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Zorii reclined in the chair with her visor facing the security monitors while her eyes watched the stormtrooper browsing her wares. She propped one hand against her chin in a show of boredom while keeping the other hand within reach of a blaster. An above ground explosion rattled the bunker ceiling sending a shower of dust drifting down onto the piles of protein rations and bootleg movies.
"You have any apple flavor packs left?" the stormtrooper asked.
"What you see is what I have," Zorii said. "I might get a new shipment next week."
A ripple of motion on the monitor caught her eye. The thump against the reinforced metal door resounded for a second before the image on the screen caught up to reality. Zorii buzzed the door open for a First Order officer and a pair of stormtroopers. She shifted her body into a better position to grab the blaster tucked underneath her desk if needed. The stormtroopers' armor looked still warm from the factory without a speck of grime. The officer's boots had been shined to a spit polish and the pleats of his pants were freshly ironed. Even the sideburns of his haircut look finished off with a straight razor. Her previous customer stood at attention while also attempting to blend into the walls.
The officer sniffed and looked down his nose at her establishment. Most of his ilk didn't ask questions about how their contraband goods arrived in their quarters, leaving their attendants to dirty their hands navigating the black markets. That was preferable to Zorii as she didn't want to interact with most of her end clients anyways. "How can I help you today? I have some fine liquors in the back or can put in a special order for something offworld," Zorii said. She only had a moment to curse between the sight of one of the stormtroopers raising his rifle and the impact of the stun blast on her chest.
Zorii woke up slumped on a metal bench with her helmet removed and a dull pain from where she had probably smacked her head when she had crumpled to the ground from her chair. She moved to massage her temple and found her hands shackled together. Becoming cognizant of the slight weightlessness in her body, she sat up and looked around the troop transport. The stormtroopers watched her from behind their helmets.
Zorii thought it would be useless to ask them if they knew who she was—better to go along with this ruse of an arrest before slipping a message to Babu Frick to send their patron vice admiral a box of cigars and a bottle of wine. He would smooth over this whole affair and get whatever pencil pushing desk jockey with a stick up his ass to put a stop to this anti-corruption initiative, which was the least the vice admiral could do given how much she paid in bribes each month. She was more worried about scavengers pilfering her stocks bare before she returned to the bunker.
The shuttle landed within a Star Destroyer. The stormtroopers hauled her up by the elbows and marched her down the gangplank into the hanger bay. The officer swiped a keycard by the elevator banks. The trio of Zorii and the stormtroopers stepped inside while the officer remained standing where he was before. He coughed to clear his throat. "You know where to take her. I need to head down to the brig to process the paperwork for the prisoner."
"Didn't she say this was supposed to be off the books—" one of the stormtroopers called out as the officer turned to walk away, and the elevator doors closed. He sighed as he looked down at the floor.
"I'm going to get my payback on whichever of you two shot me," Zorii said as she felt the tug of acceleration in the soles of her feet as they ascended into the core of the ship.
The doors opened onto a long hallway leading to a blast door. They walked over and stood there a beat before the slab of metal. Zorii's two escorts stared past her at each other waiting for the other to act. "Do we knock?" the one on her left asked.
"I guess we should. Go ahead," the other answered with a motion of the arm. His partner remained unmoving.
"Should I just—" Zorii said as she reached for the control panel.
"No, wait!" the stormtroopers said in unison.
Zorii retracted her hand, but the door hissed open anyways. The stormtroopers snapped a salute but there was nothing in front of them aside from the open space of an officer's quarters. A series of whistles and beeps at their feet called their attention to a BB-9E unit rolling around in tight figure 8s.
"Do you speak binary?" one stormtrooper asked to the other.
Zorii said, "The droid wants you to uncuff me and be on your way."
"Bullshit. Ow!" The droid had shocked his shin and then bobbed its head excitedly in Zorii's direction.
"Told you so." Zorii presented her shackled hands. He pulled out the keys with an audible grumble. BB-9E rolled back into the room and beckoned Zorii in as the door closed back up in the face of the stormtroopers.
She allowed herself a moment to gape at the luxury around her. The floor was constructed of genuine wood instead of the manufactured-by-the-ton polished tile visible everywhere else in these types of capital ships. The air was warm—not sweaty and humid like the bowels of a spice smuggling freighter, but pleasant like a summer morning on the planetside back home. A large bed with comforters sat against a side of the room across from the entryway to a private bathroom. There was even a rock garden in a corner.
