[Solved] (Episode III) A Drifter, Drifting

All it took was a moment of softheartedness, and the lives of both were irrevocably changed in an instant.

Sprey was a poor candidate for a father. He thought of himself as a kind of noble underdog, continually knocked down by his circumstances, but his self-assessed victimhood was almost entirely a fabrication; his habit of poor choices deserved the lion's share of the blame. Originally a foundling in the Watch, a Mandalorian cult, Sprey spent years as a devout member before becoming disillusioned and deciding to desert. Had he gone peacefully, it might have been one thing, but instead, he made a show of his exit, stealing a freighter and everything in its cargo bay, including several thousand credits worth of explosives and munitions. Additionally, things might not have gotten so personal if he had also been willing to abandon the title of Mandalorian, but despite his dislike for his colleagues, he refused to let go of the title he held with pride. The Watch wanted him for his theft, but they hated him for his heresy.
With a death mark on his head, he tried trawling the black markets to offload everything for market price and procure enough funds to disappear, but after numerous failures and close scrapes, he eventually settled for a pittance. Walking back on a Corellian pier to his ship after the sale, he witnessed a boy, nearly a toddler, on the run from a gang enforcer. Pulled by some kernel of decency, he helped the child escape, but was identified in the process.

In the years that followed, Sprey constantly engaged in planet-hopping to avoid those gunning for both him and his new ward, a human named Cambry Owens. Over time he raised the boy in all the skills he himself had been taught—mostly related to combat. Very few of his lessons concerned manners, societal expectations, or common sense. And while he constantly told the boy he was being raised as a Mandalorian, Sprey steadfastly neglected to teach him anything about Mandalorian culture, language, or history.

Eventually, Sprey was killed on Subterrel by a miner annoyed by his cheating at cards. Cambry fled in their ship, a YV-929 freighter nicknamed the Lassie, with Sprey's dead body on board. Now orbiting the age of 19, Cambry found a job as a spacer and mechanic, jumping from job to job until he landed back on Corellia, where he found the White Worms kept better records than he would've liked.

After a harrowing escape and a mark on his record with CorSec, Cambry found legitimate work harder and harder to come by. So he did the only thing he knew to do—survive. He began drifting into jobs of a less than legal nature, finally putting his skills to use in service of thieves, criminals, and mercenaries. On behalf of one of them, he stole a collector's prize astromech droid, an antique named Verne, who eased the loneliness of his existence by adding a sarcastic new voice to his daily life.

Bolstered by this new friendship, Cambry began his own career as a middling freelancer and bounty hunter, banking on the reputation from Sprey's salvaged armor and doing his best to make enough credits to continue to eke out a meager existence, constantly on the move.
He avoided other Mandalorians like the plague. Not just because of a lifetime spent fleeing the Basilisk chapter of the Watch, but because of deep, abiding social anxiety. Even friendly Mandalorians, the ones who treated him like a brother, expected him to know more Mando'a than "su'cuy!" Desperate not to be seen as a pretender, Cambry always tried to invent an excuse and disappear as quickly as possible.

His fortunes changed when he was hired by a mysterious representative of the Nexus Corporation to hit an encampment of Tusken Raiders on the planet Tatooine. Cambry, thinking nothing of the legal or moral implications, carried out the task effectively enough that his new employers sent him off with a recommendation to a friendly criminal gang on the rise; the Red Ravens.
Cambry didn't adapt well to the Ravens' glamorous taste, standing out as the man in a grease-stained boiler suit and full mask even in a bustling club. However, he quickly gained a respect for the Ravens' charismatic leader, Lysle, and his loyalty to the man (who may or may not have known he existed) motivated him to work for the Ravens' for several years, even after their operations became more and more ambitious. On behalf of the Ravens he joined an attack on Ryloth, and got himself purposefully imprisoned on Kessel for 2 months so he could deactivate the security from the inside for a jailbreak of another member. He helped ambush Hutts, destroy space stations, and hunt down rival enforcers.
Finally, the Red Ravens' ambition caught up with them, and several defeats meant the effective disillusion of the gang. Lysle disappeared, and Cambry found his steady income quickly drying up. An anti-Raven bounty hunter clipped Verne with a blaster bolt during an attempted capture, and the droid's vocoder and personality module were disastrously damaged. Cambry spent years, alone, trying to come up with the credits to repair his friend, until the tragic day his ship - and his friend - disappeared, stolen by some random streetjunk shipjacker.

