Kurik Otela – Ryloth
Sixteen was quite young for a pilot, if their captain was to be believed. Then again, their Devaronian captain had become a pilot at the age of fourteen, but he insisted that it was all the time spent on dust balls in the Outer Rim.
But the entirety of the crew was scraped from the scummy underbelly of the Outer Rim. Two of their cremembers had passed through prison. One of them had escaped a murder charge by murdering the witness.
Kurik was little different in origin, but he was a simple street kid instead of a hardened criminal. He very well could've ended up like one of the other crewmembers had he gone without intervention, but Dilt had seen him take a speeder joyriding out on Bespin and picked the young man up as a pilot.
From there, it had been all smuggling, all day, for every moment of his life. They'd eventually become notorious enough to earn some private and very quiet contracts from the Republic, who paid well enough that they never had to worry about a meal for the next month.
The Separatists had offered to buy them, as well, but any smuggler worth their salt knew that smugglers and the shady types who prowled the underworld ended up missing once they started working with the droids.
So when they'd landed on Ryloth by skimming underneath a Separatist blockade, they'd expected to be hauling people back to the Republic, whether injured or dignitaries. Instead, they'd been met by a Chiss who'd been stuck on the planet since the blockade had begun.
And what he had surprised them all.
"So...explain to me why a Jedi isn't delivering this holocron," Dilt said, shifting the rifle in his arms as he spoke to the Chiss lieutenant. "This seems like Jedi Council business, not smuggling business."
"Because of that." The alien pointed his finger skyward, and Kurik didn't even have to glance up to look at the Separatist cruisers hovering overhead. "I hope you have a good pilot."
"We do."
The silence that ensued was familiar to Kurik. Many wouldn't believe that a teenager whose eyes always remained covered could ever be a pilot. But they didn't know that he could see, that he could sense everything around him.
He'd never known where he'd come from and had always thought himself a human until a passing Togruta had called him something else, something he hadn't been able to recall. He'd also said that the teenager could've been a Jedi, had he been found at a younger age.
"A blind kid?"
Kurik could see, but it was an ability to be mastered just like any other sense. He'd been told that others saw with clarity, with vividness. His world was composed of smoky shadows, always moving between greys, whites, blacks, reds, and blues. He'd never see a blade of grass, he'd never see the color of the sun that beat down on him. Only the shades.
"Don't worry about him," Dilt told them. "We better be making some serious pay for this."
"The Jedi Temple promised to have payment upon delivery." A pause, an uncomfortable cough, then, "They want me to impress on you how important this is. They told me there are a number of locations in there that are deeply important to them."
"We'll take care of it. We've never failed a delivery before."
"I assume that's why they hired you." The Chiss' voice grew solemn. "One last thing. This cannot be traced to our people. If the Separatists find out we were housing this, there would be retribution, retribution my planet wants no part of."
"Understandable. If we get caught, we'll destroy it."
"Short of shooting it into a sun, I don't know that you can destroy it. I just wanted you to know that this isn't some illegal pet or a crate of weapons."
"I get it, I get it. We already have a plan."
"You'd better. I must return to my planet, now. This planet is far too hot."
"Good luck to you too, then."
The alien handed over the holocron to their captain, a blinding cube of white light that forced the young man's eyes away. Then he sunk his hands into his pockets, turned back toward the village he'd emerged from, and started walking. They watched after him for a moment, then turned back toward the direction they'd come from.
The crew of six departed from the Chiss special operative, headed back for their vessel. Kurik had managed to fit it into a convergence between canyons, a narrow pass that would be difficult to maneuver out of but that nobody would think to look for them in.
"They really wanted this off their hands," Tema said, and Kurik turned to find a smile on the shadowy figure. "Must've been frightened of it or something."
"Mmm, I've heard rumors about the man who's leading the Seps," Dilt said, scratching at a horn. "There's more than just the clones and the droids, I think. I don't know much about the Jedi's enemy, but I know they have one. Could be that the Chiss government just doesn't want to become embroiled in anyone's politics."
"I think we should just focus on getting this thing off our hands," Kurik told them.
"You could always try to see what's inside. You can use that Force stuff, can't you?"
"I guess, but not like everyone else does. Just to see and keep us out of fire, and that's about it."
They turned a corner to find their ship lying on the ground ahead. The Barloz-class freighter was a bulky vessel, an older model that was slowly losing its relevance around the galaxy. They'd outfitted the cargo vessel well, an expensive and time-consuming investment that nevertheless made the innocent transport a powerhouse.
"Alright," Dilt said. "I don't know that well be able to get out the same way we came in, so we're gonna pull one over on them."
"The false goods gambit?"
"That's what I'm thinking," the Devaronian replied. "We'll declare ourselves once we get up there. They can go ahead and scan, we turn over the cheap stuff and a little extra to get by, and they don't come looking for our real cargo." He turned to Kurik as he lowered the ramp. "Kid, get us started, we've got to cover this thing up with some Wookie-hair rugs."
