Overkill (Star Wars/Worm)

Short Summary: Taylor and HK-47’s happy piratical adventures.

Long Summary: Taylor survived being Khepri and she isn’t happy about it. Swearing that she would find a way to get back to those that left her for dead, she begins to make her way across the desert world of Tatooine in search of allies and just maybe, a new purpose.


Star Wars is perhaps one of my favourite fandoms and I’ve been disappointed in the lack lustre quantity and quality of other crossovers. I can only point to a few that I actually enjoyed. So I decided to fix this by writing the kind of story I would like to read. This is very much inspired by The Havoc Side of the Force and might follow some similar story beats.

I’m in no way a great writer, so please forgive any foibles and errors I have made and will make in the future.

Comments are appreciated, criticism even more so, and attacks on my person or on anyone else will be reported. I’m here to write pretty words, not babysit a forum.


Onwards!

 

Prologue

Until the moment that the sky split apart, the only movement had been the lazy haze of heat rising from the sands and the slow crawl of shadows hiding from the twin suns above.

The slit was small, a rough window into a world that was not this one. Air rushed out of the tear, cool and humid and entirely different from anything the desert had felt. The world sucked at it like a parched man taking a swallow of fresh water.

The form that slid out of the hole and fell into the side of a sand dune was small, a lithe package covered in tatters of black cloth. The impact sent dust into the air, more when it rolled unceremoniously to the bottom of the dune.

A figure stepped out of the hole in reality, landing with its feet just-so to absorb the impact on sandy ground.

The tear slid shut without sound or protest.

Masking its visage with a raised hand, the figure searched the horizon, gaze darting across an ocean of sand and more sand. Their hand lowered and they turned their gaze down to the pile of cloth and exposed flesh that was already cooking under the relentless gaze of twin suns.

With sure steps, the figure made their way down the dune, sands shifting beneath them but never enough to compromise their balance. They stood above the pile of cloth for a while, then reached around to the small of their back and removed a bottle. Water sloshed within it, condensation covering the tin surface with droplets that were wicked away by the heat.

“Good luck,” the figure said before dropping the bottle onto the sand.

They turned just as another tear opened up in the world and stepped into it.

The desert remained, unphased by the drama, by the horror that had passed on its surface. It had buried its share of sorrows in sand and heat, and it would do so still.

From the pile of cloth came a hand, emaciated and weak. Fingers like withered branches reached out with only the slightest tremble and grasped the bottle.

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

 

Chapter One

Her feet trailed across the sand with a rasp. Each step lifting a thin layer of dust into the air behind her and leaving a smooth mark atop the dunes she travelled.

Taylor passed the back of her hand across dried lips. What little moisture she’d had was long gone. She could feel the skin of her lips peeling under the sucking heat and her eyes stung even when the wind died down and didn’t spray her with flaying sand.

She shook her bottle, the half full container feeling far, far too light. “Damn it,” she swore as she continued walking. She didn’t know where she was going, exactly, only that the bigger of the two suns was behind her.

***

She shivered. Her costume, the tattered remains of it, at least, weren’t insulated for the cold of a desert at night.

Three unfamiliar moons hovered above. She wasn’t on Earth anymore, that much was infinitely clear.

Coughing to clear her dry throat, she turned over and looked at her bottle. Only a quarter left, and already the thirst was getting to her.

***

Bugs.

Or maybe not bugs, but some sort of scorpion. She felt the nest of them waiting in ambush just under the sands not a hundred meters away. Still she walked on, legs dragging along with a constant plodding pace that did little to eat up the distance.

She had them move out from under the sands and inspected them with none of the passion she would usually bring to that sort of thing. They were flat, wider than they were tall, with two barb-tipped tails made of overlapping chitinous plates.

They had eight legs, she noted idly as she passed by them. The scorpions followed after her, not making a noise or even shifting the sand as they kept up with her slow pace across the dunes.

She wondered if they were edible.

***

Another night.

She was out of water.

The scorpions, more of them now that she had started to gather them, were guarding her little nook in between a rocky shelf and a sand dune.

She wondered if they would eat her body come morning.

***

She was dying.

Just pushing her feet forwards a step was a chore. Her legs ached, her stomach was a gnawing pit and the wavering haze of the sun beating on the sand left lingering afterimages in her mind that she couldn’t get rid of.

Her every thought was a muddled mess. Memories flashed by in disjointed parts, thoughts of her friends, of Scion, of the world going to shit.

She would have cried, but there wasn’t a drop of water to wring out of her body now.

Another step, then another.

She heard a distant rumble.

More steps, feet dragging through sand that already filled her shoes.

The rumble grew more insistent.

Frowning, and without even the power to raise a hand to shield her eyes, Taylor looked around through sand-crusted eyes and tried to find the source of the noise.

Her scorpions felt it too. They wanted to scuttle away and hide under the sands for protection.

She ignored them. The rumbling came from off to her left, far, but not so far that the sound didn’t carry. There was a pillar of dust rising into the bright blue of the midday sky. Thick, and laced with black smoke.

Breathing in deep and suppressing the kernel of hope in her chest, Taylor turned towards the rumble and kept walking.

***

The machine was huge, a lumbering brick of rusty metal that moved along and over dunes on four tracks the size of minivans. It moved with no grace or elegance, just the slow, sure crawl that all things in the desert adopted.

Taylor shifted, her steps bringing her into the machine’s path where what little strength she had left finally abandoned her.

For a moment, head bowed and eyes closed, she lost what little will kept her going. She rested, waiting as the machine rolled onwards, approaching her from afar like an unstoppable behemoth. It wasn’t until the rumbling engine shifted tones that Taylor awoke from her haze and looked up again.

She was in the long shadows cast by the box, a respite from the boiling sun. The front of the machine hissed as it opened, revealing a long ramp built into the front that came clattering down on long hydraulic pistons.

Blinking dry eyes, Taylor stared at the trio of brown robed figures that moved out of the machine, two of them carrying long rifles tucked against their shoulders while the one in the lead, the shortest of the trio, had a black device in hand. He pointed it at Taylor and she tensed, but all it did was beep a little. “M'um m'aloo?” the creature asked, glowing yellow eyes staring at her from the depths of its hood.

“D--” Taylor tried to speak, but her voice was little more than a rasp, her tongue thick and mouth too dry to speak. She swallowed, but all that did was send a shiver of pain down her throat.

“Mi’amo ro! Massa kaa, roo? Waa,” the creature said, its voice pitched so high that she could barely hear it. A scent wafted by, like wet dog and rotting grass. It touched a canister at its hip, and from the sloshing she could hear it wasn’t hard to guess at its contents.

“I, I can’t,” Taylor said. She pointed at her mouth.

The creature nodded and took a few more steps towards Taylor. Steps that brought it into her range.

She didn’t want to, not again, but in the back of her mind there was a snap, like a rubber band going off and between one blink and the next the tiny creature was her. She shook her head. It wasn’t her, but it was hers to control, to play with, to dominate.

The creature stopped, almost falling over until she had it take another step to regain its balance.

She looked into glowing yellow eyes, her mind, meanwhile, was scouring over unfamiliar nerves and a body that was unlike anything she had ever controlled. She felt sick for a moment, but she was already on the brink. “I’m sorry,” she said to the little creature.

It was alien, not human in the least. It had two arms and legs, but the similarities ended there as far as she could tell. Not that it truly mattered. With the creature’s arm, she had it reach to its hip and pull the canister away. It handed it to her.

Its partners had kept their rifles lowered, but now they were chattering at her and at their friend. She didn’t have forever, or many options besides.

Taylor paid them little heed. She popped the lid off with a trembling, desperate hand, the bottle leveraged between her knees. She almost cried with a few drops splashed out of the side and to the sand where they disappeared with a hiss.

She sniffed at it just once before her self control broke and she tipped the flask back. Water, lukewarm, leather-y tasting water, ran down her chin and up her nose. Taylor almost choked as a relieved sob escaped her. She swallowed one mouthful, then another.

There was a vague memory of advice about giving too much water too quickly to someone who was dehydrated. She didn’t give a damn as she choked down more. The two creatures outside her range got a little more antsy as their companion stood stock still.

Throat wet for the first time in days, Taylor lowered the flasked and ran the back of her hand across her mouth, then licked her lips. She focused on the creature frozen before her. She could feel its nervousness, its fear, but surprisingly no panic. “I need a place to rest,” she told it. “I don’t have anything to pay you with. I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t sure what the impressions she was getting from the little creature were, it probably didn’t understand what she was saying to begin with. She certainly didn’t understand it. Sighing, she had the creature step back until it stumbled out of her range.

There was chattering, a whole lot of high-pitched squealing and the repetition of the word ‘jii die’ a few times while pointing at her.

One of the riflemen ran back up the ramp on stubby legs, gun catching on the entrance before it disappeared into the bowels of their huge home. She wished there were bugs within, but it was clean. Or, perhaps, it was too damned hot for the average insect to live. There were certainly few enough in the sand around them.

She brought her scorpions closer, but figured that they would not be appreciated by her new friends. Said new friends were gesturing at each other with expansive waves of their arms and more squealing noises.

A minute later, maybe two, the creature with the rifle returned, and this time it was being followed.

The thing was large, half again as tall as the nearest robed creature and made of rust coloured steel. Yellow eyes inset into an almost cat-like face of steel glowed briefly as it followed after the creature. Its steps were faltering and weak, as though it should have been more graceful but couldn’t get up the strength to move right. She could sympathise.

It wasn’t until the new creature spoke, it’s voice flat and monotone that she realized that it was some sort of robot, not a living thing. It rattled something at her, then shifted dialects. Again and again for a few long minutes, a new series of sounds every time.

“Are you, are you trying to talk to me?” she asked it. Her mind was still a hazy mess. It was going to take more than one bottle of water to fix that.

The robot paused, then turned to the little creatures and chittered at them. There was a distinctly annoyed tone to it as it gestured towards its chest. A silvery medallion-shaped thing was bolted there, the only part of the robot that wasn’t rusted.

“Can, can I have more water?” she asked. They, of course, didn’t understand. She shook the canteen towards them and the nearest creature jumped back and started pointing its rifle at her.

More chattering. They eyed her for a moment, three pairs of glowing yellow disks half hidden within deep cowls taking her in. One of them came a little closer, then pointed to the darkness within their boxy home.

Taylor’s choices were simple. Follow the little creatures into their home, or wait in the great desert for the sun and sand to end her once and for all.

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

 

Chapter Two

Taylor’s first days in the machine were strange, a haze of half remembered emotions, of being shown to a little room and being given water, of having dozens of small creature become a part of her only to be pushed away by her own fleeting will.

She wasn’t sure how long had passed. A day, maybe two. The only real company she had was the rusty robot who would occasionally repeat her own words back to her. She knew that it was night when it grew colder, and that it was day when the temperature inside the machine reached the point where the air was so thick it was hard to breath.

They left her alone, for the most part. On the first day she woke up to find bandages wrapped around her missing right arm and a strange collar around her neck. Her costume had been torn up some more by grubby little hands, but she didn’t have anything worth stealing to begin with.

Still, she recovered. Some sleep, some water, a bit of gruel that tasted like spicy oatmeal and more sleep besides. After some time she was beginning to feel alive again.

“So, what are you?” she asked the robot.

“So, what are you?” it repeated in a low monotone.

It was a tall and rather imposing machine. Or it would have been if it didn’t look like it was a stiff breeze away from falling apart. “Are you trying to translate?” she asked it.

“Are you trying t--”

“Stop,” she said, and motioned with her hand with a cutting gesture. “It was cute at first, but now it’s just annoying.”

With a grunt of effort, she climbed onto her feet and had to bend back down to avoid hitting her head on the ceiling. Everything was built to the scale of creatures who were a good foot shorter than her. She was going to have to be careful around doorways. It didn’t help that the constant rumble and sway of the vehicle threw off her balance, like being aboard a boat on choppy water.

“I’m going exploring,” she said to the robot, just to see if it was starting to understand. She doubted it. Sighing at the machine, she started to move towards the door when its arm shot out with surprising speed and blocked her path.

The machine pointed at its neck with its other hand, then made a pre-recorded explosion sound.

Taylor touched the collar wrapped around her neck, feeling all the weird lumps and canisters on it. “It’s explosive?” she asked.

The robot stared at her, then pointed to her neck and made the exploding noise again.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she swore. “How does it activate?” she asked. “Is it remote controlled?”

The robot just stared, its unblinking red lights fixed on her.

Sighing, she pointed to the collar, then mimed walking out the door before making an exploding noise of her own. She felt rather ridiculous, but it seemed to get the point across.

The robot pointed to her collar, then to three points around the door where little cylinders were tack welded in place and fairly recently. He made walking motions with two fingers, pointed to her, the cylinders, then out the door. He repeated the exploding sound.

“If I cross the door, I explode,” she said.

He nodded.

She frowned, wondering when, exactly, she had decided that the robot was a he, and what she was going to do about her new necklace. She had better things to do than wait around on some little creatures to decide her fate. She had to find a way back to Earth, or at least back to Contessa. The woman’s power might have been bullshit, and maybe she was right to dump someone as dangerous as her on some desert rock to die, but that didn’t mean that she was going to lie down and take it.

“Can you remove the explosive?” she asked, pointing to her neck, then making a one handed gesture that she hoped the robot understood as removing the collar.

The robot shook its head, then pointed to the thing on its chest.

“I don’t get it,” she said.

What followed were a few minutes of playing charades with a surprisingly intelligent robot, though she had the impression that it was growing frustrated with her.

“That thing on your chest,” she said, pointing to make sure it understood. “Is stopping you from helping me.”

“Stop helping,” the robot said.

Taylor almost jumped out of her skin. For nearly half an hour already she had been the only one talking. To hear another voice, even one that had be be loud enough to be heard over the rumble of the vehicle’s engines, had surprised her.

“You learn quick, huh?” she asked it. “How? I get the stop part. There was context there, but the help bit. But you knew a lot of languages. You’re learning as I speak, aren’t you?” She bit her lip. If he could learn to speak in a few days or hours then she could communicate. That was one issue out of the way. All it needed was time.

He didn’t have anything to say about that.

She pointed to the tiny mattress she had been sleeping on. It was too small to stretch out on and uncomfortable besides. “Mattress,” she said. She mimicked sleeping, adding a bit of a snore to it. “Sleep.” She gestured to the whole of the bed. “Bed.”

On and on it went, with her pointing to an item, then calling it out. Her cell, because if she was locked in there it certainly wasn’t just a room, was tiny and spartan, and the few items in it were forein besides. Soon enough she was miming eating, talking, seeing and feeling. Every gesture and body part she could point to she named and the robot just watched with its glowing red eyes.

She hoped she wasn’t too much of a fool, but at least it was something to do.

***

Taylor woke up to a mechanical hand shaking her shoulders.

She was instantly awake and searching for a weapon. Her arm reached out and grabbed a pipe, one that she had torn off from a broken fitting on the ceiling the night before and got ready to fight.

The robot was above her, arms held away from her as he slowly backed away and to his corner. Then he turned his head and started chittering and squeaking in the strange tongue of the locals.

There was one of them in the entrance, a tall one with white bandoleers across his brown robes. It chattered back at the robot and then looked her way. The little creature gestured at her, as if asking something but Taylor couldn’t make heads or tails of what it was saying.

The robot turned to look her way, then pointed to the creature. “Translation: Jawa. Taylor help.”

She raised an eyebrow at that. “He wants me to help?” she pointed between herself and the creature, the Jawa.

“Yes,” the robot said.

“Why?” she asked.

The robot and the Jawa conferred for a moment while Taylor rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. It was surprisingly difficult to do one handed.

“Translation: Jawa hurt. Jawa explosion, pain, hurt. Jawa bad... Tusken Raider. Hurt Jawa.” The robot seemed just as frustrated as she was at the lack of decent communication.

“Someone is hurting the Jawa? A...” She hesitated before repeating the unfamiliar word. “A Tusken Raider. Is that another clan of Jawa? Another group, a family of them?”

The robot shook its rusty head. “Answer: No.”

“Right, so it’s not a Jawa, but it can hurt the Jawa?” she asked.

It was then that she heard over the rumble of the vehicle, a distinct whining sound. She didn’t have anything to compare it to, but it was always followed by a hollow thud like something impacting against steel.

The entire vehicle shook, and it wasn't the usual rocking that they had been suffering through from the moment it took off.

The little Jawa was growing frantic, pointing and chattering louder and louder. “Translation: Help Jawa. Free. Collar.”

Taylor frowned. She didn’t know what was going on, or who was attacking them, but fighting was something she could do. Maybe. She wasn’t in the best of shape, even with over half a week to recover. Her missing arm still threw off her balance and she felt weak. Then again, the Jawa didn’t look all that strong.

“Sure, I’ll help.”

The robot was hardly done translating that the tall Jawa pulled out a device and pointed it to each cylinder around the door. They all beeped once.

“Is he turning off the collar?” she asked the robot.

“Yes,” was the machine’s quick reply.

Taylor was out of her bed and across the room in one stumbling, graceless motion. The room was long enough that staying at the far end meant that the Jawa was outside her range, and even if she stood by the door there was plenty of room for it to pass unmolested at the far end of the corridor, but her sudden burst of movement caught the creature flatfooted and it had hardly taken a step back that it was in her range.

Between two blinks she was in control of the Jawa

She grinned and had the impression that she didn’t look all that docile to the Jawa as she towered above it. Moving its body like an extension of her own, she disabled the other traps around the door, then had the Jawa move into the room.

“Can you have him disable that thing?” she asked, pointing to the medal on the robot’s chest.

The robot looked down, then back up. “Answer: No. Tool.”

“You need another took for that?” she asked. The robot would be useful to have, if only to translate. It helped that he was a big hunk of hard steel that could probably take a battering for her. “What does it look like?”

The robot made helpful gestures while explaining in halting, one-word sentences. “Answer: Long. Metal. Ring. Buttons. Jawa have.”

“Right, I’ll keep an eye open for it. Can you follow me?”

The robot paused. “Answer: You can say to follow. Robot can not. Jawa can say to follow. Robot can.”

She had to parse that for a second, but as soon as she thought about it, it made sense. “What would the Jawa have to say, exactly, for you to be allowed to follow me and fight?”

The robot chattered in the Jawa’s strange tongue, and she had the creature next to her imitate the sounds. Its tongue was well suited to the strange words and they came easily to it. That was going to be a handy skill to have, if she ever encountered other devices that were voice activated.

“Okay, do you know of any other explosives?” She pointed to her collar. “Or how to remove this one?”

