I DO NOT OWN STAR WARS!!
The duros looked up, "Yah, I'm Bane. Wha'd'ya want?" he demanded in a slurred voice.
"Um-" Teri stumbled over his tongue, "I was told you were the only one to ask to do a dirty job."
"Oh?" The duros snorted, "And who told you that?"
"My wife." Teri said simply.
Cad Bane roared with laughter, "Is that who?"
Teri was suddenly very thankful for the fact there was no one else in the cantina. "Yes." He answered.
"What was her name son?" The duros seemed sobered slightly.
"Elice Sein." Teri stated with a sigh. Silence evicted the duros' laugh.
"What did you say?" The words came from a cunning gravely voice. The duros was entirely sober now.
"Uh, Elice Sein." Teri repeated. The duros swore.
"She's married?" The bounty hunter snarled. Teri wasn't sure he liked the sound of that sentence.
"She was." Teri croaked out of his already too-tight throat. "She died."
"Poodoo. I owed her a favor." Angrily the bounty hunter swatted one of his glasses and sent it flying across the room.
"Doesn't that mean now you don't have to pay it back?" Teri tilted his head to the side in confusion, too curious not to ask a question he might regret later.
"No. It means now I owe you. Favors are passed to remaining family members." The duros tiredly rubbed his forehead.
Teri wasn't about to question the intricate rules and laws of bounty hunter society, because right now they were doing him a favor. "In that case then, Bane, sir. Think you could hack into Coruscant's memory banks?"
Two Years Later…
An eight-year-old Hope balanced her mathematics book on her left knee, and her worksheet on her right. She was advanced by two years in her studies, thanks to what she'd learned at the Temple, she was not only ahead academically, but socially. She, unlike other human children, was able to converse easily with non-humans. It wasn't just that she was unafraid of them—she certainly preferred them to many humans—but that she knew their social code, and she could read their expressions.
It seemed at long last when Hope closed her book and tucked her worksheet away in its folder. She heard her father come into the room.
It was a simple living room, open to the kitchen, and leading off to the bedrooms, bathrooms, and study. Across from the couch was the holotable, where one could turn on the holonet and see one's favorite shows. Beyond the holotable was the front door that led from the apartment, to the landing platform. It was unusual that they had a landing platform. Most families shared a common platform with other families. But Teri was a top journalist, and took risks to get the newest story, and that had its benefits.
Teri came behind the couch and kissed the top of her head, "Homework done?" he asked. Hope tilted her head back to look at her father, her long brown hair tickling her shoulder blades.
"Finally! It took forever!" Hope wrinkled her nose, "I wonder why they assign us so much."
"Why don't you write a column on it?" Her father asked.
As the daughter of a journalist/reporter, Hope knew much when it came to writing.
"Maybe I should!" Hope groaned. Her father chuckled and then looked at his watch.
"Ah! Look at the time! I'm going to be late, and your Uncle won't like that." He muttered.
"He never does." Hope remarked absent-mindedly on her "uncle". He wasn't really her uncle, he wasn't even human. But that didn't mean that he wasn't family. Though "Uncle" had never really fit him. He worked close with her father many times, sometimes following her father on his reporting ventures, sometimes letting her father tag along with him. In whatever way, it seemed the cold-hearted killer had found a soft spot in his heart—if he even had one—for Hope and Teri. I heard that some people believe in Guardian Angels, protectors of lost souls, or dead Angels from the moons of Iego who spend their after-life guarding the living. I guess that makes Uncle Bane our Guardian Demon. A loud knock sounded at their front door.
"That would be him. Hope would you get that? I've got to grab my holocam quick."
"Sure Dad, no problem." Hope jumped off the couch as Teri ran back to his bedroom to get his holocam.
