The Game Was Rigged From The Start - 10.005

[Steward]

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Herglic in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a dice.

A chance cube to be exact. Where gambling is concerned, there are few pastimes quite so pure and simple as the chance cube. Every roll of the cube is a full of potential, both wonderful and terrible. There's no skill to the game, no cunning required. All a creature needs is the means to cast the die. As it stood, the Herglic in question retained use of all of his limbs, though whether they would be intact by the time he left Xim's Palace – the finest casino liner in the Outer Rim – remained to be seen.

“Just one more roll, I think,” said the cetacean.

The Herglic had been sitting at the same table – taking up two seats – for the better part of an evening. In that time, other players had come and gone. For most, the chance cube was a game with fleeting little interest. The odds were too predictable. You won or you didn't, but either way you had no control over the game. Perhaps that was why the Herglic found it so mesmerising. You were only ever one lucky roll away from winning big.

He glanced at the cuff attached to his wrist. The band – almost like a manacle in appearance – was fitted with a small screen that displayed in bright, bold lines a series of numbers. Numbers which had been getting steadily smaller since the Herglic had arrived on the casino floor.

“How much would you like to bet, sir?” asked the steward. Standing on the opposite side of the table, his hands spread at equidistant points from its edges, the steward smiled. It was the same smile that hundreds of other gamblers were seeing at the very same time, as dozens of identical looking stewards dealt hands of cards, set game boards, span wheels and gestured for casino security to restrain any sore losers.

The Herglic looked at his wrist again. It read: 450. It didn't cost anything to stay on Xim's Palace – in fact, the suit he'd been staying in for the past week had been compliments of the house – but a shuttle away from the casino liner would not be cheap.

“Five-hundred on blue,” the Herglic grunted, with a hauum from his blowhole.

The steward's head turned with a bird like tilt. “That appears to be more than your credit cuff contains, sir.”

Under the hot lights of the casino floor, the Herglic's smooth black skin shone as it were damp. “I've got another cuff back in my suite.”

“Ah,” the steward's head titled in the opposite direction. “Of course. Five-hundred on blue.”

There was a pause, as the steward watched and waited for any further bets. As the only one at the table, it seemed the Herglic would be the only one playing. With a smile, the steward reached through the translucent forcefield that protected the game table and retrieved the chance cube. The Herglic had already thrust out one flipper-like hand and eagerly accepted the blue and red cube.

There was a pause, an instant of near ritual contemplation as the Herglic studied the cube in the palm of his hand. He had no control over the outcome of the cast, but that did not stop him from believing. In the moment the cube was cast, the translucent forcefield over the table became partially opaque. It could not be breached now, not even by a steward. The cube clattered about the table, rolling to a tantalising halt before tipping over to display just one face.

Red.

In an instant, the digits on the Herglic's credit cuff spiralled down to zero.

“An unlucky roll, sir. Perhaps next time-”

He rose up out of his seat and, like an avalanche, surged at the steward with both muscular arms outstretched. As his flippered hands went for the steward's throat, there was a ripple across the steward's face. Something like a static, as if his features were being broadcast and the Herglic had just interrupted the signal. The distortion last a split-second and then was gone, unseen by the Herglic who tumbled backwards, clutching at the wrist his credit cuff was strapped to, with a mournful wail of pain.

As the Herglic writhed about on the floor, near paralysed by the shock emanating from the cuff, other steward's strode calmly towards him. They formed a ring around him, turning their smiling faces outwards so that the casino's other patrons did not see what was happening within.

Another steward came towards the steward who had been so close to being strangled by the huge alien.

“Steward,” said the steward. His eyes tracked up and down the length of the first steward. His shirt collar was still crisp and not a hair on his head was out of place. He was, in fact, smiling. At least on the outside.

“Please allow me, steward,” said a third steward, stepping forward to assume control of the chance cube table, whilst two other steward's laid their hands onto the original stewards shoulders and turned him away. Away from the casino floor - from the dazzling colours and the bright lights and the smiles - to the discrete door that was marked for the entrance of employee's only.

[Steward]

As one, the steward's departed from the casino floor.

Their departure went largely unnoticed. Who would pay attention to a group of such drably dressed men, when there were a multitude of wonderful things on the casino floor to arrest their attention? Aside from the gambling tables and machines themselves, there was entertainment to be found at every turn. Screens levitated high above the casino floor, broadcasting live shock-boxing and racing, or adverts the many services that Xim's Palace could provide. Nothing was too good for the guests of Xim's Palace, they said. At Xim's Palace, everyone could live like an emperor or empress.

Somewhere off to one side of the humongous floor, there was a stage where a circo-troupe of acrobats and gymnasts contorted themselves into impossible shapes before the eyes of an adoring crowd, whilst demurely dressed waiters and waitresses with flesh the colour of fuchsia, carmine, ruby and amaranth distributed drinks and food with supple grace and discretion.

The steward who had infuriated the Herglic glanced back over his shoulder at it all as he was carried along on the tide of momentum generated by the other stewards. One of the floating monitors reflected his face right back at him as a placid voice said: Steward. At your beck and call, night and day.

He turned away and as the doors to the employee's only section of the floor opened, one of the steward's behind him shoved him in the back, sending him tripping into the corridor that was the night to the casino floor's day.

