A New Fear, Capters 1 and 2 (Patreon)

This is the first and second chapter of a side story for Through Victory. I don't think I've posted it on Patreon, I'm posting them together here. Consider it a double feature of sorts.

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In a distant corner of the galaxy, a lone escape pod descended through  the atmosphere of a barren desert world. And soon after it, spacecraft  followed.

They were behind it by only a day, maybe a little more. The two craft  descended through the sky, down towards the vast sea of sand below.  Before them rose a thin column of black smoke in the distance, their  sole reason for coming to the wasteland. Visually, the two craft were  similar yet very distinct. While both had dull gray exteriors with black  highlights and near-identical central cockpit pods, the similarities  ended there. Where one had three pylons connecting to jagged and angular  wings, the other had just two, connecting to a pair of sloping, elegant  panels. Neither were unarmed, each sporting laser cannons mounted on  the wings and cockpit pods, respectively. Someone looking upon either of  the craft would have felt one emotion, something the designers of each  had no doubt strived toward to elicit:

Fear.

Both of the craft dove towards the surface, cutting above the desert  landscape below. To most people, there was little of interest on this  remote backwater. The planet held little of value in terms of minerals,  if only because they had all been mined out long ago. Its bone dry  atmosphere and desert climate made farming prohibitively difficult if  not outright impossible. But to others…

To others, Tatooine was perfect. While far and away from the  Empire’s notice, its proximity to one of the largest hyperlane routes in  the galaxy meant criminal activity could readily flourish on the world,  unimpeded by laws or regulations. And flourish it did, in many  shapes and forms. From smuggling and slavery, to gambling and crimes of  all sorts. But the criminal elements of the planet didn’t interest the  pilots of the spacecraft. Their interests lay elsewhere.

The two craft slowed, the escape pod now visible to the pilots. It lay  on its side, the exterior hatch open to the elements. In a blast of dust  and sand the two craft touched down, engines whining as they shut down.  In unison, hatches popped open on the tops of both craft, and the  occupants emerged from within.

Like their craft, they were visually very similar. Black garb, lithe,  toned and clearly female forms. Both wore helmets and were clad in an  black cloak that fluttered behind them as they dropped off of their  craft to the sand below.

The latter of the two, the pilot of the twin winged craft, looked to the  former, whose gaze was focused solely on the escape pod. “That is the  pod Lord Vader told us about. No sign of any occupants however.”

The former of the two said nothing in reply. She merely walked through  the sands toward the crashed escape pod, silent as always. Reluctantly  the other followed, wary of any dangers or threats that might lurk in  the dunes. She had neither seen nor sensed any, but that wasn’t an  excuse to throw caution to the wind.

Up close, the pod was nothing noteworthy. Dull grey metal, scorched by  the heat of re-entry. The source of the smoke column rising into the  cloudless sky was the pod’s engine cluster, still smoking even after  almost a day. The inside was no doubt just as dull and utilitarian as  the outside, and neither of them needed to look inside to know it was  vacant.

No, the evidence so was readily apparent in the two sets of tracks  leading from the pod, out toward a rocky ridge off in the distance.

The former walked over to look at them more closely, her gaze following  the tracks up and towards the distant ridgeline. “Droids.”

“Yes,” the Seventh Sister answered. “Two of them. Judging from the three  lines, one of them is an astromech droid. The other is probably a  protocol droid, from the close and even footsteps.” The Seventh Sister  looked out towards the rocks in the distance. “Thy can’t have gotten  far, not in that terrain.”

Silba said nothing as she continued to regard the tracks. “They have a mission. And help.”

“How do you know?” The Sister asked.

“They are here for, not something, but…” she trailed off. “Someone. I can sense them.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. There’s someone here. And someone… old. We should be careful.”

The Seventh Sister said nothing for a brief moment. “Do you know what  these droids have?” For Vader to pull us away from our mission and to  suddenly send us here, it must be important.”

“A message.”

“What kind?”

“Our Lord didn’t tell me. I didn’t ask.” Silba began walking, following  the two sets of tracks, the Seventh Sister following close behind. The  Sister gestured back in the direction of her fighter, and on cue a  cluster of black shapes flew out of her craft, darting through the air  and across the sands toward her. They were small things, each with five  articulated limbs, and their chassis glossy black and dominated by a  single front-facing lens.

“The tracks,” she whispered, gesturing to the sands. “Follow them, fly  ahead of us. Find the droids, but do not approach. And inform me if and  when you do.” The trio of Mimics warbled and chittered and darted off,  splitting up as they flew away.

Silba quietly regarded the probe droids as they flew off, and together  they silently walked towards the craggy hills, following the path the  droids took before them.

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“Well, this... complicates matters.”

“Yes, it does.”

They both stared at the massive ruts in the sand. Nearly half a meter  deep and several wide, they were the gouges left by some sort of massive  tracked vehicle as it lumbered over and through the rock and sand,  grinding literal trenches as it went. They cut sharply through the  dunes, disappearing into the horizon.

Silba crouched, dipping a hand into the loose sand and pulling out a  handful, before letting the stuff run through her fingers. “They were  intercepted.”

“By the person they were here to find?” The Sister asked.

“No. A third party.” Silba stood, her gaze following the tracks. “Where is the advance force?”

The Seventh Sister checked the info-feed in her helmet. “They’ve just launched taken off in shuttles from the local garrison.”

“Update them of this development,” she said, gesturing to the tracks.  “Inform them to rendezvous with us mid-flight while we find the vehicle  that made these tracks.”

“Judging from the direction these tracks are going, they might encounter this vehicle before we do.”

“I see then,” Silba replied. “Then order them to find the vehicle that  made these tracks. If the droids are still aboard, detain them. If not,  interrogate whoever else is on board and find out where they are. And- and...”  Silba stopped, abruptly standing straight up. She looked up, craning her neck towards the sky.

“Silba?”

“Lord Vader,” she spoke. “He wishes to speak with me.”

The Sister was suddenly quiet, her pose becoming rigid. “Oh. I see.”  Silba noticed her rubbing her right wrist, something the Sister did  almost unconsciously whenever the Dark Lord’s name was mentioned.

Silba turned to look at her companion. “We will meet up with the local  stormtroopers, aid them if need be.” Almost on cue, the air was filled  with a distinctive whine as their crafts coasted over the nearby ridge  and landed in the ruts, guided by requests made to their autopilot  systems.

“What of your… conversation then?”

“I will commune with him while we are in flight.” She strode towards her  fighter, hopping up to board it through the top hatch, and the Seventh  Sister did the same with hers. In moments they were again airborne,  flying low across the desert and following the great ruts in the sand.

