Chapter One:
Blaster bolts whizzed past his head.
Moving nimbly on the balls of his feet, Kyp Durron dodged the blaster fire, keeping his gaze trained on the man firing wildly at him over his shoulder.
Didn't criminals ever think maybe it was smarter to just run rather than to slow themselves down by shooting?
Of course, if they had any intelligence at all, they wouldn't get into these messes in the first place. They would find a better way to make a living, an honest living. That, or they would perfect their skills so that they never got caught.
"Hey, watch it!" someone cried up ahead, as the thief rounded the corner into the busy street.
By the time that Kyp turned the corner after him, the thief had disappeared into the crowd, but that didn't matter.
Kyp had been tracking him in the Force from the start.
"Excuse me," he called, weaving his way through the bustling market crowd and using the Force to gently nudge people out of his path. A few people shot his disgruntled looks, opening their mouths to give him a piece of their mind, but he just waved them aside, stating, "Jedi business" as his excuse while he hurried past.
Those were the magic words, of course, for even though Bakura was on the outskirts of the Outer Rim, the rank of a Jedi Knight still held a great deal of weight.
Shoppers parted to make room for him, the market venders gruffly snapped at their customers to get out of the way for "the Jedi", and children scrambled around their exasperated parents to get a glimpse of a real live Jedi Knight in action.
You'd think they'd never seen a Jedi at work before, Kyp thought wryly.
He'd been assigned to the Bakura System five years ago, after being transferred from Dantooine where he'd begun his first tenure in the field after reaching Knighthood, and he still had mixed feeling about the assignment.
It was better than being stuck on that backwater world, of course, but life on Bakura was far from exciting.
Other Jedi, with more coveted assignments like the Corellian Sector, had their hands full dealing with smugglers and pirates and border disputes. And those lucky enough to land security detail for the Skywalker family were always busy thwarting assassination attempts.
Days like today, when a bold thief got caught, were good days for a Jedi on Bakura.
But Kyp wanted more.
"A Jedi does not hunger for adventure, Padawan. A Jedi is content to follow the Force and go where it takes him."
Valin Halcyon was a wise man, but Kyp saw through his former Master.
Before taking on an apprentice, Valin had been assigned to his homeworld of Corellia, and during his apprenticeship to Master Halcyon, Kyp had heard the longing for action in his Master's voice. Valin could deny it all he wanted, but the day that Kyp had passed his trials and been knighted had been a cause for double the celebration.
Two days after Kyp shipped out to Dantooine for his first assignment, Valin got himself transferred back out to Corellia.
Lucky karshka.
Kyp didn't begrudge his Master for it, though, he knew that Valin had worked hard to earn that assignment in the first place all those years ago, and if he did the same someday he would receive an assignment just as good.
Maybe he would even take his Master's place on Corellia when retirement called to Valin.
Kyp Durron, Jedi Protector of Corellia…
He liked the sound of that.
Caught up in his thoughts, Kyp barely noticed the hair on the back of his neck bristling as he burst out onto another street, but the Force was paying attention even if he wasn't.
It guided him into a spring jump, vaulting onto the hood of the speeder that nearly plowed into him and, ignoring the startled curse from its driver, Kyp pushed off the speeder to leap up three meters onto the rooftop of the nearest building.
Gotta quit the daydreaming while on duty, an inner voice that sounded suspiciously like his old Master chided Kyp as he ran lightly across the roof, clearing the gap between this building and the next without breaking stride. The Force had been directing his feet the entire time he was lost in his thoughts, and he knew without a doubt that the thief was only a few blocks away, on the streets below.
Pressing himself faster, Kyp counted the seconds mentally, listening to the Force.
Now.
He threw himself off of the roof and tucked his body as he flipped down to land in the middle of the street, directly in front of the fleeing thief.
Startled by his sudden appearance, the poor thief cried out and dropped his blaster.
Kyp smirked, using the Force to call the blaster into his hand. "Don't you hate it when that happens?" he drawled, tucking the blaster into his belt.
