Star Wars: Agents

So, on one of it’s many stops to Imperial Center, Public Freighter Krill-60 saw a major increase in its military passengers, so much so that a small force of white-armored Stormtroopers were brought on board to organize the chaos which had formed prior to Krill-60’s arrival to the Imperial capital. Each refugee was scanned and questioned, and those determined to be potential threats (“potential” being very loosely defined) to the Empire were detained and arrested. The ship’s tourists, once informed that they would be forced to wait in the Coruscant spaceport for the next available transport, could only stand outside and grumble in impotent rage. The beleaguered crew members of Krill-60 were able to experience a rare moment of quiet in that hour between boardings.

Ryoo, having been seated with other humans her age, watched one of the Stormtroopers exit their cabin before glancing out the tiny circular view port next to her. There wasn’t much of Coruscant that could actually be seen beyond the bustling crowd and the hint of a horizon of skyscrapers bathed in the morning light of the approaching sunrise. The fourteen year old girl marveled at it, appearing lost in thought.

The sandy-haired boy seated to her left was less interested in the sights outside the ship and more so on the datapad in Ryoo’s lap. He’d spent a majority of the trip peering over at it to see what she was doing, only to fail in maintaining his focus on Ryoo’s choice of light reading material - a collection of senatorial speeches made over two-thousand years ago.

When he wasn’t trying to read her datapad, he was shivering. Dressed in nothing more than tan-colored cargo shorts and a thin shirt, Ryoo’s neighbor seemed unaccustomed to the artificial climate controls that others on the ship might have thought of as actually being on the warmer side. Between being bored and being cold, the boy didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.

Seated across from Ryoo and her shivering neighbor was a young teen who seemed out of place among all the adolescents in the cabin. Everyone else, with the exception of the shivering boy, was either dressed in a cadet’s white uniform or traveling clothes. The umber-skinned boy across from Ryoo seemed to be dressed in the equivalent of rags - worn boots paired with clothing that had clearly been repeatedly restitched, patched and taped back together after being torn. Most noteworthy of all was the patch of hair on the top of his head, dyed bright green to stand out against the rest of his short-cropped dark hair; certainly not the pristine image of order the Imperial recruiters tended to look out for.

He observed everything around him in stony silence, his movements carefully and deliberately still. It was a stark contrast to his nearest neighbors, both of whom chatted animatedly over him, as if he were a mere placeholder in the seat they couldn’t be bothered to move aside.

Several Stormtroopers then reentered the cabin, escorting a new group of recruits. Some were in uniform and seemed to know exactly where to sit without being prompted, and so the Stormtroopers let them proceed. The others were directed to their spots the same way the current passengers had been. Noteworthy among them was a pale girl with long black hair - before her appearance Ryoo had been the only female in the entire cabin. Trailing not far behind her was an incredibly tall bronze-skinned teen, dressed in fine and expensive robes and nearly as tall as the Stormtroopers who escorted him. The boy in rags watched them both very intently, his piercing and emotionless gaze settling on his richly-dressed opposite once he was shown to his seat. The new arrival caught his gaze and met it unblinkingly, as if daring the boy in rags to challenge him.

The tension was broken by Ryoo’s neighbor, who tentatively cleared his throat to get the attention of the Stormtroopers. “E-Excuse me,” he cautiously prompted. “Are we going to be able to get up and walk around?” He looked as though he felt foolish for asking, but made a point of flexing his stiff legs and clutching his freezing arms tighter around his chest nonetheless.

The Stormtrooper turned to look at him with that signature expressionless helmet, but said nothing. Up until that point the recruits had only been able to watch the civilian passengers wander about at their leisure while being forced to remained seated. Of course, the Imperial officers on board did not permit the civilians within three meters of the enlisted either.

“Stay in your seat, Cadet,” ordered a beleaguered voice from somewhere behind the Stormtrooper. A young grey-uniformed officer appeared, wearing an expression so deeply annoyed that the shivering boy suspected it might be permanent. “The droid will come around again soon for muscle stimulation. In the meantime anything else needs to be directed to me first.”

The officer raised his voice to address everyone else sitting in the cabin. “That goes for everyone, Seniors especially!” At that, the mumbling chatter that was coming from the back of the cabin happened to stop. “I don’t need you compromising our security just because you have this idea that being the oldest among your peers somehow grants you special privileges. Don’t get me wrong, it does, but that’s only at the Academy. On this freighter you are just as likely to suffocate from a breach in the hull as anyone else! Any questions?”