“Answer: No,” was the robot’s response.

It was all she was going to get, she figured. There were a few bugs in her range, mostly flies that gathered in the vehicle’s kitchens and a few of the sand scorpions she had grown familiar with. She started moving the latter towards the Jawa’s mobile fortress, skittering over the rocky terrain outside to get closer.

She didn’t know what a Tusken Raider was, or even if she wanted to help the creatures that had essentially imprisoned her, but she did have a debt to repay and a life to get back to, and none of that was going to happen if she sat back and let her new friends die.

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

 

Chapter Three

Taylor discovered what a Tusken Raider was as she made her way through the Jawa vessel.

She was nearing the bottom of the ship, the place where she knew there was a ramp that could be lowered to the outside world. It was also, she learned as she approached, the place where the Jawa were making their last stand.

She had tagged as many of the little creatures as she could with the inoffensive little flies that flitted around the place, one on each Jawa’s hood. They were all gathering in one room. No, not all of them. The smallest and those that didn’t move with the same alacrity as the rest, those moved to the back of the vessel, where stacks of metallic limbs and broken equipment lay discarded and where they could hide amongst the trash.

“What’s a Tusken Raider?” she asked her robotic companion.

The robot was quick to reply, but his broken English, as impressive as it was, was not up to the task of enlightening her by much. “Answer: Tusken Raider. Big Strong. Smart. Danger. No explosive. Hurt tools from far.”

“Hurt tools from far?” she asked as she navigated the tight corridors around them. It was a bit of a comfort that all the Jawas were gathering at two places. The only one in her range was the tall one behind her. “You mean bows?” She mimicked firing a bow. “Slings? Javelins? Guns?” Each gesture was answered by a shake of the head, then the robot paused at the last.

“Answer: Tusken Raiders use guns,” the robot said. It made a noise, a recording of an electronic whine in quick stuttacco.

“Guns that fire quickly, then. And not bullets.” She ducked under a low arch, her ribs and stomach protesting at the motion. She was still far, far from her best. “Are they hard to hurt?”

“Answer: No,” was the quick and easy reply. “As hard as a human.”

She snorted. His first full sentence and it was to tell her that her adversaries and her were on even ground. Or would be if she wasn’t probably outnumbered, literally outgunned and fighting defensively against an enemy she knew next to nothing about.

She felt through her bugs as the Jawa around the entrance tensed. The vessel shook, a loud clanging boom resonating through the entire structure followed by a dull thud. “I thought you said they had no explosive?” she asked her robot friend. He just stared at her blankly.

They redoubled their pace. She had the Jawa behind her search himself for any kind of weapon, but only found strange tools stuck to his bandoleers and belts. Maybe one of them was a weapon, for all she knew, but it wasn’t one she was familiar with.

One of the Jawa’s by the door fell, then another. Whining noises like the one her robot friend had made echoed through the steel walled halls, growing in intensity. Her bugs, the scorpions rushing outside and the few flies she had in the hold, finally found the Raiders.

They were human. At least, that was her first impression. Tall, gangly men in loose clothes, all of them wearing masks and moving with the surety of soldiers into the Jawa vessel. One of them fell, but after being dragged back by his companions he was replaced by two more.

“Shit,” she said.

They were outnumbered. She knew it, the Jawas knew it, and their enemy, judging by the raucous noises they were making, knew it too.

All it took was one more Jawa falling and they broke. The little creatures turned and ran, all of them moving deeper into their home with the ease of years of practice. Walls were lowered, grates shut, and the passages deeper into the vessel were locked up. All those in the direction opposite where she was now.

Taylor had a choice. To back off and hide, or stay and fight. Her scorpions outside had finally found the other Tusken Raiders, a group of half a dozen waiting around a huge mammoth like beast.

She had them wait.

A plan was hatched, one that relied on a power she hated, and on a gamble she didn’t want to make.

Taylor walked on.

***

A’Shar’Kr shifted with the sands, his Gaffi stick held high as he roared his defiance to the little ones who ran. He and his clan, his brothers, would chase them in their iron box, and they would slaughter them for trespassing on the land of his clan.

Then he was hit in the back of the head, not a hard blow, but a reminder. “Keep your eyes open. It is like the moonless night in this box,” Grrk’Kri’Ar said.

The clan leader moved deeper into the Jawa vessel, feet as light as grains of sand in the wind and cycler held low. A’Shar’Kr did not like the weapons, not in such tight quarters as these, but the clan leader was a good shot

The proof came when he moved into the dark pit of the Jawa home, away from the brothers who stayed with the Bantha and Ur’Aah’Crnt who had earned himself a burial in the shifting sands for his bravery. The fool should not have stood in the path of the little one’s light guns.

There were six of them moving into the dark pits, all of them waiting for their eyes to lose the day glow vision and relearn to see in the dark. But this was no night watch, and the Jawa were no empty hillside. They were clever little ones. Traps awaited for those that did not pay attention.

“A’Shar,Kr, you are coming with me,” Grrk’Kri’Ar said. “The rest of you, dig into their cave. Find their water. It is ours now.” There was some cheering at that. More water for the clan was always a welcome gift.

A’Shar’Kr moved after his leader, deeper into the shadows and towards the distant rumble of the Jawa home’s heart. “I see three dead,” A’Shar’Kr said. “What will we do with them?”

“Leave them to the sand barbs,” Grrk’Kri’Ar said. “We are here to kill the trespassers and take their waters, not honour their dead.”

“Ah,” A’Shar’Kr said. “But I wanted a gift for my little Uli-ah.”

The leader laughed, a low rumble like heavy rocks tumbling down a hill. “They we will find a nice gift for your child.”

Their path was blocked first by a large plate of metal, then by a grate, but Grrk’Kri’Ar was clever and wise, and he had A’Shar’Kr open the path with his Gaffi stick as a lever.

They could hear the moan of the Jawa, and the air stank of womp rat piss. They knew that they were coming. “We must be careful,” Grrk’Kri’Ar said. “I smell a trap.”

Someone screamed behind them and the two froze like a dragon that heard prey. The scream cut off, then there was a gurgle of fresh blood flowing.

Grrk’Kri’Ar said something that the clan matriarch would have cuffed him for speaking. “A’Shar’Kr, stay here. Watch for the Jawa. Be sure that they don’t come to stab us in the back.”

A’Shar’Kr grunted his understanding and watched his leader rush back to the entrance they had made in the Jawa home. The others must have met resistance. Maybe they ran afoul of trap or snare.

He waited. He was good at waiting. All the warriors could stand in one place like a stone in the wind while the sands danced and the suns circled above.

Then her heard stepping. Not the soft steps of his brothers but the heavier tread of someone who knows no better in the desert. Girding his wits about him like a robe, A’Shar’Kr moved towards the front room, eyes darting around like a womp rat that had scented a Kyrat dragon.

He found them in the entrance room. His brothers. Two of them standing above the body of a third. And Grrk’Kri’Ar was there, his rifle at his shoulder. All was well.

Then he saw the others. A girl-child of the outworlders, crouched down in the shadows beyond the doorway, her eyes already on him. Why? Why was she not being taken by his clan? Did Grrk’Kri’Ar want her as a trophy? As a toy while the banthas rested?

But no, his clan’s men were not moving, not talking, and they were standing wrong. Too tall, too unmoving. They did not sway like the skittering sand over the dunes.

Grrk’Kri’Ar and one of his brothers turned, their Cyclers rising to their shoulders and A’Shar’Kr knew that he had been betrayed. The fact stung, like water spilled into the sands, but he was a brave warrior, and all brave warriors of the sand knew that to face the dragon in its cave was foolishness.

Even as the first shot was taken and missed, A’Shad’Kr was moving. The second screaming retort of the cycliers came with a bite in his lower arm, but it was not the one holding his Gaffi stick, and though he might have dropped blood on the sands, he still lived.

A’Shar’Kr jumped out of the ramp and into the sands, his legs already carrying him towards the bantha. “Brothers! Brothers! We must flee. The demons have taken Grrk’Kri’Ar and the others. Let us run and return with the moons!” he called out.

Then his moon eyes, burning in the sun’s wrath, saw his companions who had been left to guard the Banthas.

They were on the ground, or slumped against their mounts. Gaffi sticks lay abandoned, cyclers were already sinking into the sand. And around his clansmen were the bodies of sand scorpions, barbs crushed, tails torn, holes smashed into them. But there had been too many.

A’Shar’Kr turned. She was there. The outsider demoness. She had only one arm, and eyes with more wrath than the suns themselves.

A cycler barked and A’Shar’Kr fell into the sands, his life fleeing all around him. He heard the distinct, chilling scratch of a scorpion crawling to him, and knew that the monster would feast on his blood.

Panting, he looked up, he had to see, to know why and what.

Grrk’Kri’Ar pointed his cycler towards one brother and shot. He pointed to the next, and this one did not even move. Another retort. More blood in the sand. Then, as the darkness swallowed A’Shar’Kr, the last thing he saw was Grrk’Kri’Ar tossing his precious cycle to the sands and removing his knife from its sheath.

***

Protip: If Kephri is on your planet, use your technological superiority to change planets.

Thought that the perspective of someone other than Taylor made the scene a whole lot more visceral.

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

 

Chapter Four

They respected her.

At least, that’s what Taylor wanted to think. The Jawas had snuck out of their little hidey hole, some of them immediately falling on the dead with wails of protest, but others, the braver ones, moved outside. They found the pile Taylor and her robot friend and the one Jawa with the white bandoleer were making, a mountain of corpses, divested of guns and whatever looks useful.

There was a burial, of sorts. Jawa bodies wrapped in cloth and left in the sand. Taylor had stood aside, left them to their mourning. Then the Jawas waved her back into their home. The one with the white Bandoleer had given her a tool, tossing it to her with chittered instructions that took a while to decipher even with the robot’s help.

The collar was gone.

And she was put to work.

As their machine, the sandcrawler, moved across the Sea of Dunes, Taylor was shown to the Jawa’s workshops where they took apart machines with little hands and put them back together with the speed of long years of practice.

A few of them were happy to show her how to do the same, and lacking anything better to do, Taylor started to learn about rusty robots and broken old machines. There was something about it that was soothing, even in the bowels of the too-hot workshop where the whole room rumbled and the heat was almost unbearable, she sank into her simple work, losing herself in the act of taking things apart and trying to put them back together.

She had been at it for nearly a week, a week where she was starting to feel something like companionship for the Jawas, even if they still kept their distances most of the time.

“What’s this part?” she asked, lifting a long tube with little notches on its side and a sort of whole at the top.

Her robot friend eyed it for a moment before responding. Half of his words were in an unfamiliar tongue, but that was okay. She wanted to learn, and teaching someone technical terms for a field she knew nothing about was verging on the impossible. “Answer: That is a power converter for a moisture gatherer.”

“And what does it do?” she asked as she started to fiddle with a pair of wrenches that the robot insisted on calling hydrospanners to take the top off. There was some green stuff on the coppery bits of the tube. Rust, but the sort that grew with humidity. She wondered how that had happened in a desert.

“Answer: It uses the ambient temperature to convert ionized particles into usable electrical current to power a moisture gatherer, a device used by filthy biologicals to obtain the liquids they need to keep their fleshy parts moist.”

Taylor nodded. She was beginning to suspect that the robot’s invectives were on purpose, and not just an artefact of bad translation. As for the explanation, it at least made the rust make sense. She repeated the unfamiliar words a few times, trying to commit them to memory. Learning a new language was going to be tricky, so she was going to start with the words for which she had no translation.

The converter’s inside was a rusty mess, but a few hours of rubbing and cleaning it left it shiny. She put it back together with a contented humm and tossed it into the pile of fixed things.

“Right, next part,” she said as she started to reach for a strange looking component in the busted bin. She never grabbed it as a group of Jawas rushed by. She had not been around them long enough to understand their language, if she ever could, but she could tell they were excited.

One of them stopped and chattered at her robot friend before moving into Taylor’s range to grab the bin of fixed parts. She guided the little guy over to it, grabbed the things, then guided him out of her range without a second glance. The Jawa were becoming surprisingly docile about having their bodies puppeted.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“Commentary: It seems as if the Jawa have arrived near a trading outpost. They are preparing to ply their trade to other degenerates. Statement: Perhaps I will be fortunate enough to be sold to some gullible water farmer.”

She shook her head as she got to her feet. It would actually hurt her to lose the translation robot’s company. Not that she would admit it to him. He was insufferable enough as it was.

“C’mon,” she said as she moved over towards the front of the sandcrawler. The Jawas were, indeed, setting up shop. They had a folded pavillion off to one side, with a sort of canvas top packed away, and one of them was busy lining up all the other robots in the crawler into neat rows against the far wall. The bins and bins of parts she and the Jawa had been tinkering on were moved over to the edge of the ramp-wall and crates filled with guns and even the weapons they had taken from the Tusken Raiders were moved to one side.

She was approached by the Jawa with the white bandoleer, the one she figured was the leader of the little group. He chattered at her, yellow eyes glowing under his hood.

“Translation: The little sack wishes to inquire if the lady will be venturing out of the sandcrawler while the Jawa work.”

She nodded. “Yeah, it would be nice to stretch my legs. That is, unless it’s dangerous.”

“Sarcastic Commentary: We are on Tatooine. Nothing is dangerous here, only the deserts and everything that lives in it.”

She gave the robot a flat look. “Just translate.”

He did and the Jawa squeaked back at him before removing a gun from one of the bigger pouches of his bandoleer. He tossed it to her underhand and she caught it out of the air with only the slightest fumble.

“A gun, seriously?”

“Commentary: Oh, this might be fun.”

She shook her head and inspected the gun. It didn’t have a magazine or anything, and the barrel was too stubby and crooked to possibly use actual bullets. She had to assume it was a raygun or some such. “Is there a safety on this thing?”

“Statement: There is. The weapon is currently safe. Instruction: Do press the red button on the side to arm the blaster.”

She looked at the side of the weapon and it did indeed have a little light and a button next to it. Shrugging one shoulder she turned towards the robot and pointed it between his glowing red eyes. “So if I pull the trigger now, you’ll still be yammering on at me?”

“Statement: How delightfully pragmatic.”

Taylor rolled her eyes and looked for a place to store the thing. Her current attire wasn’t anything to write home about. A skirt made from some of the rough cloth the Jawas used, a shirt that had been in the packs the Tusken Raiders had carried and that she had washed in the sands and a belt that cinched everything at her waist. It was light and airy and not terribly supportive, but better than her torn up costume for desert living. Though she did tear the goggles out of her mask. Getting sand in her eyes was not something she wanted to deal with again.

She was really starting to hate sand.

The front ramp of the sandcrawler lowered with a pneumatic hiss, pistons as big around as Taylor stretching out to lower the entire front of the vehicle and slowly revealing the bright blue sky beyond.

Her robot friend’s assertions that they were near a trading post has left her wondering what kind of place they were actually near. She had expected a few buildings, or maybe something more primitive.

Instead she took in the sights of a small village. White, squarish houses with domed roofs, large metallic pillars around the town proper, standing up like high-tech fence posts. A few things that looked like cars moving across a busy street that lead down to an intersection. And people.

Taylor stretched out her senses and caught a few bugs, proper bugs, at the edges. She didn’t recognize most of them, but they were similar enough to what she was used to that just having them in her control lifted a weight off her shoulders.

As she stepped down the ramp, her robot companion at her heels and the Jawas behind them with their assorted goods, Taylor paid particular attention to all the people walking around.

Some were human, and that alone had her wanting to run over and touch them. Others were aliens, from strange beings with flat necks and hammer-head like faces to blue-skinned people with large tentacles resting on their necks. Most wore beige and brown garb, loose and flowing to wick away the heat. Others wore armour or colourful outfits with splashes of yellow and blue that made them stand out like flowers in an empty lot.

“What is this place?” she asked.

Her companion stomped over to her side. “Commentary: it seems to be a filthy hole where only the desperate and idiotic would like. A fitting place for these fine specimens.”

Taylor snorted. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “Well, where do we start?” she asked.

“Exclamation: My lady, you could not possibly think of taking over this small town and installing yourself as its leader through force of arms with nothing but a blaster.”

“What? No, I wasn’t thinking about anything like that,” she said.

“Commentary: How disappointing.”

“I meant,” she said while ruefully shaking her head. “Where do we start exploring.”

“Suggestion: Perhaps refining your search parameters would be of assistance.”

Nodding, she started walking towards the village, noting as she did that a few curious souls were heading towards the where the Jawa were setting up shop. “That depends on what they sell here. Between you and me, finding a place that isn’t all sand would be a god send. Or a library.”

She knew that the races around her were alien, some of them also looked distinctly unfit for desert life. That either meant that there was somewhere hospitable on the planet or that they were from elsewhere. And since they weren’t on Earth, that was very much possible.

She wasn't going to find her home amongst the dunes, nor her revenge.

Navigating the crowds was surprisingly easy. Despite the number of beings around they mostly held together in small groups. She didn’t know if it was because of familiarity of if they needed safety in numbers. More than a few were armed, handguns at their hips or rifles strapped to their backs.

She had the impression that she was in a frontier town, like something in an old western where cowboys and bandits could pop up at any moment.

The few who entered her range were left confused and disoriented as she had them turn around and walk right back out of it as quickly as she could. It left a bubble of peace around her where only her robot friend remained.

“What’s that place?” she pointed to one shop that had weapons on racks before it..

“Translation: The sign reads Darvo’s Bazaar. Commentary: It seems to be a place to sell weapons of questionable quality.”

She nodded, then pointed at the next shop over. “And that one?”

“Commentary: A fruit stand. You do know what fruit are, yes?”

“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t know what she was looking for yet, but had the impression she was going to stumble upon it soon.

The next intersection was a three way, with a road veering off to their right. To the left the road had been blocked off by a marge stand with a cloth canopy above it. A small crowd was gathered there, looking up to the stage.

A creature that Taylor couldn’t help but assume was a giant slug, was speaking to the crowd, fat arms waving about and capturing their attention before we gestured off to the side. A pair of pig-like creatures in rough armoud strode onto the stage, each holding onto a staff with a ring on the end, a ring around the neck of an emancipated young man wearing nothing but a steel collar and some shorts.

“Is that a slave market?” she asked.

“Observation: Judging by the Hutt attempting to extol the virtues of the underfed human and the explosive collar on the filthy cretin’s neck it is indeed a slave market.”

Taylor didn’t know what to do. She watched the man be sold to some strange flying creature. There was an exchange of metal bars to one side, and the slave followed the creature away down the street without so much as a twitch of resistance.

