Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Planetary security, this is the Uwanna Buyer, seeking to land," Quelev Tapper says, leaning into the comm as Myrkr slowly turns beneath them.

Talon Karrde nudges the ship closer to the green-white planet, reducing the distance in the off-chance planetary security's comms budget is smaller than their usual patrol.

Tapper presses the comm switch again. "Planetary security, this is the Uwanna Buyer, seeking to land."

They wait, listing through the yawning void of space. Karrde lifts a finger from the yoke, pointing toward a sliver of another freighter leaving the atmosphere. They watch for a moment, the ship never slowing or hailing them.

"Who tipped you off to this place, again?"

For every ounce of suspicion in Tapper's expression, Karrde matches it with unmasked enthusiasm. "Fen."

The name slides past him without a hint of visible recognition. This isn't the first time his partner has followed a lead into the wild unknown and it won't be the last. Talon Karrde has a soft-spot for entrepreneuring young minds: especially the ones selling him exactly what he's in the market to buy.

"Jett's girl," Karrde adds.

Fen – Fenig Nabon. Jett Nabon's adopted daughter. The little con-artist that works out of the Black Dust Tavern. The pretty one that Karrde is suddenly on a abbreviated-name basis with – offered Karrde the name of a man looking to sell prime real-estate on a Force-obscured planet.

The venture is as suspicious as the nagging lack of long-range landing beacons on the navicomp.

If 'Hello, sir. I hear you're in the market for a magical castle that repels invisible wizards and I have a deal for you' is anything other than a trap, Tapper owes Karrde and his Mistryl-adjacent informant an apology.

Probably several.

Tapper engages the comm switch once more and levels a dark-green stare across the console. "This is the Uwanna Buyer seeking assurance my partner did not award actual credits for the location of a planet so inconsequential as to exist without planetary security."

Silence consumes the space between them.

It's worse than he thought: their planetside destination is impossible to find from orbit. Even with exact coordinates and the Uwanna Buyer's black-market enhancements, the interference prevents them from being able to calibrate with the planet's polar grid.

It's only through sheer determination and visual scanning that they spot a city large enough for port traffic and manage to avoid concession.

Tapper's imagination cannot fathom anything more remote than Hyllyard – and he has traversed the path between Anchorhead and Jabba's Palace with the sort of frequency that the natives dread. 

The dense forest that surrounds the city of Hyllyard threatens to engulf it. Port management confirms the lack of planetary security and long-range comms are not an accident. Even more condemning, it's entirely organic; a high metal concentration in the earth and flora, in the planet itself, renders most comms entirely useless. The casual acceptance the locals demonstrate regarding their fate cements Tapper's unease.

Nevertheless, they find their contact. Chin – a local that functions on first-name basis because the city's social sphere is so small that surnames are unspoken – is barely more than a farmhand in rustic overalls. The dark-haired man offers them a simple smile and a relaxed handshake before leading them into the forest with the same casual familiarity one might extend with directions to a local cantina.

If Chin were any more (or less) friendly, Tapper would indulge the urge to grab Karrde by the back of his collar and drag him back to the ship, blaster firing. 

He's prepared to do it anyway: long fingers curling and uncurling against his palm, itching to rest on the pommel of his blaster. The slick prickle of suspicion creeps down his spine like brain-spiders but he manages to refrain from starting a firefight.

The air is thick with the smell of pine tar and churned earth, as they traverse deeper into the dreadful green. The heat and humidity aren’t as bad as other treks, Tapper admits to himself, stomping through vines after the carefree-local, careful to avoid the suspicious piles of mud and loam that dot their path. 

"Watch the olibo trees," their guide chimes.

The ensuing question is drawn forth slowly, metered with the concern their guide has only now realized they've been surrounded by foliage for an hour. "Do they … dance for tips?"

The man stares at Tapper for a moment, as if waiting for an accurate translation of the question from some unseen source. "The ysalamiri nest in the trees."

"Do they dance for tips?" Tapper repeats, distracted by the absurdity of it all and now adamant that something on Myrkr must carry a modicum of entertainment value.

"What are ysalamiri?" Karrde says, derailing Tapper's inquisition.

"Small reptiles." Chin spans his palms to clarify 'small' encompasses the width of his shoulders. He's shorter and thinner than Karrde but the estimate remains questionable. "Mostly harmless. Known to drop cones and dung on passersby."

"Wonderful." Tapper pauses, tossing a weary glance around the canopy before serving Karrde an expression as honed and specifically purposed as their guide's vibroblade. "Sunny with a chance of shit."

"Best keep your mouth shut when looking up," the local adds, blissfully unaware of the wordless exchange.

"Thank you, Chin," Karrde responds quickly.

Tapper's lips press together in a stern line and Karrde keeps the trio moving; unlike Chin, he knows Tapper's most dangerous when he's silent.

"I don't want to alarm you," Tapper hisses, loosening his collar and peeling his shirt from his sweat-drenched skin, "but we're about three hours into our one-hour trek and it hasn't been an obvious route."

Karrde habitually checks their surroundings and waves off the concern. "The one-hour estimate was by speeder."

Tapper seethes. "What was the pedestrian estimate, Karrde?"

"Twelve hours."

"Twelve hours?" Tapper gapes. The controlling stakeholders of the underworld's fastest growing smuggling organization just stepped out of communication for an impromptu walk in the park and didn't even leave a note. "Why didn't you bring the ship?"

Karrde gestures toward the sky and twirls a finger. "Not enough air traffic to mask exploration. We'd stick out like tourists."

"Touri–" Tapper's mouth snaps shut with a click. He counts to five and cracks his knuckles before resuming the thought. The man must be kissed by Lady Luck herself to have surmounted the underworld with the demonstrated self-preservation skills of an overripe meiloorun.  "If you trip and break your ankle on a magic lizard, I'm going to throttle you and blame the murder on Ken."

"Chin," Karrde corrects helpfully.

Tapper's jaw flexes under the anxious flutter of his eyelashes. "Chin."

"Excuse me," Chin says. "The ysalamiri are mostly sedentary and entirely arboreal. Captain Karrde is far more likely to trip on a root or vine."

Karrde beams, gesturing toward their guide. "Problem solved."

As it gets dark, Chin instructs them on how to set up tents, how to clear the rocks and shrubbery with make-shift tools, and how to organize the piled debris as a barrier from predators.

Using a big stick to push around smaller sticks feels like the kind of busywork assigned to prevent prisoners from rioting. After an eight-hour hike, in two-thousand credit shoes, Tapper isn’t fit to argue. He rolls up his sleeves and plays along obediently, dragging a cumbersome branch across a patch of earth far too hard and cold to be considered a passable sleeping situation. He suffers through the exercise in the desperate attempt to save himself from being brutalized, in restless slumber, by the planet itself.

Thankfully, the view makes an excellent distraction. Karrde removes his jacket, his dense shoulders flexing as well-muscled arms are freed from the sleeves. He shakes the coat, the leather snapping sharply, and drapes it over a branch. Tapper startles and his branch-rake snags in a clump of vines. 

"Smart." Chin's complement instantly launches him back to the top of the threat-list. "That'll allow the sweat to dry before the night chill sets in."

Karrde flashes him a knowing look and Tapper curses, smashing his boot against the green mass to lever the tool free. It wrenches loose with a pungent waft of floral-panic and a wet slap across his exposed arm. He flicks his wrist to rid himself of the offending sludge and heaps the seeping mess atop the growing barricade. 

"Do not touch the vines," Chin says. The words carry the same weight of a parental warning. The order places an invisible boundary on the task at hand; any originating concern too little, too late.

“Or what?” Tapper snaps.

“The sap is an irritant.”

“Unlike everything else on this planet?”

“Urushiol causes contact rash, blistering, swelling –”

“Great.” Tapper throws his branch into the pile and rolls his sleeves down to cover his quickly reddening skin. “Karrde, start a fire so we can burn it all down.”

Karrde’s lips flatten into a line. “Quelev.”

“The radurtica is beneficial,” Chin defends. “The smell is very effective at warding away predators –”

“Predators?” Tapper’s laugh is humorless. "Predators – large enough to pose a threat to three grown men – are stopped by a collection of sticks and sap?"

"The trees protect the ysalamiri. The ysalamiri protect us –"

“The ysalamiri? Which is it, Chin? The acid-sap vines or shit-flinging tree-lizards?"

Chin’s restrained movement punctuates his silence. His hips shift, weight shuffling from foot to foot while a frown carves maturity into his round face. “The ysalamiri, the radurtica, and the olibo sustain each other and, in turn, form a protection from predators." 

"Predators that don't climb trees."

Chin shakes his head. "Predators in the Force."

"Oh, there it is." The statement drips with the kind of exhausted skepticism that eddies around religious zealots preaching in starports. Tapper’s hands rise and fall in forfeiture, then tuck tightly across his chest in a concealed effort to prevent scratching his burning forearm.

Karrde gestures for a ceasefire, curiosity tinting his stern features. “I apologize on behalf of my companion. Kindly expand on that last statement?”

Their flustered guide tears his attention from Tapper to consider Karrde. The tension melts from his shoulders as he registers genuine interest. He combs his fingers through his short brown hair. "The entire ecosystem has developed a symbiosis with the Force, whether or not you choose to believe it.” A wordless pause stretches the moment as he wrestles with the best way to condense centuries of planetary culture and history. “The Neti came to Myrkr after the Sith destruction of their homeworld. They used their connection with the Force to shield Myrkr and became the forest. The forest watches over us and we watch over the forest.”

"What a charming form of planetary security," Karrde says.

Tapper sucks his teeth with his tongue. "Right."

And maybe that's enough for Karrde, but Tapper sleeps with his blaster cradled in his arms – to help reduce the swelling, if nothing else.

The abandoned outpost is everything Karrde expected and more, judging from the lift in his step and the way his broad chest puffs out like a strutting keedee.

Their new real estate sits in a large, natural clearing, south of Hyllyard. It may have been an agricultural facility, in a past life, with a large crew quarters between them and the main house. The southern half of the clearing is predominantly occupied by a processing and loading yard the size of an Action VI, as well as an array of landing pads in various states of decay.

The primary attraction is the main house: a circular multi-level dwelling with its packed-clay walls painted smooth and white to stave off heat and mold. The almost palisade structure is three wide towers huddled around a massive domed common-room.

Not that Tapper sees any of it the first day. Exhaustion deposits him on the first vertical surface that isn't covered in questionably sticky debris: an old lattice-work bench atop the duracreet retaining wall that barricades a tree from consuming the entire room – the massive centerpiece is rooted dead-center in the enclosed space, its trunk as wide around as a turbolift car and branches stretching upward with aspirations of reaching the sun beyond the transparisteel roof.

Light pours in through the mottled transparisteel, filtering through the dark green leaves and smooth limbs of the tree, casting an eerie web of shadows on the dusty stone floor. He watches the shadows creep into two stairways – presumably leading into guest quarters and utility rooms – while Karrde recounts details of the full tour.

