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From the mid-levels of Coruscant the evening sun could be seen beginning to set behind the formerly pristine Jedi Temple, now greyed and blackened with smoke.
Thousands of troops were spilling into the Temple, though this was not visable from the mid-levels of the city, where the Jedi temple was just barely visable through the skyline.
Even from the mid-levels though, it was evident: The Jedi were surely no more.
"Well that's a shame." Rive said uncaringly and went about his business.
Rive turned away from the sight of the Temple and continued to walk down the Mid-Level street.
He kept his hand on his hold-out blaster concealed in his pocket. Thanks to the efforts of the Senate and their Grand Army of the Republic, the Mid-Levels were quite safe now... Rive still liked to make sure he was safe however.
Damage was still evident along the street in several places from the brief Battle of Coruscant, a few blast marks here and there, even a battered Droid Fighter on the side of the street hanging off the edge in danger of falling to the lower levels.
As Rive observed the downed craft, wondering if there was anything left in it valuable that early scavengers hadn't obtained, he heard a clatter and a loud *SNAP-HISS* behind him.
"Blast him!" "Open fire!" "Check your flank!" were just a few of the phrases Rive could pick out as Clonetroopers from all sides of the street opened fire on the blue blur, deflecting their shots at a rate no human could achieve.
A deflected blast zipped past Rive's ear and he jumped into the downed Droid Fighter. Rive was no fool, his palm sized hold-out pistol would be no match for... Was this truly a Jedi?
Rive checked the controls of the ship and as he suspected the power cables were there, but the reactor had been stripped out by scavengers along with the emergancy power supply. The ship itself might still be flyable, but the cost to replace the parts missing would be more expensive than buying an entire new ship Rive suspected. CIS parts were hard to come by in the Republic.
Another blaster bolt barely missed him, but Rive couldn't resist watching the battle as Clonetrooper after Clonetrooper fell to the glowing blade of the robed man. This kept up for nearly 16 seconds, though it seemed like 10 minutes in Rive's eyes, before the Jedi fell.
"I wonder why they woul..." Rive muttered before being interrupted by a loud *CREEEEEEEEEEEEAK*
A moment later the disabled Droid Fighter, along with Rive hiding in the cockpit, tilted off the edge of the street and began to fall rapidly towards the lower-levels of Coruscant.
The Droid Fighter tumbled down, scraping along the building nearest the street it had fallen from. Sparks from the contact force flew all around the ship at random turning it into a fireball of sorts. It began emiting a deafening shriek and caused a long wide scrape as it fell floor after floor down the skyscraper.
Rive was completely disoriented and it seemed as though he had been falling... spinning... twirlling... for minutes now. In reality it had only been a few moments as he decended past the lower-levels and into the upper levels of the "Undercity".
Coruscant had been built vertically for generations as there was no more room to build on the surface, thus, like layers of rock formed from centuries of building onto of one another, the buildings levels were like a history lesson. The Upper Levels of the Senators, Diplomats, Aristocrats, Wealthy Businessmen and... The Jedi would always have the most recent structures and constantly revamped to match the style of the age. The Mid Levels, where Rive himself usually kept to, were not so wealthy but usually were kept well maintained and safe. The Lower Levels held the seedy Cantinas and crime of the levels above it, it was a shoddy mix of modern designs and older architecture less profitable.
Then you proceded into the Undercity, those levels brushed aside by even the seedy Cantinas. Most buildings had no door or elevator into the Undercity, the buildings simply denied those levels existance and indeed the lowest level of the Lower Levels would often be marked as Level 1.
The City did continue though, unmaintained, with relics of the past years of the Republic, past centuries even. This was where the Droid Fighter continued to tumble.
The ship pushed away from the wall, now completely scathed and scortched from the friction against the wall, but still rather intact. It began to level out and Rive quickly tried to regain his composure.
Glancing out the still open cockpit (raw inertia had kept him in the seat) Rive could see the levels whipping past. At this rate he and the ship would be remembered simply as a small scortch mark at the lowest levels of the Undercity. He had to get the unpowered craft to slow down... Or get out of it alive somehow....
