The pain was excruciating: a merciless scalding beneath his skin that penetrated his joints and muscles. It literally took his breath away, and that was the worst part, breathing. Lying on his back on a wooden bench, Tabraile fought to remain calm. Panicking required oxygen to fuel his fight-or-flight instinct, fuel he didn't have. 

He remembered a time when his cargo skiff ran out of fuel deep in the Doaba Badlands of Socorro. A corroded fuel line was the culprit. Running on fumes, he nursed the craft across the sand flats by evening out the inertia dampeners and maintaining a low, but steady draw on the throttle. It had made the difference between walking 5 kilometers to Soco-Jarel Starport versus walking 40.

"Get out of my way!" Anayera forced her way into the small storage room where they had brought him after the fight. "What have you done with him?"

Tabraile managed a wry grin as the mob of hardened rogues and scoundrels, including the Gamorrean, scattered out of the doorway. Hushed voices came from the threshold, but the throbbing in his ears made it difficult to hear.

"What do you mean Mol'jattu will not honor the agreement?" Anayera argued. "My champion not only survived the round, he killed yours. We won."

"Technically, he did not survive," said the voice of Mol'jattu's foreman, speaking in Rylothian. "Krak'Craw poison is fatal."

"Fatal?"

"His lungs are filling with fluid. He fought well, but he'll be dead within the hour. Sorry for your loss."

"Tabraile?" Anayera knelt beside him, her hand on his arm. "Can you walk? We're leaving this place!"

"Before you go, there is the matter of compensation," the Twi'lek said. "The Great Mol'jattu is asking 100,000 credits for the loss of his champion."

Tabraile knew she was reaching for her lightsaber. Before the familiar thrum of ignition, he drew in a deep breath. "Ana!"

Still carrying his uniform and his gunbelt under her arm, she leaned over him and held the back of her hand against his feverish face. The look of horror in her eyes was all he needed to understand the gravity of their situation. "Does it hurt?" she whispered.

"Only when I breathe." Tabraile laughed involuntarily, wincing due to his bruised ribs. He held onto her shoulder and with assistance sat up. It was easier to breathe in that position. Taking in a slow, shallow breath, he held on to her and shrugged into his Imperial uniform. The gauze bandage covering the stinger puncture was bleeding through and stained the gray fabric.

The Twi'lek in the colorful headscarf blocked the doorway. His two companions stood shoulder to shoulder in the outer corridor behind him. "Mol'jattu demands his compensation."

Gritting his teeth, Tabraile pulled the heavy blaster from its holster. He pointed the muzzle centimeters from the Twi'lek's smug face. "Min min vil ut valle Nharqis!"

The Twi'lek raised his arms in surrender and bowed his head to signal his acquiescence. "I make it a habit not to fight with dead men."

Tabraile shoved passed him. He leaned on Anayera as they exited the hideout through a side entrance leading to the street.

"What did you say to him?" Anayera asked. Their AV-21 landspeeder was in sight, and she hastened her steps toward it.

"I told him I would eat his ashes," Tabraile replied. "A Socorran curse. In other words, I'd kill him if he didn't move out of our way."

Anayera secured her grip around his torso and helped support his weight. "Where'd you learn to fight like that?"

"I had a brother. We didn't always get along." He coughed, blood spilling over his lips and onto his hand.

"I've got to take you to the medbay."

"No," Tabraile protested. He leaned against the driver-side door of their AV-21 and tried to catch his breath. "If Jyaard catches wind of this ... I'll be court-martialed and sold to the spice mines. There's no telling what he'll do to you."

Anayera stood looking up at him, her arm still wrapped around his waist. "You were right, Tabraile. My uncle was setting me up. There was no way I could have won this Hutt's cooperation."

"Not unless you slept with him," he said. "And even then, I don't think Mol'jattu would have cooperated." He climbed behind the steering wheel.

"I don't care what happens to me. I won't let you suffer for it," she said. "We're going back to the base."

"Take me to the civilian side of the docking bay. I know someone who can help." Tabraile slid across the leather seat and leaned back against the neck rest. "Under the current circumstances, I think you should drive."

                                                                                              ~ ~ ~

Her hair smelled of lavender and sage. Tabraile wished he could take a deeper breath, but he was having difficulty just breathing. Unable to lift his head, he leaned against Anayera's shoulders while she held him upright on the gurney.

"He's barely breathing. Do something."

"Take it easy, lady," Raab said. "I've seen this before. DUM-29, analysis?"

"Pulmonary systems are flooded," the droid replied. "Left lung—75%. Right lung—100%. I suggest simultaneous extraction."

"Will he survive dual extraction?" Raab asked.

"J-just ... do it," Tabraile gasped.

Bypassing security through a network of maintenance tunnels under the Omman City Starport, Tabraile had led them to a backroom, tucked away in an older section of the port. The illegal market offered a host of vendors, techs who made a robust trade of making ship repairs and giving first aid to those who wished to avoid any Imperial entanglements.

"Here, put this over his face." Raab handed Anayera a mask and adjusted a hose attached to the front of the apparatus. "Alright, Tabraile, deep breaths, buddy. This is going to hurt."

"Wait!" Anayera shouted. "Can't you give him something."

