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Reports from the Edge 1999 short story by
Jonathan Hicks Five years after Episode IV -
A New Hope PERSONAL
LOGS OPERATIVE: Yullm (alias), Second
Grade Information Gatherer. Entry 26 Today has not been a very good day. Working under
the shadow of the great Glann Cipple is hard at the best of times, but
recently he has become agitated and restless. I think spending all of his
time locked away in that top floor office of his is not helping matters much.
I’ve been here for a long time and I have never known him to leave his upper
apartments. My boss Zoz Eldenn says that he rarely sees Glann outside his
office, but I think he was exaggerating. Anyway, after compiling several reports on new and
expanding crime figures, coupled with the unsatisfactory results of several
high-profile runs recently, I’ve been at the butt-end of one of Glann’s
tantrums. He thinks that his prime operatives are not doing their jobs
properly and wants first-hand reports of their operations. I’m a desk worker!
I hate travelling and poking my nose in where it isn’t wanted. I told him I
would get my best man on the job. So, what Glann’s decided is that I’m to accompany his top men on at
least one of their jobs over the next few days. Me! What will that achieve?
I’ve got to follow a bunch of his guys around the Setnin Sector, spying on
their work and making a report. Oh, I’m sure that’ll make me popular! I start
tomorrow, apparently. If I don’t make any more entries into this log, then
whoever reads this will know I died on a backwater Krayt-hole somewhere with
a smouldering hole in my chest. Thanks for nothing, Glann. DAY 1 Well, I suppose I could have been lumbered with
worse. Glann’s decided to hook me up with Carlonian Feese for the first day,
one of his top hitmen and the guy he uses to lean on his adversaries. With my
datapad and lightstylus in hand, I steeled myself for a day of bodies,
Blaster's and downright mayhem. I wasn’t disappointed. We went to a nice little
place called A-desando, a large world of a very friendly people. As soon as
we touched down in Feese’s ship, the Deadmans
Dream, we were met by a rather angry looking scaly alien with long blue
hair coursing down from his brow to his waist. Apparently he was a new
gangleader trying to build up a powerbase in the Setnin Sector, and he was
running weapons and other stuff through one of Glann’s areas of space. Feese
was there to make sure he didn’t do it again. From what I understand, Goah
Galletti had already had an unplanned confrontation with this alien a week
ago, but obviously he hadn’t taken the warning and stuck around to cause more
trouble. Feese had arranged this meeting with him before leaving Amagad,
apparently. I thought he would have just turned up and started throwing
threats about, but obviously he’s a lot more restrained than that. Or so I
thought at the time. He never said much on the ship going to the
planet. I knew he kept himself to himself, but I would have hoped he would be
a little more forthcoming with answers to my questions, especially since he
knew that Glann had ordered these reports. Feese is a Mon Calamarian, all
swathed in cloaks and a huge visored facemask to hide features horribly
scarred by injury. I’ve also heard he has a plague, he’s actually a ‘droid,
there’s nothing wrong with him... what is under that mask, no-one really
knows, but he is Mon Calamarian. You can tell by the hands, you see. Bit of a
give-away, that. Feese is very bitter about everything. His answer
to a series of questions about other Glann operatives was simply ‘don’t like
him’. He doesn’t trust anyone, and if he has to work with a partner or two he
absolutely insists on having full control over the mission. He never told me
that, I pulled that from his private files. He’s surly, nasty, snappy and downright abusive.
