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The grimy lounge was crowded. It was just after the last bell on payday, and all the employees of the system’s banking guild were filling the building in a steady stream of black and gold and white uniforms. The sun was on its way to setting, streaking the eastern sky in rose and gold. Velpix 3 rotated on its axis right-to-left, and its rings, distant and glowing high above the atmosphere like ghosts, arced over the ground and cast shadows hundreds of miles long.
The customers wanted drinks and they wanted companionship— not necessarily in that order— and a few dancers were already preparing on the little stage in one black-painted corner as people took their seats in the round booths around round tables and threw back tumblers of blue and green liquor. The Empire was gone, and the fledgling New Republic, unprepared to handle the sheer amount of legislation that had to be examined and parsed and rewritten, had left many an oversight and loophole in Mid Rim systems concerning what specific kinds of entertainment one could legally procure, and plenty of people were taking advantage of those loopholes before they were closed by the ever-tightening fist of bureaucracy. A Twi’lek woman with pinky-red skin climbed up on the stage in impossibly high platform heels to a chorus of cheers and claps as a hologram appeared, flashing a scannable code for tips via personal datapad, before someone started the music and she began to twist and move so that her sparkling blue costume caught the light, flicking her head-tails over her shoulder and casting a seductive glance toward the crowd.
Eventually, her gloves, then her skirt, then her top came off. Credits started dumping into the tip holocode, but the number was never visible to the audience: it just flashed bright colors and sent the music thudding louder, encouraging more tips. Two other dancers joined her on stage: a human woman in a skimpy orange costume with a long, dark braid of hair that was slicked back tightly against her head, showing off her strong features and dramatic makeup, and a golden-eyed Zabrak girl in nothing but a pair of green heels with her short-cut brown hair loose and floating around her ears. Two more holocodes popped up. More colors flashed,
The door opened, but it was so loud by now that nobody heard, and since all heads were turned toward the stage, nobody saw the person who entered apart from the bouncer, who held out an arm to stop him. Armored, cloaked, helmeted, weapons strapped to thigh and chest and ankle— a student of history or a well-traveled customer might have seen the helmet, with its telltale T-shaped visor and domed top, and recognized it, but no one seemed to understand the particular meaning of its presence here just yet.
“I do apologize,” said a manager, rushing over with a fixed, pleasant smile on his face. “We don’t allow weapons in the lounge, sir.”
The helmet turned slowly to face the man, gleaming orange and red and green in the reflected lights. In brown and black and tan, the man in armor seemed entirely out of place in this sleek, flashy lounge, and something about his demeanor, even without words, seemed to shrink the manager. The resident bouncer, however, had managed to evade whatever spell the man had put on his boss. “He said, we don’t—”
A blaster cocked, muzzle pointing at the bouncer, and while the bouncer took a few moments to rethink his plan of approach on this mysterious stranger— and perhaps reflect, as well, on the entirety of his life up to that point— the masked man held his left hand up and activated a bounty puck. A blue-and-white hologram sprang to life, rotating slowly, with the word WANTED in red across the top: a hologram of a young human woman with bold features and long, dark hair. The manager blinked. A voice came from the helmet, low and even and modulated. “Do you know this woman?”
“Y-yes,” said the manager unwillingly, eyes darting to the blaster and the holopuck. “She’s— that’s— our best worker. She—”
“Where is she?” asked the masked man in that same flat, modulated voice.
The bouncer raised a shaking finger and pointed to the stage, and the bounty hunter turned to look, helmet freezing in place when he found the woman in orange, who was in the middle of exposing her breasts to the crowd of cheering customers as her holocode flashed a riot of colors. Without a word, he started off toward the stage. The manager choked. “Wait!” he gasped, scuttling after the cloaked man. “Wait, wait, you can’t just—”
The man in armor paid him no mind, and knocked aside a few well-dressed customers, eliciting outraged shouts. He shouldered his way past them and made directly for the stage, but as he looked up, he paused. Her holocode was still flashing, but the dancer in orange herself was nowhere to be seen.
“Mandalorian!” screamed the young Zabrak, dropping her routine instantly and backing against the wall as if he was a womp rat that might bite her. Someone shouted in upset surprise, and someone else threw a drink, and then the man in armor was gone: out the black-painted emergency exit and into an alleyway that reeked of garbage.
Down at the very end, a figure was hauling right, only a flash of orange left in its wake.
The Mandalorian gave chase.
Kyari had ditched her shoes: ridiculous impractical things. That had been step one after catching sight of the bounty hunter moving toward her: step two had been yanking her top back up on one arm haphazardly before bolting into the street via the unlocked door that she knew was always unlocked, because she’d been making a stink about it the whole time she’d worked here. Months, actually.
Kriffing bounty hunters! At least this one wasn’t a droid. You couldn’t reason with a droid, but a person, you could at least try. Biological beings had weaknesses. Cracks. Little nuances you could exploit to get your way. And Kyari was very, very good at wiggling into cracks.
Ducking under a load of durasteel sheeting, she skidded barefoot through a greasy puddle and came up scrambling for the opposite side of the alley. The back ways of Velpa City were familiar as the back rooms of the lounge, and she knew if she could get to the market she could lose the bounty hunter in the crowd, which was always packed on payday nights. She could—
She saw the gleam of fading sunlight on a scuffed helmet before she realized what she was seeing, and her body reacted as if she wasn’t in control: as he aimed his wrist at her, she twisted and slid under his arm, close enough to catch a whiff of his smelly cloak, before jumping up on a dumpster and scrambling to the roof. Years of dancing had made her body strong and flexible, and she ran from rooftop to rooftop toward the light of the market, only a few blocks away.
A blaster bolt sang past her left ear, blue and throbbing. She veered left, knowing he would expect her to dodge right by instinct, and she was right: his next bolt sang off to her right and missed her by a meter and a half as she caught an upright water pipe with both hands, using it to swing her body’s weight around and kick him flat in the side with both feet and all her strength. He crashed straight down with a grunt, and she didn’t stick around: she took off back toward the market. I should have stolen the blaster. But why was he shooting to stun and not kill? He wants me alive, not dead. Scrambling over a lip, she slid down a roof’s incline, then landed in the street, which was still hot from the day’s sun, and ran past a group of men who jeered at her. Not the best outfit for running around at night, her orange split-sided skirt with its skimpy underthings and the beaded top that was sliding all over the place, but there wasn’t any time to worry about her clothes. The market was at the very end of the street. She kept running. There was a stitch in her side. Hope filled her. She’d be able to lift a few items of clothing and disguise herself, and then—
Wham. A broad, heavy wall of metal and reinforced duraplast and thick padded fabric slammed into her from the right, and the wind left her: wheezing, she was dragged into an alley and pushed against a wall, and her feeble, oxygen-deprived attempts to claw at the arms pinning her to duracrete did nothing. No, no, no. “Kyari bi-Teltaru,” said a low, flat, staticky voice that stumbled a little over the syllables of her name.
“No,” she choked out. Maybe denying it would work. Maybe he’d let her go. “Not me.”
“Then why did you run?”
“It’s not— illegal to— run when— someone’s chasing you,” she gasped.
A bluish hologram flickered to life. Yes, that was very much her face: her hooked nose, her eyebrows, her distinctive chin. “You have five bounties on your head, bi-Teltaru.”
So denial wasn’t going to work. “Just Teltaru.”
“What?”
Air was coming back into her lungs, her bruised diaphragm operating again. She sucked down a breath and steadied her voice. “In my culture, the prefixes bi- , ba-, or be- determine the gender of the named, and the following name is the actual surname. So. If you’re going to call me by my surname, it’s just Teltaru.”
He was silent. That mask revealed nothing, featureless and blank as a sky. “Do I need to take you in conscious or unconscious?”
She definitely wasn’t getting out of this one. Well, might as well go out with a bang. Kyari stuck her face up to his helmet and forced out as fast as she could, “Unconscious. If you take me conscious I will make a scene, and I’d love to see you explain on your way to the spaceport why you have a body on your—”
Unfortunately, she never got to finish her sentence. Something pricked at her arm, and reality shifted into black nothing.
Gradually, consciousness returned.
She turned her head, wrinkling her nose: it smelled like unwashed underwear, wherever she was, and her arms had gone concerningly numb. Blinking brought some dim light back, and then she could see: she was laying on her back, feet mag-cuffed to the two corners of the open end of a disorderly, small, coffin-like bunk, wrists cuffed together and over her head. Oh, fuck, she thought with startling clarity. “Hello?” she called, croaking. She was definitely on a ship: it was cold as a tit in winter in this room, and there was a faint hum somewhere. “Hello?” She struggled in the cuffs, infuriated: there was no feeling in her hands. “Let me up! You cut the circulation off to my arms! Hey! Bounty hunter! Hello?!” The sound of heavy footsteps made her quiet down, and then he appeared down by her feet, just visible as he descended a ladder and stood there. Helmeted, cloaked, silent. Waiting, apparently, though for what she had no idea. Kyari cleared her throat and tried again. “Hi. Um, I can’t feel my arms. I don’t know if you’re human or— or human oid under all that , but, uh, I’m pretty sure you’re trying to deliver me alive and in one piece, and humans can’t handle their arms in this position for a long time. If my arms fall off, Chutt is not gonna pay you.”
He did not move. There was a long silence full of nothing but them staring at each other (at least she thought he was staring: hard to tell with the helmet) and then he broke it. “How did you know whose bounty I chose to pick up?” he said in that same flat, static-furred voice through the helmet.
“I’ll tell you if you move my hands down to my waist or something. Seriously. I can’t move, and there’s nowhere for me to go, and I don’t know where we are, so can you just…?” She rattled her right wrist and gave him a look.
A pause, a breath. Then he approached the cot. “Move your body to the left.”
Kyari realized he was going to have to crawl in the bunk with her to get her uncuffed, and she did not know how she felt about being quite that close to this person, especially with her legs cuffed apart and still in her dancing outfit. “I’m trying,” she said thinly, wriggling and bending as he squeezed himself into the bunk beside her— thank the moons she didn’t have claustrophobia, with that heavy, warm body and its uncomfortable armor pressing against her: this bunk was not designed for two people to fit in at once— and disengaged the electromagnetic current, then crawled back out and squatted at her feet, unlocking her ankles but keeping the cuffs on them.
“This controls the current,” he said, holding his wrist cuff up. “It’s very high. You make a wrong move, all four of them snap together. Got it?”
“Got it,” said Kyari uncertainly.
He stood and backed away, leaning against the interior wall of the ship. “So. How did you know which bounty I chose?”
She inched to the edge of the bunk and leaned forward, looking around and wincing as blood started flowing back into her numb arms, sending a horrible nervy tingle down her skin. “Because Chutt would have put the highest bounty on me alive, and you’re a bounty hunter. Obviously you would have gone with the highest bidder. All bounty hunters care about is money.”
“I don’t keep my pay,” he said quietly.
“Oh, sure,” said Kyari sarcastically. “And Coruscant’s full of natural wonders.”
He was silent. Her stomach growled, and she realized she had no idea how long she’d been out, and also that her last meal had been around noon on the day he’d— “I have food if you’re hungry,” he said.
“Is it poisoned?”
“No.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“You have to eat. I can’t deliver you sick.” He moved away from the wall and went to the galley, which consisted of a cold-storage cabinet the size of a sheet of flimsiplast and a tiny quick-heat oven, then pulled out a frozen meal from the cabinet and popped it into the oven.
“See? Told you. Chutt’s paying you. Am I wrong?”
“No,” he answered, looking at the oven.
“Great. Glad we cleared that up,” said Kyari sweetly, and then she bolted for the ladder. He didn’t even turn around or blink as he tapped a command into his wrist cuff and her wrist cuffs snapped into her ankle cuffs, sending her toppling head over feet and sliding to a bumping halt against the interior wall. Her cheek throbbed: she’d bashed it into the gridded metal floor. “Kriff,” she gasped, watching his boots move around on the floor with no concern in the world as he waited for the meal to cook, took it out of the oven, and stirred it with a duraplast spoon. The smell of mushrooms and cooked vegetables filled the cold air. Kyari closed her eyes. He’d probably eat it in front of her and starve her out. Asshole.
Boots moved across the floor, creaked as he squatted in front of her. “Are you going to run again if I let you use your hands?” he asked softly.
She glared up at him with one eye. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking with that mask. Kyari was used to reading facial expressions— everything about the set of someone’s jaw or their eye movements could yield a wealth of information about what they wanted, what they were thinking. It was a talent that she’d used almost all her life, especially in her line of work, and now it was gone. Useless. “What would you say if I said yes?” she croaked.
He was quiet. “That you’re an idiot,” he finally answered. “You can’t pilot this ship. It’s custom-locked to my biometrics. I have stacks of carbon-frozen people in the cargo hold. You have no tactical advantage.”
“But you don’t want me dead or frozen,” said Kyari. “I’ll tell you why, too. Because Chutt loses money if his girls are carbon-sick.” An angry tear was sliding down her nose, but she couldn’t move her hand to wipe it. “You know what you’re taking me back to, right? Or you don’t care. Bounty hunter.”
“I’m a Mandalorian first, bounty hunter second.”
“I thought Mandalorians hated the Empire.”
“The Empire is irrelevant.”
“Oh, really? Vjun has one of the most corrupt governments in the Outer Rim,” said Kyari, losing her patience. “Slavery’s all but legal, the New Republic doesn’t give a damn, the planet’s controlled by Imperial remnants, and you want to fly me back there and drop me off to Chutt Torka, the biggest crime boss on the planet, because he’s giving you money.”
“You left without serving your contract,” said the Mandalorian.
She twisted to glare up at him. “It’s indentured servitude, and it’s not legally binding anywhere except Vjun because I signed it when I was nine!”
He was impassive as stone. “It was legally binding on Vjun, where you signed it. Therefore Chutt Torka has a legal claim on you.”
“Oh, go throw yourself out the airlock,” she snapped. “You sound like a droid programmed to parrot back whatever its maker tells it to. Legally binding, my ass.”
He didn’t dignify that with a response, just hauled her to her feet and unlocked her arms and legs. “Eat.”
Her mouth watered at the smell of the mushrooms. “You take a bite first.”
“Why would I have poisoned my own food?”
“Why does a bounty hunter do anything? I’m not touching anything until you do. I don’t care if I have to starve myself out on the hyperspace lane from here to the Outer Rim.”
The dark slit of his visor swallowed all light. “I may not remove my helmet in the presence of any sentient being.”
That took her off guard. “What?”
“It is Creed.”
They both stood there staring at each other, and she must have convinced him that she would absolutely go on a hunger strike, because he picked up the spoon full of sauce, turned away from her. She thought he might be tilting his head back, but he just lifted the bottom of his helmet up a little and turned back to her with an empty spoon. “It’s good,” he said quietly. “Eat.”
