"So, when do you think we'll get to fly for real?" Jaina wondered. She, Tenel Ka, and the girl who called herself Linnara were having a rough equivalent of a slumber party, inasmuch as they could with only three participants. Linnara rolled over onto her back and put hands and feet in the air, wiggling fingers and toes with the fascination of the very sleepy.
"Speak for yourself," she mumbled absently.
"Fly with Rogue Squadron, I mean," Jaina bopped her friend on the head with a pillow, and 'Nara made an 'ackpth' noise. "When do you think Master Luke and Wedge will let us?"
"I'd rather have my own ship," Linnara flopped sideways, not really thinking about what she was saying. "Maybe a light cruiser. Something fast, sleek… something like my father's ship, maybe." At least she had the presence of mind not to go into detail on what kind of weapons systems she wanted.
Tenel Ka flopped over as well, staring nose to nose with Linnara. "Speaking of your father, how's he doing? And when's he going to visit the Academy?"
'Nara snapped awake, although she was careful to give no sign of her alertness either in the Force or in her face. One of the best things she reckoned that Academy life had taught her was how to conceal her emotions in every sense. "Don't know. Whenever his business interests take him this way, I suppose. He's been really busy, and I don't think he's planning on retiring anytime soon, even though he really could any time he wanted to… he just wouldn't know what to do with himself if he did, though." She didn't bother concealing the smile that the thought brought to her face. Boba Fett, retiring. No one would believe it even if it was true.
"What did he do before you came to the Academy? Didn't he used to take you with him?"
Laser light and fire. Explosions. Her mother, always a comforting presence, suddenly gone.
"Sometimes."
Tenel Ka exchanged a look with Jaina that 'Nara barely caught, a look of sympathy and compassion. They reached out for each other's hands at the same time, shared a brief moment of bonding through the Force. Linnara held back, and the other two didn't ask why, presuming it was something to do with her mother. She'd never spoken much about the woman, but everyone at the Academy could sense the bond Linnara's family, or what remained of them, shared. The bond, and the gaping hurt that her mother's death had left.
"So, what do you think of the new exercise Master Skywalker has planned?"
Linnara opened her mouth to respond to the blatant change of subject, but there was a knock on the door. All three girls turned to the door, then exchanged a grin. "You speak, he appears." She opened the door. "Master Skywalker?"
The Jed Master's face was grim. "Linnara, you're father's on the comm. I think it's urgent."
All three girls looked up at him with varying expressions of trepidation and nervousness. Linnara endured a brief moment of panic before she realized that the grim expression on Master Skywalker's face was not, in fact, due to him having discovered a bounty hunter's daughter among his students. "Oh… um… thanks, Master Skywalker…" she said slowly, right before she pelted out of the room and down the hall so fast Jaina would have sworn she saw her uncle's robes flap.
Linnara/Syra skidded to a halt in the comm room, taking several deep breaths as she paused on the threshold. She had to be extra careful here; she couldn't reveal the kind of nervousness she felt at an urgent call from her father. Granted, it was probably serious, and a little worry was perfectly reasonable… but a trader or even a smuggler encountered much different and much less dangers than a bounty hunter did. She calmed herself and walked over to the one comm unit that was lit, activating the privacy shield and darkening it just in case her father was suited up.
"Dad?"
"Syra…" In that moment, she was suddenly glad she'd gotten into the habit of the sound-proof privacy shield. "Something's happened. Something to do with the Imperials, I'm not sure what yet but I'm going to find out."
When Boba Fett said he was going to find something out in that tone of voice, it was going to be found out, come Imps or inferno. Syra nodded. "Do you need backup? I could get out of here if you really needed me…" It sounded childish but she had to make the offer...
Her father shook his head. "Stay there. You'll be safer there than you would with me." He looked at something away from the range of the camera, and suddenly Syra was afraid. She could feel him growing tense (he never got nervous, just tense) and watched him reach for what looked like his helmet. "Be careful, Syra. Something's happening, someone's taking more notice of me than either of us should like."
"Who… who's taking notice of us?" she accentuated the 'us' ever so slightly. He hadn't specified that whoever it was knew about her, but she was going to assume it just in case. "Dad, what's going on?"
"I don't know yet," he told her tersely, fiddling with something in his helmet. "It has something to do with Admiral Pellaeon…" He looked off-screen again, and in the midst of the flash of familiar consoles and comm units, suddenly Syra realized where he was. Cenath. Her mother's home.
"Dad… why are you…"
"Whatever you do, Syra, don't follow me. Don't try to track me. I think that's what they want. Remember what I taught you, preciosa, don't…" The screen began to fade. In the background she thought she heard someone saying 'We don't have time for this,' and then the screen went to static entirely.
"Dad…" Cold fear clenched her heart; she drove it back. "Dad, talk to me. Don't have time for what?" She fiddled with buttons, increasing the power to the receivers and boosting the signal. "Dad… don't do this to me. You know better than to pull a stunt like this on me."
"Dad… talk to me? What's going on? Why are you … who's with you?"
"Dad? Please?"
"Dad?"
