Well, I Got Friends in Lothal Places...

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6ZYwCxfdes[/youtube]​

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Continued from We Were Soldiers Once, And Clones...​

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The juvenile clone was recovering in a bacta tank.

A battalion of two thousand clone troopers. A crew of more than seven thousand Republic sons and daughters. And he'd come away from his last battlefield with his allies dead around him, and one immature clone whose sole crime to the universe had been being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the wrong war.

...on the wrong side.

Or maybe that was the real trick to the whole ordeal. There had never been a right side. The Jedi were so enamored with black and white interpretations -- the light side of the Force, the dark side of the Force -- that everything was always two-sided. Good guys. Bad guys. Allies. The enemy of my enemy.

He had gone to war with the absolute belief that the Republic was right. That he was fighting for democracy, and liberty, and the right of all species to be governed with dignity and respect.

Then the clone army had descended upon the Republic, the savior in a time of need. The Grand Army of the Republic. What a noble name for what was, in truth, the oldest profession in the galaxy.

Slavery.

They called them clones, not people. They were just good soldiers. They were bred for war. They were just doing what they were made for.

The rationale and excuses were hollow. The young Jedi would have liked to have said that he'd thought that at the time, but he hadn't. The droid army of the Separatists was descending upon Geonosis. There wasn't time to debate the morality of what they were embarking to do. It merely had to get done. And the Jedi couldn't do it alone.

So they let morality slip. After all, it was just morals. Slavery was fine, so long as it was just clones.

What of democracy? That was, after all, what they were fighting for...

Free elections would be the next thing to go. The Constitution amended so that the Supreme Chancellor would serve a life term in office. No more term limits.

What of the right of a people to govern themselves? No, no... emergency powers. This was an emergency. There was a war on, obviously. So the Senate's war declaration powers were transferred.

To the Supreme Chancellor. Who would no longer be elected.

One by one, morals and principles set aside. Put on hiatus. The politics of fear became the practice of fear. The rationale of fear. A clone army... a slave army. No term limits. A dictatorship in place of democratic due process.

Inter arma enim silent legis. In times of war, the law is silent.

His Republic was dead.

It died a long time ago. And Sor-Jan, like so many, had been too caught up in the damn war to have even realized it at the time.

He realized it now, when it had bit him in the arse. For his next trick, maybe he'd even be able to figure out where he was. Or even what planet he was on.

The small Anzat gave a grunt, grimacing as the 2-1B droid stabbed into the boy's left side to clear an suture the jagged wound which marked where the Jedi had been clipped by a blaster bolt. Sitting atop the bed in the disheveled medical bay, the weary and haggard youth stared across at the bacta tank in which the even smaller form of the juvenile clone floated.

There were so many wrongs about the image -- about the reality -- of that youngling suspended like that. In the glass, the Jedi could see his own reflection. And the weight of his own eyes staring back at him offered only questions. The kind of questions which invited answers that were not easily given, much less considered. The kind that asked, why hadn't he said something? or done something?

He knew something was wrong. The Jedi knew that something was wrong. With the Republic. With the war. Why hadn't any of them done something more about it?

The boy stretched his left arm out, at least as far as he could with the burns and gash which marred the pale flesh. As the droid went to work repairing and bandaging the wound there, the boy look down at his other hand, in his lap. The silver and black pommel of a Jedi lightsaber was rolled back and forth along his thigh.

He'd constructed it... twenty? Twenty-five years ago perhaps?

With his thumb, and a touch of his mind, the child casually slid the cover apart to reveal the crystalline chamber within the housing of the weapon. An emerald jewel sparkled as the light touched it, revealing a dark scar through the center where the gem had cracked. "You made it through that ordeal on Bespin and you break on me now..."

Maybe it was a metaphor.

Pressing down with his thumb, the boy snapped the broken lightsaber back together. A replacement crystal wouldn't be easy to come by. Not without a trip to Illum, which was world's away from anywhere in the galaxy. Mygeeto perhaps.

Frell, they could be on Mygeeto now for all he knew.

As the 2-1B completed its work, the young Jedi hopped down from the medical bed. The deck in this part of the wreckage was slanted, but not to the extreme as with some other parts. The ship had split in three places from the impact, but at least so far they hadn't seen any indications of anyone coming to check on just what it was that had fallen out of the sky.

