

I, TIM

Memoirs of a Cook on a Moon-Sized Planet-Vaporizing Space Battlestation

BY JACK TENG

I, Tim: Memoirs of a Cook on a Moon-Sized Planet-Vaporizing Space Battlestation, copyright © 2015 by Jack Teng

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover art adapted from ©Shock77| Dreamstime.com -  Cartoon Astronaut Photo

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

PART 2

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PART 1

"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

-From an unrelated fictional property that wasn't all that long ago or too far away, and that bears only strangely coincidental similarities to this story.

"There must have been a Death Star canteen..."

-Eddie Izzard.
CHAPTER 1

You probably know how most of this story goes, but I was on the inside when all the drama was happening out there. I was just about to pull the dinner stew off the plasma range when the whole kitchen jolted a massive step forward, leaving me briefly suspended in the air – and then splattered me backwards on to Joe's work area.

"DAMN YOU, Tim!" Joe swore, as he scrambled up from the floor, and straightened his cook's jacket. "Get off my steaks!"

Dazed as I was, I had no illusion that the steakyness of Joe's steaks was only notional; they were little more than cheap galactic roadkill with cosmetic reshaping and distant afterthoughts of flavoring. Nevertheless, I knew better than to upset Joe in his I'm-a-goddamned-Imperial-GOLD-SEAL-certified- CHEF-and-though-I'm-stuck-in-this-shitty-ass-job-I'll-be damned-if-I-serve-food-that's-beneath-me mood, so I placated his diva hysterics with a muttered apology, and got back to my stew, which thankfully had been held in place by the range's auto-clamps and suffered only some mild sloshing.

There was a chorus of swearing in the rest of the kitchen, as we all struggled to get our bearings back and make dinner service. Mind you, with all the hullaballoo going on outside, it was unlikely anyone would be in then mess to be served when the dinner bell blipped; but, the head chef was a re-purposed protocol droid, and you know how anal those buggers are with keeping with schedules and, even more annoyingly, docking credits by the damned micro-second.

Grabbing a ladle, I gave the stew-pot a quick stir, checking to see if it hadn't burnt too badly. Last time I'd singed the soup, I didn't hear the end of it from the crew. I held the salt shaker and my tube of "smoke essence" at ready, as I tasted the thick, sputtering stew I'd concocted. Phew. No burn. I could holster my expensive – and slightly illegal – smoke essence. The stuff was effective in making anything taste good (with some slight hints of euphoria), but use it too often and people get a nasty rash in their nether regions; something to do with the tentacled critter they grind it out of.

Alright. Time to get the stew to the feeding trough. Slipping on a pair ovenmits, I braced myself, took a deep breath, and huffed the stew pot off the range, while gingerly swivelling in the direction of mess hall. It was only about fifteen shuffling steps to get to the serving area, but, at about step four, the kitchen jolted violently yet again... and I found myself blinking on the floor, slowly registering the burning sensation over my arms and legs, as my hands spastically grasped at the emptiness of the air.

"YOU BASTARD!" roared Joe, both hands grabbing fist-fulls of his hair, his eyes bugging out of their sockets. "Tim, you dumb ass! I told you not to mess with my steaks! Do you have any idea how long it took to get the seasoning right on them? Now look at them!" Joe cried, waving his arms and alternatively stabbing the air in my general direction and his steaks, which were now wading in the lake that was my stew. Ah, that's where the pot went.

"Look, Joe. I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. It was a pretty bad one. Dunno what's going on out there," I said as I stood up, wiping the stew off my chest, and examined the fierce reddening of my arms. Shit. That was going be painful tomorrow. Glancing around, it was clear that the kitchen was now filled with small disasters. With random pans, cutlery and broken dishes liberally sprinkled across the entire kitchen, it seemed like a giant kid's hand had poked in, flopped everything around and ran away laughing teeheeheehee.

"You're sorry? You're sorry?" Joe fumed, now grabbing me by my wet, still warm stew-imbibed jacket and shook his free hand in my face. "You stupid hack! HOURS of work. GONE! You useless piece of shit!"

You know? In retrospect, I really should have been nicer to Joe. The pompous ass was a real pain, but he was a good guy; sure, he took himself too seriously, but he was still a good guy. I mean we did have a few great nights drinking together, and, man, when he let loose, he was a real hoot! Not that I regret defending myself when I did. The nutbar was going bonkers right in my freaking face after all, and who could really say they enjoy having someone scream at them point-blank? But, considering what happened to him shortly after, I did feel a little bad for saying,

"Fuck off, Joe! No one cares about your stupid steaks. They taste like piss-soaked conduit-wrapping anyway," I spat back, pushing him off of me, my fists clenched, fully ready to take him on. The stinging in my arms was getting increasingly painful, but the blood drumming thickly in my ears helped me ignore it.

"Nobody?! What?! You asshole..." spluttered Joe, genuinely shocked. Poor guy, he really did think he was the galaxy's best cook – sorry, chef – with his pathetic "Imperial Gold Seal" creds that any one of us could have bought off the datasphere, if we would have had the wherewithal to sit through three weeks of aping cooking holos and memorizing outdated Empire-sanctioned recipes – which of course we didn't since we very well knew we could get the same job with or without the shiny imperial-gold icon flashing up on our permanent datasphere records.

"Get off it, man," I sneered mercilessly. "You're no different from any of us in this kitchen."

"No different?! I've got an IMPERIAL GOLD SEAL, you fucker!"

"Ooooo.... Ahhhh...."

"Don't you mock me! I've worked too hard for some little shit like you to..."

"Oooo! Oooo! Gold seal! Better watch out! Gold seal coming this way! Oooo oooo oooo!

"Fuck you! You don't know me! I'm going to..."

...And then our stimulating banter was interrupted by a loud, metallic blat, followed by, "Is there a problem here, Line Cook Tim and Line Cook Joe? Need I remind you that service is in less than fifteen minutes and 43 seconds, and neither of you are near to meeting our objectives?"

This was our illustrious Head Chef, Dee-Three-Pee-Oh. Committed to promptness, goal-meeting and covering its brass-colored metal rear access-flap, if not to quality and taste. The droid stood an imposing full head over us, uncomfortably probing us through and through with its unblinking flat-panelled visual receptors, as it thrummed its metallic digits over its crossed arms. Of course, it would have been too much to ask for the Chef to uncross its arms and help out a little, possible even cook; managing us sloppy sacks of flesh and analyzing efficiency metrics were the only all-absorbing tasks that it had been programmed to do.

"Note that a late infraction has been indicated on both of your records, and you can expect your monthly credits to be reduced accordingly."

"But Chef! How can you do this to me? It was Tim's doing!" Joe protested, utterly horrified at the injustice. "My record! My perfectly clean record..."

"Will now have an infraction recorded on it. Correct," the unblinking droid asserted.

"I won't stand by this! I'll file an appeal!"

"Oh, lay off it, Joe," I said, trying to pull him away from an increasingly bad situation. The more time we wasted trying to reason with the droid was more credits docked against our pay.

The droid was great at what it did, which was to eliminate any kind of real employer-employee dialogue. Someone in upper-management had rightly calculated that company-staff negotiations were far more effective and disempowering without the troublesome distractions of sympathy and other such squishy emotions that other flesh-beings would be susceptible to. All we could do now is grab whatever insta-food we could from storage and hope for the best. I figured that if I could salvage an armload of the week-old veg-cubes from the compacter, I could pass it off as a 'garden fresh' soup instead of the stew.

"Come on, Joe. Let's go..."

"No! I'm not taking this shit anymore! I am a trained CHEF! I am NOT going to pushed around by some sixty-four-bit droid who can't flip a synth-burger to save itself from the scrap-heap!" Joe cried out, waggling his finger in the air, and leaning aggressively towards the impassive droid.

Rah, rah, Fellow Worker Joe. Really, honestly, and truly, I was fully intending to support the guy, but I could see Chef Dee-Three-Pee-Oh's failsafe employee "management" device quietly deploying behind his back, and I knew better than to be within range of the thing's thousand-volt stun-stick. I took a few steps back, making sure my feet weren't sitting in any puddles of conductive fluid, and watched as Joe pinned Dee-Three-Pee-Oh against the plasma range with his unending flow of righteous demands for justice.

"I deserve no mark on my record! You know it, you stupid machine! You know it!"

"Cook Joe, I have recorded a further infraction for disruptive behavior..."

"What! It's your bullshit that caused this! I demand an appeal!"

"And another for unproductivity. Step back, Cook Joe. You are now entering my physical boundaries."

"You hear ME, you droid. You're going to clear this all up and you are going to recognize my credentials!"

"Cook Joe, step back, or I will have to restrain you..."

"Restrain this!"

"Do not poke me."

"Oh, yeah? How about this?"

"I repeat. Do not poke me."

"Yeah?! No poking?"

"Cease poking me."

"Don't like it? Don't like the poking?"

"Cease your poking!"

As disturbingly fascinating and volatile as the exchange was becoming, I was grateful to have it end – though not quite in the specific manner it ended – which was by a huge ball of fire that belched out of the plasma range, engulfing and incinerating poor pompous Joe and Chef Dee-Three-Pee-Oh, while throwing me to the ground and charring my arms and face.

Shortly afterwards, a wailing siren and epileptic flashing red lights assaulted whatever remaining senses I had left. As frantic hands grabbed at me and dragged me to the escape pods, I realized that the unthinkable had happened: our battlestation was exploding. The Rebels were on the verge of destroying the most feared battlestation of the Empire, the Deeeeath Star.
CHAPTER 2

A few days later, I was working the lunch service, dolling out insipid red sauce over piles of overcooked pasta. I'd been assigned to a star destroyer in the 9th fleet with a tough-sounding name I couldn't recall, like the "Emperor's Fierce Wang" (which probably wasn't it), and that had lost much of its crew in the battle that I also had barely survived. In fact, much of the fleet had been reassigned after the debacle that lost the Empire's now non-existent and certainly now no longer unbeatable superweapon.

Obviously, I was in no condition to work after seeing half my former kitchen-mates die in various manners involving fire, toxic fumes and flying metal shrapnel. The droid-medic, however, thought otherwise and cleared me for duty shortly after the three-person escape pod I had squeezed into with five other people had been picked up. Scanning over the blistering skin on my arms and my scalded face and chest, the mechanical doctor stated, with what I guessed was its version of digital boredom, that I had only mild, topical damage that would not interfere with my duties, and printed out a prescription for some nasty smelling skin cream. On the plus side, the cream worked remarkably well, and all I had left of the burn was some intense redness all over my face and arms. On the negative side, the cream did nothing to hold back the visions of Joe in flames screaming and writhing in pain every time someone turned on the plasma grill.

"Hey! A little service here!"

Oh, right: work. I'd been having a hard time keeping track of things if I didn't keep myself moving. I mouthed something like an apology and doled out the crewman's carb and sauce, which was enough to keep him moving along. Working the front end wasn't my favorite, but, after breaking out into cold, paralyzing sweats every time I turned on the plasma grill, the Head Chef buzzed more credits off my pay and posted me here. Generally, serving wasn't that bad, but every so often you got some bozo yahoo like,

"Lookee here! Looks like someone got shore leave and got sun! Crazy sunburn you got there!" said some bozo yahoo, who naturally was followed by a posse of bozo yahoos who dutifully laughed too hard at the hilaaaarious joke. Judging by their sleek black unitards, these particular assholes were fighter pilots, the crème de la crème of the fleet – or, at least, that's what they thought and how they behaved towards any of the non-commissioned crew. "Shiiiit! And we're in the middle of a war. Who's dick did you suck to get your chance to hit the sands of Tattooine?"

Ordinarily – that is, before my former kitchen was destroyed – I didn't have to deal with these guys, since I only made the regular blah food for us lowly support staff, while they ate at their crewmen's mess; but, with the crewmen's mess still drifting in the void of space, among many other of the ship's systems, it meant I had to put up with their arrogance and self-importance. It was best to ignore these guys and hope they passed quickly.

"Whassa matter, Suntan-Man? Tongue too tired from all that rimming to talk?" taunted the pilot again, as his friends guffawed. "Oh, man! Look at that! He's getting even redder than before! Seriously, buddy, that's one amazing tan you got. You gotta tell me your secret to getting shore leave!"

It's alright. It's alright. I'd been given a hard time by these guys before. I could let it pass. I stiffly served out portions of their lunch, thanking the steadiness and semblance of dignity that my mechanical muscle memory gave me, as they continued their inane comments and I clenched my jaw until my temples hurt. When they were gone, I took some deep breaths and calmed myself by imagining all the clever replies that I could have threw back at them, like: "Why? Are the dicks you're sucking not working?" or (and this would have definitely gotten me a serious beating) "If you want shore leave, you could try doing your job, like not get your ass kicked by the Rebels."

A minuscule part of me reminded me that these pilots risked their lives every time they went out there, and that, really, they were keeping us alive and defending us – but then I remembered that was the bullshit the propaganda droid spouted at us every morning during our Eff'n Pee drills, that is, our Faith and Pep drills. After five years of hearing it almost every morning, I tried to tune out the saccharine sweet, over-the-top earnest mechanical voice, but it was inevitable that their mind-fuck message would worm itself into my brain. Hell, I could probably lead those ridiculously choreographed drills now, to the point of replicating the rhythmic salutes, chest clasping, and patriotic singing. What nonsense. Pride for the Empire, my ass. Goddamn it. I only work here. Fuck those self-entitled pricks.

I let out a deep sigh, surprising myself by how tight my chest had been once the air had been let out. The reality was that I was lucky to have this job. The galactic economy was pretty rough these days, and it wasn't easy getting something that had any security at all, not to mention even the basic benefits. Sure the salary wasn't great, but, working for the Empire, you were fed three meals a day, had clean quarters to leave in, and the benefits, at least, were decent (medical and dental is included, plus one week guaranteed vacation and one free chiro and massage appointment). So long as you're human and willing to shill for the Empire doing crappy jobs, you could at least be set for a little while until the war blew over. At least, that's what I had told myself when I applied for the job.

Seeing the sauce tray was getting low, I started ladling more into it, but then had to stop when the slopping red sauce started to give me visions of the pools of blood, guts and miscellaneous appendages that had been strewn among the dead and dying crew along the way to the escape pods. The ones that were still moaning low and pleading for help were the worst: if they'd been dead, their stunned, doll-like eyes just would have jus sat there – instead of begging to be saved as you ran by, unable to do anything else except stumble along and feel their damning stares on your back.

Shit, I wasn't doing well at all. Fortunately, judging by how full the mess was, the lunch rush was pretty much over, so all I had to do was coast the rest of my shift. I took out my cleaning cloth and started to meticulously wipe down the counter to make myself look busy. It was then when the shit really hit the fan.

I had gotten into a real nice groove of cleaning at that point (you know that nice zone-out feeling when you're doing your thing and you could be doing it for hours and you wouldn't even know?) and was finally getting somewhere with those grease burns, so I was none too impressed when I was interrupted, by yet another black-clad pilot asking for something that didn't register.

Why did the guy have to come to my station? Couldn't he see I was busy? I reluctantly broke my cleaning focus to look at the guy, and, man, was he in a weird get-up. Either he decided to take part of his starfighter with him or he was in some kind of experimental suit, but he was half covered in these funky mechanical attachments that whizzed and banged whenever he walked. Putting down my scouring brush, I asked him, "What did you say, bud? You're going to have to speak up."

"Can I have a plate of the pasta with the white sauce?" the guy said again through some kind of respirator; no wonder I couldn't hear what he was saying.

Fine. Whatever. It was only one person anyhow. I picked up my tongs from the trays, but then I noticed that the guy didn't even have a plate or tray for me to put his noodles on. Either he was some kind of newbie or an idiot. Looking at his get-up again, it was possible that he was one of the crippled (sorry, handicapped) workers management took on as part of their affirmative action policies that they thought made their public image look good. I couldn't settle on which one he was, so I decided to play it safe and assume he was a new guy – you never knew how sensitive those cripples were with whatever deficiency that got them a free pass into the Service.

So, I said, with what I thought was some pretty good clearness and patience, "You gotta get a plate and tray from the beginning of the line," before getting back to my cleaning.

"Pardon?" the guy replied, to my annoyance.

What wasn't clear about what I said? I replied again, trying to keep my cool with this cripple-pilot who apparently was also deaf in addition to being retarded, "A tray. A plate. You gotta get a tray and plate. And, by the way, there's only red sauce, no white, so you'll have that or nothing."

I only got a stunned-animal look in response to that one. This was starting to get annoying. "Look, you need a plate and tray if you want me to serve you any food. Go get them from over there," I said pointing in the direction of the sign very prominently labeled with 'Line Begins Here.' There. That should do it. The Empire must be really desperate these days if they're taking on half-wits like this guy.

"Get me a plate of pasta," the mechano black-clad cripple-retard said, this time with tinges of impatience and anger, which pissed me off even more. Honestly, WTF?

"I aint getting you no pasta. Go get a plate," I growled.

"You are going to get me a plate of pasta now."

"...What? No, I'm not. Go get your own damned plate!"

"You WILL get me a plate of pasta!"

"I'll get you nothing!"

"Give me my pasta!"

"Go get a plate!"

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yeah! Some fucking idiot who can't get their own fucking plate!"

"Get me my pasta before you regret it!"

"Get a fucking plate!"

So, this was starting to get out of hand, especially as I was pretty close to hurling some choice speculations about the guy's mother and whatever feral beast she molested to beget him, but I was stopped by an annoying voice from not too long ago that interjected,

"Hey, Suntan-Man, give me another serving here. I'm starving," the asshole pilot from before piped in, tapping his plate on the counter expectantly. The standard was that the crew was allowed one serving, and if they wanted more, they'd have to pay out of their own pocket; but this clever guy decided come in through the exit station to bypass having to pay. If there was one thing I had no patience for, it was people who couldn't queue and wait their turn. This was it. I couldn't take two fucking idiot pilots at once.

"No! Get the fuck out of here. Go to the head of line! You got your serving already!" I yelled at the new pilot, painfully clenching my fists around the tongs.

"Aw, man. Just a tiny bit of pasta, buddy...." the guy whined, and I should have noticed his next comment when he saw the funny-suited pilot I'd been wrangling with: "Oh, shit..."

"Fuck off! I've had enough of this! You want pasta? You want fucking pasta?! Fine!" I cried out; and, completely flipping out losing hold of my shit, I threw my tongs onto the floor... and proceeded to throw handfuls of noodles in the pilots' faces.

What happened after was never spoken of again in the official records, and carefully deleted from the surveillance cameras. You have to understand that there were two things going on: first, we'd just lost a major battle, and there was a whole lot of pent of anger and frustration that had been building, not to mention borderline nuts like me who didn't take much to get unhinged; second, there was a long and venerable history of food fights in the Empire's Service.

Not surprisingly, food fights were officially prohibited in Section 5 Clause 2a of our contracts entitled, 'Relations of Crew and Comestibles', where it stated that "The above-signed Crewmember would restrict their relations to edible products to being consumed by the Crewmember, and categorical not be used as an item of trade or an item of aggression or both." There had been clever ways around that clause, so they later added, "In cases where the Crewmember is feeding another Crewmember in the instance of physical handicap or perceived physical handicap, the edible item is never to be made airborne, and must always be in contact with the feeding implement until it has reached the feeding orifice of the Crewmember being fed."

Food fights, however, were a whole lot of fun, and so, at certain times when morale was low, they might be tolerated, though with some pretty strict unspoken rules. Foremost among the rules was that whoever started it would get pretty severely punished – which was pretty effective in keeping them from starting. Once the food fight started though, everyone else had immunity, under the dubious argument that the fight had been induced by a collective madness that was impossible to resist. The last food fight of note was on the mess of the star cruiser Empire's Fist, where it was said that the fight lasted so long and involved so many people that almost all the food on the ship had been trampled on or smooshed onto the wall, and the crew almost died from dehydration and starvation before they could reach the closest stardock to resupply.

Our food fight wasn't as dramatic, but the Great Unspoken Food Fight on the Emperor's Fierce Wang started shortly after my noodle flinging, with someone's delighted cry, "Food fight!" Whereupon a pandemonium of flying food erupted into the messhall air, forming a frenzied reddish-brown cloud above the heads of all the crewmen, who were laughing and cursing with abandon.

Being at the source of the food, I joined in the craziness, throwing the rest of the noodles, the sauce, the crappy meringue pies that were only good for throwing anyway, the flaccid salad no one ate but was always there to make it seem we served a full meal, and bottles and bottles salty salad dressing that actually seemed to add a nicely aesthetic counterpoint to all the red sauce flying around. By the end of it, anything remotely edible had went airborne and had coated everyone and everything with a thick crust of luke-warm gunk. By the time everything toned down, I felt like I was wearing a full ten pounds of extra mass.

Throughout it all, I laughed and laughed and laughed, until I cried and bawled, collapsing into a heap against the serving counter, dazed, feeling at turns inexplicably guilty, then happy, then depressed. I was eventually gently pulled up from the slippery floor by a few troopers who escorted me to the brig.

"You must be crazy," one of the troopers said, not unkindly. "I can't believe you did it, but you're going to be a legend."

"A dead legend," the other trooper added mirthlessly. "Hope it was worth it."

"Come on, let him enjoy it for now," the first trooper chided.

Wait, what? They can't possibly execute me for a food fight. A few weeks in solitary and probably a few months without pay, but death was pretty unlikely. I told the troopers as much. They looked at each other with a bemusement that said, "This guy can't be that stupid," and one of the troopers replied to me,

"You started a food fight right in the face Dorth Vadah. Lord Vadah. Second only to the Emperor. You threw noodles in Dorth Vadah's face."

Shit.

CHAPTER 3

Well, that's it for me. I guess I've had a good life. I got to travel the galaxy (sorta anyway: the main exciting sights I saw were the many different angles of the plasma grill – seeing as how everything there was to see was blasted to bits before we moved on to the next target). I got to meet interesting people (basically the other miserable cooks who were sweating and slaving in the kitchen pit with me, and who, like me, hated all aspects of the job as well as each other since we'd been working with zero personal space for too long).

No really, I did meet people on our rare shore leaves when we were resupplying on planet Pointlessly Nowhere (and they hated us too, probably because we were associated to someone who had killed their relative or exterminated their favorite plant). Ok, so I got to do memorable things... like be creative with making the same soup, sauce, or stew every day with the limited selection of spices I had, and was challenged with life-threatening decisions about whether I should use fine or coarse salt, or be daring and put two table spoons of pepper instead the tried-and-true mandated one and a quarter.

I shook my head and brought myself back to the dimly-lit gloom of the steel-walled cell I had spent the night in. They must have given me uppers in the water to keep me from killing myself prematurely, and now they were wearing off. I wasted my life. I didn't quite get how I meandered through my last decade of life to here, but maybe if I squinted hard enough, I could see through the haze of mind-numbing distractions consisting of drugs, booze, games and girls.

It's the system. The system is too fucked up and it screws people like me. I was never given any opportunities that would make my brilliant talents flourish like they could have. That was it. Damned system. And my folks. It was their fault. I was traumatized by their normal everyday activities that were too mundane to nurture my fragile, needy soul. Speaking of which, I should send a message to my mom about my imminent death. I couldn't think of what to say though. Hey, ma. Sorry we haven't chatted in the last five years, but thought you'd like to know that I'm about to die soon because I mishandled some pasta. Maybe I'll leave it ambiguous instead. She'll think I died some kind of heroic death defending the crew wielding my trusty ladle and the amazing power of my spices.

I probably should have done something constructive and meaningful with the last few hours of my life. Maybe go through phases of panic, wring my hands, scream, pound at the door, beg, plead, blame everyone else, attempt to bribe my out, and then finally come to peace with my pathetic life, become philosophical and wise, and even journal something deep and profound that someone will find later and marvel at the deep fount of insights I, Tim, had at the end of my life.

Instead, I had slept. Like a baby. It was great. It was probably the best sleep I could remember in a long time, in spite of my having slept in my sodden kitchen clothes on the cell's hard metal pallet. When I eventually did shake off the sleep in what I assumed to be the early afternoon of the next day, I felt strangely calm, refreshed and even contented enough to stare blankly at the wall.

At some point in my placid daze, the cell door opened and two troopers motioned me to get up and follow them. No one talked to me. No point talking to a dead man. I wondered how they were going to execute me. If they were kind, it might be a blaster shot to the head. That was quick. However, I imagined they considered that a "good" death, like the bullshit "warrior's" death they preferred (as if any death would be good when you were about to face it), which was too good for a lowly cook. Maybe electrocution? That was unlikely too, as it would use too much power that could be used for repairs. Maybe they'll depressurize an airlock around me and watch my head explode all over the floor. Probably too messy. Someone would have to clean my bits of brain up, and that would be wasted labor and non cost-efficient. Well, they could always shove me out the airlock so I'd freeze somewhere in the dark of space and they'd have nothing to do afterwards; I'd just end up a frozen corpse floating around in the space and surrounded by a thin halo of crystalized blood coming out of my ears. Yep, I'll bet that's how I'll die.

I hadn't yet come to terms with my death when I was brought to a stop in front of a nondescript grey door. As I fought down the futile urge to scream in a high-pitched feminine voice and attempt to run away, a part of my brain wondered why the fleet interior designers didn't bother taking a tiny modicum of effort to liven the place up beyond the bleak, omni-present grey that covered everything. It might be nice to color-code things a bit so that you could figure out where you were; I couldn't tell you how many times I got lost on ships with everything looking the same. Maybe a nice royal blue for the officer's area, or a chipper sunny yellow for the mess hall, or a fierce martial red for the command room... or, a grim morbid black for the execution room. I guess it was too late to drop those thoughts into the suggestion box. Curse my poorly-timed creativity. I imagined my brain was fighting for its last gasp of life as Death lay beyond the grey door.

Much to my surprise, the door opened up to the confines of a small windowless office dominated by a large, black, comfy-looking executive's chair and an imposing (also black) desk that was littered with blinking datapads. Pushing me in the room, the troopers sat me down on a tiny chair a fraction of the size of the desk and executive's chair, and left without even restraining me. I suppose it was possible for them to execute me in here, but they'd have to bludgeon me to death with those datapads. What a way to go.

A door from behind the desk opened up and a man walked in staring intently at a datapad and making entries as he muttered to himself – probably the owner of the office. He was wearing strange, glossy black, extra wide-brimmed fishing hat, and a get-up that looked more machine than... Oh, crap.

"Lord Vadah!" I said, snapping up from my chair, terrified out of my wits, and attempted a poor imitation of the chest-bonging salute that I saw the troopers do around their superiors.

Lord Vadah, fleet commander and right-hand man of the Emperor himself, took off his bulky ceremonial hat, and, responding with an irritated glance over his datapad, motioned with his hand for me to sit down as he grumbled, "Sir is fine."

"Yes, sir!" I yelled out a little too loudly, as we both sat down.

A long moment of silence followed as Dorth Vadah, the very powerful and deadly man I threw noodles at, continued to pore over his datapad, occasionally picking another up from the table to furrow his brows and scowl, and simply immersed himself, for now, in his administrative work, rather than send me to a heretofore unimaginably grisly death. I wasn't fooled by the man's seeming officiousness. It was enough to see from his battle-wounds that had left him with robotic arms and a bulky respirator that he was no one to fuck around with.

Apparently, it all had to do with his crappy relationship skills. The story goes that he tried to meet up with his ex-wife to negotiate their divorce settlement, and the only neutral place where they hadn't argued on yet was a volcanically active planet (a real bad case of this-galaxy-isn't-big-enough -for-the-two-of-us); but, in their agitation, they didn't have the sense to bring gas masks, and, not surprisingly, she died from the fumes and he's been wearing a respirator ever since. No wonder he's angry at the galaxy.

Hell, I heard the guy was so ruthless that he blasted away a whole school of little kids; not because they had done anything, but because the kids happened to be the same size of some midget-alien that had pissed him off and he was being thorough. Who does that? The word around the fleet was that, when he really lost it, he'd leap at you and strangle you to death with his mechanical hands. Sure, he was a cripple, and you could bat the guy off, but, since he was the leader of the fleet and your boss, you had let him slowly cut off your wind tunnel with his prosthetic limbs. Shit, was that what he brought me here for? Oh, man. Give me the airlock! But, it was just noodles! It's not like I killed his wife or cut off his arms! Should I beg his forgiveness? Should I throw myself at his feet? Oh, shitshitshit...

"Tim Strodeclod, Cook second grade," Vadah rasped from his chair, rousing me from my increasing pit of despair. "Formerly posted on the battlestation Deeeeath Star. So you're one of the survivors, aren't you?"

I assented quietly, as he continued to scroll up and down his deck of datapads. More unnerving silence ensued. I started to wonder if I should say something or if I should let my mind wander and freak me out even more.

"Unbelievable!" Vadah spat as he threw his datapad on the desk in disgust, pointed a mechanical digit in my direction and glared at me with blood-shot eyes. I opted not to say anything. "Could you believe the media is running the idiotic story that the Rebels destroyed the Deeeeath Star?"

"Sir?" I replied, not particularly wanting to engage in conversation, as I imagined his hands of doom tightening around my throat.

"We gave them the lines to publish, and still they bought the Rebel story over ours," Vadah cursed, throwing up his hands. "What fool would believe a single torpedo in an exhaust pipe could take out a whole battlestation? Where are their fact-checkers? Damned biased liberal media."

"But, sir, didn't they destroy the Deeeeath Star?" I asked, perhaps unadvisedly, but somewhat perplexed. "That's what we all..."

"Yes, damn it. That's the problem isn't it?" the Dark Lord said irritably, splaying his hands at me in exasperation. "Most of the crew believe that stupid story. There's no wonder I'm constantly getting complaints about low troop morale!"

"So, the Rebels didn't destroy the Deeeeath Star?" I asked cautiously.

"Of course not!" Vadah cried out. "How the hell does a single torpedo with a 20 kilometer range hit the centre of battlestation that's 160 kilometers wide??! Ridiculous. The Rebels didn't destroy the Deeeeath Star. With their discount, obsolete weapons, they could barely graze a battlestation with triple-plated metal shielding like ours."

The fearsome Dark Lord slammed one fist on his desk and slapped his forehead with the other hand, as he continued, "No, we managed to destroy the Deeeeath Star ourselves. The Emperor was in such a rush to build it, we ended up having to cut corners everywhere, not to mention all the budget overruns I had to deal with... The cursed thing was constantly overheating and we never could run it for more than an hour – and that was with only one quarter of the systems running. It was no wonder our so-called "superweapon" blew up after its first real battle! It was miracle it even lasted as long as it did."

I nodded in silence and tried to look sympathetic. Vadah's story fit with the Empire's general trend of relentless cost-cutting; all the datasphere seemed to talk about were the periodic fights the Emperor had with the Senate to increase the budget and keep the economy from collapsing. His burst of candidness decreased my nervousness slightly, but, on the other hand, it could give him more reason to wipe me out for knowing too much for my own good.

"How am I supposed to beat down the Rebellion if this is what I'm given?" demanded Vadah, waving at his datapads. "I need more troops! I need more ships! Ships that won't fall apart and that aren't rushed out of spacedock half-built on the cheap by a back-water planet willing to undercut our proper Empire corporations with their cheap slave-labor."

I was starting to hope that I may be able to get out this thing alive after all. Maybe if Vadah is distracted enough by his problems, he'll forget about me...

"And you! You're the prime example of all my problems!"

I stiffened in my chair, and held on to my bowels for dear life. Here it comes, sweet Death I will know you too soon...

"Half my troops have PTSD and I'm supposed to win battles with that? Do you have any idea how many people died on the Deeeeath Star that day? It was a miracle you survived," Vadah swore, and threw me a gloomy look. "You should have been sent to recovery not reassigned. Those useless droids will be the end of us. Our executives with their fancily tailored robes came up with them as a clever cost-cutting strategy. More efficient, more productivity, more results. So they claimed! I should never have agreed to it." Suddenly, Vadah paused and stared at me intently, "So what do you have to say for yourself?"

