A/N: Election day special! Or rather, election weekend, since I had extra time to work on it! Enjoy, guys. The rest of Nar Shadda is almost done, and then it's on to the next place--anyone who can guess where that will be wins a prize.

The Hawk was smoking slightly when he came into sight of it, never a good sign on a spaceship; Atton broke into a run as he turned the corner and nearly tripped over a corpse. He'd been gone for, what, two hours? What had they managed to do to his ship?

"Atton!"

Bao-Dur was hailing him from the Hawk's ramp; Atton jogged up it, blasters at the ready. "What the hell happened here?" he demanded. "Why are there dead aliens everywhere? How's the Hawk?"

"A bit bashed, nothing I can't fix," Bao-Dur said. "We got attacked by slavers. They were looking for Carra."

Atton cursed. "The Red Eclipse," he said, striding into the main cabin. "I ran into these two twi'leks on the way back, and drove them off, but there are plenty of—what the hell are you doing to my ship?"

T3 beeped at him reproachfully.

"I don't care if it's Carra's ship, I'm the one who's going to have to fly this damn thing, and if your dismantling the starboard sensor array—"

"He's just fixing it," Bao-Dur interjected hastily. "It got shot during the fighting."

Atton groaned. "The slavers managed to board?"

"Well, there were about twenty of them."

"Great," Atton said. "Just great. How may of them managed to get on board?"

"Do not fear," Kreia said acidly, emerging from behind them; "they are all dead now. You may help dispose of the bodies."

"Listen, you old scow, I had to run here after fighting off two of the craziest twi'lek hunters I've ever met—"

But Kreia wasn't listening; she had turned right around and stalked out, the edge of her robes swishing against the floor. Atton growled in frustration and kicked the nearby wall.

"Careful there," Bao-Dur said. "The Hawk's got enough holes in her as it is."

His ship was getting beat up, bounty hunters were after the lot of them, and Kreia was handing out orders left and right. "I hate my life," Atton muttered. It was probably too much to hope for that Mical suffered any sort of debilitating injury; the man was pretty good with a vibroblade.

"It's not so bad," Bao-Dur said. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

--

Mical wasn't hurt; in fact, he insisted on pacing up and down the length of the main cabin while they waited for Carra to come back. Atton could hear him from the cockpit (now cleaned of blood stains and blaster marks) and it made him want to punch the man's face in.

"Can you stop?" Atton shouted over his shoulder.

The pacing paused. Then the footsteps resumed again, in his direction, and the cockpit door slid open. "I apologize if I was bothering you," Mical said stiffly. "I'm sure you understand that I am merely worried."

"Carra's fine," Atton snapped, swiveling around in his chair. "She can take care of herself."

"I should hope so. She is a Jedi."

Being a Jedi had nothing to do with it. "Then stop pacing, dammit."

But instead of going away and leaving him alone, Mical lingered at the door. "You went after her," Mical said. "Do you think she'll be all right?"

Atton rolled his eyes. "For the last time, yes." She'd better be.

"She's a very capable woman," Mical said, sounding entirely unconvinced.

"Yeah, yeah." Why was this guy still talking to him?

"I admire her a great deal," Mical said, plowing along, seemingly heedless of Atton's annoyance. "She's very—brave. And beautiful."

"What's your point?" Atton ground out.

Mical looked at him in startled surprise. "Oh," he said. "I just thought you would have noticed—"

"Yeah," Atton snapped. "I did. I noticed first, all right?"

"I—er—"

"I'm going for a walk," Atton said shortly, getting to his feet. "Comm me if anything happens."

He stormed past a bewildered-looking Mical and out the ship. The sun was setting; the evening air was chill and damp against his skin. Atton resisted the urge to kick something. The only large object in sight was the Hawk, and as Bao-Dur had pointed out, it probably had enough holes in it already.

He'd noticed how brave she was. If that wasn't a line of nonsense straight from a romance novel, Atton didn't know what was. He scowled viciously at the wall. Carra wasn't beautiful, for frack's sake. Not that he cared if Mical had noticed or not.

But he'd seen her first, dammit. That had to count for something, didn't it?

Not that he cared if Carra went for Mical. It wasn't like Atton had a shot with a Jedi, anyway. Or like he cared.

He needed a drink. That shot of juma had been hours ago, and it'd been interrupted by two crazy twi'leks with some very painful swords.

"Hey!"

A bounty hunter.

Atton whirled around, blasters drawn, dropping into a defensive stance; the woman approaching from the end of the street held up her hands and stopped walking. "Atton, right?" she said. "Carra mentioned you."

Two blasters, a shield, and a modified grenade launcher; flame red hair; bare midriff. Looked like a joygirl, moved like she knew how to fight. Atton narrowed his eyes at her. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded. "Where's Carra?"

"Mira," she said. "I came here to warn you. Your Jedi's been kidnapped."

--

She'd known it was going to go badly, and she'd gone anyway.