Syra pounded down the hallway to her room, all pretense and false identity gone in favor of hiding from all the Jedi and apprentices in the compound long enough to get packed and get out of there. Her time with the Jedi had been productively spent… well, productively enough… but now they were getting into exercises and philosophies that were designed to train her to become a Jedi, which was something she had no interest in becoming. She would be a bounty hunter like her father and as formidable as her father and, as useful as Master Skywalker was, he was still an inferior teacher when it came to achieving that goal. She'd been contemplating disappearing from the Academy for a while, and had been thinking and exchanging ideas with her father about how they could manage it. The conversation they'd just had only hastened her departure.
She skidded into her room, disappearing into her closets and sending a flurry of bags flying out behind her. A few seconds later, jumpsuits and flightsuits started piling up on one of them. She had learned packing from her father, although it was more disorganized than he'd ever liked it. She'd learned efficiency from him, it just didn't look soldier-neat. But she had managed to get her departure preparation time to thirty minutes, which was good enough. Time and accuracy and haste was all that mattered. Getting out quickly with everything you needed to survive. It had been drilled into her.
Her room was relatively bare of decoration. A few pictures of her father, one of the entire family when she had been very young, these were the only personal touches she kept out, primarily to alleviate questions as to why she didn't get close to anyone. The family picture and most of the pictures of her father were safe. The only people who knew what he looked like underneath the helmet were dead or not likely to be at the Jedi Academy, and no one would have expected Boba Fett to have a family. Linnara Antilles, on the other hand, definitely had a family before half of them had gone up in a fiery space explosion. So, the old family picture. Apart from her clothes, her books, and her lightsaber, though, there was little else. It all fit into two bags and a belt pouch. She looked around at the room she had occupied for the last nine years; there wasn't much to indicate that anyone had lived there at all.
Well, that was the way it should be. That was the way her father had taught her to be, for both their sakes.
Syra shouldered her bags and opened her mind, reaching out passively with her thoughts to find the locations of everyone in the compound. Most of the students were either asleep or otherwise engaged in nighttime activities… reading, sneaking a snack, talking. Master Skywalker and Mara Jade were talking, and they seemed worried. Possibly about her? It didn't matter. She scrawled a quick note for Master Skywalker, dropped it on her bed, and walked out of the compound.
One of the first things her father had taught her, that her mother had started to, was how not to be seen. People, she had learned, even Jedi could be encouraged to ignore what seemed to them to be perfectly ordinary. She used the technique now, a quiet little voice in the back of everyone's minds that said 'It's okay, I'm supposed to be here, I'm supposed to do this. Don't worry.' In an Imperial base or on a Warlord's ship it might not have worked, but they were used to her presence. She made it out of the compound and a fair distance away before she stopped and set her packs down.
"Tethys…" Syra raised the tiny commlink. She'd never had her mother's talent with machinery, an odd one among the Jedi. Apparently only Anakin had shared it. "Tethys, do you copy?"
An irritable whirr-beep gave her the favorable answer.
"It's time to go, Tethys. Bring the ship around, would you?"
The droid beeped rudely again, but the commlink began to whirr with the sound of engines gearing up. Syra kept walking; she didn't want to risk the ship landing anywhere within sight or hearing of the compound, and some of the trainees had very long range eyes and ears. "Lock on to my signal, I'm heading further out," she told the droid as she walked. It blatted at her, something about the annoyance of having to deal with her changing her mind every five minutes. Syra smiled slightly. It hadn't been the same since … for a long time, but Tethys' temperament was starting to become reassuringly familiar.
She'd barely gotten out of visual range of the compound before the old ship landed softly. The ramp descended, and she made her way up it almost before it had touched the ground. "Something's happened, Tethys," she told the droid as she made her way to the cockpit. "We need to get back to Ceneth. Something's happened to Dad."
Tethys was actually quiet for a couple of minutes before text began to appear on the screen. "How do you know?"
"I can feel it," Syra said wryly. "He's not …" Syra swallowed, thinking of the possibility of being all alone in the universe. "...not yet. But he's tense about something, worried, and the last communication I had from him was roughly an hour and a half ago, and it got cut off about the same time I started hearing blaster fire. Now, I don't know about you, but this doesn't add up to anything good, to me."
"It does sound like trouble. What are you going to do?"
"Well, Dad told me to stay away. So, naturally, I'm going to see if I can bail him out," Syra smiled crookedly, less humor and more self-deprecation.
"That comes from your mother's side of the family," Tethys warbled. "None of you ever learned to leave well enough alone."
"Well, from what I can read between the lines, if my mother had left well enough alone none of us would be here, now would we?" Syra set in the course coordinates. "Prepare to jump to hyperspace on my mark."
Tethys complied, and was silent for a little bit as they cascaded through hyperspace. "Your father and mother both would be proud, you know," the droid said. "You are quite lucky to have the family that you did and still do…"
"Yeah…" Syra smiled slightly, thinking back to one of the few times she and her father and mother had been in the same place at the same time… a long time ago.
* * *
"Hold it steady…" Boba Fett propped up the laser-sighted spear gun in Kashya's hands, even as Cassandra moved to do something similar with the tiny lightsaber in 5 year old Syra's hands. The laser sight had been disabled and Cassandra was blocking their Force abilities; both girls were being made to shoot entirely by eye.
