Chapter Seventeen

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

Skarsk felt the pirate ship docking with the Profits of Merchandising. It was just a small shiver running through the floor before the inertial dampeners came online and compensated for the motion. It was enough. “Are you all ready?” he hissed over his shoulder.

The slaves behind him were poorly clothed, underfed, tired from days or years spent on the wastelands of Tatooine and armed with blasters that had been scavenged from Hutt slavers. They were as ragtag a bunch as he had ever seen. And yet Darth Khepri still expected him to hold back an entire force of slavers with them. There was a weak chorus of ‘yes,’ and ‘aye.’

There were battle droids too, twice as many as there were slaves and better equipped. He gave them about as much respect as they deserved, which was none. “You know who your targets are?” he asked them.

“Roger roger.”

He spat on the steel grated floor and turned back around to face the direction the enemy would come from. The droids were all off to the left and right of the group, leaving the middle area open and clear. The idea was to draw fire away from the squishier slaves.

At least the woman and her droid had given him a few tricks.

They were stationed behind a row of containers welded to the ground, past a three way intersection through which the pirates would have to pass. The other way was blocked by a closed blast door while the door into the corridor they were in was wide open. He had a controller for the door stuck to his belt.

The Profits shivered again and he felt his ears pop. Clawed hands gripped his blaster rifle tighter. Soon.

The corridor the slavers and pirates would enter had crates and boxes moved into it. Cover for the enemy to use. An idea that felt horribly wrong to him, but perhaps made sense. All those boxes and crates were thin plasteel and empty besides. A lucky blaster bolt would burn right through and hit whomever hid behind it. A second would vaporize the box.

He growled as he heard distant boots clomping closer and shouted commands. Maybe if they were on land they could have rigged explosives, or used heavier ordonance, but that was suicide in a spacecraft.

He snapped back to attention as the first slaver appeared at the far end of the corridor, pointed their way, then snapped a shot at them. It hit the ceiling halfway.

At least, he reasoned as he ducked, both sides would be awful shots. “Keep your heads down, fools!” he barked. Then, in a lower voice, added, “Let the bastards come closer.”

All the slaves dropped to the ground, but the battledroids were too dumb to react. One of them ate a blaster bolt in the head and clattered to the ground.

“Open fire!” he ordered.

Their call of “Roger roger,” was drowned out by the whine of blasters.

Soon, the air was filled with blue and red bolts going back and forth, most missing, but a few taking out or glancing off their droids.

“Our turn,” he said. “On three. One, two... three.” He stood up with the rest and took in the scene.

There were a lot more than he had expected. At least forty, if not fifty pirates in sight, too cocky to use the cover provided as they took potshots at the droids. He picked out one slaver that looked more important than the rest and fried his head off with a well placed trio of shots before dropping to one knee. He felt a wash of heat over his head as a bolt zipped by.

Waiting a few seconds, he poked his head out. More slavers were coming at the end of the corridor.

The firefight intensified and he could feel the metal of his cover warming up. “Now,” he said.

With a press of the button at his hip, the foot-thick blast doors just a pace away from their barricade began to close.

The return fire intensified as the doors shut, but there was nothing the pirates could do. They clanged shut with a boom.

A particularly stupid battledroid mistimed its fire, hit the wall, and burst apart when its bolt ricochetted into its head.

“Idiots,” he grumbled even as the stuttacco rap-tap-tap of blasters on the other side sounded out.

He grinned and brought up his door controls. This had been the murderous droid’s idea. Dishonourable, but effective.

With a press of a button, another blast door opened. This one in the corridor still filled with pirates. A blast door that lead to a junction to connect to a cargo container. One that was empty.

The whoosh of evacuating pressure was like music.

“Come, there is another ship trying to board us. We will kill them too,” he said before tossing the door controls to one of the droids. “In two minutes, close the exterior blast door, then seal this room before entering that corridor. If the Hutt ship is still connected, board them.”

“Roger roger.”

This was going to be fun, he thought as he began to race across the ship.

***

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

Trias had a feeling in the pit of his stomach that things were about to go horribly wrong. Just a niggling little seed of doubt, but one that he had learned to listen to over the course of his long career as a bounty hunter and pirate captain. “Any reports from the Thick Stick?” he asked.