Atton scowled down at the controls as he fired up the Hawk's engines; there was a worrying rattling as she took off, but Bao-Dur had assured him the ship was space worthy. In the co-pilot's chair, Mira was working on cloaking their signatures. She'd turned out to have some piloting experience.

Good thing he wasn't going to be the only one doing anything useful on this trip.

Kreia had helpfully assured them Carra wasn't dead, which had made Atton wonder what, exactly, was Carra's relationship to the old witch; perhaps Kreia had taken Carra on as her padawan, but Carra seemed pretty thoroughly trained to him.

More likely it was some cryptic Force thing no one would bother explaining to him. "All engines at full power," he said grimly. "Nothing's overheating, but something's loose in the starboard engine. Can you get Bao-Dur to go look at it?"

"Sure," Mira said, "if you want every law enforcement ship on our tails in the next ten minutes. You knew the Hawk used to be a smuggler's ship, right?"

Frack. He'd forgotten; she was a small, sleek, lovely thing, and sure, there were plenty of hidden compartments, but the Hawk was build more along the lines of a courier than anything else. "Dammit, where's that droid when you need it?" Atton muttered.

"I don't think she's in any immediate danger," Mira offered. "The Exchange boss seemed to want to talk to her more than anything else—"

"Visquis lured her into the Jekk'Jekk Tarr," Atton snapped. "Doesn't seem like he's interested in talking."

"Not Visquis," Mira said. "Goto."

Goto. Frack. The ultimate Exchange boss. Carra was in it deeper than he'd suspected; what was it with Jedi, anyway, and getting involved neck-deep in bantha crap? Assassins were after her, the Jedi were after her, the Exchange was after her—hell, even Admiral Onasi of the Republic was keeping tabs on her.

So he'd hacked into Mical's personal communications. So what?

He cast Mira another glance. At least twenty minutes before they reached orbit; another half hour after that to reach the coordinates Mira had punched in. "Tell me something," Atton said. "How'd you wind up in this mess?"

Mira shrugged. "I ran into her outside the Jekk'Jekk Tarr," she said. "She wanted to meet a Jedi Master, so I introduced them; then Visquis tried to kill me, your Jedi came after me, and she got kidnapped."

That sounded like Carra, all right, but Atton couldn't shake the feeling that this—bounty hunter—was hiding something.

But hey, they were all hiding things, weren't they? Some secrets were just deadlier than others.

"I hope someone's looking at that starboard engine," Mira remarked. Atton cursed. He'd nearly forgotten.

"I'll go check it out," he said, getting to his feet. "I'm putting the ship on autopilot—yell if anything comes up."

"Sure," Mira said, not looking up from the console. "Did you know this ship's wanted on fifteen systems? How did you get so far without being stopped?"

"Blind luck," Atton said wryly, and left to check out the engines.

--

Goto's yacht was a huge, ostentatious thing.

Had some pretty nasty tractor beams on it, too. Atton was pretty sure this wasn't just a pleasure vessel—the scorch marks on its sides were a dead giveaway, for one. Mical, for some reason, insisted on coming along on the boarding party.

Well, Atton was pretty sure what the reason was, actually.

Bao-Dur and T3 stayed behind to fix the Hawk; the ship constantly seemed to be in need of repairs, it was a wonder it still functioned. Everyone else boarded the yacht. The thing was surprisingly empty. They had received no transmissions; it was as though the yacht was programmed to automatically snag anything that came within range. Stupid policy, Atton thought; what if they had decided to start shooting?

But hey, they were on board now, and there weren't any guards in sight, so who was he to complain?

"Right," Atton said, "I think we should split up." He eyed the rest of the group. He couldn't stand Kreia, of course, and Mical was utterly out of the question—Mira might not be so bad, but he didn't know anything about her—

"I will take the bounty hunter," Kreia announced. She looked at Mical. "You. Go with the fool."

"Hey!"

"Come," she said imperiously to Mira, and headed off down the hallway.

"Is she always like that?" Mira wanted to know.

"Pretty much, yeah," Atton said, glaring after her.

"Great," Mira muttered, and followed.

Atton looked at Mical. "Maybe we should split up, too," he said.

"I do not think that would be wise, Atton." The man had taken out his vibroblade. "Shall we be off?"

--

Mical, to Atton's unending disgust, fought like a Jedi.

Which meant running headfirst into a swarm of enemies. Even if those enemies were gun turrets.

Even if those gun turrets could have been taken offline by some judicious slicing on a console less than ten feet away.

It was a wonder the man was still alive; Atton burst into the room to find Mical standing over the remains of a droid, looking rather puzzled. "Atton," he said. "Did you turn them off?"

Atton scowled. "No, I sat around and waited until they gave up. Of course I turned them off, you idiot."

"Oh," Mical said, blinking. "Well, thank you. They were beginning to become rather troublesome."