The optimist would have been hopeful for a rescue. Sor-Jan was betting on treasure hunters. Salvagers. Pirates coming to pick over the frigate and see what trinkets of value they could pluck out of its innards like vultures.

The fact that they hadn't seen either any good Samaritans or pirates meant they must be pretty far away from civilization. They'd have to get a speeder working to explore away from the wreckage.

With everything that had happened, he ought to have left before now.

...except the one soldier he had left under his charge was in a bacta tank, and the boy wasn't about to leave the clone to be defended by all of a single 2-1B.

So they would see to their own rescue, once the clone was ready.

In the meantime, the Jedi would tend to the bodies of their dead.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

The column of smoke formed a black scar in the sky.

Hands outstretched, the young Jedi guided the body of the naval officer from outside the ship. She was human. Perhaps twenty-five or so years old. Enough to make the boy try and recall what he had been doing a quarter century ago.

He looked young. But she was young.

Too young.

They were always too young.

He'd assembled the pyre just outside of the wreckage of the ship. The fire now stretched higher than he stood. Amid the flames, the bodies of two adult clones were already burning. She joined them in the fire, as the Corellian youth stared into the flames.

She had served about his flagship. For how long, he wasn't certain. Since before Duro. He'd seen her then, of that he was positive. But looking at her now, the boy realized he didn't even know her name.

Their Republic had died. Their Chancellor had betrayed them. Their army had turned on them. And, in the face of all reason to do nothing, she had stood up for him. Fought beside him. She had been a friend to him. To the Jedi.

...and he didn't know her name.

The tear slipped down the boy's face, falling to the ground as he gaze his eyes down in shame.

Then he turned to look back at the break in the hull, where two juvenile clones lay awaiting their own journey into the fire.

At least the woman had a name. Those boys had numbers. Lives that were shortened. Accelerated. They were only two years old, dead without ever having a childhood.

Sinking down to the ground, the small Anzat put his head in his hands as he wept with an outpouring of emotion he'd been trying to keep trapped within. When had the Galactic Republic become this? When had the Jedi allowed themselves to become so impotent, so docile, as to do nothing when everything had become so very wrong.

The smell of smoke carried with it familiar tones. Odors which snapped at the sense, and beckoned him back to when he'd last smelled corpses burning...

. : MAYVITCH 7 : .​

33 years before the Battle of Yavin​

The Jedi Whitecloak soared over the lunar surface below.

Banking into a steep turn, the Jedi starfighter narrowly avoided a pair of Yinchorri. The bulky alien craft needled the air with a flurry of blaster bolts, which shot across the canopy of the two-man seater. Within, the green-robed Corellian youth wrestled at the controls beside a Rutian Twi'lek who appeared teenaged. The azure-hued teen had a make-shift padawan braid hanging from his right lekku, and seemed to be holding on for dear life as a blaster bolt sailed straight by the transparisteel -- seemingly inches from his head.

Turning sharply to look down at the smaller Jedi, the Twi'lek pointedly asked, "Would you like me to fly, Master?"

Even as he struggled with the controls, the child-sized knight gave a wry grin as he shook his head. A mixture of wit and mirth colored the Corellian's tone as the boy asked, "Should I even mention Cyrillia?"

The teen's blue face flushed a violet hue, a momentary flash of anger or frustration clearly exhibited in the expression he aimed at the diminutive menace. Then the teen merely looked away, plaintively noting, "That's unfair, Master."

The small Corellian scoffed, even as the smile brightened slightly. "You just worry about firing. I'll handle the flying."

Pulling up sharply, the boy banked as he brought the whitecloak around for a second pass. Since joining the Republic, the Yinchori had become aggressive. Expansionist. They had taken over a Republic shipyard, invaded the moon of Mayvitch, and then murdered the Jedi ambassadors sent to try and restore peace.

Then, because that wasn't enough, they'd attacked the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.

The Jedi Archaeologist and his padawan had been on in the Outer Rim territories, surveying ruins of the ancient civilization that had taken root on Etti IV, when they had been recalled by the Jedi Council in light of the present emergency. The Jedi had known of the pending attack by the Yinchori on Coruscant, and it seemed that Sor-Jan's padawan was only too happy to return to the Core Worlds.

