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Part One: In the Beginning
[[Warning: this isn’t light or pleasant. this includes slavery and the dirtier (sexual) parts of it, along with a dash of murder. Read at your own discretion.]]
Kynane carefully handles the holocron Simra had procured for her from some unknown location. It was an oddly built device, shaped like a three dimensonal rhombus instead of the pyramids and cubes Kynane knew were more common. The holocron sat in her hands, dark and silent, ready to be imprinted and bound to her. She spared a moment to wonder if she should actually fill the holocron with herself and her memories, before remembering the holocron wasn’t really for her. It was for her sisters, and her loved ones who would undoubtedly outlive her.
“Are you ready Kynane?”
Kynane focused her Sight on Simra, seeing how anxious the Shadow was. She nodded.
“Then let’s begin.”
“Start at the beginning.”
Kynane is small, young.
She is back on Nar Shaddaa. She is back in the pleasure slaves’ quarters.
“I am Kynane Akeldama. I am a Miraluka who cannot use the Force, despite it providing me with sight. I do not know whether or not my parents sold me into slavery. The paperwork was inconclusive when I returned for it many years later, and my parents were not listed.
But regardless, I was a valued commodity. Few Miraluka are ever pressed into slavery, and my rarity guaranteed I was to be specially trained in order to fetch an even higher price than my uniqueness alone would bring.”
Holorecordings flash through her mind, memories long buried flaring to life under the holocron’s unfeeling touch.
Images of her education: learning how to act, to flirt, to please, to pleasure; learning how to judge a male or female to determine their baser nature; learning how to survive, how to fight without throwing a punch, how to use your body to further your own aims.
Images of fellow slaves: Twi’lek dancing girls laughingly teaching her how to dance, clumsy child steps guided into practiced grace and sensuality; a Togruta woman being beaten to death; a young Mirialan boy teaching her how to be seen yet unseen; a dancing boy found dead in the morning after his debut; the older males and females carefully teaching their tricks and routines, and how to use them to garner even a tiny bit power.
Images of her masters: a kind former slave, carefully teaching and preparing her for her debut, while never speaking of what would happen; a harsh, drunk man, an Imperial kicked from their army, who took out his anger on any slaves unfortunate enough to be within reach and knew how to hide it; the neutral, passive bouncers and guards, who neither harms nor cared; the clients who bought her fellows, their cruelties and pitiful kindnesses.
Kynane decides reliving her childhood is an unpleasant experience and is something that she should never have done. She continues in spite of it.
“I lived a life that was oddly…sheltered. I knew I was a slave, and I knew what the others did. But somehow, I never understood what it meant when the older females and males never congratulated me for growing older; they only grew sadder with each year. Maybe it was willful denial. Maybe it was something purposefully done to me. But that naivety died when it came time for my debut.”
A slave educated in the arts of pleasure was worth far more than one who was not. And as a rare species educated in pleasure, her virginity would fetch a truly handsome price. She was twelve when her master decided that it was time to cash in on that promised value.
“I was pampered, washed, dressed in fine silks, and escorted into a lavish bedroom without a word to let me know I was about to have my debut. A man walked in, one who I had never seen before. His clothes told me he must be a client, but I didn’t understand. There was nobody in there but me, so why was he here?
He then informed me he had paid handsomely to be the first, and how he had always found Miraluka to be exotic, but close enough to human to be desirable. That’s when it clicked. This was my debut.”
The horror of that realization still was as bone-chilling now as it was then. Kynane shoved the fear and hatred back down into the dark, where the rest of her true self always hid.
“I was frozen in place, watching helplessly as the client came closer. I could see into him, and I saw a wretched pit of filth; something so vile it paralyzed me to my core. But once he was close enough to touch my cheek, I remembered the dancing boy I found dead in the morning. And I knew I couldn’t allow this cesspit of a being to touch me.”
The image of the man’s confusion when she attacked was again as fresh as it was that very night.
“I got lucky. In the fight, I managed to stun him with a blow to the head with one of the glasses set out before he could overpower me. I then stuck the shattered glass into his throat, and muffled his cries so no one would come running.”
The absolute fear and hatred she felt for that unnamed man had never faded. Neither had the sensation of his hot blood coating her fingers, nor the memory of feeling him die beneath her hands.
“I painted the inside of my legs with bits of his blood, locked the door as I left, and scampered back to the quarters. It was as expected, so no one went to check on him, thinking he had exhausted himself into sleep. Once everyone had fallen asleep, I used all I knew to escape the compound.
It was the closest, most harrowing thing I’ve ever done. But I succeded.”
The feeling of triumph and freedom flashed by.
“I smuggled myself off Nar Shaddaa after that. Of course, only my luck would have me stowing away on a ship heading straight into a warzone. But it was worth it.
I met Ta there.”
Part Two: Interregnum
[[Warning: There is murder, war, child soldiers, racism, attempted murder, poisoning, and other unfriendly things in this installment.]]
