Imperial times- Coruscant

Riker South spent two days following dead end leads and finding more giant sewer rodents in his search than he�d thought possible. He�d finally found the lizard though, he was camped out with a small band of rebel refugees that were living in a small hovel on the lowest levels of the city. The missing restaurant owner, Minero, was with them.

The creature was asleep on the floor at the moment, completely oblivious to his presence. It lay curled up next to the stove like a giant house- pet, wrapped in a bedroll and dead to the world. He tried to feel his way through the rebel�s minds, trying to discover how much the little freak knew about himself.

He felt nothing from them, which was good, they were completely ignorant.

Wait, this was bad, he couldn�t feel anything from the apartment. He should be able to at least sense the people in the apartment talking or something, but they were just quiet. A hollow formed in his stomach, something was wrong here.

The faintest crunch of a pebble in the dirt behind him made him whirl around, and brought him face to face with a green snout and orange eyes. The creature snarled slowly, a low growl rising in his throat menacingly.

"Drathan," the creature hissed, snorting in his face. Riker stayed frozen in place, shocked that he hadn�t felt him sneak up behind him. The creature�s snarl deepened, the large pointed teeth exposed all the way to the gum-line in a vicious snarl fully intended to terrify. It worked. Riker found himself scrambling backward in panic, every ounce of his training had vacated his mind the moment he looked into those orange-gold eyes.

The last thing he remembered was the blur of green and claws as the creature lunged off his perch and knocked him to the ground. His head hit the pavement hard, knocking him out cold. Tarik leaned on his chest to see if he was still conscious or not, listening to his breathing.

"Nobody gonna die today, Drathan," he said, hissing a few inches from Riker�s unconscious face. He trotted off, leaving Riker out on the ground as he went to warn his friends that they�d been found again.

-------

Riker woke up with a Stormtrooper looming over him, watching him. He sat up, then nearly fell over again in a flicker of dizziness.

"We got your transmission sir, but the rebels were gone by the time we got here," the trooper said without being asked. "Are you all right?" he asked, helping Riker to his feet.

"Do I look all right?" he snapped rudely at the trooper, holding his aching head. "How long have I been here?" he asked, rubbing his head.

"You�ve been unconscious for some time. We didn�t know the extent of your injuries, so we thought it better if we left you to wake up on your own, sir," the trooper said, looking toward the building that formerly housed the rebel refugees.

Riker studied the man in armor before him with an inward smile. He was obviously a fresh recruit, barely out of the academy, yet he was here rambling on about the rebels having been gone several hours as if it were only of vague importance.

"No, it was not the rebels who knocked me unconscious," Riker answered the young man irritatedly. He�d ignored most of his rambling, but that question annoyed him.

"You�re not authorized to know who or what attacked me, young man, now get out of my way," he snapped, walking off, leaving the trooper behind him.

It was gone again, and worse yet, it had defeated him with barely an effort. Riker fumed, this was the reason he wasn�t allowed to carry a lightsaber anymore. That scaly beast had bested him in a single pounce, not even giving him the courtesy of killing him so he wouldn�t have to return and face the emperor.

Maybe he shouldn�t, maybe he should just disappear and hunt down this thing on his own, let Vader and the emperor deal with all the hard parts of the job, then wait until they�d found it to sneak in and kill it first.

Or maybe he wouldn�t have to kill it at all, he thought, smiling to himself. Maybe he should just let the thing kill Vader and the Emperor, that was what is was made to do after all. Riker�s smile grew wider as he thought. It had been intended to hunt Jedi, any Jedi, light or dark, as long at it was told to.

With the right kind of encouragement, this scaly beast just might do what Riker had planned to do with it all along. Kill Darth Vader. Riker laughed quietly to himself, leaving the Stormtroopers to sift through the empty hideout alone, he had better things to do right now.

He had to find that creature first.

-------

Tarik snuffled quietly, half asleep. His orange eyes were closed, his head resting on Mina�s leg as she combed through his curly mop of hair, playfully braiding a few locks here and there.

Minero watched them in mild amazement, he�d never seen Tarik let anyone get that close to him. Only a few hours ago, he�d come into their previous hideout insisting that there was someone outside who�d called the Stormtroopers. No one had believed him until they went outside and found the unconscious form of the person Tarik identified as a �Drathan�.

Tarik chirruped softly, his tail curling around his leg half- consciously.

