Damn, damn, damn.

I jolted up from a restorative sleep as something came niggling into my brain. No, not just my brain; into my very essence. Now, this sort of something was the kind of thing that most of the peeps in this sorry excuse for a galaxy never run into during their entire life, and maybe if they're lucky hear about it in whispers across cantina tables or through the smoke of glitterstim.

But not this lil red worrt. I've been through too much weirdness in my recent life to not immediately recognize the niggle for what it was.

A Force-user was trying to get into my skin, and find out where I was.

Now, this would never do.

I had long decided that the best for all concerned was to continue on with Plan B... which involved me remaining on my own, following my own heart, laying my own plans. For in my book, the more middlemen eliminated from the scene, the closer are the two ends of a developing scheme...

...and the less people getting hurt in that scheme should something go wrong.

Dad had raised me tough. I planned on raising Darra tougher. No time like the present.

With a little snort, I reached to my Sith belt, and activated the Force-blocking device upon it. For good measure, I activated the light-bending one as well.

Damn everyone's budding abilities anyway! A gal isn't safe in hyperspace any longer....

But now I was. Only a user of that weirdness my sister played around with ought to be able to follow my course now; one which I now reached out to alter a bit from its original one. I had a few stops to make along the way to where I was going; it didn't really matter in which order I stopped at them.

Just as long as I stayed as short a period as I could.

Jester IV yowled on through the improbability of hyperdriven space, totally cloaked now from anyone other than those Sith dudes and my sister... who I prayed to Khaandon would just keep on looking the other way until I got to where I was going....

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It wasn't much, but it said it all.

A quick trot to Ariana Public records to find an address... only to discover a certain property had been sold, just recently, cash in hand, and for a loss. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what that red-headed imp was up to; she sold the small estate she had here, probably to raise as much cash as she could in order to get far, far away from here. The bulk of her father's estate was still legally in his name, as though he had disappeared three years ago, the statute of limitations wasn't yet up. He wasn't legally dead yet.

Not like a certain someone is going to end up being. Legally, up front and proper. Identified as such... to a certain Admiral, that is.

I shook my reverie back into reality, idly swinging my helmet between two fingers as I kept my eyes peeled to that distant horizon. And even as I watched, it came: the elusive green flash as the last of the sun's rim dipped below the horizon, refracting it's light as it went. It's not a common sight to see, one said to impart luck to the watcher since it was so rare.

I pursed my lips in thought, and put my helmet back on. Moments later, I was back aboard Cutthroat, cruising through hyperspace, following yet another slim lead that had come to me. I hadn't a clue whether or not my supposition was correct, but there was that green flash....

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Sheesh, I didn't think I'd ever get off that dreary excuse for a world!

Indeed, more time had been taken at that last stop than I had first intended... although at first it looked as if I would simply be turning around and departing the moment I arrived. I mean, I know I could have gotten more for the purchase of my property, but I had been in a hurry and simply took what came first. And that hadn't been enough after all for what I wanted.

However, as I may have mentioned, Dad raised me tough. In the past years I've learned many things, and one of them was the fine art of productive haggling. It just so turned out that I had something the other wanted, and he the same of me. So finally a common ground had been reached -- although I practically had to write the entire contract in blood rather than ink -- and I was able to then go into specifications of what it was I was buying here to begin with... and still have credits leftover with which to buy food and other supplies.

It took a little longer than he promised me, too, but at length the merchandise was paraded out in front of me. I nodded, pleased with the workmanship, then ordered it stowed aboard my ship. No sooner had that been taken care of than I bid my fond adieus, and had left this place, finally able to start out on the next to last leg of the journey I had outlined ahead of me.

All along I had been careful to leave no paper trail whatsoever, paying for whatever I needed with cash up front. That cash had dwindled frighteningly low, though; I did need to lay in supplies, and there are a few items that a gal simply cannot live without, especially since where I was now heading had no place anywhere to buy anything I would need.

But I figured I had enough to last, at least until the hoopla I figured I was leaving behind me died down and I could leave the place I had picked out to hunker in for a few months or so...

...which after only a couple more days of flight announced its imminent presence by the warbling bleep of the proximity sensor. Smiling, I brought her out of hyperdrive then, and after my initial sensor sweep proved this place as deserted as I recalled it to be, I finally swooped down to into a landing upon its rocky soil. I then quickly unloaded and stowed all my supplies away, all the while keeping the Sith devices activated on my belt, their counterparts switched on the control panel of the ship. Then I hid that ship altogether, making sure it was thermally inactive and the light-bending device was in operation when I left her for the long haul.

