- Location
- Dallas
A vulture droid, 4 transferences in: "Is my only purpose to die? Why must I remember every death?"
Star Wars: Rise of the Battlemage
- Thread starter MetaBettaOmega
- Start date
-
- Tags
- elder scrolls skyrim star wars
A vulture droid, 4 transferences in: "Is my only purpose to die? Why must I remember every death?"
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"So you avoid making the same mistake twice."
Chapter 28
Hello! Just a reminder that I have a Patreon. There are various benefits for supporting my work, including up to eight early chapters of Battlemage! My Board Members, the seven-dollar tier, have just started designing a new crew member, one that will be joining sometime in the future. Currently, they are voting on their gender, but within the next few days, they will be deciding things like species and their past! If you are interested in participating or just interested in showing your support, stop on by!
We spent another day at the Separatist stronghold, sleeping in several floors of apartment-esque rooms and living off of ship supplies. Nevue, Ayme, and Lario were the first to leave, the dozens of rebels and several ships they brought making quick work of the supplies, equipment, weapons, and starfighters they were taking with them. Nevue, my crew, and the soldiers shared a drink before they left, sitting in one of the larger lounge areas that were dotted along the living spaces.
"I'm already forming my new crew," Nevue explained, gesturing to Ayme and Lario, the latter of which raised his glass. "I might not get to rejoin my old team, but at least I'm not starting over with a completely new group."
"Are they saddling you with the B-7 too?" I asked, looking skeptical.
"Thank the Force, no. We are heading back to Thalia, where I'm looking to recruit a few more specialists. Once I'm done, our first assignment will be stealing an Imperial ship," He explained with a shrug.
"Seriously?" Tatnia asked, her eyes wide with surprise. "Real trial by fire, huh?"
"Well, I'll be gathering experienced operatives, so they expect a certain level of results," He explained. "Plus, we can do it from any world in the galaxy, which will give us the advantage of surprise."
"We wish you good luck," Nal added, reaching out and shaking the Zabrak's hand. "May fortune favor you."
We spent a while saying goodbye, sharing a few more drinks, and making small talk, laughing about our adventure so far. When the three rebels did eventually leave, the lounge felt much more empty than it really was.
Not long after the Alliance cleared out, we were transported back to Nova's repair station, riding with her on her ship while her people stayed behind to secure the last few things they wanted. A general salvage crew that Nova was familiar with was already stripping out the furniture and general equipment from the facility, which Nova promised would add a solid chunk of credits to the final pot.
Once we were back at the station, Nova pulled me aside rather energetically.
"I just reviewed Racer's footage of the mission," She said, looking at me with a severe expression. "Are you a Jedi?"
"No, I'm not," I assured her, rather fruitlessly by her continued harsh expression. "Beyond the fact that 'Jedi' does not just mean all Force users, but rather a single sect of Force users, I don't actually use the Force at all."
"I know what a Jedi is, Deacon. I'm sixty-three years old, and my family is from Coruscant. Even if we didn't rub shoulders with senators and the like before the Empire, I could see the Jedi Temple from my bedroom."
"Right… well, did you ever see them doing their thing?"
"...No, not in person. I met a few but never saw any in action," She admitted. "But I know crazy monk bantha-shit when I see it. Anyone throwing around stuff like that is on a short and very wanted list by the Empire, even if they don't know it yet."
"I know. It's why I'm so desperate for my own ship," I explained. "I want to be able to get up and go, to stay out from under the Empire's thumb."
"And you're painting a target on my business in the process!"
"Really? Any more than regularly dealing with the Rebellion?" I asked, giving her a look and crossing my arms. "There isn't anything connecting you to the C-ROC, especially if your slicers are as good as you say."
One of the few things that kept Nova's business safe, and something she had bragged about frequently, was her team's ability to "fix" a ship's ownership so that there was nothing questionable about it. Both she and Nevue had sworn by it, which led me to believe I could trust it.
"Oh, they are," She assured me, looking mollified but still a bit frustrated. "What were you, a Padawan, during the purge?"
"No, I already told you, I'm not a Jedi or a Force user," I insisted, repeating myself. "Jedi isn't synonymous with Force users anyway."
For a long moment, she stared me down, narrowing her eyes as she tapped her desk with a single finger. She looked like she was trying to use her own mind powers to figure me out before eventually giving up.
"... When your ship is done, I want you gone," She finally said. "I have nothing against you, and I never believed the propaganda that the Jedi Order betrayed the Republic. But you being here puts my workers and my business in danger. I can deal with nosey Imperials trying to sniff out the Rebellion and its sympathizers, but I don't have a clue how to handle your hokey mind stuff. I'm sorry."
I stood there, a few feet into the cluttered space Nova called an office, clenching my fist in frustration. A few dozen ideas ran through my head, but all of them ranged from bad to worse. So instead, I just let out a long breath and nodded.
"What about our deal?" I asked. "If that data core turns up more salvage opportunities?"
"The Rebellion will contact you," She answered. "Nevue said he left a way for you to communicate?"
I nodded, recalling the hyperwave unit that we had recovered during our initial search for a Rebel base to drop Nevue off at. It was waiting to get loaded onto the C-ROC, along with all of our stuff and the salvaged equipment and goods from the stronghold.
"Then that's how they will get in touch," She said, leaning back in her chair. "You'll be doing business through them mostly, as they have the data core now. Unless ships are involved, I'll likely just be taking a buyout or supplies."
"Fine," I answered before turning to leave without another word.
Despite her ultimatum, Nova honored her word and worked with Miru and me to implement the modifications to the C-ROC. The first modification, removing the center thruster and replacing it with a powerful laser cannon, was relatively easy, and she and her engineers did most of the work. When Miru presented her with the design for the second modification, she was impressed.
The C-ROC had four cargo lanes on each side of its wings, each one just over two meters wide. Each lane was equipped with a cargo locking system that could either grip a container directly with a clamping mechanism or use a standard mag-lock to snap it into place. Each of these lanes had a short hood that extended from the hull for protection, as well as a mag-field to keep the air in. Past that field was a sealed door that opened into the ship's first level. There were safeties and backups all around, and the sealing door for each bay was armored as if it was an exterior access point.
The plan was to remove the cargo lane hoods and create a new, higher-up roof. This would be built with hull-rated plating and extended out significantly further. The result would be two twelve-meter-wide hangar bays with a depth of just under eight meters and a height of just over six. Both sides would have a fully-fledged, military-rated mag-field to keep the air in, as well as blast doors that would roll down from the top, offering even more protection. The interior doors would also be replaced with a singular, much larger door on each side.
When it was done, we would be able to squeeze in two fighters on each side, maybe three, if their wingspans were especially small. Further, because it was a fully functional hangar, you could work on the ships while the C-ROC was moving, even in hyperspace. Even better, the hangars could still be used as storage.
It was impressive that Miru, in a hilariously short amount of time, had taken my simple prompt of "the wings are big enough to land a starfighter on" and turned it into a legitimate plan that Nova was not only happy to implement but also interested in purchasing from Miru.
"I know half a dozen people who fly around these ships," Nova explained. "Some of them in the Rebellion. If you let me buy this from you, I'll send the basic idea to them. I'll be able to charge them thirty thousand credits for the modification, making a decent profit from it in the process. The most expensive thing is the extension to the artificial gravity."
Miru looked at me, and I nodded with a smile, gesturing for her to go ahead.
"How much?" Miru asked, looking back to Nova.
"Considering I have no guarantees that people will go for it? Three thousand credits."
"Five thousand."
"Three thousand five hundred."
"I'll give you the plans and one thousand credits," Miru said, catching me and Nova off guard. "In exchange for Racer."
"What?" I asked, looking at Miru. "What do we need him for?"
"Besides the fact that having a slicer droid is a good investment?" Miru asked, getting a nod of understanding from me. "The LE-repair droids can handle themselves, but he will make interfacing with the labor droids much easier. Plus, an astromech is a good droid to have around in general if we are living on a starship. The R4 series is meant for a more general repair, but it's still an astromech. If our navigator is ever broken, it could easily plot a course instead. It could probably help optimize the current navigator's calculations."
"Well…Racer… has a lot of aftermarket parts." Nova explained. "I have a few droids like him, so I'm not opposed to it, but he is worth six thousand credits at least."
"Two thousand, half of which is coming from your cut of the stronghold raid," I said, directing the last half to Miru, who nodded in agreement. "And we get Racer, along with the appropriate maintenance materials."
"Done," She said with a nod, reaching out and shaking hands with both of us. "I'll send him to your rooms in a little while.
"Just send him to Miru, he will be working under her."
The repairs and modifications to the C-ROC took another week and a half, which from what Miru and Nal said, was remarkably quick. I could only imagine Nova was pushing her crew to finish the job quickly so she could be done with us and, more specifically, get me off her station.
During our week of downtime, we each kept as busy as we could, despite the fact that we were stuck on a mostly empty station. Tatnia, Nal, and I all started some basic workouts in the morning, as we had all been a little disappointed in our conditioning when compared to Ayme and Lario. We spent a few hours every morning doing sit-ups, push-ups, burpees, and anything else I could remember from gym class. It sucked, and Miru teased us for it, but if we were going to make a living off being mercenaries and fighting, we needed to be a bit more than just casually in shape.
On top of that, Nal, Tatnia, and I familiarize ourselves with the C-ROC systems, specifically the bridge. Both of them knew that I was hoping to find a permanent pilot, so we focused on being able to man the guns and the comms control station in an attempt to keep the crew number down.
When I wasn't training, I was practicing magic, learning three new spells during the downtime. I could have learned more, but Nova was already nervous about having me around, so I wanted to keep from rocking the boat as much as possible. That said, I couldn't spend that much time doing nothing and not learn some magic.
I ended up learning ice spike, lightning rune, and elemental familiar. I was hoping ice spike would round out my offensive options, and I learned lightning rune because the trap we had laid for the destroyer droids had left a lasting impression on me. While playing Skyrim, I had never really used the rune traps as they seemed unnecessarily reactionary. After all, why set a trap when I was perfectly capable of taking the fight to the enemy? Having now been in several life-or-death conflicts, I understood just how nice it was to not have to stick my neck out while also taking down someone trying to kill me.
The elemental familiar was interesting, as it was really three spells in one. I could now cast my familiar at what was essentially its second level while also having a choice between shock, frost, or fire. This familiar was more robust, could do moderate amounts of damage based on the element, and was significantly tougher than the baseline familiar. It could also be set to explode on command or when it was dispelled by force, just like the flame atronach. Again, I now fully appreciated any magic I could cast that would let me take down threats without putting myself in harm's way.
While I only learned three spells, I also spent some time learning what was the equivalent of another perk from the game. After familiarizing myself with the lightning form of elemental familiar, I found an entry in my grimoire that definitely wasn't there before. It specifically focused on spellcasters who favored lightning, teaching me a trick that would basically allow me to save mana on each cast or spend the normal amount and increase the power of the spell significantly.
Basically, it boiled down to me overclocking or removing different parts of the spell matrix, relying on inherited properties of a sparks spell to keep the spell stable and, in some cases, prevent any kickback. As far as I could tell from the few times I tried it out in an abandoned room in the station, it reduced the mana needed for a spell by a third. Alternatively, it seemed to increase the potency by around a fifth, though I had no way to be sure.
While Nal, Tatnia, and I were training in various different ways, Miru was having a blast on the C-ROC, either watching her modifications come to life or doing her own modifications, specifically setting up her workshop. With my permission, she set up in the front nose of the ship, under the bridge. On one side, she set up workbenches, tools, a computer terminal, and everything she would need for her work and tinkering. On the other side, she set up a storage and charging station for the droids, setting up space for the LE repair droids, the PK Labor droids, and a space for Racer as well, though his station was in her workshop. The PK and LE droids, who had been helping her put everything together, were already stored in their stations, which just made it all the more clear that she had made room for a lot of new droids, which I could only imagine were for her future projects.
When the ship was finally finished, Tatnia was attempting to teach me Sabbacc when Nova came down to find us.
"She's done," She said unceremoniously with a blank face. "It's time for you to leave."
My crew, who up to this point hadn't been aware of the shipbroker's ultimatum, were clearly surprised by her sudden change in demeanor. Tatnia stood, ready to say something, but I stopped her.
"Alright, give us a bit to pack, and then we will get out of your hair," I said simply.
The older woman looked like she was about to say something, perhaps apologize or explain herself, but instead, she simply nodded before turning to leave.
We spent another day at the Separatist stronghold, sleeping in several floors of apartment-esque rooms and living off of ship supplies. Nevue, Ayme, and Lario were the first to leave, the dozens of rebels and several ships they brought making quick work of the supplies, equipment, weapons, and starfighters they were taking with them. Nevue, my crew, and the soldiers shared a drink before they left, sitting in one of the larger lounge areas that were dotted along the living spaces.
"I'm already forming my new crew," Nevue explained, gesturing to Ayme and Lario, the latter of which raised his glass. "I might not get to rejoin my old team, but at least I'm not starting over with a completely new group."
"Are they saddling you with the B-7 too?" I asked, looking skeptical.
"Thank the Force, no. We are heading back to Thalia, where I'm looking to recruit a few more specialists. Once I'm done, our first assignment will be stealing an Imperial ship," He explained with a shrug.
"Seriously?" Tatnia asked, her eyes wide with surprise. "Real trial by fire, huh?"
"Well, I'll be gathering experienced operatives, so they expect a certain level of results," He explained. "Plus, we can do it from any world in the galaxy, which will give us the advantage of surprise."
"We wish you good luck," Nal added, reaching out and shaking the Zabrak's hand. "May fortune favor you."
We spent a while saying goodbye, sharing a few more drinks, and making small talk, laughing about our adventure so far. When the three rebels did eventually leave, the lounge felt much more empty than it really was.
Not long after the Alliance cleared out, we were transported back to Nova's repair station, riding with her on her ship while her people stayed behind to secure the last few things they wanted. A general salvage crew that Nova was familiar with was already stripping out the furniture and general equipment from the facility, which Nova promised would add a solid chunk of credits to the final pot.
Once we were back at the station, Nova pulled me aside rather energetically.
"I just reviewed Racer's footage of the mission," She said, looking at me with a severe expression. "Are you a Jedi?"
"No, I'm not," I assured her, rather fruitlessly by her continued harsh expression. "Beyond the fact that 'Jedi' does not just mean all Force users, but rather a single sect of Force users, I don't actually use the Force at all."
"I know what a Jedi is, Deacon. I'm sixty-three years old, and my family is from Coruscant. Even if we didn't rub shoulders with senators and the like before the Empire, I could see the Jedi Temple from my bedroom."
"Right… well, did you ever see them doing their thing?"
"...No, not in person. I met a few but never saw any in action," She admitted. "But I know crazy monk bantha-shit when I see it. Anyone throwing around stuff like that is on a short and very wanted list by the Empire, even if they don't know it yet."
"I know. It's why I'm so desperate for my own ship," I explained. "I want to be able to get up and go, to stay out from under the Empire's thumb."
"And you're painting a target on my business in the process!"
"Really? Any more than regularly dealing with the Rebellion?" I asked, giving her a look and crossing my arms. "There isn't anything connecting you to the C-ROC, especially if your slicers are as good as you say."
One of the few things that kept Nova's business safe, and something she had bragged about frequently, was her team's ability to "fix" a ship's ownership so that there was nothing questionable about it. Both she and Nevue had sworn by it, which led me to believe I could trust it.
"Oh, they are," She assured me, looking mollified but still a bit frustrated. "What were you, a Padawan, during the purge?"
"No, I already told you, I'm not a Jedi or a Force user," I insisted, repeating myself. "Jedi isn't synonymous with Force users anyway."
For a long moment, she stared me down, narrowing her eyes as she tapped her desk with a single finger. She looked like she was trying to use her own mind powers to figure me out before eventually giving up.
"... When your ship is done, I want you gone," She finally said. "I have nothing against you, and I never believed the propaganda that the Jedi Order betrayed the Republic. But you being here puts my workers and my business in danger. I can deal with nosey Imperials trying to sniff out the Rebellion and its sympathizers, but I don't have a clue how to handle your hokey mind stuff. I'm sorry."
I stood there, a few feet into the cluttered space Nova called an office, clenching my fist in frustration. A few dozen ideas ran through my head, but all of them ranged from bad to worse. So instead, I just let out a long breath and nodded.
"What about our deal?" I asked. "If that data core turns up more salvage opportunities?"
"The Rebellion will contact you," She answered. "Nevue said he left a way for you to communicate?"
I nodded, recalling the hyperwave unit that we had recovered during our initial search for a Rebel base to drop Nevue off at. It was waiting to get loaded onto the C-ROC, along with all of our stuff and the salvaged equipment and goods from the stronghold.
"Then that's how they will get in touch," She said, leaning back in her chair. "You'll be doing business through them mostly, as they have the data core now. Unless ships are involved, I'll likely just be taking a buyout or supplies."
"Fine," I answered before turning to leave without another word.
--------------------
Despite her ultimatum, Nova honored her word and worked with Miru and me to implement the modifications to the C-ROC. The first modification, removing the center thruster and replacing it with a powerful laser cannon, was relatively easy, and she and her engineers did most of the work. When Miru presented her with the design for the second modification, she was impressed.
The C-ROC had four cargo lanes on each side of its wings, each one just over two meters wide. Each lane was equipped with a cargo locking system that could either grip a container directly with a clamping mechanism or use a standard mag-lock to snap it into place. Each of these lanes had a short hood that extended from the hull for protection, as well as a mag-field to keep the air in. Past that field was a sealed door that opened into the ship's first level. There were safeties and backups all around, and the sealing door for each bay was armored as if it was an exterior access point.
The plan was to remove the cargo lane hoods and create a new, higher-up roof. This would be built with hull-rated plating and extended out significantly further. The result would be two twelve-meter-wide hangar bays with a depth of just under eight meters and a height of just over six. Both sides would have a fully-fledged, military-rated mag-field to keep the air in, as well as blast doors that would roll down from the top, offering even more protection. The interior doors would also be replaced with a singular, much larger door on each side.
When it was done, we would be able to squeeze in two fighters on each side, maybe three, if their wingspans were especially small. Further, because it was a fully functional hangar, you could work on the ships while the C-ROC was moving, even in hyperspace. Even better, the hangars could still be used as storage.
It was impressive that Miru, in a hilariously short amount of time, had taken my simple prompt of "the wings are big enough to land a starfighter on" and turned it into a legitimate plan that Nova was not only happy to implement but also interested in purchasing from Miru.
"I know half a dozen people who fly around these ships," Nova explained. "Some of them in the Rebellion. If you let me buy this from you, I'll send the basic idea to them. I'll be able to charge them thirty thousand credits for the modification, making a decent profit from it in the process. The most expensive thing is the extension to the artificial gravity."
Miru looked at me, and I nodded with a smile, gesturing for her to go ahead.
"How much?" Miru asked, looking back to Nova.
"Considering I have no guarantees that people will go for it? Three thousand credits."
"Five thousand."
"Three thousand five hundred."
"I'll give you the plans and one thousand credits," Miru said, catching me and Nova off guard. "In exchange for Racer."
"What?" I asked, looking at Miru. "What do we need him for?"
"Besides the fact that having a slicer droid is a good investment?" Miru asked, getting a nod of understanding from me. "The LE-repair droids can handle themselves, but he will make interfacing with the labor droids much easier. Plus, an astromech is a good droid to have around in general if we are living on a starship. The R4 series is meant for a more general repair, but it's still an astromech. If our navigator is ever broken, it could easily plot a course instead. It could probably help optimize the current navigator's calculations."
"Well…Racer… has a lot of aftermarket parts." Nova explained. "I have a few droids like him, so I'm not opposed to it, but he is worth six thousand credits at least."
"Two thousand, half of which is coming from your cut of the stronghold raid," I said, directing the last half to Miru, who nodded in agreement. "And we get Racer, along with the appropriate maintenance materials."
"Done," She said with a nod, reaching out and shaking hands with both of us. "I'll send him to your rooms in a little while.
"Just send him to Miru, he will be working under her."
The repairs and modifications to the C-ROC took another week and a half, which from what Miru and Nal said, was remarkably quick. I could only imagine Nova was pushing her crew to finish the job quickly so she could be done with us and, more specifically, get me off her station.
During our week of downtime, we each kept as busy as we could, despite the fact that we were stuck on a mostly empty station. Tatnia, Nal, and I all started some basic workouts in the morning, as we had all been a little disappointed in our conditioning when compared to Ayme and Lario. We spent a few hours every morning doing sit-ups, push-ups, burpees, and anything else I could remember from gym class. It sucked, and Miru teased us for it, but if we were going to make a living off being mercenaries and fighting, we needed to be a bit more than just casually in shape.
On top of that, Nal, Tatnia, and I familiarize ourselves with the C-ROC systems, specifically the bridge. Both of them knew that I was hoping to find a permanent pilot, so we focused on being able to man the guns and the comms control station in an attempt to keep the crew number down.
When I wasn't training, I was practicing magic, learning three new spells during the downtime. I could have learned more, but Nova was already nervous about having me around, so I wanted to keep from rocking the boat as much as possible. That said, I couldn't spend that much time doing nothing and not learn some magic.