"Don't tell me," Tapper says, surrendering to his role as the captive audience, "the base is haunted by Sith lords."

"No Sith lords," Karrde says. "No running water. No power. The southern quadrant has been completely compromised by weather and age. And, reportedly, the vine that gave you trouble is even more virile in the spring." Karrde's smile is almost as infuriating as the blisters left by the aforementioned vine. "It's perfect." 

Tapper toes off his boots and reaches to pull them possessively close but halts with a disgusted groan. They're filthy: the fitted leather caked in questionable mud and sap. He retreats along with his will to argue. "I've changed my mind, the Force can have me." 

"Excellent." The relief is audible in Karrde's sigh. His enthusiasm for being stationary on an underdeveloped planet, isolated from his crew and the galaxy at large, deflates with minimal prodding. "We'll head back to Hyllyard at first light. I'll contact Aves and we'll be back on Coruscant before the end of the week."

Tapper grimaces. "I don't want to go back to Coruscant."

The rest of the admission -- that he doesn't want to return to Coruscant, where ghosts of Sith Lords loom in every shadow, where an imperial intelligence specialist tortures her own loyalists, where the New Republic military leaders send idealists to die -- remains unspoken. 

But not unheard.

The tension reflects in Karrde's shoulders. The older man is not as oblivious to the implications of newfound Jedi laying the foundation for the New Republic as he feigns. Although he hasn't shared details surrounding the fate of his mentor, the indomitable Jorj Car'das, Karrde's paranoia surrounding his disappearance almost matches Tapper's.

They're not going back to Coruscant; not before they have an adequately fortified base of operations to return to. Neither of them are ignorant enough to venture into business with mind-flaying mystics without a suitable backup plan. If any of the rumors are true, the insignificant dirt-clod spinning beneath their feet, permeating their clothes and clinging to their sweat, may be the best defense they have.

"The crew deserves some down-time and so do you," Karrde deflects, as if the last four years he's spent scooping up fragments of fallen empires and tamping the cracks with stability and respect like bloody plaster hasn't earned him a moment of respite. "Consider this a simulator run."

There's a lie there; hidden behind the soft crease of his lips. He wants to offer him the world: an escape plan, an alternate ending, the kind of disappearing act only dreamed about by their predecessors and colleagues.

Neither of them are going anywhere; there's too much to do.

They're stuck in this mess like the shit on his sole.

Tapper's dark-green gaze breaks from Karrde's subtle offer of vulnerability to roam across the open floor space. The encroaching forest buzzes with insect chatter and the harrowing cries of unseen beasts. He sighs and sags against the tree. "I'm sure they'll love this place. Especially after I'm devoured whole by whatever makes that incessant racket."

"Vornskrs."

"What?"

Karrde smothers a grin and takes a seat beside the pouting man. Their hips bump twice in the movement. Neither make any attempt to diffuse the conspiratorial proximity. 

"The large predators native to this area are called vornskrs," Karrde says, his low voice dragging the lore past Tapper's ear and directly down his spine. "Chin claims he's seen them pull beings into the forest whole, their screams silenced by snapping bones."

Tapper doesn't have to look. He doesn't have to see the expression as Karrde exaggerates the words. He can feel it: hear the playful antagonism squeaking through the teeth of his parsec-wide smile.

"What else do they say?"

"They hunt using the Force."

That earns a flicker of attention, a side-eye beneath a cynical eyebrow, a pinch of lower-lip dragging subconsciously beneath upper-teeth. Tapper's focus drifts from the ache in his thighs, up the tension of his spine, past the beard-prickle at his shoulder, falling toward the gravitational sway of Talon Karrde's mouth.

No wonder they sound ravenous.

The approaching scuff of boots echoes across the chamber, shattering the moment and the remnants of Tapper's calm like a mynock against a viewport. He can feel his heart stop and restart, his existence thoroughly dislodged from orbit and jettisoned to wildspace. 

This is how he dies. These are the decisions that spell his fate: following a charming smile into the quiet corners of the galaxy, trading the security of a well-crewed ship for con-woman's vibroblade-wielding contact, and forgetting Talon kriffing Karrde is enough of a literary idealist to misinterpret a suicide-run into a cursed forest as a romantic gesture.

Tapper's hand settles on his blaster and he leaps to his feet to refrain from drawing it.

Somehow, the man entering the room miraculously avoids the vacuum-chill flooding the instantaneous space between the two smugglers. 

Chin smiles politely and crosses his arms. "Finished resting? There's a bit to do before nightfall."

"The master suite has an excellent view," Karrde states with infuriating casualness. "It should function as a base-camp."

"Good instinct. Easily defensible," the vibroblade-wielding contact compliments. His eyes linger on Tapper's disarray for a moment. "Am I interrupting?"

Tapper can feel his last nerve disintegrate as he commits the sin of returning his swollen feet into his ruined boots. "I was just leaving."

"It's best if we stay together."

"I'll take my chances."

Chapter Text

Despite the bone-deep exhaustion of the two-day hike, Tapper doesn't sleep. 

There's something wrong with the planet, something off. The unshakable silence of his comm makes Tapper’s skin prickle worse than the radurtica rash snaking up his arm. He curses and clenches his fist around his forearm tighter, staving off the desire to scratch and make the blisters worse. 

He’d kill for a shower. He’s not entirely sure who he’ll murder first: the local dragging him through the forest or the conwoman that referred him. Maybe both. He could definitely resolve any suspicion regarding their intentions in a large, fiery explosion.

A thermal detonator would suffice.

If Fenig Nabon and Chin are colluding with a competitor, they're terrible at execution. They have an obvious advantage over the situation and they haven't exercised it. And, if they simply wanted to isolate and disrupt trades, a planetary-wide signal distortion is overkill for even the greediest Hutt mob-boss.

None of the motives make sense.

Despite his beliefs, Chin's assistance proves invaluable. Within the first three days, he assists in clearing a wide path to Hyllyard. The effort shaves eight hours off the route, facilitating frequent trips into town. The time (and distance) Chin puts between himself and Tapper increases productivity overnight. Repairs quickly follow: power generation, kitchens, a rudimentary comms solution, and the water filtration system.

The ability to shower leaves a marked improvement for Tapper's demeanor. Fresh hair and clothes bolster his confidence: he stands taller and complains half as much.

As much as Tapper hates to concede, the venture may actually be a solid investment. The organization needs structure and foundation. It needs a home base and the security of a planet so far off the grid – that not even ghost stories can reach it – is a good start.

With the new base almost livable – and Tapper's improved mood – Karrde transmits the Wild Karrde an all-clear and landing guidance.

By the sixth day, Tapper's not entirely sure if the base is legitimately haunted by a species departed or if sleep deprivation has finally caught up with him.

It's probably the latter – although, he can't quite shake the existential dread of an entity being observed by something much larger in the periphery. He tells himself it's nerves – some feverish byproduct of the vine, a bad hit, space sickness, general paranoia – and runs through a breathing exercise a former gunner explained to him.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Consider your target. Consider the playing field. Consider your place between the two. Repeat.

It would work, except the focus on his breathing amplifies the unnatural silence. He's not entirely sure the audible breathing – the air passing easily in and out of a deep chest – is his own.

Maybe Chin is right: maybe the forest is a living entity, maybe the trees have eyes, maybe the vines are all that stand between himself and certain death. The surrounding forest has existed long before he arrived and will persist long after he's departed. He isn't a biologist but that sounds like the kind of behavior reserved for an apex predator.

It would certainly explain all the howling and screaming.

Night falls across the base and Tapper finds Karrde in his new favorite vantage point: a balcony outside the decorative bay-window in the master suite. 

The master suite itself is sparse – a small wardrobe partially obscures a new mattress from a work-strewn desk – but the bedroll carefully spread across the open-air balcony suggests Karrde has seen more of the forest than either of them have seen of the bed.

Tapper pauses at the door before toeing-off his boots. 

"There's one benefit to comm-silence and isolation I hadn't accounted for," Tapper says, not waiting for an answer before chucking his comm and holster onto the desk and closing the distance. 

Karrde remains oblivious to his presence, his attention fixed on something at the other end of his quadnocs. 

"See something you like?" Tapper asks while undoing his belt-latch and dropping it noisily on the wood floor.

There's curious delight in Karrde's expression, as he lowers the quadnocs, that has nothing to do with Tapper's half-dressed state. He pats the empty space on the bedroll beside himself and points toward the edge of the forest, where he and Chin have spent the last three days piling branches and debris against the treeline. It's probably a fire hazard – Tapper's stated as much – but it's a serviceable demarcation between probable-safety and probable-death for the arriving crew. 

There's movement along the clustered debris: hideous writhing shadows backed with muscle and teeth. 

"I've learned two things," Karrde says. "The first being that the ysalamiri are fused into the trees. I assumed they'd move along when I'd started felling trees but, no." He chuckles to himself before his face tightens into its usual slate. "Relocating each of them manually was taxing. Don't tell Chin – most of them are still in there."

"In the leaf-pile?"

"They're quite attached."

The movement is starting to take shape. He can see them now: two gigantic creatures lurk just beyond the snaking barricade, their quadrupedal legs capped with three-toed claws. One pauses to sniff the air while the other whips a long, leathery tail into the fallen branches, producing an explosive shower of pink and gold leaves on impact.

"We're going to need a legitimate fence," Tapper says.

"Doesn't exist."

The pun earns an exhausted sigh. "An actual slatted-metal fence. A tall one."

"Ah. I've Torve and Corvis assigned to that." 

Another explosion of leaves underlines the need. Tapper watches a moment before his attention fades – the spectacle doesn't intrigue him quite as much as the one at his feet. 

"Five hours until the crew arrives." Tapper nudges Karrde's shoulder with a gentle knee and rakes his fingers through the man's short, dark hair. "Let the vornskrs enjoy the buffet in peace."

Karrde tilts his head into a propped-up palm and slowly scratches his stubble with a thumbnail. The rasping tickles the back of Tapper's throat. "The second discovery," he continues, "was that the vornskr don't see the ysalamiri."

Tapper crosses his arms to smother the rising desire to pitch the quadnocs over the balcony. "I don't see the ysalamiri."

Karrde lifts himself to his feet and uses the upward momentum to drive Tapper's attention toward the forest, physically. Long fingers pull Tapper's wrist from his pouting tuck and press the offending instrument into his palm. The skin-warmed metal is almost as jarring as the haptic rush of the man's body against his.

"The vornskr don't see the ysalamiri at all," Karrde repeats, pushing Tapper's focus toward the display. "They're right there, vulnerable and alone, practically begging to be devoured and the vornskr–"

The quadnocs lower almost as fast as Tapper's patience. He cranes his neck to pin Karrde with a stare. "No shit," he says. "I wonder what that's like."

Surprise jolts the older man. His eyes search for a punchline, the obvious jest, and linger on his frown a moment before following the visible path of discarded clothing back into the room. Karrde's smile folds under a flash of embarrassment before recovering an almost sheepish recognition. 

