Res Judicata

Posted on Fri Jan 24th, 2014 @ 12:01pm by Morgo Le'Shaad & Berry & Sev Rezer
Edited on on Fri Jan 24th, 2014 @ 12:13pm

3,250 words; about a 16 minute read

Chapter: Chapter IV: Rezer's Edge
Location: Red Raptor
Timeline: After "Severance", Past midnight

OLD

The part-Aquar’s eyes widened as she stared at the woman. Then she sighed. “He coulda left you behind and you would’ve been caught. Now you’re paying him back by not paying him back?” She shook her head, frowning out of confusion. “You think funny.” Then she turned on her heel and strode out of the room, turning down the hall…and walking past her room as she continued to the pilot’s cabin—Sev’s room.

NEW

Darkness. It was where Rezer slept…thought…attacked from. He lived in it.

And now he sat in it, waiting for the inevitable wave rushing at him, trying to wear him down.

But he would endure, as he always had. His arm and eye attested to that.

Bare feet turned the corner from Morgo’s room to his. Then, the knocking began.

“Mr. Rezer, I have a question for you!” came the young woman’s voice from the other side of the locked door.

He remained where he was, arms crossed as he sat up against the wall. His boots planted firmly on the deck as he waited. If the child was desperate enough, she’d find a way in.

“Mr. Rezer!”

Soon enough, the locked doors slid open. No doubt with the power of the Force.

With the light pouring in from behind the small woman, Rezer couldn’t see anything. But he had heard enough.

Such as the anxiety in her voice as she roused Morgo, and the strength of her vocalizations about the Jedi. Morgo’s voice was soft, slithering around the naïve child. And the poison she spread around her…he doubted Berry was immune. Not yet.

Berry’s lone braid swished as she turned her head. “Mr. Rezer?”

Now he knew she could feel and see him—his crossed muscly arms, back against the wall, leg crossed so loosely, yet unmoving like a coiled spring ready to burst. But where a normal person would hesitate at the waves of irritation coming off his closed stance, he knew she wouldn’t. Not this brand of fool.

“Mr. Rezer,” she began, eyes wide and plaintive. “We need your hel—“

“I know what you want.” He spoke slowly, but each word strained with irritation.

Berry blinked. “You do?”

It was not hard to imagine that even the droid had heard Berry exclaiming in the dead of night. And with a warrior’s senses as sharp as his…

Berry eventually came around, her laugh echoing around the ship. “Of course you do! You’re Mr. Rezer, the cool hunter.” She strode in without a second’s thought. Entering a warrior’s territory was no joke, and her serious gaze indicated she knew…at least, a little.

“Mr. Rezer…we need you to find Thane and Bomoor.”

Rezer’s frown deepened. “Not interested. Now leave my room, unless you want to be jettisoned with tomorrow’s trash.”

She puffed out a cheek, frowning slightly. “But they’re in trouble.”

His eye narrowed. “And how did you come across this?” He sneered slightly. “In one of your dreams?”

“That’s just it,” Berry said, throwing her hands up. “I…didn’t have any. Nothing in my dreams…no feel of them at all.” She bit her lip, brow furrowing.

“They’re…gone.”

“Until you know for sure—“

“But I do!” she exclaimed. “I don’t have my Force bond with Thane anymore.” Her eyes widened, brow furrowing. “Something’s wrong. Morgo told me either he’s dead or—”

He leaned forward, the most movement he had made this whole time. It was enough to quiet Berry, as she innately knew to pay attention to his every move.

“Do not believe everything she says, adik’a.” He spoke in a soft growl, his growing annoyance directed at the woman rather than the child. “Her kind will say anything to get what they want.”

The part-Aquar’s frowned slightly. “Well, my kind will punch anything to get what I want.”

Rezer slowly stood, clad in just his sleep pants and a light shirt. But he was clearly immune to that mode of persuasion, and much more. He glared slightly at her. “You’re not going to punch me. You won’t even get as far as one inch further without going to the ground.”