Cambry began to live differently, and not for the better. Even the spark of meaning and purpose that existed before Verne went missing was snuffed out entirely, and he practically slept-walk through the next several years. Foregoing bounty and merc jobs, he took up a job as a roughneck working for the Spacer's Guild, doing menial labor in dangerous environs for entry-level wages. Over time, he had gained enough of the skill required to apply for jobs as an atmospherics technician. One of these jobs, at a research station on Polis Massa, struck Cambry as a position somewhat on the philanthropic side. Searching for a purpose he wasn't ashamed of, he accepted the role when it was offered.
It wasn't quite what he had hoped for. It was boring, repetitive work, but he applied himself to the task admirably. In his mind, the least he could do was make things easier on the native researchers, and his work maintaining pressures and actualizing atmospheric seals was his small way of contributing.

But still, he was not happy. He didn't even know to put it in those words, but that was the truth of it - like just about everyone in the galaxy, Cambry Owens was searching for fulfillment, for meaning, in whatever way he could find it.

But perhaps his luck was about to change.
Perhaps the meaning he had been searching for was about to find him.

Cambry didn't have much of a social life on Polis Massa. He didn't really try. He had never put in the effort to learn the language of the locals, and when he had tried to bond with the other basic-speakers by opening up about his past, they had laughed and said his stories were nothing more than tall tales. Who would get themselves imprisoned on Kessel on purpose for a jailbreak? And for a fellow gang member? You'd really have to drink the jawa juice to be up for that.
After a while, Cambry stopped trying and kept mostly to himself. It was less discouraging. He preferred to ignore any whispers about his never removing his helmet - no one here knew how he had been raised. But really, it had nothing to do with the Mandalorians, he just didn't like people seeing his face, there was nothing more to it than that.
Yeah, his was a lonely day-to-day existence. It had been that way for a while, he couldn't really complain.
But then, there was Adonis.
Adonis Prynn was an older man, dark-skinned, with wiry white hair shooting out around his head like a halo. He wore a silvery old coat, tattered at the edges, and he had a way of looking at you like he knew every single step you'd taken since birth.
No one really knew what Adonis Prynn did on the station. At least, Cambry didn't, but his being unaware wasn't out of the ordinary. Regardless, he had always been friendly with the man, as reserved as they both were. Adonis spent most of his time in the office suites or locked in the communication array. Occasionally he'd take lunch down on the Mainway, and Cambry would sit with him. They'd chat about the view, and Adonis would ask about Cambry's life before Polis Massa. Unlike the others, the old man seemed to genuinely believe the wild stories about his career.

"I'm sorry about your droid. Temperamental as they are, droids make for good friends. It sounds like you two were true partners."

Cambry shrugged, watching a cluster of asteroids drift by in the far distance. "I'm not that worried. He's still out there somewhere."

He noisily sucked the last of the synthetic meat off his synthetic meat leg. Adonis didn't seem bothered by the display. He smiled.

"I hope so, my boy," he said, as he stood with a groan, checked his chrono, and looked down at Cambry. "Can I catch you at the same time tomorrow? You can tell me again about your raid on the Tusken Raider camp on Tatooine. Bewildering."

Cambry winced and looked down. The Tusken Raider camp wasn't his finest moment. It was an job from those years where he took jobs from just about anyone who paid, and didn't bother having the sense to sort the good from the bad. Having sense wasn't his strong suit, but he liked to think he'd come a long way from torching Tusken camps.

He said, "Sure."

