Chapter 18
“The enigmatic bounty hunter Boba Fett was someone I studied as much as I could when I was able to finally reach a library. But in all the books in the massive collection that I was able to find, not much was available to read up on. The man was very private and kept his personal life well-hidden from the rest of the galaxy. But from what I could gather, we were lucky to have a person like him chasing us through the galaxy.”
-Twilight Sparkle, On Extra-Galactic Voyages, p. 679
Blue swirls of energy coursed past the small shuttle as it made its way through hyperspace. With the computer doing most of the work, Junas was free to sit back and enjoy the ride.
If he could.
The fact was that he had sensed a frigid shoulder from Twilight, which even her teacher had noticed. The normally kind and curious pony was now totally silent, and it bothered him. Didn’t she realize that he couldn’t let any more of them get captured or killed by the Empire and the thugs it hired to do its dirty work?
He got up out of the chair and walked down the short hall and through the door on the side into the passenger cabin. “Well,” he said, addressing the ponies. “We’re going to be at Bestine in two days, if the engines hold out.”
Silence. Apparently Twilight wasn’t the only one negatively affected by Spike’s kidnapping. He couldn’t blame them; he felt just as bad as they did. But he knew that going back would have been suicide.
“Thank you,” replied Celestia. Damn, he thought. Even she’s mad at me.
“Listen, guys . . .” he began, but as soon as he spoke, Twilight scowled and trotted past him briskly and rounded the corner into the cargo bay.
Junas hung his head and slumped into one of the chairs around the table in the center of the room. Then Celestia got up from where she was sitting and walked over next to him. “I am sorry, Junas. You must be carrying a heavy burden.”
He looked up at the wizened old alicorn pleadingly. “Celestia, I wanted to go back and save him as much as Twilight, but I couldn’t risk the rest of you being captured!”
She smiled sadly at him. “Then perhaps you should explain that to Twilight.”
He looked at her in surprise.
“Go on,” she said, gently nudging him with her wing.
Nodding, he slowly got up and trudged toward the door leading to the cargo bay, wondering what kind of reception he would receive.
-----
The door opened with a snap-hiss, revealing a mostly barren cargo area, with the exception of a small purple lump lying curled up in the corner of the room.
Junas swallowed a lump in his throat. She doesn’t deserve this.
He walked carefully toward her. “Twilight—”
“Go away.” The pain and anguish was evident in her voice.
“Twilight,” he began again. “I’m sorry that this happened.”
She looked up at him, her face looking as though she had aged a thousand years. “I could have saved him. Or done something, I . . .” A torrent of tears kept her from speaking further.
Junas sighed, then walked up next to her and sat down on the deck.
For a while, all was silent save for the gentle thrumming of the engines. Then he put a hand on her shoulder.
“Twilight, I’ve been in the Alliance for a while now. It seems like forever, actually. In that time, I’ve lost friends, and even a few relatives, to the Empire and its minions. I know the pain you’re going through more than I want to.”
She curled even tighter, refusing to even acknowledge what he was saying.
He continued: “The fact is, you guys are important to me.”
She stirred. Turning to look at him, he saw the sadness and anger in her eyes. “Then why did you let Spike get kidnapped? You know I could have saved him!”
“I wasn’t about to risk it. What if they had shot you as you were going back for him? Or Rarity? Rainbow and A.J. were incredibly lucky that they weren’t killed by the Empire on Endor. I’m not about to test that luck any more than I have to.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing.
“Twilight . . .”
She looked at his eyes, and he met her gaze with an intense look.
“I am not going to lose any more of you to the Empire. Okay?”
The violet unicorn nodded sadly, then sniffed back the sorrow. “I miss him, Junas. He was my responsibility, and I let him get captured.”
“No, Twilight. It just happened. But we’re going to get him back.”
She nodded, and tried to smile weakly, but failed.
He held her as she cried into his chest.
-----
Nar Shaddaa was a place where most didn’t care whether you lived or died in the street, especially if you were a bounty hunter. But Boba Fett didn’t need the sympathy of others, or their help.
Still, he wished someone had gotten him out of the way of whatever vile liquid had splashed on him while he was knocked unconscious by his own stun missile.
Standing up groggily, he checked the chronometer built into his helmet and cursed that it had been three hours since he had attempted to capture the ponies. If I hadn’t used the long-term setting on those stunners. . .
