MadCap's NaNoWriMo 2017 - "Minos Mayhem' - Chapter Three

Chapter 3 - "A More Wretched Hive"

Capital City (as it was called in an amazing lack of imagination, Calen thought) was indeed something that Calen thought earned Karideph’s title of “Little Coruscant”. The place was utterly massive, stretching out as far as the eye could see as the Dawn descended from the atmosphere. Calen was treated to row after row of skyscrapers that stretched out in every cardinal direction from a large, center point that appeared to be the local ISB branch.

He brought the ship along the flight path they were given, bringing them to a series of rounded holes that descended into the ground just enough to allow ships to land within them, protected by vast, stone walls that followed the outside edge of the hole - docking bays. The chatter from the Port Authority could be heard as they got confirmation and coordinates for their particular circle, Calen steering the Dawn toward it, landing without his usual flourishes, much to the relief of the LOM unit that sat in the co-pilot’s seat, as well as the remaining crew.

Outside of the ship, on street level, it was even more breathtaking a sight than he’d treated to from above. The long streets of the Capital were a chaotic stimuli upon the senses. The shouting was the most prominent features, shopkeepers shouting from structures ranging from proper buildings to thatched hovels that had been erected by hand to hock their wares. Calen heard Basic, Huttese, and many other languages still that he did not recognize, all of them shouting out over the clamor made by the others to attract business.

There was a plethora of creatures as well. Beings from the short and stubby Aleena to the tall, horn-headed Zabraks were shouting out to the bypassers or were bypassers themselves as they inspected every kind of good under any sun: weapons, foodstuffs, clothing. Calen had stopped to look at a rather nice collection of blaster rifles when Ordos grabbed him by the arm, leading him away.

“Keep your focus, kid.” Ordos said, serving as a nice snap back to reality. “You can look green, but don’t look like you’re green.” With that, the old merc moved ahead, leaving Calen to ponder just how he was supposed to not look like he didn’t belong here.  “Glin’s got a watering hole down here.” Ordos said once they made it a bit further up the long street, having left the docking bays far behind. They made a turn into an alley off the main street, moving through the crowd and coming up on a cantina in one of the smaller buildings. From within, a lively tune pourted out, courtesy of a five Twi’lek band.

“MADDOX ORDOS!” A voice called out over the clamor of the music and the patrons. Both stopped at the sound of the booming voice, and all eyes were drawn to them as they entered. Calen winced, feeling increasingly uncomfortable beneath all the gazes as the gaze of one particular man in the group moved out with the rest of him. The man was about half a head shorter than he was, portly and wearing surprisingly expensive looking garb. A pair of arms came forward as the man did.

“Oh, no!” Ordos groaned.

“Bring it in, you!” The man said, laughing as he embraced the taller man in a hug. Calen could see he was hugging him with surprising force while he laughed. “Welcome to Karideph! What brings you out this far?”

“Hello, Glin.” Ordos was showing clear discomfort as the man who went by that name finally released him after he didn’t deign to return the gesture. “Still running around without regards for personal space. Or volume control.”

“Oh, Maddi, you are a treat as always!” Glin laughed.

“Don’t call me that.”

“In my bar? I’ll name you what I wish.” Glin said, his beady, green eyes flickering over to Calen. The man adjusted one of the rings on his fingers. “And who is the new guy?” He looked back to Ordos, then over his shoulder, as if looking for someone else. “And where’s Caius? He’s usually ri-” He stopped, a confused look on his face that was matched by a pained look in both Calen’s and Ordos’. “Oh, space winds, what happened?”

“We should talk.” Ordos said. “Probably somewhere a little less offensive to the ears?” He asked, gesturing around to the bar, and the lively music that had once more started up.

“Of course, of course.” Glin said, turning and gesturing for them to follow him. “And don’t rag on the music, Maddi. The Bolat Brothers there are gonna be huge, just you wait and see.” The chatter between the two went on toward the back of the bar. Calen moved to follow up until his eye caught a glint of light and followed it to where it had reflected against the red liquid of a drink. The drink was being stirred with a stick by a bored-looking woman with curly, brunette hair and an immensely bored expression.

After a moment, she looked up as if she’d realized she was being watched. Calen’s eyes widened as their gazes met for a nanosecond, before he quickly looked away and moved to follow Ordos and Glin, just catching the sight of Ordos’ frame heading through a door that was quickly closing behind him.

