Overkill (Star Wars/Worm)

Chapter Twenty-Two

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“You understand,” Dooku said as he led her down one of the many corridors of the capital ship. “That your coming here and your agreement to assist the Confederacy were both rather unexpected?”

When HK47 was done translating she nodded. “I do. And while I don’t mind lending assistance. In fact, I’m quite eager to do so if it means freeing more slaves and stopping more pirates, I also feel that I’m on the back foot, if that expression translates. I mean to say that I’m unfamiliar with a great deal of the politics and societal rules when it comes to things like piracy.”

Dooku listened to his end of the translation then scoffed. “Rules? There are parts of the galaxy that are little more than hives of scum and villainy. There are no rules to be found there. The strong thrive and only the Force allows the clever to pull through. No, don’t mistake what I am saying. Your mission, if you wish to think of it as such, is to save people, send a message, and remind the galaxy that even if the Republic has forgotten the pain and suffering of so many, the Confederacy has not. The Republic needs the support of its people, as little as the Senators as the top would want to acknowledge it. Show them the ugly truth and their support will be eroded.”

“Thereby paving a path for you to swoop in and take over,” Taylor said.

Dooku gave her a shrewd, assessing gaze. “Indeed. Make no mistake. I want peace in the Galaxy first. But I also wish to grow more powerful, both personally and politically.”

She nodded. At least she could appreciate the honesty.

They arrived in a hanger, a room so grand that she could have fit every ship in the Boat Graveyard in it twice with room to spare. Ships with strage, shell-like bodies sat in berths above them while smaller vessels were parked below. It was to one of those that Dooku led her.

“This vessel,” he said as he pulled out a sort of tablet from his pocket. It was almost like a smartphone, though she doubted it was for the same thing. “Is Gozanti-class Armed Transport Besh-Oh-One. Not a very auspicious name, I’m afraid. Feel free to change its signature before leaving. If things go well perhaps it will become a symbol.”

She looked up to the ship, bugs already shooting ahead to inspect it closer.

It was not the nicest star ship she had seen, but it did look new. No scarring around the engines, no rust on its panels. She wondered if the inside smelled like pine fresheners. The entire thing looked like a bus. Long, rectangular. Two sloped wings stuck out from its bottom at the middle and the rear was taken up by a pair of engine nacelles.

The bridge was but a slit in the flattened face of the ship, a spot just before the top sloped back into the ship’s squarish roof.

“It looks functional,” she said.

“Comment: This ship looks under-armed and under-equipped. I suspect it is also severely untested.”

Dooku made an agreeable noise and HK had to cut off his incoming rant to translate. “The Confederacy has purchased a number of these vessels to serve as anti-pirate escorts. They can carry a flight of our Vulture droids and are well armed for their size. It is neither nimble nor fast, but it is well armoured and shielded. We’ve yet to decide if they will go into full production yet. This one is, of course, is yours.”

Taylor licked dry lips and took in the rather plain ship. It took on a new light when she thought of it as hers. As her own spaceship.

It kind of made her giddy. She wished she could go back and tell her younger self that things like Emma didn’t matter because one day she would have her own spaceship and would be charged with hunting down space pirates with it.

Dooku turned on a heel and began walking away. “Preparations will still take some time. We can outfit you with some of our refurbished B-1 Battle Droids. Not the newest models, I'm afraid, but serviceable enough. They will be able to fly your new vessel around, though I would suggest finding a proper crew.”

“Thank you, Count Dooku. I hope that I can earn you and the Confederacy’s respect, and earn the trust you’re putting in me.”

He nodded. “The Force is with you. I’ve no doubt that you will do great things for the Confederacy.”

***

“I need a crew,” Taylor said as she walked around the ship. She had to crane her neck way back to take it in properly.

“Suggestion: A crew composed of droids would be more than sufficient and would save you from all the troubles associated with having meatbags in your crew.”

“That would save us some trouble,” she said as she moved under one of the ship’s stubby wings. She doubted they would do much to help the vessel fly. They were probably there to stuff some equipment and such. There was a lowered ramp leading into an equally opened airlock. She sent a few bugs buzzing into it. “But I would like a few meatbags around. Urgh, now I’m talking like you. What I mean is I wouldn’t mind having some people around that aren’t made of metal.”

“Statement: Finding capable organics to assist you will be difficult, especially in our current location.”

“Anyone here might be a spy. I believe Dooku when he says that he wants to use me for propaganda. And that’s about the end of it. The moment we launch we’re looking through this entire ship for booby traps.”

“Statement: A wise precaution. Given the time and infrastructure I can replace the core programming of any droids given to us to better suit our needs and to prevent future tampering.”

