《Star Wars: Rise of the Battlemage》


 Chapter 1

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    It''s difficult to say when it started being overwhelming. When work turned into being overworked, hanging out with friends became a social obligation. The cost of living got higher and higher, and it never felt like anything ever went anywhere.


    It wasn''t all bad. But it was hard to enjoy the good when the bad weighed so much. Covid turned the word on its head and nearly put my brother in the ground. Every day is a new problem, a new reason to be scared and stressed. More debt, less money, not enough work, too much work. Sacrificing more and more just to stay afloat. Just to keep from falling under the growing weight of responsibility. It wasn''t all bad.


    But it took a lot of work to focus on the good.


    An average day started. Early in the morning, before most people would even consider waking up. The morning commute was longer than ever after moving, and I couldn''t risk being late for work. My morning preparations were quick, a practiced ritual that had been trimmed down as short as possible. A pat down to make sure I had everything, and I was out of the apartment and on my way to the parking garage, two steps at a time.


    The car started on the second try so I pulled out of my parking spot feeling like it was going to be a good day. I circled down the parking structure, checking both ways before pulling out into the street. I pull down the road, stopping at the first red light.


    And suddenly, there was a soul-shaking impact. A flash of pain. A deep, draining ache. A creeping cold burning out into a numbness that slowly erased my connection to consciousness. I could feel my last moments of life as the tether between my mind and my body snapped, and before my brain could even work out what was happening, it was over.


    I felt the life leaving me, the weight of it being pulled away from my body. When that was gone, the weight pulled away from my mind. It was like being freed from a thick layer of mud that had weighed me down for as long as I could remember.


    For a while after that, there was nothing. Truly nothing. The pressure I had felt for the past twenty years of my life was gone. Obligations to family, friends, work, society, and myself fell to nothing.


    The fact that I couldn''t quite decide if dying was worth being finally free really tells how just how much of a relief it actually was.


    I wasn''t happy to be dead. There had been a lot I was looking forward to. I''d miss my niece''s first birthday, miss my brother''s wedding. I desperately hoped that one of my siblings would take in my cat. He would never make it on the streets. There were seasons of shows that weren''t finished and books I had been meaning to read. But even through all that¡­


    I was free. At peace. There was nothing left to worry about. Nothing tying me down or weighing on my mind.


    Time passed. And continued to pass, though I didn''t have anything to mark it by. Somewhere between a few seconds and decades went by before a familiar weight returned, and I opened my eyes.


    I was standing in a dark space, dark enough that had I been looking at the far reaches, I might not have noticed I had opened my eyes at all. Fortunately, such a spot did not immediately appear, as the space around me was filled with galaxies, swaths of fantastically colored nebulae, and planetoids of every shape and size, some trailing asteroids, others surrounded by rings. Sparks of energy danced around them, shifting colors and shooting across the space between everything.


    As I watched the spectacle around me, I realized what the returning familiar weight was. It was my body, reformed around me. I could feel the life in my body, feel my connection reforming and strengthening. I was alive. The feeling of life itself was familiar, the weight of it laying on me like a comfortable blanket on a night with a chill. It took me a few seconds to remember how to move and open my mouth to speak.


    "What is¡­ what is going on?" I asked, turning in a circle, scanning all around me.


    "<u>Deacon Roy</u></a>. You have been chosen!"


    A voice resonated through the space, louder than it needed to be, loud enough to hurt my new ears. It was coming from everywhere at once, vibrating my bones.


    "Your life has been saved, so you may embark on a grand adventure!"


    "What kind of adventure?" I asked, frowning slightly. "I''m not interested in being the butt of some prophecy."


    "There is no prophecy. Your fate is your own." The voice responded after a long pause. "Your adventure is what you make of it."


    "No strings attached?" I asked, still looking around, trying to find the source of the voice, eventually settling for the closest large planetoid.


    "Correct."


    "Alright, I''m tentatively interested."


    The voice was silent for a long time, as if unsure how to handle my response.


    "Your destination has been chosen from your own preferences, and you will be bestowed the powers common to heroes of that universe, so you may properly participate in the world at a scale fit for adventure."


    "Where am I going?" I asked, frowning now. "Because I''m not interested in going to some grimdark horror universe. If I wake up in Worm, I''m just going to chew a bullet."


    "What?" The voice asked, the first emotion, confusion, coming through. "We have given you back your life and offer you an adventure. You would throw that away?"


    "To avoid getting tied up with grimdark bullshit? Abso-fucking-lutely," I said confidently, though internally, I was surprised at just how serious I was. "Being dead gave me the first taste of real freedom and peace I''ve had since I was a toddler. Sure, not wanting to disappoint my parents and being worried about what my friends thought of me wasn''t exactly torture, but that was just the start. I was at peace for the first time in twenty-odd years. I''m not interested in trading that in for angst, suffering, and whatever fucked up shit that goes on in those kinds of places."


    This time the silence was somehow heavier, as if more of¡­ whatever I was talking to, were now listening.


    "We do not usually share the location." They responded.


    "That sounds like you''re willing to, you just haven''t before."


    "You¡­ are being sent to a Star Wars variant universe, a combination of what you know as Legends and Cannon," The voice answered after another silence. "You will be given significant control over the Force-"


    "No thank you!" I said, cutting off the voice.


    I was having a surprising amount of fun. I knew, logically, that I wouldn''t usually be this abrupt or rude in this kind of situation. In fact, I was pretty sure if this was happening to me without having died first, I would be having a gibbering existential crisis. That is if I didn''t slip into a coma from pure fear. But I DIED. What did I have to worry about? There wasn''t anyone I needed to impress, anyone I needed to keep safe, answer to, or anything. I didn''t even have any debt anymore. I could worry about who I left behind, but my family was close. They would be okay.


    "The location is fine, that''s not the problem. Star Wars is interesting, with lots of potential," I continued, crossing my arms like I was unimpressed. "But I don''t want anything to do with the Force."


    "Why?" The voice asked, the barest hints of curiosity leaking into its voice. "The Force is a potent ability. We have bestowed it before."


    "You have? And how did that turn out?" I asked. "Let me guess, they did one of three things. A, they underestimated the dark side and indulged in small pleasures or passions, slowly falling before eventually turning into a raging psychopathic monsters that destroyed the very things they loved. B, they rose above their instincts, became beacons of light and goodness, and in the process, forgot how to be human, losing sight of the people who suffered for the greater good. Or C, they manage to straddle the line of Grey Jedi, but in the process had to focus their entire being on walking a line so thin that if they fell on it, it would slice them in two?"


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    The silence stretched on for a while. When it spread out past the previous record, I shrugged and continued.


    "The Force looks good on paper, but in practice? It is way too dangerous to use by normal people. I have no intention of becoming a pious, viceless beacon of good virtue, and I would prefer not to turn into a monster because of it. Sure, at its best, it''s a pretty potent psi ability, but anything lower than that, and it''s a cognitohazard waiting to brainwash you into a cookie-cutter light-side monk or a dark-side psycho. Since I assume you''re not sending me to the happy, fun times Star Wars universe¡­."


    The truth was, I had fond memories of playing Jedi with my brother, jumping around the living room, and swinging our toy lightsabers around. The Star Wars universe was one of the more awe-inspiring sci-fi universes, with a massive amount of lore to pull from. I would have probably taken it if they had made this offer to me as a kid or even as a young adult. But I was older and more cynical. The Force was the common vein running through most of the greatest villains in the Star Wars universe. Why would I want to be controlled by that?


    "We could¡­ send you with nothing?"


    "That seems like a waste. Could I have something else?" I asked. "I get the sense you do this a lot. You must have something to use as a backup. Maybe some magic? Preferably a style that won''t taint my soul, or enslave me to an eldritch deity."


    There was a long pause, the multiple presences I could feel turning away for a moment. It was odd and came through a sense I couldn''t identify, but it was definitely there. After five minutes, a large book poofed into existence just above my eye-line. I barely had time to catch it, turning it over in my hands. It was bound in thick blue leather with a silver leaf border. A symbol, also inlaid with silver, as big as my splayed hand, marked the cover. It was a circle, with lines leading to its center, like spokes on a bicycle tire. Within the circle, over the spokes, was a smaller circle with two spikes connected to the top. Overlaid all of that was a simplified eye, with two spikes coming from either side and a third pointing down.


    "The College of Winterhold? From Skyrim?" I asked, looking back up to the same planet as before. "Are you giving me Elder Scrolls magic?"


    "In a way, yes. There are infinite versions of Nirn throughout the multiverse. We are giving you one of the less potent, more limited versions. Still flexible, still powerful, but nowhere near the immense potency of the cannon lore." The voice explained, clearly building up steam. "The grimoire you hold in your hands is bound to you now, and you can summon it at will. It will teach you the basics of how to utilize this version of Magicka, limited to spells you may or may not be familiar with, and by your own skill. As you progress in skill, so will the spells available for you to learn. Bending and changing those spells and perhaps even making your own will be up to you."


    "And what about being stuck in a Star Wars universe?" I asked. "I may know that caf is basically coffee, but you''re sending me to a universe where the caf machine to make it is most likely more sophisticated than a Tesla."


    Once again, the weight was taken away before suddenly focusing back on me after only a few seconds. It was abrupt enough that I unconsciously took a step back.


    "In order to bestow knowledge, we must modify your mind. No current memories or emotions would be harmed, but we would be adding memories to your mind at a deep level. Would you consent to this?"


    "As long as you''re not changing anything?" I asked before shrugging. "Sure. I''d prefer the full package, though, something like all the knowledge that a decent mercenary would have."


    "No. We are not allowed to tip the scales so far," The voice responded, this time immediately. "We already push the boundaries with your new magical ability."


    "Fine. At least teach me how to do basic things. It''s going to be a really short adventure if I get killed trying to open a door," I pointed out. "I wouldn''t even be able to read the language!"


    "Very well."


    "And how to use a sword... and a bow!" I said before the entity talking to me could do anything. "You owe me for lying to me, and it''s not like you would be giving me super soldier skills!"


    "When did we lie?"


    "You said my fate is my own, but I''m going to Star Wars, a place steeped in a universe-spanning, potentially intelligent psychic field. No one''s fate in that universe is truly their own."


    "...Fine"


    I winced as a sharp headache wracked my brain the second after they spoke. Instinctively I dropped my grimoire to clutch my head, the pain digging deeper until it felt like a lump of hot iron rolling and expanding behind my eyes. It pulsed slowly and steadily with my heartbeat. When I finally opened my eyes, everything was blurry. It took a full minute of blinking and rubbing for my vision to finally clear. And I did not like what I saw.


    I was by myself, standing in a dark, dingy room that was barely big enough to lie in. In front of me was a door, though I couldn''t see any mechanism to activate it. A quick turn showed a seat in the corner behind me, though I quickly realized it wasn''t a seat but a basic, bare-bones toilet. The less said about how dirty it was, the better.


    The fact that I had a pair of high-tech manacles around my wrists confirmed it. I was in some sort of prison cell.


    "I think I might have pissed them off," I mumbled to myself, referring to the entity that had just dropped me here. "So much for being free¡­"


    I started examining the room for clues or a way to escape, stopping at one point to chuckle. I was imprisoned and shackled, like almost all heroes from the Elder Scrolls series. When I was done chuckling, I spent a few minutes contemplating how much dying might have affected me because while I was worried about being locked in a metal cell, I wasn''t nearly as concerned as I probably should have been.


    Eventually, I settled on accepting that it was unlikely that anyone could die and not change in some way before continuing to study the cell. When my in-depth search of the room turned up nothing, and a quick shoulder check on the metal doorway only resulted in a sore shoulder and a bruise, I gave up on immediately attempting to escape. Instead, I leaned against the wall furthest from the toilet and sank to the floor.


    The subtle vibration I had noticed while I was inspecting my room became all the more noticeable, with more of my surface area pressed against the ground. It was constant, a low vibration that some part of my brain, probably the most recent addition, immediately identified as the feeling of a ship in hyperspace. So not only was I a prisoner, I was a prisoner in space.


    I took a long deep breath, letting it out slowly. I had time to freak out later. Right now, I needed to focus.


    "Summon it at will¡­." I mumbled, closing my eyes and focusing on the thought of the blue and silver book, my grimoire.


    As much as I hated being stuck in a prison cell, it gave me something I needed. Until someone came to check on me, I had time. And I had every intention to use every second.

 Chapter 2

    I made it past the first hurdle in the first few minutes, willing my grimoire into my hands after a bit of trial and error. It was a strange sensation, like I was getting lighter, but not in a way that affected my actual weight. I opened the book, or as quickly as possible with my wrists connected with the binders, a word for the manacles that came to my mind fluidly but that I didn''t actually remember knowing.


    My own memory of Star Wars was spotty, at best, and a lot of the more minor details had long since faded. I had read plenty of the books while I was younger, from what was now called Legends, and I had seen all three trilogies, original, prequels, and sequels. But it had been ages since I read the books, and I didn''t have nearly enough time or energy to see all the side movies, HBO series, and cartoons, even though I had heard some of them were really good. I''d seen some, but my memory of those was even more spotty than the rest. So while I did know some things, there were a lot of holes in that knowledge.


    And that didn''t even get into the fact that the entity had called this a "variant universe," a combination of the books and the newer stuff, which would have typically had a lot of overlap. I idly wondered which origin story one of my favorite characters, Wedge Antilles, would have in this universe. I was more familiar with the version from the legends, with dead parents as his catalyst to become one of the greatest starfighter pilots in the galaxy, but I couldn''t actually wish that on someone.


    I took a deep breath to focus myself and opened the book, revealing thick, sturdy paper that looked crude and rough, like it was handmade. Covering that thick paper was simple, straightforward, printed English words. I spent some time reading and skimming the book, making notes on interesting things to read in more detail later.


    As far as I understood, this book was broken into six sections. First were the five magic schools available to the player in Skyrim: alteration, conjuration, destruction, illusion, and restoration. The final section was about enchanting, which was extremely interesting, but considering that the first page immediately mentioned that setting up an enchanting altar was "a precise art that required stable ground and proper materials," I skipped it for now.


    I also noticed that conjuration was missing any mention of the necromancy spells I expected there to be, nor was there anything about Deadra summoning. Restoration was also different, missing anything to do with repelling the undead. I wanted to investigate further, but I had more important things to do.


    I flipped back to the beginning of the grimoire, which started with a few pages about how to access your magic, something that needed to be done before you could even begin to practice magic.


    --------------?


    I would like to say that during the several hours I spent reading, I had mastered all of the novice spells and was simply waiting for my opportunity to strike. Unfortunately, it seemed like this would not be that type of adventure. Learning magic was not the simple process of reading the book and suddenly knowing exactly how to perform the spell, like the gamified magic of the games often pretended.


    Instead, learning to cast a spell, or rather, spells in general, required precise control over magicka, or as the rest of the fantasy genre called it, mana. According to the grimoire, this is why more people in Skyrim didn''t know magic. It seems not everyone could manipulate their mana well enough to work through even novice spells, and the ability to do it beyond novice spells was actually relatively rare. Luckily the entity seemed to have blessed me with some skill. As the book described, the process of learning to manipulate and control your mana for the first time usually took an intense two or three days of long meditation sessions, all to get in touch with my inner magic. I was able to work through the process in five or six hours. It was still impressive, at least by real-world standards, but I could see I wouldn''t become an Archmage overnight.


    The description of how to access and manipulate my mana was frustratingly vague in most parts, leading me to fill in the gaps as best I could. According to the book, the process of drawing mana from your aetherial core was one that was unique to each individual, using visualization, focusing techniques, and even chants to draw the power from within. I tried visualizing it in several different ways, eventually settling on the image of my core being molten metal, which I pulled and drew in long, still-molten strands.


    I spent so long visualizing it, my eyes closed and the grimoire in my lap, that at the end, I swore I could feel the heat in my arms, slowly being drawn, hammered, and pulled out to my palms. When I finally succeed, I open my eyes to find mana, a pure white cloud of energy that shimmered and put off a fair amount of light pouring from my palms. I stared at the glowing cloud for a few seconds before cutting it off when I realized I could feel my mana reserve slowly emptying. It was a hollow feeling, not painful but definitely not pleasant either.


    As I released my mana, I could feel the pool slowly starting to refill. While I didn''t exactly have a stopwatch on hand, I could immediately tell that running out of mana in a fight would mean that I was basically out until the fight was over. For prolonged battles, I could take cover for a breather and let my reserves refill, but for any dispute that was constant action, it took way too long to refill for me to wait.


    I could only hope that would change, either over time or with the help of enchanted items. While I doubted I could get any of the infinite mana tricks working with this enchanting variation, even a few small increases to the amount and speed of magicka regen would be incredible.


    Once I figured out how to pull out my mana, I moved on to actually learning my first spell. Like learning to pull my mana from my core, there was a certain level of personalization, mostly in how I controlled and manipulated my mana once it was in my palms. But unlike the entirely personal process of drawing out my mana, casting spells had specific actions that the mana must go through before and after leaving my palm. Rotations, twists, splits, mergings, geometric shapes, and a variety of different pathways all needed to happen before the magic was forced out of your body. Even how the energy left your body changed depending on what kind of spell you were casting, be it targeted, a spray, on yourself, fired from your hands, and several other spell casting types.


    The problem was that all of that needed to be done, but how exactly it needed to be done was heavily influenced by your own metrics. Everything from your natural essence to the alignment of your soul influenced this process. This meant that while you knew the sparks spell started with a spiral matrix so that your final expulsion could travel through its eye, forcing the charged energy to rotate and follow a tighter pathway, how tight or loose your spiral needed to be was dependent on several personal factors.


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    The bottom line was that there were two stages to the learning process, starting with memorizing the spell matrix and ending with a long tuning process that included an incredible amount of practice and experimentation. The grimoire assured me at several points that the natural aspect of the magic and spell matrix would ingrain itself over many uses, meaning that eventually, after reaching a certain proficiency with the spell and naturalizing its use, the matrix would get easier and easier to create. This would result in me needing less mana to use it, as well as eventually making casting it as simple as willing the matrix into my palm.


    Considering that after four hours of tuning, adjusting and experimenting with the matrix, I had only cast the sparks spell a handful of times, it would be a long time before I would get to that point. Twice I cast the spell by random accident while tweaking the distance between the pathways of the first spiral.


    In the end, the constant working with my magic left me feeling tired, as if I had just spent the entire day at work rather than sitting down, doing absolutely nothing physical. I willed my grimoire away, practiced sparks a few more times, adding a few more scorch spots on the cell wall in the process before leaning my head back and closing my eyes.


    -------------------?


    I woke up to the sensation of someone kicking me in the ribs and shouting at me.


    "Five more minutes," I said, yawning and ignoring them, leaning my head against the corner of the room


    "Get up, human!" A voice shouted at me, prompting me to look up at them. "Get up!"


    Standing in the doorway, one hand on a blaster and the other on some sort of metal cylinder with a red button, was a short, hairy, non-human creature. It had entirely black eyes and a large mouth with a sharp row of teeth behind thin lips. I didn''t recognize the species, nor did my newly implanted memories, which was not surprising considering just how many species of creatures existed in Star Wars. When I didn''t immediately jump up to obey him, he pointed the metal wand in his off hand at me and pressed the red button.


    A zap of some sort of energy sent a spike of pain up my arms, causing me to curse and my arms to tense up. The pain, which was clearly coming from my binders, continued to stab into my arms until the alien stopped holding down the button.


    "Alright! Jesus, alright!" I said, standing up by sliding my back up the wall. "No reason to get pissy."


    The alien didn''t say anything, it just stepped back out of the doorway and around the corner, disappearing from sight. I could see a hallway through the doorway, and another cell door that was already opened, a male <u>Twi''lek </u></a>with green skin stepping out. He was also in binders and was not looking happy about it. I stepped out into the hall, looking back and forth.


    A dozen or so people were stepping out of cells, including various aliens and a few humans as well. I spotted a Wookie, two more Twi''leks, three humans, a Duros and two more species I didn''t recognize. All of them were wearing binders. Their expressions ranged from angry and defiant to terrified.


    "Oh fuck." I said before getting the blue Twi''lek''s attention. "Hey, this is a slave ship, isn''t it?"


    He looked at me in confusion for a moment before nodding slowly.


    "Fuck, I really did piss them off," I mumbled.


    I kept looking around, this time ignoring my fellow captives and focusing on our captors. I could see four of them, two at each end of the hall. All of them were armed, blasters in hand and ready to use should we step out of line. Two were species I didn''t recognize, but the other two were Weeqay. A fifth human, the only one with his weapon in its holster, stood at the far end of the hallway.


    "Alright, the quicker you are off my ship, the quicker I can get paid," He said, taking a step forward and motioning toward us. "Get moving!"


    Two of the guards started shoving the closest prisoners, forcing the group to move forward to avoid getting knocked down. We were led down an empty corridor and then down a ramp that led out of the ship.


    As we exited the slave ship, I could see that it was sitting in the center of a decent-sized landing pad that was old but clearly functional. The air was a little on the warm and humid side and stank of pollution. I didn''t have much time to pause and examine the scenery before the prisoner behind me pushed me forward.


    The guards led us across the landing pad to a waiting speeder, a large transport model that looked heavily modified to transport unwilling cargo. There was a driver in the front end, as well as two more guards. All three of them looked bored, a tempting target, but I could feel how many people were watching me at once.


    "Alright, you karking wastes of space, get in!" One of the guards, the one that had woken me up, shouted.


    I smirked and climbed in, everyone else following behind. When all of us were piled into the relatively cramped space, the door was sealed behind us. The modifications to the transport were even more apparent inside, as the interior was reinforced with metal plates. I looked around at my fellow prisoners, a few of them looking at me strangely because of my smirk.


    "So¡­ does anyone know where we are?" I asked, everyone swaying slightly as the speeder began to move.


    "Nar Shaddaa" One of the humans, the only other male, said after a long pause. "They said they were taking us to Nar Shaddaa."


    "Gotcha, alright¡­ So¡­ Who wants to escape?"


    I ignored the strange looks that the people who had heard were giving me as I focused on my binders. As I was practicing my magic and realized just how much time and effort would be needed to learn different spells, I spent a good while thinking through just which spell I wanted to learn first. Granted, at the time, I still overestimated how much I would get done, but I had purposely chosen spark because it was an offensive spell and it was a possible way to escape.


    I focused on my magic for a moment, going through the motions of internally creating the spell matrix for sparks, this time in both hands at once. It destabilized once, but on the second try, I got it right. I curled my hands around at a painfully tight angle and unleashed the spell. Sparks of electricity fired across the short gap between my palms and the binder cuffs, sparking off and frying the internal electronics.


    Of course, the electricity also sparked through the binders and into my arms, shocking and burning me. It wasn''t as bad as getting the sparks spell fired directly into me, but I still let out a pained groan and clenched my jaw. After a full two seconds of firing the spell, I stopped and tested the now smoking binder, yanking my arms apart. On the second pull, the binders popped open and fell off my arms, falling to the ground.


    I looked up, rubbing my slightly burned wrists, to find everyone was staring at me.


    "So¡­ Who''s next?"

 Chapter 3

    Considering I had just shot lightning from my hands, I wasn''t entirely surprised when not everyone jumped to get their binders removed. In the end, I ended up freeing the Wookie, whose binders were actually larger and more heavy-duty than my own, as well as the male and one of the female humans, the Duros and one of the female Twi''lek.


    "What''s next?" The Duros asked, looking around the interior. "We jump out when they open the hatch?"


    "No, cannot wait. Sale place be strong." The Twi''lek said in broken Basic. "Need out now."


    The Wookie nodded and huffed in agreement before letting out a low growl and whine, pointing to my hands.


    "Not really the time to explain my talents, big guy." I pointed out, stepping towards the door. "Do you-"


    The Wookie grabbed my hand and started pulling me to the back of the ship, easily overpowering me with his massive strength. He pressed my hand against the back of the ship''s interior, releasing me and letting out another long growl, chuffing at the end.


    "What, you want me to shock here?" I asked, looking at him like he was crazy. "Wouldn''t we fall out of the sky?"


    "No, no, he is right. An older, retrofitted transport like this isn''t going to have the right insulation between us and the thrusters," The human female responded, having stepped closer when the Wookie pulled me to the back.


    "That''s great, but I''m worried about falling out of the sky. How high are we right now?"


    "The forward thrust and the repulsorlifts are separate systems for a transport this large," The human female explained. "If you knock them out, they will be forced to land, not plummet from the sky."


    I looked at the Wookie, who nodded in confirmation.


    "Alright, sure," I said, shrugging before putting up both of my hands, holding them a few inches away from the wall. "Maybe hold on to something anyway?"


    By now, my Magicka was already mostly full, so after I pulled and shaped my magic, pushing it out into a double casting of sparks, I held it, streaming electricity into the metal wall. The lights along the back all sparked and popped before the rest of them flickered once. I stopped, about half of my magicka pool empty.


    When the sound of the arcing and sparking electricity stopped, the sound of the speeder''s power systems struggling and a high-pitched whining filled the room. A few seconds passed, and the speeder began to noticeably descend. A mumble of excitement passed through everyone in the back, and I shared a look and a nod with the Wookie.


    "Good call," I said, looking over at the woman as well. "Glad you spoke up."


    We all moved around a bit into more natural positions, kicking the ruined binders to the far side of the compartment. I moved next to the door, just barely within arms reach. Those of us with freed hands hid them behind ourselves as the speeder rocked slightly from a less than perfect landing. We waited for a long moment, silently watching the only entrance into the holding area.


    Just when I was about to give up on waiting, the door slid open, revealing one of the guards, of a species I didn''t recognize. He was holding his blaster pistol out, ready to open fire if he needed to. He stepped up into the holding area but stayed in the door. He was silent as he scanned the room, his blaster up and his other hand on the rod they used to control the binders. He was about to turn out and leave when he spotted the two singed and slightly cratered impact points of my spark spells. His eyes bulged, and he quickly tapped the restraint wand, causing everyone still wearing a cuff to shout, curse, and scream.


    Unfortunately for him, this didn''t help at all.


    I blasted the back of his head with electricity, locking the humanoid alien up completely, only a long groan escaping from his mouth. The Twi''lek reached out and yanked the control rod from his hand, immediately using it to unlock everyone''s binders in a quick wave. The Duros reached out and grabbed the slaver''s blaster, tearing that from his grip as well. He quickly pressed it up against his side, into his armpit, and fired twice. The whine of the blaster was muffled by the now-dead guard''s arm, with barely any light escaping either. The slaver fell to the ground as I released my spell, first to his knees before slumping to the ground. Smoke rose steadily from the corpse.


    With our first hurdle down, I was already moving, stepping around the corpse and through the doorway. Magic danced and sparked around my hands as I started prepping the spell again, stepping out of the speeder.


    We were in the middle of a massive city, with huge buildings all around us, which was unsurprising considering what planet we were on. Several bystanders were looking at us, but no one was moving to do anything. I turned to see another of the guards, inspecting the speeder less than twenty feet away. He caught me out of the corner of his eye, doing an actual double take. His eyes widened, his alien jaw and large ears moving erratically as he began pulling out his blaster. I raised both hands and blasted him with electricity, sparks dancing up and around his body as one stream struck his torso and the other seared his face.


    The slaver guard twitched and stumbled, the lower stream of electricity doing very little through his armored outfit, but the stream to his unprotected face clearly caused more damage. I held the beam as I walked closer, only cutting it off when I was in range to lift my booted foot up, kicking him in the face as hard as I could. I followed it up with a second and third boot to the face after he had fallen down back to the ground.


    I turned around just in time to see the Wookie tear the driver from the vehicle cockpit and slam him into the side of the speeder. The driver was still moving after the first and second blows but went still after that. When the Wookie finally dropped him, there was a noticeable bloody dent in the side of the vehicle.


    More of my fellow liberated prisoners poured out of the transport speeder, looking around, a lot of them stuck with lost looks on their faces. I shook my head and started going through the pockets of the guard I had taken down.


    I took everything that was useful, including a few credit chips, a comms unit, a vibroknife and sheath, as well as a few spare power packs for the blaster. I pulled off the armor he was wearing on his chest, quickly pulled his blaster holster off, and stood up straight.


    The female human who had spoken up before was already done stripping the guard the Wookie had splattered while the Duros looked around, holding the blaster at the ready.


    "So¡­ we should go, right?" I asked, nodding towards a nearby alleyway.


    "Yes, whoever runs this operation will investigate," The Duros responded. "We should not be here when they do."


    "Right. Well, I''m heading this way," I said, grabbing the crappy chest plate the guard had been wearing. "You''re welcome to join in, strength in numbers and all that."


    With that, I turn and walk away from the wrecked speeder, stepping into an alleyway and disappearing into the shadows of Nar Shaddaa.


    I had two people following me by the time I took the first left turn in the alleyway. I breathed a large sigh of relief when I saw that the Wookie stayed behind. It would have been nice to have an infallible ally that I could completely trust, but the idea of having someone that was dedicated to me, putting my life before theirs¡­ sacrificing for me like Chewbacca did for Han¡­ honestly sounded exhausting.


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    I stopped around the corner, letting them catch up while I put on the very basic armor IO had just looted. Even though its previous owner had been an alien, it still covered my vital areas. Once that was on, I started clipping on the pistol holster.


    I would need to work out how to use this specific pistol at some point because my extra knowledge basically stopped at "point and pull the trigger." The Duros and the human woman turned the corner and spotted me as I was finishing the holster, the former giving me a nod. I pushed off the wall and nodded to them. I continued to walk down the alley, both of them walking beside me.


    "What were they planning?" I asked, referring to the people we left behind. "Please tell me they had something."


    "They were going to make their way to a starport. Hopefully they will find a ship to take them off-world." The Duros answered. "We are fortunate. If they had chipped us before, we would already be dead."


    "Explosive slave chip?" I asked the blue alien nodding. "Jesus, that''s fucked. Need to come up with a way to beat that¡­."


    We kept on walking for a while, doing our best to put as much distance between us and the wrecked speeder, without looking like we were running from anything.


    "Do either of you have any idea how much trouble we are going to have to avoid for what just went down?" I asked as we passed a few carts selling food. "I''m not familiar with the area or the trade. I''m from a peaceful planet, nowhere near here."


    Apparently, we had stumbled into an unofficial marketplace of some kind, with various carts and tents set up along a wider-than-usual alleyway. The Duros actually pulled out a credit chip he must have gotten as loot and bought something from on of the vendors as we passed.


    "Depends on who was running the operation and how important the guys we just killed are," The woman answered with a shrug. "Considering how shit their equipment was, we should be fine."


    I nodded and reached out my hand, which the woman looked at for a moment, before looking up at me suspiciously. When she didn''t shake it I scoffed.


    "The whole lighting thing is ranged out to like fifty feet. If I wanted to zap you, I don''t need to shake your hand."


    She paused for a moment before reaching out and shaking my hand. Her grip was firm and her hands were callused.


    "It''s nice to meet you, circumstances not-withstanding," I said, squeezing her hand before offering the same to the Duros. "Names Deacon Roy. So why did you two follow me?"


    "I could get myself home eventually. Not much waiting for me there." The Duros responded, shaking my hand with his large, knotted fingers. "Besides, I saw you shoot lightning from your hand. Sounds like the beginning of an adventure. And Nal Tog. That''s my name."


    "Adventure, huh? I can promise a whole heck of a lot of excitement if you stick around me, at least," I admitted. "I don''t know about adventure, but I don''t plan on doing boring very much."


    Nal nodded, and I turned to look at the human woman, who shrugged, trying to figure out just how much to reveal.


    "Let''s just say I''m pretty much already back to where I was before," She said, gesturing to the pistol on one hip and the small bag on the other. "Besides, it just felt right. And I''m Tatnia."


    "Well... Let''s see if we can''t do any better than the bare-bones basics." I said with a smile when she didn''t give her last name.


    We kept walking, the streets starting to get dark as the sky changed. As it did, the quality of people walking on the streets began to drop at an alarming rate.


    At some point, we stopped to ask for directions to someplace cheap to sleep and were directed to a run-down hotel. It was a large building, old and worn, with graffiti covering the exterior walls. It wasn''t exactly the Ritz, but at this point, it was more about getting off the street than finding someplace nice.


    We stepped into the lobby and waved down a clerk, who was behind some sort of blaster-proof transparent glass. I had intended to only stay for the night, banking on finding somewhere better the following day, but even that would have drained what little money we had recovered during our escape. In the end, I traded my blaster pistol to the clerk behind the counter for three days in a room with two beds.


    "Was that really the smartest thing to do?" Tatnia asked as we stepped into the turbolift, riding it up four floors. "I know you''ve got¡­ other options, but it kind of stands out."


    "I know, but not standing out was never really an option for me," I explained with a shrug. "It''s going to get a lot weirder."


    "How were you doing that?" Nal asked as we stepped into the small room. "Did you have implants? I didn''t see any, so perhaps it''s biological?"


    "Really? You expect me to spill all my secrets right off the bat?" I said, sitting down in the only chair the room had. "Stick around a while first."


    "I very much plan on it. I am very curious where your journey leads," He assured me, sitting down at the edge of the bed.


    "Right. Well, I should warn you, I don''t plan on taking it easy."


    "That sounds like you have some sort of plan," Tatnia said, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall next to the door.


    I made a so-so gesture with my hand.


    "Kinda? More of a vague outline than anything. See, it was slavers who brought us here, so I figure that it should be slavers who fund us getting out," I explained with a smirk. "I mean, they are the perfect target. I don''t know about you, but I will sleep easy, well-fed, and happy knowing I made money by killing slavers. And this planet is full of them. Right?"


    "Your idea is to steal from slavers?" She asked, an eyebrow raised. "Just like that?"


    "Well, we would have to start small," I admitted. "The lighting thing? Yeah, I can do much more than that. I just need some more time to work on it. So we start small and see how we work together. I also need more experience. I''ll be the first to admit I don''t have much in the killing department."


    "You can do more than just the electricity thing?" Nal asked, leaning forward. "What else? Why does it require time?"


    "My friend, I can do so much more," I assured him. "There is a reason I didn''t have a problem handing over the pistol. So, are you two in?"


    "What makes you think you think we are any better off than you?" Tatnia asked, eyeing me skeptically.


    "Well, Nal knew his way around that blaster pistol way too well to be a novice," I pointed out, looking over at the red-eyed alien. "You knew just how to kill him and keep it quiet."


    "This isn''t my first rancor ride," Nal admitted with a shrug.


    "And you have the whole "grown up street urchin" vibe going on," I said, looking back at Tatnia. "Which, if I''m willing to dive into a bit of a stereotype, makes you a jack of all trades regarding the shady streets."


    She glared at me for a few seconds before shaking her head and looking away. Her lack of denial told me the answer, though, and I couldn''t help but chuckle.


    "Well, both of you think it over," I said before either of them could respond. "Sleep on it even. We have plenty of opportunities to talk tomorrow."

 Chapter 4

    <div>


    I was very glad I had managed to get some sleep during the trip here because I had plans for the next few hours. Once Nal and Tatnia had gotten into bed, I got up and headed to the small refresher room, closing and locking the door behind me. I sat down on the refresher, noting that it was surprisingly clean, as was the tiny sonic shower. Satisfied I wasn''t going to catch something by just sitting there, I willed my grimoire into my hands, and the large book suddenly appeared.


    I started flipping through the pages, examining what kind of spells the book was offering to teach me. Unsurprisingly it was still all novice-level spells, the easiest ones for each discipline. The enchanting section still displayed instructions for setting up an enchanting table rather than any information about how the actual craft was performed, beyond the absolute most basic explanation.


    Now that I had escaped, my old mental list of what spells to learn and what order needed to be adjusted. I was no longer in danger of being locked up, which is what I believed was happening at the time.


    A large part of me wanted to work on summoning a bound sword. I convinced the entity to give me the knowledge of sword fighting and using a bow specifically because I knew I would be able to summon both with conjuration magic.


    I was very glad I had managed to sneak that in as well, because I was pretty sure it was the only reason I had survived up to this point. The entity taught me how to fight with a sword and a bow, which included how to deal with combat. I instinctively tapped into the knowledge earlier, staying calm in a situation I would have had no idea how to handle otherwise. No doubt it would have its limitations, but for now, I was just happy that I didn''t have to worry about panicking during a fight.


    I read through the introduction to the bound sword spell again, still undecided. The real draw for the spell was that the bound sword would get more powerful the more skilled I became in summoning them. I could only assume that the bow would work like that as well. With any luck, once I had learned them both, I would have a powerful ranged and melee option with me at all times. Unfortunately, the spell to summon a bound bow was not a novice spell, which meant it would be a while before I could learn it.


    I also needed to learn either oak flesh or lesser ward, but I had no idea how effective they would be in this setting. I had a feeling that wards were going to be useful against energy, like blaster bolts or, god help me, force lightning, while the oakflesh spell and its more advanced versions would increase my durability in general. The information the grimoire gave me was primarily written in terms of Elder Scrolls related things, like magic and arrows, so I would have to test that out personally. This meant experimenting with myself as the target, something I wouldn''t feel comfortable doing until I could heal myself.


    In fact, learning the first restoration spell was beginning to sound more and more like the right thing to do. The ability to heal myself was always going to be useful, and I''m sure that I would be doing it a lot. The sooner I get a handle on the spell the better. I also hoped that mastering the spell to a certain level would "convince" my grimoire to teach me healing hands. The ability to heal others was almost as important as learning to heal myself. Bacta was expensive, so my ability to fix allies with my magic would be a powerful incentive for loyalty.


    With my decision made, I flipped to the restoration section and started reading the entry on the novice-level spell, healing.


    I spent the first ten minutes locked in the refresher, reading and attempting to copy the spell matrix that the book was describing, working my magic into the proper shape. When I finally had it down, I attempted to cast the spell, but it immediately failed. Surprisingly, though, the first fifth of the matrix had held, meaning I had a not insignificant head start on tuning the spell to myself.


    While the book hadn''t mentioned anything specific about what that could mean, I got the feeling that it meant I resonated with the spell, meaning I probably had a slight talent for healing spells. I pushed away the revelation and started working through my matrix, tweaking and teasing it before trying again.


    About two hours later, I cast the healing spell for the first time, the golden orange glow spinning slowly in my hand. I ended the spell and worked on casting it with my other hand, then casting it in both at the same time.


    The heal spell was effective for minor injuries at first and would grow in potency as I got better at casting it, and my affinity grew. Unfortunately, as I read about the spell, I learned about the great restriction of healing through magic. The time, and therefore the energy, required to heal an injury was exponentially scaled with the severity.


    Low-level injuries were easily fixed. In fact, I could already feel that the bruises from being kicked in the side yesterday were gone, just from casting the spell for a couple of seconds or so. The burns around my arms, where I had been zapped while breaking my binders, had hardly even been touched. When I cast the spell again, holding it this time as the spell drained my mana, the burns slowly started to fade. I ended up holding the spell for a full thirty seconds to heal both wrists completely from the second-degree burns.


    This was not the gamified crap from Skyrim. Any legitimately life-threatening wound would take considerable time and effort to fix, and would only work if I had that time. For example, a person would bleed out before I could fix an arterial bleed. That would change as I got better, but that would take time. Thankfully the grimoire specifically stated that while healing spells were slow to naturalize, they didn''t need to be actively healing to practice. There was no need to self-harm to practice this or most other spells.


    I spent another few minutes practicing the spell, casting it until my mana was at about half before waiting for it to recharge and then repeating the process. Eventually, I was satisfied with my grip on the spell matrix, so I exited the refresher. Tatnia and Nal were both asleep by then, neither of them shifting in the slightest when I reclaimed my seat. It took a while, but eventually, I managed to fall asleep in the relatively comfortable chair.


    -------------?


    I woke up the following day to the smell of food, though neither my old or new memories could figure out what it was. I opened my eyes to find Tatnia and Nal both eating from disposable containers, a third one sitting on the small table a few feet away from my chair. I groaned and leaned forwards and stood, my back protesting the movement.


    "Should have slept on the floor," Nal said. "Less comfortable, but more ergonomic. Tania bought food."


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    "I''ll be fine, just need a second," I said, hiding a smirk as best I could before casting heal.


    My hand glowed for a few seconds, healing energies swirling around my hand and sinking into my skin. I let out a satisfied groan as my lower back loosened, and the pain disappeared.


    "Mmm, much better," I said, stretching slowly. "What did you get?"


    "Street food. A local dish that should be safe for humans," Nal answered. "What was that?"


    "That was me healing myself," I explained, picking up the container and popping the top, finding a small utensil already inside. "How did you pay for it?"


    "One of your spare power packs," Tatnia responded in-between bites. No reason to keep it if you don''t have a blaster anymore."


    I nodded in agreement, lifting the food and sniffing it. There was a surprising amount of spice coming from it, vaguely smelling like curry. There were chunks of meat, some different colored chunks that seemed like vegetables. I took a bite, nodding in appreciation before sitting back down in the seat. It was pretty good and very close to a spicy curry.


    "Wait, hold on! You can heal yourself?" Tania asked incredulously, her mind seeming to have caught up. "How the kriff can you do that?"


    "I learned last night," I explained after swallowing another mouthful of food. "Took about two hours."


    "You''re full of shit."


    I sighed before standing and putting my food back on the table. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small vibroknife I had pulled off one of the slavers. I flicked it open, which automatically turned it on. Before Nal or Tania could say anything, I sliced my palm just deep enough for it to bleed. Nal watched with obvious interest, while Tania seemed more sure I was about to out myself.


    I carefully constructed my healing spell, making sure it was as good as I could get for the moment before letting it form, my hand glowing in the now familiar orange-gold light. I waited a few seconds before grabbing a towel from the table and wiping away the blood, revealing perfectly healed skin.


    "Proof enough?" I asked, Tatnia nodding with wide eyes.


    I went back to eating, getting about half way through the container before Tatnia started talking again.


    "Are you human?"


    "Last time I checked," I answered, looking up at her.


    I was going to make a joke, but she was starting to look nervous. It had finally settled in that she had been pulled, or perhaps pushed into something rather different. Nal just looked excited. For a moment, I considered my options. I had no real reason to trust these two, other than the fact that they hadn''t tried to kill me yet. But I needed to start somewhere, right?


    "Look, I¡­I have an energy inside me," I tried to explain. "Think of it as a universal power pack. I can use that power pack to do a whole lot of things. But it''s all new to me, so I''m learning what I can do as I go along."


    "Were you taken for that reason?" Nal asked, finishing off his food and crumpling up his trash. "For your inner power?"


    "No, that was just bad luck."


    "What else can you do?" Tatnia asked this time, her nervousness falling a bit.


    "Nothing, yet. Well, actually, I guess I can do this," I admitted, correcting myself before pushing out pure mana. "But that doesn''t do anything. It''s basically the pure form of the energy."


    "How are you learning? Trial and error?"


    "Kinda?" I lied. "It takes time to experiment. I just finished healing today."


    I wasn''t about to reveal everything, even if that aspect of my power was relatively small. I also wasn''t going to mention that my mana had a limit. Let them think I was endlessly powerful for now.


    Tatnia and I finished our food before Nal brought up what we had discussed the night before.


    "I am in," He said simply. "I already disliked slavery. Now it is personal."


    "Good, that''s good to hear," I said, reaching out to shake his large hand before turning to Tatnia. "What about you?"


    "I don''t know. I think that if we start attacking slavers repeatedly, we are going to attract a lot of dangerous attention. How far are you looking to go?"


    "I''m not trying to start a fight with every slaver in Hutt space, or bring an end to slavery as a business. As horrible as it is, and as much as I wish I could, a three-person crusade against it would just end up with us dead." I explained, trying to reassure her. "They are just a convenient target. I would prefer to avoid killing innocent people, and targeting slavers means we won''t be. When we make enough money to secure a few things, we can stop and move on."


    "Secure what?" Nal asked. "Having an end goal will keep us from becoming overly greedy."


    "I want a ship. Something that me and a comfortable crew can leave this planet on," I explained. "I figure starting a mercenary group would be an interesting way to earn a living. My¡­. energy generally leans towards combat anyway."


    "A ship? That''s going to take a lot of money," Tatnia pointed out, shaking her head. "And get a lot of attention on us."


    "Not if we space it out and do it all over the planet," I responded. "We have a whole planet of slavers who are just waiting to donate their money. Basically, we keep away from the big names, maybe pick up a few compatriots along the way and slowly build up our savings. Then, when we have enough money, we buy a used ship. Then we blast off¡­ If you''re still interested."


    For a long moment, Tatnia looked conflicted before finally letting out a long sigh.


    "Yeah, fine, I''m in. I was mostly worried you were doing this to take down slavery. I might be willing to blast a few of the karking shitheads, and it would be nice to free a few people, but I''m not looking to be a martyr."


    "Exactly. We do our good deeds, and we make some money in the process."


    "A good plan. I am happy to be a part of it," Nal said with a nod. "What is the first step?"


    "The first step is something quick. We better blasters, better armor, equipment, the whole shebang," I said. "I say we go back to the landing pad that we arrived at and ask around. We might get lucky and find out how often new slaves get dropped off."


    "And if we are not?" Tal asked.


    "Then we come up with a new plan," I responded with a shrug. "Maybe find some way to track people away from where the slaves are being brought to. Or maybe we ask the local constable where I could buy the best slaves and burn it to the ground. Actually¡­ that one might be a solid back up¡­"


    "Not sure, but if you''re talking about going after where they keep the slaves, that''s not a good idea," Tatnia explained, shaking her head. "A few stupid slavers from who knows where dropping off a dozen prisoners is one thing, but a market will have guards by the dozens, probably even a turret or two."


    "They are also most likely controlled by a Hutt clan," Nal pointed out. "Who will most likely spend quite a bit of money to hunt us down."


    "Right, fair enough," I agreed. "Then let''s start small."


    "About that¡­ How do you plan on getting back to the berthing dock?" Tatnia asked. "We didn''t really see the surroundings and were flying in that speeder for a few minutes."


    "I know. Give me a few hours, and I''ll have a solution for that."

 Chapter 5

    Clairvoyance was a spell I had, at first, assumed was purely a video game construct, a way to introduce GPS into a video game that was easy to get lost in. It turns out I was half correct. Clairvoyance was, in fact, one of the novice spells I could learn from my grimoire. What it wasn''t, however, was an omniscient direction system that could tell me exactly where whatever I wanted was.


    The description was rather vague, but the directional spell tapped into the aetheric connection between all things and used your knowledge of what you were looking for to tell you exactly where it was. A master of the spell could hear a detailed description of an object, cast the spell, and mark its probable location on a map for you. Unfortunately, it would be years of use before I could reach that level, so I needed a more direct connection to what I was looking for. Namely, I would need to have been there or have held the object in my hand. I would also have to travel the path the spell made for me, not just mark it on the map for others to explore.


    Eventually, I would be able to use other people''s direct connections to an object or location, but for now, I was more limited. However, it wasn''t all bad because this variation of Elder Scrolls magic had two forms of the spell. One was the standard path-following spell that was very similar to the version in the game. This form used the aetheric connections to follow paths taken by other people, but it wouldn''t work if the most common path was on a horse or a boat, which translated to a speeder or any other transport for my situation.


    The other form was a simple arrow that would float in the air above the caster''s palm. It pointed directly to the target, ignoring bodies of water or large landmasses. It was primarily used by sailors to navigate since there were no connections or pathing to follow in large bodies of water. Even better, it was an illusion that I cast on myself, meaning that no one else would be able to see it.


    Tatnia and Nal both left the small room to start putting feelers out. All three of us were woefully ignorant when it came to politics and current events around Nar Shaddaa, as neither of my compatriots came from Hutt Space, and I was from a different universe. Hell, I didn''t even know when on the timeline I was, and I definitely wasn''t putting off finding out. While I was learning my new spell, both of them would be getting up to speed.


    I sat down in the room''s single chair and worked through the spell, a familiar pattern now. I started by recreating the matrix as the book described before slowly starting to adapt it to my own harmonics and frequencies, which is where I ran into a bit of trouble. Where the healing spell had sort of just¡­ meshed, my matrix starting off partially usable, this spell seemed to fight me at every turn. It wasn''t a monumental struggle, but I couldn''t help but feel like it just wasn''t gelling with me.


    It ended up taking me four hours to finally get the spell to work in both forms, about an hour longer than I had thought. By then, it was about noon, so I set out to find my new friends. I locked up the room and made my way down to the hotel''s first floor. This building was surprisingly clean, especially considering I had bought a four-day stay with a used blaster pistol. Then again, with cheap labor in the form of unfortunate masses and droids, there really wasn''t any reason not to keep your building clean.


    I stopped once I was standing in front of the hotel''s main entrance, pushing my hand in my pocket and casting clairvoyance, focusing on Tatnia. A glowing, pale blue billowy path appeared in front of me, leading away from the door and through a crowd of people. I smirked when no one saw the magic, with plenty of people walking through the strange pathway without even hesitating.


    I followed the trail for about half an hour, through streets and a few back alleys before finally arriving at a hole-in-the-wall bar. I walked in, ignoring the several looks that were definitely not people sizing me up as a mark as I did, and eventually spotted Tatnia sitting along the back around the corner of the bar, nursing a drink.


    She spotted me as I made my way to her, her eyes going wide. I gestured if I could join her, and she winced but nodded, waving down the bartender as I did.


    "How in the hells did you find me?" She asked, motioning the bartender to get me one of what she was drinking.


    "Finished that thing I was working on. I could find you or Nal anywhere on the planet," I explained, quickly continuing when I realized how that sounded. "Well, I would know your directions. Nothing I can do if you are somewhere I can''t get to. Nal not with you?"


    "We split up pretty early. He went to a different bar," She explained. "One less friendly to humans."


    I nodded and took a sip of the drink Tatnia had bought me. It was alright, a little bitter on the aftertaste for my liking, but it led with a fruity flavor I couldn''t identify, which didn''t surprise me.


    "How are we paying for this?" I asked, turning to look around at the bar, spotting at least two people, a male Twi''lek and a human, still looking at us.


    I resisted the urge to flip them off. Instead I turned back to Tatnia, taking another sip of my drink and focusing on her. She was clearly on edge.


    "<u>Sabbac</u></a>," She explained simply, pausing for a moment before continuing. "I''ve always been good at it."


    "I''m sure you''re smarter than that, but you didn''t go overboard, did you?" I asked, turning back to her, raising my hand in defense when I saw the look she was giving me. "Not doubting you, but I''m sure you''ve seen what kind of trouble that can get you. Besides, you''ve got a couple of admirers."


    "...I didn''t go overboard, just a couple hundred credits from a handful of people. I¡­I had a reputation as someone to not be messed from... well, from before I got dragged here. I forgot I don''t have that anymore." She admitted, with a lot less vigor than she was originally intending. "They are probably going to try and mug us when we leave. I¡­ I was hoping to find someone to help take them down when I leave."


    "I''m glad I came along then," I said with a small smile. "It''s fine, though. We could use some more stuff."


    "What?" She asked, looking at me in confusion.


    "What? Do you think they are going to expect me, the unarmed man, to be a threat?" I asked, making sure to turn slightly and show that my hip was bare. "We will catch them off guard. Are you ready to go?"


    She looked at me for a moment before shaking her head and downing her drink. I did the same, standing with her. She swiped a credit chip on a scanner on the counter before heading out, with me right behind her. We slowly made our way to a dark alley, both of us ignoring the approaching footsteps. One of them grabbed me, and my ingenious plan was suddenly ruined when instead of holding me hostage, they slid a long vibroknife between my ribs.


    The pain was intense, but I still had the presence of mind to cast Sparks, reaching behind me and blasting the one who stabbed me with both hands. I could feel him jerk and switch against my back, the vibroknife cutting me erratically. When he fell to his knees, tearing the knife from my side, I stopped the spell for a moment. I turned to find the Twi''lek holding a blaster with wide eyes, the weapon vaguely pointed at me. Before he could do anything, a red blast of energy whipped by and took him in the chest, a second and third taking him down completely.


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    I finished off the guy who stabbed me with two blasts of electricity to the face, holding it for a few seconds to cook his brain. When I was sure he was dead, I half sat, half collapsed onto a box along the side of the alleyway. Tatnia stepped closer to me, but I waved her away.


    "Loot them first. Take anything worth keeping or selling," I said, already starting up a healing spell in both hands. "I''ll be fine."


    The healing energies coursed through me, rushing to the stab wound. I could feel it starting to heal me, the process slow but steady. I was lucky that the armor I was wearing, old and worn as it was, had forced him to stab somewhere not immediately dangerous. By the time Tatnia was done and I was out of mana, I was strong enough to stand.


    "C''mon, let''s put some distance between this and us," I said, wincing and limping as we walked down the alley.


    Tatnia quickly helped me by taking my arm around my shoulder and giving me a bit of support. We walked until my mana was refilled, stopping in another alleyway for me to heal again. We repeated this three times until I felt good enough to finish the walk home in one shot, using clairvoyance to get us there. We got more than a few looks as we walked through the hotel, mainly at the blood stain on my shirt, but no one willing to say something came forward. When we entered our room, Nal was waiting for us.


    "Oh good, you have returned," He said before spotting the blood on my clothes. "Have you been injured?"


    "Got jumped by a few idiots," I said with a shrug. "But on the plus side, I have a blaster again."


    "I messed up," Tatnia added. "I''m used to relying on my reputation. Should have realized that I''d get jumped if I started winning."


    "How bad is the wound?" Nal asked as I stepped into the refresher, activating the sonic shower.


    "Just a shallow stab. I''ve been healing it on and off," I explained. "I wouldn''t be dead even if I couldn''t fix myself."


    I slowly turned, letting the sonic waves wash away the blood from my skin and my clothes. While I was waiting, I cycled my double healing spell, allowing the healing energies to sink into my wound. It still wasn''t fully healed, but it felt like it was a few weeks old. When all of the blood had been cleaned off of me, I turned off the shower and stepped out, playing with the small stab hole that was in my shirt and working very hard not to think about how close I had just come to death¡­ again.


    "We wouldn''t be able to afford getting you treated," Tatnia pointed out. "You-"


    "Tatnia," I said, cutting her off, trying my best to sound understanding. "We both messed up. Learn from it, and move on. I don''t blame you, none of us are on our A-game right now."


    She looked at me for a long moment and nodded. She looked down at her hands and noticed she was still carrying the small bag of stuff she had pulled off the muggers. She quickly laid it on the bed and started going through it, handing me the <u>blaster pistol</u></a> and its holster.


    It was a beefy bastard with a grip that reminded me of my father''s 1911, while the barrel assembly looked like it was meant to be pumped like a shotgun. Its power pack loaded from the side, but it was different from any of the other packs we had. Luckily Tatnia handed me a few spares. The entire weapon had a robust feel to it, like it could survive a lot and keep on firing.


    "That is a <u>Bryar. A K-16</u></a>, I believe," Nal said, holding his hand to me.


    I passed him the pistol, and he examined it, pulling out the power pack and looking into its innards. I watched as Tatnia tucked the vibroknife she had looted from one of the muggers into its sheath before attaching it around her leg, hiding it under her pants.


    I attached the holster to my right hip, making sure it was secure, before Nal handed me the pistol back.


    "It is in decent shape, but its secondary fire is nonfunctional," He explained. "Usually, it can charge a shot to deliver more power. Said function is from a secondary unit inside the pistol. Currently missing."


    "But normal shooting works?" I asked, looking down at the pistol.


    "Yes. Shouldn''t be difficult to fix, either. Common parts. I wonder if mugger knew what he had," He responded. "Bryars are expensive in good condition."


    "Well, then maybe we should sell it?" I suggested.


    "No, keep it," Nal said, shaking his head. "You need a weapon, just in case."


    Nal accepted a backup hold-out blaster, the last weapon Tatnia head pulled off the pair of would-be muggers. As he strapped it to the inside of his jacket, she attempted to split the small collection of credit chips between us, but I waved her off.


    "Don''t worry about it. You are in charge of food for the next couple of days," I said, getting a nod in return. "Now, do we have enough time to go check around the berthing dock?"


    "We do, as long as we pay for a speeder," Nal said, "It would likely take several hours to walk."


    It took very little time for us to hire a ride, all three of us climbing into a run-down but functional speeder taxi. The droid driving the speeder was happy to follow my strange directions as I tried to use the compass version of clairvoyance to locate the berthing dock where we had landed the day before. After about ten minutes of flying around, we found it and informed the taxi to drop us off a few blocks away. We didn''t make a beeline for the dock immediately, instead walking around for a while, taking in the area.


    There were multiple docks connected together in a large U, and all but the one we had landed at were full. Most of them were light and medium freighters, offloading enough cargo that it was basically impossible for them to also be carrying slaves.


    After walking around and familiarizing ourselves with the area for a while, we all split up and started subtly trying to find out everything we could. I didn''t do much beyond asking a few street vendors how busy the area was under the guess of looking to rent out one berth for my ship. Most of them just shrugged and mainly stayed quiet. It wasn''t until later in the afternoon that a <u>Vurk</u></a>, selling pre-packaged snacks from a cart, gave me a bit more information.


    "You''re better off going somewhere else," He said, shaking his head. "The owner rents to slavers. It''s not illegal, but it''s just asking for trouble. He takes bribes to keep them off the records as well, so they don''t have to pay taxes to the Hutt clans. Not worth the trouble, my friend."


    "How do you know that?" I asked, not having to fake my surprise.


    "You''d be surprised what idiots will say in front of a vendor," He said. "I wish you luck in finding a berth for your ship!"


    I nodded and bought some snacks before making my way to a predetermined spot to meet with the others.

 Chapter 6

    I was alone, leaning against a randomly chosen corner, for only a few minutes before Nal joined me, with Tatnia right behind him just a minute later. The sun was just starting to go down, meaning we had about two hours before it started getting unhealthy to be out in the streets. Part of me was tempted to troll the area for more muggers when it got darker out, but the phantom pain of being stabbed in the side shut that idea down.


    Waiting for the criminals to come to us was probably a bad idea.


    Once we were together, we started sharing what we had learned in hushed voices. Both of their asking around confirmed that the docking berth was frequented by slavers, dropping off somewhere between a dozen to two dozen slaves at a time. They also learned that five different ships would stop by to unload "cargo," all at separate times, seemingly at random, with days in between.


    I revealed that the dock''s owner was on the take and that that berth was specifically for slave drop-offs. When I added that he also kept them off the records, Nal looked shocked.


    "That is ridiculous. Slave trade is legal on Nar Shaddaa," He said, shaking his head. "Avoiding tax is the only explanation, which is stupid enough on a planet where the government won''t torture you for stealing from them. Excellent news for us."


    "Why?" I asked. "I mean, I understand it''s dumb to try and cheat the Hutts when the slavers aren''t breaking local laws. But why is it good for us?"


    "Because the ships won''t exist in the system," The blue-skinned alien explained. "No records of them means that the authorities won''t investigate. Ships that aren''t supposed to be here can''t be reported missing without Hutts catching on."


    "So... they''ve left themselves open?" Tatnia asked. "We can just walk in and steal the ship?"


    "Yes. Nothing would stop us from doing so in the first place, but now we need not fear the Enforcers looking for us."


    The Enforcers were essentially the closest thing that Nar Shaddaa had to police, something none of us knew about before Nal and Tatnia went information gathering earlier. You could call them if someone screwed you over, stole from you, or tried to kill you. They kept everything working smoothly, so crazy people didn''t disrupt business. Basically, they were why everyone agreed to pay taxes in the first place.


    They were corrupt, brutal, rarely investigated anything that wasn''t immediately obvious, and were one hundred percent on the Hutt''s payroll, but they kept the entire moon from crumbling into anarchy. If a ship wasn''t paying taxes, they wouldn''t raise a finger to do anything about it, especially anyone who would have complained was dead.


    "That''s good. It means we can basically take everything. We will need a place to sell it, though," I pointed out as I scratched my beard. "Any ideas?"


    "Find a junkyard somewhere on the planet that won''t ask questions," Tatnia suggested with a shrug. "Selling it to someone would take too long, and the fact that it''s probably going to be modified to carry slaves just means we would be selling it to a slaver, most likely."


    "We would be selling at a steep loss," Nal pointed out. "Trading a functional ship for scrap."


    "No, I think she is right. Better to get it out of our hands as quickly as possible. We may be losing money, but we wouldn''t make any money at all if something goes wrong before we can pass it off."


    We talked a while longer about how we would prepare and what we would do. Unfortunately, it looked like we were basically going to have to wait around for a ship to land because we had no way of predicting when they would show up. Despite that, we needed a plan. There would be a lot of waiting, but with a solid plan, we could essentially relax until our targets arrived.


    The hangars themselves were large circular buildings with a circular space inside for the ships to land. They were all connected in a U shape, which was where the speeder we had been taken away on had pulled up to. Each of the hangers had personal doors, as well as a set of rather large sliding doors. We witnessed cargo being hauled in and out of those large doors from near constantly.


    "If we entered after the transport speeder, we would be hidden from prying eyes." Nal pointed out. "Ship engine might even cover the sound of blaster fire."


    "The doors are going to be coded," Tatnia countered. "We would have to enter with someone else. Unless you have something to get around that?"


    Her last question was directed to me, and I shook my head, frowning slightly.


    "Not really, unless you think shocking it will let it open freely," I admitted. "I don''t have much in terms of subtlety yet, either."


    "Well, crossing in while the cargo gate is open is probably our best bet," Tatnia responded.


    "No chance at stealth," Nal pointed out, Tatnia shrugging in response. "I have no issue with that, simply stating."


    "What about the slaves?" I asked. "I don''t want them in the crossfire."


    "Then we don''t wait until the transport is going in. We wait until it comes out," Tatnia suggested, chewing her lip. "We wait outside for the gate to open, then two of us go in, attack the slavers and take it down before they can escape. The third person would be in charge of stopping the speeder. If the one we were in was any sign, a few laser blasts through the window would be enough."


    "Everyone will be able to hear that," I pointed out, quickly shaking my head. "But then, with any luck, that won''t matter. This is a blitz. We go in, take them down and fly away. Sell the ship and move on."


    "I get the concept. Speed is the goal," Nal said, and I nodded. "I will take care of the transport. Wait for it to come out, kill the slavers, then commandeer the speeder. Let the slaves out somewhere safe."


    "That sounds like a solid plan. Could we sell the transport as well?"


    "Probably, a stolen speeder isn''t hard to pawn off, especially not to someone who already accepted a stolen ship," Tatnia answered, waving me off as I opened my mouth. "The scrap yard will know. They won''t say anything, but they will know."


    We talked a bit more, but the plan was pretty much decided at that point. We flagged down another speeder and were back at the hotel within the hour.


    -----------


    We spent most of the next two days staking out the hangar, waiting for more slavers to land. Tatnia lined up a junkyard, one that was a considerable distance away, that had enough room, and was interested in a cheap ship that they could sell for parts. I attempted to learn as much magic as possible during our downtime since I couldn''t practice while we were out and about, waiting for our targets. Unfortunately, considering what we were about to do, I couldn''t stay up super late because I needed to be at a hundred percent, not tired and groggy.


    That isn''t to say I didn''t learn anything. Five hours spread between two nights was enough for me to learn my first two spells from the conjuration branch of magic, summon sword and summon familiar.


    Conjuration magic was a fascinating subject and varied greatly from what I was expecting. My first read-through, back when I woke up, had been correct. There was no necromancy or daedra summoning in this variant of conjuration. Whether that was because the entities intentionally cut it out or necromancy and daedra didn''t exist in the world this variant of magic came from, I didn''t know.


    What I did know was that this version of conjuration, beyond those two restrictions, was also a much more flexible school of magic than was advertised in the game. It was much more about using magic to bring something into being, rather than tearing holes in reality to summon things from Oblivion or whatever daedric realm you were targeting. This meant a few things, the most obvious of which was that there was no time limit to your summons.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    When you summoned something, you fed it some of your power to cast the spell. This was enough to bring whatever you summoned into being for a few seconds. On top of that, you could feed it more energy, anywhere from essentially none to all of your remaining mana. This would affect how long your construct stuck around without any additional input. Once it started running out, you could feed it more, but only if you made physical contact. Not much of a big deal for weapons, but for a more ambulatory summon, it became much harder to maintain in a fight.


    This meant that I could summon a sword, feed it all my mana, then use that sword while my mana recharged. Eventually, I would need to provide it more magicka, but by then, I would have recharged completely, meaning the sword could stick around for quite a while.


    On top of all that, when I completed the spell and summoned a sword, I was conjuring a construct into being, meaning I wasn''t stuck with the frankly ridiculous-looking daedric weapons from the game. I had always been a fan of more straightforward, sturdy aesthetics regarding older weapons and armor, and my conjured sword reflected that. It was a simple longsword with a fuller that ran along two-thirds of the blade, a standard crossguard that curved up slightly, and a hilt and pommel that looked completely ordinary. No saw teeth or awkward curves, double blades, or fancy satanic filigree. Just a simple-looking weapon for killing stuff.


    An aesthetic that was completely pointless because it was also translucent, a pale purple, and left a subtle purple glowing streak in the air when I swung it around.


    I was also pretty good with it, practicing a handful of cuts and stabs while the other two were out of the room. The weapon knowledge that the entities had given me was rather impressive. It wasn''t just how to swing a sword and not cut your leg off, but instead a full download of a dozen or so sword fighting styles, as well as pseudo experience with actual sword combat. I was beginning to understand why they had considered all the information a mercenary might know as "tipping the scales" too much if this was what I was getting for "how to use a sword."


    Summoning a familiar had been an exciting experience as well. Like the sword, I wasn''t stuck with Skyrim''s strange mutton chop wolves. Instead, I summoned an honest to god tiger. It was partially see-through, a pale blue with slightly darker stripes, and had the same nebulous energy wafting off it as the normal Skyrim summon would have. It was hard to tell from memory, but I think my tiger was slightly bigger than the wolf as well. Even more impressive, though, was that it definitely wasn''t the half-brain-dead AI you got in the game, either. He seemed to react like an actual intelligent being, following my commands smoothly.


    Originally, I only planned to work on my sword summoning, but when I realized that almost half of the basic spell matrix worked immediately, with no tuning, I had to test another conjuration spell. It worked the same way, with a large chunk of the spell matrix just instantly slotting into place. I was now almost sure that this meant I had some sort of talent for conjuration, along with a minor skill or natural predisposition to healing magic, as it had also been a bit easier. Unfortunately, that meant I would likely have a very hard time with illusion magic, as learning clairvoyance had been a pain in the ass.


    I crossed my fingers that alteration wasn''t worse.


    The first day we were staking out the hangar, nothing really happened. We watched throughout the day, but there was no activity. The other hangars were bustling, with shipments going out and coming in constantly. The freighters that landed there were hardly there for more than a few hours, unloading their goods and immediately loading new ones on before leaving up into space. People would also get on or off the freighters, but that only happened a few times. We also observed a small guards unit that patrolled the interior and area around the entrance. They never went near the still-empty hangar but frequently walked around and into the other hangars.


    I spent most of the time practicing my healing spell, casting and recasting it repeatedly with my hand under a heavy jacket. It was interesting, despite the fact that the spell usually swirled and glowed around my hand, not just from my palm, covering it completely hid all of that, like covering a holoprojector lens.


    Late on the second day, only a few hours after noon, we noticed the first clue that something was up. The other hangars, which previously hadn''t been empty for more than thirty minutes at any point we had observed, were completely cleared out. The last freighter left, and no new ones came to replace them. We next noticed that the armed guards had also left, walking away from the building in pairs of two, disappearing into the crowd.


    About twenty-five minutes after the last freighter left, a familiar transport speeder slowly pulled up to the usually empty hangar. An armed <u>Gran</u></a> stepped out of the passenger side, walked to the hangar gate, and opened it, waving the speeder through before stepping in and closing the gate behind it. I turned to Nal and Tatnia, the former looking confident, hand resting casually on his still-holstered pistol, while the latter looked ready but a little more anxious.


    "You guys ready?" I asked, both of them nodded in confirmation. "Alright, let''s do this."


    I stepped away from our hiding spot and crossed the alley, heading towards the Hangar entrance, trying to look as calm and collected as possible. The transport speeder was already inside the docking berth, the large sliding gate closed behind it. As we got closer to the hangar, Nal stopped about halfway into the u-shaped inner area, leaning inside one of the door frames, ready to pop out and ambush the speeder as it came out.


    While he was getting into position, Tatnia and I kept walking, not stopping until we were much closer to our target hangar. I hid behind some sort of repulsorlift hauler, and Tatnia leaned back into another door well. Both of us wouldn''t be visible until the front end of the speeder passed us, at which point it wouldn''t matter.


    Five minutes passed, then ten, before a ship, a different one than we had arrived on, flew over the hangar and landed inside. It was one of the earlier YT - series light freighters, the series that the Millennium Falcon was a part of, though I couldn''t quite remember all of them. It might have been a <u>YT-1000</u></a>, but my extra memory wasn''t helping.


    I waited a few more minutes before starting to cast my conjure familiar, dumping half of my mana into it on top of the start-up. With that much mana, it would last for a good two minutes. With a sizzle of magick, I cast the spell, which activated behind the same hauler I was. A roiling spinning ball of magic expanded on the spot, revealing my familiar. The dangerous feline immediately crouched low, silently baring its massive teeth.


    I motioned for it to be quiet, even though it wasn''t really necessary. The tiger obeyed the instructions I fed it through my spell, which was coincidentally why you couldn''t just conjure up a hundred creatures and let them fight for you. The spell latched onto you after you cast it, but it still took up a certain amount of aetheric space. Trying to summon a second familiar would cause the first spell would fail. Even worse, without that connection, the summon would run rampant until the magic you fed into them ran out. I directed the conjured tiger to walk around the side of the hauler, putting it out of view of the street and giving it an easy path to the gate. I gave one last look around, getting a nod from Tatnia, before focusing on the moment.


    We were ready.

 Chapter 7

    We waited another minute, my mana filling entirely by the time the gate finally started to shift and rumble, slowly sliding open. On the other side was the speeder, which slowly pulled out of the hangar bay and into the open space. On the other side of the gate, I could see a few people walking around, with a single person, the Gran, by the gate, ready to close it after the speeder was through.


    My tiger summon ran forward with a mental command through the connected spell, crossing the gap in a few seconds. It leaped into the air and took down the first goon, knocking him away from the gate control panel and wrapping its jaws around their neck. Purple blood sprayed out as it bit down, a strangled scream getting everyone''s attention.


    From the corner of my eye, I saw Nal step out of the doorway, blaster pistol already out, aiming at the front of the speeder, before turning to focus on my job. Shouting echoed from the hangar bay as the other slavers spotted their friend getting munched on and torn to pieces. They obviously were confused, as from their perspective, it looked like a hologram of a creature was killing their friend. When Nal opened fire on the speeder behind us, they suddenly understood something was happening.


    With the gate controller dead, I sent the tiger in to attack the next closest slaver, the ethereal feline racing toward the Weequay. By now, blasters were out and trained on the summoned animal, and a half dozen blasts of red energy shot out to intercept the tiger, immediately followed up by a half dozen more. Their aim was terrible, but two shots hit the summon, and the spell collapsed into itself, disappearing in a gush of harmless energy.


    Its purpose was served, however, because while everyone was focused on the tiger, no one noticed Tatnia and me stepping in, pulling our weapons out, and opening fire.


    Tatnia''s aim was near perfect, the blast of red energy slapping into her nearest target and dropping them, their neck burnt from the blaster bolt. Her next shot wasn''t nearly as accurate but still impacted her target''s chest, sending them to the ground and letting her finish them off with a second and third shot.


    My own shooting wasn''t nearly impressive, but it was still generally effective. My first two shots took down a nearby <u>Rodian</u></a>, one in the shoulder and one in the hip. I made a note to double-check he was dead before stepping further into the hangar, aiming and firing at my next target, a human who was already turning towards us.


    By now, all focus was shifting, and they began returning fire in a rapid spray of scarlet energy. It crossed the hangar space from the three remaining slavers standing. One of them began backing up the access ramp into the ship, trying to get inside.


    As laser fire came towards both of us, Tatnia and I dove for cover behind a pair of recharge stations and access terminals, both of them sparking under the impact of more laser fire. I quickly charged up another conjure familiar and aimed it as far away as I could, just about two-thirds of the way between me and the remaining goons. My tiger suddenly appeared and immediately ran forward, drawing attention and fire away from us. Both Tatnia and I leaned out from cover and fired around my conjured familiar, both of us managing to take down another target.


    The laser fire stopped as my tiger pounced on the final goon, taking him down and finishing them off with a single vicious bite. A second later, it faded away, having already run out of magic. By then, Tatnia and I were already rushing under the ship, wanting to get on board as fast as possible in case anyone tried to take off. We climbed the gangway quickly, peeking over the edge before climbing inside.


    We both tore through the ship, finding and taking down two more goons when we pushed into a break room. I also had a fully charged tiger following me around, jumping into each room we entered so we wouldn''t get ambushed. When we eventually reached the cockpit, Tatnia sat down and immediately started flicking and pushing buttons, finally nodding and looking back around at me.


    "Scanners say there isn''t anyone else on board. Looks like we got them all," She said, looking back down at the control panels. "Take off will take about ten minutes. No way I''m taking off in this scrap pile without running a full preflight check."


    "Are we going to be dealing with Enforcers?" I asked, looking out at the hangar through the cockpit window.


    "Did you call them?" Tatnia asked. "Cause these guys sure as hell didn''t. We will be fine. Just keep an eye out."


    --------------------?


    Nal was already long gone when I exited the ship, following the plan to meet us at the junkyard after releasing the would-be slaves somewhere relatively safe. I quickly started going through each of the slaver corpses, grabbing credits, blasters, power packs, and anything else worthwhile, though I wasn''t nearly as thorough as I had been before, as time was short and we needed to hurry.


    As I worked, I had my tiger summon drag out the corpses of the slavers from inside before dumping our loot off in the same break room we had caught two of the crew inside the ship. I pocketed the credits, which were worth less than a thousand, before feeling the whole ship tremble slightly, the power shifting as we took off. I made my way back up to the cockpit, watching the view quickly change as we lifted from the hangar and into the sky.


    "Everything going well?" I asked, looking around at the hundreds of buttons, nobs, switches, and levers that ultimately meant very little to me.


    "This thing should have been sent to a junkyard ages ago," She responded with a scowl. "Half of the internal sensors are busted, and the other half are reading out warnings."


    "Are we going to have issues?"


    "No, I can get us there."


    "Good. I''m going to start clearing out the cabins and the storage. I want to know about anything we can charge extra for."


    Tatnia nodded, and after a few seconds, I patted the back of her chair and left, heading back. The plan was for us to head to space for a few hours, giving Nal enough time to fly the speeder to the junkyard and giving us time to comb through the ship.


    I started by heading to the cargo bays, which took me a few minutes to find. The larger bay was clearly modified to transport slaves, with all access and control panels blocked off or removed and chain mounts attached to the wall. The other was filled with supplies and other stuff, including a worn and laser-scored <u>speeder bike.</u></a> It was also clearly modified with a decent-sized cargo module securely attached to the front. Still, it seemed to be in workable condition. It was also armed with two small laser cannons, spread out just wide enough to shoot around the storage module.


    When Tantia was finished piloting the ship into a decent place to wait, she made her way back to the cargo bay, having walked through the slave room. She looked disgusted, shaking her head.


    "Nal got in contact," She said while peeking under the lid of a container. "He took everyone to a cheap spaceport and is now on his way. He''s about an hour and a half out from the junkyard¡­ Says he has a tag-along. A mechanic with nothing to go back to."


    I was nodding along, primarily focused on opening the cargo pod in front of me, until she mentioned the last bit. When she did, I turned to look at her in surprise.


    "Really? Well, we will need that, but let''s hope they are up for getting their hands dirty too. Did he say anything else?"


    When she shook her head, we started going through the cargo together. She tested the speeder bike, which started up immediately, to my surprise. She estimated that it would probably be able to carry about double its standard capacity with the modifications. Since it had a decent amount of storage and was functional, we ended up storing everything we wanted to take off the ship inside it.


    Once we were done going through the cargo bay, which had a decent amount of food and spare parts, we started going through the crew quarters. We found a few hidden credit stashes, totaling about four thousand credits, most of which came from the captain''s quarters. We also found a few data pads worth taking, a couple of med packs of varying grades that we eagerly took, a bunch of energy packs, and a lot of junk that wasn''t worth its weight. We put what was worth taking into the speeder, along with all of the blasters that I had looted. We each took two hundred credits for ourselves, including what I had taken from the corpses, and I held onto Nal''s cut for now. I also grabbed ten binders from their storage, as well as the control rod linked to them. They could come in handy, and it was better to have and not need than need and not have.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    We ended up filling all of the extra space left over in the speeder bike with two weeks'' worth of sealed and stable food from the cargo bay. We were double-checking everything when Nal messaged us on our comms units, telling us that they were just arriving at the junkyard and were about to head into the main shop.


