The Fugitive

"So, where are you from, kid?"

The four-armed, thickly-sideburned captain of the ship sits across from Anna at the table, currently in the process of dumping so much salt over his nerf steak that she wonders why he even bothered to cook it in the first place. Anna studies the man, idly wondering how little effort it would take to push him over given his comically large head. He says he's from a planet called Lateron, and the thought of whole cities full of bobble-headed grumps like Greez is enough to make her laugh out loud.

At least it would be, if she hadn't just been caught by said bobble-headed grump while trying to stow away aboard his very expensive-looking yacht.

Cal watches her expectantly from the seat neighboring the captain, a fork and knife sitting idly in his hands. The redheaded man hasn't touched his food, and neither has she. She clears her throat, suddenly wishing her helmet was back on her head instead of sitting uselessly in her lap.

"What's the matter? Rancor got your tongue?" Greez chuckles at his own joke.

"I guess I'm from Endor," Anna answers quietly.

"Endor?" Greez laughs louder. "No way. Nothing but forest and Ewoks out there."

"It's the…"

It's the earliest thing Anna can remember: waking up curled up on a rust-scored floor in the cargo hold of an Endor-bound smuggling freighter, cold and confused, her thoughts a nauseating fog through which she could make out nothing except the faint echo of her own name.

She doesn't tell them this.

"... it's the closest thing to home I have."

She glares hard at Greez, daring him to pry further. Thankfully, the Latero seems to have returned to his steak.

"What about your parents? Do you have any family?" Cal's words carry a hopeful note.

Anna's heart sinks, but she puts on a bright smile.

"Nope. Been on my own my whole life!"

"That must be tough."

She feels a hand on her arm. The redheaded man is giving her that look of sympathy again. Unbidden, a dull ache flares in her chest. It was tough. It is tough. She can't remember the last time anyone cared about her wellbeing beyond the credits she was worth to them at the time. With Cal, though, she finds genuine concern in those pale green eyes. It's a nice feeling, a warm feeling.

A dangerous feeling. Last time she let her guard down, she got swindled of three million credits worth of Nyriaan spice. She shrugs him off.

"I've been taking care of myself just fine, thank you very much."

"Oh yeah, that's why she needed us to fly her out of that mess she left for herself back there," Greez grumbles loudly at his plate. "You'd think she'd be more grateful for us saving her skin, but no."

A retort is right on the tip of Anna's tongue, but Cal cuts in first.

"Greez, the Brood's been a thorn in our side since forever. If we can stop them from ruining more lives, even if it's just one, I see that as a win." He flashes Anna a quick smile.

Greez shakes his head to himself as he continues to fork bits of steak. Cal gestures to the plate sitting in front of Anna.

"Come on, try the food. Our captain here might be a bit of a grump, but nobody's said no to his nerf steak yet. Though the sample size hasn't been that large, now that I think about it."

"And don't you forget it," Greez mumbles. "Wait. That wasn't a compliment."

Anna looks down at the dark lump of meat on her plate before taking a strip of it with her fork and placing it hesitantly on her tongue. The texture is soft, the flavour rich and well-seasoned, and a soft moan slips out as she continues to chew. All hesitation goes out the window as she carves a second, much larger chunk out with her knife. She feels sauce stain the sides of her mouth as she shovels it in, but she doesn't care. After weeks of nothing but pilfered rations and stale water, she's taking what she can get.

"There you go! Another happy customer, Greez!" Cal laughs.

"If I keep this up, we'll never get rid of her," the Latero says sardonically.

Pausing in the task of demolishing her steak, Anna peeks toward the front of the ship, watching the whirling electric-blue maelstrom of hyperspace through the glass of the cockpit. With a start, she realizes she has no idea where they're going.

"Hey, um, where are you taking me?"

Greez finishes the last piece of his steak with a smack of his lips, dabbing at his wide mouth with a napkin.

"Well, the plan was to refuel on Sriluur before jumping to Nal Hutta, and I ain't changing course on account of you, kid."

"Nal Hutta?" Anna's eyes widen in surprise.

