StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Disclaimer: None of this is owned by me, I am only writing it for fun.

Synopsis: A series of stories featuring the stormtrooper Asper Kalandis, as well as a few others also located on the planet Seckelar III. These stories take place around 1 BBY.

---

"Aren't you nervous if the Commander finds out?"

TRA-110—birth name, Asper Kalandis, though she certainly never shared it with anyone—hissed at the question. Her helmet distorted the hiss into a garble of static and pops, but her counterpart knew what it meant. He'd been hearing enough of it.

"Listen up, One-Five-Oh," she said, hoping that the poisonous undertones to her vitriol would carry through the tinny voice modulation, "for the last time, I am not going to stop. We've been on this planet for more than a year, and our stipend's gotten more and more meager every month. I've got kids to feed, y'know?"

TRA-150 said nothing for a while. Instead he gazed at the passersby, their bodies stretching and warping when they reflected from his helmet's lenses. They flanked a featureless durasteel door at the top of ten permacrete stairs, overlooking a broad street reserved for foot traffic. The squat, colorless building they guarded was Generator 9C for Berellon City, located at the direct center of the downtown district. On every side the grey-green horizon was blocked off by towering building blocks, and the red sun—weak even though it was midday—was overpowered by thousands of advertising marquees flickering from every available surface. Creatures of every species passed below them, and none of them looked up to meet TRA-150's steady gaze.

That line about kids always got him for a little bit, she noticed. It made her wonder if the high-and-mighty Five-Oh had some children of his own out there in the wider galaxy, running around, noses in the air, knocking spice from the hands of drugged-out Twi'leks. Maybe thinking of those little devils made him think about how far he would go to keep them safe. Asper didn't really care so long as it shut him up. But it never shut him up for long.

"But, One-Ten, if he found out…"

She strangled a shout, and jerked her blaster forcefully, swinging it up from her waist to smack hard against her right pauldron. "I'm gonna kill you…"

"Was your safety—"

"Five-Oh!" He stopped abruptly at her outburst. A calm sliver of Asper's mind noted a big dead zone had formed at the feet of the stairs. Pedestrians seemed to be repelled from it by an invisible force, and a yellow Gran nearly tripped over long robes in his haste to turn the other direction, but the rest of her was done with professionalism and discretion.

"The Commander…" she paused for a moment. Saying this could either get her into serious trouble if it filtered to the wrong people, or it could finally squash Five-Oh's crusade. Worth the risk, she decided; TRA-150 was many things, but not a snitch. "The Commander doesn't care. Neither does Cap, the lieutenants have never cared, most of the sergeants are in on it, and I don't have to tell you about the rest; you've seen what they do for me. Five-Oh, you are the one person who has a problem with our system. You are the one who should be worried about Sergeant Derella deciding you're a troublemaker."

He was shocked into silence. Most people couldn't tell when a man was shocked if he was encased head-to-toe in armor and helmet, but Asper knew the signs. All the little unconscious motions, ticks and shifts people did normally came to a sudden halt, like the person had been petrified, and Five-Oh was not an exceptional case. He stood and stared, completely motionless, at a man-height marquee frantically hawking discount rates on spanner sets. Asper could only imagine what was going through his head at the moment, and it filled her with glee to envision that part of his world collapsing in on itself. Still, she was almost certainly going to pull guard duty with him again someday. "You alright there?"

Five-Oh shook his head like he was shaking off a heavy blanket and shifted from foot to foot, looking anywhere but at her. "Yeah, copacetic. Just, um, hadn't realized is all. I…I suppose…"

"Don't suppose anything," she chided, "just shut up about it and everything'll be fine. You don't have to participate or whatever—all's you got to do is let it lie."

He nodded. Asper smiled inside her helmet, thinking that she'd finally gotten rid of the last obstacle to an uneventful—but very profitable—tour of duty on Seckelar III. Not that she really blamed Five-Oh for being such a pest. On long-haul stays away from family and friendly bases, everyone found something to hold onto, or else they lost their grip on sanity for lack of practice. Five-Oh had found himself clinging to Imperial Virtue, which was a fine thing during training when the propaganda officers were permanently encamped in your rectum, but troublesome in the less clear-cut world of actual deployment on potentially hostile worlds. Asper could only thank every star in the universe that he was someone else's bunkmate.

After that exchange, the remainder of guard duty passed in relative silence. The door occasionally slid open with a hiss of compressing gas, letting out off-duty workers, and every now and then she had to stop someone and demand their credentials before allowing them entrance. It was, frankly, not the sort of duty she had signed up for—but as long as rumors swirled in the upper echelons of Intelligence that there was a reputable Rebel threat on Seckelar, they had to take up the slack for local security. Of course, during all her patrols Asper had never so much as touched the trigger of her E-11; this sector's Intelligence office would probably act on a rumor that the Emperor was a Rebel informant, they were so damnably credulous. Finally, C Generator's door slid open, revealing TRA-16 and TRA-80 ready to relieve her and Five-Oh.

