The speeder bike in the cargo hold needed a tune up, Zira told herself. It needed a good steady hand and a proper set of tools to make sure its repulsorlift engine didn't pop a transistor at ninety kilometers an hour and spread its driver across the ground in a fine paste. This was definitely the most pressing matter she could be attending to, surely. Definitely. The soldering, the arcing, the drilling and all other noises that filled the cavernous bay of the Phantom's cargo compartment and reverberated off the walls were just a pleasant byproduct that only just so happened to block out the sound of booted feet marching up and down the hallways of the ship.
Yes siree, she assuredly didn't need some sort of deafening distraction to help block out the familiar spikes of anxiety that came with listening to a sudden intruder slam open every door and maintenance hatch on the ship she was currently on. Zira Ajaxis Vandrec, Rebel pilot extraordinaire would
never be scared of a contraband shakedown. Not when she was a little girl and her mother was trying to figure out where she'd hidden the sweets she stole, not when she was a teenager and the boys in white armor and their sneering grey uniformed officer had come aboard to insist they'd found something illegal so the good captain would give them their due bribe like everyone else, not now...not ever.
That was why she was down here with an arc welder in her hand and a pair of goggles over her eyes. Her hands were steady. Boshi's deputies could stomp around all they wanted. Look where they wanted. Snoop through every nook and cranny they wanted. She wasn't scared. The memories didn't unnerve her. The clinical coldness of their helmets' black visors hadn't haunted the dark corridors of her childhood night terrors. The sound of jackboots clanking off of metal grating just on the other side of a thin durasteel wall didn't send her heart racing. The hissing of the cargo hold's automatic door opening behind her didn't make her jump out of her own skin...
"The hell do you want?!" She blurted out, whipping around from her work and practically snatching the goggles off her face. "I already told you where everyt—Wait you're not one of the deputies."
"Not last time I checked, no." Said Jirano. He stood a half step through the doorway, his niece's reaction to his presence having halted him mid stride. He looked at her perplexed and tilted his head slightly. "Sorry, I didn't intend to startle you."
"Don't worry about it," she said with a huff, blowing a stray strand of sweat matted hair out of her eyes. "I just didn't expect to see you back here so soon. Figured you'd be halfway back to the farm by now."
"Not without transport." Jirano said, pointing at the mostly assembled speeder propped up in front of Zira. Its many components were sat in small haphazard piles around her in a display of mechanical ritual that Jirano had become all too familiar with over the years of watching his niece's method of work.
"Ah," a chuckle tugged the corners of Zira's mouth into a slowly spreading smile. "Convenient. And here I was thinkin' seeing the future was your thing."
She tried for a good-natured laugh but when her uncle's frown didn't immediately dissipate the mirth died in her throat and she found herself feeling an uncharacteristic bashfulness come over her as she brought the goggles back down over her eyes and continued her work.
"Speaking of which," she pivoted lamely. "D'you see Shakka on your way here? She was with me until Boshi's people started giving me a hard time and then wandered off."
"We spoke." Jirano said. To Zira's ear it sounded like he wanted to continue that statement but had cut himself off. She didn't need to be looking at him to sense him shift uncomfortably where he was standing. "She'll be staying in town for now which is...fair enough I guess."
A sigh followed. Zira could hear the disappointment radiating off of it even over the whirring of her hydrospanner. "Listen, don't worry about her," she said with a shrug. "We all had a bad go of it on Nar Shaddaa. Give her some time to get her head on right, I'm sure she'll come around."
"I suppose." His response was far away and so were his eyes.
"You planning on facing down those Utanxi with nothing but a pair of mittens?"
"What?" Jirano said, suddenly returned to the present as he shook his head.
"You, mister warrior monk." Zira teased as she walked across the cargo hold and slid the lid off a broad cargo crate that was sitting up against the wall. "You know for someone who never shuts up about being careful you're sure about to overthink yourself into an early grave."
"What's that supposed to mea—" Was about all Jirano could get out before his niece sent some small black object flying towards him from across the room. He managed to catch it in the split second before it would have collided with the side of his head.
"It means hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side." She said with a smirk and a nod to the E-11 blaster rifle she had tossed to Jirano out of the crate. "That one even comes with a stun setting as standard. Just your style."
For the first time since he'd walked in Jirano smiled as he looked down at the blaster in his hands. "I appreciate it but I don't think this will be necess—" he started.
"Its either that or the dirsuptor rifle I've got squirreled away."
