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Thank you, tiny omnitool, Captain Eva Corolastor thought to herself as nimble fingers plucked the device from the safe, and she retrieved the necessary data cells, shoving them down her catsuit.
Nothing like a little bit of corporate espionage to keep the internal heater cells firing. Things had quieted down since a Republic spy, a Sith, a Wookiee, and a dismantled droid had disappeared into hiding.
Sounded like a set-up for a great joke, especially when told by a smuggler. But she wasn’t a smuggler today.
Eva was a straight-up thief.
Eva crept her way back to the window she entered through and neatly extricated herself, sliding the transparisteel behind her and firing her grappling hook up to the roof. Beautiful. Well, what she had done was beautiful and technically perfect. Nar Shaddaa would never be beautiful, in Eva’s mind.
The woman wearing the black stealth suit touched down on the roof and hailed her ship, Virtue’s Thief. “Done. Pick me up. Let’s get out of here.”
There was a wordless acknowledgement, and Eva merged with the shadows of Nar Shaddaa. Somewhere between one neon sign to the next, there was darkness. This was where she chose to hide.
A misstep on the roof alerted Eva to the fact that she was not the only one with this idea. She crouched and waited. As requested by her friend, Eva had traveled the galaxy. She had just achieved an impossible thing by not setting off a security alarm in a Hutt building under the guard of a dozen Mandalorians.
Now it looked like Eva had to hit the trifecta: make it hard for others to keep up.
Eva frowned from her hiding spot as she waited for the makers of noise to reveal themselves. Eva was patient when it came to her enemies or card table rivals. She could wait for something to happen.
Silently, she thumbed her comm link on her left hand, cancelling the pick-up. Last thing she needed was for everyone to be exposed.
Waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting.
The light patterns in Nar Shaddaa’s sky changed three times before Eva’s previously unknown company on the roof revealed itself. She did not stay long to get to know them.
They wore the livery of Revan.
That caused her to send another silent signal to one dear little astromech. She always let him know where she found them, so that it was better to track their movements and their plans. Eva didn’t know if he was able to forward any information on, but if, on the off chance, it kept him one step ahead--
Eva idly wondered if the Revanites had infiltrated the Hutt space and whether the proprietors knew – or cared. This little group with their technology would be a valuable asset to any cartel. Given their tendency to stay away from the Voidhound and her fleet, the Hutts would be a logical silent partner.
Eva would destroy the Hutt Cartel, one day. For now, she wanted to stay alive long enough to get this data back to Port Nowhere and collect a mighty fine paycheck.
She was three rooftops away before they realized she was gone.
**
Eventually, Eva ran out of rooftops that she could easily grapple, climb, or jump to. “Captain to Ship, I have the drop. I got nowhere to go, though.” She cast a glance back over her shoulder.
By this point, the Revanites had alerted the local cartel security, so now she had crazy cultists and Hutt mooks gaining on her. She had no more time.
There was a squeal of static as the Thief went in and out of transmitter range. “Cap—on—way.”
Not soon enough. Not close enough. Eva weighed her options. She could let herself be arrested, but she was not interested in going down like a half-rate punk. She could shoot her way out, but given the 5, 9, 11 guys that were hot on her heels, she did not like these odds.
Eva could take her chance in a leap of faith, hoping that she could fire off the grappling hook to a building or vehicle as she passed and not be struck by everything on the way down. She would fall a long, long way before the air became unbreathable.
Virtue’s Thief wouldn’t make it there in time. She’d never live with a slave collar on her neck. She’d rather be a smear on a roof.
And so Eva stepped up on the ledge, elevated from the rooftop itself by about one meter. There was no natural breeze on Nar Shaddaa. All of the airflow was the byproduct of traffic whipping by, the marked routes only sometimes acknowledged by pilots. All light came from the traffic and the neon lights of all the various establishments around Nar Shaddaa. There was nothing natural about this place.
Eva’s hair came loose in the crosswinds, but at this point, it didn’t matter. It was about to get a lot more wild. As the voices began to reach her, Eva backed up to the edge of the ledge, like a diver, her heels off the edge as she leaned forward on her toes.
