Months and eventually years went by. My skills as a bounty hunter grew with each contract and I was beginning to gather an impressive level of infamy. Though marks on Nar Shaddaa were still common, my contracts often took me off-world. Lurek allowed me to use his ship, a BT-7 named Lightstorm from his Republic military days, when this happened. I visited several worlds tracking marks and always took a moment to appreciate how much of the galaxy I was seeing. I traveled to such places as Alderaan, Tatooine, Hutta, Balmorra, Dromund Kaas, Manaan and even Coruscant. A few of them I enjoyed enough to return to off-duty.

Of course, with my fame as a bounty hunter came plenty of complications. I had contracts put on me more than once, an annoyance I dealt with quickly whenever it came up. At one point, there was even an arrest warrant out for me in Republic space. I took special care to get that erased from their systems. I studiously avoided, though, anything that would put me on the Empire's black list. The Imperials were well known for their swift dealings with outside threats and they were incredibly harsh with prisoners. Fortunately, they also didn't care much about random deaths in their territory so long as they didn't perceive a threat to Imperial security.

Not long after removing myself from the Republic's wanted list, I felt it necessary to slow down anyway. Lurek's health had begun to deteriorate from complications of an old injury. He fell ill repeatedly and needed more help than he wanted to admit. I would have stopped hunting altogether to be with him, but it ticked him off when I repeatedly passed on contracts. So, I took just enough to placate him.

One off evening, when I was sitting with Lurek in the library and reading, he interrupted to speak to me in a more serious tone than he'd used in a while. "Melmira, I need to talk to you."

I turned my attention to him and replied "What is it?"

He sighed. "You and I both know that I haven't been doing very well lately. I may not be here very long." I bit my lip to keep from interrupting. I wanted to dispute his claim, but I knew it to be true and I respected Lurek enough not to try to insist otherwise. "There are some things I need to tell you before… it's too late."

"Okay." I breathed.

"First of all, I'm leaving everything to you when I go. You probably guessed that already, but I just wanted to make sure. And if you don't take good care of the Lightstorm, I swear I'll haunt you. Secondly, I need you to know how proud I am of you. You've become the daughter I never had and you're everything I could have wished for.

"Most importantly, though, there's something I've been keeping from you. You've probably wondered before about the day we met. Why was I, a well-off man, in a commoner's cantina so far from my home when there are nicer ones nearby? Well, I was there for you. See, I wasn't entirely telling the truth when I said I'd retired. I had tried to, but it drove me crazy. So, I took what I thought would be an easy mark: you."

My mouth went dry. Lurek had been in the White Lamya to kill me? "Wh…why?" I asked "I mean, who…? Oh. Yemar, of course. His men must have put the contract on me."

"Actually, no. Yemar's rivals took over his territory without a hitch. And they weren't about to put a bounty on the escaped slave who tricked another into killing him. It was your father's wife."

"What?"

"You were right when you guessed that you were conceived when your mother had an affair with a Rylothian noble. He, though, didn't know of your existence and, to my knowledge, still doesn't. His wife found out about the affair years later. She hired someone to research it quietly and they discovered you. She apparently was worried that if your father ever found out about you, she and her children would lose part of their claim to his station. So, she put a contract on you. I was going to take it, but when I saw you that night, when I watched you kill that man in cold blood, I changed my mind." We were both silent for a moment. "There you have it. That's the whole story."

"Why didn't you tell me before? You didn't really think I'd be angry that you'd been there to kill me, did you? I'm a bounty hunter too, Lurek. A mark is a mark. I know that."

His voice got even gruffer, though I wasn't sure how that was possible. "No, it wasn't that. I … I was afraid that if you knew, you'd have sought out your father and tried to claim your place as his daughter."

I struggled not to laugh, but lost that battle completely. "Lurek, why would I care about some Rylothian noble and his haughty title? He may be blood, but you're my father."