"This is impossible." Kashya grumbled, but they had all gotten used to such grumbles by now. Kashya was resistant to learning anything remotely resembling the combat skills that Boba Fett tried to teach her. She much preferred the more subtle, more passive techniques her mother used, although Fett had found uses for those as well.
"It's not impossible." Boba Fett gave the girls one of his rare smiles, reflected in Cassandra's eyes. "I used to do this when I was half your age."
Both girls stared at the man, unable to imagine their father as a child.
"Keep concentrating," Cassandra gently reminded them, "Think of it this way… you get to eat what you catch. Which means if you don't get anything…"
"Mo-o-om!"
* * *
Syra chuckled. Despite the threat, both girls had been good enough to get enough lake animals to cook for dinner. She had later realized that both parents had accepted this as a matter of course. No child born to them could be otherwise. No child born to both of them could be anything less than intelligent, clever, and physically capable of just about anything. To a certain extent, it was true. Their genetics and their temperments made it so.
Tethys's beeping woke her out of her day-dreaming. "We are coming up on Ceneth," the droid informed her. "Whatever it is you're going to do, you had best prepare to do it now."
"I know, I know," Syra said, unstrapping herself from the pilot's chair and making sure she had all her things within easy reach. Her father had made her leave the more noticeable parts of her armor at home, but she had also been made to take as much of her armor as she could get away with wearing anywhere near the Academy. This meant chestplate, arm bracers, and greaves over her flight suit. She armored up quickly, efficiently, with the movements that had been ingrained in her from the time she was old enough to stick her head in her father's helmet and wander around her mother's compound. She wondered if her father still had the holos around, the embarrassing ones of a little helmet with feet. Her mother had laughed... her father had taught her how to put on and use the armor.
They landed in the rudimentary dock her mother had finally had built, a year after Syra had been born. She stepped onto the platform with a feeling of déjà vu, of emptiness… it wasn't at all how she had expected her homecoming to be. The place seemed to echo, even more lonely than it had been when they had got back after the ill-fated visit to a watery planet on the edge of the Rim. She barely remembered the planet, but she did remember coming home. Even then, it had been coming home to Romy, with her father. She remembered Romy and her father having a huge fight, and she'd gone into her father's ship (the only place she'd felt safe) and hid until it was over. Even then, and every time afterwards, she'd come home to either Romy or her father. Now neither of them were there, and the whole place seemed empty.
"Hi Dad. I'm home," she said as she walked through the door. Her voice didn't raise above a whisper, and it still sounded loud. Syra shook her head slowly, calling upon her father's trademark stoicism. If she didn't, she thought she might break down and cry right there. Without her mother, the droids had mostly fallen into disrepair. Her father had eventually deactivated most of them and put them into storage. Tethys had remained as a sort of rudimentary nanny to Syra, while Domitian had remained to maintain the compound. She didn't know where the old protocol droid was anymore, though. Or, for that matter, where her father was.
His helmet was sitting on a very much burned out comm console, as she'd half-expected. She fell into the chair in front of the console and stared at the screen. "Come on, Dad. Tell me what to do. I've never done this before." She picked up the helmet and turned it around in her hands. It seemed odd, the helmet here and her father… wherever. He was never without his armor, or part of it. Most definitely he was never without his helmet, which had inspired fear in peoples across the galaxy. With a feeling almost of shame or embarrassment she slowly pulled it over her head. It helped a little, both the familiar action of trying on her father's helmet and the familiar scent on it, very masculine, very comforting. The thing actually fit now, almost. Syra started to cry.
"Initiating message sequence," the helmet said in her father's voice, and she yelped. The noise sounded odd when filtered through the voice distortion on the speakers. An image of her father appeared, overlaying the view through the visor. Syra's eyes opened wide, but she didn't dare take the helmet off.
"Syra… if you're watching this, you've done what your mother would have done and came after me anyway. I'm proud of you, preciosa. Your mother would be proud of you as well."
Syra swallowed hard.
"I need you to do several things for me, now, and all of them will be very dangerous. The people who have me at the moment don't know you exist, and it should stay that way. I need you to use the armor and track us. Enlist one person's help if you have to, but only one person. Go to your sources for information, you can even try Dengar if you have to, but don't take anyone with you. You travel fastest when you travel alone." There was a pause. "That Jedi boyfriend of yours would be a good choice."
Syra, too young to hear the tension in her father's voice and ascribe it to old pains, winced as she heard Jacen referred to in such terms.
"I don't know where they're taking us, but I do know it has something to do with clones. Be careful, Syra, and be very strong. A long time ago some people created a clone army from… my DNA. I think they're trying to do it again. Be very careful, because you know what this means."
"It means I could see people who look like you, but aren't you…" Syra whispered. The thought of having to look up and see a whole army of men who looked exactly like her father was... intimidating. The thought of having to fight them...