"Sir?" I said, startled.

"You threw noodles into my face."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"You better be. I should execute you."

"Yes, sir."

"But I'm not."

"Sir?"

"Glad to hear that, aren't you?" Vadah grimaced at my astonished look. "That food fight you instigated lifted the morale of the crew in a way no amount of shoreleave, cheap booze and hookers could have done."

"I'm glad, sir," I replied, my relief at being able to retain my life slowly registering.

A huge sigh came out from Vadah, amplified by his respirator. "Yes. I'm sure you are. The reality is the troops should have started to take shifts recovering from the battle, but we didn't. I'm sending out orders for people to start their leaves immediately with a high priority on the trauma cases. And guess what?"

"Sir?"

"I'm sending you out on the first ship out. Pack your bags. You're leaving for Tattoo-ine at the end of the day," Vadah said, suddenly sounding exhausted.

"Sir?! Thank you sir!" Wow! Tattoo-ine! It was the best retreat planet in the galaxy! I really was going to hit the sands and sun! Ever since it started being used for the Empire's main shore leave and recovery planet, the brothels and bars had really stepped up a notch. No more alien "ladies" whose half-compatible genitalia you had to make do with. Actual female humans! The first thing I was going to do was...

"And Tim."

"Yes, sir?"

"Speak of this to anyone and I will strangle you to death. Dismissed." Lord Vadah intoned, and turned his chair to face away from me.

"Yes, my Lord."

CHAPTER 4

A few weeks later, I was lounging on the patio of the clinic, watching the always spectacular setting of Tattoo-ine's binary suns. The unpredictable combination of reds, orange and gold made pleasantly hazy by the desert air was a sight I never got tired of – though that could be largely a consequence of floating around in the oppressive black void of space in one variation or another of a glorified metal canister. I imagined that, given enough time, the brilliant colors would fade to being a forgettable backdrop to the constant dust, grit and dessicated lifelessness of the desert.

I was dithering now, stretching out the time before I had to go to my next session. Don't get me wrong. I was happy to be here, instead of cooking tasteless grub and being blipped and blooped at by a droid with anal calipers that were too tightly calibrated. It's just that my exciting trip ended up not to have the harem of scantily-clad ladies I was hoping for.

Turned out I was at an actual recovery clinic that did actual treatments that were supposed to make me feel better and able to serve the Empire another day. Admittedly, the steady regimen of pills and time in the reconditioning chamber – the "Box" – were making the periodic test-flashes of the plasma grill induce only mild anxiety and slight nausea, which was an improvement over sheer terror and getting brain-melting images of people dying and burning. In fact, I don't think I've even thought of poor Joe in the last few days; my last dream of him was a week ago and I was having a rather pleasant conversation with his burnt-out corpse in a nice field of flowers.

All praise the miracle of Imperial medical science indeed. I couldn't tell you how they managed to do the fixin' in my noggin' though, seeing as how walking into and out of the Box was all that anybody remembered. For all any of us knew, they could be dicing up our brains and feeding it to hypnotic brain leeches. Either way, we were all getting better, and, much to our dismay, progressively getting closer to active duty.

Damn! So close to the ladies and a cornucopia of inebriants, and odds were none of us were going to get a taste of them before leaving. Well, "close" was relative, since as our clinic was a good two hours away from any decent town, and that was at full blast on a speeder. I guess we did have a "lady" of sorts here. I looked over to the other patient sitting next to me, and said,

"Hey, Mike. I was thinking that if I took a few more pills and bonked my head a bunch, you'd be the resident chick and I'd be hitting on you."

"Ha ha ha, Suntan-Tim," Mike replied, his voice muffled under his thick layer of blankets that made him look more like a lumpy couch, instead of one of the Empire's feared fighter-pilots. He didn't like being outside as much as I did, but I enjoyed having the company and I made him come hang out with me. "You wish. I like my men looking like men, not wasted refugees."

"Shoot, I guess that means more jerking off to the fem-droid for me," I sighed dramatically.

With his neck and thighs easily larger than my scrawny torso, Mike's hulking frame could hardly be mistaken for being girly in any way. Ever since we became friends though, he'd given my teasing some generous leeway. Of course, if we were out in public, he'd be systematically beating me into the consistency of cheap synthburger chuck by now.

Not surprisingly, when we had our first group sessions together, I hadn't been thrilled to see the same asshole pilot who had given me a hard time before the "noodle incident." But as the twisted nature of fate would have it, we were the only familiar faces to each other; so, when we were told to do the pair-up exercise, we ended up grudgingly gravitating to one another other – since sharing with a prick that you knew was the better than with a prick you didn't.

We were probably an odd match to watch: me, a relatively shortish (I'm only a little below average) over-wrought bundle of exhausted nerves, staring with incendiary fury at Mike, an enormous man looking sheepishly into his hands, unwilling to meet my gaze, and sitting on a chair that he made look like part of a child's tea party set. We'd sat in silence – and I was perfectly content to do so indefinitely – but then, in a palpable ah-fuck-it moment, Mike started talking.

I only half-listened initially, but his words slowly gave flesh to my asshole image of him: I learned about the man who ate compulsively and guiltily, then worked out ceaselessly to punish himself for being soft, weak – and ultimately for not being attracted to the correct gender that he had been taught to be attracted to. Smothering his desires was impossible, but he did find that the more kills he notched in battle and the more he was violent, aggressive and hyped-up on identifiably masculine testosterone, the more people around him turned a blind eye to his "deficiencies" and gave him a wide berth.

The strain of hiding, killing and bullying eventually proved too much however, and, shortly after my own breakdown, Mike found himself no longer able even to approach his fighter without crying uncontrollably. When his superior found him huddling and shaking in a corner of the hanger, Mike was assigned to the same flight to Tattoo-ine as me. I figured they must have dosed us with empathy drugs that day, because pretty soon we were bawling in each other's arms and apologizing non-sensically about everything and anything. Not very manly, I know, but I blame it on the PTSD.

"Well, you may not have to do the ol'droid shag this time, Timmy-boy, but I don't know if I should tell you, since you're an ungrateful bastard," Mike said from his chair.

"What? Who was the one who got you quality time with that guy you couldn't stop talking about?" I shot back.

If he'd found a way to leave this place and get our respective itches scratched by a warm-bodied living organism of any species and that had the orifices and groping features of our preference, then I'd be reminding him of every favor I'd done for him and maybe throw in some made-up ones for good measure.

"Doug? Whatever, that guy was a dud, and you even knew it and didn't tell me."

"You're the one who wanted a swing at him. I wasn't about to take away that chance from you. Besides, when's the last time you set me up?"

"In the males-only ward? Right. What about the fem-droid I found for you?"

"A deactivated droid with a pointy chest is nothing close to a fem-droid."

"Didn't stop you, did it?"

"How about I get you a fucking droid probe and see how much you like that."

"Oh, shoot. Look at the time, we better get going for our turn in the Box," Mike said throwing off his blankets and climbing out his chair.

"Hey! Wait! What's the deal?! Can you get us out of here? You gotta count me in!" I suddenly panicked, my desperation suddenly surging up in me like a twenty-foot tall tidal wave about to wipe out a tropical island filled with unsuspecting peace-loving indigens.

"Sorry, I can't be late..." Mike grinned as he made for the door.

"Ok! Shit, I didn't about Doug being straight. I'm sorry. I honestly thought that he might have been bi or something. Come on, Mike. You gotta tell me what you got going on." I pleaded, leaping in front of the door to block his escape. Yes. I was very horny and desperate. You try staying sane with the best brothels in the galaxy just moments (i.e., hours) away.

Mike chuckled and raised his arms in surrender, "Alright, alright. I paid one of the locals to take us into town. It's not huge, but at least there's a cantina where we can both get what we want." He grinned at me and gave me a light pat on the shoulder that nearly knocked me over. "Meet me after your session in the atrium, and we'll get the fuck outta here. Get your credits all stacked out, buddy. We're gonna have a good time tonight!"

Some hours later, I was grateful for the amazing time-wiping properties of the Empire's mystery procedure that made me feel as if only moments had passed. It again made me wonder what they were actually doing to me while I was in there. Maybe they were sending reams of electrical currents through each of my nerves as I was fully conscious, screaming and thrashing; but, with a quick flick of a switch, all was well, and I'd wake up, and walk cheerily away. Troubling, I know, but at least my pants were still zipped up when I woke up.

Oh, well. I did agree to sign away all my rights and possibly my soul and existence when I joined the Service. I pushed all my unproductive wondering away from my potentially vivisected mind, and thought instead of all the lovely ladies I was soon going to see and trade my credits for this planet's version of earthly pleasures. Where was Mike anyway? I fidgeted and paced around the atrium as I started to have alarming thoughts that Mike might have been messing with me, or, much worse, be leaving without me.

"Tim! Over here!" whispered Mike's voice, putting a damper on my abandonment issues. He was waving at me from behind one of the stock statues of the Heroic Soldier series that were littered everywhere in the clinic to inspire us broken men. As soon as I ran over, he gave me a thick jacket and goggles. "Here, you'll need these. It'll be a rough ride."

No shit. After sneaking out the service door, we leaped into the "ride" that Mike had arranged for us: a lop-sided derelict of a speeder that had maintained its grip on bare functionality through welded-on ill-matching parts that had their own grafted parts and that threatened to fly off as we flew over the windy desert.

Our driver was a taciturn Tusken local whose bundled up head kept me from identifying he, she or it; frankly, I should have done similarly and wrapped up my head, as, naturally, the speeder had neither canopy nor windshield, leaving us to be whipped raw by the sandy winds. I desperately gripped the sides of speeder with the certainty that, if I loosened my hold even slightly, I would be blown out and left to tumble on the dunes, breaking my every bone and leaving my sexual frustration unsated. The horrible thought made me hold on harder.

It was a good couple of hours of flying in darkness, before some sparkly lights appeared in the distance, making me hoot for joy – internally, that is, since my facial muscles had been clenching so long it was a struggle to shift them. As the lights brightened, multiplied and grew into full-fledged buildings and gyrating signs, we thankfully slowed down to approach the town.

The place wasn't much to talk about; if you've seen one Empire town whose entire existence depended on servicing the lewd needs of crewmen desperate to recklessly blow off steam, you've seen them all. I started to relax and feel giddy, as we coasted by the reassuring sights of drunken and vomiting soldiers lurching around, held up by their laughing companions or a hooker with one hand caressing their backs and the other fishing for credits in their pockets. It was so very nice indeed to be here.

Seeing a place that looked promising, but wasn't too seedy (we had some standards), Mike gestured for the Tusken to stop. Credits flashed between Mike and our driver, and, before I could get a better look, he gave me a goofy grin, and hopped out of the speeder. I nearly wiped out as I jumped after him, filled as I was with bubbling excitement. Yes yes yes! I could taste the intoxicating odors of stale air, spilled booze and cheap pheromone-laced perfume. We must have looked like two imbeciles swaggering our way into a crappy joint, but we couldn't care less. This was our night out and we were going to be lords of the place.

As far as dives went, the cantina we walked in was in the upper-middle end. Sure, there was the ever-present veil of smoke and dim-lighting that gave the place a comforting feel, but, considering the clean(ish) floors and the matching chairs and tables that looked only well-used rather than slip-shod, it seemed like someone had made efforts for it not to be at the bottom of the town's septic hole. A live band was even strumming away and filling the background with tunes that weren't lively enough to get people to stop drinking and dance, and not slow enough for people to get lost in their thoughts and pass out in despair.

Walking up to the bar, we ordered two glasses of the local swill, and, in very short order, we were slouching casually against the bar counter like regulars and checking out the crowd. Our drinks came in a couple of tall brimming glasses filled with a cloudy red brew that neither of us could identify, along with a bowl of something salty and crackly that I didn't want to look too closely at, but put in my mouth anyway.

Did it really matter what it all was exactly? Not really. The essence of it was all there. We clinked our glasses, downed them in one go, and ordered two more. Much much better. The drink was too much on the sweet side with a disturbingly musky animal-like aftertaste, but it did have the desired effect of dimming our faculties and making us generally happy about everything. Now this was therapy!

After a few drinks together, Mike and I gradually split up. In theory, we could have played each other's wing man, but since we had our eye on very different targets, it made more sense to fly solo so we'd have the best chance of getting lucky. Now that I'd had a drink in me, my freneticism calmed down, allowing me to take a closer look at the crowd. For a place that was essentially a barnacle on the Empire's back, there was a surprisingly large amount of aliens mingling. Not that I minded them, of course, being the open-minded person that I am, but most aliens were poor and from low-tech planets, making them, in the eyes of the Empire, largely moochers, and trusted only for menial tasks.

In my defense (yes, I was feeling defensive about it), I actually profited from the Empire's biases, as I found that being one of the few willing to deal with them meant I could get unusual spices and drugs with interesting side effects on the cheap and resell them as exotica. In fact, noting an Arconian trader in the corner, it occurred to me to get another supply of "smoke-essence," since mine was floating around in Deeeeath Star debris. You never knew when I'd be asked to dazzle someone with my cooking and that stuff could be useful.

No rush though. I'd been eying a red-head two tables over whose clothing was essentially a couple of strings and some strategically placed splotches of gauzy fabric. Seeing as how my imagination wasn't feeling up to working in any capacity, ogling her wide-expanses of flesh and inviting curves suited juuuuust me fine. Looking over to a darkened corner, I caught Mike's eye as he was inching closer to a wide-chested, scruffy-in-a-groomed-way guy, and we both grinned and lifted our glasses at each other. Tapping my pocket to make sure my credits were still there, I took one more gulp of booze, gave my hair a quick slick back, and was about to launch into my pick-up routine, when a gentle flash of white and a waft of fruity, lighthearted scents glided in to sit beside me. I couldn't help but look over.

Whoa. Way out of my league. What was a cute, classy chick doing here? I tried to be casual about it, but I was probably leering as I checked her out. She was wearing a plain white dress cinched at her waist by a dark leather belt that matched a pair of heel-less boots that seemed suited to walk for miles in the desert, and yet still hugged the elegant curves of her ankles. Her dark brown hair was oddly arranged on both sides of her head to look like two swirling pastries, which I assumed was a local style, but that had the notable effect of showing off her delicately shaped ears.

My mind fought against its fuzzy state to calculate the effort versus return of trying to talk to the mystery chick, as compared to the red-head with whom I could be making out and groping in minutes. It was obvious it would be a waste of time to stay, but my fantasy mind made me linger and teased me with nonsense visions of scintillating conversation, irresistible charm – both coming from me, by the way – and soul-mated crap. Surely, there was no harm in hanging out a bit longer, right? Just be the dark and solid type. That could work. I could be nonchalant, and look sultrily attractive if I stayed quiet and cool. Which is, of course, why I had to pipe up, and blurt out,

"Can I buy you a drink?" Brilliant. That was barely comprehensible too. I may have accidentally spat on her.

To my surprise, she didn't roll her eyes, or turn away with disgust, but looked at me with her soft, inviting hazel eyes (yes, I was already drowning in them), smiled coyly (and invitingly, I swear! (give me a break. I hadn't gotten laid in a full year)), and said, "I already have one."

Smaaaart. Uh... uh.. uh... "Oh."

Charm! Switch on, charm! Switch on! "I meant the next one, of course. While I keep you company finishing that one." Not bad! Not bad!

The hot, mystery woman that I've already completely fallen for, smiled at me again, sealing my fate even more firmly, and turned to face me, "I don't usually have more than one drink, you know..."

"Well, you can drink slowly then," I quipped, flashing my most confident smile, to which she laughed lightly (would you be surprised if I thought it was like listening to the tinkling of angelic bells?) and looked at me with a bit more curiosity. YES!

"So crewman, where are you from?"

"Who says I'm a crewman?" I replied, knowing full well of the Empire's reputation – particularly with a proper hottie like her.

"Pretty much everything about you," she said and started pointing. "Empire-issue shoes, Empire-issue pants, Empire-issue coat, Empire-issue shirt."

"I'm coming from a costume party," I grinned. I was on a roll!

"Yeah? What if I like Service-men?"

"I'm good at role-playing too," I replied again, and maybe even added a little swagger then. To my intense delight, she laughed again, and I joined in, with some relief and lots of enjoyment with my remarkably smooth flirtations.

"What do you go by?" she asked, gazing at me from beneath her long, lovely eyelashes.

"Tim. You?" I managed not to squeak.

"Leah," she replied, as she settled into my Amazing Aura of Irresistible Charm.

"That's a pretty name."

"Hahaha... that's sweet. I'll imagine that it's the first time you said that to a girl."

"It isn't, but it's the first time I meant it."

"Hahaha... well, then, isn't that different."

"Are you from here, Leah?"

"No, I'm actually from Coruscant. I'm volunteering at retreat center on the planet and SWOOFing at their farm."

"Oh, wow. I've always wanted to SWOOF too. You know, work the land and all that. Hard worker, aren't you? And such pretty hands too!"

"Hahaha... Oh, I'm so embarrassed about my hands. They're always so dry and rough..."

"No they're not! At least they look nice and soft to me..."

Oh, man. It was so amazing. We talked and laughed and looked deeply into each other's eyes the whole night. I don't exactly know what happened, but I must have had my sexy-smart hat on, since I kept coming up with witticism after clever witticism, and she never stopped laughing and giggling. Unfortunately, I don't remember all the details, so I'm not sure I'd be able to replicate it, but something about my brilliance and animal magnetism had to be working because she didn't move away as I moved closer, and even caressed my arm encouragingly a whole bunch of times when the words didn't flow quick enough out my mouth.

It all ended too quickly when what had to be many hours later she looked at her watch and got up to leave. Yeah, yeah, I didn't score that night. Though, needless to say, I would have been very very happy to. I wasn't too upset or surprised though, since, with a classy chick like Leah, you had to expect a little work. To be fair, I did my best to keep her there and ply her with more booze, but, apparently, she had to wake up early the next morning. I was about to protest and possibly whine, but she silenced me with peck on the cheek and nice tender squeeze of my arm that left smiling and glowing. Fortunately, in my goofy dazed state, I did hear her invite me to visit her the next day at the town's market where she'll be working the whole day selling produce she'd grown. Oh, yes, I promised, I'd definitely see her tomorrow, even if it meant selling my right testicle.

Later, when Mike and I met up to go back to the clinic, we spent a good ten minutes giggling and slapping each other's backs, as he too had met a guy he had fallen for, and who, in a rather remarkable and fortuitous coincidence, was also going to be working at the town market tomorrow in the same farm stand as Leah. There was no question about us not finding away into town, so we started strategizing ways on how to make it happen.

It was going to be tricky to weasel our way out again, not to mention bribe the Tusken, which, to be fair, I had to agree to use my credits this time around, but it was possible. Soon though, we brushed the annoying details of our escape aside, and started talking again about our sudden and very dreamy flames.

"His name is Haan," Mike said, his eyes going all starry again. "That guy is hot!"

CHAPTER 5

The afternoon was sunny and comfortably warm as Mike and I wandered around the market. It hadn't been easy to get out of the clinic, especially with our gargantuan hangovers and laughably few moments of sleep that (for no discernible reason) were punctuated by intermittent highly untame and highly inventive fantasies, for which I had to resort to my well-used manual override to get a little shut-eye. After some long haggling verging on harassment, the Tusken grudgingly agreed to bring us to town again right after noon.

The only thing we couldn't figure out was how to get around our treatments and the med-droids' annoying roll calls; but, our Tusken (named Jim, by the way, but somehow that didn't fit him) had rolled his eyes at our pathetic infatuated wimpering, and grouchily told us to shut our asses up, as he produced his work-assignment datapad from his dusty coveralls. Within a few quick taps, poof!: we were free to gallivant to our hearts' and groins' content!

It hadn't been the first time the Tusken had been asked for a way out, and, over the years, he'd found a backdoor on his datapad that could make patients effectively disappear by pre-ticking all our treatments, making it seem as if we'd already had them. We thanked him like lunatics and Mike even offered to service him right then and there, but the Tusken just grimaced, reminded us of his exorbitant daily tick-off rate, and mentioned something about it being enough that we were sending his daughter to college off-planet.

Either way, we were back in town! That was all that mattered! AND finding Leah and Haan, of course, which wasn't going to be the easiest thing given the size of the town market and the mob that was swarming in it. Since the town was so small, I'd expected the market to be a hokey little thing with a few gap-toothed yokels selling junk they'd scrounged up from their mudhuts. What we found instead was a full-sized completely legit market with at least a couple-hundred vendors all crammed and stuffed under constipated rows upon rows of tents and parasols.

I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised: despite it being infinitely more convenient to locate these markets in larger city centers, making the tourists and wealthy city-dwellers trek out to the boonies preserved the feeling that the market wasn't at all a tourist trap or a blatant money-grab, but a genuine, authentic market experience unique to the local quaintnesss of this planet's particular district – that was, by an extraordinary coincidence, nearly identical at every district on every planet.

"Genuine artisian blahblahblah!"

"Authentic organcial blehblah blehblehbleh!"

"Delicious wild hand-hunted blehblee blahblahblah!"

"Sweet open-landed, open-sourced bleebleeblah!"

Yep, everything you'd expect to find at a market was present and accounted for. There were the rinky-dinks hawking cutesy knickknacks guaranteed to illicit awwwwww reactions from the customer or unfortunate giftee. Next to them were the serious-looking crafty-folk with real smudges and stains on their clothes to illustrate that the useful product they were selling you came from their sweaty, dirty palms, which they dutifully flashed you numerous times. Not too far away, the sugar-dealers were pushing all kinds of brightly-colored candied this-or-that or steaming golden-brown pastry or pseudo-bread products – all, of course, in your choice of guilt or non-guilt-inducing variants.

Sprinkled in among all of them with smug unpredictability were the tight-shirted and short-panted ironicals selling over-priced generica that you could get anywhere for a fraction of the credits – but that they were selling with an added dash of wink-wink just so you know you were laughing together at the side-splitting joke. Never fear though, if you lacked the hipness to be in on the trendy joke, they'd be happy to sell you a substitute that could buy your way into their recherché group: a genuine ill-fitting, uselessly small-rimmed felt hat that, to get the full effect, you had angle on your head just so. It was all comfortingly familiar, much like walking into a mega-galacto-store.

Where were the farmers though? We assumed that was where we would find Leah and Haan's stall, but we'd been meandering for nearly a half-hour without any luck. Fending off all the sample-givers throwing food or miracle-creams in our faces was getting to be a bit much. It was all starting to blend together, as our senses were being fried with every vendor using some kind of schtick to get our attention, should it be their adorably cute wide-eyed child holding a plate of soggy cookies you couldn't say no to, or the knife-vendors' mesmerizing song-and-dance routine, or the stripper-bakers wearing only pies and jams in uncomfortable places. It was all good entertainment, which was really the point of the whole thing. Really, the market was the perfect place to get all you needed, especially if you were throwing a shmancy dinner party and you needed something to bring home to show off to your friends and spark a giggling and sophisticated conversation about how you found a lovely so-and-so and isn't it so nice to supporting local this-and-that.

Thankfully, however, in our increasingly desperate wanderings, we stopped at an Arconian's stall so I could buy a bottle of smoke-essence, and the seller was also helpful enough to tell us which direction to go to find the farmers' lane.

"Tim!"cried out a knee-melting mellifluous voice that I knew instantly to be Leah's.

Just a few stalls away, I could see Leah waving at me from underneath her tent, where I could also see Haan in his distinctive black-vest and facial grizzle combo flashing Mike a lop-sided grin and mock-salute. It's very possible Haan may have hollered out to Mike too, and Mike may have answered, but things became a little fuzzy at that moment, as I floated towards to Leah on a cloud of smitten-ness.

"It's great to see you. I'm so happy you came to visit!" Leah smiled, as she gave my arm a gentle and promising (as I chose to interpret it) squeeze.

"It's great to see you too," I managed to blubber as I lost myself again in the beautiful limpid oceans of her eyes.

A baritone voice saved me from having to form any more coherent words, with Haan cutting in, "Hey, Leah, I'm going to head out and get a few things with Mike, is that okay with you?"

"Sure, no problem. Tim's here so I should be fine," Leah said, causing multiple endorphin rushes to explode in my brain.

I tried not to grin too much like a goofy fool, as I nodded to Mike and watched him practically skip and hop away with Haan. I was back again with Leah – and alone! With great effort, I tore my eyes off of her to look o-so-casually-and-suavely at her tent's tables that were attractively stacked with an assortment of inviting, vibrant veggies. I tried to sound nonchalant, "So this what you've been up to, huh?"

"Yes! It's so great to be able to grow this food and then share it with people," Leah replied, beaming contagious happiness. "You're a chef, right? What do you think?"

"About all this?" I said, not wanting to elaborate on the differences between a chef and a line cook. "As a chef, you know... it's really exciting to see all this beautiful fresh produce. But I'm not sure I recognize all that's here..."

Leah laughed her tinkling, entrancing laugh, and said, "I'll bet you don't! A lot of these are heirloom varietals that are pretty rare – and very tasty!"

"Yeah? What's that thing?" I asked, pointing at a pale-green pyramid-shaped clump with swirling fractal patterns. "Are you supposed to eat it?"

"Ah! The Romanesco caulies! Of course, you're supposed to eat it. They're the best caulies you can have."

"What about these red and white globes? They look little moons."

"Mmmm... Good choice! Those are radicchios. Very nice baked and then mixed with a little sweet sauce."

"And these bundles of leaves? Are these lizard bumps on them normal? Is it a local desert plant or something?"

"No, no! Those are Lacinato leaves. They're a kind of kale. You know kale, right?"

"Uh, yeah, sure."

"You can steam them? They're really good for you?"

"Uh, yeah..." I racked my brain for some distant reference to all this alien produce that had almost certainly never entered any kitchen I had worked in, except perhaps in a cubed, dried, frozen state.

"Ok, how about this, you should know what this is," Leah said, seemingly delighted by puzzledness, as she handed me a small bag filled with what looked like an fluffy assortment greenery.

What the hell was the stuff? It looked like a whole bunch of different leaves, some pointy, some round, some frilly, and many hues of green and purple. Purple! What's with the purple and reds in there? Aren't all veggies supposed to be green? I squinted and frowned at the bag, "It kind of looks like salad..."

"You got it!" Leah clapped her hands and gave me a blissful hug. "That's right!"

"But what's with all these weird leaves? I've never seen any salad look like this before."

"Hahaha... That's because it's our signature salad mix! It has fourteen different elements in them that all taste different and feel different. No one has anything like it."

"Ah, I see. So is this what you guys do at..." I said, still glowing from the hug and tingling with butterflies in my stomach, and looked up to read the sign hanging from their tent. Oh, shit. What did I get myself into... "... The Tatootine Centre of the Powaah... You guys are Powaah Witnesses?"

"Yep. What's the matter? Are you afraid of Powaah Witnesses?" Leah answered casually, probing my crestfallen face, but still smiling irresistably.

"Nah, I'm not afraid of anything. It's just that..." Aw, man. What a waste of hottie. She was one of those Powaah nuts.

"That Powaah Witnesses are nuts? They're lunatics? They're out to destroy the Empire?" Leah teased, never letting go of my eyes. Damn her sexy, alluring eyes!

"No, nothing like that. I've never heard of anything like that," I protested, scrambling for words. Officially, Powaah Witnesses were allowed and tolerated by the Empire as an eccentric group that practised a combination of technology-shunning and "alternative" living. That is, they were weirdos. For a long time, they were a barely-known fringe group, but then the Rebellion started, and, while they'd never been proven to have direct links with the Rebels, they'd been flagged as suspicious and the mainstream shunned them ever since.

"Oh, come on," Leah said, slapping me lightly on the shoulder. "I know what people say about the Powaah and Powaah Witnesses. That we're freaks, that we're a cult."

"No, no, no! Not me! I'm an open-minded person." My rational mind was telling me I should go, while my groin was saying, Ah c'mon, when has a little freakiness stopped you?

"Liar. You're cute when you're flustered though."

"No, I'm not. What? I am?"

Leah laughed, giving me another hug that fuddled my brain again, and then tugged my arm in the direction of the tables, "Here, help me out with moving this stuff out of the sun. There's a lull in the crowd, and it's a good time rearrange the tables."

Brain 0, Groin 1.

We proceeded to change the location of virtually all the veggies on the tables. When I say "we", I actually mean Leah bustling around the tables, as I stood awkwardly making limp attempts to be useful, but which manifested itself by my occasionally holding a few bags of veg, and my taking the opportunity to check out her cute behind as she bent over to rummage in the bins tucked under the tables. To be fair, I wasn't as useless and lecherous as I made myself sound, and I did eventually catch on to what she was doing. The main focus of our efforts was getting the easily wiltable veggies out of the sun and exchanging them with ones that could tolerate the heat, but also replenishing the baskets with as much veggies as we could fit in them and maintaining the impression of having a plentiful table bursting with options.

Judging from all the little shifts, rearranging and reangling that Leah was doing to the produce, I was pretty sure I was making a mess of things with whatever vision she aiming for, but she nevertheless said (as she gave me a kiss on the cheek!),

"Hey, this is looking pretty good. You know, the funny thing is that it doesn't really matter how we arrange these tables: people seem to be attracted to us moving things around, like they're seeing some action going on and they want to be part of it."

Sure enough, a gaggle of shoppers suddenly descended on the stall, and started poking and squeezing everything on the table, mobbing Leah with all kinds of questions about freshness, organicness, ethical-sourcedness, permawhateveredness and deliciousness of the food. Of course, I couldn't leave her then. And, yes, I was still looking to score, and, another unequivocal yes to the very obvious fact that I was very horny; that my rational thinking wasn't at its prime then; and that I'm a real sucker for kisses on the cheek and suggestive squeezes of the arm, regardless of any freaky cultishness about her that was fading from my thoughts. So, yes, I stuck around to help out.

While, at first, there was lots of frantic fumbling around and fruitless hunting for vegetables with gibberish names (You want a Chiogga what now? They're next to the "fingerlings"? And they're spotted? That's the way it's supposed look?), I had to admit that, once I'd managed to get a working knowledge of what was on the tables, and, more specifically, found my calling bagging and weighing things, the seller-side of the market was surprisingly enjoyable. Spending all those hours in starship messhalls serving grouchy and bitter crewmen, I'd come to expect a pervasive disinterestedness at the very least that was not infrequently accompanied by some degree of hostility.

At the market though, I was astonished to experience a stream of positivity and happiness from the people I handed their bags, often getting gushing praise and excitement about the produce. The amazing gratefulness and sheer pleasantness was regular enough that even my suspicious cynicism wore away to put me in a better mood that wasn't drug or coitus related that I could remember being in for a while. Pretty soon, I was smiling without having to force myself, and was even initiating and continuing conversations with random people.

Only the setting sun and cooling air made me realize that a few hours had passed rather than what had felt like a few breezy moments. The crowd had thinned drastically, with most people, their bags bulging with the day's treasures, finding their way back to their transports. The vendors too were starting to close up shop and beginning the process of taking down their tents and packing up. Looking down at the tables, I noted with some pride that all that was left were a few bags of salad and some haggard-looking bunches of kale.

"We're done!" Leah said happily, pulling me into a tight embrace that I had to admit was arousing – though to be honest about it, most things Leah did led to a slight tenting in my pants. "Thank you so much for helping!"

"No problem. I really enjoyed it," I replied honestly, as I tentatively left my hand lingering at the base of her back – and was pleased when she did nothing to move away.

"It looks like you'll have to hang out with me longer though," Leah said as she poked me sensuously (yes, a sensuous poke is possible) in the chest.

