STAR WARS: All Fair In War

Vectors - New Republic Era (15 ABY)

"For the last time, Harris, there's no way this will work!"

"Yes, Jade, it will! I've gone over this a hundred times, and it. Will. Work."

Chrom sighed and rubbed his forehead, brushing his dark blue hair away from his eyes. He hadn't even been in the cockpit for a full minute and his human and Mirialan partners were already giving him a headache.

"Hell, what is it this time?" he groaned from the entryway.

Jade turned to glare at him, her usually calm blue eyes sparkling with anger. "You know damn well what it's about Chrom. This stupid karking plan of Harris's isn't going to work, and it's going to get us all killed."

"Oh, calm your ass down kid," Harris muttered, glancing down to check one of the control panels in front of his pilot's seat. The blue starlines passing by outside cast an unnervingly eerie glint on his face, and his grey hair appeared almost the same color as Chrom's in the glow.

"Calm down? Calm down?!" Jade practically screeched, her olive skin turning slightly darker in anger, and Chrome mentally braced himself from the tirade he knew was coming. "How am I supposed to be calm with this? We're going to a floating city that's at least fifty years old, been deemed off limits by the New Republic because of instability, and has Empire-knows how many security measures in place. And we're going there just to karking scavenge! How exactly am I supposed to be calm?"

"And for the last time, Jade, Cloud City isn't off limits, entry is just highly discouraged. And besides, one of my old buddies who worked there during the evacuation gave me the entry codes to get past the city's automated defense systems. There's nothing to worry about."

"And do you know if this old pal of yours is trustworthy?" Chrom put in hesitantly.

"Yeah, I s'pose he is."

"And why exactly did he feel so moved to give you those access codes?" Jade asked.

"I won them off of him in a game of sabacc," Harris retorted pressing a few buttons and preparing to take their freighter out if hyperspace. "I crushed him in the match after I uh... caught him using a skifter card."

"Ah. So he was a liar and a cheater. Seems trustworthy to me," Jade snorted, flipping her waist length hair indignantly.

"Hey, I saw through his bluff didn't I? That means he was a bad liar. I probably would have known if he tried to pull a fast one on me with those codes."

"Harris, that has got to be the galaxy's shittiest attempt at reassurance," Chrom muttered, moving over to sit in the chair behind the older man.

Harris simply looked over at his friend with a grin and a shrug. "What can I say? I reassure by my results, which are almost always perfect."

Jade sighed and took her seat next to Chrom, still clearly unconvinced. The young woman was usually the skeptic of the Greyhound's crew, especially when it came to someone else's plan. Although given her history, Chrom could understand why.

The main reason behind her more pessimistic and cautious nature was tied to her past, and the fact that the traditional Mirialan tattoos on her face weren't the only marks she bore. Her back was covered in deep scars from whippings, and her wrists were still sore and still bore the marks of a slave's restraints.

Whereas Harris had recruited Chrom from the slums of Denon when he was twelve, Jade had only been a part of the Greyhound's crew for five years. During a spice run, Chrom and Harris had fended off a pirate attack and killed the six men that tried to hijack their freighter. When Chrom decided to check the cargo hold of the pirates' ship out of curiosity, expecting to find weapons or stolen spice, he instead found a naked Mirialan teenager, cold and shivering. She was underfed and bleeding severely from a beating her captors had given her before their attempted raid.