Jedi Princess

STAR WARS - ROTJ Infinities: Jedi Princess

By The Great Shaggy





Chapter Five: So Changes a Galaxy



The death of the Emperor was only just the beginning of the Imperial Civil War.



Proclaiming himself as the new Emperor, Vader managed in fractioning the Empire with sectors declaring loyalty to him while others proclaimed loyalty to the vanquished Emperor Palpatine. Within weeks a Council of Palpatine of the Loyalist Confederacy to the New Order was established with the leadership declaring to retake Imperial Center and bring Vader to justice for the death of the galaxy’s sovereign ruler.



The Imperial Navy splintered between the two sides, bringing an equal amount of fleets to each side. Vader decided to deal with the traitors in a decisive manner by deploying the newly completed Death Star to destroy the Council of Palpatine, a selected group of Grand Moffs and Admirals that had assembled to wage the war against Vader, on the planet of Thyferria. However, the battle station was destroyed en route to the target. The Council of the Palpatine claimed credit for the station’s destruction, although further investigation revealed a catastrophic computer failure that caused the reactor to become unstable and explode.



Following the Death Star incident, Vader dispatched sizable forces to the Deep Core World of Byss and the Outer Rim world of Wayland to secure the Emperor’s secret installations where he stored vital information, weapons, and artifacts of both the ancient Sith Empire and Jedi Order. The Extremist, fearing that the Emperor hid plans for another unbuilt superweapon in one of those two installations, moved to intercept Vader’s forces. When the fighting concluded, Wayland belong to Vader and Byss’ installations were all but destroyed by Vader’s forces then allow them to fall into the Extremist’s grasp. As the war stretched out past the first year with no clear way to end the war quickly, both sides hunkered down for a long and drawn out conflict.



Vader’s forces controlled most of the Core Worlds, the Colonies, the Inner Rim and a portion of the Expansion Region while The Extremist held firm control over the Mid and Outer Rims with a majority of the worlds in the Expansion Region. The tide almost swung in favor of the Extremist when they found out about a secret installation hidden in a cluster of Black Holes near Kesel called' The Maw'. Finding nearly two fully completed superweapons, the Extremist started to plan for their final offensive drive to retake Imperial Center. However, one of the heavily encrypted transmissions were intercepted by the Dark Lord’s Intelligence network, causing a detachment of special operations troopers from the 1st SFOD-THETA to conducted a sabotage raid that not only destroyed the entire station along with the scientist and research projects, but also caused the bubble to collapse, making sure that neither side would be able to retrieve anything. The only gain for the Extremist was enlisting the services of an infuriated Admiral Daala and her four Star Destroyers that managed to escape.



Two years of bloody conflict ensued which had grounded to a stalemate when the arrival of a Imperial ship from the Unknown Region suddenly shifted momentum of the entire conflict. Pledging his loyalty to Vader, Grand Admiral Thrawn was given full command of all Imperial Loyalist Forces thus becoming the new Supreme Commander of Imperial Forces. Planets and enemy fleets soon started to fall to Thrawn’s unorthodox, but brilliant tactical maneuvering and battle strategy. Within two years time of taking command, the territory held by the Extremist had dwindled to that of only the worlds in the Outer Rim.



But the war was far from over as Vader slowly turned his attention to unfinished matters......

**********



Bib Fortuna couldn’t hid his displeasure for having to accompany his master, Jabba Desilijic Tiure the Hutt, back to his home world of Nal Hutta. He would’ve much more enjoyed Jabba’s absence in running the day to day business on Tatooine then traveling with the Hutt as he so requested. In fact, a majority of his court had been brought along for the trip as well as most of his personal wealth from his palace and townhouse in Mos Eisley. This caused the Twi’lek majordomo to have a sudden suspicion that Jabba may not in fact had been recalled to the Hutt home world as he so informed him. Maybe, in fact, he was running to it for safety?



