The Stowaway

(THREE YEARS LATER)

Of all the places on Sriluur to try to hide from a murderous band of Haxion Brood goons, Dnalvec City is probably the worst.

Anna decides this the moment she spots the telltale horns of the three hulking Klatooinians pushing their way through the dense crowd halfway down the street. She'd almost be flattered that they sent three whole guys after her—if not for the fact that there are now three seven-foot psychopaths with arms thicker than her torso looking to truss her up and throw her in the trunk of a landspeeder.

By the way they're shouting and waving their blasters in the air, they've probably spotted her, too.

Then again, maybe they're just angry because they haven't spotted her.

She pulls the thin hood of her purple shawl over her head, sticking her hands in her pants pockets and doing her best to imitate the listless plodding of the people around her. For what must be the fifteenth time this week, she curses her rose-gold helmet. It seemed like a sound fashion choice at the time, but damn does it stick out like a sore thumb in any crowd. The stupid thing is so big her hood can't even fully cover it, either…

"Hey, you!"

The people behind her make sounds of protest as somebody pushes them aside—probably the owner of those feet that are stomping so hard she's starting to feel tremors through the ground.

"Pink-Helmet-Face, I'm talking to you!"

She tries to calm her breathing and put on a tough face. They're Klatooinians. Big, burly, demonic-looking brutes, but hey, they're not bounty droids, so Sorc Tormo must still want her alive. Besides, the tough face part isn't really necessary behind an opaque rose-gold helmet.

She swallows nervously as she turns around. Having evidently realized the giant target painted on her back, the crowd is now giving her a wide berth. Right behind her, the leader of the henchmen is so close she can smell the sour sweat pouring off the grotesque, veiny flesh of his exposed green-brown musculature. She has to crane her neck up at a 45-degree angle to face him properly.

"Hey, fellas!"

Her voice comes out much higher pitched than she intends. She really should have picked a helmet with a voice modulator.

"The boss wants his spice, little girl."

She can see sharp yellow teeth poking above the murder-henchman's lower lip as he sneers down at her. His breath is positively rank.

"Look, Korg—that's your name, right?"

"Klarg."

"Right—hey, I was close! Klarg, I mean, we've known each other for, what, ten days? I feel like we've really built a connection! Remember that shootout back on Junkfort where you caught that blaster bolt for me?"

Klarg growls deep in his massive chest. She winces.

"Alright, bad example. Look, what I'm trying to say is that I would really appreciate it if you gave me a chance to explain!"

The last words come out strangled as Klarg hoists her off her feet by the throat.

"The boss doesn't want excuses. Where's the spice!"

The other henchmen crowd in, growling like feral hounds. She paws at the arm gripping her neck, but she might as well have been held up by an angry tree trunk.

"Can't… breathe!" she protests weakly.

Klarg glares at her with jaundiced eyes that convey pure fury before finally letting go with a grunt. She collapses to the dusty pavement, her vision flooding with stars as the blood rushes back to her head.

"Talk."

Anna really wishes Klarg would stop breathing on her.

"Look, I had the spice, I did! Was gonna deliver it right to Tormo! It's not my fault my pilot turned out to be a backstabbing crook who decided to blast me and dump me on this ball of dirt while he ran off with the cargo-"

"You lost the cargo!"

She scrambles back across the street as the three henchmen bear down on her. Now Klarg really looks like he's ready to do his murdering thing. Glancing around frantically, she finds the whole block completely deserted. She's alone.

"That lot of Nyriaan spice was worth thirty times your miserable life." The Klatooinian licks a black tongue over the teeth of his upper lip. "But one out of thirty is better than nothing. Get her, boys!"

The other henchmen chuckle menacingly as they close their massive hands into fists.

Anna slips her hand under her shawl. With practiced ease, her fingers find the cool steel handle strapped in its usual spot over her chest. Sighing, she flicks a switch with her thumb. She shakes her head, feigning a hurt look before she realizes that Klarg can't see it beneath her helmet.

"Klarg, I thought we were friends."

