Chapter Text
The rickety hull of the starship buckled under the significant gravitational stress as the vessel finally broke through the last layer of atmosphere and soared into the endless, inky blackness of space. Inside the patchwork metal shell, her arms braced for dear life against the sides of a cramped and claustrophobic storage compartment, Oola sighed with tremendous relief as she felt the transport clear the tumultuous edge of the storm. The turbulence began to subside and she cautiously relaxed her exhausting hold against the bulkhead walls, just in time for one last unexpected jolt to toss her violently backwards. She tumbled from her well-hidden perch in the highest, most concealed level of the storage compartment, back down to where only a thin set of sliding access doors, now directly beneath her, separated her and her provisional shelter from the rest of the starship cabin below. And then, as if on cue, the doors opened.
Oola found herself falling, once again, and from the cold, steel deck where she landed she looked up to see the visage of a man, not many years older than herself, dressed in a rugged manner that left her no doubt he was the ship's captain, with spiky blond hair, strikingly blue eyes and an utterly perplexed look across his face. Though he seemed to regard her with sympathy enough, once the shock of her admittedly startling arrival wore off, that lasted only until he noticed the blaster she wore at her side, strapped securely in its holster over her short, black dress. Before she could begin to offer an explanation for the weapon, he reached frantically for a long metal pole that lay at his feet, evidently left over from recent renovation work on the ship, and took a powerful, preemptive swing at her that she only barely managed to evade, rolling just out of the way as his blow connected forcefully with the floor instead.
"If this is a hijacking, you can forget about it!" he bellowed, positioning the metal rod defensively in front of him as if anticipating a counterattack. "I offloaded every last piece of valuable cargo I had before I left Tatooine."
"It's not a hijacking!" she shouted back from the deck, somewhat unconvincingly, as she wheezed loudly to catch her breath and weakly held her hand out in front of her to block any additional swings. "I just... needed a ride."
"Hell, who doesn't, lady?" the man scoffed, but dutifully lowered his makeshift weapon in a show of good faith. He rubbed his forehead anxiously and released a stressed chuckle. "So, if you're not a thief, then what the hell are you? And why are you armed?"
"I'm... a dancer," Oola said with clear reticence, knowing precisely the sort of reaction it would draw. Sure enough, the man's eyes widened in completely predictable bemusement. "And the blaster wasn't even my idea. A friend of mine, she was worried about me... it's just that there are a lot of dangerous people in the galaxy."
He broke instantly into derisive laughter. "A dancer with a gun. Dangerous people? Lady, you're one of them!"
"My name is Oola," she insisted as she struggled to climb back to her feet, ignoring his outstretched hand offering her help in doing so. "And I am not dangerous."
"Well, my name is Kurt. And I am," he said, with a stunningly overconfident and self-satisfied grin. Even as she sought to curry enough favor to remain aboard, Oola couldn't help but roll her eyes. "Normally I don't take on passengers, but you're here now and the only alternative would be to put you outside. And that wouldn't be very gentlemanly of me, that's for sure. So I guess we're stuck with each other, at least for right now. We might as well try to make the best of it."
In the notable absence of any more hospitable passenger facilities, Kurt led Oola straight to the cockpit, guiding her courteously around the many areas of his rust-bucket starship that were falling apart at the seams or already under some form of hasty repair. He eagerly leapt into the pilot's seat, offering Oola the unoccupied co-pilot's chair directly to his right, then fetched a pair of bottled beers from inside a cooler hidden under the navigating station. And then he immediately returned one of them, confronted by a distinctly disapproving glare from Oola that only dissipated, slightly, after a lengthy, stammering explanation about the benefits of a fully reliable autopilot system.
"You're lucky I heard all that noise you were making up there, you know. I can't imagine it would have been a comfortable place to ride for very long," Kurt said between gulps from his beverage, only a few of which managed to spill messily down the front of his shirt. "So, tell me, you've definitely got me curious. Why, exactly, did an armed Twi'lek dancing girl decide to stow away in my cargo hold?"