Which, if he'd been bored studying the antiquities of Ettian civilization, the young Twi'lek certainly wasn't want for action now.

A plume of fire erupted in the sky ahead, as the whitecloak came about with its batteries firing. The Yinchirri starfighter explosion peppered their fighter with debris, as the Corellian Jedi and his padawan worked in tandem to turn the tide on the remaining fighters itnertwined in an aerial dogfight with the Jedi.

A stray bolt slammed into side of the whitecloak, sending a shower of sparks crawling across the control as the electrical systems began to fuse with the impact. Fires broke out from beneath some of the panels, smoke starting to fill up the inside of the cockpit as the small Jedi alternated between swearing and yelping as he was shocked by the controls.

As the Anzat tried to wrest control of the starfighter back, the Twi'lek turned as he began to say, "I did..."

"Shut up and brace," Sor-Jan snapped, grimacing as he grabbed hold of the controls and gritted his teeth against the resulting shock.

Pitching the whitecloak downward, the small Jedi angled the starfighter into a controlled crash as it glided down over a lunar air field that had been re-purposed by the current occupation force. A few blasts from the laser batteries cleared the runway, as the Jedi whitecloak slammed down on the tarmac in a shower of sparks.

As the starfighter careened across the air field, the canopy was ejected. The two Jedi figures leapt from out of the smoking space plane, one igniting a green lightsaber while the other shone amber. The green robe billowed behind the child Jedi like a cape, whipping through the air as the boy vaulted to the ground and immediately took to the fight. In a haze of blaster gas, the green blade glowed vibrantly, as the blond youth neatly deflected and re-directed the hail of incoming fire.

As he did, the occasional motion of his hand sent Yinchorri, crates, and blaster sailing as the boy interwove telekinesis into his offense. Sparing a glance over toward his padawan, the little Corellian frowned deeply at what he saw. "Basics, Dilly. Basics!" the boy admonished from the other side of the runway.

As though to reinforce his master's perceived disappointment, the young Twi'lek augmented his decidedly sloppy blade work with a flourish. A spin of the lightsaber that had absolutely no form or function, other than to nearly twist the lightsaber right out of his own hand. "Form Three is boring, Master," the teen tossed flippantly over at his teacher.

Bloody hell. Was he going to be like that when he hit puberty? If so, at least he wouldn't have a master to harass with it. "Oh, yes, getting cleaved in two is much more fun," the Anzat youth deadpanned, as he circled back toward his apprentice.

As master and apprentice came back-to-back in the fighting, the Twi'lek remarked, "Padawan Secura believes I should practice Form Four."

Oh, wonderful. With all the knowledge and experience of his own master, or the available and venerable Jedi Masters, his apprentice was ignoring them all and listening instead to the advice of padawans.

That ought to work out well.

"Se..." the boy started to echo, as he tried to put a face to the name. And, when he did...

"Aayla Secura?" the Jedi commented dryly, risking a glance over his shoulder to peer up at his padawan with no small amount of skepticism. If he recalled correctly, Dil Andau was referring to the apprentice to Quinlon Vos. Twi'lek. Female. Scantily clad. Body piercings..."I doubt it's her Ataru that you're interested in."

As the resistance began to thin, the Jedi pair moved up toward the command center. Their objective was the capture of one of the Yinchori generals. Warrior caste. He'd led the invasion of Mayvitch and was quickly making himself the butcher of it's population. As though a reminder of that purpose to their being here, a shift in the wind brought with it a taint that had an immediate impact on master and apprentice alike.

Holding the sleeve of his brown robe to his face, the Twi'lek teen's voice cracked as he uttered, "What's that smell?"

"Bodies."

The small Jedi was still for a moment, before nodding his head toward a pit that had been dug into the ground. Within was a mass grave, the bodies slowly smoldering down to ash. Fluids oozed out from the corpses, as the fats of their bodies were rendered by the heat. The stench produced was putrid and overpowering.

No more condemning evidence against the Yinchori warrior they were here to arrest.

"That's the smell of burning bodies," Sor-Jan noted stoically, as the child continued toward the control tower where their 'host' was no doubt waiting to greet them...

. : LOCATION: UNKNOWN : .​

present day​

He'd put the two children on the pyre an hour ago.