She whips out the blaster pistol and fires.

The brute to the left of Klarg is struck square in the chest by a fat bolt of blue light. He falls onto his back in a plume of sand and dust, convulsing as streams of electricity arc between his limbs and torso. She doesn't wait around to see how the others react; she's already darting down the nearest alleyway. Roars of rage echo magnified off the hard walls of sandstone and tarnished metal as she pumps her legs as fast as they can go. Something explodes behind her, and there are screams. She doesn't look back.

Unfortunately, looking forward doesn't turn out to be much help either when she turns a blind corner and runs straight into a wall. The alley she picked is a dead end. Of course it is.

But if there's one thing thirteen years spent scurrying about the Outer Rim has taught her, it's that there's no such thing as a dead end. She whips her head from left to right, scouring the walls until she finds it. A window, low enough that she can reach it with a running start, and large enough to fit through.

It's shuttered. Not for long. She flicks the switch on her blaster determinedly. Lethal mode.

"Sorry," she mutters to whomever the building belongs to as she takes aim.

The alley flashes red. The shutters explode in a burst of sparks, sending red-hot pieces of shrapnel ricocheting off her helmet.

"There she is!"

Two burly silhouettes round the corner. She doesn't need to see their facial expressions to know they're pissed. Backing away from the now-open window, she squeezes off two more shots in their direction. A tiny part of her hopes they got out of the way in time, but she ignores the urge to check. Instead, she runs and throws herself at the window.

The wall slams into her full force, knocking every last wisp of air from her lungs. Her fingers barely manage to hook onto the windowsill, and she scrambles to keep her grip on the ledge, kicking her legs against the wall in a desperate attempt to gain purchase. A blaster goes off to her left. Something hot and bright whizzes by her ear. Another bolt strikes the stone wall centimeters from her head, showering her in bits of sandstone.

She finally manages to pull herself up enough to hook her knee over the ledge. Diving into the darkness beyond, she lands face-first onto some kind of shaggy carpet. The purple of her cloak flops over her head and for a moment she fumbles around on the floor, blind and gasping for breath.

When she finally manages to untangle herself from her cloak enough to see, she realizes it's on fire. A yelp of surprise bursts from her lips. Fumbling with the clasp in a panic, she throws the swath of coarse fabric to the floor and vigorously stomps out the embers. As she hastily pulls the cloak back over her shoulders, she grimaces at the long blackened blaster trail now scorched across its back.

Another shot screams through the window and explodes on the opposite wall.

"Get back here! You can't hide, Anna!"

"It's Ahh-na!" she yells back indignantly.

A meaty green hand grabs onto the windowsill—her cue to leave. She dashes through the house, stooping under doorways and trying her best not to knock over too much pottery. A family lives here, it's obvious. There are well-worn toys strewn about the floor, and some kids' holovid is still playing on the squat holotable in the corner. She feels a stab of guilt at the sight. At least the kids don't seem to be home.

She skids around another corner and finds the living room. Amber sunlight streams in through another large window in front of her. Without a second thought, she clambers over the dining table, launching herself forward in a flying leap and kicking open the shutters.

Too late, she realizes that unlike the last window, this one doesn't open onto ground level.

Then she's tumbling through empty air, flailing her arms helplessly as her cloak billows wildly around her. She hits the ground—no, rooftop—on her hands and knees, sprawling forward onto her stomach. Her very bones feel like they're vibrating from the impact, but she ignores the pain and pushes herself back to her feet. Heat flares in her right ankle as she takes her first step, drawing out a sharp hiss from between her teeth.

Sprained, but not broken. She'll live. She clenches her jaw and starts walking.

She reaches the edge of the roof and grins despite her pain. Below her, the huddled buildings of the city give way to a vast expanse of flat sandstone and steel pocked with gigantic circular depressions spaced out at regular intervals. A spaceport. The yellow afternoon sky buzzes with the roar of ion engines as starships of every size and description flit in and out of the landing zones, thick as a swarm of flies.