"That a problem?" Greez crosses two of his arms while planting the other two at his waist.

"No… I just didn't figure you guys for the type."

She's never been to the notorious homeworld of the Hutts herself, but everyone and their mother knows it's a lawless haven for every brand of criminal in the galaxy.

Greez and Cal share a meaningful glance.

"We're looking for new bounties," Cal says simply.

Anna's eyebrows just about fly off her head.

"What in… you guys are bounty hunters?" She reaches for the blaster under her cloak as she shuffles back in her seat. How could she have let her guard down so easily? "If you think I'm just going to let you sell me back to the Brood, think again!"

"You got sand in your ears, kid?" Greez waves dismissively. "We ain't exactly on speaking terms with the Haxion Brood."

"You're free to go the moment we land, Anna." Cal raises a palm toward her in an offering of peace. "Trust me, the last thing we want is to keep you on this ship."

"Cool your trigger finger before you hurt yourself," Greez adds with a shake of his head.

Anna's eyes flit back and forth between the man and the Latero. Slowly, she lets go of the blaster and puts her hand back on the steak knife.

Greez stands and takes his plate without another word as Cal finally starts on his own steak. It's a while before Anna allows herself to relax again. She's about to return to her food when she hears a commotion in the cockpit. The ship gives a sudden jolt, causing the remaining steak to hop halfway out of her plate. A glance out the now-dark glass of the cockpit confirms that they've dropped out of hyperspace.

"Cal, get up here," Cere calls from the comms station, pulling off her headset with wild eyes as she pokes her head into view. "You'll want to hear this."

Cal shoots Anna another glance before getting up from the dining table and moving across the cabin to take the headset. As he presses the speaker to his ear, a deep furrow forms in his brow. It's almost a full minute before he sets the headset back down.

"How long ago was this transmitted?" he asks urgently.

Cere's eyes flit briefly toward Anna before she speaks.

"It's fresh. Came through while it was still being broadcast."

Cal takes a deep breath, running a hand through his greasy hair.

"Do you think it could be a trap?"

"Everything could be a trap." Cere's words are sharp, almost bitter. "Are we walking into this one or not?"

There's a soft pitter-patter as the little droid from before makes its reappearance, hopping onto the edge of the holotable and scrutinizing the red blip now blinking on the projected starmap. It turns its head and chirps a rapid message toward the cockpit.

"Yeah BD-1, I hear you."

Cal walks back from the comms station to lean on the edge of the holotable. Flickering blue light bathes his face as he manipulates the projection with one hand.

"Greez, how do you feel about a little detour?"

"Depends on where we're going," the Latero answers from the pilot's seat.

The holomap zooms in under Cal's fingers until it shows only the orb of a single planet. The red dot continues to blink at the centre of the projection.

"Here, Sakiya."

"Sakiya?" Greez punches buttons on the dashboard above his head as he talks. "What's on Sakiya?"

"The source of the broadcast. We need to get there fast, Greez. There isn't much time."

"Wait, what? Can someone tell me what's happening?" Anna exclaims from her seat at the table. She can feel the ship rotating beneath her.

Cal meets her gaze from across the cabin, wearing an unreadable expression.

"We just got our next bounty," he states simply.

"Hold on to something, fellas!" Greez yells as he slams down the throttle.

The stars streak in lines of brilliant light over the black canvas of space outside the glass. Anna is thrown back into her seat as the turbulent blue tunnel of hyperspace tears open in front of the ship, the hull groaning in protest around her.

"Smooth as ever, Greez," Cere comments wryly.

"We're in a rush, aren't we?" Greez shoots back over his shoulder. "Get up here and help, BD-1! This lane ain't an easy run."

The droid scurries over and jacks itself into a circular port on the front dash. Cal takes a seat at the front of the cockpit, gripping the handrests of the chair to steady himself. Anna presses herself into her seat as hard as she can as the ship continues to rattle and lurch to Greez's careful twitches on the control sticks.

This trip better be a short one, because her lunch is threatening to make a dramatic reappearance at any second.