Silba relaxed in the control seat of her fighter. She let the Seventh  Sister take the lead, instructing her ship’s autopilot systems to follow  her. With that small matter of the way, she turned her attention to  another matter.

Her Master.

She could sense him, even across the gulf of space. Could sense him  wanting to speak to her through the Force. Behind her mask, Silba closed  her eyes, slipping into a meditative trance as she began to dive into  the Dark Side of the Force, her hands gripping the armrests of her seat  as she began to concentrate.

It was taxing for her to do this, the act of sending a portion of  herself out into the vastness of space draining her Force reserves  faster than almost anything else. As the confines of her fighter’s  cockpit faded away and the vast aether-like fabric of the Force replaced  it, she sought him out, the man she now called her Master. He  was far away aboard his personal starship, meditating himself. Her  apparition coalesced, and Silba’s featureless pitch-black avatar found  itself within the room housing his meditation chamber. It was dark, the  lights unnecessary and therefore dimmed and the chamber itself was  sealed, her Master no doubt within.

No sooner had her projection taken form than the chamber before Silba  began to open. Condensate hissed out from within as the top half rose to  the ceiling, the hyperbaric seal breaking and revealing the  black-garbed occupant within. He sat facing away from her, and as the  chair rotated its occupant to face her she quickly knelt to the deck,  bowing her head in both respect and deference.

“Lord Vader,” she finally spoke, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“Silba,” Her Master replied. “How goes your task?”

“Well,” she replied curtly. “We have found the trail left by the droids.”

“Trail?”

“They have been… intercepted.” There was no point in lying to or deceiving her Master.
“By whom?”

“Unknown, my Lord,” she spoke. “But we are following their trail as we speak. It is not difficult to follow.”

Her Master said nothing for a moment. His expression was impossible to  know, behind the faceplate of his mask. “The droids, they have yet to  make contact with the Rebel Alliance?”

“I believe so, my Lord.”

“You believe, Silba. But do not merely believe. Ensure so.”

“Of course,” her apparition spoke. The chamber before her began to once  more seal around her Master, and Silba took that as her cue. A moment  later and she was back in her own weak shell, gasping heavily at the  exertion. It was always painful for her, returning to her own body and  mortal senses. It came back to her in a rush of sensation; every  photoreceptor in her eyes, every pain receptor, every sound. She lay  limp in her seat, the harness the only thing keeping her from sliding to  the floor oh her fighter’s cockpit.

“Silba,” a voice crackled through her comms, “Have you… returned to your senses?”

“Yes, I have. Anything to note?”

“A couple of abandoned shacks, a lone farmstead,” she replied. “The  vehicle we’re following stopped there, judging from the detour the ruts  took towards it.”

“A farmstead? How do people farm in this desert?” She asked.

“They don’t farm crops,” The Sister answered. “They farm moisture.  Machines that pull water vapor from the air. Water is often a valuable  commodity on predominantly desert planets.”

“Water.” Silba looked at the desert beneath their fighters. “That makes  sense. Why wouldn’t people import it from another world then?”

“Then the Hutt Clan wouldn’t make as many credits by taxing it.”

“Of course.” Silba had heard of the Hutt Clan. An entire alien race that  had largely dedicated themselves to criminal enterprises. Her first and  only encounter with an… example of the species had been a year  before. She had still been shadowing her Master, and she had watched him  strike the creature down for having the audacity to defy the Emperor.

Silba’s thoughts were interrupted by the Sister speaking. “Anyone who’s  stuck a toe into the criminal underside of the galaxy has heard of this  planet. Tatooine, A barely habitable rock along the Corellian Run. There  used to be mining operations here, but they dried up decades ago, along  with the water.”

“Who controls this world?” Silba asked. She turned her attention to the  world beyond the canopy of her fighter’s cockpit. An empty and cloudless  blue sky above, and a featureless brown desert below, marred only by  the snaking tracks of their quarry.

“Ostensibly, the Empire,” The Seventh Sister answered after a pause. “In  reality, the Hutt Clan, as well as the pirates, smugglers and bounty  hunters they employ to enforce their will on the local populace.”

“You said ostensibly in regards to the Empire,” Silba noted. “What is their presence here?”

“Not much. A couple of recruiting stations here and there, a consulate  in this planet’s so-called capital. And a garrison of Stormtroopers to  defend it all.”

“Do you feel that they are compromised by these Hutt?”

“Silba, there’s a good reason I was so strongly against us asking them for help.”

“I see.” Despite her partner’s misgivings, Silba had called ahead to the  local Imperial officials, instructing them to have a detachment to meet  them by shuttle after they arrived a detachment that was no doubt on  their way. “Are they still en route, our so-called ‘allies?’”

“A portion of the garrison departed from Mos Espa just after you… left, to speak with Lord Vader.”

“I see. It is good to know we will soon be surrounded by adversaries.”

“That is one way of looking at things. And another, in addition to what’s before us.”

Silba didn’t need to inquire as to what she meant. For she too saw what  The Sister was seeing: They had caught up to the machine leaving the  tracks.

At first, it was just a brown smudge on a near-equally brown expanse of  dry riverbed. As they approached however, its appearance became stark,  even against the backdrop of the terrain. The vehicle, if it could be  called as much, was a large, boxy, top-heavy construct riding on massive  industrial tracks across the sands. The sides were uniform, the front  sloped out, not unlike the prow of some sort of sailing vessel. The rear  was a mess of industrial piping and exhaust ports, as was the topside.  As their fighters zipped past and Silba swung her craft around, she  spotted what might have been a cockpit or bridge of the massive,  building like vehicle at its very front and top.

“A sandcrawler,” the Sister explained. “They were used to support mining  operations. And judging from the creatures scampering around the  bridge, it’s crewed by Jawa.”

Silba followed the Sister as they swung around a second time, slowing  their speed to match the sandcrawler’s clip through the shallow valley.  Abruptly, their broadband comms were filled with the high pitched  squeaks and squeals of what Silba presumed to be the primitive language  the Jawa spoke. “Can you translate?” she asked.

“I don’t know their tongue, unfortunately,” The Sister said. “A protocol  droid would come in handy right about now.” The squeals became more  high-pitched and angry, and Silba noticed more of the Jawa were swarming  the top deck of the crawler. Some swarmed towards what looked to be a  heavy weapons emplacement, mounted at the edge of the deck. “It’s a good  thing that they have a translator aboard.”

“Yes,” Silba replied with a word. She guided her fighter over the roof  of the crawler, still keeping pace with the lumbering machine. She  flicked a switch and above her, the fighter’s cockpit hatch swung up,  letting a blast of hot air tear into her cockpit. “But I already know a  language we both speak.”

“Oh?”

Beneath her mask, Silba grinned. “Violence.”

