The Masters stood at the turbolift with their backs towards me, I didn't know if I should call out to them or not since they looked to be dumbstruck but I shrugged my shoulders and walked to the kitchen.
"Are you here for us?" I asked the chef as I approached the bar.
The man simply nodded.
"Can you make anything?"
Again he nodded.
"Good. I'd like meat. Anything is fine so long as it's
cooked to perfection. I'll let you decide on what that means."
The man nodded and then turned and got to work. He easily pulled out some kind of packages labeled with stuff and got to work cooking.
"Anything to drink?"
A menu display came to life in front of me which made me jump a bit. It scrolled by itself through more drinks than I could comprehend. Luckily it was broken up into tabs at the top and I clicked on the only one I knew.
High End Liquor.
Serving Gany'sha had me aware of what the drinks were, for some parts, but I was never allowed to try any.
Scrolling down the list I picked one at random and it happened to say Randomized Coruscant. I had no idea what that was.
The guy was already tossing some green stuff and liquids into his pans that made it all sizzle and pop and moving between three different pans. In no time at all he was transferring the food to plates just as my drink came up from the counter. He placed the dishes, one with an aquatic animals legs as an appetizer and the other a huge piece of meat from some kind of animal. I didn't recognize it and I didn't care. I devoured both plates and lost myself in the taste of them all. I didn't know I had gone through three more plates of something else that was meat and some type of vegetable meal until after I was finished. Apparently the cook saw how hungry I was and made more food for me without asking.
I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes in the bliss of a full stomach. I could vaguely tell the cook nodded his head and then got to work doing something else before I lost consciousness.
______________________________________________
I woke up feeling like my eyes were throbbing from yesterday. I stared at the ceiling for what seemed like forever just letting the Rank Assessment play in my mind. I was three days away from achieving that final Rank. Three days away from finally feeling like I took control of my life. Three days away from the anniversary of surpassing my Master.
The lights in my room automatically dimmed as the sunlight waned and only when they'd gotten to a more darker setting did I finally bring myself to move. I sat up from the floor and looked around the spacious room I was in.
I had fallen asleep on the floor, I didn't have the energy to make it to the bed when I entered. Everything in the room was new and clean, finest money could buy. It all felt like dust to me.
Ten years.
Ten years of my life was just thrown in the trash in front of my face because two Jedi thought they were right. Overzealous, conceited, self righteous.
I slowly moved to the fresher and stood there for so long my skin felt raw. I only noticed I was in the fetal position because there was a chime letting me know someone was knocking on my door. I uncurled myself and stood straight up, feeling the stiffness in my knees and arms. I was completely lost.
I finally got out of there and put on a fresh outfit about 30 minutes later and I saw everyone eating and milling about in the kitchen and living area. I went to the cook and ordered a meal fit for a family of four and devoured it.
"Hey Zavart, you doing alright?"
I was halfway through my third meal when I looked up at the distraction and saw Drazad had sat next to me. The kid was already looking somewhat better after getting fed properly but he still had an abnormal hunch to his back even for his species.
"I'm doing Kid."
I don't know how that came out from my almost mouthful of food but I guess he got the gist of it because he just nodded his head and ordered a meal for himself too. The Captain sat on my left and ordered some type of coffee like brew but also smelled heavily like alcohol.
"Anyone catch you up to speed yet," she asked me as she placed an order herself.
I swallowed what was in my mouth, "Does it look like I've talked to anyone before now?" and went right back to eating.
She glanced at me, I'm guessing taking in the bloodshot eyes and overall downcast mood I had, "Fair enough."
"You're little friends here—"
"My family."
I stopped eating and looked her dead in the eye. "They're my family."
She didn't break eye contact until her drink came up from the counter.
"You're, family, gave us the run of the place. We can go anywhere on this floor and do anything as long as we stay on this floor. There's a pool and exercise room we can use as well as a day/night room and and Holonet if we want to get any news. The only thing we can't do, is leave this floor."
"Did Bxax say how long it would be until they convened the meeting? Or if it's already happened?"
