Heirs of the Fallen {1} (Remastered)

Chapter 9

Leia sipped her caf and sighed, thrumming her hand against the edge of the desk as she scrolled through the various bills to be passed through the New Republic Council and therefore through the Senate as well. She'd already looked over most of them, but by the time she'd gotten halfway through the sun had set and her eyelids had begun to droop more and more.

Finally, Leia stood up and stretched. "Threepio?" She called, getting ready to tell the droid she was about to retire for the night. When she received no response she frowned slightly.

"Threepio?" She repeated, this time a bit more loudly. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she grabbed her lightsaber while hesitantly heading towards where she'd last seen the protocol droid. A tingle shot through her spine, and she had a deep feeling she wasn't alone.

Leia felt a sharp nudge on the left side of her brain and ducked right when she heard something hit the wall where she once was. She turned to see a dart in the wall, and she scowled and ignited her lightsaber with a snap. "Whoever you are, identify yourself!"

Silence followed and Leia's scowl deepened. "You are trespassing on New Republic property and unless I'm mistaken, just tried to assassinate a prominent figure. If I were you I'd turn yourself in before the punishment gets worse than it already is." She called out into the dark room, flicking her light switch to realize in dismay that it had been disconnected.

The figure flew at her at an almost inhuman speed, and it took all of Leia's limited Force ability to block the red blade in time. Leia's eyes widened; all the Sith had died with Vader. Hadn't they?

"Who are you?" She demanded, noticing that under the hood the lightsabers illuminated the figure. It looked female and had light colored eyes, and its face was contorted into a focused snarl.

The figure broke the block and stepped back, twirling their saber. "I'm the daughter of someone who wants you out of the picture." She responded evenly.

Leia blinked, taken aback by the statement and instinctively scrambling to remember who her enemies were, when the assassin struck again. The senator struggled to keep up with the flurry of attacks, then noticed with dismay that while she was growing tired the assassin was barely batting an eye. She was merely playing with her.

"What's your play here?" Leia snapped, taking yet another step back and reassessing her defensive stance. "Whether you kill me or not, I doubt the security of the building hasn't been alerted by now."

"Oh, I don't doubt it at all. Considering there's no security left." The assassin did a twist and kicked Leia squarely in the jaw. Leia growled in pain but struck back, her frustration growing as she was unable to get a hit in when the assassin blocked all her attacks easily.

Finally, as Leia was tiring more and more, the assassin disarmed her. Leia watched helplessly as her lightsaber flew away from her, and the assassin grabbed the dart from the wall and shot it. It stuck Leia right in the neck, and she instinctively gasped in pain and pulled it out.

It took a moment, but the world started to slowly shift and sway around her. Leia shook her head and blinked several times to try and clear her increasingly muddy and fumbled thoughts, the last clear idea coming to her mind being to unhook the assassin's saber from her belt subtly and push it under her counter with the Force. The assassin bent over Leia and said something she couldn't identify, but the last thing she saw before she lost consciousness completely was a satisfied smirk on her face.

•••

The girl stepped back in excitement, beaming as she looked upon her now finished Nubian starfighter. It had taken her an absolute nightmarish amount of time to drag it out of her home and out into the open, but once she'd done it she put the power pack in its rightful place. And now, it was time to test it.

Suddenly struck with a bout of nerves, the girl was hesitant to climb into the cockpit. What if the fighter didn't power on? What if while she was out in space she experienced a malfunction? Where would she even go?

The girl shook herself, climbing in before she could hesitate even more. She'd heard stories about planets around the galaxy, listening as foreigners told tales of wonder and excitement in the bar on Raxish. Then she'd just been a bystander. Now, she was about to go have tales of her own to tell.

But where should she start? The girl thought to herself with a frown, biting her lip as she contemplated. She'd heard that Naboo was beautiful and it was where this starfighter came from, but it probably wasn't very close. She also wasn't sure which planets were Imperial, but she believed Naboo was one of them. She could try for a planet nearby, knowing that many systems between the mid and outer rims like Raxus Prime were mainly Hutt space but good for work. Maybe she could start there.

Having made up her mind, the girl took in a deep breath, took her pack off and placed it in front of her, and started the ignition.

The fighter started to life almost immediately, and the girl couldn't resist the ecstatic beam coming to her face. "Yes! Yes yes yes!!" She exclaimed, slapping the dash happily. She was finally going to escape. After so long, she was free.

She slowly lifted the fighter off of the ground, staring in awe around her as she did so. She'd never seen the junkyard look so small, and was suddenly struck with the thought of just how tiny and fragile she really was compared to everything else around her. But she shook herself and continued lifting up out of the atmosphere.

Slowly but surely the sky faded into black, and the girl's jaw dropped. Suddenly stars were all around her, but at the same time nothing was. She peered back behind her to see Raxus Prime fading, and her stomach clenched unexpectedly. She was leaving everything she'd ever known completely behind and starting somewhere fresh. Even though she'd yearned for it for years, it was still scary to be out in the galaxy with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Frowning slightly, the girl plugged in the coordinates for the core of Hutt Space and mentally crossed her fingers that the fighter wouldn't explode or malfunction when she went into hyperspace. Holding her breath, the girl reluctantly pulled down the hyperspace lever and waited fearfully as the fighter gave a few frightening stutters, then shot into hyperspace.

The girl found herself awestruck yet again; she'd never really heard stories of hyperspace before, she just knew that it was the main way to travel long distances. She'd never imagined it'd be this beautiful.

She leaned back in her seat and watched the blue blurs fly by in fascination, feeling a sense of peace she hadn't experienced in forever. Even though she had nowhere to go, she was going to start somewhere, and that was better than staying on that trash heap of a planet for the rest of her life.

No, she was going to be more than that. She was going to do more than survive. She was going to live.