Well, she wasn’t going to wait around to see if he dropped dead or not: Kyari snatched the tray of food and the spoon and shoveled it into her mouth. Noodles, warm purple mushrooms, greens: everything normally tasted off in space, but this meal must have been specifically made to be eaten in space because it was delicious. Or maybe she was just really hungry. She even licked the tray clean.
When she was done, she slid the spoon and empty tray over to him. “Thank you,” she said stiffly.
He did not say a word in response while he dumped the trash in the compactor, but then he turned and faced her, helmet tilted as if he was looking down at her. Then, he reached for his right hand, and as she watched, he removed the plating on the back of his hand, tugged at each finger of his glove, and slipped it off. “I’m human,” he said flatly, holding his bare hand up, palm out, then turning it back and forth as if to prove it, as if to say: look, all sides, nothing non-human here.
Kyari looked at his hand. Light brown on the back, pale-palmed, with lines of dirt in every crease on his palm and his knuckles: short blunt nails, thick fingers with fine brown hairs on the backs plastered down with sweat and grime. Strong. Broad. Big hands. They moved with a fluidity that seemed to contradict the size of them. Why is he telling me— and then, she remembered what she had said: that she didn’t know whether he was human or humanoid under his mask. “Okay,” she said.
“The head’s next to the bunk,” he said, indicating it with his helmet. She followed his line of sight and wrinkled her nose: she’d seen worse freshers than this, but not many. “If you have to use it, go ahead.”
“What, right now?”
“Yes. I have to course-correct the Crest. I’ll lock you back into the bunk when you’re done.”
She scowled. “I can’t pee with someone watching.”
The glove went back onto his hand. “I guess you can hold it for six more hours, then.”
“Fine!” Kyari legged it to the head and awkwardly pulled her bottoms down. The surface was angled, and she leaned back and fumbled for the right urinary attachment. “You know, if you were paying me to let you watch me piss, that would be one thing, but this is just degrading,” she informed him, as the sound of running liquid echoed muffled through the tubing.
“I wouldn’t have to watch you if you hadn’t tried to run,” he said.
“Mandalorian,” she grumbled, finishing up. “Can you put me in feet first this time?”
“No. My torso would be in close proximity to your legs while I secured your ankles. That would be a tactical error.”
She rolled her eyes. “There’s not even any room in that bunk if I wanted to kick you.” The Mandalorian sighed. She could sense a distinct flavor of irritation in the huff of static, but she also wanted to get a look at the cockpit. Just in case. “What if you bring me up there with you, keep my arms cuffed together, and let me stretch my legs? I can’t get into any trouble. You said the ship was biometrically locked to you. I can stay in sight and just mind my business. And if I try anything, you can obviously snap me down again with that.” She pointed at his wrist-cuff. Men liked showing off their speeders, she knew: she let a little genuine curiosity into her voice, but nothing overly sugary, no feigned ignorance. He’d see right through that. “I’ve never actually been in a ship like this before. You said it’s called a Crest?”
The Mandalorian was silent again, and she got the distinct sensation that he was sizing her up. “It’s an ST-70 Razor Crest M-111. Gunship model, pre-Empire.”
“Pre-Empire. Wow. You know, usually the types of guys living out of their ships that I meet are losers,” said Kyari, offering him a slight smile. Whether he returned it or not, she couldn’t tell. “Is it a single-pilot, or…”
“You can have a look around,” he said finally. “One look around. That’s it.”
“Thank you,” she said, and followed him up the ladder.
It was not a large ship at all, and she could see why it felt so cramped: she was the extra person taking up space. It was not meant for its intended four passengers to live on it long-term, but one man alone might make it work. She sat down quietly in the rear portside seat, hands cuffed together, and took in the cockpit and the windscreen as he went about his system checks: the vast inky emptiness of space stretched out before the ship, marked by nothing at all. We are so tiny. So small. There’s only a panel or two of durasteel and duraplast between us and the void of space…
She shouldn’t have looked at the windscreen. Kyari had to put her head between her knees for a moment, feeling like she might hurl the food she’d eaten back up. Her ears roared with her own heartbeat, and her face went hot, her vision swimming. Teltaru, a voice was saying, low and urgent. Teltaru. She jerked herself up and pressed her back against the solid seat, shaking, and he must have been convinced it wasn’t some kind of ploy, because he was suddenly there, squatting down in front of her, one gloved hand on her bare knee. Teltaru, deep breaths. Slowly. Close your eyes.
She sucked in a thin, reedy breath.
Mama, sucked out the—
Her eyes flew open. “Sorry,” she managed, trying to make eye contact with the flat, featureless helmet. “Sorry. It— I forgot— it— sorry.”
“Forgot what?”
“It sometimes— comes over me like that. I— I don’t like space. All the time. Sometimes. I—” She swallowed, looked away from that blank and staring void. “Usually when I travel between worlds I go in the big passenger freighters. You can’t even tell you’re in space, and I don’t have to think about it, but this is so. Small.”
“Why did you ask to come up here if you’re afraid of space?”
“Haven’t traveled in two years. I thought maybe I’d grown out of it,” she forced out. Mama’s face, and then— “Forget it. I— I have to go back down.”
“Give me a moment. I’ll take you after I recalibrate the gyronav.”
“Three hells,” she gasped, closing her eyes and trying to think about anything besides the thin curve of transparisteel.
“I’ve never had a hull breach,” he said as he moved over the control panel.
She shut her eyes tightly, fighting her rising pulse, the heartbeat slamming into her ribs. “Can you please not say the words hull breach—”
“There is triple-forged alloy on the hull. I had it custom made and plated. There’s not a single leak anywhere on this ship. I live here. It is completely safe.”
His voice was almost soft, furry with static from his modulator, and she pretended he was trying to calm her down, to soothe her. Slowly, Kyari took deep breaths, forcing herself to hold them and let them out, until he was done with his checks and guiding her back to the ladder, where he sent her down first. She didn’t wait for him to get his boots on the floor before she staggered to the head and retched again, but didn’t get sick. That was a nice change.
“Easy,” he said.
“I’m only sick because your head’s disgusting,” she shot back, angry at herself for letting her captor see her like this. “Clean it once in a while, would you?”
“I don’t often have guests.”
“Is that what I am? A guest?”
He considered. Shifted his weight. “Something like that.”
She got up and took a deep, steadying breath. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“No.”
“Figures. If I’m not a real guest, just something like a guest, then you must be something like a host, not a real host, because a real host would have. I don’t know. Corellian brandy or something.”
A rapid-fire burst of static left the helmet’s vocal modulator, and it took Kyari a moment to realize the Mandalorian was laughing. He must have realized it almost at the same time, and stopped with a cough. “Get back in the bunk, Teltaru.”
She crawled in obediently, raised her hands over her head, and let him electro-mag her wrists and ankles to the durasteel walls after he tossed a blanket over her. It was scratchy and smelled like a sweaty body had been cocooned in it for many nights without being washed. “I’ll come back down in six hours,” he said, and then he was gone.
Kyari lay awake for an hour, staring at the ceiling of the bunk above her nose, and then she fell into a shallow sleep where she kept waking up at every little jostle of the ship.
It was several hours later when she fully woke to the sounds of shifting clothing and the soft clank of armor bumping into armor. She did not open her eyes, but remained perfectly still as she had been, listening: someone was undressing close by her feet. Twin thumps of boots being placed on the floor, then the soft flat sound of bare feet walking. The slide-flop sound of heavy, padded clothing being cast to the floor. She braced herself mentally, silently, for a lecherous touch: why else would a man be undressing where she was sleeping?
Then she heard the sound of water running, and remembered the shower tubing was right where the head was, along with the grate in the floor. So he was showering. Kyari relaxed, listening to the patter of water on the durasteel as he cleaned up. When he turned off the water, the silence was deafening, and she wondered if he’d maybe let her shower, too. She hadn’t washed in what felt like days, and the bruise on her cheek was sore and swollen. Cold water would feel great, let alone hot: she wondered if this ship had a hot-water reservoir or not. It would have had to be an aftermarket addition.
Experimentally, she stirred in the bunk and made a soft, sleepy noise. All movement and sound stopped. She pretended to fall back into a deep sleep, eyes shut, and listened as he quietly, almost silently, got dressed again, and his booted feet plunked over to the tiny galley. The smell of food filled the air as the oven hummed away, and she opened her eyes, hungry again. How long had she been asleep, anyway? She didn’t know. “Mandalorian?” she called, craning her head down to try to find him past her feet.
“You slept for about eight hours,” he informed her, helmet appearing by her feet as he pressed the mechanism on his gauntlet that let her feet move. She slid out of the bunk and sat up, squinting into the overhead lights. “Eat.”
“How far are we from Vjun?” she asked.
If she didn’t know better, she would have said something about his body language was almost evasive as he handed her a tray of food. Fried meat crumbles, flatbread, egg, fruit. “Eat,” he repeated.
Kyari narrowed her eyes. “You first,” she said.
A note of irritation crept into his voice. “I told you I have no reason to poison you. You’re my quarry, not my prisoner. I need you alive and unharmed upon delivery. Eat.”
Slowly, she popped a stick of fruit into her mouth and chewed. It was a little flavorless, watery: the meat was too salty and the egg was rubbery. But it was food, so she got it down. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“You know, I’m considering taking my chances on a cut payment and carbon-freezing you,” he snapped.
She blinked, surprised at this sudden display of anger. “Moons, I just asked how far away we were. What crawled into your pants and bit your—”
“We’re hitting a snag,” he said tightly.
“A— huh?”
“I sprang a leak in my hyperdrive. I can’t fix it in flight. So I can’t take the Salin Corridor to Vjun, because I’m stuck in realspace speed, which means I’m going to have to land the Crest somewhere and get her hyperdrive repaired. And you are a loose cannon, which means I might have to carbon-freeze you after all to get some peace of mind.”
“You were serious. Oh.” Kyari put her food down, feeling like anything she said was going to be wrong in this very delicate situation. The one single thing at this point that she wanted to avoid at any cost was being carbon-frozen. “I mean, if you freeze me, the pay cut means you won’t have the money to cover the repair, depending on the issue and how expensive it is.”
“Yes, I know.”
He sounded very on edge. Maybe not the right plan of attack. “Okay. I— look, I don’t want to run off and vanish into some backwater planet, okay? I hate space and I hate tiny ships, but I’d rather be on here going somewhere than going nowhere. That’s why I ran away from Chutt. Being my own boss and working under a fair contract was a million times better than those armpits he calls clubs.”
“Another hunter could come looking for you. You have four other bounties on your head.”
She sat forward, eager to clear her name with an explanation. “Yeah, from shitty managers. Listen. I can tell you all of them. Pluy To’s definitely one, right? He’s mad because I kicked his goons’ asses over them harassing the other girls— and some of the boys— and, okay, yes, I stole his safe out of his office when I bolted, that’s on me. Yuxby Reyun’s probably another one, because I ran off on them and broke contract but only because we found out they were spiking our drinks on working nights, and I’m not the only one who ran off. Tar Dellun for sure, because he ran that club on Canto Bight— gambling issue, he does not have the cash to put a huge bounty on me— and he’s just afraid I’m going to tell everyone he was stealing from customers and cheating on all his spouses with his employees. And the last one’s either Aryi Fraxure or Torbin Glu on Coruscant. I would bet good credits it’s Aryi because she had me on contract and got mad I was freelancing at the same time for the Silver Cage doing escort work more than I was working for her, but you try pocketing a hundred percent without a go-between and then going back to a forty-sixty split your boss nabs the majority of. Torbin’s just got a grudge because I beat up his boyfriend in a fight and stole his speeder to get to the spaceport. If any of them actually wanted me that badly, they’d have outbid Chutt, but they didn’t. The cheaper bounties mean I’ll be less of a priority to bounty hunters. Didn’t you snatch Chutt’s puck up because it was the highest price?”
The Mandalorian stood very still. “It was five hundred thousand credits,” he said.
She shrugged. “See? I mean, in my opinion, he still lowballed me, because I made him a ton of money for years. Insulting. Should have been at least eight hundred thousand.”
“You started doing sex work at nine?” said the Mandalorian, sharp and intent.
She blinked. “What? No. I signed my contract at nine, I didn’t— I was serving tables. I started sex work when I was eighteen.” Memory streamed back: gauzy itchy costumes in shades of puce and mint and burgundy, balancing trays, leers and comments. “That’s not to say people didn’t… express stuff when I was a kid. People are freaks, you know? Chutt didn’t care. He’ll sell anything for a credit. I guess I was lucky. Ugly kid. Better looking adult. Had to grow into the eyebrows.”
“Don’t say that,” he said shortly.
She raised an eyebrow. “It’s my life. I’ll say what I want about it. I was lucky. Nobody fucked me until I was eighteen.”
Silence stretched between them. He shifted his weight. “How old are you?” he asked finally, as if unwilling to even broach the subject.
“Twenty-nine. Why?”
“When I was your age, I had forty bounties completed, and had provided Mandalorian foundlings with ten million credits,” he said quietly.
Kyari blinked, startled. “You… your bounty money goes to children?”
“We raise them. Keep them safe. Raise them with the Creed among the Children of the Watch. They’re fed and warm and safe, and learn the Way of Mandalore. They don’t…” He paused, trailed off.
“They don’t end up like me,” she said tightly, her fists clenched. “A whore.” The word rolled off her tongue like a poisoned sweet.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You were thinking it.”
“No.”
She sat up. “You can judge me all you like. I enjoy dancing, for your information. Sex work, whatever you want to call it. I made my peace with that long ago. The only thing I’m a victim of is corrupt bosses and a legal system that changes on every other planet. Do you enjoy your work? Huh? You like kidnapping beings for money, ruining their lives, killing them and justifying it all to yourself because you’re giving some orphaned kids some of the money?”
“No,” he said, soft and strained. That was good. She was getting to him. Maybe if she got him to snap, he’d make a mistake, and then she could get out of here.
“I bet you do. I know exactly what you are. I remember now. The whole thing about not removing the helmet— that’s never what real Mandalorians did, not even before the Night of a Thousand Tears.”
His voice was on edge. “You don’t know anything about Mandalore.”
She’d found a crack: she dug the knife in and pushed. “Yes, I do. One of my best customers on Canto Bight was a history lecturer specializing in Mandalorian culture. All this shit about the Way and the helmets, the Watch— that’s an offshoot. Fundamentalist weirdos. You’re basically in a cult —”
With one swift movement, he had launched himself up and at her, catching her shackled wrists in one hand and pinning her to the wall. “Stop!” he barked. “Shut up!”
“You’re a fraud—”
His thigh, armored and hard, slid between hers, and she shuddered violently: he was so cold, and she was so miserable and he was— he was— “Stop it,” he hissed again, a burst of almost indecipherable static behind his helmet. “Stop.”