"Your … talents will help with that. Meet me at these coordinates as soon as you possibly can; I think this is where they're taking me. You've been there before, if you remember. If they haven't taken me there, track me down as fast as you possibly can. Time is not on our side in this, and there might be more at stake here than …" he trailed off, and Syra caught him reasserting the cool veneer that he presented to the world. "than either of us would like."
"I'm proud of you, Syra. Always remember that."
His image winked out of her sight. Syra curled up in the chair and took off the helmet, setting it reverently down on the ruined console and staring into the T-shaped visor that had brought terror and panic to so many, and only brought comfort to her. The sense of abandonment returned as she realized she might never see it on anyone except in a mirror again, and she buried her face in her hands and cried for a little while.
Master Skywalker,
I have to be gone for a little while. My father's in trouble, and I think it's serious trouble this time. Don't worry about me, I'll be okay, we do this all the time. I'll be back when I can.
-- Linnara
"Well, someone's got to go after her," Jaina had said stubbornly. "She needs help." Her tone of voice had suggested an internal debate as to whether the help was psychiatric or martial.
"Master Skywalker said we shouldn't," Jacen had pointed out, more in the way of a perfunctory no-stop-please than as any sort of actual objection. He knew better than to argue with his sister when she got an idea that firmly planted in her head. The twins had been standing around the empty room where Linnara had used to live, and where the note had been found. Unfortunately for the would-be rescuers, it hadn't been found until sometime later that day; they'd all assumed something tragic had happened, and that 'Nara simply wanted her privacy.
"Master Skywalker can go… Mmm. Well, she does need help. And it's not like she's got anyone else. I mean, isn't she practically an orphan? Or she will be, if her father really is in as much trouble as she's implying. And I don't think she has any friends outside the Academy. We're the only ones who can help her."
"We're the only ones who know that she needs help," Jacen had said. "And we can't all go running to the rescue. Someone has to stay behind and explain things to Master Skywalker."
In retrospect, from his vantage point of being ensconced in the tiny shuttle and tapping his fingers impatiently on the console, Jacen wondered what the hell he and his sister could have been thinking. This was an extremely ill-advised plan, probably suicide, and they didn't even have a clue where Linnara had been from anyway. She'd never talked much about her past, which had only convinced Jaina further when Jacen had brought it up that the girl needed their help. Unfortunately it had been Jacen who had ended up going to find help, being the only one with something resembling a plan.
A damn stupid plan, the boy thought to himself. This is never going to work. Dad's going to kill me, he mused wryly. If Mom doesn't first.
Jaina had talked about a pilot, not in Rogue Squadron but in Wraith, that had had an extreme talent for identifying people by their movements, or their speech. It took him a while and some fast talking around Wedge, and he didn't think the older man believed his story about being a big fan of Garik Loran anyway, but he managed to get an idea of where he could find the pilot. Fortunately for Jacen's sanity they were on leave, not on maneuvers. Even better, they were on leave in the upper levels of Coruscant, where Jacen could visit with relative impunity. He landed the Headhunter amidst the squadron of X-Wings, feeling distinctly out of place and out of his league.
"You wanted to talk to me?" A voice said from directly behind him, causing Jacen to jump and spin and barely suppress a yelp. He'd been so preoccupied with the insanity of what he was doing that he'd completely failed to notice that Loran had been waiting in the hanger. Stupid. Real stupid. Real good way to get yourself killed, if you're going into what I think you're going into.
"Yeah…" Jacen said, once he got his heart to stop pounding. "I need your... ability to read people. To figure out where they're from. I've got a friend who's in trouble… Only I don't know where she's from."
Loran arched an eyebrow. "City?"
"Planet."
"Planet." Loran thought this over. "What system?"
"I don't know that either," Jacen admitted.
"You don't know where she's from… what's her name?"
"Linnara Antilles."
"Hmmm." Loran shook his head slowly. "So you're going to help this kid you've become friends with. Only you don't know where she's from, or even what system she's from… do you know what species she is?"
"Human," Jacen said acerbically. "I know, I know, it's stupid."
"Damn right it's stupid. I suppose that's why I'm helping you. All right, show me what you've got."
Jacen displayed the footage he'd managed to cobble together. It wasn't much, Linnara had (intentionally, he saw with hindsight) avoided being recorded in just about any fashion, even in play. But there had been times, such as birthday parties or late-night adventures, when she hadn't been able to avoid the camera. Voice recordings were easier. Loran frowned. "It's almost so obscure even I can't place it. That system's out … practically beyond the Rim, she really is from the back end of nowhere, isn't she?"
Jacen hadn't noticed, but he wasn't about to say that to the Wraith pilot and give him even more of an excuse to be sarcastic. Jokes about his uncle's former farmboy status always flew thick and fast, given half an opportunity. "I guess so."
"She's picked up some mannerisms from all over the place, though… I don't know how she would have gotten off-planet before you guys. Most of the population of that planet is barely space-flight capable, much less hyperspace-capable."
"So you know where she's from, then," Jacen said, trying not to sound impatient.
"A little planet called Cenath… if you dig, I'd bet you can find the coordinates." Jacen was already climbing back aboard his ship. "You're welcome," Loran called up.