Lurek grumbled and turned away, but I saw the touched tear that slid from his eye before he could wipe it away. I smiled to myself, then bit my lip and looked away as a few of my own escaped. The thought of losing my father-figure was heartbreaking, yet I knew it was tragically imminent.

The moment came not a week later. I returned from a job, one I'd fought not to take, to find that my father had passed while I was gone. His body lay cold in his bed; he had died in his sleep at least. The pain was nearly overwhelming for me. I clutched at him and wept loudly. The first person I had truly cared about since my mother was gone. The grief was crushing, as was the anger that I had not been here in his final moments. I hadn't gotten to say my final goodbye.

Finally able to partially collect myself, I stood. This is how Lurek would have wanted it anyway. He didn't like mushy and wouldn't have wanted a formal goodbye. I left the room and began making funeral preparations, all while trying not to suffocate under the grief.

Kindling is a difficult thing to find on Nar Shaddaa, but within a few hours, I managed to scrape together a full pyre in the backyard. In an attempt to hold back tears, I bit into my tongue until I tasted blood while carrying Lurek's body from his room. As carefully as if he were still here, I laid him atop the stack and stepped back. Under my breath, I whispered "Goodbye, Father." I looked away, pulled a lighter from my pocket and set fire to the lower kindling.

As the light of the funeral pyre fought against the flashing neon of nearby signs and speeders, I stood too close to the flame. The heat was just passing discomfort into pain, but I barely noticed. My insides swam with emotion. The foremost was grief, but among it swirled others: anger that Lurek had forced me to leave him at such a time, guilt that I hadn't been there for him, fear of what I would do now without him.

I stayed standing in that spot until the last of the flames had died and before me lay only ashes. I dropped to my knees and reached a shaking hand forward to grab a handful. I bit my lip and squeezed my fingers shut. With the ashes still in hand, I moved toward the back of the garden, to the private landing pad. There, I pressed them against the nose of the Lightstorm, leaving a black handprint. When I pulled away, I found my own fingers just as black, the red of my skin just barely peeking through.

The very next day, I restarted my work at its highest level. I put myself into it fully, using everything at my disposal. I found that I got even better at it. Where I had already been quite infamous on Nar Shaddaa, I began to hear more rumors of myself on other words, even those outside of Hutt space. The success and the lack of warning from Lurek made me overconfident, so when a contract came in on a challenge tougher and more problematic than I had ever faced before, I couldn't refuse.

I smiled crookedly as the client related the details. We sat here alone in the backroom of a cantina, one he had requested for a meeting. The Cathar's paws shook across from me, but there was little else of him that I could tell. He had insisted on arriving in a full cloak to obscure his features from anyone; he didn't want to be able to be identified later. Based on the target he marked, I could understand why.

"I want you to kill the Sith Lord Tavrain." He repeated, as if trying to convince himself that was what he had really asked. "He… he came upon my son and said that he could feel the… Force in him. Tavrain demanded that my dear Husi submit to training as a Sith on Korriban. But Husi… didn't make it. I need you to make him pay for what he put my son through."

I leaned forward, taking care to ensure that my lekku stayed wrapped around my neck to obscure my slave marks. "I can understand your need for revenge, friend. But you must know that a Sith Lord is no easy target. This contract will not be cheap."

"I am well aware. I am prepared to pay two million credits upon completion."

I nodded once. "That's a lot of money. You are aware that if you try to back out of payment in the end, I can and will hunt you down."

"If you manage to kill a Sith Lord, I am not foolish enough to think that I could cheat you and escape with my life."

"Good."

"Does… does that mean you'll take the contract?"

"I will. It's been too long since I've had a real challenge."

