The Rebel Faction

* * * * "No... still the wrong one.." With a sigh, Damalis Skywalker tossed down another set of papers. Tapping her nails on the arm of the captain's chair in which she sat, the blond frowned, trying to remember. It had seemed a good idea at the time, to hide the name of her contact, in code of course, within the orders she had recently. Knowing she'd probably get so nervous she'd forget the man's name had prompted this but the thought hadn't gotten so far as to make sure she remembered which actual page she'd stuck the code into. Of course, it was horribly silly of her to use paper at all, but it seemed to help her files stay in order better than keeping them solely inside a machine. Damalis felt safer somehow, having that hard copy instead of just saving to a datapad.

* * * * It was just a matter of looking over each paper in front of her closely, but with her svelte-class shuttle, Delirious, quickly closing in on the coordinates given to her it was becoming pretty pressing to find it again. She was nervous enough without thinking that she'd be showing up in the Yavin system with no clue who she was supposed to meet. In fact, she only knew where she was going because the computer told her so, but she'd only been given the specifics of where she was going a short while ago. It was somewhat disconcerting, but also strangely exciting. So much subterfuge, something Damalis' every day life never touched on, as she herself was very honest, as well as running her business that way. But this was something she believed in, this Rebellion against the Imperials, but it wasn't until recently that she thought there was a thing she could do to help. Seriously, what did she, a person who designed fabric synthetics as a hobby and ran a small growing fashion business, have to offer people who were daily embroiled in war?

* * * * Apparently more than she ever thought, or at least a man named Johnathan Skier had told her so. He'd been the one to put her in touch with certain contacts who'd also became convinced she could help. Damalis was a little overwhelmed by it all, as it all seemed to revolve around a strange quirk in her wiring that let her see things. She'd been told this was a Jedi power, or trick some called it, but Damalis didn't put much stock in that. Having flunked right out of the Jedi academy after only three months made her feel more than justified in thinking this. There her best hadn't been good enough. She was useless with a light saber, even with such a patient teacher as Leia Organa, and in fact, her inability to learn how to turn the weapon on had prompted her to give it away a few years ago. Even the most basic of Jedi training had been beyond her abilities so she was certainly loath to credit what she could do to anything to do with being a Jedi.

* * * * This none withstanding, if she was able to help using it, Damalis really wished to give it a try. Luck and fortune, along with a little bit of forethought, seemed to be in charge now. In fact, it had already played a major part in her life so far, no less so than when she'd first met Mr. Skier on Taanab. It boggled the mind that she was on her way to Yavin to join the Rebellion all because a sorry rent-a-robot she'd hired had caught fire.

* * * * Damalis had only gone to Taanab in the first place because she'd gotten messages from a potential client. That the boutique had turned out to be a bunch of slimy little cretins determined to cheat her out of her own merchandise hadn't begun her day well at all. They wanted everything at rock bottom prices, which Damalis wasn't against giving to them, but when they tried to get her to sign a contract that would, essentially, end up costing her more money to deal with them than she would make in profits from the deal, she'd left. Taking the little rent-a-bot with all her fabric samples inside along with her, as well. Normally she'd leave samples behind, but she wasn't feeling in a generous mood. Damalis didn't often leave her very cheerful and perky normal state of mind, but when she did, it could certainly appear to be a very black mood in deed.

* * * * It wasn't helped by the fact that, just as she was walking up the ramp way to the docking area, the bot caught fire. More precisely, her fabric inside caught fire. By the time she'd noticed, most of the samples were ruined but at the time, she hadn't stopped to think about that. Her most pressing problem had been how to put the fire out but that was when a man had ran up and extinguished it. He turned out to be Johnathan Skier.

* * * * "Are you all right?" He'd asked, circling the bot to make sure there was no more flames to put out.

* * * * "I'm fine... but my rent-a-junk just bought the farm, I would say." Sighing, Damalis had shaken her head and fought the urge to kick the machine. She remembered that feeling well, that was for sure, as she'd been quite ready to jump all over the machine.

* * * * "I'd say. I'm Johnathan." Offering his hand, the man had the look of a person wishing to get away from a bad situation, but without actually leaving someone in a lurch.

