Star Wars: Immortal Devotion - Short Stories (Character Intros/One Shots)

"Born to be Free" (Part 3)

It had been an entire year since he and his father had so unceremoniously discussed his departure from the family business. And during that time, he had remained on Fueller until his sister was ready to begin to take over in place of him.

His father had started to crack due to the strains of all of the entrepreneurial problems their family was having, as well as from the incessant spending from his two children and wife.

Kindra was still very much a party animal, but she had matured at least enough to where she was getting the hang of running the business side of the Fueller Shipyards.

And Niles was finally ready to go.

During the past year, he was forced to say goodbye to all of his friends.

He never did hear from Tarrah Kanji after she shipped out. He assumed her time on Corellia had done her some good. Possibly straightened her out a little bit, or at the very least, sobered her up.

He did hear from Philipe Montie once, who had informed Niles that they had in fact not been assigned to guard Wild Space, and were instead on a top secret expedition deep within an unknown enemy. But that was the last transaction he received from either the Captain or the Junior Lieutenant.

Jun-Woo Maan Jr. had actually become the COO of the Concord Retail Caucus, working to defund the Empire in whatever ways he could. But to the best of Niles knowledge, he had never actually allied himself with the rebels. This gave Niles strange, mixed emotions that he couldn't exactly pinpoint. But at least Jun-Woo hadn't quite made himself an enemy of the Empire, in the traditional sense that is.

And he never got to see Emilito Burkess again. Only a week after Tarrah and Philipe had shipped out, she had been hired to teach intergalactic language at a university on Mirial. She never even said goodbye.

But Niles told himself that he didn't care, because where he was going, friends and lovers would only slow him down. Today was the day he would finally become an intergalactic drifter.

He could not deal with his father's incessant nagging anymore, and had thrown a handful of items and credits into a satchel before grabbing his overcoat and dashing out the door.

He had not told any of them goodbye, and he heard his father's pleas for him to come back and reconsider as he leaped feet first into his speeder.

He only looked back once as he took off for the nearby spaceport.

As he negotiated with an offworld pilot to take him to the nearest galactic hotspot, which was some world named Bal'demnic, he began to feel a ball of excitement swelling in his core.

He crawled aboard the ship and took one last look at his landspeeder.

He was really doing this.

He was finally going to be free.

He was a drifter. Not going where anyone told him to go, and not doing what anyone told him to do.

The last thing Niles felt before he crashed into a deep sleep following the morning's adrenaline rush was the overwhelming sense that maybe he was wrong.

He was still young, and it was very possibly he was simply being naive. There's no way his father had been right?

It didn't matter now, because there was no turning back.

He would come back to visit in about ten years or so.

But in the meantime, he answered to no one.

Niles Merrick was free.