2.06

"They want me to do what?" I couldn't have heard my cousin right. Even the suggestion almost made me drop my teacup. Had it been me I would have, but Astra had had good manners drilled into her since before she could walk.

"Officially break with the main family, declare yourself an off-shot, claim all assets belonging to your mother, and leave Kuat." Jestra's voice was calm and collected as if we were discussing the weather, not a member of a House that had existed since before the planet had been settled basically abandoning family and tradition. She sipped her tea daintily, the very image of a young Chinese aristocrat from back home. "Probably done without much fuss, if possible."

"Yeah, no. I'll stay silent as they banish me when the dead walk and the Mother of Madness come to devour our souls." As ancient Sith curses go, that one was not invoked lightly - and I had a good idea why. But like Hell was I to take that lying down. "This has House Kuat's fingerprints all over, doesn't it?"

"It certainly advances their interests if a portion of our holdings and assets are removed permanently," Jestra agreed. "House Andrim will back you up, of course, but this is the full Council we're talking about. Plus, your mother marrying an Arkanian, and one in the Trade Federation to boot..."

"Hah, as if! Mother and Father weren't technically married. Mother exercised her noble right to take up a consort... as you should well know." I shook my head, ignoring the distraction Cousin Jestra had thrown my way. "No. This is about the Nebula Front business, the Trade Federation replacing the assassinated Kuati councilmen with Neimodians, and our Council wanting to break with the Federation's ally Techno-Union because House Kuat is butthurt over the loss of face and control in an organization that wasn't theirs to begin with."

"You should be more respectful of the First and Most Ancient House of Kuat," my cousin admonished, "you might offend them." Then she winked and added two more drops of Lothalan Lime to her tea. I didn't copy her; I preferred my tea less sour. I poured in some more Corellian brandy instead.

"What are they going to do, banish me?" The two of us snorted in amusement, then fell silent. Enjoying the view was not why we'd requested a private booth in the most expensive restaurant in the city, but that didn't stop it from being breathtaking. Seeing any planet from space, from far enough that the curvature of the planet was obvious hundreds of kilometers below... it still had not lost its wonder. It was not something I could have experienced back on Earth, but one of the things I'd really wanted to. And now it was only a taxi ride away... the advanced technology and extreme wealth made all those dreams seem... cheap somehow. Small and insignificant before the vastness of the universe, if not the power of the Force. Then again, all things were so from that perspective.

"You want any ice to go with that poisonous bite in your drink?" I finally asked seemingly idly, but felt Jestra's wariness and worry spike in the Force.

"No, thank you. Ice grates on my mood, not to mention my teeth. I don't get how lots of people like that frozen feeling in their drinks. Do they want to break their teeth on the ice cubes or choke on them by accident?" Translation; our House was now aware of Project Icefang, and really unhappy about it. In fact, they were unhappy enough that sooner or later House Kuat might choke on the secret contract for an entire fleet they've not only received in secret but also kept to themselves. But any reprisal would have to be quiet, seem accidental.

"I see." I shrugged, and chugged my own alcohol-laced tea down in a few gulps, in exactly the worst way as far as a tradition was concerned. Like everything else in our meet and greet so far, it was a statement. "Well, Cousin Jestra, this was fun, but I have to return to the Doughnut."

"Only a teenager would name one of the largest merchant ships in space after a Corellian pastry," my cousin shot as a parting word as she shook her head and walked away.

"Oh, right! I'm officially thirteen now, aren't I?" I thought about fake pirates, secret clone armies, seditious conspiracies, hidden Sith Lords, galaxy-spanning wars, planet-busting superweapons, extragalactic invasions, and puberty.

"Yeah... Lucky me..."

xxxx xxxx xxxx

​

"Worst! Birthday! Ever!" I shouted as I rolled aside, the ground I'd occupied only a second before exploding as it was hit by a bolt from a blaster cannon.

"Less talking, more running!" You knew things were bad when Aurra Sing told you to run. That realization was punctuated by more heavy bolts cratering the station's surface around us.