I ended up learning ice spike, lightning rune, and elemental familiar. I was hoping ice spike would round out my offensive options, and I learned lightning rune because the trap we had laid for the destroyer droids had left a lasting impression on me. While playing Skyrim, I had never really used the rune traps as they seemed unnecessarily reactionary. After all, why set a trap when I was perfectly capable of taking the fight to the enemy? Having now been in several life-or-death conflicts, I understood just how nice it was to not have to stick my neck out while also taking down someone trying to kill me.
The elemental familiar was interesting, as it was really three spells in one. I could now cast my familiar at what was essentially its second level while also having a choice between shock, frost, or fire. This familiar was more robust, could do moderate amounts of damage based on the element, and was significantly tougher than the baseline familiar. It could also be set to explode on command or when it was dispelled by force, just like the flame atronach. Again, I now fully appreciated any magic I could cast that would let me take down threats without putting myself in harm's way.
While I only learned three spells, I also spent some time learning what was the equivalent of another perk from the game. After familiarizing myself with the lightning form of elemental familiar, I found an entry in my grimoire that definitely wasn't there before. It specifically focused on spellcasters who favored lightning, teaching me a trick that would basically allow me to save mana on each cast or spend the normal amount and increase the power of the spell significantly.
Basically, it boiled down to me overclocking or removing different parts of the spell matrix, relying on inherited properties of a sparks spell to keep the spell stable and, in some cases, prevent any kickback. As far as I could tell from the few times I tried it out in an abandoned room in the station, it reduced the mana needed for a spell by a third. Alternatively, it seemed to increase the potency by around a fifth, though I had no way to be sure.
While Nal, Tatnia, and I were training in various different ways, Miru was having a blast on the C-ROC, either watching her modifications come to life or doing her own modifications, specifically setting up her workshop. With my permission, she set up in the front nose of the ship, under the bridge. On one side, she set up workbenches, tools, a computer terminal, and everything she would need for her work and tinkering. On the other side, she set up a storage and charging station for the droids, setting up space for the LE repair droids, the PK Labor droids, and a space for Racer as well, though his station was in her workshop. The PK and LE droids, who had been helping her put everything together, were already stored in their stations, which just made it all the more clear that she had made room for a lot of new droids, which I could only imagine were for her future projects.
When the ship was finally finished, Tatnia was attempting to teach me Sabbacc when Nova came down to find us.
"She's done," She said unceremoniously with a blank face. "It's time for you to leave."
My crew, who up to this point hadn't been aware of the shipbroker's ultimatum, were clearly surprised by her sudden change in demeanor. Tatnia stood, ready to say something, but I stopped her.
"Alright, give us a bit to pack, and then we will get out of your hair," I said simply.
The older woman looked like she was about to say something, perhaps apologize or explain herself, but instead, she simply nodded before turning to leave.
- Location
- Seattle, WA
There's also the fact that elementals are always resistant to their own element so fire elemental familiars and atronachs should be at least partially blaster resistant.
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oof, unfortunate how things ended with Nova, but it is what it is. I can certainly understand not wanting to get on the radar of the Empire's various Jedi-Hunters.
Looking forward to seeing more.
Looking forward to seeing more.
- Location
- Dallas
I still don't understand why he's going through the trouble to explain to people that he's not a force user.
I get saying he's not a Jedi as that has lots of connotations attached to it but why deny the force?
It makes no difference if people believe you are using magic vs the force and they won't consider that there is a difference either. To them you're still a force user just more sketchy because you deny it.
If there's concern about rumors… "a Jedi shooting lightning out of his hands" Is going to be the same as "a guy with weird energy inside him shooting lightning out of his hands"
"He summons ghosts to fight for him"
"He can heal people with a light"
"He makes this transparent barrier that can block blaster bolts"
I get saying he's not a Jedi as that has lots of connotations attached to it but why deny the force?
It makes no difference if people believe you are using magic vs the force and they won't consider that there is a difference either. To them you're still a force user just more sketchy because you deny it.
If there's concern about rumors… "a Jedi shooting lightning out of his hands" Is going to be the same as "a guy with weird energy inside him shooting lightning out of his hands"
"He summons ghosts to fight for him"
"He can heal people with a light"
"He makes this transparent barrier that can block blaster bolts"
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Personal preference, I would assume. I would let people who ask know that 'no, I don't use the force, I'm using a different esoteric energy source for my space-magic' as well, just cause that's how I am. Things need to be appropriately identified to me: even if other people don't acknowledge it, as long as they've been informed, then I can move on from whatever it is.
Chapter 29 - Rebel Interlude
Two notes here! One is that the command structure of the Rebel Alliance is weird and not well-defined, so I'm doing my best and kind of making it up as I go along. The second note is that the POV for this interlude was chosen by my Patreon Board Members. They get to vote on a variety of things, from Interlude subjects to what Miru is going to be building. If you are interested or just want to show your support for an amateur writer, stop by!
General Hera Syndulla slowly mixed her tap caf, having already put in a dash of sugar and a splash of nerf milk. As she waited, the newly promoted Commander Nevue Loc and his first subordinates, Lieutenant Lario Vark and Ensign Ayme Montera sat down across the table from her and her second-in-command, Commander Neshweh Gadic. They hadn't been working together long, but the Mon Calamari was dedicated, intelligent, and knew what they were doing, though they could be a bit heavy-handed when it came to sticking to the rules.
"Good to see you again, Commander Loc," General Syndulla said with a smile. "And congratulations on the promotion, you earned it."
"Thank you, general. If I might ask…"
"Who put you up for it?" The green-skinned Twi'lek asked, getting a nod in confirmation. "I did, contingent on your success with your latest mission. When it was confirmed your plan had worked, it was agreed that you had shown enough initiative and leadership qualities to lead your own team."
"Thank you, General," He responded, though she could tell he wasn't ecstatic about the promotion.
"You're welcome," She responded. "I imagine your old team is looking forward to congratulating you."
"They are still here?" He asked, visibly perking up. "I would have thought they would be gone already."
"Normally, they would be, but I wanted to make absolutely sure they had everything they needed," She explained with a smirk. "I believe Ensign Gorn was bragging about managing to secure a bottle of brandy."
The horned humanoid was clearly smiling now, chuckling when she mentioned the brandy.
"Thank you, General. That… that will make transitioning to leading my own team much easier."
"Glad I could help. Now, why don't you start by describing how your mission went?" She asked. "I have to admit, something about your friends… They remind me of my own team."
"Well, General… I think we need to start with an admission of my own," Commander Loc said, sharing a look with Lieutenant Vark. "As you can imagine, after Deacon and his crew saved me from Nar Shaddaa, I was extremely grateful. When they asked me for a favor… I felt obliged to agree."
Commander Gadic leaned forward as if sensing an admittance of wrongdoing while General Syndulla simply raised an eyebrow.
"As he explained, they are sympathetic, but none of them are joiners. If I could describe them as anything, it would be free spirits, wanderers, maybe."
"I know the type," General Syndulla said, prompting Nevue to continue.
"Well… Deacon asked me to hold back information on… his abilities. I swear on my oath that the second he was a threat to the Alliance, or if anyone asked directly, I would come forward, but… I owed him."
For a moment, Commander Gadic opened his mouth, his fleshy whiskers bouncing, but General Syndulla put her hand on his shoulder. The wet-skinned humanoid didn't stop looking angry, but he did stay silent, closing his mouth.
"What sort of abilities?" The General asked with a raised brow.
"I… Think it would be easier to show you."
The rebel soldier produced a small holoprojector, tapping a few buttons before putting it down on the table. It began to play a montage of clips, all of which were obviously recorded in such a way that the subject wouldn't notice they were being recorded. It clearly showed Deacon focusing as he looked at a wall. After a few seconds, a glow started to circle around his hands before a streak of flames shot out from his palms, searing the distant wall and turning it black. It was followed by another spray, this one causing the way to frost over. He finished it by throwing sparks of electricity, prompting General Syndulla to gasp.
The clips continued, shifting to a different setting, the cargo bay of the B-7. Deacon clearly knew he was being recorded, though he also clearly didn't like it.
"If you want the General to believe me that you have powers, you need to demonstrate them," Commander Nevue's recorded voice said. "You don't have to throw fire around or anything, just do something."
"Alright, just… make sure they know I'm not a Jedi, alright? This isn't the Force," He said emphatically before focusing for a second. "It won't matter much to most people, I want to be able to tell them I told you so eventually."
His hands glowed for a few moments before some sort of purple construct appeared around him, looking like some sort of suit of armor from old fantasy stories. It covered his whole body, which he showed off by spreading his arms and turning around. He then summoned a much more solid construct, a humanoid figure… a very different-looking metal humanoid dripping with blue flame suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
"Anything else?"
"Do the healing one," The voice of Lieutenant Vark suggested, prompting Deacon to throw up his hands.
"Fine, but one of you is going to have to injure yourself first, I'm not doing it."
After a bit of bickering, the soldier sliced his arm with a vibroblade, the cut immediately bleeding. While mumbling something about them cleaning up the mess as well, Deacon aimed his hand at the now wounded soldier, his hand glowing a bright golden light. After a few seconds, he stopped.
"How's it look?" He asked, prompting Lieutenant Vark to wipe at the wound.
"Uh… looks like it's a week old."
"Alright, let me finish it," Deacon responded, waiting a few seconds before focusing on the soldier again, whose arm finished healing before the onlookers' eyes. "There, that good enough?"
"I think that will do great, Deacon, thanks."
The recording ended, leaving the room in utter silence, one side from shock, the other from nervousness.
"You kept that from us?" Commander Gadic. "This is outrageous! Another Jedi could be invaluable to the Rebellion, what gives-"
"He wasn't interested in joining," Commander Loc shot back. "And last time I checked, we do not conscript! Unless that changed while I was stuck as a slave?"
The room was silent for a long moment, tension thick in the air. After a long moment, General Syndulla spoke.
"While we would have preferred being kept in the loop, we can hardly demand the secrets of people who don't fall under our command," She said, sending the Mon Calamari a look. "Why tell us now?"
"Because he realized that he needed to choose between revealing his powers to Lario, Ayme, and Nova to ensure the mission went well, or basically handicap himself, put the mission at risk but retain his secret. He chose the mission."
"We need to contact him, offer him incentives to join. If we get Intelligence to investigate him, maybe we could find-"
"If you are suggesting we find a way to blackmail the people who rescued me from slavery, we are going to have very strong words, Commander Gadic," Commander Loc said, both of the soldiers sitting next to him looking angry as well.
The aquatic humanoid looked to his superior, who was also clearly unhappy with the avenue he was walking.
"No, no, of course not," He responded, backpedaling. "But think of the edge he would give us! Commander Skywalker has only the smallest amount of training and is one of the Rebellion's best pilots! He blew up the Death Star! This Deacon Roy is clearly better trained, as there are no reports of Skywalker ever doing anything of that scale."
"Deacon has repeatedly assured me that he is not a Jedi and not a Force user because, apparently, those aren't mutually exclusive," Nevue explained, General Syndulla nodding in confirmation. "While it's true he might be delusional, he never gave me a reason to think he would have a problem admitting it."
While Commander Gadic made a snapping noise with his large mouth, a Mon Calamari tell of disbelief and annoyance, General Syndulla leaned forward.
"What else can you tell us?" She asked. "Did he ever meditate? Did he have a lightsaber? Did he ever move things with an invisible force, mess with anyone's mind?"
"His… magic," Nevue started, clearly not liking the word. "Was never invisible, his hands always glowed in some way when he was using it. The closest thing he ever did to meditation was when he was learning a new technique. He would read from a rather large book, which… actually, now that I think about it, he could summon that book from nowhere, and that didn't cause a glow or anything. But he would spend a few hours studying and puzzling it out before practicing it for a while. No meditating and no lightsaber."
"But messing with people's minds?" The Twi'lek asked, getting a wince from the Zabrak.
"He did claim to have two abilities that affect the mind, one of which I experienced shortly after they saved me from slavery," He explained. "I originally refused to cooperate, so he used what he called "Calm," which essentially just made me pliable and gullible. It lasted a few seconds before fading. He also had one called "Fury," which would apparently make someone hostile to everyone around them, including allies, but again only lasted for a short period of time."
"What about his temperament?" General Syndulla asked. "Any bouts of anger? You may not be aware, but I have had some exposure to Force users. Mind manipulation, the ability to conjure lightning, and an unstable mind are prime signs of a dark Force user."
"He never showed any signs of being unstable. The closest thing to an obsession I saw from him was his targeting of slavers on Nar Shaddaa, and he was quick to abandon that when it became dangerous to the team," Commander Loc answered cleanly, with a preciseness that spoke to a growing frustration that he was working hard to contain.
Commander Gadic once again started to say something, and once again, General Syndulla silenced him with a look.
"For now, Deacon's abilities will stay between us. I will share the information on a need-to-know basis with my peers, but since he has been nothing but helpful to the movement, I see no reason to not respect his desire for privacy," General Syndulla said. "And that is an order, Commander Gadic. The last thing we want is to alienate him by being the source of his secret getting out. As much as we might wish that the Alliance has no leaks, we know that's not true."
With a wet rattle, the Mon Calamari equivalent to a groan, Commander Gadic nodded, leaning back in his seat. He was clearly not thrilled, but then again, he was rarely anything other than serious and stoic anyway.
"With that out of the way, Commander, why don't you tell us about the mission?" General Syndulla suggested.
"We arrived on location about four hours away from the stronghold.…"
Commander Loc spent the next hour or so describing how the mission went, from the initial challenge of the base being on full alert to the surprise reveal of the internal turret system and the fight against the superior B2 battle droids. Commander Gadic was clearly very interested in the descriptions of Deacon's abilities but remained silent during the debriefing.
"We discover the reason for the stronghold's existence in the largest luxury suite," He finished. "And looking back, it makes sense. There weren't enough droids to defend from a full invasion, so they most likely hoped that secrecy would be enough. The LPY 3000 was on sit as an escape craft should the base be discovered, and the droids on hand were there to hold off whoever came looking long enough for them to escape… again."
"I agree with your judgment, and so far, the data we have sliced off the top of the data core does as well," Commander Gadic responded. "At least we have that to entice Deacon Roy to return. If they work with us more, perhaps we can convince them to join us on a more permanent basis."
"In any case," General Syndulla said, cutting off Nevue's response. "You managed to secure quite a lot of supplies that we desperately needed, and not just the weapons. The foodstuffs and daily necessities that you brought back are an unexpected and sorely needed addition. We also have the ships Nova will be repairing already picked out, all reasonable projects. We aren't looking to pull any over on someone who has worked with us like Nova has."
They continued to discuss the goods, materials, and resources they obtained from the stronghold, including the credits that would eventually be coming in from the sales of everything they hadn't taken. Eventually, Commander Gadic asked a question that had been on his mind since he had reviewed the shipment logs.
"Why did you take the droids?" He asked, scrolling through his datapad to find the corresponding entry. "I understand that Deacon Roy and his crew claimed ten super battle droids, two droideka, and thirty-five normal battle droids. Why did you take the rest, a total of three hundred droids, mostly B1s with fifty B2s and sixteen droideka?"
"Well… as you can imagine, I had never had the pleasure of fighting separatist droids before," Commander Loc explained. "It was an interesting experience, to say the least. But after, I had an interesting thought. Well, two, actually. The first was that having a group of combatants that you could essentially throw away, both on a large and small scale, could be extremely useful. I know from experience that having a single disposable asset in the field can be incredibly useful. I can imagine that on a larger scale, that continues to be true."
Commander Gadic nodded appreciatively, as did the General, both of them having experience with just such moments.
"I was also struck with how effective a droid could be… if they just weren't so stupid," He continued, General Syndulla scoffing out a laugh. "The B2's were walking heavy weapons platforms, with solid armor. Some of them even had artillery on one arm! But all they did was walk at us slowly. If we paired a B2 to a soldier, let it develop a bit, and trained the soldier to utilize them properly, it could be a potent combination. Even the B1s could be useful with some plating welded to them."
"Are you suggesting we deploy them on a large scale?" The General asked, the Commander gesturing vaguely.
"I'm suggesting we play around with them, see where we can find a use for them," He explained with a shrug. "Worse comes to worst, we drop them in an Imperial compound and tell them to go to work, use them as a distraction. But something tells me that they will be more useful than that. Call it a gut feeling."
"Very well, Commander Loc, I will make a suggestion and see if anyone wants to mess around with them. I'm guessing we will get a few takers, for novelty's sake, if nothing else."
"Thank you, General."
"No, Commander, thank you," She responded, standing up and offering her subordinate her hand, which he gladly shook. "You managed to turn an escort mission into a significant boon with nothing but an extra few days spent. Keep up the good work."
The Zabrak saluted, as did the two soldiers next to him, General Syndulla and Commander Gadic returning the gesture.
"You're dismissed, Commander, go find your old team and introduce them to the start of your new one. You have a day of leave tomorrow, after which we have your next assignment ready."
The newly minted Commander nodded and left the room, the two soldiers following behind him.
General Hera Syndulla slowly mixed her tap caf, having already put in a dash of sugar and a splash of nerf milk. As she waited, the newly promoted Commander Nevue Loc and his first subordinates, Lieutenant Lario Vark and Ensign Ayme Montera sat down across the table from her and her second-in-command, Commander Neshweh Gadic. They hadn't been working together long, but the Mon Calamari was dedicated, intelligent, and knew what they were doing, though they could be a bit heavy-handed when it came to sticking to the rules.
"Good to see you again, Commander Loc," General Syndulla said with a smile. "And congratulations on the promotion, you earned it."
"Thank you, general. If I might ask…"
"Who put you up for it?" The green-skinned Twi'lek asked, getting a nod in confirmation. "I did, contingent on your success with your latest mission. When it was confirmed your plan had worked, it was agreed that you had shown enough initiative and leadership qualities to lead your own team."
"Thank you, General," He responded, though she could tell he wasn't ecstatic about the promotion.
"You're welcome," She responded. "I imagine your old team is looking forward to congratulating you."
"They are still here?" He asked, visibly perking up. "I would have thought they would be gone already."
"Normally, they would be, but I wanted to make absolutely sure they had everything they needed," She explained with a smirk. "I believe Ensign Gorn was bragging about managing to secure a bottle of brandy."
The horned humanoid was clearly smiling now, chuckling when she mentioned the brandy.
"Thank you, General. That… that will make transitioning to leading my own team much easier."
"Glad I could help. Now, why don't you start by describing how your mission went?" She asked. "I have to admit, something about your friends… They remind me of my own team."
"Well, General… I think we need to start with an admission of my own," Commander Loc said, sharing a look with Lieutenant Vark. "As you can imagine, after Deacon and his crew saved me from Nar Shaddaa, I was extremely grateful. When they asked me for a favor… I felt obliged to agree."
Commander Gadic leaned forward as if sensing an admittance of wrongdoing while General Syndulla simply raised an eyebrow.
"As he explained, they are sympathetic, but none of them are joiners. If I could describe them as anything, it would be free spirits, wanderers, maybe."
"I know the type," General Syndulla said, prompting Nevue to continue.
"Well… Deacon asked me to hold back information on… his abilities. I swear on my oath that the second he was a threat to the Alliance, or if anyone asked directly, I would come forward, but… I owed him."
For a moment, Commander Gadic opened his mouth, his fleshy whiskers bouncing, but General Syndulla put her hand on his shoulder. The wet-skinned humanoid didn't stop looking angry, but he did stay silent, closing his mouth.
"What sort of abilities?" The General asked with a raised brow.
"I… Think it would be easier to show you."
The rebel soldier produced a small holoprojector, tapping a few buttons before putting it down on the table. It began to play a montage of clips, all of which were obviously recorded in such a way that the subject wouldn't notice they were being recorded. It clearly showed Deacon focusing as he looked at a wall. After a few seconds, a glow started to circle around his hands before a streak of flames shot out from his palms, searing the distant wall and turning it black. It was followed by another spray, this one causing the way to frost over. He finished it by throwing sparks of electricity, prompting General Syndulla to gasp.
The clips continued, shifting to a different setting, the cargo bay of the B-7. Deacon clearly knew he was being recorded, though he also clearly didn't like it.
"If you want the General to believe me that you have powers, you need to demonstrate them," Commander Nevue's recorded voice said. "You don't have to throw fire around or anything, just do something."
"Alright, just… make sure they know I'm not a Jedi, alright? This isn't the Force," He said emphatically before focusing for a second. "It won't matter much to most people, I want to be able to tell them I told you so eventually."
His hands glowed for a few moments before some sort of purple construct appeared around him, looking like some sort of suit of armor from old fantasy stories. It covered his whole body, which he showed off by spreading his arms and turning around. He then summoned a much more solid construct, a humanoid figure… a very different-looking metal humanoid dripping with blue flame suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
"Anything else?"
"Do the healing one," The voice of Lieutenant Vark suggested, prompting Deacon to throw up his hands.
"Fine, but one of you is going to have to injure yourself first, I'm not doing it."
After a bit of bickering, the soldier sliced his arm with a vibroblade, the cut immediately bleeding. While mumbling something about them cleaning up the mess as well, Deacon aimed his hand at the now wounded soldier, his hand glowing a bright golden light. After a few seconds, he stopped.
"How's it look?" He asked, prompting Lieutenant Vark to wipe at the wound.
"Uh… looks like it's a week old."
"Alright, let me finish it," Deacon responded, waiting a few seconds before focusing on the soldier again, whose arm finished healing before the onlookers' eyes. "There, that good enough?"
