Coyote: Thrown to the Wolves-- A SW Fic!
Posted: 2002-12-16 04:50am
...Thrown to the Wolves
“You really should stop doing that, you know.”
I knew. But I kept doing it anyway. And while I appreciated what Feanna was telling me, it was beginning to grate on my nerves. Not because she was nagging, no-- I knew she was only concerned about my well-being.
It grated my nerves because she was right, and I was wrong, and I was continuing to be wrong for reasons I’d never be able to figure out.
I put the bottles away, not wanting to see them and be reminded of my own ignorant actions. I spent way too much time “unwinding”-- that’s what I called it-- from nothing but my own sense of lost purpose. I wasn’t an alcoholic-- yet-- but I definitely was abusing alcohol. And it was returning the favor.
“Arik,” she said, sliding her arms around me from behind, “you know what you need to do. You need to be back out there,” she gestured with a nod towards the ceiling, and by implication the inky blackness that lay beyond the stratosphere of Tatooine.
As she nodded, her lekku slid to new positions and twitched their concern. It was not in space, necessarily, I wanted to be, but simply traveling, going to other planets. Tatooine was not a place I went to, it was a place I ended up at, and it was here that my almost-girlfriend Feanna had caught up with me.
“Well, I asked for a position on your crew, but Captain Mancuso wouldn’t have me,” I said. Feanna sighed.
“You know how he feels about ex-Imperials,” she reminded me, “And besides, would you really want to be stuck on a smuggling crew? We spend most of our time cooped up in space. When we touch down we usually just have a few days in port and then we’re off. Not like what you need.”
What I need. What I need, for my sanity to return to its usual equilibrium, is to serve something, to be in the field again and to roam to all the planets I could find. To breathe different airs, to feel the crunch of twigs or rocks or something beneath my feet besides a steel deckplate.
I actually enjoyed flying, but only because flying meant that I was getting somewehere at the end. To serve a purpose. Flying for the sake of flying, or as a way to make a living, always struck me as a pointless and frustrating affair.
And here? I’d been paid reasonably well by the local farmers consortium to ride a swoop bike around the perimiters of various settlements, watching for Tusken Raiders or other undesireables. Myself and three other men, local farm boys looking for adventure, mostly. Not me. I was so much more than they could have dreamed of.
I was one of the best Scouts in the Empire’s service, riding real speeder bikes on real missions, not these cobbled-together hoverborne wastebuckets the locals raced.
It was on one of hundreds of worlds I served where I’d met Feanna and been in contact with her from time to time, not really knowing what our ties meant. She’d been a dancer at a bar, like many other Twi’Lek girls that are admired for their graceful moves.
But she had dreams, dreams she’d shared with me many late nights. Dreams I thought were foolish but I never said anything. She wanted to be a spacer, an independent anything-- she thought it would be romantic to be a Bounty Hunter.
Having met many Bounty Hunters myself, and not being overly impressed with them, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Bounty Hunters were about the most unromantic denizens of the galaxy.
But now who had the last laugh? She was part of a smuggling crew, a successful one at that, while I...
...had the rug pulled from under me. Not directly. At Endor. A dinky little moon in the middle of nowehere was where it all ended. The Empire came crashing down, the Republic erected in its place, and all the petty, slimy warlords that popped up to seize power. Strutting martinets in homemade uniforms calling themselves Admirals or whatnot-- not a single cell of their bodies devoted to true leadership, to rebuilding the great society that had been torn down...
“Hey,” Feanna said, looking at me. She was throwing away the last bottle and paused to give me an odd look. “You were mumbling,” she said. I smiled at her.
“Sorry,” I said, “Lost in thought.”
“Thought is good for you,” she said, sitting back beside me and draping one of her lekku around my neck. It was warm and its weight was soothing, and when she did that and put her arms around me I felt whole.
“You know we lift off today,” she reminded me. I didn’t want to think about. We’d had nearly a week together at Mos Espa; my work contract had ended and we spent the whole time wrapped up in each other and talking about fate, and the future. Her ship, the Ironraven, was due to lift in a couple hours. I sighed.
“Don’t accept this,” she said sternly, and touched my chin with her finger to focus our eyes together. “Don’t sit here and wait for some other podunk job to come your way. Hire on with someone and get out of here! I can’t stand to see you like this!”