"Oh?" I said stupidly, without any hint of complaint, and with very much a certain warming in my nether regions.

"Haan doesn't look like he's coming back, so you're going to have to help me pack up and bring everything back to the Center," she grinned mischievously.

"But of course!" I would have answered the same if she told me that she was going to flay the skin off my back and gouge my eyes out.

As we packed the remaining produce into bins, disassembled the tent and tables, and huffed it all over to a hauler parked a good distance away, you may not be too astonished to learn that I was having the time of my life, sweating, straining, and chatting away with Leah – even though I was doing grunt labor that would have been done by a droid in any other circumstance in the civilized galaxy. It was fantastic, wonderful, and all the starry-eyed euphemisms you could think of combined. As soon as everything was packed into the hauler, we were sputtering away across the dunes, still happily talking about anything and everything.

Some time had passed as we skimmed across barren sands, when a few structures appeared on the horizon, defining a small compound outlined by a series of trees and buildings. It was the Center of Powaah Nuts. Shit. My doubts came back to me then, much to my annoyance, and put a damper on my mood that I hoped wasn't too noticeable. It was with some relief that, when we slowed to stop in front of a shed, Leah jumped out of the hauler and told me she'd be back after checking in with the Center's reception, leaving me alone to disentangle my thoughts.

What the hell was I doing here? These were Powaah wackos. But then Leah was the most amazing woman ever. Ever. Ever! When was the last time I was so happy? But this could be trouble. Damn it. I could play it safe and leave, but then who knows when I would see Leah next? I could leave and come back. Yeah, right. That would be real smooth. What the hell should I do? A part of me – beyond my penis, just to be clear – desperately wanted to stay with Leah, but another sensible part worried and worried. It was in this state that Leah returned to find me.

Clearly, she knew what was going on in my head, as she leaned shyly against the hauler I'd been fidgeting and pacing around, and said gently, "You know, Tim. Powaah Witnesses aren't crazies. We're regular people wanting a simple lifestyle."

"What? I've never thought that..." I stammered, flustered, vainly struggling against my paranoid, conditioned mind that still doubted.

"You're so cute when you're flustered," she smiled and kissed me on the cheek, confusing me even more and striking me dumb. Suddenly, her eyes flashed with excitement, and said, "Hey! Look! We still have an hour of light left! Let's go look for some desert flowers!"

And, before I knew it, we were off in the hills, skipping around rocks and going up and down crevasses, as we searched for the rare, but stunningly fragrant flowers that popped up from the sands to bloom in the cool, dusk air. Finding them was so unusual, that it was said that, if you were lucky enough to encounter one, it meant that soon all your desires would appear to you. Who could resist some mumbo-jumbo like that? At least, it didn't hurt for us to look. Sort of anyway. We were mainly talking, though not as animated as before, but instead in quieter and intimate tones.

Who was I to judge, really? And what should I be believing about all those so-called exposés about the Powaah Witnesses? Everyone knew the media was biased. Besides, all the Powaah Witnesses I knew (that is, the representative two I've met) seemed friendly and harmless. I should be keeping an open mind about these things. Whatever issue the Empire had with them, it wasn't any of my business, right?

These were the thoughts that went through my head, as we walked closer and closer together, bumping into each other clumsily – which stopped when continued walking holding hands... which lead to a bumping of an entirely different kind. (YES!!!)

Later, when we were in her hut and without any flowers to speak of, Leah pushed me away and interrupted our kissing with, "Wait, wait, wait."

"What?" I said startled, grudgingly stopping my hands from coursing up and down her lovely figure, not a hundred percent processing what she was saying as most of my blood wasn't currently in my head.

"Are you ok with this?"

"Huh?"

"I'm a Powaah Nut, you know."

"Hmmmm... You're right. I should go."

"What!?"

"I'm kidding."

"You better be."  
"I guess you guys are pretty normal."

"Hahahaha... Thanks, so are you."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that."

"Really? You feel like someone who's normal."

"Doesn't hurt to do a thorough examination."

It was somewhere around that point – maybe specifically when Leah had pulled off her dress to reveal an insanely sexy, borderline fetishist bronze and leather bra and panties – when I decided that I had no issue at all with Powaah Witnesses, and, come to think of it, that it would do me well to stay a bit longer.

CHAPTER 6

In retrospect, it was pretty obvious that Leah was a recruiter. The single most obvious give-away was the amazing speed by which I managed to get into her pants in that perfect lady-killer way that, till then, I had only heard about (and tried vainly, many times, to emulate from my how-to guy-zines). Inexplicably though, in the midst of my post-coital glow that gave an extra bounce to my undeniable virility, I didn't demonstrate much critical thinking. Obviously, it wasn't at all unusual to me that a smoking-hot broad like Leah would be attracted to a desperately horny, sunken-chested line cook who was a few pounds shy of being downright skeletal.

The realization that Leah might not be as taken with me as I would have liked to think eventually did sink in, along with her increasingly frequent absences from the Center (and thus my bed) on "business" and with her progression from regular applications of sensual caresses and long crotch-rubbing hugs, to robotically chaste, sibling-like pats on the back. It all became heart-wrenchingly obvious when the other guys at the Center, who had initially been looking at me and Leah with what I had interpreted to be jealous dagger-eyed moony-faces, flat out told me that they also had had their own all-too-brief sojourn between Leah's legs.

By then, however, the minor matter of having been used and manipulated didn't really matter, as I had been successfully absorbed into the blissed-out ranks of the Powaah Witnesses. Yeah, yeah, so I converted pretty quick. Look, don't give me hard time about it. You try being surrounded by a steady flow of hugs, positive reinforcement and gratuitous validation, and see whether or not you wouldn't want to stay and get more.

I may not have been the most huggiest of guys to begin with, but I had to say that it actually got kind of nice being constantly given long hugs for one reason or another, or often for no reason at all. Of course, it helped that there was a whole lot of casual fornication going on – just as an expression of the Universal Love and Affection of the Powaah – which helped smooth any tender feelings I might have had about Leah casting me off like spent bycatch.

Plentiful sex aside, and this was saying a lot, it was pretty great to become a Powaah Witness. A major attractant was the fact that the work it entailed was pretty mild and left up to us to interpret what it meant to work for the Powaah. In principle, as you may think it should be – seeing as how we were totally dedicated to the Powaah and all that shebang – we'd be working ourselves to the bone and outdoing each other with feats of productive work for the glory of the Powaah. The rather more pleasant reality was that the "work" involved a whole lot of puttering around punctuated by a lot of singing, crying and hugging.

Honestly, when I'd been given my first shift, I'd been prepared to get my hands dirty and do some hard labor; though, admittedly, I was mainly thinking that I'd be winning Leah back by demonstrating how good of Powaah Witness I'd become. But, as I soon realized, there was absolutely no worry about my impressing people – which had less to do with my ability to work in itself, but with how little was expected.

There I was an hour into huffing and puffing with a digging fork, flipping clods of soil and wrestling with weeds, when I looked over to the others who had been assigned with me to the farm, and saw that they hadn't budged from the spot where we'd started. Apparently, after their initial listless attempts at digging resulted in resistance from the material reality of the soil, they realized that the soil wasn't ready to be worked, and that they could help it feel ready by sitting in a circle, holding hands, and singing Powaah mantras.

Sit and sing versus sweat and groan? Not a terribly hard choice to make. I could get used used to this kind of "digging." Shit... if that was all the "work" I was expected to do along with some occasional bout of brain-dead cooking, count me in! Do about the tenth of the work I was used to and get praised for it and have plentiful sex? Sign me up! What was this Powaah business you were talking about? I'm a believer! I'll sing and hug and dance around as much you like!

Similarly, when I was put in the kitchen (my being a "chef" and all), it didn't take much more than a few minutes of cutting before someone burst into tears over some existential anxiety (possibly the horrifingly aggressive act of cutting), and we all dropped everything, scurried over, and gave each other long Powaah-swapping hugs – which continued about once every fifteen minutes until dinner time. It was then that I figured out it didn't take much to impress the folks at the Center: all I had to do was some half-assed work that would have gotten me fired anywhere else in the Empire, but that garnered gushing amazement and made them want me to stay there forever and ever. But, just to be sure I wouldn't be kicked out of paradise, I sealed the deal and my position by breaking out my supply of "smoke essence" and became known for my instantly-famous sauced-drenched, smoky, simuli-animal-substance logs.

(You may, of course, be asking yourself how anything got done at the Center seeing as how people only barely worked. One answer would be that the will of the Powaah was simply so wonderful-amazing-mysterious-powerful (in a non-patriarchal way)-awesome-o-so-awesome and it moved so crazily unfathomably and miraculously. Another answer would be that there was a small army of low-wage local Tusken labourers in the background getting things done and finishing our half-done tasks. Now this might have been a reality-check for the incredible greatness of the Powaah, but, since we ignored the Tuskans and avoided talking to them at all costs, they were essentially invisible – which made it possible for us to live our privileged spiritually enlightened life while dedicating all our "labor" to the Powaah. Sure, it might seem a touch on the unfair side, but the right (and convenient) way to think about it was that we were giving those poor, primitive, undeveloped buggers an opportunity to earn credits so they can eventually scratch their way out of their own backwards state.)

For full disclosure, my rapid conversion was also helped along by a dizzying regime of detoxifying fasting and cleanses. Damned toxins. I never knew I had so many accumulating in me. Much to my regret, it was only when I started discovering my myriad of allergies and sensitivities that I realized the error of my toxic, addictive ways. What a difference I felt when I started to cut out all the delicious foods I used to stuff down my gullet all willy-nilly. Clearly, I had to undergo all the cleanses I could to purify the sack of contaminated goo my body had become.

With gusto did I swallow liters upon liters of Bantha oil, just to vomit it back up; and then undergo the digestive-water-irrigator through not only the front but the back-end; and then force down the über-fibers of Alderan nuts (the botanical kind) to scour out my intestines until they were squeaky clean. Ahhhhhhh.... How light and wonderful I felt! Fast after satisfying fast, cleanse after cleanly cleanse, I felt more and more pure with a vague sense that my brain was floating in a puddle of blinding bright light – where everything was great, agreeable, and not terribly difficult to convince me of anything at all.

I was in the middle of my Green Fluid Fast (consisting of an hourly glass of liquefied, de-fibered, de-mineralized, de-oxidized strictly green-leafed vegetables) when I bumped into Mike in one of the more secluded areas of the Center. He was sprawled on the ground underneath the shade of a spindly tree looking aimlessly into the clouds. Given our skills, we'd been assigned to different parts of the Center, and we hadn't seen much of each other since we had arrived (and stayed). What I did know, however, was that he was taking his "casting off" by Haan poorly, hence the aimless looking into the clouds in which I detected no small amount of mournfulness and possibly a hint of resentment. I sat down next to him, and pointed my glass of goop in his direction,

"Juice?"

"Nah, I'm on the Master Purification. I'm not allowed fluids until dusk." Mike budged slightly to look at me; with all our fasts and cleanses, we had limited energy and had to conserve where we could. "What are you on these days?"

"The Green Fluid Fast."

"Yeah, I did that last week. Wasn't crazy about having the green shits all day."

"I hear ya. I've only got two more days, and I'll switch over to the Carbon-Fiber Cleanse."

"Whoa. That's with the funnel and the wire-clamps, right?"

"Yep, and the metal grill."

"Hard core. I'll bet you'll feel great."

"I hope so. I've been having these weird bumps come up around nipples ever since I did that week of the Electric Cups, so I'm hoping the Carbon-Fiber Cleanse will take care of that."

"That must be some wild toxic-shit coming out of you."

"Can you imagine all the shit that's been kicking around from the time we were with the Empire?"

"All those fumes we were breathing in?"

"And that radiation and radio-waves messing with our cells?"

"Fuuuuuck..."

"Shit..."

"To hell with the Empire."

"Fuck yeah."

Not surprisingly, we'd joined the general all-for-love and down-with-oppression sentiments at the Centre, and turned our backs on the Empire. We, having been Empire Service-men, you might have thought it would have been hard or galaxy-shaking for us to do so, but it wasn't really all that hard for a couple of reasons. First, it's not like we were slapping on camo-facepaint and taking up arms against the Empire, which even we weren't stupid enough to do; we were only taking part of a harmless and very much passive group that had no risk of threatening any institutions at all. Second, it's not like we were idiots: we weren't blind to the injustices, the atrocities, the systemic inequities that made the Empire what it was; after all, we'd been on the frontlines of committing them and the enforcing the status-quo. It just never really bothered us that much seeing as how we were on the winning team and reaping the benefits of the might that made it right.

So, yeah, I guess we did "discover" our consciences, with a good number of remorseful tears shed to prove it (and the hugs that made it all better) – especially since it was our ticket to stay in the loving embrace of the Powaah Witnesses. The only thing that was a hard pill to swallow was paying Jim the Tusken to virtually institutionalize us at our former clinic: our records now showed that our horrendous soul-scaring battle-wounds were proving hard to cure, which eventually would lead to our discharge in a year or so after they had presumably exhausted their resources trying to rewire our brains. Needless to say, it was very very expensive. Ah, well. What price could you possibly put on the priceless gift of happiness and enlightened mind-expansion? Ultimately, as I'd rationalize it to myself many times afterwards, it was a piddling amount to pay to be able to relax, be stress-free, and, y'know, focus on myself for a change.

I swirled around my juice yet again, dreading the last bit of viscous jungle-green ooze, and downed the stuff in one squinting huff. My hourly dose thankfully done, I looked over at Mike again, who was still brooding. Guess it was time for some man-talk again. Giving him a nudge with my foot, I asked, "Dude, you ok?"

Prefaced by a long, long sigh, Mike dramatically covered his face with his hands. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You sure? Doesn't look like it."

"Yeah."

"You want a hug?"

"Get the fuck away from me."

"Still stuck on the Haan thing, huh."

"I swear I'll beat you."

"Right. See? I'm shitting green, I'm so scared."

Mike chuckled and let out a resigned sigh. "Man, why'd I have to fall for that guy? I always fall for the wrong one."

"Just get over it, bro. What about that guy Karl you've been boning?" I replied, cuffing him on the shoulder.

"He's alright I guess. No Haan though," Mike sighed yet again, emoting ever more sadness. "You know I sometimes wonder if I should even stay..."

"What?" I said genuinely shocked. Sure the Center wasn't perfect, but as far as sinecures go it was pretty up there. "And go back to the Empire? Back to all the fumes? To risking your life for no good reason?"

"Yeah, yeah. I get it, but something about this place..."

Before Mike could finish his thought and our manly sharing of feelings, a loud argument came crashing through behind us, tumbling straight into our midst.

"How can you? How can yooooooou??!" wailed a gaunt man, pulling at his unkempt, dready hair as he pointed an accusatory finger at a somewhat plumpish woman, who, with tears streaming down her face, tried to calm the man with,

"I hear you, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."

Oooooo... A lover's spat! These were fun to watch and worth sitting up for. Generally, following the Powaah meant you didn't have to follow gender normative coupledom behaviour, but it nevertheless happened, along with the always entertaining consequences of the seemingly inevitable infidelities.

"But I saaaaw you, Alice!" the man said, beating his chest, and shaping his words with effort through his blubbering. "You ate it! You ate a whole burger!"

"Jimmy, I hear you. I really do. But, it was only a bite, and I thought it was a vegetarian patty before I realized it too late," the woman named Alice placated the wild-eyed Jimmy, for what was likely the gagillionth time.

"But now you have to start your cleanse all over again! We were supposed to be cleanse-buddies," Jimmy whined, appearing to be calming down, judging the decrease in the flailing of his arms.

Oh, well. That's too bad, I thought, sinking back down to rest on my elbows. This wasn't going to be a passion-storm of wandering crotches, hurt feelings, and make-up sex. Instead, this was the average garden-variety blow-outs that were brought on by any number of possible upsetters; the source of which was not even remotely important, but what was crucial was that the mini-curfuffle effectively forced the undivided attention of anyone present to swivel firmly on the wailing, victimized blow-ee.

In this case, it seemed to have to do with some tacit agreement the two had about their respective search for intestinal purity and thus increased closeness to the Powaah – which everyone thought they agreed on, but never did. As these flare-ups went though, they'd soon be soothing each other with generic expressions of compassion and then drifting into a bout of hugging and heavy petting.

"I know, Jimmy, I know. I hear you. Do you feel heard?"

"I was so sad, Alice. So sad."

"I can help you process this. Do you feel heard? "

"Yes, I do."

"Can you tell me what you were feeling?"

"I was feeling abandoned."

"Ok. I hear that you were feeling abandoned. And that was triggering you?"

"Yeah. It was triggering me."

"So it was triggering you."

"Yeah. And it was all so hard to process."

"I see. You were abandoned, it was triggering and hard to process."

"Yeah."

"I'm here, Jimmy. I won't abandon you."

"Oh, thank you, Alice."

"We are one with the Powaah. You are not the doer."

"Yes, I am not the doer. I am one with the Powaah."

And, on cue, they started hugging and caressing each other's backs, while intermittently looking intensely into the other's eyes and smiling beatifically. Yet another minor drama that blew in and blew out. Notably though, this was one of the fast ones, which was apparently due to Alice being one of the more advanced Powaah practitioners, who could tune into other people's disturbed energy fields, conjure the correct words to unwrinkle them, and explain away all things in the context of the Powaah – like eating burgers despite being theoretically vegetarian.

However, just when it seemed like the moment's high-wire tension was over as Alice and Jimmy disentangled to start to get back to their assigned tasks, another flurry of inflamed passions stormed over in the shape of a wiry, angry woman, who went straight for Alice like a guided missile that exploded with,

"Fucking hell, Alice. There you are! Why the hell didn't you pick me up?" the newly arrived blazing bundle of fury shot at Alice the moment she was within a few feet of her.

Jimmy quietly stepped aside and walked quickly away, as Mike and I stood up to watch. Ah! More entertainment!

"Oh, hi, Sally. How are you?" Alice stepped back a touch and donned her softest and gentlest facial expression.

"I asked you a damned question. Where the hell were you? I waited for hours, and I had to hitchhike the way back with all the bins and tables on my back," Sally growled. As head of the Center's the farm activities, she went to market when Leah couldn't go, but, given the limited access to vehicles, she had to rely on someone to pick her up, which in this case failed to happen.

"I hear you are angry. I understand you are triggered," said Alice slowly, deploying her Powaah skills, as she nodded seriously with a slight moue of sadness to convey understanding and compassion.

"No, shit! Why can't you answer my goddamned question?" Sally demanded implacably.

"I'm so happy you got back alright. I was worried about you," Alice smiled again, doing her best to beam all her stores of Powaah Love.

"Where the fuck were you, Alice? I knew shouldn't have trusted you with using the hauler."

"I hear you."

"No you fucking don't! If you did, you'd have come to pick me up!"

"I understand."

"Where the fuck were you?"

"Let's focus our breath and find the Powaah in us..."

"Why won't you answer me?"

"I hear your anger, Sally, but I am having difficulty answering because you're not making me feel safe. I have to feel safe to be able to speak," Alice said in a serious, chiding tone, and engaging her superior spiritual knowledge of communicating passively with a hint of backhanded aggressiveness.

"Oh, not this again," Sally groaned, throwing her hands in the air in defeat. Taking a deep breath, she said slowly in a strained, monotonous voice, "Alice, I would like to hear you. Why, pray tell, were you not able to pick me up as you had told me you would?"

"Well, Sally, I really wanted to pick you up, but I felt at that moment it would be better that I performed some self-care and slept," Alice said reasonably, as she nodded in agreement with herself. "This way I could serve the Powaah and our community better."

"You took a NAP?" Sally's eyes bulged, as if someone had pumped high pressure air into her skull. For a moment, it looked like her head would blow up into a million grisly bits, but before anything memorable could happen, she stomped off cursing and swearing.

Never a dull moment at the Center, I had to say. So much triggering! So much processing! Yep, just another day at the Tattoo-ine Center of the Powaah. Despite the Center's all-encompassing embrace of Powaah Love, these kinds of "incidents" happened more frequently than not. Frankly, with all the pervasive borderline malnutrition and sleep deprivation that bred tissue-thin sensitivities and flayed emotions, I was surprised I wasn't witness to much much more of the dramatic, tearful incidents that Mike and I were just given front-row seats to.

In the aftermath, Alice stood awkwardly for a few moments in silence not comprehending (or not processing, as it were) what happened, before she noticed Mike and I sitting on the ground. Flicking on her most welcoming smile, she said,

"Oh, hello, Tim! Hello Mike! How are you! It's so good to see you!" which was followed by a pleasantly bland conversation about the weather, innocuous statements and compliments about our tasks and life, and gentle suggestions how to improve our connection with the Powaah. Alice was indeed a very advanced Powaah practitioner. Our conversation was eminently forgettable until this little tidbit came up,

"Did you two hear?" Alice said brightly, looking significantly at the two of us. "Haan and Leah are coming back from their trip tomorrow."

"What?" Mike and I said simultaneously as we jolted into sharp attention.

"Yes! They're returning with Leah's brother Louke! He's coming to give a talk! Have you met him? He's such a great guy and an amazingly advanced Powaah practitioner. A Powaah Jedi! He's a hero you know..."

CHAPTER 7

It was as if there was a halo around the guy. As I watched Louke speak, it took a few moments to reconcile my expectations. With his reputation as a Rebel and all, I'd imagined a cigar-chomping, muscle-bound thug decked out in worn-out military fatigues accessorized with a beret and a panoply of scars – not an innocent-looking, barely post-pubescent kid dressed in a saintly white robe. Disconnect aside, sitting there listening him intone about the Powaah, I found myself enraptured by his presence, as he beamed Powaah goodness at us through his boyish good looks. I had to resist the impulse to add a falsetto "baaaaaa" to highlight the glow of his golden, tousled locks.

Part of the effect was due to my dazed, calorie-deprived (but cleansed!) state of being, but also due to the efforts of the stage-droid discretely parked in the corner, looking so much like a blinking trash can as it skillfully adjusted the lighting and sound effects. Whatever the cause, Louke's talk was an impressive performance that had everything from excitement, love, danger, pathos, and even more excitement:

"...We were facing the galaxy's most fearsome weapon, and we were only a few squadrons of fighters and ships. Were we going to be crushed? Were we going to be like little waves crashing against a massive cliff? Was it crazy to attack a battlestation the size of a moon that had ten times more fire-power in one shot than all of the Rebel fleet combined? NO!"

Louke speechified with much verve and intense hypnotic eye action, as the stage-droid helpfully projected holos of ships and waves at the appropriately emotion-resonating moments. "I could tell you that as we sat there radioing amongst our teams, we felt no fear at all. We had the Powaah with us! We felt it!"

There was a significant brightening of the spotlight on Louke, followed by the crowd's, "Ahhhhh.... Ooooo...."

The room was stuffed with virtually everyone from the Center (except the Tuskans, who were busy working). We'd thought we had come early enough to get good seats, but, even though we arrived a good half-hour earlier, Mike and I only managed to squeeze our way in the back – and even then I had stand on my toes and crank my head at a funny angle to see above the heads and around a pillar. The effort was worth it though, as I was finally able to catch my solid looks of my lovely Leah and her pastry-hairdo sitting next to Louke, as she smiled in her intoxicating way that brought fire to my crotch. Mike was also craning his neck, as on the other side of Louke was Haan and his black vest smirking and winking at pretty much everybody.

"With the Powaah giving us strength, we went for it! Wooosh, wooosh, wooosh!" Louke mimed flying squadrons with his hands, complete with an impressive reverb provided by the stage-droid. "Gold team went in first, but they were getting mauled, so Red and Blue team went in to give them cover. Boom boom boom! It was too much! It was too much! We were losing fighters left right and center!"

"Ooooo..." the crowd oooed and sucked in a collective breath of nervous anticipation.

The lights dimmed ominously, as Louke took a heavy pause, confiding in a loud whisper, "You know, they said that Dorth Vadah himself was out there picking us off. We were getting close to having no hope."

"Nooooo...." the crowd gasped, fearing now that Louke may ever survive the tale as he told the tale. Louke was putting on a great show, and I was lapping it up as much as anybody in the room. I've always been a sucker for the whole underdog beats the evil whatever against crazy impossible odds. This moment of the story coming up, obviously, was the requisite low moment when we were supposed to doubt that they'd even survive, but then, at the last minute, when all seemed lost,

"Then, I heard Ben's words in my head, saying 'Louke, remember the Powaah. Let the Powaah be with you!' Yes! I put my faith in the Powaah and went in for another run at that monster of a battlestation."

And yet Louke frowned, sank his head, and construed a pause that was palpably unbearable for the crowd. "No... no... I couldn't! I still couldn't! There were too many of them shooting at me! The shot I had to take was so small! Even with EssTwo in the cockpit behind me and helping me dodge the enemy fighters, I still couldn't do it! We did our best though, didn't we, buddy?" There was an appreciative bleep-bloop-bloop from the stage-droid in the corner.

Suddenly though, Louke switched his frown into a bright smile, and turning to Haan, he slapped him on the back, "And then Haan came back to shoot all the attackers down!"

"Ahhhhh...." there was relieved clapping and cheering, as Louke continued,

"And I was free to make my run! It wasn't easy, you know. It was one tiny little hole that I had to drop a torpedo in. But I had the Powaah with me! The Powaah be with us all! I took a deep breath and... I fired! It went straight in! And BOOM went the Deeeeath Star!"

Yeah, whatever. Boom also went everyone in the Deeeeath Star working away minding their own business. Boom went all my shit now floating in space. Boom went my kitchen peeps and poor Joe. Well, at least it did destroy our annoying droid chef. I squirmed as EssTwo's exploding Deeeeath Star holo brought back some fairly unpleasant memories I had hoped never to revisit.

I looked over to Mike to see how he was doing, and could see that he too was a bit on the tense side. He seemed to be staring not at Louke or Haan, but at the guy sitting suspiciously close enough to Haan for their legs to be touching (!), and who was the hairiest dude I'd ever seen with a massive carpet of hair covering his face, arms and chest. Honestly, if it weren't for the eyes and the utility belt slung across his chest, I would have sworn he was some piece of plush furniture.

The room filled with wild clapping and cheering, as Louke, Leah and Haan beamed at the crowd with heroic pride. I did have my doubts about the details of Louke's story, but it made for a great yarn, and that was apparently the important thing. It brought up an awkward thought though: was this the kind of "business" that Leah and Haan had been disappearing to do? Could this Rebel thing really be what they've been involved with? But if Louke was part of the Rebellion and Leah was her brother, did that mean that she was also a... a... I tried not to think about it too much, lest it slacken my erection when I next hooked up with Leah.

Well, all is forgiven in the Powaah, right? The Powaah loves all, right? Let bygones be bygones, I suppose. Just wipe your mind clean, and put on that winning Powaah smile.

"Yes! We'll beat the Empire! We'll break their power!" cried out Louke, his fist shuddering in the air, as the crowd leapt to their feet and hooted.

Meh. They can do whatever they wanted, so long as it didn't involve me. I knew very well what the near-omnipotent power the Empire had, and I had no interest at all in throwing myself in front of all-consuming galactic garburator that it was. I get the whole injustice and cruelty thing, really I do, and I'm shocked, shocked I say, by the horror and awfulness of it all. But, fight against it? There was no sense in fighting the inevitable and what's always been in one way or another. We were such little specks of nothingness that what hope could we possibly have in front of the incontrovertible monolith that was the Empire? What point was there really? To make a point? Waste a life that no one would even notice getting flicked away? It was best to ignore it all, check out, and live happily out of the system, preferably working very minimally and having lots of sex.

"Down with the Empire! Down with the Emperor's tyranny!" Louke continued, starting to lead the ecstatic crowd in some fairly typical anti-establishment chanting.

Yeah, yeah. Rah, rah, rah. I'd been to my fair share of rallies in my wide-eyed innocent youth, and I was well familiar with the hysterical fervor that rose and rose during the rally itself, but that ended in an embarrassed, directionless fizzle once people started asking who was actually going to do what of the galaxy-changing they'd been chanting about. In the moment, however, all that cheering was giving a satisfyingly good warming to the collective mob and herd instincts that hungered for solidarity and belonging. Not wanting to get lynched, I joined in, and nudged Mike to do the same. So long as it was harmless venting, it didn't hurt to yell out a little and feel bigger in our britches that we really were.

"Join us! Join us against the Empire! Together, we'll beat them and take them down! The Powaah be with US!" Louke yelled at the peak of the chanting – to which he was rejoined with some intoxicated, joyous cries of assent.

Whoaaaaa there, buddy. Like I said, I feel you and agree with you (to some extent), but I'm not about to stick my neck out and do anything about it. What business was it of mine if the Empire was being unjust or unfair or brutal or genocidal, when it didn't bother me? So long as I wasn't on the wrong side and paid my dues, I'd see nothing of "bad" side of Empire – which incidentally was pretty much a necessary fact of life. How do you think the Empire provided the services that kept the galaxy-ways free of debris? The money to do it all had to come from somewhere. So what if it came from some ass-wipe planet populated by primitives who were too stupid to set up a proper trade agreement to exploit their natural resources? Someone had to do it.

One way or the other, there was no chance I was about to be recruited into some risky, brainless movement/cause/thingamajigger, no matter how many inspirational stories I was told. Abandon this comfy place for the unknown and near certain death? You got to be kidding. In fact, I'd be willing to wager that all of the people in the crowd yelling so passionately with such deep conviction about the o-so-romantic prospect of being a Rebel would be quickly backing out once they realized that they weren't going to be living in another idealistic retreat center, but entering an actual war.

Mike and I looked at each other, having reached our tolerance limits with the crowd. This was far far removed from what we had come for. With some difficulty, we started wading through the roiling mass of people, making our way towards the exit. I wasn't sure what Mike was thinking right now, but I could imagine he was feeling something not dissimilar to my mood of depression and more than a little disgust. I just couldn't see myself staying at the Center any longer – but that meant no more Leah (and no Haan for Mike), and that was a damned painful thought to accept. Could I still stay and ignore the rest of the stupidity? It was possible, I guess, and I'd lived in much worse, but somehow there was deeper vein of disappointment that I was having trouble getting a grasp on.

We'd crawled our way out of the room and were getting our first gasps of cool, sane air, when a large, shuddering BANG made us jolt around. It was probably another of EssTwo's sound effects – though this one sounded strangely sharp and jarring, not at all like the pleasantly modulated tones that it had used before. The crowd seemed to be reacting differently too, no longer sounding like a chorus of animated cheering, but began to be mingled with confused yelps and the odd scream. And then, there was another,

BANG!

"Frag grenade!" Mike cried out in shock as he pulled me to the ground. Before I could ask Mike what the hell he meant, we were suddenly surrounded by screaming, fleeing people, as they tore their way out of the room. Mike dragged me up against the wall, screaming in my ear, "Stay down! Those are stormtroopers!"

"What? What? Stormtroopers?" I answered half-understanding, my senses completely overloaded with a blur of noises, people, and sheer terror. "We have to get Leah out!"

"Stay down, you idiot! We have to stay down. You'll get us both killed if we go anywhere," Mike barked at me, firmly pressing me against the wall in spite of my struggling. "You hear that? Those are plasma rifles. They're picking the runners off."

Sure enough, the screams were punctuated by the characteristic hypersonic zip-zip of plasma shots searing the air. I sank to the ground in a daze, and felt something wet and slippery slap against my face. Looking down, I had to keep myself from freaking out as I saw my chest splattered in blood, but somewhat calmed down as I realized it wasn't my own. The people running out of the room were coming out with heavy lacerations over their bodies that were bleeding profusely. Behind them came others that were hobbling as they dragged a twisted leg, or shuffled under the weight of a maimed or limp body.

