Chir'daki
Jun 25th, 2016, 04:24:28 PM
It was hard to find a poetic way to describe the Vapor Room. You could try to brand it as one of Bespin's best kept secrets, but that would be a lie. It wasn't secret: just wasn't important enough to earn all that much notice. No one cared that a disused corner of one of the old construction platforms, left over from when the repulsorlift behemoth of Cloud City had first been hammered together by the Ugnaughts, had been repurposed as a den of drink and debauchery. No one cared about licensing an out-of-the-way dive like this. No one kept tabs on where the casks of ale and barrels of wine came from, or whether the scruffy and ruffled spacers carrying them in had bothered to pay the proper import dues.
It was one of the oddities of Cloud City. Walk through one of the doors, and you were utterly under the Baroness Administrator's watchful gaze. True, that gaze wasn't omniscient: plenty went on in the shadows of the lower levels that no amount of Wing Guards or Stormtroopers could ever hope to police entirely; but that was true of any city. Every settlement in the cosmos had it's underbelly, and the law just learned to accept it. Out here on the construction rigs, the refinery platforms, or down on the Ugnaught Surface though, they didn't even try. Whatever happened here was out of sight and out of mind: the rule of law came to an abrupt end as soon as you reached the pressure doors and curving outer walls at the edge of Cloud City. Maybe the Clouders thought they were somehow better off, leaving these havens to lure the worst of the worst to places safely beyond their city walls; or maybe Cloud City was just as corrupt as everyone said, from zero plaza right down to the refinery core.
Chir'daki didn't much care either way. Such musings were a plague on his conscience, distracting himself from the focus he usually prided himself on. But his visit (http://theholo.net/forum/showthread.php?56121-Vengeance) to the Black Archives had changed things; changed him. Something was different, something broken, tiny cracks in the barriers that usually held this kind of curiosity at bay. At least the ale here in the Vapor Room was helping, albeit in a quantity over quality sort of way.
His jaw muscles worked, face contorting into a toothy grimace as he sucked in a breath over his tongue, the cloying aftertaste of mediocre beer lingering on the back of his throat. He felt uncomfortable, forcing himself to hunch down like one of the normal folk, dressed in scruffy work clothes instead of his usual gleaming armour, slouched over his drink like a tired and broken man who didn't want trouble. Perhaps the illusion was a little close to the truth; save for the last, at least. Tired he might be, and there was no question that the Archives had left him rattled for reasons that his mind struggled to fully comprehend and recall; but no amount of disruption to his sense of self could ever make Chir'daki reluctant for trouble. He longed for it. Thirsted for it. Craved the sweet release and satisfaction of violence, the opportunity to prove to himself and the incomprehensible will of the galaxy that he was still the same beast he had always been, still the same devastating predator in relentless pursuit of his prey.
That prey was a man; an underling in one of the Tenloss Syndicate's criminal enterprises. He was a slaver, or so Chir'daki had been told: a most vile, reprehensible, irredeemable individual; the kind who snatched young girls from their beds, beat and raped them into submission, and then trafficked them into the waiting arms and loins of whoever had the credits. Perhaps the Hutt felt that by telling his hunter this, it would appeal to some sense of humanity and compassion, compel him with an added incentive to succeed; but Chir'daki didn't care, not in the slightest. Coin was coin, and a death was a death. If Ambassador Wrath was willing to pay him to slaughter a barista who'd looked at him the wrong way, Chir'daki had no qualms: not if the credits were good, and the documentation was there.
That was the crucial part of course, the fine line that set bounty hunters apart from assassins and common thugs. Any kind of man could kill for money; and all but the brainless could succeed without getting caught. But bounty hunters? Merchants of death who acted only under contract? There was some allure to it that Chir'daki could not break from, some void within him that it somehow filled. Some might describe it as a sense of honour, twisted as it might be; but such things were the currency of the Jedi, the Mandalorians, and Chir'daki was most certainly neither. Perhaps it was the order that appealed: the structure of the bounty system, giving him purpose and protocol to form shapes from the chaos that the galaxy otherwise resembled. Or perhaps it was something else, something from before, something from the years and the youth that had been stolen from him, scorched from his mind by events that he knew of only in the retelling. Perhaps it was some relic, some artefact, some aspect of a different man that he had once been.
He slammed back another mouthful of unpleasant ale, eyes narrowing as he scowled at his inner thoughts. This was not his way. It was not in his nature to dwell, or ruminate. His eyes strayed to his quarry: a gaggle of drunken, raucous brutes that he'd followed here from the City. Weequay, Klatooinians, Twi'leks; all sorts of other inhuman outer rim filth. Normally he wouldn't waste his time on creatures so far beneath a man of his skills, but today he needed them: today he was following them to his true target like flies to a carcass. They were the snatchers, the claws that dragged their poor, unsuspecting victims from the low levels of Cloud City, disappearing them to the outlying platforms so that they could be handed off to the slaver like a spice pouch at a nightclub. As efficient a system as any in a grim sort of way, Chir'daki supposed.
