BillSkywalker: Lurks?
LurkerBelow: Billy? Lng time no c...
BillSkywalker: rl issues. Had some probs.
LurkerBelow: 4 a year?
BillSkywalker: It's complicated...
LurkerBelow: Complicated. I hate complicated.
BillSkywalker: errr... look, I've got some weird stuff to tell you...
LurkerBelow: weird stuff?
BillSkywalker: you're still in Paris irl, right?
LurkerBelow: yeh...
BillSkywalker: okay... now, what if I told you that SW was real?
LurkerBelow: Id say I saw the movies...
BillSkywalker: what I mena is that if I told you there's actually an Empire and a Rebellion and stuff out there?
LurkerBelow: in an infinat universe...
BillSkywalker: cuz that's what my rl probs were about.
LurkerBelow: r u on crack?
BillSkywalker: The Empire was on earth and the yhad me at this base in Melbourne - on ly I got captured by rebels and they beat me up and they had a lightsaber. A real one. I saw it. and I don't do crack.
LurkerBelow: SithMaster Yoda alwyas said he had one, too...
BillSkywalker: That's the toher thing... SMY and Tie/Dtown and the others... they disappeared about that time as well. Got an email from TIE/DTown saying they were going on a bug hunt and they'd bget bac t o em, but they never did.
LurkerBelow: Ever?
BillSkywalker: Ever. I stopped going to IC after that...
LurkerBelow: Heavy.
BillSkywalker: IT gets worse. The other day I get a message the exact same way the Mepire got a hold of me...
BillSkywalker: errr Empire
LurkerBelow: okay, this is getting freaky.
BillSkywalker: A guy calling himself Mr. Star. He's after some guy in Brisabne, he says, and gets me to help him w/ accomodation and stuff. Anyway, apparently somehow the guy Mr. Star's after went to Paris... and he's promised cool stuff for ppl who devlier him to hinm... 'alive, but not necessarily unhurt.'
LurkerBelow: Whoah.
BillSkywalker: So, I thougth, you're in Paris, if you can find him, we could split the goodies...
LurkerBelow: Got piccies?
BillSkywalker: Yeah - sending em now...
LurkerBelow: FWIW, I believe you on the SW stuff...
BillSkywalker: Thanks man.
'Man'.
Urrmkz shook his head and snorted as he read what passed for a computer screen on this planet. No, he was no 'man'. He clumsily manipulated the control known as a 'mouse' and began the file transfer of the pictures, and snorted again. He suspected he knew far more than the human on the other end of the conversation about 'Star Wars'.
He'd been on this Force-saken mudball for four of the local years. He'd left his ship somewhere out in the countryside, managed to find these old tunnels and make himself a home. It had been rough, those first few months, only venturing out at night, subsisting on rats and vagrants. Slowly but surely, he'd spliced his way into the power grid, into the communication network and even into the water system, though that last had been the most difficult.
He was thankful for his facility with languages, too - for some reason, while many of the indigs spoke Basic or some variant, there was another language he'd had to learn, and an entire alphabet to boot. When, finally, he'd managed to obtain the local version of a computer, slicing accounts for himself had been child's play by comparison.
He was still constantly surprised by the fact that most of the indigs were of the belief that their planet was alone in the universe - and their attitude to offworlders was odd. Urrmkz was of the belief that most of the indigs would find the galaxy much more frightening than they expected. Urrmkz certainly had.
Not the galaxy itself, of course. No, an ugly blubbery part of it called Muaga the Hutt. Urrmkz was one tough Trandoshan, of course, but Muaga frightened the Sith out of him. The Trandoshan only had one skirmish with one of Muaga's bounty hunters, but that skirmish had demolished several square kilometers of spaceport and had forced Urrmkz's damaged ship into a blind hyperjump. He'd had to repair the damage to revert to realspace.
And so he'd ended up here. Muaga would pay for that.
Finally, the pictures finished their transfer, and Urrmkz brought them up on the screen and studied them. A young male, by the looks of things, light-skinned. Cultivated a little bit of facial fur.
As the Trandoshan studied the pictures, one of his network of proximity alarms began to flash. Urrmkz sighed and stood, stepped over the body of the latest vagrant he'd captured for a treat, and went to investigate.