Adonis nodded, and left.

Cambry sat there alone for some time, watching the asteroids drift through the black of space. He wondered about where Verne might be now. This line of thinking made his insides feel terrible. Or maybe that was the synthetic meat. Either way, he blocked it out.

The next day was a rare eventful one for Research Station 19. They had visitors.

A sleek, black shuttle marked on the side with the iconography of the Seraphan Photonics Labs. Cambry watched out the windows with the crowd of technicians, each of them as curious as the next. Suddenly, he noticed Adonis standing beside him, staring hard out the window.

"Who are they?" Cambry asked.

"Maybe one's a Twi'lek woman!" a roughneck nearby answered hopefully. Cambry ignored him.

Adonis was not smiling. "More important is who they work for: the UniStar Conglomerate."

"Who?"

Suddenly, Adonis seemed to return to reality. "My boy, would you accompany me?"

Cambry nodded, and the two stole away from the viewing ports to an inner corridor. Adonis looked at him, dead-serious, with an expression he had never seen.

"Listen closely, my boy. I do not have much time. I know you have left your former life behind, but I must ask for your help now."

Cambry processed this quickly. His old professional efficiency snapped back into place with only the smallest bit of friction. He was dialed in.

"You may have wondered what I do on the station," Adonis told him earnestly. "I am a kind of...talent broker. I monitor situations, and connect people with situations where they would be of service. Opportunities where they could make a difference. And Cambry, my friend, you've been looking for an opportunity for a long time. Allow me to humbly put one forward. I've been meaning to talk to you about this for some time, if I'm honest. With appropriate deference to your struggles and regrets, I'm afraid I'm in need of your skillset."

The young man knew exactly what that meant.
Cambry Owens had spent his life running, hiding, and killing for credits. He didn't even know why he did it. It hadn't taken him anywhere. He was just...here. Working shifts maintaining pressurization meters. And he didn't even know why. Every day, he worked as hard as he could while hoping it might eventually make him feel...well, alive.
He needed more than what he had. He was never any good at charting his own path. It only ever led him in circles. He needed someone new to follow.

And now he decided that Adonis Prynn was as good as anyone.

He took a deep breath, and waved the older man's concerns away. "Hey, I don't need the sales pitch; I'm in. Just tell me what I gotta do."

Adonis regarded him with appreciation. He quickly filled Cambry in on the situation.

"Those men have come here for data they cannot be allowed to have. You see, my boy, Polis Massa is the way it is-"

"Chunks?" Cambry interjected.

"Ehm, yes. It was fragmented hundreds of years ago, by an ancient super weapon. The researchers here have data on that weapon, and UniStar is interested. Specifically, the man in charge of the project is a ruthless company man named Herod Crain. He and I have crossed paths before. If Crain gets ahold of that information, the company will spare no expense to recreate it. They want their own Death Star, Cambry."

Cambry wasn't stupid, he'd heard of the Death Star. It was pretty bad, he knew that much.

"If they find even a little data, they will want more. They will turn this place into a slave camp to get it. If we fight back, they will exterminate everyone here. I must destroy the data, you understand? I need you to do whatever you have to in order to stall UniStar. But you must appear to be a rogue element. An extremist. Unaffiliated with the station. This will inevitably get messy, but we have to mitigate the damage if we can."

Cambry understood.

"Go, my boy."

Cambry left quickly, passed the crowd of technicians, and tried to look casual while he jogged back to his quarters. He swiped his ID card, entered, and grabbed his Atmo kit. He shoved the helmet on, and threw the harness over his shoulder. Then he bent down and lifted his mattress, uncovering the twin blaster pistols underneath.

He just stared at the weapons for a long moment. He hadn't laid eyes on them in months. For a while, he had thought about tossing them out the airlock. Turns out it's a good thing he didn't.
He grabbed both, checked their power packs, and stowed them in the pockets on his utility harness, then stood and, for a moment, froze.
He looked around his little room, his semblance of home for the last few months. Cambry had been in situations like this before. He knew when he was he was about to burn his cover, when it was about to become necessary that he move on. He couldn't even tell if he was sad about leaving, happy to have new purpose, or just scared of everything. Scared of everything felt right.
So he took a deep breath, turned, and walked away.

