***29 December 2004 -Blackmailed part II

 

Today I decided to contact Xtyx to finally ask him the thing.. I have thought about this for a while and only now I got the courage to ask this to my friend. I want to ask him to quit the Empire and join the Alliance.

 

First I took my usual drink at the Fallen Star, where I met Nilfe. The first time I saw the rodian she was still a kid, but now she looks older and I really have to look well before I’m able to recognize her. She seems to have some shady bounty hunter-space job.. she is still so young and already.. but well who isn’t these days? Who isn’t almost grown-up while he or she would normally still be considered as a kid? I think Tatooine isn’t a planet that is very child-friendly, especially the cities. But also outside of them, there are thugs, pirates, Tusken raiders.. and there is this bloody civil war. I feel a little bit guilty because I’m a soldier in this war too, so I myself contribute to it too. A lot of us from the Alliance are still very young. A few years ago I was still a kid too, now I sometimes feel like I’m already an old woman.

 

 

I meet Xtyx in the hotel and there I ask him to follow me, just like Lella did to me a few days ago. I take him to almost the same place in the desert where Lella and I have spoken with each other. There I try to convince him to join us, instead of the Empire. Xtyx has told me himself that the reason that he joined the Empire was the hunt; the Empire has better weapons and such, and he as a doshan likes this more. I told him that as a rebel he would have more targets to kill because the Empire are with a lot more, that the hunt would be more of a challenge because the Empire is a powerful ‘prey’ and more of those things.

He reacted more positively than I expected and now he will consider this as an option.

 

When I returned to Entha I bumped into.. Anbato. He asked me to follow him so that we could talk with each other and I felt uncomfortable. My commlink bleeped but he didn’t allow me to answer it, but I could hear a soft familiar voice saying that he would keep an eye on me. While I took my speeder at the vehicle garage I saw Larec in the distance. I followed Anbato into the desert, to a house that was totally empty.

There wasn’t even any furniture. Anbato said that ‘friends’ would come and I felt a bit scared because I didn’t know who those ‘friends’ could be. Could it be some thugs, a bounty hunter or even the Empire..? Then I was astonished when I saw Lella enter the house! Anbato apparently decided to ‘deliver’ me to the Alliance, although he didn’t know that I already was a member of it. He wanted that we would pay for this, the same thing that he had told me 9 days ago: give them ‘military’ support when needed, in exchange for information.

The situation got tense because Lella and I were a bit angry at him because of the blackmail. Then another familiar looking person entered the house, the man that trained my mount some months ago! He is called Draxxus and he told me that he is the foster brother of Anbato! After Draxxus entered, Larec entered the house too, it became a bit crowded in the little room. We continued the conversation, but we didn’t trust them and they didn’t trust us. We spoke with each other almost for two hours, sometimes holding guns against each other. Anbato seems to know the location of our rebel base, well he told us that he knows. He said he followed Lella to it. We haven’t made a decision yet, we said that we will think about it.

After this ‘chit-chat’ we contacted major Gou-geo (he had the rank of major now, instead of captain) and spoke with him in a space yacht. Gou-geo reacted positively considering the possibility of the deal: military support in exchange to insider information of the Empire. We will take Anbato and bring him to ‘our’ ground where Gou-geo will talk with him about the deal.

Maybe this ‘blackmailer’ will turn out to be an ally of the Alliance, I hope so. We really could use more information, we really could use people that infiltrate the Empire and spy on them ‘from the inside’.

I’m happy that I’m not alone in this anymore, I feel a lot safer now.