17: I want to give Korkie a hug too. You're not delusional either! She's a little while away in this enormous story, but Ahsoka will have her time too.

Enjoy the chapter as we embark on a new adventure!

Chapter 22: Running at Danger

But despite Kawlan's optimism, Mahdi proved stubborn. Korkie sought him out on the return from every refugee run, and on each occasion he rejected Korkie's offers to return his hospitality – "the bunk in my apartment is surely much more comfortable than your mattress in the kitchen" – and was polite but composed in all of the breakfasts they shared. Mahdi did not touch Korkie's hair again, no matter how much glitter he worked into it. He didn't even touch his shoulder again. Instead, his compromise – because he was too kind, perhaps, to reject Korkie outright – seemed to be friendship. And if he couldn't touch him, Korkie would listen to him talk. They talked cocktail-mixing and the limi league and life under the Empire while sharing food that Korkie, with his sporadic income, had bought from the market to supplement Mahdi's home-cooking. And on their fifth breakfast together, after the galaxy's third reluctant celebration of Empire Day, Mahdi spoke of his mother.

"When the Empire took over all the shipyards, Mum was laid off," he explained, over a bowl of barley soup that Riyan had taken to calling 'gruel'. "They replaced her with a droid. They kept the Yagai on allegedly because they're good technical workers. Which is true, I guess. They're generally more talented than humans at that stuff. But I think it helped that they'd proved themselves particularly obedient to the Empire. Humans were viewed as more unruly."

Korkie nodded vaguely, his eyes caught in the shadows of the morning light against Mahdi's collarbones.

"I didn't realise how much trouble we were in. I'd just got out of school and I was annoyed I couldn't go off-planet to study like I'd planned. Mum said she needed me to help bring in some money while she looked for work. So I started at the Hive. I figured she'd find a new job soon. But she'd never told me how much her medicines cost. And under the Empire, the price went way up. It's not a priority for them. Why import human-specific medicines to Yaga Minor when the planet has a perfectly good workforce of Yagai and droids?"

"They're heartless," Korkie muttered.

"Completely," Mahdi agreed. "Still, I had this stupid idea it would all be fine. Even though I couldn't cover the medicine on my wages. That we could move off-planet, find work and things would go back to the way they were. But we had only just really started putting together plans to move when we ran out of the last of the tablets and Mum got really sick. It happened faster than maybe we'd thought. She'd been so good for so many years. Her illness, she was…"

Mahdi struggled for words. His fingers shredded a dindra over his bowl of soup. Korkie wanted to reach out and still those beautiful hands.

"It was a brain illness," Mahdi summarised, eventually. "When she had her medications, she was fine. But without them, she started hearing things. Seeing things. Like, crazy things. And she went out one day and started yelling at the stormtroopers. Yelling that they were killing children, that all night all she could hear was the screaming of children. The troopers didn't give it even a moment's thought. They just-"

Voice failing, Mahdi gave an illustrative sweep of his hand. Korkie felt a horrible drop in his chest.

"They killed her?"

Mahdi nodded, jaw tight. Korkie forgot his caution and laid a comforting hand on his arm.

"That's horrible, Mahdi. I'm so sorry."

Mahdi gave a miserable shrug.

"It was just so stupid," he managed, his voice barely a whisper. "She had no weapon. And they shot her point blank. Such a stupid kriffing…"

He shrugged off Korkie's touch and rubbed at his eyes.

"Try explaining that to Riyan, you know? Try explaining that his mum is dead because some idiot who never should have been issued a blaster went power-crazy with his stupid white armour…"

He heaved a juddering sigh.

Just cry, Korkie wanted to tell him. Just cry and I'll hold you.

But Mahdi did not cry. He breathed again, steadier this time, and spoke.

"What about you?"

Korkie grimaced. Mahdi had given him such a painful truth and he could reciprocate only with lies.

"I don't really like to talk about it, Mahdi, I…"

And Mahdi's disappointment, so tangible in the Force, kriffing hurt him then.

"Come on. I've told you everything. I want to know some of your story."

"It's too sad, Mahdi. You've been so brave to tell me what you did, but I'm not yet-"

"It gets less sad when you talk about it."