He couldn’t fathom why he would do such a thing? Since the onset of the Imperial Civil War, the Hutt had tripled his profits by selling information and weapons to The Extremist as well as to the Loyalist. Yes other venues of the Hutt’s criminal empire were down, especially spice trafficking since Kesel had been declared off limits by Extremist forces as well as the slave trade, but it wasn’t too much to worry over. With Vader’s forces on the move the past few years, it seemed that the long war was nearing its conclusion. Then it would be back to business as usual or so he hoped.



Of course, there was that little problem of the Skywalker business. Bib snorted, shaking his head as he made his way down to the slave decks of the Jabba’s personal ship. It was no secret that Vader had killed everyone associated with the death of Skywalker with the exception of Jabba. The new Emperor would be foolish to try and pressure the Hutt Clans in giving up Jabba into Imperial custody as his official Imperial warrant read or even kill him and risk going to war with the Hutts. Besides if Vader wanted Jabba dead he would’ve been done so already.



And that to was something to look at maybe, he thought to himself as he stopped at a door. Punching in the right coded sequence, the door whisk aside and Bib stepped in, allowing a smile to cross his face. There, sleeping soundly on a mound of pillows, was the petite Alderanni woman that served him so well all these years. The former Princess of Alderaan and rebel leader turned spice addict, willing sex slave Leia Organa didn’t stir as Bib walked over and stood above her. Carefully as not to stretch the pretty face with his razor-shape fingernail, he ran the tip of a finger down her cheek. Her eyes immediately opened, her blue eyes focusing on him for a brief second before a smile crossed her face.



“Me kuna suvasa, esate,” Leia said obediently in Huttese.



Fortuna flash his row of dagger-sharp teeth. “Kuc je, youngee.”



Raising to her knees, Leia slid her hands beneath the blue folds of his robes and pulled out his member. His body shudder as her soft palms slowly fondled the entire length of his growing cock. Pulling up on it to stand it straight up, she leaned forward, her pink tongue appearing between her opened ruby lips and ran the bumpy appendage from his ball sack to the tip of his rod. A bit of pre-cum oozed from the tip, creating a long, glistening string from the head of his rod to the tip of her nose as she drew up.



Drawing herself closer, she rose up on her knees so her head hung directly above his piece. Opening her mouth wide, she dove on it, running its entire length into her wet orifice. Bib groaned as he felt the bumpy taste buds of the Alderaani’s tongue tickling the sensitive flesh of his harden member. Reaching down to place a hand on her head, he help her head bob back and forth, caressing his manhood. She took him like the pro that she was; start by stimulating the sensitive portion of penis to drive him crazy, but not enough for him to cum. Then move the head back and forth, side to side, so as to numb all sides of his organ with her tongue while her hand gave gentle tugs and squeezes at the base of the shaft. When that was accomplished, deep throat his entire organ twice and repeat.



After nearly ten minutes, Fortuna could feel his dick throbbing for release. Gripping both sides of her head, he buck his hips to face fuck his whore. It only took a few jerks for his body to lock up as the tip of his cock exploded towards the back of her mouth. Leia relaxed her throat and swallowed the onset of his load, but slowly withdraw it out as the hardened rod continued to expel its hot sticky seed onto her face. Bib groaned as he felt his final eruption and glanced down to smile at the cum covered face of Leia, who smiled back as her tongue ran along her face, seeking out every last bit of his seed as strands dangled from her chin.



“That’s a good girl,” he sooth as he withdraw a small vile.



Greedily, Leia snatched it from his outstretched hand and pour the orange powdery substances into her hand. Bringing it up to her nose, she inhaled sharply. Immediately, her eyes rolled towards the back of her head as her muscles relaxed as the nirvana mist clouded her thoughts and judgment in her mind. She fell back onto her mound of pillows and slowly drifted back off to sleep.



Bib grinned as he shoved his limp cock back underneath the folds of his robes. “Sleep well, my precious. Soon you’re going to make me a fortune.”