Mina seemed to be the only one in the group that didn�t mind the fact Tarik had just knocked out a dark Jedi and revealed that he was the same one who�d chased him before. Mina gave Tarik only one condition for his staying with them after he�d warned them of their discovery, she wanted him to let her fix his hair.

Tarik had snarled and fought all the way to the bathtub, hissing and growling in tones that would have terrified a rancor. Mina just scrubbed harder when he growled, eventually getting him to hold still long enough to finish her work. He�d pouted for almost an hour after that, but now he seemed to have started to like being fussed over.

Mina�s finishing touch to the wild mass of curls was one of her own hair ribbons to hold it all back into a ponytail. Tarik immediately sat bolt-upright, clawing at the ribbon.

"Tarik, leave it there, you look nice," Mina said, tugging on one of his braids. He hissed, trying to see the ribbon over his shoulder in the most comical way. He twisted from one side to the other, trying to see as Mina giggled at his attempts.

"Noise," Tarik said, flicking his pointed ears forward and away from the ribbon.

"Oh, well, why didn�t you say that before," Mina said, untying the bow and tying it again so that the ribbon wouldn�t touch his ears this time. He pivoted his ears experimentally, snorting as he laid them flat against his head again.

"Okay guess," Tarik finally said, scratching at his ear. The tube car above their new apartment rumbled overhead, making the lights flicker.

"I can�t believe we had to come this close to imperial center," Nyan complained, looking through the window at the grimy rain falling outside.

"We�re not that close, it�s almost a mile straight up and another mile east," Derek said, straightening the collar on his shirt.

Mina looked over at him, "Going somewhere?" Derek looked over, then glanced down at Tarik.

"I gotta find us a way off this rock, they�re getting way too close for my comfort around here." Derek grabbed a biscuit off a plate on the counter, heading for the door.

"Derek," Mina said, then looked down at Tarik. "We have to take him if we leave," she said, resting a hand on Tarik�s shoulder. He looked up at her in shock, chirping like a bird.

"Leave? Where?" he asked, confused.

"We�re leaving this planet, and Minero�s going with us," Steve said.

"We can�t take him with us! how will we explain him?" Nyan said, walking away from the window.

"How leave?" Tarik said, ignoring Nyan.

"On a ship," Mina said as Tarik backed away a few steps.

"No," he said, flicking the tip of his tail nervously.

"I�m sure we can find room for you, you�d like seeing another planet, a safe planet," Mina said, leaning toward him slightly.

"No," Tarik repeated, this time with a slight growl, "No leave here," he grumbled. "No done yet, have to stay here," he murmured, more to himself than them, remembering his dreams.

Derek sighed, "Look, we can argue about this after we find a way to actually leave instead of just talking about it." He grabbed his coat from the rack next to the door, "I�ll see you all in the morning," he said, walking out into the dismal afternoon rain. The door slammed behind him, leaving the rest of the refugees in silence.

Tarik sniffed, "Still no like me, him not," he said, crossing his arms over his chest with a sniffle. Mina snickered, stuffing her comb back into her knapsack. Nyan left the room with a sigh.

"Him no like either," Tarik said, nodding toward the doorway. Mina smiled, trying not to laugh.

"You like?" he asked Mina, cocking his head at a strange angle toward her.

"No, me no like either," she said, imitating Tarik�s broken speech. He snorted, backing his snout away and blinking, then he hiss/snickered at her, shaking his head.

"You weirdo," he said, standing and trotting out of the room toward the kitchen.

-------

In the morning, Derek came back with the news that he�d found a pilot willing to smuggle them off-world. Tarik was nowhere to be found. His place by the stove was empty, he�d taken with him the bedroll they�d given him and a few of Minero�s breakfast biscuits. A set of claw-marks on the window-sill and a wet streak where he�d climbed out into the rain were all the evidence left of him.

"He said he wouldn�t leave with us," Mina said, running a hand along the damp windowsill.

"Tarik does what he says, even when he doesn�t speak it very well," Minero said, setting a hand on Mina�s shoulder. "To take him with us would be more dangerous than leaving with the information we do have. Tarik is hunted, they would hunt us as well if he had come. He knew this, so he left," Minero said, then removed his hand from her shoulder.

"Tarik is stronger than he looks, but also much smarter than he looks," he added, smiling at Mina. "He will be safe, it is us we should worry about," he said, then looked at Derek. "I suggest packing what we have and being gone as soon as possible," Minero said.

Derek nodded, "Let�s get going then," he said, turning to look for his travel pack.

