Zira Darkstar

***
~Beta'd by: Envy~
***
Chapter 2

Carth had spent the last moments of the Endar Spire waiting for someone he’d never met. A woman who’d already managed to stir up bad blood. She’d only spoken to him once in person and she was asking if she could trust him. Trust him!? That was a laugh. He’d spent the better part of the last two years serving the Republic. He'd served for longer, but the last two years of his service had been the hardest.

He served completely and without hesitation. His mind churned as he’d climbed aboard the life pod with her and as it blasted free of it’s hold. Her slender form was thrown against him as she hadn’t had time to get settled or strapped in. He tried to steady her but her attention was out the view.

Carth knew what was to see, and he knew he honestly didn’t want to. The ship, The Endar Spire, was no more. Another lost casualty in the bloody war. The Dark Lords’ legacy coming back at them. He absently remembered the swell of pride he’d felt when the Jedi had lit their blades against the Mandalorians.

He felt so many mixed feelings now as he wore his Republic uniform that he wasn’t sure he’d ever feel the same again. The war had cost the galaxy so much. No, not the galaxy. Me. He bitterly thought to himself.

BAM! Something slammed hard against the life pod and threw them about like rag dolls. Carth barely managed to get his hands in front of him before his face collided with the small chair designed for strapping in. The woman he shared the space with, however, was not so fortunate.

Carth was a bit dazed, but otherwise unharmed. He quickly pulled the woman into a seat and got her fastened in. Just as he was doing up the final straps of her harness, the pod shuddered again and began to super heat as it broke through to atmosphere. The wind friction was causing the pod to feel less and less like a life pod, and more and more like a layer of tin foil around a baked potato. He threw himself into the other chair, his hands rushing through the motions of pulling on his straps.

He managed to get them done up with a speed only trained hands could know, and he quickly punched in a sequence to prep the pod’s computer to react to an atmospheric landing. Coolant began to dump through the air scrubbers and pour into the cabin, which was now a comfortable one hundred twenty degrees.

Wonderful. So much better to know we’ll now avoid being baked alive long enough to make it all the way to the death at the crash site. Taris was one of the worst places Carth could think to have to land an escape pod. Much like Coruscant, Taris was a world of tall skyscrapers. It left no room to aim for a lake, field, or even soft trees. Instead he got to try to steer a brick through streams of flying speeders and ships, as well as a forest of durasteel.

He decided against using the auto-pilot subroutines built into the Pod’s AI. If it’s anything like droid intelligence, it’ll start being whiney and paranoid and tell me I should turn back around to space where it’s “safe.”

His heart was pounding in his chest as he veered the extremely sluggish lump of metal between two Corellian made freighters and plunged into the buildings of Taris. The maneuvering flaps only gave a small amount of control, so he wasn’t too surprised when the ship slammed into the side of a building.

The pod scrapped down the thick durasteel surface a ways before a small ledge kicked it away. He pinballed across a couple other solid surfaces before slamming down onto one of the lesser used walkways in Upper Taris. The pod slid for a good two hundred meters along the permacrete before it hit one of the ledges that lined the walkway and came to a jarring stop.

Carth coughed as the cabin had already begun to fill with smoke and he punched in the sequence to open the hatch. Of course, one of the dents had managed to keep the hatch from popping on it’s own and he had to shove it the rest of the way clear with his shoulder.

“Soldier, on your feet!” He commanded over his shoulder, pushing the obstinate durasteel out of his way. “I said, on your feet!” He looked back at her, rather annoyed now. He realized she was in no position to be helping herself. The wound on her head had now bled across her face and had probably given her a concussion.

The smoke was venting a bit out the hatch now, but it still seemed to prefer to sit in the cabin. He moved over and quickly undid her harness and hoisted her up. He draped one arm over his shoulders and wrapped his other around her slender waist.

Even in that awkward position, Carth couldn’t help but realize just how lithe the woman was. His mind rolled over thoughts as he drug them free of the wreck. She had been through a lot, just in the short time on board the ship. Maybe he was being to harsh on her, expecting too much.

A crowd of Tarisians had began to form around the crash site of their pod and he worked his way into it. Several of the upper crust nobles eyed the two of them questioningly. Carth weaved his way through them saying things like, “She got hit with shrapnel,” and “She didn’t get clear in time,” to appease their hungry looks.

They seemed more then willing to make room and even offered to call for help. Carth was starting to panic, he knew full well that this wouldn’t be a safe thing. He looked about and his eyes fell across a run-down apartment complex.

He told them to cancel the help for her. Rationalizing with the “Good Samaritans,” that they lived near there. He said that her wound wasn’t severe and that the doctors might be better helping anyone else who’d been injured. He wasn’t too surprised when the Tarisians dismissed him and the girl quickly enough and rushed towards the crash site.

Carth drug her through the abandoned hallway and up to a locked door that didn’t look as though it had been opened in some time. He rested the woman gently on the floor beside the door and began to work on picking the lock.

Several long minutes passed as he fumbled with the equipment, not having spent too much time learning the subtleties involved in breaking & entering. See that Carth, should have become a burglar. Then playing hero and breaking into people’s houses would be so much easier. He berated himself as he fumbled with a fourth of fifth combination of wires.

“Sithspit, piece of junk, motherfucker!” He slammed his fist into the open panel of wires and nodes. The exposed wires offered him a small numbing sensation as electricity kissed his skin and he jerked his hand back. He was about to pull his blaster and shoot the damned thing when suddenly the door hissed and opened. Whatever he’d punched, apparently he’d punched it right.

This isn’t something we’ll be talking about. He thought as he looked at her and scooped her up into a cradle.

“Good cause I didn’t want to talk about it anyway.”

He looked down at her, her eyes were still closed but she’d definitely said that. Or had she? He
finished walking into the room and looked about. The room was a quaint little apartment that consisted mostly of one room. It had the essentials, he supposed. It had what he was looking for at the moment, which was a bed to lay her in.

He wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve after setting her down. He must have spoken aloud his thought, or imagined her response. There was no way this poor thing was conscious.

The next few hours he spent making sure to get the cover plate put back on the outside of the door, to
make it look as though it hadn’t been tampered with, and cleaning the wound on the woman’s head. She hadn’t introduced herself.

He couldn’t help but notice her eloquent beauty as he mopped the blood from her face and hair. He’d spent a good twenty minutes longer dabbing the wound on her head with the kolto soaked rag than was needed.

He stood and went over to the other bed, maybe a half meter away from the foot of the bed the woman was in, and sat down heavily. The weight of everything he’d just been through hit him rather quickly and he sprawled out across the small bed. The room looked as though it hadn’t been used in quite some time, there were no signs anyone had been in this room within a month at least.

The settled dust on all the surfaces, the lack of anything resembling holodisks on the walls, and the fact the clothing stores had been empty all pointed to that.

Carth breathed a long, deep sigh and pulled a blaster from his hip. He kept it tightly in his hand and laid it across his chest, his eyes slowly closing out the world around him. As the fatigue set in, he felt himself running through the final moments aboard the Endar Spire, and he couldn’t help but remember the woman’s dark blue eyes. The way they had regarded him, and the way they had analyzed him.

He wondered to himself, what it took to see love or compassion from those eyes.
He decided that he wasn’t going to be satisfied with things until he saw that. I’m sure she’s a really nice girl once you get to know her. She was just being defensive on the cruiser.

His last thoughts were of the woman, and how he couldn’t help compare her to his late wife, before desperately needed sleep took him.