Emerald

Alarms blared in the cockpit as a flight of a dozen TIE Defenders drew closer to give them an unwanted kiss, and Sapphire was putting the ship through its paces, the inertial dampener dialed down almost dangerously. What the freighter lacked in speed, it more than compensated for in maneuverability. “We can’t outrun them!” Emerald was yelling through the headset of her turret, the note of panic in her voice only adding to the cocktail of cortisol racing through the air within the ship’s cockpit. Sapphire glanced at the scopes. Emerald was right; the TIEs were too kriffing fast. Her mind spun. They just needed a few more seconds. Just then, multiple klaxons sounded. The Imperials had launched a massive wave of multiple missiles at them. “I HATE THEM!” Sapphire shouted. “EVERYONE hates them!” Emerald squealed back. But the idea gave her a devious thought. “Ruby! Remember that one time that we ran the Gauntlet down Gallinore’s High Street?” Ruby’s sarcasm was audible. “How could I forget? One of the downright worst days of my life.” “Not THAT part,” she muttered. “Sapph, listen to me, we have to go back. Stay in traffic. The space lanes.” It was an incomplete thought, but more often than not the Blood Gems worked as though they were bound in some kind of mind meld. Finishing each others’ sentences was a common theme, and Sapphire knew immediately what her friend was insinuating and yanked the ship back down toward the moon. The free crime that had lasted for millennia on Nar Shaddaa was squirming under the thumb of Imperial oppression. All it needed was a little push, and that started with the first slip of the Imperial overlords. “Let’s see how far they’ll go to protect their new citizens,” Emerald growled, steel in her jaw. Sapphire gritted her teeth. “Hold on!” she cried. Wrenching the stick, the red-head twisted the ship through the chaos. The missiles were closing, but then, wrenching the stick in the other direction, she put another ship in between them and the missiles. Then another. Then another. As the first ship exploded from Imperial firepower, Emerald flipped the wide-band comm system on. “Mayday! If you’re out there and you can hear us, everyone, the Imperials are attacking private ships without provocation! They haven’t changed at all! Who knows who is next?! Let’s hit them back where it hurts!” Leaving the video broadcast online, knowing that the nearby media satellites would undoubtedly begin a Holonet special in the category of Breaking News, she shut down the comm. “That should do it.” And the Gems were right. As the TIEs screamed after them, all the other ships began to pull out of the designated lanes, the atmosphere became a chaos of ships going every which way. As the rest of the missiles collided with the unfortunate denizens of the moon and not them, Sapphire grinned. “Oh no! The Imperials firing missiles on their own loyal, upstanding citizens? The horror!” As ships exploded, caught in the crossfire, the simmering resentment towards the Imperials that was pervasive on the moon, checked until now but never quenched, broke. Some denizens fled, but others turned on the Imperials, the quad cannons and laser cannons of dozens of ships firing at the Imperial forces in vengeance, even going so far as to tail the TIEs in pursuit of the Gems’ ship. The smugglers sitting obediently in the spacelanes abandoned their pretense of lawfulness, with the seemingly sudden shift of the Imperials into aggression without provocation meaning they no longer had a reason to keep their peace. The spritely twitter of the navicomputer was almost missed in the wail of the target lock alarm, but it was music to the Gems’ ears. Hugging tight to the surface of the moon, weaving in and out of the barely-existent spacelanes, taking cover behind the civilians the Empire had come here to liberate, they were only waiting for their opening to blast their way out of this hellhole of a system, finger on the lever of the hyperdrive. <>

