A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far, Far away...

Prologue

A shadowy figure stood atop a rocky outcropping. After carefully scanning the heavily armored, tall prison base below him, he stood up slowly, stretching his back. He had spent hours on this outcropping, waiting for Kessell's prisoners to be drawn in, and watching the small sun go down; sunsets on this planet were as harsh as the prisons that swarmed its surfaces, the ones dealing punishment to its inhabitants.

Punishment. They don't know punishment. Every day we face true torture…such is the life of a bounty hunter, reflected the man known as Jango Fett.

Jango Fett had his reasons to be cautious, despite being the most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy. His mission set him in a dangerous position, and he wasn't taking any chances. A bounty hunter's job was one of life and death, death that arose on swift wings and took the form of peacekeepers and murderers alike. That was why he had chosen his own partner to back him on his ludicrous position: a mission to retrieve a piece of "hard merchandise" that had fallen into the wrong hands.

That partner, a figure now clouded in solid shadows, cautiously approached him now, setting a small hand upon his strong shoulder.

"You've been up here for hours now, long since the prisoners fell into their prisons." A strong woman's voice, which sounded about in its early thirties, stated. "I'm tired of waiting for your signal, so I had to ask: what is it, Jango?"

Jango glanced over at his partner, a female changeling called Zam Wesell. His jaw still locked in a strong position, he wrestled with revealing the source of his worry.

"Nothing, Zam," he lied, deciding that until the mission was over, he felt no need to brief his partner on intimate details. He quickly changed the subject to divert her attention. "Are you prepared?"

Zam held up a blaster pistol and a handful of thermal detonators. "This is all I need," she said with a cold smirk.

Jango nodded knowingly. "Good," he said.

He slid his helmet on over his chiseled, handsome features, and was instantly hit by an incredible array of screens inside the cold mask, checking his entire suit of battle armor for complications and functions. Behind him, strapped to his back, he felt his jetpack roar to life and pierce the darkness of the night around him.

He expertly eased himself off the mesa, down one hundred feet to the ground. In the peripheral of his visor, he could see his changeling partner expertly advance down the hill side, partly sliding, partly running, to disappear into the shadows on the ground cast by a nearby boulder.

Spotlights glared down around the surrounding rocks. Set in a gigantic, dark crater, the prison base they were infiltrating was illuminated by many spotlights and glowrods; and was guarded by a myriad of highly trained droids serving as guards.

"Well," Zam's voice echoed through the comlink in Jango's helmet. "Let's go for it."

"After you," replied Jango.

"Very well," Zam replied. Jango heard the comlink crackle a moment before Zam checked in again. "I'll take out the spotlights and you take out the guard droids."

"No," was Jango's reply, cold and flat on the other end. "I don't want to risk detection. Don't forget that this is a galactic call," he reminded her. "There will undoubtedly be others on our backs, and there is no need to call attention to ourselves."

"Then how do you suggest we start?"

Jango motioned towards a rock outcropping opposite their location. "Look."

On the high ledge Zam could just barely make out two shapes on the mesa. She switched her night goggles on and surveyed the intruders.

"It looks like a Trandoshan," she surmised after a moment. "And a… an assassin droid unit?"

"That's what I thought," replied Jango. "My guess is Craddosk."

"Craddosk," she murmured under her breath; she recognized the name from horror stories and frightful recollections. "What's the robot?"

"I don't know. Just keep an eye out." Jango slipped an ammunition pack into the barrel of his Westar-34 pistols. "We'll follow his lead."