Korkie sighed.

"Fine. My mum..."

How had his mother died? Crushed beneath rubble. Blown to pieces by a detonator. Struck directly by a fighter-cannon. He'd seen it all, in traitorous dreams.

"My mum was killed in a bombing on Mon Gazza," he decided. "Just after the Empire was declared. I wasn't there. She'd sent me off-planet. She was going to join me. But…"

Mahdi softened.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," Korkie muttered, and pressed on. "Yeah, well… that's what happened to my mum. Then my half-brother ran off to work on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Had his kids to take care of. And my dad…"

Korkie shook his head. There was no good way to explain.

"He worked off-planet my whole life. Always coming and going. And one day he went to Coruscant and he never came back."

Mahdi managed a joyless smile in commiseration.

"My dad left us too. When Riyan was a baby."

"Oh. That's not what I meant. Sorry."

Korkie fumbled for the words.

"He went to Coruscant and got killed. Right at the start of all this mess. During the Jedi Uprising, when the Empire was born. He called us to say he'd got himself into some trouble and that we shouldn't worry but… that was it."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"Why did he go to Coruscant during that mess?"

Korkie barked out a humourless laugh.

"My dad was really stupid, Mahdi. He was an idiot. He cared too much about everything and everyone in this whole bloody galaxy. And he had friends on Coruscant who I think he was worried about so he went over to help them and…"

Kriff's sakes. He'd said far too much.

"He sounds really brave," Mahdi offered.

"It's no good being brave if you fail," Korkie muttered. "Courage is for idiots."

Mahdi appraised this declaration with a faint smile.

"You left your family farm to travel the galaxy. And I don't know what your freighting job is about, exactly, and all this business of people trying to kill you, but… it sounds like you've got some courage of your own."

Korkie conceded the point with a breath of laughter.

"I never said I wasn't an idiot too."

And for the first time since that first breakfast together, Mahdi reached out and touched him. Grazed a thumb over the back of Korkie's freckled hand.

"I'm sure they're proud of you, you know."

This tender declaration was too much for Korkie. He pulled his hand away and swiped at his eyes.

"Kriff's sakes."

"I'm sorry, Ben. I asked you too much. We can give it a rest for a bit."

"It's fine," Korkie muttered, rising to stand. "Don't worry about it."

"It's not fine," Mahdi reasoned. "It's sad. And it's okay to be sad."

"It is fine," Korkie gritted out.

Mahdi fixed him with knowing gaze.

"You're being stupid."

Korkie threw up an irritable hand.

"This whole conversation was stupid!"

Mahdi blinked in vague shock. Korkie was overcome with a rush of embarrassment. He was trying to tell Mahdi that he wasn't a child. Effortfully, he steadied his breathing.

"Sorry, Mahdi. I didn't mean that. As I said, I'm just not good at talking about it yet."

"That's okay. I'm sorry I pushed you."

They paused in silence a few moments, drowning in words they could not say.

"Thank you for breakfast."

"Thank you for the dindras."

"I'll see you next week, hopefully. I'm not sure about this week's jobs yet."

"No worries."

"Sleep well today."

"Good luck with your next job."

So much to say and no good way to say it. Korkie offered an apologetic wave and left him sitting at that kitchen table alone. Perhaps it was love, after all. For love was a choice and love was hard. And Korkie had perhaps never fully understood what his mother meant, when she had taught him that, but now he felt it heavy in his head, swimming in his chest. Love was really kriffing hard.

Mace returned to Yaga Minor to find that Korkie's beaming sunlight, which by Kawlan's amused retelling had persisted for several weeks since his first outing to The Yagai Hive, had been replaced by a cloudy turbulence in the Force. He watched the teenager determinedly crushing a series of fragrant seeds – despite having never previously demonstrated any sort of interest in cooking – set aside his data-pad, and steadied himself for a difficult conversation.

"How's Mahdi going?"

Korkie turned from his cooking at looked at Mace with suspicion.

"I thought you were rather disinterested in the matter."

And certainly he had been disinterested, to put it mildly, when the bartender had been nothing but a source of affronting cheeriness on an early-morning mission. But he cared if the bartender was making Korkie sad.

