AN: A new story, for your enjoyment. An untold tale of adventure across the stars. A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...

Chapter 1: Where Regrets Send You Running

Naruku was a dull system, with a lone habitable planet, girded with orbitals and hollowed out moons. It was something of a trade hub, but of the most mundane and forgetable sort. It had started as a mining colony, and by the time the metals had dried up, it had built up a flow of traffic that kept stopping through on their way through the rim territories. Naruku III was a cesspool city inside a stacked cluster of habitation spheres, built one by one into a clump of a megacity, and a treacherous wasteland crawling with lethal monsters beyond them. Open settlements or individual habs protected by automated defense grids and battle droids were not unheard of, but were universally considered insane.

"Gimme a Red Dwarf," he said to the Ithorian behind the bar. "A double."

It was such a typical backwater spacer dive. Equipped to serve countless species, with shady dealings in every corner and a blaster on every table. Wren slugged his drink. There was a female at the end of the bar; not human, but damn close, and well put together. He didn't meet her gaze, but the cant of her body told him she was staring straight at him. And she was on her way nearer.

"Did you know you're the only one in here who's just drinking?" she purred, gesturing about the room. She leaned her lithe frame deliberately over the wood of the bar.

"And what would you be up to, then?" he asked her. The woman gave him a sidelong glance. Wren tucked into his drink, and she draped herself over his left shoulder.

"There are a lot of things I could be doing," she said in a low voice. "What among them would bring you pleasure?"

In the corner of his grey eyes, Wren saw two Twi'lek males and a Rodian leave their booth and head for the door. The human unfolded his legs and stood from his stool. "Pay my bartab," he said to the woman, a cheeky grin on his face as he walked off. He got a few seconds of hesitation out of her, before she grabbed his arm and pulled it against her chest.

"You could pay mine," she said. "And reap other benefits."

From out the door came the sound of muffled blaster fire. Wren groaned in exaspiration. Then he elbowed the female in the sternum, shoving her away from him. With a snarl, she pulled a thin vibroblade from her top, lunging forward. The spacer stopped the lunge with two kicks; blocking the stab from out wide with a push of the bottom of his boot before lashing out sideways with the heel. The second kick landed heavy to the midsection, folding the girl over and driving her back several steps. Before she could recover her breath, Wren drew a wooden-gripped, long-barreled blaster from his thigh holster and fired two stun pulses into her. She crumpled without a sound.

"Lady, I'd buy this whole place just to stop your prattle," he muttered, before dashing for the door. At the last moment, Wren tipped himself over and tumbled back out of the doorway, before the door was burned through by a hail of blaster bolts. He hopped back on the chase once the barrage was done, loading a slender grey-tipped slug from a belt pouch into his second underslung barrel. Outside the cantina, the three from the booth were scrambling into a landspeeder. Wren took one handed aim and fired the bottom barrel, and the round pentrated through the craft's body. Within it exploded, gutting the repulsorlifts and killing the vehicle. The three began to crawl clear, but there were trigger pullers to Wren's left and right as he came through the cantina door, blasters drawn. They'd exchanged fire with the three as they escaped; one of their number had already fallen further down the street to the shots Wren had heard earlier.

Wren fired first, a thick green particle bolt taking the first in the back of the head and bowling him over. The second aimed to Wren, but the spacer stepped in close, blocking the gunman's move to aim with a right forearm and landing a straight left to the body, in one movement. Then, Wren turned his left fist upward, popping the chin up so he could strike with his right hand, hammering the grip of his blaster pistol into the side of the gunman's face. The last interloper fell in a heap, turning Wren's attention back to the three from the cantina. They raised blasters. A fusillade of green bolts cut them down.

"Ahhgh!" The Rodian howled, his blaster arm cooked. The other two moved no more. They just smouldered. Wren closed in, step by step.

"You really slagged this one, Cohju," he said with a grimace. "I'd have never taken this job a week ago. I could care less who Bruga the Hutt wants to flay." There was no response, just an accusing stare. "Don't look at me like that. You brought this on your self when you stole a Star Galleon filled with medical supplies, doomed the research station it was headed towards, and then used it to vape a private passenger craft for fun."