Holy fuck. This was insane. I'm no Rebel! I desperately wanted to get out of there and run with the others, but Mike held on to me, looking on grimly as he pointed to the fleeing people getting cut down with systematic efficiency. Another explosion shook us, but this time much closer.

"Shit. They're coming in," Mike cursed. He looked down at me and gave me a thin smile, "Well, Tim. We're going to have to take our chances and make a run for it. Follow me as best you can, alright?"

There wasn't much I could do except nod mechanically and wait for Mike to start running. Two more grenades landed, each one getting closer, but Mike motioned for me to stay still. The plasma shots began to get closer and louder too, as the stormtroopers gradually closed in on the building. I was pretty much ready to run on my own, when the first plasma shot burned from within the room, and Mike yelled,

"Come on!"

And we took off running! I pumped my legs and arms as hard as I could, trying desperately to keep up with Mike's much larger strides. Curiously, it was then that I realized that perhaps all those cleanses weren't the best idea or the most sustainable in the long run, as I rapidly felt my already depleted energy reserves peter out. Still, I struggled as best I could, straining with all my might to summon more adrenaline.

A burning pain flashed in my shoulder, and everything went dark.

CHAPTER 8

It was dark and damp when I came to. Considering my aching head and the unmistakable fragrance of urea coming from the asshole pissing right next to me, I could only conclude that I was waking up from a massive bender. At least, it wasn't some joker who thought it would be funny to give the passed-out guy a good tinkle. My eyes barely scratching open, I could just make out that it was Mike's blurry shape peeing, so I formulated suitably clever and sarcastic hangover witticism,

"Nnnghuuuuhhhh... Whatthefuuuuck... Stop... pissing... asshole..." The peeing thankfully came to a petering stop, as I struggled to get up; but I felt a firm hand push me back down on my back.

"Stay still, Tim. You aren't bleeding anymore, but you hit your head pretty bad," said Mike's voice with a somberness that didn't match my expected post-party-till-you-hurl mood.

"What....? Bleeding? Shit, that must have been some serious binging we did last night, man..." I tried to kid. My eyes were open now, but for some reason I still couldn't see things clearly. "The hangover I have right now... Why is it so dark? Are we back at the clinic?"

"Tim, you're waking up from being shot. It's dark because we're in a holding pen."

I groaned as it all call rushing back to me. Pity the last few months weren't merely a happy dream; with the slight snafu that came at the end, the binge-hangover would have been a much better alternative.

I made sense of it all with, "Aw, fuck."

"No fucking kidding," Mike replied and sank down on the floor next to me. "Sorry about taking a leak next to you. There wasn't anywhere else to go."

"Yeah, you fucking say that all the time," I grimaced and batted Mike's mothering hands away, as I sat up clutching my tender shoulder. With my eyes adjusting to the darkness though, I saw that the cell was packed with people shoulder to shoulder and barely any room to move let alone designate a luxurious space to perform bodily functions. Frankly, I could tell I should be grateful for whatever floorspace we had, which was thanks to Mike's significantly more muscular bulk maintaining a respectful space around us.

"When are we going to be let out of here?"

"We aren't," Mike said grimly.

"What? We're Empire Service-men, we have rights, we can appeal this..."

"You mean the same Service-men who are now undergoing treatment in the Empire's clinic for the next year?"

Oh, right. Fucking hell. We were screwed. If it wasn't for our then brilliant transaction with Jim the Tusken, we could have yelled out our serial number to any of the jailers or even a droid, and it would have been an easy process to file an appeal, and maybe get a few months in the brig for bad conduct; Service-men going nuts was far from an uncommon occurrence. But, with our "official" status logged somewhere else, we'd be flagged as impostors, possibly spies, and shot, if not tortured by the local maniacal jailer aiming to impress the Empire for a promotion.

"Shit, Mike. What the fuck can we do?"

"Nothing. We're fucked."

"There must be something we can do. Someone we can pay, someone we can talk to..." I scrambled for options, feeling my desperation increase.

Mike, probably more far along my own incipient emotional progress from shock to fear to despair to resignation, let out an unpromising sigh, "Tim, we're fucked. This isn't a regular holding cell. I recognize it from my trooper days. It's a slave pen. We've been 'collected' and sold to slave traders."

I had to overcome some major denial to recognize that Mike was right: looking around our "holding cell" more carefully, I could see there were significant differences from the holding cells/drunk-tanks I was much more familiar with. For one thing, besides the lack of space, cots or anything beyond the barest glimmer of light, there were no amenities to speak of: no sink, no tap, no water, no toilet, no can, not even a drain. As the logic went for human chattel, why bother waste effort trying to keep slaves alive when you were expecting half of them die anyway – and even wanted to them to die so you could weed out the weak ones?

I had to admit that part of my shock with my slow-to-sink-in situation was due to my not having that much experience with slavery and, frankly, not much interest in it. Of course, I knew very well the slave industry existed in the Empire and, as far as industries went, was rather vibrant. One might even argue it was something of a cornerstone of the Empire, as its ever-reliable, pliant and economical labor kept the rest of the Empire's departments and businesses running profitably and cost-effectively. With all the unending wars, everyone knew that the seemingly pointless conquests were to generate more free labor to maintain the lifestyles and the flow of bling that everyone wanted. It was, however, kept out of sight, so as not to negatively influence the sensibilities, not to mention the shopping habits of regular citizens – such as I used to be.

This was very very bad. I had to figure out how to get out of here. Surely there was someone I could reason with? Someone I could bribe? But with what? I had nothing now, not even my identity. Like Mike, I fell into a quiet, depressed gloom. The rest of the people in the slave pen – all taken from the Center – were similarly brooding: where once the same crowd was filled with effervescent, boundless positivity, there were now variations of dazed disbelief, anger, and pathetic whimpering.

In one corner of the crate, however, one spring of hope refused to be put down by the troublesome details of reality,

"The Powaah moves in mysterious ways. We have to trust it! We have to see the good in this!" It was Alice in full-on sermon mode, rambling away as she moved her arms around in slow circular motions and making complicated Powaah mudras, meant to indicate love, acceptance and enlightenment. I had to hand it to her: even when it obvious she and everyone around were condemned, she still found time to proselytize for the Powaah.

"Alice, will you shut up? You're not helping by being delusional," Sally croaked irritably, in spite of the deep, festering gashes across her face and arms. It would have been most effective to let Alice run out of steam on her own, but Sally had had enough of ignoring their long-standing acrimony. The small group around the two shifted perceptibly away from them to avoid getting involved.

"Surrender to the Powaah and feel the love around you."

"People are dead, Alice. Do you get that?"

"We will go back to the Powaah. Trust the Powaah and we will all be happy."

"Tell that to the corpses in the corner over there. Twelve of them."

"Be one. Be one with the Powaah. You are not the doer. Chant with me everyone..."

"Do you even know their names? The people who you try so hard to bring to the Powaah? Did you ever know their names?"

"O, Powaah. We trust you. We will walk your path, and not the path of fear. For fear is the path to the dark side..."

"Alice, you're no Jedi. You're not fooling anyone."

"I only speak the truth about the Powaah. Just what I feel from within. I surrender to the voice within me..."

"Bullshit. You say and do whatever to make you look sacred and wise. Everyone knows you're a fake. A fucking hypocrite."

"The truth is all that matters, Sally. I only fall from time to time, but listen to my words..."

"You do know that everyone knows you eat meat, right? That you go out for burgers every weekend? Even with all your 'see the sacred Powaah in all living beings spiel?'"

"...I don't know what you're talking about. I wouldn't eat the flesh of another being."

"So you say. Lots of people saw you. I saw you."

"I was only eating a veg burger..."

"Ha! A veg burger in the only barbeque place in town? Were you eating their ornamental plants?"

"I may have had one bite. But I chanted the Powaah mantra and cleansed after."

"Ooooh. That's the game then. Sin so you can always have something to 'work' on and to 'purify' your dirty self."

"You don't know anything about the Powaah, Sally. I have read all of Louke's works. I've studied all of Ben's recordings!"

"Lots of good that did you..."

It was more than a little annoying to listen to, but I guess I should show some compassion and understanding with their need to process their differences, and even be happy that they found the space to open up to each other and work through what was triggering them. Unfortunately, without the context of the Center, it was unlikely they would make up and hug as they ordinarily would have;but perhaps we could try bringing them into a group hug...

...Hold up. Fuck that. I wasn't at the fucking Center anymore and I didn't have to ape their fucking holier-than-thou fucking Powaah ways to get laid. Being stuck in a stinking pen with a bunch of Powaah nuts was bad enough, but being forced to listen to those idiots was a completely unnecessary torment. I yearned for the time when I had been passed out and oblivious to the world – or wished I had a club handy to knock those two out. Failing any of that, I'd rather someone blasted my brains out with a plasma charge.

Thankfully, a jarring metallic scrape silenced the bickering rivals. The door to the slave pen creaked open, briefly revealing the dark silhouette of a tall, thin man, before he blinded us with a slow-roving spotlight, assessing the state of his new property (us). With a disgusted snort, he made a quick motion with his hand that brought forth a group of stun-baton-wielding guards who started pulling us out and herding us down a darkened hallway, where more armed guards stood waiting to move us along with casual, indiscriminate electrified baton-swings.

Being still weak and in considerable pain, I had to hold on to Mike to avoid stumbling and collapsing; from the weak whelps, cursing and blunt thudding, I could tell it wasn't a good idea to find myself on the ground. Our grim shambling continued through darkened halls filled with the sounds of moaning and the odd plea for help.

At last, we were made to stop in a cavernous, windowless room that was filled with rows upon rows of machinery on which a mass of slaves were working feverishly. There was an overwhelming amount of clinking and clanking noises in the room – and none of it included any talking; not one of the workers took any notice of us, keeping their eyes firmly on whatever piece of machinery they were working on with unwavering attention.

Flanked by two goons that I suspected never left his side, the tall, thin man came before our pathetic assembly, and, pulling his attention away from a datapad that he had been tapping on, stared at us through sunken eyes. If not for the stun-baton that hung from his hip, the man facing us would have been indistinguishable from middle-management anywhere in the Empire. Crossing his hands behind his back, the man intoned in a bored, detached voice,

"My name is Mr. Fortuna. I will be managing your work. You may refer to me as 'Master Fortuna' or 'Master.' You are the property of Jubba's Hut of Stuff Incorporated. You will work on the assembly line making high-end products for Jubba's Hut of Luxury goods. Work hard and you will be fed and provided an area to sleep. You will be expected to maintain..."

"Sir? Sir? Master Fortuna, sir?" a whiny voice interrupted the small speech that Mr. Fortuna had repeated innumerable times to a similar groups of incoming slaves. Not daring to bring attention to myself, I resisted turning around, but I had a pretty good guess what dread-head fool was stupid enough to interrupt our new slave master.

With an entirely impassive expression, Mr. Fortuna paused to reply, "Yes?"

"Mr. Fortuna, sir. I don't think I can work," Jimmy squeaked, apparently not grasping the ramifications of our situation, and seemingly oblivious to the guards enthusiastically clenching their clubs.

"No?" Mr Fortuna said, still unnaturally and somewhat troublingly expressionless.

"No. You see, I have this recurring injury and I can't put pressure on my wrist," Jimmy explained, lifting his wrist up for everyone to see and twisted it while grimacing to show how it wasn't functional. "I'd like to work, of course, so if you give me a few days to rest, I'll be able to."

"You are unable to work because of your wrist," Mr. Fortuna said slowly.

"Yes, exactly," Jimmy answered brightly, happy that Mr. Fortuna understood him. "If I just rest, I can work."

"I see," Mr. Fortuna raised an eyebrow and made a slight movement with his hand.

With impressive alacrity, the two goons flanking Mr. Fortuna shoved their way into our stunned, paralyzed group, and came out dragging Jimmy by his dreads to the tune of a great deal of arrhythmic squealing. Bringing him to a corner of the room, the guards lifted Jimmy's light frame without any effort or notice of his flailing limbs, and threw him down a large, gaping hole. Shortly thereafter, all we could hear was Jimmy's screaming, mingled with the sickening sounds of flesh being torn and bones being cracked. It took an abominably long time for Jimmy's screaming to finally end – and for us to hear solely the noises of munching and smacking, and finally a satisfied burp.

Without the need for any further explanation, we knew that our new masters had on hand a pet sarlack – which were well-known and well-used in the Empire by the average household. As the advertisements often noted, sarlacs made low-maintenance pets who, with a few feedings, became friendly and loyal once established in a comfortable pit. Among their many benefits were not only the no-fuss disposals of waste of any kind, but also the production of nutritious mulch that could be applied on flower beds or vegetable plots. The present use of the sarlack in the slave industry, however, was something the admen failed to mention.

Throughout the horror of Jimmy's slow consumption, Mr. Fortuna barely looked away from his flashing datapad, taking advantage of the well-timed example to catch up on his administrative work. When the eating was done, it was a few long moments before Mr. Fortuna looked back up at us, and continued seamlessly from before,

"You will be expected to maintain a high standard of quality. You will be expected to maintain the speed of the assembly line. Failure to do so will result in being fed to the sarlack. If you are unable to work, you will be fed to the sarlack. If you are unwilling to work, you will be fed to the sarlack. If you are no longer working efficiently, you will be fed to the sarlack. You will be given your assignments immediately. That is all."

Mr. Fortuna made a strong case. There were no further objections as, with a few baton-prodings to move us along, we streamed passed the still happily gurgling sarlack-pit and started our new roles as Jubba's newest slave-workers.

We weren't given any further instructions after, and didn't attempt to seek any, since anyone who spoke up was promptly administered a baton swing to the stomach or back. Instead, we spread out amidst the tinkering rows of slaves and machinery, and took up whatever empty seats were available, doing our best to imitate the more experienced slaves next to us. Most of the posts were simple tasks that involved some kind of assembling of faux-designer products for the undiscerning middle-class seeking the appearance of affluence; but, once those posts were filled, some unfortunate buggers found themselves staring blankly at complicated circuit-boards that fizzled and smoked alarmingly whenever anything was placed incorrectly. True to Mr. Fortuna's word, those unable to figure out the job were dragged off the line and tossed into the sarlack pit. Four more people were thrown in before everyone miraculously found the aptitude to do their task.

I was lucky enough to find myself in the riveting section of Bantha Luxe Purses, which was simple enough to figure out. Admittedly, I had some surreptitious help from the workers around me, who, with subtly twitching arms and darting eyes, helping me figure out which end of the purse to rivet with the copper brackets and which to add a liberal sprinkling of shiny crystaline stones. Soon enough, I was indistinguishable from the other slaves, as I adopted the regular rhythm of grabbing a purse from the conveyer-belt, rivet, rivet, rivet, and tossing it back on.

My shoulder, however, was in enormous pain, with every movement I made to reach for a rivet or rock causing flames of agony. There was little choice but to suck it up and continue, since slowing down or pausing meant getting beaten, whipped or zapped. Mike wasn't any better off: he'd drifted into the Haute Couture de Jubba section, where his mind-numbing tasks were to add tiny buttons to under-sized pants, while also giving them aesthetically pleasing tears. With his massive hands, the poor guy had a hard time of it, and got more than of his fair share of whips and lashes.

After about twenty thousand rivets and stones, a shrilling whistle sounded, signaling the assembly line to stop. I still had faint hopes then – that is, before my mind and soul became entirely numbed and deadened – that we might be given a time out to stretch our limbs and maybe rest a little; but these were dashed when a bowl of thin gruel appeared before us, along with a two minute timer that counted down the time for our lunch "break." With a few quick slurps that just barely gave us enough energy to go on, but not enough for us to build any strength to consider thoughts of rebellion, we were back at it. Thus was the essence of my new life as a slave for the Empire.

Later that evening – which I simply assumed it was since there were no clocks or windows anywhere – when our shift finally ended, we were trundled out of the slave-pit and marched into our quarters. With a sink and a collection of cots, it was practically a palace next to the pen we arrived in. Our wills effectively broken, we moved like automatons, without a word or a glance shared the entire time.

I collapsed in a cot next to Mike, preparing to pass out, but I was surprised to see he still had the energy to be very much awake. His back hunched over from the welts that the whippings had produced, he was gritting his teeth, glaring at something in the corner. More out of self-preservation than anything, as I didn't want him to cause a scene that might bring the guards to lead to yet another sarlack visit, I asked Mike what was going on, to which he replied.

"I know who did this to us," Mike seethed, rubbing cramped fingers unused to hours and hours of crafty clothes-making.

"What do you mean?"

"I figured out who ratted us out to the Empire," Mike spat, nudging his chin contemptuously at a sleeping antennaed figure. "It was Greido."

CHAPTER 9

Now Greido was what you might call a visible minority at the Center. In a galaxy defined by humans having crushed into submission all other sentient species thanks to the simple fact that we held practically all of the blasters and interstellar death machines, and, consequently, the majority of the galactic purse-strings, if you weren't born human (and if you weren't a slave), you were more likely than not going to end up earning a living boot-licking and scrapping leftovers. So, in a place like the Center, plush with the luxury of privileged spiritual living, a bug-eyed, green-scaled, antennaed Rodian like Greido was something of an oddity. To be fair, the Center was a progressive place and there was actually a good handful of token aliens – ensuring that we didn't need go looking around too far to have some properly behaved, cutsey rainbow-skinned freak to show people that we were indeed enlightened.

I can't say that I had many interactions with Greido, as I didn't have the patience to wade through his combination of stuttering words, obsequious nodding, and mesmerizing hand-gestures. From what I've heard from others willing to make the effort to communicate and foster positive inter-species relations (apparently, it helped to speak LOUDLY and slooowly), he was a nice enough fellow, if a little on the "fragrant" side that was a result of the metabolic byproduct of his stinky alien spices venting from his antennae.

Greido was the oldest of his brood, and the first in the family, he was very proud to say, to get off his home planet. At first, bewildered by all the technology and masses of people light-years away in distance and progress from his own planet, he narrowly avoided slavery by signing on for a five-year tour on an itinerant, barely legal Rodian bistro-ship that hopped from planet to planet selling spicy, greasy, yet cheap concoctions to mining colonies, factory planets or otherwise unpicky and unsuspecting clientele. They generally had to move on to the next planet after the cases of food poisoning attracted the local authorities, or when there were starting to be too many questions about their "special" sauce.

After his years wading in greasy fumes, Greido tired of working for others for what amounted to a pittance, and he went back to his planet and somehow convinced his brood and even his extended brood to lend him enough credits to start his own business. Knowing full well the galactic market was saturated with cheap Rodian bistros, questionable Anzati transporters, and burly yet reliable Gamoran cleaners and nannies, he instead decided to open a beauty and health spa, specializing in traditional horticopathic and wholeplanetalistic remedies and treatments from ancient, wise non-human species. Of course, Greido was smart enough not to make any of his offerings actually alien, but simply repackaged tried and true mass-produced products whose labels had prominent images of sympathetic children of his kind that were brocaded with meaningless script in his language. In short order, well-paying Imperial (human) citizens flocked to Greido's spa, seeking and finding their very own intimate and genuine connection to the Universe, while also supporting cute alien natives.

Greido's authentically alien spas became very successful, and he had enough to expand and hire help. Again, Greido demonstrated some degree of canniness by exclusively hiring for the front-end smooth-speaking, accentless and human-looking blue-skinned Chiss of the bosomed female persuasion, while retaining his own hard-working and uncomplaining Rodians for the back-end. He must have unwittingly tapped into a massive vein of hitherto-unknown demand, since, in less than a few years, with the odor of the bistros still lingering on him, Greido became the owner of a chain of spas, known and recognized everywhere by its tradional-ish green Rodian friezes on all its products and its trustworthy and straightforward name, "Authentic Native Pure Body and Soul" – both of which Greido had designed by an expensive human advertising company.

With success and wealth, Greido did what you would expect of a once poor and now rich person (after, of course, starting a few charities on his home planet): live like a human. This, in not so many words, was how he got to the Center. I imagined he must have been baffled by all the desire to do (pseudo) work and live simply (in a lot comfort) that was essentially a redux of his life as an alien, but he seemed to take to it quite well – when, like me, he realized that the work at the Center wasn't alien-work or even human-work, just rich-human-"work." I wondered how much of an imbecile he felt now after having been lumped in with a group of humans and turned into a slave.

Until Mike's revelation, I had believed Greido's story, and even seen him as a good addition to the Center that brought diversity and openness. Like everyone else, I accepted and liked Greido and the aliens at the Center, and tolerated working with him. Little did I know that all that time, he had been a shill for the Empire, plotting to sell us out, even as he happily participated in group hugs and sang Powaah mantras. Fucker. Obviously, he was being kept in our group, so he could keep the guards apprised of any hints of dissent.

As word of Greido's treachery spread, the predictable reactions of miffed feelings and shock sparked long circular discussions with the usual suspects voicing their usual lines:

"The guy screwed us over!" Mike angrily denounced yet again, pounding his fist.

"We should listen to the Powaah and pray for guidance," mollified Alice, acting as the voice of compassion.

"Can't you see that the guards are treating him better?" Sally said, bursting with impatience.

"We have to believe that he wouldn't do such a thing," another tenacious Powaah-nut replied.

"Damn it! I heard it from the guards too. Lots of us did!" said an angry voice joining the fray.

"Let's give him a chance. He should defend himself."

"You idiot. If he knows we're on to him, he'll have the guards throw more of us to the sarlack."

"How do you know? We have to try."  
"It's fucking obvious. He's the traitor. Who else could it have been?"

"The Powaah teaches us that we should be forgiving..."

"Fuck that. The guy's betrayed us once. He could do it again. We should kill him."

"Listen to the Powaah. It would never ask us to harm unnecessarily."

"The alien is dangerous! We should kill him!"

With our slave-cohort divided between those still blissed-out on the lingering effects of the Powaah and those utterly disillusioned by it and wanting a focal point for their resentment and anger, there was, not surprisingly, no consensus, forcing us to continue wrangling over it for weeks.

In the meantime, I spent my days staring at Greido balefully as frequently as I could without getting caught. I could make him out two aisles over in Jubba's Hut of Delicates section, where all he did was attach artful bows to exciting lacy underwear. Everyone knew that the Delicates was the plum job that we all only wished we could have done. Considering the multiple attempts to switch into the Delicates section with sexual favours or promises of riches from secret accounts and passwords that all invariably failed, Greido had to have had connections to get him that posting. It was the only explanation. Only the slaves who had somehow sold out the others were there.

Eventually, the steady administration of whips and lashes and ever-present threat of sarlack-death took its toll even the most resilient of spirits, beating out the lingering delusions of compassion and patience for Greido. Even those who had most ardently espoused the familiar Center refrain of love-for-all began to demand punishment – so that, at last, the decision to kill Greido was unanimous. Unfortunately, however, we were kept from gaining our revenge by the frustrating difficulty to plan and arrange his death, resulting from the limited hours after our shift that we had to discuss it, which was in itself limited by our having to wait until Greido was safely asleep.

And, so for another interminable week we debated: some were content with a simple and uncomplicated strangling; others, like myself, were not satisfied with only death, but wanted some kind of punishment to be involved, like a beating or something more elaborate that involved hooks and knives, or even a complicated set-up that ended with him being thrown, with poetic justice, to the sarlack, much as Jimmy had – which we were convinced Greido had arranged as well.

With the hours of wasted time debating the method Greido's death, I continued to seethe in anger. My riveting became fierce and furious, as I took out all my rage out on the fancy purses I was being forced to make. As the nights continued to end unconsummated by demands of an increasingly grisly death, my hatred grew and expanded to indiscriminately include everyone and everything that caused our enslavement from the stormtroopers who shot me, to the imperial agents who recruited Greido, to the Empire who ran on slaves, to the Emperor who condoned it, to the citizens who bought the dumb shit we were making, and to the thousands of crappy, ugly-ass purses I made everyday. Fucking hell, I hated that mother fucking alien!

Finally, after an animated discussion that revealed yet more of the many past betrayals and transgressions we discovered were Greido's doing, our collective anger crested, and for a rare moment everyone was singing the same tune:

"Fucking bastard pretended to be our friend," Mike growled.

"He claimed to want to know more about the Powaah. He pretended to listen me to bring down my guard," Alice snarled, as she wrung her hands.

"We took him in! We accepted that alien." Sally decried, jabbing a finger in Greido's direction.

"He was lying!"

"He was manipulating us!

"He gave us in to the Imperials!"

"I saw him killing sand gophers for fun."

"That funny taste in the water? That had to be him."

"I lent him all my copies of Louke's works. Never got them back. The fucker!"

"I should have known that he was hiding something. He would never tell his full story. Ever think it was strange he never talked about his family?"

"Probably sold them too. That's what Rodians do. Never trust a Rodian."

"No decency. He's the kind of guy who would shoot first and never give you a chance to reason."

"The bastard!"

"Let's kill him!"

We were now properly whipped up into a satisfying lynch-mob tizzy, with the common refrain of 'Die, Greido! Die!' beating in our heads. Nothing could stop us from killing the alien.

With no more desire for anything complicated that could delay our bloodlust, we rapidly agreed to bludgeon him with the rocks of our cell. Where once we cursed the many unavoidable stones that kept those who had to sleep on the floor from a having a decent night's sleep, we now hefted their pleasantly heavy weight and fondled their sharp edges.

Someone whispered, "Grab him!" and, in an rabid jumble, we fell en masse upon the little alien, resulting in one person holding each of his limbs and one person holding his trumpet-like mouth shut to keep him from bringing in the guards.

"Greido, this should not come as a shock to you," Alice intoned, as she pointed a menacing rock at the struggling alien, his compound eyes flashing and pleading at us incomprehendingly. "You have betrayed us. Us! Your Powaah Family who took you in and loved you! You will now die."

None of us particularly cared what Alice said, desperately wanting only the bloody gratification that had been delayed for so long, but having him know why were about to kill him and that we knew he had fucked us over; that we weren't going to let him get away with it; that none of us had any sympathy for him whatsoever; and that his death was justified, o-so-very justified – felt more satisfying than him feeling as if our retribution came out of the blue or, worse, that he might be able to retain some sense of innocence.

It similarly felt more satisfying to be pummeling our rocks first on his non-essential parts, like his arms and legs, and then his body and lastly his head – so as to extend his suffering as long possible. It took a frenzied half hour of taking turns pounding, before his limbs were turned into twitching broken, and we began to work on his head and body. By then, we had no need to hold him down or muzzle him, as he was barely conscious and kept that way with regular slappings and douses of our limited drinking water that we had sacrificed for this especial purpose. His body, being as frail and malnourished as ours, gave way easily to our gleeful blows and split apart into a gooey mess that we reveled in and mashed further into an oozing paste. His head, however, sustained many blows – something to do with his reptilian physiology – until it cracked open, its pulpy contents spilling onto the floor.

Greido was dead; he had been dead for some time at that point, but, despite that, we continued desecrating his body with uncontrollable desperation, taking out our fury, our anger, our frustration, our sadness, our powerlessness, our disillusionment, our abandonment on the flaccid remains of an alien we barely knew.

As I heaved shaky breaths into my body, I looked down at the sharp rock that I still held in a petrified grip. It took much focused concentration to order my hand to loosen its hold the chunk of concrete that was slippery with blood. My hands and my tattered clothes had become damp with bluish-green blood from the horror we had done. A fetid odour that I knew to be Greido's wafted into my nose, and would continue to cling to me for many haunting weeks.

For the rest of the night, I hid myself in a corner and sobbed.

CHAPTER 10

It helped to laugh – or giggle in an unhinged machine-gun staccato. I giggled constantly. You should try it some time. It makes all your troubles disappear. Hahahaha, I'm getting beaten again for no apparent reason. Hahahaha, there goes another screaming slave into the sarlack pit; I knew that guy too. Hahahaha, my gums are bleeding again, my teeth are falling out, and I no longer have sensation in the the right half of my body. Hahahaha. Hahahaha. Hahahaha.

Chocolate! Spiced with a soupçon of caraway and tumeric, and laced with a generous dollop of boiled liver and punctured bile-duct. Hahahaha. I giggled for a full day when I managed to pinpoint all of the complex odors comprising Greido's decaying body. The guards never bothered removing his body from our cell, perhaps to punish and make us suffer more – but more likely because they couldn't care less. Since no one could bring themselves to move the rotting remains that stretched over the entire back of the cell in one long skid-mark, a quarantine area grew around Greido's kill zone, forcing us huddle even closer in our cramped space. Hahahaha.

We all had our coping mechanisms: Mike gnawed on his fingernails, leaving raw-pink nubs at the end of his fingertips, which, on the plus side, made his fingers more sensitive and more skilled with his sewing. Initially, Alice found solace in constantly repeating Powaah mantras to herself, but that was brought to a heavily-whipped end when the guards overheard her; she then switched to repeating Master Fortuna's slave-rules, and was left alone to act as a reminder to us all and probably piss us off. Sally began systematically plucking out a lock of her hair every day and studying it for hours, as if scrying for the future; she only had half of her left to go until she presumably found the prediction she was hoping for. Relatively speaking, we got off easier than say, the face-slapping-with-disfiguring- sharp-objects person, or the head-banging-against-the-wall guy, or the chew-out-chunks-of-my-skin- and-eventually-flesh woman, none of whom lasted very long.

As more of us died through combinations of beatings and disfunctional derangement, there was some half-hearted attempts to rouse grief or other such appropriate sentimentality. But, in the end, nothing happened, as that would have required having sentiments at all, which we had ceased having after that fateful night of the lynching. Instead, we exhibited little beyond apathetic, powerless numbness that kept us from having to make the conversation that would inevitably remind us of our deeds or the eye-contact in which we would see our images reflected. The only sorta positive result was that all our past acrimonies and rivaleries were rendered moot by the communion of our guilt that stained us equally.

Hahahaha. As I assembled an endless blur of purses, I felt little need to slow my tenuous grasp on sanity. Riveting became a source of demented enjoyment, as I imagined my amazing crystal designs would induce appreciative awe in my slave bench-mates, then bring about effusive praise from the guards, and finally from Master Fortuna himself who would come around to give me a pat on the head and perhaps an extra ration... Hahahaha...

...Since that failed to happen in spite of my ardent hopes, I began to add secret messages through my cleverly patterned crystals that were not only extraordinary in their pulchritudiness, but also said "Hello!" or "How are you doing!?" or "Have a nice day!" or "I'm a desperate slave wasting away, please bring a quick end to my miserable existence!"

In my saner moments, anger dominated my mind, where I frolicked in fantasies of death and bloody retribution. I'd swagger up and down the aisles and force the slaves, who by then would be the guards, to work ever harder and harder, and whip them as I threw my head back in throaty laughter. Moohahahahaha! Then, I'd go over to Master Fortuna, who I'd have assigned to the bitch-tasks, and I'd flay his back until his skin would start stripping off and he'd be pleading me to stop, but I would say, No, you bastard! You'll take this and you'll fucking love it! All the while, Greido would be looking on with approval and nod at me, as I punished our slavers and tormenters, delighting in the rivulets of blood coursing down their backs in torrents that grew and grew until it washed everything away... Then... and then... the whippings would return to snap me out of my paralyzed reverie, and I'd begin giggling again. Hahahaha.

I was in the middle of my chef d'oeuvre – which I knew to be beauteous and extraordinary in its artful placements of staggered crystals whose subtle blinking variations foreshadowed the bold, sweeping statements of the centerpiece spirals – when the conveyor line came to a sputtering halt. Oh, dear. Seems like they were having maintenance issues up the line again. It was probably something to do with the old exhaust pipes that broke periodically and bathed us in toxic fumes. I didn't envy the lashings the workers there were certainly getting now, but, then again, the longer the delay we had, the longer we'd all have to extend our shifts to meet our daily quotas; and, if we didn't meet the quotas by the end of the day, no matter the reason, we'd all be given a lashing and one of us would be chosen at random for the sarlack.