As Hope approached the door, she heard another knock. Uncle only ever knocks once. She stopped, her hand resting on the open button. The knock came again. Although Hope was far too short to see out the eyehole, she could still—and sometimes did—sense people through the Force, in her primitive way. She closed her eyes and stretched out her senses. Not one but seven warm shapes were behind the door. Hope gasped. She knew none of them were friends of hers. There was no Uncle. Uncle Bane had a specific shape in the Force, like a tunnel that had been bent back on itself too many times, you could never outsmart him. No, these people were tall, she could tell that much. But nothing more, and she didn't need to. They'd acquired a new name since the Empire's birth, Stormtroopers. Hope sensed Teri come up behind her.
"Is something wrong Hope? Why haven't you let him in?" Her father tilted his head to the side.
"It's not him Dad. It's not Uncle. Its…" she took a deep breath, "Stormtroopers."
"How can you tell? You can't see through the eyehol—" her father cut off his sentence, "Oh."
"Dad, what do we do?" Hope bit her lower lip with her teeth.
"I'm getting you out of here, first and foremost—"
"No Dad, you can't." she held up an eight-year-old hand to stop his next sentence, "They have more troopers guarding the perimeter." Hope watched her father's face grow pale.
"Then I'll hide you." He whispered, with a sad smile. Hope was set to protest when Teri held up his hand. "It'll be safer for both of us."
Hope sniffled, she was so scared. "Okay Dad." She whispered.
Another knock came, this time accompanied by a stormtroopers yell of; "This is Coruscant Security Force. Either open the door, or we'll break it down!" The booming voice chased Hope to the edge of tears.
"Come on dear." Teri scooped her up, his voice was surprisingly calm. He went into their kitchen, and opened a cupboard; it was empty at the moment; the weekly shopping still undone. Then Hope's father set her inside. Just before he closed the door, he whispered, "I love you Hope. You're my daughter, never forget who you are." His face carried resignation, determination, and love. It would be an image that Hope would hold in her mind for the rest of her life.
Dents prepared to give the door its final kick that would launch it off its hinges. Instead, his foot almost connected with the man who opened it.
"Um, sorry, I was in the bathroom…" The man's expression looked confused as to why there were seven stormtroopers at his door. "Why—"
"Because Mister Teri Sein. You have violated the law." The trooper watched the man's expression morph into one of confusion, but his eyes told a different story.
"How? What do you mean?" Sein took a step back, startled.
"You're last article criticized the Emperor. That is not allowed." Dents repeated what he'd been told, like a droid. Dents thought.
Sein's eyes, that had moments ago seemed to reveal guilt, now showed true confusion. Dents wondered if he was beginning to lose his touch on reading people. "What? But we have the right to speak freely!"
"Not anymore." Dents shook his head. "The Emperor has suspended those rights." Dents replied firmly. "I'm afraid you have to come with us sir."
"I see." Sein responded his face had gone slack and pale. The troopers escorted him to his trial.
The trial was short.
The accusation was speaking.
The jury was the Emperor.
The verdict was guilty.
The sentence was death.
Hope had been holding her breath. Straining herself to her limits, she had clung to the warmth that was her father. Followed his progress, where he was. She had kept breathing as long as that warmth was there.
And then it slipped away.
Hope felt herself stop breathing, the warmth had melted, become a pool that was sliding through her fingers. "NO!" she shrieked, "No! No, No, NO!!!" Her voice was an ear-splitting wail.
Her father was dead.
Hope kicked the cupboard door open with her feet; she tripped on the bottom of the cupboard in her rush not to feel trapped. She landed on the kitchen floor. Panic took her, tears couldn't chase away the pain. She scrambled to hear feet, and looked around. What now? She wondered. Then she heard the door open.
A kind of primal fear gripped Hope as she hurriedly submerged herself in the Force, and sensed a fuzzy-shape-that-was-not-Uncle coming through the door. Desperately, Hope looked for a place to hide. The cupboard would not save her this time; this time was a thorough search. Hope's eyes locked on their garbage chute, she looked up at the ceiling in disgust, and then threw open the little hatch and jumped in.
After she'd slid along the greasy tunnel, Hope landed with a smush in unrecognizable substances. She practically swam through the stuff to reach the wall, as she looked around; she spotted a little to her right a maintenance door, for the engineers who sometimes came through here.