"No bet," Emerald quipped. "I've been to state dinners, and they are the worst." Like a piece of driftwood floating upon the tide of her memory, an image settled in on her mind like a filmy haze. Through a tiny slit in a closed door, she could see her mother, elegantly clad in a shimmering green dress, her hair elaborately coiffed. Terelda's voice rang out distantly, like a brass gong clashing without the resonant hum of a full sound, and she was elbowing her way into the room forcefully. Small arms reached around her tiny waist, pulling her in tighter, whispering in her ear... Stay silent, little Gem. With a start, she snapped herself out of the memory to find that the rest of them had turned concerned glances her direction. In a sudden effort to cover what had just occurred, she yelled, "Well, don't just stand there, get the equipment together, load in, and let's break this kriffing blockade." A small, covered hovercraft carried them surreptitiously through the murky Undercity. For a time, Emerald kept her high collar pulled over her face, nearly afraid to breathe because of the dangerous quality of the air in the depths of Nar Shaddaa. But uneventfully, they arrived back at the Cider Puff. Not ten minutes later, the preflight check had been completed, and the ship pulled out of the hangar, slipping into silent grimy night. "This could be hot," Emerald grimaced as they began to see TIEs strafing in the upper atmosphere of the planet, reflecting the glare of the pervading neon lights. "They aren't going to want to let us out." She jerked a thumb towards the rear of the ship, looking meaningfully at Ruby. "Load up the mines. I'll man the controls. We need to be prepared to get the kriff out of here."

With a dismissive wave of her hand, Emerald snorted. "This is reconnaissance, baby. No need to get our hands dirty when we look so nice. No, I want to see if I can buy us an in with the right people." Her Cheshire smile widened as she predicted the backlash to her next idea. "I mean, we could always go as Wolfstar's new backup dancers."

With that keen fire in her feisty eyes, Emerald passed her gaze between the four of them standing close together. The possibility of staying under the Imperial thumb was abhorrent, and as much as she loved Nar Shaddaa, there would always be other havens for them. "Maybe it's time that we move operations. This moon's too damn small anyways," she murmured thoughtfully. Putting down roots on Nar Shaddaa had been good for their accounts, but not good for her psyche. Emerald was a fighter, a Mistryl-trained assassin, an expert impersonator and ruthless in conquest. Here, they were getting slow, getting lazy, tied down by the Imperials and their control of the moon. Their only hope for Nar Shaddaa would be that grip would slacken as time went on. It seemed nearly impossible that the Imperials could have assumed such command so quickly, closing all gaps in their sensor sweeps, leaving no stone unturned, especially after a massacre on Carida and a loss of their fleet that would have rendered any other governmental entity on the side of defense. Apparently, however, they had the personnel to make the Gems' life a living hell. "Screw this, we're going to that damn party with her," Emerald announced abruptly. "Maybe we'll get to shake Zinthos' hand with a thermal detonator." As predictable as always, the first dissenting voice was Ruby's. "Hell no. There is no way you are making me put on a dress and go to another damn party. Especially not with a bunch of politicians." Emerald's eyes glinted steel. "And we're going to scour the Holonet for relevant bounties on the bigwigs that are going to be there."

Glaring relentlessly at everyone and everything, Emerald crossed her arms in an obvious pout. Their time as entrepreneurs had been short-lived, but maybe it was for the best. Sapphire had resisted the assumption of Dorjoola's organization from the beginning, and Emerald should have known that it was too good to last. But perhaps the Blood Gems did not need to be the Pirate Queens of Nar Shaddaa. It served them better to be simply pirates. "Kriff this," she muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Let's hit them where it hurts. Modifications to the ships, disable their scanners, the works. We still have assets. Let's show those bucketheads a real Nar Shaddaa welcome." Her comlink pinged, a notification from an old Link contact that she had not utilized in nearly a decade. Frowning, she toggled the switch and her eyes steadily widened as she read the message. Link HQ. Crown Jewels. Lorell Pirates. - Brulo Thrusting her comlink into Sapphire's hands, she whistled through her teeth. "Think Wolfstar's bitten off more than she can chew?"