"You haven't slept," Karrde says.

Tapper exhales slowly through his nostrils to prevent airing choice grievances pressing against his teeth. He hasn't slept. He hasn't slept in six days because he's been walking for two, working for three, and subjected to fairytales for five; all in the name of preventing Talon Karrde from being murdered in his sleep. 

That's his exclusive, hard-earned right.

Karrde matches the noisy sigh with a centering breath. It’s a stalling technique he often uses to reassess a volatile situation – match the posture and body-language of a target to blend in, gain an ally, gain sympathy – and Tapper does not miss the comparison to a hostile negotiation.

"Five hours?" Karrde asks, artfully rescuing the quadnocs from Tapper's blanching grip. 

"Yes."

"I shouldn't waste them.” Karrde’s voice is as gentle and firm as the arm sliding behind his lower back to settle on Tapper’s hip, the familiarity blocking potential weapons access. He covers the maneuver with a nudge toward the master suite. “What did you have in mind?”

"There is nothing about this planet on the holonet,” Ghent says, pushing his neon-blue hair out of his eyes. "I don't know how that's even possible."

"I'm not surprised," Tapper says.

Ghent’s eye-roll is so overdone that his head tilts back across his slumped shoulders. He pushes aside his half-eaten meal and leans into the stacked crates currently serving the morning crew as a breakfast island. 

The common room of the main house swirls with the foot-traffic of fascinating and eclectic individuals but Tapper lowers his cup of caf to watch the young slicer squirm. The adolescent human has never turned down a meal and the new behavior is strikingly similar to Karrde’s hyperfixation.

“How did you find it?” Ghent asks.

"Holonet ad."

"You're lying."

"Of course." 

Chin scoots around Ghent's stretched form and swipes a second bagel from the platter, taking a brief look at the interaction and dismissing it. It's his second loop through. Chin's not accustomed to free food, Tapper notes.

"Everything's on the holonet." Ghent's hand raises and falls, slapping the wood. "Except Myrkr. It doesn't exist."

"Yet here we are."

"How did you find it?"

Tapper's head tilts in concession. "Karrde met a woman. Drinks were involved." He pauses and scans the room for his least favorite monitor. There were three individuals present for the transaction at the Black Dust Tavern and, now that he’s showered and stimmed, he has suspicion to spare. "And Aves."

From across the room, the accused tenses. A mop of blond hair sinks beneath the back of a red sofa, as if he could shrink out of sight and avoid attention entirely. The maneuver might have worked if the man didn't also yelp and spring to his feet, holding a freshly-spilled caf at arm's length. His blue eyes scowl as he reluctantly marches toward the conversation to retrieve a napkin.

Ghent jerks a thumb at the flustered man dabbing a stain on his shirt. "Aves?"

The disbelief in the young slicer's question almost matches the suspicion in Tapper's when he discovered he’d been replaced as Karrde's choice companion for the Socorro run. Jealousy doesn't entirely convey the emotional turmoil the new pilot in Karrde's favor evokes. In fact, knowing they're the same height, build, and function bolsters Tapper's opinion of himself – a younger and hotter version of Karrde’s apparent type – but there's something deeply alarming in Aves' natural ability to build trust and confidence so effortlessly. 

Tapper sips his caf. "Aves was privy to the entire sordid affair."

“Fenig Nabon is a trusted informant,” Aves states before anyone can leap to conclusions. “Karrde and I met her at the Black Dust Tavern. He mentioned he was searching for a new base and she referred him to a contact." He tips his head toward Tapper with a tight-lipped frown. "The sordid affair stayed home.”

The energy required for Tapper’s ambivalent shrug could power a small freighter.

“Uh.” Ghent waves his hands until he regains Tapper’s attention. “So how did she find it?”

Aves murmurs under this breath, "That sounds like a great question for Chin.”

No, it's not jealousy at all. It's principal. The new favorite is too comfortable too quickly. Aves has no concept of the time, effort, and energy Tapper’s poured into establishing himself as a figurehead in the criminal underworld. No grasp on the blood, tears, and bodies buried under his ascent to partner in Talon Karrde’s organization. Aves knows more than he should because he listens, because persons want to tell him things, but Tapper –

Tapper’s position is wrought from watching, from planning, from practiced execution.

A sharp pop disrupts the chain of thought: a disobedient knuckle protesting the subconscious order to throttle the ceramic mug occupying both hands. "Her father had a type," Tapper says. "Stubborn nobility. Lost causes. Martyrdom. Ms. Nabon is the last recognizable piece of his infatuation with Emberlene before it was immolated by the Empire. Myrkr’s the result of getting too invest in,” – long, thin fingers tap against the ceramic mug, fidgeting the tension from his shoulders – “folklore. Religious persecution. The kind of sacrifice that triggers an evolutionary shift in planetary ecology strong enough to disrupt comm signals."

Ghent gapes. "That's metal."

Aves stares. "That's absurd."

“No more absurd than Ghent finding reliable Holonet access on this Sith-forsaken dirtball.” The tapping stills. “How did you find it?”

Ghent’s eyes widen. His eyelashes bat against his pale cheeks as he sits up, his posture righting itself in the sudden spotlight. “I reduced the operating frequency to a longer wavelength and shot a repeater above the landing yard.” 

“Fascinating.”

Aves shakes his head. “You shot a repeater?”

There are ten landing pads on site and Quelev Tapper would rather weed and repaint each one personally than spend another moment fielding the same four repeated questions from the arriving crew.

Tapper stands at the center of the second landing pad, the sun a bleeding sliver of red spilling into the purple ink of night through the trees. 

There's something very wrong about the entire situation; beyond the fact that he's awake and dressed before the sun, beyond the fact that he's had a total of eight hours of sleep since landing, beyond the haunted screams from the forest. He's not even bitter that – despite the bizarre and haunting screams that echo though the forest – Talon Karrde has been getting the best sleep of his life.

No. This is even more mundane and jarring: the task at hand is already done. And he's just arrived.

The landing pad was overgrown when he went to sleep. Cutting grass is simple work that can be completed quickly. it's an honest labor, a quick win. It's why he volunteered for it.

But the grass is gone. Plucked clean from the gravel like it never existed. No cuts, no stains, no piles of debris. It's simply … gone.

As if the planet itself actively gaslighting his sense of awareness weren't enough, he can feel it. He stares, studying the expanse of the gravel landing pad, searching for the suggestion of other; the disruption of his cool, the presence in his periphery, the slow breath across his neck.

He spins in place, blaster drawn and ready, shoulders and thighs dipping his body low for the inevitable crush of gravel – a blaster, a blade, a fist, an ambush.

There's nothing. No one. He's alone in the twilight chill of the forest. There's nothing but insects buzzing and birds stirring; nothing but himself and the distant sounds of crew shuffling around the loading yard and main house.

Tapper stands, bringing himself reluctantly to his full height, and tucks his blaster into its holster. His palm remains stuck to the grip like his life depends on it. It does depend on it – his continued existence is evidence a blaster and fighting instinct are necessary for survival. But it's hard to act, to fight, to plan against the faceless omnipotence of Myrkr.

He closes his eyes and focuses on that strangeness, that presence.

It feels foolish – closing his eyes and calming his breathing to locate a shapeless threat because the lawn was unexpectedly mowed.

It is ridiculous. A real threat would have killed him by now.

A real threat –

Something breathes against his neck: hot, heavy, large. Too large for Karrde, for Aves, or any entity known to him. He can feel the warm, wet flesh on his skin, hear the whoosh of air through lungs much, much larger than his – much larger than him.

It's gone just as quickly.

His hand braces the back of his neck as he spins again, scouring the clearing, the nearby buildings, the treeline, every shadow for the presence.

Somewhere in the distance, a pack of vornskrs bray for a hunt. Alone, he shudders. If he can't find peace soon, he's going to tear into the forest and join them.

Chapter Text

"How do you prove a negative," Tapper asks, consciously stilling the nervous tremor in his hands by lacing them behind his neck. The sleep thing is a real problem and he's running out of options. He can feel his normally glacial demeanor sweat along the edges, dripping into the couch cushions like loose credits sacrificed to his long-legged sprawl.

Not that Karrde is giving any indication he's noticed. He's been absorbed in building a virtual model of the base in an attempt to triangulate appropriate locations for communication relays. If he can determine where the connectivity-dampening effects of the trees are neutralized, he can have amplifiers placed to increase signal-strength while preserving relative obscurity. 

"You don't," Karrde says.

Tapper sighs, folding the crook of his arm across his eyes to blot out the light. "Work with me; I'm postulating on behalf of your mental countenance."

The jab is as quick and sharp as the tongue that issued it. If it wounds the older man, there's no show of it. He only pushes virtual flags around a holographic map that occupies his desk and scratches his bearded jawline.

Tapper cracks his fingers by squeezing them against his thumb, one by one, before continuing. "Hypothetically: suppose the vornskrs are perceptive of this mystical all-encompassing energy Force. How do they use it? What are they hunting?"

"Ask Chin."

"I did." 

"Ask Ghent."

"I did," Tapper seethes. If the Force were real, he'd have a singular use for it, right this moment. He'd have a singular use most of the time. He already imagines choking the life out of every inconvenience on a terrifying frequency. 

Something in the dismissal snags his attention, though. Something in the deflection – the quick response, the easy way the name falls from his lips, the frequency of which the local has been visiting – eludes to a bygone conclusion. "He'll never survive our life, you know."

"Ghent's flourishing."

"Chin."

"Chin will have many opportunities to learn and grow, now that he's accepted a role within our organization."

"Well, that dashes my plan to use him as bait," Tapper bemoans with a sigh. He gives up and sits up, launching himself to his feet to join Karrde at the desk.

Which garners a genuine pause. Karrde considers the validity of the threat and – for possibly the first time the entire evening – flashes Tapper a sliver of consideration. “Quelev, do not attempt to domesticate a vornskr."

Tapper's dark-green eyes snap up to fixate on Karrde – the stern line of his shoulders, the thin press of his lips, the finger curled against his chin. The thought hadn't entered his mind until Karrde gave it a shape and marked it as a boundary – a challenge. 

His jaw tips upward as he folds his arms against his chest. "How could you possibly stop me?"

“What do you intend to feed it?”

"I'll start with Det. Work my way up to Aves. There are plenty of beings you wouldn’t miss.” 

The strange patterns the base model cast across the folds of his jacket fascinate him like a cat but Tapper makes a show of sweeping his gaze across the scale map. The opportunity to solve Karrde's problems without perceived effort evokes a rise out of both of them that isn't easy or common.

Tapper extends a hand and taps two partially-covered spaces on the map. “Move the relays here and here. Raise them about two kilometers.”

