[center][img]http://s2.postimg.org/ci5ovlep1/Krybes_4_1.png[/img][/center] [b]Now Zam’s Brothel, 3030.[/b] Zam watched from her balcony as the Duros bartender wiped down the surface with a wet rag. He had been a pilot once, before the spice addiction, and had fallen on hard times before Zam hired him. It was a risk, perhaps too much of one given his limited experience, but Zam had always been swift to help those in need. She reached out one of her aged blue hands towards a drink that rested atop the ledge and took a greedy mouthful of it. Her nerves had yet to calm from that situation with the Stars an hour ago. From behind her came a knock on her door and the elderly Twi’lek turned to face it. Through the doorway step the Mandalorian she entrusted to keep her brothel safe. “You asked for me.” “I did,” Zam said as she gestured to the seat opposite her desk. “Take a seat.” The Mandalorian stood unmoving as Zam took to her seat. “I’ll stand.” “Suit yourself.” The Twi’lek took another mouthful of drink, murmured under her breath with contentment, and then set the glass down with a smile. Her eyes ran over the Mandalorian’s armour as she collected her thought. The deep claw marks across the chest and helmet drew most of her focus but the slight signs of rust along the shins and gauntlets always piqued her interest. She had heard that Mandalorians took great pride in their armour but the one she employed seemed atypical of that reputation. It didn’t matter how he looked so long as he kept her brothel safe. He showed earlier that he was still capable of doing that. “I was impressed with the way you handled those Blackened Stars. You could have lost your cool or risen to that Rodian’s insults but you stayed calm. I appreciate that. This place is very precious to me. It’s very precious to all of them.” Zam’s icy blue eyes seemed to grow misty with nostalgia as she spoke. After a few moments Zam recalled why she had invited the Mandalorian up to her quarters and smiled in the warrior’s direction. Her smile was met with a cold, empty stare that the Twi’lek did not seem discouraged by. “Do you know how this brothel came into my possession, Mandalorian?” The Mandalorian shook his head. The movement was so slight it was barely noticeable. There was an austerity to the armoured man’s movements. He seemed to move only as much as he needed to and he spoke even less. “Many years ago I worked here. I say worked but I didn’t have much choice. I was brought here by slavers and sold to the brothel’s previous owners. Believe it or not they were nice enough. At the end of each year they would allow each whore a fraction of the credits they had earned. You might not believe it to look at me now but once I was a very beautiful woman, Mandalorian. I had many suitors, and many, many more clients, and at the end of each year I would more credits than any of the other women. Yet it was still not enough to buy my freedom. Not by a very long shot. That would take many years of hard work. Long after my body grew wrinkled and the suitors became fewer and further between I toiled in the hope of earning my freedom. Though I had known nothing but servitude I yearned for a life where my flesh could be my own.” The elderly Twi’lek paused for a moment to take another mouthful of drink. Once she swallowed she looked to the Mandalorian with a weary smile. “It took twenty-eight years.” Even as she spoke there seemed a surprise to Zam’s voice. She knew she had lived those twenty-eight years but the memories seemed so distant, so remote, that it felt as if they had happened to someone else. “What do you think I did with my freedom? Where do you think I went, Mandalorian? Where would you go?” A word crept from behind the Mandalorian’s mask. For once the Mandalorian’s voice sounded like it carried something resembling emotion. “Home,” it spoke. “As good a guess as any,” Zam said with a wry smile. “I was plucked from my family at such a young age I could barely remember my own name. This place was the only home I’ve ever known. The women I laid next to every night, whose wounds I tended to, and tears I dried were the only family I belonged to. It might sound... strange but leaving this place was never an option. Even as the other women begged me to leave I took to working once more, this time as a free woman, and though my body could barely take it I finally managed to save enough to buy the brothel outright. That took thirteen more years.” A contented smile appeared on Zam's face and she stood up from her seat, drink in hand, and made her way back towards the balcony that overlooked the brothel. Her long black robe hung behind her as she walked. It covered a body that had no right to have retained the