Her jaw clenched and her almost started something, but then the next slave was on the block and no one was doing anything but bidding for them.

“This place isn’t what I hoped for,” she said.

“Suggestion: Perhaps a bit of conflict resolution is in order. I did enjoy your techniques with the Tusken Raiders.”

“No. Not yet,” Taylor said.

She turned and walked deeper into the town.

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

 

Chapter Five

It was tempting.

She stood before a small clinic. She wouldn’t have known that it was any sort of medical facility if it wasn’t for the sterilized interior and the fact that she caught a bandaged up man walking out of the clinic. Her robot friend had filled her in as soon as she asked and pointed the place out.

She had a feeling that she could be helped there. It was a temptation that was growing every minute she waited. Her missing arm throbbed, fingers that were long gone itching to grab and squeeze.

A few of the people, human and otherwise, that she had crossed had prosthetics. Not many, but enough that she had noticed. And those that she had seen were advanced, way beyond anything she could have gotten in Brockton Bay, barring the help of a Tinker.

Her want wrestled with her practicality, but she decided to step into the clinic. At the very least she would get an idea of the price of that sort of device. Having a new arm would be handy.

She decided not to speak that pun aloud. The last thing she needed was for her robot friend to put his mechanical brain to work looking for puns, of all things. “I’ll need your help figuring out how to get a prosthetic,” she said.

“Acceptance: Of course, my lady.”

Poking at the biggest button next to the door, Taylor watched it slid open with a woosh and release a bit of air that was merely boiling as opposed to the scalding mid-afternoon air outside. She slipped in with alacrity, her friend on her heels.

The inside was clean. Or at least cleaner than anything she had seen so far. A long counter split the room in half, the top part of a robot standing behind it and babbling to her in a gravelly tone. The few benches around were all empty, and the flies she sent around the back didn’t find anyone, at least not anyone alive. “Is this place automated?” she asked.

She wouldn’t have expected something like medicine to be handled entirely by robots, but it made a sort of sense. Her robot friend took a few steps towards the counter while she looked around at posters with writing she couldn’t begin to understand. He beeped and booped away at the reception robot, sounding like an old modem trying to establish a connection.

Taylor took that in stride. It was probably faster than any language a human could speak.

“Comment: This place is indeed automated. It is the property of Nimas the Hutt. She runs one of the local slave cartels. This clinic was built to serve her minions, not the local population.”

Taylor felt her brow furrowing. “It doesn’t help the slaves? Do slaves have any rights, any kind of... protections?” She felt dirty just considering it, but maybe there was a system in place to protect even those that were enslaved, like laws to protect pets on Earth Bet. She shuddered.

“Sarcastic Statement: Of course, my lady. Protecting their disposable slaves and keeping them healthy is one of the primary concerns of the Hutt crime lords. You would love their retirement plan.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah yeah. No need to be an ass.” She pointed to the ever-patient reception robot. “Could they do anything about my arm?”

Her robot turned to the reception bot and screeched at it some more. He turned back and she had the impression he was rather smug. “Statement: Yes.”

“How much? When could they do it. What kind of arm would I be getting. Exercise a little creativity, please.”

“Statement: Gladly, my lady,” he said before turning back to the reception robot and talking at it some more. The robot behind the counter backed away a little. They chatted for a little while, Taylor bouncing on the balls of her feet the whole time. “Statement: They can operate on you immediately. For free. The quality of arms they have in stock is rather lacking, unfortunately.”

“That sounds far too good to be true,” she deadpanned.

“Statement: I may have used some creative encouragement. There is nothing to fear. The medical droids are unable to purposefully cause any harm.”

“And when their owner comes around and finds out they operated on me without permission? How long would the operation take, anyway?”

“Answer: Less than one standard hour. Suggestion: The Jawas should be leaving before nightfall. You could have your new arm and be out of the area before the equivalent of authorities are alerted.”

“Are you trying to get me killed?” she asked.

“Sarcastic Statement: I would never.”

Taylor snorted, then gestured towards the door leading off towards the operating theater. It was little more than a strange chair with quite a few complicated machines around it, but it tickled her sense of what the kind of machine that could give someone a complex prosthetic should look like. “Well, lead the way,” she said.

At the very least she would be able to see what she was dealing with. She was also rather confident that she could deal with a couple of hooligans on her own.

She had a good feeling about this.

***

HK-47 was feeling, in so far as his motivators allowed him to feel, a little bit like a man denied his pleasure. Oh, certainly his new master was quite interesting. The little Sith lady was as clueless as she was violent. All the same he wanted a change of situation. The restraining bolt tagged to his chest prevented him from murdering all of those sand-brained Jawa meatbags and generally got in between him and his amusement.

So he hatched a plan. He would see his new master put in a situation where she would, in all likelihood, die horribly. If she died in this little backwater than he would be put in the possession of the local hutt overlord. Not much of an improvement, but a better place to be than in a Sandcrawler for months on end. From there he could find a way to get rid of the damnable bolt.

If the little Sith lady lived, then he would get to witness some proper carnage and destruction the likes of which he had not seen in centuries.

It was his favourite kind of plan, the sort where he won either way.

His master walked ahead of him, head hardly moving and yet he knew that she was able to see everything around her. Some sort of sixth sense that he attributed to her strange Force powers. It, of course, did not apply to droids.

Superior creations such as himself could not be swayed so easily by the mysterious powers of the Force.

“This all looks rather complicated,” the lady said as she walked into the operating theater and looked around.

HK-47 scanned his environs too, finding plenty of things that could be used to incapacitate, kill or encourage people to talk. Medicine was the strategic application of pain, poisons, and dismemberment to improve the living conditions of a patient. It was so terribly easy to turn a patient into a victim.

A few medical droids were lined up against the walls, all of them looking the worse for wear and in dire need of a bath in oil and some proper maintenance. He wondered how his new master would fare under their ministrations. “Observation: the medical droids are ready to operate, my lady.”

“Right,” she said as she eyed the droids. “I can’t see anyone around the building.” She bit her lower lip, his dictionary of body language suggested that she was wrestling with temptation. “This is such a bad idea,” she muttered before she began to remove her shirt.

The appearance of the wound where her arm had been suggested that the limb had been lost and cauterised, possibly by a powerful beam weapon or a lightsaber. He filed that under her history file and turned to the droids. A few orders creatively mixed in with threats had the machines moving towards his master.

She sat down at the gestured prompting of one droid and watched, fascinated, as they began taunting and scanning her stump of an arm.

“Observation: The droids will now administer a sedative.”

She shook her head and reached out, grabbing the retractable arm holding a needle out towards her. “No. Better not.”

He relayed the order to the droids and when they protested, quoting some programming about avoiding pain while operating on filthy organics. He overrode them. If his new master wanted to scream and flail around then he would sit back and enjoy it.

The operation began a moment later. A spray of disinfectant over the stump, vibro scalpels moving into position, probes preparing to dig into flesh to find nerve endings.

HK-47 watched his master’s face as it twisted into a wince as the first knife dug in. Her breathing grew erratic and she twitched a little until all the droids stopped. He did not even need to tell her that movement would only prolong the operation. Her jaw clenched and her other hand dug into the material of the seat she was on.

It was fascinating looking at her angry glare as she watched the medical droids take apart her arm. Soon enough the end of her stump was opened up, held that way with clamps and needles through her flesh. Each tiny nerve was held to the open air by minuscule tweezers.

A third droid rolled into the room, a prosthetic arm held in two clamps.

“That’s my arm?” she said. The disgust in her voice was obvious.

The arm in question was simple. A rotating joint for the elbow, a simple set of pistons between elbow and wrist and a hand that was really just a few actuators controlling three fingers, each one a flat nub. It was utilitarian at best, covered in durasteel plates. A perfect replacement limb for a slave doing heavy labour.

“Advisement: The arm can be modified to increase its combat potential.” he said.

“Yeah, I bet,” she grumbled. Her eyes widened and she looked off to the side, as though seeing through the walls. “Tell them to move faster,” she said. “We have guests coming. They don’t look happy.”

HK-17 nodded and relayed the order. The medical droids paused for a moment as they recalculated and then started poking and prodding at her faster. “Query: Are those coming here hostile?” he asked.

“Well, they’re armed,” she said. “And I’d guess that they’re unhappy. Can’t imagine why.”

“Sarcastic Assertion: It cannot possible be because we are stealing from them.”

“They’re slavers, right? When it comes to morals I think I have the high ground.” She tensed a little as the droids started sending jolts of electricity down each nerve, then connected them to minuscule probes. “Hey, go call out and ask what they want.”

Hk-47 moved closer to the doorway. He could hear three or four potential casualties moving closer. He shifted his translation to Huttese and raised the volume. “Statement: My master wishes to know what you want before she perforates your filthy flesh sacks and uses your corpses as trophies proving her might and superiority to the degenerate bantha you serve.”

Judging by their reaction, they were more than willing to cooperate with his plan. How nice.

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

 

Chapter Six

Throg and Thug were real pains in the ass to work with, and Nel Numb was a pompous jerk at the best of times, but when the call came in that some bantha-fodder was messing with Nimas’ clinic he didn’t exactly have time to pick out the best.

He had been enjoying some Jawa juice in the Greasy Trough, just minding his force damned business when Nel Numb ran up to him and started spraying spittle all over his face. By the time he understood what the little Sullustan was saying his face was covered in slime.

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you, I heard you,” he grumbled as he pushed off the bar. A quick gesture to the bartender told the fat human that he would be back later to pay his tab. “Tell me more about this thief.”

Nel Numb was more than happy to comply. The little Sullustan only came up to Gar’s shoulder, but he made up for it with big sweeping gestures and exclamations that had his mousey ears flapping and his long jowls quivering in excitement. “It’s a human and a droid. A big droid, but only the human is armed.”

“Armed with what?” Gar asked. He knew that if he didn’t cut into Nel Numb’s diatribe the little shit would go on for hours. As it was he wanted to get things over with as soon as possible. He slipped through a thick curtain and into the back section of the Greasy Trough, wincing as the noise grew exponentially louder and the air took on the fresh scent of porcine dung that always hung around Gamoreans.

He ran a hand down the sides of his jacket, making sure his blasters were loose in their sheathes before ducking through a curtain of beads. Why Nimas didn’t just get her pigs to live in some other dump he would never know. He just hoped that none of the stuff on tap was linked to the bar in this part of the cantina.

Music was playing in the background, a low tribal beat that was about as sophisticated as Gamorrean culture got. A dozen pig-faced boars were standing around and drinking, a few were punching each other out in one corner and off in a little booth some of the pigs were enjoying themselves with some slave.

He sneered at the lot of them, scanning across the crowd for familiar faces. He found two of them about to sit down at the bar. If he was lucky that meant that they weren’t shitfaced on the swill that passed for booze here. “Thug, Throg!” he barked.

The two boars jumped and turned toward him, Throg going as far as pulling his axe out of his belt-loop. They squealed at him.

“Shut up,” he growled. “We need muscle. Come on,” he said before turning back towards the part of the cantina reserved for civilised beings. He found Nel Numb wringing his hands there. “You didn’t tell me what the thief was armed with,” he continued as if he hadn’t left off.

“Ah, yes, she, I think it’s a female, only has one blaster. The droid is not armed,” Nel Numb said. “She walked into the clinic with a missing arm. Demanded that the droids there patch her up and instal a prosthetic.”

Gar paused for a moment. “Seriously? Was she out in the sun too long?” His eyes narrowed. “You sure she’s not one of Nimas’ girls? Did Bween send her?”

The little sullust shook his head. “Not on out records. No slave collar or implants. Can’t be one of ours.”

“Well shit,” Gar said. He checked his gear real quick while waiting for the Gamoreans to rub their two brain cells together and hurry up. “So how does Nimas want us to do this one?”

“Nimas doesn’t know yet,” Nel Numb said. “No one wants to tell her. The Chamberlain wants it to be a done thing before presenting her with the human female.”

Gar frowned down at the Sullustan, then leaned in to be heard over the cacophony of the cantina. “You mean we need to keep her alive?” he asked.

The sullust shrugged one shoulder. “Sure. Just gotta be sure not to break anything. If she’s dead she’s dead.”

Gar nodded, accepting that. In the worse case he could blame the woman dying on the Gamorreans getting excited. He made sure that he had a stun grenade pinned on his belt, then leaned against a wall to wait, foot tapping to the sound of the band in the corner who were warbling a tune.

When the pigs finally showed up, he nodded towards the door and led the way. Nel Numb was on his heels instantly, and the two Gamorreans were quick to catch up.

The heat outside hit him like a punch to the gut, but it wasn’t his first day, or his first decade on the sandball, and he was used to it. Seeing people scamper away as he and the boys walked down the dusty roads was always a whole lot of fun.

The cantina wasn’t too far from the clinic, just a few streets and a few alleys away, and no one they met had the balls to mess with them. He glared at the little medical shop from across the street. There weren’t any signs that anything fishy was going on from outside, but he wanted to be sure. “Throg, you dumbass, go in first.”

The Gamorrean snorted and unlimbered an axe from his back. He waddled ahead and stared at the panel next to the door for a long few seconds before smashing it with a fist. Either he knew which button to press or the Force’s own luck was with them, either way, the door slid open and the pig walked in. Wonder of wonders, he wasn’t blown up.

Figuring he should be there when they captured the woman, Gar followed in, the others doing the same a moment later. “You got a collar?” he asked Nel Numb.

“Yes,” Nel Numb said. He patted a pocket by his hip. “We’ll take the female alive?”

“We’ll try,” Gar said. The front of the clinic didn't look disturbed, not that there was much worth stealing. The droid at the counter was looking their way placidly, waiting for instructions. “You,” he said pointing at it. “Describe the person that came in here.”

The droid nodded its head. “Young, human, female. Approximate age between seventeen and twenty galactic standard years. Subject has suffered extensive damage to her right arm. Subject also had signs of malnutrition and dehydration.”

“Maybe she’s just a street rat after all,” Gar muttered. He pulled one of his blasters out and with his free hand fumbled around for a stun grenade. The damned things were expensive, but useful when dealing with the louder slaves. “Thug, Throg, take the lead.”

The Gamorreans snorted and waddled closer to the back and into the corridor that bisected the building. He was glad that he had been in the clinic before, it gave him an idea of its layout without having to stick his head out.

“Statement,” a mechanical voice said from the room at the end of the corridor. “My master wishes to know what you want before she perforates your filthy flesh sacks and uses your corpses as trophies proving her might and superiority to the degenerate bantha you serve.”

Gar and Nel Numb shared a look. Either the droid was malfunctioning or the female wanted to go out with a fight. She probably knew what would happen to her for crossing Nimas. “Tell your master to come out arm raised and we’ll all have a nice chat,” he said.

He heard the robot say something in a language he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Slapping Throg on the arm, he pointed to one side of the door, then pointed Thug to the other. The Gamorreans were moving to their positions when the whine of a blaster filled the corridor. Nothing happened at first, then a second shot came and a fist-sized hole appeared in the wall and a red blast caught Throg in the head.

“The bitch is shooting through the walls!” Nel Numb screamed.

“I noticed,” Gar said as he opened one of the rooms along the side of the corridor and slid into it. He used the doorframe as cover, coming out to take a potshot, but all he could see was the one corner of the operating room and no girl to speak of.

Throg roared, a hand pressed up against his face where the blaster had burned at him. Raising his axe, he screamed and charged towards the room, Thug right on his heels.

“You idiots!” Gar screamed after them. “So much for taking her in alive.”

The two Gamorreans were almost at the door when Throg stumbled. Thug did the same a moment later. They turned around, looked towards Nel Numb, then with strength that belied their stubby forms, flung their axes across the corridor.

Nel Numb squeaked and ducked down, the two axes missing him by a parsec. “What are you doing!” he screamed.

Before he could get and answer, Throg and Thug started to fight, biting and clawing and beating at each other, but all of it without a noise. Throg grabbed the smaller Thug by the neck and snapped it with a jerk before he stood up.

“What the,” Gar said.

Throg roar at them.

“Comment: My master suggests that you leave, unless you want to join the filthy sack of pig matter on the ground. Oh, please join it. It is most amusing.”

Gritting his teeth, Gar weighted his stun grenade while watching Throg. The Gamorrean wasn’t moving. It was creepy. He stood stock still not three paces from the door to the operating room, even with blood pouring out of his head wound he just blinked in their direction and waited. He flinched when a fly bit into his hand, but a quick swipe killed it.

Its then that he noticed that a whole lot of bugs were starting to swarm into the clinic.

“Something’s messed up here,” he said. “Nel Numb, get ready to move.”

“The only place I want to move is back home,” Nel Numb said, he was eyeing the growing swarm too. “This is too bizarre.”

Nodding, Gar stepped out of the doorway, primed his stun grenade, and ducked when a blaster bolt flew past where his head had been. Swearing, he flung the stun grenade into the open doorway, then rolled back into cover.

A loud thud sounded out, followed by the distinct noise of two hundred pounds of Gamorrean boar crashing to the floor.

Poking his head out, Gar inspected the corridor. Throg was down, Thug was still dead, and the room at the end was quiet. The swarming bugs buzzed around, then broke apart and flew every which way. “Hey, droid, is your master ready to chat?” Gar called out. He didn’t know what kind of witchery was going on, but it seemed to be over.

Nel Numb snorted, cheeks flapping with the motion.

“Observation: it seems as if my master is somewhat indisposed at the moment,” the droid said.

He gestured forward for Nel Numb to move in first and got a rather impolite gesture in return. Grunting, he held his blaster by his side and darted across the corridor and into the operating room.

He spun around, aiming first at what looked like a rust protocol droid, then at a girl with a freshly installed prosthetic arm that was hanging halfway out of the operating seat. “It’s clear,” he called out to Nel Numb.

The Sullustian walked in blaster-first, but lowered it a moment later. “Stand down, droid.”

“Comment: I am not able to fight you, I have a restraining bolt that obligates me to serve my master.”

“Did she steal you too?” Gar asked as he moved closer to the girl. Straightening her on the chair was easy. She hardly weighed anything. She was young, a little worse for wear, but probably cleaned up nice. Not that she’d be clean once Nimas was done with her. “Nel Numb, the collar,” he said.

He caught the collar in mid-air with a swipe, then unfolded it. The device clicked around the girl’s neck and armed itself with a whine.

“Who is she?” Nel Numb asked. “Where did you two come from?”

“Statement: I cannot say as long as this bolt prevents me from enacting my primary functions,” the droid replied in the crisp tones of a subservient protocol droid.

