... Part Two ...
A swig of whiskey and a thought of you
Were the only things that got me through
- The Rocky Fortune
It had taken three days, but finally, they had come for her.
Masked figures, towering and menacing, they had found her; though she did not care to know how. They had come, blasters drawn, had kicked down her door, stormed through the tiny, muggy home and hauled her away; hands bound and screaming.
Now, sore and still entirely shaken, Salla Zend hunched in the inhumanly small passenger lounge on the transport shuttle presumably on her way to meet a contact she had never seen. Her heart pounded and again she silently cursed ever having even heard the name Han Solo. He had caused her nothing but trouble, not to say anything about that spacer-whore has-been princess who tagged along after him all the time.
She had watched them for years, drawn against her own pathetic will to holoscreens in bars and space ports. Bile rising up with ever smiling, happy photograph; both doe-eyed and waving, hanging on each other as if leads in a galactic holodrama pageant. She snorted. Perhaps that's exactly what they were, just as she had mocked the hostage young woman, kneeling uncomfortably on that dirty warehouse floor. Perhaps they were pawns after all. Perhaps that's what she had now become.
The airways had exploded over the last few months, hysteria over the galaxy's favourite power-couple had become suffocating. Reaching as far into the outer worlds as Hutt Space, Salla couldn't help but wonder what the intensity of it all looked like in the Core - where they had lived, presumably together, for the last few years. She had tried, desperately she had tried, not to care. To move on. But suddenly, the Hapen Marriage Crisis - which was the new term coined by the mid-rim media for the absurdity of the situation - brought so many deep buried hurts to the surface.
Her breath shook. She was still entirely unsure of why she even took the assignment. Han had been right - damn him - she wasn't a bounty hunter and she certainly had never killed anyone like she had been prepared to do to what's her name. Leia, her subconscience hissed at her. Don't pretend you don't remember. But as soon as she happened upon the information, something inside of her - a dark angry thing which twisted with loneliness and betrayal - knew she wanted this job more than she wanted anything else. She could do it. She could hurt him. She could make those happy smiling faces disappear.
Except she couldn't. She didn't. And now she was here - worse off than before.
And all because of that bastard Han Solo.
A hatch to the left hissed open and two armed, fully armored guards walked through. Blasters drawn, the taller of the two nudged her towards the ramp with the toe of a boot.
Struggling to her knees she shuffled forward until she could stand, glancing sideways at the fully covered guards, weapons drawn and deadly trained.
Out-gunner and out-manned, Salla was finally out of ideas.
xXx
"My client is not interested in your excuse of incompetence."
"I-"
"Nor am I." The clear female voice cut her off. Salla stood, hands still bound, on a small dark platform, while someone paced several meters above her head on a floating walkway. The cynic inside her wanted to roll her eyes at the drama and showiness of it all, and she would have, if she wasn't at the same time terrified. She was far far over her head.
"Look." She stepped forward sharply to gain attention, the noise echoed around the grand room. "Solo would have been easy. You never told me I was bringin' in a witch!"
The woman laughed, clear and tinkling. Unnerving. Beautiful. And the pacing stopped for a moment. "The small rebel princess? A witch? She was too much for you, was she?"
"You don't know what she's capable of! No one can bring her in alone."
"Well, it seems you certainly couldn't." That stung. The pacing started again.
"I was hired-"
"To terminate her."
"Yes, and-"
"Bring Solo in."
"The princess isn't-"
"As I said, I am uninterested in your excuses."
"But if you-"
"You failed." The voice above her yelled. "You toyed with them instead. Had you set aside your own pettiness this would have been taken care of."
Salla remained quiet. The faceless woman was right.
"Now. I am not a generous person. So, if it were up to me, we would not have bothered bringing you here. But..." She trailed off as footfall descended the stairs. Salla swallowed, hard. "Unfortunately it isn't up to me. We will be giving you another chance." The room was silent. No footsteps. No breathing apart from her own laboured gasps. "So," Salla jumped and spun around, the breath of the voice hot on her neck, "I suggest you bring them in as stipulated. And I suggest you do it quickly." A lock of red hair curled from under the hood just over the woman's left eye, and the face which was cast in half a shadow smiled at her, menacing and far far too beautiful. Then, as suddenly as she arrived, the woman was turned and was swallowed up in the shadows.
xXx
"You've gone soft, my dear." Familiar hushed tone whispered near her ear. She had heard his approach, choosing to ignore the advance for the short scuffle below her feet.
"Hardly." She breathed, eyes unmoving.
"You would give that vengeful, jealous incompetent woman another chance? I call that soft." he was mocking her and she eyed him carefully.
"Never underestimate what a jealous, vengeful woman is capable of. Especially when desperate and provoked; as she is." The hooded woman nodding minutely to the small figure flanked by the two guards escorting her away. They would deliver her back to the hovel of a dwelling they had fished her from in the first place.
"Why not handle the situation yourself? You are more than capable to terminating a pesky princess and bringing a would then be frantic, grieving ex-smuggler in for reward.
"That would defeat the purpose of this exercise."
"Don't bore me, my darling."
"If I must spell it out for you," the woman sighed and grasped a glass of wine loosely cradling it in the palm of her hand, holding the warming liquid to her cheek. "We don't want to kill her. We want to break her. Which, as you just heard, has started to progress beautifully."
"Break her?" The blonde man turned to face away from the railing, leaning back slightly against the smooth metal bar.
"Leia Organa is the twin sister to Luke Skywalker, self proclaimed Jedi Knight and a righteous pain in the ass."
"That's common knowledge," the man shrugged, sipping from his own glass while watching the woman he hardly knew before him.
"It is."
"Then, I don't see-"
"They failed to break him. I will not. Not with her in my grasp. Luke would do anything to save his little sister."
"From you?"
She arched a severely manicured eyebrow and smoothed her cheek over the fine crystal. "There is still a market for Skywalker blood. Not everything died when that coward Darth Vader killed my Emperor."
"You don't mean...? But, he's mad."
"He is entirely insane. But that is not what appeals to me."
"You want to hand them both over?"
"One or both, it makes no difference to him or to me. Just as long as the Skywalker line is snubbed out. And quickly." She smiled at him, lifting the curl back under her hood.
"Careful, my dear. Your claws are showing." He whispered into her ear and stepped lightly down the walkway towards the bridge.
Mara Jade watched him go, let slip the wine glass from her fingers - ignoring the shattering of crystal on grated steel and brought her right hand up out from the deep folds of her cloak. The handle of a lightsabre - her only reminder of a life she held before everything was destroyed - held loosely in her hand, and ignited the blade. She watched it for several heartbeats.
"Claws indeed." She whispered.