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It was among the shortest and the most unequal fights in the Empire's half-century of existence. It was also heart-wrenching, for, once the smoke had cleared and the last echoes of blaster fire died away, it became clear that not all of the Bakuran dead were soldiers. Dignitaries, attendants, even the governor's young maid – all shot where they huddled in terror. Some of them had not even had time to hide. There was a fine line between battle and slaughter in any war, but this was beyond anything the sole Bakuran survivor had ever seen.
Malinza stared numbly at the burned hatch of her ship, far beyond shock. There was nothing she could do to change what had happened. Mourning would have to wait until later. If there was a later. If the yacht did not become one more mysterious casualty of the vastness of space. She did not resist when the stormtroopers shoved her forward, pushing her along with her bound hands.
The man standing inside the hatch would never be considered tall, but there was something malevolent about him that drew the eye. The Bakuran ambassadors had called Darth Rage a sinkhole of evil, ignoring their governor's arguments that he was only a man, however powerful.
Here and now, face to face with the Sith, she knew that they had been right.
"Darth Rage," she spat, fury and grief driving her more than any real hope of escaping with her life. "This is an outrage. Such an atrocity will never be condoned by His Majesty or the Inner Senate. You have attacked a diplomatic ship – "
"Spare me, Governor. You were not on any errand of the Emperor's." Rage's strange, baleful eyes locked with hers; it took all of her willpower not to turn away. "You have used your privileges to aid traitors and saboteurs. What happened to the information you stole?"
Malinza answered through gritted teeth. "I stole nothing. When the Emperor learns what you have done here, he will have your head on a platter."
"The Emperor has ordered you stripped of your titles. You are no longer part of the Inner Senate, nor are you entitled to protection of any kind. There will be no office to hide behind this time." His smile sent shivers down her spine. Rage had suspected her of being a Rebel five years ago, when she was a sixteen-year-old Vice Governor just beginning her rise to power. He was surely enjoying himself now.
She still made a play at innocence. Buying time was all she could do now. "I am an Imperial citizen and a governor of a – "
"You are part of the Rebel Alliance. Your treason will be punished. Take her away."
Malinza managed to wait until the Sith was out of sight before tears leaked from her stinging eyes.
***
The droid was a tubby, squat thing that looked more like a garbage disposal than anything else. Its name was Blue. Ben had no idea what model or make it was; its number had been worn off well before it had landed in the scrap heap behind the family's garage. Uncle Gavin hated it, but Ben had always had a soft spot for it, even if it was held together by wishes and old adhesive. Maybe it had something to do with Blue's apparent intelligence; it had never had a memory wipe as far as Ben could tell and had developed the sort of touchy, eccentric personality he had come to associate with - well, with Uncle Gavin, for starters.
Blue made an odd choice for his tagalong, since Ben had always been a decent, respectable boy with the type of imagination generally found in sand dunes and small rocks. He was the one all the mothers secretly wanted their daughters to marry, if only because they were so used to mothering him and comparing his behavior to that of their own children that not being able to do it anymore seemed impossible to contemplate. After all, it was not the boy's fault that his mother had named him after that crazy old hermit, now was it? And the blame for his uncle and cousin could hardly fall on his solid, dependable shoulders.
Aside from Blue, Ben's other constant companion was Shay Moonskipper. Most of the mothers – those not directly related to Shay, anyway – muttered about the girl having her head in the stars and being not at all suitable for Ben. Oh, she was a nice enough fit in theory – eighteen like Ben, considerably prettier than he was handsome, intelligent – but she never seemed to know what to do with herself. She was one of those with her eyes on the horizon, ready to leave her bright mark on the galaxy.
"Is Sasha still going to the Academy?" she asked after a long moment staring up at the sky. The sandstorm had cleared up just a half-chrono before, but Ben had taken the opportunity to leave the tense atmosphere at home and climb up onto the garage roof. It had been his hiding place since he was little and he shared it with exactly two beings: Shay and Blue.
Ben shrugged. "Aunt Olivea doesn't want her to. Uncle Gavin would probably feed her to a krayt dragon if she got in."
"I wish I could get in," Shay said wistfully. "I know it's silly, but I keep seeing myself in a lieutenant's uniform. I want to be out fighting battles and exploring new galaxies and – "
Ben laughed. He could not help it. "You want all that?"
Shay shrugged. "Maybe. If I thought my father and mother would let me leave Draco's Well."
"Just don't tell my uncle about that." Ben did not know how Uncle Gavin would react if he learned Shay wanted to join the Imperials. Badly, most likely. His Views did not allow any room for disagreement.
