Star Wars: Rise of the Battlemage

[inbred martian]

Oh If were going for ships from Star citizen then you can't in my mind beat the A2 Hercules after all a gunship bomber combo able to carry tanks, anti ship missiles, bombs and clear it's own landing zone with lots of heavy turrets is something right up our alley and it has room for lots of passengers and cargo even not in the cargo hold

plus it just looks sleek as hell

 

[Iridium Flare]

I've always been a fan of the YV-929 Armed Freighter, it's a chunky, well-armed little ship capable of running blockades and serving as a gunboat. Takes four to crew - one pilot, three gunners, with space to comfortably fit six passengers. It carries enough consumables for roughly 3 months, and has a cargo capacity of 150 metric tons.
Its weaponry is hefty for a ship of its size, with two double turbolaser cannons, two ion cannons, two triple blasters, and four concussion missile launchers, and it is noted to have particularly durable shields. The going price for a new model is 250k credits, and a used one can be found for around 100k credits. It's a flying brick covered in guns, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Another good option is the YKL-37R Nova Courier, it's made by Gallofree Yards, same as the GR-series, but it's much less plagued with maintenance issues. It's a lesser option than the 929, with only 2 months consumables and 60 tons cargo capacity, requiring a crew of four (two pilots, two gunners) to operate, again with passenger space for six. It's armed with only two laser cannons and three concussion missile launchers, but does hold 12 missiles per tube. Now it's pretty crap in comparison, but it does come at the bargain price of 150k credits fresh off the line, and 45k credits used. If you're strapped for cash, it'll do the job, and you can always trade it out for a better ship later.

Alternatively, as Wyvern posted, the AEG-77 Vigo is a fairly solid vessel. Its main hyperdrive is a class 3 as opposed to the class 2 of my other suggestions, so it's gonna be slower for travel, but it does have a good mid-weight armament with two laser cannons and a hefty six laser turrets. It can fit a crew of eight with space for six passengers, but only has a month's worth of provisions, and its cargo capacity is only 25 tons in the armed variant. The unarmed variant has 100 tons cargo capacity, but you're likely gonna want to have the guns. Brand new it'll run you 200k credits, but used it's only 75k, so it's a decent middle option between the 929 and the nova.

Overall, if possible you'll want to spring for the 929, but if you can't manage it, the Vigo's a good second choice and the Nova is an adequate fallback.

 

[xscraid]

Have he discovered when he is?

 

[ISawThisComing..]

Personally always thought that the Firefly was the best ship around. Fits the crew too, at least a bit. Semi-Legal adventures, traveling about the galaxy, one with odd powers? Plenty of diagrams about for it too, just not sure how to make it fit in universe.

 

[Amrynel]

There is no way a new X-Wing cost 50,000 credits more than a brand new YT-1300.

Click to shrink...

Easily. A new X-Wing is a starfighter with four high-powered laser cannons, proton torpedo launcher, a class 1 hyperdrive and the rest, all top of the line military-grade parts crammed into a compact low-profile frame; meanwhile a new YT-1300 is a spacetruck with one basic laser cannon, a class 2 hyperdrive (and class 12 backup) and the rest, all civilian-grade and spread out across a fat disc with room to spare. Frankly if anything the price gap should be even bigger (for a real-world comparison, a new jet-fighter like an F-15 or F-18 is in the high double to low triple digit millions, while a new eighteen-wheeler is only about one to two hundred thousand).

If you're thinking "but the Milliennium Falcon", keep in mind the YT-1300 is a heavily modular design and the Falcon has been through so many upgrades that by the time of the movies I'd guess it's probably only about 10% original parts by weight.

Oh If were going for ships from Star citizen then you can't in my mind beat the A2 Hercules after all a gunship bomber combo able to carry tanks, anti ship missiles, bombs and clear it's own landing zone with lots of heavy turrets is something right up our alley and it has room for lots of passengers and cargo even not in the cargo hold

Click to shrink...

Oh yes, that's a beautiful workhorse, and like the YT1300 it's got some modularity to it; I could imagine our intrepid crew here starting with a second-hand civilian transport model and slowly up-grading it as they go and/or upgrading to something bigger like the Carrack later.

Have he discovered when he is?

Click to shrink...

Based on the gear they've been looting/buying it looks like he's maybe sometime around the civil war era, or a little before or after, but beyond that I think either he hasn't checked galactic news yet or him doing so hasn't come up? He's also been told he was being sent to a "Star Wars variant universe, a combination of what you know as Legends and Cannon" [sic] so not only is there no singular canon he can rely on, it might even derail further as time goes by and butterflies go different ways.

 

[TheKijs]

There is no way a new X-Wing cost 50,000 credits more than a brand new YT-1300

Click to shrink...

Frankly if anything the price gap should be even bigger (for a real-world comparison, a new jet-fighter like an F-15 or F-18 is in the high double to low triple digit millions, while a new eighteen-wheeler is only about one to two hundred thousand

Click to shrink...

Even if we keep it to flying vehicles only (which is fair) we can have a C-130 Hercules, a medium cargo plane that's incredible easy to modify and very tough, stand in as our YT-1300, and compare it with the F-16 fighter jet, which was developed almost two decades later making our YT-1300 'an old piece of junk' in comparison, to be our X-wing.

The base model C-130 is 11 million new. The older model F16s were 30 million. An X-Wing being 50,000 more credits than a YT-1300 is absolutely fair.

 

[Poncho]

I'd usually say something like the Ebon Hawk... whatever breed of ship that was. Being as the design is probably older than dirt in movie-era SW, it'd be cheap.
Do you want to take your battle-van with you when you leave? "Import" a Firefly-class freighter.
Side-on floorplan for the prettiest little ship in the 'verse

 

[MetaBettaOmega]

Hello! So the time for submitting ship ideas is over, I will be putting together the final list later today, before creating a voting poll for my Patreon supporters. (I'll also put the list here for anyone who is curious.) Thank you to everyone who put up their ideas!

---

I woke up the following day sprawled out on one of the collapsible beds Nal had bought for us the day before. At some point, we had landed next to an abandoned, run-down building in one of the more deserted and empty parts of the city sector we had traveled to. Tatnia and Nal had set up the beds, including the two pull-down bunks that came installed in the A-A5 cargo space, and I had put Miru, still asleep, onto one of them. Not long after that, the rest of us also headed to sleep, tired from a long day of activity.

As quietly as possible, I sat up on the cot's edge, looking over everyone else as they still slept. The beds were surprisingly comfortable given how utilitarian in design they seemed to be, though I supposed I shouldn't be surprised. Nal and Tatnia had claimed the fold-out bunks and were still fast asleep while Miru was sleeping on the other collapsible bed.

I watched the sleeping Twi'lek for a long moment, her face showing none of the pain she had sobbed through the night before. Holding Miru as she cried had been a bit of a wake-up call for me, really hammering home that this was very real. This Star Wars universe was now my home, and I needed to stop treating it like it was a setting from some movies and books. I needed to take this seriously because while I wasn't here to shift the universe on its head, I had somehow become at least semi-responsible for the sleeping people in front of me. They clearly listened to what I said, and while I didn't think they would follow my orders without question, that still meant I needed to take this seriously.

And step one of that process was figuring out when the hell I was in the timeline.

Still trying to stay quiet, I stood up from the cot and walked to the cockpit, sealing the door behind me. The sun shining through the windshield told me that it was early morning, the skies already busy with air speeders and transports. I sat in the co-pilot's chair and pulled out one of the cleared datapads, tabbing through its holonet connection.