Berry suddenly chuckled, smiling up at him in awe. His strength was definitely something to boast about. “Yeah, I know that. I just meant that I’m gonna go punch Zrad and company. Thanks anyway, though.” She turned on her heel and leaned forward to run out—but not before Rezer grabbed her shoulder and spun her around again.

“Ow!” she yelped, brows furrowing at him in pained surprise. Then she blinked at the look he gave her.

His eyes seemed aflame with a simmering rage, flames escaping every now and then.

Berry swallowed, a bit anxious. It was like he was in another world, reliving something.

“You don’t know who you are dealing with,” he hissed, voice grating like gravel. “He’ll take you. Tear you apart. Make you tear others. Put you back together so you can rip again—and he’ll laugh about it, enjoying every second.”

Berry stared at him, eyes wide. Her expression grew solemn, and she nodded at him. “Then…” She turned. “I’ll need all the help I can get.”

“Don’t you understand?!” Rezer snapped. “You’ll die!”

The young woman paused, glancing back at him with a faint smile, almost wistful. “Maybe I will.” Then she bolted before he could grab her again.

Rezer gritted his teeth and stormed to the lab. Suicide was a sure choice this foolish girl would choose. But…she wouldn’t have chosen to run to Zrad if she had known Thane was dead. That was the first choice.

So why did Berry settle on the second choice? She wouldn’t have known of anything related to the Force back on her world. So…where did she find out about the special components of Zrad’s compound? Of the only reason the Jedi, if alive, would not be able to escape?

That snake. Wrapping her slit tongue around the simple girl’s mind, feeding her poisonous lies. All so she could slither away while everyone crashed and burned.

He strode in, boots uncovered and marring the lab floor. “Le’Shaad!” he barked. “What is this about Thane and Bomoor?” He glanced at the hovering Berry with a frown before turning back to her, eyes hard. “What lies have you been feeding this child?”

Morgo did not turn as she switched off the violet-white flame beneath a beaker filled with an emerald liquid. Plucking up a small vial containing the distillate of the liquid, Morgo lowered it into a cooling bath with forceps, where the distillate droplets still clinging to the sides of the enclosed vial immediately condensed into a liquid, pooling at the base—and promptly became lavender in hue.

Only once she set the silver forceps down did the woman turn, snapping off one glove to gather her loose hair over one shoulder. Pale eyes cut from Sev’s shoulders, down to his boots, and then up again. The man was still in his sleep attire, just as Morgo still stood in her night robe.

“Me? Lie?” Morgo blinked,“Never.”

He scowled. “Don’t kriff with me, woman. You said something to the child to make her want to commit senseless sacrifice to one as despicable as Zrad.”

Berry looked off nonchalantly.

Rezer did not look as unperturbed, his brow lowering at the noble. “You’re trying to get this ship from us, aren’t you. Send us into the mouth of death, before stealing the ship and running away to your freedom.” His eyes burned in a glare at the Dromachean. “The pitiful existence that it is. What for? For…” He grabbed a beaker and shook it at her. “For this?!” He threw it at the wall to intimidate, where the beaker shattered into a hundred glittering pieces, glaring at Morgo the whole time.

“Velos!’ Berry winced and quickly willed a wall of water magic to sweep the shards away from them. She shot a faint smile at Morgo, shrugging. “Well…at least I tried.”

Ignoring the shattered beaker, Morgo spared a glance at Berry, whose sheepish smile looked almost contrite. It was apparent that Berry had tried to explain the situation to Sev, with no success. How the bounty hunter had made the ridiculous leap of imagination it took to accuse her of filling Berry’s head with fantastical lies, however, was a mystery.

Shooting an assessing look at Sev, Morgo turned her eyes back to her work as she lifted the lavender distillate from its cooling bath and added a small amount of ground powder to the solution, mixing it with a glass rod.

“Ah.” Morgo said as she stirred, voice low and lilting, “So now I’m trying to wrest control of the ship from you using Berry as a pawn.” Lifting the rod from the solution, Morgo tapped it lightly on the glass edge of the vial to shake off excess liquid and laid it neatly to the side.

