"You have to focus." An old man's voice said to Jiran. "Take a deep breath and concentrate."
"I can't." Jiran replied.
"Yes you can. If you don't, you won't be able to do this properly." The old man said.
"But grandpa, we've been doing this for hours! I wanna fly!" Jiran whined. He let the datapad he was holding fall to the table.
"And what will you do once you're in space and you need to figure out the proper procedures and codes to use when requesting permission to land? Or, stars forbid, you need to land after experiencing a power surge that's disabled your controls?" Jiran's grandfather asked, picking up the discarded datapad.
"I'll just fly in the Outer Rim! Mom and Dad say people don't care how you fly here." Jiran answered.
Jiran's grandfather sat down. "Well, maybe in their profession that's acceptable. But you won't be doing anything of the sort."
"Grandpa I don't wanna be like them." Jiran said. His grandfather smiled at him. "I wanna fly an X-wing!" His grandfather's smile was quickly replaced by a frown.
"No. Absolutely not. The military is no place for a young man!" Jiran's grandfather said.
"But grandpa everybody wants to fly starfighters!" Jiran explained.
"What is it with you children and flying starfighters? When I was a young man-"
"Bora when you were young it was clones that were flying the starfighters." Jiran's grandmother interrupted. She placed a plate of sliced fruit in front of her grandson.
"And members of the local defense forces. Not to mention the Republic Fighters." Bora said, accepting a cup of tea from his wife. "Everyone always forgets about them, Carla. Regardless, becoming a starfighter pilot was still far from being a common dream."
"Speaking of which, you aren't having more of those bad dreams, are you Jiji?" Carla asked.
"No grandma. I'm sleeping better now." Jiran answered before eating a piece of fruit.
"Are you sure? You can tell us, don't worry. Bora, tell him it's okay to tell us if he's still having bad dreams." Carla said.
"If he says he's fine you should trust him. He knows that they're just dreams." Bora said.
"Well I just want to make sure he's sleeping all the way through the night." Carla said. She was going to say more until she noticed that Bora and Jiran both looked confused. "Are you two alright?"
"Did you buy a different brand of tea at the market?" Bora asked.
"They didn't have our usual and I would rather die than buy from the Hutts. I know, it tastes like they put a handful of weeds in the blend." Carla answered.
"I see." Bora replied. "Hopefully we'll have more of our usual tea before any visitors show up."
"Are we having visitors today?" Jiran asked.
"I hope not. Did you invite anyone over, my dear?" Bora asked.
"No, what makes you ask?" Carla said.
The telltale sound of a ship flying overhead and preparing to land filled the house. Bora pulled a blaster from his side and peeked out of the front window. He frowned and put his blaster back into its holster.
"Looks like we're having company after all. Come on, Carla." Bora said. Carla and Jiran stood up from under the table.
"It's not them, is it Bo?" Carla asked.
Bora kept his gaze fixed to the ship outside. "Jiran, stay here. Your grandmother and I have something to take care of."
After his grandparents left, Jiran ran to the window and watched them walk towards a ship with the New Republic crest proudly displayed on its side. If a New Republic ship was here, then that meant-
Jiran woke up to someone holding him upright and helping him vomit into the toilet of what looked like a prison cell. Jiran thought for a moment. The toilet looked extremely familiar. It even had a dent in the same spot as-
The ship shook and Jiran's head smacked against the toilet.
"Sorry. We're being chased." The Slave replied.
The slave?! So he and Calla had caught her after all. Well, it was nice to have something go right for once. Jiran almost smacked his head into the toilet again. He could hear Miesho cursing up a storm. Oh no. Jiran tried to move his hands, but failed due to being cuffed. Great, he got captured by a bounty hunter. How did he even get here?
"Where's Calla?" Jiran asked the Slave. Oh, looks like his tongue's awake again.
"Shooting us." She replied.
Of course Calla was shooting Miesho's ship. Jiran wanted to curse his luck, but felt that would just invite the universe to bring more misfortune into his life.
"Are your hands free?" Jiran asked. The Slave wiggled her fingers in front of his face. Stupid question. How else was she able to help him vomit? "Can you uncuff me?"
"No." The Slave replied.
"Do you want to get out of this alive?" Jiran asked.
"Yes." The Slave replied.
"Then you should uncuff me. Do you even know how to fly a starship? Or shoot a blaster?" Jiran asked.
"Promise me my freedom." The Slave said.
"I can't do that." Jiran stated.
The next shots Calla fired knocked some panels loose.
"Stay here, then." The Slave said. She got up and opened the cell door. Miesho's alarm system must've been disabled by Calla's shooting. Or he couldn't hear it over all the other alarms blaring through the ship.
"Fine!" Jiran shouted. "Fine! I didn't want to die stuck next to a toilet anyway." The Hutts would probably find a more humiliating way to kill him, but Jiran didn't say that to the Slave.
In seconds, the Slave freed Jiran's wrists and helped him to his feet. He almost fell down again because of Miesho's evasive flying. If that didn't kill him, Calla's shooting would. At least it meant that they weren't in hyperspace yet. Who knows how long that would last.
"You're welcome." The Slave said.
