What happens if I actually can't find this Jedi? Cal wondered, the slogging footsteps of his stormtrooper entourage making for a poor distraction. Trilla said that failure meant death. Does she think she's going to kill me? Because she's tried, and it never seems to work out for her.
That short sparring match with the Grand Inquisitor crossed Cal's mind, ok. Yeah. He could probably get the job done.
What if I do find them, and then just let them go? Say they fell into a sarlacc pit or something, no one's going to try to check.
That second plan did appeal to Cal, but then a troubling third hypothetical occurred to him, What if I don't want to let them go? A shiver ran down his spine. What happens when they're like Malicos? ...What happens if they're trying to rebuild the Order?
While he wouldn't let himself compare this hypothetical Jedi to Cere, Cal knew exactly where that final thought would lead.
Grimacing to himself, Cal decided that it would be better not to think about what he was doing. Not about how it would end, at least. For now, he just needed to know where to start looking.
Thankful that he had taken to his search in the middle of a shift, Cal didn't pass many people on the road. Unfortunately, the one man that he did find lingering in the rain was one that Cal remembered.
"Mozin?" Cal recognized a man reading a scrolling news feed from an information stand, "Mozin, is that you?"
Startled that someone might realize that he was skipping a shift, the man poorly concealed a slight jump.
Not acknowledging it, Cal quickly walked up, his stormtrooper guard dropping back to block off half of the narrow road, "Hey, it's me! Cal." He lightly shouted.
Looking up and then doing a double-take, Mozin froze in place.
"Hey! It's been a while." Cal came to stand face to face with the man.
Mozin was a wiry human. Years older than Cal, they hadn't been extremely close, but Mozin was one of the first people Cal had grown brave enough to speak to. And he had also been the one who taught Cal how to operate a laser cutter. For as similar as the name made them sound, the finicky machine was a far cry from the elegant blade of a lightsaber.
"I-I don't want any trouble." The scrapper offered, gaze flicking between Cal's face, his clothes, and the stormtroopers in the background, before locking on the floor.
"Mozin, it's me. Cal. Remember? From the scrappers guild. We used to break venators down on platform seventeen."
He had recognized Cal from the start. Cal could sense as much through the Force, but the man only wanted to leave this place, "Please just let me get back to work. I won't say anything to anybody."
"Won't say anything? What are you talking…"
A realization dawned on Cal.
The last time he was here, Trilla had been seconds away from executing half a dozen workers in search of a traitorous and dangerous Jedi.
In search of Cal.
"…about?" Cal lamely finished, "Oh. Uh… It's a long story, but that day on the train… Just never mind that."
A flutter of panic rolled off of Mozin. His fear clearly directed at Cal, there was a sudden spike of adrenaline as the scrapper saw the lightsaber hilt hanging from Cal's belt.
"I'm not a…" Cal tried to calm the man, but caught himself before changing what he was about to say, "I'm not a criminal."
Mozin's brother had been on that fateful platform a year ago, and that's not what he said. But Mozin knew better than to do anything that might upset an imperial official, even if he had no idea how they had come into their position.
Especially if he had no idea how they had come into their position, "Of course not. I would never say that."
He doesn't see me. Cal's stomach churned as that painful truth became clear, he doesn't know. He doesn't know any of it. That year on the Mantis, working with the rebels. He doesn't know. He just sees the lightsaber. He just sees that Imperial gear on my shoulder.
"You should go," Cal abruptly spoke, choosing not to address what the people of Bracca did or didn't see when they looked at him, "I think there's a shift change coming up. You wouldn't want to be late."
Unsure why Cal was offering an easy escape from the conversation, Mozin didn't stop to question it, "You're right. Goodbye."
And then he walked away.
Cal watched the scrapper disappear, a figure washed away by a thin curtain of rain. For a moment he wished that he could simply disappear as well, drop what he was doing and go back to being an anonymous face in a forgettable crowd.
But the Empire had BD, and Cal had nowhere to go.
So he stood in the middle of that Bracca road and tried to ignore a painful truth:
My whole year with Cere and Greeze could have been spent with the Empire as far as they know.
It may as well never have happened.
A shudder crawled across Cal's skin. He didn't know if it was from the rain, a trickle of resentment, or the grief he held for the loss of his old life.
In either case, he restarted his walk through the rain. Moving in silence, like a shade in the storm, he didn't stop to bother any of the other occasional pedestrians he passed. To their credit, none of them ever called out to Cal.