That is if he could keep a stock of the glitterstim spice that seemed to be getting rarer in the galaxy these days. Didn’t matter, he thought as he left the room and keyed the door close. After making sure it was locked, he proceeded to the next room to service the next slave girl. Leia had been the original test subject in his experiment to see if he could find a way to keep the vaginal canal of the slave girls tight and never to loosen no matter how many encounters they had. He found it and Leia had proven to be so successful that he added more girls to the program at Jabba’s orders. Now he had over three dozen, but with the active delivery component of the elixir and control method becoming scarier in the galaxy, Bib had to make cuts.



As soon as they reach Nal Hutta, half of the girls would be sold to the highest bidder in a private auction with Leia Organa being the prize lot. He expected to take in at least five to ten million credits just on her alone. He sighed, even although he was going to sell her, she would always hold a special place in his mind. Now if he could only get that red-hair slave dancer away from his master, she would fetch a high price as well, he thought. Bib decided he’ll go and talk to the Hutt about this right after finishing up feeding his girls.

**********



Hovering in the empty, planet less portion of the Mid Rim between Bothan and Hutt Space, and concealed in a nearby gas nebula, waited two sleek arrow-shaped ships. The smaller one was a Imperial Immobilizer 418 Interdictor cruiser. Interdictor cruisers, like their Vindicator-class cousins, had the appearance of small Star Destroyers, however their lines were broken by four large globes housing gravity well projectors. The gravity wells mimicked a large mass in space and thus restricted hyperspace travel. Nearby vessels were automatically prevented from engaging their hyperdrive, and any ship passing through the area via hyperspace were forced into realspace. As well as gravity wells, the Sienar design was also equipped with twenty quad laser cannons for short range combat against other capital ships and starfighters. And the other was one of the newer models of Star Destroyers that had just recently been completed at the Fondor shipyards.



Upon returning from the Unknown Space and taking command, Grand Admiral Thrawn petition for an upgrade in the fleet, asking for a more smaller Star Destroyer-class fleet warship that could cut down on crew complement yet retain the fire rating of a full size Destroyer. Immediately the designers sent out to see if they could accomplish such a feat by modifying current under construction Imperial-II class Destroyers. The result was the Defender-class, nickname a ‘pocket Star Destroyer’ by the designers. The new Destroyers were sixty-five percent the size of a standard Imperial-I class, crewed by only 6,795 with 244 gunners and the capacity to transport 1,600 troops, a small comparison to its larger cousins’ crew needs. However, the newer Star Destroyers held the same firepower rating of the newer Imperial-II class. At 1,040 meters in length, each Defender-class ship was armed with forty heavy turbolaser batteries, forty heavy turbolaser cannons, twenty ion canons, eight tractor beam projectors, and eight concussion missile launchers. The new Destroyer also retain its capability to transport and deploy a full wing of TIEs; two squadrons of fighters, three squadrons of interceptors, and a squadron of bombers, but also added a wing of the newer TIE/D Defenders for long-range fighter escort missions. First deployed during the Battle of Contruum at the onset of Thrawn’s campaign to retake the rest of the Expansion Region, the Grand Admiral remarked that they were the best-defended ships in the galaxy when only four of the newer Destroyers were credited with a fourth of the Extremist capital ship kills during the engagement without losing one ship to the enemy’s fire.



Standing on the bridge of the Conquest, Captain Pallaeon ran his wrinkled hands over his uniform as he patiently awaited the arrival of the mission’s target objective. Having surrender the Emperor’s Defense Fleet at the onset of the Imperial Civil War above Coruscant after taking command when Grand Admiral Declann was killed on the bridge of his flagship, the Chimaera, he surely thought he'd be executed when Lord Vader proclaimed himself the new Emperor. But in a twist of fate, Vader spared his life by saying he always held him in high regard since first meeting him during the Clone Wars, although Pallaeon couldn’t remember ever seeing the Dark Lord, let alone meeting him, during that war. Nevertheless, he reassume command of the repaired Chimaera and did his best not to fail his new Emperor.