A group of guards stormed up the aisle, forcing us to rush to place our hands flat on our work-areas; failure to demonstrate that we weren't concealing anything would be punished by the removal of digits. The guards paid no attention to us though, as they all seemed to be running to the other side of the slave-pit, from where I could hear some frantic yelling:

"Move, move!"

"Shoot the fuckers! Shoot them!"

"Shit! There's a breach!"

Sure enough, the sound of a deep, rocky, grinding tore through the slave-pit, ending in an dusty explosion that blew the ceiling apart and revealed the open sky. I found myself split between the thoughts that my purses were now covered by dust and it would take hours to clean and barely make our quota; and the thought that the clear, blue sky that I had not seen in who-knows-when was soul-piercingly beautiful and perfect. Through the din of the blaster-shots and screaming, I could see that many of the purses were ruined with oil stains, but that many were salvageable, so I went about collecting them as best I could...

...Wait. Blaster-shots? What was going on here?

Suddenly, a disorderly mass of guards came running past us again, and I quickly sat down and assumed my palm-down position. Strangely, however, I noted that this time they were running in the opposite direction of the commotion, which now seemed to be toning down. Looking over at my bench-mates around me, I saw that they were holding their positions, firmly keeping their gazes down. Ah, yes. A test. Of course. That's what it had to be. They've done this before: after disappearing for a few painful hope-inducing moments, they'd come back to see who was fool enough to have acted on their fantasies of freedom – and brought them back to reality with a brutally drawn-out beating for all of us to witness. Quickly returning my gaze to my work-area and sitting back down, I desperately prayed no one had noticed that I had been so brazen as to move and look around.

Oh, well. I resigned myself to the possibility of being mauled by the sarlack or, if I was lucky, of being ignored and continuing purse-making. The real bummer was that this long delay of our production was going to keep us working far past our shift; but, there was nothing we could do but wait it out. I occupied my mind by singing gaily in my head, and imagining how I would put the finishing touches on my masterpiece, which, thankfully, had remained pristine in all the commotion. Maybe a few pink crystals beside the blue ones as an accent? Or maybe the green ones? I could always do a little more layering...

A firm hand grabbed hold of my shoulder, shaking me gently from my artistic meanderings. Still, I looked down, waiting for an order, knowing better than to look a slaver in the eye. A familiar voice, however, came to me that I couldn't resist and couldn't dare believing was true,

"Tim, it's ok. You can get up."

Could it?...Could it really be... I looked askance as much as I could dare, but then... "Leah? Leah? Is that you?"

"Yes, Tim. It's me. You're free now. Come on! Let's get you out of here!" said Leah, brandishing a blaster in her hand, as she pulled me up from my seat.

"I'm free?" I blubbered, blinking my eyes at the massive cognitive dissonance, barely registering the sight that many other slaves were being coaxed up from their seats, tentatively at first, but then with tearful excitement and delight.

"It took us a while to find you in Jubba's slave pits, but Louke, Haan and I managed to fight our past their security!" Leah smiled, encouraging my withered body to begin moving on its own.

"You found us? You came back for us?" I could barely shape the words through the joyful, unbelieving crying that I had no control over. They came back for us! The saved us!

"Of course, we did, Tim. We are one with the Powaah. You're part of our family," Leah gave me a light hug, as she guided me to the growing ebullient group of ex-slaves gathering amidst tearful hugs and back-slapping. Soon, I found myself in fierce hug with Mike, as we laughed and cried. All around us was a mixture of dazed happiness and weak cheers that struggled their way out of disused voices.

In the darkened corner that held the sarlack-pit, Master Fortuna and our former guards stood surrounded by Haan, Louke and a group of smiling Rebel soldiers striking heroic poses with their blaster-rifles. Even through this drastic turn of events, Mater Fortuna still bore no expression on his face, standing impassively, as those former slaves who dared came by and spat on him in defiance. I made my way to spit on him – but had to run quickly away as I taken over by the sheer terror that he might still strike at me.

We demanded their deaths, of course, but were admonished by Louke's wise frown, saying that they would be punished appropriately, but not through anger – and anger was not the way of the Powaah. Of course, of course. That made sense. We should be thanking the Powaah, be grateful for its wisdom, and find patience, strength, love through it. Yes, yes! Of course! I see it now! Praise the Powaah! Praise the Powaah for having found us and freed us!

Jubilant cheers rose up, celebrating our freedom and the toppling of oppression. Yes! We were together again! My heart swelled in joy and hope, as I joined in the chants,

"Down with the Empire! Down with the Empire! Long live the Rebellion! Together we'll beat them!"

PART 2

"No. I am your father."

-Some dude talking to some dude with a hand cut off, in an unrelated intellectual property.

"This is not a game of who the fuck are you"

-Eddie Izzard.

CHAPTER 11

What with the weather and all, you'd expect a demand for soups or thick, comforting stews, if only to have something nice and hot to hold and heat up our bloodless, stiff hands. But, nope: the only thing people at the base ever asked for was their regular dose of protein shakes and salad. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, mind you. The simple demands of the Rebellion's belly made my job as head chef significantly easier – and, here on the iceball planet Hawth, the day-to-day was tough enough that anything easier was much appreciated.

Believe it or not, this frostbitten misery was not only where I wanted to be, but where I was doing what I wanted to be doing: I was fighting on the front lines of the Rebellion! After witnessing and experiencing first-hand the oppression, the suffering, and the injustice that came with the domination of the Empire, I could no longer I stand idly on the sidelines, inactive and completely irresponsible. No! I had to take action. I had to fight! I'd been radicalized! After being freed from slavery, it didn't take much suggesting to light a torch up our collective asses to get us rip-roaring to join the Good Fight. Now, we were fighting the nightmare of the Empire, the nightmare of oppression... and the nightmares I often had of Greido's smashed skull and the screams of dying people. Hahahaha...

As for my maniacal giggling, they remained a struggle to control, but they did eventually recede, only coming back when I lacked the strength to repress my memories. Fortunately, when they started to slip out of control, I was relieved to discover that a sure-fire way to make them go away would be to summon my anger at the Empire and get hungry for some more fight. The bastards! The fuckers! The bastard fuckers! Let me at them! Indeed, the desire to fight seemed to be healing, and, even if it wan't, it filled the gaping, traumatic hole in our souls with focused hatred and violence.

Emaciated husks that we were though, it took weeks of nourishing meals and Powaah-mantra chanting to get us back into a suitable condition to undergo basic training – and ultimately a much-contested posting on the front where the action was. With our previous training in the Empire, Mike and I were lucky enough not to have to been the complete wimpy-ass pacifists many others from the Center were, so we didn't have to be taught all the military-type stuff and jargon from scratch. As a result, we were placed on the fast track to Powaah-sanctified violence, and, when the time came, we were offered our pick of postings.

Our decision was dead-easy to make: we had no hesitations when we chose to go to the furthest, most dangerous of Rebel bases – where Leah and Haan (and Louke) happened to be as well. Naturally, we wanted to be with them, they were our saviors! We had to be with them, even though the base was located on an arctic, under-populated, pre-industrial planet, where it was still unclear what exactly we were doing. Even after having been on Hawth for a few months and spending a good chunk of that time listening to the same morning reminders about vigilance, zero messaging with the outside, and life-or-death secrecy, we still had no idea why we were stationed there. Anyway, it wasn't my place to ask, and there had to be something critical and strategic about being stationed on a frozen planet.

I was very very grateful to be on the base. Finally, I was doing something useful with my life and contributing to a real cause that I could sense real tangible benefits to. In fact, the everyday difficulties of the base validated my experience: I relished the sense of righteous sacrifice that came with the omnipresence of the cold that followed me even fully clothed and deep under several layers of therma-covers; or with the distant memories of how my nose felt when it wasn't frozen or numb; or with the inevitable loss of my pinky toes from frostbite that was celebrated as a rite of passage in crossing the threshold from a base-newbie to respected old hand. Surely, with the daily, inescapable discomforts, there was no other possibility for it to be anything less than meaningful and important. Surely, perhaps, it also atoned for my past wrongs.

What I really wanted, of course, was a piece of the action – not a damned lame cooking post. I'd put in my transfer request into one of the combat units, but the only thing I got in return were kind smiles and a bottom-rung place on a waiting list galactic parsecs long. Oh, well. I guess we're all serving the Powaah (and, no, saying that has never been satisfying). Sure, I knew I was playing an important and crucial role feeding and providing nourishment to everyone, but I wanted to do something exciting like, y'know, shoot something or make something go boom. Like Mike. The lucky bastard had been assigned to one of the field platoons, and he'd often be away for days at a time, patrolling, scouting, or taking part in secret missions that he couldn't tell me anything about except throw in a number of extremely tantalizing wink-winks and nudge-nudges that he'd been sworn to secrecy about. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen the guy for about a week now, and rumor was he was gallivanting off-planet on a thrilling raid with Haan and Louke.

Speaking of thrills, as I glanced at the clock, it looked like what passed for my daily excitement was about to hit. Pretty soon, the dining area was going to be swarming with hungry soldiers wanting to fill their mugs with our protein-blend concoction du jour and mound up their plates with salad slathered with dressing. To mix things up a little, the kitchen crew and I prepared a selection of three protein shakes instead of the usual two: the standard green blend with an extra dose of ground-up foliage; a lumpy dark brown dessert blend that was supposedly the result of an "all-natural" ingredient (riiiiight); and, lastly, a vividly pink "berry" blend that the package claimed to come from a specially cultivated pre-sentient bush that was hand-harvested by charming native fuzzballs whose unique biology required them to mate with the bush (it was best not to think too much about the details).

Much less exciting, however, was that today was a dreaded Low Salad Day. Always the salad. Considering the ruckus that arose when we were running low on the regular mix of flavorless baby green this or "fresh-cut" tender-leaf whatever, you'd think it the galaxy was collapsing into a singularity. No one was ever happy with the nice slaws we made out of the thicker-leaved veggies to bulk up the salad. In an effort to minimize blow-back though, I got the kitchen crew to spend extra time shredding our always ample supply of brassicas super thin, and even pre-soaked them in a salty sauce to get them to be nice, moist and tender. But, despite our efforts, I knew we were going to get annoying belly-aching like,

"The salad isn't as fluffy as usual."

"What's with all the weird stuff in the salad, Tim?"

"Oh, man. Not those tough leaves again."

"I wish we didn't have to have all those bitter things in the salad."

"Isn't there anything fresh and soft left that I can have?"

Sheesh. Honestly, the sheer volume of salad these people ate was phenomenal. At first, I tried to keep up by bringing in more and more salad (blowing away my weekly budget in a scant few days), but, instead of reaching a theoretical equilibrium where the quantity matched the demand, people reacted to the increase in availability by thinking, "Look, there's more there, so therefore I can take more," and Low Salad Days still occurred – and therefore much complaining. Really? What's their problem with the brassicas anyway? They taste bloody fine and the fiber is good for you. Truly, I doubt they'd be happy unless I'd fill the whole room with salad and they had to eat their way out of it.

In fairness, as far as challenges go, it was pretty minor, considering that the salad-whine was the only complaint I got: I only had to keep a steady supply of the two regulars, while throwing in some steamed greens or my famous "smoked" simuli-animal-product logs once in a while, and I'd be considered a veritable culinary genius – which was a far far cry from my Empire days of constant cursing and demeaning comments about pretty much anything. In the end, we were all working for the Powaah and fighting for the Greater Good, so all bad feelings would end up being wiped away with the ever-reliable camaraderie, regular thanks and long hugs...

...Ahhh. Shades of flaky, lovey-dovey Center life, huh? The thing I'd wanted nothing to do with when I got shot and mauled and thrown into slavery, right? Yeah, hahahaha... I guess so. There were, however, a number of notable differences that made it very different. Very different.

The most obvious difference was the conspicuous absence of people – kids, really – pantomiming Powaah fantasies and wandering around with flowing robes and clinking crystals from their ears, belts and hair. Instead, the omnipresence of flake-head was replaced with the omnipresence of heavily muscled, active and seasoned men and women equipped with blasters, grenades and war-like items of all kinds. We were, after all, in the middle of a war, and under the constant threat of being found and killed.

No, this was a serious place with serious Men (and Women) doing serious things. Surrounded by scars and mechanical limbs, I had the distinct feeling I had graduated to the adults' table, where I was fighting alongside people who truly worked for the Powaah. Call me a born-again Powaah-nut if you like, but I was in for the Cause, heart and soul. I was a Rebel! A Powaah-Fighter! I was fighting for Freedom!

Nevertheless, some less pleasant aspects of the Center lingered, such as,

"So, Tim. I see you're still having difficulty getting the right amount of food for us."

I looked up from my work to Alice's smirking face, expressing, without fail, the annoyingly insensitive "truth," which, no matter how tactless or passive aggressive, was acceptable, since it was the truth; and you can't possibly have a problem with the truth in all its truthy truthiness, right?

"Hey, Al," I smiled at her grimace, knowing how much she hated being called anything less than her whole, unadulturated name, as it lacked the proper gravitas she craved to legitimize her new position as the base's Commissar. "Getting the right amount salad is a weekly challenge. Powaah willing, Al, I'll get it right some day."

"You know that I prefer to be called Alice or Commissar," Alice crisped, her grip tightening on her brimming protein-shake mug, which I noted she had bravely chosen the pink berry mix.

"Do you? Sorry, Al... oh, Commissar Alice... I didn't realize. Would you like any of this salad?" Of course, I couldn't resist needling her. She'd ballooned with obnoxious self-importance ever since Louke condoned Greido's killing and anointed her as his most ardent devotee to maintain Powaah orthodoxy in his absence. Frankly, seeing as we all served the Powaah and suffered equally for it, none of us took her too seriously.

"Thank you, but no, this salad has leaves that are too tough for me," Alice disdained, and, before I could pop in a suitably flippant comment, she narrowed her eyes and said: "I'm sure I told you these things before, Tim. Your review is coming up this month, isn't it? As Louke is away, I will be presiding over those reviews. Perhaps we can discuss more about this then, in addition to your not being able to meet the demands of managing the kitchen."

Shit. Looked like Alice had decided to choose me as a soft target to redress her feelings of Commissar inadequacy. This was another thing that was different from the Center: instead of the singular laughy-happy focus on loving each other and pish-poshing work, what you did or didn't do at the base had consequences – like being booted out of the base, which was bad enough, but being kicked out also meant having our experiences surgically mind-wiped from us, as if all our work fighting for the Powaah never happened. A touch on the draconian side, for sure, but it was all in the name of security and the many lives that worked at the base. As Alice helpfully reminded me, my monthly performance review to keep me from being lobotomized was coming up next week, and, if I wanted to stay and keep my memories intact, I needed to get a good report from all my managers – including Commissar Alice.

I summoned considerable strength to wring the appropriate words out of my mouth, "Hahahaha... I'm very sorry, Alice. Here let me get this for you. Hahahaha..." I groveled. I didn't have to act as my hands shook involuntarily, as I laboriously sorted through the salad mix and fished out a pile of soft, pliant leaves for Alice. "You'll have to forgive my memory, Commissar. My time in Jubba's pits has affected me, and sometimes things just don't stick. I'll work on it much harder. Hahahaha..."

Alice smiled generously, easily accepting my explanation; it was always a safe bet to bring up trauma and victimhood with Alice to allow her to play her favorite role as motherly savior. "I understand, Tim. Those were difficult days. I was glad that we were there together, or else we may not have come out of it. Please come to quarters any time, if you would like to practice mantras with me."

I would rather have a swarm of sarlack larvae gnaw off my testicles, but I instead continued emoting in the same vein, as Alice walked away with my salad offering, "Hahahaha... Thank you, Commissar Alice. I may take you up on the offer."

Damn, that was a too close and far more than my recommended dose of sniveling. It was easy enough to remind myself to avoid Alice in the future, but, unfortunately, Alice was right: the salad issue was something I had to resolve. I wasn't willing to let flavorless, limp greenery be my downfall. I wasn't entirely sure how to go about it, but perhaps my suppliers might have a few ideas – or a few extra stashes of salad hidden somewhere. In any case, our pantry was running on the low side, and it was pretty much close to the time for me to stock up again.

A supply run! Of course! That was going to cheer me up. Supply runs were my version of "missions," as they were the one time I could legitimately requisition a blaster and kit myself up with gear. In fact, I could rather satisfyingly be recorded into the quatermaster's log book as "Tim: Supply mission."

Feeling significantly better now, I started cleaning up after the lunch rush, and organizing the dinner-prep as quickly as possible so I could get my lists together and my tonton readied for travel. There was lots to do before I went to visit the Wompas.
CHAPTER 12

As my tonton puffed foul, oily breaths into the frozen air – and as I vainly attempted to avoid inhaling whiffs of them – I couldn't shake the feeling I'd forgotten to bring something. Was it extra containers? No, reaching back with one of my triply-mitted hands, I could make out the angular outlines of the heavy-duty produce-totes I'd snapped onto my saddle; to top it off, my other hand was wrapped with an extra set of reins leading the other tonton I'd taken for my supply run. Did I have credits? Yes, most likely, they hung as they usually did in a pouch suspended around my neck, but even if I didn't have them, my Wompa suppliers weren't fussed about being paid later. Maybe my pass to get back in the base? Getting locked out in the cold with nothing but two stinking tontons to snuggle up to was not my idea of a good time, and was a recurring fear of mine; but, no, paranoia aside, it was essentially impossible for me to lose my pass, as it was safely lodged subdermally in my palm.

The two tonton moaned irritably as the trek across the snow fields seemed to have no end. None of us were thrilled about being out in the frigid cold for this long. From the sorta-familiar looking rock croppings up ahead (they pretty much looked all the same if you stared at them too long), I guessed we were getting closer, so I gave my mount a reassuring pat on the neck and pulled on the reins a touch to slow us down.

This part was kind of tricky. On an isolated planet like Hawth, there weren't exactly flashing street signs kicking around – particularly as most of its inhabitants were keeping a low profile to avoid the Empire's scrutiny. You had to find your way around somehow though, and the local Wompas had a fairly clever system of rock inukshuks placed strategically around the main by-ways to lead you to hidden pockets of settlements and trade centers.

Now, where was that thing hiding again? I knew it was here somewhere. The Wompas' eyesight were adapted to the blinding, reflected light from the snow and ice, so they had little trouble spotting an inukshuk, but, puny human that I am, I had to adjust the shading in my visors a few more notches to get a close look at the ground.

Ah. There it was. Just as I had hoped: a few feet away, lay a squat pile of rocks stacked into a rough profile of a biped with its arms out. Looking carefully, I noted the direction its arms were pointing in and the orientation of its head, and figured I had about a fifteen minute ride left. With a couple of gentle prods of my heels, I coaxed my grumpy tontons to get going again, and hoped I'd read the signs correctly. With everything covered in blurry shades of snow-white and ice-blue, it was hard to get an accurate sense of depth and distance. So, it was with some surprise and much relief that a glacier-cavern suddenly and welcomingly appeared in front of us. Finally.

Bringing us to a halt in front of the opening, I stiffly eased off the saddle, and led the two tired animals into the cavern. It was dark and the ground was uneven, but the tontons immediately calmed as the unmistakable musky odors of the Wompas became omnipresent. I, however, hated this part; even with my visor set to the brightest setting, I could barely see two feet ahead of me, and had to shuffle along, one hand held out in front of me. Despite having done this dozens of times, every time came through I was convinced I'd impale myself on an ice stalactite or fall down a hole.

I was spared an icy death, when a looming gargantuan presence all but materialized beside me, practically causing me to release my bowels (I probably would have if my sphincter hadn't been so fucking frozen) but calmed down a smidge, as a heavy, friendly paw patted me pleasantly on the shoulder and another gently took my tonton' reins out of my hand.

"Hello, Tim. Good to see you. I guess you're here for your supply run," a raspy voice wheezed; Wompa vocal cords were designed for their language's deep growls and subsonic undertones, resulting in a Galactic that always sounded as if they were gasping for breath.

"H-hey, Syl-sylvie. Y-yep, I've come for the u-usual... as much s-salad as you can sp-spare," I stuttered through my chattering jaw, gradually feeling more at ease with Sylvie guiding me through the darkness of the ice-cavern system.

Naturally, "Sylvie" wasn't even remotely close to her actual Wompa name, but, considering I couldn't hear the bulk of sounds that consisted her name, she didn't seem offended when I offered to call her Sylvie. Indeed, much belying her and her species' enormous, shaggily beastial size with terrifying claws that could tear through thick double-plated steel as an afterthought, Wompas were generally rather easy-going and cheerful. Probably a sensible adaptation to living on a miserably cold planet.

"More salad?" Sylvie hrruffed, followed by her laugh that sounded more like a phlegmy coughing fit. "Didn't you leave with a sixty pounds last week?"

"Yeaaaaaah... Don't remind me," I sighed, resigning myself to the gonad-freezing fact that I'd be doing this trip much more often from now on. "Maybe you can give me some ideas on how to stretch our supply longer."

"Okay. But, I'm not sure how much more we can do for you. Let's go inside and look at the crops. Charlie can take care of your tontons and meet us later," Sylvie said, continuing with some amiable grunting to her mate who had been in the background.

It shouldn't have surprised me Sylvie's partner had also been there, though utterly invisible in the darkness – which was probably a good thing, as having two hulking beast appear beside would have certainly had me screaming in terror. In contrast, the tontons were completely unperturbed by the Wompas, and even seemed pleased, probably because they knew they would be getting some pampering and extra feed once Charlie brought them to his stables.

The walls gradually shifted from ice to rock as Sylvie and I trekked deeper into the cavern, while the air also grew warmer and revived my limbs that had become lumpy, rigid masses. Eventually, a winkling of light glimmered from what seemed a distance, but, turning around a corner, brightness flared all at once, as we walked into a roomy, high-ceilinged cavern that, surprisingly, considering how freaking freezing it was moments ago, was even on the pleasantly humid side.

I had to stop and stare idiotically for a bit as I did some mental adjusting; it always took me a few moments to register Sylvie and Charlie's wide expanse of lush veggies hidden away in their underground cultivation operation. Loosening my jacket and sweat-soaked scarf, I walked down the paths, peering at the wonderfully vibrant leafy vegetables, arranged in rows upon rows of neatly shaped beds. I only recognized a small portion of what was growing, but I strongly suspected, based on what I bought, most of it was destined to become salad of some kind.

It wasn't for nothing that Wompas were known to be excellent growers. With a well-honed combination of grow-lights and geothermal heat from the deep underground, they cultivated enough crops to sustain themselves and their communities. In many ways, as the Wompas were fond of pointing out, it was insane to be doing scrabbling a livelihood farming in such adverse conditions, when, on any other planet, they might find some place where you didn't have to dig underground to grow food. But, as they were also fond of pointing out, they didn't have any pests to speak of, and, being underground, it was peaceful, quiet and private – which the Wompas valued above all.

"Well, it looks like there's lots of salad here!" I said cheerfully, waving my hands over the expanse of greens.

"Hrrrmph," Sylvie grumbled non-commitally, shaking her grey-maned head and rolling her dark, glossy eyes. "Most of these aren't mature. They'd die after one harvest. I like you, Tim, but I don't like you enough to kill my crop."

"Oh, right," I said with some embarrassment. Glancing around, my eyes settled on some purplish, red plants that appeared to be thriving. "What about those guys then? Those look pretty big."

"The ruby streaks?" Sylvie arched a furry eyebrow. "Yeah, those are ready, but they're not like the stuff you usually get: they're pretty spicy. We usually keep that mix for the locals."

"Spicy? What do you mean? How can a leaf be spicy?"

"Just try a piece."

"I don't get it. What's the deal? It looks the same... It's got a nice feel... WHOA! That's hot!"

"Huffhuffhuffhuff," Sylvie chuckled, as I struggled with the leaf's surprising pungent heat. "I told you they were spicy."

"You know?" I said thoughtfully, as the mustardy burn settled in the back of my throat, which was was actually kind of nice – assuming you knew to expect it, that is. "I like it. Can you give me a batch of salad like this?"

"Really?" Sylvie said skeptically. "They're definitely not like the butterheads and crispheads, you know. Your people may not like it."

"Honestly. I'll take some. It's probably good for you and all that. If I can pitch the health side of the, people will eat it up," I replied more certain of myself, as I reached down to grab another leaf to munch on. "Wooo! This stuff is spiiiicy! That's a good one! Any more like this?"

"Well, there's some green wave. They're going strong, and could use a cut. There's also the golden frills, suelihung, and the red garnet," Sylvie said pensively. "And, if you're ok with those, there's always some green mizuna and red rain we can throw in. They're not spicy like the others, so it could balance the flavor out."

"Perfect! That sounds perfect," I exclaimed happily – happy, specifically because I might be able to resolve the salad-demand; with a salad like this, odds were people would take less, and it would thus last longer. The plus side too was that, if they complained – as they most certainly would – I could easily claim it was a gourmet mix that was healthy to boot, so they better damned like it. The problem, as always, was quantity: "Do you think we can do a hundred pounds this time?"

"A hundred? Are you crazy? Do you people eat anything else except salad?"

"You'd never believe me if I told you, Sylvie. I'll take whatever my tontons can bring back."

"We might be able to squeeze seventy, maybe seventy-five. But that will be pushing it."

"No more? What about next week though? We'll still need... Oooooofff!"

My haggling was interrupted by a hairy cannonball hurtling into my waist, nearly knocking me over. The furball – more properly known as Carla, Sylvie's daughter – was now tightly clutching my jacket with one hand, as the other riffled through my pockets, yelping excitedly in a high-pitched bark, "Timtimtimtimtim! You're back! What did you bring for me? Did you bring some more bangles? Did you?"

Aw, crap. That's what I'd forgotten. I'd promised to bring her some "bangles" – actually spent sub-artillery cartridges whose shiny metal casings and plasma-discharge patterns made for fun hair attachments – a small collection of which were already woven into Carla's hair. Not your average children's toy, granted, but the cartridges would have accumulated in large piles as a result of our weekly weapons training. I'd even left them in a bag next to my bed, but I must have just stepped over them in my morning daze.

Struggling to disengage from Carla's grasp (even the Wompa's young were easily three times stronger than the average human), I plunged my hands into my pockets trying to find a replacement for her "bangles"... Ah. My hand settled on something cool and rounded in my pocket. It would have to do. Hiding it in my clasped hand, I said to Carla, "Sorry, kiddo. The bangles will have to come next time. I did you bring you these though."

"Ooooooo... What is it?" Carla said, politely hiding her disappointment, as she picked up the string of shiny beads from my hand and sniffed at it. "It's pretty, I guess."

"It's a kind of bracelet that people wear back at the base. Why don't you have it?" I replied, taking her arm and did my best to fasten the string of beads around her wrist; considering how fast she grew, the thing would have to come off soon. Thankfully, I'd put in my Powaah-rosary in my pocket this morning. I'd bought the thing some time ago, wanting to support the crafty people at the base, but I never had much use for it. "I promise I'll bring the bangles next time, ok?"

"Ooookay," Carla mumbled, distracted by her new bracelet. I made a mental note to put the bangles somewhere I wouldn't forget it next time.

"Hrmmmfff," Sylvie grunted ambivalently, patting her daughter's head. Looking over to me, she said casually, "Check-in with me next time about stuff like this, ok Tim?"

"Oh, right, of course. Uh. Sorry." A brief chill clenched my stomach, realizing I must have just avoided an unpleasant faux-pas. Like most other Wompas, she wasn't crazy about us Powaah Witnesses and the Rebels in general, as we brought potentially bad attention to their otherwise quiet planet, but she tolerated us so long as we kept to ourselves and did good business.

"It's alright. I know you're harmless," Sylvie sighed. "Just clueless like the rest of you so-called Rebels. Have you eaten yet? Let's finish this over lunch."

And so, with a razor-clawed sentient beastling hanging on my arm, we went inside to partake in some food. It was a simple but satisfying meal of biscuits and a hot, thick, filling soup – which I secretly looked forward to every time I visited the Wompas. I suppose, if I were to be really honest, I was most looking forward to their hard-boiled, o-so-delicious icescrabbler eggs. Ah, animal protein! There was only so much I could take of the powdered "guiltless" veggie protein; though I often wondered how guiltless it was, seeing as it took to incredible amounts of industrial power to squeeze it out of who-knows-what with high-speed chemical-presser machines. At least, I knew the eggs plunked out reliably out of an icescrabbler's ass.

Early on in the meal, we'd settled on a good eighty pounds of salad, and more for next week once Sylvie and Charlie talked to their neighbors about getting some of their crop. Business happily aside, we let the rest of lunch and a good few hours of the afternoon coast by with many laughs and lighthearted chatter, as I bounced a small Wompa on my knee with some difficulty (though my ineptitude as a human weakling seemed to be a part of Carla's amusement). There was an uncomplicated, yet calm straightforwardness to being around them that I envied, which, granted, I was more than likely projecting onto them, but which I took a great deal of pleasure in, as they were precious moments without my familiar insecurities and fears.

All too soon though, I realized I had to leave, lest I get back after the base's nightly lockdown. Walking out of the cavern with Sylvie, Charlie and Carla, I packed my salad into my bins and saddled up my rested and refreshed tontons. With one last muffled hug to Carla, I rode out into the cold to return to the base to make it in time for the dinner rush.

CHAPTER 13

A few weeks later, I was swaggering down the halls, thinking to myself: "Hell, yeah! I'm the man!" Surely, you can't blame me for walking the walk after – yes, you guessed it – solving the "salad problem."

Unsurprisingly, the new mix took some getting used to, not to mention some explosive animosity that nearly caused me to trade blows with some nutcase who couldn't bear to be parted from his regular tasteless mix of romaines and iceberg greens. But, all resistance to our new spicy, textured, flavorful salad vanished when Leah had a few bites of it and started praising it to no end. I'd guessed right too: the spiciness of the salad also meant people took less, meaning a week's supply really did last a week – without the dreaded Low Salad Day. With one fell swoop, I ensured the base's salad supply and managed to stay within budget.

It was then with good justification (and with much pride) that I was awarded, in the hallowed halls of the dining room, the Excellence in Service medal. Yes! All my work, all my efforts, and my very existence was validated. My service was being recognized! I'm truly fighting for the Powaah! I was making a difference! I knew I was on the right path! I was doing Something with my life! I was a Somebody!

With my position at the base no longer in doubt, I relaxed into my cooking duties, starting to whip up whatever the hell I wanted. Stews, soups and breads started to pop up on the menu, with nary a complaint about sensitive-this, or allergen-that, or even the previously inescapable I-can-only-eat- raw-things-that-have-no-face-and-have-no-grains. Nope, I'd only have to puff my chest to show my shiny medal pinned to my lapel, and that would be the end of all the whining. Of course, I didn't (or, at least, I tried my best to not) let the medal get to my head, knowing full well how fickle the winds of newly minted success could be. So, whenever I caught a whiff of unhappiness with my cooking whims, I made sure to throw in a few of the regular hits and used my smoke essence liberally – in retrospect, some might say with abandon.

Having finished prepping for the dinner service well ahead of time (running the blender to make protein slurries wasn't the most taxing of menus), and with the kitchen pretty much clean and all set to go, I decided there wasn't much point in having the kitchen crew stare at each other as we twiddled the time away; so, I waved them off, and told to them to chill out and come back before dinner-time. After the kitchen had cleared out, I looked quickly around to make sure nothing would catch fire, and I too decided to take a nice afternoon break.

Not sure what to do with my free time, I wandered in the general direction of the rec room. Maybe I'd watch a flick or take a nap on the sofa. I yawned happily at the thought. That would be nice. A nice siesta would do me some good. Or maybe I'd play a hand of cards with someone there. It could be a good chance for me to win back the credits I'd lost the last time. As a matter of fact, I could hear a group playing raucously now, as I neared the rec room.

