Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You look like shit, Red.”

“Mrgh.”  Coughing into his elbow, Cal hit the bench hard, as graceless as a dropped sack of tub-onions and probably reeking like one as well.  That had to be the life, he thought – sleeping quietly, undisturbed, snuggled beneath a blanket of mud, nurtured by the warm yellow glow of a grow light… and then torn out of the ground, mashed into a pulp, and tossed into a makeshift still to become the sort of alcohol that’d have a man’s stomach lining pleading for mercy.  But onions didn’t come down with something every other month like kriffing clockwork.  If Cal could take sick days, he would’ve burned through the year’s already, and it had only just begun.  “Stop calling me that.”

“Sound like shit, too,” Taith said cheerfully, drawing her cybernetic legs up onto the bench and hooking her arms around them.  Cal threw her a weak glare and slumped against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment.  “Betcha feel like shit, huh?”

“Mm.”

“Hope you didn’t get whatever’s lurking around the Rock Rose.  Spike caught it and she upchucked all over the Rose last night, and now Fe’pa’s got it too, and Pimmy.”

Cal had never been to the Rock Rose – somebody at some point had told him it was a cantina operating out of one of the many downed shuttles littering the city’s outskirts, and that was the extent of his knowledge – and suddenly he was really grateful.  He hadn’t even been to the Filling Station since Lorel had gotten pregnant.  In her case, it was just morning sickness (a very inaccurate name, apparently), but he’d only needed to hear her puking in the sink behind the bar once to make a hasty exit and decide he wasn’t returning until he could see an actual baby.  Then he made the mistake of saying as much to Prauf, who’d pointed out that if Human babies were anything like Abednedo babies, they spit up a lot… so maybe Cal would stay away until the kid was at least two.  There were other tapcafs.  Besides, the new pay scale wasn’t leaving him a lot in the way of disposable income; he was probably better off not buying alcohol at all for a while.

The train doors wheezed shut and Cal cracked his eyes open again.  There were now two very large Besalisks standing in the car between him and Taith.  Looked like they wouldn’t be catching up, then.  He hadn’t seen her since sometime last year.  While they’d never been on the same crew, they had worked together fairly often back when both of them were new to the scrapping scene.  Taith, an Elomin whose employment on Bracca took her off Elom for the first time in her life, was utterly enchanted by Cal’s bright red hair from the moment they met and refused to drop the nickname no matter how much he begged.  For his part, Cal mostly begged out of obligation – he didn’t mind that much.  She was the upbeat type even when it’d been pissing down rain for eleven weeks straight and they had gotten stuck working on the external hull for almost as long.  Hard to stay in a funk with someone like that around.  But the Guild transitioned to the new pay scale and simultaneously dissolved all the long-standing crews, reorganizing them into much larger units headed by a fleet of foreman droids, and chief-engineers-turned-scrappers had no further say in who they worked alongside.  Prauf had been in a foul mood over that for weeks.  It was sheer luck he and Cal were assigned to the same unit.  Taith landed elsewhere and until today, Cal hadn’t known for sure she was still alive.

He could’ve moved over to the other side, sat with her, found out how she’d been.  Or he could’ve asked the Besalisks to move and hoped he didn’t get his clock cleaned for it.  But doing those things required energy, and Taith was right, he felt like shit… and the train had begun to move.  The car wasn’t that full (they never were anymore, and it didn’t escape Cal’s notice things were only getting worse instead of better), so he had a good portion of the bench to himself.  Cal chose to believe that was sheer luck too and not because he smelled like he’d bathed in stagnant starship fuel.  Lulled by the slight sway of the train car, he tipped onto his side, wrapped up in his poncho, and dozed off.

When the train suddenly slowed after almost an hour, the quiet rumble of the engine drowned out by a whine as the brakes engaged, Cal roused just enough to start counting.  Six Imperial checkpoints and four stations later, he made himself sit up, even though that started his head pounding so badly his eyes felt like they’d burst out of their sockets.  The Besalisks were gone, as was Taith.  None of Cal’s tools were gone, thankfully.  Bad luck to loot a living scrapper, but sometimes people got desperate – sleeping in public without a friend watching your back was always a gamble.

Cal dragged off the train in a haze.  The city of Solaris (another inaccurate name – it saw sunlight about three days per year) was a ramshackle mess of old ships, shuttles, prefabs, and scrap-metal shacks piled together like the galaxy’s worst jigsaw puzzle, tangled with lifts and ladders and lights – he had to keep closing his eyes so the stabbing pain in his forehead wouldn’t make its way down into his stomach.  His apartment was a straight shot from the train station, fortunately, and with great relief he let himself in and left the lamps turned off.  His poncho hit the floor in a soggy heap, followed by his boots, harness, and tool belt.  The bed was right by the door and Cal crawled into it and either fell asleep again or just passed out.  Or legally died, maybe.  It ceased to matter the second his head hit the pillow.

He woke once more to a loud THUNK and a string of Abednedish profanity that sounded more surprised than pained.  Cal pressed his face deeper into the pillow, which also smelled like fuel now.  He really needed to wash his hair.  “Watch the bike.”

“I wish you’d keep this thing somewhere else.”

A light flickered on.  Cal turned his head far enough to watch blearily as Prauf clambered over the swoop bike parked directly in front of the apartment door.  “Not paying for garage space,” he rasped, rubbing at his gummy eyes.

“Cal, it’s never gonna run, I keep telling you that…”

“Yeah?  I finally got a replacement for the power converter – all I gotta do is put that in and finish tuning the turbothrusters, and then I guess we’ll see.”  Cal scraped up enough energy to spare his sleek blue swoop a loving look.  It’d come a long way from the skeletal, rusted scrap pile he’d gotten for a song.  And if Prauf was right and it didn’t run, so what?  Cal had a built-in excuse for making poor financial decisions and it was called ‘being fifteen years old’.  Prauf thought he was seventeen, but that was neither here nor there.

Shaking his head, Prauf set the small bag he was carrying down on the counter.  “Do you actually know how to drive it?”

“Sure,” Cal said vaguely, because he couldn’t say no, but all the previous owners did and I had a bunch of their memories stuffed into my head the first time I touched the bike, so I think I can figure it out.  He pushed himself upright, wrinkling his nose as he tried to swallow around the sludge clogging his throat.  “What’re you doing here?  We didn’t have plans, did we…?”

“Nah.  And I’m here ‘cause I spent all morning listening to you sniffling and hacking.”  Prauf sidestepped into the kitchen, such as it was, opened a cabinet, and closed it again.  “Figured you were waiting on groceries until payday and wouldn’t have much lying around.”  He opened the other cabinet and took out a packet of instant lamta soup.  Because he was completely correct, it was the last one Cal had.  “I brought you a couple things, you know, just to tide you over ‘til you’re better…”

“Thanks.”

Prauf quickly waved him off, pouring the soup mix into a dented pot.  “You get the drinks next time we’re out and I’ll call it even.  Unless Lorel decides to have another kid right after the first and you refuse to go near the Filling Station ‘til that one’s walking too – ah, let’s face it, I’m probably just gonna drag you there one of these days anyway.”

“Let me suffer my irrational phobias in peace, would you?” Cal muttered.  He stood, holding onto the wall until he was convinced his legs wouldn’t give out on him.  His entire body felt leaden.  Good thing his apartment was tiny – five steps to cross the room, three through the little kitchen, and one more step down into the ‘fresher, where the toilet, sink, mirror, and showerhead were stacked atop one another in a space about a meter square.  The first few weeks after moving in had been marked by many toilet-induced bruises on his shins.  Now, he thought the whole setup was kind of handy, especially when he was running late in the morning and needed to accomplish multiple things at once.

Cal emerged from the ‘fresher to find Prauf stirring soup with one hand and pouring water into polystarch powder with the other, as comfortable in the miniscule kitchen as he was in his own.  He didn’t mind the Abednedo showing up and acting like he lived here – Cal did the same thing every time he went to Prauf’s flat.  Their tenure as roommates had been… somewhat tumultuous (he hated thinking about it, because he knew it was his fault), but since Cal had gotten his own place, the balance they’d reached after those first terrible months of cohabitation had relaxed into an easy camaraderie.  “Hey,” Cal said, running his hands through his wet but no longer fuel-scented hair and trying to blink the persistent stickiness out of his eyes, “wanna see something weird?”

“Yeah, why not,” Prauf replied, glancing over, then doing a double take when Cal poked his tongue out at him.  “…okay, that is pretty wei– wait, that’s the same thing that happened to Nox last week.  He had the goopy eyes and the cough, too.  I didn’t know Humans could get Nautolan diseases.”

“Mm.”  Cal went cross-eyed trying to look at his tongue, which was stained an amphibious green color and coated in scaly patches.  His head throbbed in warning and he gave up quickly.  “Nox said he got it from Dangger, so I think it’s Ishi Tib, actually.”

“And… Nox gave it to you,” Prauf said in an odd tone of voice, plucking a fresh polystarch bun from the dish and starting another.

“He must’ve.  We were – not like that!”  Cal elbowed Prauf in the back as he squeezed behind the Abednedo.  He wanted nothing more than to pour himself into bed, so he did, slouching against the wall and cuddling under his oversized blanket.  Prauf was focused very intently on the bubbling soup, radiating embarrassment.  “Listen, if that was the case, he would’ve announced it to the whole karking yard the next day and you know it… guy’s mouth is bigger than the Maw.  He wishes.  We were just working on the same section of bulkhead and that was enough, I guess.”

Whether or not Prauf believed him (probably not, considering all the warnings he’d given Cal about the insane number of STDs scrappers exchanged like comm codes), he dropped the subject and just said, “Stars, you really do catch everything that’s going around, huh?”

“Yup…”  And usually got it twice as bad as the person he’d caught it from, to boot.  He’d started to think the stress of scrapping and hiding and lying was wearing on him.  “It’s okay.  Kinda just feels like a bad cold.  And a really weird urge to drink saltwater.”

“Don’t do that,” Prauf said immediately.  “You’re gonna dehydrate.  I’ll add some extra salt to the soup, so just sit tight a little longer…”

A few minutes later, Cal opened his heavy eyelids at the sound of Prauf approaching and was handed a bowl of soup and a bun.  “Thanks,” he said again, squirming a little more upright so he could eat.

“No problem.”  Prauf quickly ate his own bun, dusted off his hands, peered around the apartment.  “Okay, you’ve got some extra soup mixes, more polystarch, a couple cans of juice… that should – oh, wait.”  He grabbed the nearly empty bag from the counter and fished one last thing from it.  “It’s that time of year again,” he said, tossing it to Cal.  “Congratulations – it’s been three and you’re still not dead.”

Cal had no free hands, so the tin hit the mattress with a noisy rattle.  He knew it wasn’t fragile, though.  He dropped the polystarch into his soup, which didn’t taste like much and still could only improve the bun’s starchy flavor, reached down, rubbed his thumb over the corner of the tin.  No echoes.  It was the same gift as always, nothing special or expensive, merely something to do when he wasn’t in the shipbreaking yard or so sick he couldn’t do anything besides sleep.  And right on time, too – he’d used his previous set of colored pencils so often they were ground down to inch-long nubs.  Cal had rigged up a little holder so he could still grasp what remained.  “Yeah,” he said, “just minus a spleen and a couple fingers…”  He stuck a spoonful of soup into his mouth and pointed to the workbench beneath the window.  “Red bag under there.”

It took Prauf a bit of finagling to remove the plastoid bag from a pile of parts and gadgets and scrap metal without triggering an avalanche.  Cal finished his soup and the bun and then just sat there, watching in silence, as Prauf finally freed the bag and opened it to peek inside.  “Oh, hey, you found Vo Green!” Prauf said happily.  “Last time I went to the stand, Taevia was fresh out – said some scumsucker had bought sixteen boxes right before I –” He stopped.  He’d gotten a good look at the other box in the bag, and now he pulled it out, staring at the royal blue label like he didn’t quite believe it existed.  Cal stood up to put his dishes in the sink.  “…you gonna tell me where you found Astral Lace?” Prauf said, so hushed Cal would’ve missed the words had he not been listening for them.

“No.”

“Tabbers?”

“I just said I wasn’t telling you,” Cal replied, and then couldn’t answer any further questions because he was coughing too hard. 

Prauf replaced the Astral Lace in the bag and got Cal a cup of water.  “Thanks, Cal,” he said, still quieter than usual.  They didn’t normally thank one another for this little trade-off – it was a tradition – but maybe he could guess how much it had cost, and how difficult it’d been for Cal to put that box away and not just drink it all himself.  Astral Lace was so good.  Prauf deserved it, though.  And Cal owed him tea for about forty more years if he ever wanted to pay back everything he drank while they were living together.  Prauf patted Cal’s shoulder with a big hand and Cal set the half-empty cup on the floor, curling up on his bed and tucking the tin of pencils to one side and hoping he could at least sleep off the headache before work tomorrow.  “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, then I’ll let you rest.  You’ve got my comm; call me if you need me.”  He patted Cal’s shoulder again.  Cal hummed, eyes slipping closed.

And then he heard another THUNK.  “Watch the bike,” Cal murmured.

Prauf sighed.  “You know, when I said you should get some furniture, I meant a table or something.”

Cal flapped a hand towards the workbench and yawned.  “Got one.”

“That’s a sheet of metal you welded to four pipes, and I can barely see it under all the tools,” Prauf said fondly.  The apartment door opened and shut, and Cal was left alone, cold and exhausted and sick, but with a full stomach and a warm blanket.  The whingy little voice in the back of his head that didn’t want to be left alone could piss off.  He was used to it.

Sleep refused to come as easily this time.  After ten minutes or so, Cal opened his eyes.  He picked up the tin, popped off the lid, and skated his fingertips across the rainbow of unsharpened pencils.  He really didn’t have any furniture besides his bed and the makeshift workbench, but what he lacked in furnishing, he made up for in decoration.  He was running out of space on the walls again – soon he’d need to retire some older drawings to make room for new ones.  Or he could stop, but… Cal was a scrapper, a soldier.  A destroyer.  Sometimes he thought the only constructive thing he knew how to do was draw.  If he stopped doing that, he had nothing else left, and he had already lost everything.  Coughing, he turned his head to look at the large piece of flimsiplast taped to the wall right next to his bed, one of the pictures he could never bring himself to remove.  “Dunno why you like drawing water features when you’ve already got one right here,” Prauf had teased him the first time he saw it, gesturing at the window and the pouring rain warping his delightful view of the rail track supports.

Cal had just shrugged and laughed a bit.  Nobody but a Jedi would’ve recognized the Room of a Thousand Fountains.  His apartment was a colored-pencil shrine to a Temple that didn’t exist anymore.

Scrubbing his sticky eyes on his sleeve and grimacing, he sat up, covered the tin, and gave it a gentle toss so it landed on the workbench.  That line of thinking wasn’t helping, and Cal had to get some rest, or else he’d be a zombie during his shift and probably lose a few more fingers.  He was going to sleep, slog through work tomorrow, and then he had a day off to sleep some more and try to kick this thing that was definitely not an Ishi Tib STD regardless of what Prauf might suspect.  He was going to be fine.  Maybe there was only one person left in the entire galaxy who cared whether Cal lived or died, but he gave Cal pencils and made sure he had food when he was sick and tried to look after him even though Cal knew damn well he was terrible at letting himself be looked after.  And maybe Cal didn’t always care whether he lived or died – a feeling he’d berated and guilted himself over many, many times – but as long as there was one person left, until he could be that person again, he’d hang in there.  He hadn’t survived the Purge just to get killed by Green Tongue Syndrome.

The last cargo train of the day roared past Cal’s apartment, which meant he had to be up in five hours.  He rolled over onto his side, folded an arm beneath his head, and gazed at the Room of a Thousand Fountains until he finally fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Cal woke up with a headache.  He wished he could be surprised by that, but it was nothing he hadn’t expected.  In fact, as he regarded the nagging pinch behind his left eye that came and went, frustratingly out of rhythm with the hammer working at his temple, he found himself relieved instead.  Migraine dodged.  He’d been helping Cere yesterday evening, combing through unsorted piles of books in a shop basement for several hours in search of one elusive title, and while most of the echoes he was subjected to were merely faded snapshots of emotion, even those added up after a while.  After three hours and enough dust to render them both grey-haired and pasty-skinned (as if Cal needed help with that), he’d had to call it quits.  He could feel the migraine looming much the way he felt oncoming storms in his joints.  BD-1 had no such issues, so Cal left him behind with Cere, went home, washed up, and put himself straight to bed.  Sometimes sleep held off the worst of it.  This time, it’d worked, and the headache remained at an uncomfortable but tolerable level.

He also woke up on the deck, but that wasn’t a surprise either.  The hazards of being a restless sleeper on a cot just barely wider than the span of his shoulders, Cal supposed.  Awake, he could squirm onto his side or back or stomach without moving too far in either direction; asleep, he rolled right off, and then he usually wasn’t asleep anymore.  At least the cot was comfortable.  “I’m not complaining,” Cal had said once, “because I like it in there and I don’t want to move, but I’m curious – why is there a bed in the engine room?”

“Well, occasionally we pick up grubby wet Jedi on a whim and I don’t want to get my good mattresses dirty…” Greez began, then laughed, waving the hand that wasn’t holding a knife.  “Kidding.  It’s standard on Lateron Spaceworks ships.  See, when my people first started getting into spaceflight, we didn’t have the resources to build our own ships – had to buy them offworld – and when Spaceworks got into the business, their starships were… I don’t wanna say ‘low-quality’, ‘cause they really weren’t, but they had a lotta issues.  Back then, every pilot hired a mechanic and the mechanic slept in the engine room so they could react real quick if a capacitor blew or a thruster failed.  Obviously that ain’t a problem anymore – those old shipbuilders woulda crapped themselves if they could see something like the Stinger Mantis – but small and mid-sized Spaceworks ships still have the engine bunk.  Good if you gotta rack one more person than you have regular bunks for, right?”

Cal had paused with his hands full of cutlery and sent the Latero a sideways look.  “So, months ago I accidentally implied I liked sleeping in the engine room because I’d hear it first if anything went wrong, and you’ve been getting all bent out of shape over me insulting your ship ever since… and now you’re telling me that’s why it’s there?”

Greez’s response was a mature “Ah, shut up,” so Cal thought he’d won the argument, if it could be called that.  He certainly felt vindicated.  Greez stopped bringing it up after that, though that might’ve been because he had much better ammunition: the time Cal had unknowingly brought a juvenile Artery Eater on board.  As Merrin explained, they weren’t plants at all, just very, very good at pretending.  Fully-grown, they hibernated for years before needing to feed, at which point they latched their numerous flowerlike mouths onto the first prey that wandered within reach.  The unfortunate victim was injected with venom that liquified them from the inside out, drunk like a vando-fruit smoothie (Merrin demonstrated by loudly slurping at hers), and discarded.  The Eater then budded a few dozen offspring and reentered hibernation.  She’d also said some Eaters were able to manipulate the empty skins left behind after feeding, puppeting them in order to lure in more prey for their children, but Cal had a feeling she’d made that up to freak Greez out.  It’d worked – he conscripted BD into another shipwide scouring for any last microscopic drop of Unidentified Dathomirian Ooze, even though Merrin said it’d be impossible for one to spawn from just that.

As if he knew Cal was thinking about him, Greez leaned in through the doorway to the engine room, bushy eyebrows knit and his face screwed into an expression of deep concern.  When he spotted Cal sprawled on the deck, though, the cloud lifted quickly.  “Oh, good, I was coming to wake you,” he said.  “Could hear you yelling something all the way up front.  Bad dream?”

He couldn’t remember dreaming, thankfully.  “I guess,” Cal said anyway.  He’d been having some pretty awful nightmares the past few nights.

Greez eyed Cal, who sat up, rubbing his forehead.  “You know, I’ve been thinking about getting one of those railings that clip onto the side of the bed.  Before you give yourself a concussion or something.  Or I wind up with a hernia.”

Cal just grunted, hoisting himself onto the cot.  For a guy with arms like wet noodles, Greez was stronger than he looked – he’d proven as much when Cal got knocked down with pneumonia and slept through falling off the bed six or eight times a night.  That wouldn’t have been possible were Cal capable of keeping any weight on, but every time he actually gained a few kilos, he got sick and lost them again.  He was apparently cursed to be scrawny his entire life.  Thank goodness he’d gotten to be tall, too.  He sunk his head into the pillow and pressed his palm against his left eye like that’d smother the ache.  BD-1 squeezed into the engine room between Greez’s legs and hopped up on the bed, beeping.  “I’m okay,” Cal said.  He turned his head to look at Greez.  “Sorry.”

“Eh, I was already up, it’s fine,” Greez said.  “Shower’s yours, if you want it.  Cere got a real early start again, and Merrin’s either dead to the world or composing loving odes to her mattress…”

Cal smiled a bit, running his fingers through his hair and letting his arm flop to the cot.  After almost a week spent camping on the ‘fresher floor, Merrin had earned the right to sleep in an actual bed as late as she wanted.  “Yeah, might as well.”  He wasn’t going back to sleep.  Smacking into the deck was an effective ‘on’ switch.  “Just give me a few minutes.”

“You don’t gotta hurry, kid, that’s what I’m saying.”

“Right.”  So he didn’t.  He laid there and gazed at the ceiling and let his mind wander, one leg dangling off the cot, toes smushed against the deck.  Since the Mantis’s engines hadn’t run in a few days, the metal was pleasantly cool against his skin.  BD patiently sat next to his other foot, his little legs splayed out in front of him; he was not really built to sit like that, being a droid without muscles to exhaust, but he did it anyway, and Cal suspected he knew exactly how cute it made him look.

After a couple more minutes lazing around, Cal got up and headed to the ‘fresher.  It practically sparkled, having been sanitized to within an inch of its life once Merrin was finally free to vacate the premises, and he only felt a little uneasy about entering.  Not a stupid phobia, just sensible precaution.  He didn’t want to get sick.  The really terrible corner of his brain where he banished all his un-Jedi-like thoughts was secretly glad it’d been someone else this time.  He was always sick, and so far he’d avoided thinking too hard about the implications of that.

Greez and BD were both in the cockpit when Cal walked into the galley, tugging his newest poncho on over his clothes.  It was a heavyweight synthetic weave that was not waterproof but kept him warm, and therefore exactly what he needed in a cold and relentlessly windy city like Suuvott.  It was also too big for him and striped red and blue, which Greez had said made him look like he was wearing a circus tent (and then needed to explain to Merrin what a circus was).  “Hey,” Cal called, jumping the steps and shoving his feet into the boots left lying by the lounge table, “where’d you put the money for the paint stripper?”

“Next to the tin!”

Cal found the credits Greez had taken out, scooped them into his hand, quickly counted them on his way to the cockpit.  “How much do you want?”

“As much as that’ll get you.  Should go pretty far in a place like this.”  Greez spun the pilot’s chair around, datapad in his lap, as Cal extended a hand to BD so the droid could climb onto his back.  “If you’re not gonna eat here, take a few extra creds and have breakfast while you’re out.”

“I – okay,” Cal said rather than argue.  He wasn’t hungry, but it’d probably hit him soon and Suuvottan food was pretty good.  “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Satisfied, Greez turned towards the controls again, and Cal opened the hatch so he and BD could step out into the morning chill.  He was promptly attacked by some kind of flimsi advertisement that’d been blowing around in the wind; sputtering, Cal peeled it off his face, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the overflowing trash bin.  That thing hadn’t been touched since they’d landed in the berth.  Cal had seen an ancient cleaning droid trundling through the corridors a few times, and he suspected it was the spaceport’s entire sanitation crew, so maybe it just hadn’t gotten around to them yet.  Oalivan was the wealthiest planet in the system and that wasn’t saying much.  But the grimy port was the only one in Suuvott, meaning nobody had paid a lot of attention to their arrival amongst many others, and – more importantly – taking a right out of their berth, walking past the next six landing bays, and taking another right led to a public ‘fresher.  Merrin was lucky they all liked her and wanted her to be as comfortable as possible while her digestive system committed suicide.  Otherwise, she would’ve spent the week in there.  If Cal got waylaid by one more starship-insurance scammer when he really needed to take a leak, he was going to blow his cover as a very ordinary traveler just wanting his feet on the ground for a few days.

The usual complement of grifters was haunting some other part of the port today, so Cal and BD made it out unmolested and emerged through the main arch into the city proper.  The sun had crawled out of bed, but most of the locals hadn’t; aside from a few people scurrying around, buffeted by the wind, the wide street was empty.  BD chirped.  Shading his eyes, Cal looked up at the sky.  It was a clear, bright turquoise dusted with little wisps of cloud.  “Pretty,” Cal agreed. 

BD thought it would be a good morning based on that alone.  Sighing, Cal stuck his hands into his pockets and started walking.  “Yeah, that’d be nice… I could use a good one.”

Well, then he’d better perk up, BD ordered.  If he went around thinking about how much he thought it was going to suck, it would probably suck.

Cal had to laugh at that.  “You sound like my master,” he said, a statement guaranteed to pique BD-1’s curiosity.  Sure enough, the droid nudged Cal’s shoulder and requested an explanation.  “I guess when I was little, I was kind of a pessimist, you know?  Not all the time, but if something bad happened – and it was always dumb stuff, like answering a question wrong in class – it’d wreck my entire day because I couldn’t just let it go.  And then Master Tapal came along and he was having none of that.  I think that’s why he used to schedule my training in the morning, actually.  Anyway, one day we were doing something – I don’t even remember what – and I couldn’t get it right at all and I just… burst out crying.”  He’d been nine at the time and the embarrassment was still fresh when he thought about it.  Cal had never liked crying in front of other people.  “Master Tapal ended the day’s training right there and actually sent me back to my cabin to take a nap.”  And that memory made him grin.  “I was so insulted because I didn’t want to be treated like an overwrought youngling… you know, exactly what I was at the time.”

Just ahead of them, a door squeaked open, and Cal fell silent – a gaggle of children, various ages and species, spilled out of the building and onto the sidewalk.  They were all wearing the same red uniform and he assumed they were on their way to school.  He slowed his pace, letting the chattering group get out of earshot, then continued.  “It worked, though; I felt way better when I woke up.  And then he came and told me I dwelled on the negatives until they consumed me… your focus determines your reality and all that.  And then I said I felt like a failure… so, instead of just telling me what I needed to improve after I was done training every day, he started making me tell him what I’d done right.  That was really damn hard at first, and I had a lot of trouble finding anything I’d done right… but after a while I got used to thinking about the positives, and I started focusing on those even when I struggled.  Learned to bounce back.”  Cal pushed his hair out of his face, since the wind was blowing it all over the place, and gave a sigh that came out just a bit shaky.  “I miss him.”

BD made a cooing noise and leaned his head against the side of Cal’s.  He understood.  He missed Master Cordova, but he tried not to dwell on it either.

“Guess we both had good teachers, huh?” Cal said, and BD chirped in agreement.  Of course, Tapal’s advice was not always applicable – some things hung around a lot longer than just a morning.  Like the day Master Tapal had come into Cal’s cabin to wake him (something he almost never did) and gently break the news his clanmate Wriss had been killed; Cal was too old for it, but he’d crawled into his master’s lap and clung to him and sobbed.  And it was morning, by ship’s time, when the clone troopers murdered Master Tapal and tried to do the same to Cal.  Five years and Cal had only just begun to get past that.  “I’m doing my best… but after seven bad mornings in a row, a guy has a hard time looking on the bright side.”

Six, BD corrected.  The first one had been bad for BD, not Cal.

“Bad news, buddy: your problems are my problems.”  But BD had managed to clear the virus from his system pretty quickly, so Cal could brush that one off.  The next, however, was the second day in a row Cal had barely gotten any sleep, his wrists and that leg he’d broken twice before were aching terribly, and he kicked off the morning by getting into a stupid argument with Merrin.  Then Mari had commed with an extremely time-sensitive mission, they spent an hour and a half in hyperspace throwing together a slapdash plan with no idea what they were getting into, hunkered down in their landing zone, realized the Mantis stuck out like a sore thumb, and then Cere found out via an Imperial communication the prisoner exchange they were awaiting had been postponed several hours.  That gave Cal and Merrin time to blend the ship in with its surroundings, but also time to wonder whether or not this was a trap.  The Empire didn’t usually do prisoner exchanges with fledgling crime families whose leaders didn’t have the words ‘the Hutt’ after their names.  Mari’s intel had always been good, though, so they stayed and hoped for the best.

Surprisingly, the ‘operational security concerns’ cited as reason for the delay turned out to be nothing, the exchange took place as agreed, and the plan went off with only a few minor hiccups.  Mostly in the form of bombs, since Baby’s First Crime Syndicate wasn’t quite as naïve as it liked to present itself.  Only one of the prisoners – Wookiees the Empire wanted on Kessel more than they cared about keeping a handful of low-level criminals incarcerated – was severely injured in the ensuing chaos.  She died of her wounds on board the Mantis.  She would be laid to rest on her homeworld, which now had twelve more warriors furiously prepared to defend it.  Cal almost pitied the first stormtroopers to get in their way.

The very next morning, Merrin woke up violently ill.  For two mornings after that, following nights spent with his headphones blasting so he wouldn’t hear any noises that’d stick in his head for weeks, Cal fled the Mantis at dawn and wandered, tired and mopey and praying the latest malady would decide to skip him for once.  On the fifth morning, he’d just been stupid – he took a different route out of the port to avoid the insurance scams, noticed a thin, etched loop of gold lying on the ground, and picked it up, thinking it was someone’s dropped necklace.

It wasn’t a necklace.  It was a slave collar.  Cal came around on the floor with BD prodding him frantically, about two seconds away from calling Cere or Greez for help.  He’d gone back to the Mantis, put his headphones on, used his torch to cut the collar into pieces, and threw them down the trash chute for incineration.  The poor girl who used to wear it wouldn’t need it anymore, after all.

So that was five bad mornings.  Yesterday he’d just woken up far too early, screaming – not yelling nonsense, which didn’t even bother Greez that much anymore, but screaming, like he was being tortured.  Cere had to sit with him for over an hour until the thought of being left alone in a dark room didn’t scare the hell out of him, and the memory sent hot shame writhing in his belly.  He was eighteen years old and shouldn’t need to be coddled and comforted after a stupid dream.  He wished he hadn’t touched the collar, but he didn’t regret destroying it so nobody else could stumble across it and decide it suited their disgusting purposes.

And that made six bad mornings, and only if he didn’t count the one where BD accidentally downloaded a bunch of worms from a computer terminal that’d probably been left unsecured for a reason.  Sighing, Cal waited for a speederbus to pass and crossed the road, hunched against the wind.  On the upside, he had a headache instead of a migraine, Merrin was much better, he’d gotten a decent amount of sleep, and he didn’t remember whatever slave-collar dreams had disturbed Greez.

He was hungry now, too, like his stomach had awoken and realized Cal went to bed without dinner last night.  “Hey,” Cal said, jiggling a shoulder a bit so BD’s head spun towards him.  “Which corner was that really tiny bakery on?  The green one.”

One more block forward, BD said after taking a good look at their surroundings, and one more to the right.

“Thanks.”  Cal followed the given directions to the small, pale green building with a few people queued outside the window and joined the line.  It might’ve made more sense to just grab a nutrient bar or something on the Mantis, but Cal thought the stooped old man running the bakery needed the money more than he did.  Lekku were not supposed to be bony like that.  And for five credits, he walked away with a hot cup of tea and a freshly-baked bun crusted in sugar and zwil.  He tore an enormous bite out of the latter, watching the soft interior steam into the cool air, and thought he’d die happy if he never had to touch another polystarch portion bread ever again.

Cal meandered as he ate his breakfast, having a vague idea where he needed to go to purchase the paint stripper, but not bothering to rush.  The shop probably wasn’t open yet anyway.  More and more Suuvottans were braving the wind chill on their way to work or school, though the city still felt strangely hollow.  Every other storefront was shuttered, plastered with ‘For Sale’ signs or Imperial recruitment ads.  A fair number of Suuvottans weren’t headed to work or school, just huddling beneath overhangs or in doorways with desolate expressions.  He’d seen most of them before in the exact same places.  Oalivan needed help the Empire wouldn’t provide.  The Republic hadn’t done much either, apparently – he assumed that was why the planet had thrown its lot in with the Separatists during the war.

He was nearly finished with his tea – something pale and opaque and not strained very well, with a tartness that reminded him of yogurt – when BD-1 started beeping, warning him of an awful lot of white armor in the distance.  “Yeah, I know,” Cal said.  He drained the cup and threw it in another bin strewn with loose garbage.  “Giving ‘em a wide berth, don’t worry…”

BD wasn’t mollified until Cal turned down a dead-end leading to an abandoned factory.  They weren’t far from Suuvott’s sprawling Imperial compound now.  Oalivan had only one thing the Empire wanted: a large and disenfranchised population.  It was standard procedure to set up training grounds, spread the word that troopers got three meals a day and a warm, dry place to sleep, and watch the new blood come pouring in.  There wasn’t much else in the way of employment opportunities here, so it probably looked like a great deal to the poorer residents.  The spaceport’s proximity to the compound meant the crew of the Mantis was in dangerous territory, but unlike many other Imperials in the galaxy, these Imps weren’t looking for them.  Everyone was too busy learning to march in formation and surgically inserting that stick all stormtroopers seemed to have up their asses.  Their stay had been peaceful, unless you were Cal and listening to somebody else vomit was torture.

Since he needed to go in this direction anyway, Cal passed the empty gardens outside the factory and slipped in through the unlocked front door.  The place was currently functioning as a homeless encampment.  People were scattered around inside, gathered into small communities beneath makeshift tents and the occasional actual tent, claiming the cleanest corners or passing bottles around or stoking small fires in bins.  It reminded him of Bracca – for better or worse, Solaris would’ve been as bad off as Suuvott were it not for the Scrapper Guild.

He’d taken this shortcut before and hardly anyone took notice, but it still felt a little like tromping through somebody’s house uninvited.  He headed directly towards the rear doors and tried to stay out of everyone’s way.  Unfortunately, not everyone tried to stay out of his way, and Cal almost tripped over a very small person who went running smack into his shins.  BD yelped and Cal wobbled, grabbing a crumbling wall before he tumbled over the little girl who’d fallen on her rear at his feet.  “Dammit – sorry, wasn’t watching where I was going,” Cal said, even though she’d run into him.  Judging by the white hair and white skin and her almost colorless irises as she gawped up at him, he guessed she was Umbaran.  “You okay?”

She didn’t answer, clumsily getting to her feet, tugging on one ear.  He wondered if she understood Basic.  And then she looked up again with a huge, beaming grin on her face, and he realized she wasn’t looking at him at all – she was completely and utterly transfixed by BD.  “That’s BD-1,” Cal said.  The droid in question leapt over his shoulder to land in front of her.

Giving a little squeal, the girl clapped her hands and reached out to touch BD’s head.  He warbled a greeting she probably didn’t understand either, but she bounced on the spot nonetheless and poked at one of his antennae, squealing again when he angled it towards her.  She wiped her running nose on her sleeve and crouched so they were at eye level and babbled away in a language Cal didn’t understand.  BD identified it as a dialect of Umbaran, but not one he had in his language banks.  Ultimately, it didn’t matter who understood what – twenty seconds or so into the one-sided conversation, somebody further across the factory floor called out, and the girl quieted, glancing over her shoulder.

The speaker was a small man almost as pale as the girl, bundled in dirty ponchos and scarves, eyeing Cal nervously.  Cal tried to seem as inoffensive as possible.  The man said something else, gesturing to the girl; she smiled at them again, gave BD one more pat on the head, and went scurrying away, stumbling in her ill-fitting boots.

“Yeah, yeah,” Cal said as BD smugly returned to his perch, “you make friends everywhere you go, I know.  Come on.”

He was halfway across the factory floor when the Force shrieked and the stormtroopers kicked the back doors in.

Chapter Text

Someone screamed.  The sound bounced off the stained and broken walls still littering the room, then was joined by half a dozen others; any chance Cal had of reacting immediately got lost in the cacophony, which seized his aching head in an iron grip and squeezed.  “Against the wall!” one of the troopers yelled, while another was yelling over them to do the exact same thing, but with their hands in the air, and a third trooper was actually yelling in Suuvottan so everyone could understand.

Cal inhaled and blocked out the hammer trying to crack half his skull and took stock of the situation as fast as he could.  The stormtroopers had already cut off the rear exit.  Behind him, many of the people in the factory tried to flee through the front, but those who hadn’t already made it out were stymied when a second squadron outside cut off that doorway too.  He made a split-second decision and threw himself into the remains of a small room directly to his right.  The bits of pipes that’d survived some opportunist’s scavenging suggested it used to contain a toilet.  The door was long gone, and so was the ceiling – knowing he had seconds before his hiding spot was discovered, he tipped his head back and looked up at all the holes where the second floor had crumbled away.  “Think you can make it without being seen?” he hissed to BD, who nodded.  “Keep watch,” Cal instructed, “we’ll figure it out –” and BD hit his boosters, shooting through a fissure overhead.

One of the stormtroopers rushed past the doorway, blaster raised, then backed up.  “Are you deaf?!” he snarled, jabbing the barrel of his weapon at Cal’s face.  By accident or design, he caught Cal right in the nose – accident, Cal realized as he doubled over, swearing, a hand flying to his face, and the trooper just stood frozen for a heartbeat.  He got over it quickly, though, snatching Cal by the collar and hauling him upright.  “Let’s go!  Against the wall, right now, go on!”

Cal complied, rubbing his nose.  It felt bruised rather than broken, but bled enthusiastically.  He wound up standing between the Umbaran man, who was clutching the little girl to his side, and a woman cradling a pile of discolored blankets against her chest like they were precious treasures.  He flicked his eyes upwards and couldn’t see BD anymore.

“Quiet!” one of the troopers bellowed.  Everyone shut up even if they didn’t know Basic.  The rest of the troopers shut up too, which told Cal who was running this show.  The stormtroopers who’d come in the front doors seemed to have gone back out, presumably in search of the escapees.  A dozen regular troopers remained, led by a squad leader, who stalked towards the captive civilians.  The civilians were terrified; the troopers were all but vibrating with anticipation and energy and… yes, there was fear there too.  They trained new recruits on Oalivan.  Wet-behind-the-ears stormtroopers got to practice their war crimes on an impoverished and fairly docile population before they were sent out into the big bad galaxy.  He’d bet money this unit was on its first milk run.  If Cal was willing to use his lightsaber, it wouldn’t even be a fight, but he wasn’t.  One poorly-deflected blaster bolt and an innocent person could be killed.  And the squad leader’s next words made it pretty clear showing his hand yet would be a bad idea – “If any of you have valid identification, take one step forwards!  If anyone attempts to resist or run, everyone will be shot!  Do you understand?!”

One of the troopers translated into Suuvottan.  The girl who’d been so enthralled by BD started crying noisily and the man pressed her head against his thigh, trying to muffle the sound.  Of the twenty rough sleepers the Imps had rounded up, only three people stepped forwards, and the leader nodded at another trooper, who started running IDs.  The rest, holding their blasters aloft, looked steady even if they didn’t feel it.  They were jumpy.  Lots of itchy trigger fingers.  This was no contraband search on Bracca – Cal had squeaked by a good hundred of those, got dinged for having something he shouldn’t now and then, and he never truly feared the stormtroopers until that night they were pulled from the train in search of a Jedi.  The Guild didn’t like power-tripping troopers picking off their scrappers.  These guys, however, were going to start shooting at the slightest provocation, so although he probably could’ve survived a bunch of green soldiers and one guy who appeared to know what he was doing, he kept his mouth shut and hands still and just paid attention.  The oversized poncho hid his lightsaber.  The troopers didn’t seem focused on him in particular, making it unlikely they knew who he was.  Bad luck to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, that was all.

The first two people with identification were sent back into line without incident.  The third wasn’t quite so lucky; the trooper must’ve said something to the leader over private comms, because he came storming over, took one look at the datapad, and snorted.  “This ID isn’t valid,” he said coldly, another stormtrooper rapidly translating.  “And from the looks of it, this is your second infraction.”  The Rodian tried to plead, from the sound of it, and promptly got the butt of a blaster to the stomach for his trouble.  The little girl wailed louder.  Two troopers dragged the coughing Rodian to his feet.  “Line up!” the leader ordered.  “Two lines, right here in front of me!  Again, any attempt to escape or resist will be met with lethal force!”

Of course, Cal thought, biting the inside of his lip so he didn’t say anything he – or any of these other people – would regret as he shuffled forwards, head down.  To the Empire, a bunch of poor squatters were nobodies.  Who’d miss them if they were ‘accidentally’ shot during a routine sweep?

One woman was brave enough to ask a question as she took her place in line.  The Suuvottan-speaking trooper looked to the leader.  “She wants to know where we’re going.”

The leader gave a mocking laugh.  “Somewhere that’ll make you wish you’d cleaned up your act sooner,” he said.  “Not gonna work?  Fine – plenty of room in the labor camps down south.  We’ll put you to work.  Now move!” he shouted, and they moved, clustered together with the squad circling them.

Outside, the sunlight joined the hammer in trying to reduce Cal’s skull to dust.  Swallowing a groan, he squinched his eyes shut as far as he could while still keeping track of his surroundings, watched the few civilians lingering in the street quickly scatter as they emerged from the factory.  The other squadron had only rounded up two other people.  He listened as they passed and bit his lip again, this time to stop a grin – the other leader was steaming at them for not being in position on time and allowing so many of the factory dwellers to escape.

“Left turn, now!” their squad leader snapped once they’d cleared the empty gardens.  The stormtroopers executed flawless 90° turns.  The rest of them sluggishly drifted in that direction.  Someone behind Cal got shoved hard and ordered to fall in; he didn’t look over his shoulder to see if they were okay.  Best for the troopers to see him as another homeless kid and not the only person in this group who wasn’t afraid of them.  Besides, somewhere above them, BD-1 was watching.  Cal kept his eyes on the ground and sniffled slightly, hoping his nose would quit bleeding soon.

They were marched all the way down the road to the corner, where a transport awaited.  It was a blocky, rusting speederbus with a bench on both sides, and the right side was already full of other unfortunate souls.  A Latero sat among them and Cal’s heart lurched before got a better look – not nearly enough hair to be Greez.  He didn’t have any reason to leave the Mantis, anyway.  They were stocked up on supplies and someone (meaning Cere or Greez) had been staying behind the past few days in case Merrin needed anything.  “Inside!” one of the two guards standing at the ramp said, gesturing with his blaster.  “Take a seat.  If there isn’t one, sit on the floor.  Cooperate and nobody has to die today.”  Then he presumably repeated his instructions in Suuvottan.

Cal’s line was forced into the transport first and he snagged a spot near the end of the bench, close to the hatch. It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but gave him a decent line of sight.  Hatch at the rear, center aisle – currently being filled with the others from the factory – and a door at the front, presumably leading to the pilot.  How many up there?  He was going to estimate three, max.  No windows, just some skinny slats near the ceiling for ventilation.  No restraints, either, though the two guards would most likely be crammed in here with them.  He also hadn’t seen a second vehicle prepared to fly along as an escort, which suggested they were all really confident this group of prisoners wasn’t going to be a problem.

“We’ve got eight more incoming,” one of the guards said.

The other’s helmet turned to glance inside.  “They gonna fit?”

“We’ll make ‘em fit.”

By the time the rear hatch was closed (with the two guards inside, as expected), there were forty people squeezed into a transport meant to hold half that.  The speeder huffed to life and then started moving.  The little girl and the man with her were separated; he was stuck on the floor at the far end of the aisle and she was right next to Cal, shivering, too scared now even to cry.  She was so small.  Very slowly and obviously, so he didn’t get anyone killed, Cal extended a hand to her.  She grabbed on immediately and buried her face in his arm, cupping her free hand over her ear.  Her dingy pink coat belonged to a dozen other people before, but her daddy found it and gave it to her, and she loved it because it was snuggly and warm and her favorite color.

He let the echo slip away and leaned his aching head against the wall, closed his eyes.  A transport like this ran on two small repulsorlifts, perhaps three, and it was a pretty old speeder so he doubted they’d modified or upgraded it.  Cal had disassembled so many repulsorlifts he could scrap one in his sleep.  Time to find out if he could scrap one without touching it, either.

Master Tapal would be appalled, he thought.  Cal basically carried around the blueprint for a standard repulsorlift in his head, and he wasn’t sure he could wreck one through the Force?  Of course he could.  He consulted the blueprint.  The fastest method would be to detach it from the power supply entirely, but if the loose cord caught on something, it could spark a fire and a ton of panic, so he decided to just rip out a few antigrav generators instead.  They were located directly across from one another in the array.  One of the stormtroopers gave a grunt for no apparent reason and the girl flinched, curled further into Cal’s side.  He squeezed her hand and pictured himself wriggling the generators from their sockets.

He heard it when the first repulsorlift went.  The whirring from beneath the speeder dropped in volume, there was a clang, and then a rattling clankclankclankclankclankcla- which suddenly ended in a quiet thunk-thud as a pair of generators fell onto the pavement and got left behind.  A few people started murmuring.  Cal distinctly heard another thunk, but this one came from above the bus rather than beneath it, and he suppressed a grin again.  “Shut up!” one of the guards snapped.

“What was that?” the other muttered.

The first guard was quiet for a second as if awaiting a response through his comms, then said, “Nothing.  We’re good.”

Three repulsorlifts, then – good old-fashioned redundancy.  Hoping they weren’t too close to wherever they were headed, Cal started working at repulsorlift #2.  He kept his eyes open this time, though, and in the flickering light that leaked through the vents, he watched the first trooper out of the corner of his eye.  That one spoke Suuvottan, so he probably came from the area.  He might’ve even known some of these people.  Stormtroopers were conditioned for violence and cruelty, and with their faces concealed and voices modulated, none of them had any excuse for being less brutal than the trooper next to them.  The ones who resisted didn’t last long.  The rest learned to weaponize their anonymity.

There was probably some sort of comparison to be made with the clones.  They all had the same face beneath the helmet, and they’d worn their scars like badges of honor, got tattoos, experimented with hair dye and wild styles, customized their armor three million different ways so they could be distinguished from their brothers whether they had it on or not.  Cal hated thinking about them.  Five years, and it still hurt like yesterday.  He gently wiggled his fingers until the girl reluctantly lifted her head and let go of his hand.

