Chapter One
I, naturally, didn't start out a smuggler. I started out a very rich little girl in the ritzy suburbs of Corellia. My father, Nathan Xander Larken, was head of the North Corellian Sector Police and a very strong, sweet man who loved his wife, adored his daughter, and ruled at his job. My mother, Bonita Blayrej Keller-Larken, was the co-owner of a galaxy-wide law firm called
Jefferies, Davis, and Larken: Attorneys at Law; she was a beautiful, out-spoken business woman who was loyal to her family, but a slave to her job.
My parents were good, morally-upright people who went to church every Sunday
and Wednesday. My Dad had prize-winning rosebushes, and my Mother had prize-winning poodles. When I came along, five years after they had been married, they made sure I was prize-winning too. Mom would poof my hair like a poodle and Dad would stick a rose in it, then they would cart me off to every baby beauty pageant this side of Coruscant.
Life was good.
...And so things went till I was five. By Corellian and other laws, I was ready to begin school. My parents sent me off the to "Lady Bellingham's Northern Corellian Academy for Young Ladies". I lived, studied, toiled, and worked there for most of my childhood. On holidays and during the summer, I was allowed to go home. My father usually had the same holidays as I did, so I spent a lot of time with him. However, a lawyer's work is never done; I saw little of my mother growing up.
By age fifteen, I had completed all my courses at Lady Bellingham's and I couldn't have been happier to get away from the old bat and start high school. My Mother was exceptionally proud, but my Dad was leery. You see, Mom had just finished a case. The guy she'd gotten put away was a notorious crime family leader, and as he was dragged away to the clink he'd sworn to get her back one day. My Mother, being the woman she was only laughed in his face; my Dad, being a policeman, however, was very worried. He was scared that the gangster might send some people after me since I was going to a high school and not a secure academy now. My Mother called him crazy and shoved me on a school bus at 7:30 sharp the next morning.
High School sucked. I didn't know anyone. I didn't like my classes. My teachers were even more boring than Lady Bellingham. ...And to top it all off, I was in a classic schoolgirl outfit---white shirt, plaid skirt, high socks, the works---while everyone else was in blue jeans and tank tops. I absolutely wanted to die by lunchtime. I took my tray, with my disgusting lunchroom slop, and trudged off to "The Lounge", which was simply a little lunchroom with HoloVids: your classic nerd and outcaste hangout.
I picked at my soup and nibbled on my grilled-cheese and wanted to disappear. I got bored with eavesdropping on the Beta Club and the Math League and Smoker's Circle, and turned my attention to the HoloVid. Some dorky soap opera was on, the kind my grandmother liked to watch, but it was more entertaining than anything else going on in the room.
As I was trying to gag down some form of applesauce, I heard the soap opera cut off and HoloNet's News Service theme start up. I knew it wasn't time for the news, so I looked up at the HoloVid to see what was going on...
Sorry to interrupt "The Old and the Manless", Viewers, but we here at HoloNet News have a special bulletin. Today, on the rather peaceful planet of Corellia, tragedy has struck. The business building of Jefferies, Davis, and Larken: Attorneys at Law has been sabotaged. My blood ran cold, everyone got muffled, and the room began to spin...next thing I knew I was laying on a cot in the nurse's office with a cold rag on my head and a dozen people hovering over me. They were the nurse, the principal, the vice-principal, my grandmother, a social worker, a mortician, four cops, one galactic investigator, and some guy student who'd been ogling my legs all day.
I asked what happened and the investigator explained, with the uttermost bluntness, that my mother had been blown to pieces by the work of the crime family who’s boss she’d sent to jail and my father had been killed trying to save her. Not the mention that a goodly portion of my family, from both sides, had worked for my Mother's firm, and that they all had also died. In all forty-seven of my family members, not including my parents (and a janitor who was a friend of the family), had died. That made fifty people who I'd never see again.
The next month of my life was a crazy roller coaster of funerals, interviews, investigations, death-threats, and my grandmother's doteings. I, personally, couldn't take it. My good breeding and strong ethics made me stay long enough to see to it that all my parents affairs were taken care of. I sold the house, raffled off the summer cottage, hocked the boat, auctioned off the speeder, and put the hoverbike and bank accounts in my name. With all my parents had left me and all I had earned getting rid of unwanted stuff, I was a multi-millionaire hovering close to being a billionaire.
I was only sixteen then. I was alone, scared, but filthy rich and ready to be out on my own. I packed up my belongings, traded my hoverbike in for the latest model, put all of it on a transport to Coruscant and prepared to start a new life. I met an ex-smuggler on the transport and got the idea into my head that being a smuggler was the most interesting thing I'd ever heard of. After arriving, I transferred all my money to the First Bank of Coruscant, rented a swanky flat, acquired a little ship, and bought a blaster.
Hence, my new life was off to a damn good start...
