Jaina Retrospective One: Nar Shaada

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There were three of us: Kev, Millia, and me. At first we were whoever we wanted to be.

I was a race ship pilot, a CorSec officer – my foster parents remembered Corellia to me often, and they remembered law and order fondly –, a stormtrooper until I found out girls couldn't grow up to be stormtroopers. That was the start of my hatred of the Empire: a child's game, a child's dream, frustrated. Does that surprise you? Kev was a mechanic, a trader. Millia was the odd one. She was the Emperor or his hand, though never the Empress. She was Darth Vader, or, in sharp contrast, a Jedi Knight.

Then Selpha and Emret, my foster parents, died in a gang raid. I was nine.

I moved in with Millia and her sickly mother. Now there were new roles. I was big sister to wild Millia, who was free as never before to [ibe[/i the wild one. Both of us were girls, where Kev was a boy, and for some reason that meant something now. Kev was very slightly the outsider. For some reason it never mattered that Kev and I were human and Millia Twi'lek.

Two years later Millia's mother's long sickness took her, and that same year the gangs took Kev's older sister, who had been mother to him as long as any of us could remember. New roles once more.

I became, gradually, imperceptibly, the leader, taking the place in life that Millia had held in undisciplined play. Kev was the practical one, keeping us fed. Millia was the hopeful one, keeping us alive. We all became fighters, keeping each other safe.

When I was fourteen the three of us saw a swoop rider murdered by a gang (the same on that killed Selpha and Emret? I still wonder). We were small yet, and afraid. We were Nar Shaada street children and we did not help the rider, but when the gang was gone we took the swoop.

We took it apart, Kev and I for the most part with Millia assisting. It was, I would later realize, a cheap model. We fixed it up, half on knowledge, half on hunch and instinct, making it more efficient. We figured out the controls from the inside out, took turns trying to ride it. By all rights it should have been Millia or none of us who did it well. By virtue of superior instincts, it was me. New roles again.

I was the rider, the racer. Kev was the mechanic, the manager. Millia was the hype, because it takes more than wins to make people [iwant[/i to see you race, and the race organizers weren't interested in skill, they were interested in selling tickets and they were interested in flare. So Millia became the hype, and I became the flare.

Within two months we were able to buy a better swoop. Within four I had started researching shipbuilding in earnest (I'd been doing it on and off with growing comprehension since Selpha and Emret died.)

We started building the [iKestrel[/i a year after we saw the swoop rider die.

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Perhaps "building" is the wrong word, because we started with the remains of a ship. Perhaps it is the right word, though, because we dismantled the old yacht almost entirely, putting it back together in a whole new shape with new parts wherever possible. The old ship, which we had found in a junkyard in our first weeks of street life, had been home before the swoop brought us enough money to rent an apartment.

We wanted the freedom our own ship would bring us, and all the better if we could bring with us to the stars a place that had sheltered us when we were alone and afraid.

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The day I turned sixteen I announced my retirement from the racing circuit to a mild uproar from my moderate number of fans (I'd never quite gotten down the flare it took for more than that.) It had been a little less than a year since we'd started building the [iKestrel[/i and almost exactly six months since we'd named her.

We paid to have her towed to a launch pad and then we took off based on what we'd read, what we'd found taking the old ship apart, and based on sheer gut feeling. I flew pilot with Millia as my first mate and Kev standing by to take care of any bugs.

By this time I had found more reason to hate the Empire than its frustration of my vague childhood ambition. Their prejudice against women had, perversely, endured after the ascension of Empress Isard. Palpatine had ingrained it in the structure and culture of his Empire, and Ysane Isard was not one who felt such sisterhood towards others of her sex as would drive her to rectify this. The official unofficial stance was that Ysane Isard was an exception.

The Empire's prejudice against aliens also endured, and it too had become part of galactic culture under Palpatine. I'd seen it aimed against Millia, and against Kev and me as her associates.

They were tyrannical. They were militaristic. They demanded conformity and I would not give it. The New Empire might be more subtle in its evils than the Old, but did that not make it all the worse?

I hated the Empire. Millia hated the Empire. I never knew Kev to hate anything, but he certainly viewed the Empire in a negative light. We all had, aside from our reasoned, focused hate or dislike, the vague sense of blame that all the disadvantaged have for their governments.

It was decided that our first voyage would be to the recently opened Adumar system, where we would buy a shipment of proton torpedoes to sell in the Mytaranor Sector, where rebel activity was said to be the highest.

It wasn't much of a plan. We couldn't even guarantee we had the capital to pull it off, but we were young and sure that, once we were off Nar Shaada, everything would work out.