This time, Cal didn’t hear the repulsorlift fail, because the back end of the speeder slammed into the road with a crash that felt like a gunshot to the left eye.  The two guards standing at the end of the aisle staggered and hit the closed hatch.  As the speeder came to a literal screeching halt, Cal surged to his feet, reached out, and pulled one of the guards’ blasters to his hand.  The other guard didn’t react fast enough.  Praying everyone else would keep their heads down and not panic, Cal jumped right over a ducked head and ignited his lightsaber.  The second trooper fell to the deck in an ungainly sprawl, blaster sliding from nerveless fingers, and the first never knew what hit him.

The door to the cockpit slid open.  “What’s –” another trooper began.  Cal spun, dropping the blaster, and thrust out a hand.  The stormtrooper’s backplate smashed into the speeder’s controls.  They stayed on their feet, though, flung themself back through the door, and shot twice.  One bolt, wildly aimed, passed harmlessly well above Cal’s head and impacted the hatch among a chorus of screams.  He sank into the Force and performed the most precise deflection of his life, and the other bolt ricocheted off his lightsaber and upwards, punching through the roof.  Cal hadn’t watched to make sure it went where he wanted it to; he was already sprinting up the aisle.  He stepped on a few limbs along the way.  By the time the stormtrooper shook off their shock and prepared to fire again, it was too late.  Without pausing, Cal leapfrogged the crumpling body and thrust his lightsaber through the right side of the bulkhead separating the cockpit from the rest of the bus.  The trooper seated there never knew what’d hit him either.

“– backup!” the pilot was shouting into the comms.  “Dwollop Street, we have –” and that was as far as he got.  The unarmored man’s entire body spasmed as electricity caused his limbs to contract uncontrollably.  Cal simply bashed him over the head with the hilt of his lightsaber and the pilot collapsed onto the controls, out cold. 

As BD-1 jumped from the open window to stand atop the steering column, Cal shoved the pilot aside, dealt the comms a fiery death, and hooked his lightsaber on his belt before he began scouring the assortment of buttons and switches.  None of them were labeled.  That figured.  “Nice timing,” he said.  “We need the rear hatch controls.”  BD didn’t know which one it was either, so they both pressed and toggled everything within reach until the droid finally hit the correct button.  “There we go,” Cal said, and turned around.

Nobody had bolted for freedom the moment the hatch opened.  They were all just staring, silent and motionless.

Cal put his finger to his lips, then pointed to the door.

He was the last one out, behind the Umbaran man carrying the little girl.  She waved to them over her father’s shoulder as he ran towards an alley.  Cal grinned at her, waved back, and disappeared too.  On the next street over, he walked right past a few stormtroopers who raced by, never giving him a second glance, most likely headed to help out with the ‘disturbance’.  “You know what,” Cal said to BD, who tilted his head curiously, “you were right.  This is a good morning.”

About two hours later, they returned to the spaceport, BD bopping along to the cheerful little tune he was humming and Cal lugging two enormous jugs.  Had he run into any stormtroopers now, they would’ve made good bludgeons.  Despite the sudden increase in white-clad squadrons marching through the streets in perfect formation, though, some Human teenager draped in a circus tent and hauling paint stripper seemed beneath their notice.  Cal circled halfway around the port at a distance, keeping well away from the Imperial compound and the factory, and entered through one of the smaller side arches.  He found the resident scammers, while he was at it.  Only one woman with an obviously fake badge approached him, and she backed off when she saw he was carrying a pair of jugs that weighed about twenty kilos apiece.  He knew all the manual labor would come in handy someday.

The Mantis was where they’d left her, nestled safely in Berth Something (Cal didn’t pretend to understand the Suuvottan numbering system), blazing silver now that the sun was peering up over the port’s walls.  Mostly blazing.  Half blazing.  Okay, when he stood back and got a good look at the whole picture, maybe forty percent of the ship was clean and gleaming.  BD said they’d really done a number on the poor thing, and Cal agreed, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

“Admiring your handiwork?”

Cal blinked and tore his gaze away.  Greez was standing at the top of the boarding ramp, two arms crossed over his chest, two hands on his hips, eyes fixed on the hull of his precious starship.  For a couple days he’d had to retire to the galley for some breathing exercises every time he caught a glimpse of the damage, so the irritability was an improvement.  “Soon as we’re not six blocks away from the School of Police Brutality,” Greez huffed, shaking his head, “you and Merrin are gonna be scrubbing ‘til this entire ship sparkles, you hear?”

“Got it,” Cal said, trying and failing to quit grinning like a loon. 

The Stinger Mantis, Greez’s beloved baby, still running in perfect condition despite everything they put her through, designed so well she was practically a work of art, had literally become a work of art.  Greez might’ve coped better had that not involved multiple layers of graffiti.  But anyone who’d set foot in the derelict hangar on Togoria would’ve immediately realized the Mantis was not supposed to be there – everything else in the dilapidated building was painted and tagged and vandalized ten times over, up to and including the ceiling.  The prisoner exchange getting pushed back meant Cal could rush into the city, find what he needed, and return with a few hours left to spare.

“I need your help,” he’d said to Merrin as soon as he came in, dropping a brimming crate on the deck.

“Okay,” she replied, like they hadn’t spent the morning giving one another the silent treatment over an incredibly petty argument.  Merrin removed a can from the box and turned it over in her hands, tracing her thumb over the nozzle.  “What is this and what do I do with it?”

Cal had smiled then, too, expertly ignoring Greez’s hyperventilating as he caught on.  “It’s spray paint.”  Twenty-eight cans, to be exact.  He might’ve gone overboard.  The seller had given him a steep discount, probably because she was so pleased he was purchasing instead of shoplifting, and he’d still spent almost every credit he had, but it was worth it.  He’d have plenty left over to decide what to do with later.  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Merrin was about the same age as Cal and, like him, carried years far beyond her own on her shoulders.  Half the fun of that little endeavor had been watching her pure glee as she painted Dathomirian profanity on the side of the Mantis in bright red bubble letters.  For his part, Cal studied the existing graffiti in the hangar and replicated it to the best of his ability, camouflaging the ship beneath a landscape of tags.  And some anti-Imperial sentiments he was all too pleased to repeat.  And a rancor eating a stormtrooper, for Merrin.  He’d splashed BD-1 across the fin, also, stylized in blue and purple and green, surrounded by flames because that was what BD had requested and who was Cal to refuse?  It wouldn’t have held up to close inspection – vandalized as she was, the Mantis lacked the coating of dust and grime every other inch of the place was sporting – but it worked nonetheless.  The criminals and Imperials hadn’t noticed there was one ship too many in their midst until it was too late.

He fell out of his reverie when Greez sighed, “I hope Mari loses our comm code.”  He didn’t mean it.  For all his bluster and protesting, Greez got a surge of vicious satisfaction that spiked in Cal like adrenaline every time they pulled off something crazy and gave some Imperial asshole a bad day.  “We should –” And then Greez stopped, head whipping towards Cal, jaw dropping.  “What the heck happened to you?!”

“What?” Cal said blankly.  He glanced at himself and – oh.  Right.  There was blood splattered all the way down the front of his poncho, and probably dried on his upper lip and chin as well.  “Oh, nothing.  Nosebleed.”  The trooper’s blaster had caught him in just the right spot to open the floodgates, but otherwise the bridge of his nose only felt slightly tender.  He doubted it would even bruise much.

“Oh,” Greez echoed.  Cal heaved the jugs up the ramp and set them down just inside the hatch, giving his burning arms and shoulders a rest, and Greez inspected one of the labels before nodding.  “Yeah, this should do it… you were gone a lot longer than I expected.  Was starting to think Cere would get back before you did.”

“The shop only just opened,” Cal said, climbing up to the galley and pouring himself some water.

“Mm, right, makes sense… you know, funny story, a couple hours ago I was monitoring the Imperial comm traffic, right?  And I coulda sworn I heard a big fuss about a prisoner transport that got disrupted by some guy they arrested who the pilot said was supposedly carrying a lightsaber, took out the guards, freed all the prisoners… but maybe that was some kinda stress hallucination from seeing the word ferglutz splattered across my viewport every time I tried to take a look outside.”

Busted, BD sang.

“Oh, you helped, you’re in trouble too,” Cal grumbled under his breath as he turned around.  Greez was standing in the lounge, arms crossed again, tapping a foot against the deck.  “Listen, it wasn’t a big deal, okay?  Took a shortcut through an old factory and the Imps decided that was a great time to round up a bunch of homeless people and send them to labor camps.  So yeah, I got myself on the bus and put a stop to it.”

“Cal –”

“And before you say it,” Cal interrupted, “I know we’re supposed to be lying low.  I was as discreet as I could possibly be.  I just had to do something.”  In hindsight, he shouldn’t have left the pilot alive, but he’d been so focused on getting the rest of the prisoners out before reinforcements arrived it’d slipped his mind.

“You’ve always gotta do something,” Greez said, though he sounded resigned rather than annoyed.

“All they did was squat in an abandoned factory.  They don’t deserve to be worked to death in a camp because of that.”

Greez didn’t belabor the point, probably because it was a sensitive topic.  Cal had spent his first few months on Bracca homeless until Prauf took him in and Greez knew it.  “Okay, okay,” he said, holding up two hands, then heading towards the cockpit.  “I’m gonna stay on top of those comms anyway… once Cere’s back, I think we should clear out of here just in case.”

The reason they were on Oalivan to begin with padded into the galley a moment later, carrying a bowl and a spork.  Cal glanced over his shoulder and said, “Hey.  How’re you doing?”

Barefoot and wearing the loose shirt and shorts she slept in, Merrin looked from him to her dish, where a few pieces of fruit were half-submerged in light purple sludge, and back.  “This bowl of moof milk yogurt is worth more to me than your life,” she said, spooning some of it into her mouth.

“I know the feeling.”  There was a point near the end of some illnesses where the hunger started biting, but the stomach still rejected almost anything that could satiate it, and the few things that passed muster sent one racing for the ‘fresher a few hours later.  Merrin, having survived that stage, had to be starving.  He stayed out of her way while she dumped even more yogurt in the bowl.

“Why do you look like you’ve killed and eaten someone?”

“Nosebleed,” Cal said, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth self-consciously.  Dried blood flaked off his skin.

Merrin raised her eyebrows, and since she wasn’t going to get all judgmental about it, Cal told her the whole story, with BD-1 providing color commentary.  She thought he’d taken the appropriate course of action, though she agreed he should’ve been more careful about not leaving witnesses.  Then he headed to the ‘fresher, took something for his headache, washed his face, slopped a bunch of stain remover on his poncho, and tossed it in the laundry.  He grabbed his datapad and returned to the main cabin just in time to catch Cere’s arrival.  It’d grown overcast while Cal waited to buy paint stripper, and it must’ve begun drizzling sometime after he got home; her clothing was speckled with dark raindrops and she was wiping off her face as Cal came in.  She was also very pleased, warmth teasing at the fringes of Cal’s emotions before she realized she was projecting and reeled it in.  “Did you find it?” Cal asked, already knowing the answer.

In reply, Cere pulled a small yet thick flimsiplast book from her pocket and handed it over.  It was bound in fraying blue fabric, and there was nothing on the cover except for an unfamiliar bird stamped in bronze.  “Finally,” she said.

Cal flicked through a few pages, let BD take a look, and then gave it to Merrin, who’d abandoned her yogurt for the time being.  “It’s the right one?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and smiled, happy and relieved and anticipatory all at once.  “Finally.”

“Her hair spilled down her back like froth,” Merrin read aloud, lifting her eyebrows again.

“Not the metaphor I would’ve chosen, but okay.”  Cal sat on the sofa and picked up the book on the lounge table.  This one was a journal.  Cere had come across it entirely by accident, and wouldn’t have given it more than a cursory skim had she not recognized the name scrawled on the inside cover – Zoelle Speer-Spargaya.  Master Speer-Spargaya had lived and died about four hundred years ago, and Cere knew little about her except what she’d learned from Master Cordova, who’d only taken an interest because of Speer-Spargaya’s long-lost retreat.  She’d not broken with the Jedi Order or anything like that, but she’d apparently preferred to train her students in seclusion, and to that end had established a small base somewhere in the Outer Rim.  Sort of like Cordova’s workshop, Cal had thought.  Its location was very well-protected, so that only a few people besides Speer-Spargaya and her Padawans knew of it.  When she passed, her journal – containing directions to the retreat – was supposed to be sent back to the Temple on Coruscant, but for whatever reason, had disappeared instead.  Thus, the retreat fell into obscurity.

It was either an astounding stroke of luck or the will of the Force that Cere, one of the few people in the galaxy both willing and able to go searching, found the journal in a tiny Mid-Rim junk shop.  Since the crew of the Mantis had forsaken their mission to rebuild the Order in favor of pissing off Imperials whenever possible, she’d occasionally expressed a desire to make sure the Empire didn’t succeed in erasing twenty thousand years of Jedi history from existence.  If Speer-Spargaya’s retreat had remained untouched all this time, that was a piece of their history.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as finding the journal and setting a course.  The directions were written in code (Speer-Spargaya had apparently also been rather paranoid), and that code could only be broken if one also possessed a certain novel, the title of which was helpfully noted on the first page.  It too was four hundred years old.  It’d gotten a few limited print runs and a single release in holobook format, which was far easier to find and also useless for their purposes – the page numbers were important, Cere had said after much perusal of the journal, and that meant they needed the right edition as well.  She’d started searching in their downtime while Cal was still recovering from being stabbed on Nur and hadn’t stopped since.  The only copy of the book she’d dug up so far was the wrong edition, and missing a number of pages besides.

And now, months later, the exact one they’d been looking for was cradled in Merrin’s hands as she flipped through it.  She paused on another page and, in the flattest tone Cal had ever heard, read, “Last night, those fathomless eyes had swum with tears, and she had caught them as they fell, each one more precious to her than a diamond.  He so rarely allowed himself a moment of vulnerability.  But now his eyes were hot and hard, blazing, and true lust gripped her core in a way no childish fling with her girlfriends ever had.  What could a woman do for her – oh, that’s insulting – that this man could not?  She was frenzied with the scent of him, his masculinity.  Her self-control fell away and she hooked her fingers into the waistband of his trousers, desperate for her first glimpse of the turgid treasure waiting –”

“Merrin, I’m gonna stop you right there,” Greez said, joining them with an expression that suggested he’d rather be doing anything else.  BD had actually climbed onto Merrin’s back to check the book out for himself.  Cal, who’d started out amused and now wished he could crawl under the couch cushions and die, stared at Merrin’s bowl of yogurt.  It was probably still cold.  He was tempted to smash his burning face into it.  “New house rule incoming – no reading porn in the lounge.  Good grief.  Really, Cere?”

“Hey, I said it was the right book,” Cere said.  “Didn’t say it was a good one.” 

How was she not blushing?  Sure, there was a pretty significant difference in their skin tones, but Cere seemed completely unfazed while Cal was trying not to explode from embarrassment.  “It’s kind of brilliant, though,” he muttered.  “Who’d expect a Jedi Master to hide directions to their secluded retreat in a smutty romance novel?”

“A poorly-written smutty romance novel, no less.”

Merrin suddenly made a squeaking sound and clapped a hand over her mouth.  She was blushing, now, eyes fixed on one page, and everyone stared at her.  “I do not think that’s physically possible,” she said in a strangled voice, dropping her hand.

“All right, gimme that,” Greez ordered, striding over to her.  Either Merrin misunderstood what he was asking or simply pretended to, because instead of giving him the book, she just held it up, pointing to a paragraph.  Greez’s eyes were drawn to it against his will.  His face did something extraordinary.  “No, it’s not!” he yelped, snatching the book straight from her hands and shoving it at Cere.  “Put this away somewhere the children can’t get to it.  They’re too young to be reading this filth.”

“I’m eighteen,” Cal pointed out.  “…I think.”  He still had no idea when his actual birthdate was.  He just tacked on another year each time New Year Fete Week rolled around.

“I am also,” Merrin added, “I think.”  She was on Dathomir, but she’d never tried converting their calendar to Galactic Standard, so she didn’t know how the two aligned.

“Yeah.  Fresh-faced kids, that’s what you are… I’m too young for this filth.  Cere, please.”  Cere laughed at him, but she did take the book, only to place it and the journal right on the lounge table where the children could reach it effortlessly.  Luckily for Greez, Cal had absolutely zero desire to.  Greez wiped all four hands on his pants, grimacing, and said, “Anyway, I’m thinking we should probably take off.  Cal drew a little attention earlier.”

“I was wondering why there were so many more stormtroopers out on the streets,” Cere said, so Cal had to tell her the whole story too, and once he was finished, she pursed her lips for a moment and nodded.  “I think you’re right, Captain.  If they’ve alerted anyone they suspect there’s a Jedi on Oalivan, we’d better make ourselves scarce.”

Greez clapped his hands.  “Great!  Lemme go settle up and we’ll get out of here.”

As he fished some money from the tin and left the Mantis, Merrin took her yogurt again and glanced at Cere.  “Normally they make us pay in advance,” she noted.  “What is stopping us – or anyone – from leaving without paying?”

“Probably not much,” Cere said.  “But if anyone comes sniffing around, we want the spaceport operators to remember us as some quiet, well-behaved travelers who didn’t make any waves and paid their bill in full.  People like that aren’t usually remembered.  Troublemakers, on the other hand…”

“If we were in a place where skipping out without paying was normal, though, we’d totally do that,” Cal added.

“Right.  It’s all about blending in.”

Merrin sighed.  “Speaking of blending in, Greez is going to make us clean the Mantis, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Cal said.

“I suppose I could experience an unfortunate relapse,” she mused.

“I’ll kill you.  I’m not doing it all by myself –” BD-1 interrupted with a furious chitter.  “I know, buddy, but Greez isn’t gonna let any of it stay up.  Otherwise I’d leave you on there… that one turned out pretty well.”

Greez was back within five minutes, asking around to make sure nobody had left anything behind, closing up the hatches and retracting the ramp.  Then he hopped into his seat in the cockpit and started the thrusters for the first time in days, and Cal felt him relax, like the galaxy had been sitting slightly off-kilter and finally slipped back into position.  Greez didn’t mind being grounded too much, but being grounded right near the Imperal compound was nerve-wracking, and spending a week tending to his sick crewmate didn’t help.  Cal was so glad it hadn’t been him this time.

They all obediently remained seated as Greez took the ship up and out of the atmosphere.  They didn’t have an actual destination in mind, wouldn’t until Cere deciphered the journal or they caught wind of some Imperials who urgently needed pissing off, so he’d just decided to put some distance between them and Oalivan for now.  Cal stood up, rolling his wrists (as soon as one thing stopped aching, another began), and said, “Well, not gonna miss that place… except the bakery.  You know, I’ve never been to a bad bakery…”

“Kid, if you want me to teach you to bake, just say so.”

“Their tongues battled for dominance like the legendary beasts of old – his reared, displaying its strength, and struck –”

“Merrin!” Greez yelled.

Organics were so weird about reproduction, BD declared.

Sighing, Cal decided to just retreat to the engine room and listen to some music instead.  “Tell me about it.”

Chapter Text

Six bad mornings in a row, followed by a decent one, and Cal had thought things were headed in the right direction.  He’d jinxed himself.  He woke up on the cot for a change, rather than next to it, and despite Master Tapal’s teachings, Cal found that barely qualified as a positive worth noting.  When he peeled the collar of his shirt away from his neck, it was chilly and soaked in sweat.  His head ached again.  His throat seared with every swallow and he was so congested he couldn’t breathe through his nose and someone was drilling a fusion welder into his ear.

“You’ve gotta be kriffing kidding me,” he moaned.

This was punishment for being all smug he’d not gotten Merrin’s stomach virus, he just knew it.  Cal fumbled blindly at the deck until his fingers snagged on a blanket.  He drew it up and around himself, did the same with the other one, burrowed.  Dealing with whatever this was – and he had to, as soon as possible, because his immune system was incapable of fending off even a cold on its own – could wait until he was a little warmer.

He didn’t get warmer.  Fever, check.  At least his stomach wasn’t bothering him.  He’d been much better about it overall, but every time he needed to throw up, he still got a little jumpy and anxious over it until it actually happened, and then he was fine.  It was embarrassing.

Cal huddled there for fifteen or twenty minutes, hoping sleep would claim him again and spit him back out at a more reasonable hour with maybe one less ailment to suffer.  Over by the opposite bulkhead, BD was plugged in and charging silently.  The entire ship was quiet, save for the engines purring, the hum of the hyperdrive, a sporadic gurgle as coolant cycled through the Mantis’s drive systems.  Merrin said she could hear the power cylinders whining if she stood in this room and listened closely enough, and that the sound reminded her unpleasantly of a blood-sucking insect that descended upon the Dathomirian swamps in droves at night.  Cal had never heard it.  His ability to detect tones that high was shot after a month on Bracca.  He’d come to regard the rest of the noise as background music.

Finally, admitting defeat – he’d probably just wake up feeling worse, anyway – Cal rolled out of bed.  Planting his bare feet on the deck sent a shiver all the way up to the crown of his head.  He quickly gathered some clothes from the crates beneath the bunk and tiptoed out of the room, even though BD-1 was a droid and wouldn’t ‘wake’ from his charge at the sound of Cal just walking around.  The far end of the corridor was dimly illuminated – somebody had left a light in the galley on.  Cal crept into the ‘fresher and closed the door.

It took all of his willpower to change into the long-sleeved but lightweight shirt and pants he’d chosen and not just bundle up in the warmest clothing he owned.  He was freezing.  Overheating wouldn’t help the fever, though, so he gritted his teeth and promised himself his blankets once he was done in here and pulled a pair of socks on.  The medkit was sitting beneath the sink.  At this point, he thought they should just induct it as the Mantis’s sixth crewmember.  Hoping he didn’t wind up needing stomach medicine for more than the usual dumb phobia reasons, Cal hefted it onto the closed toilet and unlatched the lid.

The kit had come a long way from the disorganized jumble of primarily Latero medication it’d been all those months ago.  Cal catching a garden-variety strain of Rimma Fever that’d morphed into pneumonia had alerted them they didn’t have nearly enough supplies to treat sick Humans, and that was before Greez and Cere even knew he’d lost his spleen as a kid.  Now, their stock of cough syrup and nausea pills that’d kill everyone but Greez (and possibly Merrin, though she wasn’t willing to try any and Human medicine worked just fine on her) only took up about a quarter of the large metal box.  The rest of the contents could’ve put some clinics to shame.  They had antibiotics and antivirals and anti-everything-elses crammed in so many neat little rows the kit took some effort to close.  If worse came to worst, Cere had said, the only goal was to keep the sick or injured party alive until they could find a medic who wouldn’t turn them over to the Empire.

So it was for him.  She hadn’t said it outright, but the implication was clear – Cal was the only one who caught everything and got it twice as bad because he didn’t have a stupid fucking spleen.  He hated feeling like a burden.  And here he was again, dragging out the medkit at 0400 hours, feverish and aching for the fourth time in less than four months.  What had he picked up this time?  He was usually pretty good about avoiding people who were visibly ill, but he –

An image blinked into his head.  The little Umbaran girl from the factory, the one who’d loved her ratty pink coat, the one who’d fallen in love with BD-1 the instant she saw him.  The one who’d kept tugging at and covering her ear.  The one whose hand he’d held in the prison transport.

Groaning out loud, Cal pried a blister pack of antibiotics from the box, slumped against the bulkhead, and slid down it until he was sitting on the deck.  Small children were germ warfare personified.  What had he been thinking?

…okay, he’d been thinking she was a terrified kid who probably didn’t understand what was happening, except that there were a lot of yelling angry people holding blasters and she’d been separated from her father.  And at her age, Cal always had someone around to help when he was scared and confused – his crechemaster, an older Jedi, his clanmates (who were all older than him too).  It’d fallen to him to be that person for her, even if just for a few minutes.

Well, what was done was done.  Cal popped the first antibiotic pill through the foil and tried to swallow it dry.  That didn’t work too well when his throat was so inflamed, and he cringed as the pill left a slimy, bitter trail down the back of his tongue.  Sighing, he stood up, stuck the packet into his pocket.  It was routine by now – at the first sign of anything more serious than a sniffle, he started a course of antibiotics and kept his fingers crossed.  It’d worked for the sinus infection that left him feeling like he’d been punched repeatedly in the face for six days.  It hadn’t worked for the awful cold, which Cere caught and got over in less time than it took Cal to weather the worst of it.  It’d worked for the Arreyelan flu, or he thought it did, since he didn’t want to imagine how bad that would’ve gotten otherwise.  He’d been so weak and exhausted it actually scared him a little.  Holding his eyes open for more than fifteen minutes at a time proved impossible.  He was barely able to feed himself, not that it’d mattered much, since he couldn’t keep anything down.

The others didn’t let him power through it like he had with the sinus infection and the cold.  He’d survived.  That flu had just chewed up almost three weeks, and Cal was acutely aware how much the Empire could accomplish in three weeks.

Cal put the medkit back, turned out the lights, and left the ‘fresher as quietly as he entered, pitching his wadded-up pajamas at the engine room.  He was not going to wake anyone up to complain he didn’t feel good.  He’d done that exactly once since he had left the creche nine years ago, thanks to the rapid onset Arreyelan flu was known for, and Cere hadn’t seemed too thrilled when he shook her awake.  Her idiot crewmate had finally done what he’d been threatening to do since the time he caught pneumonia – fainted and bashed his head against something on the way down.  In Cal’s defense, he was a slave to the whims of his bladder.  She was up the rest of the night monitoring him for a concussion.  He had a thin white scar over his left eyebrow in memoriam.

As it turned out, he didn’t need to worry about bothering Cere.  She was already awake.  Cal regarded her from the doorway between galley and corridor, wondering if she’d ever gone to bed.  When he’d turned in for the night, she still sat at the table with the journal, the novel, and her datapad lined up in front of her like soldiers.  Six hours later, the table was far more of a mess, littered with sheet after sheet of flimsi full of notes and numbers and translations, and Cere herself did not appear to have budged.  Cal peered at her work on his way past.  “Tell me that’s not my flimsiplast pad,” he said.

“Hm?”  Cere stared at a page of the novel for a moment more, then shook her head a bit, glanced up, glanced back down.  “Ah… I don’t know, I just grabbed something.  The datapad wasn’t cutting it anymore.”

“Was it on the lounge table?” he asked, filling the kettle.  “Is there a drawing of BD-1 on the back?”

“…yes…”

“Then yeah, it’s mine.  I’m just saying,” he added quickly, because Cere was staring around at the table like she’d only just realized how much of it she’d used and not doing a good job of concealing her guilt.  “I don’t care.”  And that was not entirely true, but he figured he couldn’t really begrudge her half a pad of cheap flimsi.  Cal didn’t like spending money on things he didn’t need (which was why he was so happy when the stars aligned and they needed spray paint), so it’d cost him about two credits.

Cere set down her pencil and rubbed her eyes.  “I’m sorry.  I’ll replace it as soon as I get a chance… what time is it?”

“Too early.”

Now came the hard part.  He didn’t like telling anybody he was sick, either.  It felt like admitting defeat, like the self-sufficiency and independence he’d cultivated on Bracca were slipping through his fingers now that everyone knew he was immunocompromised and always had to take care of him.  He procrastinated, taking down two mugs, dropping a Malla petal teabag into one and pouring tanque into the other.  Cere made an attempt at organizing the table, but the next time Cal looked over his shoulder, she was gazing at the novel again with a puzzled frown on her face.

She snapped back out of it when he plunked a mug down in front of her.  “Thanks,” she said, setting the book aside, curling her hands around the mug, and then shooting him a wry smile.  “And thanks for suppressing your gag reflex long enough to make this.”

“I strained it four times to get all the sawdust out,” Cal grumbled good-naturedly, sitting at the table.  “I dunno who licked a tree and thought ‘wow, I want more of this, in beverage form!’, but I hope they died painfully.”

Cere snickered into her mug, sipped it gingerly as steam puffed into her face.  “So what are you doing up too early?”

He got to procrastinate a few more seconds by drinking some of his tea, then bit the bullet.  “I was crammed into a speederbus with about forty other people yesterday,” Cal said.  “Might not have been a good idea.”

She caught on and put down the mug.  “What’s the matter?”

“Ear infection, I think,” he said, pressing his palm to it; the pain aside, there was a persistent pressure deep inside his ear, and he thought everything sounded slightly muffled.  “Throat’s a little sore.  I already started the antibiotics, it’s fine, just… letting you know.”

Cere reached over and laid the back of her hand on his forehead.  Cal’s brain didn’t launch into cascading failure anymore when she did that, but he still kind of liked it.  “What’s your temperature?”

“I don’t know; BD’s charging.”

Looking at him like he’d just said something outrageously stupid, Cere sat back and said, “Cal, we have a thermometer in the medkit.”

“I didn’t think of it, okay?”  And she always defaulted to the forehead thing when he forgot. 

“Check when you’re done with the tea,” she ordered.

“I will, I will…”

“And you should go back to bed.”

“You promised you wouldn’t be overbearing.”

“I’m not.”

He resisted rolling his eyes through a supreme exertion of self-control.  “Yeah, you said that last time, too –”

“Last time,” Cere interrupted, “you downplayed everything even when you couldn’t stand up without assistance.  I think I was well within my rights to be overbearing.”  She shook her head again and pulled a sheet of flimsi closer.  “You need to be more careful.”

Cal paused with his mug almost to his mouth, set it down too hard, and some tea splashed over the rim and onto his hand.  He already had his glove on and that was the cybernetic thumb anyway, so he barely noticed.  “Nobody else was going to do anything.  Nobody could.”

“And getting stuffed in the bus with forty other people was the best way of going about it?”

“I don’t know!” Cal snapped, raking his other hand through his hair.  “I could’ve taken care of it in the factory, and a lot of innocent people probably would have died.  You’re the one always telling me not to think with my lightsaber.  I didn’t have time to think, I just… acted.”

“I understand that,” Cere said, meeting his eyes, and Cal believed her.  “Maybe it was the only thing you could do – I shouldn’t judge, I wasn’t there.  But… sometimes you have to step back and weigh the risks.”

“Right,” Cal muttered sourly, “because I have more risks than most people.”  He was lucky he’d survived for five years without knowing any better.  Bonesey had been an excellent surgeon, but excellent surgeons didn’t work for the Scrapper Guild without a damn good reason – he’d once vaguely alluded to getting his medical license revoked back when he lived in the Corellian Sector.  Cal couldn’t imagine what someone would have to do to lose their license on Nar Shaddaa.  No surprise the guy forgot to mention there were significant repercussions when one lacked a spleen.

She just sighed, flipped the piece of flimsi over.  On the back, she’d copied out entire paragraphs of the novel, highlighting various words and phrases and drawing arrows to connect them.  “I can’t make you care about your health.  And I can’t care more than you do, because that’s just setting myself up for trouble.”

“I do care,” Cal protested.  Cere looked unconvinced, and he sighed too, slouching against the back of his seat and soaking up the little blotches of tea spattered on the table with his glove.  It needed to be washed anyway.  “Cere, I can’t live my life in a bubble.  You said it yourself – I could cut my finger and die of an infection.  I could do that right here if I slipped while Greez was making me chop up meilooruns.  If I care too much, I’ll never get anything accomplished again.  I’m not afraid of dying.”

“It always worries me when you say things like that unprovoked.”

Cal glared at her – this wasn’t some kind of joke – but Cere didn’t notice.  She stacked more flimsi, said, “I don’t think this conversation is going in the right direction,” and before he could ask what direction that even was (probably the one where he agreed with her), she added, “I’m just asking you to remember there are people who’d mind if you died.  And if you want to be practical about it, you’re not getting anything accomplished if you’re dead, either.”  Having finally restored some order to the galley table, she picked up her pencil.  “As long as you’re not going back to bed, I could use your help with this.”

“Only if I don’t have to read the book,” Cal said immediately.  He’d heard more than enough yesterday.  The word treasure was going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

Smiling, Cere flipped through the journal.  “No, that’s my burden to bear… look, here.”  She turned the journal around and Cal leaned forward to see.  Aside from a few lines of writing at the top, the page was taken up by a large circle, in the center of which was a black asterisk.  Several dots and another hollow circle, this one much tinier, were scattered inside of it.  Cere skipped ahead a few more pages and there was another – same big circle and little asterisk, different pattern of dots.

“They’re maps,” Cal said.

She nodded.  “There are forty-one of them.  If I’ve interpreted all this correctly, and I’m pretty sure I have, they form a single map when they’re put together.”  Cere slid the journal across to Cal, who kept skimming, finding another map every five or six pages.  “That star in the center isn’t a star.  It’s the planet Master Speer-Spargaya resided on.”

Cal reached the end of the journal – forty-one maps, just as Cere had said – and then returned to the first one.  “So you want me to copy them onto one page?  Yeah, I can do that.”  Sleeping through the earache would be next to impossible right now.  It was annoyingly inconsistent, subsiding for a minute or two, then sending a stabbing jolt through his ear and down into his throat.  Might as well get something done instead of lying in bed and moping.  He gestured for Cere to tear another piece of flimsi off the pad, peered around for a pencil, but Cere only had the one.  There were a couple more on the lounge table, though.  Shifting his mug out of the way, Cal sat back down and studied the first map for a moment.  “Here’s a question… how do we know all these are oriented in the same direction?”

Judging by the satisfied little smile tugging at one corner of her mouth, Cere had been hoping he’d ask that exact question.  She was such a teacher sometimes.  It reminded him of Master Tapal, so he couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed.  “That’s where the page numbers come in,” she said.  “You’ll have to give me a minute, I’ve got them all written out somewhere… but opposite every page with a map is a quotation from the novel.  The book has three hundred and thirty-nine pages, so…”

“The page number tells you how far to rotate the image,” he finished.

“Right.  The first map’s quote is from the acknowledgements, on an unnumbered page, so I think it’s safe to assume that’s zero degrees.”

“I’ll need a protractor,” Cal said, standing again.  He knew Greez had an old one around here somewhere.  “She really was paranoid, huh?”

“Having read her journal multiple times… pathologically so, I’d say,” Cere replied, with a touch of sadness in her voice.  “She lived in seclusion and rarely returned to the Temple.  She alludes to feeling persecuted, particularly by other Jedi.  It doesn’t seem she trusted the Healers enough to allow them to help.”

Cal hesitated at the top of the steps.  “Um.  Have you considered the possibility these directions are wrong, or undecipherable, or…”

“I have.  Even if they’re correct, it’s been hundreds of years; the retreat may have been looted or destroyed.  But I won’t know until I try, so I’m going to keep trying – that’s the only way I can cope with the shame of having this book on my shelf.”

The dented metal disc turned up in the last place Cal looked.  The mild strain of searching several lockers and compartments left him overheated and sweaty, which didn’t bode well.  To make Cere happy, he took his temperature on the way back to the galley.  “Thirty-eight and a half,” he reported, then downed most of his tea in a couple of gulps.  The fever reducer had gotten stuck in his throat too.  Cere just hummed in acknowledgement and let it drop, which made him happy, and despite their near-argument simmering just beneath the surface, they both got to work in comfortable silence.

When Greez, Merrin, and BD-1 all came drifting into the galley at the same time, mid-conversation, the table was even more of a mess than it’d been at Cal’s arrival.  He’d added a ruler to his arsenal and was measuring the distance between one of the dots on map number five and the edge of the circle.  Speer-Spargaya had been meticulous – every circle was precisely the same size, and he had doubled it on his copy so it was a bit easier to draw.  “I’m sure we could make it work,” Merrin was saying.

“Not gonna happen,” Greez declared.  “Privacy concerns and all that, you know?  There are parts of me I don’t put on public display – have you two been here all night?!”

“I haven’t,” Cal murmured, marking the astronomical object on his map.  “Slept a couple hours, at least… what’s not gonna happen?”

“Instead of cleaning out the old cabins he is using for storage downstairs so Cere and I do not have to share anymore,” Merrin said, “I suggested I simply move into the refresher.  After the past week, I’ve gotten to know it very well and I’m rather fond of the place.”

“Yesterday you said you wanted to burn it down!” Greez exclaimed.

“I’ve changed my mind.  What are you doing?” she asked as BD bounded up onto the back of Cal’s chair, vaulted clean over him, and landed on the table amongst all the flimsiplast.  He was careful not to disturb anything, at least.  Since Cal was preoccupied, it fell to Cere to explain; once she was done, Merrin, leaning over Cal’s shoulder, said, “Would it not have been faster to have BD-1 scan all of these and simply layer them on top of one another?”

Cal finally tore his eyes away from the flimsi to give her an incredulous look.  “What fun is that?”  BD buzzed.  “We’ll need your help eventually anyway, bud – once I’m done, you’ll have to scan it and convert it to a holo so we can upload it to the table and find a match.”

“Could take a while,” Greez said, speaking loudly to offset the fact his entire head was in the conservator.  “It’s a big galaxy.”

“We know this place is in the Outer Rim,” Cere said.  “The actual boundaries of the region might’ve shifted somewhat in four hundred years, so we can search a little further in as well, but that narrows it down already.”

“And once we find the planet, then what?  We do a grid search of the entire thing?  That’d take even longer.”

“I’m working on that part.”  Cere picked up a sheet of flimsi and waved it, even though Greez wasn’t paying attention.  “She left directions.  They’re –” 

She was cut off by Cal jamming his face into the crook of his arm and coughing, a wet, hacking noise that sounded almost as painful as it actually was on his sore throat.  Once he got it under control, he looked up, saw Merrin watching him with a blank expression, and his ears went hot.  “Yeah, I’m sick again, okay?” Cal muttered, hunching over his map.

“You are always sick,” she said, which wasn’t wrong and also wasn’t making him feel any better.  “I didn’t see you for four days, so if you caught what I had, it’s not my fault… and I hope you didn’t.  I would not wish that on anyone.”

Greez straightened up, shutting the conservator and throwing Cal a weary look.  “Tell me you didn’t get her bug.  I mean, I can cope now, but after the last week I kinda need a break from all the puke.”

There was a sentiment he could get behind.  “I just picked up an ear infection on Oalivan.  I’m fine.”  He didn’t have pneumonia and he didn’t have the flu and if they all started treating him like he was fragile, Cal was going down to the lower level, stepping into one of the empty escape pod chutes, and launching himself into hyperspace.  He stared at his work for a minute, then shook his head, dropping the pencil and scrubbing both hands through his hair.  “I need to make this bigger.  Some of these stars or whatever are overlapping, and I can’t tell if they’re supposed to overlap, or if they’re just so close together I can’t tell the difference… I need to make two maps.  Do we have a larger piece of flimsi somewhere?”

“Um… I think I’ve still got that ugly poster they gave us at the tourist bureau on Carida.  You can use the back of it,” Greez suggested.  Before Cal could agree, Greez held up a hand and gave the tabletop a pointed look.  “After breakfast.  You gotta eat something; you’ll get better faster.  And take your meds.  Merrin’s been begging for ‘real food’ anyway, and Cere’s over there about to fall asleep in a faceful of throbbing members or –”

This time, it was Merrin who interrupted with a coughing fit – she’d just snorted her caf.  Cal lowered his head onto his arms and giggled hysterically.  Even Cere, who had been dozing off, cheek slowly sliding out of her palm and down towards the novel open in front of her, snickered.  “Okay,” Greez sighed, “shoulda thought that sentence through.  Sorry, Cere, didn’t mean to imply anything, uh… weird… Cal, are you listening?  Take your meds.”

Rolling his eyes, Cal lifted his head, swiped the small bottle from the other side of the table, uncapped it.  He wasn’t sure how much good over-the-counter immunoboosters were actually doing, but he dutifully took them every day nonetheless.  He waited until Greez glanced in his direction again, then demonstratively stuck the capsule in his mouth and swallowed… and then almost gagged, snatching up his mug and washing the medication down with the last of his tea.

The day didn’t really improve from there, though it didn’t get worse, either.  The same could be said for his condition.  After breakfast, swaddled in the blankets he’d promised himself, Cal relocated to the lounge table so he had more space to work without getting in Cere’s way, weighed down the corners of the old poster to keep it from rolling up, and started all over again.  It didn’t bother him.  This was like a puzzle, and he enjoyed puzzles when he wasn’t being shot at, though the Zeffo presumably hadn’t intended theirs to be solved under Imperial occupation.  He let BD help him this time, measuring lengths and angles with more precision than Cal could ever hope to achieve on his own.  Probably more than Master Speer-Spargaya had concerned herself with – she’d obviously freehanded all the maps – but BD, like Cal, was happier when he had something to do.  Up in the galley, Cere worked too until her head finally hit the flimsiplast pillow.  Greez roused her and convinced her to go take a nap.  He didn’t need to do the same for Cal, who fell asleep on the sofa so suddenly he didn’t realize it until he woke.

There was soup and a glass of juice on the lounge table, the map (or two maps, technically) rolled to one side.  He’d slept through lunch.  His throat didn’t burn quite so badly now, but his ear was making up the difference.  Achy and sleep-drunk and feeling all the tea, Cal pushed to his feet, dragged himself up through the galley and to the ‘fresher.

He’d just finished washing his hands when an explosive sneeze caught him off guard.  His nose promptly started pouring blood again.

“Shit!” Cal yelped, clamping one hand over his nose.  He felt around for the toilet tissue and was met with an empty roll.  “Are you serious –”  Blood ran down his arm and dribbled off his elbow, bright red splotches freckling the sink and deck.  He jumped at the sudden sound of the door opening and spun around, splattering more blood everywhere.  BD-1, of course.  He’d quit trying to sneak into the ‘fresher behind Cal all the time, but he still tended to lurk nearby.  The droid sent a loud SOS down the corridor and rushed in, asking if Cal was okay.  “Yeah,” Cal said thickly.  Hoping Greez wouldn’t kill him, he grabbed one of the plush towels, shoved it under his nose.  “Sneezed.”  And apparently dislodged the clot from yesterday’s adventures.

“Why is it every time I want to use the ‘fresher, it’s covered in your blood?” Merrin asked, slipping in behind him and fetching another roll of tissue from the compartment next to the shower.

Cal almost lifted his head to glare at her, then remembered, keeping it tipped forwards.  She tore a long strip off the roll and handed it over.  He swapped out the towel, pinching his nose shut, spat blood-tinged saliva into the sink, and said, “Name one other time that happened.”

“When I got up the morning after you hit your head.”

“…fine, I’ll give you that one.”  He’d awoken too stunned and dizzy for thought processes beyond I don’t feel good and I’m supposed to tell somebody when that happens.  He hadn’t even noticed he was bleeding profusely until Cere pressed the corner of her blanket to his forehead and it came away crimson.

See, BD said, he should be allowed to come in the ‘fresher with Cal.  Things like this were just going to keep happening otherwise.

The nosebleed ebbed in about eight minutes.  Cal stayed put for a few more anyway until he was sure an errant sniffle wouldn’t ruin Greez’s sofa.  Merrin was kind enough to clean the blood on the deck; Cal mopped up the rest of it, followed by himself, and threw the stained towel and his shirt into the laundry to mingle with his poncho.

“Do I want to know?” Cere yawned as she passed Cal (half-dressed and freezing his butt off) in the hallway.

“I’m not having a good day,” was all he said in response.

The rest of it was uneventful, thankfully.  He and BD kept working on the map, interrupted only by an exclamation from the galley when Cere finally had a breakthrough – which, unsurprisingly, involved her realizing she was overthinking it.  He had dinner on time with everyone else and then tried to continue mapping, leaning forwards and braced on his left elbow so he could press that hand to his aching ear and still have his dominant hand free. 

The next thing Cal knew, someone was gently shaking his shoulder.  He cracked his eyes open, blinked until the blurry smear of red resolved into Greez’s jacket, turned his head to look up at the Latero.  “Come on,” Greez said, “you don’t wanna sleep here all night, do ya?  It’s a nice sofa, really jazzes up the room, but it’s not that comfortable.”

“Did you seriously wake me up because it’s bedtime?” Cal rasped.

“Well, it ain’t that late, but you’ve been conked out since dinner.  Might as well just go to bed.”

“Mrgh,” Cal said intelligently, gazing at the map.  It was so close to done.  He had ten more star charts to copy – twice, so twenty – and then it was ready to be scanned and uploaded to the holotable so they could start finding this place.  A nonstrenuous and hopefully quiet endeavor to keep them occupied while Cal was sick.  For an instant, he resented it.  “Okay, but let me do the last few –”

Greez promptly snatched up the poster, rolled it into a tube, and bopped Cal’s hand with it as he was reaching for his pencil.  “What did I just say?!”  Shaking his head, he braced the map against his shoulder like it was a sword or a spear.  “You can do the last few in the morning.”  BD, watching them from up on the galley table, beeped cheerfully.  “That’s right, he does need sleep.”

“He said he likes the sound that tube made when you hit me with it,” Cal corrected.  Then he sighed, draped his arm over his eyes.  “I’m so tired.”  He could’ve kept his mouth shut and everyone would’ve known he wasn’t feeling well anyway – he never slept this much otherwise.

“You’re sick, kid.”

Cal sat up.  “I’m tired of being sick.”

“Yeah,” Greez said, soft, sad.  “I bet you are.”  Cal could only tolerate his gaze for a few seconds and had to look away, closing his eyes to dispel the pressure building behind them.  It was so hard not to cry when someone felt that bad for him.  And he didn’t know what to do with too much sympathy, so it was a relief when Greez cleared his throat and started tidying the table.  “I’ll make egg sandwiches for breakfast, if you’re feeling up for it.  The good kind, since I picked up a package of roba bacon, and Cere can just have her plain boring sandwich… honestly, who doesn’t like bacon…”

Cal stood up to go lie down again.  BD-1, who could carry a charge for several days if he wasn’t doing anything taxing, followed him to the engine room, but didn’t plug in when Cal returned from the ‘fresher and crawled into bed.  He lingered next to the cot and quietly asked if Cal would be okay.

“Yeah,” Cal said hoarsely.  He’d taken another antibiotic and a fever reducer, and now he flopped an arm over the side of the bunk and stroked BD’s head.  “Throat’s not so bad – maybe I’ll get over this one quick.  I’m gonna sleep… try to behave yourself, all right?”

No promises, BD said.  Cal gave him a tired smile and watched the droid slip out of the room.

Less than a minute after he’d left, Merrin came in, pajama-clad and toting her pillow.  “Move over,” she said, tossing the pillow onto the cot.