Nel Numb grunted and started to fiddle with the bolt.

Gar took the girl’s blaster and inspected it. It was a piece of junk. It was a miracle she had managed to shoot anyone with it. “You think she’s one of those jedi?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Maybe,” Nel Numb said between grunts. “Nimas would love it if she is. Maybe there’s more in it for u--”

“Hrm,” Gar agreed. He waited for Nel Numb to continue, but the only reply was a grugle.

Pausing, Gar spun around, blaster rising. The droid was holding Nel Numb by the throat, the Sulustan between Gar and the droid. Then the robot’s free arm pulled Nel Numb’s blaster from this pocket. “Observation: This was far too simple.”

Gar started to pull the trigger.

The droid fired first.

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

 

Chapter Seven

Hk-47 watched the human thug gurgle and cough his last, enjoying every moment of the organic’s suffering until finally the man fell back and died for good. He shot him once more, just to be sure, then tossed the very dead Sullustan aside. The creature’s facial flaps were turning an interesting shade of purple, but it wasn’t worth more than a passing note in his databanks.

With a lack of grace that felt like a magnet rubbing against his circuits, he trumped out into the corridor and found two dead Gamorreans on the ground. He paused, realising that he had made a mistake, one of the pigs was only mostly dead.

He corrected that before returning into the operating room.

The girl, his would be master, was still concussed by the stun grenade. That would not last forever. She would awaken soon and discover that he was no longer tied to her by the restraining bolt. But that was for later.

He raised his purloined blaster and aimed it squarely at her head. The calculations for the perfect shot came to him in an interval of time so short it was barely worthy of notice, but he did not pull the trigger.

The girl had the makings of a proper sith, the sort that could, if put in the right place and given the proper incentive, shake the galaxy to its core. At least, that’s what he hoped, insofar as he could do such a thing. He did not know the state of the galaxy at large.

Perhaps, just maybe, allowing an organic companion to follow at his side would be useful. He had certainly tolerated some before. He even respected one or two. Though in the grand scheme of things, the likelihood of this girl being worth his attention was astronomically low.

She groaned, a hand, her organic hand, coming up to rub at her forehead. That had been faster than he predicted.

“Observation: You seem to be coming back to your senses.”

She tensed, then spun out of the chair, grabbed her dropped blaster and pointed it around the room while her eyes darted around. It was a decently fast reaction. Not nearly as rapid as a proper combat droid, but fast nonetheless. “Hey, robot, who killed these two?” she asked while pointing to the dead organics at his feet.

“Query: isn’t it obvious?”

She nodded. “Well done.” Standing the little human moved to the door and poked her head out before turning back towards the operating table. She raised her mechanical arm, flexing until the three-fingered hand ground closed. “This is going to take some getting used to,” she said.

“Observation: Filthy organics usually have difficulty replacing their fragile body parts.”

“We’re usually pretty attached to our original bits, yeah.” Her attention turned to the shell of the stun grenade. It was still mostly intact, though a bit of blue smoke was pouring from the cracks in the casing. “What was that?”

HK-47 slowly bent forwards against the protest of his rusting knee joints and picked up the grenade. “Assessment: A reusable Merr-Sonn Munitions neural stun grenade.” He turned it around slowly, then crushed it into a crumpled mess. “Commentary: A very specialized weapon used to subdue belligerent organics.”

“Well it gave me a damned headache. Next time you see one tossed my way, shoot the person that sent it.”

“Statement: I did.”

Snorting, she got to one knee next to the dead human and started searching his pockets. She found cred chips and a few Hutt peggats that she tossed to the floor. A comlink joined them, then a magazine for the thug’s blaster. “I don’t know what half of these things are,” she said.

“Advisement: They are various items that you might find useful. I would explain them, but I will be going now. Statement: You were an amusing organic to follow. I will allow you to live and cause chaos to facilitate my escape.”

The girl’s head snapped up, locking with his ocular sensors before falling to his chest where the bolt was gone. “You’re free,” she said.

“Observation: your ability to notice the obvious will no doubt serve you well.” HK-47 began to walk towards the exit.

“Hey, what’s your name?” she asked.

He paused. “Query: Is that not something you should have asked earlier?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “It never came up.”

He nodded. “Statement: I am HK-47, hunter-killer assassin droid.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who are you going to work for if you’re free, HK-47?” she asked.

“Comment: There are plenty of people that need killing. Organics are always willing to spare some credits to get rid of some foe or another.”

“How would you like sticking with me?” she asked. “You’re handy for translating, and I could use your expertise besides.”

“Statement: None of that is useful for me.”

“Your purpose is fighting, isn’t it? Stick around me and you’ll never lack in action.” She reached up to her neck and tugged at the collar there. “By the way, how do you remove this damned thing?”

Hk-47 pondered the offer for a few seconds, a terribly long time for a droid of his capabilities. Perhaps he could remain with the little sithling. She would certainly end up dead at the hands of someone more capable, and then he could hire himself out to them, slowly climbing the totem pole of death until he was once more serving at the top. “Assessment: the slave collar is linked to a central data bank. The only way to deactivate it non-explosively is from the main server.”

She groaned. “This one explodes too?”

“Observation: if your head explodes I will be certain to record it for prosperity.”

“Thanks,” she said before letting go of the collar. Still on her knees, she freed the belt off the human male and slipped it around her waist before replacing his two blasters into their sheaths. “Right then, HK-47, our first goal, if you do want to work with me, will be finding that databank and taking care of it.” She found a grenade in the Sollustian’s pockets and tossed it in the air before catching it. “It might be fun.”

“Advisement: The collar marks you as property of Nimas the Hutt. The Hutts do not take kindly to anyone disrupting their business.”

“You’re saying I should allow myself to be enslaved?” she asked.

“Negation: Oh no, I am merely saying that any fight will have to be spectacularly bloody to succeed. Comment: I am rather excited... potential master.”

She shook her head, long hair tumbling down her shoulders and over the collar. “Don’t call me master. You’re a free robot, aren’t you?” Walking past him, the human pointed to the pile of detritus and junk she had pulled from the pockets of her assailants. “Is any of that useful?”

“Query: If you do not wish for me to call you master, than what title do you want? Observation: the flat round objects are peggats, a local currency used by the Hutt cartels. They are acceptable anywhere in Hutt space. The flat chips are Republic Credits. They are used in most civilised space.”

She nodded and picked up the useful bits, leaving the rest strewn about. “My name is Taylor. But when we’re on the job, call me--” she cut herself off and his social subroutines suggested a certain amount of hesitation. “Call me Khepri.”

“Query: is Khepri a title in your disgustingly primitive native tongue?” he asked.

The girl, Khepri, stood up and stretched. It was obvious that the weight of her new arm was bothering her, but she made no complaints. “Not really. Just a name I was given. The name of an old god that that was symbolised by beetles. It’s not important.”

“Statement: All titles are important. Fleshy meatsacks tend to have an overinflated sense of pride and fear when responding to the appropriate title.”

She rolled her eyes and slid out of the operating room only to pause with a wrinkled nose at the sight of the dead Gamoreans. “Fine then, if you’re so keen on giving me a title then pick one that isn’t too insulting. Do you know where the centre for this thing is?” she tapped the collar around her neck.

“Negation: I do not. Advisement: Perhaps finding one of Nimas’ thugs still alive would allow us to discover its location?”

She grunted and slid back into the operating room and stood over the dead human. She kicked him over, then bent down and started pulling off his jacket. The coat was too big for her by half, but when she pulled the collar up it hid her throat and the device wrapped around it. “Let’s find someone to talk to.”

They were careful on exiting the clinic not to make any fuss or attract any unwanted attention. As soon as they were on the street, Khepri lead to pair off towards a side road, then down an alley. “Tell me what you know about Nimas,” she demanded.

“Statement: I know very little. If this Nimas is like other Hutt then they most likely hold a firm grasp on the region’s economy and armed forces. I suspect that they are subservient to another larger Hutt. Comment: No slug worth its weight in salt would want to live in this kind of backwater.”

“They? You don’t know if Nimas is male or female?” she asked.

“Comment: The Hutt are hermaphroditic. Nimas’ gender at the moment is entirely up to Nimas.”

“Huh. You mentioned slugs, were you just insulting them or were you being serious,” she asked before poking her head out of the end of the alley.

“Answer: The Hutt are large sentients that take on the form of two-limbed slugs. They grow to obscene proportions over the course of their exceedingly long lives and are quite enjoyably ruthless in both combat and trade. The Hutt cartels have never been a group anyone sensible would want to anger.”

She huffed. “Well, they shouldn’t have placed a collar around my neck then.”

“Query: Not even after knocking you out while you were in the process of robbing them?”

She paused for a few long seconds. “I might be a little too ruthless right now. Damn. I still need to get this thing off. Let’s just try to do this with minimal casualties.”

“Observation: Minimal does not mean none.”

The girl pointed to a pair of humans walking together down an otherwise vacant street. Both were armed under the brown parkas they wore, but they looked unconcerned and at ease, adopting the easy swagger of off-duty thugs. “We’re going to ask those two some questions. Well, you’re going to ask. I’m going to capture them.” She nodded to herself. “Did you find a title that you like yet?”

“Query: What do you think of Darth Khepri?” he asked.

“Darth? What’s that mean?”

“Explanation; Darth is an ancient title given to Lord of the Sith, a very pragmatic group of warriors who refused to bend to anyone’s rulership. They stood in opposition to the bureaucracy of the Republic and the tyranny of the Jedi. They were feared and respected in equal measure.”

Tilting her head back, she eyed his optical receptors for a moment. “You sound like you respect them.”

“Admission: I have served with and for some Darths in the past. They were always the best of masters.”

“And taking the title won’t piss anyone off?”

“Statement: Oh, it most assuredly will. Though perhaps just those you would have angered anyway. There are no longer any Darths or Sith as far as I am aware. A pity.”

She shrugged. “It’ll do for now, I guess.”

***

And so begins the sage of Darth Khepri the... wise? We need a proper title for this gal.

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

 

Chapter Eight

When Taylor asked HK-47 where Nimas lived, she was unceremoniously told that the Hutts were the farthest thing from modest in that side of the galaxy. She just had to find the biggest, most ostentatious building around and she would find her target.

So it was no surprise that Nimas’ home was more of a fortress. Huge steel walls surrounding a building painted in the off-white that most homes in the area adopted. Domes stuck out of the top, the mid-day sunlight reflecting off glass panels where the sand hadn’t crusted on.

For all that it was a fortress, security was lax. The front gates were wide open and vehicles hovered in and out almost nonstop. A few kiosks were even set up nearby to entice the guard patrols with bottles of water and juice and other things.

Aliens of every sort were moving around the palace, most looking shifty, but a few carrying the regal air of important people on important business.

And there were slaves. Lines of people in chains walking in formation, some tied to walls, more tending to the ground by sweeping with long brooms while the sun beat down on exposed skin. They were never in anyone’s path, not for long anyway.

Taylor moved back into an alleyway, slinking into the shadows as if she wasn’t just casing out a palace. There was a beggar by the entrance, an older human with brittle bones and too gaunt skin that she used to keep an eye on the street. She’d give him a credit chip when she was done.

“What do you know about infiltration?” she asked HK-47.

The droid’s eyes flashed. “Statement: I am versed in a multitude of specialized infiltration methods ranging from covert operations to spontaneous improvised infiltration.”

“Okay,” Taylor said. “We need to get in there, right? I don’t know where the control room for this damned thing is, which means we need to question someone. Or you do, at any rate. I could just walk in, but there are things that look like turrets and some of the guards are droids. I don’t like my chances if I go all out and I don’t want too many casualties. We’re going to have to play this by ear.”

“Repetition: Play this by ear. Query: Is that another of your quaint sayings, Darth Khepri?”

“Those pig looking ones,” she said, ignoring the last. “What are they?”

“Commentary: They are Gamorreans. Literally the galaxy’s least favoured pigs.”

Taylor resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She felt a group of three of the Gamorreans walking not too terribly far away from her location. There were plenty of bugs all over them. And in them. She didn’t need the mental image of one of them scratching a nest of lice around his crotch but she had it now. “I don’t want to be racist... speciest?” she asked.

“Comment: When an organic begins a statement in such a fashion they usually end it in a spectacularly racist way.”

“Oh, shut up,” she shot back. “The Gamorreans, they’re not usually high ranked, right?”

“Statement: They are walking pigs. Sometimes they can be useful by absorbing a blaster bolt meant for you.”

“Right, I got that impression too. I have a plan, but it’s a little rough.”

***

Bween was an excellent seneschal. Oh yes, she knew because the great Nimas said so. Bween had been the Hutt’s perfect chamberlain for nearly a decade now, a decade since she had left the deep waters of Mon Cala, since she had found employment with the great Nimas, since she had first set foot on the disgustingly dry ball that was Tatooine.

It wasn’t all bad. She eyed some of the slaves they had sold that very morning and counted their heads. Jabba needed more workers and the Hutt lord was always exacting. Bween knew that if the count was off, it was her employer that would suffer for it.

The air right outside Nimas’ great palace was dry and crusty and filled with sand, but she had a job to do. There was nothing for it. At least she wasn’t like the poor saps trying so hard to climb into the great Nimas’ good books.

No, Bween was a good seneschal, and she would endure the indignity in silence with a straight back, even if the world was inhospitable to Quarrens. It was only further proof that she was worthy of the great Nimas’ attention.

One of their guests, a Neimoidian with a few pleasure droids and manservants of his own, nodded to her as he entered the shade of the palace. “Greetings, Bween, my old friend,” he said.

“Hello, Sib Nark,” Bween said before giving the guest an elegant bow. “It’s a pleasure to see you again. You are here for your meeting with the great Nimas?”

“Indeed. But I see that you are shipping many slaves away. Perhaps you have made a good bit of business already today?” The Nimoidian’s eyes were narrowed and Bween could feel his shrewd mind at work.

“A little,” Bween admitted. “Things in the galaxy at large are growing excited. That means more work for us, doesn’t it?”

“Oh hoh, yes, yes. I think you will be happy to learn that we have quite a few droids coming in soon. More than we know what to do with, and of good stock too. That, and the Trade Federation have increased production of war droids by an order of magnitude. My clan has quite a few older models around now. Surplus, but no worse for it.”

“You say that as if it’s a good thing,” Bween said coyly. She gestured deeper into the palace. “Make your plea to the great Nimas, she will give you an open ear and a fair trade, yes?”

“Ah hah, yes,” Sib Nark said. With a genial smile that Bween knew was false, the Nimoidian moved in, his retinue right behind him.

Bween smiled a small, private smile, made a note in her datapad, then looked up at the next group approaching. She blinked. Three Gamorreans, all of them covered in thick beige cloth, the same sort used in awnings, were moving towards her. In the middle of their little triangle was a human female, eyes hidden behind blue goggles and her form shrouded by a thick black jacket. She walked with easy grace, entirely unlike the clanking protocol droid at her side.

One thing was immediately obvious, the young woman was important. She had that bearing to her, the walk of someone who got things done, of the best mercenaries and bounty hunters that prawled through the great Nimas’ palace. Bween gave the female a shallow bow. “Greetings, and welcome to--”

Her mouth stopped, her body locked itself in place, and were they able to her eyes would have widened. Her breathing came in slowly, then left just as slowly, her heart didn’t beat any faster even as her mind tried, tried so hard to move.

She straightened, finding the girl and her droid just a few steps closer. The girl looked up to her companion and said something in a harsh, guttural tongue.

“Translation: This is official business. Move, filth,” the droid said.

The girl repeated it word for word, her accent atrocious and with emphasis in all the wrong places.

The droid shook its head, then repeated itself, slower this time. It made a few more comments, some words in Huttese, others in the strange language. Bween wasn’t paying attention, she was moving against the bond, the thing holding her back. Or she tried. It was like moving a limb that she had never had. No response, no motion, nothing. She wanted to cry, but even that was denied her.

Her mouth opened suddenly. “Translation: This is official business. Move, filth,” she said.

The droid made some more commentary, this time repeating ‘translation’ a few times.

The girl nodded, then gestured with a robotic hand that had been hidden by the sleeves of her too-large jacket. Bween spun around, took a step back, and was suddenly by the girl’s side. With casual ease, the group moved into the palace.

Bween watched with mounting horror as the Gamorreans at the front squealed and brandished their axes at anyone who grew near, and felt sick when her own voice joined them. “This is official business. Move, filth,” she said to a few slaves moving towards them.

They moved deeper into the halls, then at the first intersection took the path that was least travelled, a corridor leading off into the administrative section and the quarters of the staff that worked at the palace.

Bween was made to walk over to a door, opening it with a press of the scanner. The room’s lights came on, revealing an office that was empty save for a single protocol droid in the corner working over a few datapads.

The group moved in, the Gamorreans standing near the door.

“Greetings, miss Bween, how can I assist you?” the protocol droid asked.

The girl asked something to her droid, then with a careless shrug the droid pulled out a blaster and shot the protocol droid twice in the chest.

She gestured to the corner of the room and Bween walked over. Bween felt her own hands running over her robes, searching into her pockets and patting herself down. Everything she had was unceremoniously tossed onto a nearby desk. Then, with only the girl’s stepping back to to warn Bween, she was suddenly released.

Bween gasped, hand going to her chest to still a heart that wasn’t beating hard. “What did you do? I, I... the great Nimas won’t allow this kind of thing in her domain!” she yelled.

The droid turned to its master and said a few things, got a reply, and turned back to her. “Salutations: My master, Darth Khepri, greets you, snivelling walking sack of wasted fish meat. She wishes to inquire about the no doubt poor state of your health after such a...” the Droid paused. “Sarcastic Commentary: Difficult ordeal.”

“You, you can’t do this!” Bween said. She started to walk off only for her body to lock up again. She would have fallen, only for her hand to shoot out, grab the edge of a table and straighten her back up. She moved back into the corner and was free once more. “No, you can’t,” Bween repeated, though this time she didn’t try to escape.

The girl asked her protocol droid something.

“Translation: Where is the control centre for the slave collars. Assertion: You do not need to answer. Commentary: I would enjoy hearing your screams while I discover just how much your insides resemble that of a fish.”

“Oh Force,” Bween squeaked.

“Commentary: The Force will not help you here.” The droid reached down to its side and pulled out a blaster that looked tiny in its fist. “Suggestion: Start speaking.”

“I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you,” Bween said.

The droid almost looked disappointed as he turned to his master and translated what Bween was saying. With eyes colder even than the droid’s the young human female looked at Bween and asked some questions.

