《Flipping the Galaxy》Chapter 13
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While Renato lost himself in training many times, enough to lose track of time and need to be reminded, he was currently pretty sure that he didn't go that deep into trance today. He knew that they were nowhere near the end of their journey, and the fact that they didn't plan any stopovers until they reached Mustafar meant that there were three probable scenarios that could cause the ship to come out of hyperspace early.
Either there was a major change in hyperplanes and the route they planned had a previously unaccounted gravity well, which, while possible, was unlikely because charts don't change too much in the galaxy and because the charts, he had, had been combined from R3-Q9 and the utility droid from the temple and everything mostly checked out. The second possibility was that it was some kind of planetary defence mechanism that caused their ship to pull out, or the last possibility, which was the most probable cause, in Renato's opinion, was that pirates targeted them.
Just as he finished this thought, as if confirming his thoughts orbo came rolling down high speed through the ship into his room.
"Beep, bwoop, bewoop, fip, fwoo" (A pirate ship pulled us out of hyperspace. Paddy is asking for instructions)
And Orbo confirmed that it was indeed a pirate attack on the ship and that he came to inform him on the orders of Paddy.
"Well, tell Paddy to give me some time while I suit up"
"Beep, bop," said Orbo in confirmation as he rolled away at high speed.
While he would have liked to say that he would suit up in a new spartan suit specifically designed for him, he could not. The only "suit" was the fake ODST armour he had made for his visit to Nar Shadaa.
While it was better than wearing normal clothes, he had made the armour using the metal alloy vault door of the lightsaber tomb and the master's vault. He wasn't ashamed to say it but almost all of his materials, his house on Tython, everything was made by reusing materials from breaking down the Jedi temple.
During his life at Tython, he had stripped and reused all that was possible from the Jedi Temple, so much so that there weren't any more ruins of the Jedi temple except the tunnels that led to the lightsaber tomb and master's vault and now that he was moving to another planet, all things that would take too much effort to recreate had been stripped and loaded onto the ship.
He put on his now-only "suit" and then proceeded to take the only three weapons he had on the ship, that being, two BA5 rifles that were just the MA5 rifle redesigned, combined with blaster technology and one BK50 sidearm that was similarly a combination of MK50 and blaster technology.
These three guns were made by cannibalising all his other blasters. While he could use the blasters themselves just fine, the comfort offered by using a gun whose design you know inside and out was too great, and the fact that they looked and felt much more comfortable than their originals were just bonus points.
Now that he was all geared up, he moved to the deck to the cockpit to get information on the situation. As he walked in Renato asked with his now synthetic voice that came from the helmet.
"Status report"
"The enemy is a pirate group. The enemy ships have been identified as a corona-class armed frigate which is accompanied by 5 heavily combat modified Taylander shuttles. They have attempted to shut down the ship with Ion weapons but failed because of the ship's defences. Seeing that they have failed, they have launched their shuttle and are trying to damage our ship enough so that we cannot hyperjump safely.
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I have already started evasive manoeuvres on both ships. Do you want me to attack or escape captain?"
Renato quickly reached out to the force to look into the ship to identify the number of people on the ship. According to his force senses, there were 56 members on the frigate ship and two people for each of the shuttles. Based on the situation he felt that he could take them on with minimal damage because he had the help of Paddy for manning the guns. But he was leaning towards escaping.
Because even though he showed much bravado, he was still a little bit soft-hearted and didn't like taking lives. Even on Nar Shadaa, when he killed those thugs who attacked him, it all happened in the heat of the moment and all his training made him act on a reflex against a perceived threat.
"Let's es-" Renato stopped mid-sentence because he was suddenly bombarded with a force vision.
/*Vision*/
"Hey you fucking nerfherders, here, take this togruta bitch we got from the new haul and stop pestering about staying in space too long, this one is already a mother so it probably won't have much resale value. But remember if you guys break her as easy as the last twi'lek I will stop taking the gals for you. I will run out of money if you guys break them any more often. Especially you, Kres! You are the most repeat person who kills valuable merchandise. Just because you are the best warrior doesn't mean that you can waste money!"