Cal rolled onto his side and obligingly pulled his knees against his chest to give her the other half of the bed.  They’d figured out fitting two people side-by-side in this cot was extremely awkward at best and against the laws of physics at worst, but one at each end wasn’t impossible as long as both of them didn’t mind scrunching up or getting feet in their face.  Merrin settled in, sliding beneath the yellow-orange blanket Greez had lent Cal.  Once she’d gotten situated, he stretched out his legs a bit and she tucked her knees behind his own.

“You probably shouldn’t be in here,” Cal murmured, folding an arm under his head.  “Might get sick again.”

“Unlike you,” she said, “I am rarely sick.  That was the first time in – three years?  Four, maybe.  A long time.”  The cot creaked slightly as she shifted.  “Last time… there was no one.  Some of the Nightbrothers checked to make sure I wasn’t dead, and that was all.  Cere and Greez are much more attentive.”

“It’s too much, sometimes.”

“You are used to it,” Merrin said.  Again, she wasn’t wrong, but he wanted her to stop being right.  “It was strange at first, but…”  They couldn’t see one another too well, so all Cal saw was a fluttering hand.  “I prayed for death and death did not come.  Then I prayed I’d at least stop throwing up, and that didn’t happen either, so I allowed them to fuss instead, and it was nice.”  Cal didn’t reply and they were both silent for a couple of minutes, and then she said, “I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I’m being cavalier about something that bothers you, aren’t I?  You don’t like being reminded you’re always sick, and I keep doing it.  I am sorry.”

“Thanks,” Cal said flatly, then winced at his tone.  “Seriously.  It’s not like it isn’t true, I just – trust me, I know.”  He meant to leave it at that, but the words bubbled up in his throat and burst out before he could swallow them.  “Cere doesn’t understand, and she doesn’t understand that she doesn’t understand.  I’m –” He stopped, sank his fingers into the knitted blanket, crushed a fistful of it to his nose and mouth, took the plunge.  “It’s never going to change.  I’m gonna be like this forever.”

He'd said the words aloud, and the finality of them settled across his shoulders.  Cal would recover from the ear infection, just like he’d recovered from pneumonia and the flu, but the next malady would be waiting right around the corner.  And he’d recover from that too, and then he would be ill again, and so on and so forth.  If he didn’t die to an Inquisitor or the mythical stormtrooper with good aim, his shoddy immune system would do the trick sooner or later.

There was nothing he could do, short of robbing the Bank of the Core to pay for a new spleen.  The Guild had garnished his wages for nearly a year to pay for two measly prosthetic fingers; cybernetic organs were prohibitively expensive.  “Sometimes I get the feeling she and Greez want me to stop,” he mumbled.  “Just… stop.  Stay on the Mantis, let you guys handle most of the work so I’m not running into people who might infect me.  Like I wouldn’t lose my mind in a week if I did that.”

“I’d give you three days,” Merrin said.

Even three days might’ve been optimistic.  Cal didn’t handle boredom well.  “I can’t do it.  I can’t just do nothing.  It’d feel like a dereliction of duty – to you guys, to the Order, to my master… everyone.”

“Mm.”  The blanket pulled tight for a second – he thought she was shrugging.  “Maybe they think you are more valuable than your duty.”

Cal didn’t know how to respond to that, so he didn’t respond at all.  “Well, as long as we’re apologizing to one another for minor infractions,” he said instead, “sorry I avoided you the whole week.”

“You were better off.  I told you, I don’t wish that on anyone.  Death would’ve been a blessing.”

He sighed.  “Yeah, but that’s not really why I did it…”

Merrin nudged one of her knees into the back of his and said, “I know.  Greez told me.”

“It’s dumb.”  He hadn’t been able to bolt until they landed on Oalivan.  Until then, Cal stayed in the engine room with the doors shut and his headphones practically glued to his ears, chipping away at his hearing a little more.  Did a sound that replayed over and over in your head against your will and triggered your fight-or-flight instinct every time count as an intrusive thought?  He could not listen to other people vomit.

“When a Nightsister got her first tattoos,” Merrin said after a long pause, “she made the ink herself from beginning to end.  I was too young yet for any when Tellay received hers, but she invited me and some of the others to come with her to pick the mushlings.  She’d even planted and grown them herself, though that was not required.  They were in a cave we swam in sometimes.  There was a sort of crack in the ceiling, so you could see the water from the surface – we would jump into the water from there – and the mushlings had enough light to grow.”  She stopped to yawn.  “Have I told you about vilslugs yet?”

“Nope.”

“They are little grubs, a few centimeters long.  Covered in toxic spines.  We saw them sometimes in the cave and I was told to be careful, but… I wasn’t.  I went to pick a mushling and knelt on a vilslug.  I don’t even remember the pain,” she said quietly.  “I think I… blocked it out, perhaps.  But I know it was the most excruciating agony of my life.  I couldn’t see or hear beyond it.  I started screaming and didn’t stop until we got back to the village and Mother put me to sleep.  I still have scars on my knee.  And after that… I was afraid of the vilslugs, but also the cave itself.  I refused to go back for years.”

“But you did eventually,” Cal guessed.  He had a feeling he knew where this was going.

“Yes.  Ilyana begged until I gave in.  I was terrified, but she knew, so we did not even go inside – we sat up on the surface and watched the water ripple through the crack in the rock, and I thought later it had not been so bad.  So I went with her next time, too, and I was still afraid, and the next time… and then, one day, when she slipped through the crack and to the water, I followed her.  It was night, actually.”  Her voice, slow and sleepy, took on a nostalgic note.  “Under the moons, her hair was – not like froth, that is nonsense.  Starlight.  Pale silk.  Clean nydak bones gleaming on the rocks…”

“Uh.”  Maybe he didn’t know where this was going.  “What’s the point of this story?”

“Hm?  It’s… oh, I forget,” she yawned again, then scoffed.  “Froth.  Really…”

“Go to sleep, Merrin.”

“You go to sleep,” Merrin mumbled, almost inaudibly.  Cal muffled a laugh that turned into a cough.  She was silent after that, though, breathing deeply and evenly, with the occasional faint murmur that didn’t hold a candle to some of the weird stuff Cal was told he said.  Smiling slightly, he shut his eyes and chased sleep until he caught it.

Chapter Text

“Cal, how many times do I gotta say ‘feet off the table’?” Greez gave one of Cal’s legs a shove on his way past.  Cal obligingly planted his feet on the floor, sat up from his slouch, blinked for a while.  He thought he might’ve dozed off.  Or his brain had temporarily atrophied from lack of use.  “Just lie down or something.”

Cal glanced over at Merrin, who was looking at her datapad, and Cere, who was studying the piece of flimsiplast that’d practically been glued to her hand since she got up this morning.  “Whenever I lie on the couch, everyone gets annoyed at me for taking up too much of it.”

“Well, you shoulda thought of that before being almost six feet tall!” Greez declared, like Cal had gotten any say in the matter.  Considering the nutrient-poor slop he’d been eating throughout puberty, he was kind of impressed he’d grown at all.  “We’re coming out of hyperspace in a few minutes, so you’ll have it to yourself anyway.”

BD, who was apparently allowed to put his feet all over the table, jumped down and scurried after Greez to join him in the cockpit.  “I could –”

Greez thrust a finger in Cal’s direction without so much as glancing back.  “Grab some seat, kid.”

Scowling, Cal stayed put, rubbing his ear, while both Cere and Merrin stood and headed up front.  Merrin at least had the decency to give him a sympathetic look along the way.  “Fine, then,” Cal grumped, “I’ll just sit here and do nothing, I guess.”

It didn’t usually bug him this much.  Except for Greez, all of them swapped roles occasionally so everybody knew how to handle the scanners and comms and computers, which meant somebody had nothing to do during takeoff and landing.  And for all his insistence Cal would get his hands on the ship controls over Greez’s dead body, the Latero had been dropping hints he wanted to open The Stinger Mantis Flight School now that The Stinger Mantis Culinary Academy was running without a hiccup.  He’d not actually progressed beyond frequent hints, however.  About a month ago Cal had asked why Greez didn’t just teach him already, since he obviously wanted to.  Greez said Cal was still too flighty and directed his attention back to the monitors for the fifth time in as many minutes.  Cal said he thought ‘flighty’ would be a good quality in a pilot, earned himself a two-day ban from the cockpit for making bad puns, and that was how Merrin got her first crash course in copiloting.  It was Cere who took Cal’s seat today, though – she was the only one who knew exactly where they were going – and Merrin sat at the communications terminal instead.  Feeling useless, Cal lingered on the couch a minute more, then gingerly got up and went to turn on the holotable.

Their first destination, a small planet called Skaris, hung in front of him.  The hologram was nothing like the two-dimensional maps they’d scanned into the table, but Cal could pick out familiar landmarks – the twin asteroid belts, the rings on the first planet in the system, the many moons surrounding the fourth.  He’d finished two iterations of the map, one assuming certain objects were the same, the other assuming they were multiple objects positioned extremely close to each other.  BD-1 also did as Merrin suggested and created his own.  Cal, who considered himself a Jedi first and a scrapper second and a thorn in the Empire’s side third and a whole host of other things long before he considered himself some sort of artist, saw it alongside his own and had to admit he’d done a damn good job with just a protractor and a ruler.  And now that he thought about it, ‘Jedi’ and ‘thorn in the Empire’s side’ were functionally identical descriptions, weren’t they?  But that was irrelevant – with the nearly identical maps uploaded, allowing for a reasonable margin of error, they’d had the nav computer search the galaxy to find a similar star system somewhere in the Outer Rim.

It'd found three.  None of them were perfect matches, but over the past four hundred years, planets collided and stars burst into supernovae and moons were ejected from orbit.  None of them were anywhere near their previous position, either, so they’d spent the past day and a half crossing the galaxy to reach the closest one.

Cal still felt like crap.  While his throat was only a bit scratchy and he could breathe through his nose again (without needing blood transfusions afterwards, even), the fever raged on and the earache refused to yield.  It was just pain, though, and he had a knack for ignoring that.  If he wasn’t exhausted, he’d be fine.

The Mantis reverted to realspace without so much as a shiver, and Cal entered the cockpit and leaned on the back of Greez’s seat.  “You know, I was kinda picturing this place like another Bogano,” Greez said, taking them in.  “Quiet, uninhabited, way out in the middle of nowhere… but this ain’t anything like that, huh?”

The ‘middle of nowhere’ part was probably the only accurate one.  A few more lightyears and they’d be in the Unknown Regions.  Skaris was the eleventh planet in the system and yet the center of it; as the Mantis drifted closer, another ship lapped them and streaked right towards the largest cluster of lights.  It was mid-afternoon by ship’s time, but the light of the twin suns hadn’t reached this side of the planet, and dozens of glowing cities beckoned weary travelers in.  “It may have been less populated back then,” Cere said.  “Or not.”  She studied the nav computer for a moment, then added, “Just keep following this course, Captain, and we’ll see when we get there.”

“Yeah, and what’ll we do if someone filled in this lake we’re looking for and built a used speeder dealership instead?”

“Then we may have to give up,” Cere allowed.  “These directions are reliant on features that shouldn’t have changed too much if they were left alone, but if they’ve all been bulldozed, there’s not much we can do.”

For her sake, Cal hoped that wasn’t the case.  She was invested in this.  Anyone who’d study a horrible romance novel cover to cover for two days without pause had to be.  Greez brought them down, and he watched the lights expand and grow, sprawling into skyscrapers and spaceports, the pin-straight streets unspooling towards tangled outstretched lanes as they left the cities behind.  Much of the continent’s population seemed to be gathered along the eastern coast, and they were headed west.  Cal saw Cere’s shoulders relax a fraction.

A couple minutes later, Merrin stood and joined them in combing the horizon for any sign of water.  “There’s very little on the comms,” she murmured, and Cere nodded slightly.  She wasn’t even pretending to watch the scanners (without a peep from Greez, Cal noticed).  Every so often another ship would come into range, but they’d already established Skaris was not uninhabited and nobody was firing cannons at them.

“There,” Cere said suddenly, pointing.  Greez adjusted the Mantis’s course ever so slightly, and then BD bounced on the spot and gave a happy trill and the forest gave way to a dark, glimmering lake.  Cere sagged in her seat with a sigh and a smile.  “That’s it.”

“You sure?” Greez asked, squinting at it.

Cere raised a hand and traced the two hills bordering one side of the lake.  “Exactly as the directions described,” she said ruefully.  “Or, more accurately, as the novel described… cleavage.”

Greez snorted.  “This is like the scavenger hunt at Darog’s bachelor party… there’s enough room on the other side to put the Mantis down, so I’m gonna land there.  Might feel like I’m violating someone otherwise.  How’d this lady get lucky enough to find a book with all the correct lurid descriptions?”

“I’m fairly certain ‘Ermin Aurus’ is a pseudonym.  Speer-Spargaya probably wrote it herself.”

“So she’s good at making maps and codes and terrible at writing,” Cal concluded.

“Or it was badly written on purpose,” Merrin said.  “We had trouble even finding the book because it was unpopular.  Perhaps that was the point.”

“Well,” Cere said, “if we find this retreat and there’s a first draft lying in a desk drawer somewhere, then we’ll have our answer.”

The ground rose to meet them.  The deck tilted beneath Cal’s feet, too, and he slammed his eyes shut, grabbing the headrest of Greez’s seat and clutching it until his fingers ached.  He had a head for heights – wouldn’t have survived on Bracca without one – but the ear infection was messing with him.  He didn’t reopen his eyes until the Mantis settled onto its landing gear and Greez cut the thrusters, and the world, thankfully, stayed on its axis.

“So,” Greez said, “now what?”

“Now we wait an hour or two for the suns to rise,” Cere said.  The first of them had only just begun to gild the treetops.  “I’d like to see where I’m going… besides, the days here are almost forty hours long.  Plenty of time.  I’m just going to check the directions over once more,” she added, like she hadn’t done exactly that a dozen times already.

“Okay,” Cal said, turning around very carefully, pressing his palm to his ear like that’d keep the vertigo at bay.  “When you’re ready to go, just yell and I’ll –”

“Hold it right there!” Greez cried, and Cal stopped in the doorway, turned back around just as carefully.  “We’re not parked next to the stormtrooper factory anymore.”  A grin split Greez’s face, and he waved at the viewport – Cal was careful to leave plenty of it clear so the Latero could see where he was flying, and they had given it a perfunctory wash, but there were still streaks and smears all over the transparisteel.  “Get to work, kids.”

Merrin and Cal looked at one another.  She shrugged.  They’d known it was coming.  “We may not get it all finished in a couple of hours,” she said.

“Well, make decent progress and I’ll let you go,” Greez said magnanimously.

Then his gaze flicked from Merrin to Cal and on to Cere, and the Force buzzed with nerves.  Cere met Greez’s eyes for a second before looking at Cal.  Something in his chest pulled taut.  She opened her mouth and he cut her off – “Let me guess,” he said, without inflection, “you want me to stay here.”

“Cal,” Cere began in that horribly understanding voice of hers.  He either found it soothing or condescending, no middle ground in sight, and it right now landed solidly on the latter. 

“I’m fine,” he said.  “I feel a lot better.”

“You’re still running a high fever and you won’t stop rubbing your ear. You shouldn't even be cleaning the ship, much less wandering around Skaris.”

He dropped his hand.  Forcing a lighthearted tone, he said, “Well, you’re talking to the guy who survived two weeks of twelve-hour shifts when he had mudpox, so I think I can manage.”

“I don’t know what mudpox is,” Merrin said.

“Neither did we.”

Cere looked unmoved.  “First order of business is to see if the directions are followable and there’s anything to follow them to, which might take a while.  If by some chance we happen to find the retreat, the next thing is seeing if there’s a more convenient landing zone nearby.  We move the Mantis and you can do what you’d like.  As long as we may have to trek through the forest for hours… I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

It was a reasonable and well-thought-out explanation.  The tether in Cal’s chest snapped anyway.  “I’m not a child!  You can’t take all of my choices away just because you don’t think I’m making the right ones!”  His choice of words left something to be desired – Cere twitched, almost a flinch.  He didn’t let himself feel bad about it for more than a heartbeat.  “I told you, I’m choosing not to live in a bubble in spite of the risks.  And I’m pretty aware of the risks, thanks.  I’ll take them and live with the consequences, so just… stop!”

Cal rarely lost his temper, and when he managed to rein it in – he’d almost been shouting – everyone, even BD, was staring at him.  He took a deep breath, blew it out, looked away and focused on the lake for a moment instead of his crew.  The surface rippled rose-gold as the first of the twin suns peeked over the forest.  He was a Jedi, Cal reminded himself.  Letting his anger lead him around would only lead him to trouble.

“Cal, come on,” Greez said quietly, tiptoeing onto the tense silence like a fragile sheet of ice he was afraid to crack.  “You were in a real bad way yesterday.  Something like that happens again...”

The worst part was how they kept saying these things as if he didn’t already know.  Of course he remembered what’d happened yesterday.  He had walked out of the ‘fresher after his shower, having finished the maps and feeling quite accomplished, and the Mantis suddenly flipped upside-down.  Cal staggered against the bulkhead and his knees throbbed and he realized he was actually on the deck; thoroughly disoriented, he tried to get back up.  He couldn’t tell which direction up was.  The spinning sickened him and closing his eyes made it worse instead of better.

BD, who’d been loitering near the ‘fresher like usual, came to the rescue.  Well, mostly he called in the cavalry and then panicked because Cal was curled into a ball on the floor and trying not to retch, but he was a small droid with no manipulators, so Cal forgave him.  Cere and Greez had hauled his carcass to bed, where he laid without moving for hours, trying to focus on just one thing long enough to hold the room still.  At least he hadn’t eaten dinner yet, so there was nothing in his stomach to throw up. Eventually, the vertigo abated enough for him to close his eyes, and he slept.  When he awoke, he was moderately dizzy and severely hungry.  He made himself dinner and hoped that was over and done with.  But the others obviously expected it to recur and it was galling that they were probably right.  Vertigo from a middle ear infection that got ideas above its station and took the inner ear hostage tended to come and go for a while – he’d had enough ear infections as a kid to know.

If he opened his mouth, he was going to say something he’d regret later.  Cal left the cockpit, seized the two jugs of paint stripper sitting by the hatch, triggered the door and the ramp with his elbow, and walked out.

The rising suns set the entire lake ablaze.  He set the paint stripper down and dropped to his knees at the water’s edge, picked up handfuls of damp pebbles tumbled smooth over the years they’d spent in the lake before washing ashore, sifted them between his fingers.  Now there was a nice sensation – he did it a few more times, then settled his hands on his knees and shut his eyes.

He meditated.  He unwound from his body, from the earache and the headache and the fatigue, immersed himself in the Force instead.  Clearly, Cal and Cere and Greez needed to have a serious conversation soon.  They wanted to protect him; he felt like he was being smothered.  Cal wasn’t as honest with them as he ought to be; they couldn’t see things from his point of view.  He was careful and he was careless.  They had a job to do and nobody else in the galaxy was going to step up, so he could not step back.

He should set some boundaries, Cal decided, preferably in a calm, controlled tone rather than throwing a fit.  And he knew he had to let the others have a say – they were the ones looking after him when he was too sick to do so himself – but they were just trying to help and they kept overstepping nonetheless.  Cere and Greez were both a lot older than him.  He understood their instinct to protect their younger crewmates, even if it drove him nuts.  It was high time everyone sat down, hashed things out, and got on the same page.

Merrin didn’t bother trying to soften her footsteps (she could be completely silent when she wanted), so Cal heard her long before a plastoid thunk sounded next to him.  He opened his eyes.  She’d dropped a large bucket on the rocks.  Inside the bucket was a slightly smaller bucket, followed by another bucket, and inside that bucket was an unpleasantly familiar bucket, and inside that bucket was BD-1.  The droid launched himself to splashdown in the shallows and chirped at Cal.  “Yeah,” Cal said.  “Uh.  Sorry about that, back there…”

“You missed your opportunity,” Merrin said, standing next to him and shielding her eyes with her hands as she looked out across the lake.  “You should have agreed with Cere and said if you are not well enough to search for the retreat, you are not well enough for manual labor.”

No doubt one of them would’ve had a rebuttal prepared – something about staying close to the Mantis just in case.  “At least they’re letting me do that much,” Cal said dully.  His hand needed a break after all the cartography, and without a task to keep himself occupied, he would’ve just wound up sulking.

Merrin hummed, crouched.  “There are goggles and gloves here.  Greez said we shouldn’t need respirators outside, but he has some if we want them.”  She paused.  “He also said you are to keep both feet on the ground.”

Cal didn’t go in there and throw a jug of paint stripper at Greez’s head, because he had more self-control than that.  He just kept skimming the label on the side.  Merrin picked up the familiar yellow bucket and regarded it with a wrinkled nose.  “I’d hoped we would never meet again,” she muttered.

“Greez gave you that one too, huh?” Cal said.  “If he did, it’s all yours.  I’m not touching it.”  He didn’t care how thoroughly the newly-designated puke bucket had been washed.  He’d had enough stomach troubles lately without reliving Merrin’s as well.

“Yes, he did.  He also gave me a datapad and told me he’d put a good holoshow on there I could watch if I wanted a distraction.”

“Was it Coronet Cookoff?”

“Yes,” she said again, pulling a pair of the thick, rubbery gloves on.  Cal removed the one he wore on his maimed hand and stuck it in his pocket and copied her.  “I watched the first episode and thought, ‘this is stupid, these people are idiots.  They are not even good at sabotaging one another’.  But I couldn’t sleep and did not want to lie there wondering if I had any intestines left, so I watched the second one to see if it would get better.”

“It doesn’t.”

“It didn’t… and then Simone and Jayleh messed with H’roth’s breathing apparatus so he was completely high during the challenge and poisoned all the judges by accident.”

“And then you watched the entire thing, enjoyed it, and were incredibly ashamed of yourself,” Cal guessed.

“Almost the entire thing.  I have not seen the last two episodes.  You’re correct, though.”

“Yeah, Cere and I feel the same way… not Greez, though.  He was really into it.  Called the finale perfectly, too.”  He peeled the seal off the first jug and, very cautiously so it didn’t splatter everywhere, tipped it up.  The thick orange fluid slopped into the bottom of the largest bucket.  “Do you want me to just tell you how it ends, or –”

“I will turn your skin inside-out,” Merrin threatened lightly, holding the bucket steady.

“Fine, no spoilers, then…” Cal set the empty jug aside and started on the second.  “Okay, this stuff’s starship-grade, so if you get it on your skin or your clothes, you’ll want to wash it off as quick as you can.  Do not get it in your eyes.  Ventilation’s good out here so no, we don’t really need the masks; don’t stick your face close and breathe it in, though.  And you –” BD had been sloshing around in the lake, frightening the jewel-toned salamanders that slipped between the pebbles, but he cocked his head at Cal when he realized he was being addressed.  “Stay away from this stuff too, got it?  I just touched up your paint job.”

They both got to their feet, and BD settled into his usual spot on Cal’s back, sending cool droplets of lake water trickling down his collar.  “It almost seems a pity to clean this up,” Merrin said, regarding the Mantis in the morning light.  “It turned out very interesting.”

Cal smiled a bit.  “Merrin, it’s mostly profanity and nametags for people I’ve never heard of.”  BD cut in with one last plea.  “I know, BD.  It’s just too conspicuous.”  The Mantis was an uncommon model of starship, but her only distinctive feature was the fin.  A casual observer was unlikely to realize she was wanted by the Empire unless they were specifically looking for her.  A large, colorful mural of a rare droid on that distinctive fin?  People would take notice and remember it.  He couldn’t leave it, no matter how often BD-1 complained droids were neglected in artwork.  He bumped Merrin with his elbow.  “Don’t worry, BD got images from every possible angle on Oalivan, so we’ll at least have the memories.”

He would’ve started at the viewport, but he’d painted it while balancing atop a stack of crates.  Cleaning it required something similar.  Greez had insisted Cal keep his feet on the ground.  So really, it was Greez’s own fault the viewport stayed a mess and Cal got to work near the back of the ship, keeping his feet on the landing gear.  Merrin was tackling the fin.  They all agreed they should just rip off the bacta patch so BD didn’t have to suffer any longer than necessary.

The job wasn’t difficult.  Dip a brush in the paint stripper, coat a defiled section of the hull, give it about a minute to work, scrape the resultant sludge off with a chisel and plop it in the other bucket, scrub away any remains with a steel wool sponge.  Cal had occasionally removed paint from ships before they were scrapped, and it was much easier without rain diluting the chemicals or nosy foreman droids hovering over his shoulder to scold him for not working fast enough.  The sole droid hovering over his shoulder now was BD, who only spoke up when Cal missed a spot or he saw a ship in the distance or an interesting cloud drifted by.

Cal and Merrin coated and scraped and scrubbed for about an hour before Cal heard the Mantis’s hatch open.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cere descend the boarding ramp, turn, and say something to Merrin (working her way across the top of the ship) he couldn’t hear.  Then there was a flash of green just out of view – he guessed Merrin had gone to change out of her casual pouring-paint-stripper-all-over-the-Mantis clothes.  Cal had never bothered changing in the first place.  He couldn't make himself care that much.  His head was beginning to ache again.

“Cal.”

He didn’t turn around.  The chisel squeaked against the hull; he’d layered four or five colors on top of one another here and they peeled off in rainbow curls.

“I think we need to talk later.”

At that, he glanced over his shoulder.  Cere was wearing the non-expression she adopted when she felt guilty and wanted to apologize and didn’t know how because she still thought she was right.  It came as a relief.  He’d chosen his words to hurt; he wasn’t sure he deserved an apology after that.  “Yeah,” he said.  “We definitely do.”  He scraped another line of paint off the Mantis, then, before she could walk away, quickly added, “I’ve got my comm.  If something happens, or you need help…”

“I’ll let you know,” Cere said, which felt like an apology.  Merrin returned, having ditched the goggles and gloves, and Cal returned to work instead of watching them walk away.

The mindless repetition of stripping paint from the Mantis was almost meditative after a while.  He kept going, shifting to the other side to continue in the shadows when the distant suns started scorching the back of his neck.  The clone troopers, safe in their armor, had always playfully teased him for going through astronomical amounts of sunblock.  A good number of them hadn’t even known what sunblock was.  Jaro Tapal wasn’t especially familiar with the substance either.  The first time his fair-skinned natural-redhead Padawan burned so badly he blistered came as quite a shock.

Another hour and there was no shade to be found anymore, and Cal figured that was a fine reason to give up.  He brought all the tools and the two pails of paint stripper (hooking his lightsaber through the handle of the puke bucket so he didn’t need to touch it) aboard the Mantis, poured Merrin’s bucket of used chemicals and paint into his own, and then – very deliberately – walked into the galley and set it down on the table.

Greez’s face ricocheted through a carnival of surprise, disgust, horror, and irritation as soon as he turned around.  “Didja have to put that on the table?” he demanded.

“Yes.  What do I do with it?  I’m not dumping it somewhere or it’ll kill every plant around it in a ten-meter radius.”

Sighing, Greez scuffed a hand across his head.  “Can’t incinerate it… lemme check once I’m finished here, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a small fuel drum rolling around somewhere down in storage.  We can seal it up and after we’re done, we’ll find a disposal site – gotta be one near the spaceports.”  He waved another hand and took some more spices from the rack.  “Leave it outside for now, not on my table… if you ever suggest a plan like that again, I’m spacing you.  We coulda landed somewhere else, and instead my classy lady is covered in graffiti.”

He was just complaining for the sake of complaining, so Cal obediently left the bucket of caustic sludge under the ship and came back in.  “Greez, if it bothered you that much, why didn’t you… I dunno, suggest we move somewhere else?  Because I was there and you never said it.”

Greez snorted.  “Kid, it was the best option and you lit up the second you hit on that plan.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that happy about anything before.  I definitely haven’t seen you spend that much money on anything before – we can’t get you to buy clothes that aren’t secondhand.  ‘course I was gonna let you do it, even if I had a heart attack from the stress of seeing my ship like that.  And Merrin was having a good time too.  I’m afraid to ask her what some of those words actually mean.  Like, if I tried to pronounce them, would they put a death curse on me?”  He peered over his shoulder, finally registering Cal’s prolonged silence, and said, “Ah, kriff, you’ve got that look again.”

“What –”

“The one where you’re beating yourself up for something.”  Another gusty sigh, another handwave.  “Okay, you’re off the hook for now.  Go do Jedi stuff.  Just tell them I’m putting the roast in the marinade now, and if you lot want dinner at a reasonable hour, you’d better not get back too late.”

Thrown, Cal blinked at him while the Latero started measuring spices into a small dish.  “…you wanted me to stay here,” he reminded Greez.  It still pissed him off, but a couple hours of manual labor had burnt away all his genuine anger.  He’d actually been thinking of taking a nap – he was sweaty and cold, his ear wouldn’t chill out for ten karking minutes, and he hadn’t gone back to bed after his midnight dinner, so he wasn’t running on much sleep to start with.  Washing up quick and snuggling into his cot for a while sounded great.

“Yeah, I did.  I do.  You’ve got a point, though, and… yeah.  We gotta talk about it once everyone’s back.”  Greez stopped measuring and mixing, slowly lowered the spoons and dish to the counter, turned around again.  There was no laughter at all in his face, just that same terrible sadness like when Cal had said he was tired of being sick.  “Just do me a favor and promise me you feel up to it.”

Cal didn’t feel up to it.  He wanted that nap, now.  But if he stayed, he was proving to them they were right, he couldn’t be trusted to make his own decisions when he was ill.  “I’m fine, Greez.  Promise.”

He hated the lie as soon as it was out there, suspended in the air between them, an arrow and a neon sign reading BANTHA-SHIT pointing to it.  Cere would’ve felt that.  Merrin too, probably.  Greez, their proud ‘normal crewmember’, one of the best pilots Cal had ever known, the guy who taught Cal cleverer ways to cheat at sabacc and insisted Cal keep that blanket one of Greez’s relatives had made, bought it.  “Okay,” he said, wagging a measuring spoon at Cal.  “Take it easy, you hear?”

“Sure.”  The word sounded like it was coming from a distance.  Cal walked out of the Mantis again, no longer annoyed, just numb and a little queasy.

When Cal last checked, BD-1 had been standing in the grass and gazing sadly up at the ship’s fin, now bereft of decoration, but he wasn’t there anymore.  Cal looked around and discovered the droid had elected to cope by terrifying salamanders again.  “Come on, buddy,” Cal said, crouching by him; BD scrambled up onto his back and asked where they were going.  “To find Cere and Merrin, I guess.  Maybe.”  That was all sort of dependent on Cere giving in and telling him where they were going.  He took his commlink from his belt.  “Hey, you guys there?  You’re not lost, right?”

“I’m beginning to think getting lost is a requirement to reach this place,” Merrin said blandly.

“We’re back on the right track,” Cere replied, sounding fondly exasperated, like they’d been having this conversation for a while now.

“So you haven’t found anything yet?”

“No, but so far it’s not been too hard to follow the directions.  Master Speer-Spargaya chose her landmarks well, it seems.  How’s it going?”

“Greez unlocked the shackles,” Cal said.  “Where are you?”

There was a loaded pause.  If she chose not to tell him, he thought, would he seriously argue?  Or just put up a token protest for appearances and then go settle in for that nap?

Finally, Cere gave the faintest sigh.  He could’ve almost believed it wasn’t a sigh at all.  “Wherever you’re standing right now, do you see the hills on the other side of the lake?”

“Yup.”

“You need to walk between them –”

“Ask permission first,” Merrin interrupted, and Cal had to spare a smile at that.

 “– and then keep going in as straight a line as you can manage for… it took us about forty minutes.  You’ve got long legs, so perhaps a bit less.  You’ll eventually come to a meadow covered in some sort of reddish-purple clover.  That’s the first landmark.”

“Do I even want to know what sort of explicit romance-novel description it had?” Cal asked, the pebbles scraping together beneath his boots as he tromped around the lake.

“No,” Cere said emphatically.  “Once you reach it, comm us again – it gets a bit tricky after that.  We’ll slow down a bit… feels like time for a snack, anyway.”

“Greez is marinating dinner and we’re supposed to be back at a reasonable hour,” Cal recited dutifully. 

He didn’t hear what Merrin said – she’d not spoken into her comm and was too far from Cere’s – but Cere replied, “Yes, yes, far be it from us to make him wait… see you in a bit.”

Cal closed the line and tucked the commlink back into his belt.  “Great,” he said.  “Now I feel like crap physically and emotionally.”  BD beeped and, when Cal glanced back at him, gave a quizzical tilt of the head.  “I got what I wanted and all I had to do was lie to Greez, who let us vandalize the Mantis just because he thought it’d make me happy.  And I don’t even want to go that much.  It wasn’t worth lying for.”  As they entered the thin, overgrown valley between the two hills, Cal pressed both palms against his eyes for a moment, then moved one to his ear, hushing the already-muffled medley of birds and insects.  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, BD… aside from the obvious.”

It sounded, BD said quietly, like that conversation he was going to have with Greez and Cere was long overdue, because Cal really needed to tell them how he was feeling.  If he didn’t think he could be honest because that would just result in more restrictions, then something had gone wrong somewhere and BD doubted the fault laid entirely with Cal.

“It’s not that, exactly,” Cal said, then conceded, “Okay, a little bit.  But this –” he gestured to the trees that’d sprung up around them now that the little valley had given way to the forest, “this is one thing, right?  It’s not important.  I mean, it is to Cere, I get that, but we’re not exactly slowing down the Empire or even bothering them.  If I don’t push back when they try to stop me from doing something even Greez calls nonstrenuous, what happens next?”  He jammed his hands into his pockets, nudged at a stone in the dirt until it dislodged and the many-legged bug beneath it scuttled into the grass.  “We can’t go back to how things used to be.  We can’t rebuild the Jedi Order.  Master Tapal told me to hold the line and… that’s all I have left.”

The scathing diatribe Cal got in response would’ve made his ears burn, but one of them was doing a great job of that already.  “Okay, okay!” he said hastily.  “I know, Merrin said the same thing.  I know they love me and they’re just trying to protect me.  They’re protecting me too much, that’s the problem.”

This from the guy who always gave himself the most difficult and dangerous tasks when they had a job, BD grumbled.

“I’m usually the best-equipped for them,” Cal said.  “Look, that’s not the point… if everything’s going to be a risk for me, then I have to be allowed to decide when and how I’m going to take those risks.  I’m not trying to get myself killed.  But I’m not a five-year-old who can’t think for himself, either.”

They walked.  Cal quickly came to realize why Cere had said as straight a line as you can manage – this forest had been allowed to grow wild and there was nothing resembling a trail to follow.  He could only walk in a straight line for about ten steps maximum before he needed to veer around a tangle of thorny bushes, or a mossy boulder, or a tree trunk so thick it’d put the Mantis to shame.  BD kept him going almost straight, when the droid wasn’t leaping away to scan patches of lichen or those bugs that filled the forest with a high, unending buzz.  Once, even Cal veered off, spotting something metallic glinting in a sunbeam that snaked through the heavy tree cover.  A small button was half-buried in the dirt, rusted enough Cal couldn’t make out the actual design on it.  He touched it out of curiosity and reality faded away for a few seconds.

“A family came to the lake for a picnic and a hike once,” he said to BD, straightening up, then holding still until the dizziness passed.  “Long time ago.  I think this came off one girl’s dress.  She and her siblings were running around, trying to hide from their oldest sister, who… if she caught them, they kept saying she’d throw them in the goo… no idea what that means.”  But she’d been having fun, and that lightness clung to him as they moved on.  Pleasant echoes did wonders for his mood.

Not a minute later, spinning the button between his fingers and listening to the soft shoof-shoof of his feet shuffling through fallen leaves and rubbing his ear, Cal stopped dead.

It took a moment for his brain to catch up with his body, which had responded to the discordant note in the Force all by itself.  He stood stock-still, listening, pushing out into the Force rather than gathering it to him.  Something was off and he couldn’t yet tell what it was.

“You ever get the feeling you’re being watched?” Cal murmured to BD-1, who chirped almost inaudibly without swiveling his head around.  At times like this, his job was to watch Cal’s back… but those optics weren’t why the adrenaline had kicked in, sending a frisson through his limbs.

The discordant note became a sharp tug.  Cal jerked to the side and the bolt rocketed through thin air where he’d just been standing, hit the ground with a piff and sent a small cloud of dirt flying everywhere.  The second shot pinged off a rock, because again Cal had moved automatically, reacting to something he’d not consciously registered.  He landed in a crouch behind a tree he couldn’t get his arms halfway around and grabbed his lightsaber off his belt, but didn’t activate it.  Blaster bolts didn’t make those kinds of sounds.

Great.  Someone was shooting at them with a slugthrower.  Instead of ricocheting like a bolt, slugs tended to melt into slag when they hit the blade of a lightsaber, and then continued on their merry way, which was usually directly towards the person who’d tried to deflect them.  That was how one of the older crechemasters had lost an eye as a Padawan.  “Did you get a look?” Cal hissed to BD.

The droid shook his head and leaned ever so slightly out from behind the tree trunk, concealed by a thick spray of leaves.  Heat signature suggested organic, he reported.  Fairly well-camouflaged.  Approximately 190 centimeters, though how much of that was armor and helmet, he couldn’t say.  Then BD jerked back out of range and narrowly avoided a bright green bolt.

Great, someone was shooting at them with a slugthrower and a blaster.  Cal didn’t have time to contemplate the reasoning there.  BD gave him a heading, Cal separated the halves of his lightsaber, ignited one, and sprinted out into the open.  By the time the guy with the guns got another shot off, Cal was already diving for cover again – and then there was a shout as Cal’s lightsaber met its mark.  A heavy branch went crashing to the ground.  He raced for the next tree, pulled his flung lightsaber back to his hand.

BD made a dismayed noise.  Cal peeked around the tree and sighed.  A jetpack, of course – every mercenary and bounty hunter in the galaxy seemed to shop at the same stores.  Jetpack landed at the base of the tree they’d been standing on, helmeted head turning.  Their dark, dappled armor disappeared in the rest of the dim forest.  No wonder Cal hadn’t noticed them until it was too late.

“Two lightsabers,” they said in a heavily modulated voice.  “That’s new.”

He couldn’t tell if they were sincere or mocking and, frankly, he didn’t care.  Bounty hunters had been chasing him for months.  Hazards of having the Empire and the Haxion Brood out for his blood.  Dizzy, Cal pressed the back of his head to the trunk until the rough bark scraped at his scalp, reconnected his lightsaber.  No need to drag this out.

Jetpack started firing the blaster as soon as Cal jolted into view.  Cal spun the bolts away with a quick twirl of his ‘saber, lifted a hand, and yanked.  Dragged off their feet, Jetpack flailed for a second, but recovered too fast; they got off one good shot with the slugthrower and Cal had to drop the pull to deflect it.  It’d been sent low, towards his legs.  His eyes were spared, but white-hot blobs of metal flecked his thighs and burned through the heavy material of his pants.  He let the pain roll off him like water.  There would be time for it later.  Right now, he focused on banking away a barrage of poorly-aimed blaster bolts and took cover before the slugthrower came out again.

“What do you want?” he said flatly.  He didn’t care about that, either, but Jetpack had figured out they could keep Cal wrong-footed with the slugs.  Once the ‘thrower was dealt with, he could end this quick.

“You to hold still for a couple seconds,” Jetpack replied.

That was a good idea.  Not for him, obviously, but in general.  All he had to do was hope Jetpack didn’t get creative.

Once more, Jetpack stuck to their strategy, raining down the blaster shots so Cal would be too preoccupied to react when they tried the slugthrower.  Cal was counting on them trying it again.  He ran forwards this time, rather than staying near cover, swatted away every bolt that got a little too close.  One went wild and BD-1 shot into the air, aided by his boosters, and the bolt missed him by a hair.  Cal kept running.  Jetpack was as far as they could get while still having a direct line of fire to him.  They really didn’t want him closing the distance.  And sure enough, as he did start to close the distance, they raised the slugthrower.

Cal stretched out with the Force and Jetpack stopped with their finger on the trigger.

Sooner or later, he thought, word would get around that just throwing medium-rate bounty hunters at a Jedi didn’t work.  Maybe he’d take out ad space in the Jetpack & Flamethrower Store.  A slight weight thumped against his back as Cal sprinted forwards; he turned his head to get a quick look at BD and make sure he was unhurt.

Skaris kept turning without him.  Balance thrown violently out of whack, Cal stumbled, fell, couldn’t even pull himself together enough to turn it into a roll.  BD squealed.  Cal’s shoulder dug a rut into the carpet of dead leaves.  This couldn’t be happening, not now – the trees wheeled overhead and the ground spun in the opposite direction and Cal, caught in the middle like a lone sock in a laundry machine, scrabbled at the dirt with uncoordinated limbs.  BD shoving at his side was the only thing guiding him in the right direction.  He flopped onto his stomach, got his hands and knees beneath him, looked up.

He couldn’t see straight, but he could still see exactly what would happen next.  He was going to lose his hold on the stasis, and Jetpack would instinctively finish squeezing the trigger before they even knew what’d happened.  Cal would pause to deflect the shot, probably get burned some more, and lose his chance – he wouldn’t be in range to destroy the slugthrower and possibly one of Jetpack’s limbs as well, and Jetpack would have plenty of time to put more space between them.  And Cal, hampered by the vertigo, wouldn’t get another chance.

Screw that.  Cal surged to his feet, staggered, ran.  Jetpack fired.  Cal’s lightsaber came down on the barrel of the slugthrower, neatly severing it from the chamber.

Even surprised, Jetpack’s reflexes weren’t dulled, and with their trump card gone, they had the good sense to hit the boosters.  They skidded backwards so fast they almost crashed into a tree.  The blade of the lightsaber seared a glowing path across their chestplate, but didn’t penetrate; Jetpack rocketed upwards and disappeared in a noisy shower of twigs and leaves.

The blinding pain Cal expected never came.  The bullet should’ve shattered his collarbone.  Instead, there was just a stinging in his shoulder.  Cal’s knees hit the dirt and he braced one hand on the ground so he wouldn’t topple.  His fingers met metal.  He yanked the slug from his skin and tried to make his eyes focus on it and realized Jetpack wasn’t using slugs at all, but some kind of dart.

“Shit.”  Already his tongue felt swollen and clumsy.  Cal dropped the dart and fumbled his commlink off his belt.  “Cere?  Merrin?  There’s a… bounty hunter or something.”  Jetpack had backed off now that they’d gotten what they wanted – he expected they would return as soon as Cal blacked out.  “Hit me with a tranq dart, I think…”

“Where are you?” Cere said immediately.

“I don’t know.  Forest.”

Merrin snarled one of those words she’d painted on the side of the Mantis.  “Hold on,” she ordered.  “I am coming.”

Hold on.  He could do that, he just had to stay awake.  “BD,” Cal mumbled, “if I fall asleep, shock me…”  He tried to stand again, slammed back down onto one knee, gagged as the planet fell off its axis and rolled away.  There wasn’t even time for the usual gauntlet of nerves – it was all he could do to hold himself semi-upright while heaving his lunch into the dead leaves.

BD kept prodding his back until Cal managed to wobble to his feet.  Things were settling a bit, not rotating quite so fast, but only because the vertigo was being consumed by whatever drugs the dart had pumped into his system.  He had to stay awake.  Merrin could cover a lot of ground very quickly and he didn’t think they’d gotten too far off the straight line to the meadow.

He needed to warn her about Jetpack.  They might still manage to catch her off-guard, though the slugthrower, at least, was down for the count.  Cal made it five or six steps before his knees wouldn’t hold him anymore.  The pull of gravity was too strong.  He slumped to the ground gracelessly, felt his teeth rattle in his skull, smelled grass and damp leaves.  His vision was going.

The last thing he heard was the jetpack.  BD sprang off of him.  Unable to move, Cal watched dimly as electricity danced over Jetpack’s dark armor… and then the droid came crashing down.  All of his indicators flickered a few times and died.  He didn’t get up again.

BD, Cal tried to shout.  His mouth wouldn’t work.  He couldn’t see anymore.

And then there was nothing at all.

Chapter Text

Cal came back to his senses one by one.

The first, as always, was the Force.  It laid over him like a blanket, submerged him like an ocean, spun the invisible sinew binding him to every other living being in the galaxy; he reached for it automatically before he’d even come fully to consciousness and it reached back, soothed him.  But… there was something wrong.  Not like after the Purge, when just trying to meditate would result in uncontrolled telekinetic explosions and gushing nosebleeds – the Force was distant, veiled.  Cal couldn’t quite grasp it before it billowed away again.

Next, he began taking in the noises around him.  Thrusters were growling, too loud to be the Mantis unless it was about to have that catastrophic engine failure Greez swore would never happen in his lifetime.  His ears rang faintly, like usual.  His right ear still seemed to be stuffed with cotton, but that’d been the case since he picked up the infection.  Otherwise, he didn’t hear anything.  He wasn’t in the forest anymore, or on the Mantis.

Then physical sensation began returning in fits and starts and Cal instantly wished it hadn’t.  His ear hurt so karking badly he wanted to tear it out of his head.  A spot right in the middle of his lower back burned and throbbed, too, which was new and unwelcome.  He couldn’t even remember what he’d done to it.  He just felt like garbage in general – sore, slow, stupid.  Cal had called himself unapproved trash once and Greez had called him a weirdo and then washed Cal’s face and sat with him after he’d thrown up.  But Greez wasn’t here.  Cal tried to remember where ‘here’ was or how he’d gotten ‘here’ and failed.

Taking a few deep breaths to cut through the fog in his head, Cal pushed the pain into the background for now so he could figure out what else his muddled senses were telling him.  He was lying on his left side, nothing cushioning his head, nothing between him and what felt like solid metal.  The very slight vibration rattling through it all but confirmed he was on the deck of a starship.  He was also kriffing freezing and, like his body had been eagerly waiting for him to notice, he began shivering, which didn’t do his back any good.

He couldn’t open his eyes.  His eyelids were too heavy.  Writing that off as a bad job, Cal kept them closed, raked all the scattered bits of his memory into a puddle of confetti and attempted to piece them together.  The retreat.  Skaris.  Cleaning the Mantis.  That purple meadow he was supposed to look for.  Arguing with Cere and Greez.  Jetpack.

He’d taken a tranquilizer dart, Cal knew that much for sure.  If it’d been a slug like he’d thought, he would’ve been pretty seriously injured, but conscious; he could have called in backup and held his ground long enough for help to arrive.  The drugs had overwhelmed his already battered system in under a minute.  And BD –

Cal’s eyes snapped open of their own accord.

