Echo

The entranceway to the building that held her uncle’s apartment was so much bleaker than she’d ever seen it before. Grey had already gone ahead inside the clear barrier and pushed the button for the turbolift, she watched him, hesitating. Something told her to be cautious, and for a moment the idea that she could have been a Jedi flashed through her mind, that half a thought took the precious time that she could have been using to heed the warning that her mind was screaming at her.

Grey’s yell and leap back towards her was too late as a cloaked figure sped from a shadowed ally, strait towards her, she rocked back away from the figure, but it anticipated her movement and grabbed her under her arms, pulling her against it. She instantly tried to struggle, but seemed unable to doso. Her attacker didn’t seem to even notice her struggles, or her curses. She was simply tossed over his shoulder, to see the world blur by, almost like the star-lines of lightspeed… the only people she’d ever seen move that fast were her uncle and Grey… Jedi… the realization bubbled to the surface like boiling water.

But… no Jedi would stalk her… no Jedi would kidnap her from under a Padawan’s nose, unless this was some elaborate Jedi test for her longtime friend. She hoped with all of her being that is was… though in her deepest mind she knew that the person carrying her was not a Jedi, that he was, as far from a Jedi as you can be.
She whimpered a little, though it went unheard in the rush of wind as she was carried away from her home by an evil force.


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“Master!” Grey’s paniced voice echoed along the passage to the Jedi’s apartments, “Master! Vera’s been taken!”


He called again, the deepest sense of dread filled him as he slammed his fist against the panel to open the door. He should have listened to the force, he should have heeded its warnings, interpreted them better… somehow. And as the door opened he realized again what a fool he was for not heeding that sense. His master’s body lay there, because he was not a true Jedi Master… the grace of being absorbed by the force was denied him and his student could only gawk at the heinousness of the scene before him.


His master’s head, dismembered by a light saber… Grey could still smell sense the charge left in the air, that so stunk with blood, was placed upon one of the lamps… his eyes were still opened, wide with shock… the man hadn’t had time to respond to the attack… The rest of his body was scattered throughout the apartment; though not cleanly severed like the head. His arms and legs seemed to have been bodily ripped off. Blood seemed to coat everything in a thick, sticky layer of gore.


Slowly, he backed out of the apartment… trying to make himself breathe. As he took a deep breath the smell of blood made him gag. As he stumbled away from the gory sight, he fumbled for his communicator.


“Gather… the council… Kivis Echo has been killed …” he managed to spit out before dropping to his knees and letting all of the emotions that a Jedi is never supposed to feel, or rather respond to, take him over. Loss, Greif, Anger… Rage. He vowed in those moments to track down the ones who did this to his master and to his Vera and to slay them more viciously than they had killed his master… and to do it slowly.


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The hum of a hyperdrive starting up brought her clawing back to hated consciousness. She groaned as a hand went to her ribs, which were extremely sore. Did I get punched yesterday? She yawned a little bit and rolled over on the bunk… the unfamiliar bunk, “OH SITHSHIT!” she yelled and sat up abruptly, the realization that she’d been abducted, from right out of a near-jedi’s nose, and just as abruptly her forehead came in contact with the metal support bar of the bunk above her. She sunk back into the bunk her hands pressed to her head.

“You shouldn’t use language like that, little one” a dark voice came from the shadowed doorway that she could only assume lead to the rest of the ship. “Someone may be insulted” she heard the smirk in his voice.

With a snort she rolled over and faced the wall, determined to ignore the stranger. If she didn’t talk to him, maybe he’d go away… and she could plot a way to sabotage this heap of his. She grinned inwardly to herself, yes… he’d be very confused when the power supply to his hyperdrive went offline… yes indeed.

“You also shouldn’t plot so outwardly, I would have assumed that you’d know that by now.” The voice had a disgustingly playful tone to it, “After what happened after you tried to shoot my with that pathetic little blaster of yours.”