"You got it, boss."
The pilot boarded the Jack of Trades, walking through the narrow corridors of the vessel until he got to the front. The cockpit was cramped and stuffed with trinkets that the young man had collected on many of the planets they'd visited.
Kurik started up the the vessel and waited as he heard shifting in the back. Once the rest of the crew was done hiding the holocron and laying out their bait, Dilt called up to front.
"We're ready, kid, take off."
It took him a few extra seconds to shimmy the vessel out of the canyon, but once they were above ground level, he piloted the Jack of Trades up into the clouds and toward the atmosphere. Once they'd broken that, the Separatists came into view.
The blockade was plain as day to the pilot. He saw each of the vessels, grey dots on the horizon of varying size. Cruisers, stations, and battleships, all with the intent of keeping people from getting in. Luckily, many blockades were not so thorough on keeping people in, especially when it came to the greed of Separatist commanders.
He heard the warning on the panel in front of him, a light pulsing in a lighter shade of grey than everything else around him. He already knew what it was, the same thing that was jammed when the vessel had to deal with any blockade. Before the enemy commander even made contact, he opened up a comm channel.
"This is the Immovable," came a stern voice. "There is currently a Separatists blockade over this planet. State your business or be fired upon immediately."
"Private industrial goods being moved to Hoth," the young man said immediately. "No Republic business being done here."
"Private commerce is restricted during a blockade." The man sounded almost bemused. "No, I think you're hiding something. Bring your vessel to a halt and standby for a boarding party."
"Roger roger." The young man made sure to sound exasperated. Part of the smuggling trade was being a good actor, something he'd learned the moment he'd stepped aboard.
He slowed the ship until it was nearly stopped, then left it drifting with the engines off. After a few minutes of tense silence, he looked through the shielding to see a vessel detaching from the blockade and slowly making its way toward them.
Something about the vessel made him squirm, made him uncomfortable. There was something inherently wrong about it, a spurious feeling he could put a finger on. He'd been scared before, he'd been worried about a run failing, but those were feelings of anxiety that were nothing like the almost sick feeling beginning to churn in his stomach.
Then he saw it, a bright pinpoint of red aboard the vessel. Though he knew little about Jedi, the Force, or anything to do with the Jedi's enemy. But he did understand that the Jedi were blue, and that the evil that made his stomach turn so was red.
"Guys!" he shouted. "Guys, we have a problem!"
"What is it, kid?" Dilt leaned into the cockpit.
"There's someone on that vessel," he said, pointing. "Somebody I don't like."
"I don't know what that means, Kurik."
"The Jedi, they're blue. Whoever's on there, they're red."
There was a pause, then, "Looks like we're running, then. I'll get the crew ready. Do what you have to do, because we can't let them on board."
"I'm trusting you on this, boss."
It was only their hyperdrive that was blocked, enough distance from the blockade would give them the room to jump out of the system. That meant he could kick on the engines to full thrust, avoiding a couple of lasers from cruisers that were a little more reactive than most.
Kurik sped toward the shuttle, which happened to be coming from the weakest point of the blockade. He could see specks of grey streaming from the cruisers all around, fighters who wouldn't manage to get to them in time.
The cargo vessel was fast, and he was able to reach the shuttle in seconds. As he approached, the controls shuddered, and the Jack of Trades slowed.
"Nonononono," he muttered, gunning the engines to full speed.
The ship continued to slow, but as it started to pass over the shuttle, it gained momentum and managed to break away. He wasn't sure what had happened, more than willing to blame the sudden malfunction on the same poor luck that constantly dogged their crew and that they still managed to overcome.
Then the Jack of Trades was ahead of the shuttle, headed toward a lone cruiser. Kurik kept his distance, and he heard the dull thud of the laser cannons firing as his crewmembers helped hold off any nearing droid fighters.
Kurik always had a way of being out of the line of fire even before the enemy fired, always managing to fit the ship into the tight spaces between the bursts of lasers. He assumed it to be the same strange ability that kept him seeing, leading him through the oppressive fire of the cruiser and out to the other side, even managing to weave and dodge as the starcruiser took shots at their back.
Then the beeping stopped, and the space ahead was clear. The young man charted a course to Coruscant as quickly as he could, then turned on the hyperdrive.
And as the stars started to stretch around them, he let out a sigh of relief.
And there are my three characters. I actually don't know about this one, because I'm not sure if Miralukans are (or more to the point, will be) canon anymore, but ah well. As stated, this story will be toward the tail end of the Clone Wars, then time skip into the Galactic Civil War. I'll be at this for the long haul, more than likely, and I'll update this when I update this. These first three were written in a time period that's more anomaly than the likely standard.