Escape from the Imperial Capital
The Great Hunt, it was a chance for glory and fame. A chance to become more than some azure-skinned alien on an Outer Rim planet nobody cared enough about to conquer. Before Braden had found him, Velldrinn had never even seen a starship, much less fly in one, and now he was standing on the bridge of his own starship.
A cacophonous mixture of alarms from the spaceport and the control console screamed at him as he struggled with the controls while trying to manuever the ship out of the hangar before Imperial security ground them permanently. So far he had managed to get the ship off the ground but navigating out of the hangar was proving far more difficult than he expected it would be.
"No, no, no! NOT THAT WAY!" Mako yelled at him before another alarm sounded just as the top of the ship collided with the roof sending a cloud of debris on the window. "Then you try doing it!" Velldrinn yelled back at the diminutive slicer, "I don't know how to fly!" She screamed anxiously back at him, "Neither do I!"
All of his life he had felt like an outcast, adrift alone in the world since the death of his parents, but never had he felt that pang so deeply as he had on the Imperial homeworld. Mako had warned him how aliens were treated in the Empire, especially here in the Imperial capital. Surely, he thought, it wouldn't be so bad here for him. After all, the other Chiss he met on Hutta was clearly working for the Empire -and- he had just captured an important defector from a Republic battleship almost single-handedly. How wrong he had been. Since he had set foot in Kaas City he had been insulted, degraded and harassed by the likes he had never experienced before, and that was besides the obstacles Tarro Blood had thrown in his path. Now he was going to die in an Imperial hangar before he could even begin all because neither of them new how to fly a stupid starship.
"I am not going to die in this hangar because of Tarro Blood and this lousy ship." He said through gritted teeth as he tried again to get the ship through the hangar when a voice responded to him that was not Mako's.
"My master's ship is not 'lousy'," a metallic voice piped up from the entrance to the bridge, "This is a D5-Man..."
Before the droid could finish Velldrinn had his blaster aimed at its face, saying, "Your master is dead and I'll scrap you next unless you can fly this thing out of here." The red LEDs in the 2V unit's eyes brightened in surprise and then quickly replied, "Of course, new master, right away!"
A few minutes later while the droid piloted and Mako figured out the navi-computer to set the coordinates for the jump to light speed, Velldrinn settled back into the seat now that they were safely out of the hangar. Now that he had time to think about where he had come from and where he was headed his thoughts went back to the last job he had planet side and the Imperial Intelligence officer who had betrayed him after successfully completing the job. No doubt the female Chiss who had worked with him to retrieve The General and infiltrated the Revanites with was almost certainly Imperial Intelligence herself. The more he considered her allegiance to the Empire, whom she worked for and his own experience with Imperial spooks he was glad to put distance between them. Maybe being alone in the galaxy was not such a bad thing.
