17 - I'll confess I half ship it too. I'm very much looking forward to bringing you the Ahsoka reunion, but I'm afraid in the meantime, Korkie has some long travels ahead of him.

Lots of action in this chapter - I'm trying to do longer chapters for you now that I'm realising how long this story will be.

Shall we?

Chapter 5: Glory to the Empire

The sewers were marginally less unpleasant than Korkie had anticipated. With the recent rainfall, the flowing stream of shit was at least somewhat diluted. And the underground passage itself had an admittedly dilapidated platform, presumably crafted back when sentient workers were expected to come down here, that saved them from submerging their boots in the filth. Overhead, there was the distant hubbub of crowd control and imperial propaganda.

"This is beyond disgusting," Han moaned.

Korkie grinned back at his friend.

"Look on the bright side. At least we've got this platform."

Han extended a hand to the wall for balance, then grimaced and withdrew. His fingertips were coated in green slime that he courteously wiped off on the back of Korkie's jacket.

"I'm going to get a disease," he declared, shuddering.

Korkie waved a dismissive hand.

"Your immune system will fight it off."

Han looked at him in dismay.

"You're a dickhead, Ben."

Han's boot slipped, then, on a slime-coated section of the metal platform. Korkie turned quickly, sensing the movement, and caught the boy by the arm as he dangled precariously over the feculent river.

"Am I?"

Han grumbled his apology and they plodded onwards, a dull ache in Korkie's knee.

They emerged from the sewer as it met the sea on the edge of Coronet City. Looming before them, angles sharp against the hazy grey sky, stood the Empire's recently revamped shipyard.

"See how easy that was?" Korkie asked. "Made it this whole way without a single question."

Han, who was dipping his dirty boots into the lapping ocean water, simply glared at him.

"What now, genius?"

"I told you. I'll trick them or fight them. Let's see what we can do about that first option."

Korkie led the way to the entrance of the squat white building Han had first identified for him through the macro'nocs. It was attended by a solitary stormtrooper.

"Happy Empire Day," Korkie greeted him. "We're from Coronet City Water and Waste. We need to access one of your internal manholes. There's a developing blockage down there."

The stormtrooper was new at his job; Korkie mightn't have been able to see his face but his confusion was abundant in the Force.

"I've not been told there was anyone coming."

"We didn't know we were coming ourselves until about an hour ago," Korkie reassured him easily. "We've been trudging around all morning trying to find the source of the blockage and we've finally localised it here. It looks like one of your ocean outflows might be blocked."

"Oh."

The trooper scuffed the gravel with the toe of his boot as he tried to make sense of all this.

"On Empire Day?"

Korkie nodded soberly.

"Some essential workers, as you know yourself, can't be spared even on public holidays."

He offered a smile.

"I know Water and Waste doesn't sound like an emergency. But the thing is, if we delay until tomorrow, your whole plant will probably smell like our boots."

"Right," the stormtrooper agreed, unwittingly projecting a grimace into the Force as he appreciated their filthy attire. "Well, if you've got your identification with you I can log you in as visitors."

Han shot Korkie a look of alarm. Korkie took a steadying breath and reached into his pocket and found the piece of flimsi that had wrapped his sandwich yesterday morning. He'd never exactly tried this before.

"Here. Ben Tanner, Coronet City Water and Waste."

Han was trying, and failing, not to look aghast as Korkie presented the grease-spotted piece of blank flimsi, folded into a neat square. But Korkie ignored him, fixed his attention upon the young stormtrooper.

Ben Tanner, Coronet City Water and Waste. The face in the left-hand corner. The glinting text and purple edging.

The stormtrooper gazed at it, paused, and nodded. Korkie plunged the flimsi back into his pocket.

"And his?"

Han paled.

"He's not got City ID yet," Korkie assured him. "This is my apprentice. Han. He'll be applying for formal employment at the start of next year."

The stormtrooper faltered.

"You don't need to see his ID," Korkie pressed. "He's not got any yet."

A pause, and another nod.

"I don't need to see his ID," the stormtrooper concurred, and let them inside.