“No no no no! Don’t do it or I’ll shoot.”
“The hell is the point of that threat?” Eva rolled her eyes. Really?
Eva hesitated no longer. She pushed off with her toes and arched her back to go head-first into a dive down through the air traffic of Nar Shaddaa.
Eva had to admit that she did live for the rush. The adrenaline surged through her as she fell, and she let herself be consumed by the euphoria for a few moments. It was better than spice, but that was because the danger was uncontrollable; spice could be metered, but the fall could not. At the moment she thought her heart would burst her chest, Eva shot out her grappling hook and prepared for her shoulder to be wrenched out of its socket by the hard stop.
Thunk.
Eva heard the high-pitched winding of the rope, and she was able to get a hand on the rope to help distribute the force of the jolt. She kept her shoulder in its socket this round as the large freighter sped through Nar Shaddaa’s chronic traffic. She hit the rewind button on her wrist unit and started to reel herself in. If she could get on and stay on the freighter long enough, she could drop off onto another rooftop and figure out how to get back to the space port from there.
As she drew near to her destination, Eva realized she would have no such luck. Panic seized her for a second. The freighter was entering a tunnel, and she was about to be crushed between the bottom of the freighter and the lower walls. Regaining her wits, she disengaged the rope from her launcher, and she heard the zip as it lashed through the air.
Eva plummeted through traffic, trying to roll between the vehicles which roared in all directions around her. She could see a hail coming through on her left wrist comm, but this wasn’t exactly a great time to answer. If she could just –
Eva remembered what boots she wore today and clicked the heels to magnetize them. Suddenly, she was yanked to the side as her soles connected with a passing tram. She rolled into herself and flattened herself to the side of the moving vehicle.
Well, that was a win. Sort of. She slid her way down to the back of the tram so she could pull herself up without being seen by the driver or by too many of the passengers. She couldn’t help but cough as the exhaust of the traffic started to get to her. Nar Shaddaa was a filthy planet in all senses of the word.
Eva carefully latched her boots onto the back bumper of the vehicle and pulled herself into a crouch, exhaling hard as she leaned her cheek into the cool metal of the vehicle. She was going to need a shower after this. Tiredly, she gave a wave to the gawping child in the speeder behind the tram. Dad looked pretty impressed too.
The smile that had accompanied that wave disappeared as a shadow loomed over the windshield of the vehicle. The father slowed the vehicle to crane his neck up to see what was going on over his head. Eva’s eyes followed the shadow’s path until they encountered the feet it was attached to. Those belonged to a Revanite.
And he had friends on other vehicles nearby, all closing in on her. All heavily armed. All very willing to have lots of collateral damage in Nar Shaddaa traffic. All for her. Eva’s eyes narrowed as she realized her tail had a small grenade launcher and clearly intended to use it on the public transport tram she was now on.
There was no choice. Eva disengaged her magnetic boots and leapt forward as she jerked her blaster and shot him. The man and the launcher fell harmlessly into the traffic below.
And so did Eva. She looked up as she fell this time, and she could see the swarming figures in red and white livery in a controlled descent as they pursued her. There was a flutter of relief as she realized they hadn’t fired – their primary objective was to pursue and destroy her, not stage a terrorist attack. She shifted her weight to tilt herself to face downward again, then straightened her body to be an arrow, intending to strike something that would take her pursuers with her. Eva considered the passing electric cables and neon signs.
If it meant she took them with her, Eva was willing to ride the lightning. Fry them all. Leave nothing behind, not even ash.
There was a sudden dark growl of an engine, an overtuned swoop bike if she’d ever heard one. It was close. She snapped her head to the left to find some helmeted idiot catching up to her on an equally perilous dive. Most swoops would have started to stall out, but this one was made for a circuit track, for speed, and for high-risk maneuvers.
Eva gripped her blaster. The rider was a figure in black, no indication that it was a Revanite, but a stranger all the same. No. No chances. She’d take them all with her.
She turned once more to look back. They were still descending with her, now gaining as they let their heavier bodies and munitions drag them down to catch her. Eva fixed her gaze downward, silently willing herself to go faster,
A gloved hand appeared at her throat and grabbed at her. Distinctly masculine. She rolled to her right and neatly dodged another cargo freighter.
