The First Year

[Mission Koht]

Mission slipped into the warehouse through an open receiving portal and then glanced around. Once she knew where she was, she shadowed her way through the warehouse as quickly as possible. She remembered what Salicia had said about the droids being docile, but she didn’t want to take chances. She spent most of the trek to the container stalking through the rafters, only scaling down when she found the container. It was a smallish dark green container with a scanner and a wheel to unlatch the door. She scanned her command card across the reader and it turned red in sync with a metallic pop somewhere inside the container. When she tried the wheel on the door, it broke loose, and she climbed in, wheeling the door shut behind her. The red card was the only light in the container for a moment, but then it shifted green again, displaying the words “in transit” on it. She grinned and pulled a flashlight from her bag that Salicia had supplied her with. She found her way to a corner and settled in. Then she shut the light off and closed her eyes.

During most of her childhood and early adolescence, Mission hadn’t been much better at sitting still than her father had, but being a slave for eight months had taught her the true value of it. She would have preferred to learn the lesson some other way, but Mission had cultivated the discipline to sit quietly and enjoy her peace and calm for as long as it was made available to her. She had every reason to expect that she would sit alone in the dark container for at least the next 5 five hours, and she welcomed it. She sat her satchel down beside her, crossed her legs, and settled down the meditate. The dark fears still lingered around her mind, and she was frightfully aware of how close she had come to being destroyed that night. But the Force was her ally, and she had overcome. She sat quietly for the duration of the journey, and pondered the sensation of absolute, untouchable freedom she had experienced in those few moments as she’d hung in the air between the skyscraper roofs that night. That moment was hers to own forever now, and she was determined that it would define her more than the fear she’d felt in the moments leading up to it.

[Mission Koht]

As it turned out, the priority shipping of the cargo container Mission journeyed to Rodia in had higher quality priority shipping standards than had been expected. After about four hours of rattling, shifting, and the gentle thrum of hyperspace engines, Mission’s ride finally came to an end, and she felt a much different atmosphere in the Force around her. Christophsis was a cool, still feeling place in the Force through the eyes of an empath – people there created an overarching mood that was almost melancholy, and a bit nostalgic, with undertones of interest and appreciation. Rodia, by contrast, or at least the part of it where she seemed to have found herself, was a busy and determined place, with undertones of concern and concentration. Even so, she felt a certain appreciation that was very different from the kind she’d experienced on Christophsis. It was less like the appreciation of art, and more like the appreciation of hard work. She liked it.

Since she had been sitting in one place for the last few hours, Mission decided to get up and do some stretches in the privacy of the darkness in the container’s interior. After all, she had at least five hours until the container’s recipient learned it had arrived. As usual, she started with the mild ones, and then began to work her way into the more demanding ones, eventually twisting her body in the types of knots that were the stock and trade of contortionists. She grinned as she rose up on her hands in a particularly precarious position and remembered how Nomi had always picked on her for “showing off”. She was quite proud of her flexibility. Nomi had always been a little bit bigger, a little bit faster, and a little bit stronger, but she could never quite bend herself as far as Mission. She amended her train of thought after a moment though – Nomi was a lot bigger than her.

After completing her more complex set, Mission was just starting her cooldown routine when a series of explosions outside the container made her roll back and plant her feet beneath her in a guarded crouch. She could hear a firefight suddenly breaking out beyond the walls of the container. What was this? She reached out with the Force and found a scene that felt like a low-key clash of good and evil erupting in whatever facility she’d found herself in. Those furthest from her exuded the sorts of emotions typical in her experience of Jedi guardians – a boldfaced determination to do the right thing, and make the problem go away in the name of justice. Those nearer to her were clearly the opposite. Whomever was operating out of this facility seemed to have found themselves in opposition to the law and were in the process of reaping the rewards of that decision.

Mission listened as the firefight grew closer and heard when it got close enough that voices added themselves to the fray. She backed away from the container’s entrance and stashed herself between two crates just in case someone tried to break in and take cover. That didn’t turn out to be the case, but she heard the exchanges get very close before moving away. It sounded like a melee of some kind had occurred outside her container. Once the conflicting forces had moved further on through the facility, Mission reached out carefully to make sure there was no one else close by doing clean up or something, and then decided it was safe to slip out. As soon as the door slid open, she could see she had been right about the melee. At her feet lay a body in some kind of strike force armor. She looked at it closer and found the republic emblem embossed on the shoulder pad and the helmet. When she rolled the body over, she realized it was a woman. She felt sadness for her. It must have been a frightening way to die – the armor wasn’t damaged at all, which meant she had been physically overpowered. Mission shuddered at some memories that thought brought to the surface and pushed them aside. There was something important about this revelation that she hadn’t thought of it. The combat was still moving further away, so she stepped back and regarded the corpse. Then it came to her. The woman was barely taller than her. It had taken her a moment to realize it since she was laying on the ground, but they were almost the same size and build. Mission felt a small pang of regret, but she needed the protection.

Taking the corpse by the arms, Mission dragged her off between two of the larger crates and fumbled with the armor locking joints a moment before she figured out how to release them, then she quickly stripped both layers of armor from the body. She wasn’t going to strip the fatigues though, that just felt wrong. It wasn’t an issue thought, the armor covered everything. The first layer was a fairly form-fitting suit of body armor that was grey and had the sort of ribbed patterns that reminded her of the sparring pads the older Jedi had made during their time on the nexus world, but this material was much sturdier. She guessed it was at least fortified against sharp weapons, if not shrapnel as well. She rolled her eyes as she realized suddenly that all the nights she’d spent listening to her father prattle on with his armorer buddies was actually doing her some good just then.

The outer layer was pretty obviously blaster-proof, since there were already two muted blast marks scoring the chest plate. Mission noticed a name plate on the armor as well, so she stepped into one of the other containers, and shot it off with the blaster she’d taken from Wex. She peeked out to make sure no one was rushing to the sound of the firearm, but the combat was still working in the opposite direction. Satisfied that she wouldn’t be immediately identified, Mission tied her fiery hair back as tight as possible, pulled on the helmet, and then snapped the faceplate up off the chest into its locked position against the leading edge of the helmet. She heard a small hissing sound, and suddenly the smell of the air changed mildly. She doubted the armor was airtight, but it was definitely good quality. Whichever government entity this was, they were well-funded. Mission stuffed the contents of her satchel into the hardened pack that was attached to the armor, then stuffer her blaster in as well, and clamped it onto the backplate of the armor. The last thing she did was clamp on the leg plates, and collect the blaster rifle and tonfa off the floor. Mission was surprised by the light weight of the armor. She suspected it was duraplast, or one of the other super lightweight alloys she’d heard talk of.

As she made her way to the front of the building, Mission knew she was likely going to have to get past some other portion of the invading law force, so she thought up a reason for her exit. It stood to reason, since the armor’s owner had been killed by physical combat of some kind, that the wearers weren’t invincible, but merely well-protected. The blast marks showed that she had been in the thick of things. All she had to do was twist the string of events into a scenario where she had almost died, instead of actually dying. As she neared the front of the building, she slung the blaster rifle she’d acquired over her left shoulder, and began to nurse the right shoulder carefully, taking the issued sidearm in her left hand and letting her right arm dangle limp at her side. She ambled slowly too, like someone who didn’t want to be jostled too much. She was nearing the front wall when she rounded a stack of containers and found one of the large front roller doors hanging wide open, and several other assault force members in armor similar to her own were guarding the entrance.

She felt a sting of nerves as she approached them, but she knew she could pull through. After all, she’d just spent the last 8 months convincing very intelligent criminals that she was one of them. She held her pistol up by way of saluting the rear guard at the door, and then carefully reached around and slotted the pistol back in its holster on her right hip. As she neared, one of the men lowered his rifle and approached her.

::What’s the situation?:: He asked, his tone firm, but not demanding, even through the faceplate.

::We’ve got em on the run:: Mission whispered in a pained tone, careful not to let too much of her actual voice out in case this man recognized the armor’s previous owner by some feature she’d missed.