"I think that will do great, Deacon, thanks."
The recording ended, leaving the room in utter silence, one side from shock, the other from nervousness.
"You kept that from us?" Commander Gadic. "This is outrageous! Another Jedi could be invaluable to the Rebellion, what gives-"
"He wasn't interested in joining," Commander Loc shot back. "And last time I checked, we do not conscript! Unless that changed while I was stuck as a slave?"
The room was silent for a long moment, tension thick in the air. After a long moment, General Syndulla spoke.
"While we would have preferred being kept in the loop, we can hardly demand the secrets of people who don't fall under our command," She said, sending the Mon Calamari a look. "Why tell us now?"
"Because he realized that he needed to choose between revealing his powers to Lario, Ayme, and Nova to ensure the mission went well, or basically handicap himself, put the mission at risk but retain his secret. He chose the mission."
"We need to contact him, offer him incentives to join. If we get Intelligence to investigate him, maybe we could find-"
"If you are suggesting we find a way to blackmail the people who rescued me from slavery, we are going to have very strong words, Commander Gadic," Commander Loc said, both of the soldiers sitting next to him looking angry as well.
The aquatic humanoid looked to his superior, who was also clearly unhappy with the avenue he was walking.
"No, no, of course not," He responded, backpedaling. "But think of the edge he would give us! Commander Skywalker has only the smallest amount of training and is one of the Rebellion's best pilots! He blew up the Death Star! This Deacon Roy is clearly better trained, as there are no reports of Skywalker ever doing anything of that scale."
"Deacon has repeatedly assured me that he is not a Jedi and not a Force user because, apparently, those aren't mutually exclusive," Nevue explained, General Syndulla nodding in confirmation. "While it's true he might be delusional, he never gave me a reason to think he would have a problem admitting it."
While Commander Gadic made a snapping noise with his large mouth, a Mon Calamari tell of disbelief and annoyance, General Syndulla leaned forward.
"What else can you tell us?" She asked. "Did he ever meditate? Did he have a lightsaber? Did he ever move things with an invisible force, mess with anyone's mind?"
"His… magic," Nevue started, clearly not liking the word. "Was never invisible, his hands always glowed in some way when he was using it. The closest thing he ever did to meditation was when he was learning a new technique. He would read from a rather large book, which… actually, now that I think about it, he could summon that book from nowhere, and that didn't cause a glow or anything. But he would spend a few hours studying and puzzling it out before practicing it for a while. No meditating and no lightsaber."
"But messing with people's minds?" The Twi'lek asked, getting a wince from the Zabrak.
"He did claim to have two abilities that affect the mind, one of which I experienced shortly after they saved me from slavery," He explained. "I originally refused to cooperate, so he used what he called "Calm," which essentially just made me pliable and gullible. It lasted a few seconds before fading. He also had one called "Fury," which would apparently make someone hostile to everyone around them, including allies, but again only lasted for a short period of time."
"What about his temperament?" General Syndulla asked. "Any bouts of anger? You may not be aware, but I have had some exposure to Force users. Mind manipulation, the ability to conjure lightning, and an unstable mind are prime signs of a dark Force user."
"He never showed any signs of being unstable. The closest thing to an obsession I saw from him was his targeting of slavers on Nar Shaddaa, and he was quick to abandon that when it became dangerous to the team," Commander Loc answered cleanly, with a preciseness that spoke to a growing frustration that he was working hard to contain.
Commander Gadic once again started to say something, and once again, General Syndulla silenced him with a look.
"For now, Deacon's abilities will stay between us. I will share the information on a need-to-know basis with my peers, but since he has been nothing but helpful to the movement, I see no reason to not respect his desire for privacy," General Syndulla said. "And that is an order, Commander Gadic. The last thing we want is to alienate him by being the source of his secret getting out. As much as we might wish that the Alliance has no leaks, we know that's not true."
With a wet rattle, the Mon Calamari equivalent to a groan, Commander Gadic nodded, leaning back in his seat. He was clearly not thrilled, but then again, he was rarely anything other than serious and stoic anyway.
"With that out of the way, Commander, why don't you tell us about the mission?" General Syndulla suggested.
"We arrived on location about four hours away from the stronghold.…"
Commander Loc spent the next hour or so describing how the mission went, from the initial challenge of the base being on full alert to the surprise reveal of the internal turret system and the fight against the superior B2 battle droids. Commander Gadic was clearly very interested in the descriptions of Deacon's abilities but remained silent during the debriefing.
"We discover the reason for the stronghold's existence in the largest luxury suite," He finished. "And looking back, it makes sense. There weren't enough droids to defend from a full invasion, so they most likely hoped that secrecy would be enough. The LPY 3000 was on sit as an escape craft should the base be discovered, and the droids on hand were there to hold off whoever came looking long enough for them to escape… again."
"I agree with your judgment, and so far, the data we have sliced off the top of the data core does as well," Commander Gadic responded. "At least we have that to entice Deacon Roy to return. If they work with us more, perhaps we can convince them to join us on a more permanent basis."
"In any case," General Syndulla said, cutting off Nevue's response. "You managed to secure quite a lot of supplies that we desperately needed, and not just the weapons. The foodstuffs and daily necessities that you brought back are an unexpected and sorely needed addition. We also have the ships Nova will be repairing already picked out, all reasonable projects. We aren't looking to pull any over on someone who has worked with us like Nova has."
They continued to discuss the goods, materials, and resources they obtained from the stronghold, including the credits that would eventually be coming in from the sales of everything they hadn't taken. Eventually, Commander Gadic asked a question that had been on his mind since he had reviewed the shipment logs.
"Why did you take the droids?" He asked, scrolling through his datapad to find the corresponding entry. "I understand that Deacon Roy and his crew claimed ten super battle droids, two droideka, and thirty-five normal battle droids. Why did you take the rest, a total of three hundred droids, mostly B1s with fifty B2s and sixteen droideka?"
"Well… as you can imagine, I had never had the pleasure of fighting separatist droids before," Commander Loc explained. "It was an interesting experience, to say the least. But after, I had an interesting thought. Well, two, actually. The first was that having a group of combatants that you could essentially throw away, both on a large and small scale, could be extremely useful. I know from experience that having a single disposable asset in the field can be incredibly useful. I can imagine that on a larger scale, that continues to be true."
Commander Gadic nodded appreciatively, as did the General, both of them having experience with just such moments.
"I was also struck with how effective a droid could be… if they just weren't so stupid," He continued, General Syndulla scoffing out a laugh. "The B2's were walking heavy weapons platforms, with solid armor. Some of them even had artillery on one arm! But all they did was walk at us slowly. If we paired a B2 to a soldier, let it develop a bit, and trained the soldier to utilize them properly, it could be a potent combination. Even the B1s could be useful with some plating welded to them."
"Are you suggesting we deploy them on a large scale?" The General asked, the Commander gesturing vaguely.
"I'm suggesting we play around with them, see where we can find a use for them," He explained with a shrug. "Worse comes to worst, we drop them in an Imperial compound and tell them to go to work, use them as a distraction. But something tells me that they will be more useful than that. Call it a gut feeling."
"Very well, Commander Loc, I will make a suggestion and see if anyone wants to mess around with them. I'm guessing we will get a few takers, for novelty's sake, if nothing else."
"Thank you, General."
"No, Commander, thank you," She responded, standing up and offering her subordinate her hand, which he gladly shook. "You managed to turn an escort mission into a significant boon with nothing but an extra few days spent. Keep up the good work."
The Zabrak saluted, as did the two soldiers next to him, General Syndulla and Commander Gadic returning the gesture.
"You're dismissed, Commander, go find your old team and introduce them to the start of your new one. You have a day of leave tomorrow, after which we have your next assignment ready."
The newly minted Commander nodded and left the room, the two soldiers following behind him.
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That is correct. The Rebellion before Yavin was a collection of disgruntled groups without much unity past "Empire bad". After Yavin these disparate groups began to coalesce with the addition of large amounts of new blood as popular rebellions began to grow on the fringes. Unlike the Empire there isn't a solid chain of command, more mutual respect and seniority. A true military structure would probably only come about by... Just before Endor, maybe?
Chapter 30
Hello again! So, as usual, I want to remind you I have a Patreon! Right now, board members are eight chapters ahead in Battlemage and four in Mettle, Metal, Meddled. On top of that, Board Members get a say in actual story details, such as naming the crew's first ship! Currently, they are designing another future crew member, having voted on them being a female Shistavanen and currently voting on their history. If having a hand in some story details and early chapters sounds interesting, or you just want to show your support for my attempt at being a full-time writer, just follow the link to my Patreon! Hope you enjoy!
Nova might have been desperate to get me off her station, but she knew better than to keep us from doing a small naming ceremony. Most of the workers turned up to watch Miru use a fancy painting droid to paint the C-ROC's new name along the upper side of the ship, above the new hangar.
"What does it mean?" One of the workers asked. "I don't recognize the name."
"It's a name from one of my home planet's legends," I explained. "About a mortal king with the soul of a dragon who rose to godhood."
The large red words "Talos Chariot" contrasted with the rest of the light tan hull. There were still some blue highlights in a few spots, leftovers from the CIS markings, but Miru promised that she would fix that once we landed at our next destination.
The naming ceremony was short, a simple speech in a language I didn't recognize, but that one of the craftsmen assured me was a blessing of some sort. When that was done, we poured a blue drink of some kind over one of the landing struts, passing the remaining liquid around for those who witnessed the event to take a single sip. It was a sweet syrupy liquor, one that seemed really out of place in a ritual like this.
As quickly as it started, the ceremony was over, the workers probably sensing how impatient Nova was. With minimal delay, we climbed up the access ramp and made our way up to the bridge, Nal was silent, sitting down in the pilot's chair, while Tatnia dropped into the copilot's seat beside him. I sat down in the comms seat, tabbing through a few things to check out the sensor readings, mostly to pass the time. Behind me, Miru sat down at a gunner's seat, though she didn't activate anything, instead spinning around to watch us. After about ten minutes, Nal looked over at me.
"We're all set, Boss."
"Take us out. I already checked the cargo bay. We have everything owed to us."
The blue-skinned Duros nodded and tapped a few more things before grabbing the primary control sticks, dialing something down, and lifting us off the hangar floor. Slowly but surely, we pulled out of the massive hangar bay, the people who had remained watching us go. When the blue film of the mag-field finally pulled away completely, Nal increased our speed and continued to pull away until there were several hundred meters between us and the station. Once we were at a generously safe distance, he shifted the ship's orientation and guided us into the darkness of space.
"Okay, can I ask what that was about now?" Miru asked, looking over at me with exasperation. "Why did Nova turn into a jerk all of a sudden?"
"She thought I was a Jedi," I explained, still focused on the comms panel in front of me. "She was worried what kind of backlash that would bring."
"But she was supporting the Rebellion!" The teenager responded. "She should be happy you were around doing stuff!"
"My abilities are a big unknown for most people," I explained, shaking my head and turning my seat to face the confused girl. "And that scares a lot of them. To be fair to her, if I was a Jedi, she would be right, being there could lead dangerous people to her station. The Force… it can be like a signal flare to other people tapping into it."
"But you don't use it… right?"
"I don't, but I couldn't convince her of that," I answered with a shrug. "Not much I can do about it. She paid us our share, gave us what we negotiated for, and finished our repairs and modifications. I'm sorry that I got us the boot, but next time-"
"It's her fault for being paranoid," Tatnia said, cutting my apology off. "We weren't welcome anyway. Besides, we have places to be."
"Was getting bored," Nal added simply. "What was the final total?"
"Thirty-two thousand and some change deposited into our account," I said with a smile. "Not bad considering what else we got out of the deal."
One of the first things I did with our downtime was figure out how to store our money better. Hauling around so many credit ingots and chips had been a constant source of stress. Luckily most banking groups, including the independent group that we were now using, had systems in place for mercenary groups like ours. Tatnia, Nal, and I had access to the funds, and could pull and put money in whenever we wanted, though anything over a certain amount sent out a warning, and going even high required the permission of multiple account holders. I could also set up ancillary accounts for anyone working for us, shifting their cuts into these accounts for them to access and to do with as they please.
"That will last us a few months with the supplies we already have," Tatnia said. "Fuel is what's going to cut into that the most. That and docking fees."
"Which means we need to hurry up and recruit some more members so we can start taking jobs," I asked, craning my neck to look over Nal's shoulder. "How long will it take to plot a course?"
"I got the navigator working on it earlier, it's already finished."
"Alright, whenever you're ready," I responded, tapping my console into hibernation. "The quicker we get to Ter'skar, the better."
"It's pronounced Terr'skiar," Nal corrected as I stood from my console and stretched, leaving the bridge and heading back.
We had talked a lot about where our first destination would be, and after a bit of a discussion, we decided that the best place to start looking for new recruits would be a world with plenty of traffic, specifically a trade world. Hyperspace lanes occasionally intersected on systems with habitable worlds, which then exploded with trade and other industries. Tatnia, who had experience traveling around to worlds like Terr'skiar, assured me we would find what we were looking for there.
"I guarantee there will be several cantinas nearby, no matter where we land, that are known as a place that pilots without ships go to hang out," She said over a cup of caf. "If we land around a big city, I'm willing to bet there will be a bar filled with pilots who specifically fly Corellian ships!"
"What about fighters? People who will join us when we are doing actual mercenary work?"
"They'll be around," Tatnia assured me. "Might have to look a little harder, but they will be there. It's a big planet, and it's easy to get stuck at a place like this if your ride sells out or loses their ship."
As Tatnia and Nal piloted the ship, Miru and I headed down to the cargo hold, exploring the recently finished hangar bays. They already had ships inside them, the two tri fighters on one side and two of the vulture droids on the other. The two remaining vulture droids were in pieces, stored in the cargo bay in a large cargo container.
"What do you think?" I asked the young, mechanically inclined Twi'lek. "Did they do a good job?"
"It's a bit bare bones, but yeah, it's well built," She answered, heading over to port side bay, examining one of the tri fighters. "I'm going to have one of the droids work on connecting them to the intercom system and connecting systems to the bridge, but yeah."
I watched her fiddle with the tri-fighter for a few minutes before she pulled back and frowned.
"What's wrong?"
"I was hoping I would be able to crack one of these open with standard tools, but they used something proprietary," She answered. "I'm going to have to cut it open."
"Why do you need to cut it open?" I asked. "What did you want these for anyway? I have to warn you that if we manage to get our hands on a pilot-capable starfighter, the vulture droids are first on the chopping block of what gets the boot."
"I want to get them working again," She explained. "Racer has a copy of their command codes, and I think I can get them active."
"Be very, very, very careful with that Miru, droid ships might have a bad reputation for being junk nowadays, but they are still very lethal. If you flip their switch and they go hostile inside of the ship...?"
"I know, I'm disabling a bunch of their systems first," She assured me. "I think the tri fighters will be the best place to start, most of their intelligence is already part of the starfighter, so I should be able to just modify that programing a bit. The vulture droids, though? They relied on the central computer to do a lot of their thinking…."
She trailed off as she focused on what she was working on, leaving the hangar bay quiet. After a moment, I turned to go, and she stopped and turned to me.
"Deacon… Thanks for getting all this stuff. The tools, the droids, the ships. We would have gotten a much bigger cut if you hadn't gotten all of this for me."
"Hey, you're our head mechanic, I need to keep you stocked and ready to keep this ship in top shape," I said with a smile. "Besides, so far, you haven't given me any reason to regret indulging you."
"I promise you won't! I'll start paying for my own stuff and-" She responded, her eyes getting wide before I held up my hand.
"That wasn't a threat or a bottom line Miru, just stating a fact," I explained before gesturing around. "I mean, look, you took a small suggestion I made and drastically improved the Chariot's capabilities. These hangar bays are superior in every way to those cargo lanes and massively increased our effectiveness. As long as your tinkering occasionally leads to stuff like this, I am more than happy to cut engineering a bigger budget. Just do me a favor and keep me updated on your plans and how your tinkering goes, okay?"
She turned away from me, looking intently at the robotic starfighter in front of her. I could hear her sniff slightly and watched as she wiped her face before turning back.
"Yeah, I can definitely do that, Boss."
"Good. Now I'm going to go-"
I stopped talking as the ship shifted slightly around us, the telltale sign that we had jumped to lightspeed.
"I'm gonna take a more accurate stock of what our food looks like and start working on a shopping list. If you think of anything, just tell me, let me know."
She nodded and got back to work before quickly looking back at me.
"Oh! By the way, Racer is in his charging bay, running a defrag and corruption scan. I might have been a bit rough removing some of the loyalty parameters concerning Nova after she started being rude to you…."
I chuckled and nodded before exiting the hangar bay, a smaller section of the huge access door opening to let me through, sealing shut behind me. In truth, the list I was hoping to put together was less of a shopping list and more of a shopping, salvage and stealing list. Some of the stuff we would inevitably end up having to buy, but the more we could salvage and steal while on the job, at least from criminals, the better.
"Definitely need to pick up a replacement for the A5…" I mumbled to myself, pulling out my datapad and starting the list with "armed speeder support."
Taking stock of the food didn't take long, nor did coming up with a long list of things I wanted us to have access to. I was hoping we could gather some of the stuff on the list over time, like speeder bikes. Everyone and their uncle had a speeder bike, and there was no doubt in my mind that we would end up salvaging more than a few.
On the other hand, one thing I was sure we would end up having to buy was some good quality armor. I knew for a fact that there were metals out there that you could make blaster-proof armor from, phrik being one that came to mind, but I knew that was prohibitively expensive. Still, I refused to believe that there wasn't someone out there producing actually effective armor that was also vaguely affordable, I just needed to find them. I remember there being a massive variety of armor in Knights of the Old Republic games, so where was the "modern" equivalent?
I added an addendum to the armor entry on my list, the word "custom?" followed by a few credit signs dollar. I wondered what kind of state Mandalore was in and if there was some Mandalorian armor we could buy. It would be massively expensive, for sure, but potentially worth the investment.
With a dozen and one idea bouncing around in my skull, I slid my datapad back into my jacket before heading back up to the second deck, heading to the captain's room, which I had reluctantly accepted as my own. I had attempted to convince Nova that she should split the larger room in half and turn them both, as well as the private bathroom, into more bedrooms, but she wasn't having it, insisting that the captain's room was an important part of the ship. I had to admit that her point of not having one decrease the resale value of the ship made sense, but I never planned on selling this ship, so it didn't really matter.
I sat down at the corner of my bed, slowly pulling off my boots, my jacket, and my armor, which I had taken to wearing around near constantly. As I finished and looked around, I had to admit having my own space would be nice. Having a bigger bed wasn't bad either, even if I knew that Tatnia had a bigger one in her room. She had somehow actually convinced Nova to take one of the luxury beds from the CIS hidey hole and put it in her room. It filled up most of the room, but I had a feeling she thought it was completely worth it.
As I got undressed from my heavier gear, I could feel the tension falling off of me. Not having a place to call my own, a place to work from, to return to, to really call home, it had been grating on me, especially after a week of feeling the unwelcome vibes that Nova had been throwing off. The fact that I was sharing that home with my crew, a team of people who I could trust, that only made it better.
I stood up from the bed and made my way to the computer terminal in the corner of the room, sitting down in the comfortable chair and spinning to face the computer. I locked the system off with a flick before summoning my grimoire and laying it across the now blank pad. I had been kicking myself for not learning the respite spell during the assault on the CIS base, and while I had focused on other things during our week on Nova's station, there was no way I would pass up on the opportunity now.
I leaned back in the chair, sinking into the surprisingly comfortable cushion as I started to read through the description of the spell again, before eventually moving onto the general structure of the two leveled matrices. We had almost a full day in hyperspace before we would arrive at Terr'skiar, which meant I had plenty of time to learn this spell and master it.
Nova might have been desperate to get me off her station, but she knew better than to keep us from doing a small naming ceremony. Most of the workers turned up to watch Miru use a fancy painting droid to paint the C-ROC's new name along the upper side of the ship, above the new hangar.
"What does it mean?" One of the workers asked. "I don't recognize the name."
"It's a name from one of my home planet's legends," I explained. "About a mortal king with the soul of a dragon who rose to godhood."
The large red words "Talos Chariot" contrasted with the rest of the light tan hull. There were still some blue highlights in a few spots, leftovers from the CIS markings, but Miru promised that she would fix that once we landed at our next destination.
The naming ceremony was short, a simple speech in a language I didn't recognize, but that one of the craftsmen assured me was a blessing of some sort. When that was done, we poured a blue drink of some kind over one of the landing struts, passing the remaining liquid around for those who witnessed the event to take a single sip. It was a sweet syrupy liquor, one that seemed really out of place in a ritual like this.
As quickly as it started, the ceremony was over, the workers probably sensing how impatient Nova was. With minimal delay, we climbed up the access ramp and made our way up to the bridge, Nal was silent, sitting down in the pilot's chair, while Tatnia dropped into the copilot's seat beside him. I sat down in the comms seat, tabbing through a few things to check out the sensor readings, mostly to pass the time. Behind me, Miru sat down at a gunner's seat, though she didn't activate anything, instead spinning around to watch us. After about ten minutes, Nal looked over at me.
"We're all set, Boss."
"Take us out. I already checked the cargo bay. We have everything owed to us."