It was finished now. Four clones, two humans... or four adults and two younglings. Their corporeal forms slipping away into the smoke which rose above the wreckage, releasing their spirit back to the Force from which they had come. And, still, the duty owed to them stayed the young Jedi by that fire. Staring into the flames. Feeling the heat sear his flesh. Choking on the stench and trying to remember them.

He'd really only known them for less than an hour of their lives.

And, in so short a time, they'd made a larger impact on his life than some he'd known for forty years.

As the pyre burned into the night, the boy let his thoughts drift out on that column of smoke. He thought about the Republic. He thought about the Jedi. He thought about the War.

Pick a war. Any war.

The Hyperspace War.

The Yinchorri "Rebellion."

The Clone War.

The Jedi Knights were supposed to be the guardians of peace. And Sor-Jan was a Jedi. He'd specifically chosen to follow his master's path because he wanted to reinforce peace, not war. Democracy, not dictatorship. And, still, the end remained the same. His Republic had become an Empire. And he had helped it, each step along the way.

The problem with being an Anzat was that Sor-Jan was still very young. He'd live a thousand years. Maybe more.

And, yet, at only fifty he felt as though he had lived too long.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

From leading a force of more than twelve thousand souls, to a wreckage containing just one clone.

...and one droid.

There's been so much death and destruction over the last twenty-four hours. Confusion, disillusionment, and all the usual 'fog of war' phenomenon had set in, ever present in the way in which the young Jedi struggled to comprehend how he was supposed to defend the wreckage of a ship without a crew. Or the futility of action when he had every reason to believe that the entire galaxy had turned against him. The only solace left him was the realization that this... Galactic Empire hadn't caught up with them.

Yet.

That sentiment hung like a shadow over every small victory he could eek out of the ruins of the Republic ship. He'd managed to salvage a refresher, so at least they could clean themselves up before they went out in public.

There was a landspeeder in the hold that was relatively intact. And seemed to be operational, for the most part. That meant that they had transportation out of here other than hiking into the wild on their own. He wasn't receiving any transmission on the usual frequencies used by the Jedi, but there were indications of some kind of electromagnetic activity. Most signals seemed to originate at a point several hundred kilometers west of their current position. It could be a settlement. If nothing else, it was hope and a direction to travel in.

And weapons. DC-17 hand blasters and DC-15S carbines which could be used for defense, or sold for credits. If the Galactic Republic had been dissolved by the Supreme Chancellor, then it was safe to assume his credit cube was worthless now.

Unfortunately, a new credit cube wasn't going to be easy to come by. If the Jedi had been declared enemies of the State then his identicard wasn't just worthless, it was a clear and present danger.

They'd need new identities, and false credit records to go with them.

The boy felt bile rise up in the back of his throat. Yesterday, he'd been leading the Grand Army of the Republic. Now?

Now, he was a criminal. And already thinking like one.

Well, that didn't take long, did it? Was that just the Corellian in him, or more of his former master's pragmatism seeping through? Whatever the case, the boy was grateful for the opportunity to at last run his clothes, ragged and stitched as they were now, through the refresher. As well as himself.

And as well as the clone.

Emerging inside of the medical bay, the tow-headed boy looked up to see the 2-1B medical droid helping the young doppelganger of Jango Fett to pull a shirt over his head. The younger boy was scratched and bruised, but no worse for wear after the night in the bacta tank. Which suited Sor-Jan quite fine.

He'd lost too many clones already.

"You look strong enough to pull the ears off a gundark," the small Jedi intoned quietly, announcing his presence. As the disheveled clone glanced up to see the Jedi standing there, the boy floundered to try and stand.

"Sir!" he chirped, as the medical droid moved to push the child back down onto the bed.

Taking a step forward, the small Anzat motioned for the clone to relax. "Rest easy," the Jedi said, trying to maintain a smile as he spoke in a soothing tone. "You've had a busy day."

The small clone just stared down at his feet for a moment, fidgeting as he obediently answered, "Yes, sir."

Well, there was that good Kamino indoctrination. "What's your name?"

Glancing back up at the Jedi, the young clone answered, "Three-Ex-Seven-Four-Four, sir."

3X744. Yes, the Corellian imagined that ranked in the top hundred popular baby named. "That's a number," Sor-Jan noted wryly. All the clones he could think of had names. Something they called each other. Aces. Jack. Wilds.