“Quit your gawking, stew,” the offending steward said, their voice identical to the voice on the floating advertisement – identical to his own. Yet, he could detect the difference. The faint buzz on the edge of the words. It was the kind of thing that you only noticed with time and concentration.

“What do you suppose they'll do with him?” asked another, who walked alongside the hover-sled that was carrying the unconscious body of the Herglic. The corridor they moved through was absolutely featureless. Grey walls, grey floor, grey ceiling. The same shade as the jumpsuit that the steward's wore. There was only one path they could take from the casino floor: towards a shimmering blue energy field that filled the end of the hallway.

“One thing's for certain,” said a steward, as they approached the energy field. “Lucky bastard's not going to end up like us.”

“No?” The steward who had been running the chance cube table turned a quizzical frown towards his 'twin' and watched as the man took a step towards the energy field.

As he moved through the energy field, he flickered for an instant – and then he was gone, the holo-emitter collar clamped around his throat powering down with a beep to reveal the bug-eyes of a Rodian glancing back at the steward. One by one, the other steward's followed and a dozen, identical smiling faces lost their similarity and their smiles, becoming instead a mismatching crowd of humans and aliens alike, uniform only due to the grey jumpsuits they wore, the collars locked around their necks and the fact that they were all six foot tall at the most.

“Of course not,” said the Rodian, with a sneer. “He's too damn big.”

[Dasquian Belargic]

When the Herglic awoke, he was dead.

At least, that was the most logical explanation for it.

It was custom when creatures of his species died for their bodies to be commended not to the seas of their homeworld Giju, but to the pakk-shum-tan – the greater sea, or as most other beings knew it, the stars. Once proclaimed dead, the Herglic would be placed into a ceremonial shuttle and, with great and solemn fanfare, fired into the blackness of space, so that they might continue their exploration of the cosmos even in the after-life.

It was this practice that the unlucky Herglic aboard Xim's Palace found himself thinking of, at that very moment.

In defiance of basic geometry, his entire body had been squeezed into a tube, one that he imagined was not entirely dissimilar from the funeral pods cast into the pakk-shum-tan. His bulky arms were pinned at his even bulkier sides and, he realised with no small amount of panic fluttering inside of him, his blow-hole was precariously close to being squashed. When he inhaled, the air tasted like bitter cocktail of sweat and disinfectant.

This was not how he had imagined his last moments. There had been much more laughter and frivolity, when he had considered how his life might end – and there had also been a buffet. All the delicacies in the known worlds, and games too. Games that he would always win, and even in his last breath he would play, winning as the light and life instead of him went out.

He blew a mournful hauum from his blow-hole, a note of a regret for the opulent party that never would be – and at that moment there was a knock. A knock that came from somewhere down beside his feet.

All circumstances considered, a knock was - unexpected.

Hauum, he cleared his blow-hole, and after a moments thought said: “Er, hello?”

“Ah,” said a voice, and the Herglic was almost positive that the voice was smiling.

“So you are alive. I was beginning to worry that you'd miss breakfast.”

[Dasquian Belargic]

The after-life, it transpired, was much more grey than the Herglic had expected.

He himself was also much more naked than he – and indeed the human who called himself Dasquian – had expected. Dasquian had tossed the big creature a towel, but it seemed that the towels in the after-life were designed for creatures of significantly smaller stature (and girth) than the Herglic. He hadn't decided whether to be offended or proud about that, yet. That decision could wait until a few more pertinent matters were dealt with. Such as the plate in his lap.

He pushed another handful of... food into his mouth. Each mouthful was a disappointment, lacking in any of the wondrous flavours he had supposed food in the after-life would contain. His hungry outweighed his chagrin, however, so he ate and considered his current surroundings.

They were sitting in a small, almost empty room. Grey walls, grey ceiling, grey floor. There were two stools – on which the Herglic and Dasquian sat – and set into one of the walls was a pair of circular openings that lead to two tubes. It was out of the lower-most tube that Dasquian had wheeled the Herglic. The tube wasn't a funeral pod, he had concluded, and this wasn't the pakk-shum-tan – but the Herglic couldn't piece together how he had gone from lunging at a steward to sitting naked, eating food of questionable origin and content whilst being observed by a stranger. A stranger who was smirking, at that.

Dasquian was wearing the very same outfit as the stewards of Xim's Palace, and to the Herglic he looked practically the same as the ever-present, ever-smiling face of the steward, except for the colour of the... fur on his head. That was the trouble with humans, of course. They all looked roughly the same: small, pinkish, fur on top. Unlike the steward's, though, this one also had a collar on, which pulsed with a dull blue light every few seconds.

It wasn't until he'd finished eating that the Herglic spoke. “So, where's this, then?”

Dasquian smiled. “This is where men who steal from Xim's Palace go. It's not bad, as far as jail cells go,” Dasquian went on. “I've certainly slept in worse – though I'd wager they didn't have a gentleman of your stature in mind when they made those sleep pods,” he added, tossing a glance over his shoulders at the circular openings in the wall.

Something caught in the Herglic's throat and he gave a strangled huup from his blow-hole.

Dasquian looked back at the Herglic, who was wide-eyed, and frowned, one hand straying absently to the collar at his throat. “Sorry, shouldn't have mentioned wagers. I suppose that's still a bit of a sore subject, eh?”

The big Herglic dabbed the towel against his clammy, blue-black forehead. “I'm not dead, then?”