The first sign something bad would soon go up was an eerie, sourceless, aimless spike of dread I'd received from the Force. Aurra hadn't felt anything consciously - I'd asked - but she had come to my celebratory shopping spree with eight blasters, one more than her usual number; deep down, she had had a bad feeling about the whole endeavor. Then again, that might have been her dislike for shopping.

A burst of alarm screamed through my mind, and I shoved my pale-skinned bodyguard with all my might. She might have been tall for a woman and packed with hard muscle, but I had the benefit of whatever genetic enhancements Arkanian scientists could cook up and Kuati wealth could buy, backed up by months of living and training under several times normal gravity; she flew one way, and I into another. A split second later, a freaking concussion missile slammed where we'd been, then detonated with bone-rattling force. Sing growled threateningly, and shot over her shoulder, while running, on another running target, while only having seen said target in her peripheral vision. The mercenary who'd shot at us with the shoulder-mounter rocket launcher still got a blaster bolt through his helmet's visor, dying instantly.

That's the Force for you.

I came out of my own roll firing, willing with all my might my own shots to go where I decided they should. I fed into them my determination, my desire to live, my annoyance at having my shopping ruined - three bags of shoes left behind! - and all the pent up frustration I felt towards House Kuat as my own blood roared in my ears from a heart exceeding three hundred beats a minute. The first shot blasted a grenade in a mercenary's belt, blowing him up where he stood. The second intercepted another blaster bolt head-on, causing both blots to explosively dissipate at the point of impact, and the third found the wide-eyed shooter that had fired at me straight in his gaping mouth, drilling through the back of his head. I didn't have time to be sick, I was too busy having a running battle in the streets. Thus I expelled my nausea and dread into the Force, and enhanced my willingness to horribly murder the bastards hunting me on my own freaking birthday!

Then Aurra and I had to dodge more cannon fire from the assault shuttle firing on us. Joy. At least they'd run out of missiles; my bodyguard had actually shot those down.

In retrospect, our shuttle's autopilot malfunction had to be sabotage. I'd had to pilot the craft myself after that and I kinda suck at piloting; we'd ended on an obsolete, soon to be upgraded portion of the orbital rings rather than the Doughnut's bay, which was total bullshit. I suspected foul play on traffic control's part because there was no way I could have missed the only two-mile-wide doughnut-shaped ship on the station had they been leading us correctly. Then that premonition of bad things was proven true when a band of "outlaws" that station security had somehow failed to catch chose to attack us out of over a quarter-million small craft and five hundred million sapients on the station. Yeah, that was a coincidence the same way the Republic would happen to find a clone army to fight the Separatists with.

Another three assassins appeared in our path, shooting us with weapons on a station everyone but a single bodyguard per noble and station security was not supposed to have. Otherwise, Terminator Squad would already have flattened these amateur idiots. Case in point, Sing managed to shoot one down before he could aim even though they had surprised us, took a bolt from a cheap blaster pistol that failed to penetrate her light armor with that glancing blow, then leaped at the last guy, grappling with him mid-roll. She came out of the tumble mostly fine; he came with his head looking straight ahead because it had just completed a three hundred and sixty-degree turn.

Then the assault shuttle following us shot over our heads, blowing the elevator we'd been running towards to bits. For some reason, it was that bit that finally had me burst into a full-blown tantrum.

"Screw this running away bullshit!" I screeched in exactly the tone and language little merchant princesses were not supposed to use. I drew my shock-stick, activated it, and turned around to face that fucking shuttle. A teenage girl in a gold dress, armed with a foot-long melee weapon that sparked prettily while facing a six-ton aircraft with a cannon longer than she was tall looked entirely ridiculous. The shuttle's pilot must have thought so too because he took his time to aim, wave at me through the canopy, and open fire.

My response to that? I drew heavily on the Force to intercept the blast with the Phrik-forged, lightsaber-parrying weapon at the right angle to send it back into the attacking shuttle's stabilizer with one hand, while I gave the pilot the finger with the other at precisely the right moment to best convey my displeasure before he lost control and crashed.

Then the shuttle exploded, and the blast wave hit me like an uppercut from a Rancor. A Rancor enhanced by Sith Alchemy which also happened to be on fire.

At least the other guy died knowing he'd been killed by a little girl.