Yeah, five military grade gun turrets could be troublesome, all right. Atton rolled his eyes. "Let's just go," he grumbled. If Carra's precious student didn't make it out of this yacht it wouldn't be Atton's fault. He was doing his best considering the man was nigh-suicidal.

They went out into the hallway beyond.

Mical nearly stepped onto a mine. Atton jerked him back, annoyed. "You couldn't gotten both of us killed that time," he growled. "At least stay behind me." He bent to disarm the thing. Behind him, Mical shifted nervously.

"Perhaps you should hurry," he suggested. "I think someone has followed us—"

Great, just great. Atton scowled and stood up. "I'll leave this in place for them, then," he said grimly. "Stay behind me and don't step on anything."

They made their careful way down the corridor, and into a wide, high-ceilinged hallway that had to lead to Goto's audience room—why else would it be so bloody ostentatious? Predictably, the door at the end was locked and magnetically sealed.

Nothing was ever easy, was it?

"I'm going to try to find some way to open that," he told Mical. "Stay here."

There was a console at the end of the hallway, and Atton frowned down at it, wondering why the hell an Exchange boss would be paranoid enough to turn on the gun turrets and put the ship in lockdown, but not send out any of his guards. There had been mines. There had been locked door after locked door. There had even, at one point, been toxic gas vented into a hallway.

But no guards.

Weird.

He stuck a computer spike into the console. It beeped at him. "Yeah, yeah," he muttered, tapping out a few commands. "Shut up and open the door, already—"

Down the side corridor that they had come from, there was the sound of a mine exploding.

"Frack." The console beeped again. "Come, on, come one, hurry up—"

Another explosion—whatever was coming certainly wasn't subtle about it—the console beeped again, there was the unmistakable sound of locks disengaging, and three malevolent, if slightly scorched-looking, metal figures burst out of the doorway and leveled their rifles at him—

He barely rolled out of the way in time. Frack, where did those things keep coming from? Was there a special factory out there to make assassin droids? Who was even buying the damn things?

"Mical!" Atton shouted, drawing his blasters. "A little help here!"

But Mical had already disappeared through the doors—probably the moment they opened, Atton thought bitterly. There was nothing to do but run for it. At least he had a shield on him—

He turned on the shield just in time for a blaster to be absorbed on it; frack those things were fast. Atton rolled to his feet and ran back down the ostentatious hallway. "Mical!" he shouted again. Dammit, where was that stupid Jedi recklessness to take the hits for him when he needed it?

Something rolled past his feet.

A grenade. Not even the best shields could withstand a blast like that—

He tried to dodge out of the way, but the explosion caught him anyway and sent him flying into a wall.

It probably would've hurt quite a bit if he hadn't promptly lost consciousness.

--

Do you think he's all right?

Mical, you're one with medic training, not me—

But you're a Jedi!

Atton cracked his eyes open in time to see Carra give Mical an incredulous look. "Jedi are not trained medics," she said.

"That's explains why I feel like I've been chewed up by a rancor," Atton said, and tried to sit up. His head hurt. In fact, his whole body hurt.

Both their gazes snapped to him. "Atton!" Mical said, looking worried and guilty. "I'm sorry. I should not have left like that—"

"Shut up and give me a painkiller."

Carra put her hand against his forehead. That music again, a faint chord in the distance, and the pain receded. "Sorry," she said. "I'm not very good at that, yet. Er—should you be moving? I read something about traumatic head injuries—"

"He looks all right," Mical said, peering at Atton far too closely for his comfort. "How do you feel?"

"Like utter crap," Atton snapped. The droids, at least, were a smoking pile of metal a little further down. Ugh. So Mical got to rush in and play the part of the chivalrous prince and he had been stuck out here looking like an idiot.

Not that Atton cared, or anything.

"We shouldn't stay here," Carra said. "Can you walk?" She glanced at Mical. "Can he walk?"

Mical shrugged helplessly. "I only had a year of training before I left," he said. "I have no idea."

"I can walk," Atton ground out, and got unsteadily to his feet to prove it. Everything seemed to be in working order. Except the fuzziness. He frowned. It felt like he'd had one too many drinks. Sure, probably better than bleeding or dead—

He'd thought the Jedi could heal anything? Carra seemed to have done a pretty good job of it so far.

"Atton?"

He looked at her. Her forehead was creased with worry, and there was a strange shimmer over her shoulder and an even stranger nausea that accompanied it.

"Sith assassins," he said, and yanked her out of the way of a sudden blaze of red light.

A/N: To Batsu Simisu-Chan re your question about Atton's past--yes, she did go to the refugee sector a while ago, but why it's not geting brought up is a bit of a minor plot point (which you don't find out in this chapter, sorry!). But I'm so glad you noticed! :)

Also, if worst comes to worst I'll include the fluff I wrote in one of these post chapter author's notes (as a thank you to those who read them, I suppose), but I'll try to work it into the story proper first. Again, thanks to everyone for reviewing.