“You alright, kid?” Ordos asked, seeing Calen suddenly duck his way through the doorway before it closed.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” Calen said, nodding.

“Just through here, gentlemen.” Glin said, leading the pair through another door at the end of a short corridor, which he opened with a keypad. Within was...a lounge. The place was furnished with seemingly little regard for any sort of theme, instead simply seeming to be a smattering of furniture, wall decor, and several curios left in cases about the room. The spectrum of colors seemed to be more towards the darker tones of green and silver, which Calen just now realized complemented Glin’s choice of attire very well. “Now...come sit and we’ll talk.” The man said as he flopped down onto a stretched-out sofa that looped around the right wall and the far wall from where they had entered, forming an ‘L’ shape. “Who is the new guy?” He asked.

“I’m Calen.” The young man introduced himself as he took a seat along with Ordos.

“Calen? Sounds Coruscanti.” Glin said. Calen tensed a bit there, but the man seemed to pay it no mind. “I suppose Maddi here has told you all about our little stint in the war, right? Is that how he and Caius got you to join.”

“I don’t-” Ordos began.

“The war?” Calen asked at the same time, which Glin chose to answer rather than Ordos’ speech.

“The Clone Wars, boy! It hasn’t been that long since they happened!” Glin laughed. “You’re...what? Seventeen? Eighteen?”

“I’m twenty.”

“Ah, ended right before your time then, it did.” Glin waved this off. “We were all buddy-buddy back then, Maddi, Caius, and me. Our little pack of troublemakers in a galaxy gone mad. Working for whatever credits the Republic gave for what passed as honest work.  Good for back then, especially for Maddi here after the-”

“As much,” Ordos cut him off, raising his voice a bit so as not to be cut off again, “as I am fond of waxing nostalgic, that isn’t why we’re here, Glin. We need help.” He reached into one of the pouches on his armor, producing the data card, still on the necklace that Caius had had it on when he’d worn it.

“...that’s Caius’s.” Glin’s words came out slowly, as if he were asking rather than making a statement. Nevertheless, from the man’s faltering expression, Calen could see the reality of the situation was dawning on him.

“Our droid partially decoded it, but there’s some corrupted information on there that keeps it from being complete. I was hoping you might be able to salvage it.” Ordos help it out to Glin, ignoring the horrified look on his friend’s face.

“Maddox, you -”

“I know.” Ordos cut him off yet again, shaking the hand that held the card. “Someone wanted him dead. He gave his last breath to give this to the kid and tell him to find ‘the Grand’. We know there’s gotta be something, and I want to know what.”

“Alright, alright!” Glin nodded as he took the data card and looked it over. “Caius never told you what this was, did he?” Ordos shook his head. “I thought not. Never did yap about it.” The portly man rose up, heading over to a panel on the wall, pushing a button. There was a mechanical hiss as a heretofore hidden door opened up, revealing a room within where sat a terminal. Glin hobbled over to said terminal, activating it and sliding the card into the appropriate slot. “Let’s have a look…”

Several minutes went by as Glin fiddled with the controls, Calen being unable to make heads or tails of the lines of digits flying across the screen seemingly at random. After about a half hour, both Ordos and Calen had retreated to the couch in the other room, both taking in the silence as Glin occasionally thought aloud during his work, but seemed to make no further progress.

“What is it?” Ordos asked. It was only after a long moment that Calen realized that the man was talking to him.

“...what?” Calen blinked, his mind having been wandering a bit before being snapped back into the present once more.

“You’ve had something on your mind since we took off from Skorr.” Ordos said. “So...get it out in the open. What is it?” The mercenary asked, his arms crossed over his chest. Calen thought about it for a long moment before he answered, making sure his question was formed. He had indeed had a long while to think about it, and he thought he had it just right now.

“Before...Daheel, before the fight. You mentioned the Academy when I said I knew how to handle a rifle. Why?”

“Simple.” Ordos said. “You’re knowledgeable about combat, but not experienced.”

“How could you possibly have known that?” Calen asked.

“You’re a good pilot, one of the best ones I know,” Ordos sat up, turning toward him as he elaborated, “and the way you stand, the way you move, even the way you sit right now is rigid and meticulous. It’s something that’s been drilled into you repeatedly. Even now, you’re sitting so that you can see every door. That’s smart, but that points to training. When you were in combat, you made a few mistakes that a seasoned soldier wouldn’t have.”

