A New Recruit - 2 BBY
Tess shouldered her duffel and walked down the transport's gangway onto the hard duracrete landing pad. Overpressure valves hissed on the tall transport's spindly landing struts as she walked by, jostled among the press of passengers arriving on Filve. The desert heat was as bad as she'd imagined after hearing the stories from the other cadets at Arclight. Filve's sun was blindingly intense at mid-day, reflecting off of the light-colored buildings and grungy ghost-gray of the landing pad, glaring even through the polarized glass of the barrel-vaulted canopy overhead.
Gusts of hot, dry wind made her long black hair fly in all directions until she gathered it up with her free hand and tucked the shiny locks under the collar of her flight jacket. Most everyone seemed to wilt under the heat; only the scores of droids traversing the pad appeared unperturbed. A few kilometers away a gigantic faceted city dome reflected the sharp sunlight like some gargantuan insect's eye.
Tess followed the crowd into the terminal where blissfully cool mists cascaded from vents in the ceiling and warm light replaced the harsh blinding glare outside. She fell out of the throng, put down her duffel, and leaned against the wall while she thumbed through her datapad to find out where she was going. "Meet outside at terminal exit four," she mumbled, reading the text of the memo. "Back outside, Tess, into the blast furnace. Yay."
She hefted her bag and looked up at the holographic guidelines for the exits. Number four was a dashed cyan. Tess started walking. At the customs inspection station she queued up with the other travelers. A severe-looking woman in the dark gray-green uniform of an Imperial Customs official nodded toward the reader affixed next to the gate. Her blond hair was pulled back into a tight bun behind her head. "Ident card."
Tess fished the plastic credential from her jacket pocket and slotted it into the reader with one hand while she set her duffel on the security scanner.
"Purpose of visit and length of stay on Filve," she demanded while she reviewed her data display.
"Visiting relatives. Staying a week or two," she gave her rehearsed answer, hoping the slicers at Arclight were as good as everyone claimed. While the Customs official kept reading, Tess flicked a glance toward the four stormtroopers loitering a few meters away. She looked back at the woman. "I like what you've done with your hair."
The gate officer looked up from her screen wearing an annoyed frown that was probably permanent. "You're clear. Enjoy your stay on Filve."
Tess removed her card with a thin smile. The gate's force field flickered and the indicator light turned green. Tess pocketed the ID, grabbed her bag as it emerged from the scanner, and walked toward the exit.
"Next!" said the official.
She held her breath until she was certain the bucketheads weren't following, then let it out and relaxed her stride. A scant minute later she emerged from the shadow of exit four's awning, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the harsh sun. Rows of every kind of speeder were parked in a lot nearby. Hundreds of beings and droids milled about, hailing taxis or queueing beside omnibuses bound for their myriad destinations.
"Tessalyn Daro-grasha?" said a young man, trotting across the roadway. He looked to be about her age, with close-cropped sandy brown hair that had been bleached by the sun. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark glasses with soft leather side shields.
"And you are—" she responded warily.
"Tazbarada Oktos, here to pick you up. C'mon, let's get out of here. Speeder's parked in the short-term lot. Got any other bags?"
"No, just this one," she said, squinting to look at him. "Is it always this bright here?"
"Pretty much, yeah." He reached into his shirt pocket and handed her a pair of sunshades. "They didn't tell you about Filve's sun?"
Tess shook her head while she hooked the flexible temples behind her ears and adjusted the side shades. "Oh, that's better. Thanks."
He uttered a sardonic grunt, accompanied by a wide smile. "We're barely in Dufilve's habitable zone, and there's not much protection from the UV. An hour out here'll put you well on your way to a case of skin cancer and cataracts". He pointed at her bulky duffel. "Can I take it? Your bag, I mean."
"That's okay, I've got it," said Tess, unsure what to make of the earnest man.
He waved over his head "You'd get used to it soon enough if we were staying." An Imperial patrol speeder thundered overhead. The young man watched it pass, his bright expression souring. "Which, I'm glad to say, we're not." They walked past the queues of taxis and buses, threaded their way through rows of parked vehicles, finally reaching a compact four-seat model.