He had already had an idea for a plan on his way over to the barracks. It wasn't a good plan, not in the least, but considering how much time he'd had to go through it in his head, he was more or less good to go. He didn't really know what Adonis was talking about. But something in him felt responsible to the old man.
What he was about to do would absolutely lose him his job, but he didn't see that as much of a problem now.

Whatever people might say about him and his aimless lifestyle; when Cambry committed, he really committed.

The hangar where the shuttle docked was an isolated structure built a few hundred feet from the primary station, and connected by a narrow access way. This access way bent near the middle to circumvent a deep crater in Polis' surface. That meant a corner, which meant some semblance of cover.

He passed through the main reception room and the few people milling about there, and then reached the spaceport access way.
The delegation had probably already disembarked their shuttle, and would be here soon.
The long tunnel was empty except for a station representative, a native Polis Massan, waiting to receive the new arrivals.

"Hey, get out of here!" Cambry yelled at the representative. "We've got a breach in the pressure seal! This place isn't safe!"

The rep blanched. "Are - are you serious? But the people from the shuttle will be here any moment!"

"I don't know what to tell ya, doc," he said. He called most people doc. They usually didn't complain. "I'll let them know too, but I don't think you wanna get sucked out into the asteroid field today."

"Not in the least," huffed the man, and he gathered himself in preperation to flee. Just as he did, however, he turned again to Cambry. His eyes narrowed. "What was your name, again?"

"Lysle. Uh, Ravin."

The man plunked it into his datapad as he rushed away.

Cambry wasted no time crossing the walkway and adding truth to his warning. He wrenched open a control panel and gave one of the pressure pipes several strong whacks with his universal tool. Not enough to decompress the room, but enough to lower the oxygen levels.
At that moment, he saw movement in the corner of his eye. The delegation had arrived at the door. He hadn't sealed the door yet.

"Hey, hey!" he shouted, and jogged towards them while waving his arms over his head. "Not safe, not safe!"

The company men seemed confused, and glanced at each other.

"Pressure leak!" he called, tapping on his EVO helmet.

What he hadn't realized was that they saw him bashing the pipe in. The leader, an older, bearded man in a sleek black suit—clearly the leader—pointed at him. The two security guards raised their carbines through the door.

"Woah, woah, hold on! I'm just a technicia-"

Glass shattered as blaster bolts screamed through the air. Cambry threw himself around a corner, narrowly avoiding a new burn in his thigh. The rush of it made him laugh, breathlessly, inside his helmet. Like a crazy person

"Go, get him! They must know we're coming," the bearded man was saying.
He was sharp, intelligent, and rude. Older, and not phased by the blaster fire in the least. "We can send in legals to clean up the mess later. You don't want to cost me this project, do you understand? Consider anyone on this station a hostile party, but don't shoot unless necessary. We need to find the station foreman, they'll have what we need."

"Of course, Mr. Crain."

Cambry snatched one of his pistols from his harness and pointed it around the corner. He was able to squeeze off a single shot before four greeted him in response.
He needed to get to better cover.
He glanced across the way at the open maintenance panel. He pointed his blaster and squeezed the trigger.

Pressurized oxygen blossomed out of the pipe in a ribbon of fire, and a water spicket overhead burst to life to douse it. Mist filled the corridor.
He wasted no time, and hauled rear back to the main station hub.

He heard shouts as he entered the lobby. A few people spotted him running with a blaster in hand, and were understandably alarmed. Keeping his cover wasn't important now. But security would come after him soon.
He spotted the representative from before and hurried up to him. The man cringed and threw up his hands.

"Lysle?" He sputtered. "The technician! Are you some kind of terrorist?"

