Chapter 28: Tatooine: a tin can.
The girl looked skeptically at the pile of scrap metal in front of her. Most likely, these plates from the tin can had once boasted a special shine that rivaled a supernova, but now they had turned into a solid yellow mess, equally covered with the local sand. She really wanted to believe that it was all because of the oil and the harsh Tatooine weather in the form of dust or sand storms, but in reality, it was much worse... It seemed that even the remnants of the Tusken Raider were still visible on the hull...
Standing next to her was a young man, or perhaps something almost not human, in bluish clothing and what appeared to be leather armor on his arms and similarly high leather boots. Under the cloak, a dark leather chestplate was also visible. To be honest, Sev'rance had no idea whose skin his equipment was made from. What interested the girl more was what exactly the leather concealed, because such archaic armor would not protect against even a knife, let alone a blaster shot.
Considering who her partner really was, he simply could not wear regular gear. It was entirely possible that the leather concealed something underneath, so that enemies would attack or shoot at the poorly protected armor, as the helmet already looked much more solid and robust. Moreover, it was easier to hit the chest than the head.
Could this tin can and her teacher be considered similar in any way? Absolutely not. The cargo ship had been brought to such a state that even the teacher himself was just pretending. Perhaps in the eyes of Olga and Rune, who were currently chatting with the owner of this junkyard, he looked like an unlucky and naive free shooter, but in reality, under the helmet was a terrifying cracked glass mask, and the very thought of it sent shivers down the poor girl's spine.
Hassan was an incredibly intimidating figure. In essence, all Sith were supposed to be like that. Even Dooku exuded a frightening aura with his refined manners, and his Force Lightning pierced every female bone. Every one of her misses was punished with Force Lightning until she finally learned her lesson. With the new mentor, everything was much more complicated.
"What is this, for crying out loud?!" Olga exclaimed in disbelief. "This isn't even a ship! It's a canned food tin on bolts!"
"Well, the important thing is that there are bolts," shrugged the human man in a worn jumpsuit. "And what did you expect? Payment before the job? Seriously?"
"Yeah, this job is definitely going to fail, I'm telling you!" the Rodian began to pound his open palm with the edge of his fist. "But with a ship like this, our chances are decreasing! Which means you'll lose a lot more!"
"You've already told me all of this," the pilot scratched his head, running his fingers through his greasy, long-unwashed hair. Maybe the sand on the ship had stuck not to the oil but to the grease from the men's hair? "And listen, if I hadn't trusted you at all, you wouldn't have seen such a ship on Tatooine. Except for me, of course," he added with a grin.
"Argh!!!" Olga grabbed his bumpy head in frustration.
"Hey, calm down," Raphael intervened, approaching the two talking almost up close. "The main thing is that the ship can fly and has some kind of weaponry," the mercenary looked at the protruding gun under the transport ship.
"That's right," the human immediately caught the thread of the conversation, "listen to your friend, Olga! You won't find a free ship anywhere else!"
"Okay, okay..." the Rodian waved his hand and then headed toward the ship's ramp.
In fact, they were lucky to find any kind of ship, because getting off Tatooine to an unclaimed planet was almost impossible without personal transport. Although this pile of scrap metal looked like it could explode at the first engine roar. However, if you think about it, death would free her from the problems hanging over her head. She hadn't expected the Dark Side of the Force Path to be easy, but this path had brought Tann to someone who seemed to be mocking her every moment.
"Move faster," Olga impatiently beckoned his companions to follow him.
Rune wordlessly followed his friend. Raphael glanced at his partner and motioned toward the ship with a nod. Of course, Sev'rance complied with the command, though from the outside, it all looked less official and more friendly. After all, they were playing the role of partners, but in reality, their relationship was more... complex. Life is a complex thing, but now, it seemed, the level of complexity for one blue-skinned, fateful beauty had increased to almost impossible.