"Well we haven't seen him since the rotation before last so I'm guessing it'll be a few more before we hear anything. Since you're so adamant on them being your family I'm going to go out on a limb as long as a Wookiee's arm and say that they won't just hand us over to the Empire or Bounty Hunters."
She took a heavy swig of her drink and then took another look at me. "They have a pretty extensive network of intelligence. Some would say too extensive."
I swallowed my mouthful of food. "They know the value of being discreet. No one notices Ugnaughts unless they need something fixed or need mechanical savvy slaves. They're in almost every organization that has ever been because their knowledge is invaluable and they know it."
Her meal of a warm broth and some kind of crab-like leg she dipped in was served then. I glanced at my fourth meal of plain meet and suddenly felt self conscious.
"Do they sell it to anyone?"
She broke the crab leg and sucked out some juices. Then dipped the rest into the broth and chewed on it. Must have been softer than I thought.
"That, I can't say. I was only inducted into an arm of it out in the boonies if you want to call it that. They do what they want with whatever information they have. Did they tell you they sell information?"
She took a moment longer to answer than before. "No, but they also didn't hide the fact that what they have would make the rounds sooner or later without them doing anything."
I shrugged and got back to my food. I ordered my second Coruscant High Tower from how fruity it tasted.
"Can you handle that much alcohol? How many have you had?"
I stopped and stared at her, mouthful of food and mind blank.
"This is an alcoholic drink?"
She gave me a weird look and then looked at the kid.
"Are we just all drinking then? Because I know you've had a couple already."
My head swiveled over and stared at the kid and saw that his eyes really had a bloodshot to them.
"I don't know what else to drink. Alcohol was the only thing I ever served as a slave and water was all we could drink."
"Why don't you drink water then?" I asked him.
His face took on a weird look to it. "Now that I'm free from being a slave I'd rather not have water anymore. To much dirt for me."
My eyebrows narrowed and I swiveled back to the Captain who had a sort of queer look on her face.
"Water isn't supposed to have dirt in it Drazad."
"Tell that to Gany'sha. All I've ever known is dirt water."
Well that killed the already weird mood.
My drink came up from the counter then.
"Well good thing no one's here to tell us no," I clinked my glass with his and turned to the Captain holding it out for her as well. She hesitated then toasted my drink too. We all knocked back a heavy gulp and then continued with our drinks.
"Are you giving our Padawan alcohol!?"
"One, he's not your Padawan. At least last I heard. Two, he got it himself without any prompting from us so stop with the blaming."
I said all of this over my shoulder, not even bothering to look at Wamo. I saw the Kid did though and since he wasn't try to get out of the way or looked fearful I didn't think she was preparing to cut me in two.
"What Master Wamo means is, that Drazad is still a child. He is under the legal age to consume alcohol and should wait until he is older—"
"I'm going stop you right there Shaddoc," I told the man as he sat down next to the Kid and Wamo next to him. "The Kid is no child, I only call him Kid because he's still young. He's seen the ugly side of the universe already, probably more than most of us here and the Chef didn't even bat an eye when he ordered his drink."
Wamo tried to say something else but I cut her off.
"Do either of you even know what kind of slave he was?"
Her mouth hung open for a few seconds and didn't say anything, neither did Shaddoc. I scoffed at them, "You want to call him your Padawan and train him but don't know the first thing about his life before you entered it. He can't just forget and move past the terrible life he had because you both say so, that's not how beings work."
"Look, the longer he stays with us the shorter his life will be. You want to train him, call him Padawan, MAKE him forget about his past like it never happened go right ahead. But I assure you he won't, he CAN'T. Your Jedi Order fell because of some reason and if you continue to teach like you always have it'll just be repeated. But I digress, we have enough enemies between the new Empire, slavers, Bounty Hunters, and whoever else is after us. We don't need each to be at each other's throats, so if you could kindly stop treating me like everything I say is a bad idea and will turn people evil then I'll stop throwing in your face how hypocritical your Order and what you say are."