"No, listen. Those guys are bad news, they're after something we can't let them get."

"What are you talking about?"

"Honestly, I don't know all the details. But you need to help me stall them, okay? If we can make this a hassle for them, and they don't find anything, maybe they'll leave us alone."

"Security!"

"No, wait," Cambry sighed. "Come on..."

A station security guard hurried over with an ignited shock baton.
"Sir, put the blaster down," she demanded.

Cambry glanced at the blaster in his hand.

He glanced at the guard.

Then he turned around and booked it.

The guard pursued, but Cambry knew the corridors and the maintenance access points too well. He stuffed himself into one of the ducts, and found himself faced with a dozen panels. The wires within were tied to nearby door control. He didn't have much time, so he didn't hesitate - he fished out his universal tool from his harness and got to work prying open the panels.

Back in the lobby, the delegation had successfully reached the main station. Herod Crain swept his gaze over the room, analyzing each person there.

"Er, welcome to Polis Massa, Station 19," the frazzled station representative, who had largely been ignored by the company men, said quickly. "May I ask your business?"

Crain's gaze finally fell on the dimunative researcher in front of him.

"There is a lunatic loose on your station, doctor. A man, a technician, tried to prevent us from coming through the, eh," he searched for the word impatiently, waving a hand. "The corridor. Your corridor. Tried to flood the thing with industrial gas. You need to find this man immediately."

Cambry chose that moment, unfortunately, to appear from behind one of the bulkhead doors. It wasn't that he had a choice, he had to reach the access panel on the door itself to disable the override mechanism. Nonetheless, Crain spotted him immediately.

"Ah, that'll be him." He motioned to his men. "Stun 'em."

Cambry was enveloped by a few low-level stun rings before he could properly react. He waved his arms as he went down. He wasn't proud of that.

Security grabbed him under the arms and dragged him before Herod Crain, who stared down at him with black, shark eyes. Cambry, unfortunately, was still conscious.

"Who are you? Get a holoscan of his face," he told his men. "A disgruntled former employee, perhaps?"

"No," Cambry slurred. He was an extremist, right? That's what he was supposed to be? What kind of things did extremists say? Cambry racked his brain. he went with the first one he thought of.

"For the Empire!" He shouted, trying to sound angry, and little insane.

The company man raised one eyebrow in his direction, and swept a hand towards him, as though that explained it all. "Oh, he's mad about the Empire, apparently. Not a popular cause these days, but I can respect loyalty. What I can't respect is idiots."

Cambry decided to pursue another avenue. All he needed was time, time for the rest of his plan to come together. "You work for UniStar! I hate UniStar. Can't stand UniStar."

The man's eyes narrowed. His tone remained casual. "I'm Herod Crain, and I represent Seraphan Photonics. Seraphan Photonics belongs to the UniStar parent group, yes. As do hundreds of other companies. Probably including whoever made your EVO gear, there. Glad you're enjoying our product."

That's when the lights went out.

"What the devil?"

"Oh my!" yelled the station representative.

Cambry hadn't meant to ruin this guy's day, but he told himself grimly that it was necessary collateral damage. He really hoped Adonis had finished his job.

Still groggy from the stunners, Cambry threw all his weight downwards and lashed out at the knees of his captors with his boots. It was sudden enough that it worked; both buckled under his weight and dropped, and Cambry was able to clumsily roll to freedom. His right leg was numb. He limped as quickly as he could towards the main access way.

The UniStar guards (Cambry guessed they worked for Seraphan Photonics, but what was the difference?) pursued him to the sound of Crain shouting obscenities down the hall into the darkness.
The next few minutes were a blur. That was fine with Cambry. It was sort of an embarrassing plan on the whole, so he didn't really want to remember it anyway. In short it involved a great deal of running, an improvised explosive hidden in his harness, several dumb-locked firedoors, the help of a semi-sentient rations requisitions terminal, and a lot of dumb luck.

But Cambry, dumb as he could be, had never had much in the way of luck.