Having distinguish his command during the Battles of Thyferra, Zeltros, and Aleen in the Inner Rim Campaign and the Battle of Wayland in the Outer Rim, Grand Admiral Thrawn hand selected him to command one of the new Defender-class Destroyers during the attack on Contruum. During the battle, he held the right flank during a vicious counterattack launched by the Extremist fleet to try and drive a wedge between Vader’s forces. During the holding action, Pallaeon was amazed at the amount of punishment the smaller Destroyer could take while dealing out a far superior more to the enemy. The result was not losing a single ship to the appalling losses suffered by the Extremist Fleet. He commented in his after action report that the newer Destroyers had ‘virtually impervious armor plating and shields’.



He took a moment to regard the crew in the pits below and on the bridge. They were all young and highly motivated enlisted and officers, yet he could notice how much things had changed during the last year of the war. He was astonished when he heard the reports of the Extremist finding a female Admiral that was once under the command of Grand Moff Tarkin guarding a secret research installation in a stable pocket in the Maw. When the installation was destroyed, Natasi Daala joined the Extremist and took command of a fleet, launching a campaign to cut the Hydian Way and Corellian Run at their intersection point in the Colonies thus cutting off a sizable portion of the Loyalist held territory in the Colonies, Inner Rim, and Expansion Regions. Only a combine Task Force led by Admiral Piett had stopped her just short of her object, but the damage had been done with dozens of systems falling to Extremist control. Even Grand Admiral Thrawn commented on her brilliant tactics of Faking and Maneuvering when studying her campaign to plan his own upon returning.



During Emperor Palpatine’s reign, women were regarded as inferior to men and held only administrative or supply positions on either a planet side installation or orbital bases with only a handful known to have ever being assigned to a warship in the Imperial Navy. That had changed in the aftermath of Thrawn’s comments about Daala. Vader immediately desegregated the Imperial Armed Forces, claiming that the unjust treatment of highly skill women during Emperor Palpatine’s reign had potentially caused talented officers to never reach their full leadership and command potential in the Imperial forces. Pallaeon took that moment of thought to realized that half of his bridge crew were female, most of them already veterans of the Imperial service that had jumped at the chance to transfer to positions aboard Star Destroyers. All and all during the last six months, Pallaeon noticed that their performance was equal to that of the highly experience men that made up three-fourths of the crew.



Approaching the ship’s commanding officer, Commander Lyra Mier slowed her pace a bit. Newly appointed as the Conquest’s executive officer, she held some reservations that the long service of ship’s commanding officer, dating back to the Old Republic Navy ten years prior to the onset of the Clone Wars that he might hold her womanhood against her. She could’ve been more wrong. Pallaeon had proven to be an exception, judging his officers’ performances of their duties then their genders as so many of her former superiors had done.



“Sir,” she called out for his attention once she stepped up next to him. “I have the latest Fleet Intel on our target’s flight plan.”



Taking the datapad from her hands, Pallaeon took a quick glance at the contents displayed on the screen, taking a moment to think about his new XO. Commander Mier was a good officer, average height with blond hair that was braided to regulation standards with crystal blue eyes and a pretty face. Having join the Imperial Starfleet eight years ago after finishing her planet’s required education system, she scored high praise for her organizational skills while serving as a Fleet Supply Officer on Corellia. But she also had been reprimanded on numerous occasions for taking TIE Fighters and shuttles out on what her commanding officer claimed where ‘joy rides to the cost of Imperial taxpayers’, but she defended her actions as maintaining her edge of the flight stick. Demoted, she was transferred to a Duro orbital city garrison in the Outer Rim where her career in the Imperial Starfleet would’ve ended if not for the start of the Imperial Civil War. Competent, knowledgeable of her duties, and a eagerness to learn, Pallaeon had no doubt that she would make a fine executive officer.