She groaned in response to that, and now remembered why she’d been knocked out. Like a moron, she’d tried to shoot him as he set her down in his speeder. The last thing she remembered was something heavy impacting the side of her head. She winced and touched the bump there, which was now complimented by the matching bump on her forehead.
“So you remember now,” the condescending voice told, much more than asked.

She scowled; she’d always disliked having her mind read. “So you’re a force user… that much I figured out a while ago”

“I know” he replied in a dry voice

“Of course you do. Who do’ya work for?” she asked, in a conversational voice that was so nonchalant that an outside observer would have no idea that he’d just plucked her off a busy street on Coruscant, hit her in the head, and was now taking her to who knows where.

“That doesn’t concern you” he replied, his tone just as dry as before, the playful tone seemed to have evaporated.

“Why not?”

“Because my employer would have me kill you,” he said flatly

“Oh” … “Why’d you kidnap me in the first place”, she queried, rolling over in the bunk, so she was facing towards him, hoping to get a glance of his face… she hadn’t seen his face except for when she tried to shoot him, and that memory seemed disturbingly blurry.

“I was supposed to kill you.” His tone dropping to an icy temperature

“Oh” … “Why didn’t you?” she asked hesitantly, worrying about the answer. She didn’t really want to be sold as a slave… dark Jedi had very little respect for life and she knew she’d make a nice prize for a hutt, the thought made her want to gag.

“I don’t know, maybe I still will”

“Bastard” she muttered, so low she didn’t think he could hear her.

“Yes, but at least one of my parents wanted me,” the comment struck a cord that hadn’t been jostled in years, most people knew better than to insult her about that one piece of her history. Though she tried counting backwards, like her uncle had taught her, breathing regularly, the rage that she so easily fell into was rising.

“Angry?” his cool voice asked, the playful tone had returned

She rolled to the edge of the bed and glared at him then, pulled her feet out of the bed and crouched low, her head throbbed from being banged around so much and she imaged she probably had a fair bruise or two. Though at the moment her temper didn’t allow her little things like vanity. She growled and then leapt at him, her hands going towards his throat. Quickness, one of the things that had saved her life many times in the underworld, however, didn’t save her from this man, he simply shoved her aside with the force, and she ended up jamming her fingers on the wall. Then fell backwards to the floor before she could compensate for the shift.

“BASTARD!” she hissed at him as she recovered her feet.

“Yes, we’ve already been through this. I am”

She glared daggers at him, “Let me go, or kill me”

The statement seemed to catch him off guard. An order wasn’t what he’d expected from her, maybe another curse or two, or a scream, or another attack. The clearness and decisiveness of the demand was the most unusual thing he’d heard from a captive in a long time… and he’d had many captives.

Through red-tinged vision she glared at him, if she wasn’t so unreasonably enraged she would have noticed his features. Human… mostly… probably upwards of six feet tall, hair like a lion’s mane fell about his shoulders and caught even the dim, artificial lights of this cabin and the almost unnatural looking highlights came to life. His eyes were a light blue that fringed on violet. He leaned against the door jam, casually a playful grin spread across his lips.

The sleeveless black top was half-net, and he wore what seemed to be two leather belts that crossed in the center of his chest, on those belts there were little metal canisters, his arms were crossed and on them were a vast assortment of tribal tattoos, though they all interweaved to create one massive piece of body art. The edges of this tattoo came to the sides of his face, like the darkness that always threatened to consume him so entirely. Though she saw little to none of this, other than eyes she wanted to gouge out with a very rusty pickaxe, and maybe an arm she’d like to see a wookie pull off.

“You’ve got a lot of anger for someone raised by a Jedi”

“I have to hate for all of us” she replied quickly, the reply that she’d given the umpti-million Jedi who had told her that over the years.

“I can see that”

“Screw you”

“Is that an offer?”

“No!”

“Are you sure?”

“YES!”


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