MadCap's Fiction Corner - "Minos Mayhem, Chapter 4"

Pergitor was even more dreary than Ordos had described it as being. Even from orbit, the planet was a dull gray, the same gray Calen remembered being the color painted onto trash collectors or the panels of a Star Destroyer. Like the Star Destroyers, it really only looked intimidating because it was a lot of gray.  Descent through the atmosphere sent them through equally dull, gray clouds down into a landscape of jagged, gray rocks that were disturbed only by the occasional blue-white lightning strike from the heavens to break up the overpowering mediocrity of the environment.

Also, the rain.

Pergitor was, it seemed, a very rainy planet.

"It’s a good thing we have the sensors going.” Calen commented through the sound of the pounding on the viewport. “I can’t make heads or tails otherwise."

"Sorry about that," Ordos had returned to the cockpit, standing behind the pilot's chair. "Had to check on an old friend. How's our ETA?"

"On our current path, it's uh..." Calen spared a half-glance over at the monitors that detailed their approach. "Roughly..."

"We are eleven minutes and fifty-six seconds from the appointed dock at the domed city of Gehenna." Red reported dutifully. When the droid realized both men were looking at it, it made a sound that almost sounded like a scoff. "I cannot help it if the efficiency of organics is limited."



"Well, Calen's keeping us in the sky. I think the limit is good enough as is." Ordos retorted.

"How do people even live here?" Calen asked. "I mean, I remember reading on the Holonet that it wasn't always like this." A flash of lightning illuminated their target for a split second, the massive domed city that Red had just reported on. When the light faded, however, they were left with only blackness penetrated by the faint pin-pricks of red light - the landing path.

"Something happened here before the Clone War." Ordos said. "No one knows for sure. Biggest theory is that it was overmining of the core. Kicked up clouds of ash that seeped into the atmosphere."

"So you mean...?"

"That isn't rain falling on us. It's liquid ash." Ordos nodded.

"That's...unsettling." Calen said. "And more than a little gross."

"I know." Ordos said.

"Eleven minutes and six seconds to docking. Shall I begin docking preparations?" Red inquired.

"Go ahead." Ordos nodded to the droid, then turned back to Calen. "I wouldn't worry about it overmuch. The ash is basically being recycled over and over again, but none of it gets into the cities. They're all sealed up. Kind of makes it hard to stave off the Perceivers, but they're mostly harmless. Mostly."

"Perceivers?" Calen asked as he watched Red adjust their path to bring them in line with the docking platform they'd been assigned a few minutes before.

"Oh right, sorry. Perceivers, followers of the Church of Infinite Perception. They were more important back in the day, but they still have quite the hold on the cities. Always going on about the Time of Ascension and such. Opening and cleansing the Waking Eye. Perfectly sane and rational things like that."

"...you're serious?" Calen asked, looking at the man from the corner of his eye, keeping his focus on the task at hand.

"If they ask you to wash it, just flick the water on the totem and smile and nod." Ordos said, Calen getting the impression that that part wasn't sarcasm.

"Right, okay. Sure." Calen said, not really sure how that would go over.

"Ten minutes and ten seconds to destination. Preparations have been made." Red said.

"Fantastic." Ordos said. "Bring her in, Calen." And Calen did just that. Steering the Dawn through the void, the minutes ticked by as it was brought closer and closer to the domed city. As they approached, it became much easier to see without the censors, as the landing lights became more numerous as if to light the path. Their particular path brought them to an extended platform, which Calen landed on without an issue. The loud, metallic thud of the Dawn's landing gear meeting the metal gave Calen his first moment of relief since they'd hit the atmosphere.

From within, they watched as the platform was drawn into a nook that was then sealed up. The sound of a cacophony of fans was heard.

"Filtering out any remains." Ordos said. "Give the people of Pergitor credit, their cities are insanely clean."