"Yeah! Yeah! Don't worry boss, we will take good "care" of the woman"
"Stop! Don't come close to me and mommy! Or I will shoot you!" said a male togruta child around 7 years old who had a blaster pistol that he snuck from one of the distracted pirates.
"Don't do it! Zaza!" cried the Togruta female.
"Don't worry Meht, we can esc-"
Before the child could complete however he was blasted back, and he hit the wall and slid down dead.
"Nooooo! My tungu! Not my tungu!" From there her voice turned into screams as pain and despair radiated off of her as her child had been taken from her forever in front of her. He could see what had changed before she had hope that even if they were sold into slavery, that one day maybe she would reunite with him.
But all that crashed the moment she saw her son dead.
"Kres! What did I just tell you! No, damaging the merchandise! The boy could have net us at least more than 200 peggats! Now I am going to take that money off of your share! And as punishment, you won't get to use the woman for at least a month!"
"Oh! Come on boss! That guy was going to shoot! If I wait for a month, she will be all worn out!"
"Then you should have="
All their discussion stops when they heard the distinct sound of a blaster going off. Immediately they were on alert looking towards the sound only to see that the mother togruta had taken the blaster from her son's hand and shot herself.
/*Vision ends*/
As soon as Renato came out of the vision, the force suddenly became so thick around him that if there were any other organics in the ship with him, they would have felt the danger just by being near him. As it is, even the droids could feel something was wrong with Renato.
"Paddy, I want you to go into full attack mode! No survivors! And prepare for docking the ship."
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"Are you sure Renato? This isn't like you."
"Everything will be explained when I come back, Paddy"
"Okay then, commencing attack"
It took Paddy only 10 seconds combined to take all the shuttles down and shoot the frigate at a vulnerable enough area to make it unable to hyperjump safely. From there she manoeuvred the ship to dock with the enemy ship. Renato could feel through the force that 13 inhabitants of the ship were gathered together at the docking port, probably to ambush him as he entered the ship.
Scoffing at their foolishness, but admiring their cleverness because the docking port was a very narrow corridor. Them trying to ambush him in the corridor meant that with sufficient firepower and their superior numbers they would have overpowered any normal group of people.
However, they weren't dealing with any normal person though seeing that he would be in a disadvantaged position in a traditional gunfight Renato decided to switch to lightsaber combat instead.
From the hip, he took out a double-bladed lightsaber and turned it on to make two beams of yellow appear from the lightsaber. This particular lightsaber was from a dead Mon calamari Jedi knight that Qiuying guarded in the lightsaber tomb and was one of the few lightsabres that he felt comfortable using.
He stood at the entrance of the corridor as the air seal was quietly released and the door opened to a dark corridor. It was pretty smart of them to limit his visibility when with their superior numbers they would just have to fire blindly when they confirmed that someone was in the corridor.
However, whatever they were expecting didn't matter to Renato because of the experimental nature of his birth he could see in the dark as well as he saw in the light, As the dim yellow light of the lightsaber showed his visage, he walked onto the enemy ship drawing deeply from the dark side as he let out a wave of force push that pushed everyone waiting to ambush into their nearest wall.
"What the kriff is a Jedi doing in the outer rim! Why the kriff are you attacking us? Aren't you sons of a bantha supposed to be pacifists?"
Renato didn't respond to the pirate speaking because his vision was currently stuck on a golden medallion on the neck of the pirate speaking. It was the medallion of Ai which was a zodiac sign that symbolised wisdom, charisma and virility in Togrutan culture. He came across it once during his studies with Paddy.
But a simple medallion would have never frozen Renato, no, it was what that medallion signified in the current scenario that made Renato draw upon a large amount of light and dark force energies.
Darkside because of the anger he was having, because he had seen that medallion before, it was the medallion the boy from his vision wore. The medallion being here meant that he was too late and the vision he saw happened in the past. His hopes that he could have saved a family from the future and prevented a tragedy were dashed. He now had a passion for getting justice for them and he also knew that without this passion for justice he had now, he would never have a goal to live for.
Lightside because he knew, that there was no light without darkness and that everywhere he went in this galaxy, there would always be plenty of darkness to face, and if he gave in to his dark emotions completely and lose control of himself, he would become the very darkness he swore to destroy. So, he reminded himself that without serenity, there would be no growth.
