SCI-FI FRIDAY
IN THE SHADOW OF THE MANDALORE
This is the last chapter. Well, the first part of the last chapter. I have one more post, and then I don’t have anything else to post, because I still have to write it. When I do, I’m putting it up behind the PAYWALL, because that’s where all my novels go. I serialize them. And that’s what will happen to this. I’ll edit it, clean it up, tighten it up, and start from the beginning again…as a serial.
The only thing for FREE on my site…is everything else. 🤷🏼
This was originally put up as part of SCI-FI Friday, and was never meant to become anything. But readers seemed to like it more than I expected. However, I’d stopped writing it because I’d painted myself into a corner (I can’t remember why), and started writing something else thinking I could sort it out in my head.
I didn’t go back because I think I didn’t really see a point in writing it; you can’t just send it to the publisher and expect them to take it. These things are commissioned to authors with a proven track record, and besides, they have a plan they’re following. This doesn’t fit in any of that. It’s a stand alone story/series.
Now, we have substack, and I can put it up here. 👏
And I will, but I have to finish my Locksley story first. Anyway, if you’re gonna want to read the rest, you’ll have to pay the price of admission. And that means you’ll have to Up-Grade. If say, no one up-grades, then why would I bother? I’ve gots lots of other things I want to do.
CHAPTER EIGHT
OFFWORLD
i
Semoline could feel the shackles digging into her flesh with each movement she made, so she stopped struggling. She could feel the bloody cuts on her wrists and swore at herself for being such a fool. She’d managed to spit out her gag, but the idea of calling out for help seemed futile when she considered she had no idea where she was. The room was dark, with the only visible light slipping in from under the door. She exhausted herself with the effort it took trying to pull her slender wrists out of the shackles – she’d even gone as far as spitting on her wrists thinking the saliva might act as a lubricant – finally telling herself she should’ve known better than thinking she might escape.
And don’t think anyone’s going to come bursting in through the door to rescue you either. That sort of thing only happens in stories.
That would be asking for too much, she knew, and felt tears of frustration welling up in her eyes. The only person who could help was her brother, and she had no idea if Dax was on her trail, or if he was even alive.
There was a noise in the other room and she tried fighting off the terror she felt overtaking her. She grew fearful as she thought of the punishment her captor would exact when he realized she was trying to escape. He might do anything, she told herself. She was at his mercy. She fought back more tears thinking of what he’d do.
The door opened and the room filled with light. She turned and saw a silhouette framed in the doorway. Wearing what looked to be a long cloak, with the cowl covering his head, he pushed it down and she saw a gleam of polished chrome reflecting in the light behind him.
“I hope you haven’t been struggling too much,” he said in a gentle voice as he sat on the cot beside her.
She looked up at him, seeing a swirl of dark tattoos and scars, and drew away from him. He smiled a soft, gentle smile as he reached for her hands and looked at her bleeding wrists.
“There’s no need for these any longer,” he said, and with a wave of his hand, the shackles fell to the floor.
Semoline crawled away from him, huddling against the wall.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, standing up and holding a hand out to her. “I’m not going to hurt you. I give you my word.”
“Except to cut me into little pieces and sent me back to my father,” she said. “I heard you tell him that.”
He smiled again.
“An empty threat,” he replied. “A ploy in negotiations. Come.” He turned and left the room, and Semoline waited, thinking it had to be a trick. When he didn’t return, she stood up and walked to the door, looking out into the room.
She could see the large room mirrored in the huge floor to ceiling windows. It appeared sparsely furnished. At the far end was a holopad. There were large crates piled beside the windows and along one of the walls, with labels written in a language she didn’t recognize.
That’s not Basic, she told herself.
She could see his reflection in the windows, standing in one of the smaller bedrooms. He’d taken off the cloak and she saw tattoos on his chest and back briefly as he pulled on a loose fitting shirt, stepping back into the larger room. He was carrying a bowl of water, with a towel hanging over one arm.
“Why don’t you sit down and let me fix that up for you?” he said. She looked around and saw a chair on the other side of the room. He smiled, made a motion with one hand, and the chair slid across the floor.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, and he Force pushed her into the chair. He knelt on the floor in front of her and took one of her hands in his, pulling her sleeve back.
“From you? Nothing,” he said. “But your father has something I require,” he added, as he began rolling her sleeve out of the way. “You’re just a bargaining tool. An insurance policy,” he grinned.
“I heard what he said. He said he doesn’t have whatever it is you want.”
“Yes, I know. He lied.” He rolled up her other sleeve.
“Why would he lie about something like that?”
“Men like your father lie for a living. It’s how they make their fortunes.” He looked at her thoughtfully, and she felt uncomfortable under his stare. He was confusing her with his kindness.
“He has no reason to lie to you.”
He smiled, dipping the towel in the bowl and wiping the dried blood off her hands and wrists. He was gentle, looking at the wounds with a critical eye and shaking his head slowly.
“You must have been desperate to want to do this much damage to yourself.” He stood up and went into another room, coming out with bandages and a small packet. He sat in front of her on his knees again and tore the packet open, squeezing brown salve onto a length of gauze.
She looked at her wrists and saw a crisscross of large cuts and scratches.
