I do not own Star Wars or any of the characters.
Discovered
Damian stood from behind cover, firing his blaster pistol twice and dropping the last stormtrooper. Then, he and Hondo ran forward, getting to the munitions room and beginning to set charges.
"We only need a handful," Damian said. "If one of these goes off, it'll set the rest off and the entirety of this half of the planet will see the fireball."
Hondo nodded, setting the last charge.
"All set, let's get out of here," Hondo said.
Damian nodded and they ran out of the base, getting on their ship and flying out of the frigate and into space where Hondo's best pilots were blasting tie fighters into scrap.
"All ships, pull out!" Hondo said. "Jump out of here!"
The fighters turned, all jumping to Hyperspace as Damian looked to Hondo.
"Let's light these fireworks off, shall we?" Damian grinned.
Hondo nodded, smirking and Damian pressed the detonator. Instantly, the charges went off, blasting the munitions which then hit the frigate's fuel. A moment later, the frigate had become a massive blue sphere of plasma shooting through space.
"Jump!" Damian shouted.
Hondo did so and they took off just a second before the plasma ball reached them. Hondo laughed as they flew, the autopilot engaged, and sat back, putting his feet up on the dash.
"Too easy," Hondo said.
"Now we go back, get wasted, and have the third biggest party of all time," Damian said.
"And since you lost the bet, you have to call them," Hondo said.
Damian's smile faded and he stared at his lap. Four years. It had been four years since he had been home. Two years since they stopped calling altogether. Two years since the last piece of that life he had ended. Well, not the last. He still used the blaster pistol given to him by Jek. It had been ruined several times but no matter how many free, admittedly better pistols he was offered by Hondo, for example pretty much anything with sights rather than a flat top, he simply scrapped them for parts which he then modified and stuck in his blaster to get it working again. How could he not? It was all that remained of that life. Of the family that he deluded himself into believing he had for a while. It was the only proof he had left that he actually mattered to someone.
"Damian, it's been years," Hondo said, resting a hand on his shoulder. "You have to call. You have to at least try. The kids have probably grown up by now. And that Togruta is probably-"
"-still angry," Damian interrupted. "She's probably still angry. She's always hated me for existing. These last four years that I've been gone have probably been some of the best in her life."
Hondo sighed, turning back to the controls.
"We're home," Hondo said. "I hope you're in the mood to party rather than drown yourself in that disgusting Rodian spiced wine again."
"Can't get drunk off anything else anymore," Damian said.
"I know," Hondo said. "You drink like me. Damian, you're addicted."
"Only until I finally work up the guts to put this blaster in my mouth," Damian said, staring at the blaster. "It's been a lot of fun, Hondo. We had a good run."
Hondo nodded slowly before piloting them down to the planet, setting them down on the landing pad. Damian walked out of the ship first, ignoring the pilots, then the ground troops, then the absentees, then the women as he walked to the bar. The bar tender set a bottle of Damian's now several-times-daily drink on the counter and Damian dropped a couple of credits, taking the bottle and instantly taking an unhealthily long swig. As soon as Hondo stepped into the room, the mood shifted. Music began to blare, drink began to flow, and people began to dance. Hondo almost instantly had women hanging off of his arms and Damian was again in his corner table. This time, however, it seemed things were destined to be different. Within minutes, Hailey, Kailey, and the Pantoran Damian had fucked that same night, then again and again for the next year before going home, Raiah, sat at his table, all staring at him knowingly and sympathetically. Then, Raiah held out the communicator that Damian spent every night staring at.
"It's time," Raiah said. "You have to call."
Damian slowly took the communicator, hesitating before standing and walking out of the room where it was quiet. He pressed the call button and waited. After so long, the communicator probably didn't actually work anyway.
"Damian?" Barriss's voice asked, thick with emotion and hope, the simple sound of it bringing tears to his eyes instantly.
"Barriss," Damian said, voice cracking as he wiped his eyes.
"It's been so long!" Barriss said. "You...you never answered. And then...How are you?"
"I..." Damian trailed off, staring at the communicator before swallowing hard, wiping futilely at his eyes. "Alone."
Damian felt his resolve shatter as he admitted it for the first time in years. His shoulders shook with silent sobs and he stared at the silent communicator.
"You could come home," Barriss said. "I can get the kids back here. And we can tell you about all of the jobs we've done. We know what you've been up to. You've been tearing the Empire a new asshole. Damian, we're so proud of you. All of us. You should come home to us, Damian. Come home. We want to see you. She wants to see you."
Damian let a sob escape before clamping down on his vocal cords, silencing himself. There was silence.
"Please," Barriss finally said, also sounding to be crying. "Please come back to us."
Damian sat down against the wall, holding the communicator to his forehead with both hands, sobbing hard. Barriss didn't call again, and somehow he knew she wasn't listening anymore. He sat there, sobbing, for easily an hour before slowly calming as the door opened and Raiah sat beside him and hugging him. He slowly stopped crying and stood, putting the communicator away as she held up his drink. He shook his head and she smiled, shaking it.
"Somebody needs to dispose of it," Raiah said.