Shay lapsed into thoughtful silence for a moment, her eyes still locked on the cloudless sky. "Ben?" she asked suddenly. "What do you want to do?"
Ben blinked. He had never been asked that – not since he was five years old, when his dream was to join Captain Fantastic and the Thunder TIEs. His aunt had been in fits about that particular children's program. "I don't know what I want," he said finally. "Maybe to set up another garage in Anchorhead or even Mos Eisley. I could get some spare parts from the Jawas and I could have a whole business going."
"You want to stay a mechanic?" Shay shook her blond head, smiling bemusedly. "Don't you want to see what's up there, Ben? Don't you want anything?"
Ben shrugged. "Not really. I mean, I know there's all that trouble with the Rebellion, but that's not here. It's far away."
"How can you say that? You're a Darklighter. The Rebellion's practically in your blood." Shay looked horrified, an expression that Ben had learned usually meant she was about to get very, very angry at the sheer stupidity of the universe. "Your father was a Rebel, wasn't he? And your mother wasn't exactly a lump, either."
"I don't want to talk about them." It came out more forcefully than Ben had wanted, but he did not take the words back. His father and mother - Dev Darklighter and Kali Newsuns, respectively - had indeed been Rebels, although not in the dashing way that Shay probably supposed. They had run a safe house, that was all; he remembered that much, even if they had died when he was only five.
"Listen, Shay," he said finally. "They're not me. I'm happy here and I don't want to be something I'm not. My parents weren't shot by stormtroopers or anything. They died because a sandstorm tipped their landspeeder over. They weren't interested in what happened up there. Why should I be?"
Shay glared at him. "Ben Darklighter, sometimes I think you're the biggest fragging idiot in the galaxy." That said, she stalked off to the rope ladder that Ben had rigged up years ago and climbed down, still frowning angrily until her head disappeared.
Sith and sand! Ben glowered after her. I'm never going to understand her. He started to stand up, but thought better of it when he remembered Shay's little habit of standing at the bottom of the ladder and waiting until she could glare at him some more. He was not going to go down there just to hear more about how he should be doing something with his life. If Shay wanted to leave, she could go ahead. He was not going to stop her.
Blue whistled something sympathetically. Normally those little noises would have cheered Ben up, but today he just waved them away. "Nothing you can do." He sighed and started toward the other end of the garage roof - the end with the makeshift, badly repaired repulsor sled on it. Ben was a decent mechanic and it had not taken much time to rig something up out of old parts. "Come on. Let's get you down."
The droid rotated its head in such a way that Ben could almost imagine it was looking at the heavens. "Don't tell me you want to follow Shay," he grumbled. "Come on. Uncle Gavin's probably cooled down by now."
Blue just watched him.
Ben sighed and thwacked the droid upside its dome. "Don't tell me you've got another wire loose. What's the matter?"
The droid leaned forward and blue light flickered from its mostly broken holoprojector. Ben sighed. "I'm not paying for a new one. Do you know how many shipments I'd have to make to Anchor - "
The rest of his tirade was cut off as a washed-out, rather grainy figure formed itself on the rooftop. It - she - was swathed in white and was standing very straight with her hands regally folded in front of her. Ben gaped. He did not watch a lot of holonews - not with the commentary his uncle and aunt provided - but he knew enough to recognize the robes of the Inner Senate. Why was Blue carrying around a picture of one of the Emperor's personal advisors?
Before he could form a question, the figure moved suddenly and began to speak. "Please deliver this message to Akim Hannibar. You will be rewarded." The message flickered and the woman repeated herself. "Please deliver this message to Akim Hannibar. You will be rewarded. Please deliver this - "
"Stop it." Ben waved his hand and Blue turned off the projector. "Do you have any idea what this is?"
The droid whistled what Ben had learned was a negative. It had no idea where the hologram had come from.
Ben frowned at the spot where the message had been. Blue was a forthright and generally cooperative droid, which was probably the reason its memory had not been erased recently. True, it was more spare parts than anything else, but still.
Spare parts. "Remember that old receiver I used to cover some of that scoring? Did you pick this up from that?"
Blue beeped a yes.
Ben sighed. None of this made any sense; better to sleep on it. He had no idea who Akim Hannibar was or why an Inner Councilor would want him. Probably Blue had just picked up stray signals. "Let's get you down, then. And don't fall. I'm not going to explain anything to Uncle Gavin if I break you."