“I have no spacer skills,” I reminded her, “No one will have me as a crewer. I’m only good for private security stuff,” I said, “maybe fixing or racing bikes. My job experience is as a Sergeant in the Imperial Army as a field scout.” She pursed her lips and mulled it over.
“Then play to your strengths,” she advised, “I think I know someone you can sign on with who might well be looking for just your type of skills.” I gazed at her for awhile, trying to figure out what she meant. Was she back on the Bounty Hunter idea, but for me?
“You know someone--?”
“Well, I know of someone. I got word of some guy looking to scoop up out of work troops.”
My dubious expression must have properly communicated my cautious interest.
“A group calling themselves the War Wolves. Or something like that,” she explained, gathering her clothes from the floor where we’d dropped them the night before.
“A mercenary group,” I said, no question in my voice. She shrugged.
“Yes, I think so,” she replied, packing her things into her travel bag. She pulled out one set of clean clothes and invited me to share the shower with her. After spending entirely too much time getting clean and dirty at the same time, we dried off and dressed.
I looked at the pile of Scout Trooper armor that I still had with me. Packed in the bottom of my duffel, I hadn’t worn it for a long time. It wasn’t exactly a free ticket to a show anymore, was it?
“Hey,” Feanna said, drawing me gently towards her, “If you stay here, you’re going got self-destruct. We both know it,” she said, with a gesture towards the recycler where the bottles had been dropped.
“I won’t have that. It’ll be awhile before I have enough money to have no worries. And you need something,” she said, smiling as she patted a wrinkle out of my shirt. “It’s not like we can just head back to your family farm at Naboo, now, can we?”
I laughed. She had me there. No, my parents would have a hard time, me with a Twi’Lek girl. They were terrified that I’d find some gentrified city gal from Theed and go off my rocker. But at least a girl from Theed would be human.
Not that there were any guarantees for me and Feanna; truth was we were just kind enjoying each other’s company when we could and beyond that--? But I found her to be a good judge of character. Mine, mostly.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “I need something to do, and this is about all I know,” I said, nudging a booted toe against the duffel. The muffled ‘thump’ of the armor only punctuated my already obvious point. “So what about these Wolves?”
“Mostly ex-Imperial, I guess,” she revealed, “The notice I read featured a guy in Stormie armor that had been repainted and had some wolf’s head insignia on it of some sort. And human,” she added with a sigh.
“Yeah,” I acknowledged. I’d never really thought about the Empire’s humanocentric policy before I met Feanna. We didn’t talk about it much. I looked around the room, suddenly realizing that I was planning to leave it. I’d only been on Tatooine for about a year—a year too long—but my rent was up in a week and I had nothing else here.
Not that I wanted to stay here, but this crap job for crap wages had been the longest period of stability I’d had, well… since Endor. Well, if this was what stability was, I wanted no part of it.
“I think you’re right,” I said, and felt straighter, taller, having said it out loud. “It’s time to get back to what I know.” We walked out and I didn’t give the little room--cell?—a second glance.
With my duffle on my back I made my way with Feanna to a nearby café where we shared a greasy, inhospitable breakfast. I then walked with her to Docking Bay 42, where the Ironraven was perched. Our breathing grew heavier as the approaching moment loomed. She held me and we kissed, and then I gently ran my hand down her lekku one last time.
“Keep in touch,” she said.
“You know I will. Will you?”
“I am better about it than you are,” she gently chided. One last sigh and a step back, and she went to her crew. Captain Mancuso shot me a look which I recognized all too well once people found out I was once a Stormtrooper.
“Now who’s the alien?” I muttered under my breath. Feanna turned and waved, and I waved back, until our next random, unplanned meeting.
I returned to the center of town and punched into the public database.
“Warwolves” I said at the prompt, and a single reference came up. It was a notice, not even really an advertisement-- just a call to duty, Docking Bay 18, 1700 to all interested parties.
Feanna was right—the layout, the style, the clipped delivery of the words all pointed to its origins in a mind shaped by years of functional and utilitarian Imperial speech.
I smiled at the familiar feelings. The sounds of busy docking bays, of shuttle loading, the smells and camaraderie…
I probably stood there grinning like an idiot for a couple of minutes before stepping away from the terminal. I went immediately to a barber and got my hair trimmed back in military order. I whiled away time until a few minutes before 1700 and went to go meet a stranger about a job.
No. Not some mere job.
A place to be.
The WarWolves saga begins.
“You really should stop doing that, you know.”
