The war was over. Rath Oligard was, by all reports, dead. The Brotherhood had repelled the Collective from Arx. The former Voice—who had once shaped the Inquisitorius to better combat the threat that they represented—was no longer needed. The Gray Fang, as it turned out, was nothing more than another small holochess piece on the Grand Master’s board, insignificant despite all his years of dedication and loyalty. The Dark Council had continued forward. Without him.
So as yet another Great Jedi War faded to memory, Marick Tyris found an abundance of something he had not known for years. Time. Above all else, time did not stop or slow for anyone. Inevitably, it would leave him behind in its wake unless he adapted, and moved on. And while the Elder Arcanist had made strides towards his newfound focus on his family and his future, the past was not so easily forgotten.
There were still some loose ends as far as the Collective were concerned. Zealous movements and organizations did not dissolve overnight, figurehead or not. That was why Marick had taken note of a specific tip on a bounty for a defector from Capital Enterprises. Contracts like that were becoming more and more common, but this one caught his eye because the target seemed to have intricate knowledge of the Collective’s home system. This coincided with other reports that the three pillars of the Collective remained standing in the wake of their failed gambit.
That was what brought him to the Shili system, homeworld of the Togruta.
Marick moved carefully through the savanna, armorweave cloak and hood keeping the setting sun from beating down on his back and shadowing his face from view. The comfort body glove he wore beneath his long jacket did well to help wick the moisture away from his skin. Their grayscale patterns, unfortunately, did little to blend with the vibrant, blood-orange hues of the tall turu-grass all around him. The smell of the fresh vegetation against the dry, arid air was a welcome change from the artificial atmosphere of Port Ol’val, or the stale scent of the Dark Ascent’s somewhat stifling stone walls.
The Arconan Elder did not have much to go on. There had been no tracking fob, no advanced reconnaissance available from the Inquisitorius. He only hoped that the former would deter the more common bounty hunters. All he had to go on was a name, Draglin Fenn, and a description: Bothan features, scar across the nose, yellow eyes. Fortunately, there were other methods to track someone on the run.
Marick stopped in a few small villages, but only the third and final one he had visited ended up having the lead he needed. The Togruta natives regarded the Hapan curiously when he offered to pay for the discarded clothing of a Bothan male they had seen passing through the day before. The Collective defector had exchanged them, along with some credits, for a change of attire and survival supplies.
Marick kept the Bothan’s belt sash and burned the rest.
The Master kept his too-blue eyes alert for sandtraps and his senses open to any predators that might be following him. His boots padded smoothly over gnarled roots and staggered stones as he periodically referenced the data stored locally on his commlink. All the while, Marick maintained a link between Draglin’s sash and its original wearer, drawing closer and closer to its source.
His concentration broke suddenly as impending danger flashed across his awareness like a klaxon. Marick slid to a halt just as a lumbering figure burst through the brush of turu-grass, panting heavily as if running for their life.
Marick’s eyes adjusted quickly to take note of the fleeing figure. It was unmistakably a Bothan bearing a prominent scar across his nose and with yellow eyes.
The Arconan Elder blinked once, processing the new information, and then instinctively dropped into a defensive crouch as a second rustling of blood-orange grass gave way to a smaller but much louder creature. It was the size of an Akul, but had a pure white hide with a bone-like ridge along the chest from head to shoulder. The creature snarled and barked as it pounded past Marick in pursuit of its prey.
A Corellian Hound? Out here? That would mean...
“Stay on his tail, Deeva!” an unmistakably Human voice shouted after the hound. A moment later, a portly man with a mop of unruly blue hair, bushy eyebrows, and a smuggler's attire trudged through the grass, stopping to seemingly catch his breath. Hands on his knees, the man straightened up and turned to face him.
“Uh,” the man said, clearly caught off-guard at encountering another humanoid hunter. “Hey, pal. You uh, here for the Bothan mark too? Hate to break it to you, but my girl Deeva’s already got him, and trust me when I tell you, you do not want to get into it with her when she’s claimed her prize.”
Marick said nothing, his eyes studying the stranger and instinctively identifying the presence of a blaster pistol holstered on his right hip and some kind of blade over his back shoulder. The Arconan Elder kept his hand on the hilt of his lightsaber beneath the folds of his cloak, but nodded once to the bounty hunter. “Very well. Perhaps I could be of some assistance?”
“Name’s Zeek, and yeah, sure, I bet you could—”
—faster than Marick would have expected for someone of their particular stature, Zeek quick-drew a unique-looking blaster from his back. At the same time, Marick brandished his lightsaber and activated the ultraviolet blade with its black core.
The bounty hunter was quicker by a hair's breadth.
Two simultaneous dashes of crimson energy leapt from the twin barrels of the blaster. The first bolt ricocheted off the lightsabers blade, but the second managed to deftly clip the exposed hilt and jar it free from Marick’s grip. The lightsaber disengaged as it flew through the air, too quick for the eye to track, and then landed somewhere nondescript among the throngs of turu-grass.
Zeek let out a triumphant hoot as he altered his aim and fired off another salvo at the unarmed Hapan’s chest. But Marick was already moving, his coat and cloak becoming a preternatural blur of grayscale against the savannahs blood-orange backdrop. The blaster bolts passed harmlessly through the space he had occupied the moment prior.
Zeek swore under his breath as he started to backpedal, adjusting his aim to try and draw a bead on his shifty adversary without having to look down scope. He sighted slightly ahead of the Hapan's trajectory and cracked off a calculated cluster of blaster bolts.
Marick defetly reversed direction, came to a halt safely on the other side of the volley, and then made a quick, curt gesture with one hand.
The bounty hunter felt a sudden whip-like pressure on the grip around his blaster pistol before it was ripped from his hand and hurled through the air. Just as Marick’s lightsaber had earlier, the blaster, too, landed somewhere unseen in the underbrush of tall, willowy blades of grass.
“Huh, Force-User...” Zeek mused as his hand hovered over his Bryar pistol and he started to weigh his options.
