Astera:
Benni didn't take us to the control room first. Instead, he led us downwards, stopping at the bottom of the ladder to watch a trio of loudly laughing miners pass into the next room.
"You said the control room's on the top level," Omega hissed accusingly, pulling irritably at the collar of his jacket. The thing definitely looked uncomfortable on her, and I had a feeling it was bothering her more than she liked to admit.
"We can't just walk right in," he fired back. "Only Mokko's inner circle has access cards. We'll need to swipe one."
"You're not part of his inner circle?" She asked incredulously. The kid had bragged so much about Mokko's generosity and favour that even I was almost a little surprised. If I didn't know what the galaxy could be like.
"Not yet. But I will be. I'm working my way up."
"And how long have you been doing that for?" I asked him, the words a little more sarcastic than I intended them to be. It brought him up short, forcing him to stop and actually think about it.
"Long enough," he admitted eventually, sounding almost vulnerable for a second. It was gone as quickly as it had appeared though, a hard, determined glint replacing it. "But if Mokko finds out I helped you, I'll be sent to the mines, so act natural."
A short walk and another ladder down, and we were in what appeared to be some kind of mess hall. It was small, dirty and completely devoid of food, yet at least ten other kids ranging from Omega's age to just younger than me were loitering around, either playing games, chatting, or just leaning against the walls. Like they were all waiting for something. And they all had some number of stripes tattooed on their necks, just like Benni. Reflexively, I touched a hand to my throat, glad the skin tight body glove covered it.
Benni went straight for the pair engaged in some sort of game at the central table, sliding in next to the boy with a huge pattern curling over his neck while Omega and I took a seat at the table behind, observing the miners and their interactions.
"We were just talking about you, Benni," the older boy said casually, placing another piece in the arrangement splayed out in front of him. "Where you been?"
"Here and there," Benni told him airily with a casual wave of his hand. The other boy did not look impressed, studying the game in front of him with an almost cold intensity.
"Bet you think that ship you scored for Mokko will make you the top earner this round."
"Why not? You can't expect to win every time."
The boy snickered, slamming a game piece down on the table with more force than necessary. "Can't I?" His opponent rubbed a hand over his forehead with a sigh - he'd apparently won the game - and he claimed the big stack of pieces in the centre with a cocky smile.
A door on the side of the room hissed open and some sentient whose species I couldn't have named if I tried strode in, flanked by no less than four sentry droids. He was almost as big as Senator Taa, and his right arm was missing, replaced by a cheap cybernetic with a claw attachment for a hand.
"That's Mokko," Benni said quietly, so quietly I almost didn't hear him. Around us, the young miners began getting to their feet, nearly running towards Mokko and crowding around him with a clamour. The tattooed boy lazily threw down his chips, standing with all the boredom of a spoiled senator's kid who knew he was getting what he wanted. As though he knew he was better than the other starving miners.
"About time. I'm starving."
Benni stood too quickly and fell sideways, slamming into the other boy's back as he made to leave. To outside eyes, it would look like he had merely tripped, but I caught the quick flash of his hand as he reached out and snagged a key card from the boy's pocket. He was completely oblivious, shoving Benni into the table with a snarl before joining the others with Mokko. Omega hopped off her seat to check on him, hunched over the table as though in pain.
"Did you get it?" I muttered, keeping a watchful eye trained on the kid miners still vying for Mokko's attention. At this point, we were the only ones hanging back. No one had noticed us yet, but we were bound to look suspicious once they did.
He showed us the card with a sly grin. "See?" he told Omega. "It's a skill."
"Great." She rolled her eyes. "Can we go now?"
"Not yet." Benni pocketed the key card, moving to join the group clustered around Mokko. "I wanna hear the tally."
I only shrugged when she looked at me and went after him, tugging the cap a little lower over my face - it wasn't like we could do anything about it. He had the key card and he could easily out us both if he wanted to. We might as well indulge him a little.
"All right, all right." Mokko's voice was about as gruff as I expected it to be, guttural and thick with a heavy accent I couldn't place. "Stand sharp." The miners immediately quieted, "I know it's been a lean season. We've all had to make sacrifices and go without. Including me. While some of you have been working hard this quarter, others continue to fall short. But Mokko always takes care of those who earn."
My slowly forming frown deepened more with each passing word. Just the way he spoke was sketchy enough, but the speech of making sacrifices when he looked like he was wanting for nothing rubbed me the wrong way. Omega wore a similar dark expression - and her pose was once again identical to mine, right down to the folded arms and angry scowl.
"So far, this round's top earner is..." Mokko paused with a wicked grin, and I could have sworn he eyed Benni tauntingly, "Drake!"
The boy Benni had stolen the card from grinned smugly and stepped forward, much to the resigned disappointment of the other kids. Benni's fists clenched at his sides, his hopeful expression crumpling and morphing into one of anger. "You've got to be kidding me."
One of Mokko's sentries handed Drake a spoon and a bowl full of some kind of soup - the kid threw aside the spoon after only a couple bites and greedily gulped down the rest of it, draining the bowl in a matter of seconds. All while the other miners were forced to watch, some of them reaching out for the bowl with tentative fingers with envy and hunger as clear as day on their faces.
"As for the rest of you, rations are low," Mokko informed them, sounding about as sincere as a pirate, "Which means you need to work harder and longer if we're going to survive. But I won't let my crew starve."