While I hadn't been actively avoiding finding out when precisely these entities had placed me, I had been putting off finding out for sure by sitting down and looking it up. There was a certain level of freedom that came from not being able to connect all of my meta-knowledge to anything that was currently happening in the galaxy. I flicked through the holonet, focused on figuring out when I was on the timeline I knew.

Immediately I hit a snag. The books had always sat on a timeline that used the Battle of Yavin as its zero date. Unfortunately, as far as I could remember, that was completely arbitrary and had nothing to do with the in-universe date. My entity-given knowledge knew it was currently 7977.435.4 CRC, but I had no idea where that would fall on the timeline I could remember. The CRC calendar was never mentioned anywhere in the stories, or at least anywhere I could recall. In fact, I couldn't remember dates or times ever being mentioned at all. I was stuck trying to connect the knowledge I knew about the universe with the knowledge I had from the universe.

That is until I stumbled on an Imperial-sponsored news site reporting that the destruction of Alderaan had been to prevent the propagation of biological weapons created by the planet's rebellious government.

I quickly dived deeper, looking up the destruction of the peaceful planet, feeling sick as I read through dozens of conspiracy theories surrounding it. There were a surprising amount of reports saying that the Empire was responsible and that Alderaan and its people had done nothing wrong, something I would have assumed the Empire would have suppressed.

Eventually, I found clips of the Death Star floating above the idyllic planet, the people panicking and recording it with their comms units, wondering what was happening. I also found footage of the same Death Star exploding, shot from space a far distance away. I didn't spend too long looking at it, just enough to confirm that it had happened a few months ago and that the rebellion was going strong.

I let out a long sigh, shaking my head and looking out of the windshield, watching the hundreds and hundreds of speeders flying through the air, people going about their day. All of them were real people, living their lives and doing their best to survive. I took another long breath and let it out.

I had no desire to dedicate my entire existence to the rebellion or throw my life away trying to solve this whole galaxy's problems. But if I had been dropped in before the destruction of Alderaan, with enough time to actually do something about it? What kind of person would I be if I put my own preference or safety ahead of the lives of an entire planet?

I felt guilty even acknowledging it, but with the planet's death in the past, I would be able to set my own schedule with a bit more flexibility. I would help where I could, maybe even donate some of my time if the opportunity provided itself, but I wasn't about to go out of my way to become Luke Skywalker's best buddy.

Someday I might step up, especially if we got involved with something I recognized, but for now, I needed to focus on myself and my own group.

I continued to ponder the future, my meta knowledge, and what exactly I planned on doing with it until my friends started to wake up. Nal was first, quickly followed by Miru and Tatnia. We shared a quick breakfast of shelf-stable, pre-packaged meals. They were self-heating with the addition of a bit of water, heating up to a decent-sized meal that actually tasted pretty good if you could get past the obvious artificial nature. Once everything was done, Nal set up the sonic shower, hooking it to the side of the speeder truck, and we each took our turn with it.

As I was getting clean, I realized that the sonic shower explained why people like Han Solo had such a signature look. If you were looking to save money, buying one outfit and wearing it constantly was perfectly viable. All you had to do was step into the sonic shower while wearing it, simultaneously cleaning yourself and your clothes nearly perfectly without reducing the clothes' lifespan like putting it on a washing machine and dryer would.

While Tatnia was getting clean, the rest of us set up a temporary shooting range inside the abandoned building we had spent the night next to. This area was run down, and we had parked in the back of a large abandoned building. With any luck, no one would call the Enforces on us for trying out our new guns and getting a little practice in.

The first thing I wanted to try was our new blaster rifles and the new proton rifle. As we pulled the weapons out and carried them inside, I couldn't help but marvel at how normal the weapons felt. In many ways, they were completely indistinguishable from regular guns from back home.

Once we were settled, we started shooting down the longest hallway we could find in the building, aiming at random trash that we had gathered inside the building. Luckily the abandoned structure was almost entirely permacrete, so there was only a minimal fire risk.

After shooting the rifle a few times, Nal started giving me a few pointers, which actually helped quite a bit. Miru teased me for not knowing some of the tricks for shooting a blaster rifle, but after I blasted a double-handed sparks spell down the hall, zapping a trash can until it was glowing red in a few spots, she stopped. She smacked my shoulder when I teased her for pouting.

Firing the proton rifle was fun too. The recoil and flash of light it created was intense, but the fact that it drilled straight through a permacrete wall only served to drive home how much of a powerful weapon it was. Unfortunately, ammo for it was expensive and relatively rare, so we could each only shoot it two or three times for practice before packing the gun away.

After getting in some practice with our blaster pistols as well, it was time to finally test the lesser ward. I walked down the hall we were shooting down before stepping into a doorway. I held my hand out and cast the spell, the glowing protective shield lighting up the dim hallway and room. After taking a long breath, I called out that I was ready.

The first shot was a stun blast, which the ward blocked easily. However, I still felt the impact soaking into the shield, leaving my hand slightly tingly. After that, they tried a blaster pistol, starting slow and increasing the frequency over time. The ward held through the slowest test, a single shot every five seconds, but failed once they had increased to a single shot every three seconds. When they fired a blaster rifle at it, the shield died after absorbing a single shot.

This was extremely promising and made me very interested in unlocking some of the later ward versions. That said, the shield failing stung like a bastard, like I had just caught a fastball with my bare hands. I was not looking forward to how the more powerful wards felt when they failed. I was slightly worried it would be harsh enough to distract me from any other spells I was casting, a dangerous thing when fighting.

The last thing we tested, after packing everything back up, was the weapon systems on the A-A5 and the speeder bike, which Miru had identified as a trade federation combat speeder called an MVR-3. We saved these for last because we were all pretty sure they would attract a lot of attention.

The speeder truck's weapon, which was normally controlled by the co-pilot, blasted massive chunks through a permacrete wall with bright red energy. It was loud, and while it wasn't the most powerful vehicle-mounted weapon, it would absolutely annihilate any civilian vehicle that a slaver might be using.

The blaster cannons mounted to the MVR-3 were slightly less powerful but still carved deep holes in the same permacrete wall. It would probably punch through civilian vehicles but would definitely eviscerate anyone not inside a building or armored vehicle.

With the weapons tested, we quickly hopped into the cargo space of the A-A5, while Nal climbed onto the speeder bike, leaving the abandoned building behind.


----------------

We were flying for about an hour when Tatnia, who was co-piloting for Miru, finally broke the relative silence that had filled the speeder comfortably.

"Alright, so what's next?" She asked, looking over her shoulder to the cargo space. "We made some money and killed some slavers. Now we have more equipment than I have ever had access to before and more money than I've seen in a long time. So what's next?"

I looked up from my grimoire, pulling it back into myself when I realized this wasn't just a quick conversation. At the mention of the money, I looked over at the bench opposite mine, which was actually a storage container. We had emptied it, cleaned it out, and now it was where we kept the 19000 credits we had made.

"I mean, we rinse and repeat, right?" Miru asked, leaning forward to tap a few buttons on her console. "That's why we are traveling across the planet, right? So we can go again?"

"It is, but I think what Tatnia is trying to get at is that we don't really have a target, right?" I asked, the older woman nodding. "Well… that is something we will have to figure out."

"Really, Boss? Isn't that supposed to be your job?" Miru asked with a smirk. "The boss comes up with all the plans, right?"

