Hot Potato

[Arya Ravenwing]

Jovan Station loomed in the viewport as Arya eased Wing of the Raven toward their designated docking station. "Remember," she said over her shoulder to her passenger, "You aren't here. You never were here. You moved your stuff back into the hold, yeah?"

One small, nondescript crate tied down in a pile of equally un-amazing crates. One smuggling hidey-hole in the bulkhead of the cargo hold that Arya knew for a fact would hold a person. She looked back at her cargo for this run, impatiently waiting for his nod. He nodded.

"Right." She activated the ship's auto-docking, allowing the station to guide the airlocks together and ensuring a quick and tight seal as the docking umbilical stretched for her ship's hatch. "You get down in the hold and be ready to get into the wall if need be. Won't be long, I promise." The smuggler shooed the man, Lucky B as he called himself, away from the cockpit as she did the final checks and settled the ship.

Arya activated the comm. "Jovan Actual, this is Dusty Maiden. Requesting fuel for my ship." She looked at the empty co-pilot's chair and found herself missing the giant grumpy Cizerack who had somehow become a part of her crew. Jaas had taken 'a rrreal vacatjion' and would be meeting up with her after this job. It wasn't anything that needed two people, anyway. She'd never needed a partner before, and found this blank spot in the cockpit a weird sensation.

The conversation with Jovan wrapped up, and she exited the ship, the airlock gently bouncing under her feet in that slightly disconcerting way that they so often did. A dock worker greeted her, arranging payment for the fill up. Arya brushed her hand through her hair, looked at the garish neon signs that declared where she needed to go right now, and started walking. The Blob Place sounded fun, she loved a good blob race, but what she really needed was more consumables. Topping off her supplies while they were here, and all.

Cizerack soldiers stalked down the promenade, causing the hair on the back of her neck to raise up. This was the closest she would go to smuggling in Pride space, and it was plenty close enough. The group of males stopped abruptly, yelling and waving their arms at a decrepit looking human in an automatic wheelchair who seemed intent on bashing his way through a glass wall and into a shop. Arya hurried her pace.

She didn't usually carry sentient cargo. Generally that meant slaves, and she was no slaver. But the job seemed straightforward enough, and credits were tight. Transporting one man from point A to point B - how hard could it be? She'd of course done her homework - Lucky B was a swoop racer who'd been caught cheating and now the Hutts had a price on his head. It wasn't a huge price, but it was enough to make anyone nervous, and that was where Arya had come into the picture.

The kid was a bit naive. If he'd cheated, she figured it had been someone else on his team doing it. He didn't seem duplicitous enough to have figured out a scheme like that on his own. She was confident, however, that no one knew that he was with her. He'd been transported to her ship in a crate. Nah, this was as simple as it got - as long as he kept his head down and stayed in the ship until she got back.

[Lucky B]

Once the safe-keeper was gone, Lucky started to count. If he counted away the silent seconds, he was sure to fill the void that had taken up residence in her absence. No noise was an unwelcome guest. And there was nothing like a monotonous task to stave off boredom’s slithery approach. All the way to twelve and back, he counted, skipping odd numbers like wobbly stepping stones. Where was she, that blackish people-thief?

The steely heels of his boots rang holy cacophony against his crate seat. If the metal man slept, he woke from his electric dream with a jolt, stiff like a hardened corpse. Lucky didn’t trust him. It was his eyes: as round and bright as twin suns, they projected no life but instead reflected it like two-way mirrors in a restroom. Lucky made his seat sing again.

“Why does the metal man call himself Twopio? Does he have an older brother or is he second best?”

[Twopio]

"Droids have no families," Twopio said, after a moment. The drumming of the human's heels against the crate was quite distracting. "Mistress Arya calls me Twopio. My proper designation is D-2PO, human/cyborg relations."

The droid turned his oculars fully toward Lucky B - a strange moniker indeed, but who was he to judge? - as Mistress Arya had instructed him to "keep an eye on him." He tilted his head slightly, wondering if he truly needed to place his face closer to the cargo so as to be touching him. Probably not. Most definitely it had been a figure of speech. "And your name, Master B. Why do you call yourself Lucky?"

[Lucky B]

The question must've pleased him, for Lucky shined toothily.

"Do you know of the mighty kimogila? Long ago, when we were bite-sized, the kimogila tried to make a meal of us with its poisoned fangs and sanguinish claws. Twice we saw the three moons before the Pirate King found us. He and his men gave us a new home. Ourself, we lost somewhere in the long heat, so Lucky they called us. Lucky B. The Astard is silent."

When a name spun such tales of death and adventure, it was a keeper. Lucky never tired of the story: the memory was not his own, after all, and with repetition came remembrance. Twopio's shortage of awe was disappointing, but if he was jealous, it was understandable. His safe-keeper would've enjoyed it, he thought, were it not for all the moving lips. Good cargo was to be seen and not heard, except when it wasn't to be seen. In the new blazing quiet, Lucky withered like a year-old namana, ready to slip his skin.