By sheer luck, she's stumbled in the right direction after all. Not that that's particularly hard in Dnalvec—three of the four largest spaceports on the entire planet are in this city, after all. Kind of an inefficient distribution, but right now it's certainly working in her favour.

She sticks her blaster back in its holster and peeks over the edge of the roof. It's several storeys of rough concrete to the lower level. Risky, but doable. She laces her fingers together and cracks her knuckles. Vaulting over the ledge, she begins the climb downward, taking care not to put too much weight on her injured ankle.

It takes her longer than she likes to reach the ground. She breathes a small sigh of relief as her feet touch the sand-blasted pavement, the muscles in her forearms screaming for relent. The distant sounds of doors slamming and pottery smashing make their way to her ears from the open window above, and she smirks under her helmet.

She's got a good lead on them now. The Brood will have one hell of a time trying to pin her down once she's off-world. All she has to do is find a ship.

She lurches off down the street, heedless of the startled vocalizations of the people that she inevitably stumbles into in her haste. If this were an Imperial port, she would have been stopped and asked for identification ten times over, if not outright arrested for civil misconduct. Here, though, the scowling brown-skinned Weequay enforcers barely spare her a passing glance as she limps through the security checkpoint at one of the yawning spaceport entrances. Glancing around through the bug-eyed visor of her helmet, she can't blame them—she feels like she's stumbled into a warzone with the sheer amount of unconcealed firepower on display on the bodies around her. The sweat of a hundred different species saturates the air in an eye-watering concoction, mixing with the dust settling her skin in a grimy sheen. She shudders to imagine what it must smell like without a helmet on.

She laughs out loud, relishing in the way the sound is drowned out by the crowd.

Sunlight trickles to the street from above, tinged orange by the meshed roof covering the streets of the spaceport proper. A wide road stretches in front of her, framed by thick doors of worn grey steel leading to each of the individual landing pads. She sticks to the shadows near the left wall, running a hand over the bulky terminal attached to the first door she passes. She doubts the security on the locks is particularly tough, but that backstabbing pilot took her slicer gear along with her cargo. This time, she'll just have to wait for luck to turn in her favour.

Thankfully, it always does, one way or another.

A commotion breaks out from somewhere toward the entrance. A short, four-armed figure dressed in faded red leather bursts from the throng, his flat head jerking back over his shoulder every few seconds with tiny ears flattened in fear. The man makes straight for the pad entrance behind Anna, slamming two of his hands on the door while he fiddles with a comm chip in his others.

"Cere! Cere, open up!"

The doors slide apart with a mechanical whine, revealing an older woman with short-cropped hair and dark skin wielding a large blaster pistol in one hand.

"Greez, what's going on?"

At that moment, two familiar figures shoulder their way into view through the crowd. It's Klarg and the other henchman. Anna tenses immediately and prepares to dash away, but as the thugs stomp closer, she quickly realizes they're not here for her. The many-armed man cowers behind his taller human companion, who is now leveling her blaster at the Klatooinians while slowly retreating back into the doorway.

"Greez! Who are these people?" the woman hisses.

"Out of the way, lady!" Klarg bellows, leaning forward and jabbing a thick finger in the man named Greez's direction as he towers over the woman. "The boss only wants this one."

"Guys, guys, I don't know what you're talking about," Greez says with a nervous laugh. "I've paid my debts to Tormo, we're all square now! Look, I'll even pay you-"

"Nothing you can pay is worth the bounty the boss put on your head after you stole his champion," Klarg chuckles. "I was sad I got sent to this planet to bring in some stupid little spice runner, but now I'm happy because you're gonna make me rich!"

For a moment, Anna thinks the woman is going to open fire. Instead, both of them whirl and begin sprinting down the hallway. The henchmen thunder after them, roaring with excitement. They leave the door open.

After barely a second's hesitation, Anna slinks through the doorway after them. Her ankle is stiff and swollen, and she silently thanks the noise of the thugs' footsteps for masking the sound of her own. Bright light shines from the end of the metal-framed corridor, silhouetting the muscular backs of the Brood henchmen.

