The Big, Wide Galaxy: A Star Wars Underworld Quest

The liner that brought you here is a battered thing that the captain swears up and down is fit for the run from Mandalore System to the Core, and you're not sure about that. The safety inspection tags have readouts that say the last qualification was fifteen years ago, the steward seems to be more enforcer than actual attendant, and the bursar is the one to go to for buying things from 'Lost and Found'. Some passenger loses it, and another finds it – such is life.

You do get a nice watch out of it, though. A sleek metal mechanical thing, all ticks and analog dials. A novelty, after all the years of a cheap digital timepiece and communicator. The quartermaster just takes the cash you fork over, and quietly advises you not to wear that in the dining cabin.

The trip itself is for more than a week, the ship stopping off at more than one world for what they claim are either passenger pickups or refuelling. Most of those worlds are wealthy, ostensibly those that are 'developed' enough to have moved above the crime and thuggery on the Outer Rim. Of course, there's a rather lot of parcels moving back and forth between the dilapidated passenger liner with far too many 'guests' going on and off ship...

Eh. None of your business, although you almost make it so when you consider a job offer aboard ship from one of the humans involved in the 'cargo transfer'. There's always room for another Mando, he says, and you almost believe him.
Almost.

It takes two weeks of this, two weeks of wariness alternating with relaxation and quiet amusement. Two weeks with a blaster on one hip and a monofilament blade on the other one, and a pronounced Mando accent marking you as someone most of the passengers tend to walk quietly around.

Then...you come to the jewel of the Galaxy.

Coruscant.

There's no world quite like Coruscant. The great ecumenopolis that is the capital of the Republic, the place from which the galaxy is ostensibly ruled. Even from orbit, you can see the vast tracery of lights, far too dense to be settlements on planetary surfaces, all around the world. There are stations aplenty in orbit, and on the flight in your liner is buzzed by a single sleek craft that one person points out as a Consular.

Even the landings are done in a style and lavishness that any other world in the Galaxy cannot afford. There is no dirt landing pad as one might see on the smaller cities of Concordia, no great sweeps of ocean set aside as it is done on planets that your father told you about – nothing like the small spaceports of Naboo rocking gently on the waves or the armored, patrolled landing stations on Mandalore.

On Coruscant, even the spaceports, home to a thousand thousand hucksters, conmen and worse, even the spaceports shine with crystal and polished metal. The battered tramp freighter whines into the landing bay of a spaceport in orbit, the station hanging above the planet with the blocky shapes of freight shuttles taking passengers down in droves to the planet.

Your liner disgorges you, your fellow passengers who give you a wide berth, and the Miraluka that was eyeing you up throughout the liner's passage. You stumble a little as you come down from the ship, battered armor painted in Republic Judicial colours to hide the beskar patchwork beneath the finish. Your duffel bag slaps against your back as you steady yourself, and a hand on your shoulder helps you do that after the drop from the liner's exit port to the ground.

"Steady there, Mando. This isn't a hot drop, no need to rush." The Miraluka woman is pale enough to make you question whether she's ever been outside, dark gray blindfold tilted towards you in an unnerving parody of human sight. "What brings an armored clansman to Coruscant?"

You hesitate for a moment before deciding fuck it, and answer as curtly as you can while turning for the hangar exits and heading for the planetary shuttles. "Brother runs a business here. I was thinking to find work off the farm."

"Work that involves armor, hm?" She runs a finger down one of your shoulders, pressing in close and the scent of something floral wafting nearby as she does. "Something that involves beskar, perhaps?"

"Security work." You brush her arm off roughly, get a few looks from other passersby in the great steel tube of the main concourse, and walk more rapidly to the exits as she follows in your wake.

"Security." She halts suddenly, and a single hand on your shoulder holds you still for a moment as the Miraluka's tilted head and quiet snort show you very visibly that she finds it amusing. "Security. If it's that sort of work you want, do let me know." A business card – old-fashioned paper – is in your hand with a comm code on it, and the name on it reads Madion Zamora, Coruscant Business Consultancy. She waves as you turn and head for the exit, and you don't wave back.