* * * * "Damalis Skywalker." It was a testament to how distracted she was that Damalis hadn't explained she wasn't from the family of THE Skywalker's, and she missed the way Skier's brow rose. But right at that moment, the tall blond was more interested in what she was going to do with a smoking heap of junk in front of her.

* * * * "Pleased to meet you.." Standing back and surveying the machine, Johnathan had offered his services one more time, while giving himself an escape as well. "Look, I was heading over to the ship to leave and if you like, I can tell the guys at the tower where you are and to contact the company to come get their droid." Waving in the vague direction his ship was in, Damalis completely missed out on the fact that he seemed to be pretty uninformative. She didn't notice this till later, when she was thinking back over the scene.

* * * * "Would you please? I'd be really grateful." Damalis had suddenly beamed brightly at the fellow, then she'd searched through a briefcase she'd been carrying, hunting for the receipt that had the rental places name and number on it. Then she remembered. "Oh damn! I had all the information inside the darn robot..."

* * * * "Well that makes it a little rough, not knowing the information. Can you remember any of it?"

* * * * "Taanab Rental Emporium, Receipt #2345-F8C Robot #4693-56TH, Rental Agreements A-1 and G-5." Rattling off the sudden answer for Johnathan was the easy part, once she knew the question of course, it was explaining Damalis always found a little hard to do. As always, she could never predict what questions she would suddenly know the answers to, or what future happenings would pop into her head.

* * * * "Now that's a mouthful. The company name should be enough though. I'm impressed you could remember all those numbers." Nodding the man had moved to head off, leaving Damalis behind to answer weakly:

* * * * "I didn't know the answer till you asked the question." As she realized he was walking away, Damalis suddenly noticed she'd been awfully rude. "AND thank you so much, Mr. Skier!"

* * * * A simple enough statement, and at the time Damalis had honestly not thought it would cause such a problem, but looking back now she knew it would have made anyone suspicious. After all, he'd never told her his last name before that point. Johnathan had walked back to her then, looking more distrustful than surprised. Damalis had tried to wave it off, explaining she did that sometimes to people, which had earned her another strange look. How do you clear up a misunderstanding by telling a person you sometimes saw future events and could answer questions you'd never known the answer to before?

* * * * It was possibly due to the fact that she hadn't told him she wasn't a true Skywalker, her family had adopted the name some generations back in order to hide from something Damalis hadn't figure out yet, or maybe it was because, without realizing it, Damalis had the most openly honest pair of eyes on anyone any where, but Mr. Skier hadn't questioned her further. Or maybe he was just in a hurry that day. Either way, he just nodded then walked off. She'd never seen him again.

* * * * Later when she'd finally reached her ship with a new rental robot and a very under-estimated price for all of her damaged goods, Damalis had found a message waiting for her. Once she'd finally managed how to get it to play for her, she'd been surprised to find that Mr. Skier had contacted her ship in her absence. He had some friend's he thought she should meet and hoped that the meeting would turn out to everyone's mutual benefit. One day Damalis hoped to meet Mr. Skier again and ask him what it was he'd seen in her that made him do what he'd done, but until then, she'd be content with the knowledge that someone had saw something useful in her. Mostly people only looked at what she seemed to be on the surface, an extremely gorgeous long legged blond with a bright smile and perpetually cheerful personality, and assumed there was nothing more to her. It was refreshing that someone had seen more based on such a short meeting.

* * * * Of course, Mr. Skier's friends hadn't seemed so sure, which of course this hadn't been helped by the fact that at their first meeting they had thought to be meeting someone interested in the Rebellion, while Damalis had assumed she was meeting potential business clients. Or, she'd also thought it could be a blind date, as she'd ended up on a couple a few times before under a similar guise. Once they'd finally determined why they were there, Damalis had gotten extremely nervous and excited at the same time. She knew she did see things, real things that came true, but it wasn't like she could produce something on command. It just didn't work that way. Having already checked out her background completely, the Rebel recruiters already knew about her Academy drop out, and Damalis surmised this was probably why they even showed up to meet her at all. It wasn't like they could sit out on street corners and ask people to join, you never knew who could be an Imperial, but she must have checked out because they'd shown.