Steve stood behind him with a blaster aimed at his chest.

"Not yet," he said, smirking slightly. "Sorry guys, but money�s always been a better friend than people for me," he said, stepping away from the door. "Open the door," he said, gesturing at Derek with the blaster.

"I don�t believe this," Mina said, stunned.

"Believe it, Mina," Steve said, "That scaly friend of yours has some nasty enemies, and they already found us last night." Mina looked up at Minero, then over to Derek.

"But..." she began.

"They�re looking for rebel terrorists, and they found them. Someone else is looking for a big scaly lab-freak, and he paid me to let him go," Steve nodded toward the door. "I managed to stall the raid until this morning, so that thing could escape," he said, "But now I think we�d better let them in before they break open the door," he gestured with the blaster again.

Suddenly a chair flashed out from the doorway behind Steve, smacking him in the back of the head and knocking him forward. The weapon fell out of his hand, skittering closer to Derek. He grabbed the blaster from the floor before Steve could recover. Nyan appeared standing in the doorway as Derek leveled the blaster at Steve�s head.

"I don�t like that lizard, but I like traitors even less," the blue alien said, tossing the broken chair to the floor. The door practically exploded inward next to him barely a moment after the words cleared his lips.

Stormtroopers flooded into the room, snatching the blaster from Derek with little resistance.

"So much for friendship," Derek muttered as he was slammed off the wall and his hands cuffed behind his back.

-----

Tarik watched from the relative safety of a small balcony across the street as his friends were led out and shoved into a waiting transport. He�d come back after changing his mind about leaving, wanting to go with them anywhere the man in black wouldn�t be, but he was too late.

He snarled and growled angrily from his half- hidden perch, tail thrashing in rage. He wanted to leap over the rail and start mauling Stormtroopers, but there were too many. Even he couldn�t handle that many people with laser-rifles, not even if he managed to get his friends free to help.

He flexed and retracted his claws helplessly, whining to himself at being stranded. He had to do something to help. Anything. Nothing was all he could do, watching the troopers close the door on the transport, leaving Steve outside on the street.

He was acting a little too cocky for Tarik�s tastes, revealing that he was the one responsible for betraying the others. His orange-gold eyes narrowed with a snarl at the treacherous human, claws sinking into the weak metal railing of the balcony with a dull screech.

Someone finally noticed him, pointing to the balcony as Steve looked up with the others. The trooper closest to Steve fired a single shot, but it wasn�t aimed at Tarik. Steve looked at the hole in his side in shock for a second, then fell over to the ground face-first. Tarik ducked back into the darkened hallway behind the balcony, disappearing into the building as the second shot ricochet off the wall near where he�d been.

The traitor got betrayed, Tarik hissed with a grim smile, he deserved it.

Tarik was long-gone by the time the troopers finally found a way into the building in an attempt to follow him. They returned to the arrest transport empty-handed, piling into the transport they�d arrived in and taking off. They left Steve�s body in the street in front of the hideout, not even looking back at him as they left.
--------

Darth Vader sat behind his desk reading the newest sighting report of the creature known as Tarik. One of the group of rebels it had been staying with had betrayed the group to the authorities, only to be shot by one of the soldiers for unknown reasons when the creature was spotted on a balcony across the street.

The Stormtrooper responsible insisted he had no memory of the incident, and indeed roughly five minutes of his memory seemed to have disappeared. There were three possibilities that could be considered for what had happened.

One, his memory had been blocked somehow during the incident. Two, his memory had been erased after the incident. Three, he had been under another�s influence during the incident and his memory had been both blocked and erased during the incident.

Scenario three was the one that Vader believed most likely, which pointed directly to someone with some ability in the manipulation of minds through the force. Someone like that little snot Riker South.

Vader glared at nothing in particular at the thought. The little przat had something up his sleeve, Riker was an idiot, but he was a conniving little idiot. He believed that he had some vague chance of gaining the emperor�s favor if he managed to disgrace Vader. The little rodent had no idea the kind of game he was playing, or who he was playing against. The Emperor thought it was amusing to let Riker run his little schemes then fall flat on his face, but now he was stepping into Vader�s territory.

The law of the universe was that the bigger, meaner things ate the smaller, stupider things for lunch. Riker was definitely one of the smaller, stupider things, and he was on the verge of finding out what happened when the bigger, meaner thing got annoyed.


-----------End Chaapter 2-----------

----on to Chapter 3?---

© 2000 Michelle Petrosky

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