Telsa released the controls and leaned back in the chair as the
Raven settled on the landing pad. “We’re on the ground, Captain,” she said. She loved flying, but landing was a satisfying feeling, and there was nothing quite like having a planet under your feet. She knew it was all in her head, but something about the natural gravity of a world felt more
right than the artificial gravity fields on space stations and starships. It was something she had become accustomed to after spending so many years in space, but there was almost a sense of homecoming whenever she touched down on a world.
“Thank you, XO,” Jast answered, standing. Telsa stood as well and followed him out of the cockpit and through the corridor to the
Raven’s mess hall. It was a comfortably lived-in affair, complete with a kitchenette, a pair of tables, a couch, and a full-color holoprojector. A few pieces of art adorned the walls, two-dimensional canvas paintings the crew had taken kept as trophies from an art heist on Obroa-skai. Sprawled on the couch was a giant of a man, reading from a datapad that looked tiny in his great hands.
“Boq, you ready?” Jast asked. Boqorro Nbara was the
Raven’s chief of security. His job consisted of either intimidating the bad guys or putting blaster bolts in them, depending on the circumstances. He stood at over two meters in height, possessed a broad, powerful build, and wore red, bioluminescent tattoos that looked like flames dancing against the black skin of his face. He’d been a hitman on Nar Shaddaa, working for a Hutt affiliated with the Besadii kajidic, before Jast recruited him. He was very good at his job.
He also had a penchant for romance novels, with at least a dozen stored on the datapad.
“Boq?” Jast repeated the man’s name.
“Hm?” Boqorro asked, seemingly engrossed in his reading. “Have we landed?” he asked. His voice was not exactly high, but it wasn’t a match for his physique. Telsa, expecting a deep, rumbling baritone or something similar, had been surprised when she’d first heard him talk. He was the newest addition to the crew, replacing their previous chief of security, a Nikto named Glaato. Boqorro’s predecessor had died on one of the crew’s jobs just a few months past.
They’d been doing a deal for Coronet Analytica then, the private intelligence company that provided them with their more lucrative legitimate jobs, usually independent intelligence work that would get filtered up to the Strategic Information Service. They’d almost gotten off-world when Imperial Intelligence agents engaged them in a gunfight in a narrow, urban alleyway. They killed their contact and put a red lance through Glaato’s skull.
It had been Telsa’s first gunfight. She’d been new to the crew then, just a few weeks into her service as the Raven’s pilot. The whole sequence of events was less of a coherent memory and more a string of images strung together. A Mandalorian warrior, armor dripping with acid rain shot through with the refracting neon hues of Nar Shaddaa's lower levels. Blaster bolts illuminating the dark passage in sudden flashes of red and blue. Glaato’s blank stare, eyes fixed on the crests of the towering skyrakers above.
“Telsa?” Jast asked, and the pilot blinked, coming back to her senses.
“Sorry, Captain, could you repeat that?” she asked, realizing she’d missed something.
“You and Val will stay here and keep the ship secure.”
“I’d like to come, actually,” she asserted, surprising herself with the force in her words.
“You don’t have to,” Jast said. Probingly, she thought. The cadence of the words made them a question. “I have Boq watching my six.” Boqorro, checking the energy cell on his large, heavy blaster pistol, smiled and nodded as he snapped the magazine into place.
“Of course, Captain, but I am your XO. I’d like to be part of the negotiation team,” she answered. “At least for the purpose of observing.”
Glaato’s death had hit Jast hard, she knew. The Nikto had been one of the oldest members of the Raven’s crew, signing on with Val back when the captain had first acquired the ship. They’d flown together all those years, right up until the Sith Empire had killed him in that alley. Khulbe was a friend, but only as far as friends in the underworld go; the Hutt was an extraordinarily dangerous person, and Glaato’s death had served as a reminder about the reality of putting crew in the midst of dangerous people. Jast had since preferred to limit the people he put in harm’s way to himself and Boqorro.
Jast nodded after a long moment. “Alright. You can carry the product. Swing by the armory and grab a sidearm too,” he said. “They’ll disarm us before we go in, but I prefer to remind them that we’re the sort of people you have to disarm.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jast, Boqorro, and Telsa strode down the boarding ramp and onto the landing pad. Jast walked in front, with Boqorro on his right and Telsa on his left. Telsa carried a compact blaster on her hip, and carried a hard shell black case, some thirty five centimeters across and thirty centimeters in height. Inside the case, she carried the product, the key to their pitch to Khulbe.
Jast recognized Khulbe’s emissary, a scantily clad female Twi’lek, as Nima Tarkona, one of Khulbe's favorite slave girls. He offered her his hand. “Nima, pleasure to see you again,” he greeted, and then introduced his crew. “I have some new faces on the
Raven since the last time I saw you. This is my new chief of security, Boqorro Nbara, and my executive officer, Telsa Jetstar.” Telsa smiled plaintively as Jast said her name, giving the Twi’lek a shallow nod. "We're looking forward to our meeting with Khulbe," Jast concluded.