Not knowing or wanting to know anything further about Herglic reproductive anatomy, Dasquian kept his eyes focused on the Herglic's eyes. He lifted an eyebrow. “Not dead, no. Bruised and aching, perhaps, yes – but you're definitely alive, fortunately for both of us.”

If the Herglic had been in possession of eyebrows, Dasquian imagined that he would have used them at that moment to frown.

“A dead Herglic would make for a poor accomplice for a prison break.”

[Cas Kento]

Elsewhere, another dull blue light pulsed.

Listening to the almost imperceptible whir of the turbo-lift, rising from the casino's lower levels to its glamorous floors, Cas Kento was aware of a handful of other lights throbbing around her – and the fidgeting of other young women trying to hide them. A slave collar, they whined, didn't make for the most appealing accessory. How were they supposed to charm guests, when the flashing light at their throats was a constant reminder that at any moment, their head could explode?

Their customers were the exactly kind of people who liked to be waited on by slaves, so why hide it?

A flustered sigh came from somewhere behind Cas and she fought the urge to roll her eyes and instead stared straight ahead. On the doors in front of them, the same words were displayed over and over. Cas didn't bother to read them any more. She knew what they said; every one of the staff on board the casino liner - stewards and hostesses alike - knew them off by heart.

Remember: the better the service, the greater the tips, and the closer you are to returning home. Have a fabulous shift!

As the lift hummed to a halt, Cas exhaled the breath she'd been holding in. Fabulous, she reminded herself. The doors parted, revealing a long grey corridor. Half a dozen steward's were coming in the other direction, their holo-emitters powering down as they passed through an energy field, the blue lights flashing brighter for an instant. Cas made a point of not making eye contact with any of them as she and the rest of the hostesses stalked down the hallway, high-heels clicking against the polished floor as they too moved through the energy field, their collars pulsing brighter for an instant, registering that they had passed from a restricted area into the comparative freedom of the casino floor.

She didn't make eye contact, because stewards and hostesses didn't mix, didn't so much as acknowledge each others presence, let alone speak. Not as far as the casino was concerned – and that was one illusion that Cas was very keen to maintain.

Fabulous, she reminded herself, as she left behind the grey corridor and, in a dress made from the finest imitation shimmersilk the Outer Rim had to offer, blended seamlessly into the gaudy colour of the casino floor. The heat and sound enveloped her and she smiled for the crowds, but mostly for herself.

It was almost time.

[Cas Kento]

It was strange to think, that the only time Cas ever got any real privacy was when she was out on the casino floor. It was a well-known fact that every inch of the hostesses quarters was monitored, at all hours. It didn't matter that they were all wearing collars which could be remotely triggered to blow their heads off at a moments notice; they had to be monitored. Privacy was a luxury of the wealthy, and that was exactly why Cas had been happy to find herself a regular customer in Pratari'sha'ik, a fat Twi'lek with an even fatter wallet.

Pratari'sha'ik visited Xim's Palace exactly once every five days, always at the same time. With the exception of the alarm that woke Cas up each day, he was the only constant in her life. She could have set her watch by him, if the casino had trusted her to own a watch. Which they did not.

She would be walking the casino floor, smiling her best smile, when quite suddenly there would be a beep in her ear. It was the communicator that all the hostesses were obliged to wear, as ever present as their collars. Into her ear, a voice would say: hostess two-thirty-two, your client is here.

That was her cue.

It was the same today as every other day he'd visited. She set down the tray of drinks flutes she was carrying, smoothed her shimmersilk dress, and began the inevitable and meandering walk to the clandestium. She had to pace herself, to make sure she didn't walk too quickly. That might make her stand out, and there was every chance that wherever they were, the monitor watcher (whose finger was poised over the button that would blow her collar up and her head off) would get twitchy at the sight of a hostess on the verge of running.

Besides, if she made Pratari'sha'ik wait, that wasn't a bad thing, was it? He was just all the more happy to see her when she finally arrived.

“Cassandra, my sweet,” he sighed, as she slipped the door to the clandestium shut behind her, and with it shut out the prying eyes and cameras of the casino liner. It was the same clandestium suite that the old Twi'lek rented every time he came aboard Xim's Palace: plush furnishings, soft lighting and fragrant smoke in the air. There was an ample supply of spice on hand, which he'd already begun to sift his fat fingers through. Languishing in a sea of cushions, Pratari'sha'ik gestured Cas forward with a dreamy smile.

“Step into the light,” he said, and she did.

A muted, deep red light was set into the suite's ceiling. Beneath it and bathed in, Cas could have passed for a Zeltron, her skinned painted a deep shade of pink. The pale silver of her dress became a glittering fuchsia. Even the ever-flashing blue light on her collar became a dark shade of purple. Pratari'sha'ik smiled and so she smiled in return.

“I'd like you to.. dance for me, Cassandra,” he said.

And she did.

She closed her eyes, imagined that she was somewhere else and she danced. Slow and sinuous, until – beneath the undulating thrum of the music that filled the clandestium – she could hear the sound of Pratari'sha'ik's breathing become heavy and deep, as he sank into half-sleep half-trance of a spice high. Her eyes fluttered open.

