Little Samla Tragoni absently chewed on a corner of her lower lip as she piloted the freighter through the heavy orbital traffic. It wasn’t because she had to concentrate on flying. Samla always knew exactly where she was as well as everything around her. Her parents had noticed it early and deliberately fostered it. No, what had her anxiously chewing on her lip was her parents and their worries about money. Recently it always can down to money. Money for docking fees. Money for fuel. Money to buy cargoes and the paltry credits they got for selling those cargoes. They were rapidly running toward the end of their savings and Pops was talking about finding new types of cargo. Samla had been born on a space station. She’d spent all fifteen years of her life in one kind of ship or another and had been in hundreds of spaceports, so she knew exactly what her father was talking about when he made hints and talked round about like that. Moms did, too, and she didn’t like it. Samla just wished that her parents would decide on it, one way or the other, and stop frowning all the time. "Sammy, you have that course plotted yet?" Her father’s voice issued from the lounge area, where he and his wife were stowing that last of the small cargo that they’d managed to secure this trip. "Yes, Pops," Samla hollered over her shoulder. "And I shaved five hours from your estimate. It’ll save us nearly 8% on fuel, too." The young pilot warned her parents of the jump to light speed and then made the transition from sublight engines to the hyperdrive. Lylah Tragoni came forward and planted herself in the copilot’s chair while her daughter went back to help with the record keeping. As soon as the girl was alone with her father, she planted her hands on her hips and stared at him where he crouched near their labor droid. Nidaine felt his daughter’s hot gaze upon him, but kept his head down to see if she wouldn’t go away and tend to her duties. He should have known better. "What is it, Sammy?" he asked, looking up at her resignedly. "Where did you stash it?" "What are you talking about, honey?" he pasted bemused smile across his face, but she wasn’t fooled. Samla had cleaned out a pair of Jedi at sabacc when she was only six and she knew a bluff when she saw one. "The container that creepy spice-head handed you. You know, back in the port when moms was in the ‘fresher?" Samla spoke slowly, as she would to a small child. His shoulders slumped and Nidaine nodded. "You were always too observant for my peace of mind, scamp. I hid it in the utility closet." Shoulders dropping in disappointment, Samla shook her head and rolled her eyes. She whipped the black watch cap off her head, revealing a short crop of flaming red hair, and gave her father a sound whack across the back of the head. "Pops, moms is going to find it within the next watch cycle when she pulls out the cleaning gear, and any half-trained customs sniffer would have it in ten minutes flat. You’re either in a hurry to start a fight with moms, or get thrown in jail. And I honestly think that you would prefer jail." Nidaine grimaced, but nodded, knowing that his daughter was correct. He just hadn’t been able to think of anything else to do. The girl thrust a datapad at him, and he meekly took it. There were just some things you didn’t argue with a Tragoni female about. "You do the records. I’ll go find a better spot for it." Samla, unlike her father, hadn’t always needed to be near the ship for the supervising of loading or unloading cargoes, so she’d had the opportunity to observe more than a few customs searches and had listened to a great many stories by the sleek and handsome as well as the scruffy and disreputable. There weren’t many tricks to hiding illicit packages that she didn’t yet know. Samla fished the small, sealed box out of the back of the closet, swearing as only a born and bred Corellian could. Her father knew bargaining, and he knew record keeping, and he could find a cargo where there was none to be had, but he didn’t know a blasted, sith-loving thing about being sneaky. She and moms had decided that it was some recessive gene from a non-Corellian somewhere in his lineage. The girl was quite amazed that he had managed to get the package onboard without her mother finding out. With proper disregard for her own safety, Samla headed for the airlock and stepped inside without even a suit for protection should a seal fail. She buried the container at the bottom of a case of spent power packs, then left the airlock. She didn’t know what was in the box, and she didn’t particularly want to know, but should it become necessary, she could open the outer hatch and let the escaping atmosphere pull the whole container out into the endless deep. Any security patrol could tax its sensors to the max and still never detect something that small. You couldn’t be too careful about things like that. ~~~~~~~ Moms didn’t find it, Samla thought irritably, but pops twitched enough during the run to make her suspicious. It had, in fact, been enough to make her give him a medical. The teen was half surprised that her father hadn’t blurted out his secret to his wife as soon as she had him on the med bunk. But he’d held fast and she now had a grudging respect for her father’s growing backbone when it came to his wife. Samla was still firmly convinced that it had been her mother who had proposed. Now, the girl was leaning negligently against a landing gear watching their droid unload the cargo. Her mother was checking the items off on her datapad as the droid trundled past and her father was busily bargaining up the price with the buyer. Samla was bored