    Tatnia and I both returned to the cockpit, and I watched her pilot the ship back down into the atmosphere. The ship rattled and shook several times, causing Tatnia to curse, but we eventually made it. She was in contact with some sort of government faction most of the way, which asked for her landing vector and location, which she happily answered. There were no questions about identification numbers or anything like that, which was unsurprising considering where we were.


    We landed rather roughly in a cramped scrapyard, one that was several times larger than the entire hangar complex we had just come from. As we did, we could see Nal, a pink Twi''lek female, and an older human male waiting by what was probably the office for the scrapyard. Tatnia shut everything down and let out a long breath, calming herself before looking at me.


    "I hate piloting," She said, with heavy emphasis. "Especially without a co-pilot. Don''t make me do it more than I need to."


    "Ah¡­ Sorry. I never had the opportunity to learn," I explained, rubbing the back of my head. "Does Nal know how to fly?"


    "He said he could. Any mechanic worth anything should be able to as well."


    We headed off the ship, which was clicking and ticking as it cooled down from its short trip. Nal and the Twi''lek female were waiting for us at the bottom of the ramp.


    "Good to see you. And unharmed as well. This is Miru. She wanted to stick around," Nal said, gesturing to the woman beside him.


    I reached out my hand, which she took confidently. I could already tell she was on the younger side, maybe even younger than eighteen. I hated to involve someone so young in something like this, but I would at least hear her story first.


    "Nice to meet you, Miru, my name''s Deacon, this is Tatnia, and I''m sure Nal''s introduced himself already," I said, shaking her hand once before letting go. "He mentioned you''re a mechanic? We don''t really have the resources to have someone on board who isn''t an active participant just yet¡­."


    "I can handle a blaster just fine," She said, just the barest hint of an accent coming through as she talked. "I am better at fixing things than breaking them, but I would never say no to killing slavers."


    "And Nal explained that this isn''t a charity group?" Tatnia asked, cutting me off from asking a similar question. "That this isn''t about saving all the slaves?"


    "He did, and I agree. I am all for helping out, but I''m not ready to fight the entirety of Hutt space."


    We talked a bit more, Miru explaining that she was actually a second-generation slave. When she was younger, she had already been freed once, only to return to Ryloth with her parents to get snatched up again. Her parents did nothing to stop it, so she had no interest in returning to them. It was a horrible story to hear, but she handled it well. That or she was jaded as hell and would likely crack later.


    "I would have been out in a few months," She assured us as we waited for the owner of the junkyard to examine the slaver ship. "I already know how to disable a slave chip, and as skilled as I am, I would have been put to work in a shop, not sent to shake my ass on a stage."


    It took a bit for me to realize it, but she spoke with a faint French accent, which threw me for a loop. At first, I wondered if she was sent here by entities as well, but after several not-so-subtle references to Earth pop culture, I was pretty sure that wasn''t the case. I asked Tatnia later, and apparently, that was the typical Twi''lek accent.


    About an hour after we landed, the older human owner of the yard came out of the ship and offered us fifteen thousand credits for both the transport speeder and the ship, which made both Nal and Miru laugh while Tatnia just scowled.


    "The material scrap alone is worth that much," Miru said, shaking her head. "Even if only half of the ship was working, it''s worth twice that."


    "Maybe, but we all know you''re not going to get that much for it," He responded with a shrug. "But I suppose that is a little low. Twenty thousand."


    We negotiated for a while, by which I mean Tatnia and Miru negotiated, and Nal and I watched. Eventually, Miru pulled me aside while Tatnia kept it up.


    "Boss, we need transportation, right?" She asked, and I nodded in confirmation. "Maybe something big enough to live out of? Something we can travel around the planet with?"


    "Yeah, that would be good, at least until we save enough to buy a halfway decent ship," I responded. "And boss? Really?"


    "I was looking around earlier while we were waiting. He has an <u>A-A5 speeder </u></a>in the back, with some serious aftermarket modifications that I don''t think he realizes are there," She explained, now talking softly and leading me away. "It''s missing some parts, but it looked mostly intact. It could function as a mobile base¡­."


    She led me around the junkyard to a large chunky speeder. It was painted gray with a blue highlight running down the side. The interior was spacious, and she assured me that the engines and repulsorlift were already beefed up to a full flight model, a costly modification. Its energy systems were also improved to handle the addition. She also pointed out that these speeder trucks were known for their reliability and power. Even better was that its laser turret emplacement was still in place, almost entirely untouched.


    "Give me Six hours and three thousand credits, and I could turn this thing into a mobile base for us," She explained confidently. "With the improvements already done to its thrusters and energy system, plus the cannon on top¡­ it''s got some serious problem-solving ability."


    I spent a few more minutes inspecting the vehicle with her and agreed that despite being dusty and clearly heavily used, the equipment and internals seemed to be in excellent shape. Miru explained that baseline, in the state that it was, the speeder was worth around five thousand credits. But with the aftermarket energy and thruster upgrades, it was worth seven or eight thousand. When she got it working and replaced a few parts, it would be worth even more.


    "Alright. Consider this your audition," I said eventually, focusing on the younger Twi''lek. "You get this thing working, and you''re part of the team."


    "Alright, Boss, I''ll start looking for some of the missing parts," She said with a serious nod before heading for a nearby vehicle.


    I returned to the rest of the group, Tatnia managing to get the owner to twenty-six thousand credits. I put my hand on Tatnia''s shoulder, and she stopped, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.


    "What about twenty-one thousand credits, the A-A5 Speeder you have in back, and the few parts to get it running again?" I offered, getting a harsh look from Tatnia.


    "That vehicle is likely worth five thousand credits," The owner pointed out.


    "I know, which means it adds up pretty well to the offer you just made," I countered. "I think we both know this is a pretty fair offer."


    He hemmed and hawed for a few minutes before finally agreeing, shaking my hand, and returning to his office to get us the money. Tatnia turned to face me, her hands on her hips. She clearly wasn''t happy that I had butt into her negotiation.


    "Miru said it''s worth the money, and she says she can get it running quickly," I explained, trying to head off her frustration.


    "And you just believe her?"


    "It checks all the boxes for what we need and gives her a chance to prove herself," I explained with a shrug. "If she fucks it up, we give her the boot and take it to a repair shop. It''s an armed speeder with enough room for all of us, something we desperately need. We are set for transport between it and the speeder bike, at least until we get a space-worthy ship."


    After thinking for a moment, she nodded, accepting that we needed a transport like that, and if what Miru was saying was true, it had been a pretty good deal.

 Chapter 8

    About two hours into watching Miru work on the speeder, Tatnia was no longer complaining about her joining the team, beyond just not knowing her. It was abundantly clear that the young Twi''lek was an extremely skilled mechanic. She all but flew around the yard, pulling pieces out of other speeders, cleaning up parts, and modifying a few of them before installing them into the A-A5. She also pulled a few pieces out of the A-A5 and worked them over, even trading a few of them out.


    Of course, we weren''t sitting idle while she worked. Tatnia helped out where she could, as she knew some basic speeder maintenance, while I was stuck cleaning since I knew absolutely nothing. A quick check of the cockpit, and I knew I could pilot the speeder with minimal trial and error, but beyond being able to tell when something was clearly burnt out or cracked, I was useless for repair.


    Scraping gunk from the repulsorlifts wasn''t exactly glamorous, but someone had to do it. I also wasn''t going to try convincing my new friends to let me sit on my ass and relax while they worked hard.


    While we worked on getting the speeder truck up and running, Nal was off with the speeder bike doing some shopping. We had taken the stuff we planned on keeping out of the speeder bike storage module, including the food and a <u>blaster pistol</u></a> for Miru. The rest Nal would sell. I also handed him two thousand credits we got from selling the ship, the money we looted from the ship, and the slavers themselves, totaling about seven thousand credits.


    "We need four blaster rifles, at least one capable of longer range, ammo packs for them, and some spares for our pistols. We also need two collapsible beds, a decent tool kit for Miru, some basic combat gear if you can find some, and anything you see that you think we need," I explained, the blue alien nodding in agreement. "Oh, two hundred of those credits are yours from the raid. Tatnia and I already took ours. You should probably check with the other two to see if they need anything."


    He left shortly after that, a list saved on his newly claimed and wiped datapad.


    The owner of the junkyard kept an eye on us as we continued to work on the speeder truck, speaking up more than once about what parts Miru was taking. Apparently, the ambitious young Twi''lek kept trying to use parts that were technically upgraded to what the A-A5 would actually have. I had her put most of them back, but a few she explained would be worth the extra money, so we paid half price for them.


    Four hours after he left, Nal returned. By then, I had finished wiping down the interior of the speeder and had started using a sonic scrubber to wash the grime off of the exterior. We didn''t want it looking new, as that''s how you got things stolen, but some of the grime build-ups were actually bad for the heat sinks that kept the repulsorlifts cool.


    The Duros pulled back into the junkyard with the speeder bike slightly overloaded, extra containers strapped to the custom storage module. He quickly hopped off the speeder and waved me over, and together we offloaded everything he had bought.


    He bought three <u>blaster rifles</u></a>, which he assured me were basic models that would serve us well but weren''t anything to comm home about. What he was excited about was the <u>proton rifle</u></a> he managed to find, a long-ranged, high-powered weapon that was usually worth around three thousand credits but that he got for just under two thousand.


    He managed to get his hands on some decent <u>armor</u></a>, which was just a basic plate system we would wear over our regular clothes. It was just the torso armor, but that was a whole lot better than nothing. He also got <u>helmets</u></a>, which looked like a different model version of the helmet Leia and Luke wore during the Battle of Endor. Hopefully, they would keep anyone from being instakilled.


    The rest of his shopping was basic, primarily supplies and the beds I requested. The A-A2 had two collapsable bunks that would deploy from the back benches, so with these two additional beds, we wouldn''t need to spend money on hotel rooms. Which was good because it was one less way for us to be tracked as we went around the planet liberating slaver money.


    Nal also bought a portable sonic shower, which I thanked him profusely for, as I hadn''t even thought of that. He just chuckled and patted my shoulder. When we were done unloading the speeder bike, Nal started helping with the repairs, and I went back to cleaning.


    After just over five hours, Miru slid down the slanted front end of the speeder truck, dropping down to the ground before dusting off her hands.


    "That''s all I can really do here, even with the extra tools you got me. Thanks for that, by the way," She said with a confident grin. "I fixed all the major issues, replaced all the parts that had been taken out, caught a few issues that would have popped up after a few weeks of running and managed to snag some upgrades. It isn''t going to be able to take on a hover tank, but she''s a fair fight with any civilian speeder you throw it against."


    "Not bad, Miru. I think I speak for all of us when I say welcome to the team," I said, smiling and offering my hand, which she shook with a cocky grin. "It will be good to have someone on board who can maintain our stuff."


    "Easy, I''ll keep everything up and running," She assured me, shaking Nal''s and Tatnia''s hands next. "So¡­ now that I''m part of the team¡­ what''s the end goal?"


    "Well¡­ for now the goal is to keep stealing from slavers until we have enough to buy a halfway decent ship," I explained, the pink-skinned Twi''lek''s eyes widening at the mention of a ship. "Beyond that¡­ well, I think making a mercenary company was on the table, but I''m down for generalized adventurers as well."


    "Adventurers?" Tatnia asked. "What does that mean?"


    "Sounds intriguing, but yes, what is it?" Nal asked as well.


    "Adventurers are¡­ huh, it''s hard to explain without cultural touchstones from home," I admitted, thinking to myself before continuing. "Adventurers are professional trouble magnets. We travel the galaxy, looking for anything interesting. Following mysterious rumors, scavenging old battlegrounds and ruins, taking bounties, hunting dangerous animals to harvest and sell."


    "That¡­ sounds an awful lot like mercenaries," Miru pointed out.


    "Yeah, probably," I responded with a shrug. "But it''s more proactive. Instead of advertising and being hired, an adventurer would go out and find things to do."


    We talked about it for a while, and I somehow managed to resist making a knee joke the entire time. Eventually, Nal cut us off, shaking his head.


    "We have gotten distracted," He said before turning slightly to gesture to the A-A5 speeder truck. "Should we not focus?"


    "Right! You need to start her up, Boss," Miru said, handing me the activation chip for the speeder. "See if I did a good job."


    "Really? You realize I was here the whole time, right? While you were testing it over and over again?" I asked, still taking the chip. "And still with the boss thing?"


    I tapped the closer side door with the chip key, the door clicking inwards slightly before sliding open with a strained whirring. I climbed inside to see everything Nal had bought set up inside, including the laser rifles stacked in a handy weapon rack along the back. Nal, Miru, and Tatnia followed me inside, with Miru following me into the cockpit and dropping into the co-pilot''s seat. It took me a second to find the slot, but eventually, I slid the activation chip into the console. A low thrum reverberates through the vehicle, the lights and buttons coming on immediately. Seconds after them, the front panels lit up, each of them going through a boot-up sequence before displaying their information.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    The repulsors lifted the truck off the ground, kicking in after the boot-up sequences finished. Everything was working well as far as I could tell, and after taking a look at Miru, I could see she agreed.


    "Alright¡­ let''s pack everything up and get the hell out of here," I said with a smile. "The quicker we can put some distance between here and us, the better."


    ------------


    It took us a few minutes to pack everything up and leave, with Tatnia driving the speeder bike and the rest of us inside the A-A5. We stayed on the ground for now since the speeder bike couldn''t fly with us if we took to the sky. Nal and Miru were in the cockpit, the door opened so we could all talk. I was sitting on one of the speeder''s benches, grimoire in my lap as I practiced the healing spell. I was primarily focused on the book, reading the introduction to the lesser ward spell, trying my best to ingrain the healing spell into my head so I could do it without thinking.


    I was already noticing that the spell was coming to me easier than before, which was good. Healing was the spell I had been using the most, actively practicing it instead of only using it when I was fighting. I shook my head and refocused on the reading, restarting the sentence to make sure I didn''t miss anything.


    Eventually, I turned the page of the grimoire, cutting off the healing spell and then activating it again in the opposite hand. The next page contained two detailed diagrams of the same spell matrix from two different angles, with notes pointing to several points. I frowned, unconsciously tilting my head as I tried to make heads or tails of the matrix.


    After a few minutes of studying the diagrams, I let the healing spell fade, feeling my mana slowly begin to recharge. I was steadily getting used to the feeling of being drained of energy, the hollow feeling getting more tolerable, especially after having drained it completely more times than I could count at this point. When my magicka had returned, I closed my eyes and focused on the matrix, using the same imagery I always used to pull, twist and draw the energy out, slowly forging it into shape.


    After about fifteen minutes of working out the spell matrix and consulting the diagram a few dozen times, I was relatively sure I got it into the proper dimension and shape. The matrix was interesting, similar in some small ways to the healing spell, which I found bizarre, but it also had a vastly different execution.


    With the matrix set up, I once again started the tuning process. The first chunk required minimal turning, my mana flowing through easily. After that, my progress slowed, meticulously adjusting the matrix as I made my way through the rest of the spell, spending a bit over two more hours tuning and aligning the rest of the spell matrix to myself. I finally got the spell to work, the surprise of feeling the magic finally push through and cast, shocking me enough to drop the spell before the ward could even fully form.


    I reformed the adjusted spell quickly, this time standing to cast, my hand held out before pushing my mana through.


    Mana spun through the matrix and shifted form, a wall of projected energy forming in front of me, radiating from a central core of energy that floated in front of my palm. There was a shimmering flash that slightly reduced visibility through the mostly see-through center of the spell, while the outer rim of the protective energy shield glowed with a very pale blue. I would have no idea how strong it was until I had a chance to test it, but the spell itself seemed to work. Now I-


    "WHAT THE KRIFF!"


    The young Twi''lek was standing in the cockpit doorway, her eyes wide and her jaw hanging open as she stared at me. Her sudden shout of surprise had scared me enough that the spell failed. The protective barrier fluttered and collapsed as the spell matrix dissolved.


    "What is wrong?" Nal asked, still piloting the speeder.


    "H-h-he was doing some sort of¡­ I don''t know, but he was doing something!" Miru responded, stepping back into the cockpit, still focused on me. "It was all bright and glowy!"


    "Oh, yes. He does that," Nal said, shaking his head, looking over his shoulder at me. "Is that safe to do inside a moving vehicle?"


    "This one is. It''s a protective barrier I can hold out in front of me," I explained. "Nothing dangerous."


    "Interesting. Will it hold up to a blaster?"


    "I have no idea. I''m going to have to test it out," I answered. "I''m pretty sure I can cast it off to the side and let one of you shoot it. If not¡­ Well, there was a reason I learned the healing spell first."


    As we casually talked about my magic, Miru looked back and forth between us, her eyes still wide in disbelief. Eventually us more or less ignoring her got on her nerves enough that she recovered.


    "Alright, will one of you please tell me what the hell is going on!" She said, looking at Nal last. "Is the Boss some sort of cyborg?"


    "He claims that he is not," He answered, a smile still audible in his voice as he focused on piloting the speeder. "He claims he has some sort of energy inside him."


    The probable teenager looked back at me, glowering as she walked back and sat on the bench across from me. She still looked a bit unnerved by what she saw, but her annoyance was clearly helping her ignore that.


    "Alright, out with it," She said. "Nal clearly knows what''s going on, so I should know too."


    "I wasn''t planning on hiding it from you, Miru. I honestly just forgot," I assured her, pulling the book away, feeling its familiar weight as it disappeared.


    "Wha- Ho- What the hell, Deacon?" she said, staring at where my grimoire had just been. "Where did that just go?"


    "Somewhere else," I responded simply, breezing past her question. "Do you want me to explain what''s going on or not?"


    She crossed her arms and gave me another look before nodding. I couldn''t help but chuckle before slowly going explaining the basics of my ability. I demonstrated how I could summon a sword before using that sword to cut myself, healing the wound while Miru watched. She then proceeded to hide a bolt in several places around the cargo space, which I would find every time with the clairvoyance spell.


    "That¡­ I don''t know what to make of that," She finally admitted. "I guess that explains why Nal said you were the boss."


    "Wait, you''re responsible for that?" I asked, looking through the doorway. "Really? Boss?"


    "Worse things to go by," He pointed out. "Boss."


    "...Dammit."


    Muri giggled, our byplay setting her off. I smiled and chuckled with her, only to frown when I realized what was happening.


    Her giggling slowly turned to laughter, starting off light but quickly spiraling until it was clearly uncontrollable and manic. It seemed like floodgates were open, the terror she had been exposed to over the last few days finally catching up with her. Soon she was sobbing, breathing hard, and I had to jump up to catch her as she started sliding off of the bench, losing control of herself.


    I held the young woman as she cried and shook, sitting on the floor of the small cargo space. She all but threw herself against me, holding my shirt with a death grip, her knuckles turning white, even with her pink skin. I did my best to comfort her as she sobbed her heart out, releasing her emotion in a singular deluge.


    Eventually, she fell asleep, having cried out any remaining energy.

 Chapter 9

    I woke up the following day sprawled out on one of the collapsible beds Nal had bought for us the day before. At some point, we had landed next to an abandoned, run-down building in one of the more deserted and empty parts of the city sector we had traveled to. Tatnia and Nal had set up the beds, including the two pull-down bunks that came installed in the A-A5 cargo space, and I had put Miru, still asleep, onto one of them. Not long after that, the rest of us also headed to sleep, tired from a long day of activity.


    As quietly as possible, I sat up on the cot''s edge, looking over everyone else as they still slept. The beds were surprisingly comfortable given how utilitarian in design they seemed to be, though I supposed I shouldn''t be surprised. Nal and Tatnia had claimed the fold-out bunks and were still fast asleep while Miru was sleeping on the other collapsible bed.


    I watched the sleeping Twi''lek for a long moment, her face showing none of the pain she had sobbed through the night before. Holding Miru as she cried had been a bit of a wake-up call for me, really hammering home that this was very real. This Star Wars universe was now my home, and I needed to stop treating it like it was a setting from some movies and books. I needed to take this seriously because while I wasn''t here to shift the universe on its head, I had somehow become at least semi-responsible for the sleeping people in front of me. They clearly listened to what I said, and while I didn''t think they would follow my orders without question, that still meant I needed to take this seriously.


    And step one of that process was figuring out when the hell I was in the timeline.


    Still trying to stay quiet, I stood up from the cot and walked to the cockpit, sealing the door behind me. The sun shining through the windshield told me that it was early morning, the skies already busy with air speeders and transports. I sat in the co-pilot''s chair and pulled out one of the cleared datapads, tabbing through its holonet connection.


    While I hadn''t been actively avoiding finding out when precisely these entities had placed me, I had been putting off finding out for sure by sitting down and looking it up. There was a certain level of freedom that came from not being able to connect all of my meta-knowledge to anything that was currently happening in the galaxy. I flicked through the holonet, focused on figuring out when I was on the timeline I knew.


    Immediately I hit a snag. The books had always sat on a timeline that used the Battle of Yavin as its zero date. Unfortunately, as far as I could remember, that was completely arbitrary and had nothing to do with the in-universe date. My entity-given knowledge knew it was currently 7977.435.4 CRC, but I had no idea where that would fall on the timeline I could remember. The CRC calendar was never mentioned anywhere in the stories, or at least anywhere I could recall. In fact, I couldn''t remember dates or times ever being mentioned at all. I was stuck trying to connect the knowledge I knew about the universe with the knowledge I had from the universe.


    That is until I stumbled on an Imperial-sponsored news site reporting that the destruction of Alderaan had been to prevent the propagation of biological weapons created by the planet''s rebellious government.


    I quickly dived deeper, looking up the destruction of the peaceful planet, feeling sick as I read through dozens of conspiracy theories surrounding it. There were a surprising amount of reports saying that the Empire was responsible and that Alderaan and its people had done nothing wrong, something I would have assumed the Empire would have suppressed.


    Eventually, I found clips of the Death Star floating above the idyllic planet, the people panicking and recording it with their comms units, wondering what was happening. I also found footage of the same Death Star exploding, shot from space a far distance away. I didn''t spend too long looking at it, just enough to confirm that it had happened a few months ago and that the rebellion was going strong.


    I let out a long sigh, shaking my head and looking out of the windshield, watching the hundreds and hundreds of speeders flying through the air, people going about their day. All of them were real people, living their lives and doing their best to survive. I took another long breath and let it out.


    I had no desire to dedicate my entire existence to the rebellion or throw my life away trying to solve this whole galaxy''s problems. But if I had been dropped in before the destruction of Alderaan, with enough time to actually do something about it? What kind of person would I be if I put my own preference or safety ahead of the lives of an entire planet?


    I felt guilty even acknowledging it, but with the planet''s death in the past, I would be able to set my own schedule with a bit more flexibility. I would help where I could, maybe even donate some of my time if the opportunity provided itself, but I wasn''t about to go out of my way to become Luke Skywalker''s best buddy.


    Someday I might step up, especially if we got involved with something I recognized, but for now, I needed to focus on myself and my own group.


    I continued to ponder the future, my meta knowledge, and what exactly I planned on doing with it until my friends started to wake up. Nal was first, quickly followed by Miru and Tatnia. We shared a quick breakfast of shelf-stable, pre-packaged meals. They were self-heating with the addition of a bit of water, heating up to a decent-sized meal that actually tasted pretty good if you could get past the obvious artificial nature. Once everything was done, Nal set up the sonic shower, hooking it to the side of the speeder truck, and we each took our turn with it.


    As I was getting clean, I realized that the sonic shower explained why people like Han Solo had such a signature look. If you were looking to save money, buying one outfit and wearing it constantly was perfectly viable. All you had to do was step into the sonic shower while wearing it, simultaneously cleaning yourself and your clothes nearly perfectly without reducing the clothes'' lifespan like putting it on a washing machine and dryer would.


    While Tatnia was getting clean, the rest of us set up a temporary shooting range inside the abandoned building we had spent the night next to. This area was run down, and we had parked in the back of a large abandoned building. With any luck, no one would call the Enforces on us for trying out our new guns and getting a little practice in.


    The first thing I wanted to try was our new blaster rifles and the new proton rifle. As we pulled the weapons out and carried them inside, I couldn''t help but marvel at how normal the weapons felt. In many ways, they were completely indistinguishable from regular guns from back home.


    Once we were settled, we started shooting down the longest hallway we could find in the building, aiming at random trash that we had gathered inside the building. Luckily the abandoned structure was almost entirely permacrete, so there was only a minimal fire risk.


    After shooting the rifle a few times, Nal started giving me a few pointers, which actually helped quite a bit. Miru teased me for not knowing some of the tricks for shooting a blaster rifle, but after I blasted a double-handed sparks spell down the hall, zapping a trash can until it was glowing red in a few spots, she stopped. She smacked my shoulder when I teased her for pouting.


    Firing the proton rifle was fun too. The recoil and flash of light it created was intense, but the fact that it drilled straight through a permacrete wall only served to drive home how much of a powerful weapon it was. Unfortunately, ammo for it was expensive and relatively rare, so we could each only shoot it two or three times for practice before packing the gun away.


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    After getting in some practice with our blaster pistols as well, it was time to finally test the lesser ward. I walked down the hall we were shooting down before stepping into a doorway. I held my hand out and cast the spell, the glowing protective shield lighting up the dim hallway and room. After taking a long breath, I called out that I was ready.


    The first shot was a stun blast, which the ward blocked easily. However, I still felt the impact soaking into the shield, leaving my hand slightly tingly. After that, they tried a blaster pistol, starting slow and increasing the frequency over time. The ward held through the slowest test, a single shot every five seconds, but failed once they had increased to a single shot every three seconds. When they fired a blaster rifle at it, the shield died after absorbing a single shot.


    This was extremely promising and made me very interested in unlocking some of the later ward versions. That said, the shield failing stung like a bastard, like I had just caught a fastball with my bare hands. I was not looking forward to how the more powerful wards felt when they failed. I was slightly worried it would be harsh enough to distract me from any other spells I was casting, a dangerous thing when fighting.


    The last thing we tested, after packing everything back up, was the weapon systems on the A-A5 and the speeder bike, which Miru had identified as a trade federation combat speeder called an MVR-3. We saved these for last because we were all pretty sure they would attract a lot of attention.


    The speeder truck''s weapon, which was normally controlled by the co-pilot, blasted massive chunks through a permacrete wall with bright red energy. It was loud, and while it wasn''t the most powerful vehicle-mounted weapon, it would absolutely annihilate any civilian vehicle that a slaver might be using.


    The blaster cannons mounted to the MVR-3 were slightly less powerful but still carved deep holes in the same permacrete wall. It would probably punch through civilian vehicles but would definitely eviscerate anyone not inside a building or armored vehicle.


    With the weapons tested, we quickly hopped into the cargo space of the A-A5, while Nal climbed onto the speeder bike, leaving the abandoned building behind.


    ----------------


    We were flying for about an hour when Tatnia, who was co-piloting for Miru, finally broke the relative silence that had filled the speeder comfortably.


    "Alright, so what''s next?" She asked, looking over her shoulder to the cargo space. "We made some money and killed some slavers. Now we have more equipment than I have ever had access to before and more money than I''ve seen in a long time. So what''s next?"


    I looked up from my grimoire, pulling it back into myself when I realized this wasn''t just a quick conversation. At the mention of the money, I looked over at the bench opposite mine, which was actually a storage container. We had emptied it, cleaned it out, and now it was where we kept the 19000 credits we had made.


    "I mean, we rinse and repeat, right?" Miru asked, leaning forward to tap a few buttons on her console. "That''s why we are traveling across the planet, right? So we can go again?"


    "It is, but I think what Tatnia is trying to get at is that we don''t really have a target, right?" I asked, the older woman nodding. "Well¡­ that is something we will have to figure out."


    "Really, Boss? Isn''t that supposed to be your job?" Miru asked with a smirk. "The boss comes up with all the plans, right?"


    "Brat," I responded before leaning back on the surprisingly comfortable bench. "I guess the problem is that we don''t really have anything to work from. For the last job, we had our own experience to pull from. But I doubt we will be able to open the phone book and look up slaver docking berths."


    "One, what''s a phone book, two¡­ I see your point," Miru admitted.


    We were quiet for a long pause as we tried to think of our options when Nals'' slightly windswept voice suddenly filled the speeder.


    "What about slave markets?"


    All three of us shouted in shock at the unexpected inclusion of the Duros, who was currently flying the MVR-3 about thirty meters away. The speeder truck shook slightly as Miru jostled the controls, though she quickly corrected the mistake.


    "Nal¡­ What the fuck?" I asked, looking around the cargo space.


    "I set up a two-way comm program through the A-A5''s network and the speeder bikes pickup," He explained. "I did not want to left out of planning. Or whoever might be piloting the MVR-3."


    "How did I not see that?" Miru asked rhetorically, leaning in closer to one of her console screens, tapping at it for a second before leaning back and shaking her head. "Not a bad setup. I''ll refine it to something more permanent later.


    "Can we get back on topic, please?" Tatnia asked. "Nal, we can''t go after the markets. With how much money changes hands at one, there is no way they aren''t heavily defended. It would be like assaulting a Hutt bank."


    "Correct. But the markets are the hubs for the slave trade," He explained, pausing for a moment before continuing. "We can track speeders coming and going from the markets with some simple observation."


    "Not bad, Nal. Glad you were listening in," I said, stroking my beard. "So, we hang out around a slave market, wait for a transport to leave, and follow it back wherever it''s going. Then what? Stage a raid? We won''t know what is happening around that area."


    "Which means we run the risk of getting caught off guard," Tatnia added, and I nodded in agreement. "But if we hold back¡­ well, there is no guarantee that any slaver ship we find will use the same berth repeatedly, and we would be letting a group of people become slaves. "


    "Too many variables," Nal commented. "An immediate raid might be necessary."


    "You might be right¡­ but let''s start small, a proof of concept for tracking out from a market. We watch a market, follow a slave transport out¡­ and snatch it."


    "Just steal the transport?" Miru asked. "That seems¡­ small scale compared to what you guys just did."


    "It would be. Depending on the quality of the speeder¡­ we could earn a few thousand credits. Maybe," Tatnia answered. "But as a proof of concept, it would work. We would still be leaving the slaves to be taken away¡­."


    "It may be cold-hearted Tatnia, but we cannot save everyone," Nal said, his voice solemn and serious. "We cannot even save most. Focus on the good we can do."


    Tatnia let out a long breath, nodding after a long moment.


    "So¡­ Do we just look up nearby slave markets?" Miru asked. "Is that the kind of thing they put on the planetary holonet?"


    Tatnia and I shared a look before I pulled out my datapad and started looking it up. Turns out, they did advertise the market on the holonet, in a way sickeningly similar to a used car lot, with snapshots and price listings. I scrolled through, looking for location information and other details, sharing them with Tatnia. She also looked ill, shaking her head as she read through a separate site.


    After twenty minutes of research, we had our next target, a market an hour away from the area we were in. Tatnia found the site and pointed out the most important bit of information on the entire site.


    "It says who owns it," she explained. "I don''t recognize the name, but it''s not a Hutt, which is all that really matters."


    "Alright¡­ well in that case, Miru, head to that location," I said, pushing my grimoire back into my hands. "We can find someplace to park, and decide how we want to keep an eye on the market."

 Chapter 10

    We arrived in the general area of the market and quickly decided it was too heavily populated for us to hang around unnoticed. Instead, we flew around a little longer and found a tucked-away alley next to a run-down building. It wasn''t abandoned from what we could tell, but it may as well have been. The permacrete walls were covered with graffiti, and while we got quite a few looks, no one said anything. When Nal pulled the speeder bike into the alley next to us, he looked around and shrugged.


    "Good as any I saw," He said, having been flying around in a different direction, looking for a similar place to set down in. "Should take turns on watch."


    "Yeah¡­ that''s not a bad idea," I agreed, stepping back into the cargo space of the speeder truck.


    We both sat down on opposite benches by the cockpit, taking a second to sit back and think. Tatnia and Miru joined us a moment later on the other two benches, each of us in a <u>different corner</u></a>.


    "I think we should take another day," I said, leaning back in my seat. "The slower we take this, the slower the Enforcers catch on to what we are doing and start shooting down A-A5 whenever they see one."


    "We could mix it up," Miru suggested, having dragged the tool chest Nal had bought for her to her bench, slowly going through the tools and inspecting them. "I know you guys picked slavers ''cause it''s basically morally positive stealing, but there are plenty of messed up people on this planet to steal from."


    "I wouldn''t necessarily be against it, but it''s much harder to guarantee we aren''t killing some down-on-his-luck security guard who is just trying to provide for his family."


    Nal stayed quiet, but Tatnia scoffed and shook her head while Miru giggled at my hypothetical scenario.


    "I know, I know, it''s a bit much. But you can''t argue that someone standing guard for a spice runner is different from someone standing guard for a slave trader," I pointed out, getting two reluctant nods. "I would probably sleep fine after the former, but I know I''ll sleep well after the latter. Find us a target we know is bad and won''t come back to bite us in the ass, and we can talk."


    We discussed our options for a while longer, eventually deciding that, yes, we would be waiting for the next day to start watching the market. However, we also agreed that we would also hit a transport if an opportunity presented itself.


    With that decided, we basically split up. Nal and Tatnia left to scout out the surrounding area, mostly just making sure there wasn''t anything dangerous nearby and visiting a market Nal had spotted from the speeder bike. When they mentioned the market, I handed Tatnia a chunk of my own credits, asking her to pick me up a nice jacket, something cool but not too ostentatious. She gave me a look for a moment before shrugging and pocketing the credits.


    While they were gone, Miru and I carried her tools out next to the MVR-3 speeder, as Miru wanted to spend some time working on it. She was taking her role as the team mechanic seriously, and she wanted to get a sense of the bike''s condition so that no problems popped up during anything important. Both she and the bike were hidden from view by anyone out of the alley, meaning she would hopefully be left alone. We kept the door into the truck open and the sensors on in case she wasn''t. They would alert me if anyone was getting too close.


    While she was looking at the speeder internals, I was sitting on one of the interior benches, grimoire in my lap, slowly going over my spells. I was multitasking again, snapping the lesser ward on and off, over and over again, trying to commit it to memory while simultaneously reading up on the next spell I wanted to learn, oak skin. While a large part of me was tempted to learn another destruction spell, I hadn''t learned anything from the alteration branch, and I needed to know if I would struggle with it like I had with my first illusion spell. I also wanted to find out just how much more durable I would be with it cast on myself.


    The process was familiar by now. I started by reading through and working out the spell matrix before adjusting and experimenting with its size, shape, angles, and rotational position to get it tuned to myself. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that alteration was definitely not my strong suit, the tuning process taking the longest any single spell had taken me so far. Every single aspect of the matrix had to be adjusted, tuned, and shifted a dozen or more times. There was no staring gimme, where a chunk of the original matrix just worked, and every adjustment needed to be precise and exact, with none of the haphazard adjustments seeming to work. It was much more challenging and finicky than learning clairvoyance had been, though it was hard to say just how much more difficult it was.


    When I finally managed to oak flesh on myself, I let out a whoop of excitement before cursing to myself. I could feel the spell interacting poorly with the heavy-duty combat boots that Nal had bought me yesterday.


    The magic seemed to be shifting between my skin and the boots, the protective footwear seemingly absorbing some of the spell''s energy. I quickly pulled on my armored combat gear and cast the spell again, cursing louder as it interacted to an even greater degree, sapping and interfering with the spell''s structure and effectiveness.


    I knew that in the game, there was a perk that increased the potency of these protection spells, but only as long as you weren''t wearing armor. Judging by how much wearing armor was messing with the casting of the spell, I could only assume that in a more realistic setting, that showed up as armor actually reducing the spell''s effectiveness.


    I cursed under my breath a third time, recasting the spell a few dozen times, working it into my brain enough that I could practice more later without struggling to work out the matrix again. This spell, and its more potent variations, would be useful to know, but I would not be running around in robes, relying on it completely to protect me. I might be a wizard, but give me good, solid armor any day.


    Having answered several questions by learning my first alteration spell, I moved on to adding another combat spell to my repertoire. A large part of me was tempted to learn elemental flare, a spell the book described as an elemental explosion, but I couldn''t risk it. Testing a spell that would explode was not a good idea in my current location, no matter how much I wanted to try it, especially because I didn''t recognize it. Instead, I settled for learning frost, as casting it in the cargo space was probably safe as long as I didn''t do anything stupid with it... Probably.


    After spending so much time on the oak skin, it was very nice to spend some time learning a spell that came relatively easy to me, or at least wasn''t extra challenging. The spell matrix took the usual fifteen or so minutes to work out, and the tuning process was worlds simpler than the alteration spell had been. So much so, in fact, that I finished it before Nal and Tatnia returned from their exploration. It was just starting to get dark when I held out my hand and cast a beam of freezing energy out of my palm, causing ice crystals to grow on the cargo space floor.


    I stopped the spell immediately, looking around for a moment before casting it again, this time at the seat cushions across from me. I only held it momentarily when Tatnia climbed into the space with wide eyes.


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    "Should you be doing that here?" she asked, reaching out to touch the frozen spot on the cushions, jerking her hand away. "Sithspit, that is cold."


    "Uh¡­ it''s fine if it''s just freezing energy, right?" I asked, getting a really disappointed look from the woman. "Right¡­ I''ll find a better target."


    She nodded before pulling something out from behind her back and throwing it at me. I managed to catch it, dropping my grimoire in the process. I pulled the grimoire away, feeling the familiar weight settle before opening the wrapped package now in my hands.


    Inside was a sturdy and well-designed <u>blue jacket</u></a>. It was made of a material I didn''t recognize, with patches of different materials around the sides and on the forearms. It had dark yellow bands over the shoulders, as well as several clips and bits, some as highlights and others as utility. It seemed to be at least lightly armored in certain places.


    "Damn, Tatnia¡­ this is fantastic," I said, quickly putting it on. "It even fits perfectly. Thank you."


    "She spent some of her own money," Nal said as he stepped up into the cargo space. "It is good quality."


    Tatnia smacked Nal in the stomach, giving him a look that told me she hadn''t intended on telling me that she had spent some of her own money.


    "You didn''t have to do that, but I can''t argue that this isn''t worth the extra money," I said with a smile. "How much do I owe you?"


    "Don''t worry about it," She assured me. "It wasn''t that much extra."


    "Well... thank you," I said, looking back down before testing my range of motion. "It''s exactly what I needed."


    "Why did you need one so badly?" Miru asks from outside the speeder truck. "You already have armor."


    "C''mon Miru, everyone knows that an identifiable look is what separates a badass from the dispensable goons," I said before looking at everyone else. "Speaking of which, we should also look into getting you guys some new looks. Something to set you apart."


    Tatnia rolled her eyes and walked to the cockpit, sitting down in the copilot''s chair. Nal shrugged and started going through one of our storage containers to the side of the cargo space. After a few minutes, he pulled out a prepackaged meal, which he offered to me.


    Soon we were eating dinner, chatting about the plans for the next day. Eventually, when we had all finished, Nal agreed to stay up for watch first, and the rest of us prepared our beds. I fell asleep quickly, the fatigue from all of the magicka usage catching up with me. Eventually, Miru woke me up for my shift on watch. I switched between learning the spell structure for the flame spell and researching this variation of the Star Wars universe on my data pad.


    -----------


    We started our surveillance the next morning. Nal was set up near the market, sitting in an outdoor bar, with the speeder bike parked nearby. The rest of us were in the A-A5, surveying the location from up high, parked in a pay-by-the-hour parking structure for air speeders. It was attached to a truly massive apartment structure, so no one asked questions or even looked at us weirdly when we pulled into an empty spot. Once we were set up, Tatnia and I sat down in the pilot and copilots seats, taking turns with newly purchased electrobinoculars, watching the entire market simultaneously.


    It was incredibly hard to watch. Both Tatnia and I were tense with disgust and rising frustration as we watched living, breathing sentient beings sold like pets, like equipment. It was nauseating, and more than once, we had to stop and look away, putting the Electrobinoculars to the side as anger bubbled inside us.


    Someday I would put a stop to this, I swore to myself. Eventually, when I was stronger and more powerful, with more resources than a beat-up flying van and a couple of friends, I would tear apart this institution, with my own two hands if necessary. Until then, all I could do was focus on getting to that point and do as much good as I could afford to in the meantime, as small and insignificant as it might be.


    "Two land speeder transports are pulling up to the gate to leave," Nal said through the coms. "Good quality. The second seems to be following the first. Both are marked with the market''s logo."


    Tatnia, who was currently holding the electrobinoculars, leaned forward and scanned the front road, nodding when she spotted them.


    "They don''t look armed¡­ Miru, come take a look," The human woman said, holding out the bulky but effective equipment.


    Miru, who had been waiting in the back, stepped through the cockpit door and peered through the electrobinoculars. She scanned around before nodding as well, a smile appearing on her face.


    "I recognize those models. Standard, neither of them should be armed," She said before handing off the sci-fi binoculars. "And I don''t see any modification that would make me think that''s changed."


    "Nal, follow them. We''ll be right behind you," I said confidently.


    I looked down and tapped a few buttons, the speeder truck coming to life, vibrating steadily. I raised my hand and cast clairvoyance, an arrow appearing in my hand that was pointing right where Nal was supposed to be. After a few seconds, it shivered slightly before slowly moving, showing our friend was following the speeders.


    I raised the speeder up from its spot and quickly guided it free of the parking, heading down and around the large apartment building. Following Nal as best I could while also casting the spell, we finally caught up with him after a few minutes, landing on the actual road and switching repulsorlift systems. Now that we could see Nal, I cut the clairvoyance spell and took better control of the speeder, following them from a safe distance away.


    "Nal, we are in position, ready when you are," I called out, knowing his comm unit would pick it up.


    The Duros said nothing, and for a moment, I wondered if he had heard the message. Before I could say anything, though, he suddenly sped up, closing the distance between it and the slave transport speeders. He overtook them quickly, whipping the bike around and firing the speeder bike''s dual-blaster cannons, red energy spraying the ground in front of the speeders.


    Both of them swerved, spinning to the side slightly while still moving forward a few dozen feet before finally coming to a stop. As they did, I pulled the speeder truck up, flying over several other speeders before landing right behind the now-stopped transports.


    The second we stopped Miru, and Tatnia rushed to the cargo space, jumping out the side door and running to the transports, but not before Tatnia grabbed a blaster rifle. Mercilessly Tatnia fired a few dozen blasts of red energy into the cockpits of the transports, making sure to shoot at a proper angle to keep from damaging anything important. By the time she was done clearing the first transport, the pilots of the second were just starting to climb out when she killed them both as well.


    Considering what we had watched for the last few hours, it was hard to blame her for the brutality.


    Miru and Tatnia quickly pulled the corpses out of the transports, letting them fall to the street before climbing into the pilots'' seats. A few seconds later, they both reoriented themselves and engaged max repulsorlift height to rise above everything in the street. We all quickly flew down the road, away from the ambush site, leaving behind four still-smoking slaver corpses on the road.

 Chapter 11

    As planned, we flew for about fifteen minutes before Miru and Tatnia landed in an empty alleyway deep in one of the city sectors. The moment we landed beside them, Miru all but ran into the cargo space of the A-A5 and grabbed her tools before descending on the speeders. She inspected every corner and spot she could think of, looking for trackers or any other issues, spending a half hour before she was finally satisfied.


    The rest of us nervously kept watch while she worked, waiting for the enforcers or whoever to come screaming down at us.


    When she declared them clean, we immediately headed off again, this time flying in a different direction than before, heading to the people Tatnia had found to sell the speeders to. This time, it was a much faster process, a quick exchange of four thousand credits, and the speeders were dragged into a garage, a small crew of people tearing into them immediately, pulling off valuable parts. Seems like Tatnia had found a chop shop.


    With three thousand dollars added to the new ship fund, and 250 credits added to each of our pockets, we climbed back into our speeders and flew away, eager to put as much distance as possible between us and this entire area. All of us were slowly coming down off our adrenaline high, to varying levels of disbelief that we had done it again and managed to pull it off perfectly.


    "We need to be careful," Tatnia said. "This was luck. That went way too well, and it makes me karking nervous!"


    She was pacing in the back of the cargo space, while Miru seemed to be digesting the situation by sitting in the copilot''s seat on autopilot, most of her thoughts clearly focused inward. I reached over and gave her shoulder a squeeze, causing her to look over at me. I gave her a supportive smile, and after a moment, she smiled back, leaning back in her seat. She let out a long breath, the tension that had been running through her slowly fading.


    "Thanks," She said quietly. "That was¡­ more than I expected."


    "I can imagine," I said, ignoring Tatnia as she muttered and talked to herself in the cargo space. "I won''t belittle you by saying you''re too young for this kind of stuff, because, at some point, you kinda stop being young going through the kind of stuff you have. But I will say if you ever feel like something is too much, that you-"


    "I can-!" She started to say, clearly upset at the accusation that she couldn''t handle herself.


    "I have no doubt in my mind that you can handle anything this galaxy could throw at you," I said seriously and honestly. "But that doesn''t mean you should. Don''t be afraid of speaking up because no one would think lesser of you."


    For a moment, she looked like she was going to try and refute what I said. After a long pause, she huffed and blew out another aggressive breath. At that moment, she reminded me of one of my younger cousins, eager to prove she could do anything. It made me want to wrap her in bubble wrap and lock her in the cargo space for her own good.


    "Thanks," she said, even quieter than before.


    I simply nodded, focusing on piloting for a while.


    Eventually, after a few hours in the air, Nal spoke through the comms, once again scaring the crap out of everyone.


    "I found a spot to land in. An abandoned landing pad, too small for a ship," He said. "I''ve already landed."


    "Alright, I''ll find you," I said before using clairvoyance to home in on his location.


    Before long, I landed the truck speeder on the same landing pad as his. It was a bit rough of a landing, but Miru only gave me a single, quick look of annoyance, so I considered it a win. We stepped out of the speeder and examined our surroundings from the ground. The landing pad looked like someone''s private space, but it was clearly in disrepair and was cut off on all four sides, with no way in or out. The walls were also pretty high up, hiding us from casual, street-level eyes.


    "What is this?" I asked as I looked around.


    "Sign of poor city planning," Nal pointed out, Tatnia nodding in agreement.


    "It was probably a private speeder pad, but the building it connected to was demolished," Tatnia guessed with a shrug. "It happens when you build a city like this, layer after layer, shoving in as much as you can."


    "Huh¡­ this might be a good spot to hunker down in for a few days," I suggested, still looking around. "We could cover the speeders with tarps to make them even less obvious, let the heat die down for a while. We have plenty of food. All we would need is water¡­."


    "I was going to suggest something similar," Nal said, standing from where he was leaning on the speeder bike.


    Over the next twenty minutes, we covered the two speeders in tarps, weighing them down and ensuring that the two vehicles'' blocky angles were as obscured as possible. When we were done, we all climbed into the cargo space of the A-A5 to have dinner.


    The night passed without issue, as did the next three days, though we all reacted differently to the sudden free time. I was alright for the first two, using the time to learn all the remaining novice spells, practicing them almost constantly once I understood them. I only became agitated when learning and memorizing all of the spells did not unlock anything new in the grimoire.


    When just learning them didn''t do anything, I spent a lot of time committing the spells to memory and getting used to casting them, only for the grimoire to remain unchanged. The only spell I couldn''t really fully cast was elemental flare. I cast it once after learning it, the spell exploding against one of the landing pad''s walls, and immediately got yelled at by Tatnia for trying to give away our hiding spot.


    Miru handled the free time fine, spending the first two days painting the A-A5 and MVR-3 using equipment that Nal went out to buy. She painted the MVR-4 a deep maroon, with bands of white running down the edges, and the A-A5 white, with gray-blue highlights, including a large strip running down each side. She then spent the last day scuffing and dirtying the new paint, making it seem weathered and old enough that no one would try and steal them. She was bored but kept herself busy enough.


    Tatnia handled the downtime the worst, almost immediately getting antsy and agitated. She mostly spent the time cleaning and tuning our blaster pistols and rifles.


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    Nal was the only one who had no problems at all being cooped up in the closed-off landing pad, seeming content to read from his datapad and sleep in.


    Still, on the fourth morning, we decided that enough was enough, and it was time to get down to business.


    "I''m as worried as everyone about stirring up too much trouble," Tatnia said, taking a sip from a container of water, a breakfast bag in her lap. "But I think this is enough of just sitting around. If we don''t do something, I''m going to go insane."


    "Alright, I guess we have been here long enough," I admitted. "I''m starting to feel it as well."


    "I suggest we find a target somewhere else, so we may return here," Nal said, looking around the secluded spot. "This location is well suited to staying hidden. For a few excursions at least."


    "It could be worse," Miru commented. "That last alley we stayed in smelled¡­ bad."


    "This whole planet smells bad," I said, shaking my head. "But that''s not a bad idea. Coming back here a few times is fine, but eventually, it''s best to move on to somewhere else."


    Everyone nodded in agreement before we began discussing our next target, starting with what we would aim for.


    "I''m not sure the transport raid was really worth it," Tatnia said with a wince. "It got a lot of attention since we did it in broad daylight, but we hardly made any money."


    The planetary news, which was 90% funded by the Hutts that controlled the entire system, had run the story for a few days, emphasizing that the men killed were innocent hard working people, never mentioning that they were transporting slaves. Still, by the second day the news had died down, and we weren''t even mentioned on the third.


    "And you think the solution is to go bigger?" I asked, looking skeptical.


    "By going bigger, we need fewer jobs," Nal explained, Tatnia pointing at the red-eyed Duros and nodding in agreement. "Though they draw more ire, it will mean we can leave sooner before the full wrath crushes us."


    "Big targets mean big stakes," I pointed out, leaning back on the cargo space bench. "But I''m ready to go after something bigger as long as we can set up a solid plan. Does anyone have any ideas?"


    "Money transfer." Tatnia immediately volunteered. "They have to take physical credits to a bank somehow at some point. All businesses do."


    The way credits worked was one of the reasons I was very happy to have negotiated for my extra knowledge before the entities dropped me here. The stories and movies had always just called them credits, only differentiating them in terms of who made them, meaning Old Republic, Imperial, or New Republic. They made some appearances in the movies and TV shows, but there was never much detail about the system in place, at least as far as I knew.


    In reality, this one at least, there were three forms of credits. The first was digital, which was essentially what you had in your bank, whether it was local or Imperial backed. It was all through the holonet, though, ones and zeroes that never really existed but could still be spent and transferred around.


    The second was credit ingots, which came in the form of literal ingots or coins. There was a surprising amount of variety for credit ingots, with dozens and dozens of shapes, styles, and denominations. The final form was the credit chip. These held internal values ranging from hundreds to thousands, even tens and hundreds of thousands. However, it was considered foolish to put that many credits into something that could be easily stolen. You could swipe a credit chip for small charges, similar to a gift card, or hand it in for its total value. Once they reached zero, they would automatically junk themselves, but Imperial-backed banks often offered incentives for handing in your zeroed chips.


    It could get confusing transferring around chips and ingots, but most people never had to worry about that because they usually only had small amounts of physical credits, their larger amounts being transferred around through digital means. Only criminals or people who didn''t trust the system accumulated large quantities of high-value chips or ingots.


    All of this was backed by the Galactic Empire, so no one was dumb enough to mess with it. Rumors existed of cities being flattened by orbital bombardment because they were leaking counterfeit ingots or hacked credit chips. Not even the Hutts were dumb or greedy enough to test that rumor, not when the Empire seemed content to ignore them for now.


    We discussed the idea of hitting a credit transfer and eventually settled on observing another market far from our current location. Chances are they would be doing the transfer themselves, which meant the transport would be easy to identify because it would be heavily guarded.


    "How heavily guarded are we talking about?" I asked, leaning forward. "The element of surprise will be on our side, but that can only do so much."


    "It will likely be in an armored speeder, probably a modified somehow," Tatnia explained with a shrug. "And probably at least one escort. Something tough enough to fight off attacks."


    We discussed it some more and devised a simple but relatively well-thought-out plan. We would find a market that was a decent distance from the nearest bank, then observe it, similar to how we started our last raid. When we thought we spotted the credit transfer convoy, because it would almost definitely be a convoy of at least two speeders, we would notify the rest of the group and follow. If it looked too tough we would pull back and move on to another location. If we decided we could handle it, I would study the speeders from our observation point and then use clairvoyance to follow them. When they reached a location that we thought would work, Nal, piloting the MVR-3, would zip ahead and attack them from the front while we would attack them from behind, hopefully taking out the convoys.


    After disabling the armored vehicle we would land, Miru would break into the armored transport and we would take everything we could gather before booking it. We would take a long, roundabout route back to this spot, where we would lay low for another few days.


    We talked about the plan for a while, spinning alternate ideas and emergency additions, where we would go if we were compromised, and what we would do if we were separated. Eventually, it was time to stop talking and start doing, so we packed everything up and headed out, traveling for four hours to find a slave market that was as far away as possible.


    It didn''t take long after we started watching this new market to realize that we clearly had no idea what we were really doing. The plan after the observation was more or less solid, as long as we didn''t bite off more than we could chew. What wouldn''t work was our idea to just wait for a credit transfer, with no idea where it would come from and what it would look like beyond armored and probably armed and protected by an escort.


    After spending four hours watching the market, I called it off, and we flew back to the closed-off landing pad. After we landed, Nal climbed into the storage space of the A-A5 so we could all talk.


    "That was embarrassing," Tatnia said, shaking her head. "Why did we think it would be that easy? They might be scum for selling slaves, but they aren''t stupid."


    "I don''t know," I said, shaking my head. "I guess everything else had just been going our way, so we assumed it would continue that way? Either way¡­ we are going to need another idea. We could go back to stealing their ships?"


    "I think I have an idea," Miru said, chewing her lip. "But I don''t know if you guys are going to like it or not."


    "All we can say is no," Nal pointed out, while I nodded encouragingly. "I do not think any of us would mock you. Especially not after what just happened."


    "Well¡­ the issue is finding the money transfer, right? Tracking it down and figuring out which one it is, right?" She asked, waiting for everyone to nod in confirmation. "Well¡­Boss, you have a way to track stuff, right?"


    "Yeah, but at my skill level, I need to know the object or have been to the location before," I explained. Eventually, that will be a bit more flexible, but not any time soon."


    "Well, what if we took some credit ingots and modified them somehow?" She asked. "A dent here, a marking there, maybe an identifiable scratch or something. Would that be enough for you to find them specifically?"


    I thought to myself for a moment, considering what she asked. After a moment, I nodded.


    "I think so, especially if I have an image of the ingots saved on a datapad or something to help me remember what they looked like. But how does that help us?"


    "Well, if the ingots look mostly normal, and they ended up being spent somewhere," She explained with an apprehensive wince. "They would most likely get stored with other ingots, which would eventually get transported out...."


    "You''re suggesting that we spend money at a slave market? Are you suggesting-"


    "Mhmm! We need to buy a slave."

 Chapter 12

    Tatnia nearly jumped out of her seat at Miru''s statement, her face red with anger. Before she could say anything stupid and potentially hurt her relationship with Miru, I snapped a crackle of electricity at her. It was only a split-second long cast of the sparks spell, which I only cast at a fifth of its usual strength. It was an interesting trick I was only just starting to learn with some of the spells that took a continuous drain of magic.


    The zap hit her in the leg, causing it to spasm slightly and keep her in her chair. From experience, I knew it hurt, but no more than a weak stun gun, or one of those tennis racket bug zappers cranked to the max. Her anger was immediately redirected at me, but I knew I could take it.


    "We would free them immediately, maybe even give them a few hundred credits to get them off the planet," I said, giving Tatnia a look before looking back at Miru. "You can disable slave implants, right?"


    "Yeah, I can," Miru confirmed with a nod and a smile. "That wouldn''t take long, though I would need a few tools. But the point would be to get the credit ingots into whatever stash the market would have."


    "Which Deacon would be able to track," Nal finished, nodding in agreement. "That is a sound plan."


    Tatnia, who was now looking a little embarrassed for being so upset, nodded in agreement. She was still rubbing her leg, though, and giving me an annoyed look.


    "One question¡­ how much does a slave cost?" I asked, getting awkward looks from everyone else.


    "I am happy to say I have no idea," Nal answered. "But that information can be found on the holonet."


    We spent the rest of the day planning the purchase, and subsequent freeing, of a slave. We started by selecting a more high-end slave market, as we wanted to ensure that the credits we were spending, around three thousand for a single slave, would be recouped when we robbed the credit transfer speeder. As grim as it was, we wouldn''t get anywhere if we spent more money than we made.


    Miru made a list of tools for Nal, who flew off the speeder bike to purchase everything she needed to disable a slave chip. The list basically boiled down to more tools used for fine-tuning electronic work. With our target selected and everyone prepared, we went to sleep with a nervous energy that ended up keeping everyone up a bit later than we would have liked.


    The following day, I was dropped off at a street corner with a big bag of credit ingots, several hours away from our temporary base. A taxi was already on its way while the rest of the crew moved into position around the slave market, finding alleyways and rooftops to idle on, waiting to hear if I needed an emergency pick-up.


    The taxi arrived, picked me up, and dropped me off at the front entrance of the slave market. It was a large compound with a singular central building and several smaller buildings around it. In all honesty, the building complex looked nice, with smooth, clean lines and the occasional shrubbery or flower garden to break up the permacrete monopoly. Everything was clean and well maintained, with none of the grime that seemed to accumulate in every corner of this planet. It was disquieting, like walking into a serial killer''s home and finding out they had the same taste in decor as you.


    As I stepped into the compound, I could almost feel the darkness, the despair that permeated the air. It wasn''t until I was well inside the complex that I realized that between where I was and the ever-present force... I might actually be feeling the despair of the victims of this disgusting place. I paused for a moment, under the disguise of looking at a plant, really just fighting the urge to burn the place to the ground.


    As I walked deeper, I spotted plenty of patrolling guards armed to the teeth. These weren''t glorified street thugs. They walked with purpose and discipline that spoke of some serious training and wore some impressive-looking armor. There were even several weapons platforms stationed around the perimeter, each one topped with a blaster cannon with a similar size to the one on the A-A5. The guards kept an eye out and in, seemingly charged with keeping dangerous stuff out, as well as the slaves from escaping.


    I headed into the main building, doing my best to focus on the mission. After a quick conversation with someone behind the front counter of the main building, I was led into a series of rooms, each with a handful of slaves. The entire experience was disgusting, a horrendous combination of being sold a car and a pet. It took everything that I had not to do anything, not start through electricity and fire around like a madman. I couldn''t start down that path, not yet, at least. But someday, that would change. Eventually, I would fix this, even if I had to kill every slaver myself.


    In the end, I settled on a Zabrak male, purchasing him for two thousand seven hundred credits, nearly emptying the satchel of credit ingots I had brought with me. He was tall, with a smooth, horned head and tattoed face that his species was known for. His skin was a bit greyer than was normal for a human, but the salesperson assured me that was normal. He responded to my orders with an utterly blank face, following behind me as the salesperson described how his implant worked.


    "There are three safety triggers, the first being a simple shock. Use it as a deterrent or a punishment. The second will render the slave unconscious, which they won''t wake from for eight hours. Be sure it will not hurt itself by falling. The third will kill the slave. You will have to repeat that command three times before activating. There are no refunds for accidental termination."


    They went through the process of locking his implant to my voice and even threw in a new, clean outfit for the poor bastard. Throughout the entire time, the man was silent, the movement in his pale blue eyes the only sign that there was any sort of intelligence at all.


    I left the slave market an hour after I entered. I was tired and disgusted with myself and the monsters I had just shaken hands with. After a five-minute wait, a speeder taxi landed near the entrance, and he followed me in, sitting in one corner of the parallel seats as far away from me as he could get.


    The droid-piloted speeder lifted off the ground with the familiar hum of repulsorlifts, taking us away from the shiny, polished pit of despair. We were in the air for a few minutes when the Zabrackian finally said something.


    "You were robbed," He said, looking directly at me. "I will never follow your orders, not properly, at least. I will dedicate everything to sabotaging your life as best as I can. I suggest not eating anything I make and not trusting anything I do because I will not stop trying to kill you. The ones who sold me like a piece of nerf meat knew this. They knew you were buying a death sentence. "


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    I looked at him, his face finally showing emotion. Just one. Complete and utter defiance. Unbroken and strong, this was a man who would never surrender to being a slave.


    "Why hasn''t anyone killed you yet?" I asked, watching him closely.


    "Can''t get your money back if my head is a pulped mess," He explained with a shrug. "They just knock me out, rough me up, and send me back."


    "How many times has that happened?" I asked before adding another question. "How long have you been a slave?"


    "Seven months and twice before. The second time I almost killed my owner," he said, all but spitting out the last word. "Who knows, maybe the third time really is the charm."


    I could only shrug at his suggestion, doing my best to relax just a few feet away from a man who would probably gladly kill me with his bare hands, even if he died in the process. I had planned on releasing his binders at some point, but for my own safety, until everything could be explained, it was probably best to keep them.


    Eventually, the taxi landed on a seemingly random street corner. The Zabrak stepped out of the speeder first. I was a bit worried that he would try and run before I realized he wouldn''t, not before he had a chance to kill me. Silently we stood at the street corner until Tatnia landed the A-A5 next to us, the door popping open.


    "After you," I said, gesturing to the doorway into the cargo space.


    When he didn''t move, I shook my head, wondering how I would do this. I could knock him out with a command and would if he fought too much, but I would rather not stoop to that level. Just having the ability to torture this person with a simple word made me feel gross. Eventually, I settled on the lesser of two evils. I hid my hand in my jacket sleeve, charged up a calm spell, and shot it at him, hitting him in the chest. He looked surprised for a moment before his whole body relaxed.


    "What is your name?" I asked, the much calmer alien looking at me with a blank face.


    "Nevue Loc," He said. "What is yours?"


    "Deacon Roy," I answered with a smile. "Could you do me a favor and get in the back of this speeder? I promise we aren''t going to hurt you. In fact, I think you will be happy with how this all ends."


    "Alright, I guess I''ll trust you for now," He said in a soft, tired voice, climbing into the cargo space. "Should I sit down?"


    "That''s a great idea, go ahead and sit down," I said, watching as the Zabrak did so, before looking through the cockpit door at Tatnia and Miru. "You guys seal that door, just in case. I have him calmed for now, but my illusion work is-"


    "What¡­ what was that?" Nevue asked, shaking his head and looking around before settling on me. "Did you hit me with some sort of stun blast? Did you drug me?"


    "-Spotty at best."


    The cockpit door sealed shut, and I finished closing the entrance to the cargo space, the A-A5 lifting off into the air soon after, heading to our temporary home.


    "Yes, it was a kind of pacifying ray, just keeps people from freaking out," I lied, dropping into one of the benches.


    "What is going on?" he asked, looking around. "What''s with the speeder shuffle?"


    "We didn''t want anyone near the market getting a look at this speeder," I explained. "It''s probably futile at this point but still. They might not have let me in if they saw it."


    By now, Nevue was starting to get visibly worried about his current predicament, frantically looking around, trying to spot an out or a solution to his problem. His eyes settle on the blaster rifles stacked on the walls, his eyes going wide.


    "Ah fuck, should have seen that coming," I curse. "Now, Nevue, please don''t-"


    The still handcuffed man jumped up from his seat, going straight for the blaster rifles. Before he could even get halfway, I shouted the knockout passphrase, "Slumber." He collapsed, landing on the angled part of the back wall, just under the blaster rifles. I winced as he hit the floor roughly, thankful that he didn''t crack his head open. I let out a sigh and made my way over, laying him down on the floor in a more comfortable position before sitting back down.


    We landed a few hours later, quietly settling down in the secluded landing pad. We quickly covered the speeder with a tarp, set up a bed for Nevue, and let Miru do her work. She scanned his body and located the implant immediately.


    "On his brain stem? Miru, are you sure that''s safe to pull out?" I asked. "I don''t know Twi''lek, or Zabrak biology very well, but that''s kind of an important and sensitive part of a human''s anatomy. You can''t just go hacking at it with your tools."


    "Who said anything about hacking at anything with tools?" She asked, looking at me like I was crazy. "The main component of the implant is removable. All the fiddly bits connected to his nerves will stay behind. You can get it removed, but it''s not necessary. I still have mine. Think of it as a mount for the dangerous computer bit. You leave the mount alone and pull out the part that will explode on command. Trust me, it''s simple."


    True to her word, it did seem shockingly simple. Using a vibroknife I sterilized with flames, Miru sliced into Nevue''s neck, exposing an implant the size of a nickel. She did some computer stuff, with Tatnia occasionally flushing the incision with water. Eventually, she was satisfied and put down her tools, picked up a pair of pliers, and pulled out the implant with a twist.


    As she put it on her toolbox, I could see that there was still some stuff inside his neck, but the majority of it was now removed. Tatnia gave it one last rinse before using some things from a first aid kit to seal up the incision, finishing up by putting some sort of bacta patch on it.


    In all, the process took ten minutes. When she was done, Miru let out a long breath.


    "Woooh, that was intense," She said, sweating slightly. "This was a newer model. It almost went off twice!"


    "Jesus Miru¡­ how close did we get to his head exploding in our faces?" I asked, giving the young techie a look.


    "No comment!"


    I glared at the young Twi''lek before shaking my head with a long sigh. With Nevue set for now, and the credit ingots sitting somewhere in the slave market, everyone sat down and relaxed a bit. I described how revolting the market was.


    At some point, Nal pointed out it might be worth checking out the location of the credit ingots, even if they hadn''t been away long if nothing else than to test if it worked. We spent about ten minutes scanning for the twenty credit ingots that we had personalized and that I had recorded on a data pad. Nineteen of the ingots seemed to be in the same spot, the arrow pointing in the direction of the market, while one was pointed off in a totally different direction. We quickly realized that they must have used that ingot for something, and it was now out in the wild somewhere.


    I continued to scan the ingots every fifteen minutes or so, making sure that we didn''t lose any more of them out into the public. About five hours after we arrived, Nevue started to stir, shifting in the bed before eventually bolting upright, looking around wildly. When he spotted us all sitting nearby, eating our dinners, he rolled out of bed and stood up quickly. After a moment, he noticed that he wasn''t wearing binders anymore, and he looked down at his wrists in confusion.


    "What¡­ what is going on?" he asked, raising his hand to rub his neck, finding the bandage there. "What¡­"


    "I took out your implant," Miru explained with a smile. "It''s actually over there with my tools."


    The maybe twenty-five-year-old alien looked around to where she was pointing, spotting the small coin-sized implant on top of her toolbox. His eyes widened, seemingly having recognized it on site.


    "How? Why? What the frink is going on?" He asked, looking between all of us wildly. "Did¡­ did you really remove it?"


    "We did. We have no interest in owning a slave," Nal explained before holding out a prepackaged dinner. "Come, you must be hungry. Eat, and we will explain."


    He stood there, staring at us for a long moment. He looked back to the implant, still feeling his bandaged neck. Eventually, having made up his mind, he walked forward and took the food from the Duros, sitting down next to him.


    "Right! Well, I guess we start at the beginning, then?" I suggested, Miru and Tatnia both nodding in agreement. "Nal, Tatnia, and I arrived here just about a week ago, locked up in the cells of a slave ship¡­."

 Chapter 13

    Explaining everything to Nevue took about an hour, during which he ate two full meals. He listened with rapt and analytical attention, absorbing everything we said. Thankfully everyone seemed to pick up on my first hint, leaving my special abilities out when describing everything. When we were eventually done, he looked at each of us before settling on me.


    "So, you''re targeting slavers to make enough money to buy your own ship and leave Nar Shaddaa?" He asked, continuing when I nodded. "Why not just steal a ship and be done with it? Just pick one and grab it. You''re clearly willing to get your hands dirty¡­."


    "Because we don''t want to be common criminals," I explained with a shrug. "Slavers are acceptable targets as far as I''m concerned, but we would rather not make off with some random hauler''s lively hood. An unlikely scenario, I know, but still one we want to avoid."


    "It wouldn''t be too difficult to find someone who deserves it," He countered. "A little research, and you''ll find most of the people on this planet are rotten in some way. You don''t last very long here if you aren''t."


    "Maybe, maybe not," I responded. "This is how we are doing it, and it''s worked so far. I''m not here to start a criminal enterprise or get rich quick. Once we have enough resources to get the fuck off this planet, we will, but I''m not willing to compromise my own beliefs to do that. Slavers are as good a target as any, and we get the added benefit of occasionally freeing some people."


    The Zabrak man was silent for a while, occasionally lifting his hand to touch the bandage on his neck, rubbing the spot with a wince. Eventually, we started talking around him, chatting and passing the time. After a while, he spoke up again when there was a gap in the conversation.


    "So what happens to me?" He asked, looking at each of us before settling on me.


    "You''re free to go," I explained, ignoring the fact that I had pointed this out a few times during our earlier talk. "We needed an excuse to get our credits mixed with theirs, but now¡­ Well, we can give you some money, maybe enough to get off-world, but that''s it, really."


    "And what if I don''t want to go?" He asked. "If I want to stick around, steal from the slavers, get off world on your ship. Would that be possible?"


    "I¡­" I started to talk, only to trail off and reconsider what I was going to say. "You don''t have anything to go back to?"


    "I might, but I''ve been missing for half a year at this point. A few more weeks won''t mean much to them. Besides¡­ you guys did free me from slavery," He pointed out with a slight smile on his face. "I figure I owe you some help."


    We explained the general outline of the plan for the next free days as we waited for the credits to move from the market. Tatnia, of course, wanted to know if he would be of any use to us.


    "I have some training with blaster rifles, and I know some hand-to-hand," He explained vaguely. "Standard Zabrak education includes some combat training¡­ To help those with a natural talent for violence find their calling early. After that¡­ Well, I ran with a group that got into some fights. I''ll be able to hold my own just fine."


    "How did you end up here?" Miru asked bluntly, Nal wincing next to her.


    "My group was attacked by a rival faction," He explained after hesitating for a moment. "I was injured and had to run. Unfortunately, on the way to our regroup location, I passed out in the wrong neighborhood. I woke up with binders on my wrists, locked in a cramped cargo bay."


    We talked a bit more, Nevue describing what he was capable of in a very obviously circumspect way. Assuming he was telling the truth, he would be useful, but I could already tell Tatnia would be keeping a close eye on him. When we eventually headed to bed, I stayed up for the first watch, sitting in the cockpit of the speeder truck, watching the sensors and the skies, the nocturnal travelers of the city sector fly through the air.


    ------------------


    Slowly Nevue fit into the group dynamic. He seemed to be something of a jack of all trades, helping Miru work on the speeders and Tatnia maintain the gear we had accumulated. He seemed to know his way around the rifles we bought and claimed to have some experience with a proton rifle as well. Considering he disassembled and reassembled it quickly for cleaning, I was inclined to believe. Everyone seemed to accept him, with even Tatnia agreeing that he seemed to know his stuff, even if we were both pretty sure the group he mentioned he belonged to was a gang of some sort.


    On the third day of him staying with us, I finally explained my magic to him, though I left out the actual M word. He tensed up when I first used it, watching me spray fire and summon a sword.


    "Is that the Force?" He asked, shocking the hell out of me in the process.


    Out of everyone I had shown my magic to, he was the only one who had mentioned the Force. I wasn''t surprised that someone had made the connection, but I was more than a bit surprised that some random Zabrak from who knows where did.


    "No, it''s not the Force. The Force is rarely used in such an¡­ elemental and multifaceted way," I explained, letting my conjured sword fade away. "That isn''t to say that it couldn''t be used in that way. There were a lot of lesser-known Force abilities that did some interesting things...."


    As I talked, he looked at me strangely, and I realized I was talking about things that very few people knew these days, all with the tone of an expert. I trailed off and coughed awkwardly.


    "That''s what I''ve learned anyway," I explained. "I''m sure you can imagine I did a fair bit of research about anything similar to what I can do¡­."


    We spent most of our time waiting around the slave market, keeping our eyes peeled as I rotated the clairvoyance spell through the remaining nineteen credit ingots. I would put my hand on the dash of the A-A5, cast the spell nineteen times, and make a note of exactly where the arrows were pointing so that I could tell if they moved.


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    We killed time however we could, reading and chatting about our lives before being taken. I talked about my family, still under the partial lie that I was from a secluded planet with minimal contact with the rest of the world. Miru talked about where she learned her considerable mechanical and programming talents. Apparently, having a knack for something got you extra rations as a slave, especially when fostering that knack led to even greater skill. I also learned that she was seventeen, and I mentally made a note to keep her as far away from the violence as I could.


    Tatnia opened up a bit about her life, finally confirming that my guess about her being a grown-up street rat was correct. She grew up on the streets of a planet she didn''t care enough about to name, eventually becoming a sort of problem solver for hire. When she was twenty, she worked as hired muscle for a merchant, traveling between a handful of planets, buying low and selling high. She had been celebrating a delivery bonus, getting a bit too deep in her cups, only to wake up in binders. When I asked her why she didn''t try and get her job back, she chuckled and assured me there was no way she hadn''t already been replaced. Apparently, being low-level merchant guards didn''t have very good job security.


    Surprisingly, Nal seemed the least interested in discussing his life before being abducted. I did find out that he was just over sixty years old, which was considered middle age for a Duros. He explained that the call to adventure was an important part of a Duros life and culture and that discussing his life previous to this journey would only taint what this could become. Apparently, it was better to form a new story than simply add to the previous one. Still, he was more than happy to chat to pass the time and share the occasional anecdote and joke.


    Nevue, on the other hand, wasn''t really interested in socializing at all. He confirmed that he wasn''t looking to stay a part of the group once we got off the planet and that he did expect some sort of cut at the end. This annoyed Tatnia, but I honestly couldn''t blame him. Finding four people who meshed so well and were eager to work together for one purpose had been a fluke that I was still shocked about. Knowing that the fifth person wasn''t interested past a ride and a paycheck was honestly reassuring.


    During the downtime, I was also practicing my magic nearly continuously. I had pretty much internalized all of the novice spells at this point, able to cast them with very little thought and at a moment''s notice. Unfortunately, my grimoire still refused to show me any apprentice-level magic, something that frustrated me to no end. I was almost positive that the first spell to heal other people was an apprentice spell, and the sooner I got that, the sooner I could stop stressing out so much about my new friends getting hurt.


    It wasn''t all bad, however, because while I hadn''t unlocked a new level of spells, I did learn that there was another whole aspect to the grimoire that I hadn''t known existed. I opened my grimoire a few days into our vigil, checking again to see if I had any new spells to learn, only to find a passage about dual casting.


    I read through the several new pages, studying the diagrams and instructions eagerly. Dual casting essentially allowed me to channel my magic through both of my hands, but instead of casting two separate spells, I would cast a singular overpowered one. This would have several effects depending on what spell I was casting. In broad strokes, however, dual casting increased the potency of the spell in several ways, making a conjured sword more lethal, a summoned creature stronger, and throwing lighting that hit harder.


    This, of course, came at the cost of using just under double the magicka. Even so, it was a potent ability, especially considering that this wasn''t a video game, so the increase in effect wouldn''t be lost in gamified numbers. In reality, a dual cast sparks spell would penetrate armor that the typically cast sparks spell would just dance over, while in the video game, it would only do a bit more damage for a ridiculous increase cost. Ultimately, dual casting would give me a significant advantage when my magic needed a bit more kick.


    I just had to learn how to do it.


    Luckily I had plenty of time, and I had been practicing these spells for a while by this point. In the game, Dual casting had been a perk that had to be purchased for every school of magic, but for me, it was a technique that could be applied to any spell that was cast with a single hand.


    Essentially you would draw out your magic, and instead of forming the spell matrix in your palm, you formed it in the air between your two hands. This was where the extra cost in mana came from, as forming the matrix outside your body led to mana unavoidably bleeding off. Even with the loss, drawing out both matrices over top of each other massively increased the potency of your spell.


    It wasn''t until I had mastered dual casting several spells that I realized this represented something significant, even more than a potency boost. The dual casting ability had been a specific perk from the video game, and here it was offered as a technique that I could learn. It stood to reason that other perks would also be available further down the road. While I obviously couldn''t remember every perk in the game, I did remember a few of them that could be helpful down the line.


    Over a week passed, and four more ingots were moved out of the market, two of them leaving the planet, with the other two bouncing around the planet as they were used normally. The remaining fifteen ingots stayed in the same location, the general center of the market place or, more specifically, under the general center of the facility.


    It wasn''t until late one afternoon that we finally got some activity, more than two-thirds of the ingots moving through the facility. By flying around in a wide circle around the facility, we were able to locate where it was being moved to, settling on a smaller building to the left of the main building. We knew from the days spent having observed this location that this was where the transport speeders were kept.


    "It''s being moved to the garage," I said through the comms, sitting on the MVR-3. "I''m going to swing around back to you guys. Get ready to move."