Kynane watched the spinning, glowing holocron as its dissembled pieces danced through the air. It shined with a soft violet light; purple was her favorite color. She wondered if that was significant.
“We have now covered the beginning. Begin the next part.”
Kynane is small again, but not as small and not as young.
She is back on the ship she smuggled herself onto.
“When I had just left Nar Shaddaa, I knew very little about the galaxy at large due to the fact it would’ve been extraneous information to teach a pleasure slave; not to mention it could’ve sparked the desire to rebel or run away a lot sooner. On top of my general ignorance of the greater galaxy, I knew even less about the illicit transportation business.
If I had known more I would’ve picked a different ship, one bound to a world in the Republic that hadn’t seen much damage by the war. As it turned out, the smugglers were heading into the contested regions of the galaxies, where the planets are in a near-constant state of civil war.”
The holocron tugs at the memories of the hunger and thirst she felt, hiding in the dark and too afraid to leave her safe spot. She stayed hidden as long as she could, before thirst drove her out of hiding. Sneaking, walking silently and with a trembling heart, she ferreted away a canteen of water and some of the food bars she had overheard the smugglers complaining about and retreated back into her hide-away. Kynane repeated the cycle twice before the ship shook under atmospheric re-entry, and then started shaking from anti-air cannons.
She had been so frightened, and had wanted to cry as the smugglers screamed how the ship wouldn’t hold and they were all going to die. But she didn’t let out a sound, still fearful of being caught.
Then, everything went black.
When she came to, her head ached like it never had before, dried blood flaking off as Kynane gently felt her scalp for wounds. She froze as she heard the unmistakable sounds of a blaster rifle being primed.
“Don’t move. Come out, with your hands behind your head.”
She gulped, but complied. She had been discovered and now needed to see what could be done with her situation. As she walked out from behind the metal debris that was left of her hide-away, Kynane was surprised to find a Mirialan girl not much older than her.
“…You’re not a smuggler are you.”
It wasn’t a question, but Kynane nodded anyways. The girl sighed in exasperation.
“My superior officer isn’t going to be happy, but I’m taking you in. You’re obviously a civilian and not one of these idiots. Come on, we’ve got a ways to walk.”
Seeing no other choice would keep her alive, Kynane complied with the Mirialan. Then she decided, an hour into the forced march, that the girl hadn’t been exaggerating.
“So what’s your name? Why are you acting like a soldier? Why was the ship shot down?”
The girl sighed again as she stared intently at her back, but apparently she was willing to talk.
“The ship was shot down because they weren’t smuggling for us. I’m not acting like a soldier, I am a soldier and I’ve always been one. And I don’t have a name; my identification code is 00234-ISSP-TAS.”
Kynane couldn’t help but turn her head to face the Mirialan in shock.
“Why don’t you have a name? That’s the one thing everyone should have; even slaves have one.”
The girl tightened her grip on the rifle, her face transforming into something as cold and dead as the oldest, most ground-down slaves Kynane had ever seen.
“I am not a person. Now quit talking, we’re getting close.”
Ta’s words hurt her heart as if she had just heard her speak them again.
Kynane shuddered, remembering again how her beloved friend and sister had once been. Ta had not lied when she said she had always been a soldier. The records they later recovered showed that after Ta had been given to the program, she had never been anything but a soldier or soldier-in-training.
Holorecordings had shown them what Ta had eventually forgotten, buried under years of pain, training, and fighting.
The superior officer the girl had spoken off turned out to be an Imperial.
He had not been happy with the girl or her existence, not at all. But he eventually quit screaming and calmed down enough to declare that Kynane could either work as a servant-slave, train to be an assistant, join their military program, or die where she stood. The girl hadn’t looked pleased with him, but she remained professional and said nothing at all.
Kynane chose to train as an assistant, hoping it would provide the highest chance of surviving and surviving unmolested.
It turned out to be the correct choice.
She aided the mechanics on even days, handing them tools, drinks, and food, while casually asking questions, endearing herself beyond their prejudice and learning what they would teach. She scuttled around for the medics on odd days, fetching random odds and ends for whatever soldier had landed on the operating table, watched them as she sought a way to ingratiate herself to them (lots of hot coffee as it turned out,) then asking questions about what they were doing here. And occasionally, she got pulled to do some random errands for someone who needed an extra pair of hands right now and learned how to look for the signs of stimulant overuse.
She learned, grew, and slowly, steadily used the knowledge taught to her in her childhood to make them like her, see her as too valuable to throw away. And as the years crawled by, her machinations paid off; even the superior officer who had seemed more than willing to kill her where she stood had grown tolerant before he was killed in the field. But the Mirialan girl was always on her mind, and never far from sight. “I am not a person.” Those words always rang in her ears, and kept Kynane from forgetting just what kind of people surrounded her.