The shining lights and the sleek surroundings make you check your six and walk in a hurry after that, and you're far more wary of the capital world. You take a folding seat up against the side wall of a cargo shuttle, facing a great cliff of freight containers and bunched up against other passengers who seem more blasé than you. The two beside you promptly go to sleep as the shuttle ponderously lifts off from the station your liner docked at, and the X-straps that hold you to the chair keep you in place as zero-G makes your stomach roil.

All the same, the shuttle-voyage is disappointing. You're too keyed up to sleep for the half an hour it takes, and at the same time you keep wishing for the shuttle to have windows or something. You wind up staring at freight containers marked FRAGILE and with the emblems of every planet from here to Cato Nemoidia while you get the zero-G nausea under control.

The shuttleport at Coruscant is similarly bare, the shuttle landing at a surface spaceport that serves the lower levels of Coruscant's dilapidated industrial zones. The hulking forms of heat-radiators and surface factories rise beside the shuttle platforms that mushroom near the port authority buildings, dead and emptied by the deindustrialization of the capital world in the face of cheaper Trade Federation competition. Smokestacks that no longer belch out gas seem as impossibly tall trees from where you stand, just off the shuttle's off-ramp. The wide blue sky looks down on a landscape defined by buildings and surfaces, with great cracks and crevasses showing the lighting and habitation of millions upon millions of troglodytic underlayer citizens while the spires in the distance shining bright golden in the sunlight seem to promise the delights of wealth and power to their inhabitants.

You stand there for a long, long moment just looking and smiling dumbly to yourself, until a hulking alien elbows you out of his way, slouches off, and mutters something vaguely insulting in your direction.

Suitably shocked back to your senses, you head for the shuttleport and the public comms systems there – your brother handed you a comm code and you're damned if you'll contact him on your personal commlink. A few credits see the clerk turn a blind eye as you fiddle with one of the station's official commlinks, and a few rings later gets you a gruff voice on the line that isn't your cousin at all.

The voice is, however, very cooperative when you mention cousin Rhaj, Concordia, and work. You're told that someone'll meet you here in half an hour, and to wait a bit while they come. Accommodation is arranged, or so you're told.

Either way, if it is or isn't, you have your armor and money and arms. You'll live. The creepy Miraluka's commlink code is likewise in your pockets, untouched and something that you remind yourself isn't a backup plan.
Half an hour later you're half-dozing on one of the lobby chairs, the clerks unwilling to evict someone with arms and armor from the arrivals lobby. You're shaken awake, and your cousin's plump face looks down at you from a silk shirt and a bright red blazer that belongs more on a garish dancer than a proper Mando. You scowl at him for a moment, and he just laughs.

"If it isn't young Cousin Jaing." Pearly-white teeth gleam in a too-wide smile as your tanned, unarmed, unarmored cousin throws his arms theatrically wide. "I never thought you'd leave the farms and come to the big city!"

"I thought of the Rim, first." You grunt as you stand up, and then grin back at the cousin who always smuggled in the best sweets from his corner of the galaxy. "Then I remembered that you had the better parties."

You're enveloped in a bear-hug at that, your cousin laughing as he replies. "Ah, you haven't seen anything yet, my boy." A ruffling of your hair as if you're a child just makes you shake your head a little, and your cousin pulls you in a little closer after that. "Anyways. Buller-" A gesture at a squat fireplug of a human, "-will take you to a barracks. You can get some rest there. Meet me…"

Pick one:
[]At Industrial Zone 3-C: "There's something shiny moving upwards, and I don't like the guy who owns it. Breach of contract tends to offend." Begin storyline: The Nemoidian Job.

[]By the Judicial Headquarters: "Sometimes we get paid for information, and the Judicials pay. Sometimes – and more profitably – the Outlands Security boys pay us for more than information." Begin storyline: Sanctions Busting

[]...actually, I'll meet you. Report to Buller first: "There's something a bit violent to be done first. Someone hasn't been paying up on time. You know how it is, your cousin Lyria's told you all about that sort of thing." Begin storyline: Franchising

AN: Feedback welcome, and votes are open.