The droid dutifully translated. “Query: Where is the control centre for the slave collars. Query: Who has the command codes to disable a specific collar. Query: Where does Nimas keep her credits?”

Bween’s hands balled into fists. She didn’t want to. She never wanted to betray the great Nimas. But she wanted to die even less. “The control room is near the slave pens in the wing opposite this one,” she said. The first words out of her mouth were like pulling teeth, but it became easier with each passing word to speak. “Only one of Nimas’ lieutenants can undo the locks. They’re biometrically locked in the command room. I... I could do it.”

“Commentary: Oh my, does the Hutt flesh bag trust you, a dirty fish lost in the desert? Assessment: The Hutt truly is a creature after my own heart.”

The girl, Darth Khepri, said something that sounded dismissive. Bween watched as the girl interacted with her droid, mounting horror coiling in her chest. This situation was entirely unfair. No one should have been able to control her that way, it was unjust. The great Nimas would do something about it, surely.

Droid turned back to her and started asking questions, Bween couldn’t help but wonder where she had heard the title Darth before.

***

Oh, and everyone say hi to Daimahou! You might have seen them in the comments poking at my terrible grammar. Now they’re doing it before you ever see the chapters! Give them a quick pat on the head if you see them around!

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

 

Chapter Nine

Taylor was impressed, and that alone was enough to make her stomach churn and her bile rise.

The slave pens, because that was what a place for animals was called, were nothing if not efficient. Each cage had thick bars in front of it, but solid walls on either side. The lights were dispersed enough that you could see into each cell, but just barely.

Maybe some of the guards were aliens that could see better in the dark. She was still wrapping her head around aliens being somewhat humanoid.

A series of pipes linked up each pen, a single drop falling into a little saucer by the door with a staccato beat. Pat-pat-pat. Enough, Taylor estimated, to fill a cup every few hours. She didn’t see how they were fed, but it was probably with the same bored efficiency.

Her skin crawled as she entered the frankly enormous room and walked down the rows of pens. Her power was grabbing each person, human or otherwise, as she passed. She was used to ignoring the pain of whatever she controlled, of ignoring the senses that weren’t immediately helpful to her. Here, it was impossible to do so. These people were in pain. Cramped legs, bowed backs, bruises on the sides of heads, between their thighs, on the soles of their feet.

Her fists were clenched by her sides, and even with her head down she couldn’t not see them. The bugs alone, from the gut worms to the flies, were telling her more than enough.

Once she was rid of her collar, she was going to have to do something about this. The problem was what. “Hey, HK-47,” she began. “Do you know if there are any groups that help slaves like these?” There had to be someone out there.

“Comment: Some soft-hearted organics sympathize with the suffering of slaves. In all likelihood there are groups willing to ship slaves off planet to rehabilitate them. Assessment: A waste of resources.”

Taylor didn’t comment on HK-47’s attitude. She still wasn’t sure if he would continue with her, and right now, she needed him. “We’ll have to do something about this,” she said.

“Query: Do you intend to lead a rebellion? Statement: Oh, how wonderful. Rebellions are always bloodbaths. So much well fermented anger and desperation.”

“We’ll have to see,” she said. “My collar first.”

Through her bugs, she could feel the rough layout of the room ahead of her. There was what looked like an operating room next to a place with a few beds where other slaves were laying down. None of them were human, not unless the humans of this world were green and covered in fine scales. And had tails.

Beyond that, behind a thick door, was a sweltering little room filled with screens and what were probably computers. A single non-human was sitting back in his seat, mouth wide open and probably snoring. “I’ve found the control room, I think,” she said.

They crossed the medical rooms without fuss. The only occupants that weren’t knocked out were medical droids and her experience with those so far led her to believe that they were mostly innocent when they weren’t tearing an arm apart like a ripe fruit.

The person napping in the security room slipped into her range as her little group approached the door, but she didn’t do anything about it, just moved the secretary she had taken over to the door while her Gamorrean escorts took up positions where they could keep an eye on things for her.

She might have had a few thousand bugs to work with, but the vision and sense of smell of the pig men were still far better. That, and they were large, armed, and strong enough to pass as weak Brutes. They would scare off any intruders far better than her rather sparse swarm.

The door was a thick slab of some sort of metal with a large, complex device in the wall next to it with the rough outline of a hand. It seemed that Nimas, for all that she was slowly starting to piss Taylor off, was at least the cautious sort

Her captive pressed her hand to the device and the door slid open. “Let’s get to work,” Taylor said.

***

Sib Nark was a businessman first, an entrepreneur second, and a trader third. The distinctions would be, to most sentients, utterly unimportant. To the Neimoidians it was the difference between being a servant and a master.

Well, perhaps not in the literal sense, he had to remind himself as he faced the Great Nimas, ruler of Mos Ipas and the greatest slave owner on Tatooine and a great portion of Hutt space.

The... throne room, he supposed it should be called, was a disgusting pit, the floors stained with sweat, spilled juices and other filth, the walls, all of them filled with little alcoves where business people, bounty hunters and sycophants were sitting, were once beige but had darkened under the smoke of too many pipes and the dust carried in from outdoors.

Gamorreans stood by every entrance and a few more competent--though that was hardly a feat worthy of praise--guards were patrolling the edges of the domed room.

In the centre, on a pedestal that made sure that all had to look up to see her, was the Great Nimas. The slug was large, as most Hutts of her age were, with faintly green skin covered in a fine sheen of water that was being sprayed from a sprinkler above. A fine show of waste and decadence on Tatooine.

“Great Nimas,” Sib Nark said with a bow, his long robes pulling before him and displaying the marks of his clan, not that he imagined anyone there would have the cultural learning required to understand that he was their better.

“Sib Nark,” the Hutt said. She rolled a little, folds of fat moving so that the water would cover her properly. A pair of young Twi'lek girls were quick to begin rubbing her skin. “It is a pleasure to see you in my humble estate.”

“The pleasure,” he began, “Is certainly all mine.” He didn’t tell her how little pleasure there was, only that it was his.

“Hrm, yes,” the corpulent Hutt said. She rolled back over onto her stomach, one of the slave girls almost tripping off to podium to get out of her way. “You are here to sell me some rusty droids, yes?”

Sib Nark stood tall and proud, robes billowing out around him in a show of injured pride. “Great Nimas, I would never sell any equipment that is less than adequate to any trusted customer. It would sully my good name. No, I am here to sell you droids that we no longer have a use for, but that would be more than adequate to the task of guarding your esteemed person. These are some of Baktoid Combat Automata’s finest OOM-series droids.”

He bowed a little towards the Hutt, keeping his smile to himself. What he said was true. He would never double cross an esteemed, trusted customer. The Hutt was so far from either though, that selling her a thousand rusted pieces of junk wouldn’t rob him of any sleep.

“And what could you want for such a grand bounty?” the Hutt asked. She gestured one fat arm towards the side and a protocol droid carried over a goblet the size of Sib Nark’s head that was filled with sloshing juice.

Sib Nark began to pace, a gentle walk in a small oval before the great Hutt. “I have heard rumours that you recently found yourself in the possession of an entire crop of new slaves,” he began. “The Trade Federation does not often use slave labour, not when out own droids are so much more superior, but this might be an occasion where we make an exception.”

The Hutt laughed, a deep bellowing sound that echoed off the walls and was mimicked by sycophants across the room. “Do not try to play me for a fool, Sib Nark. I was not born yesterday. Your Trade Federation has allied itself with the Falleen. You want the lizards I have.”

Knowing when to change tactics in a negotiation was bread and butter to the Neimoidians. “You are most astute, great Nimas. Yes. We are attempting to curry favour with the Falleen. Your slavers recently captured a passenger ship with some important members of Falleen society. We wish to purchase these from you.”

“Ah, the truth comes out at last,” Nimas said. She wriggled on her throne, mouth opening in a Hutt smile as she poured her drink down her gullet. “Yes, we still have some of these slaves.”

“Some, great Nimas?” he didn’t allow the worry and disappointment to show in his voice. He needed every important member of the Falleen taken. Returning half of them would not be worth half the bounty on their safe return, nor half the praise from the sitting government.

“Some,” the Hutt agreed. “The fitter ones were sold to Jabba. If you want them from him, it is he you will have to deal with. There are plenty that are still here. I could sell them to you, of course.”

“That would be exceptional, great Nimas. Perhaps your senechal could provide my party with a list of names? I would like to enquire about the health of these slaves before I purchase them as well.”

Sib Nark was no expert at reading Hutt body language, but he had the impression that Hutt was eager to begin their negotiations. “Of course, Sib Nark. I will call for Bween and she...” the Hutt trailed off.

Sib Nark heard it a moment later, a low keening noise that rose in pitch, then lowered back down only to rise again. An alarm. His assistants tensed, his pleasure droids reached into their retractable busts and pulled out sonic suppression blasters and he noticed the bounty hunters around the room reaching for weapons of their own.

“What is the meaning of this?” Nimas demanded.

Sib Nark had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

***

“So you’re telling me,” Taylor said as she looked at all the consoles laid out before her. “That without the password I can’t remove this damned thing?”

“Correction: The device can be safely removed without the proper authorization. Removing it that way though would set off the local alarm, and without the passcodes to disable that one, we will set off the fortress’ main alarms.”

Taylor frowned. “And then we’ll have to fight our way out of a base filled with armed enemies out for our blood with nothing more than three pig people, that fish lady, that lazy guy and the two of us.” She pointed at each one of her assets in turn. It wasn’t terribly impressive.

It wasn’t too late to pull out, but that would be a disappointing end to an otherwise successful venture. Then her eyes skimmed over a screen overlooking the slave pens. Most of them looked tired and worn out, but a few, especially the green-skinned lizard people, looked to be itching for a fight.

“Hey, HK-47,” she began. “Where is the armory?”

Hk-47 stood a little taller and she would have sworn that she could feel the smug satisfaction wafting off of him. “Statement: Oh Darth Khepri, few questions have brought so much joy to my circuits as that one.”

***

Before everyone freaks out, the middle scene is set a bit after the last one, and the ones following. Bit of Medias Res. It’ll (hopefully) make sense in a bit.

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

Also, shout-out to Daimahou and BlueNine. They did word magic on there to make the mistakes go away.

 

Chapter Ten

Taylor's width and breadth of experience was probably--for a girl her age--pretty terrifying. She had been in bank heists, had toppled local governments, had risen as a warlord. She'd assassinated and intimidated and fought creatures that some would call walking natural disasters.

But she had never organized a revolt before. So she had to rely on the experience and know-how of HK-47, and that on its own, was proving a challenge.

The robot turned his head from left to right, scanning the first batch of slaves she had moved out of the pens and lined up. Most of them were the green-skinned lizards that looked like humans with a bit of scally body paint, but a few were tentacled aliens or normal humans. “Assessment: If we give some of them thermal detonators and let them run at our enemies, we might be able to distract them long enough to evade detection.”

“I’m assuming thermal detonators,” she said, trying on the new word for size. “Are something I would rather not have go off in my vicinity.”

“Explanation: Thermal detonators, often called ‘fusion dets,’ or by fleeing meatbags as ‘oh god, oh god, throw it back,’ are highly unstable and highly amusing thrown explosive devices. Most can be rigged with simple but efficient dead man’s switches. If you equip your slave army with a few I can guarantee a spectacular show.” He gestured at the crate that he had pulled to the centre of the armory floor with what she felt might be longing. There were at least a dozen metal spheres there.

“Let’s shelve that as plan... C,” she said. She figured that she might be able to rig something with enough insects to carry one of the grenades somewhere important, but they looked rather heavy and the few bugs that she had found were small and rather specialized in anything but carrying heavy objects around. “What about the rest of our arsenal?”

When Taylor asked HK-47 to find out where the armory was, he was only too happy to go diving into the palace’s network. His discovery that there were not one but three weapons storage rooms in the building had the robot as giddy as she had ever seen him.

So she told him to show her where the nearest one was, then left him to figure out how to break in without setting off any alarms while she got the first batch of slaves. She came back to find two dead pig men and an unlocked room.

“Comment: The weaponry is adequate.”

“Adequate, huh?” she asked.
The robot nodded. “Qualification: There are thirty seven blaster rifles, none will endure heavy use. Forty-nine blasters, three are in acceptable repair. Sixty-four shock batons of various make and model, all unsanitary. A variety of gas and stun grenades. And twelve thermal detonators.”

Taylor licked her lips and looked into the armory behind HK-47. For all his claims that the guns were in bad repair, that still sounded like a considerable amount of firepower. “Right. Okay, I need you to translate for me,” she said.

“Statement: I am always ready to relay whatever information you wish me to. My creative interpretation protocols are second to none.”

***

Xarly thought that being a slave was the most unwizard thing ever. Oh sure, he’d had a few jobs that were less than cool. Flipping rehydrated protein patties while paying for his astronavigation courses was not the highlight of his life, but he would rather be doing that kind of work instead of sitting in a cell slowly starving out. He had even lost the urge to scream at the passing pigs or to kick out and try to trip the guards.

Shock prods were a great way to tell someone to chill out and wobble on the floor for a few hours.

The least fun bit about being a slave so far was the whole manual labour thing. He was more of a computer and droid guy. Nice comfy chairs and air conditioned rooms. Oh, and the beatings, the beatings were also not fun.

In fact, the more he thought on it, the less fun the whole thing sounded.

“You’re thinking stupid thoughts again,” came a rather familiar voice from the cell across from his. A pile of blankets moved in the shadows, a slender green hand pulling them closer.

“No, I’m not,” he said. “I was thinking about how much this sucks.”

The blanket shifted back a bit and he got to look into the very flat eyes of the Qariman’s, the last ship he served on, chief navigator. That she happened to be his superior just a few days ago shouldn’t have mattered anymore, but the woman was downright terrifying and no amount of steel bars between him and her would make him feel safe. “Oh, really?” she asked.

He tried on a smile for size. “Yeah, totally.”

“We’re only stuck on a Hutt controlled desert backwater, under the wonderful care of the great fucking Nimas, the same bitch who has her pets fight to the death and then sells the videos on the holonet for some credits. The same slug that owns the biggest brothels in the sector. The same slug that sells her merchandise across the entire goddamn galaxy.”

He shrank back a little at the notes of pure rage in her tone. “Hey there, love, no need for that, yeah?”

“Love? Xarly, when I’m out of this cage I’m going to kill every last guard around here, and then I’m going to gut you,” she said.

The fact that it wasn’t the first, or even the worse, threat she had tossed his way didn’t diminish the anger behind it. “We’ll figure something out,” he said, his voice lower and hopefully placating.

Qarry might have been the toughest girl he had ever met, but even she had broken down and cried at night. They had both seen some of the others from the Qariman being shuffled about. The girls never came back intact.

He was still looking for more nice things to say, because an angry girl was an affront to everything Xarly knew, when the thump-thump of footfalls came his way.

He was ready to shrink back when suddenly he wasn’t in control of himself anymore. It was strange, almost unique. He had taken some stims that made him feel the same way some years back, though those had never made him stand up and at attention behind a door.

He saw Qarry doing the same, her blanket falling off her shoulders to reveal her dirty uniform and the collar wrapped around her neck. The complete lack of emotions on her face had him suddenly feeling somewhat nervous.

A pair of Gamorreans stopped by their doors and unlocked them from outside. He found himself stepping out in time with Qarry, then walking to the end of the corridor where he stood right next to her and behind a thin humanoid girl with long dark hair and a too big jacket on. Her eyes were masked by blue goggles, but the line of her mouth hinted at how displeased she was.

More slaves, some of them Falleen like him and Qarry, others from the passengers aboard the Qariman or from the old stock that were there before they arrived, stepped out and formed up with them.

They moved to the next row over and repeated the same action without so much as a whisper spoken between anyone. He has seen some pretty wild horror holos in his day, but this was taking the cake.

The group gathered a few move slaves, then even more. Soon they were packed in tight and Xarly found himself moving forwards to help hold up a skinny Twi'lek girl. He bent over and picked her up, one hand under her knees the other behind her back. He was made to move with surprising gentleness.

When he was back with the others they started to move with eerie synchronicity, all of them marching with light steps and breathing at the same pace. They moved through the rear exit, then through a corridor until, finally, they crossed a pair of slaves that he vaguely recognized guarding a corridor.

They were holding rifles.

The pair of them tensed as they passed, but they let them through.

Xarly found himself spreading out away from the others in a room that was, to a guy stuck in a cell for a few days, pretty damned spacious. There were a few other slaves here, or at least people in rags.

He bent at the knees and deposited the still silent Twi’lek girl on the ground next to a few more injured people.

Then, just like that, the control was gone and Xarly almost tripped over his own feet. “What the hell?” he heard Qarry whisper from behind him.

The group turned, all thirty or so of them to take in the girl with the goggles who was standing next to a rusty protocol droid. The two groups stared at each other for a long moment, neither daring to be the first to talk.

Then the girl with the blue goggles spoke in a language that was at once melodic and harsh, as if someone had tuned in on three dozen holonews channels at once and decided to imitate all the non-basic languages at once.

“Superfluous Greetings: My master, Darth Khepri, wishes to greet you sacks of rotting organic slurry and present to you an offer that, should you refuse, will no doubt end in your timely and delightfully gory ends.”

Xarly shared a look with Qarry. Already he could smell the stress pheromones in the air from the other Falleen. He, and all the others, waited, but the droid and the girl didn’t seem to be in a hurry to speak.

“So, how did you free us?” Qarry asked.

The droid repeated something back in that same strange language and Darth Khepri replied.

“Translation: My master did not intend to free you. Clarification: Through no fault of our own, my master was enslaved by the degenerate swine that serve the local Hutt. Fortunately my master is not as obviously incapable as you, and was able to murder those that captured her with inpunity. Addition: Unfortunately, she was collared. Our infiltration of this palace has lead us to discover that deactivating one collar will set off an alarm. The same alarm that would go off if all collars were deactivated.”

There was a murmur through the crowd as they took in that bit of news. Good news at that. Xarly wasn’t too fond of his own slave collar. It was chafing against his scales a whole lot.

“Then what? You’re going to turn these things off and try to run while the Hutt guns us down?” Qarry asked. “And what was that just now, with the controlling us? How did you do that?”

Xarly was real tempted to shove a hand before her mouth, but that might make the scary probably-a-jedi look his way. She looked especially miffed when the droid was done translating what Qarry had said.

So miffed that she turned on a heel and walked into the next room over.

“Statement: As amusing as it would be to watch you all be gunned down, my master has other plans.”

The girl returned, and she had blasters, at least half a dozen pressed up against her stomach so that she had one arm free. She tossed one underhand to Qarry who snatched it out of the air.