::What happened to you?::

Mission grunted and flexed her right hand pitifully. ::I got jumped. I’m alright but my shoulder’s out of socket::

The man looked her over for a moment, then nodded. ::Alright, good job staying alive. Go see the medic::

Mission felt a moment of duplicitous guilt over accepting the man's commendation, but there was nothing to be done for it. Rather than risk calling him “sir” in error, Mission simply nodded and ambled past. The others at the door nodded to her as well, but kept their eyes down range. She was thankful for their discipline. She wondered if they had anything to do with the anti-cartel initiative that new senator had been rolling out over the past few months. They seemed pretty well-organized.

Mission continued to amble on through the strike force’s footprint until she spotted the medical staff’s speeder. She made a sharp left and ducked away from it. The visor had a bizarre effect of allowing her to see all the way around her head – virtual 360 degree vision – which she knew to be a common feature in high-end combat armor, as well as most Mandalorian helmets. It was a bit disorienting, but it did allow her to observe everyone as she walked through the strike force footprint and know for certain the second no one was watching. At that moment, she slipped between two containers and disappeared.

[Mission Koht]

Once the strike force was behind her, Mission slipped off her helmet, and the pauldron that sported the republic logo, and scraped it off of them both. She wasn’t sure if this armor was exclusive, but she couldn’t help that; what she could help was identifying herself with a government entity beyond any doubt at a glance. What she really needed now was paint.

As she walked, Mission considered the objective value of keeping the armor now that she was away. It was true that it might make her stand out a bit, but with her white-streaked bright red hair she stood out anyway. She figured it would be better to appear somewhat dangerous, rather than somewhat vulnerable. She was still walking through the port with that analysis and a hundred others rolling through her head when she smelled something acrid venting in through the air filter in her faceplate. It smelled familiar – paint! She cast all about with her eyes and the Force, trying to find anyone who might be doing something with paint. She found a group of auras a little way away, very distinctly emanating a mischievous vibe. That was her mark.
Mission rushed toward the mischief, and the smell of paint, and came around the corner to find a group of rodian adolescents – probably around her age – painting a mural of graffiti onto the side of a warehouse that was clearly not abandoned, judging by the shipping activities going on around the corner. She rushed toward them immediately. One of them saw her and shouted, and the entire gang burst into motion. She easily ran them down, however, and smacked three of them in the back of their legs with her tonfa midstride before tackling the fourth. She turned around and sat on the fourth, then pulled her pistol and pointed it at the others.

::I’m assuming none of you have ever been stunned before?::

The teenagers froze half crouched, and didn’t move.

::I didn’t think so:: Mission grinned a little behind her faceplate. The mechanism that broadcasted her voice through the helmet gave it a slight ominous tone. ::Now you’re all lucky I’m busy today so I’m not going to cart you in, but you’re all gonna dump your paint cans right there, and you’re gonna go straight home, understand? I’ve got your faces in my records now so if you show up for vandalism in the system again you’ll already have a warning flag… Need I say more?::

The rodians shook their heads and mumbled variations of “no ma’am”.

Under her watchful eye, they set their paint cans on the ground, and then hustled away with their shoulders hanging low. Mission smiled and watched them go. She’d probably done them a favor anyway. Gathering up their canisters, she moved on and looked for a place to hide and take off her armor plates. She ended up walking for awhile before she found a place to step into the shadows, but when she did, she immediately stripped off her helmet and duraplast plating, and began sorting through her paints. She found a few nice colors, but about halfway through the collection she paused and let out a little cackle. One of the kids had invested in a little bit better hardware than the others.

While living in Bearden’s house, Mission had enjoyed a few occasions of helping Anise prepare wonderful play scenes for Varden, in which she rediscovered all the wonderful artistic tools she hadn’t enjoyed since childhood. One instrument that was extremely useful to the end of preparing the dramatic backdrops of Varden’s playtime adventures was Anise’s multivariate “Heat Shade” airless paintgun. It was small, and contained only one type of paint, but that paint was a special prismatic chemical blend that could be shifted to any color in the spectrum depending on what temperature it was at when it was vaporized. It was a high quality and surprisingly precise painting tool. And the best part was, it dried hard as enamel in about 30 seconds. Mission stared at the armor for a moment, playing with shapes in her head, and then got to work.

She used a small application of telekinesis to manage where the paint settled so that her designs looked a little more like a professional job than a back-alley smear job. She started by painting all the armor plates a dark red shade, then she came back and added a sparse collection of broad geometric white patterns across the plates, including an illustration of a kar’ta beskar on the main chest plate. Finally, she came back and accented the edges of the plates with a combination of black and dark grey trim lines. When the armor was all finished, she came back to the pauldrons and carefully painted her logos onto them: on the left shoulder, the mythosaur skull in gold, which was the crest of the Mandalorian people; on the right, the crest of Clan Koht in indigo blue, which had been on a bracelet her father had worn until it broke on the nexus world. She regarded the v-shaped visor on the faceplate a moment, and thought of repainting it to look like the Mandalorian T-visor, but decided against it. No need to be tacky.

Mission stepped back and looked at the collection of plates and smiled. She hadn’t done anything just for “fun” in awhile, but she had certainly enjoyed this particular camouflaging act. She quickly remounted the plating onto her body armor, and then rearranged her gear a bit to her liking. The holster on the armor was ambidextrous, so she switched it to the left hip, and attached the holster of Wex’ blaster onto her right hip. She really felt Mandalorian now, and it brought a smile to her face. She slotted the tonfa on her back where she could get to it quickly in an altercation, and then slung the rifle over her left shoulder and moved on. She left most of the paint in the little alley, but she kept the Heat Shade paint gun – it was handy. After that, she marched through the streets of the port and attracted the sort of glances and glance-away reactions that she much preferred to the interested glances she likely would have otherwise been receiving. After spending the last 9 months at the mercy of others, if felt good to be respected at a glance for once.

Now all she needed was a ride home.

Mission dug the data pad Salicia had given her from the hardened pack and skimmed the list of good and bad names while trying to maintain the appearance of a purposeful stride through the massive shipping yards. She noticed a few of the “no-go” companies she had already spotted while walking. She continued for awhile through the streets of the port and found none of the company names that Salicia had said were trustworthy. She spent the better part what appeared to be the morning searching for a company that she could hitch a ride with, and felt like she had traversed the entire region, but nothing presented itself, so she decided to change her tactic.

::Hey, you work around here don’t you?:: she said, approaching a man who obviously worked around there. He regarded her uncertainly for a moment, and then nodded.

::I’m looking for a registry of private freighters in port today. Point me in the right direction::

The man glanced up the street and pointed. “There’s a terminal that way where they keep up with all the ships in port that aren’t registered to a parent company. You should be able to find the names of all the private ships in port and their pilots there.”

::Great, thanks::

Mission moved on immediately and marched down the street the way the worker had pointed. She stopped to confirm with one more worker along the way, but she eventually arrived at the building she’d been looking for, and went in. It was not as busy as she had expected it to be, but there was a little bit of activity here and there. She glanced around for a terminal and went to pull it up. She perused through the system’s command list and selected one that said freight registry. The next option she selected was to sort the list by operator name. There were dozens of names, but as she perused through the list and compared it to hers, she found only one. Huilo Garantov. She tapped the name and a registry brief popped up. There was an image of a man with a thin face, long hair, and a patchy beard, but despite his straight face, his eyes stared back at Mission like he knew the punchline to some joke she didn’t. She read down his page but found only his registry information. There was nothing about where he was, or when he was scheduled to depart. She glanced up and saw a rodian woman sitting at a desk looking bored as she tapped through her data terminal. Perfect.

Mission approached the desk and tapped the release on her faceplate; it unlatched from her helmet and dropped down to attach on a receiver on her upper chest plate. “I’m expected by a Huilo Garantov, can you pull up his portage for me? I didn’t get a location from him at the pub yesterday.” That was a good line, right? Mission had noticed in years past that her father tended to use bars as an excuse for fake encounters in his stories. She hoped it would work out as well for her.

“Huilo Garantov. Give me a moment. And you are?”

“Mission Koht.” She was surprised by how readily her own name had come off her lips. She had to admit, presenting her Mandalorian side was a bit of a confidence booster.

“Give me just a moment.” Said the bored desk worker. She tapped through a few screens on her terminal, then grabbed a headset and put it on.