HK-47 was, she suspected, rather excited.

Taylor pulled out the datapad Dooku had left for her. It had simple requisition forms on it, or so the Count claimed. “Here,” she said as she handed it over. “Get the things you need to fix droids and such, make sure any workshop we have is well stocked. And request simple bedding and food to feed a few hundred people. Stuff that can be preserved and that doesn’t take a lot of room. We’ll also need some paint. It wouldn’t do if our droids look just like the Separatists.”

“Query: Already designing your own army, mistress? I cannot help but agree to this line of thought.”

“Not an army, HK, an aggressive peacekeeping taskforce.”

“Commentary: Such a beautifully imprecise choice of words.”

Taylor grinned and moved past the ship. She had some people to meet. “Oh, and HK. Find the forms or whatever to rename the ship. It’s new designation is Atlas.”

She turned towards the entrance of the hanger where three familiar people were wobbling towards them. The two Falleen she recognized as slaves she had freed on Tatooine. The Trandoshan was Skarsk Nek, the strange, reserved lizard man she had crossed paths with a few times already.

Skarsk was the only one walking straight, but something about the parlour of his scales said that he wasn’t in the most sober state. “Look HK, the recruits are coming to us now.”

“Comment: What a sorry lot of inebriated sacks of flesh. I hardly think they would serve well aboard our new vessel, Mistress. They will stink the place up with their foul excrements and rub off the fresh paint.”

“How soon do you think you can get all the things we’ve requisitioned?”

***

“Ow,” was the first word out of Xarly as he shifted over to the side. His everything hurt. Hurt quite a bit, in fact.

Fortunately, he had recently spent a few years in college and his tolerance for morning after’s was at an all time high. He had been through entire lectures with splitting headaches, he could endure a bit of pain.

He was still squinting when his hand reached out and landed on something nice and warm and soft. “Huh?” he asked.

“You will remove your hand from my person, or I will remove it from yours,” said a voice that was most definitely nor female enough for his tastes. It was far too lizard-y.

He removed his hand and blinked a few times to take in the room. It was small, with grey walls and a bunk bed at the far end. There was a small bench and desk and what looked like a screen fixed to the wall with a feed from space.

Next to him was a writhing pile of clothes he recognized as Qarry, and in the middle of the room, standing tall and proud and imposing.

“Greetings: Hello you sorry sacks of filth, and welcome to your first day as the proud crew of the Atlas.”

***

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

Spoiler: Patreons

I want to thank all of my patrons, including:
Kido
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And my 72 other patrons!

Thank you guys; without your help I could never write as much as I do!

Thank you guys; without your help I could never write as much as I do!

She realized that at some point she was going to need to buy some furniture for her cabin. Proper furniture, beyond just the folding bed in the corner and the tiny desk with a small screen on it off to the side. It might have been the captain’s cabin but it was still absolutely tiny. She wasn’t going to complain though, not when the rest of the crew had cabins just as small that they had to share.

Yawning, Taylor rolled out of her bed and waddled over to the desk, her robotic arm limp by her side. There was a small battery pack charging on the desk which she picked up and slotted into an opening in her arm.

The three clunky fingers twitched, the whole arm spasmed, then she was in full control of it again. She was going to need to do something about the prosthetic. She was no expert, but she knew that there were better options out there. Options that probably included hidden weaponry.

If she was going to be a space pirate she was going to get a laser hand and anyone who complained could do it at the end of her arm mounted plasma cannon.

She realized that she might still be a little tired. Or she was spending too much time with HK-47. Or maybe she had some sort previously unknown dream of being a space pirate.

Taylor rooted around her tiny closet for a pair of pants and a shirt, then, once she wasn’t wearing nothing but her underthings and a t-shirt, she slipped on her boots and stepped out of her cabin.

Her cabin, on her brand new spaceship.

She could get used to that.

She noticed one the others slipping into her range one floor up. They had come up with a fairly simple system where they would hold onto a bit of flimsy with their destination on it and she would simply walk them over to it until they slipped out of her range. It was teaching her to recognize some words in Basic. Her crew were taking being puppeted in stride.

Taylor stopped by the little dining room one level down, filled a sort of sippy-cup with the drink they called Caf and shoved the equivalent of a microwaveable meal into a device that cooked it for her in a few seconds. Placing everything onto a tray, she balanced it all one-handed and made her way to the very back of the Atlas. She had a throng for scorpions following after her, little feet clicking on the metallic floor and her few flying bugs zipped around her head.

Hk-47 was waiting in the workshop. “Greetings: Hello mistress. I trust your rest was unfortunately peaceful and assassin free?”