The blue-skinned Duros nodded and tapped a few more things before grabbing the primary control sticks, dialing something down, and lifting us off the hangar floor. Slowly but surely, we pulled out of the massive hangar bay, the people who had remained watching us go. When the blue film of the mag-field finally pulled away completely, Nal increased our speed and continued to pull away until there were several hundred meters between us and the station. Once we were at a generously safe distance, he shifted the ship's orientation and guided us into the darkness of space.
"Okay, can I ask what that was about now?" Miru asked, looking over at me with exasperation. "Why did Nova turn into a jerk all of a sudden?"
"She thought I was a Jedi," I explained, still focused on the comms panel in front of me. "She was worried what kind of backlash that would bring."
"But she was supporting the Rebellion!" The teenager responded. "She should be happy you were around doing stuff!"
"My abilities are a big unknown for most people," I explained, shaking my head and turning my seat to face the confused girl. "And that scares a lot of them. To be fair to her, if I was a Jedi, she would be right, being there could lead dangerous people to her station. The Force… it can be like a signal flare to other people tapping into it."
"But you don't use it… right?"
"I don't, but I couldn't convince her of that," I answered with a shrug. "Not much I can do about it. She paid us our share, gave us what we negotiated for, and finished our repairs and modifications. I'm sorry that I got us the boot, but next time-"
"It's her fault for being paranoid," Tatnia said, cutting my apology off. "We weren't welcome anyway. Besides, we have places to be."
"Was getting bored," Nal added simply. "What was the final total?"
"Thirty-two thousand and some change deposited into our account," I said with a smile. "Not bad considering what else we got out of the deal."
One of the first things I did with our downtime was figure out how to store our money better. Hauling around so many credit ingots and chips had been a constant source of stress. Luckily most banking groups, including the independent group that we were now using, had systems in place for mercenary groups like ours. Tatnia, Nal, and I had access to the funds, and could pull and put money in whenever we wanted, though anything over a certain amount sent out a warning, and going even high required the permission of multiple account holders. I could also set up ancillary accounts for anyone working for us, shifting their cuts into these accounts for them to access and to do with as they please.
"That will last us a few months with the supplies we already have," Tatnia said. "Fuel is what's going to cut into that the most. That and docking fees."
"Which means we need to hurry up and recruit some more members so we can start taking jobs," I asked, craning my neck to look over Nal's shoulder. "How long will it take to plot a course?"
"I got the navigator working on it earlier, it's already finished."
"Alright, whenever you're ready," I responded, tapping my console into hibernation. "The quicker we get to Ter'skar, the better."
"It's pronounced Terr'skiar," Nal corrected as I stood from my console and stretched, leaving the bridge and heading back.
We had talked a lot about where our first destination would be, and after a bit of a discussion, we decided that the best place to start looking for new recruits would be a world with plenty of traffic, specifically a trade world. Hyperspace lanes occasionally intersected on systems with habitable worlds, which then exploded with trade and other industries. Tatnia, who had experience traveling around to worlds like Terr'skiar, assured me we would find what we were looking for there.
"I guarantee there will be several cantinas nearby, no matter where we land, that are known as a place that pilots without ships go to hang out," She said over a cup of caf. "If we land around a big city, I'm willing to bet there will be a bar filled with pilots who specifically fly Corellian ships!"
"What about fighters? People who will join us when we are doing actual mercenary work?"
"They'll be around," Tatnia assured me. "Might have to look a little harder, but they will be there. It's a big planet, and it's easy to get stuck at a place like this if your ride sells out or loses their ship."
As Tatnia and Nal piloted the ship, Miru and I headed down to the cargo hold, exploring the recently finished hangar bays. They already had ships inside them, the two tri fighters on one side and two of the vulture droids on the other. The two remaining vulture droids were in pieces, stored in the cargo bay in a large cargo container.
"What do you think?" I asked the young, mechanically inclined Twi'lek. "Did they do a good job?"
"It's a bit bare bones, but yeah, it's well built," She answered, heading over to port side bay, examining one of the tri fighters. "I'm going to have one of the droids work on connecting them to the intercom system and connecting systems to the bridge, but yeah."
I watched her fiddle with the tri-fighter for a few minutes before she pulled back and frowned.
"What's wrong?"
"I was hoping I would be able to crack one of these open with standard tools, but they used something proprietary," She answered. "I'm going to have to cut it open."
"Why do you need to cut it open?" I asked. "What did you want these for anyway? I have to warn you that if we manage to get our hands on a pilot-capable starfighter, the vulture droids are first on the chopping block of what gets the boot."
"I want to get them working again," She explained. "Racer has a copy of their command codes, and I think I can get them active."
"Be very, very, very careful with that Miru, droid ships might have a bad reputation for being junk nowadays, but they are still very lethal. If you flip their switch and they go hostile inside of the ship...?"
"I know, I'm disabling a bunch of their systems first," She assured me. "I think the tri fighters will be the best place to start, most of their intelligence is already part of the starfighter, so I should be able to just modify that programing a bit. The vulture droids, though? They relied on the central computer to do a lot of their thinking…."
She trailed off as she focused on what she was working on, leaving the hangar bay quiet. After a moment, I turned to go, and she stopped and turned to me.
"Deacon… Thanks for getting all this stuff. The tools, the droids, the ships. We would have gotten a much bigger cut if you hadn't gotten all of this for me."
"Hey, you're our head mechanic, I need to keep you stocked and ready to keep this ship in top shape," I said with a smile. "Besides, so far, you haven't given me any reason to regret indulging you."
"I promise you won't! I'll start paying for my own stuff and-" She responded, her eyes getting wide before I held up my hand.
"That wasn't a threat or a bottom line Miru, just stating a fact," I explained before gesturing around. "I mean, look, you took a small suggestion I made and drastically improved the Chariot's capabilities. These hangar bays are superior in every way to those cargo lanes and massively increased our effectiveness. As long as your tinkering occasionally leads to stuff like this, I am more than happy to cut engineering a bigger budget. Just do me a favor and keep me updated on your plans and how your tinkering goes, okay?"
She turned away from me, looking intently at the robotic starfighter in front of her. I could hear her sniff slightly and watched as she wiped her face before turning back.
"Yeah, I can definitely do that, Boss."
"Good. Now I'm going to go-"
I stopped talking as the ship shifted slightly around us, the telltale sign that we had jumped to lightspeed.
"I'm gonna take a more accurate stock of what our food looks like and start working on a shopping list. If you think of anything, just tell me, let me know."
She nodded and got back to work before quickly looking back at me.
"Oh! By the way, Racer is in his charging bay, running a defrag and corruption scan. I might have been a bit rough removing some of the loyalty parameters concerning Nova after she started being rude to you…."
I chuckled and nodded before exiting the hangar bay, a smaller section of the huge access door opening to let me through, sealing shut behind me. In truth, the list I was hoping to put together was less of a shopping list and more of a shopping, salvage and stealing list. Some of the stuff we would inevitably end up having to buy, but the more we could salvage and steal while on the job, at least from criminals, the better.
"Definitely need to pick up a replacement for the A5…" I mumbled to myself, pulling out my datapad and starting the list with "armed speeder support."
Taking stock of the food didn't take long, nor did coming up with a long list of things I wanted us to have access to. I was hoping we could gather some of the stuff on the list over time, like speeder bikes. Everyone and their uncle had a speeder bike, and there was no doubt in my mind that we would end up salvaging more than a few.
On the other hand, one thing I was sure we would end up having to buy was some good quality armor. I knew for a fact that there were metals out there that you could make blaster-proof armor from, phrik being one that came to mind, but I knew that was prohibitively expensive. Still, I refused to believe that there wasn't someone out there producing actually effective armor that was also vaguely affordable, I just needed to find them. I remember there being a massive variety of armor in Knights of the Old Republic games, so where was the "modern" equivalent?
I added an addendum to the armor entry on my list, the word "custom?" followed by a few credit signs dollar. I wondered what kind of state Mandalore was in and if there was some Mandalorian armor we could buy. It would be massively expensive, for sure, but potentially worth the investment.
With a dozen and one idea bouncing around in my skull, I slid my datapad back into my jacket before heading back up to the second deck, heading to the captain's room, which I had reluctantly accepted as my own. I had attempted to convince Nova that she should split the larger room in half and turn them both, as well as the private bathroom, into more bedrooms, but she wasn't having it, insisting that the captain's room was an important part of the ship. I had to admit that her point of not having one decrease the resale value of the ship made sense, but I never planned on selling this ship, so it didn't really matter.
I sat down at the corner of my bed, slowly pulling off my boots, my jacket, and my armor, which I had taken to wearing around near constantly. As I finished and looked around, I had to admit having my own space would be nice. Having a bigger bed wasn't bad either, even if I knew that Tatnia had a bigger one in her room. She had somehow actually convinced Nova to take one of the luxury beds from the CIS hidey hole and put it in her room. It filled up most of the room, but I had a feeling she thought it was completely worth it.
As I got undressed from my heavier gear, I could feel the tension falling off of me. Not having a place to call my own, a place to work from, to return to, to really call home, it had been grating on me, especially after a week of feeling the unwelcome vibes that Nova had been throwing off. The fact that I was sharing that home with my crew, a team of people who I could trust, that only made it better.
I stood up from the bed and made my way to the computer terminal in the corner of the room, sitting down in the comfortable chair and spinning to face the computer. I locked the system off with a flick before summoning my grimoire and laying it across the now blank pad. I had been kicking myself for not learning the respite spell during the assault on the CIS base, and while I had focused on other things during our week on Nova's station, there was no way I would pass up on the opportunity now.
I leaned back in the chair, sinking into the surprisingly comfortable cushion as I started to read through the description of the spell again, before eventually moving onto the general structure of the two leveled matrices. We had almost a full day in hyperspace before we would arrive at Terr'skiar, which meant I had plenty of time to learn this spell and master it.
Thanks for the chapter.
Chapter 31
Landing on a planet that was as active as Terr'skiar was an interesting experience. As we approached the planet, the planetary space command for our sector contacted us directly, asking who we were and what our purpose was. Tatnia gave them our information, our purpose, as well as several other bits of information. Typically, the person on the comms station would do that, but while I could use the console, I had been focusing on the sensor portion. I was learning, though.
After a few minutes of comms silence, we were told to move to a specific set of coordinates while they found a berth for us to land at.
"Trade worlds are usually the easiest to get in and out of," Nal explained as we essentially pulled into a queue behind a few other ships. "You wait your turn, then land. Occasionally have to deal with a surprise inspection."
"Do we have to worry about an inspection?" I asked. "We do have some military stuff on board…."
"Borderline, they wouldn't hassle us for it unless something else was wrong," He explained. "Can't blame people for wanting to defend their ships."
"Are other places harder to get on?"
"Depends on what kind of Imperial presence is on the planet, usually," Tatnia answered, still looking down at her console. "Some worlds just don't like offworlders or cater to "High Class" groups, so they try to keep control over who's coming and going. Government-funded landing pads only, strict control of who can and can't come in, that kind of stuff."
"And trade worlds are different because that makes business slow?" I guessed, getting a nod in response
"And time is credits. All that stuff slows the trading process down to a crawl," She explained. "The Empire expects trade groups to protect themselves."
As we waited, Miru joined us on the bridge, dropping down into an empty seat and spinning around once before facing the rest of us. After a few minutes of toying with her datapad she finally spoke up.
"So… if I have a list of things that I think we should have on hand, would you guys get it for me?" She asked, biting her lip. "Not stuff for personal projects, but for ship repair."
"What do you need?"
"The biggest concern right now is metal stock," She explained. "I need to be able to put together a rig or patch a crack or even reinforce something to prevent problems," She explained, shifting a lekku around her shoulder. "We have a good stock of internal parts from the base. Those crates you got easily have twenty-five thousand credits worth of parts and materials, probably more."
"Seriously?" I asked with wide eyes. "I had no idea, we didn't count them as being nearly worth that."
"Mhmm, it's more than enough for basic repair and would be sufficient to repair a lot of intentional damage," She explained. "But we would still need a general stock of metal to fix things that aren't standard parts or to build anything you might want."
"Okay, we can get that, Nal?" I asked, the older Duros nodding at me. "Since you're staying here to watch the ship, work with Miru to get what we need, preferably shipped to us since we don't have any way to get it ourselves. Better to air on the side of surplus, but keep it reasonable."
We chatted a bit more before a beep on the console got our attention, prompting Tatnia to activate the comms unit at the co-pilots seat, Nal motioning us to quiet down.
"Attention, Talos Chariot, you are being directed to sector 5B, please make your way to the accompanying coordinates and enter the atmosphere. Be aware that entering restricted airspace will net you a substantial fine, and refusal to leave will result in your speedy destruction. Have a safe trip."
It took another fifteen minutes for us to get in position and follow the proper directions into the atmosphere, the larger ship easily staying steady all the way down to the large landing pad. The pad was four or five miles from one of the several massive city centers that dotted the trade planet.
As we slowly made our descent, the sound of the Chariot's massive landing gear being deployed vibrated through the ship. As we finally made contact with the thick ferrocrete landing pad, we could feel the landing gear absorb the last bit of inertia, the built-in shock absorbers easily handling it.
"Alright, meet you down at the boarding ramp in five Tatnia, I need to get my stuff," I said, standing from the sensor station.
As I stood and started leaving the bridge, Miru jumped up and followed me out, walking quickly past me, and heading down the first set of stairs to the first deck. I was just about done getting ready when I grabbed my holster, only to find it empty. With a curse, I strapped it on and started looking around my room for it. After a minute or so, I tapped on the intercom.
"Nal, have you seen-" I started to ask, only for my door to open, Miru standing on the other side, holding my pistol and looking slightly winded. "Never mind."
The young mechanic winced and held my weapon out to me, gripping the barrel so I could grab it by the grip.
"Sorry, I wanted to surprise you with it," She explained as I slid it back into its holster. "I fixed the charging shot option, so you can use that now if you need a bit more of a punch."
"I thought that was going to take some specific parts," I said, trying to remember what Nal initially said. "How did you manage that?"
"It wasn't hard, the parts are common. I just needed a few bits from one of the super battle droids and one of the spare pistols we got from the CIS base," She said with a smug smirk, following me as I made my way down to the first deck. "So you activate it by pressing the button on the side and pulling the trigger, that's what starts the charging. You can charge it for just a second to add an extra kick, but if you hold the trigger down for long enough, it will dump everything left in the pack."
As she explained how it worked, I pulled the pistol out, examining it as we walked, stopping by the interior side of the airlock.
"Be careful, though, once you start the overcharge, you're committed, the only way to release that energy is to shoot it. And you can't hold it for too long either, you'll melt the pistol in your hands. Also, shooting too many overcharged shots in a row will make it overheat and stop responding until it cools down."
I nodded, flipping the pistol over to check the other side before sliding it back into my holster.
"Thanks, Miru, this will come in handy eventually," I said, tapping the door open and walking through, nodding to Tatnia, who was already lowering the ramp. "Make sure you don't overwork yourself, alright?"
"Alright, have fun and good luck!" She said before heading to her workshop, walking out of view.
As we left down the boarding ramp, I tapped the intercom right by the stairway.
"The ship's yours, Nal, let us know if anything comes up."
"Will do, Boss. Good luck."
As we crossed the large landing pad that the space traffic controller assigned us, which was just big enough for the Chariot to land on, Tatnia brought up a question I had been contemplating for a while now.
"So, boss… How are we going to handle this whole thing?" She asked as she pulled out her comm unit to call a speeder taxi. "We got a couple secrets that it might be better not to share."
"Yeah, I've been trying to figure that out myself," I admitted, watching the sky for a moment. "I think that our best bet is to be as honest as possible at first. We are a small crew who just got their hands on a ship. We want to expand our crew, including a full-time pilot and maybe a co-pilot. We expect that we might get into some trouble eventually, as we plan on being bounty hunters, mercenaries, and all-around for-hire muscle. Emphasize that we will not be doing anything morally wrong, but sometimes the law is part of the problem."
As I talked, Tatnia spotted an incoming speeder, which slowed greatly as it dropped down below forty feet. I waved to get the driver's attention, who angled slightly to land near us.
"And your magic?" She asked, which caught me off guard. I knew I had called it magic a few times, but so far, no one else had seriously called it that.
"That's something we can save for a while until we really get a sense for them," I answered, holding my hand up to block some of the dust the speeder was kicking our way. "Ideally, we find at least a pilot, maybe a co-pilot, and at least two more people to join us on missions. A team of five sounds like a good place to start."
"Think we should introduce ourselves as adventurers?" She asked with a teasing smirk.
"Laugh now, but after a few months of doing the kind of things I have planned, you'll be calling it that, too," I responded confidently, getting a curious-looking response.
"What kind of stuff do you have in mind anyway?" She asked as we both climbed into the Taxi, looking forward to the droid controlling the speeder. "Take us to a pilot bar, someplace they go while looking for more work. If there is somewhere that people specialize in Corellian ships, go there."
The droid beeped a confirmation before the speeder lifted off into the air again, its repulsorlifts whining as it accelerated.
"I have a few ideas for some… potentially weird stuff," I admitted. "But we should start off with some basic mercenary or bounty work, so we can familiarize ourselves with the new people. I also need to work a bit more on my… Tracking equipment. I've been working on it off and on, but if I get better at it, I'll probably be able to lead us to quite a few interesting things."
"And in the meantime?"
"We take basic mercenary work, take out bounties, stuff like that," I explained, continuing when Tatnia gave me a look. "You're telling me that there aren't places to find that kind of stuff? I mean, if we can head to a bar and expect it to be filled with pilots looking for work, there have to be bars where mercenaries go looking for work, right?"
"Usually… alright, fair point," She admitted. "How do you know that if you never left your backwater planet?"
"The more things change, the more they stay the same," I responded. "You just gotta know what trope to apply where."
After thirty minutes of traveling, the speeder taxi landed in an open area, a small screen lighting asking for payment. I swiped my credit chip, the screen blinking green before the door swung up to let us out.
"Your destination is twenty feet down the road, a bar called the Star Song." The droid said before the door closed behind us, sealing it shut.
We quickly got off the street and made our way to where the droid described. When we got closer, Tatnia put her hand on my shoulder, getting my attention.
"I know you're not an idiot, but… just let me take the lead at first, okay?" She said. "I know a thing or two about this, so I'll find some people, and you can lead the actual recruitment, sound good?"
"Works for me," I agreed.
"Good. When we go in, don't freak out studying everyone, you'll just put everyone on edge. We go in, find a place to sit, preferably at the bar and relax for a while."
I nodded and followed her, making our way to a ferrocrete building that was painted blue, with the roof painted an even, navy blue. The front doors were a gray-black color and opened easily as Tatnia led us inside. It took a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the low light, but after a few seconds, we headed straight to the bar.
The cantina was about half full, which was kind of surprising considering how early in the day it was. Quite a few people turned to look at us but quickly went back to their drinks and conversations. Wordlessly, Tatnia nodded to the bar, and both of us made our way there, claiming two seats for ourselves. The human bartender gave us a look, and Tatnia held up two fingers.
"Two Elba beers," She said, the black-haired man nodding and turning to an enormous container, pulling it open, and pulling two green bottles out.
As we sipped our drinks Tatnia and I made small talk, discussing what kind of speeder we should be looking for.
"I would love to have the A5 back," I said, shaking my head. "That was pretty much exactly what we needed. Slightly armored, armed, big enough to carry us around, could switch between air speeder and ground speeder."
"Would it even fit in the hold?" Tatnia asked. "Or the cargo elevator?"
"Doesn't matter, it would have definitely fit in one of the hangars, and it would have been well worth the space."
"We need a transport ship, one that will fit in the hangar," She said after a silent moment. "Landing the Chariot every time we have business is going to get old quickly."
"What kind of options do we have?
"It's a bit tight, but we can probably find something. Might end up being an ugly no-name box, but there are plenty of those out there, just gotta find one that isn't bantha-shit."
We continued to chat for a while, each having a second beer before Tatnia waved over to the barkeep. She slid a ten-credit ingot on the table and smiled.
"We are looking for a pilot, someone with experience in larger Corellian ships, any recommendations?"
"How big?" He asked, reaching out to take the money
"An old Gozanti class."
"...Try Calima over there, the Tholothian," He said after a moment, pointing across the bar. "She's been planetside for a bit, but she seems kind enough."
I followed his gesture to see a humanoid woman with darker skin that was tinged blue and, in some places, purple. Her head was capped with large, dense-looking dark blue scales, almost like an indigo turtle shell. Coming from that cap were around a dozen all-white tendrils hanging down to her shoulder, each starting an inch or so wide and growing thicker the further down you went, almost like a paddle or a scoop. She was sitting perpendicular to us on the other side of the bar but seemed focused on her datapad.
I stood up, stretching my leg a bit before Tatnia grabbed my arm to get my attention.
"Tholothians can live a really long time, so don't assume her age," She warned before turning back to the bartender. "A refill for whatever she is drinking now."
He smirked and grabbed a glass, filled it with ice, and poured in what appeared to be just water before placing it on the bar top.
"On the house."
Tatnia gave him a sour look, but I just chuckled and gave him a two-finger salute before grabbing my beer and the glass of water, before heading over to the women's table.
"C'mon, let's introduce ourselves."
After a few minutes of comms silence, we were told to move to a specific set of coordinates while they found a berth for us to land at.
"Trade worlds are usually the easiest to get in and out of," Nal explained as we essentially pulled into a queue behind a few other ships. "You wait your turn, then land. Occasionally have to deal with a surprise inspection."