"Actually, yours wasn't the first," Oola corrected him with an impish smile. "I got caught and pulled off of two other ships before I found this one. But I didn't have any money, or any other valuables for that matter, and I needed to get off of that rock as soon as I could. One of the other pilots, he..." Oola stopped speaking abruptly, grimacing from a thought that was clearly very distasteful. "He offered to let me trade... something else in exchange for safe passage." Kurt turned to her with eyes wide open and one eyebrow starkly raised, so Oola made sure to clarify. "I declined."
"Good for you," Kurt said, sounding surprisingly supportive of her decision. "But why the urgency to get away? I mean, I expect most people on Tatooine spend at least a couple days out of every week thinking about ways to leave, but not many of them ever take the plunge."
"You wouldn't understand."
"Try me," Kurt said, putting on his most sympathetic face.
"Have you ever heard of... Jabba the Hutt?"
"Jabba the Hutt?" Kurt repeated, half incredulous and half clearly reaching to the back of his mind in thought.
"For a time, I was his slave. And he treated me very poorly. I rebelled, so he tried to have me killed. I escaped and made it out, even though everyone in his court believed that I had perished. But his sphere of influence is vast. I could never be certain that I was truly safe, that he didn't have some associate or henchman out there, just waiting for me to run into them, be recognized and brought back, kicking and screaming, to face his wrath and final judgment."
As Oola spoke, the wheels finished turning in Kurt's brain, and his smile grew several sizes in excitement. "Lady," he started, only to self-correct midway. "Sorry, Oola, do I have news that is going to totally make your day." Despite sensing his sudden enthusiasm, she looked on only in bewilderment. "You really don't know? You didn't hear anyone else talking about it back in port?" Oola's dumbfounded expression continued to plainly reveal that she hadn't. "Man, you really must have been busy getting yourself tossed off of cargo ships."
"Is there a point to this?" she asked, her patience wearing palpably thin.
"Well, I don't know if I need to be delicate about this or not, but... Jabba's dead." He paused to give Oola time to fully absorb the weight of the news. She seemed to take it in stride rather quickly, and said nothing in response. "There was a skirmish or something, out in the desert near that palace of his."
"I was there," Oola said, looking dourly away.
"I guess you just missed the end of it then. From the sound of things... Jabba lost. And lost badly. There was some kind of business deal that went south, I think? Or maybe it was a clan war? I heard a couple different versions. I can't be sure how it all really went down, but one thing that everyone seemed to agree on was that Jabba died. And if any of his henchmen survived, I'm sure they have a lot more to worry about now than one little runaway slave girl." Kurt curiously studied Oola's visage to gauge her reaction, which was still far more muted than he would have expected. "Doesn't that change anything for you?"
"I'm not sure I see why it should, at least not now," Oola mused, little louder than a whisper, still absorbing and processing the information internally, though even she was caught off guard by how calm and unmoved she felt. "Jabba may have supplied the impetus for my departure, but I was never going to live the rest of my life back there in that desert. And wherever I end up will have its own dangers, I'm sure. Besides, I don't particularly like to delight in the death of anyone." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I think I'm just ready to leave that whole world behind."
"But this guy, Jabba... he was cruel to you? He tried to kill you?" Kurt asked, trying to provoke the emotional response he'd anticipated her having at the news. Its absence puzzled him. But Oola merely nodded. "Well, screw him then." Kurt aggressively chugged the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle haphazardly over his shoulder, where it landed with a clink and rolled out of sight. "Got what was coming to him, if you ask me." Oola shrugged. She couldn't very well argue with that.
It was then that she noticed Kurt's own antiquated-looking blaster, not much different from the one she'd been given in size or shape, securely attached to a wall-mounted bracket just over the shoulder of the pilot's seat. "Aren't you something of a hypocrite, chastising me for carrying a weapon?" she asked pointedly. "Should I be as worried about you as you seemed to be about me?"
"Oh, I don't think our situations are especially comparable," Kurt insisted smugly. "For one thing, I'm quite sure that I know how to use mine." Oola reflexively rolled her eyes again, but couldn't much argue that point either. Her former host on Tatooine had only had enough time to show Oola the basics, and she'd yet to find herself in dire enough circumstances to warrant use of the weapon. Not that she was eager for any such opportunity to test her newfound skills, especially with her, or anyone else's, life on the line.
