Swoop engines revved and idled, repulsors thrummed at the very bottom of the Human hearing range, and the spectators whispered in a background susurrous of sound. All of it combined to give a participant the same or an even higher adrenaline boost than the race itself, and Lilith loved every second of it. This was the Corellian’s first swoop race on Coruscant and she eagerly awaited the start. On either side of her, other swoops bobbed and hovered, their riders all making last minute checks on their vehicles. Lilith didn’t bother because she didn’t even own the swoop she was on. It was far too expensive to maintain swoops on all the planets she visited, and it wasn’t practical to take up precious cargo space hauling her swoop around with her. A large splash of grey and scarlet occupied the stands right at the starting line. Their constant jeers and jibes could be heard even over the engine noise. Must be a local gang. she surmised. Nor were they the only one. There were other solid blocks of color in the audience and there was usually quite a gap between them. The tensions between the gangs were palpable, even to an outsider like Lilith, but she was here for a race, not a war. As a result, she was very deliberate in all her motions and didn’t talk to anyone she didn’t have to. At one end was a rider with a large sabacc card emblazoned across the back of his jacket. On her left was a surly hulk of a Human in white and gold leathers. On her right was a lean man in grey and scarlet with the word ‘War’ stitched across the back of his jacket. Both men were glaring across the black clad figure between them. Lilith gave her helmet a firm thump to settle it soundly, and worked her gloved hands over the swoop’s grips to make sure she had a proper feel for them. A stunning woman, also in white and gold, had just walked out onto the tarmac. The noise of the crowd became deafening as the raven haired beauty raised her hand up over her head. Around the smuggler engines gunned and raced against the restraint of secure brakes, swoops dipped and rose as repulsors were powered up and down in anticipation. When the hand came down more than a dozen engines blasted into full-throated roars and the swoops flung themselves forward as if alive, their riders managing some how to cling to their seats. Rocketing down the straightaway, Lilith was aimed right at the woman who had started the race and gave the repulsors a controlled boost just in time to hop right over her. The hand gesture the bleached blond glimpsed while blazing past was not polite, and indicated something that was physically impossible for any humanoid life form. Lilith ignored it. If she didn’t want us racing past, she shouldn’t have been standing in the middle of the track. Some people just didn’t take the consequences under consideration before going and doing something stupid. Demodae leaned low over her swoop to reduce the wind drag and waited a bit to see how the pack would sort out. Those with inferior rides were weeded out in short order and the competition dwindled down to herself, the brute in white and gold, War, the King of Cups, and a Malastarian in green in orange. The smuggler acknowledged to herself that she wasn’t the best swoop racer, she lacked the fine control with a swoop that she had with the Scorpion. But, she knew where everything around her was and she was willing to take obscene risks to get ahead. That’s what being a smuggler was all about. Lilith was a superb smuggler. The course was littered with obstacles that the racers needed to duck, jump, or dodge. The five leaders jostled each other for the best position and often took different routes to try and edge ahead of the others. Lilith took her turns as tightly as she could and cut all her ducks and dodges insanely close. M1-CK would surely have a few choice words for her when she returned to the ship, though he had no way to seeing what was happening. That droid knew her entirely too well. Lilith cut back the power to the repulsors and ducked under a propped up construction beam, finding herself hugging even tighter to her swoop when she felt something rush by over her head. A lightning fast glance confirmed her guess. It was the white and gold racer. The stinking vrelt was playing nasty and trying to brush her off. //Well, I’m here to race, but if he’s gonna spoil it . . .// ******* The smuggler dropped back a tad to draft off the orange and green racer and kept a sharp eye on that white and gold vrelt-in-Human-clothing. She watched him cut across in front of War, and only the grey and scarlet clad racer’s skill kept the steering vanes of his swoop from being fouled. Lilith’s sense of fair play was outraged. She wouldn’t have quibbled if there was something else riding on the outcome, but there wasn’t. There was no money, no property, nothing but ego riding on that race and the freighter captain didn’t consider that sufficient to endanger the lives of others. Not unless it was her ego, or at least her reputation, anyway. So she was gonna personally hand that kriffing, Jawa-brained cheater his head. The bleached blond pulled around the Malastarian she’d been drafting and began creeping up on the two leaders. She scraped the bottom of the barrel with her power source to get a little more height out of her repulsors and rose until she was hovering just over the vrelt’s right shoulder. It took a bit of waiting and some closer calls than the smuggler would normally have liked, but suddenly the opportunity she had been waiting for appeared. Lilith had kept station above and slightly behind the white and gold menace to fair play. The Malastarian had moved in to draft off of her, and with the end of the final lap coming up fast, the perfect situation appeared. The Malastarian, a smudge of green and orange at the corner of Lilith’s vision, made a move to pull around her and the bleached blond cut hard to the left, in a maneuver designed to look panicked. Her new course angled down and across the path of Mr. Vrelt. The more experienced rider of the two, Mr. Vrelt braked sharply to avoid a collision, but