A few feet from the entrance, however, I froze, my stomach contorting into excruciating knots, as my face burned and I overheard their conversation:

"...it'll pass, it'll pass. Don't worry."

"Fuck, no one likes the food he makes. Give us the old stuff and I'll be happy."

"It's his time. We all get it at some point."

"Can't wait for that skinny loser to crash and burn."

"Yeah, he'll be put in his place soon, and we'll be back to having what we want."

"His smoked food is good though. Gotta hand him that. Dunno how he does it."

"Some kind of bottled shit, you moron. It's not like there's a smoker on the base."

"Whatever, I've seen you stuff your face with it."

"Only to hide the taste of the other crap he puts out. Shit, I'm starving these days."

"I give it another week and things will be back to normal."

"I want him to stop wearing that dumb fucking medal. Doesn't he know that everyone has one of those?"

"Probably not. He's wearing the thing all the time like it means something."

...Suddenly, I no longer felt the need for a nap. Suddenly, I no longer felt like going to going to rec room. With my blood throbbing in my ears, I was thankfully no longer able to hear the banter from the rec room. My chest sagged with the weight of the medal that had brought me so much pride and meaning, but was now stupidly pinned to me. I slinked away as silently as I could, struggling to take controlled breaths, desperately wanting to disappear.

As I hid my face in my trembling hands, I fought my nerves to keep my knees from buckling. What the fuck? What the fuck was going on? This wasn't really happening right? Hadn't I been doing important work? Hadn't I dedicated myself to a right and just cause? Didn't this have meaning? Fuck. Fuck. FUCK! Maybe they weren't talking about me. Maybe it was someone else. Right. I was the only head chef in the kitchen who used smoke-essence. Chef! Ha! Who the fuck was I kidding? What was I doing here? Was anything I'd done worth it? This was supposed to mean something. I was supposed to be part of something... Hahahaha...

...I lurched violently back from the sight of green blood splashing in front of me... I almost screamed as I saw Greido's entrails oozing in my hands... That was me wasn't it? Hahahaha. I did those things, right? Hahahaha. But, we all did it. We all took part. We all had to serve Powaah now. That's right, of course. It was for the Powaah, that made it right...

...It's okay. It's okay. It was just the light. Hahahaha.... A trick of the light. That's all it was. The artificial lighting makes everything look a little green. I propped myself against the wall, and focused away from my memories, and struggled to remember... anything, really, anything else. Anger! There was lots to be angry about! This was the Empire's fault! This was Jubba's fault! They are the oppressors! They did this to me! I got this medal for fighting them! Medal? Oh, fucking piece of shit... I'm a fucking moron... Hahahaha...

Feeling my resolve wavering, I resorted to mechanically muttering a Powaah mantra,

"O, Powaah. I trust you. I will walk your path, and not the path of fear. For fear is the path to the dark side. I am of the Powaah. We are of the Powaah. The Powaah is with me."

My breathing slowed and became easier, as I calmed myself down and gratefully felt my memories recede back into a far, far corner in my head. Straightening my back, I clasped my hands together as tightly as I could to stop their shaking. No. No, I resolved: I was not here for nothing. I was not doing something meaningless. I affirm it! I affirm it!

My confidence and sanity somewhat restored, I realized that it had all been a test. Of course. I've heard of many people on the base undergo trials like this. This clearly was mine. This was an opportunity for me to see that I had been getting too comfortable in the kitchen. The Powaah was showing me that it was time to move on. Yes! I knew it. I felt it in my heart. The Powaah was telling me, in fact, that it was my time for what I always wanted: a part in the action, the real action; it was my turn to be a fighter!

Before I could convince myself otherwise, I marched to the base's main office in a daze. I could hear voices in there, and wondered for a moment if I should come later, but, no, this couldn't wait! I knocked on the door with a determination I hoped would continue in the coming conversation.

"Come in," Leah's muffled voice answered.

I nearly lost my nerve when I opened the door to not only Leah, but Alice as well; they were both sitting at the desk with a dozen datapads laid out in front of them, going over our reviews – including mine.

"Oh hi, Tim. How can I help you?" Leah's smile gave me the strength to ignore Alice's irritated frown. This was Leah. I knew her. Most importantly, I knew she could help me. With that in mind, I found the nerve to say,

"H-hi L-leia, hi Alice. Sorry to bother you, but do you have a minute?" Ok. I got that far. I could do this. I willed myself some super-alloyed steel balls to force out the next part, "I'd like to be reassigned from the kitchen."

"Tim, we've got other..." Alice groaned, rolling her eyes, but was quieted down by Leah (see how wonderful she is?).

"Of course, Tim. Is there a problem? I thought you liked it there. You're doing so great in the kitchen, we awarded you an Excellence in Service medal," Leah said quizzically, though with reassuring patience and kindness.

I swallowed the anger welling at the thought of my foolish, childish pride at the silly trinket still on my jacket. This was obviously part of my trial. I decided not to open that can of worms and concentrate on my goal, which I knew would be difficult enough, "E-everything is going well, hahahaha... sure. And I'm very happy and proud to have been recognized for my service. But... but I'd like a change and try something new."

"Something new? But we love what you do in there, Tim! Your smoked logs are so good, aren't they Alice?" Leah beamed at me, as Alice mumbled something about mysterious incidents of groin rashes going around the base that I probably didn't want to hear.

"Th-thank you, Leah, hahahaha..." Her praise never failed to fill me with happiness, but I didn't let it distract me. "Really. I'd like a change. I've made a request before and..."

"There's always room in maintenance. They could always use some help," Alice interrupted, picking up a datapad, ready to sweep me away with a few flicks of her fingers.

"No. No, I'd really like to..."

"Or inventory? They're always short-handed too," Alice offered sweetly, reaching towards another pad.

"No! None of those!" I said a tad too forcefully, creating a momentary uncomfortable pause in the room. "Sorry."

"What would you like, Tim? Please tell us," Leah broke the silence, looking serious now.

I took a deep breath: "I would like a combat role. I've applied for it before and you said that..."

"Tim, I've told you already that you're on the list. Look, we've got a lot..." Alice snapped impatiently.

"I want to be part of the fight..."

"So do lots of other people. There's a long list..."

"What list? What list are you talking about?"

"There's a selection process that..."

"I've seen lots of people get roles before me!"

"It's not that simple, Tim. There are physical assessments..."

"I passed all the tests! I'm tired of jumping through your hoops!"

"Everyone has to! Even I had to..."

"I want my chance!"

"OKAY! That's enough!" Leah silenced our bickering. "Tim, can you tell me what you were hoping for?"

"I just want my chance at the fighting," I said as calmly as I could. "I know I'm not the strongest in the base, but I know I scored well on..."

Alice rolled her eyes again, interrupting me with a dismissive, "This is a waste of time..."

"Let him finish," Leah said firmly, motioning me to go on – and, incidentally, keeping me from starting another fight with Alice.

"I know I'm not the strongest physically," I started again, ignoring Alice's scowl. "But I know I scored strongly on the other skills. I want a chance to fight with the others. I'm tired of being in the kitchen..."

"We need to eat too, y'know..." Alice huffed.

"DAMN IT! I'm more than that! I've worked hard. I've put in my time. I know what people say... that I'm just a skinny weakling who's only good at cooking, who'd be cannon fodder. No, I know it! I've heard it! I'm more than that! I've trained hard. I've suffered like everyone else. I'm more than a cook. I want to fight. I want to do my part. I want to show everyone what I'm made of. I want my chance! Just a chance... that's all I ask..."

There was a moment of silence, as Leah and Alice let me recover my breath. Someone passed me a tissue. I blew my nose noisily and continued standing awkwardly, feeling as if I had too many limbs than I knew what to do with. Ok, this wasn't exactly as I'd seen this conversation going. I suppose one might say I had something of a meltdown, but, to be fair, I've had enough of Alice's condescending put downs; and, the truth was that meltdowns got results – as I hoped still held true from our time at the Center.

Sure enough, the benefits of wigging out proved itself when my quiet sniffling was broken with, "Ok, Tim. Ok. I can see you're unhappy with how things are going," Leah soothed, studying me carefully for any risk of further freak-outs. "I think we can arrange something for you."

"What? There isn't any..." Alice sputtered, but quickly shut up with a flick of Leah's wrist.

"Let's see here," Leah said, rummaging around the datapads. "Ah. Here it is. Can you fly a shuttlecraft?"

"Yes! I got my license when I was sixteen!" I exclaimed with growing hope.

"Excellent! We need someone to fly a shipment for us..."

"I can do it!" I shouted.

"Haha... Ok. I know you can, Tim," Leah grinned. "It isn't very glamorous, but, then again, it isn't very safe either. You could get caught by the Imperials, and you know what that means."

"I'm up for it!" I beamed, my chest bursting with confidence.

"I know you are, I know you are," Leah continued tolerantly, as she tapped on a datapad. "You'll have to leave in a few hours though. That should be enough for you to get a briefing from the quatermaster and get your equipment. Can you do that? Can you pass your duties to someone else in the kitchen?"

"A few hours?" Wow! This was serious! Leah wasn't messing around! I can't let her down now! "Yes, of course! It'll take me a few moments to get my things together. And... and I can let... I can let James. No, Kim! Kim can take over for me. She knows what to do. I only have to..."

"Great. Great, Tim." Leah said, quieting me down with a brief hug. "I'm glad you came by. Good luck on your mission. May the Powaah be with you."

"Thank you! Thank you so much! May the Powaah be with YOU!" WOO! WOO! WOO! I'm going on a mission! I'm going on a real bonafide mission! How fan-fucking-tastic was that!?!

It didn't take me very long at all to clear out my bunk, and brief Kim in on her new role; she was, I'm pleased to say, suitably impressed with my going on a mission. Soon after that, in a rapid flurry, I was in front of the quatermaster, half-listening to the regular drone about security and making sure I didn't lose any of the equipment I was signing out or else I'd have to pay for it.

The mission itself seemed pretty simple: all I had to do was fly a shuttlecraft to a rendez-vous planet, drop off a shipment, pick up another shipment, and then drop that one off to another planet. Easy-peasy... But very dangerous, of course. Very dangerous and exciting. Not anybody could do this, you know. I'd been chosen for a sensitive task.

Not without some smugness, I flashed my mission-log to the hangerbay guard, who, despite his skepticism, had no choice but to let me in with my little dufflebag containing my few belongings. As I walked in though, aiming to head to my shuttle and check everything for take-off, a loud party distracted me: a mixed crowd of fighter-pilots, mechanics and maintenance staff were gathered around a star-fighter, laughing, cheering, and happily slapping each other's back. What was going on there? They seemed to be listening to someone...

"TIM! DUUUUDE!" I was suddenly trapped in a huge bear-hug and found myself lifting off the ground.

"MIKE!!! SHIIIIIIIIT!" I cried out, recognizing the bastard immediately after a few struggling gasps. A torrent of relief, glee, and joy gushed out of me as I tearfully hugged Mike back. This couldn't be any more perfect! Mike was here to see my glorious moment of going out on a mission!

"Mike, I can't believe it's you!" "Tim, buddy! Fucking hell!"

"When'd you get back?" "What are you doing here?"

"I'm heading out, dude!" "Just got back from a mission!"

"Nice! Tell me about it!" "You're what?"

We broke down laughing, excitedly stumbling on each other's words. I couldn't help noticing Mike's worn and battered look when he released me from his embrace; the last mission must have been a long one. Looking at me curiously, Mike asked, "What do you mean you're heading out? You mean, like a mission?"

My face split into a massive, beaming grin, and I showed him my mission-log with all the exciting deets of my many adventures to come, "Yeah! Check it out! I'm leaving in forty minutes! Man, it's great to see you. There's so much to tell you, but it can wait till later, I guess."

"You're leaving in an hour?" Mike frowned, staring at the log. "This was issued today. And it looks like not even two hours ago..."

"Hell, yeah!" I pumped my fist in the air.

"This is strange. It should take a few days..." Mike said with a concern that I didn't think was in keeping with my mood.

"Dude! Chill! I spoke to Leah and that twit Alice, and they gave me this posting!" I crowed. Feeling a strong urge to move on, and get my mission rolling, I pointed to the crowd, "Let's check out what's going on there!"

"It's just Louke and something he dragged in from outside," Mike muttered disinterestedly, still studying my log. "I didn't think they'd move this quickly for this..."

"Louke's back? Shit, why didn't you say so?! Come on! Let's go see him!" I all but dragged Mike closer to the crowd to hear what Louke was saying. Man, what a great perk! Now that I'm part of combat crew, I'll get to hear Louke's stories fresh from his missions, rather than a re-warmed version that probably had all the good parts sanitized from it.

The moment we got within earshot of Louke's words, I wasn't disappointed to feel the familiar, excited tingling of the crowd earnestly listening to every snippet they could hear,

"...We snuck into the asteroid field, and we thought for a moment we'd lost the enemy fighters. And we were right, we did, but that wasn't all that we had to fear though," Louke recounted, sitting on a wing of his starfighter, striking a classically warrior-like pose. Oh, good! I wasn't missing the good parts. I shouldered my way deeper into the crowd to hear Louke clearer, "Their heavy cruisers started launching depth charges into field!"

"Ooooooooo!" We cried out on cue to highlight our concern.

"Asteroids were bursting around us in! Boom! Boom! Boom! Blue leader was down!" Louke's eyes were wide open in fear, his nostrils flaring, as we too became jittery with anticipation. "With the cruisers and enemy fighters behind us, the only thing we could do was go deeper and deeper into the asteroids, flying as well as could."

"Oh, no!"

"After a half an hour of navigating the asteroid field, we lost over half our fighters... But we made it! We made it!" Louke smiled, bringing the story to an abrupt end; he was probably going to add some embellishments in later versions. "A few days later, we returned back victorious from our raid! May the Powaah be with us!"

"May the Powaah be with us!" We repeated automatically.

"What about the beast! Tell us about the beast!" Someone piped up, wanting more.

"Well, isn't that another story!" Louke said, indulging the crowd and shaking his head as he settled into his next tale of heroism. "Can you believe this happened only earlier today?"

"Woooooow!" This was a fresh story! The thought that we were among the first to hear it was thrilling.

"We'd landed on Hawth and met up at the meeting point to regroup and make sure no one had tailed us," Louke began, expertly setting up the context of the story and drawing us in. "I was the last to arrive, because this way I could make sure everyone leaves safely before me."

"Of course! That's so great" We exclaimed approvingly of Louke's exemplary selflessness. What a guy Louke was! What a guy! Always putting his needs last. If only I could be like him.

"So with everyone safely away and headed to base, I did a once over of my fighter... but then... then I felt something creep up behind me," Louke raised his eyebrows and scrunched his shoulders together, as he cast a dramatic look behind him.

"Ohhhh...." This was going to be exciting! Sounds like a big fight coming up!

"It was a snowbeast!" Louke yelled out, grabbing at us with his hands and getting a unified peal of excited surprise, before launching into a breathless narrative: "Thankfully though, I felt the evil thing with the Powaah. It was fast! It leapt on me, and pinned me down, but then I spun to the side, and managed to shake it off. Still it kept coming! I kicked it in the face, and I could see its terrible claws coming at me. It kept coming at me!"

Louke paused to catch his breath, as the unquestionable drama of Louke's story gripped us. We knew, however, the dramatic end was coming as he leaned in closer to us to start again, "I summoned up all the Powaah I had, struggled to pull my blaster out my holster, and blasted a hole into that dirty snowbeast's chest," Louke's finale was met with cheers, as he jumped down from the fighter and began to point and kick at a greyish-white form on the ground.

Wait. What did Louke say? Snowbeast? What was he talking about?

The cheering around me made it hard to concentrate. I had to get closer. What did he mean "snowbeast?" There were only a small collection of lifeforms that were able to survive on Hawth, and they were all harmless. I guessed it was possible that something might be lurking out there – and, I was willing even to believe, was sent from the Empire – but the Wompas never told me about it, and they knew what happened on their planet.

Nudging closer to the edge of the circle, I could just barely see the body at Louke's feet, but everyone was still too animated and jumping around. The flurry of movement was aggravated by people now taking their turns taking selfies, crouching and making faces with Louke's kill. Just a little more, just a little more... and, with one big push at my back that I guessed was Mike, I was staring at the corpse of small, furry body, charred and bloody in areas by Louke's panicked plasma shots. Strangely, the snowbeast looked a lot like a Wompa, though much smaller. Strangely too, the beast had little decorative trinkets tied into its hair that had interesting star-burst patterns on them... I felt myself go numb. No. No...

"What should we do with it?"

"Let's mount it!"

"Yeah, let's skin the thing!"

"No one can mess with us!"

"All hail Louke!"

"He's a hero!"

This was crazy. It can't be her. It can't be. I tried to block it out of mind, desperately trying to convince myself otherwise, but my eyes fixed themselves on my Powaah-rosary still wrapped around Carla's wrist. No... No... NO! This was insane! She probably wanted to play! Does Louke have any idea what Sylvie and Charlie will do to him when they find him? And they WILL find him. They'll string him up and tear him to pieces! I had to do something. I had to say something.

I ceased registering what was happening around me, as my mind slackened and resisted accepting the absurdity I was seeing. My hands twitched by my side, as I struggled to find the words or the right action. I could feel my hand drifting to my holster, reaching at my blaster, not knowing what I'd do with it, but surely something would come to mind... Before my hand could reach my blaster, I was roughly turned around and pushed away from the crowd. Mike had been watching me carefully throughout the whole incident, and had taken action before I could.

In an senseless blur, I was in the cockpit of a shuttlecraft that a distant part of me assumed was my own. As Mike buckled me in, I was lucid enough to hear Mike's parting words:

"I've programmed your shuttle to fly out on its own, so you should be fine. I put a few things in your jacket for later that should help. I guess this is it, ol'buddy," Mike gave me a long hug. "You take care, Tim."

I blanked out.
CHAPTER 14

...whatthefuck...whatthefuck...whathefuck...What the fuck... WHY?! Sofuckedup sofuckedup sofuckedup... I don't get it... I want to serve. I want to serve, yes, I do. Really! I do. But sofuckedup sofuckedup... Why am I here? Where am I? ...oh, shuttle. I'm on the shuttle... I can kill myself. I should kill myself. Where the fuck is my blaster...

...Oh, Carla. I'm so sorry. Sorry, so sorry, sorry. Oh, fuck... Mike, why did you leave me here? Did you take my goddamned blaster? You bastard. I need help. Where the fuck are you? I'm so fucking alone...

At least he left me with this booze... What is this shit? Fucking hell, it's some serious shit. Whatever. I want more... So fucked.

WHY! WHY! WHY! I'm fighting for the Powaah! I'm fighting for the Powaah! I'm fighting... fuckthatfuckthatfuckthat. I'm sorry Carla! I'm so sorry! Oh, shitshitshit, this is what I've become. I can't leave them. Shit, I'm going to throw up...

...Hrrrrrruuuuuhhhh...

Hrrrrruuuuuuuuhhhhhh!! I don't deserve help. I'm shit... I'm nothing. Fuck! Help me! Help me! Oh, fuck! I'm sorry, Carla! I'm sorry Greido! I want to bring you back! But I have to do what they say... They say I'll be saved, right? The Powaah will save me. I need to follow the Powaah. Louke knows. Louke knows best. He's a hero! He's a Jedi! They all know more than me. Oh, Leah... Help me! I'm sorry, Carla. I'm so sorry...Shit...

It's all... itsallfuckedup...

itsallfuckedup,

izzzallllllfuck...

izzzzuuhh... uuuuuuuughhhh..................

The shrieking wail of the shuttle's proximity alarm tore me out of the soft, comforting nothingness of oblivion – and into the agonizing harshness of consciousness, not to mention a damned fucking brutal hangover that felt like a family of rancors had taken up residence in my skull and were happily trampolining on my hypothalamus. Painfully opening my sandpaper eyelids, I panicked as I slapped off the alarm and realized from the blurry spinning that the shuttle had somehow lost its navigational stabilizers and was drifting erratically in space.

Shit! Now I had to regain control of this stupid craft. Where were the thruster controls again... Oh, wait. The spinning was in my head. I calmed down, but regretted that almost instantly, as the adrenaline had somewhat abated my nausea; with the panic receding, I promptly threw up on the floor. There wasn't much point in looking for a barfbag, since, judging from chunks of vomit glistening with bile and liberally spread all over the cockpit, it wasn't the first time I'd thrown up.

What the hell happened? It was painful to form anything remotely coherent in my mind, so it took some time to establish that nothing was amiss with the shuttle, and that the alarm had been a pre-programmed notice (probably Mike's doing) that I was going to arrive to my destination in fifty-eight minutes. Ok. Plenty of time to get myself together. Thinkthinkthink. Ok, basic animal needs first: water. I need water. In the toilet. Go to the toilet. I can do this. Taking a deep breath, and simultaneously realizing how rancid the air was, I swallowed down another urge to retch, and fled to the shuttle's toilet, slapping on the ventilator as I left my sticky, foetid chair.

I chugged down two bottles of water from the stores, realizing too late that I drank too much too quickly, and hurled it up again with my head hanging limply over the sink. At least, this time it wasn't on floor or – aw, crap – over my clothes. Realizing I was covered in crusty patches of upchuck, I grabbed a wad of tissues and did my best to get the worst of it off my flight suit. Most of it came of easily, but I knew if I didn't get it off fast enough, there would not only be an obvious stain, but a smell that would linger for a long time.

Though I tried to deny it to myself, I remembered everything leading up to the shuttle far too vividly – but I still didn't know what to make of it. Horror and anger welled in me, but, with my body spent and wasted (like my fucking life), they both fizzled out into powerless apathy. Ah, how I was grateful for the many self-repressing and sense-dulling benefits of substance abuse! It was with considerable happiness when, still in the throes of shock and incomprehension, I had found the flask of booze that Mike had left in my jacket pocket.

The stuff was a kind of vile, mucousy syrup that left a lingering flavor of charred ass on my tongue. It was probably something you were supposed to add to something else and dilute it and make it last for several sessions; but, once I started to feel my pain and thoughts fuzz out, I downed it all in one gagging go. While the taste never improved, I can guarantee you that my blitzed out state got more blitzed out.

Ah, fuck. I lurched out of the tiny toilet, and slinked back into the cockpit, avoiding the puddles of bodily-fluids as best I could. Should I even continue with this mission? Fucking hell, I didn't feel as if I knew anything more. Where would I go? What would I do? There was nothing else. I'd be lost and empty yet again. I rubbed my temples gingerly, my face still tender and swollen from screaming bawling like fucking baby. It didn't make any sense. Carla, oh man... little Carla. What happened? How could it be? What am I? What kind of person am I? I tried to steady myself by gripping the water bottle tighter, but I could feel a pathetic crying fit coming on again. My hungover mind was buckling under the strain, vainly forming some semblance of rational thought, but anything I might have come up with of was dashed by,

"BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"

FUCK! Goddamn it! Fucking proximity alarm! Alright! Alright! I got it! I slapped blindly on the dashboard until I found the blinking panel that controlled the shuttle's flight-plan. Damn it. I was less than twenty minutes to arrival now. Looking out the window, an orangish swirly-patterned planet loomed ahead growing ever larger, as the shuttle approached and aimed itself towards the gas giant's southern hemisphere. Feeling confused, as the planet lacked the usual constellation of blinking lights and swarming spacecraft that indicated habitation, I then hazily remembered from the mission-log (I'd only excitedly skimmed) that my first stop was a remote mining colony. In fact, with the cloudy details of the planet becoming clearer, I could see the dark, smudgy outlines of the sprawling installation floating at the edge of the planet's atmosphere not unlike an enormous metallic, smoking jelly-fish.

Ok. Ok, fine. I'll go through with it. Resisting the urge to turn the shuttle around and fuck off, I decided I might as well finish the mission, as, at the very least, it would give me some time to sort through the mess in my head. I took the controls back from the autopilot, and plotted as tight a path as possible to the colony; the sooner this was over with the better. The signal I sent to the flight tower announcing myself was promptly replied with pre-recorded docking instructions indicating the landing bay I should go to. I had a deep sense of relief at not having to deal with an actual person; hopefully, once I landed and got rid of my shipment, everything would be automated too.

As I flew in closer and the clouds of noxious gases parted, the mining colony revealed itself to be the typical slap-dash mix of refineries, smoke-stacks and messy snarls of metal tubing and container-towers. These colonies were purely functional places with no consideration for any niceties – focused, as they were, on extracting as many resources as they could, as quickly as they could. They were typically rough, grimy places, where everyone there spent all their time and effort making as many credits as they could. The place was likely populated with the usual mix of surly miners and jaded bureaucrats, meaning I wasn't going to get any scintillating conversation or riveting discussions on the nature of art – which suited me just fine.

Sighting a flashing set of green lights, I flicked on the thrusters to slow the shuttle down and began my descent. The shuttle gave a small shudder with the landing bay tractorbeam locking on, so I shut the engines down and let the shuttle be guided in by the automated parking system. My mind drifted, as I considered my options. Maybe I should stop by their canteen, have a meal and stretch my legs a little. Hell, if the local ladies weren't too skuzzy, it might do me some good to have my chain yanked. Yeah, get my mind off things, that's a fucking good idea. I realized, however, with considerable sourness, that the only ladies I was going to find in this joke of a "colony" would be a handful of over-worked hookers.

My head still pounding, I cursed as I stood up to the polite bleeping indicating it was safe to exit the shuttle. I grabbed the datapad with the delivery manifest that would release the cargo, and, throwing on my jacket (which thankfully had only a few splotches of vomit), I cranked open the door release, eager to get this delivery done and back to something soothing, like sleep or more booze. I doubt anything could have prepared me for what followed.

"Welcome!" a deep baritone voice boomed, the moment I stepped off the shuttle.

I had to a pause moment, certain I was hallucinating, as I registered the garish sight of a rather rotund man, literally glowing with the most bling I had ever seen hanging, attached or draped over a human being: there were at least a good dozen gold chains suspended around his neck, along with many multiples of bejeweled rings on each of his fingers, in his ears, through his nostrils and even one, for good measure, in his right eyebrow. Quite incredibly too, even his clothes were a custom-made gold and silver track-suit, complete with a platinum blue cape. Really? A cape? Who wore capes? Who was this guy? Where was I?

"I'm here for a delivery..." I said hesitantly, my uncertainty and nervousness rising as I noted the two heavily armed guards on either side of the golden dude.

A rich and, dare I say it, golden laugh answered me, "Yes, of course, you are! We've been expecting you!"

"I'm here from the... the..." I started, not knowing if it was safe to reveal my Rebel affiliation.

"The Rebellion! Yes!" the blindingly gold man cried out for every possible Imperial agent in the area to hear. "We are always happy to have our Rebel friends visit."

"Ah, yes... thank you..." I stuttered uncomfortably. "I have a delivery."

"A delivery, yes. You mentioned," the man said, smiling. I noticed that even his teeth were plated with gold and encrusted with rubies and opals. "If you don't mind? ..." he continued, pointing to my datapad.

"Oh, yes. Sorry," I jolted upright, feeling a fool as I fumbled with my datapad. Flipping as quickly as I could to the confirmation screen, I held the datapad between us, so we could press our thumprints on it simultaneously. As soon as we did, the datapad emitted an approving blip as the shuttle's cargo-trunk was unlocked, followed by the pneumatic swoosh of the doors opening.

The gold man suddenly rushed forward and embraced me, crying out far too loudly in my ear, "My name is Londo! I'm the city's mayor. You must stay for a while and relax in our city."

"My name is Tim. And, th-thank you, but if we can get the next cargo on I can be on my way," I said, struggling to wriggle my way out of his suffocating grasp.

"Nonsense, Tim! Nonsense! I won't hear of it!" Londo beamed, now applying some hearty thumps on my back. "You must stay. Besides, it will take some time for my people to unload your shuttle and get it ready for takeoff again. You may as well enjoy our hospitality."

A swarm of said people had materialized around us, pushing carts and trolleys of varying sizes, and had started to unload, with a remarkable amount of care, what seemed to be shrink-wrapped green bricks. I didn't particularly want to stay any longer than necessary on this grimy shit-hole with this gold-fetish wacko, but it was clear from the number of people now mobbing my shuttle and the mounting stack of bricks on the trolleys that my delivery was a large one.

"Alright. Thank you, Londo," I said grudgingly. "Do you have somewhere I can clean up? I had a rough flight over."

"Of course! Of course! Not a problem at all!" Londo pshawed with his hands. "We have everything you'll ever need. You may not even want to leave."

Londo's eyes twinkled, as he opened the airlock to the city, causing a gush of warm air to waft over me. I could find no words to say, and there was no need, as Londo knowingly watched my slackjawedness, as I was totally and utterly blown away by a wave of pounding music, strobing lights, and giggling, beckoning women.

"Welcome to Cloudy City, Tim."

CHAPTER 15

Nestled as I was between two naked and fantastically babelicious green-skinned Twileks, who didn't seem to mind being fondled, and who, in fact, encouraged me to do so with pleasant, inviting squirming and rubbing, I had to confess that I had finally realized my dream of becoming the happy sausage in the middle of a smokin' hot lady-sandwich. Taking a long drag from a spliff one of the girls held to my mouth, I reveled in the joyous, freeing feeling of having my accumulated tension, worries and traumas evaporate into thick plumes of fragrant smoke. Temporary bliss though it was, I had not a single complaint regarding Londo's hospitality.

Perhaps, I shouldn't have been so surprised that "Cloudy City" was so named not because of its physical location in the clouds, but because of its effects on its guests. Being legitimately located in remote parts of the galaxy, mining-colonies provided excellent covers for the rambunctious lawlessness, ample drug-use and whoring of smuggler centers. Considering its size and the sophistication it took to have it hidden so effectively, Cloudy City was one of the larger centers where smugglers, dealers and those working outside of the Imperial law could meet and do business.

Perhaps too, I shouldn't have been that surprised when, as Londo's workers began streaming industriously past us, ferrying my delivery of packaged green bricks, a distinctly familiar skunky fragrance drifted past. Noticing my bewildered sniffing, Londo had given me another strong whack on my shoulder, and laughed as he said something about how he loved how the Rebels always gave him the "good stuff" that was so good that, no matter how much wrapping around it, you'd always smell the green. From a brief glance, it looked like I'd delivered a good half-million credits of high-quality weed, which Londo assured me was well-worth the "crazy price you Rebels asked for."

High in the clouds of fuzzy happiness that I was, it took some time to figure out how they could have possibly grown that quantity of weed at the base without us knowing. Could they have hidden it away somewhere? Impossible. The base was large, but it wasn't infinitely large or riddled with dimensional portals; certainly, there was nowhere to hide a large-scale grow-op, even considering the few places that were off-limits, like the hangar-bay and armory. The hydroponic equipment alone would have encompassed five complete hangar-bays, not to mention the areas needed to process the bud. More significantly, there would have been an inescapable smell that would have stuck to everything and permeated the air and everyone's clothes, had the operation been anywhere near the base. And, in any case, who would have done it? We were all busy with our separate tasks, and none of us would have had the time to tend to some high-maintenance plants.

Who indeed? Who would have the skill and the knowledge to grow such a large crop? Who were renowned as excellent cultivators, and could be trusted to be quiet and discreet because they would fundamentally prefer to keep to themselves and avoid the Empire anyway? It made even more sense then why the Rebellion would bother setting up shop on a barren, frozen planet like Hawth with no strategic value – except that it had a whole population of secretive, highly-skilled underground Wompa farmers.

