Crossfire | Poe Dameron

Prolouge

The Orrdill family had always had their hands deep in history. Their names flitted in and out of schoolchildren textbooks, dropping out for years and then reappearing with a bang. They were orchestrators, they were warriors, but they were never pawns. On a small scale, they were puppet masters. They were in charge.

They sided with the "right" side of history. They didn't care about morals, they put their support with who they thought would win the war. And war was rampant in the galaxy. The Orrdill's supported the Republic, then the Galactic Empire, and then the rebels, even as they sold information to the other side. Their all alliances changed at the drop of a hat, with one side one minute and the other the next.

Allegiances only mattered on the surface. If they publicly supported the Republic, then they were selling the plans of ships to the Empire under the table. They were too powerful, too large of a family for the orders to do anything about it. They were unaffected by the turning from one leader to another.

Some members of the Orrdill family traded currency, other's illegal substances, all manner of things, all with the promise of secrecy and protection from the Jedi or the Stormtroopers or the soldiers. It was a delicate balance that they struck, walking on a moral compass that pointed both ways.

Elders passed on the tradition to their children, and their children passed it on to their children. They were liars and they were thieves, but they did it well. Each generation got better and better, richer, and richer.

Years of knowledge and riches culminated in Kietess Orrdill. Her mother was where she got the infamous Orrdill name from, her father a merchant that had stumbled into the wrong woman at a bar and then been trapped into a whirlwind marriage of that benefited both parties. Kietess had never once seen her mother and father express any sort of love to each other. They were bitter business partners, the family business more important to them than love.

She traveled the galaxy with both of her parents, never staying in one place for too long. She was a ghost, a phantom that flitted through the memories of her young friends. Her method on new planets was simple. Coached by her parents from a young age, she was a nine-year-old menace.

Kietess made friends with the children of the most influential families, a new last name, new identification, and a new backstory being flaunted. She wriggled and wormed her way into the social circles with manners that the parents of friends cooed over and a smile that rivaled the sun.

And when she was in, that's when she got to work. She listened, she snooped, and she found the skeletons in the closet that so many families tried to bury. She found the affairs, the illegal dealings done by government officials, nothing was safe. She reported back to her parents, they released the secret for money, they moved, and the cycle repeated over again.

It started when she was nine-years-old, and continued until she was an adult. If someone had asked Kietess if she liked what she was doing, she would have shrugged her shoulders and turned away. She didn't know any other life than what she had. She was a child, molded into the heir of the Orrdill family. She had been built into the person that she was, some pieces not quite clicking. But she still went along with her parent's schemes, even when her inner consciousness pinged on the edges of her brain that something wasn't right. She didn't know how to say no.

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Kietess Orrdill traded in objects and secrets. Her parents were dead, had been for years. She had her memories of them, and most of all she had the Orrdill legacy and fortune.

She lived in a sprawling city on the Inner Rim planet Denon, constantly awoken by a speeder going past her window. It was easy to hide in a city, people constantly coming and leaving, filtering through the many buildings and ports that rested on the surface. She could do her business, and not be discovered.