Even seven years later, Terrah was haunted by the intrusive memories of that day on Megalox Beta. She was fifty-three standard years old now, and life continued as it had always done. She collected bounties, she spent them, and she looked for more. It was a pattern she was used to, a race that continued on until an inevitable end.
Terrah leaned back in the pilot seat of her attack craft, as the pale blue light of hyperspace dimly lit the cockpit, the cockpit of Slave-1. Cheedo had lost the ship just as Terrah had predicted; and while on a bounty hunt, she happened to see it in the Keeper's hanger. The temptation was too much. Seeing another opportunity present itself, she took advantage of it, and thus she was now the owner of the famous Firespray attack craft. Its name was changed and new modifications added, however. She had painted the ship bright red and fitted it with a droid brain.
"Get your helmet on, Red," a familiar voice spoke from the ship.
"You're wasting your breath. As if I was going to forget that, Raider," Terrah replied.
The blue hyperspace evaporated as the ship exited hyperspace and the temperate planet of Lothal solidified in the viewscreen.
"I don't waste my breath," Raider replied
Terrah donned her helmet, a scarred and dented crimson helmet that matched her armor. It had large, black, eye shields and a slit mouthpiece fitted with a toxin filter. The rest of the helmet was unaccented except for a caudal ten-centimeter antenna.
"That's up for debate, as far as I'm concerned, Raider," she said with a smile behind her helmet.
"As if you don't talk too much, Red," Raider replied; and without warning the droid brain took the ship down sharply toward the surface of Lothal.
Terrah settled back in her chair and crossed her arms as Raider sank into the atmosphere. "I will take the controls when we're close to the surface," she said resolutely.
"I'd like to see you try," Raider replied. The droid ship was all talk.
The planet Lothal was a diverse ecosystem consisting of temperate forests, savannahs, and prairies. Terrah, her hands now on the controls, took Raider away from any towns and flew into the equatorial savannah wastelands. Sporadic and towering rock projections reached up from the scrublands and ornamented the otherwise flat terrain. A holographic display at the right of the control console glowed with coordinates.
It was not long before a grouping of rock towers appeared in the distance, widening and rising further into the sky as Terrah approached. A small landing pad was nestled in between the elliptical formation of rock spurs. Terrah flew above and settled Raider down for a landing. The drab rock faces passed as she descended to the pad and smoke from her ventral engines filled the mountain bowl. She powered down the engines and lowered the ramp.
Two ground buzzer blaster cannons emerged from the starboard and port hulls.
"You covering me?" Terrah asked as she stepped down the ramp. "Must think this is a trap."
"Red, it's always a trap," the ship replied.
Terrah nodded but did not reply, caught up in another memory of someone that line was familiar to. She walked to one of the rock spire faces and stood still in front of it. Raising her transceiver, she spoke. "Seti, I'm here."
There was no response on the transceiver. The wind blew causing some of the silty earth to spin momentarily in the rock bowl. The call of a distant flying Loth-Hawk could be heard in the distance. Still, Terrah waited. The wall in front of her suddenly trembled, gravel and dust falling from hidden seams in the rock. The hidden door retreated into the mountain a meter and then rotated to open a narrow passage, just wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. Terrah entered without fear into the heart of the spire. The door then shifted and closed behind her with an echoing crack. For a moment she was left in the darkness until a channel of natural light materialized from above.
A figure emerged from the darkness into the cylinder of light. He wore a simple, brown, hooded robe, bound with a leather strap at the waist. No weapon was visible, but the robe could easily conceal one. The man's face was hidden behind an onyx plate, smooth and featureless.
"Seti Gabril," Terrah began.
"Red Sun," the man replied and clasped his hands behind his back. "I was hoping you would respond to my offer."
"Well, three hundred thousand credits is a good incentive," Terrah replied.
"Since you released The Keeper's prisoners for me two years ago, I was hoping that you would be willing to find one more," Seti stated. The prisoners he referred to were a human man named Kanan Jarrus and a Twi'lek woman named Hera Syndulla. Terrah had successfully awakened the two prisoners from a twenty-year sleep in carbonite, and with it, she had obtained credit for destroying The Keeper and his entire operation. The killing of The Keeper and his men was not her work, but she was unwilling to clear up that misinformation.
"Tell me who, and I'll tell you if I will do it," Terrah replied.
Seti Gabril held out a hand-held holo-display. The blue-gray light showed a rotating astromech droid with an angular head with retractable grasping arms. Its arms and motorized treads were mismatched and showed visible wear to its surfacing.
"A C1 droid?" Terrah questioned. "And not even a good quality antique. What value is there in that thing?"
"Value is a concept difficult to define," Seti replied.
Terrah huffed at the thought. "If it's worth three hundred thousand to you, it may be worth three hundred thousand to me," Terrah said. "But tell me where it is. I imagine the bounty is more about the difficulty than the value."
"Aux Shupli, the First Order sympathizer from Anthan Prime had him last," Seti informed her.
"That bladderweasel. I've had a run in with him before. Can't say it won't be fun swiping some droid off him."
"He's dead," Seti responded as a matter-of-fact.
"And now the droid is . . .?" Terrah inquired as if Seti was not going to inform her.
"I don't know," he said. "That's what I'm hiring you for. Pirates hijacked his space yacht outside Anthan Prime three months ago. They stripped the yacht of everything; everything except his burnt body, that is."
"Pirates," Terrah said to herself then thought a moment. "There would be three possibilities in the Outer Rim territories."
"Who?" Seti asked and folded his arms in front of him.
"You don't need to know that. You just need to know that I'll take the job," Terrah replied.
Seti's shoulders tensed a moment then he nodded. "If the droid is inoperable, there is no bounty."
"I understand," Terrah said. She stepped back out of the light into the darkness and turned around. "Pleasure, as always."
Seti muttered something under his breath. Terrah could only hear a word or two but it sounded like a form of benediction. That made her more uncomfortable than anything else.
"Are you going to let me out?"
The rock slab shifted inward and rotated to let in the gray light from outside. She walked out through the ray of light as Seti slipped back into the shadow.