Author's Note: So action this chapter... and AHSOKA! I did promise. Enjoy and if you have a second leave me a review. -November
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Chapter 12: Prisoners
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Ny glanced sidelong at Djela Kur cross the Cornucopia's cockpit. He sat hunched over, like a hunting snake curled up to strike its prey. His eyes were half closed into slits and his long-fingered hands fidgeted over his stomach. In that moment, Ny missed Terin fiercely. She missed his quiet calm and small reassuring smiles, even the inappropriate suggestive winks he would give her in stressful moments. They used to make her laugh and distract her from the dangers of the life they had lived. There was nothing to distract her now from the truth: she was transporting a criminal and his merchandise through a lawless region of space, alone. She wished Terin was sitting in the co-pilot seat beside her and she could tell him she was too old for those amorous looks, just to break the silence.
But her husband was dead. It wasn't the life that he'd tried to leave behind, one of shady deals and constant threat, that got him killed in the end; it was a war that he had no part in. The galaxy struck Ny as ironically cruel sometimes. She hadn't always seen it that way. Once she'd believed in some kind of karma that would make sure the evil were punished and the good rewarded. That was before she'd fallen in love with a ruggedly handsome and enigmatic young pilot, a good man drawn into a bad life by unfortunate circumstance. She learned from him that the galaxy was decided by luck.
That was four decades ago, four decades of hard years and harder times. Ny barely recognized her old self in her memories. She certainly didn't feel like the hopeful young woman, ready to tear the galaxy apart for a man she loved. But she had defied some powerful forces for Kal Skirata…
"You look good Ny," Djela said in his language of warbling grunts, breaking the professional silence that had fallen on the cockpit since she picked him up.
"I am," Ny said, punching controls a bit harshly as she maneuvered past the space-junk rings of Dara-9. It was one of the oldest inhabited planets in the sector with the largest spaceport within easy jumping distance. It was also as dangerous as Nar Shadda without the Hutts to maintain any balance of power in the area. The skies over the planet of jagged mountains had been the site of many hijackings and outright gang violence. Shattered hulls and remnants of ancient ships gave the planet a hallo of treacherous debris. It was a virtual gold mine for scavengers.
"I was almost sure that you would retire after what happened to Terin."
"I practically have."
"From what I heard you're still doing some hauling around the Mandalore sector."
"Who told you that?" Ny asked, feeling her heart lurch in her chest.
"Oh you know me, I just hear things," Djela said. His wide set eyes slanted further closed.
"Your hearing must be going. I don't hang around the Mandalore sector if I can help it."
"I see," Djela grumbled but it was impossible to tell if he really believed her. Ny fought the reflexive urge to gulp. She steered the ship clear of the last of the debris, as the ship's computer completed charting a course out of the Jutta Sector. She ran through the last pre-jump checks before engaging the light-speed engines. She gave herself a moment just to enjoy the streaming white lights of hyperspace filling the view-screen.
"How long will it take?" Djela asked.
"We'll arrive in Catharia Space in three hours," Ny said, glancing at the calculations.
"Humm."
"What's the rush?" Ny asked.
"Nothing you need to worry about," he said. "The sooner I get rid of this cargo the better. It's in all of our best interests to get this done quickly."
"I don't like being kept out of the loop, Djela," Ny shot back at him.
"Then you must spend a lot of time being frustrated with your clients," he replied and slowly unfolded himself. He went back to the empty crew bunks off the cargo bay and squeezed into one without another word. Ny frowned and glared back at him. Her gaze drifted from him to the single crate that was his cargo. It was a six foot long rectangle, half as wide and a foot and a half deep: about the size of a carbonite-freezing frame. If that's what it was she didn't know why he needed the extra cover. Carbonite was diamond hard protection on it's own. She forced herself to turn back to monitoring the ship's course.