However, for now, he needed to take out the trash for the future of the galaxy. He stabbed his lightsaber through the pirate in front of him.
"Why? Aren't you Jedi peacekeepers?" he said his final words as he lost the light of his eyes.
"Your greed has twisted you into what you are now, may death and joining the force offer you the peace that your greed has promised you. Requiescat in pace"
By this time, however, the remaining pirates have gotten rid of their stupor because of being thrown around and they saw Renato with his lightsaber through the Pirate's body.
"Kriff! The fucking son of a bantha killed Kres! Kill him!"
Immediately all the pirates started firing at Renato who was using soresu to deflect and or reflect all the blaster bolts coming at him. It was 20 secs later that the blaster bolts stopped, obviously because they had to reload.
Within this firefight, Renato killed 3 more pirates by reflecting their blaster bolts back to them. Now that the firing stopped Renato immediately used his superior speed to reach the largest cluster of 5 pirates and swung his lightsaber cleanly bisecting the five from the waist down.
He then proceeded to jump towards the next two pirates and cut them both down diagonally. The last two seeing that they had no choice started running when he had been attacking. But they were still in sight and Renato quickly swapped out his lightsabre for his rifle and proceeded to shoot them down.
From there Renato systematically went through the rest ship and massacred the remaining members of the ship.
"Bantha Shit! You kriffing stupa! Do you know who we work for? I am Luffen and I work for the Hutts under Gunvab Shungac!" said the last pirate, who was also the captain as he was stopped from escaping the ship with an escape pod.
"I don't care," said Renato as he stabbed his lightsaber through the pirate's body.
"Sithspit! I should have fucked the twi'lek schuta before the stakeout."
"Your uncontrolled desires have led to this path; may you find peace with the force. Requiescat in pace"
Renato then proceeded to take control of the ship before returning back to his YT-1300 Stallion.
As he entered the cockpit, he inserted a memory stick into the console.
"Hey, Paddy this is the control code of the ship and I have dropped all of its firewalls, you can take control over it and have it cleaned up a bit, I need to go into meditation for a while. I will explain what happened when I come out of my meditation."
Renato went into his room locked the door, cleaned himself up and started meditating on his actions and emotions to reflect on himself and rebalance himself in the force. Because without balance, there is no peace.
/1 hour later/
Renato came out of the room having reflected on his actions and regained his balance. As he came to the cockpit.
"Young master. I have finished taking account of everything obtained. We have gotten over 1800 peggats, 68 blasters, the bank account of the pirate captain, two completely unharmed Taylander shuttles, several datapads, a slave chip implanting gun, the most of the ship's armaments, food stocks and like are fully stocked except for the two missiles they tried to fire on us, I have already cleaned up the battlefield with the help of tractor beam.
I have also parked our ships inside the ship and have the previous captain's room cleaned up and prepared for your use. I have taken control of all the droids on the ship, which are 3 R2 droids and one R1 droid, and five maintenance droids. I had them all looked up by the huragoks and before you ask, I have given the Huragoks standing instructions to change the loyalty subroutines of anything they repair to make you the highest.
I have also asked them to do their magic on the ship and according to them it will take at least 24 hours to completely go over the ship. I have also put in a request to them to make it so that I can control the ship."
"Wow, I wonder if this is what love feels like, to have someone understand you so completely that they can guess what's on your mind. But you didn't mention, what you did with the bodies?"
"Ah! That, I didn't mention it because I feel that you will be uncomfortable with my solution."
"Oh? Really? What did you do? Tell me I don't think I would mind."
"Ah, well I used the construction droid to turn their bodies into fertilizer."
"Uh? Fertilisers, well at least they will be helping the environment. Wait a minute, I can't believe I didn't tell you this, I hope it's not too late, but one of the pirates had a medallion of Ai. Do you have it, or has it already been recycled?"
" Oh! I have the medallion separated. I went through the security footage of the ship and noticed you paying special attention to it. So, I figured I would keep it in quarantine until you confirmed if you didn't need it to recycle."
"Thanks, Paddy you are the best. Well, just like you understand me, I too know that the reason you explained everything first so that you wanted to hear my reasons without any distractions.
So what happened was that when I was about to give the order to escape...."
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