Star Wars Character Cafe - Redemption Chapter 4

REDEMPTION

CHAPTER 4

Back on Eriadu, Shivron was idly watching the holonet transceiver transmissions to pass the time. The three children were sat on the floor, Chan occupied with some colourful building blocks, while Zak and Jeana took turns on trying to beat each other’s score on a portable electronic game., just built in the right proportions for their small hands. At the moment, it was Zak’s turn, so Jeana glanced at the holoprogramme that Shivron was engrossed in.

The two Alderaanian dogs belonging to Jeana’s mother were dozing, their furry bodies pressed against each other, the male’s head resting on the female’s shoulders. Kaitlin, still a little annoyed at being left behind, was fixing a meal for the children.

Shivron muttered a curse when the programme was suddenly cut off and a news report broke in to take its place.

“This is Karli Savoyna reporting from what appears to be a terrorist attack at the Imperial Palace on Coruscant. There have been reports of an assassination attempt on the Emperor by the Rebel terrorist group, the Ackley and Alpha Premier Rivik has been deemed a traitor. The warrant for his arrest was issued only moments ago by the Emperor himself after the execution of Trin Agar, Governor of the Outer Rim Territories – “

“Kat, come and look at this!” Shivron called. Kaitlin paused in her task to see what Shivron wanted and looked at the holo projection of the reporter. The holocam panned away from her to focus on the two figures of Shiba and a strange wolfman emerging from a tower window.

“That’s mummy!” Jeana said.

“This is not good!” Kat said, as she moved to turn the transceiver off.

She turned to Shivron. “Go get Cresentina and Shara.”

“But – “

“Just do it, Shivron. They could come down on us at any minute. We’ve got to get out of here,” Kaitlin said as she scooped up Chan into her arms. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Though she couldn’t explain it, Kaitlin had been feeling strange ever since Flik and the others had left for Coruscant. Her anxiety levels had been building up and now threatened to overwhelm her emotions but the coolness she’d perfected during her time as a thief had kept that in check, up to now, at least. Kat had always had that feeling when something bad was going to happen, like the time the Imperials had come to evict her parents from the farm on Chandrilla, or the time Shivron’s parents had been murdered by Stormtroopers. Still, a small part of her had figured it was just worry for her friends, but now she knew that her fears had not been unfounded.

Shivron stood and went to find Shara and Cresentina, while Kaitlin took Zak and Jeana to the waiting Forgotten Warrior. Zak was glad that that their game was interrupted because Jeana had beaten his score every time.

The two children followed her on short, podgy legs. Zak had felt the danger too, and that had been distracting him from the game. He slipped his hand into Jeana’s, his other still clutching the electronic game.

“Come on, Jeya,” Zak said. Jeana, sensing his tension and that of the adults’ was too frightened to reply.

Kaitlin’s hand closed around Jeana’s free hand so that they wouldn’t get separated. The two dogs sprung to sudden alertness and bounded ahead of them. They danced on their front paws when they reached the turbolift, waiting for Kaitlin and the children to catch up.

“Stay close kids,” Kaitlin said as she relinquished her grip on Jeana’s hand to slap the button to call the turbolift. When she checked on the children, Zak and Jeana were gone. Shara appeared around the corner just as the turbolift doors slid open. Kaitlin handed Chan over to the Bothan and gave her the access code to the ship.

“Take Chan and if I’m not at the Warrior with the kids, Shivron and Cresentina in fifteen minutes, go without us. We’ll get out some other way. Attack on the Palace is only a matter of time.”

Just as she spoke, alarm klaxons began to sound throughout the Palace.

“Scratch that! They’re here already!”

“Hurry Kaitlin Ros.”

The dogs wanted to stay with Kaitlin, but she made them go with Shara. Just what were those kids trying to pull, running off like that? By the time she reached Flik’s quarters, the situation had deteriorated as the smell of smoke reached her nostrils: the Palace was on fire!

“Zak! Jeana!” Kaitlin desperately called. “Where are you?”

***

It didn’t take long for Shivron to find Cresentina. She didn’t look well and doubled over in pain as he got to her. He caught her with his good arm and she leaned against him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“The baby – I think it’s coming. It’s too early – “

“Come on. I have to get you out of here.”

Sounds of the attack on the Palace could be heard.

“I can’t,” Cresentina gasped. “Save yourself, Shivron.”

