Wishes and Commands, A Star Wars Story

            “I said, let go!” Cora growled, as she attempted to wrest her arm from the human that looked more like the bastard son of a hut and wookie than his own race. When she couldn’t, she tried to pull her other arm from the gammorian. Unsuccessful there as well, she sighed. Where ever they were going, she was going, too.

            Quickly, she searched her mind for who could have sent these goons after her. Her last smuggling job with her brother Rikard had been a success. Enough spice to choke a herd of Batha was now on the outer rim of Naboo. Her part of the payment was safely back on Blackstar Blue, a little vessel they had scraped the payment together for a few jobs back. She had been drinking away a handful of credits in a seedy little dive when these goons burst in, grabbed her, and dragged her out of the bar. No one tried to do anything to help. This was the type of place that everyone was just happy that it wasn’t them going away for a beating, or worse.

            She didn’t owe money, she hadn’t pissed anyone off, and now she was being taken into the back of some ally in a very lower level of Coruscant. The moment the door opened, her nose burned with the stink of deathsticks, decades of grime, unwashed bodies and shit. Not figurative shit, this was actual shit. This was bad.

            At first, she saw nothing but as her eyes cleared of tears and adjusted to the dim lighting, her heart sank. Rikard was in chains, his back covered in lashes. Again, she struggled against her captors, but the result was the same. A scattering of sentients was in the room, and a torture droid, eyeing her with sentience and malice. A humanoid smoking a deathstick, dressed in much better clothes than the others eyed her with a far more appraising look.

            “Rikard!” Cora stomped on the foot of the hut/wookie/human. It was enough to break free. Running to her brother’s side, she tried to protect him. “What the fuck is happening here?”

            The human smiled, showing far too many teeth. “Your brother Rikard here fancies himself something of a Saabac player.” Now Cora knew it was bad. Her brother had a problem, but whatever happened, it couldn’t have warranted this.

            She braced herself, picturing the money she had stashed on her ship. “How much does he owe?”

            “Cora, “ It was Rikard. His voice was weak, coarse.

            Cora sighed. “Don’t talk, Rikard.”

            “No, I fucked up,” tears started choking him. The sound of it made her turn. They had been though some shit in their lives, but she had only heard him cry once, more than a decade ago when their parents died. “It’s all gone, all gone.”

            “Fuck, did you gamble my share, too?”

            “And the ship,” answered the toothy suit.

            The Corelian girl turned, facing him. Her eyes were wild. “You can’t! That’s mine, too!”

            “Oh, he did, girl. He lied about how much he had, but he lost. He now owes more money to the Pykes than your plain little ship, or the change you had on board. We already have that garbage scow in our custody. Rikard was nice enough to give us the security codes. However, he owes more than he will ever pay back in his lifetime, so we need another source of payment.” He stepped forward, into Cora. Instinctively, she stepped back only to he stopped by her brother’s suspended body. The toothy suit reached forward, leering, his hand stopping just shy of her breast. “Now, you can pay it back one way…” he violated her with his gaze before meeting her horrified stare, “or you can pay it off with other odd jobs for the Pykes. You’ve smuggled spice before.”

            “Smuggling sounds better.” Though she meant to speak with her normal confidence, her voice did not break a whisper. “But how the hell am I supposed to do that without a ship?”

            “You’ll figure out something. After all, the alternative exists.”

            Cora tried unsuccessfully to suppress the shivers racing across her spine. Trying to cover her horror, she straitened her back, tugged down on her vest, and demanded, “Well, cut Rikard down. He’s my partner.”

            “Not anymore. You’re on your own, or with who we tell you. When I said that your brother owes more he can pay in a lifetime, I was not being dramatic. He’s ours for as long as he lives. But how long that is, or how much suffering it entails depends largely on you.”

            Deep helplessness threatened to drag the girl down into a mental sarlacc pit from which she’d never escape. Instead of allowing those tentacles to take hold, she looked the Pyke captain in the eye. “When do I start?”