"Don't give me up to Bruga," Cohju gasped. "Just blast me here."

Wren crounched, wrenching Cohju's good arm around behind his back and yanking him up by it. "No such luck," he hissed in the Rodian's ear. "And don't think I'm nice enough to hand you over to the New Republic, so you can get a cot, holonet, and three round portions of whatever the fek your species likes to eat, for the rest of your life." The pained look on Cohju's face turned to dread. Wren grinned wide. "You're going to Bastion. Try not to look too thrilled."

Wren lead his catch to the star port; there, Naruku Trade Authority would hold him till the Empire came to shuttle the lowlife off to less-than-comfortable full incarceration, for a small cut of the bounty. "Buck up, old buddy," he said to his one time friend. "They won't work you to death, it's 22 ABY, not 2 ABY. Gilad Pellaeon isn't exactly Palpatine. You'll have food, blankets, might even get a microfresher."

The bounty hunter took his time leaving the spaceport, unsure where he should proceed. "Time is it?" he asked himself, consulting his chronometer. "21st out of 26 hours?" He could return to his ship, but there were still 5 hours of nightlife to consider. Especially since his balance was 4000 credits larger.

The grumble in his stomach decided for him. "Grub'" he said aloud. "Definitely grub."

Wren had developed a knack for tracking down the only decent food on backwater dirtballs. He strode through the streets, a sack of nerfburgers hanging from one hand. "Hah, nightlife. Funny," he said to himself, navigating through to the star port, high on the wall of the hab cluster where the hangars ringed the outside of the structure. "Wrenspeak for 'drink yourself silly'." He sent his starship a ramp-down signal, which it obeyed immediately. It was a Corellian model, 52 meters long, with three drives and a classic linear blockade runner profile.

"Su'Cuy! This your ship?" Wren turned to see.

"I'm on the ramp, so yeah, it's mine," he said to the armored form. He almost mistook the white armor trimmed red for a stormtrooper, but if you stayed in the rough spots of the galaxy, you learned to spot genuine Mandalorian kit, and to stear clear. "You've gotta be the shortest Mando I've ever seen."

"Ke barjurir gar'ade, jagyc'ade kot'la a dalyc'ade kotla'shya," the mercenary said.

Wren waved his hands dismissively, not understanding a word. "What do you want?" he asked, already at the end of his patience.

"I need transport. To Coruscant."

The implications passed through Wren's head. A run to Coruscant meant big money. But it also meant that whoever this was, Wren was stuck with him for quite a bit of time. "A runt like you wouldn't take up much space," the pilot jabbed. "And the YZ-775 is a pretty roomy model. Fast too, and the Hasty Lady here is faster than most of her like. We can get you to the core at .75 through hyperspace, but that's a long trek out of my way. Cost will be extra."

"My employer will cover any expense. Will 15,000 credits reserve your services until we arrive?"

Wren was about to haggle higher when he heard shouts coming from down the corridor. Cursing, the Mando posted outside the doorway. "This conversation isn't over," Wren said, dashing up the ramp.

"Iviin'yc, spacer!" The Mandalorian called at Wren's back. "Your rust bucket is worthless if you are!" The armored warrior shouldered a modified DC-15A blaster rifle, deploying a keen bayonet. A pilot light on the right wrist of the armor clicked on, a thin blue torch. Then a gang of gunmen in ramshackle plastoid armor came round the corner, and the Mando hosed them down in a spray of burning fuel. What followed was a storm of violent bayonet drill, as the 5'4" stack of armor and weapons stabbed, cut, and bludgeoned through the still-burning attackers.

In the conical cockpit, Wren inched his hand back from the weapons control. "Damn," he muttered, starting an heavily truncated launch procedure. The Mando sprinted for the Hasty Lady's ramp, turning to fire a volley of blue plasma as more armored gunmen spilled into their landing pit. They toted T-21 repeaters and CR-1 blaster cannons.

"If you let them hit me with that, I'm gonna reset all your holonet preferences," said a sly female voice. Wren responded by hitting the 'ramp up' switch.

"Gimme the autoblasters on eye-tracking," he ordered. The men on the ground began setting up a Merr-Sonn Mark II.