Jirano's sentence came to a squeaking halt that was gradually replaced by laughter but now it was his turn to laugh alone. He regarded his niece for another moment.
"Wait...you're not joking." He said with sudden realization. "Zira where the hell did you get—"
"Rough go of it. Nar Shaddaa. Were you even listening to what I just said?" She lazily made her way back over to the speeder as if no further answers were needed. "You're not the only one making backup plans, you know," she grumbled. "I'm not some hapless teen anymore."
The silence that followed was only punctuated by the metallic groan of a bolt being tightened. For a moment Zira was actually afraid she'd hurt her uncle's feelings.
"You're right." He said.
"I'm...right?" Zira repeated, turning to face him with a cocked eyebrow. "Who are you and what have you done with my uncle?"
"First time for everything I guess." He said with a wan smile. "But you are right. After all that's happened I can say you definitely don't need me worrying about you. I just do it anyway because...because..."
"I know." Zira affirmed gently with a nod, wandering over to stand in front of Jirano. "C'mon lets have a look at ya. Make sure you're not missing anything before you go gallivanting off into a blizzard."
Jirano's brow furrowed as he watched his niece walk around him with a thoughtful expression. "If there's anything I haven't already thought of we can just strap it to the speeder."
"No, no, no." Zira tutted as she made the full circle about Jirano and pointed at his torso. "There's definitely something you're missing right here. Lift your arms up real quick."
Confusion dominated Jirano's features but he did as his niece instructed, hiking his arms up above his head. "You're going to have to be more specific. I don't know what—Ah!"
Zira's hug managed to catch the larger Nautolan completely off guard...all according to plan, of course.
"You're missing one of these." She said with a chuckle as she squeezed herself into him. "I know you'll never stop worrying about me. You protect people, its what you do. Its what makes you a good uncle." She looked up into his face, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "I just wish you'd let other people worry about you for a change."
"Thank you, Zira." Jirano said as a pleasant warmth spread out from his chest. "But I'm really not going that far, there's no reason to worry."
"There better not be." She scolded him, refusing to release the embrace and putting her head against his shoulder. "You come back with one arm again and I swear by all the stars I'll take the other one off myself."
She felt the chuckle rumble in his chest as he returned the embrace, wrapping his own arms around her. If there was a sensation that felt like home, her inner voice told her, this was it.
"That would make nice moments like this a bit more complicated, logistically speaking." He joked.
"I'm serious." Zira insisted. "You better come back to me, you big dumbass."
"I will," Jirano said. "I promise."
The pneumatic hiss of the compartment door sliding open swept the warm fuzzies aside as if they'd never been there at all.
"Alright folks!" Salla announced, the armored Bothan coming around the corner nonchalantly. "We've finished our inspection and didn't find anything—"
If the confusion in Jirano's face made the deputy slow then the naked derision in Zira's expression froze him place. It was all he could do not to stammer like dumbstruck livestock caught in a speeder's headlights at the sight of the two still hugging in the middle of the room. Instinct alone saved him as he turned on the spot and disappeared back through the door before it could automatically close behind him.
"I'll just go tell the Twi'lek then." He concluded lamely.
The Twi'lek was indeed told, the deputies excused themselves and fled the scene before Zira could give them more of her stink eye. In the minutes that followed Vic disappeared as quickly as she had come, Jirano had driven the speeder bike down the cargo ramp and back out into town with enough gear and supplies strapped to it for a week's trek through the woods (not that he intended to be gone for a week but still, it never hurt to be prepared), and suddenly the ship was much quieter than it had been for the past hour. The silence was a bit uncanny to Zira's ears...or maybe the uncanny part was the slight itch in the back of her mind that told her she was forgetting something...
"Have you seen the kid yet?" Shakka asked as Zira passed through the ship trying to remember what she was doing. "I heard her voice a few minutes ago."
"Karking hell." Zira swore, suddenly remembering. "Well she couldn't have gone too far."
She had not, in fact, gone far as it turned out. The two women found her in the cockpit along with Kate. Myala had shoved herself into a corner where she sat with her back to a wall, knees pulled up and held to her chest where her face was buried. Zira felt crestfallen just looking at her, it was like she was trying to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible.
"Hey there." Zira tried softly, crouching down so she could be eye level with the girl. "You doing alright down here? Floor's awful cold."
Myala mumbled something against her knees that Zira didn't catch.
"What?"