After the large vehicle had passed, that deep rumble reappeared at her ear. Didn’t get him. She made motion to roll again, but this time the hand grabbed at her collar and yanked hard, causing her to gag as she fought to keep herself free. Her left hand reached for a vibro knife slotted in a secret pocket, but the rider deliberately slammed his right handlebar into her left hand to force her to drop it. Despite the throbbing pain, she leveled the blaster less than an inch in front of her forehead and shot toward him. That helmet probably wasn’t blaster-proof.
Eva heard a curse in a language she did not know. Finally, the man shouted at her as he dragged her by her neck over the side of his swoop bike, pressing her head down into the left kneecap of his racing suit as he spoke. “Don’t screw up a perfectly good rescue, darling.”
That caused Eva to freeze as her mind raced and her heart pounded. She raised the blaster where he could see it and then holstered it as slowly and as smoothly as she could muster given their steep incline and the crush of her hip against the swoop bike’s front end.
The rider released her neck and pulled the bike out of the dive, merging back into traffic.
Immediately Eva went for his left sleeve, pulling it up hard. She had to be sure.
The hook-shaped scar.
“I used to compete in swoop bike racing. Broke after I collided with a median. Other guy’s fault, of course.”
Eva let the sleeve slip back. She let the information register before she carefully brought her left leg under her chest in order to straddle the bike properly and get herself facing forward rather than leaning over the side. The rider shifted back as much as he could, but it was a tight fit: racing swoops were meant for one person leaning forward.
Eva got her left leg over the side and shifted herself to face forward. She felt herself pressed down into the bike and its revving engine, the rider’s chest and hips behind and slightly on top of her back and hips. She hooked her legs back over his, trying to prevent any chance of her unbalancing the bike with her limbs flailing all over the place . Eva gently gripped the center parts of the handle bars – not hard enough to steer, but enough to balance herself.
“There is to be no contact, period.”
“No contact at all, huh? Not even a little bit?”
“If we had more time…”
Eva would have laughed if they were not in mortal peril. And she dare not speak his name out loud, if anyone was listening. In the brief respite, Eva contemplated how the Revanites had found her or whether it was a coincidence: did they want her for the corporate espionage or the same old thing?
She had more pressing concerns, literally and figuratively. She looked into the bike’s mirrors. “They’re still coming.”
The rider nodded, consulting his mirrors briefly before he switched lanes again.
“I was thinking to run them through power lines, but that doesn’t seem like such a great idea anymore.”
Their close proximity meant she felt the twitch in his upper arms and chest in opposition to that idea, as if his body threatened to wrap itself around her even more tightly. “Got a better idea,” his voice came through the helmet.
Eva was really in no position to argue at this point. She was just going along for the ride.
The swoop bike accelerated, and they hurtled forward through Nar Shaddaa’s hazy traffic. They were getting closer to the surface as the air quality declined. A yellow-brown mist settled over everything, and the bike’s lights automatically went on. Again, they changed lanes, but this time they took a path that tracked them upward and in between the massive buildings. The alleys were narrow, and the turns out of them were tight; the rider had to throttle down as he took them, as well-tuned as his bike was.
Eva could still hear people following them. A glance upward at the buildings overhead informed her they weren’t just pursuing them on this level. As the rider pulled into a dingy, open space in the slums, an eerie silence settled upon them. The engines stopped roaring. The voices stopped yelling.
That did not mean they were not there. It simply meant they were preparing to spring the trap.
The tension mounted as even the barely functional lights around them began to blink out one by one. She watched as the shadows crept in around them. She adjusted her position, pinned between the rider and his bike. Eva could feel his heartbeat and his breathing. He was anticipating most of this, as if he had played this game before with these men. “Blaster. When I say,” said the rider, voice cool and unnervingly calm.
Eva pulled her blaster as requested, trying to will her breathing to slow down, to match his. Her heart was still off to the races. For a moment, a hand was on her shoulder, as if to ensure she was still there, still alive, and then a squeeze to assure her he was still there, still alive.
