Gambling Between the Stars

She'd been about to quip that he shouldn't have mentioned eating razor blades if he didn't want to end with one shoved down his throat, when she was suddenly visited by the notion that maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to do just as he had said. For a moment it made perfect sense, and, eager to carry out the man's suggestion, her mind was running through all the possible locations where she might find a razor blade, when her eyes fell on the man's nether regions to take another look at his erection but found something quite different.

The sudden stink and humidity of the air made Qourr lose her grin fast. And with the grin, so went the urge to find a razor blade. Nothing could possibly be further from her thoughts than doing what he had suggested now, and she took as many steps away from him as she could, ending up with her back against cool steel plating. Which, unfortunately, still wasn't far enough to escape, and within seconds she had a horrible horrible taste of urine in her mouth that made her gag. But her stomach was empty and the only thing that cramped with it reflexively was her fingers. The actuator button pressed down, making her prisoner flail and thrash past anything that he could have done before. She dropped the stun baton.

Qourr was up against the wall when Binky decided to finally react in a manner other than pissing himself. The durasteel panels around her started to buckle and then swung outward, trapping Quorr in a metal ribcage.

"Ah ha ha... I win, you see what I did there?"

The Sith knight was quite proud of himself, yet now wondered how to explicate himself out of the medbay area. He never thought to use the force to break the bonds that bound him. So, for now, he puzzled on as to how to escape and how to turn up the morphine flow...

When he'd pulled her up onto her feet, the dizziness came back with a vengence, and this time it brought a friend: nausea was gripping her stomach and drove all else out of her mind. On unsteady legs, she managed to stagger into the 'fresher area and into one of the stalls before the sour bile reached her mouth, and then it came out and she did no longer care where she was as wave after wave of nausea reduced her to a gasping, choking wretch. Sinking on the floor, her trembling hands reached for something to hold on to and found the edge of the toilet, then slipped even from that unable to keep their hold, and, with a last heave of her stomach that produced nothing but a dry cough, she sank to the floor, and let darkness claim her.

The Starlight was three decks up from the medbay. It was, in essence, not simply a restaurant called Starlight, but indeed an entire deck of that name which housed various entertainment and recreational areas for the ultra-rich. Qourr and he had visited it on their first day while on recon of the ship; apart from a minor Moff who had fallen into disrepute at Imperial Center and a trio of musicians just famous enough to be recognised by a traveller or two, they'd seen no one of note. From what he recalled, the restaurant where he was supposed to meet the inquisitor was located at the far end of the deck - on the opposite end of the ship from where he was now.

To give himself more time, he decided to walk to the elevators on the other end of this level. He was going through the implications of this inquisitor seeking him out - and carefully weighed the possibilities, the reasons behind this move, in his head.

---

When he stepped out of the elevator and onto the Starlight deck, he realised he was about as far away from figuring it out as he could, and that realisation calmed him, somewhat. Aside from the obvious, there were any number of possible - and some impossible - reasons an Inquisitor would want to see him, and there was no way to be prepared for all of them.

Fear still frayed the edges of his thinking, but it wasn't corrupting his thoughts anymore. After all, it had been a constant companion over the years. He'd simply lost control for a second. It wouldn't happen again. He'd steeled himself now.

And it wasn't like he wasn't trained for dealing with any number of contingencies. He would simply have to make the best of it, and play this like any mission. Which, in a way, it was. The most dangerous of all.

He pushed open the door of the restaurant and was immediately set upon by the anxious hostess - anxious to see him gone. He growled "Imperial Intelligence" at her, and she took a step back, her face visibly draining of all color, and feebly waved him by.

Even in his own current state of anxiety, he couldn't fail to feel a little bemused at her reaction. Intel was a nebulous organisation, at best, to the ordinary citizen, but using its name nevertheless struck fear into the hearts of even the most loyal of them.

