Shalimar, could you let me know if anything in this story fragment would be out of character for Stella...
[sblock=Darryn/Stella background story]
A few weeks after the destruction of Alderaan ...
This isn't working. Darryn thought, some time after his fifth or sixth drink of the evening. The girl he was with was even more expensive than the alcohol, but neither had been as diverting as he'd hoped. You just don't have the right personality for a drunken playboy, Dr. Leqarna. And you know too much biochemistry to try drowning your sorrows in anything stronger than alcohol.
He was in a spaceport cantina that the idle rich favored, on the sort of world that the idle rich went to when they were looking for trouble. It had seemed approriate. What else was he going to do?
"You're better than this, Darryn." Someone said. Who was it? That engineer he'd hired two worlds back, when Marcus -- who'd taken care of Darryn's starship and otherwise worked for him all through medical school, and his residency, and was probably the best friend he'd had -- had quit? What was her name? Stella something-or-other? She'd needed to get off-world, and he wasn't being picky at the time. She was running from something, he'd picked up that much.
"You've known me less than a month." He said.
"And despite spending most of that time wandering from one direputable spaceport cantina to the next, you've still managed to save half a dozen people's lives in that time." She said.
"I don't know why I bothered. It's pointless, anyway. If the Empire can blow up Alderaan, they could do the same anywhere else, for any reason." He was ignoring his escort, but she didn't seem all that concerned.
"You didn't come down here to walk me home." He finished.
"No. There's an urgent priority message for you, and you weren't answering your commlink."
"It's probably more lawyers." Darryn said. When he wasn't burrying himself in alcohol, he'd spent too much time talking to lawyers lately. Usually informing him that another group of relatives had been confirmed dead, and that he was heir to at least some part of their estate. These things happened when you were one of a handful of Alderaan nobility who had been off-world when the Empire decided to make a statement with its new terror weapon. By the time they were through, he wasn't just going to be rich, he was going to be exorbiantly wealthy.
"I don't think so. This was sent on the highest priority you've got, and encrypted."
"I suppose I have to get back to my ship." He told his escort.
When he got back to the trasport, he took a couple of pills to clear his head before opening his mail. He'd left his wrist computer on the ship; it was handy for normal business, but not for fun.
"Use the special family code." He told the computer, when the standard decryption program returned gibberish other than a short header that let him know who the message actually was from. Prompted for a passphrase, he typed it out. Surprising the things he still remembered. A holorecording started to play in response.
"You may not remember me." A man about Darryn's age said. One that looked a lot like him, actually, except for the unfamiliar uniform. It wasn't surprsing; Arrik was Darryn's second cousin, and as far as Darryn had known, Arrik had disappeared without a trace two years ago. Or rather with very little trace; his parents had recieved a few untraceable messages a year that let them know he was still alive, but not much more than that. "By now, you've head about what happened to Alderaan. If you want to do something about it, keep listening, otherwise destroy this message right away. I'll give you a minute..."
He thought about shutting off the recording. Arrik was certainly hinting that he was part of the Rebel Alliance. Which Darryn had always considered well-intentioned but doomed. But he didn't stop it. And his cousin gave him a contact point, and told him the Rebellion could always use doctors, but he thought someone who was smart, observant, got on well with people, and had more than a little quite legitimately acquired money might be able to do more than that.
And then Darryn realized Stella had heard the whole thing. Those pills he'd taken did a lot to clear your head after too much alcohol, but they didn't completely reverse the effect.
"If you have any intention of calling Imperial Security, could you do it now?" He said.
"I don't." She said.
[/sblock]
[sblock=Darryn/Stella background story]
A few weeks after the destruction of Alderaan ...
This isn't working. Darryn thought, some time after his fifth or sixth drink of the evening. The girl he was with was even more expensive than the alcohol, but neither had been as diverting as he'd hoped. You just don't have the right personality for a drunken playboy, Dr. Leqarna. And you know too much biochemistry to try drowning your sorrows in anything stronger than alcohol.
He was in a spaceport cantina that the idle rich favored, on the sort of world that the idle rich went to when they were looking for trouble. It had seemed approriate. What else was he going to do?
"You're better than this, Darryn." Someone said. Who was it? That engineer he'd hired two worlds back, when Marcus -- who'd taken care of Darryn's starship and otherwise worked for him all through medical school, and his residency, and was probably the best friend he'd had -- had quit? What was her name? Stella something-or-other? She'd needed to get off-world, and he wasn't being picky at the time. She was running from something, he'd picked up that much.
"You've known me less than a month." He said.
"And despite spending most of that time wandering from one direputable spaceport cantina to the next, you've still managed to save half a dozen people's lives in that time." She said.
"I don't know why I bothered. It's pointless, anyway. If the Empire can blow up Alderaan, they could do the same anywhere else, for any reason." He was ignoring his escort, but she didn't seem all that concerned.
"You didn't come down here to walk me home." He finished.
"No. There's an urgent priority message for you, and you weren't answering your commlink."
"It's probably more lawyers." Darryn said. When he wasn't burrying himself in alcohol, he'd spent too much time talking to lawyers lately. Usually informing him that another group of relatives had been confirmed dead, and that he was heir to at least some part of their estate. These things happened when you were one of a handful of Alderaan nobility who had been off-world when the Empire decided to make a statement with its new terror weapon. By the time they were through, he wasn't just going to be rich, he was going to be exorbiantly wealthy.
"I don't think so. This was sent on the highest priority you've got, and encrypted."
"I suppose I have to get back to my ship." He told his escort.
When he got back to the trasport, he took a couple of pills to clear his head before opening his mail. He'd left his wrist computer on the ship; it was handy for normal business, but not for fun.
"Use the special family code." He told the computer, when the standard decryption program returned gibberish other than a short header that let him know who the message actually was from. Prompted for a passphrase, he typed it out. Surprising the things he still remembered. A holorecording started to play in response.
"You may not remember me." A man about Darryn's age said. One that looked a lot like him, actually, except for the unfamiliar uniform. It wasn't surprsing; Arrik was Darryn's second cousin, and as far as Darryn had known, Arrik had disappeared without a trace two years ago. Or rather with very little trace; his parents had recieved a few untraceable messages a year that let them know he was still alive, but not much more than that. "By now, you've head about what happened to Alderaan. If you want to do something about it, keep listening, otherwise destroy this message right away. I'll give you a minute..."
He thought about shutting off the recording. Arrik was certainly hinting that he was part of the Rebel Alliance. Which Darryn had always considered well-intentioned but doomed. But he didn't stop it. And his cousin gave him a contact point, and told him the Rebellion could always use doctors, but he thought someone who was smart, observant, got on well with people, and had more than a little quite legitimately acquired money might be able to do more than that.
And then Darryn realized Stella had heard the whole thing. Those pills he'd taken did a lot to clear your head after too much alcohol, but they didn't completely reverse the effect.
"If you have any intention of calling Imperial Security, could you do it now?" He said.
"I don't." She said.
[/sblock]