He is, however, a very effective operative with a high success rate. He was
also one of the very first people to work directly for Glann when he was
setting up business, so I wonder; does Glann employ him because he’s good, or
does he just because he’s used to Feese being there? Anyway, the blue-haired alien introduced himself
as Noomtil, and also introduced his brother and his daughter. Everything was
going well, with Feese laying out Glann’s conditions for Noomtil’s path
through his spacelanes. Noomtil wasn’t having any of it. As soon as he
refused to co-operate, two hired hitmen appeared from behind a door and
started walking over. Without a thought for my safety, Feese never even
gave Noomtil a chance to explain and produced a sawn-off Blaster rifle and
put a hole in both the hitmen. He told Noomtil that Glann’s conditions were
not an offer but a requirement. Noomtil asked what Glann intended to do if he
continued to run through his space, so Feese blew his brother’s head off to
make his point. I think Noomtil got the message. I felt physically sick as I boarded the Deadmans Dream. There was nothing to
indicate that Feese would do what he did. The talks may have got a little
tense when the gunmen turned up, but Feese obviously doesn’t like anyone
making threats, no matter how small. What he did was spur-of-the-moment
stuff. Impulsive. But, it did get a result. Noomtil said he’d watch his step,
even asked to talk to Glann face to face, so obviously Feese’s actions, no
matter how brutal, got a result. Which scared me. That seemed to be the only
way he could communicate, through threats and violence. Luckily, that was the
only job I went out with him on that day, and Glann was pleased with the
result of the meeting. I hope I pull a better hand tomorrow. DAY 2 Happy day! I’ve got Jan Lomona today, zipping
across the cosmos, pulling deals and turning wheels. At least, that’s what
Jan said we would be doing. We
spent the first seven hours on board his ship, the Berone Sunrise, traversing hyperspace to Cantarr Bi Romou. The
huge shipyards came into view as we entered the atmosphere, and we promptly
passed over them to a smaller shipbuilding out of the city limits. From what
Jan told me, which wasn’t much, we were meeting with a junker named Arach
Raynor, who apparently had got his hands on some kind of illegal fuel
injector for starfighters and wanted to sell it to Glann, with no way of
transporting it off-planet. Where he had got it from I don’t know. Jan didn’t
mind saying what he was getting, but he wouldn’t explain the details. Jan had always struck me as a well-meaning,
friendly sort of chap. He was out-going and jovial, with a face that said
‘trust me’. Which you couldn’t do, of course, but that’s probably because I
know him quite well. He’s Glann’s top smuggler, and with an eighty-two
percent success rate, who was going to argue? Jan knows his limits, knows
what he can and can’t do but still tries those jobs that seem a little
impossible. Sometimes he comes across as a little cocky, which makes you wish
he would mess something up so that you can laugh at him whilst he’s got muck
on his face. You can’t help liking him, though, and hoping at the back of
your mind that he makes it through his job, no matter how much trouble he
makes for himself. He has a wide circle of friends and contacts from Amagad
to The Core. None of these people would trust him with their life savings,
that much is true, but it’s amazing how he has this power to make people fall
over themselves to help him out. I asked him about the stories of his womanising,
but he just gave me a disapproving glare and said something about ‘can’t
please everyone all of the time’. He’s not a violent person, but will defend himself
if necessary and tries to avoid confrontations if possible. He can hold his
own, and from what I understand his punches are pretty notorious for being a
little too heavy. From recent reports I believe it’s ‘three dead, seven
hospitalised’. We set down in a wide field next to a right old
heap of a salvage ship, and there was a longhaired human waiting for us. As
soon as Jan lowered the ramp, the man, who was obviously Arach Raynor, dived
up, dumped a large container and took the credit pouch Jan had for him
without counting it. Jan was furious. He shouted after him, demanding an
explanation. Arach just shouted back that the people the injector belonged to
wanted it back, and we’d better get the hell out of here. His passionate request was reinforced by three
assault freighters, all bearing the mark of Zobian pirates and firing wildly
at the two ships. Jan got the point pretty quickly and dived back into the
cockpit. I had tried to activate the shields, but a device on Jan’s belt had
already powered the ship’s engines and defence systems. Before I knew what
was happening, he had pointed the nose of the Sunrise at the sky and roared off. I slid out of the cockpit,
down the corridor and landed in a heap in the cargo bay. We jinked and banked, making it difficult for me
to make my way back to the cockpit, with flashes of laser fire exploding all
around. Jan sat with intense concentration on his face, blasting out into
orbit and then heading for deep space, ignoring the calls from a custom
frigate to stop. I was amazed at how he managed to pilot the ship and use his other hand to program the
Nava-computer, and before the Zobian’s could lock tractor beams we had leapt
into hyperspace and freedom. Jan just looked at me, that lop-sided smile on his
face, and said ‘quiet day’. DAY 3 Tarr Ranth hasn’t been doing many jobs for Glann
for very long, so this one was a mystery to me. I was expecting a bounty
hunter of the usual calibre, with little toys and attachments to a mismatch
of body armour. What I got was full suit of Mandalorian armour in total
black, which was impressive to look at. We were going to the Wennicas System
to pick up a ‘skipper’, Ranths term for a scumbag who had jumped a planet to
avoid arrest and capture. Being one of Glann’s ex-operatives, this ‘skipper’
needed picking up before he was caught and spilled the Poodu about Glann’s
operation in that part of the Setnin Sector. Tarr Ranth was very quiet, and at first I thought
I had lumbered myself with another Carlonian Feese. He answered questions
about his professional life quite willingly, but personal and private
questions he avoided. He also asked me to stop asking those questions at one
point. The stare that he gave me through his visor pretty much told me not to
pursue that avenue of investigation. I got the impression he was a capable
man, with skill and confidence in his abilities. He didn’t appear to be
afraid of anything, and told me that he kept his appearance to a minimum,
only coming out to execute his mission parameters. He said that he ‘blended
into the background until it was time to strike’. How anyone, especially a bounty hunter, dressed in
black Mandalorian armour can walk around and assume that people aren’t taking
any notice of him is beyond me. I think the armour has two effects, one good
and one bad; the sheer presence of it has people worried and even scared.