It's best to leave Djela's business to him, She told herself. Once I get him off my ship it won't matter. It doesn't affect me anyway. In her mind she could almost see Terin's uneasy expression, the one he would get on a stressful job when he thought she wasn't looking. But almost immediately after the image of him solidified, it was pushed out by the more recent, vivid memory of Kal's angry ultimatum and his smug response to her cussing.
"I'd rather be the krettle that saved your life than the man who let you die."
At least if she got herself killed it wouldn't be for his lack of trying to save her. Kal Skirata didn't let her do anything. Ny was determined to be her own woman, no mater how likable the old mando was.
As she thought about it she realized it was probably a good thing she didn't have A'den with her. He would be obvious proof she was working for a group of Mandalorian's now—more than working for them. I lived with them, she though. 'Lived', she realized she was thinking about it in the past tense. Do I really think I'm not going back? She wondered. Even if she wasn't, she didn't want to do anything that might compromise them. A'den was a sweetheart under his armor and rippling muscles; he was the kind of man she would have wanted as a son back when she and Terin were planning a family; Something always got in the way.
Ny looked around the cockpit, spotting Djela's bag in the far corner. She glanced back at the Illothorian curled up on the bunk. The soft burbling sounds of his sleeping breaths were coming steadily. Ny shuffled across the deck as quietly as she could in her boots. She flipped his bag open and peered around. There were a few changes of clothes, money, hygiene supplies, and the item she was looking for, his comm link. Ny dug it out.
A quick scan through the contents showed it was new. Djela had only bought the comm the day he contacted Ny. That meant he'd lost his previous one or ditched it. Given his history, Ny leaned toward the latter. If Djela was running from someone it would explain why he called her instead of one of his many other contacts. Ny hadn't been connected to him for years even before Terin died. She scrolled through the short call history, absently reading the unlabeled frequencies. Her thumb paused on the controls.
"Fifty five Fifty one," Ny whispered the prefix-code under her breath. She didn't have a lot of frequency codes memorized but that one she knew. What is Djela doing contacting Imperial Transport Authority? Ny wondered. They would happily grab Djela for the crimes he's committed. He would only turn to the Empire if he had a bargaining chip, something to keep the heat off himself.
Ny's gaze turned from the comm link in her hand to the crate strapped to Cornucopia's cargo deck. There was an ITA outpost on Catharia. That was no secret. Djela might not even have to land on the planet to make whatever deal he had planned. Once they came out of hyperspace, whatever Djela was transporting would be as good as Empire property.
Ny wasn't comfortable handing anything over to the Empire unless she knew it was useless. She had a vested interest now in undermining them at every turn. They had been responsible for so many wrongs. As far as she was concerned they were to blame for Terin's death, for A'den's pain and everything his brothers went through, for the people killed in the Clone Wars, and that wasn't even counting the things they had done afterward.
Ny slipped the comm link into a zippered pocket of her flight suit and moved as silently as she could toward the crate. She kept her eyes on Djela's back as it rose and fell slowly with his even breathing. She lifted a pry-bar from a side hatch, flinching when it clanged against the lid. She crept toward the box. Once she wiggled one of the straps away so she could ease the bar's flattened end under one plank. The wood groaned and creaked when she slowly applied force to it, then suddenly released with a soft pop!
Ny froze at the sound and looked over at Djela. His even murmuring breaths didn't so much as hitch. She kept her eyes on his as she slowly lifted the board free. One quick look down was all she need. The pry-bar slipped from her hand and landed with a hollow thud on the box. She clamped the other tightly over her mouth to hold in a strangled gasp of horror.
Ny went straight for the controls with only one thought: getting the Illothorian scum off her ship as soon as possible. She drew her blaster with one hand and keyed up the hyperdrive computer with the other. She picked the closest port at random. It was Nemoidian, a Trade Federation outpost. For the right price they could take Djela off her hands. Whatever it was, she was willing to pay. Maybe Kal would reimburse her.
The ship shuddered as it dropped out of hyperspace. Ny didn't pause before starting up the sub-light engines.
