Here's Chapter 3. Once again, thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this. Please leave your comments/reviews!

Chapter 3: A Visit

Kyrr Geron was a little boy again, in his old home. His father was speaking to him. He was reliving a moment from the past.

"Alright son, are you packed up for your trip?"

"Yeah, I think so. When are we coming back?"

"Just a few months from now. We're gonna have a great time, okay?"

"Where are we gonna go on this trip Dad?"

"Oh, just for a cruise in space. But it'll be lots of fun, just you and me and a few other people who are gonna help me run the ship. We'll get to spend lots of time together!"

"When are we leaving?"

"Right now, Kyrr. My boss says so. Come on now, we have to get in the airspeeder and fly to the spaceport, wouldn't want my cruise ship to leave without us!"

Kyrr felt panicked. All of a sudden he was a full-grown man, and he tried to warn his father of what would happen.

"Wait Dad, if we go the ship will crash, and you'll… you'll get hurt! And I'll never see you again!"

"I know son, but that's the way it happened. It was meant to be this way."

His father and his home faded away and all of a sudden he was falling, falling, falling helplessly into a black abyss.

Kyrr Geron opened his eyes. His vision was slightly blurred, and his cheek felt... cold. He sat up in bed and buried his head in his hands, contemplating his dream.

"It was meant to be this way."

He took a deep breath and looked over at the blue-glowing screen of the chronometer hanging on the wall in his dark apartment. It was still one and a half standard hours before sunrise on Coruscant. He changed into more decent clothing, strapped on his blaster-pistol, walked over to the panel on the wall next to his bed, and touched a button on it. In an instant, his entire apartment lit up with bright white light, which had no apparent source; there were few shadows.

Kyrr's apartment walls were painted a stark white, with polished durasteel flooring. Across from his bed were two doors; the one on the left lead out into the hallway of the apartment complex, while the one on the right lead into the small storage closet in which Kyrr stored his armor and equipment. The room in which he slept was around eighteen by twenty-five feet in size, and several feet away from his bed were two four-foot long windows that, at a touch of a button, could open or close their long, horizontal shutters in a split second; they could let in light from outside, or block it out entirely. The bed itself was essentially a part of the floor. It was pretty much a foot-tall rectangle made of durasteel with a stiff, black mattress on top of it without blankets or pillows.

In front of the two windows was a shiny black table, with an expensive-looking, leather-upholstered chair on either side of it. This was where Kyrr would talk to his clients in person, when the occasion called for it. He walked over to the table and wiped two fingers across its reflective surface. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, feeling the grit and studying the line that he had left in the thin film of dust. He sighed, and picked up his datapad, which he kept on the table. He switched it on and scrolled through the local bounties that had been posted recently. He found that there wasn't a single one over 900 credits, and he cursed silently to himself. While he was reading the list, two of the posted bounties actually disappeared, having already been claimed by some other bounty hunter.

Great. Now the highest one is 600 credits.

He sighed again and put his datapad back on the table. He turned away as if to leave his apartment, but when he got to the door he stopped.

I didn't check the non-local bounties.

He went back and picked his datapad up again, and checked to see if there were any off-world bounties posted on the encrypted data-base that he was connected to. There were two. He saw that one of them was set at 9,000 credits.

I don't have a ship anyway. Perhaps I can find a client or two in the underlevels today.

He returned to the door, and, once again, he hesitated. He heard several sets of running footsteps outside his door. Then he heard a clinking sound against his door, and then a beeping noise that continued to increase in rapidity. Kyrr's eyes opened wide.

Realizing what was happening, he turned to his closet and opened the door. Just at that moment, there was a deafening blast and the sound of tearing metal, accompanied by a small fireball. Kyrr dove into his storage room, avoiding the explosion for the most part. He pressed a button on a panel inside, shutting the door behind him. He instinctively put on his dark red Mandalorian armor at a speed that could only be achieved through a lifetime of practice, preparing to face whatever had blown his front door down. His grey and crimson helmet tucked under one arm, he grabbed two of the many blaster rifles he owned off the rack on the wall, slinging one over his back for later use. He put on his helmet and took a Merr-Sonn Munitions V-1 thermal detonator from a high shelf with his left hand while he held the rifle in his right hand. He could hear activity on the other side of the closet door. Then he heard two muffled words that sent his heart racing.

"Get clear!"

He backed up against the wall as far away from the door as he could get, which was unfortunately only a few feet away, and braced himself. There was another loud explosion, and his closet door ceased to exist, but Kyrr's armor absorbed the shockwave that reached him, leaving him unharmed. He edged over, activated his thermal detonator, and tossed it through the threshold. When he heard it go off, he swung around into what was left of his apartment. What he saw startled him; there was another black, T-shaped visor staring back into his own.

That explains the Concord Dawn accent.

The clone trooper raised his blaster rifle, still a little dazed from the unexpected explosion, but Kyrr was fully alert and already had his rifle trained on the clone. He let loose a volley of rounds, most of which hit the clone trooper full in the face, burning away much of the front of his helmet and revealing a glimpse of the face of Jango Fett. He fell over, dead.

Kyrr looked around. In an instant, he saw that his grenade had taken out six of the nine clone shocktroopers in the squad, and his blaster had eliminated a seventh. There was one on either side of him. They slowly approached him, blaster rifles raised.
One of them shouted, "Drop your weapons and surrender, now!"

I'm not gonna let these guys push me around so easy.

Kyrr slowly knelt down, as if placing his weapon on the floor. He put his rifle on the ground, and took his left hand off the grip. Then his back leg shot out and tripped the trooper behind him, and, lifting his rifle with one hand, he shot the one in front of him once in the knee. In a flash he had the rifle braced against his shoulder with his left hand supporting it, and he gunned down the trooper in front of him. As the trooper behind him was getting up, he slid across the floor. He came to a stop a couple of feet away, and lying on his side, using the bodies of two other dead clone troopers as cover, Kyrr let loose a spray of plasma at the last remaining shocktrooper just as the clone had taken aim and fired twice. One of the blue blaster bolts hit the durasteel flooring behind Kyrr, the other hitting one of the bodies that was in front of him. With all the clones dead, Kyrr stood up.

Then he realized that if they were really trying to take him down, the shocktroopers could have a support squad standing by. He went back into the storage room, looking for any more usable equipment. He was able to salvage two more thermal detonators, which he hung from the right side of his belt. There was a Merr-Sonn 1126-series rocket that he could launch from his left gauntlet, and he found some extra power packs for his blasters that he could use. But the majority of his remaining weapons lay mangled and bent on the floor, collateral damage from the powerful blast that had ripped through the reinforced durasteel plating of the closet door. Fortunately, his blaster pistol had been on his hip when the heavy explosives destroyed the rest of his arsenal, and he had been mostly out of the way of its destructive power.

He walked cautiously into the hall, checking all possible points for any more clone troopers. When he had made sure that that the hall was clear, he took one last look back at his ruined home. His mattress had been burnt away, along with the expensive leather upholstery on his chairs. His table had been knocked over and was peppered with shrapnel, and his datapad lay on the ground next to it, its screen cracked. There was a large, crater-like dent in the floor where the thermal detonator had exploded, the metal shutters on the windows were bent outward, and some had been propelled through the transparisteel windows. The nine bodies of the dead clones were strewn about the area in front of his closet, and the entire room was covered with a grey residue from all the smoke.

Nice of them to visit. They sure do make a big mess for people who are trying to 'clean up' the upper levels.

He walked down the hall, making his way toward the elevator.