"It's going poorly," Korkie relented, turning back to the spices and pounding with the pestle once more. "He's far too interested in talking about my past. And he still thinks I'm too young for him."

Mace tried to stifle his surprise. He would have to proceed delicately.

"Ah, remind me… how old is Mahdi?"

Korkie saw through him and scowled.

"Don't look so worried. Kriff's sakes. He's twenty."

"Twenty-standard?"

"You heard me," Korkie grumbled.

Mace gave a pensive hum.

"Does he know that you're sixteen, Korkie?"

"Almost seventeen. And I think he suspects it. Hence why it's going poorly. Or not really going at all, for that matter."

He gave an extravagant sigh and grumbled onwards.

"Mahdi would have made a great Jedi, actually. A champion of self-denial and celibacy."

This, at least, was reassuring. Korkie glared at Mace, aware of his relief.

"Don't look so pleased. I don't see what everyone's so fussed about. Why should it be a problem?"

"Well, that age gap is technically illegal on Yaga Minor," pointed out Kawlan, who was sitting across from Mace mending his boots.

"Under Republican law too," Mace contributed.

Korkie glowered at them both.

"All you geniuses and the kriffing law. Have either of you studied lawmaking?"

He did not wait for a response.

"I've studied lawmaking," he declared. "And I know that laws are made to protect the most vulnerable. Which is important and right, obviously. I'm not advocating that we change the law. I'm just saying that I, personally, in this situation, do not require that protection. I'm a kriffing adult and I make my own decisions. I've got no parents, I look after myself, I fight battles and save lives and-"

"You know that all this trauma doesn't actually mature your frontal lobe any faster?" Mace ventured.

"Trauma?" Korkie spluttered. "I'm fine, Mace. I know my frontal lobe isn't exactly done growing but it's good enough to decide this. I'm not a blasted child bride. I'm not being coerced. All I want to do is kiss the man-"

"I don't think that's all you want."

And Korkie, who had been on such an impressive verbal rampage, stopped and gaped. From his nebulous Force signature a bubble of warm laughter finally emerged.

"Kriff, Mace. I didn't know you had that banter in you. Star's sakes…"

He turned to Kawlan.

"What about you? Do you have any useful advice for me?"

Kawlan pondered.

"Maybe give it some time," he suggested. "What's that famous old saying? About the grace to accept what you cannot change?"

Korkie looked at his friend in dumb disbelief.

"That's not a famous saying, Kawlan. No one says that."

"They do," Kawlan countered, laughing. "My mum used to say it all the time. And my schoolteachers."

Korkie shook his head.

"Kawlan," he articulated solemnly, "that concept is completely foreign to me. No one has ever taught me that."

Mace chuckled at Kawlan's bewilderment.

"You should have met his parents."

Korkie resolved, as he fried his spice paste in the market's cheapest oil, that if he wasn't going to get anywhere with Mahdi, he would at least make the most of Mace Windu's return to Yaga Minor and get to the bottom of this secret mission business.

"These so-called 'basic scouting trips' that you've been going on, Mace," he ventured, eyes averted as he filled a pot with boiling water. "You insist on going alone and come back with injuries. Should we be worried?"

Their company – Kawlan, still working to patch up the hole in the sole of his boots, and Cody, who had returned from the garage with the smell of cooking dinner – looked up at Korkie with glances that conveyed the same obvious, although silent message. Don't start a fight, Korkie.

Mace, who had been reading from his data-pad, did not seem disgruntled by the question, although he tugged his sleeve down perhaps in a bid to hide the bandages that Korkie had already noticed on his right arm.

"No. You needn't worry. You shouldn't worry."

Korkie made a noise of vague disagreement as he stirred in a packet of dried noodles.

"Well, I'm also curious."

Mace gave a knowing smile.

"It's better to say what you mean from the outset."

"Not always," Korkie countered mildly. "But we're not talking negotiation strategies. What is it that you're working on? Something beyond the Path, right?"

Korkie sensed in the Force that despite their airs of superiority, Cody and Kawlan were intrigued too. They feigned disinterest, Kawlan shaking a bottle of glue and Cody at work cleaning his blaster kit.

