Star Wars Universe: The Shipment

Star Wars Universe:

The Shipment

By: Michael Mulhollon

The YT-1800 Transport, with its triple drive units, sat in the landing bay on Tatooine while its Kuat owner leaned against the port side wall of the bay admiring his two year old ship while he waited for his contact. From fore to aft he looked at the two sensor dishes (both on the top and on each side of the deflector shield generators in the front), the four concussion missile tubes beneath the forward lifeboat, the depth of its structure (that carries triple of what the old YT-1300 Transport use to carry), its six single barreled (low yield power) laser cannons on each corner of the transport (except where the bridge is built on the fore starboard side) and its pristine, clear triple drive units in the back of the gleaming white hull. The male humanoid sighed with satisfaction of the Mon Calamari’s job of cleaning the hull before coming here, but then his peace is disturbed by the sound of the door in the front of the bay. The man snapped his attention to the front and noticed both the front door of the bay is opened and two figures (covered up in dirty rags and googles covering their eyes) walking through and stopped just a few feet from the entrance of the bay. From his headset, the Kuat scanned the two figures and they appeared to be unarmed before he stepped out from the shadows and walked towards the figures direction as he asked, “Did you bring the shipment?” The two covered figures looked at the Kuat and one of them replied in a raspy voice, “We have Smirv Tamalack. Were you tracked?” Smirv looked hurt and replied, “Now that’s insulting for a man of my reputation. If I had would you think I would still be in business?” Smirv stopped in front of the two figures as the same one replied, “No, I believe you would not.” Smirv extended his left hand and the other figure pulled out a small leather bag and handed it to Smirv. Smirv opened it and dumped 5 golden credits onto his hand and Smirv frowned when he looked up and stated, “This is not even half.” The figure that has been doing the talking replied, “You will get the rest when you reached the coordinates. This is meant to cover the costs of fuel till you reached your destination.” Smirv nodded and said, “Understandable.” He pulled his right hand out to reveal a remote with five buttons, pressed one of them and the ramp in the front of his transport lowered and he said, “You can bring out the shipment and put them in the holds that are open.” The figure that handed Smirv the credits turned his back to him, pulled out a small whistle, made one long blow and multiple figures (clothed as the ones that stood before Smirv) appeared through the entrance way with crates carried between two figures at a time as they formed a line towards the ramp of The Hooper.

The figures descended down a short staircase beneath the metal floor and loaded the crates on metal racks beneath a coffin on top of each one before they exited the ship, all the while Smirv and the two figures that approached him, stood outside and watched when one of them asked Smirv, “May I ask how were you able to avoid getting caught? Because from here it looks like there is no place to hide from the inspectors and their x-ray scanners.” Smirv smirked as he replied, “I keep a copy of my old contract with a morgue on Anaxes and a coffin and corpse on the top racks.” The two figures looked at each other before they both turned their attention to Smirv and the same one asked again, “Those contracts have copyright protection labeled on them. How are the inspectors able to ignore that?” Smirv answered, “They are protected, but, if you copy them enough times the copyright label written all over the documents fad till about after you copied them over ten or more, the wording disappears. They change the ink, wording and format every few months or a year, but it is still the same when you copied it enough times or if you find the right angered employ and price he or she will tell you the changes they made and supply you with the right new document to forge.” The two figures looked at each other, nodded and one of them said, “Interesting.” The end of the line appeared and entered the transport when another figure approached one of the figures standing by Smirv and stated, “All is loaded.” And the last of the completely covered people exited The Hooper and left the landing bay and the person that was told said, “Good.” Before he turned to Smirv and said, “Our business has concluded on this end. Good luck.” Smirv chuckled and said, “Luck? This is just another day.” And they parted ways with the clothed figures exited the landing bay while Smirv boarded his own ship.