Written by Salt-Trooper for @MTrac1000 – August 14, 2020
Note: @Salt-Trooper is a Star Wars Fanfiction writer who loves to tell stories from the perspective of soldiers, and enjoys blending elements the old and new Star Wars continuities together in an immersive and usually non-lore breaking way.
Wild Space, 5 BBY
The Breath of Iego was eerily quiet as it drifted through space. Normally, all ships had that sound to them – the creaking and groaning of a ship moving past planets, tugged occasionally by a planet’s atmosphere, the sound of the engines of nearby fleet ships, or maybe the distant rumbles of supernovas shaking the the very fabric of the galaxy itself. Only now, there was nothing. The ship had gone as silent as the grave, and the crew realized, with an ice-cold sinking realization, that “The Explorer” – their Quarren shipmaster, Kelgar Moray – was absolutely nowhere to be found. The older crewmen knew it occasionally got like this, and when it did, everyone stayed conspicuously away from the captain’s quarters for some quiet, unwritten rule.
Everyone who had been with Kelgar for any amount of time knew what he did, even if no one was brave enough to say it out loud.
The Quarren was… strange. While he came across as pleasant – charming, even – it was hard to deny that there was something wrong about him. Nothing about that kindness seemed to match the rest of him in the slightest. It all seemed forced, unnatural. He would laugh, but his voice would be hollow. He would smile, as much as a Quarren could, but joy would not reach his eyes. Everyone could sense the heavy feeling that seemed to surround him like a fog. It made you forget yourself, lose track of time, block your thoughts, and other strange phenomena that otherwise shouldn’t occur around someone of Kelgar’s sunny disposition. It made even the fleet’s supreme commander, the famed “Crimson King,” wary, and Kelgar seemed to know it.
Still, he was the best karking navigator in the galaxy, and who really wanted to dispose of the singular person that had, without fail, managed to hide the fleet impeccably and steer them through the worst of what Wild Space had to offer? His eccentricities were overlooked on account of his usefulness, and his willingness to play along was appreciated by almost everyone – though he knew that another one of the Red Fleet’s shipmasters, a Verpine known simply as “The Digger,” would toss him out given half the chance, but that was an infight for another day.
Thing was, no one really knew where the shipmaster had truly come from, other than his claims of hailing from Iego. Most of the other members of the Council of Shipmasters had been relatively open about their pasts to an extent, but the Quarren had been decidedly silent on the whole matter. He answered with half-truths and guarded replies, but nothing to ever concretely say why he had stuck around after successfully guiding the flagship of his predecessor to safety behind one of Iego’s many moons. For most people, it didn’t really matter. He was friendly enough and received results that no one could deny were impressive. His darkened past helped give way to a number of unsettling rumors about his activities.
Everyone knew what he did in the shadows, or at least the crew of his flagship did. Everyone else on the other ships liked to speculate, but with the many bodies of half brain-dead Imps and slavers people had seen carted out of his quarters, imaginations liked to run wild. It was only whispered in breathy rumors in quiet places across the command decks where he couldn’t hear them.
They hoped.
Anyone who had served on the fleet for any length of time knew about the Quarren’s… “rituals,” or at least his alleged rituals, since the man never owned up to anything when the subject would be tentatively broached, though the details were misty for everyone outside of the First Officer, who would always give stony stares of reproach whenever the topic was brought up. Thus, everyone found it safer and much more expedient to turn a blind eye to the shaking, muttering people who would get dragged from his quarters at the end of every Zygerrian raid.
Since he wasn’t harming the slaves they would free and oftentimes recruit, no one really found much of a cause to say anything. Who really cared if one of those slavers got their minds melted, anyway? That, and he was never wrong. His information was almost always correct, or kriffing near as close as close could be. Whatever he was doing in there led his fleet to safety, and if the fleet was safe, so were his men. The close-to-guaranteed security made even the most superstitious of his crew turn the other way. Don’t look a gift Bantha in the mouth.
Whenever rumors of his “habits” got out, it was always met with a chuckle and gentle, almost playful denial. It was a startling and off-putting thing to see the Quarren wave away allegations of what could only be called close to black magicks or sinister alchemy, but he did just that.
Of course, he would never do dark rituals! That was silly, naturally. Those sorts of things only happened in the stories told to children to frighten them into behaving. There was no such reason for something like that to occur on his ship. It was standard interrogation, nothing so fantastical. It was his regular denial given with a fond chuckle and a casual wave of his hand in dismissal while his tentacles curled around his mouth in a gesture of happiness. It was enough to soothe people’s worries, but they also quickly forgot what exactly it was that they were asking as well.
No one wholly believed him, least of all the men under his command, but they were willing to overlook a lot of things if it meant being on the ship that seemed to know everything about the enemy. The only one who could confirm or deny any of the outlandish rumors about the Quarren was his First Officer, a tall and taciturn Togruta, who almost certainly knew things. Whatever he did know, he kept to himself. Whenever anyone would ask, all they would receive was a stony glare, so after a time, nobody thought to bother him with it, especially after the first five or six people received the same reply.