Hope sighed and inched her way the door, then she jiggled the door handle a bit until the door swung open. Hope got up on what appeared to be a street. It was familiar to her, from a time when she had been only six. She breathed deeply, and instantly regretted it. The fumes from the garbage hung heavy in the air, disgusted, she pulled the door shut.
"Hey, you!" a voice bellowed. Hope spun around. There stood about five boys, each taller and older than her by far.
"Me?" Hope pointed at herself.
"Yah, you!" the same boy shouted at her, "You're in Hawk-Bat territory!" Hope rolled her eyes, she'd just lost her father; she didn't need this.
"Oh really?" she snorted, "Well sorry, I was really just passing through."
"Maybe you don't get it." A boy with an irritating nasal voice said, "Once you come on our terf, you don't leave!"
"Guys, just leave her alone—" One of the boys pleaded.
"Oh shut up!" The first boy growled, "Don't you know what kind of payment the boss gives us if we bring one in?" The third boy sadly shook his head.
"Um, excuse me. But I have no intention of going anywhere." Hope met the eyes of the first boy, deciding he was the leader, "So bug off!"
"Oh, I'm so scared." The first boy snorted loudly. Hope felt two sets of hands clamp onto her upper arms, the other two boys had come behind her while she was bantering, "But maybe you'll reconsider."
"Hey! Let me go!" Hope writhed, she was the "niece" of a bounty hunter… she knew how to defend herself, but right now, she was panicking.
The first boy laughed, then he made a hand signal and the two boys began dragging eight-year-old Hope to somewhere she didn't want to go. "LET. ME. GO!" she yelped, she started yanking hard on the unforgiving hands. The boys, except the one, just laughed. That one walked with his head down in shame.
The entire way, Hope never gave up the fight. But it was in vain. Before long, she was dragged to a storm drain, and then dropped down. She had no chance to escape; hands quickly seized her arms again. It was then that her horrors truly began.
"We've got a live one here!" One of the boys holding her arms teased. Hope kicked his shin for the tenth time in retort. She began to look around her, faces shone from the shadows that threatened to swallow them all.
"Let me see." A deep voice resounded. A greasy haired and overweight human man walked over from the deepest shadow. Hope sucked in air as the crude excuse for a sentient sized her up. Then the man's lips curled up in a cruel smile and he turned to speak at—not to—her, "Welcome child, to the Hawk-Bats. We're the best thieves in all of Coruscant."
Hope gasped inside, So this is a child-thievery ring!
"Numa!" he bellowed, and a young twi-lek girl came running out with a sharp unfriendly looking device. It was a bulky tube filled with liquid, that tapered off into a sharp and slightly jagged tip. The man snatched it from the twi'lek girl, and then he thundered over to Hope and grabbed her wrist. "Once you're in. You don't leave." He jabbed the needle into her arm, Hope bit her tongue against a scream. "Those are nanobots. If you lift one finger against the Hawk-Bats, they'll kill you. Do you understand?"
Hope's arms were dropped, and she clutched at her stabbed arm, blood pooled from the wound. But then she looked deeper, she looked in the Force, and found the tiny bots, little specks of dullness, connected to a control that was far, far away.
She could feel the nanobots through the Force as they spread their way through her veins. And as they spread, she watched her fate seal itself, watched as both her regrets and her dreams both flickered past her eyes. She wanted to cry, to wail; but she couldn't, her tears were lost. So was Hope.
"Now." The big man wiped his greasy palms on his pants, "What's your name girl?"
She met his dirty eyes, she wanted to say, My name is Hope. But that was a lifetime ago, that wasn't her name anymore. It was just a name that could be tracked, a good lie. She searched frantically for a name that fit. And the only thing that fit a dirty life was a filthy lie. "My name is Teri Ecile." Start sleeping with one eye open.
My apologies if this chapter is a little jumpy!
Things to notice: Ecile is Elice backwards.
A thanks to My Lady Vader, darkangel1994, The Name Is Unimportant, and Queen for your reviews!