Author's Note: I have just gone back and changed the end of the previous chapter since I didn't want to spend any longer on the escape. Having done this, hopefully, it will now be easier for me to motivate myself. If it works, I should be posting a new chapter in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime, please enjoy this flashback.

Dakon grimaced as a jet of coolant sprayed out of the engine of the hovercar he was working on and scrambled out from under the machine as fast as he could on his back. "Oh... nakt!" he swore, wrinkling his nose and trying to brush the liquid off his overalls before it could leak into the material. It didn't work in the slightest, and the foul-smelling fluid seeped into the cloth and stained it from blue to dark green. "Problems?" asked the tall alien waiting by the garage door. "Nah, not really. I'll be smelling like chemicals for a while, though." He picked up a cloth that he had left on the hood of the parked hovercar and started to walk toward the customer. "The repairs shouldn't cost you too much. Just one part in need of replacing, plus maybe a skin plate if you're a perfectionist. I gotta say, though, that I find the damage odd. How'd the undercarriage get burnt up this badly?"

The customer stared down at him, but Dakon couldn't tell at all what he was thinking. Four small, black eyes peered out at him from a rigid, spiny face, and features like that didn't lend themselves all that well to being expressive. "I suggest," the alien replied, his voice thickly accented and his tones clipped, "That you simple-ly fix the probe-lem and not ask too men-ny kestions. Trust me. You will get in fewer... troubles this way." Dakon's eyes flicked to the blaster hanging by the alien's side, partially concealed by his long coat, then muttered something like "Right, gotcha, quick repairs, no questions, I'll just um... yeah..." and went back over to the hovercar. He had just laid down on his back again and was about to slide under the car's chassis to get another look at the damage, when the big garage door got blown in.

A storm of rubble and dust suddenly filled the air, flying everywhere at the same moment that a deafening "Bang!" shook the whole building. Immediately Dakon rolled away from the door and behind the hovercar and tried to make himself as small as possible. Just in time, as it turned out, as a moment later the whole garage seemed to be full of blaster fire. The electric blue rings of stun blasts screamed past him, mixing with the dust to form a perfect mess of confusion and noise. All the windows of the hovercar shattered immediately, carpeting the floor in broken glass and raining it down on Dakon's head. And then, as suddenly as it began, the storm of weapons fire was over, replaced with perfect silence and the sound of gravel and plaster falling to the floor.

Dakon looked to his left, and only then did he realize that the alien customer was crouched beside him, blaster in hand. Dakon almost said something, but the alien gave him a sharp look, his four eyes looking hard and deadly, and Dakon's mouth snapped shut. And he listened. And he waited.

"Clear. Check the other garages on the street. He has to be here somewhere. Move quick- he has to know we're here now." The voice was processed, mechanical, and laced with static. A moment later, there came the stamp of heavy boots and a rattle of armor. It sounded like rather a lot of stormtroopers. The moment Dakon could no longer hear their footsteps, he turned to the alien and whispered frantically "What just happened? Are they after you? Who are you? What's going on? Why did you bring them here?"

The alien looked at him with that same inscrutable stare. Instead of answering any of Dakon's, in his mind, perfectly reasonable questions, the alien whispered back "We have to go, now. They will be back to search more thor-roughly once they have guards at every garage on the street, and that will not take them long. Get in the hovercar." "B-but the repairs! It has a punctured secondary coolant line! It'll be in danger of overheating as soon as you take it into high gear..." Dakon was confused. He didn't understand what was going on. And so he retreated into what he did know, and what he knew was hovercraft. "Besides that, it needs a tune-up on the steering, the windows are shattered, so it'll be hard to see with the wind blowing through the cabin-" "Will it still drive?" interrupted the alien. Dakon nodded mutely, and the alien grabbed him roughly by the collar and manhandled him into the car. "Wait, why do I have to go with-" "Would you pref-fer to stay and be labeled as a rebel symp-pathiser?" Dakon blinked twice, mute and with his mouth hanging open. This alien was a rebel? He supposed that he shouldn't have been this surprised. Who else would have a full platoon of stormtroopers after them? "The answer to that kestion is 'no'. Trust me, getting caught by them is not in your best interests. This is your only option now. Take it or get out." As he spoke, the alien settled himself into his own seat, brushed broken glass off the dashboard, and glanced over at Dakon. When he made no move to get out, the alien turned back to facing forward. Dakon still couldn't read his expressions, but the way his four eyes twinkled looked almost like he should have been smiling.

"Good to have you with us. Five... four... three..." The alien started up the engine. Down the street, Dakon could make out the sounds of shouts, and stormtroopers running back towards them. "Two..." The hovercar lifted off the ground, and began to inch forward. "One!" Suddenly, the craft leapt forward out through the smoking wreckage of the garage door, narrowly missing the first of the stormtroopers. The white-armored man leapt backwards and fired his blaster wildly, but the blue rings of the stun bolts bounced harmlessly off the sides of the car. The engine revved, and the car swerved off down the street, lifting further into the air. Dakon let out a whoop of triumph. Then, a moment later, he was grazed by a blue ring flying through the cabin, and his mind went blank.