Shivron shook his head. His Pearle scent feathers shone and shimmered as the light from the overhead illumination caught it. “I’m not leaving you, Cresentina. You have to move, for the sake of your child. The Imps have already killed Trin.”

Cresentina gave in and let him help her, if not for her own sake, but that of her child. Their pace was slow partly because of Cresentina’s pain and partly because smoke from the raging fire was reaching them, making them choke and he couldn’t see. He navigated using the same instinct he would in the dark in a place he knew well. They got to the turbolift and coughing because of smoke filled lungs, Shivron knocked the calling button with the elbow of his injured arm.

***

Shara waited in the pilot’s seat of the Forgotten Warrior. Time was ticking away. Kaitlin and Shivron only had five minutes to get to the ship before she would have to lift off. Chan was locked in the cabin Flik and Shiba had used for sleeping and the dogs she had shut up in one of the cells they’d used to contain prisoners during their time as bounty hunters. There was only one other cabin. The ship was small and was not intended for more than two or three people, but it looked like that was being put to the test. She had powered up the ship and had had to deal with its AI, Lobo, before it would allow her access to the ship’s functions. That had taken quite some time, and she was sure that more than fifteen minutes had passed, but she had to give them as much chance to escape as she could.

***

Shivron entered the turbolift. Cresentina collapsed on to the floor and he had only enough strength left in him to hit the button for the hanger bay before he too sank to the floor of the turbolift. He tried to catch his breath by breathing deeply, but it only made him cough and weakened him even more. He used the minute or so that it took for the lift to descend to regain his composure before he left the turbolift. He heaved the unconscious form of Cresentina up as best he could, wishing for the first time since the accident that he had taken up Shiba’s offer of giving him a prosthetic arm. He stumbled his way over to the Forgotten Warrior. Shara saw them from the veiwport and went out to help them.

“Have you seen Kaitlin and the kids?” she asked him.

Shivron shook his head weakly. “I thought they’d be with you.”

“They were heading down here but Zak and Jeana ran off. Kaitlin went back for them.”

They boarded the Warrior and settled Cresentina in the medical bay. Shara checked the time and found that the fifteen minutes were up.

“We’ll wait another five minutes, but then we will have to go,” Shara decided.

***

Kaitlin looked everywhere in the lounge and adjoining kitchen where two small children could hide. The smoke was becoming increasingly thick and she gave up calling for them in favour of saving her breath. She found no trace of them and moved on to Flik and Shiba’s bedroom, checking the wardrobe, under the bed and in the covers. Nowhere. She moved on to the ‘fresher unit but they weren’t there either. She was becoming increasingly worried and in a panic, checked the balcony. It was a silly move, really, because there was nowhere for even a womp rat to hide there. She berated herself for wasting valuable time before moving on to Jeana’s room. She found the young girl in the corner of her room, clutching to a bag and a stuffed Ewok doll fearfully.

“Kat,” she said when she saw her. Kaitlin hugged her and kissed her forehead. She trembled in her arms.

“Where’s Zak?”

“In his room,” Jeana replied.

Kaitlin had a fit of coughing before she could pick her up. She found it hard to see because of the smoke stinging her eyes. A blast of hot air singed her when she entered Zak’s room. Laser blasts from the attacking TIE Fighters had set the room alight. She feared that the young Shistavanen boy was dead, before she saw him huddled in a corner as far from the fire as he could get, with a bag at his side. Zak got to his feet when he saw her and tried to get to her, carrying the bag with him.

Kaitlin grabbed his arm and retreated from the room as quickly as she could with the burden of the two children. She coughed as the thick smoke irritated her lungs. She knew that she couldn’t take much more of it and neither could the children. The turbolift would be too dangerous by now and it was so hard to see that no one lacking sensitivity to the force would have been able to find their way out. Somehow, though she couldn’t explain it, she found the stairs and descended. She found that she could breathe better as she descended, but it would only be a matter of time before the thick smoke would find its way down there too, and it was getting thicker all the time as more of the palace was consumed by the flames. She was glad when they reached the hanger bay.