They did not speak to each other often, perhaps ten times over the two years Kynane had survived in the Wampa den. Most of those times where when the girl got injured enough to require medical care, which did not occur as often Kynane suspected it should. And those times were brief, with Kynane providing more than ninety-five percent of the conversation, but she made the effort to speak to her when she had the chance.
Then everything changed when the base was bombed.
Her two-year routine had been shattered, and so too had her femurs under falling rubble.
Kynane can remember how she had sobbed from the pain, greater than anything she had felt before. How she cried out for someone to help her, anyone at all. Eventually, in her utter desperation, she screamed out the girl’s identification code, hoping beyond hope that the unnaturally strong Mirialan would hear and find her. But what came out was slurred beyond recognition, her Basic sliding away from her like sand from her hands.
“TAAA! TTTTTTAAAAAA!”
On the edge of unconsciousness, she saw the rubble covering her begin to shake, and calling up the last bit of stubborn will she had that had driven her off Nar Shaddaa, she called out again.
“Tttaaaa…?”
She fell unconscious even as the rubble was flung aside, the blurry, inconsistent vision of something green accompanying her into the dark.
Kynane drifted in and out of waking several times before she managed to claw herself back to the land of the living. As her Force Sight cleared, Kynane slurred tiredly, “ttttaaa.”
The greenish blob jerked at her call, a fuzzy tendril reaching out to slide through her red hair.
“Rest Kynane. I will summon Doctor Rarke.”
But she was already falling back asleep with a soft, sleepy “…ttttaaaaa.”
When Kynane properly came out of her fugue her legs did not hurt, but the Mirialan girl was not there as her fuzzy memories insisted she would be. Neither were any of her medic acquaintances, which was odd, but there was a private was standing beside her bedside. She didn’t recognize him on sight, and didn’t know why he would be by her bedside, but she saw his hand on a syringe; and that syringe was inserted into her vein.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Kynane followed her instincts and screamed.
The privet started cursing loudly, “Shut up, you alien bitch-!”when a green wall burst through the door and tackled him to the floor with a hard thud. “Kynane! What is going on?!”She knew that voice, no matter how seldom she had heard it. “Ta, he injected something into me and I don’t what andIneedamedicnow- Oh stars.” Agony ripped through Kynane like glass shards shredding their way through a Killick silk veil, and she involuntarily started sobbing with the pain. Her insides felt like they were being liquefied from the inside out, and Kynane screamed again as the pain surged.
Mercifully, she blacked out immediately after that.
“I wouldn’t wake until long after I was healed and the private had been court martialed. Doctor Rarke would tell me after I woke up that the private had injected highly corrupted Kolto into me, for the high crime of being an alien who wasn’t in Ta’s program.
Commander Rios, Commander Soreso’s replacement, court-martialed him immediately, though it had to wait until the medics made sure the damage Ta had done to him wouldn’t kill him in the middle of the proceedings. Rios apparently was outrageously incensed by the end of it; the murder attempt, the fact he had purposefully corrupted precious Kolto to kill me, and that he was willing to murder someone under Rios’ command for his own reasons, had Rios executing him right in front of Ta, with a blaster bolt to the brain.
I had to clean Ta’s face of his blood when she came to visit and inform me that Rios had permanently relieved him of duty.”
Kynane smiled at the dissembled holocron, the purple glow washing over her with a phantom chill touch.
“It’s funny how that incident, Private Korolla, shaped the rest of my life. After I healed up, I went to Doctor Rarke and asked to be formally placed under him as an unofficial apprentice. I never wanted to be so helpless ever again. I wanted to be able to take care of myself, to make sure if something like this ever happened again I wouldn’t be left to die screaming in pain because I didn’t know what to do.
Rarke accepted, and for the remaining two years after that, he taught me everything about battlefield medicine, surgery, and Kolto he knew. The knowledge he passed on would go on to form the majority of my medical knowledge and groom me for what would become my specialty. Without Rarke, I never would have become a Sawbones, and I probably would have died a while ago along with Ta, Alke, and Simra.
During those two years, Ta and I grew very close, laying the foundation of the fondness and love we share for each other now. She asked me in secret one night to call her Ta from then on, for that’s what I had called out when I had needed her. I agreed but only if she would allow me to give her a proper name.
It took all my skills and persistence over the next month to convince her, but she eventually said yes. In the dark of that very night, I asked her if she would accept the name Ta-Usret; it was a good name, a strong one, and one that also honored her desire to be called Ta if she wished to continue with it.
She nearly crushed my spine with her hug.
A few months after that, the base was bombed again. But this time, only Ta and I crawled out of the rubble and survived long enough to recover from our wounds. We decided, that without the Imperials to hold us back, to leave the wretched mess of a planet, and stole away from the base to find a place to hide.”
Kynane’s smile stretched into a broad grin.
“That’s when we met Alke.”
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