Behind the Veil: Part II

[Corias Bonaventure]

BEHIND THE VEIL

Episode II

THE FYROKKIAN LAIR

It is the era of the New Republic. A
vicious threat has forced RHEA
KAYLEN and CORIAS BONAVENTURE
to make the perilous journey from
Coruscant to Rhea's home planet
of Imran.

En route to the Aranio System,
Corias's starship, the IOLANTHE,
was driven off-course into the
gaseous cloud known as THE VEIL,
home to the Fyrokkians, an ancient
race of warriors scarred by the
Empire's greed.

At the mercy of their feline captors,
Rhea and Corias must use their wits
to survive or risk becoming casualties
of the Fyrokkian lust for revenge...

***

In a matter of hours, Corias and Rhea's lives had been turned on their heads.

It was barely thirty minutes since Lord Arushi, patriarch of the Ramanuja Clan, had relented to his son, Arajah, and decreed that the alien prisoners be kept on board the battlestation Orchag-Maur indefinitely. Corias Bonaventure wasn't sure whether to mourn or to celebrate.

At the least, it meant they weren't spacedust, or catfood. The spacer preferred to keep a positive outlook on things.

The only other alternative had been to be carted off with that Fyrokkian shaman, Sarojin Kimatra, while Iolanthe stayed in the battlestation's hangar. Corias much preferred to stay near his ship. At this point, it was their only possible avenue of escape.

The spacer kept his thoughts to himself as he and his erstwhile passenger, Rhea Kaylen, were roughly conducted down a spartan corridor and into what had to be a military medical ward. Corias and Rhea were made to sit on a pair of operating beds, and two doctors, if there was a Fyrokkian equivalent, poked and prodded the prisoners as a team of guards headed by Captain Arajah Ramanuja barred the exits. After concluding their examinations, one of the medics set a metal case on a tabletop, opened it, and pulled out a pair of thick metal collars.

Arajah took one of the collars in his large paw and approached Corias, steely-eyed. "This is a tracking device," he said. "You cannot take it off. If you attempt to tamper with it, it will send an ion discharge through your nervous system. Continue tampering, and the charge will intensify. It should render you unconscious before it kills you, but I wouldn't test it if I were you."

Corias knew better than to resist with a squad of particle blasters aimed at his back. The collar closed around his neck, and the deadbolt shot home with a clank and a hiss. The metal weight hung loose enough that he could breathe, but too tightly to pull up over his head. The spacer watched helplessly as the Fyrokkians fastened the other collar around Rhea's neck.

"You will be monitored from now on," Arajah informed them. "Do not forget that. You will be assigned quarters onboard the station, and you will be given work like everyone else. We do not have the resources to waste on freeloaders. Beyond that, you may come and go as you please as long as you do not enter any restricted areas. And... one more thing."

The large felinoid warrior stepped closer and lowered his voice. "Officially, you are under the protection of Red Guard, the royal forces of Ramanuja. They are the ones who wear the red band below the shoulder. All the soldiers on Orchag-Maur have been commanded to leave you alone, but they are not all as disciplined as my men are. There is much resentment toward your kind here. I suggest, for your safety, that you do not wander far from the soldiers with the red armbands."

Corias took in a deep breath. "I think we get your drift," he said.

Arajah nodded sharply, then turned for the medbay door. "Once the healers have finished working up your vitals, you may leave. My guards will direct you to your new lodgings. You will report to the Red Guard barracks for your duties in the morning." With that, the yellow-furred Fyrokkian left the prisoners alone in the medical ward.

[Rhea Kaylen]

The medical bay was cold, even to Rhea. Her skin tingled with small goosebumps, but she dared not move even so much as to rub her shoulders, lest she upset her captors. The heavy, horrid metal collar weighing on her prominent collarbones was sharply cool, as well, like a band of ice.

But these had nothing to the chill wrapped steadfastly around her heart and seeping through her veins.

Rhea felt as though there was no way this could really be happening. She was no longer shocked by being here; even fear had faded to a frigid numbness lodged somewhere deep in her chest. But still the Imrani woman kept waiting, hoping madly, that she would wake up from this fever dream to find herself back on the Iolanthe, or home on Imran.

That hope, however, was fading fast.

The clinical severity of the sickbay, in particular, drove the reality of their situation home with all the unrelenting force of a power hand drill to the brain. Rhea was beginning to feel dizzy, and, afraid of fainting away completely, she turned her bleary eyes to her companion.

Corias looked as shell-shocked as Rhea felt, though the woman noticed a telltale flicker of pure angry flame still raging in his eyes that she was sure she did not possess herself.

"Corias," she whispered hoarsely, longing for conversation and jumping to the first questions that sprang to mind. "How long do you think they'll really keep us here? And what work will they have us do?"

And how long, do you think, Corias, before they tire of us and rid themselves of our nuisance?

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias was too flustered to accurately gauge how Rhea was doing. And as much as he wished he could set her mind at ease and tell her things were going to work out, he knew she wouldn't fall for any empty lines.

"They think we're a threat," he said quietly, his eyes fixed pointlessly on a rusty rivet on a nearby bulkhead. "You heard what they said in the throneroom--they're at war. And somehow, our being here upsets their balance of power. That means they'll keep us as long as they can afford to, or as long as they think we're valuable to them."

And if they were valuable, that was a bargaining chit they could potentially use. But for what gain? Would their situation be any better with any other faction? Corias didn't really think so. They couldn't afford to waste what grace they had on any half-baked schemes in a game whose players they didn't know and whose rules they couldn't even guess at.