“You stop,” she gasped. Her top, too loose and slippery and not meant to be worn for any kind of function, had slipped down again, and she was exposed to the cold recycled air of the ship, but she couldn’t think about that, and anyway maybe he couldn’t see her from the chin down in that stupid helmet. “You. Stop. Stop… pitying me for what I chose to do in the circumstances I was in.”
He was silent, his body almost vibrating, taut and tense, against hers. “If you stop condemning a foundling who knew nothing but the Way to follow,” he finally said softly, “then, yes.”
“You… you’re an orphan?” she managed, reeling. “You…”
“I was ,” he said, and released her, stepping back. “I have spare clothes in the compartment above the bunk. Take some.”
“Thank you,” Kyari whispered, ashamed of herself, and did not bother complaining as she went over to the compartment and pulled out a long-sleeved, deep green man’s shirt and a pair of black pants. She stripped down, discarding her costume, and turned to look at him. “How, uh, how does the shower…”
“Like this,” he said abruptly, pulling the retractable hose down and showing her the toggle to turn it on. She set it to hot and washed every bit of herself clean with the bar of scrub-soap and a rough square of plastcloth, ensuring every last speck of cosmetics was gone from her face and every bit of hard styling wax was gone from her hair, which must have looked horrendous by now. When she was clean, she shut off the valve, and the Mandalorian flicked on the blow-dry apparatus, blasting her dry in minutes from head to toe, apart from her hair, which was long and thick and dried very slowly. She almost asked about a mirror as she finger-combed it, untangling all the knots, but had to chide herself: why would a man who never showed his face bother to own a mirror? He watched her the whole time— or maybe he had his eyes closed under that helmet— and when she was dressed, barefoot and clean and wearing clothes that didn’t smell like sweat, she revolved, arms out.
“Verdict?” she asked.
“Fine,” he answered. “Your hair should be put up.”
Kyari raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t think bounty hunters had opinions on fashion.”
“Shed hair can clog the air scrubbers in this ship.”
“Oh. Right. I’ll braid it again when it’s dry.”
A short nod was all she got in response, and he turned slightly. Kyari felt bad for goading him, even if he was a bounty hunter, and reached out to touch his elbow. “Hey—” The Mandalorian moved with a fast and brutal speed, gloved hand snatching her wrist as he twisted her and pinned her to the wall, his breathing heavy and panicked. “Ow!” she barked, startled. “I wasn’t—”
“What?” he snapped, a ripple of static through his mask’s modulator.
“I was—” She struggled, glaring at him. “I was trying to apologize! Three hells, hasn’t anyone ever touched you on the arm before?” He did not move, and she thought belatedly that maybe a man who had spent his life as a bounty hunter maybe, actually, had never been touched affectionately. Kyari cleared her throat and softened her tone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me,” he said. “I’m a Mandalorian.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure, you just pushed me against a wall because you need an excuse to manhandle me.”
“I—” He released her as if her skin had burned him through his gloves and stepped back. “I don’t need an excuse for anything,” he said sharply. “You are my quarry. I can do what I want with you.”
“Ooh, I bet you tell all the girls that,” Kyari said dryly.
The Mandalorian’s fists clenched, then unclenched, the fingers of his gloves splaying wide. Without his face to mark his expressions by, she had to rely on his body language and micro-movements, and those did actually speak volumes. “Stop talking like that.”
“You don’t scare me either,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him, and he remained still for a moment, then reached out and grabbed her by the upper arm, turning her around. “Wh—”
“Up,” he said flatly, pushing her toward the ladder to the upper level.
“Okay, okay—” Kyari climbed up the ladder, her cuffs clanking, and once they had both emerged into the top level of the Razor Crest he snapped her wrists together with the mag-cuffs and marched her to the back, slamming a hand down on the door panel and sliding it aside to reveal a carbon-freezing chamber, panels stacked against the wall. Kyari felt her heart rate rise, her palms go clammy: she turned her face away from the twisted, pained expression of the beings frozen in place.
He grabbed her head, turned her back to look by the chin. “This is my backlog,” he said, clipped and precise. “These are quarry wanted dead or alive. I could very easily decide to put you into a carbon-freeze. Fifty percent chance of survival.”
“You wouldn’t. You won’t. You need me alive,” she whispered, still clinging to that hope as she stared at the cold gray carbonite.
His hand tightened on her neck, cupping the front of her throat, gloved fingers curling around her jaw. Not hard enough to bruise, but firmly enough to get her attention. “Ask me not to.”
Kyari went still. Her vision was fixed on the carbonite slabs, but her other senses were taking in a wealth of data: the texture of his voice was ragged, angry, maybe upset— his body, pressed against hers, was solid and broad under the padded clothing and the armor. For years, the answer to the question what exactly does this person want had been part of her daily life, and now she collected herself. I can play this game. Whatever he wants. Just as long as I get out of this alive. “Will you… not… carbon freeze me?” she asked awkwardly, cringing at how bad it sounded. Come on, you’re better than that at this.
His other hand was locked around her shackled wrists. “Ask me like you mean it.” The words were almost… intermittent, quick and sharp and desperate, and Kyari suddenly realized, oh, wait, that’s not— just as she was pulled back to press up against the bandolier across his breastplate, every cartridge digging into her skin, and the back of her ass, pulled against his groin, slid over something firm protruding just beneath the bottom lip of the plate armor that encircled his abdomen.
What in three hells, she thought blankly, but this was something she understood, could play at. “Please don’t carbon freeze me,” she said, affecting a tremble, a catch in her voice. If he wanted begging, she’d give him begging. Hey, maybe if I can get him to let his guard down, I’ll get out of these restraints eventually, and then when we land at a decent spaceport I’ll give him the slip. “Please.” Subtly, she shifted her weight, which brought some friction between his groin and her backside, and elicited a burst of static from the modulator on his helmet and a tighter grip on her jaw. “Please. I’ll do anything you want. I’m sorry. I—”
He made a soft, staticky sound and instantly released her, thumbing the controls on his wrist and slapping her wrists and ankles back together so that she crumpled into a bantha-tied ball once more on the floor. Neither of them spoke: him, frozen above her; Kyari, lying on her side with her knees bent up and her cheek pressed into cold durasteel. Then, he stepped back until his shoulders were pressed to the wall, and his gloved hand shifted uncomfortably across the seam of his heavy-duty pants. “Say it again,” he whispered.
Which part, you moof-milker? And why am I getting so warm? She decided to go for the whole thing again. “Please don’t carbon freeze me,” she whispered. “I’ll do anything you want, please, I’m sorry.”
A shuddering breath left his mask, static furring the edges of the sound, and he pushed himself off the wall, bent down, and hauled her to her feet as the mag-cuffs disconnected and let her stand. “Ladder. Now.” Kyari stiffly slid her way down the ladder with her ankles locked together, then backed into a wall as he came down and turned to face her.
“You like scaring people,” she said softly.
He made no move toward her. “Get into the bunk.”
She made no move to obey. “Do you want to talk about what that w—”
The Mandalorian marched over, grabbed her by the arms, pushed her forcibly down to the floor, and mag-secured her wrists over her head. “If you don’t want to get in the bunk, you can sleep here.”
“Hey! No, I—” But he was already walking away, back toward the ladder. Kyari watched him climb back up, and then he was gone.
She was sure there was a sliding hatch that closed between the section of the ship that had the ladder and the cockpit, but he had, for some reason, not closed it, and she could hear him.
First it made her hold her breath and listen, appalled, and then despite her years of experience listening to similar sounds she got kind of flushed, because he didn’t— he didn’t really sound like anyone she’d ever— the thing was, Kyari thought, flustered, that normally— normally men jerking off didn’t sound like this. In her experience, men were silent apart from a few grunts, restrained, just trying to get off so they could last longer a few minutes later. But the sounds floating down from the cockpit— had he purposely left the door open so she could hear him?
Soft, slick-squish noises of flesh on flesh. Choking little groans, whines, muffled sounds— what the hell was his deal? She tried to unpack whatever was going on with this man’s brain. Most human bounty hunters, upon taking someone like her alive, wouldn’t have shied away from the opportunity to use the situation to their advantage— maybe promising a chance at freedom in exchange for a few quick and dirty moments in a ship’s bunk or the floor or against the cockpit controls. This man was something different. She couldn’t parse it out, and after a few more moments of listening to him up there taking stuttering, strangled breaths, she kind of didn’t want to.
It was undeniably attractive. Really hot, actually. The noise, the way he’d restrained himself, the fact that he clearly didn’t want to really hurt her. I have got to get better standards in men. She shut her eyes, trying to banish the heat that was gathering between her thighs without even a by-your-leave, flushing her with emotions she did not need to be thinking about right now. He was definitely doing this on purpose. Putting her off her guard. Moons, she wanted to fuck something. Kyari leaned her head against her raised arm and exhaled. It had been a while. She had expected to have to possibly use sex as a tool, a weapon against others, but not to have her own wants suddenly override her plans. Damn that Mandalorian!
She was uncomfortably aroused with no way to ease it when he came back down the ladder, in full armor, not a single sign pointing to what she knew damn well he’d been doing minutes ago. “You are my quarry,” he said, not a hint of a tremor in that voice even though his left hand was visibly trembling before he clenched it into a fist. “Do not attempt to manipulate me again.”
Kyari pressed her thighs together. “Listen, bounty hunter,” she managed. “If you’re going to do that in close quarters, you’d better allow me the same courtesy.”
He paused. “Mando,” he said.
“Huh?”
“My associates call me Mando. You may also call me this. Instead of bounty hunter. ”
“Short for Mandalorian? What, you don’t have a real name? Just Mando?”
He did not answer, simply reached up and disconnected her wrists from the wall, then picked her up and took her to the bunk, where she crawled in and dutifully lifted her arms to be locked to the back wall.
Kyari woke feeling pleasantly rested, and after banging on the wall with her elbow, the Mandalorian came down to free her and give her food. “You know,” she said, waiting for her meal on the floor, “you could just deliver your backlog to get the money to pay for the hyperdrive repairs.”
“Yes,” he answered, stirring her meal. “I considered that.”
“What’s the issue?”
“Would take too long.” Something about the quality of his voice was different, but she could not place her finger on what it was.
“Oh.” She accepted the food and started to eat, watching as he sat down on the floor and tilted his head against the wall. “Tired?”
“No.”
She snorted. The whole tone of his voice was ragged, on edge. “That’s a load of bantha crap. You haven’t slept the whole time I’ve been on board.”
“I have stimshots. Sleeping is not necessary.”
“Those will kark your brain over long term, you know. Give you the shakes on the comedown.” Kyari shook her spoon at him. “Can’t use them consistently long term, either, because as you get older, the effects get worse. How old are you anyway, Mando?” He didn’t respond. She continued. “Anyway, hope you have a lot of water on hand. They say you can cure the effects with a depressant, but that’s just a short-term fix. One of the dancers I knew at Toru’s Emporium said the only surefire way to flush stim out of your system was doing enough physical activity to sweat it out, getting hydrated, and eating a good meal. In that order.”
“Thirty…forty… no, thirty-eight,” he said.
“And— wh— oh. Oh, you’re thirty-eight?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“You must really be tired if you forgot how old you were.”
“I don’t keep track,” he said as she finished the food.
“Oh.” Kyari fell quiet. “Your people don’t celebrate birthdays? Lifedays? Namedays?”
“Mandalorians do not, no.”
Kyari slid the tray to him. “I mean, before you were Mandalorian. You said you were a foundling.”
He took it and set it aside, sitting quietly, not moving. “I have no memory of it.”
“I’m sorry.”
The helmet turned slightly to face her. “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”
Isn’t it? Kyari frowned, thinking of her very young childhood, almost forgotten: flowers, singing outside her window. “I guess it’s not, if you don’t remember birthdays. Then you don’t really miss them, do you?” He didn’t answer, just heaved himself up off the floor and went for the medkit by the bunk, where he withdrew a stimshot, peeled off the wrapper, and bent slightly to drive the hypoderm into the meat of his thigh through his thick trousers. A soft pssh filled the room. “That cannot be hygienic,” said Kyari, wrinkling her nose.
“It’s fine,” he said, raising himself up and shaking out his shoulders a little, cracking his head from side to side. “Do yourself a favor and don’t try anything stupid while I’m using these.”
“Good, a jumpy Mandalorian armed to the teeth in close quarters,” said Kyari, leaning back against the wall. “Just what I need.”
He secured her wrists to the wall again. “I’ll find you a bacta patch for that bruise,” he said, rummaging through the kit. Out came the pale green patch, and he unpeeled it and stuck it to her cheek, where the flesh was tender from where she’d smacked it against the floor. His gloved fingers were rough, impersonal. “Can’t deliver you damaged.”
“Yeah, moons forbid you take a pay cut,” she mumbled.
“I’ll be back in a minute.” He walked to the ladder and hauled himself up, and Kyari sat there, listening to the ship’s engines change course ever so slightly, the cadence and tenor shift. We’ve changed course, but for where? Pretty soon his boots came clanking back down the ladder rungs, and he landed on the floor and turned to face her. “We’re going to Nar Shaddaa.”
She gaped at him, convinced she’d misheard. “I’m sorry? What was in that stimshot?”
“You heard me. Nar Shadda.” He crouched down, wrists resting on his knees. “There are plenty of shipyards there that will be able to fix my hyperdrive.”
She scowled and sat back. Nar Shaddaa was one of the moons of Nal Hutta— like Coruscant but worse, everyone always said— an overgrown urban sprawl clogged with pollution, run by warlords, and overlooked by the Galactic Republic. She’d never be able to get away from him there: the place was crawling with bounty hunters, and with a price still on her head… “Fine,” she said.
“Well, someone’s angry.” Was he being smug? That son of a— “I thought you’d like to stretch your legs a little. Get off the ship.”
“Believe me, I’d love to get off this ship. I bet if you shined a blacklight in here it would light up like a Zeltron art piece, especially in the cockpit.”
His helmet tilted to the side. “I thought you liked to listen.”
“You—” she spluttered, embarrassed in spite of herself. “What is your deal?”
“My deal is credits, Teltaru. I can offload my backlog on Nal Hutta to secondary parties, pay for the hyperdrive repairs, and have you delivered to Vjun in less than forty-eight hours. Wasn’t that your idea in the first place?”
Kyari closed her eyes, infuriated. Losing the hyperdrive had seemed like a gift, but now her plan was going to shit. “Yes,” she said tightly.
“Good.”
She cracked an eye open. He hadn’t moved from where he was squatting. “Are you going to sit here and stare at me until we get to Narsh?”
“I might. You’re fast, and you’ve caught me off my guard once or twice.”
Kyari rolled her eyes. “Should I take my top off and give you something more interesting to look at?”
A note of something sour entered his modulated voice. “That is not necessary.”
“I’ve done weirder things for entertainment. You wouldn’t believe what some people are into.”
“Try me.”