"Yes, sir," the small clone answered in the same autonomous, neutral reply. Hesitating a moment, the boy then remarked, "But... it's my number, sir."

So clones did have a sense of personal identity. Noting the stated preference, the young Jedi inclined his head in respect to boy's statement. That was rather bold, actually, given what he'd been told of their training and education program on Kamino. "Three it is then," Sor-Jan affirmed with a smile.

Taking another step closer, the young Jedi reached across the small clone's body. Taking hold of one corner of the bed sheet, the boy draped the thin blanket over the younger boy. "We'll be setting out at dawn. You should get some sleep while you can."

The clone struggled against being put to bed. Shifting underneath the sheet, the boy tried to push himself up from the mattress as his mouth opened in protest. "But..."

The small Jedi's hand gently rested on the youngling's shoulder.

Sleep.

It wasn't so much a word, as it was a concept. An idea made manifest in how the young clone's body went limp, the child relaxing down onto the mattress as the small Jedi tucked him in.

And then looked down at the other boy's face, as he thought over all the choices that the next morning would have to involve.

He'd spent so much time throwing clone lives away. Now all he had was just one clone to protect.

It wasn't going to get easier.

Even if this... Galactic Empire... wasn't looking for them, that much was still going to be true.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

Plains.

The land was flat for kilometers in each direction, giving the spectator an almost level view out to the horizon. The young Jedi's boots crunched down over barren soil, as the Corellian boy trod over the remains of a farm. Which was a generous description at best. Whatever it had been, the land had been left fallow for many years. The tattered remnants of the farm which might have once been there evident only through the faintest outline of structural foundations which were visible where rain or erosion had whittled away the cover of time.

The sound of airspeeders could be heard, the resonance of repulsor engines tacking on the wind in the faintest echo, but there hadn't been any sign of a transport. If this was a populated world, then it had to be fairly sparse.

An agricultural industry or, perhaps, a mining one.

Still, there were not many worlds in the Mid-Rim that were sparsely occupied as this one seemed. Certainly not a world in the Colonies. Corellia had a wilderness, but it was frequently traveled enough that they would have seen some more tangible signs of life by now. CorSec security would have investigated the crash if nothing else.

No, they were more likely in the Outer Rim. Which, hardly narrowed down the possibilities. Though, the pastoral scenery did rule out one thing. This wasn't Kamino.

It was, however, familiar.

As he stared out over the fallow landscape, he found his eyes returning to a ridge just three or five kilometers away. A single peak jutted up from a rocky hill, unremarkable and yet...

...it was possible they'd been driving toward.

For what purpose, the small Jedi did not know. It was a feeling. He sensed something here, on this world, in this place. Or, rather, that place. Not a presence, something insubstantial. And yet, not inconsequential.

The sound of boots crunching over dry grass marked the harried approach of a juvenile clone trooper. Turning, the young Anzat glanced back over his shoulder as the wavy haired boy scurried across the dusty plain in the blue-on-blue uniform of immature clones. In the distance, near where their landspeeder hovered, the silvery metallic form of the 2-1B medical droid could be seen strutting about with a radio finder clutched in its grip.

"Onebee says.... he..." the young clone began, having to pause and start again as the boy processed language and the need to think before he spoke. Were he human, he'd probably be in the elementary grades of childhood development. Leveling one arm out to indicate the horizon away from the peak of Sor-Jan's interest, the clone said, "There's transmissions come... coming from thirt... thirty clicks south... like, southwest."

Tracing the path of the other boy's hand out to the horizon, the small Jedi nodded his head.

Then found his eyes pulled back to the peak jutting out from the ridge nearby. Uncertainty clouded the Anzati's face and eyes for a moment, as the youth seemed hesitant to commit to a distraction from their path. He lowered his eyes for a moment, then glanced back at the small clone. "We'll head that way," the boy-Jedi affirmed with a nod.

"But, first, there's something I need to see," the youth stated, raising a hand to motion for the smaller boy to join him as the Jedi set out across the plain. The weather was temperate, and the exercise did some good for how tense his body had become. First a battle at Corellia, then a battle through his own ship, and then crashing on this planet. The walkabout was really a welcome distraction for the mind.

Though, this appeared to be a spiritual journey.