"Given the levels of toxicity in the air, it's not that surprising." Calen said. "The fact that someone thought to even build cities here is-"

"Like I said, before the War it was different." Ordos shrugged. "But c'mon, we've got work to do." He started out of the cockpit. "Red, stay with the ship."

"Oh, the Maker himself couldn't move me, sir!" Red chirped. Calen got up, turning to follow Ordos out. Once they had been greeted by a service droid and declared that there was nothing onboard that was considered contraband, they were admitted into the city proper. A trip through the docking bay area eventually led them to a set of corridors that opened up into a larger area at the center. To Calen's eyes, it looked like the combs of a beehive, every single inch of space was utilized to full effect.

"Pretty efficient, I'll give them that." Ordos muttered. "Then again, compared to the outside, a Wookiee's maw looks appealing..."

"So, where exactly are we going to looking for this...?" Calen asked, trailing off as he couldn't remember the name of the one Ordos wanted to contact.

"Beebus." Ordos finished the sentence for him. "Rodian. Slimy sort. Runs a shop down here in this section of the habitat ring...or at least he did when I was here last."

"How long ago was that?"

"Uh...five, six years?" Ordos shrugged. "Pretty sure he's still here. He's a weasel, to be sure, but he's good for information provided you can pry it out of him." The older man led the way to a lift, which the two got into.and descended to the next level. When the doors opened, it was a commercial area. There was less of a clinical look than the docking bay and the corridors above, mostly because of everything that didn't fit in with the city's aesthetic. To Calen's eyes, it looked as though someone had stuffed the bazaars of Capital City into this space.

He took it all in, and then saw a group of familiar looking white-armored humanoids marching by in formation. Calen ducked his head around, trying to look at something other than that.

"I thought you said the Church was running things here?" He hissed to Ordos.

"What?" Ordos blinked, then nudged him. "Stop doing that. You're going to draw attention."

"But the Storm-"

"I told you, we're at the tips of the Empire's fingers, kid." Ordos cut him off. "The Cluster is still an Imperial territory."

"Oh. Great." Calen muttered, trying to stand in a way that made him look less conspicuous.

"Just...relax." Ordos said. A look from Calen seemed to alert him to the contradiction in that statement. "Be casual. These aren't exactly Troopers jonesing to pick up a bounty on some nobody trainee gone AWOL, if you get my meaning."

"No, I'm not sure I do-" Calen started, but soon they had arrived at a shop that Ordos stopped at. The sign overhead read Vaen Xii's General.

"There we go." Ordos said, stepping in through the circular doorway, Calen following after. The place was littered with supplies of all kinds - everything from rations to droid parts - and with only a few customers about and a Rodian manning the counter while speaking to one of them. "Beebus, you old so and so! Let's talk!"

"<Ordos?!>" The Rodian's Huttese came out choked, his face turning a paler shade of green. Deciding to flee, Beebus pushed away his patron and ran for the counter, leaping over it just in time to avoid a stun bolt from Ordos' rifle.

"After him!" Ordos said, charging into the backrooms, which had a small storeroom that was marked by a single door. A door that was sealing by the time they got to it. Ordos hit the button to open it and got no response. "Damn...magnetically sealed. Hang on." He tore the control panel off the door and fiddled with the wires. When a few seconds got no response, he fired a shot into it. The circuit was overriden and the door opened. "Move! Move!"

Calen ran out in another corridor. In stark contrast to the clean and clinical ones above, this one looked to be almost in a state of disrepair. The walls were faded, bits of paneling were busted or had disappeared entirely, and trash was littered about. It reminded him of one of the rare trips he'd had to the underbelly of Coruscant, the lower levels were polite society did not oft speak of. Calen bolted after the form of Beebus.

The Rodian had clearly meant for the door to last longer in his defense, and thus was now hurrying to put more space between himself and his pursuers. Unfortunately, it appeared that he was both out of shape and old for one of his race and wasn't making much headway in that regard. His biggest asset now was the roundness of the corridor, built to the same kind of logic as the rest of the domed structure, weaving into itself around and around its core.