As the last light flickered out, Huttese security burst into the square on all sides. At the edges of this frenetic activity were those shadowy figures marked in red and white.
Here they go.
The swoop bike’s engine revved, and the repulsorlifts suddenly fired from beneath them, shooting them straight up in the air. Eva felt herself gasp; she thought she felt him laugh. She could hear the anger and shock of the ground troops. The rider hit the throttle and they shot in between two buildings, blaster fire from the ground momentarily showering them, but it quickly ceased. Too much collateral, even here.
The swoop wove between the narrow tenement buildings before it took a hard turn out and shot across a flight path, nearly embedding itself into the radiator of a public transport tram. There were blaring horns as the swoop skittered to safety, and Eva could hear the din rising in volume behind them. That’s a few tails lost, with any luck. The swoop accelerated, and Eva realized they were heading into the casino district.
Eva and the rider hurtled through the yellow-brown sky, weaving in and out of traffic as the brightest lights on all of Nar Shaddaa approached. It was the middle of the night, but day never ended in this area, advertised to the Republic and Empire alike as an ideal place for shore leave and vacations of all kinds.
Thieves, smugglers, spies, and swoop racers knew better.
“Blaster,” called out the rider. Eva scanned the sky for her mark. “Walkway, right there.” Eva spotted the clear walkway that connected two parts of a casino together. They were barreling straight toward it. Once she was assuredly within range, she took the shot, and the rider opened the throttle to achieve top speed.
The walkway shattered into hundreds of thousands of sharp little pieces and fell to the ground far beneath them. Figures that the Hutts would use sub-standard materials for their buildings; her shot should have bounced right off. They passed between the buildings right where the walkway had been, and then a sharp drone pierced Eva’s ears. Using the swoop’s mirrors, she saw a transparent green light field now in place to prevent people from entering the walkway ….
And rather large number of their pursuers eating it, striking it so hard they bounced off and tumbled to their deaths.
Leave it to Hutts to actually pay attention to safety features while still going with the lowest bidder.
The herd had been thinned, but the swoop bike still had a few pursuers. The rider seemed to be humming to himself, thinking over what he could do next. Even as they hurtled through the air at the bike’s top speed, he seemed unhurried. In fact, he seemed as if he was enjoying himself. Eva had to shake her head – this man was ridiculous.
The bike rolled mid-air and then it took an abrupt downward turn and started to powerdive. Eva looked ahead of them to realize that the rider was aiming right into the massive fake volcano at one of the Hutt casinos. It went off every so often….
Eva checked her wrist comm. “It’s going off in less than a minute.”
“Perfect!” He sounded all too thrilled. He opened the throttle and down they plummeted into the artificial volcano, Eva having no time to object.
They were plunged into darkness for a moment before the bike’s lights kicked on. The volcano was huge and seemingly bottomless – Eva had no clue how they would know to pull up in time. But there was a bottom to it, and they were going at top speed right toward it.
In the darkness, her heart beat at a peppy allegro. Vivace would come with the burst of adrenaline, as they realized where the bottom was. Presto, for when the flames came up to meet them. For now, it was all anticipation, the waiting, the speed toward the inevitable. She tried to manage her breathing even as the full weight of the rider pressed into her back and hips, cradling her smaller form and pressing her into the machine between their legs. Somehow, the rider was all calm and confidence, even in the darkness. He knew his bike, and he seemed to know where he was going.
If he didn’t, he did a fantastic job in pretending.
At last, the bottom of the volcano made itself known as it began to ignite in order to fire and blow its top (in pre-scheduled fashion for the tourists). Eva caught a flash behind them in the swoop’s mirrors. There were three or four tails left. She couldn’t see if they were Revanites or Hutt Cartel. It didn’t matter. They had to lose them.
And so the swoop bike charged toward the incinerator, the heat beginning to meet them. As predicted, her heartbeat ticked up to vivace, her breathing matching. This time, it seemed the Hutts went with a high bidder but zero safety features: she could feel the raw heat from the inferno beginning to rise dangerously. Although the heat initially caused an impulse to unzip the cat suit to get some air, Eva knew it to be folly: she’d burn. The engine started to scream a bit, objecting to the heat, demanding to slow down.
