Chapter 12.

By Carycomic

PLANET THYFERRA (22 B.B.Y.)

It was rumored among some people, along the Outer Rim, that Aurra Sing had been born on Nar Shadda as the mixed-blood daughter and only child of an Umbaran spice smuggler by his red-headed human paramour from Corellia. That the latter had eventually become so addicted to spice that, to support her habit, she had sold Little Aurra to cultists of the Ember of Vahl. And that she was finally rescued from that cult by the Jedi, who started to train her as a Padawan. Only to see herself abducted by slave-trading space pirates from the Senex Sector; sold to a Hutt crime lord; and trained in the deadly art of life-force drainage by Anzati assassins.

All while being presumed dead by the Jedi.

Yet, whatever degree of truth might lie in those rumors, there was no denying that she hated the Jedi with a passion bordering on obsession! Hence, her occasional affiliation with the Jedi-hunting mercenaries known as the Crimson Novas. Two weeks earlier, however, she had been pursuing a more conventional bounty on Tattooine when she had the most extraordinary vision she had ever been granted by the Dark Side of the Force. A vision of a young Jedi Knight, dressed in black, engaged in fierce combat with what looked to be an adolescent Tusken Raider. But, one with the strength of an alpha bull bantha... and the devastating speed of a sandstorm wind.

For every time the young Jedi tried to slice his opponent in half, with his lightsaber, the young Tusken Raider dodged with incredible ease. Only to counterattack with a gaffi stick that he wielded with unbelievable power and bone-breaking ferocity. But, she never witnessed the end of the battle, for she was finally snapped out of her involuntary trance when the young Tusken Raider ripped off his protective googles and revealed...

...glowing red eyes.

Consequently, she hunted down the site of this battle and was aghast at the state of the young Jedi's body.

"What in the name of the Dark Side did you face, boy?" she had muttered to herself.

His identity- -Anakin Skywalker- - she only discerned when someone named Padme Amidala began trying to contact him over his commlink. She recognized both names, right away, from holovid newscasts about a failed assassination attempt on Coruscant. Whereupon, she had put young Skywalker into her own version of a Jedi healing trance. Initially intending to contact the Jedi Temple on Coruscant with a ransom demand once she returned to the spaceport at Mos Eisley. She changed her mind, though, the moment a holovid transmission came through from someone she had also heard a lot of, recently. But, from far shadier sources than the HoloNet News.

Count Dooku of Serenno: leader of the Separatist Confederation.

"Bring Skywalker to the Xucphra Corporation on Thyferra, for bacta treatment, and you will be paid sixty-five thousand credits," he had told her. "Plus another _hundred_ thousand if you will then take up the hunt for whoever did this to him!"

With Dooku and his proxy having made good on their word, concerning the first installment, she was now returning to her ship, at the Xucphra City spaceport, to start work on earning the second installment. Her original quarry on Tattooine (a mere embezzler) having already been forgotten. That decision, however, did not sit well with the embezzler's former employers: the Inter-Galactic Banking Clan.

Consequently, when the body of Sahl Eeze the Caarite* was brought before them by Mirl 'The Dark Archer' Yinn, the clan's chairman San Hill made him an additional offer.

"What would you say to a quarter of a million credits for bringing back another offender of the Banking Clan? And in the exact same condition as the Caarite?"

The Myke bounty hunter looked at them. His long hair, styled upward, bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to the wingspread of a bird-of-prey diving for the kill.

"Simply give me the name."

"Aurra Sing."

Alas! The Dark Archer was never able to make good on that contract, right away. For the Battle of Geonosis occurred almost immediately after this arrangement was made. Marking the opening of the now-infamous Clone Wars.

Which, in turn, is why Tobias Beckett of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate was able to get to her, first.

Y'TOUB SYSTEM (10 BBY)

The Tappratine took off from Nar Shadda without incident. With Arnwes Kar stun-cuffed and safety-belted in the observer's seat behind the pilot's chair, while R5-D4 astrogated from his open-topped module behind the cockpit.

When the four wing-foils had once more closed up, to become two, only then did the Hawk-Batman contact the droid.

"Red, you through collating that data yet?"

Arfive signaled back in the affirmative. His translated signals confirming what the costumed crusader had already concluded. Namely, that it was Xizor Transport Systems that had been shipping both Xa Fels and stolen Hapan blasters to Nar Shadda! Nor did the information end there. Evidently, XTS was also doing a lot of shipping between the planet Churba... and the Zygerrian homeworld.

He turned to look at his passenger.

"Since when do the Churbans use slave labor in their factories?"

The outcast Bimm once again shivered at his captor's half-growling/half-whispering tone of voice.

"Th-Th-They're not. The s-s-slaves being smuggled there are Askanjian dancing girls! For the factory workers to blow their paychecks on at the end of each work week."

"Askanjians?" echoed the Hawk-Batman in unconcealed surprise.

The Bimm nodded, too terrified to even attempt lying. "Their homeworld's a desert planet. So, the native women have evolved three pairs of mammary glands in order to retain more water for the wet-nursing of their young!"

"I don't believe it," said the costumed crusader. "There can't be that many men in this galaxy with that perverse of a breast fetish."

Arnwes Kar could not help smirking. "You don't date much, do you?"

The Hawk-Batman did not even attempt to dignify that remark with bitter sarcasm. Instead, he turned back around to resume manual piloting. Casually noting, in the process, that they were passing the outermost planet of the system: Nar Hekka. He was therefore blissfully ignorant of the fact that the Imperial Star Destroyer 'Devastator' had already left orbit, an hour earlier.

Churba-bound directly ahead of him.

IMPERIAL PALACE, CORUSCANT

(SIXTY-FIVE MINUTES EARLIER)

Emperor Palpatine looked down upon the centimeter-tall hologram of his favorite apprentice... with a shamelessly wicked grin.

"I shrank him down using his own ring! I then placed him- -quite literally- -in the capable hands of Director Isard's promising young daughter. It was not long before she extracted the information I sought. Like other 'dragon-pearls', they are actually gizzard stones. In this case, from a Star Dragon subspecies native to the Outer Rim planet of Imsk. This subspecies is evidently sensitive to the Force. Using it to evade big-game hunters by instinctively shrinking down to the size of worthless sand lizards!"

"It was the wide-spread poaching of these Imskian dragons, by the Gotal, that led to the brief war between them and the space-faring Duinuoguin. Poaching that the Jedi all but totally quashed by the start of the Clone Wars. Since the ascension of our empire, however, the poaching has resumed. With some of it having been engaged in by Sinestro, himself, in collusion with a Myke master of kli-run archery named Mirl Yinn. Every dragon-pearl they subsequently extract is then smuggled to Churba... for installation within these 'Guns of Command'."

"Do you wish me to break orbit for Churba, then, Master?" inquired Vader.

"Yes. There you are to visit the head of the local Tisshar Consulate and question him. Diplomatically, but firmly, of course!"

"Of course, Master. And the Consul's name?"

"Ra's-Al-Ghul."

tbc

*Caarite(s): a humanoid race of porcine ancestry whose sensitivity to the Force makes them irresistibly hyper-charismatic to anybody in close proximity to one of them.