“Hello, let me speak to Huilo. Thank you… Hello Mr. Garantov, there is a young Mandalorian woman here named Mission Koht, who says you’re expecting her. I need written or verbal permission to release docking location info to her.”

Mission’s heart leapt into her throat. Her sly little story had just gone down the drain. She did her best to keep a straight face, but the points of her ears burned as she watched the rodian woman calmly nod along with whatever the freighter pilot was saying. After a minute or so of nodding, she sighed.

“Very well, just a moment.” She pulled the headset off her head and offered it to Mission without a word. Mission hesitantly accepted it, and pulled off her helmet so she could put it on.

“This is Mission.”

::Hello my young friend, apparently we met at a bar last night?::

“That’s right.”

::I must have been pretty radically drunk then, because I could have sworn I was at the theater with the guys last night watching “Best Served Cold”::

Mission bit her lip for a moment. “Well... everyone reacts differently to different drinks. You’ll have to tell me about that movie.”

The voice on the other end of the headset laughed aloud. ::You’re a pretty cheeky mando, you know that? So tell me, why should I let you into my port? Your people have no compunctions about shooting other people when they feel compelled to::

Mission glanced up at the desk lady, she wasn’t even engaged in their conversation anymore. “I mean that’s certainly true, but like I said last night I just need a lift up the Corellian Run into the interior. I’m a bit stranded here.”

::Interesting problem::

“Yep, well, you know how life is. And – like I said last night – I’ll be happy to earn my way. You wouldn’t be disappointed to have me on your crew for awhile.”

There was silence for a moment, then the voice came back. ::You’ve got my curiosity piqued Mission. If you promise to play nice when you show up, I’ll let you in::

“You got it. My word is good.”

::Excellent, hand me back to the beautiful lady will you?::

Mission grinned and handed the headset back to the rodian woman. She put it on, gave Huilo a few “mhm” sounds, and then put the headset down.

“You’ll find him at docking platform 5C, dock thirteen. Let me run you off a pass.” She stroked a few keys on another terminal, and then plucked a card off the desk with her suction-cupped fingertip and offered it to Mission. “Out the door and to your left, then keep going until you see platform 5 on the right. Third deck is level C. 13 will be on the right as well.”

“Thank you,” Mission popped the card off the rodian’s finger with a quirked eyebrow and marched out of the building. She followed the directions until she got to a gate, beyond which she could see the massive docking structures she had eyed from a different angle earlier that day. The card let her pass, and she stepped onto the new street.

As Mission glanced down to slip the card into her pocket, she realized she already had another card in the same pocket, and it reminded her that she still needed to check in with Salicia. She stuffed the card into her pocket, and then pulled the data pad off the clip on her belt.

::Salicia,

Things got a little dicey at the end, but the ride was nice over all, thanks for the recommendation. One of the connections you recommended looks to be panning out as well. Thanks for all your advice.

I’ll see you around,

Mission::

She didn’t dare say more, in case there was some way for anyone else to see Salicia’s message queue. She hated to think how closely they might be watching everyone on Christophsis, especially now that she had escaped. She would make it right in good time though. For now, she just needed to focus on getting home.

[Mission Koht]

At platform 5, Mission scanned her card again, and then rode a lift up to the third deck, where she made her way to dock 13. There was a large service door there, and also a smaller pedestrian door which she was about to open when the service door began to groan open. She stepped back and watched for a moment, then walked over to the side of the portal and stood while the gate swung up and away. There were men in dock worker suits milling around the space, and a few men in slightly more eclectic attire pointing them around and speaking with them. Mission eyed them carefully, feeling them in the Force and watching as they spoke with the dock workers. They didn’t seem like malicious people. She spotted Huilo beside the curious looking freighter talking to a man who looked like some sort of foreman. She was about to step in when a large machine carrying a bunch of metal canisters rolled up to the service door. She paused and let it roll past, then made her way in and over to Huilo.

As MIssion waded through the workspace, she glanced up at the freighter again. It was a strange-looking ship with the cockpit built onto one side instead of set in the middle of the ship. It was a strange arrangement, but it seemed like a reasonably sturdy ship otherwise. She found her way through the crates and canisters and paused within speaking distance of Huilo, where she waited and watched him. She liked him almost immediately when she brushed against him with her empathic senses. She’d known a few people like him before – he was the type who’d never met a stranger.

As the freighter captain carried on with the foreman, Mission realized he was already aware of her standing there. Knowing she had arrived didn’t stop him from cutting up with the foreman for a couple more minutes, but as soon as he was done, he turned to her and waved.

“My newest drinking buddy! Step over here.” His accent wasn’t one Mission had ever heard before, but it rolled off his tongue with an interesting lilt. Mission approached him and paused just out of arms reach from him. He eyed her for a moment with an interested expression, and then crossed his arms. “Are you a fake Mandalorian?”

Mission’s faceplate popped down and she crossed her arms too, glowering at him. “No, I’m a discount Mandalorian.”

Huilo chuckled, but Mission saw his eyes run over her face and pause on the ragged gap in her left eyebrow. “Alright then 'discount mando', give me the short and sweet version. Why are you here?”

Mission sighed and brushed the not-so-short-and-sweet details aside in her mind, sifting the most important bits out and into a pair of sentences. “I’ve been stuck in this sector for quite awhile, ever since my last job ended unexpectedly. I was stuck on Christophsis for awhile but I finally got a lift here, and I just need a ride a little further into the interior so I can get a lift to Mandalore. Discretely.”

“You can’t just call home?”

“No, I can’t. Long story.” She didn’t have any way of knowing what the situation was with her clan just then. Eight years ago, her mother had still had a few enemies in the clans. She needed to go and find out for herself. It occurred to her that she might have emblazoned her armor with the Koht crest a little prematurely.

Huilo regarded her for a moment longer, then shrugged and smiled. “Alright, well I’ll be happy to get you as far as Corellia, but it might take a little while. I go where my freight carries me, you know?”

“That’s fine, I’ve been stranded this long, I don’t mind taking an indirect path home.”

Huilo smiled. “Alright then, we’re about done here so let me get things wrapped up and I’ll show you around my boat. Is that all your gear?”

Mission glanced down at herself and nodded. “Yeah, I travel light.”

“Good, you’ll make an excellent spacer.”

Mission sat on a crate and watched as Huilo and his crew of three hustled around the bay getting everything tagged and loaded up. There was discussion of more freight elsewhere, but it was apparently something much larger. She glanced back at the ship, wondering how it was going to carry a larger haul that what they’d already put aboard. It didn’t seem to be designed for towing. The back half of the ship was one big thruster.

Once the dock workers cleared the area, there were only a few crates left, and Huilo’s crew began to move them to the ship. Mission hopped off the crate she was sitting on, clipped her helmet onto her belt, and dragged the crate behind her toward the ramp of the ship. It was heavy and caught on her heel, so she slipped over the top of it and pushed it the rest of the way. She quietly assisted the crew as they moved the rest of the crates and canisters to the ramp, and then began swinging them onto the ramp for the man operating the lev-tractor. Huilo worked along with his men, but he watched her as well, and from what she sensed, he was satisfied. He wasn’t without his suspicion though, he didn’t strike her as an idiot. Apparently he worked for Salicia occasionally, which meant he participated in shady dealings and therefore had to be clever and a little deceptive, but Salicia had vouched for him as well which meant if there was any honor among thieves, he had reserved a bit of it for himself.

As the last of the canisters rode up the ramp on the lev tractor, Huilo tossed Mission a bottle of water from a cooler in his other arm. “Here you go Discount; first pay check.”

Mission caught the bottle and cracked the lid, drinking thirstily as her body finally registered how dehydrated she was. It struck Mission suddenly that she had been on Christophsis running for her life less that 24 hours ago. It felt like a lifetime ago already. She pulled the seal collar of her body armor down from her chin so that it looked more like a shirt collar, and then pulled the knot out of her hair and began to tie it back in a mesh braid. Once she was done, she pulled the water bottle out from between her blaster and the thigh plate of her armor and continued drinking until the bottle was empty. Huilo glanced back at her as the bottle crunched in her hand and quirked an eyebrow. “Another?”