Thank the gods, an enclosed cab. Just their short walk in the scorching heat had sweat running down Tess's face, though the air was so dry that it evaporated almost immediately. Taz opened the cargo boot at the back and she deposited her bag, then got in the cab. He slid behind the controls and the speeder rumbled to life. Taz boosted the output on the repulsors, lifting it a half-meter in the air, then eased out of the lot and onto the access road, past a row of Imperial troop transports and what looked like a cadre of cadets who were withering in the heat. His stiff expression didn't hold a microgram of sympathy.
"Awful lot of Imperials around," Tess observed, pushing the glasses up on her head.
"We were free of them for a while, after we chased the Protectorate fleet away two years ago. That's what convinced me to join Razorclaw. Wouldn't mind a rematch, but I think we'll need more ships to take on that task force in orbit." His serious demeanor lasted only a moment, then he smiled again. "Anyway, I'm glad we've got a new pilot joining the crew." He pointed to the small compartment in the dashboard. "Water's in there if you're thirsty. There's food too, though it's just ration bars." He crinkled his nose. "We've got a bit of a drive yet."
Tess nodded, relishing the cool air of the cab. She took a chilled bottle from the compartment and drank half of it in one go. "The heat's a killer."
"Been here all my life and I'm still not used to it. My mother and sisters always complain about how it ruins their hair and skin. Even the native Filvians don't like it. That's why they put domes over all their cities and moved out of the deserts."
"Is everyone on Filve this talkative with strangers?" she probed.
"We Filvians are a friendly bunch, just ask us," Taz answered with an uncertain grin. He banked away from the spaceport's access road onto something that looked like an animal path. The industrial buildings and warehouses around the spaceport fell away into featureless dunes and sand grass. "I only got posted to the Old Ghost a few months ago. To be honest, you're kind of the first person I've met who's close to my age. On the crew, I mean." He looked like he was about to say something more, but instead Taz closed his mouth and concentrated on driving.
Tess gazed out the side windscreen for a while, but was quickly bored of the barren terrain they were traversing. She wasn't much for being planetside in any case, and this place only confirmed her belief that space was a lot more interesting than any planet. After a few minutes she realized her driver had stopped talking. She sneaked a glance at him. He seemed intent on steering the speeder.
Did I put him off? "I... didn't mean for you to stop talking," she said, then quickly followed with, "Why did you say Old Ghost? I thought our ship was the Pride of Olminar?"
"Oh it is," Taz responded, perking up again. "We call her Old Ghost because she's got these prototype ECM systems that make her really hard to detect. I hear that's one reason they were able to kick out the first Protectorate fleet. The Olminar got right on top of them, destroyed two corvettes and damaged a Nebulon frigate before the Imperials even knew she was there. I suppose it didn't hurt that we sliced into their systems and deactivated their shields and weapons beforehand, though."
"That's— pretty impressive." After a while she said, "When you met me, you called me something."
"Grasha," Taz answered reflexively.
"At Arclight I heard a lot of the Filvians use that word. What is it?"
"It's an honorific. We use them all the time."
"An honor-what?"
"You know, a way of addressing someone. Like 'mister' or 'miss', except there's a lot of them on Filve. The Filvians are a gregarious species, evolved from desert-dwelling herd animals. But the relationships between families, friends, colleagues, they're all really complex. They have something like three hundred words in their language just to describe interpersonal relations. Anyway, grasha is the one you'll hear most. It's the polite way to address someone you've just met, or someone of the same social status as you. You basically can't go wrong with grasha. Then there's nagrasha. We use that one to address higher status people, like a grandparent, the head of a company, an employer or a customer.
"If you want to get even more formal than nagrasha, there's nagarashasu. But that one's only used at a few religious ceremonies these days. You'll probably hear aktuu a lot as well. That's how fellow professionals greet each other. Like if you met a pilot whose skills you admired. See what I mean?"
"Hmm, it's all a little confusing," Tess admitted.