Nearing the base of the singular peak, the young Anzat's mouth hung open at the sight of sigils engraved into the face of the boulders which surrounded the base of the hill. The cuneiform writing was weathered with age, but recognizable as symbols of the Force. Ashla. Bogan. Visual interpretations of the light and the dark. This was a... monument?

No, this was a Jedi Temple.

"This is Lothal," the Corellian uttered aloud, as recognition at last arrived, as his eyes traced upward to find the mountain peak.

Through the death he had sensed through the Force, and the betrayal of his friends -- that band of brothers that had become how he thought of the clone army -- Sor-Jan had felt as though he was a boy alone in the wilderness.

Seeing a temple of the Jedi, standing against time and the elements, the young Anzat knew that he was not alone.

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

Ake's Tavern was an establishment in the northern market district of Lothal's aptly named Capital City.

It might have been the planet's only city.

The tavern was the kind of dead end dive that was the bane of every planet with a spaceport. The kitchen had only a marginally passable inspection label posted from the board of health inspectors, which was also quite dated by all appearances. The caf looked to be about a week cold in the pot. Suffice to say, no one came for the food. Instead, the small Corellian could make out the diminutive figure of an Ugnaught who was busy moving spice and deathsticks out the back. Inside, an Aqualish was keeping a rather menacing eye on several Rutian Twi'leks who were kept silent as they waited for a potential buyer to show up. Of somewhat greater interest was the man to whom the small Jedi had become acquainted, a Pau'un who was a far ways away from home.

If someone wanted to move weapons on Lothal, it appeared that all roads went through Eion Moen.

The Pau'um swirled an amber colored liquor around in a tumbler, savoring a sip from the ice-chilled beverage as he turned his predatory gaze down on the smaller humanoid. "Anzat?" the man remarked, smirking with no small amount of sarcasm. "An old spacer's tale, to frighten younglings," the ashen figure scoffed dismissively.

Relaxing back into the cushions of the booth, the young Jedi crossed one leg over the opposite knee, as he cocked his head with a Sith-eating grin of his own. "Most would like to think so," the boy quipped dryly.

Moen made a gruff noise that might have been a laugh. "They say your species is ancient," the Pau'un remarked, as though willing to play along. "I suppose you're over a thousand years old."

"Me? I'm only fifty."

Moen's brow furrowed slightly, before the shadow of that smirk reappeared. "Well, that's at least more impressive than what you've brought me," the man noted, with an air of disappointment, as he lifted up a DC-17 hand blaster and appeared to inspect it. "Three thousand."

"Twelve," the boy countered evenly.

Cradling the hand blaster in between both hands, the Pau'un raised his dark eyes to peer down at the small boy. "You're quite unreasonable," the weapons dealer stated, his face contorting as though there was now something sour in his mouth. Setting the hand blaster down next to the DC-15 carbine on the table, the Pau'un leaned over the two samples that the boy had brought him. "This is mass produced rubbish... Twenty-five hundred would be generous. I'm offering you a deal."

Swinging his leg back down, the child-Jedi propped himself up on the table's edge as he looked up at the ghoulish alien. "More like a steal," the boy remarked flatly. Gesturing with one hand to indicate the merchandise, the Anzat noted, "This is military-grade hardware. But I suppose I could let it pass for ten."

"Seven, and you include the landspeeder."

"Eight," the boy countered without even so much as a pause. "...and I'll think about it."

The lanky form of the black marketer sank back against his side of the booth, as the man seemed to have arrived at an impasse. Then the ghoul leaned forward, arms propped against the table as the smirk returned. "Perhaps an alternative form of bargaining might... aid... this transaction," the Pau'un intoned, with a saw-toothed smile.

The tow-headed boy merely inclined his head curiously, as though inviting the man to drop the other shoe. "You are Corellian, are you not?" Moen asked, as he said, "Are you familiar with the game of Sabaac?"

"That's a stereotype," Sor-Jan stated, pushing himself back from the table, as if re-evaluating the man across from him. Outlaw. Merchant. But gambler? Sor-Jan wouldn't have anticipated that. "...but I've picked up a hand or two," the boy admitted in a neutral tone of voice, cocking his head to one side as he asked, "What's the wager?"

