The Orrdill family had always had their hands deep in history. Their names flitted in and out of schoolchildren textbooks, dropping out for years and then reappearing with a bang. They were orchestrators, they were warriors, but they were never pawns. On a small scale, they were puppet masters. They were in charge.

They sided with the "right" side of history. They didn't care about morals, they put their support with who they thought would win the war. And war was rampant in the galaxy. The Orrdill's supported the Republic, then the Galactic Empire, and then the rebels, even as they sold information to the other side. Their all alliances changed at the drop of a hat, with one side one minute and the other the next.

Allegiances only mattered on the surface. If they publicly supported the Republic, then they were selling the plans of ships to the Empire under the table. They were too powerful, too large of a family for the orders to do anything about it. They were unaffected by the turning from one leader to another.

Some members of the Orrdill family traded currency, other's illegal substances, all manner of things, all with the promise of secrecy and protection from the Jedi or the Stormtroopers or the soldiers. It was a delicate balance that they struck, walking on a moral compass that pointed both ways.

Elders passed on the tradition to their children, and their children passed it on to their children. They were liars and they were thieves, but they did it well. Each generation got better and better, richer, and richer.

Years of knowledge and riches culminated in Kietess Orrdill. Her mother was where she got the infamous Orrdill name from, her father a merchant that had stumbled into the wrong woman at a bar and then been trapped into a whirlwind marriage of that benefited both parties. Kietess had never once seen her mother and father express any sort of love to each other. They were bitter business partners, the family business more important to them than love.

She traveled the galaxy with both of her parents, never staying in one place for too long. She was a ghost, a phantom that flitted through the memories of her young friends. Her method on new planets was simple. Coached by her parents from a young age, she was a nine-year-old menace.

Kietess made friends with the children of the most influential families, a new last name, new identification, and a new backstory being flaunted. She wriggled and wormed her way into the social circles with manners that the parents of friends cooed over and a smile that rivaled the sun.

And when she was in, that's when she got to work. She listened, she snooped, and she found the skeletons in the closet that so many families tried to bury. She found the affairs, the illegal dealings done by government officials, nothing was safe. She reported back to her parents, they released the secret for money, they moved, and the cycle repeated over again.

It started when she was nine-years-old, and continued until she was an adult. If someone had asked Kietess if she liked what she was doing, she would have shrugged her shoulders and turned away. She didn't know any other life than what she had. She was a child, molded into the heir of the Orrdill family. She had been built into the person that she was, some pieces not quite clicking. But she still went along with her parent's schemes, even when her inner consciousness pinged on the edges of her brain that something wasn't right. She didn't know how to say no.

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Kietess Orrdill traded in objects and secrets. Her parents were dead, had been for years. She had her memories of them, and most of all she had the Orrdill legacy and fortune.

She lived in a sprawling city on the Inner Rim planet Denon, constantly awoken by a speeder going past her window. It was easy to hide in a city, people constantly coming and leaving, filtering through the many buildings and ports that rested on the surface. She could do her business, and not be discovered.

Her interactions with her clients, as she called them, were varied like no other. Her favorite deals were the big ones. They were dangerous and thrilling, causing adrenaline to rush through her veins. Kietess fed off of the feeling. And her clients always paid her well for her trouble.

It was like a game to her. She pushed down every feeling that might have tipped her into the land of feeling bad for what she was doing. Besides, she told herself, it wasn't like she was doing anything herself. She only gave people the information that they needed. It was a business transaction, nothing more.

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"God, I hate Vane's," Kietess muttered to herself as she closed the door of her home. She scrubbed at her face, releasing it from the fake smile she had held while dealing with the member of the infamous Vane family. "They always come in, demanding things." She looked at the piece of equipment that she held in her hand. "This is not worth what I gave him."

Kietess had a habit of talking to herself. She was a chatterer, but she was alone most of the time. Her mouth was always moving, forming meaningless words to nobody. Sound filled her days, from her, from music. There was never silence. The absence of sound, it seemed, had an unfortunate habit of making her feel lonely. So she talked, to herself, to her plants, to inanimate objects.

Plunking herself down at her kitchen table, Kietess sighed. Her kitchen was cozy, cluttered, and perfect for her, but sometimes she felt restless. She had traveled too much as a child that as soon as she was able to, she settled down. She thought that staying in one place would make her happy. Now an itch was starting to work its way through her body.

It started in her feet, wanting to walk on a surface other than her own floor. It traveled to her stomach, longing for food from a far-away planet. It moved to her arms, wishing to touch the ocean that governed a planet. It migrated to her mouth, thirsting to drink in air not filtered through a building. It maneuvered its way into her ears, wishing for music not generated by a device. It ended in her mind, a seed planted that grew into ideas pulling her to other places.

But still, she stayed, in her small apartment in a large run-down building. Still, she stayed, longing to travel, making her secrets come to her. Still, she stayed, as she watched her neighbors and friends move on and move out.

"Alright, let's see what this piece of junk is?" Kietess pulled a magnifying circle of class over the equipment. She poked at with her tools, pulling it apart and then putting it back together. Identifying it as an old Resistance communicator, she didn't bother trying to fix the pieces that were broken. It was still functional, but just barely. Tossing it into a corner with the other broken trinkets that she collected, she moved on to the slip of paper. Black ink bled through the back of the paper, a secret begging to be read.

Secrets were never meant to be kept. No matter how hard people tried to keep their mouths shut, lips would peel back, mouths would open, and words would spill out. Whether willingly or by force, whether by word of mouth or directly from the source, whether by transmission or face to fic, the secret would come out eventually. The best-kept secrets, Kietess had found, were the ones where you took the phrase "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you" literally. The best-kept secrets were the ones where no one knew.

The secret contained on the paper was of the kind that Kietess would look over and laugh at before moving on to her next client. It was part of a petty dispute between two First Order generals, and the secret would result in the fall of the more corrupt of the two. He would be taken down, and Kietess would have a hand in it. It caused her to feel drunk on the power that she held.

She spun around on her chair, laughter rocking through her body. She would look forward to seeing the ripple in the world that her releasing the secret caused. She would look forward to the shocked faces plastered on netscreens in the city. She would look forward to the latest nosy neighbor poking their face in through her door to alert her to the news.

The communicator would collect dust in the corner of her room, taking calls that never went through. It would sit for months, as Kietess took secrets and spun them out into the universe. It would sit until the conditions were just right for a call to go through.

Author's Note

Sooooo.... here it is! What do we think? Never fear, Poe will be in the first chapter. Thank you so much for reading!

- Nicole