Pale, but recovering his nerves, the thief put up his fists, as if his brain was actually telling him it was a good plan to try and fight a Jedi in hand-to-hand combat.
"Please don't be stupid," Kyp implored flatly. "For your own sake."
The thief's eyes, wild and panicked, darted from Kyp's blank, serious face to the hilt of his lightsaber, which was affixed to his belt next to the blaster he'd confiscated, and after a few seconds reason seemed to finally catch up with him again.
"See, I knew you were smart," Kyp said as the thief lowered his arms in defeat.
He took his comm-link from his belt and called the Planetary Security Department to let them know that he'd apprehended their guy. For once, security got there in a timely fashion, and within ten minutes he was relinquishing the thief into their custody.
"You guys got here quick this time," Kyp observed as they fitted the thief with stuncuffs.
"We were in the area," the officer explained. "There's been a landing breach on the outskirts of the city. Balidin wants your help on this one."
"A breach?" Kyp echoed with a frown.
"Yeah, Control tracked an unauthorized entry, an escape pod from the looks of it. It didn't respond to their hails. They sent a few of their boys out there to take a look, but they've lost contact with the scouting team."
"Interesting," Kyp murmured. "What are the coordinates?"
The officer handed him a datapad and then helped his partner load the thief into the Security landspeeder they'd arrived in. "Thanks for nabbing this guy for us, Jedi Durron. Good luck with the landing breach mess. Balidin should be sending soldiers down to assist you, but if you need anything, you have our comm-frequency."
"I'm sure it's nothing," Kyp replied. "But I'll let you know if it's not."
He borrowed a swoop-bike from a market vendor whose little boy he'd found when the kid wandered off the week before during a storm, and headed out in the direction the security officers had indicated.
As he approached the landing site, his senses came alive, tingling vibrantly.
This was no ordinary case of an unauthorized landing, of that much he was certain, though he could not say why.
Something big was on the horizon, something important.
And it all started here, at the crash.
The escape pod was in the center of an open field near the edge of the D'aar Forest, thoroughly embedded in the dirt from what looked like a hairy landing.
Half a dozen uniformed Bakuran soldiers lay sprawled in the grass around the pod.
Kyp dismounted from the swoop and started toward the escape pod slowly, unease sinking deeper into his chest with each step closer to the pod. He knelt beside the first soldier, his eyes keeping a sharp watch on the pod, and was relieved to find a pulse.
Just unconscious, then.
A light probe with the Force proved the others to be in the same condition.
He started to rise to his feet, when he suddenly felt a stirring in the Force, and his senses flared in warning, but it was too late to react.
A presence moved up behind him from nowhere.
And then he heard the familiar crack-hiss of a lightsaber igniting, and found a violet blade at his throat.
"Don't move," a female voice hissed in his ear.
Her head was pounding.
It felt like a hydrospanner was banging around in her skull.
The escape pod's flight controls had been fried by laser fire from the Z-9 Headhunters attacking the Sky Blazer, and the ride down through Bakura's atmosphere had been almost as rough as the landing.
There was a chance she had a concussion, but she was holding it at bay with the Force.
She needed to stay conscious, and lucid, until help arrived. The escape pod's homing beacon had been activated, and she knew that as soon as the Temple received the distress call a rescue team would be dispatched to find her, so she needed to be coherent when they got there.
Maybe her brothers would be part of the rescue team; it had been a few months since she'd seen either of them.
Maybe her grandfather would even come himself.
Force only knew he was probably driving the entire Temple crazy right about now.
Don't worry, Grandfather, she thought, willing the feelings behind the words to reach out across the galaxy and find him on Ossus. I'm okay.
Wincing, she touched her fingers to the right side of her face, where blood was trickling from a gash at her temple.
Mostly okay anyway, she amended.
What she wouldn't give for a med-kit and a few bacta strips, though.
It was unfortunate that none of the soldiers that had come to investigate the crash site of her escape pod had brought emergency supplies. She'd checked their transport after rendering them unconscious with the Force, but it was empty, so she'd moved the transport into the trees of the forest, in case she needed it for a quick escape.