“I thought I did pretty well.”

“Yeah, except for that gaping hole in your abdomen.” Ordos gave him a look. “But even so, it was a guess up until then. That confirmed it.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Calen said. In his mind, he wondered what the merc would do. Desertion was not looked upon well by the Empire, especially not for some low-level recruit who was just out of the Academy. Knowing his father, he could expect next to no help there, either, as Ordos could collect a tidy little profit by turning him into the ISB right there in the Capital...

“I won’t go handing you over,” Ordos said, and Calen felt a wave of relaxation hit him that immediately ended when Ordos continued, “but I need to know the full story if you’re going to keep on with us on the Dawn.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.” Calen sighed, running a hand down his face. He had nowhere else he could do, nothing else he could do. On Karideph, perhaps he could find work and go elsewhere, but that would mean starting again, running yet again. With the Captain dead, Calen knew it was something that he couldn’t leave undone. There was no alternative, he’d have to talk.

“My name...my full name, is Calen. Calen Darkhaven. I was just out of the Academy.” Calen said, then specified. “The Imperial Academy. I’d just finished my basic training for TIE and came home for a few weeks of leave before I’d get my first posting.” He thought back to that day on Coruscant, where he’d come home to find...neither his mother nor his father waiting for him at the docks. He hadn’t seen them until quite late in the evening afterward, and his father had given barely above baseline approval of his achievement. “It was...the day before I was set to head back. I’d gotten my assignment and was going to ship out the next morning when…” He remembered the day, it was crystal clear in his memory, seeing that image.

“When…?” Ordos offered gently.

“When Alderaan...was destroyed.” Calen said, remembering it all too well.

“They knew about that on Coruscant?” Ordos asked.

“New travels fast, I guess.” Calen said. “It was on every screen. Everywhere. Authorities said it was a hoax perpetuated by the Rebels, said it was propaganda they’d hacked the holonet with...but it was too late by then. Everyone knew. Everyone had seen it.” Ordos was listening, and nodded a bit as he spoke those last words.

“I have a feeling there’s a little bit more to it than that.”

“What do you mean?” Calen asked.

“You had a bright future ahead of you in the Navy. Someone doesn’t just abandon that because of an image on a screen.”

“Well...I guess that wasn’t all it was. It’s...more what came after.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not really sure I can explain it. It’s...complicated.”

“Try.” Calen’s brow furrowed, wondering what the point of it was but, alas, this was the road he had chosen.

“It was a...feeling. Of a sort. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever felt before.” Calen explained. “I saw the holovid play over and over again...and I just...felt the urge to run. Like something was compelling me to.” Calen saw that he could only assume was a puzzled look on Ordos’ face. “I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Right…” Ordos muttered, and Calen saw that the old merc was no longer looking at him. He seemed to be looking past him, stroking his facial scruff as if lost in the mists of contemplation.

“AHA!” Glin’s voice cut Calen off from questioning the look, finally his muttering coming to a loud exclamation of triumph. “Clever Caius! Clever, clever, clever Caius!”

“You found something?” Calen asked, getting up with Ordos and moving into Glin’s small office.

“You didn’t decode part of it, you decoded all of the it.” Glin said, pointing to the monitor and the lines of code that only he seemed to understand. “You didn’t decode part of it. You decoded all of the available data.”

“But...Beedee said it was incomplete…”

“You still have that hunk of junk onboard?” Glin asked Ordos, looking incredulous at the very thought.

“Glin…” Ordos started.

“Right, right. Sorry.” The barkeeper turned in his chair, pointing to the screen again. “The other data on here isn’t corrupted. They’re junk files that have been coded to appear as corrupted.”

“Then you can decode them?” Calen asked.

“No, you don’t understand.” Glin said. “They’re junk files. There’s nothing to decode, but they’re designed to make someone think that there is. Look.” He tapped in a few commands and the code changed. He pointed to a strand of it. “It’s data that’s made to continuously appear as corrupted, but there’s nothing there.”

“What does that mean?” Calen asked.

“It means that this is only one part of whatever it is you’re looking for.” Glin said. “Caius...or whoever he got to code the chip...was absolutely brilliant. Anyone who got a hold of it would be spending their time trying to decode files that essentially meant nothing, and they’d think the rest of the data was lost for good.”

“Why only have one piece, what would that achieve?” Ordos asked.