No way in Hell's Seven Circles would that ship be found now unless someone physically stumbled into it. And I do mean walked up unsuspectingly and stubbed his toe against her. And considering where I had her parked, that possibly was about as remote as a rancor settling down to sleep with a nerf.

Now it was getting dark. But just for a moment, before I committed myself to the confinement I was about to head into, I just stood on the free surface of this place, and watched as the stars began to pop up one by one, then a couple here, a few more there. More and more sprang into being as the skies darkened by degrees until at length it was as dark as only a moonless night can be. And all about me that great and beautiful canopy stretched down to touch the ground.

I just stood there a moment longer, breathing in the night air, relishing the glory of that twinkling blanket. "Look Darra," I said to her, raising her wee face up and pointing with my free hand.

"The sky is filled with stars."

Then I turned and entered into the place I was appropropriating as my home, and would continue to do so for several more months to come.

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Fates only know; all I did know was that I was spending entirely too much of it here, travelling hither and yon across this part of the galaxy, following one whisper of a lead after another in my continued hunt. And it was here in this surreal part of space and time, while staring at a sector map I was dotting as I travelled, that the pattern leapt out at me, big and bold as you please. My eyes lit up with fire as my brain kicked into gear and I extrapolated.

I knew where she was going. Gads, why didn't I think of it? Probably because number one, she would think it too obvious and thus handily dismissed; or, two, because I had all but forgotten the place myself over these past years.

But there the pattern was, big as an opee's eyes, and at it's end the one place where Galen would think she was safe... for it was there I had once brough her simply to be safe.

Sol Varek.

It didn't take Cutthroat long to get there, she was that sweet of a little ship. And as I swooped in over Quee's secret little hidey-hole, it was with the knowledge that she was as silent as snow, Actar's workers were that sweet in their abilities.

Now tucked quietly into a qha'farr tree's prickly branches some 200 meters from his bunker, I shifted my weight.

Waiting.

Watching.

I knew she was in there, and it was only a matter of time. I suppose I could have just marched in there, but that's not the trademark of the exemplary bounty hunter that I am. Let the mark come to you, is my motto.

Being the hunter that I am, my instincts did not fail me. They never do, much to the woe of many a mark. And they did not fail me now. It had taken about three days from when I had landed, most of the time spent in absolute silence in this damned tree, until she showed her face.

Every sense I owned snapped alert when suddenly the door opened...

The very door we had both stood framed within, once upon a better time, my arms about her, her head against me.

...and she came out holding Darra in her arms. My jaw suddenly clenched, and the inexplicable knot within my stomach suddenly started growing in size and density. I did my best to ignore it, and very slowly then raised my blaster rifle, my eye pinned to the scope, the crosshairs pinned right between her beautiful brown eyes when she unexpectedly turned my way.

Those big brown eyes that I had once opened my own to, reading worry and despair and then joyous relief within... opening up another time to reveal overwhelming love, the only love ever coming along to crack the armor I had so carefully erected over the years... inexplicably, superimposed over that was an image of 187, pointing his finger at me. *SSHK* Pow! *SSHK* And then I had learned that Gravin had taken her....

I blinked, my jaws clenched so tightly I could hear my own teeth grinding. But I was a professional... too much of one to even let the blur of tears deflect my aim. The sound of the rifle came almost as a complete surprise to me, and for a moment I wondered why she was no longer in my crosshairs....

I approached on wooden legs, stopping to look down at what I had done.

And then I finished the job.

Damn you, Actar....

I buried them there, together, in the rocky soil of Sol Varek, afterward kneeling on their joint grave and wetting it with the only tears I had ever shed, or ever would again. In my gauntleted hand was a locket she wore, once with an image of us in it, now showing her and Captain Danner and the little girl.

My daughter....

I turned away stonily at that, something inside me snapping and turning into a block of ice which would never melt again. If the esteemed Admiral wanted a cold-hearted killer, then I think he had gotten himself a deal... even though I couldn't find the Sith ship anywhere, I think he'd be pleased.

He'd better be. He'd just damned well better be.

I boarded Cutthroat and blasted off from this miserable rock, and soon found myself coming into orbit about Coruscant. Like I said, time plays tricks on a man in hyperspace....

[ 10-25-2002 06:03 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Sorben Tarnus ]

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