The four adventurers entered the pilot's cabin, where Olga immediately began to start up the cargo ship, muttering something to himself. Rune took a seat at the co-pilot's place and instantly fastened his safety harness, gripping the armrests with his hands. Raphael, without much thought, also took a seat in an available space near the cabin entrance and similarly fastened his harness, hoping for the best. Sev'rance, on the other hand, was less radical in her approach. Unlike her concerned partners, she calmly took the last seat, across from the teacher, and quite provocatively crossed her legs without a care for her own safety.
To be honest, the risk of them not taking off was quite high, but there was also the possibility of this old machine exploding, which should have been retired a long time ago or brought back to life by experienced mechanics. She was less concerned about death now than before. Moreover, it used to be simpler. There was the army, there was an escape from her home planet with a guy, followed by rigorous apprenticeship under Dooku, and now she was here, sitting right across from a Sith who seemed to lecture her almost every day.
Sometimes he was a ruthless sadist who broke many of her bones and scarred her beautiful face, and sometimes he appeared as a carefree do-gooder, making her nauseous with his kindness. His two sides were so different that poor Sev'rance was in a constant state of cognitive dissonance, exacerbated by the recurring nightmares. As a result, the sleep-deprived Sev'rance was always on edge, wanting to release the accumulated stress on someone, anyone! But she couldn't. Because of her new teacher.
However, last night she managed to sleep relatively well. When, in her dream, the teacher once again brutally killed his student, she woke up in a cold sweat, in a state of shock. And that's when her teacher approached her. At that moment, she couldn't think clearly due to the panic after his brutality, when the mentor literally ripped her insides out through her mouth using the Force. But the gentle voice of Hassan or Raphael slightly comforted the frightened girl, as they shared their past with her. Were his words true? She didn't know. However, after he tenderly took her hand, Sev'rance fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.
In the morning, waking up from a sweet and much-needed slumber, to her surprise, she found her teacher sitting next to her, still holding her hand. After waking up, she didn't immediately understand what was happening, but a little later, Tann realized that he had been sitting with her all night, protecting her from nightmares. Sev'rance shuddered at... the wrongness of it all. She had already realized that her teacher had shown her tenderness, care, and affection, which she had long forgotten about. No, she didn't just forget about them; she had rejected such weak and unnecessary feelings, so it was extremely uncomfortable to experience them now.
Sev'rance should be grateful to him, but she couldn't. She just couldn't. She felt that this behavior was wrong, as it was not at all Sith-like in the end! Only Jedi could afford such sentimentalism, not Sith! Dooku had never concerned himself with her well-being—it shouldn't be any other way. But Hassan was behaving completely differently!
"Hey, are you listening to me?" came the smacking voice of the Rodian from above.
Tann seemed to emerge from a pool. Trying to regain her composure, she glanced out the window and saw space. Had she really been so immersed in her thoughts that she slept through liftoff? It seemed like a lack of sleep, general anxiety, which seemed to have become chronic, and the teacher's inexplicable actions had taken a toll on the fragile mind of the Dark Side adept. After the mission, she needed to meditate urgently to clear her thoughts, but for now...
"If you come any closer to me than two steps," she slowly turned her head towards him, each word dripping with threat, "I'll gouge your eyes out. Clear, bug-eyes?"
"Yes-yes, I get it," the Rodian immediately stepped back, shielding himself from the angry witch with his tablet. "Anyway, I managed to get one of the pirates drunk in the bar. I lost all my credits to him, damn the Hutt!" Olg shook his head in dissatisfaction. "But I managed to get something interesting out of him," he started poking at the tablet's screen. "Surprisingly, the planet they chose, Rozd, has a flat landscape with hills and occasional low mountains. According to him, they set up a small open-air warehouse with minimal security—about twenty to twenty-five pirates, no more."
"So, that's five pirates for each of us?" Raphael was surprised. "Isn't that a bit too much?"
"Pff..." Rune scoffed.
"Actually, it's seven to eight for each of you," Olg clarified.
