Right back at you LordAries - so happy to hear from you again! Thanks to followers also :)

But enough talk. We have a scumrat to meet.

Chapter 2: The Scumrat

Korkie woke to a bad feeling, worse than any dream. The feeling of danger blaring at him through the Force. He lurched to his feet – he'd learned early on in his adventures that it was best to sleep with his boots on – and caught sight of an approaching speeder. He noted the Imperial stamp upon its sleek paintwork with a rising groan in his throat.

"Kriffing hell."

He tuned in then to the footfalls and voices below him – more local stormtroopers, by the sound of things. How had they kriffing found him? And why? He'd not stirred up any trouble since his petty vandalism. He'd kept his head low.

But there was no time for questions. Korkie took off at a run, easily leaping the gap between neighbouring buildings. Once, twice, three times. He'd have lost track of the ground troopers who had to contend with the traffic below but the reinforcements in the speeder weren't so easily shaken. The engine droned ever closer behind him.

His weapons jangled at his belt. The fears of Kalarba came back to him. He couldn't use his 'saber, or the price on his head would surely increase tenfold. It was one thing to be a ratbag saboteur in the new Empire and another matter entirely to be a Mando-Jedi.

The next building loomed enormous, too tall for Korkie to leap onto even with the Force augmenting his strength. He looked beneath him, swallowed the nausea rising in his throat, and threw himself into the chasm.

"Oi! What the kriff do you think you're doing?"

Korkie was jolted violently in the civilian speeder into which he had cast himself. The pilot was a boy surely no older than him, with a wavy crop of dark hair and an unstubbled jawline.

"Get out of my speeder!" he howled.

He rocked the speeder again, as though to cast Korkie off in the manner a shatual shook off a fly.

"Hey, go easy, just listen to me for a sec-"

Korkie managed, to the pilot's intense disappointment, to wedge himself into the passenger seat and secure a belt across his torso.

"I'm sorry to have given you a fright. Don't worry. I'm not here for trouble. I've got fifty credits, I'll pay you."

"Fifty credits?" the boy barked out. "For putting stormtroopers on my tail? Are you kidding?"

"I just need to fly with you for five minutes," Korkie negotiated. "Then you can kick me out, promise. I'll be okay by myself from there."

The pilot considered, laughed, and grinned.

"You reckon you only need a five minute head-start on a squad of six stormtroopers?"

Korkie knew then that the boy wouldn't eject him. He waved a hand dismissively.

"They're pretty slow. Usually I can outrun them without any of this drama but…"

He frowned and tried to remember.

"I don't know what happened. I woke up and they all but had me surrounded. I wouldn't have thought-"

The words choked and died in Korkie's throat as the speeder corkscrewed beneath oncoming traffic.

"Watch out!" he yelped.

The boy gave a maniacal grin and did not slow as they dipped and darted, weaving through impossibly tight gaps in the inner city traffic. Korkie's stomach flipped with it. He might have been the best Force-blind pilot Korkie had ever seen.

"Were you sleeping rough?" his companion asked.

Korkie struggled to find the same casualness to his voice.

"Yeah."

"Ah, that explains it. They've got these new patrol droids with facial recognition. They go around at night-"

Korkie's stomach jolted.

"A Corellian database?"

The boy shook his head.

"Empire-wide, I think. I've seen them arrest off-worlders."

So they knew who he was, then. That explained the persistence. Korkie groaned and rubbed his forehead. The boy watched him shrewdly from the corner of his gaze as the speeder continued its acrobatics.

"Are you telling me you're an intergalactic criminal? What in the hells did you do?"

Korkie pulled his collar up higher against his face.

"Aw, come on," coaxed the young pilot. "More than half the economy here's illegal. What'd you do? Sell something cool?"

Korkie crinkled his nose.

"Why would I tell you? You'll hand me in."

The boy laughed.

"I don't need to know what you did to hand you in."

But the feeling of danger had dissipated now. They were travelling unpursued out from the centre of town, into the less-patrolled outskirts. Korkie leaned back in his seat.

"You remember those 'WANTED' billboards with the Emperor's face on them a few days back?"

The boy nodded, rolling his eyes despite his grin.

"You did that?"

"Yeah. D'you like them?"

"Sure, I liked them. Hardly worth sticking your neck out for, though."

Part of Korkie agreed with his new acquaintance's assessment; this misadventure had certainly caused him far more trouble than he'd anticipated. But he'd left Tatooine to cause trouble, hadn't he? He thought of his mother and the mural on the leather factory in Keldabe.

"It's something," he reasoned. "Doing something's better than doing nothing."

The boy raised a sceptical brow.

"You nearly killed yourself jumping off that building. For a billboard."

"A couple hundred billboards," Korkie corrected him. "Besides, I knew I'd land on your speeder."

He didn't tell the boy that this small act of rebellion had also cost him eight hundred credits plus a whole ship, hyperdrive and all. He was trying to forget that himself.

"Small acts win revolutions," Korkie went on, quoting his mother. "And patience wins revolutions. It'll be worth it one day."