This was it: the moment she had been waiting for. The music didn't stop, but her dance ended abruptly as she sank to her knees beside the dozing Twi'lek. With deft fingertips, she loosened the cuff from his wrist. The screen read in bright letters: 463,750. Cas blinked, touched a button to turn off the display, and then turned it on again. The same number appeared. Fat Twi'lek, with an even fatter wallet.

“Okay,” she breathed, nodding to herself.

She lifted the cuff to her lips and pressing another button on it, whispered:

“Flarett a rellaren?”

[Dasquian Belargic]

The Herglic was in the process of fashioning two bed-sheets into a toga to cover his modesty when his wrist cuff began to flash and talk. He'd almost forgotten the manacle-like cuff was there, he'd become so accustomed to it, but it had never spoken to him before. It was, to his knowledge, just a way to keep track of the contents of his credit account, and apparently also a tool for the owners of Xim's Palace to send a few hundred volts of electricity through him.

Dasquian, who had to that point appeared to be locked in a never-ending repetition of lying down then sitting up that he called sit-ups, sprung up to his feet and in two long strides was pulling the Herglic's wrist up to his ear.

“Flarett a rellaren?” a small voice said, in a language that Dasquian knew all too well. It was Hapan, and it meant: “Was dinner spiced well?”

A grin tugged his lips upwards. “Qualis madriax,” he answered in kind. Like heaven. There was a moment of silent, unspoken relief on both ends of the cuffs transmission.

When she spoke again, Dasquian could hear the smile in Cas's voice. “Hello, you,” she said. The Herglic gave Dasquian a look, not too dissimilar from the look he'd been wearing when he first came out of the sleep pod: an expression that Dasquian chose to interpret as confusion sufficient enough to keep his mouth shut.

“Hello yourself, nia. You're late,” Dasquian replied, touching an input on the cuff that made the voice inside it sound that little bit louder. The low, ambient sound of music played over the open transmission. Dasquian gestured for the Herglic to sit, both of them returning to the cell's two small stools.

“I'm never late. You're just impatient.” He would have been willing to bet that at that moment, she was smirking.

Shaking his head at the Herglic, Dasquian resisted the urge to sigh as he undid the cuffs of his jumpsuit and rolled them up to his elbows. “Tell me something I don't know.”

“How's this for novel: I've got a kilo of spice and the better part of half a million credits here with me.”

The Herglic gave a pronounced, deep hauum. “She what?”

[Dasquian Belargic]

“It's complicated.”

That was an understatement. Even on the surface, there was an implied complexity to it all: a hefty quantity of drugs, an even larger quantity of money, a steward conspiring against the house. It still wasn't clear how someone was speaking to Dasquian through his credit cuff and, more to the point, how that someone – nia, had he called her? - knew to use the Herglic's cuff as a communicator in the first place. Piecing it all together was like trying to assemble the Galaxy's biggest jigsaw puzzle without any idea what the finished product should look like, while blindfolded.

“Uh, stupid question maybe, but were you going to mention that your mouthpiece was awake?”

Dasquian glanced up from the credit cuff to the Herglic. “He's the strong, silent type.”

There was a hmph of laughter from the other end of the cuff transmission. “I suppose one of you has to be. So, does this mean we have our third man?”

Meeting the Herglic's eyes, Dasquian nodded. “We have our third man.”

It was hard to tell, beneath the low undercurrent of music that played over the cuff, but Dasquian thought he heard Cas sigh in – relief? Agitation? It was hard to say. “You should tell him the plan.”

“I should,” Dasquian agreed - and he did.

He told the Herglic everything, every last detail, each one stacking the odds further against them. It was, Dasquian explained, a plan some months in the making and one that required each of them to play a precise part. They had mapped out as much of it as they could, but there were variables that they couldn't count on, as random as the spin of a roulette wheel. It was, in short, almost certainly doomed to fail.

But if there's one thing in the Galaxy you can depend on, it's that when faced with impossible odds, a Herglic will always double-down.

Grinning for the first time, all teeth, the Herglic said:

“I'm in.”

[Cas Kento]

It was an hour before Pratari'sha'ik came to and another two before Cas got out of the clandestium. She glanced down at her cuff. It read: 2763.

It wasn't much; five-hundred more than she'd started the shift with. You couldn't buy the back-end of a second-hand speeder with that kind of money. It wasn't even a fraction of what Cas owed the house, but it would have to do. The Twi'lek always tipped Cas a hundred for her time, and four hundred more was the largest amount that she could skim from his credit cuff without rousing suspicion.

As they parted ways - Pratari'sha'ik to a dinner appointment, Cas back to the casino floor – she wondered if she could have just asked him for the money. He'd paid for her company on enough occasions now that he'd clearly developed some kind of attachment to her. The trouble was, of course, that attachment depended on Cas remaining so poor that she couldn't afford to pay off her considerable debts to the owners of Xim's Palace. Pratari'sha'ik wasn't her ticket off of Xim's Palace, not now or ever.

No – that was where the Hapan came in, she thought, as she stepped up to one of the casino floor bars. The bartender – a steward – smiled vacantly as he handed her a tray of drinks. Cas balanced it on the palm of one hand, turning to slip deftly out onto the floor.