Silba didn’t need to lay eyes on the Sister’s face to see the savage grin spreading across it. “Do you need help?”

“No,” she replied quickly. She pulled herself up to the top of her  fighter’s cockpit, standing on the roof of it as she looked down at the  now panicking Jawa. They had started to fire weapons up at her, the  shots harmlessly splashing off of her fighter’s shielding. “Coordinate  with our ‘allies,’ tell them to make haste as they might have prisoners  to detain.”

“Might?”

“Might,” Silba said, drawing one of her lightsabers and igniting it. And  without another word, she stepped from the edge and dropped down to the  Jawa below.

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Despite the immense size and mass of the sandcrawler, its crew was comparatively tiny.  Silba could only sense eight of the so-called Jawa creatures inside the  vehicle, yet she got the impression it could carry a far larger crew.  Six of their number had spilt out through hatches on the roof to greet  her, while two more remained in the cockpit area at the top front.

The instant her feel hit the roof, the Jawa resumed firing at her with  their crude weaponry. Ion blasters, crude and homemade, designed to stun  their target instead of killing it. She parried the blasts  effortlessly, sending them back to their senders with mere flicks of her  lightsaber. The six Jawa were struck by six different blasts almost  simultaneously, dropping to the deck like flies. Silba didn’t know what  line of reasoning had motivated the creatures to attempt to use  non-lethal weapons on her, but it had been a fatal decision,  metaphorically speaking.

Nearby, one of the Jawa half moaned, half squeaked in pain, somehow less  stunned than its comrades. Perhaps its blaster needed maintenance. The  creature staggered up, back onto its feet. It looked up at Silba, and  she brought her saber close to its face. It almost fell back, over the  side of the crawler to the sands below. Through its black facemask and  opaque goggles, Silba couldn’t begin to fathom what thoughts lay behind  that mask. Fear? Anger? It would have been trivial to cut the  Jawa down - a flick of her prosthetic wrist, a quick jab. A nudge with  the Force, to send it plummeting to its death below. Her Master… he  would have approved.

Her Master wasn’t here though.

Silba sighed, lowering her lightsaber. “Tend to your fallen,” she said,  gesturing to the Jawa’s fallen comrades. Turning away, she strode  towards the nearest open hatch and dropped through it into the crawler  below.

If the exterior of the crawler was decrepit, than the corridor she now  stood in was downright repulsive. Dim, flickering lighting, rusty floors  and ceiling. Grimy and filthy walls on both sides of her, caked with  Force knew what. Silba was glad she had the forethought to install a  rebreather apparatus into her mask, because she didn’t want to breathe  even a whiff of the air around her.

She turned her mind away from her surroundings and towards the remaining  Jawa, both of whom were in the cockpit at the end of the corridor.. The  door to the cockpit was sealed shut, but that proved to be no obstacle  to her. And with a few slashes of a lightsaber she carved a hole through  it. The instant the triangular section of doorway fell inward, an ion  blast was fired through the gap at her. She parried it with her  lightsaber, sending it back towards the attacker as she had before. She  stepped through the door, mindful of the still-glowing edges and laid  eyes on the cockpit.

The room was every bit as dirty and disgusting as the rest of the  sandcrawler she had seen, which hadn’t been much. A bank of controls  lined the front of the small room. It was ringed on three sides by  windows, serving as the primary source of light at the moment. More  control panels and displays lined the rear bulkhead, many of which were  broken, cannibalized for parts or in disrepair. Before her, the Jawa  that had shot at her slumped by the controls, knocked out by its own  reflected attack. Which left just one. It seemed a little taller than  the rest, its posture defiant despite its situation, despite what it had  just witnessed. Silba decided that it was the leader of this little  troupe of aliens. It was armed she realized, a cobbled-together blaster  pistol held in one hand. The Jawa looked to its fallen comrade, back to  her, as if debating what to do.

Then it raised its blaster.

Silba didn’t need a gesture, just a thought. And with a thought, the  Jawa’s weapon was ripped from its hands and sent flying to one of hers.

“Your people are trying to avoid killing me,” Silba spoke, dropping the  scrap pistol and letting it clatter to the deck. “Noble, yet misguided.”  This time with a gesture, she wrenched the Jawa up by his- her- its neck, the small creature struggling in her grasp. “However, I am feeling… better than most days. I will return the gesture and spare your lives,  provided you tell me where the droids are.” Around them the sand crawler  ground to a halt, but Silba disregarded it for the moment.

“Droids?” The Jawa squeaked in Basic.

“I care only for two, an astromech and a protocol. The astromech is blue  and white, and the protocol is dull gold. You picked them up in the  desert a day ago.”

The Jawa said nothing in reply, only gasped for breath where it hung in the air. Silba tightened her grip. “I won’t ask twice.”

“Bought,” It squeaked. “By farmer!”

Behind her mask, Silba narrowed her eyes, tying her grip on the Jawa’s neck. “Who?” She demanded.

The Jawa struggled more, gasping for breath. Silba relaxed it, but still kept a firm grip.

“L- Lars!” It squealed. “Human! Farmer!”

The Jawa... wasn’t lying. Silba recalled what the Sister had said earlier. A  couple of abandoned shacks, a lone farmstead. The vehicle we’re  following stopped there, judging from the detour the ruts took towards  it. Silba released her grasp on the pitiful creature, letting it  drop to the deck in a heap of tattered robes. Without any more words to  it, she turned away to walk out the way she came in-

Only to come face to face with one of the Sister’s mimic droids. It  hovered there in the doorway, watching her. It waved an appendage at  her, warbling a greeting as it did.

“I didn’t need help, Sister,” Silba spoke.

“I didn’t help,” the Sister replied. “I only sent one of them to act as a  backup, just in case. And the rest to stop the crawler.Oh, and to  restrain the remaining Jawa.”

“Helping.”

“The crawler would have driven into a ravine if I hadn’t stopped it. And  two of the Jawa were about to lay siege to the crawler’s bridge with  heavy weapons.”

Silba sighed with a shrug. “Did you hear it?”

“I didn’t know they spoke Basic,” the Sister said. “I’ve ordered one of  the dropships to the farmstead we passed. The other is on their way  here. It’ll actually be here any moment. Also, I checked below with my  other mimics, just to be absolutely certain. The two droids we’re  looking for aren’t aboard this dungpile.”

“It was telling the truth.” Silba brushed past the mimic, the droid  following her and acting as a mouthpiece for its master. She walked out  the door, past a pair of unconscious and bound Jawa that had been trying  to crew some sort of laser cannon between them. Silba leapt up through  the hatch she had entered, landing on the sandcrawler’s roof. Most of  the Jawa were still unconscious. She looked up at her fighter, the craft  dropping down to let her board it.