Karrde considers the suggestion, pressing two thick fingers against the surface and dragging the virtual flags to match. The line of sight and clarity estimates almost double – and they should: the maneuver parrots what Tapper gleaned from Ghent, days before. He's kept that critical bit of knowledge tucked away for just such an opportunity. If pressed, Tapper will absolutely leave that detail out of the explanation.

Perhaps Karrde sees through the spark of genius: the skin around his eyes tightens. Puzzle solved, he has sudden bandwidth to consider Tapper's question. His fingers trace the edge of his goatee as he almost visibly recounts the entire conversation in his mind. It’s a long moment before either of them speak again.

"Quelev," Karrde says, his voice heavy with authority. "A safehouse is only safe so long as its residents are not in danger.”

"What could I possibly do to endanger the crew while the tree-lizards stand vigil?"

The flinty remark strikes Karrde's durasteel expression so hard that Tapper swears it leaves sparks. There is no humor in the information broker's eyes, no leeway in his stiff posture. There is only a cold, inflexible judgment where a question should be.

Talon Karrde believes.

The revelation itself feels disorienting; it's one thing for smugglers and pirates to prepare for the theoretical -- and often fanciful -- worst. It's quite another for Talon Karrde -- the man that overthrew the Car'das Group in an overnight coup, the man that pulled a flourishing business from Jabba's ashes like a phoenix, the man that navigated an Imperial assault to salvage Tapper's hide -- to leap at ghost stories and hokey religions with an angel-investment.

"You're afraid," Tapper says, almost breathless with astonishment. 

“Quelev." It's the third time he's said the name in so many minutes and the third intonation. It's carried on a sigh, given wings by resignation, and claws by warning. "Do not domesticate a vornskr."

Tapper scoffs. "I wouldn’t dream of it."

He does, of course. He dreams of it constantly. Tapper dreams of shutting off the power and throwing open the doors. He dreams of standing on the balcony and watching the forest devour everyone and everything. He feels it. He feels the hunger consume intangible wavelengths – sounds, color, light – as his eyes drift shut. 

His dream-self is part of the darkness, the figurehead of the underworld round-table. The gathered faces are obscured but he recognizes the fear – the respect – that permeates a room lit only by the reflections of feral, red eyes against glistening, white teeth.

It’s Karrde’s fault, really: he granted the blasted idea breath and now it exists, sprawling, growing, digging its roots into the back of Tapper’s waking mind like an invasive species. 

He needs to domesticate a vornskr. There's nothing the dark can hold over him – no hidden threats or mystic ends – if he holds the leash.

Tapper paces the fledgling perimeter-fence like a caged nexu, searching for a gap in Corvis and Torve’s progress. If the radio-silence and lack of immediate threat weren’t enough to unnerve him, the deafening quiet of the forest tugs along his spine like mynocks. He cannot shake the persistent feeling of being watched.

Movement in the underbrush catches his attention and he dips low, instinctively; a hand already settled on his blaster. He'd shout or fire but his paranoia is too strong to draw attention and his pride is too fragile to return for assistance.

A flash of sleek, black fur confirms what he already knows, what he was waiting for: he's discovered one of the local predators and it’s just as anxious as he is. 

Branches snap as the beast retreats into the forest. Tapper exhales, rolling excess nerves through his shoulders, and lifts himself to watch.

Which puts him in direct line-of-fire of the second beast, lashing a long, leathery tail against the perimeter barricade. The whip-snap of leather catches him completely off-guard. He stumbles backward, falling on his ass. If this is how he dies – tossed into the yard-waste with construction debris and shit-flinging lizards – he’s absolutely haunting Talon Karrde.

The creature is massive, this close to his prone being, with only twigs and branches between himself and an inevitable skewering. The barbs on its tail glisten with venom and, instead of reaching for his blaster, he calmly reaches for a ration bar.

He peels the foil from the compressed protein and breaks a hunk off, then tosses it past the fence experimentally. The beast flinches and retreats, completely disinterested in the offering.

And, really, that makes two of them. 

The next time he walks the perimeter, he watches for the creature. And the next time he sees it, he's prepared with a handful of cheese.

It isn't long before both vornskrs pace along the fence in tandem with his patrols, snapping at any foodstuff he tossed to them.

The walks help bleed some anxiety from his system. There's a reassurance in knowing he's not on the menu for the locals – at least when the alternative is cheese. 

“I need a chemical analysis,” Tapper says, carefully depositing a foil wrapper onto Annowirski’s desk expectantly. 

The small packet drips questionable liquid onto the sterile-metal surface of the desk and Annowirski scowls. “I’m begging you to keep it in your pants.”

Tapper would expect better from a medical professional but it’s an entirely fair assumption. As the primary medical professional of Talon Karrde’s smuggling operation, Annowirski has fielded a variety of obscure and potentially toxic samples before – and after – a deal. It’s a large red-flag when the co-owner of the company hastily arrives with an urgent request. 

In an attempt to assuage concern, Tapper pushes his fingers through his hair and offers a salesman's smile. Unfortunately, he’s sweating and the smile crumples under a heavy heartbeat. Regular encounters with the vornskrs haven't done anything to decrease the nervous tremor in his hands and buries them in his pockets to avoid the topic.

“It's a venom sample from the local predators.” 

“Oh, well that changes everything,” the doctor says. “Keep it out of your pants.”

“I’m not fucking the local wildlife."

"No, no. Of course not. You're just coaxing it in for dinner and a little pet-play.” 

Tapper’s jaw flexes. “I need a chemical analysis on the sample.” His mouth curls around a distasteful afterthought. “Please.”

Annowirski takes a centering breath and nudges the foil with the back of his stylus, experimentally. “What are you on?”

Tapper doesn’t want to acknowledge the question with an answer. It’s irrelevant. “I’m attempting to assess the threat levied by local predators.”

"By attempting to hand-feed them."

"I'm studying them," Tapper snaps, cutting the air with a decisive gesture. He's been baited, he realizes with a huff, and returns his hand to his pocket.

The doctor notes the reaction. He gingerly lifts the sample into a vial with a set of tongs and wheels himself across the office to a bank of devices. "Were you hit?"

"No."

"How's the rash?"

"Fine."

"The tremor's new."

It's not. Arguing the point will only raise more questions. The doctor is uniquely talented at drawing information from his patients. "It is imperative that I have information on the vornskrs."

"It is imperative that my employer doesn't suffer cardiac arrest on my desk."

The sample disappears into a machine and Annowirski drums his fingers on the side paneling. He frowns as he watches Tapper from his chair.

"How long ago were you hit?"

"I wasn't –"

"Show me."

"I need –"

"Show me."

Tapper snarls and removes his jacket. The instant relief of air across his sweat-dampened undershirt teases a shiver along the back of his neck. He gingerly lifts the fabric to reveal a gash and several welts that pepper his sides.

"Sithspit," Annowirski says under his breath. He closes the distance between them faster than Tapper has ever seen him move. He snaps a pair of gloves on and dives in for inspection. "These are whip-welts. Please tell me you didn't leave a matching set on Karrde."

"Ask him yours–" the retort is cut short as the doctor presses against the gash and swipes a cold, wet swab against his side. Tapper jerks away with a growl, an electric spike of pain branching through his back and chest. 

"The venom's paralytic,” he says through his teeth.

The machine dings and Annowirski reviews the readout. His brows lift and he exhales slowly. "Emperor’s bones, that is an understatement. This venom could put down a bantha." He swipes through the report on his datapad and absently places the second sample in the machine. "What in kriff are you self-medicating with?"

Tapper offers a humorless smile. "Sunshine and fresh air."

"It’s only a secret until that machine dings.”

"Stim-packs.” Tapper leans on the desk. “And Requilisant."

"Requilisant is a stimulant for high-gravity mining. No wonder you’re vibrating out of your skin. You’re damn lucky you aren’t hearing voices."

Tapper laughs mirthlessly, shaking his head.

"Shit– Quelev." Annowirski draws his hands across his face.

The machine dings a second time and Annowirski skims the report. Judging by the placid expression, it doesn’t tell him anything new. The stimulants were in his system before the venom and both of them know it’s the only reason he’s still standing.

Annowirski chucks the datapad on his desk. Resigned, he retrieves an injector and a bacta patch from carefully labeled cabinetry. He’s wordless as he cleans and patches the gash, injecting a cocktail of antibiotics and supplements into Tapper’s shoulder with a little too much enthusiasm.

Tapper’s grateful for the silence. Being forced to sit through lectures on health care and addictions has only ever sparked the desire to test his personal boundaries. And he, of all people, is intimately familiar with his personal limitations. It’s his job to strike deals and move product, to dance along the cutting edge of the underworld’s favorite trends. It’s Annowirski’s job to make sure he survives it.

Tapper pulls his undershirt back over his head, careful not to displace the fresh dressing or drag along the bruising.

“Their tails,” Tapper says. His voice feels like a meek imitation of itself, like a child defending the actions that lead to a shattered window. “The vornskrs have tails that whip around when they’re happy.”

"Extremely venomous tails."

"They're the only beings here that are happy to see me."

Annowirski drops his used gloves into the hazmat bin before clapping his hands on his knees. He drums his fingers against his legs for a moment, an almost paternal expression knitting his brows. “How do you feel about a little surgery?”

Tapper chews his top lip absently as he mulls over the mysteries he finds himself entrenched in. He should be paying attention to the detailed report about missing assets outside of Borleias but, instead, his mind wanders to a comment a dancer once made about fish only growing as large as their ponds. She'd meant it symbolically -- she'd never make better tips without moving to a bigger city -- but it implied a biological supply and demand.

Annowirski determined the venom was potent enough to subdue a bantha. In order for a predator to develop the means necessary to hunt something two or three times their size, there would have to be something two or three times their size to hunt. And something is watching. Something the vornskrs don’t like any more than he does.

"-- and that's when we shove the kid out the airlock and take bets on what shade blue he turns," Det concludes with a boisterous slap of his long, bare foot against the duracrete.

"Leave Ghent out of this," Tapper warns.

"Oh, so you were listening!"

Tapper frowns pensively, his attention still tracing the edge of the puzzle.

"Where ya at, boss?" Det leans forward, his three-fingered paws soft against the table. "That's your thinking face. Your thinking face means I get to explode someone."

"What's the cheapest way to procure two-hundred kilograms of fresh meat on a weekly basis?"

The Lepi's large, red eye widens, air puffing through his furry, white cheeks as he whistles. "I don't think anyone would miss Dankin or Torve."

"Non-sentient meat.”

"Dankin's Berchestian," Det counters.

Tapper waves his hand, prompting the conversation to move past the sacrifice of crewmates.

"Speaking as a being whose evolutionary brethren are a common protein source, this may be a question better posed to a local like Chin."

Tapper sighs.

"But I'm a fan of shooting things on a regular basis. Especially if it keeps me off the menu for your new project."

Tapper's gaze finally lands on his companion and lingers just a little too long before softening. "I would never feed you to the vornskr."

The Lepi's long, white ears dip back behind his head as his expression narrows. "You, sir, are a terrible liar."