As she walked, gamblers of all shapes and sizes reached out to take a complimentary drink from her. Each time their cuff passed into range of the drinks tray, Cas smiled, as a single credit zipped from their cuff to hers. Again, it wasn't much – but she also took a small amount of satisfaction each time it happened. The drinks were supposed to be a free, a way of saying thank you to the casino's customers and ensuring that they got a little reckless with the rest of their cash. It had taken a lot of time – time spent listening to Pratari'sha'ik snoring – to figure out how to hack the credit cuff, not only to act as a communicator but also as a contactless gadget for grifting, but it was worth it. So worth it.

Cas looked at her cuff again: 2769 it read, now.

She smiled to herself then looked up, just in time to see the man she was about to collide with and spill half a tray of drinks all over.

[Steward]

“Oh,” the steward said. Well, that was unfortunate. He tilted his head forward, his chin a fraction short of pressing against his collar as he considered himself: the crisp, ash grey of his shirt had been covered in what could only be described as a splotch. From the button at his throat to the last one at his waist, his entire chest was covered. If you wrung out the soggy contents of his shirt, he'd comfortably fill a pint glass.

He was, he realised, dripping on the carpet – although that was hardly a travesty in itself. The carpet that covered the casino floor of Xim's Palace had seen more spills than a zero gravity, rotating dance-floor. You could get quite a buzz just sniffing the fabric, and if anyone ever had the ridiculous idea to test the alcohol content therein, there was a very good chance that they'd find the carpet was so far over the Imperial legal limit that, not only had it long since forgotten what the limit looked like, it had begun to doubt there was even a limit in the first place.

The steward looked up at the hostess and smiled, because that was what his holographic face was programmed to do.

The hostess, on the other hand, looked like a woman who had just realised she was standing on the surface of a frozen lake. For the time being, she was safe and secure standing on that lake, but there was a very real possibility that at any moment the brittle barrier between her and an excruciating demise might give way.

Brittle. Yes, that was just the word to describe the steward's smile.

“Please, excuse me,” he said to the casino guests around him, who had barely registered the collision, with the exception of one particularly mouthy Corellian who was complaining about a droplet of something landing on his fahkin' expensive shoes.

Fortunately, shoes could be replaced, but – Cas Kento thought, as the steward locked a hand around her wrist and, as discretely as only a steward could be, began to steer her towards the staff rest-room's – could broken bones be replaced quite so easily?

[Cas Kento]

Cas barged into the rest-room door, shoulder first – though not by her own choice. Without appearing to exert much effort at all, every hair on his head still perfectly in place, the steward had shoved her into the door, which had regrettably not been designed with such a method of entrance in mind and rather than swinging inward on a hinge, slid sideways with a surprisingly efficient hiss.

“Hey. Hey! Grabby hands. Ease up, would you?”

Cas shrugged off the steward's grasp and backed up a couple of steps, catching a glimpse of herself in one of the rooms many mirrors lining the wall to her left. To her right were dozens of open cubicle doors. The rest-rooms aboard Xim's Palace had been designed to cater not only to all genders but also to as many species as possible. Cas didn't know – and more importantly, didn't want to know – exactly when and how some of the apparatus in the room would be used.

At that particular moment, the rest-room - in all its incarnations - was completely unoccupied. Whether that was a good thing remained to be seen.

The steward took a step towards her. “You should be more careful.”

Cas held up her hands, her now empty drinks tray pinned under one arm. “Look, I'm sorry. I didn't see you. You all just,” she wrinkled her nose and gestured awkwardly at her face. “Ok, so I wasn't looking where I was going, but you just appeared-”

The steward touched his collar, his perfect hair and placid smile rippling away to reveal something that made Cas's heart practically leap into her throat.

“-out of nowhere.”

[Dasquian Belargic]

In the blink of an eye, the steward was no longer a steward. “I'm sorry. Didn't mean to startle you.”

Dasquian smiled down at Cas, who shoved her drinks tray against the damp patch on his chest. “Stars, Belargic. Do you always have to make such an entrance? Is it a Hapan thing? It's a Hapan thing, isn't it?”

His smile grew wider and he tugged at his shirt collar, smoothing it down, managing to maintain an air of togetherness, in spite of having half a drinks cabinet spilled down the front of his shirt. “Nia, you don't know the half of it.”

She wanted to smack him when he smiled like that but in spite of herself, Cas grinned. For a beat she just – stood there, looking up at him, feeling that weird energy he gave off, like at any minute he was going to grab her hand, laugh and start running. “You know you're... deceptively strong, for a bean pole. Next time, don't grab me so hard, okay?”

He rocked back on his heels. “Oh, there won't be a next time.”

“Ominous much?” Cas arched eyebrow. “What, what is that face? You look even more ridiculously pleased with yourself than normal.”

“Today's the day!”

“Today?”

“Mm-hm,” he nodded, spinning the drinks tray in his hands.

“The day?” Cas folded her arms across her chest.

“Uh-huh,” he nodded again, tucking the tray behind his back.

Cas's shoulders sank with a sigh. “For once, could you just - talk in complete sentences that, you know, actually make sense.”

Dasquian feigned a wince, frowning. “We don't have time for that!”

“But we do have time for – what,” Cas glanced over her shoulder, at the reflected image of Dasquian and then back, at the real thing, “You admiring yourself? Get it together, Hapes.”

“What's to admire? I'm a mess – and before you say anything else,” Dasquian silenced Cas by striking one finger into the air and then, with a knowing tilt of his head, tapping the same finger against the slave collar locked around his throat. “I've got a card game to win, and I can't do it looking like this.”