"Either leave or shoot, flyboy!" called the Mando from the ramp. He fired his DC again, sending the enemy scrambling, before pulling a cryoban grenade. "Both, preferably." He hucked the cryogenic weapon, before sprinting to the cockpit as the ramp closed shut. The Mando posted on the back of the copilot chair, stowing his DC's bayonet.

Wren fixed his eyes on the ambling men; at the cheek positions on each side of the cockpit, an array of four dual autoblaster turrets deployed from beneath concealing armor plates, and adjusted to his point of vision. He pressed the button on his left armrest console, and the eight barrels blanketed the entryway in hundreds of bursting red bolts, the discharges melding together into a single splitting screech. Wren walked his vision left and right, mowing through the assembling heavy weapons and detonating the Merr-Sonn turreted gun. "Kandosii," the merc breathed through his voice filter. Wren didn't understand, but smirked anyways.

"Yeah," he said, hitting the throttle and sending power to the drives. They turned and shifted out of the hanger before tearing away for the ever higher reaches of the atmosphere. "Now then. First, SENA, an apology would be nice, considering that your hardware is untouched as usual."

"Granted," came the same female voice from before.

"Thank you kindly. Moving on, Mando. My rate to Coruscant from these parts is normally 25k per head. But seeing that you've got some very heavily armed critics, that rate is gonna climb to 50k, up front, plus thrice that on completion." Wren smirked more.

"Two things," the armored passenger responded. "One, where's that lady?"

"SENA is short for Self Expanding Neural Architecture. She's my co-pilot, physically located in the off-limits droid bay, and she helps me run this eight man ship on my own. She's tapped into pretty much everything on the Hasty Lady. Anything else?"

"Your rate is exorbitant. If I knew you were gonna be a besom, I would have looked for a different ship."

Wren laughed. "Buddy, truth is that there isn't another ship in the Naruku system that can get you to Coruscant in one piece. This isn't my first bantha ride, you're getting chased by people with blaster cannons for a good reason, and I'm gonna get paid proper for getting you through it. Autoblasters is just the beginning of this bag of tricks. Your employer will get his money's worth.".

Something resembling a scoff issued from the voice filter. "We'll see," the Mando said. "Verd ori'shya beskar'gam."

"A warrior is more than his armor," SENA offered.

"Apt," Wren responded with a chuckle. "But you've got the best pilot that frequents these parts. The Hasty Lady has the muscle, brains, and firepower to get you to the Core alive. But if you like, I can drop you off on that dirtball so you can find a cruddier ship with a scruffier, laserbrained pilot, who can help you test that pretty kit's void resistance." The Mando tilted his helmet, but said nothing. "Your room is to the left out of the cockpit corridor. Mine is to the right; also, obviously, off limits. Food prep is in the lounge at the center of the crew deck, if your people need things like that." Then an alarm sounded, followed by a soft red light on Wren's console. "SENA?"

"Three upgunned Action VI transports, and sixteen X-ceptors, all on intercept vectors off a minor orbital crossing our flight path," came the even reply. "Insulting, really."

"Oh come on, it'll be a nice light show. Give me forward shields and the autoblasters, and get to work with the AG-2Gs."

"Gedet'ye, tell me you're kidding! I'm paying you to get my shebs out of trouble, not into it!" the Mando complained, as the Hasty Lady came about and angled up, reaching for a higher orbit as the autoblaster turrets revealed themselves from under their armored panels. Streaks of red reached out into the dark from the Lady's waist guns, streaking off till they burst apart on something solid or lost cohesion thousand of kilometers away. Bolts of green fired from the wing cannons of salvaged TIE Interceptors bound to X-wing bodies, but the Correlian transport pitched about on her maneuvering jets, and the long range shots flew wide or pounded all too feeble against the Hasty Lady's shields. The uglies had less luck; even at such extended ranges, SENA's gunnery yielded blossoming fireballs as the powerful quad guns lead the ramshackle fighters and tore through them. Wren too struck out against the approaching fighter screen, pointing the nose once, twice, and a third time to slay X-ceptors with the rapid fire cheek cannons. They were speedy fighters, with plenty of power for weapons and thrust but very poor handling; thanks to the conflict between X-wing control systems and drives mated to the solar power and maneuvering thrusters of a TIE/in, getting properly responsive controls out of X-ceptors was impossible. Between Wren and SENA, the fighter screen fell apart rapidly.