"Buckle up, boys and girls," Greez announces loudly. "Dropping into realspace in five, four, three…"

This time, the steak flies fully out of Anna's plate, leaving a streak of brown sauce on the thin purple tablecloth. The ship shudders violently, throwing her to the ground and sending a bolt of pain shooting through her injured ankle. There's a low-pitched whine from the stern as the hyperdrive spools down.

She blows stray tufts of hair from her face as she props herself back up on the table, swallowing hard to keep the bile from coming up her throat. Raising her gaze back out the front of the ship, she finds the flat void of space has been replaced with an arcing aquamarine horizon. A blue-white sun shines half-crested in the distance, its rays tracing streaks of shadow across the wisps of cloud obscuring the jagged continents below.

Greez continues to put out a continuous stream of chatter as the cockpit pitches down toward the surface.

"Hey, hands off the dash when I'm flying! Yeah, yeah, I can see the coordinates on this side too, you know. Now, sit back and let ol' Greezy work his magic."

Anna rarely gets the chance to fly in anything with windows as nice as this yacht's, and she drinks in the scenery of the descent with wide eyes. The sky above goes from pitch black to increasingly bright shades of blue as the bow of the yacht cuts through layer upon layer of cloud cover, the sunlight taking on a softer hues through the thick atmosphere. As they continue to descend, she begins to make out the sharp peaks of long mountain ranges separating the approaching landmass from a deep green sea that stretches on until it meets the sky at the horizon.

This won't be a bad world to lay low on for a few months until the whole business with the Haxion Brood blows over.

The ship plunges through a final layer of dense cloud. Drops of rain begin to land on the cockpit glass, denser and denser until the view is reduced to a distorted mess of criss-crossing translucent trails. Large angular structures loom through the veil, flashing shiny and metallic by the light of sporadic bursts of lightning. The engines change pitch as the captain coaxes the ship expertly between the buildings. Finally, she hears the roar of the thrusters echoed from below as the slick surface of a steel-paved landing pad rises to meet them.

The cabin door opens with a hiss, touseling her loose hair with a blast of wet, tropical wind. Greez steps out of the cockpit wearing a stern expression, his two left hands pointing straight at Anna.

"Alright, time to hit the road, kid. The Mantis ain't a chauffeur service."

The Latero jerks his thumbs toward the open door. Anna sees Cal regarding her from the cockpit entrance. He says nothing, but there's something odd about the way he's looking at her.

She gathers her cloak around her shoulders and rises to her feet before she can dwell on it. Tucking her helmet under one arm, she manages a whole two steps in the direction of the exit before her sprained ankle betrays her, sending her sprawling to the floor in an ungainly heap. She pushes herself off the ground to see Cal walking toward her with his eyebrows raised in concern.

"Hey, are you okay?" He's standing over her now with his arms folded.

She laughs to hide her embarrassment.

"I'm fine, really!"

She pushes herself back to her feet. A traitorous gasp escapes between her teeth as her ankle protests at her weight.

"Alright, I twisted my ankle pretty bad jumping off a roof earlier," she admits in a smaller voice.

The droid, BD-1, pokes over Cal's shoulder and pops open a small compartment on the side of its rectangular head. With a puff of compressed gas, a glowing-green capsule ejects into the air. Cal catches the projectile deftly in one hand, offering it to Anna.

"What's this?"

Anna pinches the glass vial between her fingers, turning it over in front of her nose.

"It's a stim." Seeing her confusion, he laughs. "It's medicine. Makes you heal faster. Come on, it'll help your ankle."

The stuff in the vial doesn't look like it belongs inside her body at all. She jabs the small needle into her leg with a grimace. A burning sensation spreads from the point of puncture, as if her veins are being filled with molten lead. Her hands clench as she feels her swollen ankle flash white-hot for a brief moment. Then it's over, the pain replaced with a cooling sensation as the raised lump sinks back into her skin.

She hands the empty canister back to Cal with a grateful smile.

"Thanks… thanks for that."

