Phasma

Star Wars: Phasma

By Delilah Dawson

Scanning the sands before them, Siv saw two things. The first was a stranger fence made of meta; wore stretching forever in either direction. The second was a figure glittering so bright that it burned her eyes to look at it.

Without a word, the lead GAV changed its direction, aiming for the figure. Siv couldn't tell from so far back whether it was a structure, a droid, a machine, or something different. Another mystery seen only from far off involved white placards placed at equal distances along the fence, flapping against the metal and making an eerie, toneless song as they were buffered by the wind. Any writing that had been there had long ago been scoured away. The fence went on and on, rising stark against the bright-blue sky, and they didn't slow as they approached.

When they were almost within blaster-rifle range of the bright thing, the first GAV skidded to a halt. Brendol and Phasma's vehicle drew even with it and stopped, as did Siv's. All in a row, engines growling, they stared at the puzzling figure. Phasma pulled out her quadnocs, considered the scene, and handed them down to Brendol. He, too, looked a long time, and when the 'nocs dropped, he was frowning, his whole face bright red and dripping with sweat.

“What is it?” he asked Phasma.

She took her dead. “Nothing I've ever seen before”.

“The way the sun reflects off it,” Torben said. “It burns my eyes.”

An extraterrestrial member of the Enterprise starship. Photo by Elena.

The two leaders hopped down from their vehicle, and Phasma gestured to her warriors to join her while Brendol consulted his troopers. Even with the quadnocs, Siv couldn't tell what the bright thing might be, and she had the sharpest sight among the Scyre folk.

Gosta sidled up to Siv and tried the quandoncs herself. 

“Stranger,” she muttered. “It's too lumpy for a machine, but too shiny for a living thing.”

Brendol put a hand on Gosta's shoulder. “You're still injured. You stay here and guard the GAVs. Everyone else, have your weapons ready.” He pulled his own blaster and fiddled with the switches on the side. “This is not normal.”

“Well, what is, these days?” Torben said, hefting his club and ax.

The troopers went first, blaster rifles up and ready, their boots slipping through the sand. Phasma came next, Siv and Torben flanking her. Brendol came last, his blaster shaking in his hand as sweat dripped down his forehead in a way that Siv found nearly blasphemous when she glanced back. Gosta clearly hated staying behind, but she held her blaster and took her place in the back of her behicle as the others crept up the hill. Defying Brendol had somehow become as ridiculous a thought as defying Phasma.

The whole thing seemed silly to Siv. If the mysterious object was a machine, it either was deactivated or had been tracking them all along. If it was an animal, it was stupid or slow, as it hadn't budged. She couldn't think of anything else that could pose a real threat, and yet Brendol commanded them to sneak up on it? Still, her leader was following his orders, and so she would follow Phasma.

Closer and closer they crept in plain sight, every blaster aimed, every bit of metal reflecting in the sun, and still the glittering thing didn't make and move whatsoever. Soon Siv could make out the true shape of it, and it reminded her of a statue she'd seen in Arratu, a piece of claywork vaguely in human form, apparently representing some much-loved Arratu of time past. The shape was lumpy like that, and yet the material wasn't anything she'd seen before.