"Your skepticism is duly noted," Wren beamed. "But these clowns are gonna have to do a lot better than this if they wanna vape my humble abode."

"Wren, those Actions are picking up missile locks and launching proton weapons," SENA reported. "Nine torpedoes total."

"That's more like it. You're best with the composite beams, they're all yours."

The Hasty Lady wore four bulges amidship, two ventral and two dorsal. Each contained an armored popup turret for a composite beam laser, an incredibly destructive short range blaster weapon similar in mechanism to the superlaser of the Death Stars of old. These weapons, though they dissipated quickly, were furiously intense and exceedingly accurate, so SENA used them as a point defense system. The blistering red beams detonated the proton torpedoes in rapid succession as they closed in on the Lady. The approaching ships launched volleys of turbolaser fire, which the Lady returned with her dorsal and ventral dual guns. The muffled thumps of impacts against the shields drowned out the sound of Wren's return fire.

"You're not gonna outgun those big bastards, just cut and run!" By now the Mando was in a panic, wincing at every slash of red-orange color that the Action VIs sent their way. Wren was rather enjoying it.

"But our jump point is that way," he cheekily insisted. "We've gotta go through, or we'll have to jump again. It'll be a waste of fuel."

"I'm about to waste blaster bolts in your sorry shebs if you don't-"

Wren eased the inertial dampers back and took a particularly hard bank, pitching the armored mercenary back into one of the navigator chairs. "Sit down, damn it," he ordered, pouring on the throttle. He spun a thumbwheel on his flight stick for weapon selection; ahead of and between the autoblasters, armored panels revealed two longbarreled chin cannons. He fired two short bursts with these weapons. The first volley of solid shells sheathed in red plasma caught the rightmost transport. The shields flared but found no purchase, and all six struck the nose of the converted freighter. Each impact issued a furious spherical detonation, reducing the front end of the pirate ship to a glowing molten wreck. Wren angled left for his second burst. Caught in the waist by another grouping of six, the power source detonated, and broke the ship in two.

"Meg shabla..." the Mandalorian groaned. "Har'chaak! Gar atin or'dinii!"

"K'uur!" SENA shouted back. Wren cackled, spinning the selector wheel again. Two torpedoes trailing blue exhaust launched from tubes at the root of the cockpit and the main hull, slamming into the last vessel's rear end as it turned to run. Bursts of wayward lightning coursed across its hull, killing the drives and the last smatterings of turbolaser fire.

"Oogaly boogaly!" the pilot shouted back at them. Then he reached for his comm controls. "SENA, sweep for New Republic transponder signals, the higher tonnage the better."

"Hmm... Ok, here we go. The Mark I Assault Frigate Voidwatcher, a five hour jump away."

"Assault frigate Voidwatcher, this is the medium transport Hasty Lady. We just had a bit of a scrape with some piracy, and there's a disabled Action VI transport here ripe for your taking. Sending you a bearing with our sensor data of the fight now. Be careful on your approach, there's plenty of dead wrecks too."

"Hasty Lady, remain on station pending our investigation of your incident, over."

Wren let out a barking laugh as he powered down the weapons, stowing the autoblasters, mass drivers, and composite beams beneath their hull panels. The four conventional turrets returned to neutral facings. "That's not happening," he said with a shake of his head. The Lady jumped, bounding into hyperspace. Wren stood from his chair, stretching his arms up behind his head. "I'm going to bed. Feel free to make yourself at home, but please keep in mind, SENA will be watching you for me."

The pilot moved down the hallway, past the ramp and into the crew deck. He took the right, entering his bedroom and locking the door behind him. He set his environmental control to refresh, and rolled up a cigarra. The marcan helped keep the dreams at bay, but in this sleep the calming herb would provide no solace. He stripped, ran a hand through his brown hair, dimmed the lights, and soon drifted off to sleep.