I left the client with the coordinates for the dead drop once the contract was fulfilled. Back at the manor, I began to pack in preparation for a long journey. I had nothing on this mark but a name and a title, so there would be quite a bit of researching to do before I could even get close to my target. I decided to make my way to Coruscant; I had a contact there in the Republic military. Though his superiors wouldn't approve of using bounty hunters to aid in their war effort, this Captain saw the benefit of pointing me in the direction of his Imperial enemies, even if he had to keep it a secret from command. This was the contact I typically used when looking for information on targets last seen in Imperial space. Perhaps the best part about him, though, was that this Zabrak captain saw our dealings as his duty to the Republic and therefore asked no fee.

It surprised me, then, that he refused to give me information when I showed up on his doorstep. "Melmira, you've lost your mind! Taking a contract on a Sith Lord?! There's no way you'll survive this!"

"Have a little confidence in me, Drovo. Haven't I always been alright before?"

"You've always gone after small Imperial targets before. Didn't you say that you didn't want to hit anything too big and draw the Empire's attention?"

"Things have changed. I've gotten better. And it is an awful lot of money."

He scoffed. "Bounty hunters!" I heard him mutter under his breath. "I won't send you to your death. I can't have that on my conscience."

"Drovo, think of the blow this will be to the Empire! Think of how many Republic troops, even Jedi, this Sith might kill. You could be saving a lot of lives."

"That's assuming you can manage to kill this guy."

"He's not immortal."

"I've seen Jedi fight. And I hear Sith don't have their restraint. He may as well be." Drovo turned away from me and sighed heavily. After a moment, he cursed to himself, walked over to his computer, tapped at the screen for a minute and returned with a data disk. "Here's everything the Republic has on Lord Tavrain. Please be careful, Melmira."

"Don't worry, Drovo. When I'm done with this, I can move to some remote system, buy half a planet and never touch a blaster again." I left with the data disk, snickering at that thought. Like Lurek, I'm not sure I could ever give up the bounty hunting gig. It was too much of a rush.

Back on the Lightstorm, I plugged the information into my central computer and took a look. I was in luck. Not only did the Republic know the name of Tavrain's flagship, Korriban's Fury, they also had its approximate location, thanks to one of their spies onboard. The Imperial star destroyer was stationed a few parsecs away from Balmorra, not as part of its blockade but ready to assist if necessary. There was even an image of Tavrain in the file. He was human, but that term seemed almost not to apply anymore. He was paler than your average Rattataki and his eyes were as red as my skin. His face was cracked and scarred in several places, though I couldn't even begin to make out what type of injury had caused such damage.

With the information memorized, I wiped the data disk clean to keep anything from leading back to my contact. I felt fear and excitement begin to build within me as I started up the Lightstorm's engines and set a course near where the Korriban's Fury should be. It took me some time to arrive, but I used it to work out the details of my plan.

I came out of hyperspace a little ways away from the star destroyer. It wasn't in range of my scanners yet, but according to the coordinates in the file, it would only take a few minutes of sub-light travel to get there. When I was just outside where their scanners should be able to detect me, I shut down to emergency power only and let the Lightstorm drift toward my target. I did, however, leave one system fully operational; Lurek had a clever little device installed onboard called a Life Signs Jammer. It intercepted any scans of the ship and reported back that there were no life signs aboard. My plan was quite simple: if the Imperial star destroyer saw what looked like a Republic ship dead in the water with no living thing aboard, they would likely pull it in to investigate and learn what they could of their enemy. I, in the meantime, would hide in the smuggler's compartment until I could slip onto their ship undetected, find Lord Tavrain and kill him.

While I waited, though, I stayed in the pilot's seat, watching my own scanners carefully. There was no reason to hide in the cargo compartment yet and I needed to make sure that if the Imperials decided to just blast me away instead of investigating, that I could activate my shields and flee. Time seemed to pass slower for me. With each moment, I wondered if the Imperials wouldn't take the bait. Finally, the Lightstorm shook roughly; their tractor beam was pulling me in.

