Twenty-three days following The Alderaanian senator's departure, Inny sadly gave Tess the news that both her Uncle Bail and the planet she once called home were gone. Tess spent hours crying in her guardian's arms. Inny held her and rocked her in her bed, whispering soft comforting words in the eleven-year-old's ears. Finally, Tess managed to get a few words out.
"Where am I going to go now?" Tess muttered.
"What do you mean?" Inny asked. "You'll stay right here with me, love. Why do you think that would change?"
"But…Uncle Bail…he can't pay you," the girl said. Inny brought a hand to her mouth, her eyes welling up slowly.
"Oh, dear, you can't possibly think I'm with you for the money…" Inny whispered, hugging her close. "Tess, I love you. You are like a daughter to me—I thought you knew that. Oh, dear…" Inny planted several kisses on the child's forehead and rocked her some more, letting her cry until they both fell asleep.
Hours later, after falling asleep in Inny's arms, Tess and her guardian were awakened by a knock on the door.
"Oh, its so late…" Inny muttered sleepily, pushing herself to her feet and tucking Tess more tightly under the covers. "Go back to sleep, Tessie." But Tess was too curious for that.
Tess listened intently as the front door to their little cottage squeaked open. She heard the faint mutterings of a few male voices and Inny's, but could not make out the words. Then suddenly, an electrical hum pulsated through the air, followed by male outbursts, four blaster fires, and several heavy thumps as if something fell to the ground.
Tess' eyes widened like saucers. Her throat dried up—she wanted to cry out for Inny, but she couldn't speak. However, she didn't need to cry out because Inny rushed into the room seconds later.
Inny grabbed Tess' hand and dragged her out of bed.
"What happened?" Tess asked, caught off-guard as Inny forced a tunic over her head.
"Nothing you need to be concerned about," Inny assured her. She had an odd metal cylinder-shaped device in her hand, which she quickly stuffed in her own tunic. It appeared to be a long, thin can of something. Inny took Tess by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "Tess," she began in a serious voice. "You're going to see something out there that is not going to be pleasant. But I'm going to protect you, okay? I know you have questions, but there will be time for them later. We need to get out of here. Now."
"But—"
"Tess," Inny warned, holding up a finger as if to suppress the girl's questions. "Just keep your eyes forward and follow me outside."
Tess nodded bravely, her hands shaking. She dutifully followed Inny but let herself slip into one of her fantasies. She imagined she was an esteemed young leader of the rebellion like she imagined Uncle Bail's daughter would be—the demeanor and poise of a princess, but the courage and strength of a soldier. But no matter how fanciful Tess' imagination was, she could not ignore the severed limbs and bodily remnants that she stepped over when exiting the front door of the cottage.
Once they made it outside, the cold Dantooine air met Tess and Inny's faces. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they saw a white wall of Empire stormtroopers surrounding them completely. Tess' younger eyes noticed them before Inny did. She noticed the shine of a raised blaster first, too.
"Inny, wait, look!" Tess screeched.
Suddenly, a single blaster shot snapped at the air and Inny fell to the ground.
"Inny!" Tess screamed, dropping to her guardian's side. Inny tried to hide the wound on her arm but blood seeped through her opposite hand that she covered it with. Tears of fear and worry and confusion fell from Tess' eyes.
"It's okay…" Inny muttered, clearly startled and out of breath with pain. She pulled herself to a stand with Tess' help, just in time to notice a man in gray uniform approaching them. For a second Tess thought he would help them. Unlike the stormtroopers, the fact that she could see his face made him more human and less of a "mindless clone of destruction" like she once heard a local man call them. As the man in the gray suit came closer Tess recognized him, but she could not yet put a name to the face. Inny beat her to it.
"Chid," Inny muttered through clenched teeth. "You traitor." Chid couldn't help but laugh.
"You are one to talk, Inny Foetl," he chuckled. "The Rebel Alliance and all its members are the traitors, not the Empire." Chid's eyes shifted to Tess. "Ah, this one has grown. Tricky, that Organa. Why, she's not even the proper age! But she is the child, isn't she?"
Inny pushed Tess behind her protectively.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Inny insisted. Chid rolled his head and straightened his stance as if to show he was bigger and better than her.
"That dimwit Alderaanian senator didn't think we would figure it out, but we did. There are medical records to prove it. Hidden of course, but always accessible for the Empire. She's quite the little science experiment, isn't she? Taken out of Padme prematurely, put into an artificial womb to finish her growth at the slowest pace possible, so that even if we searched every child that was age-appropriate, we still would not find her! But we did. And her father wishes to see her."
"My father?—" Tess began.
"You don't know what you are talking about, Chid!" Inny snapped, more angry than Tess had ever seen her. "This is an innocent child, and she is not the child you think she is! You've got it all wrong!"
Striding closer until he was a step away from them, Chid flashed a chilling smile at Tess, then back at Inny.
"Then you won't mind if we take her to investigate that," he said softly.
With fantastic speed and precision, Inny whipped the metal cylinder out of her tunic at lightening speed and with the press of a button, it hummed into a yellow lightsaber and inflicted a painful and demobilizing but not lethal wound to Chid's chest.
"Tess, run!" Inny screamed. Tess didn't need to be told twice.
But the stormtroopers closed in on them too fast. Tess had not taken five steps before one of them scooped a cold, armored hand around her waist, lifting her straight off the ground. She kicked and swung her body, but to no avail. Two more stormtroopers helped grab her. One pulled out a thick needle filled with pale yellow liquid. Tess cried out in terror.
"Tess!" Inny screeched through the darkness, recognizing the girl's scream. Tess' eyes followed the voice until she saw a circle of stormtroopers surrounding Inny, though the only indication of Inny was the top of her yellow lightsaber.
An eruption of blaster fire seemed to create multiple stab wounds in Tess' ear until the glow of the lightsaber fell.
With Inny gone, Tess lost the last shred of anything close to a family that she had ever known.