The fighter continued to freefall into the undercity. Rive got his bearings back and reached for the flight controls under instinct... All the emergancy matienance controls had been stolen from the droid fighter of course, along with any power source for them.
Dim lights from cheap glow-rods that illuminate the lowest levels of Coruscant zip by as Rive and the fighter continue to accelerate downward.
A sudden idea comes to Rive and he pulls his hold-out blaster from his sleeve and plugs the Fighter's emergancy power supply cable directly into the blaster's power-pack. Cables all around Rive start to spark and a wailing proximity alarm starts to go off. Due to safety proticals hard-wired into the fighter it immediatly fires off the thrusters in its underbelly that had not been stolen. It begins to decellerate to a stop...
Not nearly quickly enough however. The fighter slams into an Underworld street, smashing its wings apart and crushing most of the frame.
After a brief moment of pain, all goes to darkness around Rive and he feels nothing.
"It was hardly worth even dragging out here" A raspy voice accompanied by a ringing tone...
"Yeah... Too bad, why do you figure tha..." A deep voice with the same ringing tone along with it...
Rive blacked out again.
"Hey buddy! Wake up!" it was the small raspy voice again.
Rive steadily came to but couldn't see a thing, the raspy voice started up again almost before he could worry the explosion had blinded him.
"You got a pretty nasty gash across your face, had ta bandage ya up"
Rive's head was still spinning and he could hardly seem to focus on the words... "Um... Tanks... Tanks... Thanks"
The deeper voice laughed from the corner, "Top-dwellers can't handle a bit of spice eh?"
"What?" Rive still couldn't focus
The raspy voice was behind him now, "We don't have any fancy medical supplies down here, had ta slip you some glitterstim to shut down your system long enough to get you patched up... What were you doing in a scrapmetal confed ship anyway?"
"Well I was... Glitterstim?"
The raspy voice was clanking around some metal as he responded, "Yeah, you used to be able to get it prescription top-side, called it kodatain or something? Eh B'ruk?" The deep voice grunted in agreement from the corner, "Heck of a drug, kills pain, knocks ya out, and even puts you into a bit of a calm healing state. Still don't know why they banned it a few years back. "
Rive's breathing started to come in gasps as he felt his lungs close up
"Oh yeah, side-effects" The raspy voice said to the deep voice... to B'ruk's great amusement, "Don't worry kid, they'll die down in a few hours, we had to give you a pretty big dose. Try to get some more rest."
Blinded by bandages, barely able to breathe anymore, and a bit of a spasm running through his arm... Rive didn't think he was in any position to argue and drifted into a spice-induced nap.
Rive awoke with a jolt and immediately reached for his blaster pistol. Finding nothing there he panicked slightly and went into a full-on panic attack once he discovered he'd apparently gone blind.
Still mere seconds since his awakening Rive recalled the bandages on his eyes and what had happened. Ripping the cluster of bandages off with a single motion - feeling no pain apparently due to the spice overdose not being entirely out of his system - his eyes had no problem adjusting to the lighting of the room... because there wasn't much lighting to speak of... adjusting to the constant spinning of the room was a differrent story.
After a few stumbles and complete failures Rive had managed to work his way from the makeshift table - apparently made from an old airspeeder windshield sitting atop a crate - to the other side of the room. Steading himself against the wall he slid open the nearby door. It was dark outside, but it was outside of whatever this dank hole was. Taking a few unsteady steps outside and having victory in sight, Rive suddenly noticed his vision blurring into the red spectrum and then fainted.
"Yep." the raspy voice from what seemed like months ago came, "The idiot ripped open that slice across his head again. Let's take him inside and make sure he doesn't rip the bandages off this time."
Rive awoke - again. This time without a jolt and with a pounding pain in his head and still quiet blind.
The effects of the spice had apparently worn off, he was breathing fine, and the room wasn't spinning. All in all it was a substantial improvement over the last time he work up.
Except for the fact his hands were bound together behind him.