"What do you mean? You want to stay on the ship?" the mercenary asked in annoyance.
"Of course!" the Rodian replied as if it were obvious. "That's where my muscles come in handy!" He pointed to the hefty ambala sitting proudly in the pilot's seat. "I'm responsible for gathering information, and you, please, kindly finish the rest."
"Your blabbering is really getting on my nerves," Sev'rance, already irritated, couldn't stand the snake's empty words anymore.
She abruptly got up, snatched the tablet from the bewildered Olg, and then rudely pushed him back into the pilot's seat. He was lucky she didn't use the Force – in that case, he might have been ejected through the viewport. Rune clearly didn't like how they were treating his friend, so he merely stood up to put the insolent mercenary in her place, but he received a harsh kick to the nose from her armored boot. The poor ambala cried out and collapsed back into his seat, frantically rubbing his bruised nose.
"If you do that again, I'll rip your balls off and shove them down your throat," Sev'rance threatened, fixing the ambala with a menacing look that could be felt even through his helmet.
"Alright, alright, we get it," Olg massaged the spot where he was pushed while trying to get comfortable in his seat. "I'll input the hyperspace coordinates for now."
"Yeah..." Raphael, on the other hand, had practically melded into his seat, as if fearing the wrath of his companion.
Sev'rance quickly read the information on the tablet, shook her head in frustration, and then unexpectedly threw the gadget at the ambala, who barely managed to catch it with his thick, clumsy fingers. His once-gray nose noticeably reddened from the close encounter with the woman's heel. Now he knew what it was like to be under a lady's stiletto.
"Is this all you found, bug-eyes?" she asked, clearly dissatisfied. "No maps, no schematics – just the words of a drunken pirate?"
"What did you expect?" Olg protested with a wave of his hands. "You want a ship and intelligence in just one day?"
"Hey, hey, chill, Cheesecake," Raphael suddenly interjected. "He really didn't have much time. Our deadline is tomorrow, so we have to work with what we've got."
"...," the girl slumped into an available seat, taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm down. "Alright. So, we'll leave the ship about a kilometer from their hideout, and then we'll ALL go for reconnaissance together. Is that clear?"
"What about me? I'm not a fighter! I've already said," Olg began to object.
"I don't care if you're a fighter or not, we're not leaving you alone," Sev'rance raised her voice. "If we have to split into pairs, then it'll be me and Rune, Olg and Raphael. Is everyone clear on that?"
"...Okay," the pilot barely managed to squeeze out. "But if they set me up..."
"Olg, stop grumbling," Raphael spoke up, "you're just making my partner angrier."
The Rodian raised his hands in front of him, surrendering completely. Meanwhile, Sev'rance nervously bit her lip. Was she doing everything right? From a tactical standpoint, she couldn't leave Olg behind because she didn't trust him. Of course, they were here to extract him from the mess he had gotten himself into, but that didn't mean Olg wouldn't stab them in the back and make off with the loot or, conversely, conspire with the pirates. In either the first or last case, she would take immediate action to... neutralize the Rodian. His death probably wouldn't please her teacher, whom she was now anxiously glancing at.
Tann couldn't imagine what was going on in Hassan's head right now. All she could do was go with the flow, pretending to be a mercenary, and follow Hassan's not entirely obvious orders. She was literally walking on the edge of the unpredictable shard that was her new mentor.
Dear Readers,
I would like to give you some important information regarding the release of new chapters of this fanfic. In the near future, they will appear less frequently than before, as I will be busy with other projects. However, it is important to note that this does not mean that I am abandoning this work or the story we have all come to love so much.
If you can't wait for the next chapter and want to read more, I have a suggestion for you. I've set up my Patreon, where I already have 5 chapters ready to read, and new chapters will be released there much faster than on this platform. It's a great way to get first access to content and support my creative efforts. Thanks for your loyalty and understanding. I hope you continue to enjoy this story with me, wherever you choose to read it next.
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