"They've... got you surrounded."
The tiny figure that was Crispy kept running, waving its arm and parting the crowds before it, but he was silent for a few seconds over the comlink. Finally, he said, "Well, I don't see a line - they haven't got me hemmed in yet. Where's the line weakest? Which way?"
Kristy quickly sized up the tightening circle, concentrating in Crispy's general direction of motion - the two cops chasing were still hot on his heels. She drew her head back and blinked, trying to gestalt the line - and there it was. A single car was stopped, unable to move as people crowded in front of it. It was coloured oddly for a police car, but its lights were flashing - and it was in the right direction.
"Crispy - at your ten-thirty, a street to your left and up about three hundred metres. A car's stalled - there's your weak spot."
"Right." Crispy ducked down yet another of the numerous alleys, careening out and onto a congested street. Kristy heard him begin to yell again in his gibberish, and the crowd began to part in front of him again.
Crispy was three-quarters of the way to the stopped car when the occupants suddenly climbed out and took cover behind it, obviously bracing weapons over the roof of the car. The entire street cleared in a minor stampede, leaving Crispy exposed.
"MPs!" Crispy called over the comlink, and then his path began to veer unpredictably all over the street, making himself a difficult target. On the comlink, Kristy faintly heard a voice over a megaphone, speaking sternly in French. "Arretez-vous! Laissez tomber l'arme et levez vos mains ou nous ouvrirons le feu!"
The foot police pursuing Crispy pulled up sharply, kneeling and bracing weapons at his receding back. "Arretez!" came the megaphone voice again, this time much louder. "Laissez tomber l'arme!"
Then came the gunshots. Two short, tight bursts from automatic weapons. Crispy's grunt was audible over the comlink, and the figure on the screen staggered and developed a limp. "I'm hit," he gasped, and then he raised his arm towards the car.
One shot. Another. One of the military police officers twitched and fell limp, leaning on the car in what almost looked to Kristy like an attitude of rest, while the other staggered back and collapsed. Crispy ran on past the car, his breathing ragged over the comlink, still moving quickly despite the limp. The police kneeling far behind him rose and rushed towards the car.
"Crispy?" asked Kristy. "Are you okay?"
"Got a couple in the vest... one in the right leg... doesn't seem to be bleeding too badly..." Crispy's voice varied in loudness, peaking every time his right leg took a step. "Where to now...?"
"Just to your left and keep going - they're all behind you now..."
"Right." Crispy followed Kristy's directions, limping down the street, the crowds thinning as he went. Kristy watched nervously as the police circle began to change direction and move towards her teammate. Fortunately, the streets were crowded enough that the vehicles had trouble getting underway - unfortunately, there were several police on foot converging on Crispy from the direction he was heading.
"Um... Crispy... you've got cops ahead of you - they're still a few hundred metres away, but they're closing..."
Crispy ducked through an alley, emerging into a street right next to the bright orange fencing surrounding a roadwork site. He glanced around, down into the hole, then began to run past the fencing. As Kristy watched, he stopped, hopped over the fencing and climbed down into the pit.
"Crispy? What are you doing?"
"I saw a tunnel," Crispy replied, his voice strained. "I'm going to go inside..."
"But you don't know it goes anywhere!"
"I know there probably aren't any cops down there... isn't Paris supposed to have heaps of tunnels and stuff under it?"
"Uh... I think you may be right... hang on... I'll see if I can find a map..."
The screen no longer showed Crispy, but it still crawled along the street, centred on his comlink signal. Kristy watched it for a moment in fascination, and saw a gendarme approach the pit and stop.
"Crispy..." she said eventually, as the comlink signal began picking up speed. "I think you may have done it - they don't seem to want to follow you down there... They're gathering round the pit."
"Great. Have you managed to find - what th -" A meaty thwack resounded over the comlink, and there was a clatter as if the comlink fell on stone.
"Crispy? Crispy?"
There was a sudden burst of static, and the comlink fell silent. As Kristy watched, the message "Signal Lost" appeared in red letters across the bottom of the screen.
LurkerBelow: u won't believe what just happened.
BillSkywalker: What?
LurkerBelow: I've got the cargo. Where does Mr. Star want it?