This was not the time for regret. He needed to get back to tracking these creatures down. Ten million credits is hard to ignore, and besides that his own code of honor dictated that any creature that caused so much devastation should be incarcerated anyway.
Striding down the street away from the pile of rubble he’d caused and brushing aside the angry owners of the building he’d damaged, he made his way toward his starship, Slave I, in order to pick up the trail.
He had never lost a bounty.
And these creatures would not elude him so easily.
-----
The beautiful disk of Heloan Yagen hung in the sky above the barren moons which orbited it, providing an awe-inspiring backdrop for Junas’ shuttle as it dropped from hyperspace. The gas giant was unaligned in the galactic civil war, which made it the perfect choice for him to hide in while he repaired the aged engines in their ship, which had begun fluctuating during the transit in hyperspace.
Gliding in on the prescribed approach vector, he deftly guided the ship in between canyons that jutted up from the dark gray surface of the planet’s innermost moon, looking for a flat surface to alight on. He was about ready to take off and find another moon to land on until he spotted a large plain of volcanic glass, apparently caused by the gravitational tide of the gas giant.
As he activated the landing claw and made sure it engaged with the surface, he thought about how close they were to their goal. One short hyperjump, if the engines held, and they would be in the Bestine system which was home to at least two dozen Rebel cells. They might even be able to help him find his home ship.
Smiling, he stood up and headed back through the corridor into the passenger cabin toward engineering so he could start repairs on the engine. If it was anything like a YT-1300’s propulsion system, this should be relatively easy to fix.
As he walked through the compartment toward the door at the other side, he bumped into Rainbow Dash.
“Hey! Watch it!” she snapped.
Turning in surprise, he stared incredulously at the blue pegasus. “What?”
“Watch where you’re walking! You almost stepped on my hoof!”
“Rainbow Dash!” shouted Rarity, “Calm down! He didn’t mean to bump into you like that!”
Dash turned angrily toward the fashionista. “Yeah, well, I’m tired of this bucking universe! We’ve been running from the Empire for weeks, with no sign of it stopping!”
Rarity looked at Dash sympathetically. “Darling, we’ve almost made it to the Rebel base. They’ll help us find a way home.”
“And what if they can’t? We’ll be stuck in this universe forever!”
“Then we’ll just have to find a way home without them.”
“Y’know,” said Dash with an edge to her voice, “we wouldn’t even be in this mess if it weren’t for you!”
Everyone looked at her in shock. “Rainbow Dash!” admonished Twilight. “You know she didn’t mean to send us to this place!”
“Yeah? Well, we’re here, aren’t we?” Dash swiftly shot into the air, hovering over Rarity and pointing an accusing hoof at her. “And it’s all thanks to Miss Fashionista over here!”
“Now let’s not let this sink to petty insults,” retorted Rarity with a trace of uncertainty in her voice.
“I’m sick to death of this place, and if it weren’t for you, Rarity, we would be back home!”
“Well why don’t you just fly us all there!” Rarity’s voice rose to an angry crescendo. “Oh, that’s right! You can’t fly in space!”
“GIRLS!!”
They both looked at Princess Celestia. “You all represent the Elements of Harmony. I would hope you would remember that during our stay in this galaxy, and if you cannot, then do not let our enemies see your disharmony and use it against us.”
Looking into her eyes, Rainbow and Rarity saw the seriousness of their deity. The blue pegasus lowered herself to the deck, and when Celestia’s head was turned, she thrust her own into Rarity’s face. “I’ll put on a show for Celestia,” she said quietly and dangerously. “But I’m not going to forget whose fault it is that we’re stuck here.”
Before Rarity could respond, Dash shot into the air and flew into the sleeper cabin at the front of the compartment, the door hissing shut behind her.
As the room cooled down, they all heard Rarity sobbing and saw the tears running down her cheeks as she laid on the floor. Twilight walked up to her and put a hoof on the unicorn’s shoulder. “Don’t be sad, Rarity. Rainbow’s just a little stressed.”
“No,” sniffed Rarity. “She’s absolutely right. If I hadn’t been so arrogant none of this would have happened.”
“But—”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Twilight. But right now I think I need to be alone.”
With that, she stood up and walked sadly into the cargo bay. Fluttershy glided after her, ignoring her friend’s desire for solitude in order to offer her own brand of consolation.
Pinkie Pie got up from Applejack’s sleeping body and walked past Twilight toward the sleeper cabin where Dash was sulking. “I better go see if she needs someone to help her paw angrily at the ground.”
