Imperial times- Dantooine

Tarik watched the shuttles leave, seeing Mina and Derek still standing on the field next to the last shuttle. It was the last few hours of the evacuation, and all the rebel encampments were packed up and gone but theirs.

This was the last base on the planet, the buildings were going to be left as decoys should the Empire track them here, and in case Tarik needed a place to live.

Tarik ticked to himself miserably, watching the last of the rebels board the shuttle, all except Mina and Derek. He knew what they were waiting for, they were giving him one last chance to come with them if he wanted too, but he couldn�t. They�d be hunted even more if the Empire found out he was traveling with them, it was safer to leave him here, where they�d both be safe.

He�d found a new stick to replace his lost staff, leaning on it like a cane while he watched them leave. Derek waved to him in farewell, and Tarik waved back. Mina didn�t wave, she just stood with her arms crossed, watching him. She turned and walked up the ramp as if she hadn�t seen him.

Tarik�s ears drooped, and he sank lower into the grass in dejection. Derek cast one last glance back at Tarik, then boarded the shuttle behind her. He chirruped, suddenly reconsidering his decision once they were out of sight.

Maybe this was a bad idea, maybe he should go with them, wherever they were going.

He forced himself to stay put, watching the ramp close and the engines begin to glow. He ducked down closer to the ground as the ship lifted off the ground, taking Mina and his last chance to leave with it. He whined softly, watching the ship rise into the air and grow ever smaller as it left.

He was alone.

For the first time in his entire life, he was completely alone. No people, no giant sewer rats, no Stormtroopers, just grass, and trees, and the wind. The breeze picked up a little, making the fields of grass ripple like water.

A small flock of migratory avians flew overhead, disappearing into the distance. The heavy scent of rain clouds on the horizon and the sweet tinge of crushed and scorched grass where the shuttles had landed touched his sensitive nose.

Something felt.... right about this place. It felt like someplace he should be, not lost in the city. He sniffed at the breeze, picking out individual scents that he�d have to identify later.

A four-legged creature of some kind bounded through the grass, stirring up a small flock of the fat birds he�d hunted earlier. He sank low to the ground, watching the birds settle back down into the grass from between the blades. The hunting instinct drifted back, and there were no more rebels to scare away the birds this time.

He was alone, but he was home.

-------------

Back on Coruscant, Darth Vader was busy with troubles of his own. Riker South had disappeared again, and taken another of the more foolish dark adepts with him. Riker was turning out to be more trouble than he was worth, and more of a problem than he�d anticipated.

The strange flicker of something long forgotten nagged at him, he was missing something here, something important, and he didn�t like it. Tarik was part of this equation as well, the scaly being had been carted off world by the rebels he�d saved.

Vader frowned beneath the helmet, thinking.

A force-sensitive Jedi-hunting creature that cost far too much to make and even more to capture now vanished into the depths of space.

The rebel girl Mina, latently force-sensitive but possibly very capable if she were ever trained.

A homicidally stupid dark side Jedi adept, and Riker, a dark side Jedi inept, vanished into the streets of Coruscant.

And to add torment to bother, the Emperor was planning to dissolve the senate once and for all. Plus his precious pet battle station had consumed much more resources than they�d expected, and the shield of secrecy over the project was beginning to thin.

Sooner or later, the Death Star, as they�d named it, would make its presence known to the galaxy. Another technological terror to shake at their enemies when resources were better spent elsewhere.

And somewhere inside it all, this strange....feeling kept haunting him. There was something he�d missed, some singular detail that was being overlooked. Somewhere, there was a flaw in their plans, something was wrong.

The nagging was coupled by a little giggling cackle of an old woman.

The old Jedi woman he�d heard rumors about weren�t rumors. The strange alien Jedi had sent him a short recorded message, introducing herself and giggling about the emperor�s defeat. She claimed to have seen his downfall by the hand of a Skywalker. The message had erased itself, and he had no more proof of the strange woman other than his memories.

And he did remember her.

The star-sapphire eyes and charming smile were what he remembered. Apparently she�d retired from the order, and she�d never been found. He couldn�t remember the name or anything past seeing her that one time, during the war, but he knew her.

He sighed heavily, closing his eyes as he tried to think. Where was the connection? Skywalker, Jedi, the old face from his past, a reminder of who he�d been. It was all part of a puzzle that refused to fit together.

And Tarik, the one piece that wasn�t even part of the puzzle, he�d been cut from another puzzle and dropped into this one, making it much harder to solve. The scaly creature might as well morph into a Jedi master and go prancing off to save the universe before Vader had the chance to figure out what was going on.

He smiled at the thought, a rare event in itself. Tarik a Jedi, that would happen around the time Hutts grew wings and sang like birds, he thought sarcastically.

He shook his head at the thought, this was getting him nowhere. He�d come to his meditation room to think, not make up absurd jokes about that escaped lab freak. Although it was an interesting concept......

What if that fool thing really did have the force-sense to be trained? What would he do, waste his skills telekinetically throwing things at Stormtroopers? Either that or stealing food from the cafeteria, from the reports, he always seemed hungry.

Vader guessed he probably really was hungry all the time from what little he�d seen when Tarik stood still long enough for anyone to look at him.

The little thing was solid muscle and bone, there wasn�t a molecule of fat on his entire body. He was thin almost to the point of starvation, but he�d still have been able to claw Vader into pieces given the chance.

With a high metabolism and no food to fuel it, Vader guessed that the overgrown lizard was in all probability only fighting at half-strength when they�d fought, which was a frightening prospect.

He was suddenly very, very glad he�d eliminated all the other prototypes and destroyed the lab. His leg still ached from the slashes Tarik had given him. The searing pain of the initial strike was still stored in his memory, and the unsettling fact that the wounds were taking this long to heal made it all the more discomforting.

If only he�d coerced the creature into killing Riker instead of letting him escape. No, that had been Riker�s plan in reverse, coaxing Tarik into killing Vader to save his friends. He had no intention of doing anything Riker had thought of as a good idea.

Riker was a big enough problem without adding the other to the mix. The adept he�d taken with him was unstable, even dangerous. The boy would turn on him in a heartbeat if he sensed any deception or treachery. That was one good thing at least, now Vader could hope that the psychotic boy would kill Riker for him. Riker he didn�t care about, but that boy was a relative of one very powerful, and best left unangered businessman from the far rim. If he was injured in any way....

Vader decided not to think about that for now, Kirunne was too powerful an ally to make an enemy just because his youngest son felt like playing warrior. The boy would come back when he got bored of playing with Riker. They were both a secondary concern to the more pressing matters of keeping the Death Star�s construction location a secret.

In a little under a year, it would be finished, then he�d have no more worries about keeping tabs on the Emperor�s pet project.

He had his own pet projects to worry about.

----on to Part 6 of Chapter 5---

© 2000 Michelle Petrosky

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