Wow, there are still people hanging about, and people kind enough to leave reviews, to boot! I missed this place. :)

It took all of four days for Atton to talk to the right people and pull the right strings to find out how to cash in the bounty on Del. It bothered him when he thought about how easily he'd slipped back into a skin he'd thought long-shed, picking up old habits with the guilt-edged relief of a drunk falling off the wagon, so he didn't think about it much. Leave philosophizing about right and wrong and dark and light to the freaks in robes. Lowly creatures like him would have to keep living by the rules of instinct and necessity.

He'd been sure that his Zabrak babysitter would spoil things, would spout off something stupid where someone could hear or get his horns in a twist about the seedy places they had to wade through on the way. But Bao-Dur kept his mouth shut and did what he'd been told like a good little soldier, monitoring Atton's every move without once trying to interfere despite the frown tattooed on his face. That was hard enough to stand, that silent and watchful disapproval. Atton could imagine the Zabrak recording everything he saw in that ink-scrawled head of his, taking notes to share with his precious General as soon as Atton was out of earshot.

Let him, he thought. Let both of them shake their heads and cluck their tongues over what a bad seed he was, what scummy company he kept. Let the old witch join in too, if she wanted. Make a party out of it. He hadn't asked to go along on Del's crazy revenge tour. He didn't need approval from any of them.

The Jedi reject hadn't let Atton touch her since their little sweaty interlude in the cargo hold, not without cringing away like he had some nasty disease, and he fully expected that once his bit part in this five-credit drama on Nar Shaddaa was through she'd tell him to take his bow and get off the stage. The old lady would let him go if Del demanded it, she'd have to. And he'd walk into the sunset with a smile on his face and a song in his heart, and get back to whatever the hell he'd been doing before she'd dropped into his life like a bomb.

At the end of that fourth day, he paged the Ebon Hawk and told Del it was done. Her eyebrows practically disappeared under the edge of her hood in surprise.

"I'm impressed," she told him. "Really. I can't say I understand why you're helping me, but..." She looked away, fixing her diminished gaze on something he couldn't see. The next words came slowly, just above a whisper, like her mom was standing just off-screen and forcing her to say them. "I... appreciate it."

Atton wasn't prepared for the rush of satisfaction those words of praise, meager and hesitant as they were, sent through him. He waved them away, chuckling, his mask snapping into place as reliably as ever. "Hey, don't thank me yet. When the bounty's called off and your Jedi buddy's been spaced, you can bake me a batch of muffins or something."

"Muffins? I've never baked a thing in my life." Her lips twitched upward in a genuine smile. The blur from the video transmission softened the worst of her scars, and for that instant he could see the beauty she had been.

He wanted to see that smile again.

He wanted to hurt her until it disappeared forever.

Atton's head swam. He put his hands on the wall behind him, steadying himself, glad she still had her eyes downcast.

"Maybe you can think up some other way to show your gratitude," he said, and his voice, at least, betrayed nothing.

Her hand came into view, toyed with her lower lip a moment, and dropped out of sight again. "We'll...talk. Later." She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes again, and although the curious shyness retreated Atton thought he could still hear traces of it in her voice, a distant echo. "For now, tell me what you've learned."

The speed with which Atton had been able to arrange the collection of an Exchange bounty set off alarm bells, but Del told herself that dirty hands should not point fingers. Atton had two more surprises for her, besides: that Goto himself was the one funding her capture, and that he seemed to be under the impression that she was the very last of the Jedi.

The scarred sith lord who'd nearly killed her had made the same mistake. She wished that whoever had leaked her records to the galaxy at large had been thoughtful enough to include the tidbit about the Council blinding her to the Force.

Goto's involvement was a problem. She had never worked with the crime lord directly, or even indirectly as far as she was aware, and knew little enough about him except that he was mysterious and powerful and not to be crossed. Rumors marked him as paranoid, never meeting even his most trusted agents in the flesh. Taking him out was likely impossible, but the bounty ruse might still be useful. Either she would convince the man that she was not his intended prey, or she would deal enough damage to his underlings and equipment to make him think twice about hunting her further.