"Best thing we can do is follow along and see what we can learn. As for the work..." The spacer glanced up at a flickering light fixture on the ceiling. "Looks like they need all the help they can get. Probably just some light menial labor, if I had to guess. They're not going to put us in danger if they can help it. With some luck, we can show them where our skills are--maybe they'll give me a look at their sensor systems. I might be able to figure out what's actually going on here. Where we are. How many ships they have..."

He broke off abruptly. He had no way of knowing if any of the Fyrokkians in earshot understood Basic; best not to say anything incriminating.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea recalled the terrifying throneroom encounter with the Fyrokkian patriarch and his advisor. The tension in that chamber had been nearly suffocating as Corias and Rhea had come to understand that they had unwittingly become potential material assets in a Fyrokkian civil war. The heated argument between Captain Arajah and his father Lord Arushi had sounded quite a good deal like a contractual dispute over land deeds--the two captives were highly volatile mislaid chattel, and nothing more. Finders' keepers, losers dead. Or, at least, that's what Captain Arajah had managed to convince his father, much, it had seemed, to Sarojin Kimatra's displeasure.

At the thought of the Fyrokkian mage (or whatever Sarojin was--that point was never made quite clear), Rhea shivered. One glance at that creature had convinced Rhea he was untrustworthy. But a few minutes in his presence had told her something else, too.

Rhea's Force-connection, which had been acting and feeling very strangely ever since she and Corias had dropped from lightspeed to find themselves inside the Veil, was apparently in some ways heightened, to all evidences. Rhea was acutely aware of many things she had never realized before--a bit like having always seen through a very thin film and it suddenly being removed--and in the throneroom had noticed Sarojin was different from his fellow Fyrokkians.

He was a quicker thinker than all but perhaps Captain Arajah, and he seemed to have an uncanny ability of reading the emotions of those around him. In and of themselves, these things would not necessarily have tipped Rhea off. But it was not ten minutes into the hearing that Rhea had distinctly felt the probing fingers of another being's mind intruding upon her thoughts. She had quickly realized these ministrations could have belonged to none other than Sarojin himself.

Which is why, when, later in the hearing, Sarojin had angrily suspended Corias in midair, apparently using only his mind to do it, Rhea had recognized the action for what it was. Had she been anyone else, she might even have categorized the thing as a brand of sorcery. But it was not.

It was Force-telekinesis. Sarojin Kimatra was a Force-user.

Whether he had been able to identify Rhea as also being one, she could not know. But, considering her already-established dislike of Sarojin and the kind of emotion she'd seen some of the other Fyrokkians have for him (fear, for the most part, though Captain Arajah's could only be discribed as hate), she felt that from now on she would make sure to tread cautiously where the mage was concerned.

She also decided to keep a lid on her own Force capabilities, at least for the time being. Whether Sarojin would really care about such a thing or not, the Fyrokkians' reaction to the mage's demonstration of power had been extremely negative. If she were to pull a similar stunt, there was no way of knowing how the aliens would react.

Even with Corias' anticipation of what was in store for the two captives, Rhea had no real idea what to expect. Though, her companion was certainly right about one thing--the Fyrokkians surely could use all the help they could get.

The walk to the medbay had been short, but enough to give Rhea a small look at the interior of the station, the hulking Star-Destroyer-turned-habitation-satellite the Fyrokkians called Orchag-Maur. Its outwardly cobbled appearance accurately represented the entire station, it seemed. The very hallways had been pieced together, patched with all manner of scrap material in a constant battle to maintain station pressurization in the middle of space's unrelenting vacuum. The whole station, what with its extra attached segments in addition to the Star Destroyer's bulk, must have been huge, but Rhea had seen few enough Fyrokkians other than the entourage Captain Arajah had brought with him to the docking bay--the Red Guard, as he called them. Though this could have been chalked up to such a circumstance as this part of the ship being restricted or under construction, with the generally worn, secondhand, and run-down look of the station's structure and equipment, Rhea was inclined to think perhaps the station really was shorthanded.

Which would certainly explain why the Fyrokkians would be putting their new acquisitions to work first thing in the morning.

Rhea waited a moment more as Corias went silent and seemed to be thinking about something, then asked quietly, carefully considering and phrasing her language as she took the hint to be cautious what she said, "Is there anything you want me to...accomplish--" anything you want me to ask, discover, or find out "--once I start working? I have no clue what they'll do with me--" let us assume, because I am a small female, it will not be manual labor, so it could perhaps be cooking, cleaning, or desk work, all of which would afford me an appreciable amount of contact with these aliens "--but I think...I could be of some use."

In other words, it is also possible that, because I am a female, they will consider me less of a threat than they find you to be, and thus watch me a little less closely. I may be able to ferret out information with more freedom than you can.

Rhea just looked at Corias intently but with a bland expression on her face. She hoped he would pick up on her implied reasoning, nudging him just ever so slightly with her mind to try and bump him in the right direction.

[Corias Bonaventure]

There was a lot behind Rhea's relatively simple question. It didn't take much effort to get the general sentiment.

And it was a relief to know Rhea was volunteering to do what she had to do to help their cause. Corias knew she had a fortitude that belied her stature; one had to be stubborn to call a place like the Santiago district "home." That'd be an asset for her.

Especially since, being a small female, she'd probably be set to cooking, cleaning, or desk work--something that would involve more direct contact with the Fyrokkians. And if they didn't consider her much of a threat, maybe she could gather information more freely than he could.