shape and form it did at Zam's age. The Mandalorian stood in place, arms crossed, and watched as Zam gestured to the brothel around them. "Forty-one years of service, forty-one years of men and women travelling across the galaxy to fawn over me, to claw at my skin, to make me bite, kiss, and suck as and what they comanded, and finally I was a free woman. A truly free woman. Do you know what it is to be truly free, Mandalorian?" There seemed a hint of recognition in the bounty hunter for a moment and his arms uncrossed, falling loosely by his sides, as he considered Zam's words. [b][center]*****[/center][/b] [b]Then Quadrant Six, Ganthel[/b] On the floor of a cell in Quadrant Six’s Justiciar Department was Alec Vendrell. The scent of alcohol radiated from him so strongly it could be smelled several cells down. His clothes were ripped and stained with alcohol and there were several bruises along his face from the night before. Alec had been out on the town again and for the third time in as many weeks had been on the wrong side of a beating. It wasn’t the kind of behaviour that was expected from a Vendrell on Ganthel. They were the closest thing the little industrial planet had to a first family given their history on the docks. As soon as the Vendrell men were of age they went to work on the docks and once they were past thirty-five most went to work in the union. Alec’s father was Esvan Vandrell. [i]“Van the Man”[/i] as he was lovingly referred to along the docks. He was head of the largest union in the Quadrant and one the most powerful men several Quadrants over. As such Alec’s scrapes with the Justiciars were a cause of constant embarrassment for his father and the latest one would no doubt cause Alec’s father another headache. For the time being though Alec was more concerned about his own headache. To the sound of shouting his bloodshot eyes opened wearily and he winced as the pounding in his head intensified by the second. The sharp intake of light hadn’t helped. From behind him he heard the voice shouting once more and Vendrell realised it was directed at him. “Wake the hell up you lazy sack of bantha fodder.” Vendrell pushed himself up and looked towards the man stood at the gate of his cell. The man was a wall of muscle, clad in the grey and blue Justiciar uniform that Vendrell had come to loathe over the past six months, and the twisted, cruel mouth that stuck out from the bottom of his helm was familiar to Alec. [i]Justiciar Dorn[/i] he remembered as he pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to fight back his headache. “Looks like daddy has pulled a few strings for you again, Vendrell.” Dorn muttered as he unlocked the door to Alec’s cell. “You’re free to go this time.” The sound of the door clanging open made Alec’s already throbbing head throb a little more but he refused Dorn the pleasure of seeing his discomfort. Instead he climbed to his feet with the wall as his support and wandered out of the cell that had been his home for the night. He picked up his things from lockup and made his way towards the exit only to find another familiar face waiting for him on the other side of it. “Kass?” Alec muttered in a pained voice. “What are you doing here?” Alec’s sister let out a sigh and shrugged her shoulders. “What do you [i]think[/i] I’m doing here? Dad said if you got in trouble with the Justiciar’s again he’d kick you out. As much as you might get on my nerves sometimes I don’t want you on the street.” Alec smiled and pulled his sister close to him. He was oblivious to his sister’s pained expression throughout their embrace. He smelled like a brewery and there was still dried blood along his chin. The Vendrells weren’t a touchy-feely family at the best of times and hugging definitely wasn’t in their nature. He let Kass go and looked at her with a warm, appreciative smile. “Thank you.” Brother and sister walked alongside in silence for a few moments before Kass conjured up the courage to tell Alec what she had promised herself she would tell her him. The two spoke little at home, Alec was almost a decade her senior and their paths rarely crossed but for family occasions, but it was clear from their body language that Kass was the more mature and considered of the two. It was why the words that came next carried such weight. “This has to stop,” Kass muttered. “You know that, right?” Alec nodded gravely in acceptance. “What am I supposed to do, though? Go work on the docks like dad and the rest of those meatheads? I’d sooner die than do that.” He was twenty-three years of age, seven years passed the usual age of taking work at the docks, and had never worked a day in his life. It had caused more than its fair share of arguments in the