Taylor sipped her caf. “It was,” she said. “I had some bugs hanging above the door in case anyone tried something. Which reminds me, we need to stop somewhere to gather more bugs, preferably something with more bite than those I picked off Tatooine.”

“Suggestion: We can find an information archive on most civilised planets, these may include warnings about the dangerous fauna of already-explored worlds which we could then visit.”

“Don’t you have an internet?” Taylor asked as she placed her tray on a workbench. The room was strangely shaped, owing to the fact that it was squeezed in between some of the ship’s primary systems. Still, it was large, with a decent amount of storage for odds and ends in bins at the rear and enough room to disassemble entire droids.

Which was what they were going to be doing. Not only did she want HK-47 to inspect all 75 droids they had been given, she also wanted to paint them in such a way as to make it clear that they didn’t belong to the CIS. So far that meant spray painting them black with yellow stripe highlights on their dog-like face.

“Query: What is an internet?”

Taylor had grown used to explaining words by then, and more recently HK-47 had been teaching her some Basic. She could almost string together a sentence. “It’s a network of interconnected computers meant to share large amounts of information and give people access to... sites, which are repositories for specific kinds of information. There are also games and media and social functions on it.”

“Conjecture: That sort of system sounds ripe for tampering. No, there is no such intergalactic system in place. The various holonet channels provide news and information at faster than light speeds across the galaxy.”

“Huh, alright,” Taylor said. She pulled at a stool, realized that it wasn’t budging, then noticed that it was clamped to the ground with four small magnets. A bit of fiddling later and she was sitting at the workbench and eating her way through her breakfast. “Where are we going next?” she asked. “Our mission parameters are pretty broad. Too much so, even.”

“Statement: I have taken the time to compile a list of potential targets of opportunity.” The droid spun around and placed a datapad on the bench. “Statement: Count Dooku left us with a long list of potential targets.”

“Hrm,” Taylor said as she started to scroll through the list. Most were essentially small pirate outposts or minor slave trading hubs. The sheer number of the later had her gut twisting in distaste. “Is there a way to see these on a map?”

Rather than replying, HK-47 took the datapad and connected it to a small holoprojector at the base of the workbench, one she assumed as for displaying schematics and the like.

An image of the galaxy appeared, then was filled with small markers all across it, each one with a letter-number combination in Aurabesh. It didn’t take a genius to see the links between the numbers and the targets on the list.

Taylor skimmed through each one as she finished up her meal, after a while they all blurred together. Then she noticed a name that stood out. “HK, what can you tell me about Czerka corporation? Are they an affiliate of the Separatists?”

“Negation: They are not, as far as I am aware, tied to the Confederacy.”

A mission to a planet called Nar Kaaga deep in Hutt space just felt... off. “This one,” she said as she pressed the name of the planet. The galaxy map shifted and expanded to zoom into the appropriate sector. “Says there’s a small slaver base here. The slaves are brought in from...” she looked at the list of places the slaves were shipped from and winced. “A whole lot of places. Mostly able-bodied humanoids. But they’re all sold to one client. Czerka corporation.”

“Conjecture: The Czerka corporation have been producing inferior weapons for thousands of years; it is probably that they need the slaves to work their factories.”

“Factories,” Taylor repeated. “Is the company in Hutt space?”

“Sarcasm: Let me verify my large banks of corporate information. Oh no, I’m afraid the information was misplaced.”

Taylor rolled her eyes. “Right, I get it. I think we should call Dooku, I might have an idea.”

***

Count Dooku was enjoying a fine tumbler of a Corellian wine a dignitary had gifted him some weeks prior when his desk chimed, warning him of an incoming message. He didn’t change his posture, remaining comfortably seated in his chair with only a flick of the wrist to accept the call.

A holoprojector slid out from the wooden surface of his deck and flickered to life, presenting him with the nervous visage of the Neimoidian currently serving as his secretary on his current mission. A mission that was going very well. The Falleen had taken the rescue of their citizens as a sign of good things to come and his personal visit to their pitiful little system was seen as something of an honour.

They still had too much pride in what little they had, but he could overlook that if it meant they joined the Seperatist movement years ahead of his schedule. The Force seemed to rejoice in his action in the system. It was an auspicious sign.

“Count Dooku, sir,” the snivelling secretary said. “You have a call from lady Khepri.”

“Darth Khepri,” the Count corrected. He suspected the girl had chosen the name at random, that was, until he had seen her capture the minds of anyone that slipped too close to her with nary a twitch. A strange and powerful ability, and not one the Jedi would ever approve of.