With extraordinary clarity he suddenly realised that it was this same sensation that he felt himself everytime he saw or heard an Inquisitor, and he stopped dead in his tracks. Odd indeed... it put his meeting into a different kind of perspective - after all, he was not a simple citizen who had no option other than to run and hide: he had the might of Esalis and Intel behind him, and even if this was not quite equal to the power held by the Inquisitors, it at least did not leave him completely powerless.

He resumed his way into the restaurant, feeling less nervous, and looked around. It was still rather empty, and wherever his eyes roamed, he could not see the uniform of an inquisitor. There was no one there but an elderly couple of Bith, the giggling trio of singers he had noticed upon his first visit to the deck, and the human male his files had identified as the Black Sun lackey Reeeouuurrra had overseeing her ship who seemed in conversation with a male Devaronian.

Where was he?

“Pretty lady, I hope I d’nt int’rupt anything?” The devorian nodded towards the 'freshers, and I rubbed a hand over my face. Tri'ahna as Moff-bait didn't look like it was going to happen. Great. So she was completely useless, which meant either I would keep protecting her, or I'd have to throw her to the mynocks.

Figuratively speaking. Usually.

"Actually, I am kinda busy." I smiled, "You know how it is. Good luck tonight at the tables..." I extracted myself from Sei'trem's company, and walked back towards the 'fresher.

Knocking on the door I got no answer, and so I opened it and poked my head in. It looked empty. "Tri'ahna?"

The Devaronian smirked as Mr. Olorin removed him self for Jakys’s company, his sharpened teeth extending slightly in amusement. “Kal” seemed much more distracted about a simple evening consort than one would assume.

“Aye, apologies, then.” Jakys didn’t bother probing any further along the lines, the time was drawing near for his evening meeting. However the horned alien did catch the eye of a waiter making his rounds near Jakys and managed an imperceptible twitch of the eyes towards the fresher.
Across the dining area he spotted a face that radiated anxiety but whose posture screamed ‘Imperial’.

A chuckle escape his lips, how he loved that expression; it was almost like a trained hound squirming under a threatening master.

Sei’Trem removed himself from the central dining area and sat himself down in his reserved chamber isolated at the far end of the Starlight.

“ Pardon’m miss…” The devaronian straightened out his silk shirts and brushed a fleck of dust from his polished horns as a waiting girl
approached. “…could y’please escort m’guest over. An’, Love, a bottle ‘v Rantiri m’rald s’well.”

Cold.

That was the first thought, long before anything else. She could feel nothing but that coldness. It was the one clear sensation she could grasp, and she hung on to it, fearing to lose that connection to... to... being alive.

Ah! Yes. I am alive.

That thought pierced through the fog of her brain with brilliant clarity, but before it could take any further hold it was followed by another which questioned the clarity of the first.

Am I?

There was a dullness where she thought had to be something else but she didn't know what it meant. The sensation of cold was complete. But if she concentrated hard enough - so she realised after trying it once - she had an impression of something apart. Something that wasn't her body. Something cold, yes; but also ungiving, hard.

Still, she couldn't think further than that. She thought she was alive, because she felt cold. But there was no certainty in that. Certainty was elusive, like other sensations. She could feel cold, but nothing else. Was there something else to feel?

If I am alive... then I can move.

But it was a useless thought, even if it felt like a big thing... a big step. It felt... warm. But differently. It felt... somewhere else. There was still the cold. The cold that was her and the cold that was not quite her. But the warm feeling was inside somehow. While the cold was all around it and ... outside. And the warmth was spreading. It wasn't a different thing now, either. It was still there in the center, but it was also going elsewhere.

Spiky. Cold and warm at once. Prickly. Twingy. Shivery.

Oh... OH!

Sudden thing that made the back of her mouth itch; noise! With it, dull thump, thump, thump of the warm core, and sensations all at once. Many sensations. Pinpricks, little burnings all over, but cold now less part of her, more of hard part outside of her.

Under me. I am lying on cold. I feel warmer than it. I am alive. I move now.

She could feel her head. It felt heavy. Because of the thinking. Her head was where she felt most alive. She tried to push it, to move. But it only made the thump, thump noise louder, and it got colder.