Exhaling a plume of warm tingly smoke followed by a long draught of a deliciously spiced brew, I found myself rather at peace with the whole idea – as I squeezed a yielding breast and fondled a firm nipple. I suppose the Rebellion had to fund itself somehow, and, as far as illicit drugs went (though it had been legalized in several planetary districts, not to mention it's general dispensation for medical uses), weed was on the mild side. Certainly, it wasn't anything like the brutally nerve-burning synthetic crystals that were usually dealt by the hard-edged criminals. No, no, no, no, no. The Rebellion wasn't a criminal organization. They did what needed to be done to get the job done, and it just so happened they managed to do it with a widely accepted, though officially (and unfairly) persecuted recreational drug.

"Tim, my friend! Feeling more refreshed, I see!" Londo's way, way, waaay too loud voice intruded on my stoner zen. He'd left me here an indeterminate time ago amidst over-sized bean-bags, munchies, and an assortment of rollies, pipes and two kinds of vaporizers, all administered by the previously mentioned buxom, very much aiming to please (and already did so with great eagerness and gusto on my part) Twileks – again, no complaints – as his workers finished unloading my shuttle and prepared it for my next delivery.

"Londo, hey..." I grinned stupidly. "Good to see you. Don't tell me the shuttle is ready already?"

"You mean after, six hours? When it should taken those lazy bastards two?" chortled Londo glowing amidst his omnipresent golden aura, as he sat down next to me, and accepted the toke I offered him. "Yep, it's ready to go. Doesn't look like you are though."

"Well, with your hospitality, who can resist?" I said, causing us to laugh, then wheeze on our smoky coughs.

"Stay! Stay!" Londo waved magnaminously, as he basked in the folds of plush couch (I had to suppress an uncontrollable fit of the giggles, as I couldn't help but imagining him as some kind of smoking golden walrus basking in the sun). "Stay a few more days! Who will know?"

Who? Alice would fucking know. Then the whole fucking evaluation board would know. Fuck, they would even know if I was a few minutes late, and it would be duly noted on my record, and pointed out with her pompous I-told-you-so voice that that's what you get for assigning someone to a operational task when they're not properly approved – by her and her bullshit criteria that she made up and that conveniently gave her a vice-like grip on the personnel department.

As I stroked the lovely, smooth skin of the ladies lying beside me and elicited lusty moans, it was painfully tempting to stay. It would be so easy to believe the ladies' dreamy sighs and wistful smiles were genuine, and get lost in a haze of drugs – which, in itself, was neither undesirable nor unfamiliar. I could stay, right? Get my brains fucked to nirvana and back again. Considering the last few days, I fucking should. Did I belong to them anyway? What did I owe those guys? Or was I fooling myself? Maybe there was a reason it all happened the way it did. The Powaah did move in mysterious ways... but Carla... Greido... Damn it. Don't think about it.

But, in spite of my wavering loyalty to the Rebel cause, I knew that staying was simply impractical – not on a moral level but on a financial one: I was spending the Rebellion's credit right now with every toke, sip and diddle, and lest I end up having their debt collectors come after me to settle up a mounting bill, it would be wise to move on.

"No, I do have to go," I sighed mournfully, as I reluctantly stood up to a great many sad, pouty complaints from the Twileks, to whom I promised to come back as soon as I could. All too quickly, Londo was by my side, squeezing my arm too tightly as he guided me to the door.

"If you must leave, then you must!" Londo making the well-practiced disappointed-but-that's- ok-because-I-got-your-credits-already face he gave the customers he had fleeced. "I'll show you to your shuttle."

As soon as we left the room and onto the colony's main causeway, we waded through a thick crowd of slow-moving revelers and hawkers. Judging by the dizzying array of multi-hued and multi-shaped bodies, as well as any number of unregistered weapons and any conceivable mind/mood/body altering substance completely unhidden and out in the open, I could have easily satisfied any exotically deviant desire had I lingered a bit longer.

Ordinarily in this crowd, we would have been constantly pestered by salesmen and pimps, but, with Londo's guards acting as an effective deterrent, I had the rare opportunity to walk through a market such as this and observe with comfort – which was probably how I noticed him standing in the middle of the causeway,

"Whoa! Haan is here! Hey Haan! What are you doing here!" I called out to Haan, who was just a few feet away, grinning into the distance in his particularly lackadaisical way. Strange, he wasn't answering. Could it not be him? Now, I was going to be the jerk who called out to random people. It had to be him though: the man was unmistakable with his black, half-opened vest and his ruffled hair that was always ruffled in exactly the same way. Wait a minute... Was it the lighting or did he have a weird metallic sheen around him? And he sure was standing incredibly still with the crowd moving around him...

"Oh, I see you know Haan too," Londo said wistfully, as he walked ahead and put a rather possessive hand on the incredibly life-like statue of Haan. "I guess he is pretty irresistible."

"Well, I wouldn't know..." I said uncomfortably, as I watched Londo cup his hands around Haan's statue's (statuesque) ass.

"Before he was with the Rebellion, he was with us, you know" Londo continued, as he stared longingly at the statue, making me vaguely concerned he would start rubbing himself on it or make out with it.

It was with more than a small note of bitterness that Londo explained, "He and I started this place together and made it what it was. But he wanted something bigger. He wanted more excitement. And, so he took off to build his massive business with the Rebellion."

"Oh, I see... I didn't realize..." I said tentatively, never sure what to say in these kinds of messy past lover/business partner situations that had the tendency to blow up unpredictably.

"We left on good terms, of course, it's always good to break things on good terms, right?" Londo added quickly, putting away the streak of jiltedness that had come up, and then briskly had us move along again. "It was a great loss for Cloudy City, but I got over it, and, besides, we still do good business together. Ultimately, I really wanted to celebrate his memory and my time with him, so I had a few of these carbonite statues of him made, and I put them all around the colony to remind everyone of one the founders of the place. Frankly, it's my favorite decoration here, if I do say so myself. It adds a sense of history to the place. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Uh, yeah. Absolutely," I echoed. Weird. So weird. I didn't want to think about what kind of statue of Haan the guy might have made for his private quarters, though I guessed it had particularly correct anatomical features. Creeeeeepy. I guess gold-fetish man has some unresolved issues. It was definitely a good thing I was leaving.

When we reached the landing bay, I was pleased to find that my shuttle was not only ready to go, but completely clean on the inside and out; it would have been pretty sucky to be flying around in a vomit-scented cockpit. However, now that I knew what the cargo was, I had a growing concern for my safety, since, if I was caught, the Empire had strict no-tolerance policy for smugglers that would promptly have me executed on the spot.

Pausing in front of the shuttle's cargo-trunk, I wondered how well hidden the delivery was, and, more importantly, whether it would pass an inspection test should be I stopped along the way. Was there a false compartment or something? Was it plated so the screeners won't see through it? What if they took apart the fuselage? Shit. I felt my palms moisten as I freaked myself out.

"Uh... Londo... About the delivery..." I asked nervously. "It's hidden, right? I won't be caught, right?"

"Tim! Tim! Tim!" Londo guffawed, at my complete non-joke that I wasn't too crazy about not being taken seriously. "Don't worry! You worry too much!"

"You know the Empire has the policy to shoot smugglers..." I said, still looking warily at the shuttle. Shit, this was my life we were talking about.

"Don't worry! It's taken care of!" Londo said, as he gave me two ludicrous thumbs up. "Trust me. Would I lie to you? We're professionals."

"Okay..." I gingerly accepted the delivery datapad Londo pushed into my hands.

"Ha ha ha... Look. If you must know, the shipment is perfectly legal. You're just making a medical shipment, ok? We even got rid of the smell of weed that was there before. No worries! No worries!" Londo smiled, as he firmly turned me in the direction of the shuttle door. Sensing I was slipping to his side, he sealed the deal with, "Here, take a couple of ounces for good measure. On the house."

"Well, okay, if you put it that way..."

I guess, in the end, I wasn't hard to convince. All in all, everything seemed quite good indeed with a hefty pack of weed in my pocket and a well-serviced crotch. And with that, and another set of not-to-worry thumbs-up from Londo, I was off.

CHAPTER 16

Don't worry, he said. No worries, he said. Fucking easy to say when you're not stuck in an Imperial destroyer's tractorbeam. Don't worry, my fucking ass!

All I was doing was flying as casual as I could, avoiding as many of the main shipping lanes and keeping my distance from the larger ships, when WHAM! came the inescapable military-grade tractorbeam out of nowhere. Given that there had been at least dozen space-way blocks that I'd managed to come through without incident, there was a good chance this was a routine spot-check. To be on the safe side though, I threw out all of Londo's bloody fine green weed (I have to admit I cried a little when I saw it drift off into space), aired the cockpit and applied a few good sprays of freshener to get rid of any incriminating smell.

My comm crackled with official and bored-sounding bureaucratese instructing me to shut down my engines and prepare to be boarded and thoroughly searched, including a possible dismantling of my craft and body cavity search – sorry for the inconvenience. I nearly hyperventilated, replying in my most chipper, upbeat voice and threw in an inane laughter I hoped would be interpreted as being totally unsuspicious.

As my shuttle drifted steadily closer to the gaping maw of the destroyer's holding area, I spent a few moments succumbing to my weed-fueled paranoia, imagining my guts splattered across some stormtrooper's boot and my body flung out into space. Calm down. Stay calm. CALM DOWN! Ok. Check that there's no obvious evidence of drugs. Ok. It's all gone. Really, it is. What about me? Do I look like a junkie or anything other than a perfectly ordinary, normal wholesome Imperial Citizen? Looking into the mirror to check on my eyes, I was relieved to see they didn't look any more bloodshot than someone who had stayed up too late. I started to breathe easier with the thought that I might be able to pull this off. Now, the main thing was whether I could trust that Londo's people had done their job properly.

Hearing the familiar thudding noise of the shuttle being secured, I zipped up my jacket – noting with some dismay that the vomit-stains were still there – and was about the exit the shuttle when:

"DON'T GET OUT OF THE SHUTTLE!!!!! Stay inside the shuttle! DO as you are TOLD! You are being scanned!" a rather alarming voice screamed at me through the window, as I, effectively alarmed, jumped away from the door and nearly had a seizure. There was a low-pitched thrumming and a series of pulsing, electric fields that strafed my body, which I assumed to be the scanners – which I also assumed would either render me infertile or ensure my future offspring would be mutants.

"CLEAR!" the outside voice yelled. "Come out of the shuttle now!"

"Ok! Coming out!" I called to be sure that no one would shoot me upon stepping off the shuttle.

Gathering my datapads together, I stacked them in the order that I expected them to look at, doing my best to to demonstrate my cooperation and make the inspection go easier. My shoulders hunched over in submission, I stepped out the shuttle, putting on my most ingratiating smile for the expected, distracted grey-uniformed officer with his stormtroopers milling around – but was instead rendered completely frozen (and yet again alarmed and terrified) by the barrel of blaster-rifle rammed up my nose, as a lunatic screamed at me,

"TURN AROUND! TURN AROUND! Get up against the shuttle! Move it! Spread your feet! SPPPRREEEEEAAAD THEM!!!"

I rushed to comply, but honestly, did everything need to be screamed at the top his lungs? Wouldn't it be such a nicer experience, if everyone could speak in soft, dulcet tones, like that of patient receptionist? Maybe they could even try signing or semaphore for a day and see how nice the silence would be – instead of getting all upitty and riled up; really, it seemed as if the more they yelled the more agitated they became.

I had to say though, the yelling guy who seemed to be in charge was probably the most pointlessly aggressive officer I'd ever met, almost to the point of being humorous. As I thought of it, I could feel the giggles coming up... Oh, crap. I was still high. This was definitely not the time to take anything lightly, let alone giggle stupidly. With the effects of the weed still mercilessly tickling me, I struggled to keep a straight face throughout the absurdity of it all. It was thus a strange thing to be relieved to have my face smashed against the shuttle, as it made not laughing a lot easier.

After a rough pat-down that thankfully didn't involve any of my clothes being a removed, a jittery hand twirled me around, and I was suddenly facing a wild-eyed, unshaven psycho, who had apparently missed a few steps on the evolutionary rungs to civilization. Peering angrily into my eyes with a feral, unhinged look, he practically barked at me,

"Where's the stash! WHERE IS IT! Tell me now, you hippie! I know you have it! You're the type to have it, you damned fucking liberal. I can SMELL it on you! WHERE'S THE STASH!!!"

"Sir, there's nothing. I don't have anything," I protested weakly, trying to calm him down, and using all my mental strength to keep myself from smirking at how completely hysterical this guy was (curse these fucking giggles). Was this guy for real? Was he even legit? The guy didn't look like a stormtrooper or officer. Instead of the usual plasticky white, the weirdo's loose-fitting body armor was a dusty-green that had a make-shift, hand-made look to it that was accentuated by the rocket launcher strapped onto his back that probably didn't even work.

"DON'T YOU LIE TO ME!!!!" the grizzled whack-job shrilled, his acrid, booze-tinged breath blazing in my face, causing my nose hairs to shrivel. "I know you have it! I'll fucking BEAT the shit out of you! TELL ME WHERE YOU'RE HIDING IT! Where is it? Where is it!!!"

"That's enough, Mr. Fet!" a deep gravely voice boomed, bringing an end to the screaming. "I know this man. I will deal with him personally. You can inspect the shuttle."

"Yes, my Lord," the formerly screaming guy grumbled, reluctantly letting me go and turning away – but not without casting me the I'm-watching-you stink-eye.

As I unkinked my body from being shoved up against the shuttle, a mechanical sweep of dark foreboding movement came before me. Looking up, I froze.

"Hello, Tim. No noodles this time, I trust?"

"No, Lord Vadah," I gasped, straightening myself for a chest-bong salute.

There was a raspy chuckle through his respirator, as Vadah responded with a lazy wave and answered, "No need to salute me, Tim. Since you've been discharged, you're free from doing that, aren't you? And, 'sir' is fine."

"Yes, sir!" I said, ram-rod straight, not daring to look him in the eye.

"Sorry about Fet. The Empire has been short-staffed lately, so we've enlisted some of the local officials to help out on bounty-basis for the smugglers they find. They tend to get the job done, but they're a bit hard to control," Vadah explained apologetically.

"Yes, sir," I answered promptly, expecting my death any moment.

"Take it easy, Tim," Vadah said gently, putting his heavy robotic hand on my shoulder. "I know you've been through a lot. I'm curious to know how you've been."

And, as my shuttle was ransacked and mechanically violated and probed over and over again in an effort to determine if I should be executed (with an apparent preference for a "yes"), I had a rather pleasant conversation catching up with the dreaded Dorth Vadah. Initially, it was hard to match my image of the guy being a singular force of Terror and Evil in the galaxy to his being actually fairly friendly and a good conversationalist. I figured either this was a very clever trick or he was very bored, but the truth of it was that, at this point, I had nothing to lose.

So, I found myself freely chatting to him about my time after being "discharged" (thanks, Jim!) from the treatment center on Tattoo-ine and my new life (and my cover story) as a delivery man – obviously leaving out the parts about the Rebellion. Rather surprisingly, he was understanding about my leaving the Service, and even sympathetic,

"Yeah, I don't blame you for leaving, Tim," Vadah exhaled a sonorous breath through his respirator. "The Service is in desperate need of reform. I've told the Emperor so many times that you guys aren't just mindless clones and need to be treated as individuals. But, even he can only do so much with the Senate having a stranglehold on the budget. We can only hope that with the mid-term elections something will change, but I doubt it."

"You can always quit too, I guess," I joked weakly, imagining the Emperor's most feared enforcer deciding to check out and tell the galaxy to screw itself and start a solitary life farming on an isolated planet somewhere.

"Ha! If only I could. You have no idea what hold the Emperor has over me," the dark lord grimaced, as he shook his head. "And now with the Rebellion getting worse and their drug-running expanding, it's just going to get more difficult and busier. No way I can retire any time soon."

"The Rebellion runs drugs?" I said innocently, feeling my smirk lifting the corners of my mouth, but kept it down by manufacturing an appropriate amount of conservative, family-values shock and indignation. "That's shocking! Have they been running weed?"

"Yes, but if it were only that, it wouldn't be so bad. I'd be a hypocrite to claim that I didn't partake in a little harmless toking in my youth," Vadah said rolling his eyes, as I nearly collapsed into peals of laughter at my image of a lounging Vadah, getting high off a bubbling hookah funneling into his blinking chest-panel. "A few years ago, they were harmless and were a minor weed-advocacy group. But now! They all but control the drug cartel in the Empire and have enough fire-power to take down the most powerful battlestation in the galaxy. With their newfound power, they've started dealing not only weed, but sythetic crystals, and all the opiates you can think of – all in the name of righteous "Rebellion." Damned drug war will destroy us."

"Oh," I mumbled, though I was surprised to find that I wasn't surprised; the weed was probably numbing my reaction.

"Could you believe my son joined the Rebels? My own son!" Vadah said, his hand wapping his forehead in disbelief as he shook his head. "You know? I'll admit that a lot of it was my fault. I wasn't there much when he was growing up, but, after his mom died, I had work to do and an Empire to clean up."

"I'm sorry to hear that, my Lord," I empathized, feeling a massive sense of awkwardness as the conversation switched too quickly to Vadah's emotive sharing.

"The Service didn't have child-support then, so I had to leave him with his uncle to care for him on his farm," Vadah continued with a sigh of regret. "I know it couldn't have been easy. His uncle is a stern man and wouldn't have given him much caring at a time he must have needed after his mother died. I'd told myself it would build character, and he'd appreciate it... But, I guess ultimately I didn't give him enough attention."

Seeming to forget I was there, there was a silence as Vadah whispered to himself sadly, "When will you come back to me? When you will recognize me as your father again, Louke?"

Noooooooooooo! Holy shit! Vadah is Louke's dad? Now that's wild! In a strange, fucked up, possibly even poetic way, it made sense when I looked deep into my heart. Could this whole Rebellion thing be a complex expression of Louke's acting out and a lack of affection when he was young? Louke did say that he had been abused when he was young. Wow, and I thought I would benefit from therapy. These guys' issues have fucked up a whole galaxy!

"Sorry for mentioning that, Tim. I don't mean to unload my problems on you," Vadah said, suppressing a mechanical sniffle.

"Not at all, my Lord. I do sincerely hope that you will speak to your son soon," I replied. Did that just happen? Was I just the confidant of the most terrifying man in the Empire?

"Thanks, Tim. I appreciate the thought," Vadah said, giving my shoulder a firm squeeze.

Thankfully, I was spared any further over-sharing, when a rush of aggressively over-compensating masculinity interrupted us with,

"Lord Vadah, sir!" Fet barked hoarsely. "We have completed the inspection, and I have reason to believe this man is a smuggler!"

Fet grinned maliciously, relishing my visible reaction as I widened my eyes in shock and visibly tensed my whole body – which also included my not as visible reaction of my balls shriveling into minuscule berries and attempting to re-ascend into the safety of my body. I wracked my brain for something sensible to say, but was hampered from constructive thought by the characteristic buzzing of Fet's blaster rifle charging up, as he pointed it into my chest and said, "I can shoot right now, my Lord."

...ohshitohshitohshitohshit...

"Wait a minute, Fet," Vadah said, mercifully stopping the madness, as he pushed down Fet's rifle. "What evidence did you find, exactly?"

"Well, my Lord Vadah... We didn't find any contraband," Fet admitted reluctantly, but quickly added, "But we did find medical grade-opiates in his cargo..."

"And are his documents in order?" Vadah asked.

...ohpleaseLandoohpleaseLandotellmeyoudidyourjobtellmeyoudidyourjobohpleaseLando...

"Yes, my Lord, he is registered as a legal opiate transporter, but... but..." Fet struggled to find the words, as Vadah watched him patiently with an eyebrow cocked – and I suppressed the urge to hoot, 'In your face you gun-nut asshole!!!'

Unable to endure his unconsummated bloodlust, Fet exploded, glaring angrily: "But! I still suspect he may be associated with the Rebels. His flight log shows that he recently came from Hawth and the mining colony on Cloudy City, which are both suspected to be..."

"Yes, yes. I know the stories. I am scheduled to inspect those places in due course. Thank you, Fet. Good work," Vadah cut, dismissing Fet with a wave, but noticing the weirdo was still there, staring at me, as if he were ready to pounce, Vadah raised an eyebrow, asking, "Anything else?"

"No, my Lord," Fet replied, looking at me murderously. "These liberal hippies will be the destruction of our family values. I know this one is in on it, if you'll let me..."

"Enough. enough, Fet," Vadah groaned tiredly at the conservative propaganda he'd proabably heard a million times, and might even had had a hand in approving them. "I'll find something for you to hunt soon."

"Yes, Lord Vadah," Fet said leaving grudgingly, but not before jabbing an index in my face that screamed 'J'accuse!!!'

Watching the glorified bounty-hunter leave, Vadah shook his head, "I swear, the reforms can't come soon enough to the Service." Handing me my approved datapad, Vadah smiled, "If you ever feel ready, Tim. We could use a good man like you back in the Service."

"Uh... I..." I stammered.

"Not now. Just think about it, Tim," Vadah said, pausing my words with a patient, understanding hand. "I see you're headed to make a medical shipment."

"Yes, my Lord," I answered, walking to the shuttle as quickly as could, eager to be on my way and to end this strange encounter. "My next stop is Daggobah."

"I've been there once, long ago. Swampy place. Don't get stung. The bugs there are huge."
CHAPTER 17

It was a five hour flight to Daggobah at the fastest speed I could muster out of the shuttle, but it was still not long enough to process the surrealness of the last few days – nor, very frustratingly, short enough to make my delivery on time. I was at least grateful that I had a pretty good reason for my tardiness, and even made sure to keep the official Imperial "inspected" seals on my delivery datapad. However, as I breached the planet's thick clouds and barreled down to the surface, I could make a out a solitary figure in the landing area, standing arms crossed and probably tapping their feet with impatience. Come on! I was only a few hours behind! Surely, that wasn't that bad?

Rushing the landing sequence as quickly as safety would permit, I leapt out of the shuttle. Almost immediately, I was covered in a thin film of sweat, courtesy of the sweltering, damp heat of the planet. My datapad in hand, I had all my explanations set to go, but my brain chose that rather impractical moment to go to mush as it registered the sight of the "person" waiting for me. I was only able to squeak out,

"Dee-Three-Pee-Oh?"

"Doctor Dee-Three-Pee-Oh," corrected the unmistakably haughty voice of the brass-coated protocol droid, as its flat, unyielding visual receptors scanned me, recording everything for its report. "Delivery-man Tim, You are two hours, thirty three minutes and twenty-six seconds late. Were you not made aware that this delivery was time-sensitive?"

"Yeah, look... I came as fast I could... I was stopped by an Imperial inspection," I replied handing over my delivery datapad, bracing myself to be upbraided and reprimanded. Sure enough,

"I see," the droid said, after a moment inspecting the Imperial seals on my documents that included a brief flashing of its eyes as it copied them into its records. "Nevertheless, according to Rule 68 slash B subsection 5, entitled 'Commitment to Effective Time Management Strategies' you should have accounted for the possibility of being stopped and adjusted your departure accordingly."

"Yeah, well, I did my best," I muttered, giving up on all my well-crafted excuses; assuming this really was Dee-Three-Pee-Oh or one of its copies, it would futile attempting to reason with the damned droid and its inflexible list of rules and regulations.

"I have made a note of what happened, and your record will reflect your lateness and lack of foresight for your next review," the droid announced. Yeah, whatever. At least, it didn't seem to recognize me, which was definitely a good thing, as it would have gotten its wiring into an infuriatingly sanctimonious knot and lectured me about my record from the Deeeeath Star to "make a heuristic and constructive point."

Sucking back all the words that would have landed me into more trouble, I turned to get back on the shuttle, thinking of finding a nice quiet planet filled with bars and easy women, but the fucking droid wasn't done with me. Motioning with one of its arms, the droid pointed to the shuttle, saying, "Delivery-man Tim, I am requisitioning your aid in carrying this delivery into the facility. While your compliance is optional, it will be duly noted on your record."

I was so very tempted to flick the bastard off, but, figuring some easy brownie points could always come in handy, I headed over to the cargo-hold, grumbling, "Yeah, fine."

With the droid stacking boxes on my arms with brisk, eerily familiar movements, I couldn't help but wonder if it was the same droid I'd known that was somehow recovered and reconstructed for the Rebellion. I knew I should have let it go, and try to get this done as quickly as possible, but, considering the wacky events of the last few days that effectively made anything possible, I felt my grasp on reality was dependent on my asking:

"Dee-Three... Uh, Doctor. This may be a strange question, but were you on the Deeeeath Star? It's just that I knew a droid who looks exactly like you..."

"Please secure those packages, Delivery-man Tim," Dee-Three-Pee-Oh criticized yet again, before answering, "No, I have not been to the Deeeeath Star. However, another of the Dee-Three-Pee-Oh models may have been there. I would be happy to verify. Accessing datasphere..."

"No no no! That's not necessary!"

"Indeed, a Dee-Three-Pee-Oh was on the battlestation designated as 'Deeeeath Star' with the status as Head Chef. That instance of Dee-Three-Pee-Oh was unfortunately destroyed. We Dee-Three-Pee-Oh's mourned that day," the droid announced with a static note of sadness. "I am pleased to note that it had uploaded its core to the datasphere prior to termination. I can download its personality so you can speak with it if you wish."

"No!" I said quickly; at least with this version of Dee-Three-Pee-Oh, I had a slightly cleaner slate. "I mean... No, thank you, doctor. It would be better to respect its service by letting it rest."

"Understood. Very admirable," the droid blipped approvingly, as it lead me through a series of pressurized doors into the main building.

The place was all of what you'd expect of a medical facility with its uniform greenish-white walls, starkly-lit halls, assortment of gurneys and unavoidable smells of disinfectant. What was the catch though? Wasn't this a front like Cloudy City? I strained my eyes peering at the corners and walls, looking for tell-tale signs of secret passage-ways or holo-barriers masking the house of revelry or den of sin that, to be honest, I wouldn't have minded taking part in. Yet, it seemed the real deal. Everyone there very much seemed like they were doing the standard medical, clinical-type things, like tending to patients and carrying trays of pills and syringes.

"This way, Tim," Dee-Three-Pee-Oh motioned impatiently through a door it was holding open with an extended leg attachment. "Due to your lateness, we are not able to follow protocol and head to the pharmacy. Instead, we will have to go directly to the patients requiring their doses"

Obediently following the droid's clackity-steps, I shuffled through the door with my armload of morphine, and stepped into a patient hall divided into twenty-odd semi-private areas by a series of curtains. The droid motioned for me to set my packages on an empty gurney and called out,

"Nurse, come and help me. I have the morphine. Begin administering 10cc to everyone here, and continue with another 5cc every two hours."

There was a rustling of movement from one of the beds, and a tired voice replied as it emerged from behind one of the curtains, "Yes, doctor, but I'm not sure all of them need it."

"Nurse Sally, this is a previously resolved discussion..." the doctor began officiously.

"Tim!" Sally yelled out as soon as she saw me, and ran to hug me.

"Sally!" I answered, my spirits raising and finding myself comforted by the familiar face and the feel of Sally's embrace. I hadn't seen her since we'd been freed from Jubba's slave pits, and I was happy to see that her hair had grown back and her scars had faded to thin pink lines on her face and arms.

"What are you doing here? I thought you were on Hawth!" Sally asked, the rigid Dee-Three-Pee-Oh forgotten, as she held me at arm's length to look at me.

"I'm running deliveries now! I was made operational!" I said summoning the pride that lacked the vividness it should have had. "I didn't realize you were here. What are you doing here?"

"That's so great for you!" Sally beamed. "Well, I'm a nurse here and I..."

"Nurse Sally, if you wouldn't mind continuing your duties," Dee-Three-Pee-Oh buzzed impatiently. "Had I realized this man would have been a distraction I wouldn't have brought him."

"Yes, doctor," Sally replied, pushing me gently aside and motioning not to get involved. "But as I said, I don't think some of them should be continuing with their course of morphine."

"Nurse, my records note that this question has already addressed three days ago, and I have given you a satisfactory response that has also been logged," Doctor Dee-Three-Pee-Oh said, emphasizing its pronunciation of "nurse."

"Doctor, please listen to me. I've been treating these people for months, and I'm pretty sure they don't need painkillers any more," Sally said, her frustration mounting. "Take Ben Kenobei for example. He doesn't need it. And, at this point, all we're doing is..."

"Wow! Ben Kenobei? The Ben Kenobei? He's alive? He's here?" I cried out, unable to resist being star-struck by the teacher, the inspiration, the hero Louke had talked about so frequently. I was going to ask more about him, but I was silenced by Sally's glare of death.

"Nurse, as the Doctor of this facility," the droid snipped, taking a step close to tower over Sally in both height and status. "I make the final decisions on the treatment of the patients in our care."

"But it makes no sense! I'm telling you that..." Sally said making another ill-fated attempt to be heard.

"Nurse Sally!" the mechanical voice lifted a few decibels and silenced Sally, as the droid switched sharply into its "strong manager" mode. "Administer the treatment I have prescribed or I will find someone who will."

"Yes, doctor," Sally replied through her gritted teeth.

Satisfied that the lines of its pre-programmed org-chart had been made clear, the droid blipped contentedly, and whirled around to stomp off to its other patients. It felt like an impossibly long period of watching Sally assemble the series of morphine hypos and my feeling like a royal dick, before I bashfully touched Sally on the shoulder, and said,

"Sorry about that Sally. I shouldn't have said anything..."

"Damn right," Sally growled angrily, without bothering to cast me a glance.

Shit. I couldn't think of anything to say that could make the situation better – and I really did want to make it better, to hug her, to tell her that I believed what she said, not that fucking droid, and, hell yeah, let's go tell that fucking machine to fuck off. Instead, I said miserably,

"Sorry. I should go. It was nice to see you."

Turning away, I headed to the door my tail between my legs, but Sally snared my elbow and sighed, looking at me with tired, lined eyes, "No, stay. I don't want you to go. I haven't seen a friendly face in a long time. Sorry about being testy. It's been frustrating working here sometimes."

"I know what you mean," I said, surprised but very happy at her request – surprised too at how soothing it was to have her touch rest on my arm.

"I finish in twenty minutes. Do you have to leave soon?" Sally asked, as she smiled with a warming honesty and sincerity I hadn't felt in some time.

"No, of course not! I'd be happy to hang out," I said happily returning her smile.

"In that case, you can help me load these hypos and I can start giving the injections sooner," Sally said, sliding next to me and taking my hands in hers to show me how to pop morphine capsules into the injectors. Looking at me with a twinkling in her eyes, she teased, "Hopefully, you're better at this than your weeding."

"What? My weeding was great," I replied indignantly, relieved as the tension dissolved into more comfortable territory. "The tools you gave us never worked properly."

"Don't blame the tools, if you can't admit that could never figure them out."

"Whatever. I was the best at using the tools you gave us."

"To kill the plants, you mean?"

"Don't get on me about the delicatas again. I swear, that was an accident."

"Bullshit, you hated cooking with them. I know you did it on purpose..."

With our teasing and happy reminiscing about our times at the Center, I doubt that we went any faster than if Sally had loaded the hypos herself. Just for the record, we'd never been a "thing" back in the day at the Center; but now, after all the bullshit and insanity, seeing a familiar, friendly and safe face, I felt a sudden and urgent desire for intimacy. Though I tried to deny it later, my chest was engulfed with an irrespressible urge to tell her everything and share everything that I'd hidden from everyone and myself – and I was surprised and relieved when I found that Sally felt the same.

Considering the task, we stood unnecessarily close, and touched each other unnecessarily frequently, as our pleasant chatting grew to flirting and comfortable silences. Clearly, there were other priorities at play besides time and efficiency. In the end, finding comfort in each other and in the familiarity of our experiences and pains was our unspoken priority – which made the inevitable flow of events of our "hanging out" not at all unambiguous. Interestingly, there was nothing really about her physically that made her attractive to me – and I suspected the same could be said for her about me. Looking at it from the outside, it was, admittedly, pathetic: two broken, fucked up people drifting to together and fucking our sorrows away.