But she was too placid, too calm and collected to be a true Sith lord, and she failed to recognize his own power. Or, perhaps, she was merely unimpressed by it. A strange mystery, but for now one whose goals seemed to align with his own.

“Darth Khepri, yes,” the secretary said. “Shall I tell her you are busy?”

“Put her through,” he ordered as he sat up.

The projector flickered again. Darth Khepri appeared, angled in such a way that it was obvious that she was sitting at a desk of some sort with her droid translator just a step behind her. She said something with nodding her head once at the projector, then her droid translated. “Greetings: My master greets you and wishes you a day with as little pain and inconvenience as possible.”

“Hello, Darth Khepri,” he replied easily. “To what do I owe the honour?”

“Translation: The honour is owed by the simple expediency that any work you wish accomplished requires additional information. In particular, my master wishes to be informed about the Czerka corporation.”

He raised one delicate eyebrow at the last. Czerka were big. Not the biggest, not by far, but certainly one of the longest lived corporations in the galaxy. They produced a few products that competed with the Techno Union, if he recalled. “I see. Might it be possible to know what, exactly, you're planning on doing?”

“Translation: That would be permissible. Though any plans are contingent on the information obtained.”

“Of course,” he said. “Transmit a list of required information and I will have my people fulfill as much of the request as they can. Though I am curious, what makes you aim towards Czerka.”

“Translation: The Czerka corporation was flagged as common purchasers of large quantities of slave labour. They are also mostly based within Republic space. Discovering a Republic company using such under the auspice of the Republic would blemish both sides and disguise any acquisitions made during an assault.”

Count Dooku resisted the urge to smile, keeping his face bland and only mildly interested. “I believe I see what you’re planning. In any case, the largest Czerka factories are in the Anoat system. It is within Republic space, though not an area that is commonly policed or observed by Republic authorities.”

It took a time before Darth Khepri’s reply arrived, time she spent speaking with her rusty droid. That the language remained indecipherable so far was merely another mystery. Perhaps an old Sith tongue? It was certainly ugly and guttural enough.

“Translation: We await further information. Your time was appreciated, Count Dooku. With any luck we will next speak while the factories of our competition burn and the galaxy discovers the idiocy and corruption of their betters.”

The transmission ended soon after, leaving Dooku with much to ponder.

His thoughts ran back and forth until, finally, he reached a choice. His master had told him to begin collecting acolytes, those that were in touch with the darker side of the force. These were to be trained in the most basic ways of the Sith, though he had only found a few candidates so far, all of those were pitiful.

He had thought of adding Darth Khepri to their ranks, but that would obviously not work.

Now it was his duty to relay his findings to his master.

***

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

Spoiler: Patreon

I want to thank all of my patrons, including:
Kido
Treant Balewood
Orchamus
Electric Heart
Aiden King
CrazySith87
Shadowsmage
Sammax
Angelic Knight
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Pheonix14
Flanders
And my 73 other patrons!

Thank you guys; without your help I could never write as much as I do!

The trip to the Anoat system had taken three and a half days.

It felt like forever. She had spent her share of time locked in small rooms, not counting the time she’d spent in jail. She knew what it was like to be cooped up without being able to go outside. But usually there was an outside to go to, not just the empty swirling void of space.

Maybe she had gotten used to the idea that travelling took a few hours at most. Dragon crafts, teleporters, the occasional commercial flight. She had done her share of moving around on Earth. But Earth was tiny, minuscule. One look at a galaxy map and the route they took showed that they had crossed the equivalent of a tenth of the entire galaxy’s diameter. It was a distance so huge it hurt to even think about it too long.

And all of that was behind them.

The Atlas burst out of hyperspace on the edge of a quiet solar system. A single sun sat in the distance, a bit more on the reddish side than the sun back home. Three large planets spun around it, though only one of them was of any interest to them.

Anoat, the only inhabited planet in the Anoat system was their target. Taylor didn’t give anyone points for creativity there.

“Our target is the Czerka factory,” she told her crew as they assembled in the mess hall. Their ship was too small for a proper conference room, but the hall was big enough for all five members of the crew. The two Fallen, Xarly and Qarry stared at her, and the Trandoshan, Skarsk Nek continued to clean the barrel of a blaster with meticulous care, a cloth wrapped around a talon to scrub out all the grime.

“Okay,” Xarly said. “So we’re blowing it up?” he asked. He made an explosive gesture, complete with sound effects.

She frowned a little then shook her head. The words ‘blowing it up’ were unfamiliar, but the gestures he made helped explain the general meaning. “No. We go in, find out where meatbag slaves are. We see. We... learn. We make plan. Then we take meatbags with us and then we... blowing it up.”