Can't move!!!!

The shivery cold came back, and with it an echo of the thumping noise. But one inside. Not under her head. Inside her.

Under...? Ohhhhh...

This time, she tried to push her head away from the cold. Up. The thump thump noise left, warmth flooded where it came from.

I am alive. I feel. My heart. It beats. Faster.

Then she finally remembered what the dullness was. And opened her eyes.

Greyness. Not dull anymore. Grey. Blurred.

For a moment she managed to keep her eyes open and her head raised, then something at the inside of her twisted. It brought a faint memory of something sour with it. The dullness was edging back into her blurred vision, and she lost control of her head. It fell back onto the arm it had been lying against.

Urrrrgh... must not do that.

But conscious thought was back now no matter if she was capable of controling her body or not. And with it, came two very important questions:

Where am I?

And even more importantly: Who am I?

Even though he now felt a lot calmer than he had when he'd first stepped into the restaurant, his nerves were still a little frayed - that much he allowed to admit to himself. But the fear he'd felt was rapidly turning into irritation at being summoned and then made to wait. He'd scanned the large room three times with his eyes for anything ... suspicious, dangerous even, but if this was a trap then he couldn't detect it with bare eyes.

He wondered if this was all a ploy to get him away from interrogating their prisoner. Maybe the Inqs wanted to muscle in on the action.

Maybe they just want to get you away from the girl so they can get a clean shot. She doesn't even know why you left. No one to report back about any Inquisitor hunting down a lowly agent...

But no, he had to stop that kind of thinking.

Yet it was there, and lurking; lurking at the back of his mind. When the waitress came up to him and stumbled almost into his arms, he felt relief that it was temporarily helping him blot out his thoughts. The poor thing was shaking visibly just by being in his presence, and she sounded even more incoherent than the crazed addict now sitting behind a force shield in a med bay. But that she wanted something was clear, and when he'd gripped her arms and steadied her a bit, he could make out that he was supposed to follow her to where his host was waiting.

What host?!? He hadn't noticed anyone new entering the restaurant!

But she led him to one of the chambers on the far end of the Starlight, and almost pushed him inside while already a step into running off, anxious to get away from him.

And so he found himself standing in an opulent and vividly crimson chamber, and face to face with the Inquisitor.

It was the Devaronian.

Jekaan's heart was beating overly loud.

"Frell."

I knelt down in the stall and pulled the girl upright from where she lay, practically hugging the facilities as though a waste receptacle would keep her from flying off into the vastness of space. Tri'ahna flopped a little, her neck not keeping her head up, and her eyes were barely open. She seemed to be drooling. "What the hells is wrong with you?!"

I slapped her gently on the cheek, to see if she would snap out of it. Damn! And the Moff would be hitting the casino floor shortly. I could use one of the female security guards, but he'd probably recognize whoever it was I used, and I had... well I always had a little bit of blackmail on any of my employees, but I couldn't trust that my intel on the officers currently on board was current enough. Frell! I could almost hear Sasseeri laughing at me. And then yelling at me.

"Dammit girl, talk to me." I pulled her against me, her head coming to rest on my chest as she stared up at me.

“Ay, Jekaan, ow've ye been?” The devaronian at the table rose and energetically crossed the room to grasp Agent Oludh’s. Jakys felt the man tense up and try to recoil, but Sei’Trem tightened his grip and aimed the man towards the table with a hearty slap on the back. “Aven’t seen ye in ages y’sodding mynock.”

Tangible fear radiated off of the Intelligence agent. The devaronian perfectly ignored the poor man’s discomfort and kept on like long lost friends. Oludh’s had to have been in a haze, probably wondering whether he’d been had or an Inquisitor was actually toying with him.

“Oy…” Sei’Trem called over his shoulder towards the retreating waitress. He flashed a reassuring smile to try and ease the apprehension on her face. “Th’wine if y’please, love”.

He placed a hand on Jekaans shoulder and pushed the man into a seat, forcefully, before crossing to his own side of the table.