She had to smile in spite of herself and leaned her head back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. “Okay. Uh, one guy, a regular at the Silver Cage had a massive, massive Twi’lek degradation fetish. Well, not so much a— he wanted to specifically have a Twi’lek woman tell him his penis was too small, but not in, like, a mocking way? Like in a genuinely concerned, horrified about it way. It was a whole production. But he paid Kyla this massive tip she didn’t have to split, and he never wanted to actually have sex, so she let him come back a million times. And this one woman had a thing where she wanted to be frozen in carbonite and face-fucked— I mean, obviously that’s impossible to do in reality—”
“She what,” said the Mandalorian flatly.
Kyari shrugged. “Yeah. We made it work. People are weird. Everyone’s got a thing.”
He shifted, but sat down and crossed his legs. “How exactly did you… accomplish that?”
“Oh, it was really theatrical. We set up a coolgel slab with a bunch of fog in the room and put her in it and had Bron— that’s one of the guys who worked there— face-fuck her, and she was thrilled. Came back, like, every month.”
The Mandalorian’s helmet tilted to one side. “But… it wasn’t carbonite. She wanted carbonite.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t really about the carbonite. It was about the… immobility, the sense of not being able to do anything to help yourself. Coolgel won’t kill you or cause carbon sickness, it just traps you in place, but it can be safely dissolved in five seconds. You know? Like if someone’s fantasy is really unobtainable, you have to figure out what the point of it is at its heart, then aim at something reasonable that meets the need.”
He was quiet. “Another example?”
Well, this was a conversation, at least. “Sure.” She ruminated a moment. “Okay. There was another customer, once, at the Cage, and he very specifically wanted to be strangled with a woman’s long hair until he passed out, and then wake up to being… um, taken advantage of by the woman in question. Problem is, you don’t tend to get sexually aroused when you pass out, and choking someone is dangerous, right? So we talked it over and I ended up dosing him with Silyn so he’d be… you know, ready for business, and then when I ‘strangled’ him with my hair I really just cinched it tight and used my fingers to cut off the blood to his brain— not his air— for a second. The minute he passed out, I did my thing, and he was great. All good, no problems, tipped well, came back for seconds, and then we never saw him again. I think once he got it out of his system he was good. Everyone’s different.”
The Mandalorian tilted his helmeted head to look at her. “You… you did that,” he said.
“Yep. Had a med-droid on hand just in case, too.”
“What if…” He paused, his hands working against his knees. “What if someone wanted something they couldn’t… really explain?”
“Then we’d talk to them.” She watched, interested, as the Mandalorian sat there, his thumbs moving slightly against the curve of his gloved index fingers. “They could try to figure it out with us, and we could— you know. Make it work. Unpack the mess.”
“The mess,” he echoed.
“Yeah. Not like… not like a bad mess. More like… tangled up string inside their head. And we help them sort it out. That’s why I liked my job. It was nice to be able to help people untangle the string.” The Mandalorian didn’t say a word. “Like… if someone was purposely doing something provocative where another person could hear it,” she prodded, looking at the slit in his visor that swallowed all light, where his eyes surely were. “Maybe they don’t know why they want to do it, or why they did it, exactly. But talking about it might help them understand why.”
He abruptly stood. “I’ll alert you when we’re within planetfall,” he said, and climbed up the ladder, vanishing into the cockpit.
Nar Shadda was a large moon, pale greasy green on the dayside, the nightside a constellation of amber-bead lights and neon-colored splatters from the city sprawl on its surface. Definitely like Coruscant, but worse, Kyari thought dismally as she sat cuffed to the passenger seat behind the cockpit while the Mandalorian piloted them into the atmosphere. Crime was abundant here. You could find anything you wanted on Narsh, and plenty of things you didn’t into the bargain.
“I’ll find you shoes,” he said over his shoulder before turning back to the comlink array. She barely heard his clearance code or the name of the dock they were landing at. Shoes. So he really did mean to take her out on the surface and not leave her here alone locked up like a prisoner. Kyari resolved to stick close to the Mandalorian: at least she’d already built a rapport of some kind with him.
“I’m not picky, as long as they’re not heels,” she said dryly.
He piloted the Razor Crest in, landed the ship on a dock that did not look very reputable, and switched the engines off. “Okay. Shoes…” The Mandalorian got up out of his seat and rummaged through a few bins. “Here we are.” He circled around to her front and lifted the boots: simple, flat-soled, comfortable looking things that went up past her ankle, plus socks.
“I’ll have to take off my ankle cuffs,” she said warily. What was he playing at?
“Yes,” he answered, and slipped the socks on her feet. “And if you kick me or run, I’ll turn you over to the first person who recognizes your puck.”
“No,” she blurted out, horrified. “I won’t, I promise. I’ll behave.”
“Good.” He unlocked her ankle cuffs and slid the boots onto her feet, tying them on snugly. “Get up.” She obeyed as the current keeping her wrists locked to the chair fizzled out. “Hands.” Both hands extended out toward him, and he slid the cuffs off and secreted them somewhere among his layered clothing and armor.
“It’s not gonna look weird? A random civilian walking around with a bounty hunter?”
He gave her what might have been an appraising look behind that mask, and then slid a blaster out of his belt, slipping the bolt mechanism back and unloading the energy cells. “Take this,” he said, handing her the blaster.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, turning the useless thing over in her hands. Obviously, she couldn’t have been trusted with a loaded weapon, but what was she going to do if there was trouble, brain someone to death with the hilt? Kyari tucked it into her waistband and followed him to the ramp, where he unlocked the sealed door.
“You stay with me,” he directed sternly.
“Believe me, I have no intention of getting kidnapped by another bounty hunter,” she muttered, looking from side to side as the door slid open and the docking hand came up to the door. The Mandalorian exchanged a few words and a couple of credits, then made for the way off the ramp, and Kyari followed.
The air smelled awful. She supposed you could get used to it after a very long time, but it was terrible: smoky, sulfur and methane, the sharp tangy reek of something worse. It clung to her clothing and skin like a physical film. And it was almost uncomfortably warm, despite the cloud cover: her shirt started sticking to her chest and armpits. There was no way the Mandalorian wasn’t sweating his helmet off in this muggy heat. On either side, shops and markets and houses stacked up one on the other like children’s blocks, and speeders screeched right over the heads of the pedestrians every so often: there was not a lot of traffic regulation here. Steam and smoke billowed up from the platforms, from the ground, from the walls of the laundries and food stalls and shops and houses.
The Mandalorian paused in a stall to ask someone about ship repairs. A few credits exchanged with a taxi-shuttle, and they found themselves crammed into a stinking tube of metal with twenty other people five minutes later as it bounced around the air and avoided collision with other speeders at a breakneck speed. Kyari was pushed up against an elderly woman on her left who was muttering under her breath and reading a holobook and the Mandalorian on her right. He was warm as an oven in his armor and padded clothing, and a few people were giving them concerned, cautious looks. She focused on not passing out from the heat and the smell, and thanked the moons when she was finally out of the shuttle and they were walking down a few more blocks to a junk shop with a dangling, rusty sign over the door.
The Mandalorian walked right in and rang the bell. “Om Shutta,” he said aloud.
A Malastarian Dug came hurrying in, purple snout twitching at the sight of the people in his shop. “Ay!” he croaked, startled. “You gotta thing needs repairing, huh?”
“Hyperdrive on a Razor Crest. ST-70.”
“M-90?”
“M-111.”
The Dug’s red eyes narrowed. “Whassa problem with her?”
“Leak in the hyperdrive motivator.”
“Ehhhh,” he grunted, hoisting himself up into a seat. Kyari watched, fascinated: she’d never met a Dug, and the way he used what had once been primeval forelimbs to walk and what were once hind legs to grab things and point was almost hypnotic. Acrobatic. “Motivators on the M-111 always leaking after, ahhh, thirty-forty years. Always, always. Big design flaw.”
“Can it be repaired?”
“Yeah, yeah, can be repaired.” Om Shutta sniffed and wiped his nose. “You lucky, Mandalorian. Got a shipment of motivator solder in this week. Real good. From the Core.”
“How much?”
“Mmmm.” The Dug swiped up a holo-calculator and did a few sums, frowning and mumbling to himself. “Labor, don’t have to order special… ten thousand, I think. Yes, ten thousand.”
“Deal,” said the Mandalorian. “She’s docked in Barter Town.”
“You bring her here, dock her in the yard out back,” said Om Shutta. His eyes darted over Kyari. “Maybe you wanna keep the girlfriend close by, eh? Bad people around here.”
Kyari’s cheeks burned, but the Mandalorian simply said, “Noted,” and turned to go. She followed him out into the street, sticking close to his side as they walked.
“Girlfriend?” she asked derisively.
“Let him assume what he wants. We’re getting the subtrain back. I’m not traveling by taxi again.”
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day,” she mumbled, and followed him into the dark sublevels.
Om Shutta turned out to be a total wash. After quoting ten thousand, he upped it to fifteen, and then twenty, and then a week and a half later said he couldn’t fix the hyperdrive after all, but he also couldn’t give them their money back. The second person they found also took about nine thousand credits before vanishing, and the third mechanic managed to damage the realspace engines before running off with another nine thousand. It was entertaining watching the Mandalorian stew about being scammed, and she also got some fried tip-yip with sweet-spice sauce from a food stall out of it every time they went out, so it wasn’t all bad.
“We’re going to have to ask someone else,” he snarled in irritation, not even bothering to buckle himself into the pilot’s seat.
“Do you think you should sleep first? It’s been like two weeks of stimshots.”
“No.” He jerked the controls up and flew through the unregulated traffic lanes as his realspace engines sputtered smoke. “There’s one person I know who could help us. Impella Trix. Owns a massive chain of nightclubs. Queen of the Underground. She’s richer than most of the crime lords on this planet, and the last time I was here she had a private mechanic on call. It’s pretty much known that if you catch her interest, she’ll grant requests… with the expectation that it’ll be held over your head later, of course.”
“So what’s the catch?” asked Kyari, leaning back and eating her fried tip-yip.
He landed the Razor Crest on a docking pad higher up out of the slums before he turned and faced Kyari. “She hates Mandalorians.”
“Oh…kay?”
“Not her, personally. It’s an… inter-species thing.”
“Why?” He turned and pointed to the holo-sign that was rotating over the sleek chromium facade of the club about four klicks down, and Kyari frowned. A full-color holo of a pink-skinned woman with thick blue curls posed in a skimpy outfit, smiling and blowing kisses at the street on repeat under a sign that read The Twilight Court. “She’s a Zeltron?” she asked, blinking.
“Yes.”
“Oh, shit,” said Kyari, realizing. “Ohhhh. But you can’t take off your helmet!”
“Yes,” he repeated, sounding edgy.
Kyari sat back and lapsed into silence, considering this conundrum. Zeltrons were famously hedonistic pleasure-seekers with telepathic abilities who culturally shunned negative emotions and had also produced some of the most cutting-edge hologram and entertainment tech in the galaxy. They valued the beauty, purity, and honesty of a revealed body (the skimpier the clothing, the better: most of their polyamorous weddings were conducted in the nude) and distrusted people who did not show their faces or who masked their feelings, because it was viewed as dishonorable, an insulting hiding of positive emotions. Asking a Mandalorian to walk into the court of the Queen of the Underworld and ask for a repair job would be— would be—
“This is a suicide mission,” said Kyari blankly. “Would you take off the helmet if you absolutely had to?”
“If I remove my helmet, I cease to be a Mandalorian,” he said.
“So that’s a no. Why can’t we look for anyone else for repairs? There has to be at least one honest mechanic on Narsh.”
“The last thing I need is leaving a trail. I don’t need people catching on and realizing there’s a Mandalorian on Nar Shaddaa with a broken hyperdrive. Besides, I’ll run out of credits before I find a reputable mechanic.”
“Sounds like someone’s regretting coming to Nar Shaddaa after all,” she said sweetly.
He got out of his seat and leaned against the wall. “The last time I was here, it wasn’t this bad,” he muttered behind his helmet.
“When was that? Imperial days?”
“Yes,” he said, and did not elaborate.
“You don’t trust me to go alone, or I’d be able to get you the mechanic myself,” Kyari said, kicking her heels lightly against the floor. “I worked with a couple of Zeltrons, and I can talk my way into almost anything. Is there another planet in this system we could try?”
“Engines won’t hold and I have no fuel,” he said.
“Refuel here, then.”
“That costs money, and I still need a hyperdrive. Even if I could afford to get the realspace engines fixed, Nal Hutta’s worse, and there’s not many places a bounty hunter can go outside of Huttspace. Bothawui would be a good option, but the New Republic’s active there.”
“So we’re basically grounded on Nar Shaddaa? What do you suggest we do?”
“I don’t know,” he snapped, folding his arms. “I’m thinking.” The fingers closest to his blaster drummed softly, and Kyari glanced up.
“You can not just blast your way into a high-end nightclub.”
His hand stilled. “I wasn’t going to,” he said mulishly, as if he had been caught in the act.
“Great. Glad we cleared that up.” She tried to tamp down her annoyance: if he just wore a disguise like a normal person, this wouldn’t be an issue— he’s your captor, you idiot, you shouldn’t be annoyed! You should be looking for a way to get out of here! “How about…” She sighed and thumped her head back. “You said you had a backlog of other bounties, right? Why don’t you re-sell them to other bounty hunters for three-quarters of the price on the puck? It won’t be a huge cut on your end, but that’ll incentivize a sale because they’ll turn a profit. More money in your pocket.”
“Not a bad idea,” he admitted after a moment. “But you don’t get to accompany me on sales trips.”
“I promise I’ll stay right here, bantha-tied like a good girl,” she said sarcastically.
He paused, sighed deeply, and went out the door of the cockpit.
It took about four days to sell off his backlog, and by then his mood had risen considerably. Or maybe it was the steady amount of stimshots. Kyari glanced over from where she was heating up a flash-frozen meal in the onboard galley and sighed as she watched him turn his back to her, lift the bottom of his helmet to gulp down a protein tube, and inject himself in the leg at the same time. “You’re running out,” she said.
“I know.” His voice had roughened a lot over the past weeks due to lack of sleep, and he was getting jumpy.
“You know, a few more days on those and you could burst a blood vessel in your eye.”
“That’s not true.” The Mandalorian tossed the empty hypo into the growing pile in the rubbish bin. It was starting to really stink in here: unwashed bodies, artificial adrenaline, garbage— all mixed with the stench of Nar Shaddaa filtering in.
“It is too. One of my friends on Canto Bight said she knew someone who went on them for three and a half weeks straight— a pilot— and he got an erection at the two and a half week mark, and then it didn’t go away and turned black and they had to cut it off.”
The Mandalorian’s hand went to his crotch automatically as if in sympathetic response. “Stop it,” he said.
“I’m just saying!”
He paced back and forth, hands tucked into his sides, a gesture she now recognized as self-comforting, and then turned back to her. “We’re going to have to try the Twilight Court,” he said thinly. “There’s no other way.”