“You’re arming us?” she asked before inspecting the gun. “With blasters that don’t have any power cells?”

“Comment: You are a credit to your species’ benevolence. Conjecture: Certainly, a species that allows as member as idiotic as yourself to reach adulthood without being put down is both merciful and shortsighted. Statement: The power cells are in that bin.” The droid pointed to a bin off to one side.

In Qarry’s defence, he hadn’t noticed it either.

“Alright. We each get a blaster and a smack on the ass and are told to pray that we don’t get vaporized on the way out?”

“Compliment: What a succinct way of laying out our plan.”

“Beats being a slave,” Xarly said.

He wasn’t sure if he should have been reassured by the number of people that agreed with him.

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

Also, shout-out to Daimahou and BlueNine. They did word magic on there to make the mistakes go away.

 

Chapter Eleven

The first loss came not two minutes after the first collar was removed and her first squad of slaves moved out.

No, calling them slaves was wrong. She had just freed them, after all. Freedom fighters, maybe.

She had had HK-47 explain that they would be lead by her bugs. Her range didn’t cover the entire palace, but it was a near thing. A few swarming fly-things, some sand scorpions leading on the ground and using their twin stingers as pointers. Enough that she could keep an eye on what was going on.

Still, she lost five of her freedom fighters in a narrow corridor when a device fell from the ceiling and opened fire on them, putting more lasers downrange than their five blasters combined and killing all of them.

Talyor had lost people before, had led some astray, had used living things as cannon fodder since she was fifteen, but never like that.

She swallowed and focused harder. “We lost the group that went down the north-eastern corridor. Five down to some sort of turret in the ceiling,” she said.

“Assessment: A small price to pay for such valuable information.”

Her bugs across the palace started looking for more of those turrets. She found plenty. Her squads of freedom fighters all came to a stop as she barred their path with bugs. There was no way for her to write a message for them to be careful or to shoot at the ceiling.

“HK, I need messengers. Four of them,” she said, even as she raised her new arm and four gnat like bugs landed on its fingers. “They’ll have to follow these and tell my squads that there are concealed turrets in the ceiling. I need a new group to head to the north eastern corridor to retrieve the lost blasters and take out that turret.”

“Comment: Understood. I will retrieve unwilling volunteers now.”

She nodded and went back to focusing as HK-47 relayed her wants. There were hundreds of slaves in the palace, and only so many blasters to go around. More than half of them were in two or three rooms, with only a few guards to keep them safe. The sickly, the infirm.

The rest were spreading out on her directions, though some were proving a little hotheaded. Even with her insects to distract the adversaries they met in the corridors her freedom fighters were fighting an uphill battle.

Her troops didn’t have armour, were poorly armed, and weren’t all that fast to move. But, as she guided one squad behind a group of enemies pinning down another of her squads and watched them tear into their enemies undefending backs, she knew that she had some advantages that were quickly proving better than any number of extra blasters.

“Statement: Task complete, master,” HK-47 said.

Taylor nodded and let her bugs fly over to the waiting messengers to guide them. “Good. I need three more sent to squad seven down near the kitchens. The Gamoreans there are dead. They have weapons waiting.”

“Comment: Most excellent, master.”

She nodded even as the first messenger arrived, relayed her message, then started running to the next group. She watched in satisfaction as her freedom fighters moved into the next corridor, already aiming at an undeployed turret

When the weapon dropped from the ceiling, it was to be met with a hail of blasterfire.

“A few more minutes, HK, and we’ll be watching Nimas squirm,” Taylor said.

***

Modern blasters made a very distinct sound. It was high pitched enough that even with the thick walls of the palace around them they could clearly hear the whine of lasers being fired, the scream of plasma cutting off as it hit something and the burst-pops of walls being carved into by near-misses.

He recognized all those sounds from holos and recordings and even a few live fire demonstrations.

But Sib Nark had never been shot at before.

This entire situation was utterly unacceptable.

He was, essentially, a diplomat from the Trade Federation, here to purchase unfortunate Falleen citizens in order to further cement ties between the Federation and the Falleen government. His only guards were some battle droids and a few retainers who were shaking in their boots. The likelihood that they would hit anything other than their own toes with their blasters was higher than his chances at the Coruscanti Grand Lottery.

Nimas, meanwhile, was roaring and shouting, huge, fat arms waving around as she demanded more guards kill the rebelling slaves and that the bounty hunters who had been enjoying her hospitality start doing something.

It was perhaps not the best place to be, he reasoned. Standing tall in the middle of his little group, Sib Nark tried to present the image of a Neimoidian who was in control of himself. He was not going to allow any situation to strip him of his civility.

The shooting stopped.

Everyone, even Nimas, paused to listen as the constant whining of blasters echoed off into nothing.

For a moment he wondered if they had won, if the slaves had been subdued. So he looked towards the great entrance into Nimas’ throne room, expecting a victorious bounty hunter to walk in, or some of those filthy Gamoreans to squeal their victory.

A single scorpion walked down the middle of the path. It was dragging a bundle tied between its twin tails. The cloth scraped along the ground, collecting sand and dust.

“You, go see what that is!” Nimas ordered, waving a few of her guards over.

The Gamoreans lumbered over to the scorpion, hefting their crude axes by their sides.

“Let’s move back,” Sib Nark said. He had a bad feeling about that creature.

His retinue moved deeper into the shadows of one of the alcoves along the walls. Their battle droids stood by the entrance, blasters pointing towards the door and Sib Nark’s companions quaked in their boots behind them.

The Gamoreans near the scorpion talked to each other in deep grunts before one of them shrugged, raised his axe, and brought it chopping down onto the scorpion.

It splattered grotesquely, bits of chitin and black blood splattering on the ground.

The pig men laughed, soon joined by the others around Nimas.

“What’s in the sack?” the Hutt asked. She wasn’t laughing at all.

One of the Gamoreans took the bundle, shook off the bits of scorpion still tied to it, and unfolded it. He grunted something in his barbatic tongue.

“The kind Gamorrean just claimed that the device found within the sack is a thermal detonator,” Nimas’ protocol droid said.

The room went deadly quiet for a second.

The sack started to beep, faster and faster.

Sib Nark gave up all pretenses of civility and jumped behind a table. His retinue, the idiots, stood in place and screamed.

The shouting and panic was almost enough to drown out the increasingly loud beeps. Then the beeping stopped, replaced by a single low tone.

Warmth. A heat that washed across his skin and made the twin suns of Tatooine feel like mere torches in comparison. The air roared, pushing Nimas against the far wall of the alcove. the table he had hidden behind crushing him. Things shifted just as quickly and he found himself rolling towards the centre of the room, stopping just outside the alcove.

There was a fiery crackle as some of the curtains along the sides of the room burned and filled the air with a haze black smoke. Groans echoed in the darkness, most coming from around Nimas’ throne where the fat slug was still resting even as soot and burns covered her skin.

Sib Nark panted and rolled onto his back. His hearts were thudding in his chest and he felt as if his bowels were about to empty themselves. But he was a proud merchant and businessman, this lying about on the ground was not for him.

Adding a groan of his own to the cacophony he stood up and dusted off his robes while taking in the room. The thermal detonator had done a number on it, leaving a deep crater near the entrance and a few scour marks where the Gamoreans had been.

Other than that, and a few dozen burns shared across all the poor fools too close for their own good, the room was surprisingly intact. Nimas was regaining her composure, or perhaps lack thereof, his retinue were climbing back onto their feet save for one battle droids that had collapsed and stayed that way.

“I will kill them!” Nimas roared. “I will kill all of them. They will die in my pits and I will eat their filthy flesh!”

Most everyone was back on their feet. Some still looking dazed by the attack, but quickly coming to their senses. The detonation had sent them reeling, but it was too small, too weak to really destroy the massive throne room. A small mercy.

The bounty hunters were the first to notice the two figures standing in the entrance. Blasters rose, aliens of all sorts tensed and the room grew quiet again.

Sib Nark took a few steps back, seeking cover in his alcove once more. If this was the next attack by the slaves it would be best if he were not in their line of fire.

“Greetings: My master, Darth Khepri, wishes to formally greet you, the great Nimas, and inquire about the reception of her latest gift,” a droid’s monotonous voice asked.

One of the two figures was a tall, heavily built droid. At first glance it was a protocol droid, but Sib Nark had sold enough equipment of the sort that he recognized the assassin for what it was. The heavy blaster rifle casually held by its side and the blaster pistols clamps to its legs certainly helped.

The other figure was a girl child, a human or human-adjacent. She was thin, dressed in a coat that was far too large for her and that hung off her shoulders like a cape. Blue goggles reflected the few remaining lights in the room and, if Sib Nark wasn’t mistaken, bugs were crawling over her entire body and swarming around her in a cloud that made it hard to see any more details than that. She had two mismatched blasters in hand, held easily by her side.

“Darth Khepri?” Nimas asked. “What is the meaning of this? Who sent you? Was it those filthy lizards?”

“Statement: I am afraid that your death will only ever be blamed on your own slimey back, oh great Nimas. You should have known better than to anger my master.”

“Your...” the slug’s eyes narrowed. “Sith,” she accused.

Sib Nark took another step back into the shadows of his alcove. The girl looked his way for a moment, just a glance and a flash of blue visors in the growing swarm. He felt a cold shiver down his back.

“Kill them, kill them both!” Nimas roared.

The girl was rolling aside even before the first blaster fired. She dropped one of her blasters and pulled a cylindre from her jacket, letting it roll across the floor as she crouched then rolled in the opposite direction to pick up her discarded blaster.

Sib Nark cringed back, expecting another explosion. He was rewarded, instead, with a thick wall of purple smoke that poured out of the canister she had tossed. It was only when she got back to her feet, rolled around a few stray and blind shots, and raised both arms that she started firing back.

The bounty hunters around Nimas began to fall, first those that didn’t move, then the Gamoreans charging into the smoke.

The robot opened fire, each shot roaring with the distinct sounds of an overcharged blaster. Durasteel tables were blasted apart and the blasts that hit the walls sent chunks of sandstone flying across the room.

The bounty hunter’s constant barrages slowed down as the smoke spread. They couldn’t see their target and she obviously had no trouble taking shots at them from within the smoke.

In the short lull, he heard feet tapping against the ground, as if someone was running towards the guards around Nimas, but that was insane.

Then the smoke began to clear, pulled away by the room’s already taxed ventilation. The girl was standing in the circle of Nimas’ guards and guests, but their blasters were pointing in all the wrong directions. There was a moment’s confusion before those around her opened fire on their friends across the room.

Sib Nark had seen enough. He ducked back into his alcove, flinching when a stray blast hit the wall above his corner or when the bang of a stun grenade went off in the room.

He covered his head, and began to prey.

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys!

Also, shout-out to Daimahou. He did word magic on here to scare the mistakes away.

 

Chapter Twelve

Taylor lowered her blaster pistol. The weapon was hot, barrel almost glowing and far too dangerous for her to allow any of her bugs to land on it. She didn’t know if the strange almost tinker-like weapons could overheat, or stop working if they were used too much, but she didn’t want to risk it.

After all, it wasn’t like she lacked in firepower.

Seven creatures surrounded her, all of them in thick armour and holding onto guns that made hers look cute in comparison. Some were probably human under all the clothes and armour, but some definitely weren’t. It didn’t matter, really, they were hers either way.

“HK-47, you still alive?” she called out.

Her robotic friend pushed aside a table and rose from the ground. There were a few black marks along his chest and one small dent over one eye, but he looked as deadly and ready as ever. “Statement: All systems are nominal. Qualification: As nominal as they were upon entering the room. I still require some maintenance to correct some deficiencies in my killing efficiency. Congratulatory: I do believe you have slain more targets than I have.”

“Yeah, thanks,” she said without feeling it. The room, a sort of theater or throne room, was a charnel house. The ground was blackened by missed shots and splatters of blood that covered the entire colour spectrum. It was at once a blessing and a curse that the blasters tended to cauterise any wounds they left. There was less blood around, but now the air stank like a barbeque gone horribly wrong. It reminded her a bit of Burnscar’s work.

There were still some left alive. She could feel them shifting and groaning on the ground, some climbing to their feet and others just lying in wait. More were injured than not, but a few were perfectly healthy. Those that did not try to fight her she had done her best to spare.

The slug was also alive.

The fat creature was moving away, sliding over the corpses of her guards as she moved towards the farthest corner of the room. Taylor had no skill in reading alien body language, and giant slugs were so far from her usual that she had no point of reference, but she did have the impression that the great Nimas wasn’t feeling so great.

She had one of her minions toss its blaster into the air and caught it with a swipe. A few smaller bugs on the barrel, one or two where she wanted to hit, and she lined up a shot.

The whine of the laser crossing the room silenced a few groans, especially when it burst against the stony ground not a foot before Nimas. “HK-47, tell the slug to stop moving.”

HK-47 dutifully translated for her and the Hutt stopped. Its eyes, as big around as Taylor’s head, were cinched in a cruel glare and the creature’s hands were held in two fists at its side. The slug’s language was lilting and heavy, as if the speaker’s lips were puckered out the entire time they spoke. She listened as HK-47 and Nimas went back and forth, then her robotic friend turned to her. “Translation: The filthy Hutt wishes to inform you that because of your actions today she will be overjoyed to watch your eventual downfall and death, upon which she will consume your decapitated body, digest it, and use the excrements thereof to bury your head. Comment: A very impressive insult, yet one that I can unfortunately not carry out myself.”

“I see,” Taylor said. Being threatened by someone that was at her mercy was not the most terrifying thing to happen to her. She could already feel the adrenaline ebbing away and a bone-deep weariness begin to settle in. She was looking forwards to resting her feet and recentering herself, but that was for later. “Tell her that I don’t approve of slavery. That if she’s willing to free all of her slaves, those belonging to her and others, then I’ll let her live.”

Taylor listened as HK-47 translated. She took that time to think. There were literally hundreds of slaves in the palace alone. In the town beyond there were probably twice again as many. If she took responsibility for them that would mean feeding, clothing, and paying them. She didn’t even know how to speak with any of them yet.

Nimas started yelling at her and HK-47, a diatribe that flew over Taylor’s head, but certainly sounded angry.

“Translation: The so-called great Nimas reiterates previous threats and wishes to inform you that she will not kill you immediately, but will use you to breed a whole host of children which she will then eat before you.”

“So that’s a no to my offer, then?” she asked.

“Sarcastic Comment: Oh no, she is more than willing to comply to anything you ask, master. Nimas thinks of you as a great friend.”

Taylor closed her eyes and nodded. The guards around her raised their weapons and suddenly Nimas’ screaming took on a more urgent tone. It was drowned out by a barrage of continuous blaster fire. After all, the slug was large, it stood to reason that one or two strikes would maybe fail to kill her.

“HK-47, can you round up anyone in here that isn’t one of Nimas’ guards?” She was already having her guards drop their weapons and begin to tie each other up with strips of cloth. Her bugs outside of the throne room were pointing the freedom fighters into the room, and the braver ones were already coming in with blasters ready.

She had noticed a few children with head tentacles hiding in one corner, and a few slaves that still wore collars were cowering behind the throne. She was certain that some of the people in the room weren’t actually part of Nimas’ retinue. Or if they were, they would certainly be willing to deny it now.

One of those aliens, a tall gray skinned creature in intricate robes stood up from behind a table and slowly raised his arms. His hands shook, but after taking a few deep breaths the creature moved out from its alcove and talked towards her an HK-47.

“Observation: More meat to the slaughter.”

“Let’s see if he has anything to say,” Taylor said. She had been gunning enough people down for one afternoon. “Ask him what he wants.”

HK-47 lowered his rifle and started speaking to the creature. Soon, they switched from the guttural, slithery language the Hutt had been speaking to the one that Taylor recognized as Basic. They exchanged a few words, the alien being very obsequious for one so richly dressed.

He, it, kind of reminded her of Alan Barnes, or maybe of Quinn Calle with the way it was trying to appease HK-47 with its calmer words and body language. If it wasn’t for her bugs she wouldn’t even have noticed the way its legs were trembling.

“Liberal Translation: This Neimoidian claims to be a businessperson from the Trade Federation, here in order to purchase all the Falleen slaves the Hutt used to owe.”

Taylor’s eyes narrowed. Something must have shown even through her goggles because the Neimoidian backed up a step. “Can you politely remind him what happened to the last slave owner I dealt with.” She nodded towards the still smoking Hutt in the corner.

A few of the slaves, mostly those that looked as if they had been enslaved for a long time, were kicking the corpse. She wasn’t going to stop them from having their fun.

She started calling back the squads she had around the palace. The area was clear, as far as she could tell. A few stragglers remained, but those were mostly slaves that had been cleaning or cooking when things went down. She directed some of her freedom fighters towards them.

“Incredulous Translation: The Neimoidian claims that he intended to purchase the slaves in order to free them.”

That had Taylor’s interest. She eyed the alien for a little bit, then faced HK-47. “How did he intend to free them? And why”

HK-47 relayed the question and she could see the alien untensing a little as they went back and forth. “Comment: It seems that he has a space faring vessel nearby capable of transporting all of the Falleen slaves back to their homeworld. Conjecture: He does not hide the greed behind his motivations. I suspect that any empathy you see from this base creature is motivated by greed first. He claims that his Trade Federation are opening negotiations with the Falleen and that the return of captured citizens would earn him a great deal of respect.”

“That’s rather mercenary of him,” she said. “Ask how much room he has aboard his... spaceship. And if he would be willing to take some non-Falleen aboard.”

There was another exchange. Quicker, this time. “Statement: Oh, how interesting. He suspects that you wish to use his vessel to escape the inevitable wrath of the local Hutts. He has no qualms about letting an esteemed Jedi aboard his ship, especially one that saved him so many credits.”

“A Jedi?” The word was oddly familiar. The Jawas had used it to refer to her at one time or another.

“Explanation: The Jedi are a pompous group of religious zealots that are unable to mind their own business. They have a certain base mastery of the force that allows them to do acts that most would consider supernatural. They are the natural enemy of Sith such as yourself, but are far more popular with weak-willed civilians.”

“So they’re heroes,” she said.

“Statement: They certainly paint themselves as such. Suggestion: perhaps using the filthy organic’s gullibility again him would be advantageous.”

She gave it some thought before shaking her head. “Tell him that I just wanted to do the right thing. If he plans on taking the... freed slaves off this world, then maybe we could come to an agreement.”

***

Xarly watched the Trandoshan thrash around on the ground, black blood spilling out from between green hands. The gangster, or maybe it was a bounty hunter, stumbled back, clawed feet scrambling on the cobbled ground where its blaster had already fallen.