Watching all of her friends walk or fly out of the passenger compartment, Twilight sunk to the deck and sighed. Celestia watched her student as she laid on the metal floorplates, then walked over and placed a wing over her shoulder.
“Don’t give up hope, my subject.”
“But Princess, how can I have hope? This galaxy is tearing our friendships apart at the seams!”
“I have faith in you, my student. You have shown great courage and determination in the face of impossible odds. I know you can do this.”
The little pony looked up at her mentor with sadness in her eyes and gave her a half-smile. Then she got up and trudged toward the remaining pair of sleeping bunks. “I sure hope you’re right.”
-----
“What a mess.”
Datapads and plastiform sheets littered the dock master’s office at Zackis Docks. Fett however was not referring to the huge pile of debris, but to the Zabrak dock master’s head, or rather what was left of it. He nonchalantly stepped past the red spatter on the wall and over the bloody pile of brain matter in the floor to look at the computer screen in front of the corpse.
Discovering where the ponies had gone to in order to get off-planet was easy enough. Slave I’s hypercomm system picked up local chatter about a group of fugitives being chased toward the docks by goons hired by the Empire.
Logging into the computer was no more difficult; the dock master apparently thought his favorite pet’s name was good enough for a passcode. Fett hoped he could find some sort of shipping or passenger manifest that would tell him where to look for the ponies and that Rebel scout.
After digging through the records of ships landing and taking off from the port, he found no traces of passenger manifests. The dock master didn’t keep very stringent records.
Frustrated, Fett paced a bit, trying to think of a new lead. Subsequently he decided to try the ship registry. There were three dozen or so ships that were currently parked. Maybe one of them had been either bought or stolen by the Rebels.
After uploading the information to a datapad, he went into the starship garage and manually checked the ships parked there against the registry.
The task took longer than Fett was comfortable with, considering the time-sensitive nature of bounty hunting, but he finally noticed a discrepancy. In the middle of a long row of ships was a grease spot where an old JS-77B was supposed to be docked.
When he had made sure that all the rest of the ships were there, he headed back to Slave I to begin talking with the local Comm-Scan station to see where the shuttle was headed.
They won’t elude me twice.
-----
After trying three times to get the engines to start, Junas finally slammed his fist into the console and the converters finally initiated. The low whine built to a high-pitched crescendo as the engines kicked into gear, sending the ship floating up off the surface of the moon and into the inky blackness of space.
As he guided the ship into an approach vector for the jump the hyperspace, Junas sat back in the chair and let the autopilot do its job.
He thought about how this war was affecting the seven passengers in the cabin. One of their princesses and the baby dragon Spike had been taken alive by the Empire. He almost wished with a nihilist tone that they had been killed instead. He’d heard about the experiments that the Empire did on aliens. Brutal experiments designed to exploit their biology and figure out how to turn them into weapons for the Imperial war machine.
He’d even seen some of the Cyborrean War Dogs that the Emperor had commissioned. The poor beasts were stripped of their personality and had cybernetic devices implanted into their bodies to turn them into horrifying weapons of terror.
He shuddered to think about what fate the Emperor had planned for Spike and Princess Luna.
His reverie was interrupted by a beeping on the console, the signal that he was approaching the hyperspace buoy and the hyperspace lane that would take them to Bestine.
As the holographic apparition shot past the ship, he pulled a set of levers to his right and watched as the hyperdrive’s whine built to a crescendo and the stars elongated to reveal the familiar blue tunnel of hyperspace.
He sighed.
This war was taking a toll on all who fought it. But he had to get these ponies to the Rebel Alliance.
Their world, and his, depended on it.
-----
Slave I hovered next to one of the many floating platforms in the smoggy atmosphere of Nar Shaddaa, her boarding ramp latched securely to the greasy magnetic clamps on the side of the deck. The platform was connected via turboshaft to a small office which was home to one of Nar Shaddaa’s Comm-Scan facilities, and it was this particular facility which was going to give Boba Fett his next lead.
The bounty hunter stood silently in front of the desk, behind which sat a small, spindly alien with eight arms which moved over the control board as though he were playing an exotic musical instrument. He adjusted the eyepiece over his left eye, his concentration never deviating from the myriad screens which cast a pale bluish green glow in the otherwise dark room, the only source of light other than the indicator lights on the control board.
