[Past]

  The moon was bright on Ventano, just like the sun. Compared to many other planets, the light of the moon would rival that of normal sunlight. On Ventano, however, nothing could come close to the light of day. Contrary to the sun, however, the moon casted an white light with slight blue hues over the landscape. The change of time brought a change in color.

  There was no darkness for Nicoash to hide in. The shadows that she could creep around in were far too few. It was like trying to sneak around in the light of day. Unlike on the streets of Ventano, Nicoash couldn’t hide in plain sight. If she was seen at all, it was over.

  The sounds of footsteps and yelling echoed through the streets as the pirates tried to figure out what to do about the Nexus eating all of their nerfs. Nicoash hid with her back against a building, watching as a handful of pirates ran out into the streets, loading their weapons. A grin slowly crept onto her face as they ran past her.

  She quickly jolted into action, stepping out from the corner and walking over in the direction that the pirates had come from. She stayed hunched over, low to the ground, focused on keeping her footsteps light and quick. For now, the dirt roads were helping, but that wouldn’t last long.

  A few more pirates rounded the corner, and Nicoash immediately dived into cover in one of the nearby alleys.

  “What are we going to do? Should we wake the captain up?” The pirate sounded anxious and maybe even terrified.

  “You want to wake him up and tell him how we kriffed up with the nerfs, then you go do it.” This one sounded annoyed and far more gruff. He clearly was much much older. “Someone get that damned force field up and running. We can deal with the stragglers left inside.”

  Nicoash listened as a few of the footsteps slipped off in a different direction, presumably toward the forcefield controls. She had a time limit.

  Once the footsteps were all far enough away, Nicoash slid out from her hiding place and started making her way up the path again, constantly on the lookout for more pirates. As she arrived at the townhall, she looked up at the building curiously, considering how easy it might be to walk right in. Just as the thought crossed her mind, however, the doors to the hall screeched open. Nicoash quickly ran up to the hall and slipped behind a stack of boxes.

  “It’s just a couple of beasts, right? With a couple of blaster rifles and maybe some detonators, it should be easy.” The two pirates paused right outside of the doors. As they talked.

  Nicoash rolled her eyes. They could never make it easy for her. She looked up at the metal awning that stretched out over her. She took a few careful steps around while staying out of sight to look over it. Sure enough, there was a window on top of it. Another grin crept on her face as she turned to face the building right next to her. It should be tall enough.

  The pirates continued conversing about how stupid their peers were for not locking up the nerfs while Nicoash climbed up on a dumpster. She hopped up and grabbed the edge of the building, making a loud sound as she pushed off the dumpster. Immediately, the conversation stopped.

  “Dank ferrik…” Nicoash grumbled under her breath before focusing back on the task at hand. She pulled on the edge to try and get herself up, but she had never been the athletic sort. This was much harder than she thought it would be. She could hear the footsteps creeping up and she knew she was running out of time. So, she dug her feet in and pushed up while pulling as hard as she could. As soon as she was able to make a little bit of progress, she was able to grab onto a pipe on the roof and pull up harder.

  The two pirates rounded the corner with blasters held up high, but as they looked in the alley, it was empty. They pointed their blasters around, searching for the source of the noise. Eventually, one of them lowered his blaster, shaking his head. “Must have been a mouse or some kark. Come on, we should probably get moving.”

  Nicoash finally exhaled as she heard the two pirates walking away. Once the footsteps were gone, she shifted around and poked her head up over the roof. Seeing that the alley was empty, for now, she stood up and took a few steps back. “Alright. Come on, Vesdani. Almost there.” She took in a deep breath before breaking into a sprint. She jumped over the gap, landing on the awning with a loud slam. Nicoash knew that anyone nearby heard that as well, so there was no time to waste. She quickly opened up the window and crawled inside.

  The halls of the building were illuminated with yellow sconces that seemed unable to bring any sort of color or vibrancy to the dingy gray halls. The walls felt like they were closing in around her, threatening to swallow her up forever. Nicoash imagined that this must be what a prison looks like. It had to be what a prison felt like.