"Do we have to worry about an inspection?" I asked. "We do have some military stuff on board…."
"Borderline, they wouldn't hassle us for it unless something else was wrong," He explained. "Can't blame people for wanting to defend their ships."
"Are other places harder to get on?"
"Depends on what kind of Imperial presence is on the planet, usually," Tatnia answered, still looking down at her console. "Some worlds just don't like offworlders or cater to "High Class" groups, so they try to keep control over who's coming and going. Government-funded landing pads only, strict control of who can and can't come in, that kind of stuff."
"And trade worlds are different because that makes business slow?" I guessed, getting a nod in response
"And time is credits. All that stuff slows the trading process down to a crawl," She explained. "The Empire expects trade groups to protect themselves."
As we waited, Miru joined us on the bridge, dropping down into an empty seat and spinning around once before facing the rest of us. After a few minutes of toying with her datapad she finally spoke up.
"So… if I have a list of things that I think we should have on hand, would you guys get it for me?" She asked, biting her lip. "Not stuff for personal projects, but for ship repair."
"What do you need?"
"The biggest concern right now is metal stock," She explained. "I need to be able to put together a rig or patch a crack or even reinforce something to prevent problems," She explained, shifting a lekku around her shoulder. "We have a good stock of internal parts from the base. Those crates you got easily have twenty-five thousand credits worth of parts and materials, probably more."
"Seriously?" I asked with wide eyes. "I had no idea, we didn't count them as being nearly worth that."
"Mhmm, it's more than enough for basic repair and would be sufficient to repair a lot of intentional damage," She explained. "But we would still need a general stock of metal to fix things that aren't standard parts or to build anything you might want."
"Okay, we can get that, Nal?" I asked, the older Duros nodding at me. "Since you're staying here to watch the ship, work with Miru to get what we need, preferably shipped to us since we don't have any way to get it ourselves. Better to air on the side of surplus, but keep it reasonable."
We chatted a bit more before a beep on the console got our attention, prompting Tatnia to activate the comms unit at the co-pilots seat, Nal motioning us to quiet down.
"Attention, Talos Chariot, you are being directed to sector 5B, please make your way to the accompanying coordinates and enter the atmosphere. Be aware that entering restricted airspace will net you a substantial fine, and refusal to leave will result in your speedy destruction. Have a safe trip."
It took another fifteen minutes for us to get in position and follow the proper directions into the atmosphere, the larger ship easily staying steady all the way down to the large landing pad. The pad was four or five miles from one of the several massive city centers that dotted the trade planet.
As we slowly made our descent, the sound of the Chariot's massive landing gear being deployed vibrated through the ship. As we finally made contact with the thick ferrocrete landing pad, we could feel the landing gear absorb the last bit of inertia, the built-in shock absorbers easily handling it.
"Alright, meet you down at the boarding ramp in five Tatnia, I need to get my stuff," I said, standing from the sensor station.
As I stood and started leaving the bridge, Miru jumped up and followed me out, walking quickly past me, and heading down the first set of stairs to the first deck. I was just about done getting ready when I grabbed my holster, only to find it empty. With a curse, I strapped it on and started looking around my room for it. After a minute or so, I tapped on the intercom.
"Nal, have you seen-" I started to ask, only for my door to open, Miru standing on the other side, holding my pistol and looking slightly winded. "Never mind."
The young mechanic winced and held my weapon out to me, gripping the barrel so I could grab it by the grip.
"Sorry, I wanted to surprise you with it," She explained as I slid it back into its holster. "I fixed the charging shot option, so you can use that now if you need a bit more of a punch."
"I thought that was going to take some specific parts," I said, trying to remember what Nal initially said. "How did you manage that?"
"It wasn't hard, the parts are common. I just needed a few bits from one of the super battle droids and one of the spare pistols we got from the CIS base," She said with a smug smirk, following me as I made my way down to the first deck. "So you activate it by pressing the button on the side and pulling the trigger, that's what starts the charging. You can charge it for just a second to add an extra kick, but if you hold the trigger down for long enough, it will dump everything left in the pack."
As she explained how it worked, I pulled the pistol out, examining it as we walked, stopping by the interior side of the airlock.
"Be careful, though, once you start the overcharge, you're committed, the only way to release that energy is to shoot it. And you can't hold it for too long either, you'll melt the pistol in your hands. Also, shooting too many overcharged shots in a row will make it overheat and stop responding until it cools down."
I nodded, flipping the pistol over to check the other side before sliding it back into my holster.
"Thanks, Miru, this will come in handy eventually," I said, tapping the door open and walking through, nodding to Tatnia, who was already lowering the ramp. "Make sure you don't overwork yourself, alright?"
"Alright, have fun and good luck!" She said before heading to her workshop, walking out of view.
As we left down the boarding ramp, I tapped the intercom right by the stairway.
"The ship's yours, Nal, let us know if anything comes up."
"Will do, Boss. Good luck."
As we crossed the large landing pad that the space traffic controller assigned us, which was just big enough for the Chariot to land on, Tatnia brought up a question I had been contemplating for a while now.
"So, boss… How are we going to handle this whole thing?" She asked as she pulled out her comm unit to call a speeder taxi. "We got a couple secrets that it might be better not to share."
"Yeah, I've been trying to figure that out myself," I admitted, watching the sky for a moment. "I think that our best bet is to be as honest as possible at first. We are a small crew who just got their hands on a ship. We want to expand our crew, including a full-time pilot and maybe a co-pilot. We expect that we might get into some trouble eventually, as we plan on being bounty hunters, mercenaries, and all-around for-hire muscle. Emphasize that we will not be doing anything morally wrong, but sometimes the law is part of the problem."
As I talked, Tatnia spotted an incoming speeder, which slowed greatly as it dropped down below forty feet. I waved to get the driver's attention, who angled slightly to land near us.
"And your magic?" She asked, which caught me off guard. I knew I had called it magic a few times, but so far, no one else had seriously called it that.
"That's something we can save for a while until we really get a sense for them," I answered, holding my hand up to block some of the dust the speeder was kicking our way. "Ideally, we find at least a pilot, maybe a co-pilot, and at least two more people to join us on missions. A team of five sounds like a good place to start."
"Think we should introduce ourselves as adventurers?" She asked with a teasing smirk.
"Laugh now, but after a few months of doing the kind of things I have planned, you'll be calling it that, too," I responded confidently, getting a curious-looking response.
"What kind of stuff do you have in mind anyway?" She asked as we both climbed into the Taxi, looking forward to the droid controlling the speeder. "Take us to a pilot bar, someplace they go while looking for more work. If there is somewhere that people specialize in Corellian ships, go there."
The droid beeped a confirmation before the speeder lifted off into the air again, its repulsorlifts whining as it accelerated.
"I have a few ideas for some… potentially weird stuff," I admitted. "But we should start off with some basic mercenary or bounty work, so we can familiarize ourselves with the new people. I also need to work a bit more on my… Tracking equipment. I've been working on it off and on, but if I get better at it, I'll probably be able to lead us to quite a few interesting things."
"And in the meantime?"
"We take basic mercenary work, take out bounties, stuff like that," I explained, continuing when Tatnia gave me a look. "You're telling me that there aren't places to find that kind of stuff? I mean, if we can head to a bar and expect it to be filled with pilots looking for work, there have to be bars where mercenaries go looking for work, right?"
"Usually… alright, fair point," She admitted. "How do you know that if you never left your backwater planet?"
"The more things change, the more they stay the same," I responded. "You just gotta know what trope to apply where."
After thirty minutes of traveling, the speeder taxi landed in an open area, a small screen lighting asking for payment. I swiped my credit chip, the screen blinking green before the door swung up to let us out.
"Your destination is twenty feet down the road, a bar called the Star Song." The droid said before the door closed behind us, sealing it shut.
We quickly got off the street and made our way to where the droid described. When we got closer, Tatnia put her hand on my shoulder, getting my attention.
"I know you're not an idiot, but… just let me take the lead at first, okay?" She said. "I know a thing or two about this, so I'll find some people, and you can lead the actual recruitment, sound good?"
"Works for me," I agreed.
"Good. When we go in, don't freak out studying everyone, you'll just put everyone on edge. We go in, find a place to sit, preferably at the bar and relax for a while."
I nodded and followed her, making our way to a ferrocrete building that was painted blue, with the roof painted an even, navy blue. The front doors were a gray-black color and opened easily as Tatnia led us inside. It took a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the low light, but after a few seconds, we headed straight to the bar.
The cantina was about half full, which was kind of surprising considering how early in the day it was. Quite a few people turned to look at us but quickly went back to their drinks and conversations. Wordlessly, Tatnia nodded to the bar, and both of us made our way there, claiming two seats for ourselves. The human bartender gave us a look, and Tatnia held up two fingers.
"Two Elba beers," She said, the black-haired man nodding and turning to an enormous container, pulling it open, and pulling two green bottles out.
As we sipped our drinks Tatnia and I made small talk, discussing what kind of speeder we should be looking for.
"I would love to have the A5 back," I said, shaking my head. "That was pretty much exactly what we needed. Slightly armored, armed, big enough to carry us around, could switch between air speeder and ground speeder."
"Would it even fit in the hold?" Tatnia asked. "Or the cargo elevator?"
"Doesn't matter, it would have definitely fit in one of the hangars, and it would have been well worth the space."
"We need a transport ship, one that will fit in the hangar," She said after a silent moment. "Landing the Chariot every time we have business is going to get old quickly."
"What kind of options do we have?
"It's a bit tight, but we can probably find something. Might end up being an ugly no-name box, but there are plenty of those out there, just gotta find one that isn't bantha-shit."
We continued to chat for a while, each having a second beer before Tatnia waved over to the barkeep. She slid a ten-credit ingot on the table and smiled.
"We are looking for a pilot, someone with experience in larger Corellian ships, any recommendations?"
"How big?" He asked, reaching out to take the money
"An old Gozanti class."
"...Try Calima over there, the Tholothian," He said after a moment, pointing across the bar. "She's been planetside for a bit, but she seems kind enough."
I followed his gesture to see a humanoid woman with darker skin that was tinged blue and, in some places, purple. Her head was capped with large, dense-looking dark blue scales, almost like an indigo turtle shell. Coming from that cap were around a dozen all-white tendrils hanging down to her shoulder, each starting an inch or so wide and growing thicker the further down you went, almost like a paddle or a scoop. She was sitting perpendicular to us on the other side of the bar but seemed focused on her datapad.
I stood up, stretching my leg a bit before Tatnia grabbed my arm to get my attention.
"Tholothians can live a really long time, so don't assume her age," She warned before turning back to the bartender. "A refill for whatever she is drinking now."
He smirked and grabbed a glass, filled it with ice, and poured in what appeared to be just water before placing it on the bar top.
"On the house."
Tatnia gave him a sour look, but I just chuckled and gave him a two-finger salute before grabbing my beer and the glass of water, before heading over to the women's table.
"C'mon, let's introduce ourselves."
Chapter 32
Hello! So, as usual, I want to remind you I have a Patreon! Right now, board members are eight chapters ahead in Battlemage and four in Mettle, Metal, Meddled. On top of that, Board Members get a say in actual story details, like helping me design a future crew member! If having a hand in some story details and early chapters sounds interesting, or you just want to show your support for my attempt at being a full-time writer, just follow the link to my Patreon! Hope you enjoy!
I sat down across from the Tholothian, placing the refill in the center of the table, while Tatnia sat down next to me.
"Hello, my name is Deacon, this is Tatnia," I said with a smile. "Are you Calima?"
"I am," She responded with a slow nod. "How can I help you?"
"The bartender said you have experience flying some of the larger Corellian Engineering ships."
The woman put her datapad down, studying both of us for a long second before nodding and leaning back in her chair.
"That's true, though once you know one... you know the rest," She admitted, a slight Corellian accent carrying through her voice. "At least for most CEC ships. Are you looking for a pilot?"
"We are. We have a modified C-ROC Gozanti class, and while we can fly her, we are looking to expand the crew."
"A C-ROC?" She asked, narrowing her eyes. "A lot of… bad people use those ships. You aren't pirates, are you? Smugglers? Because I won't work for the Hutts or for anyone breaking the law in that way."
"We aren't pirates, and we aren't smugglers," I assured her. "Maybe I could tell you a bit about how we got started and what we plan on doing, then you can decide if you're interested?"
After a moment of thinking, she nodded, taking a sip of the refill we brought before gesturing for me to start.
"Well, I'm from a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere. I managed to leave but almost immediately got snapped up by slavers…."
As I talked, I could see the sympathy in her eyes, switching to approval as we described some of the raids on the slaver businesses that we did. I talked around the fact that Nevue was a rebel because openly admitting that while in public would be stupid, but I shared enough for her to get the gist of the story. Of course, I also left out my abilities.
"That… well, it's certainly a story," She said when I was done. "Glad to see you're making the best of a bad round of Sabbacc."
"We play the hand we are dealt," I responded with a shrug. "I wish we could have made it off Nar Shaddaa without throwing up as many flags, but I won't pretend to be sad we got to make our start off Hutt money."
"I can imagine. You know…people would find the fact that the Hutts might be after you worrying and a solid reason to deny your offer…."
"Maybe, but I'm not sure we want anyone on the team who couldn't stand the idea," I explained. "Plus, this is going to be an active position. We will see violence, and any pilot we hire needs to be okay with that."
"Do you plan on fighting them more?" She asked, watching me closely. "You might be able to slip under their scanners or even pay them back…."
"Yeah, not capitulating to them, that's for sure," I said, shaking my head. "If we stumble on a slaver ring or there's a bounty on slavers, those are more than acceptable. I'm a bit worried that my team won't be ready to go against the Hutts openly, not yet at least."
"That… is reasonable. The truth is, I have a bit of history with a few of the Hutts. I'm not exactly openly hunted… but they do not like me very much."
"How in the hell did you manage that?" Tatnia asked, leaning forward. "The Hutts and their cartels are happy to kill their own people just for the fun of it, how did you piss them off and not get put on a hunted list?"
"The Hutts might be… conniving, greedy, selfish piles of bantha shit, but they aren't stupid, and they don't waste money," The Tholothian explained. "I signed a contract to pilot for a group that turned out to be a front. When I learned I was piloting ships with spice stuffed in the deck paneling, I managed to get out of the contract with all my pay. They were pissed… but not enough to call for bounty hunters.
"Does that have anything to do with why you haven't been hired?" I asked. "Did you get blacklisted?"
"Most people see any negative involvement with the Hutts… and their syndicates as a big enough issue to pass me over," She explained. "I don't see the issue, it's not as if it's as exciting as your story."
"Well, I happen to see it as a good sign. Are you interested in working with us?"
"I… have to admit, I am," She responded, leaning forward. "How does the payment work?"
"You would be paid a portion of the payout from whatever job, salvage, or bounty we complete," I explained with a smile. "If the payouts are under a certain amount, we will just divvy it out entirely, but over an amount, we will split a percentage, and the rest will go to improving our equipment, future repairs, fuel, docking, supplies, things like that. Oh, and living expenses, we will cover those as well."
"And what would my share look like?"
I pause, looking confused for a moment before Tatnia lets out an amused huff.
"She means what percent of the payout will she see," She explained while looking at me before looking back at our potential pilot. "And he is confused because he thought it was obvious. Everyone gets an equal share."
"Truly? What about him?" She asked, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.
"The same as everyone else," Tatnia confirmed. "He did it without any prompting, the very first time we made money, when it was just three of us."
"I might be the leader, but everyone works together to get the job done," I explained with a shrug. "Why should I get paid more just because they call me Boss? I've had enough shit jobs to know better."
Calima looked at Tatnia with a surprised and curious look, the human woman smirking and nodding in return.
"Yes, you just heard that, and yes, he actually believes that," she answered. "As far as I can tell, at least."
"Well… That settles it," Calima said, holding out her hand. "I would be very interested in working with you and your team, Deacon."
"Great!" I said with a smile, reaching out to shake her hand. "Now let's talk about time frames…"
Unsurprisingly, Calima was eager to get started, having spent the last three weeks watching her savings slowly go down as she waited for someone to come by and hire her. We talked about the ship, about how it was a recovered CIS cruiser that still had some of its automation intact. We also went over what else was expected of her beyond piloting.
"We expect you to help defend the ship, but no, we wouldn't expect you to come on our more violent mission. In fact, having someone to hold down the fort is half of why I want a dedicated pilot."
"It's definitely not my strong suit, but I know how to take care of myself," She assured us. "I'm a halfway decent shot with my pistol and have some starfighter training."
"We will keep that in mind," I assured her.
When we were done, and all our questions were answered, I took a picture of her and sent it to Nal through my commlink. When I was done telling the Duros that she would be on her way in a few hours, she left to go back to her temporary lodgings to grab her stuff. I handed her a fifty credit ingot to help cover the air speeder, and she looked at me for a long moment after taking it, taking and laughing after looking at Tatnia, who just rolled her eyes.
"You're too nice, Boss, but most taxis don't take ingots," She said, shaking her head. "I would be more worried that you were going to get suckered if I didn't know you're too paranoid for that."
"You know me so well, Tatnia," I responded with a smirk. "The coin was so I could track her if something happens."
"... Like I said, paranoid."
We left the bar, waving down another air speeder and climbing in. After a short conversation with the driver, who was actually organic, we were once again crossing the city, high in the air. After a ten-minute ride, we were dropped off at another bar, this one considerably more rough looking.
"Are we sure we should be recruiting from here?" I asked as we crossed a courtyard-like area to get to the bar. "Getting a 'bad side of town' vibe from this place."
"Really?" She asked, giving me a side look. "Just wait until we go to bars on outskirt worlds, this place looks downright pleasant compared to some of them."
We went inside, stopping by the entrance. This place was even more packed than the last, with only a few open tables that I could see. Luckily, as we got closer to the bar, someone who had been sitting by an empty space stood up, letting Tatnia and me sit down without issues.
Just like before, we spent a few minutes making small talk, slowly sipping our drinks. This time our conversation was primarily about if we should buy a transport speeder now or try and pick one up along the way.
"I think we should just buy one," Tatnia said with a shrug. "We need a few too many things out of it to rely on finding the perfect match. Besides, if we do find a better one down the road, we could always sell it."
"I'm just a bit hesitant to spend a bunch of money before making a bit of a buffer," I explained, taking a sip of my beer.
"Transport is too important," Tatnia pointed out. "We need a few speeder bikes and a transport speeder. Being able to move around once we land on a planet is important. We can hire taxis here, but when we are transporting a bounty? Or assaulting a pirate base?"
"Yeah, alright, fair enough. Alright, we can-"
"Excuse me," A voice said from behind us, prompting both of us to turn around. "I couldn't help but overhear. You said you are looking for speeders?"
Standing there was a human, about twenty, maybe twenty-five years old, with black hair and brown eyes. His hand was wrapped in a bandage, and he had a bacta pack on his cheek, the rest of his face slightly off color like the very tail end of a bad bruise.
"Can we help you?" Tatnia asked, her hand sliding downward, something the beaten man noticed.
"Ah. Well. You're looking for transport? A speeder and some bikes, right?" He asked, to which I nodded slowly. "Good. I have an offer, a way you could make a bit of money and get what you're looking for. I can explain everything, but… maybe at a more private table?"
Tatnia and I shared a look, and with a shrug I stood, my crewmate standing with me.
"Alright, lead the way."
He nodded and led us to a table in the far back of the bar, handing a waitress a credit ingot and a few words as we sat, the woman nodding and rushing away. He seemed to sit down slowly, like someone who was in pain.
"So, my names Julus, Julus Centall," He started, reaching across the relatively small table to shake our hands. "Thanks for hearing me out."
"No problem, I'm Deacon, and this is Tatnia," I responded. "Just to be clear, we are just listening. What exactly are you proposing?"
"Okay, right, so you can tell I am a little roughed up?" He asked, raising his bandaged hand. "So this happened two weeks ago. Zandev and I, we…."
He paused for a moment, seeming to hold something back before continuing.
"We were coming home one night and got dropped off in the wrong part of the city. We… well, we had been celebrating our latest paycheck, so we didn't notice until we landed. Before we could get a ride home, we were ambushed."
"Ambushed? By what?"
"A gang, the Blood Cores. They claim a small garage in the corner of the lower Gyyeresu District on the east side," He answered, shaking his head. "They are a tiny little gang, no more than eight people, and we just happened to get stuck on their turf."
He paused, shifting in his seat slight, looking down at his hands while letting a long breath go.
"While we were waiting for a cab when they showed up, starting getting aggressive," He explained, shaking his head. "I'm not bad in a fight, and... I get cocky when I drink. I tried to tell them to get lost, got in one of their faces, and.... they took offense to that. They took turns beating the snot out of me. When Zander tried to stop them they killed him."
The waitress came along and brought us drinks, putting a glass of water in front of Julus. He grabbed the glass and stared at it for a moment before recovering.
"Zandev was like a… hells, he was my brother. I knew him for most of my life. And I got him killed because I can't keep my mouth shut when I get buzzed," He explained, taking a long drink of water before wiping his face and his eyes. "Sorry, it's been two weeks, but…"
"It's alright, take your time," I said gently, the young man nodding.