Vendrell household but up until now Alec had refused to relent. He didn’t want to be [i]another[/i] inconsequential Vendrell that was born in Quadrant Six, worked the docks in Quadrant Six, and died in Quadrant Six. He wanted more than that. Trouble was that on Ganthel that’s all there was. Kass let out a sympathetic sigh as she tried to hail down a transporter pod. “Yeah, well, at the rate you’re going at you’ll have your wish before the month’s out, big brother.” [b][center]*****[/center][/b] [b]Now 3030, Zam’s Brothel[/b] The Mandalorian snapped back into awareness as the haze of memories passed. All thoughts of Kass, his father, or Justiciar Dorn left his mind and his eyes fixed on the elderly Twi’lek stood peering over the brothel’s balcony at the revelers below them. The Mandalorian strode out to the balcony to stand beside his employer one more. “Why are you telling me all of this, Zam?” Zam extended her hand to young Mon Calamari stood sheepishly in the corner of the room beneath them. “You are fond of Ki.” The Mandalorian [i]was[/i] fond of Ki Hobro. Or more Alec Vendrell was fond of Ki Hobro. He thought he had hidden that fact from sight but the Mandalorian supposed the elderly Twi’lek had spent a lifetime in places like these. She knew affection, true affection, when she was it. It wasn’t a romantic love he felt for Ki but the opposite. Though she looked and sounded nothing like his sister Kass there was something about her nature that reminded Alec of Kass Vandrell whenever he was in Ki’s presence. All the same he gritted his teeth beneath his battered helmet and shook his head curtly. “No more than the rest.” A wry, knowing smile appeared on Zam’s blue lips. “If only you were as good at lying as you are with those blasters.” “She was an orphan when she arrived in Coruscant. It is a dangerous thing to be in a place like 3030. One only realizes how important friends and family are when they find themselves without them. A young girl without someone to look out for her is a target out there. Ki was a target.” Beneath them Ki gossiped with J’asta and the two shared a laugh with one another before the Mon Calamari took to the bar and started up conversation with the Duros that worked it. “Before I bought her freedom Ki worked for Gorro,” Zam sighed as she took another mouthful of her drink. “The Scarred Hutts passed her around like a piece of meat, forced her to take spice, and took pleasure in her humiliation. Had I not found her I am sure she would have died. If not at the hands of one of Gorro’s men then from a bad batch of spice. Yet here she is free. She can come and go as she pleases, ply her trade without fear of injury or abuse, and earn a decent living. She can save for the starship she dreams for and maybe one day she will see the Outer Rim. Maybe all of them will fulfill their dreams.” There was love in the elderly Twi’lek’s eyes. A maternal love that the Mandalorian had seen nowhere else in 3030. Coruscant’s underbelly was dark and sickly to the touch. It consumed and exploited people and then spat them out once it was done with them. Zam’s was an oasis from all of that. The Mandalorian thought of Ki in the hands of the Scarred Hutts or the Blackened Stars. He thought of his own sister in their possession. “I lost forty years of my life before I found freedom, Mandalorian, and this brothel is a mural to that sacrifice. It is the only brothel of its kind in all of Courscant – a safe haven for the weak and vulnerable, those without friends and family, who see no other way out than to sell their flesh. You will find no slave within these walls. Only free men and women.” Zam took one last mouthful and then upturned the vessel and placed it atop the balcony with a contented smile. She looked to the Mandalorian with her soft eyes and the Mandalorian felt them probing and searching beyond his visor for some sign of reciprocation. “Do you understand now why we must protect this place? This place is so much more to a brothel, Mandalorian.” The Mandalorian nodded. “I understand.” Beneath his gauntlets Alec felt his hands growing sweaty as the magnitude of his task dawned on him. Not once had he felt guilty for taking Zam's money before but now he did. When he had taken the job this place had meant nothing to him, there hundreds of brothels in 3030 after all, but now he understood this place meant more to Zam than anything had ever meant to him in his life. He pictured a future without Zam's Brothel. He tried to imagine where girls like Ki might go or whose employ they might be forced into. Most of all he pictured a day when his skills would be called upon and he would be found lacking. And for some reason he had a feeling that day was coming soon.