Give Me Liberty with Danger
Posted on Sun Mar 25th, 2018 @ 12:57am by Amare
1,760 words; about a 9 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter IV: Rezer's Edge
Location: Nar Shaddaa
Timeline: Three weeks after the Battle of Jericho; follows “Carpe Noctem”
Tags: Retaliator, Widowmaker, blasters, Nar Shaddaa
OLD:
“Is he...really gone?” Coda asked whilst catching her breath, still disbelieving of the situation and how it all transpired to end like this.
“Dead as a jawa run o’er by a sandcrawler, I reckon,” Saucy said with a cold, uncaring grin. She spat at Chesto’s corpse and added, “Good riddance.”
ON:
It was a moment of rebirth for her to step out on her own into the neon lights of the endless city. Zaracoda was finally free to seek her own path and make her own decisions…or so she believed.
Saucy Feril saw the young nautolan woman turn around to smile at her one last time and wave goodbye. Saucy returned the wave and blew her a kiss, her signature farewell gesture reserved only for the people that mattered the most to her.
After she executed Brent Chesto in his office following his fight with Coda, Saucy closed the club and bar early and arranged the scene of the crime to make Chesto’s death appear as a suicide. It wasn’t that she had any formal police to be concerned with, but it would mean fewer questions and suspicions when the cartel came looking to collect on Chesto’s regular dues. There were a lot of unwritten rules on the Smuggler’s Moon, and murdering a business partner--even if he was a sick unreliable drunken bastard--didn’t always look good for business, except those times when it did.
Saucy then took generous care of Coda better than ever before. She insisted that Coda use her private luxurious bath, and when finished gave Coda comfortable water-resistant traveling clothes that was trendy among other amphibious female humanoids, followed by a modest warm meal and a little face-to-face girl talk.
She explained to Coda that trust always had to be earned, even among kin, and to never look a gift-bantha in the mouth; when the opportunity was there the wisest course was to take it as quickly as possible, even if your heart told you to be modest and kind. That was just weakness, she told the nautolan, and no woman worth her salt in the galaxy could afford to deny what was her’s to take. Men were always going to be physically stronger than women, and so it would behoove a lady trying to survive by the skin of her teeth in a man’s world to gather all the resources she could to prepare herself in case a man or an envious woman came to take it all away.
But then she tempered her advice to Coda by adding that the galaxy never played favorites with anyone. No matter how strong, or rich, influential they thought they were, a single blaster shot could send even the mightiest to the grave. She said to never feel more entitled to something than someone else. If one passionately wanted something bad enough, they had to earn it. Sometimes that meant trickery, sometimes that meant a degree of sacrifice, and sometimes that meant killing.
That was when Saucy presented her with two slender sporting blasters each with a name etched in tiny Galactic Basic letters on their sides: “Retaliator” and “Widowmaker”. She told Coda that they were formerly the property of a young up & coming smuggler that tried to cause trouble at a different club Saucy once managed several years back. Bar security had confiscated the weapons and threw the idiot out. Later, when he came back to claim them with a hired pair of mercenaries, that was when Saucy cemented her reputation as a ruthless businesswoman when she ambushed the mercs with hidden auto-cannons she had installed, and personally threw the smuggler off the balcony 'round back and down to his doom at the bottom of the high-rise depths of Nar Shaddaa.
The light and well-balanced blasters came with their own custom thigh holsters fit for a lady, and Coda’s beige and green outfit was long and loose enough to keep them concealed except to careful inspection and search. The holster belt also had small pouches for extra blaster power packs and featured a metal buckle with a hidden compartment large enough to hide yet another spare power pack. Coda instead opted to use it to hide her yellow kyber crystal, the very object that led her to clash with Brent Chesto and being cut loose from slavery after five long years.
As she watched Coda head off into the unforgiving Nar Shaddaa night, the twi’lek madame--and now sole owner of the Smoke & Hots Club--wondered just how far her young protégé would get. It was akin to her own first night of freedom where she was given some basic equipment by a heroic smuggler and told to go make something of herself. Saucy was successful because the offer was genuine, and she had the knack to manipulate, cajole, and worm her way into a comfortable spot in the criminal underworld. But as much as she had high hopes for Coda, she also had Chesto’s debts to pay to the Hutts.