"Right, okay. So the Blood Cores ride around on five speeder bikes and a speeder. I don't know how they got their hands on them, but their bikes are C-PH models, military tech," He said, shaking his head clear before continuing. "I think the air speeder was a modified Arrow-10 Light. It's enclosed, carries four people, and it's got a turret. That's what you're looking for, right?"
"How do you know all this information about them?" Tatnia asked, narrowing her eyes. "That's a lot of information about a group you met once, two weeks ago."
"...I don't think I could ever forget a single detail of that night," He admitted with a deceptively normal shrug. "And I did my research, as best as I could anyway."
"So… what exactly are you looking for from us?" I asked, wanting to confirm my suspicion.
"Right. I'm willing to pay you five thousand credits to wipe the Blood Cores out. No warning, no second chances, no chance to wiggle out on technicalities or for good behavior," he explained coldly. "You can take their gear when you're done, I don't care. I just want them dead."
"I'm not opposed to being called in for a little justice, especially when I'm getting paid for it and get the salvage," I admitted before sharing a look with Tatnia. "But we are actually here to recruit more members. At the moment, we only have three active combatants on our crew."
"I could help," He offered. "I'm a bit roughed up, but nothing would stop me from putting them down."
"Be that as it may-"
"Please, the fact that you just happen to be looking for something they have and are looking for work…." He trailed off. "I don't have enough money to hire anyone, and most people would consider the salvage a bonus, not part of the pay. But since you're looking for that kind of stuff…"
Tatnia and I share another look, and this time I give a subtle shrug. She groans in response and rolls her eyes.
"Alright, tell us everything you've learned, everything you know about this gang," she said, leaning forward. "After that, we will discuss it with our team."
I sat down across from the Tholothian, placing the refill in the center of the table, while Tatnia sat down next to me.
"Hello, my name is Deacon, this is Tatnia," I said with a smile. "Are you Calima?"
"I am," She responded with a slow nod. "How can I help you?"
"The bartender said you have experience flying some of the larger Corellian Engineering ships."
The woman put her datapad down, studying both of us for a long second before nodding and leaning back in her chair.
"That's true, though once you know one... you know the rest," She admitted, a slight Corellian accent carrying through her voice. "At least for most CEC ships. Are you looking for a pilot?"
"We are. We have a modified C-ROC Gozanti class, and while we can fly her, we are looking to expand the crew."
"A C-ROC?" She asked, narrowing her eyes. "A lot of… bad people use those ships. You aren't pirates, are you? Smugglers? Because I won't work for the Hutts or for anyone breaking the law in that way."
"We aren't pirates, and we aren't smugglers," I assured her. "Maybe I could tell you a bit about how we got started and what we plan on doing, then you can decide if you're interested?"
After a moment of thinking, she nodded, taking a sip of the refill we brought before gesturing for me to start.
"Well, I'm from a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere. I managed to leave but almost immediately got snapped up by slavers…."
As I talked, I could see the sympathy in her eyes, switching to approval as we described some of the raids on the slaver businesses that we did. I talked around the fact that Nevue was a rebel because openly admitting that while in public would be stupid, but I shared enough for her to get the gist of the story. Of course, I also left out my abilities.
"That… well, it's certainly a story," She said when I was done. "Glad to see you're making the best of a bad round of Sabbacc."
"We play the hand we are dealt," I responded with a shrug. "I wish we could have made it off Nar Shaddaa without throwing up as many flags, but I won't pretend to be sad we got to make our start off Hutt money."
"I can imagine. You know…people would find the fact that the Hutts might be after you worrying and a solid reason to deny your offer…."
"Maybe, but I'm not sure we want anyone on the team who couldn't stand the idea," I explained. "Plus, this is going to be an active position. We will see violence, and any pilot we hire needs to be okay with that."
"Do you plan on fighting them more?" She asked, watching me closely. "You might be able to slip under their scanners or even pay them back…."
"Yeah, not capitulating to them, that's for sure," I said, shaking my head. "If we stumble on a slaver ring or there's a bounty on slavers, those are more than acceptable. I'm a bit worried that my team won't be ready to go against the Hutts openly, not yet at least."
"That… is reasonable. The truth is, I have a bit of history with a few of the Hutts. I'm not exactly openly hunted… but they do not like me very much."
"How in the hell did you manage that?" Tatnia asked, leaning forward. "The Hutts and their cartels are happy to kill their own people just for the fun of it, how did you piss them off and not get put on a hunted list?"
"The Hutts might be… conniving, greedy, selfish piles of bantha shit, but they aren't stupid, and they don't waste money," The Tholothian explained. "I signed a contract to pilot for a group that turned out to be a front. When I learned I was piloting ships with spice stuffed in the deck paneling, I managed to get out of the contract with all my pay. They were pissed… but not enough to call for bounty hunters.
"Does that have anything to do with why you haven't been hired?" I asked. "Did you get blacklisted?"
"Most people see any negative involvement with the Hutts… and their syndicates as a big enough issue to pass me over," She explained. "I don't see the issue, it's not as if it's as exciting as your story."
"Well, I happen to see it as a good sign. Are you interested in working with us?"
"I… have to admit, I am," She responded, leaning forward. "How does the payment work?"
"You would be paid a portion of the payout from whatever job, salvage, or bounty we complete," I explained with a smile. "If the payouts are under a certain amount, we will just divvy it out entirely, but over an amount, we will split a percentage, and the rest will go to improving our equipment, future repairs, fuel, docking, supplies, things like that. Oh, and living expenses, we will cover those as well."
"And what would my share look like?"
I pause, looking confused for a moment before Tatnia lets out an amused huff.
"She means what percent of the payout will she see," She explained while looking at me before looking back at our potential pilot. "And he is confused because he thought it was obvious. Everyone gets an equal share."
"Truly? What about him?" She asked, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.
"The same as everyone else," Tatnia confirmed. "He did it without any prompting, the very first time we made money, when it was just three of us."
"I might be the leader, but everyone works together to get the job done," I explained with a shrug. "Why should I get paid more just because they call me Boss? I've had enough shit jobs to know better."
Calima looked at Tatnia with a surprised and curious look, the human woman smirking and nodding in return.
"Yes, you just heard that, and yes, he actually believes that," she answered. "As far as I can tell, at least."
"Well… That settles it," Calima said, holding out her hand. "I would be very interested in working with you and your team, Deacon."
"Great!" I said with a smile, reaching out to shake her hand. "Now let's talk about time frames…"
Unsurprisingly, Calima was eager to get started, having spent the last three weeks watching her savings slowly go down as she waited for someone to come by and hire her. We talked about the ship, about how it was a recovered CIS cruiser that still had some of its automation intact. We also went over what else was expected of her beyond piloting.
"We expect you to help defend the ship, but no, we wouldn't expect you to come on our more violent mission. In fact, having someone to hold down the fort is half of why I want a dedicated pilot."
"It's definitely not my strong suit, but I know how to take care of myself," She assured us. "I'm a halfway decent shot with my pistol and have some starfighter training."
"We will keep that in mind," I assured her.
When we were done, and all our questions were answered, I took a picture of her and sent it to Nal through my commlink. When I was done telling the Duros that she would be on her way in a few hours, she left to go back to her temporary lodgings to grab her stuff. I handed her a fifty credit ingot to help cover the air speeder, and she looked at me for a long moment after taking it, taking and laughing after looking at Tatnia, who just rolled her eyes.
"You're too nice, Boss, but most taxis don't take ingots," She said, shaking her head. "I would be more worried that you were going to get suckered if I didn't know you're too paranoid for that."
"You know me so well, Tatnia," I responded with a smirk. "The coin was so I could track her if something happens."
"... Like I said, paranoid."
We left the bar, waving down another air speeder and climbing in. After a short conversation with the driver, who was actually organic, we were once again crossing the city, high in the air. After a ten-minute ride, we were dropped off at another bar, this one considerably more rough looking.
"Are we sure we should be recruiting from here?" I asked as we crossed a courtyard-like area to get to the bar. "Getting a 'bad side of town' vibe from this place."
"Really?" She asked, giving me a side look. "Just wait until we go to bars on outskirt worlds, this place looks downright pleasant compared to some of them."
We went inside, stopping by the entrance. This place was even more packed than the last, with only a few open tables that I could see. Luckily, as we got closer to the bar, someone who had been sitting by an empty space stood up, letting Tatnia and me sit down without issues.
Just like before, we spent a few minutes making small talk, slowly sipping our drinks. This time our conversation was primarily about if we should buy a transport speeder now or try and pick one up along the way.
"I think we should just buy one," Tatnia said with a shrug. "We need a few too many things out of it to rely on finding the perfect match. Besides, if we do find a better one down the road, we could always sell it."
"I'm just a bit hesitant to spend a bunch of money before making a bit of a buffer," I explained, taking a sip of my beer.
"Transport is too important," Tatnia pointed out. "We need a few speeder bikes and a transport speeder. Being able to move around once we land on a planet is important. We can hire taxis here, but when we are transporting a bounty? Or assaulting a pirate base?"
"Yeah, alright, fair enough. Alright, we can-"
"Excuse me," A voice said from behind us, prompting both of us to turn around. "I couldn't help but overhear. You said you are looking for speeders?"
Standing there was a human, about twenty, maybe twenty-five years old, with black hair and brown eyes. His hand was wrapped in a bandage, and he had a bacta pack on his cheek, the rest of his face slightly off color like the very tail end of a bad bruise.
"Can we help you?" Tatnia asked, her hand sliding downward, something the beaten man noticed.
"Ah. Well. You're looking for transport? A speeder and some bikes, right?" He asked, to which I nodded slowly. "Good. I have an offer, a way you could make a bit of money and get what you're looking for. I can explain everything, but… maybe at a more private table?"
Tatnia and I shared a look, and with a shrug I stood, my crewmate standing with me.
"Alright, lead the way."
He nodded and led us to a table in the far back of the bar, handing a waitress a credit ingot and a few words as we sat, the woman nodding and rushing away. He seemed to sit down slowly, like someone who was in pain.
"So, my names Julus, Julus Centall," He started, reaching across the relatively small table to shake our hands. "Thanks for hearing me out."
"No problem, I'm Deacon, and this is Tatnia," I responded. "Just to be clear, we are just listening. What exactly are you proposing?"
"Okay, right, so you can tell I am a little roughed up?" He asked, raising his bandaged hand. "So this happened two weeks ago. Zandev and I, we…."
He paused for a moment, seeming to hold something back before continuing.
"We were coming home one night and got dropped off in the wrong part of the city. We… well, we had been celebrating our latest paycheck, so we didn't notice until we landed. Before we could get a ride home, we were ambushed."
"Ambushed? By what?"
"A gang, the Blood Cores. They claim a small garage in the corner of the lower Gyyeresu District on the east side," He answered, shaking his head. "They are a tiny little gang, no more than eight people, and we just happened to get stuck on their turf."
He paused, shifting in his seat slight, looking down at his hands while letting a long breath go.
"While we were waiting for a cab when they showed up, starting getting aggressive," He explained, shaking his head. "I'm not bad in a fight, and... I get cocky when I drink. I tried to tell them to get lost, got in one of their faces, and.... they took offense to that. They took turns beating the snot out of me. When Zander tried to stop them they killed him."
The waitress came along and brought us drinks, putting a glass of water in front of Julus. He grabbed the glass and stared at it for a moment before recovering.
"Zandev was like a… hells, he was my brother. I knew him for most of my life. And I got him killed because I can't keep my mouth shut when I get buzzed," He explained, taking a long drink of water before wiping his face and his eyes. "Sorry, it's been two weeks, but…"
"It's alright, take your time," I said gently, the young man nodding.
"Right, okay. So the Blood Cores ride around on five speeder bikes and a speeder. I don't know how they got their hands on them, but their bikes are C-PH models, military tech," He said, shaking his head clear before continuing. "I think the air speeder was a modified Arrow-10 Light. It's enclosed, carries four people, and it's got a turret. That's what you're looking for, right?"
"How do you know all this information about them?" Tatnia asked, narrowing her eyes. "That's a lot of information about a group you met once, two weeks ago."
"...I don't think I could ever forget a single detail of that night," He admitted with a deceptively normal shrug. "And I did my research, as best as I could anyway."
"So… what exactly are you looking for from us?" I asked, wanting to confirm my suspicion.
"Right. I'm willing to pay you five thousand credits to wipe the Blood Cores out. No warning, no second chances, no chance to wiggle out on technicalities or for good behavior," he explained coldly. "You can take their gear when you're done, I don't care. I just want them dead."
"I'm not opposed to being called in for a little justice, especially when I'm getting paid for it and get the salvage," I admitted before sharing a look with Tatnia. "But we are actually here to recruit more members. At the moment, we only have three active combatants on our crew."
"I could help," He offered. "I'm a bit roughed up, but nothing would stop me from putting them down."
"Be that as it may-"
"Please, the fact that you just happen to be looking for something they have and are looking for work…." He trailed off. "I don't have enough money to hire anyone, and most people would consider the salvage a bonus, not part of the pay. But since you're looking for that kind of stuff…"
Tatnia and I share another look, and this time I give a subtle shrug. She groans in response and rolls her eyes.
"Alright, tell us everything you've learned, everything you know about this gang," she said, leaning forward. "After that, we will discuss it with our team."
Yay, Gang Violence!
Some gangers bout to become crispy!
Chapter 33
"Thank you, thank you," He said, sagging in relief. "I… No one has even offered that much, at this point, I was contemplating trying to do it myself…"
"My first question is, why haven't you gone to the police or the security forces?" I asked. "I assume they have something like that here?"
"We do, the Terr'skiar Planetary Security Force. And I did. They don't care about anything that doesn't affect the traders," He spat, shaking his head. "The Blood Cores are small time and keep to their neighborhood. Sure, they terrorize that neighborhood, but they don't go anywhere near the trade centers, warehouse districts, or high-end parts of the city. I reported Zandev's murder, and they promised to investigate, but nothing happened after a week. I went to ask what was wrong, and they told me there was nothing they could do."
He clenched his uninjured fist and his jaw, anger almost radiating off of him.
"Zandev's only crime was trying to stop me from getting beaten to death, and they killed him. And laughed! I…" He let out a long breath, shaking his head. "The idea that they are out there, enjoying their lives after what they did to him… I can't live with that."
"I don't blame you," I said with a solemn frown. "What else can you tell us about them? We need to know what we might be getting into."
Over the next fifteen minutes, Julus explained everything he had learned about the small-time gang, including their home base and some of their more recent crimes. They lived out of an old abandoned garage, which was only empty because they ran off the previous owner. They treated the neighborhood that they lived in as their own little fiefdom, charging protection money and roughing up anyone who didn't pay up. According to the recovering young man, several people told him that when they first moved in, they made an example of the first few people who tried to stand up to them.
"But there were no reports?" I asked. "Nobody told the Security Force?"
"In an area like that, the TPSF is just another gang," Julus explained. "They come in, rough up people who are just trying to survive, arrest anyone who complains, and usually just make the situation worse by pissing people off. Most of them are dirty anyway."
I frowned, unable to make up my mind as the obviously still grieving man explained the situation. I wasn't getting any bad vibes from Julus, he felt sincere and seemed to be truly grieving for the loss of his friend. But I wasn't comfortable committing my team to be executioners without making sure that the people on the chopping block had it coming. I would need to get back to the Chariot and see what everyone thought.
"Okay. We need to take this back to the rest of the crew," I eventually said, Julus nodding eagerly. "Personally, from what you've said, this looks like a solid opportunity. And you want to participate?"
"Yes. I'm still sore in some places, but I'm not missing this."
"Do you have experience with this kind of thing?" Tatnia asked before I could.
"I am a security guard for a warehouse company, we walk patrols at night and sometimes accompany transports when they are carrying anything particularly valuable," He explained. "I'm a fair pilot with most speeders and a better shot than most with a blaster. My father taught me how to shoot when I was younger, and my job pays for extra training."
"And what about actual light-fights?" Tatnia asked. "Have you ever been in one of those?"
"A few, maybe five or six," He responded. "We had to fight off a couple robbery attempts, as well as a few warehouse raids."
"Alright, so it's unlikely that you'll freeze at least," She said. "Assuming you're telling the truth."
"We will head back to our ship and talk to the team," I said, slowly standing. "Give me your comm number so we can get in contact with you when we have reached a decision."
He quickly rattled off his number, and I fed it to my comm before giving the man a nod. We shook hands again before leaving the back corner of the room. As we did, Tatnia tugged me back to the bar itself. She put a credit ingot down on the counter, which got the bartender's attention.
"The man we were talking to, anything you can tell us?" She asked, watching the bartender pick up the ingot
"He's been in every day for a week, at least," He said, shaking his head. "Trying to put a hit on some gang. Isn't offering nearly enough, though."
"Thanks. Have a good afternoon," She responded before we both headed out of the cantina.
Fifteen minutes later and we were climbing up into the Chariot. As we stepped through the prep room and past the airlock, Miru came around to greet us from her workshop, Racer following right behind her.
"How did it go?" She asked, wiping her hands on a greasy rag before throwing it back into her space. "Nal said you found a pilot but hasn't said anything else."
"We might have stumbled into a job," I admitted, Miru's eyes widening slightly in surprise. "C'mon, we can explain it over food, I'm starving, and I've been drinking on an empty stomach."
It only takes a few minutes for the whole team to meet up in the lounge area. I was standing behind the countertop while Nal, Tatnia, and Miru sat on the stools, everyone eating from their food packets.
"So, Julus overheard us talking about speeders and essentially used that to offset the fact that he couldn't really afford what it would really cost to wipe out the gang," I explained. "My first instinct was to believe him, but we need to be sure before we do anything drastic. Racer?"
The droid's angular head spins as we wheel out from behind the counter, focusing on me with a string of beeps.
"Do you think you could skim the top of the local security force branch and see what they have on them?" I asked. "Don't slice any deeper than you have to, and don't do anything that would lead back to us."
The little astromech whistled in confirmation, spinning around and heading straight to the cockpit to connect to the comm unit there, as it would have a better connection.
"The pay is crap, but the salvage would save us a lot of money and solve one of our biggest problems," Tatnia admitted.
"More than that," Nal said, shaking his head. "C-PH is top of the line. Each is worth five thousand credits, in decent shape."
"Seriously?" I asked with wide eyes. "How the hell did they get their hands on that?"
"They stole it." Miru said, reading from her datapad. "Racer just sent this, it looks like they stole them from a bigger gang, one with much more resources. That's why the TPSF hasn't gone after them. They stole from a gang and then ratted them out to the Security Force. As long as they keep screwing over other gangs, they are willing to look the other way."
"Even with the crimes that have been reported?"
"Yup," Miru responded. "They don't really care. The bastards probably just assume that they will get themselves wiped out eventually, so there's no reason to spend resources, especially not while they can whittle down the bigger gangs in the meantime."
"What other crimes are they guilty of?" I asked, prompting Miru to scroll through her information.
"They know about two more murders, drug trafficking, assaults… a few sexual assaults."
"... Now I'm tempted to hit the TPSF as well, just to fuck with them," I said, shaking my head. "What kind of assholes let people like that walk around when they are supposed to… Fucking hell. Okay, Unless anyone has a problem, I'm going to call Julus and tell him we will take the job, have him come here so we can plan it out."
When no one spoke up, and Nal and Tatnia nodded in agreement, I stood and walked a bit away from the table, pulling out my comms unit. A quick scroll through my contacts later, and the call was sent, connecting almost immediately.
"Julus? Yeah, it's Deacon. My team has agreed to take your offer," I said, smiling as the younger human shouted in happiness. "I'm going to send you the info for where our docking bay is. Catch a ride here so we can start the planning process."
"Alright, great! Yes, I'll head right over." He responded, his smile audible. "I'll be there in ten."
I said a quick goodbye before hanging up, sliding my comm back into my pocket. Before I could turn back to the group, though, my comms dinged loudly, a call coming in. I quickly took the device back out and activated it.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Deacon, this is Calima… I have just arrived at your docking bay. Your ship is interesting, I don't think I have ever seen a C-ROC quite like this."
"It's an original modification," I admitted. "Our own engineer designed it. Hold on a second. I'll be down to let you in."
I made my way down to the boarding ramp, tapping the button to deploy it down. When it made contact with the landing pad, Calima came into view. She was wearing a single backpack and was carrying a second bag. As she reached the top of the stairs, I took the second bag for her, hefting it relatively easily.
"Thanks… So this is already different from the last time I was on a C-ROC," She admitted, looking around the airlock-style ready room.
"I wouldn't know, but like I said, it was heavily modified as a hauler for the Separatists," I explained, leading her out of the room and into the cargo bay.
"Definitely modified...this cargo bay is much more open," She said.
"So I have been told," I said as we stepped into the cargo bay, stopping and gesturing to Miru's space. "This is Miru's workshop, she is the team's engineer and builder. She is a bit young, so when we leave to go on missions, she will likely be here with you. The other side had charging stations for droids."
"And those are your spoils from the 'salvage' mission," She said, pointing to the stacked and folded-up droids against one side of the cargo bay.
I nodded and continued the short tour, showing her the large door to the hangars before leading her upstairs.
"You can claim any of these rooms, they have double beds, but we don't plan on having enough people to fill them yet, so feel free to use it as storage for now," I explained, watching her pick one of the rooms, the door opening smoothly.
"Huh… not bad. Definitely been stuck in worse," She said as she walked in, looked around, and nodded. "Not having to share will make it much easier for now."
