A Bad Day for Gor

From his position inside the air duct, Gor could hear footsteps – heavy, confident clomping. His sallow Sullustan skin was clammier than usual, and he found himself having to constantly wipe down the handle of his blaster to keep a firm grip on it. Their life-form scans would pick him up, no doubt, but what this position lacked in relative obscurity, it gave him high ground and a decent vantage point. He wasn’t sure how many Jerry had gotten to before they breached the blast doors of the cargo bay. He was fairly confident he could take out two from this spot if his aim was true, but there had been at least six approaching his ship…

His ship. It still sounded strange – here he was, a journeyman mechanic , less than two years off the planet, and now Tankerd was referring to him as “Captain Gor.” Not bad for an orphan of Sullust, the kind of murky-eyed vermin everyone expected to wander into the tunnels and disappear into oblivion. Still, Captain? Goodspeed and his Wookiee were either in a terrible hurry, or they had an unshakeable belief in the power of luck. Heck, the way Goodspeed put the keycard in his hands and smiled at him convinced Gor he really was the right man for the job.

Outside, he heard the footsteps stop, and through the slats of the grate, watched the handle of the door jiggle. Gor wasn’t sure he should’ve locked it – it gave away his position, after all, but it did give him a couple of seconds’ worth of an advantage. He steadied his hand, estimated the position of their heads, and took aim.

Tankerd hadn’t liked it, of course, but Goodspeed had found him first. And it was about time Gor got to take the lead on a job, about time he got to be in charge of something, to have a say in what they did. The way Tankerd saw it, his bladder cheated him out of the job.

“Gin,” he sneered while inspecting his quarters that first time. “Alderanian drink. Goes right through you. I had to get up to piss twelve times that night.”

After determining which quarters were the Captain’s, Gor had let Tankerd have his pick of the rest. It had been hard to figure out which ones were the Captain’s quarters, though, because it wasn’t nearly the size of the room Tankerd got – that room had belonged to someone named Temiel. Goodspeed’s former quarters were much smaller, and unlike Temiel’s, didn’t even have their own private john.

Of course, it was his bladder that had saved Tankerd this time, and may have doomed Jerry and Gor. Just as they finished loading their first cargo on board at Dantooine – a healthy shipment of gold – Temiel excused himself to the docking bay’s bathroom. It would be the last time Gor saw him, as the ship with the Twi’lek and his goons arrived shortly after, blasting his ship – His ship! – and sending he and Jerry scrambling. They had managed to get the cargo bay closed, and Jerry told Gor to hide. It was his job, after all, to protect his Captain.

Looking back on it, Gor became overwhelmed by the gesture. He promised himself if he and Jerry somehow survived this, the Rodian muscle would be his second in command, not Tankerd, big room be damned.

To Gor’s surprise, a red laser shot through the door and sliced off the handle. It produced an unearthly hum, a consistent, monotonous tone that was an anathema to Gor’s sensitive Sullustan hearing. Attached to nothing, the door swung open, revealing the Twi’lek holding the laser on… some sort of hilt, like a sword, it appeared, and flanked by a pale, near-Human looking goon with a blaster rifle and the big one, a human of almost six and a half feet brandishing a vibro-blade.
Gor wasted no time. His first shot hit the near-human square at the nape of the neck, knocking him back into the hallway, but his second shot was deflected by the Twi’lek’s laser sword. The Twi’lek looked up at Gor through the slats of the duct, smiling maliciously, and then began to approach him, slowly.

The way Gor saw it, intimidation tactic or no, he wasn’t going to waste this Twi’lek’s deliberate casualness trembling. He fired again, only to have the blast deflected once more. The second shot, however, found its target, sort of. The blast landed hard on the hilt of the Twi’lek’s laser sword, and to Gor’s amazement, shattered it, disrupting the laser and the infernal hum.

Any celebration would be short-lived however, as the Twi’lek’s shock gave way to a narrowed, seething glare. In a fluid motion, the Twi’lek waved his arm across his body, and somehow ripped the grate from the edge of the wall, sending it flying, bent and broken, to the other side of the room. Gor fumbled with the trigger of his blaster, his hands oozing moisture as the Twi’lek’s other hand gestured broadly toward him and Gor found himself propelled from the duct and towards the large man with the vibro-blade. Gor’s head met the man’s elbow, sending shock waves of pain throughout his cranium and disrupting what coherent thought Gor might have been forming towards the goal of escape. Still stunned, he felt himself lifted by the back of his jacket, and when his eyes opened, blurry from the blow and the brightness of the room, he made out the shape of the Twi’lek’s head, framed by his two tentacles.

“Goodspeed… and the Wookiee. Where are they?” the Twi’lek purred. His cadence was low, and although he spoke softly, he did not mumble.

“Nobba dooda dey oona das bangua,” Gor sputtered through the blood-soaked corners of his mouth. “Ib dee doona das Capttayn dey bangua.”

“This ship appears to be going through name changes and captains at an alarming rate. Regardless, this remains Goodspeed’s ship, no?”

“Far Zarnar.”

“I’m unfamiliar with the term.”

“Das bangua goondo dey Far Zarnar. Eebo Ithor.”

“Well, that narrows it down, given Goodspeed’s crew," the Twi'lek muttered, his tone reeking of sarcasm. "We have established that you are the captain, and that Zarnar the Ithorian owns the ship. This still does not answer my question. Where is Goodspeed, and his flea-ridden companion?”

“Nobba dooda dey…”

“This will not do. Set him down.”

Gor felt the grip on his jacket released. He came down hard on his left ankle, and crumpled to the floor, rolling in pain. As he grasped the injured tendon and rolled onto his back, an object slammed into his shoulder with a sickening squish. Gor groaned half-knowingly as he looked down on the severed head of Jerry, his once vibrant green epidermis now a sickly greenish white, the fine serrations along the edges of his neck a perfect compliment to the large man’s vibrating machete, which glistened as the man set his enormous rubber-soled boot down on Gor’s chest.

“Let’s try this again,” the Twi’lek cooed, his fanged mouth inches from Gor’s eye, “and we’ll see if we can come up with an answer that allows you to keep your life. We know that Goodspeed and the Wookiee are not here, Capttayn. I want to know where they are, and where they are headed. And you’re going to tell me, or you’ll be-headed there, too.

The pun, of course, is definitely intended.”