Rykath "Raptor" Dartak. That's what they call me, though they don't call me "Raptor" much anymore. It's a dead giveaway. It'd be unfair if I expected you to know as much as I do, so I'll give you the quick rundown. My was father Daxton, worked for the Black Sun back on Corellia, probably the best slicer in the hemisphere too. My mother, don't know much. I know her name was Alyssa, and she was a smuggler for the Black Sun. She has red hair. Don't know much else, though I'm quite curious. That's why I still have this picture of her and that's about it. But enough about the boring stuff.
My father was at a deal, gone bad. My mother had already taken off and never came back. Dad took it pretty hard, but he taught me a thing or twelve at least, probably wanted to make me as good as he was. My father gets greased, Black Sun says "so sad, too bad, you're indebted to us now and have to pay us back for the goods we lost". I didn't take that lightly. You see, my father used his own encryption on their lovely network - the same one he trained me on bypassing. I figure a fitting revenge was shutting them down for a time. They probably lost millions of credits. Whole network the Black Sun operated on on Corellia, gone in an instant. I took that opportunity to vacate the premises, and contract with the Empire's Sub Adult Group.
Ever hear of the Imperial Intelligence Service? The IIS? No? They're spies. They're essentially the watchmen. How about the Imperial Security Bureau? They're worse. They watch the watchmen. They're the sleeper agents, the spies, the rogues who watch internally and externally. Secret police and internal affairs rolled into one. Youth indoctrination is where I started, and they saw I was good at what I did, and moved me up the ladder. I've served on lots of worlds and lots of campaigns. I've Jabba'd people, coerced people, you name it. You're probably thinking, "Wait, Rykath, what does this have to do with ME?" I've some bad news for you. You signed me on, consider yourself possibly marked. It's not so bad, though, the galaxy's a big place. Anyway, back to my story.
I did some detail on Corellia, we had a shortage of high-powered slugthrowers that we were in desperate need of to ship them to a neighboring system to combat one of the alien races their. Now, those archaic things are hard to find, but I heard my old friends the Black Sun had gathered quite a collection and were going to sell them to the Syndicate at a bargain. I checked with my bosses, got the okay, and raided the deal with some Stormtrooper friends of mine. It was there I found my father's slicing kit, one of the Syndicate lieutenants must have taken it as a trophy from his corpse. I recognized it, he always had it, and it bloody well said "Love, Alyssa" on it. Was the best credits could buy, and after a sound thrashing, it was mine.
Let's talk about more recently, say twelve years ago. I was attached to the Empire 54th Recon under the command of Captain Alexi "Osprey" Strov. Good enough soldier, but they believed he may have had seditious intentions along with the rest of his squad, and they threw me in the lot to investigate after a recent casualty in Strov's unit. "Volucris Praeda", he called them, "Birds of Prey". I'm not sure if he was full of himself, and I had just had a crash course on Scout training, but they knew their stuff. Longest assignment I've ever been on, excluding rotationals I did when we were supposed to be on leave, or sleeping. It was Endor when I started to wonder about things. We won, sure. I'm not even what what exactly clicked, but it was like Strov said after, "This is how it starts. One Rebellion down, on to cleansing the Empire." And cleanse we did.
I was beginning to agree with their pragmatic viewpoint, and was introduced to Captain Jasmine Sunrider of the Gallina, who had been ferrying us on occasion between zones. The Empire will employ just about anything that flies, and what looks like an easy target for pirates might get ignored if you broadcast and Imperial IFF. And the Rebels would ignore a free trader. Anyway, seems she had been dealing arms on the side - I knew about that by then, it wasn't hard to miss; you see the signs of sedition after a while - and had taken a rather opinionated view of the Empire. Bit odd for someone employed by them, but we all have to make our living somehow. Turns out she was indebted to them after they "accidentally" took out her last ship. The IIS's doing, I wager, wanted to bring her on as an Imperial contractor given the size of her ship. And the IIS doesn't ask politely.
Bottom line, this lead to that, and who knew that would lead to defecting? Rather, that might've pushed me over the edge. We decided "frack this", and made our way out of core space.
No escape is ever easy.
Turns out one of Sunrider's crew was an ISB agent as well. He looked a bit too familiar for it to be a passing coincidence, and of course, he was her astrogater. Why is it always the navigator? He met his fate out an airlock, but not before he dropped us into a trap. Tractor beams are hard to escape from in a freighter, and we found ourselves caught between and Interdictor the ISB Chimaera. We surrendered peacefully, and they were polite enough to lock us in some cells. Rule of thumb, if you ever capture a ship full of Scouts, make sure they really don't have anything, and don't put them in neighboring cells. It's just bad logistics.
One daring escape later and we found ourselves sprinting back towards the Gallina, with more Stormtroopers than I'd like on our heels. As much as I wanted to overload the hyperdrive core and blow the Chimaera to pieces, we barely had time to disable hte tractor beam. I still remember hit in the leg and dropping my father's slicing kit as more troopers poured throw another blast door. I still remember Captain Pellaeon's smirk as he picked it up, bastard was full of himself. Sunrider and Osprey hauled me into the Gallina, and we barely escaped with our lives. We had coordinates set and we punched out of there, one less sleeper agent to boot, and got away as clean as we could hope for. We went our separate ways, much to myself and Jasmine's dismay, but splitting up was for the best. It's been a few years, though, and I wonder how she's keeping.
And that's it. The summary of Rykath Dartak. And that's the SHORT version.
What? My eye? That's a story for another time.