“Imaginative of you I’ll admit, Rezer, if a bit contrived and completely and utterly wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter what’s wrong or right,” he growled, his voice lowering like a nexu’s growl as it snapped its prey’s neck. He, of course, was a much sturdier breed. “What matters is the intent.” His eye narrowed at Morgo. “And I don’t like the smell of yours.”

Berry’s eyes widened. “Huh? I don’t smell anything.” Her nostrils flared as she sniffed around. Then her nose wrinkled as the harsh smell of chemicals hit her sensitive organ. “Eh.”

Morgo's eyes narrowed a fraction as she lifted her gaze to meet Sev's. Her hands moved to pour the lilac liquid into the hypo-spray refill, which she then laid beside five identical vials, designed to snap into a hypo-spray for immediate injection—four of the vials were filled with a turquoise colored liquid, the farthest vial a pale green.

Placing her palms on the cool metal of the table Morgo leaned forward and smiled, something that would have been convincing had the air of unspoken menace about her not been so apparent. If Sev wanted to play this game, Morgo would be the gracious host.

"You're a bounty hunter of great repute, are you not? A man who sniffs and tracks for a living?" Morgo tilted her head in a manner that suggested she was considering him, "Well, for a tracker you are rather dense, aren't you? If you could be bothered to struggle your way through your delusions and calm your childish fit, I invite you to do you Sithing job." She hissed, voice hard, "And use your eyes to observe."

Lifting her chin, Morgo gestured towards the doors to the med-bay, "First thing you should have noticed when you walked through my door, while your filthy boots dragged their way in, is that I was silent. I said not a word about the state of your feet. The second thing you should have noticed was that I too had not cared to cover mine to save the sterility of this floor—something I am usually adamant about. Those should have been your first clues that something out of the ordinary was happening, as I do not abandon my standards for anything less than dire need."

Morgo's lacquered toes took her a step back as she spread her arms to include the entirety of the laboratory, "The third thing you should have noticed, bounty hunter, is that I am in the process of distilling and mixing together a series of chemicals. I'd wager you've been in your fair share of drug dens. Did you not recognize the faint smell of illicit narcotics in the air? The smell of the makings of a powerful serum? I am clearly preparing for something, darling Rezer, and it is not the taking over of this ship."

His brows lowered in great suspicion, eyes probing her.

The noblewoman pulled her robe tighter around herself as she lifted from the table one cyan, refill vial from the table and snapped it into the nearby hypo-spray, shooting Sev a withering look, "Do you know what a StimShot is, Rezer?" She asked as she held the hypo up between them,"Do you know that one shot of this, my own recipe, will stimulate the effect of 24 hours of good bed-rest, six hearty meals, and revitalize an otherwise dying subject for its duration within the body?"

Her grey eyes glinted in the clinical, white light of the medical bay, steely as she leveled Rever with an critical gaze, "I have five of these, bounty hunter." She said flatly, motioning to the vials on the table, "One for each crew member. Ours will be taken before we embark on the rescue. The lavender vial is tailored for Bomoor's Ithorian biology. The remaining stim-shot is for Thane."

Slamming the hypo-spray back down on the table, Morgo leaned into Sev's space, "I'm still in my night robe, Rezer." She declared, patience gone, "And I don't wake up for anything but emergencies. Thane and Bomoor have been compromised. That is no lie. So I suggest you either shut up or suit up."

Morgo leaned back, her mood thundering around her head like a storm cloud.

Rezer, quietly rumbling on his own, suddenly lashed out—with his words, this time anyway.

“How the kriff am I supposed to believe you?!” he yelled back. He gestured to the spray, fingers just millimeters away from dashing the concoction to the sullied floor.

His finger, a menacing muscle on its own, stabbed at the slender woman. If he wanted to, he would’ve been able to kill her with just that.

But he held back both his finger…and his rage.