* * * * It had taken her a little longer to convince them she was useful, however. Not until she'd answered a few random questions by the man and woman there. Knowing their parent's names had surprised them, knowing their birthdate's had impressed them a little more, but when they'd started firing questions at her so fast, expecting more and more so quickly, Damalis had felt the wall come down and knew nothing could help her find the right answers then. But that had obviously been enough, as she was on her way to meet with Davin McCorda on Yavin.

* * * * "Davin McCorda!" With a little woot, Damalis laughed happily, now that she'd remembered the man's name all on her own. It was of course a waste of a good little code, she'd written down 'Having Miss Curden for Lunch' in one of her appointment slots for two weeks ago. Never mind that then, as suddenly she was hailed from the planet below. She'd been given instructions about where to go and at what time to be there, so she wasn't surprised to have this happen. Damalis had been very truthful when she'd admitted she wasn't a good pilot. Her little Delirious flew itself on autopilot, a happy little slave unit surrounded the console in which Damalis knew nothing about how it worked, but while she could doing landings and take offs, she preferred not to.

* * * * "Hello.." Nervously Damalis answered the hailing with a complete lack of knowing what she was actually supposed to say. "I was told to be here, right here, so I'm assuming you know who I am already... anyways... could you please land me now?" Damalis didn't mind one wit that she'd probably just cracked up a whole tower with that, but really, she hated doing landings. She always bashed something.

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "I'd really like that." Damalis nodded, still smiling brightly as she avidly looked about her. She'd been a little startled to find two men with blaster rifles greeting her along with the Captain, unaware this was procedure and didn't really have anything to do with her. There was probably very few people here on Yavin 4 who had less knowledge of military protocol than Damalis, which is why she spoke to the two fellows, instead of ignoring them.

"Uhh.. hello to you two as well." Her smile a little shaky now, she nonetheless waved a little greeting to the other two men, hoping they didn't take that as a threat or something. However, if anyone looked less like a threat than Damalis, they'd have to be dead. In honor of the occasion she'd dressed in what she considered very somber attire, a well cut suit in a soft grayish material, but as always, Damalis was still Damalis. The skirt was just a tad too short for any where except the hippest clubs but as Damalis carried herself with self assurance, as well as looking really good in the outfit, it didn't seem out of place. Topping out at six feet, with the heels on her shoes she graced six foot two, so her height gave her a much needed look of command that the outfit didn't quite give to her like she'd hoped. However, on her, anything else would have seemed out of place but the general all around effect was all business with the skirt telling people she was just as fun as her smile said she was.

"I wanted to ask, before I did something stupid, is there any rules I need to know right now?" She asked, hoping to stave off some horrible incident where she offended someone or broke some horrible cardinal rule on a rebel base. Having never been near one, Damalis just wanted to be sure she didn't bungle anything on her first visit there. It was not totally impossible for her to do this, since she knew she was completely capable of making the wrong gesture to an alien or saying something to break some ancient taboo. It always seemed way too easy for her to bungle her way into a situation like that.

Alexei slowly climbed out of the cockpit, taking stock of the situation. His gaze took in two men, one of them a lower ranking Admiral by the looks of his uniform, and the other person next to him is probaly an aide, Ferrier decided. He checked his complement of weapons, which, being a pirate meant that he had quite a few of them. He had his main rifle, an E-11 taken from the hands of a stormtrooper he'd killed himself, and a DL-11 blaster pistol tucked away in his pants. He also had a small Vibro-dagger with a sheath on his belt. With the weapons check done, he shut down the starfighter's systems, and emerged from the craft. He listened to the Commander's critique, noting it with a small secret smile tugging at his lips. Of course I could have been killed. There's always risk involved anything you do. If not, then what's the fun in doing it?. Alexei was then led off by the two men to see his quarters. He would unload his cases after he saw what type of room he was getting. Probaly just a bunk and refresher station, if even that. Usually starfighter pilots don't get real good quarters, unless they are high ranking officers. And even then, in the case of a Rebellion like this, they may not get good quarters.

