Private A Time to Hunt

[Adelle Bastiel]

Denon Spaceport



Adelle could not ignore the headline.

Another Abduction! 8 Children Kidnapped in 3 Days!

She was supposed to be looking for bounties. Fuel, power cells, food--for her and Phantom, everything required credits. It was one of the things she missed about being with the Order: she didn't have to worry about a creds balance. But an alert on her datapad went off. One of the keywords she had set a program to flag on holonet articles came up positive. And the headline settled in the pit of her stomach like a lead weight.

It had been a long time since she'd confronted Krayt on Coruscant and an even longer time since she'd been abducted by him, used as a human experiment. And when he had purged his fortress, all she had left was the little she managed to scrawl on a piece of flimsiplast: account numbers, too few to be of any use in hunting down shady dealings. But it confirmed that Krayt was not working alone. There were others out there that knew about his project. Something to do with Force Users, based on what he had taunted her with.

And all eight children were Force Sensitive.

It could be coincidental. Abductions were plentiful on ecumenopolises like Denon. People went missing all the time on the lower levels and never got the attention of the holonet. But if it wasn't happenstance... She couldn't let it happen again. Especially not to a kid.

Adelle tossed the datapad onto the inert flight controls, pulled up a bottle of tihaar and flicked the cap off, taking a generous swig of the burning liquor. Well, looks like her day had been planned for her. She grabbed her buy'ce and climbed down from the cockpit, gathering her weapons from the armory. The ramp slowly lowered and she finally left the confines of the Tome'tayl'kandyc, joining the throng of people moving through the spaceport. The smell of street food, oil, and people wafted into her helmet, the press of bodies on wide walkways brushing against her durasteel beskar'gam. The Holonet article had mentioned the area these kidnappings happened wasn't too far from the spaceport and a few levels down. Adelle strode through the crowd with purpose, weaving through people and past vendors with a dangerous presence about her.

This ended today.



Aiden Porte

 

[Aiden Porte]

Adelle Bastiel
​

The hum of the city pressed in from all sides as Denon's endless pulse of light and motion, too bright above, too dark below. Aiden had felt that rhythm a thousand times before, but tonight it carried an undertone. A dissonance. Something wrong.

He stood near the lip of a mezzanine overlooking the lower traffic lanes, cloak drawn close against the gust of speeder backwash. From here he could see the lines of the crowd shifting organic tides of motion that always betrayed more than words ever did. Fear had a pattern. So did desperation.

When the Holonet headline came through, it had already reached his outer channels: Eight children missing. All confirmed Force-sensitive. Even before he finished reading, he'd felt the echo—faint, buried beneath kilometers of durasteel and neon haze, but real. Tiny sparks of light suddenly cut off, snuffed out by something cold.

He took a slow breath and reached through the noise. The Force here was choked, distorted by metal and machinery, but it still moved. Like whispers through circuitry, it carried impressions panic, grief, the faint residue of purpose. Someone was hunting these children deliberately. That much he was sure of.

 

[Adelle Bastiel]

She felt it as the closer she got, a snarl in the Force, something dark and twisted. A general sense of paranoia lingered in the air like a haze. It would be worse lower down, on the levels the kidnappings had happened on. Adelle quickened her pace, crossing over a mezzanine that gave quite the view. The people nearby started moving out of her way, pace and impassive T-visor a warning. At any other time, she might have stopped to look at the vista next to her. But the turbolifts at the other end held her attention.

So much that she almost missed it.

The presence of Light.

Adelle stopped abruptly then looked over her shoulder, back the way she came, scanning the crowd. There, a man holding his cloak against the wind near the edge, gaze not out over the speeder traffic but down, towards the lower levels. There was a recognizable wisdom in his eyes; the training of a Jedi. Adelle nearly started towards him before realizing he wouldn't know her from a bounty hunter with how muted she kept her own presence. Slowly she released her hold, letting her own Light bleed into the Force. It was just good manners to not surprise someone you were about to ask help from. Adelle approached him then, her gait measured and not quite as quick but still purposeful.

He was taller than he first seemed, her head only coming up to his shoulder. She made no pretense of being there for any other reason than to speak with him. Time was ticking.

"You've felt it, I take it," she said, the vocoder of her helm roughing up her voice. "I'm heading down to check it out. I wouldn't mind an extra set of eyes."



Aiden Porte