I knew. But I kept doing it anyway. And while I appreciated what Feanna was telling me, it was beginning to grate on my nerves. Not because she was nagging, no-- I knew she was only concerned about my well-being.
It grated my nerves because she was right, and I was wrong, and I was continuing to be wrong for reasons I’d never be able to figure out.
I put the bottles away, not wanting to see them and be reminded of my own ignorant actions. I spent way too much time “unwinding”-- that’s what I called it-- from nothing but my own sense of lost purpose. I wasn’t an alcoholic-- yet-- but I definitely was abusing alcohol. And it was returning the favor.
“Arik,” she said, sliding her arms around me from behind, “you know what you need to do. You need to be back out there,” she gestured with a nod towards the ceiling, and by implication the inky blackness that lay beyond the stratosphere of Tatooine.
As she nodded, her lekku slid to new positions and twitched their concern. It was not in space, necessarily, I wanted to be, but simply traveling, going to other planets. Tatooine was not a place I went to, it was a place I ended up at, and it was here that my almost-girlfriend Feanna had caught up with me.
“Well, I asked for a position on your crew, but Captain Mancuso wouldn’t have me,” I said. Feanna sighed.
“You know how he feels about ex-Imperials,” she reminded me, “And besides, would you really want to be stuck on a smuggling crew? We spend most of our time cooped up in space. When we touch down we usually just have a few days in port and then we’re off. Not like what you need.”
What I need. What I need, for my sanity to return to its usual equilibrium, is to serve something, to be in the field again and to roam to all the planets I could find. To breathe different airs, to feel the crunch of twigs or rocks or something beneath my feet besides a steel deckplate.
I actually enjoyed flying, but only because flying meant that I was getting somewehere at the end. To serve a purpose. Flying for the sake of flying, or as a way to make a living, always struck me as a pointless and frustrating affair.
And here? I’d been paid reasonably well by the local farmers consortium to ride a swoop bike around the perimiters of various settlements, watching for Tusken Raiders or other undesireables. Myself and three other men, local farm boys looking for adventure, mostly. Not me. I was so much more than they could have dreamed of.
I was one of the best Scouts in the Empire’s service, riding real speeder bikes on real missions, not these cobbled-together hoverborne wastebuckets the locals raced.
It was on one of hundreds of worlds I served where I’d met Feanna and been in contact with her from time to time, not really knowing what our ties meant. She’d been a dancer at a bar, like many other Twi’Lek girls that are admired for their graceful moves.
But she had dreams, dreams she’d shared with me many late nights. Dreams I thought were foolish but I never said anything. She wanted to be a spacer, an independent anything-- she thought it would be romantic to be a Bounty Hunter.
Having met many Bounty Hunters myself, and not being overly impressed with them, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Bounty Hunters were about the most unromantic denizens of the galaxy.
But now who had the last laugh? She was part of a smuggling crew, a successful one at that, while I...
...had the rug pulled from under me. Not directly. At Endor. A dinky little moon in the middle of nowehere was where it all ended. The Empire came crashing down, the Republic erected in its place, and all the petty, slimy warlords that popped up to seize power. Strutting martinets in homemade uniforms calling themselves Admirals or whatnot-- not a single cell of their bodies devoted to true leadership, to rebuilding the great society that had been torn down...
“Hey,” Feanna said, looking at me. She was throwing away the last bottle and paused to give me an odd look. “You were mumbling,” she said. I smiled at her.
“Sorry,” I said, “Lost in thought.”
“Thought is good for you,” she said, sitting back beside me and draping one of her lekku around my neck. It was warm and its weight was soothing, and when she did that and put her arms around me I felt whole.
“You know we lift off today,” she reminded me. I didn’t want to think about. We’d had nearly a week together at Mos Espa; my work contract had ended and we spent the whole time wrapped up in each other and talking about fate, and the future. Her ship, the Ironraven, was due to lift in a couple hours. I sighed.
“Don’t accept this,” she said sternly, and touched my chin with her finger to focus our eyes together. “Don’t sit here and wait for some other podunk job to come your way. Hire on with someone and get out of here! I can’t stand to see you like this!”
“I have no spacer skills,” I reminded her, “No one will have me as a crewer. I’m only good for private security stuff,” I said, “maybe fixing or racing bikes. My job experience is as a Sergeant in the Imperial Army as a field scout.” She pursed her lips and mulled it over.