“What brings ye this part o’space?” The devaronian laced his clawed fingers in front of him, eyes focusing on Agent Oludh.

“Get with the program you imbecile.” The words rang through Jekaan's head. Which should not have even been possible because the devaronian never even opened his mouth.

She was still not making much headway into getting answers to these two very important questions when loud noise made her raise her head up a little. It was still feeling heavy.

Her eyelids were absolutely, terribly and amazingly heavy. Through her blurred vision she saw something move but couldn't make out any details. She put her head back down on her arms with a smile.

"Hmmmmmmmmmmmm...."

But then something grabbed her, and her vision tilted sideways. Her head rolled from one side to the next, and a sharp crick in her neck made her twitch. Her unfocused eyes registered first red blurredness, then grey, then white, something brown and mottled, then light, before she closed her eyes against the blinding brightness. Her shoulder felt heavy, but then there was also another feeling that didn't belong to her. It was grabbing her.

Fingers. Grabbing her shoulders. Pulling her.

"Dmmmmtgrrrrl-taaaaaaaaaak'meeeee."

She tried to open her eyes again, but it took a while, and when she did her head had already made contact with something warm and soft. Dark. She closed her eyes again.

Giggled.

It took him a long, long time to fully realise his situation; far too long for a man who should have been used to all kinds of situation. It took until he heard a voice in his head that wasn't his own, and sounded much like the one the Devaronian was using.

He's not an impostor then.

That was his first clear thought after the jumble of thoughts that had rendered him dumb and speechless. Only someone with the kind of powers an Inquisitor would have could have 'talked' in his head. And yet - this was a Devaronian... but he supposed even the most rabid followers of the Imperial doctrine could bend their rules to accommodate aliens now.

He had to make an effort to unfreeze from his position in the chair. Apparently, they were not safe from prying ears (or eyes?). It would make matters interesting.

"Ah...good to see you too... I'm on vacation. Spending those hard-earned credits, you know?"

After a moment or two he realised that his fear had all but evaporated, and had made way for an odd calm that was in stark contrast to the jumble of emotions he still felt boiling beneath the surface. He tried not to think of anything but the here and now, knowing fully well that for an Inquisitor nothing was impenetrable. And this one had already shown he could get into his head.

"So, what about you?"

Dren! I looked down into unfocused eyes and knew that my plans for her were simply not going to work out. Frack and what was I going to do now? I couldn't just seduce the moff myself, even if I wanted to (which I didn't, not that I have anything against men who don't like women, as long as they leave children alone and keep their hands to themselves), and all the working girls on the ship seemed to keep their own records of who they dealt with and it would take too much explaining to try to get them to do one off the books. At the end of my rope, and a very long mental sentence, I carefully deposited Tri'ahna back on the floor, patted her head awkwardly and mumbled, "There, there."

I got up to my feet, and washed my hands at the sink, drying them on one of the individual towels. Dropping the used towel in the recycler, I looked back at Tri'ahna who was still giggling softly. Cute kid, but mental. Geez. I guess it was a good thing she snapped when she did - couldn't have her getting all pukey on the Moff. That would make great blackmail material.

Leaning out the door to the women's 'fresher, I surprised an older woman in a sleek black dress sprinkled with firegems. "Er," I said, and held the door for her as gallantly as I could.

She looked askance at me, and then when she saw a bit of Tria peeking out of one of the stalls, she bristled.

"Too much to drink," I shrugged, trying to look as much like a choirboy as I could. I flagged down a waitress. "I need someone to get this girl back to suite 1337 as soon and as discretely as possible."

Inside, the older woman's female curiosity had won: slowly she approached the stall that Tria occupied and peeked in, face scrunched up in disgust at such behavior. Drunk, at such an hour!

But while her seasoned nose certainly got a hefty whiff of sour vomit, it detected no smell of drink. The young woman lying on the floor in front of her turned around and stared at her out of two unfocused, blue eyes.

"M-m-mama?"

The girl's voice held such a plaintive plea - it softened the old lady's heart. At once she decided that she needed to help this poor thing who obviously had been ill-used by that man somehow.