“Um, would you like a bit of refreshment while you wait?” asked the alien.
Fett said nothing as he personally wondered how a creature who had a modicum of kindness or consideration for others wound up on Nar Shaddaa, much less survived here.
As he stood stoically waiting on the nervous creature, he saw him wipe his brow and glance intermittently in the bounty hunter’s direction with a nervous smile. Fett was just fine with the creature’s skittish behavior. His reputation depended on others fearing him, a characteristic that would often cause his quarries to make mistakes and get themselves caught, so the more creatures that feared him, the better.
Silently he stood by, waiting on the confirmatory beep that told him and the operator that the Comm-Scan’s computer had finally finished combing the untold trillions of data entries for the characteristics of a JS-77B interstellar shuttle.
Soon his patience was rewarded by a chirp as the computer displayed a short list on one of the larger screens. The operator’s arms deftly moved over the controls as he brought up the heat signatures, energy patterns, BOSS I.D., and many other characteristics of the ships on the screen. After separating the data into manageable sections, he turned to the bounty hunter. “Uh, is this, uh, what you’re looking for, Mr. Fett?”
He walked slowly past the screens and scanned over the information floating before him. Two of the ships were droid-controlled mail ships, so they were eliminated. One only had three passengers, so it was also out. That left the two which had eight occupants apiece. He had thought the bounty was for nine, plus a Rebel operative, so he assumed one or two had been captured already.
He looked over the fine points. The hulls were normal, the shields were fully functional . . .
What was the difference?
Suddenly he noticed that the heat signatures in the passenger compartment had significantly different appearances. The one had humanoid shapes lounging in the chairs or walking about the deck. But the other had shapes which could only be equinoids, like the ponies he was after.
The creature jumped when Fett spoke. “This one. Give me the hyperspace trajectory this ship used and any possible destinations along the vector.”
The poor alien nodded his head so vigorously the Fett thought it would fall off his shoulders. “Yes, sir!” He looked over the panel and simultaneously flipped several switches and punched in commands in the console. The majority of the ships on the screen disappeared, to be replaced by two spheres representing Nal Hutta and Nar Shaddaa. As the two spheres came to a stop in front of Fett, a small dot which evidently represented the shuttle flew up and away from the planet’s moon. Then a small paragraph containing a list of planets along the trajectory and a percentage which represented the likelihood of that planet being their destination popped up along the white line representing their escape vector.
“Um, it appears that Bestine has the highest probability of being their destination. Would you like me to upload the information to your ship’s computer?”
“No. Put it on a data disc and encrypt it to me.”
The alien nodded, then inserted a blank disc into a drive on the side of his console. After putting an encryption on the disc, the operator waited a few seconds, and then the computer ejected it and a small tag which would allow the data to be read by Slave I’s computer.
The operator handed the disc and the tag to Fett with a nervous smile. “Would that be all, Mr. Fett?”
The bounty hunter didn’t answer as he took the disc and tag and strode out of the operator’s office and into the turbolift that would take him back up to the platform and his waiting starship.
-----
The calm black of space in the Bestine system was interrupted in an instant by the JS-77B shuttle popping out of hyperspace. Junas guided the tiny craft through the void, following the holographic path set before him by the computer.
He experienced an unusual sense of urgency. Maybe it was because of the fact that they were wanted by the Empire. Or maybe it was because he knew that there were bounty hunters who were willing to pursue them across the galaxy for a profit.
Whatever the cause, he goosed the throttle and squeezed every ounce of speed from the engines, the constant acceleration cutting their flight time down considerably.
Behind him he heard the door to the cockpit corridor open up. Twilight Sparkle walked slowly through the corridor and into the cockpit, then sat in the copilot’s seat. Junas looked over and saw the look on her face, the expression speaking volumes about her depressed state of mind.
“Y’know, we’re going at a speed of around thirty thousand kilometers per second.”
The attempt at getting her attention off of what was bugging her didn’t have the intended effect. “I’m not really in the mood for science right now, Junas.”
He looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “You? Not in the mood for science?”
She glanced at him, irritated. “I’m still mad at you for not going back for Spike.”
“I know,” he replied. “And I don’t blame you at all.”
“It’s just that he’s only a baby dragon. I don’t know what the Empire has planned for him, and I don’t want to think about it.”
Junas said nothing.