"What are you doing?" Djela cried out behind her. Ny spun in her chair, raising her blaster, but before she had even finished turning long bony fingers grabbed her wrist and wrestled for the weapon.
"You -! You'll get us both killed!"
"Get the hell off me and the hell off my ship!" Ny screamed and fought for the blaster. Why didn't I bring A'den, she thought angrily just as the ship began shaking with the buffeting force of atmospheric entry.
Cornucopia rocked and shuddered as it plummeted down through the atmosphere. From the planet's surface the ship was a streak of red burning across the sky. The assorted freighter pilots and dock workers below could hardly make out what it was but the sensors on the high towers of the Nemoidian Trade Federation Building pinged the transponder and received a clear signal back.
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"You don't understand!" Ahsoka cried and struggled against the large hands that gripped each of her arms. "I'm no one. You don't want me. I don't know anything." The towering mountains of rippling, sun browned muscle on either side of her didn't pay her any attention. They dragged her down the steep steps into the basement of the compound, like she was a disobedient animal on it's way to slaughter. She stumbled along a short distance before they pulled her to a halt in front of a small doorway secured with a keypad.
"Inside!" the slightly larger guard on her left said gruffly. He dragged Ahsoka over the threshold as she kicked out at his shins in retaliation and tugged uselessly at the bonds around her wrists. Both of her escorts took firm hold of her arms and shoved her roughly into the small, dim chamber. Unbalanced by her bound arms, Ahsoka stumbled and fell in an undignified heap on the dirty floor. She nearly gagged at the putrid smells of sweat, urine, and blood in the cramped room. She rolled lithely and curled her legs underneath her. Standing in one fluid motion, she made a dash for the door. Arms shot out across her path like solid bars, stopping her dead. They threw her back and she fell hard on the dirty floor again. Ahsoka bit back a curse at the pain radiating from her hip and elbow.
"P-please, I don't have anything you want! I'm just a refugee!" She lied and whimpered theatrically.
"Quiet!" The guard to her left snapped. She felt his intention in the Force a moment before his hand lashed out toward the side of her head. She leaned as much as she could out of his backhanded attack without appearing to miss it. On her sensitive montral, even the softened blow made her dizzy with pain. Her involuntary wordless outcry was real, but the sob that followed was faked to cover her angry instinct to growl.
"She was asking around at the tap-caf for a man called Sayne Heeran," one of her captors said, "and she was carrying these." Ahsoka looked up to see the larger of the hulking guards holding out the leather gun-belt holding the shinny chromium DC-17s. She followed the guard's gaze to the alien creature perched on a small chair set on a high pedestal. He sniffed his short trunk-like nose and his wings fluttered with a soft buzzing sound.
"I see," the gangster drawled in his nasally grumble.
So this is Bedjiim, Ahsoka thought. She gave him her best expression of terror and felt the visceral satisfaction it gave him through the Force. It was hard to hold back her sneer of disgust.
"I-it's just a name," she said quickly. "I-I don't even know him, I swear."
"Then why were you asking for him?" Bedjiim asked. Ahsoka shuffled back from him a little and pictured familiar white armored figures marching up the steps of the Jedi temple; her lekku shuddered at the mere thought. By Bedjiim's satisfied emotions emanating in the Force, he was convinced by her charade.
The toydarian made a slight flicking motion with his claw without breaking eye contact with Ahsoka. Strong hands grabbed her under her arms and hauled her upright. She barely had her feet underneath her when a solid fist snapped out and into her stomach. Ahsoka gasped and choked as the air was force from her lungs. The strong hands dropped her and she crumbled back to the floor, doubling over and coughing for breath. She forced the growl building in her chest to become a half convincing groan of pain.
"Please, please just let me go," she whispered. She was losing patience with the game. Ahsoka looked up at her captor. He was a pool of excitement in the Force, far too enamored with the power he though he had over her to see through the act. She probed his mind gently, feeling little resistance. He was too distracted by his anticipation to notice her influence.