“I’ve been thinking about, uh, the helmet and how we can… maybe still get in there without you being kicked out,” said Kyari instantly. “Zeltrons really, really value honesty, which is associated with a bare body and face, true, but they’re also really respectful about… people’s… sexual proclivities. So… if I go in there the right way, with you, and I tell them that the helmet is, like, a fetish—”
“It’s not,” he bit off.
“Yeah, I know that! But if we act like you’re not really a Mandalorian and tell them that it’s a sexual thing for you they might be less inclined to toss us out on our asses or be super offended. And that is literally the only thing I can think of that’s workable as an… angle into this.”
“Us,” said the Mandalorian, cocking his helmet. “First of all, we are not a team, Teltaru.”
“Believe me, I know,” she shot back. “I would love to part ways with you, Mando, but not on Nar Shaddaa, and not inside the Twilight Court, and you are not getting in there without me.”
There was a pause. “Well, first you’re going to have to change,” he said, a hint of humor in his modulated voice.
They stood side by side at the entrance of the Twilight Court club, sleek shining chromium marking the entry arch. It was getting dark— Nar Shaddaa had no real sunsets because the clouds were so thick and grimy that nothing penetrated them, but the ambient greasy light had certainly started to fade. Kyari took a deep breath. She was almost grateful for the skimpier orange outfit, even though it really needed a wash: it appropriately exposed her legs and skin, and she’d tied her hair up around her head to leave her neck bare.
Beside her, the Mandalorian was as silent and covered as ever. She’d explained until she was hoarse about what he should do, how he should behave, how he should project emotionally, but he seemed completely blank to all of it until she’d mentioned that she’d probably have to touch him, and then he’d swiveled his helmet and stared at her so long she faltered. “Touch me where?” he’d asked, static-burst, half-growl.
“Wherever I have to in order to convince Impella Trix that you’re my consort. And for moon’s sake, don’t freak out and don’t talk.”
Now, she tucked her arm through the crook of his canvas-padded elbow. He was warm as a furnace under all those clothes, and he really did stink by now in the polluted heat of Nar Shaddaa— he had only showered the one time she’d been asleep. She ignored it and pushed forward brightly, smiling at the bouncers. I wish he would have let me do the leash thing. It would have been simpler to have a physical symbol of a submissive relationship in the whole mess, but he’d point blank refused, and she couldn’t really blame him. Who in their right mind would trust their captive to put a leash around their neck?
She batted her eyes at the bouncers, one Zeltron and one Twi’lek. They were very handsome, both male, the Zeltron a deep crimson color and the Twi’lek a pale orange. It had been ages since she’d seen such good-looking men. I wouldn’t mind… she thought, letting her emotions wash over the Zeltron. He gave her an up-and-down look, smiled briefly, and then looked at the Mandalorian. Kyari didn’t need to read minds to know what he was thinking, and immediately thought, as if it was natural and real: oh, no. Maybe they won’t let us in. I told him it might be too problematic to wear to a Zeltron club…
The Zeltron caught her thoughts. “I understand,” he said, nodding. “Go on in.”
“Thank you,” she breathed, batting her eyelashes, and hustled the Mandalorian past the door and down a tunnel-like hallway and into the club itself. “Okay. Step one, done,” she whispered. When they entered the main room, the huge chamber, the Mandalorian stopped in his stride abruptly, and Kyari had to drag him sideways out of the path of people walking. “What?” she hissed. He didn’t answer, just stared down into the massive, circular room, frozen, and she followed his gaze. It was like any other Zeltron-owned club, just much larger, with luxuriously padded booths, tables, a gleaming curve of bartop, a stage, and curtained off areas for personal activities, along with doors leading down to private rooms. He seemed to be focused on the three people tangled in each others’ arms in one half-curtained booth. Clearly, they were exhibitionists, but what was the issue? Kyari frowned. “Why did you stop?” she asked through her teeth, smiling pleasantly in an effort to keep her emotions steady and positive. “Never seen a public threesome before?”
“No,” he said thickly.
“Just make sure your emotions aren’t betraying you, okay? I can work with nervous and jumpy, I can work with curious. I can’t work with fear and disgust because someone’s wiwi spooked you.”
“I’m not disgusted.”
“Great. Let’s find a table.” She marched him over to the closest unoccupied booth, where he sank down into plush upholstery. “I’ll get a drink. Sit here and… just try to emanate pleasant vibes, okay?”
He did not argue, and she scurried to the bar, ordered a couple of very overpriced Tarkeenian Nightflowers, and headed right back to the table. The Mandalorian was sitting right where she’d left him, and the steady, deep rise and fall of his chest was the only indication that he was extremely on edge, but the Zeltrons passing by were giving him the oddest looks— almost… coy, a lot of grins. What in three hells was going on? “You okay?” she asked softly, sliding him a Nightflower.
“No,” he said thickly. His hands were shaking.
“Are you— are you going through stimshot withdrawal at a time like this?”
“Maybe.”
It was all she could do to keep her mental clarity focused on pleasant feelings. “That explains why everyone’s giving you those looks,” she said.
“What looks?”
“They’re mistaking your symptoms for— for really strong sexual excitement. Similar emotions, you know, and similar physical responses. I—”
A handsome Zeltron man and his human boyfriend paused by the table, smiling and casting intrigued glances at the masked stranger. Both of them were wearing almost nothing, and the Mandalorian froze. “Hi,” said the Zeltron, one arm around his partner’s shoulders. Kyari caught a whiff of his pheromones, deep and musk-powdery, and fought to keep herself under control: he must have sensed her, because he grinned. “These seats taken?”
“Actually,” said Kyari, returning the smile and gesturing casually at the Mandalorian, “this is his first ever visit here, and he’s getting a little overwhelmed. Maybe in a couple hours.”
“Aw, pity,” said the boyfriend, nibbling at the other man’s ear with a grin. “Ooh. Bondage mask?”
“You guessed it,” said Kyari, leaning across the table with a wink. “I was so worried that someone would be offended, but we can’t help what gets us off, can we?”
“Oh, we all have our thing,” said the first man, reaching down to twitch aside the skimpy piece of mesh fabric that was definitely-not-quite hiding his cock. He lifted himself up so that Kyari could see the piercings marching down in a line from the head to the base. “Mine’s this,” he said throatily, catching his lip in his teeth and grinning.
Kyari laced her fingers under her chin and gave him a sugary-sweet smile as she sipped her Nightflower, wrapping her tongue around the straw. “Ooooh, it’s gorgeous,” she said, and she wasn’t lying: the gold contrasted with the deep red skin of his genitals in a striking way. “You go get a drink. I’ll find you later.”
“If he lets you out of his sight,” said the boyfriend, glancing over at the Mandalorian, who sat like a statue. “He wants you bad.”
Kyari had been experienced at controlling her emotions since she was seven, but even so, it took a massive effort to consciously and quickly turn her surprise into excitement. If either of them noticed, they didn’t say a word: maybe the Mandalorian’s emotions, ripping through the telepathic waves between him and the two Zeltron men, were so loud that they were overriding her own. “I know,” she purred, snuggling closer to the Mandalorian, who was trembling where he sat: whether it was stimshot comedown or something else, she couldn’t tell, but the two men were grinning and waving and moving away, and she turned to him, marking the other bright and interested faces glancing at them in every color from palest pink to dark deep red. Her voice dropped into a whisper. “Can you please tone it down? We don’t need every Zeltron in a three klick radius coming over here and propositioning us.”
“I don’t,” he said thickly, the body beneath the canvas and padded clothing trembling.
“You don’t what?”
“I don’t— I didn’t— I—”
“Mando,” she said softly, putting her hand on his forearm. He flinched, air gusting in a burst of fuzzy static out of his vocal modulator. “Breathe. It’s fine. You’re doing great.”
“I’m not,” he choked.
“What’s wrong?”
The helmet swiveled toward her. “Something private.”
“Wh…” Kyari paused, considered, and moved her hand down to his thigh slowly, like he was a bantha that might startle. “Can I check?” she whispered, and waited for him to give a sharp, short nod before sliding her hand to the center of his lap. Her fingers bumped into the muffled shape of his cock underneath heavy-duty cloth, hard as durasteel, and as she mapped out the length and width of him, trying to get a bearing on the problem, he sucked in air and leaned back, spreading his knees to… give her more access? “Mando?” she asked quietly, her hand pausing.
“Is it. Going to fall off.” His tone was flat, clipped off, tight.
“How long’s it been like that?”
“Since… right before we walked in.”
“Then no. Not yet, anyway. You need a system depressant. Drink the Nightflower.” She leaned forward, reached for the full drink, and slid the glass over to him.
“I can’t. I am in a room with hundreds of sentient beings: I cannot remove my helmet.”
“We’re in a high-backed booth. Nobody can see you if you turn around and face me.”
“I can’t, ” he repeated, strained.
“I can close my eyes or look away if you want. But if you don’t get some kind of depressant into your system quick, I can’t promise your dick won’t—”
He silently sat forward, snatched the glass up in a gloved hand, turned to face her, and gripped the bottom rim of his helmet with the other hand. “Keep your eyes on the crowd,” he rasped, and lifted it swiftly, tilting his head back to down the Nightflower all at once.
Kyari kept her eyes sweeping from side to side as the seal of the helmet hissed, doing her best to think pleasant, sexual, excited thoughts, but she didn’t have to really try anymore when she caught the barest glimpse of his face. Not much of his face. Just some of his mouth and chin and part of his neck as he tilted his head back. But his mouth was a surprisingly nice mouth: small and expressive. He had a defined bow to the upper lip, the corners of his mouth turned down, and he had scruffy, patchy facial hair, dark brown speckled with silver, dusted along the curve of his jaw and chin and upper lip. Not a bad-looking mouth at all. Then he put the helmet back down, re-sealing it, and set the glass on the table, turning back toward the open end of the booth. “Give it a minute. You’ll feel better,” she told him, sipping at her own drink.
The music started, but it wasn’t club-thumping, loud music that would leave ears ringing for hours afterward: it was theremin music, soft and wavery and sensual, almost eerie in its tone. Lights came down, illuminating the place in gold and purple, and Kyari leaned forward, watching with interest as a platform descended from the ceiling over the stage, glittering strips of confetti falling like a rain of diamonds. I guess we found Impella Trix. The woman on the platform was smiling brightly, blue curls perfect, gold light washing her pink skin to something near orange, and her costume was both beautifully regal and incredibly nonexistent. Gold and silver paint covered the few square centimeters of skin absolutely necessary, and the rest was all ornamental jewelry: an electrum cuff around her neck and wrists and hips, arcs of metal curling around her thighs. She dismounted the platform to enormous applause.
“Welcome, welcome, to the Twilight Court!” she called out, her voice beautiful and soft. The customers applauded as if it was an opera. “We have some wonderful entertainment planned for you tonight, and as always, inquire with a booking agent about our private rooms if you are interested. Please, eat and drink and be happy! ”
“She seems nice,” said Kyari.
“We have to talk to her,” said the Mandalorian, focused on the stage.
“We have to wait. She’s the owner, she’ll probably hang around and say hello and then go to a more private area. Haven’t you ever been in a club before?”
“I’ve been in lots of clubs,” he said.
“I mean for classy entertainment, not for snatching up— oh, wow.” Kyari let her voice trail off as a naked, gorgeous man got on stage and began to do an acrobatic routine with two equally-stunning female partners. Midnight-blue and white paint dabbed on his thighs and elbows marked their bodies in deliberate patterns as they all touched, bent over, cartwheeled, and by the end of the routine they proudly showed off the image that had been painted on their bodies as a composite as they bent and touched elbows and knees and locked arms together to bring it all together, forming a copy of a famous classical painting: Alu-bi Gurzan’s Coruscanti Peak. Applause filled the club. “See, this is a really nice, high-end place. A club like this. ” I’d kill to be able to work here. Wow.
The next show was a scarlet-skinned woman doing an aerial dance routine that involved a lot of silk scarves and a gold hoop. Above the audience’s heads, other women descended, kicking and swinging, nude and smiling. The Mandalorian gazed upward. He had not moved from Kyari’s side, his hip pressed against hers, and she thought maybe he was freaking out just a little. “They must be very strong,” he said noncommittally.
“They are,” she said, watching muscle twist and stretch under smooth, oiled skin. That bit ended, and there was a music break, so Kyari went back to the bar and got two Jet Juice shots, dodging other patrons as she returned to the booth. “Okay, got you a Jet Juice this time. It does have a kick to it. Spice liquor. Here.”
He did not bother protesting about his helmet this time, but turned around anyway to face her and not the rest of the room as he lifted the helmet and threw back the shot with a grimace. He had really good teeth, she thought, surprised. Even and straight, no discoloration or any missing ones. “Little kick,” he said dismissively as he pulled the helmet back down. “Not bad.”
“You feeling better yet?”
“I think so.” He flexed his hands. “Less jumpy.”
“Good.” She refrained from asking about the state of his genitals. A head of blue curls was moving around tables. “I think Trix is making the rounds. Don’t say anything, let me do the talking.” A short nod was all she got in reply, and then Impella Trix was sweeping up to their table with two crimson-skinned bouncers, beaming brightly.
“Good evening!” she said, delighted.
“Oh, Madam Trix,” said Kyari instantly, genuinely excited to finally see this woman up close and in person. “It is so kind of you to come over and say hello.” A pair of purple eyes briefly glanced over at the Mandalorian, who sat still as a rock, but that warm smile never faltered. “Please forgive my attire,” continued Kyari. “It was all I had that was appropriate, but I didn’t want to offend, especially since my partner…”
“Oh, yes,” said Impella Trix, nodding. “I was informed we had a newcomer with a penchant for being covered in the Court: what an absolutely fascinating tweak of the human psyche. And you are so kind to apologize for your clothing, darling— you look lovely— but I am ever so fascinated by this… dynamic!” She leaned in slightly, focusing on the Mandalorian, and Kyari put every thought out of her head but excitement and nervousness at meeting the woman. “Yes,” said Trix finally, smiling. “Oh, he’s a gem in the rough, this one. So much pent-up sexual energy, and nowhere to put it. Clinging to that helmet like a soother. Delicious.”
“Exactly,” said Kyari, smiling. Where the hell is this going?
“And you two have the most interesting relationship. Such a… fascinating power dynamic between the pair of you. The trust, the… push and pull.” Impella Trix tilted her head and licked her lips. “And you haven’t even taken him to bed yet!” The Mandalorian stiffened, but she ignored it. “You absolutely must participate when they put on the Scarlet Lamp, and I want you two to come to my private salon after. One floor up. Give the bouncer this and he’ll take you.” She slid a deep purple slip of duraplast embossed with the silver seal of the Twilight Court to Kyari, who took it gratefully. “And I’ll get you a new set of clothing, darling, especially after the Scarlet Lamp.” She called a staff member over. “You here, get this table another round of drinks and some food. Thank you. Ooh, what fun!” She tossed her blue curls, gave Kyari another smile, and swanned off through the crowd to the next table, which Kyari was gratified to notice she did not stay at nearly as long.
