Part 1. - An Unlikely Ally.
Ch. 1 - The Time Pirate.
1.
The galaxy stretched out as far as the eye could see, it's vast emptiness looming unsympathetically on the holoprojector screen. From her chair, the girl sighed, as she watched the countless stars, blinking on the black velvet blanket of space, move slowly past them. She craned her neck, hearing it crack in protest as she pushed against the back of it with the palm of her hand. She became dimly aware that she was, in fact, stiff all over, it seemed as if hours had passed since lunch. And, glancing over her shoulder at a chrono mounted on the wall, she realised that they had.
She'd left the dining hall long before lunch had been over, excusing herself for not being particularly hungry, and had come straight to her chamber, after giving her Mother, what she hoped had been, a reassuring smile. She'd been watching the holo-screen ever since, wide eyed with open concern, frowning periodically, in frustration at the failure of her vigilance to turn up any sign of the Millennium Falcon, or the convoy it had been heading. She vaguely recalled telling someone to leave her alone, when they'd messaged her over the intercom, although she had no idea as to who it had been. Possibly her sister, Jaina, and she felt instantly guilty. It was selfish of her to act like the only one who was worried.
Lola Skywalker inhaled deeply, and heaved yet another burdened sigh. She drew herself up, and began to pace about the room, stretching her arms, first to the front and then out behind her, as she did so. Her, usually sparkling, green eyes were dull, and underlined with fatigue. She blinked them into focus, as they became accustomed to the artificial lighting around her.
She turned away from the holo-screen, and crossed to the other side of her room. And, taking a silver comb from the dresser, she began to straighten up her long, copper hair. Not that it particularly needed tidying, she thought, as she numbly viewed her reflection in the full-length vanity mirror.
She was dressed as if for training; a figure hugging, yet non-restrictive, pale blue flight suit, her mauve, half calf, stiletto boots- the leather bound hilt of a small combat dagger could be seen above the top of each one, on the inside leg. Strapped midway down her right thigh was a holster, which housed her blaster, either side of which was a pouch, each carrying half a dozen extra energy cells. The pockets on the left and right lower thigh of her flight suit held a training orb and an organic and mechanic repair kit, respectively. Then, attached to her belt, resting at a slight angle on her right hip, was the piece de resistance; her lightsaber- a sleek affair, constructed of highly polished chrome, it was almost scroll-like in shape, the deep purple cabochon of the Force-channelling crystal just visible at its base. It was true; she looked every bit the nineteen-year-old Jedi-in-training. In fact, the only decorative piece she had allowed herself, was the gold coloured New Republic Affiliation shield, which was buckled around the ankle of her right boot.
She laid down the comb, and moved towards the intercom, intending to apologise to Jaina. She would have done so, too, had not the holoprojector screen caught her eye at that precise moment.
2.
A few minutes later, the blast doors leading into the young Princess' chamber slid noiselessly open, the silence echoing down the deserted corridor. Lola peered cautiously out from her room, and stepped into the silver-grey panelled passage. She paused, alert. Then, opening the floodgates of her mind, she allowed the energy of the living Force to flow freely through its canals.
She was standing, stock still, eyes closed. The expression she wore was one of calm serenity. She had donned a deep purple velveteen robe, which hung regally from her shoulders, enveloping her like a shield. The hood framed her delicate face; shadows caught in its folds creating the effect of shifting waters as it flowed around her copper curls. A blue drawstring knapsack rested limply at her feet- the gold cord entwined around the fingers of her left hand- momentarily forgotten.
Her eyelids parted slowly, revealing fathomless emerald pools of light. They had lost all trace of the tired opaqueness; instead they danced, with a mixture of anticipation and mischief. She smiled a kind of half smile that imitated her Dad perfectly. She knew all she needed to.
"Take it easy, Pops," she said to the empty space. "Help's a-comin'."
She swung the sack into the air, slipped the cord over her head, and, taking a deep breath, sprinted off towards the docking bay of the Royal Starcruiser, her robe flapping furiously behind her.
3.
The holoprojector screen bleeped steadily to itself, almost keeping time with the high-heeled footfalls that were rapidly disappearing down the length of the corridor. Footfalls which, even as they faded off into the distance rounding a corner, seemed to come back on themselves, as the echo of steel pounding on chrome bounced off the wall at the other end of the empty passageway.
The display had been frozen; a section at the bottom right corner of screen had been enhanced, enhanced again, and referenced. It was this information panel which pulsed in and out of view.
It was written in red, which meant that the climate of the yellow planet, whose image was shown on the holoprojector, was, at present anyway, rather hostile. But such information had been irrelevant to the mind of the young Skywalker- she was pretty confident that she could manoeuvre through whatever asteroid storm was out there. No, no what had interested Lola about this particular planet was its spaceport.
