Croatoan - Chapter One (Star Wars, Luke/Mara adventure - WIP)
Croatoan
Dramatis Personae
(in order of appearance)
Mara Jade, human female smuggler
Luke Skywalker, human male Jedi master
Gerrick Koor, human male smuggler
Willoughby Darklighter, human male City Administrator
Mark Whitesun, human male mechanic
Isabel Whitesun, human female housewife
Katya Terra, human female Jedi apprentice
Bren Ashen, human male Jedi apprentice
Croatoan - Chapter One
by EmilieDarklighter
Author's Note: The character of Gerrick Blake is not mine. He belongs to a friend of mine, and is used with permission and credit to Scree, who is Gerrick's mommy. <3
Any and all original characters are the property of their creators (EmilieDarklighter and Scree) and may not under any circumstances be used without permission. Any and all Star Wars characters and situations are the property of Lucasfilm, Ltd, Del Rey books, with special credit to Timothy Zahn.
The higher-grade focusing crystal in the DH-22 gave it a hell of a lot more punch than your average blaster pistol. It enlarged the grip a bit, but Mara didn't mind; it still fit comfortably into the palm of her hand, and did quite a good job of remaining invisible against her clothing when most other weapons might give themselves away. There was only a slight bump in her vest in the back, where the grip slid up just a little bit above the hem of her trousers. She stood with her hands behind her back, facing the jungle and Skywalker, one fingernail picking at the rubber grip.
"It's just a few days, Mara. That's all. Just stay a few more days. It would be dangerous to leave now."
They were standing outside the temple because the students were inside, and Mara had no desire to strangle him in front of them. A bit traumatic for all, and besides, outside there were no witnesses.
"But you can't tell me why?"
"Well, no, but--"
Mara wrenched the gun from it's holster. She felt a twinge of satisfaction as Luke's eyebrows shot up and disappeared behind his bangs and he threw his hands up in surrender.
"Do you see this gun, Skywalker? I love this gun. I spend at least an hour a day cleaning this gun. So why in the galaxy have you got it into your thick skull that I don't know how to use it?"
She fired a few shots into the jungle for emphasis; there was a loud squawk and an audible thump and a rustle as the dead avian hit the jungle floor.
"It's not that I don't think you're capable, Mara. It's just that I have a-"
She glared at him.
"Don't. Say it."
Luke rolled his eyes and exhaled loudly. "Fine," he said through a tight smile. "The whole thing makes me uncomfortable, then. I can't shake it."
"Well get comfortable. I've got work to do and I'm not shirking responsibilities just because your trousers are too tight."
Luke rubbed his eyes and made a very unpleasant expression; Mara resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him and re-holstered her gun. After a few moments, Luke dropped his hand and his face fell back into calm. She wanted to kick him.
"Let me go then. You're always telling me how I should get off Yavin sometimes. You could humor me just this once, couldn't you?"
"Not my job."
He didn't respond, only stared with those annoyingly large eyes of his. After a moment he began to have a look on his face that bordered on mournful; someone might think she'd kicked his puppy and not told him she was leaving for a routine pickup like the kind she made three or four times a month.
The staring contest went on for a full minute before Mara threw up her hands in disgust.
"I don't have time for this. You can tag along, whatever. But there are rules, Skywalker. If you break my ship, I'll kill you. If you get in my way, I'll kill you. If you so much as look in my direction and I even think that you're going to start spewing Jedi at me-"
"You'll kill me. See, Mara? I'm an old hand at this already."
Mara snorted. "No. No, that just means you know the rules. Whether or not you apply them - and survive - is entirely a different story. Takeoff's in an hour, and if you're even a second late I'm stranding your ass with the rest of the spoonbenders - I've got a man with my pickup location half a day away and I don't want to keep him waiting. Got it?"
"Got it."
***
"Took you long enough."
Gerrick Koor had his back propped against a rough stone wall of The Titan's Dart, a cantina on the higher end of low in the downtown district of a port city on Gala. With his arms crossed over his chest, feet crossed at the ankles, and half-closed eyes, Gerrick looked like one more lazy kid shirking off work to booze in a cantina. He didn't even push off of the wall when they approached him, and they barely heard him speaking over the mulling evening crowd.
Mara smiled tightly at him. "We had a little bit of a delay on Yavin," she said. "And I picked up some extra cargo."