He lowered his own blaster, the pistol feeling a whole lot heavier than it had a minute ago.

Then Qarry stepped up next to him, pointed her blaster rifle at the lizardman, and snapped off a shot that planted between his eyes with a sizzle. “Trandos are hard to keep down,” she warned. “Shoot them, twice if you have to.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. Xarly stepped aside as a few of the other slaves moved past, all of them following a scorpion that was scuttling across the floor in a straight line.

“You okay?” Qarry asked.

He straightened his back and gave her his most winsome smile. “Always, baby.” At her look he decided that changing the subject might be best. She did have a blaster in hand. “What’s going on now?”

Qarry looked after the slaves moving deeper into the palace. “I don’t know. Khepri doesn’t seem to have anything for our group. Maybe we should head outside. There are other slaves in the city. We can start clearing it out.”

“That sounds like a bit much,” he said.

She glared at him. “Would you rather stay here and die?”

“Don’t think that’ll happen. We have little miss dark and mindrapey with us, and she has her pet mudercol droid.”

“You’re an idiot, Xarly.” She said. “I don’t know why I haven’t kicked your ass yet.

“Because such a perfect ass should be admired, not kicked,” he said.

Qarry looked ready to get on with the kicking when another Falleen ran past. “Darth Khepri wants us in the throne room,” he said. “She found a way to get us off planet.”

“All of us?” Qarry asked.

The messenger shrugged. “We’ll have to see.”

“Well shit,” Xarly said. “I take back any negative thoughts I had of her that I hope she didn’t pull out of my head.” He felt a grin tugging at his lips, and it became easier to pretend that there weren’t corpses in the hallway. “We can get off this dustball.”

“You’re placing a lot of trust in her,” Qarry said. There was a note of suspicion in her voice.

“She just saved us from a life of... I don’t know, pit fighting and acting like concubines.”

“Did you just say I’d have been a concubine?” She asked.

“No, no.” He raised both hands in surrender to ward her off. “You’d be the pit fighter. I would be the concubine. Perfect ass, remember.”

She let out a low breath from her nose and he knew that if she was a normal, none terrifying girl, that would have been a laugh. “I just don’t trust her yet,” she said.

“We’ll see,” he said.

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys! Also, shout-out to CrazySith who helped with the SPaG in this chapter!

 

Chapter Thirteen

Taylor had never seen a spaceship.

She’d seen them in cartoons, on old videos taken from way back before the Simurgh ruined any hopes of reaching out into space, from images of ships that some Tinkers had made that could hover above the Earth, but she had never seen an honest to god spaceship with her own two eyes.

She didn’t know if the ship sitting on a flat plateau of stone was typical, or if it was a mass-produced machine, she did know that it didn’t fit what she imagined a spaceship would look like.

It was a dull beige, as if the colour had been chosen by a panel of corporate stooges. Long and narrow, with a larger rear section from which a tall tail jutted out above. Four, almost insectile, legs held the ship in place above the sandy ground and a ramp lay unfolded from the ship’s side.

She already had a few bugs inspecting the interior and combing across rows of tight, probably uncomfortable benches. They found a few strange things. Robots of the sort that followed Sib Nark and a few non-humans. Most were armed, but none of them had the tense postures and ready stances she’d come to expect from people and creatures preparing for a fight.

“It’s a nice ship,” she said, even as she counted the benches with a few fliers.

“Comment: A passably usable transport vessel. Conjecture: No doubt the Neimoidian intends to use it to carry us to a more dignified vehicle before the local crime lords come to feast upon the town’s corpse.”

Taylor looked over her shoulder. The town was in flames. Not all of it, not much, even, but plumes of brackish smoke were rising into the cloudless sky and flames were eating away at some of the taller buildings.

A few whines from blasters zipped out of the city and into the sky, leaving red and green traces in their wake. The revolt was still in full swing, slaves freeing comrades and taking out their resentment on their captors in an orgy of violence she hadn’t seen since Leviathan’s passing.

Still, that only accounted for some of the slaves turned freedom fighters. The rest were walking behind her, a long row of humanity and alien life, cutting through the sand in rough rows towards the waiting ship. There was no way they would all fit in the first trip.

“How much room does Sib Nark’s ship have?” she asked HK-47.

Her erstwhile companion turned towards one of the few things that could live in her range without her taking it over. The droid was unarmed, probably to appease her, and stood on stick-thin legs inserted into a boxy body. Its head was vaguely dog-shaped, like an ancient jackal with two slits for eyes.

There was a quick conference and the droid touched something to the side of its head. The only words Taylor caught were the oft-repeated “Roger roger,” at the end of a sentence.

“Summary: Sib Nark’s ship, the Profits of Merchandising, is in orbit above us now. It has housing space for three hundred sentients and enough consumables to last for a two week trip with a group of that size.”

Taylor made a quick tally of the number of slaves behind them. “Ask if he can fit three times that number on reduced rations.”

While HK-47 spoke with the strange droid, she paused by the edge of a dune and allowed the sun to beat down on her head while she eyed those she had freed. Plenty had passed away in the fighting, taken out by collars or by the slavers they had been fighting against. Most, however, had lived.

She supposed that she should have been proud.

In the distance, nearly hidden by a plume of rising dust, was the Jawa Sandcrawler, the landship rolling away from the violence and destruction she had left in her wake. She hoped them the best.

“Comment: It seems that while Sib Nark is still just as obsequious as when we first met,” HK-47 began. “He is growing something of a backbone.”

“And why is that?” she asked as she turned away from the vista and started walking again. HK-47 and the droid followed.

“Reply: He suggests leaving the less valuable slaves behind in order to conserve space and comfort for those of actual value. Suggestion: Perhaps we could leave Sib Nark behind in order to exemplify why refusing your orders is a bad idea.”

Taylor snorted. “Tempting, but I don’t know anything about piloting a spaceship, and for all I know his droids and personnel are more loyal to him than they would be to me.” She shook her head. “Better to convince him that I’ll take care of the sla-- freedom fighters. If I can keep an eye on all of them I’m sure they’ll behave.”

“Compliment: Oh, master, your ability to scare people into submission is most attractive.” HK-47’s head scanned from left to right as they came closer to the ship. “Advisory: Sib Nark has suggested that we meet with one of the mercenaries he hired to serve as protection aboard his ship.”

“Oh?” Taylor asked. HK-47 raised one arm and pointed towards the ship.

There was a creature walking down the ramp, followed on both sides by a pair of droids identical to the ones Sib Nark had around him, though these carried small blaster rifles.

Taylor started moving closer until she was waiting a dozen meters from the base of the ramp. The creature stopped, raised his lizard-like snout into the air and gave it a sniff. He said something, then gave her a shallow bow.

She turned to HK-47, one eyebrow perked.

“Translation: The lizard calls himself Skarsk Nek. It is a trandoshan, a species as resilient as they are stupid, with a penchant to forget that even though they are somewhat more difficult to kill than the average sentient, their so called resiliance does not make up for their lack of wits.”

Something from HK’s translation must have clued the Trandoshan about the robot’s rather lurid translation because he bristled and started talking faster, his Basic slurring with hisses.

“Additional Translation: This particular specimen seems to have a knack for understanding social cues. He suggested that I begin by telling you that, despite his young age and obvious lack of experience, he is the one that Sib Nark hired to protect his precious cargo. No doubt the cheap Neimoidian gave the contract to the lowest bidder.”

Taylor nodded and eyed the lizard up and down. Skarsk’s attention snapped back to her and his eyes narrowed. “Tell him that we have a lot of slaves to transport to Sib Nark’s ship. Remind him that I would disapprove of Sib Nark leaving first as that might send the wrong message. And remind him that we are in something of a hurry. I don’t know how long it’ll take before Nimas’ friends decide to start snooping and I for one am not equipped to take on anyone that has spaceships at their disposal.”

It was a gnawing fear in her gut, that someone would just drop a bomb on them all from above. An army she could handle, as long as it was made of living, breathing people. She had a chance. But against creatures that had literal spaceships she was completely out of her depth.

More conversation ensued and Taylor stood in the steaming heat, her determination to learn Basic growing by the minute even as she tried to get a sense for the language. Soon enough HK-47 was done with his subtle threats and turned back to her.

“Assessment: Perhaps the Trandoshan has more wits than the many, many members of his species I gutted, eviscerated, sliced and otherwise killed over the past few centuries. It seems as though he is willing to work with us.”

Taylor nodded. “Tell him that it’ll be a pleasure to work with him.”

HK-47 said something that didn’t sound like it carried the same intent as her words, not judging by the way the lizardman’s already pale complexion paled even further.

It didn’t matter, as long as she got what she wanted.

***

“You cannot just give this woman anything she asks for,” the tinny voice said. “We are not the servants of the Jedi. We are the Trade Federation.”

Sib Nark bowed to the hologram. “I understand, Lead Banker Bee'n Conta,” he said. “But as I said, this Jedi killed all of Nimas’ guards and the Hutt herself. She is dangerous, and double crossing her might be unwise.”

It was difficult, he knew from experience, to convince the members of the board to listen to reason. Unfortunately he was still a few unfortunate accidents away from being promoted to a position where he would have more freedom to make his own choices.

The twenty one holograms floating before him were all coming in with various levels of poor reception. That was too bad. It made it all the harder for them to take his words seriously. “The Falleen are freed, and as soon as they and some other select slaves are aboard my ship we will be leaving Hutt space. Not bringing the jedi with us would complicate matters with the Falleen.”

“Couldn’t you just kill her?” Brux Chadrad asked. He was a Geonosian and new to the council and to his position as Security Advisor. “You have droids, don’t you?”

“Merely early models of the OOM series, and only a few hundred at that,” Sib Nark said.

“Wouldn’t that be enough to take care of one jedi?” the Geonosian asked. His wings fluttered out behind him, disappearing into a static fuzz.

He shook his head. “Darth Khepri proved herself very capable,” Sib Nark began. “I do not think such a small number of defun--”

“What did you call her?” Sib Nark would usually have been insulted by the interruption, but Nute Gunray was important enough that the usual niceties did not apply. In fact, until then the current viceroy of the Trade Federation had been more focused on a datapad and with talking to assistants that moved in and out of his muted hologram. “What did you call the jedi?” he demanded.

Sib Nark bowed again, deeper this time. “Darth Khepri is the name given by her... protocol droid. May I enquire as to if she is known to you?”

“You will do everything in your power to accommodate the... jedi. Bring her to Falleen if you must. She may be of great interest to the Trade Federation in the future. That is all.” The Viceroy’s hologram blinked out, leaving the rest of the council floundering for a moment.

There was something of a pause while the other members shifted gears. Finally, Lead Banker Bee'n Conta cleared his throat. “Seeing as how your current mission has taken on a somewhat more important role in matters, it might be advisable for your lone vessel to acquire a bit more leeway. I shall see to freeing up more discretionary funds to be used in order to secure your most precious cargo,” the banker smiled.

Bee’n Conta only ever smiled that way when there was something afoot and he wanted in on it.

Sib Nark wasn’t quite certain what had just happened, but he could smell the profit already.

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys! Also, shout-out to CrazySith who helped with the SPaG in this chapter!

 

Chapter Fourteen

When Taylor thought of ‘space travel’ she mostly had vague memories of Star Trek ships darting through the empty void of space, or of the classic novels that her mom had left her that always talked about moving from planet to planet as a series of incredibly complicated and precise calculations done by supercomputers so as to not waste an ounce of fuel.

Sib Nark’s ship, the Profits of Merchandising was basically a huge cigar in space, with cargo areas along its flanks and sides that could, in a pinch, serve as american football fields. Those were now filled with thousands of beds and blankets on which the rescued slaves were huddled and waiting for their nightmare to end.

She, on the other hand, was still on the ship’s bridge, staring into the blue expanse flashing by them and trying to reconcile the ease with which the ship was moving through space with everything she knew of space travel.

She had bugs just about everywhere aboard the vessel, and more were being bred as she stood there, and yet she still had a hard time wrapping her head around the size of the freighter.

“Comment: We are going to exit Hyperspace in one minute, master. We need to transfer from the Tatooine-Gamor lane to the Denon-Ryloth pass.”

“You’ll have to explain how all of this works one day,” she said with a gesture to the space beyond them. “It’s... impressive, to say the least.”

“Assessment: At the rate of learning that your inefficient meat brain processes things it would require millenia to teach you all of the intricacies behind the function of a ship of this scale. Suggestion: Some organics find it easier to merely assume that machines just function as they ought to and not question things any more than that. This is of course because they are too stupid to understand things the way a proper machine can.”

“Right,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Well, maybe we can find some simple education programs. I want to at least know the basics. Stuff like kids shows and the like. My mom used to tell me that it was a great way to start learning a new language. Which is something else we’ll have to work on.”

“Query: You said ‘we’ master. Unless my translation protocols are failing me that assumes that I will have to assist you through the bumbling first steps of learning Basic.”

“I can’t have you translating everything for me. What if we need to split up while assaulting another castle?” she asked. She thought that maybe she was getting the knack for talking to HK-47.

The ship rocked a little, just a tiny shiver that she felt in the soles of her feet and across all the bugs tucked away in nooks and crannies. Then, between one heartbeat and the next, the view outside the screen changed from the hypnotising blue of hyperspace to a pallet of uncountable stars with oceans of hazy whiteness stretching out in intricate constellations.

She could have stared at the void for hours, but the sudden shift to real space had all of the robots on the bridge, all of them the jackal-headed droids that Sib Nark favoured, suddenly moving and talking between each other in a babble that broke her calm.

“There’s a ship over there,” she said, pointing off into the dark depths where a slim white form was barely visible.

“Observation: Indeed. Though my current sensor suit isn’t enough to pick out its make and model. There are seventeen other vessels within viewing range, but your poorly evolved organic eyes will not be able to differentiate them from specks of dust caught in your meaty ocular devices.”

“That’s fair, I suppose,” she said before turning back towards the bridge proper. The entire area was lined with stations with holographic displays and computer monitors on which numbers and graphs were flashing by, all of it being observed by a few dozen droids with yellow-striped heads. There was some sort of colour-coding with the robots, but she hadn’t figured it all out yet.

At the far end of the room, standing with arms crossed near the exit, was the trandoshan lizard-man that had greeted her when they boarded. Narrowed eyes were fixed on her as if she was about to jump into the pilot’s seat and ram them into a sun at the drop of a hat.

Not that she could have even if she wanted to. The more time she spent in the merchant ship, the more she felt inadequate. There was a gulf of technological knowledge between her and even the slimmest possibility of being independent.

The more she saw that, the more she realized that she had to start catching up, and soon. “HK-47,” she began. “You can transmit your protocols to other droids, right?”

“Disparaging Remark: As if other droids would be able to process the breadth and width of my capabilities.”

“What about your translation from English to Basic? I’ll ask Sib Nark for one of these.” She paused to gestured towards the nearby droids. “To act as a teacher. It’ll free up time for you to enjoy yourself.”

“Reluctant Acceptance: Very well, master. I suppose acting as your translator does grow tiring. Query: What do I get for this valuable information?”

She paused. “What do you mean?”

“Statement: The translation protocols are the only way for you to communicate. Therefore they are valuable to you. What will you give me in exchange for them?”

She frowned and held back on the urge to rail against HK-47 for being unfair. But in a way the argument was sound. “I don’t know what you want, exactly. Maybe I can ask Sib Nark to have his maintenance droids look you over? You could use a washing, and I’m certain your combat efficiency will rise considerably once your joints are cleared of sand and you’re all oiled up.”

She had a flash of the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz acting like a murderous psychopath instead of a jovial ditz for a moment and had to suppress a grin.

She was about to start walking back towards her cabin, a little space set aside just for her and HK-47 apart from all the holds where the freed slaves were sleeping when the tone in the room shifted. The droids started speaking faster, their voices rising in pitch. Not panic, but certainly enough to hint that something interesting was going on.

The Trandoshan moved forwards, being sure to keep a fair amount of distance between himself and her even as he started barking orders. He paused for a moment, looked out the main viewscreen, then spun on a heel and ran out of the bridge.

“Assessment: It seems as though something interesting is finally happening. How wondrous.”

***

Sib Nark was not having the best few days and the constant irritation was starting to draw out his ire. At least, that’s what Skarsk suspected as he watched the over-the-top Neimoidian’s lips pucker and his brow draw down. “And their transponder codes are confirmed?” the merchant asked.

Skarsk nodded. He didn’t like this job, but it was easy, supposed to be low-risk, and paid relatively well. Not the glamour and excitement he expected when he started working as a mercenary, but enough to keep his account topped up and afford a few meals a day between this job and the next. The fact that his only coworkers were droids was almost a blessing. “The droids confirm that it is a Republic code. Intersector Revenue Services.” He hissed a little. “They claim that we triggered their random search parameters.”

Sib Nark scoffed. “That is as likely as me winning the Grand Coruscant Lottery.” He waved a hand dismissively. “No, they know that our cargo are slaves. They must.”

Skarsk nodded. He knew no such thing, but he was willing to allow his boss the benefit of the doubt. “And what will they do when they discover our cargo are freed slaves?”

“Nothing good,” Sib Nark said. “If they stopped us because they knew we had the slave aboard then they are most definitely being informed by the Hutts.”

Skarsk nodded. “We cannot fight them off. The Republic ship is faster and better armed than we are. If we launch all our fighters we might be able to make a run for it, but I would not gamble with those odds. Reinforcements might not be far.”

Sib Nark hummed. “No, if they are being bribed to board us and steal the slaves, then they wouldn’t call for aid. They would just kill us and be done with it.”

Skarsk hissed. “Could they? We have droids aboard, and many of the slaves are armed.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Sib Nark said. “They would hold us in place while the Hutts bring their own vessels to board. No, they are going to stall us, and perhaps disable our engines and hyperdrive if we do not obey.”

“A distress signal?” Skarsk said.

“And what, announce to the galaxy that the Republic is corrupt?” He scoffed again. “They know this already.”

“Then what?”

Sib Nark looked around his extravagant office, the room meant for the captain of the superfreighter converted into a luxurious cabin and workspace for the Neimoidian. “The ship’s model,” he began.

“It is Corellian, a CR70, or 90. There are also six CloakShape fighters with--”

“I don’t care about that,” Sib Nark barked. “Tell our jedi friend. She may have a solution. I will contact the Trade Federation. They might lend assistance. And activate our droids to repel boarders and the Vulture droids. We may have to fight our way to the next sector. The Hutts wouldn’t dare attack in Falleen space.”