The arranged time arrived, and Del and her "captors" made their way to a deserted docking platform that looked like thousands of others. A transponder was clipped to her belt as Goto had instructed, transmitting her location to the pickup ship, and of course to a receiver on Bao-Dur's own wrist as well. He and Atton were both well-armed. Goto's lackeys would have no way of knowing that the rifle strapped to the Zabrak's back was for Del's benefit and not his own. Her hands were bound by an old and deteriorated pair of cuffs, easily freed.

They waited, alert and saying nothing. Nal Hutta hung bloated in in the sky above, scraped by the shadow fingers of a million towering buildings. Ships and speeders flitted through the dark like insects as a weak breeze stirred the air.

"Something's not right," Atton murmured. He held up a hand to silence their questions, listening intently to the night.

The soft chirp of a remote detonator afforded Del just enough time to throw her arms across her face before the world exploded in blinding light. She reeled, dropping to one knee as a second round of flash mines went off like a thunderclap almost underneath her. She fell to all fours, clinging to conscious thought by thread.

A flash of green. A fist cracking against her temple.

The thread snapped.

Solitary details floated across the void. The steady throb of pain in Del's head. A sensation of movement. The press of something cool and unyielding against one cheek. A woman's voice speaking, then a man's reply over a comlink. The latter tugged at her, oddly familiar, but she could not puzzle it out over the ringing in her skull.

She opened her eye a sliver. She'd been dumped in the cramped back seat of an airspeeder, her face flattened against the window. She could see nothing of the woman piloting the speeder save one green sleeve and a splay of red hair above the headrest.

There was no way of guessing what might have befallen Del's companions, but a hard lump digging into her hip suggested her captor had not had time to search her yet. Slowly, slowly, Del unclipped the transponder from her belt and slid it beneath one sleeve into the hidden wristguard that normally held her poisoned needles.

She might have risked more, but just then the woman banked the speeder hard into a turn. Del tumbled across the seat, her head in an uproar and her stomach roiling, then vomited into the footwell.

"Guess I'm not getting the deposit back," the redhaired woman drawled. Del caught sight of her face in the front mirrors, clear-eyed and unlined.

"Does your mother know you're out running errands for crime lords at this hour?" It sounded a good deal more biting in her head, when it wasn't punctuated by a bout of retching.

"I'll have to send her a message," the woman replied. "Right after I let the nursing home know you'll be skipping Gizkaloaf Night. Only sixty three days until the big four-oh, right?" She chuckled.

Del consulted her mental calendar and scowled. "Right. Now tell me my favorite animal and my shoe size and I'll be really impressed."

"I know a lot about you, Katya Deleón." The amusement abandoned her voice, leaving it flat and cold as the window glass had been. "What you were up to the last time you came creeping around Nar Shaddaa, for example. You're lucky I don't work for Goto. I'm tempted to hand you over to him gift-wrapped as it is."

Del let the woman's contempt roll across her for now, seizing on the pertinent facts. "Who sent you after me, then?"

"Someone who wants your sorry carcass safe and breathing for reasons I don't understand." The woman banked again without warning, sending Del sprawling. "We're going to switch to foot traffic for now. Those bounty hunters might have gotten a visual on the speeder." Her eyes flicked to Del in the mirror, her lip curled in disgust. "And I could use the fresh air."

The red-haired woman landed the speeder, her piloting involving more lurching and bumping than was strictly necessary, and Del vowed then to pay her back with interest when the opportunity presented itself. Still, a thin tendril of relief took root somewhere beneath the nausea. The woman feared that Bao-Dur and Atton had seen her and might follow. She had not killed them.

The woman popped the top of the speeder and hopped neatly out of the pilot's seat. She grabbed a handful of the back of Del's jacket and hauled her out onto the pavement, making her feel absurdly like a puppy dangling by the scruff of its neck. She tolerated it, but barely, aware that turnabout would only require a quick shucking of her cuffs, a flick of her strength enhancers.

For now, though, Del was more interested in the identity of the girl's employer than in reprisal. She let herself be herded through an unfamiliar maze of alleyways with impatient prods from the tip of a blaster, not much caring where she was going as long as the transponder up her sleeve was transmitting her location to Bao-Dur...and to Goto, as well. Whether Del's allies or enemies tracked her down first, she had a hunch that their arrival might provoke the mysterious new player to reveal himself.