“I was trying to escape,” she said with a note of defiance.
“And why wouldn’t you?” he smiled, wrapping the gauze around her wrists. The salve was cold against her skin but felt warm on her cuts.
“You knew I’d try to escape?”
“It’s what anyone would do.”
“Would you have let me?”
He smiled, shaking his head and she watched the light reflecting off the chrome cap on his head.
“Who are you?”
“Do you mean my name?”
She nodded.
“Keramud Verd’ika.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“I told you, your father has something I need.”
“Are you a Sith?”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” he smiled as he stood up, picking up the bowl and placing it in the sink across the room.
“It isn’t?”
“I suppose that depends on your point of view.” He turned to look at her, leaning back against the counter as he folded his arms across his chest. “Your father and his partners have business dealings in Sith Space. That should tell you right there that whatever you might think, or have been told, is probably wrong. The only reason people fear the Sith is because the Jedi tell them to.”
“So the Jedi are lying?”
He smiled.
“The Jedi and the Sith are one and the same. There was a great war once, a long time ago — a millennia ago — and the Sith — they weren’t called Sith back then — ”
“What were they called?”
“Don’t interrupt. It’s not polite. They were called the Dark Jedi. They fought several wars over the years – schisms I suppose you’d call them, since they were based on moral differences. The Dark Jedi saw that power could be manifested through the Force and used it to gain control over people and Nature.”
“There. You see? Why do you feel you have to control people?”
“I don’t expect you to understand the lure of power. That’s something men of ambition strive for – ”
“And women don’t? Are there no female Sith in your world? Or are the females of all species subservient to your needs? Mere chattel? Meant for procreation and nothing more? How can you say the Sith way is better than the Jedi, if the Sith believe in nothing more than conquest?”
A slow smile played across his lips.
“You’ve obviously been convinced through years of miseducation that the Jedi Order brings stability to the Galaxy and the Sith represents Chaos. That may be so, but for every one side of an argument, there has to be another...for every action, there has to be a reaction. If I push you and you push back, which of us is in the wrong? Me, because I pushed first, or you, because you pushed back? What if, in pushing me, you pushed too hard? Perhaps injured me? You see, there’s no right or wrong way, not if you look at it like that. There’s no good, or evil in life — not like that, not the way you’ve been taught to look at it. I mean, simply because someone stands up and declares that his way is the one way to follow – to blindly follow, no less – and at the same time say those who refuse to follow your way, are simply wrong.”
“You can’t convince me that abducting me and holding me for ransom is not wrong. I’m sure even the Sith have rules, or Laws of some sort.”
He smiled again.
“This may be the start of an interesting friendship,” he smiled.
“I doubt it.”
ii
Seated on the back of the War Droid two thousand meters above the city, Semoline found herself holding on tight to her captor. She would’ve never moved toward him under normal circumstances, but the wind was gusting, the jets screaming, and she found herself more frightened now than she’d ever been in her life. The Mandalorian armour he wore left her little to hold on to, and she wrapped her arms around him tighter because of it.
She refused to call him by his name. He was her captor and that’s all she would allow him. That he’d kill her when he no longer needed her, she had no doubt. She wouldn’t let herself believe him when he assured her that her life was not in danger. He could kill her just by thinking it. She felt the Force like a sudden punch when he’d pushed her into the chair earlier. He’d brought down Archangel using the Force, and anyone who had that much power at hand, could easily snap her in half like a twig.
That doesn’t explain his kindness.
After bandaging her wrists, he made her something to eat. He cooked it himself, and the aromas coming from the small kitchen reminded her of how hungry she was. But he was a Sith, she chided herself. Why would he know about food and how to cook? Everything about him went against everything she knew concerning the Sith.
“You think I’m a monster, don’t you?” he’d asked her.
“Of course I do,” she snapped back at him, and saw him fighting back a smile.
“And yet, I’ve dressed your wounds, and fed you,” he said easily.
“It means nothing.”
“Of course it doesn’t...except to show you that everything you think of about the Sith is wrong.”
She hated him for saying it because it was true and she wondered if he’d read her mind. She didn’t know what he was able of, but he’d practically used her own words against her, and that made her feel uncomfortable.
She saw the SecuorCorp speeders coming in from the right, three of them, and she felt the Basilisk bank to the left. They made their way between two stratoscrapers, and she could see people inside staring out at them as they passed. The roar of the jets echoed through the narrow opening between the buildings and she could feel the heat of the jets on her skin. In the span of time it took them to bank left, they turned again, facing the three speeders. There was a roar of cannons and the three speeders burst into flames, one of them hitting a building directly in front of them, the other two spiralling down toward the planet’s surface.
In a moment, the Basilisk dropped straight down, veering to the left and through a canyon of buildings. She was certain they’d hit one, only to come out on the other side and climb straight up once again. She could see their reflection in the windows around them, not realizing how big the Droid truly was.
We make an odd looking pair, she thought, seeing their reflection strobing like an old viddy-flick as they passed the windows.
How he expected to make their escape, she couldn’t picture. Where did he think they’d go? She was almost certain there’d be more SecuroCorp speeders in a moment, and the Jedi were sure to follow.
Dax will save me, because that’s what Jedi do, she told herself.