The generator building was also serving as the ad hoc headquarters for Asper's T Company. Ad hoc was probably the wrong term, however, since they'd been living here for more than six months without any hint from Regimental HQ that they would ever be moved to more permanent quarters. C Generator was all blank halls and harsh, utilitarian lighting, but it made up its utter lack of amenities with sheer space. Although the hallways Asper walked through were low-ceilinged and cramped—several technicians had to flatten themselves against the walls to avoid colliding with her as she plunged through the facility—the storage rooms were essentially huge, man-made caves. It was in one of these caves that T Company quarters were to be found. From the main corridor it was a right, a quick left, and another left, then there was the big black door whose mechanisms squealed as it retracted into the floor.

She passed through it, and was officially off-duty when the scanner read her ID. Five-Oh made a brief goodbye and peeled off toward his bunk. The storage room was simply a huge box, two hundred feet to a side, thirty-foot ceiling. The back-left corner was taken up with huge shipping crates—the durasteel ceiling retracted so ships could lower them in—while the rest of the back wall was dedicated to company HQ, the medical partition, separated from the outside by prefabricated walls and heated by a gently humming power block, and the technical area, which bustled with droids. The center of the floor space was mostly left clear as a sort of parade ground, and the area in front of the right wall was populated by rec-time equipment as well as lockers. Other than that, the space was filled with standalone metal frames hung with black curtains, behind which were bunk beds and personal chests. Asper navigated to her own little private space, having to sidestep piles of laundry, stacks of holotapes, and keep from tripping over zippy little droids that loved to roll under her feet. There weren't many of her fellow soldiers around at the moment—most were on patrol, at rec, or bunked up, where she intended to be. But she had to do something first.

She came to her frame and ducked behind the curtain. TRA-52 was zonked out on the top bunk, her chest rising and falling steadily and her eyes and ears blocked from the world by a standard-issue blinder. A blinder that would zap you to wakefulness if any alarms went off, or the perimeter scanners detected intrusion, or someone bumped the switch, or really any reason. Asper despised the blinders and their zapping, but there was no other way to get sleep in the middle of an entire company. Asper stripped off her armor with the speed and alacrity born from scrounging every rec minute like it was precious ore, but left the black body glove beneath her kit on. Their living space lacked any kind of temperature regulation, and the glove at least provided some of that, if it lacked genuine comfort. She stowed her armor and weapon in the left side of her chest—the Cap had permitted them to keep their weapons close while at base—and threw on her olive-grey duds.

Then she left, heading to the rec area. To one side there was a series of resistance machines, with off-duty T Company troopers contorted into extremely uncomfortable positions inside them, straining to extend their limbs. One in particular demanded that its unfortunate victim bunch his legs up to his chest, feet against a metal plate, and then shove the plate away from him. The magnets ensured that the plate only ever moved at a crawl, however hard you strained. The man inside it currently was grunting and yowling like an injured kath hound, but a group of troopers shouted encouragement, mostly insults, at him. Standing apart from all this, apparently disinterested yet watching the whole goings-on, was Sergeant Derella.

Derella was not his real name, obviously. He was called that in commemoration of their short stint on Derella, where he had blasted six heavily-armed Trandoshans into dust and tossed a grenade into an escaping transport, all after the rest of his squad was wiped out. In recognition of his actions he had received an Imperial Commendation, and T "Titan" Company had been renamed T "Trandoshan" Company, and given the serial appellation TRA. The Sergeant was a small man, 1.5 meters in height, a bit shorter than Asper, but he was solid, built like a permacrete barrier. The only hair that he cultivated on his head was a strip of black stubble running from one ear, across the back of his head, to the other ear, which he claimed had some cultural significance to his people. Asper had always wanted to shave it off. She supposed that she might when she was finally tired of living.

"Sergeant?"

Derella turned to regard her, his thick eyebrows and deep-set sockets making his brown eyes appear black as they were sheathed in shadow. "What's the matter, One-Ten?"

Asper laughed nervously. "The matter, uh, nothing's the matter Sarge. Just wanted to share some words."

Derella narrowed his eyes momentarily, then he looked away from her, back to the displays of strength at the machines. He continued to talk. "You never come to me unless there's a problem. Is it One-Five-Oh?"

"Well, not exactly," she said haltingly, but another look at Derella, whose jaw was flexing in apparent impatience, convinced her to cut to the point, "I think I ought not to be assigned duty with him, is all, Sergeant. It's not that he's a problem, just that it's a bit too…awkward."