“Okay,” she whispered to the Mandalorian. “We’ll get the chance to talk to her later. Eat something before the alcohol hits you too hard.” He didn’t have to be told twice: the food came, and he discreetly lifted up the bottom of his helmet to shove a handful of veg crisps in. The lights had started to dim gradually, in imitation of a sunset, and in the shadows, nobody could see his exposed mouth— not even Kyari. She sipped at her own Jet Juice and eyed up the third set of drinks. They were a light purple color— must be a Violet Nebula. Before she could decide, the Mandalorian had grabbed one and tossed it back in a gulp. “Three hells, Mando. Slow it down.”
He said nothing in response to that, just sat back and almost braced himself, like someone was going to pounce on him from the front. “I do not have pent-up sexual energy,” he said.
“She’s obviously reading your current psychological state as arousal. Remember? We talked about this. Don’t take it personally.”
Another show started. This one was four Twi’lek women drinking wine off each other’s lekku, which Kyari had to admit was a very delicate business and not easily done. They got a standing ovation when it was done, and she glanced over to the Mandalorian, who was looking at the table, helmet tilted down. “I have to get out of here,” he said thickly.
“I told you not to drink so fast. Are you going to puke?”
“No. I—”
The last vestiges of the fake sunset light died, plunging everyone into soft darkness, lit only by tiny white lights overhead like stars. In the dark, Kyari reached out and touched the Mandalorian’s arm, in the crook of his elbow, and rubbed at him, trying to be soothing. It wasn’t easy: he was buried under tons of canvas padding. “You’re fine,” she whispered.
And, astonishingly, his gloved hand came down on hers, the thumb gliding over her knuckles before his fingers tightened around her hand— but only for the briefest second, because soft music started, and a beautiful Zeltron girl with long lilac hair floated out onto the stage, lit by a soft gold light as she pointed dramatically at the ceiling, which parted and opened, lowering down a canopy of blown-glass lamps. The lamps, dark at first, began to glow and shimmer a pale lilac, which deepened to pink, spreading outward from the center, then changing softly, lamp by lamp, to rose. He let go of her hand the moment the lights came up. Kyari looked over at the Mandalorian. His helmet was upturned as he stared at the lamps, the deep pink reflecting off his helmet and visor like smears of a sunrise. On went the music, deep, seductive strains of Naboo cello and theremin. Did his visor mute color, she wondered? Did he have some kind of display inside to tell him exactly what the hue and mix was, or could he see it? Rose deepened to red, and a sudden jolt of realization went through her: was this the Scarlet Lamp that Trix had mentioned? What exactly did participating entail?
She got her answer pretty quickly when a group about four tables away started all kissing each other at the same time, clothes slipping off, bodies slipping up to the table, and another group sitting closer to the stage started doing the same thing. The lights drenched them, cast everything in soft rosy hues. A woman at the table near the stage got up and sat on the table nude, and the Twi’lek woman with her bent and started eating her out. Kyari turned to the Mandalorian. “We have to get up on the table,” she said tightly.
“What?”
Kyari gestured to the two tables. “Look at them. Trix said we needed to participate before we came to her private salon.”
“No.”
She leaned in close. “Do you want your kriffing engines fixed or not, Mando?” He did not move. Trying again, Kyari cast her voice in a lower tone. “You don’t have to look at anyone but me. You don’t even have to look at me. You can close your eyes. I’ll help you.”
A breath, ragged and panicky, burst past his modulator. “It… hurts,” he forced out at last.
“What does?”
He reached out, took her wrist, and drew her hand jerkily, uncertainly toward his crotch. Below the thick material of his padded clothing, he was still hard, and Kyari closed her eyes, silently exulting in the fact that she, at least, was not going to have to work her ass off to get him up. “Help me,” he croaked, his voice blurry through his helmet. “Please.”
You could not pay me to put my face down there, she thought, and nodded. “I’m going to help you,” she whispered. The music was loud enough to drown out the sex noises from the other tables, which she was grateful for: she needed to focus on this. “Kriffing stimshots,” she whispered, exasperated, and felt around to unsnap the catch of his pants, tugging down the closure until she had exposed him fully by feel alone under the table. He was hot to the touch, sticky with dried sweat, and she could feel his pulse, heavy and rapid. A young male employee wearing a gold mesh knotted hipcloth and nothing else swept by discreetly with a sani-wipe and a hot towel, dropping one at every participating table, and Kyari grabbed them both gratefully, wiping the exposed flesh in her hands with the sani-wipe until the Mandalorian was clean, then putting the hot towel to the side as she slid down on her knees between his legs and pushing the table back so she was halfway visible to any interested patron’s eyes. Plan changed. Handjob avoided. Mouth it is. Being on display seemed to be an important part of the participation element. The Mandalorian was frozen, his breath coming in heaving pants as he sat there with his legs apart and his hands planted on the seat. “Okay,” she said softly, tugging his pants open a little more. He was an adequate size, but making out details was difficult in the shadows. Heavy in her hand, broad, hot. That was all. “Make as much or as little noise as you want. It’s okay.”
The only answer she got was what could have been a whimper, furry with static, and then she was bending in, licking hot clean skin, running her tongue over the head of him and around him in gentle sweeps. He made no sound, just sat there as tense as a viol string, and when she tilted her head forward to suck him into her mouth, pulling back and pushing forward, the Mandalorian made a sound like he’d been stabbed and one gloved hand finally left the upholstery to grab at her head, fingers thickly tangling in the coil of hair she’d braided up. That’s better, she thought, and continued her movement as he clumsily guided her with a shaking hand, up and down, up and down. Up; a breath: down; her nose buried in crisp hair that had the slightest odor of sweat and body odor still clinging to it. Up and down, up and—
The Mandalorian clenched his thighs together tight around her body and let out a choked off sound, almost a bark, and then it was like she could feel his twitching muscles moving somewhere in in the flesh stuffed in her mouth a split second before he came, aborted little uh-uh-uh static noises shaking out of his helmet’s voice modulator as warm, faintly salty-tasting come flooded her mouth. But he didn’t let go of her head. Kyari gagged, controlled herself, and forcibly pulled back, panting for air herself as another burst of come painted itself across her cheek and down her throat and over her top. His hand slid out of her hair, his thighs shaking, and he lay there, fully armored and clothed apart from the cock jutting out of his pants at an angle, casting an obscene-looking shadow from the crimson lights overhead on his belly. It looked silly, in an almost juvenile way. He was trembling all over. “You’re fine,” she whispered, clearing her throat. “Here.” The hot towel was close by: Kyari picked it up and cleaned herself off, then him. “See? You’re fine. Breathe.” Short, sharp little choking sounds were coming from the helmet. Was he crying? Oh, moons. “Mando, pull it together. Shh. I’m right here.” She reached for his knee, patting him gently. “I know. It’s a lot.”
He sucked in a breath, sat up, swayed for a moment, and did his pants back up. “Don’t,” he hissed. “Don’t touch me.”
Instantly, Kyari took her hand away. “I’m so sorry. What—”
“What w-was th— mouth on— you—” He barely seemed able to talk, and she sat there on her haunches, bewildered, before the Zeltron man from earlier in the night (alone this time) came sliding over to the table, eyes lowered with delight, and with nowhere to go, the Mandalorian remained where he was in the booth as Kyari enthusiastically returned the Zeltron’s offered kisses.
“I’m Iric,” he said softly, laying her flat out on the table. “And you, sweetheart, need to get rid of these nasty old clothes—”
Well, Kyari couldn’t argue with that, and he was very good-looking and smelled like heaven. Iric stripped her naked, bent down, and started eating her out, fingers pressing into her body in a way she’d been craving for weeks. This was good: transactional, devoid of any uncomfortable personal connection, and so physically gratifying.
After her first two orgasms, she turned her head. The Mandalorian was watching, frozen, his chest rising and falling with heavy, thick breaths, and both hands were clenched into fists as he sat there watching her get railed three feet away. That’s how it feels, asshole, she thought victoriously, remembering the incident in the cockpit. She made sure to make as much noise as she wanted. Fair’s fair.
“Oh, he’s jealous, ” moaned Iric, grinning. “And he’s getting off on it. I love voyeurism, don’t you?
Was he really? Good. “Technically, he’s the voyeur, and we’re the exhibitionists,” said Kyari, tangling her fingers in Iric’s hair as he crawled forward up her body and sucked hard at her right nipple, which made her yelp. She had a sudden thought— what if Iric fucked her over the table so she was facing the Mandalorian, able to look right at him— what would he do? Lose it?
“Oh, there’s a thought,” Iric growled, and thank the heavens for telepaths, because the next thing Kyari knew she was being flipped over on her belly, resting on her forearms, toes scraping the carpet as Iric pumped into her from behind, and she did have to admit the piercings added a little something to the sex, even behind the barrier he was using.
All she could see was the Mandalorian’s helmet, his clenched fists. “Look at me,” she panted, and she didn’t know why she said it, but he leaned forward, as if hypnotized, until the curve of his helmet touched her brow. She closed her eyes and let the noises just pour out as a gloved hand cupped her cheek, holding her steady: as Iric said a bunch of dumb stuff about how good she felt. She forgot everything but the T-shaped visor in front of her, the thought of those lips she’d caught a glimpse of on hers—
And then Iric finished. The moment faded. He wiped his forehead with an arm and offered to buy them both a round, and she was so breathless and sweaty that the Mandalorian had to accept the offer for her, and then the lights faded and people were applauding politely and several groups were pairing off, slowly, trickling into private rooms as the seductive music continued.
Iric brought the drinks back, but he didn’t stick around, just gave Kyari a cheeky wink and went back to his own table. Thank the moons, too, because that would have been awkward. She folded the used wet towel to a clean side and sat on it, breathing heavily and resting on her elbows as she gulped down the Chandrilian Charblossom and scraped tendrils of sweaty hair out of her eyes. “Okay,” she said when she could think, trying not to make eye contact with the Mandalorian, because what in three hells had that been? “I think we should— find the private salon.”
“Yes,” said the Mandalorian roughly. He lifted the bottom of his helmet and sucked down the tall, slim glass of pink liquor in one go.
“Okay, great.” Her clothes were on the floor, but she didn’t care. Everyone else was naked by now. Kyari found the purple slip of duraplast and held it tightly. “Let’s go. Stick close, please.”
He didn’t respond verbally, but he slid out of the booth on just-barely unsteady boots and waited until she was up, then followed her closely to the bouncer. Kyari showed the slip, and was escorted to a small, luxurious turbolift which had overhead lights that were a soft, sunrise-gold glow, but still seemed too bright for eyes used to the warm dark of the club. It was small, and she had to stand close to the Mandalorian. Without any clothes on. Great.
“Are you okay?” she asked tentatively, afraid to look at him.
Again, no answer. Kyari thought maybe he was upset— hadn’t Impella Trix said he had pent-up sexual energy with nowhere to put it? She lowered her head a little, unsure of what to say, but then she felt his gloved hand: his fingers, the ridge of seam in the ochre-colored leather as they trailed softly up her spine, to her shoulder blades, and back down.
Oh. Huh. She swallowed and turned her head, parting her lips to say— something, but then the lift doors were open and they were in a gorgeous room— something like a really big sitting room, low-lit, a desk with a huge electrum-chased chair along one wall, low padded couches in purple and gold everywhere in floor depressions, and dozens of people having torrid sex with each other. It smelled heavily of incense, pheromones, and the musk of body fluids. Impella Trix was sitting at the desk, looking almost bored, but as they approached down the center aisle, she stood up, beaming.
“Oooh, the human! And her helmeted pet! I absolutely adored it,” she said, kissing Kyari on the cheeks. “What a picture you two made. I think all of my people were so focused on the intensity of you two that they forgot to pay attention to a single other thing. My, my. Oh, you’ve lost your poor clothes. That’s all right. And you’re a wreck! Ah, that’s how you know it was a good time, no?” She winked, and Kyari had to smile: she really was the kind of person who put you at ease instantly. But there were an awful lot of Zeltrons in here, all giving them almost greedy looks. She wondered about that.
“Is there anything at all I can do for you, Madam Trix?” she asked, knowing how this went. “I am just so honored to be asked up here.”
“Oh, my darling, just one teensy thing,” said Impella, fussing over Kyari’s hair. “In fact, I’ve prepared a private room just for you two. With fresh clothing, and an en-suite. I want all my closest friends to experience when you two finally consummate your relationship. You’ve no idea how rare it is that we get someone with exactly the sort of… dynamic flavor, you know, especially on Nar Shaddaa... Telepathy is a curse so often, darling. A curse. And we’re so hungry for a good… I don’t even know how to describe it to someone without telepathy. When someone makes a breakthrough of any kind, you know, but especially in a sexual context— especially— oh, it’s like seeing a sunrise. Like listening to a crescendo on the most beautiful piece of music. Even better than a Ryloth orgy.” She clasped her pink hands and rolled her purple eyes heavenward. “And when you’re through giving us such an incredible gift, I would be more than happy to give you anything you desire. I have so much at my disposal, darling.”
Kyari tucked her hand into the Mandalorian’s frozen arm and beamed. “Oh, Madam Trix, I would be happy to. I’m sure we can think of something to ask for.”
“Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Take as much time as you need.” And then they were escorted off pst a curtain and up a flight of shirt stairs into a bedroom, and the door was shut, and Kyari collapsed on the plush low bench at the foot of the enormous bed and covered her face as the Mandalorian stood in the middle of the floor like he’d been hit with a stunbolt.
“Oh, moons,” she said finally, pulling her face out of her palms. “Great. We’ll get what we want as long as we fuck each other, that’s just—”
“Yes, I heard her,” said the Mandalorian tersely.
“Sorry. Yes. Don’t forget to keep your emotions, you know.” Kyari affected a bright smile and pointed at her face, then let it fall. “Okay, well. I’m taking advantage of the shower and the clothes.”
She did not wait for him to answer, but got up and went to the bathroom, shutting the door, and used a decent fresher for the first time in days. After that, she got into the walk-in shower, which had marble walls, a meter-square rainfall ceiling, scented water, soap, shampoo, conditioner, and everything she could ever want. Kyari took her sweet time, washing every inch of skin, and stepped out, towel-drying her wet hair with thick, plush Hosnian cotsilk. This is the best shower of my life.
When she stepped back out into the sleeping and lounge area in the sleeveless transparent green thing that had been left for her, he was exactly where she had left him, standing in the middle of the floor, full armor, helmet, boots. “You need to shower,” she said firmly.
“I may not remove my helmet in the presence of—”
“You reek. There is a door. Close it and shower.”
