Hutt Space. Y'toub System. Nal Koska. Arb'Mata Desert.
The last lances of Nal Koska's setting sun pierced through cottony, bluing clouds and caught the scuffed, silvered chassis of a battered landspeeder. It sailed over the scrubby desert terrain, kicking up a veil of dust in its wake. Risk's white hair danced in the wind. Her acquisition was cuffed, lying in the back seat, squealing in Gamorrean. Occasionally he was loud enough to send a drop of spittle into the airstream where it was caught and vaporized by the speeder's ancient engines.
Risk preferred to focus on the sound of the wind, the almost-clean scent of the air, and making a game out of dodging the larger scrubby bushes. Nal Koska's atmosphere was plagued by pollution, just like its cousin Nal Hutta one orbit away, but it still had a handful of plants valiantly trying to scrape out an existence. The scent had a greenness to it, hidden beneath a pervasive chemical odor, that brought a metallic tang to the back of her throat. Compared to Nar Shaddaa, Risk was driving through a garden.
The Gamorrean was really getting agitated now. He beat the back of her chair with his bound hands. The sensation would have been rather nice, almost massaging, except for the fact that he hit like, well, an angry Gamorrean.
Risk called over her shoulder, "Knock it off! You lost! And I don't speak Hog, so stop wasting your breath!" She twisted the wheel and banked hard enough to send him into the footwell between backseat and front. He didn't stop yelling. The litany of porcine squeals and snorts was even a little clearer now that he was a few inches closer to her tormented ear.
She rolled her eyes and hit the air brakes. The speeder came to a slow stop. He was still yelling. Squealing, really. She hopped out of the driver's seat and grabbed her acquisition by the collar. Once he was upright again, he took a swing at her and missed utterly. Risk put a finger to her lips and fixed him with a Jedi stare. She eased the tumult of Force energy whirling around him, and managed to soothe him.
"There, now we can get to the spaceport without losing my security deposit…." Risk let her words fall away, unable to maintain her cynicism. Once he'd stopped struggling, she saw the glistening trails of tears on either side of his snout.
He was a thickly built Gamorrean, just like every other one she'd seen. Hardly spoke a word of Basic, which had suited her fine, until the tantrum. Now he was all slumped shoulders and defeat.
She couldn't believe what she was about to do. "Hey, it's not like you're wanted dead. They want you alive, so I'm sure you'll have a chance to make things… right?"
Her grieved acquisition tilted his chin up to meet her gaze. He was weeping freely, though he had appeared otherwise calm. His snout opened and after a few clicks and grunts he shaped a word she could recognize: "Worse."
Her stomach churned, but she was already back in the driver's seat, so she turned her attention to getting back on the road. "Hey, hope's hope, right? And I'm hoping to get to the spaceport before it really gets dark so…."
He interrupted her with another round of snorts and grunts. "Please," he snuffled, "family."
She didn't start the engine.
"What?"
"Family," he was choking on the words, "goodbye family?"
She reached for the ignition. He had to be playing her. Sure, mess with the lady because she'll have a soft spot for piglets. "You're wanted for stealing property, and I don't grant requests for thieves."
"Slave."
Blazes.
Risk twisted around to study him, and found nothing but sincerity in his dim-witted eyes. He didn't have an ounce of guile and his Force Aura confirmed that. She pinched the bridge of her nose and slammed her fist into the control console. "You're wanted because you stole your family back from slavers. Damnit. How come I found you all alone out here then, big hero?"
"Bounty hunter. Family go, be safe."
She couldn't do it. Risk was not, and couldn't be, mercenary enough to take him back to the Nar Shaddaa for the crime of rescuing his family.
"They're at the spaceport, aren't they?"
He grunted a soggy affirmative.
She hit the ignition this time and yelled over the engines, "If you're playing me, I will make you wish that you'd been wanted dead. Got it?"
He didn't respond.
The rest of the trip should have been quiet, filled with her wondering if he'd actually taken such a chance on her good-hearted charity or if he was just too dumb not to sell out his own half-baked, tragic plan. A more ruthless bounty hunter would have taken this slave's family in, too. They'd be worth a few credits, if she were cruel enough to capture them.
Instead, a blaster bolt sailed over the speeder. Risk swerved and spotted a mob of swoop bikes in her rear view mirror. "Of course this is what I get for doing a good deed." Her cynicism had begun to extend to the will of the Universe, as a whole.