“Please.” Mission said and drank half of the second one as well before slowing down. Huilo chuckled and sipped his own water as he started up the ramp. “I suppose I’d sweat a little extra in armor like that too.”

“Oh it’s not the armor, it’s pretty well ventilated. I’ve just been walking around the docks all day.”

“Did you hear about the Cartel Task Force raiding that warehouse over on the north end this morning?”

Mission nodded, carefully guarding her expression. “I did, actually heard some of the blaster fire. They had the whole place locked down though so I wasn’t about to try and take a peek.”

Huilo shrugged. “Bad for business I say. It’s hard to feel safe when you can’t even land in a respectable port and not hear about those spooks making another raid.”

“How much do you know about it?” Mission asked, pausing at the top of the ramp while he closed it.

“Not a lot, just that they’ve got an incredible amount of momentum. The senator behind the task force is about as green as they come, but he’s very popular, and very clever too it seems. I don’t know what his sources are but this push is making all of us independent spacers double-check our employers really carefully.”

“I’m sure it’s a headache.” Mission agreed, careful not to say anything more loaded before she had a good read on him and his crew.

“Absolutely, but anyway, welcome to the industry for what it’s worth. You’ll mainly just be hard labor and added security while you’re on my ship, but I’ll catch you up on the particulars later. There isn’t much to know.”

“Sounds like a good gig,” said Mission. She followed Huilo into the ship and was introduced to the crew. They seemed like a pleasant bunch of motley fellows, but most importantly, they seemed no more malicious than their captain. It struck Mission that while these men were apparently smugglers, they were in no way like the smugglers who had caught her on Mon Gazza. That distinction made her feel much better about being on the ship, and while she was hardly about to let her guard down, she realized that she could actually breath easy again. As the apparently Corellian ship lifted off and jetted out into space to pick up the rest of it’s cargo, Mission settled into the bunk they had assigned her, still in full armor, and smiled inwardly. The number of steps between her and the nightmare that had been Christophsis was now two. She was going to have to work on this ship for awhile, but she could do that. She was out of the woods, and on her way home.

[Mission Koht]

Life aboard the Picatinny – as the ship turned out to be called – was a pleasant and amusing one for the most part. Mission was quite fascinated to learn that the ship used the strange prongs that constituted its prow to lock onto cargo modules in high orbit and actually push them through space, rather than pull them. It explained the size of the thruster on the ship’s rear. It also explained the name, apparently, though one of the crewmen had to explain the concept of a picatinny rail to her before she fully understood it. At that point she realized that two of the weapons she carried had these picatinny rails on them, and struggled to hide her embarrassment. The crew were an entertaining – and easily entertained – bunch of men, however. They made life aboard pretty easy for her.

Yubo was the first mate on the ship, as well as the only non-human on the ship apart from Mission, but he was moreso, being a nautolan. He was a stricter man than Huilo, but only when he perceived that someone was trying to “stick it to him” as he liked to describe it. As long as people did their work, he was just loud and zealous about his own work. He also possessed an extremely defined musculature - moreso than anyone else MIssion thought she'd ever known - and the others occasionally called him 'pretty boy' when they were feeling bold. Mission also got a sense before long that the others liked to harass him a little just for their own entertainment, and entertainment was something that they pursued a lot on the Picatinny.

The youngest member of the crew (perhaps apart from her) was a scrawny-looking young man who the rest of them called Sevs. He was, in fact, anything but scrawny. He was the next most competent mechanic in the ship after Huilo who was intimately familiar with the innards of his own vessel, and Mission saw him on several occasions carrying canisters and crates nearly his own size up the ramp when they were in a hurry. However, she also sensed once in awhile that he was showing off for her benefit. He indulged in nearly continual tech talk, unless he was too busy eating or slaughtering the other crew members at table ball.

The last member of the crew was the oldest, and pretty hard to ruffle. His name was Hermudus, though he complained that it sounded like the name of some over-dramatic character from a play. He preferred to be called Hermy. He managed to be a little pudgy in his old age, but he was a hard and cheerful worker, and took a particular liking to Mission once he discovered (as did she) that she shared his secret love of exotic beverages. He was the crew’s silly old uncle on most days, and even Huilo treated him with a deferential respect when it came to matters that didn’t concern his ship and contracts.

Huilo, Mission discovered, was a very intuitive man, and a gleefully sarcastic individual. He kept up with Sevs’ tech talk better than anyone else, picked on Yubo more than anyone else, and on a few occasions, she even caught him up late at night helping himself to Hermy’s stash of fancy drinks. He was a good captain to his men, and they liked working for him. She was on the ship nearly a month before they themselves let it slip that they were smuggling anything. As it turned out, a good bit of what they smuggled was contraband supplies going to places where aid was restricted or otherwise impossible to deliver. The first time they ran a blockade to deliver relief supplies, she had seen a distinctly noble side of the smuggler captain. He was calm, determined, and very decisive under pressure. He said he was just good at his job – good at getting paid – but she sensed a deeper desire to do good. She asked him once what kinds of things he smuggled apart from humanitarian aid and he simply chuckled. “Mostly the sort of thing you’d find in Hermy’s little stash. I made my name as a rum runner.” She asked no more questions after that. He’d done right by her, and never done anything to make her feel uncomfortable either directly or indirectly. He was a good man, with a good crew.

For her part, Mission had started out doing exactly what Huilo had told her she could, which was manual labor and added security, but she quickly developed a pension for acting as his “scary lady” at the rougher ports they stopped at. The crew joked that she was like a little watch dog, and she enjoyed the reputation. In truth, she simply had grown accustomed to the emotional ranges that were common among those who frequented space ports, and learned to empathically scan for individuals who had any kind of particularly devious or malicious intent. She could almost smell them before long, and she sought them out before they could make good on any of their designs. Even though she was tiny compared to most of the individuals she encountered in the ports, she managed to be menacing in her own way. The aggressive color scheme of her armor, and the way she rested her hands on her pistols like they were her hips made her seem – as Yubo described her – like a firecracker looking for a flame. “And it don’ change any when you take off de helmet.” He would say. “You and dat crazy hair and stare. I wouldn’ wanna meet you in some alley.”

Mission learned all she could from them. She paid attention to the tech talk, she took the wheel whenever Huilo was in a good enough mood to let her pilot, and she always, always made sure she knew their cargo and destination. She realized that if she had spent the last nine years as a Jedi and a part of the galaxy in which she now found herself, she would already know most of this stuff, so she had a lot of catching up to do in her mind. She had already learned bits of Durese and snips of Huttese from Derry and Lylia on the on the nexus world in addition to the mando’ad in which her father had insisted she retain a proficiency, but now that she was out in the star lanes interacting with other spacers, she experienced a major leap in her linguistic skills.

She also learned to know her gear a little better, since she had come to rely on it while in port and during smuggling runs. Her armor was capable of a little bit more than she’d realized, but not much. She was able to get into it’s software directory eventually and find out for sure, though. It could in fact give her vacuum seals, but only with a specialized air tank attachment, so she didn’t count on that too much. There was also a registry number in its base code which she deleted. She familiarized herself with her rifle, and her pistols. Yubo raved over the pistol she’d take from Wex one day when she pulled it out at the dinner table to wipe off some condiment Sevs had dribbled on it. Apparently it was some manner of high-end Westar that had been a limited run, and was nothing to shake a stick at. Her rifle and other pistol were SoruSuub firearms, but they were good quality weapons too.

Table ball was something Mission naturally gained superiority at rather quickly, what with her mildly precognitive Jedi reflexes and natural athletic talent. She was Sevs’ only contender for “Lord of the Realm”, but she also discovered one day that Huilo was holding back quite a bit. She had learned the body language of pulling blows and intentional hesitation over the years of sparring, and she saw all the signs whenever he played. She found it both disappointing and endearing all at once. Even so, she called him out on it one evening during a hyperspace haul between Hutt and Bothan Space.

“You totally let him win!” Mission cried, throwing a crisp at Huilo after Yubo defeated him by about five points. Huilo grinned and tossed his paddle to her. “Why don’t you show me how it’s done?”

Mission caught the paddle and threw it back. “You first.”