"Thanks!" Jacen called back before the canopy closed. "I think," he muttered as he maneuvered off planet. This is such a mistake. Master Skywalker's going to kill me. If Dad or Mom doesn't get to me first…
"Speak for yourself," she mumbled absently.
"Fly with Rogue Squadron, I mean," Jaina bopped her friend on the head with a pillow, and 'Nara made an 'ackpth' noise. "When do you think Master Luke and Wedge will let us?"
"I'd rather have my own ship," Linnara flopped sideways, not really thinking about what she was saying. "Maybe a light cruiser. Something fast, sleek… something like my father's ship, maybe." At least she had the presence of mind not to go into detail on what kind of weapons systems she wanted.
Tenel Ka flopped over as well, staring nose to nose with Linnara. "Speaking of your father, how's he doing? And when's he going to visit the Academy?"
'Nara snapped awake, although she was careful to give no sign of her alertness either in the Force or in her face. One of the best things she reckoned that Academy life had taught her was how to conceal her emotions in every sense. "Don't know. Whenever his business interests take him this way, I suppose. He's been really busy, and I don't think he's planning on retiring anytime soon, even though he really could any time he wanted to… he just wouldn't know what to do with himself if he did, though." She didn't bother concealing the smile that the thought brought to her face. Boba Fett, retiring. No one would believe it even if it was true.
"What did he do before you came to the Academy? Didn't he used to take you with him?"
Laser light and fire. Explosions. Her mother, always a comforting presence, suddenly gone.
"Sometimes."
Tenel Ka exchanged a look with Jaina that 'Nara barely caught, a look of sympathy and compassion. They reached out for each other's hands at the same time, shared a brief moment of bonding through the Force. Linnara held back, and the other two didn't ask why, presuming it was something to do with her mother. She'd never spoken much about the woman, but everyone at the Academy could sense the bond Linnara's family, or what remained of them, shared. The bond, and the gaping hurt that her mother's death had left.
"So, what do you think of the new exercise Master Skywalker has planned?"
Linnara opened her mouth to respond to the blatant change of subject, but there was a knock on the door. All three girls turned to the door, then exchanged a grin. "You speak, he appears." She opened the door. "Master Skywalker?"
The Jed Master's face was grim. "Linnara, you're father's on the comm. I think it's urgent."
All three girls looked up at him with varying expressions of trepidation and nervousness. Linnara endured a brief moment of panic before she realized that the grim expression on Master Skywalker's face was not, in fact, due to him having discovered a bounty hunter's daughter among his students. "Oh… um… thanks, Master Skywalker…" she said slowly, right before she pelted out of the room and down the hall so fast Jaina would have sworn she saw her uncle's robes flap.
Linnara/Syra skidded to a halt in the comm room, taking several deep breaths as she paused on the threshold. She had to be extra careful here; she couldn't reveal the kind of nervousness she felt at an urgent call from her father. Granted, it was probably serious, and a little worry was perfectly reasonable… but a trader or even a smuggler encountered much different and much less dangers than a bounty hunter did. She calmed herself and walked over to the one comm unit that was lit, activating the privacy shield and darkening it just in case her father was suited up.
"Dad?"
"Syra…" In that moment, she was suddenly glad she'd gotten into the habit of the sound-proof privacy shield. "Something's happened. Something to do with the Imperials, I'm not sure what yet but I'm going to find out."
When Boba Fett said he was going to find something out in that tone of voice, it was going to be found out, come Imps or inferno. Syra nodded. "Do you need backup? I could get out of here if you really needed me…" It sounded childish but she had to make the offer...
Her father shook his head. "Stay there. You'll be safer there than you would with me." He looked at something away from the range of the camera, and suddenly Syra was afraid. She could feel him growing tense (he never got nervous, just tense) and watched him reach for what looked like his helmet. "Be careful, Syra. Something's happening, someone's taking more notice of me than either of us should like."
"Who… who's taking notice of us?" she accentuated the 'us' ever so slightly. He hadn't specified that whoever it was knew about her, but she was going to assume it just in case. "Dad, what's going on?"
"I don't know yet," he told her tersely, fiddling with something in his helmet. "It has something to do with Admiral Pellaeon…" He looked off-screen again, and in the midst of the flash of familiar consoles and comm units, suddenly Syra realized where he was. Cenath. Her mother's home.
"Dad… why are you…"
"Whatever you do, Syra, don't follow me. Don't try to track me. I think that's what they want. Remember what I taught you, preciosa, don't…" The screen began to fade. In the background she thought she heard someone saying 'We don't have time for this,' and then the screen went to static entirely.
"Dad…" Cold fear clenched her heart; she drove it back. "Dad, talk to me. Don't have time for what?" She fiddled with buttons, increasing the power to the receivers and boosting the signal. "Dad… don't do this to me. You know better than to pull a stunt like this on me."
"Dad… talk to me? What's going on? Why are you … who's with you?"
"Dad? Please?"
"Dad?"