“So, moisture farm?” the Sister asked.

“That’s what the Jawa said.” Silba leapt up, landing on her fighter’s roof and slipping back inside.

“Well, let’s go hunting.”

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“Farmers,” Silba said. “The droids got themselves sold to farmers of all people. Why?”

“Convenience, perhaps,” the Sister replied. “Whatever purpose the droids  were sent from the ship for, it likely wouldn’t have been served by  being inventory for the Jawas. Judging by the route the sandcrawler  took, it wouldn’t surprise me if those farmers were the first  opportunity for the droids to escape.”

“That answers one question perhaps, but what would a moisture farmer do with an astromech?”

“Not sure.” A moment passed in silence as the Sister thought. “Perhaps  they own a spacecraft and need a navigator? At least the protocol makes  more sense in a rural setting. With the right programming they can do  anything.”

Silba contemplated her words. Both of the droids as described were older  models, decades past obsolescence. But with the right upgrades to their  processing harnesses and internals however, their usefulness could be  extended. “How dangerous do you think these droids might be?”

“Hmm,” the Sister hummed. “Hard to say. From the description, the  protocol droid is definitely non-standard, possibly hand-built from a  kit or spare parts. The Rebels haven’t really shown an inclination to  modify droids to be more deadly, nor to use them in front line combat  like the Trade Federation during the Clone Wars. Any droids they do use  tend to fill utility or tertiary roles.”

“I see.” Silba contemplated the droids she had interacted with in the  past, as well as the Mimics that her companion utilized. The Sister had  explained her own upgrades and modifications to them, how she had  modified their comparatively simple programming harnesses to work  together and function as a sort of hive mind so that each one of her  Mimics could act independently or collectively with others. From a  programming standpoint they were all functionally the same droid in a  sense, and that was before she went into all the other stuff she did to  them to make them more dangerous to suit her needs. Upgraded repulsors  and power generators, shock tasers, cameras and directional microphones  for surveillance and eavesdropping, and countless other minor tweaks and  changes.

In a way, the Seventh Sister reminded Silba of her past self, how that  dead failure from years past would fawn over and play with her toys. At  the very least, she was putting that sort of skill set to a good use,  even better than her past self.

“How do you foresee this interaction going?”

“Well, best case, we find a hapless moisture farmer whom we can persuade to turn the droids over to us.”

“And worst case?”

“He makes us pay for them. I think Imperial credits spend here.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Silba could taste the humor in her tone, but she had little use for it. Not right now at least.

“Or,” and she continued, “We find everything on fire, the farmer’s  family flayed to the bone and nailed to the walls, on which insane  ramblings in machine code have been written in blood.”

“Sister.” Silba let the annoyance flow into her tone.

“You asked, and that’s about as worst a case as we could hypothetically find. Alternatively, we could find the HK droid there.”

“The what?”

“A story for another time,” she replied with a chuckle. “We’re  approaching the farmstead, and from the looks of it the locals beat us  there.”

The Sister was right, and as they approached the farmstead Silba could  identify the dropship hovering above it. A number of troopers had  already disembarked, scurrying around the cluster of domes and  contraptions to establish something resembling a perimeter.

“We shouldn’t let them have all the fun,” The Sister said.

“No, we shouldn’t.” Silba slowed her fighter, bringing it to a hover  above the ground near the dropship. She popped the hatch and Silba  climbed out and back into the boiling desert air. She took a step  forward into the air, falling and landing on the sand below.

Before her, the apparent farmers were being dragged from their domicile,  the bulk of the structure seemingly underground. It made sense on a  desert world she supposed, due to the lack of building materials and the  thermal insulation such a dwelling would provide. They were both  cuffed, being led out by stormtroopers and commanded by an officer that  looked to be on the portly side.

“I said look for any others,” the officer ordered one of his troopers.  “I don’t know if there are any others, but check. You better not  embarrass us all in front of these pompous idiots, whoever they are.”

The stormtrooper he was addressing looked over to her where she just landed, before glancing back to his superior. “Sir-”

The officer cut him off. “I mean really, ordering us out over some  moisture farmer’s droids? Who do these bantha kriffs think we… are…?”  The officer realized the trooper wasn’t looking at him, but past him.  “One of them’s right behind me, aren’t they?”

Silba brushed past the man, ignoring him in favor of the trooper. “Are  they the owners?” she asked, gesturing to the man and woman that had  been forced to their knees just then.

“Y- Yes ma’am,” the officer answered.

“I was not addressing you,” Silba hissed, “I was addressing the  trooper.” He seemed competent, compared to his superior at least.

“I believe they are, my lady,” The trooper answered after a brief hesitation.

“So they are.” Silba glanced over her shoulder, back toward the fat officer. “Who is in charge here?”

“Lieutenant Casston there, ma’am.”

With a thought, Silba grasped the neck of the officer behind him. Her  master favored choking people, crushing their windpipe and suffocating  them. Personally she thought it was slow, but she would never dare tell  him that to his face. Instead, she preferred to constrict the thick  blood vessels in the neck as it had more immediate results. As  demonstrated by Lieutenant Casston, who passed out and went limp after  just a few brief seconds.

“So he is,” Silba hissed. “So he was.”

The trooper’s mask hid his reaction, but Silba could still sense the  fear and worry radiating from the man’s surface thoughts. “What… Do you  want us to do with them?”

“Nothing beyond what you already have.” Silba walked past the trooper,  striding over to the two on their knees. Behind them, she could hear  clangs of metal and the cracks of pottery being broken, other troopers  no doubt searching for the droids. “Where are they?” she asked.

“They?” The man asked, clearly fearful of her.

“The droids,” Silba clarified. “I know they are here.” The sound of more  crashing came from below. “The troopers haven’t found them yet, so  where are they?”

“Damn it, I knew they were trouble, I told you they would be, Owen!” The woman shrieked.

Silba grasped the woman’s throat, choking her. “Where are they?” She repeated, letting her anger flow into her tone.

“Please, don’t hurt her!” ‘Owen’ begged her. “The two droids, I’ll tell you anything!”

“Tell.”

“Luke, our boy,” his voice wavered. “Th- That astromech droid, the  broken thing wandered off last night. He went searching for it just a  couple of hours ago in our speeder!”

“And?”

“If- if you leave now, you can catch up!” He pleaded. “It’s an older  model, not very fast. They can’t have gone far. Please, that’s all I  know!”

“Trooper?” Silba asked the trooper standing behind her.

“Ma’am, the pilots sighted wheel tracks heading towards the west. They  look like the kind made by an older model astromech. There’s no sign of a  landspeeder, although it looks like one was parked over there.” He  gestured over to a spot just around the edge of the central dome, where  Silba could just spot a shallow depression in the sand.