Calen charged ahead as Beebus made his way onto a catwalk and back into the marketplace proper. Beebus overturned barrels, crates, stands, basically anything he could get his hands onto long enough to disrupt their resting in order to block his path. Calen avoided them all, the debris only stopping him by the narrowest fractions of a second. From the edges of the marketplace, Beebus led them a merry chase into the crowds.

"Excuse me! Pardon me! Excuse me!" Calen said to avoid people of various species as he moved forward in pursuit, doing his best to not lose sight of his target. He got through the crowd just in time to see Beebus heading down into another alley. As he broke through the gathering, Calen drew his pistol and set it for stun, heading down the way. His eyes skimmed all points of entry that he saw as he came up...but he failed to notice that he, now, was being followed, although that became very clear when he felt the cold metal of a blaster muzzle pressed against the back of his head.

"<You picked a bad time to get lost, friend.>" Beebus quipped at him. "<Put the blaster down. Nice and easy.>" Humiliated, Calen dropped the blaster to the ground."<Good. Now...if you want to keep going with that head attached to your neck, here's what you're going to tell Ordos. You->" The Rodian was suddenly cut off by the safety of a blaster being cut off.

"You can tell me yourself, Beebus. I'm old, not deaf." Ordos had caught up to them, his blaster trained on the Rodian. Beebus looked between the two humans, the one he was holding at blasterpoint and the one holding him at blasterpoint.

"<Think you can kill me before I fry your young friend, Ordos?>" Beebus asked him. Then, to Calen's shock and surprise, Ordos...smiled. And he holstered his blaster.

"I don't really think I have to." He said.

"<What are you-AHHHHH!!!!>" The Rodian's question was cut off as he screamed, dropping the blaster. Calen scrambled away, turning just in time to see electricity arching all across the green alien's body. When he crumbled over, Calen could see why - Beebus had been hit by a stun bolt.

"What the-?"

"ROOOOAWRRRRR!!!"

"Calen, meet Rookanonah." Ordos said. "Or, as I call him, Rook." Calen looked over to see nearly seven feet worth of shaggy black fur in humanoid form - A Wookiee! Tuffs of that black hair covered up his eyes, but the rest of very distinctly of the armed variety. An ammo belt crossed his chest, some grenades were affixed to the same belt, and a variety of pouches adorned the creature's waistline. On its belt, too, was a wicked looking, curved blade that Calen had never seen before. In his hands was the long, thin form of a blaster carbine with several notches carved into the barrel by the sharpness of a blade...or its owner's skilled claw.

"I...what?" Calen blinked several times, his confusion clear.

"What? You've never seen a Wookiee before?" Ordos asked him.

"I know what he is!" Calen protested, finally finding his motor skills again as he retrieved his blaster from the floor. "Where did he come from?" Calen asked. "...and it's nice to meet you, Rookanonah."

The Wookiee gave a bark that Calen was completely lost on, looking to Ordos for guidance.

"He says to call him 'Rook'. Everyone calls him 'Rook'." Ordos said. "He's a bounty hunter. I thought he might like an assist." The Wookiee gave a louder growl that sounded...annoyed? Calen was having trouble tracking it. Ordos, however, had no such hang ups. "Yes, yes, this is your glorious hunt. No worries, old friend."

Rook knelt down by Beebus' fallen form, pulling the bolt from his back. The intention, it appeared, hadn't been to kill him with it.

"Okay, so what do we do-" Calen started to ask, and was immediately cut off as Ordos put his foot right into Beebus' stomach with a nice, swift kick.

"Wake up, nerf herder!" Ordos shouted at him. The Rodian mewled pathetically on the floor. "Oh, cut the theatrics! That was barely a love tap!"

"<Someone help! Help!>" Beebus started shouting. "<Call the Garrison! I'm being atta-ACK!"> He received another kick in the stomach for his trouble.

