Purgatory Is a Desert Town - Part 2
It happened at midmorning. The faint echo of dread that had tickled her brain with paranoia the day before—its shadow now loomed large over her as the dawn crop of moisture farmers dwindled and left the cantina. The silence and emptiness usually brought her peace, respite, yet now it brought unease. Only two people remained in the space besides Aro and Ti; likely travelers or traders not beholden to a desert schedule. Nayomi took a steadying breath. What was the Force trying to say? The feeling had been obvious, blatant even, when she had dressed in her ship cabin before work. Wear it! Her cortosis cape had screamed at her; wear it! Take me with you! It lay quiescent around her shoulders now, its dark folds still retaining some of the cold of the predawn desert. Silent. Nayomi paused her sweeping and slowly scanned the cantina, wall to wall, looking for potential signs of danger. Two humans, one slumped in a booth and one slumped on the counter, neither charged with tension or dark energy. She sighed through her nose and resumed sweeping. The Whills would speak, when they were ready.
The shadow in her mind lengthened.
>>>>>>Shifted.
Gathered.
Nayomi stopped.
The whine of a repulsor engine grew louder outside the cantina walls, and a shadow passed by one of the frosted window slits. The engine spun down and cut.
Nayomi found herself staring intensely at her duros employer behind the counter. She called, “Aro?”
His ruby red eyes met the gem pink of hers, and his blue forehead crinkled. “Yeah kid?”
She struggled to voice the feeling that seized her. There was too much there bound up and puckered together to explain with speed. All she could manage to say was, “Bad.”
With a quick turn of his eyes to the front door and noises outside, she knew he had understood. Her shoulders loosened by a fraction. Then the door opened with a hydraulic clunk and multiple silhouettes stood framed by the hazy light. They filed into the cantina, three, four, five, six of them, their fish-like bulbous heads framed by hexagonal helmets or covered by golden masks. What did that patron call them yesterday? Pyke? Even the two humans looked up from their morning ruminations at their entrance.
“I told you before, I ain't selling.”
“While you refused our offer before, we believe you may now reconsider,” the pyke leader said smoothly. He gestured to one of his companions, and they came forward and proffered a small case to Aro. The entire box glinted with thousands of golden Imperial credits.
“Holy kriff,” Ti swore.
“What is this?” Aro growled, sensing a trap. “You steal this from an Imperial?”
“If we did, that is our business, not yours, duros,” the pyke said. “Sell us your property, and buy passage to an oasis world. Drift the stars to your heart's delight. We don't care.”
“And how am I supposed to spend a stamped fortune like that without getting arrested at the first checkpoint?” Aro said, his humming voice full of contempt.
“I suppose you'll have to use your head, and be careful,” he said, his high tones light with derision.
Nayomi slowly, steadily, calmly tugged her cloak from around her back to her left side, eyes never leaving the pykes.
The wrinkles on Aro's face deepened. “That cred has heat on it. No deal.”
“We are no longer asking,” the pyke said. The five other pykes behind him calmly put their hands and claws to holstered weapons. Snakes coiled to strike. “Why make this more difficult for both of us?” the pyke leader entreated. “Make the right choice and we can all get what we want.”
Nayomi placed a second hand on her steel broom, but did not move.
Inexplicably, Aro smirked at the pykes. “You's get run outta town in a day if you shot me.”
The pyke's face contorted. Bullies were used to getting what they wanted, when they wanted it. “Last chance, drifter,” he hissed. “Give us the title and the slave girls' contracts or we'll blast you all to slag.”
It took Nayomi a second to register that the pyke had called her a slave. But Ti exploded immediately. “I'm not a slave anymore you piece of druk!” she shouted.
The pykes' eyes and blasters all snapped to her, ready to fire. Something in Nayomi's chest gave a shriek at seeing barrels pointed at Ti, and she leaped across the cantina before she knew what her legs had done. At the same time, Aro used the momentary distraction to hurl a heavy glass at the leader and duck behind the bar.