She tossed her bag into her bed, taking the one I was carrying and putting it down beside it. She took off her jacket and hung it up before turning to smile at me, her tendrils moving as she did.
"I'd like to see the cockpit…."
I nodded and led her down the hall to the lounge, where everyone was still waiting. She spotted everyone and gave a short bow.
"Miru, Nal, this is Calima. She is our new primary pilot," I said, smiling as Miru stood up from her chair and held out her hand, which the Tholothian shook.
"It's nice to meet you, are you gathered to meet me?" She asked, turning to look at me.
"I would have done that, but we were already gathered for lunch and to discuss and offer. Are you hungry?"
"No… thank you, I ate before leaving my previous apartment. But thank you," She said. "May I ask what kind of offer?"
"Yeah, of course. Why don't I take you to the bridge and explain? These guys have already heard and agreed to the offer."
"Very well…"
I led her to the bridge, and the Tholothian immediately claimed the pilot's chair, examining the various screens, buttons, levers, and knobs in front of her, humming in what I was pretty sure was approval. After a minute or so of this, I started going over the offer. When I got to the part about how the TPSF was letting this all happen, Calima did not seem surprised.
"The TPSF is… almost completely owned by the major shipping companies that use Terr'skiar as a stopping point. They get involved, keep the peace, and patrol more affluent areas, but they have all but given up… on the outskirts," She explained. "It does not surprise me that they are doing nothing about this gang."
We talked a bit more about the ship, its modifications, and its automation, which she was a big fan of. After about five minutes, she leaned back and nodded confidently.
"I can easily pilot this ship, it is a simplified modification to the standard Corellian Engineering control scheme," She assured me, turning back in her chair. "I could likely fly this ship unaided… save for combat situations."
"That's good to hear, there will probably be someone up here with you just in case, but it's good to know you can manage."
When we left the bridge, opening the reinforced bridge access door, I found most of my team talking to Julus. He looked mostly the same, though the bandage on his hand was gone. He was still clearly nursing an injury there, but it seemed he was putting that aside for the moment and dealing with the resulting pain. He also looked invigorated, the news that we were taking his offer clearly having given him new energy.
"Julus, glad you're here," I said, gesturing to Calima. "This is our new pilot, just joined with us today."
The two shared a simple nod, and I clapped my hands before gesturing to the large table that took up the corner of the lounge area, with enough seats for all of us. It was opposite the kitchen system, the counter, and stools, and was another piece of furniture we claimed from the Separatist base.
"Right, well now that you're here, we can talk about business and how this operation you brought to us is going to go. Have a seat, and let's get started."
"My first question is, why haven't you gone to the police or the security forces?" I asked. "I assume they have something like that here?"
"We do, the Terr'skiar Planetary Security Force. And I did. They don't care about anything that doesn't affect the traders," He spat, shaking his head. "The Blood Cores are small time and keep to their neighborhood. Sure, they terrorize that neighborhood, but they don't go anywhere near the trade centers, warehouse districts, or high-end parts of the city. I reported Zandev's murder, and they promised to investigate, but nothing happened after a week. I went to ask what was wrong, and they told me there was nothing they could do."
He clenched his uninjured fist and his jaw, anger almost radiating off of him.
"Zandev's only crime was trying to stop me from getting beaten to death, and they killed him. And laughed! I…" He let out a long breath, shaking his head. "The idea that they are out there, enjoying their lives after what they did to him… I can't live with that."
"I don't blame you," I said with a solemn frown. "What else can you tell us about them? We need to know what we might be getting into."
Over the next fifteen minutes, Julus explained everything he had learned about the small-time gang, including their home base and some of their more recent crimes. They lived out of an old abandoned garage, which was only empty because they ran off the previous owner. They treated the neighborhood that they lived in as their own little fiefdom, charging protection money and roughing up anyone who didn't pay up. According to the recovering young man, several people told him that when they first moved in, they made an example of the first few people who tried to stand up to them.
"But there were no reports?" I asked. "Nobody told the Security Force?"
"In an area like that, the TPSF is just another gang," Julus explained. "They come in, rough up people who are just trying to survive, arrest anyone who complains, and usually just make the situation worse by pissing people off. Most of them are dirty anyway."
I frowned, unable to make up my mind as the obviously still grieving man explained the situation. I wasn't getting any bad vibes from Julus, he felt sincere and seemed to be truly grieving for the loss of his friend. But I wasn't comfortable committing my team to be executioners without making sure that the people on the chopping block had it coming. I would need to get back to the Chariot and see what everyone thought.
"Okay. We need to take this back to the rest of the crew," I eventually said, Julus nodding eagerly. "Personally, from what you've said, this looks like a solid opportunity. And you want to participate?"
"Yes. I'm still sore in some places, but I'm not missing this."
"Do you have experience with this kind of thing?" Tatnia asked before I could.
"I am a security guard for a warehouse company, we walk patrols at night and sometimes accompany transports when they are carrying anything particularly valuable," He explained. "I'm a fair pilot with most speeders and a better shot than most with a blaster. My father taught me how to shoot when I was younger, and my job pays for extra training."
"And what about actual light-fights?" Tatnia asked. "Have you ever been in one of those?"
"A few, maybe five or six," He responded. "We had to fight off a couple robbery attempts, as well as a few warehouse raids."
"Alright, so it's unlikely that you'll freeze at least," She said. "Assuming you're telling the truth."
"We will head back to our ship and talk to the team," I said, slowly standing. "Give me your comm number so we can get in contact with you when we have reached a decision."
He quickly rattled off his number, and I fed it to my comm before giving the man a nod. We shook hands again before leaving the back corner of the room. As we did, Tatnia tugged me back to the bar itself. She put a credit ingot down on the counter, which got the bartender's attention.
"The man we were talking to, anything you can tell us?" She asked, watching the bartender pick up the ingot
"He's been in every day for a week, at least," He said, shaking his head. "Trying to put a hit on some gang. Isn't offering nearly enough, though."
"Thanks. Have a good afternoon," She responded before we both headed out of the cantina.
Fifteen minutes later and we were climbing up into the Chariot. As we stepped through the prep room and past the airlock, Miru came around to greet us from her workshop, Racer following right behind her.
"How did it go?" She asked, wiping her hands on a greasy rag before throwing it back into her space. "Nal said you found a pilot but hasn't said anything else."
"We might have stumbled into a job," I admitted, Miru's eyes widening slightly in surprise. "C'mon, we can explain it over food, I'm starving, and I've been drinking on an empty stomach."
It only takes a few minutes for the whole team to meet up in the lounge area. I was standing behind the countertop while Nal, Tatnia, and Miru sat on the stools, everyone eating from their food packets.
"So, Julus overheard us talking about speeders and essentially used that to offset the fact that he couldn't really afford what it would really cost to wipe out the gang," I explained. "My first instinct was to believe him, but we need to be sure before we do anything drastic. Racer?"
The droid's angular head spins as we wheel out from behind the counter, focusing on me with a string of beeps.
"Do you think you could skim the top of the local security force branch and see what they have on them?" I asked. "Don't slice any deeper than you have to, and don't do anything that would lead back to us."
The little astromech whistled in confirmation, spinning around and heading straight to the cockpit to connect to the comm unit there, as it would have a better connection.
"The pay is crap, but the salvage would save us a lot of money and solve one of our biggest problems," Tatnia admitted.
"More than that," Nal said, shaking his head. "C-PH is top of the line. Each is worth five thousand credits, in decent shape."
"Seriously?" I asked with wide eyes. "How the hell did they get their hands on that?"
"They stole it." Miru said, reading from her datapad. "Racer just sent this, it looks like they stole them from a bigger gang, one with much more resources. That's why the TPSF hasn't gone after them. They stole from a gang and then ratted them out to the Security Force. As long as they keep screwing over other gangs, they are willing to look the other way."
"Even with the crimes that have been reported?"
"Yup," Miru responded. "They don't really care. The bastards probably just assume that they will get themselves wiped out eventually, so there's no reason to spend resources, especially not while they can whittle down the bigger gangs in the meantime."
"What other crimes are they guilty of?" I asked, prompting Miru to scroll through her information.
"They know about two more murders, drug trafficking, assaults… a few sexual assaults."
"... Now I'm tempted to hit the TPSF as well, just to fuck with them," I said, shaking my head. "What kind of assholes let people like that walk around when they are supposed to… Fucking hell. Okay, Unless anyone has a problem, I'm going to call Julus and tell him we will take the job, have him come here so we can plan it out."
When no one spoke up, and Nal and Tatnia nodded in agreement, I stood and walked a bit away from the table, pulling out my comms unit. A quick scroll through my contacts later, and the call was sent, connecting almost immediately.
"Julus? Yeah, it's Deacon. My team has agreed to take your offer," I said, smiling as the younger human shouted in happiness. "I'm going to send you the info for where our docking bay is. Catch a ride here so we can start the planning process."
"Alright, great! Yes, I'll head right over." He responded, his smile audible. "I'll be there in ten."
I said a quick goodbye before hanging up, sliding my comm back into my pocket. Before I could turn back to the group, though, my comms dinged loudly, a call coming in. I quickly took the device back out and activated it.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Deacon, this is Calima… I have just arrived at your docking bay. Your ship is interesting, I don't think I have ever seen a C-ROC quite like this."
"It's an original modification," I admitted. "Our own engineer designed it. Hold on a second. I'll be down to let you in."
I made my way down to the boarding ramp, tapping the button to deploy it down. When it made contact with the landing pad, Calima came into view. She was wearing a single backpack and was carrying a second bag. As she reached the top of the stairs, I took the second bag for her, hefting it relatively easily.
"Thanks… So this is already different from the last time I was on a C-ROC," She admitted, looking around the airlock-style ready room.
"I wouldn't know, but like I said, it was heavily modified as a hauler for the Separatists," I explained, leading her out of the room and into the cargo bay.
"Definitely modified...this cargo bay is much more open," She said.
"So I have been told," I said as we stepped into the cargo bay, stopping and gesturing to Miru's space. "This is Miru's workshop, she is the team's engineer and builder. She is a bit young, so when we leave to go on missions, she will likely be here with you. The other side had charging stations for droids."
"And those are your spoils from the 'salvage' mission," She said, pointing to the stacked and folded-up droids against one side of the cargo bay.
I nodded and continued the short tour, showing her the large door to the hangars before leading her upstairs.
"You can claim any of these rooms, they have double beds, but we don't plan on having enough people to fill them yet, so feel free to use it as storage for now," I explained, watching her pick one of the rooms, the door opening smoothly.
"Huh… not bad. Definitely been stuck in worse," She said as she walked in, looked around, and nodded. "Not having to share will make it much easier for now."
She tossed her bag into her bed, taking the one I was carrying and putting it down beside it. She took off her jacket and hung it up before turning to smile at me, her tendrils moving as she did.
"I'd like to see the cockpit…."
I nodded and led her down the hall to the lounge, where everyone was still waiting. She spotted everyone and gave a short bow.
"Miru, Nal, this is Calima. She is our new primary pilot," I said, smiling as Miru stood up from her chair and held out her hand, which the Tholothian shook.
"It's nice to meet you, are you gathered to meet me?" She asked, turning to look at me.
"I would have done that, but we were already gathered for lunch and to discuss and offer. Are you hungry?"
"No… thank you, I ate before leaving my previous apartment. But thank you," She said. "May I ask what kind of offer?"
"Yeah, of course. Why don't I take you to the bridge and explain? These guys have already heard and agreed to the offer."
"Very well…"
I led her to the bridge, and the Tholothian immediately claimed the pilot's chair, examining the various screens, buttons, levers, and knobs in front of her, humming in what I was pretty sure was approval. After a minute or so of this, I started going over the offer. When I got to the part about how the TPSF was letting this all happen, Calima did not seem surprised.
"The TPSF is… almost completely owned by the major shipping companies that use Terr'skiar as a stopping point. They get involved, keep the peace, and patrol more affluent areas, but they have all but given up… on the outskirts," She explained. "It does not surprise me that they are doing nothing about this gang."
We talked a bit more about the ship, its modifications, and its automation, which she was a big fan of. After about five minutes, she leaned back and nodded confidently.
"I can easily pilot this ship, it is a simplified modification to the standard Corellian Engineering control scheme," She assured me, turning back in her chair. "I could likely fly this ship unaided… save for combat situations."
"That's good to hear, there will probably be someone up here with you just in case, but it's good to know you can manage."
When we left the bridge, opening the reinforced bridge access door, I found most of my team talking to Julus. He looked mostly the same, though the bandage on his hand was gone. He was still clearly nursing an injury there, but it seemed he was putting that aside for the moment and dealing with the resulting pain. He also looked invigorated, the news that we were taking his offer clearly having given him new energy.
"Julus, glad you're here," I said, gesturing to Calima. "This is our new pilot, just joined with us today."
The two shared a simple nod, and I clapped my hands before gesturing to the large table that took up the corner of the lounge area, with enough seats for all of us. It was opposite the kitchen system, the counter, and stools, and was another piece of furniture we claimed from the Separatist base.
"Right, well now that you're here, we can talk about business and how this operation you brought to us is going to go. Have a seat, and let's get started."
- Location
- UK
MC can probably go after some other minor gangs too for the salvage and loot… With Racer giving tips on which ones to hit.
For some reason after reading the part of how the table is from the former sepi base my brain sent me down a tangent of how furniture would be built in the Star Wars universe lol. like most of the higher end stuff I'd imagine would have to be built with anchor points in the base for attachments to ships or mag locks while also ensuring that the make up of the furniture is held together by it either all being one piece or with extra hard points to keep it together through higher G movements and gravity. Some times my brain just leaves me confused with the trails it takes me down
Chapter 34
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"So, we are taking the offer Julus," I repeated once we were all sitting, getting an eager nod in return. "But I want to make this clear. This is not a pistol at dawn, airing your grievances and dueling to the death kind of situation. This is an execution. Cold, clean, and simple. We aren't holding back to be fair or giving you the opportunity to see the life leave anyone's eyes."
"I don't care. I may not be able to handle them being alive when Zandev is dead, but I'm not looking for a show," He agreed, nodding once. "I just want them dead, like you said, clean and simple."
"Good. Then my suggestion is that we wait until it's dark, until they are all asleep, and we catch them in their beds," I said, Miru wincing, but Nal and Tatnia nodding in agreement. "If I get my way, we wouldn't even be in the same building when they are all alive, but depending on what that garage you mentioned is made of, that might not be possible. Nal, do you think you could get your hands on some more ammo for the proton rifle?"
"Here? Easily," He said simply.
"Good. How about some night mission gear?"
"Night vision goggles?" He asked. "Or thermal? It is possible to have both, but pricey."
"Less than five hundred credits per pair?" I asked, the blue-skinned alien nodding in confirmation. "Then get five, they are a handy bit of gear, so there is no reason not to get our hands on them while we can."
He nodded again, quickly pulling out his datapad and starting to scroll through something.
"Next, I want to know what this garage and the area around it looks like before we start this," I said, looking at Tatnia. "Can you handle that? It might be as simple as having Racer look into public records, or you might have to take some pictures yourself. If that's the case, I don't want you to even land near their territory, alright?"
"I can handle that."
"Good. Once we get those pictures, we can start planning this for real," I said, turning to Julus. "You're welcome to stay here until we execute the plan. We have to make sure you're geared up properly anyway."
Tatnia and Racer made their way to the bridge while Calima made her way to her room to unpack. Miru and I took Julus down to the cargo bay, where we were keeping all of the spare gear we had acquired so far. He needed armor, a helmet, and a blaster rifle, which we had plenty to spare. He did have his own pistol, two of them, in fact.
"You like them?" He asked when he saw me looking at them. "They were my fathers, he gave them to me before he passed. The only thing he left me."
"What are they?" Miru asked. "I don't recognize the make."
"That doesn't surprise me, they are apparently pretty rare. I was gonna sell them, but Zandev convinced me not to," He admitted, looking down at the two blasters on either hip. "They are Westar-35s. They pack a mean punch and are pretty accurate, but I never really invested the time in learning how to shoot them both at the same time."
By the time we had his armor and other gear set up, Nal was getting ready to leave. He took the MVR out to go shopping for what I asked for, driving the speeder bike right out of the starboard hangar. He dropped until he was five or six feet off the ground before his repulsors compensated, and he zoomed off.
"On a scale of one to ten, how difficult was what he just did?" I asked Miru, though Julus was the one who spoke up first.
"Oh. Right, on a civilian bike, that would be a hard eight," He said, still looking around the hangar curiously. "But a military bike is designed to go everywhere, including from high ledges to lower ground. It would have compensated for the change automatically."
"What about coming back in?"
"If he comes in slow, it should be fine."
I gave Miru a look, and she nodded in confirmation before turning to leave the hangar bay. As I was stepping through the smaller door, Miru turned and headed to her workshop. "Let me know if you need anything, Boss, I'm just tinkering!"
"Alright, have fun," I said, heading to the stairs, Julus following behind.
"So. she is a bit on the young side," He commented as we stepped onto the second deck. "Is she going to be coming with us?"
"No, Miru is our engineer," I explained, turning my head to look at him. "She is the one who designed the hangar modifications."
"Oh, alright."
It was only about an hour before Tatnia and Nal had completed their tasks, the crew plus Julus once again sitting down around the large table in the lounge. Nal had returned from his trip and unloaded two cases of ammo for the proton rifle and five smaller boxes containing goggles that could switch between thermal and night vision. I carefully opened one of the latter boxes, examining the goggles before handing them to Nal to inspect.
After that, Racer used his holoprojector to show off the images that Tatnia and he found on the holonet, with minimal slicing required. The garage itself was surprisingly large, a double-floored structure with two large bays and what looks like the office portion next to that. The first floor was ferrocrete, while the second floor, which formed a lip around the structure, was some sort of metal paneling with a few windows. Everything was in pretty good condition, and there was a speeder and two speeder bikes parked into the front ferrocrete pad.
"I assume these are from before the Blood Cores settled in?" I asked.
"Yeah, by about four months," Tatnia answered. "Racer also dug up some shots of the surrounding area."
The holo-projection shifted, showing off a few buildings with the garage showing up a few times in the corner or background. After about ten photos Racer projected a wireframe version, clearly compiled from everything he had just shown us, outlining all surrounding buildings.
"Damn, that's useful," I said, examining the slowly rotating projection.
"Nova wasn't kidding when she said she upgraded him," Miru said proudly. "Racer has a hell of a lot of power and tools stuffed into his frame."
The astromech whistled a long string that sounded vaguely proud. After watching the projection for a few minutes, I motioned for Racer to stop the slow rotation.
"Okay, I think our best bet is to ambush them, most likely starting with you, Nal, up on this roof," I said, pointing out the three-story building across the street from the garage. "You should have no problem shooting down into these windows with the proton rifle. Considering just how many vehicles Julus says they have, sleeping on the ground floor is unlikely. Still, we need to be prepared for that."
I gestured for Racer to zoom in on the front of the building. When the view changed, I continued.
"Now, a lot of this depends on where they are, but I'm going to assume the garage doors will be closed. If they aren't, we can take advantage of that, but we plan for them being shut," I explained, pointing to a row of windows that dotted the first floor. "Once Nal opens fire, taking out as many as he can through the windows, Tatnia, Julus and I will come in through these lower windows here."
As I pointed, several basic outlines of people appeared on the exterior of the projected model. I gave Racer an impressed look before continuing.
"If they stay on the second floor, then Nal can take them all out, but once they make it down to the first floor, which I'm guessing they will try, we ambush them there."
I sat down in my chair, leaning back and looking at everyone. Nal, Tatnia, and Julus were listening closely, while Miru and Calima were listening with much less enthusiasm.
"Our biggest goal here is to keep them from getting on their speeders. Not just because we want them intact but because it would give them a major advantage in firepower. Miru…"
The pink-skinned mechanic sat up straight, eyes wide, clearly not expecting to be called on.
"I want you and Racer here, listening in to TPSF comms. Do you think you could crack into those Racer?"
The droid wiggled and whistled out a complicated tune, which, of course, meant nothing to me.
"He says that he won't be able to hear them word for word, that's too protected for him to slice without being noticed," Miru translated. "But, he could get enough information to know if they are responding to a general neighborhood."
"That's good enough. I'm hoping we can skip their involvement, and I need to know if that changes. Calima?"
"I assume you want to be ready to lift off, just in case?" She asked, having been a bit more prepared to respond than Miru. "I can do that… but I will warn you that there are security forces in space around the planet. They could try and stop us."
"I'm hoping that they won't take it that far, but if it comes to that, we will just have to outfly them," I said with a wince. "Can you do that?"
"Most likely. If we get really unlucky… It might be difficult, but I think I can handle it."
"Good. Alright, we could get this done tonight, or we could push it off tomorrow and get a little more time to prepare, any preference?"
"I would rather get this done with," Tatnia responded, leaning forward in her seat. "No use putting it off."
When Nal only nodded in agreement, and Julus looked like he was ready to do it right now, for obvious reasons, I considered the matter settled.
"That works for me. Let's get everything packed up and ready to go, then we can have an early dinner. After that, we head out."
Another series of nods from around the table, and we got to work. Miru, Nal, and I broke down the proton rifle and four of our blaster rifles, fitting them and the goggles into the cargo container attached to the MVR. When that was done, we gathered around in the lounge and shared our meal. As we ate, I looked over at Calima, who was listening to the conversations but was staying mostly quiet.