"Awkward is not a word that I like hearing between troopers in my company, One-Ten," Derella said, his voice tinged with disdain, "there are far too many troubles on the outside to be having any on the inside. I'll speak to Lieutenant Six; he's mostly in charge of rotation. In the meantime, you had best start coming up with a better solution, or I'll find my own."

She blanched internally. Five-Oh was a pain, but the Sergeant's solutions were informed by his experiences on the planet that had given him his name—they usually involved a lot of blasting.

Derella grinned and looked at her sideways. "I see that got your attention. Mull it over and get back to me within a couple days. Meanwhile, I suggest you rest up. There's a combat patrol into the Restricted Area going out in six hours, and it has your name all over it."

Asper cocked an eyebrow. "Me? Did some request bubble up from the lower levels?"

The Sergeant shrugged. "Another bunch of scum has moved in and requires dealing with, apparently. And it's about time for your weekly pickup, remember?"

"Ah, right. Well I'd better get going then."

Derella dipped his head in acknowledgment and Asper pulled away, flashing a smile and a wave at a group of troopers that called out to her from where they sat around a holo-projector. Beyond them she saw TRA-150, looking very small as he sat alone on a packing crate, sopping up some blue, nutritive goo onto a slice of bread. He kept swirling it around and around, never bringing the food to his mouth, his eyes transfixed on the floor. Something to hold onto, Asper thought to herself, Five-Oh, I hope you find something new.

Berellon City's Restricted Area was little more than a sick nerf's latrine; filth encrusted the streets, and every square inch of its labyrinthine alleyways stunk. This was due to most of the multilevel nerf farms and abattoirs being located in the Restricted Area, but most of the blame laid with lax environmental standards in the construction of these farms. Besides those grotesque industries, the Restricted Area was taken up by block after block of slums, filled mostly with aliens—unemployed Ugnaughts, Twi'leks, Grans, a few Bith and smatterings of other species. Seckelar III had been at the center of a big industrial boom for a period after the end of the Republic, thanks to the asteroid belt and moons of the system being relatively rich in ore, and millions of sentient beings had flocked here at the promise of steady wages and Imperial protection. Those days were long gone. The major mining companies had long since exhausted the richest seams, and what industry now remained was entirely concentrated in Berellon City, and so the great influx of immigrants also concentrated in Berellon, overwhelming the local government and blessing landlords with immense power.

It was, Asper figured, her sad lot in life that Trandoshan Company had to deal with the repercussions of all that. They had to keep the peace and stick out their necks, although on this patrol she was squad leader and could have other people take the risks. Squad leader was her title, but it was just her and four others—TRA-52, her bunk-mate, the hulking TRA-90 who carried the heavy, cylindrical T-21 Light Repeater, TRA-40 and TRA-43. Really it was a glorified fireteam, sent out as a squad so an NCO wouldn't get involved in the dirty business. Besides Ninety, they all carried the standard E-11; the Restricted Area was a warren where firefights would be at thirty meters or less, so a compact, handy weapon that still packed a punch was preferable. The bone-white armor of her squad-mates glistened in the soft red lighting of the shuttle's interior. About half the seats were empty; only their patrol was heading out. The local Army units provided support on these missions, so there wasn't much need for personnel. Despite being labeled "combat" patrols these were little more than heavily armed sightseeing tours, except the sights were heaps of trash and tweaking aliens.

The pilot's voice crackled over their comm-link. "Alright, ETA thirty seconds. Good luck out there."

"Luck!" Ninety barked, hefting his blaster. "Luck has never done me a good turn; I prefer to trust in my gun."

"Don't trust in it too heavily," Asper said sharply, "we aren't seek and destroy, we've got specific objectives this time. You leave finding targets to me."

Ninety shrugged, but said nothing. Asper didn't mind him overall—good fire support was too hard to come by for her to mind him—but she didn't appreciate his attitude, a feeling exacerbated by her nerves. She always got pre-mission jitters, like there was a great emptiness in her middle that her heart was continually falling into. They always evaporated when the mission began, however. She sometimes had nightmares about what would happen if they stayed. It was a fact that most of the aliens in the Restricted Area were as cowed as aliens could be, but there were elements of their society that had no about shooting at Imperials. Asper planned to make it through this stint alive, and hopefully rich, two objectives that did nothing to calm her.

There was a sudden jerk as the shuttle's landing legs touched down, and her throat suddenly constricted so that she couldn't say a thing. Then the ramp descended with a whoosh of escaping gas, and her terror seemed to vent along with the pneumatic mechanism. Asper led her squad down the ramp at a brisk pace, weapons up, and she signaled them crisply and calmly. They were now fanned out on the streets of Berellon.