Her father, himself, had told her more than once, that if you were ever in need of, how to say, services, there would always be someone willing to sell you them in Mos Eisley, on the desert planet of Tatooine.
4.
Lola slowed to a walking pace as she approached the docking bay of the huge Starcruiser, relieved that she had successfully negotiated her way through the ship without meeting any obstacles that were likely to interfere with, or try to talk her out of, her plans. Not that she had expected to encounter anyone who might dare to do such a thing; her ability to use the Force meant that he could feel the presence of others very much like radio signals- the stronger the individual was, the more audible their signal, no matter the location. Her 'in-tuning' had revealed her Mother and Uncle Luke to be still in the dining hall on the other side of the ship. It seemed to Lola, that they were deep in an emotional discussion, though about what she couldn't tell. She heard Uncle Luke say something to the effect of, "Leia, please, it…it has to be done soon," and decided to leave them in privacy. Her own brothers were sparing with each other, two levels up on the training deck, whilst Jaina, who had been just a corridor away in her own quarters, had fallen asleep, and therefore posed no immediate problem.
There seemed to be droids everywhere; repairing, testing, refuelling, getting under the feet of whatever pilots had decided to tinker with their engines. Under the shadow of her robe, Lola was able to walk through this throng relatively unheeded. Indeed, she supposed, she could quite easily have been mistaken for one of her own handmaidens, Meela, perhaps, or even Solstice.
Hoping that this was the case, Lola strode past her own craft, the impressively agile Midnight Monsoon, and straight towards Destiny Comet 1. Beneath her hood, Lola winced a little, she would have been more at ease in the Monsoon, and felt better prepared should the worst happen, but her situation called for her to keep up her identity of handmaiden. At least until she was well out of the Starcruiser's tracking range.
"Well, well…Miss Ankhrose," a handsome, yet grubby looking, humanoid stepped out from behind the left engine of the one-man J type craft.
Lola cleared her throat. Passing herself off for her flirtatious best friend was going to be harder than she'd imaged; whoever this person thought he was, all Lola wanted to do was break his nose, she couldn't stand when men looked at her like that. But, of course, he wasn't looking at her, was he? She remained calm.
"The l'il Princess gotcha runnin' errands, has she?" he smiled, and winked at her, as he wiped his hands on a cloth that was even dirtier than he was.
This man obviously knew Solstice very well, Lola was suddenly quite aware that if she wasn't careful, she could find herself in deep waters very quickly.
She pulled the hood of her robe a little further over her face, hoping the mechanic didn't notice that Solstice's raven black hair had suddenly become a vibrant, fiery red.
"Something like that," she managed. She did not care one bit for the way this stranger had taken her hand, and was now bent down, with his lips pressed to it. As his eyes looked up into the shadow that was her face, it was all Lola could do to keep from jerking her hand back abruptly. But Solstice Ankhrose would not have done so; Solstice would have giggled girlishly. Lola chuckled accordingly. Quite convincingly too, she thought.
"Fancy a l'il stroll first?" the man advanced, obviously with other things on his mind.
"I'm in kind of a hurry," Lola replied, putting as much of a playfully dismissive tone into her voice as was possible through clenched teeth.
"Ain't that always the way," laughed the man, deftly sliding his hand inside the fold of her robe, and slipping his arm around her slender waist. Before Lola had even the chance to protest, he had pulled her close to him, and his lips had expertly found her own, even beneath the purple velvet hood.
He stepped away, and Lola, having not had time to think about what had just taken place, felt sure her cover had been blown, as she remembered that her saber was still hooked to her belt.
Instead, the mechanic, or whatever he was, just smirked, raising his hand in a farewell gesture, "See ya 'round, Sugar." And with that, merely sauntered over to the opposite side of the bay, and began to polish up the side of Uncle Luke's X-wing.
From the safety of her hood, Lola bared her teeth, - "How DARE he?!" - as she stepped up into the cockpit of DC1. She began to run an operations check, thankful to the Force that the unit had already been lowered into place, behind her, she didn't fancy the chances of her disguise holding up, if she'd been forced to ask- "That creep!!" - the mechanic to load it up for her.
R2 B5 bleeped at her, in protest, as she drew the transparent shield down over a little harder than, perhaps, had been necessary.
"Can it, metal mouth," she snapped impatiently. "Are we ready for launch, or not?"
From behind her, she heard a series of excited little blips, as the twin radial sublight engines of the Destiny Comet fired into life. The R2 unit knew exactly who it was accompanying on this flight.
Lola Skywalker smiled as DC1 hovered in the hangar for a second, and zipped cleanly into the black and silver fields of hyperspace.
"Clever l'il thang, ain'tcha?!" she chuckled to the droid, as she caught her last glimpse of what had possibly been one of Solstice's most recent conquests, who was standing beside the X-wing, watching the DC take off.