He reached up and unclasped his cloak. Then, off came the plate armor, piece by careful piece, laid out on the floor against the far wall and the couch there. Kyari watched as he removed his boots next, then his gloves, and finally, with only the helmet and his quilted, thick shirt and pants left (and by now the smell of stale body odor was filling the air, activating the automatic air freshener and the low hum of the scrubbers) he walked to the shower, slid the door shut, and firmly latched it.
There was food and drink provided, so Kyari figured she might as well take advantage of their host’s generosity. She knocked back a Corellian whisky, ate a plate of roasted meat slices and grilled vegetables with red and blue cheese and a bowl of fruit, and had started in on a glass of wine when a voice from the other side of the bathroom door said, “Teltaru?”
She halted. Her head was pleasantly swimmy and her body warm and loose by now, but it seemed like… like that voice hadn’t been filtered through a vocal modulator. “Mando?” she called, getting up and almost spilling her wine. “You okay?”
“I need…” he trailed off, and she went to the door.
“I’m right here.” Kyari put her hand on the door, feeling almost dizzy: just a thin barrier of duraplast separated her from his naked face. Why did this feel more titillating and taboo than being railed on a club table in public a foot away from him? Her heart rate sped up a little, heavy and hard. “Mando? I’m here.”
She could hear movement. Then, his voice, an inch from hers, on the other side of the bathroom door. “I’m drunk,” he said faintly.
Kyari knelt down. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. And me too. I mean, I had another drink or two while you were showering.”
“I haven’t yet.”
“Hm?”
“Shower. I can’t… focus. Enough. To— to—” He grunted softly, and there was a sound like he’d plunked his bare forehead against the door. “I need help,” he mumbled.
Kyari closed her eyes, wondering what the best thing to do in this situation was. He was not wearing his helmet, and that was apparently a big deal in his culture. The biggest rule among the Children of the Watch: you don’t take off your helmet in front of anyone. But maybe there were exceptions, in the case of an emergency. She’d never asked, because it had never come up. “Are you asking me to come in there and help?”
There was a long silence. Then, he mumbled, “Yeah,” in a raspy voice, slurred, half-helpless. “Please.”
“Without your helmet on?”
Another longer silence stretched out. “Please,” he whispered, so soft that she barely heard it, and then the door unlatched and Kyari got to her feet, but got really lightheaded for a second, so when she slid the door open she wasn’t looking at him, she was stumbling sideways and bracing herself on the sink as her head swam. When she’d collected herself, she drew in a breath and looked up— and there he was, reflected in the mirror.
Helmeted again, still dressed in his protective layer of clothing, and she wanted to laugh but couldn’t bring herself to. “Did you put that bucket back on before I got in here?”
“Yeah.” He sounded like an embarrassed child, but he swayed on his feet, one hand splayed out against the wall. Socks, bare hands. He looked naked without gloves and boots. Wrong. She turned to face him and reached for him so he wouldn’t slip.
“Socks off, Mando. Let’s get out of these dirty clothes, okay?”
“Okay,” he mumbled, and let her guide him to the commode and sit him down on the shut lid. As Kyari knelt between his ankles, she reflected that it had been almost this same position she’d been in when she had put her mouth on him, only an hour or so ago, only now she was peeling off his filthy socks and tossing them under the sink. His head bent forward heavily, as if the helmet was too heavy. “Teltaru.”
“Hm?”
“Thank you.” His head lifted slightly, and he took another breath, rasped with static.
“Sure. What next?”
A breath. Labored, slow, heavy. “Shirt,” he said finally, plucking at the collar with a bare hand, and Kyari got up on her knees, carefully undoing the closures and opening it on the diagonal, peeling off the panels, pushing it off his shoulders.
The skin on his chest and abdomen was sunlessly pale with golden-dark undertone to it, the flat soft nipples on his nicely-developed chest a warm, dark brown, and hair tufted his sternum and belly in a sparse dark thatch that was plastered down with weeks worth of dried sweat and grime. Several round, pocked burn scars littered one flank and both arms, higher up, where the armor had not protected him from some long-ago barrage of blasterfire, and a scar puckered his skin on his left side, near his ribs. Kyari reached out and touched the line of twisted, discolored flesh without thinking, her fingertips just barely grazing it, and the Mandalorian stiffened, shuddering. “Sorry,” she whispered, pulling her hand back. “Looks like it hurt.”
“It did,” he said thinly. “Pants.”
“Sure.” Kyari undid his pants, and he shifted his hips, helping her slide the thick material off him. “You think they have a laundry service here?”
“I don’t know.” He sucked in air as she peeled him out of his pants, leaning his helmeted head over against the side of the wall with a thunk. “I didn’t… know you were going to do that with your mouth,” he said faintly, slurring his words.
“I— oh. I—” Her foggy brain rewound, landed on the scene. “I thought it was obvious. I was kneeling with my face in front of your—”
“I didn’t know people could do that. I—” The Mandalorian cut himself off and crossed his arms in a protective gesture, his thighs tense. If he could, she thought, he’d curl into a ball.
“I’m sorry,” said Kyari immediately. “I didn’t realize— I should have warned you beforehand. Just so you know, I’m not planning on doing… that, um, right now.” She put a hand on his ankle, which was the closest body part that she could touch that he wouldn’t flinch at, and he breathed deep, then let it out. Static, crackle, fuzz. “You want help getting into the shower?”
“Bathing necessitates removal of my helmet,” he said.
“Oh. Okay—”
His helmet rolled until the visor was aimed at her. “But right now I cannot stand… without assistance. Or wash myself.”
Kyari’s skin felt prickly. Hot all over, too tight. “Are you… asking me to help you or not?”
“I…” His voice trailed off into nothing, and his body sagged a little, as if he’d fallen asleep— passed out, more likely— and then he jerked back upright with a gagging noise.
Kyari’s body knew what was happening before her mind caught up. That helmet was airtight. If he was sick in the helmet, he’d choke on his own sick, and if he suffocated she was stuck on this planet with no way off. It was not even a question: she grabbed him, hauled him forward off the fresher, turned him around, and tugged the helmet upward one-handed to break the seal as she shoved the lid up and bent him forward over the commode.
His body convulsed as he gripped the bottom of the helmet in one clumsy hand and pulled it off, planting his whole face into the bowl and hurling up everything he’d eaten and drunk with a nasty splashing noise. The helmet heavily clunked against the wall, on the floor, empty of his head. All Kyari could see of his face was dark brown hair, matted down with sweat, softly curling at the nape of his neck. “You’re okay,” she said desperately, patting his bare, grimy back. “You’re okay. Easy does it.”
The Mandalorian groaned, maintaining a white-knuckled grip on the fresher, and then the gagging stopped, replaced with moans and gasps for air. Kyari wasn’t paying attention to the sounds, mostly— she was staring at his back, which was crisscrossed with old pale scars like roads over his skin, blasterfire scars, bruises not quite healed yet, still yellowy-green. Then he threw up again, and she stood, ran a washcloth under the cold water, squeezed the excess water out, and placed it gently over the back of his neck. “Stimshot,” he croaked hollowly, still face-down, and how different his voice sounded out of the helmet! Still a slight rasp to it, warm and low and even, but stripped down, somehow.
“Hmm?”
“Stimshot comedown. Plus… a lot of system depressant. Bad combination.”
“I’ll get you water,” said Kyari immediately.
“Don’t go,” he moaned, shaking his head.
“I’ll be right back.” She got up and went back into the bedroom, poured a tall glass of water, and brought it back in to him, setting it down on the tile by the commode. “That’s for when you think you can keep it down.”
He shifted his body, still kneeling, and remained where he was until she put her hand on his shoulder. Then he sighed deeply, pulled his face out of the fresher, and reached for the water, tugging it toward him and slopping some over the side as he lifted it and drained it in one long breath.
Kyari was afraid to look at him. Don’t the legends say that the Mandalorians of old used to kill those who saw them unmasked? Do his people follow that? No, she couldn’t think that— moons, she’d forgotten all about the Zeltrons listening in to her emotions at the moment. Hopefully they were getting something out of the Mandalorian’s queasy stomach and her own uncertainty, because this was not—
And then he turned and looked at her, and she looked right back and thought, with some blank surprise, oh.
Just a man, after all. Like he’d said. I’m human. And he was. Patchy, scruffy beard at his chin and his upper lip and cheeks and jaw, that almost pouting mouth that curved down at the corners— these she recognized. Everything above his mouth was new, so Kyari took it all in. His nose was softly hooked, mirroring the gentle protrusion of his chin in a way she could actually appreciate now. Below the smashed-flat curls of his sweaty dark hair, a pair of guarded dark eyes framed by low brows found hers. He certainly looked his estimated thirty-eight years, maybe more: lines creased the outer corners of his eyes, lines marked out the path from the outer edges of his nose to the corners of his downturned mouth, and silver threaded his dark hair and his patchy short beard.
She didn’t know what to do. What to say. What he wanted her to say or do. But there were stains of bile on his chin, caked in his facial hair, so Kyari reached out, as slowly as she could, to take the wet cloth off the back of his neck.
Her fingers grazed his skin. The Mandalorian pulled air into his nose sharply and froze as she drew the cloth forward again and carefully wiped his mouth clean, got all the sick off him, got up and washed out the cloth and sat back down. “When you feel okay to stand,” she said quietly, “I’ll help you into the shower.”
A breath. A second. His eyes were fixed on her. What do you want? What can I do? The air-freshener whirred on, filling the room with an odor neutralizer and the scent of Princess’s Heart, native to vanished Alderaan, rare and sweet and heady-musk. The Mandalorian’s nostrils flared subtly as he caught it. “I’m ready,” he said finally, and Kyari clambered to her feet, helped him up, got him into the shower, and flicked the water on. It didn’t matter that she was going to get her clothing wet: there was more where it had come from. There was a helpful bench built into the wall (which was almost definitely used for sex, now that Kyari considered it) that she sat him down on, and under the pouring, hot rainfall, he seemed to relax, still looking at her and never taking his gaze off her as she soaped up a cloth and handed it to him, then reached down and used her fingertips to work his greasy hair out of its plastered-on cast of sweat and dead skin without really thinking about it: this was what you did to bathe someone, right?
Except his reaction was definitely not what she expected. He gasped in air in a half-cry, reached up, grabbed her by the wrist, and she must have slipped because in the ensuing half-wrestle she ended up on one knee at his feet, staring up at him as water poured off his face in rivers. “Mando,” she said, trembling. Oh, moons. He’s going to kill me like I thought. “Mando. I’m just washing you. I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“What?” he choked out, and then she noticed that, between his legs, a particular situation she’d thought she’d already handled had sprung up again, and then she realized he hadn’t thought she was trying to harm him. He’d been overwhelmed and reacted the only way he knew how: push away, neutralize.
“Shh,” she crooned, watching his eyelids flicker, his chest heave. “Hey. Easy, Mando.”
The Mandalorian glanced down at his own crotch. “S-stimshots,” he muttered by way of explanation, unconvincingly.
“Can you please let me up?” He released her wrist, and Kyari got back to her feet, rubbing her arm. “Do you want me to leave so you can wash your own hair, or—”
“No,” said the Mandalorian so swiftly that she paused, blinking. “No.”
“You… want me to do it?” she asked cautiously, prodding.
“Yes.” Dark eyes darted up to hers.
“Are you going to grab me again?”
He weighed it. The genuine consideration was clear as day in his eyes. “Maybe,” he admitted.
“Three hells. Okay.” Kyari squeezed a dollop of shampoo into her hand and carefully lathered up his hair, but he didn’t grab her, just froze where he sat. She couldn’t see his face, either. Maybe that was just as well: he was not a good hider of his emotions at all… but she guessed maybe that was to be expected from a man who lived his life in a helmet. His hair was so filthy that the soap didn’t lather, so she rinsed him and washed him a second time, massaging her fingertips deeply along his scalp. This time, the Mandalorian made a sound like he’d been hit in the gut and leaned against the marble wall, one arm up, fist clenched, forehead pressed into his elbow. “Am I hurting you?” she whispered, pausing.
“No.” It came out like a sob. Torn, ragged.
Easy. Go slow, don’t poke. “It doesn’t sound like I’m not hurting you. Do you want me to stop?”
“No,” he gasped, shaking his head and pushing it upward against her still hands like an akk-dog desperate to be petted. “No. I don’t.”
Kyari murmured, “Okay,” and kept washing his hair, careful and slow, making sure to massage every inch of scalp and hair. By the time she was done, the Mandalorian had both hands upraised against the marble, hands curled into fists, his breath coming loud and uneven. “Rinse,” she said, and tugged him to lean back into the stream of water, which resulted in his body pressed up against hers, back to chest. He closed his eyes, chest heaving, and reached up to grip her wrist— for a moment, she thought he’s going to push me away again, but he simply… held her there, his fingers shaking.
“Your name,” he said, once the soap had cleared from his soaked hair, but he didn’t open his eyes.
“What?”
“Your name. I didn’t just pick the… bounty. Your bounty, because of… the price.”
“You… picked it because of my name?” He was warm, and she didn’t care that the rest of him still smelled like a dump as she held him upright against her in the shower. “What do you mean?”
“It… looks like a word in Mando’a. Shareeka.” Or at least, that’s what she thought he said. “It’s also pronounced almost the same. The only difference is a few… letters. Your name starts with a Krill, and shareeka starts with a Cresh.”
“Spell it for me,” she said softly.
“Yours…” He swallowed, eyes still shut. “Yours is spelled Krill-Yert-Aurek-Resh-Isk. Shareeka is spelled… Cresh-Yert-Aurek-Resh,” and here he made a motion with his finger in the air, “tick, Isk-Krill-Aurek.”
Kyari pondered that for a moment. “Cyar’ika,” she mused, finally able to see the same word in her head that he could. “What is it? I mean, what does it mean?”
Silence fell. The Mandalorian shifted in her arms, sat back up, and drew his hand over his face. “Removing my helmet was a mistake,” he said flatly, his back to her.
She had an answer prepared for that by now. “It was out of necessity. You were going to aspirate on your own—”
“Get out.”
Kyari stood there, frozen, for a split second before immediately turning and sliding the glass door open. “I’ll be in the bedroom,” she said uncertainly. “I—”
“Get out,” he barked, and she did not reply or even grab a towel as she fled, soaking wet, from the bathroom.
The foot of the bed was a good place to sit, so that’s where Kyari sat: knees to her chest, arms circled around them, chin on her arms. She was staring in the direction of the glowing light-wall, which spread and morphed into different warm, soft colors to illuminate the room: delicate pink, soft gold, purple and lilac and orange. The thoughts that coursed through her mind weren’t about the lights, however: they were focused on the face of the man in the bathroom, whose features she could not forget no matter how hard she tried.
Water puddled beneath her into the fine carpet. She did not move. The room was warm and smelled of Princess’s Heart. He might kill me for seeing his face. Maybe he’d be quick about it. Not make a mess, not make her suffer. She wondered if she’d ever find out what cyar’ika meant. Keep your thoughts guarded. What did it matter now, what the Zeltrons heard or did not hear?