    I got confirmation back as I gunned the speeder, zipping down from where I had been parked to quickly make my way back to where the A-A5 was being kept. When I pulled into the alleyway, everyone was already on board the speeder truck save for Nal, who was waiting for me.


    "Good luck," I said as we traded places, the blue-skinned alien taking the speeder bike as he was a much better pilot than me. "I''ll call out their movements. Stay in contact."


    The Duros nodded and pulled down his goggles, double-checking his helmet before lifting off and away. The MVR-3 had an impressive repulsorlift ceiling, which we had been using to our advantage to travel over buildings. It was probably more than a bit rude, but I wasn''t exactly going to lose sleep over it.


    I climbed into the cargo space of the A-A5 and started cycling the clairvoyance spell, waiting for any shifts in location. For twenty minutes, nothing happened until finally, they started moving again. I started tracking one specifically instead of rotating through the group, feeding Miru the direction. She quickly lifted off, speeding out directly in that direction, Nal following behind us.


    Five minutes after lifting off, we had the convoy on our site. A singular, unarmed but armored transport, with two other speeders moving in tandem. The two other speeders were armed and lightly armored, with a closed-off interior and a single turret on the back that swiveled and scanned the area.


    "You see them, Nal?" I asked through the comms.


    "I do. I am ready when you are."


    We waited silently, following the convoy for a few minutes before the perfect opportunity struck. The convoy pulled off of the main road and into a smaller back road, one that would make it much more difficult for them to maneuver in.


    "Miru put us down at the entrance into that road!" I ordered, the ship tilting as Miru nodded. "Nal, herd them back towards us with a strafing run! Nevue, get the proton rifle. Once Nal starts laying into them, try and take out their turrets. Tatnia, same to you. We need those armed speeders down before they can hit back. I''m not looking to test the A-A5''s armor. Stay focused, everyone. We can do this."

 Chapter 14

    Nal immediately sped ahead of us, turning down to follow the convoy down the smaller back road. I could feel Miru speed up, the speeder truck tilting slightly as she pushed the repulsorlifts to their limits. It didn''t take long for us to catch up, Miru gently landing us at the road entrance, just in time to see Nal spin around much further down the road, now facing us.


    The convoy had already stopped, the turrets of the two armed speeders spinning to target Nal. He started peppering all three of the vehicles with blasts of scarlet energy, even as he was turning. As the two armed speeders opened fire on Nal, who swooped low to avoid the return fire, the armored transport tried to retreat but was blocked off by the third vehicle in the convoy.


    I chewed my lip as I watched from the cockpit door, leaning further into the cockpit to look out the windscreen. I could hear Nevue opening the side door of the cargo space, as well as the turret swiveling on top of the vehicle to lock onto its target. I glanced at Tatnia, who was focused on the screen in front of her, directing the turret.


    Energy blasts of red, comparable to the blasts the convoys turrets were putting out, lanced out from the roof of the A-A5, stitching against the back of the closest target, centering in on the turret. It focused in closer before punching through, the turret detonating with enough force to rock the speeder to the side. Tatnia let out a cheer before starting to adjust her aim on the second vehicle.


    Nal, who was now on his second strafing run, rained down fire on the hood of the armored transport, landing a quartet of impressive shots on the windscreen. The first pair of blasts from his dual cannons darkened the armored screen, the second blast following behind a moment later, causing it to sag under the intense energy. The third and fourth pairs turned it red hot before punching through and slamming into the vehicle, the cockpit in flames. The vehicle accelerated in its death throes, slamming into the wall of the nearby building and grinding against it for a moment before finally coming to a stop.


    I could hear the whining charge up of the proton rifle before the pale, glowing yellow streak of energy fired out from the side of the A-A5, slamming into the convoy''s remaining turret. Unfortunately, the turret was already spinning back to aim at us, and the powerful proton energy blast glanced off, scoring the armor deeply, but failing to penetrate.


    "Sithspit!" Nevue cursed as the turret aimed directly at us.


    I could hear our own turret shifting again as the enemy weapon opened up, a triple blast of red energy slamming into the truck. It shook the vehicle, causing me to lean against the doorway. Tatnia shouted and responded with her own shots, slamming into the turret and the speeder it was attached to. At the same time, Nevue fired the proton rifle again, the same beam of yellow energy firing out from our cargo space. It was hard to tell which of them actually destroyed the turret, but the result was an explosion that crumpled the top of the speeder.


    Before we could celebrate taking out the heavy weapons, people started climbing out of all three vehicles. A singular, clearly wounded, red-skinned Devaronian all but fell out of the transport vehicle while several others poured out of the other two.


    I turned and stepped back to the cargo area, looking down at Nevue, who was lying on his stomach as he aimed down the street with the proton rifle. I stood over him and quickly dual cast the ward spell, conjuring a vaguely ovoidal shield just outside the door. I managed to leave him a small space to shoot out of while still covering the doorway, and most of him, with the shield.


    Even as Nal ran another strafing run, taking down three of the armed guards, the rest opened fire, spraying blaster bolts at us and at the speeder bike. Two blasts hit the shield, which held just long enough for Tatnia and Nevue to open fire, their heavy weapons quickly decimating the relatively unprotected guards.


    When they had taken out the last one, the street was silent for a long moment, save the crackling fire of the transport speeders cockpit. I dropped the dual cast ward, stepping out of the cargo space and onto the ground. Hyperaware of how much of an open target I was, I quickly readied the lesser ward spell again, this time only in my left hand, holding out the protective shield while also pulling out my blaster pistol. I could see Nal landing on the half-crumpled wreck of the first armed speeder, jumping down with his own weapon out.


    The two of us quickly checked the vehicles to ensure there wasn''t anyone waiting for us to drop our guard before gesturing to Miru, who was still in the pilot seat.


    "All clear!"


    The speeder truck lifted slightly off the ground and pulled into the road. It was a little cramped with three wrecks and buildings on either side, but she managed to lower the vehicle enough that one could climb in and out without too much of a struggle. I could see the young mechanic tapping at the controls through the windscreen before rushing out of the speeder. She tossed some tools down to Nal and I before jumping down to the ground. Tatnia and Nevue were still in the cargo space, leaning out of the doorway slightly.


    "Okay, this shouldn''t be too hard¡­." Miru muttered to herself, pulling out a scanner and running it along the back end of the transport speeder. "This back hatch is reinforced, maybe four inches thick, as is the rest of the back, but¡­."


    She trailed off, still scanning, chewing her lip as she focused. After fifteen or twenty seconds, she let out a triumphant shout.


    "Yes! Okay, hand me the tight-beam emitter." She said, holding out a hand as she studied her scanner.


    I looked down at her tools, then up at Nal, who smiled and pointed to a device resembling a cross between a taser and a laser temperature gauge from home. I quickly picked it up and handed it to her, the focused Twi''lek utterly oblivious to the delay. Another thirty seconds passed as she pointed the device at certain places on the hatch. When she was done, she pulled something from her pocket and stuck it to the door, a low clunk echoing from inside the door. With a wide grin, she put her tools away and pulled the hatch open, revealing the contents.


    The back of the transport speeder was filled with containers, all bearing the same mark that covered the slave market and was stamped on the transport. There were at least a dozen of them, maybe even more, stacked inside the back. A few of them had fallen over, probably from the crash, and one was even cracked open, its contents spread around the open space of the transport,


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    "Okay guys, enough lollygagging, we need to get this onto the truck," I said, already reaching in to grab one of the containers, dragging it out to the back edge.


    Keenly aware of our limited time, we quickly figured out the best way to move the money containers. Nal or I would drag it to the edge of the transport, Miru would scan it quickly for any weird signals, then we would throw them up to Tatnia and Nevue, who would slide them into the back of the cargo space. Even with the routine running smoothly, it still took two minutes to get everything into the A-A5. We only left one box behind, the only one that Miru''s scans for anomalous signals had gone off on.


    With every box we got out of the speeder, I could feel a rising disquieting feeling in the pit of my stomach. By the time Nal was running to get back onto his speeder bike, and I was helping Miru back into the speeder truck, I could tell that Nevue, Tatnia, and Nal had figured it out as well. When Nevue grabbed my hand and helped me up into the cargo space, Miru immediately blasted away from the scene, following behind Nal.


    "This is too much," He said as I plopped down onto one of the cargo space''s benches. "You see that, right?"


    "Yeah, I see that," I responded. "Fuck. Nal, Miru, crank it up. We need to get the fuck out of here."


    We had just taken twenty boxes of credits, and if the one that had cracked open was anything to go off of, we had anywhere between forty-five to fifty thousand credits stacked up right next to us. We had clearly underestimated just how much money that slaver market was making, never mind how much they would be transporting in physical credits. I was going over the math in my head when Tatnia leaned over their seat and looked back at me. She must have missed what Nevue said because she just repeated his general opinion.


    "You know we are in some deep shit right now, right?" She asked.


    "I know, just push this thing as hard as it can go," I said, rubbing my face. "We need to-"


    Before I could finish my thought, the speeder truck dropped, Miru cursing loudly as she put us into a dive that was steep enough to shift the crates of storage and credit containers. I cursed and held on to a nearby panic handle as we immediately rose back up, then swerved to the side.


    "Someone is shooting at us!" The mechanically inclined Twi''lek shouted back, the sound of muffled laser blasts making it to us. "Hold on!"


    "It''s Enforcers!" Tatnia explained, already returning fire, the turret on our roof firing as fast as possible. "There''s two of them!"


    "Fuck!" I cursed, loudly. "I was hoping to avoid this! Tatnia¡­ shoot them down!"


    Tatnia nodded and focused on the instruments and controls around her, leaving what this meant unspoken. The fact that they had identified us meant they definitely knew what kind of vehicle we were driving now. We needed to get away long enough to hide. We needed somewhere to park the A-A5 where it wouldn''t be seen because every moment we spent flying around was another chance to get spotted. I rushed to the cockpit door to look over Tatnia''s shoulder. It was hard to stay steady as Miru kept us dodging constantly, but I managed long enough to see we were being chased by two different air speeders.


    As I watched, bracing myself in the door frame, I could see Nal, swooping around and using his maneuverability to his advantage, distracting the larger air speeders. As Tatnia peppered the front of both speeders, Nal attacked them from behind. I was white knuckle gripping the door frame as together they managed to take them both down, one after the other. Both crashed into the streets and buildings below, making my stomach roil. We had definitely crossed out of the morally positive slaver robbing now.


    "Nice job Nal!" I called out anyway, as we evened out, and no other enforcers showed up. "Pull out ahead and start looking for someplace for us to land. We need to talk."


    "Sure thing boss," He responded.


    We looked for about five minutes, passing by alleyways and a few abandoned buildings that looked good but seemed a bit too exposed. We were just starting to slow down and land in an abandoned building, half collapsed and with just enough room for both speeders, when suddenly another group of speeders, this time just three speeder bikes, started to pepper us.


    Over the next thirty minutes, we played a brutal and high-stakes combination of hide-and-seek and tag with the Enforcers, shooting down or escaping from several patrols. We traded laser fire with dozens of speeders, shooting down most of them and taking some light damage in return. Tatnia was in the zone, sweating but focused as she and Nal kept us out of danger as Miru tried to fly us to safety.


    Eventually, out of desperation, Nevue and I started cracking open the credit containers and going through them, worried that we were still being tracked somehow. After cracking open the seventh container, I found a fist-sized piece of electronics with a blinking green light, buried under a layer of ingots.


    "Fuck!" I shouted, taking the device, opening one of the side doors and throwing it out into the whipping wind.


    We quickly went through the rest of the credits, doing our best to ignore just how much money we had taken. We found four more of the devices, which we quickly jettisoned from the vehicle. After the last one was gone, Miru slowed down, dipping into the cover of the massive city buildings that dotted almost the entire planet. Soon we were in the shadow of the taller buildings, following behind Nal at a much slower but still urgent pace. Eventually, he peeled off, having spotted an abandoned construction project. We followed behind him, landing behind a thick, opaque fence. Once we were hidden, Miru expertly drove us inside the unfinished structure.


    We quickly jumped out of the vehicle and got to work, keeping one eye on the sky for any more Enforcers but also doing our best to obscure the A-A5. We draped and weighed down two of our massive tarps over the workhorse, covering it enough that, hopefully, no one would identify it. About ten minutes after we landed, the entire team climbed into the back of the A-A5, still tense, but our adrenaline faded.


    "I''m sorry!" Miru said the second the door was closed. "I-I don''t know what happened! I scanned the boxes, and they didn''t give off anything weird, I swear."


    "They must have had them on a trigger," Nal said, sitting down on the pile of credit boxes. "I was looking at your scanner Miru, and there was nothing."


    "They could have been triggered when we moved them, maybe some sort of proximity trigger?" Nevue suggested. "Something so that if they leave the back of the transport, they start broadcasting."


    "Either way, we have a problem," Tatnia said, sitting down on one of the benches. "This was way too much at once. I know the goal was to aim a bit higher than the last job, but¡­ this is going to put a lot of attention on us. They clearly know what our rides look like, and they will probably have our faces not long after that."


    "It''s probably around forty-five, maybe fifty thousand credits," I said. "They are all pretty much as full as the cracked-open one. It''s a lot of money, way more than we anticipated getting at once."


    "Our supplies are sufficient to lay low," Nal said, sitting across from me. "We have another week or so of food, maybe two if we stretch it. Water is a problem. Only enough for two days, maybe three."


    "Laying low will only get us so far," I pointed out, shaking my head. "Before, we could reliably slink around, and no one would be looking for us particularly hard. That''s not true anymore. We are going to have to watch our backs constantly."


    "Chances are, if they have this many credit ingots, they are going to have even more resources to throw around," Tatnia said, her arms crossed. "We are going to start seeing people specifically looking for us, especially if they put out a bounty."


    "For fifty thousand credits? Yeah, there''s going to be a bounty," I said, shaking my head. "If for no other reason than to teach us a lesson for robbing them."


    "Then what do we do?" Miru asked, now sitting beside me.


    I was silent for a while, racking my brain for a solution. One came to me quickly, but I was hesitant to go with it. Unfortunately, no reasonable alternatives presented themselves.


    "Honestly¡­ It might be time to cut our losses," I said with a wince. "We should lay low for a day, then head out tomorrow night. We can''t handle this level of wanted, so we have a day to figure out what kind of ship we want to steal, and who we want to take it from."

 Chapter 15

    "Wait, that?" Miru asked, turning to look at me with a surprised look. "Leaving? Already? We¡­ we''ve barely done anything! What about freeing more slaves, robbing the bastards who¡­ who did this to us?"


    "Miru, kiddo¡­ We can''t do anything to help if we are dead," I said, letting out a deep breath. "This is going to bring way too much heat. Even if they hadn''t gotten a good look at the A5 and MRV, we would be going to ground hard. I''m talking about months of waiting before we even started planning the next move. But now? This much money changed this from attacks of opportunity to criminals targeting a legal business that the Hutts and their peers make a lot of money from. There are going to be bounties, wanted signs, and news reports. If the Enforcers are even mildly capable, they will be on the lookout for people using the credit chips in some of the boxes. You knew we wouldn''t be able to do this forever, and you agreed that becoming martyrs wasn''t an option."


    I reached out and put my arm around the young Twi''lek. She flinched for a moment, but before I could pull back, she leaned against my shoulder.


    "I know, I know¡­ I just figured we would be able to do a little more," She admitted with a disappointed look, once again reminding me of my younger cousins. "It''s alright. I''m just being stupid."


    "No, you''re not," I said, shaking my head. "I desperately wish I could do more too. But¡­ We don''t have the resources to do much more than we''ve already done. I would have liked to spend a few more weeks, maybe even a month or so, liberating slaves and helping where we could. But this¡­ We just put a very large target on our back. People are going to notice a pattern."


    "We were lucky our first job, where we freed you," Nal explained, Miru looking up at the blue-skinned man. "We were able to take the ship with us and sell it without consequences. There will be consequences for this."


    "So, we are leaving," Tatnia said, eager as ever to move the conversation along. "Who are we stealing a ship from?"


    "Just pick one," Nevue said with a scoff. "We could literally pick a direction and fly for five minutes, and we would go over five of them.


    "I''m¡­ We should put it to a vote," I said after a false start. "I''m willing to do that if we agree as a group, even if I would rather not."


    "Why not?" Nevue asked, looking annoyed. "You are so eager to steal from slavers, but there are other criminals here. This whole moon is rotted to the core. Even if you pick randomly, you''re still likely to pick someone who deserves it."


    "We have an alternative," Nal pointed out. "Our first heist, they would have restarted business."


    "Is that a good idea?" I asked. "Returning to the scene of a crime strikes me as a bad idea."


    "But according to the Enforcers, there was no crime there," Tatnia pointed out. "They would have kept that under wraps as much as possible, to cover up their tax evasion. No way that they reported it."


    "They would have increased security," I countered. "I''m not against the idea, just wanted to point it out."


    "Unless they set up heavy turret emplacements, our vehicles can likely counter any upgrades." Miru pointed out. "I''m more worried about the quality of the ship. The last one was a pile of junk that shouldn''t have left the ground, never mind traveled through space."


    "So¡­ We return to that area, find someplace to hide out, and watch the location, waiting for someone to land. Once someone does, we assess their ship and decide if we want it¡­ If we don''t get one after a day, we go with Nevue''s idea. Does that work for everyone?"


    The group nodded, though Nevue still was clearly not happy about it. He didn''t say anything, though, and we all agreed.


    "Good¡­ Miru, how bad was the damage to the truck?"


    "It could have been a lot worse. The extra armor held up pretty well, but there was some damage," She responded. "I''ll have to take a closer look, but considering the fact that it didn''t fall from the sky, nothing important was damaged."


    "Great. Also, I''m sorry, but I need you to paint the speeders again," I explained. "We need to do everything we can to throw off the Enforcers and whoever else is undoubtedly looking for us, even if it means redoing good work.


    "It''s fine. I''ll just strip the accents and come up with something else," She accepted readily. "Tatnia, Nal, wanna help?"


    "Sure. Anything to keep busy."


    We spent the next few hours into the night staying under the cover of the half-constructed building. While Nal, Tatnia, and Miru repaired and repainted the A5, Nevue and myself kept watch, our eyes on the city, hidden in the shadows of the empty permacrete structure around us. The two of us switched out frequently to keep from getting complacent and sloppy, but it was still incredibly boring. I spent my time rotating through my spells, at least the ones that I could cast inconspicuously and silently.


    We finished the tense action-filled, and nerve-wracking day with a simple prepackaged dinner, all of us sleeping in the A5. One of us was on watch, of course, which meant everyone had a bed, and the person on lookout duty would switch with whoever was next.


    The following day was more of the same. Miru, Nal, and Tatnia had finished fixing what they could, with Miru eventually announcing she was satisfied that nothing major was damaged, though we would be without temperature control and air purging until we got to a real shop. Tatnia had also stripped the accent paint on the A5 by the time it was dark the night before, which meant she and Miru would spend the afternoon painting and then roughing up new accents. The rest of us kept watch, killing time while we gave everyone a chance to calm down.


    "Our biggest issue will be around this area," Nal pointed out during lunch. "We are still relatively close to the crime scene. They will be looking for us hardest around here."


    "Rushing out is the exact last thing we should do," Tatnia pointed out, Nal nodding in agreement. "We need to go slow. We can leave when it gets dark and find a place to hide near our target. We can watch the landing pad from far away since we will be attacking with the speeders."


    "About them¡­ We are going to have to leave the A5 behind," Miru pointed out. "It''s too big to fit on any freighter that might be landing here."


    "Yeah, I thought about that. I wish we had gotten a bit more use out of it, but it already paid for itself after we sold the two transport speeders to that chop shop," I admitted. "If we weren''t on the edge of everything spiraling out of control, we could find someone to buy it, even for scrap. It''s a shame, we didn''t even really get to name it or break it in."


    "...Name it?" Tatnia asked, looking at me like I was slow. "You wanted to name it?"


    "Not yet!" I responded defensively. "...But eventually, yeah. You gotta name stuff that you use for a while. It gives them more meaning, more metaphysical weight."


    "What does that even mean?"


    "If you name something that has been with you for a while and has been reliable, it''s got more metaphysical weight," I explained. "The universe pays attention to stuff like that."


    "That¡­ fucking hell, are you the kind of person to name your blaster?" She asked, shaking her head.


    "Not if it''s just a random gun I picked up," I responded, mostly continuing because I could see that Miru was starting to smile out of the corner of my eye. "But if I have it for a while, and I''ve repaired it, upgraded it, cleaned it, and if I''ve done some stuff with it, then yeah. C''mon Miru, back me up."


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    "...If you ever call out the name of your blaster during a fight, I''m leaving," She said, trying to hide her smile "I don''t need you embarrassing me."


    "Traitor!"


    The young mechanic giggled, and I winked at Tatnia, who smiled and nodded in return. The rest of the day was spent preparing and planning, the tight edge of tension that had gripped us overnight having lessened slightly.


    When darkness finally reached us, we quickly packed everything together. The vehicles were now as nondescript as possible, both of them a dark gray color, worn and artificially dirtied. Miru was once again piloting while Tatnia sat on the copilot''s seat.


    "Alright Nal, ready when you are," I said when everyone was settled. "Lead us away."


    The Duros acknowledged and lifted off, flying ahead. He quickly lifted up over the temporary walls set up around the construction site, before continuing on over the buildings. Miru promptly followed in the A5, both of them keeping a reasonable speed. The only suspicious thing we were doing was flying a little low, but even that wasn''t too out of the ordinary.


    The first ten minutes were tense, with Tatnia all but glued to the sensor screen, watching the movement of every other speeder in range. At one point, a pair of speeders got close, almost following beside us for a moment. We all breathed a sigh of relief when they kept going when Nal led us away, the two speeders heading off to their own business.


    Two hours later and we were reaching the general area of our destination, though you could only tell because of the coordinates the city looked the same from our perspective. A quick check of clairvoyance was enough to settle any nervousness about traveling to the wrong location. When we finally landed in a tucked away parking space, paying the fee with a smile, it was late enough in the night that it was threatening to become a very early morning.


    With nothing else to do, we decided to sleep, Nevue taking the first watch, followed by myself and then Tatnia. When I awoke the next morning, it was Tatnia shaking me awake.


    "Get up lazy. We need to start watching the hangar."


    I quickly got ready, grabbing something to eat and strapping on my blaster pistol before following her. A quick walk and a longer climb up a set of external stairs led us to a shadow-covered rooftop, which overlooked an impressive expanse of the city district. Tatnia, who had found this spot earlier, handed me the electrobinoculars.


    I peered through the advanced binoculars, the sophisticated software auto-adjusting for the perfect look. I could see the hangar perfectly, clear as day. Overall, very little had changed to the structure, dispelling my fears of large turrets suddenly appearing. I did notice that more guards were walking around, two of them stationed on either side of the gate that led into the "reserved" hanger. To the right of that hangar gate was a gun emplacement of some kind.


    "Damn¡­ I wonder if they have any more of those inside," I wondered out loud. "You think that could punch through the A5''s armor?"


    "If it hits somewhere unarmored? Maybe," She responded. "I''m more worried about what they have inside."


    "Have you seen any sign of what''s inside?"


    "I''ve seen a few guards come in and out, carrying some impressive weapons," She said. "My guess is that there are six inside and two outside, rotating occasionally. And don''t forget any ship that lands will bring more¡­."


    "Yeah, not forgetting that."


    We watched the hangar for a while longer, silently passing the electrobinocular back and forth. We mainly stayed quiet, only talking when we spotted something new. Eventually, after a few hours, the guards started to perk up and move around.


    "How much do you want to bet all this activity means something is incoming?" I asked Tatnia, only getting a scoffing chuckle in return.


    Sure enough, ten minutes later, two transports arrive at the hangar, waiting at the entrance of the berth.


    "Nal, start getting everything warmed up," I said into my comm unit. "Looks like this might happen sooner than we thought."


    We were prepared to spend a day or more waiting, but it seemed like the schedule of these slavers had different plans. About twenty minutes later, a large ship landed in the hangar, and Tatnia and I started running back to the others. It was a smaller sized ship, but it also seemed to be in decent condition, much better than the last ship we had stole. It was a more compact design, with a curved top that jutted out past its underside.


    We arrived back at the speeders only a minute or so later, both of us hopping into the back of the A5. Tatnia quickly sat in the co-pilot''s seat while I sat down on the back bench. Nevue was already holding the proton rifle while I reached over and grabbed one of the blaster rifles. Nevue saw that and smirked.


    "Not going to use your fancy sparks and flames?" He asked, double checking the proton rifle was appropriately loaded.


    "I can always drop the rifle," I responded with a shrug. "My damage stuff isn''t quite so good for long range, at least not yet."


    He shrugged, and before he could comment, I could feel the speeder slowing down.


    "Get ready!" Tatnia shouted, the sound of the turret spinning and stopping filling the cargo space.


    "Miru, park it above the ship. Keep them from taking off!" I shouted, standing and making my way to the door.


    I cracked it open slightly before throwing it open completely, the A5''s turret opening fire to cover me. Nevue kneeled next to me, and together we opened up on the guards that were already aiming up at us.


    Red laser fire, both from my blaster and from the A5''s turret, lanced downward. Tatnia was focused on the two stationary blaster cannons set up inside the hangar, while I started trying to pick off the still-struggling guards. Between the element of surprise, the high ground advantage, and our superior firepower, which was only increased when Nal started to make swooping strafing runs, we quickly took down the guards spread out around the hangar.


    With the heavy weapons down, the next step was taking over the ship before it could take off. I looked down at the top of the ship below us, judging the distance before nodding, turning to Nevue, and putting my blaster rifle down on a bench.


    "Cover me!" I called out to the Zabrak, before casting oak flesh on myself and jumping from the speeder.


    I landed and rolled on the top of the freight ship, quickly regaining my footing and running toward the front end of the ship. Finding a good place to slide off, just behind a rather large sensor dish, I lowered myself down and let myself go. I slide down about six feet, using my hand free hand to slow myself down with the gaps in the ship hull plating. I landed roughly but rolled, working off the limp as I ran around to the front of the ship. I spotted Nal landing the speed bike not too far away, giving me covering fire as the people in the transport speeders started climbing out and shooting at me.


    I pulled out my blaster pistol and cast lesser ward, returning fire as well as I came around to the entrance into the cargo bay of the relatively small freighter. With a curse, I was forced to dive and roll as the thick-plated door to the ship''s cargo bay started to close. The door shut behind me as I recast the lesser ward, climbing to my feet and holding it in front of me just in time to block a spray of blaster pistol fire. I returned fire, missing twice but catching the crew member in the shoulder on the second.


    As I rushed across the small cargo bay, passing several large crates, the thought that this definitely wasn''t a slave delivery bounced around in the back of my skull. Still, I pushed forward, holstering my pistol and stopping by a ladder that led to what I assumed was the main deck of the ship. I had one foot and one hand on the rungs before I realized how dead I would be if I started climbing. Instead, I dual cast a fully charged familiar spell up through the hole to the main deck, the transparent form of my tiger familiar casting light purple light back through the bay.


    The shouts, screams, and laser fire of at least two people echoed down through the hole as my tiger followed my orders to take down any hostiles. After a few seconds, the spell failed, having taken too much damage, but I only cast it again. I repeated this two more times before the spell timed out instead of failing due to damage. I dual cast oak flesh on myself and pulled out my pistol, slowly climbing the ladder, my familiar still active.


    The main deck wasn''t anything special, reminding me of the interior of a relatively large RV. My familiar was standing by the ladder, waiting for its next set of instructions, while three corpses slowly cooled on the floor, the last one in the doorway to the cockpit. I double-checked that the rest of the ship was empty before pulling out my comm and making my way back down to the cargo bay.


    "How''s it going out there?" I asked, my hand hovering over the controls for the cargo bay door. "Is it safe to come out?"


    "We are clear," Nal responded. "Hostiles cleared out. Miru just landed."


    I slapped the button to the cargo bay, the thick door slowly opening to reveal Nal, holding his blaster at the ready. I give him a nod before stepping out of the cargo bay and making my way across the landing pad. I could see Miru and Tatnia climbing out of the A5, Nevue already looking around, having replaced the proton rifle with one of the blaster rifles.


    "Alright, let''s get the money loaded up. The quicker-"


    I spotted a tiny bit of movement from the corner of my eye, turning to spot a single guard standing on the lip of the ship berth, his blaster rifle held up in a tight grip as he aimed down at Tatnia and Miru.


    "Look out!" I shouted, running past Nal, dual cast lesser ward already forming between my hands.


    Tatnia whipped her head around, trying to spot the threat, while Miru just froze, focusing on me. The guard opened fire, missing the first two shots, the third just barely deflecting away from Miru as I stood between her and the guard. I held the ward out in front of me, deflecting a half dozen shots while Tatnia dragged Miru back inside the A5. Tatnia had just barely succeeded when my ward collapsed under the onslaught of red energy.


    Fortunately, that was enough time for Nevue and Nal to target and kill the guard, the very dead man falling forward off the lip of the roof, falling head first to the ground. Unfortunately, he also managed to get two shots through. The first slammed into my stomach, the second hitting a little higher up.


    I could smell burning as I stumbled backward from the impact. As I stumbled back, my feet caught the edge of something, causing me to trip and fall back completely. I could hear shouting, but all was silenced when I felt my head hit something on the way down, turning my brain off like a light switch.

 Chapter 16

    Head trauma has a funny way of messing with your sense of time. I''ve been knocked out twice before this, once during a little league game when I was young and again a few years ago while I was celebrating my twenty-seventh birthday. Just three beers was enough to help a simple slip turn into a tumble down the stairs.


    Being unconscious is like a deep sleep, one that you sometimes snap out of immediately, coming to after a few seconds. Sometimes, though, it likes to hang around. Your consciousness starts getting slippery, and it becomes really hard to stay awake for very long. Usually, getting knocked out and staying out is a really bad sign.


    I slowly woke up with a slamming headache terrible enough that I could feel my stomach roiling from it. Thankfully I managed to hold on to my last meal because I wasn''t nearly lucid enough to run to the nearest vomit-safe receptacle.


    I slowly pieced together what was going on, struggling through what was probably a pretty severe concussion that I was probably fortunate to be waking up from. I remembered being shot, and the sensation of being lifted, carried around, and laid back down. I remember shouting, and the whine of blaster fire as well. I struggled to put everything together, but every thought was difficult to grasp, like trying to grab a melting ice cube with already numb fingers.


    When my brain refused to cooperate, I decided to try and slowly sit up and open my eyes, gasping and collapsing backward when my chest and stomach muscles immediately failed, a deep, dull, aching pain radiating into my body. It was the deepest pain I had ever felt, grinding down on me. I could feel my brain trying to protect itself by swallowing me back into unconsciousness when something grabbed my hand, squeezing it.


    "Deacon¡ª¡ªself¡ª¡ªneed¡ª¡ªyourself!"


    The voice was washed out by the pain that wracked my body, but the grip on my hand gave me something to focus on. I gripped it back and tried to focus, my eyes seeing nothing but darkness, despite the fact that I could feel that they were open.


    "Deacon! Heal¡ª¡ªself!" The familiar voice said again. "YOU NEED¡ª¡ªHEAL YOURSELF!"


    Part of my brain reacted to the shouting without any extra input. Somehow, even with the pain and slippery thoughts, the familiar matrix of the novice-level healing spell formed in my palm. A cool, gentle sensation radiated downward from my hand, sinking into my body. I used all of my mana to hold the spell for as long as possible. The spell failed when I was out of magicka, but I could already feel it slowly refilling.


    When it was full again, I raised my hands slightly, and whoever was gripping my right hand let it go. I struggled to dual cast the healing spell, failing twice before getting it right, creating a much more intense flow of healing energy. I did my best to focus it into my head, the slamming headache receding slightly, even as I used up my magicka much more quickly.


    I repeated the process a few more times before finally opening my eyes to see the cargo bay roof of the <u>ship </u></a>we had just stolen. My head was feeling considerably better, though I could still feel the pain in my stomach as my muscles occasionally twitched, turning a dull, deep ache in a split second of shooting sharp pain.


    I turned to see Miru, who was kneeling down next to me, with a watery smile on her face, tears dripping down her face.


    "Hey, what I miss?" I asked, my voice scratchy and rough.


    The pink-skinned Twi''lek almost jumped at me to give me a hug, but luckily Tatnia, who was standing just behind her, caught her in time.


    "Woah there, kiddo, not quite fixed yet," I explained. "I was focusing on my head¡­"


    I could see Tatnia wince when I mentioned my head injury while Miru kneeled back down. I realized that I was lying down on one of our cots, which they must have set up in the cargo hold. From both of their expressions, my injuries must have been pretty bad.


    "You hit your head pretty hard," Tatnia explained, picking up on my own expression. "None of us are doctors, and we really couldn''t stick around. There were some medical supplies and we did what we could but¡­"


    "It''s alright, I get it," I assured her, starting another dual healing spell, this time focused on my stomach. "How did my stomach look?"


    "It could have been worse," She said. "You have some pretty bad burns around your stomach and a bit higher up, but we were pretty sure nothing important got cooked. The armor that Nal got us saved your life."


    "Should have been wearing a helmet," I said, shaking my head. "I had him buy them for a reason."


    "Thank you," Miru said suddenly, gripping my hand again. "You¡­ I just froze and...."


    "Hey, don''t worry about it," I said with a supportive smile, giving her hand a squeeze. "I''m the boss, right? I gotta take care of our mechanic."


    This time Tatnia didn''t stop her in time, the younger girl wrapping me up in a tight hug. I did my best to grin and bear it for her sake.


    It took about thirty minutes of on-and-off healing before I could finally sit up on the edge of the cot. I switched to a one-handed healing spell as I looked around the cargo bay. It was very cramped, the small storage area was filled with our own supplies, as well as the supplies that were already in the cargo bay when we took the ship. I could just make out the MRV-3 speeder, against the opposite wall, the one with the thick cargo bay door. Tatnia was sitting on a crate a few feet away while Miru went back to what she was doing, which looked like taking inventory.


    "So, what did I miss?"


    "Not much," She admitted with a shrug. "When you were out, we brought you inside, and Nal did some basic first aid. The rest of us took everything from the A5 and moved it in here. We just managed to leave before more guards showed up, but they didn''t have anything that could punch through the shields."


    "Where are we going?" I asked, feeling the strangely familiar hum of hyperspace through my feet.


    "Well¡­ We weren''t sure if you would wake up on your own, and even if you did, we didn''t know what state you would be in," She explained. "Nevue said that his people might be able to help, so we plotted a course to the last place he knew they were."


    "His people?"


    "He is with the Rebels," She explained, "They-"


    "Fuuuuuuuuuuck," I groaned, hanging my head for a second before gesturing to Tatnia. "Sorry, continue."


    "He says he isn''t sure if anyone will be at his old meeting places. Apparently, they''ve been pretty busy the last few months," She explained, and I snorted at her understatement. "But he knows where he can get in contact with people, find out where they are, and if they are willing to help.."


    I frowned, having a pretty good idea where some of his friends were, at least. After the battle of Yavin and the destruction of the first Death Star, the Empire blockaded the entire system, preventing large transports from leaving the solar system, never mind Yavin 4. Most of the rebel fleet was already around the galaxy, and there were several small rebel bases already set up, waiting for the rest of the alliance to escape Yavin 4. At least, that''s what happened as far as I knew. This whole time period was a little murky even before the split between the Legend canon and the Disney canon.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    "Well¡­ since this is just a temporary ship, then there really isn''t any harm being around the Rebels," I eventually said, slowly standing up. "So we can drop him off and negotiate a deal for this ship, then head out to buy our own."


    "Don''t like this one?" She asked with a smirk.


    "It''s a bit small. Have you guys been sleeping in shifts or¡­?"


    "No, there are two beds, a cot, and the couch," She responded with a shrug. "It''s not exactly the most comfortable place to sleep so we switch back and forth between that."


    Once I was sure my legs weren''t going to give out, I started making my way through the cargo bay, peeking into the crates and containers. My eyes went wide when I realized the second container I opened was all blaster pistols.


    "Did we steal an arms dealer''s ship?" I asked as I looked in another crate to find a heavy repeating blaster cannon like they had set up in the hangar. "Holy hell!"


    "It seemed to be a delivery of weapons, but it''s also got some general supplies," Tatnia responded. "Nevue already said that if we sell it at a discount to wherever Rebel group we find, he will consider that his payment."


    "There''s gotta be another twenty thousand credits here."


    "More like twelve or thirteen. It''s not all blasters and weapons," Tatnia said. "We should probably end up keeping some of the food that''s in those crates over there."


    I continued to explore the smaller cargo bay before arriving at the ladder. I had been healing myself pretty much non-stop since I woke up, so I confidently put a hand on the ladder before stopping and turning to Tatnia.


    "How long was I out anyway?"


    "Was wondering when you would ask that. Just over a day and a half," She answered. "We''ve already been to one empty base, Nevue was hoping that his team would be there, but it was cleaned out to the bedrock."


    "Damn¡­" I trailed off, eventually shaking my thoughts clear. "Has anyone gone through our money? Just to count it and make sure there aren''t any more hidden surprises?"


    "We did, and there weren''t," She explained, laughing when he gestured emphatically for her to spit it out. "We have just over sixty-one thousand credits. Not including the twenty thousand we got from selling the first ship."


    "Holy¡­ we need to be careful," I said, my heart thumping in my chest like a kick drum. "That''s¡­ a lot of money. Someone is going to come looking for that."


    "We are in the wind for now," She responded with a shrug. "Eventually, we will be able to handle it anyway."


    I nodded and started to climb the ladder to the main deck, climbing out into the lounge area. There were no pools of blood or anything, though there were a few suspiciously clean spots where there had been pools of blood. I made my way forward, stepping back down into the descended cockpit area. Nal turned to greet me, smiling and nodding.


    "Good to see you awake," He said, gesturing to one of two empty seats, which I happily sat in. "How do you feel?"


    "Better. I''ve been down there healing myself for a while."


    "We heard. Miru was shouting pretty loudly when you started waking up," Nevue said, focused on the ship controls in front of him.


    The cockpit was a wash of panels filled with buttons, switches, and levers. There were a pair of flight controls in front of Nal and Nevue, though both of them were tilted forward and out of the way, probably disengaged because we were in hyperspace. I mentally made a note to find an excuse to ask why some ships had sleek, futuristic controls and some had the Cold War-era look. Past the control panels and joysticks, through the viewport, were the brilliant streaking lights of hyperspace. It was a riveting view, almost hypnotic to watch, though part of my implanted knowledge said that staring at it was a bad idea. I wasn''t sure if that was superstition or not, so I tore my eyes away and focused back on Nal and Nevue.


    "Why are you guys stuck here?" I asked, leaning back in my chair and casting another heal on myself, trying to fix the last bit of soreness. "Isn''t it kind of set it and forget it for hyperspace?"


    "For an unfamiliar ship?" Nevue asked with a scoff. "There are easier ways to get yourself killed."


    "Never know what quality ship might be," Nal said, explaining it a bit better. "Engine could fail suddenly, or a stabilizer might come loose. Fine if caught, lethal if it''s not. Only trust a ship you know, maintained by crew you trust. Besides, you can enjoy entertainment."


    He lifted up a datapad I had missed, wiggling it a bit before putting it down. We were quiet for a few minutes, the two pilots switching between looking at their datapads and the consoles around them. I could see that Nevue was playing Sabbac, while Nal was reading what looked like a technical manual.


    "So¡­ A Rebel huh?" I asked finally, when my magic was full. "Guess that explains your experience."


    "Yeah, that''s not going to be a problem, is it?" The Zabrak responded after a long moment, turning his chair to look at me.


    "No. I mean, I rather you weren''t, but not because I have a problem with the rebellion," I assured him. "Just makes things more complicated. I do appreciate you trying to get me to a doctor."


    "I would still be rotting on that karking cesspit of a planet if you hadn''t come along," He responded with a shrug. "I''m willing to extend a bit of trust. I should warn you, it''s going to be a little tense when we eventually get somewhere with people."


    "They won''t just blow us out of the sky, will they?"


    "No, definitely not. They don''t have the resources to just blow ships out of the sky just cause it''s suspicious," Nevue assured me. "I''m just going to have to prove I am who I am first. I can''t imagine everything is going smoothly after what happened to Alderaan. Not to mention blowing up the Death Star."


    "That actually happened?" Miru asked, stepping into the cockpit, catching me off guard for a second. "Weren''t you¡­ already caught by that point?"


    "Yes, but I had access to the Holonet, and I know which news brokers can be trusted," He explained, staring out past the cockpit window. "I honestly wish it wasn''t true, two billion people lived on Alderaan."


    The cockpit was quiet for a lot longer this time. I looked over at Miru, who seemed unsure if the news of the Empire destroying a planet with a moon-sized space station, then that station getting blown up by a rag-tag group of freedom fighters, could really be true. Eventually, I couldn''t take the silence.


    "What do you do for the Alliance?"


    "... my team and I were asset acquisition," He explained after a long moment. "We make deals for weapons, food, supplies. We also raid Imperial depots and supply deliveries. Nothing much bigger than this ship, and that was very rare. Usually, we just stuck to stealing food and supplies."


    "Explains why you were so ready to rob the slavers," Miru said, the rebel nodding without looking away from his sabbac game.


    "Let''s just hope at least some of my team survived," He responded. "They should have records of who I am, but it will be a lot easier if they have someone on hand to back me up."

 Chapter 17

    Eventually, I got bored looking at the streaking lights out of the cockpit window and left to explore the rest of the ship in more detail. It was far from what I was hoping to buy for us once we were done dropping Nevue off and selling our extra goods, but it was clearly in better shape than the slaver ship we had sold. I was hoping to find a ship that would allow us to expand our team and pick up some more members and equipment. This one was way too small for that.


    I figured the best way to explore was from one end to the other, so I made my way to the stern on the main deck. The furthest feature of the ship was a small crawl space, about half my height, that, as far as I could tell, led down into the engine area. I couldn''t imagine having to repair anything in a space that size, never mind in an emergency. Next to the crawlspace entry was a small storage area. It was almost filled with supplies, some of them looking freshly delivered. I could tell someone had already been through it, with boxes and other things strewn around the counter. Judging by the empty snack food box sitting in the corner, they seemed to have found what they were looking for.


    There were two identical bedrooms, cramped both from the lack of floor space and the fact that the roof slopped downward. Each room had a double-stacked bed to one side, with storage built into the frame. It was tight but manageable, especially since I knew there was a lounge to sit in. Next to the bedrooms was the refresher, which was basic but passable.


    I kept exploring, eventually discovering that there was a meal prep system built into one end of the lounge. I grabbed a bag from the storage room and used the system to make myself a meal. It was similar to what we had been eating so far, but in a different style, some sort of noodle dish with a strongly flavored sauce that reminded me of beef stroganoff. I took one of the seats in the lounge, letting out a long breath before starting to eat. There was something therapeutic about eating a simple meal, and I could feel some of the tension I had felt, some of it stretching back to before I was injured, slowly released. When I was done, I climbed back down into the cargo bay,


    I spent about twenty minutes or so going through the cargo, just exploring what we had made off with. Tatnia, who had left the cargo bay not long after I came down, hadn''t been lying, there were a few shipments of weapons, but most of it was supplies and other goods. Our staff, or rather the stuff they had grabbed before we left, was set aside in the far corner of the cargo bay, near where I had been laid down.


    Eventually, going through boxes got boring as well, so I made my way back to the cot and sat down on the edge of the bed. On a whim, I pushed out my grimoire, flipping through the pages to check if anything new had appeared. To my surprise, just after all of my novice spells were the new apprentice-level spells.


    "YES!" I shouted out, jumping up off the bed and cheering. "Fucking finally!"


    I did a little victory dance, which was, of course, the moment that Tatnia climbed back down the ladder, catching me with my hands in the air like I just didn''t care.


    "Well, that''s a good sign," She asked. "What''s going on? Find something interesting?"


    I stopped dancing and suddenly realized that I had no way to explain how or why the book was expanding. They had all bought the "internal energy source" idea pretty well, but a book just randomly gaining solid pages? I couldn''t just explain that away. Eventually, I just shrugged and told the truth.


    "I unlocked the next level of things I can do," I explained. "Got a bunch of new things to learn. I''m pretty sure I''ll be able to heal you guys once I figure it out."


    "I¡­ I''m not going to pretend to understand how you''re doing these things," She said after a moment. "But I won''t complain if it means you can fix me up when I get injured."


    I nodded and looked around, eventually deciding that the small lounge in the living area would be a better place to read. I climbed back up, leaving Tatnia to herself, sitting myself down where I had just previously eaten, and started reading through my grimoire.


    Despite the fact that I wasn''t nearly as crunched for time as I was when this all started, I still wanted to have a general idea of my options before I dedicated myself to a singular spell. In order to do that, I needed to read through what spells the book was offering to teach me. The first section was alteration, which had a paltry two spells to offer, and both of them were upgrades to spells I already knew.


    Destruction had an array of new spells, including some desperately needed spells that would let me hit something further than fifty feet away. I made a mental note that lightning bolt was on the short list of spells I wanted to learn as soon as possible. Illusion was in a similar spot as alteration, as there were only three spells. Fear and courage could be useful, and I had a small niggling feeling that in the games, calm and courage had been flipped in terms of level, but muffle, the third illusion spell, was definitely going on the list with lightning bolt. Stealth archers were overpowered for a reason.


    Conjuration was a bit different from what I expected, barring the fact that there was still no necromancy. Not that I was upset by that, I was more than happy to not have to deal with raising the dead. The apprentice list of spells included the ones I had expected, like conjuring a bound battle ax, soul trap, and summoning a flame atronach, which joined the list of must-learn spells. Additionally, there was conjure elemental familiar, which, as far as I could tell, was a spell that lets you summon your familiar with an extra twist of either fire, cold, or lightning. If someone managed to forcibly dispell them, and it''s what you wanted, they would detonate in the element you imbued them with. They also did a bit of extra damage with that element through any normal attacks as well.


    I could only assume that the summon elemental familiar had replaced flaming familiar, which I remember having been at this level or at adept. What I was sure about was that a detonating summon could be very useful¡­ or an extremely dangerous problem. I couldn''t reset my choice for it to explode once I cast it, and I wasn''t immune to its explosions, as far as I could tell. All that meant that a lucky shot could cause my familiar to blow up in my face.


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    What was extremely interesting was the inclusion of summon bound armor, which I knew for a fact was not a spell you could learn in Skyrim. It came in two varieties, upper and lower torso, and from the description, it would work the same way as a bound weapon. The description went out of the way to remind the reader that bound items were not indestructible, even beyond banishing.


    Realizing that my list of spells to learn asap was growing, I skipped ahead and opened the restoration section, revealing the list to be what I expected, save one addition. I was excited to learn that healing hands, a spell that lets me heal others, was on the list, as well as fast healing, a potential game changer in dangerous scenarios. There was also the second iteration of ward, steadfast ward, something I was eager to learn after a lesser version failed to block sustained blaster rifle fire.


    What was really intriguing was the respite spell, something I didn''t recognize from Skyrim but did sound vaguely familiar. A quick check through its description revealed it to be a spell that wiped away fatigue and restored stamina. I was very interested to find out how that worked, and I could imagine that it would be extremely useful in a lot of bad situations, especially since it could be cast on yourself or onto someone else with very little change to the second matrix.


    Despite desperately wanting to try and learn one of the spells I knew weren''t from Skyrim, I knew that there was something much more important things that I really needed to focus on. I quickly flipped the pages back, re-opening the restoration section and finding the healing hands spell.


    I started reading through the first page, which included a more in detail description, a brief overview of its limitations as well as several potentially missed uses. I made note that this spell did nothing for anything conjured with magic, nor any sort of automaton, which made sense. It wasn''t unsurprising, but now that I knew it wouldn''t work, I really wish it did.


    As I flipped the page over to the matrix diagrams, it took me a long moment for me to realize what I was looking at.


    "Huh¡­ I guess that explains why they are broken up like that.¡­" I mumbled to myself, doing my best to make heads or tales out of the diagrams.


    Novice spells had been relatively easy to learn. Each spell had a matrix, which I would recreate and then slowly tune to my own body, aetherial presence, and soul. When I was done, I would memorize it through repeat casting, which helped my magic acclimatize to the spell, making it easier to cast with less thinking. It appeared that apprentice spells had two separate matrices, both of them interacting with each other before recombining to be cast. How they interacted and the placement of the separate matrices depended greatly on the spell, but the examples they included were one after the other, woven together at the same time, or even created in separate hands and combined at the last minute.


    On the one hand, this meant that learning new spells wasn''t going to be some crazy process that required resources or anything. On the other hand, learning two matrices would most likely double how long it took for me to finish them, meaning somewhere between six and eight hours. Even worse, if the pattern continued, then learning adept spells would take between nine and sixteen hours, probably leaning toward the higher end.


    I cursed and shook my head before doing my best to put that out of my mind, purposely not doing the math for the expert or master levels. Instead, I focused on forming the matrices for healing hands. This particular apprentice spell was simply two matrices in a row, the first one starting in my wrist and the second in my palm. It wasn''t terribly complicated to put together, just a much longer process, as I worked out the second matrix immediately after the first. About forty-five minutes after I started, I finally had the matrix put together. I held it in place for a while before slowly but surely tuning it into something that would work for me.


    I was about three hours in when I could feel the ship drop out of hyperspace. I groaned, realizing that I needed to plan ahead better now that learning a spell wasn''t something I could crank out in a few hours. For a moment, I considered trying to rush it, but Tatnia came up from the cargo bay and nodded to the cockpit when she saw me. I nodded and closed my book, grumbling under my breath. I mentally debated for a moment before calling out to Tatnia.


    "What''s wrong?" She asked when she poked her head out from the cockpit.


    "Take a vote amongst yourselves. I''m about five hours from learning how to heal you guys, so we can wait until I have it down, or-"


    "We can wait!" Miru called out from behind the human woman.


    Both Nal and Nevue also voiced their agreement quickly. Apparently, waiting wasn''t nearly as big of an issue as I thought. Tatnia picked up on my surprise and snorted.


    "Not exactly a difficult choice Deacon. Why would we rush when taking our time means we have a medic on the team?" She pointed out, shaking her head. "Do your thing, Boss. I''m going to take a nap."


    "Ah¡­ yeah, fair point," I admitted sheepishly, quickly focusing back on my work before I lost any progress.


    Like the novice spell, the first fifth of the matrices worked smoothly the first time I tried, cutting a fifth off what the spell would have probably taken. I continued to work, trying my best to focus while everyone was moving around. After about another four hours and some change, I finally managed to cast the spell, the coil of healing energy stretching out away from my hand for a foot or so instead of sinking into my body like my normal healing spell did.


    I let out a groan and leaned back into my seat, casting the spell a second and third time, holding it for the third until I ran out of magicka. I almost lost it on the second cast but managed to recall the final form of the matrices, aided by whatever was causing the spells to get easier as I recast them repeatedly. Nal, who was sitting in a chair not far from me, looked up from his datapad, showing his sharp teeth off with a smile.


    "Were you successful?" He asked, putting the datapad on the center table.


    "Yeah, I got it working," I responded, waiting for my mana to replenish before casting it again and again. "Got any injuries that need healing?"


    The blue-skinned Duro''s stood up from his seat and moved to sit directly next to me. He lifted one of his fingers to his mouth,


    which as always, was filled with very sharp teeth, nicking his skin enough that some blood began welling on his finger pad. I rolled my eyes before recasting the spell, this time focusing it on his hand.


    "Oh¡­ that is a strange sensation. Not unpleasant," He commented before cleaning his thumb to reveal unbroken skin. "It appears that you have succeeded, Deacon. Congratulations."


    I stood up and groaned, leaning backward a bit in my seat, my spine settling with a series of cracking sounds. I was sore, having spent around six hours bent over the grimoire. I cast a normal healing spell on myself, my soreness fading after a few seconds.


    "Nal, you wanna get Tatnia?" I asked, the older man nodding in agreement. "I''ll go down and get Miru."


    Nal went back to knock on the bedroom door while I leaned down and shouted for Miru, the young Twi''lek shouting back, making their way to the ladder. After just a few minutes, we made our way into the cockpit, only to find Nevue had moved into a passenger sleep and was now taking a nap.


    "Nevue?" I called out, noting that the Zabrak jolted awake a bit aggressively, his hand sliding down to his holster before he remembered where he was. He took a second to blink and crack his neck before looking at me. While he was blinking the sleep from his eyes, Nal sat down in the copilot''s chair.


    "You all set?" The horned man asked as he tapped his controls and read his readouts.


    "Yeah, ready when you are."


    "Good," He said, simply standing from his seat and retaking a seat in the pilot chair. "Time to say hello."

 Chapter 18

    It turns out that when Nevue said we needed to say hello, he wasn''t using a turn of phrase or making a joke. The first thing he did when he sat down in the pilot''s seat was tap a few buttons and flip a switch, a panel lighting up and beeping out a series of tones and warbles that repeated every five seconds.


    "What''s that?" Miru asked, leaning over to look at the panel.


    "It''s the friendly signal," Nevue explained, taking control of the ship and reorienting it, a large planet filling the cockpit window. "Just in case anyone is home to see us coming, they know we aren''t here to wipe them out. We don''t have an IFF transponder."


    The ship kept moving, rumbling softly as Nevue activated the sublight engines, the small freighter now oriented chiefly away from the planet. A small moon, half blocked by the planet''s horizon, slowly came into view. The planet itself was a mixture of red and cobalt gray, a strange combination, made only weirder by the light yellow clouds that covered a significant portion of it. The moon behind it was a very, very pale blue and seemed to be on the large side. Or maybe it was just closer than I was used to from Earth''s moon?


    "What kind of base was this?" I asked, looking away from the planet to our pilot. "That planet doesn''t exactly look habitable."


    "Oh, it''s not. It would melt the skin off your bones in a few minutes and noticeably corrode the ship''s hull after a few hours," He admitted. "It''s a dead world, which makes its moon the perfect place to hand off goods. Whenever we got our hands on enough supplies to be worth the trip, we would seal it up, bring it to the moon and store it in a deep meteorite crater. The pick-up team would come by and haul it away, distributing it as needed. It''s also our emergency contact point. There''s a hyperwave comms unit that we can use to request a rendezvous point. They won''t respond to random messages, just ones from specific units."


    "Ah, so the Rebellion is still in the rebel cells stage?" I asked, Nevue nodding without looking away from the viewport.


    "Partly. It''s an important part of gathering resources, stirring up the rise to rebel, and really the only way to keep a presence on any world firmly in Imperial hands," He explained easily. "But it''s not all small cells of freedom fighters. We have a fleet, and an army, though it''s broken up and spread out around the galaxy. It''s not all dead drops and code phrases."


    I nodded in understanding and mentally pushed the lever between the Disney canon and Legends canon a bit further into the Disney section. The Legends canon never really dove into the pre-rebellion era that much, at least not that I knew of, and the idea of rebel cells slowly building an Alliance army generally came from the Disney side. It wasn''t a guarantee, but it was worth keeping in mind.


    We got closer and closer to the moon, slowly lowering to the small lunar satellite. We flew around its surface for a few minutes before Nevue pointed out toward the lip of a large meteorite crater.


    "There it is," he said, before adjusting the ship to get closer, landing it a few meters away from the lip. "So, we have three EVA suits. Who wants to come with me?"


    It took a while for Nal, Nevue, and myself to put on the suits, mostly because I had no idea what I was doing, and they both needed to help me, but soon Miru and Tatnia were sealed up on the main deck while we slowly depressurized the cargo bay. The suit was only a basic sealed environment suit, with a blue underlay and orange plates over that. The helmet was the same color scheme and actually reminded me of the original Spartan helmet from Halo, though the face plate was translucent, not one-sided.


    The suit itself was a bit restrictive, and I needed to be careful not to cast anything that would ruin it, but I was way too excited at the prospect of a low-gravity moonwalk to care. I had spent the first ten years of my life assuring everyone that when I was older, I was going to be an astronaut and walk on the moon, and while this wasn''t Luna, it was still part of a dream come true.


    When the cargo bay door finally opened, I was the first one out, walking down the slight ramp to the moon''s surface, I turned back to look at Nevue, who was looking around from the doorway.


    "Does this moon have a name?" I asked, bouncing a little in place to get used to my new weight outside the ship''s artificial gravity.


    "No, the planet doesn''t even have one, just a code number," Nevue answered, stepping down to the surface. "We always called it ''hand off point thirteen'' or Point Thirteen."


    I followed the Zabrak to the edge of the massive crater, looking down into the pit. It mainly seemed normal, though now that I was focusing, I could see the subtle footprints that covered a significant portion of the ground around us. Down in the middle of the crater was a platform, about three meters across and maybe four wide, the whole structure clearly painted to be as camouflaged as possible to the moon''s surface.


    "That platform was where we would secure things for pick up," Nevue explained, pointing down at it. "Though we sometimes had to improvise and spread it out a bit more. Then we could cover everything with camouflage tarps."


    "How do we-" I started to ask, only to watch as he jumped over the lip and floated downward. "-get down¡­ Right, I should have seen that coming."


    I watched as he made his way down, doing a strange leaping walk that let him cover a lot of distance, though everything had that slow, low grave pacing. Eventually, Nal jumped after him, and after a deep breath, I did as well. I slowly bounced down to the bottom of the crater, doing my best not to fall on my face as I did. Eventually, I got a bit more confident, and when I reached the reasonably flat ground at the bottom of the crater, I jumped up as hard as I could.


    I shot up and forward, floating through space for a full five seconds before the moon''s low gravity finally caught up with me and I slowly landed, stumbling a bit but recovering. I turned to find both Nal and Nevue looking at me, suddenly very glad I didn''t let out a shout as I flew.


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    "Hey, cut me a break. This is my first time in low gravity," I explained. "Low-tech planet, remember?"


    Nevue shook his head and continued to walk towards the platform while Nal nodded in understanding.


    "It is an interesting experience," He said as he got closer. "Very glad you''re not the type to get violently ill."


    "Yeah, me t- Wait, was that something that could happen?" I asked, turning as the Duros walked past me. "Was there a chance I would have just gotten violently ill?"


    "Yes, some species have members who cannot stand in low gravity," He explained. "Humans are one such species."


    "Jesus Christ, I would have been sick in the suit too!" I said, suddenly feeling a bit queasy from the thought of throwing up in a sealed environment. "You could have warned me!"


    "Could have, but that wouldn''t have been as funny."


    I resisted the urge to shove the older man, instead following behind him and climbing up onto the platform. Now that we were standing on it, you could clearly tell that the legs were driven into the rocky moon''s surface, probably to keep them from flying away every time someone bumped them. Nevue spent a few minutes walking around the small platform, looking down before eventually letting out "hah!" of success and kneeling down. He fiddled with something for another few seconds before pulling open a hidden hatch


    He reached inside the hatch and pulled out a school locker-sized box, lifting it easily in the low gravity. Once he had it secure on the platform, he spent a minute studying the box, eventually opening a panel and typing on a small datapad-like interface. He typed for about thirty seconds before spending a minute re-reading what he had typed. When he was done, he nodded and tapped the keyboard again.


    "Alright, that''s done," He said. "Now help me get this box up into the cargo bay. I don''t want to be in this suit any more than I have to."


    The three of us spent about ten minutes moving the large mobile holonet connector into the cargo bay, closing the large door, and waiting for the bay to repressurize. When a light near the door turned green, we started removing the EVA suits. Our helmets came off first, popping off with a slight hiss of a seal breaking.


    "Sithspawn, I hate these," Nev said, visibly restraining himself from dropping the helmet onto the ground. "They are never warm enough. I can''t feel my fingers."


    "At least it''s better than a flight suit," I pointed out. "Nothing like wearing something willing to sacrifice your limbs to keep your body going."


    Nevue shivered and shook his head, quickly removing the rest of his suit. When all three of us pulled off the final pieces, Tatna and Miru made their way down the ladder into the cargo bay. Miru headed straight to the box we had just brought in while Tatnia leaned against a crate.


    "So, did it work?" She asked, her arms crossed.


    "The message went through. Assuming someone is still checking the system, we should get a reply eventually," Nevue responded.


    "Miru, don''t mess with it," I said, having watched the mechanically inclined teenager start tapping the casing of the secure holonet unit.


    "I wasn''t gonna break it! I just want to see under the casing," She explained, pulling her hands away. "I''ve never seen a hyperwave unit like this."


    "That''s because it''s custom-made," Nevue explained. "It''s basically a cudgeled-together starfighter unit, sealed in a fancy box."


    With the message sent, all we could do was wait. I was tempted to start learning another spell, but with no idea where the base would be, I had no way of knowing how long I had. Instead, I settled on practicing some of my novice magic, as well as the healing hands spell. It was boring, so I also passed the time by finishing up the inventory of goods and figuring out what we wanted to keep and what we wanted to sell to the rebels.


    "Everything we keep is going to make transferring harder," Tatnia pointed out. "Not sure how you plan on shipping over all the credits once we drop off Nevue. You were planning on selling this thing, right?"


    "You know, I don''t have to be the only one making decisions," I pointed out. "I never claimed to be the leader."


    Tatnia snorted in response, shaking her head,


    "You know, before all of this," She responded, gesturing around vaguely. "I would have laughed at anyone who told me I would listen to what someone else told me to do. I''m not the brightest star in the galaxy, but even I can see you''re the boss, Boss."


    I grumbled as she smirked, knowing just how I felt about that.


    "Fine, I won''t say no. Just make sure you back me up when we inevitably find the person who thinks they can do a better job than me," I said, getting a raised eyebrow in response. "But yes, the plan is to sell this ship to the Rebellion, probably at a discount. While I''m not a joiner, the current status quo is too fucky not to lend a hand here and there. Anyway, we can sell them the ship with the caveat that they use it to shuttle us somewhere where we can buy another one. Then we just transfer stuff over. When we are done, they leave in this ship, and we leave in our new, bigger, and much better ship."


    Tatnia nodded appreciatively of the idea before looking up at where the ladder disappeared into the roof of the cargo bay. She was clearly thinking about something, but I was happy to let her do so in silence as I read through some of the options for the pre-packaged, shelf-stable meals. Eventually, she spoke up.


    "You think they can do it?" Tatnia asked. "Take down the Empire?"


    "...Maybe," I answered, looking up at the brown-haired woman. "It will happen eventually either way."


    "What do you mean?"


    "Empires always fall, it''s inevitable," I explained with a shrug, leaning back on my storage crate seat. "No matter what kind of government, no matter how they rule, they always fall eventually. Ironically, it''s usually at the hands of its own people. Rebels who want a change or greedy people who want to rule. Even if it comes down to chance, eventually, it will happen."


    "So you think the Galactic Republic falling was inevitable?" She asked, focused on me now.


    "Absolutely. From what I know, it was a miracle it lasted as long as it did," I responded. "It was a bloated, corrupt, unresponsive, half-dead, greedy corpse. The Empire were just the fucks who put it out of its misery."


    "... That was a lot more aggressive than I expected," Tatnia admitted, looking at me surprised.


    "The only thing worse than someone being a dick, is someone being a dick while insisting that they have the moral high ground, and that they are doing what''s best for the world," I pointed out. "If the Empire hadn''t come along and taken over, I''m pretty sure there would still be a rebellion going on."


    Tatnia and I chatted for a few more minutes before, eventually, she went off to get something to eat while I continued to multitask between practicing what magic I could inside a ship and looking through the inventory. Eventually, the holonet connector let out a series of beeps.


    I called out for Nevue, pausing to listen for a reply. When none came, I started making my way over to the ladder, only for the Zabrak to appear on the ladder, climbing down. He quickly made his way to the custom machine, pulling open the display and reading the response. After a few minutes, he sent an answer before turning to look at me.


    "They sent coordinates," He explained. "To a planet called Thila in the Outer Rim Territories, I-Sector."


    "Really? Just like that?" I asked in disbelief. "Sounds a bit easy."


    "Well, the messages have been in a double-layer code," He explained with a shrug. "And the hyperwave system we use is pretty secure."


    "...Well alright. Not much we could do anyway," I admitted, shaking my head. "Get us there, Nevue. The quicker, the better."

 Chapter 19

    Nevue put the ship in hyperspace, pausing for a moment as we all watched the stars fly by in the dazzling display. Eventually, after everyone had left, Nevue got up to go as well, leaving the cockpit empty save Nal and me.


    It was stunning that this ship, which was more or less on the lower end of speed according to everyone, was capable of crossing a not insignificant portion of the galaxy in less than a day. I knew my companions were annoyed that the low quality of the ship''s hyperdrive had added hours onto the trip, but I couldn''t help but be amazed. The sense of freedom, the feeling that we could go anywhere, an "anywhere" that included other planets, felt like the freedom of my first car multiplied but a million.


    It also mixed in a sense scale that probably should have been disturbing but that I couldn''t help but find reassuring, somehow. We were now one small group over a galaxy of people. We were just five people out of trillions of souls throughout the known universe. We were small, just a tiny spec on the cosmic scale, and hopefully, that meant we could do our business for a while without attracting too much attention.


    Nal waved me off when asked if he needed anything as I stood up from my chair. I nodded and stretched before leaving the cockpit, mentally reviewing the spells I wanted to learn. Twelve hours in space meant that I had time to learn another spell.


    I plopped down into one of the seats in the lounge, my grimoire out and on the table a second later. Out of the spells on my need-to-learn list, my first instinct was to go with respite. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that it could not replace sleep. It could hold off exhaustion for a while, but the crash became more and more severe as you put more and more strain on yourself. Eventually, your body and mind would start to deteriorate under the effects


    Since respite wasn''t going to suddenly double the amount of time I had to get shit done, I decided to leave it for later and go for the second option, conjure flame atronach. Conjure familiar had been extremely useful when I had the chance to plan our attacks, and the only thing that kept it from being even more useful was that I kept forgetting to use it. A summon that could shoot fire, take more hits, and would be immune to fire seemed like a great step up from a simple panther.


    I read the description carefully, double-checking that I wasn''t about to set the entire ship on fire. The flame atronachs in the game had a tendency to explode whenever they died and looked like they could set things on fire just by being close. Thankfully, with the more realistic version I had access to, they would only explode if I commanded them to. They could also control their ambient temperature to keep from burning down every building they were conjured inside. It would be warm, even uncomfortably so, but it wouldn''t melt the plastic paneling off the walls.


    I started work immediately, memorizing the two levels of matrices before recreating them in my arms and hand. This spell started all the way down by my elbow, the first matrix a long stretched series of shapes, bends, and turns that took up most of my forearm. Six and a half hours later, when half of the group was asleep, I cast the spell successfully, summoning a flame atronach in a small flash of flame that didn''t feel all that hot. Like my sword and dagger, the conjured atronach was not actually pulled from the planes of Oblivion, but rather a construct of my own making.


    As a result, the flame atronach didn''t even vaguely resemble the in-game version. Where the game had a scantily clad, metal woman of fire, mine was fully armored, with blue-licking flames coming out from every crack and gap. The metal was mostly black, with hot red edges along some of the plating. It stood on its own two feet rather than floating around with a trail of fire like a dainty nymph. Its only connection to the in-game version was that mine was also feminine, though not nearly as¡­ obvious as the original. As I watched, the flaming atronach looked around, and I could feel a slightly more intelligent connection through the spell''s anchor. I was pretty sure that it was enough that I could give her more open-ended directions, and she would be able to figure out what I meant.


    The atronach walked around for a bit, following my mental commands. I also told it to patrol around the area, and the construct proceeded to walk around in a small circle, unable to do much more in the cramped space. After a few seconds, I dismissed my summon, the construct disappearing in a flash of heatless flame and crackling magicka.


    I let out a long breath I didn''t even realize I was holding, letting my mana refill before casting the spell again, repeating it several dozen times before finally stopping. I was tired, sore, and hungry, but I had learned my second apprentice spell, and it was an impressive one. I quickly ate something to quiet my complaining stomach, continuing to practice the spell while I ate. When I finally stood up, I used healing to soothe my aches before immediately heading off to kick Nevue out of my bed. I had been nice enough to let him sleep a bit extra while I finished my spell, but now I desperately needed to sleep.


    ------------------------------


    I woke up to someone nudging my shoulder and a voice talking. I rolled over in my cot to see Miru standing by my bed.


    "What was that?" I asked, rolling over slightly so I wasn''t straining my neck.


    "I said Nal just set up our sonic shower in the corner. You might want to clean up a bit," She said, cutting me off when I opened my mouth to ask a follow-up question. "The one upstairs is tiny, and only half works. And yes, we are almost there. Just another twenty minutes before we drop out of hyperspace."


    I nodded and slid to the side of the bed, sitting up and rubbing my face. I had no idea how long I had been asleep, but I could feel that it wasn''t enough. I stood and stretched, using a healing spell to soothe a slight tightness in my back. Miru had one hand on the ladder when I called out.


    "Hey, what happened to my jacket?" I asked. "I assume my armor was a lost cause, but did the jacket survive?"


    "Uhh, last I saw it, Nal was pulling it off you after¡­ to better get at your injuries," She responded, faltering for a moment before continuing. "Check by the bay door? That''s where the sonic scrubber is anyway."


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    I nodded and turned, heading to the front of the cargo bay. The sonic shower was indeed set up in a corner, but I wanted my jacket first so I could wash it with the rest of my clothes and myself. I spent about five minutes looking for it, finally finding it jammed up behind a crate. It took a few minutes to get it out, but when I did, I was pleasantly surprised.


    Because I had been wearing the jacket open, the blaster bolt had hit my armor on the uncovered parts. There was singing around the inside lining, and a bit of the material was noticeably stiffer than it had been before, but other than that, the jacket was still in good condition. I was smiling about my good luck until I realized that if the coat had been closed, I probably wouldn''t have had the massive burns on my stomach.


    I put the jacket on and stepped into the open-air sonic shower, feeling the pulsing waves clean me and my outfit. I spent a few extra minutes ensuring I was as clean as possible before turning off the transportable unit. I pulled my jacket off as I made my way to the ladder, doing my best to work the stiffness out of the one spot, nodding when I was moderately successful. I once again donned my jacket and climbed the ladder, making my way to the cockpit. Everyone else was already waiting, meaning I was stuck standing as there were only four seats.


    "What''s our ETA?" I asked.


    "About ten minutes," Nal responded, looking back at me. "Where was your jacket?"


    "Tucked back behind a crate," I said, looking down at it for a second. "On one hand, I''m glad it survived. On the other getting shot would have sucked less if I had been wearing it correctly."


    "It''s just a jacket. You should have been wearing it closed to protect yourself," She said, looking at me while shaking her head.


    "It looks cooler open," I responded as if that was the only necessary response. "Though I''ll need to pick up some more armor soon, do you think¨C"


    Before I could finish my sentence, Tatnia cursed while Mire smiled and held out her hand. Tatnia put a small credit ingot in her palm while giving me the stink eye.


    "Really?" She asked, crossing her arms and shaking her head. "You couldn''t have waited until we were landed to remember your armor?"


    "It saved my life. I''ve been fighting the urge to put it back since I woke up," I responded. "Did you guys seriously bet on me forgetting to ask about my armor?"


    "We would have stopped you from leaving without it," Miru assured me before reaching down beside her chair and pulling out my old armor, which looked undamaged. "The plates are replaceable, and Nal got extras, so I put it back together."


    "Oh, well, thanks," I said before quickly pulling off my jacket and pulling the armor back on. "Not sure how I feel about the betting, though."


    "I had faith in you, Boss!" Miru said with a smile, giving me a thumbs up.


    "I was going to show you the super cool thing that I learned, but I''m not sure I''m up for it anymore."


    "Cooler than shooting lightning from your hands?" Miru asked, getting a chuckle from Nal.


    "I think so," I said with a smirk before turning and walking out of the cockpit, Tatnia and Miru following after me.


    I focused for a moment before casting conjure flame atronach a few feet in front of me, the now familiar armored summon appearing in a flash of magic and heatless flames. The summon remained motionless, even as Miru gasped and Tatnia''s hand went to her hip, fingers around her pistol grip before she finally stopped.


    "What in the hells is that?" She asked, voice sounding tense. "That can''t be safe, Deacon. It''s on fire!"


    "It''s called a flame atronach. It''s kind of like an artificial elemental," I explained, though I wasn''t sure if she understood that any better. "It''s a better version of what I did on our first job. Remember my familiar?"


    "That four-legged, see-through thing that chewed that guy''s throat out?" Tatnia asked, sounding nervous as she walked around it. "Why is this one better?"


    "It takes more energy to make, but it can take a lot more hits as well. It can also throw fireballs and do the same flame spray that I can do," I explained. "It can also explode if I tell it to."


    Before they could ask anything else, the atronach jerked and faded into blue flames and crackling energy, disappearing in half a second. I spent a few more minutes explaining its capabilities and how it could be useful, as well as reconjuring the atronach when Nal wanted to see it. He seemed to approve and, as always, took my growing abilities in stride as if it was entirely normal for someone to be doing magic.


    By the time I was finished showing off, and Tatnia had confirmed I wasn''t about to melt a hole in the deck, it was just about time for us to drop out of hyperspace. We all made our way back into the cockpit, just in time for the brilliant light show outside the cockpit window to compress and normalize.


    From our perspective, we were now flying above Thila, the large planet below us. Immediately Nevue guided us "down," the ship making its way into the planet''s atmosphere. The planet''s surface was riddled with canyons and mountains, massive on a scale that was hard to fathom as we flew over them. Some of the mountains were big enough that we could see them from orbit and spiking above the horizon, several dozen mountain ranges casting shadows over the valleys and canyons. We continued to fly, tension rising among us as we waited for something to happen.


    After about five minutes of descending into the atmosphere, static cracked on our communication, which Nevue had apparently been keeping on. It seemed to rise and fall at random intervals, but after listening to it for a few minutes, Nevue nodded as if he had received a message. It took me a minute to realize that there must have been some sort of code in the rising and lowering of the static, like a Morse code equivalent.


    Nevue adjusted our course, angling the ship down at a steeper angle and swooping a bit until we were pointed to a different location. After another few minutes, we stopped, clearing a particularly large mountaintop. On the other side was a deep valley, at the bottom of which was a surprisingly flat area, some sort of lowered mesa. As we got lower, we began to see cutaways in the side of the mountain, revealing hangar bays filled with ships, both starfighters and larger freighters. These bays had been completely hidden from above, and as we stopped in front of an empty one, I could see that they also had camouflage doors that would make them even harder to spot.


    Nevue, with Nals help, guided the ship into one of the bays, landing on the carved stone floor after about two minutes. He then depowered the ship completely, the interior now dark save a few safety lights.


    "Alright, let''s try and keep this from devolving into a lightshow," The Zabrak rebel said as he stood up from his chair. "Don''t make any crazy sudden moves, and keep your hands away from your blasters. Let me do the talking, at least at first, and then you can introduce yourself."


    Already I could see people pouring out of the entrances into the once-empty bay. Dozens of armed soldiers took cover behind crates, boulders, and other equipment, all of them focusing their weapons on the ship. Two heavy blaster cannons were set up quickly by the entrances, each with two rebel soldiers manning them. These were obviously not useless slaver goons either. Each and every one of them was focused and ready.


    We all made our way down to the full cargo bay, stopping by the still-closed bay door. Nevue gestured to the thick door, and after a moment, I reached out and slapped the controls, the door slowly sliding upward, revealing the carved-out hangar bay and the soldiers waiting for us.

 Chapter 20

    Nevue stepped out of the cargo bay slowly, his hands out and empty as he moved. When he was a few feet ahead of us, he stopped.


    "I''m Nevue Loc. I messaged ahead that I was returning?" He called out, his voice echoing throughout the large stone hangar.


    After a few seconds, a head popped out around the corner of one of the entrances into the large empty hangar bay. It stuck out just long enough for Nevue to spot it before dipping back around the corner. He smiled and called out.


    "Thak Gorn! I saw that, it''s good to see you survived!" He called out, turning his head to look back at us. "He was part of the team I ran with."


    After about a minute, the <u>Gotal </u></a>stepped out fully from around the corner, with two more people, a Twi''lek woman, and a <u>Mon Calamari</u></a> male, following with him. Both of the additional people were wearing a vest uniform that I vaguely recognized as an officer''s vest from some of the movies. They slowly made their way into the hangar, stopping about ten feet away from us.


    "Nevue, it''s good to see you alive," The Gotal, Thak, said when they stopped. "Who are your companions?"


    "They are friends. Saved me from slavery," Nevue explained. "Are we the only survivors?"


    "No, Salo and Maraliz also made it out," He responded solemnly.


    "Only four?" Nevue asked, shaking his head. "Dammit..."


    "You said your friends rescued you from slavery?" The Gotal asked. "How did you get wrapped up in that? We have you listed as KIA because you were cut off and wounded last we saw. Your stupid plan to lead them away is the only reason any of us lived, by the way."


