Katuun was a mining colony located within the East-side of the galaxy. Famed for its abundant ore of Zetanite, one of the toughest metals in the galaxy. Blasters and plasma weapons were useless, and it could also prove very effective against an Ergotana, mysterious energy blades traditionally used by the Murai.
Mountains of magma and smoke, and one very bored looking man. Tovin Rusk scratched his beard, his boots crunching against the blackened gravel as he walked down the line. The sun burned through the haze overhead, casting long shadows behind the chained figures kneeling before him.
"Too skinny," he muttered, nudging the first alien with the tip of his boot—a wiry creature with skin like cracked porcelain. The overseer, a hulking brute with four arms, grunted and moved on. The next candidate was a broad-shouldered beast, his knuckles dragging on the ground. Tovin paused, tilting his head. "Got the strength, sure. But how's his endurance?"
"Endurance?" The overseer snorted, flexing his upper set of arms. "This one lasted three weeks in the acid pits before his last owner got squashed by a rockfall. Paid in full."
Tovin circled the kneeling brute, noting the scar tissue mottling his back—old burns, poorly healed. Acid pits. Nasty work. He crouched, meeting the slave's dull eyes. "You understand Common?" A slow blink. No response. Tovin sighed. "Worthless if he can't follow basic—"
Tovin's boot scuffed against gravel as he passed another slave—this one reeking of old sweat and fear, ribs jutting like the bars of a cage. "Not this one either," he muttered, rubbing his temple where the headache always started.
The overseer's mandibles clicked in irritation, but Tovin barely noticed. He hated this part. The bargaining, the assessing people like livestock. But Zetanite didn't mine itself, and the quotas weren't going to—
"Hey, Uncle Tovin." A voice, light but firm, cut through the haze. Kael. The kid leaned against a rusted ore cart, arms crossed, nodding toward the end of the line. "How about this one?"
Kael was young, roughly nineteen, with short dirty blond hair and sharp features.
The slave he pointed at wasn't much—smaller than the rest, amphibian, with wide eyes that darted between Tovin and the overseer like it was calculating escape routes. Its skin was slick with moisture under the oppressive heat, patches of iridescent green shimmering like oil on water.
"What about it, Kael?" Tovin said.
"She says she's good with engineering." Kael pushed off the ore cart and stepped closer, hands stuffed in his pockets. The amphibian slave flinched but held her ground—odd for a creature chained at the ankles. Her webbed fingers twitched like she was tracing invisible schematics in the air.
Tovin walked over, his shadow falling across the amphibian. She didn't cower—just tilted her head up, her pupils dilating against the harsh light. The silence stretched too long. "Engineering?" he finally said, skepticism dripping. "You understand me?"
"Y-yes sir..." She said. Her voice was raspy, like she hadn't used it in months. Her throat pulsed under the thin skin of her neck as she swallowed. "I can fix things. Machines. Circuits. Even..." She hesitated, glancing at the overseer before lowering her voice. "Even bypass security locks."
"What's your name?"
"Brakka," she whispered, her webbed fingers curling against her thighs. "I am Brakka."
Tovin studied Brakka's webbed fingers—too delicate for hauling ore, too precise for brute labor. A bad investment, by any foreman's measure. But Kael had that look, the one that meant he'd dig his heels in if Tovin said no. The kid had a soft spot for strays.
"Alright,"
Tovin exhaled through his nose, the sound sharp enough to cut through the sulfur-heavy air. He reached into his coat—slow, deliberate—and pulled out a dezit chit stamped with the mining consortium's seal. The overseer's four hands twitched in anticipation. "Thirty thousand," Tovin said. "Not a deci-dezit more."
The armor smelled of gun oil and old blood.
Orik Dayn ran a calloused thumb along the vetanite breastplate, feeling the faint grooves where plasma bolts had scorched but failed to penetrate. The steel still held its mirror finish after twenty years—proof that Bendak had been right about the alloy.
"Damn you for being right about everything," he muttered, tipping the flask to his lips. The liquor burned worse than the memories.
Outside his hut, the mining colony's alarms wailed—another rockfall in the eastern tunnels. Routine. He didn't flinch. The cantina girls would be by soon, drawn by the promise of free drinks and his increasingly embellished war stories.
They'd laugh, roll their eyes, and leave when he started slurring. Routine.
The breastplate gleamed under the flickering neon of Orik's hut, catching the light like liquid silver. He traced the dent just below the left pauldron—where Bendak's sword had struck during their last spar. The memory hit him harder than the blade ever had.
"Should've ducked faster," he chuckled, wiping dust from the embossed Baaldorian crest. The metal was cold under his fingertips, but the ghosts it carried burned.
The knock came like a gunshot in the silence—sharp, unexpected. Orik Dayn's hand froze halfway to his flask, the liquor sloshing against the glass. His good eye flicked toward the door. It wasn't the cantina girls' usual playful rapping. This was deliberate. Three precise strikes. Military.
"Damn," he muttered, though a grin tugged at his beard. He'd been hoping for company. Preferably the kind that didn't talk much and smelled like cheap perfume.
Orik's grin faltered when the door hissed open. Not perfume. Not laughter. Just the stench of ionized armor polish and something metallic—blood or adrenaline, maybe both.
Two figures stood silhouetted against the colony's flickering neon haze: a broad-shouldered man in imperial blacks, his scarred jaw tight as a coiled spring, and beside him a female Ryptizan, a lizard like woman with the head of raptor. Her golden eyes gleamed with predatory focus.
"If you've come to kill me," Orik said. "You're more polite than the last who tried."
"We're not here for that, Baaldorian."
Baaldorian... That was word Orik had not heard in a long time.
The Ryptizan's clawed fingers flicked a coin-sized device onto the table. It whirred to life, projecting a flickering hologram of a girl barely out of childhood—delicate Murai features, eyes too old for her face. Azoka Gawa's image straightened her ceremonial robes with a precision that bordered on obsessive.
"Orik Dayn," the hologram said. Her voice was smoother than he expected, laced with aristocratic crispness. "My father fought beside you at the Siege of Veydor Pass. I urge of you to help us in this dire need."
A second hologram shimmered beside her—a grainy security feed showing a man in black plunging a dagger into a regal man's back. Orik recognized them, it was Zark Trudr killing Emperor Rion Azhena in cold blood.
The timestamp glowed blood-red: twenty years ago to the day.
"If you can deliver this to the Emperor's son Leo," the hologram said. "This can prove that the Baaldorians were innocent."
"Innocent..." Orik spat the word like rotten fruit, tossing the flask onto the table with a clatter. The hologram flickered as liquor splashed through Azoka's projected face.
"Spare me the fairy tales, kid. Baaldorians razed cities for breakfast. We weren't saints." His metal eyepatch gleamed dully as he leaned forward, the scent of aged whiskey thick between them.
He then thought of Bendak...
Orik knew that Bendak was one of the most noble of Baaldorians. He risked himself to help save many others during the war, and in the end was murdered for it.
Orik's fingers twitched toward the flask again, stopping halfway.
The hologram flickered, resolving into a new image—rows upon rows of dezit chits, stacked higher than a man's waist. The number ticked upward in the corner, red digits searing into his retinas: 5,000,000.
Orik snorted. "Kid, you could buy half the colony for that. Why me?"
"You're the Baaldorians' only hope now." The hologram faded out, the message ended.