"Your weapons, the landspeeder..." Moen began, turning his head as his eyes slowly traced a predatory path toward the dirty windows which peered out onto the market street beyond the walls of the darkened cantina. Three was visible through the haze of dirt and dust, playing with the silvery medical droid. "...that boy," the Pau'un added, before turning back to gaze down at the small Anzat.

The young Jedi followed the Pau'un's eyes out the window and then back to the booth in which they were negotiating. He come to Eion Moen knowing that he'd have to skirt the edges of decency. They needed credits. And identicards.

And anyone who dealt in weapons was going to be hell's angel at best. So it was no surprise when the Pau'un revealed his true colors behind that smirk. A monster who dealt in all manner of illegal trade. Weapons. Droids. Slaves.

"...against one of my ships," the Pau'un boasted, flipping a datapad onto the table. The youth's eyes were drawn to the illuminated screen, then flicked up at stare into the eyes of the devil himself. "Would that interest you?" Moen inquired smugly.

The young Jedi didn't even think twice about it. "Deal the cards."

Producing a series of distinctive, illuminated cards, the Pau'un began shuffling the deck. "The loss of your homeworld has caused something of a resurgence in sabaac," Moen remarked as he set the shuffled deck down for the boy to cut the cards. The young Anzat took note of the comment, but pointedly kept his attention at the game at hand.

Moen might simply be referring to the Separatist invasion of Corellia, which Sor-Jan had routed. Or, had Palpatine's claim of Empire prompted Corellia into leaving the Republic? He could see that happening. Corellians had an allergy to political authority as it was. The greater the dictator, the stronger the rebellion festering in the Five Brothers.

Besides, with Three bet as collateral, there was too much at stake for the young Jedi to take his focus off of the game. Taking the four cards that were dealt to him, the small boy flipped the hand around and saw himself holding the Commander of Flasks, the One of Sabers, the Four and Eight of Coins. Twenty-five. He needed to drop two face values, which wasn't going to be easy.

Moen had a skifter.

Raising his eyes over the tops of his own hand, the child watched as the Pau'un shuffled the cards in his own hand. The finger of his free hand lightly tapping the third card from the left.

In his mind's eye, the young Jedi could see the card in the Pau'un's hand. It just changed from the Two of Flasks to the Idiot. Moen intended to play an Idiot's Array. A bold move by any strategy, even with a skifter.

At the same time, the first round of shifting took place. As several cards were randomly altered, Sor-Jan picked out the Master of Coins and the Six of Staves to set aside. Holding two remaining cards, which were liable to shift at random, the boy peered across the table at his opponent. Moen was setting himself up to play the Array, discarding a card into the sabaac pot so that he was left holding three-card sabaac.

"Your call," the Pau'un intoned smugly.

The small Corellian flashed a Sith-eating grin over at the ghoulish man. "Shift," the boy said evenly.

The Queen of Air and Darkness, and the Five of Coins lit up in Sor-Jan's hand. Glancing down at his deck, the boy's eyes flickered back to gaze up at the Pau'un.

"Call," the man uttered coldly, as he lowered his cards down toward the table.

As he did, the Anzat reached out with his mind to touch the corner of the third card from the left in the man's deck.

"Idiot's Array," the Pau'un boasted, as he laid his cards down on the table. The young Corellian's azure gaze fell to the table for a moment, then back up to the Pau'un. The man's arrogant smirk faltered some, as the boy tipped his head downward. As if inviting the man to look down at the hand that he'd played.

The Two of Coins, the Three of Flasks...

...and Moderation.

Negative nine. Instead of playing twenty three, Eion Moen had just called on a hand value of negative nine. If it was possible, what little color that the Pau'un possessed drained from out of his skin as the boy's two cards came down. Tapping the sides of the cards against the table, the boy laid them over the two that he had discarded earlier.

And then he flipped them face-side up.

In front of the small Jedi were arranged the Queen of Air and Darkness, the Five of Coins, the Six of Staves, and the Master of Coins.

"Pure Sabaac."

 

[Sor-Jan Xantha]

Docking Bay Seven was were she rested.

A Corellian YT-series freighter. The smallest of the line actually, with a grandiose name as only a Corellian would have gifted her. The registry said that her name was Alderaan Queen, but to the small Jedi and his rag-tag band of survivors who had fought their way through the Clone Wars and then crawled out from under the bitter victory of Order 66... this ship would be home.

