You Must (Not) Let Go

Part 12

The boy swallowed the rather large bite of food he had in his mouth. He was bracketed on either side by Mr Ressais and Mr Xak’kis, the old man Seiliu, with the hidden scars on his chest, leaning across from the head of the table to give the boy his full attention. Weillith sat in a rocking chair angled away from the table, but the stick he was whittling hung loose from his fingers, and he twisted in his seat to focus on the newcomer. Even Dareel sat intently forward, although it was difficult to tell how much he was actually taking in.

The boy had been glancing between them all the while, Bastila noticed, spending particular time flicking over Sera from head to toe. He opened his mouth.

“It seems we don’t even need you to help advertise,” Mr Ressais said jauntily. “Guests are just falling out of the sky, ha-ha!”

“We might even break even at this rate,” Mr Xak’kis said with a laugh.

“Yes, we’ve been very busy the past few days,” Dareel said, much louder than he needed to.

The boy snapped his mouth shut, a line forming on his brow.

“Uh, it seems to have been,” Sera said, pulling up a chair and sitting down facing the boy. “You’re a long way from home, Mitri. I’m impressed you managed to find this place on your own.”

Mitri blushed pink. “We knew what direction you’d been. I just had to keep going until I found you.”

“You were the one that did it and not anybody else,” Sera said, threading her fingers through Bastila’s as she sat down next to her. “That’s something to be proud of.”

The boy’s eyes darted to their joined hands.

“What brings you here?” Sera continued, with a pleasant smile. She drew thoughtless circles on Bastila’s thumb, as she often did. “Looking to be the first diplomat on a new planet?”

He sat up straight. “The King has imprisoned Meat Head in the storage room. The King’s council has goaded him into accelerating his plans about dealing with our village to a permanent end. Meat Head tried to slow him down and sent me to find you to get help. They got him right as I was leaving and I had to run.”

“Did they follow you, boy?” Weillith demanded, after this had been translated.

“I don’t see how it would matter if they did,” Sera replied.

“Does the individual have the capacity to carry out their threat?” Ran said.

Everyone swivelled to look at her. Ran blushed and turned her head away.

“Um…” Mitri blinked a little bit, seemingly thrown by the sudden drama. “I…”

“Well,” Sera said, picking up the thread for him, “their base of operation, so to speak, is a conglomeration of mass collected around a derelict ship orbiting relatively low above the planet that can, with force, be separated from the whole and can and has,” she said, with a nod in Bastila’s direction, “be dropped from above if you get the timing right and the gravity takes it and pulls it the rest of the way. Or if you had a way to accelerate it. Oh.” She closed her eye and rubbed at her forehead. “Right.”

“We better get going then!” Mission said. She turned to Mitri. “How long do we have before things go terminal?”

“Uh, a couple days? A day? I don’t know! I don’t even know if I’m too late already!”

“No, no. We’re going to do what we can to fix this,” Sera said calmly.

“What about the debris field?” Bastila said. “It’s going to be particularly difficult to navigate with a ship The Galactic Star’s size, not to mention time-consuming. Do you know of a secret way through the field?” she asked Mitri. “You must be more familiar with it than any of us here.”

“It moves around too much for there to be any pathway. Axxx says he knows a trick to get through it in under ten minutes, but I think he’s full of it.”