It was when the rider’s heartrate jumped at her back that Eva’s adrenaline flooded her. The swoop was struggling in the heat. The throttle was still wide open as gravity pulled them down, but the bike shuddered, the engine threatening to fail. The rider could hear it.
And then he cut the engine.
She felt the rush and the edge of terror that came with it. Presto.
Eva’s breath caught in her throat as they started to fall uncontrollably, the roar gone silent. Her heartrate soared and she was trapped, could not escape. She heard the rider grunt as he swung his weight to force the bike to turn to the right, their left sides heading straight into the fire. She realized that was the way out – but with no propulsion, they’d simply cook one side first rather than die headlong. She reached for breath, the hot air entering her lungs brutally. She felt his muscles flex around her as he attempted to align the bike with his own strength while in free-fall.
Eva hadn’t given a lot of thought to his raw physical strength to this point – it was always his brain and looks. It wasn’t an awful last new thought to have before dying, honestly.
Somehow, in a split second, he had managed the rotation and then reignited the engine. There was a shower of blaster fire to their right as their would-be-captors realized they would get away – but they seemed to lack the cognition that by the same stroke, they were dead already.
He rolled his right wrist as far back as it could go, and the swoop accelerated with a hard jerk that sent Eva back into the chest of the rider. As his left arm came down and across her body to steady her, there was a blast of heat at their backs. He hissed, taking the full brunt of it, but she could feel it lick the soles of her boots and the sides of her legs.
She was dizzy with the fear, the danger, the speed, him.
It was better than spice. The rush was incredible.
Her heart pumped blood through her, everything sensitized and feverishly alive. She seethed for fresh air – a foreign commodity on Nar Shaddaa. The lack of oxygen adding to the high, and the machine beneath her gave her body no stable place to rest; as it shook, so did she.
She could feel the rush consuming the rider as well, his heart pounding, his body still curled protectively around her even as his left hand returned to its handlebar. His breath came in puffs, the helmet’s respirator staticky. She could feel his muscles pulse, a combination of exertion and adrenaline. He leaned forward into her back as they shot through the service tunnel of the casino.
The heat dissipated behind them. There was no one left following them. They just had to get out. They flew toward the dim lights at the end, which opened into a docking bay. Through wide open doors lay the open air on Nar Shaddaa. Safe.
They were safe.
As the high left her, she was foggy at best, mind not as sharp, exhausted, but she still sought some rooftop, some secluded space. Eva waved her hand away, out of the casino district. The rider took her direction, and they managed to find the one park on Nar Shaddaa without artificial trees. There was actually some hidden life that the Hutts hadn’t paved over.
The swoop bike touched down with grace, and the rider turned off the engine and threw down the kick stands. Eva and the rider held their position on the bike for a moment before both of them simply collapsed down into the bike. Eva felt her feet hit the ground, and she let her head drop onto her forearms as she still straddled the bike. She felt his weight on top of her at her back, the helmet bowed over her shoulder. Her backside was flush to his pelvis as his arms dropped to hang off the sides of the bike alongside his legs, his feet firmly planted on the ground as well. As their adrenaline levels crashed, tremors went through both of them.
“You ok?” She finally asked. “You get burned?”
“No,” he answered close to her ear. “You. You hurt?”
Eva flexed her left hand experimentally. “No.”
She felt him relax against her. He was too tired to care about contact. They panted together, feeling each other’s heartbeats through their suits.
“Context aside, that was a fun ride,” she managed. “Though not the craziest thing I’ve done on Nar Shaddaa.”
“Same,” he answered. “I should take you again sometime. Context aside.”
For once, it was her turn to close her eyes in order to process that statement. Eva reached back and felt for his back and shoulders, trying not to give anything away. “You doing all right?”
The helmet nodded.
“Back into swoop racing?”
“Yeah. Got bills to pay, even off the grid.” He readjusted his position slightly, trying to ensure the helmet’s edges didn’t gouge at her, she guessed. “What brings you to Nar Shaddaa?”
