WHAT HAVE WE HERE
By
Warrior Draco Maligo #8521
House Excidium
I walked down the bleak duracrete hallway after a long training session. It was late, and few others from House Excidium were up and about. I ignored the security patrol and made my way to my room. It was small, due to my fairly low rank, but it was better than living in a barracks. I had few personal possessions, having become accustomed to a Spartan existence. It hadn’t always been that way, but in my sojourns into the Force I had come to devalue material things.
A flick of my wrist swung the door open, and I stopped just inside the threshold. My tidy little quarters had an unexpected addition, glaringly obvious as it lay on my bunk. A plastoid cylinder, perhaps three decimeters long and about as thick as my forearm. It had my name scrawled upon its surface in black ink, with no other notable markings or writing. I felt out the tendrils of the Force as they wafted through the area, noting the sinister feel of the package, like a sudden acrid stench hovering in an open field.
Since there was a limit to what I could learn from the Force, I turned back and went for assistance. The logistics department was nearby, and a diagnostic QZ series droid available. I returned to my quarters, the faintly humming robot following behind. Quizzer looked like an octopus had mated with a credenza. Its multi-tooled arms protruded from the top of the droid body like an octet of ebony spines, each appendage equipped with its own ocular sensors. The robot angled into the room through the barely wide-enough doorway and set about scanning the tube with a pair of sensors, covering visible light as well as infrared and ultraviolet. It took several minutes for the droid to report.
“The parcel is a two millimeter thick plasticine compound. Surface of the material has no tool markings or writing excepting the name, hand written. Species of writer unknown, and no handwriting analysis of writer exists in the Brotherhood database. Contents of package exactly match the atmospheric components of the planet Almania with the addition of ten thousand parts per million of Bitis Arietans venom, pressurized to 4.03 Caina atmospheres,” said Quizzer in its mechanical monotone.
Almania. My home planet. I’d only visited the place once since I was seventeen, and that only briefly, to kill a panel of judges who robbed me of my inheritance. After I joined the Brotherhood the money didn’t mean so much to me, it was just the thought of the rich elite stealing what little I had that stoked my rage. I had put the past behind me, entertaining no thoughts of ever returning.
“Incinerate the package and its contents, and make no report of this task,” I ordered.
The droid reached out, gingerly picked the tube up off the cot, and slid it into a briefly opened slot on its torso. I heard a whoosh of flame and the sizzle of the plasticine as Quizzer angled its clunky torso out the door and trundled down the corridor.
A flick of my wrist sent the door swinging shut. I sat down on the cot. Bitis Arietans venom. Scientific name for an Almanian winged serpent, what we called a puff adder. The snake’s wings were small, but it was able to inflate its bladder to rise off the forest floor, position itself over its prey, and with a puff of its deflating bladder land atop the victim and inject the poison. Nasty creatures, highly deadly venom. The contents of the package under pressure would have thoroughly doused me with the atomized venom, causing death within minutes. Not enough time to get medical attention.
I had plenty of enemies, therefore no shortage of possible suspects. The connection to Almania was suggestive, however. But when I killed those judges I was not seen, and before then I was a petty thief, and before that a farm boy. No one worth killing years later. There were those within the Brotherhood who wished me dead, but few knew I was from Almania. It wasn’t a secret, but it was certainly an oblique way to kill me. Unless it was some kind of trap, an obvious message to get me to return to the planet that was once my home. But why? If someone wanted me dead it would be easier to do it here than to lure me somewhere with my suspicions thoroughly aroused.
* * *
I had little choice, really, I mused as I waited out the hyperspace jump to get me to Almania’s gravity well. I spent the better part of two days going to all the postal depots tracking the package, making certain the trail really did lead to my home planet. The best part about droids is that they never forget. The tube was sent on to me from an outpost on Ziost, a planet fairly close to Almania. The droid there provided a picture of the sender, a young human female. She wasn’t very pretty, of average height and size, and dressed appropriately for a slave or a servant. I had confirmation that she turned around and jumped aboard a shuttle that ran exclusively between Ziost and Almania.
As I reverted my scout ship from hyperspace I felt the old familiar feel of the planet. Planets, like individual beings, all had a different feel in the Force. Almania didn’t have a dark or light side leaning, which was odd considering its position in Sith space. It was a sense I was very familiar with, and despite my desire to alienate myself from it, the planet still felt like home.
I landed at the main space port outside Chiatos, planetary capital and the hub of interplanetary trade. The shuttle carrying my mystery mailer also flew into Chiatos. After securing my ship I made my way to the shuttle offices. It was the same as everywhere else. A single sentient being in charge with a host of droids of various types plodding or wheeling about. It turned out that the mystery woman walked from the spaceport, which meant she lived fairly close. She did not hop a planetary shuttle, which indicated to me that she resided in an area of less than a hundred kilometers, or so. Still a big search area to cover, but not nearly as vast as the entire planet.
I rented a speeder bike and made my way to the local constabulary. All the big cities on Almania had a myriad of surveillance cams watching everything. The officials didn’t seem to care about the rash of petty crimes being committed, only worrying over possible mob action and insurrection. The typical bane of every government, whether democratic or despotic. It took me a bit of power with the Force to wheedle my way into the back offices and commandeer a search droid to do a facial recognition scan of all the cameras in the city.
After a half hour of fending off nosy constables, the droid finally provided me with a list of locations the woman frequented. I didn’t remember ever having been down that particular street that featured so prominently in the woman’s itinerary, but the largest number of hits was at a run-down housing complex, no doubt the woman’s home. That eliminated the possibility of her working for a rich family. They tended to keep their servants on their estates and eliminate their tendency for personal free time.
The disgusting slum lord wouldn’t stop stuffing food in his mouth, and I had to force him to reveal the woman’s apartment number. I choked him to death and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. I checked for any other residents and the need to eliminate witnesses, but the working class dregs must’ve all been toiling away at their dead-end jobs. Almania wasn’t big on welfare, and if you couldn’t work you needed to beg or steal.
I didn’t bother to knock, and the cheap locks that protected the miniscule accommodations provided no resistance to the Force. I swung the door open and shut it behind me, leaving no marks upon it. The woman lay on the floor, her eyes bugged out in fear and death, and her stench told me she had been dead the better part of two days. I stretched out my senses, feeling the presence in the next room. My hand slipped over to the hilt of my lightsaber as I crossed the threshold.
“Took you long enough,” the dark haired human said. Rosh Nyine was the Aedile of House Excidium. He lounged across the dead woman’s sleeping pallet.
I eyed him uncertainly. My hand still gripped my saber hidden under the civilian jacket I had donned to move about the streets without drawing attention. Was this some kind of test, or was it a bizarre execution?
He smiled. “No, I didn’t bring you here to kill you. Just seeing what you’re capable of,” Rosh said as he nimbly leapt to his feet. “We have big plans for Excidium, and I wanted to see what use you will be to the leadership in future. See you back home.” He chuckled as he sauntered past me and out into the corridor. I waited a few moments then strolled out after him. Just another test, after all.