Her Basic was, in a word, basic.

“Slaves?” Qarry said. The Fallen’s interest was obvious. She, of all her crew, seemed like the only one that was professional. She stood with her back straight, acted with the decorum and precision that Taylor associated with PRT officers and seemed to know what she was doing.

Skarsk Nek wasn’t bad either, though it was obvious that he considered all ship-board duties to be beneath him. He did his share, but with a fair degree of reluctance.

Xarly spent more time trying to slip into Taylor or Qarry’s pants than actually working, though when he did get to work he was... passably good.

Taylor nodded. “Slaves. Yes. We save meatbags. We kill filth. Czerka Corporation is evil.” That name was hard to pronounce, the sounds in the company’s name unfamiliar in English. “We know they are evil. We take their shit. Just need to learn how much shit to take.”

HK-47 shifted. “Suggestion: Move along to the actual planning phase of this meeting. These incompetents don’t need to be encouraged to fight. Or if they do need such encouragement I will be honoured to provide it.”

“Right, yes,” she said. To be fair, poorly concealed threats aside, she didn’t think her crew needed to be sold on the idea that saving slaves was a morally acceptable thing to do. “Problems are many. Slave collars with head shortening charges. No amusing casualties allowed. Slaves need moving.”

“So, we need to infiltrate them?” Skarsk said.

Taylor turned to HK-47. “Translation: Infiltrate. To sneak, to slip behind enemy lines, to find the optimal position from which to carry out an assasination.”

Taylor nodded to Skarsk. “Yes. We infiltrate. We good because we have reason to visit and to learn. I will be rich merchant meatbag. You will be... safe maker.” She scrunched her nose and gave up on finding the right word. “We ask questions. We learn much. Then we attack. One hundred battledroids. HK-47. Us. Free slaves. Give slaves blasters. Take ships. Leave. Then we go elsewhere. Make lots of trouble for the Republic.”

“Czerka have guards,” Skarsk said.

“We learn that too,” Taylor agreed. She added the word ‘guards’ to her mental dictionary and promptly forgot it. “Also need stuff for fight.”

“Stuff?” Skarsk asked, his voice a sibilant rasp.

Taylor nodded. “Weapons for meatbag slaves. Explosives. Czerka spaceships. This ship, Atlas, not taking part in fight. Too weak. Too...” she paused. She wasn’t about to admit that she was so vain as to want to keep her shiny new ship shiny and new looking. “Small.”

“Well, if Czerka aren’t expecting us, I think we might be able to do quite a number on their defences,” Skarsk said. “I never attacked a factory before, but I was hired to help take out a small fortress... elsewhere. It is bad form to talk about the particulars of past work.”

Taylor nodded along, piecing together most of what he was saying. Their Trandoshan was a mercenary, that much she knew, that he had some experience wasn’t unexpected. “How do we do, then?”

Skarsk hissed, a low, thoughtful sound. “We need to know the layout first. That will be our first priority. That and numbers. If the factory is small, then we can take it ourselves. If it’s as big as I suspect, then we won’t be enough.”

“The droids can help fight.”

Skarsk shook his head. “No. The problem isn’t fighting. It’s a factory. They will have guards and security and maybe turrets.” He paused to let HK47 translate part of that for her. “Nothing we can’t handle. The problem will be handling all those slaves at once. If there are few, then it is not really a problem, but if there are many, then we will have difficulty with them. The authorities won’t help either.”

Taylor sat back in her seat and pondered that for a moment. If they were using slave labour, and in great enough numbers for the CIS to notice, then there was a good chance that the local equivalent of the police were aware of them, and they hadn’t acted on it.

“We have to fight the ‘authorities’ then,” Taylor said.

Skarsk shrugged. “They might look the other way. Depends on if the slaves are legal or not.”

Taylor stood up. “Let us carry out first part of plan first. Then we see when we learn more.” That said, she nodded to her crew and moved back. She still had some things to prepare.

***

Anoat was a shithole.

Taylor didn’t say it lightly. She had been in some pretty horrible places before, but in every case all it would take was a few minute’s walk and she would be in a nicer place. Even a city devastated by an Endbringer had some wilderness left untouched nearby, some places where nature took over and the filth had been washed away.

The planet hovering below them had none of that.

Even from their rapidly descending orbit she could see long trenches cut into the landscape, as if the planet were no bigger than an apple that someone had cut slices into. All of those trenches lead to the single large city on the planet. Oh, there were little outposts shining on the dark side of the world as they crossed it, but she judged them to be no bigger than a small city on Earth, only visible because of the absolute lack of light across the rest of the world.