She nodded in Luke's direction. The half-day between here and Yavin hadn't been nearly as bad as their argument over the actual trip itself, but it had still been full of petty bickering and more than a little sarcasm. At one point she'd actually managed to drive Luke all the way out of his Jedi calm, but all that had gotten her was an exasperated shout of "Are you insane, woman?!" and angry mumblings in Huttese. Luke had been mostly silent for the past hour or so, though, mostly owing to the fact that she'd made in plainly clear that she resented his presence, did not need his help, and thought he was being more than a little stupid.
"She's a little tetchy today."
She popped him one for good measure. Right in the back of the head. It was satisfying.
"Ow! A lot tetchy, then. Geez, Mara."
If Gerrick was impressed by his first encounter with the renowned Jedi, he wasn't showing it. In fact, his expression was less of interest or intrigue and more 'dear sweet Force, you're an idiot.' It was an expression that Mara saw him wear a lot.
"Your observational skills astound me," said Gerrick, finally standing up straight and uncrossing his arms. The movement revealed a small black box, about the size of a deck of cards - the kind of information storage device that would plug into a personal datapad or computer terminal. He held his hand out as though to shake Mara's, and she palmed it, subtly sliding it into her vest pocket as she straightened the garment.
"You should see him do tricks."
Luke wrinkled his nose at her, and he looked as though he wanted to say something, but before he could, Gerrick interrupted.
"While I'd love to stay and make fun of your friend," he said. "I've got stuff to do. You know, like, my job. That thing that lets me eat once in a while? I like food. It's nice. Hence, job. I'm out."
A moment later they were watching Gerrick's retreating back.
***
"Does he always do that?"
As they watched Gerrick's ship take off from the cockpit of the Fire, Luke watched it fade into the clouds with a funny tilt to his head, like he was thinking entirely too hard about something. His forehead had tiny, horizontal wrinkles and his nose was scrunched up like it itched; Mara had the sudden, fleeting urge to scratch Skywalker's nose, and the ridiculousness of that was enough to jerk her out of her last-second study of his face. Time to snap him out of it.
"Pretty much. He keeps to himself and his ship mostly. It's a nice life," she added, giving him a pointed stare.
Bingo. The pensive look melted from his face and was replaced with more than just a little exasperation. He swiveled in his chair to face her and leaned forward, but not before she caught a little roll of the eyes that he hadn't meant her to see. Jerk.
"Mara, this is silly. Can we please just - "
She'd been splitting her attention between Skywalker and the mission briefing flashing the viewscreen in front of her. Karrde himself had promised that this particular job would be easy, a not-quite-vacation on the Outer Rim that would at least ensure that she wouldn't have to work too hard to get it done. And normally, she could see, it would have been, if not for present company. It was a rare occasion that Mara said the -first- thing that came to her mind, but frustrations with Skywalker had an uncanny ability to break her filter, so the first thought in her mind was also the first thing out of her mouth.
"Damn you, Skywalker."
His head whipped around. "What? What'd I do?"
Mara's attention was now wholly on the briefing screen, where a very familiar binary system flashed in red letters repeatedly in the left-hand corner, in the box that indicated 'destination'.
"Do you see that?"
She jabbed a finger at the screen. Skywalker leaned over, unsure at first, and then she saw his eyebrows shoot into his hairline when he saw that her ship would be heading, in no uncertain terms, to his home planet of Tatooine."
"Looks like I'm going to be more helpful than you thought."
She leveled him a look.
"What? I'm not exactly thrilled about it either, but at least I know mostly what we're walking into."
"You mean what I'm walking into."
"Mara, there's no way I'm staying-"
He didn't get it. He was famous, damn it, and for some reason his thick head always seemed to forget that. She didn't know how long it had been since he'd been to Tatooine, but she got the sinking feeling that with their luck, he'd have a few statues, some museums, and a seedy bar named after him. Not good for business at all.
"Look," she said. "No disrespect to your past, Skywalker, but I'm pretty sure that whole fame thing you've got going on is probably worse here, and I don't have time to convince my seller that you aren't going to arrest him on sight. I don't trust that you'll keep your head down, and thus you will be staying on the ship."
"No."
Another look. There was more "I'm going to kriffing kill you" in this particular glare, but he had set that stubborn jaw and had crossed his arms over his chest. He looked like he was about to pull rank on her; if he did that, there would have to be blood.
"No, Mara. It's too dangerous, and I - well, something's not right. I can feel it. I was invisible to these people for nearly two decades. I can do it again for a few days. I promise."
Mara stood up at about the same time Luke did, and they faced each other, arms crossed. She wasn't giving in and neither was he, and still three more days to Tatooine.