C Generator was only a two minute shuttle trip from the Restricted Area, so they had landed right on a street called Xaluu, in the heart of the alien slums. Army units were posted at checkpoints at every major exit leading out of the Area ,and also at a few important intersections within it—the nearest was about five hundred meters distant. Asper signaled Five-Two to take the lead. They'd already been briefed on where they were headed, and the trooper immediately moved into a narrow alley between two massive apartment skyscrapers. Despite her calm, Asper nearly screamed from fright when the shuttle's engines roared as it lifted off, and it took all her discipline not to scream at the pilot sending his final transmission. "Contact me when you're ready for extraction, I'll be in the area."

"Affirmative shuttle, this is One-Ten out," Asper replied. She noted with satisfaction that her voice was icily confident, and her calmness returned. The pilot would be circling overhead, able to provide air cover if need be, but where they were going a shuttle couldn't see.

She took in the whole environment as the squad scuffled down the alleyway. Besides its fabulous stench and liberal coating of dirt, the Restricted Area was also an utterly glum place. In downtown Berellon the sun was drowned out by bright lights, but here its weak crimson light was throttled by thick yellow gasses that the abattoirs and factory farms belched into the atmosphere. There were no marquees, instead printed ads were papered over any available wall-space, and these were all coated in grime by the pollution. Street lights were an exception here, rather than a rule, so there was a prevailing darkness everywhere, but the alleyways especially. This presented little challenge to the squad however, as their helmets quickly adjusted brightness and threw a green tinge over everything.

"Alright squad," she said, "you already got the briefing, but here it is again. We hit these small-time producers hard, but no deaths if possible. Just a standard smash and grab; blasters to stun, flash bombs first, then handcuff anyone in there and scorch the equipment. Got it?"

There was a chorus of affirmatives. "Good. Forty, Four-Three, you initiate the assault through the back entrance and zap anyone standing. Five-Two and Ninety, you are with me at front entrance."

The squad came to a small door in the side of the apartment building, so short that even Asper had to bend her head to avoid cracking her helmet against the header. It slid open thanks to a confiscated residential ID ran through the door scanner—Imperial ID, while it opened all doors, immediately tipped off anyone watching the building's computer. Now that they were inside, the clock was running. The more time wasted, the more time they could be spotted and reported to their targets. Asper went over the building's layout in her head, recalling exactly where to turn, what blind spots they would have to stop and clear. Thankfully their tip had been mighty specific about where they were going, and plans for this building had been gratifyingly available. Many builders never filed a single permit for most of these slum structures, so there was nothing on file for a lot of them.

They entered into a long passageway, punctuated with pneumatic doors leading to apartments. The ceiling was so low it forced Ninety to stoop. Dim orange lights dotted the corridor, but the durasteel walls were, like everywhere else in the Area, covered with advertisements. Everything from pornography to contraband medicine was on sale, a state of affairs that Command certainly did little to put a stop to. But the one thing they actually claimed to stand against, Asper thought as they filed down the corridor, was illicit drugs. She had used to find that ironic.

Now she found it lucrative. They approached a split in the passage and took the left fork, which ended in a rusty lift. Asper keyed in the lowest level. A lot of these apartment blocks' underground floors were connected to each other, creating a sprawling web of interlinked buildings; a subterranean city unto itself, where most of the criminal element lurked. Some of these had been made by the original builders, but a surprising number had been knocked through by enterprising residents or one of the numerous syndicates. They were heading to one of these underground streets now.

"There's about one hundred meters from the lift to our target," Asper explained as the elevator engaged and she felt her stomach float into her chest, "once we hit bottom level we sprint all the way in. Zap anybody you see; there's no telling who might be working for them."

There was a fantastic grinding of gears as the lift lurched to a complete stop, and the rusty doors shrieked when they pulled apart, setting Asper's teeth on edge. They were warning practically the whole floor. Standing just outside the lift was an orange-skinned Twi'lek in a stained yellow jumpsuit holding a stun rod loosely, his jaw slack at the sight of five Imperial Stormtroopers stepping into his world. Asper blasted him with a circle of blue energy that rippled through his body, and he folded onto the floor with a small groan. "Either a door guard or a mugger," she said, "either way, hustle!"

The lower level of the building was essentially identical to the upper floors, except now there was the occasional puddle from seeping groundwater, and long electrical cables ran along the floor and ceiling—the illegal operations in the underground siphoned from other grids to supply the power they needed, which often surpassed what domestic outlets could handle. The squad moved quickly, only pausing long enough to ensure their corners were clear. Asper felt utterly exposed at these intervals; their boots clicked as they ran, and then they had to lean out and expose themselves in order to check corners. It was all a part of urban ops, but her stomach for risk was practically nil. Fortunately there were very few aliens in the halls, and the couple of pig-nosed Ugnaughts they did see were promptly stunned, not even given the opportunity to squeal. Within two minutes they had reached the target area, where their corridor intersected with a much larger hall. The targets were within a room at the corner of this crossroad.