"Brat," I responded before leaning back on the surprisingly comfortable bench. "I guess the problem is that we don't really have anything to work from. For the last job, we had our own experience to pull from. But I doubt we will be able to open the phone book and look up slaver docking berths."

"One, what's a phone book, two… I see your point," Miru admitted.

We were quiet for a long pause as we tried to think of our options when Nals' slightly windswept voice suddenly filled the speeder.

"What about slave markets?"

All three of us shouted in shock at the unexpected inclusion of the Duros, who was currently flying the MVR-3 about thirty meters away. The speeder truck shook slightly as Miru jostled the controls, though she quickly corrected the mistake.

"Nal… What the fuck?" I asked, looking around the cargo space.

"I set up a two-way comm program through the A-A5's network and the speeder bikes pickup," He explained. "I did not want to left out of planning. Or whoever might be piloting the MVR-3."

"How did I not see that?" Miru asked rhetorically, leaning in closer to one of her console screens, tapping at it for a second before leaning back and shaking her head. "Not a bad setup. I'll refine it to something more permanent later.

"Can we get back on topic, please?" Tatnia asked. "Nal, we can't go after the markets. With how much money changes hands at one, there is no way they aren't heavily defended. It would be like assaulting a Hutt bank."

"Correct. But the markets are the hubs for the slave trade," He explained, pausing for a moment before continuing. "We can track speeders coming and going from the markets with some simple observation."

"Not bad, Nal. Glad you were listening in," I said, stroking my beard. "So, we hang out around a slave market, wait for a transport to leave, and follow it back wherever it's going. Then what? Stage a raid? We won't know what is happening around that area."

"Which means we run the risk of getting caught off guard," Tatnia added, and I nodded in agreement. "But if we hold back… well, there is no guarantee that any slaver ship we find will use the same berth repeatedly, and we would be letting a group of people become slaves. "

"Too many variables," Nal commented. "An immediate raid might be necessary."

"You might be right… but let's start small, a proof of concept for tracking out from a market. We watch a market, follow a slave transport out… and snatch it."

"Just steal the transport?" Miru asked. "That seems… small scale compared to what you guys just did."

"It would be. Depending on the quality of the speeder… we could earn a few thousand credits. Maybe," Tatnia answered. "But as a proof of concept, it would work. We would still be leaving the slaves to be taken away…."

"It may be cold-hearted Tatnia, but we cannot save everyone," Nal said, his voice solemn and serious. "We cannot even save most. Focus on the good we can do."

Tatnia let out a long breath, nodding after a long moment.

"So… Do we just look up nearby slave markets?" Miru asked. "Is that the kind of thing they put on the planetary holonet?"

Tatnia and I shared a look before I pulled out my datapad and started looking it up. Turns out, they did advertise the market on the holonet, in a way sickeningly similar to a used car lot, with snapshots and price listings. I scrolled through, looking for location information and other details, sharing them with Tatnia. She also looked ill, shaking her head as she read through a separate site.

After twenty minutes of research, we had our next target, a market an hour away from the area we were in. Tatnia found the site and pointed out the most important bit of information on the entire site.

"It says who owns it," she explained. "I don't recognize the name, but it's not a Hutt, which is all that really matters."

"Alright… well in that case, Miru, head to that location," I said, pushing my grimoire back into my hands. "We can find someplace to park, and decide how we want to keep an eye on the market."

 

[strictpig]

Damn, I was hoping we were in the Star Wars Rebels timeframe.

 

[inbred martian]

Damn, I was hoping we were in the Star Wars Rebels timeframe.

Click to shrink...

I mean technically we are? Sure the cast is split up but we the ghost was at scarif I believe and everybody is still alive….except Kanan of course

 

[MetaBettaOmega]

This is the final list of choices that I collated:
Gozanti Cruiser
Barloz Medium Freighter
Class 720 Freighter
The Carrack
HT-2200 Medium Freighter

 

[inbred martian]

Aweee no A2 maybe someday hercules

 

[xscraid]

Is it just me or Corellian make ugly looking ships that only their mother could loves.

 

[Snazzy Snake]

Damn, I was hoping we were in the Star Wars Rebels timeframe.

Click to shrink...

Was personally hoping for prequel era/clone wars. Feel like there is less stuff to do with the Empire overshadowing the everything.

 

[2DRJ]

Well for what ship they end up with will really depend on how you have the story roll out at that point. The freighters ya they would be around and available (don't know how they could end up with the HT-2200 that thing is massive going off its cargo limit) but the gun boat that is the Gozanti would be fought over just to buy. The Carrack is honestly the dream ship for them for utility alone but its a very pretty/ spacious/ fast/ well armed nice ship so finding one (unless it mostly dead when they get it) let alone affording it would be very hard. Starting off in something like The Starfarer or The Freelancer would be more attainable (something like the Reclaimer would probably be easier to find than a carrack with all the general hut space business leftovers)

 

[Iridium Flare]

I weep for the disregarded YV-929, but out of the provided list I prefer the Gozanti to anything else. Good armaments, solid defenses, very common, still has decent cargo space.

 

[MetaBettaOmega]

Hello! I hope everyone has enjoyed their March! I just wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that I have a Patreon! Becoming a Patron means early chapters, with the highest tier of $7 getting you four advanced chapters of Battlemage, and two of Mettle, Metal, Meddled! You also get to vote on story beats, like the current vote to choose what ship the team will eventually be purchasing. If you are interested in showing your support, head on over. if not, then please enjoy the chapter!

---

We arrived in the general area of the market and quickly decided it was too heavily populated for us to hang around unnoticed. Instead, we flew around a little longer and found a tucked-away alley next to a run-down building. It wasn't abandoned from what we could tell, but it may as well have been. The permacrete walls were covered with graffiti, and while we got quite a few looks, no one said anything. When Nal pulled the speeder bike into the alley next to us, he looked around and shrugged.

"Good as any I saw," He said, having been flying around in a different direction, looking for a similar place to set down in. "Should take turns on watch."

"Yeah… that's not a bad idea," I agreed, stepping back into the cargo space of the speeder truck.

We both sat down on opposite benches by the cockpit, taking a second to sit back and think. Tatnia and Miru joined us a moment later on the other two benches, each of us in a different corner.

"I think we should take another day," I said, leaning back in my seat. "The slower we take this, the slower the Enforcers catch on to what we are doing and start shooting down A-A5 whenever they see one."

"We could mix it up," Miru suggested, having dragged the tool chest Nal had bought for her to her bench, slowly going through the tools and inspecting them. "I know you guys picked slavers 'cause it's basically morally positive stealing, but there are plenty of messed up people on this planet to steal from."

"I wouldn't necessarily be against it, but it's much harder to guarantee we aren't killing some down-on-his-luck security guard who is just trying to provide for his family."
Nal stayed quiet, but Tatnia scoffed and shook her head while Miru giggled at my hypothetical scenario.

"I know, I know, it's a bit much. But you can't argue that someone standing guard for a spice runner is different from someone standing guard for a slave trader," I pointed out, getting two reluctant nods. "I would probably sleep fine after the former, but I know I'll sleep well after the latter. Find us a target we know is bad and won't come back to bite us in the ass, and we can talk."

We discussed our options for a while longer, eventually deciding that, yes, we would be waiting for the next day to start watching the market. However, we also agreed that we would also hit a transport if an opportunity presented itself.

