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It started when Omega woke up feeling as if she had not slept for years. She was also burning up and her head was aching. She clutched the pillow and covered her face with it, wishing that it wasn’t so light. Her whole body itched too.
Sleep. She wanted to go back to sleep but she knew that today they had yet another important mission. They were on… Omega couldn’t remember because she felt so bad. It didn’t really matter to her. Not right now.
Right now, she needed to go back to sleep. Maybe if she slept a little bit longer than she would feel okay. Then she could act normal. Right now, the Galaxy seemed horrible and harsh.
So she closed her eyes and soon drifted off back to sleep.
“Omega,” someone said after a few minutes. At least it felt like a few minutes. “You need to wake up. It’s time to get ready for the mission.”
“Five more minutes,” Omega muttered as she forced her eyes open a bit. It was Hunter, wearing his sleep clothes and not his armor.
Hunter muttered something but then he left and Omega fell back to sleep. She slept for what felt like five seconds but then she was shaken awake. Omega groaned and tried to push him away but she felt weak.
“Omega, are you okay?” Hunter asked. He let go of her and then put his hand on his forehead. “You’re burning up.”
She pushed his hand away and then turned to her side. “Want to sleep.” But Omega knew that she couldn’t do that now. Not with them already worried about her. She forced herself to sit up. Her head pounded against her skull and she rubbed her hand on her forehead before itching her arm.
“I’ll get ready,” Omega managed to mutter. She tried to get out of her room but when she got to her ladder, her arms felt weak. She let go.
Hunter caught her.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Hunter said with a sigh. He put her back in her room. “You need to get some rest.”
Omega didn’t say anything else. She could hear her brothers talking but they sounded far away. Tech said something about how her symptoms could be multiple different illnesses. Wrecker was worried about her. Echo thought one of them needed to take care of her while she was sick.
“I’m fine,” Omega muttered. “Go on the mission.”
They needed the credits and as many people for the mission as possible. Omega was supposed to go too. But she was so tired and her head hurt so much.
“Someone needs to watch her—“ Hunter tried to say as Echo nodded.
“No, I’m okay,” Omega said, forcing herself to sit up. She itched her arm. She looked at it expecting to see a rash, hives, or bumps but there was nothing. Not yet. “I’ll be okay. They need all of you. All of you go.”
“You’re sick and—“
“I’ll be fine,” Omega said. She had to convince them of that. All of them were needed. The mission sounded dangerous. And if one of them didn’t go then one of them might get hurt.
Or killed.
Her brothers argued about this for awhile and Omega sometimes said how they should leave her. That she would be fine.
“It’s not that serious,” Omega said. “Really I’m okay.”
Her brothers exchanged looks and Omega was sure that they would say one, or maybe worse, all of them needed to stay, but they actually ended up going after saying that they would try to be back as soon as possible. Omega didn’t care. All she cared about was sleeping.
At least at first.
But then she had horrible dreams. Dreams that took place on this planet. Dreams that seemed so real. In them, bounty hunters were after her again, but they were even worse than Bane and Shand. These bounty hunters wanted to catch her and do horrible experiments on her. They wanted to make her Force Sensitive and they would cut her up into pieces if they had to.
Omega woke up with a gasp. She was drenched in sweat even though she usually didn’t sweat much, but somehow she was still shivering. And everything seemed wrong on the ship. The lights had mostly gone out and the ones that were still lit were the emergency ones which caused ominous shadows. Omega shivered and grabbed her blankets closer to her.
But then she heard a horrible creaking noise from the ship. The ship didn’t make noises like that. And then she thought she heard a voice.
“Hunter? Wrecker? Crosshair? Echo? Tech?” Omega asked, shivering. Her head still hurt so bad and she was so cold. How could it be so cold? She forced herself to go to her ladder, but that was when she saw it. Outside the ship. Hiding in the shadows. A person… she just knew that it was a person and they were outside her ship. And that she was in horrible danger. Since she was sick, she wouldn’t be able to fight him well.
But Bane was stronger than her. He had even defeated Hunter.
And the person… Bane… She just knew that it had to be Bane. That he would still be after her even now that the Kaminoans might not be making clones anymore. That didn’t mean that others might not want her. And they might do experiments on her.
She had to stop this from happening. She wouldn’t let them take her. She wouldn’t. She stumbled forward almost tripping over her own feet. Her bow… where was her bow… but she wouldn’t be able to shoot. Not when she felt this horrible. And Cad Bane… he was so horrible. Horrible. He had almost killed Hunter.
He easily could have killed him.
Omega needed to do something and her bow wouldn’t be enough. If Bane got in this ship, in her fevered state, she knew that it would be bad. She had to prevent that. And had to tell her brothers, but when she got to her comm unit, she wasn’t steady and she dropped it. It cracked. The ship… she could use the ship’s… but something was wrong with it. Really wrong.
No… she would have to protect the ship on her own.
