Walking away was the hardest thing she'd ever done.
But the once-feared Darth Revan left her ship, and knew it was the only way forward.
The deeper she pushed into the Unknown Regions, the more Imperial worlds she found. This wasn't one, but here, she could find transport. The Hawk would return to the Republic, with the droids and her messages. The ship was too dangerous to keep. It brought back too many memories of happiness and safety, and they didn't belong here. She wouldn't be distracted.
Nor, part of her said, did she deserve to be happy... or safe.
She approached the harbor authority, exerting conscious effort to look nondescript in the busy crowd. Revan was still surprised that they ignored her, when even Sith had walked past her without a second glance. The further she went, the more certain she was. A real Empire lurked out in the shadows, no doubt the thing she and Malak had found before.
And with the Force as her witness, she would burn it to ash.
As she reached the window, she cleared her mind of the haunting storm-cloaked planet and smiled a disarming smile.
"I need transport."
"To?"
"The nearest location where I might buy a ship, or hire independent transport." She narrowed her gray eyes. "Without 'borrowing' it, if you catch my meaning."
He glanced past her and raised a brow. "Are you looking to sell?"
The Hawk's engine roared behind them, and the small, disk-shaped ship swept skyward a moment later. She smiled again.
"I'm not. Tickets?"
She bought her ticket and headed toward the dock, peering up once to track the Hawk's lights as it fled the planet's atmosphere. Revan let herself stare wistfully after it until it faded into the sky beyond.
"Good luck, T3," she murmured. "I'm sorry."
#
For a little droid, T3-M4 got in a lot of trouble.
First, the woman that intercepted the Hawk when he'd stopped to refuel. His Master had been negligent regarding such mundane things toward the end. She'd forced her way on, closing HK-47 in the main storage hold and interrogated him. He played dumb, successfully, and she had commandeered the ship to intercept a Republic vessel. That was fine by him, since it put him a step closer to finding his Master's partner.
Except the Hawk had been attacked and crippled, then picked up by the Republic ship, which itself was attacked and crippled, and this was all far above his programming.
But now everyone was dead or dying and he'd lost his Master's favorite swoop bike, which he'd catch frustration for later. The Hawk was spaceworthy enough, and he'd fixed his Master's other droid. He'd even re-enabled HK-47, who always caused him no end of trouble, so he could handle the HK-50 model now banging on the cockpit door.
And that had gone worse than he'd expected.
At least his Master had made the cockpit a self-sustaining unit over the past two years, just in case the Hawk failed during flight. The HK-50 wouldn't cut through a door meant to withstand a lightsaber.
T3 steered the ship through the asteroid field that was Peragus, opening the comm to play a distress tone. The HK-50 model demanded entry again, and the Astromech answered with a rude chirp.
Peragus' controller transmitted permission to land and directed the ship to one of the docking bays. HK-50 stopped banging and retreated as T3 lowered the ramp. The droid grumbled and opened the shipboard radio — another addition of his Master's, allowing her to listen if boarded.
"—aboard a Republic ship. Sadly, my master appears rather nonfunctional from the commotion."
T3 chirped rudely.
"We'll get a medical team. What attacked you?" That would be the controller.
"Weary recitation: I do not know, sir. Supplication: if you do not mind, my master is a very important Jedi, and she—"
"She's what?" T3 made a quiet dwoo at the panel. "We'll talk in private. Security team, go through the ship and locate the injured woman. Take stock of the damage while you're at it."
T3 followed the life-signs of the boarding party as they pulled the unconscious Jedi and bodies from the ship. When several reached the cockpit, T3 unlocked and opened the door. He chirped cheerily at them.
"/T3-M4 = flew ship here /Other droid = bad /HK = bounty hunter droid; target = Jedi /"
"You understand it?"
"Nope."
T3 whined and prodded the closest man with his manipulator, then pointed at a nearby screen. The man jumped and shook his head.
"Looks like someone might need a memory wipe."
T3 replied with a series of inventive profanity he'd learned from his Master and put himself in a false low-power state that would mimic shutdown.
He was positive he could outsmart any HK-50 model any day. He didn't need organics messing up his plans. The Hawk needed repaired — then he'd focus on finding the Jedi, bringing her on board, and locating his Master's mate.
And he wasn't getting a memory wipe.
#
The chief security officer glared over his desk at the man in front of him, binders on his wrists and two guards behind him. "And... what happened?"
The brown-haired man shrugged, a motion emphasized by the ribbed collar on his jacket. "Why not ask Morons A and B here?"
He was unamused. "I'm asking you."
"I was making deliveries."
"Contraband, sir." One officer handed him a datapad. "We found this in his cargo hold."
"That wasn't even coming off my ship! You can't expect me to know all your rules."
"Maybe you should read the regulations before you try to ship somewhere." The officer slammed the datapad onto the desk.
"I told you what I was unloading. Supplies." The man waved at the datapad. "Any other back-end of the galaxy would thank me for half that shit."
"A crate full of blasters and seventeen bottles of Corellian brandy?"
"Sounds like a good time to me."
The man sputtered, beard twitching. Typically, the "independent contractor" wouldn't avoid a Peragus shipping run — too many regulations, not enough profit. But he had a contact on the station who'd mentioned the possibility of cashing in big, just by doing a passenger run. He wasn't about to turn up his nose at that.
Besides, the blasters and the brandy was for him, not the miners. It'd just been in front of the mining shields in his cargo bay.
"You know penalty for smuggling in the Republic?"
"While they let the best stuff go right by their noses?"
Another splutter, before the officer decided he wasn't worth it and cleared his throat. "Take him out to the security cells. Let him sit for a while."
"What? You aren't the Republic, you can't—"
"Wrong, Mr. Rand, we have colonial authority out here. Take him off."
Atton Rand tried to pull away from the guards as they pulled him to his feet, but was unsuccessful. "Right, fine then. If you want to be a little schutta, that's none of my business."
"Get him out of my sight."