She cautiously emerges into the open air of the landing bay, hugging the base of the wall to conceal herself in the deepest of the shadows cast by the angled rays of the afternoon sun. Her breath quickens with excitement as she runs her eyes across the ship sitting in the center of the pad. It's a long, sleek yacht with an elegant paint job of enamel white and metallic gold highlights. The bow tapers to a downward-angling twin cockpit, the hull widening in the opposite direction until it's split by a thick cylindrical section a third of the way from the stern. Atop the cylinder, a massive dorsal fin longer than the ship itself extends toward the sky.

None of this catches her attention nearly as much as the entrance ramp jutting from the hull that is currently extended invitingly to the ground.

The thugs continue to advance on Greez and Cere as they back across the landing bay.

"Nowhere left to run, Greez!" Klarg booms with a taunting grin.

The brute pulls out a set of stun cuffs from his belt, snapping them open with a flick of his wrist. Cere still stands defiantly between her friend and the Klatooinians, but the thugs barely even seem to notice her.

They're almost to the ship when a man with frazzled red-brown hair emerges from inside. An open-mouthed expression of complete incredulity spreads across his boyish features as he surveys the scene before him.

"Cal!" Cere yells over her shoulder. "Some help, please?"

The man dashes forward in a blur and inserts himself between Greez and the thugs, his hands raised placatingly.

"Whoa, whoa there! Everybody calm down."

His voice comes out higher-pitched than Anna expects, but something about the way he says those words makes her suspect he's more than a match for the two Klatooinians.

Klarg clearly doesn't have the same feeling.

"This is your one chance to run before I crush you like a scrap rat, little man," the brute growls, clenching and unclenching his fists.

She's on the opposite side of the ship from them now. Anna tears her gaze from the confrontation and back toward the ramp leading into the yacht—the now-unguarded ramp.

The owners of the ship are much too preoccupied with not being abducted by the henchmen to notice a small girl stealing into their ship behind them. Hopefully.

She makes a run for it. Approaching from behind the ramp, she presses herself against the underside of the smooth metal surface and peeks carefully around the edge. To her surprise, Klarg and his buddy haven't attacked any member of the yacht's crew yet. More importantly, though, none of them are looking in her direction. She holds her breath and limps up the incline, shoulders tensed in anticipation of shouting and blaster fire.

To her relief, she makes it inside greeted by nothing but the soft hum of a holotable. Instinctively, she begins to scour the coolly-lit cabin interior for somewhere to hide. Her eyes take in a large terrarium set into the wall and low, cushioned seats upholstered with some exotic weave, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Having lived practically her whole life stowed away on ships, this one was certainly nothing to turn her nose up at.

Slowly, the smile falls from her face. This spice run was supposed to be the score that finally got her out of this life. So much for that.

The main compartment is too exposed. There has to be a better spot. She ventures toward the back of the ship, stepping carefully in case someone is still around. After a long pause of straining her ears in complete silence, she tiptoes down the narrow passage, passing several closed doors that probably lead to sleeping quarters. At the end of the corridor, she is greeted with a large room of bare metal and the massive rings of a hyperdrive glowing dully from the opposite wall.

The engine bay. Perfect.

She's about to climb down the ladder to the maintenance shaft when she notices faint lines criss-crossing the floor beneath her. Tracing a curious boot-tip along the concentric circles etched into the tarnished metal, she almost screams out loud when a small droid drops down in front of her. She shrinks backward from the two-legged creature, her hand sliding under her cloak to grip the handle of her blaster. The droid doesn't deploy laser cannons or stun rods like she's expecting, though. It only tilts its rectangular head, telescoping its ocular sensors as it regards her quizzically. She takes a hesitant step toward it. The tiny thing barely comes up to her knee.

"Hey there, little guy," she whispers, leaning down.

The sound of hollow footsteps from the entrance ramp has her jerking back. The crew has returned. At least, she hopes it's the crew, because if Klarg ended up killing everyone outside, she sure as hell doesn't know how to pilot this spaceship on her own.