She stuffs her helmet on as quickly as possible, doing her best to ignore how her heart suddenly feels a size too big. Pulling her threadbare hood over her head, she steps down the ramp. The air is humid and the downpour drenches through her layers of clothing in seconds. Taking one last look over her shoulder, she finds Cal still standing in the doorway, his red hair blowing wildly in the wind. His hand raises in a little goodbye wave that she can't help but return.

With a small sigh, she turns and breaks into a run toward the looming spires of the city.

The hard part is over. She's off Sriluur and off the ship, with all her limbs intact to boot. Now, the plan is the same as always—lay low, reset, find a way to pocket enough credits to hop to the next world. She's never been to Sakiya before, but that's not a problem. Being able to fend for yourself in strange places is at the very top of the list of skills required to survive as an orphan, and she's been at this for a long time.

Too long.

Rinse, repeat. Survive. It's all she's ever done. All things considered, she's fared pretty well for an amnesiac eighteen-something-year-old girl with no family or friends to speak of—but this can't be all there is to life.

She sighs again, wiping rivulets of rain from her visor. She wishes so much that she remembered something, anything about her parents. At least then she'd have some kind of explanation of her rotten lot in life…

She shakes her head, struggling to brush her frustrations aside. Now is not the time. Unfortunately, the effort only gives her thoughts room to drift in the direction of a certain redheaded man.

The crew of the Mantis seemed unremarkable enough at first glance, but she can't shake the feeling that something's different about them. It's a good different.

They said they're bounty hunters, but she's met her fair share of bounty hunters. Even if they did happen to share a common enemy with her, bounty hunters wouldn't have cooked her nerf steak or given her medicine for her twisted ankle. But these people did. She's so used to everyone she meets treating her like gutter trash, a waste of space, a pest to be cleared off with a broom—but, while this crew seemed just as eager as the rest to have her off their ship, somehow they didn't seem to see her that way.

Cal certainly didn't. Every time he looked at her aboard that yacht, it was like he truly saw her. Not Anna the stowaway or Anna the liability, but just a person like any other. She liked that. She already misses it.

Her life must really be a sad and lonely mess.

Then she's reminded why wallowing in self-pity is so high on her list of no-no's.

She doesn't notice the soldiers standing in the street until she runs into one—literally. Squealing sharply in surprise, she tries to jerk back, but the man catches her shoulder in an iron grip. Wet footsteps sound around her as more soldiers clad in the same frowning helmets and enamel-white plate armour step into view behind the first, each wielding a long military-issue blaster rifle.

Stormtroopers. Her heartbeat accelerates. What's the Empire doing in Hutt space? She beats on the arm holding her and immediately feels the butt of a rifle strike her in the back of the knees, sending her roughly to the street.

"Hey, let me go! I didn't do anything!" she protests. Lifting her head, she gulps as she stares down the ends of three glistening blaster barrels.

"Don't move! Hands behind your head!" commands the trooper who grabbed her. Unlike the others, his right shoulder is covered by a wide orange cap. He must be a higher rank. "Take off the helmet."

Anna's about to explain how she can't comply unless she moves her hands, but the order isn't for her. One of the other stormtroopers steps forward and roughly tears her hood back before yanking the helmet from her head.

"Give that back, I paid good credits for that!" she protests loudly.

"Is this one of them?"

The voice comes from behind. It's different from the stormtrooper's, deeper, more heavily filtered. Anna wants to turn and catch a glimpse of its owner, but her fear tells her to hold still.

"Yes, sir. We tracked her from the ship," the lead trooper answers.

"Good. Bring her back for questioning."

The lead trooper makes a gesture and two others move to hoist Anna from the ground by the armpits. As she's frog-marched down the road, she glimpses the angular silhouette of an Imperial shuttle landed in the distance through the curtains of rain.

She squirms in the soldiers' vice-like grasp.

"What do you want with me? I don't know anything!"

"That's what they all say… at first," the trooper on her left chuckles darkly.

Anna doesn't like the sound of that at all. Panic rising in her chest, she struggles with all her might—and breaks free. Confused, she whips her head left and right to find the troopers raising their blasters at something in front of her.

"Looking for me?"

That voice is familiar.