[Cas Kento]

“I'm not sure about this..”

They were inside one of the rest-rooms many cubicles. Dasquian was sitting down, Cas standing over him, her hands at his throat. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the ideal place to perform precise, delicate modifications to a piece of technology that – if tampered with – could explode at the slightest touch. It didn't, though. Stars knew, she'd spent enough time getting familiar with the damn things to know which buttons and wires would make them go boom. In their default state, the collars came with two settings – off and on – but with some tweaking, Cas had managed to create a third.

She pushed the 'on' button twice, in quick succession, then took a step back to assess her handiwork. Gone was the ash gray steward's jumpsuit, replaced instead by a crisp white shirt, a pair of slate grey trousers and calf-high cuffed leather boots. A blue Aeien silk cape with red lining hung over his shoulders, fastened by a golden clasp at his throat, in the shape of a star.

“You make a convincing scoundrel.”

Too convincing? Cas chewed at the inside of her lip, her right hand absently straying to the credit cuff shackled around her left wrist. He wasn't going to take the money and run. He wasn't. She had to keep telling herself that. He wasn't. He'd been one of the good guys, hadn't he? Dasquian Belargic, good guy. It sounded right in her head, but now it was all actually happening – now that she was about to give him every credited that she'd earned (or stolen) - -

“If I'd had more time to get to grips with the collar...”

She'd done what she could, but programming an entirely new, responsive facial structure into the collar holo-emitter had proved too taxing even for Cas. If she hadn't spent so much time on the cape – well, it wouldn't have been half as believable a forgery then. The weighted look of the fabric, the way that it shifted each time he moved. It was the most convincing holograph she'd ever seen, so much so that she wanted to reach out and feel her fingers pass through it, as if to prove to herself that she was capable of such a convincing illusion.

“Look at me,” Dasquian said, both hands on her shoulders now. “It's the Diva's penultimate performance today. Plenty of people will be up in the Atrium, instead of down on the floor. No one is going to be looking at me, let alone recognising me. You've done a great job. You held up your side of the bargain, and now it's time for me to hold up mine.”

Cas nodded and, taking a deep breath to try and settle some of the nausea bubbling in her stomach, she held out her left hand. Dasquian did the same, knocking the side of his credit cuff against hers. Dasquian Belargic, good guy, she reminded herself, as she tapped at the cuff's controls and sent two-thousand credits from her account to his.

“Get the Herglic his money as soon as you can. We need him out on the floor with me, if this is going to work,” he added, stepping out of the cubicle and already heading for the rest-room door. One hand on the door, he paused and glanced back at her. “We can do this.”

Her arms tightly crossed, Cas could feel her heart thumping against her chest. “Good luck, Hapes.”

“In my experience, there's no such thing as luck.”

“Just.. shut your smug mouth, get out there and rob the bastards blind.”

“You bet.” He grinned, winked, and then he was gone.

[Dasquian Belargic]

It was both a blessing and a curse of his former occupation that Dasquian Belargic had travelled the galaxy twice over – but in all his travels, he'd never seen anything like Xim's Palace. The closest comparison he could make was to a city-planet like Coruscant or Nar Shaddaa. Strip away everything but the bright lights and the thrill-seekers, and you had the Palace's casino floor.

Held aloft by towering, ornately carved columns, the ceiling soared at least one hundred and fifty feet above the floor – and hanging from it were enormous chandeliers, which looked as if they had been fashioned out of crystal. The same luminous stones that were set into the chandeliers also studded the walls and the edges of the floor to ceiling windows, offering a stunning view of a nearby nebula.

In the month that he'd been a guest of the house, Dasquian had walked the floor plenty of times – but always behind the homogeneous face of a steward, whose attention had to be focused on the game he was running, rather than on his surroundings. Now, he had to do just the reverse. It was as he'd said: the floor was quieter than usual, but that wasn't necessarily the blessing he'd hoped it to be. He skirted the edge of the floor, finding himself a spot at a crowded bar. The air was full of cigarra smoke that only barely covered the indescribable medley of scents that the casino's diverse clientèle gave off. There was a hint of human sweat – but other smells too, some strong, some sweet, some sour. It wasn't hard to see how people got overwhelmed by it all.

There were dozens of stewards manning the gaming tables. When Dasquian was behind the holographic mask of the steward's face, he could rely on the legions of other identical faces to trust him, to an extent – but not now, not with his own face on show. If a steward spotted him and recognised his face – his real face – the jig would be up. What he needed was a table with a hostess for a croupier but – frowning, Dasquian couldn't pick one out. He couldn't see Cas but, it was better if he didn't win at a table she was running. The less of a connection that people saw between the two of them, the better.

“Hello, handsome. Credit for your thoughts?”

Both eyebrows lifting, Dasquian looked over his shoulder to see a hostess had appeared behind the bar. She had green skin, blue feather-like hair and yellow eyes that looked almost feline. Dasquian smiled back at her.

“I'm looking for a good game. Something high-stakes,” he added, flexing the wrist that carried his credit cuff.

She tossed a glance at a huge archway, set into one of the floors walls. “All the high-rollers went to see the Diva. You can't miss her, they say. Show of a lifetime, they say.”

Dasquian nodded, letting his eye wander back to the floor. “Oh, yeah? Who's they?”

“Well, everyone of course!”