"You know I don't know anything," Ahsoka whispered, using the Force to open his mind to her words. For a moment she felt his assurance and anticipation waver. Then his mind snapped shut to her and broke from her mental grasp.
Bedjiim waved one of his guards over with his claw and whispered instructions in his gravelly voice. Ahsoka tried to make out his words, but the echoes in the small space reverberated in her montrals. The guard hurried from the room, latching the door securely behind him. Ahsoka heard his footsteps descend further into the basement labyrinth and then two sets returned to the door. On the other side she sensed two presences: one assured and impartial; and the other felt like dry, cracked earth—exhausted and lifeless. She turned to look at the door so Bedjim wouldn't see the satisfied smirk forming on her face.
The door opened to admit a tall, dark-skinned man with a lax expression of pure despair underneath the molting of bruises on his face. He limped and stumbled as his escort shoved him into the small, dirty room. Ahsoka frowned; his limp was going to be inconvenient.
Sayne looked up slowly, his gaze falling on Ahsoka. His clear grey eyes widened when they met hers. She felt his recognition as much as saw it in his expression.
He whispered in a dry voice, "you're a…"
She didn't give him time to finish.
Ahsoka rolled onto her back and vaulted onto her feet into a flash. With one Force-assisted movement she tore the leather bindings from her wrists. Her weapons were familiar and easy to find in the Force. They came willingly to her call, snapping into the palms of her hands, ready and accurately aimed.
Bzaap! Bzap! Bzap!
She took out the shorter guard that had escorted her into the basement and Bedjiim's two personal aides before they could even lay hands on their own weapons. Sayne gasped, more in pain than in warning, as he was thrown aside by the brute behind him. Ahsoka spun on the spot and side stepped just in time for a hot bolt of plasma to shave by her side. She returned fire before the tall guard blocking the door could pull his trigger again. He crumpled to the ground with a dark burnt hole in the middle of his forehead.
"Behind…" Sayne cried out as Ahsoka spun back around, ducking and dropping to her knees to avoid the gangster's shots. Bedjiim fired haphazardly as he fled behind the relative safety of his high perch. Ahsoka shot back, keeping him pinned down and covering the sounds of his Huttnesse yelling with the sharp bzaap and hiss of hot plasma discharging.
"Run!" She yelled at Sayn and grabbed his arm, dragging him from the room. Sayne stumbled but thankfully remained upright. As soon as they were out of the doorway, Ahsoka pushed him forward toward the stairs.
A door on the far side of the hall opened in front of them, and two figures dashed out, silhouetted by the diffused light coming from the top of the stairs behind them. To his credit, Sayne didn't slow down. He flinched when Ahsoka's shots flew past him, but they only hit her enemies. The two figures fell before they could even make out their attacker in the gloomy hall. Sayne tripped on one of the bodies and fell to his knees. Ahsoka caught up with him and bent down to grasp his arm. She could feel how bony and emaciated he was through his dirty shirt and see his whole body quivering with each ragged breath.
"I'm sorry. I can't," Sayne panted. "I won't make it. You can't get killed for me. You have to save her!" His deep voice was insistent. It didn't strike Ahsoka as the voice of a man ready to die.
"No, I'm getting you out of here," she said and hauled Sayne to his feet. He stumbled and fell against her.
"You have to keep moving," she said in his ear, "Get up the stairs and go straight out into the courtyard. Do you understand? Just get that far and I'll do the rest. I will get you out of here alive, I promise. Now move! That's an order!"
Sayne gritted his teeth and eased weight back onto his injured ankle.
"Yes, sir," he forced out with military emphasis on the second word. Ahsoka could see his legs shaking with the effort of standing. He was starved and beaten, but his resolve was stronger. He looked up at her with bright amber eyes. She could see he didn't need codling or assurances; he needed a leader. She could be that.
Ahsoka put on the expression of calm seriousness she though of as her Commander face and nodded to him. She felt his strength fortify and his weight eased out of her arms. She gave him one last appraising look before she ran ahead.
