Leaving the early afternoon peace and tranquility that was the majestic rolling clouds of Bispin behind us, Morrigan and I sat in the cokpit of my ship the Winds of Change as we broke for orbit. Morrigan sat in the copilots chair going over one final systems check as I lay in the coordinates for the jump to hyperspace.

"There, all set." I said. "As soon as we clear the planet we will be on our way to Naboo."

"Fantastic." Morrigan said as she finished the systems check and then turned to face me, "Pretty handy that your ship happens to be a freighter."

Turning to her and smirking I said, "Yeah, covenant that you can use me instead of having to contract someone else."

Feigning hurt she replied, "But, that would have taken days, and this way we get to snoop." Playfully smacking me in the arm she added, "Besides, the whole time you've been here, this is the first time I've been on your ship."

"Oh yeah, that's right. Well we don't have a terribly long trip ahead of us, so once we hit hyperspace I'll give you the grand tour." I said to her as I reached for her hand.

As she took my hand into hers she smiled and replied, "That sounds like a deal."

Holding hands until we completely cleared the gas giant and its mass shadow, I let her hand go only to engage the hyper drive. The pin points of light that were the stars instantly elongated then almost as quickly dissolved into the tumbling torrent of light that was hyperspace.

Giving one last check of the controls I turned to Morrigan, "Alright, let me give you the tour of my home." Offering her my hand as she stood up we walked out of the cokpit. Walking past him on our way I said to Deeters, "Com me if there are any problems and let me know when we are five minutes from reverting to real space." His tweeted response seemed to disappear as we walked down the outrigger corridor to the main part of the ship.

Starting in the galley/lounge area, I showed Morrigan around. Beginning with the forward cargo hold I took her around the ship moving away from the cokpit. As we headed aft and I showed her where my quarters were, she almost seemed disappointed. "Not much to it is there?" she said as she examined the bed and the small table that were my only furnishings. "At least the bed is comfy." She added as she sat down.

"That's because all I do back here is sleep." I said as I leaned against the door jam. Taking a step inside to grab her hand, I pulled Morrigan up and began guiding her out the door. "If you want to see where I spend most of my time when I?m on board, then come with me." Leading her by her hand I took her to the rear cargo hold. Hitting the button to open the door, Morrigan gasped as she looked inside.

"Stang Phifer, now this is nice." Morrigan exclaimed as she walked inside. Where most YT-1300's had a rear cargo hold, I had converted the one on the Winds to a training/meditation chamber. Modeling it after the training room at the academy on Yavin 4, it was filled from top to bottom with all the things a Jedi would need to keep themselves at the top of their abilities. "I can see why you spend so much time back here." She said as she looked around in awe.

"I have everything I need back here to keep up with my training. A sparing droid and remotes for honing my lightsaber skills; different training tools for focusing my Force abilities; a work bench for keeping every thing operational; plus a quite corner for meditating." I explained as I walked through the chamber indicating things as I talked about them. Stopping in front of the corner where I meditate, I turned to face Morrigan as she walked up and put her arms around me.

"I know it sounds weird, but I can feel peace and calm in this corner." Morrigan said as she wrapped her self in my embrace.

"It?s not weird at all." I said as I looked into her eyes. "I spend hours a day here strengthing my connection with the Force. I wouldn't doubt you could feel the results of that." Resting my forehead against hers I asked, "Would you like to try something?"

"Sure, anything." She said her voice a whisper.

"Ok then, close your eyes and relax." I said, our heads still resting against each other. As I felt her breathing steady, I opened myself to the Force completely; I let its warm energies flow through me. Using the spot where our foreheads touched as a focus point, I guided the Force into her and allowed it to fill her conciseness and then to flow back into me. As the Force flowed between us and swirled around us, our conciseness's twined together. Our thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears and desires became one, strengthing the bond that had flowed between us that day we first reconnected on Cloud City. Loosing all track of time, what seemed like minutes, but could have been hours or even days, I barely noticed my com chime. It was Deeters; he was letting me know we had five minutes until we reverted to real space. Slowly breaking the connection with Morrigan, I began to let her go and pulled my head from hers, but Morrigan just wrapped her arms around me as tight as she could.