    "Well... I''m glad something good came from it, at least," He responded ruefully, though a smile quickly returned. "I managed to give the Imps the slip at the last second, but I passed out in my hiding space from blood loss."


    He lifted up his shirt to show a gnarly-looking blaster scar that I had no idea he had. It was around the left side of his abdomen and looked like a mix of a grazing bullet wound and a high-temperature burn that had long ago healed up.


    "Someone found me, slapped a bacta patch on me, and shipped me off to Nar Shaddaa," He explained, lowering his shirt. "I got tagged after we landed, and I spent the last few months weighing if I should just get it over with by killing the people who bought me. Luckily it didn''t come to that."


    The group was silent for a moment. The Twi''lek woman shared a look with Mon Calamari before looking at Thack. After a moment, she sighed and looked back at the rest of us.


    "Alright, for now, we will give you the benefit of the doubt," The green-skinned Twi''lek said. "I am <u>General Hera Syndulla</u></a>, temporarily in charge of Thila outpost until the siege of Yavin 4 is over."


    Tatnia gave me a slight shove, just enough to force me to step forward. I resisted the urge to curse, instead continuing to step forward as if it had been intentional.


    "My name is Deacon Roy. I''m more or less the leader of this group," I said with a small bow. "We appreciate the trust."


    "Let''s move somewhere more comfortable. I want the full story," The General said. "I''m sorry, but while we are gone we will also be searching your ship."


    "Well, it''s only been ours for a few days. We had to borrow it for a quick escape," I explained. "But that shouldn''t be a problem, as long as you don''t mind one of us remaining behind?"


    "As long as they don''t get in the way."


    I nodded and turned to Tatnia, who put her hand on Miru''s shoulder and nodded, confirming both of them would be staying back. Miru didn''t look happy about it, but I would make it up to her if this didn''t go south. I would have preferred to keep us all together, but someone needed to stay behind and watch our money. I might trust some of the rebel leaders, and I might agree with parts of the movement, but I didn''t trust some random soldier not to snag a couple of ingots from our pile.


    The Mon Calamari stayed behind, directing the troops around as we left the hangar, some of them staying behind while the others jogged away through the two other entrances. A few also jogged to catch up to us, serving as an escort. As we left the hangar behind, I focused on the Twi''lek General. I recognized her name, as well as her face from one of the newer cartoons. It had a reputation for being good, but by the time it gained any momentum, I was already working two jobs and picking up odd jobs on the side. It had been on my list of things to watch, along with several Disney Star Wars stuff, but there was just never enough time.


    I quickly ran through what I knew about her from the few clips I caught on youtube. I knew she was a pilot and ran with a crew, including who I think was the show''s main character. She had a love interest, or a partner, who I was pretty sure was training the main character to be a Jedi. I looked around to see if anyone else was following behind us. Seeing none, I focused on the soldiers, paying particular attention to their belts to see if they had any lightsaber-esq cylinders clipped there. I racked my brain for anything else, even as we were led to a small lounge-like area. Unfortunately, I couldn''t think of anything else useful beyond a comedy relief astromech.


    As I racked my brain, Hera walked in confidently and sat down at the table while two of the guards stood on either side of the doorway. Nal, Nevue, and I followed inside, with Nal and myself sitting across from the General while Navue sat on the perpendicular side.


    "So, Lieutenant Loc, why don''t you tell us the rest of your story," She asked, leaning forward in interest, her elbows on the table.


    Nevue nodded and began explaining what he had been up to since his last mission went bad. Some of this I already knew, as even though he had been relatively quiet about his past, he never missed an opportunity to talk shit about Nar Shaddaa, which often included his previous owners. Eventually, he explained how his last owner shipped him back to the slavers, and he had been scheduled to go through a few days of "education."


    "Luckily, before I could get shipped off, these guys bought me," He said, gesturing to Nal and me. "I was not looking forward to being tortured into submission."


    "They bought you?" Hera asked, her eyes wide, looking at both of us harshly. "What-"


    "That has a context I should explain if that''s alright?" I asked, giving a harsh look at Nevue, who was chuckling to himself, his sense of humor returning now that he was among his allies. "We immediately freed him after paying for him, including removing his slave implant. The point wasn''t to buy a slave, but get our money into their credit ingot storage."


    I started to explain what we had been up to, giving the General the basic outline of what my crew and I had been doing leading up to freeing Nevue. I skipped over my magic, explaining that we had tracking chips cut inside the credit ingots. Nevue had agreed to keep his mouth shut about it as well, as long as we stayed friendly to the Rebel Alliance. He also explained that if someone asked him directly if I had special abilities, he wouldn''t lie. He was willing to keep things out of his report, but he was not willing to lie to his friends and superiors.


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    "They didn''t find the trackers?" Hera asked, leaning back in her chair, looking skeptical. "That seems unlikely."


    "Well, to be fair, Miru did an outstanding job at hiding the tracker inside the ingots," I assured her. "And if they were smart they wouldn''t be slavers."


    "I suppose. So what went wrong?" She asked. "You mentioned you stole that B-7 as a quick escape, and you''re clearly not still on Nar Shaddaa, stealing from slavers. So why did you need to run?"


    "Our plan worked too well," I explained with a shrug. "The market we bought Nevue from looked successful, but it didn''t look like they would be a group we would have to worry about. Except the credit transport was carrying sixty thousand credits. I was hoping to get that much eventually, but spread out over a month, maybe two. We weren''t prepared for the bounties and the attention from enforcers. Rather than tempt fate, we decided to get while the getting was good."


    "Smart, can''t imagine the Hutt''s liked you stealing from them, though. I would watch out in the future, you''ll probably have a price on your head soon, if you don''t already."


    "We¡­ didn''t steal from the Hutts. We intentionally avoided Hutt-owned markets because we didn''t want to get them involved," I responded, a sinking feeling starting to form in my stomach.


    "Sorry to burst your bubble Deacon, but everything on Nar Shaddaa is run by the Hutts. It''s why we don''t do much business there," She explained. "There is no way a business shipping that much money around wasn''t owned by the Hutt''s in some way. It''s probably why it was so lightly protected. They assumed no one was... stupid enough to steal from the Hutts."


    I stared at her for a long moment before I let out a long sigh, leaning back against the seat. Eventually, I shook myself off and rubbed my face, sitting back up. My mind raced, but I did my best to focus on the Twi''lek in front of me. I idly realized that she was the first person from the stories back home I had met, but I quickly pushed that thought away.


    "Alright, thank you for sharing that with us. I guess we will be keeping our eyes open," I said. "And stepping up our timetable."


    "What are your plans exactly?" General Syndulla asked.


    "We plan on buying a ship, something big enough to run a small mercenary company out of," I responded. "Maybe a few smaller ships as escorts."


    "An interesting goal, and by the sounds of it, you have the money to make at least the first part of that plan a reality. In fact¡­" The rebel leader seemed to think for a long moment before eventually continuing, having seemed to reach an internal conclusion. "We have contacts with a few shipbrokers that are sympathetic to our cause. With the right words, we might be able to help your money go a little further."


    "Nova always has some good stuff," Nevue pointed out, looking at his superior. "Plus, I know them pretty well. I can escort them to her repair station."


    "Are you sure? I was planning on putting your team back together. You''re more than welcome to join them," The rebel leader asked.


    "I would like to join my team, but these guys need a ride," Nevue responded, getting a confused look from his superior.


    "We were hoping to sell you the B-7 and most of its cargo to you guys at a discount, something around twenty thousand for both," I explained simply. "We would then need a ride to the shipbroker,"


    "That¡­ seems like a low price," Hera responded, eyebrow raised. "Assuming the ship doesn''t have anything wrong with it."


    "It''s in pretty good condition," Nevue assured her. "Better than you would expect, honestly, given its previous owner''s occupation. And the supplies are useful, a few crates of blasters and ammo, some heavy cannons as well. Twenty thousand is a terrific deal."


    "That only proves my point," She pointed out. "Why the low price?"


    "We may not be interested in joining, but that doesn''t mean we aren''t sympathetic to the movement," I explained, Nal nodding in agreement. "In the future, we would be happy to work with you for a discount, maybe even donate our time for a good enough cause. We just need to get our feet under us first. We need a ship, a few more crew members¡­ Probably don''t have to explain that sort of stuff to you,"


    "No, I know that process very well," She admitted with a smirk. "Alright, give some time for my people to inspect your ship and its cargo. If everything is in order, you''ve got yourself a deal. Nevue will bring you to Nova, they run a shipyard of sorts around an old repair platform. We buy a lot of ships from them. They always seem to have something worth buying."


    "That''s very generous of you, General," I responded.


    "Please, you''re practically giving away that B-7, it''s worth at least fifteen thousand credits if it''s in as decent quality as Nevue claims," She responded before pausing as if she was considering her next question. "Could I¡­ ask about the young Twi''lek traveling with you?"


    "Miru?" I asked, looking confused. "She is our mechanic, extremely talented from what I''ve seen."


    "How old is she exactly?"


    "She says she is seventeen," I explained. "I will be very happy when I can leave her on a ship to keep up with maintenance while the rest of us do the fighting. She has seen a lot in her life already, but that''s no reason to pile on more."


    The green-skinned Twi''lek woman studied me for a moment or three before eventually letting out a sigh.


    "I apologize. My race is often mistreated and taken as slaves and¡­ I have a soft spot for children,"


    "I do as well, and honestly, she reminds me of one of my younger cousins," I explained, shaking my head. "Anything wanting to hurt her will have to go through the rest of the crew and me to do it, I promise."


    "I believe you," She responded, before standing up from her seat. "Unfortunately, I don''t have much in the way of spare time these days, so I''m going to have to leave you in the capable hands of your new escort."


    General Syndulla said, gesturing to the two soldiers standing by the doorway. Both of them stood at attention now that we were looking at them.


    "They can show you to some spare quarters," She said with a subtle smile. "I''d ask that you resist the urge to explore. We may be friendly, but I can''t have you wandering around in high-security areas."


    "Of course, we will probably stick around the ship, rest and leave tomorrow if that works for Nevue," I said, sticking my hand out, the confident Twi''lek general taking my hand and shaking it firmly.


    Shortly after that, General Hera Syndulla left us alone with the soldiers, who seemed to stand a bit easier with their superior officer gone. I smiled and gestured to the door.


    "We would like to get back to the hangar for now," I explained, the taller soldier nodding in understanding.


    The taller soldier led the way back to the hangar, the second soldier following behind us by a few feet, preventing us from making a run for it or sneaking away. It didn''t take long for us to reach the mostly empty Hangar bay. The ship was already being emptied, with Tatnia standing near the cargo bay entrance, watching as workers unloaded some of the cargo. She noticed us and nodded in our direction, prompting me to head over and see what I could do to help.

 Chapter 21

    The rebel workers made quick work of clearing out the B-7 cargo bay, emptying it of everything we didn''t want in only an hour, which included the time we were off meeting General Syndulla. When workers hauled away the last crate, all that was left was the stuff we had brought from Nar Shaddaa, the MRV, and three crates, we wanted to keep from the ship''s original cargo. The stolen cargo we kept was actually a mix of several different containers. A few extra pistols, rifles, and ammo from one crate, a month''s worth of food stable food from another, as well as other odds and ends that Tatnia and Nal thought were worth keeping.


    While we were getting our stuff settled, transferring what we wanted into different containers, I wondered out loud why the cargo for this ship had been so well stocked with weapons and other useful stuff, and Nal responded while chuckling.


    "It''s our fault," He explained, leaning back from the crate he had been sorting through. "They wanted to increase security after we stole from them the first time. They were smuggling in new equipment for more guards."


    "Huh¡­ lucky us I guess¡­" I admitted before shaking my head and getting back to work. "I would have rather freed another batch of slaves, though."


    Nal nodded, and we finished getting our crates secure, connecting them to the cargo bay floor in their new positions by the back of the bay. By the time we were done, whoever the Rebels had gotten to do an inspection of the ship was also done and confirmed that the ship and cargo were well with twenty thousand credits. Twenty minutes later, we had two new containers of credits in our pile, both filled with credit chips instead of ingots.


    "We need to get some sort of account set up at some point," I commented, all four of us sitting in the cargo bay, looking at the stacks of credit boxes. "I can''t imagine the shipbroker is going to be excited to deal with all this."


    "With their clientele, I''m sure they are used to it," Tatnia respond before looking back out of the cargo bay into the now active hangar. "Which reminds me, you are being really trusting with these people. Are you sure that''s a good idea?"


    "Do I trust every member? Not even close," I assured her. "But I trust the General, Nevue, and the general group. But no, I don''t trust all of them, so I will be sleeping on board in one of the cots to keep an eye on the credits."


    Tatnia nodded in agreement, volunteering to switch off if I wanted to. After we talked for a bit more about posting a watch to keep track of the over one hundred thousand credits we had on board. By that time, it was starting to get late, both for us and the actual planet''s timescale, which just happened to have a similar time schedule to what we had become used to on Nar Shadda.


    We spent a little while longer chatting, mostly discussing what sort of ship we were looking for, before the group was escorted to some better sleeping quarters while I stayed behind and slept in the cargo bay. When they were gone, I closed the bay doors, sealing them shut before sitting down at the edge of my bed and pulling out my grimoire.


    It wasn''t the most responsible thing, but I couldn''t resist the urge to learn another spell, especially now that I would have time to recover from missing sleep. I also hoped that my natural "talent" with conjuration would keep me from being up too late.


    I slowly worked my way through the description of conjure bound armor, carefully paying attention to its limitations. Like all conjured objects, its time limit was connected to how much mana I put into it, and since it was also locked around my body, I would be able to easily feed it more energy. According to the description, I would be able to summon it and keep it summoned indefinitely, as long as I was conscious and didn''t run out of magicka to fuel them.


    I decided to start by learning the upper torso armor first, since it covered all my vitals. It would also make learning the lower torso version easier, since the first stage matrix was the same for each spell. As usual, it took about thirty minutes for me to get each stage set, forming the two matrices in my hand. When I was sure I had the right shapes, lines, and angles, I started pushing more mana through them, slowly adjusting and shaping each part of the matrices until the magic flowed through easily. It took me about seven hours in total, keeping me up well past when I should have been asleep.


    It was well worth it, though, as I stood up from the cot and summoned the bound armor, the magic wrapping around my arm as I cast it. The magic stretched down my arm, over my chest, and down my other arm, forming the armor as it went. It even stretched up to cover my head, though the magic was completely see-through when it finally covered my eyes. I looked down at my hands, which were now covered in the pale purple color of conjured objects. Once again, I was glad that the things I was conjuring weren''t based on the daedric equipment from Skyrim, instead finding my hand and arms were wrapped in a semi-translucent set of <u>plate armor</u></a>, not some fear-inducing fantasy crap.


    I moved around slowly, stretching and testing my range of motion while encased in the ethereal armor, finding that not only did it seem to weigh nothing, but it also didn''t hamper my dexterity in the slightest. It seemed happy to clip through itself when I wanted to touch my arm, but was extremely solid when I tried to punch myself. I climbed up the ladder to the main deck, stepping into the bathroom so I could look at myself in the small mirror built into the wall. I could see my face through the purple glowing armor, the <u>helmet</u></a> still not hampering my vision at all. I had hoped that it would obscure my face, but I could hardly complain when everything else worked out so well.


    Satisfied with how the top half of my bound armor looked, I quickly went back down into the cargo bay and ran it through even more testing. I shot myself with sparks, frostbite, and flames before slashing at it with a conjured dagger. The armor blocked several seconds of each destructive spell combined, though I could feel that it was extremely damaged at that point, and I needed to re-conjure it to test out the dagger, which did noticeable damage to it but still stopped completely.


    I practiced the new conjuring spell for about thirty minutes, making sure I had it down completely before finally heading to bed, excited to learn the lower torso spell as well, when I got the chance. With any luck, I would have the entire trip to wherever this Nova shipbroker was.


    With the spell learned and my testing complete, I eagerly climbed into my cot, falling asleep to the low ambient noise of the outside hangar, the natural wind of Thila occasionally rattling things around.


    ---------------?


    I woke up the next morning to the sound of a very active hangar outside the ship. I slowly sat up from my cot, my brain taking a few seconds to catch up. It was clearly much earlier than I had hoped to sleep too, but that''s what I got for sleeping somewhere like an active hangar. I stretched and used a quick healing spell to clear up my aches before slowly making my way to one of the side doors of the B-7, tapping the control panel to open the thick, double-sealed door.


    I stepped down and out of the small freighter and into the busy hangar bay. What had been an almost entirely empty space just a few hours ago was now abuzz with activity. Six <u>X-Wings</u></a> had landed at some point in the last few hours and were now in the process of getting looked over by several technicians and pilots.


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    While meeting Hera had been a bit jarring, her being the first in-universe person I had met so far, seeing an in-the-flesh, honest to god, mother fucking X-Wing, not fifteen feet away, had me looking on in awe, my mind completely blown away. Here was the symbol of the Rebellion, arguably one of the most famous and easily identified science fiction ships ever made, the subject of video games and an entire book series. My brother Brian and I had spent hours playing starfighters, running around our house, holding cheap X-Wing models, and making horrible imitations of their engines and the sound of lasers. This was a dream come to life.


    Unbidden, I took a step forward to the closest starfighter, my attention locked onto it as I walked around, taking in every nook and cranny. I could see scoring along one of the S-foils, the sign of a very close call, most likely recent too. I could also see the ship was in pretty good shape despite that, though I lacked the technical knowledge to know exactly how good of condition it was in. What I could tell was that this was anything but a prop. It was clear as you looked at it that every piece had a purpose, that every plate was not just some random do-dad that the people at Lucasfilms stuck on to add some texture. This was starfighter, a weapon of war, and-


    "Can I help you?"


    I jumped when a voice half shouted out to me, needing the extra volume to cut over the tools and other echoing noises that filled the hangar. I also realized that I had been reaching out to touch the side of the starfighter, a big social faux pas when you didn''t own the ship you were touching. I winced and pulled my hand back.


    "Sorry, I wasn''t really thinking," I explained sheepishly. "I''ve always loved the X-Wing design, and if I knew anything about flying, I would definitely want one of my own eventually."


    As I talked, I looked over the S-foil again before turning to look at whoever had gotten my attention. It was a young man, probably about eight or ten years younger than me, with black hair and thick eyebrows. He was wearing a pilot''s suit, but with all of the extra panels, tubes, and the white flak jacket removed, probably to make it easier to move around. He was looking at me with a raised eyebrow, most certainly wondering what the hell I was doing.


    "Sorry, name''s Deacon, I came in on the B-7 over there," I explained, stepping forward and holding out my hand, which the man shook. "Just dropping off one of your operatives we happened to pick up before moving on."


    "Huh. Sounds like there''s a story there," The man said with a smile. "I''m Wedge Antilles."


    My brain screeched to a halt, studying the man''s face. He did look a lot like the actor who played him in the original trilogy, though it was far from an exact match. I finally let go of his hand, coughing awkwardly before returning his smile.


    "Maybe, it was certainly an adventure," I admitted with a chuckle, trying to cover up from the panic in my head.


    I was talking to my childhood hero, the best pilot in the galaxy, Rogue Leader! Creator of Wraith Squadron and driving force behind the eventual invasion of Coruscant! An honest to god legend, currently in the process of forging that legend.


    "My friends and I staged a breakout after we got picked up by slavers and dropped off at Nar Shaddaa," I explained, looking back at his starfighter. "We raided a couple of slaver holdings to make some cash before blasting out in the B-7."


    The Rebellion hero scowled a bit when I mentioned slavery, nodding along as I told a highly abbreviated version of our story.


    "Well, I''m glad you managed to escape. Slavery is a blight on the galaxy. I can only hope that when we take down the Empire, we can do something about it."


    "Let''s hope so."


    "Are you here to join up?" The legendary pilot asked. "Even if you can''t fly, we are always looking for soldiers, engineers, even specialists."


    "No, my crew and I have plans to start a mercenary group now that we are off Nar Shaddaa," I explained with a wince. "I''ve already explained to General Syndulla that we are sympathetic to the cause, enough to work for cheap, and even donate our time if something particularly important comes up. But¡­ I''m not much of a joiner."


    "...Well, allies are almost as good as members," He said with a shrug. "It was nice talking to you, Deacon, but I need to finish my inspection before we take off again. We have to get back to Yavin 4 to help break the rest of the Alliance through the blockade."


    "Sure, and¡­ May the force be with you," I said, my inner child dancing with glee as Wedge gave me a serious nod, going back to his X-Wing.


    I turned and headed back to the B-7, quickly climbing back inside, the double-sealed doors closing behind me. When the door shut all the way, my inner child broke free for a moment, and I danced in place while laughing.


    "I shook Wedge Antilles'' hand!" I said, laughing to myself. "Brian would be so fucking jealous!"


    When I eventually calmed down, I made my way to the main deck of the ship, using the small kitchen system to make a small breakfast before eating it at the nearby table. My thoughts eventually drifted to what was next, what I needed to make happen in order to get my team in a good, solid position. We needed to have the ability to take on jobs and explore without having to look over our shoulders constantly, or at least know that when something bad did come knocking, we could handle it. The first step was a ship, something substantial enough to call a home base. If I wanted to start recruiting people, having a ship to live out of would make convincing people much more straightforward.


    After that was securing supplies, which meant making money. I had a few ideas for that angle, some of which were as complicated as "listen to rumors and see if they pan out" to abusing some of my meta-knowledge. I knew a few places where I could make quite a bit of money or at least quite a bit of salvage, but unfortunately, some of those were a bit too advanced for now.


    I finished up my meal quickly before heading down to the cargo bay, coming down just in time to see the cargo bay door open to reveal Miru, Nal, Tatnia and Nevue on the other side. There were also two rebel soldiers, who were both armed and carrying packs much more extensive than one would expect for just escorting some people around. One was a human woman, maybe a few years younger than me, while the other was a human man, just around my age.


    "Morning guys. How''s it going?" I asked, stepping off the ladder and walking to meet them halfway. "Everyone ready to go?"


    "We are ready," Nevue said before gesturing to the additional soldiers. "This is Ayme Montera and Lario Vark. They are here as backup, just in case. General Syndulla was hesitant to let a newly purchased ship go with only your word we could have it back."


    "Oh¡­ fair enough, I hadn''t thought about it like that," I admitted before nodding to both of them. "Welcome aboard. Thanks for joining us."


    The two soldiers nodded before Nal reached over and tapped on the control panel for the bay door, the thick armored door slowly closing. The soldier walked further into the bay before dropping their packs while the rest of us made our way up to the bridge on the main deck. It didn''t take long for Nevue and Tatnia, who volunteered to be the copilot this time, to get permission from hangar control to leave, the ship lifting off of the ground easily, slowly pulling out of the large hangar bay. After a quick flight up and out of Thila''s atmosphere, Nevue plotted a course, and we left the mountainous planet behind.

 Chapter 22

    Nevue explained that the trip would take about eighteen hours, as the shipbroker was stationed in a distant corner of the galaxy, along the edge of Wild Space. Their business was located in deep space, on a repair platform that only a few people knew the location of, as most of their business was done by delivery or pick up. I was excited to have such a chunk of time to learn some new magic until I remembered our extra passengers.


    The two rebel soldiers, who were essentially acting as bodyguards for Nevue and as extra insurance that the Rebel Alliance would get the ship they had just bought back, had set up some space for themselves in the cargo bay. This was fine for my first task, which was learning the lower torso portion of my bound armor spell, because I could just do that in the lounge area. But I had also been hoping to have Miru help me set up a target of some sort, one that would let me learn the lightning bolt spell, which was definitely not something I could do in the lounge.


    Still, I had plenty of other things I could learn, and after a few minutes of consideration ended up picking the second level of the warding spell, steadfast ward. When I set to work, learning the lower torso bound armor spell barely took four hours because of my work on the upper torso bound armor and my "talent" with conjuration.


    The steadfast ward took a bit longer, though my apparent talent with restoration kept it from being ridiculous and let me finish it with enough time to get some sleep before we arrived at our destination. Miru, Tatnia, Nevue, the female soldier, and I were all in the cockpit when we dropped from lightspeed. In the distance was a singular dot, a small station far enough away that there were no discernible features besides being vaguely blocky.


    As we got closer, more and more details became visible. By the time Nevue used the ship''s comms to contact whoever was on the <u>station</u></a>, we could see that the free-floating structure was simple and utilitarian, with a central, vaguely cuboid central structure and four massive hangar bays connected to that structure. One of the hangars led directly into a ship berth structure clearly meant for larger ships. Currently, the large berth was empty, and as we got closer, we could see that it also seemed to be nonfunctional, as all its guiding lights were off, and there was a lot of plating missing on its branches.


    Despite it clearly being nonfunctional, there were a dozen or so ship frames attached to it, all of them clearly missing a lot of their parts. Some were barely even skeletons of ships, stripped down to just a basic framework.


    It didn''t take long for us to get permission to land in one of the hangars, the smallest one to the left of the large ship berth. As Nevue and Tatnia guided us in, Nevue explained what we were getting ourselves into.


    "The station was sold to Nova''s family shortly after the Clone Wars. Her family had connections in the Republic that worked just long enough in the early days of the Empire to snag it. It was heavily damaged at the time, but they repaired most of it before mothballing everything they didn''t need. Basically, the hangars work, and there''s enough functional living space for a few repair teams," He explained, pausing to gently land the ship inside the smallest hangar bay.


    The bay had plenty of room for us several times over, even with the other <u>ship</u></a>, the type of which I didn''t recognize, already landed in one corner. When we landed, Nevue flicked off a couple switches, and the ship slowly powered down to a resting state. After a short conversation, Tatnia volunteered to stay behind and watch the ship, as did the male soldier, while the rest of us exited via one of the side doorways in the cargo bay. My boots had hardly even touched the deck when a voice called out.


    "Nevue! It''s good to see you. It''s been what, eight or nine months?" An older woman''s voice called out, prompting me to search the hangar for the source. "I thought we talked about you messaging ahead when you come with a delivery?"


    Along the far back end of the hangar was the main entrance, and above that was a second-story observation deck. There, leaning on the railing, was a human woman, probably fifteen or twenty years older than me, with brown and gray hair pulled up into a tight bun. Her face was starting to wrinkle, with crow''s feet around her eyes and laugh lines in other places. She was dressed in a well-worn and stained pair of coveralls, with a tool-laden belt around her hips.


    "Not here with a delivery, Nova, I have some friends here looking to make a purchase," He called out, leading us to stand under the platform. "They are looking for a decent-sized ship, something to run a mercenary group out of."


    "Friends? Of yours or your bosses?" She asked, looking down at us with a raised eyebrow.


    "Both! I was gone for so long because I managed to end up as a slave on Nar Shaddaa. It''s a long story. " He explained, Nova''s eyes going wide. "They personally freed me and got me back to my people. And in the process, offered to help the movement when they could, even sold them some goods we managed to obtain along the way for cheap."


    "Sithspit, you managed to get yourself in some trouble, huh? Well, not gonna turn away a friend of yours, especially not after pulling your ass out of the fire," She said with a smile. "Come on in. I think we''ve got some options for what you''re looking for."


    Nevue once again led the way, this time going through the main entrance, a closed door that opened smoothly as we got closer. We made our way through a long corridor with doors on either side, most of them marked with signs that denoted them not to be opened. At an intersection, Nova joined us, stepping out of a turbolift. She immediately gave Nevue a hug before sharing handshakes all around. I introduced Nal and Miru before introducing myself.


    "And I''m Deacon. Leader of sorts of our group. There are only four of us at the moment, but we are hoping to find something to grow into," I explained, the older woman nodding in understanding.


    "I have a few things that can fit that bill, depending on just how big you''re looking to get," She responded, gesturing with a nod down one of the hallways. "Let''s start with hangar bay one. It''s our largest bay and where we keep most of the finished ships."


    She led us down the corridor and then through another doorway, climbing up a set of stairs before exiting out onto another walkway, this one overlooking a massive hangar that dwarfed the one we had just been in. Inside were dozens of ships, some of which I recognized and many that I did not. There were quite a few ships that looked like they belonged to the YT family, and there was even a <u>LAAT Gunship</u></a> tucked into a far corner.


    Several of the ships had people and droids climbing on them, working diligently to repair obvious damage or replace worn parts. I spotted more than a few of what I was pretty sure were <u>Verpine</u></a> workers, welding and working on various ships.


    "Alright, so how much firepower are you looking for?" She asked, gesturing to the large space. "We have a little bit of everything, from assault boats to craft more focused on transportation and freight. We also have a few ships that look like they are more focused on freight but have been heavily modified."


    I stepped over to the railing that ran along the edge of the observation platform, leaning on it as I studied the ships. Some of the ships, mostly the ones I recognized, caught my eye, but if there was one thing I knew about buying something as big and expensive as a ship, it was that you should get a look at as many options as possible before making your choice.


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    "Firepower is good, but not the primary concern. I''m looking for space for my team to grow, and I want room to modify and add our own additions," I explained. "I plan on spending a solid chunk of change to make this ship a tough nut to crack. Do you have a list of ships and prices, maybe with some specifications?"


    "I do," She answered, reaching down into her tool belt to pull out a palm projector pad and passing it to me with a smile. "Tell you what, I''ll assign a droid to you, they will be able to show you around. If you''re interested in one, just let them know, and they can contact me. Listen to the droid and any workers, and you''ll be fine. While you''re looking around¡­"


    She turned to Nevua and pointed at him, a hand on her hip.


    "You and I are going to go to my office. I want to hear more about what happened to you," She said, shaking her head. "I was worried sick, especially when your friends refused to tell me what happened!"


    Despite her apparent annoyance, it was clear that she had actually been genuinely worried about the Zabrak. Nevue seemed to realize this and made no attempts at arguing with her as she led him away. Once they were gone, the door sliding shut after them, the female soldier, Ayme, let out a sigh.


    "Guess I''ll go back to the ship," She said, shaking her head.


    "You sure?" I asked, taking pity on the obviously bored soldier. "I wouldn''t mind an extra opinion."


    "Really?"


    "Yeah, you might see or think of something we missed," I responded with a shrug. "It''s better than sitting in the B-7, just staring at the ceiling."


    She shrugged, and together the four of us started looking through the options on the projector pad. We ended up sitting on a nearby couch, the pad on a table as we examined each projection. At some point, a heavily cobbled-together protocol droid, a combination of at least four different types, stepped through the doorway and greeted us.


    "Hello, my name is B-3A7, but you may call me Beat. I understand you are looking to purchase a ship?" The male sounding droid asked, bowing slightly when we answered yes. "Very good. Have any of the op-op-options stood out to you?"


    "Yeah, let''s start off with Anvil Carrack." I asked, standing up and grabbing the pad off the table. "That caught our eye."


    "Ah yes, the Carrack is a good choice!" The droid with a full body nod. "It is just down there, but I''m sure you are more interested in the interior. I shall lead the way!"


    The heavily modified droid led us down to the main floor of the hangar. It then began a short and somewhat overly detailed tour of the ship. Most of the technical babble went over my head, but Miru seemed to be easily keeping up, while Nal seemed to catch most of it. It was Ayme that pointed out why this ship wouldn''t work, proving my instincts about inviting her to be correct.


    "It''s a full package ship," She explained, peeking into a storage compartment. "Keyword being full. It''s got everything you need but no room for modification. You''d have to sacrifice the cargo bay or do some pretty intense remodeling."


    I looked to Miru, who nodded in agreement after some thought.


    "She isn''t wrong. It would be a pain to modify. Plus, Anvil Industries has a reputation for higher-end ships, I kind of doubt this is in our price range."


    A quick check with Beat confirmed that it was out of our price range, if only barely, prompting us to leave for the next ship we had picked, a <u>Barloz medium freighter</u></a>. This one was on the other side of the primary hangar and was almost exactly what we were looking for. I had been hoping for a slightly bigger ship, but it was still well within an acceptable range. After a short tour, I was almost certain this was the ship we would be leaving with. Still, I wanted to see all of the options, so we had Beat lead us to the second-largest hangar, where a few more ships were being kept.


    "I should warn you," The droid said as we made our way down a corridor. "The secondary hangar contains mostly ships that are under construction. Be vigilant that you do not interrupt the workers or-or-or venture into dangerous areas."


    We stepped into the hangar through the central entrance, stepping into a much more active space. A few ships were going through complete overhauls, while a few others were being stripped for parts. As Beat guided us through, I noticed a<u> large ship</u></a> to one side, with dozens of droids and a few workers crawling all over it. It was long, with a curved, drawn-out face and two stubby wings. It also had five massive engines that I could work out. It was clearly damaged, with laser carbonization and slag marking the side facing us. Its top engine was also completely trashed and was in the process of being disassembled. The ship was big, bigger than anything else they had in the hangar by a not insignificant degree.


    "What''s that?" I asked, pointing at the ship.


    "Hmm? Oh-oh-oh, the <u>C-ROC Gozanti-Class Cruiser</u></a>?" They asked, stopping to face the ship, which easily crested over the smaller ships around it. "It does stand ou-ou-out rather well, doesn''t it? It was sold to us by a now-retired supplier on-on-only a few days ago."


    "How much?"


    "How- It is not currently for sale, it is still heavily damaged. Mistress Nova has not set a price for it."


    I looked to Miru, who was squinting at the ship, clearly thinking about it.


    "It''s a lot of ship boss¡­ but it would have plenty of room. I''m more familiar with the standard Gozanti, but from what I know of this class¡­ it would work. Not gonna be cheap, though."


    I looked at Nal, who shrugged in response.


    "Ayme, any words of wisdom?" I asked, smiling at the rebel soldier.


    "It would be better off in our hands," She said, pausing for a moment before continuing. "But it would probably work pretty well as a mobile base for a mercenary company."


    "Umm, excuse me, but the C-ROC Gozanti-Class is not yet for sale," Beat repeated, finally getting a word in. "If you will follow me to-"


    "Is there any way we could see inside of the C-ROC?" I asked, cutting the droid off.


    "I¡­ I would have to ask Mistress Nova," The droid eventually said. "On-on-one moment."


    The droid stepped away, and after a few minutes, Nova and Nevue joined us, the former with a light frown on her face.


    "Now, what''s this about you wanting to take a look at the C-ROC?" She asked. "That ship won''t be for sale for two weeks at least, and from what Nevue was telling me, it will be out of your price range by then."


    I gave Nevue a harsh look, not happy that he had revealed what kind of money we had to throw around. He had the good sense to at least act like he was sorry, sheepishly picking at one of his horns.


    "I get that it''s a bit more than what we described, but I think we both know there''s always a way to make a deal work," I vaguely pointed out. "Let us take a look inside, and if it''s something we might want, then we can work something out."


    Nova studied me for a moment before looking at Nevue. He shrugged in a "what can you do?" way, prompting the older shipbroker to let out a sigh.


    "Alright, fine, I need to inspect the repair team''s progress anyway," She admitted before stepping away to lead us to the ship.

 Chapter 23

    Nova led us into the ship through the forward entry ramp because the primary cargo elevator was being used to move parts in and out of the large ship. As we climbed up the ramp, we first <u>stepped into a locker room area with sealed doors </u></a>on both sides.


    "This ship was originally a Separatist transport and was only recently recovered from a previously unknown dormant stronghold," Nova explained as she led us through the locker room. "The Separatists were primarily known for their droid army, but almost all ships like these did have an organic crew in control, supported by droids."


    As we stepped through the opposite door, we entered into a much larger cargo area, which was mostly empty save three workers and a bunch of tools. They were focused on their task, and only one noticed their boss walking through the ship.


    "The C-ROC was an in-house modification to the Gozanti class cruiser, which had been out for several years before the start of the Clone Wars. It was basically an attempt to revitalize the ship by fixing up a few issues, adding the cargo lanes on the wings, and moderately improving the hull composition while adding the sloping, shovel-like nose," The shipbroker stopped in the middle of the large cargo bay. "The Separatists took a portion of them and modified them even further, stripping out a lot of the bottom nose section for even more cargo storage. Between the wings and this bay, you have an incredible amount of storage or room for modifications. Pirates like to take these ships and turn them into overpowered gunboats or mine-layers."


    She turned and walked through a large bay door, which was currently knocked off its rail and bent slightly. She waved to a pair of verpine workers, who bobbed their heads a bit in what I think was a greeting. Further in the room, I could see the cargo elevator lifting things up into the cargo bay.


    "This area has a small amount of storage space but primarily leads to the outboard cargo lanes. These heavy sealed doors lead to a small maglock cargo space, each about three meters wide. Each row has a mag-field in place past the doors for extra protection, but I wouldn''t rely on it. The bay doors are what keeps the space out. These grates¡­"


    Stomped her feet on a grate, which, now that I looked, stood out from the rest of the floor plating. I could see a flushed hinge on one side of each panel.


    "This is the access to the repair crawlway for emergency repairs. Much easier to access everything from the outside, but you work with what you can. There''s more of them in the forward cargo bay."


    We left back the way we came, Nova pointing out the hatches she had just mentioned as we walked around to a set of stairs. We climbed them to the second floor, exiting the stairwell into a long with doors on both sides and at each end.


    "This is the floor where the organic crew would spend most of their time," She explained, gesturing down one end, the door marked with noticeable damage. "The ship maintained a small deployment of droids, but the controls and communications equipment went with the room it was stored in down there. We already junked most of it and sealed up the access from the floor below. It will be an empty space when we are done with it. Access to the internals for the smallest ion drive is back there as well. We are thinking about just removing it because it''s so undersized it''s hardly worth the upkeep."


    She then gestured in the other direction before walking down the hall. We passed a repair droid carrying a heavy-looking part while a human worker walked behind it, waving a scanner around.


    "When it arrived, the ship was built around a crew of five, with room for five more passengers. We plan on moving things around a bit, with the end result being a max capacity of twelve. The bedrooms will be cramped, but the lounge area more than makes up for it."


    We stepped through an automatic door and into said lounge area, which was easily six or seven meters wide and just as long, which on a spaceship was shockingly luxurious. At the moment, the room was mostly empty save a kitchen system, which actually looked like a kitchen, complete with countertop and stools bolted to the floor. There were also two couches tucked in another corner, but both of them were old and could do with replacing.


    "Some of the furniture was damaged, but we have replacements already lined up," She explained before we stepped through the final sealed doorway.


    A thick security door slid open to reveal the cockpit, which, as far as I could tell, was completely intact. There were five chairs set up, one in the front and four facing along the side of the vaguely triangular room.


    "For all their faults, the Separatists knew their way around automating a ship. In a pinch, one person could fly this entire ship, even keep the guns firing. But for better results, you have the copilot, two gunners, and the comms operator, who would double as a sensor specialist. And the pilot, obviously."


    Nal stepped past me and sat down in the pilot''s chair, closely examining the layout. After a few seconds, he looked back at me.


    "I could fly it. Probably. CEC keeps their ships easy to use," He explained, scratching his chin. "Separatists changed very little."


    "So you can handle it, but we should look for a full-time pilot?" I asked, Nal responding with a simple nod. "Alright, sounds good."


    I turned to Nova, who was giving me an amused look, clearly curious as to where I was getting my confidence.


    "How much for it, right now, with no more repairs?"


    "As it is? Eighty thousand credits. But I wouldn''t take your money, especially ''cause you''re a friend of Nevue. This ship isn''t safe as she is," She said emphatically, shaking her head. "The first floor doesn''t hold pressure, and the back room is more melted slag than ship. Not to mention the top engine is barely worth scrapping. This ship needs thirty thousand credits of repairs before I would even consider letting someone buy it. Another forty thousand on top of that to get it to the kind of quality I built my business on."


    "I get that," I said with a nod. "I''ll give you eighty thousand credits to buy the ship. You take that money, put it somewhere safe, it''s yours. I''ll give you another twenty thousand to keep working on the repairs."


    "That''s not enough. Even with the friend of a friend discount."


    "I know, which is why, while you''re working on my ship, we go and take care of your job."


    "My job?" Nova asks, her eyes narrowing as she looks at me. "What do you mean?"


    "C''mon, I know how this works. Someone like you running a business like this? For as long as you have?" I said, gesturing widely. "Maybe there''s a rumor you want investigated, or you have a line on some supplies you need. Maybe there is something special someone wants, or a big score tucked away somewhere you can''t get to. There is always a job. Usually, more than one."


    Nevue, who was standing behind Nova, looked at me with a raised eyebrow, clearly wondering when I had gone insane. I could practically hear Miru rolling her eyes beside me. Nal was the only one nodding in agreement, having spun the pilot''s chair around.


    "Boss, what are-" Miru started before Nova spoke up.


    "Alright. Say I have something in mind. You would need a ship."


    "We have one."


    "Excuse me?'' Nevue said, breaking into the conversation. "Ignoring the mind-boggling fact that Deacon was right about what he just said, you don''t have a ship. The Rebellion has a ship that we agreed to use to ferry you here."


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "Then we cut the Rebellion in," I said, giving Nova a look. "It''s gotta be a big one, right? Something that could stand to make everyone a lot of money or a bunch of supplies? Maybe both?"


    For a long moment, Nova was silent before finally letting out a grumble of confirmation.


    "Fine, I do have something in mind. It''s actually got to do with this ship and why it''s so heavily damaged," She admitted. "But we aren''t talking about it here. We are already slowing everyone down. Come on, we can talk business in my conference room."


    ---------------------?


    It took us a few minutes to get back to the conference room that Nova had mentioned. It was a decent-sized table in a sealed-off room, with a holoprojector unit built into the table. Nothing special, all function over form. Tatnia and the second soldier, Lario, had joined us as well. The ship was safe here, and the money was already Nova''s, assuming I could hammer out this deal.


    "I have a few different crews that bring me ships now and again. Some I hire, and some just work on a contract. Carlion was a ship chaser that I had worked with on a few occasions and usually brought good stuff in," The older shipbroker started, leaning back in her chair, which I couldn''t help but notice was a fair bit nicer than the ones everyone else was sitting in. "This time, though, I went to him. I''ve been sitting on a rumor of an old CIS base in the Outer Rim for a few months now. It was just a rumor, one I was pretty sure was a load of crap, but with your friends always needing ships...."


    She trailed off, giving Nevue a look before she leaned forward and tapped on a control pad in front of her, the holoprojector lighting up and displaying a slowly rotating planet.


    "This is¡­ P-3 something something something. Just call it Stronghold," She said, ignoring that the planet''s alphanumeric code appeared with the projection. "Its air is barely breathable, its weather is erratic and dangerous, and its home to, surprise surprise, a relatively large dormant CIS stronghold. Carlion and his crew landed their ship and investigated the base. Of course, since they were looking for ships to sell, that''s where they started."


    She tapped the control pad, and the projection changed, shifting to footage that appeared to be from the point of view of a landing ship. It showed several fortified structures, including a decent-sized hangar and a row of ships on a large landing pad, the C-ROC being the largest. The view spun as the ship landed, settling down by the C-ROC.


    "Stop!" Miru called out, prompting Nova to press the pad to pause the feed before giving the young Twi''lek a look. "Go back like five seconds¡­aannndddd stop!"


    Nova slowly reversed the footage, going until Miru called out again. As the view spun while the ship rotated to land, there was a two-second shot of a massive dish array sitting on top of the largest structure. It was also clearly destroyed, with a large chunk missing from one side and large portions of it blackened, slagged and destroyed.


    "Well¡­ That explains why it''s still there," I said, leaning forward, "And it makes me feel a bit better about not having any surprise company. Good eyes, Miru."


    I said, reaching over and squeezing her shoulder, getting a big smile in return. Nova looked impressed, nodding in agreement.


    "Well, that''s a bit of good luck. It almost makes up for what happened next," Nova said, leaning back in her comfortable chair again. "They were just starting to explore the second floor of the C-ROC when the stronghold defenses kicked in and started targeting their original ship. Realizing they didn''t have much time, Carlion ordered his ship to take off, stranding him and two of his team. They worked for a few hours to get the C-ROC up and running, and when they did, they took off. The defenses took exception to that and tried to blast them out of the air too. They barely managed to limp back here, where Carlion retired on the spot when he saw just how karking wrecked the ship was."


    "And you want us to go back there for the smaller ships?" Tatnia asked. "Seems like a big risk for a couple of transports and whatever''s in the hangar."


    "No, but if it goes well, we will get those, too," Nova answered, shaking her head. "If I had known there was something like this there, I wouldn''t have sent Carlion, I would have hired someone with a bit more smarts. A base like this will have a central computer, and the side effect of automating everything is that everything stops when that stops. If you can get one of my slicer droids to the central computer, we could shut down the automated defenses along with everything else. But that''s only the beginning. Because if that data core of that central computer is still intact, then there''s going to be a lot of information on it. Things like supply depots, trade lanes, troop movements, and even shipyards. Now most of that is going to be long gone. But with a little luck and some smarts¡­."


    "We could get our hands on a whole lot of resources," Nevue finished, leaning forward in his chair. "This¡­ yeah, I''m in. Ayme, Lario?"


    "Yeah, count me in," Lario responded eagerly.


    "Just let the General know so she doesn''t send someone to come looking for us," Ayme added.


    "That just leaves one thing¡­What is everyone''s cut?"


    "Forty to the Rebellion, forty to Nova, and twenty to us," I suggested. "Not including the remaining repairs and a few extras for the C-ROC. And, I want in on any future finds you get off of the data core, if there are any. You''ll need muscle anyway, and by then we will have expanded a bit."


    "You realize that there aren''t going to be any credits lying around," Nova pointed out. "And I want those ships on the landing pad."


    "I know, and I''m alright with that," I agreed with a nod. "You can buy us out of our shares if we don''t find anything we want, but I have a feeling we will end up finding some useful stuff."


    "If the Rebellion agrees to split your buyout if you need it, then I can agree to that aspect," Nova said before crossing her arms. "But there needs to be a certain level of profit involved to cover all of the repairs, even with your twenty thousand inclusion."


    "I''de think the shuttles and the other ships on the pad would cover that at least," I pointed out.


    "Not after calculating profits and the cost of repair and updating them."


    "Fine. If you fail to double the cost of my repairs, half of the cost will come from our cut," I offered.


    "And if the whole thing comes apart?" She asks. "How do you pay for it then?"


    "I will join the Rebellion," I said, looking at Nevue. "They can cover the repairs and a decent payout for my team if they don''t want to join as well."


    "Done!" Nevue said quickly, surprising the two rebel soldiers and Nova with his eagerness.


    Nova looked back at me, suddenly analyzing me much closer than before, no doubt wondering why Nevue was so eager to recruit me to the cause. Guess my magic had made more of an impression than he had let on. Then again, I had been banking on that.


    "Alright, that sounds like we have an agreement?" I asked, getting nods from everyone. "Good. Let''s move onto the planning phase, I want at least a rough outline of what we are doing before committing ourselves."

 Chapter 24

    We spent another hour coming up with the plan, working together to forge something that was serviceable and that we hoped wouldn''t immediately fall apart.


    The plan was to travel to the planet on the B-7, landing a far distance from the base before hoofing it the rest of the way to avoid setting off any sensors. Meanwhile, Nova would remain in orbit in her own ship, along with a few others. If everything went south, we could bring them in for some air support, which would really just amount to them flying over the base at high speeds, peppering the base, and zipping back out before the turrets could take down their shields. Understandably, Nova didn''t want to risk any ships in a slugging match. She was also hoping she could claim the turrets and affix them to her station, bolstering her defenses quite a bit.


    Once we got there, we would sneak into the central building if everything went well. We knew that the buildings had power and at least some sensors since it had picked up Carlion''s ship, so once we got close, we would probably be on a short timer before interior defenses came up, probably in the form of droids. At some point, it would devolve into a fight, but the hope was to break through deep enough into the building that we would be able to get to the central computer before the total weight of the stronghold dropped on us.


    To aid us in getting through security, Nova was lending us two droids, <u>R3-D4</u></a>, who was green and yellow, and <u>R4-C3</u></a>, who was red and black, both of which beeped and whistled as they joined us in the smallest hanger, the one the B-7 was in.


    "Arthree and Racer both have upgraded slicer protocols installed, as well as extra processing upgrades and infiltration tools," The shipbroker explained. "Either one of them is going to be enough to break through an old CIS terminal, as well as any security doors you run into. Don''t let them get destroyed because the only other option you have to stop from being overrun with droids and take down the defenses is to destroy the computer. That would shut down the base, but it would also probably destroy the data core.


    "Gotcha. Head on board, you two," I said, the droids beeping, the more angular-headed Racer leading the way. "Everyone all set?"


    My team, which consisted of both my core group, Nevue, and the two extra Rebel soldiers, all nodded in confirmation. Miru was the only one who didn''t, the pink-skinned girl still pouting by the doorway. I flat-out refused to let her come with us, something she hadn''t appreciated. She had tried to convince me that her technical expertise would come in handy on the ground, but with the modified astromechs coming with us, her skills were a lot less critical. Instead, she would be riding with Nova on her ship, waiting in orbit for the okay to land.


    I had pulled Nova aside privately when she was offloading the payment for the C-ROC and asked if she could give Miru a job and a place to live if the mission went south. I also wanted her to eventually give her the money for the ship since our deal would be broken, and she would be free to sell the ship to whoever she wanted. She agreed solemnly before slapping me on the shoulder.


    "Nevue seems to think you''re worth some hefty investment, that tells me you''re no pushover. Don''t focus on what could happen. You''re only making it more likely that it will happen."


    "Oh, I know. I''m confident we can make this happen," I said truthfully. "I trust my team, and I know what we are capable of. That doesn''t mean I would leave this up to chance."


    We finished unloading everything, both to clear things up and because all of our stuff would be going on the C-ROC eventually. When we were done, we floated in a simple cargo loader to haul the astromechs over any treacherous terrain we had to cross once we landed. Not long after that, we were ready to go, and everyone piled into the ship for another long series of hyperspace jumps, this time out of wild space, across half the galaxy to a basically unknown planet in the Outer Rim. We jumped seconds after Nova''s ship did but before the other three she was leading could.


    We had only been in hyperspace for about twenty minutes when Tatnia found me sitting on the cot in the cargo bay, reading the lightning bolt entry of the grimoire. She sat down next to me and, after a few minutes of silence, finally said something.


    "So¡­did you realize the flaw in your plan yet?" She asked, prompting me to look over at her. "You plan on fighting the droids with us, right?"


    "Of course¡­" I started trailing off for a moment before slapping my forehead. "The soldiers haven''t seen me do my thing yet. And if they do, they will probably spill it right back to the rebels."


    "Not just that, Boss," She said, pointing at the two astromechs, both of which were plugged into separate charging ports. "Nova''s gonna have eyes on you too."


    "Fuck¡­ "


    "Gonna make it work without doing anything weird?" She asked. "Hypothetically speaking, the droids could suffer an accident after finishing their task...."


    "No¡­ no, that''s more trouble than it''s worth," I said, shaking my head. "We are just going to have to trust our new friends to keep it to themselves. It''s not like I wasn''t throwing around lighting and stuff on Nar Shaddaa."


    "You might not have been spotted."


    "Please, on a planet like that? Someone saw me."


    "So what does that mean?"


    "It means¡­ I don''t know what it means, give me a minute to think."


    I stood up from the cot and started to walk around the cargo bay, rubbing my face and basically pacing around as I thought to myself. The issue with my powers was that in a galaxy where the Force was a known factor, everyone was going to assume I was using the Force, especially people who were dependent on it. Someone like Palpatine or Yoda would never even consider the existence of some sort of alternative power. Even face to face, when I used magic, and they sensed nothing in the Force, some would assume I was somehow hiding my presence in the Force or something.


    All this boiled down to one thing. When old Grandpappy Sheev caught wind that someone was throwing around lightning and summoning stuff from nothing, I was going to be hunted down, just like any Jedi or any other force user trying to stir shit up. I knew about the Inquisitors, Jedi hunters that took down any of them who managed to escape order 66, even though I hadn''t seen much of the content they were in. I knew they existed in the Disney canon, but I was murky about their existence when it came to the time period around the original trilogy. They certainly didn''t come after Luke during the movies.


    Even if the Inquisitors were gone, I would still be hunted. Hell, I was probably already being hunted. There was a chance that what I did on Nar Shaddaa might be brushed off as parlor tricks and aberrant technology, but if I kept it up, even that thin facade would crack, and I would be put on a list and hunted down. We were already, most likely, on some Hutt''s shit list, I really didn''t want to be on the Emperor''s.


    "Boss, I think you''re thinking about this too hard," Tatnia said, breaking me out of my rapidly spinning spiral. "If you''re worried about being put on a wanted list, the Empire taking an interest in you, the galaxy is a huge place. There are plenty of systems that a wanted record from the Empire wouldn''t even give people pause, and that doesn''t include a large amount that would actually see it as a positive. Hell, if all else fails, we could always turn to the Rebellion. I know you wanted to maintain our independence, but I''m sure we could work something out in exchange for a safety net of resources and a list of planets and stations to take refuge in when shit gets tough."


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    As she talked, I considered her words, nodding along as she assured me. As she did, I began to realize that she was right. I was thinking in terms of my old life, where options got really slim if the government wanted you. You could slip away if the local police wanted to ask you some questions, but the FBI? Here though, there were entire planets that hated the Empire. Sure, I would have to keep a lookout, but that''s what a loyal crew was for.


    "Yeah¡­ thanks, Tatnia. I guess I was still thinking about how things were back home," I explained, who nodded in agreement. "Still have to get used to all of this."


    "I get it, Boss. Gotta be a big shock to go from one tiny little world to an entire galaxy."


    "You have no idea. Alright, could you do me a favor and go get Nevue? Maybe trade places with him so he can keep the soldiers from shooting at me or trying to burn me at the stake or something."


    Tatnia gave me a weird look, but I just waved her off, leaning back and sitting on one of the few remaining crates in the cargo bay. It didn''t take long for Nevue and his compatriots to climb down the access ladder, the Zabrak, in particular, coming down with a little pep in his step.


    "Right. So, I''m sure you''re both wondering why Nevue was so eager to agree to the backup deal I made with Nova, despite it costing the Alliance a pretty penny?" I asked, both Lario and Ayme nodding slowly in confirmation. "Well, the deal is that I''m¡­ not exactly normal. Now I want you both to visibly confirm what I am about to say to you. You are not in danger, what I''m about to do is safe, and you don''t need to worry. Understand?"


    Both of the soldiers looked a bit nervous, but after sharing a glance, they nodded again. I paused for another few seconds before nodding, mostly to myself, before starting to run down through my location-appropriate spells. I started by summoning my bound armor, figuring that starting with something focused on myself would help them get used to it. When I was covered in a glowing protective shell, I summoned a sword and a dagger before dismissing all of it in a shower of magical sparks and translucent smoke. I cast candlelight and summoned my familiar, which was finally too much for Lario, who pulled his blaster out and held it steadily at the large feline.


    "What the hell is that!" He shouted, looking at Nevue, who was chuckling to himself, and then Ayme, who had taken a few steps back. "Nevue!"


    "Basically?" Nevue asked, breaking through his chuckling. "Space wizard."


    "Like a Jedi? Like the kid who blew up the Death Star?" Ayme asked, immediately catching my attention.


    "Not according to him. According to Deacon, it''s not the Force, but some sort of energy he has inside himself. All I know is that he can throw lightning and ice and fire from the palm of his hand and block blaster bolts with the other."


    As he talked, I dismissed my familiar, Lario slowly calmed down after I did. He did look at me like I was a dangerous-looking animal, though, so it was probably safe to say he was still a bit nervous.


    "Look, just treat him like a special asset and follow his lead," Nevue explained, patting the older soldier''s shoulder. "He''s in command for this op, by order of General Syndulla herself."


    We spent the next ten minutes talking about my abilities, showing off a few more spells, including clearing up a stiff neck and a troublesome knee thing that Lario had been apparently ignoring for a few weeks. Any complaints he had about me wholly disappeared after that. Nevue also convinced me to let him record me, pointing out that if he was going to explain the situation, he would need proof so they would take him seriously.


    Additionally, as I was showing off my flame atronach spell, I realized something I hadn''t noticed before. Spells that weren''t instant cast, most conjurations spells, or the calming spell, could be held for a long time before I was forced to cast. On top of that, it was easy to cancel them as well, the magic flowing back inside me with barely any loss. All I had to do was tug internally at the base of the first spell matrix, and the spell unraveled, the magic rushing back into my core.


    With this new knowledge, I spent the rest of the trip learning two new spells, the first being lightning bolt because I needed a longer-range attack that would hopefully be effective against droids. I spent about seven hours learning the spell before starting to cast it, holding the electric energy in my hand. After a few seconds of holding it, I unraveled the spell, feeling the energy return to my body. It took me a few minutes to cast it again, but I could feel it getting easier every time I cast, held, and then unraveled the spell. It was much slower at working the spell matrix into my aetheric presence, or however the book had described the fact that spells got easier the more times you cast them, but it was working.


    After spending an hour practicing the spell, I moved on to the second one, fast healing. I was tempted to learn another destruction spell, or maybe even elemental familiar, but I was already starting to lean heavily into the tank role for the team, so having a quicker heal option was a pretty safe bet. Learning the spell took me another seven hours, including the time to practice it a few dozen times to make sure it stuck. This left me with just enough time for six hours of sleep before we arrived at our destination.


    We were all piled into the cockpit as we dropped out of hyperspace, the formation of five ships appearing one after the other, Nova''s ship still in the lead, on the opposite side of the planet from the stronghold. As we agreed, we stayed comms silent and immediately started to pull ahead, soon entering the planet''s atmosphere. Nova and her four other ships spread out, though the likelihood that they would be detected by a stronghold with such severely disabled sensors was tiny, spreading out made that even less likely.


    We slowly made our descent toward the planet''s surface, taking it slow to keep from throwing up too much heat as we cut through the planet''s atmosphere. Again, most likely an unnecessary precaution, but there was no reason to risk it. Once we were a bit lower, Nevue and Tatnia guided us around the planet, getting closer and closer to our target. Below us was a dry, cracked, and desolate planet with very little in the way of flora or fauna. We did spot a few herds of strange-looking six-legged creatures, each the size of a speeder bike, as well as a few smaller forests growing around pools of greenish water, but beyond that, the planet was dead.


    When we did finally land, Nevue powered down the ship to low power and turned his chair to look at me.


    "It''s probably a four-hour hike to the location from here, but there is very little chance they saw us," He explained. "The mission is yours, Deacon."


    "Right. What did the weather scans say while we were coming in?


    "There''s a big storm on the other side of the continent and a smaller one to the far south, but neither of them was pointed at us," Tatnia answered. "We are good for a while."


    "Okay, let''s get the astromechs on their cargo loader, have a look around, and head out."

 Chapter 25

    The sparse, rocky, dry landscape made making our way to the stronghold a simple, if lengthy, process. The droids took turns pulling themselves for the most part, their wheels easily handling the dry, relatively stable ground. We did occasionally have to load them both onto the cargo loader and guide them ourselves, but that only happened a handful of times throughout the whole hike.


    Unfortunately, simple does not necessarily mean easy, as when Nova said the atmosphere was barely breathable, she was being generous. The air was so dry that it hurt to breathe once your heart rate picked up and you started to breathe heavier. There was also a prevalent metallic taste in the air, which made me think there was something in it that humans probably shouldn''t be breathing. We ended up taking light breathing masks from the ship''s survival kit and turning them on their lowest setting, filtering out the more dangerous particulates and gasses while also trapping the moisture from our own breathing, meaning it was a lot more comfortable to do so. The low setting also meant that the breathing masks would last up to fifteen hours instead of eight.


    With the major issues solved, the hike just took time, crossing massive plains of stone and gravel. We took several breaks to keep up our energy, during which I spent most of my time berating myself for not learning the respite spell. I was in decent shape, but hiking four hours through a planet-sized rocky desert was pushing me a lot harder than I wanted to admit. I made a note to put effort into building endurance after this was all over. If I was going to be fighting a lot, I needed to be able to keep up.


    My only solace was that only the two rebel soldiers seemed to be easily handling the workout, as everyone but them was showing at least signs of fatigue. When we were about thirty minutes out, I called for a final rest, gathering everyone around.


    "Alright, from here on out, we need to be careful about making noise. From the footage we have of the stronghold, it seems like approaching from the south is our best bet. West would provide us with better cover, but I''m worried about getting the astromechs through those steep cliffs. Plus, our target building is closer to the south."


    As I talked, we all slowly recovered from the last hour-long leg of the hike. I was mostly repeating what we had already gone over during the planning session, but everyone listened closely regardless.


    "Arthree and Race, stick with the group until we start taking fire. Hopefully, we will already be in the main building by then, but either way, once bolts start flying, I want you to play it safe. You two are the keys to this operation being more than a one-time find, so I don''t want you to get hit by stray fire. Everyone understands the game plan?"


    I got a series of nods and a low tone of confirmation from both of the droids, prompting me to nod back.


    "Alright. Ten minutes to check your gear and get everything prepared, then we head in. Leave your packs here, Lario is carrying everything we might need in his."


    Because we wanted to try and race to the central computer, we wanted to be as quick as possible. Lario was a good head taller than me and built like a brick, so he volunteered to carry the essentials while the rest of us traveled as lightly as possible. He nodded when I mentioned his burden before joining everyone else in checking their gear.


    The soldiers had their blaster rifles and a spare pistol on their hips, as well as some basic armor that was definitely just stripped-down stormtrooper armor, painted black and green. Everyone else was using the blaster rifles we had bought on Nar Shaddaa, with Nevue reluctantly leaving the proton rifle behind. I was running light, with my blaster pistol on my hip being my only physical weapon. My magic was going to be my primary weapon for this adventure.


    After ten minutes were up, everyone but Lario lined up their packs, and we covered them with a tan camo blanket. Once we were set and everyone double-checked they were ready, we started the last chunk of our hike, making our way to the outskirts, the southern side of the stronghold. With the rising tension and anticipation, this thirty-minute hike seemed to stretch on for a lot longer than anyone appreciated. When we finally arrived on the outskirts, we took cover behind along a slight ridge, Nal scanning the base with our electrobinoculars. After a few minutes, he handed them to me.


    "We''ve got a problem, Boss," He said softly, prompting me to peek over the ridge.


    The issue was immediately apparent. What was supposed to be an abandoned base, with the only immediate danger being the auto turret emplacements, was actually fully active. Dozens of battle droids patrolled the landing pad while others stood at sentry points, actively scanning the surroundings. Every doorway had at least two guard droids posted beside it, and there were several droids walking around, carrying things and completing tasks. A few repair droids were even working on one of the transports that Nova claimed.


    I bit back a curse and slid back fully into full cover, passing the binoculars to Tatnia, who slid up to look.


    "The whole base is active," I whispered, giving Nevue a look as he softly cursed. "The last alert must have brought the base online. There are at least fifty active battle droids, including on guard and sentries."


    "Which means whatever is in the hangar might be active as well," Tatnia said, sliding back into cover next to me, handing the binoculars to Nevue. "If they have armor vehicles in there, we are fucked."


    "We have two options. We push forward, or we bug out. Chances are the base will go back into shutdown if we give it enough time," I pointed out.


    "But we have no idea how long that will take," Ayme pointed out. "If we get inside, any armor they have will be useless, there is no way they will shoot at the building continuing their central computer, not at anything that could put it at risk."


    "I say we still push forward, Boss," Tatnia said.


    "I agree, I just wanted everyone to understand the options," I explained. "Okay, the plan stays the same, but now instead of trying to beat the alert, the alert is most likely going to happen immediately. I''m going to lead the charge, then slow down and switch to following behind, trying to draw fire. Everyone else''s goal is to get into the central building. Arthree, Race, once you have the door open, I need you to get ready to slam it closed again. Once everyone is inside, including me, slam the door shut and scramble it as best you can. Then it''s a race to the central computer system."


    The droids both bounced a bit, which I took as them understanding what I had just said. I took one long breath before slowly sliding around to the edge of our cover, peaking around to watch the patrols. As they moved, I could see that there were a few small gaps, but nothing that even came close to being big enough for us to slip through. The entrance to the central building was about two hundred meters, and it was doubtful that we would make it even half that distance without getting spotted. As I watched, I cast the upper and lower bound armor on myself, filling them completely to keep them around as long as possible. After a few minutes of watching the droid patrols, I saw an opening and took it.


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    "Go!" I whispered urgently, stepping out from behind the cover and running.


    I could hear the rest of the team following behind me as we crossed the first fifty meters without anyone spotting us. At about the seventy-five-meter mark, I saw a patrol turning towards us, about fifteen battle droids, all armed with blaster rifles. I peeled off a bit and slowed down, watching the rest of the team keep moving past me, making a beeline for the central structure. As they passed, I started walking backward, my eyes on the patrol. All of them suddenly came to attention at once.


    "Intruders!" One of the droids shouted, the call echoing across the entire landing structure, all of the robots spinning at once to look in our direction.


    "Well¡­ here we go!" I said, before dual casting steadfast ward, holding it out in front of myself.


    The first few blaster bolts whizzed by me, not even getting close. Some of them weren''t even aimed at me but at the rest of my team. I was about to tell them to get to cover since my distraction wasn''t working until the first bolt hit the ward, draining about a tenth of its power and bouncing off. The bolt of red energy harmlessly slammed into the ground about ten meters away


    .


    "JEDI!"


    Another call went out, this one even louder than the first. Suddenly all of the attention was on me, which was exactly what I wanted. As thirty or so droids opened fire on me at once, I was seriously starting to question my previous thought process.


    "We are at the door, Boss!" Tatnia said, "Thirty seconds!"


    Three more bolts hit my ward, all bouncing off wildly. One even crossed the gap between me and the nearest patrol to slam into one of the droids, drilling through its chest casing. I started moving backward as fast as I could, keeping the ward up and juking back and forth, trying my best to keep moving erratically. A fifth bolt hit the ward, and I could feel it weakening, my mana quickly running out.


    I was backpedaling at full tilt now, red bolts slamming into the ground around me, whizzing past and occasionally hitting my ward. I could feel it get closer and closer to failing, my hands going numb from the impacts.


    "It''s open!" Tatnia called out. "RUN!"


    My ward gave out just as she shouted, and I turned to run. I was about fifty meters from the doorway and could see the team taking cover inside, now returning fire, red bolts of lethal energy now whipping by me in both directions. I was moving as erratically as I could, but it was only a matter of time before-


    The impact almost spun me around as a blaster bolt slammed into my shoulder. I could feel that my upper bound armor almost immediately gave out under the blast, but by some miracle it held. I fed it as much magic as I could, reinforcing it slightly, but focused on running as fast as I could. Luckily the reinforcement stabilized the armor just enough that when the second bolt hit me, this time in the small of my back, the armor shattered but still stopped any energy from reaching me. Unfortunately, the impact and subsequent shattering armor knocked me off my feet, throwing me to the ground, where I tumbled and rolled¡­


    ...Right through the doorway of the central structure.


    The doors slammed shut just a few feet behind me, cutting off the exterior light. I quickly stood back up, my hand dipping to my hip to grab my blaster pistol, pulling it out even as I breathed heavily.


    The interior of the structure was simple and utilitarian, though there was a lot of dust along the floor. The hallway that I had tumbled into was a three-way intersection, with open halls leading to the left and right but a sealed door towards the center of the building. The door was covered in carbonized blaster marks, but a cursory glance told me it was superficial damage


    The hall was clear in both directions, prompting me to stand up straight and lower my pistol to my side. I looked at my team, checking out each of them before pulling off my mask and clipping it onto my hip.


    "Anyone hurt?" I asked. "Everyone good?"


    "Yeah, Boss, you kept them off us long enough to get the door open and into cover," Tatnia answered. "You okay? You took a few hits.¡­"


    "I think armor held up, and the rest got deflected by the ward," I assured her before turning around. "My back alright?"


    "Yeah, you''re good," She responded, her hand dusting off my back. "Nothing got through."


    "Right, okay, step one was a success then," I said, facing the rest of the team. "Arthree, Race, how goes it?"


    Arthree spun around, and Racer pulled away from the door after a few seconds, their <u>scomp</u></a> link retracting back into their chassis, Racer letting out a long series of bleeps and bloops. I stared at the droid for a long moment before Nal spoke up.


    "They scrambled exterior access," He explained. "Will take two hours, or destruction of the door to get in. Internal security is the last threat."


    "They get a map in that process?" I asked, Artthree whistling before shifting slightly, his projector lighting up to display a holographic map.


    The pale blue, 3D representation of the building spun around slightly and showed a blinking green light several floors down in a central chamber. It marked a route as well.


    "Alright, that looks like a good path, lets-"


    Before I could finish, the sound of heavy metallic footsteps came from the left hall. With barely a second to think of anything, the large frames of three battle droids came around the corner. Unlike the droids outside, however, these were not B1''s. Instead of the tan cannon fooder the Separatists threw at their problems by the thousands, there were three beefed-up B2 Super battle droids.


    The second they stepped around the corner, they opened fire, prompting us to do the same. Laser fire stitched down the walls and floor, and I had just enough time to call up another steadfast ward deflecting a handful of blaster bolts.


    "Go! Get back to some cover!" I called out, holding the ward out in front of myself before charging my newest destruction spell.


    An ark of lightning shot out from my hand, my lightning bolt spell slamming into the lead droid even as we all retreated. The electricity sank into the droid''s arm, causing it to spark and swing out, spasming slightly before going limp. As I followed my team back down the hallway, I fired a second time, then a third and fourth, the battle droid finally going down, electricity sparking off its body as it spasmed to the ground.


    The two other droids just stepped over their compatriot, their wrist-mounted blasters firing another chain of bolts. Lario and Nal leaned around the corner as I dove around it, laying down and covering the fire. As I dove, I barely managed to avoid a blast of red energy, my ward failing as my Magicka reserve was utterly depleted.


    Tatnia quickly joined the other two, firing around the corner and taking down the two super battle droids with multiple volleys of mass fire, several shots finding weak points to drill into the metal of the droid, finally causing enough severe damage to drop them. When the two remaining droids collapsed, we all breathed a sigh of relief.


    "Alright¡­ let''s keep moving," I said. "The sooner we can take down the central computer, the better."

 Chapter 26

    We quickly jogged past the smoking remains of the super battle droids, Lario pumping a few extra shots into each as we did. I didn''t blame him in the slightest, they had been significantly more challenging to take down than the normal B1s, which tended to all but fall apart after the first hit or two.


    By the time we made it all the way down the hall, I had re-summoned my armor, and my mana had regenerated. I was constantly feeding the armor magic to keep it at its strongest, which meant my magic was regenerating much slower than normal. To compensate, I took out my blaster pistol, sweeping down the next corridor as I stepped around the corner.


    "Clear," I said, stepping around and making my way down the long hallway.


    I found myself wanting to cast a steadfast ward, but the mana-intensive spell would drain me in a few seconds, with most of my magic already going to my armor. Still, my sword skills called for me to have something in my offhand, making me think that a thick, blaster-proof shield might actually be a decent idea. A scene from one of the early Marvel movies popped into my head, with Captain America kicking down a door with his shield in one hand and his pistol in the other. I had never been a fan of the Captain in comics or the movies, he always came off holier than thou to me, but that scene looked cool, and if I could find a metal resistant enough to blasters fire but light enough to carry around¡­


    I shook my head to clear it of distractions. There would be time for getting creative with my load out when this was done.


    I slowed down as we approached another sealed door, going past it and stopping on another side, my team coming in behind me. Racer pulled up next to it without prompting, linking to the doorway and immediately starting to slice into its controls. He gave a series of beeps, and Nal looked at me, holding up two fingers.


    "Alright, take cover, guys, we need to hold here for two minutes," I prompted, pointing to the small cover that the sectioned hallway provided, Nevue and Ayme sliding into place. "We-"


    The sound of machine parts whirring echoed through the space, cutting me off and prompting everyone to look around wildly. For a long second, we didn''t see anything, only for two turrets to drop from the ceiling. They quickly spun around and targeted us in a blur of movement, both units relatively small and clearly designed for internal, anti-personnel purposes. Despite that, they were still obviously dangerous. The first one immediately targeted me, firing off a quick quartet of blasts that hit me square in the chest, slamming me against the door. The first three bolts cracked my bound armor easily before the third slammed into my physical armor.


    The other turret swiveled further and aimed at Race, focusing on the slicer droid. Tatnia, who was standing beside the droid, wound up and kicked the smaller robot, the droid getting yanked free from the scomp connector just in time for the second turret to unleash its own quartet of bolts. All four of them slammed into the door control panel, which exploded in a spray of sparks and melted metal.


    All of this happened in a split second, which was just enough time for Nal, Ayme, Nevue, and Lario to jerk their weapons up at the descended turrets and open fire, peppering the robotic weapons with a river of red bolts. The turrets exploded in a wave of sparks and slag, one falling out of its housing and smashing to the ground.


    "Fuck, that hurts," I said, pulling myself off the door and already casting two fast heals on myself simultaneously.


    The double fast heal inundated my body with energy, the golden healing magic sinking into my chest and immediately healing a significant portion of the damage. I immediately repeated the double cast, the pain receding almost completely, though I could still feel pulling when I stretched. Tatnia started to immediately check on me, finding that the armor just under my left pec was cracked, blackened, and basically ruined, but that my skin underneath looked like a three or four-week-old injury.


    "I''m alright, Tatnia," I assured her, looking at the rest of the team. "We need to keep moving. Race, I''m assuming this door is a bust?"


    The red and black droid let out a long solemn warble that confirmed my suspicions.


    "I could¡­" Lario started, trailing off when I shook my head.


    "No, that''s our backup option. I don''t want to waste it when we can just use the next one down and work from there," I said, already re-casting my bound armor. "Everyone keep your eyes open for more turrets, especially at intersections, doorways, and corners."


    Everyone nodded, and again, we were on the move, quickly jogging down hallways. We eventually found the alternative doorway, which Racer cracked easily. Two more turrets dropped down from the ceiling, but this time we were ready and blasted them the second they came down. Once Racer opened the door itself, it immediately revealed six B1s on the other side of the doorway. Thankfully I had seen that coming, so we had all dropped into cover. Considering they were just standing in the middle of the hallway while we were safely protected by the door frame, we made quick work of them.


    Slowly but surely, we made it down two more floors like this, blasting the occasional patrol of droids and taking out any turrets that dropped from the ceiling. We even managed to stamp out another trio of super droids, a much less daunting task now that we were prepared for them and weren''t stuck in the open like the first time. I simply summoned a flame atronach and ordered it to charge at them. The conjured elemental managed to make it within a few feet of the first one before it was finally taken down. It stumbled and fell to the ground at their feet¡­ only to detonate like a small grenade, staggering two of the more advanced droids and knocking the third on its ass. All of us popped around the corner at the sound of the explosion, having been waiting for it, and immediately opened fire on the now unfocused robots. It took a few seconds of sustained fire, but they went down eventually.


    From the third floor down, the defenses became more and more intense. Soon we were facing down dozens of droids at once, both B1s and B2s, all determined to keep us from getting any lower. Luckily, in true CIS fashion, they just continued stacking the numbers, trying to overwhelm us with disposable droids. Not only did it barely slow us down, it actually, occasionally, made things easier for us. The droids would collapse when destroyed, blocking the path and sometimes causing the droids behind them to stumble as they tried to advance toward us. We went through a lot of ammo, but between spamming my flame atronach and the whole crew''s firepower, we took down all of the threats in relatively quick succession.


    When we finally entered the last floor, and Racer scrambled the security door behind us to give us time to work in peace, we immediately took a minute to take stock of the situation. According to Racer and Arthree, the droid forces had started breaking down doors to follow us, using whatever tools, and even their blasters, to get through. They were currently on the third floor, doing their best to break into the stairwell leading to the fourth. By Arthree''s estimation, we had about thirty to forty minutes before they could reach us.


    Once we had all gathered our wits, reloaded our weapons, and caught our breath, we started making our way to the center of the sixth floor, which according to Arthree, was where the direct access to the central computer access would be. As we moved deeper, it was clear that this floor was very different from the others in terms of defenses. Where the past few floors had been a near-constant cacophony of droids, blaster fire, and shouting, this floor was nearly silent, a low hum of high-energy conduits and coolant systems the only real noise.


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    When we finally found the main entrance to the central room, Arthree hooked themselves into the scomp port, slowly unlocking the door while we looked around nervously. We were so close to our goal, and the fact that this floor had, so far, been entirely unprotected left us all feeling on edge.


    "Maybe droids aren''t allowed down here?" Lario suggested. "Wouldn''t want them to have access to their own systems¡­ right?"


    Before I could say anything to his guess, Arthree whistled a happy tune, the door opening up with a near-silent whoosh of air, a sign that the pressure had been different inside than out. With a victorious whistle, Arthree rolled around the door frame and into the room, making a beeline for the center.


    "No! Wait!" I called out, taking a half step into the room and looking around quickly.