"Yeah, I think you could. I--"

He broke off and gave Rhea a puzzled look. Where had that train of thought come from? True, he'd been thinking along similar lines, but somewhere he thought he'd detected a voice that wasn't his own.

Rhea's?

Corias had never pegged her for a telepath, or even an empath. But then, she was a Force-user.

He could ask her later. For the moment, he focused on getting back on track.

"Any information is useful at this point. Keep your eyes and ears open--look for customs, habits, social structure. They don't all speak Basic, so it's going to be hard to listen in on any gossip, but if you hear any sort of news, about the war, about the court, whatever--remember it. Force willing, we'll have some opportunities to put our heads together and see what we know."

Corias glanced over at the medics in their glassed-in lab on the other end of the medbay. They still were engrossed in their data--if he had to guess, they were screening their prisoners for pathogens. It was one of the hard truths about interspecies contact that one race's common cold could become another race's plague. He didn't expect any serious problems; he'd run the full gamut of available vaccinations before he started his explorations, and Rhea had to have taken the major ones if she'd flown a reputable transport to Coruscant.

That was one thing in their favor. About seven million more and they just might break even.

"Listen, Rhea," Corias said quietly, "there's no telling how long we're going to be on this station. We can't afford to stay aliens here. Wherever they put you, try to make as many allies as you can. Help out your coworkers. Learn their names. I don't know how the females compare to the males--with any luck, they'll be friendlier. As soon as I get the opportunity, I'm going to ask for some language tapes--or whatever they use to teach their children Basic. The more we learn of their language, the better."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea nodded slightly, thinking a little belatedly that, now she'd volunteered her services as a spy, she had literally no clue how exactly she was going to go about it.

Oh, well. Maybe it would just sort of...come to her when the situation arose.

Which might be sooner than expected. One of the medics emerged from behind the glass panel, a ruddy brownish Fyrokkian somewhat smaller and considerably less muscled than Captain Arajah, and approached one of the remaining Red Guard standing near the door. The two aliens growled in subdued voices, their long whiskers quivering and their sharp teeth--which Rhea really just noticed for the first time--snapping as they bit the ends of words and sounds.

In only a few seconds, the two Fyrokkians' short conference was ended and the medic, handing over a data disk to the Red Guard he'd been talking to, threw a last impassive once-over along Corias and Rhea, then ducked back into the lab without another word.

Just as Rhea was beginning to wonder, What next?, two of the four powerful-looking Red Guard soldiers shuffled forward, glowering down at Corias and Rhea. Time to leave, apparently. Unconsciously, Rhea shied from the broad outstretched hand--forepaw?--of one of the Guards, drawing toward Corias.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias caught Rhea's movement out of the corner of his eye. He gently laid his hand on her shoulder and stood up off of the examination table. Stay with me, Rhea, he willed in her direction. We're safe for now...

I hope.

One guard grasped Rhea's upper arm, and the other took Corias's. The larger of the two, whom Corias took to be Arajah's lieutenant, snapped out a syllable, and his counterpart growled a response, to which the gray lieutenant gave a raspy chuckle. Corias barely had time to wonder what was so funny before he was guided forward with a clawed jab in the center of his back.

The prisoners were escorted out of the medbay, two guards in front, two behind. All the guards carried some sort of sidearm at their hips—it was the same sort of eclectic mix they'd seen in the hangar bay—but their paws were free. Corias was surprised they weren't training weapons on their captives, even if they themselves were unarmed. Whether it was a lack of discipline or some idiosyncrasy of their military procedure, he couldn't tell. At least it meant he and Rhea weren't regarded as much of a threat.

There wasn't much to see on their way through the corridors. The Imperial polish had long faded from the walls and floors; the bulkheads appeared stained and weathered in the pale, fluorescent light. Occasionally they passed a column of soldiers or a maintenance worker--all paused to gawp at the aliens in their midst, but a stiff glare from the guards set them back about their business. Corias didn't have enough visual reference of Fyrokkian anatomy to tell for sure, but it seemed the soldiers were mostly male while the techs were mostly female. He wondered if it was coincidence or if there was an occupational gender gap in Fyrokkian society. He still hadn't seen any young.

Few words passed among the guards, but Corias was already making mental notes on their speech. Their vocabulary of phonemes far outpaced the human-friendly patterns of Basic; the Fyrokkian's snarls and yips and percussive aspirations, a mix of humanoid and animal sounds, represented a very mobile palate and larynx. Apparently, a majority of their sounds were shaped in the back of the throat rather than on the lips—perhaps their thick, feline jowls weren't as nimble as a human's. But if a Fyrokkian could speak passable Basic, there had to be some measure of compatibility. Corias was counting on that. If he and Rhea were to have any chance of winning sympathy with these beings, they had to learn to communicate with them.

The entourage shuffled onto a lift, which descended a good fifteen levels and coughed them back out into another corridor. There was less light there; only one in three of the overhead light panels was illuminated, and they gave only a dim, red glow that cast the jutting bulkheads in sinister brown shadows. Corias took care to watch his feet as his eyes adjusted--the Fyrokkians seemed to have no such trouble. The lower corridors seemed to be in worse repair. Here and there, panels were missing from the ceiling or walls, laying power relays and pipelines bare, with jagged strips of durasteel siding lying like refuse on either side. Corias couldn't help sensing they had just entered the slums of Orchag-Maur.