She felt bad for having to knock them out, of course, but it was necessary.
They would be fine when they woke up, and sooner or later someone would come looking for them, hopefully after a rescue team had come to collect her.
A distant sound caught her attention and, as she placed it, she groaned.
The Force just wasn't on her side today.
Pressing herself closer to the trunk of the tree she was standing behind, she peered out into the field and watched as a swoop-bike arrived on the scene, with a dark-haired man sitting astride.
Just one, she observed, with some relief.
The man got off the swoop and began to walk toward the escape pod, but then he noticed the soldiers lying scattered about and turned his attention to them. As he knelt beside the nearest man, she slipped silently out from behind the trees, her hand going to the hilt of her lightsaber.
He was keeping his gaze trained on the escape pod, perhaps correctly anticipating an attack.
Only he was looking in the wrong direction.
As she silently slid up behind him, her senses tingled, and she felt a small stirring in the Force. He was Force-sensitive, she realized with faint surprise, although it was hard to say if he was aware of that or not.
Either way, she wasn't about to let her guard down.
With her thumb, she ignited her weapon and the violet blade leapt to life at the man's throat, catching him by surprise. "Don't move," she advised.
The man stayed still, but shifted his chin up slightly to angle his throat away from her blade.
"There's really no need for that," he said evenly, with a surprising amount of calm for a man who had a lightsaber to his throat. "I'm no threat to you, I promise you that."
Despite herself, she smiled, albeit in mirth. "I never thought that you were."
After all, she was the one with the lightsaber.
"You're a Jedi."
It was an observation, not a question, one that he made as simply as if commenting on the weather.
"Maybe I killed a Jedi and took the weapon," she responded.
"Not likely."
Was it her imagination, or did she detect a hint of amusement in his voice now?
Irritated, she pressed the lightsaber closer to his throat, reminding him that he wasn't in any position to be pushing her buttons. "And what would you know about it?"
The man's right hand moved and she grabbed his arm with her free hand.
"Look," he said gently, patiently, and pulled back the outer layer of his tunic, to reveal a silver utility belt.
And clipped on it was a metallic cylinder.
A lightsaber.
"My name is Kyp Durron," the man said. "My Master was Valin Halcyon."
"Halcyon?" she echoed. "As in Neeja Halcyon?"
The man, Durron, nodded as best as he could with her blade still at his throat. "Valin is his son."
That was right, the Council member did have a son, if she recalled correctly.
And a grandson and great-grandchildren.
Valyn Terrik-Halcyon had been a classmate of her younger brother at the Temple, and there was a girl, Jysella, who was in the crèche at the time of her cousin Ben's birth. Their father, Corran, must have been this other Valin's son.
"If you don't believe me," Durron suggested. "Then use the Force."
He was right, of course, and she would have been embarrassed that she hadn't already done so if she wasn't irritated by the hint of smugness she detected from him.
A simple brush with the Force against his mind confirmed his claim was true.
He was a Jedi.
"Feel like moving that lightsaber any time soon?" Durron drawled. "Or are you still planning to cut off my head?"
She flushed despite herself, quickly removing her blade and extinguishing it.
Durron straightened, turning around, and she got her first good look at him, leaving her pleasantly surprised. He was of average height, which meant he practically towered over her, and lean, wiry muscularity that was visible beneath his tunic. His face was handsome and sharp, with chiseled features that reminded her somewhat of Ganner Rhysode, whom she'd had a bit of a crush on in her younger days.
What really grabbed her attention, though, were his eyes.
Veiled by the dark strands of hair falling across his face, he had the most startlingly intense emerald eyes that she had ever seen.
The kind of eyes a girl could get lost in, as Tahiri would say.
"I agree," Durron said with an arrogant little smirk. "My head is too pretty to be cut off."
For the second time, she flushed, but it was more in anger than embarrassment. Anger at him, for being so presumptuous, and anger at herself for actually falling into a daze looking at the pompous jerk.
"What's your name?" Durron asked, flashing her a smile that she was certain usually charmed every female in his proximity, making them feel weak in the knees.