    The room was cold, clean, and utilitarian, with a large holoprojector in the center. All around the room were what looked like server banks and computer equipment, each marked with blinking lights. As Arthree headed straight for the center console, his scomp link already extended, I extended my arm to keep Racer from rushing forward. The dome-headed droid managed to reach the center console, only for two hatches to open on opposite sides of the room, revealing just about the last thing I wanted to see.


    "Get to cover!" I shouted as two <u>droideka</u></a> waddled out of their hiding place, their shields already deployed. "Arthree, watch out!"


    The astromechs dome spun around and locked onto one of the dangerous battle bots, letting out a screech of terror as it tried to swivel around and run out, only to be blasted into smithereens by the combined effort of both droideka.


    "Fuck, get to cover!" I shouted again, sliding against the door frame as the destroyer droids turned around and started walking toward the door, rapidly firing their blasters.


    "What do we do?" Tatnia called out, leaning against the other side of the door frame, shouting to be heard over the constant barrage of laser bolts.


    "Don''t shoot them!'' I shouted, seeing Ayme preparing to lean out and shoot back at the robots. "We can''t risk a ricochet!"


    Ayme cursed and leaned back around to cover, a pair of red energy bolts sparking where she had just been leaning. I peeked around the corner, trusting my armor to hold for at least one shot, desperate to get a look at what the large droids were doing. I pulled my head back immediately, looking up and down the hallway before finally coming up with an idea.


    "Pull back!" I shouted, motioning everyone to move back the way we came. "We can''t handle that kind of firepower! We need to leave! Pull back!"


    Everyone looked at me like I was crazy until I grabbed Lario and spun him around, and started digging through his backpack, pulling out our two backup plans. Tatnia smirked and nodded, turning and walking away.


    "You hear him! Retreat!" She shouted, prompting everyone on the left side of the door, the side we had come from, to run down the hallway towards the stairs we had taken down.


    After a few seconds, Lario and I followed, with me holding a dual cast ward up to cover us both as we crossed the doorway. We continued to move, the whole team retreating partially up into the stairwell. While they did that, I stopped around the first corner, peeking around it to watch the door. I kept watch for a few seconds, until I finally saw the droideka leave the room, following behind us and making their way into the hallway. I pulled back and leaned against the wall, counting to five, before looking back to Lario, who was waiting for my signal.


    "Now!"


    The soldier squeezed the detonator he was holding, and the explosive charges that I had dropped on either side of the doorway as we "retreated" both went off simultaneously. The explosion shook the structure around us, scattering chunks of ferrocrete all the way down the hall to bounce around the corner. When the debris finally stopped, I turned to peek around the corner, pumping my fist when I saw that the droideka were both smoking piles of scrap.


    I stepped around the corner and jogged back to the door to inspect the damage more closely. I was glad to see that the positioning of the explosives around the corner had directed the explosive force away from the entrance but still had enough power to destroy the destroyer droids.


    We rushed back to the serving room, Racer following behind, giving the destroyed remains of his compatriot a wide berth before connecting to the mainframe. The droid whistled a slow tune, and Nal frowned.


    "He believes he can crack the system in three to five minutes," The Duros explained.


    I nodded and directed everyone to move around the room, to spread out and find a cover around the room, but to stay focused on the doorway. While they were moving into position, I walked to the entrance and stayed there, listening for the sounds of company.


    Three and a half nerve-wracking minutes went by before Racer let out a triumphant series of whistles. Immediately the whole room went dark, every light, control pad, and sensor blinker going out before almost immediately coming back a split second later. The room lights clicked on first before the central core slowly came back online. The little astromech continued to beep whistle and warble, his scomp still spinning inside the connector.


    "The base is completely locked down," Nal informed us. "All surviving battle droids are returning to their charging stations and storage racks. Even the super battle droids are shutting down. Apparently, they don''t need the central computer to function but still follow its commands."


    All of us cheered at the news, Tatnia slugging me in the shoulder as we gathered together by the computer''s holoprojector.


    "Racer, was Miru right that the comms were completely busted?" I asked, getting a warble that I could tell was a confirmation, but I still looked to Nal, who nodded.


    "Alright, well, lock everything down. We need to head back up to the surface," I said. "I doubt the comm unit we packed is going to be able to get through all this ferrocrete."


    Again the little robot warbled a confirmation and, after a few minutes, pulled away from the access port. Together we slowly made our way back through the building, climbing over the wrecked droids we had taken down along the way. As we got higher, we had to climb through several destroyed security doors, warped and scored with blaster fire and small-scale explosives.


    As we stepped out into the harsh, dry exterior, all of us clipped our masks back on. Lario started to unpack his comm equipment with Ayme''s help, quickly setting it up on the ground. Once it was done, I called up to Nova on our agreed-upon coms band. A few minutes and a short conversation later, Nova and her team were on the way down.

 Chapter 27

    As we waited for Nova and her other ships to fly down, I couldn''t help but feel a little tense. While none of her ships even remotely resembled what you would call a warship, they were all armed. She also had a significant number of workers with her, who were no doubt also armed. We might be good, or at least decent, but between the ships and her superior numbers, we would be at her mercy. If she wanted to betray us and take this whole site for herself, this would be the perfect time to do it.


    "When are your people getting here?" I asked Nevue, who seemed to have picked up on my nervousness.


    "Within the next five or six hours," He answered before patting my shoulder. "Relax, Nova is a friend. I don''t blame you for being nervous, though."


    "Yeah, I know. Not exactly the best position to be in."


    When the businesswoman finally arrived, she was the first one out of her ship, even as her other ships landed. As her workers followed her out, her other ships lowering their ramps, she looked around before turning back to address her people, giving orders and directing them to several tasks. A significant portion of the group broke off and started to inspect the ships on the landing pad while even more rushed into the buildings, weapons out as they began clearing everything, ensuring everything was safe. Before we could reach the older businesswoman, a pink missile streaked across the gap between us and collided with me.


    "I''m alright, Miru, everyone is alright," I assured her, returning the teenage Twi''leks hug. "It was easy, no problems at all."


    "I can clearly smell that your armor is burnt," She said, pulling away and inspecting my jacket and the armor beneath.


    "Yeah, but you know me, I bounce back from that sort of thing," I said with a smirk, earning a slap to the shoulder before she turned to give a hug to Tatnia. Together, after a few more hugs, we crossed the rest of the distance to Nova.


    "Good work, everyone," She said with a smile, stepping out to shake my hand, making me feel silly for my previous nervousness. "How did the mission go?"


    "There were some complications at the beginning," I admitted, continuing when she raised her eyebrow. "The base was fully active when we got here. Patrols, lookout stations, the whole nine yards. But we managed to get inside without taking any injuries, and all it did was shrink our timeline a bit."


    "Well, good job. The ships seem to be in good condition, despite being exposed for so long, and-"


    "Nova!" A voice called urgently from the older woman''s comms unit, cutting her off. "Nova, come in!"


    "Sorry, hold on a second," She said, unclipping her comm and holding up. "Nova here, say again?"


    "You''re going to want to come to the hangar bay Ma''am," The voice said. "It''s¡­ well, you''re going to want to see this."


    She glanced at us, and I gestured for her to lead the way, all of us crossing the huge landing pad to the entrance into the hanger. It was larger than it seemed, and as we crossed from the harsh light into the darker, slightly cooler interior, we could finally see what Nova''s worker had been talking about.


    All three walls of the hanger, which went back surprisingly far into the rocky hill it was carved into, were lined with stuff. The left wall was crammed, floor to ceiling, with cargo crates ranging from smaller standard crates to massive shipping containers. The far back wall was filled with several storage units of droids, most of them B1''s, but with several other types as well. Along the right wall were ten starfighters, most of them the <u>robotic</u></a> <u>variants</u></a> that I recognized from the movies, but there were also three X-wing look-alikes that I guessed were <u>Z-95 headhunters.</u></a>


    But all of that paled in comparison to the<u> large ship</u></a> sitting at an angle in the center of the space. It was at least forty meters long, maybe more, and looked sleek and clean. Large windows were arrayed along the side, making me think that this was a pleasure craft rather than a warship. It seemed to be in great shape as well, with its red paint in almost perfect condition.


    "Well¡­ that just made this whole thing worth it," Nova said with a smirk, slapping my back. "That''s a PLY 3000. It''s worth at least a hundred and fifty thousand credits, probably closer to two hundred!"


    "What the hell is a Personal Luxury Yacht doing out here in a military base?" Tatnia asked. "And in perfect condition?"


    "Stera, Tedo, start going over this ship! I want to know how it looks on the inside!" Nova called out, her worker nodding before turning to other workers and barking orders at them.


    "C''mon, let''s inspect the rest of these buildings, maybe we might figure out what''s going on here," Tatnia suggested, nodding toward the hangar exit. "Who knows, we might spot something useful."


    -----------------?


    We spent a few hours exploring the structures around the base, with Nevue and the soldiers splitting off to go their own way, leaving us, plus Racer, to start with the upper floors of the main structure, working our way down. The first and second floors were clearly designed as a sort of central command, which made sense considering the massive communication dish on the roof. While all the stations were dark, dozens of display pads were set up by the reinforced structure''s long, horizontal windows that overlooked a significant portion of the base.


    Underneath the command center floor was a floor of storage, filled with replacement parts, equipment, and tools, as well as other basic supplies. Below that, we found three floors of empty rooms, well furnished but simple, like a very basic apartment complex. I was surprised to find that many living quarters, as this base would have been perfectly functional with a handful of organic supervisors.


    As we explored further down into the many rooms we had fought past but hadn''t explored, it got more and more confusing. Storage filled with long-term supplies for organics. Room after room filled with clothes, linens, literal tons of food, everything a decent-sized group of people needed to survive for a long time. There was even a commercial-sized kitchen, staffed with robots that were now shut down and tucked into a series of charging bays in the corner.


    The second to last floor, the one directly above the central computer, was split into three luxury living spaces. They were big, bigger than any apartment I had ever lived in or even seen, and were filled with high-quality furniture, computers, and all sorts of luxury amenities. As we explored the largest of the three, I directed Race, who had joined us when we split with Nevue, to access the computer terminal behind a large wooden desk. He whistled in confirmation while we looked around.


    After about three minutes, he whistled out, and Nal and I headed to the desk, reading the data entry that Racer had pulled up. It described the timeframe in which the facility had been constructed, as well as what its purpose was.


    "Son of a bitch, we found someone''s hidey hole," I said after reading the document. "Look, right here. ''A bastion of last resort.'' and ''holds supplies to last several years, should our investments in the Separatist movement turn sour.'' Some CIS dumbass didn''t want to face the music if they lost the war, so they built a place to hide if it started going bad. Must have never made it out here¡­."


    "That explains the Yacht," Tatnia said, dropping down onto a couch that probably would have cost me a few months'' pay before I died. "What do you think that means for the data core?"


    "Could be a separate system, with no contact with the rest of CIS," Nal admitted with a shrug. "Or it could have been a sanctioned project. Might be connected to similar bases."


    "Either way, we get what we need at the moment," I said, both of them nodding in agreement. "With any luck, it might lead to more profit later, but for now, it pays for our ship plus some starter funds while we search for more members."


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    "You said you would be taking most of our cut-in materials," Miru brought up. "Why was that?"


    "Because when you''re living on your own rules, supplies are worth more than any amount of credits," I explained, Nal nodding in agreement. "Fuel is likely our biggest issue that requires money to solve, everything else we can scavenge, bargain for, or loot from pirates, slavers, and other acceptable targets. Also, more specifically, I was betting that the C-ROC being stationed here would mean it would have supplies to maintain it."


    "Oh¡­ could that include some droids?" She asked, looking a bit nervous to be asking for something. "It''s just that I''ve always wanted to tinker with droids, and the B1s would be a great way to start. Plus, I could use some extra hands maintaining a ship as large as the C-ROC¡­."


    "I think we could likely convince them to pay us to haul the B1''s away," I said with a chuckle. "They don''t exactly have the best reputation. But yes, we can negotiate that, especially since I''m pretty sure some of the stuff you''re going to end up making will be useful."


    Miru preened at the compliment before Tatnia raised her hand.


    "I want this couch," She said, now laying back on it, her eyes closed as she enjoyed the expensive seat.


    "Why not the bed?" Nal suggested, the human woman''s eyes flying open. "If they paid that much for their couch¡­."


    Tatnia was up and off the couch before Nal could finish, looking around before making a beeline for the bedroom, Miru following close behind, looking around curiously.


    We spent the next while unwinding and exploring the stronghold, making a note of anything we saw worth negotiating for. One building off the side of the central, large structure was some sort of garage containing five speeders, which Nal identified as <u>Flitknot</u></a>s. They were unarmed, though, so not likely something I would ask for. Another one of the buildings contained what was clearly an armory, most of which was just blasters of different types and sizes. We already had blasters rifles, spare blasters, and spare blaster pistols, so most of that was useless to us. I did spot a few interesting things, but how much of it we would get would come down to how the negotiations went.


    We were talking to Nevue about who was riding one of the unarmed speeders back to the B-7 to pick it up when the Rebel Alliance finally arrived. Three large ships landed on the pad, which was now well and truly full. Nevue and I ran out to greet whoever was in command, which turned out not to be necessary as a soldier met us halfway and handed Nevue a data pad without a word.


    "Well¡­ Good news, I''m now in charge of this operation from our side," He said, still reading from the tablet.


    "What''s the bad news?"


    "The bad news is that I''ve been deemed too big of an asset to return to my team. I''m now forming a second team, basically doing the same thing," He said with a frown. "Damn¡­ I was looking forward to seeing them again."


    "No good deed goes unpunished," I said with a wince, Nevue letting out a snort of blank amusement. "Shall we go find Nova? Start negotiations?"


    "Yeah¡­ let me give my people some orders, and we can go find her."


    Fifteen minutes later, the three of us, with my crew, a few rebel soldiers, and a pair of Nova''s workers following behind us, began to divide up the loot, starting in the hangar. They both immediately started trying to claim the luxury yacht, as Nova hadn''t made any claim to what was inside the hangar while we were originally discussing terms. Instead of joining in, mostly because it was useless to me, I offered to give up any claim to it in return for dibs on three large storage containers worth of parts for the C-ROC sitting in the hangar. They agreed before continuing to negotiate for the PLY.


    Eventually, it was decided that Nova would get the Yacht if the Rebellion got the three Headhunters, all equipment set aside to repair them, and thirty thousand credits or something equivalent, which Nova agreed to. I asked for some of the droid starfighters at the request of Miru, and the two agreed as they weren''t interested in getting them to work. In the end, I claimed four <u>vulture droids</u></a> and two <u>tri fighters</u></a>. Since both of them openly admitted to not wanting them, I managed to convince them to count them as only a thousand credits each, despite them being worth significantly more, even in scrap.


    I was also able to convince them to let me take as many B1s as I wanted and to let me have ten super battle droids and two droideka. Nevue asked for the rest and offered to cut the credit IOU for the LPY 3000 in half in return, which Nova readily agreed to. I had to argue much harder to get a small team of<u> labor droids</u></a> and <u>repair droids</u></a>, five each, as Nova wanted them badly. I did eventually win, but I had to give up on the unarmed speeder bikes. Miru almost mentioned how I hadn''t actually cared about getting them, but Tatnia thankfully got to her first. Nova was still getting thirty-five of each robot type anyway, so she didn''t have much to complain about.


    The general supplies were also hotly contested, as all three of us had use for them. Eventually, Nova and I agreed that the Rebellion needed them more, and so we settled on each of us getting a few crates of basic necessities and letting Nevue take the rest. Both of us then used that goodwill to claim most of the tools and spare equipment that were secured around the facility. I wanted Miru to have every tool she could possibly need to keep our ship running and do her tinkering. After a bit of negotiating, we settled on basically getting one of everything while Nova and Nevue would split the rest between them, heavily biased toward Nova.


    The negotiations continued as we argued over who would get what and if this trade or that trade would stick to the forty-forty-twenty agreement we had all shaken on. In the end, the one item that we argued about the most was the turret emplacements that dotted the stronghold. I wanted one of the more powerful cannons to bump up the punch of the C-ROC, Nevue wanted them to jump-start the defenses of the Alliance''s next base, and Nova wanted to build them into her station, which at the moment was only lightly armed.


    Eventually, we settled on a compromise. I got one of the larger turrets for the C-ROC, Nevue got a few, and Nova got the vast majority. In exchange, Nova would repair several alliance ships for free and increase the scale of the modifications she would do to the C-ROC on top of its repair.


    "Just what exactly are you looking to get done?" She asked when I started angling for more modifications. "There is a limit to what I can do without a working refit station."


    "You were already talking about removing that tail thruster?" I asked, smirking when she nodded. "I want to take the heavy turret we just got and attach it there. Should make chasing us a much more daunting task."


    "...That''s not a bad idea, we could reroute the engine''s power to shields, but let it switch to the cannon when you need a bit more firepower." She said, scratching her nose as she thought. "That shouldn''t be too difficult either, though you may need a separate station to work that turret, working it into the existing systems wouldn''t be worth the effort. What else are you thinking? We could do a few more like that, though you''re going to start putting a strain on your ship''s power systems if you add any more energy weapons."


    "No, no more weapons. I think I only want one more modification, but this one is going to be a bit bigger," I admitted. "You know how the empire likes to use their new style of Gozanti cruisers to carry starfighters into combat? Well, Miru and I had an idea for something functionally similar, executed very differently.¡­"


    Nova narrowed her eyes at me before shaking her head.


    "Don''t bother describing it to me now, we can sit down and plan it out later. For now, I have to get in contact with some more traders. There''s a lot of goods nobody was interested in, and I''m not leaving them behind when there is money to be made."

 Chapter 28

    We spent another day at the Separatist stronghold, sleeping in several floors of apartment-esque rooms and living off of ship supplies. Nevue, Ayme, and Lario were the first to leave, the dozens of rebels and several ships they brought making quick work of the supplies, equipment, weapons, and starfighters they were taking with them. Nevue, my crew, and the soldiers shared a drink before they left, sitting in one of the larger lounge areas that were dotted along the living spaces.


    "I''m already forming my new crew," Nevue explained, gesturing to Ayme and Lario, the latter of which raised his glass. "I might not get to rejoin my old team, but at least I''m not starting over with a completely new group."


    "Are they saddling you with the B-7 too?" I asked, looking skeptical.


    "Thank the Force, no. We are heading back to Thalia, where I''m looking to recruit a few more specialists. Once I''m done, our first assignment will be stealing an Imperial ship," He explained with a shrug.


    "Seriously?" Tatnia asked, her eyes wide with surprise. "Real trial by fire, huh?"


    "Well, I''ll be gathering experienced operatives, so they expect a certain level of results," He explained. "Plus, we can do it from any world in the galaxy, which will give us the advantage of surprise."


    "We wish you good luck," Nal added, reaching out and shaking the Zabrak''s hand. "May fortune favor you."


    We spent a while saying goodbye, sharing a few more drinks, and making small talk, laughing about our adventure so far. When the three rebels did eventually leave, the lounge felt much more empty than it really was.


    Not long after the Alliance cleared out, we were transported back to Nova''s repair station, riding with her on her ship while her people stayed behind to secure the last few things they wanted. A general salvage crew that Nova was familiar with was already stripping out the furniture and general equipment from the facility, which Nova promised would add a solid chunk of credits to the final pot.


    Once we were back at the station, Nova pulled me aside rather energetically.


    "I just reviewed Racer''s footage of the mission," She said, looking at me with a severe expression. "Are you a Jedi?"


    "No, I''m not," I assured her, rather fruitlessly by her continued harsh expression. "Beyond the fact that ''Jedi'' does not just mean all Force users, but rather a single sect of Force users, I don''t actually use the Force at all."


    "I know what a Jedi is, Deacon. I''m sixty-three years old, and my family is from Coruscant. Even if we didn''t rub shoulders with senators and the like before the Empire, I could see the Jedi Temple from my bedroom."


    "Right¡­ well, did you ever see them doing their thing?"


    "...No, not in person. I met a few but never saw any in action," She admitted. "But I know crazy monk bantha-shit when I see it. Anyone throwing around stuff like that is on a short and very wanted list by the Empire, even if they don''t know it yet."


    "I know. It''s why I''m so desperate for my own ship," I explained. "I want to be able to get up and go, to stay out from under the Empire''s thumb."


    "And you''re painting a target on my business in the process!"


    "Really? Any more than regularly dealing with the Rebellion?" I asked, giving her a look and crossing my arms. "There isn''t anything connecting you to the C-ROC, especially if your slicers are as good as you say."


    One of the few things that kept Nova''s business safe, and something she had bragged about frequently, was her team''s ability to "fix" a ship''s ownership so that there was nothing questionable about it. Both she and Nevue had sworn by it, which led me to believe I could trust it.


    "Oh, they are," She assured me, looking mollified but still a bit frustrated. "What were you, a Padawan, during the purge?"


    "No, I already told you, I''m not a Jedi or a Force user," I insisted, repeating myself. "Jedi isn''t synonymous with Force users anyway."


    For a long moment, she stared me down, narrowing her eyes as she tapped her desk with a single finger. She looked like she was trying to use her own mind powers to figure me out before eventually giving up.


    "... When your ship is done, I want you gone," She finally said. "I have nothing against you, and I never believed the propaganda that the Jedi Order betrayed the Republic. But you being here puts my workers and my business in danger. I can deal with nosey Imperials trying to sniff out the Rebellion and its sympathizers, but I don''t have a clue how to handle your hokey mind stuff. I''m sorry."


    I stood there, a few feet into the cluttered space Nova called an office, clenching my fist in frustration. A few dozen ideas ran through my head, but all of them ranged from bad to worse. So instead, I just let out a long breath and nodded.


    "What about our deal?" I asked. "If that data core turns up more salvage opportunities?"


    "The Rebellion will contact you," She answered. "Nevue said he left a way for you to communicate?"


    I nodded, recalling the hyperwave unit that we had recovered during our initial search for a Rebel base to drop Nevue off at. It was waiting to get loaded onto the C-ROC, along with all of our stuff and the salvaged equipment and goods from the stronghold.


    "Then that''s how they will get in touch," She said, leaning back in her chair. "You''ll be doing business through them mostly, as they have the data core now. Unless ships are involved, I''ll likely just be taking a buyout or supplies."


    "Fine," I answered before turning to leave without another word.


    --------------------?


    Despite her ultimatum, Nova honored her word and worked with Miru and me to implement the modifications to <u>the C-ROC</u></a>. The first modification, removing the center thruster and replacing it with a powerful laser cannon, was relatively easy, and she and her engineers did most of the work. When Miru presented her with the design for the second modification, she was impressed.


    The C-ROC had four cargo lanes on each side of its wings, each one just over two meters wide. Each lane was equipped with a cargo locking system that could either grip a container directly with a clamping mechanism or use a standard mag-lock to snap it into place. Each of these lanes had a short hood that extended from the hull for protection, as well as a mag-field to keep the air in. Past that field was a sealed door that opened into the ship''s first level. There were safeties and backups all around, and the sealing door for each bay was armored as if it was an exterior access point.


    The plan was to remove the cargo lane hoods and create a new, higher-up roof. This would be built with hull-rated plating and extended out significantly further. The result would be two twelve-meter-wide hangar bays with a depth of just under eight meters and a height of just over six. Both sides would have a fully-fledged, military-rated mag-field to keep the air in, as well as blast doors that would roll down from the top, offering even more protection. The interior doors would also be replaced with a singular, much larger door on each side.


    <u>When it was done</u></a>, we would be able to squeeze in two fighters on each side, maybe three, if their wingspans were especially small. Further, because it was a fully functional hangar, you could work on the ships while the C-ROC was moving, even in hyperspace. Even better, the hangars could still be used as storage.


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    It was impressive that Miru, in a hilariously short amount of time, had taken my simple prompt of "the wings are big enough to land a starfighter on" and turned it into a legitimate plan that Nova was not only happy to implement but also interested in purchasing from Miru.


    "I know half a dozen people who fly around these ships," Nova explained. "Some of them in the Rebellion. If you let me buy this from you, I''ll send the basic idea to them. I''ll be able to charge them thirty thousand credits for the modification, making a decent profit from it in the process. The most expensive thing is the extension to the artificial gravity."


    Miru looked at me, and I nodded with a smile, gesturing for her to go ahead.


    "How much?" Miru asked, looking back to Nova.


    "Considering I have no guarantees that people will go for it? Three thousand credits."


    "Five thousand."


    "Three thousand five hundred."


    "I''ll give you the plans and one thousand credits," Miru said, catching me and Nova off guard. "In exchange for Racer."


    "What?" I asked, looking at Miru. "What do we need him for?"


    "Besides the fact that having a slicer droid is a good investment?" Miru asked, getting a nod of understanding from me. "The LE-repair droids can handle themselves, but he will make interfacing with the labor droids much easier. Plus, an astromech is a good droid to have around in general if we are living on a starship. The R4 series is meant for a more general repair, but it''s still an astromech. If our navigator is ever broken, it could easily plot a course instead. It could probably help optimize the current navigator''s calculations."


    "Well¡­Racer¡­ has a lot of aftermarket parts." Nova explained. "I have a few droids like him, so I''m not opposed to it, but he is worth six thousand credits at least."


    "Two thousand, half of which is coming from your cut of the stronghold raid," I said, directing the last half to Miru, who nodded in agreement. "And we get Racer, along with the appropriate maintenance materials."


    "Done," She said with a nod, reaching out and shaking hands with both of us. "I''ll send him to your rooms in a little while.


    "Just send him to Miru, he will be working under her."


    The repairs and modifications to the C-ROC took another week and a half, which from what Miru and Nal said, was remarkably quick. I could only imagine Nova was pushing her crew to finish the job quickly so she could be done with us and, more specifically, get me off her station.


    During our week of downtime, we each kept as busy as we could, despite the fact that we were stuck on a mostly empty station. Tatnia, Nal, and I all started some basic workouts in the morning, as we had all been a little disappointed in our conditioning when compared to Ayme and Lario. We spent a few hours every morning doing sit-ups, push-ups, burpees, and anything else I could remember from gym class. It sucked, and Miru teased us for it, but if we were going to make a living off being mercenaries and fighting, we needed to be a bit more than just casually in shape.


    On top of that, Nal, Tatnia, and I familiarize ourselves with the C-ROC systems, specifically the bridge. Both of them knew that I was hoping to find a permanent pilot, so we focused on being able to man the guns and the comms control station in an attempt to keep the crew number down.


    When I wasn''t training, I was practicing magic, learning three new spells during the downtime. I could have learned more, but Nova was already nervous about having me around, so I wanted to keep from rocking the boat as much as possible. That said, I couldn''t spend that much time doing nothing and not learn some magic.


    I ended up learning ice spike, lightning rune, and elemental familiar. I was hoping ice spike would round out my offensive options, and I learned lightning rune because the trap we had laid for the destroyer droids had left a lasting impression on me. While playing Skyrim, I had never really used the rune traps as they seemed unnecessarily reactionary. After all, why set a trap when I was perfectly capable of taking the fight to the enemy? Having now been in several life-or-death conflicts, I understood just how nice it was to not have to stick my neck out while also taking down someone trying to kill me.


    The elemental familiar was interesting, as it was really three spells in one. I could now cast my familiar at what was essentially its second level while also having a choice between shock, frost, or fire. This familiar was more robust, could do moderate amounts of damage based on the element, and was significantly tougher than the baseline familiar. It could also be set to explode on command or when it was dispelled by force, just like the flame atronach. Again, I now fully appreciated any magic I could cast that would let me take down threats without putting myself in harm''s way.


    While I only learned three spells, I also spent some time learning what was the equivalent of another perk from the game. After familiarizing myself with the lightning form of elemental familiar, I found an entry in my grimoire that definitely wasn''t there before. It specifically focused on spellcasters who favored lightning, teaching me a trick that would basically allow me to save mana on each cast or spend the normal amount and increase the power of the spell significantly.


    Basically, it boiled down to me overclocking or removing different parts of the spell matrix, relying on inherited properties of a sparks spell to keep the spell stable and, in some cases, prevent any kickback. As far as I could tell from the few times I tried it out in an abandoned room in the station, it reduced the mana needed for a spell by a third. Alternatively, it seemed to increase the potency by around a fifth, though I had no way to be sure.


    While Nal, Tatnia, and I were training in various different ways, Miru was having a blast on the C-ROC, either watching her modifications come to life or doing her own modifications, specifically setting up her workshop. With my permission, she set up in the front nose of the ship, under the bridge. On one side, she set up workbenches, tools, a computer terminal, and everything she would need for her work and tinkering. On the other side, she set up a storage and charging station for the droids, setting up space for the LE repair droids, the PK Labor droids, and a space for Racer as well, though his station was in her workshop. The PK and LE droids, who had been helping her put everything together, were already stored in their stations, which just made it all the more clear that she had made room for a lot of new droids, which I could only imagine were for her future projects.


    When the ship was finally finished, Tatnia was attempting to teach me Sabbacc when Nova came down to find us.


    "She''s done," She said unceremoniously with a blank face. "It''s time for you to leave."


    My crew, who up to this point hadn''t been aware of the shipbroker''s ultimatum, were clearly surprised by her sudden change in demeanor. Tatnia stood, ready to say something, but I stopped her.


    "Alright, give us a bit to pack, and then we will get out of your hair," I said simply.


    The older woman looked like she was about to say something, perhaps apologize or explain herself, but instead, she simply nodded before turning to leave.

 Chapter 29 - Rebel Interlude

    General Hera Syndulla slowly mixed her tap caf, having already put in a dash of sugar and a splash of nerf milk. As she waited, the newly promoted Commander Nevue Loc and his first subordinates, Lieutenant Lario Vark and Ensign Ayme Montera sat down across the table from her and her second-in-command, Commander Neshweh Gadic. They hadn''t been working together long, but the Mon Calamari was dedicated, intelligent, and knew what they were doing, though they could be a bit heavy-handed when it came to sticking to the rules.


    "Good to see you again, Commander Loc," General Syndulla said with a smile. "And congratulations on the promotion, you earned it."


    "Thank you, general. If I might ask¡­"


    "Who put you up for it?" The green-skinned Twi''lek asked, getting a nod in confirmation. "I did, contingent on your success with your latest mission. When it was confirmed your plan had worked, it was agreed that you had shown enough initiative and leadership qualities to lead your own team."


    "Thank you, General," He responded, though she could tell he wasn''t ecstatic about the promotion.


    "You''re welcome," She responded. "I imagine your old team is looking forward to congratulating you."


    "They are still here?" He asked, visibly perking up. "I would have thought they would be gone already."


    "Normally, they would be, but I wanted to make absolutely sure they had everything they needed," She explained with a smirk. "I believe Ensign Gorn was bragging about managing to secure a bottle of brandy."


    The horned humanoid was clearly smiling now, chuckling when she mentioned the brandy.


    "Thank you, General. That¡­ that will make transitioning to leading my own team much easier."


    "Glad I could help. Now, why don''t you start by describing how your mission went?" She asked. "I have to admit, something about your friends¡­ They remind me of my own team."


    "Well, General¡­ I think we need to start with an admission of my own," Commander Loc said, sharing a look with Lieutenant Vark. "As you can imagine, after Deacon and his crew saved me from Nar Shaddaa, I was extremely grateful. When they asked me for a favor¡­ I felt obliged to agree."


    Commander Gadic leaned forward as if sensing an admittance of wrongdoing while General Syndulla simply raised an eyebrow.


    "As he explained, they are sympathetic, but none of them are joiners. If I could describe them as anything, it would be free spirits, wanderers, maybe."


    "I know the type," General Syndulla said, prompting Nevue to continue.


    "Well¡­ Deacon asked me to hold back information on¡­ his abilities. I swear on my oath that the second he was a threat to the Alliance, or if anyone asked directly, I would come forward, but¡­ I owed him."


    For a moment, Commander Gadic opened his mouth, his fleshy whiskers bouncing, but General Syndulla put her hand on his shoulder. The wet-skinned humanoid didn''t stop looking angry, but he did stay silent, closing his mouth.


    "What sort of abilities?" The General asked with a raised brow.


    "I¡­ Think it would be easier to show you."


    The rebel soldier produced a small holoprojector, tapping a few buttons before putting it down on the table. It began to play a montage of clips, all of which were obviously recorded in such a way that the subject wouldn''t notice they were being recorded. It clearly showed Deacon focusing as he looked at a wall. After a few seconds, a glow started to circle around his hands before a streak of flames shot out from his palms, searing the distant wall and turning it black. It was followed by another spray, this one causing the way to frost over. He finished it by throwing sparks of electricity, prompting General Syndulla to gasp.


    The clips continued, shifting to a different setting, the cargo bay of the B-7. Deacon clearly knew he was being recorded, though he also clearly didn''t like it.


    "If you want the General to believe me that you have powers, you need to demonstrate them," Commander Nevue''s recorded voice said. "You don''t have to throw fire around or anything, just do something."


    "Alright, just¡­ make sure they know I''m not a Jedi, alright? This isn''t the Force," He said emphatically before focusing for a second. "It won''t matter much to most people, I want to be able to tell them I told you so eventually."


    His hands glowed for a few moments before some sort of purple construct appeared around him, looking like some sort of suit of armor from old fantasy stories. It covered his whole body, which he showed off by spreading his arms and turning around. He then summoned a much more solid construct, a humanoid figure¡­ a very different-looking metal humanoid dripping with blue flame suddenly appeared out of nowhere.


    "Anything else?"


    "Do the healing one," The voice of Lieutenant Vark suggested, prompting Deacon to throw up his hands.


    "Fine, but one of you is going to have to injure yourself first, I''m not doing it."


    After a bit of bickering, the soldier sliced his arm with a vibroblade, the cut immediately bleeding. While mumbling something about them cleaning up the mess as well, Deacon aimed his hand at the now wounded soldier, his hand glowing a bright golden light. After a few seconds, he stopped.


    "How''s it look?" He asked, prompting Lieutenant Vark to wipe at the wound.


    "Uh¡­ looks like it''s a week old."


    "Alright, let me finish it," Deacon responded, waiting a few seconds before focusing on the soldier again, whose arm finished healing before the onlookers'' eyes. "There, that good enough?"


    "I think that will do great, Deacon, thanks."


    The recording ended, leaving the room in utter silence, one side from shock, the other from nervousness.


    "You kept that from us?" Commander Gadic. "This is outrageous! Another Jedi could be invaluable to the Rebellion, what gives-"


    "He wasn''t interested in joining," Commander Loc shot back. "And last time I checked, we do not conscript! Unless that changed while I was stuck as a slave?"


    The room was silent for a long moment, tension thick in the air. After a long moment, General Syndulla spoke.


    "While we would have preferred being kept in the loop, we can hardly demand the secrets of people who don''t fall under our command," She said, sending the Mon Calamari a look. "Why tell us now?"


    "Because he realized that he needed to choose between revealing his powers to Lario, Ayme, and Nova to ensure the mission went well, or basically handicap himself, put the mission at risk but retain his secret. He chose the mission."


    "We need to contact him, offer him incentives to join. If we get Intelligence to investigate him, maybe we could find-"


    "If you are suggesting we find a way to blackmail the people who rescued me from slavery, we are going to have very strong words, Commander Gadic," Commander Loc said, both of the soldiers sitting next to him looking angry as well.


    The aquatic humanoid looked to his superior, who was also clearly unhappy with the avenue he was walking.


    "No, no, of course not," He responded, backpedaling. "But think of the edge he would give us! Commander Skywalker has only the smallest amount of training and is one of the Rebellion''s best pilots! He blew up the Death Star! This Deacon Roy is clearly better trained, as there are no reports of Skywalker ever doing anything of that scale."


    "Deacon has repeatedly assured me that he is not a Jedi and not a Force user because, apparently, those aren''t mutually exclusive," Nevue explained, General Syndulla nodding in confirmation. "While it''s true he might be delusional, he never gave me a reason to think he would have a problem admitting it."


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    While Commander Gadic made a snapping noise with his large mouth, a Mon Calamari tell of disbelief and annoyance, General Syndulla leaned forward.


    "What else can you tell us?" She asked. "Did he ever meditate? Did he have a lightsaber? Did he ever move things with an invisible force, mess with anyone''s mind?"


    "His¡­ magic," Nevue started, clearly not liking the word. "Was never invisible, his hands always glowed in some way when he was using it. The closest thing he ever did to meditation was when he was learning a new technique. He would read from a rather large book, which¡­ actually, now that I think about it, he could summon that book from nowhere, and that didn''t cause a glow or anything. But he would spend a few hours studying and puzzling it out before practicing it for a while. No meditating and no lightsaber."


    "But messing with people''s minds?" The Twi''lek asked, getting a wince from the Zabrak.


    "He did claim to have two abilities that affect the mind, one of which I experienced shortly after they saved me from slavery," He explained. "I originally refused to cooperate, so he used what he called "Calm," which essentially just made me pliable and gullible. It lasted a few seconds before fading. He also had one called "Fury," which would apparently make someone hostile to everyone around them, including allies, but again only lasted for a short period of time."


    "What about his temperament?" General Syndulla asked. "Any bouts of anger? You may not be aware, but I have had some exposure to Force users. Mind manipulation, the ability to conjure lightning, and an unstable mind are prime signs of a dark Force user."


    "He never showed any signs of being unstable. The closest thing to an obsession I saw from him was his targeting of slavers on Nar Shaddaa, and he was quick to abandon that when it became dangerous to the team," Commander Loc answered cleanly, with a preciseness that spoke to a growing frustration that he was working hard to contain.


    Commander Gadic once again started to say something, and once again, General Syndulla silenced him with a look.


    "For now, Deacon''s abilities will stay between us. I will share the information on a need-to-know basis with my peers, but since he has been nothing but helpful to the movement, I see no reason to not respect his desire for privacy," General Syndulla said. "And that is an order, Commander Gadic. The last thing we want is to alienate him by being the source of his secret getting out. As much as we might wish that the Alliance has no leaks, we know that''s not true."


    With a wet rattle, the Mon Calamari equivalent to a groan, Commander Gadic nodded, leaning back in his seat. He was clearly not thrilled, but then again, he was rarely anything other than serious and stoic anyway.


    "With that out of the way, Commander, why don''t you tell us about the mission?" General Syndulla suggested.


    "We arrived on location about four hours away from the stronghold.¡­"


    Commander Loc spent the next hour or so describing how the mission went, from the initial challenge of the base being on full alert to the surprise reveal of the internal turret system and the fight against the superior B2 battle droids. Commander Gadic was clearly very interested in the descriptions of Deacon''s abilities but remained silent during the debriefing.


    "We discover the reason for the stronghold''s existence in the largest luxury suite," He finished. "And looking back, it makes sense. There weren''t enough droids to defend from a full invasion, so they most likely hoped that secrecy would be enough. The LPY 3000 was on sit as an escape craft should the base be discovered, and the droids on hand were there to hold off whoever came looking long enough for them to escape¡­ again."


    "I agree with your judgment, and so far, the data we have sliced off the top of the data core does as well," Commander Gadic responded. "At least we have that to entice Deacon Roy to return. If they work with us more, perhaps we can convince them to join us on a more permanent basis."


    "In any case," General Syndulla said, cutting off Nevue''s response. "You managed to secure quite a lot of supplies that we desperately needed, and not just the weapons. The foodstuffs and daily necessities that you brought back are an unexpected and sorely needed addition. We also have the ships Nova will be repairing already picked out, all reasonable projects. We aren''t looking to pull any over on someone who has worked with us like Nova has."


    They continued to discuss the goods, materials, and resources they obtained from the stronghold, including the credits that would eventually be coming in from the sales of everything they hadn''t taken. Eventually, Commander Gadic asked a question that had been on his mind since he had reviewed the shipment logs.


    "Why did you take the droids?" He asked, scrolling through his datapad to find the corresponding entry. "I understand that Deacon Roy and his crew claimed ten super battle droids, two droideka, and thirty-five normal battle droids. Why did you take the rest, a total of three hundred droids, mostly B1s with fifty B2s and sixteen droideka?"


    "Well¡­ as you can imagine, I had never had the pleasure of fighting separatist droids before," Commander Loc explained. "It was an interesting experience, to say the least. But after, I had an interesting thought. Well, two, actually. The first was that having a group of combatants that you could essentially throw away, both on a large and small scale, could be extremely useful. I know from experience that having a single disposable asset in the field can be incredibly useful. I can imagine that on a larger scale, that continues to be true."


    Commander Gadic nodded appreciatively, as did the General, both of them having experience with just such moments.


    "I was also struck with how effective a droid could be¡­ if they just weren''t so stupid," He continued, General Syndulla scoffing out a laugh. "The B2''s were walking heavy weapons platforms, with solid armor. Some of them even had artillery on one arm! But all they did was walk at us slowly. If we paired a B2 to a soldier, let it develop a bit, and trained the soldier to utilize them properly, it could be a potent combination. Even the B1s could be useful with some plating welded to them."


    "Are you suggesting we deploy them on a large scale?" The General asked, the Commander gesturing vaguely.


    "I''m suggesting we play around with them, see where we can find a use for them," He explained with a shrug. "Worse comes to worst, we drop them in an Imperial compound and tell them to go to work, use them as a distraction. But something tells me that they will be more useful than that. Call it a gut feeling."


    "Very well, Commander Loc, I will make a suggestion and see if anyone wants to mess around with them. I''m guessing we will get a few takers, for novelty''s sake, if nothing else."


    "Thank you, General."


    "No, Commander, thank you," She responded, standing up and offering her subordinate her hand, which he gladly shook. "You managed to turn an escort mission into a significant boon with nothing but an extra few days spent. Keep up the good work."


    The Zabrak saluted, as did the two soldiers next to him, General Syndulla and Commander Gadic returning the gesture.


    "You''re dismissed, Commander, go find your old team and introduce them to the start of your new one. You have a day of leave tomorrow, after which we have your next assignment ready."


    The newly minted Commander nodded and left the room, the two soldiers following behind him.

 Chapter 30

    Nova might have been desperate to get me off her station, but she knew better than to keep us from doing a small naming ceremony. Most of the workers turned up to watch Miru use a fancy painting droid to paint the C-ROC''s new name along the upper side of the ship, above the new hangar.


    "What does it mean?" One of the workers asked. "I don''t recognize the name."


    "It''s a name from one of my home planet''s legends," I explained. "About a mortal king with the soul of a dragon who rose to godhood."


    The large red words "Talos Chariot" contrasted with the rest of the light tan hull. There were still some blue highlights in a few spots, leftovers from the CIS markings, but Miru promised that she would fix that once we landed at our next destination.


    The naming ceremony was short, a simple speech in a language I didn''t recognize, but that one of the craftsmen assured me was a blessing of some sort. When that was done, we poured a blue drink of some kind over one of the landing struts, passing the remaining liquid around for those who witnessed the event to take a single sip. It was a sweet syrupy liquor, one that seemed really out of place in a ritual like this.


    As quickly as it started, the ceremony was over, the workers probably sensing how impatient Nova was. With minimal delay, we climbed up the access ramp and made our way up to the bridge, Nal was silent, sitting down in the pilot''s chair, while Tatnia dropped into the copilot''s seat beside him. I sat down in the comms seat, tabbing through a few things to check out the sensor readings, mostly to pass the time. Behind me, Miru sat down at a gunner''s seat, though she didn''t activate anything, instead spinning around to watch us. After about ten minutes, Nal looked over at me.


    "We''re all set, Boss."


    "Take us out. I already checked the cargo bay. We have everything owed to us."


    The blue-skinned Duros nodded and tapped a few more things before grabbing the primary control sticks, dialing something down, and lifting us off the hangar floor. Slowly but surely, we pulled out of the massive hangar bay, the people who had remained watching us go. When the blue film of the mag-field finally pulled away completely, Nal increased our speed and continued to pull away until there were several hundred meters between us and the station. Once we were at a generously safe distance, he shifted the ship''s orientation and guided us into the darkness of space.


    "Okay, can I ask what that was about now?" Miru asked, looking over at me with exasperation. "Why did Nova turn into a jerk all of a sudden?"


    "She thought I was a Jedi," I explained, still focused on the comms panel in front of me. "She was worried what kind of backlash that would bring."


    "But she was supporting the Rebellion!" The teenager responded. "She should be happy you were around doing stuff!"


    "My abilities are a big unknown for most people," I explained, shaking my head and turning my seat to face the confused girl. "And that scares a lot of them. To be fair to her, if I was a Jedi, she would be right, being there could lead dangerous people to her station. The Force¡­ it can be like a signal flare to other people tapping into it."


    "But you don''t use it¡­ right?"


    "I don''t, but I couldn''t convince her of that," I answered with a shrug. "Not much I can do about it. She paid us our share, gave us what we negotiated for, and finished our repairs and modifications. I''m sorry that I got us the boot, but next time-"


    "It''s her fault for being paranoid," Tatnia said, cutting my apology off. "We weren''t welcome anyway. Besides, we have places to be."


    "Was getting bored," Nal added simply. "What was the final total?"


    "Thirty-two thousand and some change deposited into our account," I said with a smile. "Not bad considering what else we got out of the deal."


    One of the first things I did with our downtime was figure out how to store our money better. Hauling around so many credit ingots and chips had been a constant source of stress. Luckily most banking groups, including the independent group that we were now using, had systems in place for mercenary groups like ours. Tatnia, Nal, and I had access to the funds, and could pull and put money in whenever we wanted, though anything over a certain amount sent out a warning, and going even high required the permission of multiple account holders. I could also set up ancillary accounts for anyone working for us, shifting their cuts into these accounts for them to access and to do with as they please.


    "That will last us a few months with the supplies we already have," Tatnia said. "Fuel is what''s going to cut into that the most. That and docking fees."


    "Which means we need to hurry up and recruit some more members so we can start taking jobs," I asked, craning my neck to look over Nal''s shoulder. "How long will it take to plot a course?"


    "I got the navigator working on it earlier, it''s already finished."


    "Alright, whenever you''re ready," I responded, tapping my console into hibernation. "The quicker we get to Ter''skar, the better."


    "It''s pronounced Terr''skiar," Nal corrected as I stood from my console and stretched, leaving the bridge and heading back.


    We had talked a lot about where our first destination would be, and after a bit of a discussion, we decided that the best place to start looking for new recruits would be a world with plenty of traffic, specifically a trade world. Hyperspace lanes occasionally intersected on systems with habitable worlds, which then exploded with trade and other industries. Tatnia, who had experience traveling around to worlds like Terr''skiar, assured me we would find what we were looking for there.


    "I guarantee there will be several cantinas nearby, no matter where we land, that are known as a place that pilots without ships go to hang out," She said over a cup of caf. "If we land around a big city, I''m willing to bet there will be a bar filled with pilots who specifically fly Corellian ships!"


    "What about fighters? People who will join us when we are doing actual mercenary work?"


    "They''ll be around," Tatnia assured me. "Might have to look a little harder, but they will be there. It''s a big planet, and it''s easy to get stuck at a place like this if your ride sells out or loses their ship."


    As Tatnia and Nal piloted the ship, Miru and I headed down to the cargo hold, exploring the recently finished hangar bays. They already had ships inside them, the two tri fighters on one side and two of the vulture droids on the other. The two remaining vulture droids were in pieces, stored in the cargo bay in a large cargo container.


    "What do you think?" I asked the young, mechanically inclined Twi''lek. "Did they do a good job?"


    "It''s a bit bare bones, but yeah, it''s well built," She answered, heading over to port side bay, examining one of the tri fighters. "I''m going to have one of the droids work on connecting them to the intercom system and connecting systems to the bridge, but yeah."


    I watched her fiddle with the tri-fighter for a few minutes before she pulled back and frowned.


    "What''s wrong?"


    "I was hoping I would be able to crack one of these open with standard tools, but they used something proprietary," She answered. "I''m going to have to cut it open."


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    "Why do you need to cut it open?" I asked. "What did you want these for anyway? I have to warn you that if we manage to get our hands on a pilot-capable starfighter, the vulture droids are first on the chopping block of what gets the boot."


    "I want to get them working again," She explained. "Racer has a copy of their command codes, and I think I can get them active."


    "Be very, very, very careful with that Miru, droid ships might have a bad reputation for being junk nowadays, but they are still very lethal. If you flip their switch and they go hostile inside of the ship...?"


    "I know, I''m disabling a bunch of their systems first," She assured me. "I think the tri fighters will be the best place to start, most of their intelligence is already part of the starfighter, so I should be able to just modify that programing a bit. The vulture droids, though? They relied on the central computer to do a lot of their thinking¡­."


    She trailed off as she focused on what she was working on, leaving the hangar bay quiet. After a moment, I turned to go, and she stopped and turned to me.


    "Deacon¡­ Thanks for getting all this stuff. The tools, the droids, the ships. We would have gotten a much bigger cut if you hadn''t gotten all of this for me."


    "Hey, you''re our head mechanic, I need to keep you stocked and ready to keep this ship in top shape," I said with a smile. "Besides, so far, you haven''t given me any reason to regret indulging you."


    "I promise you won''t! I''ll start paying for my own stuff and-" She responded, her eyes getting wide before I held up my hand.


    "That wasn''t a threat or a bottom line Miru, just stating a fact," I explained before gesturing around. "I mean, look, you took a small suggestion I made and drastically improved the Chariot''s capabilities. These hangar bays are superior in every way to those cargo lanes and massively increased our effectiveness. As long as your tinkering occasionally leads to stuff like this, I am more than happy to cut engineering a bigger budget. Just do me a favor and keep me updated on your plans and how your tinkering goes, okay?"


    She turned away from me, looking intently at the robotic starfighter in front of her. I could hear her sniff slightly and watched as she wiped her face before turning back.


    "Yeah, I can definitely do that, Boss."


    "Good. Now I''m going to go-"


    I stopped talking as the ship shifted slightly around us, the telltale sign that we had jumped to lightspeed.


    "I''m gonna take a more accurate stock of what our food looks like and start working on a shopping list. If you think of anything, just tell me, let me know."


    She nodded and got back to work before quickly looking back at me.


    "Oh! By the way, Racer is in his charging bay, running a defrag and corruption scan. I might have been a bit rough removing some of the loyalty parameters concerning Nova after she started being rude to you¡­."


    I chuckled and nodded before exiting the hangar bay, a smaller section of the huge access door opening to let me through, sealing shut behind me. In truth, the list I was hoping to put together was less of a shopping list and more of a shopping, salvage and stealing list. Some of the stuff we would inevitably end up having to buy, but the more we could salvage and steal while on the job, at least from criminals, the better.


    "Definitely need to pick up a replacement for the A5¡­" I mumbled to myself, pulling out my datapad and starting the list with "armed speeder support."


    Taking stock of the food didn''t take long, nor did coming up with a long list of things I wanted us to have access to. I was hoping we could gather some of the stuff on the list over time, like speeder bikes. Everyone and their uncle had a speeder bike, and there was no doubt in my mind that we would end up salvaging more than a few.


    On the other hand, one thing I was sure we would end up having to buy was some good quality armor. I knew for a fact that there were metals out there that you could make blaster-proof armor from, phrik being one that came to mind, but I knew that was prohibitively expensive. Still, I refused to believe that there wasn''t someone out there producing actually effective armor that was also vaguely affordable, I just needed to find them. I remember there being a massive variety of armor in Knights of the Old Republic games, so where was the "modern" equivalent?


    I added an addendum to the armor entry on my list, the word "custom?" followed by a few credit signs dollar. I wondered what kind of state Mandalore was in and if there was some Mandalorian armor we could buy. It would be massively expensive, for sure, but potentially worth the investment.


    With a dozen and one idea bouncing around in my skull, I slid my datapad back into my jacket before heading back up to the second deck, heading to the captain''s room, which I had reluctantly accepted as my own. I had attempted to convince Nova that she should split the larger room in half and turn them both, as well as the private bathroom, into more bedrooms, but she wasn''t having it, insisting that the captain''s room was an important part of the ship. I had to admit that her point of not having one decrease the resale value of the ship made sense, but I never planned on selling this ship, so it didn''t really matter.


    I sat down at the corner of my bed, slowly pulling off my boots, my jacket, and my armor, which I had taken to wearing around near constantly. As I finished and looked around, I had to admit having my own space would be nice. Having a bigger bed wasn''t bad either, even if I knew that Tatnia had a bigger one in her room. She had somehow actually convinced Nova to take one of the luxury beds from the CIS hidey hole and put it in her room. It filled up most of the room, but I had a feeling she thought it was completely worth it.


    As I got undressed from my heavier gear, I could feel the tension falling off of me. Not having a place to call my own, a place to work from, to return to, to really call home, it had been grating on me, especially after a week of feeling the unwelcome vibes that Nova had been throwing off. The fact that I was sharing that home with my crew, a team of people who I could trust, that only made it better.


    I stood up from the bed and made my way to the computer terminal in the corner of the room, sitting down in the comfortable chair and spinning to face the computer. I locked the system off with a flick before summoning my grimoire and laying it across the now blank pad. I had been kicking myself for not learning the respite spell during the assault on the CIS base, and while I had focused on other things during our week on Nova''s station, there was no way I would pass up on the opportunity now.


    I leaned back in the chair, sinking into the surprisingly comfortable cushion as I started to read through the description of the spell again, before eventually moving onto the general structure of the two leveled matrices. We had almost a full day in hyperspace before we would arrive at Terr''skiar, which meant I had plenty of time to learn this spell and master it.

 Chapter 31

    Landing on a planet that was as active as Terr''skiar was an interesting experience. As we approached the planet, the planetary space command for our sector contacted us directly, asking who we were and what our purpose was. Tatnia gave them our information, our purpose, as well as several other bits of information. Typically, the person on the comms station would do that, but while I could use the console, I had been focusing on the sensor portion. I was learning, though.


    After a few minutes of comms silence, we were told to move to a specific set of coordinates while they found a berth for us to land at.


    "Trade worlds are usually the easiest to get in and out of," Nal explained as we essentially pulled into a queue behind a few other ships. "You wait your turn, then land. Occasionally have to deal with a surprise inspection."


    "Do we have to worry about an inspection?" I asked. "We do have some military stuff on board¡­."


    "Borderline, they wouldn''t hassle us for it unless something else was wrong," He explained. "Can''t blame people for wanting to defend their ships."


    "Are other places harder to get on?"


    "Depends on what kind of Imperial presence is on the planet, usually," Tatnia answered, still looking down at her console. "Some worlds just don''t like offworlders or cater to "High Class" groups, so they try to keep control over who''s coming and going. Government-funded landing pads only, strict control of who can and can''t come in, that kind of stuff."


    "And trade worlds are different because that makes business slow?" I guessed, getting a nod in response


    "And time is credits. All that stuff slows the trading process down to a crawl," She explained. "The Empire expects trade groups to protect themselves."


    As we waited, Miru joined us on the bridge, dropping down into an empty seat and spinning around once before facing the rest of us. After a few minutes of toying with her datapad she finally spoke up.


    "So¡­ if I have a list of things that I think we should have on hand, would you guys get it for me?" She asked, biting her lip. "Not stuff for personal projects, but for ship repair."


    "What do you need?"


    "The biggest concern right now is metal stock," She explained. "I need to be able to put together a rig or patch a crack or even reinforce something to prevent problems," She explained, shifting a lekku around her shoulder. "We have a good stock of internal parts from the base. Those crates you got easily have twenty-five thousand credits worth of parts and materials, probably more."


    "Seriously?" I asked with wide eyes. "I had no idea, we didn''t count them as being nearly worth that."


    "Mhmm, it''s more than enough for basic repair and would be sufficient to repair a lot of intentional damage," She explained. "But we would still need a general stock of metal to fix things that aren''t standard parts or to build anything you might want."


    "Okay, we can get that, Nal?" I asked, the older Duros nodding at me. "Since you''re staying here to watch the ship, work with Miru to get what we need, preferably shipped to us since we don''t have any way to get it ourselves. Better to air on the side of surplus, but keep it reasonable."


    We chatted a bit more before a beep on the console got our attention, prompting Tatnia to activate the comms unit at the co-pilots seat, Nal motioning us to quiet down.


    "Attention, Talos Chariot, you are being directed to sector 5B, please make your way to the accompanying coordinates and enter the atmosphere. Be aware that entering restricted airspace will net you a substantial fine, and refusal to leave will result in your speedy destruction. Have a safe trip."


    It took another fifteen minutes for us to get in position and follow the proper directions into the atmosphere, the larger ship easily staying steady all the way down to the <u>large landing pad</u></a>. The pad was four or five miles from one of the several massive city centers that dotted the trade planet.


    As we slowly made our descent, the sound of the Chariot''s massive landing gear being deployed vibrated through the ship. As we finally made contact with the thick ferrocrete landing pad, we could feel the landing gear absorb the last bit of inertia, the built-in shock absorbers easily handling it.


    "Alright, meet you down at the boarding ramp in five Tatnia, I need to get my stuff," I said, standing from the sensor station.


    As I stood and started leaving the bridge, Miru jumped up and followed me out, walking quickly past me, and heading down the first set of stairs to the first deck. I was just about done getting ready when I grabbed my holster, only to find it empty. With a curse, I strapped it on and started looking around my room for it. After a minute or so, I tapped on the intercom.


    "Nal, have you seen-" I started to ask, only for my door to open, Miru standing on the other side, holding my pistol and looking slightly winded. "Never mind."


    The young mechanic winced and held <u>my weapon</u></a> out to me, gripping the barrel so I could grab it by the grip.


    "Sorry, I wanted to surprise you with it," She explained as I slid it back into its holster. "I fixed the charging shot option, so you can use that now if you need a bit more of a punch."


    "I thought that was going to take some specific parts," I said, trying to remember what Nal initially said. "How did you manage that?"


    "It wasn''t hard, the parts are common. I just needed a few bits from one of the super battle droids and one of the spare pistols we got from the CIS base," She said with a smug smirk, following me as I made my way down to the first deck. "So you activate it by pressing the button on the side and pulling the trigger, that''s what starts the charging. You can charge it for just a second to add an extra kick, but if you hold the trigger down for long enough, it will dump everything left in the pack."


    As she explained how it worked, I pulled the pistol out, examining it as we walked, stopping by the interior side of the airlock.


    "Be careful, though, once you start the overcharge, you''re committed, the only way to release that energy is to shoot it. And you can''t hold it for too long either, you''ll melt the pistol in your hands. Also, shooting too many overcharged shots in a row will make it overheat and stop responding until it cools down."


    I nodded, flipping the pistol over to check the other side before sliding it back into my holster.


    "Thanks, Miru, this will come in handy eventually," I said, tapping the door open and walking through, nodding to Tatnia, who was already lowering the ramp. "Make sure you don''t overwork yourself, alright?"


    "Alright, have fun and good luck!" She said before heading to her workshop, walking out of view.


    As we left down the boarding ramp, I tapped the intercom right by the stairway.


    "The ship''s yours, Nal, let us know if anything comes up."


    "Will do, Boss. Good luck."


    As we crossed the large landing pad that the space traffic controller assigned us, which was just big enough for the Chariot to land on, Tatnia brought up a question I had been contemplating for a while now.


    "So, boss¡­ How are we going to handle this whole thing?" She asked as she pulled out her comm unit to call a speeder taxi. "We got a couple secrets that it might be better not to share."


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    "Yeah, I''ve been trying to figure that out myself," I admitted, watching the sky for a moment. "I think that our best bet is to be as honest as possible at first. We are a small crew who just got their hands on a ship. We want to expand our crew, including a full-time pilot and maybe a co-pilot. We expect that we might get into some trouble eventually, as we plan on being bounty hunters, mercenaries, and all-around for-hire muscle. Emphasize that we will not be doing anything morally wrong, but sometimes the law is part of the problem."


    As I talked, Tatnia spotted an incoming speeder, which slowed greatly as it dropped down below forty feet. I waved to get the driver''s attention, who angled slightly to land near us.


    "And your magic?" She asked, which caught me off guard. I knew I had called it magic a few times, but so far, no one else had seriously called it that.


    "That''s something we can save for a while until we really get a sense for them," I answered, holding my hand up to block some of the dust the speeder was kicking our way. "Ideally, we find at least a pilot, maybe a co-pilot, and at least two more people to join us on missions. A team of five sounds like a good place to start."


    "Think we should introduce ourselves as adventurers?" She asked with a teasing smirk.


    "Laugh now, but after a few months of doing the kind of things I have planned, you''ll be calling it that, too," I responded confidently, getting a curious-looking response.


    "What kind of stuff do you have in mind anyway?" She asked as we both climbed into the Taxi, looking forward to the droid controlling the speeder. "Take us to a pilot bar, someplace they go while looking for more work. If there is somewhere that people specialize in Corellian ships, go there."


    The droid beeped a confirmation before the speeder lifted off into the air again, its repulsorlifts whining as it accelerated.


    "I have a few ideas for some¡­ potentially weird stuff," I admitted. "But we should start off with some basic mercenary or bounty work, so we can familiarize ourselves with the new people. I also need to work a bit more on my¡­ Tracking equipment. I''ve been working on it off and on, but if I get better at it, I''ll probably be able to lead us to quite a few interesting things."


    "And in the meantime?"


    "We take basic mercenary work, take out bounties, stuff like that," I explained, continuing when Tatnia gave me a look. "You''re telling me that there aren''t places to find that kind of stuff? I mean, if we can head to a bar and expect it to be filled with pilots looking for work, there have to be bars where mercenaries go looking for work, right?"


    "Usually¡­ alright, fair point," She admitted. "How do you know that if you never left your backwater planet?"


    "The more things change, the more they stay the same," I responded. "You just gotta know what trope to apply where."


    After thirty minutes of traveling, the speeder taxi landed in an open area, a small screen lighting asking for payment. I swiped my credit chip, the screen blinking green before the door swung up to let us out.


    "Your destination is twenty feet down the road, a bar called the Star Song." The droid said before the door closed behind us, sealing it shut.


    We quickly got off the street and made our way to where the droid described. When we got closer, Tatnia put her hand on my shoulder, getting my attention.


    "I know you''re not an idiot, but¡­ just let me take the lead at first, okay?" She said. "I know a thing or two about this, so I''ll find some people, and you can lead the actual recruitment, sound good?"


    "Works for me," I agreed.


    "Good. When we go in, don''t freak out studying everyone, you''ll just put everyone on edge. We go in, find a place to sit, preferably at the bar and relax for a while."


    I nodded and followed her, making our way to a ferrocrete building that was painted blue, with the roof painted an even, navy blue. The front doors were a gray-black color and opened easily as Tatnia led us inside. It took a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the low light, but after a few seconds, we headed straight to the bar.


    The cantina was about half full, which was kind of surprising considering how early in the day it was. Quite a few people turned to look at us but quickly went back to their drinks and conversations. Wordlessly, Tatnia nodded to the bar, and both of us made our way there, claiming two seats for ourselves. The human bartender gave us a look, and Tatnia held up two fingers.


    "Two Elba beers," She said, the black-haired man nodding and turning to an enormous container, pulling it open, and pulling two green bottles out.


    As we sipped our drinks Tatnia and I made small talk, discussing what kind of speeder we should be looking for.


    "I would love to have the A5 back," I said, shaking my head. "That was pretty much exactly what we needed. Slightly armored, armed, big enough to carry us around, could switch between air speeder and ground speeder."


    "Would it even fit in the hold?" Tatnia asked. "Or the cargo elevator?"


    "Doesn''t matter, it would have definitely fit in one of the hangars, and it would have been well worth the space."


    "We need a transport ship, one that will fit in the hangar," She said after a silent moment. "Landing the Chariot every time we have business is going to get old quickly."


    "What kind of options do we have?


    "It''s a bit tight, but we can probably find something. Might end up being an ugly no-name box, but there are plenty of those out there, just gotta find one that isn''t bantha-shit."


    We continued to chat for a while, each having a second beer before Tatnia waved over to the barkeep. She slid a ten-credit ingot on the table and smiled.


    "We are looking for a pilot, someone with experience in larger Corellian ships, any recommendations?"


    "How big?" He asked, reaching out to take the money


    "An old Gozanti class."


    "...Try Calima over there, the <u>Tholothian</u></a>," He said after a moment, pointing across the bar. "She''s been planetside for a bit, but she seems kind enough."


    I followed his gesture to see a humanoid woman with darker skin that was tinged blue and, in some places, purple. Her head was capped with large, dense-looking dark blue scales, almost like an indigo turtle shell. Coming from that cap were around a dozen all-white tendrils hanging down to her shoulder, each starting an inch or so wide and growing thicker the further down you went, almost like a paddle or a scoop. She was sitting perpendicular to us on the other side of the bar but seemed focused on her datapad.


    I stood up, stretching my leg a bit before Tatnia grabbed my arm to get my attention.


    "Tholothians can live a really long time, so don''t assume her age," She warned before turning back to the bartender. "A refill for whatever she is drinking now."


    He smirked and grabbed a glass, filled it with ice, and poured in what appeared to be just water before placing it on the bar top.


    "On the house."


    Tatnia gave him a sour look, but I just chuckled and gave him a two-finger salute before grabbing my beer and the glass of water, before heading over to the women''s table.


    "C''mon, let''s introduce ourselves."

 Chapter 32

    I sat down across from the Tholothian, placing the refill in the center of the table, while Tatnia sat down next to me.


    "Hello, my name is Deacon, this is Tatnia," I said with a smile. "Are you Calima?"


    "I am," She responded with a slow nod. "How can I help you?"


    "The bartender said you have experience flying some of the larger<u> Corellian Engineering </u></a>ships."


    The woman put her datapad down, studying both of us for a long second before nodding and leaning back in her chair.


    "That''s true, though once you know one... you know the rest," She admitted, a slight Corellian accent carrying through her voice. "At least for most CEC ships. Are you looking for a pilot?"


    "We are. We have a modified C-ROC Gozanti class, and while we can fly her, we are looking to expand the crew."


    "A C-ROC?" She asked, narrowing her eyes. "A lot of¡­ bad people use those ships. You aren''t pirates, are you? Smugglers? Because I won''t work for the Hutts or for anyone breaking the law in that way."


    "We aren''t pirates, and we aren''t smugglers," I assured her. "Maybe I could tell you a bit about how we got started and what we plan on doing, then you can decide if you''re interested?"


    After a moment of thinking, she nodded, taking a sip of the refill we brought before gesturing for me to start.


    "Well, I''m from a backwater planet in the middle of nowhere. I managed to leave but almost immediately got snapped up by slavers¡­."


    As I talked, I could see the sympathy in her eyes, switching to approval as we described some of the raids on the slaver businesses that we did. I talked around the fact that Nevue was a rebel because openly admitting that while in public would be stupid, but I shared enough for her to get the gist of the story. Of course, I also left out my abilities.


    "That¡­ well, it''s certainly a story," She said when I was done. "Glad to see you''re making the best of a bad round of Sabbacc."


    "We play the hand we are dealt," I responded with a shrug. "I wish we could have made it off Nar Shaddaa without throwing up as many flags, but I won''t pretend to be sad we got to make our start off Hutt money."


    "I can imagine. You know¡­people would find the fact that the Hutts might be after you worrying and a solid reason to deny your offer¡­."


    "Maybe, but I''m not sure we want anyone on the team who couldn''t stand the idea," I explained. "Plus, this is going to be an active position. We will see violence, and any pilot we hire needs to be okay with that."


    "Do you plan on fighting them more?" She asked, watching me closely. "You might be able to slip under their scanners or even pay them back¡­."


    "Yeah, not capitulating to them, that''s for sure," I said, shaking my head. "If we stumble on a slaver ring or there''s a bounty on slavers, those are more than acceptable. I''m a bit worried that my team won''t be ready to go against the Hutts openly, not yet at least."


    "That¡­ is reasonable. The truth is, I have a bit of history with a few of the Hutts. I''m not exactly openly hunted¡­ but they do not like me very much."


    "How in the hell did you manage that?" Tatnia asked, leaning forward. "The Hutts and their cartels are happy to kill their own people just for the fun of it, how did you piss them off and not get put on a hunted list?"


    "The Hutts might be¡­ conniving, greedy, selfish piles of bantha shit, but they aren''t stupid, and they don''t waste money," The Tholothian explained. "I signed a contract to pilot for a group that turned out to be a front. When I learned I was piloting ships with spice stuffed in the deck paneling, I managed to get out of the contract with all my pay. They were pissed¡­ but not enough to call for bounty hunters.


    "Does that have anything to do with why you haven''t been hired?" I asked. "Did you get blacklisted?"


    "Most people see any negative involvement with the Hutts¡­ and their syndicates as a big enough issue to pass me over," She explained. "I don''t see the issue, it''s not as if it''s as exciting as your story."


    "Well, I happen to see it as a good sign. Are you interested in working with us?"


    "I¡­ have to admit, I am," She responded, leaning forward. "How does the payment work?"


    "You would be paid a portion of the payout from whatever job, salvage, or bounty we complete," I explained with a smile. "If the payouts are under a certain amount, we will just divvy it out entirely, but over an amount, we will split a percentage, and the rest will go to improving our equipment, future repairs, fuel, docking, supplies, things like that. Oh, and living expenses, we will cover those as well."


    "And what would my share look like?"


    I pause, looking confused for a moment before Tatnia lets out an amused huff.


    "She means what percent of the payout will she see," She explained while looking at me before looking back at our potential pilot. "And he is confused because he thought it was obvious. Everyone gets an equal share."


    "Truly? What about him?" She asked, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.


    "The same as everyone else," Tatnia confirmed. "He did it without any prompting, the very first time we made money, when it was just three of us."


    "I might be the leader, but everyone works together to get the job done," I explained with a shrug. "Why should I get paid more just because they call me Boss? I''ve had enough shit jobs to know better."


    Calima looked at Tatnia with a surprised and curious look, the human woman smirking and nodding in return.


    "Yes, you just heard that, and yes, he actually believes that," she answered. "As far as I can tell, at least."


    "Well¡­ That settles it," Calima said, holding out her hand. "I would be very interested in working with you and your team, Deacon."


    "Great!" I said with a smile, reaching out to shake her hand. "Now let''s talk about time frames¡­"


    Unsurprisingly, Calima was eager to get started, having spent the last three weeks watching her savings slowly go down as she waited for someone to come by and hire her. We talked about the ship, about how it was a recovered CIS cruiser that still had some of its automation intact. We also went over what else was expected of her beyond piloting.


    "We expect you to help defend the ship, but no, we wouldn''t expect you to come on our more violent mission. In fact, having someone to hold down the fort is half of why I want a dedicated pilot."


    "It''s definitely not my strong suit, but I know how to take care of myself," She assured us. "I''m a halfway decent shot with my pistol and have some starfighter training."


    "We will keep that in mind," I assured her.


    When we were done, and all our questions were answered, I took a picture of her and sent it to Nal through my commlink. When I was done telling the Duros that she would be on her way in a few hours, she left to go back to her temporary lodgings to grab her stuff. I handed her a fifty credit ingot to help cover the air speeder, and she looked at me for a long moment after taking it, taking and laughing after looking at Tatnia, who just rolled her eyes.


    "You''re too nice, Boss, but most taxis don''t take ingots," She said, shaking her head. "I would be more worried that you were going to get suckered if I didn''t know you''re too paranoid for that."


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    "You know me so well, Tatnia," I responded with a smirk. "The coin was so I could track her if something happens."


    "... Like I said, paranoid."


    We left the bar, waving down another air speeder and climbing in. After a short conversation with the driver, who was actually organic, we were once again crossing the city, high in the air. After a ten-minute ride, we were dropped off at another bar, this one considerably more rough looking.


    "Are we sure we should be recruiting from here?" I asked as we crossed a courtyard-like area to get to the bar. "Getting a ''bad side of town'' vibe from this place."


    "Really?" She asked, giving me a side look. "Just wait until we go to bars on outskirt worlds, this place looks downright pleasant compared to some of them."


    We went inside, stopping by the entrance. This place was even more packed than the last, with only a few open tables that I could see. Luckily, as we got closer to the bar, someone who had been sitting by an empty space stood up, letting Tatnia and me sit down without issues.


    Just like before, we spent a few minutes making small talk, slowly sipping our drinks. This time our conversation was primarily about if we should buy a transport speeder now or try and pick one up along the way.


    "I think we should just buy one," Tatnia said with a shrug. "We need a few too many things out of it to rely on finding the perfect match. Besides, if we do find a better one down the road, we could always sell it."


    "I''m just a bit hesitant to spend a bunch of money before making a bit of a buffer," I explained, taking a sip of my beer.


    "Transport is too important," Tatnia pointed out. "We need a few speeder bikes and a transport speeder. Being able to move around once we land on a planet is important. We can hire taxis here, but when we are transporting a bounty? Or assaulting a pirate base?"


    "Yeah, alright, fair enough. Alright, we can-"


    "Excuse me," A voice said from behind us, prompting both of us to turn around. "I couldn''t help but overhear. You said you are looking for speeders?"


    Standing there was a human, about twenty, maybe twenty-five years old, with black hair and brown eyes. His hand was wrapped in a bandage, and he had a bacta pack on his cheek, the rest of his face slightly off color like the very tail end of a bad bruise.


    "Can we help you?" Tatnia asked, her hand sliding downward, something the beaten man noticed.


    "Ah. Well. You''re looking for transport? A speeder and some bikes, right?" He asked, to which I nodded slowly. "Good. I have an offer, a way you could make a bit of money and get what you''re looking for. I can explain everything, but¡­ maybe at a more private table?"


    Tatnia and I shared a look, and with a shrug I stood, my crewmate standing with me.


    "Alright, lead the way."


    He nodded and led us to a table in the far back of the bar, handing a waitress a credit ingot and a few words as we sat, the woman nodding and rushing away. He seemed to sit down slowly, like someone who was in pain.


    "So, my names Julus, Julus Centall," He started, reaching across the relatively small table to shake our hands. "Thanks for hearing me out."


    "No problem, I''m Deacon, and this is Tatnia," I responded. "Just to be clear, we are just listening. What exactly are you proposing?"


    "Okay, right, so you can tell I am a little roughed up?" He asked, raising his bandaged hand. "So this happened two weeks ago. Zandev and I, we¡­."


    He paused for a moment, seeming to hold something back before continuing.


    "We were coming home one night and got dropped off in the wrong part of the city. We¡­ well, we had been celebrating our latest paycheck, so we didn''t notice until we landed. Before we could get a ride home, we were ambushed."


    "Ambushed? By what?"


    "A gang, the Blood Cores. They claim a small garage in the corner of the lower Gyyeresu District on the east side," He answered, shaking his head. "They are a tiny little gang, no more than eight people, and we just happened to get stuck on their turf."


    He paused, shifting in his seat slight, looking down at his hands while letting a long breath go.


    "While we were waiting for a cab when they showed up, starting getting aggressive," He explained, shaking his head. "I''m not bad in a fight, and... I get cocky when I drink. I tried to tell them to get lost, got in one of their faces, and.... they took offense to that. They took turns beating the snot out of me. When Zander tried to stop them they killed him."


    The waitress came along and brought us drinks, putting a glass of water in front of Julus. He grabbed the glass and stared at it for a moment before recovering.


    "Zandev was like a¡­ hells, he was my brother. I knew him for most of my life. And I got him killed because I can''t keep my mouth shut when I get buzzed," He explained, taking a long drink of water before wiping his face and his eyes. "Sorry, it''s been two weeks, but¡­"


    "It''s alright, take your time," I said gently, the young man nodding.


    "Right, okay. So the Blood Cores ride around on five speeder bikes and a speeder. I don''t know how they got their hands on them, but their bikes are <u>C-PH</u></a> models, military tech," He said, shaking his head clear before continuing. "I think the air speeder was a modified Arrow-10 Light. It''s enclosed, carries four people, and it''s got a turret. That''s what you''re looking for, right?"


    "How do you know all this information about them?" Tatnia asked, narrowing her eyes. "That''s a lot of information about a group you met once, two weeks ago."


    "...I don''t think I could ever forget a single detail of that night," He admitted with a deceptively normal shrug. "And I did my research, as best as I could anyway."


    "So¡­ what exactly are you looking for from us?" I asked, wanting to confirm my suspicion.


    "Right. I''m willing to pay you five thousand credits to wipe the Blood Cores out. No warning, no second chances, no chance to wiggle out on technicalities or for good behavior," he explained coldly. "You can take their gear when you''re done, I don''t care. I just want them dead."


    "I''m not opposed to being called in for a little justice, especially when I''m getting paid for it and get the salvage," I admitted before sharing a look with Tatnia. "But we are actually here to recruit more members. At the moment, we only have three active combatants on our crew."


    "I could help," He offered. "I''m a bit roughed up, but nothing would stop me from putting them down."


    "Be that as it may-"


    "Please, the fact that you just happen to be looking for something they have and are looking for work¡­." He trailed off. "I don''t have enough money to hire anyone, and most people would consider the salvage a bonus, not part of the pay. But since you''re looking for that kind of stuff¡­"


    Tatnia and I share another look, and this time I give a subtle shrug. She groans in response and rolls her eyes.