Lilith corrected slightly. She didn’t take his head off, that had never been her intention, but his steering vanes were instant casualties and he spun away, hitting the track with a bone jarring impact. War, the Malastarian, and Demodae crossed the line and were followed in short order by the rest of the pack. The crowd was on it’s feet, the grey and scarlet block cheering like maniacs. The white and gold section looked mad enough to kill. And Lilith, she just grinned. Isn’t racing grand? ******* Coming off the track and into a pit area, Lilith returned her borrowed swoop and walked back out to the track to look around. She’d half wanted to find War and congratulate him, but the tension hanging in the air was getting -more- pronounced, not less, now that the race was over. Something was going down, something big and the young freighter captain was beginning to worry that maybe she’d picked the wrong day to race on Coruscant. The crowds were beginning to melt away, a few of the friendlier gangs stopping to mix a bit and chat. Lilith watched, keen to see which groups mingled with which, and which kept their hands near their weapons. Such knowledge could be important to a smuggler. Ambling toward the stands, Lilith began to climb the stairs out of the track area on the way to the entrance. The various gang colors weren’t hard to spot, and she carefully wove a path through them that never brought her nearer one group than another. In this atmosphere anything could be badly, even lethally, misconstrued. Everything was winding down when the paranoia that had kept her alive since her parents’ deaths reared it’s head. Jerking around to find the source of it, Lilith’s muddy green eyes searched her surroundings and locked upon a small hand blaster that had appeared in the midst of the masses still in the stands. Every action around her slowed to a crawl as her brain analyzed what it was seeing. The smuggler’s paranoia dribbled away just as soon as it had determined that the blaster was not pointed in her direction. Once that vital fact registered, the others filtered quickly through her mind, her instincts swiftly sifting them into a clear picture of intent. The arm raising the weapon for its shot was clad in white with gold piping. It took no great genius to figure out which gang the shooter was from and who his target just might be. The race winner, War, was striding along the track toward where the rest of the gang and quite a few unaffiliated spectators were waiting, a few moving out to greet him. But unless the shooter was willing to wait and risk being spotted or losing War in the crowd of his fellows, his angle was far too low. So War wasn’t the target. A grey-green gaze, as hard as durasteel, scanned the edge of the track and again checked the angle of the blaster. There were several candidates in the target area, but only one of them was the unerring goal of War’s current trajectory. The red chess knight on the back of the woman’s jacket was mostly obscured by a long thick braid of pale golden hair, and judging by those around her, she was -short-. War had his hands extended toward her in invitation, but her gesturing finger indicated that he was to come to her. *A small girl with a blaster aimed at her!* Lilith’s subconscious superimposed the memory of her own experience over the present situation and Demodae’s body jolted into action before rational thought could reach a decision. Tall frame hurtling back down the steps through the thinning crowd, Lilith spared only fleeting glances at the blaster as it settled on its mark and steadied. It was gonna be close. Too close. But the voice of Corellia within her whispered urgently. *Damn the odds!! She needs you.* War caught sight of the bleached blond amazon barreling down on the woman and broke into a run, his expression suddenly anxious. Other members of the gang looked abruptly went on the defensive and tried to spot the danger and the non-members became confused. Time slowed even farther and the finger tightened on the trigger. Lilith leapt forward. The Corellian’s long arms wrapped around the woman’s slender form. Immediately, the smuggler ducked one shoulder and started them rolling through the air, searing heat flashing across her back. Time snapped back to its normal course and Lilith was aware of screams and outraged shouts and the snarling report of blaster fire over her head as she tucked her charge tight into her chest and hit the ground in a modified shoulder roll. Over and over they turned while the remaining non-gang crowd rushed away from the firefight. When the two women stopped moving, the natural blond was sheltered from harm by Lilith’s body and the amazon was half twisted around, her right arm extended and rock steady, her own blaster pointed right where the shooter was. But the shooter was gone. Gone, down or dead, it don’t matter now. All around her the grey and scarlet gang closed in and blocked all view of the stands. Hands lifted the two women to their feet and half a dozen large men stampeded in the direction that first shot had come from. With so many weapons already deployed, Lilith felt secure enough to slip the hide-out weapon back into her boot and shuck out of her uncomfortably warm jacket. Before Demodae could do more than finger the blaster burn that marked the otherwise smooth black leather, the woman she had saved was back in front of the smuggler, War tucking her protectively against his side. Her age was hard to guess from her face alone, but if her man’s age was anything to go by, she was nearing the dark side of forty. "I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done," War was saying. "I’m Crash," the woman smiled. "And this," she indicated War, "is Shael." No sooner had she spoken than a dozen more people introduced themselves, the last giving his name as Roble. "We’re the Horsemen and if you ever need anything, anything at all, you just let us know." |
 |
| If you have enjoyed this story please consider leaving feedback, no matter how short or long. Many thanks! Add Comment |
| Crash & Burn By Lilith Demodae |