"You were what, then? A soldier?"
"Something like that."
Oola bristled a little at the intentional vagueness of his reply. "And now you ferry cargo. Is that above board or are you what they would call a..."
"Smuggler?" Kurt interjected with his customarily conceited grin. "...something like that." Suddenly seeming to sense that, in his consistent evasiveness, he was in danger of losing what little connection he'd forged with his wary Twi'lek passenger, Kurt reached toward the control panel and activated a stored holographic recording. "But if you really are curious, then I'll show you what this has all been about."
"She's pretty," Oola remarked, her voice noticeably softer than before, upon seeing the tiny, transparent image of a young woman flicker to life before her in the glow of the computer's light. Like Kurt, she was a human, with short, jet-black hair and unusually pale skin, if the holographic recreation of her was to be taken as an accurate representation of the actual person. The figure turned around once and appeared to laugh uproariously; an expression of pure, unbridled joy, the likes of which Oola had not been witness to in what seemed like an eternity. The recording came to an abrupt end after only a few seconds, and Kurt hastily shut it down to prevent it looping continuously. "Very pretty, indeed."
"She is... well, she is my one and only," Kurt said in an unexpectedly heartfelt tone that managed to convince Oola that his feelings were genuine, despite her overall skeptical impression of the man. "Her name is Ami, and she's waiting for me on the planet we're headed toward. With this last run behind me, I'll finally have enough currency saved up to take her someplace nice, build a home, start a new life... and start to forget what it took to get us there." He turned again to Oola as if searching specifically for her approval. "Does that sound like a good plan to you?"
"More than you know," she answered with warmth, and just a hint of envy, as she looked wistfully away into the starry distance.
Shintaela was the name of the planet, according to Kurt; the world where he intended to rendezvous with the girl in the hologram who, whatever their true history, clearly meant a great deal to him. Oola had never heard of the place, but then she had to admit that she'd lived a relatively sheltered life, at least until a certain Hutt gangster had entered the picture. For better or worse, her horizons were wide open now, and wherever she was presently going, Oola was certain that it would be but the first of many destinations in her future. She only barely paid attention as Kurt rambled on describing it to her; a hyperspace jump or two later, she'd have the chance to find out all about it first hand.
It was late in the afternoon, local time, when they finally arrived. Kurt's ship docked without incident in the central city's largest spaceport, and after painlessly clearing what amounted to regional customs, Kurt and Oola disembarked and made their way out into the world.
If Tatooine could have had a single planet as its direct polar opposite, then Oola was sure that she was currently standing on it. In much-welcome place of the sprawling sandy dunes and the harsh heat of the desert, the tall, steely architecture of Shintaela's capital city was surrounded on all sides by lush, unbroken waves of full evergreen forest, accompanied by a light, pleasant misting that seemed omnipresent and kept the air distinctly cool and refreshed, though Oola didn't feel so much as a single solid raindrop fall from the cloud-covered sky. Just to make sure, she excitedly extended both arms in front of her, collecting as much of the dewy moisture on her exposed skin as she could and relishing the unique sensation it caused. For the first time in recent memory, Tatooine and Jabba's Palace both seemed so very far away.
"I can't recall when I last saw so much green," she said, her mouth nearly agape in awe.
"So I take it you haven't looked in any mirrors lately?" Kurt quipped from behind her. But not even his characteristic annoyances could ruin the moment for Oola.
"I do appreciate that you didn't, you know... throw me out into space," Oola said, turning toward Kurt with a look that effectively conveyed both her gratitude for his hospitality and her complete lack of amusement at his wit, "but..."
"But this is where we part company," Kurt dutifully finished for her, as if he'd been waiting for just the right moment to do so. "Listen, I get it. If I were you, I'd probably be sick of me by now too." The two of them shared an understanding and genial set of smiles, as they prepared to go their separate ways. "I hope you find what you're looking for. Whatever that may be." Oola nodded sharply with determination, to show that she reciprocated the amicable sentiment.