Zak, exhausted from smoke inhalation collapsed. Shara, seeing that her wait had paid off, saw them emerge from the stairwell and raced out to help her. Shivron followed her and took the bags from Kaitlin while Shara took Jeana. Kaitlin picked up the unconscious form of Zak and was the last to board the Warrior. Having learnt some basic field medical techniques from Shiba, Kaitlin stabilised Zak and checked on Cresentina. Shiba hoped that they reached Sullest before the labour advanced. For the second time that day, Shivron wished that he were more use to them than a one-armed cripple. When he saw Shiba again, he would tell her that he changed his mind the prosthetic arm. Kaitlin joined Shara in the cockpit and sat in the co-pilot’s seat.

“Shivron, go check on Zak and Cresentina,” she said. “Right, Lobo, let’s see what you can do.”

Shara transferred the main controls over to Kaitlin’s station, as she was more familiar with it than Shara was. Kaitlin fired up the repulsers and brought up the landing struts. Then she switched on the engines and they were away. Almost immediately, TIE Fighters were on their tail. The com buzzed, but Kaitlin just chose to ignore it – it would just be the Imperial Star Destroyer’s Captain demanding their unconditional surrender.

She had come this far and she couldn’t be bothered to listen to their arrogant blustering. She got a lock on a TIE and sent a proton torpedo through the cockpit of a TIE Fighter that was making an attack run on them.

“Good shot, mistress Kaitlin.”

“Shut up, Lobo. Your prattling is as annoying as that com beeping.”

In retaliation, Lobo answered the com without Kaitlin’s permission.

As Kaitlin knew it would be, an arrogant, very military sounding voice crackled from the com. “This is Captain Kenda of the Imperial Star Destroyer, Punisher. Surrender now and prepare to be boarded, or be destroyed!”

“I’m sorry, Captain, but my captain isn’t on board right now, so I cannot comply with your orders,” Lobo replied.

“You will surrender or be destroyed!”

Lobo let out an electronic raspberry. “As mistress Shiba would say, go kiss a Hutt!” Lobo said, and cut the connection. Kaitlin exchanged a grin with Shara.

“How does Flik put up with that?” the Bothan asked.

“That’s nothing. You should hear what Lobo says to Flik sometimes – it’s not repeatable.”

They had left the atmosphere now and the Punisher was rushing towards them. Kaitlin dodged turbolaser fire and a squadron of TIE Fighters were on their tail.

“Lobo, target the TIEs with the repeating laser cannons,” Kaitlin said.

“I’m on it already.”

“What are you doing?” Shara asked as they were still heading towards the Star Destroyer.

“Just watch. I’ve always wanted to play chicken with an Imperial Star Destroyer.”

The Star Destroyer loomed closer. When they were almost upon it, Kaitlin asked, “How long till lightspeed?”

“Two minutes.”

“Damn. Lobo, on my word, let loose all proton torpedoes,” She pulled the stick back and they only just missed crashing into the command tower. “Now!”

Lobo dropped the torpedoes. They impacted on the Star Destroyer’s shields, but only brought them down. “Lobo, engage the cloaking device and cut power to the engines.”

“What? Are you crazy?”

“Relax, Shara. I know what I’m doing.”

Inertia kept them moving without the need for burning fuel. Thirty seconds before the jump to hyperspace, Kaitlin dropped the cloaking device and started up the engines. Once the countdown was complete, she flipped the switch and they entered hyperspace.

“I didn’t know you could handle a ship like that!” Shara said.

“You mean for one so young? I surprised myself a little, but then I did have one of the best in the business teaching me, but don’t let Flik know I said that,” Kaitlin replied. “And I guess I had one of the best ships, to pilot too.”

“Why thank you, Kaitlin,” Lobo said. If it were possible, the AI would have puffed its chest out with pride. “At least someone recognises my worth.”

“Don’t let your microchips get too bloated, or they’ll explode,” Kaitlin said.

***

It had been a couple of hours since the escape from Eriadu. The children were sleeping, Shivron was in the cockpit and Shara was monitoring Cresentina, giving Kaitlin a break from it. Going into the galley, Kaitlin noticed the two bags that Zak and Jeana had gone back to risk their lives for and she was curious to see what they had brought. After mixing up a refreshing drink, (Shiba kept the food and drink supplies on the Warrior almost as meticulously as she kept the medical supplies, even if Kaitlin had no idea what the majority of them was used for,) she sat down at the table and emptied out the contents of Jeana’s bag; there was nothing remarkable in there, only a few toys. In some ways, Kaitlin understood why they had gone back; when her family had been evicted from their farm on Chandrilla by the Imperials, most of her personal belongings had been left behind, and all because her mother’s sister had been an aide to Mon Mothma. Still, it could have been worse.