"What is it, dear?" she asked, but received no coherent reply.

She fumbled in her purse; the first thing would be to get the poor thing back onto her feet, and she had just the thing for it: she practically lived on the stimpills herself. So she bent down to the girl and shoved two of the pills into her mouth between pleas for her mother, mumbling "there, there, dear, mama is gonna fix you now, swallow now, good girl, you'll be much better now".

Indeed, the girl's glazed eyes seemed to clear within seconds, and she shook her head, then groaned and looked around. The horrified look in her eyes told her benefactress enough.

"What is it, deary? What's he done to you?"

But that just seemed to confuse the girl; she stared at her, unable to form any kind of reply. Did she not know? Had that monster of a man drugged her into doing something?

"Did he do something to you? Touch you?"


--------------------

Tria had absolutely no idea what this woman wanted from her.

Her mind was slowly starting to clear of the strange fog, and with it bits and pieces of memory were starting to come back. Strangely enough the first thing on her mind had been her mother - but what she had thought was a dream made way for a starker reality, and it wasn't her mother but this wrinkled person who kept asking her question after question. She didn't have any answers yet.

She didn't remember anything at all of what might have happened. Certainly not how she had got here - or wherever here was. So that was the first thing she needed to ask.

"Whe-where am I?"

The older woman looked at her with eyes full of pity, and Tria guessed that whatever must have befallen her had to be bad. Panic was rising within her.

"You're in a 'fresher on the Morning Star, deary. Couldn't tell you where we are right now, but last I heard we were somewhere on the Hydian Way. Don't you remember coming here?"

Her panic level rose a notch higher. The Hydian way? That was a term she had only ever heard in relationship to space travel. If they were on it, then she had to be on a ship.

What? How?

"That monster of a man must have fed you something to make you forget! Wait here, I'll go find this man, he can't have gotten far!"

With that, her savior left her to the solitude of the stall. She tried to stand up - her legs felt weak, shaky, but they supported her, somehow. Leaning upright against the side of the stall, Tria closed her eyes again and tried to remember what had befallen her.

The last thing she clearly remembered was singing in front of a small crowd of people at a private gathering of an old acquaintance back on Bestine.

How did I end up on a ship, far away from home?

I lingered in the doorway, the waitress scurrying off to fetch a busboy, when the woman who had entered the refresher came up to me. "What did you give that poor girl?!" She whacked me with her purse, which thankfully was small and appropriate for dinner.

"Hey, hey!" I tried to fend her off without hurting her, and got smacked a few more times in the process. Behind her I couldn't see Tria, but this was rapidly getting out of hand. "Look, look, she's just feeling sick." I squeezed by the lady and looked into the stall where I'd left the girl.

"Hey, lets get you back to your room." I reached in for her as the old lady spluttered and hit me in the back with her clutch. Again.

One look. One good clear look at his face and the events of the last days rushed back into her mind with a vengeance; it hit her like a downpour of icy rain. Suddenly it was all there in her mind again, and so much more than she could have expected.

Oddly enough she didn't feel panicky anymore; maybe it was because of the drugs the woman had given her, but she was feeling quite warm and ... cheery. She noticed that she was standing there with her mouth open, so she shut it.

Only to open it again a second later, when she'd realised what was going on outside the stall, and to shout: "No, stop it," at the older woman who had come up behind Mr Olorin and was about to grab him by the neck. "He saved me! He's not done anything to harm me!"

(Hadn't he?)

It was enough to stop the woman in her tracks, looking at her with a dubious stare in her eyes. "No, seriously, he saved me from a shipwreck and once I was fine to walk was taking me to dinner, but... but..." - here she floundered a bit. What exactly had caused her to fall that ill? A memory of the viewing deck of the restaurant and that vast space outside flashed back at her, and she had her answer. "... I-I'm not used to being in space. It just... sort of overcame me."