“Hey, you not goin’ easy on me now Huilo, are ya?” Yubo eyed him.

Huilo shrugged. “Maybe I’m just a little distracted today. You know I haven’t eaten since I got up.”

Mission glanced over at his dirty plate sitting in the sink, and said nothing.

“Oh you need some breakfast?” teased Yubo. “I think there’s some apple sauce in the coldy.”

Huilo chuckled and bobbed over to the cold store unit. “Hey, breakfast of champions. I suppose it’s either this or squid right?”

Yubo gaped at him while the other laughed. “Rude, mahn. I’m no squid. And I beat you too, so enjoy da kid’s meal.”

While Yubo ignored Sevs’ request for the next match and challenged Hermy, Mission watched Huilo across the common room. He was definitely holding back. Breakfast was cut short, though, when an alarm sounded in the cabin and drew them away. Mission ran to the side of the ship behind Huilo and looked over his shoulder as he squelched the alarm. It had been a distress call.

“Are we gonna check it out?” She asked, leaning on the back of Huilo’s chair.

“Yeah, we’re in no hurry.”

Huilo reached up and killed the hyperdrive, then activated the long-range sensors. There were two pings, but one of them was just a comet. The other repeated the emergency broadcast they’d picked up after another minute of scanning. Huilo immediately pressed the thrusters and moved toward it. They didn’t have any exterior cargo at that time, so they had full maneuverability. He pulled up alongside the ship and scanned it with the high-resolution array that projected from the dish atop the ship’s left side.

“Two life signs, both pretty weak.”

Mission tapped him on the shoulder. “Bring us around to that side hatch. I’ll go get Yubo and bring them back here.”

Huilo nodded quietly and angled the control yoke to swivel the ship around and line the side ports up. Mission headed back into the ship and informed the rest of the crew what was going on. Sevs immediately volunteered to help.

“If there’s a mechanical failure I can get it stitched up.” He suggested. Mission could sense his desire to show off a bit, but it was mingled with genuinely good intentions.

“No.” She insisted, rolling her collar seal up to her chin. “We just need to get the passengers over here and make sure they’re in good condition for now, then we can worry about the ship.”

Yubo returned with his gear just as she finished speaking and zipped up his jacket. “Are we docked yet or what? Let’s go do dis ting.”

Mission slapped on her helmet and locked in the faceplate, She immediately could see a mild luminous outline on the edges of solid objects – it was a passive low-light mode she had discovered, and it was good for situations like this. She and Yubo advanced to the airlock as soon as they felt the clank of the ships latching together and slid it open.

Air whooshed past the boarding party before they even began to cross the threshold into the other ship, which meant the atmospheric systems had been down. Everything was dark, so Mission stepped in first. The lamp on her helmet was not a visible spectrum of light to the naked eye, but it worked in conjunction with her night vision filter to give her a kind of ghostly daylight even in pitch black, so she set her visor to screen out Yubo’s flashlight as he stepped in behind her.

::Give me something, Huilo::

::Advance twenty paces ahead and turn left. Follow that corridor to the cabin of the ship, they’re both in there::

Mission waved Yubo on and they made their way in through the ship to the cabin. They found two men sitting in the pilot and copilot seats. As she examined them, Mission had a sudden sense of foreboding. These weren’t good men, or at least one of them wasn’t. She sensed darkness surrounding them, but not the kind she had grown accustomed to in the past couple of months in and out of ports where criminal scum gathered – this was the concentrated kind; the intentional darkness that she had grown up in the shadow of on the nexus world. She looked at the two men, apparently struggling to remain conscious, and tested their emotional states. The man in the pilot seat was foggy and uncertain, like a man struggling to find his way in a dark room, the man in the copilot seat, however, seemed almost neutral, which wasn’t possible for a living being. She detected only a mild inkling that he was waiting, for… something.

In the confines of her helmet, she contacted Huilo on a private channel. ::Something’s not right here, Huilo… These aren’t good men::

The line was silent for a moment, then his voice crossed through, low and steady. ::What makes you say that?::

::I don’t… I just have an instinct. When have I been wrong about the people we cross though?::

::I’m not disagreeing with you Mission. Something doesn’t add up here. There’s nothing wrong with their ship::

::Nothing?:: Mission raised her arm to stop Yubo as he stepped into the cockpit.

::Nothing I can see with the high-rez::

Mission was just about to back out of the ship and leave it far behind when the man in the pilot seat stirred. He came to with a start, but he was clearly weak, and he slumped back into his seat. His eyes sluggishly tracked toward them and settled on the light from Yubo’s flashlight.

“Oh thank… I don’t know what happened, our… we might have been sabotaged. Please…”

Nothing about his presence was untoward. His emotions were a mixture of shock, fear, and relief that matched someone being rescued from a hopeless situation. The other man still didn’t stir… not even in the Force. Mission wrung her hands and took a step forward. Regardless of the situation with the copilot, she couldn’t ignore the genuine distress of the pilot. He was weak, and desperately needed help. Her mind races over the options.

“Yubo,” she said, turning and opening her faceplate so she could whisper to him. “Get the copilot but be careful. Something’s off about all this, and it’s got something to do with him."

Yubo regarded her uncertainly for a moment, but then he nodded and moved forward. He was the one who had declared her their watchdog, and he trusted her implicitly. As he pulled the copilot from his seat, Mission drug the pilot up onto her own shoulder, and turned to follow Yubo out of the ship. Before they had gone ten paces, the copilot woke up, and grunted a bit before mumbling that he could walk and tapping Yubo on the back. Mission glared intently as the first mate dropped his charge carefully to the ground, and then caught his arm as he stumbled. He still just felt like he was waiting for something. As they all staggered back into the Picatinny, Hermy and Sevs stood waiting in secondary cargo hold through which they’d ported onto the distressed vessel. Huilo walked in just as Mission crossed the threshold.

“Are they alright?”

“Yeah boss, dey just air deprived.” Said Yubo.

The man leaning on Yubo for support glanced up at the word “boss” and looked at Huilo for a moment. “Are you… Huilo Garantov?”

Huilo quirked an eyebrow. “Who's asking?.”

A flash of color and movement flashed through the eye of Mission’s mind, and she glanced suddenly between Huilo and the copilot.

“Good enough.”

The copilot broke into motion at the very same moment Mission dumped the barely-conscious man from her shoulder. By the time she reached out her hands to catch him with the Force, he had already shoved Yubo to the ground and crossed half the distance between himself and Huilo. A red lightsaber blazed in his right hand. With a growl of effort, Mission dragged him backward and slammed him through the airlock into the far wall of the room in the other ship.

:: Huilo get us out of here now!:: Mission bellowed behind her faceplate.

The captain didn’t stop to question what he had just seen, he holstered his pistol and dashed through the ship to the cockpit. Mission opened fire on the assassin with both pistols and gestured at the control panel for the airlock. The assassin deflected all five shots she managed to get off before the door closed – one of them back into her chest plate, which knocked her back a step. Two seconds after the door shut, a red blade stabbed through it and began to cut through the metal. It didn’t have time to make a substantial cut before the ships broke loose, however, and it popped back out. Immediately air began to rush through the hole, but Mission reached her hand out and crumpled one of the empty canisters a few feet from her, then whipped her arm forward and smashed it into the hole. The air stopped hissing, and the ship lurched forward, leaving the drifting freighter and their attacker behind.

[Mission Koht]

“What in the actual hell just happened?” Huilo demanded. He couldn’t manage to sit, so he leaned against the control console of the Picatinny and stared at Mission as the hyperspace tunnel swirled behind him. She sat in one of the passenger seats and looked stricken. She knew he wasn’t just talking about the assassin.

“I think we may have stepped into some kind of trap laid for you.”

“It seemed that way, didn’t it?” Huilo shook his head and looked out the viewport, undoubtedly replaying the single moment of the struggle over again in his head. The attacker had been halfway through thrusting his saber forward when Mission caught him. “And why is this the first I’m hearing about you being force-sensitive? People know the Mandalorians have been raising their own force-sensitive children, that’s not a big secret you needed to keep from me.”

“I couldn’t be sure.” Mission said.

