TK-421, Why Aren't You At Your Post? - Episode 4

Tarkin leaned in close, causing waves of pungent scent to crash over me.

“We’ve lost some rather sensitive information – in fact, a complete technical read-out of this very battle station.  We have reason to believe that the plans are being carried by an Artoo unit who is traveling with a protocol droid.  Last we saw they were headed towards a small planet on the outer rim – Tatooine.”

“Okay,” I said, getting out my datapad to take some notes, “so I assume you’ve already gotten started looking there?”

“Oh yes,” said Tarkin. “We have a crew of our brightest and best stormtroopers combing the planet for the droids, but they haven’t found them.”

“Uh, great, that’s great,” I said.  You’ve got to understand: stormtroopers mean well, but talking about the “brightest and best” of them is kind of like talking about “the cleanest and best-smelling” of the nerf-herders.   Imperial propaganda has it that they’re these genetically enhanced, highly intelligent super-clones, and sure, the hosts are usually pretty bright and certainly good fighters, but the fact of the matter is, lots of things tend to get lost in translation when you’re cloning, and the troopers generally come out a few ears short of a gundark.  Personally, I wouldn’t hire one as a babysitter, much less to do investigative work.  The non-clones are mostly high-school dropouts who couldn’t get a job at a Toshi Station, so yeah, not a whole lot better.

We were suddenly interrupted by a chirping rendition of “Gungan Style”, and Tarkin fished his comlink out of his pocket.  He rolled his eyes. “Excuse me,” he said, “I think I’d better not ignore this.  I do apologize.”

“Take your time,” I said.  I was being paid by the hour.

“Grand Moff Tarkin here,” he said into the comlink.  A garble of unintelligible speech crackled through the comlink.  Tarkin (who, miraculously, seemed to be able to understand it) frowned, and sat up straighter.

“Why didn’t you notify me immediately?  Yes, of course it’s important!  We shall meet you in the docking bay shortly.”

“I sense something…”

I jumped, because I had kind of forgotten Vader was there.

“Oh, do shut up,” said Tarkin peevishly.  He turned back to me.  “I think, Investigator, that you had better come with us.  It would seem that a strange ship has been intercepted on its way to Aldaraan and was pulled in by our tractor beam.  This may well be the key to our missing plans.”

“Sure, I’m game,” I said. “Come on, Jawa.”  Jawa pushed himself off the edge of the chair and we followed Vader and Tarkin out the blast doors and into the turbolift. 

TK-421, Why Aren't You at Your Post? - Episode 3

“I apologize for keeping you waiting,” said Tarkin, in his prissy Eriaduan accent. “We’ve been conducting an interrogation that went a little longer than expected.  On the bright side,” he said cheerfully, “we’ve just demonstrated the full power of this battle station.  We blew up Alderaan.”

“Terrific,” I said, hoping it didn’t come out as sarcastically as I meant it.  See, that’s just the kind of thing I’m talking about: you blow up people’s planets enough, eventually, they’re going to get mad.  Besides, Alderaan was the only place on this side of the star system where you could find a decent bantha burger.

Tarkin’s eyes narrowed to dewback-thin slits, as they swept over Jawa.  “Great Plagueis, how did that thing get on board?” he asked.  For reasons that I don’t like to bring up, jawas aren’t the most popular with other species.

“He’s with me,” I said. “My assistant.”

“Very well,” conceded Tarkin, with lingering distaste. “Just make sure he keeps his hands to himself.”

“He will,” I promised.

Vader came in just then.  “Inspector Dagnar,” he said, “we meet again.” 

“Greetings, Lord Vader,” I said, putting out my hand, but the guy wouldn’t even shake it.  He’s rude like that, it’s one of the things I don’t like about him.  I put my hand on the conference table, casual-like, as if that was why I had put it out in the first place.  “Bug-eyed jerk,” I thought (even though, strictly speaking, I’m not really one to be talking about bug eyes).

Lord Vader immediately took his place at the head of the long conference table.  Tarkin sat on his left and indicated that I take the seat on his right.   He made Jawa sit on the far end, three chairs away, which made me kind of envy him because the stench was making me nauseated.  A protocol droid (one of those special E-3PO units only the Empire can get their hands on) came in with a tray of four juri juices.  The droid put one in front of each of us, including Lord Vader, and I watched the whole time because I was curious to see how he would drink it, but he never did.  It was kind of weird to think about; I guess I had always just thought he ate batteries or something.

“I suppose you’re wondering why we called you out,” said Tarkin.

“As a matter of fact I am,” I said.  They had told me nothing about this case, which I can’t stand.  I had taken it on anyway, even though the pay was lousy, because, let’s face it, people don’t say no to the Empire. “So what is it, an assassination or something?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that, I assure you.  Actually, it’s not even a murder.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment.  This deal was getting worse all the time.

Tarkin gave the E-3PO droid a pointed glance and a meaningful cough, and, taking the hint, the droid stumped stiff-leggedly out with his tray.  Tarkin leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and touching the tips of his yellow, wrinkled fingers together.

“The truth is, it’s all rather embarrassing,” he said, “and I’m sure you’ll understand that what you are about to hear must not leave this room under any circumstances.”

“Sure,” I said.  I was bored already.  Like I cared about their stupid state secret … I had a life.