The bathroom door slid open behind her. She closed her eyes, listening to the soft falls of bare feet on carpet. “If you’re going to kill me,” she whispered, “make it quick. Please.”
The footsteps stopped. “Turn around,” said the Mandalorian, voice muffled and flattened by a vocal modulator.
Kyari knew what she’d see before she turned, but she steeled herself anyway. He was nude apart from the helmet, standing in the doorway and looking at her. Any other situation, a naked man wearing a helmet and nothing else would have looked ridiculous, even without the solid erection he was sporting. It would have looked funny, even. But here, now— she cleared her throat. “You all cleaned up?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. About the helmet.”
He took a step closer. Then, another. Coarse, sparse hair still damp from the shower dusted his shins, his forearms: the slightest soft fuzzy down on his thighs and hips caught the light and glowed like a halo as he came to stand between her and the illuminated wall. “There is some… dissent,” he said carefully, squatting down in front of her. “Among the Children of the Watch, on… which emergencies might necessitate removal of a helmet.”
“Is there,” said Kyari, shivering slightly.
“Some believe if the choice is between the death of a Mandalorian or removal of the helmet, the Mandalorian must place faith in the Creed and die. Others believe life is as sacred as battle, and that in a case of life or death, the helmet may be removed and replaced without loss of honor.” He slid forward to rest on his knees and placed his hands on his thighs. “Some believe that to lift the helmet is the same as to remove it. Some do not. When I return to the Watch, and I am asked if I removed my helmet, I will answer no. When they ask if it has been removed by anyone else, I… will also answer no. ”
Relief swept her. “Does this mean you’re not going to kill me?”
His broad chest rose and fell, rose and fell. A hand left his thigh, reached out toward her: she remained where she was as his fingertips grazed up the edge of her left arm, then back down. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said roughly. Then, swiftly, “That was a joke.”
Kyari had to smile at his attempt at humor. “I bet the inside of that helmet is disgusting.”
“I cleaned it.”
“Oh, good.” He smelled a lot better: the fresh clean scent of soap wafted around them both. “I think some cleaning droids got our dirty things.”
“Droids,” he said disparagingly. The fingers slid more to the center, past her shoulder, grazed over her collarbone. His thumb brushed her sternum, then went lower to the edge of the transparent, wet lounge dress she was still wearing. “Kyari,” he murmured.
She brought her head up. “Hm?” He’s never used my name before.
“Take this off, or I will.” The texture of his voice had smoothed out, low and needy, and it sent an unexpected burst of heat through her body: where had this come from? She undid the closures at the top of her shoulders and peeled it off her clammy skin, shivering as the air bathed her in comparatively cooler temperatures.
“You can pull it down the rest of the w—”
He lunged for her. Gripped her, dragged her to stand upright, seized the crumpled roll of wet fabric around her waist and yanked it down past her hips until she was able to stumble forward out of the circle of damp mesh, toward him, and then the cold helmet was pressed against her cheek, his hands slipping over her skin, his warm body pressed to hers and she wanted to kiss him so badly, wanted that soft pouty mouth on hers, wanted the feel of his beard to scrape her skin. Both his hands reached down, gripped her backside in two palmfuls: he lifted her and set her down on the bed, hands all over her back like he couldn’t touch her enough. “I want,” he rasped, muffled through the helmet. “I want. I want—”
“I think there’s, there’s lubricant in the—”
“Get it.” He let go of her and let her scramble across the bed to the little bedside table to yank out the lubricant, but he followed her close the whole way, as if he couldn’t stand to stop touching her for even a second. “Give it to me.” So Kyari did: he squeezed it into his hand and reached down, slicking himself in one movement. “I want,” he said again, and took a heavy breath. “What that Zeltron was doing to you with his mouth. I wanted to do that to you. I want— and I can’t— I can’t—”
“Don’t worry about that,” whispered Kyari, pressing her hands to his warm chest. “It’s okay. We have time later. You’ve had sex before, right?”
He got her down on her back, shifting his hips between her thighs, bringing himself to exactly the right spot, and then he paused, helmet gently planted against her forehead. “No. But I had a lot of up-close examples in the past three hours.” And she had to laugh, because what a thing to say, and then he was pushing in, splitting her wide, cramming himself into her and the laugh turned into a groan as she clung to him, gasping, fingers and toes curled against his skin.
“Mando— shit—”
“Am I hurting you?” he asked, strained.
“No, no, you’re not, not—”
“Good,” he gasped, and withdrew almost completely, then rammed himself to the hilt again. “Tell me.”
“Don’t— worry, I’ll tell you—” She gripped his shoulders, slipped her fingers underneath the back rim of his helmet, touched the strip of exposed hair there as he shifted his position and set up a brutally even, punishing rhythm, his breath bursting from the modulator like gusts of staticky wind. His elbow was digging into her side. “Kriffing— ouch, Mando, move your crinking elbow —”
He jerked his arm forward, seizing her by her hair instead as a string of unintelligible noises poured out of his mask. Kyari did not bother trying to hold back: the friction was too good, and within minutes she was climaxing, curling up into him with a bark and squeezing his body between her knees. “Good,” he said curtly, still moving.
“Your turn,” she panted, loose and hot all over and pleasantly drifty. Nothing mattered: he’d finish soon and then they’d be let go and— and—
But he wasn’t finishing. He kept plugging away, even and hard, and sweat started slicking his skin, but he didn’t finish, and she started to get a little sore. “Mando,” she said, lifting her head.
“What,” he gasped.
“You’re taking a while, are you—”
“I can’t—” He stilled, panting. “I can’t finish.”
“Can I do anything?”
“I don’t…” Still buried in her, still hard, he bent his helmeted head and did not speak.
“You didn’t have an issue down in the club,” she said, half-thinking to herself.
“Yes, I know,” he snapped.
“Sorry— I’m not trying to make fun of you.”
“Oh.” He slid himself up to his knees, hands on her thighs.
Running through all the possible problems, Kyari lifted her head to peer down at him. “Is it a friction thing? I can wipe off some of the lube.”
“No, it’s—” He paused, swaying. “It’s not a physical issue. I can’t… get myself where I need to be in my head. It was different in the club.”
“All right. What do you need to be able to get yourself where you—”
An annoyed burst of air cut through her words. “Give me a second.” But he didn’t move, he stayed where he was. Hilt-deep. Breathing. “It’s… the helmet,” he said, sounding more annoyed than upset about it.
“Oh. Still smells like puke?”
“No, it—” He took another deep breath that Kyari would have called a huff if it had been any harder, and ran his hands down her sides. “I… I need a hand free,” he murmured.
“Come down here, then,” said Kyari, and pulled him down to lie on his side, facing her, one leg thrown over his hip. “Okay. What do you need a hand f—”
He reached up with his right arm, tugging up at the front of his helmet until his mouth and nose were exposed, and Kyari shut her eyes automatically, trying to fight the urge to touch his face. “This,” he said huskily, and then she felt his mouth, soft and hot and rasped with facial hair, sliding down her throat, felt him leave her body between the legs but his tongue was moving past her chest, over her breast— over her nipple, wrapping there, sucking. Her eyes flew open. She was making noises she’d forgotten she knew how to make.
“Three hells,” she choked out, when she could form words. “Mando—”
“Din,” he growled, moving to her other breast, heavy on her ribcage.
“Wh-what?”
“My name,” he said against her skin, friction rasping with every word, “is Din Djarin. I want you to call me that.”
“Din,” she gasped, hands clinging to the back of his neck, and he canted his hips against her thigh in response, a moan leaving his nose as he curled his lips over her left nipple. “Din. Tell me wh-what cyar’ika means. Please.”
Releasing her with a soft pop, he lifted his head and shifted, slid down until he was settled between her legs on that huge bed, one hand holding his helmet away from his nose and mouth, the other curled around her thigh. “It’s a… term of endearment,” he said, parting his lips and licking her open in one long, firm stripe that had her gripping the sheets in both hands. “You might translate it to Basic as, uh…” Another set of licks, soft kittenish laps this time that made Kyari jerk her free leg up and gasp for air as heat puddled into her pelvis, set her nerves on fire. “Darling,” he said roughly, and then another set of swift, soft laps. “Or… sweetheart.” More movements with his tongue. She thought she might actually combust, right here on the bed, burning straight to ash, and then someone would have to suck her up in a vac and he’d never get his money, never, but then he was delving in, tongue and lips, and she was grabbing his helmet and his face and whatever she could reach to get herself off, desperate and clawing.
At some point, she finished: dreamlike, still-tipsy as he climbed his way back up and lay back down on his side, then seated his dick back inside her where it belonged, aligning to the right like a ship coming in to dock at port. “Din,” she moaned, trailing her fingers down that strip of exposed jaw, and he shivered like he’d been stung and then her mouth was on his and he was moving with a surprising intensity, teeth pressing along her lip as his hips began to move. It was a shame he couldn’t use both hands: his only free one was curled under her body, planted on one breast and holding tight as he rocked into her. But she didn’t mind.
“Touch me,” he gasped, urgent and low. “Touch me, touch me, please—”
So she did: she raked her short nails up his scarred back and made him groan, she sucked at his throat and brushed his flat soft nipples and finally got her hand up inside the back of the helmet, in that warm, close darkness that her eyes would never see, and tangled her fingers in his hair, pulled softly. What had she said to him all that time ago? This was like undoing knots. Figuring out people, getting into their heads, their psyche: finding out what made them tick. Working out the snarls like she’d done to her hair. Untangled.
And he came. A strangled sob burst from his throat as his body tightened, his mouth pressed open and desperate against her cheek, his hips rocked erratically… and then he was coming down, limp and loose and blissed-out, the helmet askew where he lay as his parted lips panted for air. “I’ve got you,” Kyari crooned, running her hands gently down his sides, over the burn-scars as he shivered against her, nuzzling close as if in search of comfort. “Shh.”
“I hope,” he said after a long moment, “the audience got a good show.”
She laughed. “Go to sleep, for moons’ sake.”
“Huh,” he mumbled, and after that he didn’t say a word, and Kyari looked down. He was unconscious, helmet still cockeyed, chest rising and falling deep and even. She could have pulled the helmet off. She could have bolted, run for the door: she could have taken any number of objects in the room and ended the life of the man who had taken her captive for money.
But it was late, and she was tired. So she gently worked herself out of the sweaty tangle of his limbs without waking him, got a soft blanket, and covered him up before tucking her body alongside his and closing her eyes.
Din Djarin woke.
The first thing he noticed was that he was not wearing his helmet.
This was not ordinarily a cause for concern, since he did not sleep in it, but as he groped around the bed he was lying in for it, he realized it must have slipped completely off his head at some point, because he definitely remembered, in a vague way, that he had wanted to keep it on.
The next thing he noticed was that he was hungover and shaky: food and water would help to settle that.
The third thing he noticed as he sat up in bed was that the wall that had last night been an opaque lightwall of moving light and color was now translucent, and the early daylight of Nar Shaddaa was coming through the duraplast, the filter in the wall changing sickly greenish sunlight into something pinky-yellow.
The last thing he noticed was the woman lying in bed with him, flat on her belly, one light brown arm stretched out toward him and the other one awkwardly bent up over her head, mouth open, long dark hair sticking to her cheek and her shoulders and tangled around her body. He drew his knees up, rested his arms on them, and looked down at Kyari bi-Teltaru for a very long time, his naked eyes drinking in the lines of her sleeping body, the prominent bold shape of her nose and dark eyebrows, the rise and fall of her back as she breathed.
“Get up. Time to go.”
Kyari jolted upright, spitting hair out of her mouth and half-awake. Her gut roiled and her head throbbed unpleasantly. “Oh, moons,” she groaned, covering her eyes. “Turn off the light.”
“That’s the sun.”
She flopped back down to the bed with a moan. “I’m gonna need bantha tranqs to even move out of this bed.”
“Madam Trix sent up some hangover cure, with her compliments.”
“Really?” Kyari cracked open an eyelid as a little bottle landed beside her in the bed neatly.
“Really. Get dressed.”
“Ugh.” She dragged herself back upright, gulped down the tiny bottle in a single shot, and stuck her feet out, trying to find the floor. “Do I have to?”
“Unless you want to walk back to the Razor Crest naked, yes.” Kyari shot a look over at him: he was fully suited up in freshly-laundered clothing and waiting by the door.
“Food?” she asked. “Repairs?”
“She sent her mechanic over in the middle of the night. They’re loading the ship as we speak.”
“I guess this means we performed appropriately,” she muttered, getting up and trying to find her clothes. Everything between her legs was puffy and still a little sore, and she grimaced.
“Correct.” He leaned against the wall, watching as she tugged on the clothes left for her: a split skirt, boots, and a sleeveless top with a short-sleeved jacket.
“My hair’s a wreck. Why did you let me fall asleep without re-braiding it?”
“I didn’t know that was my job.”
She stuck her tongue out at him, feeling better by the minute. “Well, I have to get the knots out before we go.”
“You do that.” The Mandalorian— Din Djarin— shifted his weight from foot to foot as Kyari picked up a comb and started picking at the tangles in her hair. “I’ve made a decision.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve decided that my quarry, Kyari bi-Teltaru, unfortunately gave me the slip somewhere on Dantooine. I could not locate her or track her down.”
Kyari paused, blinking, and turned to face him. “You…”
“And then I managed to lose the bounty puck.” He reached into his cloak, pulled out the holopuck, set it on the floor, and brought his boot down on it hard several times in quick succession, smashing the durasteel into sparking bits. “There was nothing I could do about it,” he continued, deadpan. A cleaning droid sensed a mess and emerged from the wall, chirping as it swept up the shards of metal with a little brush-mouth and popped back into the hatch it had come from.
Tears filled her eyes. “I still have other bounties on me,” she mumbled, wiping her eyes.
“Yes. But none of the people hunting you will be me. So I think your chances will be decent.”
She laughed, wet and halfway snotty. “Good.”
Din Djarin paused for a moment. “Impella says there’s a branch of the Twilight Court opening on Ralltiir. All above board, totally legal work. She says if you want, a job’s waiting for you there. Good pay and benefits. Housing taken care of, too. They even have a union.”
“You got me… a job,” said Kyari, stunned. “You…”
“I didn’t get you anything. Take it or leave it. It’s there.”
“I’ll take it. Can you drop me off on Ralltiir?”
“I can.”
She finished braiding her hair and got up, dusting her hands on her thighs. “And I don’t want to look out any windows.”
“I’ll activate autopilot when we get back to the Crest.”
“Thank you.”
“Din,” she said very softly as she came to stand in front of him, “I…” What could she say? What was anyone supposed to say in a situation like this?
“Let’s go,” he replied, even and firm. “Ship’s waiting.” And then they left for good, out into the greasy air of Nar Shaddaa, leaving it behind forever.