    "Alright, tell us everything you''ve learned, everything you know about this gang," she said, leaning forward. "After that, we will discuss it with our team."

 Chapter 33

    "Thank you, thank you," He said, sagging in relief. "I¡­ No one has even offered that much, at this point, I was contemplating trying to do it myself¡­"


    "My first question is, why haven''t you gone to the police or the security forces?" I asked. "I assume they have something like that here?"


    "We do, the Terr''skiar Planetary Security Force. And I did. They don''t care about anything that doesn''t affect the traders," He spat, shaking his head. "The Blood Cores are small time and keep to their neighborhood. Sure, they terrorize that neighborhood, but they don''t go anywhere near the trade centers, warehouse districts, or high-end parts of the city. I reported Zandev''s murder, and they promised to investigate, but nothing happened after a week. I went to ask what was wrong, and they told me there was nothing they could do."


    He clenched his uninjured fist and his jaw, anger almost radiating off of him.


    "Zandev''s only crime was trying to stop me from getting beaten to death, and they killed him. And laughed! I¡­" He let out a long breath, shaking his head. "The idea that they are out there, enjoying their lives after what they did to him¡­ I can''t live with that."


    "I don''t blame you," I said with a solemn frown. "What else can you tell us about them? We need to know what we might be getting into."


    Over the next fifteen minutes, Julus explained everything he had learned about the small-time gang, including their home base and some of their more recent crimes. They lived out of an old abandoned garage, which was only empty because they ran off the previous owner. They treated the neighborhood that they lived in as their own little fiefdom, charging protection money and roughing up anyone who didn''t pay up. According to the recovering young man, several people told him that when they first moved in, they made an example of the first few people who tried to stand up to them.


    "But there were no reports?" I asked. "Nobody told the Security Force?"


    "In an area like that, the TPSF is just another gang," Julus explained. "They come in, rough up people who are just trying to survive, arrest anyone who complains, and usually just make the situation worse by pissing people off. Most of them are dirty anyway."


    I frowned, unable to make up my mind as the obviously still grieving man explained the situation. I wasn''t getting any bad vibes from Julus, he felt sincere and seemed to be truly grieving for the loss of his friend. But I wasn''t comfortable committing my team to be executioners without making sure that the people on the chopping block had it coming. I would need to get back to the Chariot and see what everyone thought.


    "Okay. We need to take this back to the rest of the crew," I eventually said, Julus nodding eagerly. "Personally, from what you''ve said, this looks like a solid opportunity. And you want to participate?"


    "Yes. I''m still sore in some places, but I''m not missing this."


    "Do you have experience with this kind of thing?" Tatnia asked before I could.


    "I am a security guard for a warehouse company, we walk patrols at night and sometimes accompany transports when they are carrying anything particularly valuable," He explained. "I''m a fair pilot with most speeders and a better shot than most with a blaster. My father taught me how to shoot when I was younger, and my job pays for extra training."


    "And what about actual light-fights?" Tatnia asked. "Have you ever been in one of those?"


    "A few, maybe five or six," He responded. "We had to fight off a couple robbery attempts, as well as a few warehouse raids."


    "Alright, so it''s unlikely that you''ll freeze at least," She said. "Assuming you''re telling the truth."


    "We will head back to our ship and talk to the team," I said, slowly standing. "Give me your comm number so we can get in contact with you when we have reached a decision."


    He quickly rattled off his number, and I fed it to my comm before giving the man a nod. We shook hands again before leaving the back corner of the room. As we did, Tatnia tugged me back to the bar itself. She put a credit ingot down on the counter, which got the bartender''s attention.


    "The man we were talking to, anything you can tell us?" She asked, watching the bartender pick up the ingot


    "He''s been in every day for a week, at least," He said, shaking his head. "Trying to put a hit on some gang. Isn''t offering nearly enough, though."


    "Thanks. Have a good afternoon," She responded before we both headed out of the cantina.


    Fifteen minutes later and we were climbing up into the Chariot. As we stepped through the prep room and past the airlock, Miru came around to greet us from her workshop, Racer following right behind her.


    "How did it go?" She asked, wiping her hands on a greasy rag before throwing it back into her space. "Nal said you found a pilot but hasn''t said anything else."


    "We might have stumbled into a job," I admitted, Miru''s eyes widening slightly in surprise. "C''mon, we can explain it over food, I''m starving, and I''ve been drinking on an empty stomach."


    It only takes a few minutes for the whole team to meet up in the lounge area. I was standing behind the countertop while Nal, Tatnia, and Miru sat on the stools, everyone eating from their food packets.


    "So, Julus overheard us talking about speeders and essentially used that to offset the fact that he couldn''t really afford what it would really cost to wipe out the gang," I explained. "My first instinct was to believe him, but we need to be sure before we do anything drastic. Racer?"


    The droid''s angular head spins as we wheel out from behind the counter, focusing on me with a string of beeps.


    "Do you think you could skim the top of the local security force branch and see what they have on them?" I asked. "Don''t slice any deeper than you have to, and don''t do anything that would lead back to us."


    The little astromech whistled in confirmation, spinning around and heading straight to the cockpit to connect to the comm unit there, as it would have a better connection.


    "The pay is crap, but the salvage would save us a lot of money and solve one of our biggest problems," Tatnia admitted.


    "More than that," Nal said, shaking his head. "C-PH is top of the line. Each is worth five thousand credits, in decent shape."


    "Seriously?" I asked with wide eyes. "How the hell did they get their hands on that?"


    "They stole it." Miru said, reading from her datapad. "Racer just sent this, it looks like they stole them from a bigger gang, one with much more resources. That''s why the TPSF hasn''t gone after them. They stole from a gang and then ratted them out to the Security Force. As long as they keep screwing over other gangs, they are willing to look the other way."


    "Even with the crimes that have been reported?"


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    "Yup," Miru responded. "They don''t really care. The bastards probably just assume that they will get themselves wiped out eventually, so there''s no reason to spend resources, especially not while they can whittle down the bigger gangs in the meantime."


    "What other crimes are they guilty of?" I asked, prompting Miru to scroll through her information.


    "They know about two more murders, drug trafficking, assaults¡­ a few sexual assaults."


    "... Now I''m tempted to hit the TPSF as well, just to fuck with them," I said, shaking my head. "What kind of assholes let people like that walk around when they are supposed to¡­ Fucking hell. Okay, Unless anyone has a problem, I''m going to call Julus and tell him we will take the job, have him come here so we can plan it out."


    When no one spoke up, and Nal and Tatnia nodded in agreement, I stood and walked a bit away from the table, pulling out my comms unit. A quick scroll through my contacts later, and the call was sent, connecting almost immediately.


    "Julus? Yeah, it''s Deacon. My team has agreed to take your offer," I said, smiling as the younger human shouted in happiness. "I''m going to send you the info for where our docking bay is. Catch a ride here so we can start the planning process."


    "Alright, great! Yes, I''ll head right over." He responded, his smile audible. "I''ll be there in ten."


    I said a quick goodbye before hanging up, sliding my comm back into my pocket. Before I could turn back to the group, though, my comms dinged loudly, a call coming in. I quickly took the device back out and activated it.


    "Hello?"


    "Hello, Deacon, this is Calima¡­ I have just arrived at your docking bay. Your ship is interesting, I don''t think I have ever seen a C-ROC quite like this."


    "It''s an original modification," I admitted. "Our own engineer designed it. Hold on a second. I''ll be down to let you in."


    I made my way down to the boarding ramp, tapping the button to deploy it down. When it made contact with the landing pad, Calima came into view. She was wearing a single backpack and was carrying a second bag. As she reached the top of the stairs, I took the second bag for her, hefting it relatively easily.


    "Thanks¡­ So this is already different from the last time I was on a C-ROC," She admitted, looking around the airlock-style ready room.


    "I wouldn''t know, but like I said, it was heavily modified as a hauler for the Separatists," I explained, leading her out of the room and into the cargo bay.


    "Definitely modified...this cargo bay is much more open," She said.


    "So I have been told," I said as we stepped into the cargo bay, stopping and gesturing to Miru''s space. "This is Miru''s workshop, she is the team''s engineer and builder. She is a bit young, so when we leave to go on missions, she will likely be here with you. The other side had charging stations for droids."


    "And those are your spoils from the ''salvage'' mission," She said, pointing to the stacked and folded-up droids against one side of the cargo bay.


    I nodded and continued the short tour, showing her the large door to the hangars before leading her upstairs.


    "You can claim any of these rooms, they have <u>double beds</u></a>, but we don''t plan on having enough people to fill them yet, so feel free to use it as storage for now," I explained, watching her pick one of the rooms, the door opening smoothly.


    "Huh¡­ not bad. Definitely been stuck in worse," She said as she walked in, looked around, and nodded. "Not having to share will make it much easier for now."


    She tossed her bag into her bed, taking the one I was carrying and putting it down beside it. She took off her jacket and hung it up before turning to smile at me, her tendrils moving as she did.


    "I''d like to see the cockpit¡­."


    I nodded and led her down the hall to the lounge, where everyone was still waiting. She spotted everyone and gave a short bow.


    "Miru, Nal, this is Calima. She is our new primary pilot," I said, smiling as Miru stood up from her chair and held out her hand, which the Tholothian shook.


    "It''s nice to meet you, are you gathered to meet me?" She asked, turning to look at me.


    "I would have done that, but we were already gathered for lunch and to discuss and offer. Are you hungry?"


    "No¡­ thank you, I ate before leaving my previous apartment. But thank you," She said. "May I ask what kind of offer?"


    "Yeah, of course. Why don''t I take you to the bridge and explain? These guys have already heard and agreed to the offer."


    "Very well¡­"


    I led her to the bridge, and the Tholothian immediately claimed the pilot''s chair, examining the various screens, buttons, levers, and knobs in front of her, humming in what I was pretty sure was approval. After a minute or so of this, I started going over the offer. When I got to the part about how the TPSF was letting this all happen, Calima did not seem surprised.


    "The TPSF is¡­ almost completely owned by the major shipping companies that use Terr''skiar as a stopping point. They get involved, keep the peace, and patrol more affluent areas, but they have all but given up¡­ on the outskirts," She explained. "It does not surprise me that they are doing nothing about this gang."


    We talked a bit more about the ship, its modifications, and its automation, which she was a big fan of. After about five minutes, she leaned back and nodded confidently.


    "I can easily pilot this ship, it is a simplified modification to the standard Corellian Engineering control scheme," She assured me, turning back in her chair. "I could likely fly this ship unaided¡­ save for combat situations."


    "That''s good to hear, there will probably be someone up here with you just in case, but it''s good to know you can manage."


    When we left the bridge, opening the reinforced bridge access door, I found most of my team talking to Julus. He looked mostly the same, though the bandage on his hand was gone. He was still clearly nursing an injury there, but it seemed he was putting that aside for the moment and dealing with the resulting pain. He also looked invigorated, the news that we were taking his offer clearly having given him new energy.


    "Julus, glad you''re here," I said, gesturing to Calima. "This is our new pilot, just joined with us today."


    The two shared a simple nod, and I clapped my hands before gesturing to the large table that took up the corner of the lounge area, with enough seats for all of us. It was opposite the kitchen system, the counter, and stools, and was another piece of furniture we claimed from the Separatist base.


    "Right, well now that you''re here, we can talk about business and how this operation you brought to us is going to go. Have a seat, and let''s get started."

 Chapter 34

    "So, we are taking the offer Julus," I repeated once we were all sitting, getting an eager nod in return. "But I want to make this clear. This is not a pistol at dawn, airing your grievances and dueling to the death kind of situation. This is an execution. Cold, clean, and simple. We aren''t holding back to be fair or giving you the opportunity to see the life leave anyone''s eyes."


    "I don''t care. I may not be able to handle them being alive when Zandev is dead, but I''m not looking for a show," He agreed, nodding once. "I just want them dead, like you said, clean and simple."


    "Good. Then my suggestion is that we wait until it''s dark, until they are all asleep, and we catch them in their beds," I said, Miru wincing, but Nal and Tatnia nodding in agreement. "If I get my way, we wouldn''t even be in the same building when they are all alive, but depending on what that garage you mentioned is made of, that might not be possible. Nal, do you think you could get your hands on some more ammo for the proton rifle?"


    "Here? Easily," He said simply.


    "Good. How about some night mission gear?"


    "Night vision goggles?" He asked. "Or thermal? It is possible to have both, but pricey."


    "Less than five hundred credits per pair?" I asked, the blue-skinned alien nodding in confirmation. "Then get five, they are a handy bit of gear, so there is no reason not to get our hands on them while we can."


    He nodded again, quickly pulling out his datapad and starting to scroll through something.


    "Next, I want to know what this garage and the area around it looks like before we start this," I said, looking at Tatnia. "Can you handle that? It might be as simple as having Racer look into public records, or you might have to take some pictures yourself. If that''s the case, I don''t want you to even land near their territory, alright?"


    "I can handle that."


    "Good. Once we get those pictures, we can start planning this for real," I said, turning to Julus. "You''re welcome to stay here until we execute the plan. We have to make sure you''re geared up properly anyway."


    Tatnia and Racer made their way to the bridge while Calima made her way to her room to unpack. Miru and I took Julus down to the cargo bay, where we were keeping all of the spare gear we had acquired so far. He needed armor, a helmet, and a blaster rifle, which we had plenty to spare. He did have his own pistol, two of them, in fact.


    "You like them?" He asked when he saw me looking at them. "They were my fathers, he gave them to me before he passed. The only thing he left me."


    "What are they?" Miru asked. "I don''t recognize the make."


    "That doesn''t surprise me, they are apparently pretty rare. I was gonna sell them, but Zandev convinced me not to," He admitted, looking down at the two blasters on either hip. "They are <u>Westar-35s</u></a>. They pack a mean punch and are pretty accurate, but I never really invested the time in learning how to shoot them both at the same time."


    By the time we had his armor and other gear set up, Nal was getting ready to leave. He took the MVR out to go shopping for what I asked for, driving the speeder bike right out of the starboard hangar. He dropped until he was five or six feet off the ground before his repulsors compensated, and he zoomed off.


    "On a scale of one to ten, how difficult was what he just did?" I asked Miru, though Julus was the one who spoke up first.


    "Oh. Right, on a civilian bike, that would be a hard eight," He said, still looking around the hangar curiously. "But a military bike is designed to go everywhere, including from high ledges to lower ground. It would have compensated for the change automatically."


    "What about coming back in?"


    "If he comes in slow, it should be fine."


    I gave Miru a look, and she nodded in confirmation before turning to leave the hangar bay. As I was stepping through the smaller door, Miru turned and headed to her workshop. "Let me know if you need anything, Boss, I''m just tinkering!"


    "Alright, have fun," I said, heading to the stairs, Julus following behind.


    "So. she is a bit on the young side," He commented as we stepped onto the second deck. "Is she going to be coming with us?"


    "No, Miru is our engineer," I explained, turning my head to look at him. "She is the one who designed the hangar modifications."


    "Oh, alright."


    It was only about an hour before Tatnia and Nal had completed their tasks, the crew plus Julus once again sitting down around the large table in the lounge. Nal had returned from his trip and unloaded two cases of ammo for the proton rifle and five smaller boxes containing goggles that could switch between thermal and night vision. I carefully opened one of the latter boxes, examining the <u>goggles</u></a> before handing them to Nal to inspect.


    After that, Racer used his holoprojector to show off the images that Tatnia and he found on the holonet, with minimal slicing required. The garage itself was surprisingly large, a double-floored structure with two large bays and what looks like the office portion next to that. The first floor was ferrocrete, while the second floor, which formed a lip around the structure, was some sort of metal paneling with a few windows. Everything was in pretty good condition, and there was a speeder and two speeder bikes parked into the front ferrocrete pad.


    "I assume these are from before the Blood Cores settled in?" I asked.


    "Yeah, by about four months," Tatnia answered. "Racer also dug up some shots of the surrounding area."


    The holo-projection shifted, showing off a few buildings with the garage showing up a few times in the corner or background. After about ten photos Racer projected a wireframe version, clearly compiled from everything he had just shown us, outlining all surrounding buildings.


    "Damn, that''s useful," I said, examining the slowly rotating projection.


    "Nova wasn''t kidding when she said she upgraded him," Miru said proudly. "Racer has a hell of a lot of power and tools stuffed into his frame."


    The astromech whistled a long string that sounded vaguely proud. After watching the projection for a few minutes, I motioned for Racer to stop the slow rotation.


    "Okay, I think our best bet is to ambush them, most likely starting with you, Nal, up on this roof," I said, pointing out the three-story building across the street from the garage. "You should have no problem shooting down into these windows with the proton rifle. Considering just how many vehicles Julus says they have, sleeping on the ground floor is unlikely. Still, we need to be prepared for that."


    I gestured for Racer to zoom in on the front of the building. When the view changed, I continued.


    "Now, a lot of this depends on where they are, but I''m going to assume the garage doors will be closed. If they aren''t, we can take advantage of that, but we plan for them being shut," I explained, pointing to a row of windows that dotted the first floor. "Once Nal opens fire, taking out as many as he can through the windows, Tatnia, Julus and I will come in through these lower windows here."


    As I pointed, several basic outlines of people appeared on the exterior of the projected model. I gave Racer an impressed look before continuing.


    "If they stay on the second floor, then Nal can take them all out, but once they make it down to the first floor, which I''m guessing they will try, we ambush them there."


    I sat down in my chair, leaning back and looking at everyone. Nal, Tatnia, and Julus were listening closely, while Miru and Calima were listening with much less enthusiasm.


    "Our biggest goal here is to keep them from getting on their speeders. Not just because we want them intact but because it would give them a major advantage in firepower. Miru¡­"


    The pink-skinned mechanic sat up straight, eyes wide, clearly not expecting to be called on.


    "I want you and Racer here, listening in to TPSF comms. Do you think you could crack into those Racer?"


    The droid wiggled and whistled out a complicated tune, which, of course, meant nothing to me.


    "He says that he won''t be able to hear them word for word, that''s too protected for him to slice without being noticed," Miru translated. "But, he could get enough information to know if they are responding to a general neighborhood."


    "That''s good enough. I''m hoping we can skip their involvement, and I need to know if that changes. Calima?"


    "I assume you want to be ready to lift off, just in case?" She asked, having been a bit more prepared to respond than Miru. "I can do that¡­ but I will warn you that there are security forces in space around the planet. They could try and stop us."


    "I''m hoping that they won''t take it that far, but if it comes to that, we will just have to outfly them," I said with a wince. "Can you do that?"


    "Most likely. If we get really unlucky¡­ It might be difficult, but I think I can handle it."


    "Good. Alright, we could get this done tonight, or we could push it off tomorrow and get a little more time to prepare, any preference?"


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    "I would rather get this done with," Tatnia responded, leaning forward in her seat. "No use putting it off."


    When Nal only nodded in agreement, and Julus looked like he was ready to do it right now, for obvious reasons, I considered the matter settled.


    "That works for me. Let''s get everything packed up and ready to go, then we can have an early dinner. After that, we head out."


    Another series of nods from around the table, and we got to work. Miru, Nal, and I broke down the proton rifle and four of our blaster rifles, fitting them and the goggles into the cargo container attached to the MVR. When that was done, we gathered around in the lounge and shared our meal. As we ate, I looked over at Calima, who was listening to the conversations but was staying mostly quiet.


    "Sorry that your first day is so eventful," I apologized. "We had no idea that things would kick off like this, but it''s a good opportunity so we couldn''t pass it up."


    "I understand¡­ You don''t have to worry," She said with a smile. "This may be more exciting than I''m used to, but I had a feeling working with you would be like this when you described your last few weeks."


    "Well, that''s good," I responded. "I''m glad that it wasn''t a surprise at least."


    We finished dinner quickly, and it was time to get to work. Nal flew out on the MVR again, carrying our rifles so that we wouldn''t have to, while Tatnia, Julus, and I called in a cab. It was starting to get dark by the time we landed several blocks from our target.


    As we walked the rest of the way, a ten-minute trek through a few alleyways, we did our best to seem inconspicuous. Julus kept looking around as if he expected the Blood Cores to come swooping down at any minute, but I couldn''t blame him for being nervous so close to where his friend was killed.


    Eventually, we got to the building that Nal was waiting for us behind, having landed the MVR in an alleyway. There we waited, out of sight from the street, while it slowly got darker and darker. Eventually, Nal passed out the night vision goggles, and we all started assembling our rifles.


    "There''s a clear path to the garage from here, through these alleys," Nal explained, pointing to a small path between two abandoned buildings to his left. "Just keep walking straight until you reach the street."


    "Alright, comm us when you''re in position, and we will head in," I said, watching as he nodded and started climbing a nearby ladder, heading up to the roof.


    A quick glance at Tatnia and Julus, and we headed out, with me in the lead, slowly making our way through the alleys, following Nal''s instructions. We held our rifles tucked under our jackets to hide them as best we could, though it was obvious what we were carrying to anything more than a passing glance.


    After another minute of walking, we stopped, having reached the road. Across the street was the garage, lights still on inside. We could hear thumping, loud music clear through the garage bay doors. I held up my hand as I spotted two people, a Rodian and a Weequay, sitting outside. They had something in their mouths, some sort of Star Wars cigarette equivalent that my extra knowledge didn''t know about. I held up my hand to motion to Tatnia and Julus, and all three of us walked back enough to be covered by the shadows of their alley. I crouched down low and pulled out my comm, tabbing it to Nal.


    "Nal, they are still awake, stay down until the garage goes dark," I said softly into the comms.


    ".... Understood," Nal replied just as quietly.


    For the next two hours, we waited in the darkness of the dirty, trash-filled alley, waiting for the gang to finally shut down for the day. At ten minutes past the two-hour mark, just about when I started to worry that they would party all night long, the music finally cut off.


    There was shouting from inside the garage, the responding complaining voices coming through even with the building mostly sealed up. After a while, the building quieted down, and after twenty minutes, it finally went dark.


    "Can confirm, sleeping on the second floor," Nal said softly through the comms, confirming at least one portion of our plan.


    The lights in and around the building turning off flooded the street with darkness. All the public lighting near the building had been destroyed, the nearest lights coming from far down the street. Silently, we all pulled the goggles down over our faces, toggling on the night vision. At first, I was overwhelmed by the brightness, but the goggles quickly compensated, revealing a new bright world, though tinged with green. After a minute, I switched to thermal, only to immediately switch it back when I realized it was useless through the solidly built structure.


    We waited another hour for everyone to fall asleep before Tatnia, Julus, and I crossed the street, keeping our heads down and moving as silently as possible, not stopping until our backs were against the ferrocrete wall of the garage. Each of us lined up near a different window, each of us sharing a look before I held up one hand left hand, giving Nal the ready signal.


    I adjusted my rifle, holding it ready as I let out a slow breath. I could feel myself wanting to cast my armor on myself. I felt naked without it, but I focused on the fact that this was not like the Separatist raid, if they even got a shot off at us, we had already fucked up.


    Suddenly the relative silence surrounding us was broken by the familiar whining sound of the proton rifle charging from across the street before a beam of yellow energy punched through one of the second-story windows. The whine immediately started again, firing not a second later.


    A riot of shouting, screaming, and cursing echoed across the street as the Blood Core gang was cut in half in just over thirty seconds.


    "I can''t see the rest," Nal said, his voice coming from my jacket pocket, much louder now. "Coming down the stairs."


    "Go!" I shouted, before turning and looking in through the window, the night vision goggles letting me see into the dark room easily.


    Unfortunately, all I could see was the air speeder, filling up a large portion of the bay and blocking my view into the rest of the garage. I turned, planning to run around Tatnia and Julus to another window, only to see a staggering rapid spray of blaster bolts coming from inside the building, catching Julus in the side and throwing him to the ground, at least three bolts hitting him before he hit the ground.


    A yellow beam of proton energy lanced down into the window from Nal, a choking scream cutting off the spray of energy, silencing whoever had surprised Julus. I pulled away from the structure, running around and watching as Tatnia focused and fired through her window. When I reached the window that Julus had been looking through, I peeked around the corner, moving away just in time to avoid catching another dozen sprays of lethal red energy.


    "Fuck this!" I said, charging my bound armor and casting it immediately.


    Now protected by glowing conjured energy, I turned around the corner, this time coming out completely. I tanked the two out of over a dozen blaster bolts that managed to hit and drilled my own triple shot burst directly into a half-dressed Weequay holding a massive repeater blaster cannon, standing over the corpse of a blue Twi''lek female. Two of my shots hit his chest, seeming to do very little, before my final shot somehow found his eye, taking off most of his head before his corpse fell to the floor.


    "How many did everyone get?" I called out loud enough for Nal to hear me across the street.


    "Two," Tatnia responded, still looking into the garage, her still rifle up.


    "Five," Nal added, his voice coming through my comms.


    "And I got one. Nal, keep us covered, but I think that was everyone!" I said, turning back to Julus, who was still on the ground.


    Both Tatnia and I rushed to the younger man, who was pale and breathing slowly. Before I could say anything or start to heal him, he grabbed my hand.


    "It''s okay," He said. "I¡­ I did what I needed to do. I don''t mind following my brother."


    "Yeah, but I bet he would want you to live," I said, pulling my hand away. "Now sit still. You''re gonna be fine."


    "No way, I know-"


    Before he could continue, I pulled his jacket aside and poured a dual-cast healing spell into the charred wound on his stomach and upper chest. Whatever that bastard had been shooting, it had been powerful because it punched right through his armor and started to cook him. I emptied my magic into him, his eyes widening as he felt it suffuse his wounds.


    "Wh-what was that?" He asked, looking up at me. "What-"


    "Team secret," I said, shaking my head with a smirk. "Just be thankful I like you, now keep still."


    After a few seconds, I pumped him full of healing magic again, repeating it twice more until his color had marginally returned. He was looking at me with wide eyes, but before he could say anything, I shook my head.


    "No, not now. We have work to do," I said. "You can ask questions when we are done. Alright?"


    He nodded slowly before starting to push himself up.


    "No, not yet," I said, pushing him back down flat. "A few more times, then we can get to work. Tat, keep an eye out, this is going to take a minute."

 Chapter 35

    I ended up dumping my full mana capacity into Julus three more times before I was comfortable with letting him sit up and move around. His wound had been severe, bad enough that I was pretty sure he sure wouldn''t have survived without an immediate dunk in bacta or my help. When I was done, I helped him to his feet, walking with him to sit on the ledge of the window I had been standing at.


    "Can I-"


    "If it''s a question about what I just did, no," I said, cutting him off. "I will answer your questions, but not here. Have a little patience, alright?"


    "Yeah. Alright. Okay." He said, seeming to mentally fortify himself. "What do we do now?"


    "Now we hope no one called the cops," I said, grabbing my communicator. "Miru, how''s it look?"


    "...Nothing so far, Boss, Racer says there isn''t any activity in your area," She responded after a moment. "I''ll keep you in the loop."


    "Rodger that," I confirmed before switching my comm connection to Nal. "See any movement from up there, Nal?"


    "Negative," He responded. "There were some people peeking out windows when the shooting stopped, but none anymore."


    "Alright, do another scan around and then join us. Leave the MVR where it is, we can pick it up after we are done."


    A quick confirmation from Nal and I hung up, shifting my attention to Tatnia.


    "Tat, I''m going to do an internal sweep, cover out here and keep an eye on Julus," I said, trying my best to convey that I wanted to keep him from running just as much as anything else.


    "Got it, boss," She responded, stepping away from her window. "Stay safe."


    I nodded and stepped through the shattered window, charging my full bound armor as I did. Since my magic didn''t work with something in my hand, I had to let go of my gun and summon one portion after the other, mentally making a note to invest in straps. When I was covered in my faintly glowing light purple armor, I quickly started scanning the room, making sure every gang member was dead, first clearing the first floor before slowly making my way to the stairs. There were two corpses that Tatnia had gotten while I had been taking care of the heavily armed Weequay.


    I double-checked that both gang members were definitely dead, before moving on to the second flood. After I climbed over the corpses blocking the way, I checked the second floor, double-checking every corner of every room. One of the people, most likely the first person Nal had targeted since they were still in their bed, was still breathing, though they were clearly passed out from either pain or blood loss. I summoned a dagger and quickly put them out of their misery, stabbing them in the base of their neck, up into their brain.


    I let the dagger fade before letting my armor fade as well, heading downstairs again. I spent a minute locating the lights for the garage area, activating them when I finally did. The light was blinding with my night vision goggles, and I cursed in shock as I pulled them off and clipped them to my belt. As I recovered from being blinded, I looked around the garage area, frowning slightly at what I saw.


    There were five speeders and an air speeder, just as Julus said. However, they were clearly not very well taken care of. They had been poorly painted, most of them had things welded or even taped onto them, and even my generally untrained eye could tell that they were definitely in need of some work. The airspeed was also poorly painted, but it seemed to be in better shape. The paint job, bad as it was, seemed to be newer as well.


    I shook my head and looked around the walls of the garage, near the bay doors, finding the controls after a quick scan. I tapped them quickly, the two bay doors opening noisily, causing all of us to wince as the sound echoed down the street. As I stepped out onto the pad, I could see Nal, just as he was crossing the street to join us.


    "Alright, Julus, you feel like you could fly a speeder?" I asked, who stood from his spot and nodded.


    "Yeah, I can handle that."


    "Good. I want you three to go in there and pick the two best-looking bikes. Fly them and the air speeder back to the ship, drop the bikes off, and everyone comes back to pick up the next batch," I explained. "I''m going to start going through everything while you''re gone, see if they have anything else worth taking."


    "Are you sure, Boss?" Tatnia asked. "I don''t like the idea of leaving you here alone..."


    "Yeah, if the security forces start making moves, Miru will let me know, and I will hoof it to the MVR," I assured her. "I can handle it, now get going, the quicker you leave, the quicker you can come back."


    She nodded, albeit with a bit of reluctance, before quickly picking out a speeder bike for herself. Julus had already climbed into the air speeder, powered it up, and was going through several preflight checks to be safe. Nal was last to pick his, but soon all three were zipping out of the garage and heading down the road. I quickly headed back inside and started working on scavenging the smaller stuff. The first thing I grabbed was the <u>impressive blaster</u></a> that had almost killed Julus.


    As I scavenged that room, finding a few energy packs for the heavy weapon and a small pouch of credits, I also found a bed pushed into the far back of the room. While most of the gang had been sleeping upstairs, the two that had shot at Julus and I had been sleeping in the office. I probably should have seen that coming.


    I quickly went over the rest of the room, piling anything worth taking down in the garage. Between how small the gang had been and how little they cared about their own gear, I wasn''t finding much. I did grab a few of the more interesting-looking blasters, as well as a few vibroblades. There was even a vibrosword, which I added to the pile despite the fact that it showed clear signs of being a mall store weapon. By the time the air speeder returned, I had about two dozen things pushed into a pile. It landed in the front pad, and Julus, Tatnia, Nal, and Miru climbed out.


    "What is she doing here?" I asked, Miru blowing past me to take a look at the remaining speeder bikes.


    "Racer can use the comm just as well as I can," She explained, kneeling by the closest speeder bike. "And Nal was worried a few of these wouldn''t be flyable.


    "And how would I understand him when he comms me?" I asked, crossing my arms.


    Nal, Tatnia, and Miru all froze for half a second. The older two looked annoyed with themselves and a bit wide-eyed while Miru tried to recover.


    "Nal can translate for you," She said with a smile.


    "And for the ten minutes you were traveling, and Nal was with you? And when we split up again to fly these home?"


    "I¡­"


    "You guys put me in charge, I need to know these sorts of things before they happen," I said, giving Nal and Tatnia a look. "Bringing Miru was a good idea, but I would have warned you to bring Racer with you or check to see if Calima can understand droid speak."


    Before I could say anything, my comm buzzed before letting out a string of panicked whistles, warbles, and chitters. I clipped my comm and brought it to my mouth, still looking at my three crewmates.


    "Racer, one beep for yes, two for no," I said, cutting off more warbles. "Do we need to leave right now?"


    When two beeps came through, everyone loosened up slightly before I continued.


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    "How about in the next five minutes?" I asked, getting a single long whistle, followed by silence.


    "Fuck, alright, Miru, keep checking the speeders, Tatnia, Nal, help me load up what I found," I said, quickly grabbing the looted gear, credit bags, and chips. "Julus, keep a lookout."


    We quickly got to work, rushing to load everything into the air speeder. I could see Miru quickly working through the remaining speeders, peering into gaps with a flashlight. When we were done loading everything up, I got her attention.


    "How do they look?"


    "They should last back to the ship," She said, still looking upset about what I had said. "But I can''t promise much past that."


    "That''s fine. Julus, Tatnia, pick a bike, Nal, head back out to the MVR," I said, getting a nod in response. "Miru, you have the air speeder. Everyone, take it slow, stay close to the ground, including you, Miru, you might need to pick someone up if their bike breaks down."


    The crew broke apart after my last words, Nal jogging across the street and disappearing into the alleyway, Miru climbing into the air speeder, and the rest of us mounting our bikes. It took me a moment to figure out the controls, but thankfully the basic systems were self-explanatory, at least for my extra knowledge. We lifted off and pulled out of the garage, heading down the road with the air speeder out in front.


    After a few tense minutes, Nal pulled up alongside us, catching up quickly since he could push the MVR without worrying about it falling to pieces under him. Ten minutes later, we arrived at the Chariot, all of our new speeder bikes sliding into the hangar bay on the port side, and the air speeder landed nearby. We spent fifteen minutes shifting the two tri fighters as far as possible to one side, most of the work getting done by the labor droids, orchestrated by Racer. When enough space was cleared, Nal piloted the airship into the hangar bay before we shut the hangar blast doors.


    "Well¡­ Good work, everyone," I said with a smile. "Save for a bit of miscommunication, that went rather well. We are going to stay on alert for a few more hours to make sure nobody catches on, but good work regardless."


    As we congratulated each other, I noticed Miru was looking down, so I made my way to her.


    "Hey, don''t let it eat you up," I said, giving her shoulder a squeeze. "Bringing you on the return trip wasn''t a bad idea, it just could have been implemented better."


    "Yeah¡­ I just wanted to help."


    "You are going to help. We rely on you to keep our gear working," I pointed out. "Without you, our speeders would look like these."


    I gestured to the C-PHs that were parked through the large hangar door. She winced, and I chuckled.


    "Let''s head up to the lounge and unwind a bit. Julus is going to want some questions answered, and you''re not starting on those speeders until tomorrow."


    ----------------------?


    With his adrenaline fading and the experience of almost dying behind him, Julus was surprisingly patient in seeking me out to talk about what he had seen. And by that, I mean he actually managed to wait until we were alone to ask.


    "Okay, we''re back at the ship. Can you explain now?" He asked.


    We were in the forward cargo bay, the rest of the team having already gone up the stairs to the second deck. He had grabbed my arm to get me to hang back, which Tatnia had noticed, prompting her to stop as well.


    "Why should I?" I asked. "It''s not really any of your business."


    "You used it on me to fix a blaster wound that should have absolutely killed me," He pointed out, in a hushed but frustrated tone. "How does that have nothing to do with me?"


    "...Fine, come on," I said, gesturing back to the cargo bay.


    Both he and Tatnia joined me as I walked to a clear space before charging my armor spell and casting it on myself.


    "The truth is, I have a sort of¡­ energy inside myself, and-"


    "He is a space wizard," Tatnia said bluntly. "Does all sorts of magic. It''s karking insane, crazy, but there it is. Show him the frost spray one."


    I rolled my eyes at Tatnia before holding up my hand and casting frostbite, ice magic spraying out and hitting the floor about five feet away. I slide my hand a bit to arc it along the metal deck, small ice crystals growing from the impact site. I cut off the spell and looked back to Julus. His hand was on one of his pistols, and he was staring at me with wide eyes.


    "Wh- Are you a Jedi?" He asked, looking at me like I was about to leap at him.


    "No, I don''t use the Force," I answered. "And even if I did, the Jedi were a group. Having a connection to the force doesn''t automatically make you one."


    "Boss, immediately adding that fact does not help people believe that you aren''t a Jedi," Tatnia said, shaking her head. "And you do it every time."


    "I¡­ Dammit, that''s a good point," I said, slapping my forehead and dropping my bound armor spell. "Either way, Julus, I''m not using the Force, this is something different."


    "How do you know?"


    "How do I¡­" I said, trailing off when I realized it was actually a decent question. "Because I know what the Force is, even if I''m not connected to it. This isn''t it, it''s something else."


    "What is the Force?"


    "The Force is a galaxy-spanning, all-encompassing semi-sentient energy field that allows people who are sensitive to it to tap into its power to do various physics-defying things. It reacts differently to different emotions, and if you lean too far in any direction, you risk becoming an insane rage-driven psycho or an emotionless monk. However, the raging psycho is more likely unless you are actively trying to go the monk route. There is also evidence that it influences the universe on a larger scale, including, but not limited to, allowing people to see glimpses of a future or possible futures."


    Both Tatnia and Julus were staring at me with wide eyes, Julus with his mouth hanging open.


    "Yeah, now you know why I don''t want to be grouped in with them," I said, shaking my head. "A frankly disturbing amount of the galaxy''s most terrible events in history happen around, too, or are done by Force users. But that''s not important."


    I said, stepping closer to the now nervous-looking young man. His hand was no longer on his blaster pistol, but he still looked more than a bit uncomfortable.


    "The important bit is that you have a choice."


    "And¡­ what is that choice?" He asked, gathering his courage.


    "You can either go back to your job as a security guard, back to your normal life¡­ Or you can leave with a space wizard, join his crew and kick ass across the galaxy," I said with a smirk, holding out my hand. "I can''t tell you where you will end up, but I can tell you it''s going to be one hell of a ride."


    For a long moment, he stared at me before looking down at my hand. After a few seconds passed, he took it, giving me a single strong shake.


    "I was planning on leaving this planet anyway, it reminds me too much of Zandev," He explained with a small smile. "We used to dream about exploring the galaxy together. The least I could do is make our dream a reality."


    "Good to have you then, Julus. Now come on, let''s get you a bunk so you can rest for a while," I said, putting my hand on his shoulder and leading him to the stairs. "You can go get your stuff and move in properly tomorrow."

 Chapter 36

    After the door to Julus''s new room shut, sealing him inside so he could rest after his rather eventful night, I barely made it ten steps before Tatnia stopped me.


    "I assume you invited him¡­."


    "To keep an eye on him?" I finished quietly, Tatnia nodding in confirmation. "It''s not the only reason, but yeah."


    "What''s the other reason?"


    "We need more crew anyway, and he seemed to know what he was doing," I said with a shrug.


    "He didn''t do anything, he got hit before he did anything," She pointed out.


    "Through no fault of his own," I countered. "He stayed cool, calm, and collected. He didn''t even panic when he thought he was dying. I want him close by, but he also isn''t a bad choice from what he told us about his job."


    "Assuming he was telling the truth."


    "That''s¡­ a fair point. We can ask Racer to see if he can get us access to his work records, and maybe we can run him through some drills at some point," I suggested.


    We made our way to the lounge area, where the rest of the crew was already waiting. I made a quick announcement that Julus was joining us. Nal didn''t seem surprised, and Miru and Calima simply nodded. We spent a few more hours on alert, basically just sitting around, ready to react if Racer called from the cockpit that the cops were on their way. When nothing happened, most of the crew headed to sleep. I wasn''t far behind them, only asking Racer to confirm Julus''s story and work history before turning in.


    The next morning I woke up late, unsurprising considering how late everyone was up the night before. I quickly read Racer''s information on Julus, which was basically a few police and internal reports confirming his presence at a few attempted robberies and raids. After reading through some of those, I cleaned up in the sonic shower and headed out into the ship, making my way to the lounge. Tatnia and Calima were having breakfast, chatting about her stay on the planet.


    "It didn''t seem that bad," Tatnia said, giving me a nod as I entered.


    "Oh, there are¡­ Certainly worse trade worlds," Calima admitted with a shrug. "But Terr''skiar has a lot of issues under the surface. The ruling trade groups are cutthroat and greedy. There is even a Hutt in control of one, though she is apparently an exile."


    I grabbed a small breakfast bar from the kitchen system, waving as I left the lounge and headed down to the first deck, heading down into the forward cargo bay. The large forward space was abuzz with activity, with Miru, Julus, Nal, and three of our five LE repair droids. I noticed one of the droids was painted red rather than the blue and white combination that the others shared.


    The cargo bay had clearly been re-organized, most likely to make room for the group''s current project, the speeder bikes we acquired. As I looked around, I noticed there were quite a few less battle droids, and those that remained were neatly stored in the custom charging bays Miru had made. I could see five B2s, with the remaining free spaces filled with B1s.


    As I watched, I could see the three LE droids steadily taking apart one of the C-PH speeders, with another one already disassembled. The remaining three were being worked on by Mire, Nal and Julus.


    "Morning, everyone," I said as I looked around. "So what''s the verdict?"


    Miru stood from the bike she was working on and grabbed a rag, cleaning some of the grease off of her hands.


    "They were in rough shape, Boss," She admitted, shaking her head. "After looking through them all, Nal and I decided it was better to completely disassemble two of them and then use the parts that were still good to fix up the remaining three. Sorry for not letting you know, but-"


    "Don''t worry about it, Miru, if you say they weren''t worth saving, I believe you," I assured her. "Engineering is your wheelhouse."


    "Well, I think that these will be up and running by the end of today¡­ probably," She said, adding the last bit after a pause. "The air speeder is pretty much the same, but we don''t have replacement parts. I made a list, and we will need to buy a few parts before I would be comfortable flying it around. It''s honestly a miracle it made it back to the ship."


    "How much will they cost?"


    "No more than three thousand," She explained. "Probably closer to two if I can find them for a good price."


    "I''d like to get the air speeder up and running, especially since we really can''t fly the bikes around casually, on this planet especially or any with a big Imperial presence," I said, continuing when Miru looked confused. "They are military tech, they will catch a lot of attention if we fly them around. The speeder is much less conspicuous, even if it''s armed."


    "Oh¡­ should I stop and focus on that?"


    "No, they all need to be finished," I assured her. "We can use a taxi in the meantime. Just get the parts before we leave."


    "When will that be?" Nal asked, now wiping his own hands clean.


    "I want to see if we can find one more person, someone capable of fighting before we leave. That said, four people is enough to complete some basic jobs," I responded. "So I''m compromising and spending another day searching, and if we don''t find anyone, we are finding a bounty or a job posting somewhere and heading out."


    "I will take her to a shop today," Nal confirmed, looking at Miru, who smiled.


    "Great. I''m going to be heading out with Tatnia soon, let me know if something comes up when we are gone."


    I turned to leave before stopping, spotting the red droid again from the corner of my eye.


    "Why is one painted red?"


    "Oh, he is the prime," Miru explained. "I''m going to keep him on and powered more frequently, doing checkups and looking for faults around the ship. Over time he will develop a personality."


    "And that''s a good thing?"


    "Sometimes, depending on what develops," She explained before adding with a shrug. "If it''s not, I''ll wipe it and try again."


    "Huh¡­ alright!"


    I made my way back to my room and quickly got ready, throwing on my armor and my jacket and putting my blaster pistol on my hip before heading out to find Tatnia. I went over my plan with her to spend another day looking for a new crewmate before leaving, successful or not.


    Twenty minutes later, Tatnia and I were once again in a taxi on our way back to the same bar we had been to the day before. We got a similar reaction as we stepped inside, though there were a few more considering looks as we walked to the bar. Tatnia ordered a caf for each of us as we sat down at the bar, since neither of us was interested in alcohol this early in the morning.


    Eventually, we asked the bartender if there was anyone looking for long-term work, specifically working for a mercenary team. He directed us to a few people sitting around the bar, but as we talked to them, I didn''t think any of them were a good enough fit.


    "You''re being too picky, Boss," She said after we assured the fifth person that we would comm them if we changed our minds.


    "I''m not inviting anyone on the ship that I wouldn''t feel comfortable leaving Miru alone with," I said emphatically.


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    "I¡­ guess that''s a good point," Tatnia agreed, wincing slightly.


    Not long after that, we were on our way home. We stepped through the entryway and into the forward cargo hold to find the remaining three speeder bikes, cleaned and freshly painted, arrayed side by side, tucked against the starboard wall. All four of the crew that had stayed behind, Julus, Miru, Nal, and Calima, were standing and sitting by the door. Julus had a blaster pistol in his hand but had turned to see us. Down on the other end of the ship was a target painted on a big sheet of metal.


    "What are you guys doing?" I asked Nal. "I thought you would set up outside."


    "This pistol has adjustable output settings," Miru explained. "We turned it all the way down, and it''s like a training blaster. And I don''t think the owner of the landing pad would like us shooting up his property."


    I let out a long sigh before gesturing for them to continue.


    "Alright, Julus, show us what you got," I said, watching as he nodded and turned back to the target.


    We watched for a while, Julus proving that he was, in fact, a really good shot, better than Tatnia and I with a blaster pistol at least. We took turns for a while before we broke down the practice setup. A quick conversation with everyone, and we decided to leave tonight before the landing pad owner could charge us for another day.


    ---------------------?


    It took just under an hour for us to call in our intention to leave, get a flight plan, pull away from Terr''skiar and jump to hyperspace. It was a short jump, just long enough to put us in the open and endless void of space. When our sensors read that everything was clear, I called a meeting. Everyone made their way to the lounge area, sitting down at the meeting table.


    "With Calima and Julus on board, our new transportation acquired, and the Talos Chariot, we have completed my first goal." I explained, leaning forward in my chair, which was the head of the table. "Which means it''s time to talk about secondary goals."


    "You mean taking bounties, doing mercenary work?" Miru asked, looking confused. "Do you have other things in mind?"


    "I do. I have several. Some of them are too far in the future to even think about, but for now, my next goal is pretty simple. Build a name, build up resources, build up our money."


    "Why?" Nal asked. "Those are important, but you seem to be thinking of something specific."


    "As impressive as what we have achieved so far is, I want to go further," I explained. "This ship, us, the equipment we have, our skills, it''s impressive, but ultimately just a small footnote. We could leverage it if we are lucky and determined, but I want to be able to do more. I want to do more. Maybe we side with the Rebellion, maybe we try to take down slavery on a much bigger scale. Maybe we build a fleet and stamp out the Hutts. There are a lot of possibilities out there, and I want the strength and ability to do them when we want to."


    My crew was looking at me as I talked. Miru, Nal, and Tatnia seemed to understand where I was coming from. They had all experienced slavery in some way, even if it was just a taste for Nal and Tatnia. The desire to never be in that situation again, to never be that vulnerable, to never be that powerless, it was strong enough for them to understand and want the same thing I did.


    My reason was just a lot more simple. I had lived a good chunk of my life working for other people, usually working way too hard for way too little. I wanted to be free, wanted to be a powerful enough player that fucking no one could push me around. I wasn''t looking to be the next emperor, and I wasn''t a fan of the idea of leading a large group, but that didn''t matter. If leading was the cost for respect and just the right amount of fear to keep assholes from doing stupid shit, then so be it. Even better, with that kind of clout, I could help people. Still, make money, yeah, but actually be able to help as well.


    "Julus, Calima, I know that this is a lot to hear so soon after joining up, but it''s not nearly as intense as it sounds. It just means that I''m looking to expand, and some of our jobs are going to be focused on that."


    "You may not have¡­ said it out loud, but I would have had to be deaf and blind to not be able to see your ambition," Calima assured me with a smirk. "As long as you¡­ do not expect me to die for your ambition, and I get my cut, then I''m happy."


    "Yeah. Same," Julus added. "You don''t do subtle very well, Boss."


    "I know," I responded with a smile. "that''s what I have you guys for, right?"


    "So, if the goal is to grow, with a capital <u>Grek</u></a>, what''s our first move?" Tatnia asked.


    "Well, I would like to make some more money, finish building up a bit more," I answered. "I know Miru has some plans she wants to implement that will hopefully improve our fighting capabilities."


    "I¡­ have a few ideas," She admitted. "I¡­ Well, I can go over them later, but my first goal is to get the two tri-fighters up and running and tied to our commands. Then maybe do something with the vulture droids?"


    "Right. Well, stuff like that will take money, and I would also maybe consider getting a second ship, one to pilot alongside ours. Long-term, however¡­ I think working with the Rebellion is something we should consider."


    "You seemed pretty against that before," Tatnia pointed out. "What changed?"


    "I''m against joining completely. But working alongside them?" I explained. "The Empire is a blight, and eventually, it''s going to fall. I have a good feeling that the Rebels have a solid chance of making that happen. It¡­ well fuck it sounds manipulative and cold, but getting in on the ground floor now¡­."


    "You''re hoping to ride their wave of success?" Julus asked, making me wince.


    "Pretty much. Don''t get me wrong, I do believe in their cause, and I do want them to succeed. It just so happens that it''s also a great opportunity," I explained. "Having a say in what comes next wouldn''t be so bad either."


    Depending on what canon was dominant, the New Republic that the Rebellion built was either going to be completely inept or partially inept and very unstable. Maybe I could influence that to change, but in order to do that, I would have to have influence first. And in order to do that, my group would have to be more than a few people in one cruiser.


    "Well. I have nothing against that plan," Julus said. "I have no real love for the Empire, though I don''t have any love for the Rebellion either."


    "I¡­ Would also be alright with this," Calima said with a small smile. "The Empire is, indeed, a blight¡­ I would happily help wipe it out, especially if we can gain from it."


    All it took to understand if Miru, Tatnia, and Nal were on board was a look.


    "Alright. So, our current game plan is to take some jobs, save some money, spend some money, build up our capabilities, and see if we can''t get back to the Rebellion and be useful," I said, getting nods in agreement. "Great. Now¡­ how do mercenaries usually find work?"

 Chapter 37

    <div>


    She turned her datapad to me, showing off a humanoid of a species I didn''t recognize. I shook my head in a negative.


    "Seems like not enough to make it worth heading out there," I said.


    "If we don''t join the bounty hunters guild, this is about all we can expect, bounty-wise," She pointed out, but still pulled the datapad back, continuing to look through the listings.


    It had been just under two days since we had taken off of Terr''skiar. Since then, we have been working on preparing and finding our next mission. While we still had a buffer in terms of credits and were doing very well in terms of materials and equipment, we would definitely need to keep making money.


    "I''ve got something," Nal said, reading his datapad. "A small mining center on a planet not far from here has been getting hit by a raider gang."


    "That¡­ sounds pretty good. What''s the pay?"


    "Ten thousand, fifteen if we can recover what they have stolen. We also get salvage rights to anything that doesn''t belong to the town." Nal responded.


    "What kind of info do they have on their numbers and equipment?"


    "The report claims between fifteen and twenty strong," He answered. "With speeders, blasters, and other movable equipment."


    "And the camp?"


    "They don''t know. They sweep in, steal what they want and leave just as quickly. The town doesn''t have the equipment to do anything about it, especially as the raiders made sure to destroy any defenses they had in the first few raids."


    "Alright, how far away is it?"


    "Are you sure?" Tatnia asked. "Twenty is a lot of people to fight at once."


    "You''re right. It would be," I responded with a smirk. "If we were going let it be a fair fight in any way. Nal?"


    "Three systems away, ten hours."


    "Alright, send them a message that we are on our way."


    ----------------------


    Ten hours later, we were landing on the outskirts of a decent-sized town on the planet of Itander, a mostly rocky, snow-covered planet that had a band of more hospitable space around its equator. The town, Solinda, had a similar aesthetic to Mos Eisley, with ferrocrete buildings making up the vast majority of structures, with prefab metal and polymer structures sprinkled around throughout.


    As we landed on the outskirts, I could see that some of the citizens were clearing out as fast as they could, mostly parents leading their children indoors away from the newcomers, while others made their way out of their homes to get a better look at what was going on. Calima landed us smoothly, flipping a handful of switches once we were securely on the ground.


    "Keep her warmed up, if the raiders come by while we are talking, take off and provide air support," I told the Tholothian, standing up from comms control. "Julus, help Miru unload the Arrow and two C-PHs. Nal and Tatnia, let''s go say hello."


    I got a series of confirmations, which I expected since I was really just repeating our already set plan before everyone but Calima left the bridge behind. Nal, Tatnia, and I headed out to the forward cargo bay, passing by Miru as she moved our bikes into position.


    "You guys all set?" I asked as we stepped into the expedition room airlock, going through my own pat down to make sure I had everything.


    "All set."


    "Ready to go."


    I nodded and opened the exterior door, my two teammates stepping through before I sealed it after us. I tapped the exterior intercom system to activate it, all three of us heading down the access ramp, stepping down onto the rocky planet. A cold breeze carried through, making me glad I had brought my jacket. A quick look around showed one person standing ahead of the small crowd that had formed about a hundred feet from the Talos Chariot. It was a <u>Besalisk</u></a>, a four-armed behemoth with a boney skull and a large mouth. They were wearing considerably fewer layers than everyone around it, seemingly comfortable in a simple tunic and shorts.


    The three of us crossed the distance slowly, eventually stopping in front of the four-armed humanoid. He was a full head taller than me and built like a brick house.


    "Hello, my name''s Deacon. We are here for the mercenary work you posted," I said, holding a hand out toward the large brown and maroon-skinned alien. "I''m hoping you got our response."


    "Aye, we did," He said in a gruff voice, looking up past me at the Chariot. "You certainly seem to have the tonnage to take care of some raiders. Names Rabben Corgug, the head foreman of the town claim."


    One of Rabben''s massive hands swallowed mine, shaking it roughly.


    "We would have taken care of this ourselves, but the karking mynock bastards sabotaged our defensive turrets," He explained, getting to a nearby pile of rubble. "Now we have to deal with them raiders and roving beasts, and too few of us are prepared for a fight."


    "And when you try and get more.¡­"


    "They blow those up, too," He finished, nodding in confirmation. "Don''t even know where they set up, so we can''t go out and take them ourselves. Tried the surrounding area, but too far out, and folks stop coming back."


    "Well, rest assured, we can solve your raider problem," I said confidently, gesturing back to the ship, where Julus was just flying the Arrow out of the starboard hangar. "We are going to do some patrols around the area while the Talos Chariot goes a bit higher and runs some scans."


    "That''s not gonna do ya any good," The Besalisk said, shaking his head. "Smart money is on them digging down into the snow. Go down deep enough, and a normal sensor reading won''t penetrate well enough to pick them out."


    "Maybe not, but it will give us plenty of warning when they start getting close," I explained, the larger humanoid reluctantly nodding.


    Once we had responded to the work posting, the crew and I spent a few hours spitballing what the best way to complete the job was. Obviously, being able to use the Chariot to take them down, with no risk to ourselves, was ideal, but Calima had pointed out what Rabben just had about the snow and ice, which meant if we wanted to locate their camp, we would have to get a little tricky. As far as Calima knew, the plan was to keep track of any raiders who ran when we ambushed them, as they would have little choice but to return to their base. In reality, once I spotted them, my clairvoyance spell would be able to track them. I was getting pretty good at it by this point, so seeing the raiders in person should be enough for me to track them, even if they weren''t close to me.


    "Boss," Nal said to get my attention before stepping forward and facing Rabben. "What have they been taking?"


    "Food and supplies mostly," He answered. "We don''t keep large amounts of credits on the planet, our profits get stored in a bank and we purchase new things on the holonet."


    "How frequently are the raids?"


    "Every two weeks or so," The large male humanoid responded. "What are ya getting at?"


    "They might be relying on your supplies to survive," I answered when I caught on, Nal nodding in confirmation. "Which means it''s going to be a lot easier to trick them into attacking."


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    "Trick? No need to trick, they come on their own!" A human man said from behind Rabben.


    "Well, if they do, we can take them out and then track them back to where they''ve set up camp," I explained, happy our original plan would work. "The point is that if they need what you have, they are coming back if they think they have a chance."


    I pulled out my comms unit and turned back to the ship, looking up where I knew Calima was sitting and watching. I made sure to hold it up to my face, covering my mouth.


    "Alright, Calima, when Miru and Julus are done offloading the speeders, the plan is a go," I said.


    She sent back a confirmation, and I slid my comm back into my jacket, watching Julus and Miru work. Once they were done, Julus stayed in the Arrow, and Miru made her way over to us.


    "And now, in case someone is watching¡­." I said, reaching into my jacket, pulling out a small sack of credits, and putting them in the young Twi''leks hands. "We pretend to pay you, shake on it¡­."


    We shook hands, and Miru nodded, clearly working to keep from smiling at the act. When we were done, she quickly made her way back to the ship before Calima lifted off from the rocky surface, kicking up all sorts of dust as she flew away into the sky.


    "Why¡­ why are they leaving!?" One of the people behind Rabben said, sounding shocked and scared.


    "They aren''t," Rabben responded, shaking his head as he looked over his shoulder and then back at us. "They are setting a trap. And we are bait."


    "Yes¡­ technically that is true," I admitted, rubbing the back of my head. "But we should have an early enough warning to keep everyone safe. And we are still going to be here, meaning that they won''t be able to just roll through town unimpeded."


    "I don''t like it¡­ but we don''t have much of a choice," Rabben said, giving me a hard look before turning back to the crowd. "Alright, people, back to work. None of ya have enough time free to be sitting around doing nothing!"


    The larger humanoid started walking behind the leaving crowd, and I turned to Nal and Tatnia.


    "Start running patrols with the speeders," I said, nodding toward the leaving foreman. "I want to talk to the big guy some more. If the cold starts getting to you, rotate through the Arrow. I''ll find you or call for a pickup when I''m done chatting."


    Nal nodded, but Tatnia looked hesitant to leave me alone. I gave her a raised eyebrow, and she reluctantly headed to where the Arrow and the C-PHs were parked. I turned back to the town, jogging to catch up with Rabben.


    "Foreman Corgug could-" I started to say when I caught up with him.


    "I don''t sign your paychecks, boy, you don''t gotta call me that," He said, not slowing down as he moved through the streets of the mining town.


    "Technically, I think you''ll be signing at least one of them, but fine. Rabben, mind answering a few questions?"


    "As long as they pertain to the job we hired you for," He responded.


    "Do the raiders usually attack from one direction, or is it random?"


    "They come from the east more, but not by much."


    "Huh. Okay, what are you guys mining here?"


    "Platinum."


    "How big is your claim?"


    "The planet."


    "You guys own the planet?" I asked, surprise leaking into my voice.


    "No. As the first settlers, we have the first claim. Just means people wanting to mine or settle on the planet need to come through us. We can sell them claims or ask for a portion of their profits."


    "That seems¡­"


    "Strange? Corrupt? Easily abusable?" He listed off with a snort. "That''s because that''s how they want it. It''s usually how mining corpos keep a grip on the best mining claims. They scan a hundred planets before we can even leave the docking bay, settle all the good ones, and leave the rest of us claims that barely profit. We got lucky finding this, but we won''t ever be rich. Better than being slaves in all but name, though."


    "I''d have to agree," I said, looking up to see the Arrow flying over the town, a lot of other people stopping to do the same. "When did the raiders show up?"


    "Three months ago, after the melt," He answered, waving to someone as we passed a shop, continuing to answer my next question before I could ask it. "The planet''s orbit is slightly elliptical, there''s a two-month time when it''s a few degrees warmer. Most of it stays frozen, but the clear, livable strip around the equator expands by a good distance on each side."


    "Interesting. Any chances they have someone in the town, a contact or informant?"


    That question finally got him to look at me, reading my face for a long moment before finally grunting and shrugging.


    "It''s possible, but no one comes to mind."


    I pulled out my comm unit and relayed that information to my team, telling them to keep an eye out for anyone behaving suspiciously. They confirmed it and reported that they had made a few loops around the town and couldn''t see anyone on the outskirts.


    "Do a few more wider loops around and then land for a while," I responded. "We need to look like hired guards."


    "So lazy, cheap, and useless?" Tatnia asked, getting a laugh from Rabben.


    Despite her joke, I could hear the sound of the airspeed and bikes getting more distant as they expanded their patrol. I talked a bit more with Rabben, mostly about when supply drops came by, how often their ore was picked up, and what their general profit levels were. He was getting a bit annoyed with my pestering but answered everything I asked to at least some extent. Eventually, I split up and headed to where my team had landed.


    "Spot anything?" I asked when I got close enough, stopping by Tatnia, who was sitting on one of the C-PHs.


    "Saw a few bits of trash, some animal carcasses, and one speeder wreck, but that wasn''t very far out." She responded. "Beyond that, nothing."


    "Alright. I''m going to do a few loops to get a sense for the town, you and Nal warm in the Arrow," I said, nodding towards the air speeder. "When I get back, we can trade, and I''ll ride in the back. Oh, and shift over to the east side, that''s where most of the attacks have been coming from."


    They both hopped off their bikes, and I climbed onto one, turning it on and spending a minute getting used to the controls before zipping away. The truth was I needed a bit of time to familiarize myself with this speeder as I was just barely able to fly it. We spent some time going over the controls on the way to this frozen rock, but I needed some time to work it all out.


    After a few trips out into the rocky tundra and five or six trips around the town, I was feeling pretty confident with the more complicated controls, including the forward-facing blaster cannon, which actually seemed to pack a pretty serious punch, at least it did when the target was the rocks and boulders out in the tundra.


    When I was finally satisfied with my flying, I flew around the town again, slowly stopping at the Arrow. Nal was already outside, sitting on his C-PH. As I came to a stop beside him, I turned the speeder down to idle.


    For a long moment, we sat there, staring out into the white and brown expanse. After a while, I sagged a bit and cursed.


    "Dammit. I should have realized how boring this would be."

 Chapter 38

    It didn''t take long for me to realize that my assumption about how to deal with the cold was very wrong. While the interior of the Arrow was nice and warm, anyone stuck driving the C-PHs around quickly got cold enough that it was a genuine medical concern. Even with rotating out every fifteen minutes of patrolling and sitting around, we were quickly getting way too cold to function properly.


    I could heal away frostbite, but that didn''t mean any of us wanted to actually get it.


    I made a quick call to Rabben with my comm, and when he stopped laughing at me for taking that long to realize it was a genuine issue, he agreed to round up some clean winter wear in exchange for three of the spare blaster rifles we had stashed in the Arrow. Thirty minutes and a quick exchange later, and we were all wrapped up in cold-rated jackets and pants, with gloves and face masks.


    "Thank you, we don''t have much experience with planets this cold," I explained to the Besalisk, trying my best to make it sound like a simple oversight rather than a symptom of inexperience.


    "''s hardly a fair trade, couple bits of clothes for three blasters," Rabben admitted with a shrug. "Dilip was happy to turn a profit in the trade."


    When the large humanoid left to return to his work, I turned back to my ground team, watching as they finished bundling up. Nal was leaving most of it off as he was piloting Arrow, but Julus and Tatnia eagerly strapped on every extra layer.


    "Alright, we can stretch out the rotation a bit more, but let''s see how efficient this gear is before setting a time.¡­" I said, trailing off slightly with a wince. "So we are going to be flying around, on patrol for several more hours¡­ I would like to try and learn some new magic, but I can''t do that while on a C-PH¡­."


    Nal chuckled as he realized I was basically asking to hog the gunner seat of the Arrow while everyone else flew around, Tatnia and Julus catching on shortly after.


    "It''s fine, Boss, this gear feels warm, and we can rotate out the pilot," Tatnia assured me. "Every bit you learn makes our team more powerful, so it''s worth the cold and time."


    Nal and Julus agreed that it was fine, so the blue-skinned Duros and myself climbed into the Arrow. I took the back seat, the one that had a fold-down screen and a control system for the roof turret. I quickly collapsed and moved the turret controls out of the way, allowing me to summon my grimoire. I took a few minutes to familiarize myself with my options before flipping to the segment about the fire rune spell and beginning to study.


    The first day of patrolling and waiting passed slowly but steadily. I managed to learn fire rune pretty easily, happily adding it to my repertoire by the end of the day. We ended up testing it outside of town as we investigated the crashed speeder the team had stumbled on while I was talking to Besalisk. The explosion it caused was decent, though I had a feeling it looked more potent than it actually was due to the fireball it spat out. There was no doubt it would take out people in even a medium level of armor, but it wasn''t taking down air speeders anytime soon¡­ Probably.


    Patrols continued on into the next day, and I flew around on one of the C-PHs, practicing my magic since I could do that on the back of a moving speeder. I spent the first half of the day casting each spell before canceling it, repeating that dozens and dozens of times. The second half of the day, while flying around on patrol, I dedicated completely to mastering the clairvoyance spell as soon as possible, trying my best to push it to the limit. The sooner I could use it to locate stuff I had never seen in person, the better.


    To practice the spell, I started with the easy stuff, scanning for odds and ends I knew were on the Talos Chariot. It was a warm-up, something to let me really get a feel for how the spell felt and worked. Eventually, when I was satisfied I had mastered the basic levels of the spell, I started pushing it further by searching for some of the ingots we used to buy Nevue. While doing that didn''t take more energy or change the nature of the spell, I could feel it reaching further, latching on to the astronomically distant credit ingot.


    As I practiced, I could feel myself getting better and better with the spell, the aetheric linking that let the spell connect to distant objects, people, and locations getting more and more manageable. My ultimate test, the confirmation that I had successfully mastered the spell, was trying to get the spell''s arrow to point to Cloud City, a place that I chose at random because I had obviously never been there but had seen a half dozen times in the movies.


    I was getting closer, but by the end of the day, I still hadn''t managed to link to something I had never seen personally. I was pretty sure my seemingly natural ineptitude with illusion magic was holding me back, despite the fact that I knew the matrix by heart and had it firmly ingrained into my aetheric field.


    On the third day of flying around on patrols, killing time waiting for the raiders to show up on the Talos Chariot''s sensors, I was back in the back of the Arrow, my grimoire opened to the muffle spell. So far, we hadn''t really been using stealth, at least not to the point where the ability to silence yourself was useful, but I knew at some point it could come in handy, so I wanted to at least know it.


    In total, the new spell took me just under nine hours to learn, my issue with illusion magic once again rearing its head. By the end of it, I was just glad that there were very few spells I desperately wanted from the illusion branch of magic.


    Between practicing and learning magic, patrolling, and keeping an eye out for people sneaking around the outskirts of the mining town, I also had plenty of time to observe the town itself. It was clear to see that the stress of the constant threat of raids was grinding on its citizens. I saw three fights between citizens, one of which I almost stepped in to break up when Rabben arrived to do so.


    It didn''t help that there were a surprising amount of people crammed into the relatively small town, enough that I was confused about where they were all staying. When I wondered that question out loud, Nal pointed out that there were probably apartments underground to help lower heating costs. It certainly explained why some of the prefab-looking buildings seemed to house multiple families while not being all that much bigger than the ferrocrete buildings that made up the majority of the town''s structures.


    We were about halfway through the fourth day when Calima called me out of the blue, cutting me off during a conversation with Tatnia.


    "Say again, Calima?" I asked after pulling my comm out.


    "Sensors are¡­ picking up energy signatures coming towards the town," She repeated. "We are orienting to descend from behind them to keep them from running away. Racer has already calculated a possible general area where their camp might be."


    "How long do we have?"


    "... forty-five minutes at¡­ their current speed," Calima responded. "From the west."


    "Alright, get into position, I want you to hit them just before they get to the town," I explained.


    "Understood¡­ Good luck."


    I quickly called Rabben to warn him, and within fifteen minutes, the entire town had disappeared into whatever buildings the people called home. It was actually kind of eerie, watching a whole town disappear, with hardly any shouting or panic, save a few startled kids.


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    As I looked around, I could see a dozen or so people making their way to the roofs of some of the taller structures, taking cover as best they could, including Rabben himself. They were armed and ready, clearly prepared to defend the town as best they could if we failed. My team got ready just as quickly, with Nal and I on the C-PH''s while Julus piloted the Arrow and Tatnia manned its turret. We swung around the town and slowed by the west-facing section, ready to intercept any of the raiders if they managed to get through the coming ambush.


    After about thirty-five minutes, Nal spotted and pointed them out. The large group was visible in the distance, more than twenty speeders, all making a beeline toward us and the town. I raised our electrobinoculars, focusing on them easily as the advanced compensated for their movement.


    They were a rag-tag group dressed in winter clothes of various colors and designs, some newer, while others were ragged and torn, their faces covered with black face masks and goggles. Their speeders were all painted white, but that didn''t stop me from immediately recognizing the classic <u>74-Z design</u></a>. On top of that, most of the raiders had <u>blaster weapons</u></a> slung across their chest, ready to access but out of the way enough to drive. As far as I could tell, like their bikes, all of them were armed with the same thing.


    "Two minutes out¡­ starting rapid descent¡­" Calima said, my comm now set loud enough to hear from my pocket.


    I knew that ships meant for space travel were fast, in the same way that I knew the 747s that seemed to go so slowly in the distance were actually traveling extremely fast. However, it''s one thing to know that and another to see a seventy-three-meter-long spaceship drop from the high atmosphere to about a hundred and fifty meters off the ground, almost on top of the large biker swarm.


    It was incredible to watch as the Talos Chariot moved fast enough that by the time it was on the raiders, slowing down to match their speed, they had barely had enough time to react to it at all. And now that it was there, they weren''t getting away.


    Immediately the quad laser turret on the bottom of the vessel deployed, swiveling around and unloading a deluge of red energy bolts. It was similar to the weapon mounted to the Millenium Falcon and was designed to take down shielded starfighters, which meant it was very overqualified for this use.


    The blasts of energy eviscerated the first three speeders instantly, the vehicles detonating in explosions that knocked out another raider. Near misses were lethal as well, each blast exploding violently and hurling rocks and chunks of frozen dirt like frag mines going off. The Chariots tail mounted heavy cannon, the newest addition to the ship''s direct armament, swiveled around as well, firing deadly beams of energy down at the back row of speeders, killing two more and causing another to tumble off their bike, most likely dying when they hit the ground.


    To their credit, the raiders reacted a lot smoother than any raider gang had any right to. Instead of the chaos and mayhem that I had been expecting, the remaining bikes peeled off into three groups, smoothly reorienting to avoid more fire. They spread out as well, making it much more difficult to take out multiple targets at once. If our only ace in the hole had been the ship, we would have been in trouble, as it wouldn''t have been able to stop all three groups at once. Instead, two gray streaks burst out of the Chariot''s starboard hangar as the fruits of Miru''s labor were deployed.


    Our brilliant engineer had had three days to herself, waiting for the raiders to take the bait, and she had not been idle. Between her own programming skills and Racers, she had torn down the loyalty sections of the droid tri-fighters and slaved their command code to her own commands. Their controls were a little clunky, something Miru was confident she could fix, but painting seven fleeing speeder bikes as targets for an airstrike was pretty straightforward.


    The tri fighters tore after the second largest group, flying far faster than the Chariot and swerving at angles that would have torn the much larger vessel to pieces. Their advanced targeting systems and a mix of laser weapons erased their targets in a matter of seconds, leaving trails of blue thruster energy as they flew a patrol circuit around the town.


    Meanwhile, Miru, who was manning the C-ROC''s tail cannon, and Calima wiped out the largest group almost as fast, the only delay caused by trying to match the speeder bikes maneuverability with their heavy weapons.


    That just left the smallest group, four speeder bikes that, at first, had stayed straight, heading directly for us and the town. Funnily enough, after seeing their compatriots die with very little effort, they seemed much less eager to attack the town, especially when they got close enough to see us waiting for them. The remaining four speeders slowed and turned before burning away, back the way they came, as fast as they could.


    "Our turn!" I said before gunning my own speeder bike.


    Nal easily kept up with me, our extremely fast bikes whipping away from the Arrow and chasing after the fleeing raiders. According to Miru, the Empire apparently designed C-PH to be the fastest speeder bike available. Miru had attempted to explain to me how it managed to hold that title, but it had gone over my head. Now though, as we whipped past rocks, snow mounds, and the charred, slagged remains of raider bikes and the drivers, I at least understood what it meant.


    The C-PH was fucking FAST.


    Until now, even when I was practicing before, I had yet to open one up and go, but boy did it have a whole lot of get up and fucking go. Both Nal and I held on tightly as we chased after the raiders, quickly catching up to them, my bike letting out a long beep, letting me know whoever I was chasing just came into weapons targeting range.


    I clamped down my finger on the fire control, the forward-facing cannon dumping a barrage of red energy, chasing after the still-running speeder bikes. The self-adjusting targeting system tried to lock on and direct my fire, but between my own movement and the raider''s surprisingly skilled and effective juking, I couldn''t land a shot.


    Nal, on the other hand, seemed to know something I didn''t, or at least could compensate for the movement well enough to rake his blaster fire across the closest bike, the back end exploding in sparks and fire, the driver tumbling off and vanishing, turning a long streak of the icy, broken stone ground red.


    We continued to chase after them, easily keeping up with them for another few minutes, managing to take out a second speeder and rider before I made a gesture to Nal, both of us slowing significantly, turning back as if we were heading back to town. We flew for about fifteen seconds before stopping, waiting for the Arrow to catch up.


    "Was that sufficient?" Nal asked as we came to a stop.


    I raised my hand and, for a moment, focused on one of the two raiders who had "Escaped" before casting the arrow version of clairvoyance. My hand glowed for a second before the familiar pale white arrow appeared, wobbling slightly as it pointed back toward the raiders.


    "Yup!" I said. "We got them!"

 Chapter 39

    Julus and Tatnia showed up about five minutes after I had confirmed we would be able to track the raiders. They pulled up in the Arrow just as I was climbing off of the C-PH, the turret spinning around as Tatnia surveyed the area. The side door of the Arrow opened without prompting, and I stuck my head.


    "I can track them," I confirmed. "The only question is if we should give them time or head in now."


    "Uh, why would we give them time?" Julus asked. "They might get away."


    "If they escape off the planet, then that''s more or less our problem solved," I explained. "And there is nowhere on this planet that I wouldn''t be able to track them easily, so there''s no risk of them escaping in their speeders. But I was thinking that we could wait until nighttime. Just wanted to hear what everyone thought."


    "They are off center, Boss," Julus pointed out. "Better to set off while the thrusters are still hot."


    Nal nodded in agreement quickly, while Tatnia seemed more on the fence.


    "Ambushing them while they sleep is probably safer," She pointed out. "They will have to eventually."


    "Let''s go with a middle ground," I suggested. "We have to wait until they are in their base, at least. Once they stop moving, Nal and I will make a nice big loop around their base, and then we can move in and see what''s going on."


    The three agreed that was our best bet, which just left a bit of waiting. Both of us climbed inside the Arrow to warm up, and I basically chain-cast clairvoyance. I was waiting for the arrow to stop wobbling and shifting side to side slightly, which would mean the target had stopped flying around.


    "What are the chances any of those bikes could be salvaged?" I asked, getting a raised eyebrow from Nal. "I mean, the ones they hit directly are all scrap, obviously. But some of the raiders were just knocked off their seats."


    "Those might be intact," Tatnia admitted. "Why, though? We already have enough speeders, and the C-PHs are much faster than 74-Zs. Whoever was stuck with them wouldn''t be able to keep up."


    "Not for us. It might be nice to sell them back to the town for cheap," I responded. "Give them some defense capabilities of their own."


    "...Well. Right. If any are in workable shape, they might not be there when we get back," Julus pointed out.


    "After the show, we just put on?" I responded. "I think cheating us out of our promised reward is the last thing on their minds."


    Tatnia and Nal nodded in agreement, the former breaking open a food package and passing out snacks to everyone.


    "Aren''t 74-Z''s imperial tech?" Julus asked after a minute.


    "They''ve been around since the Clone Wars," Nal explained. "They are military gear, but it''s not strange to find civilians using them."


    "No¡­ he has a point," Tatnia said, a slightly confused look on her face. "One or two here or there is one thing¡­ but more than twenty? That''s a lot weirder than five busted up C-PH."


    "Well¡­ you think they are Imperials?" I asked skeptically.


    "No, they wouldn''t be dressed like that," Tatnia said, shaking her head with a frown. "I don''t know what I''m saying, just that it''s strange that some random raider gang has access to more than twenty speeder bikes, all military gear of the same model."


    "Their blasters were all the same as well," I pointed out, getting a look from my companions. "I don''t know the model, but they were all the same design, slung over in mostly the same way."


    "So¡­ what does that mean?" Julus asked, the rest of quiet for a moment before I spoke up.


    "... It means keep your eyes open and stay in contact. I don''t think this is Imperials, but something might be going on," I answered, Julus nodding in response.


    Quietly we continued our small meal, all of us now thinking about what this information could mean, though none of us could come up with a good enough answer. When we were all finished with the food, I cast clairvoyance again, watching the arrow sit perfectly still. It had been close to an hour, meaning our targets had covered a significant amount of ground.


    "Almost time to go. They''ve stopped," I explained, looking at Nal. "A few minutes to make sure they aren''t taking a break, and then we mount up."