The boy gave a contemptuous snort as the speeder jolted to a stop in a sprawling industrial estate. He clambered from the speeder and unpacked the trunk. Korkie followed suit.

"Power wins," the boy informed Korkie. "Or, the illusion of power, at least. And you've got neither just now."

The boy waved the package, wrapped in oil-stained canvas, at an approaching Kubaz merchant. The imposing figure, eyes wrapped in dark red vision protection goggles, whirred and clicked in his native tongue. The boy managed a rudimentary reply and the Kubazian accepted the package in return for a bag of clinking currency that the boy inspected and weighed with the aid of a small scale-device from his pocket.

"I just got a good price for those parts," he explained, "because my employer is powerful."

Korkie made a non-committal noise of assent and kicked at some loose rubble.

"You need a job?" the boy asked. "If you're wanted in as many systems as you say you are, I guess you've picked up some useful skills. The White Worms always need more scumrats."

"Scumrats?" Korkie repeated.

The boy laughed.

"Listen to you, in your posh accent. You don't know what that means, do you?"

Korkie scowled.

"It appears to me that it means delivering goods and collecting fees within a small-scale contraband market," he observed. "I take it your cut's rather lean?"

The boy bristled defensively.

"For now. But soon I'll be doing bigger jobs, acquisition and distribution. I'm a good saver; I don't waste my money betting on the fights like everyone else does. Give it a few years and I'll have enough saved up to get off this blasted planet."

Korkie sighed.

"I don't have a few years to spare."

The boy's expression darkened at his dismissal.

"The revolution's calling?" he scoffed. "I'm not sure what galaxy you've been living in, buddy, but there is no blasted revolution, only a few idiots getting themselves arrested for throwing public tantrums. Of which you would have been one, if I hadn't helped you."

He scowled as he vaulted himself back into his speeder. Korkie scrambled after him.

"Hey, I'm sorry."

Korkie was surprised by his desperation in that moment not to lose his new acquaintance.

"I'm sorry, it was really generous of you to offer me a job, not to mention saving my-"

- shebs, he nearly said. But speaking Mando'a was asking for trouble.

"Saving your ass," the boy filled in smugly.

"Yeah. Look. I really do appreciate it."

Korkie hooked his elbows over the railing of the speeder and leaned forward as he tried to explain.

"It's just that I left home to take down the Empire and I can't do it from here. You're right. The billboards were useless. I need to do something real and meaningful and so I need to get off this planet-"

The boy grimaced.

"Don't waste your life on this."

Korkie's eyes widened and his voice rose.

"Nothing could be more important! Don't you understand?"

The boys stared at each other, at a loss. The dark-haired pilot softened first.

"Let me guess. They killed your family? Took your home?"

Korkie's mouth went dry. They had killed not only his family but every last Mando'ad they could find. They had destroyed not only his home but his entire homeworld.

"Yeah," he managed.

"Well, look at it this way," the boy advised. "My parents died, poor and miserable, under Republican law. But I never tried to bomb the Senate."

He barked out a coarse laugh.

"Politics is a joke, my friend. It's a hobby for the rich. None of it really makes any real difference. The shipyard where my dad lost his arm is still a death-trap. Someone else will be losing a limb today. Republic or Empire. Suffering is a law of the galaxy and the best you can do is find your way around it."

Korkie's knees felt weak. He couldn't for a moment entertain those words.

"I'm sorry, I appreciate everything you've done for me, I just…"

"Whatever. Don't take my word for it. Corellia will teach you. We don't entertain politics here. All anyone cares about is who wins the next barely-regulated cage fight."

The boy punched the speeder engine back to life.

"You want to make your way from here? Or I can take you back to the centre."

Korkie shrugged haplessly. He didn't know what he was doing.

"Here's fine."

The boy raised a sceptical brow but didn't protest.

"Okay. You take care of yourself, alright?"

Korkie managed a nod.

"Yeah, sure."

He dropped his gaze then towards his pocket of credits, almost missing the oil-stained hand thrust towards him.

"I'm Han, by the way," the boy offered.

Korkie took his hand, almost disbelieving. When had he last touched another person like this?

Not since Kalarba. Not since the friends that he had failed.

"Ben," Korkie stated in return.

Han's palm was callused but there was something almost elegant about the hands that had flown with such impossible dexterity. Korkie didn't want to let go.

"Keep your credits, Ben. And if you need me again, ask around," Han advised. "You could do far worse than be a scumrat."

"I will, thank you."

Korkie gave the hand a squeeze and then relinquished it.

"Good luck with the promotion. I hope you make it off-world."

"You too, Ben."

Han gave a dimpled grin.

"Who knows? Maybe one day I'll find you again in revolutionary paradise."

Korkie gave a grudging snort of self-deprecation. Han wheeled the speeder around and left him in a cloud of dust.

Han! Born 32BBY, same year as Korkie. I couldn't resist.

I hope you enjoyed meeting a familiar face - there will be many more to come, and I will do my best to factor in anyone you're particularly hoping to see. This story is as sprawling in its scope as ATITF (if anything, broader), and I want to write for you the scenes you want to see.

Next chapter, Korkie finds a way to make some quick money on Corellia.

xx - S.