A Hand In Battle
Part One
It had been a little over a year ago when Dara first met Clizh. She was on some backwater world, scrubbing the floors for money and food. Oh, Dara didn?t mind it much, scrubbing for money seemed like the normal thing to do. It was what she had been doing since she could walk and talk. Dara only had a few friends with whom she worked with and when they got older, they would steal for money. Once they had enough, her friends had decided to leave Dara on that dirtbag excuse for a world and go off to find new lives. New lives that had money attached to them. New lives
that eventually got them killed.
When they started stealing, her friends taunted her about not wanting to be a part of their group. They would always ask, ?You do want to go somewhere else don?t you?? and she would reply,
?Yes, of course I do,? then her friends would say, ?We can help you.? Then they would try to get
her to be a distraction in one of their plans. When she refused, they would tie her up and throw stones at her until she agreed, only to run away until they had forgotten about the whole thing.
One day she was cleaning the tabletops of the restaurant she worked in when Clizhoth walked through the door. Clizh was a human, obviously very high up in the Empire. She at least was smart enough to not wear her Imperial grays in the fringe. The only reason Dara could tell Clizh was an Imp was because of the way she carried herself.
Dara had realized she was staring, and Clizh noticed too. She had snapped at her at first saying, ?What?? and Dara had flinched at the sound of enormity and power in her voice. Now here, Dara thought, was a person used to being listened to. ?I?m sorry,? she had said after that. Clizh glanced at her again and ordered two cups of caf, one for her and one for Dara. Dara took an immediate liking to Clizh, and after two cups of bad caf, an hour of talking, and one pastry from the bakery section of the restaurant, they became the best of friends. Clizh had been right in the middle of a sentence, telling how the Emperor killed her father, and that was when she joined (she leaned in as she said this, even though no one was in sight),?The Rebellion.? Apparently Clizh had been high up in the Empire, somewhere in Intelligence. All of a sudden Dara heard blaster fire. She looked around and when she saw the stormtroopers at the door, she gave a little shriek of suprise. Clizh was muttering something about, ?They?ve found me, they?ve found me??
The next thing she knew, her and Clizh were running toward the spaceport of her small, backwater world, for Clizh?s ship, the Remembrance. Clizh called her ship and told it to be ready for takeoff. When Dara gave her a quizzical look, Clizh had shrugged and said, ?New technology.?
When they finally reached Clizh?s ship, the engines were running, the ramp was down, and the lights were on. Dara slowed and stopped, admiring the ship. It was probably of Mon Calamari design, with sleek lines and a rounded hull. ?Wow?? she breathed.
Not even noticing the stormtroopers behind her, a hand grabbed her arm and yanked her onboard.
After making the jump to hyperspace, Clizh joined Dara in the ?lounge? section of the ship. ?You saved my life.? Dara stated.
?No, I didn?t,? Clizh protested.
?I would never have gotten out of there alive if you hadn?t been there.?
Clizh was silent for a moment.
?You want something to eat?? Dara nodded, not realizing how hungry she had been. Clizh got some Coruscant meals for both of them and the pair ate in silence for a while.
?As I was saying before we were rudely interrupted, I joined the Rebellion and they had me working small intelligence missions. They?re testing me, seeing if any of the information I?ve been given is getting to the Empire??
Clizh had told Dara that she should join the Rebellion. She would be ?such a big help? as Clizh had put it. ?No, I wouldn?t,? she had said, not really knowing what she could help with. But, eventually, Clizh had her convinced to join the Rebellion and she did (reluctantly). As it turned out, she had a knack for combat skills and was immediately placed in charge of training troops.
For the first few months, she saw very little of Clizh. When Dara asked her about it Clizh had said, ?They?ve had me away on missions,? as if they were of no importance.
About half a year since the Emperor died, Dara was stretching out after training that day and a messenger came and gave her a note. She stood up, accepted the note, and only opened it when he had left. It was from the high-ups in Intelligence:
Instructor Dara Pekk,
You are to be copilot to Intelligence Agent Clizhoth Sanz on her ship, the Remembrance. Please report to docking bay 36 at 0700 hours ready to leave.
General Airen Cracken
What a strange way to go about telling her that. Couldn?t they have just summoned her to General Cracken?s office? Oh well, at least she would be with Clizh on one mission.
2 months later
The mission turned into two, and those turned into four, and so forth. Clizh and Dara had been on so many missions together that each knew the other?s life history from birth to the point where they met. At the moment, they were on their way to refuel; their next stop after here was Nal Hutta, on the other side of the galaxy.
?OK, so the Empire once tried to kill you by sending you on an impossible mission, but you succeeded. Then they killed your father so he couldn?t talk?? Dara still couldn?t believe it. Clizh nodded solemnly.
?He was a good man, but didn?t really approve of the Empire, nor did he approve of the Rebellion. He was sure they would be crushed.?