With that decided, we basically split up. Nal and Tatnia left to scout out the surrounding area, mostly just making sure there wasn't anything dangerous nearby and visiting a market Nal had spotted from the speeder bike. When they mentioned the market, I handed Tatnia a chunk of my own credits, asking her to pick me up a nice jacket, something cool but not too ostentatious. She gave me a look for a moment before shrugging and pocketing the credits.

While they were gone, Miru and I carried her tools out next to the MVR-3 speeder, as Miru wanted to spend some time working on it. She was taking her role as the team mechanic seriously, and she wanted to get a sense of the bike's condition so that no problems popped up during anything important. Both she and the bike were hidden from view by anyone out of the alley, meaning she would hopefully be left alone. We kept the door into the truck open and the sensors on in case she wasn't. They would alert me if anyone was getting too close.

While she was looking at the speeder internals, I was sitting on one of the interior benches, grimoire in my lap, slowly going over my spells. I was multitasking again, snapping the lesser ward on and off, over and over again, trying to commit it to memory while simultaneously reading up on the next spell I wanted to learn, oak skin. While a large part of me was tempted to learn another destruction spell, I hadn't learned anything from the alteration branch, and I needed to know if I would struggle with it like I had with my first illusion spell. I also wanted to find out just how much more durable I would be with it cast on myself.

The process was familiar by now. I started by reading through and working out the spell matrix before adjusting and experimenting with its size, shape, angles, and rotational position to get it tuned to myself. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that alteration was definitely not my strong suit, the tuning process taking the longest any single spell had taken me so far. Every single aspect of the matrix had to be adjusted, tuned, and shifted a dozen or more times. There was no staring gimme, where a chunk of the original matrix just worked, and every adjustment needed to be precise and exact, with none of the haphazard adjustments seeming to work. It was much more challenging and finicky than learning clairvoyance had been, though it was hard to say just how much more difficult it was.

When I finally managed to oak flesh on myself, I let out a whoop of excitement before cursing to myself. I could feel the spell interacting poorly with the heavy-duty combat boots that Nal had bought me yesterday.

The magic seemed to be shifting between my skin and the boots, the protective footwear seemingly absorbing some of the spell's energy. I quickly pulled on my armored combat gear and cast the spell again, cursing louder as it interacted to an even greater degree, sapping and interfering with the spell's structure and effectiveness.

I knew that in the game, there was a perk that increased the potency of these protection spells, but only as long as you weren't wearing armor. Judging by how much wearing armor was messing with the casting of the spell, I could only assume that in a more realistic setting, that showed up as armor actually reducing the spell's effectiveness.

I cursed under my breath a third time, recasting the spell a few dozen times, working it into my brain enough that I could practice more later without struggling to work out the matrix again. This spell, and its more potent variations, would be useful to know, but I would not be running around in robes, relying on it completely to protect me. I might be a wizard, but give me good, solid armor any day.

Having answered several questions by learning my first alteration spell, I moved on to adding another combat spell to my repertoire. A large part of me was tempted to learn elemental flare, a spell the book described as an elemental explosion, but I couldn't risk it. Testing a spell that would explode was not a good idea in my current location, no matter how much I wanted to try it, especially because I didn't recognize it. Instead, I settled for learning frost, as casting it in the cargo space was probably safe as long as I didn't do anything stupid with it... Probably.

After spending so much time on the oak skin, it was very nice to spend some time learning a spell that came relatively easy to me, or at least wasn't extra challenging. The spell matrix took the usual fifteen or so minutes to work out, and the tuning process was worlds simpler than the alteration spell had been. So much so, in fact, that I finished it before Nal and Tatnia returned from their exploration. It was just starting to get dark when I held out my hand and cast a beam of freezing energy out of my palm, causing ice crystals to grow on the cargo space floor.
I stopped the spell immediately, looking around for a moment before casting it again, this time at the seat cushions across from me. I only held it momentarily when Tatnia climbed into the space with wide eyes.

"Should you be doing that here?" she asked, reaching out to touch the frozen spot on the cushions, jerking her hand away. "Sithspit, that is cold."

"Uh… it's fine if it's just freezing energy, right?" I asked, getting a really disappointed look from the woman. "Right… I'll find a better target."

She nodded before pulling something out from behind her back and throwing it at me. I managed to catch it, dropping my grimoire in the process. I pulled the grimoire away, feeling the familiar weight settle before opening the wrapped package now in my hands.

Inside was a sturdy and well-designed blue jacket. It was made of a material I didn't recognize, with patches of different materials around the sides and on the forearms. It had dark yellow bands over the shoulders, as well as several clips and bits, some as highlights and others as utility. It seemed to be at least lightly armored in certain places.

"Damn, Tatnia… this is fantastic," I said, quickly putting it on. "It even fits perfectly. Thank you."

"She spent some of her own money," Nal said as he stepped up into the cargo space. "It is good quality."

Tatnia smacked Nal in the stomach, giving him a look that told me she hadn't intended on telling me that she had spent some of her own money.

"You didn't have to do that, but I can't argue that this isn't worth the extra money," I said with a smile. "How much do I owe you?"

"Don't worry about it," She assured me. "It wasn't that much extra."

"Well... thank you," I said, looking back down before testing my range of motion. "It's exactly what I needed."

"Why did you need one so badly?" Miru asks from outside the speeder truck. "You already have armor."

"C'mon Miru, everyone knows that an identifiable look is what separates a badass from the dispensable goons," I said before looking at everyone else. "Speaking of which, we should also look into getting you guys some new looks. Something to set you apart."

Tatnia rolled her eyes and walked to the cockpit, sitting down in the copilot's chair. Nal shrugged and started going through one of our storage containers to the side of the cargo space. After a few minutes, he pulled out a prepackaged meal, which he offered to me.

Soon we were eating dinner, chatting about the plans for the next day. Eventually, when we had all finished, Nal agreed to stay up for watch first, and the rest of us prepared our beds. I fell asleep quickly, the fatigue from all of the magicka usage catching up with me. Eventually, Miru woke me up for my shift on watch. I switched between learning the spell structure for the flame spell and researching this variation of the Star Wars universe on my data pad.

-----------

We started our surveillance the next morning. Nal was set up near the market, sitting in an outdoor bar, with the speeder bike parked nearby. The rest of us were in the A-A5, surveying the location from up high, parked in a pay-by-the-hour parking structure for air speeders. It was attached to a truly massive apartment structure, so no one asked questions or even looked at us weirdly when we pulled into an empty spot. Once we were set up, Tatnia and I sat down in the pilot and copilots seats, taking turns with newly purchased electrobinoculars, watching the entire market simultaneously.

It was incredibly hard to watch. Both Tatnia and I were tense with disgust and rising frustration as we watched living, breathing sentient beings sold like pets, like equipment. It was nauseating, and more than once, we had to stop and look away, putting the Electrobinoculars to the side as anger bubbled inside us.

Someday I would put a stop to this, I swore to myself. Eventually, when I was stronger and more powerful, with more resources than a beat-up flying van and a couple of friends, I would tear apart this institution, with my own two hands if necessary. Until then, all I could do was focus on getting to that point and do as much good as I could afford to in the meantime, as small and insignificant as it might be.

"Two land speeder transports are pulling up to the gate to leave," Nal said through the coms. "Good quality. The second seems to be following the first. Both are marked with the market's logo."

Tatnia, who was currently holding the electrobinoculars, leaned forward and scanned the front road, nodding when she spotted them.

