Disclaimer: This universe belongs to someone else. I just play in it.

Chapter 1: First Run

The smuggler knew that something bad was going to happen when she walked into the restaurant. She sat down in a padded booth in a near-empty establishment a few blocks out of the financial district of Ord Mantell's dusty capital, ordered soup made out of familiar Corellian-style ingredients, and waited. Corellian food reminded her of home, but not because the smuggler was Corellian. She'd had never been to Corellia, nor were either of her parents from there, but in the Galactic Core you couldn't throw a stone without hitting a human, and most of those humans were from the systems settled by Corellians, and so somehow Corellian cuisine had evolved into a sort of universal human comfort food. Even on Coruscant, the planet the smuggler reluctantly called her home, there were lots of Corellians to be found. There was lots of everything on Coruscant, though.

The server, an organic being—a female Twi'lek— brought the soup. It was good, but she wasn't comforted.

She had no real reason to be uncomfortable, not yet, anyway. Ord Mantell was a long way from home, but it wasn't strange enough to be truly frightening. The population was mostly human, which should have made the smuggler feel more at home. The terrain was familiar enough. She'd been to planets with towering trees that made her feel like an insect, flat, contourless continents, or places with gray skies and rain that never stopped. She'd seen holos of them, anyway. Still, Ord Mantell was still a strange place to the smuggler. She'd never been here—at least not that she remembered. There'd been a time when she was little that her father had brought her along on one of his trips, but had that been Ord Mantell or Ord Zat? She couldn't remember. She'd been too young.

But everything really was going well. Her contact had provided her with the location of the drop off point on the Avitlan island—a war-zone these days, but that needn't bother her. She didn't plan on going anywhere near the actual conflict area. They'd used dead-drops and encoded transmissions, so the smuggler didn't know the true identity of her employer, nor did they know hers. This was important, as she was reminded every time she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glossy polished-wood surface of the bar where an aging human male was shining cutlery. If anyone saw that girl, the one staring back at her, she'd be done for. She could see the inexperience in her own face with a clarity that she hoped would get her through this, but that knew better than to rely on. The smuggler could be as honest with herself as she liked, but that wasn't going to get her out of this alive. This was her first run. That was what bothered her.

She reeked of newness. She wanted to be a smuggler, make big creds moving cargo for scofflaws, but the young woman knew that simply calling herself a smuggler didn't make her one. Being a smuggler's daughter didn't mean she was one, either, especially not when for all intents and purposes her father was retired. Whatever reputation the smuggler Vondo Ra'lon once had, he couldn't just pass it on to his daughter like a piece of advice or an old holdout blaster. Besides, she didn't even have his name. Vondo Ra'lon had married and taken his wife's name and insisted that the children do the same. The name Junaida Tormaris would strike fear into exactly zero hearts galaxy wide, until she built up a reputation of her own. She was a nobody, just a girl with pink cheeks and dark hair and the burning desire to make her own way in the galaxy by hauling cargo. Illegal cargo, of course, but Junaida Tormaris hadn't been raised to mind what was and wasn't legal. She'd been born into this business, and while nobody else might know that, she already understood how things worked on this side of the law. Her father had brought her along with him when she was little sometimes. What had he been running the last time they'd come to Ord Mantell? She remembered crates marked FRAGILE that she wasn't allowed to play near. Had they been bombs? Or were they just ducking customs to undercut regular vendors or something mundane? They might have been Alderaanian glass pots. And it might have been on Ord Zat.

She glanced at that unwelcome reflection again and saw the tense curve of her own shoulders, and the way she kept running her fingers down the edge of her vest. Tucked underneath, clipped inside a shoulder holster was her blaster. Baby's first blaster. It was warm next to her body, moist from her nervous perspiration. She'd bought it off of a friend of a friend from the academy. She didn't know where he'd gotten it, and she didn't care. She needed an unregistered firearm and she could get one without having to leave Coruscant. She was nineteen, tall, fashionably slender, fresh-faced with blue eyes and jet-black hair braided tightly down one side, ending in a carefully pinned coil. Yes, if anyone saw that girl there, unhurriedly working her way through the over-salted Corellian potato soup; neatly groomed and apparently collected despite the nervous glance she kept throwing at her own reflection, sipping her glass of water slowly like someone who'd never been rushed before in their life, they would know that this was her first job, and they'd start to drool. Even in the capital; Ord Mantell was a rough place.

