Chapter 6 The Slave
When Rachel startled awake, she could still hear a booming laugh in her head, but it took her a while to believe that she was actually awake because she had never worn as little clothing as she now had on. And what was—?
She felt a sharp zap of electricity as she tried to take off what felt like a metal collar from her neck. When the same thing happened again, she realized that it was going to have to stay there.
Trying to cover herself as much as she could with her arms, she looked around.
She was in a dark, warm room that felt wet. The walls were a reddish-brown metal, and there was a small, barred door. Other than that, there wasn’t much to see. The inside of the room only had the small mattress she woke up on on the floor and what she could only guess was a pot to relieve herself in in the corner.
Standing up, she walked over to the barred door to try and look out, but she couldn’t see anything except the wall across from the cell.
She had a horrible feeling.
Master Ywin hadn’t noticed her leaving the bar with the alien, and the fact that she had let the alien coax her away irritated her. How had he done that? He’d clouded her senses and corrupted her judgement and made her walk willingly into a trap.
She shuddered at the memory of his hands touching her and closed her eyes to try and meditate on her emotions and drive away the rising anger and disgust. As she did so, she took a deep breath and reached out to sense if there were others nearby.
There were.
Down one hall were two strange minds whose thoughts were riddled with fear and were set on keeping order in the prison.
There were other prisoners, but she didn’t get the chance to look closer into their minds other than to sense their fear because another mind approached that was determined and sure. He had a job, and if he didn’t follow through, bad things would come from it.
The being was a Twilek, and he stopped in front of Rachel’s door, his eyes travelling up and down her body making her feel uncomfortable.
He said something in Huttese, but she didn’t respond even though she thought he asked her how she was feeling. She thought it would be better if she pretended not to understand him.
“Perhaps,” he said in a raspy, heavily accented voice, “Basic would be better?”
There was no way around that one, so she nodded.
“It will go better for you if you learn at least some of the Hutt’s language,” he said, an eerie smile creeping over his face as his eyes again travelled her body. “It would be a pitiful waste for them to kill such beauty so soon.”
It didn’t take long for Rachel to understand the Twilek’s words.
She was put to work in a cantina similar to the one she had been taken out of, except this one was filled with Hutts. There were other women dressed similarly to her, and they were all waiting on the Hutts’ every whim.
Some of them seemed to have more freedom than others, she noticed. While she was chained to one of the Hutts, there were some who walked around without chains. They all wore the metal collars though, and Rachel saw them in use twice already. If the slave didn’t do as the Hutt wanted, they received an electric shock from the collar.
Rachel did her best to please the Hutt she was assigned to, but she had some trouble understanding him. Another of the women seemed to notice and tried to help her as best she could.
It wasn’t until the fifth night of working like this that Rachel began to wonder if Master Ywin would ever come to rescue her, or if he even knew where to begin looking for her. He hadn’t seen her leave the bar, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have seen a Hutt.
One of the other slave women identified the alien who had taken her as a Falleen; a species notorious for having the same effect on many others as he had had on her. While many worked with the Hutts, there were also many who didn’t. So even if her Master had seen the Falleen take her, it was no guarantee that he would know there was a connection to the Hutts or to which Hutts.
After eight days, Rachel tried to use mind-manipulation on the Hutt who controlled her chain to see if he would give her a little more freedom, but it turned out that either a Hutt’s mind wasn’t malleable, or she wasn’t doing it right.
She was running out of ideas and running low on hope. If the Jedi didn’t find her, how was she supposed to get herself out of this?
If she could find her lightsaber, she knew she could have a fighting chance. She tried to meditate after almost two weeks. She struggled to find an inner calm in order to focus, but when she finally managed it, she searched for the beating heart of her lightsaber’s crystal, hoping to hear it calling for her. But no matter how far she reached, she couldn’t hear it.
Weeks began to go by, and she found that finding time to be by herself became harder and harder to get. She felt the scrutiny of the Hutts, and she wasn’t sure who among the other slave women she could trust. She tried to use the Force to sense their minds, but some of them seemed impervious to her and others were hostile altogether.
The Hutt she was chained to changed from time to time either due to the Hutt’s boredom or because they liked to keep things fresh for themselves.
One day, she found herself chained to a new Hutt, and he was very unpleasant, but while he didn’t seem to want her near him, he wasn’t about to unchain her. The second day of her service to him, a bounty hunter came to him with a Rodian frozen in carbonite. Apparently, it was a job that the Hutt wanted done, and he went to pay for it, but the bounty hunter looked at Rachel and pointed at her.