That asshole had hurt his best friend.  Probably a good thing Cal was in what appeared to be a cell, because he couldn’t have been held responsible for his actions if Jetpack had presented himself at that very moment.  Not that he could’ve done much, because he was having a hard time remembering where all his limbs were located.  Sedatives sucked.  His shoulder and hip ached from taking his weight, so he rolled onto his back, and a strangled animal noise clawed out of his throat – that wound on his lower back flared up like a firework, sending spots dancing in front of his eyes.  Cal lurched onto his side again, too hard, and flopped on his stomach instead.  But the pain diminished until he could reach back and gingerly prod at his spine, wondering what the hell he’d done.  An injury he couldn’t recall?  Had he gotten caught by a blaster bolt and failed to notice in the rush of adrenaline?

It was impossible to tell without a better look, but he did discover two things.  One, the padded vest his climbing harness hooked onto was gone, because he could easily ruck up his shirt.  And two, whatever was causing the pain, it’d been hidden away beneath a thick bandage the size of Cal’s hand.  Odd.  Jetpack had gone to the effort of tranquilizing Cal rather than just shooting him and had evidently treated his wounds, so they wanted him alive.  That was good to know.  Mindful of the pain in his back and the intermittent vertigo that’d caused this whole mess, Cal sat up very carefully, one hand bracing himself against the deck and the other rubbing his bleary eyes.  He had no way of knowing how long he’d been unconscious.  He really needed to use the ’fresher, though, so at least a couple hours must’ve passed.

The room he’d been left in was definitely some kind of holding cell.  It was square, half again as tall as Cal in both directions, and otherwise featureless; there wasn’t even a bunk or a vac tube.  He was sitting on bare deck panels instead and the bucket in the opposite corner didn’t need explanation.  Two small objects were on the floor in the middle of the cell: a water bulb and a wrapped ration stick.  Cal could reach them from his position, but he left them alone for now.  Nothing on the walls except the grille for a ventilation shaft, which would also be in reach if he stood – while not large enough for Cal to wriggle into, he made a note of it all the same.  A transparent pink shield sealed the cell off from the rest of the ship.

“BD?” Cal said.  Even softly-spoken, it sounded very loud in the empty room.  He didn’t get a response, but he hadn’t really expected one.  Grunting, he forced himself to his feet, keeping a hand on the bulkhead, blinked hard, and waited for the swaying to stop.

No lightsaber.  No welding torch – in fact, his entire tool belt was gone – or commlink.  He was barefoot.  Upon investigation, he’d been stripped of everything except his shirt and pants, up to and including the cuff he wore on his right wrist.  Whoever had frisked him saw fit to leave Cal exactly one thing, and that was the packet of antibiotics in his pocket.  He almost laughed when he fished them out.  Of course they’d been disregarded.  What was he going to do with these, deliberately overdose?  There were three left.  Depending on how much time had elapsed, he was probably due for another.  Cal stuck the package back in his pocket.

Step one of being a captive, don’t panic.  He had that one well in hand, as he was too sore and cold to spare the energy.  Step two, figure out where he’d been taken.  The cell wasn’t giving him much in the way of answers, so he stepped closer to the ‘door’, intending to see what might be outside it, and stopped.

There was someone standing right on the other side of the shield.

“…hey,” Cal said after a long moment.  No response to that, either.  He came closer, careful to avoid making contact with the shield – it was probably not one of those instant-death ray shields, since those were obscenely expensive, but he wasn’t taking any chances right now.

Directly across from the cell, against the wall, was a droid.  A loader droid, if Cal had to guess, and most likely an older model, as it was blockier and bulkier than the ones Cal was accustomed to seeing these days.  He couldn’t tell whether the rust and scuffed paint job were due to age or poor maintenance.  He waved one hand, but the droid did not move, just kept its glowing optics fixed on the cell and, by association, Cal.  “Any chance you’ve seen another droid around here?” he asked, running his hand through his hair, wincing when a couple strands got caught in his cybernetic fingers.  His glove had been taken, too, though it served no purpose other than protection while he was using his torch and to cover the prostheses.  “He’s a little guy, you might’ve missed him…”

Still nothing.  A lot of droids constructed solely for labor didn’t have vocalizers.  Accepting that angle wouldn’t get him anywhere, Cal tried to take a peek outside, which was difficult as he couldn’t get too close to the shield.  He thought the cell might be located along a corridor, though.  The other bulkhead was barely more than a meter away and he was pretty sure he could see a door or two off to his left.

Looked like he’d have to wait for answers until somebody else came along.  Cal figured that would happen sooner or later – he’d yet to meet a bounty hunter or mercenary capable of shutting up once they had (or thought they had, more often) him where they wanted him.  He paced for a few minutes, letting the last of the tranquilizer fog roll off him, then, when he couldn’t ignore his bladder any longer, cast the loader droid an irritated glance.  “Mind turning your back for twenty seconds or so?  I don’t even let BD in the ‘fresher with me, and he’s real weird about that sort of thing since he saw an Anzellan accidentally flush himself down a ship’s toilet one time.”

The droid just continued to stare silently.  Sighing, Cal kicked the bucket to a different corner so he could at least face the other direction.

It was perhaps another twenty minutes, which Cal passed by constantly letting unhelpful thoughts distract him from meditation, before he heard a door open somewhere.  Heavy footsteps echoed down the corridor.  He was too achy and dizzy to leap to his feet, but he was still standing by the time someone came into view – Jetpack, minus most of the armor besides the chestplate and cuisses.  The helmet was gone, too, exposing the face of a Human man as fair-skinned and freckled as Cal, though his hair was dark.  There was nothing particularly distinctive about him aside from a thin scar at one corner of his mouth.  He tapped his fingers against the holster of his blaster and his gaze flicked to the bulkhead just to the left of the cell.

Amateur, Cal thought dryly.  Now he knew where the door controls were.

For a moment, the two of them just sized one another up through the energy shield.  Then Jetpack leaned over, scooted an upturned crate in front of the cell, and sat on it.  “Guess you’re awake, then,” he said in a drawling Core accent that reminded him of Trilla.  Cal pegged it as fake immediately.  “The bounty on you is pretty nice; it would’ve been disappointing if you’d choked on your own vomit and died.  I even got a little worried when you puked back there.  Thought you had some kind of adverse reaction to the tranq.  But you were just sick to start with, weren’t you?  And here I thought I’d gotten lucky when you started wandering through the woods all by yourself.”

“Who are you?”

The scarred side of Jetpack’s mouth curved into a smirk.  “You can call me Quince,” he said.

“Where’s BD-1?”

“Your droid,” Quince said, as if to clarify.  Cal just glared at him.  “I didn’t bring him along, if that’s what you’re thinking.  I saw your arena fight a couple months back – that thing’s puny, but a little too crafty for my tastes.  You were the only one I wanted, anyway.  Left him on Skaris.”

“Well, I guess that answers my next question,” Cal said.  People looking to capture rather than kill him were doing it for a payout from either the Empire or the Haxion Brood, and that arena fight hadn’t been widely publicized.  He resisted the urge to press his hand to his ear – guy already knew he was sick, no reason to let him find out exactly what was wrong – and leaned a shoulder against the bulkhead.  “Sorc Tormo pays better if I’m alive, huh?”

“That’s right.  Dead will do, though, so let’s get a couple details out of the way.”  Quince reached into a pouch on his belt, removed a small device about the size of his thumb.  “I could’ve just stunned you back there, but those things never last long enough, and I needed you out for a while.  You might’ve noticed your back’s a little sore.”

“Hard to miss,” Cal said casually, even though his heart rate had picked up and he had a terrible feeling about this.  The Force swelled with foreboding.

“Ever heard of those chips slaveowners implant in their slaves so if they stray too far from their masters – trying to run away, for example – it explodes?”  Quince eyed the transmitter, then looked at Cal, and apparently Cal’s expression gave away his dismay, because the man’s smirk erupted into a full-blown grin.  “I’d say you have.  Me, I’ve actually seen it happen… and if you’re thinking of trying to yank it out yourself, don’t.  Tamper with it and –” he lifted his free hand, closed into a fist, then quickly splayed his fingers, “pop.”

This idiot was so proud of himself, Cal thought numbly, and he had no idea what he’d done.  Unless he had a full-blown surgical suite on this ship, took all the proper precautions, and sterilized the hell out of everything first, Cal was a dead man walking.  He doubted Quince had been that conscientious.  “Thought those things normally went in the head,” he said, unable to affect the casual tone anymore.

“They do!” Quince said brightly, like this was a class at the Temple and Cal had just answered a tricky question correctly.  Unlike Cere’s teacher tendencies, it wasn’t endearing.  The grin slid off Quince’s face for a mere instant before reappearing.  “This one came out of my head, in fact.  Problem is, if you misbehave and it goes off… well, it’s too easy to fake a headless body, you know?  All I’d need is a Human man about the same height and build and a cheap tattoo artist.”  He nodded at Cal’s wrist.  “Tormo wouldn’t give me a single credit for that.  Can’t check DNA if it’s not in a database somewhere.  But dead or alive, I intend to be paid in full, and you can still be identified with a big hole through the bottom of your spine.”

Cal hoped Sorc Tormo was exactly as much of a petty scumbag as he’d always seemed to be and seriously docked the payout for a dead bounty.  “So we’re –”

“Save your questions until the end, please,” Quince interrupted, holding up a hand.  He knocked his knuckles against the loader droid’s leg; the droid, unsurprisingly, did not react at all.  “This is Topp.  Consider him your prison guard.  There’s nothing in the poor bastard’s head, but if he hits you, you will know you’ve been hit… so don’t try anything or he’ll make sure you won’t want to try it again.”  Quince stood and hooked his thumbs in his belt, nodded to the ration stick and water on the deck of the cell.  “We’re not gonna be traveling long enough for you to starve, or even dehydrate.  That’s just me being nice… appreciate it, since it’s all you’re getting.”

Quince was quiet after that, so apparently the lecture was over.  “You’re dragging me back to Ordo Eris, then?” Cal said.  “You’d think you guys would learn after what I did to the place the first time.”

“You didn’t do a damn thing Tormo didn’t want you to, Jedi.  The ship, on the other hand… no, we aren’t going to Ordo Eris.  Tormo’s not a fool.  I’m handing you over someplace that pilot of yours doesn’t know about.”  Quince regarded him for a moment, the smug smirk playing on his mouth again.  “Anything else you want to talk about, or can I go finish changing?” he asked, gesturing to his chestplate.

“If you know so much about capturing Jedi, you should probably know you’re better off leaving that on,” Cal said coolly.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”  Quince turned away and began walking back down the corridor.  Cal let him get two steps before determining that was far enough.  Even sick and gritting his teeth through quite a lot of pain, the Force came easily to him now – he reached out and pulled.

With a startled grunt, Quince hit the bulkhead shoulder-first.  Whatever button or switch controlled the cell door triggered from the impact.  The shield evaporated.  Cal gave the guy another Force-shove to send him forwards onto his face and bolted.

He made it about three steps.

Something slammed into his throat so hard it would’ve knocked him clean over, but then it closed around his throat, hoisted him off his feet.  Cal hung, choking, for one weightless second before his back struck a wall.  He would’ve screamed from the pain, but he couldn’t breathe and his vision had greyed out and suddenly the ship fell away.

He walked.  He did not deviate from the invisible straight line that guided him from START to END.  When he reached the END, he placed the crate in his arms in the next available space, returned to the START, and repeated the process until there were no further crates to load.  That was all.  He had not been programmed to think, but his processor and personality matrix had once allowed for a limited amount of autonomy.  His memory banks were proof of that – there had been another dock, a smaller one, where he was permitted to think cargo-over-weight-limit-for-freighter-inefficient-fuel-burn and T0K2-speed-reduced-32%-may-require-maintenance, even if he had no easy way of communicating those thoughts.  He could direct the first OWNER to T0K2 so she could see for herself he was lagging behind and one of his legs did not bend correctly.  It had been a good dock.  He had felt useful there.

Now he did not think or feel.  STOP.  GO.  LIFT.  FOLLOW.  PLACE HERE.  RELEASE.  WAIT.  SHUT DOWN.  Sometimes there was shouting, a thin electroprod jammed into his joints to send a jolt through the delicate wiring there, the closest thing to pain he was capable of experiencing.  Sometimes there were new orders – MONITOR or BLOCK ENTRY POINT.  Often he and the others merely stood in their charging berths for long periods of time, conscious, motionless, awaiting orders to either shut down or get to work.

Then there was a new OWNER, who looked him over and nodded approval, who said, “T0P9, huh?” as he looked at a datapad.

“We’ve been callin’ him ‘Topp’,” said the previous OWNER, chomping on a soggy cigar.  “He ain’t ever said a word about it.  You want a droid who’ll keep their trap shut, he’s it… not much in the way of brains.  Wouldn’t take the bolt off if I were you, though; dunno what sort of programmin’ he’s got beneath it.”

“Fine,” the new OWNER said.

His duties were similar to those on the docks.  He loaded and unloaded cargo as instructed, by himself, bound to the White Spark by whatever subroutine froze his limbs if he moved too far out of range.  He did not do so deliberately, but it caused the OWNER displeasure, and while this one did not have an electroprod and he did not feel pain, there was still a certain discomfort to being struck.  Organics inflicted violence on one another out of disapproval or anger or a desire for revenge, emotions he did not understand.

His new orders were to inflict violence too under certain circumstances.  He did not understand that either, but he dutifully complied.  His unlubricated joints began to grind, and the shining red paint his first OWNER had applied to his plating was crumbling away as he rusted, but he could do nothing.  He did not complain and he followed his orders because he was not able to disobey and he was frequently struck anyway.  He did not feel pain.  He did not feel.  He did not think.

What-am-I-doing-wrong?

“I think you’ve made your point.  Drop him.”

The pressure around his throat released all at once.  Cal landed on the deck in a heap, and now he could feel pain, but he was too busy gasping and coughing and gagging to do a thing about it.  “Back up,” Quince ordered, and through fuzzy eyes Cal saw Topp walk backwards until he was against the bulkhead again.  The pink energy barrier sprang up, separating Cal from them once more.  “Consider that a warning.  Don’t try him, Jedi… or me.” 

Quince walked away without interruption this time.  Still guzzling air, Cal propped himself up on an elbow to take the pressure off his back, slumped onto his side, pressed his cheek against the cold metal deck and wheezed.

Okay, wasn’t like he could say that hadn’t gone as planned, because he hadn’t had a plan.  He’d just wanted to see what would happen.  Now he knew for sure where the control panel was, and that the shield didn’t require anything sophisticated like a code to activate and deactivate… and that getting past Topp was going to be his first obstacle.  Cal sluggishly sat up, rubbing his aching neck and slumping sideways against the nearest bulkhead, and looked at the droid.  Topp stared back impassively.

So.  Topp had a restraining bolt attached somewhere.  Droids only had a handful of good control points where a restraining bolt was guaranteed to function properly, and Cal couldn’t see one on his chest, so it was most likely on his back.  More importantly, it wasn’t functioning properly.  His original programming seemed pretty standard for a loader droid.  Someone had stuck a bolt on him and shut all that down, reduced him to responding only to simple commands that would trigger his orders, stopped him from even thinking.  Yet here he was, with enough processor power to realize he didn’t like it when he was hit, and express confusion and sadness because he didn’t know why he was being hit.  That shouldn’t have been possible, so either the restraining bolt had been attached to the wrong spot, it was damaged, or it’d come slightly loose.  Cal was betting on the second or third possibility.  Topp clearly hadn’t been maintained in a long time, or else Quince probably would’ve noticed.

Well, Cal hadn’t liked that slime to begin with, and witnessing some of Topp’s memories didn’t paint a rosier picture of the guy.  People who mistreated their droids pissed him off.   BD-1 got a quick scrub and a tune-up every few days, a full oil bath as often as they could manage it, and Cal had been collecting a box of small droid components good for repairing BD if he was ever damaged.  Considering everything BD did for him, that felt like the least Cal could do in return.  The idea of smacking the little droid around for any reason at all was alien to him.

“No hard feelings,” Cal said to Topp, wincing as he tipped his head back and forth, and then quickly stopping when that just made him dizzy.  Topp couldn’t be held responsible for his actions; he wasn’t capable of ignoring orders.  Quince, on the other hand?  Cal needed to break out of here just to kick the man’s teeth through the back of his skull.

At least he had some information now.  BD-1 hadn’t been brought on the… what did Topp call it… right, the White Spark with him, which meant he would’ve reunited with Cere, Merrin, and Greez and told them every tiny detail he could recall, and as BD was a droid that’d be a lot.  Quince really was an amateur when it came to kidnapping Jedi for that sweet crime syndicate bounty.  He would’ve found his hostage a lot more cooperative if he could punish BD for any trouble Cal caused.

Cal refused to consider the possibility BD had been permanently deactivated.  He was fine.  He had to be.  The rest of the crew were probably making a beeline for Ordo Eris at this very moment – not like Quince was the first Haxion Brood merc to try cashing in that bounty this month.  A little time listening to Brood communications would tell them Cal wasn’t there, but since mercs never kept their mouths shut, sooner or later they’d find out he had Cal somewhere else… and by that point it’d probably be too late.

Again, Cal reached back to touch the bandage plastered over what must’ve been an incision.  It hurt worse than it had earlier, which was a feat, and the bandage felt wet and sticky where it clung to his skin.  Either he was bleeding or leaking some other undesirable substance, and he couldn’t check because he doubted Quince had bluffed about that chip.

He’d tried to implant a slave chip alongside Cal’s spine, a nice little insurance policy in case Cal escaped him, and wound up with a time bomb, instead.  If that incision wasn’t infected already, it would be soon.  His spleenless body was already struggling with the ear infection.  And all Cal had was three antibiotic pills, and they weren’t even the strong antibiotics that made him feel like crap but did a good job killing off anything in his body that wasn’t supposed to be there.

He needed an escape plan as soon as possible.  Preferably one that included stealing the transmitter off Quince first so Cal wouldn’t blow up.  Whatever Sorc Tormo had in mind for him wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would probably be broadcast, and he wasn’t stupid enough to allow Greez access to the frequency this time.  Better not to reach his destination at all.  Cal needed an escape plan and a medcenter.  And a comm so he could call his friends.  And a miracle, while he was at it.

Cal took the antibiotics from his pocket, removed one from the package, and leaned forwards to swipe the water bulb off the deck.  It felt like being stabbed in the back.  “Great,” he muttered, uncapping the bulb and sniffing the contents.  No scent.  No grit at the bottom of the transparent plastoid.  The first tentative sip had no flavor and didn’t leave behind any strange aftertastes, so he assumed it wasn’t drugged and washed down the pill.

Then, sore and dizzy and shivering, Cal stood back up.  He had nobody to blame but himself (and Quince) for his current predicament.  Should’ve just stayed on the Mantis and napped for a while and let Greez fuss over him.  Sighing, Cal turned in a circle, gazing at the entire room, and chose a starting point.  If there was a single gap or crack or weakness anywhere in this cell, he was going to find it.

Chapter Text

“Okay, lemme go over the plan one last time,” Greez said, expertly ignoring the groans from everyone else in the speeder.  It wasn’t the repetition they minded, it was the uncomfortably lavish descriptions of their target that began to wear thin after a while, and once again Greez did not disappoint.  “Step one, when we get into the warehouse, you guys let me do the talking, okay?  You’ll know her as soon as you see her.  The girl is tall.  I’m talking downright statuesque, here, even by your standards – legs for days.  She’s got that long, graceful neck, too… little square-jawed, maybe, but you know what?  I kinda like that in a woman.  I mean, she’s the whole package, just…” Apparently out of poetry to wax, Greez whistled instead, quite at odds with the rude gesture he gave the speeder ahead of them that dropped out of the upper skylane without warning.  “Step two, I’ll go over there, get her attention; you keep an eye on our exits and make sure nobody interrupts.  Step three, I say, ‘So, Atty,’ – her name is Atty, by the way – but don’t call her that, only I should call her that – ‘So, Atty, what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?’.  That’s the signal, so she’ll know we’re the ones here to rescue her.  Step four, Cere brings the Mantis in and we slip her on board and take off.  Easy-peasy.”

“Step five,” Merrin said, “we give you two some privacy before I witness something I will never be able to erase from my memory.”

Greez rolled his eyes, then swore in Lateron and slammed on the airbrakes as the speeder in front slowed to a crawl.  He did the Mom-arm thing to Merrin, but BD, stood on the dash, smacked right into the viewport.  There was a little spiderweb of cracks in the glass when he regained his footing.  “Ah, this is a rental,” Greez sighed, shaking his head.  “Anyway, listen, it’s not every day I get my hands on a gorgeous pair of dorsal laser turrets.  And she’s fresh off the assembly line, too; none of those shabby half-junked A-T-A-Ts for a pilot of my caliber…”

Up to that point, Cal had been content to curl up in the passenger seat and doze.  He was too tired to pay attention to Greez verbally caressing a shiny new Imperial walker.  He’d snagged the blanket from the back, leaned his head against the window, and let the sound of rain drumming against the roof lull him into a sleepy fog while overbright city lights lit up the night like a kaleidoscope.  But Greez’s last sentence burrowed through the haze, tweaked a nerve; Cal lifted his head and yawned, “You’re saying it wrong.”

“A-T-A-T,” Greez enunciated, “short for ‘All Terrain Armored –’”

“I know what it stands for.  I worked on Bracca for five years, I’ve scrapped about a hundred of those things, and not once did I hear anyone call it an ‘A-T-A-T’,” Cal said, a little mocking lilt creeping into his tone on the acronym.  “Not even the Imperial supervisor they sent from Coruscant, with his posh accent.  It’s AT-AT.”  He snuggled back into his knitted tunnel, resting his cheek on his hand, and gazed out the window as they traced the skyline.  The blanket was big enough to drown in.  He might try, if Greez didn’t cut it out.  “You’re just saying it that way to annoy me.”

“It ain’t all about you, kid.”

No, BD pointed out, but it was just silly to use a longer nickname when there was a shorter and more common alternative available, and one that wasn’t going to sound like a number over staticky comms either. 

Cal was too tired to pursue the argument right now.  He’d bring it up later, preferably before Greez started putting his mitts all over Atty right in front of the Mantis.  That probably qualified as some sort of infidelity.  “I don’t know if there’s enough space for it on the ship,” he said instead.  “Merrin’s still got the telescopes set up in the back.  How are we going to get it in there?”

“One leg at a time,” Greez replied.  “Like putting on pants.  And don’t you start falling asleep over there, you’re supposed to be awake… hey, Merrin, there’s the hotel.”

Merrin scooted over so fast she crushed Cal against the door.  She didn’t even notice his glare, leaning into him to get a better look outside.  They were winding out of the city center, the skyscrapers diminishing in favor of opulent mansions and manicured parks and apartment complexes that could’ve fit every unit in Cal’s building on Bracca into a single floor.  Up on the ridge was a spotlit hotel, which was both a stunning example of Old Republic-era Zygerrian architecture and the ugliest shade of pastel pink Cal had ever seen.  It reminded him of soap suds and stomach medicine.  Supposedly, the golden domes were still originals; that was ten thousand years of potential echoes (a goldmine, he thought, then winced at his own awful pun) and it was tempting to put his mitts all over them, fold the past into his palms.  His headache had other ideas.  And if the door latches decided to give out, he’d have time to dictate his will to BD before he hit the ground.  “Merrin, you’re squashing me…”

She eased up slightly, though her gaze was still locked on the building as they cruised past.  “I just want to see it,” she said.  “I was named after the hotel.”

Cal eyed the three-story-high illuminated letters on the wall.  “This place is called The Leah Alisabett.”

“Not this hotel,” Merrin said witheringly, “the hotel.  The first one.”

He was about to ask her what the hell she was talking about, but then he realized what she was actually doing – or not doing – and all but shoved her over to her seat.  “Watch the skylane, please!” Huffing, Merrin took the controls again and guided them off their current collision course.  Cal and the tree they almost obliterated both sighed in relief.  “Stuff like this makes me wonder why Greez is teaching you to fly the Mantis.”

“Because we need a backup pilot.  And you don’t pay attention.”

“What do you call what just happened?!”

“She corrected in time,” Greez said.  “And she does what I tell her.  You’re supposed to be staying awake.  Sorry, Callie, you’re not getting anywhere near the pilot’s seat until I can trust you to focus.”

But it was fine if she nearly gave them all a few nature-inspired piercings because she wanted to stare at a hotel.  That was fair.  Cal considered retreating into his yarn fort to sulk, paused, replayed Greez’s words in his head.  “Didn’t we have a whole discussion about when you can and can’t use that nickname?”

Greez ignored him in favor of telling Merrin to cool it on the throttle a bit unless she wanted to crawl up someone’s exhaust port.  BD prodded Cal’s knee, asked if he was okay.  It didn’t matter, Cal told himself, uneasy.  Greez probably just forgot.  The Latero banked a hard right, taking them alongside a low-slung building splashed with holofilm advertisements; Cal didn’t recognize any of them, not that he’d ever been into that sort of thing.  The rain was getting heavier.

Where were they, anyway?

He couldn’t remember, and his first suspicion was a head injury.  This was almost exactly how his last one played out – he was fine until he realized he was sitting at the bottom of a Republic cruiser’s turbolift shaft with no idea how he’d gotten there.  Then he freaked, and Prauf had to reassure him he’d just taken a bad knock to the head and they were waiting on a grappling line since there was no way he could climb.  Cal learned later they’d had that exact conversation three or four times.  Concussion-induced amnesia was a real pain in the ass.  But the more he chewed on the possibility, the less likely it seemed, simply because Cere and Greez weren’t too happy to find out he’d walked off – or worked off – that head injury.  If he sustained one under their watch, he’d be resting quietly aboard the Mantis instead of participating in an AT-AT heist.  And really, how were they going to get a whole AT-AT onto their ship?  There wasn’t even a ‘back’ to stick it in.

Next theory.  “Greez,” Cal said, tipping forward so he could see past Merrin, “I have a confession to make.  I hate your gorss steaks.”

Greez’s jaw almost hit the dash.  Merrin looked offended too, since she loved those vile things, but Cal went on without guilt or mercy.  “I hate gorss in general, actually.  It tastes like a dirty boot.  But somehow, and I don’t know how you accomplish this, you get the absolute worst cuts of meat every single time.  They’re 90% fat with some stringy, chewy, gristly bits scattered here and there.  It’s revolting.  I have to consciously stop myself from throwing up when we have them, and you know how I feel about throwing up so you’re kinda just torturing me.  Once I thought you were deliberately giving me the bad steaks because you were mad about something, but I snuck a piece of Merrin’s and it was the same.  I know they’re cheap and store well, but they’re so bad, and you don’t even do anything to improve the flavor.  At least marinade them like the scazz or whatever.”

“Can we discuss this when we’re not in the middle of traffic?” Greez said through gritted teeth, slamming on the brakes again.  BD-1 was reintroduced to the viewport.  “Droid, you really gotta put a safety belt on… and why did this karking syphilitic nerf-herder have to cut me off when he’s just gonna slow down every three meters?!”

Cal sat back in satisfaction, taking BD with him before the poor droid went clean through the glass.  “Yeah, I’m dreaming.”  Sometimes he stepped on the line between ‘dream’ and ‘reality’ and realized he wasn’t on the side he thought he was.  He didn’t think he was supposed to be sleeping, though.  “If I said that to the real Greez, he’d be devastated.  And then he would gut me with a meat cleaver.”

Greez snorted.  “Oh, so it’s fine to devastate me, but not him?  What’s he got that I don’t?”

“He makes most of the food.”

“I could gut you with a meat cleaver, if you’d like,” Merrin offered.

“I’ll pass.”  Right above them, an enormous billboard for some drink spewed a constant hail of bubbles from a two-dimensional bottle; foam coated the viewport before Merrin hit the button for the wipers.  Cal wondered how many people had careened into the board or another speeder or the surrounding buildings as a direct result of that poor design choice.  He leaned his head against his window, contemplated napping… and then, through the neon raindrops racing down the glass, he spotted a familiar apartment block and sat up straight.  “Hey,” he said, reaching across to nudge Merrin, “drop me off here, okay?”

“What?” she said.  “You need to wake up.  We need your help with the A-T-A-T.”

“Don’t you start.  You said it normally yesterday.  Prauf’s probably home by now and I need to talk to him.”

She sighed, but dropped the speeder out of the skylane, and when Cal glanced at her, her expression was almost unbearably gentle.  “You do this every time,” she said.  “What is there to say that hasn’t already been said?”

Merrin, who wasn’t responsible for the deaths of her sisters, would never understand, and Cal didn’t expect her to.  He said nothing, ducking out of the speeder as soon as it was on the ground, shedding his knitted plumage.  “We should keep this,” he suggested, nodding at the blanket as he piled it on his empty seat.  “It’s comfortable.  Come on, BD.”

BD skipped across the backs of the seats and up onto Cal’s shoulder.  “Wake up, Cal,” Merrin said.  “He is coming.”  

“Sure.”  Cal shut the door and the speeder lifted off again, leaving them alone in the pouring rain.  He turned towards the apartment building, tugging his hood up, and a wave of dizziness washed over him – swaying, Cal grabbed at a nearby bench, just barely managed to plant his butt on it before he fell onto the filthy pavement.  BD asked if he was okay again.  “Yeah,” Cal said faintly.  He was sitting down and sitting still and the vertigo got worse anyway.  Bewildered, Cal stared down at his hands.  “…I think I’m sick,” he finally said.  “I’m not supposed to be sleeping.  Maybe I –”

He tripped over that indistinct line separating dream from reality, then, and the rain and the bench and BD-1 dissolved, replaced with engine noise and an uncomfortably warm deck and pain.

Cal kept his eyes closed a moment longer, clung to the tendrils of his dream.  They’d been in the speeder on Eufornis Major – he vividly recalled that weird drink ad and the pink hotel – but in reality, Greez stayed behind the controls the entire time.  There was no AT-AT heist, either (just a quick in-and-out to extract an informant for Saw Gerrera, which went sideways and therefore was not quick), Cere had definitely been present, and Cal hadn’t spent it wrapped up in a blanket.  Spirits, he wanted a blanket.  He was so kriffing cold.  Except he was also too hot, flat on his stomach on overheated metal, and –

His eyes snapped open and he groaned.  He shouldn’t have slept.  Quince had implied they had a pretty short trip between Skaris and… wherever he was being taken, and Cal needed to watch closely for any chance at getting out of here, not take a nap.  Once again, he had no idea how much time he’d lost.  Everything hurt.  He’d gotten spoiled, sleeping in a comfortable cot all the time; his muscles cramped and burned as he sat up, curling his legs in so he could prop his elbows on his knees and rub his face.

At this point, the earache was so familiar it was more of a companion than an affliction.  It wasn’t getting any worse, at least.  Cal could not say the same for basically anything else.  He felt groggy, extremely feverish.  The stabbing pain at the base of his spine put his ear to shame.  He wished he could believe he’d just become a bit of a hypochondriac thanks to the immune system issues, that he was blowing this out of proportion, but he felt wrong and no amount of meditation or deep, soothing breaths was staving off the panic that’d been building in his chest since he found out about the slave chip.

He withdrew all of his recent complaints about bad mornings.  Those were nothing in comparison to this one.

Cal locked his fingers together at the back of his neck, hunched forwards, and took some deep, soothing breaths anyway.  Fever and malaise did weird things to his brain and he was almost homesick, despite having been away perhaps one standard rotation.  He wanted a blanket.  He wanted to curl up in his cot and sleep for a week.  He wanted to be roused in the dead of night because the Mantis’s compressor had malfunctioned and Cal was the only person Greez trusted to help him fix it.  He wanted Cere to insist everything would be okay, she couldn’t ruin eggs, and then have to chisel the remains out of the pan (and Greez complained about Cal scorching his ceiling once).  He wanted to be sent on a ‘rescue mission’ when Merrin didn’t return from a fast supply run, only to find her enraptured by a group of street performers with makeshift instruments.  He wanted BD-1, his actual companion, to lean over his shoulder and point out a pretty flower, or grumble because Greez had made them clean up the picture of him on the fin, or tuck under the covers and let Cal cling to him after nightmares.  The Mantis had become his home, rather than just a safe place to crash and grab something to eat, and the rest of the crew was the closest thing he had to a family.  He wanted to go back to them.

None of those things were ever going to happen again if Cal just sat here moping.  He’d be fine.  He wasn’t going to die.  Acting like he’d seen his friends for the last time wasn’t going to do anyone any good.  Suck it up, he ordered himself, and raised his head, digging the water bulb from his pocket.  Having been on him a while, the water was unpleasantly warm, but he drank about half of what remained anyway.  Then he eyed the ration stick for a long moment before sighing and tearing the wrapper open.  He needed to give himself some energy whether he had any semblance of an appetite or not. 

As he broke the end of the stick off and chewed it, he glanced around the cell for the millionth time.  Nothing had changed.  He was pretty sure he knew how Merrin felt after days languishing in the ‘fresher with a stomach bug – he’d studied every square centimeter of the tiny room he’d been trapped in.  There wasn’t anything that’d make an escape easy or even possible, but Cal hadn’t expected otherwise.  Mostly it’d just distracted him, kept him awake and focused.  Sitting in a corner for a couple of minutes just because he was feeling too lightheaded and weak to stand anymore had clearly been a mistake.

What he really needed right now came along less than a minute later.  Quince strolled down the corridor, probably from the cockpit – Cal had a rudimentary idea of the ship’s layout thanks to Topp’s echoes – with a flat, rectangular package in hand.  The man sat on the crate next to Topp, who’d not budged a millimeter, and tore the cover off the meal pack.

“You normally eat with your guests?” Cal asked hoarsely, swallowing a mouthful of tasteless ration stick with a wince.  Getting his windpipe crushed by a loader droid with a durasteel grip hadn’t done him any favors.

“You’re the first guest I’ve had, actually,” Quince replied.  “Maybe I’m starting a tradition.”

“I knew you couldn’t be a bounty hunter by trade.”  Cal regarded the rest of the stick for a moment, then wrapped it again and stuck it in his pocket.  His stomach wasn’t too thrilled by it.  “Spice runner, right?”

“What makes you think that?”

Getting up, Cal turned around to face the ventilation shaft just above eye level.  Having inspected it thoroughly, he knew he wasn’t freeing himself that way.  His shoulders wouldn’t fit even if he turned diagonally.  But the slats were spaced just far enough apart for him to stick his fingers through, and he did, rubbing one against the bottom of the duct, then turning back towards Quince.  His fingertip was coated in glittering, multicolored dust.  “Nobody ever thinks to clean the vents.”

“Huh,” Quince said.  Cal quickly scrubbed his hand clean on his pants – he knew from experience how easily some of that stuff was absorbed through the skin, and he wanted to stay in control of his faculties.  He had sort of a plan, this time, and it relied on Quince being as calm and relaxed as possible.  The guy was talkative, so Cal was going to let him chatter on.  He might accidentally give away some useful intel.  Quince stabbed his spork into the meal pack and continued, “Anyway, to answer your first question, I’m not an idiot.  You’re the wily type and Topp sure isn’t, so I’m not just leaving you here alone all the time to cook something up while I’m not paying attention.”

Too late, Cal thought.  He slid down the bulkhead, drew his knees up, folded his arms behind them.  He couldn’t get warm.  And if it made him look a little more pathetic and helpless, well, he’d squash the twinge of shame and hope Quince underestimated him.  “Is the Haxion Brood bounty really that good?  I mean, you know what the Imps are offering for me, right?”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Jedi,” Quince said.  “I’m from the Outer Rim, and around here, we don’t really care who’s supposedly running things.  Republic, Empire, the Hutts, whatever – it’s all rotten to the core.  You think any of them gave a damn when I needed help?  The only one who did was the Brood.  I’d be dead without them.  And unlike some people you may have met, I’m grateful for everything they gave me, so I repay my debts.”

It wasn’t an unfamiliar story.  Cal knew far too many people on Bracca who’d gotten roped into gangs that way.  Had Prauf not been looking out for him, he might’ve wound up in the same situation.  “So you turn me in…”

“And I wipe out the last of my debt and also get a nice payout to boot.”  Quince speared something yellow on his spork, inspected it with a distasteful expression, and stuck it in his mouth.  “Count yourself lucky.  That’s the only reason I’m bothering to keep you alive – I could use the extra money.”

“Hate to break it to you,” Cal said, propping his cheek up on his hand, “but I might be dead before you hand me off anyway.”

“Oh, and why’s that?  Didn’t think you self-righteous Jedi were the suicidal type.”

If only he knew.  Cal had never been actively suicidal, never planned to end his life, punished himself for his darkest thoughts by reminding himself how much Master Tapal had sacrificed for him… but the years of not caring whether he lived or died weren’t too far off.  He and Cere had had some pretty grueling conversations about that.  “I don’t have a spleen,” he said bluntly.  “So I don’t have much of an immune system, either.  You stuck that chip in my back with your gross spice-runner hands.  Bet you didn’t even wash them first.  See where I’m going with this?”

Quince eyed him for a few long seconds, then shrugged and returned his attention to his meal.  “Even if I believed you, it wouldn’t matter.  You don’t look like you’re going to drop dead in the next eight hours.  Once you’re in Tormo’s hands and the money’s in mine, whatever happens next isn’t my problem anymore.”

So Quince had implied a minute ago they were still in the Outer Rim, and apparently they had about eight hours left until they reached their destination.  The former didn’t mean much, as the Outer Rim was massive; the latter was good to know.  “Just thought I’d mention it,” Cal said, closing his eyes.  “One more question, then… how do you Brood scumbags keep finding me?”

The other man laughed at that.  “Like I’d tell you,” he huffed.  “But here’s a hint – you’re running with Greez Dritus.  Tormo has a vested interest in keeping an eye on him.  Found him before I found you, actually.  Puttering around his little ship, all alone… he wouldn’t have seen it coming if I’d put a bolt through him.”

Cal shot to his feet, pain and fatigue momentarily forgotten, tightening his fists in the grubby fabric of his shirt until they ached.  “You stay away from him.”

Quince just laughed again.  “Relax.  Dead bodies can’t clear their debts.  He’ll live, for now… once he’s paid up, though, then it’s open season.”  He held up a hand, thumb and index fingers extended, and pulled the trigger on his imaginary gun with a grin.  Thoroughly unconcerned by Cal’s anger, he then dropped the spork in the empty package and set that on the deck.  “You, on the other hand, you’d better just worry about yourself.  You humiliated Tormo, cost him a lot of money, and he doesn’t forgive and forget that kind of thing.  After he’s had his fun, you’ll die.  And it won’t be pretty.”

Exhaling, Cal lowered himself to sit back down on the deck.  He’d take his chances with Sorc Tormo over another round in Fortress Inquisitorius, honestly, but he still wanted to shake loose from Quince before he became another valued guest of the Haxion Brood.  “Whatever,” he muttered.  “Doesn’t matter anyway.  Don’t you want to let me go?”

“Nah,” Quince said, unmoved.

“You sure?”  Cal caught the man’s eyes and held on tight.  Slowly, pressing the Force into every word, he said, “You want to let me go.”

“…no, I don’t,” Quince said, but he didn’t sound too certain of that, and he seemed unable to tear his eyes away or even blink.

Cal leaned forwards, not breaking eye contact, until his face was as close to the shield as he was willing to get.  He pressed harder, enunciated even more clearly.  “You want to drop out of hyperspace as soon as it’s safe,” he said, “find an inhabited planet, give me the transmitter for the chip, and let me go.”

For one glorious second, he thought it worked.  Quince, moving like he was in a dream, stood up, turned towards the cockpit… and then he shook his head so hard Cal almost heard his brain rattle.  He pivoted back around, face flushing a furious red, and threw Cal a murderous glare before slamming an open hand against Topp’s chestplate.  Cal jumped at the resulting noise, but Topp did not react at all.  “That’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to be watching out for!” Quince shouted, his voice echoing through the corridor.  The edges of that crisp Core accent he put on were peeling up.  “Think he’ll spare you if he gets free?”  He then looked to Cal, who met his snarl without fear.  “You try that again,” Quince said in a low, cold tone, “I’ll sedate you for the rest of the ride, and this time I won’t give a shit if you choke on your own vomit and die.”

With that, he stormed away, leaving Topp on guard and an empty meal pack on the floor.  What a tool, Cal thought irritably, looking up at the droid.  “Sorry,” he said.  “Didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

Topp just stared silently.  Sighing, Cal pulled his knees back up against his chest so he could rest his arms and head on them.

Well, it’d been worth a shot.  Younglings at the Temple had not been taught mind tricks for obvious reasons (though a couple figured it out anyway – he recalled Sayler being quite good at them), so few Jedi learned until they had a Master to teach them one on one.  Jaro Tapal died long before he ever got the chance.  That meant it’d fallen to Cere, and she’d been quite willing to explain the theory, but balked when it came time for him to actually practice.  Understandably, she didn’t want anyone influencing her thoughts or actions.  Greez also categorically refused.  BD was a droid and mind tricks didn’t work on his kind.  Merrin, on the other hand, had agreed as long as Cal didn’t try to make her do anything weird or dangerous.  She’d sat on the sofa so they were facing one another, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.

“Okay,” Cal had murmured to himself, glancing around the room in search of a safe and simple task.  Once he had one in mind, he took a deep breath, tried to remember everything Cere had told him, and said, “You’re going to get up, take the watering can, and water the milk grass.”

“She’d better not!” Greez yelped from the galley.  “Already done for the day!  You overwater that thing and it’ll die.”

Cal looked away from Merrin to glare in Greez’s general direction as the Latero hid the watering can.  Unsurprisingly, Merrin didn’t budge, just looked slightly amused.  “Fine, fine,” Cal grumbled.  “Um… all right.  You want to go steal Greez’s Good Spoon and give it to me.”

“No,” Merrin said blandly over Greez’s muttering.

“You want to steal Greez’s Good Spoon and give it to me,” Cal repeated, focusing.

“No.”

“You want to steal Greez’s Good Spoon and give it to me?” he offered hopefully.

Cere, sat on the other end of the couch and pretending she was reading her datapad instead of supervising, said, “It’s not a question,” before Merrin could refuse.  “Don’t say it like one.”

“Right.”  He took another breath, looked Merrin square in the eyes.  “You want to steal Greez’s Good Spoon and give it to me.”

“No.”

In all, she’d stonewalled him about twenty times before Cal had given up.  He probably shouldn’t have expected anything different.  But he’d not gotten any further practice, and Quince was the first time he had tried it for real, so Cal supposed he was thrilled he managed to influence the guy for even a few seconds.  And Quince was rattled, now – he would probably stay away for a while so Cal couldn’t get another chance and potentially succeed.  That gave Cal space to think and plot out his next move.  Quince was right about one thing – Cal wouldn’t expire in the next few hours.  He was going to get out of here and he was going to be fine.  He just needed an opening.

Chapter Text

Cal was meditating when the ship’s hyperdrive cycled off.  It was a sound he knew well, both from sleeping in the Mantis’s engine room and all the time he’d spent deep in the Albedo Brave, putting things back together after he’d disassembled them for fun.  He cracked an eye open – it hadn’t been near eight hours yet.  Not even half that.  Either Quince had lied about how much more time they’d have together, or they were taking a little side trip.  He assumed he wasn’t getting any answers from Topp, so he closed his eye again.

He didn’t want to stop meditating, honestly.  Everything hurt a hell of a lot less in that state.  And the pain aside, if he wasn’t wracked with chills, he was sweating profusely, and the dizziness and nausea and crushing exhaustion had come home to roost.  It all reminded him of his bout of pneumonia.  Thank the Force he could breathe just fine and the occasional cough felt more like Post-Strangulation Syndrome.  Master Tapal used to tell him not to do this too often, not to escape physical discomfort by kicking out of his own body.  It was unsustainable, he’d always said – temporary relief, yes, but eventually he’d have to face reality, and it would be made worse by having avoided it for a while.  Five years on Bracca cultivated the sort of pain tolerance that’d make hardened mercs weep, so Cal didn’t usually retreat like this anymore.

I’m sorry, Master, he wanted to say, but I’m scared.  Not of this slimeball, mind you, or his enforcer, or even whatever Sorc Tormo’s got brewing in his twisted little brain right now.  I’m scared my body is going to give out on me.

There was nothing he could do for it right now.  Reluctantly, he opened both eyes, scraped his fingers through his sweaty hair.  “Guess we’re stopping, huh?” he said to Topp, who, as always, was quiet and still.  Not having BD-1 around to talk to all the time was getting to Cal a bit.  “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna try anything… believe it or not, I don’t really want my spine blown up.  Even though that might actually be less painful.”  His back hurt terribly.  He’d broken his femur and been stabbed with his lightsaber and while this didn’t hit quite the same level of agony, it was lurking not too far beneath them.  Was it possible to contract a spinal infection?  That was another one of those things which might’ve been covered in the Human Anatomy class Cal hadn’t paid attention to.

Cal said nothing more until he heard and felt the KA-CHUNK of the landing gear extending, at which point he stood up.  That’d become an ordeal.  Between the pain and the dizziness, he had to lean against the bulkhead for about fifteen seconds before he wasn’t afraid he’d just fall right back over.  “Think he’ll tell me what’s going on if I ask?  Guy sure likes the sound of his own voice, so maybe,” he said, like he wasn’t talking mostly to hear his own voice.  He was still very raspy and his throat felt bruised when he touched it, but that seemed to be the extent of the damage.  “I know somebody like that.  He’s got a story for everything and he’s not shy about sharing them, and spirits help us if we don’t listen.  He’s… a good friend, though.  A really good friend.  Keeps looking after me even when I don’t appreciate it.”  And wasn’t that a familiar tale?  Prauf and Greez would’ve gotten along pretty well, he thought.

He took a few laps around the little cell to keep his blood circulating and try to warm up.  On the fourth, he thought he heard a hatch open, though he couldn’t guess where; on the seventh, without warning, Topp abruptly turned ninety degrees and walked away.

It was the first time since being captured that Cal hadn’t been under supervision.  He was elated for all of two seconds before his mood crashed.  He had one plan left, it was kind of a shit plan, and the droid he needed for it had just walked away.  This would’ve been the perfect time for it, too.  Heaving a sigh, he took the last of the antibiotic pills – probably too soon, but he doubted it mattered at this point – and waited.

“Don’t get antsy,” Quince said when he walked by and noticed Cal on his feet.  “Just the day job calling.  We’ll be on our merry way again in a few minutes.”