Keeping the terrestrial haulers in the treeline has worked wonders for keeping their growing presence off the radar but it’s the fourth time in two weeks that Tapper’s found himself scraping shit out of his speeder. He's already in a foul mood and the trip to Hyllyard is enough to drive him to homicide. 

What’s worse is that Karrde was right: fresh air and home turf has worked wonders for general morale. Productivity and gains are trending upward faster than either of them predicted. Unfortunately, that directly equates to a contagiously chipper disposition across the ground crew, and the incessant chatter has Quelev Tapper deeply reconsidering how many sentient-beings could go missing before anyone bothered to notice.

And, the longer Dankin recounts the entire history of his favorite public-broadcast holodrama, the further up the list he climbs.

It’s distracting enough that Tapper almost misses the freighter-sized blur that bowls them off the road to Hyllyard. He’s about to shush the man and spot the disruption when their speeder jolts, the back-passenger side tipping upward violently on unseen impact. 

Adrenaline and fear slow time itself; in the face of probable demise, Tapper’s instinct is to brace for impact and stare it down. But there’s nothing, save for that familiar sense of other. 

The world spins for a fraction of a heartbeat before the vehicle slams, inverted, into a bank of shrubs. Metal and transparisteel shrieks under the assault of gravity and sharp, thorny branches, before they settle abruptly. He’s almost, almost convinced his senses are betraying him, when the pack of braying vornskrs that tear past them in frenzied pursuit.

“Did you see that?” Tapper shouts, climbing out of the passenger window for an unobstructed view of the catastrophe racing away from them. A large, blurry shadow barrels through the forest almost drunkenly. It’s difficult to focus on directly but it’s impossible to miss the trees bent and torn in its wake.

“We’d be dead if I hadn’t!” Dankin shouts. “Kriffin’ furballs!”

Tapper’s attention breaks from the road, from the vornskrs, to pin Dankin with ire. “Before the vornskrs.”

“What?” 

“Before the vornskrs,” Tapper stresses. “You hit something the vornskrs were chasing.”

“Don't try to pin this on me," Dankin says defensively. The release on his crash-webbing opens with a clink and he thumps against the metal frame with a curse. "They hit me.”

A defensive rebuke crawls up Tapper’s throat and he swallows it down. The Berchestian isn’t going to vouch for his sanity and arguing only seeds desperation. He returns his attention to the road, to the pack, and the fractious motion in the trees beyond. 

There’s nothing but howls and screams in the shadows of the forest. But there is something out there. 

And the vornskrs don't like it either.

Chapter Text

The after-image of the shadow rushing through the trees haunts him for days.

Finally, he breaks.

"What exactly do vornskrs eat?" Tapper demands of Chin, the impatience in his voice echoing sharply against the stone walls of the main house’s vacuous common area. 

The act requires the almost two-meter tall man to crane his neck, looking up into the boughs of the massive tree centerpiece of the main building.

Chin slowly returns a wicked set of metal clippers into a thigh-holster and adjusts a scaling harness to settle in comfortably for the impromptu interrogation.

There have been a lot of those, now that the base is seeing use. As the resident expert and storyteller on Myrkr, Chin's time has been in high demand.

He scratches his jaw with muddied fingers, his skin dark with stubble. "Some say they feast on curious children–"

"No," Tapper interrupts, his hand slicing the air as if it could physically cut the tale short. "No more stories." He runs long, shaking fingers through his short, dark hair. "What do they eat? What did they evolve to hunt?"

Chin rests a palm on his hip and adjusts his feet, his precarious seat in the tree swaying gently with the apparently familiar motions. His expression is unfazed, unbothered – long-resigned or completely oblivious to his apparent role in the local ecology.

"Jedi," Chin says with infuriating conviction.

"Jedi." Tapper can feel the anger swelling within him, beneath the welts and bruises, under the pressure of constant vigilance for an invisible threat. "Not birds or rodents. Not fish or some vertical-axis, nocturnal fungus colony only found in sun-forsaken cave systems? Not whatever the kriff keeps shitting all over the landing pads?" His dark-green eyes narrow as he recounts the absurdity of the statement. "Jedi."

Chin's narrow shoulders shrug. "Never seen them fish."

Tapper's heels lift, the frustration and paranoia nearly launching him up the tree to throttle the answers out of the organization's new favorite informant. He posts his hand on his hip and diverts his anger toward the conscious act of unclenching his jaw.

Something hit his cargo hauler. Something breathed down his neck and made his skin crawl. Something very large is missing from the ecological makeup of Myrkr. And something is very, very wrong with its inhabitants.

"Are there a lot of Jedi on Myrkr, Chin?"

"No." He pauses and chuckles, laughing at a joke only he can hear. "How do you think the vornskrs got so big?"

"I need tracking data," Tapper declares, pressing his long fingers against the table Ghent has been using as a desk. "Someone, somewhere on this planet has to have caught footage of something."

Ghent stares are him for a moment. 

"The big ones. The fuzzy lizards. Whatever passes for rabbits around here," Tapper pantomimes. "Someone has to know something. I want information."

Ghent's fingers curl into his hood and remove earbuds. He rolls the listening devices around between nervous fingers for a moment. "I already told you: there's nothing out there."

Tapper can feel his exhaustion bat his eyelashes sarcastically. "Dig deeper."

Ghent rubs a thumbnail across his eyebrow. "I've scraped everything from headlines to shipping manifests and there's nothing. If there's something you're expecting to find, I'm going to need specifics."

Tapper's fingers fold behind his neck in an effort to keep from pulling his hair. His brows furrow and he tilts his head back in defeat, massaging the tension at the base of his neck with his thumbs absently. He pauses, his eyes snapping open. "What if we had patrol sensors? Migration patterns?"

"Well that,'' Ghent frowns, tucking his hands under the crook of his arms and mulling over the suggestion. "That is a much bigger net. Does this take priority over the request for a tracer on the contaminated ryl?"

"Yes."

Ghent scratches the back of his neck. "It's just that Karrde was really curious about that contaminated ryl shipment…"

Tapper's eyes narrow. "There's something off about this planet and I want to find it before it eats us."

"Oh. Okay. Sure."

A wise man once told Tapper that the fastest way to a man’s heart was through the fourth and fifth ribs. Whereas he’s found that to be true, time and again, he’s also learned that positive reinforcement and snacks are more suitable for the ones he’d like to keep beating.

If the cheese trick was good enough for Ghent and Det, it’s good enough for his new friends skulking just outside of his periphery. The vornskrs are more cautious than he’d expect for an apex predator – which, again, leads him to believe there’s something bigger just out of reach.

In the meantime, he has something serious to discuss with his furry followers.

“I need data,” he says, chucking a cube of cheese past the fence and watching it disappear down a long muzzle. “Your human counterparts are terrible archivists and I need you to start earning your keep.”

Another piece of cheese flies past the metal latticework and disappears with a snap.

“They don’t mass produce bagged vornskr kibble. If you ask me, it’s a terribly overlooked market opportunity.” Tapper arches an eyebrow and scratches his jaw with a gloved thumb before continuing. “Of course, an uptick in vornskr domestication would help launch the bagged-kibble sales dramatically. You two could be stakeholders in a very lucrative operation.”

One of the vornskrs skirts past the underbrush and pokes a curious nose into view. It sniffs the air and eyes him curiously. He twists his fingers into the fence and the vornskr retreats.

“I’m offering you both the opportunity of a lifetime. A ground-floor investment.”

If Talon Karrde were walking the fence and pitching the proposal, the vornskrs would be queuing down the road. No one would think to ask about the fine-print -- minor conditions like castration and a lifetime in posh captivity -- as long as he smiles. Hell, it worked on him and Karrde didn't even hand-feed him cheese. The thought makes him chuckle, which makes his chest hurt – and that reminds him what he’s out here to do.

“I’m not even mad,” he lies. “The rough-housing is water under the bridge.”

He draws a sealed container from his jacket pocket; a special set of cheese cubes, laced with a farming-grade sedative. Annowirski was adamant that he wear non-permeable gloves to handle the goods.

Both noses peek out from the underbrush when he opens the container. A waft of pungent tauntaun cheese hits him in the sinuses and he lifts his elbow to gag a cough.

“The doctor and I have prepared an entire five-point plan on how this will work. I simply need a volunteer.”

Shaking the jar seems effective. Crouching low and clicking his tongue also seems to help. One vornskr slinks from the shadows and approaches very, very cautiously. And they have every reason to be cautious – the five-step plan involves irreversible surgery and a sub-dermal tracking beacon.

The long, furry muzzle draws so close he wants to pet it. He settles for carefully dropping cheese cubes on the direct opposite side of the fence. The cheese disappears and he offers words of praise; it wouldn’t do to have to chase a drugged vornskr into the forest. He’s accomplished more with less but he’d really, really like to pet the big, furry muzzle.

If this works, he’ll have to think of names.

Against everyone's best judgment, Tapper stalks and tranquilizes one of the vornskrs that skirt the perimeter of the base.

Tapper's dark eyes are wide and curious, his face precariously close to the gaping maw of the creature unconscious on the sterile durasteel operating table. He presses a thumb and forefinger to the beast's brow and pries open an eyelid, checking his reflection in its drowsy gaze.

Tapper bites his lip as the large creature stirs, muscles twitching through its forelegs, claws unsheathing and retracting with rhythmic bursts that imply the vornskr thinks it's running, despite being horizontal on the table.

"It's waking up," he says unhelpfully.

"Nah," Annowirski dismisses. "Chasing hares."

It takes a moment for the statement to sink in. "Do you know what they eat?"

Annowirski shrugs. "They’re not dreaming of wine and bruallki."

“Kriff off.”

Annowirski mops at the creature’s surgical incisions after he secures the final sutures, applies a thin layer of bacta gel, and pats its flank almost affectionately. The care and precision the doctor takes with his large, canine patient makes Tapper a mite envious given their last professional encounter. Although, he’s decidedly grateful the man’s never taken the opportunity to get that close to his genitals with a scalpel.

“Just to reiterate: this is a long-term investment," Annowirski says. "Fluffy’s likely to be far more aggressive and toothy while he learns how to function without testes or a tail.”

Neutering males theoretically reduces the amount of testosterone and, thus, territorial aggression in mammals. Tapper has never witnessed any truth to the practice but understands the creature’s going to compensate for the alteration with massive muscles and sharp teeth. It’s also going to need constant supervision while healing, to prevent destroying the base or itself, and it’s going to be high as kriff in the interim.

There’s more to it than that, though. The doctor’s warning is underlined with a thin reminder that everything said and done in his office is confidential: he’s disavowing any and all knowledge or involvement in Tapper’s inevitable dismemberment – or Karrde’s discovery and potential retribution.

Tapper isn’t worried about the latter: Talon Karrde’s predilection for dangerous and beautiful strays far outweighs anything Tapper could bring home, including 180-kilograms of teeth and claws. No, this colossal druk-sturm of bad ideas is the direct result of his partner's decision to exclude him from strategic decisions like Fenig Nabon, new-hires like Aves and Chin, and investments like Myrkr.