I let a few more moments pass before moving to hide myself in the smuggler's compartment. The wait thereafter was long and dull. I heard several pairs of footsteps march by my position and a number of different voices. Finally, when things were quiet, I snuck out. I found myself in a large hanger. Nearby were several Imperial shuttles and on the other side of the room I spied an astromech droid, probably T-class. Carefully, I sidled over to the nearest exit and crept down the hallways. I had done a little studying on the design of Imperial star destroyers on the trip over here so, if I was right, the bridge would be up several levels. I also imagined there should be a service elevator somewhere in this area.

In my trek through the large ship, I happened upon one engineer, who I quickly silenced. I found a storage closet in which to dump his body, struggled into his clothes and made my way less conspicuously down the hallways, hoping that this Lord Tavrain wasn't so xenophobic as not to have any alien technicians aboard his ship.

I found the service elevator minutes later and set it to take me to the bridge. When the lift stopped several floors short, I cursed to myself. Someone had called for it on the other side. Ensuring that my blaster was completely hidden, I clutched the engineer's clipboard closer to me and stared down at it, acting like I was engrossed in whatever was written there. In truth, I wasn't even paying enough attention to it to be able to read it. The doors slid open and in stepped two Imperial soldiers in their full black body armor, their helmets held at their sides. They didn't pay much attention to me and I had to stifle a sigh of relief at that. My species, at least, didn't give me away.

I paid very close attention to the two of them as the lift continued on its way. I needed to be able to anticipate their movements as much as possible, especially if this ride ended in violence. Fortunately, they seemed entirely relaxed; they chatted with each other about inconsequential things like their families.

"Hey," one of them turned to me. I surreptitiously moved my finger to the trigger and looked up. "Relax, Techie. Some of the soldiers onboard may give aliens a hard time, but I know you're just doing your job like the rest of us. No need to be so tense."

I made a show of relaxing my shoulders and sighing. At the last second, I remembered to adopt an Imperial accent; I could have explained away its absence easily enough, but the fewer questions I had to answer, the better. "Well, that's a relief. We're all here for the same thing, after all."

"Right. So, where are you off to, Techie?"

"The bridge. I caught an unusual signal down in engineering and I'm coming to check it out."

"Keep her ship shape, eh?" I nodded and smiled in response. The two soldiers got off then a couple floors down from the bridge.

I took a few deep breaths as the final levels slipped away. The doors opened to the bridge. Beyond was a long hallway. On my left, the catwalk led to a large front facing window through which I could see thousands of stars, several spinning galaxies and even a brightly colored nebula. On either side of the walkway were lowered areas littered with terminals and scurrying Imperials. I cataloged these things as I entered, but the true point of interest was about halfway up the catwalk. There, standing proudly with his arms crossed and gazing out the front window was my target, Lord Tavrain.

I noticed all these things in the few seconds it took me to cross the hallway and enter a door on the other side: the restroom. There, I retrieved the equipment I had hidden in this uniform. I screwed the scope onto the end of my blaster and felt the emotions build faster inside me. All of these I used: anger, guilt, fear, anticipation. When I felt them reach a peak, I knew I was ready. I peered outside and made sure everyone was paying attention to their own doings.

Bracing myself against the doorframe, I leaned around and took careful aim. I sighted down the blaster and squeezed the trigger. I could almost follow the blaster shot as it sped toward the mark. I thought, "Goodbye, Sith. Hello, two million credits."

At the last second, Lord Tavrain spun around, pulled out his blood red lightsaber and deflected the bolt. For a small fraction of a second, I locked eyes with him and I understood then why taking a contract on a Sith was quite possibly the stupidest thing I had ever done. All the passion I could see in his eyes made mine seem like fleeting cares. I thought I used my emotions, but I was an amateur in comparison. I was staring in the face of true perfection. I was staring in the face of Death.