“I’m responsible for him!” continued Twilight. “Celestia gave me the charge of taking care of him. And I owe him so much. He’s been my assistant since I was a filly, always doing what I asked without thought of reward.”
“He’s a good kid, Twilight,” said Junas. “I feel horrible about leaving him behind.”
“As well you should,” she napped. Then she sighed and looked over to him sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I know you must feel as badly as I do about losing Spike.”
“You’re not the only one responsible for him, Twilight. He was under my protection, as are all of you. I’ve got to do my duty to you and the others, and that means doing what I think will ensure the survival of the group.”
“Yeah,” said Twilight, then she sighed. “I know you’re just doing what you think is right. I just wish there had been another solution.”
“So do I. But we can’t do any good for Spike or Luna if we dwell on the past. I’ve seen soldiers killed because they kept second-guessing their decisions. The ones who survive don’t ever question themselves. They make mistakes, but they learn from them and then don’t make them again.”
The unicorn nodded at him, then laid down in the seat and stared out the window at the deep blackness of space.
Soon the blue disk of Bestine, the planet which gave the system its name, appeared out of the void. Twilight watched as the small blue dot grew into a marble, then a ball. As she watched the planet get closer and closer, she noticed something odd about the stars around it.
One of them was slowly moving. She thought it might be a small moon, but then the tiny dot changed course and then stood still: a ship was moving to intercept them.
“Junas? There’s a ship moving toward us.”
“I see it,” he said. “I just need to get close enough to scan it and find out what it is.”
Twilight nodded, then watched the screen the Junas was monitoring. The scanner was tied directly into it, and she followed the numbers as the counted down the distance to scanning range.
Soon the computer screen displayed a diagram of a ship of some kind. I consisted of a large oval shaped skirt with two wings on either side and a tail underneath, with a large black canopy in the middle. When Junas looked back at the monitor, his demeanor changed to nervousness.
“I wonder what a Firespray is doing out here? They’re pretty rare.”
He continued to stare at the monitor. “Wait a minute,” he said softly.
He never got the chance to explain before the other ship started firing long purple blasts of energy at him, forcing him off course.
“Junas,” shouted Twilight, “who is that?!”
“Boba Fett.”
Twilight had no idea who he was talking about, but if she was reading his voice correctly, Boba Fett was one of those names to run away from very fast.
Junas threw the ship into a nosedive, but by this time Fett had caught up to them and matched their maneuver perfectly. The Rebel scout made several maneuvers, but nearly all of them were easily matched by Fett, who continued to spray them with ion cannon fire.
“Twilight!”
She looked at him expectantly.
“Get to the turret and get him off our tail!”
The unicorn nodded, then hopped out of the copilot’s chair and ran down the corridor to the seat. It was hanging by an armature from the transparisteel dome, outside which was a gun. She sat in the seat, then stared at the myriad controls. “Junas! How do I work this thing?!”
He held the controls steady as he leaned back to shout, “Flip all the switches on the right-hand console, then hit the red buttons on either side of the screen!”
A shudder brought his attention back to what he was doing. He pulled the ship into a hard right, evading yet another hail of ion blasts.
-----
Fett wrestled with the controls of Slave I, weaving his ship to and fro to keep up with the Rebel shuttle. He sent wave after wave of ion bolts toward them, hoping to score a hit.
He was good, and he knew it. Therefore it was only a matter of time before they succumbed.
Suddenly he was surprised by a direct hit from their laser cannon. The blast blinded him for a moment, but it was enough for them to slip out of his line of sight. Cursing, he maneuvered Slave I back on their six, then released another hail of ionizing energy toward their stern.
-----
“Yaaahhhh!!!”
Twilight fought to get control of the chair she was sitting in while simultaneously trying to get another hit on Fett. Her first score had largely been a fluke, an accident caused by the fact that Junas had rolled the ship just as she was activating the chair controls, causing her elbow to bump the firing stud on the hand controls. But she knew that her luck wasn’t good enough for another hit.
However, she didn’t count on the chair’s controls being so darn sensitive! She wrestled with the yaw lever as she struggled to get Slave I back in her sights.
An opportunity: she saw Fett drift back into the crosshairs. With the flick of a hoof, she sent a volley of laser energy careening toward him. But he did a barrel roll around it, then sent a barrage of his own into their tail section.
“Twilight!” shouted Junas. “Keep that guy off my six! Another hit like that and we’re dog food!”
