Line

A S H A L A A

Line

Chapter One


Written by Jeff Walters


He'd made it. He knew that he had little if any time left, but he'd made it. And that was all that mattered now. Grasping a thick clump of the strange brownish grass that appeared to completely blanket the surrounding landscape, the old man slowly pulled himself up into a sitting position and then up onto his feet. Just this last hill. One more.

The wound that he'd been carrying for almost a day now, throbbed with renewed intensity with every step he took, but slowly, gradually, he was able to make his way to the hill's crest before his legs gave out and he slumped to his knees. There it was. Lying below him at the foot of the hill was what he'd been searching for. An Ikelah. Well, that's what the locals called them. An Ikelah was just a home. Seen throughout the galaxy in a million different forms, under a million different names. But this home, this Ikelah, was no ordinary one. It was Kira's home.

The wounded man patted his tunic's pocket just to make sure the package he had to deliver hadn't dissappeared into thin air since the last time he checked, mere seconds earlier. It hadn't. The chest wound was bleeding profusely again, the makeshift bandages that had been ineffective before were now practically useless. He had to move now. Eyeing the mudbrick Ikelah below, the old man rose as quickly as his injured 90 year old frame could manage. He had a mission to complete.
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Kira awoke with a start. Something was different. Kicking off his bedding and stumbling still half asleep to his feet, Kira surveyed the room. Blurred though it was, the picture his eyes were transmitting was exactly how it always looked.

"Must have been a dream or,,,,,something." he mumbled. He couldn't understand it, but his senses were screaming at him. Something had changed. He glanced back down at the bed longingly. A hard night debating galactic politics with a bottle of Kessel Ale had left his body feeling like it had been invaded by a squad of angry wookies, who were currently re-arranging his internal organs alphabetically. I need some Konsho. Though this dirtball of a planet he called home, Yalte, was on the periphery of known civilisation, physically and culturally, it did have the distinction of making the most powerful anti-hangover remedy in the galaxy. Konsho. Officially a medicine used to treat any number of illnesses, it was unofficially the morning saviour of countless cantina inhabitants the galaxy over.

"I'm gonna stop doing this." he promised himself, as he always did the morning after. He grabbed his robe off the bench to the side of the bed and stumbled in as straight a line as he could manage to the door to the Ikelah's main room. There he stopped. His heart stopped as well.

The door leading outside was open an inch or two and gently moving as the breeze outside tried to force it's way into the Ikelah. Pre-morning light spilled through the crack and faintly illuminated the main room. What is going on here! A shadow moved off to his right. Approaching. Kira dived forward across the room, his hand groping for the blaster he always kept hidden taped under the large table that occupied the centre of the room.

On his third attempt he tore the blaster loose and spun to face the shadow that had now stopped just outside the doorway to his room. Where he himself had stood not moments before.

"I've....gotta a blaster on you....don't move" Kira stated with more confidence than he felt. The shadow moved forward again. Slowly. Kira felt a tug on his hand and then in a breath his blaster was gone.

"I'm....not..your...enemy...son." the figure spoke in raspy voice. The shadow stepped out directly into the light from the door way, revealing the intruder to be a hunched over elderly human. The light wan't terribly strong, but Kira could distinctly see blood flowing down the man's tunic. "I.....have...come..to..." the man fell to his knees coughing "come..to...give..message."

Kira moved closer to the man. A small part of him wanted to run, but the sight of the man's pain seemed to chase away his fear and only concern remained.

"What messa..." Before Kira could finish the man fell forward. Kira jumped into action and caught him before he smashed against the table. He dragged him fully into the light from outside. The elderly man had a single penetration wound to the right chest. Kira was no doctor, but he could tell that the man's right lung was punctured and filled with blood. If they were near the planet's capital Prelonh, the man might have had a chance, but not out here. "I'll get some banda...." Kira started to say.

"No...time...pocket...get..pocket" the old man stammered as quickly as he could. Kira could see the corner of something protuding from the the tunic's pocket. Reaching into the pocket, he removed an old torn scrap of parchment full of writing, but not a lanuage he could recognise.

"This? What is it? Why me?" Kira pleaded of the old man.

"He'll...know..." the dying man rasped painfully.

"Who?" Kira spoke urgently. He felt guilty about pressing a dying man, but somehow he knew that it was important.

A look of relative contentment flashed onto the mans face and he looked up directly into Kira's eyes, "Luukke......LLuke will know....tell..." pain returned to the man's face and a spasm of coughing seized him. It took all his power to get out his final word's, "tell...him...Ashalaa....Ashalaa...is..rising.....again."

.......to be continued.


The following chapters will be written by Matt Stills & Justin Pegg.

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