The raspy voice and the deep voice were nowhere to be heard. Rive took his chances and hopped up to his feet and bumped his way around until he found an exit. Striding along, hands bound behind his back, and head wrapped entirely in bloody bandages, Rive didn't draw a single stare as he walked down the streets of Coruscant's Undercity. There were plenty of stranger things down this deep.
He continued like this until he heard a group of friendly sounding - comparatively speaking - Rodians talking nearby.
"There's 50 credits in it for the first one of you to slice these binds and rip open some holes for my eyes in this bandage"
Money talks in the depths of the city-world. Within moments he was walking away from a the bundle of Rodian's who were arguing who had torn the holes first and how to split it with the one who cut the wrist bindings.
The first place he headed was right back to B'ruk's and the Raspy Voice's place... and there she was - his ticket out of here.
The droid star fighter he'd "piloted" down here - the wings were replaced with some old Z-95 wings welded on, the engines looked like they'd been patched up with Bantha hides, but... it was repaired.
Rive's attempts to pry the newly installed cockpit were thwarted by the deep voice - B'ruk: "What in the Nine Corellian Hells do you think you're doing, boy?"
B'ruk was apparently a Barabel. Large, reptilian, and holding a large wrench.
This didn't look good.
Suddenly the Barabel dropped his tail and his eyes softened, "Oh! Apologies, sir. Didn't realize yous was the proper owner of this here fine craft. We was wondering where you run off to."
"Figured we'd need to sell it to a less astute customer - clever of ya to power up the engines with a blaster's energy pack," said a Chadra-Fan drawing himself out from under the modified Droid Starfighter, "won't need to do that again, we got a... classic... Incom Slipstream X7 reactor core wired in!"
He shook Rive's slightly bloodied hand with his own furry, very greasy hand enthusiastically, "Got her patched up and good to go, Master Jedi! 'Fraid I'll need to charge you 200 extra credits to keep us quiet about you being down here - keep the Empire off your back, eh? Brings the total to 8,200 credits"
It was extortion, the "classic" Slipstream reactor had been issued with the Z-74 Starfighter, nearly 4 decades ago, and 8,000 credits was enough to buy a new Z-95 anyway - not to mention the fact that the Slipstream was too powerful for the tiny Droid Starfighter's engines and would probably blow them out within a week at the max - but Rive kept these thoughts to himself, he would have paid twice the amount to get out of the Undercity - "Ah, Empire?"
"That's right, ain't it? You been knocked out on our table for a solid week, haven't ya! You missed an entire regime change in the galaxy!"
"That's... interesting. I'm no Jedi anyway, just a guy who was in the right place at the wrong time."
"Oh? Well, my apologies - I'll need to charge you 200 more credits then, we give Jedi a 400 credit discount. That'd be... 8,400." he said with a toothy grin - or a sneer, it was a bit hard to tell with Chadra-Fans. B'ruk - the Barabel, chuckled.
Rive sighed, "Of course," he retrieved a cred-chip from his pocket and authorized it for a 8,900 credit transfer - the extra 500 credits would help to ensure they didn't shoot him down on his way up - to keep the money and the scrapheap of a ship.
From the looks of how the engines were patched up, it'd probably be a one-way trip.
Fandar immediately scanned the cred-chip, after a moment the transaction cleared - draining probably a third of Rive's savings, "Happy travels! And remember, if you're ever in the Undercity - you'll get a 10% repeat customer discount at Fandar and B'ruk's Starshop!"
"Yes, thank you," Rive said, faking a smile - 10% off extortion was still extortion - as he hopped into the junker cockpit (although it was far more comfortable than smashing himself into the original Droid Starfighter's lack of a cockpit).
With a stutter and a whine, Rive was headed back out of the Undercity - nearly 9,000 credits poorer, missing generous portions of skin and blood, and a blaster power-pack (he was half-surprised the two had left the blaster with the ship at all, rather than claiming it had been "lost", it had to be worth at least 200 credits)... And there was still no guarantee he'd make it back to the surface in this mutt of a ship.
B'ruk and Fandar waved him off with a smile and the nearest thing a Barabel could manage to one.
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May The Force Be With Us, Always
Last edited by Rive Caedo on Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:02 am; edited 10 times in total
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