“I know!” she shot back. But it wasn’t easy for somepony as uncoordinated as Twilight to simultaneously aim and fire a laser turret. Her next few shots went wide; the bounty hunter didn’t even flinch.
All of a sudden they felt a large impact on the hull, then all the instruments went dead, electricity playing on the switches and contacts. Twilight knew better than to touch it, but she couldn’t figure out why the ship suddenly died. Panicking, she leaned back in her chair to look at Junas, who was pounding the console and cursing in Corellian.
“Junas? How come my controls won’t work?”
Sighing, he turned to look at her. “Fett hit us with ion cannons. Our ship’s electronics are pretty much toast.”
He looked up through the canopy of the tumbling shuttle to see Slave I coming in to dock for boarding.
“And it looks like we’re gonna have company . . .”
-----
A low bump resounded through the hull when the bounty hunter’s ship made contact with the docking collar. As the ponies and Junas gathered around the cylindrical door to the docking vestibule, they heard the low whine of the latching mechanism followed by the screech of the rusty door retracting into the hull.
For a moment all was silent as they stood with baited breath, waiting for the door to open.
With a hiss that sent a shock through their spines, the door opened, revealing Boba Fett, his worn battle armor gleaming in the dim lighting offered by the overhead glow-lamps.
He slowly lowered a blaster toward them.
“Wait!” shouted Twilight.
He didn’t. Junas and Celestia were hit with stun blasts in less than a second, and when Rainbow Dash came out of the sleeping quarters and shot after the bounty hunter, she took a stun shot in the chest and crashed unceremoniously to the floor. Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie huddled together under the table while Rarity hid in the sleeping quarters with Applejack, who was still recovering on the bunk. Only Twilight remained to confront the bounty hunter. Fett lowered the gun toward the violet unicorn. “I’m not gonna tell you more than once. Move into the docking tube.”
“Please,” said Twilight. “Don’t take us to the Empire!”
“Why not? You’re a disruptive force, causing trouble for the galaxy.”
“We don’t mean to,” pleaded the purple unicorn. “We just want to go home.”
“What are you talking about?” asked the masked bounty hunter.
“We’re not even from this galaxy. The Empire wants to kill us, but we just want to get our princess and dragon back, then go back home!”
He waited a moment, seeming to contemplate what she was saying.
“If that’s true, then why have you attacked Imperial outposts and killed over a hundred troopers and officers?”
“We were enslaved by the Empire. We had no choice!” She blinked tears away. “Believe me, sir, if we could have pleaded for our lives, then we would have. But the Empire wouldn’t listen to us. We never did anything wrong! We landed here because of a magical accident!”
The dark green armor betrayed no emotion, but Twilight felt like he was considering her words.
“They told me you were all an invasion force from another galaxy and used Endor as a staging ground. You were planning on taking over the Empire by force, if necessary, if the Emperor himself didn’t surrender to you.”
“What?” asked Twilight incredulously. “That’s absurd! Why would we even think about doing that? We have no desire for more territory! Our army is barely two hundred strong, and our technology is so inferior to yours that it would take thousands of years before we even came close!”
“You could have fabricated that story.”
“Then let me prove it to you.” Twilight lit her horn in preparation for a memory spell, like the one she had used on her friends during the Discord incident.
Quick as lightning, Fett drew and cocked his blaster. “Don’t even think about it, pony. Come aboard Slave I. I’ll let you do whatever you’re going to do up there.”
As she started to follow the bounty hunter into the docking tube, Pinkie Pie grabbed her ankle with tears in her eyes. “Don’t go, Twilight! I don’t want to lose another friend!”
“I have no choice, Pinkie,” she replied. “I’ve got to convince him to let us go.”
-----
The bounty hunter’s ship wasn’t the cleanest in the galaxy, but Twilight had seen worse in her travels. As they traveled up the backside of the ship through the airlock and into the cargo hold, Twilight got the distinct feeling that she was walking on very thin ice with Boba Fett.
He stopped in the middle of the small compartment, then turned toward the pony. As she stopped, he pressed a small button on his armor.
Three tiny droids popped up from behind him and aimed small blasters at her.
“If my vital signs waiver in the slightest, these droids will fire on you. If I don’t report back to the cockpit in the next six hours, the ship will self destruct, taking you and your shuttle with it. If you try to undock your ship from mine or operate any of the controls, the droids will kill you and my ship will blast yours to atoms. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “I need to contact your head with my horn.”