The glass shattered across the leader's face with a lethally deep crack and he fell backward with a scream, slamming into the pyke behind him. The second pyke's eyes went wide as Nayomi smashed the side of his head with one end of her broom, then swept his legs out from under him with the opposite end. They hit the ground with a crack and a thump, but the gang's shock at the dual attack did not last long. Blasters went off, shots broke metal and glass, and more than one pyke swiveled to focus on Nayomi.
She felt the pull.
Nayomi grabbed the corner of her cape and brought it up to shield her head, squeezing her eyes shut, right as a blaster bolt walloped into the fabric—only to dissipate into a burst of flame and a crackle of electricity. She wasn't dead. The cortosis worked. Pride bloomed in her chest.
Now was not the time to marvel at it, though.
She jumped to one side as they tried to shoot at her legs, dropped her cape, and took a swing at a third pyke's knees, trying to breathe out her fear and let her years of martial drilling take hold. The pyke cried and stumbled but a fourth took a wild shot at her, singeing the fabric off her right shoulder. Aro popped up from behind the counter with his scatter gun, giving her an opening by firing a warning shot which made most of the pykes duck. Nayomi plunged in with her steel broom, but a scaly fist banged into the side of her head, knocking her off balance. She staggered to turn around to batter the pyke in the face with the bristly end, but it felt stilted, reactionary, until suddenly she giggled. It was funny, fighting such bullies with a broom. Her grip loosened, the broom twirled. She began striking blasters and wrists and knees and joints where they appeared, ducking and weaving around the remaining four assailants like the tide. Breathe. Let go the conscious self. Trust instinct, trust the Force. All their attempts to hit her no longer landed. She did not know their anatomy and her broom was beginning to bend and groan but the limbs of bilateral bipeds were always solid targets, and if you could not stand then you could not fight. Pushed and pulled by the Force in an exuberant dance, Nayomi distributed enough pain and discomfort among each of the aliens that none of them could stand, let alone hold a blaster.
The last pyke dropped to the floor with a yelp, and Nayomi surveyed the cantina, still coiled and tense. Aro slowly stood up behind the counter, and Ti peeked out from a booth.
“Kriff, Ruthe,” Ti said, incredulous. “Since when could you do that?”
Nayomi glanced behind her to look at Ti, and her smile dropped. A scuff of metal and rustle of cloth made her whirl back to the pykes just in time to see one of them, propped up from the ground, hiss and point a blaster at her face.
At that same moment, a singular small flat shoe spun through the air with exquisite precision and smacked the blaster out of the pyke's hand. The pyke gasped in pain, cradling a broken finger.
Nayomi traced the shoe back to its owner, and beheld a powerfully curvy human woman slouching at the bar, a look of grim satisfaction and moody disgust on her caf brown face. The woman's frizzy dark hair sat in beautiful disarrayed braids upon her head, held back only by a scrap of linen and the heat of her amber eyes.
“Nice aim,” Nayomi said, feeling fluttery.
“Grazi,” the human said, pushing off the bar and sauntering closer. “You're not so bad yourself, minty. Braver than a whole helluva lot a people I've seen.” The woman began stepping between the pykes and picking up the discarded blasters, stacking them on the bar for Aro. Aro nodded to her and started ejecting the power packs as she went. She kicked a hand to free another blaster.
“Braver?” Nayomi asked, still a bit flustered.
The woman looked up at her, exasperated. “They're pykes.”
Nayomi didn't know what that meant, despite the human's emphasis, and she didn't want to look foolish. She had already revealed more about herself than she would have liked.
“The syndicate that always delivers perfect and exacting revenge on those who defy them?” the woman added, attempting to jog her memory. “Lords of the spice trade? Competitors with the Hutts?”
“Oh.” Nayomi paled a little. Even Zanshin colonists knew about the spice mines of Kessel and the lucrative and addictive drug created from the glittering mineral.
“Yeah. Regretting your decision much now, sweet stuff?” The woman put a fist on her hip.
Nayomi looked down at the pile of 6 pykes, half of them moaning on the sandy floor, and frowned. “No,” she said firmly.
