Ghost of a Smile

Chapter Eight

Telos – Spaceport

Garazeb Orrelios and Alexsandr Kallus made their unhurried way through the streets of Telos. Neither of them felt unhurried in the slightest, quite the opposite really, but it would do them no good to draw the eye of the one stormtrooper in all of Telos who was still new enough to his patrol job to take it seriously.

Neither of them talked as they casually moved ever closer to the local Imperial Dome. Kallus, still disciplined with the skills of an Imperial enforcer, used the silence to eavesdrop on the locals' conversations. He hoped one of them would mention the convoy that had left only days before Zeb and himself had arrived. But as of yet he had struck out. No one even seemed to even know about it.

Zeb was less focused on the mission. The destruction of his home and his people had left its scars, one of those being an adopted attention to worlds which had been destroyed like his. Telos was one of those worlds. Thousands of years ago, during the Jedi Civil War, an admiral ordered his orbiting fleet to bring fire to the skies of peaceful Telos. When the bombs stopped dropping, no life registered on any scanners.

Efforts had been made to bring the planet back to life-providing status and had gone largely successful; the sight of it gave Zeb hope for his own people. But when the Empire first rose, Telos sided against the new order and had since been brutally subjugated for its dissent. The peace that existed now was that of a beaten animal too scared to act. The Empire no longer thought Telos had the ability to rebel, which served the needs of Zeb and Kallus well as it meant the local troops had gone lax.

"All right, you're the former Imperial, you come up with the plan." Zeb said quieter than his usual booming voice.

"It should be pretty simple; all we need is to access one of the computers inside the Dome. Then, I'll search for the normal keywords and we'll walk right back out."

"You make it sound easy." Zeb chuckled, "So, am I going in with you into the Imperial Dome, where everyone is human, or am I waiting outside for everything to go horribly wrong?"

"Have some faith, Zeb, as far as missions go this one's pretty straightforward." Kallus looked at him, a sly smile was on his lips, "Still, we won't be impersonating Imperials so you'll come in too."

"Where do we get in?"

"Well, we don't have a jetpack or a glider, nor can we get our ship close enough to let us off at the top, so I guess we'll go through the front door." Kallus said nonchalantly, that small smile remained on his lips.

Zeb looked at him like he was crazy. Nevertheless, Kallus continued to stroll on towards the front entrance of the Dome. They entered the civilian entrance and walked up to the secretary. She looked up with an assuring smile at Kallus, a smile that turned to repulse as her gaze flicked to Zeb.

"Hi... Can I help you?" She asked, genuinely curious what business an alien could have here.

"Hi, I'm Avin, Avin Groman," Kallus introduced himself, gone was the core-imperial accent, it was replaced by one from the outer rim. It was the accent of a wild spacer, "This is my friend, Seb Ompho." He gestured to Zeb.

The accent told the woman all she needed to know, stupid wild spacer, she thought to herself, no wonder he doesn't know better than to travel with an alien. "How can I help?"

"We're travelers, in fact, we arrived on Telos earlier today..." Kallus went on with the woman for several minutes, telling her how nice the planet was, how they were surprising a friend who worked in the building, etc. etc. To Zeb, it was just unbearably uncomfortable. The woman decided she had had enough as well after a couple minutes and called up to the 'friend' that 'Seb' and 'Avin" were surprising.