?But they weren?t.?
?Exactly.?
Dara frowned inwardly, starting to pick at a chip in the table. Now, that was a strange way to reply. Shouldn?t it have been something like, ?Right? or ?Thankfully??
There was a moment of awkward silence between pilot and copilot, which was broken by the real space re-entry warning.
?I?ll handle it,? said Clizh. Dara nodded, and when she looked back up, all she saw was the back of Clizh?s flight suit and her red-brownish hair retreating to the cockpit.
Dara looked down at her own silver colored hair. Well, she tried. It was up in a ponytail.
Dara sighed. Then she swore. The last thing she expected when they dropped out of hyperspace was a jerking motion that slammed her against the table.
?Get UP here!? Clizh shouted. ?We?re under attack!?
Dara ran full speed to the cockpit, occasionally running into walls because of Clizh?s dodging motions.
When she finally made it to the cockpit, Dara saw that whoever they were against was low on budget, but high on talent. She saw Blade-32?s running around, shooting at whatever they could, one A-wing, two Tri-Fighters, a whole mess of Uglies, and was that an X-wing? Dara shook her head. The Blades weren?t all that bad a fighter, except for the fact that they?re slow. The A-wing was the best ship they had, the leader must be in that one. The X-wing was pretty battered; it must have been salvaged from a Rebel/Imp dogfight. Then there were the Uglies.
They were called that for a reason. An Ugly looked kind of like an eyeball cockpit married with X-wing S-foils. At least the ones in this fight did. Some were effective in battle, some looked like they?d be more at home in a trash compactor.
Dara took all of this information in in about three seconds. Her fingers flew over the console, arming this, firing that, targeting this. Soon all they were up against were the A-wing, one Blade-32, and about four Uglies.
??Remembrance, surrender now or we shall be forced to take hostile action. Repeat, Remembrance?? came the voice from the comm.
?Oh, sure, now they want to talk.? Clizh muttered. She identified the speaker as the A-wing pilot and spoke.
?A-wing, this is Remembrance.?
?Are you ready to surrender??
Was this guy insane? The Remembrance still had all its shields; all of its weapons and this guy wanted them to surrender.
?No, A-wing, and we never will be.? After a moment Clizh added, ?Have a nice day.?
Then she shot off the ion cannon and re-aimed faster than was humanly possible. In one point three seconds, their enemy was dead in space.
Dara spoke.
?You know what??
?What??
?Maybe this wasn?t such a good place to refuel after all.?
Clizh laughed.
* * *
On Nal Hutta, Dara and Clizh were to buy Imperial codes on the black market. Very expensive Imperial codes. Buying them wouldn?t be too hard, but smuggling them off the planet would be.
After the codes had been purchased, the team returned to the spaceport, only to find their ship destroyed. Dara stopped breathing.
?Oh, Sith,? came a curse from behind her. Clizh?s face was knotted up in frustration, but not desperation.
Soon a burning sensation in Dara?s lungs told her that air was a necessary part of staying alive.
The two searched the wreckage for anything salvageable. Unfortunately, the whole thing had been turned to scrap metal. Wonderful.
?I guess we?ll just have to get a new ship,? Clizh said.
?I don?t think so.?
The voice from behind them startled Dara, but she didn?t show it. She slowly stood and turned around, bringing her had to rest next to her blaster. The person who had spoken had his blaster trained on Clizh and another was standing next to him, focusing on Dara.
?And why can?t we get a new ship?? Clizh asked haughtily, impersonating an impatient child.
?Because we won?t let you.?
?Oh, really? Who says we aren?t going to just-? In the middle of her sentence, Clizh stopped and pulled out her blaster. Dara knew the trick and did likewise. As their two obstructers opened fire, Dara and Clizh dove off to the side looking for cover. Dara didn?t even hear the cry of pain from Clizh, she just wounded the two men and took their blasters. After destroying them with her own, they told her that their ship was three docking bays over.
?Thank you for you business,? she said, ?Clizh, did you hear that??
No answer.
?Clizh?? Dara saw one of her legs behind a destroyed part of their ship and ran over to her. Clizh had been shot in the stomach and was unconscious.
?NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!? Dara picked her up and carried her over to the docking bay that the two had mentioned. She strapped Clizh in in the med-bay area, starting a bacta flow through her system. As Dara studied the controls, she found that they weren?t all that much different than the Remembrance?s controls. She noticed that the ship was called the Last Hand. That would have to be changed. First things first, she had to get off planet so that Clizh could get to a real med-facility. She frowned when she saw the nearest planet with a facility was Kessel. Dara didn?t like being that close to the Maw or the mines. The people they sent there?
Oh, well. The most important thing was to heal Clizh. Dara got clearance from the tower and jumped to hyperspace.