“The fake accent is really karking annoying!” Cal called after him.  Being sick made him petty.  He rested his head against the wall, listened to voices in the distance – they were just far enough out of range he could tell one was Quince, but the words were indecipherable.  He knew he’d regret all the loud music and scrapping someday.

Topp returned, passed the cell with his arms full of a black crate almost as wide as the corridor.  He proceeded to the rear of the ship, where Cal knew the cargo hold was, then came back empty-handed.  Doing his duty, as ordered.  One of his knee joints gave an awful scraping noise on every step.  Cal moved towards the energy shield, watched… and the next time the droid walked by with another box, he took a close look.

There.  The restraining bolt was anchored to Topp’s back, smack dab in the center.  While Cal didn’t have his welding torch or even a chisel on him, desperation bred creativity.

The droid took six more crates to the cargo hold.  On the last one, Quince followed; he hadn’t been hanging around Cal’s cell since the attempted mind trick, but now he paused and said, “Might as well make yourself comfortable, Jedi.  Just a few more hours and then you and I will never have to see one another again… not that that’ll be an option in your case, really.”  Cal simply shrugged and kept his mouth shut.  Quince glanced towards the hold, yelled, “What, did you get lost?  Hurry up and get back here!”

Almost before he’d finished the sentence, there was a loud BANG as a box hit the deck from about six feet up.  Topp promptly came striding down the corridor.  Cal bit the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t laugh – droids with restraining bolts tended to be extremely literal, and he’d hurried, all right.  Hopefully that crate was securely sealed.  Quince scowled at Topp, then at Cal, and then finally spun on his heel and stalked towards the cockpit.

Cal waited until the thrusters started up again and Quince was occupied with the ship.  “You know what’s interesting?” he said, turning to face the rear wall of his cell.  He held up his left hand, eyed his prosthetic fingers.  “When I first got these, I hated them – they’re clumsy and the lack of sensory input took some getting used to, and we’re not even gonna talk about the phantom pain – but eventually I figured out they have their positives.  Like, for example, they make half-decent screwdrivers.”

He didn’t know if Topp was actually listening when Cal rambled, and if he was, how much of it he understood.  That didn’t matter.  He was watching.  Cal studied his thumb and index finger a second longer, compared the ends to the bolts attaching the ventilation grille to the bulkhead, then just tested them to see which would work.  The corner of his index finger fit nicely into the slot.  He started unscrewing it.

Three screws later, Cal was beginning to worry.  He’d expected Topp to flip out the moment Cal began trying to get into the vent, but the droid hadn’t moved, as usual.  Fiddling with the last bolt, which was being stubborn, he said, “This vent might look kinda small for me, but I’m pretty sure I can manage it.  I was a scrapper on Bracca for five years – if you’ve never been there, I don’t recommend it, they’d probably break you down for parts – and I got sent into tiny spaces all the time.  Wasn’t so bad when I was twelve, but at fifteen it started getting to be a problem.  Anyway, it’s been nice knowing –”

CLUNK.  Cal glanced over his shoulder and saw Topp had taken one step towards the cell.  Hiding a grin, he kept working at the bolt until it finally loosened.  They were off the ground now – he’d heard the landing gear retract – and he really wanted to get things in motion before they jumped to hyperspace again, so he lied through his teeth.  “Yeah, I should fit… sorry if Quince gets mad at you about me escaping and all.  There we go!”  The final screw clinked against the deck and Cal slid the grille out of the vent.

He was dodging a blow before the energy shield even finished dissipating, and Topp, unable to course-correct so quickly, missed Cal by about half a meter.  He was still between Cal and the doorway, though.  With limited room to move in the cell and Topp taking up about two-thirds of it, Cal had nowhere to go – he ducked a clumsy swing at his head and got his feet knocked out from under him instead.  The grille clattered to the deck.  He just barely managed to twist in time so his shoulder absorbed his weight instead of his back and it still felt like being shot.  Poorly-maintained or not, Topp was fast for his size.

He saw the kick coming and rolled with it, but a large metal foot still connected with Cal’s side.  He choked the scream off into a loud groan – he needed Quince oblivious until he’d done something with Topp – but for a few seconds he could do nothing but lie still, paralyzed with pain.

Topp didn’t try to choke the life out of him again.  He merely stood there and gazed down at Cal as if assessing whether or not he would continue attempting escape.  He was still blocking the doorway, so Cal had no choice but to stagger to his feet, swaying drunkenly as the cell spun.  Forget jumping to hyperspace, he needed to get this over with before he collapsed.  “Sorry,” Cal wheezed, bracing an elbow against the bulkhead and clutching his side, “I have to get out of here.”

He lunged for the door.  Topp lunged for him.  Cal jumped.

The droid’s arms closed around Cal’s legs and his stomach slammed into Topp’s broad shoulder so hard the air was driven from his lungs, but it was enough.  He reached down and seized the restraining bolt with one hand, dug his cybernetic fingers under the edges.  Topp yanked.  Cal’s arm howled in protest as it was nearly pulled out of the socket, and his prostheses howled in protest as they were nearly pulled from the sockets, and Cal just tried not to howl in pain, but as the droid furiously tried to throw him to the ground, he felt the loose bolt start to peel off.

He let go of the restraining bolt a second before Topp yanked again, in the interest of not dislocating his shoulder or ripping his prosthetic fingers out, and was unceremoniously dumped on the deck.  Breathless, lightheaded, Cal couldn’t get up in time; he saw the heavy arm swing and tried to duck.

Topp missed.  Not by a small margin, either – his hand struck the bulkhead where Cal’s head might’ve been were he not crumpled on the floor.  The droid pulled his arm back, tried again, punched the exact same spot.  He didn’t seem capable of doing anything else.  Seeing his chance, Cal grabbed the vent grille, clambered to his feet, stumbled around to Topp’s backside, lifted the grille high, and slammed the edge down against the restraining bolt.

It snapped off and fell to the deck.  An instant later, Topp followed it, his limbs jerking spasmodically like he couldn’t control them… or had just gotten full control over them again for the first time in a long time.

Cal left him there.  He had bigger problems to deal with.  As he ran out of the cell, drawing on the Force to keep him going, he heard Quince yell, “Hey!” from the cockpit.  He could see the open doorway at the far end of the ship.  “What’s going on down there?  Topp?!”

As soon as Quince showed up on the threshold of the cockpit, Cal threw him back inside.  It’d worked pretty well on the prison transport.  Desperate as he was, though, he didn’t have much energy to spare, and it was a weak shove – Quince staggered back against the ship’s controls, stayed upright, went for his blaster.  Cal didn’t give him a chance to fire.  He shoulder-charged the guy and they both slammed into the controls, and Quince bumped the flight stick.  The White Spark lurched to the left, knocked off-course, but from what Cal saw in the split-second before they went down in a pile of flailing fists, they were still in some planet’s atmosphere.

Then he couldn’t think about that anymore, because Quince was snarling profanity and trying to smash Cal’s head against the console.  He’d dropped the blaster.  Cal thrashed in his grip, forcing him to hang on instead of trying to retrieve the gun.  That got Cal socked in the mouth once or twice, but everything already hurt so much, what was a little more pain?  The armor made it hard to get any good hits of his own in.  He caught one of Quince’s eyes with his cybernetic fingers, though, and judging by the screech, that’d hurt.

Quince got revenge.  He took full advantage of Cal’s lack of armor and rammed his knee up between Cal’s legs.  No amount of Force-sensitivity would allow Cal to shrug that off.  He collapsed onto his side, gasping through gritted teeth, curling into a ball.  Quince scrambled across the deck – there was a scrape of metal on metal as he grabbed the blaster –

Cal tore it from his hands without opening his eyes.  He hardly even moved.  The blaster went clattering down the corridor.  He did force his watering eyes open, then, and got half a glimpse of Quince’s enraged face before the man fell on him and clamped his hands around Cal’s abused throat.  “Kriffing – little – bitch –” he hissed, pinning Cal to the ground with a knee on his chest, trying to strangle him to death and making good progress.  “I should’ve shot you in the head as soon as I saw you!”

Would’ve seen it coming, Cal wanted to say.  He couldn’t breathe.  Maybe Quince spotted the attempt at sass in his eyes, however, because he eased up just long enough to lift Cal’s head and then bang it against the deck.  Stars burst in front of Cal’s eyes.  He instinctively clawed at Quince’s wrists, but they were well protected by his gloves and sleeves.  It took everything he had to overcome that instinct, focus, gather his remaining energy for one last try.

“Tormo didn’t say anything about bringing you in brain-dead,” Quince mused, almost calm now that he had Cal where he wanted him.  “Maybe he’ll split the difference, you know?  Not quite alive, but not –”

Cal flung him away with all his might.  In fact, he might’ve overdone it – Quince flew upwards and slammed into the ceiling, cracking his head much harder than he’d done to Cal, and promptly fell down again.  Cal barely rolled in time to keep from being crushed under the man’s weight.  Unfortunately, while clearly dazed, Quince was not unconscious, and he started struggling to find his feet within moments of impact.  Coughing violently and blinking the greyscale static from his vision, Cal pushed to his knees, latched onto the back of the copilot’s chair to heave himself the rest of the way up on watery legs.  That groin shot was playing dirty.  He resisted the urge to throw up and instead stretched out a hand and pulled.

The blow to the head had uncoordinated Quince.  By the time he realized his blaster was skittering past and lurched towards it, it was already in Cal’s grasp.  “You!” he snarled, plunging a hand into his belt, “you’ll –”

Cal fired.  Quince gave an odd grunt like he’d been punched in the stomach and, for the third time today, slumped against the ship’s controls.  He scrabbled weakly at them for a moment, but the bolt had burned through his abdomen and apparently grazed his spine – his legs weren’t cooperating with him and he couldn’t stand on his own and finally he just slid down to the deck, panting, white-faced.  “You,” Quince said again, weaker, and it took a few seconds for Cal to realize he wasn’t the one being addressed this time.  “Stop him!”

Right behind Cal, stooping slightly to peer through the doorway because it was too short for him, Topp regarded the both of them.  He didn’t move to stop Cal.  He didn’t do anything at all besides watch.  Convinced he wasn’t about to be strangled or smashed around again, Cal looked back at Quince.  “I took his restraining bolt off,” he rasped.  “Maybe he’d be more interested in helping you out now if you didn’t treat him like crap.”  Since he was having a hard time standing on his own too, Cal spun the copilot’s seat around and dropped into it, wincing, still keeping the blaster trained on Quince.  “I think we’re done here.  Touch the transmitter and you’re dead.  Tell me where –”

Quince had enough left in him for one last lunge, but instead of gunning for Cal, or messing with that control for the slave chip, he shoved an arm beneath the console.  Cal pulled the trigger again.  He hit what he was aiming for – a neat hole appeared in the center of Quince’s chestplate.  His entire body jerked and Cal heard something click.

Quince went limp.  The thrusters cut out, all the lights and monitors on the console darkened, and the White Spark, suddenly powerless, tipped nose-first towards the ground.

“Fuck,” Cal said.

He was shaking like a leaf from a combination of pain and fever and his legs still didn’t really want to hold him, but Cal got up anyway, stumbled over to the pilot’s chair, planted himself in it.  None of the switches on the console responded to his touch.  He couldn’t even restart the thrusters and give himself some hope of flying this thing.  All he had was the sickly green emergency lighting that flickered on after a few seconds.  “Come on, come on…” he muttered.  He found the button Quince had pushed and hit it again, which did nothing.  “Fuck.”  Of course the ship had a kill switch, and apparently one that would lock everything unless the correct sequence of buttons or whatever was pressed, just to top it off.  Quince was that kind of guy.  Cal couldn’t even be surprised.  He had no engines, no monitors, no scanners, no comms.  The control column refused to budge.  The ground, which had been a featureless, deep red smear a few moments ago, was growing more and more detailed as they picked up speed.

He might’ve been better off waiting until they’d left atmo after all.  Think, he told himself, heart pounding in his throat.  What would Greez do in this situation?

“Fuck,” Cal said once more, though this time it came out in a breathless laugh.  He knew exactly what Greez would do, because Greez had told him.  He probably just hadn’t thought Cal listened, because Cal was admittedly not great at paying attention sometimes.  Classes at the Temple had been the same way – either he was interested and focused or he wasn’t.  Wishing he could scoot the chair back, he started feeling around blindly at the base of the yoke, beneath the edge of the console, and found nothing but plastoid and metal until finally a finger caught on what felt like a ring.  “Please,” he muttered, and pulled hard.

The manual override, the one Greez said all professionally-built starships were legally required to include, engaged.  The flight stick loosened in his other hand, suddenly mobile.  “Yes!”  He didn’t know where any of the other overrides were located, and didn’t have time to go searching besides, but now he had something.  Cal took the yoke in both hands and pulled the nose of the ship up as hard as he could.  It fought him, happy in its downward arc, but at least made an attempt at leveling out.  He’d need to ditch the ship in what appeared to be sand, and it was a relief to see they weren’t flying directly towards a cliffside yet even if watching thick columns of rock flash by below was a little unnerving.  With no gauges, Cal had to guess at their speed and altitude and didn’t like either one.

A footfall behind him made him tear his eyes away from the viewport for a second.  He’d forgotten all about Topp, who had stepped into the cockpit and was standing there like he didn’t know what to do next.  “You’re gonna want to strap in,” Cal said, nodding at the copilot’s seat.

Topp did nothing.  He wasn’t bound by the restraining bolt anymore, but stars knew how long he had been; it was entirely possible he’d reverted to base programming and was just awaiting orders.  “Okay,” Cal said, looking back towards the viewport, “sit in that seat, strap yourself in –” he grabbed his own restraints and hastily buckled them over his chest one-handed, “like that, and – wait, wait.  Can you move him out of here?” he asked, jerking his head towards Quince.  He’d crash-landed with an unsecured corpse once and it hadn’t gone too well.  “Just… stick him in a cabin or something.  Actually, none of the doors are gonna work, right?  Toss him in my cell.  And then sit down and strap yourself in.”

Luckily, those instructions did not prove too complicated for Topp to follow, because Cal had bigger problems at hand.  He heard Quince’s body dragging across the deck and struggled to hold the ship level.  “If you’re gonna crash, you wanna land belly-first,” Greez had said – that section of most ships was reinforced for such an event and therefore best at taking the impact.  And there was going to be one hell of an impact.  They were perhaps fifty meters up and plummeting.  They were also coming in way too close to one of those massive orange rock spires; Cal didn’t have enough control over the White Spark to adjust her course and it was all he could do to keep her steady.  There was a horrific screeching sound, a series of loud bangs, and a high-pitched whistle as part of the hull was torn wide open and the flight stick did its best to judder right out of Cal’s hands.

Topp had sat down and was sluggishly attempting to strap himself in just as Cal had, though, so that was one less thing to worry about.  Crashing with an unsecured droid would probably be even worse.  Cal pulled back on the yoke with all the strength remaining in him and, barely able to hear himself over the deafening wail of wind tearing at the ship and his own frantic breathing, he said, “Hang on.”

The starship plowed into the ground with an enormous FWOOMP and threw up a tide of sand that blocked out the sun.  Cal was flung against the restraints, then slammed back into his seat so hard he thought he might’ve actually blacked out for a second from the pain.  It was nothing like crash-landing on Bracca.  He’d hit mud and rock in an escape pod meant to do exactly that.  He had curled into a ball and screamed into his knees and braced through two impacts – first, the pod, where getting thrown around in restraints meant for someone much taller had fractured a few of Cal’s ribs. Then, that of Master Tapal’s body, which left Cal’s right arm one giant bruise and quite possibly fractured some bones in that same arm too, not that he’d been in any state to care.  As they ripped a long channel in the wet ground, Cal had thought, absurdly, he needed to quit getting hurt because Searchlight and Tox were beginning to tease him for being accident-prone.  Like the broken leg was his fault.  Or the other time he broke his leg, or the skull fracture, or this – and then he’d started sobbing, huddled in his seat, clutching Master Tapal’s lightsaber and hoping he’d wake up from this dream.

The sound of glass breaking thrust Cal back into reality.  His neck ached.  Slowly, like he really was waking up from a dream, he realized he’d let go of the flight stick, and he was hunched over, quaking, both arms wrapped protectively around his head.

But he wasn’t dead.  That was a good sign.

Once he’d convinced his muscles to relax enough that he could lower his arms, he straightened up, aching – perhaps they weren’t broken this time, but his ribs felt pretty battered – and spotted the source of the shattering glass.  Topp was removing his head and shoulders from the ruined viewport.  Cal’s heart skipped a beat.  The droid seemed unharmed aside from some new dents and scratches, however, and placidly sat back down in his seat, shedding red sand everywhere.  The nose of the ship was buried.  Either Topp hadn’t gotten the straps on properly or they weren’t intended to contain a bulky loader droid and simply snapped.

“You okay?” Cal said hoarsely, extending his arms and inspecting his legs.  Blood oozed out from beneath the ports where his cybernetic finger and thumb connected to his hand.  They still appeared to be in working order, though.  Otherwise, no obvious damage.  Thank goodness.  He had more than enough trouble to begin with.  Once he’d shrugged out of the restraints, Cal bent all the way forwards, ignoring the screaming from his spine, rested his spinning head between his knees, and took a few deep breaths.  The back of his shirt was sodden with cold sweat.  Passing out was not acceptable, he told himself firmly.  He’d survived the crash.  He’d survive whatever came next, too, and whatever came after that, and so on until he made it back to the Mantis and his friends.

To that end, once the threat of fainting dispelled, Cal gingerly sat up again.  The White Spark didn’t have a separate communications terminal like his ship did, just a built-in comm next to the copilot, and it was as nonfunctional as everything else.  There was also a spike of rock as long as Cal jammed through it.  “Huh,” Cal said, inspecting it, “glad we didn’t skim that giant spire any closer.  Well, doubt it would’ve worked anyway…”  Sighing, he looked at the ship controls again.  “So where’d that sleemo hide all my stuff, and how the heck am I getting in there?”  With his lightsaber or his torch, he could’ve cut through the sealed doors, even if it took a while, but…

There was a sudden chnk like a lock disengaging, followed by another.  Then another, and another, and by then Cal thought to look back – Topp had gotten up from his seat, moved out to the corridor, and begun triggering switches tucked away behind small concealed panels in the bulkheads.  The manual overrides for the doors, he realized.  “Oh.  Thanks.”  He followed the droid out of the cockpit.  “Wanna help me with this?”

He’d said help, but Topp – the one not in terrible pain – did all the work, prying the first set of doors open until there was enough space for Cal to squeeze between them.  “Thanks,” Cal said again, slipping into the room.  This was Quince’s cabin, apparently.  It was fairly devoid of personal touches, aside from some rumpled bedding (presently covered in rocks and sand and bits of the hull, courtesy of a brand-new window) and the tranquilizer gun Cal had halved lying on a small desk.  Briefly, Cal experienced a powerful urge to lie down regardless of the debris.  He was losing the adrenaline boost real quick and felt absolutely dreadful.  He knew he had to keep moving, though, so he kept looking around, and finally saw something familiar: his tool belt, flung in a corner, also coated in sand.  When he tried to pick that up, he found his vest and harness buckled into it, and then his boots lying by the foot of the bunk.  Everything else, save for his lightsaber, turned up beneath the bed, thrown there either by Quince or the crash.

As he dressed, Cal eyed the storage locker next to the door.  If he’d captured a Jedi to turn them over to the Haxion Brood and intended to keep their lightsaber as a trophy, or even to use himself, he would lock it up until that Jedi was a good few star systems away.  Hell, he’d lock it up if he was even the slightest bit unsure of his ability to keep the Jedi locked up.  And now that he had his welding torch back… it was no trouble at all to simply cut the entire door off.

The first thing he saw once the door clattered to the deck was a small cloth bag sitting on the upper shelf, which he poked at, determined contained credits, and immediately swiped.  Quince wasn’t going to need it.  Below that, next to a blaster rifle, was his lightsaber.  It was undamaged, both blades springing to life at the touch of a switch; Cal turned it off, satisfied, and hooked it on his belt.

There was nothing else of interest in Quince’s cabin, so Cal left and discovered Topp had gone on to open all the rest of the doors, including the cargo hold at the very end of the corridor.  The room across was just another crew cabin and completely empty.  The one next door, on the other hand, was a small ‘fresher, and Cal wasted no time in finding a medkit.  It was tiny.  He raided it anyway.  Two painkiller hypos, a single syringe of heavy-duty antibiotic, some bacta gel, another large bandage like the one he already sported – Cal took one of the painkillers and the antibiotic, hoping they’d stave off whatever was brewing in his system until he could find some actual help, then swapped out the bandage on his back, slathering the new one with bacta gel before sticking it to his skin.  There was only a tiny mirror at eye level, so he couldn’t see how the incision was doing.  The large amount of dry blood on the original bandage didn’t make him feel too confident, though.  The longer it’d been open, the more likely he had an infection.  As if he didn’t already have an infection.  His right eardrum was going to pack up and leave soon.

Across from the ‘fresher was the galley.  It was about as impressive as the medkit, and Cal couldn’t think about eating right now, but he raided that too.  With a pocket full of ration sticks, he shoved two full five-liter bottles of water into the hallway.  He had a bad feeling he’d need them.  There was an engine room (which Cal would’ve raided as well, under different circumstances), and then the cargo hold, which Cal couldn’t enter.  He tried, as the door was open, but – surprisingly gently – Topp extended an arm to block the doorway.  “Uh,” Cal said, “what’s the matter?”

Unable to explain, Topp slowly lowered his arm.  Cal eyed him for a second, peered through the gap into the dark hold, where either the emergency lights had failed to activate or simply weren’t present.  He took out his lightsaber and lit one end.  “Oh,” he said once he got a better look.  Quince was a spice runner.  At least two of the crates had been stuffed with wrapped blocks of glittering silver dust, which he only knew because those crates had broken in the crash and the blocks had burst everywhere.  “Yeah, okay, got it,” he said, withdrawing.  “Thanks – really shouldn’t be breathing that stuff in.”

If there was anything useful in the cargo hold, it was coated in raw spice, so Cal wasn’t going to bother.  He looked up at the droid.  “Look, I’ve got two options,” he said.  “I can stay here and hope somebody happened to see the ship crash, or flies by and notices the wreck, and I’m pretty sure it’s full of sand so it won’t be easy to see.  Or I can pick a direction – the one Quince came from, maybe, since he obviously got all that spice somewhere – and start walking.  I need a comm and a medic and I’m not –”

Only then did he realize he’d never found his commlink.  Cal double-checked his belt, but it wasn’t there.  It didn’t really matter; either Quince had left it on Skaris to begin with or it was lying around elsewhere on the ship, and in the latter case, it was useless unless the Mantis was in the system.  That comm was strictly short-range.  “I’m not finding either of those here,” he finished.  “You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to.  Someone should notice the ship eventually, but… I can’t wait that long.  If you do want to come, though, I could use a little help carrying the water.  This place looks hot and I’m not in the best shape.”

Topp promptly walked past Cal, back down the hallway, and lifted both jugs like they weighed nothing.  “That’s not an order or anything,” Cal said quickly, following.  “You really don’t have to.”

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t get an answer, but the droid stopped right in front of the main hatch, which Cal supposed was answer enough.  “All right,” Cal said.  “Hold on a sec.”

Quince had been unceremoniously dragged into the cell, and even more unceremoniously hurled around in the crash; he was folded into a corner with his neck at an angle that would’ve killed him had he not already been dead.  Cal, who’d lived on Bracca for five years and had zero compunctions when it came to looting dead bodies, cut his entire belt off and searched it for the transmitter.  Once he had that in hand, he tucked it into a pouch that closed securely.  He didn’t want to trip or something and drop it and not realize until his spine exploded. 

Topp was still waiting patiently.  Edging around him, Cal lifted his lightsaber again and said, “Let me just…” The blade cut a hole in the door much faster than his welding torch could ever have hoped to.  One shove from Topp and a large metal rectangle screeched free of the hatch and fell into the sand.

Cal’s first thought was that he’d been right about the water.  It wasn’t so hot stepping outside would be dangerous, but it was plenty warm nonetheless, and beneath the blazing sun he would dehydrate very fast if he wasn’t careful.  His second thought had him returning to Quince’s cabin and rifling through the guy’s clothing until he found a hooded jacket.  “Why nobody carries sunblock, I don’t understand,” he grumbled to himself, hacking it up so he had a hood and a sleeve-turned-scarf he could wind around the lower half of his face.  He didn’t care how stupid it looked; the situation was bad enough without sun poisoning.

“Come on, then,” Cal said to Topp, who’d not left the ship yet.  Since they’d churned up a load of sand upon landing and were half-buried, there was no need for a boarding ramp; Cal stepped right out of the ship, shaded his eyes, turned in a slow circle.  Nothing in sight besides the defunct ship, grains of dark red sand almost large enough to be called pebbles, rock columns so tall he had to tilt his head all the way back to see the tops of the nearest ones, and steep, striped hills.  “I have no idea if we were going in a straight line after we took off, but… might as well start walking.”

He did exactly that, then stopped when he realized Topp still wasn’t moving.  The droid had crouched to peer through the hole Cal had cut in the hatch, just like he’d done at the cockpit, and was watching Cal with a water jug in each hand.  “Come on,” Cal said again.  “Unless you changed your mind.”

Nothing.  “You know the restraining bolt’s gone, right?” Cal asked, heading back.  He stopped with just a few meters between them.  “You aren’t stuck on the ship anymore.  Nothing can stop you from walking away.  Here, this is… what, like, five steps for you?  That’s not much.  Just try coming over to me.”

After what felt like a solid minute, Topp lifted one foot and placed it on the sand.  The other foot joined it.  He paused, and Cal could almost feel him waiting for his limbs to lock up, for the bolt to kick in and paralyze him for attempting to leave the ship… but there was no longer a bolt to restrain him, and he took another step.

“There you go, see?” Cal said.  Three more steps and the droid was standing directly in front of him.  Cal reached up and patted Topp’s chest.  “You did good.  We’re just gonna keep doing that, okay?  See if we can find something that might point us towards civilization.”  He started walking again, and this time, Topp followed, one step behind.  “We’ll make it.  Everything’s going to be okay.”

Chapter Text

After four or five hours of walking, Cal’s optimism was waning.

The adrenaline that’d kept him going on the White Spark had long since drained away, leaving him so tired and weak he’d silently worried he was seeing another round of Arreyelan flu.  He could still stand, though, so he clenched his teeth and kept putting one foot in front of the other.  His back hurt.  His ear hurt.  His neck hurt.  He was developing an impressive headache, too, one that swallowed his entire skull instead of politely pestering one side the way his migraines usually did; he couldn’t tell if it was the sun, the heat, a consequence of the ear infection, or something else, but it wasn’t improving his situation any.

And he was so karking cold.  Logically, Cal knew that was untrue – he was trudging through sunbaked badlands on a hot, cloudless day – but he couldn’t quit shivering like he was buried in a snowbank.  It scared him.  Back when he’d had pneumonia, his temperature skyrocketed over 41° and he’d begun vividly hallucinating, seeing Cere as a gruesomely resurrected Nightsister and trying to escape the Mantis and believing he was being tortured when they were just doing their best to cool him down.  If he went off the rails like that out here, he would die, no question about it.

Cal had an awful, nagging feeling that was going to happen anyway.  He did his best to ignore it.  Every time the urge to just stop hit him, he reminded himself he’d survived worse.  He had gone to work sicker than this in some of the shittiest weather conditions Bracca had to offer.  At most, when that urge became intolerable, he took a break, drank some water, forced down a few bites of a ration stick, and then kept going.

Was he even going towards anything?  For all he knew, they were walking in the wrong direction, and there was nothing this way for a thousand kilometers.  Maybe he should’ve stayed with the ship.  Too late now, though, so all he could do was walk.  And this felt like the right direction, a little whisper in the Force telling him come this way, come this way.

The first sign of trouble reared its head when he vomited.  Just like the previous time, it came on unexpectedly, and there wasn’t even any precautionary vertigo beforehand.  One moment, Cal was dragging along, face burning, the rest of his body ice-cold; the next, he was yanking his makeshift scarf away from his mouth and dropping to his knees, retching painfully, until his aching stomach finally gave up a small amount of water.  He spat it into the sand and continued to dry-heave for half a minute more before getting a break.  Cal promptly fell flat on his rear and cradled his head in his hands, panting.  He was too hot.  He didn’t feel hot, but heatstroke would kill him faster than infection.

Another thirty seconds and a pair of hands abruptly jammed beneath his arms, tried to lift him to his feet.  Startled, Cal yelped, “Leggo!” and only realized that was a bad idea when his instructions were obeyed exactly – the hands vanished and he went flopping down in the sand again.  Groaning as the impact reverberated through his spine and into his head, Cal sat up, rubbing his forehead, and looked at Topp.  “Thanks for the help, but I’m okay,” he said faintly.  “I need… I need to rest for a while.”

Just up ahead was a cluster of rock spires offering some precious shade.  Cal managed to stagger out of direct sunlight and immediately felt the temperature drop about ten degrees.  Topp followed, watched him slump to the ground again, and placed both water jugs next to him.  “All right,” Cal said, uncapping one jug and taking a few small sips he hoped would stay put.  “I’m just gonna sit here until I feel a little better… I dunno how much of a charge you have left, but if you’re not running too low, could you do me a favor?”  He paused automatically, waiting for an answer that would never come.  Topp didn’t have a vocalizer.  “See that hill there?” Cal pointed to one nearby.  “Can you walk to the top of it and look around, see if there’s… I don’t know, a building, or another ship, or anything that might tell us we’re headed in the right direction?”

Topp turned and began walking towards the hill without hesitation.  “Thank you,” Cal called after him, then pulled off his hood and scarf, leaned his head back against the rock, and closed his eyes.

He couldn’t let himself contemplate dying out here, but the thought clung to his brain and demanded attention anyway.  It’d not been too long since he’d disappeared off Skaris, and he had gotten out a warning beforehand, so his crew knew he had gotten snatched by a bounty hunter; they were worried, no doubt, but probably not frantic yet.  As far as they knew, Cal was just recovering from an ear infection, nothing serious.  He guessed they were on their way to or had already reached Ordo Eris and were lurking surreptitiously nearby, snooping on the Brood’s comms, maybe even planning to sneak Merrin or Cere inside so they could do some thorough recon. 

And here Cal was, with absolutely no idea where he was except ‘not on Ordo Eris’, dangerously sick, struggling in the heat, implanted with a bomb chip, cut off from everything and everyone except a mute loader droid.  Had he gotten over himself and accepted Greez and Cere might’ve known what they were talking about in this particular instance, he would be nestled into his cot for a long nap right now, loaded up on medication, 100% less miserable and less explosive.

Spirits, he wanted that and no longer cared how pathetic it sounded.  He would live with feeling smothered if he lived long enough to let them smother him again.  They all needed some boundaries, sure, but he wanted Cere to lay her hand on his forehead to check his temperature even though they had a thermometer and BD-1.  He wanted Greez to tease him about falling out of bed again as he tucked Cal back into it, to make him noodles for the fourth meal in a row because that was the only thing he could stomach.  He wanted Merrin to curl up on the cot with him to keep him company and tell meandering stories that devolved into impromptu poetry about another girl’s hair, or read filthy excerpts of bad romance novels until he exploded from embarrassment.  He wanted BD to sneak into the ‘fresher on his heels so he could make sure Cal didn’t pass out in there (or flush himself down the toilet).

He loved them.  If he died out here, none of them would ever know what had happened to him.  They’d keep searching and searching long after Cal was a pile of sun-bleached bones in the badlands, afraid to give up in case he was still waiting for them to rescue him, and they would never know.

Stop it, he told himself, drinking some more water.  He couldn’t think like that.  But he couldn’t stop, either, and the train of thought dragged him into an uneasy sleep.

When he woke from a series of incoherent fever dreams, the shadows had drastically elongated and he imagined it was a tiny bit cooler.  Even a quick glance out towards the sunlit sands was excruciating, though, and almost made him retch again; Cal had to turn away quickly and shut his eyes and outlast the pain and nausea.

Great.  The light sensitivity normally restricted itself to migraines.  That would complicate things until the sun went down.  Topp had returned, at least, and was waiting in the shade of another column, optics fixed on Cal.  “Hey,” Cal said weakly, sipping a little more water and grimacing at its temperature.  “See anything?  Uh – just point in that direction if you did.”

To his dismay, Topp didn’t move.  That meant they were nowhere near civilization.  Cal’s back hurt so badly he could hardly make it from sitting to standing, and when he stumbled around the other side of the spire to relieve himself (for the first time in way too long, so he wasn’t drinking enough), he discovered another fun ailment to add to the collection: he was pissing blood. “Fantastic,” he muttered.  That was probably thanks to Topp trying to destroy his kidneys back when they’d fought.  If it was anything worse, he had no way of knowing, so he just filed it under well, that sucks and forgot about it for now.

“Okay,” he said to Topp, slinging the hood back over his head and handing the droid the full water jug, keeping the other one with him, “might as well move on.  Hopefully it’ll cool off once the sun sets.  You doing all right?”

He almost didn’t wait for an answer, so he almost missed it – after a pause, Topp’s head jerked in what was unmistakably a nod, and Cal managed a tired smile.  “Good.  Let’s –” And then he stopped, because Topp prodded Cal in the chest.  It wasn’t gentle – the droid didn’t seem to know his own strength – and Cal was barely staying on his feet, so he almost fell over… but the intent was clear.  “Yeah,” he said, “I’m okay,” just like he would’ve done if BD was asking.  BD wouldn’t have bought it for an instant, though.  Cal was dripping in sweat and shuddering uncontrollably.  “Listen, uh… if something happens to me… you keep going, all right?  Try to find somebody, I guess.  Don’t just stick around with me until you run out of power.  Let’s go.”

They walked on.  Cal kept his head low, eyes squinted almost shut, relying on the Force to tell him if he was about to stroll directly into a rock or step on some kind of horrifying venomous sand scorpion that probably existed on this planet because the galaxy hated him.  His head hurt so badly he couldn’t do anything else.  He failed to realize he’d forgotten his ‘scarf’ at that group of columns until they were a good half-hour away from it, and at that point there was no chance he’d go back.  Ten steps, twenty steps, fifty, seventy-five, one-hundred – pause for a drink of water – ten, twenty, fifty, seventy-five, one hundred – water – ten, twenty, fifty…

He lost track of his steps pretty quickly.  Then he tried to drink as often as he remembered, which didn’t seem like often enough, and then his jug was empty and Cal dropped it, only felt slightly guilty about littering.  His hands shook.  The headache was blinding and he just kept plodding along, unseeing, lightheaded, because that was what Cal knew how to do.  He’d become a worker instead of a child at age twelve when he crashed on Bracca; no matter how often the others tried to convince him he needed to relax or rest, pushing forwards was second nature.  He clung to it now as the lifeline that might possibly let him survive this.  The Force still murmured this was the right way to go.

Cal was so fixated on the arduous, overwhelming task of moving that he didn’t notice Topp had stopped at first.  By the time he finally thought to mumble, “Can I have the other jug…?” he was thirty meters ahead and it took way too long to figure out the droid was behind him.  “Hey,” he said, turning around slowly, rubbing his bleary eyes, “what are you…”

Topp stood stock-still, jug in one hand, the other lifted to point directly to his left.

Bewildered, Cal glanced in the direction Topp was pointing, saw a whole lot of red sand and not much else.  The sun was getting low now, but there was still more than enough light to see by and to shrivel his eyeballs into raisins.  He couldn’t tell whether or not the temperature had decreased.  He was freezing.  “What, did you see something?” he asked, trudging back over to Topp and taking the other water jug.  Topp kept pointing, so Cal looked, and waited, and looked some more, and waited some more… and then the tiniest speck on the horizon, one he’d mistaken for a very distant spire or something, gradually began getting larger.  It was joined by another speck, then another, and another.

Those were vehicles.  There were other people out here.  They were coming this way.

Cal’s legs chose that moment to give out on him and he didn’t even mind when he landed flat on his ass in the sand and it made half of his spine scream in unison with his head until he puked.  He just wiped his mouth, opened the jug, and drank without taking his eyes off the little clump of speeders approaching him, almost expecting them to disappear.  Could droids be fooled by mirages?  “Topp,” he said once he’d lowered the water to catch his breath, “Quince did not deserve you at all.”

Now that Cal had spotted the speeders, Topp lowered his arm and stood there placidly.  Cal drank some more water.  His luck, he was about to be menaced by pirates or something, but what were they going to do, kill him?  He wasn’t even fit for torture – if he piled any more pain atop what he was already feeling, he’d simply black out.  “When they get here, let me do the talking…” he trailed off, pondered what he’d said.  “Um.  That wasn’t a dig at you.  Sorry, habit – friend of mine hasn’t been around the galaxy too much.  Occasionally she’s really offended people in situations where we didn’t want to offend people.”

He didn’t get up until he could count eleven individual speeder bikes.  By then, it was clear they hadn’t overlooked him; the one riding in front gave some kind of signal and the close-knit group separated, fanning out, encircling Cal and Topp and closing in until they stood in the center of a tight ring.  Yeah, it was a good bet he was about to be menaced by pirates, or at least a motley crew that fancied themselves pirates.  Their bikes were dirty, utilitarian scrapheaps modified to carry large quantities of water or fuel rather than for speed and style.  The riders themselves were varying degrees of impressive – most of them had hoods or scarves or goggles to protect their faces from the sun, but he could guess at species for some.  The two sharing the dingiest jumpspeeder Cal had ever seen were clearly Twi’leks.  A few looked Human.  One was Klatoonian and started sharpening their nails as soon as their speeder pulled to a halt.  Every single one of them was armed.

“Hey,” Cal said, tipping his jug up for another drink.

One of the probable Humans removed his helmet and shook out his dark hair.  Despite the dirt and stubble and general build – he was nothing but muscle – he looked only a few years older than Cal, if that.  “Look at this,” he drawled in a deep, raspy voice, leaning forwards to brace himself on the handlebars, “we found a live one.  How’d you wind up all the way out here by yourself?”

“By accident,” Cal said blandly.  “Any chance you guys could tell me how to get to town?”

“Well, for starters, you’re going in the wrong direction,” Big Guy said.  One of the Twi’leks giggled and Cal could feel a general air of amusement from the others, and it wasn’t the good kind.  Wonderful.  “Most people out here ain’t too nice, you know.  Lucky you, running into the Sandstorm Raiders… we ask questions first and shoot later.”

“Thought we were calling ourselves Sunfire Raiders now,” said someone behind Cal.  The voice cracked mid-sentence, so he estimated the guy’s age at fifteen, max.  In fact, he doubted any of these ‘raiders’ were too far past puberty yet (with the possible exception of the Klatoonian, as he had no idea how fast they aged).  The Twi’lek girl on the back of the jumpspeeder couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

“Shut up, Bit,” Big Guy growled.

“How seriously do you expect to be taken if you can’t even agree on a name?” Cal wondered.  And then, because his inability to keep his mouth closed had overridden his self-preservation instincts, he added, “And ‘Sunfire’ is kinda redundant, isn’t it?”

A foot struck the back of his legs.  Cal stumbled, collapsed to his knees, hissed in pain.  He’d expected the blow – ‘Bit’ had very obviously been inching up behind him – and saw no real reason to avoid it.  Let them think he was just some weak, stranded fool.  What he did not expect was the fleshy thunk and a truncated yelp as Topp, otherwise perfectly still, swung one arm and caught Bit clean across the head.

The boy hit the sand and chaos erupted in a scrum of yelling that actually made Cal cover his ears so he wouldn’t puke again.  At least four blasters were immediately aimed in his direction.  Big Guy, the Klatoonian, and several other raiders leapt off their bikes; Cal barely got out a “Wait, stop!” before the Klatoonian and another one were barreling into Topp, sending him to the sand too.  Topp didn’t resist.  A meaty hand seized Cal’s collar and hauled him to his feet and bodily spun him around – the world spun further and he staggered, dizzy, held up by Big Guy, who snarled something he couldn’t hear over the cacophony –

“That’s enough.”

As if by magic, everything stopped.  Well, the dunes kept lazily rotating, but all the shouting abruptly silenced.  Heads turned.  Cal locked his knees so maybe he could stay upright without Big Guy’s assistance, glanced towards Topp (face-down on the ground), then to the raider who’d spoken.  It was the same one who’d been leading the pack as they approached; now, she pushed her goggles up and shrugged off her hood, revealing a head full of pale tentacles that stood out against her dark skin.  Tholothian, he thought.  She gave Cal an appraising look, nodded to the Klatoonian.  “Blasters down.”

The Klatoonian obliged and stood smoothly.  The other raider did not, still crouching on Topp’s back, holding his blaster firmly against the droid’s head.  “It attacked Bit –”

“Bit provoked it,” the leader corrected.  “Besides, he’s alive.”  Sure enough, Bit was sprawled in the sand, moaning faintly, hands pressed to his bloody forehead.  “Did you hear me, Spike?  Put your blaster down.”

Seething, Spike did as he was told.  Cal was reluctant to take his eyes off the guy – something told him Spike was a little too volatile to ignore – but he also didn’t think he should ignore the leader, either, so he focused on her and tried not to feel nervous about having Spike at his back.  Big Guy’s grip tightened until it hurt.  The leader smiled coolly.  “This is the part where you hand over anything valuable you’ve got on you without a fight,” she said.

Cal shrugged, took the pouch of credits from his belt, and tossed it to her.  She caught it one-handed and asked, “How much?”

“Dunno,” Cal said honestly, “I stole it.”

She smiled again, threw the pouch to the male Twi’lek, who opened it and began counting, dropping credit after credit into the female Twi’lek’s waiting palms.  “Loke,” the leader said, “he got any weapons on him?”

“Hands up,” Big Guy – Loke – ordered, and Cal, sighing, did as he was told.  Loke patted him down quickly.  “Nothin’,” Loke reported.  Then there was a soft ping as he flicked a fingernail against the hilt of Cal’s lightsaber.  “‘cept for this pipe thing.  You want it?”

Five years ago, there were few people in the galaxy who wouldn’t have recognized a lightsaber for what it was, or at least been able to guess from stories and rumors.  Hearing someone call it a ‘pipe thing’ should’ve been sad, but Cal was so exhausted and queasy and burning cold it was all he could do not to laugh out loud.  “That’s my favorite pipe thing,” he muttered.

“Nah,” the leader said, to Cal’s relief.  “But if he hits someone with it, feel free to punish him…”  She was quiet for a moment, watching Cal closely with her head tilted slightly to one side.  It reminded him of BD.  “How did you get out here?”

“Ship crashed,” Cal said.  He glanced at Topp and Spike, had a thought, and added, “It wasn’t mine.  The owner had a lot of spice in the cargo hold.  I’ve got no use for it, but if you want it, be my guest.”

A low murmur rippled through the raiders at that.  The leader lifted her eyebrows.  “Is that so?” she said, disbelieving, but he’d piqued her curiosity.  “Where?”

“Uh.”  It took Cal far too long to recall which direction he’d come from, and he couldn’t be certain he’d been walking anywhere near straight.  Still, he waved behind him and said, “Somewhere that way.  We were walking for… a while.”

“What kind of spice?”

“Dunno,” Cal said again.  “Not Booster Blue, though, I can tell you that much.”  He’d never forget that color, or the bitter scent of Booster Blue crystals when they were pulverized into powder.

“This is bantha-shit,” Spike said.  Cal looked over his shoulder to see the raider finally getting off Topp’s back, allowing the droid to sit up.  Sand cascaded off his head and arms.  “You can’t tell me you’re really listening to his crap, Aja.  He’s just gonna say anything he thinks might keep him alive a little longer.  Quit playing his game and shoot him.”

“It’s what Rom woulda done,” one of the others muttered.

“Oh,” Aja said in mock surprise, tapping a finger against her cheek.  “Yes, I forgot.  And where’s Rom now?”  Nobody said anything.  “That’s right, she’s dead, because she didn’t kriffing know when to stop inviting trouble.”

Spike spat on the ground.  “And what are you doing?” he demanded, shoving past Cal and Loke.  Clearly this wasn’t about Cal or Topp at all; he’d just been looking for a chance to challenge the leader of this little gang, and Cal was a convenient excuse.  Cal wondered if anyone would mind him sitting down for this and giving his legs a rest.  “He’s got good boots, decent clothing, buncha tools – stuff we could use – and you’re letting him jerk you around!  The hell did we let you run this show for if you’re not gonna act like a raider?!  You’re not doing anything for us!”

“She’s lettin’ your worthless ass hang around,” the Twi’lek girl mumbled, to a couple approving sniggers.

Spike’s lip curled.  “Shut your mouth if you know what’s good for you, schutta.”

The other Twi’lek practically exploded off the bike.  In the blink of an eye, he was in Spike’s face, shouting in a language Cal didn’t understand.  He wasn’t sure Spike understood, either, but the raider shouted back nonetheless.  Another raider flew to Spike’s side, the Twi’lek girl, furiously flushed, stormed over too, and then it all deteriorated into a screaming mess again.

On the other side of the angry mob, Cal could just see Aja close her eyes and press two fingers to the bridge of her nose.  He also heard Loke sigh behind him.  The Klatoonian slouched back against their bike, looking annoyed.  “Load of kriffing children,” Loke muttered, and Cal was inclined to agree.

Before anyone got punched – or worse – Aja raised her blaster pistol into the air and fired once.  It wasn’t quite as effective as when she’d spoken earlier, but the shouting died in volume.  A couple of the raiders backed off.  Spike, a hand fisted in the male Twi’lek’s collar, threw her an ugly look.  “That’s enough,” she repeated.  “Let go of him.  I won’t ask twice.”

With a snort, Spike did as he was told, shoving the Twi’lek back into the girl and a couple others.  “Now,” Aja continued, barely sparing Cal a glance as he finally tugged free of Loke’s grip and simply sat on the ground, propping his cheek up in his hand, “you’re right, I’m not Rom.  And unlike her, I don’t force you to run with me because I ‘made you into a raider' or whatever shit she liked to spew.  You don’t like how I’m doing things?  Fine.  You’re free to leave whenever you want – I’m not gonna stop you.”

Spike actually hesitated.  “Come on, Aja.  You ain’t stupid enough to fall for this.  Just shoot him.”