“Nobata Bargon!” The Hutt bellowed. Apparently, she wasn’t meant to be given as payment either.
But the bounty hunter merely shrugged and started to take the frozen Rodian away.
The Hutt yelled at him, and they negotiated for a while, but Rachel tuned it out. What did it matter who she served? Although, perhaps, if she went with the bounty hunter, she could fight her way free.
“Deal,” the bounty hunter said, and he turned to Rachel. She wasn’t sure what kind of deal they had made, but she didn’t like the look in the hunter’s eyes.
The Hutt handed her chain to the bounty hunter, and he led her to a back room that the Hutts reserved for ‘private meetings’, and Rachel learned quickly what kind of deal the two had worked out.
She never felt more disgusted as when the bounty hunter handed her chains back to the Hutt. Knowing she was a slave was one thing, but knowing she could be used that way appalled her, and she wanted nothing more than to escape, but she knew she couldn’t. There were Hutts, guards, pirates, bounty hunters, and all kinds of scum everywhere. She was chained and wore a slave collar. There was no way she was doing this alone.
The next opportunity she had where she was alone, she tried to meditate. Her inner calm eluded her, though, and it was difficult to reach out to the Force.
Opening her eyes, she tried to think of how she found peace. Where did she find it?
The woods back on Earth. The gardens and clearing in the Mitth homestead. The Room of a Thousand Fountains. The Lake. If she could just picture these places…
A loud clanging sound echoed down the hall.
She couldn’t picture anything green or growing. Unless of course it was the mossy scummy whatever it was that was growing on the walls of her cell.
Pulling her knees up to her chest, she leaned back against the wall, feeling the cool metal against her bare skin. Everything looked dark.
She tried to remember back to when things had been ok—when she had last felt ok—and as she closed her eyes, she saw the living area of a ship. Everything was white, gray, or black, so she knew it was a Chiss vessel. In the chair across from her sat Thran, and his smile was warm and genuine. She felt her forehead tense as she tried to hold back tears.
The Council had forbidden her from reaching out to Thran. That had been months ago. Right after the Syndicure had banished her from Chiss Space. It was a double blow that left her feeling baseless. While she had kept up her training, her heart hadn’t been in it as much as it had been before, and she wondered if that was why her Master had begun to pull away from her training. Whenever she had a setback or needed reassurance, and Master Ywin didn’t offer it, she wanted to turn to Thran, but she couldn’t.
Being with him was the last time she had felt ok and felt safe even though they had been on their way to their respective sentences.
She tried to think about him and about that day, but it didn’t offer her the calm she needed, so she thought further back. When he had first told her that he promised to be her friend had been in the clearing—a place where she found peace. While she hadn’t believed him at first, it was where he had first promised it.
The memory came into her mind easily, but it still didn’t offer her the inner peace she needed in order to meditate.
These moments were in the past. She needed to meditate on the present and find peace in the here and now. That was what Master Ywin had taught her.
She heard a blood curdling scream from down the hall and felt the hair on her body stand on end.
There was no peace here. Only fear.
Thran heard his comm going off, and a small part of him hoped it would be Rachel responding to the message he’d sent, but when he saw his father’s signal, he almost decided to ignore it.
“Father?” he answered.
“Thran, I think something has happened that you should know about,” his father’s voice came somberly.
“What do you mean?” Thinking the Syndicure changed their minds again.
“One of the recent explorations into Republic Space brought back a strange report,” he said. “And it’s concerning.”
He relaxed a little. “Something another planet is planning against the Chiss?”
“No, nothing like that. Our explorers were near Hutt Space trying to learn more about them when they heard a rumor that a Jedi had gone missing. The Hutts seemed pleased with it, but I worry because the missing Jedi matches Ra’chel’s description.”
Every muscle in his body went rigid as a pit formed in his stomach.
“‘A young female Jedi Knight with black hair and a strong figure has been taken from Nar Shaddaa, and the Jedi are looking for any and all information to her whereabouts.’” He paused. “When did you last speak with her?”
“The last time we spoke was before the Syndicure ruled against her after the mishap on Rattatak.”
“The ruling you convinced them to overturn. Did you tell her it was?”
