Okay, time to try something different. I normally hang out in the Baldur's Gate neck of the woods, & for those of you who have the SW database hardwired into your brains, be patient with me. I haven't written SW fanfic since high school (and don't even ask how long ago that was). I started this one a couple of years ago during one of our SW RPG sessions. The game plot that inspired it died out, & this sat in my files until yesterday, when it began jumping frantically up and down, waving its arms at me.

I have no idea where it wants to go – or if it will wind up going anywhere at all, but it wanted out to play, so here it is. I'll dust off the lore as I go.


It was funny, the way things could change from good to bad – unbelievably bad – in the space of a few seconds.

On the other hand, Rian decided from her vantage point beneath the table, maybe it wasn't funny, after all. A couple of stray blaster bolts later, the maybe was gone. It definitely wasn't funny.

The day had begun well enough. She hadn't really wanted to take this vacation; it had seemed like a waste of four perfectly productive weeks, but her father had insisted. As his youngest child and only daughter, she was usually able to wheedle him into anything, but she also knew that when he used that tone, it was time to stop wheedling and start obeying. Trevan Avandar had not risen to his present position in life by allowing his orders to be flaunted, and while Rian had no fear that he would deal as harshly with her as he would one of his employees who defied him, she had no doubt that her role in the family business would be curtailed considerably if he felt that he could not trust her to do as she was told.

And where else could she find a job that paid her for blowing things up?

The Avandar family controlled any and all criminal activity on the planet of Mandiri, and most of that in neighboring systems, as well. They maintained that control by either absorbing or eliminating the competition.

Rian had very little interest in the absorbing part.

She had been born with a talent for mayhem, a talent encouraged by her indulgent father and honed on legions of terrorized nannies and tutors. School had been ridiculously simple, leaving her with far too much spare time on her hands. It had been only too easy to tap into the black market to find equipment and reagents to supplement the rather anemic chemistry lab at school. She had, in fact, offered several suggestions to him a few weeks later on how the lab could be improved – as long as it was being rebuilt anyway. The end result of that particular episode had been her entrance into the Imperial Academy. After three years of training under instructors who were not the least bit indulgent, she had learned to harness her talent and focus it on approved projects. Upon graduation, her commissioning as an officer had been sidetracked by a few well-placed bribes, and she had returned to Mandiri to take her place in the Avandar empire, advancing quickly to the head of the sabotage unit.

She loved her work, relished the challenge of gaining access to a secured installation, wreaking havoc and escaping unseen. Explosives were her tool of choice, and she handled them with an instinctive ease that was occasionally unnerving to those with whom she worked (occasionally was probably an understatement; Talia was the only one who had willingly accompanied her on more than two missions).

The past few weeks had seen an almost unprecedented demand for her talents, however, as her father's efforts to expand operations into a new system had met with unexpectedly high resistance, not only from local law enforcement, but from the existing criminal network on the chief planet in the system. The conflict had culminated with Rian shutting down an entire spaceport with a few well placed charges and some skillful manipulation of the computer systems, bringing all commercial activity in the system to a screeching halt and leading to a speedy capitulation that added another franchise to the Avandar family business. Rian had been justifiably proud of her part in the latest acquisition, but Trevan had been concerned that her activities had caused undue attention to focus upon her specifically, rather than the Avandar operation as a whole. Not wanting to risk his daughter becoming a target of his business rivals, he had ordered her to take an extended sabbatical well away from Mandiri until things had cooled down.

Which was how she and Talia happened to be in the bar of the spaceport on a backwater planet whose name she could not recall, whose sole importance was the fact that it provided a convenient connection hub to the resort planets on the outer edge of the galaxy. Less than thirty minutes before they were scheduled to board their flight, Imperial troopers had appeared in the bar and approached a shabbily robed individual who had been sitting alone at a table, head down with the hood of his robe concealing his face.

Things had gone downhill with amazing speed.

Beside her, Talia swore as a blaster bolt took a sizeable chunk out of the table beside the one they had taken refuge beneath. "Door. Now."

Rian didn't argue. Talia had been her pilot, bodyguard and friend for over a year now, and she trusted her judgment implicitly.

Besides, it was pretty damned obvious that this was not a place they wanted to linger. As if to emphasize this point, the chair to Rian's left exploded, sending painful shards ofshrapnel her way.

Okay. Time to go.

Belly crawling, the pair headed for the exit, slithering around assorted debris and the odd dead body that was the inevitable product of indiscriminate blaster fire in a bar full of innocent bystanders. Rian was maneuvering with some care around one of these unfortunate cases of collateral damage when, turning her head to see how far they had to go to the door, her nose encountered the heel of Talia's boot.

What the…

Covering her squashed nose with one hand, she cautiously raised her head high enough to see why Talia had stopped, concerned that her friend might have inadvertently intercepted some of the indiscriminate blaster fire.

She seemed unharmed, but she had raised her own head much higher than Rian thought prudent, and was staring back the way they had come, green eyes wide with astonishment.

That caught Rian's attention. One of the reasons that she and the tall redhead had become such an effective team was that she was utterly unflappable, providing a balancing counter to Rian's restless energy. She turned to see what Talia was looking at – and felt her own jaw unhinge.

The shabbily dressed stranger who had been the focus of the troopers' attention was in the process of finishing off the last of his would-be detainers with a strangely glowing blue wand perhaps three feet in length. As Rian watched, he spun, robes swirling around him, bringing the strangely humming wand around in an impossibly fast arc that ended at the neck of the last trooper. Head and body fell separately and bloodlessly, stumps totally cauterized by the bizarre but deadly weapon, joining the motionless forms of the other Imperial troopers.

"What the hell is that thing?"

"Light saber," Talia replied, her eyes never leaving the robed stranger. "He's a Jedi."

"Jedi?" Rian looked at her friend in surprise. "Can't be. They're all dead."

The man stood alone, looking warily about the bar. With a final hum, the glowing wand vanished into a black and silver cylinder that he slipped into his robe as he stepped over the bodies on his way out the door.

Talia turned her head to follow his progress, eyes uncharacteristically intense. "Come on," she said, scrambling to her feet.

Rian followed her out onto the main concourse and hesitated as she began to follow the stranger; their ship would be boarding shortly, at a terminal in the direction opposite the way Talia was leading them. If they were too long in following the man, they would in all likelihood miss their flight.

And the downside to this is…?

Shrugging, she turned to follow Talia, her hesitation having lasted perhaps half a second or so. She didn't know where they would wind up, but from what she had seen so far, it was bound to be more interesting than sunning herself on the beach.