Ahsoka took the stairs in three leaps, landing in a crouch to the left of the entryway just as it was lit-up with blaster fire. The bright sunlight pouring in from the open walkways and courtyard blinded her after the dim dungeon room. She closed her eyes, seeing nothing but the diffuse red of her own eyelids. She trusted the Force and let it see for her, guiding her aim as she returned fire and danced across the large room. She felt the heated trails of plasma against her exposed arms and her lekku. The gangster's men were bright lights in her sixth sense flickering out one by one.
"Over there!" Ahsoka heard one voice rise above the deafening din and someone's attention shifted away from her. Her eyes snapped open and she turned toward the shout. Sayne was stumbling across the courtyard in the center of the compound toward the far wall as she'd told him, but she could see his legs were giving way. She made a dash for him, just as the guards turned their blasts toward the courtyard. Sayne came to a stop at the wall, his shoulders dropping in disappointment the second before she ducked her head under his arm.
"Hold on," she managed to say, and she jumped. Sayne felt the ground disappear between his feet and small strong arms dragged him upward. For a weightless moment he hung twenty feet above the ground as courtyard crisscrossed with red blaster-fire. Then he was falling. Sayne cried out in surprise when gravity grabbed them. Ahsoka cushioned their fall onto the roof as much as she could, but Sayne landed on his bad leg and she heard the unmistakable snap of breaking bone. His cry of fear cut off suddenly, and his weight slumped against her shoulder heavily.
Ahsoka gritted her teeth as she grappled to find enough power to haul herself and Sayne off the roof. She jumped again and the roof sped away below her, giving way to empty space. Ahsoka didn't have time to smile at her good aim before she was falling again toward the row of parked speeders in the shadow of the compound walls. She landed on the wide back seat of the nearest one, Sayne's weight slipping from her grip.
"Back here!"
"Come quick!"
"Stop!"
She heard shouting from around the corner and, moments later, Bedjiim's guards appeared. She vaulted into the driver's seat and ducked under the console as the first shots whizzed over her head. She silently thanked her master for teaching her to hotwire just about anything as the speeder roared to life. Sitting up, the glittering identi-chip in the ignition caught her eye. She groaned and rolled her eyes at herself as she slammed the accelerator.
The speeder shot forward, tearing across the dry, sun bleached ground in a cloud of dust. A few wide shots flew past her, but she was out their range. Ahsoka turned to look back at the dwindling figures swarming around the sprawling building, then down at the unconscious man lying in the back seat. His face was relaxed and peaceful now but still unfamiliar to her.
But he knew me, she thought with a frown, or at least what I am. Organa hadn't said much about him and certainly hadn't hinted he had been a friend of the Jedi before the end of the war.
"He said he had information on the Jedi the Empire is still hunting," Organa had told her. "It isn't much but it may lead us to others still in hiding before the Empire finds them." Maybe that was who Sayne meant by 'her', whoever it was he wanted Ahsoka to save.
Ahsoka turned her attention back to the landscape flashing by. It would be a mystery until he woke up and then she would do everything she could to help. As a Jedi, it was her duty.
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Asajj Ventress was dozing in the pilot's chair of her small fighter craft as it drifted lazily in orbit over a barren backwater moon. There wasn't much more to do until her contacts dug up some useful intelligence on Djela Kur. She'd already put out all the feelers she could into the underworld without drawing too much attention to herself. That was always the danger these days. If she wasn't so worried about showing up on the Empire's radar she could be making a nice profit for herself as a bounty hunter but the risks were too great. Drawing the Empire's attention meant drawing the attention of the Sith. That lesson at least she had learned well: There is only ever one Lord of the Sith and he does not share power.
The console in front of her pinged and jerked Ventress from her half slumber. She opened one pale eye and gave the machinery a blood-chilling glare. It didn't even quiver, but a small light flashed on the display panel. With a weary sigh she sat up and read the scrolling text.