Han looked as though he had seen a ghost.

"How the kriff-"

"Don't worry about it. We've got a job to do, no?"

Korkie had done his best to silently persuade the attending stormtrooper to wait outside but wasn't sure how well the message would stick. Han nodded and strode ahead.

"Right. Yeah. The particle energisers will be around this way…"

The abandoned shipyard was a spectacle to behold. With all the sentient workers out in the streets, the droids had been placed on standby, and the enormous conveyor belts that ran back and forth, up and down, almost to the ceiling, had been paused. Han vaulted over the lowest conveyor belt and delicately laid his hands upon a loaded cassette of identical parts, waiting to be placed, one by one, onto the belt.

"Here they are," Han breathed, a smile creeping onto his face. "Look at this engineering!"

Korkie raised a brow. Anakin might have appreciated the craftsmanship, but all he saw was a small mesh-like disc.

"Take what we need, then we'll head back underground."

The yellow eyes of the attending droid flicked on as Han filled his bag.

"Item displacement."

The automated voice echoed from the metallic walls.

"Oh kriff!"

Han scrambled to silence the droid. But it was new and faultlessly clad, without any exposed wiring to exploit.

"Item displacement."

"Give me a hand, Ben?"

Korkie hurried over, limping awkwardly, and sliced the droid in half. He mumbled an apology – not to the droid, but to Siri Tachi, who never would have wasted her 'saber on something stupid like this – as he replaced the weapon at his belt.

"Was that a-"

"We need to leave, Han."

The warehouse was silent again as Han hurriedly extricated the last of the particle energisers from the cassette. But Korkie felt the coming danger before the first footfall echoed all around them.

"You hear me, Han?"

"Loud and clear."

In retrospect, Korkie supposed they should have figured their way out before laying hands on the particle energisers. He hadn't even found the way back into the sewers, which was probably a useless venture anyway, given he'd told the stormtrooper that was how they planned on getting around. But where else could they go? The footsteps behind them grew ever louder.

"Are you trying to leave me behind?"

Han turned, exasperated, to his hobbling ally.

"Are you trying to get us shot?" he retorted.

But he did not leave Korkie behind; he grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him onwards.

"There'll be a heavy parts freighter around that maybe we can use…"

They rounded a corner and Han's jaw dropped.

"A demo model!"

A gleaming ship stood hulking before them. Despite it all, Han's face was filled with childish delight. In Korkie's opinion it was hardly an attractive ship; its cockpit was strange and egg-like and its solar-plated vertical wings hardly looked conducive to elegant flight.

"This is it, the twin ion engine fighter!"

Korkie pulled his friend down into a duck as a blaster bolt sailed over their heads.

"Well? You reckon it flies?"

Han gaped.

"Are you serious?"

"Why would I be joking right now?"

Korkie ignited Siri Tachi's lightsabre once more and deflected the incoming bolts. It was consoling, despite the danger, to defy his nightmare. He could still lift the blade, as he always had.

"I'll cover you, see if you can get it started."

Han scrambled to comply, jumping to grab the underside of the cockpit and hauling himself up and into it.

"Well it's open, at least."

"That's good," Korkie gritted out, deflecting a blaster bolt into the ceiling as their pursuer barked into his radio for back-up. "Engine?"

His question was answered by a resounding roar as the fighter came to life. Korkie turned to see Han in the cockpit, rendered voiceless by the shriek of the twin engines, motioning desperately above them.

The kriffing ceiling was still closed.

Korkie gave his companion what he hoped was a reassuring nod and fought his way on his faltering knee towards what he hoped was the release button on the wall. Two more stormtroopers had arrived now, showering Korkie with heavy fire. He was stung on the hand as he reached out, and with a cry of pain collapsed forward. His shoulder clunked into the button, and the ceiling began to open.

Han was gesturing like a madman in the cockpit, beckoning him forward with his arms.

There is no pain, only the Force.

Ten steps. Five steps. Two steps. Nearly there. Korkie was hit once more on the shoulder as he leapt, desperately, up towards the cockpit. Han's hand found his jacket and hauled him up.