“If the target keeps to its projected flight path, intercept time is in approximately ten minutes from now,” Pallaeon announced, turning the datapad back over to Mier. “Notify the Accession to power up its gravity well projectors.”



“Yes, Captain. Should I put two squadrons of TIEs on alert as well?”



Pallaeon took a moment to think her suggestion through. It would be highly unlikely the target would survive the initial attack, but there was always a chance. “Very well. Have Gamma and Zeta squadrons place on ready status with Alpha on standby.”



Nodding, Mier turned and took her leave to carry out her orders. Yes, she’ll definitely will be a good executive officer, Pallaeon thought as he turned his attention back to the bridge’s viewports. Now all that had to happen was a clean kill to wrap up this mission and get back to the fleet’s rendezvous point to prepare for the beginning of the invasion.

**********



Nestled on two pillows between Jabba’s bloated belly and his twitching tail, Mara yawned as she lowered her hand to her aching loins. The Hutt had barely finished with their morning session after abusing her body all night long when his majordomo entered his private chambers. After giving her her vial of glitterstim, that she eagerly took like all the rest of the girls, Bib waited until he saw a smile appear on her face as she slipped into the spice-induced blissfulness.



“Master, may I have a word with you?”



Jabba waved one of his hands as he dipped his other into a bowel next to his dais, grabbing a live Klatooine frog. “Damn it, Bib, can’t this wait until after breakfast?” asked Jabba as he plopped the squirming creature into his massive mouth before reaching for another.



Bib knew it was nearly impossible to try and conduct business with the Hutt when he was feeding, but he had to try anyway. This would be his last attempt before reaching Nal Hutta. “Master, as you know my wishes to sell off half of the girls to-”



”Which I don’t think to be in best interest, Bib. I told you that when you first informed me of your intentions. This war will not last forever and when it does, the supply of glitterstim will soon be back to its normal levels.”



“Yes, that might be true. But in the mean time, it cost nearly ten thousand credits for a small vial of the spice. Adding up the cost between the amount of girls we have puts the spend to earn ratio into the negatives.” Bib took a deep breath. He hadn’t informed the Hutt of selling the Princess but decided it would be best if he did if he was going to sell him on getting rid of his pet. “Fourteen of the girls will generate an income of anywhere between fifty to a hundred thousand credits each in private auction. Many of the bidders are associates of yours that have always wanted to have one for their own.”



“You said fifteen your selling, but mention fourteen. What of the last one?”



“My research and inquirers have shown that the Princess will fetch-”



Hearing Leia’s name, Jabba exploded. “No! I will not let her leave my grasp. She will die by my hands when the time comes.”



“But, Mighty Jabba, the earnings for her alone will almost be ten million credits,” stated Bib. “Maybe as high as twenty.” The mentioning of such an astronomical amount was enough to calm the Hutt, causing the Twi’lek to relax. Time for the last play, he thought. “Arica will also fetch somewhere as well in that price range, but not as much as the Princess. Seems that our bidders have a thing for natural red heads.”



Having been chained to Jabba’s side for the better part of four years, Mara had come to learn and speak Huttese. Now, hearing the exchange, her eyes widen with surprise and hope. Ever since her failed escape attempt and the diminishing use of the Force since her master’s death, she’d been unable to properly plan or coordinate another attempt. In fact, it had taken almost her entire willpower to keep from becoming a spice craze junkie, but she been slowing losing for the better part of the past year. Even now she could feel her body craving more for the drug, a thought that disturb her to no end. Now with this new information, hope had rekindled inside of her of possibly escaping this hellish nightmare and seeking revenge on the person that betrayed and killed the one person whoever cared for her.



Jabba leaned back to ponder Bib’s words. Total value of the sixteen would be well over forty million credits. That was over a hundred percent of what he was making now in half a year in the both the spice and slave trafficking. Glancing down, he saw her emerald eyes looking up at him. Was that a look of hope or surprise in her eyes? Didn’t matter for he was starting to get tired of her anyway.