Only today had been one of those dreaded days. They had intercepted another Zygerrian slaving vessel. Oh, they had freed the prisoners onboard and welcomed them in with open arms, as was expected, but it was who else Kelgar had requested be brought aboard that made the new crewmen confused and the old crewmen shudder. He asked that several of the felinoid slavers be brought onboard as well and set up in the brig for him to inspect later. No one was brave enough to ask why.
His First Officer had gone with him down into the dark hold, and the two had emerged with a collared and bound Zygerrian. He had slung defiant words at Kelgar’s back, but it was almost as if the Quarren couldn’t so much as hear him at all. The crew had watched him vanish into his quarters without as much as a word to anyone. Not many people seemed to care. They never did. One less slaver in the world was a karking good thing as far as the others were concerned.
Only that day, people decided to question. This time, it wasn’t one of the crew.
“What does he do with them?” A Twi’lek, one of the ex-slaves that Kelgar had liberated from the Zygerrians, inquired, as she sat hunched over a bowl of whatever the crew’s cook had decided to whip up that night.
A Devaronian nearby snorted, “ask his First Officer. That hornhead is as likely to talk as ‘The Explorer’ is.”
“But does anyone know? Do they come out?”
“Oh, they come out, alright,” another pirate sneered.
Much to the Twi’lek’s surprise, that was where the conversation pointedly stopped. No one elaborated, no one carried on. The conversation ended as sharply as it had begun. For the rest of the meal, all she could think about was what they had said about their illustrious leader. He had liberated them, hadn’t he? Surely, he couldn’t be as awful as they seemed to believe he was.
She made up her mind that she would find out what all the fuss was about after dinner. When the rest of the crew had returned to work and her fellow now-freed men had taken up their bunks for the night, she had slipped out of the room and retraced the steps of the Quarren and his Togruta partner until she found the room, where soft voices were coming from a jarred door. It was slightly open, likely closed manually due to a faulty panel, and she paused to see what she could through the thin crack.
She peered through the opening in the door and saw the Zygerrian. He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his puffy red eyes and a drooping mouth. He looked up at someone, and before long, the Togruta came through her narrow view and knelt before the exhausted slaver.
“This one won’t last much longer, Kelgar. Best get what you need and finish up before he keels over,” he spoke in his thick Shillian accent, glancing over his shoulder at a figure that the girl couldn’t quite see.
“Very well. Thank you.”
Finally, as the Togruta stood, the Quarren came into view, and the Zygerrian’s whole face changed when he did. She saw his eyes widen in horror as the Quarren knelt down before him and lifted his chin so that their eyes were level with one another. “Allow me to ask you again: where are the rest of your ships in this sector?”
“I-I don’t know! I don’t know! Please, please let me go! I’ll…I’ll pay you anything! Anything you want! You… You’re a Jedi! Right? You don’t do things like this! Please, mercy!”
The Quarren seemed taken aback before he gave a deep laugh that filled the entire room, drowning out the whimpering sobs of the Zygerrian. “Jedi?” he asked with a fond shake of his head. “I haven’t been one of those in a very, very long time. Besides,” he stood up, and the Zygerrian let out a terrified sob as he extended his hand, “they don’t much like it when I do this.”
The screams and the way the body contorted under the Quarren’s hands made the Twi’lek let out a small gasp of horror, and when she did, she saw the Togruta spin around and make a sharp line for the door, flinging it open and staring down at her with a sort of mortified rage. “Boss!” he called over his shoulder as he knelt down and yanked her to her feet.
“Someone got nosy!”
The Quarren never moved from his position, but the low chanting he had been doing ceased before the Zygerrian’s screams quieted. He looked over his shoulder, eyes cold as ice. “What are you doing here, young one?”
“I… I just…”
“Just?” The Quarren pressed, and when he did, his hand constricted, making the Zygerrian howl in pain before him.
“I heard rumors… I swear I won’t tell anyone! I won’t say a word!” She pulled against the Togruta’s iron grip to no avail.
The Quarren slackened his hardened form, and the Zygerrian dropped to the floor, eyes twitching and body spasming. “I believe you, dear,” he said with a soft incline of his head. “I know you won’t tell a soul.” She breathed a sigh of relief as Kelgar turned to his First Officer, “Bas?”
The Togruta turned to him, still holding the Twi’lek’s arm. There was a long beat of silence – a held breath in the quiet of the small room where you could hear your own heartbeat in your ears like the steady beating of a drum.
All at once, it was as if any warmth he had given had gone from him and his voice, cold as Hoth, simply said, “space her.”
She went to scream in protest, but his cold eyes locked onto hers, and suddenly her throat seemed to close up like someone had their hand around it. Her scream choked on itself and her mind felt like someone was drowning it in thick black smoke. “Making such a ruckus at this hour is rude, dear,” the Quarren purred as he looked down at the Zygerrian with a sigh. “Oh, and Bas, when you’re finished, come back and help me get rid of this one as well…”
He brushed his hands on his sleeves and turned back to the Togruta with an tilt of his head, “We need to inform the ‘Crimson King’… that I found their fleet.”
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