"No!" Myala said, louder and more petulant this time so she could be heard. "Everyone hates me!"
Zira did her best to bite back a laugh. The girl had said it with such absurdly genuine conviction that it had caught her off guard for just a moment. Ah, to be a teenager again...
"Well I can safely conclude that's definitely not true." Zira said, trying to put on her most reassuring smile. "After all, I'm part of everyone and I don't hate you."
Myala picked her head up slowly to look at Zira and whatever mirth Zira had been harboring died upon seeing how red and wet the girl's eyes were as well as how pained the lines in her face.
"Serina hates me because I told her son what happened to his uncle..." She moaned. "He was just so curious and I couldn't just stand there and tell him I didn't know what happened when I saw the whole thing. I...I ruined everything. I don't know why I said anything!"
"Myala its alright—"
"Its not!" she shouted, tears streaming down her face. "Its my fault! Jaden's probably dead by now because of me! Its my fault! I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to..."
Her rant came to a halt as Zira reached out and squeezed one of her hands in her own. The girl flinched at the sudden contact but stopped to look at Zira when no pain followed.
"Myala listen to me, this is important." Zira insisted. "None of this is your fault, okay? Sometimes bad things happen and its nobody's fault. That's something you're gonna run into in life a lot, okay?"
"But Serina said..." Myala whimpered softly. "She said to not say anything...and...and I did."
"Well, sure." Zira reasoned. "But its not like you told Jaden to run off into the woods, right?"
"No..."
Zira didn't think it was possible for the girl to shrink down into herself any more than she already was but somehow Myala had managed it with that last plaintive "no." Zira looked to Shakka for any suggestions but the Twi'lek was steadfastly silent despite managing to look positively sympathetic even over a pair of folder arms.
"Listen Myala," Zira offered. "You probably haven't eaten anything since last night I'll wager. Why don't you come let us make ya something for breakfast and then we'll go find something fun to do in town, how's that sound?"
Myala sniffled through a runny nose and wet her long sleeve with the tears she dried from her cheeks. "I'm not hungry..." She said eventually. The sudden wet grumbling of an empty stomach breaking the silence attested otherwise, however.
"Ah, see," Zira chuckled. "Your mouth might lie to me but the stomach always tells the truth. C'mon, we'll break some eggs, make some omelettes and I'll even let you make fun of my cooking, sound like a plan?"
The question came with a freely proffered hand. Zira watched the gears turn behind the girl's eyes as she considered the offer. It broke her heart to see how much the desire to trust the kindness being offered fought with the hard experience of whatever trauma Zira knew had been inflicted upon her as a slave in Gordulla's farce of a court. Eventually Myala's hand inched forward and took a few of Zira's fingers in her grasp.
"Okay..." She said quietly.
The offerings of the ship's pantries were...lackluster from Zira's point of view. Then again, the former captain had been a transient by occupation; smugglers and free traders may have been known for their thrilling adventures and devil-may-care attitudes but they certainly weren't known for carrying around award winning eating establishments in their holds...unless one needed to be smuggled somewhere for some reason. A pity, Zira thought as she rifled through crates of dehydrated and freeze dried foods. They'd certainly do the job but left a lot to be desired. Myala, for her part, didn't seem to mind at least. Zira watched her quietly peck and stir at the victuals on the plate in front of her at the counter near the ship's kitchen. The girl sat on her stool, skittish and cross legged as she continued to try to make herself as small as possible, occasionally sipping at the cup of blue milk that had been poured for her while Zira scrubbed the kitchen's many chrome surfaces with a cloth.
"So Myala..." She started tentatively. "Whaddya think of all this snow? Bet they didn't have much back where you're fr—errr...where you used to be."
"...No, not at all." Myala replied eventually, her fork fidgeting with a morsel in front of her nervously. "I saw a lot on Gordulla's old holovids when he played them...but I never knew it was so cold...in person I mean."
"Nothing quite like it, eh?" Zira beamed. "All that stuff that came down last night was nice and powdery too, not that slushy crap you get on some planets. Should make for a good ol' fashioned snowball fight later!"
The speed with which Myala's eyes widened was matched only by how soft and shaky her voice suddenly became. "I...I don't wanna fight anybody though!" She pleaded. "Please don't make me fight...I don't...I can't...I—"
"Myala sweetie nobody's fighting anyone." Shakka declared suddenly as she took a seat at the counter next to the girl. The pointed look she gave Zira only deepened the Corellian's confusion. "At least...not in the way you're familiar with it."
