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

 

[Aiden Porte]

Adelle Bastiel
​

Aiden's gaze lifted before she even spoke. The Force had carried the whisper of her approach muted, careful, deliberate, like the controlled exhale before a duel. And then, just as quickly, the quiet edge of her presence had unfurled, light threading through the tension that gripped this place.

He turned as she came closer, the last wash of speeder exhaust flickering over beskar plates and the faint gleam of the visor reflecting the skyline's chaos. For a heartbeat, the city noise dulled. The presence before him was unmistakable. Not just a warrior. Not just someone attuned. Someone who'd been through it someone the darkness had tried to break and failed.

"I felt it." Aiden said simply. His tone carried no surprise, only recognition. The wind tugged at his cloak, the fabric shifting around his boots as he regarded her. "It's stronger below. A pattern of fear… deliberate. Whoever's behind this knows what they're doing."

He studied the spaceport below them the way light bled into shadow, how movement thinned the deeper one looked. Then his eyes returned to her visor, searching for the shape of her intent. "If they're taking Force-sensitives, they're not just traffickers." he said quietly. "There's purpose in it."

A small nod. "You're not wrong to move fast. But we'll need to move smart. Lead the way. I'll follow your route until we find the source."

 

[Adelle Bastiel]

Adelle inclined her head as soon as he finished, acknowledging what he said, and turned around, the motion blending into the same pace she had set before. He'd confirmed her initial thoughts--someone competent was deliberately taking specific children for some unknown purpose. It made her brain itch and touched chords of memory that had long sat silent. Adelle reined in her presence again, on the off chance this was the work of a Force-user.

Thankfully, an open turbolift waited as if for them as they approached. Adelle held it open for the Jedi and hit the controls to take them down.

"I've seen something similar, once," she said, pulling out her datapad to download publicly accessible maps of this area of Denon. "But it was seven years ago and on Coruscant. The man responsible had others helping him but he purged his entire stronghold, all his data and anything that might've been a lead."

Fire. Blood. Wires. She could taste copper on her tongue. "I don't like this kind of coincidence."

The turbolift opened up to a level much further down from the mezzanine. The twist in the Force was stronger here but it did not originate here. Further down. Adelle ground her teeth and set her datapad to sync the maps with her HUD. Lifts and stairwells for public use weren't terribly far but a maintenance ladder was closer and ended fairly close to another public stairwell.

"Two more levels until the last known location of the most recent kidnapping," she said, more to herself than to the Jedi with her. "But it feels stronger lower than that. Can you get a better read on it?"

She headed to the ladder, a measured pace this time but still deliberate. Last time she'd gone investigating something like this, it hadn't ended well.



Aiden Porte

 

[Aiden Porte]

Adelle Bastiel
​

Aiden stepped into the turbolift beside her, the hum of its descent reverberating through the metal beneath their boots. His reflection flickered faintly in her visor but his attention remained elsewhere below, through the durasteel veins of the city, where something malignant pulsed like a hidden infection.

"I can feel it." he said after a pause, his tone quiet but weighted. "It's not just darkness it's organized. Contained. Someone's using it." He exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing as he reached through the tangled skein of sensation. "Whatever they've built down there, it isn't chaos. It's structured. Intentional."

The turbolift shuddered to a stop, and the doors hissed open to a corridor washed in the jaundiced glow of half-flickering lights. The air carried the scent of ozone and rust, the kind that clung to the forgotten places of Denon. Aiden followed Adelle out, letting his senses stretch further as she synced her datapad. Her mention of Coruscant lingered in his mind like an echo, a grim thread tying this moment to something older.

"Coruscant…" he murmured. "I remember hearing about a purge like that—records sealed, details omitted. Too neat to be random."

He crouched near the grated floor as they approached the maintenance ladder, pressing a hand lightly against the metal. The Force trembled through it, faint but unmistakable a vibration that carried both fear and endurance. "There's movement three, maybe four levels down." he said quietly. "Children. Alive. But they're being kept in containment probably stasis or sedation. And something else… a focal point." He straightened, jaw tightening. "Someone's anchoring the darkness there."

Aiden's hand hovered briefly near the hilt of his saber, though he didn't draw it yet. "We'll go quietly." he said, his tone even, professional but beneath it lay something colder. "And if this is connected to your Coruscant man, then whoever's down there is about to regret thinking history could repeat itself."

He met her visor briefly, a flicker of understanding passing through the Force shared purpose, steady resolve. "After you."