Junaida had a feeling that it was already over for her on this job. Someone somewhere had already spotted her, and this was it. The meet was going to be a set up. There wasn't going to be a shoot-out, because both Junaida and whoever had spotted her would know that it wasn't necessary to fire shots. She would go down without a fight. She would scare easy. She was just a little girl who was a long way from home. Barely one year ago she had sat in a stiff white dress in line with six hundred other teenagers in the auditorium of the Coruscant Academy of Achievement Preparation and received her diploma from a Bothan who had certainly already forgotten her face and name. She'd been a mediocre student. She'd caused trouble, but not too much trouble. She was insignificant and harmless.

That's where they were wrong. Sure, this was her first job. Sure, she'd never been in a blaster fight before, unless you counted light-tag, and shooting desh off a fence on Alderaan, but she'd gotten herself this far. She'd decided to follow in the footsteps of her father—quite without his knowledge, of course—and she was going to see this transaction through, no matter what it took. Fake it until you make it, she thought to herself. This was quickly becoming her favorite mantra, as much as she knew that mantras were poor defense against real danger.

Junaida Tormaris paid the server, gathered up her coat, and ran her finger down the edge of her vest again as though straightening it, while her thumb brushed the hard metal of her illegal Black Talon Pulse-Wave Blaster underneath. She thanked the server and ran a magnetized fingertip over the sensor in her earlobe that activated her comm implant as she stepped onto the street.

"Fiver, check in," she whispered into the mic in her collar as she pulled her helmet over her head and climbed onto her rented speeder-bike.

The astromech droid, full designation R1-F5C, was a souvenir of her childhood and a summer at Junior Circuitry Camp. She'd assembled him partly by herself, partly under the supervision of the tireless camp instructors who had insisted that unless you were a fighter pilot there was no use for an astromech at all, but Junaida had found the gutted droid in a salvage heap and liked the look of him, and remained obstinate. She stood by her choice. While potentially impractical, Junaida appreciated having a droid for a companion whose speech was limited to binary. Fiver warbled back an all-clear signal, but even the droid's tone, which Junaida had learned to interpret as cheerful, did little to allay her growing trepidation.

"Any word from Skavak?" she asked. Of course, while Junaida wasn't entirely certain of the identity of her employer, she had managed to figure the identity of the other smuggler who'd been hired to do this job with her. Skavak would be running the second half of the job. She wasn't naive enough go in believing ignorance was armor.

Fiver warbled back a chirp Junaida that knew meant no. She had a bad feeling about Skavak. First of all, he was a smuggler without references who was anything but new to the game. Usually, a smuggler worked up a list of jobs with reputable references—by disreputable standards. Employers, a list of happy clients, jobs completed, shipments delivered, and also of customs officials they knew suspected something, and planets they knew they could slip in and out of undetected. Skavak had none of this. His record was spotless. Among thieves, his tabula rasa stank like a dead bantha under twin suns. Nobody had a record that clean. Even Junaida, as fresh as she was to the game, had a couple of counts of public misdemeanor and petty theft to her name—part of the reason why she'd been sent to Junior Circuitry Camp. Either Skavak wasn't Skavak's real name, or his records had been purged. Their employer—the nameless source who had enlisted them for the transport a shipment of arms off Ord Mantell—had chosen to look past this red flag. Perhaps they thought that any man who can scrub his record that clean could also get a shipment of guns out of the system clean, too.

Junaida's job had been to collect the guns planetside and then meet Skavak in orbit so he could take them far away. Her record would get her in and out easy, and his experience would get the goods the rest of the way. He was waiting out there now, just off of the big hyperspace routes, hidden in the gravity well of the fifth planet's moon. Junaida knew the job she was doing was illegal. Most arms were being shipped to Ord Mantell, be it from one nameless benefactor that smelled like the Galactic Republic, or by a different one that was likely Sith. People here wanted guns, so anybody taking guns off planet would run into bad humor not only with the Republic Police, who were responsible for filling the law-enforcement gaps on the planet during the war, but also with whatever faction planetside had wanted them in the first place. Junaida didn't really care. That particular red flag she would ignore. In fact it was her job to ignore that red flag. She was a smuggler. If nobody cared that this cargo got delivered off planet, she'd just be a courier pilot.

The second red flag was the knowledge that since Junaida was able to find out anything about Skavak at all, he probably knew everything about her as well. As clever as she might have felt tracing untraceable comm connections and getting her hands on the Galactic Police records files connected with them and then to the vagabond called Skavak, she was probably only half as clever as every other smuggler with holo-net access. She'd managed to figure out who she was working with, so she was confident that Skavak did too. Which was bad news.