5.
Vincent Reeves' mouth gaped, as he watched DC1 exit the docking bay; in all the years he'd known that girl, he'd never seen her so eager to leave, or to throw her ship into hyperdrive quite so early in the take off process. His brow wrinkled slightly, he shrugged and turned back to Master Skywalker's baby.
As he polished, he thought to himself, "Come t' think of it, I ain't niver seen her eyes quite so green." He paused in his thoughts and reread them, sure he was going mad, "Are her eyes green?"
He shrugged again.
6.
Lola laughed out loud, with the sheer adrenaline rush, that came of her having managed it yet again. She was free once more, on her own. Well, at least until Uncle Luke, or her mother, Leia, sensed that she was no longer on board. But, Lola hoped, by the time they found her this time, she'd have managed to get help finding her father, and possibly, even drawn up a plan of action, to rescue him.
Because, he did need rescuing, she was sure of that. Even if no one else wanted to believe it, and had convinced themselves that he'd just stopped off somewhere to meet old friends, Lola knew with startling clarity; Han Solo was in some sort of trouble, trouble that he could neither talk, blast, nor fly his way out of.
"I'm on my way, Dad," she reassured herself. "B5, set our course for Tatooine."
The astromech tweaked a response.
"What kind inference?" she consulted the internal scanner. "There's no sign of any debris out there."
More tweaks, and blips, followed by a long, ominous sounding low-pitched whistle.
"Ok, chill l'il guy. Just point her in the general direction, Ok? I'll worry about gettin' her through…whatever it is that's out there. I can handle it," she sounded convinced, until she added to herself, "I just hope Solstice's DC can."
She chuckled nervously, then shook her head, as if to clear it. Her hood fell back, around her shoulders, and hair like molten lava cascaded down in full, luscious waves. She was still aware of the Royal Starcruiser behind them; it was, however, getting smaller by the second.
"Just make sure you put plenty of space between us and that, before bringing us out of hyperspace, Ok, B5?"
The droid bleeped an affirmative.
"Oh, and record all of our flight information from here on out."
Behind her, B5's domed head span full circle, whilst sensors and lights flickered, comically.
"Alright, alright," Lola laughed at the droid, who was trying to communicate the fact that it was overworked and under oiled. "I just wanna show Uncle Luke, and everyone, that I'm not a kid any more. Plus, if anything goes wrong…"
She trailed off, as she looked out into the void of space. She was suddenly, shockingly, aware that she was not just alone, she was alone in a black place where there were no stars. She turned, looking over her shoulder; her mother's Starcruiser was nowhere to be seen. A look of sheer panic momentarily lighted on her face.
"You are recording this, ri-"
She was cut off as the small J-type was slammed out of hyperdrive. Lola, who, in her hurry to leave the Starcruiser, had not restrained herself properly, was flung into the front facing instrument panel. Her head took the full force of the impact, shorting out a few of the circuits. The last thing she saw through the domed cockpit shield, before she lost consciousness, was, what seemed to be, a solid wall of silver light.
7.
When Lola came to, she saw that the stars had returned. She looked around slowly. There was still something wrong about them. Were the stars too bright?!!
She rubbed her forehead, "Dang. Musta hit something pretty hard back there. Any ideas what it was, B5?" The astromech didn't.
Lola shook her head, still fairly dazed.
"How long was I out, anyways? My chrono stopped on impact," she asked, holding her wrist to her ear.
B5 hummed a little.
"Not that long then, huh?" Lola said, as she glanced at the craft's own chrono display. "Huh?!!" She double-checked the display, after she'd rubbed her eyes. The digits were changing faster than she could read them, as if the chrono were desperately trying to make up for lost time. What was even stranger: they were going the wrong way. Backwards.
Lola looked around once again, even slower this time, at the too-bright -No, at the younger stars. If the air space she had been occupying before she lighted-out had been called Kansas, Lola knew she was not, by any small degree, there any longer.
"Oh, boy," she said flatly, lips trembling slightly, "I think I really did it this time, B5. Just went ahead, and really did it."
B5 whistled, in agreement. This was too eerie, even for a droid.
"I sure hope you were recording back then, Bud, 'cos I don't think anyone we know is gonna stop by, any time soon."
She seemed to notice for the first time that DC1 had shut down completely, the silence was unnerving. As she started the engines up again, she, also for the first time it seemed, saw that the planet of Tatooine was right in front of them.
"Alright, B5, the plan's still the same. You wait in the DC, whilst I look around town for someone willing to part with a ship that's faster than the Falcon, and a crew willing to go on, what's promising to be, a near-suicide mission."
Lola sighed, as she took Destiny Comet 1 down into the atmosphere of Tatooine, and headed towards Mos Eisley.