Chapters (57)
- Cover
- Doctor Aphra
- DRAMATIS PERSONAE
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- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Doctor Aphra! You are an irresponsible and troublesome woman.
Utani Xane and his gang of security droids surround Aphra.
APHRA:
[sotto]
Great, the really boring cavalry’s here.
[regular voice]
Heeeey, Utani Xane. And…uh, friends. Security droids? Sirs, madams?
Not sure what you prefer.
UTANI XANE:
Silence!
APHRA:
Utani Xane, so nice to see an old…friend. I didn’t know you were working here. Why am I not surprised?
UTANI XANE:
I’m equally unsurprised to find you setting off the alarms. There’s a reason why the Triple-Zero Matrix has been quarantined for centuries.
APHRA:
Yes, because of people like you! Small minds who just want to hide beautiful things in storage or a museum.
It should be in an armory!
UTANI XANE:
And you should be in prison again. Maybe this time, it’ll stick.
APHRA (narration):
The overzealous security droids clamped binders on me and took my treasure, but I was already thinking of all the ways I would obviously foil them and escape in a blaze of glory. Loud, explosive, all-blasters-firing glory.
It’d been pretty explosive the last time I’d encountered Utani Xane, too —he used to be the curator at a bustling museum on Coruscant, specializing in outdated droid artifacts salvaged after the Clone Wars. I applied for a job there—I know, I know. You’re thinking, Really, Chelli? When did you ever apply for a proper job? Is it Opposite Day?
Or, more precisely, The Antithesis of Everything You Are and Will Ever Be Day?
Look, I was in a bit of a dry spell after splitting with some contentious associates who’d helped me raid a… mostly abandoned fortress on Sarjenn Prime. I thought it might be nice to rack up credits and get an official-like title under my belt—assistant curator—because even the lowlifes who hire for the semi-illicit type jobs I do are impressed by such things. I figured Xane would be so dazzled by my expertise, I’d be promoted to the top in no time!
Head Curator Aphra, in charge of absolutely everything! Has a nice ring to it, eh? For a fleeting moment, I was almost… respectable!
Buuuuuut…turns out folks like Utani Xane—sniveling little bureaucrats with fancy titles and certain ideas about how things “should” be done—really don’t like it when their underlings take initiative.
I couldn’t help it. Being surrounded by all those supposedly outdated droid parts…well, they started talking to me in that irresistible mechanical language, and I simply had to respond.