"That's not the half of it!" he exclaimed. "If you're addressing someone like a doctor or technical expert you'd use aktushu. Your co-workers who are senior to you are onshu, and your juniors are uugresh. Then there are some honorifics reserved for friends and family, like kaashuub and iksha. Kaashuub is for really good friends, ones that are as close to you as your family. Iksha's a little harder to describe. Adults use it with their kids. Teachers use it with their students, and even co-workers will use it. Children and girls— females— like to shorten it to iisha, or just sha. Lovers use that one too. With each other, I mean."
"Wow," Tess said. She'd never thought that much about the complexities of relationships. She was used to just using people's names, or maybe their titles. "Are there more?"
"Yep, dozens more, but those are the ones you hear most often. The natives have used them going back thousands of years, I expect. When humans arrived we picked them up and started using them too. You know, 'when on Filve' and all that."
Tess gave him a quizzical look.
"'Do as the Filvians do'," he finished.
"Oh. Do they say that around here?"
"I thought they said it everywhere."
"Not really," she said with a grin. He had kind of a naïve charm to go with the talkativeness. "Since Razorclaw's a Filvian cell do I need to learn all of that?"
"Nah," Taz waved his hand. "I guess you might hear them occasionally on board, but mostly we just use military protocols— 'Mister' and 'Miss', or 'yessir!' or 'right away ma'am'!" He laughed.
Tess smiled. She found his laughter infectious. He was also kind of good-looking, with his tanned skin, pale blue eyes and lean frame.
"We're nearly there," Taz said, double-checking the nav screen. He tapped the glass display. "The dunes all look alike and the wind can alter the landscape in just a few minutes, so it's easy to get lost without inertial nav."
"No satellites?"
He shook his head, looking grim again. "Imperials locked us out of the SatNav net two years ago when we spanked them. One more reason to drive them out of the sector for good," he growled.
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The speeder moved onto a broad expanse of bedrock that rose over the final few kilometers into a low, broken ridge. Taz slowed the vehicle as a spacecraft came into view. He tapped the datapad sitting on the dashboard. The vessel's broad loading ramp lowered at the rear of the seventeen-meter ship. Taz turned the speeder around and backed it up the ramp. Then he shut down the power, letting the vehicle settle on the deck. The cab's roof slid back and they climbed out. "Imperials never venture this far out of the cities. As long as we're careful we can come and go without the task force knowing about it."
"Where's her pilot?"
Taz smiled. "I'm looking at her. This is your ship."
"Mine?" She echoed, her dark eyes alight.
"Sure is," he assured her. She's called Arbalest."
"Who flew her here?"
"I did. Well, I was mostly just a passenger," Taz amended. "The autopilot did pretty much all the work. I'm still learning the basics." He led Tess down the ramp.
"She's a YY Ninety-six, isn't she?" asked Tess
"Surprised you'd be familiar with the local models."
"I'm a space rat. Spent most of my life on ships."
"Hmm," Taz acknowledged. "This one's the assault variant. Nevestrom Ekstar builds them on F'Dann Seven, and here on Filve. I heard they stole the plans from Seinar, though."
Tess nodded eagerly. "She's based on a design for an asteroid miner, but it never got past the prototype stage."
The hull was painted in ochre shades, mostly red and brown, with some dark yellow accents around the hatches and access panels. Tess could see that she was a pretty new ship, to judge by the clean paint and absence of wear.
She studied the large nacelles with their powerful sublight drives and broad s-foil stabilizer fins. Four long, movable vanes surrounded the rear nozzles for vectoring thrust and radiating excess heat. "These are Girodyne's new Maartens tri-helix dual inline ion turbines, right?"
Taz nodded. "I heard she'll do over thirteen hundred klicks per hour in atmosphere. Good acceleration too— over thirty-eight hundred G."
Tess whistled. "That's way faster than the Sentinels and Etas we used for training at Arclight." She looked up at the double ball joint that connected the nacelle to a stout-looking spar on the side of the hull. "Articulating nacelles with opposing thrust nozzles. This baby should turn on a millicredit chip. It won't be like piloting most ships."
"She's got magnetic grapples, cofferdams on the port, starboard, and ventral docking rings, plus passenger ramps on both sides." They moved to the bow and he pointed to the ion cannons and lasers in twin pods. Between them sat a tapering cockpit with darkened transparisteel viewports. "Guns and missile launchers on either side of the cockpit. Twin laser turret up top too."