Let’s face it, if you had two meters of attitude dressed like that lumbering
towards you with evil intent... well, I don’t care what species you are it’s
a serious bowel-loosener. But that kind of appearance brings notoriety and
fame. And, in this business, that kind of fame you can do without. I wondered if he was really as good as he said, or
whether he was just building his reputation on other bounty hunters that wore
the same kind of armour, like Boba Fett and Jodo Kast. It would be a shame if
he travelled the galaxy on the backs of these two others because when we
arrived on Wennicas he showed me what he was capable of. The skipper had gone to ground somewhere inside a
disused space station in orbit of the planet, an old stopping station that,
although it still had power and gravity, was empty and almost derelict. It
had been left operational in case of emergencies. We docked alongside it,
with engine drive on minimum, and Tarr slowly deactivated the vessel’s
systems but left them powered enough in case we had to make a quick exit. He
spent the next hour slowly stalking his target, cursing me several times for
my clumsiness, and finally caught up with him in an old cargo bay. The
skipper had a vibroaxe which he twirled in his hands deftly, obviously a true
master. With two deft moves Ranth disarmed his opponent and knocked him cold.
He told me that if I hadn’t been shadowing him, he would have nailed the guy
quickly and cleanly. Well, I’m not subterfuge material. I’ll give Ranth
a good report but I think I’ll make a request for the next job to be a little
easier. DAY 4 I was supposed to be travelling with Goah Galletti
today, but as I approached his ship he just sealed the ramp and took off.
That took some explaining to Glann, I can tell you. DAY 5 Glann’s called me in already. I was hoping to get
out with at least two other operatives before submitting my reports but
apparently he’s got something big going down and he wants to review files on
his top men. I stood in his huge office and stared at the floor as he perused
my work. He was silhouetted against the huge window which looked out over the
city of Amagad which he knew would make me feel a lot more nervous than I
actually was. Psychological warfare was always one of Glann’s strong points. I cold barely make out his frown as he read about
Feese, saw him smile with contentment at Lomona and Ranths reports, but he
could hardly disguise his contempt for Goah’s arrogance. His number one
operative, Melm, with his long white hair and his stern visage stood over
Glann’s shoulder and smiled to himself as he glanced at the report. All Glann said to Melm was ‘call them in’, and
then he turned his gaze on me. ‘Is that it?’ he asked. His eyes bored into
mine and I suddenly felt weak. I answered in the affirmative and he then he
just waved me away. I left quickly. DAY 6 Apparently Glann was really pleased with my
reports. From what I understand he was satisfied with my performance and
wanted to reward me. The reward was gracious. He gave me the
responsibility of gaining information and details of all the new people he
employed, and to scout around for potential hires. He’s got me poking my nose
into other being’s private business. If I’m found out I’m dead. I hate this job. Reports from the Edge 1999 short story by
Jonathan Hicks Five years after Episode IV -
A New Hope Histories - This story
continues a trend begun by Mark
Newbold and Jonathan Hicks
back in the early 1990's, when they would compile character profiles for
their RPG games. Taken to the next level, Jonathan Hicks
has written a report on some of the major charcters in the Setnin Sector underworld - and not all
of it is good reading… Cast of Characters Yullm Carlonian Feese Glann Cipple Melm Goah Galletti Jan Lomona Tarr Ranth Noomtil o'dorsh Zoz Eldenn |