STAR WARS: Fugitive

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

“Hey!” whispered someone’s voice. Why was someone waking her now? Gerrikan felt like she’d barely gotten to sleep...

“He’s back from the Ring!” She couldn’t quite place the voice, a little louder this time, someone female, when, with a start, the thought hit her: you’re not in Taris anymore! She stirred a little and sighed; I miss that place at times like this.

“C’mon!” It was Gama, the weapons expert and pilot with the orange eyes; still haven’t figured out what race she is...

“Alright! Give me a moment,” Gerrikan responded softly, blinking her eyes. She’d rolled onto one of her lekku in her sleep – must have gotten some decent amount of sleep, then – which made it difficult to jump up and get moving sometimes since her lekku, though attached to her skull, managed to affect her motor skills when compressed.

Gerrikan was a blue-skinned Twi’lek. She’d grown up on Taris, a planet near the Core’s edge. As an adolescent she began following her mother’s footsteps in the entertainment business before she realized she could figure out electronic gadgets. She never felt she shared her mother’s talent, so when an opportunity with a gang opened up requiring electronic skills, she jumped at the chance to break out of the entertainment spotlight and from beneath her mother’s shadow.

She proved a fast learner with a couple of slicers in the gang that managed to engineer nearly anything the gang wanted to accomplish. Before long, she was slicing along with them, bypassing security systems, misdirecting law enforcement, and even secretly forged administrative processes once to free a couple of gang members. That setup was so perfect; no one ever suspected me, she reflected to herself as she forced herself more awake.

But later, she was seized and confronted about her stunt by Trynt Tellos and his brother, Taban – I still don’t know how they figured it out; the whole thing was flawless. They gave her an offer she couldn’t refuse, recruiting her to her current position on their team. The team was part of a smuggling ring, known informally as The Ring, operating in the Outer Rim territories, and occasionally they did business closer to the Core territories to change things up when normal business was slow.

Lately, apparently, business was hectic. The Sith were running unrestrained throughout the galaxy, fighting the Jedi in the Core, or each other for supremacy. Most news was hard to come by, what with the mythical HoloNet everyone gripes about missing, guess I’m too young for that, she thought, but it could be so useful at times, but she managed to slice into navicomputers of space craft they encountered and space port mainframes to collect and synthesize data. Unfortunately, this took up memory space on their cruiser’s mainframe, but she managed to keep it hidden or disguised as obscure miscellaneous files. Trynt discovered she did it, though, when running some preventive maintenance diagnostics and noticed a drastic drop in available memory. All he did was comment about it to her, enough to let her know he knew about it, just enough to let her appear mystical to the crew with her access to information, mainly to help her earn respect against their prejudices and stereotypes.

So far she’d worked out the main dynamics of the crew members. Trynt and Taban were both human. Trynt was very level headed, almost emotionless sometimes, the natural leader of the group, very diplomatic, able to tell anyone where to go and make sure they enjoyed the ride.

Taban was a self-proclaimed master of economics and price haggling. He seemed to carry a little of a superiority complex toward everyone, but he knew how to ensure any price was at least fair, if not in their favor.

Gama, the weapons expert, knew extensive technical specifications, capabilities and limitations of nearly any weapon on sight. She seemed to carry blasters for any occasion, from sniper jobs to silent stuns to heavy weapons, even ship’s lasers, all with special modifications. She looked human, but something didn’t feel quite human about her, especially with those orange eyes. She was very analytical, and sometimes outspoken.