"Wow," she said and let out a low whistle. "She can fight her way into combat zones for troop drops, can't she?"
"I expect she can. Ready to see inside and get out of here?"
"You bet I am, Oktos-grasha," she said, trying out the honorific.
"Oh, you can just call me Taz," he said casually.
"Tess," she answered with a little smile.
They entered through the portside ramp and turned into the narrow cockpit. Taz indicated the pilot's seat for her. He grabbed his uniform jacket from the back of the copilot's seat and strapped in, paying careful attention as she went through the pre-flight checks and powered up Arbalest's systems.
"Oh, you're a Warrant Officer Four, like me," Tess observed, seeing the silver and black pip on his jacket collar. "What's your job on the Olmin— the Old Ghost?"
"Primary rating's medtech, with secondaries in sensor ops and gunnery. Been helping out with cargo handling too, and piloting of course, when I can find someone who'll let me tag along." He flipped the switch to secure the rear loading ramp as Tess eased the repulsors to life. The Girodyne engines built to a satisfying roar. Tess angled them vertically and Arbalest rose into the cloudless Filvian sky amid a storm of sand thrown up by the exhaust. "What about you, Tess? Any other ratings besides pilot?"
"Combat support, driving armored troop transports and command speeders. I have four pilot ratings though— everything from snub fighters to medium capital ships. I prefer the smaller ones like Arbalest here, though."
"Four primaries? That's amazing! How long were you at Arclight?"
"Sixteen months," she replied.
Taz whistled. "You're a genius, Tess. I barely got out of there with my medtech primary in fourteen."
"I'm pretty comfortable in a pilot's seat," she admitted, but with a deprecating tone and a blush on her pale cheeks.
"Anyway, she'll carry twenty-four passengers or seventy-two troops if you really stuff them in. Usually we only have about thirty aboard, though. Forty tons of cargo too, though she lumbers when she's loaded down like that." He chuckled, then pulled up the nav display and tapped at the panel. "I've input coordinates to rendezvous with the Olminar."
Tess nodded. "As soon as we clear Filve's gravity well I'll make the jump. How fast is she in hyperspace?"
"She's been upgraded from stock to a class one, with a twelve for backup. Navcomp's good for ten jumps, too." He took a data cylinder from a slot on his jacket sleeve. "Export certificate. It's forged, but it should get us past any Imperial patrols."
"Good," she said. "The less of them I see, the better I like it."
Taz nodded agreement, a sober look on his face. "Me too."
"It... can't be easy seeing them occupying your homeworld."
"You're right," he said, grinding his jaw. "Everything I love about Filve, the Empire despises. They treat the Filvians like slave labor, and the Humans barely better. They've turned the entire Girandian continent into a penal colony. "Re-education camps they call them." He slammed a clenched fist against his leg. "We don't need Imperial education." He spat the word. Then he looked down and was quiet for a while. "Sorry, Tess. Sometimes I just get fed up with the way things are."
"We all do, Taz. I was born in space so I don't have a homeworld, but I know how you feel. My parents had an independent salvage operation in the Outer Rim on this big old bulk freighter my dad bought after he retired from the Navy."
"How are your parents doing? I hear the Empire's been active in the Fringe."
"I don't know," Tess admitted with the same kind of grim look that Taz had. "They used to just get harassed by Imperial patrols every now and then. But four years ago they got boarded. Everybody was detained. I'd been flying since I was ten, so when the shooting started mom put me on a skiff and programmed the hyperdrive for the Fonash system." Her voice fell. "I haven't heard from them since."
Taz's face softened. "I'm really sorry, Tess."
"It's okay," she said with a sniff and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. "Someday I'm going to find them again. After we drive the Empire into the farthest corner of the galaxy or destroy them."
"I'm with you, Tess," said Taz, holding up his fist. She curled her fingers into a fist and bumped against his with a wan smile.
Taz gave a little jerk of his shoulders, like he'd just grabbed a live electrical circuit. "We should alter course."