As the throbbing in Del's head subsided, she came to realize that she was being lead on an erratic route, more than once crossing a path they had already taken. An old trick, and one Del knew well from the times she'd thrown a predator off her own trail by employing it.

They were being followed already.

The red-head shepherded her up a steep permacrete ramp, which lead to a covered bridge connecting two dark and looming buildings. They halted at the center of the bridge, where a break in the pillars offered a clean view of both the streets below and the skyways above.

The woman peered over the handrail, scanning the darkened streets, then ducked back behind a pillar with a whispered curse.

"Trouble?" Del asked, not bothering to keep her voice low.

"Shut up and don't move," the woman hissed. Then, more gently: "It's for your own good. I've seen what these droids are capable of, and it's not pretty."

Droids?

Del rose to the balls of her feet to get a look over the woman's shoulder, coldness washing down her back even before she laid eyes on the first angular, gunmetal-gray head. She remembered well how fast the droids had moved on Telos, how just three of things had left her half-blind and Bao-Dur on the threshold of death. There had to be ten of the droids moving in neat formation below, their yellow photoreceptors flashing in the dark as they chattered with one another. Directly beneath the place that Del and her captor crouched on the bridge, the droids split into two groups and set off in opposite directions.

"I think we've lost them," the woman breathed, but Del knew that wasn't right. The droids were following the signal from the transponder she carried, just as they'd followed the signal from her cybernetic eye before it. They had separated into two groups so that they could climb both ramps at once, trapping her on the bridge in between.

There was no time for elegance. Del gave her wrists a sharp twist, snapping them free of the cuffs, and let the transponder drop from her sleeve into her hand. The redhead started to whirl with her blaster raised, but hesitated when she could have squeezed off a shot. Del landed a heavy punch in the center of her solar plexus before she had a second chance, fist driving deep into muscles that were unflexed and unprepared just below the ties of the woman's flimsy excuse for a blouse. The breath gusted out of her, her blaster clattering to the permacrete. Del clipped the transponder to the woman's waistband while she was still reeling, snatched up a fistful of her jacket, and used it to hurl her over the handrail.

It wasn't a long drop. The woman would have been just fine if she could have controlled how she landed. She made a muddled, floppy sort of attempt to get her legs under her before she hit the ground, but her knees buckled like reeds.

Del smiled when the telltale crunch of ripping cartilage reached her ears, but couldn't waste time feeling pleased with herself. The droids had already mounted the ramps, and their photoreceptors would pick her out effortlessly from the shadows. Snatching up the woman's dropped blaster and tucking it into her belt, Del hopped over the railing, catching the lower rail as she fell. Instead of dropping to the street below, where she would be easy pickings, she swung forward and wrapped her legs around one of the support beams, suspending her body horizontally beneath the bridge.

"Unnecessary observation: the target organic has evaded our pincer maneuver. Goto will not be pleased if our delivery of the Jedi is delayed yet again."

The modulated voice came from right above her. She held her breath, keeping her body as still as the metal beam her knees were locked behind. She wished she had thought to turn on her strength enhancers, and the small sliver of her mind not completely focused on the psychopathic droids above her head noted that Kreia had spoken true. Unbolstered by artificial reserves of strength, Del had to fight to hold up her own body weight without her biceps and thighs shaking.

"Statement: sensors show that she remains nearby." Metal scraped against metal as one of the droids leaned over the railings. "Delighted observation: the target has damaged one or more of her limbs in an unwise attempt to evade us. And she appears to be unarmed. It is almost as though she wants to be caught... or is pitiably outmatched by our sophisticated programming."

"Cautionary reminder: we should approach the Jedi carefully. Past encounters suggest a propensity for barbarity and property damage exceeding what the her mediocre intelligence and advancing age might suggest. Two droids will remain to act as sentinels while the rest approach."

Del directed very dark thoughts toward the droids as she listened to their metal feet clank softly down the length of the bridge. Between them and the smart-mouthed redhead, she was well on her way to developing a complex about entering her fifth decade.

Speaking of the youthful bounty huntress, Del guessed from how quiet she had been that breaking her leg had also caused her to faint from shock. A good thing, too, since she could have escaped while the droids were gabbing together like schoolgirls, probably even if she were limping or crawling. Del chanced twisting her head far enough to catch a glimpse over her shoulder.