May the best woman win.
Dramatis Personae
(in order of appearance)
Mara Jade, human female smuggler
Luke Skywalker, human male Jedi master
Gerrick Koor, human male smuggler
Willoughby Darklighter, human male City Administrator
Mark Whitesun, human male mechanic
Isabel Whitesun, human female housewife
Katya Terra, human female Jedi apprentice
Bren Ashen, human male Jedi apprentice
Croatoan - Chapter One
by EmilieDarklighter
Author's Note: The character of Gerrick Blake is not mine. He belongs to a friend of mine, and is used with permission and credit to Scree, who is Gerrick's mommy. <3
Any and all original characters are the property of their creators (EmilieDarklighter and Scree) and may not under any circumstances be used without permission. Any and all Star Wars characters and situations are the property of Lucasfilm, Ltd, Del Rey books, with special credit to Timothy Zahn.
The higher-grade focusing crystal in the DH-22 gave it a hell of a lot more punch than your average blaster pistol. It enlarged the grip a bit, but Mara didn't mind; it still fit comfortably into the palm of her hand, and did quite a good job of remaining invisible against her clothing when most other weapons might give themselves away. There was only a slight bump in her vest in the back, where the grip slid up just a little bit above the hem of her trousers. She stood with her hands behind her back, facing the jungle and Skywalker, one fingernail picking at the rubber grip.
"It's just a few days, Mara. That's all. Just stay a few more days. It would be dangerous to leave now."
They were standing outside the temple because the students were inside, and Mara had no desire to strangle him in front of them. A bit traumatic for all, and besides, outside there were no witnesses.
"But you can't tell me why?"
"Well, no, but--"
Mara wrenched the gun from it's holster. She felt a twinge of satisfaction as Luke's eyebrows shot up and disappeared behind his bangs and he threw his hands up in surrender.
"Do you see this gun, Skywalker? I love this gun. I spend at least an hour a day cleaning this gun. So why in the galaxy have you got it into your thick skull that I don't know how to use it?"
She fired a few shots into the jungle for emphasis; there was a loud squawk and an audible thump and a rustle as the dead avian hit the jungle floor.
"It's not that I don't think you're capable, Mara. It's just that I have a-"
She glared at him.
"Don't. Say it."
Luke rolled his eyes and exhaled loudly. "Fine," he said through a tight smile. "The whole thing makes me uncomfortable, then. I can't shake it."
"Well get comfortable. I've got work to do and I'm not shirking responsibilities just because your trousers are too tight."
Luke rubbed his eyes and made a very unpleasant expression; Mara resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him and re-holstered her gun. After a few moments, Luke dropped his hand and his face fell back into calm. She wanted to kick him.
"Let me go then. You're always telling me how I should get off Yavin sometimes. You could humor me just this once, couldn't you?"
"Not my job."
He didn't respond, only stared with those annoyingly large eyes of his. After a moment he began to have a look on his face that bordered on mournful; someone might think she'd kicked his puppy and not told him she was leaving for a routine pickup like the kind she made three or four times a month.
The staring contest went on for a full minute before Mara threw up her hands in disgust.
"I don't have time for this. You can tag along, whatever. But there are rules, Skywalker. If you break my ship, I'll kill you. If you get in my way, I'll kill you. If you so much as look in my direction and I even think that you're going to start spewing Jedi at me-"
"You'll kill me. See, Mara? I'm an old hand at this already."
Mara snorted. "No. No, that just means you know the rules. Whether or not you apply them - and survive - is entirely a different story. Takeoff's in an hour, and if you're even a second late I'm stranding your ass with the rest of the spoonbenders - I've got a man with my pickup location half a day away and I don't want to keep him waiting. Got it?"
"Got it."
***
"Took you long enough."
Gerrick Koor had his back propped against a rough stone wall of The Titan's Dart, a cantina on the higher end of low in the downtown district of a port city on Gala. With his arms crossed over his chest, feet crossed at the ankles, and half-closed eyes, Gerrick looked like one more lazy kid shirking off work to booze in a cantina. He didn't even push off of the wall when they approached him, and they barely heard him speaking over the mulling evening crowd.
Mara smiled tightly at him. "We had a little bit of a delay on Yavin," she said. "And I picked up some extra cargo."