Through mutterings in the Force, Cal knew that a few of the people recognized him. A few were confused, a few of them surprised. All of them were some degree of afraid.
Walking through the lingering sense of fear like it was just another part of the storm, Cal came to the strip of stores he had set out for.
Unremarkable and half made from ruined ship parts, the retail strip was just as derelict and tired as the people who frequented it.
Dripping wet with rain, Cal stepped out of the storm and into a cantina.
The Rust Bucket was as fine a place as any on Bracca. A narrow hole in the wall squeezed between two other hobbles, decades-old and peeling synthleather covered the booths that lined one wall, a long bar lining the other. The strip of walkable area in the middle of the two rows was usually choked with workers gambling over a game of sabacc or dejarik.
But it was at a lull now, with just a hand full of men and women sitting around, the last dregs of workers waiting until the last possible moment to dart to their shift.
Cal couldn't blame them.
He couldn't bring himself to be very interested either, as he was here for one reason. Nodding at the stormtroopers, they understood that they were supposed to block the only two exits to the place. The couple that meant to block the back door walked with Cal for a moment, only to pass him by as he came to a stop at a booth towards the center of the long building.
"C-cal?" a gotal half stood from his seat, only to lamely sink back into place as his eyes darted about, noticing the stormtroopers posted at each of the doors, "didn't think I'd see you again. How you doing?"
Scabbers had always been a somewhat scummy man, trading in hard-to-find parts, half of which had been stolen or acquired with questionable means. He kept a small enough footprint, never fencing anything important enough to attract the eye or the ire of the Hutts or any of the other major syndicates. But he knew everything on this planet, his grimy head acting as the most complete collection of gossip and rumor on Bracca.
Lanky, made a foot taller than Cal by a pair of stubby horns that rose from the top of his head, Scabbers always seemed on the verge of teetering over. What was lustrous brown fur on the rest of his species was matted and nearly yellow on the smuggler. His wide yellow eyes seemed constantly panicked, making it near impossible for most to tell if he were actually rattled or just faking it.
Wordless and not sure what he was going to say, Cal slunk down into the booth opposite of Scabbers so that he stared across the grimy table from the man.
"Didn't think I'd see you back here." Scabbers repeated, obviously looking for a way to wriggle out of the situation, "What, uh, what brings you back to town?"
Mouth suddenly going dry, Cal wasn't sure how he was supposed to explain what he was doing. Not in a way that he could live with at least. "You still owe me a favor," he answered without really answering.
A tremor of panic cutting through the Force and rippling over Scabbers' features, the man mostly managed to keep it from creeping into his voice as he said, "I do?"
Cal said nothing, instead opting to look at the scraggly man across from him. He didn't need a reminder that he was a pariah on Bracca. An instant threat for wearing an Imperial seal on his shoulder, an obvious danger for the squadron of troopers in his wake. He was tempted to believe that the scrappers he'd worked with had willfully forgotten him. Just another face to forget among the crowd, maybe one to be gossiped about after the Inquisitors had appeared to kill him.
Tucking away that sour thought, Cal didn't blink, "Yes. You do."
"I-I mean, of course." Scabbers backed off the moment he thought he was pushing his luck. "What do you need?"
Feeling nervous eyes from nervous patrons in the bar sweeping over him, Cal tried to be quiet as he said, "I'm looking for a Jedi."
A beat of silence passed over the table.
"Don't know what you're talking about."
Cal blinked. Moving slowly, he unclipped the lightsaber on his belt before laying it flat in the middle of the table. "Don't lie to me, Scabbers."
The fur across Scabbers' head dipped slightly, almost imperceivably, as sweat began to trickle from his pores and weighed it down, "I hear about… You too?"
"No." Cal answered quickly, trying not to think of what he was saying, "No, I'm not. Now, who saw the Jedi? I know you know something."
"…A guy down in yard seventeen." the scrapper quietly admitted, "Said he pulled a data log out of an old supervisor droid. Tried cleaning it up to sell, found a grainy recording instead. Some tiny-looking thing carrying a lightsaber. That's all I heard; I swear."
Of course. Cal almost rolled his eyes at the mention of yard seventeen. One of the last yards for breaking Venators, and one that he had frequented. "I need a name."
"I don't-"
"Don't make me make you talk." Cal threatened, horrifyingly aware of what he was doing, and desperately trying to justify his actions to himself with the thought that he needed to get back to the Fortress to check on BD.
And it worked, as the gotal paused. A heavy silence settled while he was left to nervously look between Cal and the troopers cutting off his only hope of escape, "He's in deep with the Crimson Dawn …"
"They still got a name."