“I certainly don't mind what you did,” Aro hummed. “Might have been a lot worse if you hadn't.”
The human smiled faintly, amused, and leaned on the bar in front of Nayomi. There was a kind of piercing quality to her gaze that spoke of war and repercussion and quick decisions on a battlefield as she asked, “Who are you, nerra?”
Nayomi said blandly, “No one of consequence.”
She snorted, “The barkeep, patrons, pykes and the floor all beg to differ.” The woman gave her a look. “That was some top notch technique.”
“Nayomi,” she said quietly. “Nayomi Ruthe.”
“Maro Virjel,” she volunteered in kind. Virjel recovered her shoe, stuffing it back on her foot, and looked back to Nayomi. “Just blowing through town looking for a way back off this sand pile.” She asked, “Are you...” then stopped.
Nayomi sensed a vortex of meaning lurking behind Virjel's discarded question.
“Where the krong did you dig up a cloak like that?” Virjel asked, switching her attention.
Nayomi looked down at the scattering of black powdery residue on her cape where the blaster bolt had exploded on contact with the fabric. She examined it, looking for holes or damage in the wool. Nothing. The unbroken black metal threads felt gloriously cool beneath her thumb. Trying to be casual, Nayomi said, “I made it.”
“Yeah, and my mother fucked the Emperor,” Virjel said. She turned her attention to the pykes on the ground and nudged one with her foot. “What do you want to do with these sorry fish?” she asked Aro.
The pale blue duros frowned at the pykes for a minute. “We'll huck em in the street, let em dry out. I'll rustle up some extra hands.” He grabbed a wide brim hat and skirted the pile of pykes to the door. Within only a few minutes Aro stepped back into the cantina with another dusty local right behind him, and the shouts of neighbors bounced through the open door. They started hauling the pykes out into the street in teams of two, Virjel gleefully joining in by grabbing a pyke by the ankles and dragging them facedown through the broken glass and hot sand. Nayomi flinched as Virjel “accidentally” banged its head on the cantina door threshold. She glanced back at Ti, and started using her now-bent broom to quietly sweep up the shards of glass and metal. Once outside, the debris would quickly disintegrate and return to the sands from whence they came.
By noon, the entire town knew what had happened to Aro and everyone had efficiently rifled through the pockets and speeder compartments of of the pykes, distributing power packs and water canteens and stray trugats between them. It was the law of all small town desert dwellers: betray hospitality and you would be ousted and stripped clean faster than carrion in a sandstorm. The twin suns would do the rest. Nayomi appreciated the primitive wisdom of it. Everyone watched from shaded awnings and doorways as the pykes staggered upright, more than a hundred eyes glaring dispassionately as the aliens hissed and yelped and limped into their landspeeder in the blazing suns.
The leader, however, turned to face the cantina. Through crusted green blood and an eye swollen shut, he barred his needle-sharp teeth and glared directly, solely, unmistakably at Nayomi. Her heart stuttered and dropped as he hissed, “You're dead, mirialan.” He climbed into the hovering vehicle and they sped out of Vaporator Springs.
Virjel pushed off the door and said to Aro, “Shoulda just shot em. Or at least taken more of that sweet cache of theirs, friend.”
“Not worth the attention,” he hummed. Then turned to Nayomi. “But you might want to get out of town for a while, kid. You got time before anyone comes looking, but that time'd be best spent disappearing wherever it is you usually go.”
Nayomi startled out of her disquiet. “But...” She looked between Aro and Ti, and deflated a little. She still needed twice as many credits to buy the right kind of fuel, and she'd carved out a nice niche here where she was practically anonymous. But he had a point. She definitely wasn't anonymous anymore.
Virjel perked up. “If you're skipping outta here, can I hitch a ride?” she asked.
Nayomi frowned, trying to think of an excuse.
“I do recall saving your life 'bout an hour prior, tootz,” she said, smirking. “You owe me.”
A spike of fear entered her gut, adding to the dread already pooling there. Nayomi breathed it out. “Fine. I can take you to Mos Espa. Meet me in the garage in an hour.”
Continued below
