Six years later, Tripp met Avon Jakkar, a smuggler who had joined Talon Karrde's organization the previous year. Tripp and Avon instantly liked each other, and before he knew it, Tripp had decided to stay and work on the Century Bat. He maintaied close ties with friends in the New Republic, much to the chagrin of Karrde. Tripp respected Karrde, but thought of himself as working with Avon, rather than for Karrde. He was very pleased when, 3 years later, Karrde formed the Smugglers' Alliance and decided to help the New Republic...
Shortly after Tripp became Jakkar's copilot on the Century Bat, Jakkar took him to meet some old friends of his on the smugglers' moon. Jakkar's friends weren't there when they arrived, so they let themselves in and waited.
When they showed up, they had with them a lovely young Twi'lek woman they'd just rescued. The evening was spent telling Jakkar and Tripp the story of the rescue, which is too complicated to go into here. But they asked Jakkar to take the girl home.
On the trip to Ryloth, Becca got to know Jakkar and Tripp, and asked if she could stay with them. They introduced her to Karrde, and he agreed. Since then, she has studied to become a medic, a profession which comes in handy in her friends' business...
But when he was 16, he stowed away on a smuggler's ship. He remained hidden for the entire trip, and when the ship landed and no one was looking, he snuck off. He found he was near a large forest. He thought he might explore it, but when he heard fearsome growls from just beyond the cleared area, he decided against it. He wandered around the base, at first keeping out of sight, until he could figure out what to do next.
Before he made any decisions, he was discovered by a human, who brought him to the base's leader, Talon Karrde. Karrde talked to Brik for awhile, and Brik asked for a job. Karrde agreed to try him out as a mechanic. He showed promise, and began training with the more experienced mechanics at the base.
Before long, the others in the organization started calling him Pleep, a nickname which Brik rather liked. He got to know all the ships and people at the base fairly well, but his favorite was the Century Bat, which he often flew on, as well as fixing...
So Krika started looking for a smuggling operation to join. she was having trouble deciding which she liked best, and it didn't help that none of them were interested in her. She decided she'd have to spend several years building a reputation for herself among the slicer community. Maybe then one of them would recommend her to their employers, she thought.
She started out at age 14 by transferring funds from the Empire to an account in her name, with which she bought herself a small ship, and she left Mon Calamari. She went to various worlds, learning whatever she could, improving her skills, and pulling as many dangerous jobs as she could. Finally, a few months after Karrde formed the Smugglers' Alliance, Krika got noticed by another young slicer named Ghent.
Soon thereafter, Krika had a regular job with the best smuggling organization in the galaxy. She decided she would stay with them at least a few years before offering her services full time to the New Republic, though as it turned out, she wouldn't get that chance....
Its original designation is unknown. Its memory is sketchy at best, having been damaged in battle before the droid was salvaged by a Gungan named Saxor Untinks. It has occasionally had flashes of old memories, and over the years has been able to reconstruct that it was originally a security droid, later reprogrammed as a scout and an infantry droid. Of course, it wasn't designed to remember much of anything, in the first place.
It was damaged in the Trade Federation's assault on Naboo, but not irreparably. Saxor was in the Gungan Grand Army, and took part in the battle. He was also a mechanic. After the battle, he salvaged a battle droid and repaired it, making several modifications. He gave it greater memory storage capacity and independent thought processors, and disabled its command overrides, so that it couldn't be controlled remotely (just in case the Trade Federation ever tried to get it back), along with a few other modifications. Saxor also salvaged and repaired a few other items, such as blasters, macrobinoculars, and an STAP (Single Trooper Aerial Platform).
Upon completion of repairs, Saxor reactivated the droid for the first time since it was deactivated during the battle, and asked it about itself. At first it couldn't remember much of anything, including its designation. So Saxor gave it a new name: Feddy (as in "Federation") Bettamekka ("Better/reengineered Mech/droid"). Feddy provided Saxor with years of useful service, before he eventually died, passing the droid on to a son who wasn't interested in it, and sold it the first chance he got.
The person to whom he sold it was Avon Jakkar, who happened to be stopped over on Naboo in the middle of a supply run. He'd been thinking for some time about buying a droid to copilot his ship, among other duties. It was a lucky chance for both him and Saxor's son that they met. Since then, Feddy has proven very useful to Jakkar for several years, and Jakkar has had some programs installed to supplement Saxor's programming, including about half a million languages.
E-3PO was constructed one year before the Battle of Yavin, and was bought fresh from the showroom by Avon Jakkar. Jakkar was looking for a permanent assistant on his ship, the Century Bat. In the two years he'd owned the ship, Jakkar had had a number of copilots, none of whom had lasted long. Finally, he decided to try his luck with a droid. He could use an interpreter, anyway. Threepio worked out fairly well, and the two had many adventures in the years that followed.
Jakkar was amused when he began hearing of another 3PO unit of a slightly different style that became enmeshed with the new heroes of the Rebellion. of course, that one was far older than his own droid... Jakkar had perhaps heard stories of this droid before, now and again, in connection with other assorted fringe characters. But he hadn't been at all interested until the major Rebellion victories, beginning with the Battle of Yavin.
Jakkar and E-3PO have even met C-3PO once or twice, since the forming of the Smugglers' Alliance, but never got to know him really well. Jakkar much prefers his own Threepio, anyway...