“Of what?!” Huilo cried. “Were you afraid I’d toss you out the airlock if I found out you could move things with your mind? I like you, Mission. We all do! I would have put you to better use months ago if I’d known; I’d have trusted your “instinct” about that trap from the get-go if I’d known. I’m guessing it wasn’t just some instinct, right? Force-sensitives ping each other like radar or something isn’t it?”

“In a way, yes. He was concealing his force-sensitivity, but he was over-compensating and I couldn’t sense anything at all from him, almost. Just darkness swirling around the ship, and a feeling like some kind of predator waiting to spring.”

Huilo laughed incredulously and shook his head, running his hands over his long hair. “Yeah, I bet your friggin’ skin was crawling when we dragged his ass on the ship. So now what? Can he sense you? Can you still sense him?”

Mission shook her head slowly, still not sure quite where she stood with Huilo; his emotions were a bigger whirlwind than she’d ever felt within him. Ever. “I’m not that far-sighted, no. And I’d doubt he is either. Usually only elders can do that.”

“Elders?” Huilo eyed her with something between curiosity and skepticism.

“Yeah, I mean… I don’t suppose that’s necessarily the best… term.” Mission hesitated, wondering how much she should say.

Huilo took a steadying breath, crossed the cabin to sit down across from her in the other passenger seat. “Hey, it’s alright Discount. What’s up?”

Mission let out a heavy breath, and looked him in the eye. “I’m a Jedi. Or, well, my father is a Jedi, my mother is a Mandalorian. But I know only older force users are generally that far-sighted because I’ve been around a lot of them.”

Huilo rocked back in his seat. “You… You know where the Jedi went?”

“No, I don’t. Well I do, but I don’t know where they are now. It’s hard to explain but I got separated from them almost a year ago and I haven’t seen or heard from any of them since.”

Huilo watched her in shock for a moment, then slowly began to nod. “Damn… Alright, so then give me the more relevant version of how you ended up on my ship?”

Mission explained to the best of her ability how she had been cast across the stars to Mon Gazza, how she had been captured and sold off, then sold again and left to the life of a house slave for months before finally finding her opportunity to escape. Huilo grinned when she mentioned Salicia.

“She’s a good girl. I like working for her. She doesn’t deserve to be stuck where she is.”

“Huilo, I’ve gotta find a way to help her. To help them all. And then I’ve gotta find the rest of the Jedi.”

Huilo stared at the ground for a good ten seconds, and then seemed to make up his mind and gave a decisive nod. “Alright, well we’ve got cargo to haul, and a creep with a lightsaber to shake, but once we’ve done that I think we might be due for a jaunt up the Corellian Run, maybe see if we can’t find some cargo bound for Keldabe or something.”

Mission stared at Huilo for a moment, struck speechless by his suggestion. He grinned and bobbed his eyebrows at her.

“What’s wrong Discount? You really thought I was going to toss you out an airlock if I found out didn’t you?”

“No I just…” Mission stared at him another moment. “I didn’t think you’d wanna get involved.”

“Ouch! Young lady, when have I ever shied away from the tough jobs?”

Mission laughed self-consciously. She knew better. “I don’t mean you specifically, I just meant… In general. I figured if I said anything, people would try to distance themselves.”

“Nah, you’re in good company. We may be smugglers, but we aren’t dirtbags. Well, Yubo a little bit.”

“Fo real?” Yubo had just stepped into the doorway, and glared at Huilo. “I was just comin’ in here to say I tink it’s great how Mission saved us from dat freak and you’re heepin crap on me already.”

Huilo shrugged. “If it sticks…” He rose from his chair while Yubo huffed down the hall, and stepped over to the console to make a few corrections in the system. Then he turned back to Mission and that characteristic gleam had returned to his eyes. “Well Mission, I think our course is clear for the moment. We need to have a chat with our new passenger.”

[Mission Koht]

Domine was a pretty delicate individual as it turned out. When he had been dumped on the floor earlier, the impact had knocked him out cold again. When he had woken up, he was laying on a bunk in the medical bay of the Picatinny with two very tall men and a very short woman in frightening armor standing over him, and he had almost passed out again. When they fitted an oxygen mask over his face, he came to a little more, and managed to give them a proper frightened stare for a minute before they convinced him that he, neither, was about to be tossed out the air lock. At that point he introduced himself and cooperated a bit more readily. It was shortly very clear that he didn’t have much to hide.

“He seemed like a pretty ordinary, competent fellow to be honest,” said Domine when they asked him about his copilot. “He had a bit of a temper I’ll give you that, but I had no idea he was looking for someone, much less looking to kill them. He just hired on as my first mate for this trip to Nar Shadaa.”

“Now you know if you’re lying, my friend here the Mandalorian Jedi will know it immediately,” Huilo said, leaning down over Domine. “So you’d better be getting this right the first time.”

Mission grinned behind her faceplate. Huilo could seem very ominous with his towering stature and weathered features, but she could sense the amusement and theatrical flare mingling in him as he threatened their guest.

“No, honest, I had no idea. I never even saw a laser sword on him. He seemed legit, and he knew his stuff. He just wanted to make a few runs with me and build up his experience, then he said he had an offer to hire on with some company I’d never heard of.”

“What company was dat?” Yubo asked.

“Uh, Welles-Droite was the name, I think.”

Yubo and Huilo exchanged a glance.

“You tink it could be- “

“It must be.”

“Must be what?” Mission asked.

“Yubo you wanna take this guy and get him a cup of coffee?”

“Sure ting boss-man. Come on frien', you like you coffee manly or fancy?”

Mission stepped aside while Yubo helped Domine off the bed, then leaned against it herself as they departed the sick bay. Her eyes cast curiously back at Huilo again.

“So you know the last couple of blockades we’ve run had as much to do with trade disputes as with political squabbling. It’s the sort of nonsense the Jedi would have snuffed out immediately, eight years ago. Unfortunately, when you stay in one smuggling lane for too long, people start to recognize you, which is why we would normally change lanes after one delivery. But you saw how things were on Hevnora; we couldn’t just leave them like that for the vultures…”

Huilo smiled and shrugged, and Mission sensed a mingling of frustration and tenderness it him that reminded her of a father. “Anyway, we’ve run the blockade on Hevnora three times, which is okay, but professionally speaking it’s not a great idea if you want to keep up your anonymity. Welles-Droite is one of several dummy corporations that belong to the man behind that blockade. I think word has gotten back to him that I’m messing with his stuff.”

“So this guy put a hit out on you?”

“Looks that way.” Huilo brushed a hand back over his long hair, and Mission again sensed a feeling of tension in him. “Though I gotta say, this guy they sent isn’t like the kinds of hitmen I’ve dealt with in the past.”

Mission gaped. “You’ve had hitmen after you before?” She felt she should have guessed as much, but it still seemed crazy to imagine.

“Most smugglers have to shake a hit from time to time. Yubo and I have been shot at a lot.”

“But not so much been chased with a lightsaber.”

“Not so much.” Huilo gave her an exasperated look at turned to leave the sick bay.

“I guess it’s a good thing you picked me up when you did.” She called after him.

“So it would seem.”

[Mission Koht]

Domine continued to be forthcoming as they sailed through the ether toward Hutt space. As it turned out, they had the same destination, which was likely what had made this fellow “Dirk” choose the vessel he had for his snare ploy. Since they had a head start on the hitman, Domine had offered to contact his porter once they reached the shipping station and concoct some sort of story about hitching a ride in to get repair parts so they could find out if Dirk was close behind.

“It’s a big station,” he insisted. “The odds of him docking in the same platform as us are slim to none.”

Mission wasn’t so confident. She couldn’t sense the hitman nearby, but her connection with the Force resonated a need to be cautious. Whether he was tracking them physically or not, she didn’t think they were going to get off the station without another run-in. She told Huilo as much as they walked along one of the half-asteroid super-station’s pedestrian catwalks after they'd arrived, and he merely shrugged.

“I don’t normally stick around to face these guys, I just keep ducking and dodging until they lose track of me. Are you telling me we’re in for a fight?”

“I’m just saying you’re not likely to lose this guy as easily as some others.”