The bikes kicked into high speed and moved to swarm the land speeder. She spun the wheel, rammed into one and sent it spinning. She counted three, no, four more left, and she knew that trick wouldn't work again. The surviving bikers were pulling out all manner of weapons, including a heavy grenade launcher. Not the ideal weapon for a bike gang, but she assumed these were bounty hunters after her acquisition.
A Wookiee pulled up next to the speeder and leapt. His fur whipped in the wind, beads and feathers flying off at high speed. He raised a giant paw and took a swing at Risk. She ducked only to find the Gamorrean using his manacles to hold the Wookiee back. She did what any good pilot would do and tried to throw him off the vehicle with a set of reckless maneuvers. The Wookiee was frustratingly sure-footed, and now locked in a struggle with her bound Gamorrean. He swatted the piggy man back down into the footwell, and Risk saw a pair of sharp-clawed paws reaching for her, only to be kicked away moments later by the Gamorrean's dirty boot.
She pulled her ion pistol and fired two shots directly into the Wookiee's chest. He roared and continued his assault. The Wookiee was all teeth and spittle as he grabbed Risk by the shoulders. The speeder swung wildly, just out of the way of a massive column of dust and fire from the grenade launcher. Apparently his buddies weren't too concerned with workplace safety.
Risk was nearly hauled bodily from her seat, but she managed to get in a Force-empowered strike to his midsection. He was now clinging to the side of the speeder, hanging by one leg to keep himself from dragging against the ground. The vehicle was tipped by the severe weight imbalance, and Risk had to focus to keep from flipping the speeder over entirely.
Her Gamorrean yelled in his porcine language, to which Risk could only respond, "Basic, unless you've got Mirialan in your skull somewhere, speak Basic!"
"Chain!" He barked.
Risk shook her head. "Look, we're on the same side, I think, but I'm not sure that—" she swerved to dodge another grenade. Blaster fire pelted the air around them and more than a few shots were landing dangerously close to the important bits of the engine. "All right!"
She fired off another ion bolt at the still-clinging Wookiee and reached into a belt compartment. Inside, she kept a handy quick release just in case she was one day restrained by her own cuffs. Banthashit happens.
The transmitter whined and the Gamorrean's hands came free. He immediately went for her blaster on the console. Risk's eyes went wide. She couldn't believe it. He had been playing—
He sent the butt of the gun into the Wookiee's hand and the furry behemoth went rolling into the scrubland. He'd probably survive.
Her gun wasn't returned; it wasn't turned on her, either. Risk focused her attention on driving while her newfound comrade-in-arms went to work on the three remaining bikes.
"Take out the grenade launcher first!"
He turned back to her with a questioning grunt.
"Gren-ade launch-er!"
He nodded and started looking through Risk's equipment in the passenger seat. She had serious doubts about their partnership. Communication issues could doom any enterprise. Maybe they'd need counseling…
A small metal sphere came out of his hand and landed on the ground three hundred meters ahead of their speeder. Risk recognized it as one of her own ion grenades. "What in Blazes are you thinking?!" she screamed and barely missed the lightning-filled explosion. The swoop bike on her tail wasn't so lucky and shut down instantly. Its nose bit into the desert sand and sent the rider flying at breakneck speed.
The Gamorrean rolled a grunty chuckle from his chest and held his hand up to Risk. She found the interaction a touch absurd, but she meet his hand a resounding high-five.
Two bikes left, including the one with the grenade launcher.
They were nearing a rocky outcropping of mesas in the scrubland and Risk gunned the engine far past its redline. In less than a minute, she was weaving between hoodoos and boulders. The smaller bikes maintained their pursuit without any difficulty.
As they drove onward, Risk saw the terrain getting tighter. The sides of their speeder threw up sparks as she scraped between formations just a little too tightly-packed to pass cleanly.
The pair of bikes was forced to follow directly behind her through a thin canyon. She was completely out of maneuvering options, soon to be out of tactical options as well. The canyon was coming to a dead-end four-hundred meters ahead.
"Can I trust you?" she yelled over the roar of the engine, which was now much louder in the pinched space.
The Gamorrean grunted.
"I'm going to take that as a vow on your family's honor, Buddy!" She cut the engine and the speeder's airbrakes flew open. They hovered to a stop just before the vehicle would have met unforgiving red stone.
The swoop bikes pulled back hard on their brakes and managed to come to an unsteady stop, which, conveniently for them, blocked Risk's exit.