The older woman still looked somewhat incredulous but at least had ceased her attack on Mr. Olorin, who looked a little sheepish standing there. So she willingly took his hand and let herself be led outside of the fresher stall. Outside, she stopped briefly, and grabbed the other woman's hand and gave it a squeeze. "Thank you, Miss, for all you've done. I feel fine now, what you gave me worked wonders."

And really it did. Tria felt like she had never been sick at all, only the stale sour taste lingering in her mouth reminded her of it. The other woman nodded at her and squeezed her hand in return, mumbling "Glad you're okay, deary," and allowed her and Mr Olorin to pass out of the 'fresher.

Frelling hells that old lady was strong! I was sure I was going to have a bruise on my back from the last few hits she'd gotten in on me. Escaping from the 'fresher with Tria in tow, I peered down into her dark eyes. "Feeling better?"

She nodded hesitantly, and I caught a slight medicinal odor as the girl exhaled. Ah. Well, if I carried anti-nausea meds on me maybe I'd of been able to help her sooner. To be honest, I just hadn't ever thought about it. I mean, who gets spacesick? No one I know.

The busboy came up, a questioning look in his eyes, and I angrily waved him off. What sort of ship was I running here? I couldn't even keep this girl in one piece and my thoughts all in order. Before heading back onto the dining floor I looked at my dizzy charge. "Hungry? Or do you want to skip eating and head out to the casino?"

By the Goddess, what had she got herself into?? It was quite incredulous, now that she had a clear head again and could think about it. Vaguely she remembered feeling lost and scared and over-emotional before, but she also recalled having found a side to herself which remained focused, calm, no-nonsense. It was still there now, all of it combined into herself again.

And yet, a new self. She realised, right there and then as she was standing in a corridor of this giant spaceship with her arm entwined with that of the ship's overseer (was that the word?), that she had come further than she could have ever imagined. And that couldn't be a bad thing, even if the path to that had been ... unexpected ... and disturbing, nevermind extremely embarassing.

She blushed, feeling ashamed and embarassed by her own behavior. And yet... she indicated the direction of the restaurant with her head. "I'd rather not go back there now. You know... mustn't chance it... just yet, anyway."

The new her wasn't up to proving herself in that way yet; the casino would hopefully be further in the interior of the ship.

"Can we eat something there, maybe? I am a little hungry, to be honest."

She wasn't sure how her stomach would react to it, but oddly enough she suddenly felt ravenous.

"Sure!" I said, perhaps a little too brightly. "Here, we'll go out a different way."

My arm around her slim waist, I guided Tria with me as I headed through another hallway into the second floor kitchens. I got a few glances, but for the most part we were completely ignored as I got us into the server's turbolift that would take us out of the restaurant. Inside, as the 'lift descended back into the ship, I looked at the girl. "Don't worry, you won't see any stars in the casino proper."

Sasseeri would be laughing her head off at me if she could see me. This better work - I was too far into it to change course now and get what I needed on the Moff. The door slid back and I led Tria through some wide service hallways until we reached a door that took us back into the part of the ship that the customers got to see.

She wasn't just ravenous, she realised: she was starving. Walking through the kitchens a hundred different smells assaulted her nose, and they were all delicious. She was hoping for a sign from her companion that they would stop and eat something right there and then, but his arm around her waist kept a stead grip of her and he wasn't stopping. With a yearning look behind her they left the kitchens behind them, and stepped into a lift.

She nodded at him in gratitude when he told her there would be no view of space in the casino, just as she'd hoped. He really was a kind man, inspite of what he was getting her into. He probably had someone else to report to, too, and was using her only in order to keep his job.

They were walking through grey hallways devoid of any of the otherwise elaborate decor of the ship; apparently, these were staff only. It was a stark contrast, and somewhat alienating. She had had no idea there would be such differences - back home on Bestine IV everyone had the same, and people just worked for each other.

No longer home now, she thought, and sighed again. She wondered how long it would take until she'd be used to that thought.

Finally they seemed to have reached their destination, just as her stomach gave a loudly audible growl of protest. She blushed again with embarassment, yet hoped he would take the hint.