stiff and wondering how in the galaxy her father was going to manage to get rid of that package he’d picked up. It was then and there that she decided that she’d just have to go with him to make sure he didn’t screw it up. Poor Nidaine had all the charm and polish expected of a well bred Corellian and none of the duplicity or risk-taking skills. Not that he didn’t take risks, but he didn’t have the skill to back it up or pull it off. With payment made and Lylah off to shop for supplies, Nidaine waited only until his wife had disappeared around a corner to rush to his daughter and ask her where she had hidden their clandestine cargo. Samla chuckled low in her throat and waved for him to wait. Shortly she was back, package in hand and he practically snatched it away. Sammy suffered the pains of mortifying embarrassment as her father tried to find someplace in his clothing to conceal the package. Small though it might have been, it wasn’t small enough to fit in a pocket. "Pops, maybe you’d better just let me take it to the buyer," she suggested as he was jamming it into a vest pocket. There was a decidedly loud ripping sound before he responded. "Oh no, Sammy. That’s no place for someone like you. Besides, I need you to stay here and keep an eye on the ship and Gonk." "Dad!" The exasperated exhalation was the supreme expression of frustration Samla could give without getting in trouble from her mother. "Gonk isn’t going nowhere, and neither is the ‘Galactic Strider’. You’re gonna need my help again, I just know it." "Well, maybe, but you have to promise me you’ll stay behind me and let me do the talking." Samla didn’t answer. She strode up the entry ramp and returned a minute later with a burnt out droid actuator, a box of spare power couplers, and a package of nutri-wafers. "Give me the package, Pops." When he handed it over, Sammy added it to the rest of her stuff and all of a sudden she was a girl holding a bunch of packages for her father, rather than a man and a child with an illegal cargo to deliver. "Lead the way, Pops." "You are entirely too clever for your own good, scamp." "Yeah, that’s what moms says." She shrugged nonchalantly. "Then she buys me stuff." Samla had to step quickly to keep up with her father’s much long strides as he wove his way through the marketplace crowds, looking for a specific stall. Once again she promised herself that she would be at least 5'10" before she stopped growing. Her growth spurt was years late and Sammy was barely bigger than she had been at age nine. Both her parents and their parents were all at least 5'6" and Samla hated being smaller than everyone else. Toydarians didn’t count, she figured, because they had wings and could fly taller than she was. With one arm wrapped around her camouflage, and the other hand gripping tight to her father’s belt, Samla rode his wake through the packed crowd prayed that they finished this business and were back at the ship before her mother completed her shopping. When her father cut sharply to the left, Sammy almost lost her grip on him, but she was small and wasn’t knocked around too much before they were out of the crowd entirely. Standing between two vendors’ stalls, they waited only a moment before a Twi’lek stepped into the temporary alleyway right behind them. "You have it?" he rasped. Samla cringed back behind her father, playing the role of small child to the hilt. "Yes. Do you have the payment?" "Not with me. I will have it delivered to your vessel when we have verified the contents of the package." Samla barely contained a snort of derision. Who did this guy think they were? Alderaanians? Her father responded as his instincts kicked in. "Never mind. I’ll find another buyer." He began to push past the Twi’lek to move back into the press of beings just beyond. "Wait, maybe I have enough with me to cover the purchase." An orange-ish hand extended toward my father. "Might I see the merchandise?" Samla stepped forward and handed her father the package, and then stepped sideways out of the way, so that she could see everything that was going on. She didn’t say anything in an effort to remain unobtrusive. The Twi’lek opened the box and closely examined the contents. With a satisfied sounding hum, he turned and stepped quickly toward the front of the vendors’ stalls and the crowd, only to trip over a small leg extended right behind his ankle. "Oops," was all Samla had to say for herself as her father jumped forward. "You know, Pops, you weren’t half bad back there. You might have a little pirate in you after all." "I wasn’t always a pilot, Sammy. Besides, I’ve been married to your mother for a long time. I’d hate to think I haven’t learned anything from her." Nidaine reached down and took the box of couplers from her. "Between the two of us, we did just fine. We make a good team, scamp." They walked in silence for a while before he spoke again. "You weren’t planning on telling your mother about any of this, were you?" Nidaine asked his daughter as they walked calmly out of the marketplace crowds and headed toward the spaceport. "I suppose for the price of a pilot’s or ship master’s license I could be persuaded to remain silent." "You still need another hundred hours behind the yoke for your pilot’s," her father reminded her. "You can fudge it. No one would know but me." "You’re too young." "Not with both parents’ signatures." "You’re mother-" "I could walk a little slower. She should be back any minute now." "Are you sure, you’re not part Hutt?" |
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| Beginnings By Lilith Demodae |
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