"Are you kriffing kidding me? Shassa, these bucketheads know how to ruin a good party," Emerald muttered as they made their way through the slimy undercity of Nar Shaddaa. If the Undercity of Coruscant was hazardous, the Undercity of Nar Shaddaa was purely toxic. The casual layer of grime and tibanna residue dusted everything that managed to come down this far, a filth that would take decades--if not millennia--to purge, even assuming one could put reins on the economy of crime that was all that Nar Shaddaa had ever known. The destabilization of the Hutt cartels meant that the whole system was thrown into disarray: even the presence of the Imperials could not stifle the general attitude of the moon, and in fact, rather increased it. While sell-outs and informants had always been present on Nar Shaddaa, even cutthroat, the immense destabilization of all the economic and systematic norms of the Smuggler's Moon meant that everyone was more liable to keep to themselves, wishing to stick it to the Imperials one way or another. The bad blood on the planet was like molten lava, exerting an immense amount of pressure from the inside of this erstwhile active volcano. If the Gems had anything to say about it, the system would blow itself wide open with barely a nudge on their part. Since the relocation of the Imperial fleet elsewhere, the remaining troops left behind were struggling to shut down all of the resistance attempts. Drug cartels, slave rings, gambling hives, dueling clubs, gunrunners, they all had a vested financial interest in Imperial failure in the Y'toub system, and made it known at every attempt. Even as Emerald and Sapphire moved further into the underground and unknown, heavily disguised as they knew would be necessary, vague rumblings from explosions somewhere kilometers above them announced such unrest. There simply were not enough Imperial personnel to keep track of all of the misdeeds that were taking place under their noses, and even their attempts to do so only drove the scum of the earth to band together. Owing to that, not a single person they passed as they walked gave them a second glance, if even a first. Emerald's hand never left the butt of her blaster, but she felt an odd sense of compatriotism with the underworld slime who were camouflaged by the drab debasement and depravation here. This far down, there were no holocams, no security, just the stench of decay and disease and desperation. The sounds of strafing TIEs could be heard, but distantly, far off, overhead where the light from the system's star still reached. Here, there were monsters. "I thought you prissy little credit-grubbers would never show," a familiar voice, rich and smooth like fine Alderaanian cacao, quietly pierced the darkness. "We've been waiting for you." They had made their way in quite a roundabout fashion to an undercity bunker, the likes of which were common across the surface of the planet. Taking great pains to make sure they had not been observed or followed, and blending in with others to make sure their heat signatures were always masked by the presence of other sentients, they had arrived at a hidden stronghold of the Blood Gem Pirates, which had been owned personally by the Quarren majordomo of Dorjoola the Hutt, from whom they had taken their empire. There were contingency plans on top of contingency plans for such an eventuality, and while an Imperial occupation was not high on the list of probabilities, the Gems prided theirselves on their keen preparation. What Emerald could not possibly have prepared for was how glad she was to see Tarvil.

"I'm going to resort to picking off Tibanna freighters and selling cheap blasters on the black market if we don't see some movement soon," Emerald lamented, sprawled out on her bunk listlessly. "You'd think those kriffing bucketheads would have learned their lesson by now. Trying to suppress crime in the Y'toub system is like firing a blaster bolt in a magnetically sealed trash compactor." The whir of servomotors interrupted her moping and she turned her head to acknowledge the glossy black BB unit as it rolled to a halt and beeped urgently at her. "What do you want, twerp?" she snapped at the droid. A series of whistles ended with a loud blatt, and with an overexaggerated groan, Emerald leapt up to follow him. "This better be real news this time, no more of those weird pictures with captions on them--" Her voice trailed off as she entered the cockpit just in time to see the entire occupying Imperial fleet jump to hyperspace, one after another, winking into oblivion like a relentless suitor who had not yet learned the art of tact. "Well, I'll be a Hutt's body fungus," she muttered to herself, then turned over her shoulder to holler back into the hold. "Sapphire, get up here." She gestured to the empty space between them and the planet, the blockade having departed. A sparkle of a devious idea glinted in her eyes. "I think it's high time we go do a little digging ourselves. Find out what dear Raven left behind for us," she said mischievously.

Emerald glowered. "I don't trust them as far as I can throw them. But we can try to rally some backup. Where's that monstrosity of a BB-unit? He should be able to get a hold of Kain." As if on cue, BB-666 rolled into the cockpit with a resounding blatt. "Yeah, you," she said gruffly. "Get a hold of that creep that dropped you off here and let him know it's time to hold up his end of the bargain."

A comm arrives for Kalen Lorell, heavily encrypted and rerouted multiple times.

The blonde shrugged. "Suit yourself." Tapping in a quick message to Kalen, she rerouted it through several channels and encryptions such that it would never be traced back to them. "What's your plan? We can't tackle that many ships head-on," she pointed out.

