Chapter 3: Slak

Splat! His boot hit the puddle in the cracked street as he ran, splashing water and traces of multi-colored chemicals into the dark crevices in the dirty, filthy blackrete that the long-out-of-date ground speeders hovered on.

He didn’t notice the puddle. Or the person next to it who got hit with the water droplets and cursed him for not being more careful. He barely felt the stinging rain as it hit his exposed skin, and barely noticed the hovering streetlights above him in the darkness. He didn’t listen to the people he jostled under the gray, starless night in between the small factories, business stalls and residential buildings, nor did he even look up to see which street he was running on or to. All he cared about right now was following the plan that had served him so well in the past when someone wanted to harm him:

Put as much space as possible between you and them, and as quick as possible.

Didn’t matter if it was water, street, floors in a building or polluted water in a waste lake. Do it quick, and usually they’ll forget you existed pretty soon.

C’mon, c’mon, he said to himself under his breath, running past people, shoving the occasional one out of the way, dodging street-speeders when needed and avoiding every doorway, however inviting it may have looked in the heat of the moment.

He knew he’d crossed from one territory of the city to the next by the smell in the air. The acrid smell of molten metal now gave way to the more pungent, crisper scent of chemicals used to color clothing. He’d left the factory blocks that made metal cookware, and now ran in the section of the city that made the industrial dyes and textiles.

That meant he was closer to his territory, where he had friends who might help him out of his latest jam.

Might.

He kept running, wishing he wasn’t broke and had enough to hire a street speeder. Or a flyer. Anything to get him away, fast. Of course, he thought, if you weren’t broke, then you wouldn’t be running. You’d have paid off your debt instead of blowing it in a gamble to double your money, smartboy.

He knew this wasn’t going to end well. Knew it in the back of his head, a little voice repeating over and over again: you’ve done it this time, Slak. Really put your foot in some poonta dropping this time, haven’t you? You’ve used up the favors of just about every powerful friend on your block you’ve got. Now all you have are a bunch of middleweights who might not even hide you once they knew who you were running from.

Into an alleyway, and avoid the open door. Trying to dodge a hunter in a building was like trying to hide in a dead end. However tall the building was, eventually you ran out of space to run, with nowhere else to go except a nice, long highdive with a sudden street-kiss as your last stop on life’s little journey.

He stopped, bent forward and held up his body by leaning on his knees, chem-infested water dripping from the dark locks of his hair, stinging his eyes and hitting the ground in long droplets and streams. He gasped for breath, wondering if his pursuers would risk pulling out a blaster in a street this crowded...

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Crack! Went the wall to the right of his head. Slak jumped and started running again as if someone had jabbed him with a dose of current.

“Nearly there,” he said as he dodged more people, held out his hand to stop more speeders that threatened to finish the job that the bounty hunter chasing Slak had started.

Slak took a right turn, then a left. Slak thanked the Maker, if He was really there, for having the bounty hunter start chasing him at just the time that almost every worker in this particular time zone of the industrialized planet of Corellia ended or began their shift. Streets teeming with workers going home or to work got in his way time and again, but also would be getting in the hunter’s way as well.

Finally, a few more seconds and he was at Treasure Ship Row. The vendors and hawkers clogged the street even more than the people and speeders had in the last part of Blue Sector. Slak ducked under the robed material covering one of the many stalls, the cheap cloth brushing his short black hair.. Even though it was now night, the streetlights made the street space where the vendor’s booth lined the way seem almost magical, with soft lights of various colors lighting up the tiny particles of factory byproducts in the air, giving the street an aura of misty, twisting rainbows.

“What th’...Slak?” yelled the middle aged man behind the vendor’s desk. “What the blazes are you up to, boy? Are you adding stealing to your list of...”

The vendor never got the chance to finish the sentence. Another blast zinged through the air and ignited the folds of cloth hanging from the vendor’s booth.

“Agh! Slak, what did you bring down on my head, boy?” he screamed, trying to beat out the flames with one hand and protect the costume jewelry he was selling with the other.

Slak was already halfway down the alley towards the next street over, the vendor’s yelling already submerged in the bustle of the Row, and the Row itself swallowed in the constant motion of Blue Sector, which was itself only a sub-section of Coronet City, the capital city of Corellia, a lone world among the Five Brothers in the system.

Slak stopped thinking about that. He knew he needed to stay focused and alert to his current job of escaping trouble, and thinking about just how small and powerless he was in the grand scheme of things was no way to accomplish anything useful.

Slak found another darkened alley and paused again to catch his breath. He was still in the Blue Sector of the city, which meant he could do what he needed to do to survive with relatively little interference from the police. But the flip side of that coin meant he was on his own in terms of finding safety and protection from the bounty hunter.

But where to go?

A thought jumped into Slak’s head, and he took off running again. He doubled back towards Treasure Ship Row, trying again to lose himself in the flowing masses crowding the streets. He dodged a family of Dralls.

Slak apologized as he ran around them- Little furry Dralls with their buck teeth had always pleased Slak for some reason -maybe it was their similarity to the one toy he remembered his parents giving him when he was little. It had been a stuffed furry humanoid toy that could have been a Wookie or a slinky Selonian as easily as a short, stubby little Drall.

Selonians, Slak thought for a second as he ran, his new destination coming into view as he kept running. Those hive-dwellers have the subways- maybe I can talk my way down there for a few days...

Something whizzed by his ear, sounding like an insect hungry for his blood. The person behind him yelped and slapped at their neck as they went down into an unconscious sleep. Slak doubled his pace- the Meatlump Gang must have gotten pretty upset with him to subcontract Slak’s capture and/or demise to a bounty hunter that used sleep darts!

Or was it poison?

#To Bb Continued...