Behind her mask, Silba was frowning. The droids had somehow slipped away  yet again, but she was catching up. “I believe you,” she told the man  on his knees as she released her grip on his wife. “What are your  names?”

“O- Owen, Owen Lars,” he said. “And my wife Beru. I don’t know what’s  going on, what any of this is about!” The man’s pleading tone was  readily apparent now. “We’re loyal Imperial citizens, I swear it! Our  boy Luke even wants to be a fighter pilot for the navy!” The man trailed  off, his head sagging into his hands. “Oh, it’s been hours now. If he’s  in danger…”

Silba didn’t hear the rest of the man’s ramblings, she was already  walking away. “Detain them for further questioning, trooper, and see to  your superior’s medical needs. Either myself or my partner will be in  contact with you. Keep an eye out for their child, or anyone else in the  area.”

“Yes ma’am.” With that, Silba proceeded back to her fighter, the craft’s  autopilot having already landed it softly in the dust at the edge of  the farm. She had quarry and a trail, and no time to waste in finding  them.

----====| | |====----

The trail went cold just beyond the ridge to the west. There, Silba and  the Sister found evidence of a scuffle: a discarded primitive club,  animal tracks and footprints, bits of paper and detritus. But no sign of  a landspeeder, a human male, or either of the two droids.

The prints told a story of their own. Someone, presumably the farm boy  Luke, was attacked and dragged by several others who rode large  quadrupedal animals of some sort judging from the hoof prints--banthas,  most likely. For reasons unknown they had fled, judging from the long  strides leading away from the canyon back toward their apparent steeds.  Another set of footprints approached from the opposite direction. They  were humanoid shaped, the imprints of some sort of simple boot pressed  into the sand. The newcomer had seemingly come to the aid of the  farmhand and the droids he had been tracking. But the trail ended there,  as the two people and the droids had all seemingly left on the speeder.  To where, neither Silba nor her companion could ascertain.

“We aren’t far behind,” the Sister told her, looking at the discarded club in her hands. “A few hours at most.”

“He was attacked,” Silba said. “Their son.”

“By Tuskens,” the Sister explained. “Their race is native to this world.  They’re a backwards, tribal species, attacking settlements and raiding  farmsteads.”

“Cowardly as well,” Silba replied. “One person drove an entire party of them off.”

“It would seem. This weapon belonged to one of the raiders; they discarded it in their haste.”

Silba was starting to feel disgust at this situation. Part of her was  tempted to tear the droids apart when she found them, only for wasting  so much of her, and by extension Lord Vader’s, valuable time. Another  part of her wanted to bend them to her will, reprogram them for her own  ends. They were resourceful, remarkably so. While she had little use for  an astromech, the protocol droid could prove to be useful. A part of  Silba was growing fond at the idea of robotic minions to do her bidding.

“Your advice, Sister?”

The Sister hummed in thought. “I doubt that the droids were broken at  all. They slipped away in the night to make contact with their handler.  Whether said handler is the son of those two farmers or this newcomer,  I’m not sure.”

“You suspect the farmers?”

“I suspect everyone, Silba.”

Silba considered the situation. Her anger simmered just beneath the  surface. Questions swirled around and around in her mind, but answers  seemed fleeting. The two droids had come to this backwater. They had  resourcefully escaped the clutches of a handful of Jawa. What then? They  had gotten off at the first stop. An unplanned stop? A local  sympathizer? And somehow enlisted the unknowing aid of some random  farmhand teenager. Unless the farmhand had been their contact…

No matter. Silba was going in circles. Whether it was the boy or this  fourth mystery person, the droids were still out there somewhere. But  Rebel High Command was somewhere else very far away, and they clearly  lacked a means off of the planet. Silba needed to act, now.

“Sister, contact the Imperial forces on this world, instruct them to  interdict the spaceports,” she instructed. “The droids have no doubt  made contact with the local rebel agents, and they no doubt now seek to  escape this planet.”

“I will do that,” The Sister replied. “As I recall, there were two major  spaceports on this planet, one much closer than the other.”

“And which would that be?”

“A place called Mos Eisley, apparently.”

----====| | |====----

Mos Eisley.

It was a large collection of drab, brown buildings dominating a wide and  shallow valley. Even from fairly close it was still hard to tell where  the desert ended and the town actually began. Most all of the buildings  were the same drab shade of brown as the surrounding desert, though  there were splashes of vibrant colors here and there. There were large  beasts of burden, a handful of ground and aircars, and canvas covers  over a myriad of market stalls and shops. The two of them swooped low, a  mere hundred meters above the rooftops, angling toward the spaceport  located centrally in the city and ringed by some of the taller  buildings. Silba sensed a scant few of the locals below paying them any  mind, the majority no doubt focused on their tasks at hand.

Gaining clearance was trivial. The Seventh Sister only needed her droids  to help translate the strange language the person in the control tower  was speaking. A moment later, she was following the Sister to a landing  pad in the central complex of low, muddy brown towers that surrounded  the settlement’s spaceport. Although ‘spaceport’ was being generous in  Silba’s opinion. Here and there she spied ancient and dilapidated  freighters occupying some landing pads. She glanced at one ship, the  vessel catching her eye due to its asymmetry and poor condition. It was  even more ramshackle than the other worn vessels, and Silba was left  seriously doubting its spaceworthiness.

Silba’s observations were cut short as she had to take over manual  control over her fighter craft. She set her ship down next to the  Sister’s on the small pad reserved for them. As the craft powered down,  she saw an Imperial officer, the commander of the local garrison,  walking toward them with a squad of troopers. Silba climbed out of her  ship, dropping down to the rusted and dirty floor and meeting up with  her partner.

“My ladies,” the garrison commander spoke, “Captain Orphit, at your service. To what do I owe your company this afternoon?”

“The spaceport,” Silba said, “Is it secure?”

“Of course,” he nodded enthusiastically. “My stormtrooper squads are in  the process of securing the craft that are currently landed. A squadron  of TIE fighters have also established a cordon to secure the local  airspace.”

“Excellent.” Silba began to walk toward the exit that the captain had come in from, the Sister and then the troopers following.

“Although, my lady, may I ask a question?”

“You may.”

“For what reason has the spaceport been closed, may I ask? There are  merchants that will be upset that they can neither depart or arrive.”

Silba didn’t reply. She had arrived at the exit, walking through it and  into the town proper. Her gaze panned from left to right, her eyes  focusing on what seemed like hundreds of people. And not just humans,  but aliens of every color and shape. Some looked more human than others,          but most were only humanoid in the vaguest of terms. There was  far less variety in the core worlds, those planets mainly the domain of  humans and humans alone. The variety of sentient life here? It was a  little jarring to say the least.