"Tell us a tale, Second of Pio. Our minds wander and our feet are like to follow."

[Twopio]

He was fluent in over six million forms of communication (including Cizerack tail-sign, which he could translate if not actually sign himself), but it still took Twopio a moment to parse Lucky's story. The kimogila was a reptilian creature not unlike the krayt dragon of Tatooine, though native to the planet Lok. Other details were given that had no context, but the droid filed them away in case they became useful later, such as Lucky's connection with a Pirate King. The Astard was not usually silent ...but there was no reason to upset Mistress Arya's passenger-cargo with a correction.

"I'm afraid I'm not a very good storyteller," Twopio said, but hurried on as Lucky's face fell. "I could tell the story of - " he accessed his memory banks "-the Hyperspace Wars. Many thousands of years ago..."

[Lucky B]

“Are we in a classroom? We should sooner be debrained, Professor Twopio. No. No. Tell us about this blackbird’s wing and the people-thief who calls it home.”

Lucky was on the move, wandering the foothills of cargo mountains. On occasion, he stopped to wrap his knuckles upon a crate, and press his ear against it to divine the contents from its melodorism. What else did the safe-keeper hide deep in the belly of her old bird? The largest box refused to disembowel its secrets despite a feverish working of the fingers, instead it bit back with its sharpish edges and drew to the surface some vintage ruby red. Lucky sucked at his thumb and decided he cared not for the mysteries of the blackbird anymore.

“There is nought but sand to this grimy dimness. Let us thrash it, Second of Pio, real wild card, and nab for ourselves some booty in Jovan’s cave of wonderment!”

Little by little, he edged nearer to the vertical stairs, and to freedom.

[Twopio]

It took a moment for Twopio to process Lucky's trajectory; his movements random enough that the pattern was slow to emerge. By the time the droid saw that their passenger was likely to 'do a rrrunnerrr,' as Master Jaas so eloquently would have put it, Lucky was much closer to the ladder out of the hold than he was to Twopio.

"It is in your best interest to stay put," the droid nervously piped, walking as quickly as he could manage in chase of their mobile cargo. "Please, Mistress Arya would be very upset if you left after she told you to stay -!"

[Lucky B]

"The metal man must think himself a security drone to accost us such."

Surprised by the sudden change in Twopio, Lucky dropped anchor on his unscheduled flight, and reached skyward in surrender. Behind his eyes, where aborted ideas lashed in their death throes and new thoughts were squeezed shiny and slippery into existence, curiosity flashed like lightning. What would it do, his jailor? A smile, like an opee fish at dinner time, greeted the droid, and the embrace of hands, crashing down upon his shoulders like gentle jaws.

"We are leaving, Second of Pio. The safe-keeper wants us to go unseen, so, unseen we will go. Beyond the belly of the blackbird, there is much storminess, bucketheads, and coupons. And thus, it is an undertaking of obfuscation that befalls the metal man, if he is to keep the safe-keeper's secret safe."

After a step, Lucky could see his breath fogging Twopio's metal cheek. His hands traced delicate lines from his shoulders, down his arms.

"Help us, metal man. Shelter us from unfriendly peepers with all of your powers of human-cyborg... relations."

[Twopio]

The droid was certain that this sudden change of attitude from the human was bound to result in his being taken apart in some way. He stood still while the man ran his hands down the painted blue of his arms, golden oculars gleaming as he tipped his head to the side a little. Lucky B was quite insane - his speech patterns hinted at it, and combined with his actions Twopio was confident in making the diagnosis. Friendly insane, or dangerous insane? It remained to be seen, but if Twopio's luck held out he'd be dismembered and stuffed into a storage compartment within the hour. He seemed to be made to suffer.

"Indeed, if you are concerned about being seen, there is the smuggling compartment. Mistress Arya left me instructions on how to hide you inside, if the ship were boarded. It is..." the droid lifted one arm and pointed toward a bulkhead, "over there."

[Lucky B]

Lucky owled at the bulkhead, as if seeing it for the first time.

"Will the metal man show us?"

[Twopio]

"Of course." Twopio carefully tottered backward and out of reach of Lucky, and then turned, walking stiffly toward the side of the cargo hold. "It is quite big enough to hold a human being, though not in total comfort. Mistress Arya herself has used it on occasion to hide herself."

[Lucky B]

Twopio's departure was a hook in the fleshy lip of his memortorium: there was an agefied bookkeeper on Malastare who smuggled stolen credit chits between her undercheeks - she moved like that, too. He trailed the stiffly eloquish one all the way to the bulkhead and, there, regarded it with dishidden unappointment. His arms knotted.

