Lost Knowledge

[Zu Pike]

I close my eyes against the dust and try to sleep. Ninety standard years, and still going strong. Or..is it closer to a hundred? The years underground in the dark have not dimmed my eyes or my mind, but keeping track of time is too tiresome.

I almost envy my sister, Zan. She died many years ago, before I was brought to this hell-hole. Kessel. Management had changed up top many times over the years, but still old Zu was left here. I suppose everyone had forgotten about me.

I am too old to fight my way out, but not as old as a human woman would be. I am an Epicanthrix, near-human in looks and mannerisms, and yet...not. I have one blue eye and one green eye, and at one time I was beautiful. My twin sister and I collected bountys from one end of the galaxy to the other, until we got on the wrong side of CorSec and she was killed and I was sent to the spice mines of Kessel.

Losing my sister should have been punishment enough.

I lost my father as a child to the arena of Bunduki. I used to plan and dream about going back there and winning the tournament in his name, but the Empire did away with it.

Teras Kasi...

The ancient martial art is probably all but lost in the universe. I was once a skilled fighter in the Teras Kasi style, myself and my sister both. Now....

...now I am just an old woman in a bunk, trying to sleep before the next shift. The lights flicker and go out, drowning us in darkness.

[Zu Pike]

The darkness overwhelms us as the work train shuttles my group down into a tunnel. Energy spiders and bogeys used to be a problem down here, but they tell us not to worry. They only send people down to the lower tunnels (the most dangerous) when they already have more than a life sentance.

Or if they are people everyone would rather just disappear quietly. Like me. If anyone remembers I'm here.

There have been rumors of a new administrator 'up top' but he hasn't been to my section, so I have no idea whether the rumors are true or not. The train stops, and the foreman orders us off of it. I take a bit longer than anyone else, but for my age (he doesn't remember a time when I wasn't here) I do remarkably well. Armed with goggles to see the glitterstim veins and tools to attack the tunnel walls with, the prisoners of Kessel arrange ourselves along the pitch black wall.

Glitterstim has to be harvested in complete darkness, otherwise the spice will be activated, and useless. I also heard a rumor that I'm too old and they're going to move me up to the packing plant. They've probably forgotten the last time they tried that.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Lilaena De'Ville looked at her apprentice, and sighed quietly. He could teach mules about being stubborn. Which reminded her of... herself. Which made her frustrated at him, which caused him to dig in his heels more, which -

Well, it was a vicious circle. "Rykov, we are about to revert to real space." She didn't tell him to buckle up, that would have been insulting. Actually, maybe she should have. He pouted like a child sometimes.

It had been a long time since her last apprentice, and to be honest, she was out of practice. She felt like an old woman, content in her little world and stuck in her ways. Training apprentices was always uncomfortable for her. And them, as they soon found out.

The ship slid out of hyperspace smoothly, starlines shortening and changing to distant sparkles. Starboard, Kessel hung like a disintegrating cotton puff, it's wispy atmosphere trailing into space, drawn towards the amazingly colorful Maw. The Maw, a cluster of black holes which was in itself an anomaly, lay to the port side of the Sith Infiltrator. The colors came from trapped gases, or some such nonsense. De'Ville had never claimed to be a scientist. Neither was she fool enough to attempt to pilot the Maw, as some were reported to have done, or fly any closer than she absolutely had to.

Smugglers making the Kessel Run were able to use the gravitational and spacial fluxes of the Maw as they flew by to shorten the time it took to make their runs - the closer they piloted, the shorter the time, and the bigger the payoff at the end.

Lilaena turned Revenge towards Kessel, and activated the sublights.