"It's all for the Path," Mace assured him. "And you're doing good work, Korkie. All of you are. I don't mean to distract you by my additional missions."

"Which involve what, exactly?"

Mace pondered Korkie for a moment, his gaze calm and considered.

"You won't like it," he warned.

Korkie did not miss a beat.

"Go on."

Mace gave a sigh.

"The Empire appears to have a hidden path of their own," he admitted. "I'm trying to figure out where it leads."

Neither Kawlan nor Cody could keep up their ruse any longer; Cody's head snapped upwards, to attention, and Kawlan placed down his worn-out boot and spoke.

"What do you mean, their own hidden path?"

Mace was slow and measured in his answer, his face lined with solemnity.

"I mean that they don't kill all of the Force-sensitives that they find."

Cody frowned.

"Don't they?"

And in the ensuing silence, as Mace perhaps searched for the right words, the puzzle pieces fell into horrifying place in Korkie's mind.

"They turn them?" he asked. "To the Dark Side?"

Mace nodded heavily.

"As best I can tell, the current practice is to execute the adults, unless possessing rare gifts in the Force. But they seem to keep the children alive."

He pre-empted Korkie's next question before it could leave his lips.

"They've proven very difficult to track, I'm afraid."

"We have to find where they're taking them," Cody muttered.

"We do," Mace agreed. "But…"

"Do you have leads?" Korkie pressed.

Mace sighed once more.

"I have leads. But not solid leads."

"Where to next?"

"Nar Shaddaa."

Not even stone-faced Cody could conceal his double-take.

"Nar Shaddaa?" Korkie repeated. "I hope you're taking someone with you. You'll get ripped to p-"

He was cut off by the vicious overboiling of his unsupervised noodles; he turned hurriedly, cursing, to rectify his mistake.

"Dinner's ready!" he announced.

But the men did not pounce on the food as they usually would.

"You probably should take someone with you to Nar Shaddaa," Kawlan counselled, quietly.

Mace wore the sort of weary expression Korkie imagined he might have worn at gatherings of the Council when faced with the questionable conduct of the Jinn training lineage. A teenage Anakin had performed dramatic retellings of those encounters for entertainment at the Kryze-Kenobi dinner table in Sundari.

"I wasn't planning on it, Kawlan."

Korkie drained the noodles and tossed them through his spiced oil, the spatters burning his wrists, and divided the meal between four bowls.

"I've always wondered if Nar Shaddaa is as bad as everyone says," he mused.

"It is," Cody and Mace confirmed in unison.

Korkie shrugged.

"I'd like to see it for myself."

He levitated the bowls to their dining table, perhaps because the bowls were hot, or perhaps hoping to provoke that impossible voice that never spoke to him anymore.

What did I teach you about frivolous use of the Force?

Mace did not seem to share Obi Wan's fervour for policing such trivialities. The men gathered around, their elbows and knees jostling at the table meant for two.

"You, Korkie," Mace declared, waving his cutlery illustratively in his direction, "are prime slaver-bait. I'm not taking you to Nar Shaddaa."

Korkie grinned.

"Prime slaver-bait? Is that a compliment?"

Mouth full of noodles, Mace shrugged.

"No," Cody answered sternly in his stead.

"You could come too, Cody," Korkie suggested. "If you're worried about missing out on the fun."

"This is not some Academy field trip, Korkie," Mace advised. "It is dangerous and there's a job to do."

"I know that. But I want to help you do it. It looks like you've been getting into trouble on your own."

Mace looked like he'd have liked to disagree, had he not been eating his noodles with his non-dominant left hand.

"We've only got the one run for the week," Korkie pointed out. "Kawlan is rostered to do it with Trapper and Boil while Kix makes a health clinic visit to Jabiim. So Cody and I are free to come to Nar Shaddaa. It's perfect timing, really."

Mace looked flatly at him, unimpressed.

"The timing is not the problem, Korkie."

Korkie laid down his cutlery and pushed his soup aside.

"It's because you don't think I'm ready, right? Because I'd just be a liability?"

Mace sighed and repeated himself.

"It will be dangerous, Korkie."

"And I have to learn how to handle it," Korkie pressed. "Because I'm going to keep running at danger no matter what you tell me."