"Sorry that your first day is so eventful," I apologized. "We had no idea that things would kick off like this, but it's a good opportunity so we couldn't pass it up."
"I understand… You don't have to worry," She said with a smile. "This may be more exciting than I'm used to, but I had a feeling working with you would be like this when you described your last few weeks."
"Well, that's good," I responded. "I'm glad that it wasn't a surprise at least."
We finished dinner quickly, and it was time to get to work. Nal flew out on the MVR again, carrying our rifles so that we wouldn't have to, while Tatnia, Julus, and I called in a cab. It was starting to get dark by the time we landed several blocks from our target.
As we walked the rest of the way, a ten-minute trek through a few alleyways, we did our best to seem inconspicuous. Julus kept looking around as if he expected the Blood Cores to come swooping down at any minute, but I couldn't blame him for being nervous so close to where his friend was killed.
Eventually, we got to the building that Nal was waiting for us behind, having landed the MVR in an alleyway. There we waited, out of sight from the street, while it slowly got darker and darker. Eventually, Nal passed out the night vision goggles, and we all started assembling our rifles.
"There's a clear path to the garage from here, through these alleys," Nal explained, pointing to a small path between two abandoned buildings to his left. "Just keep walking straight until you reach the street."
"Alright, comm us when you're in position, and we will head in," I said, watching as he nodded and started climbing a nearby ladder, heading up to the roof.
A quick glance at Tatnia and Julus, and we headed out, with me in the lead, slowly making our way through the alleys, following Nal's instructions. We held our rifles tucked under our jackets to hide them as best we could, though it was obvious what we were carrying to anything more than a passing glance.
After another minute of walking, we stopped, having reached the road. Across the street was the garage, lights still on inside. We could hear thumping, loud music clear through the garage bay doors. I held up my hand as I spotted two people, a Rodian and a Weequay, sitting outside. They had something in their mouths, some sort of Star Wars cigarette equivalent that my extra knowledge didn't know about. I held up my hand to motion to Tatnia and Julus, and all three of us walked back enough to be covered by the shadows of their alley. I crouched down low and pulled out my comm, tabbing it to Nal.
"Nal, they are still awake, stay down until the garage goes dark," I said softly into the comms.
".... Understood," Nal replied just as quietly.
For the next two hours, we waited in the darkness of the dirty, trash-filled alley, waiting for the gang to finally shut down for the day. At ten minutes past the two-hour mark, just about when I started to worry that they would party all night long, the music finally cut off.
There was shouting from inside the garage, the responding complaining voices coming through even with the building mostly sealed up. After a while, the building quieted down, and after twenty minutes, it finally went dark.
"Can confirm, sleeping on the second floor," Nal said softly through the comms, confirming at least one portion of our plan.
The lights in and around the building turning off flooded the street with darkness. All the public lighting near the building had been destroyed, the nearest lights coming from far down the street. Silently, we all pulled the goggles down over our faces, toggling on the night vision. At first, I was overwhelmed by the brightness, but the goggles quickly compensated, revealing a new bright world, though tinged with green. After a minute, I switched to thermal, only to immediately switch it back when I realized it was useless through the solidly built structure.
We waited another hour for everyone to fall asleep before Tatnia, Julus, and I crossed the street, keeping our heads down and moving as silently as possible, not stopping until our backs were against the ferrocrete wall of the garage. Each of us lined up near a different window, each of us sharing a look before I held up one hand left hand, giving Nal the ready signal.
I adjusted my rifle, holding it ready as I let out a slow breath. I could feel myself wanting to cast my armor on myself. I felt naked without it, but I focused on the fact that this was not like the Separatist raid, if they even got a shot off at us, we had already fucked up.
Suddenly the relative silence surrounding us was broken by the familiar whining sound of the proton rifle charging from across the street before a beam of yellow energy punched through one of the second-story windows. The whine immediately started again, firing not a second later.
A riot of shouting, screaming, and cursing echoed across the street as the Blood Core gang was cut in half in just over thirty seconds.
"I can't see the rest," Nal said, his voice coming from my jacket pocket, much louder now. "Coming down the stairs."
"Go!" I shouted, before turning and looking in through the window, the night vision goggles letting me see into the dark room easily.
Unfortunately, all I could see was the air speeder, filling up a large portion of the bay and blocking my view into the rest of the garage. I turned, planning to run around Tatnia and Julus to another window, only to see a staggering rapid spray of blaster bolts coming from inside the building, catching Julus in the side and throwing him to the ground, at least three bolts hitting him before he hit the ground.
A yellow beam of proton energy lanced down into the window from Nal, a choking scream cutting off the spray of energy, silencing whoever had surprised Julus. I pulled away from the structure, running around and watching as Tatnia focused and fired through her window. When I reached the window that Julus had been looking through, I peeked around the corner, moving away just in time to avoid catching another dozen sprays of lethal red energy.
"Fuck this!" I said, charging my bound armor and casting it immediately.
Now protected by glowing conjured energy, I turned around the corner, this time coming out completely. I tanked the two out of over a dozen blaster bolts that managed to hit and drilled my own triple shot burst directly into a half-dressed Weequay holding a massive repeater blaster cannon, standing over the corpse of a blue Twi'lek female. Two of my shots hit his chest, seeming to do very little, before my final shot somehow found his eye, taking off most of his head before his corpse fell to the floor.
"How many did everyone get?" I called out loud enough for Nal to hear me across the street.
"Two," Tatnia responded, still looking into the garage, her still rifle up.
"Five," Nal added, his voice coming through my comms.
"And I got one. Nal, keep us covered, but I think that was everyone!" I said, turning back to Julus, who was still on the ground.
Both Tatnia and I rushed to the younger man, who was pale and breathing slowly. Before I could say anything or start to heal him, he grabbed my hand.
"It's okay," He said. "I… I did what I needed to do. I don't mind following my brother."
"Yeah, but I bet he would want you to live," I said, pulling my hand away. "Now sit still. You're gonna be fine."
"No way, I know-"
Before he could continue, I pulled his jacket aside and poured a dual-cast healing spell into the charred wound on his stomach and upper chest. Whatever that bastard had been shooting, it had been powerful because it punched right through his armor and started to cook him. I emptied my magic into him, his eyes widening as he felt it suffuse his wounds.
"Wh-what was that?" He asked, looking up at me. "What-"
"Team secret," I said, shaking my head with a smirk. "Just be thankful I like you, now keep still."
After a few seconds, I pumped him full of healing magic again, repeating it twice more until his color had marginally returned. He was looking at me with wide eyes, but before he could say anything, I shook my head.
"No, not now. We have work to do," I said. "You can ask questions when we are done. Alright?"
He nodded slowly before starting to push himself up.
"No, not yet," I said, pushing him back down flat. "A few more times, then we can get to work. Tat, keep an eye out, this is going to take a minute."
"So, we are taking the offer Julus," I repeated once we were all sitting, getting an eager nod in return. "But I want to make this clear. This is not a pistol at dawn, airing your grievances and dueling to the death kind of situation. This is an execution. Cold, clean, and simple. We aren't holding back to be fair or giving you the opportunity to see the life leave anyone's eyes."
"I don't care. I may not be able to handle them being alive when Zandev is dead, but I'm not looking for a show," He agreed, nodding once. "I just want them dead, like you said, clean and simple."
"Good. Then my suggestion is that we wait until it's dark, until they are all asleep, and we catch them in their beds," I said, Miru wincing, but Nal and Tatnia nodding in agreement. "If I get my way, we wouldn't even be in the same building when they are all alive, but depending on what that garage you mentioned is made of, that might not be possible. Nal, do you think you could get your hands on some more ammo for the proton rifle?"
"Here? Easily," He said simply.
"Good. How about some night mission gear?"
"Night vision goggles?" He asked. "Or thermal? It is possible to have both, but pricey."
"Less than five hundred credits per pair?" I asked, the blue-skinned alien nodding in confirmation. "Then get five, they are a handy bit of gear, so there is no reason not to get our hands on them while we can."
He nodded again, quickly pulling out his datapad and starting to scroll through something.
"Next, I want to know what this garage and the area around it looks like before we start this," I said, looking at Tatnia. "Can you handle that? It might be as simple as having Racer look into public records, or you might have to take some pictures yourself. If that's the case, I don't want you to even land near their territory, alright?"
"I can handle that."
"Good. Once we get those pictures, we can start planning this for real," I said, turning to Julus. "You're welcome to stay here until we execute the plan. We have to make sure you're geared up properly anyway."
Tatnia and Racer made their way to the bridge while Calima made her way to her room to unpack. Miru and I took Julus down to the cargo bay, where we were keeping all of the spare gear we had acquired so far. He needed armor, a helmet, and a blaster rifle, which we had plenty to spare. He did have his own pistol, two of them, in fact.
"You like them?" He asked when he saw me looking at them. "They were my fathers, he gave them to me before he passed. The only thing he left me."
"What are they?" Miru asked. "I don't recognize the make."
"That doesn't surprise me, they are apparently pretty rare. I was gonna sell them, but Zandev convinced me not to," He admitted, looking down at the two blasters on either hip. "They are Westar-35s. They pack a mean punch and are pretty accurate, but I never really invested the time in learning how to shoot them both at the same time."
By the time we had his armor and other gear set up, Nal was getting ready to leave. He took the MVR out to go shopping for what I asked for, driving the speeder bike right out of the starboard hangar. He dropped until he was five or six feet off the ground before his repulsors compensated, and he zoomed off.
"On a scale of one to ten, how difficult was what he just did?" I asked Miru, though Julus was the one who spoke up first.
"Oh. Right, on a civilian bike, that would be a hard eight," He said, still looking around the hangar curiously. "But a military bike is designed to go everywhere, including from high ledges to lower ground. It would have compensated for the change automatically."
"What about coming back in?"
"If he comes in slow, it should be fine."
I gave Miru a look, and she nodded in confirmation before turning to leave the hangar bay. As I was stepping through the smaller door, Miru turned and headed to her workshop. "Let me know if you need anything, Boss, I'm just tinkering!"
"Alright, have fun," I said, heading to the stairs, Julus following behind.
"So. she is a bit on the young side," He commented as we stepped onto the second deck. "Is she going to be coming with us?"
"No, Miru is our engineer," I explained, turning my head to look at him. "She is the one who designed the hangar modifications."
"Oh, alright."
It was only about an hour before Tatnia and Nal had completed their tasks, the crew plus Julus once again sitting down around the large table in the lounge. Nal had returned from his trip and unloaded two cases of ammo for the proton rifle and five smaller boxes containing goggles that could switch between thermal and night vision. I carefully opened one of the latter boxes, examining the goggles before handing them to Nal to inspect.
After that, Racer used his holoprojector to show off the images that Tatnia and he found on the holonet, with minimal slicing required. The garage itself was surprisingly large, a double-floored structure with two large bays and what looks like the office portion next to that. The first floor was ferrocrete, while the second floor, which formed a lip around the structure, was some sort of metal paneling with a few windows. Everything was in pretty good condition, and there was a speeder and two speeder bikes parked into the front ferrocrete pad.
"I assume these are from before the Blood Cores settled in?" I asked.
"Yeah, by about four months," Tatnia answered. "Racer also dug up some shots of the surrounding area."
The holo-projection shifted, showing off a few buildings with the garage showing up a few times in the corner or background. After about ten photos Racer projected a wireframe version, clearly compiled from everything he had just shown us, outlining all surrounding buildings.
"Damn, that's useful," I said, examining the slowly rotating projection.
"Nova wasn't kidding when she said she upgraded him," Miru said proudly. "Racer has a hell of a lot of power and tools stuffed into his frame."
The astromech whistled a long string that sounded vaguely proud. After watching the projection for a few minutes, I motioned for Racer to stop the slow rotation.
"Okay, I think our best bet is to ambush them, most likely starting with you, Nal, up on this roof," I said, pointing out the three-story building across the street from the garage. "You should have no problem shooting down into these windows with the proton rifle. Considering just how many vehicles Julus says they have, sleeping on the ground floor is unlikely. Still, we need to be prepared for that."
I gestured for Racer to zoom in on the front of the building. When the view changed, I continued.
"Now, a lot of this depends on where they are, but I'm going to assume the garage doors will be closed. If they aren't, we can take advantage of that, but we plan for them being shut," I explained, pointing to a row of windows that dotted the first floor. "Once Nal opens fire, taking out as many as he can through the windows, Tatnia, Julus and I will come in through these lower windows here."
As I pointed, several basic outlines of people appeared on the exterior of the projected model. I gave Racer an impressed look before continuing.
"If they stay on the second floor, then Nal can take them all out, but once they make it down to the first floor, which I'm guessing they will try, we ambush them there."
I sat down in my chair, leaning back and looking at everyone. Nal, Tatnia, and Julus were listening closely, while Miru and Calima were listening with much less enthusiasm.
"Our biggest goal here is to keep them from getting on their speeders. Not just because we want them intact but because it would give them a major advantage in firepower. Miru…"
The pink-skinned mechanic sat up straight, eyes wide, clearly not expecting to be called on.
"I want you and Racer here, listening in to TPSF comms. Do you think you could crack into those Racer?"
The droid wiggled and whistled out a complicated tune, which, of course, meant nothing to me.
"He says that he won't be able to hear them word for word, that's too protected for him to slice without being noticed," Miru translated. "But, he could get enough information to know if they are responding to a general neighborhood."
"That's good enough. I'm hoping we can skip their involvement, and I need to know if that changes. Calima?"
"I assume you want to be ready to lift off, just in case?" She asked, having been a bit more prepared to respond than Miru. "I can do that… but I will warn you that there are security forces in space around the planet. They could try and stop us."
"I'm hoping that they won't take it that far, but if it comes to that, we will just have to outfly them," I said with a wince. "Can you do that?"
"Most likely. If we get really unlucky… It might be difficult, but I think I can handle it."
"Good. Alright, we could get this done tonight, or we could push it off tomorrow and get a little more time to prepare, any preference?"
"I would rather get this done with," Tatnia responded, leaning forward in her seat. "No use putting it off."
When Nal only nodded in agreement, and Julus looked like he was ready to do it right now, for obvious reasons, I considered the matter settled.
"That works for me. Let's get everything packed up and ready to go, then we can have an early dinner. After that, we head out."
Another series of nods from around the table, and we got to work. Miru, Nal, and I broke down the proton rifle and four of our blaster rifles, fitting them and the goggles into the cargo container attached to the MVR. When that was done, we gathered around in the lounge and shared our meal. As we ate, I looked over at Calima, who was listening to the conversations but was staying mostly quiet.
"Sorry that your first day is so eventful," I apologized. "We had no idea that things would kick off like this, but it's a good opportunity so we couldn't pass it up."
"I understand… You don't have to worry," She said with a smile. "This may be more exciting than I'm used to, but I had a feeling working with you would be like this when you described your last few weeks."
"Well, that's good," I responded. "I'm glad that it wasn't a surprise at least."
We finished dinner quickly, and it was time to get to work. Nal flew out on the MVR again, carrying our rifles so that we wouldn't have to, while Tatnia, Julus, and I called in a cab. It was starting to get dark by the time we landed several blocks from our target.
As we walked the rest of the way, a ten-minute trek through a few alleyways, we did our best to seem inconspicuous. Julus kept looking around as if he expected the Blood Cores to come swooping down at any minute, but I couldn't blame him for being nervous so close to where his friend was killed.
Eventually, we got to the building that Nal was waiting for us behind, having landed the MVR in an alleyway. There we waited, out of sight from the street, while it slowly got darker and darker. Eventually, Nal passed out the night vision goggles, and we all started assembling our rifles.
"There's a clear path to the garage from here, through these alleys," Nal explained, pointing to a small path between two abandoned buildings to his left. "Just keep walking straight until you reach the street."
"Alright, comm us when you're in position, and we will head in," I said, watching as he nodded and started climbing a nearby ladder, heading up to the roof.
A quick glance at Tatnia and Julus, and we headed out, with me in the lead, slowly making our way through the alleys, following Nal's instructions. We held our rifles tucked under our jackets to hide them as best we could, though it was obvious what we were carrying to anything more than a passing glance.
After another minute of walking, we stopped, having reached the road. Across the street was the garage, lights still on inside. We could hear thumping, loud music clear through the garage bay doors. I held up my hand as I spotted two people, a Rodian and a Weequay, sitting outside. They had something in their mouths, some sort of Star Wars cigarette equivalent that my extra knowledge didn't know about. I held up my hand to motion to Tatnia and Julus, and all three of us walked back enough to be covered by the shadows of their alley. I crouched down low and pulled out my comm, tabbing it to Nal.
"Nal, they are still awake, stay down until the garage goes dark," I said softly into the comms.
".... Understood," Nal replied just as quietly.
For the next two hours, we waited in the darkness of the dirty, trash-filled alley, waiting for the gang to finally shut down for the day. At ten minutes past the two-hour mark, just about when I started to worry that they would party all night long, the music finally cut off.
There was shouting from inside the garage, the responding complaining voices coming through even with the building mostly sealed up. After a while, the building quieted down, and after twenty minutes, it finally went dark.
"Can confirm, sleeping on the second floor," Nal said softly through the comms, confirming at least one portion of our plan.
The lights in and around the building turning off flooded the street with darkness. All the public lighting near the building had been destroyed, the nearest lights coming from far down the street. Silently, we all pulled the goggles down over our faces, toggling on the night vision. At first, I was overwhelmed by the brightness, but the goggles quickly compensated, revealing a new bright world, though tinged with green. After a minute, I switched to thermal, only to immediately switch it back when I realized it was useless through the solidly built structure.
We waited another hour for everyone to fall asleep before Tatnia, Julus, and I crossed the street, keeping our heads down and moving as silently as possible, not stopping until our backs were against the ferrocrete wall of the garage. Each of us lined up near a different window, each of us sharing a look before I held up one hand left hand, giving Nal the ready signal.
I adjusted my rifle, holding it ready as I let out a slow breath. I could feel myself wanting to cast my armor on myself. I felt naked without it, but I focused on the fact that this was not like the Separatist raid, if they even got a shot off at us, we had already fucked up.
Suddenly the relative silence surrounding us was broken by the familiar whining sound of the proton rifle charging from across the street before a beam of yellow energy punched through one of the second-story windows. The whine immediately started again, firing not a second later.
A riot of shouting, screaming, and cursing echoed across the street as the Blood Core gang was cut in half in just over thirty seconds.
"I can't see the rest," Nal said, his voice coming from my jacket pocket, much louder now. "Coming down the stairs."
"Go!" I shouted, before turning and looking in through the window, the night vision goggles letting me see into the dark room easily.
Unfortunately, all I could see was the air speeder, filling up a large portion of the bay and blocking my view into the rest of the garage. I turned, planning to run around Tatnia and Julus to another window, only to see a staggering rapid spray of blaster bolts coming from inside the building, catching Julus in the side and throwing him to the ground, at least three bolts hitting him before he hit the ground.
A yellow beam of proton energy lanced down into the window from Nal, a choking scream cutting off the spray of energy, silencing whoever had surprised Julus. I pulled away from the structure, running around and watching as Tatnia focused and fired through her window. When I reached the window that Julus had been looking through, I peeked around the corner, moving away just in time to avoid catching another dozen sprays of lethal red energy.
"Fuck this!" I said, charging my bound armor and casting it immediately.
Now protected by glowing conjured energy, I turned around the corner, this time coming out completely. I tanked the two out of over a dozen blaster bolts that managed to hit and drilled my own triple shot burst directly into a half-dressed Weequay holding a massive repeater blaster cannon, standing over the corpse of a blue Twi'lek female. Two of my shots hit his chest, seeming to do very little, before my final shot somehow found his eye, taking off most of his head before his corpse fell to the floor.
"How many did everyone get?" I called out loud enough for Nal to hear me across the street.
"Two," Tatnia responded, still looking into the garage, her still rifle up.
"Five," Nal added, his voice coming through my comms.
"And I got one. Nal, keep us covered, but I think that was everyone!" I said, turning back to Julus, who was still on the ground.
Both Tatnia and I rushed to the younger man, who was pale and breathing slowly. Before I could say anything or start to heal him, he grabbed my hand.
"It's okay," He said. "I… I did what I needed to do. I don't mind following my brother."
"Yeah, but I bet he would want you to live," I said, pulling my hand away. "Now sit still. You're gonna be fine."
"No way, I know-"
Before he could continue, I pulled his jacket aside and poured a dual-cast healing spell into the charred wound on his stomach and upper chest. Whatever that bastard had been shooting, it had been powerful because it punched right through his armor and started to cook him. I emptied my magic into him, his eyes widening as he felt it suffuse his wounds.
"Wh-what was that?" He asked, looking up at me. "What-"
"Team secret," I said, shaking my head with a smirk. "Just be thankful I like you, now keep still."
After a few seconds, I pumped him full of healing magic again, repeating it twice more until his color had marginally returned. He was looking at me with wide eyes, but before he could say anything, I shook my head.
"No, not now. We have work to do," I said. "You can ask questions when we are done. Alright?"
He nodded slowly before starting to push himself up.
"No, not yet," I said, pushing him back down flat. "A few more times, then we can get to work. Tat, keep an eye out, this is going to take a minute."
Gonna be honest thought him going down was going to lead to our MC getting those sweet Mando pistols. And ya, he's probably their newest member lol. After all who doesn't want to stick around the man with healing hands