Relative to the squad's approach, the door was about five meters down the right corridor, across the hall from them. Asper stacked up first on the right-hand wall, Five-Two behind her and Ninety behind both of them. Forty and Four-Three had stacked up on the left wall, further back from all of them; when the hall was clear they would head down the corridor to the back entrance.

Asper crept forward silently until she could see a little ways down the left intersection—there was no one in evidence. Now, the dangerous part, requiring her to lean out and check right, leaving her open to the left. She moved her helmet around the corner silently, but pulled back when she spotted two beings flanking the door to their objective. It was a Gran and an Ugnaught in rough brown clothing, cheap blasters tucked into their belts, the Ugnaught chewing on something that made his jowels wobble as he worked it over. Asper reported their presence in hand signals, while Forty and Four-Three reported the side door was clear. With that confirmation, Asper decided they would strike right away, and delivered the signal to advance. Five-Two moved around her left while Asper leaned around the corner to cover the door. Both guards were struck down by stun blasts, while Forty and Four-Three hustled across to the other entrance. Asper wheeled around the corner so she leaned into the intersection, squeezing off more stun blasts down the right corridor. There was a Bith running away at full-tilt; she clipped its left side and the alien's stunned leg twisted under it, dumping the Bith onto the ground where its swollen cranium struck the floor. She zapped it once more in its back to make sure it was down, then ran across the hall to the front entrance. Five-Two was already there, while Ninety stood behind them covering the intersection with his T-21.

Everyone was in position, and there were no sounds of panic or attempted escape from within their objective. She opened up the comm-link to Forty. It struck her that the slight crackle of the comm sounded a bit like standing over the ocean. When she transmitted, she would dive into that ocean and be subject to all its vicissitudes. Every mission was like that, she found, even the smallest and the least consequential. Asper breathed in, filled her lungs with air, and jumped head first. "Flash and clear."

"Roger," came Forty's response, followed by the sound of a door sliding open and then two muffled bangs.

Five-Two hit the door controls and Asper charged in, squeezing off half a dozen stun blasts, only aiming enough to not direct any towards where Four-Three was coming through. Even behind her polarized lenses, the room was a blinding kaleidoscope of blue, red and green energy, all sizzling through the air and exploding against the walls; sparks showered from blasted equipment, and everything was a cacophony of laser discharges and screams cut short, with the voices of Forty and Four-Three trying to rise above the din, ordering the suspects to get on the floor. Asper joined her voice to the warnings as she crossed the room to a large middle table. She leaned out to look down the side, and her eyes locked with a Duros' huge orange orbs. In that millisecond, as the alien's finger depressed the trigger on his uplifted blaster pistol, Asper could see every wrinkle and crag around its eyes and the long, smooth forehead leading to a shiny cranium, then there was a tremendous green flash that leapt from the end of the Duros' gun to her shoulder, and at the same time she fired a blue stun blast that collided with its chest. It collapsed silently, the blaster clattering to the floor when the alien's hands went limp.

"Room clear!" Four-Three's voice was deadly calm, something that Asper envied as her legs had gone boneless.

She didn't want to look at where the Duros had blasted her, even if her bulky helmet would let her, but she couldn't help but feel at the spot. The pauldron was scored fairly deep, but considering it was a close-range shot she was lucky to still have the limb. "These aliens must be shooting without much power," she said to no one in particular.

Five-Two and Forty grunted at her. They had holstered their weapons and set to binding the hands and feet of the downed targets. Besides the Duros, there were four others in various unconscious poses; two Twi'leks, another Ugnaught, and a Rodian. Whatever color the creatures were before, now they were encrusted all over with thick yellow dust that coated their skin and clothes. Their clothes, for that matter, were riddled with burn holes, probably from chemical spills. None of them had any identification on them, though a couple had dropped weapons. They were junk like the Duros', however, with nearly inert tibanna gas chambers—completely incapable of penetrating plastoid body armor. These were a routine assortment of low-lifes and no-lifes, so Asper moved on to inspect the room for anything of importance.

There were a half-dozen consoles lined against the walls, their displays picturing 3D models of complex molecules and what she guessed were graphs of fluid levels. Atop these consoles were series of glass tubes, injectors and burners that evaporated, condensed and mixed a multitude of brightly-colored chemicals.

"Just a standard drug op," Four-Three said matter-of-factly. "I don't see much of serious interest. Still, it's hard to believe these guys couldn't afford better weapons; with the way gang wars work down here, you think it'd be a requirement for going into business."