Cal could understand the skepticism – running spice was a pretty lucrative gig if you had reliable contacts, and if it had been his cargo, he would’ve stayed close to the White Spark and defended it with his life until help arrived.  No sane runner would walk away and offer it to the first raider gang they came across.  But it wasn’t his cargo, he wanted nothing to do with the buyer, and he’d gladly let these guys have the entire lot if they could just tell him where to find a medcenter or something.  And apparently Aja saw some reason to trust him, because she replied, “I ain’t stupid enough to not at least check it out.  If he’s legit, he gets to walk away.  None of us need his boots that badly.”

Shaking his head in disgust, Spike turned around and walked back to his bike.  He sat down, started it, demonstratively spun away from the circle they’d all parked in.  One of the raiders joined him immediately; two others looked at one another, seemed to come to a silent conclusion, and followed.  The four bikes roared off, none of their riders giving a backwards glance.

If losing a third of her gang at once bothered Aja, she didn’t show it.  “Anyone else?” she said.  Nobody moved a muscle, so she zeroed in on Cal again.  “If you’re lying, or trying to lead us into some kinda trap… well, I suggest you come clean now, or you’ll wish I’d taken Spike’s advice.”

“I’m not.”

She nodded slowly.  “Where’d the spice come from, then?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Cal admitted.  “I told you, it’s not my ship.  I kinda got… kidnapped?  And locked in a cell most of the way.  Quince picked up the cargo somewhere on this planet, and it couldn’t have been too far from where we crashed, but I don’t know where.”

“If it was local, had to be Slim,” said another raider in a growling voice.  “Nobody else exports off-planet ‘round here.  Shit, Aj, you think we could sell his own product back to him?”

A slow smile was creeping across Aja’s face – a real one, not the smug, careless smirks she’d been shooting Cal all this time.  “I think,” she said, “whoever was buying that spice wouldn’t be too happy if it disappeared.  We offer it back to him outta the goodness of our hearts, see what he’s willing to give us for our trouble, establish ourselves as honest and reliable if he ever needs a hand… okay, here’s the deal,” she said to Cal.  “You show us where the ship crashed.  If the spice is really there, then I’ll tell you how to get to Baker Station.  Otherwise you’re just gonna be wandering the badlands until you die.”

Cal considered this for about two seconds, then forced himself to his feet.  “Deal,” he said, “on one condition.”

“You don’t get to make demands,” Loke said under his breath.

Cal ignored him.  “I’m not walking all the way back.”

Shrugging one shoulder, Aja said, “Please.  You look like you’re ten meters from death anyway.”  She glanced around.  “Nifa, get Bit up and on the back of Terro’s bike.  You take his for now – he’s in no shape to drive.”

The Twi’lek girl looked thrilled by this.  The other Twi’lek, not so much, but he helped Nifa manhandle Bit onto the speeder bike and took his seat again while she practically ran to commandeer Bit’s.  “You ride behind Loke,” Aja ordered Cal.  “Any funny business and Thymeg will have a bolt through your head before you know what hit you.”

Cal glanced at the raider with the growling voice, who was holding a rifle and so shrouded he couldn’t take a guess at their species, and nodded.  “What about him?” he asked, tipping his head towards Topp.  “I’m not leaving him here.”

Aja sighed.  “Your droid can ride with Jiyazi, I guess.  Her bike’s the only one strong enough to take it anyway.”

Jiyazi turned out to be the Klatoonian.  She eyed Topp with a frown, but didn’t argue.  “Go on,” Cal instructed him, “just hang on tight, okay?”

Topp got to his feet, walked over to Jiyazi’s bike – a wide, homely thing with an extra thruster perched on the back – and sat sidesaddle behind her.  The rear end of the speeder promptly dropped about ten centimeters.  It wasn’t dragging on the ground, though, so it’d fly even with the extra weight.  Loke prodded Cal in the back.  “Move,” he said.  “You tell us where to go.  And you heard Aja – don’t screw around.”

“I won’t,” Cal said, awkwardly climbing onto the bike behind Loke.  It wasn’t built to carry two people, so he had a bit of fun trying to find somewhere to sit reasonably comfortably.  It was impossible.  Cursing Quince for that groin kick, Cal resigned himself to suffering.  “I do want to survive this, you know.”

“Then man, you picked the wrong set of badlands to wander around in,” Loke said.

As the bike fired up and began rattling beneath Cal like an angry eopie trying to throw its rider, he decided Loke had a point.  It was possible, with the fever and the infected back and earache and spirits knew what else he had going on right now, Cal wasn’t thinking too straight.  But the long slog across the dunes had led him to the Sandstorm-slash-Sunfire Raiders, who might just be his ticket out of here, so he wasn’t about to complain.  The Force provided.  Sometimes he thought the Force had a very strange sense of humor, too.  Cal grabbed the back of Loke’s belt so he didn’t go flying, Loke hit the gas, and they were off.

Chapter Text

Within half an hour, Cal decided getting on this bike had been a bad idea, and his conviction only grew as the minutes and kilometers ticked by.  Unlike walking, it required absolutely nothing of him – aside from the occasional instruction to keep going or not drift too far off in either direction, all he had to do was sit there, hang on, and shudder as the wind whipped by.  The temperature had plunged so far since the sun set that even dangerously feverish, Cal could feel the difference.  Hunched behind Loke, trying to let some of the bigger man’s body shield him, he couldn’t stop shivering and his teeth ached from chattering.  And the bitter chill was the only thing almost keeping him awake – his eyes kept slipping closed against his will, and more than once Cal jerked out of a doze when his chin smacked into his chest.  Somehow, he was nearly sleeping through the worst headache he’d ever had.  He didn’t know if that said more about the headache, his ability to withstand pain, or how sick he felt otherwise.

Nobody was paying too much attention to him at the moment, so Cal took the opportunity to slip the other painkiller hypo from his belt and furtively inject it into his wrist.  Aja seemed like a woman of her word, but he wasn’t sure he trusted her to uphold her end of the bargain.  And if it turned out another pack of raiders had gotten to the shipwreck first, or the spice was in some way too damaged to return to ‘Slim’, he’d be in trouble anyway.  Eight rugged bikers versus one Jedi… not much of a contest, normally.  One extremely ill and exhausted Jedi (and his new droid friend), on the other hand – that was a potential problem.

It was very dark out, the badlands lit only by the stars and the lights rigged to the raiders’ bikes.  He couldn’t find any moons.  In order to inoculate himself against the overpowering lure of sleep, Cal leaned back until the violent quaking of the speeder bike’s ancient thrusters threatened to rattle him off.  Once he was occupied trying to keep his seat, he could let his mind wander without it drifting into sleep.

He wondered if his friends had realized yet Cal was not in the Haxion Brood’s hands.  He wondered if this ‘Baker Station’ had comms, or preferably a medic – as much as Cal wanted to contact the Mantis, that wouldn’t do him much good unless they were very close by and could come find him before he got any sicker.  He wondered if Aja knew they were being followed by the raiders who’d left.  Those four were keeping a safe distance and out of sight, however, and Cal wasn’t sure he could explain how he knew without outright saying I’m Force-sensitive and I can feel it, so he kept his mouth shut.

“Been a real long time and I ain’t seen a ship yet,” Loke tossed over his shoulder at Cal.

Cal sighed.  “I walked for a real long time,” he replied.  Yes, the speeders could cover a lot more ground a lot faster than he had on foot, and they’d passed the rock spires where he’d taken a nap a while ago, and he wasn’t entirely certain they were headed in the right direction… still, he clung to hope.  He couldn’t have veered that far off course.  “Just… keep going.”

They kept going for a bit.  Then, as Cal was starting to think he’d need to swallow his pride and ask for a quick stop – he’d finished off his second jug of water and clearly wasn’t so dehydrated anymore, since he really needed a ‘fresher – Aja called for a break.  His legs didn’t like being on solid ground after a couple hours on the bike.  He stumbled off to a secluded spot anyway, saw he was still peeing blood, sighed again.  Even in the privacy of his own head, he couldn’t bring himself to make a dark joke about hoping that would kill him without doing anything exceptionally mortifying first.  He didn’t want to die.  If this was how Cere and the others felt every time Cal got sick and wouldn’t listen when they pleaded with him to rest, afraid that would finally be the day his immune system just completely collapsed and they’d lose him, he owed them a serious apology.  It wasn’t like he’d never thought about it before, but it’d never felt real before, either.  Most of his bout of pneumonia was lost, thanks to the delirium, so if he’d been scared to die, he couldn’t remember it.  He'd not believed the flu was going to kill him.  The closest he’d come since the Purge had been on Nur, and even then, the fear was tempered by righteousness – had he died in the Fortress, he would’ve gone down knowing he’d done absolutely everything he could to protect those Force-sensitive children.

Here, Cal didn’t feel righteous or brave or anything like that.  He mostly felt sick to his stomach.  He wanted to see his friends so badly it hurt.  Wishing he had one of his ponchos, too, he shivered onto Loke’s bike and they got underway again.

This time, they rode for less than ten minutes before one of the others suddenly called, “Hey!  You noticing the metal all over the place?”

Loke and Cal looked down in unison.  As they rushed over the windswept sands, Cal saw them – chips and snarls and chunks of metal littering the ground in a wide spread – and quickly looked back up.  “There,” he said, knocking a hand into Loke’s shoulder, pointing.  “That giant gouge in the column, right there?  That’s the one we clipped before we crashed.  It’s gotta be just up ahead.”

For the first time, Loke seemed convinced Cal was being honest about the ship.  He relayed this information to Aja, who was riding in front of them; she glanced over her shoulder, gave a nod to show she understood, and sped up.  They all fell in behind her and matched her speed.  It was no more than another minute before Aja said, “I’ve got something!”

And there the White Spark was, exactly as Cal and Topp had left it, looking quite sad, battered and half-buried in sand with a weak beam of emergency lighting struggling through the damaged hatch.  Cal couldn’t pretend he was happy to have returned so soon, but as long as the spice was still safe, he’d get over it.  Aja, as the leader of this little outfit, was the first one off her speeder and inspecting the hole Cal had hacked in the ship’s hatch.  The rest of the gang shifted on their bikes, muttering, anticipation running high.  Cal utilized a lifetime of practice and resisted vomiting with all his might.  He genuinely contemplated the possibility he’d hit his head in the crash and just didn’t remember it – his skull felt about to crack open and spill his brains into the sand.

Aja finally gestured for Loke and Jiyazi to follow her inside.  As soon as Jiyazi jumped down from her bike, its nose jutted towards the sky, its aft slamming to the ground and sending a puff of dust into the air.  Topp promptly slid off the end, at which point the speeder righted itself.  Cal heard Nifa giggle.  Seeming unconcerned by this development, Topp gazed at his outstretched legs for a moment and then began delicately picking large grains of sand off them.

Cal could’ve stolen Loke’s bike right then.  He wouldn’t have gotten Topp on it before at least one of the raiders started shooting, though, and he didn’t know where to go, so he just leaned forwards and rested his elbows on the seat and his chin in his hands.  His neck was aching something awful too, he thought, working his shoulders slightly and grimacing.  Getting strangled twice in about one day probably hadn’t been a good idea.

He’d barely finished that thought when Aja reappeared in the doorway, grinning widely.  “We’re in business,” she declared.  “Get in here, all of you – except Thymeg, you stand guard out here just in case.”

Thymeg nodded and scooted their bike forwards, angling it sideways directly in front of the hatch.  Assuming he was included in that ‘all of you’, Cal got off Loke’s bike, paused, looked at Topp.  “Do you want to go back in there?” he asked, gesturing towards the ship.  Then he waited – Topp obviously needed a while to process questions – until the droid, with the same jerky motion like he was unused to it, shook his head.  “Okay.  Just stay right out here.  I should be back soon and hopefully we can get going.”

Really, Cal didn’t want to go back inside the White Spark much either.  The only reason he bothered was because he was pretty sure he’d seen a poncho in Quince’s clothing stash and he wasn’t spending a night in the badlands without something warmer on.  As the raiders all rushed towards the cargo hold, evidently unconcerned about breathing the raw spice, Cal went into Quince’s cabin, instead.

“You guys care if I run off with this?” Cal asked once he’d found what he was looking for.

Terro, who’d gotten the job of lugging Bit (still a little dazed and uncertain how they’d ended up there) on the ship, paused in the corridor and glanced at the bundle of fabric Cal held up.  He snorted.  “That thing’s ugly as shit.  All yours, pal.”

“Thanks.”  It was ugly as shit.  Quince had had many terrible qualities and Cal could add ‘fashion sense’ to the list – who thought neon green with purple and yellow zigzags was a good idea?  It made a statement, though, if that statement was I want to be a sniper target.

But it was warm.  Cal would put up with the shame.  He yanked it on over his clothes and waited; after another minute or so, Aja emerged from the cargo hold with Nifa at her side, chattering away.  Aja’s expression was casually disinterested and she seemed more concerned with inspecting the cell (and the dead body therein) than whatever Nifa had to say, but Cal got the impression she was listening very closely nonetheless.  “– I’m just saying, we could use it.  I mean, okay, maybe we gotta dig it out – or bury it better, so it’s cooler – or we could tow it somewhere else, but it could be like, a base, right?  We save up for a generator and –”

Spotting Cal, Aja held up a hand and Nifa quieted immediately.  “Well,” Aja said, “we had a bargain, didn’t we?”  Then her mouth quirked like she was trying not to laugh.  “You look ridiculous in that.”

“I know,” Cal sighed, rubbing at his eyes.  “Listen, I –”

“Aj!” Thymeg abruptly yelled from outside.  Cal turned around to see them come scrambling inside.  “Spike – the others, they’re on their way –”

“Kark,” Aja said.  She raised her voice and hollered, “Everybody out, now!  Bit, come on, get your lazy ass up –”

Bewildered, Cal caught her arm as she darted past him and towards the other crew cabin where Terro had left Bit.  “Are you insane?” he asked.  “You outnumber them two to one, and you have cover.”

Aja yanked out of his grasp, eyes blazing.  “Spike was our explosives guy.  If he’s not headed right towards us with a detonator in his hand, I’m a fucking Weequay.  Let’s go or you’re gonna be blown to hell!”

Cal stared at her as she ran into the cabin.  “I don’t have time for this,” he said.  He turned again, walked back towards the hatch.  The only raider whose name he still didn’t know, a Human with a buzzcut and piercing blue eyes, was just about to scramble out, but Cal put out a hand to stop them.  “Just… wait,” he said, stepping out of the ship.

Thymeg was right outside the hatch, the rifle in their hands.  Topp had finally stood and was looking off into the distance.  “Didn’t even notice ‘em until your droid started pointing,” Thymeg said, hoisting the rifle up to their shoulder and peering down the barrel – at least, Cal thought that was what they were doing, but he couldn’t see their eyes and couldn’t tell for sure.

“He does that.  And he’s not my droid.”

“Where are you going?” Thymeg exclaimed when Cal kept walking.  He didn’t answer.  With the bikes’ lights out and the other group of raiders not dumb enough to put theirs on, he couldn’t see them coming, but he could feel them.  Three of the four were angry and hopped up on adrenaline; the fourth… he was boiling over, and Cal knew without a doubt that was Spike, taking the lead.  Destroying his old gang, the ones no longer bloodthirsty enough for him, and the ship at the same time would make his day.  Selling any spice that happened to survive was just a bonus.

Cal waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness again and he could make out four speeders.  One was significantly ahead of the others, and the raiders bringing up the rear began firing their blasters.

Sighing, Cal ignited his lightsaber.

None of the raiders seemed to be particularly good shots; even as he broke into a jog, Cal only had to deflect a few bolts, and he sent them back the way they came.  At least one met its mark and he heard a shriek.  Spike was the only one who really concerned him – this close, he could see the guy bent low over the handlebars, controlling the bike with his left hand, something clutched in the other.  Cal didn’t know how big an explosion that bomb would cause and decided not to let him get near enough to lob it towards the ship.  He skidded to a stop, separated the lit end of his lightsaber, aimed, and threw it.

The glowing blade tumbled end over end through the air.  Realizing he couldn’t simply run Cal down or he’d be halved by a flying lightsaber, Spike veered to the left to avoid it… exactly as Cal had anticipated.  He activated the second blade.  The speeder blazed past and with one swing, Cal sheared the steering vanes and a good third of the control unit off.  The bike spun out of control in an instant, and Spike, apparently too stunned to react fast enough, didn’t jump clear in time.  Man and speeder alike crashed into the cliffside.

What followed was ten seconds of absolute silence, followed by a roll of thunder as the detonator blew.  Cal saw the cliff shudder, backed away warily as a couple massive stones dribbled off the top and fell, but the rock had stood too long to be bothered by something as small as a bomb.

Sighing again, Cal weighed the effort of walking to retrieve the lightsaber against pulling it to his hand, chose the latter.  The hilt weakly skittered through the sand a ways before finally zipping back.  He put his lightsaber together again, hooked it on his belt.  The gang behind him began turning on the lights of their bikes, then, illuminating the three other speeders.  One had come to a halt at a distance, its rider slumped over the controls.  Another had careened off and laid on its side in the sand; a raider was staggering to their feet, clutching their shoulder.  And the third, who appeared unharmed, had stopped dead and had his empty hands raised in surrender, gaping at Cal as if he’d never seen anything like him before.

Aja and her gang were doing pretty much the same thing, he saw.  The nameless raider was the first to find their voice – “Thought you guys were all dead,” they said in a soft, awed voice.

“Most of us,” Cal corrected, dragging himself towards the White Spark.  He was officially out of energy.  “But not all of us.”

Aja stared at him a second more before she regained her composure, straightening up and dusting off her hands.  “Jiyazi, with me,” she said.

Cal left them to it as Aja and Jiyazi headed towards the raider with his hands up, Jiyazi smacking her blaster against her palm like she was itching to use it.  He patted Topp on the chest again, said, “Good work,” and, for lack of better options, sat sideways on the seat of Loke’s speeder bike.  Loke didn’t say a word about it.

When Aja and Jiyazi returned, one of the injured raiders was slung over Jiyazi’s massive shoulder.  “Spike’s dead,” Aja announced.  “Webb here is bawling about a little graze on his hand.”  As Jiyazi all but threw the whimpering Human to the ground, Cal spotted the ‘little graze’ and had to wince – half of the guy’s fingers were singed black.  But he’d chopped off two of those same fingers and hadn’t been such a baby about it, so he only had so much sympathy to spare.  “We’ll dump him off at Baker Station, because we’re nice like that.  Dae-Kavek’s hurt but refused transport to the Station.  She flew off with Thib, so… good riddance.”

“So what’s next?” Loke asked, leaning against the side of the ship next to Bit, who was sitting in the sand and blinking at Cal in a perplexed sort of way.

Aja glanced around.  “Terro, Nifa,” she said, and the two Twi’leks snapped to attention immediately, “you two haul Webb’s ass down to the Station.  Then swing by and see how Slim’s doing, let him know what we’ve got… even if it ain’t his, he’s not stupid enough to pass this up.  Doubt he’ll pay you upfront, but make sure you see the money before you leave, and tell him I know exactly what this haul’s worth… oh, and tell him to bring the trailer or else we’re not moving it.”

Terro, again looking slightly disgruntled, accepted this with a nod and went to drag Webb over the back of his bike.  Nifa watched him for a second, turned to Aja.  “You want me to take Bit’s bike again?”

“No,” Aja said.  Nifa’s face fell.  Clearly, she expected to be crammed onto one speeder with Terro and Webb… but then Aja continued, “Webb won’t be needing his anymore.”

Nifa’s smile could’ve lit up the entire canyon all by itself.  Beaming, she sprinted out to where Webb’s speeder bike sat, and Aja turned to the unnamed raider.  “Yav, you go with them,” she ordered.  “Let them handle things unless they run into trouble.  The rest of you, might as well get back inside.  I want to know how many bricks we’ve got here.”  As Yav went to join the Twi’leks and the others filed back into the ship, Thymeg guiding Bit, Aja finally looked to Cal.  “You’re pretty impressive, aren’t you?” she said quietly. 

Cal shrugged.  “I guess.”

“I don’t just mean… that,” Aja said, waving a hand towards the cliff where Spike’s speeder lay, a mangled, scorched wreck.  “You got any clue how much that spice in there is worth?  Most people would’ve kept it for themselves.” 

He just shrugged again.  Aja watched Terro, Nifa, and Yav speed off, Webb strapped awkwardly into Nifa’s old seat, then said, “Money from that’s gonna keep my family going for months.”  She eyed Cal.  “Guess a guy like you couldn’t be convinced to stick around.”

Standing up from Loke’s bike, Cal rubbed the back of his neck, squeezing his eyes almost shut – his head hurt – and said, “I need to get back to my own family.”

“Yeah,” Aja said.  She picked a broken bit of metal off the ground, studied the stars for a bit, crouched, and, in the emergency light spilling from the hatch, scraped an X into the sand.  “We’re here,” she said as Cal leaned over to watch.  “You were going in almost exactly the opposite direction you needed to, you know.  So if you turn slightly to your left – little further – yeah, that’s the way you want to go for a few hours.”  She drew another X about five centimeters from the first.  “Eventually, you’ll come to a bunch of broken vaporators from the moisture farm that used to be out there.  They’re a little hard to see in the dark, so keep your eyes open.”

“That’s what passes for a landmark here, huh?”

Aja laughed.  “Yep.  From there, you’ll want to turn further left – say, twenty degrees more – and keep going.  You’ll know you’re headed the right way if you pass the old Julper homestead after about an hour.  Don’t bother trying to loot it, it’s been empty for years.  And then you just drive in that direction.  As long as you don’t stop too often, you should make it to Harlan before daybreak.”

“Harlan,” Cal repeated.  “Thought you were sending me to Baker Station.”

“Baker’s nothing but raiders, spice cooks, and the people they’ve got hooked,” she said bluntly.  “And you look like crap.  Harlan’s further away, but you’ll drop dead long before you find a ride off-planet at the Station.”  She stood up, tossing the bit of metal aside.  “Arritus Saloon in Harlan’s open pretty much all the time.  You can probably get someone there to help.  And if you happen to see Neyna, tell her I said hi, okay?”

“Sure.”  Cal studied the sketchy little map a second longer, committing Aja’s directions to memory.  “Uh… I don’t suppose you’ll let me steal a speeder.”

“Nope,” she said.  “But Dae-Kavek wasn’t gonna be able to drive with her shoulder all messed up like that.  She hopped on Thib’s and left hers behind.  You’re welcome to it.”

That was the best news Cal had heard all day.  “Good luck,” he said.

Aja nodded.  Before Cal had gotten two steps away, though, she said, “Hey, you got a name?”

He turned back towards her.  “Cal Kestis,” he replied.  “And –” that’s BD-1, he almost said automatically, but caught himself.  “That’s Topp,” he said instead, gesturing towards him.  While the loader droid was no BD, he was a decent sort.

“Nice meeting you,” Aja said.  She hopped through the hole Cal had cut in the ship’s hatch, threw him a grin.  “Seriously,” she added, and then disappeared down the corridor.

“Ready to go?” Cal asked Topp.  The droid looked at him, nodded, and fell into step just behind him as Cal headed towards Dae-Kavek’s abandoned bike.  At a touch, he knew it was both well-loved and stolen from someone else who’d loved it just as much, which didn’t incline him to feel too bad about hitting her with a deflected blaster bolt.  Given the sort of luck he’d had lately, Cal almost expected it to be too damaged to fly, or too light to hold both him and Topp, or out of juice.  It growled to life when he pressed the ignition, though, and the fuel gauge was more than half-full.  Topp sunk it until the whole thing hovered just a few centimeters off the ground, and he’d probably never reach top speed, but it was much, much better than walking.

The speeder flew like a dream when he hit the throttle, too, and Cal thought wistfully of the swoop bike he’d owned back on Bracca.  Despite Prauf’s predictions, it’d run beautifully, and once Cal got over feeling smug about that, he was kind enough to let the Abednedo take it out from time to time.  He was bound to Bracca and the Scrapper Guild, but that bike had felt like freedom nonetheless.  He’d seen more of Solaris and the surrounding wastes in a month than he had in the three years prior, thought maybe this rainy junkyard planet wasn’t the worst place he could call home… and then Cal came back to his apartment one day to find it’d been broken into and the bike was gone.  He’d never seen a single piece of it again.  After that, he stopped buying anything that wasn’t strictly necessary.

Those thoughts only distracted him for about five kilometers, and after that it was just him and his back and stomach and head.  And Topp, sitting contentedly behind Cal like he was born to it.  And the fever.  And the nauseating wobble of the planet that made it difficult to stick to those directions Aja had given him.  The poncho wasn’t keeping him any warmer, but he left it on anyway, because he’d already approached heatstroke today and didn’t want to let hypothermia get a shot in too.  Soon, he had to twist his entire torso to glance behind him or to either side – his abused neck stiffened until he could barely turn his head.

It was so tempting to ask Topp to take the controls and just keep them going forwards, especially once they passed that heap of rusted vaporators Aja had mentioned, but Cal gritted his teeth and suffered in silence.  If he wasn’t driving, he’d fall asleep.  And if he fell asleep… well, given how restless of a sleeper he was while lying in his warm, comfortable cot, he couldn’t imagine staying upright on the bike for more than twelve seconds.  He’d have to tie himself down like the raiders had with Webb.

At least it was dark, as difficult as that made navigation.  He wasn’t looking forward to daylight.  The first rays of sun would probably melt his eyes right out of his head.  Not for the first time, Cal was strangely, almost perversely grateful to the Scrapper Guild for driving its workers like draft etobis – he could push through damn near anything short of actual death, now.  It might drive everyone else crazy, but it was his only hope for survival.

He still had to stop about half an hour later to throw up.  And again, outside the crumbled wreckage of the old homestead; once he finished dry-heaving, Cal stumbled over to a cleaner patch of ground and collapsed on it, panting, squeezing his eyes shut.  His skin was scorching hot and felt too tight, like it’d shrunk in the sun, but he was so cold he could hardly stand it.  He pressed his cheek to the chilly sand and shivered.

He laid there for so long Topp came to lift him to his feet again.  This time, Cal didn’t resist, because he didn’t think he could’ve done it himself.  “Thanks,” he said weakly, scrubbing the sand off his face.  “Better get going… we’ve got a –” He stopped mid-sentence when he tried to clamber back onto his seat and was gently bumped aside by the droid.  Cal stared at Topp for a moment, then at the bike.  “…you think you can just go straight for a while?” he asked.

Topp nodded.  Everything Cal looked at for too long began rotating to the left or right, so he figured this was the better option and he’d just need to find some other way of staying awake.  Unsure how much Topp knew, he quickly explained the controls, then let Topp have his seat and slumped across the back.

Despite his best efforts, Cal couldn’t stay awake.  He dipped in and out of fever dreams, head resting against Topp’s broad, solid back, so nauseated he often woke just long enough to spit bile into the wind and then fell under again.  The headache followed him into sleep.  The earache, long ago faded into a mild concern, did not, but Cal jerked upright and almost fell off the bike when a sudden, piercing pain in his right ear startled him out of a nightmare.  “Ow,” he groaned, pressing his palm to his ear.  “Think I just lost an eardrum…”  The pain swiftly receded, though, leaving his hearing as muffled as before, but minus the constant pressure.  His hand came away with a smear of something warm and sticky on it that didn’t seem dark enough to be blood.  “Oh, that’s gross.”  He wiped his hand clean on his pants.

He slept again and did not wake until a corner of his unconscious mind realized something was wrong.  Feeling like he’d not slept at all, Cal opened his gritty eyes, blinked at Topp’s back a few times, thought about decapitating himself so his head would quit hurting, and finally registered that they were no longer moving.  “What’s going on?” he mumbled.

Topp didn’t reply, of course.  Gripping the droid’s shoulders, Cal stood on the back of the bike to look over Topp’s head and saw the fuel gauge had run empty.  “Well, shit,” he sighed.  Looked like naptime was up.  The prospect of walking for several more hours was a daunting one, but what other choice did he have?

And then Topp lifted a hand and pointed, and Cal saw a cluster of lights in the distance, brilliant against the starry horizon.

Cal could’ve fainted from relief.  He almost did anyway.  His neck refused to bend far enough to sink his head between his knees, so he just rested it against Topp’s back again, breathed until the darkness gathering at the edges of his vision backed off.  “Okay,” he murmured.  “Okay.  That’s not far – few kilometers.  I can make it.  Come on.”

They walked, again.  Cal felt even worse than earlier, but it seemed easier now that he had a clear destination.  His dragging feet left long, shallow troughs in the sand.  A hint of pink and gold stained the horizon by the time they were close enough to Harlan to actually see it, and there wasn’t much to see – perhaps two dozen small houses scattered in a rough square around a wide street, which was flanked by buildings that crammed up against each other’s sides, leaving few alleys or niches between them.  Everything had been constructed of the same rough sandstone in every shade of red and orange and beige Cal could imagine, lit by the hazy globes lining the road.

Happy as he was to have reached civilization, he could’ve done without the lights.  His head hurt so much.  If he was sick again right in the middle of the street, nobody was around to notice.  And Greez wondered why Cal couldn’t keep any weight on, he thought.  Remembering what Aja had said, he looked around until he spotted a weather-beaten sign on one of the buildings.  Arritus Saloon – that was the place she’d mentioned, and it was open, no less.  Someone had stuck a rock in the doorway to keep the door from closing automatically and a couple speeders were parked outside.

Cal regarded the yellow glow inside the saloon with distaste – he’d gotten so light-sensitive over the past day it was ridiculous – and then sighed, said, “Might as well,” to Topp, and went in.

Thankfully, the lights were not too bright (agonizing, which he considered a step below excruciating), and there were only a handful of people inside, most of whom were gathered around one table and talking in low voices.  At the back of the room stood a long, low counter, stools shoved under the lip, and behind that was a young Human woman working busily at a stove.  She gave Cal and Topp a brief glance as they approached.  “If you’re looking for breakfast, it’ll be about half an hour before we start serving,” she said.  She was a tiny scrap of a thing, heavily tanned and freckled, with mousy brown hair and eyes of some murky, indeterminate color.  Cal watched her drizzle some oil into a pan, close the bottle, tuck it under her arm, and take a spatula to spread the oil around – all one-handed, as her empty left sleeve had been twisted into a knot at her shoulder.  “Can’t get anything on the hob ‘til it’s hot, and you know that takes forever…” The woman glanced up again and her brow furrowed.  “Or maybe you don’t.  Haven’t seen you around before, and you look like death warmed over so I’d probably remember.  Where you from?”

“Not here,” Cal said wearily.  “Ship crashed.”  He held up a few fingers.  “Three questions.  One, is there a comm around here?  Two, does this place have a medic, by any chance?  And three… what planet am I on?”

The woman laughed at that last one.  “This is Zemney Five,” she said, “the sweaty armpit of the Outer Rim, and you’re in Harlan Outpost, and I’m Neyna.  Yeah, we got a comm in the back.  Real old piece of rubbish, though.  Planetside and realspace communications only.  As for the medic, we’ve got one of those too – my boyfriend, Shae.  But he left yesterday to check on old Leta Wallace out in the boonies.  He’s probably on his way back by now, but even if you’re dying, it’ll be a few hours at least.”

Cal shrugged.  He’d lived this long – he’d manage a few more hours.  “Fine.  Can I use the comm?”

“We charge,” she cautioned.

“I… don’t have any money,” he said.  He’d given what he took off Quince’s ship to Aja and her gang, and he hadn’t had a credit on him otherwise.  Or at all – he spent it on spray paint.

She hummed, grabbing a mixing bowl and wedging it between two heavy crocks to stir the contents with one hand.  “Well,” she said, gaze flitting past Cal to Topp, who was standing behind him with his head ducked so he didn’t smack it on any of the dangling light fixtures, “tell you what.  Your droid there looks pretty strong.  You let us borrow it for an hour – just movin’ some heavy stuff around – and I’ll let you use the comm free.”

“Topp’s not my droid,” Cal said.  He turned to face Topp.  “You understand all that?” he asked, and got a slow nod.  “Are you okay with it?”  Topp nodded again, so Cal turned back to Neyna and said, “Fine.  Just… be nice to him.”

Neyna set down her spatula.  “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna work it – uh, him – into the ground or anything.  There’s a bunch of stuff in the cellar that needs to come upstairs, that’s all.  Okay… Topp?  You wait here a sec, I’ll be right back.  You –”

“Cal.”

“Cal, you follow me.”  He came around the other side of the counter and Neyna led him down a long, dim corridor.  She paused at one point to pound on a closed door and call, “Ma, can you watch the stove for a few minutes?”  Once whoever was inside replied, she beckoned for Cal to keep following.  “Used to be a storage closet, but it’s practically the only place we could plug the damn thing in… so if that’s not your droid, who’s he belong to?”

“Someone who’s dead now,” Cal said.  “So, himself, I guess.”

“Huh.  What’re you gonna do with him?”

“I don’t know,” Cal admitted.  He was too focused on surviving long enough to get back to the Mantis to worry about it just yet.

Neyna opened a door all the way at the end of the corridor and flipped on a light, which gave off an unholy buzzing sound that made Cal’s vision go kind of wonky.  There was a dusty comm terminal, though, and a chair, which he fell into.  “All yours,” she said, “for as long as you want, ‘less someone else needs it.”

“Thank you,” Cal said.  Neyna left him alone and he powered up the terminal.  Greez had made him and Merrin memorize the Mantis’s comm code months ago, just in case they ever lost their commlinks and needed to get in contact with the ship.  Cal wasn’t good at memorizing strings of numbers, so he’d set it to the hook of a song he liked.  Humming under his breath, he punched in the code – four-six-seven-two-besh-trill-one-seven-eight-two-nine-one-five-five-threefour drum solo – and waited, holding his breath.

The indicator light blinked yellow as it tried to connect… and then went red.  Cal’s heart sank.  The Mantis was probably in hyperspace.  He gave it five minutes and tried again, with the same result.

There was nothing else he could do.  Cal laid his head on his arms and left one finger on the button and just kept pressing it over and over and over, waiting for the medic to return.

Chapter Text

Someone clearing their throat and tapping gently on the doorframe woke Cal from a doze.  He gingerly straightened up, yawning and rubbing at his neck, and automatically tried the comms again.  Still nothing.  “Sorry,” he mumbled, “didn’t mean to fall asleep…”

“It’s fine,” said Neyna’s mother, a Koorivar woman who’d introduced herself as Senne earlier when she’d poked her head in to see who was hogging their comms.  “Just lettin’ you know, Shae’s back – Neyna went racing off soon as she heard that horrid overclocked speeder of his comin’ up the road.”

Cal didn’t want to give up on the comm, but it’d been at least two hours – probably more, since he’d slept a while – and he wasn’t getting an answer.  Hoping he hadn’t remembered the code wrong, Cal got to his feet, gripping the back of the chair.  His head felt about to float away, which would be just dandy as long as it took the pain with it.  “Thanks.”

“Sure,” Senne said.  He trailed behind her as she headed back to the front of the saloon.  “May as well take your droid, while you’re at it.  Neyna’s grifted you good – we don’t charge for the comms, she just wanted some free labor.”

“Oh,” Cal said.  He couldn’t bring himself to care too much.  The volume level increased as they approached the kitchen and dining room, and it was all he could do to stay on his feet when they emerged from the hallway.  Breakfast was clearly in full swing – it seemed like everyone in town, and probably a decent number of people outside it, had gathered in the saloon.  Some of them gave Topp (standing motionless next to the counter) a wide berth, but most people didn’t seem to mind his presence.  In fact, Cal came around the counter and saw a very small child plastering sparkly star- and planet-shaped stickers to the droid’s leg.

Senne laughed as soon as she noticed what Cal was looking at.  “Della!” she called across the room.  “Come get your boy before he vandalizes this poor man’s droid any further!”

A woman came running, overflowing with apologies, and snatched up the toddler.  He promptly stuck a sticker to her cheek.  Cal was too tired to laugh, to even smile, but Senne did enough of both for the two of them.  “That little one’s gonna be a rascal, I can tell,” she declared.  “All right, you better get a move on – take a left outta here and go down to the post.  Clinic’s right above it.”

“The post,” Cal echoed blankly.

“Yeah.  We only get a ship from Warrly City ‘bout twice a month and they can’t be bothered to stop at all the homesteads that’ve ordered stuff – they drop it all off at the post and everybody comes into town to pick it up.  Six buildings down, you can’t miss it.  Just go up the stairs.”

“Thank you,” Cal said to her.  Topp, who’d been idly inspecting his new decorations, joined him at the door and they left the saloon.  Even blocked by the buildings, the sunlight made Cal want to go straight back inside.  Head down, makeshift hood up, a hand shading his eyes, he slunk down the sidewalk to what Senne had called ‘the post’.  She was right, it was impossible to miss – the garage door was open, revealing a plain sandstone-block room where the floor was hardly visible beneath crates and packages.  An Ugnaught sat at a small desk, playing cards by himself; he watched Cal suspiciously for a moment, then went back to ignoring him when Cal began sluggishly climbing the stairs next to the building.  He had to do it like a little kid, putting both feet on each step so he wouldn’t lose his balance.  At least Topp was right behind him and might try to catch him if he fell.

Cal made it to the landing without incident.  There was nothing up there except more stairs to the top floor and a grimy window and a door, which opened before he could hit the button; Neyna came bouncing out and nearly knocked him over.  “Oh, sorry!” she exclaimed.  “I was just coming to getcha, since Shae’s home.  Go on in and grab a seat – he’ll be right with you once he’s done washing up.  ‘scuse me, I gotta get back to work or Ma will really let me have it.”

“I forgot,” Cal said as Neyna was on her way down, “I met Aja out there.  She said if I ran into you, she says hello.”

Neyna paused and looked over her shoulder.  “Did she, now?  Well, good to know she’s alive and kicking.”

“Friend of yours?”

“We hung out in the same circles when we were younger,” Neyna said.  Her eyes flicked to the empty space where her left arm should’ve been.  “But then I came on home, Ma hired me, and now I’m an honest woman.  Oh, and Shae happened to be here too.”  She winked at him and then hopped the last few stairs and vanished around the corner.

The front room of the clinic was as barren as the landing, with the addition of a few rickety wooden chairs.  The door across the room stood halfway open; beyond it, Cal could hear water running.  Topp took one look at the small chairs and elected to stay standing.  Cal sat and tried not to puke on the dingy but clean floor, mentally going over the list of everything he knew was wrong with him and everything he thought was wrong with him too.  It was an extensive list.  If someone had asked him right then whether he’d rather have Master Tapal or his spleen back, he would’ve had a difficult decision to make.

A couple of minutes crept by, and finally the water shut off.  A door closed, there were footsteps in the corridor, the half-open door slid the rest of the way open, and a Human man stepped into the room, drying his hands on a towel.

Cal was hammering the buttons for the front door and backing out onto the landing before he consciously understood what he was seeing, or even thought to move.

“Huh,” Shae said dryly, “usually people don’t have that reaction until I pull out the big needles.  If you’re not staying, close the door – I’ve got the air on and it gets hot in here real fast.”

Cal stretched out a foot, felt around blindly for the steps, but they were too far to reach.  He needed medical attention or he was going to die – there was something terribly wrong with him, a foreboding in the Force that begged him to stay.  He couldn’t make himself go back in, though.  The medic just watched him, his features almost as familiar to Cal as his own.  He was Rumble and Tox and Everly and Nine and Searchlight and Laze and Tenner.  “You’re a clone,” Cal said faintly.

“How about that?”  There was a hint of acid in Shae’s tone.  “Neyna said you were coming by for help.  You…” He trailed off, then, because Topp had moved to place himself in the doorway, directly between Shae and Cal.

Sick with the knowledge his only chance was to trust a clone trooper, Cal hesitated.  Shae hadn’t started shooting on sight – actually, he wore just a loose pair of pants and a sleeveless tunic and nothing else, not even shoes, so Cal was willing to bet the guy wasn’t carrying any weapons at all.  And unless one paid close attention to Imperial bounty advertisements, Cal was only immediately identifiable as a Jedi if one saw the lightsaber, and it wasn’t obvious beneath his poncho.  Cal moved his right arm to hide it entirely.  Swallowing hard, he said, “It’s okay, Topp.  I’m okay.”

The droid neatly sidestepped so Cal and Shae could see one another again.  Shae was now scrubbing at his hair with the towel, looking bored.  There was nothing to distinguish him from any other clone except for the tan, courtesy of the desert sun – and the fact that he wasn’t trying to kill Cal.  “Didn’t expect to find a clone out here,” Cal said carefully.

Sighing, Shae tossed the towel onto a chair.  “You’re real hung up on that, aren’t you?  Fine, yes, I’m a clone trooper – for a loose definition of trooper, I guess.  Never saw combat.  They shipped me out to a medical station in the Colonies, and the station shipped me back after a couple months – apparently my “attitude” was “detrimental” to a “team approach”.”  He actually made air quotes.  “Dunno what team they were talking about.  Karking Kaminoans ran the show and I didn’t get to do crap.  Their loss… I decided I wasn’t staying on Kamino, got myself smuggled off, bounced around for a while.  War ended and I was here and just stuck around, so here I am.  And there’s my sordid story – do you actually want my help or not?  ‘cause if not, I’m going to bed.  I’ve been up all night.”

Very, very slowly, Cal inched into the clinic again.  Shae didn’t pull a concealed blaster or anything, just looked at Cal like he was trying to diagnose him on sight alone.  Cal took a minute to figure out where to begin.  “Um,” he said.  “A day or two ago I got kidnapped by a spice runner playing at being a bounty hunter.  I already had an ear infection – was taking some antibiotics for it, but I think my eardrum ruptured.”

“Okay,” Shae said, nodding.  “The eardrum will probably repair itself, but we can spritz a bit of bacta in there to make sure it closes properly.”

“The guy who kidnapped me also cut my back open and implanted some kind of slave chip that’ll blow up if I get too far away from this,” Cal added, taking the transmitter from his belt and waving it.

Shae’s practiced, blasé, world-weary-medic-who’d-seen-it-all expression fell flat.  “You’re joking.”

Cal turned around, ignoring every instinct screaming at him not to turn his back on a clone, and hiked up his poncho and shirt so Shae could see the bandage plastered to his skin, careful to keep his lightsaber tucked in the folds of hideous fabric.  Shae stepped closer, began to peel the bandage off, hissed, “Well, for starters, it’s horribly infected…”

“I was told it’d go off if it was tampered with, so I didn’t even poke it – except when the ship crashed, I guess – but… yeah.  And I got kicked in the kidney the other day, too – been pissing blood ever since.  I have the worst headache I’ve ever had and I get migraines normally.  Oh, and my spleen was removed when I was twelve, so… don’t have one of those.  Or much of an immune system anymore, either.”

“Oh my god,” Shae muttered under his breath, sounding exasperated.  Cal felt Shae stick the bandage to his skin again.  “Wait here.  I’ll be back in a minute.”

Cal pulled his shirt down and sat in a chair and waited.  He heard another door open, and then Shae saying, “Wake up, Teeka.”

“Good morning, Shae!” piped a modulated feminine voice.  “After you left, Giz brought up the supplies you ordered and I restocked the cabinets for you!”

“Thanks.  We’ve got a patient – I’m gonna need your help on this one.  Probably Denise’s too, come to think of it…”

“I am always delighted to be of assistance!”  With that, a shining bronze droid came speeding into the room on a single wheel.  “Hello!” she said brightly.  “I am TKA-11, at your service, but you may call me Teeka!” 

“Uh,” Cal said, slightly taken aback by her zeal, “I’m Cal.  And that’s Topp.”

“A pleasure to meet you!  Please sit calmly for one moment so I can take your vitals!”

Shae stepped back in and while Cal’s heart still stuttered at the sight of him, he curbed the urge to flee and just sent the clone an odd look instead.  “She speaks in exclamation points,” he said as he was being scanned.

Snorting, Shae said, “Yeah, she does that.  Think her personality switch got stuck on ‘enthusiastic’ and I dunno enough about droids to fix that kinda thing.”

“I am a pediatric surgical droid!” Teeka announced, withdrawing the hand that held the scanner.  “I have been programmed to have an impeccable bedside manner!  And while Shae has deleted that programming from his own memory, I think it’s quite useful!”  She looked at the scanner’s display, then exclaimed, “You have a temperature of forty-point-forty-eight degrees!  My goodness!  Shae, I would like to take him into the back for bloodwork!”

“Hold on, hold on,” Shae said.  He inspected the scanner too and his face went utterly blank.  “Have you eaten or had anything to drink in the past five or six hours?”

“No,” Cal replied.  He’d run out of water before he and the raiders had reached the White Spark, and he hadn’t thought to bring more when he left; considering how unsettled his stomach was, he would’ve seen it again anyway.

“Good.  I think I’ll need to sedate you… I’m gonna go talk to Denise.  She’s seen damn near everything people can do to slaves; she should be able to tell me whether or not there’s a way to deactivate that chip of yours or take it out.  And if not, I’ll try to keep you alive long enough to find someone who can help.”

The heavy way Shae said keep you alive told Cal he’d not been a hypochondriac about all this.  It really was that dire.  His stomach tried to lurch and was forced down by years of practice.  “Okay,” he said, and his voice only shook a little.  “Can I – I need to try to contact my crew one more time.  Just in case.”

Shae waved him off.  “Like I said, I gotta find Denise.  Once you’re done, come back – Teeka can do that bloodwork and get you settled in.  Just make it quick.”

“I will be here when you’re ready!” Teeka said cheerfully.

The sound of Cal clomping down the sandstone steps had a sort of finality to it.  He felt like he was moving through a nightmare.  If he died here, he thought, dimly aware of Topp following him again, it would be better than the badlands.  He didn’t want to die at all.  He could’ve cried, but smothered the tears, walked back to the saloon.  It was even more crowded now, almost every chair and stool occupied, the scent of frying bacon hanging in the air and making Cal gag.  “Sorry,” he said to Neyna as he passed, “need the comm again.”

“Go ahead,” she said.  “Free, this time.  Ma got on my back about that one.  You’d think I knifed somebody…”

Topp stayed with him all the way to the tiny comm room, where he politely waited in the doorway.  Three more tries and Cal still couldn’t connect with the Mantis.  He stared at the terminal numbly.  Then he looked around – a couple of crates were stacked in a corner, some forgotten pieces of flimsiplast lying atop them.  Cal took one and delved into his belt for an old wax pencil he’d used to mark ships on Bracca for cutting.  Once the flimsi was laid out before him on the terminal, though, he just stared at it, unsure what to write.

The crew of the Mantis was the only family he had.  Cal loved them all fervently.  How was he supposed to apologize for dying because he’d been too arrogant and foolish to just stay home and rest while he was sick?