There was a third red flag, as well. Junaida had pulled up Skavak's file in the GalPol database and found his latest holo, to be of a man with dark hair and spidery black face-tattoos, strong jaw and arrogant smile, and she found him absolutely stunning. Junaida may have only have been nineteen, but she had learned well enough not to trust her instincts when it came to men. Any man who made her heart beat fast was best avoided like the Rakghoul plague.

But this was just business. Junaida knew she had to keep it that way, but it felt counterintuitive to trust someone with her life, never mind that she didn't have any alternative now, when she knew that even a simple schoolgirl crush on a man like this was misguided. A man like Skavak could have her killed during this encounter just because he had nothing to profit from her staying alive, and fewer ways to split the actual profits from the job. Junaida was sure that if Skavak knew how easy it would be, he would put her out an airlock and never think twice, so Junaida had made sure to only ever meet Skavak over HoloComm, and she'd been disguised. Her gender, her species, her accent, her age; all these things could lead back to her true identity and get her killed or scammed. Was she in over her head? Probably, but there was no turning back now. And still she had a very bad feeling about working with Skavak.

Junaida wasn't force sensitive or anything. That honor fell to her youngest sister Alsina, who'd been shipped off to study with the Jedi when she was five years old. Alsina was fourteen now. Once, a couple years earlier, Alsina had sent Junaida a message on the HoloNet warning her that her old boyfriend was cheating on her. Junaida wished Alsina'd send her a message now. Maybe she'd sensed something. Junaida asked Fiver to check the HoloNet just in case.

Fiver chirped "all clear" again.

"Blast it," Junaida said to herself, keying the ignition of the speeder. "I guess that means I've got nothing to worry about."

Two hours later, pinned down under heavy fire beneath the leaking fuel-tank of the old cruiser parked in the docking bay next to hers, Junaida cried out, "Okay okay! Cease fire! Cease fire! I surrender!"

A few stray blaster-bolts lit up the duracrete flooring, skittering all too close to the puddle of highly volatile fuel leaking from the cruiser. Junaida ducked out of cover and saw a blaster-rifle take aim at her from across the bay, but the lead officer motioned for him to stop. She gasped for breath, air coming only with great difficulty through the pounded intake valve in her helmet. She'd taken a bolt to the helmet that had nearly knocked her out right as she stepped into the hangar bay. She'd heard something inside and reached for her blaster, and that was all the provocation her attackers needed to open fire. It had taken her a few minutes to sort up from down and right from left again, and in that time everything had gone to pieces. She'd drawn her blaster and opened fire, ducking behind a conveniently located crate, and prayed to whatever gods people normally prayed to that this wasn't one of the arms crates filled with explosives. It wasn't.

But the people firing on her weren't robbers, they were customs officials, dressed in blue Ord Mantellian armor, lined up in tight defensive formation, shooting to keep her still but not kill her. All the while the leader shouted orders at her.

"Put your weapon down! You are under arrest, Junaida Tormaris, for the transportation of stolen military goods with the intent to sell! Lower your weapon and we will take you into custody! Lower it now! Now!"

But she had kept shooting, not aware of exactly what had happened. How did they find her? She hadn't even started yet. She'd only just gotten to Avitlan and stepped outside the spaceport to see what Fort Garnik was made of. She'd heard stories of pink skies and wanted to see for herself. She had still been waiting for her contacts to deliver the goods to the hangar so she could take them off world. She hadn't committed any crime—not yet, anyway. How could this happen?

"I surrender!" she repeated, tossing her blaster to the ground and raising her hands above her head. One of the commandos grabbed her by her arms and threw her to the ground. She felt the click of binders being activated, trapping her wrists together. Her head hit the ground. The broken panel on her helmet crushed the intake valve even more. She couldn't breathe. She tried to yell. Everything was growing dark.

And then the officer pulled her helmet off and she could breathe again. She pressed her forehead to the cool duracrete and gasped for air. Oxygen flooded her brain and she became aware, out of the corner of her eye, a pool of red spreading across the hangar floor. One of the officers was down, two of his or her companions tearing away the armor to apply a compress. Had she done that? The officer holding Junaida's binders shook her, slamming her face into the floor. "You piece of shit," he hissed. "You're going to pay."

"Enough," snapped the leader. "There'll be time for that later. Ms. Tormaris. Where is your ship?"

"My ship?" Junaida repeated.

"Yes," snapped the man again. He had removed his helmet. He looked very angry. Middle-aged. A career pro. Probably ex military. Scratch that, probably still military.

