Lady of the Sky
By JalendaviLady
Prologue: They Call Me Lady
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars.
If you recognize any characters, locations, or things in the following story, George Lucas owns them.
----
They call me Lady.
I suppose it started the first few times I used my ship to move human cargo.
Now, don't look at me that way. Willing human cargo, although I will admit I've
raided slave ships before. But that was after...
After the willing cargo that was unwilling.
I suppose it doesn't matter if I explain, since the Empire is falling apart at
the seams now and no one I smuggled is probably alive.
I changed my hair, changed my way of life. Traded an upper-class personal
starliner for a stock freighter, pocketed the change along with whatever I
could grab from my regular accounts before I took to ground.
I transported fine wines from Alderaan to Coruscant. Those who bought from me
supplied the finest restaurants of the Empire, places I could have once walked
into and been instantly seated, even if the waiting list had been years long.
On the return trips to Alderaan...
I smuggled Jedi.
Padawans, Knights, Masters, waves and waves of initiates of all ages.
Elder Jedi clinging to their Code, chanting it over and over as a cherished
thread to a life they would never know again. The younger generation, Jedi who
had been attracted to each other for years but had either respected the Code or
met in back hallways, smiling and giggling at each other in-between emotional
break-downs.
Heart-breaking. Heart-warming.
...
They only knew me as Lady, another person dislocated by Palpatine's rise. His
friends were the first I smuggled. They knew perfectly well who I was.
If it hadn't been so dangerous, if I wasn't hiding so much, I would have let
myself get drunk when I had to deal with them. But all it would have taken is
whispering his name in a moment of drugged inhibition for me to be in big
trouble. Even today, that could be a problem. A big problem.
I'm still under cover. Deep. Years ago, in the Clone Wars, I got a hold of a
Senate report listing the number of Spaarti cloning cylinders ordered for a
military base somewhere in the mid-rim. I was on the planet once, after a
smuggling run, and saw the cylinders being destroyed as part of the Emperor's
public crusade against clones, Jedi, women, aliens... anyone standing in the
way of his schemes or who is not a human male produced by normal reproduction.
I still have a bet running with my friend Sala on whether or not he would
eventually bring back the age-old skin color discrimination. 50 Republic
credits, and the final value rose with each credit coin he melted to make
Imperial money.
Nearly a hundred cylinders fewer were destroyed than were installed. Palpatine
siphoned them off somewhere, and I've spent over a decade tracing them.
I sell food, staple items and delicacies. Cultural items. Books. Holofilms.
Anything that can keep for months in my smuggling compartments or the rooms I
once shipped wine in.
And I trade information on the side. Harmless things. Never anything that could
cause harm.
I think I've nearly found the cylinders. Just a few more years, if that. To
lose my cover now... the funds lost from Sala acquiring a Force-scrambler, a
simple medallion created by I don't know who that kept even Jedi Masters from
identifying me... the years of tracking... It would be such a waste...
...but oh so tempting. Palpatine is gone. The world is changing. I have
contacts who wouldn't care who I once was, people I could stay with for a
while. I could go to the Alliance and offer my help.
Something about the cylinder thing bothers me, though. Palpatine has to have
had a plan for those stupid things. I'm nearly running out of sources. And if I
go to the Alliance, to see if Mon Mothma will let me get anywhere near their
resident ex-Sith...
Somehow, word will get out about what I'm really looking for when I ask if
anyone ever saw a shipment of cloning cylinders move through a port. I'll go
from being a smuggler with big questions to being a real threat.
And that would be if everything goes right. If he recognizes me...
The Jedi-smuggling can't hurt me, not now. But there are other things, other
secrets.
...
There's a reason they call me Lady, even now.
It started among his friends. Their way of respecting me for who I once was. It
became a symbol of my honesty, my regard for the well-being of my fellow
beings.
"Lady can be trusted," even the worst gangsters whisper when I walk
into Smuggler's Run. "Lady plays fair, always. Lady never sells anyone out
to the Empire."
And then there was the street-scamp I cared for during five of the darkest
years of my life. It was the most legal I had ever kept the ship in my entire
life. He was a Corellian street-rat, one of Shrike's leavings. He stowed away
on my ship, barely a teenager. He left afterwards, joined the Imperial
military.
I've heard rumors about what he's been doing since then. About the Wookiee he
freed, the court-martial, the smuggling for the Hutts...
If I hadn't been searching so hard for a way to survive, hadn't discovered the
loss of the cylinders, I would have offered help.
Maybe I can get him to use his position in the Alliance... No. I will not ask
him to become what I have become. He has his own life now. His own goals.
...
I am Lady. I go by no other name.
I hear the one who I was insulted for what she did in a moment of youthful
innocence and do not flinch. I cross my toes in my boots as I drink toasts to
the wishes of others that she who I was should burn in the Sith-Hells for what
I did, for they would see if I crossed my fingers as in the ancient customs
from before time.
The Emperor has been dead for weeks now, and Vader is no longer a threat. I
will stay hidden as long as I can. If I find the cylinders, I may need to tell
the Alliance, if there is a danger to the galaxy, but he will never know who I
really am. Not if such is up to my choice.
...
Sometimes, I let myself not be Lady, while my ship floats in space.
Sometimes I crawl down into one of deepest compartments, where I keep the few
bits of my old life I've kept. Nothing much, a piece of japor carved jewelry,
my wedding ring, a small stack of holostills. A stack of holonet flimsiplast
printouts starting from about 5 years ago with a few older bits and pieces,
rumpled from being handled through these long years alone.
And I cry.