Some time later, after they had reached the quarters, and he had unloaded and unpacked himself, Alexei Ferrier decided to take a little walk in order to familiarize himself with his new home. He visited the Cafeteria, the rest of the barracks, the refresher stations, and finally, the hangar bay. As he approached the bay he sighted a man with two troopers moving away from the bay and into a hallway. And being escorted by the three men, was a drop dead gorgeous woman of the likes Alexei Ferrier had seen before. Quickly Alexei ducked into a refresher station to make sure he didn't smell, and comb his hair down. Having finished that, he went into the hallway, and took off after the party. He doubt she would take him seriously, but he would still like to introduce himself and get to know her anyways. Besides, look at how short her skirt is! Woo-hoo!

Charlot had gladly returned from the capital social hurricane to her studies of ancient nomadic peoples, whom she knew and understood far more that he understood the stars. She had worked on this project since her days at Tuis, slowly, steadily accumulating her evidence, pointing toward (he thought, rather obvious) conclusion that the great ecological factory of the steppes of Tuis had spun forth or stimulated virtually every great movement in history. Eventually she would turn it all into a book; indeed, she already had well over two thousand pages of text on disk. In his eyes, part of his wife's charm was this dichotomy: resourceful mother without, bulldog scholar within.

The Comm rang three times before Charlot could travel from the patio to answer it. Her voice came through the open bedroom window facing the river.

"I'll find him," She told the caller.

Sighing he stood, pushing on the corduroy covering his bony knees.

"Raven!"

"Yeah?"

"Riley from Segun, Are you available?"

"Sure," He said, less reluctantly. Riley was not a close friend, merely an aquaintance, but over the years they had established a pact, that each would inform the other of interesting developments before most of the scientific community or the general media had heard of them. Raven climbed the path up the bank in the dark, knowing each root and slippery patch of mud and leaves, whistling softly. Holt bounded through the ferns.

Marty watched him owlishly from the edge of the lawn, under the wild plum tree, the monkey puppet hanging loose and grotesque on his hand.

"Is Holt with you?"

The dog followed, ears and eyes locked on the monkey, which he wanted passionately.

"When can we get the telescope out, Dad?" Marty asked.

He grabbed Holt's collar and bent down to hug him fiercly. THe dog yelped and cranned his neck to nip air as the monkey's plastic face poked him in the withers.

"A little later. Tell Mom."

"She'll get it?" Marty was passing through a stage of doubting his mother's technical skills. This irritated him.

"She's used it more than I have buddy."

"All RIGHT!" Marty enthused, releasing the dog, droping the puppet and running for the steps ahead of Raven. Holt immediatly grabbed the monkey by the throat and shook it, growling. Raven followed his son, turned left in the hallway past the freezer chest, and picked up his office extension.

"Riley, what a suprise," he said affably.

"Raven, I hope I'm the first." Riley's voice was a higher tenor than usual.

"Try me."

"Have you heard about Tevis?"

"Tevis?"

"Tevis. Renal's fifth moon."

"What about it?"

"Its gone."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Theres been a search. The Realst's still strong out there, but it hasn't been aimed at Tevis for weeks. The Local long range satilites have turned cameras to where Tevis should be, but there's nothing big enough to photograph. If it were there, it would come out of occulation again in about ten minutes. But nobody expects to see it. Calls from ameuters have been flooding in for sixteen hours."

Raven couldn't shift gears fast enough to think how to react.

"I'm Sorry?"
"It's not painted black, It's not hiding, It's just gone. Nobody saw it go either."

"Thank you for your time." Damalis told McCorda as they walked along. "I think I've got the general idea, it was pretty straight forward. And if you really need to go, I'm sure I can find my way with some directions." She was still confused at what she was supposed to be doing personally, but maybe they intended to give her a few days to settle in before telling her what that was.


After all, her general brand of help didn't come on a schedule. She never knew when something was going to pop into her head and be useful, but that thought did give her one more question. "A quick one before you go... who do I report to, duty wise?"