Syra pounded down the hallway to her room, all pretense and false identity gone in favor of hiding from all the Jedi and apprentices in the compound long enough to get packed and get out of there. Her time with the Jedi had been productively spent… well, productively enough… but now they were getting into exercises and philosophies that were designed to train her to become a Jedi, which was something she had no interest in becoming. She would be a bounty hunter like her father and as formidable as her father and, as useful as Master Skywalker was, he was still an inferior teacher when it came to achieving that goal. She'd been contemplating disappearing from the Academy for a while, and had been thinking and exchanging ideas with her father about how they could manage it. The conversation they'd just had only hastened her departure.
She skidded into her room, disappearing into her closets and sending a flurry of bags flying out behind her. A few seconds later, jumpsuits and flightsuits started piling up on one of them. She had learned packing from her father, although it was more disorganized than he'd ever liked it. She'd learned efficiency from him, it just didn't look soldier-neat. But she had managed to get her departure preparation time to thirty minutes, which was good enough. Time and accuracy and haste was all that mattered. Getting out quickly with everything you needed to survive. It had been drilled into her.
Her room was relatively bare of decoration. A few pictures of her father, one of the entire family when she had been very young, these were the only personal touches she kept out, primarily to alleviate questions as to why she didn't get close to anyone. The family picture and most of the pictures of her father were safe. The only people who knew what he looked like underneath the helmet were dead or not likely to be at the Jedi Academy, and no one would have expected Boba Fett to have a family. Linnara Antilles, on the other hand, definitely had a family before half of them had gone up in a fiery space explosion. So, the old family picture. Apart from her clothes, her books, and her lightsaber, though, there was little else. It all fit into two bags and a belt pouch. She looked around at the room she had occupied for the last nine years; there wasn't much to indicate that anyone had lived there at all.
Well, that was the way it should be. That was the way her father had taught her to be, for both their sakes.
Syra shouldered her bags and opened her mind, reaching out passively with her thoughts to find the locations of everyone in the compound. Most of the students were either asleep or otherwise engaged in nighttime activities… reading, sneaking a snack, talking. Master Skywalker and Mara Jade were talking, and they seemed worried. Possibly about her? It didn't matter. She scrawled a quick note for Master Skywalker, dropped it on her bed, and walked out of the compound.
One of the first things her father had taught her, that her mother had started to, was how not to be seen. People, she had learned, even Jedi could be encouraged to ignore what seemed to them to be perfectly ordinary. She used the technique now, a quiet little voice in the back of everyone's minds that said 'It's okay, I'm supposed to be here, I'm supposed to do this. Don't worry.' In an Imperial base or on a Warlord's ship it might not have worked, but they were used to her presence. She made it out of the compound and a fair distance away before she stopped and set her packs down.
"Tethys…" Syra raised the tiny commlink. She'd never had her mother's talent with machinery, an odd one among the Jedi. Apparently only Anakin had shared it. "Tethys, do you copy?"
An irritable whirr-beep gave her the favorable answer.
"It's time to go, Tethys. Bring the ship around, would you?"
The droid beeped rudely again, but the commlink began to whirr with the sound of engines gearing up. Syra kept walking; she didn't want to risk the ship landing anywhere within sight or hearing of the compound, and some of the trainees had very long range eyes and ears. "Lock on to my signal, I'm heading further out," she told the droid as she walked. It blatted at her, something about the annoyance of having to deal with her changing her mind every five minutes. Syra smiled slightly. It hadn't been the same since … for a long time, but Tethys' temperament was starting to become reassuringly familiar.
She'd barely gotten out of visual range of the compound before the old ship landed softly. The ramp descended, and she made her way up it almost before it had touched the ground. "Something's happened, Tethys," she told the droid as she made her way to the cockpit. "We need to get back to Ceneth. Something's happened to Dad."
Tethys was actually quiet for a couple of minutes before text began to appear on the screen. "How do you know?"
"I can feel it," Syra said wryly. "He's not …" Syra swallowed, thinking of the possibility of being all alone in the universe. "...not yet. But he's tense about something, worried, and the last communication I had from him was roughly an hour and a half ago, and it got cut off about the same time I started hearing blaster fire. Now, I don't know about you, but this doesn't add up to anything good, to me."
"It does sound like trouble. What are you going to do?"
"Well, Dad told me to stay away. So, naturally, I'm going to see if I can bail him out," Syra smiled crookedly, less humor and more self-deprecation.
"That comes from your mother's side of the family," Tethys warbled. "None of you ever learned to leave well enough alone."
"Well, from what I can read between the lines, if my mother had left well enough alone none of us would be here, now would we?" Syra set in the course coordinates. "Prepare to jump to hyperspace on my mark."
Tethys complied, and was silent for a little bit as they cascaded through hyperspace. "Your father and mother both would be proud, you know," the droid said. "You are quite lucky to have the family that you did and still do…"
"Yeah…" Syra smiled slightly, thinking back to one of the few times she and her father and mother had been in the same place at the same time… a long time ago.
* * *
"Hold it steady…" Boba Fett propped up the laser-sighted spear gun in Kashya's hands, even as Cassandra moved to do something similar with the tiny lightsaber in 5 year old Syra's hands. The laser sight had been disabled and Cassandra was blocking their Force abilities; both girls were being made to shoot entirely by eye.