"Any painkillers would be counteracted by the venom. Besides, there's no time. Another minute, and he'll be beyond my help." He slapped the droid on its large, dome-shaped head. "Light it up, Dum-Dum!"

"Initiating extraction." The mechanical droid leaned forward and drove its spiked talons into Tabraile's back beneath the shoulder blades.

There was no breath left in him to cry out. Tabraile laid with his head on her shoulder and gasped desperately. He heard the intense whirring of the droid's internal siphon as it drew the fluid out of his lungs. The bloody mixture flowed through its tubing and into a canister sitting on the floor beside an old X-34 speeder engine.

"Minimal negative pressure," DUM-29 said. "Ending maintenance procedure." The droid withdrew the spikes and stepped aside as Raab quickly wrapped a bandage around the wounds to staunch the bleeding.

"Nice job. Now go sterilize yourself and get back to fixing that hydraulic loader. Imps are bringing in a transit hopper, and we need to be ready to lift and move the damn thing."

"I can't believe you used a mechanics droid to extract the fluid?" Anayera said.

"Fluid's gone. Poison, too. No different than sucking slag out of a reconstituted fuel line." Raab lifted the gauze to check the wounds. Finding minimal bleeding, he sprayed a bacta wash over the injection sites. "Don't need a dedicated medical droid when you got a DUM-series bot under your roof. Working on people ain't no different than working on ships, lady."

"Only he could die," she protested.

"But he didn't," the Corellian said, wiping his hands on his greasy overalls. "That's why folks come to me when they take a blaster bolt to the chest or a vibroblade to the gut. And that's the droid I use to take care of their problems." He helped her lay Tabraile down on the dirty gurney and covered him with a tarp. "He's gonna need a little shut-eye. At least eight hours. That bacta treatment should stabilize his blood pressure and flush out any residual toxins."

"Are we safe here?"

Raab grinned at her, showing a row of rotted teeth. "Relax, lady. For the 10,000 credits you gave me, my home is your home for tonight and the next if you want it. I'll sleep in the maintenance bay. And if anyone comes asking, I never saw you. Or him." He left the room, sealing the door behind him for privacy.

Anayera leaned over Tabraile, her warm breath blowing over his face. She dabbed at his forehead and brushed the damp hair from his face. "Are you comfortable?"

He nodded, wanting to say more, but he was too sleepy.

"Don't fight it," she said. "Go to sleep."

"Can't stay here," he whispered, drifting off. "I can't protect you."

"Ssh," she hushed him. Her fingers were cool against his cheeks. "Go to sleep."

                                                                                        ~ ~ ~

"Tabraile!"

The terror in her voice awakened him from peaceful slumbers. Tabraile came to consciousness through a fog. Muscle pain and a wheezing in his chest reminded him of his fight with the Krak'Craw. The stinger wound burned, and he groaned in pain. "Lady Anayera, what's wrong?" He stared at her trembling hands as she helped him into an upright position on the gurney.

"We have to leave," she said. The hood was drawn over her head, her face hidden in shadows.

"How long have I been out?" He blinked rapidly to adjust his eyes.

"Five hours."

Still groggy, Tabraile tolerated her pulling the bloody uniform tunic over his head and waited while she buckled the gunbelt about his waist. Holding his bruised ribs, he stood up to test his balance. He recognized the cold chill that lingered about her. "What aren't you telling me?"

"We have to leave Omman. Now."

"And go where?" He took her by the arm. "I thought we talked about this. We can't go back—" Her hands were covered in blood. "Ana, what have you done?"

"I killed them," she whispered, almost proudly. "I would have killed them all, but I settled for the Hutt and his Twi'lek goons."

"Uldyr," he swore, looking at the blaster wound still smoldering at her lower abdomen. "We need to have Raab look at this."

"No time. The starport's been put on lockdown. Only official Imperial craft are permitted to come and go."

"Well, there are a few advantages to having a restricted transponder code." Tabraile rummaged through a bag of medical supplies before throwing it over his shoulder. "Come on." He led her from the room. Clearing the corners, he stayed well within the shadows of the access corridor parallel to the main docking bay.

"How are we going to get back to the shuttle? It's on the military side," she said, her voice strained.

"You let me worry about that." Tabraile gritted his teeth as he lifted a heavy maintenance grate. "Down you go. Careful, the metal rungs get slippery." He followed her down the ladder into the shaft and then pulled the grate back into place.

Panting, she fell to her knees. "The shafts beneath the port are a labyrinth ... why would you lead us back down here?"

Tabraile used a glowrod to highlight the random scrawling on the nearest wall. "See that? It isn't graffiti. It's a smuggler's cant. Mostly Socorran. If you can read it, you've got your very own underground map of the starport."

"Resourceful," she sighed.

"Let's just say I've been down here a few times ... running errands. Hey!" As she tried to get to her feet, she collapsed, falling into his arms. Tabraile clenched his jaw and picked her up, his bruised ribs protesting the strain. "RK-O, you there?"

He listened to the anxious response as the droid interrogated him about their whereabouts. "Nevermind that. We're leaving." Tabraile felt his wind and stamina pushed to the brink as he hurried through the maintenance shafts. Anayera laid her head against his neck and held on to him. "I don't care about the tech who boarded the shuttle. Did he fix the landing sensor? No, do not file a flight plan. Lady Vannre is hurt. It's not safe here. Prep the shuttle for lift off."