"What?" She muttered and her thin brows pulled together. Can't be, she thought. They can't be stupid enough to land on a Nemoidian controlled planet! But the readout was telling her otherwise. The Cornicopia, the ship Djela had contracted to carry him out of the Jutta Sector had been longed in the Nemoidian trade registry. The network of ports used the registry to track the movement of resources so they knew where it was best to invest their money. It also made any ship that moved through those ports easy to track if you knew the right slicer.
"I guess it's my lucky day," she said to herself and flicked the hyperdrive computer. The lightspeed engines crescendoed to a resounding hum. The computer whirred and chugged for a minute before resolving a route. Ventress hit the throttle, propelling her into lightspeed.
When the streaming star-lines stopped suddenly and threw her ship back into the black void Ventress was just under a green, murky looking planet with wide oceans and violent looking storms. She barely gave it a glance. With a few flicks and turning dials, she started scanning for Cornicopia. The Monarch-class freighter wasn't hard to find. It was streaking up from the planet at a sharp angle far from any port or civilization. Ventress smirked.
"This is just too easy," she chuckled and took hold of the steering controls. She fired up the sub-light engines and gave chase.
Her small light craft was built for speed and maneuverability. It was nothing like the large bellied freighter with its wide set engines designed for efficiency and stability. Ventress came in overtop of Cornucopia and eased lower, forcing the ship to slow it's accent and turn back toward the surface. It was quickly loosing speed with the increased friction of the atmosphere. She smirked again. Soon they would have no choice but to descend.
Cornucopia twitched violently once before it did a tumbling nosedive toward the surface.
"Amature," Ventress growled. She needed the bastard alive! If he crashed she wasn't going to get her bonus and she needed the credits badly. She leaned forward and plunged after her quary. Cornucopia swerved and spun in its wild decent. She could almost hear the drives when the ship pulled up from its helter-skelter dive. Her own craft lifted its nose gracefully and swung in low beside the freighter. Ventress prepared to give Cornucoia a barrel roll spin with her right stabilizer when she saw movement on the aft compartments of the ship. Strange protruding mountings on the Monarch freighter unfolded to reveal familiar swiveling barrels.
"Frak!" Ventress hissed and threw up her drag flaps. Cornucopia shot in front of her but the guns spun just as fast. They fired with concussive booms and flashes of bright blue plasma. Ventress's chair shuddered underneath of her. Alarms blared from every corner of her cockpit. The sound of her engines faltered and then dwindled down to nothing.
"I better get paid for this!" She growled.
Ventress unbuckled from her seat and drew one of her high powered hand guns. It took two shots to crack the view screen and one hard Force shove to send the transparisteel fragments flying out of the frame. They were immediately caught by the rushing wind and half of them became projectiles that hurtled back into the cockpit like flying knives. Ventress sliced through them with the Force, feeling them slide off the invisible shield she held in front of herself. She jumped out of her ship into the buffeting air, just as her stabilizers overloaded and went out with a loud bang and plume of black, oily smoke. The craft under her feet lurched and started to fall faster.
Ventress gathered power under her feet and bent her legs. She shoved hard with the Force and jumped, soaring off her crippled ship into the widening gap between it and the Cornucopia.
With one grasping hand she snagged the fender. She planted her feet firmly on the solid durasteel of the hull and pushed off again, concentrating on launching herself up and forward. She trusted the Force to hold her and spun in its grasp, falling again into a crouch on top of the freighter's engine housings. She only gave herself a minute to get her footing before she dashed forward, her head down into the oncoming air.
Ventress sprinted to the viewscreens at the front of the ship and vaulted over them to land in front of the pilot's view. She raised her blaster again and shot out the nearest frame. It burst, opening a hole in the ship. Like a diver she aimed herself through it and rolled when she hit the hard decking inside.