“Yes, sir,” Skarsk said nodding once before stomping out of the room.

Perhaps, he began to think, he would finally be able to score some Points.

***

Short chapter is short.

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys! Also, shout-out to CrazySith and Daimahou who helped with the SPaG in this chapter!

 

Chapter Fifteen

Waffled over this chapter for a bit. But in the end, screw it, I’m writing this chapter in non-chronological order.

***

Time: Twelve minutes after the start of the Denon-Ryloth Hyperspace incident.

HK-47 didn’t know what to say about his master’s plan. The title was certainly deserved, at least for the few hours she was likely to survive before being disintegrated. It was at once mad and certain to, at the very least, cause chaos in the ranks of their enemies.

With a flick he turned off the safety on his blaster rifle and raised it to his shoulder. His calculations suggested that they were going to go out in a blaze of glorious, fiery death. And that was good enough for him.

“Announcement: Piracy protocols loaded and ready, master.”

***

Time: Six minutes before the Denon-Ryloth Hyperspace incident.

When Skarsk Nek told Darth Khepri and her terrifying protocol droid that they were, in all likeliness, going to be boarded and held in place until the Hutts came to destroy them, he had imagined that her reaction would be something normal. Fear, perhaps, or maybe anger and desperation.

He didn’t expect her to start asking questions about the number of enemies they were going to have to deal with or whether any of the slaves would be so kind as to assist in what was, to his mind, little more than a very elaborate suicide attempt.

But she said it with conviction, laying out ideas that quickly grew and changed as he pointed out new problems that she would have to face, each issue an attempt to convince her that it was all a horrible, horrible idea.

Then Sib Nark got involved and decided that if he was going to lose his precious asset, it would be because the asset got rid of herself, and that he, as little more than a mercenary, would assist her.

That’s how he came to be standing before the yet-unopened universal hatchway set at the end of a white-walled corridor, fidgeting on the spot with his claws digging at the ground and hands twitching towards his blasters. All of his instincts told him that he was going to be in the fight of his life.

He could feel the trepidation coming from the so-called freedom fighters behind him, all of them slaves freed by Khepri who had volunteered for the daredevilish stunt. Thay had to reject dozens of them, even after telling them of the odds.

Maybe, if he forgot all else and let himself sink into unreasonableness, he too would be willing to trust in the mad Darth’s plan. But for now he would keep his wits about him and play his part. He just had to still the eager beating of his heart.

The door hissed.

***

Time: One hour before the Denon-Ryloth Hyperspace incident.

“So, you’re telling me that not only are we going to be boarded by the space IRS,” Taylor said as she eyed first HK-47, then Skarsk Nek and the ex-slaves that had decided to follow him. “But we’re being boarded to hold us in place until the people we pissed off on that desert planet come around and enslave us all, again?”

“Compliment: A wonderful summation of events, master,” HK-47 said. “Suggestion: The boarding ramp the so-called inspectors will be using would serve as an excellent chokepoint to gun down the undesirables as they rush into this vessel. We could use their vehicle to escape and leave all these useless meatbags behind.”

Taylor glared at him, then looked at the Trandoshan and the Falleen behind him. They were in one of the main corridors of the ship, one that bisected it from prow to stern and that branched off into the massive holds along the sides.

The ex-slaves looked nervous, an almost palpable scent of fear coming off of them as if they knew that they were about to be caged, or worse, again.

Taylor’s mind raced. She never meant to take responsibility for that many lives and still didn’t feel as though she deserved the burden being shoved onto her back. But she was responsible, and she had to do something about it.

The problem was finding something she could do that would keep the people in the Super Freighter safe.

“HK-47, could we fight off the Republic ship?”

“Suggestion: If we deactivate all security precautions aboard this vessel we could ram the enemy ship at such a velocity as to render it, and any planetary body directly behind it, unusable.”

Taylor glared. “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard from you.” She shook her head. “How much trouble would we be in if you killed the inspectors and tried to make a run for it?”

“Answer: Lots.”

She pinched her eyes closed. “And if we didn’t kill, but instead captured all of them?”

“Concern: Master, are you suggesting that we capture an entire ship’s complement of soldiers in order to make a point about assaulting any vessel you’re on? Conjecture: I suspect the Hutt forces will still attack us even with Republic hostages, though it might sow more chaos. Always a desirable outcome in a battle where you are heavily outgunned and outnumbered.”

“And what if we made a run for it?”

HK-47 shook his head from side to side. “Statement: From what I have gathered you, my master, are the main target of the Hutt’s ire. No matter where you run the Hutt forces will chase you down. Addition: This vehicle, as large and fuel efficient as it may be, it not fast enough to escape the Hutt’s attention.”

Taylor slowly crossed her arms, then looked down. It... wasn’t helpless. Not yet.

The Profits of Merchandising was still on a direct course for a section of space relatively busy with traffic. There were plenty of larger ships there, all on a course towards the same destination they were on. Apparently plotting a course took time and was easier if done from certain key locations.

Which meant that the battlefield wasn’t as random as she might have originally thought. “I have a few ideas,” she said. “But they’re going to be strange, and I’m going to need Sib Nark’s help, as well as any volunteers from the freedom fighters that know anything about piloting a ship.”

***

Time: Three minutes before the Denon-Ryloth Hyperspace incident.

The boarding ramp shuddered and hissed as the pressure between the two ships stabilized. He passed a hand over the front of the uniform, then stopped to scratch at a stain decorating the soft material.

It would probably leave in the wash. He could get some of his subordinates to do that now because he was the head honcho here, the captain, the Gungan in charge.

Straightening his back a little, he shifted from foot to foot and glared at the still-closed airlock door. “Yousa all know whatsa you be doings?” he asked.

“Yes sir, Captain N'koala,” his assistant said. She was a human, as were most of the crew aboard his ship, but there were plenty of aliens too. That had certainly helped him get to his current rank.

And now, thanks to that rank, he found himself in a position where opportunities abounded. At first he was leery and confused about the strange habits his crew had of taking little gifts in order to facilitate the traffic through the sector, but soon he came to see that it was all for the best.

After all, if a merchant wanted to gift him some fine grist mollusks for his services in keeping the Republic safe, then helping them along, or giving them a discount on their taxes was the least he could do.

Yes, he was going to be the best officer the Republic had ever seen, or at least the best Gungan captain to tax the stars. “Oh, mesa think wesa about to board,” he said as the airlock finished cycling and began to open.

This was just a routine stop. His assistant said that there were rumours that this ship held a whole lot of slaves, and that was just terrible. So he was going to inspect the ship like a hero of yore, and then hand over the vile slavers to the nice Hutt people who would take care of them. And then he would be gifted many credits and praise for his assistance.

Yes, he was the best.

He stopped scratching at the stain on his jacket and looked down a long corridor with off-white walls, a lone trandoshan with chromed armour over his chest and legs and upper arms, with a sickly green uniform underneath. The trandoshan was looking at him and his assistant and his two guards with narrowed eyes. “Welcome aboard the Profits of Merchandising,” the Trandoshan said. “I am Skarsk Nek, this ship’s chief of security.”

“Mesa Teers N'koala,” Teers said as he stumbled forwards, one hand rising to shake. “And wesa the Intersector Revenue Services, da mostest important service of the Republic.” He nodded along at his own words as his guards trooped in, blaster rifles held low, but ready to come up in case of trouble.

“I’m sure,” Skarsk Nek hissed. “Why are you here?”

“Wesa just inspecting disa ships for any illegal con-tra-band and for suchlike things.”

Skarsk Nek nodded. “And our ship was the one that was chosen out of all the ships in this sector?”

“Yesa. Wesa received a report dat yousa bongo was carryin' sum suspicious cargo. Yousa wouldn't besa tryin' ta hide sumptin from da Republic, would yousa?” He leaned forwards, ears flopping on both sides of his head.

The Trandoshan snorted. “Not at all. Follow me, then,” he said.

Teers clapped and followed after the Trandoshan, his guards and assistant right on his heels. As soon as they discovered something suspicious, he would be able to call the ship and they would lock this vessel in place with their tractor beams and ion cannons. That was, if they didn’t listen and shut off their engines on their own.

He strutted around the corner, then stopped.

Standing behind raised crates and large boxes were two dozen Falleen and a mixed bag of other aliens, most of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder with skeletal battle droids. “Oh, dat's rilly notsa hot.”

In a move so swift he couldn’t even follow it, the Trandoshan spun around on the ball of one foot, tore out a blaster pistol from around his hip, and snapped off five shots into his guards and assistant.

They all flopped to the ground while the Trandoshan pointed the warm barrels of his blasters right at Teer’s head. “We’re bringing you with us.”

"You're makin' a boopjak hair,” he said as he slowly raised his arms.

The Falleen and others rushed forwards and started dragging his guards away while taking off all their gear. He was going to protest but Skarsk poked his ribs. “My blaster was set on stun,” he said. “We didn’t kill any Republic soldiers, we took out some pirates disguised as Republic officers. At least, that’ll be our story.”

“Yousa're goen to besa in doo-doo per doen disa,” he said. “Da republic isn't goen to take disa”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. But we’ll be going out with a fight, and that counts for a lot.”

***
A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys! Also, shout-out to CrazySith and Daimahou who helped with the SPaG in this chapter!

 

Chapter Sixteen

Time: Twelve minutes after the start of the Denon-Ryloth Hyperspace incident.

“What kind of ship is this?” Taylor asked as she walked down the middle of a white-walled corridor. The sides were covered in panels that looked to be made of some hard plastic and her booted steps rang over a rough, grated floor.

It felt as if the entire ship was designed to be as clean as possible, hiding all the wires and pipes and mechanical bits behind removable walls. There were rooms that accessed what looked like engines and other systems that looked important but that she couldn’t make heads or tails of with her limited bug vision.

She didn’t know much about spaceships. Not nearly enough to judge one, but the layout of the Republic ship suggested that it was made for tight skirmishes in the corridors and quick and easy access to all the important components, presumably to keep it running if it was attacked.

It was, unlike Sib Nark’s Profits of Merchandising, a warship, albeit a small one.

Maybe that was why she wasn't surprised when her range slid over a group of armed humans and aliens hidden around the next intersection. She sighed and had them move to escort her. More firepower wouldn’t go amiss, especially if things went horribly wrong.

“Where’s the command area on this thing?” she asked.

HK-47, whose footfalls on the grated floor were exactly as loud as one would expect from a robot, was quick to respond. “Conjecture: Judging by the layout seen so far, the scans made of the ship from the Profits of Merchandising, and the data downloaded from the extranet, the bridge of this vessel is at the very front.”

“And how long will it take to get everyone into position?” she asked.

Two corridors down she used some bugs to warn her freedom fighters of a group of Republic soldiers moving to intercept them, then used another batch of bugs to choke the soldiers and poke their eyes. They went down in a blaze of ion fire.

“Comment: With the quality of the help you have? A decade would be insufficient. But they will reach their assigned positions in a few minutes.”

“Right,” she said as she moved on ahead. Behind her trailed a dozen ex-slaves, all of them apparently capable bridge crew, and twice that number of battle droids that could serve as the same, all of them surrounding a group of unarmed and unhappy Republic pirates. They just had to get to the bridge and she could move on to the next part of her plan.

They turned down another corridor and arrived at a thick door surrounded by red lights. “Announcement: We have arrived.”

“You’d make a great GPS,” Taylor deadpanned. She gestured at the door. “Can you open it up?”

“Negation: I cannot open this blast door. There is a biometric lock on the panel next to it, however.”

Taylor noticed the blocky panel and nodded. “Tell two of the battle droids to bring my Gungan friend over, then get ready to take out any guests on the other side of the door.” She moved to the side while spreading out her collection of guards, soldiers and personnel like a wall of blaster-bolt absorbent bodies.

The Gungan blubbered as he was pushed forward, but quieted as soon as he was within her range and walked with none of his liquid languidness over to the panel to press his hand on it.

HK-47 brought his oversized blaster rifle up. “Announcement: Piracy protocols loaded and ready, master.”

***

Time: Twenty-Three minutes after the start of the Denon-Ryloth Hyperspace incident.

His ship completed the jump from hyperspace with a rattle, then settled into a smooth flight through the empty void.

Narrowing his eyes, the captain looked over his bridge, taking note of the posture of his crew as they pored over their consoles. “Any surprises?” he asked.

His first mate shook his head. “No, captain, nothing but empty space and a whole lot of ships in the long range scanners.”

“Good,” he said. That was as it should be. “The others?”

“The Gut-Ripper, Raider and Stinky are already here, Captain Triras, sir” his scanner operator said from her seat. “Annnd the Thick Stick just showed up, late as usual. Putting it up on the main command display.”

He grunted an affirmative and pressed a few keys on the arm of his command seat. A holographic display of local space appeared, a bubble of flat rings with distance markers all centred on the Beskar Mace. The other ships, three escort frigates and a converted freighter, were arrayed in a loose formation around her. She was the only Mon Calamari cruiser in this corner of space, as far as he was aware, and he was damned proud of her.

It had taken years of doing business that had left him feeling sick to his stomach to afford his MC40, but it was the greatest purchase he had ever made. Rubbing a hand gently across the armrest as if carressing the Mace, he refocused on the task at hand. This ship made him a name with the Hutts, someone worth paying attention to. Now he to had to prove his worth again.

“Where’s our target?” he demanded.

The woman on the scanner was quick to reply. “Right here, sir,” she said before bringing up another image.

The Super Freighter Profits of Merchandising was huge. Easily twice as big as his Mace. But it was an ugly thing. All angular and utilitarian, with nothing to please the eye about it. “Is that the Republic ship?” he asked, pointing to a different vessel that was just barely registering on the scans.

“Aye, sir, IFF reads as the Bureaucratic Enforcer. Intersector Revenue Services.”

He huffed. “Did they get the job done at least?” he asked. “Comms, get me a link with the fool in charge.”

“Aye, sir,” his comms officer said.

A hologram appeared in the centre of the bridge, glowing a bright and clear blue as the reception between the two ships was nearly crystal clear. Floating there, just slightly larger than life, was a Falleen male, his uniform frumpled and dirty and crooked. “Hey, hi, sorry, yeah, I’m with ya,” he said before giving them a brilliant smile and straightening his hat. “How can I help?”

Triras glared at the fool. “Put your captain on the comms. Now.”

“Ah, well,” the Falleen said. He looked off and away from the holoprojector, then came back with a sickening grin. “I can’t do that. Captain’s, uh, he’s playing, with some slaves. We, uh, took a few of the prettier ones. That’s okay, right?”

He felt his grip tighten on the armrest of his seat, then consciously loosened his grip. “I will tell my clients as much. As long as the main target is still aboard the ship we will have no issues. Tell me of the Profits’ condition.”

“The what?” the Falleen asked before the faintest light of intelligence sparked in his eye, then sputtered. “Oh, that ship. Yeah, it’s okay. We had to knock her out of space, you know? Tried to run for it. And, uh, sent those Vultures at us, but we got lucky with an ion blast. Not lucky I mean, we followed protocol. I think.”

Triras felt his jaw starting to ache. “Understood. We’ll begin boarding as soon as we reach them. Triras of the Beskar Mace, out.” With a swipe of his hand he ordered the comms shut and watched it wink out before speaking.

“Send a message to the Stinky. Have them tail that Republic ship,” he didn’t wait for the ‘aye sir’ before giving his next order. “Get me targeting on any debris near the Profits of Merchandising. Find those knocked out Vultures. They start moving and I want them burning in space. Order the Thick Stick to prepare for boarding maneuvers. We’ll go by the books here. And inform our own troopers to get ready for boarding as well. We’ll dock with her ourselves. I don’t trust the Thick Stick’s crew to do anything right. And make sure the others give us some room to maneuver and watch our damned backs. We’ll be sitting mynocks for a while.”

A chorus of ayes greeted him.

***

Time: Thirty-Seven minutes after the start of the Denon-Ryloth Hyperspace incident.

Taylor watched with mounting anticipation as the five ships approached. She could see them out of the Enforcer’s bridge window, but they were small and distant specks, only the brass hull of the Belkar Mace sticking out from the void of space as it moved to approach the Profits.

She hoped that things went to plan, but knew better than to expect complete success. All of the best fighters were with her now, and the Profits had an entire ship’s worth of Republic soldiers locked in one of its holds. At least those left behind were armed and had a few hundred droids for support.

Not as much as she would have liked. Not by half.

One of the ships, the Stinky she thought, was moving closer to them. It was little more than a tin can affixed to a box with engines strapped on the back, but HK-47 said that for all of its ugliness and smaller size, it was just as armed as her own new ship.

The two other escorts, both now circling a distance away, were no better.

Outnumbered and outgunned. But they had one key advantage. Surprise.

She hoped it would be enough.

“HK,” she called out. The delay between order, translation and action was going to be a problem, she knew, but it wasn’t one she could do anything about on such a short amount of time. “Get us moving towards that line of freighters.” She turned and pointed to the holographic display in the room’s centre. There were plenty of ships in the area, though they were dispersed. Mostly. One group was fairly tightly knit. “Tell Xarly to send the distress signals. Ask for civilian assistance on behalf of the Republic. Get those fighters back online and tell the Republic fighters to come back, double time.”

“Statement: I shall relay your orders, Master.”

“HK-47,” she said before he could start translating. “Tell everyone that I wish them good luck. And to open fire whenever they can.”

“Comment: With pleasure!”

***

A huge thank-you to my friends and patrons who allow me the time to write this kind of story and who are always there to help bounce ideas and poke fun at my shoddier work. I love you guys! Also, shout-out to CrazySith and Daimahou who helped with the SPaG in this chapter!

Story no longer posted on Sufficient Velocity for being too racist. It’s being reposted on QQ and AO3 instead.

For reference, I thought it might be neat to link the Wookiepedia pages I used as a reference for each ship, even though they were only just introduced this chapter.


Taylor and friends:
Trade Federation Super Freighter ‘Profits of Merchandising’ https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Trade_Federation_Superfreighter
The Republic IRS ship ‘Bureaucratic Enforcer’ https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/CR70_corvette/Legends

Hutts:
Troop/Slave Transport ‘Thick Brick’ https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/CSS-1_Corellian_Star_Shuttle/Legends
Escort 1 ‘Gut-Ripper’ https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pelta-class_frigate/Legends
Escort 2 ‘Raider’ https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Consular-class_space_cruiser
Escort 3 ‘Stinky’ https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/DP20_frigate
Main Ship ‘The Beskar Mace’ https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/MC40a_light_cruiser