And with that, Oola set off on her own once again, beneath the mists and towering skyscrapers of Shintaela's capital city. Holding her head and her spirits high, she looked back over her shoulder only once or twice, at least at first. Just often enough to see that Kurt had yet to move from the place where she'd left him, and appeared to be glancing around his surroundings with some amount of visible trepidation. Almost like someone or something had started to make him very nervous, and Oola began to wonder why he might have suddenly become so eager to see her go...
But whatever he might be up to now, it clearly wasn't any of Oola's business, and she had to trust that Kurt knew how to handle his own affairs. Oola's freedom was still a fresh and fragile thing in her mind, and she feared the prospect of becoming unnecessarily entangled in the troubles of others. She had walked a similar path once before, and it had ended with her enslaved, a collar and leash around her neck, to a ruthless, spiteful crime lord, who had eventually even attempted to kill her. She vowed, if absolutely nothing else, to be more cautious going forward. No matter what, she couldn't afford to make the same mistakes, and pay the same horrible price, ever again.
One more time, and quite despite herself, Oola turned worriedly back the way she'd come. Kurt was still standing there, but had evidently been joined by another. Oola was distant enough already that it was hard to see them in any detail, but the newcomer looked to have the general shape of a woman, with color and highlights to match the appearance of the hologram Kurt had showed her. Oola smiled with relief. She had never doubted Kurt's story, but it warmed her heart nevertheless to see proof that he'd been truthful, and just might be on his way to the happy ending he'd described to her. Oola certainly hoped so, for both of their sakes, and hoped as well that whatever nervousness or anxiety she thought she'd seen in him had just been the anticipation of a long-awaited reunion, and nothing more burdensome, to anyone, than that.
A shot rang out. From Oola's position, it sounded just like thunder, and under a layer of clouds so thick she couldn't see the sun it took her a moment to determine that it hadn't been. Instinctively, she hit the ground. So did many others around her. More than a few of them started to flee. In the distance, through the escalating madness, Oola saw the woman who had joined Kurt become surrounded by several other figures, now plainly in the midst of a violent struggle. Kurt was nowhere to be found, until Oola noticed a dark shape that had fallen in the middle of the street.
She reached for the gun strapped at her side, but suddenly hesitated. Her fingers closed around the handle, then pulled reflexively back, as if they'd touched something too hot to grasp. She had never held the blaster like this, with her heart beating fiercely and cold sweat coating her palm. She might miss her target, she might slip and discharge it in the wrong direction entirely. She might make everything worse. So she waited, paralyzed and as powerless as she had ever been, watching the events in the distance unfold without her, until the struggle finally ended, and all but the one unmoving figure that still lay defeated on the ground had disappeared from sight.
Oola rushed to Kurt's aid. The single shot that had been fired had hit him square in his right side and he lay broken in a rapidly expanding pool of his own blood. But he was still conscious, and he forced himself to sit upright in spite of the overwhelming pain.
"They took her..." he managed to say to Oola, as they both endeavored to stop, or at least slow, his bleeding.
"Ami? Who? Who took her?" Oola demanded loudly, cursing herself for not trusting her instincts and pressing through Kurt's evasiveness when she'd had the chance, before an innocent woman's life potentially hung in the balance. But just as before, his answers were less than helpful, though he had a better excuse for it this time, and she decided they had more immediate concerns to address first. "Your ship, does it have emergency medical supplies aboard?" Kurt nodded his response.
For a brief moment, Oola's hesitation returned in full force. Kurt may have provided her with transport to a new world, but they had already said their goodbyes. Ami was nothing more to her at present than a pleasant-seeming hologram. Oola didn't owe her life to either of them, and judging by Kurt's deteriorating condition, the situation at hand had already become everything that Oola had feared getting involved in again. Despite all that she'd been through, she was alive, and free; free to walk away and return to the path of safety that she had coveted for every terrible, horrifying second of her incarceration in Jabba's Palace. She told herself, repeatedly, that there was no need for her to set foot back into the darkness, least of all so soon after she had left it behind, and she knew that she was right. And then she made her fateful choice.
"Come on," Oola said, hoisting Kurt off the ground and shouldering as much of his weight as she could, while he attempted to move forward beside her under as much of his own power as he had left. "Our first stop is your ship. Then you're going to tell me everything, and I mean absolutely everything, that I need to know to help you save that poor girl's life."