This is what Quelev Tapper does to occupy his time on an insignificant planet with a significant lack of quality entertainment.

Annowirski crosses his arms against his chest. “Whatever that look was, I want none of it.”

A smile tilts Tapper’s mouth. "Deal."

One would think monitoring an immobile creature for a handful of days would be simple. In fact, one might even bet against the odds of ever losing an inebriated, 180-kilogram mammal within the confines of a four-hundred square-foot guest suite. And yet, Myrkr continues to out-maneuver Quelev Tapper.

He's in the middle of discussing an arms deal when his comm buzzes. Normally he'd ignore the intrusion but normally he doesn't have an inebriated predator hidden in his private kitchen. It takes a bit of artful discussion but he's had practice; the deal is postponed and he quickly retreats to his quarters in the main house.

He releases the safety latch on his blaster before opening the door. He'd hate to have to take down his latest project permanently but awarding Annowirski the satisfaction of his death is the least favorable outcome.

The kitchen is empty. And so is the sofa, the bed, and the private refresher. In a fit of panic, he squats to confirm the speeder-sized predator is not, in fact, hiding beneath his transparisteel dinner table.

The entire suite is empty.

Which should be a relief – except it's not. Tapper curses and returns his blaster to its holster in favor of fumbling with his datapad.

It's a couple of swipes to bring up the near-field tracking sensor for his quarry – an experiment he hasn't had to prove functional until now. He stares at the display, waiting for confirmation the vornskr is still on the property, still in the immediate vicinity.

And it is! 

Barring the vornskr hasn't somehow managed to slip its tracker, it's currently hiding in the suite two doors down the main hall, on the right. The master suite. 

Talon Karrde's personal quarters.

Tapper shakes the device and curses, desperate that the device is wrong, that the creature has somehow misplaced its own tracker, that the screen will refresh and reveal he's simply missed the beast hiding just under his Rodian rug.

He checks the time on his chronometer and curses again. He needs to retrieve the vornskr from Karrde's office before Karrde finds the vornskr – or worse.

He slinks down the hall as quickly as his long legs will carry him. Pausing at the door, he presses his forehead against the cool metal and closes his eyes. 

Breathe in. Breathe out. Consider your target. Consider the playing field. Consider your place between the two.

The door opens and he crosses the threshold, hand on the hilt of his blaster.

Thankfully, there's no greeting, no scream, no human remains, torn and strewn about the floor. But that doesn't award time for relief.

Tapper darts around the office, checking on, over, behind, and under the desk. He checks the sofa, next – a sofa large enough for himself and Karrde is easily enough to hide a vornskr. His gaze sweeps across the balcony and the refresher; there are signs of awkward shuffling – hide-bound books open and strewn across the conference table, the contents of a case of exotic weapons littered across the floor, muddied boots dropped haphazardly past the threshold – but he's not confident in his ability to differentiate the work of a vornskr versus a distracted workaholic.

There's a soft rumble and a metallic crunch that strikes fear into his stomach and lobs a shot of pure adrenaline into his heart. A decorative wooden screen obscures the bed from the rest of the office-space and he can almost see a blob of dark fur behind it. There, on the bed, low and preoccupied, a vornskr crunches something non-living between its powerful jaws.

"Pspspsps," Tapper hisses, unable to conjure a more appropriate response. "Drop it."

The chewing stops and the vornskr's short, triangular ears shift his direction. It sits up and slowly lifts its head for a clear view of the intrusion. Large, red eyes glint in the light – dopey and almost relieved. "Get down. Get off the bed!" 

The vornskr's ears flatten against its skull, shoulders dropping as it lowers itself away from the stage-whispered reprimand. It mewls low and long, a mournful sound that lances Tapper straight through the heart.

"Shhhh," he hushes. "Shhhh. You can't be here. I need you to go back."

The vornskr cowers even lower and drops the object of its preoccupation. A cluster of ornate, brass bands, bent and curled, tumble from the sheets to the floor, thumping against the rug.

His eyes widen and he chucks a glance behind him to quickly confirm a suspicion: a Jedi Holocron – an ornate, metal box commonly sold as valuable artifacts by half-rate fences – is indeed missing from Karrde's desk. Or, rather, the expensive paperweight now lies crushed like an oil-can at the base of Karrde's bed.

"You like that?" Tapper turns, scouring Karrde's office for something of equal size or shape. He swipes a triangular puzzle box from a high shelf and shakes it. "Come on. That's it. Let's go back and you can sniff it all you want."

The vornskr lowers itself from the mattress, leaving a mess of drool, and metal, and short, dark hair, and cautiously follows Tapper back to his suite. 

Safely returned to containment, Tapper performs a mitigation sweep of Karrde's office.

With any luck, he won't notice the missing holocron before Tapper can find him a replacement. Thankfully, every artifact fence from Tatooine to Coruscant has three to spare.

If the vornskr is feeling spry enough to cause trouble, it's time to smuggle him back out to the fence and test the limits of the tracker.

Torve stands on the dew-crisp gravel of the loading yard and takes a bracing breath before business starts for the day and exhales in a sharp yelp. "What the kriff is that?"

Tapper kills the accelerator on his speeder and offers his cohort, Det, a look before extending Torve a curious eyebrow. Det’s long ears bob as he shakes his head, feigning complete ignorance of the drugged and drooling predator occupying the bed of the speeder. 

Tapper checks over his shoulder before returning his attention to Torve. "That's called grass, Fynn. It's good to occasionally reach out and touch it."

Torve's face is pale with concern. "What the kriff is that?" he repeats with alternate intonation.

"Oh, this?" Tapper slaps the creature's massive flank, his own large hand dwarfed by the muscle and dark fur. "This is a vornskr."

The man shivers, his fingers making an attempt at covering his gaping mouth.

"Det and I are going to take him out for introductions to a couple of his bigger brothers."

"What?"

Tapper's mouth quirks into a poorly trimmed smile. "Want to come along?"

"No. Absolutely not."

Tapper kicks the accelerator and the speeder bucks. "Suit yourself."

Chapter Text

According to days of tracking data, the brothers have distinct and traceable behavioral patterns, and Tapper's good with patterns. He excels at patterns. The realization that the vornskrs have what appears to be a hunting ground within a day's trek of the base is an astounding breakthrough.

Tapper routes a map within the week. Unlike his original arrival, this time he's prepared with a set of minimalist camping gear. Sensible shoes and sweat-wicking clothes mark a notable rise in his outlook for the hike.

To avoid unnecessary questions, Tapper arranges for himself and Det to make a trip into Hyllyard, leaving a detour into the uncharted forest off the official plans. When they are sufficiently distant from both the base and the town, Tapper diverts the speeder from the beaten path and they set off on foot.

Det and he spend a day scouring the smashed brush and scratched trees for any sign of vornskr sustenance: blood or bones, hide or feathers, disturbed earth or fallen trees.

Hours of fruitless investigation lead them to a small clearing. Tapper presses his hand against a thinner sapling, dusted with what appears to be white moss growing between two and three meters up the tree. It's too tall to be vornskrs, too low to be ysalamiri, and too uniform to be mold. It crushes under his gloved hand like velvet.

Tapper pulls his glove off and experimentally presses his fingers to the moss. It’s … dry. Soft. It isn't moss at all. It's an odd smear of off-white and pink that feels unnatural; intentional, placed. 

It's almost like –

Whatever it is, Det doesn't care. He pushes against an adjoined sapling and complains sharply, "There is so much shit in this forest."

"What?" Tapper abandons his mystery moss to note what his lagomorph companion is cursing.

Det points toward the underbrush with the muzzle of his carbine and switches the weapon to his off-hand to gesture more accurately. "Prey comes and goes in tidy piles to reduce a footprint. Predators jettison the exhaust and scratch the dirt to make themselves look bigger. But whatever this is," the man shakes his head, "does not give a kriff. The world is its 'fresher."

Tapper considers the statement and toes the dirt in a subconscious attempt to remove the mud from his boots. He surveys the dropping-dappled clearing and tilts his head. 

Whatever entity that Dankin and he encountered when it hit the hauler managed to sneak up on both of them until it was too late. They didn't see it until it had run them off the road and continued into the forest.

Prey hides its tracks. Predators create tracks. Whatever this is, it prefers the open space, away from the trees.

Away from the ysalamiri.

"The vornskrs don't see the ysalamiri." 

"Yer mumbling."

"The vornskrs can't see the ysalamiri," Tapper says, flicking his gaze around the nearby trees and discovering a lack of ysalamiri. "It can't hide in the trees. We need to stay off the road."

The bob of Det's soft, pink nose pauses as he squints at Tapper. He takes a slow breath, his ears arching above his brows. "That's backward, boss."

"The entire planet is backward." Tapper stands and adjusts the strap of his carbine against his shoulder, then starts into the heart of the forest. "Stay close."

They venture deeper into the cursed forest, off the hunting circuit, on a hunch. Tapper isn't entirely sure if the creeping dread in the back of his mind is confirmation or the simple passage of time. The further they stray from the planned route, the fewer signs of vornskr either of them can find, and Tapper tells himself that's expected.

A seasoned hunter would tell them their scent carries on the wind and drives the local wildlife away like a traffic closure but they didn't bring a seasoned hunter and their prey has proven it's unconcerned with traffic laws.

When night becomes too thick to continue, Det and Tapper swap their carbines for net-casters, launching lines into the canopy above to quickly construct above-ground lodging. The bright yellow one-being tents look a bit like flimsiplast cocoons, dangling from the trees, but provide shelter from most ground-bound entities.

It isn't very comfortable. Nature did not intend for men to sleep with their shoes on, let alone suspended, isolated, in the dark heart of a haunted forest without a fire or full security detail. 

Tapper's, admittedly, a creature of habit and needs. His distinct preference leans toward capping his day with a warm meal, a hot shower, and an even hotter body beside him in bed. None of those are available options in his current suspended state.

Det doesn't seem to mind the isolation. Chin probably wouldn't, either. He'd probably sleep like the dead and proclaim something about being cradled by moss while the moth-mother fluttered lullabies over his morning caf. And that's enough to keep Tapper's complaints unvoiced.

He's only half awake when the sound of rustling disturbs him. He's more alarmed at the uncharitable pull of gravity sucking at his entire being, his arms tucked at his sides and fingers laced at his chest. It's not how he sleeps. It's not his bed. It may not be his body consciousness has determined to return to.

Despite the obvious discomfort and chilling noises, he's oddly at peace; the prying eyes of the forest are not on him while a beast stirs the night nearby. The rustling in the underbrush beneath him is strangely familiar: it's the same heavy-set four-legged trot that prowls the treeline beside him during his patrols. It's the same density and speed of his companion vornskr; the one he's followed into the forest has, remarkably, followed him off the beaten path.