TK-421, Why Aren't You at Your Post? - Episode 2

           We walked into the conference room that the storm trooper had pointed us to.   It was empty.  The blast door slid closed behind us with that quiet, ominous sound that I always find so irritating.   There wasn’t much to look at: the conference room looked like everything else in the space station – gray, flat and boring – but there was a window that looked out over the hangar.  With nothing else to do, I stared out of it.  I could see my own ship, a modest little Corellian cruiser, being taken care of by a small crew of maintenace droids.   As my eyes wandered over the hangar, something else caught my eye: a smaller ship, obviously not Imperial, seemed to be attracting a lot of attention.  It was Corellian-made, an older model from the YT series, but it looked like someone had done a clumsy job of trying to soup it up.   I had seen ships like that, usually being flown by young hot-shots trying to look tough and claiming to be in smuggler gangs.  It looked out of place next to the top-of-the-line TIE fighters, and even my little cruiser put it to shame.  “What a piece of junk,” I said.  Besides me, Jawa’s glittering eyes were staring at it, too, and he was rubbing his little black hands together.  Jawas love junk.   

       The door on the opposite side of the room opened and we were immediately met by this really foul stench.  

       “Ah, Inspector Dagnar.”  The man coming toward us was human, older for their species, with sunken-in cheeks that made it look like he’d swallowed his teeth.  I recognized him from some of the Empire’s propaganda holos, but I’d never been close enough to smell him.  “Welcome aboard the Death Star.  Allow me to introduce myself: Governor Tarkin.”

            It’s a mixed blessing, being one of the many races in this galaxy that has hyper-sensitive olfactory senses.  Ironically enough, lots of people think that I can’t smell just because I don’t have a nose, but actually the skin-flaps on my cheeks are way better than what most races would call a nose.  Humans, for instance, have an extremely low olfactory sense, and probably because of this they usually smell a little funky, but this guy was exceptional: he must have practically taken a bath in cologne, the sick-smelling stuff that some humans like to wear because they think it makes them smell better.  I took a quick glance at Jawa and wondered what he was thinking.  Superior smelling is one of the few things we have in common – the jawas even use it in their communication – but I had already learned that his taste in smells ran to the unrefined.  I guess it comes from his former life in the garbage business.

               “Lord Vader will be joining us shortly,” Tarkin explained.

              "Oh, joy,” I thought inwardly.  I keep on the right side of the Empire, like anybody with any brains does, but that guy gives me the creeps.  I had worked with him before, and I hadn’t exactly been impressed with his bedside manner.  I wasn’t sure precisely what his role in the Imperial hierarchy was (aside from mascot – they had this whole line of merchandise, including a breakfast gruel, with his face all over it), but his leadership style consisted mostly of impromptu executions.

TK-421, Why Aren't You at Your Post? - Episode 1

TK-421, Why Aren’t You at Your Post?

            So there I was, on board the Empire’s newest gim-crack – the “T.T.” I called it, for “Technological Terror”.  Not to Lord Vader’s face, mind you – I didn’t much care for the idea of hovering two feet above the ground getting my brains choked out by some dumb (but effective) trick of that ancient, hokey religion of his, especially since I didn’t have my blaster at my side.  I had been forced (physically forced, I mean, not “force” forced) to leave it with the secretary when I came in.

It was something, I can say that – the Death Star, I mean.  That’s what they called it, the blood-thirsty little imperialists.   Everything’s got to be death this, death that, destroyer this, destroyer that.  Over-doing it, I say.   Intimidation only goes so far – I’ve learned that in my line of work.  You got to wheedle people along sometimes – please them, flatter them, make them think they’ve got what they want.   Everybody’s happy that way, and then you don’t have up-start groups with an over-inflated sense of freedom and justice posturing around and compromising your security.

Jawa was with me on this case.  Not just because I thought he might come in handy, or because I didn’t really care to stroll into a giant space station the size of a small moon built by a blood-thirsty, power-hungry, and chronically paranoid despot, all by myself.  No, I was actually getting to be genuinely of fond of the guy.  In spite of the fact I didn’t know his name even, and was more or less just assuming his gender, he was growing on me, and I found it comforting to hear the shuffle of his brown robe as he walked beside me, his sleeves flapping along at his sides.  He didn’t say much, and that was O.K. with me.  In a weird way, I think we were beginning to understand each other.

“Move along,” said a stormtrooper.   He was eyeing Jawa with a cocked helmet, and what looked like disapproval.  I wanted to say, “You move along,” but I shut my trap because that’s what you did when you were around imperials.  Sure, the stormtroopers had the intelligence level of a wompa in a vegetative state, but they had blasters, and I didn’t, and, at this range, I wasn’t about to put too much faith in their unimpeachably bad aim.

Introduction: TK-421 Why Aren't You at Your Post & Other Stories

              

            So, this is an idea I’ve had noodling around for a few weeks.  The concept is that you have a set of murder mysteries set in the Star Wars universe.  Not too long ago I tried to read a sci-fi detective novel, and really I didn’t like it.  There’s too much explaining – it’s too foreign, too much world-building is necessary, and it just doesn’t have that homey, comfortable “oh yeah, I know this guy” feel of a good old detective novel.   It occurred to me that this could work much better if set in a sci-fi world which already exists and is well-known, well-beloved, and well-filled-out by not only its creator but a whole army of dedicated and enamored fans – namely, Star Wars.   The familiar archetypes – wise-guy detective, loyal sidekick, blundering police always messing everything up – are easily imagined in an already colorful universe that is ready-made to lend itself to this kind of a story.   All this, plus the fact that I could watch "Empire Strikes Back" and call it "research" made the idea quite appealing.

           Our hero is a bith (think the Mos Eisley Cantina band – that’s what bith are) named Fenn Dagnar – a detective-for-hire who gets called out on cases that are too hard for the knuckle-headed local law enforcement (read “storm troopers”) to solve, which is, as you can guess, pretty much every case.   Every detective must have a sidekick, and Fenn’s is “Jawa”, about whom you shall hear more later.  

            My goal is modest: tell the stories in serial format, with posts of about 350 words or more once a week, and I’ll probably be as surprised as anyone at the end.