Well, it certainly didn't have any affect on her.
None whatsoever.
"I'm Jaina," she said at last, clipping her lightsaber to her belt.
"Jaina," Durron repeated, with a curious expression, as if he were trying to place it. She mentally counted the seconds it would take until... "As in Jaina Skywalker Solo?"
"That would be me, yes," she confirmed smoothly, with an unkind smile.
"I... you don't..." he trailed off, face pale and horrified, hurriedly kneeling in front of her. "Forgive me, Your Highness, I did not know you."
The smile faded from Jaina's lips and she sighed. "Get off your knee, you nerf-herder."
Durron straightened, but his face was expressionless so she could not decipher what he was thinking. It was probably for the best, of course, because if he was thinking any thoughts that even remotely alluded to the idea that she was helpless or needed protecting simply because her grandfather was the king of the Jedi, then so help her she would have to mar his pretty face with the blunt end of her lightsaber.
"Stop staring at me," she snapped irritably.
Durron quirked an eyebrow. "Is that a royal order?"
Jaina narrowed her eyes sharply. "Do I need to make it one?" she demanded.
He actually had the nerve to smirk, and Jaina fought the rising urge to wipe that infuriating smirk right off of his face by force. "My apologies, Princess," Durron said, and she doubted there was even a drop of sincerity behind those words. "I was merely captivated by your beauty."
"Save the sweet-talk for someone weak-minded," Jaina retorted, unfazed. "I've heard better."
Ganner Rhysode, an old flame of hers, had been particularly gifted with the charm.
"I'm sure you have," Durron agreed, and his eyes lingered over her just a little bit too long for her tastes, before he finally became serious. "How did you end up on Bakura?"
"I was en route to Csilla on a diplomatic mission," Jaina replied grimly. "My grandfather sent me to meet with Lord Thrawn, but my convoy came under attack just outside of Wild Space. It was an ambush, with at least three dozen Z-9 Headhunters."
"Pirates," Durron muttered in disgust. "We've heard some reports of activity in the next sector. I guess they finally started in this way."
He sounded intrigued by the prospect of pirates in his territory, and she supposed he didn't get much excitement out here in the middle of nowhere.
"That's what Master Fekt thought," Jaina said flatly.
Durron frowned. "You sound like you think he was wrong," he observed.
Jaina shrugged, not willing to divulge anything else on the matter, at least not yet. Jedi or not, she had just met this Kyp Durron, and she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to confide in him.
"Uncle Luke thinks we might have spies in our ranks..."
Her brother Jacen's words still gnawed at the back of her mind, and in light of what had happened to her convoy, she was taking her uncle's suspicions to heart. She highly doubted that Durron was a spy, he hadn't even recognized her, but there was the off chance that he was just a talented actor.
Either way, she would find out who was responsible, and they would suffer the consequences.
The crew of the Sky Blazer had consisted of a handful of Jedi pilots and technicians, whom she hadn't known that well, but she still mourned for them. Fesk, a Master appointed to this mission by her grandfather's Advisory Council, had been the one to get her to safety.
And Bashkar, her Noghri bodyguard, had taken one of the decoy escape pods to draw enemy fire away from her.
He had looked after her since she was just a toddler, and unless there was some kind of miracle, he was dead. The display console in her escape pod had tracked the other eleven pods, and she'd watched them shot down one by one.
"Why did the king send you?" Durron asked.
Startled, Jaina blinked back her reverie and looked up at him, mentally wishing he was shorter. "What?"
"Why did the king send you to meet with Thrawn," Durron repeated, this time clarifying his question. "Instead of a member of his Council, like Yoda?"
"Master Yoda is over nine hundred years old," Jaina pointed out dryly. "He's not exactly in the condition to be traversing the galaxy and exploring the Unknown Regions these days. Besides, I happen to be more than capable of handling a meeting with Lord Thrawn. I was knighted over a year ago."
"How impressive."
He was mocking her, she was sure of it.
His expression was perfectly respectful, but she could see past it.