Their table fell silent for a moment - or at least, as close to silence as it had been since they arrived. A few muttered words, carefully overheard by Chir'daki's honed senses. A message from their employer. An estimated time of arrival. A shout to the bar staff for another round of ales. Chir'daki's hand gripped tighter around the plasteel cup that his booze had arrived in - apparently the Vapor Room was far too savvy to hand potential weapons to their clientèle.
Soon.
It was one of the oddities of Cloud City. Walk through one of the doors, and you were utterly under the Baroness Administrator's watchful gaze. True, that gaze wasn't omniscient: plenty went on in the shadows of the lower levels that no amount of Wing Guards or Stormtroopers could ever hope to police entirely; but that was true of any city. Every settlement in the cosmos had it's underbelly, and the law just learned to accept it. Out here on the construction rigs, the refinery platforms, or down on the Ugnaught Surface though, they didn't even try. Whatever happened here was out of sight and out of mind: the rule of law came to an abrupt end as soon as you reached the pressure doors and curving outer walls at the edge of Cloud City. Maybe the Clouders thought they were somehow better off, leaving these havens to lure the worst of the worst to places safely beyond their city walls; or maybe Cloud City was just as corrupt as everyone said, from zero plaza right down to the refinery core.
Chir'daki didn't much care either way. Such musings were a plague on his conscience, distracting himself from the focus he usually prided himself on. But his visit (http://theholo.net/forum/showthread.php?56121-Vengeance) to the Black Archives had changed things; changed him. Something was different, something broken, tiny cracks in the barriers that usually held this kind of curiosity at bay. At least the ale here in the Vapor Room was helping, albeit in a quantity over quality sort of way.
His jaw muscles worked, face contorting into a toothy grimace as he sucked in a breath over his tongue, the cloying aftertaste of mediocre beer lingering on the back of his throat. He felt uncomfortable, forcing himself to hunch down like one of the normal folk, dressed in scruffy work clothes instead of his usual gleaming armour, slouched over his drink like a tired and broken man who didn't want trouble. Perhaps the illusion was a little close to the truth; save for the last, at least. Tired he might be, and there was no question that the Archives had left him rattled for reasons that his mind struggled to fully comprehend and recall; but no amount of disruption to his sense of self could ever make Chir'daki reluctant for trouble. He longed for it. Thirsted for it. Craved the sweet release and satisfaction of violence, the opportunity to prove to himself and the incomprehensible will of the galaxy that he was still the same beast he had always been, still the same devastating predator in relentless pursuit of his prey.
That prey was a man; an underling in one of the Tenloss Syndicate's criminal enterprises. He was a slaver, or so Chir'daki had been told: a most vile, reprehensible, irredeemable individual; the kind who snatched young girls from their beds, beat and raped them into submission, and then trafficked them into the waiting arms and loins of whoever had the credits. Perhaps the Hutt felt that by telling his hunter this, it would appeal to some sense of humanity and compassion, compel him with an added incentive to succeed; but Chir'daki didn't care, not in the slightest. Coin was coin, and a death was a death. If Ambassador Wrath was willing to pay him to slaughter a barista who'd looked at him the wrong way, Chir'daki had no qualms: not if the credits were good, and the documentation was there.
That was the crucial part of course, the fine line that set bounty hunters apart from assassins and common thugs. Any kind of man could kill for money; and all but the brainless could succeed without getting caught. But bounty hunters? Merchants of death who acted only under contract? There was some allure to it that Chir'daki could not break from, some void within him that it somehow filled. Some might describe it as a sense of honour, twisted as it might be; but such things were the currency of the Jedi, the Mandalorians, and Chir'daki was most certainly neither. Perhaps it was the order that appealed: the structure of the bounty system, giving him purpose and protocol to form shapes from the chaos that the galaxy otherwise resembled. Or perhaps it was something else, something from before, something from the years and the youth that had been stolen from him, scorched from his mind by events that he knew of only in the retelling. Perhaps it was some relic, some artefact, some aspect of a different man that he had once been.
He slammed back another mouthful of unpleasant ale, eyes narrowing as he scowled at his inner thoughts. This was not his way. It was not in his nature to dwell, or ruminate. His eyes strayed to his quarry: a gaggle of drunken, raucous brutes that he'd followed here from the City. Weequay, Klatooinians, Twi'leks; all sorts of other inhuman outer rim filth. Normally he wouldn't waste his time on creatures so far beneath a man of his skills, but today he needed them: today he was following them to his true target like flies to a carcass. They were the snatchers, the claws that dragged their poor, unsuspecting victims from the low levels of Cloud City, disappearing them to the outlying platforms so that they could be handed off to the slaver like a spice pouch at a nightclub. As efficient a system as any in a grim sort of way, Chir'daki supposed.
Their table fell silent for a moment - or at least, as close to silence as it had been since they arrived. A few muttered words, carefully overheard by Chir'daki's honed senses. A message from their employer. An estimated time of arrival. A shout to the bar staff for another round of ales. Chir'daki's hand gripped tighter around the plasteel cup that his booze had arrived in - apparently the Vapor Room was far too savvy to hand potential weapons to their clientèle.
Soon.