The drake rested on the air current air rushed over and beneath his leathery wings. The peace of flight reminded him greatly of his days on Zoit, of the shifting and bending winds of the canyons and of the air currents rushing up from the sea to carry him up into the sky. He missed that, some days, but for the most part he was glad to be away.

Despite the joys of Zoit, it was not worth living with the constant fear that today, it was his clan that was driven out into the open by storm troopers, to be gunned away by the new destroyer droids that the Second Imperium had developed for the precise purpose of exterminating innocent civilians. Of course, they only killed you if first you did not accept their offer to join the ranks of their military. Freigo, of course would always oppose the Empire.

That did not mean he supported the Republic either! After the Empire shipped him off of his home planet to some slavery chamber on Ryloth, the New Rebel Alliance came to rescue their human and Wookie and Twi’lek comrades, but left him in the slave quarters because they deemed him to be "just another beast of burden." His silver blood boiled at the thought of the Alliance and he wanted to tear them limb from limb, each and everyone of them!

It was a mere rogue knight who rescued him from that hell. Not a sizable man by any stretch of the imagination, but as powerful with his mind as Freigo was with his muscles. Ulysses Jinks was his name, a mere teenage boy from the former Republic headquarters of Zydirnon, and damn glad to meet you, Freigo…

So no, the Empire had never been of any help to him. But the Republic had forsaken him. It was one of the interlopers who had saved him, and he had been Jinks’ loyal friend and compatriot ever since.

Even when those damn hoods started coming around.

They weren’t Jedi and they weren’t Sith. If they were anything at all, they were Wraiths, which was what he and Jinks called them when they were in private. Demigod-type things with immeasurable Force ability and a knack for showing up just as Jinks was trying to make a hasty escape from either Alliance or Empire authorities.

But now, since the Second Imperium had taken root in the society of the universe, the hoods were in popular abundance in the Outer Rim territories. They wore Empire insignias on their black robes, spoke only to the storm troopers or their authorities, and killed without discrimination. Woman, child, cripple, it made no difference to them, and that was what sickened Freigo and Jinks the most, their mercilessness.

He spotted the Corellian ship in its bay, polished by maintenance droids and patrolled by a few storm troopers. Freigo nervously flew around the perimeter, loathe to enter, until he saw Jinks, silver-tongued Jinks, speaking sweetly to one of the storm troopers. Freigo could have pissed himself laughing.

What a slut. He snorted and swooped down, his wings flared. He landed in the center of the bay with a loud THUD as his feet struck the ground.

The storm troopers startled, but didn’t do anything other than stare for a minute or two. Freigo grinned, pulling his lips back from his teeth to expose his fangs, then quirked his ears. He could hear Jinks’ voice.

"No, sorry, babe, duty calls you know," Jinks sighed.

"If you ever come back into the Outer Rim, you have my station number."

"Of course," Jinks replied and smiled. "I’ll give you a call." The storm trooper, hardly a man yet, smiled back and watched him leave.

Freigo raised his eyebrows and folded his wings across his back. He followed Jinks up the boarding ramp and the ship, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "You’re one conniving son of a bitch, you know that Jinks?"

"What else is new?" Jinks replied, aloof, and hurried into the cockpit. "I’m going to do a quick scan of the computer systems to make sure these damn Imps didn’t go poking around our navigation files."

"Wouldn’t you be able to tell?" Freigo inquired with a raise of one black-feathered eyebrow.

"I’ll be able to once I’m online," Jinks replied with a slightly impatient slur to his words. "Now give me a second so I can tap in the access codes."

Freigo scowled, a truly gruesome expression on his Zoitian drake face, and turned, trudging out of the cockpit to patrol the ship’s corridors. He pushed one of the maintenance droids over carelessly with one huge, clawed hand.

"I thought your master called you all back," he growled at it as it fell to its side.

"Terribly sorry, sir," the droid apologized in a petrified stammer. Stiffly, it managed to get back onto its feet. "At your command, I shall return to my master’s quarters with haste. But, be it all the same to you, I had no actual intention of setting foot on my master’s premises again."

"Stowing away then?" Freigo growled in a threatening tone. He advanced a little closer, flaring his wings an inch or two and exposing the sharp daggers that were his teeth. "We don’t allow stowaways onboard the Georgina."