Huilo nodded. “You’re the watchdog. I’d still prefer to pick the turf if we’ve gotta get rid of this guy the old-fashioned way though. And it’s not here.”

They took as little time as possible to reach their contact and get things going. They could run with less concern if they weren’t carrying someone else’s cargo. Several men showed up to the docking bay to unload the Picatinny in short order, and they were soon making preparations to depart once more.

“It’s gon’ take us a minute to get fueled up though,” said Yubo, watching as the men connected the line to their thruster port.

“We don’t need to get a full tank,” Huilo assured, “Just enough to get us on our way.”

As he was speaking, his comm piece chirped. He took it from his jacket while Mission and Yubo edged closer. A voice crackled over the channel suddenly in an urgent tone.

::He’s here already!:: it was Domine.

“Okay, slow down.” Huilo said calmly. “Where is he, and how long ago did he get here?”

::He docked in the platform adjacent to this one three minutes ago! The porter just now got around to telling me because he assumed it wasn’t urgent::

Mission glanced at Huilo as Domine’s voice crackled out of the comm piece. He was visibly more tense than he had been five seconds ago. Three minutes was plenty of time for their pursuer to have asked some questions and made his way across to the next platform.

“Thanks for the heads up Domine, wish us luck.” Huilo didn’t leave his comm piece on to hear any well wishes. He stuffed it back in his coat and turned to Yubo. “Tell those guys we’re topped off and get that hose off the side of my ship, we need to leave now.”

Without hesitation the nautolan jogged over to the fueling crew, hollering the whole way. Huilo clapped an arm on Mission’s shoulder plate as he spun back toward the ship’s ramp. “Can you smell him?”

“No. Just get this thing ready to fly, I’ll scream at you if I do-OH THERE HE IS!” Mission drew both of her blasters and immediately opened fire on the pedestrian entrance to their bay. The blue rings of energy sizzled through the air and splashed across the doorway just as a figured with a glowing red blade appeared. He slashed one ring out of the air and sidestepped the second, then made to advance.

“Go go go!” Mission continued to pour stunner fire at the hitman, joined by Yubo who saw the commotion as well. He was already backing up the ramp and shouting for Mission to follow, but she knew she had to keep him at bay just a few moments longer. He couldn’t reflect her stun blasts back at her, which was why she’d chosen that setting, but all that meant was that he was slowed in his advance. The second she heard the ship’s engines roar to life, she stepped back onto the ramp and continued to pour blaster fire at their attacker while they rose up off the platform. She crouched on the ramp as it shut, continuing to shoot until the last possible second, and heard as the fuel line popped loose of the ship, and they spun to make an exit. A second later, she heard another thud on the hull, and a frightened shout above.

“He’s still on us!” Sevs cried. Mission rounded the corner to find the red blade stabbed through the same airlock it had been several hours ago, carving a hole.

“Huilo can you shake him off?” She called up the hall, taking a pot-shot at the gap that had already been cut out.

“I’ve got no maneuvering room, this isn’t Bespin!” He called back. “Can you do anything?!”

The question resonated in Mission’s head as if she’d heard an echo of a long-past thought. It summoned to mind an image of some strange horde of beasts stampeding down a steep hillside, and a tall lupine Jedi who had calmly stepped into their path, certain that the force was his ally. Many others had followed in his footsteps, each certain of their course, and each willing to sacrifice. Yes, she could do something.

Mission dropped the blasters from her hands, took two running strides that launched her the entire distance across the adjacent cargo bays, and shot both her feet out in front of her to connect with the sealed hatch. It blasted off its heavy hinges under the sudden force of the impact, and she careened down toward the surface of the station along with the seered and now terribly misshapen bulkhead, and their assailant.

Mission tumbled for a moment while she figured out which way was up, but she found the ground, or what passed for it on the space station, and began to orient her feet toward it. The Force was her ally, and she didn’t fear the fall. The ground, or rather the roof of some docking structure, rushed up to meet her, and she summoned the Force to protect her. When her boots made contact with the roof, the momentum of her landing dispersed across the receiving surface and bashed it in like a crater had it – she felt no more impact than if she’d jumped off a table.

“You keep getting in my way!”

Mission turned to the sound of the angry voice and instinctively dodged as the hunk of metal that had been the airlock door came sailing at her and whooshed a few inches over her crouched form. Then she saw the hitman, Dirk, racing in behind it with his saber drawn. She drew the duraplast tonfa that had been on her armor, and hoped it was really was good against lightsabers. She didn’t intend to put it to the test unnecessarily.

The man raced toward her and attacked aggressively with his lightsaber, but she dodged away and danced around his cuts and thrusts, taking swipes at him whenever she got the chance, but not pushing her luck. She did bat his saber away with her tonfa a couple of times, and it did the job nicely, but it also left dull glow marks where the weapons had made contact. She spun around him for several seconds, avoiding his blade and doing her best to keep him shifting at awkward angles to avoid her own attacks. She realized quickly that he wasn’t an accustomed dualist – he felt frustrated, and annoyed, as well as very mildly concerned. He’d probably never fought another force-sensitive warrior before. That realization was empowering, and Mission began to carefully press her advantage.

The exchange between the two fighters was still a messy tangle for a few more seconds, but a fortuitous distraction occurred when the Picatinny wheeled around into view around a dispatch tower with its navigation lights glaring down at them. It the split second that Dirk turned to see what had come upon him, Mission brought her tonfa down on his wrist in a sharp crack and disarmed him. The lightsaber clattered to the deck below them, and she launched her heel straight into his chest, blasting him off the ground and against the side of the same dispatch tower that had concealed the Picatinny’s approach.

Mission didn’t waste a moment, but scooped up the lightsaber and activated it, coming upon Dirk just as he rose to his knee and holding the blade out to him. “You’re finished.”

Dirk eyed the length of his own lightsaber being pointed at his throat, and held his hands up, glaring at her with hate-filled eyes. “It never ends, girl.”

Suddenly the hitman slapped his palms on the metal surface under their feet and caused it to ripple violently toward Mission. She staggered back only a step, but it gave Dirk the opening he needed to rise and reach out a hand to grasp her with the Force. She was too far to attack physically, and her only recourse was to do the same. The two of them stood for a moment, bearing down on each other in a contest of will – Dirk with his open palm outstretched with hawk-like fingers, and Mission with her fist raised up as if to shake it at her opponent in insult. She could see the weight of her determination crushing in on him, but at the same time she could feel his own desire to defeat her crushing in on her torso from all sides, locking her in place and stifling the air in her lungs. The hatred he felt for her strengthened his resolve, and she felt as if he would gain the upper hand – that was the nature of the darkness, it thrived on conflict, and malicious intent. As her vision began to blur and the dark anger of her opponent began to fill her mind, she was reminded of the horrible dark nexus that had overshadowed her childhood – the wretched consuming impulses that had emanated from it, destroying and corrupting everything that it touched… but it hadn’t corrupted them. It hadn’t corrupted Mission.

The raised fist stretched out toward Dirk softened, and turned to face him as a gentle, open palm. Purifying energy that hadn’t course through Mission in so long she’d almost forgotten it welled up inside her and burned out through her eyes. The furious expression on Dirk’s face began to wither as his opponent whom he had been sure was in her final moments suddenly loosed herself from the tether of his power as easily as if she’s shrugged off a cloak. Light blazed out through her eyes and washed over him, beginning to glow from her entire body. He was no longer held in place, but nor could he move.

“You’ve been corrupted by a thing you’ll never understand.” Mission said, leveling her hand toward him. “You’ll never be any safer than anyone in your path as long as it festers inside you.”

The light radiating from Mission intensified until it almost speared Dirk and threw him back against the wall of the tower again. He cried out in terror as a flameless fire scorched through his body and consumed his entire being for a single moment. Then it was gone. Dirk fell to the ground against the tower breathing heavily, and Mission staggered a step to one side before finding her footing. She could feel the radiance fading from her, but not the effect it had left on him – or her. As she took a tentative step toward Dirk, he began to pant slowly, then faster as he sat on the ground, and he reached up to drag his fingers desperately through his hair.

“What hap-what’s going on? What – What did you do to me?!” As Mission watched, he began to pant even heavier and writhe as though he had suddenly become painfully claustrophobic.