The fact that Sapphire was still halfway wanting something to happen, even if she wasn't going to push for it, told Emerald that the other woman did not fully understand what she had been getting at. But they were both fairly hotheaded, even as calculated as Sapphire could tend to be, and Emerald also couldn't fault her for wanting something shiny--even if it was a man. And even if that man was Kalen. "What are friends for," she said dryly. It wasn't a question, and the silence hung awkwardly between them for a moment before the proximity alarm sounded. Pushing past her friend, Emerald moved to the cockpit of the Glory. "Huh. Looks like they're monitoring all incoming and outgoing traffic. That, uh, doesn't look good for us," she said wryly. Just then, a comm from Ruby pinged on their communications console, and the holonet broadcast called for by the Naptime Protocol showed up. Glancing forlornly at Sapphire, she repeated, "That really doesn't look good for us."

Emerald's jaw tightened as she wheeled on her friend, and she snatched the jacket out of Sapphire's hands. "This has nothing to do with Tarv. This is the way we've always worked, and it won't ever be different. No matter what he wants to tell himself." Coiled like a serpent waiting to strike, she glared at Sapphire wordlessly, the two women locked in a predatory standstill. Painfully, the space of seconds ticked by, and Emerald could hear the blood pounding in her head. With guarded tone, finally, she spoke once more. "He abandoned me. Kalen. He was my friend and my mentor while I was in school, and one day out of the blue he just picked up and disappeared. Left me with some story about his family and how he had to get away from me to keep me safe. It was all bantha poodoo." The tension melted slightly from her shoulders and she let the jacket dangle from her hands. "Look, I mean what I said, he's good at what he does. If he wasn't, I would never have agreed to hire him. But he isn't trustworthy, not at all. Maybe I expected a little more from you. I didn't realize you were still the kind of girl who could be taken in by a lot of smooth talk and a pair of green eyes. Shassa, Sapphire, you should know better. At least I'm aware that there's nothing significant between me and Tarvil. You still sound like a wide-eyed schoolgirl who's waiting to be swept off her feet. Newsflash: it's never going to happen. And if it does, your wallet will be significantly lighter when he leaves. And he will." Behind the judgment in her eyes, Emerald was unable to hold back the flicker of pain.

"Yeah, I know about the twins," Emerald said dispassionately, swinging her legs to the side in a neat arc that brought her one hundred and eighty degrees around until she was vertical once more. "You talk like you know him. That's the problem with you, Sapph. If there's anything I know about him, it's that no one knows anything about him. Take everything you think you know and shove it. He's good at his job, he's smart, he's fast, he's lucky. But he doesn't have feelings, and he's not your friend." Her words were as cold as if they were frozen permanently in carbonite. Suddenly uncomfortable under her friend's scrutiny, she sprang to her feet and moved as if to stalk off toward the cockpit. "He's not mine either," she finished abruptly.

Lying on her back on the lounge's cushiest sofa, her feet propped up against the adjacent wall and her blonde hair cascading over the edge of the seat, Emerald glanced up at Sapphire dispassionately, her face an unreadable mask. The hard set of her quizzical eyebrows and a sarcastic toss of her namesake eyes seemed to insinuate, however, that her mood had not changed much since departing Nar Shaddaa. "I don't need to know anything, that much is obvious," she retorted sharply, "but if you finally feel like explaining to me all the things you've been hiding, maybe we can get back to work." Her glower did not shift, neither did she change her posture to regard her friend's entrance. Tarvil's jacket lay on the floor across the room, crumpled like it had been thrown with some force against the wall before sliding to its final resting place.

When she arrived back at the apartment, dressed in the same clothes that she had been wearing the day before (with the addition of Tarvil's jacket), Emerald seemed in no fit mood to talk. Irritably, she pushed past Ruby, uncharacteristically ignoring the offer of fresh caf, and sealed herself in her room. The next several minutes were fraught with a variety of sounds which the others would have varied success in placing: the hiss of the refresher, a series of bangs and slams, what might have been a blaster shot, and an irascible scream that sounded oddly muffled for some reason. Finally, she emerged, fresh as a newly hatched Porg, her duffel slung over her shoulder and her blaster on her hip, hair perfectly in place, green eyes flashing. Without a second glance at her friends, she pushed past them towards the door of the apartment. "Yes, I'm fine. No, I don't want to talk," she said preemptively. "If we're going, let's go." The faint scent of burnt ozone lingered behind her as she headed into the open air, headed for the hangar where they had stashed the Glory.