He could confirm the suspicion – he could reach for his datapad and check the tracker's location – but he doesn't. He doesn't move, doesn't speak, doesn't open his eyes.

He listens.

It's not one vornskr but two. They snuffle the air through their long muzzles and scratch against the tree, communicating with each other in a strange huffed-mewling that sounds deceptively sweet. Whatever has been whispering along his spine since they've arrived, is reverently observant of the brothers' conversation.

And they purr.

A smile melts the hard edges of Tapper’s nerves in a way spice never has. The alien rumble of easy breathing through their chests caresses his senses in much the same way planet-side sunlight feels after the cold of hyperspace. It feels like unconditional trust; like comfort and acceptance. It feels like – despite everything – they like him.

It's the best sleep he's had in months.

Whatever bliss Tapper has achieved in the night disintegrates when something hard and flat hits the back of his head. He sits upright quickly to avoid a second attack and the momentum sets his suspended tent into a nauseating sway. He's overslept – a luxury he can't remember from the recent past – and assures Det he's moving before the man can lob another rock. 

The morning is rough. They've managed to avoid an altercation with anything larger than a stinging insect but the sense of being watched has intensified beyond a feeling. Even the stinging insects are starting to recognize the thick silence is not natural.

Their movements slow, every act methodical and calculated. Tapper checks every shadow and reflection like one of his vornskrs and Det’s insistence on proximity raises the hair on the back of his arms and neck like an electric charge.

They're kilometers inside the forest and, if the trackers on the vornskrs are still functioning, Tapper’s datapad isn’t. They’re on the cusp of discovery, following in the proverbial footsteps of something too vast for either of them to comprehend, and the gravity of it bends their shoulders and knees as they keep moving. 

This time it isn’t nerves. It isn’t some fever dream, a bad hit, space sickness, or paranoia. 

"Do you see anything," Tapper asks.

Det’s furry pink nose twitches as he takes in his surroundings. The exploration is cut sharp as he slaps his arm and smears the pink and green remains of a stinging insect across his white bicep. "I see the biggest boom in anti-itch cream Hyllyard has ever had."

Heavy footfalls race through the treeline beside them and Tapper ducks, quickly motioning for his companion to do the same. Dead leaves crinkle and branches snap as they watch a group of dark shapes dart through the thicket ahead.

Det leans in close and lifts a white-furred paw toward the commotion. "Someone made some very scary friends." 

Tapper doesn’t completely hear the comment. His gaze doesn’t completely follow the familiar shapes Det spots for him. His muscles are tight, seized by some unseen intrusion – an emptiness where a large, dark shape should be. He’s seen it before – in the speeder to Hyllyard – watched it crash through the trees after tossing him aside. He’s felt it before – the hot, wet breath across the back of his neck. 

The pack of vornskrs followed them, followed it, and press into it from all sides. He can almost see it, as if the pack can stress the thin veil of reality and push it into existence. He focuses on the breathing – the air passing quickly in and out of a deep chest – that is not his own.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Consider your target. Consider the playing field. Consider your place between the two. Repeat.

Deliberately, slowly, with a sniper's honed movements, Tapper unslings the carbine rifle from his back and lifts it to his shoulder. Det's whiskers vibrate as he sniffs the air, cemented in place as Tapper creeps forward.

"What are you–?" The question is silenced by a deafening blast as Tapper fires into the forest ahead. 

A bugle rips through the trees, the oppressive silence shoved bodily from their senses as a low rumble skyrockets into a distinctly pained high-pitched scream. A massive quadrupedal creature, three times the size of any vornskr he’s seen, fills the space their eyes had just perceived as vacant. Broad, flat antlers the length of Tapper’s stance sprawl horizontally, drip with a decaying and bloodied molt. Its saucer-sized nostrils flare and flatten in labored exhalation as it shakes its head and stamps long, spindly legs. The beast's left flank is slick and dark with a fresh blaster hit, and its distressed wail reverberates in their bones.

Tapper pales, blood draining from his face. He hadn’t expected it to work; didn’t plan for a scenario in which a carbine volley only made the darkness mad. The creature's large, dark eyes fixate on him. 

Through a fog of pain, his figure, and the heat from his rifle, strike an all-consuming target. The beast lurches forward, crushing saplings and underbrush as it closes the distance.

Det's instinct kicks in and he drops into a dead run, anywhere but in the direct path of the monster Tapper's just summoned into existence, but Tapper stubbornly stands his ground.

It feels like time stops with a second fired round. A third. The density of the beast's low groan shakes the earth and birds scatter from the area.

He was right all along: there was something watching. The planet was going to kill him, trample him, swallow his existence, and continue to persist without him. It's the last anyone will see of him, Tapper realizes, the carbine fixed in his white-knuckled grip.

The beast never makes it to him. 

A chorus of howls join the cacophony. Two vornskr emerge from the underbrush and hairy the creature. Two more join the assault before it takes another step. Teeth flash and whip-tails crack, envenomed strikes tearing at the beast's legs and opening a window for a fourth blaster shot. The last in the charge pack.

The beast crumples under its own weight. Its breathing ceased by a mix of teeth and claws and pure determination.

And, through all of it, Tapper watches. Tall. Steady. Vindicated.

Slowly, Tapper slips the carbine-strap over his shoulder and pulls a wicked knife from a hip-sheath. His fingers curl and uncurl around the hilt in contemplation. With each passing heartbeat, his features thaw into self-satisfied arrogance.

"Kriff me," Det curses from somewhere in the brush. He’s careful to keep Tapper between himself and the frenzy of hungry vornskrs before them. "You were right."

The look Tapper returns is entirely unnerving: it betrays an awareness of shaken faith, of desperation and abandonment, an accusation of cowardice. It recognizes blood in the water and threatens a long, long walk home.

Light dances off the edge of the knife as his grip firms and loosens with manic glee. His smile mirrors the ravenous danger of the vornskrs themselves. 

"Hey Det,” he says, attention fixated on the affirmation. “How much can you carry?"

Tapper is not an outdoorsman. He's not a butcher. And the fact that he carves the beast so quickly and efficiently visibly unnerves his Lepi companion.

The vornskrs growl but Tapper throws them a handful of offal and their protests wither under the clatter of snapping teeth.

Det retrieves the speeder and the two of them stack enough meat onto it for the engine to labor the entire haul back.

The commotion their return causes in the base is audible before they reach the northwest gate. Tapper's posture and bright-white smile carry a level of arrogance that is just distracting enough to keep them from being shot on sight – it's not every day that smugglers see a speeder smeared with viscera and crowned with a two-meter sprawl of antlers.

Somehow, the fact that both of the returning beings are covered in dried blood doesn't penetrate the chatter. The moment he spies their local guide, Tapper abandons all pretense and corners the man. He squeezes Chin's shoulder with a blood-stained hand, his eyes wide and dark, and nearly possessed. 

"How'd it go?" Chin asks, mildly concerned for his new employer.

Tapper laughs humorlessly and tightens his grip, leaning in to share the unspoken jest. "I know what they eat."

To his credit, Chin doesn't flinch. He furrows his brow and purses his lips, studying the newly-minted hunter. "The forest suits you."

It’s a few days before the vornskrs are seen skirting the perimeter again. There are two now. There were two before and there are two now: one with a tail and one without. Annowirski doesn't ask any questions when Tapper brings the second one in for an attitude adjustment.

They’re the worst-kept secret on the base and that largely works to Tapper’s advantage; the trick to keeping something off Talon Karrde’s radar is to make it as obvious as possible. Vornskrs are hard to miss: massive beasts, sleek and muscular, with coats as dark and slick as a river at night, and mouths that could swallow a man whole. They eat as much as the rest of the ground crew and require just as much surveillance. For the most part, they keep to themselves, to the shadows, enough that the excitement quickly dies down.

The watchful presence of the forest doesn’t decrease but something in the knowledge of what causes it, what entity evades perception in the open spaces, satiates the madness of it. When it’s too much – when the anxiety peaks and the nervous tremor returns – Tapper takes a detour into the forest and returns with mysterious provisions. Everyone enjoys a barbeque and any concern is quickly appeased when the ration demands for the growing business are addressed under-budget.

Tapper works with Aves and Dankin to have proximity sensors added to the ground vehicles, to defend the vornskrs from undue accusations (if nothing else). He works with his vornskrs to keep the perimeter clear and base Jedi-free.

For the most part, Tapper's frequent comings and goings aren’t something anyone keeps note of – as long as the crew is healthy and no one is firing upon the fleet. 

What Tapper overlooks, however, is the lift in his step: the effects of a full stomach, frequent excursion, and better nights of sleep. The preoccupation, the general peacefulness and approachability, the brothers bring him are a curious about-face.

And Talon Karrde thrives on curiosity.

Chapter Text

“The Sluis Van meeting was canceled. We should have dinner.”

It sounds innocent enough – a quiet evening with one’s partner is something most bonded-beings find very attractive. Most beings aren’t hiding partially-feral predators in the apartment two doors down from the man they’re involved with. Most beings don’t understand the implication surrounding Talon Karrde making room in his schedule for a private meeting.

“What’s the occasion?” Tapper asks, masking the weariness in his voice behind a few layers of impatience and expedience. 

"I haven’t thanked you for being so patient during our relocation to Myrkr,” Karrde says. Adulation and something that almost looks like genuine apology softens his ice-blue eyes.

It’s the right approach: the only thing Tapper loves more than an attractive being with dark hair and bright eyes is an attractive being that expresses interest in his accomplishments. It’s been a while since Talon Karrde, spymaster of the galactic underworld, pinned him with a sly smile and undivided attention.

With effort, Tapper diverts his gaze from the valley of the man’s exposed clavicle and checks his chronometer: the more weight he can add to the perception he simply has no time, the sooner he can move the vornskrs. “Your place at eight?”

The corners of Karrde’s smile flicker in an almost insignificant twitch. It’s a confirmation – a sabacc player’s tell – that Tapper only recognizes because he’s been the unfortunate recipient of it on multiple occasions. There’s something Karrde wants and it’s not Tapper.

“Your suite is closer –”

“– by two doors –”

"How about now?"

It’s upsetting how quickly three little words can propel Tapper’s feet in a direction autonomous of his mental faculty. He’s not sure when they started up the stairway from the common room to the living quarters but he’s absolutely going to blame the ascent for his elevated heart rate if Karrde presses the subject.

“Give me an hour to shower and prepare something.”

“Quelev, that wasn’t a question,” Karrde says flatly, culling further deflection.

Tapper’s sole hits the landing and he has the briefest second to swallow before the shorter man consumes his field of vision again. Trying to out-smart the information broker is an exercise in patience he doesn’t currently possess. He can only hope the vornskrs extend the same feline precaution toward Karrde that they demonstrated for Det.

He picks at the seams of Karrde’s shirt and smooths out the wrinkle in his smile with a soft sweep of the fabric. “Of course.”