"Oh!" Zira said. "Oh. No. No! Of course not! Its not an actual fight, that's just what it's called! Its...a game. You've played games before, right Myala?"
Zira saw the fear of giving a wrong answer in the teen's eyes as they darted between the two women next to her. She swallowed weakly and set her fork down before speaking.
"Gordulla used to make us guess which one of us he was going to show off to one of his friends when they came to his tower to visit...He called that a fun game."
Zira and Shakka shared a look and for the first time in a long time Zira didn't know what to say.
"I never found it very fun." Myala finished and then was quiet.
"Listen Myala, I don't want you to have to think about Gordulla again if you don't want to," Zira said after a moment. "All that's over. You don't ever have to go back to Nar Shaddaa again, understand?"
Myala didn't reply. Her eyes were busy twisting through the lumpy memories apparently housed in the rehydrated eggs on her plate. Eventually she simply nodded wordlessly.
"I'd like to see the snow again." She said.
Zira gave her the best reassuring smile she could conjure. "Well we can definitely make that happen."
About a hundred yards from the massive gate that provided the only really obvious entrance and exit for the town through the length of the shimmering shielded wall that surrounded it three speeder bikes and the figures straddling them formed a loose triangle in an open patch of snow. They congregated in the open and so were obviously not attempting to hide anything but at the same time these obvious outsiders to the gunmetal grey town of Imperial prefabs were far enough away from any of their hosts that they couldn't easily be eavesdropped on.
"...Let me send a pulse over the frequency to make sure it works." Vic was saying as she manipulated a few of the knobs on her long range communicator pack, the antenna for the device bent lazily off to one side. "Standby...there. Do you hear that?"
Jirano, sitting a few meters away astride his own speeder bike taken from the ship's cargo hold held his communicator up to his ear and managed to hear the faint pulsing beep that Vic's device was sending over the frequency she'd just given him.
"Clear more or less." He confirmed, putting the device back into a belt pocket. "I assume you giving me this frequency means you're not coming with us?"
Vic shook her head as she revved her speeder's engine. "I've got business here. Besides, I'm sure the two of you can handle our arsonist compatriot and and some noble quest if you put your heads together instead of up each other's asses."
Jirano gave a sidelong glance to the impassive helmet that Karl wore. The man made no indication of even acknowledging the dig besides a slight shrug of the shoulders.
"I'm...sure we'll do fine, thanks." Jirano said after some consideration. "Keep in touch. We'll try to call to check in periodically while we're out and keep you updated."
"Good idea." Vic nodded. "Try not to run afoul of any of those monsters."
"Maybe those monsters should try not to run afoul of us." Karl grumbled as he turned his speeder towards the gate.
And so the three split with Vic headed back into town and Jirano and Karl driving their bikes directly up to the gate. They were halted by one of the gate's several guards who no doubt sensed their intentions when he saw their little group off in the distance. Jirano was brief, pulling out the coin that the Marshal had given him and tossing it to the man to let him examine it. The guard looked the object over, looked back at the unlikely pairing of the fully armed and armored mercenary and the comparatively plain clothed Nautolan, and shrugged his shoulders before tossing the coin back to Jirano and signalling his comrade in the gatehouse to open the gate and allow them to pass. Two speeder bike engines revved into life and the two offworlders peeled off into the wilderness around the town, the fence and outskirts of civilization shrinking further and further behind them as they traveled under a sky that was much clearer than it had been the night before.
"So what noble quest was Vic talking about, then?" Jirano asked as they got out of earshot of any of the guards at the fence, raising his voice to be heard over the whir of the engines. "Dealing with Ego and Roger is one thing but I never pegged you for the charitable type."
"I'm going to speak to this exile." Karl replied. "That's all she meant."
Whatever Jirano had been expecting him to say, it hadn't been that. "Do you...think he's dangerous?"
"I think he ought to have a choice. No matter what he did, and it doesn't sound like he did much, it just doesn't sit right."
It was a simple thing, phrased simply but in that moment it struck Jirano as somehow profoundly important. He had spent almost three decades ruminating, meditating, and dwelling on all the ways his order had failed in their purpose and if there was one thing he always came back to it was how, when it had really mattered, the Jedi Order had always managed to miss the forest for all the trees. In almost every conflict or disagreement that he'd been presented with he had always watched as the great sagely masters of the order had forgone the obvious good they could have had that was directly in front of them in exchange for the promise of some nebulous greater good that Jirano swore they always felt was attainable but that he had never felt was truly tangible.