“Extracurriculars.” Eva stopped for a second, then arched up slightly. Shit. She yanked down the zipper to her stealth suit to reach in. She sighed in relief as her fingers ran over the data cells needed for the drop. “Still got the goods after all that.” He continued to be unmoved as her back returned to its original position after an audible re-zipping.
“Where exactly were they going to go in that thing?” he asked rhetorically.
Eva turned around slightly from her position on the bike, craning her neck trying to see into that helmet. “So much for ‘no contact.’” Eva said the words aloud.
He didn’t move from his position on top of her. “Does it count if we were never here, officially?” The rider floated the idea out there as he propped the chin of his helmet on her back.
Eva’s breath caught in her throat for a second. “Well, if a smuggler and a spy agreed not to have contact, you can’t really hold a thief and a swoop bike racer to those other people’s agreements.”
“What happens on Nar Shaddaa stays on Nar Shaddaa?”
Eva grinned even as she teased. “Are you trying to convince me of something or drive me off?”
“Not sure.” There was a raw and honest bite to that sentence. The rider sat up and extricated himself from the bike. He stood up to stretch his achy muscles. The rider cleared his throat. “I suspect they’ve caught on to mutual friends.”
Eva knew he was correct as she stood up next to him, stretching herself. Eva quietly signaled the Thief. She wouldn’t cancel it this time. She gestured out at the urban sprawl before them. “The job was clean – I know the contact, I know what he needs this for. This – not planned by the other side. Just an opportunity.”
“I agree. Wrong place, wrong time for you. I need to move on. Keep moving until —” The rider shrugged. “I don’t know. Nobody does.”
Eva finally was able to give the rider a good look over. Yes, this image was going to be filed away and preserved for eternity. His lean, muscular figure did look good in the swoop bike racing gear. She couldn’t see into the helmet, but she was willing to bet that her stealth suit was giving him a hell of a visual too.
They caught each other looking. Eva put her hands on her hips defiantly. “You started it.”
“‘If we had more time,’” he recalled. “‘But we don’t.’ Again.” A hand went up to rub the back of his neck where the helmet met the suit. “Let’s…say, hypothetically –”
“Hypothetically,” she echoed.
“If I took off the helmet right now and dealt you in, would it make the wait worse?”
Eva ran her tongue over slightly wind-chapped lips. “Hypothetically – before you left?”
“Hypothetically. After Prime. After –” The rider gestured back toward the casino district indistinctly. “And you looking like –” He flicked his wrist at her for a second before letting his hand drop to the side. “Not knowing when again.”
Eva closed her eyes for a moment and let her weight shift from left to right to left. She opened her eyes. “Keep the helmet on – and no, that’s not an invitation to investigate whether I have a Mando kink.” She drew out a shocked laugh from him. “We don’t know when…or if.”
She almost felt him withdraw back behind the helmet, but his words were still reaching out. “First and last shouldn’t be the same thing.”
“And we’d only have time for that. It’s like you said when we did the Imp Exchange – we can’t be concentrated in one place.”
“Someone has to survive,” the rider’s voice broke through, stronger than it had been. “We can’t linger.”
The roar of Virtue’s Thief’s engines finally entered into Eva’s ears. Finally, the dark night was over, as if it truly mattered on Nar Shaddaa. “Please stay safe,” she said to him. She chuckled at herself for a moment. “Silly thing to say to a swoop racer.”
The rider walked back to his swoop and started the engine. “I’ll fly fast then. I have a card game to make it to, after all.”
“You do.” She said it, firmly.
Even as her own lips pulled back into a slightly wan smile, she would have bet he wore a similar expression as he kicked off and sped back into Nar Shaddaa, no further contact.
As quick as he had arrived, he was gone. The last exhausted splutterings of Eva’s adrenaline reserve gave out, and the depressed lows after the thrilling highs began to close in around her. It would have been so much worse if –
Dawn would come, some day.
The ladder dropped down from the Thief, and she climbed it, limbs heavy and body weary. She dropped through the open hatch into her ship, wordlessly following Bowdaar. “Who was that?”
“Just some swoop racer. Gave me a lift. And remember, Bowie – we were never here.”