  Nicoash quickly started moving again. Now she could really hear her footsteps echoing against the hard floor. She was just thankful that the sound of pirates fighting Nexus had started to get louder. As Nicoash reached a set of stairs on her left, a few pirates rounded the corner down the hall. She darted down the steps, out of view, and opened up the door at the bottom.

  As she stepped inside the room, all she could see were weapons. There were tables and racks scattered throughout the room that were filled with them. Blasters, explosives, and anything else that could be used to kill someone. Nicoash took a breath and shook her head, making her way for the exit across the room. As she got close, she heard footsteps and voices on the other side. She dropped to the ground and rolled under one of the nearby tables just before the door slid open and a handful of pirates wandered in.

  “How have they still not gotten that force field up? There is no way it’s that hard. This planet isn’t that advanced at tech,” one of the women said.

  “Don’t know. Apparently there is some issue with it.” The sound of blasters being grabbed echoed throughout the room as the pirates started arming themselves. “Looks like it’s up to the extermination crew, huh?”

  They all laughed before heading out the opposite door. Once they were gone, Nicoash rolled out of her hiding place and got up to her feet. She stared at the door that they had left from while backing up to her own exit and pressing the button to open it. She then whipped around and quickly crept down the hallway. She rounded the corner at the end of the hall and turned to see her goal. It was the door to the former mayor’s office. If the captain of the pirates was anywhere, it had to be there.

  She crept up to the door and started to reach up to press the button, but then a realization struck her. If he wasn’t asleep and she just opened the door, then of course he would see her. She pursed her lips as she backed up. There had to be some other way inside. Her gaze wandered up to the ceiling where she saw the grate of a vent. She grinned before turning around and following the presumed path of the vent down the hall until she reached another door. This door looked different than the others and had a clear warning sign on the front. It had to be a maintenance room.

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  Nicoash popped the door open and jolted inside, closing it behind her. The room was surrounded by dark walls with bright lights and exposed wiring. It was filled with a variety of tools. On one end, Nicoash found exactly what she was looking for. She picked up a hydrospanner and pushed a box up against the wall so that she could climb onto it and access the vent at the top of the wall. She used the hydrospanner to unfasten a few of the bolts and pull the grate out. She then pocketed the hydrospanner and tossed the grate to the side. The grate impacted a table with a loud clang, but Nicoash was already climbing up into the vent.

  The vent was small and probably difficult to traverse for most, but Nicoash fit inside without any trouble. She started crawling down the labyrinth of ventilation shafts, guided mostly by her own general sense of direction. As she arrived at the grate above the hall that she had first seen, she heard footsteps under her. She shook her head and kept going. Just a little further.

  The shaft snaked around and eventually she reached another grate on the side. She peered through to see Vesho himself passed out on the bed at the edge of the room. Nicoash grinned as she used her hydrospanner to pry open the grate. The grate flew off the wall and Nicoash quickly jerked forward, catching it before it could hit the ground. She stared at Vesho with wide eyes, waiting for him to stir, but he didn’t. Nicoash sighed and slowly set the grate down on a desk under her before stepping out of the ventilation shaft and into the room below.

  The glint of light reflecting against gold caught her eye, directing her attention to a table next to the bed where Vesho had left the ring. Nicoash slowly and carefully inched forward, watching him for any signs of movement as she drew closer. Once she arrived at the table, she picked the ring up and held it up in front of her. A smile crept on her face as she inspected it. Finally, she got what she came for. The smile remained painted on her face while she put the ring in her pocket.

  Outside, she heard unintelligible murmuring and footsteps getting close to the door. Cutting her celebration short, she whipped around and bolted back to the vent as quietly as she could. She was just barely able to make it inside before the door opened.

  “Boss, boss!” He walked over to Vesho and started pushing his leg to wake up. “We’ve got a problem.”

