Trial of a Lorrd: In Medias Res

Posted on Mon Aug 13th, 2018 @ 10:48pm by Amare
Edited on on Wed Jun 8th, 2022 @ 2:01pm

844 words; about a 4 minute read

Chapter: Additional Stories
Location: Bonnedill Flats, Lorrd
Timeline: Day 2, Follows "The Lightsaber" and "Old Heroes, New Lessons"
Tags: Amare, Dark Herald, Danni Thorsten, Bonnedill Flats, Lorrd

ON

Danni Thorsten felt the rush. The world's top speed record was within reach.

"Reaching three-twenty...three-thirty...crossing the redline," said his son, Danni Jr., over the radio from their desert base where officials from the Bureau of World Records were closely monitoring everything to ensure legitimacy of the record-breaking attempt. "Three-forty-two! Punch it, dad!"

"Shifting to stage two!" Danni Sr. called back through the commlink built into his racing helmet.

Their shining blue and gold dream machine pushed itself up to a new mind-blowing threshold of inertial intensity. It was a long, sharply angled, custom ultra-aerodynamic desert-ripping bullet; long, lean, a tight squeeze to get into, and built to shatter the best records in the galaxy. When the ion injection boosters were slammed into overdrive, Danni's rapidly thumping heart was over the moon just as he was close to beating his late father's fifty year-old personal record.

"Three-sixty...Three-seventy..."

"C'mon, baby..." Danni softly plead to the machine, "Give me Four-twenty for three seconds. You got this."

"Four-fifteen!"

The analogue speed gauge was far past the redline, and the ion engine was at critical tolerances. He touched the fabled four-twenty threshold when he saw it. He was about to collide with disaster...or so he thought.

He struck something, but there was no indication of physical impact whatsoever. It was as if Danni was going so fast that he was able to hit a desert mirage before it had the chance to disappear. It took almost thirty seconds for his rocket speeder to slow down safely enough to come about and return to where he thought he hit whatever it was he thought he saw.

"Son, have the medics meet me out here," Danni Sr. radioed still wondering if he was seeing things. The confusion, worry, and urgency of unanticipated development made him completely forget the elation he would have otherwise felt for finally shattering the Lorrd planetary speed record after years of expensive preparation and hard work. "I think the car struck someone."

"Sure it wasn't a stray animal, pop?" Junior asked.

"Out here in the middle of the Bonnedill Flats? No, son. I'm pretty sure it was a person," Danni replied. "Prolly one o' them crazy aboriginal nomads off on a vision quest or something."

"Medics on their way," Junior informed him.

"Okay, good...I think I see someone on the ground over here. Oh no...I was hoping it wasn't real."

"What do you see? Who is it?"

Danni pulled up beside what he believed was his unfortunate victim. He removed his helmet, his safety harnesses, pulled himself out and ran over to kneel beside the figure that was face down in the dirt covered mostly with a tattered and dust-covered brown traveler's cloak. Long blue tendrils were peeking out from under the brown hemp-like material, and Danni at first assumed it was a Twi'lek. He had fond memories of a drunken party with a Twi'lek girl the first night he became a man, but that seemed like a lifetime ago.

Gingerly, he placed his hands on where he thought were the victim's shoulders and carefully turned the alien over onto their back. What he saw wasn't someone who was mowed down by a supercar, but rather an unconscious aquatic female that was on the verge of succumbing to heat stroke and dehydration.

"A Nautolan?" Danni said to himself with more than a little surprise. "Don't get many of your kind this far from Coruscant. Hm, still breathing I think." He wondered who it was that he hit. He recalled seeing someone tall and as grey as charcoal ash that stepped in his speeder's path. The person wasn't blue and petite like this. He glanced all around him and saw no one else. There was no way they could have disappeared so quickly if they managed to avoid getting hit; there was nowhere to hide for miles in any direction on the Flats.

"Hang in there, kid," Danni said to as he opened a flask of water that he drew from a pocket on his racing suit. "Help's on the way." He coaxed her dry, cracked lips apart a poured a small amount of water to which there was almost no response. On the one hand, the alien girl was breathing, but it was shallow, and almost non-existent.

Unbeknownst to Danni, there were hidden eyes on him and the fallen Nautolan. It was not the usual spectre of Shadrak that came to haunt the Nautolan as before. These eyes belonged to someone older, someone darker, and someone who knew the girl better than she could ever know herself...


You're not dead yet, daughter of lost fools...

...Your end shall come at the appointed time and place...

...That is the day Zaracoda dies, and Amare is born...

...For the Sith to rise, the Rule of Two must be fulfilled...


TBC


Author's Note: The Thorstens and their speed machine were inspired by the real life story of Danny Thompson's historic Bonneville Record.

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