A moment passed where even the Chef had stopped moving things around to see how it would play out. And surprisingly Shaddoc was the first to lean forward and stretch out his hand to me.
"I can agree to that."
I wasn't the only one surprised it seemed as Wamo whipped her head to look at him.
"Shaddoc!"
He didn't waver and kept his eyes on me though. After a moment it looked like Wamo had a revelation and came back to her senses, she then bit her lip and cast her head down in shame or contemplation I don't really know. I stared at Shaddoc's hand for a while not really believing this was happening but he didn't retract it or move an inch to prompt me into an action. He just waited.
Eventually I reached out and took his hand in mine but I'm sure it clearly showed on my face that I didn't believe his proposition. We shook once and after he nodded his head we let go and he sat back down and ordered some type of steak from Mon Cala with something called a Crystal Raincol to drink. He glanced at Wamo and with her head still down he ordered a simple toasted Porg and vegetables with Aldaaranian wine for her.
Once she received her food she downed her not so small glass in one and ordered another. Shaddoc drank his more carefully but still finished it and started to look for something else. "So Drazad, it seems Zavart is right. Master Wamo and I know nothing about you before we met you in Mototōsque and we should clear that up. So if you're up for it…."
He let the sentence hang as his drink slid up from the counter, some kind of dark red almost lava looking liquid that wouldn't stop moving around. The Kid hesitated for a second but continued to his meal so he wouldn't have to look at anyone.
"I had told Zavart that one of my first memories was of pain. I was a child and Gany'sha had just gotten out of his bath when I accidentally dropped his towel before I could give it to him. His face had morphed into a monster, the only definition of evil I've ever had and he had the other slaves chain me up so he could whip me. It went on for so long that I passed out from the shock and woke back up to him still whipping me. His motto was 'Break them once, then break them again. They'll learn or you break in a new one.' A lot of the older kids covered for me the first couple years. They knew what it was like to start out there and have to get used to everything and I was still young. I didn't take advantage of it, always tried to take my own blame but they would just give me this look before stepping up for me. It wasn't until one of them died for taking my punishment that they all stopped which I guess is also the sign. It meant I was old enough to have learned by now and old enough to no longer be coddled. Gany'sha made me watch as he broke his legs and threw him into his fighting arena to be eaten. After that, the whippings were for punishments or just for the fun of it. I was his favorite, I had heard around the parties that he kept me around longer than others because he had some kind of vendetta against Wookiees and I was the closest he was going to get to getting even. Once a month, he's throw a huge party in the middle of it, bigger than all the others. The whole planet was always talking about it. While the guests partied across his land, he would go through his slaves, torturing us one by one. He always saved me for last."
The four of us were silent once he stopped talking. It seemed like he had never said these words to another since he became a slave and he just couldn't stop them once he started.
"How did many of you survive?" The Captain had he eyes shut and fists clenched.
"There was some type of healer he had on hand although it was never the same person for more than 3 months. They would lay their hands on us and we'd suddenly become healed but not always fully. Myself and a couple before me were never fully healed for whatever reason. It was like that until the day you two appeared and convinced him to give me up. I don't know how you did since I thought he would never do it but when I walked away with you, I really hoped my life could be something different."
"If given the chance, would you kill Gany'sha?"
We all turned to Wamo. She was looking right the Kid and it almost seemed like she could see through him too.
"After all that he did, all that you can remember and the others that died. If you had the power would you kill him?"
"I don't know too much about the galaxy yet, from what you had told me under the Republic almost nothing could have been done to bring him to justice. I remember what his guests looked like, they weren't poor people like I was they were other rich people, probably a couple Senators even. But I would have wanted to bring him to justice, see it happen with my owns eyes. But I would have wanted to be the one to deliver it. Yes if I had the power I would kill him after he was made to pay for what he's done."
"That is not the Jedi way. We are not executioners," her mouth became a thin line and she seemed to be taking a firm stance on the subject.
"Then I will be more than a Jedi to help people that you will not."
And with that he stood and walked away.