The Coruscanti Job [Star Wars/Heist Plot] (SI)

[OrakBarama8D]

"...and that's the problem with the Senate. Nobody listens 'til the Rim's already burning!" slurred the dangerously inebriated Gran sitting across from me, banging his metal mug against the equally metallic tabletop, making my ears ring and my head throb painfully. I did not strangle him. Mostly because moving that much was impossible right now.

He'd been rambling for a while. Politics, mostly.

I managed to bring my left hand over to itch violently at the back of my right one, where, under a thin sheen of cold sweat, was an ugly red welt. About an inch of skin distended upwards from its natural level around what might have been a bee sting or maybe a spider bite. My mouth felt dry, so I reached for my drink only to remember I hadn't ordered one. "... and he's the devil, I tell you. The frakkin Devil! And he's perverted the mind and soul of fair old Aak with vile wizardry!"

My hand was itching again, so I scratched it. A ship passed by the large window to my side, momentarily blocking the bright sunlight descending, like a clawing hand, down into the seedy lower levels through the ecumenopolis' gargantuan ventilation shafts. I winced as the bright light reappeared, though the jerky movement made my head pound painfully once again.

One of the Gran's three eyes, I noticed, was limp. The middle one, its stalk hanging flaccid down his face, leaning ever so slightly to the side over the bulging nose and mouth common to the species. I paid him no attention, too focused on not throwing up in my mouth and not falling off my chair.

I scratched my hand.

I was so fucked, wasn't I? What was I even doing?

"Though you, I can see it. You... you're meant for more, aren't you, boy!? You can..." he rambled on, either not caring or, much more likely, too far gone to fathom that my glassy eyes, hunched posture, and incessant sweating were not conducive to active listening. I just sat there, watching him talk at me for a while.

"...And that's why they're cloning a race of mind-controllers on Byss to take over the Galaxy!" This was a crazy person, no doubt.

"Heuumpgh!" I told him as much, though he didn't acknowledge my riposte.

One of his eyes turned on its stalk, and I watched in envy as he, with the grace of someone not at risk of painting the floor with their vomit if they tried such a maneuver, lifted an arm and hailed one of the droids working the floor. It was one of those service droids that rolled around on one wheel – a model WA-something. It listened to the Gran, went away, and a moment later glided back with a thin, glowing cylinder.

Was that a Death Stick? The Gran lit the end and inhaled. That's a Death Stick.

I tried to groan, but it ended up as a gurgle.

I heard a noise.

Ah, the alien was speaking again.

"…for those who frolic upon the gossamer webs of fate may filigree the spaces in-between in their own image." What the hell was he on about?

Not an hour ago, I was getting ready for sleep in my own home in my good old childhood town of Kevil, Kentucky. Half an hour ago, I opened my eyes in a dirty lower-level Coruscant alley, dazed and confused, and instinctively squashed whatever bug just bit my hand.

"...and while the structure may remain, the purpose of the portrait changes in the weaver's passage..."

My hand itched again, but I didn't have the strength to scratch it.

I'd stumbled down the street, my head on a swivel, dodging aliens and droids and off-duty clone troopers, and I'd entered the first bar I found. I would've swept the floors for a drink and somewhere to collapse. This crazy Gran Marmeladov'd me the moment I stepped inside, and I didn't have the strength to resist.

"You see, a weaver is a conductor!" he coughed wetly and inhaled deeply from the death stick.

"And with an ensemble meet enough and a score carefully chosen, he may yet lull the forces of light and dark to dance to a ballad not of their own devising!"

"Bleurgh," I said, and I meant it.

My upper body gave out, and I slumped over the table, head now resting on my messily splayed-out arms. I could look out the window from this position; up through the ventilation shaft and past layers upon layers of utilitarian duracrete construction, I glimpsed the bright sky. Still now, while I wallowed down here, up there on the surface, a single man plotted the eradication of all that was good in a galaxy I had found myself in.

The gran leaned into my point of view, only to exhale a breath of red-purple smoke into my face and down my lungs and through my eyes. He wore a nasty smile. Crooked teeth. At some point, his third eye had opened.

"What are you waiting for, boy?" he asked. "Go find an orchestra and play some damn music."

I could barely hear him, and I was in no state to answer anyway.

The back of my hand itched again, but less than before. My fingertips tingled, and white fluid oozed from my wrists in short but weak bursts before hardening on the table. I kept eye contact with the Gran, even as the edges of the world darkened and tensed muscles slackened.

"Finally awake, are we?" he said.

I fell unconscious.