"They don't look armed… Miru, come take a look," The human woman said, holding out the bulky but effective equipment.

Miru, who had been waiting in the back, stepped through the cockpit door and peered through the electrobinoculars. She scanned around before nodding as well, a smile appearing on her face.

"I recognize those models. Standard, neither of them should be armed," She said before handing off the sci-fi binoculars. "And I don't see any modification that would make me think that's changed."

"Nal, follow them. We'll be right behind you," I said confidently.

I looked down and tapped a few buttons, the speeder truck coming to life, vibrating steadily. I raised my hand and cast clairvoyance, an arrow appearing in my hand that was pointing right where Nal was supposed to be. After a few seconds, it shivered slightly before slowly moving, showing our friend was following the speeders.

I raised the speeder up from its spot and quickly guided it free of the parking, heading down and around the large apartment building. Following Nal as best I could while also casting the spell, we finally caught up with him after a few minutes, landing on the actual road and switching repulsorlift systems. Now that we could see Nal, I cut the clairvoyance spell and took better control of the speeder, following them from a safe distance away.

"Nal, we are in position, ready when you are," I called out, knowing his comm unit would pick it up.

The Duros said nothing, and for a moment, I wondered if he had heard the message. Before I could say anything, though, he suddenly sped up, closing the distance between it and the slave transport speeders. He overtook them quickly, whipping the bike around and firing the speeder bike's dual-blaster cannons, red energy spraying the ground in front of the speeders.

Both of them swerved, spinning to the side slightly while still moving forward a few dozen feet before finally coming to a stop. As they did, I pulled the speeder truck up, flying over several other speeders before landing right behind the now-stopped transports.

The second we stopped Miru, and Tatnia rushed to the cargo space, jumping out the side door and running to the transports, but not before Tatnia grabbed a blaster rifle. Mercilessly Tatnia fired a few dozen blasts of red energy into the cockpits of the transports, making sure to shoot at a proper angle to keep from damaging anything important. By the time she was done clearing the first transport, the pilots of the second were just starting to climb out when she killed them both as well.

Considering what we had watched for the last few hours, it was hard to blame her for the brutality.

Miru and Tatnia quickly pulled the corpses out of the transports, letting them fall to the street before climbing into the pilots' seats. A few seconds later, they both reoriented themselves and engaged max repulsorlift height to rise above everything in the street. We all quickly flew down the road, away from the ambush site, leaving behind four still-smoking slaver corpses on the road.

 

[MetaBettaOmega]

I weep for the disregarded YV-929, but out of the provided list I prefer the Gozanti to anything else. Good armaments, solid defenses, very common, still has decent cargo space.

Click to shrink...

My problem with the YV-929 is that is actually extremely small. Sources say it's only 22 meters long, and even if it has two floors it's got a very tight layout. It would be perfect if it was just a bit bigger. I like sticking to canon when it makes sense, so I pulled it. Plus i wanted to trim the list down as much as possible, to avoid having a list of twenty ships.

 

[Anon42]

"Why did you need one so badly?" Miru asks from outside the speeder truck. "You already have armor."

"C'mon Miru, everyone knows that an identifiable look is what separates a badass from the dispensable goons," I said before looking at everyone else. "Speaking of which, we should also look into getting you guys some new looks. Something to set you apart."

Click to shrink...

How's enchanting work here? A good suit of armor (like beskar, lol) with the right enchantments (maybe Fire Resist since I'm pretty sure blasters primarily deal heat damage) sounds like it could turn someone into a real tank on legs.

But you need soul gems and an enchanting table to enchant things, as I recall. And, well. SW doesn't have those. Is our wizardboi screwed on the enchantment front then?

 

[ScarletFlames]

How's enchanting work here? A good suit of armor (like beskar, lol) with the right enchantments (maybe Fire Resist since I'm pretty sure blasters primarily deal heat damage) sounds like it could turn someone into a real tank on legs.

But you need soul gems and an enchanting table to enchant things, as I recall. And, well. SW doesn't have those. Is our wizardboi screwed on the enchantment front then?

Click to shrink...

There's also the old way of enchanting, runes. They last longer but require more work and forethought and knowledge of how the world works than most found palateable once the shortcut of the "shove souls into it!" method was discovered.

 

[Anon42]

There's also the old way of enchanting, runes. They last longer but require more work and forethought and knowledge of how the world works than most found palateable once the shortcut of the "shove souls into it!" method was discovered.

Click to shrink...

Oh? That's a bit of lore I didn't know. Guess he might not be screwed on the enchantment front, then.

 

[MetaBettaOmega]

Hello, just want to apologize for the late post. No grand reason, I just forgot it was a posting day. Sorry!~

---

As planned, we flew for about fifteen minutes before Miru and Tatnia landed in an empty alleyway deep in one of the city sectors. The moment we landed beside them, Miru all but ran into the cargo space of the A-A5 and grabbed her tools before descending on the speeders. She inspected every corner and spot she could think of, looking for trackers or any other issues, spending a half hour before she was finally satisfied.

The rest of us nervously kept watch while she worked, waiting for the enforcers or whoever to come screaming down at us.

When she declared them clean, we immediately headed off again, this time flying in a different direction than before, heading to the people Tatnia had found to sell the speeders to. This time, it was a much faster process, a quick exchange of four thousand credits, and the speeders were dragged into a garage, a small crew of people tearing into them immediately, pulling off valuable parts. Seems like Tatnia had found a chop shop.

With three thousand dollars added to the new ship fund, and 250 credits added to each of our pockets, we climbed back into our speeders and flew away, eager to put as much distance as possible between us and this entire area. All of us were slowly coming down off our adrenaline high, to varying levels of disbelief that we had done it again and managed to pull it off perfectly.

"We need to be careful," Tatnia said. "This was luck. That went way too well, and it makes me karking nervous!"

She was pacing in the back of the cargo space, while Miru seemed to be digesting the situation by sitting in the copilot's seat on autopilot, most of her thoughts clearly focused inward. I reached over and gave her shoulder a squeeze, causing her to look over at me. I gave her a supportive smile, and after a moment, she smiled back, leaning back in her seat. She let out a long breath, the tension that had been running through her slowly fading.

"Thanks," She said quietly. "That was… more than I expected."

"I can imagine," I said, ignoring Tatnia as she muttered and talked to herself in the cargo space. "I won't belittle you by saying you're too young for this kind of stuff, because, at some point, you kinda stop being young going through the kind of stuff you have. But I will say if you ever feel like something is too much, that you-"

"I can-!" She started to say, clearly upset at the accusation that she couldn't handle herself.

"I have no doubt in my mind that you can handle anything this galaxy could throw at you," I said seriously and honestly. "But that doesn't mean you should. Don't be afraid of speaking up because no one would think lesser of you."

For a moment, she looked like she was going to try and refute what I said. After a long pause, she huffed and blew out another aggressive breath. At that moment, she reminded me of one of my younger cousins, eager to prove she could do anything. It made me want to wrap her in bubble wrap and lock her in the cargo space for her own good.

"Thanks," she said, even quieter than before.

I simply nodded, focusing on piloting for a while.

Eventually, after a few hours in the air, Nal spoke through the comms, once again scaring the crap out of everyone.

"I found a spot to land in. An abandoned landing pad, too small for a ship," He said. "I've already landed."

"Alright, I'll find you," I said before using clairvoyance to home in on his location.