They caught up to him in a corridor with huge windows looking out into the crater. Just before they did, he tossed his harness to the side, where it slid up next to the windows. People fled from the commotion by the glow of the emergency lights. Cambry watched them go as he was thrown to his knees, silently glad they'd had the wherewithal to get out of dodge.

He looked up into the sweaty face of old Mr. Crain, who looked, understandably, furious.

"What was your plan, here? I'm not dead, if that was your goal. I'm going to get what I want. What were you trying to do, get on our nerves? You're not heroic, you idiot. You're just annoying."

Cambry blinked up at him. 

"Just wait," he said. "I can get a lot worse."

The improvised explosive in his harness did it's thing. A huge flash of light and a burst of noise, enough concussive force to knock all of them to the floor. 

And to blow a hole in the window. 

The corridor immediately, and violently, depressurized. Crain was lucky enough to grab onto something, flailing against the vacuum and shouting for someone to close the emergency bulkheads. One of his guards flew into the remaining transparisteel around the hole, probably breaking an arm. 
Cambry was sucked backwards along the floor with the second guard, straight towards the hole. They scuffled as they went. Cambry pushed wildly off of the man and watched him whack his head against the edge of the hole. Cambry himself had just enough time to seal his helmet before he left the interior of the station and went flying out into space.

The chaos of the moment was instantly gone. Everything became nothing, in the blink of an eye. The depressurization really sent him flying; he watched as the station got smaller and smaller in the distance, as he spun away. There was silence in his helmet, besides his own breathing. Breathing! His harness had his O2 supply, that was how he'd turned it into an explosive. He really should have thought that part through. That meant he had just what was currently in his helmet, and then he was done for. Well and truly at the end of his rope.

He took a moment to consider his death.
It was either a slow asphyxiation, or get crushed by the asteroid field above. Neither sounded great, but he'd prefer the first.
At least he'd gone out well, right? Fighting for some kind of worthy cause, or so he'd been told? As far as the standard of his life went, serving someone who wasn't actively a mob boss was pretty good.

He could feel the air getting thinner. Each breath was harder to take. The starfield above him was beautiful, streaked with blues and purples, past the huge grey hulks of the asteroids. He really liked space. 

Maybe dying there wasn't so bad.

He closed his eyes, and fell unconscious.

Then he woke up.

He gasped for breath, and to his enormous relief he felt oxygen filling his lungs. He was lying on durasteel grating, on a ship. In a sudden panic, or reeling from near-death shock, he scrambled to his feet and swung a punch at a nearby shape.

He watched the shape--which he slowly identified as Adonis Prynn--swiftly dodge the strike, before putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"You're alright, Cambry. Take a few deep breaths, relax."

"A-Adonis? Damn. I thought I was done for."

Adonis smiled a wide, creaky smile. A smile with secrets. A smile genuinely glad to see him alive.

"Not hardly. I don't know what you did down there, but you did it well. I had ample enough time to erase the stations' copies of the weapon data, and get the Silver Starmark in the air in time to pick you up."

"Well, thanks for that. I don't suppose I can go back there, huh?"

"Oh, my boy, that's true for the both of us. Herod Crain will be looking for you. I'm not sure he knows about my involvement in this. We'll need to, as they say, be on the lamb for a while."

Cambry shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time."

"Not the first time, indeed. But that's alright, I think. We have a lot to do."

"Do we?" Cambry asked, rubbing his head and glancing around the interior of the ship.

"UniStar won't stop here. There's trouble out in the galaxy, Cambry. People are going missing. Things are happening - dark things. Things people like us might be able to stop."

"Well, look. Mister Prynn-"

"Adonis is fine, Cambry."

"Adonis-I'm all in. Whatever you need, I'm game. I mean, I think I could use a nap first, but yeah. After that, I'm ready to go. Just tell me what to do."

Adonis was making his way towards the cockpit, but he turned back to look at him. Once again, he smiled.

"Let's go see about a girl, shall we?"