Risk stood on the back of the still-hovering speeder, every angle in her stance a statuesque threat. "I'm giving you a chance to leave. Call it a holdover of a more honorable past."
The pair of bounty hunters laughed and the Duro female took a shot at Risk with her blaster.
"You saw that, right? She shot at me!"
The Gamorrean grunted affirmatively and reached for Risk's abandoned ion pistol. She waved him off. Her other hand was reaching for the wide belt compartment at her back.
In a blur of motion, a red lightsaber blade came down on the rocket-launcher wielding bounty hunter and cleaved him cleanly into two smoking sides of Gran.
His companion hardly had time to scream before Risk was bearing down on her. The plasma core of her lightsaber shot off sparks as it sunk into the swoop bike, after a shortcut through her opponent's chest.
Risk extinguished the saber as she jumped backward. She had the hilt hidden away before her boots met the ground. She tossed the ruined swoop bikes out of the way with a flick of her hand and a sweep of the Force.
The Gamorrean looked as if he were seriously considering a tuck and roll maneuver; anything to get out of the speeder and away from the witch at the wheel. He kept himself as far from his dangerous savior as he could while seated in the passenger seat of the speeder.
She doubled back, bringing them out of the dead-end canyon. They covered the rest of the distance to the starport in exhausted—and on the Gamorrean's part, terrified—silence. The Gamorrean seemed grateful, even if he still flinched every time Risk moved her hands over the console too quickly.
There was nothing for it; she had to address the issue directly. Since Byss, she'd grown a distaste for the electric tremors of fear in the Force. She preferred the sensation of impersonal intimidation. It offered a sense of withdrawal, the retreat of Force aura, not unlike the way a receding wave pulls around bare feet on a beach. Fear was Kull's tool, one he so desperately wanted her to use. One that she didn't need.
"Look. I'm not sure if you know what you saw back there, so I'm going to tell you. You saw me take down some bounty hunters who would have been more than happy to kill me if that meant they got a payout from your hide. Hunters who would have kept you from ever seeing your family again. Nothing more. And now, I'm going to get you to your family before they leave the planet. Got it?"
His jowls wobbled as he nodded his assent, though he kept his silence.
One hour later, the blue cast of twilight was fading to indigo night, and they could see a squat, shadowy mirage solidify into a city clinging to the base of a mesa. Ships were spared the final five hundred meters' descent to the planet's surface by the well-placed landing strip atop that same mesa. Occasional cargo ships could be seen starting their journey to shuttle raw materials and workers up to Nar Shaddaa for the great factories that operated without any oversight.
The pair pulled up to the great freight elevator that clung to the side of the mesa. They abandoned their speeder and took a wordless ride to the top. Risk felt a great wave of relief come off her ward when he spotted a small, olive-skinned, snout-faced child walking up the ramp into a modest freighter. He turned to Risk, regarded her with great, watery eyes, and hugged her against his heavy frame. She patted his back and sent him on his way.
The child must have heard the unmistakable commotion of a Gamorrean at a full run, because it spun on a tiny heel faster than Risk thought any piglet could. It called for its mother, who came careening down the ramp into the arms of a boar she'd probably never expected to see again. He scooped his child up and planted him on a wide shoulder, gave Risk a parting wave and stomped up the ramp with his family.
"Sight like that's almost enough to make you believe there's some kind of plan behind life in this galaxy. Maybe we all have a destiny."
Risk turned to find a geriatric human standing behind her, wrapped in layers of tattered clothing. The old woman shared her few good teeth with Risk in a crinkled smile. Her words struck the Mirialan in a part of her chest that she didn't like. The sensation crept to her throat and gave her voice a thin, reedy sound when she spoke. "Yeah. Doesn't take much for some people."
Risk pushed past the still-smiling woman, whose dark eyes followed her all the way to the elevator. After Risk was out of earshot, the old woman shrugged and muttered something about the deficient manners of the current generation.
The freighter's captain began to loosen up after the first strained hour Risk spent in his copilot's unused seat. He occasionally took on passengers, but they were usually the type who were too poor to be picky about the steerage-quality accommodations. None of them had ever cared about watching the flight.
"Uh, you know, that, ah…." He still wasn't completely comfortable. If his stammering kept on much longer, Risk would head back to her cot in the cargo bay, view be damned. "How'd you get that scar, anyway?"
Wrong icebreaker.