Presently they entered a security station, a broad, squarish room with monitors mounted on one wall and two guards sleepily watching them. When the party arrived, the guards leapt to attention, and the gray lieutenant snapped a monosyllabic command. The two watchguards relaxed, but they followed the two prisoners with great interest. Corias and Rhea were led down a narrow corridor to the left--a detention block.

So much for moving about freely, Corias mused darkly. But as they reached the first pair of cell doors, he saw by the green lights that surmounded them that they were unlocked--perhaps the cells were serving as quarters for the time being.

The gray lieutenant halted them there, and he turned toward the prisoners. "Thisss... lasssst base Rrrred Guarrrd," he said laboriously, chewing the Basic syllables like a bad piece of meat. "Out therrre..." he gestured in the direction of the far door of the monitoring station, opposite the one they had come in through, "Fyrokhani live. Earrrs up."

The large Fyrokkian slapped a wall panel on either side of the corridor, and the first two cell doors hissed open. "It is late. We come in six hourrr. Sleep."

With that parting advice, the Fyrokkian guards turned and left the human and the Imrani to their own devices.

[Rhea Kaylen]

There was something very psychologically disturbing about the realization that one's living quarters were in fact a detention cell deep in the belly of an ancient Imperial Star Destroyer. To say nothing of the fact that the ones who'd shown you to your room were six-foot alien carnivores with unknown motives and intentions.

Rhea was sure there was some irony in this situation, but she had yet to find it.

As the Red Guard soldiers marched back out through the security station and around a corner out of sight, Rhea watched them disappear helplessly, wondering what in the flying frell she was supposed to have learned from the big grey Fyrokkian's cryptic words. Sure, it was a warning, but hearing that she was now separated from the entire Fyrokkian colony by mere feet of durasteel and scrap metal was scarcely made any less confusing or terrifying by being admonished to keep one's "ears up." Which is what he said, right?

Rhea shook her head to clear it, shuffling a few feet down the hallway to peer into one of the cells. The rest of the hallway was eerily quiet, save for the background hum of the dim overhead lighting, and the subsonic mechanical rumble of the ship-station's innards.

The closet-sized cell was as utilitarian and uncomfortable-looking as could be expected from Imperial craftsmanship. The gunmetal grey room (by now rusting in large patches and stained in various spots) was entirely featureless except for two ledges, one a few feet above the other, jutting from the opposite wall, that served as bunk beds. There were neither pillows nor headrests nor blankets to mark the sleeping-slabs at all.

Rhea turned back to Corias, feeling bitter sarcastic vitriol rising inside her like bile.

"We hope you enjoy your stay," she said in the sappy tone of a vid-commercial announcer. In her state of weary, stale shock, she made a convincing tenor. "Do tell us if you need anything, anything at all--like food, water, blankets, extra clothing, or even a single clue as to what the frell is going to happen when the talking cats come back in six hours!"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias turned away and lightly rubbed his temples. He'd been expecting some sort of explosion from Rhea now that the guards were gone, but this particular form of release was grating on him like a nexu's claws on a panel of tempered duraglass--a sound he'd had the unhappy occasion of actually experiencing once.

"We'll find out soon enough," Corias replied. "Whatever else he meant, the gray cat was right--we'd better get some sleep. Can't afford to be exhausted in the morning."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Instantly Rhea bit her lower lip so hard it hurt. She'd immediately regretted her outburst, knowing just how stupid she'd sounded. And Corias looked tired, she suddenly saw--not just tired. Bone-weary, soul-weary. How could she have been so focused on herself that she would let such petulance slide past her lips? Especially when Corias most needed her to be strong and accepting. Or at least silent.

Pained and ashamed, Rhea started to reach out her hand, to touch his shoulder, to apologize, to comfort, just to ease the tension...something. But Corias's bloodless fingers were still pressed into his worry-etched brow, and the shadows under his eyes were forbidding. She let her hand drop, silent.

Then she nodded. "Right," was all she could find to say. What else could be said?

Rhea turned and stepped into the right-hand room, pausing fractionally in the doorway but not stopping or turning back. Once inside, she palmed the door control and heard the panel whoosh into place, a little squeakily with disuse and age.

The lights in the cramped room were dim, not intentionally but either because of old lighting filaments or grime on the light housings or diminished power to this part of the ship (station, Rhea corrected herself). An uncertain flicker that shuddered through the light tubes suggested the first or the last. At least it seemed maybe a degree or two warmer in here, probably because the cell had been kept shut for so long before now. Then again, it was probably just wishful thinking.

Rhea realized that, at last, all the adrenaline of fear and shock and worry and anger were gone. She had literally nothing left, barely enough energy to take one step and collapse on the lower of the two durasteel shelves.

The buzz of the lights overhead and around her was not comforting, and the glow, even dim, was a little brash. Rhea sighed, closing her eyes and determining to adjust.

As she lay, so tired and sore she couldn't fall asleep, Rhea's mind wandered. It sluggishly re-watched the past twenty-four hours in fits and starts, stopping as if it were a broken vid on some scenes, speeding through others, skipping several entirely. She thought she might be subconsciously trying to find something good, something redeeming or comforting, in what she'd seen so far.

But no. There was nothing. As the vid played, a lump grew painfully in Rhea's throat. She was only seeing a vision of growing hopelessness and inescapability, a burden too great too bear, a situation her mind had no clue how to deal with, or how to try.