    After a few minutes passed and the arrow didn''t move as far as I could tell, Nal and I hopped back on the C-PHs and raced off, heading straight for our target. After about thirty minutes of flying around, we swung wide so we wouldn''t get too close to the raider camp before we were ready. After another thirty minutes of flying around, we had a good sense of what the surrounding area was like. We slowly tighten our circle around the camp before eventually stopping, climbing off our bikes, and continuing on foot.


    As we got closer, I cast a muffle on myself, silently taking points as we approached our target. After about twenty minutes of walking, we were close enough to the camp that my arrow was pointing down into the snow. After about five minutes of scanning around, we spotted a large hole in the snow, with a lot of relatively warm air coming out of it, according to the thermal setting on my goggles.


    A quick message later, and Julus and Tatnia were on their way, both of them leaving the air speeder to join us. Once they arrived, we headed to the hole, slowly making our way to and then down the obviously artificial hole into the snow and ice. The tunnel led down a few dozen feet before opening up to a large, open space. It was a low, circular dome carved into the ice, maybe fifty feet under the top layer of snow. From what I could see, it was at least sixty meters in diameter, with metal supports added into the middle.


    I was getting some serious Empire Strikes Back vibes.


    The camp itself was extensive, with several temporary structures that looked collapsible but still relatively sturdy. There was a lot of equipment and cargo around, though tarps covered most of it, probably protecting it from water damage. In all, everything was much better quality and much better organized than any raider camp should have been, just adding more evidence that something was going on here.


    By the entrance tunnel into the underground camp were two speeder bikes, the surviving raiders'' rides. They seemed in excellent condition and, more importantly, completely unattended. I held up two fingers and gestured to the left, Tatnia and Julus sharing a look and a nod before breaking off and going to the left. I was thrilled they understood what I meant, considering we hadn''t discussed hand signals at all yet.


    As Nal and I moved to the right, I quickly summoned my bound armor and cast muffle again, dumping all of my leftover mana into my armor. When I was adequately protected and silent, I pulled out my blaster, holding it up and ready. With a look over my shoulder at Nal, I slowly took point, both of us making our way around the right side of the dugout camp. Almost immediately, the sound of voices reached our ears, though we had to walk in further to hear them, and even then, their hushed tones barely reached us.


    "-ust gone¡­ all of them¡­"


    "-ission statement¡­ call for evac-"


    "-on''t come¡­ no reason we-"


    I nodded towards the talking and started walking closer, following the sounds as best I could. Both of us were moving slowly because even though I was magically silent, I could still make noise if I fucked up hard enough. A few seconds after following the voices, we stepped out from behind a stack of crates to find a small clearing. Not wanting to be seen just yet, we pulled back and stood to the shadow cast by the crates.


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    In the clearing were several tables, each lined with chairs, like some sort of public mess hall or gathering space. Sitting in those seats were five individuals. Two of them dressed as the raiders had been, in piecemeal winter gear, though most of that had been stripped off. They sat in their chairs like they had lost all energy and collapsed into themselves. The other three looked at them in disbelief, their faces pale or the nonhuman equivalent. Those three were dressed in what looked like a basic uniform, though not any that I recognized.


    "The information said they didn''t have enough money to hire anyone like that!" One of the three uniformed individuals shouted. "Where the fuck did that ship come from?"


    "Does it matter?" One of the "raiders" asked with a hollow. "It''s here, it wiped us out. We need to call this mission off."


    At that, most of the group looked at a blue-skinned <u>Pantoran</u></a>, whose forehead was marked by a yellow symbol I couldn''t quite make out. He was sitting heavily on the table behind him, taking several seconds to respond to the looks.


    "We¡­ will call for extraction," He finally said, the two "raiders" sagging in relief. "Seron, to establish a connection, I''ll-"


    Hearing that they were going to get in contact with someone off-planet, I quickly stepped out of the crate stack''s shadow. Several steps later, I was entering the clearing, my pistol raised, Nal right behind me.


    "Hey! Hands up! Put your hands up where I can see them!" I called out, startling all five of the "raiders."


    One of the raiders who had survived their encounter with the Chariot stood up and whirled to face us, raising his blaster carbine, which had been hidden from my view. Showing surprising skill, he had his weapon up and aimed at me in seconds, firing a quick burst of lethal red energy. Two of the beams hit my bound armor, almost shattering it before Nal fired twice in return, each shot hitting the "raider" in his center of mass. The now very dead man fell to the ground, two charred holes in his torso.


    I poured more mana into my bound armor, its damage slowly repairing itself as I held my pistol up, recovering from the force of the bolts quickly. Just as I was doing that, Julus and Tatnia came around a different building, both of them training weapons on the remaining "raiders."


    "Hands in the air, or we will kill you!" I shouted again, this time getting a response, a Rodian raising his hand immediately.


    With one of their companions having surrendered, the remaining three quickly followed, raising their hands in the air. I stepped closer, keeping my gun trained on them.


    "Julus, Tatnia, disarm them," I said, not taking my eyes off of them as the two humans quickly went to work, checking each survivor for weapons, finding two hold-out blasters and more vibroblades.


    "Good. Now slowly sit down at the table and put your hands on the tabletop," I ordered when Tatnia stepped back and gave me a nod. "Any of you take your hands off, and my friend here will put a crispy hole through your chest."


    Slowly the now disarmed "raiders" moved to sit at the table, carefully keeping their hands visible and on the blue polymer surface. Once all three were sitting, I slid my pistol into my holster and dismissed my bound armor.


    "Fantastic. Now, my name is Deacon, and I was hired by the good people of Solinda to stop the raider attacking their town," I explained, taking the opportunity to study and meet each of our prisoners'' eyes. "I could just put a bolt into each of you and collect my pay. In fact, I''m kinda tempted to do just that."


    The four tensed when I mentioned just killing them, and two of them started looking around rapidly, trying desperately to find a way out of the situation.


    "Fortunately for you, I am a sucker for a good mystery," I admitted. "So I''m going to give you all a single, thirty-second chance. You tell me what the fuck is going on here, because your clearly not really raiders, and I won''t kill you."


    "Bantha shit!" The Pantoran said, still pale and shaken but clearly not broken. "And risk your payment?"


    "I was paid to stop the raids," I explained. "I clearly did that. Now I want to know why you were pretending to be raiders in the first place. Your chance starts now."


    I said, slowly counting down in my head. After about fifteen seconds, all of them were sweating, despite the relatively low temperatures. At the five-second mark, I pulled out my pistol again and took a step closer.


    "W-we were hired to scare the miners off!" The last remaining speeder pilots shouted, finally cracking under the threat. "We-"


    "Seron, will you shut-!" The Pantoran started to say, turning and reaching out with his hands, like he was going to strangle the confessing "raider."


    Without a word, Nal raised his pistol and fired, the red bolt slamming into the shouting Pantoran, who collapsed forward heavily onto the table, dead before the impact. I turned to look at Nal, who was slowly lowering his pistol.


    "You were saying?" I asked after turning back towards the remaining conscious mercenaries.


    "W-we were hired by the mining guild!" The human, Seron, continued. "We were supposed to drive the miners away by slowly starving them out, and in between raids, we were supposed to scan the planet!"


    "What for?"


    "<u>Vonium</u></a> and <u>Varium</u></a>!" He answered quickly. "We melt holes in the snow and scan down into the planet!"


    "No, why were you scanning it in the first place?" I asked, clarifying what I meant.


    "I¡­ I don''t know¡­"


    "The initial survey came back negative, but someone at the Miners Guild realized that the snow would have messed with the scans," One of the other mercenaries explained, seemingly happy to have some useful knowledge. "They came back later when the snow receded some, during the planet''s warm period, and they scanned it again from orbit. It came back positive for Vonium and Varium!


    "B-But they need to know how much is here, and they need Solinda gone so they can claim the planet!" The third mercenary explained, not wanting to be the only one who wasn''t helpful.


    "So you guys have been killing people, slowly starving them at the behest of the Mining Guild, trying to scare them off so they could swoop in and mine the Vonium and Varium?" I asked, getting some nods in confirmation. "Jesus, it''s like an ''R'' rated Scooby-Doo mystery."


    I shook my head and let out a short and slightly manic laugh at the absurdity and the horror. I rubbed my face, pulling off my gloves, before looking over at Nal.


    "Knock them out, please."


    He nodded and pulled up his pistol again, ignoring the shouts and pumping the three remaining mercenaries with blue stun energy. I let out a long sigh, shaking my head.


    "Alright, let''s get these guys tied up, I want to hand them over to Rabben," I explained before turning to Julus. "Call the Chariot for me, let them know everything is good, and I want Calima to fly over here to transport stuff back to the town."


    "You realize they are just going to kill them?" Tatnia asked, sliding her weapon into her holster.


    "I know, but then it''s on them," I said with a shrug. "They can do what they want with them, it''s their right, not ours."

 Chapter 40

    The rest of the day was a flurry of constant activity.


    The prisoners were transported back to Solinda, where they were promptly executed for their crimes. When I explained what the real story was behind the "raiders," Rabben seemed to be partly ecstatic and partly terrified. He asked very urgently if he could join me as we went back to the camp, and I agreed.


    Very quickly, he recognized most of the equipment, having used it himself multiple times.


    "It''s a deep scanning system," He explained, activating it with a few button taps. "It''s supposed ta be a powerful all-purpose scanner, but this brand is known for seeing raw resources."


    The device came in two pieces, one of which was its computer system, which was what Rabben was working on. After a few minutes of scanning, he pulled out his comm unit, downloading some data to it.


    "They have been scanning since before their first raid," He explained, his usual rough demeanor fading behind a bubbling nervousness and wired energy. "And already they managed to uncover two mineral deposits! From what I can see, they are worth, a minimum, as much as both our platinum mines combined¡­ EACH!"


    "Have they been transmitting their data?"


    "In batches," He responded. "I don''t know when the last message was, just when the data was accessed. I need to return to Solinda, contact some people. This planet just became very valuable."


    I had Nal drive him back in the speeder, and stayed behind to help with the looting. When I had gone to drop off our prisoners, they had gotten a jump start on going through the camp, picking out what was worth keeping, what was worth selling to the town, and what was worth hauling away to sell off the world. By the time I had returned with Rabben, Racer was already directing the labor droids to disassemble two of the temporary structures. Deployed, the structures were about six meters wide and ten long, but disassembled, they flat packed away into a tiny fraction of the space they provided.


    The longer we went through everything, the more we realized that most of the stuff was better off being sold back to Solinda, as we really had no use for it. On top of the temporary structures, we also took some of their survival gear, specifically some heating units, water filtration systems, energy units, and a few more bits that essentially equated to Sci-fi camping gear.


    On top of that, we also snagged the scanner system the mercenaries had been using to scan for ore deposits. According to Miru, it was a very nice system and worth taking. She apparently already had an idea in mind and had to be reminded to finish going over the equipment before running off to tinker. I was tempted to grab the laser cutter they used to make the underground base itself, but according to Nal, it was a low-powered version and wasn''t actually worth much. On top of that, we already had two blaster rifles that could do similar things just by fiddling with their settings.


    With everything we wanted to keep stored on the Chariot, we quickly loaded up the Arrow and C-PHs, before Calima flew us back to Solinda. We landed around the same spot as we had when we first came to the snow-covered planet. By then, it was starting to get dark, and as Nal and I stepped out, we were immediately directed to the town hall, where Rabben was still working.


    Stepping into one of the larger ferrocrete structures in town, Nal and I both stopped to appreciate the whirlwind of work that was happening in front of us. Rabben was talking to three people at once through a holoprojector, negotiating the price of a land claim. When I realized they were talking about a down payment of just under three million credits, the number slowly creeping upwards, I mentally tossed out the idea of basically giving away all of the gear still at the mercenary camp. They could clearly afford to pay for it in full.


    When Rabben was finally done with his negotiations, settling on the offer made by a Rodian for 4.3 million credits and 10% of their net profits, he turned to me with a smile. Behind him, the holoprojector shifted to show the planet, which was now dotted with two green marks.


    "Sorry for making you wait," He said, smiling despite how tired and frantic he looked.


    "It''s alright, this is clearly big news to you," I said.


    "You have no idea, my friend," The Besalisk said, patting my shoulder with a thump. "You''ve just turned the fates of this entire town on its head! Days ago, we were contemplating shutting down and leaving. Today, every member of this town is more wealthy than they ever dreamed of being."


    "How come you guys missed these deposits before?" Nal asked, looking past the large leader to the holoprojector behind him.


    "Because we bought them original scans from the Mining Guild," He responded, shaking his head. "We knew of the two deposits of platinum our mines sit on, as well as three smaller sites, but that''s it, ya. But now? We plan on scanning around as much of the planet as possible."


    "Well, I''m glad we could help you out," I said with a smile, the larger man chuckling. "We''ve taken what we want from the campsite, interested in buying the rest?"


    "What''s left?"


    Nal pulled out his data pad and started listing the general outline of what remained in the camp, the Besalisk nodding along as he did. When he got to the bottom, Rabben was silent for a moment before making his offer.


    "Ten thousand. And I want any salvage from the bikes around here."


    "Fifteen. And that''s fine."


    "Eleven thousand. Don''t forget the stuff that is ours was part of the original deal."


    "I remember just fine. Thirteen."


    "Twelve thousand¡­ and another five if you wait to leave until after our new security arrives."


    "New security?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "What new security, and how long?"


    "Our planet is now worth millions and millions of credits," He explained. "More if we keep finding deposits in our deep scans. We need more than just one cruiser to protect us now, especially if the Miners Guild doesn''t decide to cut their losses. I''m hoping to spend a chunk of what we just made in those sales to hire them."


    "How long?" I repeated. "We can stay for a while, especially if you are paying us, but we do need to move on eventually..."


    "Fine, six thousand for four days, then another two grand per day after that," Rabben offered, extending his hand. "Deal?"


    "...Deal," I confirmed, shaking his hand.


    "Good. Telami!" Rabben shouted, waving down one of the many people running around the large room. "Pay this man, twenty-seven thousand. Fifteen for the original deal and twelve for the extra equipment."


    "Right away, sir," The small, mouse-esque humanoid said, pulling me aside while Rabben shouted to another person, telling them to get a crew together to grab their newly purchased equipment.


    A quick exchange of information later, and our group account was twenty-seven thousand credits richer. I immediately took nine thousand credits out and split it out between everyone, paying everyone in my crew, before heading back to the Talos Chariot.


    -------------------------


    The crew was happy to stick around for a few days and get paid to basically wait, although Tatnia did point out that we would be expected to defend the town if something did come up. I assured her, just like always, I was happy to help but not eager to become a martyr, as horrible as it would be to just leave. If the miners guild showed up, I would help negotiate a surrender or even evacuate people, but I wasn''t about to sacrifice my team for a hopeless fight.


    Miru was perhaps the most excited to have some extra time, as she had a project for the LE-Repair droids that would be much easier for them to do planetside.


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    Her project, which she fully designed out so that the LE droids could do most of the work themselves, was to put the Tri-fighters on the exterior of the ship so that we could clear up even more hangar space. The addition would use some of the mag-locks and clamps that were removed from the wings during the hangar modification. There would be four attachment points located under the "Wings" of the ship. Unfortunately, there was one major problem.


    "Most droids used by the separatists are very, very illegal to use," Miru explained, getting a wince from me. "So, I need to modify the Tri-fighters enough that they don''t look like droids. Otherwise, the second we land on a world with a heavy Imperial presence, we are going to get in big trouble."


    "Does that include the B1s and B2s?"


    "Yeah. Not worried about that, though, they will be easy to disguise with a bit of metal plating stock, and no one will ask any questions. "The tri-fighter, however, is going to be stuck to the outside of the Chariot, completely obvious. I have an idea¡­ but it''s going to take a chunk of our metal stock."


    "Alright, show me what you got."


    The very eager mechanical genius led me down to her workshop, practically bouncing with energy. It was the morning of the first day of our extended watch on Itander, and I could tell she had been holding herself back since she woke up.


    She sat down on a chair and tapped into her computer, a holo projection of the tri-fighter appearing next to her, showing several precise measurements. She described removing the top wing of the tri-fighter and shifting the engine components inside to compensate, as well as removing the missile support frame under the starfighter. The projected image shifted and changed as she described what she wanted. According to the pink-skinned Twi''lek, the reduced weight and height would let her use metal plating to cover the bottom wings. The resulting modification gave the tri-fighter an angular teardrop shape that terminated at the engines suddenly before the tail of the teardrop. The central sphere, where the primary control unit and droid brain sat, was still mostly exposed at the top and bottom.


    "The ship would lose a single laser cannon and the ability to carry missiles, but we would have gone bankrupt keeping those stocked anyway. The reduction in weight compensates for the new metal frame, as well as this," She said, a small addition planting itself inside some of the empty space created by the metal frame and plating. "A shield generator. There isn''t enough space or energy for anything massively powerful, but even a low-level shield would improve its survivability by a lot. And they are already a pretty deadly starfighter."


    "How much will that cost?"


    "The shield generator?" She asked, continuing when I nodded. "Depends on what kind we get, if it''s used, and how old it is. There is enough space for several dozen different models that I know of. Somewhere between three to eight thousand if it''s used, five to twelve if it''s new."


    "Something used then, I don''t want these becoming too expensive to throw away if we need to."


    "Sure, it makes sense to me," She agreed. "Does that mean¡­."


    "Yes, you can start the modifications. Do one at a time so that if something comes up, we will at least have one. What''s the word on the vulture droids?"


    "I haven''t started working out their coding, I wanted to get the tri fighters usable first," She explained with a shrug. "Their programming is really basic, so it won''t take long. The downside is that they aren''t very good. Kinda just a group of moves tied together with instructions on when to use them. Plus, they only last like five minutes without the solid fuel slug they use."


    "... Kinda sounds like they are useless."


    "They might make a good distraction?" She suggested tentatively. "I don''t know, they might not be worth working on."


    "Could you use their armor?" I asked, continuing when she gave me a confused look. "As the metal plating for the tri-fighter modification."


    "...Yeah, I could. I have all the right tools to work with metal¡­ It would also be better suited, lighter, but probably tougher since it is specifically tempered as armored," She said, going over it in her head. "Does that mean you''re giving up on the vulture droids? Because if you are, I could use their parts for other stuff¡­."


    "If they are as useless as you say they are, then yeah. Do me a favor and use the parts from the ones we already disassembled first, alright? And finish the tri-fighters before moving on to your next project."


    "I have like five projects going on at once," She said, putting her hands on her hips. "One more won''t hurt!"


    I chuckled and patted her shoulder, leaving her to her work while I went to find some breakfast. By the time I had finished, Miru already had four of the LE droids working on the exterior mounts, while she was already working on the first tri-fighter, the fifth LE droid working with her.


    Over the next few days, all the way to the fifth day, we all did our best to keep busy. I worked my way through four spells, ice rune, elemental bolt, firebolt, and bound battle axe. At this point, I was starting to get closer to working on the apprentice-level spells that I really had no reason to learn but would anyway in case it counted towards when I would unlock adept-level magic.


    The entire crew took turns working with Miru, helping her remold some of the armor pieces from the vulture droids into plating for the tri-fighters. It wasn''t particularly difficult, her tools did most of the work. The most challenging part was maneuvering some of the awkward pieces into her workshop. Calima was the only one not to help, but considering she spent most of her time in the cockpit, keeping an eye on the sensors, none of us were complaining.


    By the time the fifth day rolled around, Mirue had completed her modifications and then some, painting the tri fighters to even further obfuscate their original design, settling on a simple design of spaceship white with blue highlights. For now, the modified tri-fighter, now nicknamed raindrops by the crew, sat in the starboard hangar bay, waiting for us to exit the atmosphere to attach to their exterior mounts. According to Miru, that wasn''t necessary, but I wanted to ensure they could handle the docking process first.


    Thankfully we wouldn''t have to wait long, as the first wave of extra security finally arrived in the form of several drop ships and a Clone Wars-era Arquitens light cruiser, as well as a squadron of mixed starfighters. The Arquiten set up in the atmosphere and would soon be joined by more ships, while the starfighter squadron and drop ships landed near Solinda, quickly setting up a base camp. Not long after they arrived, Rabben made his way to the Chariot, and I headed out to meet him.


    "I want to thank you again," He said, shaking my hand with his massive grip. "If you and ya crew hadn''t come by, we would have left this claim behind without knowing we were giving up our fortunes."


    "I''m just glad we could keep you from getting cheated," I responded with a smile and a nod. "We will be heading out soon now that your new security is here."


    "I thought as much," He said with a large smile. "We already transferred your second payment, as well as a bonus for going the extra klick. I suspect Itander and Solinda are about to see some rather impressive growth, so if you ever need a place to lay low, you have it."


    "Appreciated," I said simply. "It was nice meeting you, Rabben. Good luck."

 Chapter 41

    With our first proper mercenary mission completed, we left Itander behind a few hours after Rabben stopped by to say goodbye. Once in space, Miru deployed the raindrop fighters out of the hangar bay, directing them up and under the ship, where the mag-lock and cargo clamps locked them against the hull. When they attached, a muffled thud reverberated through the ship.


    "Oookay, the raindrops are properly attached," Miru said with a smile. "We are good to go!"


    "Great," Julus said, having joined Miru and I down in the hangar bay for the occasion. "Where are we going?"


    "For now? The middle of nowhere so we can have a group meeting," I responded, Miru, Julus, and Racer all following as I made my way up to the bridge. "We have some options to discuss."


    It took a few minutes to get everyone together, Calima the last one to arrive since she was plotting a course to a random spot in nearby space. We made a quick two-minute jump to the edge of the Itander system before the Tholothian left the bridge and sat down at the large lounge table.


    "Alright. So our first mercenary mission was a rather resounding success," I said with a smile, everyone cheering and patting each others backs. "Everyone performed great, we got some decent gear out of it, made much more money than I expected, and managed to make Solinda fucking rich. If all things go well for Rabben, we have a pretty loyal place to retreat to, should we need to."


    "What was our final¡­ Payment?" Calima asked. "I saw the money in my account, but I am curious what we made in total."


    "I was getting to that," I assured her before pulling out my data pad. "We got the full fifteen thousand for stopping the raider and returning most of what they stole that wasn''t food. Another twelve for the leftover gear we sold to them, and then another eight for hanging around until their new security forces arrived. Rabben was also kind enough to give us three thousand credits as a bonus for helping them figure out what was going on in the first place. Which reminds me.¡­"


    I opened up the business account again, taking the three thousand dollar bonus and spreading it out evenly between everyone before confirming the transfer. Not long after I did, the crew''s comms started to go off.


    "That''s your account, I split the bonus between everyone," I explained, Julus letting out a cheer in response. "That brings us up to fifty-four thousand credits in total, not a bad chunk of credits."


    "So what''s next?" Julus asked, repeating his earlier question.


    "Well, we have a few options," I said, leaning back in my chair. "Miru getting the tri-fighters up and running and then modifying them into the raindrops has massively increased our capabilities."


    "It wasn''t that hard, Racer helped with the code, and all I did for the conversion was remove some stuff and move other stuff around," She insisted, a hint of a blush on her cheeks. "The only tough part was the charging ports on their mounting."


    "Wait, they don''t run on fuel?"


    "They do, but they can also last about ten minutes without it," She assured me. "By default, they use the fuel first, but I switched it so we don''t have to worry about filling them up as often."


    "Right¡­ Well, Miru also wants to add a shield generator to the raindrops, which we would have to purchase," I said. "After seeing how the tri-fighters trivialized driving off the raiders, I think the raindrops are a solid investment. Plus, we can sell the vulture droids to make up part of the cost."


    "Won''t be able to sell those," Nal responded. "Not legally. CIS droids are illegal to own, remember?"


    "... And if we didn''t care about it being legal?" I asked.


    "I could probably figure it out," Tatnia said. "But it will take a few days, and we will have to go to the right planet. But there are no guarantees anyone will be interested. It''s kind of a specialty item¡­. That said, just selling them to a scrap yard will probably get us four, maybe five thousand?"


    "Well¡­ shit. Alright, let''s scrap them then. They are taking up space, and I''m hoping to fill it soon."


    "With what?" Miru asked.


    "To start with? A transport ship of some kind," I answered. "Landing this every time we go to a planet is a waste of money. An armed transport will give us more options, more flexibility, and more firepower."


    "Well, we can pick up something like that on any world with enough interplanetary traffic," Tatnia said. "Like I said before, it might be a no-name box with guns, engines, and shields, but you don''t need much more than that."


    We talked a bit more before settling on a vague plan. We needed to refuel, buy a transport and some shield generators, all while hopefully scrapping the two intact vulture droids to make up for some of what we spend. After that, we would head out, looking for more mercenary work.


    "Is it worth the hassle to join the bounty hunters guild?" I asked. "You said we weren''t likely to get any good bounties if we didn''t."


    "They have lots of rules," Nal responded. "If you break them, they will come after you. Some of them are¡­ restrictive. Especially if you have morals."


    "Yeah, I don''t want that," I said, shaking my head.


    "Well. Uh. I''m already a low-level member," Julus volunteered, the rest of the crew looking over at him. "Well, technically, I''m not at the moment. But if I paid my dues and the fines for not paying them for so long¡­."


    "... Seriously? You didn''t think to bring that up earlier?" I asked, looking at him incredulously. "Like when we were discussing bounties and how we couldn''t access any good ones?"


    "I wasn''t there for that," He said. "Not saying I shouldn''t have mentioned it sooner, Boss. But I was helping Miru fix the Arrow when you were going over potential jobs."


    I let out a long, defeated sigh before shaking my head and rubbing my face.


    "Anyone else has something similar?" I asked when I had recovered enough. "Nobody is secretly royalty from the Hapes Consortium or part of the Chiss Ascendancy? No?"


    "What''s the Chiss Ascendency?" Miru asked Nal quietly, who shrugged but looked equally curious.


    "Why are you a member?" I asked, ignoring Miru and Nal.


    "If money was ever tight, or if Zandev and I had our eye on a big purchase, we would run a few bounties," He explained, a nostalgic smile on his face. "Just local stuff, nothing too exciting, mostly just dragging people who skipped bail back to a jail cell. Being a member cuts the taxes you pay on money from official bounties to a third, so it''s worth it."


    "Alright, well, that''s an option for the future," I said. "Assuming you could be our go-between, handing in bounties. For now, let''s figure out what planet we are stopping at to offload the vultures and find a transport."


    Racer projected a stellar map, and we discussed the best place to try and offload the vultures, fuel the Chariot and let Miru do her shopping. Eventually, we settled on the relatively nearby world of Daalang, a middling populated world just outside of Hutt Space. Calima set a course, everyone settling in for a four fourteen hour trip. When I spotted Miru immediately heading back to her workshop, I called out to get her attention.


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    "Miru, take it easy, please," I requested, the young Twi''lek turning to face me. "You''ve been working hard for the last few days getting the raindrops finished."


    "Working on stuff is how I relax, though," She pointed out, seemingly worried I would ban her from her workshop or something.


    "Okay, but take it easy, yeah?" I asked. "Non-stop work and stress is bad for you, and it wears you down, which has a tendency to catch up with you at the worst times. So just take it easy, okay?"


    "Alright. I''ll work on some programming and watch some stuff on the Holonet," She agreed. "What are you doing?"


    "Practicing my clairvoyance and-"


    "Your¡­ what?" Calima asked, still sitting at the table.


    "My¡­ oh, right. We haven''t gone over that with you yet.¡­" I said, rubbing my forehead. "So-


    "He''s a space wizard!" Miru shouted, cutting off Nal and Tatnia, probably from saying the same thing.


    "He''s¡­ a what?"


    "A space wizard!"


    "... Come with me, Calima, I can show you down in the cargo bay," I said with a long sigh. "Would have been nice to ease you into it, but no helping it now."


    Still looking confused, Calima stood up slowly, following down to the cargo bay.


    -------------------------------


    By now, I was an old hand at explaining how my magic worked, what it was, and what kind of stuff I could do. So far, everyone accepted the explanation that it was something from my homeworld, or at least one of those strange mysteries you sometimes hear about when traveling around the galaxy. After a fifteen-minute show for Calima, she went back upstairs, looking a little shell-shocked but not enough to consider leaving us or anything that drastic.


    Over the next four hours, I worked on my clairvoyance more, stretching it out as much as I could. About two hours in, I finally achieved one of the first levels of clairvoyance mastery, or at least expertise, the ability to locate objects similar to one you had already identified. Its range was small, I could barely locate a second bolt on the other side of the ship while holding an almost exact copy in my hand, but that was already useful. Or rather, I''m sure it would be, especially as the range had already expanded past the length of the ship by the end of the third hour. This was just the first step in mastering the clairvoyance spell with the next stage, the one I was really looking to learn, finding objects I had seen in detailed images, sketches, or magical reproductions. Once I could do that, I would probably stop spending so much time with the locating spell, as I really didn''t care about the even further higher levels of mastery.


    When we finally landed on Daalang, I negotiated with the owner of the landing pad to supply us with fuel, which he promised would arrive by the end of the day. We didn''t technically need a refill, at least according to Calima, but I would prefer to keep the reactors topped off. Miru and Nal managed to find a scrap yard that would buy the two intact vultures for five thousand credits each, not bad considering how little I originally "paid" for them. At the prompting of Miru, we also negotiated with the yard owner for two used shield generator units in exchange. He eagerly agreed, and after trading a few pictures back and forth, Miru agreed the ones we settled on were good quality. In the end, a hauler came by about four hours after we agreed to the deal, dropping off two higher-end starfighter shield generators and taking the vultures, as well as two thousand extra credits.


    "These are perfect Boss, they should fit nicely in the raindrops," Miru said as the labor bots, directed by Racer, carried the units onto the cargo lift. "I''m gonna add in some of the spare vulture power cells as well to help keep the shields running without affecting the speed or how long it can run without using fuel."


    "That''s not gonna slow it down?" I asked as she stepped onto the cargo lift with the droids and parts.


    "Nope, on top of the rocket mounts and the dorsal wing, I also removed some of its paneling since it was just going to be covered by more paneling," She explained. "With all the changes done, it should be just about the same weight, maybe just a tad heavier."


    I let the young mechanic go, she was clearly eager to get started prepping everything for the final modifications to the raindrops. She hadn''t expected to get the shields this quickly, but she was thankful I was still prioritizing what she wanted.


    It was hard not to after seeing what the tri-fighters had done on Itander.


    By the time everything was loaded and offloaded, and our fuel was delivered, it was already starting to get late. I spent the downtime looking through the inventories of several ship brokers, trying to find the best fit for what we were looking for. I quickly found that Tatnia had been nearly a hundred percent correct, most of what I found in our price range and our required size were no name boxes with very little originality.


    "How did you know there would be so many like this?" I asked him, tilting my data pad toward her.


    "Because hundreds of planets and species make their own shuttles," She explained with a shrug. "There''s no hyperdrive and no reason for showing off when your only goal is to go from planetside to a waiting ship."


    "Right. Sounds like I should definitely bring one of you guys to tell me if it''s junk or not¡­."


    I eventually found two locations not far from us, each one having a couple of shuttles that would fit what we were looking for. Unfortunately, with how late it had gotten, I decided that going out to find it could wait until the following day.


    When Tatnia and I finally did get up and head out early the following day, we ended up taking a taxi in the hope that we would find a shuttle that we liked and would fly it back to the landing pad. We arrived at the first shipyard but immediately realized that there was nothing we were interested in. The two shuttles that had caught my eye were much older than the images let on, having been sitting in the lot for years. There was significant corrosion in their engines caused by the high PH level storms that occasionally plagued the rainy season on Daalang. The salesperson tried to get us to buy a new model that had just come in, one that more or less matched what we needed but that he was asking way too much for. We left frustrated but hopeful that the next place would have what we were looking for.


    When we arrived at the second location, we were immediately more hopeful about the quality of the vehicles, as the salesperson had to actually pull a tarp off them with the help of a hovering droid. We had just stepped into the back end of the second shuttle when my comm suddenly lit up.


    "Boss! Come in!" Miru shouted frantically through the device. "C''mon, c''mon!"


    "Miru? What is it?" I asked, as I pulled my comm out and brought it up to my mouth. "What-"


    "Racer just detected a massive alert over the police frequency," She said, cutting me off. "The entire city quarters security force just got orders to head directly for you, with orders to capture two dangerous criminals matching your descriptions!"

 Chapter 42

    "What?" I asked, looking around with a confused expression. "Are you sure they are coming for us?"


    "Yes! They have rough images of you two and your descriptions!" Miru said, nearly shouting now. "You need to get out of there!"


    Tatnia, who had leaned in to listen when I had started looking around, now looked back at me with wide eyes. She turned to the sale''s person, who was waiting close by.


    "Are these shuttles fueled?" She asked, pulling out her blaster and repeating her question louder. "Are these shuttles fueled?"


    "N-n-no!" They managed to stutter out. "Th-th-they don''t even have power cores! It''s to stop them from being stolen!"


    "God dammit, we need to move!" She said, grabbing my arm and getting me going, both of us running out of the planetside shipyard.


    The shipbroker shouted after us, cursing when we all but kicked out his front door and ran into the streets.


    "What about you guys? Any trouble near you?" I asked, quickly matching Tatnia''s speed, jogging behind her as she picked a direction and quickly set off.


    "We are fine, there''s no movement near us," She explained. "Racer is keeping an eye on it, but so far, not a single eye is looking our way."


    "That''s good, that might mean they haven''t connected us to the ship," I said, looking around, expecting cops to pop out from behind every corner and speeder parked around us. "How long do we have?"


    "A minute maybe, probably less," She responded. "You really need to get out of there!"


    Tatnia, hearing our time limit, gave a quick look over her shoulder and brazenly stepped into the open area in front of the shipyard, a land speeder whining to a stop, its repulsors straining to slow down the vehicle and keep from hitting her.


    The speeder, a simple engine in the back, seating area in front design that was common for land speeders, came to a stop just inches from touching her. Without pausing, she pulled her blaster pistol out and aimed it at the person driving, the <u>Gran</u></a> driver raising his hands up and talking harshly in a language I didn''t understand. Tatnia, on the other hand, spoke right back to him, albeit only a few words, as she climbed into the speeder, the driver shifting over to let Tatnia drive while I sat in the back.


    "Miru, I''m hanging up so I can focus on what''s going on here," I said. "Stay on the ship, Racer can keep track of what''s going on. We don''t want them connecting us to the ship if we can help it!"


    "Alright, Boss¡­ Good luck," The younger Twi''lek responded, sounding anxious and scared.


    As Tatnia gunned the speeder forward, the Gran screamed and shouted until Tatnia shot him in the chest, the familiar stunning blast making him slump down in the passenger seat.


    "What are we doing, boss?" Tatnia asked, looking over her shoulder at me as she drove at slightly dangerous speeds considering how small the road where we were driving was.


    "The fact that nobody is going after the ship means they haven''t linked it to us," I pointed out. "Otherwise, they would have gone after that first. I have no idea why they are coming after us now, but the second we make a beeline toward the Chariot, we lose that advantage."


    "So¡­ we go to ground?" She suggested, and I nodded in agreement. "We-"


    A blaster bolt slapped into the back of the speeder, scoring the plating and making a worrying sound as it whizzed away. I turned back to fire at whoever was shooting at us, only to see someone who very was clearly not a police officer with a blaster rifle pointed at us. I pulled my pistol and took a few snapshots at them, knowing I had no chance of hitting them but hoping to make them duck.


    I managed to take a chunk of ferrocrete from the corner of their cover, causing them to sink down behind it. Tatnia took advantage of their distraction to gun it, the speeder picking up more speed as we escaped.


    "What in the hell was that? Not even gonna try and ask us to surrender?" Tatnia asked angrily, our speed increasing again. "They are going straight to killing?"


    "That wasn''t a security officer," I answered, shouting over the wind from the open seat speeder. "Maybe a bounty hunter? Wasn''t wearing a uniform, at least."


    "Really? Fuck, that means it''s probably the Hutts!" Tatnia responded. "We need to get off this planet!"


    We continued to move as fast as we could, only slowing for a moment to dump our passenger on the sidewalk. Tatnia had hoped having them on board would give us some cover, but now it was too dangerous. For a few minutes, there was no sign of any more people coming after us, though we could hear the police back the way we came. Speeders flew through the air, scanning the streets, but for a while, we managed to escape notice.


    Then another bounty hunter, or whoever was chasing us, tried to disable our ride again, the blaster fire immediately attracting the attention of the police. They zoned in on us in seconds, several speeders dropping in behind us.


    "Fuck, we need to move!" I said, turning back and firing my pistol at the chasing police, trying my best to disable their speeders without actually killing anyone.


    Tatnia didn''t respond, only gripped the steering system harder, the land speeder accelerating again, pulling out from the police, who by now were stacked up a half dozen deep, all with sirens and loudspeakers, shouting at us to stop. In desperation, I charged up a shot, my pistol heating up as I dumped in the remainder of the energy cell into the capacitor, taking aim before firing. My pistol kicked back, and a thick, snarling bolt of red, almost orange energy fired from the muzzle and slapped into the lead security speeder, just below the cockpit. Smoke poured from the hole, and the nose of the speeder dipped, colliding with the ground with enough force to carve a furrow as it dragged along.


    Unfortunately for the speeder occupants, momentum is a cold bitch, and the back end of the speeder flipped up and over, the speeder smashing into the ground. If that wasn''t bad enough, instead of the slow, gradual decrease of speed I was hoping for, slamming into the ground stopped it almost on the spot. This meant that three of the following speeders smashed into it, piling up in the road and sealing it up as they failed to dodge the wreck.


    "Fuck... there goes any hope of negotiating," I said, changing my pistol''s energy cell quickly. "Tatnia we-"


    I didn''t get to finish my sentence as I turned to see something big being pushed into the road, blocking our path. Tatnia swerved as best she could, trying to dodge around it, but it wasn''t enough. We slammed into the side of what I think was some sort of dumpster, the impact throwing us around inside the speeder, our inertial dampeners barely holding us inside the vehicle. The speeder itself crushed the dumpster, spinning around a quarter turn before the power cells failed and the repulsors all cut out simultaneously. The speeder dropped to the ground and continued on, bleeding momentum as it skidded along the ground, throwing up sparks. When we finally came to a stop, slamming into the corner of another building, the inertial dampeners were fully off, so both of us were thrown free of the vehicle.


    I groaned, looking up at the sky for a long moment, having come to rest on my back. I immediately charged and cast a double-handed fast heal on myself, the healing energy coursing through my body, healing bruises, scrapes, and tears instantly. The second double casting cleared up the concussion, and I climbed to my feet, heading directly to Tatnia, who was slowly standing as well.


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    "Hey, come on, we need to keep moving," I said, helping her stand and emptying my mana into healing hands as I did.


    She groaned and nodded, limping and leaning heavily on me as we made a beeline for a nearby alleyway. I kept healing her when my mana was full, the bruised and battered woman slowly standing up straighter. A walk turned into a jog when we heard people shouting behind us, talking about how we had cut into the alley. Soon that jog turned into a run, my healing hand''s spell doing its job.


    "Fuck I hope this isn''t a dead end," I cursed under my breath, desperately running away from the chasing bounty hunters.


    I was half tempted to turn around and fight, but any action would attract the attention of the security forces again. We needed to keep moving and hide, or I would have to kill a lot more people to escape.


    After about thirty seconds of running deeper into the alleyway, the voices were getting closer and closer. I had just about resigned myself to a fight when a door opened, and an older, white-haired, hunched-over woman stepped out.


    "Over here, quickly!" She said, motioning for us to rush inside the doorway.


    I made a snap decision, turning at the last second and running into the room, skidding to a stop in the dark interior. I could hear Tatnia run in after me, and the old woman close the door after her. I turned to the woman, only to watch her cringe and step back, barely visible in the low light.


    "I''m sorry! They made me!" she said, cowering back.


    I turned back to see two armed men step out of a dark archway that I had assumed led further into the older woman''s home. Both of them had their weapons drawn and aimed at Tatnia and me.


    Before I could even say anything or start to charge a spell, the blue light of two stun blasts screamed across the room, slamming into us, the dark and shadowed interior disappearing into pure black.


    ------------------


    I could feel the low hum of a hyperdrive, the floor transferring the familiar vibrations to me. I could also feel a deep ache from most of my muscles, as well as a full-brain headache.


    "Note to self¡­ being stunned sucks¡­ almost as much as getting shot," I groaned out, slowly putting together what had happened.


    As consciousness returned to me, I slowly got a better sense of my surroundings. I was face down on a metal floor, my face pressed against the cold, probably not very clean surface. While my hands were stuck in a familiar pair of cuffs, I could feel something heavy on my neck. With a groan, I rolled over, my shoulder bumping into someone.


    "Tatnia?" I asked, looking over at one of my first teammates. "Are you awake yet?"


    "Yeah." She responded, clearly dealing with her own pain. "Boss, what''s around my neck?"


    I looked over at her, studying the tight, metallic collar she had around her neck. There wasn''t much to it save a few greebles and red light that slowly blinked. I let out a long sigh.


    "It''s a collar. My paranoia says a slave collar of some type." I said, laying back on the floor. "Same as mine?"


    I could hear her shift before she let out a grunt of confirmation.


    We were silent for a few minutes before I rolled over onto my stomach again, using my body as cover to cast a fast heal spell on myself. Feeling much better, the aches and pains gone, I offered my hand to Tatnia, who, after a second, took it, letting me help her stand. When she was up, I stepped closer, like I was giving her an armless hug, hiding a five-second bout of healing hands to help with her aches.


    "Thanks," She said simply. "I don''t like how familiar this is."


    "Yeah¡­ me either,"


    A quick session of taking stock found that we were in pretty good condition, though both of us had been stripped down to our basic clothes. I groaned when I realized they had taken all my stuff and that I would likely never see any of it again.


    "Dammit, I really liked that one, too," I said, sitting down on the small bench that ran along the back wall.


    "What, your blaster?"


    "No, my jacket," I said, shaking my head. "I was just starting to lay the foundations for my look."


    Tatnia let out a long-suffering sigh while I couldn''t help but smirk. Before I could continue my joke, the only door in the solid metal cell opened with the sound of a firing and sealing piston. A worn, scared, beat-up human man stepped in, leaning on the door jam.


    "Aww, you''re awake already. Wanted to kick you up myself," He said with a cruel smirk. "I''m surprised you''re moving around."


    "Sorry to disappoint you," I responded. "Would you mind telling me what''s going on?"


    "What''s going on?" He asked, shaking his head with a laugh. "You pissed off Jabba the Hutt, that''s what''s going on!"


    "Wait¡­ Jabba?" I asked, suddenly confused. "How did we piss off Jabba? We were worried about pissing off the Hutts of Nar Shaddaa, not the sandworm."


    "You¡­ you don''t even know¡­You attacked his smuggling operation three times, and you have no idea it was his?" He asked, his eyes going wide. "I would suggest you take that to your grave, I can''t imagine him learning that he lost so much on chance would go over very well."


    It took me a moment to figure out what the human was talking about, but eventually, it clicked. If you counted our original break out, we attacked the slave smuggling operation three times.


    "Jabba was the one running that slave smuggling operation?" I asked, genuinely surprised. "Why?"


    "He was until your attacks caught the attention of the Enforcers. You cost Jabba an entire operation!" He said, stopping to laugh again, leaning heavily on the cell door frame. "You''re lucky his obsession with Solo gets more insane every day, or he would have taken a more personal interest in you."


    "So we are on our way to Tatooine then?" I asked. "I sunburn easily, so I would prefer someplace less sunny if you don''t mind."


    "Well, that''s good then, because you two are headed to <u>Magravia</u></a>. Jabba wants you to waste away in the spice mines," He explained with a shrug, seemingly frustrated that we weren''t panicking or groveling. "I would have just killed you, but he is big on ironic punishments. Attack a slave operation, get made into slaves."


    When neither of us reacted to his declaration, he sneered, clearly wanting to get a rise out of us and frustrated we weren''t reacting how he wanted. Suddenly, Tatnia stood, ready to charge the human, when he moved his hand. Immediately she crumpled to the ground, barely making it a few feet from the bench. The human laughed, pulling his hand from his pocket to reveal that he was holding some sort of device, probably a control unit for our collars.


    "Ooo, almost! Anyway, I just came to gloat and thank you for the big stack of credits I''m going to get in my account when I drop you off."


    "Wai-"


    Before I could say anything, he tapped something on his control unit, and like a light switch, consciousness left me.

 Chapter 43

    When I next woke up, it was to the unfortunate sensation of someone kicking me in the side. The deep, full-body ache that I felt from being initially stunned in that old woman''s house wasn''t present, which I idly noted in the back of my mind probably meant that what our jailer used to knock us out again had been something different.


    "Looks like I timed it better this time," The familiar, cruel voice of the taunting human said from above me. "Get up, we are here."


    As I started to stand, our jailor kicked my hand out from under me, knocking me to the ground again, stepping away quickly with a chuckle. When I finally looked up enough to even think about retaliating, he was already by the door, the control unit in his hand. I bit back a curse, realizing I had just missed a solid opportunity to attack him silently.


    "It''s time for you to go and time for me to get paid," He said. "And before you start complaining, if I have to knock you out and drag you myself, I will, but you''re going to be really sore by the time I''m done."


    I gave Tatnia a look, and together we followed the bounty hunter off of his ship, the bounty hunter staying about three or four meters away at all times. As we were led out, we passed by four other bounty hunters, each of them watching us closely and thumbing their own collar control units.


    As we stepped down onto the landing pad, we both immediately recoiled at the stench of the planet. It was acrid, the air sharp enough to burn my nose. I resisted the urge to cough because it would only make it worse, but my lungs still burned.


    Seeing our reaction, the human bounty hunter laughed, already pulling on a breathing mask. I cursed under my breath, lifting up my shirt to breathe through and mentally chanting that whatever damage the air was doing to our lungs, I could reverse with a healing spell.


    As we stood on the landing pad, suffering and waiting, I got a good look at the surroundings. In the distance, I could see massive smoke stacks by the hundreds, pumping out green-brown fumes into the air. Whatever was making that green smoke was making a lot of it because the color hung in the air, tainting it. There was no wildlife that I could see. The grey-scale colored ground was rocky, sandy, and dry. This planet was dead, and we were about to be stranded there.


    I turned my head to look behind us, spotting the four other bounty hunters, weapons drawn and ready to stop us if we tried anything. I mentally cursed as our chances to escape before we got stuck here continued to shrink.


    As the pain in my lungs started to become unbearable, a speeder pulled up to the landing pad. It was boxy with a rough, heavily salvaged and repaired look and had a clearly after-market box built in the backspace, enough for four or five people. A red-faced humanoid, whose species I didn''t recognize, stepped out, already wearing a mask.


    "Why aren''t they wearing masks?!" He demanded, looking at the bounty hunter harshly. "They are useless if they can''t karking breathe! You two, get into the back of the speeder, now!"


    Tatnia followed me as I climbed into the speeder, desperate to get out of the hazardous environment. The door sealed shut behind us with a hiss, and I quickly cast fast heal on myself, the burning in my lungs vanishing after the second cast. I cast healing hands on Tatnia, her breathing evening out as I did. She nodded in appreciation, and we both examined the interior of the speeder. The box we were in was clearly designed to hold people who didn''t want to be transported, like slaves or prisoners, and was separated from the front by a metal barrier and a small metal grate.


    While the barrier between us and the driver was well built, there was hardly any reinforcement built into the exterior walls, which I could only assume was because only an idiot would try and bust out into the surface of a planet that was so clearly deadly. Because of that, we could see the driver yelling at the bounty hunter, who clearly didn''t care. He held out the control unit, prompting the driver to pull out his own more intricate-looking model and press them together. After a moment, the driver put away his control unit, pulled out a com, and spent a minute talking to someone before turning away and walking back to the speeder without another word.


    He climbed in and slammed the door shut behind him, taking off his mask and putting it down on the seat next to him. Any hope that his earlier anger was out of some kind of empathy for our health was immediately smashed to bits as he finally spoke.


    "Alright, listen up! I''m only going to give this explanation once. I''m the foreman in charge of mine ''D,'' branch ''U,'' where you two will be working from now on. You two are worth nothing but the spice you bring up. If you bring up spice, you eat. If you don''t, I kill you and throw you out of the dome myself. Understood?"


    "It seems simple enough," I responded. "My name-"


    "I don''t give a karking firebird shit who you are. Your designation is D-U-4353, and your friend''s is D-U-2953," He responded, not even looking back at us. "Whoever you were before this is dead. Welcome to your afterlife."


    He refused to say anything after that, ignoring any attempts by myself or Tatnia to engage him. I briefly considered trying to cast calm on him to make him more pliable, but the spell''s effects didn''t last nearly long enough for me to be useful, and even if it did, I had no idea what we would do next. As horrible as it was, we needed more information.


    With negotiation turning out to be a bust, we settled in, watching the barren gray landscape move by. We had only been traveling for a few minutes when we stopped at a small building, a checkpoint. A quick look up, and I could see that it was stuck in the wall of a massive bubble.


    "A shield of some kind?" I asked, nudging Tatnia and pointing up. "Probably to keep breathable air in."


    "You''re smarter than you look." Our driver said. "The air inside is breathable. The air outside isn''t. Remember that if those smarts tell you that you could try and escape."


    We passed through the checkpoint, crossing a blue mag field to enter. The air here was much cleaner, lacking the green tinge that was poisoning the atmosphere. From there, we only had to wait a minute, the driver pulling up to a massive ferrocrete facility. A garage door along one side opened up, and the self-proclaimed foreman drove us inside. Seconds after we crossed the threshold, both Tatnia''s collar and my own let out a beep. When the driver stopped, having parked in the corner of the garage, he turned to look at us for the first time since we first saw him.


    "You heard that beep? That is your collars entering the control field of this facility. You leave that field, and you die. You attack me, you die. You attack your fellow workers, and you die. You attempt to sabotage equipment, and you die. The only thing that does not end with your death is mining for mediari, the component of spice we are after. Understood?"


    "Understood," I responded.


    I knew this game, even if the addition of "you die" was new.


    "Good. Now get out."


    We turned to the speeder door and saw that an armed and armored <u>Aquilish</u></a> guard was standing outside the speeder, waiting for us. He already looked annoyed. I stepped out first, and before Tatnia could climb out of the speeder, I got a stomach full of fist for my efforts. The large tusked and hairy guard let out a low, wet rumble that I could only guess was laughter. Tatnia climbed out quickly, starting to step menacingly toward the guard, but I stood quickly and stopped her.


    Stolen story; please report.


    "That''s just what he wants," I said.


    The guard led us through the building, undoing our wrist restraints and passing us off to dark green-skinned Rodian as we entered the interior open space of the large ferrocrete structure. There, in a massive courtyard, was the mine, a huge hole in the ground, lined with a single metal walkway leading downwards into the poorly lit hole. In the center enormous crane system, built into the ferrocrete structure around the courtyard, slowly lowered a large platform into the hole.


    We stopped there for a moment, the guard pulling open a cabinet and passing both of us heavily used filtration masks. They covered our entire faces, and while they were ancient, patched up, and a mismatch of different color parts, they seemed functional. We both quickly put them on, and before we could do anything, the guard shoved me forward after a few seconds. I didn''t understand his words, but it wasn''t difficult to understand his actions.


    The descent into the massive mine was disconcerting. The sky was slowly swallowed up by the slowly shrinking mouth of the mine shaft. It was hard to tell just how deep we went, the carved walls and metal walkway so nondescript that you quickly lost track of any identifying features.


    The only real features were the offshoot shafts, marked by a place for the crane platform to connect to and a flat space for people to load crago onto the platform. The first three were empty and devoid of activity, while the fourth one and down had a few people working and two guards standing by. On the fifth offshoot, dozens of people worked to push sealed crates onto the same platform that had passed us going down. I also spotted five more guards, all armed and armored.


    At the seventh offshoot, this one marked with a large <u>usk</u></a> symbol, the Rodian guard stopped, said a few words to a male Twi''lek guard, and immediately headed back upstairs. The Twi''lek turned and shouted at one of the workers, an older human man covered in dirt and scars. He walked toward us and listened to the guard for a few seconds before turning to face us.


    "You speak Basic?" He asked.


    "Yes, we both do."


    "Good. Cisoc wants me to lead you to the end of the tunnel," He said simply, nodding back into the offshoot. "Let''s go."


    "What''s your name?" I asked as he led us into the tunnel, the already low light level dropping even more.


    "What''s yours?" He asked back, looking over his shoulder.


    "Deacon."


    "And your friend?"


    I turned to look at Tatnia and shrugged, getting an eye roll in response.


    "Tatnia."


    "Right. You can call me Fareff." He responded, though really clearly not caring.


    "Why did Cisoc ask you to lead us down here?" I asked.


    "Because he is lazy," He responded. "And as a reward for good behavior. I get a break from lifting, and he doesn''t have to walk all the way down here."


    Fareff continued to lead us down into the offshoot mine, which had started to dip downward as well. Along the walls of the tunnel, I could see evidence of miners chasing deposits of what I assume was spice, some spots marked with light drilling, others gouged several feet in. After about five minutes, we could hear the sounds of equipment and working ahead. It was also getting dustier, the air getting harder to see through. I tugged at my mask to make sure it was secure.


    When we finally reached the end of the mine, Fareff stopped, giving Tatnia and I the chance to look around. The mine was at least ten meters tall and fifteen wide, the same as the poorly lit tunnel leading to it. It was clear they had been mining in this spot for some time, having carved out a wide tunnel with three vague walls, each lined with multiple platforms, scaffolding set up to let the miners dig and carve out the solidified spice, or at least this particular type of spices main component from the walls. The whole room was lined with lights to the point that it was almost too bright.


    I could see the foreman nearby, the man who had picked us up, standing near one of the portable light towers that lit everything up. He had a small work area set up, including a stool he was sitting on, watching the three or four dozen miners as they worked. A few feet away was some sort of hover platform with simple controls and a small seat, no doubt what he had used to get her so much faster than us. Fareff headed straight for him, leading us to where he was keeping watch, two guards standing with him. The fact that we were about to be handed off to the same person who had brought us in finally broke my resistance.


    "Hey, do you have a twin? Because I swear-"


    My mouth was starting to sass before I even realized it, my frustration making my control slip. The foreman must have seen it coming, though, because he reached out to a table at his workspace and tapped something. I didn''t even have time to do anything before Tatnia dropped to her knees, her mouth open in a silent scream, her body convulsing. It continued for a full three seconds before the red-skinned humanoid stopped, pulling his finger off the button.


    "I''ve worked in this mine for thirty years, prisoner," He said, spitting something onto the floor between us. "I''ve seen it all, I know your type. I know you''re the type to get over pain quickly. You''re not a special prisoner. Get over yourself, or your friend here is going to pay for it."


    I wordlessly helped Tatnia to her feet, her legs shaking slightly as she stood. She grabbed my arm tightly and squeezed, shaking her head when I looked at her. The foreman''s hand moved over to the table again, finger hovering over the button.


    "And now you say ''Yes, Sir,''" He said, staring me down.


    "...Yes, sir," I responded, clenching my fist as he smirked.


    "Good. Smarter than you look," He responded, moving his hand away from the table.


    I could feel Tatnia slowly unclenching.


    The foreman spent five minutes explaining how the process worked, leading us to the closest worker, a male Tartuga, who was dressed in a bright orange prison uniform. He was using a large,<u> handheld device</u></a> to break up the stone, the machine firing waves of some sort of pressure or compressive force. After a moment, cracks and fissures slowly started to form in the rock wherever he focused the grinder. He then gently put down the large piece of equipment, grabbed a hammer and a small pick, and started breaking apart the stone. Occasionally he pulled out a chunk of dark maroon material, which he carefully stored in a satchel on his left hip.


    "Use the resonance grinder to soften the stone, then use your tools to break it up further," The foreman explained. "Do not overuse the resonance grinder, it will reduce the mediari stone, the spice component, to powder. Do not aim the grinder at anyone, you''ll be forced to clean up the mess, and then I will kill you. You share the resonance grinder with whoever else is on your platform."


    Before I could ask any questions, a pair of tools and a satchel were placed in my hands, and a second set handed to Tatnia. Without another word, the foreman turned and walked away, leaving us on our own. Tatnia and I shared a look, silent for a few moments.


    "You best get to work," Our platform buddy said, not looking away from his spot. "Your quota might be smaller today, but if you don''t hit it, they won''t feed you."


    I let out a curse and put my tools down, bending over to pick up the resonance grinder, hefting the large machine, and looking at Tatnia. I wasn''t exactly happy about it, but for now, it was time to get to work.

 Chapter 44

    The process of mining out the spice veins was simple but grueling. According to Azyter, the Togruta</a> working on the same platform, this was the process''s first step. We would mine into the stone, following the lines of mediari until they ran out. When a layer is clear, they come in with large machines and carve forward, pushing deeper into the spice vein. We would have to load up the crushed rock, as well as any carvings we pull free now. He gestured down to the piles of rock already forming at the bottom of the cave underneath us. We had managed to arrive just after the last major carving, meaning we had a few days of easier work ahead of us.


    With a look and a nod, Tatnia and I both agreed that, for now, it was better to play along. The stunning effect, pain inducer, and whatever other surprises these collars had were too big of a problem to attack half-cocked. I wasn''t about to try and shock them off me without knowing if they had a bomb in them. The foreman had intimated that leaving the field would kill us, but I needed to confirm how before we did anything risky.


    With only a few grumbles of sworn revenge, I started carving into the rock, softening and breaking it up with the resonance grinder, before passing it to Tatnia, who started doing the same. While she worked, I pulled out my hammer and chisel and started to slowly pull out chunks of stone, stopping when I spotted a hunk of dark maroon material. I gingerly reached for it, not wanting to break it if it turned out to be fragile. I managed to get it out, hefting the dense chunk of stone about the size of a deck of cards. After a few seconds of examining it, I put it into my satchel and started hunting for the next piece.


    After the first hour passed, and after weighing and dumping our satchels into one of the large mine carts full, I started to notice that my fingers were stinging, slowly becoming too much to ignorable. Seeing me study them, Azyter once again chimed in.


    "It''s the spice," He explained, looking back to his work, never really stopping. "Its powder is caustic when it mixes with your sweat."


    "How badly?" I asked, resisting the urge to wipe my hand off my clothes.


    "It''s slow, but you''ll have blisters tonight," He answered, pulling out a sizable chunk of mediari stone and putting it into his satchel without really even looking at it. "They spray us down with a neutralizing agent when our shift is over."


    "Right. Thanks." I responded, shaking my head in frustration, noticing that Tatnia was suffering just as much as I was.


    The forced labor continued for another two hours before a guard came into the active mining area, pushing a hovercraft laden with a large liquid-filled tank. One by one, the foreman called us down to the hover cart, where a guard would use a hose to spray water into our mouths. The water had something in it, giving it a light blue tinge that made me very nervous, but I focused on the fact that they wouldn''t kill off their workforce while there was still work to be done. I drank my fill, lifting up my mask, which after several hours of hauling, carving, and digging was a lot, before heading back up to the platform.


    "That''s not just water," I asked Azyter once he returned. "Any idea what it is?"


    "Naturalizer." He answered. "It''s impossible to keep the mediari from spreading, so the neutralizer keeps it from burning your insides."


    My eyes went wide at that statement, and I shivered. Tatnia was next to get a drink, and she returned quickly, and we got back to work.


    Eventually, after another four or five hours, they called us down for another drink, this time by the entrance into the mine, our shift apparently over. Tatnia and I stuck close together, both of us dragging the same cart full of mediari stone behind us as we were led back out of the mine, armed guards keeping a close eye on us, most of them thumbing familiar control units. Our carts were dropped off by the flattened loading area, and we were led up the long, slowly circling staircase to the top of the mine.


    Once at the top, our masks were gathered, and we were herded into a massive cleaning room, where we were sprayed from head to toe with a blue foamy neutralizing agent. Once we had been thoroughly neutralized, we were forced into another room, where we were sprayed down with blue-tinted water, washing the foam away and down the drain.


    I was hoping we would at least get a big fan to dry off in front of, but instead, they simply led us to our "barracks," soaking wet and miserable. As we stepped into what was essentially our prison away from the mine, a guard handed out a thick bar sealed inside some sort of plastic. It took me a bit to realize it was supposed to be food. Once we were inside, they locked the doors behind us, leaving us to our own devices.


    "So do we order room service or¡­" I said, Tatnia giving me a look that told me to shut the hell up. "Right, sorry. Need to keep the sass to a minimum."


    "... At least where they can hear," She said, looking around. "I don''t want to go through that again unless it''s really necessary."


    "Yeah, I won''t do that again," I assured her, doing my best to study our new temporary home.


    The "barracks" were simple, a singular, large open room with a few tables in the center and three floors of cells around the central space. Everything was either metal or duracrete, a pattern that continued into the individual rooms. I peeked around a corner to see a room with four bunks, two on each side, with the far wall just a solid blank wall. All four of the beds had people in them, one of them giving me a nasty look as I peered inside. I stepped away to avoid pissing anyone, turning back to find most people already heading towards their rooms.


    "They''ve pretty much already given up¡­ haven''t they?" I asked in a low tone, Tatnia nodding.


    "Not a whole lot of options for people without your skills," She said. "Not sure I would be able to hold out hope without them, not even if I knew the rest of the crew was looking for us¡­. They are looking for us, right?"


    "Nal and Miru wouldn''t just call us a loss like that," I responded confidently, stepping forward to try and find a room for us. "I don''t know the chances of them actually being able to find us¡­ but it''s not zero."


    "Yeah¡­" She said, at least partially reassured. "Soo¡­ what''s the plan?"


    "The plan¡­ is we wait," I said, looking into the next room only to find it also full.


    Azyter, one of its occupants, shrugged when he noticed us looking in.


    "That''s it? Boss¡­"


    "Tatnia, relax. We know nothing about this place, how these collars work, the shifts, the guards," I explained, cursing under my breath as I realized the first floor was likely full, turning and heading for the stairs. "Are we being recorded? Are there people listening in¡­"


    Tatnia''s eyes went a little wide as she looked around, spotting the same security cameras I had earlier. She cursed under her breath as well, following me up the stairs to the second floor. A quick walk around the rooms'' second story showed that they two were taken or had one space free. Clearly, there had been people already here when we arrived, though it took me a while to notice.


    When we got to the third floor, half of the rooms were sealed shut, and all the rest were mostly filled. We finally found a room that was empty, the absolute furthest point from the entrance to the "barracks." I claimed one of the bunks, sitting down on the edge and studying the ration the guard had handed us.


    "So¡­ the first step is finding out if they are listening in on us?" Tatnia asked softly as she sat next to me. "Or watching."


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "Mhmm," I said. "We can ask around tomorrow. Until then¡­ Don''t panic, and keep our eyes open."


    "And if they are listening right now?"


    "Then we are probably up for a beating or another round with that pain inducer," I responded with a wince. "Sorry."


    "It''s not your fault," She assured me, cracking open her rations and quickly eating whatever nutrient and protein-rich block was sealed inside. I idly noticed mine tasted like slightly off beef but felt a very dense cake in my mouth. It wasn''t quite too revolting to eat, but it was very much straddling that line.


    We both ate quickly, barely tasting the awful rations. It had been way too long since we ate, and we were both feeling the effects. When we were done, Tatnia stood and stretched before crawling into the bunk across from me. I rolled back onto my bed, closing my eyes and trying to get some sleep.


    After the long day we had, it wasn''t surprising that it only took a few minutes for us to pass out.


    ------------------


    I was up, standing, tense, and ready for a fight before I was even fully awake. My heart was racing, and while my mind was struggling to catch up, my fight or flight was screaming at me. What my brain did comprehend was the guttural snarl that woke me, sounding like an angry, lashing-out wolf.


    When my bleary eyes cleared, I saw a canine-like alien, a female Shistavanen</a>, standing in the room. Surprisingly, she was facing away from us, standing over a grubby-looking human man.


    "Alright! I''m sorry, I''m leaving!" He said, sliding further out of the room, looking up at the wolven-like woman in fear.


    I looked over at Tatnia, who seemed to be equally as shocked but not nearly as confused. Instead, she looked angry.


    "Tatnia?" I asked wordlessly.


    "He was sneaking into the room," She said, barely controlling her anger, disgust, and not a small amount of fear hidden below it. "...coming towards my bed when she came in."


    "Oh fuck that," I said, following the Shistavanen out of the room.


    She had stopped right outside the door, the creep starting to pull himself up with the railing, obviously feeling a bit more confident since she hadn''t attacked him yet. I completely ignored what he was saying and wound up punching him directly in the forehead. He cursed and fell back to the ground, holding his head, only to shout when I grabbed his orange jumpsuit, dragging him back to his feet.


    "You fucking degenerate piece of shit," I shouted, getting right up in his face. "What the fuck do you think you''re doing? Did you think the fresh meat would be an easy target? Tell me why I shouldn''t knock out every single last tooth you have and make you eat them?"


    "Y-you can''t!" He said, eyes wide, trying desperately to pull free of my grip. "The guards-"


    "You don''t need teeth to mine spice!" I pointed out, shoving him back against the railing, his top half leaning slightly over the edge. "Try again!"


    "I-I-I have friends! They will-"


    "I don''t care if you are butt buddies with the fucking EMPEROR!" I screamed, my voice echoing through the prison, people looking up to see what was happening. "If I catch you sniffing around my crew again, trying to get your rocks off, I will ship your ass to him in a five-gallon bucket!"


    I dragged him off the railing and threw him down the walkway, the near sobbing man falling, stumbling before finally half crawling, half running away. I follow behind him, kicking his ass, causing him to fall on his face a few more times. Eventually, when we got close to the stairs, I stopped and watched him flee, casting an angry look around me at our audience, resisting the urge to do anything more long-lasting. Counter to what I said, I was pretty sure the guards would lay into me if I started to brutalize him.


    After a long moment, I turned around to go back inside the cell, walking by the Shistavanen female again. When I step inside, Tatnia is sitting up on the edge of her bed, clearly having been listening to me.


    "Good job," She said with a nod. "Showing everyone else that we aren''t to be messed with."


    I stopped and looked at her, her words taking a minute to work through the anger. I snorted when I finally realized what she meant.


    "Yeah, sure, let''s go with that," I responded. "Definitely what I was doing."


    "You¡­" She said, trailing off before looking down. "... Thanks, Boss."


    "It''s my job," I responded, sitting down beside her. "You okay?"


    "Yeah, this isn''t the first close call, I grew up on the streets, remember?" She said, wincing slightly. "Saying it out loud makes me realize that''s not actually reassuring¡­But I am okay."


    I patted her shoulder and gave it a squeeze before standing and turning to the Shistavanen, a hand outstretched.


    "Thank you. I assume you were walking by and noticed it happening?"


    "I¡­did," She said, looking down at my hand for a moment like she was surprised to see it before reaching out to shake it. "This is my room."


    The hair-covered humanoid was clearly much bigger than me, but her natural posture, slightly crouched and hunched, meant the top of her head was only an inch, maybe two, above mine. Her voice was deep, deeper than you would expect from a woman, but it had a warm, rumbling quality that sounded oddly soothing, at least to my ears. She had a thick, light brown, almost blonde coat with faint brown highlights running around her arms and up the side of her head.


    "Sorry, it was empty when we got back," I explained, scratching the back of my head. "It''s also one of the only rooms with two empty beds¡­ Unless you already have roommates?"


    "No¡­ no other prisoners wanted to stay," She admitted, hesitating for a long moment before finally. "My kind is not often trusted due to our isolationist nature."


    "Well¡­ if you don''t mind the company¡­"


    "...I do not have an issue with roommates," She admitted with a nod. "The vehement defense of your ally speaks to your character."


    "The Boss is a good person," Tatnia explained. "Sometimes too good. That''s what me and the crew are for."


    "Crew?" The Shistavanen. "Do you have more allies here?"


    "No, the rest of our team wasn''t picked up when we got captured," I explained, giving Tatnia the stink eye for her last comment.


    "Captured?" She asked, continuing when I nodded. "Then you are like me. A slave, nor a prisoner."


    "There is a difference?" Tatnia asked, slightly confused.


    "This is a prison for criminals, not a slave pit," She explained. "We are simply the exception, most likely due to bribery, in which direction I cannot say."


    "That explains the trash sneaking in here," I said, shaking my head. "God, I''m glad Miru isn''t here."


    "She has been through worse," Tatnia said with a frown.


    "That doesn''t make it better, she might be seventeen-"


    "Sixteen," Tatnia corrected. "She was afraid you wouldn''t take her seriously."


    "Really? Dammit, we really-"


    "Are we getting off-topic?" The Shistavanen asked, looking between Tatnia and myself.


    "Yeah, sorry, we are," I said with a smirk. "My name is Deacon, this is Tatnia. The circumstances aren''t the best, but it''s nice to meet you¡­?"


    "Vaz Stross," She answered with a simple nod.


    "It''s nice to meet you, Vaz," I repeated with a smile. "Would you mind answering some questions about how things work around here?"


    "...I suppose, but not for too long." She said after a moment of thought. "I must sleep before I return to work."

 Chapter 45

    Tatnia and I spent a few minutes asking Vaz questions, which she answered as best she could. She was patient with us for a while but eventually had enough, climbing onto the bunk above Tatnia and almost instantly falling asleep.


    During our talk, our first and probably most important questions revolved around how closely we were being watched. According to Vaz, while the guards were constantly on the lookout while we were "on the clock," the four cameras along the ceiling of the prison were the only places we were being monitored from while back at the "barracks."


    "I have never heard of the guards knowing something not seen by their own eyes or by those recorders," She explained. "If they are listening to us as well, through hidden microphones, they have allowed several damaging incidents to occur to keep it a secret. If that were true, then what would be the point of listening in the first place?"


    We talked a bit more about the cameras and what kind of incidents she was talking about before Tatnia brought up our collars, specifically if the smaller, individual control units could deactivate a collar and if she knew what else the collars contained.


    "The units the guards carry with them?" She had asked before shaking her head. "I do not know. I know they can put one or many to sleep or induce pain to the same degree. I have once seen a collar execution."


    "How did that work?"


    "There is an explosive charge, enough to decapitate, inside the collar," She explained with a shrug. "I have only seen it once, nor have I heard many tales of it used otherwise. The threat is often enough."


    I managed to keep myself from cursing, but only barely. Having explosives in the collar was one of the worst situations possible, as I couldn''t risk a sparks spell, not when an overload might set them off. With my worst fears confirmed, Tatnia steered the conversation away from the collars, eventually talking about shifts. The lupine humanoid revealed she normally worked with our group, but the guards sometimes pulled her off to hunt for vermin around the facility.


    "It would not be the first time my species has been reduced to vermin killers," She admitted with a shrug. "It is better than being stuck in the mines, even if I am only hunting small, weak prey."


    Not long after, Vaz finally decided that she had explained enough, stopping Tatnia''s next question with a raised hand and a shake of her head.


    "I must sleep if I am to keep up with my quota tomorrow," She explained, turning to climb to the top bunk, stopping and turning back to us. "I am aware in which direction you ask your questions. Be warned, you will be punished if your plans are discovered. You risk death if you enact your plans and they fail."


    "We know. The guards don''t exactly look forgiving," I responded, shrugging. "We will try not to get you involved. Unless you want to be, of course?"


    She looked at me for a long moment, her green, gold-flecked eyes locking on to mine, studying me. Eventually, she rolled her shoulders, a dismissal of my offer, but I got the feeling it wasn''t a complete one. She climbed into the top bunk without another word, laying down on the thin foam mattress, facing away from us and towards the wall. After a moment, it was clear she was asleep, or at least pretending well enough that I couldn''t tell. After a few moments, I looked at Tatnia and gestured out the door with a nod, my crewmate following without a word.


    "Better than I feared," I said as softly as possible once we were outside, not facing the cameras. "But not nearly as good as I had hoped."


    "Not sure we could have gotten much better," Tatnia said, shaking her head and leaning on the railing across from the cell door. "Having a free run of the cell will make some things easier."


    "Yes, but it''s only the beginning," I said, shaking my head. "There are a lot of things we need to know before we can start planning."


    "Seems like whether the guard''s control units can deactivate a collar would be the most important one."


    "My assumption is no," I guessed, idly looking down at the bottom floor of the prison, where a few people were sitting around. "It would be a huge risk for no real reason save a minor convenience."


    "The unit that the foreman used seemed different," Tatnia said after a moment. "It was bigger. Had more buttons too."


    "That feels slightly more likely," I admitted, though I was still frowning. "But it still seems like a big risk for them. Why have the device to free your prisoners somewhere a riot could access them?"


    "Someone has to control them, so there has to be a way to turn them off somewhere," She pointed out before looking down. "How''s your hand?"


    "Pretty sure I cracked something," I responded, wincing as I opened and closed my fist. "Who knew punching someone in the forehead was such a dumb choice."


    "Most people who throw punches do," She responded with a snort.


    "Yeah¡­ It will be fine, I''ll heal it when I''m in bed."


    We were silent for a while, looking around the large room before I stood back and yawned deeply.


    "We need to get some sleep," I said, shaking my head. "We spend the next day trying to think of something while we work, and tomorrow we start brainstorming."


    "Do¡­Do we trust Vaz?" She asked. "I know she stopped that creep, but¡­."


    "I get a good vibe from her," I said with a shrug, ignoring Tatnia''s eye roll. "Let''s give her the benefit of the doubt for now but not give everything away just yet. Trust but verify."


    Tatnia nodded, both of us heading back into the room, crawling right back into bed. I rolled to face the wall, lifting up the foam mattress and shoving my hand under it. I chain cast fast heal, the glow barely visible against the wall as the healing energy sank back into my hand, fixing whatever damage I managed to do to it.


    When I was done, I rolled over and tried to get comfortable, closing my eyes. Sleep didn''t come nearly as quickly as before, but eventually, I managed to fade into a dreamless rest.


    The following morning, if it was morning since there was no way for us to tell, we were awoken by a harsh, almost painful buzzing from our collars. Vaz almost seemed to anticipate it, already jumping down from the top bunk and leaving through the door. She seemed to remember we were there as she while leaving. She paused to look back at us as Tatnia, and I climbed out of bed, wincing and visibly straining against the headache-inducing vibrations.


    "It is our alarm," She explained. "It will not stop until we have prepared to leave the prison barracks."


    We quickly followed behind the Shistavanen, struggling to focus through the "alarm." As we walked down the staircases, I could see that there was already a line forming by the entrance, other prisoners from the same group we had worked with before. Not long after we arrived, the intense vibration stopped, and we were handed our morning ration. Judging by how everyone immediately started opening them and eating their contents, we were on some sort of time limit. Sure enough, after a few minutes, the guards started to herd us out of the prison. They followed us, covering us from all sides, armed both with weapons and control units.


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    We were herded back down into the mine, walking down the spiral stairway. As we slowly made our way down, I couldn''t help but remember how much climbing back up them would suck after our shift. I kept an eye open and on our guard, absorbing as much information about their tactics, temperaments, and reactions as possible.


    Before long, we had returned to the still active portion of the mine. This time we followed Vaz, all three of us working on the same platform.


    "What happened to not getting me involved?" She asked as she picked up the resonance grinder.


    "Would you prefer we go elsewhere?" I asked seriously. "We could leave...."


    "...No." She said after a moment of consideration. "The company is nice, I am usually alone on my platform."


    I nodded and waited for her to finish using the sci-fi mining tool, taking it from her when she was done and quickly getting to work, not wanting to draw more attention. Almost as important as information gathering was staying under the radar, something that I hadn''t been doing well so far but would hopefully get easier now that we had "settled in."


    I passed the tool to Tatnia when I was done with it and got to work, hammering out stubborn chunks of stone, separating out the pieces of mediari, and storing them in my pouch. Work was constant and painful, the maroon material slowly burning my fingers, turning them red and causing small blisters to form. I could see Tatnia was suffering as well, and I had to fight the urge to reach out and heal her. Not only would the light of the spell be blatantly obvious to everyone around us, but we would also stand out like a sore thumb if we didn''t have any sign of handling the caustic spice component. Healing my hand from punching that creepy fuck was the last bit of healing I could probably do for a while.


    At first, Tatnia and I chatted to pass the time, making the early hours pass by quicker. By the time we emptied our pouches several times and got our first drink break, we were already too tired to talk. The temptation to cast respite was even greater than the urge to heal Tatnia or myself. Despite the encroaching exhaustion, we kept chipping away at the wall. Somehow Tatnia and I managed to just barely keep up with Vaz, the clearly physically stronger and fitter Shistavanen easily handling the hard work. All throughout the day, we did our bests to watch our guards, as well as the foreman, trying to spot anything that might be useful.