Cody gave an empty beat of laughter and rubbed at his forehead.

"Korkie, if you would just let us take care of the rougher jobs-"

"How long will it be until an Inquisitor boards one of our ships?" Korkie interrupted.

Kawlan grimaced, Cody started to grumble a protest. Mace looked at him and gave nothing away.

"You all know it will happen one day," Korkie pressed. "Sure, things are going well now because our routes are new and word hasn't got out yet. But there are inevitably going to be leaks as we build up bigger and bigger and we're going to get into trouble. You can't keep me safe forever."

Cody groaned.

"You're sixteen-standard, Korkie-"

"-and I don't plan on dying anytime soon," he cut in. "I don't mean to be a pessimist but we don't know how long we'll all be able to work together like this. I need to learn from you while I've got you. And I know I've been keeping you all entertained playing the role of lovesick teenager recently but this is still the most important thing in my life."

He would learn from all of them, but his eyes fell and fixed upon Mace.

"Please?"

With Jedi patience, Mace sat back and finished his dinner. Only once he had eaten the very last bite, set down the bowl, and neatly arranged his cutlery did he speak.

"I hear you, Korkie," he acquiesced. "If you are ready to learn, then I will teach you."

There seemed to be a sort of clamour in the Force that was distinctive to Hutt space and it would rise to a deafening cacophony on Nar Shaddaa. Mace beheld the amber lights of the looming metropolis moon and gathered the Force gently around him. The Jedi Council had deemed this miserable corner of the galaxy outside their jurisdiction and Mace could admit it had been convenient for them to do so. The domain of Grakkus the Hutt did not make for a pleasant visit.

"Focus with me, Korkie."

The teenager had been in a state of solemn best behaviour ever since Mace had conceded his company on the mission and did not offer any quips of his usual disdain for the Jedi practice of meditation.

"You're alright at the controls, Cody?"

"Of course. Off you go."

Korkie followed Mace from the cockpit to the holding bay, where they sat on the cold metal of the floor and closed their eyes.

"You can sense all that darkness in the Force, Korkie?"

"Like Tatooine on steroids."

"I suppose so."

Mace took a slow breath.

"Let us detach ourselves from the chaos so that we might see clearly through it."

Greed, fear, hatred. Desperation, ecstasy and lust. Ten billion lifeforms clawing their way through a world with no rules. The only certainty on Nar Shaddaa was injustice.

"And what am I trying to see? Grakkus? The children?"

"No. You are searching for nothing. You are softening the noise so that you hear the Force when it speaks to you."

Korkie's breaths were perfectly even. He might have been counting them, as younglings were taught to. But the shields he constructed were far beyond those that a youngling might create; the Force was woven like a gossamer cocoon around him.

"From a place of stillness within yourself, Korkie, you must open yourself to the Force."

Mace felt his confusion.

"But then I hear all the chaos again."

He was no teacher, blast it. He had taught Depa more than two decades ago, and anyone could have taught Depa; she had been brilliant. He felt a quiet surge of fondness for his only Padawan. She had been on Kaller, with an apprentice of her own, on the day the Order had fallen and he had heard nothing of her since. It was safest to presume they both had entered into the Force.

"I can't quite explain it," Mace admitted. "Let me…"

He probed gently outwards. With no established bond, it was a few moments until Korkie became aware of his close presence in the Force and began cautiously, thread by thread, to dissolve his shields.

A glimmer of pride.

I feel you.

And then, his attention snared – Cody's landing calculations, the plotting of pirates, the misery of slaves aboard a freighter.

"Blast it!"

Korkie snapped his eyes open, and Mace followed suit.

"It's all or nothing for me," the teenager grumbled. "I can block the noise out just fine, but…"

There was Obi Wan's teaching all over him. Shielding, masking, deception. Every facet in which he had been particularly gifted. But in listening, in the delicate vulnerability of opening oneself to the Force, Korkie had much to learn.

"There is a difference," Mace advised. "Between blocking out the noise and letting go of the noise. I'm not asking you to shield."

The boy looked sceptical.

"It takes practice," Mace added. "You'll get there. Try again."