***
The girl in the corner of the Mos Eisley cantina stared at the bottom of her glass and chuckled bitterly at some inner joke. Being drunk did not make problems go away, but at least she could look at them with a sort of distanced cynicism. And while she was at it, she could wonder what it was she had ordered. It had not tasted bad, precisely, although it had the sort of aftertaste that promised a nasty headache in the morning. Funny how that did not matter right now.
"Need company?" A burly man who probably considered himself handsome leaned over and smiled broadly. His breath smelled like the drink had tasted.
The girl gave him a slightly unsteady look. "Don' need comp'ny," she slurred.
The man eyed her for a moment. Aside from being quite young - seventeen standard years, maybe eighteen - she was dressed in well-made, neatly tailored clothing and wore the sort of chronometer that probably cost about fifty credits in the Core. "Sure you do," he said as he settled himself across from her. "We wouldn't want you getting into any trouble, now would we?"
"Take care o' m'self."
"At least let me take you back to your rooms," the man said. "That's what I'm here for. I don't want to see a lovely lady like you being taken advantage of."
"Really?" The girl leaned back, her eyes suddenly very focused and decidedly nasty. At the same time, something round and muzzle-like rested itself against the man's knee. "Wouldn't want that, would we?" She smiled. Or showed her teeth, anyway. There were quite a lot of them, all dazzling white against her dark skin. "You know what happens when I'm drunk?" she asked conversationally, her eyes never leaving the man's face. "I get trigger-happy. Sometimes people lose things. Accidentally, of course."
The man swallowed. "Things?"
"You know. Legs." That smile widened to display even more teeth. "You were just leaving." It was definitely not a question.
The man bolted up and scrambled away from the table, vanishing into the shadows as fast as dignity allowed. The girl reholstered her blaster, flipping the safety back on with a deft flick of her fingers. She did not have to put up with this, of course. The heiress to both the Calrissian mining fortune and the entire stack of Risant deeds and titles could have had her pick of bodyguards - or private bars, for that matter. But if she had wanted that, she would not have been here, waiting for a contact in a filthy cantina halfway to nowhere.
It was that stupid prophecy's fault.
It had sounded like such an easy job: get a few weapons for the Rebel Alliance and bring them to a base in the backwater of the Outer Rim. It was easy credits and it was smart business, since the Rebellion had stuck around a lot longer than anyone had thought and there was no telling how long it would keep throwing men and blasters at the Empire. That was before she had been asked to take a tiny little detour - just a small one - to pick up some governor and deliver her back to her space yacht before the Empire was the wiser. That was before she had been slipped a copy - just a little data chip - of the governor's information. For insurance, of course. Nothing that would actually endanger her. That was before she had decided to see what was so special about the data chip, especially since the Rebellion was willing to pay her quite a lot to have her hang on to the extra copy.
That was before, as they so quaintly said on Sacorria, she had wound up in the dung heap without a shovel.
Another creature - she was not going to dignify it by calling it a man - lumbered over to her, belching something purple. Jessa Calrissian sighed and shook her vibroblade out of its arm sheath. Forget amputation. Next guy who tried to hit on her was going to get castrated.
***
Rowan frowned at the tiny hologram sitting on her desk. "Of course I told him, sir. We intercepted the transmission and we've traced it to a section of the planet. Tatooine is not heavily populated. We'll find it." Before the Sith, she added silently.
"Which settlements in particular?"
"Three sir. Too small for much more than settlers." She referred to her list anyway; when the Grand Admiral asked for information, you did not ask questions. "Noonridge, Draco's Well, and Anchorhead."
She could not be sure given the size of the hologram, but for a moment the Grand Admiral's eyes seemed to narrow. He did not look worried, precisely, but he was definitely considering something. Despite her own anxiety, Rowan made herself wait. Her position with Darth Rage was relatively stable; her position among the Grand Admiral's colleagues was anything but. Plotting to overthrow the Emperor required patience and discretion.
"Send men you trust to search a landmark near the settlements," he said finally. "Hermit's Hut. You will find what you need there."
Rowan frowned. "Hermit's Hut, sir? Why would the transmission be there?"
The Grand Admiral smiled faintly. "Because that is the only place to hide such dangerous information. And I believe the current carrier has certain memories of the place. It will be there."
"Of course, sir. I'll see to it." Rowan managed to wait until the hologram vanished before blowing out a long, shaky breath. She had not risen this far without a firm belief in the principals of the New Order. She was not a Rebel or insurrectionist. All she was doing was removing a parasitic growth from an otherwise healthy organism.
That did not stop her from feeling twinges of panic. Thinking about a military coup was one thing. Actually putting it into motion was entirely different. Suddenly her quarters did not feel very warm at all.
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