The Ilothorian at the helm yelled in his spitting, gurgling language. His words were lost behind a human woman's scream. Ventress spun around to get her bearings. The Force warned her a second before a blaster bolt burned a hole in the floor where she had landed. Ventress rolled again to get out of the way, coming up facing the human. She was short and gray haired, armed with a small blaster she was clutching in both hands.
At the ship's controls the Ilothorian pulled hard on the yoke, and Cornucopia tipped upward suddenly. A prybar slid across the decking past Ventress's feet. The human stumbled and cried out, her aim flying wide and one hand grasping out for something solid to steady herself on. Her fingers found the single piece of cargo in the ship's rotund hold. It was a crate with one board half pealed off.
"Give my apology to your husband," the Ilothorian yelled over the rushing wind coming in the broken view screen. He had abandoned the controls completely. He stumbled over the sharply sloping deck to the woman and shoved her hard with his thin arms. She cried out and lost her footing. Her grip failed, sending her rolling across the deck right into Ventress. They both crashed backward onto the folded up loading ramp at the back of the ship. For being so small, the woman was heavier than Ventress expected. It took a moment to push the struggling human off. Djela Kur scrambled back up the deck and reached for a large lever on the far wall.
"No!" The human screamed the moment before Djela pulled the lever. Ventress felt the solid deck beneath her give way. She slid painfully down the rough, grated surface of the ramp and then dropped off the edge into empty space. She plunged into free fall looking up at the open cargo ramp of Cornucopia racing away from her higher into the sky.
Frak, she thought.
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Ny had once fallen through the frozen crust of a river when she was younger and dropped into the frigid water below. The initial shock of the cold that engulfed her petrified her for the barest second and she tried to gasp. She could never forget the cold water, like sharp knives in her chest, and the terror that followed. The following seconds or minutes before her brother had hauled her from the frigid water were all a terrible blur to her. But she remembered coming up, coughing out water and heaving in painful lung-fulls of cold air.
She expected falling to her death would feel like falling through that sheet of ice. But it wasn't. It felt like coming up. Ny's first scream died on her lips as she plummeted toward the unfamiliar planet below. All she could hear was the wind in her ears and her own frantic heartbeat. She was cold, every inch of her body was frozen. She choked on breaths of too-thin air.
I'm going to die, she thought. I'm going to die in this place I don't even know the name of alone and Kal will never know what happened to me. He'll have to look all his life and never know, just like me searching for Terin. I'm sorry, Kal, she felt tears in her eyes immediately swept away but the rushing air.
She was about to die and all she could think about was how Kal and his boys would never get the closure of knowing why. Ny shut her eyes.
A thin, hard band wrapped around Ny's waist, it bent and pulled her hard. It became rock solid and dragged her upward, forcing the little air out of her lungs.
What? Ny wondered and opened her eyes, desperately trying to see through her tears. There was someone next to her, holding on to her as they both fell toward the ground. This strange woman had one thin arm around Ny and the other stretched toward the ground with her fingers splayed and her palm flat to the surface.
Ny felt like she was hanging by the thin arm around her middle, no longer falling. But the ground of green swampy vegetation was speeding up toward them alarmingly. Ny closed her eyes against her oncoming death even as the woman's arm pulled her harder and harder till Ny though her back was going to break under the strain.
Then she hit the ground. Hard enough to bruise her knees and the palms of her hands where she threw them out to catch herself but nothing more.
"Aaaghhhh!" The woman cried out beside Ny and fell with a wet, muted thud onto the soft, green moss.
Ny felt the moss under her hands, slightly rough and wet but warm. Luke-warm water was seeping up over her hands, green and murky. Ny breathed in great gasps of the humid thick air. It tasted like mildew, earth, and decay and smelled richly of growing and living things. Ny looked around herself at the stretching field of moss and low coral-like shrubs that dotted her view.
She laughed suddenly once, then twice until she descended into hysterical snickering.
"I'm a live," she finally managed to gasp. "I—I'm alive!"
