STAR WARS: Fugitive

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

How did I let myself fall for this!! Peri was still in shock, as he neared what seemed like the end of the line, trapped in an isolated alleyway, a quarry caught by his own quarry. He always followed details to the bitter end – which he always maintained that it yielded confidence and safety, while others nonetheless found it to be a caustic trait in him, which was why he worked alone these days – but never anticipated quite so fatal results in the details he dared to follow.

But now he faced informal execution. He had trailed a network of various warlords and interplanetary incidents across the galaxy's outer rim, looking for intel to bring back to his home world of Corellia. Corellia had recently been targeted by and barely defended against a small Sith skirmish force. Republic reinforcements had arrived too late, despite the small victory – Peri knew it was small – leaving him with a nagging feeling that something should be found to use against the Sith when they returned, or from any other marauders as well from outside the galaxy core threatening Corellia and other worlds near the core's edge, something to make Corellia less of a target of opportunity.

Peri personally believed that any entity owned a weakness to exploit, and had hoped to convince his government agency, Corellian Security, known as Corsec for short, that he could find such a weakness. Peri's superiors expressed little faith in his hunches with little evidence available to him. Rejected, he went rogue, leaving the core behind to sift through tangled webs of puzzle pieces. Finally, he stumbled on to something promising, trailing a crime ring's operations around the outer rim to Mandalore. Unfortunately, he tripped someone's trip-wire, landing him here, now, on his knees with the muzzle of a blaster turned his way, with no way and nowhere to run, no backup to help him, and no one to witness his death but his executioners.

His captors consisted of a green skinned Twi'lek female, Lady Gosell, a smuggling ring underlord who he had been trailing, along with her partner, another Twi'lek, male, didn't get his name, and a bounty hunter, probably just hired help, in full battle armor, complete with helmet and jet pack.

"As you can see," began Gosell, "I am a very private businesswoman," she shook one of her slender head tentacles from her shoulders and straightened her loose-fitting blouse, as if preparing for an inspection, "and I don't like loose ends or taking risks when someone I don't know is discovered listening in on one of my private affairs." She sounded almost rhetorical. "I'll make this quick," she said almost seductively, raising the blaster to point at his forehead...

"Well, hello there!" came a new woman's voice. Gosell's blaster arm snapped toward the newcomer, a Human woman, wearing a badly burned, torn and ragged, blue dress with scorched gold trim, waving her hand.

"You should feel very afraid to pull the trigger," the woman calmly stated, as she treaded her way toward the small gathering.

"I shouldn't have a second thought," Gosell bellowed, clearly distressed all of a sudden, but maintaining her aim on the woman.

"Who do you think...," began Gosell, when the woman, still advancing, waved at them again and cut her off, "I am sorry, but I am afraid I must take this man from you for transport off this world; you have no further need of him."

The male Twi'lek leaned in toward Gosell and whispered something, wherewith she lowered her weapon.

"I won't waste my time with you, and I detest being interrupted," she said with a grin, "but I shall enjoy watching my hired help prove his worth, for the glory of Mandalore."

The bounty hunter nodded, brought his sidearm to bear in a show of response and power before his employers. Then suddenly something lifted him a couple meters helplessly into the air. With the sound of an oddly familiar snap-hiss, the two Twi'leks turned back toward the apparently hostile woman.