She withdrew back inside and into Chesto’s office to make the call that would surely doom Coda. In minutes, the word was put out to any mercs on the planet looking to make an easy twenty thousand credits to return Coda to the slave exchange with full reward only if brought in alive.
Saucy fell back in Chesto’s old desk chair and pondered the ravages of internal conflict she was feeling for what she just did. That bounty marked her second act of sin against Coda. As for the first, well…it wouldn’t have done any good over the past three years to share that she was the one responsible for hiring the goons that killed Coda’s parents. No good at all. But even in death--the corpse of the man that lay motionless on the floor nearby with a large hole in the side of his head--Brent Chesto, along with his dark ties to the Hutts meant he got the last laugh. Saucy had no choice but to betray Coda to unburden herself of Chesto’s loose ends.
She felt gut-wrenching remorse as she gazed frowning at Coda’s portrait on the desk monitor. She was confident it wouldn’t take long before the bounty was collected, and Coda was in the hands of a new slave trader. Even a quality pair of blasters wouldn’t be enough to help Coda against dozens of local mercs itching to make an easy buck on a weak little runaway slave…
An hour later…
The cold tender tap of a droplet of rain made impact on Coda’s bare shoulder drawing her attention to the black sky. The water sent a slight chill through her body, but it was a good feeling that she would soon be in the rain, and not hiding from it under the cover of the club’s roof.
She looked down at the little piece of glossy paper she held between her index finger and thumb. The face staring back at her on the picture was her own, and she was showing a joyful expression that was mixed with a little playful shyness. The marketplace where the photobooth was located could be seen in the background with a bright neon green sign casting an intense shine that delicately intermixed with, and outlined the blue on the left side of her face, head tendrils, and shoulder. It had an artistic stylized gold border with two clever opposing angled corners which she felt added a kind of fancy coolness factor to it. She had heard this was something the hip youth crowd were calling a “selfie”, and she could see why it was a popular trend. To indulge in one’s own beauty had a certain appeal and charm to it, but simply taking a picture of oneself without any kind of special meaning other than for attention-seeking felt kind of hollow and pointless to her. Coda had no use for pointless things, but this portrait would remain the exception, and she would treasure it always.
The tiny selfie was the perfect little token to commemorate her first night of freedom, and it also marked her first credit spent from the pool of ten thousand she was given by Saucy. Originally, the credits came from a slicing job Coda was forced to tag along with a group of mercs one of Brent Chesto’s cartel associates hired to frame a local street gang that causing a bit too much trouble for the Hutts to tolerate. All Coda had to do was hide behind cover, wait for the shooting to stop, and then break into the gang leader’s personal computer before reinforcements arrived. It was a harrowing caper that lasted all of five pulse-pounding minutes, and the deed was done, but not without Coda seizing the opportunity to clandestinely swipe a few fifty-thousand credits onto a blank credit chip to keep hidden for herself in case of the day she ever found freedom.
Coda put the picture away into one of her belt pouches with a frown as she recalled Saucy having found that chip sometime later. Saucy took a “finder’s fee” cut, and later explained that the rest would be put to good use later. That use was partly for Coda’s wrist computer, and the rest for who-knows-what. Still, ten large was far better than going out into the open world entirely broke.
As she gazed out into the distance overlooking a wide area of the vast Nar Shaddaa cityscape from the railing of a busy cargo landing, the sky chose to unleash its free-falling aquatic gifts rather than hold back. The rain drenched her and she closed her eyes, thankful to whatever god or goddess that could hear her thoughts having granted her this moment of precious peace. She outstretched her arms and fully embraced the weather. For the first time in years, she finally and truly felt alive.
The energetic sound that followed behind her was subtle yet telling. The modulated voice projected from someone’s armored helmet hammered home the meaning and danger behind that little sound of a blaster’s safety having been disabled.
“You’re not very bright being out here all by yourself, girl,” said the mercenary. “Turn around so I can get a good look at you.”
And for the first time this night, Coda felt very much like she was about to die…
OFF and TBC...
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