Phoenix - Ghosts of the Past

V

Day 4, Festival of Life, 15 AFGE

I should've known the empire wouldn't leave me alone.

'Hello, Jedi.' A voice behind me purred.

'Inquisitor. Might I know which one of you I'm speaking to?' I sighed. Of course, they would manage to find me. 'How did you find me?'

'Did you really think your performance in that back alley on Corellia went unnoticed by the thirteenth sister? A drone recorded that incidence.'

'I assume that you came here to kill me to prolong your life? Lest you end up like the second sister?'

'How do you know about her?' I felt her presence back away. Good, she was getting nervous.

'I have my ways. Now, would you still want to fight me?'

I felt her steeling her nerves and heard her igniting her lightsabre. Her mind was made, unfortunately. At least I will give her a clean death. I ignited my own blade and turned around to face her, falling into my favoured opening stance, showing my left shoulder with my blade extended out past the shoulder, pointing slightly downward, both hands on the hilt.

'Are you sure you want to do this? It's not too late to back off and leave the empire.'

She laughed and charged at me. All right then. I let her have the first strike at me. That strike was a simple downward cut as her momentum carried her forward. I spin my body anticlockwise and dodged then twisted my wrists to slash from my right towards her relatively undefended side. The inquisitor ignites her second blade to block statically, then stepped back out of the strike to thrust with the blade blocking, slipping right under my blade. I stepped out of the attack and moved my blade down to block the slash I knew will be coming. The cut did come, but at a weird angle aimed at my feet. I danced out of the way, returning with a cut towards her shoulders. The inquisitor also danced out of the way. It seems like they had gotten a bit better while I was... away. No matter, I thrust out a palm, intending to force push her legs, but she lashed back with a push of her own, intercepting my wave of force energy. I was impressed. I had not thought any inquisitor could stand up to that, after being honed by nine years of Sith spirit tutoring. I was pleasantly surprised. With another push, I broke off the pushing contest. The resulting force wave threw us both backwards in that back alley on the Kuat freight port. My back connected with a trash collector, folding over it and slammed my head on the wall behind the collector. The inquisitor got lucky and simply slammed into a plane wall before sliding to the ground, groaning. Looks like she was hit much harder than me, I thought with a smirk. Picking myself up from the ground, I jumped at her with my sabre extended. Still sitting on the ground, she was barely able to block my downward cut in time. I went at her blow after blow, being stuck off her feet, she was stuck on the defence. Then the inquisitor decided to activate the spinning feature of her blade to shield herself while the other hand attempted to push herself up. Fool. By spinning her blade, since she couldn't move the spinning blade, lest she cut her leg in her position, her hand was completely exposed, and I took advantage of this blunder. With a well-placed thrust, I poked a hole in the back of her sabre hand. Reflectively, her hands loosened, and her sabre clattered to the ground, deactivated. Using the force, I threw the sabre to the other side of the alley and squatted in front of the inquisitor. 'By the way, the reason I know about the second sister is simple. I'm her.' I told her, allowed her a few seconds to process it and then stabbed my sabre through her head. The inquisitor slumped in her position, the twi'lek is no more.

With an exhale, I threw the inquisitor's sabre into my bag and fled the scene.

I calmly and slowly walked up the ramp to the Phoenix after deliberately going the wrong way and disappearing from the camera of the station. We need to leave, soon. I had already commed the crew to meet on the ship. I was the last one to show up, and when I show up, they were sitting around the table playing dejarik. The crew was still only consisting of four people and we all had gotten close. 'What took you so long? This wasn't a large station.' Sinya yelled out when she saw me duck into the lounge.

'People, we got a problem.' That got their attention real fast. They all whipped around to look at me, eyes wide with shock.

'What do you mean-'

'What?'

/What have you done?/

To absolutely no one's surprise, all three voices spoke at the same time. I held up a hand and waited for them to quiet down. 'What I mean, is that the empire wants me dead or captured.'

'What. Did. You. Do?' Emlita asked, stressing on every word.

'I did nothing. The empire thought I am a Jedi and thus wants me dead. They had already sent an inquisitor after me, I killed her. If you wanted to get out, do it now.' No one moved, all of them reaffirming their decision.

'One thing, are you really a Jedi? And what's an inquisitor?' Sinya asked.

'The Inquisitorius was established to hunt the remaining Jedi in the galaxy. They are all ex-Jedi. Technically, I was a Jedi but I also was an inquisitor.'

'This just gets more and more complex, does it? What next? You would tell me you used to be a clone trooper too? Huh, Ali?'

I glared at her. 'Oh, my real name is Trilla, but please, keep calling my Aaliyah.' I told them. 'We should probably leave. Let's set out for Raxus, it was out of the way and the imperials had loosened their monitoring of that place back to that for an unimportant, nothing to note planet.'

'Sounds good.' Sinya and Emlita made to leave. Sinya was now the gunner on the Ashes, leaving me and T7 to pilot the Phoenix. In less than ten minutes, the Ash and the Phoenix were docked in space and entered hyperspace.

In hyperspace and safely back to my room, I pulled out the inquisitor's lightsabre and sat down to meditate. Every lightsabre carries the stories of its owner within, as long as the owner bothered to bond with the crystal in any capacity, some part of the owner's memories would be imprinted on the crystal. To put it lightly, I was curious.

Of course, the inquisitor had bonded with her crystal, and excessively, it seems. I was treated to almost her entire life story. Turns out she was a full-blown Jedi knight before the turn. She was dissatisfied with the inaction of the Jedi and actually preferred serving the empire. Oh well. Still, I could see why she would think that. She was a shadow back in the order and was constantly sent in deep cover, where she literally threw her soul away to stay in the role and when the job was finally done the one suffering under her eyes continue to suffer, just under another criminal. She never saw the Jedi work to help those suffering, only to take away the criminal, leaving those in need of help behind. In this way, I could see why she preferred the empire's stronger rule.

'What are you planning to do with that... thing?' Ah, the ever-helpful spirit returns.

'Disassemble it and use it as spare parts.'

'Good, as long as you're not using it.'

'I did use the exact same model of sabre before this one.' I tapped the sabre hanging on my belt.

Eleatal stared at me, horrified. 'Why did you use that? Did you not construct your own?'

'I was an inquisitor; I was just an attack dog.'

'I guess you were lucky that you were already a good dueller before.'

'Yeah, I guess.'

A few days later, the Phoenix – From the Ashes came out of hyperspace and immediately came across an imperial blockade. An Imperial I class star destroyer, a Quasar Fire class carrier and a few Carrack class light cruisers. This was going to be fun...