The silver protocol droid lifted it’s metallic hands up to shield its face and exclaimed in fear, "Oh my!" before waddling back a pace or two.

"What’s your ID number!" Freigo boomed.

"D40," the droid sputtered and proceeded to plead, "Please, sir, don’t dismember me! I’m sure you’ll find me more valuable intact as opposed to scattered into tiny little pieces. If you truly do not want me aboard your ship—fine vessel that she is, sir—you could take me to the Mos Eisley market and auction me off. I’m a very rare specimen, you know. I can break both Second Imperium and Alliance access codes, military and civilian—"

"Code breaker?" The drake squinted at the droid apprehensively and raised his eyebrows. "So you’re saying that if we wanted to get into a secured sector on, oh say, Zoit, you’d be able to get us in with relatively little difficulty?"

"Code breaking is my primary function, sir," D40 informed Freigo pleasantly. "Although I am adept in over forty other functions, including languages, tutoring, cleaning, computer programming—"

"All right, that’s enough," Freigo silenced him dismissively. The droid fell silent with a slightly wounded glance at the floor of the ship—if droids could appear wounded at all. Freigo gave his head a tilt, then turned and ambled back towards the cockpit.

He rapped one powerful claw on the door and called out, "Jinks! Come out here. I’ve found something you might find interesting."

He heard the human behind the doors swear fluently in what he suspected was Twi’lek, heard him as he tripped over instruments, and finally regarded him with a grin as Jinks opened the doors. The knight glared at him and demanded, "What! What’s so interesting? And stop grinning at me that way, you know it pisses me off!" His scowl darkened.

Freigo gestured to where D40 was standing, looking very perplexed and out of place. "We’ve a stowaway."

"Another one?" Jinks grumbled. He moved his hand to his hip to draw out his blaster. "Step back, I’ll take care of it."

D40 cried out, "No, please, sir—!"

"Jinks, hold on a second!" Freigo said and grabbed for Jinks’ wrist. "Hold on!"

"We’ve got a policy about stowaways, Freigo," Jinks said laconically. "‘Don’t transport something that could get you killed’ remember?"

"Yes, I remember," Freigo replied, "but Jinks, this thing might be able to help us get back into Zoit airspace."

Jinks shot a suspicious glance at where D40 waited. The droid shifted, its sandy joints rubbing against one another uncomfortably. Jinks put his hands on his hips and ambled a little closer.

"So, droid, what’s your name?"

"D40, sir, property—or I was, anyway—of Heemo Yuwajoo the Hutt." D40 gave a pleasant little tilt of his metallic head.

"A hutt?" Jinks exclaimed. He shook his head firmly and stated, "No, Freigo, no way, I’m not getting involved with the hutts. You remember what happened last time we cut a deal with them?"

Freigo persisted, "It won’t be like last time, Jinks. They won’t know—"

"It was bad enough when they knew what we were up to!" Jinks cried out. "Now you’re suggesting we seize one of their droids as a souvenir? God’s sake, Freigo, I knew you were thickheaded, but this is getting plain ridiculous."

"You’re going about it all wrong, Jinks," Freigo began again. He made a plaintive gesture to the droid. "Look at him. Unpolished metal, squeaky joints, a malfunctioning optical unit; Heemo has probably just chucked him out with last week’s garbage or something."

"Well!" D40 huffed, insulted. "I say, you are a couple of uncouth scoundrels, aren’t you!"

"Knock it off, Coppertone, or we’ll send you back right now," Jinks drawled, then regarded Freigo sternly. "Is getting back to Zoit truly that important to you, Freigo?"

Freigo nodded solemnly. "As important to me as liberating Zydirnon is to you," he said in a soft, reverent tone.

Jinks crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the corridor wall, brooding. His sullen, dark eyes glared up at Freigo for a moment, then turned to alight on D40. Both of them waited for his answer expectantly. Finally, Jinks sighed and threw his arms up in defeat.

"All right, then," he conceded. "D40, I’m Ulysses Jinks, and this is my pal, Freigo. Welcome aboard."

"Thank you, sirs, how very thankful I am!" D40 cried out and followed Jinks into the cockpit. Freigo chuckled at the leer Jinks heaved his way.