"This is impossible." Kashya grumbled, but they had all gotten used to such grumbles by now. Kashya was resistant to learning anything remotely resembling the combat skills that Boba Fett tried to teach her. She much preferred the more subtle, more passive techniques her mother used, although Fett had found uses for those as well.
"It's not impossible." Boba Fett gave the girls one of his rare smiles, reflected in Cassandra's eyes. "I used to do this when I was half your age."
Both girls stared at the man, unable to imagine their father as a child.
"Keep concentrating," Cassandra gently reminded them, "Think of it this way… you get to eat what you catch. Which means if you don't get anything…"
"Mo-o-om!"
* * *
Syra chuckled. Despite the threat, both girls had been good enough to get enough lake animals to cook for dinner. She had later realized that both parents had accepted this as a matter of course. No child born to them could be otherwise. No child born to both of them could be anything less than intelligent, clever, and physically capable of just about anything. To a certain extent, it was true. Their genetics and their temperments made it so.
Tethys's beeping woke her out of her day-dreaming. "We are coming up on Ceneth," the droid informed her. "Whatever it is you're going to do, you had best prepare to do it now."
"I know, I know," Syra said, unstrapping herself from the pilot's chair and making sure she had all her things within easy reach. Her father had made her leave the more noticeable parts of her armor at home, but she had also been made to take as much of her armor as she could get away with wearing anywhere near the Academy. This meant chestplate, arm bracers, and greaves over her flight suit. She armored up quickly, efficiently, with the movements that had been ingrained in her from the time she was old enough to stick her head in her father's helmet and wander around her mother's compound. She wondered if her father still had the holos around, the embarrassing ones of a little helmet with feet. Her mother had laughed... her father had taught her how to put on and use the armor.
They landed in the rudimentary dock her mother had finally had built, a year after Syra had been born. She stepped onto the platform with a feeling of déjà vu, of emptiness… it wasn't at all how she had expected her homecoming to be. The place seemed to echo, even more lonely than it had been when they had got back after the ill-fated visit to a watery planet on the edge of the Rim. She barely remembered the planet, but she did remember coming home. Even then, it had been coming home to Romy, with her father. She remembered Romy and her father having a huge fight, and she'd gone into her father's ship (the only place she'd felt safe) and hid until it was over. Even then, and every time afterwards, she'd come home to either Romy or her father. Now neither of them were there, and the whole place seemed empty.
"Hi Dad. I'm home," she said as she walked through the door. Her voice didn't raise above a whisper, and it still sounded loud. Syra shook her head slowly, calling upon her father's trademark stoicism. If she didn't, she thought she might break down and cry right there. Without her mother, the droids had mostly fallen into disrepair. Her father had eventually deactivated most of them and put them into storage. Tethys had remained as a sort of rudimentary nanny to Syra, while Domitian had remained to maintain the compound. She didn't know where the old protocol droid was anymore, though. Or, for that matter, where her father was.
His helmet was sitting on a very much burned out comm console, as she'd half-expected. She fell into the chair in front of the console and stared at the screen. "Come on, Dad. Tell me what to do. I've never done this before." She picked up the helmet and turned it around in her hands. It seemed odd, the helmet here and her father… wherever. He was never without his armor, or part of it. Most definitely he was never without his helmet, which had inspired fear in peoples across the galaxy. With a feeling almost of shame or embarrassment she slowly pulled it over her head. It helped a little, both the familiar action of trying on her father's helmet and the familiar scent on it, very masculine, very comforting. The thing actually fit now, almost. Syra started to cry.
"Initiating message sequence," the helmet said in her father's voice, and she yelped. The noise sounded odd when filtered through the voice distortion on the speakers. An image of her father appeared, overlaying the view through the visor. Syra's eyes opened wide, but she didn't dare take the helmet off.
"Syra… if you're watching this, you've done what your mother would have done and came after me anyway. I'm proud of you, preciosa. Your mother would be proud of you as well."
Syra swallowed hard.
"I need you to do several things for me, now, and all of them will be very dangerous. The people who have me at the moment don't know you exist, and it should stay that way. I need you to use the armor and track us. Enlist one person's help if you have to, but only one person. Go to your sources for information, you can even try Dengar if you have to, but don't take anyone with you. You travel fastest when you travel alone." There was a pause. "That Jedi boyfriend of yours would be a good choice."
Syra, too young to hear the tension in her father's voice and ascribe it to old pains, winced as she heard Jacen referred to in such terms.
"I don't know where they're taking us, but I do know it has something to do with clones. Be careful, Syra, and be very strong. A long time ago some people created a clone army from… my DNA. I think they're trying to do it again. Be very careful, because you know what this means."
"It means I could see people who look like you, but aren't you…" Syra whispered. The thought of having to look up and see a whole army of men who looked exactly like her father was... intimidating. The thought of having to fight them...
"Your … talents will help with that. Meet me at these coordinates as soon as you possibly can; I think this is where they're taking me. You've been there before, if you remember. If they haven't taken me there, track me down as fast as you possibly can. Time is not on our side in this, and there might be more at stake here than …" he trailed off, and Syra caught him reasserting the cool veneer that he presented to the world. "than either of us would like."