Korkie lay on his back on the cramped floor, catching his breath and trying to dispel the pain while Han lifted them out of the building and into the sky.

"Where are we going?" Korkie panted.

There were strange, colourful spots flickering in his vision.

"Not really sure," Han muttered, his forehead furrowed in concentration. "These things aren't made for atmospheric flight, so…"

"Not made for atmospheric flight?" Korkie repeated.

He was too exhausted to be horrified.

"But we're flying, right?"

"We are flying," Han affirmed, tweaking the handles and grimacing. "I'm just not going to pretend I've got any sort of control over the steering."

Korkie let out a beat of empty laughter.

"You reckon the people can see us?"

"I fear so," Han muttered.

"Do a loop!" Korkie requested.

At this, Han finally tore his gaze from the sky and looked at him properly.

"Did you hit your head, Ben?"

"No," Korkie reassured him. "But you should do a loop. For Empire Day. They'll think it's an air show."

Han rolled his eyes.

"I'm not doing a loop with you lying on the floor."

"I'll put a seatbelt on!"

Korkie pulled himself, effortfully, upright. Han looked at him warily.

"You heard me say that this thing isn't made for atmospheric flight, yeah?"

"If we are going to crash," Korkie decreed, strapping himself in the co-pilot's seat, "then we'd best do it in style."

In the city centre, faces lifted to the sky. The crowd, so uninspired in its reluctant rendition of Glory to the Empire, oohed and aahed with genuine delight.

"Did you know they were doing a TIE demo?"

The newly promoted lieutenant didn't like having his ignorance exposed by the privates, so he nodded.

"That's the new series four twin ion engine set," he informed his inferiors knowledgably.

"I didn't think they were designed to fly in atmospheric conditions."

The lieutenant shrugged.

"With a good pilot, they hold up."

The fighter corkscrewed through an impressive series of loops and sped into the distance, wobbling only slightly. The people clapped and waved their hands to the sky, ignoring the projection of the Emperor as he droned on about the importance of unity, discipline, and order.

They skidded to an ungainly but non-fatal halt in the abandoned outskirts of town, between large warehouses that hosted the morning fruit and vegetable markets when the galaxy was not celebrating Empire Day.

"That was ridiculous!" Han crowed jubilantly, shoulder tucked under Korkie's arm so as to drag him as quickly as possible away from the conspicuous shipwreck. "I thought we were done for!"

Korkie gave him a weary smile but said nothing. The glancing burn on his hand wasn't much but the blaster bolt to his shoulder had hit him squarely and the ache was intensifying.

"Let's duck in here. The parade'll be nearly done now. Let's just wait out the next little while until it's safe to come out into the streets again."

Han had found them a tiny alcove in a shipping bay. Korkie sensed he had hidden in it many times before, and gave a heavy sigh of relief, allowing his eyes to flutter closed as he tucked his knees to his chest. The darkness was warm and comforting.

"You okay?"

Han's hand shook his knee. Korkie effortfully opened his eyes.

"Yeah. Just sore."

He closed his eyes again and was surprised when Han's arm wrapped around his shoulders.

"Thanks," the boy murmured. "I wouldn't have made it out of there alive without you."

"I only got us in. You got us out," Korkie reminded him. "Thanks for crashing without killing us."

Han chuckled.

"We gave them a good show, huh?"

Korkie made a noise of assent and let the conversation die. He focused on his breath, on the feeling of Han beside him. The company of a friend helped to take the edge off the pain.

"Before you say it," Korkie mumbled, "I'm really not a Jedi."

Han didn't argue with him.

"I think you'd have made a good one," he offered instead.

Korkie laughed weakly, shaking his head.

"I'd have been completely rubbish. But thanks."

Korkie didn't accompany Han, despite the offer, on his mission to sell the particle energisers. Instead, he spent the morning following Empire Day lying on his back, his wounded shoulder cushioned by his rolled-up jacket, trying to distinguish cloud from chemical haze. He'd have liked to start looking for his new ship but needed to rest his aching knee. New adventures awaited him and it wouldn't do to hobble.