"Why?" Tess asked, just as the short-range sensors began pinging urgently. She displayed the contact on the forward viewport, which resolved into the distinctive boxy silhouette of a Guardian-class Customs cruiser. Tess flipped over to manual, began transmitting their export credentials, and grasped the helm controls on the arms of her pilot's seat. The ship continued its approach. The comm channel crackled to life, a woman on the other end ordering them to stop for inspection. Tess ignored it.
"I guess they didn't like our export cert," observed Taz, tightening his safety harness.
"We're still in Filve's jump shadow. We'll transit to lightspeed as soon as we're clear." Taz nodded as Tess swept Arbalest onto a vector that would get them out the gravity well in short order. The vessel was still out of weapons range, and Tess aimed to keep it that way.
"Let's see what you can do, Arbalest. Fifteen seconds," she said to Taz, and opened up the Maartens-23 drives to full. The shuttle shot away from Filve's orange orb, pushing them back into their seats until the inertial compensators nulled out the acceleration. The patrol ship repeated its hail and insisted they stop immediately to be boarded.
"Will they catch us?" asked Taz.
"They're plenty fast, but my baby's faster," Tess beamed, already feeling at home in Arbalest's pilot seat. "Jump in three… two… one… JUMP!"
Taz pulled the levers and the black starfield suddenly stretched, the stars streaking past all around them. The blackness of normal space dissolved, replaced by the blue and white bands that human eyes perceived as hyperspace.
"And... We're clear!" Tess shouted, grasping Taz's hand across the short space between their seats.
"Great flying, Tess!" said Taz, grinning from ear to ear.
"Nah, I just ran away, but thanks," she replied. That smile of his really was growing on her. "Next time I'm going to take the fight to them, though."
"I'm gonna be with you when you do," he agreed readily. He ran a sensor sweep to see if they were being tracked or followed somehow. All of the readings were negative. Safe in hyperspace, he unhooked his harness and let out a sigh.
"Hey," she said, "How did you know that they were coming? You told me to change course before the sensors picked up that cruiser."
Taz looked like he was unsure how to answer. "Sometimes I get… feelings. Like when something's not right." He hesitated for a few seconds. "Ever heard of the Force?"
"The religion of the Jedi? Yeah. Dad fought in the war against the Separatists. He knew some Jedi. He used to tell me stories about the things they could do." She uttered an incredulous chuckle. "It always sounded like magic to me."
"They teach us that the Force was just a myth, a con the Jedi used to keep control of the Old Republic before they betrayed it." He looked over at her. "I don't believe that, though; at least I don't anymore." He paused again. "When I was a kid at HyperDyne's technical academy these two Imperials, well they tried to start some trouble with me and— I made them stop."
Tess looked confused. "What do you mean?"
"I just told them to leave me alone, and they did. Then when they were leaving I was so angry, I shouted after them that they should turn themselves in to security, and they did that too. I didn't understand what had happened, but a few days later one of the academy's librarians pulled me aside during study period. She said she'd seen the whole thing. She knew about the Jedi, and the Force. She gave me a holochip, said I should read it, but never to show it to anyone. It's a journal that a Jedi Master recorded centuries ago. It described exactly what had happened to me. Sounds crazy, right?"
She gave a slow nod of her head, making her dark hair shimmer in the light of the instruments.
"Since then, I get these feelings, like a shock behind my eyes or my neck, or between my shoulder blades. And when I do, I know something's about to happen." He fell silent for a while. "You won't tell anyone, will you? I'd just as soon nobody knows. I'm pretty sure the Empire still hunts down Force users."
"I won't tell a soul, Taz." Tess assured him. She consulted the navcomp. "Two hours travel time. Hope you packed lunch. I'm starving."
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As soon as Arbalest dropped out of hyperspace at the predetermined coordinates Taz began transmitting an encrypted ident code. It wouldn't do to transit more than a thousand parsecs only to be obliterated into space dust because the Pride of Olminar misidentified them. They received clearance and an approach vector.
As they maneuvered to dock, Tessalyn got her first look at the Old Ghost. "Damn," she exclaimed, seeing the big axial weapons poking out the front. "A few good hits with those could punch right through an Imperial-class."