Scabbers pulled in a hissing breath. "Vince Zarxic. A noghri. He's got a shop down on the scrap yard floor. Hard to find, it looks like a trash heap… But his contacts run deep, he'll be halfway to the outer rim the second he sees you coming."
Cal wasn't surprised, but he'd learned enough. Sliding back out from the booth, he clipped his lightsaber back on his belt as he told Scabbers, "He won't make it that far."
.***.***.***.***.
Leaving the Rust Bucket left Cal in a mostly empty part of town. For a moment at least, until the shift swap came and the muddy roads were suddenly flooded with workers leaving their grueling jobs and swarming the bars in search of something resembling relief.
Moments passed where Cal considered stopping someone, asking what they had heard about that day the Empire came looking for him; about that hat day that Trilla stopped the train and threatened half a dozen of them with death if Cal hadn't come forward. But his short chat with Mozin made him think twice about speaking to any of the familiar faces he passed.
And that had left him in relative silence as the shift change came and went.
He'd held out fine at first, but hearing the rare joyful conversation drift out of a clump of people, only to dampen into silence of whispered warnings as he came near left loneliness to crash down over him. A peculiar sense of being alone while constantly surrounded by his past and his stormtrooper guard.
It grated at Cal, so he decided to do something about it.
Walking down a slightly less busy street, Cal asked a simple question to the trooper closest to him.
"Hey, what's your name?"
"It's Perin." She answered flatly.
Not sure if he expected anything else, Cal did what he could to try to sound personable, if for no other reason to try and chase that lingering loneliness away, "Well, my name is Cal. Where are you from, Perin?"
"Alliga"
"Separatist space," Cal noted, specifically remembering that the planet had been one of the last refuges for the Separatist Council, and one of the main staging areas for Grievous' droid army.
Though Perin's face was hidden, Cal was sure that she flinched, "Until the Empire showed up. Took them long enough."
Wait a second… "So the Empire invading your homeworld. You think that was a good thing?"
Wondering why one of the supposedly ruthless and aloof Inquisitors was so interested, Perin was still cautious as she answered, "We did what the Republic couldn't, put a stop to the war."
Cal opened his mouth with a sharp comment about the Empire's methods, only to pause as he realized that the Republic had fought the same war with most of the same tactics. The only difference was that the Republic stretched the fighting out to three years instead of ending it in a matter of months.
"So is that why you joined?" Cal all but blurted instead.
"That, and the army was the best way to get off Alliga."
Cal processed the information, not sure if he considered offering a different kind of fighting as an escape from old fighting as something to hold against the empire, or to give to its credit. "Huh. And what about you?" he turned to the trooper to his left when he couldn't decide on an answer.
Listening to the exchange and then caught off guard when it suddenly passed to him, the other trooper only managed a, "What?"
"What's your name? Where are you from?" Cal repeated his questions.
"…I'm Esol. Geives. Esol Geives, from Hapes."
Cal thought on his answer for a moment, "But that's not part of the empire?"
"It's not." Esol wasn't sure whether Cal was asking or telling him that, but he did have a knack for politics, "Not formally at least. They're technically an independent consortium, but the planet nobility recognized that we're legally a commonwealth territory."
Cal was pretty sure he recognized each of those words individually but not he had no idea what they meant in that context.
"Huh. Interesting. And you…" Cal turned to the next stormtrooper and then the next, asking each the same questions as the last.
First, he asked Mikel and Olmar, brothers from Berrol's Donn.
Then came Kina Shan. Born to a fishing family on Castilon and no stranger to hard work, she preferred to roam the stars rather than the waves.
And Fred Jensen. From Kooriva, one of the rare backwaters in the inner rim, he'd always wanted to see if the Coruscanti nights really lived up to their reputation.
Millie Rusk. Coming from wild space, she was just in it for the paycheck and regular meals.
Gerard Bliken. Born and raised on Alsakan in the shadow of an imperial academy, he wasn't from an affluent family but he swore that one day he would be a general.
And to Cal's deepest confusion, most of them were about his age, maybe a year or two older, with Olmar being the oldest among them at twenty-three.
So most of them weren't old enough, and the ones that were didn't actually fight in the Clone Wars. Cal tried to appear calm as that icy realization washed over him.
Shaking the thoughts from his mind, Cal found yet another twisting side route off the main road. Not holding out much hope for finding the hole in the wall that Scabbers had described, Cal tried his luck anyway, bringing the contingent of troopers down to the scrap yard grounds.