She nodded in Luke's direction. The half-day between here and Yavin hadn't been nearly as bad as their argument over the actual trip itself, but it had still been full of petty bickering and more than a little sarcasm. At one point she'd actually managed to drive Luke all the way out of his Jedi calm, but all that had gotten her was an exasperated shout of "Are you insane, woman?!" and angry mumblings in Huttese. Luke had been mostly silent for the past hour or so, though, mostly owing to the fact that she'd made in plainly clear that she resented his presence, did not need his help, and thought he was being more than a little stupid.
"She's a little tetchy today."
She popped him one for good measure. Right in the back of the head. It was satisfying.
"Ow! A lot tetchy, then. Geez, Mara."
If Gerrick was impressed by his first encounter with the renowned Jedi, he wasn't showing it. In fact, his expression was less of interest or intrigue and more 'dear sweet Force, you're an idiot.' It was an expression that Mara saw him wear a lot.
"Your observational skills astound me," said Gerrick, finally standing up straight and uncrossing his arms. The movement revealed a small black box, about the size of a deck of cards - the kind of information storage device that would plug into a personal datapad or computer terminal. He held his hand out as though to shake Mara's, and she palmed it, subtly sliding it into her vest pocket as she straightened the garment.
"You should see him do tricks."
Luke wrinkled his nose at her, and he looked as though he wanted to say something, but before he could, Gerrick interrupted.
"While I'd love to stay and make fun of your friend," he said. "I've got stuff to do. You know, like, my job. That thing that lets me eat once in a while? I like food. It's nice. Hence, job. I'm out."
A moment later they were watching Gerrick's retreating back.
***
"Does he always do that?"
As they watched Gerrick's ship take off from the cockpit of the Fire, Luke watched it fade into the clouds with a funny tilt to his head, like he was thinking entirely too hard about something. His forehead had tiny, horizontal wrinkles and his nose was scrunched up like it itched; Mara had the sudden, fleeting urge to scratch Skywalker's nose, and the ridiculousness of that was enough to jerk her out of her last-second study of his face. Time to snap him out of it.
"Pretty much. He keeps to himself and his ship mostly. It's a nice life," she added, giving him a pointed stare.
Bingo. The pensive look melted from his face and was replaced with more than just a little exasperation. He swiveled in his chair to face her and leaned forward, but not before she caught a little roll of the eyes that he hadn't meant her to see. Jerk.
"Mara, this is silly. Can we please just - "
She'd been splitting her attention between Skywalker and the mission briefing flashing the viewscreen in front of her. Karrde himself had promised that this particular job would be easy, a not-quite-vacation on the Outer Rim that would at least ensure that she wouldn't have to work too hard to get it done. And normally, she could see, it would have been, if not for present company. It was a rare occasion that Mara said the -first- thing that came to her mind, but frustrations with Skywalker had an uncanny ability to break her filter, so the first thought in her mind was also the first thing out of her mouth.
"Damn you, Skywalker."
His head whipped around. "What? What'd I do?"
Mara's attention was now wholly on the briefing screen, where a very familiar binary system flashed in red letters repeatedly in the left-hand corner, in the box that indicated 'destination'.
"Do you see that?"
She jabbed a finger at the screen. Skywalker leaned over, unsure at first, and then she saw his eyebrows shoot into his hairline when he saw that her ship would be heading, in no uncertain terms, to his home planet of Tatooine."
"Looks like I'm going to be more helpful than you thought."
She leveled him a look.
"What? I'm not exactly thrilled about it either, but at least I know mostly what we're walking into."
"You mean what I'm walking into."
"Mara, there's no way I'm staying-"
He didn't get it. He was famous, damn it, and for some reason his thick head always seemed to forget that. She didn't know how long it had been since he'd been to Tatooine, but she got the sinking feeling that with their luck, he'd have a few statues, some museums, and a seedy bar named after him. Not good for business at all.
"Look," she said. "No disrespect to your past, Skywalker, but I'm pretty sure that whole fame thing you've got going on is probably worse here, and I don't have time to convince my seller that you aren't going to arrest him on sight. I don't trust that you'll keep your head down, and thus you will be staying on the ship."
"No."
Another look. There was more "I'm going to kriffing kill you" in this particular glare, but he had set that stubborn jaw and had crossed his arms over his chest. He looked like he was about to pull rank on her; if he did that, there would have to be blood.
"No, Mara. It's too dangerous, and I - well, something's not right. I can feel it. I was invisible to these people for nearly two decades. I can do it again for a few days. I promise."
Mara stood up at about the same time Luke did, and they faced each other, arms crossed. She wasn't giving in and neither was he, and still three more days to Tatooine.
May the best woman win.