"What was that, Cal?" she hears the one named Greez exclaim. "What did you do to 'em?"

"Just a little mind trick. It won't last long. Come on, if that wasn't our cue to leave I don't know what is."

"Don't need to tell me twice, kid."

Anna jumps as the engines whirr to life behind her with the deafening whine of spooling turbines. The groan of the retracting ramp is followed by a quiet hiss as the cabin pressurizes. She feels the floor press into her and she scrambles for a handhold as the ship jolts upward.

She grins widely, sticking her middle finger at the ground. So long, Klarg.

Only then does she realize that the droid is no longer with her. A mechanical pitter-patter of tiny feet fades down the corridor to the crew compartment, followed by the voice of the redheaded man.

"What is it, BD?"

The reply is a series of rapid chirps and beeps.

"What? There's someone in the engine bay?"

Anna's heart sinks to the pit of her stomach. Rising quietly from the floor, she pulls her pistol from its holster and thumbs the switch to stun mode. She hates threatening innocent pilots, but that doesn't mean she won't do it to save her own skin.

And the first rule of successful threatening is to take the target by surprise.

She steps out of the engine room and strides into the crew compartment with her blaster drawn. The man named Cal is standing beside the holotable with the droid perched on his shoulder, staring at her with his eyebrows raised in shock. The other two are still in the cockpit.

She points the blaster straight at Cal's nose.

The second rule of successful threatening is, of course, to deliver a killer one-line ultimatum. If only she had one. She tries to channel Klarg and say something tough-sounding, but her mind comes up blank. Instead, she and the man just stare at each other for a several long seconds, frozen. She's grateful for the helmet hiding her face as she feels her cheeks warm with embarrassment.

In the end, it's Cal who breaks the silence.

"Well, this is awkward."

Hearing his words, the dark-skinned woman turns from her seat in the cockpit and raises an eyebrow. At the sight of the intruder, her eyes go wide.

"What the hell is going on here!" the woman shouts, immediately drawing her own blaster and baring her teeth.

"No, Cere!" Cal exclaims over his shoulder, raising a hand in front of his companion's weapon. He turns back toward Anna with his eyebrows angled upward sympathetically. "Whoever you are, you don't have to do this. Put the gun down. We can talk."

His words are soft, calming. The blaster shakes in Anna's hand as she continues to stare into the man's kind face. He's not even holding a weapon. Despite the light stubble on his jawline, he looks young enough to be her brother.

She jerks the barrel of her pistol toward the older woman instead.

"She has to do it first," she says in a much smaller voice than she likes, struggling to keep the words firm and commanding.

"Cal?" Cere's voice raises in pitch as she stares back with a death glare.

"Do what she says, Cere," Cal replies quietly. "I can handle this."

The woman holds Anna's gaze for another instant before holstering the blaster to her hip in a single angry motion.

"Fine."

Cal lowers his hands. The little droid on his back clambers up until it's fully perched on the man's shoulder, tilting its head at her with that same quizzical look. Haltingly, Anna lowers her own blaster toward the floor.

"Please," she finds herself whispering. She sighs and holsters her pistol. Grasping the sides of her tight-fitting helmet, she slides it off her head with the soft click of opening latches. Her strawberry hair spills around her face, matted and sticking to her sweaty skin. "You can drop me off at the next spaceport, I don't care where. Just take me away from Sriluur. I… I'll pay you!"

She's lying through her teeth, but she's desperate. For a few breaths, there's nothing but tense silence.

"Please," she pleads again. "If the Haxion Brood catches me, I'm as good as dead."

"You're the spice runner those Klatooinians were talking about," Cere says slowly.

Anna nods.

The droid chirps twice from Cal's shoulder, and the man barks a hesitant laugh.

"We really got off on the wrong foot. Let���s try this again." He extends a hand toward her. "Hi. I'm Cal Kestis."

Taking the hand cautiously, she takes a deep breath.

"Anna. Anna Arrel."