A woman with a staff slung across her back stood in front of a wall length video display of the scene outside the Star Destroyer. Night was setting in on the planet below; most of the cities dimmed their lights to obfuscate themselves from bombing raids while unchecked fires burned on the surface like raw, oozing wounds. Laser bursts twinkled from a far-off battle of fighters and anti-aircraft rounds puffed in the atmosphere around a descending supply convoy. A weight settled in Zorii's chest at the thought of the First Order looking down at the chaos they wrought from a perch high above where they couldn't hear the explosions or smell the smoke. She pushed the feeling down aided by a squeeze of her fist.
"Zorii Bliss, I presume," the young woman said with a turn of her shoulders.
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance. To whom do I owe the honor and how can I be of service?" Zorii said. From the non-regulation grey robes and the affected Coruscanti accent, she pegged her as a dilettante fresh from the academy playing at war and scaring stormtroopers with an officer's commission bought with old money. Zorii could work with that.
"’Rey’ is fine for our conversation. My reports indicate you run one of the larger black-market networks on the planet and that you’re squatting in the mansion of a supporter to the First Order who has evacuated from the front lines."
"He wasn't using it anymore and his emergency rations were going to waste, but yes, I can deliver the cosmopolitan comforts of the galaxy right to your doorstep for the right price."
"There are allegations that you also do business with the other side, with that petty warlord who calls himself a Grand Marshal."
"More as a matter of convenience. If your soldiers were better at holding onto the city, I would happily do business with the First Order exclusively, but I believe my neighborhood has changed hands three times in the last month," Zorii said. She wondered if the vice admiral had been killed in the last blitz and that was why she was getting the once over by this fresh face.
"Blame the generals who believe stormtroopers spring forth full grown from the ground and use them like they have infinite divisions in reserve. This is only one front in the war to restore peace to the galaxy, and I have been chosen to bring it to a close," Rey said. With a wave of her hand, she slid back a wall panel to reveal a bar stocked with rows of liquor bottles. "I had these shipped in on the last supply run. I need your help in choosing a gift for the Grand Marshal. You should be familiar with his tastes."
Nice trick with the moving walls. Zorii processed the request for a moment before walking over to the bar. Her fingers brushed over the bottles as she read the labels in turn. She pulled down an aged whiskey, worth two weeks of a lieutenant's wages on the black market. She turned to show the supposed gift to Rey but startled to find herself almost walking right into her. The scare caused the bottle to slip from her hand, and Rey snatched it from the air before the glass smashed onto the floor. She examined the bottle before passing it back to Zorii.
"Thanks for the assist," Zorii said as she looked up at the other woman. "I'm sorry but, are you really sending this whiskey to the other side?"
Rey pulled a vial of clear liquid from within her robes. "A painless death."
"And you want me to deliver it," Zorii said in understanding as she pointed to herself for emphasis. "A good plan that has that dash of style the First Order typically lacks. This will unfortunately also put a target on my head from the Grand Marshal's surviving loyalists."
"Name your price," Rey said. "I can procure you a new cruiser with a crate full of credits to take you far away from here or whatever else you could imagine asking for."
"A new cruiser would be helpful since I might have to return to running spice after you kill or absorb half my current customer base. You'll have to give me a moment to think about such a big decision. For starters, however, I notice you have an extra bottle of this vintage, so we should crack one of them open to make sure the batch hasn't spoiled before we send it over. He might not drink it if that were the case."
Rey pursed her lips before retrieving and placing a single glass onto a desk that was carved from a single piece of wood. She set her staff down as she gestured for Zorii to take a seat as well. Zorii smirked before grabbing a second glass. "It's not that I never drink alone, but doing it too often is just sad." She pushed a glass of the amber liquid over toward Rey.
Zorii downed her drink in two gulps. She'd actually never had an opportunity to taste this label for herself. It went down smooth, but she'd stick with her normal order if she was the one paying. She arched an eyebrow at Rey, who was grimacing and pouring herself a glass of water from a pitcher to chase away the burn.
"Not used to taking shots?"
"Not used to alcohol, in general," Rey stated. "It dulls the senses."
Zorii hummed in agreement. "That's the point." She poured out another serving for each of them, though she added two parts of water for each part of whiskey in Rey's glass.
"I don't need you to water down my drinks. I'm not a child."
"Wish we had some ice," Zorii muttered. "I'm not watering down anything; different palates call for different drinks." Looking around, she spotted a bowl of fruit on an end table by the bed. She grabbed a peach and a paring knife.
"Something else that you need for this mission?"
