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When the Sith walked onto the bridge where Andronikos was pouring over the flashing console he only glanced up once. Then his mind registered what he saw seeing and he looked up again – because the Sith wasn’t wearing her helmet. In the dim light of the cave on Tatooine he had seen the basics; green scarred skin, diamond face tattoos, glowing yellow eyes. But here, under the bright light of the ship her features were illuminated and Andronikos couldn’t help but stare a bit. She really was small, with skin the colour of a forest like Endor’s, and short black hair tied back in various places with basic decorations, and those scars – if Andronikos didn’t know any better he would think someone had pushed the Sith’s face into barbed wire. But damn if she wasn’t still kinda pretty, and those yellow eyes stared right back at him with a defiance that made something shiver down his spine like an electric jolt.
“Nice ship.” He said. With the silence broken the Sith came in properly, approaching the console he had been inspecting.
“You think you can fly this as well as your own?”
“Heh. I can fly anything, trust me.” Andronikos smirked, patting the consoles. The Sith’s cheeks twitched like she didn’t know how to smile, and his curiosity overtook him. “What’s the story, Sith? Seems like you know all about me and I don’t know nothing about you. You always a sicko or you just kind of fall into it, like I did?”
The Sith exhaled something close to a chuckle and fell gracefully into the captain’s chair; she peered up at him with those yellow eyes and for a moment he wasn’t sure if she would reply. But then she shrugged.
“I didn’t really have much choice.” She said. “My parents were slaves. I was a slave. Originally I was meant to be something like a housemaid, for cooking, cleaning, and… personal use.” She tossed the phrase out so casually, raising her eyebrows, and Andronikos rolled his eyes. He got the insinuation.
“But?”
“But I kept hitting back. Eventually the family… devalued me,” she gestured lightly to her face and the spiderweb of scarring, “and sent me to Kessel, to the spice mines there. Do you know it?”
Andronikos frowned – he knew Kessel well enough, and he knew the typical work and fate of the slaves one saw in those mines.
“Rough place.” He ventured, and the Sith chuckled in agreement.
“Most don’t last a year. I was there for two. Then one day the overseer was lashing me harder than he should have and…” her voice trailed off, and her gaze fell to her hands. She flexed them, and Andronikos heard the crackle of electricity, saw the sparks jump across her fingertips. He looked back up at the Sith’s face, grinning.
“Tell me you killed him.”
“One moment he was raising the whip again and the next… well, his ashes were getting all blown into the spice. I couldn’t explain what I’d done, but I remember the way everyone looked at me. One of the higher-ups must have seen, because I was handed over to the Sith just days later.”
“So here you are.”
“So here I am.”
“Funny how those Sith work.” Andronikos leant back against the ship’s wall, deciding to return the favour of a story, “I was an accountant on Moneylend when I decided I wanted a little more adventure. So I put a blaster to the head of the Intergalactic Banking Clan and walked off with a few million credits.”
Just to illustrate the tale he spun his blaster out its holster and raised it at the Sith, who didn’t even blink. If anything, the twitch of her mouth solidified into the closest thing to a smile he’d seen so far. Andronikos grinned too. “Been robbing and murdering ever since.”
“Well it sounds like you made a good start. Just don’t put a blaster to my head.” Her words came out as a murmur, lovely and low without the distortion of the helmet.
“Don’t worry, Sith.” Andronikos smirked, holstering his weapon again, “I got a good survival instinct.”
There was no doubting it now, the Sith’s lips curled upwards into a smirk of her own.
“Me too.”
He paused, her yellow eyes and placid smirk filling his vision; but then a snarl came from somewhere else in the ship and the Sith looked over her shoulder, her face falling back into a guarded frown. “Khem Val. I should go.” Andronikos shook his head as she got to her feet and began to leave.
“You’ve got to tell me how you got that beast sometime.”
She paused in the doorway, looking back at him and holding up her electric hand. “Another time. I promise.”
Then the Sith was gone, her footsteps echoing through the ship and leaving Andronikos with the consoles. Promise, huh? He wouldn’t have pinned her down as a woman so easy to talk to, but he couldn’t deny the promise of more conversations… wasn’t bad. Maybe he’d even find out her name next time.
Sith. Andronikos shrugged, turning back to the ship controls. Never can figure them out.