"Make it work!"

[Twopio]

"Certainly, you simply press here," Twopio placed a hand on the spot, "and here," spreading his arms so he could touch both at the same time. After a moment of nothing happening, he stepped back. "It appears I am not capable of opening it, but I assure you if there is enough leverage, this section comes off. I can assist in closing it from the outside, however. I have done it before."

[Lucky B]

With the application of his superior human endowments, Lucky removed the panel from the bulkhead and set it rumbling against a similar, unsecretive, metal panel. He put some distance between himself and the trickery, which put him in soldierly rank with Twopio. The mouse hole hidey-hole was given a frowning.

"We have some apprehensitivity about this." A firmviting hand found its place on Twopio's back, "Like a trembling leaf, he will fold himself into the micro-gloom, lest he be trampled on?"

[Twopio]

Twopio felt the weight of the arm on his back, and considered what it was Lucky was asking. Language was his speciality, of course, and the man's speech was a conglomerate of a form of pidgin Basic, Lokkian slang, and the random patter of those with attention deficit disorder.

"No apprehensitivity is needed; the hidey-hole is quite safe for trembling leaves, cargoes, and person-beings." Twopio turned his head slightly so as to see Lucky's face and gauge his reaction to the new translation pathways the droid had been creating by listening to him talk. "Unless he has a scare of tight spots, he will be quite safe from trampling. The safe-keeper has hid within of a time, and emerged to fly again. Very safe."

[Lucky B]

“We were talking about the Second of Pio.”

Meaning, loaded by the cargoful in Lucky’s eyes, was transferred gazily into Twopio’s bright vacant discs. On a knife’s edge, the moment arabesqued. The silence fell in shards around them when Lucky actioned himself fully against the droid: the first hand was reinforced by the second, pushing, wrestling Twopio towards the secret space.

“Deceptery and treacherism!” Lucky crowed, “Shrink yourself into unsightfulness, victimish metal man!”

[Twopio]

A new exception was made for this dialect - while a pronoun often means the speaker is referring to themselves in the third person, it does not always mean they are not talking about you. Twopio squawked as his body was shoved toward the smuggling hole. "Oh no, please! This one will not fit! The metal man will not-"

As he was pressed against the edges of the space and Lucky began leveraging one of his arms down, Twopio gave up completely on the new language database he'd been adding to. "I do not bend enough, Master Lucky, this will not work!" The assault abated just long enough for Twopio to turn around, arms at his sides. "Thank you. As you can see if you wish to leaveeEEE!" The smuggled cargo who was a man (or perhaps a boy), squatted down far enough to heft the droid up and into the hole, sliding him in past his hips. Twopio's legs stuck out ungainfully as the droid thumped on the walls all around him as he struggled ineffectually.

After a moment he calmed, and finished his sentence, his voice echoing tinnily from inside the wall. "If you wish to leave there is little I can do to stop you, though I do remind you that your passage was booked with Mistress Arya for your own safety, and if you do not follow her instructions the guarantee of your transport will be nullified."

[Lucky B]

“Our pockets are heavy and deep. We will have our own ship, unpliant one. A fast one!”

Lucky pushed, but it was his own legs, not the droid’s, that were repelled by his exertions; he watched his feet sliding away from him and decided the dead horse had been flogged. In the face of his defeat, Twopio’s rigid and unyielding legs protruded from the bulkhead like a rude and shiny gesture. The sentiment was returned in full when Lucky ragdolled against the nearest crate to refuel his lungs.

“We are a metal man, too.”

[Twopio]

This declaration of solidarity was too much for Twopio's circuits. "Get me out of here at once! I am a protocol droid, not a decoration. I am fluent in over six million forms of communication, including a lesser known dialect of Gamorrean from the slums of Nar Shadaa, and I will not be relegated to a baby sitter for -"

He paused, considering the noise of footsteps that had filtered into the hidey-hole while he had been in the middle of his tirade. "Hello? Are you still there?

"Hello?"

He was alone.

"Oh dear."

[Arya Ravenwing]

Fuel was a little cheaper than she'd been expecting, so Arya was considering which crate of consumables she was going to add to her supplies. The 'all-in-one' option with veg, protein packs, and a dessert option with enough for two people for three months was looking good. Not that Jaas would appreciate the veggies. Not that she did, either, but she ate them out of a sense of duty to her body. The seller sensed some hesitation on her part, and said, "They last unopened for five standard years!"

"Excellent," she said, "I'll take two crates." Arya turned and looked back toward the slip where her ship was tethered to the outside of the station, imagining she could see it through Jovan's thick outer hull. "Deliver them to 32DD. Dusty Maiden." She completed the transaction and walked toward the nearest bar. She needed a new bottle of whiskey for her galley.