The fact that it was a Corellian ship was in no small part irony for the young Anzat, who swelled with pride as a son of Eldest Brother, and whose last battle had been fought to push the Separatists back away from his beloved world. That was what this ship looked like to him. It looked like free skies. It looked like...

"What a Hutt!"

Scowling, the small Jedi turned his head to shoot a dark glare over at the miniature clone trooper that had dare utter the inconvenient truth. When it came to their ships, honesty was not required. Merely performance.

And a technical manual.

And a complete tool kit.

And a great deal of patience...

All right, so it was a Hutt! It was their Hutt. It was a new beginning. A beginning of what exactly? That still remained to be seen.

He'd sold the weapons and the landspeeder to Eion Moen after all. He still needed the identicard and some credits to cover the supply, refueling, and docking fees that this ship was going to cost him. It hadn't made sense to continue haggling after taking the ship from the Pau'un in the bet, so he'd sold them for seven thousand credits. Enough to pad a credit account for a fair number of voyages, which is likely what it was going to take for the small Anzat to get his bearings with everything that had happened.

But first things were first. His lightsaber crystal was shattered, leaving him relying on the small blaster he'd turned around and purchased off of the Pau'un at the conclusion of their deal. While Sor-Jan wasn't necessarily a purest -- he wasn't totally object to using a blaster -- he had been a Jedi for long enough that he felt naked without the crystal at his side. The problem was, Lothal was on the wrong side of the galaxy from Ilum. Which meant that the boy would have to venture elsewhere to find a replacement crystal, the young Jedi thought as the trio of two boys and a droid watched as the hatch to the freighter opened and they got their first whiff of that new starship smell.

It smelled like Gamorrean gym socks. Moldy, rancid, Gamorrean gym socks.

The small clone immediately clapped his hands up to his nose, pinching it shut. "Ugh, what's that smell," the youngling muttered from beneath the hands folded over his face.

"Nerf," the small Anzat supplied dryly in answer. The last shipment must have been livestock. Turning back toward the clone and the droid, the boy used a nod of his head to indicate they should get aboard. "It's probably a good thing the cleaning crew just arrived," the Jedi deadpanned, as he started up the boarding ramp inside.

The interior was cramped. Similar, but more compact from the more popular YT-1300 series freighter. As he crossed inside, the small Jedi reached back to cue the hatch shut behind them. From the entry, the boy made his way around and up into the cockpit. The computers seemed to respond to the touch, as the freighter started to come to life while the boy brought the navi-computer on-line and began cycling through flight plan options.

Coruscant was too far for a single jump. In fact, it might be too far for two jumps. And, if Palpatine had turned the Clone Army on the Jedi, then the Jedi Temple was very likely either a total war zone or a prison by this point.

Another reason why he needed to repair his lightsaber if he was going to be of any value to fighting this... Empire.

The Adega System might work. Adegan crystals were once the staple of Jedi use, before Ilum had been discovered a hundred generations past.

Bringing up the repulsors, the small Jedi eased himself into the pilot's seat as he turned to shout back into the ship. "Strap in, we're taking off."

As the small Jedi worked to ease the freighter off the landing pad, the small clone and the lumbering form of the silvery 2-1B medical droid emerged to take seats in the cockpit with him.

"Pardon me for asking, sir," Onebee uttered, in the synthesized, masculine tone voice. "...but, where are we going?"

"Ossus," the boy answered simply, as spaceport of Capital City fell away from view and the canopy was exposed to the naked light of Lothal's blue skies. Applying his hands to the controls, the young Jedi gently eased the ship up into the clouds as he cycled up the engines.

Having read Eion Moen's mind, he knew enough to trust that the ship was in fair condition.

Fair condition, for a Corellian freighter.

...which meant, of course, they were flying a death trap. But, kark it all, it was a Corellian death trap, damn it!

"It's out here in the Outer Rim, in the Adega System," Sor-Jan explained as the clouds fell below the transparisteel windows and the blue skies faded to reveal an endless night. "It's a world that's been dead for more than five hundred years," the archaeologist added, as the field of stars shot across the view out into space while the boy angled the ship for the jump into hyperspace.

"We shouldn't have any surprises there."