“I sent her a message saying so, but she has not returned the message. I thought the Jedi were barring her from contacting me, but if it’s her that’s gone missing—” He couldn’t allow himself the thought. “No. It can’t be. I will contact her again. She’s too strong for something like that to happen, and her Master would have protected her and wouldn’t let such a thing happen.”
“Learn what you can,” his father said. “I will continue to look out for further reports, but it worries me. I like her, and I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
“I will call her immediately,” Thran said.
“Let me know if you find anything else out.”
“I will.”
He hung up and immediately felt his mind spin as all kinds of thoughts and scenarios began to form.
“No,” he whispered to himself. She couldn’t be gone. Surely it was merely the Jedi who kept her from contacting him. She couldn’t have gone missing. It had to be someone else.
But if it was her…
He hated the idea of what the Hutts might do to her. They were a vile species, and he was glad to have never encountered one.
Reaching out to activate the comm, he noticed his hand shaking and clenched his fist to make it stop.
When he finally thought he had control over himself, he activated the comm and waited.
It was several minutes before he determined that she wouldn’t answer.
What if…
“Ra’chel,” he began the recording, “I still do not know if the Jedi are refusing to allow your communication, but reports have crossed my father’s desk that he has felt he should share with me, and I have found them disturbing. Some of our explorers in Republic space have heard rumors that a Jedi has gone missing while on a mission on Nar Shaddaa. A female Jedi, and the reports matched your description.” He felt his voice begin to waver, so he tensed his jaw in an attempt to hide what he felt, but the thought of her being gone hurt and angered him. “Please…I do not care what the Jedi have dictated. I will go to the Jedi Temple myself if I must.” His voice gave out, so he swallowed and took a breath to calm himself. “I need to know you are all right, Ra’chel. Please.”
The entire next day, he waited to hear from her, but there was no response. For a week, he waited for some kind of answer or report. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore and did go to the Jedi Temple, but the guard blocked his entry.
“I want to speak with Ra’chel Ba’kandi,” he told the guard. “At least tell me she is here.”
“I am not at liberty to discuss the whereabouts of any Jedi,” the guard said neutrally. “If you have a means of contacting her, then I would suggest using it to learn where she is.”
“And if she had been ordered to not contact me?” His anger threatened to break through the stoic wall he had carefully crafted.
“Then I’m afraid you will have to let her go.”
“She is my friend,” he urged him. “I need to know that she is safe.”
“Why would she not be safe here?”
“I have heard the reports and rumors that a Jedi matching her description was taken from Nar Shadaa. Is that true?”
“I do not have any confirmation for you. I am not—”
“Not at liberty to discuss her whereabouts,” he cut him off. “You have made that clear. Can I speak with Jedi Master Zhulung? Or Master Ywin?”
“If you wish to speak with the Council, there is a way to do so through the Senate,” the guard said. “You are a Senator, aren’t you?”
“I am an Ambassador for the Chiss Ascendency.”
“All the same. You can ask for Jedi assistance through the Senate, should you require it.”
“That is all?” Thran asked, exasperated. “You can give me no information? Not even to tell me if she is safe?”
“Your feelings are quite strong, Ambassador. I suggest you allow yourself to let go. Such feelings are not acceptable for the Jedi, and this is likely why the Council is barring you from communicating with Padawan Bakandi.”
“I cannot. She is my friend, and I promised I would always be here for her. If she is hurt or missing—”
“If such a thing happened,” the guard interrupted, “then the Council will do everything it can to find her.”
“But you cannot confirm or deny that she is the one missing.”
“I am not at liberty to do so.”
Thran glared at the guard before turning to leave without another word. His anger fumed from the tension built up in his chest. They wouldn’t even tell him if she was safe. He needed to know.
He tried to contact the Council the following day, but they refused to speak with him or give any kind of information.
He sent her another message that night.
“The Jedi denied me any kind of information,” he choked out through a tight throat. “They would not let me into the Temple. They would not tell me if it was you or not. They would not even tell me if the rumors were true or false. Please, Ra’chel. I need to know that you are all right. I do not care what the Jedi have mandated against me or against our friendship. I care about you, and I need to know that you are safe. Please.”
Every ounce of emotion threatened to overwhelm him, and he had to end the call before he let her see how much pain he was in. The lack of information disturbed him, and he feared that his friend was lost.
He couldn’t focus on any work for days, and those days turned into weeks without word from her. His father told him about more rumors, but he received no further information. He began to think the worst, but his heart didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t be dead. But what other conclusion was there?