"Don't let me go Phifer; I don't ever want this feeling to end." She said, quiet desperation sneaking into her voice.

"It never has to Morrigan." I said as I returned her embrace, squeezing her tightly. "Not even death can break the bond between us."



Once on planet it wasn't long after we landed that the delivery truck from the security force arrived. Staying only long enough to make sure everything was there, Morrigan left to do some snooping around while I stayed behind to supervise the loading of my ship. Fortunately it did not take them long and I was soon able to get out and do some snooping of my own. Relying on my connection to the Force I walked around the spaceport to check things out. Opening myself to people?s thoughts and intentions, as well as keeping a watchful eye on all the alleyways and dark corners. It was my job to see how many pirates I could find, in what places they hung out and how much of the spaceport was under their influence. As I did this Morrigan used her connections (in security as well as toughs from when she worked on the freighter) to see what she could find out about their operations as a whole. After a few hours of snooping we met up at a tapcaf near where the ship was birthed to discuss what we had found.

Arriving a little after me, Morrigan sat down just as the service droid brought over a pitcher of spiced Corellian ale for us to share.

"Well," she began as she pored herself a glass, "According to what security knows, the pirates operate mostly at the edges of the sector. The do have some operations here, but not much. The Royal Security Forces keep too tight a reign on things for the pirates to get too involved on the planet. Plus the Nal Raka crime syndicate has a pretty strong influence around here too."

"Well that kinda makes sense with what I found." I said between sips of ale after Morrigan had finished. "Along the fringes of the space port and some of the business around the central part were the only places I found any pirates, and very few at that. The other thing was that they didn't seem to be localized. Almost as if they didn?t have an actual base on planet, just a few places they could meet."

"Ok," Morrigan responded as she shook her head in response, "one of the smugglers I used to know said that he runs cargo for them from time to time to pay off a dept he owes 'em. Anytime he makes a pick up or a drop off he always does it on Ohma- D'un. Which would make sense because Nal Raka pretty much controls Rori."

"Well, sounds like we have a place to start our search." I said as I finished off my first glass of ale.

Morrigan, pouring herself a second glass said, "Exactly. Let's get this cargo back to Cloud City, grab some backup, come back and start poking around where they don't want us too."

Smiling at her as I pored my self a second glass of ale, we continued talking. Making plans for when we came back, who we were going to bring back with us, where we were going to look first and other logistic stuff as we finished our pitcher of ale.

Arriving back at our birth I greeted Deeters as soon as we got on board to make sure nobody had tampered with the ship. Judging from the slowness and the tone of his beeps and whistles, it sounded like he had a pretty boring wait. Reading the translation of his tweetels on the screen for the terminal he was plugged into I was able to see that he was in fact bored. The biggest thing that happened was a drunken passer buy falling into the door of the birth. Satisfied that everything was ok I went up to the cokpit to start getting things ready to leave. It was not long before we had everything powered up and ready to go. Getting our launch clearance, we headed into orbit, leaving Naboo behind us. As we cleared the planet and were vectoring past Ohma-D?un I was struck by a very strange feeling. Morrigan must have sensed it too or had noticed my reaction, because she was giving me a look that asked what was wrong.

"Every thing is ok," I said to her unasked question. "Something just struck me about this that just seemed... familiar?" Crinkling my forehead as I thought about a better word to use, a voice came over the com unit interrupting my reserve.

"Jedi scum," a gravelly voice said. "We'll teach you and that winged freek your with to keep you noses out of things that aren't your business."

Surprise and anger radiated from Morrigan. "How did they find out we were looking, and how in the nine layers of Corellian hell did they know our com frequency!" she exclaimed.

Before I could respond, the scream from Deeters was the only warning we got. The pirates had fired an Ion cannon at us from the surface of the moon. Washing over us the blast had disabled all of the ships systems, including Deeters. Our fingers flew across the controls trying to bring power back up, but it was too late. The moons gravity had trapped us, and we were hurdleing uncontrolled toward its surface.

More to come.