According to Mace, Grakkus the Hutt was a fanatic of all things Jedi; in the dying breed he had recognised economic opportunity and began a collection of items that would soon be, if the Imperial Inquisitorius got their way, the last of their kind. His collection reportedly spanned humble tabards and belts to lightsabers and holocrons. And, by multiple accounts, he boasted a collection Jedi children.

"Are we planning to get in undetected?" Korkie asked.

They stalked through the alleyways of Hutta Town – perhaps the most unpleasant borough in all of Nar Shaddaa's ubiquitous urban sprawl – with hoods raised. Grakkus's palace loomed above them, blocking what was left of the sun's rays as it slipped beneath the horizon. There were no streetlights.

"It looks quite solid," he added.

The trio did not slow in their purposeful strides.

"I need a closer look," Mace answered, eventually.

Korkie took this to mean they didn't yet have a plan. Cody was sticking so close to him that he was almost walking on top of him, anxiety thrumming in the Force. Korkie was still working on that. On blocking out the feelings of the sentients flowing through the Force while listening to the voice of the Force itself. But he was either not yet capable or the Force had nothing to say to him.

Mace was examining the high walls of the palace with a faint frown of disapproval. Tall Palliduvan sentries were posted at regular intervals, wielding vibro-staffs, their chalky skin glowing faintly in the falling dusk.

"I have the least famous face of the three of us," Korkie mused. "Although I suppose your face, Cody, has the benefit of belonging to many others."

Cody eyed him warily.

"I don't think we're planning to-"

"It's not going to be easy to get in there, not even for Mace," Korkie countered. "We could provide a distraction."

Mace, still watching the palace, gave a vague hum that Korkie chose to interpret as agreement.

"I'm prime slaver-bait, as we've established. Grakkus might grant us an audience if you promise to sell me to him."

Cody appealed silently to Mace but got nothing in return.

"I don't like this idea," he muttered.

Korkie tried to give him an encouraging smile.

"I trust you both to rescue me afterwards."

Mace was fiddling with a handheld scanner, measuring the dimensions of the palace. Then, he exchanged his scanner for another device deep within his pocket and pressed it into Korkie's hand.

"Put this somewhere hidden."

Korkie regarded the small object in his palm. It emitted a pinpoint flashing light.

"A tracker?"

Mace nodded.

"A back-up. In case I lose you in the Force. If you can get to where the children are, I'll make an unconventional entrance and join you."

Korkie placed the tracker into a small pocket he had sewn into the inside of his trousers and hoped that Grakkus the Hutt was not in the habit of immediately undressing his newly acquired slaves.

"And give me your coat."

"Why?"

The warmth of the sun had dissipated rapidly with the nightfall.

"Because no one bothers to give their slave a coat on a cold night on Nar Shaddaa."

Korkie slipped his new coat from his shoulders – he had long outgrown and finally replaced the patchwork Academy predecessor – and offered it to Mace, who layered it underneath his own cloak. It was bizarre, seeing Mace fit comfortably into it.

"Have you been eating enough?"

Mace did not answer.

"Cody, you'll accompany Korkie as far into the palace as possible. Express your interest in Grakkus's collection. He's known to be readily blinded by his pride. I'm told he considers himself some sort of academic when it comes to the Jedi."

Korkie snorted but Cody did not seem in the mood for humour.

"Are you sure this is the best way?"

Mace's expression gave little away as he tugged his hood down to cast shadow over his eyes.

"There is no certainty in the Force."

"Don't look so unimpressed, Cody."

Korkie gave his companion a cheery clap on the shoulder and bent to conceal his weapons in his boots.

"It'll go better than Ryloth, at least."

Cody turned his face to the cloudless sky as though appealing to some deity, before sighing and dropping his gaze back down towards the task at hand.

"You set the bar so low, Korkie," he muttered, "that a Taris coin-crab couldn't scuttle beneath it."

Our newest mission begins. These three make for an iconic trio.

I couldn't write a Star Wars novel without a Hutt scene. Next chapter, as we tackle Grakkus's Palace, is a lot of fun. We'll run into a new friend too - someone I stumbled across while reading up on Nar Shaddaa...

xx - S.