“The darkness in the Force can’t corrupt you anymore – you’ll never touch it again.”

Dirk stared up at her with wide, terrified eyes. “…what have you-!” Mission’s tonfa cracked over the side of his head and cut off the rest of his sentence.

[Mission Koht]

There was no more reason for the crew of the Picatinny to flee anymore, so they stuck around to finish refueling their ship and get a bite to eat while the station’s fabrication shop repaired their damaged airlock. Dirk had been tossed in a cell somewhere to await whatever passed for justice in Hutt Space. Mission knew the real justice had already been meted out against him. Anything else was secondary. Huilo and the rest of the crew didn’t say much as they ate their food, but they watched Mission with some mixture of awe and admiration while she wolfed down her food and then helped herself to some of Yubo’s. They’d all seen the final moments of the fight from the cockpit of the ship – seen the Force Light blaze out of her and consume the assassin. They didn’t fully understand it, but they didn’t need to. As far as they were concerned, they were in the company of the first Jedi they’d ever seen - the first the galaxy had seen in eight years - and that thrilled them enough. Mission felt differently. She knew she was no Jedi, and for some reason she knew it now more than ever, but she also knew that she had honored the legacy of those that had taught her, and those that had come before. She still felt lost – but hopeful now.

“Gentlemen,” Huilo said at last as Mission finished off his sandwich. “I think it’s about time we found ourselves some new work paths. I’ve had about as much of Hutt Space as I think I want for now… Any objections?”

All around, the crew shook their heads, including Mission as she wiped a smear of something off her lower lip.

“In that case, I’m thinking about checking out some job leads in the Wild Space territories. We’ve been needing to get out of this criminal hotbed for awhile now, and I think we’ve got a very important stop to make in that direction along the Hydian Way as it is.” He narrowed his eyes on Mission. “Sound good to you?”

Mission smiled softly. “No objection from me, Boss. I’m ready to go.”

Huilo nodded and rose from his table. “Alright then, settle up and get yourselves back to the ship lads. We’ve had our discount Mandalorian far too long already. It’s time to get her home.”

[Mission Koht]

Epilogue

There was nowhere else to run. Every asset he’d accrued over years of labor and careful planning had been captured and frozen – there was nothing left for him to wield, and nowhere left for him to run – Bearden listened to the echoes of blaster fire, and cries of shock and pain in the halls below; listened as the sounds of battle progressed up through the different corridors of his previously hidden complex and finally reached the doors of his personal suite. He was a rat in a trap, and he knew it – he didn’t bother raising a blaster, even when those around him did so.

Everything had gone wrong for him and his clandestine empire two years ago. It had begun with one of his slaves escaping, then one of his most competent underlings disappearing, then things had simply spiraled. Before he knew it, there had been joint Republic-Mandalorian raids happening without warning in his key centers of operation. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that Salicia had been captured, or perhaps someone had gotten to her somehow, but whatever the avenue by which it had occurred, she had given them everything they needed to disintegrate his life’s work in about eighteen months. And now he sat quietly, resigned to his fate even as his more hopeful – or perhaps simply more ignorant – underlings clung to the blasters in their hands like lifelines in a maelstrom.

The sounds of battle swiftly ended, and suddenly there was a solid whump against the reinforced door leading into his suite. His heart pounded in time with the second thump, and the third, but when the sounds of attempted breech ceased, he rose from his chair as calmly as he could manage and moved to one side of the room. He knew what came next. As surely as he’d guessed it, no sooner had he settled himself against the side of a desk adjacent to the wall than the door, along all three hundred pounds of the durasteel and oak that composed it, explosed into the room and blew two of his security detail off their feet. The others leveled their blasters and he knew they would fire. Given another second to consider it.

“Wait! Just… stop. It’s over you fools.”

He watched with resentful resignation as a group of five Mandalorians hustled into the room and began relieving his men of their blasters, then as a sixth armor-clad figure walked into the room and moved straight for him. It was a woman, shorter than the others, and in armor that seemed Mandalorian at a glance, but when he peered across the others, he realized that it wasn’t. At least not in the traditional fashion. She leveled her rifle at him and motioned him forward.

“Come forward, hands out. Don’t try anything subtle.”

Bearden raised his hands slowly into view and walked to the center of the room till he stood only a handful of paces away from the woman holding her rifle on him. “It seems you’ve finally run me to the end of the maze. Now what? Are you going to execute me?”

“If that’s what the tribunal decides, then yes.”

“The tribunal?” Bearden regarded her uncertainly. “I’m not aware of any tribunal fit to try me. I’m a citizen of the Galactic Republic-“

“-whose crimes have been brought before the senate for dispensation of justice by the sovereign clans of the Mando’ade.”

Bearden crossed his arms and stared down the barrel of her rifle, suddenly feeling he might have a way out. “On what grounds? I’ve never had any dealings with the Mandalorians. You’ve no grounds to pursue any supposed justice against me.”

“On the grounds of testament by the daughter of Mandalore Koht, whom you held in slavery for nearly a year. A fact which was collaborated by a member of your own inner circle.” The helmet of the woman standing before him separated into two pieces, and the faceplate dropped away to reveal a face he couldn’t have forgotten even if he’d wanted to. His sudden burst of hope faded as quickly as it had appeared… Mandalore’s daughter.

“You… it was always you, wasn’t it?”

The girl shook her head, and his mind recalled the ember-red hair she undoubtedly had tucked away under her helmet. “No, it wasn’t me. It was you, Bearden. You stepped on too many good people trying to get what you wanted for yourself.”

“And you’ve done nothing different in your quest for revenge!” Bearden spat back. “Do you know the Republic task force sacked my home on Christophsis in the middle of the night? Did you even stop to think about what that would mean for the people there that took care of you?”

The girl smiled patiently at him, and it made his skin burn. “I do, actually. I was there, unlike you, and it was a very calm thing. You may be happy to know Varden is still with Anise – she hasn’t defaulted on any commitment she ever made to you. But now she can take care of him freely, and to the fullest of her abilities.”

A thousand curses raged in Bearden’s mind. He wanted spew them on her and pray that they melted her into nothing. He also wanted to thank her for the life of his son, and he knew then that she’d shown more concern for Varden’s wellbeing than he had. He hated her for that as well. “Alright then, Joan. You’ve played your game and won. I’m at your mercy.”

The girl reached down and removed an object from her belt as she slung her rifle, an object he knew to have been in his home at the time of the republic raid. It made a snap-hiss sound and a crimson blade burst forth out of it.

“My name is Mission, and I’m not responsible for your fate. You shaped that with your own hands. Now move out.”

***
Mission followed Bearden out of the complex with her saber drawn, walking back down the halls she’d fought her way up only a moment ago with the team of warriors from clans Koht and Spar. It was a mess, but thanks to the agreement between the senate and the mandalorian tribunal, not one she’d have to clean up. She watched with a degree of satisfaction as a beskar-clad pilot shoved him into a speeder and closed the hatch behind him.

As she watched the crime lord’s final taxi ride race off into the distance, her mother came up beside her and grasped her forearm gently.

“That takes care of that.” Leyana observed, preferring to speak mando’a in that moment rather than common. Mission glanced back at her and smiled.

“Yeah. End of an era, I suppose.”

“What will you do now? This has kind of been your passion project ever since we got you back.”

Mission remembered the moment she’d first laid eyes on her mother and sisters again. Nine years it had been since she’d been whisked away to the Nexus world, and at the moment she saw them, the first thing her mind punctuated was that her father Erril was missing from his wife’s side. It wasn’t a thought she’d been able to shake since.

“I’m going to find dad. I’m going to find all of them.”

Leyana nodded solemnly and let go of her arm. “If I can help in any way, let me know.”

Mission smiled into her mother’s blue eyes. “I will.”

As her mother and the other Mandalorians made their way back to the larger ship they’d arrived in, Mission made her way to a Firespray cruiser with a dingy maroon paint job and boarded it. Climbing into the cockpit, she settled back onto the pilot seat and stared up out of the viewport, a smile still lingering on her lips. She had a very great mystery to unravel now, and she had no idea how long it would take, but that was alright. The Force was her ally, and she knew she would succeed.