What she saw made her catch a curse in her teeth.

Atton and Bao-Dur had also succeeded in tracking the transponder signal. Bao-Dur pointed to the fallen girl, and the two of them began to jog toward her, Atton with his blaster drawn. Del could not risk calling out or waving to them, could only bite the inside of her cheek as the pack of homicidal droids emerged from the sidestreets behind them.

Atton noticed them first, elbowing Bao-Dur to attention. Del notice with commingled distaste and admiration that the Zabrak stepped in front of the wounded girl as he raised his fists, standing between her and the droids.

"Where is she?" he asked, his voice calm but rising clearly above the night breeze.

"Puzzled query: where is who? If you are referring to the Jedi right behind you, I suggest you speak to your primary care practitioner about performing diagnostic testing for ocular degeneration at the earliest opportunity."

"I'm not the one who needs my sensors checked," Bao-Dur said. "This woman isn't the General."

"He's right." Atton nudged the redhead with his boot, earning a pained groan. "This bounty-sniping little schutta is no Jedi. What happened to the woman she had with her?"

"Impatient explanation: it does not matter. We were instructed to collect a human female, tagged with a transponder, along with the human and Zabrak males who had captured her. That is precisely what we have found. Other organics are of no consequence to this transaction."

Just let them have her, Del urged them silently, but she needed no hints from the Force to suspect that tonight's plan was not yet finished self-destructing, despite the flaming wreckage all around.

"You have the wrong woman," Bao-Dur said again. "The deal is off."

"Regretful rebuttal: we have no time to engage in an extended exchange of words-or of blaster bolts. Goto values punctuality above brutality. Hostilities must be terminated in a brief and, sadly, non-lethal manner."

Del heard a click as the droids on the bridge raised their weapons, out of sight of her companions. Non-lethal manner, the droid had said, but she knew well enough from experience that being maimed, blinded and probably worse was not off of the table.

She had the woman's blaster, and the element of surprise. She might at least be able to cause a big enough distraction for the others to get away.

Her knees loosened their hold on the strut, but before she could start to swing herself down, Kreia's voice rang clearly in her thoughts.

Do not cast your life away on foolish displays of solidarity, Exile.

Del nearly dropped from the underside of the bridge in shock. She'd heard whispers before, stirrings like dried leaves, but this... The Force, she thought, wonder swelling in her chest. I'm feeling the Force again.

You cannot hope to rescue your companions if you are chained beside them.

Del tamped back her ill-timed excitement. The droid above her fired and a canister exploded at Atton's feet, spewing white plumes of gas that clouded the street. There was a sputtering exchange of fire, a flash of the Zabrak's cybernetic arm in the dim. Del heeded Kreia's advice and stayed where she was, though guilt coiled and twisted like a serpent in her gut.

When the smoke cleared, Atton and Bao-Dur were in heaps beside the crippled huntress. Three droids darted forward to snap glowing cuffs onto the wrists of their captives, then heaved their unresisting bodies over their square durasteel shoulders. They set off at a smooth lope, graceful and predatory, hardly making a sound.

Only when the quiet of the night held fast for a count of sixty did Del drop to the street below. She landed hard on tired limbs, but fared a great deal better than the red-head. She straightened slowly, the muscles in her arms and legs shrieking in protest at the simple act of standing.

What now? Charging off after them with her single blaster was suicide. She needed a plan. She needed help. But who could she call upon, when the nearest she had to friends were the very ones who needed rescuing?

"Mira?"

The voice came from somewhere near the toe of her boot. Del startled, jumping back a step. Something metal glinted on the pavement-the bounty huntress's commlink.

"Mira?" It spoke again, the same voice she had heard when she came to on the speeder. The girl's mysterious employer. A man Del knew. "Was there trouble? Please respond."

Del's skin tightened, prickling across her arms and her scalp. Yes, she knew that voice well. She had heard it many times in her youth, and again just days ago in the recording of her trial the astromech droid had purloined from Atris. Many battles remain for that one, he had said of her, and he had been more right than he could have known.

She stooped and picked up the commlink.

"Zez-Kai Ell," she said. "We need to talk."