Zorii nodded as she passed a slice of the peach over to Rey. "Take a bite after sipping the whiskey. It'll help with the aftertaste. Zorii bit into her own slice, savoring the juice as it hit the back of her throat. The blend of tart and sweet that rehydrated rations could never recreate sent a shiver down her spine. Rey followed suit, chewing the peach slowly and licking her thumb afterward. They sat in silence as Zorii split the peach between the two of them until nothing remained except the pit.
Rey asked, "What's your personal best for the Kessel run?"
Zorii snorted in surprise. "15 parsecs." She considered Rey for a moment before regaling her of the time she decided to not play it safe but to push herself and her ship to the limit. Most of spice running was glorified transportation work carrying cargo from Point A to Point B or sitting around waiting for a job. Sure, the heart started pounding when the authorities (or a rival gang) set their attention on her, but smugglers didn't last long in the profession if that was their everyday experience.
Halfway through the story as Zorii was describing the rattle of the hull as she banked through the turns, Rey had leaned forward to soak it all in. Zorii eyes flicked to the flush of alcohol on Rey's cheeks and beneath that, a fading tan uncommon among those who made their homes in space. Rey asked surprisingly technical questions about her ship, not a topic that was typically covered in officer school. Her Coruscanti accent was backsliding into something from the boondocks in the Western Reaches, whether through inattention or the alcohol's effect. Zorii's preconceptions pivoted in her mind.
At the conclusion to the tale, Zorii drained the last of her drink and asked to see Rey's palms.
"Why?" Rey said as she narrowed her eyes.
"To read your fortune."
"This feels like a pick-up move. You can't actually see the future," Rey said. "Can you?"
"It's something to do with friends and family after a round of drinks to pass the long winter nights back home. Come on, it's fun."
Rey presented her hands. and Zorii took them into her own. She ran a thumb over the healed over nicks and callouses. Zorii could tell Rey's fingernails had been worn down from manual labor. They reminded Zorii of her own hands after a day spent tuning up her ship. "This long line here, indicates you're very lucky when it comes to love."
Rey laughed and playfully tried to pull her hands back. Zorii gave them a tug and continued, "You have a long life ahead of you, but these broken lines over here indicate early trouble with family and prosperity." Zorii watched as the smile dimmed from Rey's eyes. Something like rage replaced it. "But I see the potential for a brighter future with some effort and a leap of faith."
Zorii released Rey's hands and lifted her glass. Seeing that it was empty, she set it down instead of refilling it and declared it had been ages since she last took a bath. "You're free to join me if you want, since it is your quarters."
Zorii sauntered over to the bathroom and turned on the faucet. Jets of warm water began filling up the tub, which was spacious enough for two. Zorii sat on the edge of the tub as she unzipped her boots. She hummed at the sensation of the heated floor. Looking over at Rey, who was still seated at the desk, she shimmied out of her red flight suit. She tested the temperature with her toes before sliding into the water until it was past her chest. Her feet still had room to stretch to the other end. The warmth wove into her muscles as the rising steam eased the tension from her face and neck.
Rey entered through the doorway and stood before Zorii. She slid her robes off her shoulders onto the floor and unfastened the tunic from her torso. Zorii looked up at toned abs and wiry arms crossed against the chest. Rey began pulling off her pants past her thighs. Zorii scooted over to give room for Rey to slide in next to her. Water sloshed over the edge onto the floor.
"I hope you have enough sense to take advantage of this tub every day."
"I do," Rey grinned. She splashed a handful of water against her face.
Zorii laughed along and when she was done, she traced a wet finger from Rey's temple down to her jawline. She placed the hand on Rey's shoulder as the other hand interlaced their fingers. She leaned over pressing her chest against Rey’s bicep as their legs rubbed against each other. Rey's lips parted in anticipation. "I want Kijimi," Zorii said against the shell of Rey's ear.
"What?"
Rey's breath brushed against Zorii's neck. Keeping her voice low, she said, "You asked me earlier what I wanted in return for winning this war for you. I want the First Order to leave Kijimi and return all the children you've abducted into the stormtrooper corps. To the First Order, it's just another hunk of rock on your checklist of galactic conquest, but it's home for me and mine. For Kijimi, I'll deliver the poison for you."
A pressure hung in the air, like the moment before Zorii’s ears popped as the cabin air pressure normalized. Then it lifted. "I promise I'll get the First Order to move on from Kijimi."
Zorii rested her chin on Rey’s shoulder and pressed her forehead against the side of Rey's head as she whispered her thanks.
When Zorii walked through the blast doors again, she carried the vial of poison and the bottle of whiskey. She'd do her part. Rey could leave her high and dry afterward, but Zorii had a feeling she would hold up her end of the bargain too.