STAR WARS: Fugitive

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Everyone makes mistakes, thought Bli Aeocc as he sat alone at his table sipping on his glass of water and rationalizing over his most recent bout of bad luck. He stared out the tapcaf window, watching as random shapes of various beings walked past. When he first sat down, the fog was very thick, which made it easy for Bli to ignore any details of the beings outside, allowing himself to sink into memories, sifting through choices and alternative outcomes that would never come to pass now. He needed to pull out of his rut and find work, another bounty of some sort to draw some credit flow, since he was running short of food and supplies for his space transport.

Now he was on the other side of the galaxy, Ryloth of all places, far enough away from his blunders anyways. He was supposed to meet a rep for a bounty hunting team that claimed to specialize in hunting Jedi Knights. Recent years had seen a Jedi or two pop up at scattered points outside the Core allegedly on scouting missions. While it was also no secret that some were beginning to defect from the Republic to join the Sith armies, the Sith did not seem to want to take chances these days as they had posted bounties for Jedi, dead with their lightsaber weapon or alive. Dead Jedi paid more, but either posed a significant challenge to anyone up to the task. The reputation of Jedi spread quickly, even without the HoloNet from the Core. While everyone knew the Sith were ruthless, the Jedi could be just as deadly.

Bli wasn’t new to bounty hunting, but he only recently tried delving into hunting force-sensitives. His very first attempt, which he now sat contemplating, ended badly. Some renegade Sith were loose around Mandalore. You’d think the Sith could take care of their own, he thought, always killing each other for power, a bit unusual.

Following tips, he picked up on a trail, unsure of how reliable the tips were. He remembered hearing for himself all the evidence he needed – lightsabers clashing just around the corner from where he was, in some sort of obvious struggle, bodies strewn around the alleyway once he finally made it to the scene, the only survivor in sight was a woman, beautiful, though I’m not sure why I cared to notice, crying, sitting on the ground. He was still unsure at first – that was my first mistake... – until out of nowhere, it felt that way anyways, she put up an amazingly strong fight... even for a female, she was well trained...

He checked his chrono ...rep’s gonna be here in a few minutes... and shook his head inhaling deeply, weary with reliving that whole encounter in his head again....

Something banged into his table real hard. He sprung to his feet, his holdout weapon drawn and aimed at whatever had just disturbed him. He was startled, but he wasn’t about to let on that he wasn’t aware of his surroundings to anyone for an instant.

Standing nonchalant at his reaction next to him was a figure wearing dull, green armor with orange trim over a loose, brown colored bodysuit, wearing a helmet with a bluish, opaque visor. He guessed the figure was female by the slender form standing with feet apart, weight shifted to one side, sidearm barely visible as it was held it so that it hung behind the support leg. When the figure didn’t flinch at his reaction, he noted further the features of the armor were shaped fairly to accommodate a female form. Where her neck would be was bare, so he could tell she was Human, or at least near-Human, as she had brown hair that barely strayed from her helmet.

He held his blaster trained on her and charged up his auxiliary systems of his own battle armor with his finger-switch on his empty hand, not daring to drop his guard until she moved.