His own words to Zira came back to him. "It is their way," he had said. As if that made it right. Thirty years later and with almost every master he had ever known now one with the Force...and he was here making the same mistakes.
Or perhaps...not? Perhaps, like old Oryon had told him once, the answer lay in something simple. Perhaps the galaxy simply needed more impertinent expectations that what was right be done...or at least that it demanded to be done.
Or perhaps he was just going crazy thinking his firecracker of a niece had a point. There was always that possibility.
"Let me help you find him."
"What?"
"Like Vic said, two sets of eyes are better than one. If we both look for him it shouldn't take too long. He's on foot, he couldn't have gone too far."
Zira had been hesitant to leave Myala with Shakka outside while she crossed the street to step into the New Republic's embassy office here in town. Eventually she had convinced herself that the two would be fine if left to their own devices for ten minutes...or at least that's what she fervently hoped would be true in any case. Walking through the doors of the plain, squat building that only managed to stand out from its neighbors by virtue of the flag of the New Republic draped over the entrance her mind was immediately whisked to more pleasant prairies as the warmly lit interior unfolded itself before her. Broad holo-posters mounted along the walls and into standalone pillars scrolled through sets of ever changing images depicting in artistically rendered glory actions that she was intimately familiar with. Here was the famous Alliance flag raising over the crystalline towers of Christophsis that commemorated that sector's hard fought rebel victory and just beyond it was a rendering of a SpecForce Pathfinder waving his squad of troopers forwards under withering bolts of blaster fire on a beachhead she recognized as being on Scarif, the scene of one of the earliest strikes the Rebellion forayed upon as a single entity.
These and a dozen more scenes like it were arrayed in every corner of the building while near the back wall beyond the desk of the secretary Zira recognized as the one who had invited their group to attend the ambassador's appointment stood a memorial on a marble pedestal that projected the faintly glowing image of a slowly spinning blue and green orb whorled with white. Underneath it was a golden plaque that Zira read although she hardly needed to given what it commemorated:
REMEMBER ALDERAAN
She wandered through the mostly empty hall and reflected on how clean everything was. Even the chrome finish on the blaster equipped N-5 sentry droids posted at each door, still as life sized statues shone under the gentle light of a brilliant crystal chandelier that hung from the center of the ceiling. Potted plants dotted the landscape of the building providing the first bits of greenery that Zira had seen since she landed here almost a day ago. This Ambassador Trask certainly ran a tight ship, she thought as she came to a startled stop in front of the secretary's desk. She had been appreciating the decor to the point that she had nearly walked into it.
"Greetings!" The woman with the pristine auburn hair beamed from her seat behind the desk as she folded her hands in front of her on a small stack of paperwork. "And welcome on behalf of the New Republic!"
"Good morning!" Zira chirped politely. "Krissa, right? Ambassador Trask's assistant?"
"That's right!" The woman affirmed. "Should I inform the ambassador that you've come to answer his summons?"
"Yeah, su—"
Something on the assistant's desk caught Zira's eye. There was a small holo-display of who she assumed was the ambassador shaking hands with Mon Mothma, often regarded by the wider public as the mother of the Rebel Alliance. But that's not what Zira's attention was caught by, rather it was the scale model of two X-Wings flying in attack formation that stood on small display stands next to said holo-display that had the Corellian's full attention.
"I...uhh...I'm sorry is this supposed to be a model of Hammerin' Hank Palgoz's X-Wing?" Zira asked, tapping the nose of the model.
"Ahhh, how astute!" Krissa said managing to sound genuinely delighted. "A connoisseur of Alliance history, perhaps?"
"I suppose you could say that." Zira said, snorting out a bit of laughter as she further examined the model. "I just couldn't help but notice this model is missing the thirteenth and fourteenth kill marking he'd painted on the nose before he lost a leg in his last sortie at Fondor."
"Oh." Krissa hummed. Zira tried not to enjoy how much confusion painted her facial expressions as she considered the statement. "I'm dreadfully sorry, did you know Hank Palgoz?"
"I definitely knew him well enough to help install some new S-foils onto his pride and joy before he flew that sortie." She turned to face the secretary and extended a calloused mechanic's hand to shake. "Zira Vandrec, a pleasure to meet ya. Please tell Ambassador Trask that Javelin Squadron sends its regards and I'd be happy to speak with an old rebel for old time's sake if nothing else."