She put the toys carefully back inside the bag and opened Zak’s bag. His was pretty much the same and she was about to put it to one side when two objects caught her attention; one was a long, slender cylinder with an activation button near the hand grip and a focusing lens at the opposite end. It fascinated her and she remembered seeing it before, wielded by Flik when they had rescued Shara from the Imperial prison, where Quan had been killed. A lightsabre. She activated it, wondering what it was doing there. She knew that it was the weapon of the fabled Jedi, though Flik had denied being one after the attack on the prison. He’d told them that he’d taken it from a criminal he had hunted in his time as a bounty hunter. After gazing at the green blade for a few moments, she deactivated it. Had he told them the truth? And why keep this from them? Did Shiba know that he was a Jedi?

She put the lightsabre down on to the table and picked up the cube. As soon as she touched the cube, it flared into life and made her jump. The image of a Barabel hovered in the air above the cube.

“Greetingz, Jedi. I am Jedi Master Hisha, the Gatekeeper of Tallamichuck’z holocron, and master to Raqak Sivrak and Naja. In it, you will find my teachingz, the eventz of my life and that of my studentz, though itz original creator was a Wookiee Jedi Master, Tallamichuk, who lived over 5000 yearz ago. I reprogrammed it so that I would be itz Gatekeeper, but those original teachingz of his still remain inside thiz holocron.”

“Lobo, what is this?” Kaitlin asked.

“I’m not at liberty to say, mistress Kaitlin,” the AI replied.

“Not at liberty?” Kaitlin asked. “Wait a minute, the Gatekeeper said something about a Raqak Sivrak – Flik’s a Jedi.”

“I wouldn’t know, mistress Kaitlin. You will have to ask him about it yourself.”

Kaitlin sensed that the AI knew more about it than it was willing to tell. That’s the trouble with machines, Kaitlin thought.

***

Flik had appropriated a swoop. It was fancy looking, and he guessed that it belonged to someone with more money whose taste for the garish far out weighed their need for practically and as such, was not as good as the one in the hold of the Warrior. He’d modified it so it had sensors for the detection of enemies and a computer that tapped into his and Shiba’s signatures so that they could find each other in these situations. Now he had to rely on pure instinct and the Force to find her.

The government may have changed, but much of the layout of the grounds near the Palace that had taken the place of the Senate Hall was much the same, but the Jedi Temple that had once graced the skyline in that district was gone, and though it was to be expected, that disorientated him at first. The statues that once flanked the boulevard leading up to the old Senate Hall had also been replaced and were now brooding statues of Palpatine himself. Their gaze made him shiver as he passed under their shadow to gain access to the Grand Corridor.

It didn’t take long for him to be signaled out by the local security force, partly because he wasn’t using a specified traffic lane and partly because he was a Shistavanen in an area mostly frequented by humans. Sometimes that could be such a drag. He didn’t want to cause them harm because they were good people just trying to do their job, even if they were protecting the heart of the Empire, but still he his time as a Bounty Hunter sometimes suppressed his Jedi training and he had to retaliate.

He spotted the landspeeder for the Imperial News crew and that reporter who had been at the prison they had sprung Shara from. Well, he’d give his fan club something else to condemn him for, he supposed. He saw Shiba and the other Shistavanen as they entered the other tower. He knew he couldn’t follow them so he piloted the swoop along the Grand Corridor until he came to the tower and set it down on the walkway.

He unsheathed the vibrosword at his back and cut through the barrels of the blaster rifles of the Stormtroopers what had come forward to intercept him. He let the Force guide him now, using the vibrosword much like he would have used a lightsabre. It felt good. After he had dealt with them, he saw Shiba and her companion emerge from the tower. They were jumped up on by a squad of Stormtroopers that he flung aside using the Force and sent falling to their deaths in the dark expanse below. He took that moment to sheath his vibrosword and opted for the use of the more versatile blaster. In that time, Shiba and her companion reached him. He kissed Shiba deeply, relieved that while they weren’t completely out of danger yet, that they were back together again.

It was when they pulled away that he noticed Shiba was wearing the Imperial uniform.

“May I say that’s quite a look you’ve got their Shib.”