“You, of ALL the people on this ship,” he began, lip curling, “would have the LEAST amount of loyalty to that whelp of a Human.” His gaze pierced hers. “Go ahead and display your science and your ‘evidence.’ They mean nothing to me without motive.”

He would’ve had to be an idiot to not see the animosity growing between Morgo and her rescuer. There was even some between Thane and the child. But for Morgo to gain a heart and risk her life for a fellow exploiter? Rezer couldn’t believe it.

Morgo scoffed quietly as she looked down the floor, eyes distant. All at once her irritation simmered down beneath the surface, still there but overshadowed by something else. Something uncertain. Morgo had hoped to avoid sharing her reasons for doing this with anyone, personal as they were. But if she was going to work with Sev and Berry it was logical for them to trust her reasons for doing this. Trust her conviction.

"If you cannot trust me, do not." She began, voice firm as her eyes flicked up to stare at Sev Rezer, "But know that there is a man I hate and despise...and he expects me to betray Thane and you all without the slightest hesitation." She stated, a dark chuckle falling from her lips as she did so, "Even if I dislike Thane it will never be as much as I despise this man. And I will not give him the satisfaction of being right about this. " Looking up at Sev, her eyes bright with an unnamed memory, Morgo's voice was unwavering, "I also owe Thane a debt. One that will be repaid before it can be used against me again."

A fire was alive in Sev's eyes, but so too did one burn in Morgo's as she spoke, a cold flame, "If you cannot trust my heart, do not." She repeated,

"But trust my wrath."

Rezer eyed her for what seemed like forever. Peering, studying with his warrior senses.

His lips thinned. “Repaying a debt. Any warrior with honor understands that.” He glanced back at Morgo. “I do not doubt your pride. You stink of it. You and that rogue Jedi.”

Berry nodded, her only braid fluttering. “Now that I do smell.” She lifted her chin at Morgo, brows lowered and a determined smile on her golden-green lips. “You go, Morgogo.” Way to calm Mr. Rezer down! Sometimes she wished she was that good with words…but not really, she was way too impatient for that.

Morgo raised both brows as she looked from Sev to Berry, and back, her voice low and clear as she spoke, "Then if you're sufficiently convinced that I am committed to saving Bomoor and Thane, I suggest you find motive yourself and gear up, Rezer. I have a plan and I'll need you most of all. Meet me in the rec room once you're ready."

Casting a dubious look at Berry from the corner of her eyes, Morgo's expression was expectant, "You as well, Berry. Change and collect your lightsaber. Your fists will be little use to you should you enter Jericho without the Force."

Berry rolled her eyes as she smiled. “Yeah, yeah.” She skipped outside to “suit” up in a tunic and shorts.

Rezer frowned and turned on his boot, striding out, his motives his own.

As for Morgo, she sighed into the empty expanse of the medical bay, alone once more as two pairs of footsteps gradually faded from her hearing. Collecting the vials from the table, gently clinking together, the noblewoman held them speculatively in her hands as she glanced out the doorway, pale gaze considering. She too would have to change out of her robe, but not into her usual fare. No....there was no room for flowing cloaks, loose fabrics or pristine whites in this rescue. Not if she wanted to come back alive from this excursion.

Lightly stepping over to the cabinets where she pulled open a drawer, a small circular device slid about within from the momentum. Reaching in, she plucked up the small, silver disc and raised it to one eye, the gadget still in the condition it was in when Daneel had surreptitiously slid it to her in court, if a bit dusty. It was his special design, a personal device that attached to specialized clothing, interacting with the interweave frequency of a cloth's fibers to change the hue and pattern of of its outer appearance. In his line of work, camouflage was paramount to the successful study of many animals in their natural habitat. And while this was no personal cloaking device, it would be able to change the white of her jumpsuit to any color or pattern she required, something that had aided her many times while in flight.

But she a feeling that only one such color would suit this occasion. Black.

To many this was a color of foreboding. Of evil and death. Her fist closing around the device as she strode out the doors to her laboratory, perhaps for the last time, Morgo just hoped that it was not their deaths it heralded.

TBC

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