Releasing her chain, he used his tail to sweep her off the dais to Bib’s feet. Mara let out a surprise yelp as she landed in a pile on the ground. “Take her, Bib.”



Smiling, Bib grabbed the chain and gave it a hard tug to drag the girl back onto her feet. “Thank you, master.”



With Mara trailing silently behind him, Bib lead her back down to the slave level and began to plan his next move. Yes, he would definitely sell both of them, perhaps even to the same bidder in a secret deal for more than twice the price to guarantee he won them during the live auction. That way he could stash the earnings while giving Jabba the winning bid amount. Stopping by Leia’s locked hatch, he decided that he would do that as he keyed for the lock. Stepping to the side, he unclip the chain on her slave collar and shoved her into the room. Stumbling in off balance, Mara eyes widen in surprise at seeing the sleeping form of the Princess Leia Organa on a mound of colored pillows into the middle of the room. She couldn’t believe that after all these years the Hutt had kept her alive.



“Have fun with her. You’re both going to make me rich.”



Standing upright, she turned to look back at the Twi’lek who was laughing when she was suddenly thrown to the deck as the ship lurched violently. Bib cried out in surprise as he landed hard on the deck, managing to brace his fall in time. What the hell is happening, he thought as he reached into his robe and withdrew his comlink.



“Bridge, this is Fortuna. What is going on?”



“We’ve been pulled from hyperspace.”



“I guess that already, you idiot. By what?”



There was a brief pause when the crewmember voice replied back in horror. “Two Imperial Star Destroyers. Their-”



His voice cut off sharply as the ship suddenly shuddered violently to the side. Illumination and control panels above and around him exploded, showering him with hot sparks as he felt the ship listing to port. Smoke from fires and explosions filled the air, overpowering the air scrubbers as alarms and klaxons battered his ear drums. Coughing, he slowly drew himself back onto his feet as he tried desperately to think. Why was the Star Destroyers attacking them? Did they stumble into a battle, was it an ambush that they stumbled into, or were they the subject of the attack?



It didn’t matter. If it was two Star Destroyers out there then Jabba’s ship was doom. He needed to get to an escape pod and launch before it was too late. He took a step and then stop as a thought did occur to him: even if he did manage to escape in a pod and land on a inhabitable planet with a settlement, what would he do for credits? He carried none and all the codes he retain to manage Jabba’s accounts where sealed in the onboard vault. As the ship jolted again, he decided it would be suicidal to try to retrieve the codes and make the pod in time. Then his gaze fell upon the women. Yes, he could use them to earn back his money. He still had memorized the elixir formula and could surely replicate it. Or if all else fails, sell them during a slave auction.



Running into the room, he hauled both human slave girls to their feet and dragged them down the smoke filled passageway to the nearest escape pod bay. With a little bit of luck he could reach it in time and slip away without being detected before the ship was destroyed.

**********



Pallaeon watched as the converted cruise ship hung dead in space. He wasn’t overall surprised that the Hutt ship had survived the initial attack, after all the Hutts were criminals and would buy the best shield array system they could get their grubby hands on, even if it was a highly illegal military-grade as was this system that was protecting the Hutt's ship. Thankfully he didn’t have to find out if it carried a military-grade weapon systems.



“Comscan, give me a damage report on that ship,” he ordered. “Commander.”



“Yes, Captain,” Meir replied, still feeling a bit stun that the Hutt ship had managed to survive such concentrated firepower.



“Launch Gamma and Zeta squadrons, but they are to hold a tight pattern two thousand meters out from our starboard side. I don’t want to send them in unless I have too.”



“Sir, sensors indicated that their shields have weakened to only twenty percent. Reactor is holding stable, but its containment field is weakening. Life support is failing.”



“Any escape pod launches detected?”



“Negative.”



“Very well. Gunnery, all forward batteries may fire at will until target is destroyed.”