“Security.” Glin suggested with a shrug. “Can’t complete whatever it is without the other two pieces.” There was a moment of silence before he asked. “So what is it?”

“Starmap.” Ordos told him. “Had the Minos Cluster on it, biggest reason that we’re here.”

“And here I thought this was just a social call.” Glin teased.

“The other two pieces have to be out there, then.” Ordos said. “We know that Daheel or whoever he’s working for has at least one.”

“Daheel? You mean Tin Daheel?” Glin blinked, looking back to him again.

“And whoever’s in the Gauntlet must have ordered Caius’s death. Daheel doesn’t strike me as a master planner.” Calen said.

“He’s not.” Ordos replied curtly.

“Wait...the Gauntlet? Whoa whoa whoa!” Glin piped up again, a bit louder this time. “You guys took on the Gauntlet?”

“A few of the thugs, yes.” Ordos said. “Apparently Daheel’s made some friends in low places.”

“He said someone named Sher Tog had died.” Calen mentioned.

“Oh, yeah. Word was that the Gauntlet had a little bit of a power struggle a few weeks ago. The smoke cleared, but nobody seems to know who came out on top. Glin shrugged. “Still, business as usual resumed, so nobody seemed to care, either.”

“Well, then we have a lead to follow.” Ordos said. “Just need to find Daheel.”

“Actually, I can help you with that one.” Glin said, raising a hand. “There was some word the Gauntlet was sliding some folks in on Pergitor, something about a mining operation of some kind.”

“That’s what we were delivering,” Calen said, “mining equipment. He must be on...what place did you say? Pergitor?”

“Yeah. The Gauntlet must be doing some heavy duty work if they want as much equipment as word on the street says they’ve gotten.” Glin said. “Must be something heavy, though. They couldn’t possibly keep it under wraps.”

“Well, I intend to find out what’s going on that was so important that Caius had to die for it.” Ordos said.

“Should be careful, crossing the Gauntlet isn’t a good idea, regardless of how justified you feel.” Glin said.

“I’ll be careful.”

“We’ll be careful.” Calen interjected. The eyes of both men fell on him. “...what?”

“This isn’t a training exercise, kid.” Ordos said. “If you’re in for this, you better be su-”

“I’m not a kid.” Calen said adamantly. “And I am sure. Captain Caius gave me a home and a job without ever asking why I needed one. He trusted me to bring that card to you. I want to see this done. I want to find out what was so important that he had to die for it.” He hoped his words were as laced with the veracity he felt pulling at his core. After a long silence, Ordos nodded.

“Alright, Calen. You’re in.” The old merc said.

“That only leaves us one thing that we don’t know.” Calen said. “What’s the Grand?”

“I have no idea, Caius never mentioned it.” Ordos said.

“I haven’t heard of it either. But, If it’s something here, something connected to that map, then I’ll find out about it and let you two know.” Glin said, nodding to the pair.

“I appreciate it, Glin.” Ordos said, standing up and turning to leave. “C’mon. We have to get to Pergitor.”

“Maddi...be careful.” Glin said, getting only a dismissive grunt from the mercenary. The barkeeper looked to Calen. “Do look after him, won’t you?” Calen nodded. “Good...thank you.” The man’s thanks seemed earnest, he seemed almost relieved.

“C’mon. Let’s go.” Ordos urged Calen again, heading for the door.

“Maddox.” Glin’s word made Ordos turn on his heel back to him. “When you find Daheel...you be sure to give him one from me.”

“You got it.” The old merc said, heading through the door as he did so. Calen gave a small wave to Glin before he followed Ordos out.

***

“He is nearly here...he is nearly here...”

The man heard the words, knew what they meant. The time would be soon, he knew. Within a few days, things would be in motion that could not be undone. Already, those who stood upon the Ascended Path were calling out to him, to tell him to prepare. Ijo Critus had done just that, his flock being more than ready for the tasks to come. Already, their hands had reached out to take others, forming their little alliance and seeing to it that their goal long-awaited would soon come to pass. The Derriphan awaited, but he would soon claim it for them. Soon, he would take them all upon the one Path. The True Path to Ascension. The Empire. The Rebellion. The Gauntlet. All would pass and give way to what would come after.

“Grand Perceptor.” The voice of one of his beloved flock crackled to him through the grillwork of the speaker in his quarters. “Your visitor has arrived…” Critus’ lips twisted into a smile as he rose.

All was as had been foretold to him.