The hostess was still talking, but the small-talk reflex in Dasquian's brain shorted as, as carefully as he could, he turned his back on the casino floor and propped his elbows against the bars counter. On an irrational impulse, Dasquian held his breath as he stole the briefest looks over his shoulder. The group he'd seen moving out onto the floor - well, they complicated matters. Complicated them by a factor that Dasquian hadn't even begun to account for.

Of all the casino liners in all the star systems, what was an Imperial Inquisitor doing here?

[Reinhart Thul]

“It is a... novel idea,” Dasquian heard the Inquisitor say, as he came within earshot. “Although in practice, I'm not entirely sure what they're supposed to take away from the experience.”

Even among the many varied human and alien species on the casino floor, Reinhart Thul stood out. At six-foot four, he generally did, though it was not height alone that drew eyes towards Thul. The cut of his suit was unmistakably Imperial, his allegiance confirmed by the symbol of the Empire that was stitched in black thread onto the shoulders of his dark grey jacket. He walked with his hands crossed behind his back, side-by-side with a companion whose smaller height might have meant that the Inquisitor overshadowed him, were it not for his elaborate outfit.

[Lurian Starspite]

The slim figure at Reinhart's side smiled a thin smile.

“A keen understanding of how to swindle the house, perhaps, Mr. Thul? I'd imagine that after a month of working a table here, I'd know better than most how to fix them.”

A young Twi'lek crossed the floor in front of the two men, pausing to offer a convincingly genuine smile and a drink to both of them. They both declined: the Inquisitor with a small shake of his head and the gold-skinned man with a wave of his hand.

“Quite a money spinner though, eh? With no salary to pay to the staff, Xim's Palace must be turning an extraordinary profit. Shrewd indeed, Mr. Thul.”

[Reinhart Thul]

“I think it would be safe to say that this is one of the more.. lucrative.. correctional institutes in the galaxy, yes.”

As Reinhart spoke, the gold-skinned man's eyes were darting all about the casino floor, chuckling to himself about something. In the short time Reinhart had known the man, he had come to the conclusion that Lurian Starspite was almost a quintessential example of his species. The Firrerreo used Reinhart's name at whatever opportunity he could, and on the one occasion that he himself had called Starspite by his full name, it had quite clearly unsettled the man.

Taking a step forward, to place himself between the Firrerreo and the dozens of distraction sights before him, Thul gestured towards the far side of the casino floor, where droves of people were flocking through a huge archway and up a flight of stairs.

“Shall we?”

[Lurian Starspite]

For a moment mildly puzzled that Thul had placed himself so obviously and inconveniently in the way of what he was looking at, Starspite twisted on his boot-heels, his eyes widening as they fell on the crowds pouring up the majestic staircase to the Atrium.

“But of course!” he proclaimed, practically bouncing down the stairs of the raised platform they'd wandered their way onto. “There are some things that all men should have the chance to experience in their life, Mr. Thul, and witnessing the last performances of a Diva is one of them.”

[Dasquian Belargic]

It wouldn't be a good idea to follow them. Not by any stretch of the word good. Though he didn't recognise the Firrerreo, there was no mistaking the Inquisitor at his side. Even without the uniform as a give-away, Dasquian knew he'd seen the man's face before, though he couldn't place when exactly. Regardless of the fact that he couldn't put a name to the face, the reverse was unlikely.

The ship's employees – or rather, in-mates – either didn't recognise Dasquian, or hadn't clued the house in to his identity out of spite, but the Inquisitor wouldn't be so selective. He'd recognised the former Director of Rebel Intelligence in the blink of an eye, so it would be jeopardising everything that he and nia had worked for to go wandering off after him. An act of wilful recklessness.

Old habits...

Belargic waited a beat, watching until the Inquisitor was almost lost in the crowd, and then started off after him.

[Cas Kento]

“You bet.” He grinned, winked, and then he was gone.

Almost immediately, Cas threw up.

It was like the door hissing shut behind Dasquian had been the final piece in the puzzle that would allow her to understand what she'd just done: given practically everything she had to a man who'd made his life pretending to be something and someone he wasn't.

Stepping out of the cubicle and up to the wash-room mirrors, Cas checked her appearance. The edges of her eyes were damp. Where's your game face, Kento? She breathed in, reminding herself that she wasn't done paying out. The Herglic was waiting for his money. With the credits she could give him, he'd be able to pay his way out of the Palace – a rare accomplishment.

The door to the bathroom swung open and in the blink of an eye, Cas's was all business like. She swiped at an errant strand of dark hair, as a familiar face loomed over her reflection. Madame Luxisa, the woman that all hostesses were trained to fear and love. Rumour was, she'd been a hostess once too and managed to pay her debt - but grown so accustomed to Xim's Palace that instead of leaving, she'd earned herself a lucrative contract with the house. She was a Zeltron whose age no one seemed to know, but who was old enough to have pink crow's feet forming at the edges of her eyes. She wore more make-up on one eye-lash than Cas had on her whole body and was permanently surrounded by a sickly aroma of nebula orchids, that didn't quite mask the ever-present odour of gin. She laid a hand on Cas's shoulder.

“Cassandra. Your customers,” she said, dipping her head to peer at Cas pointedly over half-moon spectacles.

Cas shrugged off the hand, “My shift's done.”