2 months later
Clizh healed and the both of them were awarded medals for bravery. The ship that Dara had ?borrowed? from Nal Hutta was renamed the Fire Dragon and Clizh insisted on being copilot instead of pilot. She said that she never could have figured out how to pilot a new ship while worrying about her friend. Dara reluctantly agreed to be pilot and they two had many more missions together.
Present Time
Dara hoped their cover held. Their fake identities were generated by Intelligence, the ?best they had?, Intel had insisted. As long as it could get them into and out of Correlia safely, she didn?t care. Hopefully the Diktat wouldn?t be too careful about two civilians from Coruscant on Correlia for a pleasure trip. Although this trip would be far from pleasurable.
The objective to be obtained was to smuggle ground synth-meat to the Rebellion. Well, it was supposed to look like synth-meat until underneath the first layer. Underneath that first layer were stormtrooper blaster rifles. They would be very useful to the Rebellion, that was, if the two could get them off of Correlia undetected. She snorted. Fat chance.
Everything was going wonderfully until Clizh and Dara separated. Dara was paying the export fee and Clizh was boarding the ship. She started to hand the money to the export official, but he was just rambling on about keeping the merchandise cool. Dara kept nodding and saying, ?Yes, yes, of course.?
Something was not right here. When she realized the official was just trying to distract her, Dara shoved the money into the man?s palm and turned to see if anything was wrong. Oh, no. Not again.
Clizh had been shot going up the ramp to the Fire Dragon. ?Shot in the back,? she thought, ?it?s not fair, somehow.?
Dara turned back to the official to ask him about the situation and found herself staring up the barrel of a slightly wavering blaster. Her eyes flickered for a moment and then mustering up all the na�vet� she could, said, ?What is going on, sir??
?Don?t give me that act, Rebel scum,? the man rudely answered her. ?Alrighty then, you wanna play it hard, we?ll play it hard,? she thought.
?Oh,? Dara said, swinging her leg up to kick his blaster arm away, then rolled, sprinted, and dove across the hanger bay as she pulled her own blaster from its holster. Stormtroopers entered and also started shooting at her. She slid behind a crate, hitting her arm on it, causing her blaster to misfire...
* * *
When Dara finally woke up, she was in a completely dark room. When she convinced herself that her eyes were open, she stood up and started feeling around the room for a sort of light switch or something. Brushing her hands along the wall, she found a button. Dara pressed it.
The last thing she expected was for the floor to fall out from under her and to fall for what seemed like an eternity. After landing in something soft at the bottom of the shaft, she muttered, ?Note to self, ?Upon finding buttons in very dark rooms, don?t touch them.??
?Indeed,? said a voice. Dara looked around wildly to see where the voice was coming from and then smacked herself on the forehead. It was pitch black down here too. Then someone shined a wonderfully bright light in her eyes, for a change, she supposed. Through nearly closed eyes, she tried to get a better look around the room. There wasn?t much to see. She was sitting on some kind of air mattress that seemed to be the only furnishing in the room.
?Welcome,? said the voice again. It was a woman?s voice, coming from a loudspeaker.
?Welcome to Lusankya.?
Something sparked in the back of her mind. Lusankya rung a bell in her head, but she wasn?t given a chance to see where it came from. Within seconds, Dara was pulled off the mattress and onto the floor, being dragged down a hall she supposed. She only felt half aware of the world, groggily realizing that there must be some kind of gas in the air making her tired. The word Lusankya bounced around in her head a few times and then everything became dark.
Dara was awake. At least, she thought so. There was no way to tell for sure, her eyes couldn?t open and none of her limbs could move. But her brain was functioning somewhat.
"She?s coming out of it."
That was a man?s voice. Next Dara heard a woman?s voice, the clipped tones of a trained Imperial.
"Very good, Captain Adda." Dara?s eyes were starting to open and she could feel a sort of tingling in her limbs. There was darkness around the edges of her vision but she could see. The only person in front of her was the Captain she assumed had spoken first.
Dara was strapped to a chair with binders that went halfway up her arms and legs. She was still wearing her flightsuit, albeit a bit dirty, it was nice to have something familiar with her.
A woman walked around so that Dara could see her, and the reaction to seeing her was a sharp intake of breath. It was so strange, the woman looked just like Dara?s fallen friend, Clizh! The only differen*e was her hair. It was jet black with white temple locks, and her face looked a little different, too.
"Why, hello, Dara," she said, executing a smile that could make womp rats? blood curdle. Defiance is the best medicine, or something like that, Dara thought.
"Who are you? How do you know my name? What do you want?" she demanded.
The woman?s smile did not waver but her tone of voice changed ever so slightly.
"Oh, you know me, Dara. Or have you forgotten me so soon after my death?"
No, she thought, it couldn?t be! That voice sounded just like...
"It?s me, Clizh. Or, as my staff knows me, Imperial Intelligence Director Ysanne Isard."