The arrogant monkey-lizard thought she was nothing more than a spoiled, incompetent little princess, and he couldn't have been farther from the truth.
She was spoiled, of course, she'd be the first to admit that, but she'd worked hard to master all of the skills that the Masters had taught her, and she'd had to fight for the right to take her trials at all. Her grandmother had said that she didn't need to bear the full mantle of a Jedi Knight, that she had too many other responsibilities, and some of her teachers had been wary of her temper, which she was constantly being reminded could become her undoing.
"You are your father's daughter," her mother was fond of sighing. "And you are most certainly my father's granddaughter."
Jaina never felt that was a bad thing, but she did see her mother's point.
Swallowing back her anger, she fixed Durron with a forced smile of politeness. "Besides, Thrawn's closest advisor is Baron Soontir Fel, a former Corellian noble. He and my father were comrades in their youth, and my brothers and I were playmates of his children when were little."
"Ah," Durron said, nodding to himself. "So you have connections with the Chiss."
"Yes," Jaina replied crisply. "I do. And I'm certain they'll be sending someone to collect me shortly, once the Temple sends them the coordinates of my escape pod."
Durron glanced past her at the pod, a frown creasing his forehead. "Either way," he said evenly. "You can't stay here. Planetary Security will be crawling all over this area soon, and I'm guessing that the Temple would prefer that Bakura remain unaware of your presence here."
"I can take care of myself," Jaina retorted.
"I'm sure you can, Princess," Durron replied with a smirk. "But this isn't Ossus, or even Coruscant for that matter. The Outer Rim is a dangerous place, and there are plenty of people who would love nothing more than to see you dead simply because of who you are. That, or they could use you as a bargaining chip. The only granddaughter of the Jedi King? That's an awful lot of credits in ransom, just waiting for some piece of Hutt slime to go after."
Jaina pursed her lips, glaring at him in silence. He was right, of course, but she couldn't leave, not when the distress beacon in the escape pod was the only way her family had of finding her.
"We'll cut the beacon out," Durron suggested reasonably.
"Don't go poking around in my head, nerf-herder," Jaina snapped.
"Then don't broadcast so loudly, Princess," he retorted, brushing past her toward the escape pod and pulling his lightsaber from his belt. Before Jaina could protest, he was cutting the homing beacon box out of the interior of the escape pod, leaving a clean, seared arch in the durasteel. "There," he announced a few moments later, straightening with the homing beacon in hand. "All done. Now come on, let's get you out of here."
"What makes you think I'm going anywhere with you?" Jaina demanded, folding her arms.
"Because I have a sub-space transmitter at my place," Durron replied smugly. "And it's the only one not monitored by the Planetary Security Department. If you want to contact someone to come get you, you're going to need my help."
For a long moment, Jaina was debating just killing him and then stealing his sub-space transmitter.
But, sadly, that wasn't conduct becoming of a Jedi Knight.
"Fine," she said begrudgingly. "But I'm keeping an eye on you, Durron."
Durron flashed that cocky smile again, the one that made her want to hit him. "I bet you will be."
Rolling her eyes, Jaina fell into step behind him as he made his way back to the swoop-bike he'd arrived on. She paused when he climbed on and looked at her expectantly, a refusal to share close proximity silently warring with the insistence that she do the flying.
"Don't worry, Princess," Durron laughed. "I don't bite."
Huffing, Jaina strode over to the swoop-bike and swung one leg over the back, settling as far away from him as possible, which wasn't very far at all on a swoop meant for one person.
"Grab onto my waist," Durron advised.
"In your dreams," Jaina scoffed.
"Fine," Durron said with a shrug. "Have it your way."
He revved the engine and the swoop lunged forward so fast that she was, despite using the Force to secure herself in place, thrown against his back. She grabbed his tunic to steady herself, and knew he was smirking. Grumbling, she loosely held onto his waist, definitely not noticing how firm his muscles were or how warm his skin was beneath his tunic.
Force, help me, Jaina thought with a sigh. I need to get off of this kriffing planet.