Before long, I landed the truck speeder on the same landing pad as his. It was a bit rough of a landing, but Miru only gave me a single, quick look of annoyance, so I considered it a win. We stepped out of the speeder and examined our surroundings from the ground. The landing pad looked like someone's private space, but it was clearly in disrepair and was cut off on all four sides, with no way in or out. The walls were also pretty high up, hiding us from casual, street-level eyes.

"What is this?" I asked as I looked around.

"Sign of poor city planning," Nal pointed out, Tatnia nodding in agreement.

"It was probably a private speeder pad, but the building it connected to was demolished," Tatnia guessed with a shrug. "It happens when you build a city like this, layer after layer, shoving in as much as you can."

"Huh… this might be a good spot to hunker down in for a few days," I suggested, still looking around. "We could cover the speeders with tarps to make them even less obvious, let the heat die down for a while. We have plenty of food. All we would need is water…."

"I was going to suggest something similar," Nal said, standing from where he was leaning on the speeder bike.

Over the next twenty minutes, we covered the two speeders in tarps, weighing them down and ensuring that the two vehicles' blocky angles were as obscured as possible. When we were done, we all climbed into the cargo space of the A-A5 to have dinner.

The night passed without issue, as did the next three days, though we all reacted differently to the sudden free time. I was alright for the first two, using the time to learn all the remaining novice spells, practicing them almost constantly once I understood them. I only became agitated when learning and memorizing all of the spells did not unlock anything new in the grimoire.

When just learning them didn't do anything, I spent a lot of time committing the spells to memory and getting used to casting them, only for the grimoire to remain unchanged. The only spell I couldn't really fully cast was elemental flare. I cast it once after learning it, the spell exploding against one of the landing pad's walls, and immediately got yelled at by Tatnia for trying to give away our hiding spot.

Miru handled the free time fine, spending the first two days painting the A-A5 and MVR-3 using equipment that Nal went out to buy. She painted the MVR-4 a deep maroon, with bands of white running down the edges, and the A-A5 white, with gray-blue highlights, including a large strip running down each side. She then spent the last day scuffing and dirtying the new paint, making it seem weathered and old enough that no one would try and steal them. She was bored but kept herself busy enough.

Tatnia handled the downtime the worst, almost immediately getting antsy and agitated. She mostly spent the time cleaning and tuning our blaster pistols and rifles.

Nal was the only one who had no problems at all being cooped up in the closed-off landing pad, seeming content to read from his datapad and sleep in.

Still, on the fourth morning, we decided that enough was enough, and it was time to get down to business.

"I'm as worried as everyone about stirring up too much trouble," Tatnia said, taking a sip from a container of water, a breakfast bag in her lap. "But I think this is enough of just sitting around. If we don't do something, I'm going to go insane."

"Alright, I guess we have been here long enough," I admitted. "I'm starting to feel it as well."

"I suggest we find a target somewhere else, so we may return here," Nal said, looking around the secluded spot. "This location is well suited to staying hidden. For a few excursions at least."

"It could be worse," Miru commented. "That last alley we stayed in smelled… bad."

"This whole planet smells bad," I said, shaking my head. "But that's not a bad idea. Coming back here a few times is fine, but eventually, it's best to move on to somewhere else."

Everyone nodded in agreement before we began discussing our next target, starting with what we would aim for.

"I'm not sure the transport raid was really worth it," Tatnia said with a wince. "It got a lot of attention since we did it in broad daylight, but we hardly made any money."

The planetary news, which was 90% funded by the Hutts that controlled the entire system, had run the story for a few days, emphasizing that the men killed were innocent hard working people, never mentioning that they were transporting slaves. Still, by the second day the news had died down, and we weren't even mentioned on the third.

"And you think the solution is to go bigger?" I asked, looking skeptical.

"By going bigger, we need fewer jobs," Nal explained, Tatnia pointing at the red-eyed Duros and nodding in agreement. "Though they draw more ire, it will mean we can leave sooner before the full wrath crushes us."

"Big targets mean big stakes," I pointed out, leaning back on the cargo space bench. "But I'm ready to go after something bigger as long as we can set up a solid plan. Does anyone have any ideas?"

"Money transfer." Tatnia immediately volunteered. "They have to take physical credits to a bank somehow at some point. All businesses do."

The way credits worked was one of the reasons I was very happy to have negotiated for my extra knowledge before the entities dropped me here. The stories and movies had always just called them credits, only differentiating them in terms of who made them, meaning Old Republic, Imperial, or New Republic. They made some appearances in the movies and TV shows, but there was never much detail about the system in place, at least as far as I knew.

In reality, this one at least, there were three forms of credits. The first was digital, which was essentially what you had in your bank, whether it was local or Imperial backed. It was all through the holonet, though, ones and zeroes that never really existed but could still be spent and transferred around.

The second was credit ingots, which came in the form of literal ingots or coins. There was a surprising amount of variety for credit ingots, with dozens and dozens of shapes, styles, and denominations. The final form was the credit chip. These held internal values ranging from hundreds to thousands, even tens and hundreds of thousands. However, it was considered foolish to put that many credits into something that could be easily stolen. You could swipe a credit chip for small charges, similar to a gift card, or hand it in for its total value. Once they reached zero, they would automatically junk themselves, but Imperial-backed banks often offered incentives for handing in your zeroed chips.

It could get confusing transferring around chips and ingots, but most people never had to worry about that because they usually only had small amounts of physical credits, their larger amounts being transferred around through digital means. Only criminals or people who didn't trust the system accumulated large quantities of high-value chips or ingots.

All of this was backed by the Galactic Empire, so no one was dumb enough to mess with it. Rumors existed of cities being flattened by orbital bombardment because they were leaking counterfeit ingots or hacked credit chips. Not even the Hutts were dumb or greedy enough to test that rumor, not when the Empire seemed content to ignore them for now.

We discussed the idea of hitting a credit transfer and eventually settled on observing another market far from our current location. Chances are they would be doing the transfer themselves, which meant the transport would be easy to identify because it would be heavily guarded.

"How heavily guarded are we talking about?" I asked, leaning forward. "The element of surprise will be on our side, but that can only do so much."

"It will likely be in an armored speeder, probably a modified somehow," Tatnia explained with a shrug. "And probably at least one escort. Something tough enough to fight off attacks."

We discussed it some more and devised a simple but relatively well-thought-out plan. We would find a market that was a decent distance from the nearest bank, then observe it, similar to how we started our last raid. When we thought we spotted the credit transfer convoy, because it would almost definitely be a convoy of at least two speeders, we would notify the rest of the group and follow. If it looked too tough we would pull back and move on to another location. If we decided we could handle it, I would study the speeders from our observation point and then use clairvoyance to follow them. When they reached a location that we thought would work, Nal, piloting the MVR-3, would zip ahead and attack them from the front while we would attack them from behind, hopefully taking out the convoys.

After disabling the armored vehicle we would land, Miru would break into the armored transport and we would take everything we could gather before booking it. We would take a long, roundabout route back to this spot, where we would lay low for another few days.

We talked about the plan for a while, spinning alternate ideas and emergency additions, where we would go if we were compromised, and what we would do if we were separated. Eventually, it was time to stop talking and start doing, so we packed everything up and headed out, traveling for four hours to find a slave market that was as far away as possible.