"I'm proud of you, Syra. Always remember that."
His image winked out of her sight. Syra curled up in the chair and took off the helmet, setting it reverently down on the ruined console and staring into the T-shaped visor that had brought terror and panic to so many, and only brought comfort to her. The sense of abandonment returned as she realized she might never see it on anyone except in a mirror again, and she buried her face in her hands and cried for a little while.
Master Skywalker,
I have to be gone for a little while. My father's in trouble, and I think it's serious trouble this time. Don't worry about me, I'll be okay, we do this all the time. I'll be back when I can.
-- Linnara
"Well, someone's got to go after her," Jaina had said stubbornly. "She needs help." Her tone of voice had suggested an internal debate as to whether the help was psychiatric or martial.
"Master Skywalker said we shouldn't," Jacen had pointed out, more in the way of a perfunctory no-stop-please than as any sort of actual objection. He knew better than to argue with his sister when she got an idea that firmly planted in her head. The twins had been standing around the empty room where Linnara had used to live, and where the note had been found. Unfortunately for the would-be rescuers, it hadn't been found until sometime later that day; they'd all assumed something tragic had happened, and that 'Nara simply wanted her privacy.
"Master Skywalker can go… Mmm. Well, she does need help. And it's not like she's got anyone else. I mean, isn't she practically an orphan? Or she will be, if her father really is in as much trouble as she's implying. And I don't think she has any friends outside the Academy. We're the only ones who can help her."
"We're the only ones who know that she needs help," Jacen had said. "And we can't all go running to the rescue. Someone has to stay behind and explain things to Master Skywalker."
In retrospect, from his vantage point of being ensconced in the tiny shuttle and tapping his fingers impatiently on the console, Jacen wondered what the hell he and his sister could have been thinking. This was an extremely ill-advised plan, probably suicide, and they didn't even have a clue where Linnara had been from anyway. She'd never talked much about her past, which had only convinced Jaina further when Jacen had brought it up that the girl needed their help. Unfortunately it had been Jacen who had ended up going to find help, being the only one with something resembling a plan.
A damn stupid plan, the boy thought to himself. This is never going to work. Dad's going to kill me, he mused wryly. If Mom doesn't first.
Jaina had talked about a pilot, not in Rogue Squadron but in Wraith, that had had an extreme talent for identifying people by their movements, or their speech. It took him a while and some fast talking around Wedge, and he didn't think the older man believed his story about being a big fan of Garik Loran anyway, but he managed to get an idea of where he could find the pilot. Fortunately for Jacen's sanity they were on leave, not on maneuvers. Even better, they were on leave in the upper levels of Coruscant, where Jacen could visit with relative impunity. He landed the Headhunter amidst the squadron of X-Wings, feeling distinctly out of place and out of his league.
"You wanted to talk to me?" A voice said from directly behind him, causing Jacen to jump and spin and barely suppress a yelp. He'd been so preoccupied with the insanity of what he was doing that he'd completely failed to notice that Loran had been waiting in the hanger. Stupid. Real stupid. Real good way to get yourself killed, if you're going into what I think you're going into.
"Yeah…" Jacen said, once he got his heart to stop pounding. "I need your... ability to read people. To figure out where they're from. I've got a friend who's in trouble… Only I don't know where she's from."
Loran arched an eyebrow. "City?"
"Planet."
"Planet." Loran thought this over. "What system?"
"I don't know that either," Jacen admitted.
"You don't know where she's from… what's her name?"
"Linnara Antilles."
"Hmmm." Loran shook his head slowly. "So you're going to help this kid you've become friends with. Only you don't know where she's from, or even what system she's from… do you know what species she is?"
"Human," Jacen said acerbically. "I know, I know, it's stupid."
"Damn right it's stupid. I suppose that's why I'm helping you. All right, show me what you've got."
Jacen displayed the footage he'd managed to cobble together. It wasn't much, Linnara had (intentionally, he saw with hindsight) avoided being recorded in just about any fashion, even in play. But there had been times, such as birthday parties or late-night adventures, when she hadn't been able to avoid the camera. Voice recordings were easier. Loran frowned. "It's almost so obscure even I can't place it. That system's out … practically beyond the Rim, she really is from the back end of nowhere, isn't she?"
Jacen hadn't noticed, but he wasn't about to say that to the Wraith pilot and give him even more of an excuse to be sarcastic. Jokes about his uncle's former farmboy status always flew thick and fast, given half an opportunity. "I guess so."
"She's picked up some mannerisms from all over the place, though… I don't know how she would have gotten off-planet before you guys. Most of the population of that planet is barely space-flight capable, much less hyperspace-capable."
"So you know where she's from, then," Jacen said, trying not to sound impatient.
"A little planet called Cenath… if you dig, I'd bet you can find the coordinates." Jacen was already climbing back aboard his ship. "You're welcome," Loran called up.
"Thanks!" Jacen called back before the canopy closed. "I think," he muttered as he maneuvered off planet. This is such a mistake. Master Skywalker's going to kill me. If Dad or Mom doesn't get to me first…