Smuggler's Promise

Posted on Fri Oct 5th, 2018 @ 4:26pm by Kalen "Rex" Vickers & Reave & Mentis
Edited on on Thu Oct 3rd, 2019 @ 11:30pm

2,658 words; about a 13 minute read

Chapter: Chapter V: Unbound
Location: Commercial Sector, Nar Shaddaa
Timeline: Shortly after "Mandalorian Favour"; some days after "Utinni!"

A small red elastex ball hung still in the air in Mentis' small room. From his basic single bed, the former cultist manipulated the small object with ease. With a sudden thrust of his hand, he flung the ball hard against the tarnished wall, where it rebounded at great speed back towards the centre of the room. It stopped again, slowed and held motionless in a fraction of a second by Mentis' abilities. He had been performing this repetitive action for a long while now; it was a basic trick, but one that practised fine control over telekinesis. It served to fill the time while he waited for Rex to arrive.

Mentis' room was far less ornate than the one he had initially been gifted at Urma's 'boarding house' but it was entirely free from distractions. He had sought it out himself as soon as he had been informed that he would have to spend a few extra days on Nar Shaddaa, having now earned some credits from a few odd jobs Rex had thrown his way.

He had found himself taking a bizarre liking to these little jobs; hunting down some troublesome gang-members with Reave or 'retrieving' some merchandise Rex required for a shipment. It was short work, with a high degree of freedom, which was refreshing, but every new day on the moon brought with it a looming sense of dread that Axion was closing in on him. His new associates were no match for Axion's power; Mentis' mind was set on finding the group that had consistantly evaded his former master's grasp: these rogue Jedi Knights and their Mandalorian companion.

Before his ears heard the distant footsteps in the corridor, Mentis sensed the slow approach of Vickers to his doorway. Mentis jumped up and moved to the door, grabbing his ball from mid-air as he did so. Sliding open the door revealed the familiar human with his finger hovering just in front of the call button.

"So?" Mentis began, not allowing Rex the time to compose himself, "Have you made any progress?"

The sudden appearance of the former cultist jarred the man, and the cluster of credit chits and chips bundled haphazardly between his arm and body almost burst forth and fluttered down in an uncomfortable rain of money. Fortunately, Rex Vickers was a man good at clutching credits close, and not one made good their escape.

"Kriff and Sithspit, buddy!" Rex cursed at Mentis, offering him a brief scowl before he bundled past him towards the little desk on the far side of the room.

It was a square piece of furniture, the desk, utilitarian, clean and shiny-grey. Every time Rex came by, which was pretty much daily (or even twice-daily), he set himself up on the foldout chair that Mentis always tucked beneath the desk, even though the Human never had the decency to do the same when he left.

The smuggler released his little horde of chips, the small tokens scattering across the desk. To Rex's own credit, not one slipped over the edges, but Mentis noticed there were even a couple of coins mingled in with rest - not a common occurrence in the modern galaxy, although a few of the non-aligned worlds still retained such archaic currencies.

Without wasting any time to acknowledge Mentis any further, presumably abandoning whatever reason had driven him to visit the Rattataki, Rex set about counting the array of money. The gestures were surprisingly meticulous, considering the sort of man Rex clearly was, and his usual disregard for finesse. It was an attribute shared by the excessively violent Reave, although the wide-brimmed hat-laden Jawa was not with his Human friend on this occasion.

“An impressive haul, as usual,” Mentis acknowledged, knowing full well that his role in recent events had made a sizeable contribution to Rex’s earnings, “But it is not for the money that I continue to stick around with you and your trigger-happy friend. It is because you promised me a lead on the Raptor and its crew.”

Mentis drew a little stool out from under the bed and sat down next to the smuggler, whose fingers were still flicking through the chips at near-Jedi speed, “Every day you sit and count these credits while the danger to me continues to mount.”

There was a strong, childish urge to simply throw the chips across the room, which the former cultist did his best to suppress, instead squeezing hard on the elastex ball still in his hand. Despite his surprise a moment ago, Rex had become much more at ease around him, apparently forming some trust that he would not choke him to death at any given moment. If only he knew what hate he had channelled back at Axion’s sanctuary when he killed Trey.

Entirely oblivious to that very possibility, Rex seemed to continue paying Mentis no mind, not faltering from counting his selection of chips. "Oh, uhh, yeah," he muttered noncommittally in the Rattataki's general direction, as if not hearing whatever it was he had said anyway.