Afterwards, as we lay there chatting – Sally with a leg draped over me, while I had my arm around her waist, holding her tight – I realized that I finally felt an easing of the throbbing pains of my shattered mind. Nothing in particular had happened: we'd chatted and had a spin in the sack, of course, but there were no tears, no break-downs and not even any substance abuse of any kind. Perhaps, simply no longer having the need to "keep it together" or to hide our festering wounds were in themselves healing. In the comfort of our shared traumas, my nightmares and my crippling fear of my nightmares felt comfortingly distant and manageable.

I impulsively kissed Sally in mid-sentence, causing her to accuse me of not listening to her – which was true, but I did want to kiss her, and we did start to making out again. Somewhat inappropriately though, I remembered something from earlier that I'd wanted to get back to, so I interrupted our kissing to ask,

"Hey, is it true? Is Ben Kenobei here?"

I received a smack in the chest in response followed by, "Hey, assshole, you're stopping a kiss to ask about an old bastard?"

She had an excellent point, but, as I held her hand to stop her from whacking me any further, I replied, "The guy's a fucking legend. Can't blame for wanting to meet him. So is it true? Is he here? I thought he had passed into the Powaah or something."

Covering her hand with her eyes, Sally groaned, "Yeah, he's here. He's alive. Sometimes I wish the guy would have passed into the Powaah though. I guess you want to meet him, huh?"

"Of course!"

"Alright, I'll see what I can do," Sally grumbled.

"Yes! Thank you!" I replied excitedly, as I leaned in to pick up where we left off. But, pushing me back, Sally looked away and said,

"You know, he isn't like the stories. He isn't as great as they say."

"That's not that surprising to me, I guess, but I'd still like to..."

"In fact, most of this place isn't as great as I thought," Sally said bitterly. Thinking I'd pissed her off somehow, I started moving away to a safer distance, but she drew in closer and squeezed my hand. "I thought I came here to treat Rebel soldiers and help them recover – and I guess we are, but I didn't expect..."

I stiffened, as I braced myself to hear even worse than what I've seen already. What was it this time? Child slavery? Organ harvesting? I wasn't sure I could take any more. I relaxed when Sally said, "I didn't expect they'd be running an opiate black market here."

"Is that it?" I said, laughing in relief. Ok. Now I knew what they were doing on the side at the facility; nothing as dramatic as Cloudy City, but it did fit the general picture. "What do you think I was delivering before I came here? I'd just finished dropping off a huge shipment of weed! I figured there might be something worse like child-slavery or organ harvesting or something."

"What? They run weed too?" Sally said, sitting up and looking at me.

It was my turn to look away this time in embarrassment, as unresolved thoughts returned to me, "Yeah, I think that's it though, but I don't know for sure..."

"I guess weed isn't really illegal," Sally said tentatively, as we both rationalized what we'd learned against our will.

"I figured that the Rebellion needs to fund itself somehow," I repeated to myself.

"Yeah, I suppose," Sally's hollow voice replied.

Unable to muster the right words or thoughts, we tried to find solace in holding each other tighter. None of it sat well, but neither of us were willing to mention – or, more pointedly, to deal with our disillusion and feelings of betrayal. And yet... and yet, we both knew we were only delaying admitting the truth to ourselves. It was a matter of time before casual fucking or mind-jumbling substance abuse would no longer be effective and we would crack. To be honest, if you haven't already guessed, I was pretty fucking close to that already.

I blurted out, "Let's run away, Sally. Start a new life somewhere."

"Yeah? Where to, Tim?" Sally answered, looking at me with amusement.

"Y'know. Planet Somewhere or planet Anywhere," I sighed and closed my eyes.

"They sound like nice places," Sally said, laying her head on my chest. "What would we do though?"

"Dunno, maybe start a spiritual Center. How about that?"

"Oh, fuck me!"

"One without bullshit."

"Well, in that case, I'm in."

We enjoyed the fantasy in silence, hugging each other sadly, knowing it was unlikely the Rebellion would let us go easily – not without a lobotomy which wasn't looking all that terrible right now. Run as we might though, we'd done too much, seen too much, been complicit in too much to feel as if we could be free of anything. Ultimately, the only escape was death or drugs. Speaking of which, I asked,

"Hey, do you have any weed? I could use a puff."

"Yeah. Good idea. I have my stash in my purse. Can you grab it from the closet? I'll get some papers." Sally replied, pointing in the general direction of her closet, as she got up to rummage in her night table.

"Sure, no probs," I said, getting up as well.

After untangling myself from the snarl of our clothes in our floor, I made my way to the closet, which positively exploded when I opened it and a mess of clothes tumbled out. Aw, crap. How the hell, am I supposed to find it now?

"Purse, purse, purse," I muttered to myself, rummaging around the pile of clothing. Obviously, Sally wasn't the most orderly of people; though, to be fair, her room was more like a glorified utility closet.

"Sorry, it's a mess there," Sally said. "Do you see it?"

"Not yet. What's it look like?"

"It's black with stripes on it. Need help?"

"No, no. I got it. Wait a minute..." I answered amidst the mess I'd made, realizing that I probably should have started out more systematically. Damn it, how difficult can it be to find a fucking purse?

I was about to give up and ask Sally to look for her damned purse, when something sparkly caught my eye. Breathing became difficult, as memories surged back to me and I felt my fingers spasm as they attempted to repeat motions they'd done millions of times under the threat of being whipped or beaten. I somehow found the courage to pick up the cheap, tacky purse.

"No, not that one, Tim. That's a shitty one management gives out to us as gifts," Sally said, glancing back at me.

"This purse, Sally...." I said quietly, holding the gawdy piece of crap.

"No, the other one, Tim. The black one? You see it?" Sally repeated.

"This purse..." I said, feeling a long suppressed anger rise, as my hands clenched tighter around the thing. It took all my strength to resist tearing it apart and screaming at the top of my lungs.

"The other one, Tim. It's okay, I see it..." Sally said, coming over to me.

"Sally," I managed to say through a strangled voice, as I held out the crystal-studded purse to her. "This purse. I made it. I made thousands like these in Jubba's pits."

CHAPTER 18

The more we looked, the more we found Jubba's shit everywhere. Once we knew what to look for – and we'd gone into a full-blown frenzy upturning everything – we found the faint "JHS" monogram printed on a tag or imprinted somewhere innocuous. The fucking cups we drank from, the fucking chairs we sat on, the fucking datapads we worked on, most of the fucking clothes strewn across Sally's floor, even her fucking nurse scrubs, the fucking shoes, the fucking lamps, the fucking clocks, and even the fucking bed we'd fucked on. All of it was Jubba's and all of it came from the slave pits. Fucking hell.

Sitting in the wreckage of her room, unable to touch or look at anything around us, we inevitably questioned our sanity: what if "JHS" stood for something else? Maybe something Powaah-related or inspirational like "Joyous Happy Saints," or something nonsensical and safely meaningless like "Jumping Heirloom Savories"? What if the purse had been some twisted coincidence? What if we'd just destroyed her room like a couple crazy people? Hahahaha... Upon closer scrutiny, we couldn't see any visible writing on any of the tags or Jubba's actual name anywhere, so, with a few nervous laughs, we'd calmed ourselves down.

But, just as we were about to clean her room up and chalk the mess up to our paranoia, I accidentally squeezed one of the tags, causing it to light up up and activate a cheap blueish-white holo-recording. Though the holo was no larger than my hand, we could easily identify the cheerfully waving figure of a grotesquely corpulent man reclining on a rattan beach chair in front of a thatch hut – The Hut, presumably, where Jubba had legendarily (so the press claimed) started his first business that eventually became his massive, all-encompassing empire of shitty stuff. A heavy, basso voice could be heard from the holo, as Jubba laughed and drawled,

"Huh... huh... huh... huh! Thank you for purchasing a fine product from Jubba's Hut of Stuff, where quality meets affordability! Huh.... huh... huh... huh!"

It was a fucking outrage. What the fuck was the Rebellion doing supporting a barbaric corporation like Jubba's? Haven't there been enough people like Sally and I who have survived and escaped the horrors of their slavery? Haven't there been enough reports and exposés and even two full-length documentaries detailing their rights abuses, exploitative practices, destruction of minority species and desecration of countless planetary ecologies? This is a Rebel facility for fuck's sake! We should be fighting against evil like Jubba's, not to mention boycotting their goods at the very least. It was outrageous. Outrageous! FUCKING OUTRAGEOUS!!!

We burst into patient hall, screaming and hollering, demanding to speak to Dee-Three-Pee-Oh about the facility's completely unacceptable and unethical purchasing practices. Disheveled and somewhat on the crazed side, Sally yelled at the droid, as I stood silently behind her, having decided that given my past history with Dee-Three-Pee-Oh (and also that my mental state wasn't entirely suited for making an argument (though I wasn't too sure about Sally either...)), it would be best if I took on the role as the strong silent-type, standing in solidarity and demonstrating my outrage through my frowning and crossed arms.

"It's an outrage! An outrage! It's everywhere! Even HERE!" Sally said, ramming a hypo into Dee-Three-Pee-Oh's face and pointing at the JHS logo on it.

"Nurse Sally, that is indeed a hypo-injector, what is your grievance with it?" the droid buzzed calmly, as it assessed the situation of having two angry flesh-beings in front of it. "You appear to be in need of sedation..."

"This... All of it... Everything here was made by Jubba's corporation. Everything is a product of slave labor. We can't have this here! It is unacceptable!" Sally screamed.

"Nurse Sally, your complaints have been registered and will be duly investigated," the droid said, holding out a placating arm, as the other was cocked behind its back and holding a hypo-injector that I guessed Dee-Three-Pee-Oh was calculating if it had enough morphine to use on the two of us.

"Don't you brush this under the rug, you fucking machine! I demand that the purchases from Jubba's corporation be stopped immediately!" Sally shrieked, thrusting her index angrily in front of Dee-Three-Pee-Oh's lifeless eyes.

"Nurse Sally, may I remind you that you are being demeaning. I am not merely a machine, I am a droid..." the machine said, attempting to shift the focus on to Sally.

"The fuck you are! If you were more than a machine, you'd know how disgusting of a company Jubba's is," Sally spat, and then pleaded, "At the very least, we should stop buying from them! Find another supplier!"

"Nurse Sally, Jubba's Hut of Medical Supplies is a reliable and affordable source of supplies for this facility. The financial considerations..." Dee-Three-Pee-Oh explained.

"Fuck that! Purchasing from Jubba's is against the facility's charter of ethics!" Sally threw what was certainly her strongest card. With a charge like that, Dee-Three-Pee-Oh had to take it seriously or face the facility's board members.

"Jubba's Hut of Stuff Incorporated is a respectable company..." the droid said, repeating the company line.

"Bullshit! Jubba's is slave company!" Sally said, inching closer to Dee-Three-Pee-Oh, and progressively pinning the droid against the wall, making me nervous with the vivid moment of deja-vu.

"Nurse. You are mistaken. As a Doctor, I am trained to critically analyze the legitimacy of reports and studies, and the ones you mention have never been proven," Dee-Three-Pee-Oh said, attempting to gain the upper-hand through condescension.

"Never been proven?? Are you crazy? How many people have told you about our experiences? How can you deny that?"

"I have verified the datasphere, and reliable sources have assessed that their practices are sound and ethical."

"Those are the company's bullshit reports you're reading!"

"They are from independent agencies..."

"You stupid fucking machine! I was there! We were fucking there! We were Jubba's slaves!" Sally screeched in exasperation, bursting into tears and slamming her fist on a trolley-full of hypo-injectors and spilling them onto the floor.

I tried pulling her away, but Sally refused to be touched, and I watched helplessly, as she began stomping and crushing the hypos with a maniacal look of vengeful satisfaction. From the corner of eye though, I spotted Dee-Three-Pee-Oh approaching Sally slowly, almost as if it was going to console her – but then, an electric alarm coursed through me, as I noticed the hypo in the droid's hand. Oh, no! It was going to sedate Sally! I had to stop it! Throwing myself at the droid, I yelled,

"You get away from her, you bastard!" I pushed the the droid away from Sally, while also knocking the hypo from its hand.

A whole lot of yelling and arm-waving followed, much of it mine and Sally's, as our hope that our complaint about a violation of ethics would result in fundamental change degenerated into a series of shoving and cursing. Admittedly, given our agitation, we should have anticipated that we weren't going to make the best case.

"Unhand me! You are in violation of Protocol 2 slash 6..."

"Stop the purchases! Stop them now!"

"...entitled 'Healthy Staff Relations and Constructive Dialogue..."

"They're slavers! It's completely unacceptable to be buying from them."

"Cease and desist you activity! You are disrupting the efficiency of..."

"Never! We demand justice! We demand to be heard!"

A voice finally managed to pierce our wild brouhaha with, "Hey! Hey! HEY! Knock it off! Let the damned droid gimme my morphine!"

Turning around to curse the interrupting person, I instead gaped in awe and said, "Kenobei? Ben Kenobei?"

"Yeah, I'll be your fucking mother too, if you shaddup and gimme my morphine," growled a frail, grey-bearded man from the bed across from us. With the tubes and blinking machines attached to him, it was hard to tell for sure, but it had to him! Who else had his famous all-knowing and patient eyes. "What the fuck is hold-up here? Dee-Three-Pee-Oh, get over here!"

"I am coming, Patient Kenobei. There has been an unforeseen delay," the droid doctor answered immediately, as it shoved the two of us aside and headed towards Ben with a hypo that had survived Sally's wrath. "I will call security, and all will return to normal soon."

"It goddamned better," snarled the old man, sinking back into his bed. As I stared at the wasted husk of a man, I wondered if this really was the man Louke had talked about; the man Louke had described was a noble, wise man who commanded respect with his very presence – not this mockery of a man with matted, unkept hair who, "Keeeuh! Keuuh! Keeeuuuuh! Rrrraaachtttt... ptuuuh! What're you looking at boy?"

I took a step away from the disgusting man's phlegm that had landed too close to my feet, and shook my head, "You can't be Ben Kenobei."

"What the fuck would you know, delivery-boy?" the man sneered, lifting his sleeve to bare a bony shoulder for his much craved shot.

My face reddened, as I replied, "I know Louke Skywalker himself! I knew him on Tattoo-ine and served with on Hawth! Ben Kenobei is a noble person! He's a wise man who..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah... I heard the bullshit stories too. I fucking made 'em up," the whithered man snickered, relaxing now as the morphine took effect. "Who the fuck do you think came up with the idea to use a fucking bullshit Powaah cult as a front? Even got Solo in on the show."

"Haan? Haan Solo? You know Haan? That's fucking bullshit!" I sputtered at the thought, as I watched Dee-Three-Pee-Oh leave the patient hall. The droid was probably getting the guards, which meant Sally and I should be leaving too, but I felt compelled to refute what the old man had to say.

"Fuck you, boy," the old man said defiantly. "I was the one who started the whole organization. I found all the contacts and made all the money to start it up. I brought 'em together. I was the one who recruited Louke to the Rebellion and introduced him to Solo. Do you think that lick-spittle shit Louke could have built a narcotic cartel and start a war alone? I was the brilliant one who started it all. War and drugs. Best way to make money."

A hand gripped my arm tightly, as I listened to the madness the old man was spouting. I vaguely heard Sally's voice asking, "What did he say?" but I was too focused on the words that kept spilling out,

"That Louke's a traitorous fucker. Got rid of me, soon as he had a chance," Kenobei laughed mirthlessly. "Just didn't have the balls to kill me outright so he threw me aside to this shit-hole planet and drugged me up so I won't be a problem. Fucking regime change. Got rid of all the people who used to at the head of the organization. Just like poor Yodda. An overdose gave the guy a stroke and now he can't even talk right any more. Right, Yodda?"

An high-pitched, trilling voice answered from a shriveled midget of a man lying on the bed beside us, "Morphine there not be! Where be the fucking droid? Pleased I am not! Pleased I am not!"

"It's coming, it's coming. Don't worry, Yodda. They won't want us talking for long," Kenobei said, placating the delusional midget, who bore a sickly shade of pale green. Similar grumbling and complaining could be heard as the other patients' morphine wore off. "Louke told 'em to keep us high so we won't be able to say or do a thing. Guess I should thank you for my first moment of lucidity in a year."

"You're fucking lying," I whispered.

"No, I ain't. You wanna to know why there's so much of Jubba's shit here?" Kenobei said pointing at Sally now with a gnarled finger. I felt her stiffen by my side. "How do you get blind 'soldiers' who kill themselves doing what you say? You give 'em a cause like the Powaah, right? Sure, that's the easy part. But you gotta make 'em fanatics to make 'em real loyal. So what do you do? Make 'em suffer together, make 'em go through something horrible, make 'em do something together that's insanely awful. Who'd you kill? Anyone good? Sometimes they have them torture some loser, but you don't seem the type. Usually they target some loser fucking alien no one will care about. It's only after that and only then, come in and save them. Feed 'em the Powaah then and they'll follow you like dogs and even thank you for it. Ooooo, Rebellion! Thank you! Ooooo, thank you so much! Let me fight for you! Ooooooo! That was my idea, boy! I set up the deal with Jubba!"

"Let's get out of here," I said to Sally, trying to turn us both away, but neither of us budged when Ben continued taunting us with,

"I'll bet stormtroopers brought you in to Jubba, right? Who do you think tipped them off? Shit, Louke and his gang got the Empire to bring you guys to Jubba so they can be the "saviors" to pull you out," Kenobei snickered. "It's a great fucking deal: Jubba gets free slaves, and then, when they become useless, Louke or Haan or whoever comes in and collects a whole bunch of dedicated soldiers all rip-raring to fight against the Empire. So, of course, the Rebellion would keep a contract with Jubba. He's our best business partner!"

"This way! In here!" Dee-Three-Pee-Oh's urgent, buzzing voice ordered, storming into the room along with two guards and pointing angrily at Sally and I. But, before the droid could order us taken out, a cacophony of moaning voices demanded its attention,

"Doctor! My shot, where's my shot?"

"Help me... the pain... please..."

"Where am I? What is this place?"

"O, please, my arms... Doctor, where are my arms?"

"Someone please, tell my mother... tell her I'm here..."

"Please stop the pain... please stop the pain..."

I watched as Dee-Three-Pee-Oh rushed from patient to patient, administering shots, and calling on the guards to hold down the ones that had begun thrashing. With the droid distracted, it was the perfect time to get away, start a new life, anything for fuck's sake, but everything – my mind, my body, my will – had ground to a numbing, paralyzing stand-still.

It was only when I watched Sally rush forward to one of the guards, snatch his blaster and point it to her head that I could move again. Soon afterwards, I was sprawled on the ground, holding and sobbing over Sally's dead body.

CHAPTER 19

I was asked to come up with something for Sally's eulogy, but I couldn't do it. What was I supposed to say? Sally lived for a "revolutionary" and "progressive" movement that used her for a dream that was in reality an abusive, manipulative lie? And, she was really great at it until she blasted her brains out on the floor? No, that wasn't the story they wanted me to tell.

By the time the Rebellion's image consultants were through with the clean-up (I had to hand it to them: it was impressive how quickly they came and sorted things out), the story of Sally's death had turned into a heroic attempt to get rid of highly contagious brain parasite that would have spread and rendered everyone at the facility mad – for which she would be posthumously awarded a strangely familiar-looking Excellence in Service medal. I politely declined being involved.

After Sally killed herself, things got a lot calmer, as all the patients were given their doses of morphine, properly tucked in and strapped down. Things got especially calmer after Dee-Three-Pee-Oh administered a shot to me as well, even though all I was doing was crying my eyes out on the floor, long after they'd dragged Sally's body away. My guess was that either the shot was to mitigate the high likelihood I'd lose my shit and go nuts like Sally – or, the first in a long series of shots to keep me quiet and subdued like Ben Kenobei, Yodda and the other "patients" who knew too much.

Fortunately, I did wake up, and unbound, though I guessed I was only spared a morphine-induced fate of drooling and bedsores because I still had deliveries to make. When my eyes re-focused properly, I was greeted by the sight of two wary-looking orderlies holding loaded hypo-injectors. It was an understandable precaution, but they needn't have bothered: I could barely summon the energy to dress myself, let alone start a pointless, useless riot.

I was meek and obedient, as I was led to my already loaded and prepped shuttle and handed my delivery datapad. Dee-Three-Pee-Oh was even on hand to say a few bland instructions and comments, which I suspected included the usual back-handed criticisms, but none of it landed and I merely nodded. During the entire time, I don't recall any eye-contact, while the only words that came out my mouth were simple one word yes-no answers – even though I should have said "Fuck off, you fucking droid" or something similar, or thrown myself at the machine and tried to beat it to pieces with the fucking datapad they'd given me.

Once I was safely away though, my mind drifted back to the past few days, to Carla, to Greido, to losing Sally, all pointless, useless deaths, just as my own life was pointless and useless. I spent a good hour crying, screaming, and cursing. What the fuck? What the fuck? It had all been so convincing, so fulfilling. And so very false. What path was there to follow now? Everything was tainted and suspect – even my own sanity and memories. Was any of the affection, the love, the belonging I had real? Or, were people laughing behind my back the whole time? Had I done anything good with my life at all? What the fuck indeed.

I did feel significantly better after I jettisoned the cargo from my shuttle. I had no idea what it was this time, but I couldn't care less. I just didn't want anything to do with it or the Rebellion for that matter. I felt even better still when, spotting a good sized, isolated asteroid I could land my shuttle on, I came to the decision to kill myself. The asteroid was about sub-moon sized, and it would mask my presence and block all radio-transmissions, giving me some much needed privacy.

Finding a nicely secluded crater to land in, I figured I had a number of options to me: the easiest, of course, would be to set the shuttle to auto-destruct, which would be fairly quick and painless; or I could always re-jig the engine to circulate ion-fumes into the cockpit and kill me through asphyxiation; or, the simplest of all, I could open the doors and I'd freeze to death fairly quickly. Having seen too many fiery, bloody deaths already and not particularly crazy about the idea of wheezing and gagging to death, I settled on death-by-freezing.

Straightening my jacket and putting myself in order (might as well be a decent looking corpse for anyone who found me), I strapped myself down so I wouldn't be sucked out. I swiveled my chair to put myself in reach of the airlock handle. Shit. I guess this is it. I just wished there'd been just... just... something more. I guess I'm yet another dumb, useless ass who couldn't hack it. As too much thinking started to rattle in my head, I realized I was losing my nerve. I was breathing too quickly now. Damn it, I was close to hyperventilating. Ok, calm down.

I rammed my hands into my pockets, rummaging around on the chance that there might have been nub of a spliff leftover to calm my nerves. Anything? Not this pocket, maybe the other one. Fuck, I wish I'd have had the foresight to keep a tiny bit for the off-chance – of what? I laughed. The off-chance that I may need a puff so I wouldn't be such a cowardly shit before I chickened out of committing suicide?

My hopes soared, however, when, rummaging through a side pocket in my jacket, my fingers found something crinkly. I pulled it out eagerly, hoping for the tiniest bit of weed – but instead found a neatly folded piece of paper. It was letter, and it was addressed to me. Pulling my hand away from the airlock, I unfolded the letter that had been stuffed into my pocket some time ago, and read my friend Mike's parting words,

Timmy-boy,

Shit, it feels like ages ago since we were chilling on the deck of the treatment center, huh? Man, I've been wanting to talk to you for ages, but we never seem to be in the same place for too long. There's so much I want to tell you and talk about! But, the way things are going, who the fuck knows when's the next time we're going to see each other? Anyway, I'm writing this letter to you now, cuz if I die I told my squad-mates to give it to you. (I had to tell them you were my boyfriend, so if they give you any problems, you know why. Sorry.)

Dude, I know you've been wanting to be out with me where the action is, but, seriously, it isn't what you think. We get to shoot lots of stuff and blow shit up... I know that's what you want, but if you've spent one mission with me, you won't want to be part of it...

Like right now, I'm writing from a shit-hole in the ground. It really is a shit-hole. We're hiding from the troopers in a latrine and we've been waiting here two days for the heat to pass. And you know? Sitting in shit is pretty much standard with our officers' half-assed planning. Throw in lots of running for our lives and people dying around us, and it's pretty much a regular Rebel mission.

There's lots I can't tell you, or they'll fry my brain, but the things I've done, the things I've seen... Sorry, bro. I don't mean to be a downer. It's been a tough time. I know I shouldn't be complaining or pointing out shit that doesn't make sense to me or seems wrong... but I'm having a hard time buying their reasons these days... Fuck, why did we leave the Service again?

I think I've been causing too much trouble, cuz I'm not sure they want me around any more. I keep on being assigned to harder and crazier missions that I somehow manage to survive. Shit, I was really close to dying the last one when they asked me to steal a shuttle to infiltrate some jungle moon. Now they want me to get the pass-codes for a military installation that's protected up the wazoo. I don't know if I can make it this time. Seems like a suicide run to me.

Man, we sure fucked things up "discovering ourselves"! Louke and Haan keep telling us that it's growing pains and we'll come out ahead in the end. We all have our tests and we should have faith in the Powaah. Right. I don't fucking know anymore. Haan keeps smiling at us and telling us we're doing great, we're fighting for a great cause, we're doing amazing things, we're making a difference. If I hear that shit again, I'll go nuts.

Fuck, it would have been so much easier if we hadn't gone and had our eyes opened up! I guess we can't go back now. But fuck. We should have our chance at finding something we'd be really happy with. Not someone else's made-up shtick to fill our emptiness. Our own thing. That isn't too much to ask is it? How hard can it fucking be?

You know, looking back on it all, our lives were pretty shitty, but there were good parts to it. I figure if we'd stayed put and found some way to be ok with it, we might have enjoyed our lives more. We might not have fought so hard against it, and we'd even been happy doing the dumb ass things we were doing before. Ah, hell. How about it?

If I survive, let's try finding our own thing some time, alright? In the meantime, keep your head down and don't make too much trouble, or they'll have to get rid of you too and put you on a bullshit mission to keep you from everyone else. Don't let them fuck you over, ok?

Tim, shit. It's not that I want to fuck you or anything. Honest, you're too skinny for me and I think I'd probably snap you in two. But I miss you buddy. I miss our times together. I don't think I ever told you how much I appreciated your friendship with me. So there you go. I really appreciate you, bud.

You keep well, alright? Try not do anything stupid or put your dick anywhere you shouldn't.

Love ya, Tim,

Mike

I sniffled as I wiped my eyes yet again. Goddamn bastard made me cry. Folding Mike's letter and putting it somewhere safe, I reached over to the airlock handle again – and hesitated. It would be so easy to call it good right now. I'd done my best, right? Fuck this galaxy. It doesn't want me, so why should I stay?

And yet... There had been good times. There could be more, I guess. I shouldn't let those so-called Rebels fuck me over. Goddamn it, Mike! I angrily reached over to the shuttle controls and initiated the start-up sequence, unsure of where I was going. Damn it! Goddamn it, Mike! Fuck you for putting doubts in my mind.

I love you too, Mike.

CHAPTER 20

Blazing hot flames lapped at my fingers, as I cursed in pain, rescuing a wayward veg that had bounced out of my stir-fry. I adjusted the level of the plasma grill downwards and sucked my singed finger-tips, reminding myself to be more careful. I didn't want to catch on fire and go up in a whoosh of flames – at least, not today.

Flying aimlessly in the shuttle had nearly driven me bat-shit insane, as I struggled with the idiotic, pointless desire to live, shit, breath and fuck up, as opposed to the nice, quiet simplicity of death. After leaving the asteroid, I'd re-decided about – oh, I don't know – fifty or sixty times to end my miserable existence; but, every time, I reconsidered. Why? I'm still not sure I can tell you why exactly. Probably in large part because I was being a chicken shit. A smaller part of it was that I was stupid enough to think I could find some form of contentment, if not complete happiness and fulfillment. Best to start small, right?

Given my track-record, I didn't have the strongest claim on sound decision-making, so I had my hesitations when I ended up sending Vadah a message asking for my old job back. Would he still he remember me? Positively, that is (I was assuming I wasn't about to shake off the noodle incident any time soon)? Or, would he send a troop-transport to pick me up and torture me until I spilled the beans on everything I knew about the Rebellion?

Quite remarkably, within an hour, I got a message back from him, telling me he was happy to hear from me, that I could get my old job back, and he was sending a transport to meet me... Or was he? Could he be playing me? Could he be setting me to be executed and thrown into a pit of pain?

As it turned out, a transport did rendez-vous with me, though, instead of meeting a hovering multi-armed torture-droid, I met with a friendly lady from HR, who took down my information, debriefed me and ran me through the process of re-enlisting. As a matter of pro forma, I was asked to tell as much as I could about the Rebels, but the truth was that I so low on the food chain that I never really knew much that was useful or that they didn't know already.

While there was none of the violent tension that I had been expecting in the meeting, what did happen was some nice bonding with Jamie (the HR lady's name) over food and cooking, both of which she was very interested in as a hobby, and which I discovered I actually knew a lot about and – rather surprisingly to me – I found it was pleasurable to speak about it (if you must know, I did ask for her number, and we did go on a few dates, but we ultimately decided to stay friends – which I was surprisingly ok with).

I finished off the stir-fry with a few shakes of ground-pepper, and hauled the pot over to the serving area. I was back to being a line-cook, but, thankfully, my Head Chef was a living being made of flesh and with more than a set of rules and targets motivating her (yeah, I know, a female head chef; talk about progress!). Our head chef even made a point in getting us decent ingredients to cook with, like real bonafide vegetables, and encouraged us to cook food that we enjoyed eating – as opposed the never changing menus and crap-ass third-grade "fresh" processed shit Dee-Three-Pee-Oh used to have us reheat.

As part of the reforms that Vadah had begun implementing, the over-riveted droids were being phased out, along with their soul-crushing focus on efficiency at all costs that crushed the Empire from within – even while producing amazing graphs and figures at the end of the fiscal year. I had to admit that much had improved as a result, not the least of which was morale. These days, I even found myself looking forward to my cooking shifts and trying out new things. What was this galaxy coming to, huh?

Despite all the positives, I missed Mike immensely, and thought of him frequently when the pilots piled in for food. The crowd was still difficult during service, but having experienced being on the front and the stress of being shot at, I had somewhat more tolerance for them. In memory of Mike, during my time off, I'd made the effort to get to know some of the pilots and took playing cards with them, which significantly decreased their collective assholeness. In many ways though, tension was inevitable, as we were serving on the half-finished Deeeeath Star – the second iteration of it, that is – and there was a not so great precedent set with the last one having gone "kablooie."

A rustle of movement and animated chatter started to get louder from down the hall, which I knew meant the messhall would soon be filled with hungry people. I might as well end the story here. I don't foresee anything terribly exciting will happen after this – besides a bunch of people asking for seconds and my vague concern that I may not have made enough for all the pilots.

Which reminds me: I need to catch up with some of the pilots who were heading down to the moon we were orbiting. Word was that there's some kind of local critter there, which I figured could be a good treat to have as fresh protein. Maybe someone could bag me a nice "eeewok" for dinner.

The End?

**About the Author**

Born in Montreal, Canada, Jack later moved to the West Coast (Vancouver) to do a doctoral degree that involved collecting many thousand ticks in the Okanagan Valley. He wasn't thrilled about the ticks either. Later, he dabbled in small-scale farming for a few year, during which he simultaneously developed an aversion to kale and fancy salad mixes. He now lives with his wife in Boulder, Colorado.

Jack is the author of An Okanagan Messiah Cometh the first book of the Gilded Butterfly series. The second book, Salt Spring Battle Royal, is due in spring of 2016.

Follow Jack on social media!

Facebook: facebook.com/author/JackTeng

Twitter: @MyBossIsaDroid