“Oh you know, I got bored with the black flight suit.”

Rivik looked at them, open mouthed.

Perhaps it was the exhilaration of the battle, his joy at being with Shiba again, or the fact that he’d been in Zan’s company for too long, but Flik’s first words to the exiled Alpha Premier were, “You don’t get a kiss.”

Looking around, he noticed that the camera crew had followed them. He turned to Shiba, “Do you think our personal paparazzi got that?”

“Yep, but you know what’ll happen to that crew for filming a seemingly Imperial Officer being kissed by an alien.”

“I guess we’ve gotta save their sorry buts, too right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Got any ideas how we’re gonna get out of this bantha dung?”

“Nope.”

There was a big crash and rumble of falling durasteel across the walkway. In the confusion, they sprinted length of the Grand Corridor. Flik grabbed the wrist of the reporter as they passed the crew and Rivik grabbed the cameraman.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Karli yelled at him.

“Saving your nosy behind, that’s what,” Flik growled.

She screamed when she saw the Trandoshan, Kobrossk, waiting with Zan in a landspeeder. There was only just enough room in landspeeder for the cameraman, Rivik and the reporter. Flik knocked Karli out using the Force to stop her screaming and fighting him as he tried to get her into the landspeeder. Flik climbed on to the back of a speeder bike that had belonged to one of the Stormtroopers he had disposed of earlier. It felt much better.

“Where’s the others?” Flik asked.

“Cathos and the Wookiee caused the distraction, just now and Artea’s getting the ship ready so we can get out of here, fleaball.”

“Turn that holocam off. Do you want them to know where we are?” Kobrossk hissed.

“That’s the whole idea,” the cameraman replied.

A ferocious snarl from Rivik convinced him to turn it off.

“Let’s go.”

***

Shiba finished changing out of the Imperial uniform and joined Flik in the cockpit of the marauder. They had been lucky to sneak off Coruscant by using a commercial starship as cover, but still, the escape from Imperial Centre had been hairy. She slipped her arms around Flik’s shoulders.

“I have some bad news,” she said producing data disc from the pocket of her flight suit. “They’re building another Death Star.”

Flik and Shiba’s moment of intimate privacy was broken when Karli stormed in.

“Karli, this is not the right time - ” Karli ignored her cameraman flat out.

“I’m an Imperial citizen and a journalist. I demand that you take me back to Imperial Centre right now!” she screamed at the wolfman.

Flik swivelled around in his pilot seat to look at her. He answered her in the tone that Shiba had become familiar with in the early days when she’d first met him and wanted to accompany him on his hunts. “You are in no position to demand anything, lady.”

“You have no right to do this to me,” she advanced upon him gave him a hard slap across his muzzle. For a woman who had no experience of military training, it stung more than he would have expected.

Zan and Cathos appeared in the doorway at that moment. “I’m sorry, Captain, we didn’t know she’d come up here,” Zan apologised, with an air of humility that was unusual for him. Say what you like, when it was needed, Zan dispensed with his characteristic cockiness.

Flik waved his apology away. “It’s ok. I will deal with it.”

The wolfman turned back to the journalist. “I saved your life back there - ”

“Kidnapped me, more like,” she spat at back at him.

“I saved your life back there,” Flik repeated. “Do you really think they’d let you live for broadcasting that?”

“All I know is that you are a stinking, alien terrorist who wants to bring down civilisation. You can’t blame me for wanting to tell the truth about it.”

The way she said it with such passion, he knew she actually believed it. It hurt him more than any injury he had ever sustained to hear someone believe that of him. It wasn’t propaganda for the Empire that she was spilling out, it was actually what she felt in her heart and she hated him.

“I am sorry for your sake that you feel that way.”

Shiba had heard enough. “You couldn’t be further from the truth. What Flik stands for is civilisation, one that doesn’t destroy people’s lives or their homes, but one that stands for justice, peace and freedom.”

“Yeah, freedom for your kind to elope with each other,” Karli spat at her.

Karli said it with such hate and malice that Shiba almost lashed out at her. Only the calm restraint of Flik’s hand on her arm stopped her.

Flik turned his intense lupine gaze upon her. “You may not kill directly but you benefit from it. Tell me, whose worse, the truthful killer or the one who deceives herself?”

Karli fell silent at this. Flik took this as the cue that she was finally at last willing to listen to what he had to say.