All this time, until just five minutes ago, to her shame, Rhea had held up remarkably well, she thought. Especially since she'd always had the tendency to overreact under pressure. But now, there was no one she had to impress, no Gucchi to play-act ignorance for, no Corias to be strong for. With nothing but herself and her confusion and cold misery in this cell in the belly of an ancient Star Destroyer, a prisoner of an alien race with unknown intentions, Rhea found she could not hold up any longer.

Hot tears built in her eyes and leaked out through the closed lids, catching on her long eyelashes and spilling over onto her cheeks. As they came more frequently, they splashed down on the hard bunk, and on Rhea's trembling hand, her only pillow. She did not allow herself more than shuddering gasps for breath and whisper-quiet moans, lest someone hear, but her soul was weeping and sobbing.

With the intensity of her tears waxing and waning randomly over the course of the next half an hour, Rhea cried herself to sleep.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias stepped into his own cell, his shoulders sagging and his eyes burning. No matter what he told Rhea, no matter what facade he attempted to put up either for her benefit or for their captors, he was afraid for their future. The Republic was unknown in the Veil at best; a phantom menace at worst. They themselves were curiosities, wild cards, hunting trophies, forced labor, take your pick.

In any event, there'd be nothing new to learn until tomorrow. Corias was actually relieved to hear they'd be put to work in the morning, thrown into the mix with the Fyrokkian people instead of quarantined like lab specimens. Even considering the gray cat's warning, that meant the Fyrokkians regarded their prisoners as sentient beings, not cattle. The more the Fyrokkians could identify with a pair of humanoids, the better. Over the next few weeks, it would be up to Corias and Rhea to become as Fyrokkian as possible.

The first order of business was to sleep. With a concerted effort that rivaled Jedi meditation, Corias cleared every other thought from his mind, stretched himself out on the stiff Imperial bunk, and drifted off to the drone of Orchag-Maur's ancient power relays.

[Arajah Ramanuja]

Night and day were relative distinctions on Orchag-Maur. The station's demands were too severe and too constant to allow its population to enjoy a natural, communal rhythm of work and sleep; all its foundries and factories and tech crews remained in full operation for straight seven-hour shifts punctuated by regular breaks for routine maintenance, meals, and shift rotations. There were four shifts in a rotation--two shifts on duty, two shifts off for all able-bodied workers. It was a strenuous way of life, but it was one the Fyrokkians had long grown accustomed to.

It had been a short night for Arajah Ramanuja, whose off-duty shifts had been all but consumed by the arrival of the outsiders. He scarcely had time for five hours of sleep before it was time to awake them, one full hour before his first shift of the rotation was to begin.

Accompanied by two Red Guardsmen, the Ramanuja prince strode into the security station outside the detention block. The two soldiers who had admitted Rhea and Corias leapt to their feet and pricked their ears in salute.

"How are our guests?" Arajah asked.

The senior guard pointed to the surveillance monitors in the wall, which displayed both prisoners curled up on their bunks. "There's been no trouble from either one, Vachu. They crawled into their beds as soon as they entered their rooms." The brown-furred guard elevated his chin and bared his teeth in amusement. "The female mewled like a kitten until she fell asleep."

Arajah regarded the monitors dispassionately. "Wake them," he ordered. "I want them ready to move as soon as possible."

"Yes sir." The guard stabbed a control on a nearby console, sounding an abrasive electronic siren in the two cells. The slumbering figures on the screens jolted awake.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's heart flew out of her mouth at the scream of the siren and she sat bolt upright regardless of the fact she was still asleep. About the time she started sliding off the bunk, she woke up and collected the majority of her wits.

Staggering fantastically and falling against one wall, Rhea yawned wide enough to split her jaw and tried to still her racing heart. Force, but that was a rude wake-up call! Her bleary eyes prickled with too little sleep, and she felt absolutely like bantha fodder--her throat hurt from the too-cool, too-dry atmosphere and her head ached magnificently. What Rhea didn't realize was that she looked fully as bad as she felt; her eyes were still swollen and she had the sleep-mark imprint of her jacket all over her left cheek. Her bed hair, in particular, was terrifying, or would have been had she been able to see it.

But she neither knew of it nor cared much, because she suddenly remembered exactly where she was, why, and how. She was about to be put to work doing Astrel-knew-what, and her situation as a prisoner of the Fyrokkians had not miraculously changed overnight.

Rhea yawned again. It's going to be a beautiful day.

And then the door to her cell flew open.

[Arajah Ramanuja]

Arajah stood there, dominating the diminutive hatchway. "Come," he said gruffly. "We will take you to the washroom where you may make yourself presentable. We have brought a fresh set of clothing for you."

He stood back away from the hatch and beckoned Rhea toward him.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea stared up at Captain Arajah with large eyes, shivering from cold and fearful anticipation. She tried to crane her head around to see if she could see Corias, but there was too much fur and Fyrokkian in the way, so she finally regained her senses and crept from her room to follow wherever he took her.

She was relieved that she would be given a chance to "make herself presentable." She felt terrible, and wanted to wash her face. She really wanted to wash her hair, but she had some serious doubt that she would be granted that much time or luxury. She would just have to tie it back and deal with it.

[Arajah Ramanuja]

Corias was nowhere to be seen at present. Arajah took Rhea by the arm and guided her swiftly down the prison block corridor to what had been a small public vibeshower that served the star destroyer's brig. Two Fyrokkian females, quite possibly near Rhea's own age, were waiting there.

Before Rhea could make an inquiry, Arajah deposited her inside, then backed out and closed the door. The two females quickly took hold of Rhea and, with businesslike dispatch, pulled her jacket and her shirt off, then unfastened her jeans and slipped them down, relieving her of her shoes and socks in the same motion. Within seconds, Rhea had been stripped completely naked, and her clothes were piled on a bench against the wall.