“Child, the day you're done is the day the collar comes off your neck,” she caught Cas's wrist, twisting her arm to display the face of her credit-cuff, “And I'd say that day is a long way off.”

She bit her tongue. Almost literally. It was almost a pity that she'd never get to pay her way off of Xim's Palace. More so that as she and Dasquian rocketed away to freedom, Luxisa wouldn't be able to see the lurid hand-gesture Cas was throwing in her direction.

“There's a gentleman come for the Diva's performance who wants human girls to see to him. You're human, aren't you?” she added with a sniff. Cas arched an eyebrow and opened her mouth to speak, but now it was the Madame's turn to look incredulous.

“You've a pretty mouth, Cassandra Kento. Don't let's spoil it by making me slap the sass out of you. I dare say you'll make a tip or two from this gentleman, so be on your way now. Before I do something that you'll regret.”

[Reinhart Thul]

Reinhart was no stranger to spectacle.

A man could not spend any amount of time in service to the Galactic Empire without becoming - to some degree - anaesthetised to the impact of such things. No one did pomp and grandeur quite like the Imperials, but he had to admit: the owners of Xim's Palace were making a damn good effort of it. In days gone by, Thul had been a frequent patron of the Galaxies Opera House on Coruscant, and even it could arguably be eclipsed by the sheer scale and sumptuousness of what now lay before him.

Laying his gloved hands against the guard rail of the box that he and his charge had been assigned to, he looked down on the room below and it was as if he was looking out into the vastness of space itself. Near absolute darkness, punctuated only by pin-pricks of light, some of which were drifting slowly about the place – these, he realised, were the illuminated collars of the slaves who staffed the casino.

Frowning, he lifted his gaze. With ceilings as high as the casino floor and higher still, the swirling nebula beyond was a far more spectacular back-drop than any set designer could have hoped or dreamed to create. He wondered whether Alluria would have found this a beautiful sight.

“It's impressive, Mr. Thul,” came a croak from behind him. Reinhart turned his head a fraction; Starspite was lounging in one of the boxes two chairs, a booted foot propped up on his knee. Further still behind, the door to the box edged open and silhouettes slipped in from the shadows, the hollows of their throats glowing a dim blue.

“But I've seen better,” Starspite added, with a sidelong glance as one of the hostesses stepped forward wordlessly and offered out a tray of – what? Reinhart could not say. Peculiar looking finger-food. With a flutter of his fingertips, the gold-skinned man plucked a morsel from the tray and popped it into his mouth.

[Dasquian Belargic]

The lowest level of the Atrium contained no seats, only droves of people crowding as close as they could to the stage at the centre of the chamber. Dasquian edged into the sea of bodies, knowing with near certainty that there was absolutely zero chance that the Inquisitor and his gold-skinned companion would be part of the crowd. Habitually xenophobic and prejudiced towards even those humans that they deemed to be of a lower class, the Imperials would be somewhere high above in a private box.

The buzz of pre-concert conversion should have been loud enough to drown out his thoughts, but Belargic's mind was practically buzzing itself. Getting off the casino liner was already a challenge, without the added hurdle of an Inquisitor. They were trained to fight Jedi, for stars sake. There was no knowing whether the man would intervene on behalf of the house, but Dasquian couldn't shake the feeling that he was already – somehow – being watched.

He had to work on the assumption that the time-line of escape he'd planned out was now dramatically shorter than it had been to begin with. That meant starting right away.

The lights dimmed and from somewhere within the room, a low note began to echo.

Belargic lifted his cuff to his lips and whispered.

“Show time.”

[Diva Aramonia]

A circular stage commanded the attention of the Atrium, illuminated by a carpet of lights studded into the surface of the stage itself. As a low musical note reverberated throughout the chamber, the lights began to pulse softly. Swirling around the Atrium, the sound grew louder, coming from everywhere and nowhere.

At the centre of the stage, a panel parted and pale mist rolled out from within. It spread across the stage, creating the illusion for those looking down from on high that the stage was not a stage but a nebula strung with dozens of glittering stars.

Something rose from within the mist. A ripple of sound passed through the audience, a collective gasp.

A towering shadow with pointed, owl-like ears and in front of it, in a gown that shimmered with the light of the stars around her, the Diva.

“When you're alone, silence is all you know... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPGuBtsrJjU)”

[Dasquian Belargic]

Wading out through his crowd with his back to the stage, Dasquian could practically feel the voice of the Diva washing over him. It was... dream-like. The faces of the crowd staring up at her with eyes wide, ears and hearts open, the unique beauty of the Diva's art entrancing them. The lights pulsing delicately in time with her voice, almost hypnotic. As the song came to a close, it was as if the Atrium, as one being, breathed a contented sigh of relief.

“Silence is all... around.”

The Diva's head fell forward and with it, darkness fell across the Atrium.

Applause crashed against the walls of the vast chamber in waves.

All at once, the roar of sound was sucked into silence as a spotlight sheared through the shadows – across the stage and down into the crowd. The beam of light pierced the Atrium, thrust right between the now lifted wings of the owl-creature behind the Diva.

The spotlight was on Dasquian.

[Varovalo]

“YOU.”

- hooted the Rishii, its eyes fixed on Dasquian Belargic.

With a piercing shriek and a gasp from the audience, it launched itself into the air - its great wings gusting wind around the Diva as it swooped over her.