I dodged the reflected blaster bolt and sprinted for the lift. I made it only a few steps before I found myself unable to move my legs. I looked back to see Lord Tavrain holding his arm towards me. Panic gripped me and I struggled to be free. As I fought fruitlessly, I was lifted a few feet off the ground and brought slowly to the Sith. The Imperials on the lower deck stole glances up at me and their expressions were worse than foreboding.

Lord Tavrain dropped me roughly in front of him. I managed to keep my feet, but this was no success. Without a word, the Sith released a huge blast of lightning at me. I screamed. The pain was immeasurable. It felt like my every vein was on fire. My teeth locked over my tongue and I tasted blood. The voltage built and I was unable to even move. When it finally ended, an eternity later, I fell to my knees, wishing I had just died. Finally, I started to breathe again and when I did, I felt the horrible ache in my muscles after they had forcibly contracted.

"Well, well, well," his voice came from above me. "What have we here? A Republic spy? The Republic doesn't usually send assassins. They don't have the stomach for it."

In a voice so weak, I hated myself for it, I replied "Bounty hunter."

"Ah. That makes more sense." I felt that strange sensation as the Sith lifted me up without touching me. He forced me to stand straight so he could look me in the eyes. To my surprise, he released me once I was upright. I wasn't stupid enough to try to run. "I must say, little hunter, you are to be commended for making it this far. You were in the Republic ship, weren't you?" I nodded. "Why didn't our scans pick up any life signs?"

"I have a unique device, a Life Signs Jammer. It alters your scan to report as many or few life signs as I choose."

"Quite clever." He complimented, yet somehow it sounded like such praise was the last thing I would want from him. "That, however, didn't let you devise a plan and come here to kill a Sith Lord. I can feel your passions: your guilt, your rage, your terror. You use them to your advantage, to make you stronger. But even that is not what allowed you to make it all the way here to the bridge and fire a shot at me. No, even that would not have been enough." He laughed; it was not a pleasant sound. "What a curious thing you are. An alien bounty hunter come aboard my ship to kill me. An alien bounty hunter who uses her emotions to fuel her. An alien bounty hunter who can feel the Force, though she certainly does not know it. And just as I was considering taking an apprentice to bolster my power base."

I stumbled, though I wasn't sure if it was because of the pain and exhaustion or his words. I spoke, even if it probably was not wise. "Wh… What do you mean, the Force?"

He stepped closer to me. "Allow me to guess: you're very good at what you do, better than you have any right to be, and took to it naturally. Your reflexes are faster than others, almost as if you aren't reacting but seeing things before they happen. Maybe you've even had strange dreams that eventually happened."

"But… what is the Force?" I had heard it spoken of before on my travels but it always sounded so flimsy, like some absent god.

He cackled and I quickly regretted asking. "This, little hunter, is the Force." He called lightning to his fingertips and shocked me again. I shrieked, but couldn't even fall to the ground because he held me up again with, I assumed, the Force. The torture seemed to end sooner, but I couldn't be sure. Pain stole my perception of time. When it stopped, somehow, I was able to stay upright still. "Now, little hunter, you have a choice. Submit and I will take you to Korriban where you will learn to use the Force and become Sith. Refuse and die." Once more, he blasted me with lightning.

Despite the pain I was in, the fear I was still crippled by, and the hatred I was consumed with, I felt something click inside me, something awaken. My bloodcurdling shriek changed from one of agony to rage. My emotions built further and further until the pressure was more painful than the lightning. In a second, it all blasted outwards, all my pain, anger, hatred, guilt, and terror. Around me, numerous terminals shattered and every Imperial within fifty feet flew backwards. Many hit the side wall and several didn't get up again.

Power. Pure, undiluted power coursed through me. I could feel it feeding off my emotions and making me stronger. Sparks jumped between my fingers and before me Lord Tavrain smirked. "I'll do it. Take me to Korriban."

"Excellent." He surged me with lightning again, but this time it was different. The horrible agony was fuel for the power growing inside me. I barely noticed when my sight began to fade to black and eventually I passed out.