"I expect she could," Taz agreed.
"She's beautiful," Tess said, admiring the ship's smooth, aggressive curves. She'd grown up on spacecraft of all kinds but most of them were designed for function, not form. The Olminar was clearly built by someone who understood that starship design could be a sublime art, not just an exercise in practicality. Her ochre paint scheme reflected the ship's Filvian roots, Tess realized. Red dominated, with yellow and brown highlights. Painted on either side in dark yellow was a stylized image of a predator that looked something like a bird of prey. The ship's design was simple but elegant at the same time. And intimidating with all of those guns.
A pre-programmed sequence brought them beneath the Olminar. Arbalest flipped so that her ventral docking ring mated with its match on the bigger ship under the starboard cargo bay. Another sloop, identical to theirs, was docked under the portside bay. "We have two?"
"Yep. That's Lightning."
They secured the shuttle, then climbed down the ladder and ducked headfirst through the ventral hatch, emerging into the brightly lit cargo hold.
A man and woman awaited them in slate blue combat uniforms and jackets. Tess came to attention and rendered a smart salute. "Warrant Officer Fourth Class Tessalyn Daro, reporting for duty assignment to the Pride of Olminar. Permission to come aboard?"
The male officer returned her salute. "Permission granted, Officer Daro. Avery Rexler. I'm the ship's CO" he said, and shook her hand.
"Dianthe Numarkos, Chief of Operations." Dee seconded. We're happy to have you aboard, Officer Daro. I'm told you had top marks at Arclight. We expect great things from you."
Tess smiled and shook Dee's hand. "I won't disappoint you ma'am," she assured.
"Did Officer Oktos talk your ear off on the way here?" Dee said with a wink. "We Filvians can be a chatty lot."
"Taz— Mister Oktos was very helpful, ma'am. He's a decent speeder driver and he was an excellent copilot when an imperial patrol pursued us." Tess answered.
Taz cleared his throat. "I didn't really do anything except throw the hyperdrive motivator levers."
"He did more than that, Major," Tess corrected. "Officer Oktos detected the Imperial vessel."
"I see," said Rexler, leaning into the conversation. "Have you anything to report, Officer Oktos?"
Taz stiffened to attention. "Sir, after ascertaining the cruiser's position, Officer Daro skillfully steered an evasive course and kept us out of the enemy's firing range until we were able to make the jump past lightspeed."
"Very well. Excellent work Officer Daro. I'll expect a full report from both of you by oh-eight-hundred tomorrow."
"Yessir!" Tess and Taz answered, nearly in unison.
Taz looked over at Tess and Dee Numarkos. "She handled Arbalest like she'd been flying her for years, ma'am."
"Hmm," said Dee to Tess, "Maybe I'll appoint you as my personal pilot."
Tess straightened. "I'd be honored, Major."
Dee laughed. "In any case, let's get you settled in. Laetia will take you to your quarters."
"Of course, Major Numarkos," replied the BD-3000 luxury droid standing nearby. Her rose gold body, silver and gold limbs reflected the bay's lights as she made a graceful bow. "Welcome to the Pride of Olminar, Officer Daro. Please follow me."
"I'll bring your bag," offered Taz. He saluted the officers and disappeared back down the hatch into Arbalest.
Tess accompanied the droid up the lift to the Operations deck, and down the corridor to her junior officer's stateroom. The three-meter room held a bed, a small desk with a Holonet terminal, and a table with two stools pushed beneath it. In the corner was a compact refresher with a basin, toilet, and sonic shower. She sat on the bed, thinking about what to do next when Taz appeared at the door with her duffel.
"Settling in?"
"I suppose," Tess answered. She took her duffel from him and put it on the bed.
"I'll let you get unpacked. I'm in number nine if you need anything," he said, turning for the door.
"You, um, wouldn't want to show me around the ship, would you?"
He tried hard not to smile. "I'd love to, Tess."
She smiled back at him. For some reason, the way he said her name made her feel really comfortable, despite the new posting. She pushed off the bed and took a deep breath, inhaling the smells of her new home. "Good. Lead the way, Taz."