“My lady?” the Captain repeated.

“I said you could ask,” Silba spoke. “I never said anything about replying.”

The man swallowed nervously. “But, I am going to have-”

Captain Orphit was promptly cut off as he began gasping for breath,  falling to his knees in the dirty sand. Silba only targeted his windpipe  this time. She needed him conscious, after all. The squad of troopers  following them halted in place, suddenly unsure of the situation that  was developing before them.

“Captain, you may tell them whatever you wish,” Silba hissed, turning to  face him. “Lie, prevaricate, it does not matter. This is the will of  the Empire, and you have the details of the individuals that your troops  are to look for. Now, do I make myself clear?”

“Y… Yes…” the Captain nodded, gasping.

“Good.” Silba released her grasp on the man. “Secure this city. Sister,  follow me.” With nothing else to say, Silba continued on and the Sister  followed, leaving the Captain and his stormtroopers behind at the  spaceport.

“Was that necessary?” The Sister asked her.

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Lucky either way.” Silba was thinking of Lord  Vader as she spoke, and both of them had little doubt that he would have  cut the man down for back talking, perhaps promoting one of the  troopers.

“So, what now?”

“Now,” Silba responded, “We wait for them to arrive.”

“You haven’t told me why you’re so sure that the droids and their contact will be coming here. Another one of your hunches?”

Silba didn’t answer, she didn’t need to. She was following a feeling,  some weird mix of gut instinct and the Force. A hunch that told her that  the droids would come here to Mos Eisley. “Keep tabs on the local  troopers, ensure that they carry out their orders. I somehow doubt that  they take their jobs as seriously as the 501st does.”

The Seventh Sister nodded. “And you?”

“I shall do the same.” With that, Silba had her task, and so did the Sister. They parted ways to hunt for the droids.

----====| | |====----

Silba, her companion, had been right. The local troopers didn’t take  their jobs seriously. Local standards had become lax, due to a  combination of any number of factors, least of which was the distance to  the capital. Even with a literal inquisitor almost as literally  breathing down their necks, they could only be motivated so much. Their  actions and response times were substandard, even to the basic standards  of the common stormtroopers, let alone the 501st that Lord Vader was so  fond of and often seconded squads of to them. It frustrated her to know  that her fate was dependent, even to the smallest degree, on these…  rejects, these washouts. The Seventh Sister swore that if she was  somehow damned by any of them failing to catch these fugitive droids,  she would make it her last and final mission to drag them with her into  whatever hell Lord Vader would see fit to cast her.

The Seventh Sister sighed, while clenching and relaxing her hands. She  was getting frustrated and irritated, in a time and place where she  could ill afford to be either of those. “Report,” she ordered, venom in  her tone.

“Ma’am?” Came the reply of the trooper she had escorting her. Of all the  washouts and walking failures that she had encountered so far amongst  the members of the local garrison, this particular stormtrooper seemed  to be the least incompetent somehow. He’d taken everything in stride so  far, following her orders without question. A good head on this one,  maybe he’d be promoted to commander one day.

“Is there anything to report?”

He shook his head. “Negative ma’am, quiet so far. I’ll send out another request to check in right away.”

“Do so,” she ordered. It had been about an hour since she and Silba had  parted ways, each to pursue the same task in different places. The other  woman had apparently gone off to observe the local garrison’s efforts  to secure the air and sky above the port, while The Seventh Sister had  been left to oversee the troops on the ground.

Silba. To the Sister, the young woman was something of an enduring  mystery. She still remembered the day that she had met her, within the  depths of Lord Vader’s castle on Mustafar. Out of the blue she had been  summoned away from her activities as an Inquisitor, to meet with Lord  Vader regarding a ‘personal matter’ as he had put it. For a while on  that trip, she had been sure that she was flying her starfighter toward  her own doom, that she had made some unforgivable or unrectifiable  mistake and that Vader would see to it personally that she would never  get a chance to make it right.

Only instead of being introduced to her executioner, she was introduced  to Silba. The Sister still remembered her first impression of the girl,  there in Vader’s meeting chamber. She had been standing next to Lord  Vader, her face ever hidden behind an ancient Mandalorian relic. She had  seemed like some waifish slip, in stark contrast to Lord Vader’s  towering figure. There, Vader had given the Seventh Sister a task: to  teach Silba both about the galaxy and how to use machinery and  technology. And from then on, Silba was going to be her companion in her  mission to hunt down survivors of Order 66.

And so the Seventh Sister had, albeit reluctantly at first. The Sister  didn’t exactly consider herself to be a good teacher, and it had been  something of a learning experience for herself as well. Not to mention  that Silba had proved… difficult, at first. The girl had rarely  spoken even back then, and always in a tone that fell somewhere between a  loud whisper and an angry rasp. That she was audible at all was only  due to the voice modulator built into that helmet of hers. Her voice  always came with a clear tone of underlying anger to it. The Seventh  Sister didn’t even need to use the Force to sense the miasma of hate  that seemed to permeate the girl, anger at… something. Whatever it was,  she knew better than to ask.

Thankfully, Silba was a fast learner, albeit in her own way. At times  she seemed ignorant of common knowledge, the sorts of things even people  on the very outskirts of civilization knew: types of droids and  spacecraft, different common species and the like, even basic things  like Galactic credits and the Aurebesh alphabet. Other topics though,  she took to almost instantly. She understood advanced engineering  concepts, and how to build and maintain machines. She had been  fascinated with her droids, closely inspecting and handling one of them,  both to the Sister’s chagrin and that of her mimics. She also  understood ballistics, strangely enough, concepts like projectile  trajectories and the various factors that affected them.

And then her lightsabers. Silba had, somehow, managed to build her own.  Although, ‘build’ hadn’t exactly been accurate. Something more akin to  ‘cobble together from parts’ was more descriptive for those slapdash  initial constructs of hers. At the time, the Seventh Sister couldn’t see  how they could even function in the first place, and had chalked it up  to sheer anger and force of will on part of their owners. At least they  had stopped sputtering and flickering after she had shown Silba how to  rebuild and modify them.

Which was a good thing, because she was adamant on learning a new style  centered around them. Silba knew the basics at least, the Sister could  ascertain. How to fight, block and defend, the simple things all  younglings and padawans first learned. Footwork, dodging and evasion she  was a little better and more familiar at. It was clear that more  advanced techniques were centered around some sort of staff or  polearm-based weapon, and definitely one that wasn’t based on a  lightsaber.

The Sister had tried asking Silba once for more details, both about her  past combat experience and her past in general, but the other woman had  just fallen silent. Her past was clearly a sore point, and one of the  few things that seemed to truly upset her. At first, the Sister had  thought her to be from Mandalore, based on her helmet’s design. But it  was an old design, and millenia old at that. Not to mention that the  Sister later learned that it had been a gift to Silba from Vader, and  from his personal collection of trophies, no less.