Maybe he should start with a simple apology and go from there.  Tell them he was sorry and he loved them.  It was too difficult to see the flimsi clearly – his neck did not want to bend – so Cal stood, laid it flat against the wall, and began.  And then the words just poured out of him, because there were so many things he’d never gotten to say.  He kept coming back to the indisputable fact that they were his family and he loved them and he was sorry for dying.  This was going to be one repetitive letter, he thought, and prayed they would never have to read it.  He went on so long he had to flip the flimsi over, and once he’d finally run out of words, he needed a second piece to fold around it like an envelope.

Then something occurred to him.  Cal glanced at the crates, popped open the top one, peeked inside.  Apart from enough dust to clog a Venator’s thrusters, there was just a pile of electrical cords in it.  He hid his lightsaber at the bottom of the crate and added a note to the flimsi beneath his signature.  Shae hadn’t realized he was a Jedi yet – Cal figured it was best if he didn’t find out at all.

He scrawled the code on the outer piece of flimsiplast, put his pencil away, tried the comms one last time, and left the room.  Topp fell into step behind him immediately.  “I know it probably doesn’t mean much,” Cal said quietly, “but I’m glad you came with me when I left the ship.  I don’t think I could’ve gotten here without you.  Thanks.”

Neyna was still at the counter, stacking clean plates and cups, when Cal came in.  “Hey,” he said, and she glanced at him, then turned off the faucet and came over.  He held up the letter.  “I need to ask one more thing of you.  I wrote a comm code on here.  If I don’t make it… could you try to call it occasionally until someone answers?  Otherwise my friends are never going to know what happened to me.  And if they come by, give them this note, okay?  Please.”

“Sure,” Neyna said.  She took the flimsi from Cal, stuck it in the pocket of her stained apron.  “But you don’t need to worry.  You’ll be fine.”

“Right,” Cal said tonelessly.

She shook her head.  “I mean it,” she insisted.  “Listen, Shae doesn’t have any kind of fancy hotshot education from some Core university or whatever, but he was a medic back during the war, you know?”  Again, she glanced at her knotted-up sleeve, then sighed.  “I got bit by a joxix a couple years ago,” she said.  “Right on the hand.  Toxic little bastards.  By the time Aja and Feek got me here, my arm had gone rotten almost up to the shoulder – if it’d reached my organs, that was it for me.  And I knew I was a goner because Aja’s scared shitless of Ma – Ma blames her for gettin’ me into the raiding life, like I needed encouragement to be a total hoodlum back then – but she ran straight for her anyway.

“And then this guy showed up.  Never seen him before; he’d blown in long after I left Harlan.  And he looks at me and looks at my arm and this arrogant son of a bitch goes ‘yeah, I can handle that’, and just saws off my arm right there in front of everyone in the middle of the street.”  Neyna’s face split into a grin.  “Hurt like hell, since there was no time for the drugs, but he did it, and kept me from bleeding out afterwards, too.  I was up and walking again by the next day, like I’d never had the rot.  Also, he’s a looker, so that was a reason to stick around… anyway, point is, Shae’s good.  And Teeka might be a maniac, but we all pooled as much as we could spare for years to afford her, and she’s even better.”  Neyna turned the tap back on and plunged a fresh stack of dirty dishes beneath the water.  “Zemney’s a rough place.  We help each other out here, right?  And as long as you’re out here, we’re gonna help you too.  Go.  I’ll hold on to this and you can come back and get it when you’re better.”

Cal wished he had her optimism.  Still, it was nice of her to try to cheer him up, so he said, “Yeah.  Thanks,” and headed out.  He was halfway down the sidewalk before he took notice of the heavy footsteps behind him and thought he should’ve asked Neyna to maybe look out for Topp, too.  Cal didn’t know what to do with him.  Unlike BD-1, Topp wasn’t the sort of droid who could make his own way in the galaxy if he had to.

No time to worry about it now.  He’d almost reached the post, and Shae was standing at the base of the stairs, conversing with the oldest Sullustan Cal had ever seen.  Sullustans didn’t wrinkle and go grey the way Humans did; this one had drooping jowls and drooping eyelids and drooping ears and looked tiny and shriveled in the large hoverchair.  Their eyes were bright and alert, though, and snapped to Cal the moment he came close enough.  “You the one?”

“That’s him,” Shae said before Cal could respond.  “This is Denise – if anyone can figure out what’s up with that slave chip of yours, it’s her.”

“Hi,” Cal said.

Denise studied him from a mountain of shawls and one brightly-patterned headscarf.  “You a slave, boy?”

“No.”

“No?  You can tell us – I’m not about to turn you in.”  Cal shook his head, though, so she instead said, “Lemme get a look at that transmitter Shae’s told me about,” and he slipped it out of his belt and placed it in her wizened hands.  She held it up to the light, brought it close to one of her round dark eyes, then sighed.  “Yeah, seen a few just like this.  See that slot there?  Supposed to be a datachip in it so the explosive can be deactivated, but I assume whoever did this wanted to make sure nobody but them shut it down.  All right, Shae, help me up – Giz!” she hollered over her shoulder, and from inside the post building there was a clatter like the Ugnaught had fallen from his seat.  “Run back to my place and grab my toolkit, wouldja?!”

Her hoverchair was too big to fit up the narrow stairway.  Denise wriggled out of it, leaving several shawls behind, and leaned heavily on Shae’s arm; he all but lifted her step by step.  Cal glanced at the chair, said, “Do you want me to…”

“Leave it,” Shae said.  “You look half-dead.  I’ll get it in a few.”

In the end, he didn’t have to – Topp, at the back of the little procession, simply lifted the chair like it weighed nothing and began to walk upstairs behind Cal.  They all crowded into the front room of the clinic, Shae got Denise settled in the hoverchair again, and Teeka promptly zipped in.  “You’re back!” she chirped.  “Cal, I would like you to come with me!  Nothing to worry about, I just need a blood sample so I can run some tests!”

Cal glanced at Shae, but he was deep in discussion with Denise, and Topp had apparently taken it upon himself to arrange the wooden chairs in a very straight row.  So Cal followed Teeka down a short corridor to a small room filled with cabinets and monitors, a sink and a disposal unit and a full-body scanner lining the walls.  Though everything looked rather old and tired, it was all so clean he doubted he’d find a speck of dust anywhere.  “Please have a seat!” Teeka said, opening a drawer.

“I’d really rather stand,” Cal said, eyeing the examination table in the middle of the room.

“If that’s what you’d prefer!”  Teeka came back with a syringe and several vials caught between her metal fingers, instructed him to roll up his sleeve, scrubbed the inside of his elbow with an alcohol wipe until it was as clean as the room around it.  “While I am taking blood, I would like you to describe your symptoms to me!  Do not be shy; I can best treat you if I know exactly what we are dealing with!”

Cal looked away before she slid the needle into his vein.  It didn’t help much – in a place like this, where they could only rely on fresh medical supplies twice a month at best, syringes were used and sterilized almost to the atomic level and then reused.  The previous victim had been a young child who was terrified of it and screamed and wept the entire time, and Cal – who didn’t like needles either – had his job cut out for him, riding the echo out, focusing on that ridiculously long list of ailments he’d made and rattling them off for the droid.  If Teeka noticed him trembling, she probably chalked it up to fever or exhaustion.  “There, that’s done!” she said, capping the filled vials.  “Please remain here!  Shae will be in soon!”  With that, she rolled towards the door.

Seeing no other option, Cal waited until she left, braced himself, and put his hand on the table.

It was both better and worse than he expected.  Worse, because the memory pummeling him was that of someone dying long ago – it’d been slow and agonizing and they’d not had enough painkillers to let him go quietly, nor anything they could slip into his IV to let him go quickly.  He’d screamed himself mute within the hour and then just thrashed silently on the table, spewing an endless stream of bloody froth from his lungs, his extremities swelling until the skin burst.  No wonder Neyna was happy Shae had simply cut off her arm.  The rot wasn’t a good way to go.

Cal passed out after that, which made it a lot better.  He came back around to his shoulder and hip throbbing where he’d landed on them, and had a brief, absurd thought that Cere would be so pleased he hadn’t smacked his head off the table this time.  Then he remembered Cere was not here and he might never see her again.  That was enough for Cal to fully rouse himself, but the thought of getting up exhausted him, so he just stayed there on the floor, breathed, and thought, yet again, he didn’t want to die.  Maybe that made him a bad Jedi.  He couldn’t find it in himself to care.

“– as well just get a line in him and start on the ceftriaxone now,” he heard Shae say from somewhere beyond the examination room.  “Disinfect everything twice.  Guy’s immunocompromised.  Teek, you know how to do a lumbar puncture, right?”

“Of course!”

“I dunno if it’ll be safe to do that before we’ve handled the chip, but as soon as that’s dealt with, we need – shit!” Shae yelped, and at the rushing footsteps Cal opened his eyes.

“‘m fine,” he mumbled.  “Just… might’ve fainted for a bit.  I’m okay.”

“Yeah, and I’m the Emperor,” Shae said, heaving Cal to his feet.  Cal leaned against the table and blinked the blurriness from his vision as Shae got Denise (who’d again had to abandon her hoverchair to navigate the corridor) inside.  She sat in a regular chair in the corner, holding in her lap a metal box almost larger than she was.  “Right, then.  You conscious?” Shae asked, and snapped his fingers in front of Cal’s face.

“Mm.  Yeah.”

“Teek’s grabbing you a gown.  Soon as you’re in it, we’ll put in an IV too for the antibiotics, and then you’re going under for surgery.”

Cal was fine with the gown and the IV, but the last one made his stomach go cold even though he’d expected it.  Shae must’ve seen his alarm, because he said, “Sorry, kid, can’t put it off.  You’re in bad shape.  Ran your bloodwork through the computer, had it simulate forty-eight hours of bacteria growth for me.  It’s not looking fantastic and I doubt your cerebrospinal fluid’s much better.  You can’t be awake for this.  Denise says those kinds of chips are normally anchored to the skull so they don’t go off from someone falling or getting hit – either this one’s anchored to your spine, or worse, it’s just free-floating around in there, so we can’t have you moving around at all while we work.  Gonna be hard enough to get it out of there without triggering a sensor or para–”

“Shut up, Shae,” Denise interrupted, scooting her chair across the sandstone floor with an unpleasant screeching sound.  “You’re scaring the boy.”

“I’m not,” Cal said vaguely.  His ears were ringing louder than usual, his palms slippery with sweat; he slid down the side of the exam table and sat on the floor again.  “I’m fine.”

“Now you listen here,” Denise said.  She’d scooted so close she was sitting right in front of him, peering over the massive box still in her lap.  “I know those chips.  I know how they’re put in, and I know how they’re taken out, even when you can’t deactivate them first.”

“What I want to know,” Shae said abruptly, “is how a spice runner turned bounty hunter knew exactly how to implant that chip.  Most people don’t.  I sure don’t, and I don’t admit to not knowing much.”

Cal leaned his head back against the table, shut his eyes to avoid the harsh lighting.  “He said it used to be his.”

“That could do it,” Denise said, then scoffed.  “Slaves who become slaveowners themselves disgust me.”

“He kidnapped me for a bounty.  I told you, I’m not a slave.”  Cal opened his eyes again, lifted his head, looked at Denise.  “Were you?”

“No.  But a lotta people on this planet were, or are.  This isn’t the first slave chip I’ve removed… my hands and eyes aren’t what they used to be, but Teeka’s a droid – her hands don’t shake.  And Shae’s got an ego bigger than my family tree, but he’s not half-bad either.”

“That’s the nicest compliment you’ve ever given me,” Shae said, and he actually did sound quite pleased.  “She’s right, though.  You’re gonna be fine.  Lucky you, winding up here, the one place on Zemney Five that can help you.”

Master Tapal had never believed in luck.  There was only the Force, he’d always said.  Cal took a deep breath.  “I have a family,” he said.

“Bit young for that, aren’t you?” Denise asked.

Cal huffed a weak laugh, suddenly reminded of Prauf, who’d assumed on flimsy evidence Cal was spending his free time in his grubby apartment getting railed by Nox Latennerie.  Or doing the railing.  He had always been too afraid to ask which.  It was a painful, wonderful memory – he’d realized long ago Prauf’s death would always hurt, but he’d accepted it nonetheless, which made the good times a lot easier to remember.  “Not like that.  My… friends.  I’m just saying, if I die and they find out you didn’t do everything you could’ve… well.  Just do everything you can, I guess.  Please.”

Teeka came rolling in then, a pale green gown draped over one arm, so Shae, who’d been gathering equipment onto a tray, set it on the table and again hauled Cal to his feet.  “Okay, ladies, get lost for a minute so I can put this guy in the gown,” he said.  Teeka agreed in her usual animated fashion, seized the back of Denise’s chair, and pushed her right out of the room, deaf to her mutterings that it was nothing she hadn’t seen a million times.  Apparently she was up to great-grandchildren and fully intended to stay alive long enough to add one more ‘great’ to that massive family tree of hers.  “As for you,” he added, helping Cal fumble the poncho off and tossing it aside with a vaguely disgusted look, “if you ever again imply I’m not gonna do everything I can, I’m charging you triple.  I have a reputation to uphold.”

“Did you get kicked off the station for talking like that to Kaminoans?” Cal mumbled.

Only after it was out did Cal realize he shouldn’t have said it.  Not too many civilians had more than a passing familiarity with the Kaminoans; they wouldn’t know about the cloners’ insufferable sense of superiority, especially towards their ‘products’.  Shae just snorted and said, “Yeah, that might’ve been the problem,” though.  “Couldn’t cope with the possibility this upstart little clone might know what he was doing, and better than some of them did, to boot.  But that’s behind me… all I care about today is taking that chip out of you and treating all these infections you’re collecting like trading cards.  Now get changed.  I’ve got miracles to work.”

Chapter Text

That droopy, fuzzy feeling Cal associated with sedatives had returned.  He picked up on it the instant he began to wake, and that was almost enough to make him think screw this and go back to sleep… but he couldn’t remember why he’d been sedated.  Was he hurt?  Nothing hurt at all – no, that wasn’t true.  His head hurt, his neck hurt, his stomach hurt, there was a deep, throbbing pain in his lower back… it felt muted, though, unable to penetrate the fog too far.  He was evidently hopped up on painkillers too.

Experimentally, he tried opening his eyes.  It took a while for his eyelids to respond to his commands.  In the meantime, he breathed through his nose, smelled antiseptic and bacta and the kind of harsh cleaning products that never quite overpowered the scent of bodily fluids.  That combined with the starchy sheet draped over him and the pinch of a needle in his arm gave him a pretty good idea where he was well before he actually got his eyes open.  Once he did, he was disappointed – his vision was so blurry he could barely make out a single thing.  It was all just overbright smears of color, one of which was moving.  And talking.  “Shit,” it said in a very familiar voice, “shit, that’s still way too fast.”  A deep breath.  “All right, give me the next bag…”

“He’s waking up!” piped a different voice.

“Finally.”  A face – at least, Cal guessed it was a face, as it had dark spots where the eyes should be and a black smudge on top like hair – popped into view, blocking out the light mounted directly overhead.  “Hi there.”

“Tox?” Cal slurred, then frowned, squinting.  Not Tox.  He had that tattoo, the purple bubbles creeping up the side of his face all the way to his hairline, and there was no purple on this guy.  Fins… it couldn’t be Fins, either.  He’d died.  “Searchlight.”

“What?” Searchlight said blankly.

“Where’s… Master?” Cal attempted to get a good look at his surroundings, found himself unable to turn his head much, was distracted by something very shiny rolling past him, and lost his train of thought.  Droid?  Definitely the medbay.  A little thrum of panic started building in his chest and he weakly pushed at the sheet.  It wasn’t keeping him warm anyway – he was terribly cold, shivering so hard he thought he would vibrate off the bed.  That might be his only way out of here, since he’d managed to get an elbow braced against the mattress and then didn’t have enough strength to push himself up.  At least his legs responded and he heaved one of them over the side.

“Hey, hey.”  Searchlight promptly picked up Cal’s leg, placed it back on the bed, and smoothed out the sheet.  “Where do you think you’re going?”

“You and Master Tapal said I didn’t have to stay in the medbay,” Cal mumbled, trying to get up again and being thwarted again.  His muscles were jelly, and the painkillers must’ve been slowly wearing off, because now everything hurt.  “You promised.”  Cal ran away from there once, because they’d put Ivy in the next berth and he started noisily throwing up.  Upon discovering Cal’s disappearing act, one of the medics panicked and raised the alarm, and half the ship started looking for him, but Master Tapal – who, by that point, was up to speed on his little Padawan’s neuroses – found out what had happened and immediately went to check Cal’s cabin.  Cal was curled up in bed, asleep.  Searchlight decided there was no reason for Cal to remain in the medbay for just a bronchial infection, and after that, Cal spent very little time in the medical wing unless it was absolutely necessary.

“Did you not say earlier he wasn’t a slave?!” said the unsettlingly happy voice, which Cal finally connected to the droid.

“…yeah,” Searchlight said, sounding odd.  “I really don’t think he is.  Hey, kid?”

Cal couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.  “Where’s Master Tapal?”  When he did wind up in medical jail (they all got very good at keeping him there when he had to be), his master always came by if Cal asked for him.  More than once he’d even stayed in Cal’s cabin overnight and supervised his apprentice so Cal didn’t need to remain in the medbay.  Master Tapal might’ve been strict and demanded quite a lot from Cal, but he was the best.

Whatever Searchlight said in reply got lost on its way to Cal’s ears.  He fell asleep again.

Everything went very strange after that, like his dreams were overlapping with reality.  Master Tapal came and picked him up from the medbay – literally picked him up, as Cal was too weak to walk.  Draped over his broad shoulder, half-awake, Cal ran the edges of his favorite blanket between his fingers like he’d done constantly when he was younger.  He missed that blanket.  Thinking to ask Master Tapal if he could bring it with him this time so it didn’t burn up when the ship blew, he tried to form the words, but couldn’t speak.  His dry tongue felt disconnected, a loose piece of leather clogging his mouth.  Someone expressed concern about how fast he was breathing.

He was on the Mantis for a while after that, then on Bracca, then on the Mantis again.  He had nightmares about freezing to death on Ilum.  Solid hands ran a wet cloth over his face and neck and worked down the rest of his body, which was more than a bit embarrassing.  He felt grimy and sticky and sweaty, though, and he couldn’t move anyway, so he conceded the need for a bath and tolerated it.  Besides, Master Tapal laid his blanket over him afterwards, like a reward for his cooperation.

“Master,” he managed to breathe.  His useless tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and the word came out in a lisp, like he was still five years old with no front teeth.  The hand – a different hand, warm and soft – holding one of his own tightened until it almost hurt, then relaxed.  Another touched his forehead the way Cere did, stroked his cheek.

Cere wasn’t there – if Searchlight was, and Cal often heard him talking, then she couldn’t be – but he liked to imagine she’d found him.  Someone felt so haggard and worn it overflowed and seeped into his head even when he wasn’t trying to feel it.  Almost seemed a little rude, honestly.  He was tired enough already.

He kept hearing snippets of music.  Songs he knew, mostly, if they were performed in Binary by a certain droid who liked stealing Cal’s headphones.  He missed BD-1.  And Merrin – he thought he heard her humming along, sometimes, murmuring soft gibberish he guessed was his subconsciousness’s attempt at Dathomirian – and Greez, who invaded his fragmented dreams and whispered, “Come on, Callie, you gotta hang in there.”

Maybe they needed another conversation about when Greez was and wasn’t allowed to call him that.  They’d agreed to only when Cal was sick enough not to care.  Admittedly, that was a somewhat subjective call, but he wasn’t that sick right now.  He dimly remembered needing surgery… something removed.  Stars, what did he have left?  The Healers had taken out his tonsils when he was a toddler, as his inauspicious infancy had left him sickly; he’d suffered constant throat infections for over a year after he came to the Temple.  He had an appendectomy at age seven and destroyed his spleen when he was twelve.  If he woke up without anything he wanted to keep (a lung, a kidney, a testicle), he was going to be pissed.

After a while, he gave it another try and managed to crack open his eyes the tiniest bit.  He couldn’t do it for more than a few seconds, and the place was so bright he couldn’t see anything, but it felt like an accomplishment.  No blankets this time, just the one he’d lost during the Purge, so Cal rewarded himself by going back to sleep.

He had the opposite problem the next time – it was so dark he couldn’t see anything.  Somebody close by was breathing, slow and even and out of sync with Cal.  He matched it, dozed off again.

The next two or three attempts were non-starters, as he still ran into the light problem.  He sulked about it a bit.  BD-1 would’ve turned it off for him if he’d been here.  Once, following another failure to see anything, there was a sharp pinch at one of his fingertips and he instinctively pulled his hand to safety beneath the blanket.  Some sadist was thrilled by that reaction.  Medbays were all the same – if it wasn’t the guy in the next bed barfing his guts out, it was a medic poking needles into Cal’s fingers and enjoying his pain.  He sulked about that too until he fell asleep. 

And then, finally, Cal thought he would open his eyes and simply did.  It ached, like everything else, and the light was no help, but he laid there, blinked until his vision began to adjust, and realized the incoherent mess of color he faintly recalled was gone.  He was on a narrow bed in a room made of sunset-hued sandstone bricks, the walls bare but for various monitors and displays mounted over the beds.  There was only one other bed besides Cal’s, unoccupied, though the blanket was rumpled and the pillow askew.  A plastoid bag of clear fluid dangled from a pole, slowly dribbling into his veins via the tube in his arm.  Cal gazed at it for a moment, then rolled his head to the left.  Right next to him was another wall and a window, bare of curtains or shutters, which explained where all the light was coming from.  And clearly something interesting was happening out there, because BD stood motionless on the sill, optics fixed on the street below.

Sitting up had dethroned opening his eyes as far as impossibility went.  Most of Cal’s muscles just didn’t want to do as he asked.  Feeling like he’d just pulled four straight twelve-hour shifts in the shipbreaking yard, he pushed himself up on his elbows, planted a hand on the thin mattress, straightened his arm out, and fell back on his elbows again, panting.  He got BD’s attention, though – the droid whipped around, gave a happy trill, and jumped off to land right next to Cal, beeping and chirping up a storm.  “Slow down, okay?” Cal said, wincing as his voice clawed its way out of his throat.  He would’ve killed for a cup of water, but the table on the other side of his bed was empty aside from a syringe sealed in a clear packet and a small vial.  “I think only about three percent of my brain is working… what’s going on out there?”

Someone’s speeder caught fire, BD said dismissively.  Big commotion, people were heaping sand over it to try and put out the blaze, a Rodian he thought might be the owner was shouting and jumping around and waving their arms and generally being more entertaining than the actual fire.  It didn’t matter.  Cal was awake.

Between one heartbeat and the next, Cal remembered where he was and why.  More importantly, he remembered BD should not be here – he hadn’t been able to contact the Mantis before the surgery, and he’d only instructed Neyna to try calling them if he died.  So unless this was a very uninspired afterlife, BD shouldn’t have been here… yet he was, and now that Cal had propped himself up a little and could see it, somebody had tucked the yellow and orange blanket from his bed at home around him.  It almost matched the walls.  “Wait,” Cal said, half-expecting BD to dissipate like a dream, “how are you here?”

BD gave him the funniest look a droid could manage and said he’d come on the Mantis, obviously.

“But you –” Cal broke off as the center of the room suddenly lit up green.  For a split second, he saw flames springing from the stone floor, a constellation of bright green sparks flooding together like a firework in reverse, and then it was gone, leaving Merrin behind.

She looked almost as tired as Cal felt.  There were dark smudges beneath her eyes, and her hair was thrown back in a rumpled ponytail rather than her typical tidy bun.  They stared at one another, Cal blinked, and in that blink she’d moved and caught him in a hug that nearly lifted him clear off the bed.  He squeaked slightly, his arms automatically coming up around her back for support.  That was one way to sit up, he guessed.  He pressed his nose against her shoulder, shut his eyes, and just breathed, feeling her do the same.  She smelled like woodsmoke and the crisp incense she’d accidentally bought way too much of on Riflor and some expensive soap Greez had treated himself to and then let Merrin have because it gave him a rash.  Cal probably smelled like a medbay.

They were still clinging to one another when the door swished open and Greez cried, “Hey, that’s cheating!  Stealing the first hug just ‘cause you don’t need to use the door like the rest of us… let’s go, move it, let other people have a turn!”

Reluctantly, Merrin released him and stepped back, leaving Cal sitting at an awkward angle.  He was saved from falling right over again by Greez, who picked up where she’d left off with twice the arms and twice as much squeezing.  Cal normally preferred it that way – what good was a hug if it didn’t leave you feeling squashed? – but he ached, and the pressure was too much.  A faint gasp escaped Cal and Greez immediately dropped him.  Cal landed flat on the mattress and swore as the pain in his back flared so bright he almost blacked out.

“Sorry, sorry –” One of Greez’s hands landed in Cal’s hair, stroking it off his face; another rubbed his shoulder while Cal caught his breath and fought the tempting call of unconsciousness.  “It’s okay.  You’re okay, kid, you’re gonna be fine, I promise,” he rambled, like he was trying to reassure a distraught child.  Or a distraught Latero.  Cal jerked his chin in a nod, screwing his eyes shut, forcing himself to breathe deeply through the pain.  Why was he lying on his back?  That seemed like a terrible idea… though, to be fair, it was almost a given he'd started out in some other position.

Once the nauseous, lightheaded tide receded, Cal opened his eyes and met BD’s concern with a faint smile.  “You guys might have to help me sit up,” he admitted.  “I’m made of noodles right now…”

“Told ya if you ate too many you’d turn into them,” Greez said.  He might’ve been stronger than he looked, but Merrin still wound up doing most of the work.  “You’re gonna be weak for a while.  You’ve been in bed for about six days.”

“Six days?!” Cal repeated.  They got him propped up against the wall, and now he could see Cere, who’d slipped in behind Greez and apparently didn’t see the need to fling herself all over Cal; she gave him a tired smile which he was too stunned to return.  He thought it’d been just a night, maybe two.  His dreams had felt longer, but they always did.  Sometimes he lived years in an hour-long hyperspace nap.  For him to have slept for more than a week… well, that did explain the tubes, not so much the one in his arm as the one in a much more awkward place.  “What happened?”

“We were hoping you could tell us,” Cere said, sitting in the chair by the bed and placing a glass of water on the table.  Greez and Merrin simply sat on the bed, Greez close enough to give Cal’s thigh a pat, Merrin settling in at his feet, and BD-1 was next to his hip.  He’d been so afraid he would never see them again and they were here.

It took a worrying amount of effort not to burst into tears.  Cal chalked that up to all the drugs he was probably on.  And despite all those drugs, he felt like complete shit, so whether or not they were actually accomplishing anything... the jury was still out.  “How’d you guys find me?  Did Neyna comm you?  Wait, wait – they got that chip out of me, right?”  He was very much alive and not blown up, which meant the answer was probably yes, but there was a slim possibility they’d had to leave it.

“Yes, they did.  And no, it wasn’t her, exactly,” Cere said.  She nodded at the water and said, “You can have some, if you’d like – slowly, though,” she added, because Cal went for it without hesitation.  His mouth was drier than the badlands and tasted worse than Greez’s gorss steaks.  Three sips of plain, room-temperature water had never felt so good.

“Perhaps we should start at the beginning,” Merrin suggested.  “Back on Skaris, when you commed us because you had been attacked by a bounty hunter.  I…” She hesitated, and the cool mask slipped for just a second, vulnerability leaking through the gaps.  “I could not find you fast enough.  By the time I got to where you had been, you were gone.”

“‘s not your fault,” Cal yawned, rubbing at his eyes and flinching as he caught the bridge of his nose.  His face hurt.  He glanced at his hand, wrinkled his nose, wiped the flakes of skin on the edge of the mattress.  “I didn’t even know where I was.  I’m really sunburnt, aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Figures.”  Cal looked at BD-1.  “You’re okay?”

Fine, BD replied.  All the bounty hunter did was hit him with an electromagnetic pulse strong enough his systems shut down automatically to prevent damage.  He’d rebooted soon after, but both Cal and the bounty hunter were missing, and neither he nor Merrin could find anything that would tell them where they’d gone – there was nothing left behind except Cal’s commlink, plus some fresh scorch marks on the ground about a kilometer away where the ship had presumably been.

“So we thought, who keeps sending bounty hunters after us – or, specifically, after you without bothering to get the rest of us and rake in one helluva Imperial bounty?” Greez said.  “And, uh… well.  Just in case I haven’t said it recently, I’m so –”

“If you start apologizing, he won’t stay awake long enough for us to finish,” Cere interrupted.

“I’m awake,” Cal protested, forcing his half-lidded eyes open all the way, blinking until they focused.  And then he yawned again.

“Right, right… so, figured Sorc kriffin’ Tormo was at it again, did a quick flyover of the area to make sure we hadn’t missed a ship, and took off for Ordo Eris,” Greez said.  “Got there, started eavesdropping…”

“We did not hear anything about you,” Merrin continued, “but everyone seemed very excited about something on Nar Shaddaa which they apparently were not to discuss over the comms.  And since you clearly weren’t on their disgusting little base –”

“They sent you in, then?” Cal asked, picking up the water glass again and tentatively drinking a bit more.  His mouth and throat loved it, but his stomach was still making up its mind.

“I volunteered.  I regret it.  It smelled like nobody there had ever bathed in their entire life.”

“Anyway,” Greez cut in, “we headed for Nar Shaddaa.  Dropped outta hyperspace to grab some more fuel quick and all of a sudden someone starts pinging the Mantis’s comms.  Now, I don’t give that code out to anyone, so we got real excited for a sec, thinking it’d be you… except I answered and it disconnected after like, two seconds.  And then they called again, and disconnected again, and this happened like eight times before Cere managed to interrupt and ask them not to disconnect.”

Cal distractedly ran his fingers over BD’s head.  “But if it wasn’t Neyna… her mom?”

Another tired smile crept across Cere’s face.  “No.  Seems you made a friend while you were gone – a very taciturn friend who, I think, didn’t entirely understand how a comm works.”

“Topp?” Cal said incredulously, though he quickly realized it wasn’t inconceivable.  Topp had the limited processing power one would expect from a loader droid, but, minus the restraining bolt, he was quite capable of independent thought.  He’d stood right outside the room the last few times Cal had attempted contacting the Mantis.  If nobody else had input a different code after Cal finished, all he’d have to do was press the button.  Blowing out a breath, Cal sagged a little further down the wall, and Cere swiftly rescued the water before it ended up in his lap.  “And then?”

Cere shrugged.  “I asked if there was someone he wanted us to talk to.  I guess he got up and left, and we all sat there staring at one another for a good two or three minutes before he came back with Neyna.”  The smile slid off her face.  “She told us you were there, but hurt; she didn’t know exactly what was wrong, just that you were in surgery at the clinic.  Gave us a planet and some very approximate directions and we left as soon as the tank was full.”

“She is not joking about the ‘very approximate’ part,” Merrin added.  “We got lost trying to find this village.  From above, it blends in too well.”

“But we made it here, popped into the saloon, found out where the clinic was, and here we are,” Greez finished.

“I almost had a heart attack when I saw the medic,” Cere muttered.

“You and me both,” Cal said.  “He… wait, where is he?”

Outside, BD said, threatening to withhold bacta gel from anyone stupid enough to stand right next to the flaming vehicle.

“Right.” Cal scrubbed a hand over his face and wished he hadn’t as his skin began to burn from the friction.  “He’s okay, I guess… I don’t think he knows what I am.  I hid my lightsaber back in the saloon.”

“It’s in your room on the Mantis,” Cere said.

Cal opened his mouth to say oh, thanks, paused just a second to consider her words, and his stomach lurched.  “Neyna gave you the note I wrote.”

“Yes.”

“Did she tell you I said not to read it unless I was dead?!”

Cere hesitated for the tiniest fraction of an instant before repeating, “Yes,” and Cal knew she’d considered lying to him for that fraction of an instant.  He was glad she didn’t lie to him, but it wasn’t enough to overpower the rush of embarrassment and discomfort.  He’d poured his heart out in that stupid letter and really had not been prepared to ever discuss its contents.  It would’ve been one thing if he’d stuck to the apologies and generalized affection, kept it short and sweet.  Instead, he’d said a lot of things he usually kept to himself, like how he never said a word about it because he didn’t know how she’d feel, but Cere was the closest thing he had to a master now and he thought she’d done just as well by him as Master Tapal would have. 

Cal had written that note intending to get it back from Neyna and throw it away in the unlikely event he lived.  Suddenly, overwhelmingly self-conscious, he stared down at his blanket, picked some lint off it.  “You weren’t supposed to read that,” he mumbled.  “I didn’t want you to read it.  You shouldn’t –”

“Cal,” Greez said quietly.

He flashed Greez a scowl, but the Latero didn’t even blink.  He just looked weary and sad.  Cere’s expression, however, had gone stony.  She leaned forwards, rested her elbows on her knees, and looked him dead in the eyes.  “We got here and met Shae and Teeka,” she said, slowly, as if making sure Cal had time to contemplate every single word, “and they said we could go in and sit with you as long as we wanted, because neither of them expected you to survive.”

Fearing he was going to die and learning the trained professionals had thought so too were two different things.  The water crept up into his throat; Cal swallowed hard and dug his fingers into the blanket and, again, asked, “What happened?”

“You got an explosive slave chip implanted in less-than-sterile conditions,” she said, “and it’s also possible the ear infection spread, though less likely.  You had meningitis and a bloodstream infection.  They were almost out of antibiotics, worried about sepsis, and it’s not like there’s a pharmacy down the street.  Even if they got their hands on more, they didn’t know if it’d be enough.  You were not in good shape.”

Greez sighed, patted Cal’s leg.  “That’s why I left.  Came up to see you quick and then got right back in the Mantis and headed to – uh – whatever their capital’s called, I forget.  I could make the trip a whole lot faster than any of them could.  That medic gave me a shopping list and permission to sling his name around… guess he’s got clout in these parts, because the medcenter gave me what I asked for with only a little browbeating.  Kept saying I should just bring you there, but that place was an overcrowded mess… didn’t look any better than here, honestly, and.  Yeah.  We didn’t know if you’d live long enough to make it there anyway, and being surrounded by more sick people didn’t seem like a good idea…”

“You lived,” Merrin murmured.  Cal glanced at her.  Her gaze was a thousand systems away.  “Obviously.  But…”

“But we sat in here for two days and tried to figure out how to let you go,” Cere said tonelessly.  She met his eyes again, and now there was nothing in them but pain.  He’d hurt them all terribly – unintentionally, not even of his own will, but he’d done it nonetheless, and the urge to retch was getting worse and worse.  “So yes, I read your note.  If you died… I didn’t know I’d ever be able to, after that.”

Merrin straightened up and shook her head slightly, casting off her reverie.  “I did not.  I said I would not unless you were cold.  And Greez did not either.  He almost started crying instead, so…”

“And BD – well, his response contained more profanity than I’m comfortable repeating,” Cere said, over Greez muttering that a guy was allowed to shed some manly tears now and then, especially when one of his crewmates was actively dying in front of him, sheesh.  “I was the only one.”

Cal couldn’t look at her anymore.  He couldn’t look at any of them.  He got the profoundly unsettling feeling she and Merrin and Greez had all taken a step in a direction Cal couldn’t follow.  They had to understand it wasn’t his fault; he hadn’t asked for the missing spleen or the kidnapping or the slave chip or any of it.  If they decided they couldn’t face doing this again… Cal was a Jedi and knew he needed to value the time he had with his family without clinging to them.  Why, then, was the thought of the others leaving him as frightening as the prospect of dying meaninglessly thanks to some random infection?  He was being possessive.  He hated himself for it.  Looking at BD-1 seemed like neutral territory, so he stared down at the little droid, willed his turbulent emotions to settle before they overflowed.  “Didn’t I tell you to stop swearing so much?”

He would do that, BD said brightly, when Cal did the same.

While appreciated, his cheer failed to dispel the oppressive melancholy suffocating the room.  Cal could hardly breathe for it.  Greez was intently studying the blanket like he hadn’t seen it a million times before.  “But,” Cal began, and almost cringed at how small and fragile his voice sounded, “I got better.”

“You did,” Cere agreed.  “After the first two days, you turned a corner, started improving.  You were slowly beginning to wake up instead of slipping further into a coma.  Shae finally said he thought you’d pull through after all.”

He supposed that was a relief.  “Great,” Cal muttered, running a hand through his hair.  He dimly recalled a sponge bath at some point, and whoever had done it (he kind of hoped it was Teeka) had made an attempt at cleaning his hair, but it still felt slick and clumpy.  “Of course.”  A humorless laugh bubbled out of his mouth.  “I don’t just have an ear infection, I have meningitis.  It was Rimma Fever, now it’s pneumonia.  I’m not tired, I have Arreyelan flu.  What’s next?  I stub my toe and get Bothan Nether Rot?”

“How are those two things connected?” Merrin wondered.  She crawled up the bed to sit next to him so they were shoulder to shoulder, BD caught in between her leg and his.  “Actually, no, do not tell me.  I really don’t want to know how one contracts something called Nether Rot.”

“No, you don’t,” Greez said.  He moved a little closer too, laid two hands on Cal’s knee, one atop the other.  “Come on, Cal, you’re okay.  We’re not mad at you or anything, it was just… a tough week.”

Even Cere got up from her chair and sat on the edge of the bed.  Belatedly, Cal realized they were looking at him like that because he was crying.  He hastily rubbed at his face again, ignoring the stinging sunburn, tried to get himself back under control.  He hated crying in front of people.  The tears wouldn’t stop coming, though, no matter how foolish he felt for shedding them – he was alive and his friends were all here and that karking chip was out of his back and he was okay, everything had turned out fine –

Through blurry eyes, he saw Cere hold out an arm.  Cal tipped forwards and buried his face in her shoulder, and she wrapped him up tight, one hand on his head, the other on his back, well above the incision.  “Sorry,” he mumbled into her shirt.  He reached blindly, felt BD press against his hand, felt Merrin’s leg resting alongside his own and Greez’s hands still on his knee.  “Sorry, I…”

“You don’t need to apologize for anything,” Cere said.  “This wasn’t your fault.”

“I should’ve just stayed on the Mantis… I didn’t even really want to go, I felt like crap, but I was stubborn…”

“Kid, there’s no way you coulda known we’d been tracked,” Greez pointed out.  “None of us knew.  I figured you’d either be fine, or at worst you’d overexert yourself, and then maybe next time you’d be more careful.  Who was thinking ‘oh yeah, some kinda lunatic bounty hunter who sticks explosives in his bounties so they don’t run away is looking for you’?”

“When aren’t there people looking for me?” Cal said, wiping his cheeks with a palm, forehead still pressed to Cere’s shoulder.  Crying took way too much energy to keep up for long and he was already running dry.  He didn’t pick his head up, though – Cere would probably let go of him then and he wanted her to hold him for a little bit longer.  Until now, he hadn’t even realized how afraid he was they’d be angry at him for this mess.  “I meant I’m sorry for almost dying and scaring you…” He managed a watery chuckle.  “Scaring myself.  I – I know what I said about not being afraid of dying, but I really don’t want to die.  Especially from something like this.”

“Well, we’d like it if you didn’t die either,” Greez huffed.

If only it was as easy as just not dying.  Suffering a fatal infection stemming from an ingrown toenail was, unfortunately, a possibility.  “Did you bring… my meds?”  It took a minute for the right words to come to him.  “Been off them a while.”

“They’re on the ship too,” Cere said, rubbing her hand in small circles between his shoulder blades.  “We’ll see what the medics say – you’re not supposed to take them on an empty stomach, and I’m not sure you’ve been cleared for anything but water yet.”

“Mm.”

“He’s gonna fall asleep on your shoulder in a minute, Cere,” Greez predicted, amused.

Cal thought about turning his head and sticking out his tongue, but he was pretty sure that urge was the drugs talking too.  Usually he had a little more class than that.  Just a little.  Cere was nice and warm, besides.  “‘m awake,” he murmured.

“Barely.”  Merrin poked his arm.  “Do you want to lie down?”

“…yeah.”  He was so floppy and uncoordinated he couldn’t be much help.  Cere and Merrin got him laid out, though, settled on his side so he wasn’t putting extra pressure on his back, the blanket tucked around him and BD nestled against his stomach.  “If I wake up and this was all a dream,” Cal said, his eyes fluttering shut against his will, “I’m gonna be pissed…”

“Someone’s been staying here every night, even after the medics figured you’d be okay.  When you wake up, it’ll be ‘cause I’m in that other bed nobody’s using, snoring my head off,” Greez said, squeezing Cal’s shoulder.

“You will not,” Merrin said.  “You slept here last night; it’s my turn.  And I do not snore.”

“You do sometimes,” Cal slurred, and drifted off to her indignant protests.

Chapter Text

“Oh, you’re awake.”  Shae came barging into the room the next day without knocking or so much as a ‘good morning’.  Cal, lying on his stomach and only about forty percent conscious, turned his head to the other side so he could watch the clone bustle around, checking monitors and hooking up IV Bag #1,000,004.  He hadn’t actually seen Shae since he’d been sedated for surgery – after he’d dealt with whatever happened outside with the fire, Shae left Cal’s care to Teeka for the night and, the droid said, went to get a full eight hours of sleep for the first time in over a week.  Cal couldn’t really begrudge him that.  And Shae’s absence meant Teeka was the one who’d sponge-bathed him again after ‘breakfast’ (tea, since he was still on clear liquids only), which was the least embarrassing option.

“Can I leave yet?” Cal asked.

“Do you think you can leave yet?” Shae said sweetly.

“…no.”

“There’s your answer.”  He drew the blanket and sheet down to change the dressing on Cal’s back with practiced efficiency.  “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, by the way… I haven’t lost a patient in almost a year and you tried real hard to break that streak,” he said.  “Now, you might be thinking, ‘Shae, you live in Harlan, which has a population of fifty-one, and even adding all the homesteads and moisture farms a hundred kilometers in every direction, that’s still only about two hundred people’, and you would be correct!  I don’t get too many patients trying to die on me.  However, seeing as I’m surrounded by absolute idiots who think coming real close to gawk at the burning speeder is a great way to spend an afternoon, I figure it’s a pretty impressive record.”

Cal was too tired to follow all that.  “Mmhm.”

“At least pretend to listen.”  Shae huffed, pulling the blanket back up.  “So, you want the details now, or when you’re a little more conscious?”

“Might as well just get it over with,” Cal murmured.  “How’d the whole… chip thing go?”

“Well, I won’t lie, it was stressful.  And you, kid, you’re the luckiest bastard I’ve ever met – we’re pretty sure that chip was never anchored to anything because this dumbass didn’t actually know what he was doing.  Just opened you up and jammed it in there.  You could’ve been blown to pieces by sitting down a bit too fast.  Never heard that kind of language from Denise before.  Arm,” Shae said, and Cal obligingly held out his left arm, closing his eyes so he didn’t have to watch the needle poke at his elbow until Shae hit a vein.  Teeka could’ve done it faster, but she was across the hall, recharging.  “Had a hell of a time finding the damn thing.  And we didn’t really want to sit there with that incision wide open, but until Teeka got the tweezers on it in just the right way not to trigger any sensors…”

“What happened to it afterwards?”

“We couldn’t deactivate it, so Teeka sped out onto the landing and threw it behind the clinic, since there’s nothing back there,” Shae said.  “It blew the second it hit the ground.  Be glad that wasn’t your spine; I’m still amazed you were running around with the chip loose and nothing happened.”  Cal opened his eyes when he felt the needle disappear and saw Shae shaking his head, setting a few vials of blood on a tray.  “Then you had bacteremia and meningitis, you overachiever, but I heard your friends filled you in on that… you’ve also got some incredible bruises shaped like seat restraints.  Minor renal trauma from that blow to the kidney you mentioned – not too bad, improving, but we’re keeping an eye on it anyway.  We dunked your hand in a bit of bacta for a couple hours, too, since the skin around the ports for your prostheses was all bloody and raw.  Haven’t noticed any problems there since, but if the fingers themselves are damaged, you’re gonna have to find a specialist to fix them; I don’t repair cybernetics.  By the way, did you know you had blobs of metal embedded in your legs?  We removed them.  You’re welcome.  And the ear infection’s clearing up.  Speaking of, I need you on your left side.”

Groaning slightly, and with some assistance, Cal did as he was told.  He tried not to cringe at the feeling of bacta dripping into his right ear, muffling half of his already-iffy hearing down to near silence; Shae rolled up a small wad of cotton and pressed it into Cal’s ear canal to keep the bacta from leaking out immediately.  “Okay, that’s the last time we’ll do that,” the medic said (a bit louder) as Cal wriggled onto his back.  “The eardrum might take a few more weeks to fully heal, but the bacta should help it along.”

“How much longer do I have to stay here?”

“This course of antibiotics is ten days – you’ve been on it for eight –”

“Eight?” Cal repeated, brow furrowing.  “The others said they’d been here six days yesterday… or, wait –”

“Yeah, and they got here about a day after you showed up at my clinic.  So we’re on day eight; depending on how you’re doing once this course is done, we’ll decide whether or not you need more.”

Cal had a feeling he’d be here a while.  His poor, ragged immune system rolled over and died for a simple earache – something like meningitis had to be thoroughly eradicated before they could risk stopping the antibiotics.  “Can I at least get up soon?  I could probably make it to the ‘fresher myself…”

Shae looked down at him and pursed his lips, and the expression made him look so much like Fins Cal’s ribcage squeezed around his heart.  “Ask me again in an hour or two after I’ve run your bloodwork, and if you can stagger to the ‘fresher and back without too much assistance, then we’ll start getting you up.  Until then, you’ll have to cope with some mild indignities,” Shae said, moving down to the foot of the bed and folding back the covers.  “But, seeing as you’re awake and complaining about it…”

Doubting Shae would be calling it mild if their positions were reversed, and also fully aware his gelatin legs were quite happy to stay where they were, Cal shut his eyes again and pretended to be elsewhere throughout the rest of Shae’s ministrations.  At least Merrin had already gone back to the Mantis for a shower and some breakfast.  She’d been curled up in the other bed every time Cal jolted awake from a nightmare he couldn’t remember, groggy and achy, and checked to be sure he hadn’t simply dreamed her presence.  BD-1 was there too, tucked to his side, and unlike Merrin, he didn’t snore.