Asper shook her head and pointed out the lab table. "Look at all those unopened boxes; lab equipment and ingredients. These guys were just setting up, they probably hadn't sold the first dose at this point."

The Duros began to moan, weakly flopping his prodigious grey head. He seemed to be trying to speak. Asper stood over up it, and used her boot to roll the thing off its stomach. "Got something to say?" she asked with what she hoped was appropriate Imperial gravitas. Really she wanted to kill the damn thing for forcing her to get a repair order on that pauldron.

"Just that…" The alien gasped for breath. The zap sometimes messed with proper lung function, depending on an organism's physiology. "You've made a mistake. The City's gonna turn on you. We're all they've got down here, and you're taking us away."

"And I expect you're willing to keep a lid on it for us?" Four-Three asked, snickering derisively. "It'll take more than you can imagine to buy off Imperial justice."

"Quite so," agreed Asper, before pointing her E-11 right at the Duros' face. Pure fear broke out, its ocular orbs looking like twin suns and the alien's mouth opened in a silent scream, but it instantly relaxed once the stun struck its brain stem. It had taken a great deal of restraint not to set for lethal. "Okay squad, let's do what we came here to do. Ninety, what's our status out there?"

Ninety backed into the room slowly, holding his long blaster steady at the hip. "Bunch of locals congregating down the hall. I count ten, maybe fifteen. Various armaments; batons, vibros."

Her throat seized up. They were an undersized unit; whether or not their opponents had junk equipment, if there were enough of them things would get hairy. She swallowed and managed to force her orders out. "Let's blast this equipment, seal the doors and get out. From now on, weapons to lethal. No zapping."

Sixty seconds of blaster fire and minor explosions later, Asper worked the side door controls while clouds of yellow gas seeped from the room and green fire consumed the lab table's contents. She could smell the acrid but sickeningly sweet smoke even through her helmet's filter system, while her ears were filled by the sounds of cracking glass from the equipment burning on the table. Finally she got the door sealed, and turned to head down the hall. There were no lifeforms down there, just a cylindrical cleaning droid that had been covered in graffiti, trying to remove the layers of poster on the wall; it looked like they were going to extract cleanly. Then she heard the deep thrumming of Ninety's T-21 and her heartbeats accelerated to a feverish tempo. She spun around, her trigger finger pawing at her E-11, but he was only firing warning shots at some skulking observers. A small figure was thrashing on the ground, but the rest had scattered out of sight. Asper cursed herself for her gel-consistency nerves.

As they moved down the corridor—their footsteps occasionally punctuated by Ninety firing a few bolts behind them—Asper sent a transmission to the local Army units.

"Restricted Area Command this is TRA-110. Five suspects in custody at the location marked by our beacon. Be aware there is an unknown gas in their vicinity. TRA-110 out."

"Copy, units inbound."

Five-Two piped up. "Won't the gas choke those damn things before the grey goons get there?"

Asper had thought of that already. "Orders didn't really say a thing about delivering anybody alive," she said, "just that we were to restrain the targets and destroy their equipment."

Her squad-mates all cracked up into what she called combat laughter—staccato blasts of too-loud guffaws that cut off as soon as they began. "Ice cold," Four-Three said, his voice tinged with approval.

She jogged past row after row of domiciles, all of them shut tight, until they came to a spiral ramp that ascended to a street access nearby Yulla Block. It was a long climb—for whatever reason, there was only one turbolift per building, making the ramp the fastest way up.

They emerged directly across from Yulla Block, causing Asper to breathe deeply of the gruesome air. They were more or less free and clear; the shuttle still circling overhead could provide both fire support and a quick getaway. The mission was not yet done, however, and the squad set out to cross the street.

Yulla was a very short building compared to its neighbors, only about fifty stories high, yet it had the dubious distinction of being the longest residential building in Berellon City—almost two miles from one end to the other. Its central hallway was comparable to most of the Restricted Area's streets. Asper considered herself lucky that they didn't have to traverse the whole Block; the arranged meeting place was at a shipping center for Abromobil, the only distributor still operating in the Restricted Area. Command obviously condoned Abromobil, but a main reason for its continued operation was the protection crime syndicates lent it. An Imperial patrol at an Abromobil facility was therefore completely normal. If they walked out with a large container of something or other, they were simply confiscating contraband materials that had been slipped into the warehouse.