Damian smiled and took the bottle, hurling it into the wall with a satisfying shatter and splatter of liquid on the wall and ground. Then, they walked to the door, opening it. Just as they did, the front door opened and white armor stepped through. It was instantaneous chaos. Even drunk, the pirates were natural fighters. Weapons were always in an arm's reach, and a natural hatred of stormtroopers allowed for the first two waves of troopers to be dropped in a massive, bloody, deafening mixture of lead pipes, rifle butt stocks, and blades. Then, the door opened for a wall of plasma and pirates were dropping like flies in a hail of blood red streaks. The pirates began to fire back almost instantly, stormtrooper corpses lining the ground as well, but there were so many that they were able to shield themselves with the dead before them.
Scarcely a second after the blaster fire started, Damian was kneeling behind his own table, which was on its side for cover. As getting there had been instinctive, he had no idea what or who was around him. When he looked, he found out. And his heart shattered. Hailey and Kailey had been at his table, back to the door. They hadn't been able to hear the fight over the music. Or if they did they assumed it as a normal pirate vs pirate fight. So when the blaster fire started, they likewise hadn't seen it coming. Now they were lying beside Damian with smoking holes through them, Hailey's hand still in Kailey's pants and her other entwined with her sister's. In front of Damian, Raiah was lying, holding a hand over several holes in her stomach as blood foamed from her mouth.
"Raiah!" Damian gasped, pulling her to him with the Force. "Hold on!"
She smiled and shook her head slowly.
"Shred," she managed to choke out, raising a hand to his chest. "Family...Home...Peace...I...love...y...y..."
Damian swallowed hard, setting her down and wiping blood from her lips before drawing his pistol and standing. Blaster bolts shot past him instantly but he raised his own, opening fire and beginning to drop troopers, a single shot each. If a blaster bold was aimed at him, he twisted or leaned out of the way and continued firing. As he did, Hondo's forces rallied, concentrating fire at the doorway, bottlenecking the stormtroopers' reinforcements as Damian massacred the ones in the room. Then, the next time the door opened, Damian shoved a hand, putting as much power as he could behind the telekinetic shove. Bodies crashed into bodies, bodies crashed into walls and floor, and then bodies exploded through the outer door with the force of a volcanic eruption, corpses by the several dozen rocketing out over the landing pad and falling into the mountains below.
"Damian, those powers!" Hondo said. "It has been so long!"
"Everyone evacuate," Damian snarled. "Take your fighters and get out of here. Don't fight. Don't play the hero. Just get yourselves out."
Everyone scrambled out of the room and Hondo joined him at his side. Hondo drew a pair of blasters and they walked out of the base, Damian blasting any stormtroopers nearby off the landing pad, along with all of the tie fighters, before walking toward the ship, Hondo sprinting on ahead. Damian fired carefully, each shot dropping a trooper, while Hondo fired accurately but rushed, more pinning the troopers down than killing them. Then, just as they reached the ship, a crash sounded behind Damian and he turned, finding himself staring at a humanoid with black robes, black gloves, black shirt and pants, black boots, and a black mask with numerous red-lensed cameras sticking out of it at odd angles landed in the center of the platform, drawing a sword that Damian instantly identified as Cortosis from under his cloak.
"That's useless," Damian said. "I don't use Lightsabers anymore. I use this."
He held up a detonator and pressed the button and the center of the landing pad exploded skyward, blasting the Sith Stalker into pieces instantly.
"Amazing what you can learn from Bounty hunters and pirates," Damian said, walking to the ship and climbing on, closing the ramp as Hondo took off. Then, Hondo flew them to space, docking with his orbiting shuttle and looking to Damian.
"Where will you go?" Hondo asked.
"I'm going home," Damian said. "I'm going back to them. I've lost one family now. I'm going to protect my other one. Go into hiding Hondo. Don't let them find you. Stop being a Pirate."
"They'll track you," Hondo said.
"They'll track a shuttle," Damian said. "I'll trade it for one of the spares."Hondo nodded, handing Damian a piece of paper with coordinates on it.
"It was meant to be a gift for your birthday," Hondo said. "It took a long time and a lot of credits, but it's finished. I had your old one restored."
"My old one?" Damian blinked before his eyes widened. "The Wraith? You got the Wraith fixed?"
"And upgraded," Hondo said. "All the old stealth tricks, plus active visual cloaking, Mandalorian Iron and Cortosis plating, cruiser deflector shields, and newly upgraded blasters."
Damian hugged Hondo who chuckled before stepping back and bowing.
"I will see you again my boy," Hondo said. "May fortune always smile upon you. And may you go painlessly cold turkey from alcohol."
"Good luck, my friend," Damian said.
Hondo nodded and left to his own shuttle and Damian jumped to the coordinates, swapping them out for his own sleek ship which had been destroyed when he first worked for Hondo. The Wraith was a custom-built ship even before Hondo's upgrades and Damian's own modifications. It was vaguely arrow-shaped with the ship being more or les a triangle with the wings rounded at the back and extending back slightly past the thrusters, a pair of slanted fins on either side where the wings met the main body of the ship both fins leaning outward, a rotating turret on the top of the ship that had four separate eight-barrel rotaries arranged into a square, a main gun on the nose that had three separate eight-barrel rotaries arranged into a triangle, and a large assortment of missile launchers along the underside of the wings, containing everything from auto-target rockets, to proton torpedoes, to standard missiles, and finally thick black plating that, if Hondo didn't skimp on them, would shrug off most heavy cruiser guns better than any ship Damian had ever seen. Damian disconnected from the shuttle and jumped again. It was long past time to go home.
Read and review. Damian's ship, the Wraith, is based on the Phaeton Class v1.1 Jumpship from Destiny.