"My ship?" Junaida stuttered. "Is it not here?"

Rough hands wrenched her torso up from the ground so she could see. Junaida's vision swam and for the first time she realized why she'd had to run so far for cover from the blaster fire. The docking platform where her ship was supposed to be, where she had just parked it minutes earlier, was empty.

Junaida closed her eyes and was surprised to find that she felt reassured. "Skavak," she whispered.

"What?"

"Ahh, ak," she groaned unconvincingly. She wasn't about to sell out her accomplice, even if it was starting to look like he was more of a double-crosser than a helping hand. Tattling was bad form. Any ten-year-old knew that. "My ship—it was here. I don't know where it is."

"Your ship and the guns, where are they?" the officer demanded, slamming her head back down to the ground. She thought her nose would break, and then it did. She heard a crunch and was temporarily blinded by pain, choking on her own blood.

"What guns?" she lied, but it was hard to speak. "I don't know!"

"Enough," said the leader in a calm, authoritative tone. "Take her to lockup. We'll question her later and clean her up. We need to find that ship. Line up and move out, boys!"

The angry officer hoisted Junaida to her feet and marched her across the hangar to a military speeder nearby. The others had finished patching up their injured comrade, who sat up, face pale and disoriented. There was blood all around him. Junaida felt sick. There was blood all down her front now, too.

"Do I get a lawyer?" she asked meekly.

The turned to face her, shooting her a look that though through his helmet Junaida could only imagine was a sneer. "Where do you think you are, Coruscant?" he spat. "Don't got no lawyers out here, miss. Just us or the Seps. Wanna bet who'd keep you alive longer?"

"I'm not a fan of gambling," Junaida replied, but the engine drowned out her words. And then it occurred to her that she'd survived. Against all odds and despite losing her ship and her droid and probably her cargo, she was alive.

And that meant her parents were going to kill her.

The urgent signal came in a little after midnight, Coruscant central time. The personal Holo-terminal in the master bedroom lit up and chirped, demanding attention. Vondo Tormaris rolled out of bed but left the lights off, not wanting to wake his wife, but knowing full well that she was already awake. They were both trained to wake at the slightest sound, even if they hadn't had to use that training in a while now. Vondo took the call, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and checking the call's origin. It was his daughter; the troublesome one.

Her form swam into focus in miniature before him, shoulders slumped, hands clasped behind her back. Not clasped, bound.

"Juni?" he began.

"Dad," Junaida Tormaris replied, but it was less of a greeting and more of a plea.

"What's going on?" Vondo demanded, enlarging the image so he could see Junaida's face and shoulders. There was dirt on her face. No, not dirt—blood. The color on the projector was so bad he could hardly tell. Reception was bad. Her nose was broken, but she looked sharp, alert, and focused. Vondo knew that look. He'd worn the exact same look when he was her age. Troublesome indeed.

"It's okay," she insisted, but looked down, still appearing more amused than repentant. "There's been a misunderstanding. I'm on Ord Mantell. Someone's stolen my ship and they think I'm...mixed up in something crazy." Now she got her act together and looked terrified, like she really had no idea why she'd been arrested.

Where did she learn to lie like that? Vondo wondered but almost laughed. She was good. This wasn't the first time she'd falsely professed to be innocent while being held by police, and if her performance was less convincing than usual now, the blood on her face probably had something to do with that, but she was still good. Or course, both of her parents were professional liars. She'd been raised in a literal den of thieves. Mixed up. Of course she was mixed up. Vondo felt a pang of guilt and then gathered himself up to put on his best angry father voice. "Mixed up?" he repeated curtly. "Young lady, I want you to tell me now and truthfully, what exactly are you mixed up in?"

"Nothing!" Junaida insisted, eyes flashing. She almost smiled. No child, don't smile. If anything, you need to cry. Junaida looked down again and for a moment Vondo thought she was going to cry. Maybe she simply couldn't pull it off. She'd never fake-cried to get out of trouble before. No, she'd always worn her punishment like a badge. Troublesome. "I wanted to visit the dig-site. There's some ancient circuitry remnants being dug up here. You and mom said I could go." Junaida appeared mortified for a moment. "Mom's not there right now, is she?"

Vondo shot a glance across the room to his wife. She was out of bed but had her attention fixed on the window, not the Holo-terminal, though there was no doubt that she was listening intently. Outside, a crane with blinking red lights ferried a handful of builder-droids from one level of a formerly devastated skyscraper to another. The transparisteel blocked out all the noise, but the rebuilding of Coruscant was still visible to those who cared to look. She glanced at him and smiled.

