Blood Guard: A Star Wars Story

by Euripides Polliwog

The Outer Rim can be a hard place for an honest man to make a living. The pay is bad, the food is worse, and the closest thing to entertainment might be playing hide-and-seek with your friendly neighbourhood space pirates. Mandalorians call this "job security," but there are things beginning to stir in the Galaxy that even hardened mercenaries might not be prepared to handle...

1. Prologue

Blood Guard:

A Star Wars Story

Prologue

The world was grey.

As the transport continued its descent, the dull grey clouds that had obscured the surface of the planet were swept away, exposing grey-brown lands ridged with grey mountains and bordered by restless grey oceans. Peering down through the passenger cabin's viewport as the topography of the planet steadily magnified, Kellan Breck took a moment to remind himself that this wasn't even in the top ten of the ugliest worlds he had seen, not by a parsec. Besides, in his profession, natural beauty in the work environment was hardly a concern.

Not that the prospect of a contract on an Outer Rim backwater like this was all that attractive, he reflected as the ship settled into a surprisingly smooth touchdown on the spaceport landing-pad, but then beggars, or near enough in his case, couldn't afford to be choosers. Kellan's last half dozen or so contracts had been frustratingly expensive affairs in which he'd only just managed to break even on his investment at best. A change was definitely in order, and the deal that had brought him to this planet promised to relieve his financial worries into the foreseeable future, even if the terms of service were more than a little eccentric by his standards.

Further thoughts on the matter faded as the other passengers in the shuttle began to rise from their seats and retrieve their luggage in anticipation of the crew giving them the go-ahead to depart the transport. Wincing as he unfolded his long legs from the cramped seat, Kellan likewise stood and removed a large and rather lumpy duffle bag from the overhead stowage unit directly above his seat. Getting the bag through customs had been a minor nightmare of bribes on the one hand and some very delicate baffling of spaceport security scanners on the other, but without the funds to maintain his own ship, Kellan had been finding it necessary to travel via public transport services, which had further limited his success as an independent contractor.

"How much longer do you think they'll keep us waiting?" Kellan's neighbour from the next seat up turned to ask, and then immediately froze as his eyes lit upon the grooved handgrip of the Mer-Sonn Power-5 blaster pistol poking out from inside Kellan's jacket.

"I have a permit," Kellan offered, smiling in what he hoped was a convincingly reassuring manner.