He thought of his mother and her revolution, of all the thousands of children across Mandalore who had died that winter of preventable illnesses, of the pharmaceutical production laboratories the New Mandalorian government had established and which now had been turned to dust. Korkie had found it unfathomable, as a child, that there existed a world without antibiotics in which people died from superficial injuries, days after the bleeding had stopped. He supposed that if his shoulder wound became infected he might die. He'd washed it out with stolen alcohol and it had stung enough to kill – hopefully, that meant the pathogens were dead. But he really had no way to guarantee the matter. Death, which had seemed so remote in his first life, in that time Before, would be a constant companion in the After.

Korkie was disrupted from his macabre reverie by the arrival of his friend, who threw a flimsi-wrapped toasted sandwich onto his chest.

"They tried to underpay me but I didn't flinch. Check it out!"

Korkie rose to a seated position, watching in awe as Han crouched before him and emptied a pile of credits onto the ground. His right eye was a reddish-purple and magnificently swollen.

"What happened to your face?"

Han shrugged.

"Oh, no big deal. The boss was angry that I stole something without her permission. But she paid up when I threatened to sell the energisers to a rival."

Han grinned at Korkie and pushed the pile towards him.

"Here. All yours."

Korkie counted the credits, incredulous.

"This is half?" he asked, jaw dropping. "This is way more than I got for beating Razor, Han, this is-"

"That's all of it," Han told him, flushing slightly. "I figured you deserved to be the one who divided it up. Seeing as you got us in there and hurt your shoulder and saved the day and all that."

Korkie rolled his eyes and shook his head, a grin rising upon his lips.

"Half each, Han, you idiot. Right down the middle."

"Well…"

Han gave his appraisal after three laps of the ship and a close inspection of the cockpit.

"It'll handle marginally better than the TIE fighter in atmosphere."

Korkie snorted.

"You're quite a ship snob, for a scumrat."

Han didn't try to argue otherwise.

"When I get my ship, Ben, she's gonna be a beauty."

"I'll expect a ride."

Korkie hauled a crate of rations up into the hold.

"So where are you going first?" Han asked, fiddling with the navigation system.

Korkie shrugged.

"Wherever I can find those Inquisitor bastards."

Han nodded his faint approval but said nothing. He looked around them, at the tired cladding and the cheerful kitchenette and the two bunks hanging from the ceiling.

"Good-sized hold."

"Yeah."

Something unsaid hung between them.

"I'd ask you to come with me," Korkie ventured. "Except that it's going to be highly dangerous and not at all lucrative, so-"

"Thank you for offering," Han interjected, with a faint smile. "But it's okay. Don't feel bad. I can wait."

He ran a hand through his dark hair, eyes darting to the floor.

"I've got a friend who's trying to get out too. Known her since we were kids. So I wouldn't go without her, it wouldn't be fair."

Korkie raised his brows, grinning.

"A friend?"

Han scowled.

"Shut up."

"You should have told me!" Korkie wailed.

"I'm glad I didn't."

"What's her name?"

"Go to hell."

Despite it all, Han conceded a reluctant smile, folding his arms across his chest.

"Forget I told you. Now, let's get you off-planet before you start to feel too sad about missing me."

The understatement was obvious. The boys looked at each other, silent and self-conscious for a moment, and then embraced.

"Thank you for everything, Han," Korkie murmured.

He didn't tell him that he was the first friend he'd had in a whole year of loneliness. He figured Han probably knew.

"You too," Han muttered, releasing him.

He descended from the hold, down the ramp and onto the tarmac.

"I'll keep an eye on the revolution, Ben," he vowed. "Just for you."

It was an outrageously bad idea, but they've done it.

It always made sense to me that our charming Korkie's greatest strength in the Force would be his mind-tricks. And how about Han's piloting? Their inadvertent sabotage of Sidious's lame Empire Day celebrations made me laugh. I had a lot of fun writing this chapter and I hope you enjoyed it too.

Next chapter, Korkie heads back out into the big wide galaxy. And we travel perspectives to see some friends you might be missing.

xx - S.