Despite everything, things had turned out reasonably well. Well enough  so, that Vader had decided that the two of them should be partners as  they hunted for the few remaining Jedi. The Seventh Sister had been  appalled at first by the decision, but had known better than to object,  especially to Vader. Silba was clearly some sort of special case to Lord  Vader. Not exactly a favorite, but perhaps something akin to an  especially useful tool, and if there was more to it, then the Seventh  Sister knew better than to pry.

In the few years since, as they had grown into something akin to  partners, there was one thing about Silba that the Seventh Sister knew  for certain: whoever or whatever Silba had once been, the poor wretch  was as dead and buried as the Sister’s own past, and that was that.

“Milady?”

The Sister’s musings were cut off by the trooper’s report. “Yes?”

“All quiet so far, just a few farmers and merchants coming from the deserts.”

The Sister gritted her teeth. “Oh? Excellent, we’re looking for one of those.”

“Ah, right. Well-”

“Spit it out, before I tear your tongue out.”

The trooper swallowed nervously. “Well ma’am, one of the squads on the  west outskirt thought they’d found the farmer and the droids, a protocol  and an astromech. But, well…”

An eyebrow twitched. “Well what?”

“They, and I quote, ‘weren’t the droids they were looking for,’ apparently,” The trooper explained.

Something tickled in the back of her mind, the first warnings of alarm.  The Sister recognized them, and capitalized appropriately. “Get me the  squad in question, right now. Patch me through.”

“Yes ma’am.”

A moment later, and the tinny voice of the sergeant sounded on her helmet’s comm-link. “In- Inquisitor?”

“Trooper, I understand you found droids that matched the provided descriptions?”

“Yes, we did at first,” The trooper said. “Well, we thought they did,  matched I mean. But it was just a… a misunderstanding. They weren’t the  droids we were looking for, after all.”

Even through the static of the commlink, the Sister could hear the odd  robotic tinge his voice took at reciting that specific phrase. It  tickled something in the back of her mind, an old paranoia. “Could you  repeat that?”

As she feared, the stormtrooper wavered neither in tone nor delivery. “They weren’t the droids we were looking f-”

The Sister killed the comm link, hailing Silba the next instant. She  fully disregarded the troopers, as it was now clear they were  compromised. A brief moment passed and she was connected.

“Sister, any updates?” Silba asked.

“Yes,” The Seventh Sister replied. “The droids have arrived in Mos Eisley, but we now have another problem.”

“Which is?”

“Jedi.”

A beat passed in total silence, punctuated only by the sounds of the town around her. “Are you sure?”

“Positive,” the Seventh Sister answered. “A squad of stormtroopers were  mind-tricked into letting the droids through a checkpoint. It’s an old  Force technique utilized by the Jedi.”

“All right Sister, I trust you. Well then, it would seem that our quarry are nearby, so now we start the... hunt…”

“Silba?”

“I need to go,” She said. “Lord Vader calls for me again.”

“I see.”

“Can I trust you to handle matters for the time being?”

“Of course, Silba, of course.”

“May the Force ever serve you, Sister.”

----====| | |====----

The Force had led her to the entrance of some dingy cantina bar. The  Seventh Sister stood before the entrance, idly wondering what specific  choices in her life had led her to her current predicament. Wandering  around dirty streets on some backwater dustball, having to deal with  amateurish, barely trained foot soldiers while looking for a pair of  fugitive clankers. Had it been when the Jedi had whisked her away from  that orphanage on Miralia when she was a child? Had it been later, when  she had been inducted as a Jedi Knight? Had it been after that, when she  has survived getting murked by their own Clone troopers by sheer dumb  luck only to wind up subject to Darth Vader’s tender mercies?

She sighed, the sound coming across as a harsh burst of static from her  helmet’s speaker. She needed to keep her head in the game, and  frustrating, roundabout thinking wasn’t going to help her. The cantina  seemed lively at least, as she spotted a pair of rough-looking laborers  depart, both clearly inebriated. Perhaps she would find clues here? She  had often wondered how her partner managed to do it. To the Sister,  she’d just pick a direction without a word and start walking toward  trouble and a fight, and Silba would inevitably find both. Some small  part of her noted that out of all the places that she’d found fugitives,  Jedi or otherwise, a bar wasn’t one of them. She expected that to  change shortly.

And then up the steps from the cantina and without warning came one of  the two sources of her recent woes and anguish. Had it not been for her  Force-enhanced reflexes, the golden chassis of the protocol droid they’d  been chasing for the past couple of days would have smacked right into  her.

“Oh, pardon me!” The protocol droid quickly apologized as she darted to the side. “I simply did not see you there.”

A warbling of tones came from behind it. The source was the other droid  she had been hunting, an older astromech droid with a blue livery. Who’d have expected astromechs to be this snarky?

“Oh, well excuse me, R2. I don’t see you leading the way,” The yet unnamed protocol droid shot back.

The R2 unit indignantly beeped a scathing reply. The golden droid, after  recoiling, was quick to fire back. “Well, you certainly haven’t helped  keep us out of trouble.” The protocol droid turned back to her. “Please,  excuse myself and my friend here, we’ve only just learned that this  establishment prohibits droids.”

The Seventh Sister got over her shock quickly and took the briefest of  moments to consider her next course of action. She could disable the  droids now, take them apart right in the entrance of this crappy  cantina. But that action would cause a scene and alert their contact, no  doubt a seasoned and experienced Jedi Master if they had evaded capture  and detection for almost two decades now. It was highly likely that  said Jedi was nearby, possibly in the very cantina below her. She  carefully probed outward through the Force, seeking out any sort of eddy  or disturbance but found none. She doubted she would if they were that  careful.

Or she could play it smart, try and locate the Jedi before doing  anything rash. If she could take them by surprise, she could ambush them  and cut them down before they had a chance to react, to ignite their  own lightsaber. She could then come back and extract the data from the  droids once the major threat had been dealt with. A stray thought  drifted across her mind, wondering if Silba would like them as a present  of sorts. After the Sister had reprogrammed and upgraded them, of  course.

Behind her mask, the Seventh Sister grinned before coming to a decision.  She stepped aside, allowing the two droids through the exit, the two  bickering all the way. With a thought, she sent a brief message to  Silba. I’ve found the droids. The Jedi is nearby.

There was no answer. Which meant her cohort was no doubt still preoccupied.

