The Art of Chaos and Darkness

Chapter Six

Din sat in the cockpit, his helmet glinting in the starlight on the seat beside him.

He'd come extremely close to losing his bounty and failing the entire job. How could he be so foolish? So reckless? His fingers gripped the data pad in his hands. He plugged the un-encrypting device into the side and watched is it slowly downloaded into the system. Only one good thing had come from the bounty hunter managing to find them on this tiny moon.

Valda Aslyran.

That was her name. He'd overheard the bounty hunter say it before he had killed him.

He typed the words into the search on the data pad. Without the un-encrypting device, the search would have come up blank. But the device allowed him to access sealed files, prison records as well as republic and imperial files. It took a few seconds to load but then the results flashed on the screen.

Valda had been born on another planet Din had never heard of: Dromund Kass.  Neither of her parent's names were listed, only their date of death below Valda's own birthday. They had died when she was eight, leaving her an orphan.

His mouth went dry as he read the next line.  Valda had been sold to the Hutt Cartel at the age of ten.  Her slave chain code was listed and his stomach dropped.  She'd been sent to Nar Shaddaa after her twelfth birthday. Din knew what happened to young girls on Nar Shaddaa.  What they were made to do. He tried to avoid the planet himself as much as possible. What he saw there always made his stomach roil. The Hutt Cartel was one of the worst on the filthy, polluted planet.  The entire city was a cesspool of crime, death and violence.

She'd likely been a sex-slave in one of the worst places of the galaxy.

Din scrolled down further on the tablet.  Valda had stayed on Nar Shaddaa for five years, far outliving the lifespan of young girls on that planet. Somehow she'd managed to stay alive in the horrific line of work. On her seventeenth birthday it listed her as sold to a new buyer.  Someone by the name of A'Sharad Hett. The sum the new buyer had paid was a ridiculous amount.

After that the file was blank.  It was as if Valda Aslyran had ceased to exist.  No matter what Din typed or searched, the data pad could provide nothing new.  Frustrated, he deleted Valda's name and typed in Dromund Kass. It was listed as an old Empire planet in the Outer Rim Territories' Esstran sector.

Other than that there was no information. Nothing detailing what had happened after the war, who lived there now or even who controlled the planet. Almost as if someone had wiped every data base clean. As if someone wanted no one to ever remember the planet existed.

The knot in Din's stomach was growing. There were too many unknowns in this mission. Who was Valda Aslyran? What about her was so important that she be delivered alive, to an unknown planet? Why were other bounty hunters hunting her across the galaxy? They were willing to kill her, that much was clear. His strict orders to keep her alive clearly did not extend to the others.

And what was this deal with the Sith and Jedi? Din did not want to be caught up any Empire or Republic business. Grogu had brought him enough attention and he had been willing to sacrifice his secrecy, his own creed, for the child. But now Grogu was gone. And Din wanted this to be a normal job, nothing more.

He set the data pad aside and checked the fuel level on the ship. Already close to empty. The space port worker had only managed to fill half the tank before he'd been killed. Din sighed. This meant they would have to stop as soon as they dropped from hyperspace. He could only hope there wouldn't be more bounty hunters waiting for them.

Din stood and walked back out into the large cargo hold area. The prisoner- Valda- was in the same position as before, ration package all but licked clean. She looked better all ready- still ridiculously skinny but there was more color to her skin, her face than before. She was filthy, coated in blood and dirt.