"Rook here has all his licenses up to date and you have a rap sheet that's taller than he is." Ordos snapped at him. "Do you really want to bring down the Bucketheads? You think that's gonna go well for you?"

"<I don't...I...I don't know where Tin Daheel is. Honest!>" Beebus wheezed.

"That's funny, I don't recall asking anything about where Tin Daheel is." Ordos said.

"<He's the only reason you'd be here!>" Beebus coughed, Calen was almost certain that some internal organ would be coming out at the rate he was coughing. "<Word's already gotten out about what he did to your Captain and everything.>"

"If you're smart, I wouldn't bring that up again." Ordos said. "Unless you wanna join him in the grave he's gonna fill." Calen could see it flash in the eyes of the older man, the soldier he had been...wrath. Real, proper wrath that was flowing from the man. "Start talking. The more you talk, the more limbs you get to keep."

"<I don't...>"

"The mining equipment. Why does he need it? What for?" Ordos asked.

"<I don't know. I wasn't cut in on that jo-AHHH!>" A blast from Ordos seared into the Rodian's hand, causing him to scream out in pain yet again. Feeling had apparently started returning to his limbs only to get that particularly wonderful feeling.

"You gonna talk?" Ordos demanded of him. "You only have two hands and two feet left..."

"<It's some kind of job on Pergitor! It's here! He's here! With the Church!>"

"What?" Ordos pressed him. "What is it?"

"<I don't know! Space winds, I swear I don't have the faintest idea! The Church would know! It's something to do with them!>"

"Okay, good." Ordos said, holstering his blaster. "Rook, he's all yours."

"<WHAT?!>"

"What? You thought we were going to let you go? Don't be ridiculous!" The older man snorted. The Rodian paled into a lighter shade of green.

"<Listen, you don't have to do this! I can help you! I can get you equipment! Weapons! Discounted! To free! Please don't->" Beebus was silenced by the stock of Rook's carbine smacking into the back of his skull. The Wookiee knelt down and hauled his target's limb body over his shoulder like a sack of grain. With a nod and a growl toward Ordos and Calen, Rook lumbered off to go and collect his bounty.

"Don't feel too bad about him." Ordos said, noting that Calen looked...unwell. The young man stood there, fidgeting a bit.

"No, I'm not...I just..." Calen's voice trailed off. He hadn't realized he'd been shaking. "That was..."

"An interrogation." Ordos finished his sentence for him. "I told you before, this was all or nothing. You had an out, you didn't take it." He shrugged. "Hate it for you, kid, but this is how the real world works."

"I...know." Calen said. 'But that doesn't mean I have to like it.' The back half went unsaid as Calen tried his best to remember his training, finding the discipline to keep himself from shaking.

"And we at least have a path to follow." Ordos said. "And if Daheel is here, then it's probably the best chance we have to get him. I was hoping we wouldn't have to, but...let's go to Church." He started off back the way they had come.

"But what about Rook?" Calen asked. Ordos stopped, turning and looking to him with a raised brow. "If things go south, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a bounty hunting Wookiee in our corner."

"He's got a bounty to collect. And we have a job to do." Ordos said. "The Church is mostly just some fringe lunatics and pushovers anyway...shouldn't be a problem. It's not like we're trying to raid the Imperial Palace." They started off down the corridor again, heading back toward the marketplace. As they went across the catwalk, a thought struck Calen.

"So, Rook was the old friend you were talking about?" Calen asked him. "Was he in your group? With you and Glin and...the Captain?"

"Yes. He was." Ordos said without looking to the man walking next to him. "A long time ago."

"Why did you-" Calen started to ask, but stopped as Ordos stopped moving forward. He saw something in that man's eye. Something...sorrowful, maybe? Either way, as soon as Calen noticed it, it was gone again. The old soldier's stoic face once more taking its place.

"Nothing lasts forever, Calen." Ordos said curtly before moving ahead once more.