He nodded, then removed the helmet to reveal a scarred, hardened face with black, curly hair. His brown eyes focused intently on her as he knelt down to eye level. “Proceed.”
She nodded again, then charged her horn and pressed it to his head.
Instantly the bounty hunter was mentally assaulted with countless memories and feelings from Twilight’s life. She made sure he knew exactly who they were and what place they came from, and she could see the man’s eyes go wide as he struggled to keep up with the mental deluge.
She finished as suddenly as she began, the shock of the cessation of memories causing him to lose balance momentarily.
He sat for a moment, the intensity of the magical act being difficult to process. Finally, slowly, he stood up and replaced his battle helmet. It was a long moment while he considered what she had showed him.
Finally he spoke: “It seems that I will have to disappoint my employers.”
She smiled gratefully at him. “Thank you, sir.”
“Just don’t let anyone know that I let you go so easily. Now get off my ship.”
Twilight bowed slightly in thanks, then retreated down the docking tube toward the shuttle.
-----
A snap-hiss was heard as the docking clamp disengaged, freeing the disabled Starhound from Slave I’s grip. The Firespray glided away on a trail of dissociated ions as the shuttle drifted toward Bestine on inertia.
Luck however seemed to be turning for the ponies. A few replaced circuit boards later, and the ship was back on course for Bestine. As he slid the last CPU into position, Junas remarked, “It’s a good thing this old crate was pretty insulated from ion blasts.”
As he sat in the cockpit and guided the starship toward the blue marble floating in space before him, he heard the door to the cockpit corridor open and one of the ponies walk toward him.
Princess Celestia sat down in the space behind the copilot’s seat. “Do you mind if I join you?”
He smiled back at her. “Not at all, your highness.”
She rubbed the back of her neck absentmindedly.
“I take it you’ve never been hit with a stun blast before,” he said.
“I can’t say that I have, Junas.”
He looked at her sympathetically. “It’ll take a minute, but the effects should wear off in time.”
Bestine grew closer and closer, the planet now appearing to be about the size of a landspeeder. Junas turned and looked the ancient alicorn in the eye.
“Celestia, can I ask you something kind of personal?”
She cocked an eyebrow.
“Why do you let Twilight handle so much on her own? I mean, she did a pretty good job handling Fett, but you’ve given her a lot of responsibility.”
Celestia thought for a few moments, choosing her words carefully. “It’s to help her fulfill her destiny.”
He looked at her quizzically.
“What I mean is,” she continued, “Luna and I are Equestria’s rulers, but we can’t always rule and defend our nation at the same time. So I searched for an apprentice that could serve as someone who would be the nation’s defender, a ‘warrior princess’ if you will. I even established a school for gifted unicorns who might be suitable candidates for Equestria’s next princess. One day outside my academy, I saw an unprecedented display of magical potential. When I rushed up to the room where the magic outbursts were coming from, I saw a very young filly, no more than perhaps eight or nine years old, producing magic such as I had never seen.” Her voice quieted to an amazed whisper. “It was like seeing myself as a filly, before Gaia chose me to be the goddess of Equestria along with Luna. I invited her to be my personal protégé at the academy, and made it my mission to watch over her from that day forward. If she had the characteristics of a princess as I saw it, she would be crowned as Equestria’s newest member of royalty.”
Junas held his chin, contemplating what she told him. “So she will eventually be Equestria’s defender? Don’t you have an army of some kind to do that for you?”
“Yes,” she said. “The Royal Guard, of which Twilight’s brother is captain. We also have an air force in the form of the Wonderbolts and the Thunderhawks, in addition to several other squadrons of pegasi. But none of them are prepared for the kind of magical enemies which threaten Equestria. Only somepony who is brave and a powerful magic user can hope to stand up to them, and I believe Twilight is that pony.”
He nodded. “Sounds like you have the whole thing pretty well planned out.”
“That was before we were stuck here, though with each test that Twilight passes, I’m more sure than ever that I made the right choice in a warrior princess. But we must return to our world, with Luna and Spike, in order for her destiny to be fulfilled.”
“Well,” said Junas, “I’m hoping that the Rebel Alliance can help you guys find those two.”
“As do I,” replied Celestia.
The two of them sat in the cockpit for what seemed like ages as the small shuttle glided toward the cerulean planet below. Their future was uncertain, but now Celestia felt something that made her glad for the first time in days . . .
Hope.