“Everything you know, everything you take for granted, everything that gives you the comfortable lifestyle that you now lead was paid for by blood and is maintained by the deaths of innocents – my people and my comrades paid for the creation of the Empire with their blood. The blood of my children, parents and sibling, Sholinar’s people, Shiba’s people and countless others have all been spilled to maintain it. That is the truth of things, journalist. Report that.”

***

It was much later. They couldn’t take a direct route to Sullest from Coruscant because there was no direct route. It was just as well, really, because they wouldn’t have wanted Imperials following them there from Coruscant. The marauder slipped out of hyperspace at Alderaan.

Flik and Shiba were in the cockpit, alone. The others were taking a rest, or had decided that it was best to leave Shiba alone with her own thoughts. Flik glanced across at her, wondering what was going through her head. Alderaan, once her home was now a place of desolation, and it was a race against time to stop more planets from suffering the same fate.

“You know, even now I still can’t believe it happened. A part of me keeps hoping this is all a bad dream and I’ll wake up to find everything’s fine, well as fine as it was before it happened.”

“I hope it’s not all been a nightmare for you,” Flik said, reaching across to take her hand. He swallowed hard, thinking he’d hoped the same thing during the Jedi Purge that had taken the lives of his comrades that he had mentioned earlier. A cold shiver passed down the length of his spine and he knew, gazing out at the Graveyard, that the old era had passed, making way for the new, no matter what happened with the Death Star.

Shiba smiled ruefully, her voice breaking into his revere as he tried to pin down what it was that made him feel the passing of the old. “And now I’m having the same nightmare all over again.” She sniffed and silent tears rolled down her cheeks. She felt Flik’s grip on her hand tighten.

“You won’t be facing this nightmare alone. We’re ready for them this time. This time, we will destroy the Death Star before they have a chance to use it on a planet, even if we have to die to stop them.”

Even as he spoke those words, he knew that would be the most fitting fate for the last of the old Jedi Order. Even as that thought came to him, he realised what it was that he had sensed only moments before. Like Mace Windu, Ki Adi Mundi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master Naja and his father before him, Yoda had passed and become one with the Force.

“You would die for that?”

Flik nodded. “If it is my destiny. I am a Jedi, remember and it’s time I took up that responsibility again.”

“If you die, then I die with you. I couldn’t bear losing someone I love to the Empire again,” Shiba said, giving voice to the very thing that was at the core of all the trouble in the first place, the very thing that the Jedi had struggled for millennia against, but which their inability to properly understand that all life needed it had been their undoing in the end.

Flik heard someone behind them. He didn’t need to turn around to know who it was, for hr recognised the journalist’s scent.

“I understand the relationship between you now,” Karli said.

“How long have you been there?” Flik asked, without even bothering to swivel his chair round.

“Long enough. I’m sorry for what I said to you both earlier. I had no right to say what I did,” she looked out of the veiwport. “So that’s Alderaan.”

“What’s left of it,” Shiba said.

“I had no idea…there were rumours, of course, but they were squashed on Coruscant…and I helped do that,” Karli realised for the first time the true horror of what the Empire had become and probably always was.

“It is something I still have a hard time believing. Somewhere among those asteroids is what’s left of my husband, Chan. He was a good man. He neither had any affiliations to the Empire or the Rebellion. He didn’t like the Empire but he didn’t want to throw his lot in with the Rebels because he had a family to think about. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”

“No. Our daughter and I were off world at the time, though sometimes I think we’d been better off with him when it happened, well at least that was what I thought soon after it had first happened. I gave birth to my son a few months after and left them both with a friend on Corellia. Then I turned to bounty hunting.”

“If you’d been a doctor, why would you have done something that - ?”

“Despicable?” Shiba snorted. “Give me a break. You soon learn that there are far worse things in the galaxy than bounty hunters. Besides, I think I was entitled to go a little off my head when my whole life was destroyed. I bought myself passage on a ship headed for the Bounty Hunter’s Guild, piloted by a Wookiee called Chenlambec. I approached Boba Fett first, because he’d joined the Guild about the same time. He wasn’t interested in a partner, not ever and he told me I should get out of it while I had the chance. The bounty hunters Bossk and Denger just laughed in my face when I asked them. I visited the big cheese of the Guild, a Trandoshan called Cradossk, who happened to be Bossk’s father. He tried to partner me with a Gand called Zuckess, who really didn’t look like he knew what he was doing, so I went back to Chenlambec again. He refused to take me on because he already had a partner called Tinian, but he did give me the name of a hunter he’d worked with before and that hunter was Flik.”