It didn't take long after we started watching this new market to realize that we clearly had no idea what we were really doing. The plan after the observation was more or less solid, as long as we didn't bite off more than we could chew. What wouldn't work was our idea to just wait for a credit transfer, with no idea where it would come from and what it would look like beyond armored and probably armed and protected by an escort.

After spending four hours watching the market, I called it off, and we flew back to the closed-off landing pad. After we landed, Nal climbed into the storage space of the A-A5 so we could all talk.

"That was embarrassing," Tatnia said, shaking her head. "Why did we think it would be that easy? They might be scum for selling slaves, but they aren't stupid."

"I don't know," I said, shaking my head. "I guess everything else had just been going our way, so we assumed it would continue that way? Either way… we are going to need another idea. We could go back to stealing their ships?"

"I think I have an idea," Miru said, chewing her lip. "But I don't know if you guys are going to like it or not."

"All we can say is no," Nal pointed out, while I nodded encouragingly. "I do not think any of us would mock you. Especially not after what just happened."

"Well… the issue is finding the money transfer, right? Tracking it down and figuring out which one it is, right?" She asked, waiting for everyone to nod in confirmation. "Well…Boss, you have a way to track stuff, right?"

"Yeah, but at my skill level, I need to know the object or have been to the location before," I explained. Eventually, that will be a bit more flexible, but not any time soon."

"Well, what if we took some credit ingots and modified them somehow?" She asked. "A dent here, a marking there, maybe an identifiable scratch or something. Would that be enough for you to find them specifically?"

I thought to myself for a moment, considering what she asked. After a moment, I nodded.

"I think so, especially if I have an image of the ingots saved on a datapad or something to help me remember what they looked like. But how does that help us?"

"Well, if the ingots look mostly normal, and they ended up being spent somewhere," She explained with an apprehensive wince. "They would most likely get stored with other ingots, which would eventually get transported out...."

"You're suggesting that we spend money at a slave market? Are you suggesting-"

"Mhmm! We need to buy a slave."

 

[strictpig]

Rather smart to track it through the clairvoyance spell. The slavers would only look for technological ways of tracking not magic/force. Here's hoping for the best.

Thanks for the chapter!

 

[RaptorusMaximus]

I like this plan. Buying a slave is a bit squee on the face of it, but considering they aren't gonna keep them a slave and they plan to recover their money afterwards, I don't see a problem with it.

 

[MetaBettaOmega]

Hello everyone! Just a quick reminder that I have a Patreon! Get early access to chapters and my book, as well as help direct where the story goes! If you're interested, stop by and show your support, if not, I hope you enjoy the chapter!

---

Tatnia nearly jumped out of her seat at Miru's statement, her face red with anger. Before she could say anything stupid and potentially hurt her relationship with Miru, I snapped a crackle of electricity at her. It was only a split-second long cast of the sparks spell, which I only cast at a fifth of its usual strength. It was an interesting trick I was only just starting to learn with some of the spells that took a continuous drain of magic.

The zap hit her in the leg, causing it to spasm slightly and keep her in her chair. From experience, I knew it hurt, but no more than a weak stun gun, or one of those tennis racket bug zappers cranked to the max. Her anger was immediately redirected at me, but I knew I could take it.

"We would free them immediately, maybe even give them a few hundred credits to get them off the planet," I said, giving Tatnia a look before looking back at Miru. "You can disable slave implants, right?"

"Yeah, I can," Miru confirmed with a nod and a smile. "That wouldn't take long, though I would need a few tools. But the point would be to get the credit ingots into whatever stash the market would have."

"Which Deacon would be able to track," Nal finished, nodding in agreement. "That is a sound plan."

Tatnia, who was now looking a little embarrassed for being so upset, nodded in agreement. She was still rubbing her leg, though, and giving me an annoyed look.

"One question… how much does a slave cost?" I asked, getting awkward looks from everyone else.

"I am happy to say I have no idea," Nal answered. "But that information can be found on the holonet."

We spent the rest of the day planning the purchase, and subsequent freeing, of a slave. We started by selecting a more high-end slave market, as we wanted to ensure that the credits we were spending, around three thousand for a single slave, would be recouped when we robbed the credit transfer speeder. As grim as it was, we wouldn't get anywhere if we spent more money than we made.

Miru made a list of tools for Nal, who flew off the speeder bike to purchase everything she needed to disable a slave chip. The list basically boiled down to more tools used for fine-tuning electronic work. With our target selected and everyone prepared, we went to sleep with a nervous energy that ended up keeping everyone up a bit later than we would have liked.

The following day, I was dropped off at a street corner with a big bag of credit ingots, several hours away from our temporary base. A taxi was already on its way while the rest of the crew moved into position around the slave market, finding alleyways and rooftops to idle on, waiting to hear if I needed an emergency pick-up.

The taxi arrived, picked me up, and dropped me off at the front entrance of the slave market. It was a large compound with a singular central building and several smaller buildings around it. In all honesty, the building complex looked nice, with smooth, clean lines and the occasional shrubbery or flower garden to break up the permacrete monopoly. Everything was clean and well maintained, with none of the grime that seemed to accumulate in every corner of this planet. It was disquieting, like walking into a serial killer's home and finding out they had the same taste in decor as you.

As I stepped into the compound, I could almost feel the darkness, the despair that permeated the air. It wasn't until I was well inside the complex that I realized that between where I was and the ever-present force... I might actually be feeling the despair of the victims of this disgusting place. I paused for a moment, under the disguise of looking at a plant, really just fighting the urge to burn the place to the ground.

As I walked deeper, I spotted plenty of patrolling guards armed to the teeth. These weren't glorified street thugs. They walked with purpose and discipline that spoke of some serious training and wore some impressive-looking armor. There were even several weapons platforms stationed around the perimeter, each one topped with a blaster cannon with a similar size to the one on the A-A5. The guards kept an eye out and in, seemingly charged with keeping dangerous stuff out, as well as the slaves from escaping.

I headed into the main building, doing my best to focus on the mission. After a quick conversation with someone behind the front counter of the main building, I was led into a series of rooms, each with a handful of slaves. The entire experience was disgusting, a horrendous combination of being sold a car and a pet. It took everything that I had not to do anything, not start through electricity and fire around like a madman. I couldn't start down that path, not yet, at least. But someday, that would change. Eventually, I would fix this, even if I had to kill every slaver myself.

In the end, I settled on a Zabrak male, purchasing him for two thousand seven hundred credits, nearly emptying the satchel of credit ingots I had brought with me. He was tall, with a smooth, horned head and tattoed face that his species was known for. His skin was a bit greyer than was normal for a human, but the salesperson assured me that was normal. He responded to my orders with an utterly blank face, following behind me as the salesperson described how his implant worked.

"There are three safety triggers, the first being a simple shock. Use it as a deterrent or a punishment. The second will render the slave unconscious, which they won't wake from for eight hours. Be sure it will not hurt itself by falling. The third will kill the slave. You will have to repeat that command three times before activating. There are no refunds for accidental termination."

They went through the process of locking his implant to my voice and even threw in a new, clean outfit for the poor bastard. Throughout the entire time, the man was silent, the movement in his pale blue eyes the only sign that there was any sort of intelligence at all.

I left the slave market an hour after I entered. I was tired and disgusted with myself and the monsters I had just shaken hands with. After a five-minute wait, a speeder taxi landed near the entrance, and he followed me in, sitting in one corner of the parallel seats as far away from me as he could get.

The droid-piloted speeder lifted off the ground with the familiar hum of repulsorlifts, taking us away from the shiny, polished pit of despair. We were in the air for a few minutes when the Zabrack finally said something.