The surrounding walkways were crowded with Ugnaughts, many lying against the exterior walls of Yulla, their eyes wide-open and transfixed by nothing in particular, minds in a state of euphoria produced by the spice they consumed. Most were in dirty, mismatched robes wrapped tightly around their small bodies, a countermeasure against the chilling effects of coming down off the high. Sometimes there were as many as twenty laid out in a perfect row, like bodies on the battlefield being prepped for disposal. The few who still possessed some mental faculty tried to scramble away from the stormtroopers who stepped over the bodies of their compatriots, striding through the drug-addled mass like pure white ships cutting through a foul sea. Inevitably those who tried to escape tripped over one of their comrades and fell to the ground, where they curled up and stared, petrified, at the patrol as it passed them by.

"Disgusting," Five-Two muttered, though she fell silent at a curt gesture from Asper.

They were Imperial stormtroopers; however much she agreed with Five-Two's sentiment, stormtroopers floated above filth, burning it away when necessary but never stooping to acknowledge its existence otherwise. Sympathy and disgust were equally exploitable emotional reactions. A stormtrooper watched impassively, albeit with a blaster trained on any threats.

So they walked silently past the detritus of Berellon City, until they came to a warehouse door set in the side of Yulla Block, over which a glowing sign read Abromobil Supply, in neon pink. A regular door was set into the warehouse entrance, and Asper accessed it with a swipe of her hand. It slid open silently, a well-maintained piece of automation in a decaying zone, revealing a square of blackness beyond. With well-practiced precision, they executed a standard door-entry, the first two going in covering two separate directions, the rest entering as they fanned out and scoped the whole interior. It was simply a huge loading bay, with a few leftover pallets from the day's work and a row of cargo droids in shutdown mode leaning against one wall. No lights were on—although their night vision obviated that problem—except for one, all the way at the back of the cavernous building. A little blue glowstrip still shone over a set of double doors.

Through the doors they found an office space, the walls occupied by desks stacked with holo-consoles, and at the far end of the space there was the entrance from the building at large, which was guarded by a security desk. Standing languidly in front of this desk was an purple Twi'lek with two long lekku that wrapped around its violently red tunic, and it wore brilliant white trousers that Asper was willing to bet was woven from nerf fur-an expensive choice, especially in the Restricted Area. Flanking the Twi'lek was a Bith and two Grans. The Bith held a long, slender rifle cradled in one elbow, and it wore dull black blast armor. Altogether it looked like a poor imitation of a bounty hunter from the holovids, but when the alien saw the stormtroopers stalking towards it its ultra-cool facade dropped entirely, and the thing shifted its blaster into both hands.

"Hired some new muscle, Tarthey?" Asper called out. "They look green, and stupid. That's right, Bith, I see you with that long gun. Keep your hands in the clear."

Tarthey Lagord, the Twi'lek kingpin of the Berellon underworld, had a manic laugh, and he used it to full effect. "Quite funny you are, stormtrooper One Hundred Ten! I'm glad you've decided to keep our appointment after all. Some unexpected trouble?"

Asper noted with annoyance that the squad was, indeed, several minutes late. They must have underestimated the time it would take to move down those long hallways. She drew up across from the drug lord, the squaddies taking up positions to either side. The Gran thugs squirmed under the featureless gaze of their helmets, their eyestalks wiggling to and fro. "Imperial business is none of yours," she finally replied.

"That is the beauty of the arrangement, yes?" Lagord grinned like an idiot. "I know little of your operations, you know little of mine, and we can both carry on our business without risk from the other one."

Asper nodded, saying nothing. She knew more than Tarthey Lagord thought. His organization was entirely confined to the Restricted Area, with no connections outside of Berellon City's slums. It was why she had chosen to deal with him in the first place; he was big, but only within the Area, which meant that their relationship went all one-way, whether he realized it or not. She motioned to Forty, who approached the security desk and pulled out a small stack of blue chips, totaling one thousand credits. "There's out contribution," she said, "where's what we came here for?"

Lagord seemed to take her moving on to the subject of payment as some sort of insult, because he continued in a haughty, aggressive tone and ignored her question. "Now, with that setup, things can go on for a very long time, no changes needed. But if one or the other of us learns a little more, then that increases all the risks—and so the payout ought to reflect the shifting circumstances, yeah?"

"What are you getting at Tarthey?" she demanded. If he thought he had something to hold over her, he was going to get a rude awakening.

"You see, for a long time I thought I was just dealing with you alone, and your buddies, silent lot that they are" Lagord continued, waving at Forty, "but then I started gettin' a little curious. You seem to walk out of here with a little more product each time, come in with a few more credits—always at the same rates, but don't tell me you can pass all that off as contraband and still sell it."

"Going down the wrong path with this, I warn you," Asper said, leveling her blaster at the Twi'lek. The squad followed suit, and Lagord's toughs stiffened, hands twitching toward their weapons. But they didn't go for them—at this range, against stormtroopers, it would have been a death wish.