The Seventh Sister let out another sigh, softer this time. She turned  her attention to the cantina proper. The bartender, a human male clothed  in orange robes was behind the bar, servicing customers. Through the  Force, she sensed those who were paying attention to the newcomer, for  one reason or another. A Devaronian male sitting in the corner gave her a  glance, although his attention was focused mostly on a quartet of  aliens playing music on a stage. A pair of human women sat further along  the bar, and they likewise gave her no more than a glance. She walked  up to the bar, to the nearest seat available and sat down, retracting  her mask as she did.

“What’ll you be having?” the man asked.

The Sister produced a pair of credits from the pouch at her side,  placing them on the bar. “Distilled water is fine.” While she was hardly  one to abstain from spirits, getting drunk on the job was not something  she dared to do, especially when the job could turn into a battlefield  at a moment’s notice.

The bartender grunted, turning to grab and fill a pair of cups from the dispenser behind him. Cups, plural. What? Her momentary confusion was dispelled when the bartender placed one in  front of her and the other in front of the young man she’d sat next to.  Crystal blue eyes, sandy blond hair, garbed in a simple white tunic and  pants and rough boots, the sort of outfit one would expect a common  laborer to wear. And a laborer he was, if his toned physique and tanned  complexion gave any indication of his line of work. At some point the  boy must have noticed her looking at him and turned to face her,  surprise crossing his features at the Miralian woman sitting in the next  stool over.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello,” she replied back.

A beat passed. “Water too?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry, if I’m interrupting you.” He turned back to his cup, taking a  sip. The Seventh Sister regarded the contents of her own up. She assumed  it was clean, at least by whatever standard the locals considered  ‘clean.’ She dared to take a sip, and noticed nothing strange, nor any  odors emanating from the glass.

The Sister smiled. “Not from around here?” Something… stuck out about  the boy next to her. He looked out of place in an establishment like  that. Too young and soft maybe? It was something she couldn’t quite  grasp, that her subconscious had noticed but the rest of her mind  hadn’t-

Then she saw it, through the Force.

There was a lightsaber clipped to his belt and hidden by his tunic.

Oh.

“I’m just waiting for someone,” the apparent Jedi padawan replied,  unaware that he’d been made. “A friend. He's around here somewhere.”

“I see.” She really did, and it was starting to make sense, the pieces  falling into place. In the time since the fall of the Jedi, a few of  their more enterprising members had tried to restart their order, taking  in padawans and apprentices of their own. They too had been cut down  whenever they were found. It would seem that this boy was one such  apprentice, taken in by the mystery Jedi she was now aware of. He was  kind of cute, so it was a shame she would have to kill him.

“What about you?”

“Oh, me?” The Sister smiled, showing teeth. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Have you found them?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh,” he turned back to his drink. “Well, good lu-”

The boy was abruptly shoved toward her, by someone standing on the other  side of him. She leaned back to see an alien, specifically an Aqualish,  saying something to him in its native tongue, something that sounded to  her like a bantha's death throes. To his credit the boy only glanced  back at it before turning away, likely having already judged the alien  to be a non-threat.

“He doesn’t like you,” Another spoke, coming into view from around the  Aqualish. The Seventh Sister was revolted by the human’s appearance. At  least she thought it was a human, or one that had shoved their face into  a lit starship engine for a thrill, before visiting some back alley  surgeon to get patched up. She decided that they were looking for an  easy mark, someone to accost or shake down, and had unwittingly chosen a  Jedi’s apprentice.

“I’m sorry,” the boy said, turning away. Subtly, she bit her lip. A part  of the Sister was overjoyed at the anticipation. She was about to watch  a padawan get into what was probably his first real fight. No, it was  definitely his first fight, else she would have heard about it already.  The ISB had a strange talent for finding incidents involving Force  sensitives.

“I don’t like you either,” the human with the ruined face said. “You  just watch yourself, we’re wanted men. I have the death sentence in  twelve systems.”

“I’ll be careful,” he turned back to his drink.

“You’ll be dead!” Ruined Face Man said, grabbing the boy by his shirt.

“This little one’s not worth the effort,” came the voice of another man,  walking through the bar and up to the duo so keen to start a bar fight.  Right behind him was a Wookiee, towering over all. It took all of one  second for the Seventh Sister to peg the voice. It had aged since she  had last heard it so long ago, from a Jedi Master to a group of  younglings, one of whom had been her. And with growing dread, she  realized that he was here. The great sea beast that Lord Vader  had chased for so long had been on this dusty backwater the whole time.  And unfortunately, she couldn’t even kill the man. Not that she thought  she couldn’t take him, no. It would be because her boss would literally  flay her alive for denying him the chance to do so himself.

“Come, let me get you something,” Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi said.

Violence exploded. Facejob roughly grabbed the farm boy, hurling him to  the floor with more strength than the Sister had credited him with.  Impressive, overpowering a Jedi in training. Kenobi’s hand went to his  belt in defence of his padawan as the Aqualish drew a blaster. The  bartender yelled, diving behind his bar in a panic. And there it was,  the Sister heard the ignition of a lightsaber, the weapon’s blue beam  arcing through the chest of the scarred man before slashing back through  the Aqualish’s arm and severing it. Both of them screamed in pain,  falling backward onto the floor in a moaning heap.

Just as quickly as it started it had ended, and the elderly Jedi  extinguished his blade. The Sister realized that she had risen to her  feet on instinct during the commotion, and she only became aware that  the cantina had fallen silent when the sound returned. The patrons went  back to quiet talking, and the jizz band on the stage resumed playing.

The elderly Jedi walked over to the padawan, helping him back to his feet. “I’m all right,” the boy managed.

“Luke, Chewbacca here is first mate on a ship that might suit us,” The Jedi said.

She took in the Jedi’s Wookiee companion. It towered head and shoulders  over most of the patrons of the bar, and wore a heavy bandolier with  little else. The Sister knew that most of their kind often forewent  clothing due to their heavy fur coats they grew naturally. The creature  roared something in its guttural language to the Jedi, and the Seventh  Sister was also reminded why so many regarded them as little better than  animals.

“Indeed, my friend,” the Jedi answered, turning to the farm boy. “Luke,  take the droids and go with him to his ship, help him if needed. I need  to have a word with someone else before we depart.”

So, Luke was his name, and the Sister suppressed a chuckle. The missing  child of those two farmers, running away in the night to become a Jedi?  The story was so saccharine that it almost made her feel like puking. A  shame, that such stories always had tragic ends. At least she’d make the  boy’s death a quick one, if only because she liked him.

“What about you Ben?” Luke asked.

“I need to have words with an old acquaintance before we depart,” ‘Ben’  said confidently, turning to face the Seventh Sister with his lightsaber  already in hand. The Seventh Sister had already drawn her own, having  anticipated a violent lightsaber duel herself.

“Or, should I say, Inquisitor, my dear?”

“Kenobi,” the Sister snarled.

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