“Little bit of discomfort,” Shae warned – Cal tensed automatically, which probably didn’t help – but it was over quick, and much less painful than getting kicked in the groin.  “All right, you’re set… fed, medicated… anything else you need before I leave?  Someone’s gotta go make sure all the morons who got themselves burned yesterday are healing.”

“Mm… nah, I think I’m good.”

“Your friends should be back any minute; one of them can grab Teek if there’s a problem while I’m out – oh, right.”  Shae walked towards the door.  “You’ve got a visitor.  Come on, big guy.”

When Cal reopened his eyes, Topp was leaning down to peer through the doorway.  Cal hadn’t expected him – all he’d heard of the loader droid since waking was that he’d apparently been roped into helping Neyna at the saloon again – but smiled sleepily nevertheless, beckoning him over.  “Hey,” he yawned.  “How’ve you been?”

Topp drifted over and then just looked at Cal.  “I’m okay, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Cal said.  “Should thank you for that… if you hadn’t kept trying to call my ship, they wouldn’t have known where to find me, and Greez couldn’t have gone for extra meds.  Thanks.”  He patted Topp’s leg, as that was the highest part of him he could reach without sitting up.  “Are you still helping Neyna?”  The droid nodded.  “She’s not working you too hard, is she?”  Now Topp shook his head.  “Okay, good.  Because if she does, you can stop.”

Another nod.  And then, haltingly imitating what Cal had done to him several times out in the badlands, so delicate Cal hardly felt it, Topp patted Cal’s chest.

“Thanks,” Cal said again, smiling at him.

Topp’s head abruptly swiveled towards the door.  A few seconds later, Merrin strolled in with BD on her shoulder; the little droid hopped down, scampered over to Topp, and beeped up at him inquisitively, asking how he was.  With the same slow, careful movements, Topp crouched and tapped a finger against BD’s head.  BD seemed to take that as a positive answer.  He jumped onto Cal’s bed, next, and asked him how he was.

“Not bad,” Cal yawned.  “So tired I’m not even bored with lying around yet…”

BD said that was either miraculous or very concerning.  Or possibly both.

“I do rest sometimes.”

“Not enough,” Merrin said, setting a steaming mug on the bedside table next to his cup of water.  Cal gave the mug a longing look for all of one second before realizing it was caf and losing interest.  He still didn’t like caf much, and it probably wasn’t part of his approved liquid diet right now anyway.  Merrin turned to Topp.  “If you would like, Marssiah wants to move her speeder – or what’s left of it – now that it is no longer in danger of exploding or catching fire again.  She needs a few –” was as far as she got before Topp did a prompt one-eighty and walked straight out of the room, stooping slightly to get beneath the doorframe.  “Okay,” Merrin said, glancing at Cal.  “I tried to phrase it as a request…”

Cal shrugged a shoulder.  “For better or worse, he’s a loader droid – built and programmed for labor.  He’s happy when he’s being useful.”  And Cal knew that for a fact, thanks to the stark difference between the echoes when Topp was working at the first dock, when he’d felt valuable and satisfied with his job, and the later ones with the restraining bolt and then Quince.

BD-1 could relate.  He enjoyed fulfilling his purpose as an explorer, he explained, but as he had a more developed personality matrix and significantly more processor power too, he also found he enjoyed music, making Greez’s day a little more surreal, and seeing interesting paintings of himself.  Hint, hint, he added, which made Cal snicker.

“Hm.”  Merrin took her caf, drank some, gave Cal an expectant look.  “According to Teeka, you are supposed to be sitting up more.”

“I know, I know.”  Seven days in bed hadn’t done his muscles any favors.  He needed to sit up so he could prove he was strong enough to stand up later.

“Sit up.”

“Working on it,” Cal said.

Three sips of caf later, Merrin said, “You haven’t moved.”

Cal sighed.  “Merrin, my head is still killing me.  My back hurts.  I just had a tube removed from a place no man should have a tube.  Give me a break, okay?”  But he started struggling upright, this time without any help except from BD, who (despite his best efforts) wasn’t a whole lot of help.  Cal appreciated it anyway.  And he did manage to sit up, though he was swimming in sweat afterwards and had to lean against the wall.  “Oog.”

“Oog yourself.”  Merrin sat down next to him, stretching out her legs, providing a convenient shoulder for him to rest his head upon.  All he had to do in return was put up with the smell of the caf. 

“Shush.  Where are Cere and Greez?”

“They should be on their way soon.  It was their turn to scrub the Mantis while you were napping.”

“Get all the graffiti off yet?”

“Most of it,” Merrin sighed.  “I still think we should’ve left it that way…”

Cal dozed as they waited for the rest of their crew.  He’d just awoken from a nap not half an hour ago, but he was ready for another – a day or two more and he suspected his lack of energy would start driving him mad, as it usually did when he was sick.  Merrin drank her caf; BD took up his favorite position on the windowsill and provided a running commentary as several locals and Topp tried to remove the burnt-out remains of Marssiah’s speeder.  Whatever experimental fuel mixture she’d modded the thrusters to run on had blazed so hot it’d melted the sand beneath the vehicle into glass, which was apparently impeding the process.

Eventually, Cere came shuffling in with her own mug of caf, followed soon by Greez, who was grousing under his breath about all this sun being terrible for his skin.  Cal roused himself enough to mumble, “There’s sunblock in my cabin, if you want it.”

“Already raided it.  Now I smell like a buncha citrus fruits having an orgy.”  Greez hoisted himself to sit up on the end of the bed while Cere took the chair.  “So, kid, you gonna finish that story or not?”

“Mm.  One sec.”  Cal opened his eyes and blinked hard a few times.  Last night, after waking again, he’d tried to explain to the others what’d happened to him between comming Merrin on Skaris and winding up at the clinic, but he couldn’t remember saying much and suspected he’d not gotten very far.  “Where’d I leave off?”

“You met the bounty hunter,” Cere prompted, “and he told you about the chip.”

“Right, okay.  I think I fell asleep for a long time after he left; I didn’t want to, but I didn’t feel well at all…”

Piece by piece, with few interruptions, he went through the rest of his captivity, his escape from the cell, the White Spark crashing.  Greez looked extremely smug when Cal said he’d actually paid attention to Greez’s lectures and subsequently knew how to crash.  His arduous trek across the hot, dry badlands got sympathetic winces from everyone but Merrin, who was built to endure heat and opined it did not sound too awful, though she admitted she wouldn’t want to do it while seriously ill, either.  He glossed over every time he’d feared he was going to die out there.  Cal had just reached his encounter with the raider gang when they were interrupted by Teeka rolling in.  “Ah, you’re awake!” she said happily, skidding to a halt at the foot of the bed.  “And sitting up!  Excellent!  How are you feeling?!”

“About the same as earlier,” Cal said.  He pressed a palm into one eye for a moment.  “Head’s really hurting again.”

“It’s too soon for more ibuprofen!  If you still require it in forty-nine minutes, however, I will bring you another dose!”  Cere and Greez scooted out of the way so the droid could do her usual check of Cal’s temperature and blood pressure.  Neither Merrin nor BD bothered, so Teeka worked around them.  “I can also bring you more tea, if you’re hungry!”

“Maybe in about an hour, when I can have more ibuprofen, I guess… hey, if we brought tea from our ship, would you make that for me?”

“Certainly!” Teeka chirped.  “When you require my assistance, I will be down the hall in the office!”  With that, she zipped out of the room.

Cal waited for her to get far enough away she probably wouldn’t hear before he said, “The tea they have here is the blandest, weakest crap I have ever tasted.  Do we have any of the good Chalactan tea left?”

“Should be enough for a few more cups, at least,” Cere said.  “Want me to bring some later?”

“Please.  I’m not allowed to have milk yet, so it’ll be spicy as hell, but I don’t even care right now.  I want it to hurt.”  Cal caught Greez’s expression and grinned.  “I’m joking.  I just need something with actual flavor.”

“I can tell you’re feeling better,” Cere mused, moving her chair back a bit and propping her feet up on the bottom rail of the bed.  “Last night you barely even noticed what they were giving you to drink, and now you have opinions about the tea.”

“Still exhausted, though,” Cal grumbled.  “Okay, so there were twelve – no, sorry, eleven bikes.  Nifa was riding with Terro, then… I kinda got the impression they were brother and sister, but I could be totally wrong about that.”

Since he’d already covered the most harrowing part of the story, the others were a lot more engaged as he continued – BD made appreciative noises when Topp concussed Bit for kicking Cal, Merrin and Cere occasionally interrupted with questions, Greez guffawed as Cal told them about ending the potential fight between the two groups of raiders really quickly.  “Not much else happened after that,” Cal said once he’d reached the end of his brief acquaintance with the raiders.  “We took the leftover speeder and followed the directions Aja gave us.  Topp did some of the driving so I could sleep.  I threw up a bunch of times because I felt like someone was crashing a freight train into my skull.  Speeder ran out of fuel, but we were in walking distance of Harlan by then, so we got here, stopped at the saloon, I tried to comm you guys.  And once Shae returned, I met him and got prepped for surgery and… that’s it.”

“And you wrote us a soppy letter,” Greez added.

Cal glared at him.  “Which you weren’t supposed to read.”

“I didn’t!  Just her,” Greez said, flapping a hand at Cere, who looked unrepentant.  “I only know it was soppy ‘cause she got real emotional and left the room.”

Cal’s ears went hot.  He knew he’d been incredibly maudlin in that letter, because he’d expected it would only be opened if he died; did they really have to rub it in?  He cast Cere a sidelong look to remind her of his displeasure, which didn’t seem to faze her.  “We love you too,” was all she said.

Now his entire face heated up, though mostly from pleasure this time.  He picked at invisible lint on the blanket for a minute to get the blush under control (being so pale had considerable downsides), then said, “Uh.  While I’m awake… I think we need to talk.  Since we didn’t get to back on Skaris.  I mean –” he glanced from Cere to Greez, “I need to talk to you two, specifically.”

Merrin huffed.  “I do all this work being a pillow and I am getting snubbed for it,” she complained.

“I didn’t –”

“Well, in that case, I quit.”  Very gingerly, she inched out from beneath Cal, who lifted his head off her shoulder as soon as she started moving; she stood up and stretched out her arms, then added, “Come, BD.  As long as we are being cruelly shunned, there’s no need for us to stay.”

BD pointed out they hadn’t been bodily removed from the room, or even asked to leave.  Merrin nodded, said, “Yes, exactly.  How dare they exclude us,” and held out a hand so he could climb to her shoulder, which he did regardless of his confusion.

“You really don’t have to –”

“Terrible, all of you,” Merrin declared as she and BD headed for the door.  “We shall go down to the saloon and eat by ourselves.  Maybe Neyna will entertain us with more stories of the time she was a raider.  Cere, Greez, I’ll bring you some food when we come back.”

“If whatever she’s making has onions on it, can you ask her to go light on mine?” Cere called over her shoulder.  “Please.  My digestive system will thank you.”

Once the two of them had left, Cal looked at Greez.  “I think she’s hanging out with you too much.”

Greez snorted.  “Well, what else is she gonna do, hang out with you?  You’ve practically been comatose for more than a week.  Besides, you get her into bad habits, like spray-painting my ship…”

Shrugging, Cal tried to pull his thoughts into order, decide exactly where he wanted this discussion to go, but before he got anywhere, they were interrupted by voices in the corridor.  A second later, Teeka rolled past (backwards), followed by a Human woman carrying a small boy Cal recognized as the kid who’d put a bunch of stickers on Topp.  Teeka was effusively explaining the benefits of vaccination against something called ‘bleeding cough’.  According to her, it was spread by the local scavenging birds, which liked to divebomb and bite people.  Cal hoped they stayed the hell away from him.  She quieted once they entered the examination room and shut the door, though he could still hear her indistinct voice carrying through the walls.

“Hey,” Greez said abruptly, “you remember like, a million years ago, when you had pneumonia and I told you that story about the diplomats who brought me a roast?”

“The one they cooked alive?”

“Yeah, exactly.  That.”  Greez pointed towards the exam room.  “That is what the lady sounded like when she was telling me all about how they horribly killed some poor animal.  Happy as can be.  Talk about creepy.  But if I’d said that, Wroshyr-Tree-Arms would’ve torn my head off and mounted it on the viewport like some kinda morbid hood ornament.”

Thinking of Wroshyr-Tree-Arms and the shirt he’d left behind on the Mantis, which Cal had long ago claimed to sleep in, Cal glanced down at the loose gown he still wore and said, “You think they’d mind if I changed into my pajamas?”

“Ask later,” Cere advised, removing her feet from the railing and sitting up straight.  She couldn’t have said get a move on any clearer without actually saying it, so Cal tried again to figure out how to start.  The issue wasn’t quite as clear-cut as it’d seemed back on Skaris.

Finally, he began, “I meant it when I said I wasn’t going to live in a bubble.”  He glanced at Cere, who nodded slightly as if to acknowledge she recalled that conversation.  “This – my immune system being kinda worthless and saddling me with every germ that comes knocking – isn’t going to change.  And I’m trying to be careful, and I should maybe try a little harder, but sometimes I don’t even do anything and…”

“You get kidnapped by a guy who thinks explosive slave chips are the season’s hottest fashion accessory?” Greez filled in dryly.

“He also liked ponchos with color combinations that probably aren’t legal on other planets,” Cal muttered.  He wasn’t keeping that one.  Too many bad memories linked to it now… and it was karking hideous.  “But yeah.  That sort of thing doesn’t happen much.  Usually it’s just stuff like the ear infection or the flu and I’m willing to take those risks, okay?”

Greez held up a hand and said, “Okay, is this the point where I butt in and say when you take those risks, you’re also making us deal with the possibility – even if it’s small – of you getting real sick and dying?”

“I know.  But I could get sick and die from a cold one of you passes on.”  Cal drew his knees up, braced his arms on them, winced when his lower back pulled.  “What we do… resisting the Empire… it’s important, and I’m going to keep doing it unless I’m really too sick.  But… I want to be able to say ‘I don’t feel well’ and not expect you to use that against me.”

Greez opened his mouth again, brows knitting; Cere shot him a quelling look, however, and he didn’t say anything.  “I suppose,” Cere said, “we were being too protective on Skaris, you felt it wasn’t necessary, and that’s caused problems.”

Cal had thought Greez would be the first one to concede they’d gone too far.  Cere was usually a little more firm in her convictions.  “It wasn’t like we were infiltrating an Imperial base,” he said, “and the whole plan would’ve gone up in flames if I’d gotten too sick to continue halfway through.  I did kinda feel like you were overstepping – sorry I threw such a fit over it, though, that wasn’t necessary – so I wasn’t honest about how I felt, and when I did feel worse, I went to join you anyway, because… I don’t know.  Like I’d be setting some kind of precedent otherwise, where I’d just give in when you wanted me to.  It sounds pretty stupid now.”

“So we kinda screwed up,” Greez summarized.

“…yeah, I guess.  I think so.  I’ll admit I’m not always great about knowing my own limits.”  In Cal’s defense, his limits were all over the board sometimes.  At the moment, they were ridiculously low; he’d been sitting up for less than twenty minutes and he was already so tired he could’ve fallen asleep if he closed his eyes for longer than it took to blink.  “But I want to make those decisions for myself anyway.”

“I think I understand,” Cere said.  “You’d prefer it if we didn’t overrule you unless we genuinely think it’s necessary.”  Cal nodded.  “And… it wasn’t, back on Skaris.  Like Greez said, disregarding the bounty hunter we had no way of knowing about and no reason to expect, the worst you could’ve done was felt too sick to continue.  We crossed a line and I’m sorry about that.  You’re not a child, I shouldn’t treat you like one.”

“But we are gonna overrule you if you want to do something dumb like infiltrate an Imperial base while you’ve got a high fever and vertigo,” Greez added.  “No way that’s ending well.  Unless, you know, a whole planet of people are going to die if you don’t… then we’d have to discuss it first.”

Cal shrugged again, murmured, “Eventually there might be a time where I have to do something like that.  My spleen’s not spontaneously growing back.  I just have to live with it.”  He picked at the tape securing the intravenous line to his arm and wryly added, “Can’t promise I’ll always be happy about it, though.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be, so I guess that’s fair.”  Greez propped his cheek up on his fist, regarded Cal for what felt like a long time.  “It’s hard, huh?”

“…yeah,” Cal said quietly, peeling away the tape millimeter by millimeter until Cere prodded his shoulder and ordered him to stop that.  He dropped his hands to the blanket and started worrying the edge of that instead.  “For years I thought, well, I was sick a lot as a kid, this isn’t that different… and Bracca sucked, so that was probably why everything seemed worse.  But it’s just going to be like this forever… yeah, it’s hard.  Doesn’t mean I want to be babied,” he quickly added.

“No, clearly not,” Cere said.

“Sometimes it’s okay for you guys to step in, though.  Like if I’m really sick and not being rational at all.”  Even Cal didn’t trust himself to make good decisions while in the throes of fever-induced delirium, or if he’d been awake coughing for four days and was so sleep-deprived he kept forgetting what he was doing in the middle of doing it.  “I mean – you are the ones with the burden of looking after me when stuff like that happens.”

“It’s not a burden,” Greez muttered.  “You’re my friend.  I’d do it for Cere or Merrin too.  Dunno about BD – I don’t really get computers.”

“Responsibility, whatever.”

Cere put her hand on Cal’s shoulder, waited for him to look at her.  “There’s one thing we need from you, then,” she said.  “You touched on this before – you have to be honest with us about how you’re feeling.  Otherwise we’ll have a hard time figuring out when it’s appropriate to step in, and when we need to step back.”

“My head’s about to split open, my back hurts all the time, and I’ve been sick to my stomach since I woke up yesterday, thanks to the antibiotics,” Cal listed flatly.  “I don’t think there’s a single cell of bacteria left in my entire body.  Including the good stuff.”  He did not look forward to solid food.  His digestive system was a mess.

Smiling slightly, Cere said, “I didn’t mean right now, but thanks, I guess?”

“Be glad I left out all the really gross details…” Cal trailed off into a massive yawn.  “I’m gonna… lie down again.”  He promptly did so, curling up on his right side so he could still face Cere, who kept a hand on his shoulder until he was settled.

“We’ll probably need to talk about this again at some point,” she said, “but that was a good start.”  She moved her hand to his forehead (there was no way she didn’t know how much he liked that), then brushed it over his hair, which was almost clean.  Cal had been a more active participant in today’s sponge bath.

“I said once I was tired of being sick,” Cal murmured, “but I’m kinda sick of being tired, too.”

Greez slid off the edge of the bed and tucked the blanket securely around Cal with the ease of someone accustomed to relocating his restless crewmate from the deck to the bunk.  “You almost died, Callie.  Give yourself a break.”

“I thought I was gonna die out there… and none of you would ever find out what’d happened to me.”

“Like I woulda stopped looking,” Greez said.  He rubbed Cal’s shoulder.  “You’re alive.  You’re gonna recover.  Soon as you’re discharged from the clinic, you’ll be back on the Mantis, running off half-cocked with grand plans to piss off the Empire and scaring the living daylights outta me.”

“Mmm.”  Cal couldn’t think of anything better.  Shitty immune system or not, he was pretty happy with the way things were going these days.

“Okay, he’s half-asleep already,” Greez said to Cere.  “You wanna go over to the saloon and spare Merrin the trouble of bringing back our lunch?”

“Wait,” Cal interrupted before Cere could reply, putting in the effort to force his eyes open, “lunch?  I just had breakfast.”  He drank his pathetic excuse for a cup of tea, had a bath, dozed for a bit, and then Shae showed up.  It couldn’t be lunchtime already.

“We got thrown out so you could bathe about… five hours ago,” Greez said.

“…that nap was only supposed to be an hour or so.”

Greez patted Cal’s shoulder again.  “Ah, we’ve all been there… decide to stretch out on the sofa after lunch, thinking, ‘oh, I’ll close my eyes for twenty minutes, then I’ll be recharged for the rest of the day!’  And then you fall into the fifth dimension where time has no meaning and wake up because someone –” he sent Cere a significant look, “says you need to cook dinner before the kids start chewing on the bulkheads.”

“Sorry,” Cere said.  “Next time I’ll just make it myself.”

“Like hell you will!” Greez said, alarmed.  Cal shut his eyes and waited for sleep to overtake him, listening to Greez’s muttering as he and Cere slipped out of the room.  “You oughtta be on Coronet Cookoff.  At least Cal has the excuse of just being a little sprout when he wound up on Bracca, where they apparently think kriffing polystarch qualifies as food…”

Chapter Text

“Okay,” Cal said, lowering himself to his knees next to the crate, “let’s see what we’ve got here.”

Merrin reached into the box and removed a can of red spray paint, gave it an experimental shake.  “We are nearly out of this one,” she said.  She did the same with a darker shade, then added, “This one too.”

“That’s because you used almost all of the red writing expletives on the Mantis,” Cal reminded her.

She sighed wistfully.  “Those were good times…”

He had to agree.  They were over, however; as of yesterday, every bit of graffiti had been scraped from the Mantis’s hull, leaving it brilliant silver in Zemney Five’s sunlight.  Cal actually couldn’t look at the ship for long without giving himself a headache.  Topp, the recipient of the remaining paint stripper, was not quite so blinding as he leaned over and peered at the crate.  Cal glanced up at him, said, “Guess it doesn’t matter much… you said you don’t want to do red again, right?”

Topp nodded, very delicately taking a can and staring at it curiously.  BD jumped from Cal’s back to the rim of the box and said, in his opinion, red was the best possible color for a paint job, closely followed by blue. 

“Well, you’re not the one getting painted today,” Cal said.  After the Mantis was finished, Merrin had cleaned what remained of Topp’s old paint (half of which apparently just flaked off with one brush of the steel wool, no chemicals required) and they’d secured reluctant permission to work on his rust patches inside the clinic, as Cal hadn’t been allowed out yet.  A bit of the rust remover Greez kept on hand, some grinding, and he looked like a whole new droid.  He was moving like one, too.  They had also gathered all the oil they could find – Teeka kindly donated three entire jugs, as she didn’t see enough grime in her daily life to need a full bath every month – and while it wasn’t enough to give him a full bath, it would tide him over for a while.  Shae refused to allow them to use the clinic’s tub for that, so Merrin and Cere brought Topp out back to douse him good and Cal got stuck watching from a window, occasionally yelling down to work some more into his joints, and also pay close attention to the one knee he had trouble with.  BD claimed the tortured noises from that knee made him ache, and he didn’t even have pain receptors.

This morning, Cal had been cleared to go out behind the clinic too and finish what they’d started.  Accordingly, he and Merrin were both dressed in their sloppiest applying-or-removing-paint clothes.  Cal was so happy to be dressed, he didn’t even care he looked like a hobo.  He was dressed and wearing shoes and outdoors and, for the first time in over two weeks, not hooked up to an IV.  He would be later – a couple more nights of antibiotics, Shae had said, and then if his bloodwork was still clear and he had no symptoms, they could discharge him – but for now, he felt wildly happy.  There was no freedom quite like walking to the ‘fresher without dragging an IV pole.

Topp went through the entire crate, studying each color and replacing it exactly where he’d found it, ignoring only those few Merrin set aside as too close to empty for use.  Cal and Merrin got the dropcloth laid out so they wouldn’t be painting any sand onto him.  Before removing his old paint, she’d also painstakingly peeled away all the stickers that little boy had put on Topp’s leg.  Thankfully, they were the good plastoid kind that came off in one piece – he wanted to keep them, so they’d go back on once his paint was dry.  If he ever picked some paint.

Finally, the droid began selecting colors.  Cal watched him line up a row of dark blue, purple, and black, then turn towards him expectantly, and said, “You want those, huh?”  He took the blue paint, shook it, eyed Topp’s long frame.  “Like a gradient, from light – well, lighter – to dark?”

Topp nodded.  “How well is it going to blend?” Merrin asked.  “This paint does not like to be mixed.  I tried it when we painted the Mantis and I just made a mess.”

“You can fade one color into the next… it’s harder with spray paint, but it’s doable.  You want blue on the top and black on the bottom?” Cal asked, and Topp nodded again.  “Okay.  The purple section is going to be a little smaller than the others, since we don’t have as much and you’ll need two coats, but I can do it.  Ready?”

Merrin obligingly held up a few large sheets of flimsiplast, a roll of tape around her wrist, and began blocking off all the spots on Topp’s head they definitely did not want to paint over.  Cal put the lid on the crate, kicked it closer to use as a stepstool so he could reach Topp’s head, and, as soon as Merrin gave him the thumbs-up, got to work.

“You remember what I told you, right?” Cal said as he painted.  “You’re officially an employee now.  That means if you’re moving things or helping serve, she has to give you breaks – you don’t have to take them if you don’t want to, but she has to offer – and you get a full charge every night.  They’re gonna find you a datapad so you can communicate a little better.  And Shae says he’ll clean and oil you once a month like he does with Teeka.  He does her maintenance, too, so if you’ve got a problem, he’ll do what he can to fix it.”

Topp didn’t nod this time, probably because Cal was spritzing paint all over his head and he didn’t want it on his optics, but Cal was pretty sure he understood.  Neyna had stopped by the clinic yesterday (as she did most days, though not to see him) and stuck her head in the room, said hello, asked how he was doing.  Then she’d brought up the actual reason for her visit – “You know that droid of yours?  Not the little guy, the one you keep saying isn’t yours?”

“He’s not,” Cal had replied.  “What about him?”

“Any chance he could stick around when the rest of you guys leave?”  Neyna meandered over, flopped into the empty chair by his bed.  “He’s been a big help the past couple weeks.  I don’t mean that in a horrible exploitative way,” she added hastily.  “Ma’s already lit into me about that once… look, he hangs around in the saloon and as soon as I ask him to give me some help, he’s right there.  We gotta store a lot of stuff down in the cellar because we have no space upstairs, and Ma’s back has gotten so bad she’s not supposed to carry anything heavy at all anymore.  And, well.”  She waved her one arm.  “I can only carry so much.  We won’t talk about all the trays I’ve dropped… anyway, everyone else ‘round here likes him too, you know?  Just saying, if he’s not going with you…”

Cal absorbed all of that, then simply shrugged.  “You need to ask him,” he said.  “If he wants to stay, that’s up to him.”  It did sound like a better alternative to bringing him along when they left, which Cal had also considered.  Topp didn’t seem to enjoy violence, and he’d likely see a lot of it running with the Mantis crew.  And while Greez had taken to BD-1 eventually, he was kind of leery around a loader droid literally twice his size, so he wasn’t even sure Greez would let Topp come along.  “But if he says yes, you have to treat him properly.  The last few people didn’t.  No restraining bolts, ever.”

Neyna snorted, standing up.  “Do I look like the kinda girl who goes around with a restraining bolt in her pocket?  I don’t even have one.  Besides, he’s not dangerous – don’t really expect him to start decapitating my customers or anything.”  She’d paused for a second.  “Although, when it’s the middle of dinner rush and everyone’s whining because the topato hash is a little bit less spicy than it was yesterday, I’ve been tempted…”

So she’d gone and done exactly as he said, and Cal asked him too, later, and they both got the same answers: yes, he wanted to stay in Harlan.  Yes, he liked helping out in the saloon or the clinic or anywhere else he was needed – the people here were kind to him and appreciated his assistance.  No, he would not decapitate any of Neyna’s customers even if she asked nicely.  Neyna agreed to a few terms and promised to treat him well (and her mother would come after her with a meat tenderizer if she didn’t), and Cal felt good about leaving him here.  Not that Cal would be leaving yet – even once he was released from the clinic, they’d stick around a few more days to make sure he didn’t immediately relapse.  Shae wanted daily bloodwork a bit longer, too.  Cal felt less good about that, but he was trying not to be too annoyed by it.  Everyone was always going to get a little fussy when it came to his questionable health.  He would take it as a sign of love.

He’d just finished up the purple section and was spraying Topp’s leg plates, laying black paint on heavily at the bottom and going lighter and lighter as he approached the purple, when the rear door of the post slid open.  Cal glanced over his shoulder quick and saw Shae walking outside, squinting in the sunlight and hauling the clinic’s trash bins to the skip.  “Hey,” the medic said.  “That is… an interesting choice of color.”

“It’s the color of misery and suffering,” Merrin said.  “Or midnight.  A severe bruise… a tragedy… my soul when there’s just enough caf left for one person and Greez takes it without asking anyone else first… fresh brula fruit nectar.”

“Right,” Shae said, then wandered over to Cal and asked, “Where did you find her?”

“He didn’t,” Merrin said before Cal could answer.  “He played with forces he did not understand and spawned me from a dark ritual.  Now I am simply fattening him up to eat him.”

“…you know what, I can think of worse ways to go.”  Shae gave Cal a critical once-over.  “You’re gonna be working on it for a while, though.  Arm,” he said, and Cal obediently extended his left arm, letting Shae check his pulse and temperature.  “Feeling okay?  No dizziness, nausea, headache?”

“Nope,” Cal said honestly.  “Just tired.  As usual.”  He’d been going stir-crazy cooped up in bed for a week, though; he’d deal with the fatigue as long as he got to do something occasionally.  “Kinda hot.  I’ve got about an inch of sunblock on me.”

“Good… all right, I’ll give you another half-hour, then you get back inside and cool down and rest,” Shae ordered.  “Got it?”

“Yeah.”  It was so dry and sunny out Cal expected the blue paint to have dried to the touch already, so he could get the second coat finished in time.  He crouched to continue with the black paint.

“Good,” Shae said again.  He turned away and Cal heard him walk back towards the building, then stop.  “Hey, I was talking to Denise earlier and she wanted to ask – that guy who kidnapped you went to some serious effort to keep you from getting away.  If he really wasn’t trying to turn you into a slave, any idea what he was planning on doing with you?”

“Handing me over to his boss to claim a bounty?” Cal suggested.  “He was part of a crime syndicate that really, really doesn’t like me.  And I escaped from their base once, so.”

“Huh.  Must’ve been one hell of a deal.”  Shae threw open the lid of the skip, which smacked into the sandstone wall with a muffled clonk.  “Most people would’ve just gone for the Imperial bounty instead.  I hear that’s pretty sweet.”

Cal opened his mouth and promptly closed it again.  Slowly, he looked at Merrin – shielding Topp’s knee joint with a piece of flimsiplast, her eyes narrowing – and then stood up, eyeing Shae warily.  His lightsaber was on the Mantis, safe from prying eyes and of no help to him.  “What Imperial bounty?”

“The one on Jedi?  Come on, everybody knows they supposedly pay bank for one of you…” Shae dumped one of the pails into the skip, picked up the other, glanced back.  Cal stood perfectly still, waiting for something, but getting no warnings from the Force.  Merrin’s head was tilted to one side like she was contemplating how much effort it’d require to send Shae through the skip and the sandstone blocks.  Even BD, who’d been stationed safely upwind from the flying paint, skittered over and planted himself directly in front of Cal.  “…oh, wow.  You really thought I didn’t know.”  He emptied the other bin, seeming quite unconcerned.  Cal could still sense the sudden tension in him.  “Look, Jedi came to the medical station now and then.  One of them was an apprentice who’d gotten a leg blown off and had a bit of trouble adjusting to the prosthesis, so she was there the entire time I was.  Nice kid – always said if she couldn’t go back to the front, she’d be a medic or something instead, so she spent all her free time helping out.”  He shook himself slightly.  “You talk in your sleep, you know that?  And when you’re delirious.  Some of the stuff you said… I can put two and two together.”

“If you know what he is,” Merrin said, “and about the Imperial bounty, how do we know you have not contacted them and are just keeping us here long enough for someone to arrive?"

Shae looked at her like she’d completely lost her mind.  “I’m a clone who deserted from the GAR while the war was still going.  Even if they didn’t believe me and just sent some low-ranking desk drone to check, that person would probably recognize me.  Dunno what the Empire does to clone deserters and I’m not gonna find out, thanks.”  He looked to Cal, now.  “So… you pretend you never saw me, I pretend I never saw you.”

Cal held his gaze for a few seconds, then said to Merrin, “If he was going to turn me in, he would’ve been safest doing it about two weeks ago when I was alone and comatose and couldn’t fight back.”

“There you go,” Shae said, letting the skip slam shut.  “Half an hour.  Don’t make me come back out here.”

He was at the door and reaching to open it when Cal couldn’t help himself.  “Why did you guys do it?”

The medic turned back around.  “What?”

“The Purge,” Cal said, and watched Shae’s face go blank.  “There was no coup, unless you count whatever the hell the Emperor did.  We were just trying to get through the war with as many people alive as possible and we were slaughtered.”  His hand ached; he loosened his grip on the paint, relaxed his other fist.  “One minute the men in the 13^th are my friends, and the next they start shooting.  They killed my master.  He blew the ship up before he died and that’s the only reason they didn’t follow me to Bracca and keep shooting until I was dead too.  I was twelve.  Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know,” Shae said, which was about the most inadequate answer Cal could imagine.  But, for the first time since they’d met, there was something distant and confused and vulnerable in Shae’s eyes, in his entire aura.  It was so uncomfortable Cal had to pull away and shield himself.  Nobody could fake that level of hurt.  He truly didn’t know and it ate at him.  “I told you, I skipped town before the war ended… takes a while for news to make it all the way out here.  I knew it was over, but I didn’t find out the Jedi were dead until… two months later?  Three?  If it was… planned or something, and I guess it must’ve been, nobody bothered to tell me.  I don’t know.”

That didn’t make Cal feel any better.  For a moment there, he’d actually believed he might understand, even if he hated the answer… but he still had nothing.  “Oh,” was all he could say.

Shae shrugged a little bit, picking up the empty bins, avoiding Cal’s eyes.  “If I wanted you dead,” he finally offered, “I would’ve just done that.”  He opened the door.  “Half an hour,” he added, one more time, and shut the door again.

BD-1 turned around and nudged Cal’s shin, beeping quietly.  “Yeah, I’m okay,” Cal said, turning back towards Topp, who’d stood patiently the entire time.  “Sorry, didn’t mean to leave you hanging… let’s get this finished so you’re dry before the wind kicks up.”

It was hard to stay in a mood when he was outside and feeling better and giving Topp a paint job that even BD expressed envy over.  By the time he’d finished the second coat, the loader droid looked spiffy.  The paint covered up some uneven spots where he had needed to grind the rust out and one would have to pay close attention to realize Cal ran out of purple a little sooner than he thought he would.  He stepped back, surveyed his work.  “There you go,” he said, capping the nearly-empty black paint can.  “Still no wind – if you can stand out here for another hour or two, that’ll help cure the paint a lot faster and you won’t have to worry about it smearing or chipping.”

“Here, give me that.”  Merrin took the can and slotted it back into the crate.  “I will return everything to the Mantis.  It’s been almost half an hour and you look very tired.”

He was very tired.  At least he’d gotten something accomplished.  Topp had apparently taken his words to heart and remained on the dropcloth, still as a statue, though he did occasionally peer down at himself.  Cal thought they should find a mirror so he could get a proper look.  But that was for later – right now, it was a relief to climb the stairs and enter the cool, shady clinic.  He hit the ‘fresher, washed the paint from his hands, poured himself into bed, and closed his eyes… and then plunged into that timeless fifth dimension Greez had mentioned and slept for way too long.  When he woke, the room was full of shadows and the sky outside the window had darkened to a twilit bluish-purple, not unlike one-third of Topp.  Someone had turned out the lamp and covered him with his blanket.  He was actually too warm beneath it (stars, he loved not having a fever), so Cal kicked it to the side, basked in the air conditioning for a few minutes, and finally sat up.  BD-1, sitting at the foot of the bed, chirped a greeting.  “Hi,” Cal yawned, rubbing his eyes.  “What’ve you been up to?”

Not much, BD said.  He’d hung out with Merrin for a while, watched her glue the stickers back onto Topp’s leg.  Topp was now down in the saloon’s cellar, charging via a cable Senne had rigged up for him, and would begin his new job tomorrow once the paint was completely dry.  Even Neyna thought it was too cool to risk ruining.

“Good.”  Cal had enough of the blue and black left for a quick touch-up if it was necessary, but no more than that.  Still, he thought he’d gotten his money’s worth out of those spray paints… and he had a bunch left over yet.  He looked out the window, considered wandering over to the Mantis and seeing if Greez or Cere were there, but the overlong nap (and the hour spent in the blazing sun) had left him drowsy and a little weak.  They’d probably come to him anyway.  With that in mind, he propped himself up against the wall, a pillow cushioning that spot on his lower back he suspected would be sore for a while, and took the pad of flimsiplast and his pencils off the bedside table.

Cere and Greez arrived a bit later to find Cal drawing and BD watching curiously, complaining all the while because Cal refused to put him in this picture, even just tucked unobtrusively in a corner or something.  According to BD, all artwork was automatically a masterpiece if there was a droid in it.  His good-natured diatribe was silenced by Greez, who said, “Hey, kid, you hungry?  I’m gonna throw some gorss steaks in soon, bring ‘em up here so we can all eat together.”

“I hate your gorss steaks,” Cal said.

Greez’s jaw hit the floor.  Cal had a very strange sense of déjà vu.  The Latero spun around, sputtering, “You guys heard that, right?  Those words that just came outta his mouth?!  I didn’t hallucinate them?”

“Yes, I heard,” Cere replied.

“I heard it too.”  Merrin’s voice came from somewhere down the corridor.  “Disgusting.  Should I grovel for forgiveness on his behalf?”

Greez flung all four hands into the air.  “No!  Praise the ancestors, he finally karkin’ admits it!”

Cal put down the pencil he’d been using and sent Greez a deadpan look.  “So you’ve known all this time and you made me eat them anyway?”

“Yeah, ‘cause we had that whole chat once about speaking up when you need something and whatnot, remember?  I was waiting to see if it’d sunk in or if I had to tell you another depressing story from my childhood.”  Shaking his head, Greez folded his arms over his chest.  “Took you so long I started to think you’d just be stubborn forever.  Well, congrats – you can have something else next time.  Not this time, since you’re getting whatever Senne sends up anyway.”

“Probably nuna soup again,” Cal said.  The clinic didn’t have a kitchen (Shae’s itty-bitty flat on the top floor of the building apparently did, but just barely), so patients who had to stay got their meals from the saloon once they were allowed solid food.  Fortunately, Senne’s soup was good, because Cal ate a lot of it.  He couldn’t even look at anything too heavy or spicy while the antibiotics wreaked havoc on his digestion.

BD vocalized his disappointment they weren’t going to watch Merrin grovel for forgiveness on Cal’s behalf – he wasn’t sure she could pull it off.  He had a point, Cal thought.  Merrin was decidedly not the groveling type.  Neither Merrin nor Greez understood enough Binary yet to figure out what he’d said, but Cere did, chuckling as she sat down and Greez took the other chair they’d finally brought in and Merrin settled on the edge of the bed.  “What are you working on?” Cere asked, nodding at the flimsiplast.

Shrugging, Cal handed the pad to her.  She flipped it right-side-up and her expression immediately flattened out.  “Pretty,” Greez said, leaning in to see.  “Uh… what is it?”

“It’s the creche at the Temple,” Cere said, soft, with the slightest quaver on the last word.  She traced a fingertip around one of the windows stretching from floor to ceiling, lingered on the sunbeam like she could feel the heat.  Unless it rained, the creche had always been so bright they’d never turned the lights on until sunset.  “Where we lived when we were children.”  She blinked a few times, then gave the flimsiplast back to Cal, almost smiling.  “You’re very good at this, you know.”

Cal’s face instantly burned.  “I’m just screwing around,” he muttered.

Sighing, Merrin reached over and flicked him on the forehead.  “Learn to take a compliment, Cal.”

Wishing he didn’t blush so visibly, Cal busied himself with packing the colored pencils back into their box.  Cere wanted to twist the knife, though, because she added, “I also saw Topp when he was headed into the saloon.  The paint turned out nice.”

“Nicer than my poor ship,” Greez mumbled under his breath.

“Spray paint’s really not that hard to use,” Cal said.  “Just takes practice.  And, uh… let’s say I experimented with whatever mediums I could get my hands on as a kid… on a lot of different surfaces.”

“The walls,” Cere said knowingly, nodding.

“Walls.  Floors.  Doors.  A rug, because Suni dropped an entire bottle of juice on it once and the stain didn’t come out.  That time I tried the watercolors on Caleb’s bedsheets and he liked the effect so much he wouldn’t let anyone wash it off for three weeks.”  He shrugged again, slid the cover back onto the box as gently as possible.  It was old and had once been the property of a very enthusiastic little girl; it remained intact on a prayer and the occasional application of wood glue.  The pencils would just be stubs eventually (soon, given how often Cal used them), but he intended to keep the box as long as possible.  Cere and Greez and BD-1 had conspired to get him some colored pencils in the hopes Cal would actually try to relax sometimes.  It was more than that, though – it was a reminder they’d listened the one or two times Cal had mentioned liking to draw, proof they cared enough to buy him something he didn’t really need but quietly wanted.  It was an awfully small box to hold so much love.

“Oh, Greez,” Cal said, “can I deface the Mantis again?”

“Absolutely not,” Greez said without missing a beat.

“What if it’s on the inside this time?”

“No.  Why?”

Cal gestured to BD.  “He liked the painting of him we had on the fin.  Droids are underrepresented in artwork.  I think I should make a new one, but inside, where it won’t be conspicuous.”

“No,” Greez repeated, then groaned, lowering his face into his hands and roughly scrubbing his palms over his head.  “Ugh.  Seriously?  You had to ask now, when you almost died and I’m feeling real permissive because of it?”  He straightened up and jabbed a finger at Cal.  “Small.  I mean it – a meter square, max.  I get to decide where you put it.  And I wanna see a rough draft first!  Anything too ostentatious and I’m vetoing it… it’s gotta be classy, you hear?  No flames.”

BD gave a joyous leap and trilled, too excited to be bothered by the restrictions.  “Yeah, okay,” Cal said.  The flames were a little tacky, anyway.

“I just know I’ll regret that,” Greez sighed.  He stood up.  “All right, lemme go get the steaks started so we can have dinner.  One of you leave a comm on; I’ll need help carrying everything and we gotta swing by the saloon to grab Cal’s food too.”

“I have mine,” Merrin said, waving it.  “Just let me know when you are ready.”  She set it down on the blanket as Greez bustled out of the room, leaned a little closer to the window, brow furrowing slightly as she watched something down below.  “The more I see it, the more I like Ellory’s hair.”  Cal thought she was about to start waxing poetic again, but instead she tugged at that one lock of her own hair that always slipped free of the bun, looked at it thoughtfully.  “Do you think I could pull off an undercut?”

“You?  Probably,” Cal said.

“I have not cut my hair above my shoulders since I was about five.”

“You’re talking to a guy who never lets it get longer than this.”  Cal ruffled his fingers through his hair, which felt soft and clean.  He was allowed to shower now and it was great.  “I can’t stand feeling it on the back of my neck.”

“And it’s hair,” Cere added.  “It grows back.”

Merrin lifted a shoulder and tucked that lock of hair behind her ear, where it stayed for about two seconds.  “Mm.  I’ll think about it, then.”

Cal set the box of pencils on the bedside table, followed by the flimsiplast pad, which he propped up behind the lamp.  There were only a few pieces left.  Cere had gone through a number of them trying to decipher that journal, and Cal had used more copying the star charts… “Sorry about getting kidnapped while you were trying to find that retreat,” he said.

The sudden change of subject seemed to throw Cere off a bit; she stared at him for a second, shook her head.  “You were more important,” she said.  “Besides, it’s not like we can never return.  We found a few better places we could land the Mantis so we won’t have to walk quite as far next time.  We’ll find it.”

“Or whatever might be left of it,” Merrin reminded them.

“Burglaries tend to leave behind echoes,” Cal mused, wriggling down until he was curled on the mattress with his head resting on the pillow.  Sitting up wasn’t exhausting anymore, but he was still frustratingly low on energy, and Greez would make fun of him forever if he fell asleep in his dinner.  “Rubble has memories too.  If there’s anything left, I might still be able to tell you what happened to it… I’m good with the past, remember?”

Cere’s gaze flickered to the flimsiplast, the home neither of them would ever see again.  “Yes,” she said, “you are.”

It was going to be a little while before they ate, so Cal gave in to the temptation to drift, eyes half-closed and unfocused.  Cere’s eyes were closed, but whether she was meditating or just relaxing, he didn’t know.  Behind him, Merrin and BD were looking out the window again.  Greez would be back with dinner soon, and afterwards Cal would take a shower – a short one, because water was precious out here, but the clinic was allotted as much as Shae could argue for, which was a decent amount – and settle in for the night.  Either Shae or Teeka would hook him up to the dreaded IV pole, which meant he’d be out of bed every couple hours and on his way to the ‘fresher before the fluids exploded his bladder like that slave chip.  He only had a few more nights of that to look forward to, though, and then he could sleep on the Mantis.

He wasn’t dead in the badlands, or wherever Sorc Tormo intended on keeping him this time; he hadn’t succumbed to infection, either.  His family was here.  Cal would go on as he always had, maybe a bit more carefully now, and hope for the best.  Trust in the Force.  It was all he could do.

Merrin poked his ankle.  “Stay awake,” she said.  “You can sleep after dinner.”

“I know, I know,” Cal said blearily, forcing his eyes open.  After a second, he made himself sit up as well, ran his hands through his hair again, blinked hard.  He’d slept more in the past couple weeks than he normally did in a month.  He needed a distraction.  “Okay… first draft of that painting needs to be as appalling as possible, so anything else I come up with will seem reasonable in comparison.”

BD swiftly suggested flames, but Cal shook his head.  “Too obvious.  He’ll know I’m messing with him and he won’t take it seriously.”

“A rancor,” Merrin said.

Lightning bolts, BD said.

“Two rancors.”

Fireworks, BD added, hopping up and down.

“Two rancors with very large daggers.”

“Seems a little redundant,” Cal mused.  “I’ve seen the claws on those things.”

“If you need any more ideas, I could probably come up with a few,” Cere said.  They all looked at her. “Hey, I’ve known Greez longer than the three of you combined…”

“Two rancors and Cere?” Merrin proposed.

Snickering, Cal took the flimsiplast off the table again, flipped it to a clean page, and grabbed a regular pencil he kept for random doodles he wasn’t wasting valuable color on.  “So, two rancors – with daggers – lightning, fireworks, obviously BD’s gonna be there, and Cere… you want some cool sunglasses while I’m at it?”

“Of course I do.”

Cal finished writing a quick list on the corner of the flimsi and cracked his knuckles.  “All right,” he said.  “Keep ‘em coming.  Let me see what I can do.”