She squints through the rain and there, fifty meters down the street, stands none other than Cal Kestis—currently facing down the entire squad of armed Imperial Stormtroopers with nothing but a sopping-wet poncho.

"Cal, no!" Anna cries out in panic. "What are you-"

In a single smooth motion, Cal sweeps back the folds of his raincoat and retrieves a rod-shaped something from his hip. He twirls the rod in his hand, holding it out in front of him. Suddenly, his chest and face are bathed in pale light as a glowing blade of green plasma extends from the device. Her jaw drops.

That's a lightsaber.

The troopers flanking her open fire. Instinctively, she cowers and covers her ears from the blasters' screams, watching in horror as the blazing red bolts fly straight at the man who is trying to save her life. Cal swings his blade impossibly fast, cutting downward in a sweeping arc. The soldier on her right is blasted off his feet, a smoking burn mark scored into his chestplate. He lies motionless where he lands on the street.

Anna has no idea what just happened, but she's definitely not being put into that troop transport if she can help it. Drawing her pistol from its holster, she pivots and blasts the other trooper straight in the knee. The man's yell of agony comes garbled through his helmet as he collapses to the ground.

The hum of Cal's lightsaber grows louder as he dashes toward her.

"Anna, get behind me!" he shouts frantically.

Anna hears orders being barked between the soldiers behind her. Whirling around, she finds three stormtroopers leveling their blasters at her. Their armour gleams red as they fire, bathing the drenched pavement around them in blazing light. Abruptly, she's free falling, but backward, yanked off her feet as the lasers lance through the air, coming dangerously close to her chest.

Then she's on her back, struggling for breath from the impact with the ground. Cal is between her and the soldiers now, his blade held diagonally in a defensive stance. Time seems to slow as he stares down the stormtroopers. Peering through the space between his legs, Anna sees another figure push forward to stand in front of the soldiers, one clad in pitch black armour emblazoned with the Imperial crest. A glowing red slit of a visor glares out from the helmet like a single angry eye.

"Get the girl. I'll deal with this myself."

The black trooper pulls twin daggers from his belt, twirling them tauntingly before angling them toward Cal. The blades crackle with leaping electricity.

Scrambling to her feet, Anna points her blaster at the closest stormtrooper with gritted teeth. She really doesn't want to be here right now, but there's no way she's going to let Cal kill himself rescuing her.

As if he heard her exact thought, Cal glances back at her and grimaces.

Several things happen in quick succession.

Cal throws his lightsaber at the orange-shouldered trooper, slicing a molten gash clean across the chest. The man's body doesn't even hit the ground before Cal thrusts his other hand toward another stormtrooper. Anna watches, mouth agape, as the man is blasted off his feet by an invisible force, slamming into a second-storey window of a nearby building with a sickening crunch.

Then the black-clad trooper is upon Cal. The redheaded man leaps nimbly backward as the twin daggers scythe through the air, narrowly avoiding being cut to ribbons. Cal holds out his hand and the lightsaber hilt flies back to him, reigniting in his grip just in time to catch the next flurry of blows.

"You think that means anything?" The black trooper laughs maniacally as he advances, slashing his daggers in an electric blur. "I don't need backup to kill you!"

A shot flies so close to Anna's face it sears a lock of her hair. Diving to the slick ground, she curses—she forgot about the last stormtrooper. Another bolt streaks overhead. Bringing up her pistol, she fires four times blindly in the direction of the shot. There's a muffled scream. No more bolts come.

Pushing herself shakily to her feet, Anna looks up in time to see Cal sever his opponent's hands with a lightning upward sweep. He turns his back to the trooper as he carries the momentum of the swing fluidly over his head and into a backward thrust. A final wheeze emanates from the black trooper's helmet as his body goes limp, impaled on Cal's green blade.

The hiss of the extinguishing lightsaber shakes Anna out of her stupor. The trooper's body slumps to the ground, his black armour a stark contrast to the other, white-clad bodies strewn around him on the street.

There are so many bodies.

She stares at Cal, chest heaving with hysteria. Her blaster falls from numb fingers, as her blood pounds in her ears. She manages three words.

"Who are you?"