  Vesho grumbled and groaned as he stirred, eventually pushing himself up into a sitting position. His big curly mustache was disheveled and clung to the sides of his face. “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got Nexu out there wreaking havoc and we can’t get the force field running. We figured you might be able to get the force field working since you used to work with them and-”

  “Fine.” Vesho cut him off as he kicked his legs over the bed and stood up. “I have to do everything myself around here.” He reached over to the table and then froze. “Where…?” He started searching around the table. growing more frantic by the second. “Where is my ring!?”

  That was Nicoash’s queue to leave. She started backing up in the vent before turning and starting to crawl back the way she came. Behind her, she could still hear Vesho as he started to yell.

  “That kid! That kriffing kid!” Vesho’s voice echoed through the vent, suddenly making Nicoash realize her mistake. She didn’t close the vent. “She stole my kriffing ring! Broke the kriffing force field!” The sound of footsteps echoed through the vent as she kept crawling.

  Nicoash reached the grate on the floor of the vent that overlooked the hallway in front of the office just as Vesho met with a few of the pirates under it. She peered down at the group and listened.

  “Boss, how do you know that-”

  “I kriffing know!” Vesho looked at the pirate with rage in his eyes. “Who else do you think could have done that to a force field? She wants my kriffing ring! And now she’s got it!” He turned to one of the others and pointed at his chest aggressively. “How did you let some kid get through the town without being noticed? How incompetent are you scudsuckers?”

  “In our defense,” the pirate he was pointing at piped up nervously, “you didn’t notice her in your room either….”

  Vesho blinked at him for a few moments before reaching his hand out to the other pirate. “Can I see your blaster for a second?”

  Nervously, the pirate pulled out his blaster pistol and handed it to him. Vesho grinned at him and offered a word of thanks before turning and blasting the one who spoke. He held the smoking blaster up in the air as his lifeless corpse hit the ground. “Find that kid,” he yelled as he pushed the blast up against the chest of the one that had given it to him. Once the blaster was taken from him, he started walking off down the hall. “And kill her.”

  Nicoash stared down at the dead body with horror in her eyes. Footsteps echoed through the hall again, but all she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears. Things had gone too far. She wanted to scream and cry. She wanted to go home. She needed someone to save her, but no one was coming. No one could save her. Nicoash clenched her fists and tried to regain control of her breathing. She had to get out. She had to survive.

  No one was left below her. There was no time to waste. She used the hydrospanner to open up the grate under her. She kicked it off the ceiling and hopped down after it, hitting the ground shortly after the metal clang echoed through the corridors. She began quickly making her way back the way she came, but she stayed low to the ground. She couldn’t get caught now.

  She rounded the corner and jumped into the room they were using as an armory. She quickly started going through the various arms that they had left there. There had to be something she could use. She found a thermal detonator and inspected it for a moment before nodding. That’ll do. Behind her, she heard the door screech open again. She grabbed the nearest blaster pistol and whipped her head around, pointing it at the pirate who had entered. The pirate immediately put his hands in the air. He looked at Nicoash cautiously, but there was clear skepticism in his eyes.

  “Where do you keep the speeders,” Nicoash questioned him with the blaster pointed right at his chest.

  The pirate started slowly lowering his arms. “You’re just a kid. You aren’t actually going to blast me.”

  Nicoash gritted her teeth and whipped her arms to the side, blasting the wall next to him. She pointed the blaster toward him again as his arms shot back up into the air. “You really want to bet your life on that?”

  The pirate inspected her for a moment longer, but much more cautiously this time. Eventually he shrugged. “There is a garage. Down the hall behind you, then take a left and go down the stairs.”

  Nicoash nodded a few times as she started stepping toward the door. “I… uhm… thanks.” That was all she could get out before she opened the door and slipped off into the hall. She started walking low to the ground again as she followed his directions.

  “Over here!!!” The pirate screamed behind her the moment she was out of view. “She is headed for the garage!!!”