"No, she's not," he lied. "You'd better thank your lucky stars. Have you been charged with anything yet? Where's here?"

"Not formally, no? And I'm on Ord Mantell. Avitlan. Fort Garnik."

"Have you been mistreated?"

Junaida shrugged, "Yeah, but I more or less did some mistreating of my own when things first went down." Besides the bloody nose and bruised cheek, Junaida did look all right. No missing limbs or broken ribs. Nothing lasting. Well, assuming she got that nose treated properly. Now that would teach her to stay out of trouble. He wondered if Junaida could get on without the perfectly symmetrical, pretty face that had helped her out of tight spots before. Not as tight as the spot she was currently in, though. There was a point where looks stopped counting.

Vondo wanted to laugh. Instead he glowered. "Don't say or do anything. They will release you in the morning."

"And then what?" Junaida asked, meeting his eyes. "I don't have a ship, I don't have any money—they took Fiver!"

Vondo shook his head. Losing the droid seemed to upset her more than anything. He knew letting her get an astromech so shortly after their akk dog had died wasn't a good idea. "I'll send someone," he reassured her. "I've got some friends in that sector. They'll help you get back to Coruscant. And then," he began and paused to glare at the Holo-terminal, "We will talk."

Junaida nodded and muttered, "Thanks," before turning to someone out of the frame and nodding again. The image dissipated and the terminal lights changed from blue to dull orange, and then faded into darkness.

Vondo ran a hand through his black hair. Junaida seemed to have inherited all of her features from him. His coloring, his crooked smile, his taste for distasteful company and most of all for trouble. It was starting, now. How old had he been when he'd first been arrested for something serious? What was Junaida trying to haul? He didn't doubt for a second that she was in on some sort of illegal transportation deal. She'd always followed in his footsteps. He'd raised her on his own a lot since her mother hadn't been around back then. It had been difficult, but that was a long time ago.

Vondo's wife turned to face him and gave him a small, tired smile before sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Like father like daughter," she murmured, though it was resigned and almost affectionate. "I was always an obedient child," she told him, "And it brought me just as much trouble and danger as Junaida's rebellious ways do."

"Is being a scofflaw considered rebellious if it runs in the family?" Vondo asked and reached out to stroke his wife's hair. "Shannin, I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" Shannin asked.

"When she was little, I always brought her with me. I didn't know what else to do. Maybe she thought it was easy, that it was good, what I did."

"You were a parent," Shannin assured him with a small shrug, "Which was more than I ever was. I'm sorry. Besides, I'd rather she learn to take after you than me." She leaned her head against his shoulder and held her breath.

"Don't be so hard on yourself," Vondo told her and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "We did our best."

"Yes, and made a right mess of it all the same," Shannin grumbled neutrally and then sighed. "We left them a terrible legacy."

"Is there any other kind?" Vondo observed and let go of Shannin. Getting up, he pulled the curtains over the window shut and then walked back over to the Holo-terminal, switching it on again.

"Who are you calling?" Shannin asked as she climbed back into bed and pulled the covers over her legs.

"I know a kid who lives on Ord Mantell. He's been running with the freedom fighters there for the past few years."

"Not Corso Riggs, Vondo?"

"Why not?"

"He's just a little boy, isn't he?"

"It's been ten years since I dropped him there," Vondo reminded Shannin. "He ought to be a man by now."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Shannin asked, a small smile flickering across her tired face.

"I'd trust Corso with my life," Vondo assured her, typing a short text message and sending it across the HoloNet.

"Yes, but would you trust him with our daughter?"

Vondo crawled back into bed in the dark and pulled the covers up over his shoulders, trying to find the warmth that had seemed to already gone out of the sheets in the few minutes he'd been up. He took a moment or two to think about the question and then nodded. "Yes, actually. I just don't know if I trust our daughter with Corso."

Shannin sighed a small laugh and found her husband's hand beneath the covers and squeezed it tight. "She's a good girl," she said and closed her eyes. "All he needs to do is get her out of prison and then she'll come straight home."

"You don't believe that, do you?" Vondo asked with a tired smile. "You don't believe what she said, do you?"

"Of course not," Shannin assured him. "I'm just hoping she'll have learned her lesson and be done with it."

"If she's sensible like her mother, she will," Vondo declared. "I'm just worried that she takes too much after me."

Shannin smiled and seemed to reflect on this. After a few moments of silence she replied, "I was never sensible."