Tapper reminds himself to breathe as they cross the threshold into his quarters. He removes his boots and keys the lights with as much bluster as he can afford without seeming suspicious. 

If Karrde notices the warning noise, he doesn’t show it. He moves around the guest quarters with ease and familiarity: leaving his boots at the door, draping his jacket over the sofa, pulling two glasses and a bottle of wine from the cabinet.

Tapper watches him pick about the living quarters with an ease and familiarity he doesn’t share. Part of him wants to check his datapad to confirm the vornskrs are behind his bedroom door. Another part of him assuages that their mysterious disappearance is the best-case scenario for his evening. Still, the darkest part of him – the part that doesn’t want to wait for elk steaks to roast in the food-prep unit while the galaxy’s most notorious information broker assesses his living conditions – wonders if it’s too late to aim between the fourth and fifth rib and call it a camping accident.

The intrusive thoughts are remarkably silenced as Karrde presses a glass of wine into his hands and begins preparing a vegetable dish. The domesticity of the scene is a pleasant distraction.

“I hear you’ve unlocked a major mystery,” Karrde says.

"I’ve discovered an entire genus of megafauna skulking around this dirtball."

“Ah, yes!” Karrde gestures toward the haunch of red-meat slowly rotating in the food-prep unit. “The crew is very pleased.” 

The crew is pleased, Tapper notes. Not Karrde. There’s a distinct lack of interest in the discovery that lines the conversation with red flags. 

“Are the lightsabers particularly beneficial?” Karrde asks.

Tapper stirs the pot of cubed vegetables, buying himself a moment of focus away from the loaded question. “Lightsabers?”

“Some pieces from my Ruusan collection have gone missing in the past few weeks. I thought it might be Ghent or Dankin –”

“– lock your doors –”

“– but then I noticed my boots had also been moved.”

It doesn’t take much mental math to derive the most logical solution. The man that wore two-thousand credit shoes on a day-hike is the most likely candidate to have been compelled to return a pair of haphazardly discarded boots to their appropriate rack. The accuracy of the character detail is stunning but it’s not as condemning as smuggler’s brow implies.

“I haven’t touched your lightsabers,” Tapper says, migrating the conversation to the dining table along with flatware and the steaming roast. 

From the corner of his eye, he notices a shadow that isn’t part of his normal decor: a vornskr, blending in seamlessly, hauntingly, to its sleek, ultra-modern surroundings. He almost drops the vegetables in an attempt to seat Karrde with his back toward the disturbance.

Tapper carves a steak and gingerly adds it to Karrde's plate before dressing his own. "Ghent would have confessed. You should talk to Chin–”

"When are you going to introduce me to your new friends?" Karrde asks pointedly.

It's a strange question to hurl at a man holding a carving fork. Tapper's not entirely sure he heard it correctly but the accusation spears him directly in his dark places. His mouth snaps shut and his eyelashes bat a moment while the words process. "What?"

Karrde swirls his wine around his glass, his left arm draped behind the back of his chair, his expression bemused. "There's hair on your collar; your entire wardrobe has shifted to dark colors to mask it–"

"– I like dark colors –"

"– Your scent has changed." Karrde lifts his hand and gestures around the room by making a small encompassing circle with his index finger. "Your cabin and clothes smell earthy, musky – not your usual cologne and sweat."

"You smell me now?"

"You're eating for five."

Servingware clatters as Tapper throws it on the table. He stares, long and hard, a look of indignant bewilderment plastered across his face. 

Karrde sips his wine and Tapper wordlessly drops himself into his chair, opposite the table from his accuser.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Consider your target. Consider the playing field. Consider your place between the two. Repeat. 

Tapper tucks his thumb and forefinger between his lips and whistles, a shrill and clear sound. Two large vornskrs unstick from the shadows and slink, heads lowered, toward the table. He doesn't break eye-contact with Karrde as they slip past him with ink-like fluidity and gather to flank him at either side. 

Karrde's expression cracks briefly. Whatever he’d derived – a gambling debt, a secret lover, illegitimate offspring – is so far from the truth that the journey is sprawled across his features. His mouth tightens as his blue eyes take in the hulking creatures.

Tapper exhales his frustration before picking up his dinnerware and slicing into his steak. He takes a bite and chews mechanically, his shoulders tense and eyes deadly, before gesturing flippantly at the vornskrs. "Sturm. Drang," – he lifts his knife toward Karrde – "Talon."

For once, Talon Karrde is speechless.

Despite all his efforts, business takes the both of them back to Coruscant. The New Republic has need of Karrde’s skills and, whether or not Tapper likes Booster Terrik, Corran Horn, or any member of Rogue Squadron, is irrelevant. Karrde conducts negotiations with Booster and Corran while Tapper walks the boys around the rooftop sky garden.

The door opens and Corran exits the building with a whoosh, a scowl plastered across his young face. The frustration and anxiety pouring off the pilot is palpable, his hands tightly wrapped around a medallion at his neck. No matter what planet, or proposal, or being, it’s an inevitable reaction to being in close proximity to both Booster Terrik and Talon Karrde for any amount of time. It’s why Tapper chose to walk the vornskrs.

The vornskrs instantly key in on Corran’s anxiety: shoulders hunched, hair raised, ears flat. Their stances stalk him like prey, a low growl rumbling from within their deep chests.

It’s remarkable behavior. 

Tapper lifts an eyebrow. "Everything alright, Lieutenant Horn?"

"Not at all," Corran says, keeping a respectful distance between himself and the agitated beasts. "There are laws prohibiting Talon Karrde and Booster Terrik from interacting – in several systems. I'm baffled as to how Wedge picked the singular planet outside of jurisdiction."

"Captain Antilles is a clever man," Tapper offers, stroking Drang's fur to ease some tension.

"Right. Well." Corran pauses, releasing his medallion to gesture at the brothers. "Are they alright?"

The unsaid statement – that animals aren't generally so aggravated by his presence – is wildly fascinating.

Tapper crouches to eye-level with Drang and watches the pilot's reflection in the vornskr's big, dark eyes. There's hunger there; Sturm and Drang both see Lieutenant Horn in much the same way they see the mysterious elk back home.

And like that, it clicks: there's more to the entire story than meets the eye. 

Tapper knows where he's seen the medallion before and knows exactly why the vornskrs are fixated. Some puzzles require time, effort, and pure dumb-luck. Some puzzles are designed to be solved using wits or tools or – in the case of Karrde’s now largely-falsified holocron collection – the Force. 

"Just a little hungry." He gestures toward the Jedi Credit looped around Corran’s neck with as much nonchalance as possible. "Family heirloom?"

"Good catch." Corran tucks the medallion back under his collar. "Lucky charm."

Tapper pats Sturm placatingly and stands at full height, adjusting his suit lines and shirt cuffs, and smiles wolfishly. "If you ever find the heart to part with it, I know a collector."

Karrde boards the Uwanna Buyer with a strut that suggests he's just sold the New Republic a brand new Star Destroyer. He takes the helm and they start the long journey home with an electric charge of knowing between them.

"By all means, you first," Tapper cedes, crossing his arms and settling into the copilot's seat while Drang snuffles in the corridor for an optimal spot.

Karrde waves off the gesture, a grin barely obscured by his goatee. "It's nothing. What did you find?"

Tapper grants Karrde the span of three heartbeats to change his mind and boast before speaking. "Chin may not be an entire idiot."

Karrde nods politely toward the overdue concession.

"The Sith are terrible neighbors – tend to warp and defile nature – blot out entire suns and the like. Myrkr was an immigration waylay at one point.” Tapper pauses, waving himself past the tangential distraction. “I found records on Tuk'ata: Sith hunting dogs. They were said to be sustained by the Force, since the planet's wildlife was sparse. If the Sith brought them to Myrkr, it’s entirely probable their descendants adapted to the local ecology." 

"Of course."

“Unfortunately, there’s no record of my invisible elk.”

Karrde smiles. “Until now. Congratulations; 'Cervus Q.T.' has a bit of a ring to it."

"Spare me," Tapper dismisses airly. He crosses his feet on the instrument panel and allows the electric buzz of new lore to settle before adding the master stroke to his presentation. “And, oh– you'll never have to worry about Corran Horn visiting Myrkr.” Refraining from smiling, from lighting his eyes, from showing any hint of excitement regarding his reveal is almost torturous – but undeniably worth it, “The vornskr eat Jedi."

Whatever news Talon Karrde had prepared, whatever smug excitement he was prepared to share, is dropped out of atmosphere by the statement. His shoulders loosen, attention shifting from polite listening to actively engaged. The intrigue reflected in the crime lord’s blue eyes harbors the same adoring glint the vornskrs exchange for cheese. 

Tapper flashes him a tight smile. "I knew you'd like that."

The boys are an excellent addition to the Org. They serve as watch tirelessly, keep rodents and predators off base, and somehow weasel everyone into increased physical activity.

Most importantly, they keep Tapper out of trouble. And, for that, Karrde is willing to overlook a few missing objects and the occasional protective growl when he gets too close to their favorite being.

The mistrust doesn't last long. As it turns out, the rumors are true: Karrde's magnetic personality satiates even the wildest heart. He's cautious in the approach but Sturm and Drang quickly adapt to his presence.

A meeting starts with the sun just kissing the western treeline and doesn't end until it's too dark to see the exit.

The holographic form of a Trandoshan is the last one to dissipate, plunging the office into eerie darkness. There's a moment of awkward silence before Tapper stretches his long arms with a yawn, and drapes himself dramatically across the table to nudge Karrde's arm. "Are you going to get the lights?"

Karrde's frown is audible. "I would but Sturm fell asleep on my feet."

There are parsecs between this moment and the last time Tapper barked a genuine laugh. Karrde registers the occasion an instant before himself, as evident in his smile. 

Myrkr was an excellent decision.

Chapter Text

Mara Jade is only twenty-two standard years old and she’s already spent half her life restless, homeless, in the shadows, and on the run. Working as a mechanic on Varonat wasn’t a picturesque life but her new career path with the smuggling organization on Myrkr feels like a step in the right direction.

And Myrkr feels like home.

It’s hard to put a finger on why, exactly. Survival instinct dictates that she should not feel at ease surrounded by thieves and smugglers. Years of training tells her she should not bank trust with anyone whose sole capital is derived from trading secrets. And the tiny, green-white forest planet flirting with the edge of wildspace and the hutt cartel should irritate every ounce of her that misses the Imperial Palace. But it doesn’t. It feels like, well, nothing. A warm, cozy blanket of static and white-noise. A blank slate. A fresh start.

And Aves knows his way around a percolator.

She stands, cradling the warmth of her cup of caf in both hands, watching the little forest base rouse. Crew busies itself as the ground starts to warm and fog starts to dissipate, melting before the rising sun. But the strangest thing –

“We’re going to need a better fence,” Mara says to no one in particular.

Ghent looks up from his breakfast, curiosity in his acknowledgement. “What for?”

She blinks and gestures toward the landing yard. “To keep all those elk out.”