The mega city was a huge sprawling block. Thousands of buildings squished together, some of them probably bigger than anything on Earth.

She started to question the viability of her plans. Those buildings could house millions of people. And if those were the slaves she was going to save, then she would need a bigger ship.

The place looked like a more polluted, more desperate post-Behemoth Manhattan. If the city was a hundred times as large. They crossed over what she suspected was the industrial sector, a place filled with smokestacks and huge complexes surrounded by walls. Vehicles were moving in and out, some with cargo, others without. There was even a network of rails with trains moving to and from one factory and the next.

“This place is huge,” Taylor said.

The clunk of HK-47’s feet told her of the droid’s presence by her side. “Statement: The Czerka factories on this world produce millions of tons of equipment every standard galactic year. Most of these are simple manufacturing items though they also build weaponry, droids and large scale mining equipment.”

Taylor nodded. It was impressive, even if everything she saw was darkened by grim and soot. Stepping back, Taylor turned to Hk-47 and looked the droid up and down. She had spent a few hours with him scrubbing off the rust from his armour and injecting lubricants into all of his joints. Then she masked his important sensors and spray painted him the same flat black as all of her other battle droids. With his red eye-like sensors and the danger-yellow marks she had carefully traced along the edges of his armour he looked like something out of someone’s nightmares.

“This place looks alive, at least,” she said.

The droid piloting the Atlas turned its head in her direction, it was one of the few that she hadn’t repainted in ‘her’ colours. “We are approaching landing pad Leth Mem Aurek Osk. Prepare for slight turbulence.”

Taylor’s mechanical arm grabbed into a railing and tightened as the city beyond the viewscreen grew larger. They made a few adjustments in the air as the pilot droid aimed them towards a huge skyscraper with large holes all around it where ships were slipping in and out.

“HK, set up a guard when we land. Just a few patrols of droids around the Atlas to discourage idiots.”

“Query: What sort of response shall I program into them?”

“Get them to at least ask people to back off before opening fire. Maybe use stun rounds at first.”

Atlas slid into a wide berth, the pneumatic hiss of landing gear sounding out through the whole ship as the strange repulsorlift engines she had yet to figure out roared to life and made the entire vessel come to a stop and rotate until it was facing the exit again.

“We have landed,” the pilot droid said.

“Well done,” she said.

The droid nodded its head even as its mechanical hands flicked off a bunch of switches. “Roger roger.”

Taylor was tempted to get her droids to say something else, but seeing as how HK-47 was the only one with programming knowledge of that sort on their crew, she didn’t dare ask. They would probably start cussing her out every time she gave an order.

Now she just had to move onto the next step of her plan; scouting out the enemy. Unfortunately she didn’t have the connections to pass herself off as a rich merchant just yet, which meant either making those connections or... “HK, I need the directions to the seediest bar in the sector.”

***

Oh boy, here we go freeing slaves again.

 

Chapter Twenty-Five

Spoiler: Patreon

I want to thank all of my patrons, including:
Kido
Treant Balewood
Orchamus
Electric Heart
Aiden King
CrazySith87
Shadowsmage
Sammax
Angelic Knight
PreytorFenix
Pheonix14
Flanders
And my 73 other patrons!

Thank you guys; without your help I could never write as much as I do!

Taylor resisted the urge to press a hand against her newly acquired facemask. It was an annoying but necessary piece of equipment on Anoat.

They had landed two days ago. Two days of searching somewhat fruitlessly for a lead.

The first day had passed in a flurry of purchases. Some basic equipment, including her new mask, some clothes that weren’t from Tatooine and some basic essentials. Now she was kitted out in simple but tough clothes that gave her good freedom of motion and a nice pocket-lined jacket, all in deep blacks. A cowl to cover her face and hair, as was common in the local fashion later and she could pass for just another human in the crowd.

A human being escorted by two battle droids and a menacing protocol droid look-alike, but a human all the same.

They were in one of the deeper recesses of the megacity, in a place filled with bars and shops tucked into the corners of buildings and where the sun above was barely visible through the maze of catwalks, bridges and the haze of thick pollutants in the sky.

A form darted out of an alley and came to walk by her side, just barely outside of her range of control.

“Anything?” Taylor asked.

A masked face looked at her, the see-through front revealing Qarry’s rather pretty features. “Maybe.”

Taylor nodded and pointed to a small stand off to the side of the not-so-busy street. There were hundreds of such stands, reminding her a little of those that popped up around the Boardwalk on Earth Bet.

Then she noticed the squid-like face of the person behind the counter and the fact that the food was all served in plastic containers meant to keep the pollutant outs and the nostalgic feelings were dashed.

