Chapter 6 – The Pirates and The Hunters

I am being taken to heart of port nowhere.

Now I realize this whole station is just gigantic tavern. Everywhere I look there is a smuggler or pirate getting drunk.

The pirate that is guiding me stops walking in front of a door.

"Boy, in here"

The room behind the door is spacious with a savac table in the middle, at the table there is woman dressed in a red coat and a hat covering her face, with her feet over the table.

"Huntress, he is here"

The woman only nods and with a wave of her hand she dismissed the pirate.

"So, what brings you to my station, kid?"

"Well, I'm just a scavenger loo-"

"A scavenger with a lightsaber. Nope try again, and don't try lying on that one, I recognize one when I see it."

She is going to be hard to lie to.

"My name is Lando Calrissian-"

"You are not Lando Calrissian if you were, you would be dead."

In retrospective that one was dumb. Of course Lando would have passed by here and probably pissed her off too.

"I once was a bounty hunter, my partner, a trandoshan named Bossk and I once hunt down a padawan and I took the lightsaber as a momento."

"Keep going this is almost amusing."

The woman puts her hand inside one of the pockets of her coat and takes out a spherical objet, she toys whit it for a while.

"I am part of Hondo's crew-"

"Hondo has no crew."

She presses a bottom in the object.

"Catch."

She throws at me the sphere only to realize it's not a toy, it's a grenade.

I raise my hand and use the force to push the grenade back at her and quickly take cover in a corner.

I probably shouldn't have used the force but it doesn't matter anymore, that grenade should explode any moment now.

"…"

Nothing is happening.

I raise my head to look at the huntress who still siting with her feet over the table passing the grenade from one hand to another.

Now I see it.

"It was a fake."

"And you throw it back without even touching it."

"Okay, you win, I am a Jedi."

"You are not just that, there is only one group of people in the galaxy that flies the same type of ship like in the one you came here."

I don't like where this is going.

She raises her hat with one finger revealing a mirialan with an almost yellow skin tone.

"Rebel."

She knew.

"If you knew all that, why the whole mind game?"

"As I said before, it's almost amusing."

But why am I here?

"So what do you want from me?"

"A simple deal. You see, I've no love for the empire, they just make harder for my kind to live."

In my experience a deal with pirates never ends well.

"What kind of deal?"

"The kind that settle an old score, your friend have all the details."

The door opens and to the room enters a mandalorian in purple armor. The mandalorian may have changed the color of her armor but I could still recognize her style anywhere.

"Are you two done?"

"Sabine, what are you doing here!?"

"Yeah, we are done."

They are ignoring me.

"Come on Ezra, we are leaving."

I follow her, she Cleary wants to leave before start talking.

We exit the room and walk few meters away.

"Sabine, what is going on?"

"Well, my past started to catch up."

"Your past?"

"Some things I did while I was a bounty hunter."

"Sabine what did you do?"

"That woman you met, the red huntress, Ketsu and I almost claim her bounty once. That was before she became the ruler of this station."

I still have more questions about her past but I'll let her be.

"So what are you doing here?"

"I was looking for you. You didn't come back to base so Hera sent me to find you."

Hera sent her, figures she would worry after a few days gone.

"Why didn't you come back?"

"I'm not ready yet"

I am not strong enough.

"You already have a new lightsaber. What more are you missing?"

"I'm just not ready to go back."

I am missing more power.

"Fine have it your way."

"So, what is this job about?"

"I will explain more once we are out of here."

"Before that we need to go back to my A-wing and pick up a droid"

"A droid?"

After we attached my A-wing to Ketsu's freighter and manage to get the inactive HK unit onboard, we departed from port nowhere.

Sabine was currently trying to fix HK, so I decided to talk to Ketsu who was in the bridge.

"So, what were you two doing?"

"We were having fun, until your captain called, asked to found you."

She is Cleary mad at me and I don't want to know what fun means, in other words maybe talking to her was not a great idea.

I look at the hyperspace, trying to think of a topic of conversation with the person who knows more about Sabine than the whole crew, if they knew more they haven't tell me.

Nothing comes to my mind, my mind is blank. I doubt this is the clarity that I am supposed to achieve during meditation.

"I'll check on Sabine."

"You do that. I will remain here, piloting the ship, to another boring mission."

I leave the bridge and find Sabine still fixing HK.

"Any news?"

"The memory core is damage, the chassis is fracture in some parts and it could use some new motors. Actually, I'm surprised it could even move, I mean this thing is ancient."

"It did mention it was centuries old."

I wish I could see what is inside that memory core, the secret it could hold about its previous masters could be useful.

But there are more pressing concerns right now.

"I think is time you tell me about the mission."

"When I reached port nowhere, the red huntress contacted me, she said she was willingly to forgive and forget if I helped her."

"A deal with pirates. Not the smartest choice."

"It was that or having a whole space station against me. Anyway, she helped me to find you and in return all we need to do is protect convoy coming from a skyport named asylum from imperials."

Asylum, sound familiar but that is not important right now.

"That's all?"

"That not all, if we succeed we can work a larger deal, in exchange of protection we can get charts and their smuggling routes. There I'm done with the droid; Try to turn it on now."

I do as Sabine told me.

"Declaration: All systems go, greetings master."

"Hey, HK"

"Disappointed statement: Master you are fine, for a moment I thought I would have to get a new master."

Sabine giggled and I am about to replay when the sound of the ship intercom interrupted our conversation.

"Hey guys, we are approaching asylum."

We go to the bridge and see our destination, it's a station made of metal with tall buildings and one in the form of a hook standing out more than the rest.

Ketsu is the first to talk

"I'm going to guard the ship, you two plus the droid go to the meeting point."

"Are you going to be fine alone?"

Sabine is worried about her friend.

"I'm going to be fine."

"Last time I heard those words someone disappeared for days."

Sabine started leaving the bridge and Ketsu raised an eyebrow at me and I only smiled awkwardly while Following Sabine out of the ship.

A man dressed in some old robes looked over the newly docked ship and watched as two teens descended from it. He recognized them from the files that he read along his orders.

He took out his holocommunicator and waited for the other end to answer.

"They are here, inquisitor." He said to the robed figure in his palm.

"Good, start phase two."

"I will look for the artifact right away."