Risk had her feet up on the console, her arms tucked behind her head. "Same way you got this ship: a complicated story we don't have time for. How long until we get back to Nar Shaddaa?" Her heavy boots met the deckplates with a pair of simultaneous thuds. Risk made a point of standing up abruptly, stretching, and heading for the exit.
"About an hour—oh, you're leaving?"
"Seen one view of the Hutts' city, you've seen them all. Seeya at landing, Swale." Risk stepped through the cockpit door and made the short trip to the cargo hold.
Memories nagged at the edges of her consciousness. Her cheek itched. A small cascade of fine sand fell when she ran her fingers over the old scar. She could only dodge so many unwanted recollections before a bitter nostalgia took hold. Risk gave in, turning her thoughts to nearly a decade ago.
"Renuka, where are you?"
"Senate tower lobby." Renuka was still mad, and it was audible in her voice. She was leaning against a marble wall, watching political professionals go about their daily business.
She didn't want to speak to anyone. But Master Kardu's call couldn't be ignored, if only because he would keep calling. And calling. And that impatient chime would attract attention she didn't want.
"Did you finish the background research already?" He sounded skeptical, as usual.
"I finished everything on the... subject herself, but now I am looking for something a bit more recent. Like current associates." Renuka tried to avoid moving the muscles on the left side of her face as she spoke, a tall order that gave her speech a certain stroke-victim quality. She didn't care. The wound on her cheek was taut and pulled uncomfortably every chance it got.
In a month or so, she would have an impressive scar that wouldn't bother her so much. That would be a badge of honor. Now, it was a constant reminder of her dissatisfaction with life in the Order.
"You know that we cannot afford to allow our quarry—"
"To discover that we're on her trail, yes, Master Kardu, I know it. I also know that I will go into fits if I have to sit in the Temple Archives flipping through ancient data that the investigation leads could have looked up whenever they needed it."
"Renuka. This isn't busy work. If the Council's suspicions are correct, the Republic could be in grave danger. Not only that, it's an opportunity to show the Council that you have the patience and wisdom required to earn your knighthood."
Renuka rolled her eyes and marched out of the lobby. If she kept growling into her comm while glaring at passers-by, someone was bound to take notice. She stomped past the security checkpoint at the main entrance, leaving them to recognize her robes and the lightsaber at her waist on their own time, not hers. They didn't need to see her identification.
She gripped the comm tightly, shielding it from the wind outside the tower. "You know full well that I earned my knighthood during that last battle. Three days, Mu-Daru, three days without backup and my left eye still can't see in low light!"
The Cerean took time to measure his response. She knew he was going to try to soothe her again, encourage her to be patient, to understand the Council's process. She didn't want to hear it.
"You have to understand that they are well aware of your skill and courage. What they are concerned about…." He paused, and she knew he was looking for just the right way to phrase it, again. "...is your emotional nature."
"This isn't about my attitude. It's never been about my attitude. For years I've heard that I have control over my attitude, but that my ingrained emotional nature would be my undoing. Ever since I started at the Temple, they've always kept an eye on me. All the other students knew I was the illicit child of a Jedi. Mirialans don't get the dispensation for families that you Cereans do."
"Your father's actions should not be held against you," he began, and realizing his mistake, revised. "The Council does not hold that against you."
Renuka scoffed. "Should and is don't always go together! The Council deferred my petition for knighthood for a year. I can't even ask for consideration until then. It's a simple yes or no and they won't even give me that!"
"Your reaction to their decision is evidence enough that you may not be ready. You did not choose your lineage but you can choose the path of patience and wisdom."
"So what you're saying is, as long as I don't care if I become a Jedi Knight, they'll probably let me become one. But if I actually want to achieve that title, I'm unworthy. Pardon me, Master Kardu, but this system will only yield apathetic Jedi who—"
It was Renuka's turn to get cut off, though not by the infinitely patient Master Kardu. In fact, he could be heard asking if she was still transmitting, if something had happened? She clicked off the comm unit.
A distinctive shaggy grey cloak could be seen making its way across the Senate Tower's bridge. Renuka broke into a smile, which twisted into a wince as her burnt skin protested. She let her target get a lead of nearly a hundred meters before Renuka slipped into the crowd in pursuit.
A micrometeorite broke through the freighter's hull, neatly piercing her reverie and leaving a whistling hole beside Risk's right boot. She rolled her eyes and went for a patch kit.