They sat, the droids standing guard behind them and probably discouraging anyone else from joining at the stand.

Taylor pushed a pair of cred chits across the counter and pointed to one of the more palatable meals on the menu before gesturing for two. The alien warbled at her and started warming up two meals, the chits disappearing in a blink.

“So?” Taylor asked.

“The presence of slaves is confirmed. Even their locations. They’re all housed in one of three large bunker complexes around the factories. Two for manual labourers, one of slaves with technical skills.”

“Okay, good,” Taylor said.

“The factory runs all through the night. There’s always a shift out working.”

Taylor sighed. “Not so good.”

Qarry hummed. The woman was certainly proving her worth as one of the more competent members of Taylor’s crew. “There’s a group that protests slavery here. Lots of rich backers. Mostly young students from the richer families.”

Taylor noted that. It was surprising but not quite. Slavery was, she hoped, viewed as cruel across most of the galaxy. “Do they do anything to help the meatbags?”

“No.”

She snorted. “Useless, then.”

“Maybe not,” Qarry said. “Could provide support. They have bodies.”

It was an idea, certainly, but she didn’t want to throw kids into a battle against a corporation that was probably owned by their parents. Or something. The help didn’t sound reliable to begin with. “Underground?” she asked.

Qarry shook her head. “Skarsk Nek knows more. Probably a bad idea. They need the city to work. No slaves, no work, they lose.”

Taylor ground her teeth, but couldn’t deny the twisted logic. Two meals were placed before them, steam escaping the plastic tabs on their boxes. The alien behind the counter made a shooing gesture.

“Suggesting: Let my master eat in peace or I’ll leave you in pieces,” HK-47 said amiably.

Taylor rolled her eyes and flicked another chit at the alien who caught it and moved further back.

She ignored it and started eating after lowering her mask and opening the lid to release fishy smelling steam.

As she ate, she considered her options and actions. Destroying the factories here was going to ruin an entire industry and probably cost Czerka millions, if not billions of credits, not just in lost slaves, but in equipment and infrastructure.

It would lead to the entire planet suffering a huge blow to its economy. Czerka was the biggest corporation on the world, it held a lot of sway and power and removing it would probably lead to a collapse of the entire planet’s infrastructure.

Was that such a bad thing?

It would leave lots of normal, otherwise innocent people in deep trouble, would destroy lives and homes and would have effects that she couldn’t even imagine. And yet if all those things depended on something so glaringly evil, she couldn’t let them continue, even if that meant the suffering of others in the short term.

HK had been teaching her a little, in odd moments of free time, about the philosophy of the warriors and rulers he called the Sith, those from whom her new name came. He explained that freedom itself was their greatest treasure, and the power to stay free their greatest asset. Maybe it was time to spread some freedom around.

She had been thinking too small, expecting that this world’s slave trade was no bigger than what she had found on Tattooine, not an order of magnitude more complex. Nimas the Hutt had been a trader, but most of the slaves the Hutt moved had never entered her facility or even landed on Tatooine.

Here, the slaves were kept alive as long as possible, or at least as long as they were usable. It was the sort of cold efficiency that made Taylor sick to the stomach. Unfortunately, the ships that brought new slaves only carried a few hundred each, they didn’t have room for the thousands on Anoat.

She had to shift her plan, a lot.

“Qarry,” Taylor said as she finished her meal and pushed her container away. She focused on finding the right words in Basic. “I need new information. Learn for me the planetary defences. The way the place defends for war. The local army and all that. Then we learn who the leaders are. We’re going to make... replacements.”

“Statement: Oh, master, please forgive this old droid for ever doubting you.”

Taylor rolled her eyes.

“I understand,” Qarry said. She bowed from her seat which had her head dipping into Taylor’s range. The amount of respect she received from her crew was at once too much and too little at times. She hadn’t done nearly enough to earn it yet.

“Get to work. HK, we need to plot more.”

Taylor stood and started moving again, her robots forming up behind her. “Query: Where are we going now, master?”

“Czerka’s head office. The security is supposed to be rather lax. I want to verify what Xarly learned and plan a way to break in. Can you break into their systems if you’re in the same building?”

“Statement: I can indeed break into most secured systems, though I am not built with that purpose and won’t be as fast as some other droids, I’m afraid.”

Taylor paused in the street. “Then we find a droid that can.”

***

R3-C2 scanned the streets outside of the shop's windows with a glance. Six organics, two droids, one fauna in the form of a bird that their databanks considered common on the upper tiers of Anoat.

The astromech turned around and made another slow circuit of the platform they were on. It afforded the droid a good look at the rest of the showroom.