A few more seconds then passed, and with each lingering moment that shuffled by, the Human's concern at the growing shadow surrounding the staring Mentis seemed to develop in sync with the man's thinly-veiled ire. "Oh, uhh, yeah!" He now said with more gusto, twisting to face the man and giving him a wide-smiled, if nervous, expression. "I, umm... Well, what I mean to say is that... y'know how it is, Mantis; these things take time and we, uhh, we can't always get that sorta information that quickly! It's a big galaxy, with all sortsa people, an-"

Hearing Rex’s excuses and disregard for his concerns, Mentis’ anger got the better of him. But instead of simply knocking down the chips, he shot his hand forward in a pincer shape towards the man. In an instant, the babbling stopped as an invisible power prevented air passing in or out of his lungs.

“Not a big enough galaxy to hide from Axion!” shouted the Ratattaki, his mismatched eyes highlighted with a slight orange halo, “I cannot wait any longer for your contacts, if you even have any…”

It was then Mentis’ turn to be silenced as the distinctive chime of an incoming call rang out from Rex’s communicator on his wrist. He loosened his hold on the smuggler’s trachea, allowing him a few gasps of air but not enough that he dared move an inch for fear of crippling his airway.

The Human let a few raspy breaths of air clamber down his throat, which he was now massaging intensely. More than anything, his indignant expression, whilst intermingled with a healthy dose of fear, betrayed embarrassment more than anything else. "Buddy," he managed between catching his breath, "you really... gotta work... on that anger... phew... It's bad... bad for your heart!" He rubbed his throat. "And my singing voice! What will the ladies do when Rex Vickers can't perform his famous Zeltron serenade?"

Although he was doing his best to obviously remain positive and lighthearted after Mentis' assault, it was clear Rex was both surprised and upset by the former cultist's outburst. That hint of trust and kinship that Rex so plainly exposed within the Force had been chinked by the attack, and Mentis could feel the barriers, which were surprisingly firm, given Rex was not a Force sensitive, scurrying back up around him.

Dropping his hand and freeing the smuggler completely from his grasp, Mentis stepped back and looked away. He felt an unusual amount of embarrassment at his actions against the man who, aside from his blasé attitude towards the danger from Axion’s cult, had treated him with a great deal of respect these last few weeks, “Go ahead: answer it.”

Rex did not actually say anything back to Mentis. Instead, with wary eyes that did not move away from the pale Humanoid, he reached his other hand over and tapped the communicator. The small receiver Rex had embedded in his ear, almost invisible to the naked eye, began spilling information out to the man. Even with his heightened Force senses, the words were effectively inaudible to Mentis, but he sensed a shift in Rex's thoughts, mental barriers notwithstanding, and a winning smile came to the man's face.

"Haha! Man, you shouldn't ever doubt your good friend Rex!" He declared, pointing two index fingers in mock-blaster fashion at Mentis. Rex's voice then took on a fake-serious tone as he leaned in towards Mentis, his voice dropping to match the joking expression his face had adopted too. "I'll, uhh, be having that apology now, Mr Mantis," he said, bobbing his head either way as he spoke.

“If you have something worthwhile, then the apology is yours,” Mentis half-conceded, but now rapidly forgetting the incident in light of some potential news, after weeks of waiting, “What did you learn?”

"It's that dumb ship of yours!" Rex declared. "The Red Craptor! A buddy of mine who, well, who likes to play Mandalorian with Sev Rezer, said that they recently had a little parley with the maniacs who ride in it. Turns out, they're still as stark-raving mad as they always were! Poodoo-brained fools are trying to use space lizards to hide their magic powers, or something (my Mandalorian isn't great), but they told darlin' Sev where they're going."

“And where would that be?” Mentis’ strained, trying to draw out the information without becoming frustrated with the man and his Force-ignorant language.

"Korriban, they says," Rex answered with a slight shrug, some of the humour dying now that he felt like he had given Mentis the information he wanted. "Lifeless rock, as far I can tell. Spooky old dust ball that gives science geeks and wizards hard-ons. Some of my old smuggling buddies used to say there were creds in some of the relics, if they could get past the Jedi, but most of that kark's all gone, and I've had enough deserts for a lifetime!"

