Once they had gotten past Dromund Kaas’s atmosphere, the ship was quiet. After setting their course, Merce had given her a Sith threat to not bother him and then locked himself in his room. There was now only the quiet wooshing of the ventilation and the beeping of some computer on the bridge tracking their progress through the stars. It was a meditative quiet, but unlike the calmness of a planet like Voss, she sensed this quiet to be that of a stalking predator or an invisible cloud of sickness, not of peace.
When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she started playing a drumbeat called four-tails on the walls: a little ditty every young Twi’lek knew and often used to learn to count. It was like a light turning on in a nursery; the scary monsters under the bed resolved themselves into bright children’s toys. The ship simply became empty rather than deathly silent, drifting lazily past glowing worlds of wonder rather than hiding away from them like a stalking tuk’ata.
She smiled and played it again.
Then came the shock to her collar, jerking her hands from the walls and leaving her breathless on the floor. “What is making that racket?” Merce appeared at the door, an angry shadow of robes and human.
Vette picked herself up off the ground and tossed her head-tails defiantly. “Maybe it was mynox chewing on the power cables. Shall I investigate, my lord? It wouldn’t do for them to eat a hole in the ship so far from a port.”
Merce glared at her dangerously, but he gestured for her to continue.
She ducked under the nearest computer terminal, and there started playing the four-tails again with a smirk.
The shock was swift in coming and longer lasting this time. When her breath finally came back, she still crawled out of the cubby to grin at him.
“I will do it again,” he warned, his expression implacable.
She dropped her grin. A monster loomed under the bed, yes, and this time she knew what to name it.
Fear.