Tarthey, however, didn't even acknowledge the threat, he just kept babbling. Her blood boiled at his incessant high-pitched voice. "A little bit of spice, maybe you could sneak that through, but so much? Somebody would notice it if it went missing. So I decided to run some experiments. Had a few of my boys tip off the authorities about a bunch of production operations—some of them mine, some of them my competition's. And lo and behold, I haven't been hit yet, but all the other labs have gone down, one by one. Now what do you think about that?" Lagord stopped, smiling fiendishly like a kath pup cornering its first prey, his insulted demeanor evaporating so quickly it must have been feigned.

Asper didn't like where this was going. Tarthey was trying to get clever with her, a dangerous trait in this business. If she had to blast her primary supplier, there was no telling if she could ever pull together another operation on the same scale. It would be back to scraping together savings from whatever scraps the Empire shoveled onto this backwater system. She decided to play for time.

"Well, why don't you tell me what you think first."

"I think, heh, that your superiors know all about this. How far up it goes, I can only guess, but they do. This isn't just a business between you and I—it's, like, some kind of weird Imperial policy." Tarthey signaled to his Bith, who rapped on the door. It opened promptly, revealing two hulking Weequay thugs pushing a hovering container. The Weequay were in tan, fiber-armor vests and wore huge pistols at their hips. Lagord spat out a few alien words and his thugs opened up the container. The sweet, strong odor of Seckelaran spice immediately wafted around the room. The Twi'lek inhaled deeply, emitting a satisfied sigh. "Now that's good product. Best spice our labs can turn out, and it will absolutely satisfy any sentient being. It's, you know, premium. And premium is worth an increased buy-price, don't you agree? Especially when, let's say, one's career is riding on keeping the stuff coming."

Asper cocked her head at him. What he was saying didn't make any sense. What would Imperial policy gain by concentrating the drug trade into his hands? It struck her that the depths of conspiratorial thinking and paranoia one found among the aliens probably had no lower limit. Yet, the reality was, she had to deal with this one. She took a deep breath and plunged in.

"I don't like renegotiating in the middle of an arrangement. We set this meeting up, agreed on the price, and I've held up my end of the bargain—now you're altering the deal. I pray, for your sake, Tarthey, that you don't try to alter it any further, because you should remember that you are in an extremely precarious situation at the point of my blaster."

Lagord's lekku wiggled as he frowned. "If that's the way it's going to be, there's no need for us to do business."

"No, that's not how this works," Asper said, taking a step towards him. "I'm not just talking about right now. You are always at the point of my blaster. Do you think you'll find some other Imperial who's willing to smuggle your worthless dung out of the Restricted Area? Nobody's got the connections to do it. If they tried then they would be insane, and insane people don't make for good business. Otherwise, they would shoot you for even asking. You need me, Lagord, not the other way around. If I leave, if we stop dealing, then that blaster pressed against your skull goes off and it's all over for you. Then, when one of your more reasonable cohorts takes over," here she waved her gun towards the Bith, then the Weequay, "he will come groveling to me. And me and him will make money, but you'll be dead. Is that how you want this to end?"

Over the course of her speech the Twi'lek's face had contorted into a range of emotions, from frustration, to anger, to pure hatred. As she came to a close it settled on what looked like resignation. He smiled at her, looking very tired all of a sudden in the way that his eyes sagged. "Well played. I really thought I had you pegged there, at the beginning. One thousand credits it is. The spice is yours. Sha'ala to you then! Come on you nerfherders, we're leaving."

The drug lord turned on his heel and dragged his feet across the floor, leaving out where the spice had came in. The Bith sidled up to the table and snatched the credits, then it and the Weequay filed after their boss.

"Wow, One-Ten," Ninety said, "you are a tough customer. It was like you were using a blaster on his mind when you spoke."

Four-Three snorted. "It's called being something other than a trigger-happy lunkhead. Nicely handled though, Ten. I only wish we could've fried those pustule packages."

Ninety chuckled at Four-Three's jab, readily acquiescing the point. Asper was laughing hysterically inside her head. At the very moment when she finally Lagord down, that was the peak of his hatred, and she was convinced that she would have to kill him. A whole career of mediocrity and a subsequent life of poverty seemed to be laid out before her, like one of the Restricted Area's residential corridors—fetid, unending, and with no exits. Then he cracked, and within her relief crashed into euphoria, producing a heady blend. She brought herself enough under control to respond to Four-Three. "Thanks. And I agree—killing that piece of work would have been a pleasure. But credits are also a pleasure, right on?"

The squad whooped and hollered in response, prompting Asper to smile, for the first time this patrol, as she called in to the shuttle pilot. With a caseload of illicit psychoactive drugs on hand and five aliens probably chocked to death by gas behind them, they were heading back to base.