Jiran nodded and tried to ignore how nauseous he was. He regretted not drinking enough to sleep through this.
"Alright, follow my lead and don't do anything stupid." Jiran said. The Slave nodded and followed him down the hall. "There's only so many places for Miesho to put anything on this old gunship, so if my memory serves me-" A few more hits knocked the Slave into Jiran. "-try holding onto something. Ah, here we go." Jiran and the Slave found Miesho's weapon locker. Jiran was dismayed to see Miesho had installed a keypad on it.
"What's wrong?" The Slave asked.
"You, eugh, you didn't hear him say the combination, did you?" Jiran asked. He looked around to see if there was anything sturdy enough to beat the locker doors in with.
The Slave pushed him out of the way and mashed the keypad. The locker opened on the first try, revealing all of Miesho's weapons. Jiran's weapons were among them. Along with his jacket and thermal detonators. How could he forget he brought all this with him? A sharp pain ran through his head. Right, he was drinking. Rearmed, Jiran looked at the Slave. If he stunned her, he wouldn't have to hold up his end of the deal.
Jiran held a blaster out to the Slave. She took it, taking care to avoid pulling the trigger.
"I set it to stun. I don't know if we're in space yet, but you don't want holes in your ship regardless. I'm going to stun Miesho and you'll cover me. Try not to miss. Just because a blaster on stun won't poke any holes in the ship, that doesn't mean it won't mess up the electronics." Jiran explained. The Slave nodded.
They crept up to the cockpit, as best as two people trying to avoid falling down on a shaking ship could. Jiran thanked the Force Miesho hadn't tried doing any barrel rolls. Jiran slowly stood up straight as he leveled his blaster at Miesho. Right as he began squeezing the trigger, Calla hit them dead on and Jiran missed. Miesho turned around and the Slave immediately stunned him.
While he would have made a joke about the irony of him being the one to miss his shot after telling the Slave not to, Jiran had bigger fish to fry. The fish being Miesho's ship and the frying referred to figuring out a way to fix their nosedive and land. At least he knew they were still on the same planet as before.
Jiran tried everything he could think of to get the controls working again. Maybe grandpa was right about needing to pay more attention since Jiran's knowledge consisted of performing a reboot and hitting the console really hard.
"We're going to die." The Slave said. Jiran didn't argue with her about that.
Calla stopped shooting Miesho's ship once it fell into a nosedive. Either she'd knocked Miesho out or Jiran had freed himself and was going to take control of the ship any second now. She tried not to panic when she saw that the ship continued its fall. All that time she spent preventing Miesho from breaking atmo and taking Jiran to the Hutts, wasted because she was too good at her job.
Calla continued flying after the ship and rapidly lost hope that Jiran would survive. If nothing changed soon, it would be too late to land with a decent chance of survival. At the very last second, Mieshos's ship began leveling out and came to a violent landing in a field. At least it was in one piece. Calla ran out of the Knight Errant with a blaster rifle and a med-pack to see Jiran and the Slave staggering out. Calla's guess that Miesho captured the slave was right. Jiran was dragging an unconscious Miesho with him.
"Jiran! Are you alright!?" Calla asked as she began to look him over for any major injuries.
"Nothing some sleep won't fix. Remind me never to drink again. I'm starting to feel it now that the adrenaline's wearing off." Jiran replied
"I'm fine." The Slave said. Calla checked her over as well.
For such a terrible landing, they all came out of it in good shape. Even Miesho was only a little dinged up. Making sure that none of them had any life-threatening injuries, Calla started thinking about how to solve their Miesho problem.
"Are you just going to leave him here?" Calla asked.
"I don't see why not. His ship's here." Jiran answered. "It's a shame, what happened to Miesho in the crash."
"Do you really want to do that?" Calla insisted.
"Doesn't the Academy teach you how to be less squeamish? We've done this kind of thing before." Jiran said.
"I know. It just feels wrong." Calla admitted.
"We're smugglers, Calla. We're thieves and scoundrels. Not like we haven't killed anyone before. If you don't want this on your conscience, I'll do it." Jiran offered. He applied a bacta patch to his forehead. "Both of you go into the ship. I'll make it look as natural as I can."
The muffled sound of a blaster shot rang out across the field. Jiran entered the Knight Errant a few minutes later. He and Calla put the ship into orbit.
"I freed the slave." Jiran said calmly.
Calla was not as happy as she thought she'd be after hearing that. "What are we going to do now?"
Jiran was silent for a long time. He didn't have a lot of options. With Miesho out of commission, Jiran's bounty was guaranteed to go up. And that didn't even factor in what the slaver Norrin Cadar would do to them for freeing the slave.
"I might be able to find some people who can help us hide." Jiran said.
The Knight Errant's engines lit up and it flew off into hyperspace.
"Oh, what is that disgusting smell?" Miesho asked before gagging. "Ah, it's in my mouth! And my jowls!"
The nerfs producing the horrible smell paid Miesho no mind as they made themselves at home in his ship.
"Did you buy more of the good tea at the market, my love?" Bora asked.
"Yes, why?" Carla replied.
"No reason. Just curious. Very curious." Bora said as he looked out of his home's front window.