"Yes, you old twit!" the woman on the ground beside Ny growled, finally stirring. She dragged herself up from the mossy ground on thin arms that shook. She was panting fast and shallow. Her skin was pale but slowly regaining an inhuman grayish tone and her head was patterned with purple markings that might have been natural. She was dressed in heavy leather clothing with blaster holsters on each hip, one empty and the other cradling a well-worn grip.
Bounty hunter, Ny thought and swallowed instinctively. Ny rolled onto her back and started edging away from the woman as she realized the situation was much worse.
Not just anyone could survive a fall like that. Only a Jedi or… Ny gaped open mouthed at Ventress as the former Sith apprentice straightened up and caught her breath.
"What? No thanks?" Ventress asked the gaping woman.
"Y-you're… Force-sensitive."
"Very astute." The words oozed sarcasm.
"W-what were you…" Ny stumbled over her words but her question was cut short.
"Shut up!" Ventress growled and put the Force and her will behind the words. Ny physically flinched and fell silent immediately. "I'm asking the questions here. Who are you?"
Ny's lips quivered for a moment and she gritted her teeth. Ventress pressed with her mind on the woman's will, feeling it like a physical thing, elastic and fragile.
"Nyreen Vollen," the woman gasped.
"Why were you on that ship?"
"It's Terin's ship, my husband's… my ship," Ny gasped out.
"Who do you work for?"
"No one," Ny whispered but Ventress could feel that wasn't the whole truth.
"Who do you work for?"
Ny gritted her teeth and curled up over her knees, wrapping her arms around herself as she cowered under Ventress's Force influence.
"Answer me!" Ventress snapped and pressed harder on her will.
"Kal Skirata, I work…for Kal." Ny clamped her hands over her mouth to stifle her horrified gasp.
I'm sorry Kal, she thought. I'm sorry.
"Who is Kal Skirata? What is his interest in Djela Kur?"
"A mandalorian, he's a mandalorian. He doesn't want anything with Djela. He doesn't even know Djela."
"Then why was Djela Kur on your ship?" Ventress demanded.
"He asked for a favor. I was repaying an old debt of my husband's."
"Where is your husband?" Ventress demanded. If Djela was going to turn to someone for help that meant Ventress could lay a trap.
"Dead, he's dead." Ny's voice was thick with tears as she answered.
"Why did Djela want to come to this planet?"
"He didn't," Ny whispered, "I did."
"Why?"
Ny gritted her teeth and pressed her lips shut.
"Why?" Ventress yelled and she pressed until she felt Ny's will was on the verge of breaking. The old woman screamed and grabbed at her skull, trying to hold it together as the physical pain threatened to tear it apart.
"The girl!" Ny screamed and Ventress let up enough for the woman to breath.
"What girl?"
"That's what he was transporting… It was a girl… a… a little girl frozen in carbonite. He was going to turn her over to the Empire for some reason. I don't know why they wanted her, but I'm no slaver. I wasn't going to be a part of that. I just wanted him off my ship!"
Ventress started down at the old woman curled up in the mud and torn up moss. She remembered the box strapped down in Cornucopia's cargo hold. It was just big enough for a carobonite-freezing frame. It was sickening to think of a child, a young girl, frozen in there, strapped to the deck of a cold ship hurtling through space to an unknown fate. What would she wake up to? Ventress wondered. She would wake up alone, without her family or anyone to protect her.
I know what that feels like, that particular kind of pain, Ventress thought. She looked up at the sky where Cornucopia was a disappearing gleam of burning engines in the atmosphere past the column of smoke that was the remains of her own ship. She was stranded and exhausted, but motivated more than ever to find Djela Kur. He was going to regret the day she heard his name.
.
Author's Note: So…. things are moving along. Slowly. Poor Ny, scared half to death and now captured by a crazy Zabrak bounty hunter. Next chapter: MORE AHSOKA! Vorpa decides what she thinks of Kal and Rex bargains with a Hutt. Fun, fun, fun. Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. If you have a moment, reviews are greatly appreciated. -Em