And suddenly she had the best idea for that. She had seen a Life Day Holoshow the other day. She and Wrecker had liked it a lot. It was about a kid, maybe a little younger than her, who had put up all sorts of traps around his house to keep some people from breaking in and robbing it.
Omega could do that.
It wasn’t easy but she hurried as fast as she could through the ship. At one point, she almost fell down and had to grab at the wall which was barely enough to keep her up. She managed to get some water and then went to the ramp that led to the entrance of the ship. It was cold outside. Perfectly cold. No way that it wouldn’t freeze. So she poured the water down to make the ramp icy.
Good.
Now she had to do something else. She could hear noises that weren’t normal outside. Why was Bane doing that? Was it not Bane?
But it had to be. She just knew and she thought he had seen him. Right? It hadn’t just been shadows. He was probably messing with her. He seemed like the type who would like to do that, especially since she had made a fool of him that one time.
She grabbed some nails and put them at the entrance of the ship. That wouldn’t be enough. She needed more. She hurried to the kitchen, almost falling down multiple times as she did. But she made it to the kitchen. She threw some glasses in the sink and then took the glass shards and put them down a hall. That wouldn’t be enough though.
What else should she do? What else had the boy in that show done? He had a giant spider, but she didn’t have anything like that. She just had a Loth cat she got recently and droids although maybe she could get the droids to help her.
She went to them, falling to her knees.
“You got to help me,” she said weakly. “If anyone comes, don’t let them in. Do whatever you can to stop them.”
He chirped at her and she knew that she had succeeded. He would do whatever he could to keep her safe. She remembered when he had basically been her only friend.
He wouldn’t let Bane just take her.
But she could make it so some of the doorknobs were much hotter than they should be. She needed to find the flamethrower. She would have to be careful with it. Her brothers wouldn’t want her to use it, except maybe Wrecker. Actually, Wrecker would for sure be fine with it. He probably thought it made no sense that she couldn’t use it.
But it did make sense to Omega because she was just a kid. She was more responsible than most but she still might make a mistake. She’d rather not use it. But she would do what she had to.
She had never used it before, but she could figure it out. But first she had something else she could do first. The other day, they had gotten tar from a mission. She was sure that she could get it to pour down near the entrance of the ship and then she could find something to blow something like feathers on Bane. Or whoever was here.
And so she did all of that.
And then she heard talking. The talking sounded different. And the world was spinning. Flamethrower. Omega had to get the flamethrower.
But before she could do that, she heard someone yelling and thumping. They were falling. Bane was. It had to be Bane. She thought she had seen him. She grabbed the nearest non flamethrower weapon and ran as fast as she could.
Somehow, she ran into a wall.
Omega let out a whimper and fell to the ground, hitting her head hard. She let out a cry and grabbed it. This couldn’t be happening. She was going to be caught again. She could just tell. She was burning up and she knew that Bane would catch her. She hadn’t done enough.
He would give her to people who would do horrible things to her. They would make her suffer. She didn’t want to go through that. She would rather die.
She tried to stand up but everything was spinning now. Omega clutched her stomach. There was scramming. Really loud screaming.
Screaming.
At first she told herself that it was Bane. And that she had won.
Then she recognized it.
“No, no, no,” Omega said. It was her brothers. She had messed up. But Bane had to be out there, but it didn’t matter because it was her brothers.
“What did you do?” Crosshair spat out. He was suddenly in front of her and… he was covered in feathers. He was a chicken Crosshair.
For a moment, all Omega could do was stare at him.
And then she started to laugh. She couldn’t help it and she knew that it wasn’t funny. Crosshair would probably kill her and she didn’t know what happened to her other brothers.
“It’s not funny,” Crosshair said. He grabbed her shoulders. “And you better stop laughing or—”
But Crosshair didn’t get to finish because that was when Omega threw up on Bird Crosshair.
She didn’t remember much that happened after that.
***
After another week, Omega felt a lot better. That one night was really fuzzy but apparently she had turned a lot of their ship into a giant trap. Tech had ended up cutting himself, Wrecker had fallen down, and Crosshair got tar and feathers all over himself, but besides that, they had been okay.
Except the ship had tar over part of it.
But somehow Wrecker got it off.
“Crosshair made the best bird,” Wrecker said as he grinned at Omega. “Next time you need to let me join you in your pranks.”
Omega smiled shyly. Yes, Wrecker might be okay with what had happened, but she wasn’t going to do anything like that again.
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again,” Omega said, looking at her feet. Crosshair was still angry with her and refused to even talk to her. Sometimes she was worried that this would be enough to make him go back to the Empire. “I just really thought I saw Bane.”
And she had been sick so she hadn’t been thinking clearly.
“It’s okay,” Hunter said. “Next time we’re not leaving you alone when you’re sick.”
“We’ll make sure that Bane doesn’t get you again too,” Echo said.
Tech nodded.
Omega forced herself to also nod, but she knew that she might always be worried about being caught by Bane, Fennec, or some other bounty hunter.
But for this Life Day at least, she would try not to think about that too much. After all, she had so much to be grateful for as well.