  Nicoash’s heart felt like it dropped into a bottomless pit. She could already hear the footsteps behind her. With no tricks left up her sleeve, she broke into a sprint. She ran down the hallway and whipped around the corner as she heard more pirates yelling behind her. She ran down the stairs two steps at a time and slammed the button on the door, slipping through the crack as soon as it was opened wide enough.

  Nicoash looked around at the garage. It was filled with various speeders and all of them were ready to go with just a few button presses. She could hear the pirates getting closer behind her. She looked down at the thermal detonator and pressed the button to activate it. She threw it as hard as she could at the biggest collection of speeders before turning and running away from the impending explosion. The explosion of speeders was the loudest noise Nicoash had ever heard in her life. Sparks and speeder parts flew around the room as fire engulfed the space that the speeders had once taken up. Even with her ears ringing, she couldn’t slow down now. She ran around to the other working speeders and started shooting the controls with her blaster. She made sure to demolish every speeder except for one speeder bike that sat on the very edge of the garage. She hopped onto it and started flipping switches and pressing buttons.

  “In here! In here,” one of the pirates screamed as he ran into the garage. He immediately started coughing from the smoke, and waving his hand around, trying to get sight of Nicoash as the other pirates filed in behind him.

  The engines of the speeder bike roared to life as it lifted Nicoash into the air. She grabbed onto the handlebars and revved the engine. The bike zoomed forward just as blaster bolts started to fly past her head.

  Nicoash immediately pulled the bike around as she flew out into the town, narrowly avoiding the buildings in front of her and continuing out onto the street. The speeder raced through the streets, quickly reaching high speeds as Nicoash refused to let off the gas. The wind blew her hair and jacket all over the place, threatening to throw her small frame off the bike entirely, but Nicoash kept a grip on the bike so tight that her knuckles started to turn white. A few of the pirates ran out into the street in front of her, firing blaster bolts in her direction. Nicoash dipped her head down to avoid the incoming fire before quickly pulling one of the handlebars back. The bike hit the turn faster than it could handle, causing it to skid toward the pirates on its side. Just as the bike started to slow, however, Nicoash hit the throttle. The engines roared to life again and the bike whizzed off into the much bigger street, far away from the pirates that blocked her original path.

  There were no more pirates left on the path. There were no more nexu. She had a straight shot. At least, she thought she did. Then she caught a glimpse of a familiar bright red glow out of the corner of her eyes. She shot her head up to try and see over the buildings. She watched in horror as the force field fence had already started its path around the town, connecting the massive electronic posts one at a time. She had mere seconds before it blocked her path.

  Nicoash turned to look down the path once again. She took in a deep breath, letting the wind that threatened to throw her off fill up her lungs instead. She then furrowed her brow and leaned forward, hitting the throttle as hard as she could. The bike picked up more and more speed by the second as the force field closed in around her. She gritted her teeth harder with each passing moment, pulling on the throttle so hard that she threatened to rip it straight off the handlebar. The red walls of light reached her peripheral vision. There was one fence post left. She let out a loud, guttural scream as the forcefield started spreading from the last two fence posts, covering her peripheral vision more and more until….

  The eruption of the engine behind her was all that Nicoash could hear as she passed through the edge of the forcefield. She lost control of the bike, and it started hurtling toward the ground. She quickly pushed herself off the seat and dived off of the bike. She landed into a group of bushes just outside of the town as her bike hit the ground and flipped. It rolled and bounced against the ground a few times before exploding in a ball of fire.

  Nicoash panted as she watched the bike explode. Her thoughts slowly caught up with the events that had transpired. She turned to look at the force field behind her, which now completely closed the town off from entry or exit. A small laugh escaped her lips. Then another. Finally, she broke into a loud and excited laugh. “Woohoo! I kriffing did it,” She cried as she pushed herself out of the bush. There was nothing in the galaxy that could wipe that smile off her face now.