Another sentry droid set another bowl of the same stuff on the nearest table and had barely backed away from it before the entire group of miners rushed it at once, pushing each other aside in their hurry to reach it first. The savagery of it all took me aback - they were like a pack of wild animals, fighting and attacking each other over each bite they could snatch from the bowl. It wasn't something I hadn't seen before, but only from planets that were on the verge of complete starvation. Certainly not from a mine that looked to be performing fine enough, despite the 'degraded' ipsium. And yet Mokko was entirely undisturbed by the display; my lip curled in disgust, seeing the almost smug look on his face before he turned and disappeared back through the doorway he'd come from, leaving his miners to fight over the scraps.
Benni was the only one who didn't move, too caught up in his own betrayal to do anything else but stalk away from the mess hall and onto the bridge connecting us to the control room, Drake's access card gripped so tightly in his hand I was sure he'd break it.
"Uh, you alright?" Omega finally asked when the silence became too thick to ignore.
"No," he snorted. "I stole the ship, and it still didn't make me the top earner."
"You shouldn't have to compete for food."
"She's right, kid," I agreed. "I've never seen this happen in a place like this."
"That's how it works here." He didn't even sound defeated, just resigned. "We have to earn our share. But I'll impress Mokko. Just wait."
"This isn't earning your share." Trying to be gentle wasn't working. He needed the truth, plain and simple. "A mine like this should pull in enough to feed all of you. Don't you ever wonder if he's not telling you the whole truth?"
"Mokko took care of me," Benni snapped back. "He takes care of everyone here. Why would he lie to us?"
There were a million different answers to that question, and I could have used about half of them, but somehow I found myself staying quiet instead, letting him open the door to the control room and lead us inside. Some truths were just ones people had to figure out for themselves. That was a lesson I'd had to learn the hard way.
For all the importance Benni had stressed on the difficulty of getting into the control room, it was stupidly easy to go about it undetected. Not a sentry droid or a worker was in sight. It was like they were asking for it to be broken into.
"Hunter, we've reached the control room," Omega reported into her comm, the other clone's response so quick I wondered if he was keeping the channel open just to wait for us.
"Copy that. Get the shield code and get back here."
"We're on it." I stowed my own comm away while Omega took out Tech's datapad, eyebrows furrowing for a moment before holding it up to me.
"Shouldn't you be the one to do this?"
I shook my head. "You got this, kid. I'm just here as backup."
The smile she offered me was more real than anything she'd attempted in the past few weeks and she plugged the datapad in, both of us watching the screen to watch the download begin.
"They really treat you like you're one of them." I couldn't tell which one of us Benni was talking to, but either way, he looked embarrassed even as he said the words. "I wish Mokko did that."
Omega pulled off the giant jacket she'd been forced to wear and slung it on the nearest table. "Doesn't seem like he cares about any of you. Why don't you leave?"
Even she could see the way Mokko treated his miners. She'd come a long way from being the sheltered girl the Batch had rescued from Kamino, and I couldn't be more proud of her. The problem was making Benni see it too.
"You're wrong," he insisted. "Mokko's kept us in business. He said with more time and digging, we're bound to reach better ipsium soon."
I arched my eyebrows in disbelief, tossing my cap to join Benni's jacket. "You really don't wonder if he's exploiting you?"
"No! He has no reason to do that. He's made sacrifices just like the rest of us. Besides, I can't leave. This is my home. It's what I know."
"I get it," Omega cut in, softer than before. "Our ship is our home. It's the only one we really have."
"I'm, uh, sorry I stole it." At least he had the decency to sound like he actually meant it, , rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. Omega smiled at him and reached into her pocket, offering him the small yellow package we'd become used to eating for the past few days.
"Here, you can have my rations."
"I- Why would you give this to me?"
"Not all of us want to see you starve," I said from the door with a snort.
"For helping us," Omega corrected, holding it out to him a little more insistently. He took it from her carefully, eyeing both it and her like she would snatch it from him at any second, finally unwrapping it and taking a bite once it became clear that it wasn't going to happen. She returned to the datapad, tapping away at the console next to it while I crossed the room to peer over her shoulder.
"How's it going there, kid? Any luck with the shield code?"
"Not yet." She squinted at the readings with a frown. "Most of this data is just Mokko's profit reports. I thought you said the ipsium here's degraded."
The last part of that was directed at Benni, who sat up a little straighter. "It is."
"Not according to this." I skimmed over the most recent report briefly. In fact, according to the report, Mokko was pulling in a lot more than even I'd suspected.
"Let me see that." He was beside Omega in an instant, taking the datapad from her hands and staring at the screen. Shock flitted over his face briefly before a noise from behind us had him yanking out the connection and turning to face the opening door, a guilty expression spreading over his features.
Mokko's huge frame filled the open doorway, his cane clacking heavily on the floor with every other step. Two sentry guards marched in front of him with batons drawn, flanking us in seconds. Another two were behind him, remaining guard at the door.
I swept Omega behind me before she'd fully registered the situation, my body instinctively shifting into a defensive half crouch. Neither of us had our weapons, and her hand to hand combat was still rudimentary, to put it nicely. This wasn't going to go well.
"My thief caught some other thieves." Mokko chuckled, the sound low and ugly in his throat. "Nicely done, Benni. I'm impressed. Where are the others?"
"Garage bay," he muttered, almost reluctantly. "Sorry. I had to." Judging by the miserable expression on his face, Omega had shot him a betrayed look. One that I would have replicated, if my attention weren't so firmly on the droids on either side of us.
"That's my boy," Mokko patted him on the shoulder. "The title of top earner is definitely in your future."
I stifled a snort - after that he still wasn't 'top earner' material? The kid might have betrayed us, but after all the trouble he'd been through, I still couldn't help a small pang of sympathy for him.
"Grab them." The droids advanced on us with their batons brandished, and I rose up to meet them, armed with nothing but my fists.