The Human set himself down to continue organising his chips, which had been jolted about after Mentis' little outburst, upsetting whatever odd system, or simple gratification, Rex had.

“Perhaps not such a crazy plan,” Mentis thought out loud, allowing Rex to continue the process of re-organising the chips undisturbed, “Even the strongest Force master would be unable to sense a single midichlorian through the strange field those lizards create. But are they not working with the Jedi? Why would they need such tricks in the first place?”

"Beats me," Rex said with a disinterested shrug, his part in the affair seemingly done from his perspective. "Jedis have always been difficult, gettin' up people's business when they ain't wanted. Hells, they even do it to each other!" The man had portioned the chips into piles that held no meaning to Mentis, organised in some system of counting that was unique to the smuggler.

“True enough,” Mentis nodded, having observed the internal conflict of the Jedi Order on multiple occasions; the existence of their Rift Jedi order as well as numerous other disillusioned former-Reborn Jedi spoke to the fragile nature of their co-operation, “But there is something about the ones I am pursuing that makes me think they are different. So, Korriban…”

Mentis left Rex counting for a moment and looked out of the window, contemplating the situation. He watched the bustling side-street below packed with vendors and shoppers completely unaware of matters of Jedi or the Force. But his time on these streets had taught him the value of being adaptable and having others to depend on in a fight. If he were not still so fearful, a part of him wished that he could spend more time with Rex and Reave on this world. He felt as though he was really starting to fight back against the kind of scum that had kept him enslaved all those years ago on Rattatak.

But he was fearful; while he had long since developed enough power to put street criminals in their place, he still had no way of defeating the Master that had once saved him from his life as a street fighter. His immediate future lay not with the charismatic human with him now, but instead with those who held the power to destroy Axion; or at least his best hope of doing so. But perhaps Rex had one last part to play in this story.

He turned back and admired the stacks of credits along with the smuggler, who had apparently finished and was doing his best to count them in whatever bizarre pattern he found worked for him, “We certainly did make quite a few creds’ together,” Mentis smirked, allowing a slither of his rough former-accent through intentionally, “I think my share would be more than enough to cover your fee to transport me to Korriban.”

"Heh, yeah..." The way Rex responded made it clear that he had not quite taken in the exact words Mentis has said, but realisation quickly invaded his brown eyes, and he placed his hands palm down on the desk and turned his head to fully face the once-cultist. "Hey, what? That wasn't part of the deal! That crazy ball of dirt is nothin' but trouble, crawling with Jedi and gods know what else!"

Mentis opened his mouth, preparing some harsh words, but held his tongue, knowing he did not want to drive the man away. Instead his right hand subconsciously drew to his face and he felt the long irregular pattern of the now well-healed scar across the bridge of his nose and left cheek. Some wounds never healed and he did not want to further any injury between the odd relationship they had formed.

“I do expect it to be trouble,” he agreed instead, “And I will need someone whom I trust to get me there and you are the only person who I have even come close to trusting since I fled from Axion. So, how about you keep my earnings and, in addition, earn another favour from me and my ‘laser sword’? All I would ask is that you get me to the Red Raptor yourself and not cart me off on some bulk freighter with no chance of getting to Korriban.”

Rex eyed Mentis for a few moments, in a manner reminiscent of a small rodent or feline judging whether to accept the morsel of food from a stranger's hand. "Keep all your earnings, you say?"

The mental gymnastics taking place in the Human's mind were plain to see, but those barriers continued to interfere with Mentis' ability to read him properly. A thumb and a finger soon found themselves stroking Rex's chin as the equations in his mind continued to be solved. "An' all I gotta do is drop you with the Raptor and I get myself this favour of yours? Heh, well, I don't blame you. We make a pretty fine team, Mantis. You and me could be running this whole sector in a standard year, if we wanted to."

His eyes then grew wide, and he raised two flat palms, as he so often did. "Not that I would ever want to, though! Sheesh." Rex blew some air between his teeth in slight exasperation. "Can't think of anything worse. But you know what? I like you. I'll do it. But I get to leave right away, right? And no blasting or fighting, yeah? Getting in a Jedi brawl isn't worth all the credits this side of the Hydian."

Mentis was both pleased to have struck the deal he had hoped for and also relieved that Rex would see him through to what would hopefully be another safe haven for him.

“I promise that your hide will not be at risk from any Jedi conflict,” he smiled and added, “Or my name isn't Mantis.”

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