Coruscant Noir
By Adam Gottfried
This was a story I wrote for a proof of concept for a game that never happened. I still enjoy the story, even if the game went nowhere.
I
hate Coruscant when it rains. Say what you want about a planet-wide
city, I still stay it rains harder here than on the dankest backwater
jungle planet in the galaxy. No leaves to slow things down, not to
mention artificially generated air mixed with natural humidity is a
terrible combination. Can’t even light a death stick, and boy do I
need a death stick just now.
I
put my back to the wall of the alley and look down at the blaster in
my hand. BlasTech DL-44, slightly modified to have a hair-trigger,
but also a safety to make it a little more street-legal. The latter
mod was really to keep me from doing something stupid with it, for
all the good it did me now.
I
breathe out and realize how cold it’s gotten. I can see my breath
and in the equatorial region I where I lurk—can’t really call
what I do living—that is almost unheard of. I glance skyward and
let the rain patter away the sweat and grime on my face. The drops a
frigid, almost painfully so, but it is a welcome respite from…
everything.
Abject
fear followed by abject terror followed by abject adrenaline leads to
sweaty armpits, forehead, and a near pulmonary episode if you are
prone to such things. Thus far, I am not, and more is the pity. All
that Academy physical conditional means exactly nothing fifteen years
later with a black-spotted lung and a mid-level paunch running to
fat. I am still sucking in breath like oxygen is at a premium and I
am fresh out of credits.
I
glance down for the first time at the corpse. It’s a dug, armed
with a specially modified automatic blaster that might once have been
from the BlasTech series but now more closely resembled an over/under
blaster rifle/detonator launcher. Not that it did him any good in the
end, though it sure as hell went a long way to scaring the exercise
out of me. The dug had squeezed off a trio of shots from reflex alone
as he toppled over at the mouth of the alley, but they had hit the
filthy permacrete walls of the adjacent building leaving barely
noticeable scorch marks.
In
the not-so-distant distance I can hear the whining klaxon of an
approaching Republic Pacifier Cruiser. Already, I could see the
swaggering arrogance, the casual indifference of the Coruscant Peace
Officers as they stepped out of their modified speeder. The barely
registered disgust as one or the other of them either recognized me
on sight or my name from the biometrics scan that would soon follow.
“Daxon
Rill,” one of them will say, drawing my name out slowly and with
the subtle tone of someone naming something sticky and loathsome. I
will respond with something ill-advised and sarcastic. The safety of
my training also did not keep my mouth from saying anything stupid.
Then they will ask the inevitable question. The question I would ask
were our places reversed.
I
could play dumb, but that would be tantamount with lying and if that
were the case, I might as well just hand them a fiction for all the
good it would do me. I snort aloud as the Pacified Cruiser blocked
the alley. I drop the blaster to the ground and drop to my knees,
placing my hands on my head. They would ask me to do that anyway,
though the fact that I preempted them might earn me a quick takedown
face first onto the permacrete with my hands restrained behind my
back.
As
they step out of the cruiser with half again the imagined swagger I
had put upon them, I smile grimly to myself. No, honesty would be the
best policy here, as the evidence would quickly show through any lie
I might concoct. I was never very good at lying in any case.
No,
there was no way around it. I had indeed shot first.