The two cats then pulled a pair of sponges from a bucket and began swabbing Rhea from head to toe, daubing away all the sweat and grime that had accumulated on her face, on her face, her shoulders, under her arms, on her back, and everywhere else. Then one of the attendants produced a third sponge--if it could be called that. It was stiff and rough, with teeth that looked like they could shred flesh. She dampened the device, then briskly combed Rhea's hair with it, drawing out all the tangles and knots with grim efficiency.

They dried her off with a pair of towels, then set about dressing her. The clothing was primitive by Republic standards, but perhaps the best they could do to accommodate her anatomy--a lightweight wrap resembling muslin went snugly around her chest under her arms, and a white, shin-length skirt, joined in the front, was fastened around her waist. The meager outfit was completed with an open-sided tunic that slipped over her head and was fastened with a broad, cloth belt wrapped several times at her hips. The belt caused a momentary quandary, as it was supposed to wrap below the tail. As it was, the costume sagged a bit on Rhea's tiny frame, but the Fyrokkian attendants decided that she looked presentable enough, and they shuffled her in front of a cracked mirror so she could see herself.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea half expected to be missing bits of skin or clumps of hair. Her flesh still reverberated from the scouring she'd just undergone. One thing could most assuredly be said, however: she was now very much awake.

Her reflection showed no such battle-scars. It did reveal the most bizarre-looking getup Rhea had ever known herself to wear, and rosy skin along her arms and her exposed legs from the vigorous ministrations of the two furred attendants. Her wet hair was still a sight, but she ran her fingers through it quickly to flatten it a little so she wouldn't scare people...er, cats.

The clothing was comfortable, though--not very warm, but not entirely to her disapproval. But then, Imrani raising was not conducive to a good fashion sense, and Rhea was dimly aware that she rather resembled a misshapen pillowcase.

Still, to be clean and awake were a commendable couple of good points, and Rhea meekly looked into the mirror at the two females, who seemed a little scared.

"Thank you," she murmured, knowing as she said it they would not understand.

[Arajah Ramanuja]

The two Fyrokkian females glanced at each other, and then back at Rhea. They were surprised that she had spoken to them--neither one knew enough Basic to understand what she had said, so they merely bobbed their ears obeisantly and ushered Rhea back out the door and down the hall to the security station where Arajah, his subordinates, and Corias were waiting. Corias, it seemed, had been through a similar morning treatment--his skin was reddened and clean, and he was clad in a tight-fiftting, sleeveless tunic and loose-fitting pants. He still wore his boots, however.

Arajah dismissed the two attendants, and they bowed and hurried from the room. With little word or ceremony, he signaled his guards, and they secured both prisoners and escorted them out the far corridor--into the residential district of the station.

Of all the areas of the station, it was the population center that had been the most altered from its original design. The spartan, machiavellian layout of an Imperial Star Destroyer ill-befitted the needs of an industrial civilian community, so the Ramanuja clan had gutted entire decks of marine barracks, repair hangars, and auxilliary stations, and recreated Orchag-Maur as a city in the clouds with its own farms, factories, marketplaces, and temples. Nearly ten thousand Fyrokkians called the station their home

The corridor ran for a hundred meters or so before channeling into a broad, high-ceilinged thoroughfare. It was there that Corias and Rhea first saw the abundance of the Fyrokkian population on the station. In the dusty, red light they could see a swarm of multicolored fur and cloth--Fyrokkians shuffling back and forth between meal breaks and duty shifts, some of them in uniform, most of them in costumes similar to Corias and Rhea's, males and females of various ages, a few little ones darting through the masses.

But it was clear the corridor was more than just a channel for traffic; it was also a sort of bazaar, a marketplace and meeting ground. On either side of the hallway were public cafeterias, maintenance shops, and public distribution centers. There were also small booths dotting the walls from which entrepreneurs, mostly females, sold clothing, jewelry, handmade crockery, even a little fresh produce. From the size and spacing of the booths, it appeared that few Fyrokkians could afford such luxuries--most of their goods were likely allocated and provided centrally.

The passage of the small party of warriors and prisoners broke the steady rhythm of traffic and commerce, however. At the sight of the bare-faced, bare-armed aliens in their midst, the masses paused and stared, some retreating, others pressing forward to see the spectacle. None of them pressed too close for fear of provoking the Red Guard, but many of them traded whispered comments, oaths, jeers, and maledictions.

"Breath of the Veil... it's them!"

"What are they doing here? Where does Arajah think he's taking them?"

"Maybe he plans to start a zoo. Or a freak show."

"Alien carrion. I wouldn't soil my claws with them."

The party marched on in silence, through a large intersection, and at last took a side-corridor to a turbolift station. They rode up two levels, navigated a few more corridors, and finally entered a sparse room lined with lockers--from the door on the far side came a great clamor of machinery, running water, clattering metal, and boiling liquids; there was also a palpable gale of scents, from sizzling meat to frying vegetables and grains to scorched ingredients to detergent.

Arajah turned to address Rhea. "This is where you will work," he rumbled. "The Lady M'runhn should be here shortly."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea knew immediately where she was. The kitchens. The smells and sounds were unmistakable, and, to Rhea, oddly comforting. They were a small snatch of the familiar in the middle of this strange place. In fact, Rhea thought she smelled cabbage boiling.