The shivering boy, looking confused, shook his head. When no one answered, the officer cleared his throat and then produced a datapad from seemingly nowhere. “Now, this is the final roll call before reaching our destination, so if you don’t hear your name and answer I’m going to assume that you’ve defected and call to arrange for your court martial as soon as we get to Carida.” The Stormtroopers exited the cabin and he cleared his throat one more time. “Abor, Paydon!”

“Here!” answered an older cadet from the back.

“Bolton, Jarreb!”

“Here!”

“D’jek, Dayton!”

The shivering boy raised his hand, but only high enough to prevent any warmth from escaping his body. “Here.”

The officer looked at him, his annoyed expression seeming to deepen as he tapped the data pad with his finger. “Endivain, Garik!”

“Here!”

Dayton D’jek relaxed against his seat as the officer continued his roll call, or at least tried to as he shivered uncontrollably. Ryoo stared up at the officer, dutifully waiting to call her name and so Dayton took the chance to glance at her datapad. The same text from before was there, a political speech of some kind that Dayton wasn’t even going to try to begin to understand. What he was really interested in was the make and model of the datapad. He was almost certain it was Nubian, with it’s shining chrome exterior, but what he wondered about was the processing power and it’s Holo capabilities, if it had any.

“Laurent, Kira!”

“Here!”

Dayton quickly glanced to his left at the sound of the female voice, and he hadn’t been the only one. For a moment at least twenty pairs of eyes were on the girl who had just been brought in by the Stormtroopers with the other new passengers. Crossing her arms, she raised a sardonic and finely tweezed eyebrow at the stares she could meet, wryly challenging them with her facial expression. Dayton quickly went back to peeking at Ryoo’s datapad and trembling from the cold.

“Marrow, Zan!”

“Here.” This time, a boy from somewhere behind their seats answered, his face sullen and angry-looking.

“Naberrie, Ryoo!”

“Here,” she softly replied, loud enough to get the officer’s attention, but not enough to bring the same amount of stares in her direction as it had with the other girl, Kira. Ryoo brought her datapad up to her face, shielding herself from further scrutiny.

A few more minutes passed with more names. “Sidewinder, Vurdes,” revealed the boy dressed in rags, and “Storm, Marcus,” the tall boy he had been glaring at. Marcus sat poised and unflinching as he met Vurdes’ stare. He couldn’t have been older than Ryoo, and yet his expression held a seriousness to it that Ryoo had only seen in adults when they were displeased with something a child had done. Vurdes’ stare seemed less challenging by comparison, and more pale, as though he had been put off by Marcus’ entire appearance, expensive finery in the face of the other boy’s torn up rags.

The well-dressed newcomer waited until the roll-call was finished and the Imperials were no longer in the cabin to address the poor boy across from him. “Can I help you?” he asked, more as a dare to cross his unspoken boundaries than as a polite question or conversation-starter.

Vurdes, with his streak of green hair, took a moment to peer around the cabin at the other passengers from his seat. “I’m not looking for help,” he said in a rather bluntly, “but your clothes are interesting. No one else is dressed like you,” he admitted, after a tense pause.

Marcus Storm bristled slightly at the retort. “No one is dressed like you either,” he shot back, “so I’d appreciate it if you minded your own business.”

Ryoo kept her eyes on her datapad, feeling uncomfortable. She too wore traveling clothes not too unsimilar to Marcus,’ though more plain and far less ornate. His midnight blue robes made it very obvious to her, and probably to others, that he came from a noble family on Coruscant. Her family, though technically of noble stock as well, was not a fact she had been hoping to advertise to others among the Empire. Not yet, anyway. She stared hard at her datapad, hoping Vurdes’ observations wouldn’t find her as well.

Dayton, no doubt feeling the palpable tension in the cabin, quit trying to read Ryoo’s datapad and instead cut in with, “So, uh, where are you guys coming from?”

The other girl, Kira, scoffed from her place two seats over from Marcus. The boy next to her was fast asleep. “Coruscant, obviously.” Her accent was very distinct and notably Imperial.

Dayton sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, I got that. Just, you know, Coruscant’s a big place, and uh, I thought I could make some conversation. It gets very boring in this cabin.”

“Yes, and you’re not helping,” Kira snidely answered.

Dayton did his best to ignore her by focusing on Marcus to his left, who had taken to closing his eyes and deeply concentrating on something. His hair was swept back in a neatly maintained dreadlocks style which reached the nape of his neck and gave him an added air of maturity and importance like his clothing. When Dayton realized Marcus responded even less receptively than Kira, he took back to shivering, sulking and staring at his feet.