**********



Mara’s mind was whirling as the Twi’lek dragged her and Leia down the increasing chaotic corridor towards the nearest bank of escape pods. She had no doubt that she could easily dispatch the Twi’lek once he got them into the escape pod, but depending on their current position, she didn’t want to spend possible weeks lock in a claustrophobic interior with a decaying corpse. Then there was the question of what she would do with the Princess? But that was thinking too far in advance, first she needed to do was get rid of the excess baggage.



Rounding the corner, Bib felt his spirits rise upon finally seeing a bank of escape pods. Slamming his hand on the control panel to the first escape pod, he stood off to the side and waved his hand to the slave girls.



“Get inside now,” he ordered.



They both obeyed without so much as a twitch of an eyelash. Leia was the first one in, followed by Arica. He was about to follow when Arica suddenly whirled around and struck out with an open palm, striking the top of his forehead with enough force to propel him backwards against the far bulkhead. With his vision spinning, he shook his head to refocus his eyes just in time to see Arica’s hand slapping on the launch button. With his eyes widening in horror, he lunged towards the control panel to abort the launch, but failed to make it when the ship jolted violently to the right, sending him screaming down the corridor.



Gripping the side of the arm rest, Mara barely had time to buckle herself into the acceleration couch’s safety harness when she was slammed roughly to the soft cushioning as the explosive bolts detonated, propelling the pod clear of the dying ship just as the reactor went critical. Both women covered their eyes as Jabba’s starship grew as bright as a supernova for a brief moment before exploding into flaming pieces of wreckage that flung past all around the small pod.



Taking a deep breath, Mara took a quick glance out the viewport and was surprised to see two arrow-shape silhouettes that had to be Imperial Star Destroyers off in the distances. For a brief moment she considered activating the emergency locator and broadcast her identifier code, but dismiss it as quickly. She didn’t know if this was in fact Extremist ships or Loyalist. Besides, of the three individuals who knew of her true identity, one was dead and the other was working for the last who in all cases wanted to inflict as much physical pain onto her before she died for killing Skywalker.



No, she would take her chances in the escape pod. Glancing at the navigational display, she brought up their current coordinates and could’ve have been more dishearten by what she saw. Of all the hyperspace routes that connected Tatooine to Hutt Space, Jabba seem to pick the one with the least amount of inhabitant planets along its vectors. Commonly referred as the ‘Dead Zone’, it was a section of the known galaxy that was a cylindrical sphere that encompassed a vast section of space that started as far as the border of the Expansion Region and Inner Rim and extended all the way to Gamorr at the outer fringes of the Outer Rim and Wild Space. Within that sphere was a cluster of highly condensed gas nebulas, asteroid fields that some astronomers speculated to be remains of planets, numerous black holes, and cosmic anomalous that help spread the various ‘ghost’ stories by spacers of that region. Some historians theorize that before the formation of the Republic, some catastrophic cosmic event caused a chain reaction that caused nearly all the stars in the sphere to go supernova over a time period of a couple hundred years that caused such great devastation. Others claim it to be the remains of an ancient empire that destroyed itself in a terrible civil war before the formation of the Old Republic.



But those arguments were minuet thought to Mara at the moment. Cross referencing the star lines, she pin pointed the pod’s exact position as being halfway between Moonus Mandel and Lannik, which put them directly in the heart of the Dead Zone. Which meant that if no one should stumbled upon them within the next week or so then this pod that was supposed to be her salvation was to become her final resting tomb.



“Their leaving us.”



Upon hearing the cry, Mara suddenly became aware that she wasn’t alone in the escape pod. Turning, she saw Leia gazing out the pod’s only viewport at the Star Destroyers that were slowly moving away from the engagement area. It was at this moment that Mara’s hand started to unconsciously shake; a sure sign of spice withdrawal what both women would come to face in the upcoming days. Within a minute, both Imperial vessels had disappeared into the flicker of hyperspace, leaving the women to their undecided fate.





TO BE CONTINUED......