Immediately her heart lifted just a little. Kitchen-work she could do, with little enough extra instruction. Maybe if she did her work well, she could get on her boss's good side sooner than planned. Rhea just hoped this "Lady M'runhn"--she couldn't even rightly pronounce the weird Fyrokkian name--could speak Basic.

That was a pretty large assumption, though. Rhea glanced back, a little uncertainly, at Captain Arajah, but the stocky Fyrokkian had already turned away. And Rhea could not get another glimpse of Corias, as he was eclipsed by furred cords of muscle and marched smartly out of the locker room and away from her.

Now her heart skipped. Until that moment it hadn't really sunk in that the two of them would be truly and actually separated. Rhea wondered in momentary panic when she'd see him again, but she quickly chided herself.

We'll be put back in the detention block together at the start of the next sleep cycle. He'll be fine. I'll be fine.

I hope.

The clank and hiss of the kitchen continued on unabated, filling Rhea's ears as she stood hovering in the locker room, waiting for Lady M'runhn, too apprehensive to go inside yet and see what she was up against.

[Fyrokhani]

There was another sound rising over the kitchen noise--quiet at first, then brash and unmistakeable. It was a husky female voice snarling and spitting in the feral Fyrokkian tongue with prodigious rapidity and ire. Then, suddenly, the kitchen light was blocked from the transluscent curtain that covered the doorway, and then the curtain was thrust aside.

And in stepped the Lady Shiraga M'runhn, the mistress of food procurement and preparation aboard Orchag-Maur and the tyrant of its kitchens. She was an enormous dun-furred female, nearly as wide as she was tall--she easily outweighed Arajah. She was clad in a white linen collar and tunic that seemed barely up to the task of containing her, and over her ample chest she wore an apron that was covered with stains of all colors and textures. The massive cat was nearly backing through the doorway as she finished roaring a virulent tirade at one of her subordinates.

Then she spun with such a force that the floor seemed to shudder and stopped to stare at Rhea, her small eyes narrowed to slits and her large lip curled to reveal her fangs.

"You," she spat. "You work for me? What you name?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Astrel ov Force!!

Rhea staggered backward, her hand clamped over her mouth to hold in the scream of fright she threatened to loose. Great moons, was that ever a mean-looking, massive, monstrous beast of a female! Her weight was not what startled Rhea as much as her sheer presence, and how she made her inconsequential height, little more than Rhea's, somehow tower menacingly over her newest kitchen-maid.

All thoughts of getting on the Lady's good side vanished instantly, leaving behind them the black hole in the Fyrokkian's critical glare, sucking Rhea in to chew her up and spit her out.

Rhea's tongue was lodged somewhere in the back of her throat and for several tense seconds refused to obey her frantic commands to reply. Then, just as the Fyrokkian female looked about ready to cuff her across the room, the Imrani woman squeaked,

"Rhea Kaylen!"

[Fyrokhani]

Shiraga lifted her nose imperiously. She was patently unimpressed with the shrimp of a female that stood quaking before her. Wind and fire, she hoped that little thing could at least pull her weight.

"Ri'yahkehden," she replied. "Ri'yah... I have..." She paused, searching for the Basic word. "Niece. Named Ri'yah."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea blinked. She didn't quite know what to say to that; the female had a niece with Rhea's same name? Was...was that a good thing?

Rhea ventured a little smile and nodded. "Oh? You do?"

[Fyrokhani]

Shiraga gave one slow nod and peeled back her lips. "She a lazy sh'vahth," she spat. "Good for nothing. I ought cook her." She stepped forward and pointed a flabby claw. "You lazy, I cook you. Understand?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea could do nothing but nod vigorously, her damp hair bouncing, her eyes wide as saucers in fright. She crossed her eyes trying to focus on the hooked claw pointed in her face, and focus on not getting nicked in the nose by it.

"Y-yes, mistress. I promise I'll work very hard, and I'll do whatever you tell me to."

Because, somehow, I doubt you're kidding about the cooking thing.

[Fyrokhani]

Shiraga made a derisive huff in the back of her throat. "Come," she barked. Then she led Rhea back through the curtain and into Orchag-Maur's main kitchens.

The space was enoromous--the Fyrokkians had directly converted the Star Destroyer's primary mess to serve the local region of workers and warriors. There were rows and rows of ovens, flat grills, thermal coils bearing massive stew pots and roasts. Tools and ingredients hung in clusters from the ceiling; huge bunches of dried herbs filled the air with spicy aromas. Off to one side were the doors to the storehouses; to the other was the scullery bay.

The kitchen was bustling to such a degree that Rhea may have wondered how she could possibly fit into Shiraga's tightly organized system. Nearly all the workers were female, and most of them appeared a good deal younger than Shiraga, though typical humnanoid conventions of aging an individual didn't necessarily apply to the Fyrokkians.

Hardly anyone within the kitchen-mistress's sight so much as looked up to see their new colleague; however, as soon as Shiraga's back was turned, they stopped to stare. One brindled female hissed something to her companion, but Shiraga's ears turned their way, and the matron snarled off a reprimand. All the kitchen workers quickly returned to their business.

Shiraga led Rhea to the scullery bay, where a conveyor belt ran dirty dishes past a long trough of sudsy water. There were already six young females washing. The large Fyrokkian mistress guided Rhea in front of the vat and grabbed a heavily stained metal plate.