A disembodied voice made an announcement and then Krill-60 shuddered to life. Ryoo watched the vast plain of skyscrapers get smaller and smaller and when the five towering spires of the Imperial palace were no longer in view, Ryoo turned to Dayton and sighed, reluctantly murmuring, “I’m from Naboo.”

Dayton looked up at her in surprise. Ryoo hadn’t said a word to him or anyone since she arrived on board before Krill-60’s departure to Coruscant. “I-I figured that,” he replied, sounding cautious. “I remember when the ship stopped there a few cycles ago.” Through the view port they could both see that Coruscant had become a complex network of bright lights arranged in grids and concentric circles. From space, there was no sign of natural geography or topography that hadn’t been constructed by sentients. The surface of Coruscant had been that way for thousands of years.

Ryoo tried not let her annoyance show on her face. “Didn’t you want to make conversation?” she asked, hoping her pleasant tone would make it obvious to him that she was trying to help him save face in front of the newcomers.

Dayton made a defeated little shrug. “I figured people just wanted to be left alone. I understand.”

Ryoo titled her head in a purposefully quizzical manner. “You understand their need to be rude and condescending?” She had said it loud enough to draw Kira’s attention, as well as illicit an open eye from Marcus, though she pointedly ignored their stares. “Look at it this way: at least you have a story to take home about what Coruscant is like.”

Dayton frowned. “Yeah… I don’t think I’m going home anytime soon. I was conscripted.”

Ryoo swallowed, uncomfortable once again. “Well, we have leave periods,” she replied, hoping that sounded reassuring.

Dayton scoffed to himself. “I wouldn’t want to go back anyway. Ergeshui is just a useless swamp with useless non-humans.”

Ryoo remained silent at that. She’d never heard of Ergeshui but she imagined it was somewhere beyond the outer rim, where Krill-60 reportedly started it’s journey before heading into the core worlds. More so than her lack of knowledge, she wasn’t sure how to respond to Dayton’s xenophobia, or anyone’s for that matter. But it was a common sentiment among Imperials, she knew she would have to face it eventually.

A medical droid wheeled itself into the cabin hours later, armed with adrenals. They were low in dosage, but sent little currents of electricity through the passenger’s calves and legs. Dayton shook his legs about, earning an admonishment from the droid and a threat to sedate him if he did not stay still through the procedure. Most of the cadets flinched from the injections, except for Vurdes, who curiously seemed used to the poking and prodding from the droid. Either that, or he was much more adept at making himself stay still. His movements, when he did move, were always very deliberate, and he did not make unconscious gestures the way most people did, like scratching his nose or idly tapping his feet.

When a service droid eventually came by with food, it was clear that Vurdes was overwhelmed and struggled not to let it show. The rich flavors assaulted his senses and made him dizzy despite his grumbling stomach. Like every meal on Krill-60, he could only take in a fraction of it before feeling ill. Too much protein, too many nutrients… too much. Eventually he pushed his tray aside in favor of watching the others eat. They stuffed the luxurious food into their faces with abandon, while still having the nerve to complain about it to their neighbors.

“I can get better food from the local trash dump,” said one.

“What do you expect from public transport?” replied a neighbor.

If Vurdes could process the food he would not have complained like the others. His time on Krill-60 was the first time he had been able to eat so regularly and so much. Was the Academy going to be like this, he wondered. If it was, Vurdes thought he might weigh too much to actually move during training exercises.

There was also a designated time after meals which served as the only moment the cadets were permitted to get up, escorted in small groups to use the ship’s lavatory. The Imperials cleared it at that time of civilian passengers so that only the cadets were occupying the facilities. It was a welcome chance to actually use their leg muscles. The med-droid’s stimulation adrenals could not compare to the real thing. Then, after dinner was served, the cadets could make their seats recline and get some sleep… provided they could block out the noise made by the civilians outside the cabin, a few of which had stayed up arguing over Sabaac for hours on end.

This is how it was for the recruits for the next few days on Krill-60 as it traveled up the Perlemian Trade Route to the planet Carida. Ryoo realized they had finally arrived when she felt the jolt of the ship dropping out of hyperspace and a giant insignia appeared on the other side of the viewport she was sitting next to. It was carved into the side of one of Carida’s two moons, so large it could probably be seen clearly from the surface of the planet.

Ryoo noticed that Dayton was leaning over to look through the viewport as well. She explained, “That’s the Mascot Moon. They carved the Cliffside insignia for the Academy into it over five-thousand years ago.”

Marcus leaned over as well, seeming surprised to see it. From his seat Vurdes was scrutinizing it much the same way he scrutinized the other recruits and the portions of food given to all of them.