Flik, who had been content to let her tell the narrative from her viewpoint, decided to break in at that point. “I remember. You were a lost bantha cub in a pack of killers - ” he began.

“Hey!”

“Ok, maybe not so much as a bantha cub, but you was vulnerable back then. She pleaded with me to let her be my partner, in business, you understand, back then. I refused, of course. She was a liability to me. I didn’t want her getting herself or me killed and I was used to working alone.”

“I persisted. I put a tracer on his ship and followed him. There was something about him that drew me to him. I felt I could trust him. Of course I could be wrong, but my rage and loneliness compelled me to do it and it was almost like I was looking for a way to follow Chan into death. I guess I had something to prove, to Flik, the other bounty hunters and of course, myself. The hunt went badly for Flik and he was beat up pretty bad. The ship I’d managed to get hold of had been destroyed in the mean time, but I had enough medical skills to stabilise him until I got him to a medical facility, one of the few that dealt with aliens. I saved his life and convinced him to let me work with him.”

“We went on a trial mission together to start with. Shiba proved her worth to me and I repaid her by training her to be a killer. Our first few hunts together were clumsy but she learnt quickly, as did I. We learnt to function as a team and our success rate became one of the highest in the business and we even began to rival Boba Fett. But we were selective about who we went after. We only hunted those whose crimes were so great that ordinary police couldn’t catch them and we did the occasional work for the Hut crime lords, but only when we couldn’t get anything else.

“We became friends and then lovers of a sort. We became addicted to each other. What must have sparked it between us were the experiences we shared, but it became deeper than we realised. Our last hunt was an Imperial Governor called Agar, who replaced Tarkin. Soon after that, we realised our true feelings for each other and decided to get out of the game. First we went to get Shiba’s children from the orphanage run by her friend, because we knew that after our last hunt, we would be targets ourselves and if no one could catch us, they’d go after them instead - ”

“So you were never to blame for the orphanage,” Karli said.

“Not directly, but it was our presence there that caused it. We were captured and a Rebel organised our release.”

Shiba added, “Even our love is illegal, under the Empire. Just another reason to bring them down.”

Some things don’t change, Flik thought, but instead, he said, “It’s time to finish our journey to Sullest.”

What was left of Alderaan disappeared when they entered hyperspace.

***

Kaitlin waited for news of Cresentina in the waiting room on board the medical frigate. Zak and Jeana had been treated for smoke inhalation, as had Kaitlin and Shivron. They had been discharged and had gone back to the Forgotten Warrior, which was docked in the hanger. Shara, at the first opportunity, had left to seek out her superiors, leaving Kaitlin alone. Other than waiting for news of Cresentina, Kat was at a loss for what to do. She let her mind wonder in contemplation of what she had seen on the holocron. Could she really be a Jedi, or at least have the potential to be one? She wished Flik were there with her so she could talk it through with him. She’d heard no news of them since they left Eriadu behind, and she was sick with worry at the thought of what was happening to them. On the holo, it looked like they wouldn’t even get out of there.

Her life had certainly been interesting since that time when Flik and Shiba had come to her and Shivron’s rescue.

A shadow fell across her.

“You look lost in thought.”

She looked up to see a wolfman hovering over her. Though she’d never seen him before, there was something definitely familiar about him.

“Lak Sivrak,” he introduced himself. “Shara told me I’d find you here. You have Flik’s scent all over you.”

“You know Flik?” Kat asked.

“I should do. He’s my brother.”

She wanted to ask the question; was he a Jedi too, but she thought the question would be too intrusive.

“Do you know why the fleet is gathering?” she asked instead.

“The word is that the Bothan’s have discovered something big, but for the moment, no one’s letting on what it is,” a far away look came to his lupine eyes and his voice took on a distant quality. “The final hunt will soon begin.”

The way he said it frightened Kaitlin and for a moment he seemed to be somewhere else, his body was there, but his soul, that shining part of him that gave him life wasn’t there. It passed and he was back with her.

“It won’t be long before we’re reunited.”

Kat, missing the true meaning of his words thought he was talking about his brother.