"Wash," she said, just to make sure the alien understood. To demonstrate, she grabbed a sponge in her other paw, plunged both the plate and the sponge into the water, and quickly scrubbed it clean. Then she pressed the sponge into Rhea's comparatively tiny hand. "Until you see your face in it. Understand?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's nose twinged at the wonderfully delicious scents of the kitchen, but almost immediately their lovely flavors were doused in the stale, iron smell of dishwater and wet pots and pans.

Oh, she understood, all right. Hated it, but understood. She nodded to her new superior, hand clenched around the too-large, dripping sponge, steeling herself for all the dishes laid out before her.

"Yes, mistress," she replied, quickly taking up her spot a mere half a foot from the next dishwasher, a tall, sinewy female with charcoal fur and a suspicious, sharp yellow eye that scraped mercilessly over her new coworker. Rhea could feel dislike radiating from the Fyrokkian's demeanor. Wonderful. So much for getting to know her shift-mates.

Not that the Lady would likely have given her the chance; that stern gaze held every kitchen-maid in silent obedience. As soon as the massive kitchen-mistress saw that Rhea was in place and knew what she was doing (Rhea having immediately taken up another plate and industriously scoured it, to prove her willingness and ability), she snorted a brusque but satisfied noise and shambled out of the scullery bay.

Rhea took a deep breath and seized a bowl. These cats wanted her to work. Fine. She'd show them she could meet their pace and complete their assignments. She was determined, for both her sake and Corias', not to give the Fyrokkians any reason to think them useless slackers.

In this world, it seemed there was no place for uselessness.

[Corias Bonaventure]

As Arajah shuffled him out the locker room doorway, Corias tried to crane his neck back around to make some sort of contact with Rhea--a mouthed word, or even just a glimpse--but she was already out of sight. He couldn't help her now; she was on her own. From the frenzied clatter in the kitchen, it sounded like she was going to have her hands full.

Then it was another forced march through the corridors. Corias had tried to keep the junctions and directions straight in his head, but the station's floorplan was so fragmented and patchworked from retrofitting that he soon lost his sense of direction. So he turned his attention to the corridors themselves--the corroded bulkheads, the exposed relays running overhead, the system of marking the borders between sections--anything that might provide useful information over an extended stay on an alien space station.

It seemed that the best way to think of Orchag-Maur was not as a military ship but as a fort that had grown into a city, like so many frontier outposts in the history of galactic civilization. The hub of the station, what had originally been the command and control centers of the Star Destroyer Impunity, had changed little since its Imperial days; the Fyrokkians had recognized the efficiency of the regimented Imperial design and had adapted their defensive scheme to match it. The rest of the station, however, the living quarters, farms, factories, and distribution centers, had grown outward from that hub as any city would, filling its natural boundaries here, creating new ones there, adapting the environment to suit its own needs and conveniences. Many of the Imperial designations of decks and sections were now irrelevant, and the orderly decksigns had been replaced with more haphazard Fyrokkian labels, some of which seemed to have been hand-painted. Arajah and his cohort, however, seemed to have no difficulty navigating it.

They passed a significant-looking marker--Corias guessed it meant they had moved out of the local residential section and into something else--and then through another mag-lift hub and a security checkpoint. At last, they came to a corridor with rows of transparisteel windows lining one side, looking down into a cavernous chamber that once must have been the Star Destroyer's primary loading bay.

Most of the loading mechanisms seemed to still be in operation--the tractor beams, the mobile platforms, the cranes and manipulator arms. But farther down the chamber, in the racks once used for storage and service, there was now a sort of assembly line of industrial machinery stretching for several hundred meters, a good percentage of the vessel's overall length. Corias could make out a battery of mobile scanning heads and, beyond that, stands of clamps and several vicious-looking industrial plasma drills. Mounted in the ceiling were tracks for suspension rigs; on the deck were tracks for carts and dollies.

Currently, there was a rock twice the size of Iolanthe suspended on a massive antigrav plate beyond the mobile scanners. As Corias watched, one of the turret-mounted laser plasma swelled with energy, then spat out a blinding yellow beam, slicing into the stone behemoth and carving it like a roast.

He paused for a moment before one of the guards jostled him from behind. The spacer stumbled forward, but he kept stealing glances through the window.

"What is this place?" he asked Arajah.

"Processing," the Fyrokkian captain replied.

They were approaching another hub of lifts, and the last window had almost passed out of view. As Corias was shuffled into one of the lifts, he said, "Processing for what?"

"Asteroids, derilects," Arajah said. "Anything we find in space that may be of use to us."

"So it's a sort of refinery," Corias surmised. "Mining, smelting... I saw those scanning heads at the beginning of the assembly line. Looking for resources?"

The ochre cat narrowed his eyes and flattened his ears. "What does it matter to you?"

"Well, that's essentially my job--outside the Veil, I mean," Corias answered him. "I'm very experienced with scanners, especially geological and ecological systems. Maybe if you let me take a look at your set-up, I could--"

"You will be scrubbing ore-carts," Arajah said flatly. "Perhaps swabbing the deck if you manage to put yourself ahead of schedule."

Corias pursed his lips. He'd more or less expected a menial task, but he wasn't willing to give up so quickly. "I'm only trying to let you know my capabilities. I'm not familiar with your systems, but I'm sure that if you gave me a chance--"

"The ore-carts, Corias Bonaventure," Arajah snapped. "The time to discuss your capabilities will come when your work cycle is complete. Until then, I beg you not to try my patience."

That was enough for Corias. He kept his mouth shut as the lift sank to the level of the Processing Deck and wondered just what Arajah meant about discussing his capabilities later.