Koji shook me awake probably an hour after I had fallen asleep. Truly, today was the wrong day to be tired.
After the fifteen minutes for the shitty breakfast, we were usually allowed to pee and clear our bellies.
We were then gathered into a line and escorted up the ramp, the same ramp that had brought us down here. Only this time it was taking us up.
It couldn't have been just one hour. Maybe the time we had woken up had been late.
I mean, the sun was already starting to shine over the dockyard.
You never quite realize the value of that free warmth from the sun until you have been locked down in a pit for days. It had not even been that many days.
The sun now felt like the most precious commodity we could get our hands on in this world.
The warmth was so refreshing it almost felt like we were being rewarded after such a long time in the dampness of the levels below.
But if that was what I felt, then I was absolutely wrong.
There was a reason they were bringing us up here. And if they could have taken away the sun, they probably would have.
The first thing I noticed was that Hato's ship was already here. It was not that strange, but it was usually hard to see Hato in the dock unless he was delivering cargo.
Most of the supervision was left to the overseers and his enforcers.
But today he was here.
He was seated right at the only exit to the dockyard.
When we had been assembled, he walked over.
"Brilliant. See, you have been paying attention. Because if you hadn't, you wouldn't be alive by now," he said, looking at Koji and me.
"Today is cleaning day, and I expect no one to go out of line."
"I'll be here most of the day. And you do not want to spoil such a nice day, now do you? Do your work well and you might even get some time to bask in the sun."
The way he said it, you would think he had personally made that sun shine.
"Hato is not a bad man."
I did not know if that was sarcasm, because it was literally in his title.
Hato the Bad.
Although now that we were standing here, I think I might have realized where the title came from.
His ship was too big for me to have properly noticed the first time it had come to rescue me. Besides, I would not have seen it anyway since the pod had been pulled in from below.
But now that we were standing here, I could clearly see the name.
The Bad.
It was printed in bold letters above the ship's viewport, the paint designed to look like it was dripping blood.
I wondered why, of all the titles he could have chosen, he went with The Bad.
After the brief address, we were released and divided into several groups.
The older slaves were sent to a different container. All the crates that had been emptied were there, and they were given some protective clothing.
It gave me the impression again that some of the things Hato dealt with were tremendously dangerous.
In fact, if one was not careful around here, casualties were not exactly far fetched.
Another group was escorted inside the ship.
I was honestly sorry I was not among those tasked with cleaning the smuggler's ship.
I wanted to check whether my credits were still there.
More importantly, I wanted to know whether my pod was still there.
If Hato had no use for the pod, he might have gotten rid of it. Which meant it might still be somewhere around the docks.
But if it was still inside the ship, then I hoped nobody had found my credits yet.
I had a good feeling that unless somebody went looking for something specific, there was a good chance they were still there.
But even if they were, where would I hide them if I took them?
I figured I would take my chances leaving them on the ship. There was literally no privacy here. Not a single moment when you were truly alone to figure out a hiding place.
Even the cell we slept in was shared with eleven other slaves.
This was actually a strategic way to keep us from scheming. Because when you are constantly surrounded by others, you are always afraid of betrayal.
It worked.
Right now, even I did not fully trust Koji.
Being up here, however, I began to notice things.
I used the opportunity to continue my lessons from the dream state. Within a short while I had mapped the dockyard as far as my eyes and senses could reach.
Today there were noticeably more enforcers, not to mention the regular staff working around the docks.
Up here there were more rooms, ones that seemed more private than the level we had been working on below.
I started observing the hierarchy of command.
Even the overseer who ran things down there did not seem particularly high ranking.
There was Hato.
Then there was a big human thug with a patch over one eye.
I did not know whether it was fashion or an injury, but something covered his left eye. He seemed to be the second in command.
And if I had thought the overseer was a monster, that man made the overseer look like a sweetheart.
The guy was vicious even with the enforcers and the other overseers. It did not take me long to notice that even they were afraid of him.
The only person who seemed comfortable around him was Hato.
There was not much else interesting up here.
But around midday I began noticing something strange.
There were slaves wearing collars, but they were dressed in civilian clothes while the rest of us wore uniforms.
These ones came and went freely through the main entrance.
Even the security droids did not bother them.
It piqued my interest.
They honestly seemed quite happy. They looked like they enjoyed life a little more than the rest of us.
I did not know whether it was an act, but judging from the way they interacted with the enforcers, they clearly held some kind of importance.
They even seemed more important than some of the enforcers themselves.
So they had to be doing some very important job, I guessed.
After a while I lost interest in them.
Well, not entirely.
The thought stayed at the back of my mind.
But something else had occurred to me.
If I could just get inside the ship.
I mean, I was a freaking pilot. I might have taken off.
'And gone where?'
A voice inside my head immediately answered.
'Yes, you are a pilot. But you have no idea how to fly that ship'.
I knew it was right
The knowledge might be standard, but smuggler ships were heavily modified. You might think you know what a control does until you sit in the cockpit and realize the switch you thought handled navigation actually vents the damn cargo bay.
And besides, I had no idea whether the ship was even flight ready.
But that was not even the biggest problem.
The real problem was that stealing a ship from Ord Mantell meant flying without clearance. Not unusual in smuggler circles, sure.
But Hato was a smuggler with contacts. Plenty of them.
He would send people after me.
unless I was willing to jump blindly into wild space again and risk dying in the void.
That was a terrible idea.
There was also another matter.
I had chosen Force sensitive smuggling.
And somehow the system had dropped me into this life as a smuggler slave.
I honestly felt like there was something intentional about that.
Maybe the idea was that I was supposed to learn something here. Maybe the system wanted me to pick up smuggling lessons from Hato before moving on.
If I ran now, I might not gain anything from it.
I could just end up in another port where another smuggler would take advantage of me.
Or maybe the Republic would finally finish whatever they had started.
So I decided it was not the time yet.
There were still things I needed to learn here.
And if I left, a lot of trouble would probably fall on Koji and the other slaves.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a plan had started forming.
There had to be a way for me to get out of this situation without more people getting hurt.
From now on, I had to move carefully. I had to follow a plan.
Because randomness was not going to save me.
It was the very thing that had landed me here in the first place.