Seven R2 units were lined up in a neat, shiny row next to the main window, each one wobbling in pre-programmed delight when an organic showed interest in them. Some R5s floated on repulsor lifts that slowly turned them in circles and displayed them to any customer entering the shop.

R3-C2 knew from self-compiled data, the frequent complaints of returning sapients, and the occasional malfunction witnessed live, that the R5s were temperamental at best and prone to malfunction.

Shop-Owner Bzell was--according to R3-C2’s social programming and prediction software--trying to entice customers into buying the more expensive and less disaster prone R2 models.

R3-C2’s route continued and their sensor package deployed completely at the predetermined location to reveal all of the tools and utilities they had tucked away. It also allowed them to scan the deep end of the shop where additional parts and upgrades were for sale, as well as defunct older models like the C1 series droids.

A GNK-Droid moved out from the backstore and approached each droid at the front in turn, deploying a power injector from its forward casing to top off any batteries. R3-C2 scanned the placard hanging from its side and noted that the price on the droid had lowered by another hundred credits.

When the GNK-droid honked at them to know their power status R3-C2 merely whistled a negative in return.

The shop was well lit and clean for an establishment visited by so many sentients. R3-C2, having sliced into the shop’s mainframe, knew that it was the best Industrial Automations sales point in their sector of the galaxy, though not because of the droids they sold on the main floor but thanks to the large number of ASP-series worker droids that were sold to local factories.

But Shop-Owner Bzell was aiming higher still. It was why R3-C2 was there, to entice local militia officers into purchasing even more droids, perhaps even those like R3-C2 that were specially made and crafted to be as near-perfect as a droid could be.

The door buzzer whistled. A sound too high pitched for most organics to notice. R3-C2 sped up their circuit of the display area so that they could see the newcomers.

There were four of them, three droids and a single sentient at the fore. Her social programs analyzed their positions relative to each other, the posture of the sentient and the quality of their equipment and clothes.

The two droids at the back were a relatively recent model, though they had been repainted to a flat, non-reflective black with yellow highlights around their armoured chassis. Their weapons were standard mass produced pieces but they seemed new and well maintained.

The other stand out droid was of a make and model that didn’t match up to anything in R3-C2’s databanks. There was a glitch as the scanners the astromech was equipped with tried to designate it as a non-combative protocol droid, but that classification didn’t match up with the other evidence present. The long rifle on its back that had parts matching a common snub-fighter’s cannon, the twin blasters in hip holsters, and the single vibroblade magnetically attached to the base of its back in a sheath made to look like a powerpack.

There were enough glitches in the scan and parts of the droid’s body that were shielded that R3-C2 suspected there were other, non-visible weapons hidden on or in the droid.

The last potential customer was a female human. Age indeterminate. She had a black mask with a built in rebreather and filtration system and a pair of golden-lensed goggles on that masked part of her face. Her clothes all seemed new. Baggy, with many pockets.

R3-C2 found three weapons on its first sweep, and two more on the subsequent scan. Not counting the hundreds of smaller, insectile lifeforms congregating around the sentient and moving in distinctly abnormal patterns.

Shop-Owner Bzell moved to the front, hands wringing together as he greeted the potential customer with a socially appropriate greeting.

The woman ignored him and moved towards the R2 droids while the false protocol droid began questioning Shop-Owner Bzell about the slicing potential of the droids currently being sold, as well as their capabilities in and out of combat.

Shop-Owner Bzell answered everything with an obsequious smile, then gestured to the R5 models behind him.

The protocol whipped out a compact blaster rifle from its hip holster and shot the R5. The droid exploded quite spectacularly. The gun turned and aimed towards the R2 models who waddled on the spot and panics as one of their numbers was blown apart.

The rifle turned to aim at R3-C2.

The astromech fired its thrusters and took to the air, arc-welder deploying along with its miniature buzz-saw. The protocol droid was a threat attempting to eliminate R3-C2. As a non-organic entity, R3-C2 would be justified in attacking it back.

The droid dodged with agility that didn’t match the physical characteristics of the droid. R3-C2 added a note to its databanks.

“Stop.”

The droid stood back straight and reholstered its blaster. Show-Owner Bzell stood up from his crouch and the R2s peeked around from the corner.

“Tell me about this one,” the woman said as she pointed to R3-C2.

Shop-Owner Bzell smiled, but his other physical queues suggested her was nervous. He explained that R3-C2 was a showpiece, not meant for individual sale.

“We’ll take it.”

Shop-Owner Bzell did not protest overly much and R3-C2 noted that while the customer had paid the full purchase price for an R3-unit, they weren’t charged for the other units.

What a strange and curious new master.

***