The Beskar Mace had just completed its docking maneuvers, connecting it with one of the many entrance hatches along the Profits of Merchandising. It wasn’t quite a sleeping mynock, but it was damned close to one. The Raider was hovering close by in case things went wrong, the Stinky was watching over the Republic ship and the Gut-Ripper was farther afield, slowly coming around.

The only other ship in the fleet he had taken command of, the Thick Stick, was docked on the other side of the Profits and unloading slavers into the cargo ship. Once it was secured from within with slavers and pirates from the Stick and the Mace, they would use the hauler to drag their bounty back to Tatooine.

It was a simple enough plan, and he expected it to go horribly wrong at any moment.

“Loss of atmosphere on the cargo ship!” one of his officers screamed across the bridge. “No, wait... just one section. Shit, we’ve got crew from the Stick jettisoned.”

He sat straighter in his seat. “Was it accidental or are the slaves fighting back?” he asked.

“Fighting sir. We had a report from on the Profit about a barricade and some battle droids,” the same officer said.

“Tell our own men to be careful. They’re prepared for us. Cornered as they are they’ll fight like enraged rancor.” He glared at the display. Nothing was going on beyond that, except...

“Sir, those vulture droids are coming online!”

“Captain!” another call. “The Profits is bringing up partial shields. It’s laser canons are aiming at out hull.”

“Report from the Stinky sir, the Republic ship is warming up its engines and coming around it’s... sir, the Republic ship is opening fire!”

“Captain, those Republic fighters near the waypoint are turning our way!”

Trias rammed a fist into his armrest and started thinking as quickly as he could. A dozen vulture droids was nothing to scoff at, but it was too little to be a real threat to his ship. The other ships in his fleet though might have difficulty with those numbers. They would have to take care of themselves for now.

The Republic fighters were little more than six Cloakshapes. Nothing to be worried about just yet. And they had a ways to travel.

No, his main focus had the be the ship his own was docked to, and the Republic CR70. Neither were well armed, but they were bigger threats all the same.

“Get targeting on that Republic ship. Contact the Raider and Gut-Ripper, tell them to chase that damned ship down. Recall the Stinky, it’s too far from the rest of the fleet. Cancel our boarding action. I don’t need that extra distraction.”

He got a few ayes as his orders were relayed. He was almost content to sit back when he felt a slight tremor run across his ship.

“Sir, the Profit’s laser canons are hitting our hull,” his first mate said, voice too damned placid for someone announcing that they were being hit. “The emplacement is rather awkward, we can’t hit it with any turbolasers. Any missile we use would impact us too. Should we aim the point defence guns at it?”

“Might as well,” he grumbled. One smaller anti-pirate laser cannon emplacement wasn’t going to do much against the shields on his Mace. “Tell the Thick Stick to get its shit together and get some men in that abomination. Shut that emplacement down, dammit.”

“Aye sir,” his First Mate said. “Sir, the Stinky is reporting difficulties.”

He scoffed. “Put it on the screen.”

The Stinky was an old DP20. Ugly as all sin, but armed to the gills and with shields well above its class. It was a ship built from the ground up to be a warship, not a retrofitted freighter or transport or a cushy little frigate like the Republic’s CR70.

The holo switched to a view of the Stinky moving at a decent clip parallel to the Republic ship, blasts of laser fire were being exchanged from the two vessels and yet...

“Ion cannons,” he said, recognizing the blue tint of the shots coming from the Republic ship.

In hindsight it made perfect sense. The Republic ship was a policing vessel. It wasn’t made to stand up to sustained fire or destroy anything, it was made to incapacitate and hold enemy vessels. Of course it would have a full suite of ion weaponry instead of proper lasers.

For every uncannily aimed shot the DP20 took, the Republic ship took two, the weight of fire from the Stinky far surpassing what the CR70 could put out, but even as he watched, arcs of electric fire ran across the DP20’s shields and its cannons shorted out, going quiet one by one.

When two of its four engines sputtered to a halt and its shields winked out, he knew it was over. The Republic frigate had taken a beating but its shields still held and it was circling around to finish the job.

He still held the advantage, still had more ships and more firepower, but suddenly things weren’t looking so good.

“Sir, there was an explosion near our boarding ramps. We’re... we’re being boarded!”

Trais glowered at the holo. Clearly he had not charged enough for this expedition.

***