“I think I might have a plan on how to deal with all that,” Sera said. She tapped her fingers on the tabletop, momentarily lost in thought. “Shall we get started then?”

~~~

Sera slept peacefully beside her. Bastila stared at the ceiling, brain hallucinating patterns in the darkness rather than switching off. She thought about checking the time, but decided against it. Time lost all meaning in the night and it would only wake her up further.

She got up. Grabbing a light dressing gown, she padded restlessly through the halls of the ship, missing the ability to go for a late night walk through slumbering streets.

A light was on in the common dining room. Bastila poked her head through, seeing Mitri sitting hunched over at the table, staring at nothing in the table cloth.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

He started, blushing beneath his fur. “No, um. It’s still early evening where I’m from. So I wasn’t really sleepy.”

“Of course, I’m sorry. I completely forgot.” Bastila pulled back a chair and sat down. “Would you like anything? You’re welcome to anything we have in the kitchen.”

“I think I’m alright at the moment, thank you.

“I see you managed to master the shower controls,” she said, touching a curl of wet fur above his eyebrow.

“Ah. Yes.” He ducked his head. “It’s very strange purposefully sticking your head under so much water. We only use chemical wipes at home and we haven’t had any in the base for a very long time.”

“Oh, yes, I had the pleasure of them when we were making the modifications to the shuttle.” Bastila made a face. “Sera warned me, but I wasn’t prepared for the reality.”

A hint of mischief entered his smile. “Before they ran out, we used to have contests seeing who could rub them over cuts the longest. I never won, but I managed to last longer than some of the bigger kids at least twice.” He wrinkled his nose. “Demon got mad and said the game was for pussies. Him and his friends used up the rest of the wipes playing flaming snowballs.”

“Oh. Those… burn rather ferociously, don’t they?” she said carefully.

“They get a little more rough than I like,” he admitted. “Especially with the littler kids. Sometimes they scare them because it’s funny or because they lose patience with them. Or get mad at them when they cry when they’re hungry. The king used to do that,” he added suddenly. “Scare some of the kids and then laugh about it and act like he was doing them a favour.”

“And this is the person that has imprisoned your friend?” Bastila asked, feeling adrift momentarily.

“No, the King was the old king’s War Leader until he, he passed away. He’s kinda more strict and doesn’t let us do a whole bunch of stuff, but he’s not as unpredictable as the Old Man used to be. After, um, some things happened, he made it so the littler kids didn’t get to wander as much and had to stay by the base and help out and stuff. He’s still kinda mean to them, and he, like, he doesn’t…” He twisted his shoulders and pulled his face into the ghost of a sneer, as if unconsciously trying to convey meaning by embodying another. “He doesn’t like weakness. And he doesn’t like people feeling things. But that’s sort of more, like, he isn’t used to being around other kids and he doesn’t have any siblings. And then Demon and his friends and even the Old Man are always… saying things about him. Because he’s small. And because…” He shook his head reflexively, his whole body tense and recoiling from his own words.

“And this pushed him over the edge?” Perhaps two in the morning was not the right time for this.

“No. Sort of.” He rubbed at his forehead. “Meat Head… Demon, he… They were always friends. He wouldn’t have come to the king’s attention otherwise. That’s why I think Demon and the others were so pissed off, even though they couldn’t have come up with the things he came up with. And that’s why they’re pissed off at Meat Head as well, because he kinda should be one of them, but he’s not, because he wanted to play with Leader when they were kids, and they're trying to get back at them for that.”

He stopped, breathing heavily as if he had run a marathon.

“I wondered where you’d got to.” Sera slid an arm around Bastila’s shoulders, dipping her head to kiss her. “Talking about me?”

“Of course. What else could anyone ever be wanting to talk about?”

Sera laughed.

Mitri watched them, his eyes widening ever so slightly. He’s not used to this.

“Worried about tomorrow?” Sera asked him.

He blinked. “Um. Well, I…”

“I checked the nets,” she assured him. Weillith’s offering. From the mouth of a large, natural harbour. Only mildly radioactive. “Right before bed. No tears or tangles. Should clear a path a-okay.”

Bastila squeezed Sera’s knee beneath the table. “I think our guest needs a glass of water, darling.” She got up.

“I’ll have tea, thanks,” Sera said.

“Oy!”

Sera spread her hand out innocently. “You were offering.”

Bastila peered down her nose at Sera. “Hmm.”

“Gonna be okay going home tomorrow?” Bastila heard from the kitchen as she switched the kettle on. Sera’s voice was low, almost too quiet for her to hear.

Mitri was quiet for a long time. “I hadn’t really thought about that yet.”

“I’m sure your family will be happy to see you. But you’re welcome to stay in the ship if you feel you need to.”

“Everything happened so quickly. I didn’t think… They’re gonna know it was me. They’re going to take it out on my family to get back at me!”

Bastila pictured in her mind’s eye Sera reaching out to place a hand on the boy’s arm. “Mission is an excellent pilot. We’ll clear a path and get to the village before anyone even realises we’re in the system. As far as anyone will know, you’re still floating somewhere in the galaxy looking for who know what.”

The kettle switched off. Bastila took her time pouring Sera’s tea and returning to the dining room. Mitri was pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes rimmed red.

Bastila placed the steaming cup in front of Sera. “Your tea, Your Majesty.” She set a glass carefully down in front of Mitri. “I hope water is alright. I can get you something hot if you prefer.”

Sera stared at the cup. “Where’s yours?”

Bastila sniffed delicately. “It wasn’t in the mission brief, it seemed.”

Sera rolled her eye. “We can’t have that now, can we?” she said, brushing her hand gently over Bastila’s back as she got up.

Mitri clutched at the glass with both hands, as though his salvation lay within. “Thank you.”

*****

I actually got to the end of this scene!

And now I'm tired and have no motivation to write anymore tonight >:(