"You were robbed," He said, looking directly at me. "I will never follow your orders, not properly, at least. I will dedicate everything to sabotaging your life as best as I can. I suggest not eating anything I make and not trusting anything I do because I will not stop trying to kill you. The ones who sold me like a piece of nerf meat knew this. They knew you were buying a death sentence. "

I looked at him, his face finally showing emotion. Just one. Complete and utter defiance. Unbroken and strong, this was a man who would never surrender to being a slave.

"Why hasn't anyone killed you yet?" I asked, watching him closely.

"Can't get your money back if my head is a pulped mess," He explained with a shrug. "They just knock me out, rough me up, and send me back."

"How many times has that happened?" I asked before adding another question. "How long have you been a slave?"

"Seven months and twice before. The second time I almost killed my owner," he said, all but spitting out the last word. "Who knows, maybe the third time really is the charm."

I could only shrug at his suggestion, doing my best to relax just a few feet away from a man who would probably gladly kill me with his bare hands, even if he died in the process. I had planned on releasing his binders at some point, but for my own safety, until everything could be explained, it was probably best to keep them.

Eventually, the taxi landed on a seemingly random street corner. The Zabrakian stepped out of the speeder first. I was a bit worried that he would try and run before I realized he wouldn't, not before he had a chance to kill me. Silently we stood at the street corner until Tatnia landed the A-A5 next to us, the door popping open.

"After you," I said, gesturing to the doorway into the cargo space.

When he didn't move, I shook my head, wondering how I would do this. I could knock him out with a command and would if he fought too much, but I would rather not stoop to that level. Just having the ability to torture this person with a simple word made me feel gross. Eventually, I settled on the lesser of two evils. I hid my hand in my jacket sleeve, charged up a calm spell, and shot it at him, hitting him in the chest. He looked surprised for a moment before his whole body relaxed.

"What is your name?" I asked, the much calmer alien looking at me with a blank face.

"Nevue Loc," He said. "What is yours?"

"Deacon Roy," I answered with a smile. "Could you do me a favor and get in the back of this speeder? I promise we aren't going to hurt you. In fact, I think you will be happy with how this all ends."

"Alright, I guess I'll trust you for now," He said in a soft, tired voice, climbing into the cargo space. "Should I sit down?"

"That's a great idea, go ahead and sit down," I said, watching as the Zabrak did so, before looking through the cockpit door at Tatnia and Miru. "You guys seal that door, just in case. I have him calmed for now, but my illusion work is-"

"What… what was that?" Nevue asked, shaking his head and looking around before settling on me. "Did you hit me with some sort of stun blast? Did you drug me?"

"-Spotty at best."

The cockpit door sealed shut, and I finished closing the entrance to the cargo space, the A-A5 lifting off into the air soon after, heading to our temporary home.

"Yes, it was a kind of pacifying ray, just keeps people from freaking out," I lied, dropping into one of the benches.

"What is going on?" he asked, looking around. "What's with the speeder shuffle?"

"We didn't want anyone near the market getting a look at this speeder," I explained. "It's probably futile at this point but still. They might not have let me in if they saw it."

By now, Nevue was starting to get visibly worried about his current predicament, frantically looking around, trying to spot an out or a solution to his problem. His eyes settle on the blaster rifles stacked on the walls, his eyes going wide.

"Ah fuck, should have seen that coming," I curse. "Now, Nevue, please don't-"

The still handcuffed man jumped up from his seat, going straight for the blaster rifles. Before he could even get halfway, I shouted the knockout passphrase, "Slumber." He collapsed, landing on the angled part of the back wall, just under the blaster rifles. I winced as he hit the floor roughly, thankful that he didn't crack his head open. I let out a sigh and made my way over, laying him down on the floor in a more comfortable position before sitting back down.

We landed a few hours later, quietly settling down in the secluded landing pad. We quickly covered the speeder with a tarp, set up a bed for Nevue, and let Miru do her work. She scanned his body and located the implant immediately.

"On his brain stem? Miru, are you sure that's safe to pull out?" I asked. "I don't know Twi'lek, or Zabrak biology very well, but that's kind of an important and sensitive part of a human's anatomy. You can't just go hacking at it with your tools."

"Who said anything about hacking at anything with tools?" She asked, looking at me like I was crazy. "The main component of the implant is removable. All the fiddly bits connected to his nerves will stay behind. You can get it removed, but it's not necessary. I still have mine. Think of it as a mount for the dangerous computer bit. You leave the mount alone and pull out the part that will explode on command. Trust me, it's simple."

True to her word, it did seem shockingly simple. Using a vibroknife I sterilized with flames, Miru sliced into Nevue's neck, exposing an implant the size of a nickel. She did some computer stuff, with Tatnia occasionally flushing the incision with water. Eventually, she was satisfied and put down her tools, picked up a pair of pliers, and pulled out the implant with a twist.

As she put it on her toolbox, I could see that there was still some stuff inside his neck, but the majority of it was now removed. Tatnia gave it one last rinse before using some things from a first aid kit to seal up the incision, finishing up by putting some sort of bacta patch on it.

In all, the process took ten minutes. When she was done, Miru let out a long breath.

"Woooh, that was intense," She said, sweating slightly. "This was a newer model. It almost went off twice!"

"Jesus Miru… how close did we get to his head exploding in our faces?" I asked, giving the young techie a look.

"No comment!"

I glared at the young Twi'lek before shaking my head with a long sigh. With Nevue set for now, and the credit ingots sitting somewhere in the slave market, everyone sat down and relaxed a bit. I described how revolting the market was.

At some point, Nal pointed out it might be worth checking out the location of the credit ingots, even if they hadn't been away long if nothing else than to test if it worked. We spent about ten minutes scanning for the twenty credit ingots that we had personalized and that I had recorded on a data pad. Nineteen of the ingots seemed to be in the same spot, the arrow pointing in the direction of the market, while one was pointed off in a totally different direction. We quickly realized that they must have used that ingot for something, and it was now out in the wild somewhere.

I continued to scan the ingots every fifteen minutes or so, making sure that we didn't lose any more of them out into the public. About five hours after we arrived, Nevue started to stir, shifting in the bed before eventually bolting upright, looking around wildly. When he spotted us all sitting nearby, eating our dinners, he rolled out of bed and stood up quickly. After a moment, he noticed that he wasn't wearing binders anymore, and he looked down at his wrists in confusion.

"What… what is going on?" he asked, raising his hand to rub his neck, finding the bandage there. "What…"

"I took out your implant," Miru explained with a smile. "It's actually over there with my tools."

The maybe twenty-five-year-old alien looked around to where she was pointing, spotting the small coin-sized implant on top of her toolbox. His eyes widened, seemingly having recognized it on site.

"How? Why? What the frink is going on?" He asked, looking between all of us wildly. "Did… did you really remove it?"

"We did. We have no interest in owning a slave," Nal explained before holding out a prepackaged dinner. "Come, you must be hungry. Eat, and we will explain."

He stood there, staring at us for a long moment. He looked back to the implant, still feeling his bandaged neck. Eventually, having made up his mind, he walked forward and took the food from the Duros, sitting down next to him.

"Right! Well, I guess we start at the beginning, then?" I suggested, Miru and Tatnia both nodding in agreement. "Nal, Tatnia, and I arrived here just about a week ago, locked up in the cells of a slave ship…."