“Then play to your strengths,” she advised, “I think I know someone you can sign on with who might well be looking for just your type of skills.” I gazed at her for awhile, trying to figure out what she meant. Was she back on the Bounty Hunter idea, but for me?
“You know someone--?”
“Well, I know of someone. I got word of some guy looking to scoop up out of work troops.”
My dubious expression must have properly communicated my cautious interest.
“A group calling themselves the War Wolves. Or something like that,” she explained, gathering her clothes from the floor where we’d dropped them the night before.
“A mercenary group,” I said, no question in my voice. She shrugged.
“Yes, I think so,” she replied, packing her things into her travel bag. She pulled out one set of clean clothes and invited me to share the shower with her. After spending entirely too much time getting clean and dirty at the same time, we dried off and dressed.
I looked at the pile of Scout Trooper armor that I still had with me. Packed in the bottom of my duffel, I hadn’t worn it for a long time. It wasn’t exactly a free ticket to a show anymore, was it?
“Hey,” Feanna said, drawing me gently towards her, “If you stay here, you’re going got self-destruct. We both know it,” she said, with a gesture towards the recycler where the bottles had been dropped.
“I won’t have that. It’ll be awhile before I have enough money to have no worries. And you need something,” she said, smiling as she patted a wrinkle out of my shirt. “It’s not like we can just head back to your family farm at Naboo, now, can we?”
I laughed. She had me there. No, my parents would have a hard time, me with a Twi’Lek girl. They were terrified that I’d find some gentrified city gal from Theed and go off my rocker. But at least a girl from Theed would be human.
Not that there were any guarantees for me and Feanna; truth was we were just kind enjoying each other’s company when we could and beyond that--? But I found her to be a good judge of character. Mine, mostly.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “I need something to do, and this is about all I know,” I said, nudging a booted toe against the duffel. The muffled ‘thump’ of the armor only punctuated my already obvious point. “So what about these Wolves?”
“Mostly ex-Imperial, I guess,” she revealed, “The notice I read featured a guy in Stormie armor that had been repainted and had some wolf’s head insignia on it of some sort. And human,” she added with a sigh.
“Yeah,” I acknowledged. I’d never really thought about the Empire’s humanocentric policy before I met Feanna. We didn’t talk about it much. I looked around the room, suddenly realizing that I was planning to leave it. I’d only been on Tatooine for about a year—a year too long—but my rent was up in a week and I had nothing else here.
Not that I wanted to stay here, but this crap job for crap wages had been the longest period of stability I’d had, well… since Endor. Well, if this was what stability was, I wanted no part of it.
“I think you’re right,” I said, and felt straighter, taller, having said it out loud. “It’s time to get back to what I know.” We walked out and I didn’t give the little room--cell?—a second glance.
With my duffle on my back I made my way with Feanna to a nearby café where we shared a greasy, inhospitable breakfast. I then walked with her to Docking Bay 42, where the Ironraven was perched. Our breathing grew heavier as the approaching moment loomed. She held me and we kissed, and then I gently ran my hand down her lekku one last time.
“Keep in touch,” she said.
“You know I will. Will you?”
“I am better about it than you are,” she gently chided. One last sigh and a step back, and she went to her crew. Captain Mancuso shot me a look which I recognized all too well once people found out I was once a Stormtrooper.
“Now who’s the alien?” I muttered under my breath. Feanna turned and waved, and I waved back, until our next random, unplanned meeting.
I returned to the center of town and punched into the public database.
“Warwolves” I said at the prompt, and a single reference came up. It was a notice, not even really an advertisement-- just a call to duty, Docking Bay 18, 1700 to all interested parties.
Feanna was right—the layout, the style, the clipped delivery of the words all pointed to its origins in a mind shaped by years of functional and utilitarian Imperial speech.
I smiled at the familiar feelings. The sounds of busy docking bays, of shuttle loading, the smells and camaraderie…
I probably stood there grinning like an idiot for a couple of minutes before stepping away from the terminal. I went immediately to a barber and got my hair trimmed back in military order. I whiled away time until a few minutes before 1700 and went to go meet a stranger about a job.
No. Not some mere job.
A place to be.
The WarWolves saga begins.
Might develop into a very nice fic if you keep up the level of writing you've used so far. Also an interresting consept for a fic. Never seen one like it before. But that might be just me. Anyone else seen a concept like this before 
A Question though, does the Empire just let a Stormtrooper leave 