    By the end of the day, after nearly twelve hours of difficult and painful work, Tatnia and I were leaning on each other heavily for support, our bodies not accustomed to the harsh conditions. Even our face shield and filtration masks made things more difficult, the old, worn-down equipment much more difficult to breathe through than it must have been when they were new. The fact that they weren''t new and that countless people had used them before us was a fact I had to continually repress.


    The after-work process was identical to the previous days, an escorted climb to the surface, a foam shower, and then a rinse. Vaz looked miserable walking out of the rinsing room, and I managed to keep from laughing. She looked like a dog coming out of a bath and reminded me of a family pet from when I was much younger.


    When we made it back to our room, rations in hand, I stealthily cast respite on myself, then Tatnia, who looked like she was about to hug me when the stamina and energy-restoring spell settled into her body.


    "That¡­ I think that might be addicting," She said, sitting straighter and looking much more alert. "I feel like I don''t need to sleep."


    "That will fade, like drinking a cup of caf," I explained. "We still need to sleep, or we will crash."


    When Vaz joined us, she sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall opposite the entrance, clearly not wanting to climb into bed soaking wet. She silently ate her ration, finishing it quickly. Tatnia and I talked for a while, quietly discussing what we had noticed throughout the day.


    "They know what they are doing," Tatnia begrudgingly admitted when I brought up the guards. "They made the usual mistakes people make for these types of jobs, but they clearly learned to work around them."


    "They are experienced," Vaz explained. "The mine is profitable, they can afford to pay them well and to hire guards who know what they are doing."


    "I would be a lot more impressed if they weren''t supervising slave labor," I said, shaking my head. "Assuming they know. Did you get a closer look at the foreman''s and control unit?"


    As we were preparing to leave for the day, grabbing and starting to pull the mine carts full of mediari, I spotted Tatnia trying her best to get closer to the foreman''s table without seeming suspicious. I tried to cause a bit of a distraction, but I was only partially successful, a nearby guard shutting me down with a threat almost immediately.


    "Not close enough to really see much," She responded. "It''s definitely different, but I have no idea if that includes an off switch."


    "...I still can''t see them having an off switch so close to us," I commented with a frown.


    "It would be best to assume competency," Vaz responded.


    "I agree," I responded. "Let''s assume they aren''t dumb enough to actually leave something like that around. Besides, starting an escape down in the mine¡­ Seems like a good way to get shot climbing out."


    "How are you planning to fight the guards, even if you manage to free yourselves?" Vaz asked, standing up from her spot on the floor. "Are you capable of fighting armed guards with your fists?"


    "We¡­ can handle them," I assured her.


    She looked at me for another long moment before shaking her head.


    "I do not know why I believe you, but I do," She responded, shaking her head. "I am more than a match in close combat, but not even sharp tooth and claw would help when they have the advantage of range."


    "That sounds a bit like you''re interested in helping us," I said with a smirk.


    "Does it?" She responded, giving me a smirk of her own.


    She wordlessly pulled down the mattress of the bunk above mine, using it to dry herself off as best she could. It worked surprisingly well, and I pushed the fact that she had probably used my mattress to do that to the same at some point. When she was done, she put the mattress back to dry before raking her clawed hands through her fur, attempting to comb it straight.


    "I will join you," She finally said in her deep rumble. "I have been here, doing nothing for long enough. My father would be disappointed that I have wasted away for so long. Even if we fail, I may die knowing I was not a coward."


    Tatnia and I shared a look, stuck between being happy to have another helping hand and concerned about her acceptance that she might die.


    "No one''s dying," I said, standing up from the side of my bed. "We take this slow, plan out every step, and we will get through this."


    "Very well," She responded, though she didn''t look like she completely believed me. "What is our first objective?"


    "Our first objective is getting these collars off," I explained, Tatnia nodding in agreement. "Any progress we make is meaningless if we don''t have a way to get them off."

 Chapter 46

    Not long after Vaz agreed to join us in trying to break out, and we reaffirmed that finding a solution to the collars was our most important task, we climbed into our bunks and slept. I could have used the respite to let us plan a bit more, but at this point, there wasn''t much of a reason to. We woke up, and from there the day was the same as before. We ate, got herded down to the mine, and spent the entire day working before being escorted back up to the prison area.


    During our work shift, when Vaz was dropping off a load of stones, Tessa caught my attention.


    "Deacon¡­ would that armor spell you mentioned be enough to protect you from¡­" She started to ask, finishing by miming an explosion from her neck.


    "At the stage I''m at now? No, I wouldn''t trust it," I responded, shaking my head. "Maybe at the next one? That''s a pretty risky maybe, though, so let''s call that plan ''We are fucked anyway, might as well try it.'' I would have to learn it first, and I don''t exactly have the most free time. And the purple armor I make would consider it clothes and form around it, not protect me from it."


    She nodded in understanding, the topic dropped for now as Vaz returned. Eventually, we would show her some of my abilities, but for now, we needed to make sure she was actually on board, not just pretending to be so she could eventually sell us out. The shift dragged on and on after that, and I spent most of it mindlessly working, my brain focused on how we could get out, trying to put together a plan from what little we knew.


    My first instinct was to just try and cut it off. If we were careful and didn''t cut anything important, there was a chance we could remove it without disturbing any sensors inside the device before it could realize it was no longer around someone''s neck.


    When we finally arrived back at the prison block, and the three of us sequestered ourselves back in our cell, I brought up my idea.


    "Do you know what kind of anti-tampering stuff the collars have?" I asked after sitting on the edge of my seat, the still-wet form of Vaz sitting on the floor. "Like if we started messing around with it?"


    "I know of several who have attempted to remove their collars, none of whom succeeded," She responded. "One managed to knock himself unconscious trying to smash it open, while the others failed but were quickly taken away and punished for attempting."


    "So they knew someone was trying to tamper with it? But then why not just remotely knock them out¡­?" I asked, mostly just trying to puzzle through the conundrum out loud. "Were they taken away immediately? Or once the guards got a look at them?"


    "A mixture of both." She answered after a moment of thinking


    "Fuck, that doesn''t tell us anything," I said, shaking my head. "We-"


    "Wait! The ones that were taken immediately¡­. were they trying this out in the open?" Tatnia asked. "Like in view of the cameras?"


    "I¡­ cannot say for sure," She admitted. "My instincts tell me you are correct, that those taken immediately must have been spotted by the surveillance. However, the memories have blended together. Others might remember better¡­.?"


    "Letting people know what we are planning is a bad idea, especially with the vast majority of people here being criminals of some kind," I said, shaking my head. "And there is no way to ask about how tamper-proof the collars without people realizing what''s going on."


    For a long moment, I thought to myself before eventually letting out a sigh, not liking the conclusion I had reached but realizing that there weren''t a lot of options. I needed to go out on a limb.


    "We need more information. That is the key. If we don''t start canceling out some variables and finding the real information, we are going to be stuck here forever," I explained, reaching up and fiddling with the collar.


    "How do you suggest we do that?" Vaz asked, watching me curiously.


    "Right now, our biggest variable is whether or not the collars have sensors that tell people when they are being fucked with," I said, standing from the bed and getting down into an awkward position. "The fact that they could do visible damage to it tells me that whatever explosive is inside them is stable enough not to go off when it''s hit. So...."


    I sat down by the bed, putting my neck and collar against the hard metal edge. With any luck, this would keep me from getting hurt since all of the force would be going through the collar and into the bed rather than through the collar and into my neck.


    "Wait, what are- No. No, we are not testing it out on you, Boss," Tatnia said, shaking her head, grabbing my arm, and pulling me back up. "Don''t be stupid. What happens if you''re incapacitated? We lose our powerplay."


    With me standing out of the way, Tatnia started taking my place, putting her collar against the edge of the bed and looking up at me and Vaz.


    "But¡­ Fuck, alright," I said, shaking my head. "I''m a lot less confident about me hitting the right spot than I was about you hitting the right spot though."


    "Allow me then," Vaz said, putting her hand on my shoulder. "I am confident I can hit the collar without harming her."


    I looked at her for a moment before nodding and standing aside, still watching closely, chewing my lip. The canine-esque humanoid stood over Tatnia, lining herself up, settling into some sort of trained stance.


    "Not enough to break it," I reminded her. "Just to test if they know when we are fucking with it. I''m worried the bomb will go off if it''s actually removed, especially if the lock itself breaks."


    Vaz nodded wordlessly before focusing on Tatnia and her target. She seemed to settle even more before bringing her clawed hand down on the collar, slamming the side of her palm into the metal band. She struck it three more times, each time the bed letting out a muffled metal banging, the collar itself letting out a much more dulled metallic clunk. After the fourth blow, she stood back up, coming out of her stance.


    "That¡­ wasn''t fun, but it wasn''t nearly as bad as I thought it would be," Tatnia admitted, shifting and standing up from the awkward position. "Now what?"


    "Now we wait," I said, stepping around Vaz to examine Tatnia and, after that, her collar, inspecting it for visible damage. "It''s slightly warped, but nothing else noticeably wrong beyond that. You definitely hit it hard enough to rattle any sensors it might have for being fucked with."


    We sat around the cell, waiting nervously for anyone to come and take Tatnia away. After an hour of uninterrupted waiting, we finally called it and climbed into our beds. It appeared that no one had noticed what we had done, but we wanted to play it safe.


    The following day, we were all walking on eggshells, mentally, if not physically. We were all hyper-aware of every look the guards sent our way, wondering if somehow they would notice the nearly invisible amount of warping that Vaz had inflicted on Tatnia''s collar. As the day went by, our tension slowly receded, replaced by a sliver of hope. If whoever was controlling the collars couldn''t tell it was being tampered with, I felt a lot more confident about messing with them to try and get them off. Not that I would risk sparks, not when it could set off whatever explosives were inside them.


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    When we finally made it back to our cell, all three of us were tired and sore, so we quickly ate in silence. By the time we were done, we had recovered enough to talk about what we had learned.


    "They showed no signs of knowing we had tampered with Tatnia''s collar," Vaz said, folding her ration bar wrapper up before throwing it out of the cell.


    "Yeah¡­ That''s a good sign," I said. "That means if we manage to take it off, there is a chance they won''t know until we start moving around."


    "Unless the bomb goes off," Tatnia pointed out.


    "The fact that these other people did visible damage to their collars and it didn''t go off, or even tell the people controlling them that something was up, tells me their system isn''t as foolproof as they claim," I said, leaning by the entrance to the cell, facing inwards. "It''s still a possibility¡­But I think the explosives are set up to be triggered, not trapped. It''s a risk, but.... let''s go with it for now."


    "The rest of the crew could be coming for us," Tatnia pointed out. "Not saying we shouldn''t take the risk, just pointing out it''s an option."


    "I''m sure they are looking for us, I''m just a lot less sure if they are already coming for us," I responded. "I don''t doubt their ability or drive, just how they could possibly know where we are."


    "So we risk it?" Tatnia asked, and I nodded in confirmation.


    "Yeah, we risk it."


    "While I understand your sentiments, you''re talking as if you already have a way to remove our collars," Vaz said, her canine features carrying her confusion well. "Do you have a way?"


    "Yeah, he has a bit of an advantage," Tatnia said. "A few tricks up his sleeve¡­."


    Tatnia trailed off, the silence hanging in the room for a second before she looked at me with a confused look on her face.


    "Aren''t you gonna¡­?"


    "I''m waiting for you to spoil it like you did last time,''" I responded, crossing my arms with a raised eyebrow.


    "Really, Boss? You''re gonna do that now?" She asked, shaking her head. "Fine, I won''t say anything."


    I stared at my crewmate for a long moment before eventually adding and uncrossing my arms, turning to look at Vaz, who looked bewildered at what we were talking about.


    "Right, so-"


    "He is a space wizard!" Tatnia said in a stage whisper, cutting me off again, just like before.


    Unlike before, though, I immediately got back at her by charging a low-powered spark spell and zapping her leg, like I had before, while still on Nar Shaddaa. She cursed and stumbled onto my bed, her leg giving out for just a split second. She immediately sat back up, giving me an annoyed look. I turned to look at Vaz, who was staring at me and speaking in a language I didn''t understand. She had fallen into a combat-ready stance, her claws ready to attack.


    "What was that?" She asked tensely, which slowly released as neither Tatnia nor I made any violent moves. "What did you just do?"


    "As annoying as she might be, Tatnia was right, I am a wizard. A mage, more specifically," I explained. "I can do magic."


    Over the next twenty minutes, I showed off a bit of my abilities, making sure to only use things that were easily hidden and didn''t make too much noise. I finished off my little show by healing the blisters and burns on the hands of the humanoid from handling the mediara. Since she was covered in fur, no one would be able to see that she didn''t have them.


    "You¡­ healed me¡­ Just like that?" She asked, feeling her pain-free hands opening and closing them. "That is incredible. No Jedi could do that, at least not that fast."


    "That''s cause I''m not a Jedi," I said, tilting my head after a moment. "How do you know about Jedi?"


    "My adopted father, before he died, was Mandalorian," She responded.


    "Oh, yeah, that explains it," I said with a nod, getting a surprised look from Vaz and Tatnia. "Mandalorians and Jedi aren''t exactly sworn enemies, but it was as close as you could get. Their beliefs clash heavily, and they don''t have the best history. Neither side is innocent, no offense, but I imagine your father taught you a bit about them in a ''know your enemy'' type of way."


    "I¡­ yes, how do you know that?" She asked, looking confused. "Not many know that history."


    "He does that," Tatnia said, shaking her head. "Knowing things he shouldn''t, I mean. You get used to it. That said, Mandalorians have a reputation. Did your father train you?"


    "Partially. My father was.¡­ not an exile, but left his covert after a difference in opinion," She explained. "He trained me in what he could but died before he could finish."


    "My condolence," I said softly, getting a nod of acknowledgment in return.


    "... So you are not a Jedi, but a mage. How will your magic help us?" Vaz asked after a moment of silence.


    "Well¡­ I think with the right application of cold¡­" I said, spraying a frostbite spell across the wall. "And a bit of leverage.¡­"


    I charge up my summon-bound battleaxe spell, a large double-edged axe appearing in my hand. It was just over four feet long, with a simple axehead </a>and very little detailing beyond some simple accents and shaping in the handle. It looked a bit like the Stalhrim battleaxe from Skyrim but without the weird material. As always, it was also translucent and glowing light purple with whisps of the same color flowing off of it.


    "You''re not thinking of using that to cut it off, are you?" Tatnia asked, suddenly very nervous, her hand going up to her neck. "Cause if you are, I take it back. You can go first."


    "No, all healing spells in the world wouldn''t make me feel comfortable swinging this thing at any friend''s neck," I said, shaking my head. "The weapon end isn''t the important part. The handle is. Just a bit of old school magic called simple machines and the humble lever."


    While Tatnia looked at me like I was crazy, Vaz reached out and took the axe from me. The glowing bound weapon had plenty of charge to last for a while without me recharging it. Vaz shifted her grip before trying her best to break the glowing weapon. When she failed, she nodded in satisfaction.


    "I do not know how cold you''re capable of getting the collar, but if it is sufficient¡­ it could work," She said, passing the weapon back to me, starting slightly when I just dismissed it.


    "Alright. Then the only thing that''s left is to talk about when and where," I responded. "I would just assume we do it here, but I''m open to all arguments."

 Chapter 47

    A short conversation was all it took to decide that there wasn''t much reason to wait at this point. I would have given my left arm to know the guard''s schedules, shift changes, or even just how many of the bastards there were in the building at once. Unfortunately, with how strict they were with moving us quickly between the mine and our quarters, there wasn''t much of an opportunity to gather that sort of information.


    Given enough time, we could probably figure out some of what we wanted to know, but none of us were willing to hang around for a few months while we tried to spot shift changes and count faces while still looking innocent. Our information gathering for the last few days had gotten us little beyond the fact that the collars would not detonate or alert our wardens when we messed with them.


    We waited another hour, mostly hoping to let everyone around us fall asleep. I would have waited longer, but another shift of prisoners would be returning eventually, and we needed time to work. When the time came, I hit all three of us with a respite spell, wiping away any residual fatigue and tiredness before starting the process.


    When I volunteered to go first, Tatnia slapped the back of my head.


    "Are you serious?" Tatnia asked as Vaz, and I started getting ready. "We just went over this. You should not be going first."


    "Except I can use my oakflesh to protect myself," I explained. "It will give us a better idea if this is possible for you two."


    For a moment, Tatnia looked like she was about to argue with me before she cursed and stepped back. Vaz passed me a wad of foam, which I had cut from my bed with a dagger. I took it and, after a moment, let out a big sigh and stuffed it into my mouth before Vaz took another, bigger slice of foam and slid it between me and my collar. Finally, I conjured my bound axe, handing it to her with a grim nod. I dual cast oakflesh, sinking as much magic as I could into it before silently waiting for my magic to refill.


    When I was ready, or as ready as I was going to get, I looked at Tatnia before raising my hand and casting frostbite, aiming it for the collar. I held it for a while, draining my mana completely as I poured frigid energy into the collar. As the metal got colder and colder, I idly thought to myself how my magicka capacity had definitely expanded since I first arrived, as I was holding the spell much longer than I could have before.


    While the insulating chunk of foam between me and the collar, directly under where I was freezing, did help at first, soon it froze too. As the temperature continued to drop, I could feel the oakflesh spell trying to protect me as well, resisting the temperature drop, and absorbing the damage. Unfortunately, the spell was only at novice level, and I wasn''t even that good at it, meaning it failed pretty quickly under the constant pressure of the frostbite spell.


    The pain was immediate when my last line of defense snapped. It felt like a hot pan being pressed against my neck, my flesh being seared by the incredible cold. Soon I was biting into the foam in my mouth to hold back screams. When my mana was fully drained, I dropped down to the ground and positioned myself against the bed again, trying to ignore the sickening amount of pain it caused me, failing entirely, screaming and cursing into the foam.


    I saw spots, my vision flickering when Vaz pushed the handle of the axe between me and the collar, grinding against the severe frostbite forming on my neck. Knowing that every second counted, she did not take it easy on me and immediately wrenched the ax to the side. Even with me bracing the collar against the bolted-down bed frame, for a moment, I was afraid that my body would be what broke before. The edge of the collar ground into my collarbone, bruising and even cutting into my skin before I finally heard a metallic crack, and the pressure disappeared.


    Tatnia practically hoisted me up to the edge of the bed while Vaz pulled and bent the collar of the rest of the way. When she pulled the collar away, it yanked the foam barrier, which pulled free frozen flesh with it, almost making me black out. Thankfully I managed to stay conscious, and as Vaz tossed the collar up into her bed, I dumped fast heal after fast heal into my body, repairing the massive amounts of damage I had just done to my neck.


    About five minutes after non-stop healing, my neck was just about fully repaired, though I swore I could feel the cold band of metal still burning into my flesh. Tatnia was sitting next to me, looking pale and anxious but still steady.


    "Fuck¡­ that fucking sucked," I said, shaking my head before looking over at Vaz, who was trying to look casual as she kept an eye out. "Anything?"


    "No, there has been no movement," She said, turning back toward us.


    "Good," I said before looking at Tatnia. "So¡­ think you can take it?"


    She let out a long breath before nodding reluctantly. She stood, and we began the process all over again, preparing Tatnia, dumping mana into the axe for Vaz, and eventually getting her into position. With the benefit of having done this already, Tatnia sat down and put herself into position before we started, and Vaz pushed the handle of her battleaxe into the gap around her neck. It was a tight fit, tighter than mine had been, but we got it to work.


    With a look and a nod, I bent down and began pouring my frostbite spell into Tatnia''s collar. Now that I was looking on, I could see it as frosted over, as my magic chilled the metal collar and the padding below. It didn''t take long for Tatnia to tense as she started to feel the freezing energy, and not long past that for her to begin struggling to control herself. To counteract the damage it was doing to her, I cast healing hand with my opposite hand. Unfortunately, it didn''t seem to help the pain, but the muffling wad of foam did its job, but only barely, as I emptied my magicka reserves once again. When it was done, I stepped back, chewing my lip as Vaz made sure she was in the right position.


    This time it took three tries for Vaz to break the metal collar, splitting it in the same place as mine, just where I had focused my spell. Vaz tore off the collar, and I started healing Tatnia immediately, though I was stuck with the much slower healing hands spell rather than the fast heal I could use on myself. I understood why she had been so pale before, the damage the freezing energy had done to her neck, and what my neck must have looked like as well, was grotesque, like a severe third-degree burn.


    After fifteen minutes of healing, Tatnia was finally fully healed. She stood up from the bed, rubbed her neck, and shook her head, her eyes closed. She let out a long breath before turning back to Vaz and me, opening her eyes.


    "That was karking terrible," She said, still pale despite my healing. "Easily the worst thing I have ever done."


    "Definitely not something I want to repeat either," I agreed before looking to Vaz. "You ready?"


    "I am prepared," She said, before reaching out with her hand, taking mine in a warrior''s handshake. "Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Even if¡­"


    "You earned it, Vaz, when you did something about that creep," I responded firmly.


    "I suppose. Alright, let us get this over with."


    We quickly got everything set up again, once again repeating the harrowing and nerve-racking procedure. This time Tatnia was manning the axe, standing above the Shistavanen, who had already closed her eyes, her large, dangerous jaw set around significantly more padding than Tatnia or I had used. With a nod from Vas, I began pouring freezing energy into the thick band of metal. I waited for the freezing cold to reach through the foam before starting my healing spell, only stopping when my Mana was empty. I nodded to her and Tatnia worked the axe handle, pulling and straining against the metal. For a moment, I was worried she wouldn''t be able to do it, and I started getting up to add my own strength when suddenly the collar snapped.


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.Vaz reached up and bent it completely off of herself, a low rumbling growl coming from her chest as she fought through what I knew was an immense level of pain. As she stood, I saw that her eyes were wide, bloodshot, and wild. For a moment, she seemed poised to jump at us before she visibly wrestled herself under control, sitting down on the edge of the bed. I immediately started to heal her, my hands glowing as my magic sank into her horrifying wound.


    After another fifteen minutes, the wound was healed, though she now carried an unfortunate bald spot under where I had been freezing the collar, which continued around her neck a good way. My magic healed her flesh, but she would have to regrow her fur the old-fashioned way.


    When everyone was finally freed, healed, and ready, I cast respite on us again before standing up and stretching. We were all silent, the past hour having left a mark on all three of us.


    "You guys ready?" I asked eventually, getting two nods in response. "Alright, time to get this party on the road."


    I took a deep breath, mentally preparing myself for what would probably be a long night of violence. When I was ready, I charged up two separate ice spikes before stepping out of the cell and destroying two security cameras, immediately charging up two more attacks and taking aim again. It took two more volleys, but when I was done, the cameras were sparking scrap. After that, all three of us rushed down to the first floor. I dual cast a lighting rune on the floor in front of the only way in or out of the prison area before joining Tatnia and Vaz behind the cover of the closest stairs.


    Between us running down the stairs from the top floor and me destroying the cameras, some of the other prisoners started to peek out from their cells, watching us closely. Before any of them could do anything, though, they all collapsed, like their strings had been cut.


    "They knocked them out," Tatnia pointed out. "They must be on their way."


    I nodded in agreement before quickly casting my armor, sinking all of my energy into it. My reserves were halfway full when the large doors leading into the prison area slowly opened, revealing three armed and armored guards cautiously stepping inside. Instantly my rune went off, a massive amount of electrical energy discharging at once. Between my talents with lighting and the fact that I had dual cast the rune, all three of the guards dropped dead the second the lighting stopped, their corpses smoking and twitching.


    "Time to go to work," I said with a smirk, stepping out of my cover and making a beeline for the door.


    I raised my hand and charged a lightning bolt, firing it off at the first guard I saw poking their head into the room to see what had happened. The blast of electric energy caught him in the face, knocking him back around the corner and out of sight. I put on another burst of speed, determined to step through the doorway to prevent them from sealing us inside. Blaster bolts sizzled through the doorway, one catching me in the shoulder as I ran, prompting me to quickly slide behind one of the tables for cover. I turned to check on Tatnia and Vaz, watching them take cover behind another table just a bit further back.


    Blaster bolts kept pouring through the doorway, preventing me from standing and charging again. I peeked around my cover, cursing when I spotted the doors starting to slide shut. I leaned further out of cover and quickly dual-cast conjure flame atronach, aiming as close to the door as I could before releasing the spell.


    My <u>armored summon </u></a>appeared about ten feet from the closing doorway, just out of view of the guards. I quickly flexed my control, guiding it to move as fast as it could, staying in cover for as long as it could. At the last second, the blue flame wreathed summon charged through the slowly closing doors. It took a single blaster bolt to the shoulder, but the spell held together, just barely making it through the doorway before it closed, sealing us inside.


    I couldn''t exactly see through my atronach''s eyes, and what feedback I could feel was limited, but with the door now completely closed, I took a chance and ordered to find some sort of method to open the door. I could feel its limited sentience straining to figure out what I said before seeming to do something. Before I could even parse out exactly what it did, I could second, third, and fourth blaster bolt hit it, destabilizing its magic and destroying the summon.


    Which, of course, triggered the explosion, a muffled "Whump!" reaching us back inside the prison area.


    "Please have found the door controls¡­ please have found the door controls¡­" I repeated under my breath before jumping up when the doors once again shuddered and began to open. "Yes!"


    I charged the doors again, this time staying off to the side before peeking around into the hallway on the other side. The signs of my atronach''s explosion marked the left side of the hall, a singed and smoldering circle that covered the floor and went up the wall. Inside the perimeter were two charred corpses, one of which was reaching up toward a soot-covered lever.


    I pulled my head back just in time for a quartet of blaster bolts to fire through the fully opened doorway. I let out a quick breath, checked to make sure my armor was intact, and charged before casting and holding an ice spike. I whirled around the door and fired the spell, catching the last standing guard in the leg, knocking him off of his feet, the human man screaming and clutching at the massive spike of ice in his leg.


    After a quick double-check to make sure there was no one else, I turned back to wave Tatnia and Vaz over, only to find them already looting the smoking corpses of the guards who died to my lighting rune. Both of them eagerly took their weapons and spare ammo. Tatnia quickly pulled on one of the guard''s basic torso armor while Vaz caught up with me.


    "Are you two good?" I asked, turning back to watch the hall.


    "I believe we are uninjured," Vaz responded, her blaster up and pointed down the hall.


    I nodded and quickly made my way to the injured and shouting guard. I covered his mouth with my hand, the older man looking at me with fear in his eyes. He started to flounder through some sort of begging routine, but I just shook my head.


    "Here is the deal. You tell me how I get to the collar controls, and I don''t make your other leg match this one," I explained, tapping the tip of the ice spike.


    "What¡­ why?" He asked, looking confused. "I can''t."


    I gripped the spike and slowly twisted it with my hand, the guard screaming and clenching his teeth.


    "Okay, okay! Just please stop!" He shouted, trying to shove my hands away.


    I stopped touching the spike, the man sobbing out a thank you before explaining that the collar control room was an offshoot of the security room, which was a floor up and down several hallways. I promised I would be back if he was wrong, the man staying silent until I reached out for the spike again. He frantically corrected himself, explaining that the security room was a floor down, not up. I patted his shoulder before standing, already walking down the hallway from the prison area.


    "Why do we need to go to the security room?" Tatnia asked. "Wouldn''t it be better just to leave?"


    "If we leave now, we will have the entire facility, maybe more, looking for us," I explained. "But if the entire facility shuts down, and all of the collars turn off at once¡­?"


    "They would have to focus on the resulting riot," Tatnia said, Vaz nodding in approval. "Alright, Boss. Lead the way."

 Chapter 48

    The three of us slowly made our way down the long halls of the facility, with my armor fully charged. As we walked, I summoned a familiar, letting him run ahead whenever we came to a corner or an intersection. For the first two, nothing happened, but on the third, the "ambush" we were waiting for finally found us.


    At an intersection of our hall and another, my familiar turned down the next corridor and was almost instantly destroyed, a half dozen blaster bolts passing through its space in a few seconds, blowing it apart completely. I stopped and put my back against the wall, leaning around the corner for a moment, pulling back to avoid the subsequent barrage.


    "Alright, there are six of them," I said, looking back at my companions. "Any ideas?"


    "We need to keep moving," Vaz said, turning to watch the corridor behind us. "If we remain in one place, we will be flanked."


    "Right, forward and through it is," I said, shaking my head. "Tatnia, follow me in?"


    "Right behind you."


    I nodded and took a deep breath, mentally double-checking my armor before charging up a dual cast steadfast ward. I stepped out of cover with Tatnia right behind me, holding the shimmering and glowing shield of magic slightly to the side. Tatnia used the extra cover to lean out from behind me and shoot through the ward, something that I admittedly should have tested before I tried. Still, it worked, and the blaster bolts sailed down the hallway to where the guards had set up their ambush.


    Her first shot managed to catch one of the guards in the chest before they could even open fire, seemingly stunned by what they were seeing. Unfortunately, one of their companions falling backward with a carbonized hole where his heart once was finally shocked them into reacting. Some of them took cover, disappearing behind the metal barriers that had been set up, while the rest stood up and opened fire, shooting down the hall at us.


    Several blaster bolts hit my ward, bouncing off and slamming into the walls, sending white sparks flying. Even as my shield failed from the concentrated fire, Tatnia managed to take down two of the three guards who stood and fired at us. The third got one shot in on my bound armor before Vaz took them down, using our diversion to lean around the corner and fire.


    During all of this, Tatnia and I kept moving forward, my unprotected crewmate ducking behind me fully when my ward failed. Together we picked up speed, finally reaching the fortified area. I lashed out with a sparks spell in one hand, washing it over two of the guards, causing them to shout and stumble back. Tatnia turned and fired at the remaining guard, dispatching them easily. While my targets were stunned by the sparks, I charged up a lighting bolt, slamming one into each of their chests, turning them into smoking corpses.


    I refilled my armor as we caught our breath for a moment or two, Vaz catching up with us as Tatnia grabbed more ammo from one of the downed guards. She tossed one of the energy cells to the Shistavanen, who caught it and quickly exchanged it, loading her blaster rifle with a practiced hand.


    "Time to go down?" Tatnia asked, nodding to the nearby doorway, which was marked as a stairwell.


    I nodded, and together we made our way to and down the stairs, a summoned familiar once again taking the lead. When we reached the right level and stepped out into a new floor, we immediately ran into two more guards. My familiar managed to take down one cleanly, and Vaz sprinted to do the same to the second. While my tiger familiar tore the throat from its target, Vaz used her claws to slice through hers, seemingly experienced enough to point the resulting arterial spray away from herself.


    "Damn¡­ alright, the security office should be this way," I said, orienting myself according to the guard''s directions.


    It didn''t take long for us to arrive at our destination while somehow avoiding any more encounters with the guards. The security office was well-marked, but the door was locked. I cursed under my breath, looking around before shaking my head.


    "Alright, let''s try-"


    "Boss, let me give it a shot," Tatnia said, stepping around me and pushing me back.


    As I stepped out of the way, she slid forward, took a deep breath, and slammed her fist against the door. I watched her in surprise, wondering what the hell she was doing when she called out to whoever was inside.


    "Sir! We have a problem!" She shouted, sounding a bit panicked and out of breath. "Hello? Sir, can you hear me?"


    Nothing happened for a long, slow few seconds. Suddenly the locked door slid open, revealing a crisply uniformed guard. He looked confused, which quickly shifted into shock and fear when Tatnia jammed her blaster rifle up under his chin. He raised his hands immediately, and I stepped closer to disarm him, pulling a blaster pistol from his hip.


    "Nice and easy now," Tatnia said, pushing the guard into the security room, Vaz and myself following behind.


    The room was a decent size, with one side nearly covered with computers and view screens showing video footage of several different places. Three of the viewscreens were divided into six camera views, and one of the three showed nothing but static on their divided screens. Along the far wall was a doorway with another on the wall opposite the wall of screens.


    "-aren''t heading to the exit," One of the guards, a Rodian, said. "They managed to take down the ambush point but didn''t make it to the second one¡­ where are they?"


    "Doal''s squad just reported in, they definitely aren''t in the their barracks," Another guard, this one human, said. "Sir, who-"


    As Tatnia pushed the guard further in, the three guards sitting in front of the security screens finally noticed us. One of them stood quickly, trying to pull his pistol out. I zapped him with sparks before finishing him off with an ice spike, the large ice projectile slamming into the Rodian''s chest, knocking him off his feet and to the ground, where he lay, unmoving.


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    The other two raised their hands in surrender.


    "Vaz, find strip them of weapons," I said, the Mandalorian-trained woman nodding, heading to the surrendered guards while I focused on the one sweating on the end of Tatnia''s rifle. "And you can lead us to the collar controls."


    "Why?" He asked, pale and fighting what was probably a considerable amount of panic. "What are you going to do?"


    "I''m going to throw a party," I said sarcastically, jamming his own pistol into his ribs. "The collar controls?"


    He nodded reluctantly, turning and heading to the far doorway, Tatnia and I following behind. He stopped in front of the door''s control panel, looking over his shoulder before slumping in defeat and tapping the panel. After entering a password, it blinked green, and the door opened, revealing another smaller room. There was only one computer system inside, and it was currently unmanned.


    "C''mon, we have invitations to send," I said, pushing the man into the chair, leveling his blaster against the back of his neck. "I want you to turn off all of the collars at once. Can you unlock them from here?"


    "Ye-yes, b-but-"


    "But what?"


    "They are all unconscious! They won''t wake up for a while!" He responded, shouting to get through his fear.


    "... can you activate all of the collar''s functions from here?" I asked, the man nodding rapidly. "Good. I want you to activate the pain inducers for a split second, just long enough to wake everyone up. Then unlock their collars. Will that work?"


    "I¡­ y-yes, that would probably work," He admitted, leaning away from me but not moving otherwise.


    I gestured to the controls, and he jolted, turning to the screen and starting to activate the collar system. After going through two confirmation screens, he stopped, looked at me, and winced, pressing a button for a split second before releasing it. Once he released the pain inducer button, he quickly entered another password¡­ and another before finally gaining control.


    "Are you-"


    Ignoring him, I reached forward and pressed the activation button, the screen flashing a warning before registering that all collars were unlocked and disengaged. He slumped in his chair, giving up. After confirming everything was in order, Tatnia grabbed the guard''s shoulder and dragged him out of the room. Once they were through the door, I washed the console down with a stream of sparks, the system immediately going dark as I fried it. I quickly left, sealing the door and destroying the control panel as well.


    "Right. One last thing," I said, walking to Tatnia and grabbing the guard''s arm, dragging him to the wall of screens. "I want you to delete everything that the cameras have been recording, and then I want you to turn it all off. Can you do that for me?"


    This time guard didn''t hesitate, quickly sitting down and doing as I asked. I watched as he worked, confirming that he was at least vaguely doing the right things. After a few minutes of tapping and working, the screens started going dark, and the system completely shut down.


    "Good job. Now stand back," I warned, waiting for him to get out of the way before hosing the whole wall down with the lightning, watching the computers and screens spark and smoke as I ruined them completely.


    I did this twice, emptying my mana completely each time before I was satisfied. I turned to find Vaz securing the last guard with the others, tying them up with their own jackets.


    "Alright, that''s done. Time to get going," I said. "We are gonna blitz to the exit now, I want to get out before getting caught up in the riot."


    "Agreed. I know the way. These guards have been eager to give directions," Vaz explained, and I nodded, gesturing for her to us out.


    We made quick progress through the facility, stopping twice, once to hide at a corner and let a squad of guards run by and again to fight a different squad, easily taking them out after getting the jump on them.


    It wasn''t until we reached one of the final barriers to our freedom that the guards finally put up another challenging fight, clearly having decided to hold the exit at any cost, having set up a heavy blaster cannon of some sort. Without access to magic, I was pretty sure we wouldn''t have stood a chance.


    As it was, it took me a minute to charge my armor, step out of cover, fire a dual-cast lightning bolt, retaking cover before my armor failed. I was trying to take out the blaster cannon itself, and after a few tries, I eventually managed to nail it. The weapon shot out sparks, its powerful energy source sending out an explosion of smoke and fire, knocking the two guards manning it to the ground.


    With the guards distracted and the heavy weapon destroyed, I conjured a fire atronach, sending the construct to rush the reinforced exit, hands raised and dumping fire into the ranks. It lasted long enough to dive over a piece of cover before I detonated it, a gout of flame coming over the metal barrier. With the guards now dealing with more injuries, fire, and the explosion itself, I sent more and more of the constructs until, eventually, I felt confident in charging the exit myself.


    Once again, I led the charge, with Tatnia and Vaz behind me this time. I held out a one-handed steadfast ward, firing out ice spikes at any guard who stuck their head up, managing to make it through one of the gaps my atronach had made. We jumped through and made quick work of the surprised guards, finishing off a few of the burned and injured before rushing to the exit.


    We stumbled out of the smoke and fire-filled interior to find ourselves in the same garage area Tatnia and I had been brought in through. After a minute of searching, we found a row of land speeders parked in a neat row.


    "Personnel parking lot?" I asked as Tatnai pulled out ahead, looking around before making a beeline for a specific craft. "See something you like?"


    "I know this model," She said, walking over and looking into the sealed cockpit. "Plus, there is room for all three. Can I have a dagger?"


    I quickly summoned a dagger and passed it to her, watching as she used the bound weapon to expertly pop open a panel under the door. She fiddled for a few seconds, cut a wire and connected it somewhere else, a metallic clunk echoing through the vehicle. With a smirk, she pressed a button, and the hatch pulled back, revealing an interior with four total seats.


    "Get in. We need to get gone," She said, slapping the panel closed with her palm.


    "Really?" I asked sarcastically, climbing into the passenger seat as Vaz climbed into the back. "I figured we could take the scenic route, maybe stop for some food?"


    She laughed, the high of the prison break clearly affecting us all. She sat down in the driver''s seat, using the dagger to pop open another panel. This one took even less time, the speeder starting up in a few seconds. She made to pass me the dagger, but I dismissed it instead, the blade disappearing in a puff and spark.


    Shaking her head, she focused on driving, swinging the speeder out of its parking spot, and making a beeline for the exit. I had to step out and activate the garage bay door, but once it was open, we were free and clear.


    Tatnia drove out of the garage, keeping it steady and at a reasonable pace, not wanting to attract any attention if someone happened to be looking. For a while, we were silent, our focus on looking around, trying to spot if anyone was following us or tracking us down. After about five minutes of driving, I let out a long sigh.


    "Thank you, my friends," Vaz said, sitting up and focusing on me. "You have given me my freedom."


    "We aren''t in the clear yet," I reminded her. "We still need to get off the planet."


    "It does not matter," she assured me, shaking her head. "I am free when I thought I would never be again. I owe you both my life."


    "You were just as important to getting out as we were," I assured her. "For now, let''s focus on getting off this rock. We can talk about who owes who what later."


    Vaz looked at Tatnia, who laughed and shrugged.


    "It''s just how he is, you get used to it," She explained. "Or you will if you stick around."


    "I would like that."


    "Welcome aboard then," I said with a smile and a nod, turning back to watch the road and our destination.

 Chapter 49

    We drove for a while, crossing the gap between the prison mine and the rest of the city built under the energy dome''s protection. Eventually, we made our way into an industrial district surrounding the mine in a crescent moon shape. Space was clearly a premium under the dome, but the gap still took around a minute to cross. I idly wondered if that was a safety precaution to catch escapees who tried to book it on land or an attempt to prevent collapses or other mine issues from affecting the infrastructure. Once we crossed the gap and faded into the buildings along the edge, all three of us sagged in relief.


    "Alright, what''s our next step?" I asked. "My instinct is to find an off-world communication station and contact the rest of the team. I want to know if they were caught up in anything or if they made it off that planet cleanly."


    "I realize now that this might be a bit late to ask this, but why were you sent to the mines?" Vaz asked.


    "We escaped being made slaves on Nar Shaddaa," I explained, leaning back in my seat. "Since it was their fault we were there, we decided to "borrow" some resources from the slavers. In the process, we fucked over Jabba the Hutt, not that we knew it at the time. He put a bounty on our heads, and somebody collected."


    "What about you?" Tatnia asked, looking at Vaz through her mirror as she drove. "How did you end up there?"


    "My father ran afoul of a crime boss before he retired. He thought he paid his debts and laid the grudge to rest, but the crime boss disagreed."


    "The Black Sun?" I asked, doing my best to hide my nervousness at the idea of being on such an infamous and widespread organization''s radar.


    "No, just a planetary crime lord." She assured me, shaking her head. "I doubt he has the connections to even learn that I have escaped."


    "Right. Sorry, I needed to ask. If it had been, we would have to be much more careful," I apologized. "Maybe even find a way to fake your death or something. So what happened?"


    "I understand," She said with a nod before continuing. "This crime lord put a bounty on my father, but I managed to escape. I was in the process of seeking revenge when I was caught. Instead of killing me, I was sold for a small shipment of spice."


    "Are you going to go off on revenge again?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at her.


    "No, I will not." She assured me, looking out the window. "I have wasted enough of my life on him, I will not lose more time. Besides, crime lords have notoriously short lifespans, he may already be dead."


    "Comes with the territory, I guess," I agreed before sighing and taking a long breath. "Right, we still need to figure out what we are doing. We should get in contact with the others to at least tell them what''s going on and make sure they are okay. Depending on the situation, we may just wait for them to pick us up¡­ or we might try and find our own ride off this planet."


    "No stealing shipments of spice," Tatnia said, looking at me sternly. "Yes, we could make a ton of money, but it would not be worth it. You were nervous about getting Black Sun''s attention, that''s how you get people like them to take an interest in someone."


    "Alright, I didn''t want to do that anyway. But that''s going to reduce the pool for potential ships by a lot," I pointed out. "Especially because if we are worried about messing with the spice, then the ships delivering materials to treat the mediari would also be off limits."


    "... Damn, you''re right," Tatnia agreed, chewing her lips.


    "For now, let''s focus on step one, finding an off-world capable comms unit," I suggested, getting two nods in agreement.


    The way that communication systems worked in Star Wars was one of the reasons I was so glad I negotiated for a general knowledge package before the entities dropped me off in my cell oh so long ago. In both canon lines, the handheld comms units sometimes acted like walkie-talkies, other times, they acted like cell phones, and while Legends did talk about things like the Holonet using buoys to connect planets together for the equivalent of the internet, none of what I was exposed to talked deeply about what the Holonet was, save an internet equivalent. That wasn''t surprising, as most of these books were written in the early 2000s when the internet was just becoming something exciting and potentially useful, not the ever-present behemoth that touched every corner of our daily lives like it was by the time I died.


    In this universe, almost every planet had a local form of internet, even if it was just an extensive network connecting information together rather than a source of entertainment or convenience. The majority of planetary communications ran through or alongside those systems, and the vast majority of handheld comms units could use those systems to connect to people also on the planet.


    The Holonet, on the other hand, was an interplanetary internet, essentially a premium service. You needed to pay for access and frequently had to pay more for individual subscriptions to each "website" for full access. You could also pay to have access to a planet''s local internet equivalent with their Holonet uplink, which was how people could see stuff the Empire would rather censor, as a local planetary server hosted it, and you, as the viewer, were just streaming data, rather than an entire file.


    Shockingly enough, that was only the top layer of knowledge, the kind of information most people already knew. I knew that most interplanetary banking services played by different rules, for example, with the Holonet letting them through so anyone could access them. There were also many subsystems, optional services, off-brand equivalents, and sharing methods that I vaguely knew existed but weren''t included in my download since the details weren''t common knowledge.


    All of this came down to one thing. We needed to find a comms system that had Holonet capabilities, as most comms units could access local internet, but not Holonet. It was a strange distinction for me, someone who was used to being able to access almost any information with just a cell phone, but my local knowledge just accepted it as a fact of life.


    Technically a Hyperwave unit would also be able to communicate with the Chariot, but since those were only found on ships, so that was off the table unless we grabbed one.


    "So, what''s our best bet?" I asked, watching as another industrial complex passed by on the left.


    The smokestacks were huge, reaching out the top of the dome and pouring out green smoke. Dozens of workers climbed the scaffolding, walked around platforms, and went about their work. I couldn''t see any that were wearing collars.


    "Honestly, our best bet to find a Holonet link and a ship is the same place, the spaceport," Tatnia explained. "A Holonet connection is required to have a starport function. Otherwise, Holonet connection is basically random, beyond maybe excluding poor people."


    "I assume you mean like a civilian port rather than one the refineries are using to ship stuff in and out?"


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    "Well, they both would, but again, not worth the trouble."


    "Yeah, but hijacking a ship from a spaceport¡­ seems like a big step. I mean, this is technically an Imperial world, right?"


    "Yes, and we are lucky it is. If we were sent to a spice mine in Hutt space, we would likely have been implanted with a slave chip, not wearing a prison collar," Vaz explained. "Slave implants are illegal in Imperial space."


    "Besides, we have plans to eventually join the Rebellion, remember?" Tatnia pointed out. "If we don''t end up from this, we will eventually work with them."


    "Right, you''re right. Okay, civilian spaceport it is. Maybe we can find something that Nevue can buy off of us." I responded before wincing and looking back at Vaz. "You don''t have an issue with the Rebellion, do you?"


    "No, I do not," She replied. "I have felt the effects of Imperial human elitism and find it distasteful. As long as my needs are met, and I find honor in our job, I have no issues with working with the Rebellion."


    "Good, okay. The new first step, find out where the nearest spaceport is¡­."


    That turned out to be easily done, as the speeder we were in had a robust computer system built into the console, letting me look up the information and get directions. As I worked, Tatnia found an empty alleyway to park, pulling down and out of sight. After a few minutes of scanning for info, we ran into the first problem.


    "Okay, we need a way to get out of this dome and into another," I explained. "The nearest civilian spaceport is a handful of domes away."


    "If we wish to remain unseen, the checkpoints are unlikely to be viable," Vaz pointed out.


    "Unless¡­ we sneak into a transport," I suggested with a thoughtful frown. "There has to be cargo going between the bubbles, right? Well, we can hop in one, ride it to the next bubble, then repeat the process to the next one. Here, take a look."


    I pulled up a simplified but well-labeled map on the small screen embedded in the dashboard. Vaz leaned forward to get a better view as I pointed at the first dome.


    "We are here, and we need to get here," I explained, dragging my finger across the screen to our destination. "That''s three bubbles, not including this one. The roadways don''t split between any of them, which means any transport we hop on going through the right checkpoint will arrive at the right bubble, assuming they don''t have to divert. We might have to get rough if they do, but we might have to get rough with any plan we make."


    "It''s not a bad idea¡­" Tatnia admitted. "We would need to get some masks, there is no way the back of a hauler is sealed enough to keep the acidic air out."


    "On a planet like this, every building we step into is going to have some," I assured her. "All we have to do is stick our heads into a few buildings, look into a few cars, and we will find some."


    "Alright, it''s our best bet to get there without being spotted," She agreed, looking at Vaz. "What do you think?"


    "I agree," She responded with a nod. "This seems like the best way to travel and stay hidden."


    "Alright, then we need to get our hands on some more masks, then make our way over to the right checkpoint and look for a ride."


    "We need to find some clothes for Vaz, too," Tatnia added, prompting me to look back at the Shistavanen.


    She looked down at her clothes, pulling at the orange prison jumpsuit. Tatnia and I were still wearing the same clothes we had arrived in, washed and cleaned at the same time as we had been during the rinse after each shift.


    "I want new clothes as well," I said. "And to burn these. The rinses may have been cleaning them, but I doubt it was as good as a sonic shower."


    Vaz chuckled at my joke, weak as it was, which I appreciated. After a few more minutes of planning, we got to work, Titania and I leaving Vaz with the speeder before heading off to find what we needed for our plan. She wasn''t thrilled about staying behind, but between her jumpsuit and the rarity of her species, she would have stuck out like a sore thumb.


    My first assumption turned out to be correct, as we only had to check a few places before we found the first thing we needed, filtration masks. We poked our heads into the back entrance of a warehouse, then what looked like a storage shed, before finally stumbling into a guard''s shack along the outskirts of a work yard. We must have gotten lucky and happened on it during break or something because the small structure was empty but had a cabinet with several masks. There was even one that would fit Vaz, which considering how different her face was structured than most humanoids, was lucky.


    Finding Vaz some clothes turned out to be even more difficult, but eventually, we found something, settling on a large shirt she could pull over her jumpsuit, as well as a cloak. It wasn''t the best solution, but instead of screaming "escaped convict," she screamed "bad news," which I thought was a solid step in the right direction. We gave up finding clothes for ourselves because, as much as I hated the idea, we would survive for now.


    Once everything was gathered, we returned to the speeder to find Vaz struggling to stay awake in the back seat, which considering we had been up for around twenty hours, wasn''t surprising. We ended up taking turns getting some rest, one of us keeping watch while the rest of us recuperated a bit.


    The following day Tatnia drove us out of the alleyway and across the dome, stopping a few blocks away from the checkpoint through the environmental shield. She parked the speeder deep into an alleyway, as out of sight as possible, before Tatnia and I moved closer to the road to look for anyone heading to the checkpoint.


    About an hour later, we spotted what we were looking for. A large speeder, hauling a trailer full of cargo, covered in a thick tarp already loose in the back. As it pulled around the corner, I conjured a flame atronach as far down the street as I could, right next to a stack of crates and boxes. With a mental command, I ordered it to knock over the pile, the construct immediately moving.


    The boxes tumbled and rolled, some of them making it to the road. The speeder hauler slammed on the brakes, the hauler swerving and slowing down, stopping right before hitting the largest container. I dismissed my atronach as I waved Vaz over, the three of us sprinting towards the back of the cargo trailer while the driver climbed out of the speeder, shouting and cursing, kicking at one of the crates. One after the other, we climbed into the back, sliding into the gaps between the cargo. I climbed in last, making sure to pull the tarp back into place, folding and shoving it back into position. We quietly waited, listening to the driver curse and shout, though I had no idea what they were saying.


    After a few minutes, we could hear the empty crates being pushed and dragged, shoved clear of the road before the driver climbed back into the hauler, still muttering under their breath. A few seconds later and we were on the move.

 Chapter 50

    The drive to the checkpoint, as well as the stop-and-start traffic before it, was nerve-wracking, tense, and aggravating. For a few a while we were even partially convinced we were going in the wrong direction, probably because we were stuck in the dark trying to guess where the driver was turning. Thankfully, a quick casting of clairvoyance, focused on the prison, showed that we were heading in the right direction when we finally stopped.


    When we did eventually stop at the checkpoint, we could hear the officials in charge as they talked to the driver. It was muffled, but I could make out that they were concerned about the recent breakout.


    "-workers and guards dead¡­. checking all¡­ no leads¡­ you for your cooperation...."


    As they talked, we could hear another person walking around the hauler. I bit back a curse and gestured to Tatnia and Vaz, all of us shifting around as quietly as possible. I managed to slip up and over a cargo crate, hiding completely, while Tatnai pushed back out of view from the back. Unfortunately, Vaz was struggling, trying to find a place to disappear and failing. She crawled as far back into the central walk space as she could, looking for a place to slide into. Unfortunately, she reached the end without finding any. Before she could come back, the tarp at the far end ruffled and was lifted up, light pouring into the back, casting harsh shadows.


    Vaz had just enough time to pull herself together and hide behind her dark cloak. The shadows cast into the hauler shifted and moved as whoever was checking the cargo looked around.


    Somehow, she managed to stay in the shadows through sheer luck, her dark cloak blending and hiding her.


    After what felt like ages, the checkpoint guard finally closed up the tarp, even went the extra mile and made sure it was secured. We collectively held our breaths as he walked around the side of the truck and shouted to his partner that the hauler was good to go. We started to move a minute later, pulling through the checkpoint and out into the harsh, unprotected expanse of the planet. We each pulled on our masks, the green, poisonous air already starting to seep under the truck''s tarp. After a few minutes of driving past the checkpoint, the tension finally started to leave us.


    "That¡­ that was way too close," I whispered, crawling back to Tatnia so we could talk without shouting.


    Tatnia nodded, slumping back against one of the crates, shifting to get a bit more comfortable. Vaz joined us, crawling back and sitting down, looking for a spot that had a bit more space for her longer legs. We had a few hours before we would arrive at the second domed city, so I volunteered to stay up, letting the other two get a bit more rest. Despite how loud it was riding in the back of the hauler, they both fell asleep pretty quickly, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Rather than drive up my own anxiety about whether this would work or not, I passed the time practicing clairvoyance, casting it over and over again on the Talos Chariot, the arrow pointing down through the planet, hopefully, off-world. It wasn''t a lot of time to practice, but every bit helped.


    The checkpoint to get into the next dome was surprisingly lax. After once again being stuck in stop-and-go traffic for ten minutes, the driver had a two-minute conversation as someone just walked around the outside of the vehicle, making no attempt to look inside. All three of us were shocked, but none of us were going to complain. My only guess was that they weren''t worried about people making it this far.


    We waited silently for an opportunity to jump out of the hauler, peeking out the back, lifting the tarp slightly to check if the coast was clear. After a few minutes, the hauler pulled down a less populated road and slowed down, letting us jump clear of the back. I botched the landing and rolled a bit, but Tatnia helped me up and we quickly made our way into a nearby alleyway.


    "Well¡­ that went well¡­" I said, frankly a little shocked that the plan had gone off without a hitch. "I guess we head to the next checkpoint?"


    "No, first we need food, then we can head to the next checkpoint," Tatnia corrected, Vaz nodding along enthusiastically.


    "How? We don''t have money."


    "Just leave that to me," Tatnia said with a smirk before taking the lead.


    It didn''t take long for us to find someplace to eat, Vaz quickly picked up the scent of a shop selling food that was nearby. Once inside, Tatnia pretended to be someone down on their luck, which wasn''t much of a stretch. She asked if she could borrow a single credit chip and a computer, so she could access her account. She promised to spend a significant amount of money on food, assuring the older man behind the counter that all three of us were very hungry.


    Five minutes later, a quick check of Tatnia''s account attached to our crew, a transfer of funds, and a credit chip update later, and we were eating a feast of food. It tasted amazing, probably because we had spent the last few days eating nothing but crappy rations.


    Once we had eaten our fill, we made our way across the city. This dome was smaller but much more densely populated than the one we had started in, which was suitable for blending in. Still, it was a big area to cover, and we spent most of the day walking across the city. Tatnia floated the idea of stealing a speeder, but we eventually decided that staying as under the radar as much as possible was our best bet.


    By the time we made it to the general area of the correct checkpoint, it was getting dark, so we found an empty, relatively dry alleyway to sleep in. It was far from pleasant, but a quick check showed that our current dome was primarily residential and business, with no temporary sleeping locations to keep from leaving a trail.


    When we woke up the following day, we repeated the same general tactic we had before, selecting a proper ambush point before targeting a suitable ride. This time, however, it almost failed miserably. When we attempted to stop the driver, using a similar method of blocking the road as we had before, he only slowed down a bit, using his truck like a ram to shove the dumpster out of his way. I had to run and jump, both Vaz and Tatnia reaching out to grab my arms and pull me into the smaller trailer.


    In the second bubble, not including the one that held the prison, we managed to find a cheap hotel room, paid for with credits that Tatnia withdrew from her account. I made a note to pay her back when we got out of this hell hole.


    We would have slept on the streets again, as none of us had any qualms about it in particular, but that bubble seemed to be the cleanest so far and had an actual active security presence. I didn''t think we would get recognized now that we were so many domes away from the prison, but if we got busted for sleeping somewhere we shouldn''t, that would probably change in a hurry.


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    We made the rest of the journey with very few issues, all the way until the last leg of the last trip. We had just passed into the final dome, the one that contained the spaceport, and were waiting for an opportunity to jump off of the flatbed hauler we had stowed away on. We waited and waited, keeping an eye out all the way until they pulled into their destination with no luck. They parked their truck and climbed out, forcing us to climb out in the middle of an active industrial zone.


    It took us fifteen minutes to sneak back out, by some miracle, making it past the walls unseen. I couldn''t believe how lucky we were getting, and Tatnia was on the same page. Every time something seamlessly went our way, I got more and more nervous about how it would all go wrong. We were both anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. Vaz, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at ease, accepting each lucky break as they came.


    "Your thinking is flawed," She explained as we stopped to eat, the city quickly getting dark around us. "These are ''kih shukur'', small breaks. Sometimes they go in your favor, and sometimes they go against you. They are not accumulative."


    "I¡­ guess that''s true?" I said reluctantly. "Kinda hard to just let go of the instinct."


    "There is always something," Tatnia said, shaking her head in disagreement. "Just because it missed you doesn''t mean there wasn''t something waiting to go wrong. Better to be tense, waiting for it to happen, then relax and get blindsided by it."


    We continued to chat about the nature of luck, eventually transitioning to some of what Vaz had learned under her father. Besides broad strokes, Vaz was clearly reluctant to pass on anything concrete. Words of wisdom were one thing, but the teachings of Mando were obviously another. I wasn''t about to push her into passing on anything against her will, especially not when learning through observation and osmosis would happen naturally over time once we got back with the rest of the crew.


    The night was a bit on the cold side, but we weathered it with the knowledge that, with any luck, this would be our last day in this fucking mess of a world. The sooner we left this hellscape behind, the better.


    The next morning we made our way through the domed city, eventually arriving at the outskirts of the spaceport. It was hard to make out any details from the ground, so we stealthily made our way to the top of a nearby building, climbing a ladder to the roof. We knelt behind the lip that ran around the roof''s edge and watched the distant structure, trying to figure out our next move.


    From what we could tell, the spaceport was comprised of three different areas. The most prominent and only part entirely inside the dome was the intake area. This was split into civilian processing and cargo transport. The former took place inside a large building not unlike an airport, while the cargo shipping took place in a yard with an access point built into the energy dome.


    Along the back of that civilian processing building were four covered walkways that led through the dome and out onto the landing pad, where a large passenger transporter waited. A boarding ramp equivalent was attached to the covered walkway''s exit and the passenger ship''s entrance, creating a sealed system.


    The second area was a large cargo delivery space. This was nearly double the size of the civilian landing pad, and was a constant flurry of activity. Large cargo vessels would land, drop off or pick up their goods, before taking off again. I suggested we sneak in on the trucks like we had been for the past few days, but Tatnia pointed out that the checkpoint for the cargo was likely where they were charging people taxes or cargo fees. Those transports would be inspected and weighed, and their contents carefully recorded.


    The third spot, off to the side, seemed to be a private or civilian landing pad. How it was different from the one we were dropped off at, I didn''t know. What I did know was that there were several ships there now, small freighters or transports, coming and going at a much slower pace than the cargo ships. Most of the ships in the private area were clearly civilian vessels, all in various states of quality.


    "So, I think the processing center will probably have some decent security, which makes getting inside to use any holonet connection they might have very difficult," I said, watching another vessel take off. "My guess is that we would be better off just going for a ship and getting in contact with the Chariot later. Question is, how do we get to the ships?"


    "Why do we not just go around?" Vaz suggested. "There is a checkpoint in that direction. We could get on another hauler and travel through the checkpoint before getting off. Then we make our way around the outer rim of the environmental dome to the starport."


    "That would make it much easier to get access to one of the civilian vessels¡­" I admitted. "Would our masks last that long?"


    "... No, we should probably find new ones," Tatnia responded, pulling out her mask and checking it with a bit of alarm. "We cut the last trip a little close. Dammit, we didn''t even think of that."


    "We would have made it," I assured her. "It would have sucked, but I could have healed all the damage as it came in. I would rather not have to do that, obviously, so let''s find some new ones before we go for a walk."


    "I would rather not test that theory," Vaz said, Tatnia snorting at her stoic delivery.


    "Yeah, me either. Alright, we need to find or buy replacement masks," I said, nodding my head. "Anything else?"


    When we couldn''t think of anything, we climbed down off of the roof. It took a little bit for us to find a way to look up the directions, but we eventually arrived at a pawn shop of sorts, where Tatnia bought new masks for all three of us. Again I made a note to make sure she was compensated, as she had spent a good chunk of her personal money.


    Not long after that, we made our way to the exterior checkpoint nearest the starport. We managed to hop aboard another hauler, this one mostly empty, and once again crossed through the shield dome and out into the harsh landscape. Once we were far enough from the actual checkpoint, I stuck my hand out of the tarp and conjured my familiar, making it appear under the hauler. It disappeared almost immediately, but before it did, it made a huge racket as it was essentially conjured already being run over.


    The hauler slowed down drastically and pulled to the side of the road, the driver clearly having slammed the brakes aggressively. He got out and inspected the underside of his speeder for a few minutes before cursing and climbing back inside the cab, which was when we jumped out of the side facing the road, jumping over and hiding behind the barrier.


    When the hauler pulled away, we turned and returned to the dome, walking at an angle to avoid the checkpoint.

 Chapter 51

    It took us about twenty minutes to cover the distance back to the dome, primarily because as we got closer, we started being extra careful about not being seen. Luckily, the edge of the dome had a deceptively large ferrocrete lip that ran around the entire circumference. It was easily three times as tall as me and, from what we had seen on the inside, had a six or seven-foot-tall wall around the interior perimeter as well. Once we crossed the rough terrain to the side of the dome, we were hidden by the foundation, which meant all that was left was a simple hike to the landing platforms.


    Of course, smooth didn''t mean short, and we spent the better part of three hours walking around the foundation for the energy shield-protected city. The masks, while keeping us alive and healthy, made everything even more difficult. Thankfully, between our desire to finally get off the planet, and judicious use of the respite spell, we did eventually make it. When we arrived, we took cover in a low berm that was about fifty meters from the closest landing pad, which was empty.


    "Okay, so I''m not exactly happy about stealing a random person''s livelihood, so if anyone spots an alternative, call it out," I said, looking across the civilian section, watching ships take off and land.


    "Then it might be better to take the pilot with us," Tatnia said. "It will make things much more complicated, but when we are done, we can just¡­ let them go?"


    "Alright, I like that plan. Let''s hope whoever is flying the ship we pick doesn''t fuck it up," I said with a nod.


    After a few minutes of ship watching, Vaz spotted a <u>YT-2400</u></a> coming for a landing at one of the pads closer to us. It landed smoothly, its cockpit coming around to face away from us, its landing gear extending down as it landed. After a few minutes, its cargo elevator and its entry ramp dropped down, a speeder truck coming out to greet it. Over the next fifteen minutes, the ship quickly offloaded its cargo before the elevator started to close, and the truck, now piled with crates and packaged, pulled away. The man stood around for a while before climbing up the entry ramp, which stayed down.


    "Alright, guys, let''s make it happen," I said, standing up from cover and rushing towards the ship.


    We started off at a fast jog, picking up speed as we got closer and closer until we were about fifty meters away.


    Which was when a barrage of scarlet laser fire punched through the ship, which detonated into a massive fireball, flinging debris in every direction. As small chunks of the ship landed around us, I whirled around, searching the sky for where the attack had come from.


    It wasn''t difficult to spot.


    A <u>Lambda-class</u></a> shuttle had come in from behind us, the sound of its repulsorlifts hidden behind the other ships moving around the spaceport. It was painted black, with a symbol I didn''t recognize painted along each of its large wings. For a moment, I froze, unable to do anything. There was nothing we could do, with the weapons of the shuttle aimed at us, we didn''t have a chance. My magic couldn''t help, and there was no way we could outrun it. If I ran one way while Vaz and Tatnia ran the other¡­


    Despite having us dead to rights, the ship slowly landed, its weapons still tracking us as it settled down, clearly not caring about the designated landing zones. After a moment, the entry ramp extended from just behind the cockpit, a dozen stormtroopers pouring out. They made a beeline towards us, their weapons drawn.


    "Run for cover," I said, quickly casting my armor on myself, fully encapsulating myself in its protection.


    "What?" Tatnia asked.


    "When you get the chance, run for cover. And do not shoot at whatever comes out next," I said, tensely waiting as the stormtroopers stopped about thirty feet in front of us, guns raised and focused on us. "Focus on the stormtroopers, do not shoot at anyone with a lightsaber."


    "Lightsaber!?" She asked, a hint of hysterics leaking into her voice. "What about you?"


    "Just do it, Nia. Vaz¡­ drag her away if you have to."


    Before Tatnia could respond, another person slowly stepped down the ramp. An <u>armored figure</u></a>, with plates and pauldrons highlighted with red, with a black-gray helmet that didn''t have any obvious space for eye holes, just a smooth black finish. I was torn between relief that it wasn''t Darth Vader and very worried when I recognized the general similarities to the Inquisitors. The <u>discus-like</u></a> lightsaber on their hip was also a dead giveaway.


    They silently made their way closer, stopping just slightly ahead of the stormtroopers. For a moment, everyone was silent, the sound of the spaceport seeming to fall away as we stared each other down.


    "Greetings, Deacon, it''s nice to finally meet you." A fluttery male voice said from behind the helmet. "I''ve been tracking you for quite some time now."


    "Spotted us on Nar Shaddaa?" I guessed, getting a chuckle in response


    "Indeed, though at that point it was merely rumor chasing, a few poor quality videos from distant security cameras," He responded, his hands held behind him, seemingly completely at ease. "Intelligence wrote it off entirely as an interesting use of technology, but nothing special."


    "Until the prison break?"


    "Precisely," He confirmed. "I spotted the reports of a prisoner throwing around impossible powers and connected it immediately. Not that it particularly mattered. We would have investigated the prison break regardless..."


    "Yeah... I figured someone would come looking eventually," I admitted with a shrug. "Didn''t think it would be so soon."


    "The Imperial Intelligence network is vast and deep," He responded with a subtle shrug. "You managed to catch quite a bit of attention, throwing around abilities and power like you have. Watching your prison escape was very interesting."


    "Let me guess, they uploaded the footage off-site as well?"


    "Correct! Watching you throw around lighting, summon shades as you did¡­ and all with such control," He said, seemingly genuinely impressed. "Even now, with that interesting full-body shield¡­ I can hardly detect your presence. If I wasn''t watching you with my own eyes, I wouldn''t have been able to pick you out of a crowd¡­ fascinating. Oh, but let me introduce myself. I am Jago, Fourth Brother of the Inquisitorius."


    "... I wish I could say it was good to meet you," I responded.


    "Oh, don''t be like that, I''m sure there is much we could learn from each other," He said, stepping forward again. "Imagine if we combined our knowledge of the Force. With what I have learned from my training..."


    "Was that... are you trying to recruit me? There is no way you were given the go-ahead for that. The Emperor would never willingly let you guys learn what I can hypothetically do," I responded, continuing when the dark Jedi tensed in reaction to my words. "If the Emperor really wanted me captured, he would have sent more of you to make it easy, not risk it with just one of you... "


    Despite his face being covered, the dark Jedi, or wannabe Sith, was still plainly upset by my guess. Still, to his credit, he recovered almost instantly.


    "I came after you alone because I wanted to offer you training. While your skills are impressive, you clearly lack finesse. Become my apprentice, and together we could become powerful enough to kill the Emperor..."


    As the dark Jedi talked, the pressure emanating from him continued to rise. It felt dark, twisted and seemed to pulse with anger, which was disturbing and unsettling considering coming from an outside source. It took me a moment to swallow the rising urge to run and respond.


    "Really? I mean, how powerful could you really be, you''re not even the Grand Inquisitor. " I asked, working hard not to flinch when an incredible pressure seemed to double, weighing down on me. "I just want to make sure that you have the proper levels of training to teach me."


    "You are mocking me?" He asked, taking one stomping step forward. "Choose your next words carefully, I can just as easily torture your secrets from you as learn them from you willingly."


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    "So quick to shift from being my teacher to being my torturer," I said, shaking my head. "Your not-"


    A blast of formless and invisible force slammed into my chest, driving me back, my feet sliding skidding across the ground. Somehow I managed to stay standing, shocking myself more than anyone else.


    "I tire of your insolence. Troopers... kill the other two. I will handle the upstart force user," He Ordered, clearly not having a high tolerance for mocking. "Prying his secrets from him will be a fun challenge."


    I could hear Vaz and Tatnia turning and running, so I stepped to the side, keeping myself between them and the Stormtroopers. The white armored soldiers got a few shots off but, after a moment, ran off to chase my two companions, leaving me and the Inquisitor alone. I could see his head turning to watch them run before looking back at me.


    "One last chance. If you beg for forgiveness, I will order them to kill your companions quickly."


    I raised my hand and rushed at him, my hands glowing as I did, conjuring a sword to my right hand as I cast sparks with my left. I aimed the spell at his chest, the lighting reaching out, only to be blocked by his saber, only one blade out so far. As his red saber caught the spell, I swung my sword down, trying to catch him off guard, only for him to pivot his block and extend the second blade, the saber catching my conjured blade, which shockingly did not disappear when it hit his saber.


    The two very different weapons clashed, sending out a noise any Star Wars fan was familiar with, sounding like a hot iron bar on ice, spitting and crackling. There was also a low creaking sound that I hadn''t expected, like the sound of rending, tearing metal. I stopped my sparks spell, my hand glowing again before I cast flames, a burst of fire spraying from my hands. The armored Force user attempted to block it as they had the sparks, but as it was just fire, it did nothing to slow the spray. The dark Sith wannabe shouted and pushed me back with a Force-enhanced shove, forcing me to stumble backward.


    They quickly stifled the flames that licked up their chest, their armor now stained with scorch around the edges. As they did that, I took a moment to examine my sword. Hitting the lightsaber had drained a slightly larger amount of mana than just keeping it activated, but I could easily keep it going for a while.


    My mana slowly started to tick up, and I used it to conjure up a dagger for my offhand before once again charging the Inquisitor. It was subtle, but they were clearly hesitating when I charged them. The fact that it was because they were used to chasing their prey, not defending against it, wasn''t hard to figure out.


    The armor-clad Force user had just enough time to get into a prepared stance before I was on them again, striking downwards with my sword, following up with a thrust from my dagger. They blocked and struck back, the pressure of their anger palpable. As they lashed out at me, I brought my sword up to block, then my dagger to keep him from pivoting the second blade into my leg.


    We fought in a blur, cutting and slashing, blocking and stabbing. It quickly became apparent that while he was a better swordsman, potentially because of the Force given danger sense, I had more flexibility. It became especially apparent when he first managed to hit me, slashing his lightsaber against my arm, only for it to deflect off of my armor, draining its reserve but ultimately doing nothing. I quickly refilled the drain and pressed the attack, trying to take advantage of his shock.


    While he might have been better, my conjured armor and my gifted skill with the blade meant I was holding my own and then some.


    As we fought, my mana slowly refilled, taking its sweet time as I constantly recharged my bound items. I whirled around, jumped back, and threw my dagger at him, only to dismiss it when he tried to swipe it out of the air with his saber. As he did that, I charged and conjured a flame atronach, holding it back for a second to shoot the spell behind him. He spun around to see the suit of flaming armor, cursing.


    "How? What Force magic are you using?" He shouted, seething in rage as he pulled down the dark side. "Wh-"


    I directed my atronach to charge him, bum-rushing him as it raised its hand and cast flames at him, forcing him to raise his hand in return and block it with a force barrier. At the same time, I threw an ice spike at him, only for it to shatter when he blocked it with his saber. Despite that, shards of ice still hit him, breaking his focus as the atronach continued to charge him, blasting him with fire before finally slamming into him.


    The ominously red lightsaber blade stuck out of the atronach''s torso, the Fourth Brother managing to bring his lightsaber around at the last second, plunging it into its stomach. The atronach hung off of the blade, lifeless, prompting the Inquisitor to laugh.


    "It seems your constructs are still susceptible to-"


    The atronach, destroyed by the lightsaber blade, detonated in a ball of explosive fire while making physical contact with the Inquisitor. The resulting force tossed him back, tumbling and sliding along the ground. His pained scream cut out when he smacked his head on the ground.


    I slowly stood up straight, walking over to the Inquisitor''s smoking form, kicking him over. A good third of his outfit was burnt off, revealing a light green skin tone underneath. His helmet was a mess as well, cracked and chipped, his armor plates melted. He groaned, trying to find his saber, only to see it several feet away. Reaching out, he tried to pull it closer, using the Force to and dragging it to him. Just before it reached him, I drove an ice spike through his arm, then another through his left leg.


    He screamed, his free hand gripping and pulling at the spike of ice in his arm, his lightsaber flying past us and bouncing along the ground. I kicked his free hand away, charging another spell, my hand glowing.


    "Hey! Hey! Shut up!" I shouted, kicking his side. "Call off your troopers! Call them off, or I will drive another one through your chest! And order your pilots out here!"


    He activated some sort of communicator in his helmet, calling his troopers. He repeated himself a few times, but there was no response.


    "T-they aren''t responding!" He practically shouted. "And I flew myself. I tried, I-"


    "It''s fine, Deacon, we are fine."


    I whirled around to see Tatnia, supported by Vaz, slowly making their way to us. They were both limping, with Tatnia holding her side, a blaster wound under her hand. On top of that, Vaz wasn''t wearing her mask and was clearly suffering for it. Still, they were both alive.


    "Thank god," I said, sighing in relief. "Go on, you two get on the ship. I''ll be in to fix you up in a second."


    They both nodded, making their way to and then up the entry ramp of the Imperial ship. When they were gone, I turned back to the Inquisitor, who was trying to escape, whimpering as he pulled at the still creaking ice spikes. I kicked away his hand again, putting my foot on his chest. I charged up a calming spell and cast it on him.


    "Who knows I was here?" I asked. "You were looking to become more powerful. If you tell me the truth, I will help you be one with the Force, more powerful than you could possibly imagine."


    "I told the Grand Inquisitor I was investigating rumors that didn''t sit well with me!" He said fervently. "I didn''t want them to know about you, I wanted your secrets for myself."


    "But there are records of me, of the prison break?"


    "I hid them," he explained. "They might be found eventually, but not for some time¡­Wait¡­ what mind tricks are you playing on me!? I-"


    My hand glowed, and I drove a final spike of ice into his head, the icy spear punching through the already cracked and damaged helmet, killing him instantly. After a long moment, I stood back and conjured another flame atronach. Mentally I ordered it to burn the dark force users body until it ran out of power or I left its range. When it aimed its hands downward, and flames spewed over the corpse, I turned and headed to the ship, only to stop and turn around, quickly grabbing the double-bladed lightsaber that sat nearby. With my prize in hand, I turned and jogged back to the Lambda shuttle. My crew needed healing, and I wanted off this fucking planet.

 Chapter 52 - Ahsoka Tano Interlude

    Ahsoka could literally feel people watching her as she made her way out of the hangar and deeper into the tunnels of Thila command. The Force sang with curiosity as she walked, the people around her wondering just who she was and why she had been given such quick access to the high-level hangar bay. She wasn''t surprised, and it didn''t slow her down in the slightest. She was used to being stared at. She was even used to the curl of suspicion that ran under all of that curiosity.


    She made her way down a few floors, confident in her steps, despite never having been to this base before. Eventually, she arrived at her destination and stopped in front of a thick metal door, armed guards on either side. Rather than admit who she was, she reached through to the other side, where she felt the familiar presence of an old friend.


    "Let her in," General Syndulla called from inside her office, surprising the two guards, as they had yet to announce her.


    "Yes, General," The taller of the two guards said, reaching behind himself, the door opening a moment after.


    Ahsoka nodded and stepped into the room, casting her eyes around as she subconsciously looked for any hidden threats. Finding none, she focused on the green-skinned Twi''lek sitting at her desk, looking down at a large datapad. The Togruta sat down across from the rebel general, wordlessly waiting for the general to finish what she was working on. After about a minute, she tapped a final time, the datapad going dark as she looked up at her guest.


    "Sorry, just working through the first stages of our plan for the final exodus from Yavin IV," She admitted. "The ground forces that are still stuck behind the blockade are getting desperate, so we are working around the clock to get everyone out. It''s going to be close¡­ We could use your help."


    "...Will he be there?"


    "Luke?" Hera asked, the red-skinned Force user nodding in confirmation. "Most likely, he has been working hard to put the move together.


    "... I will think about it," She responded after a long moment. "I am worried that once he learns about me, he will assume that I am there to guide him. Or worse, train him. That cannot happen. I am not a Jedi, I will not train one."


    Hera nodded, leaning back in her chair, grabbing a glass of some sort of liquid as she went. Silently she took a sip, gesturing if Ahsoka wanted anything. When the once Jedi shook her head, the rebel general continued.


    "How is he?" She finally asked, her voice soft, showing just how worried she was about the answer.


    "He¡­ will survive," Ahsoka responded, a frown on her face. "He spent nearly a year submerged completely in the Force, resisting Thrawn''s¡­ interrogations. When Thrawn couldn''t break him, he locked him in a cell and threw away the key. Probably meant to use him as bait, or as a hostage."


    "Where? On the Chimaera?" Hera asked. "How did he keep it functioning? How did he escape? The Purrgil¡­?"


    "Thrawn¡­ he had resources out there. I don''t know where from or how, but when we reached the end of Ezra''s Force trail, Thrawn had managed to build a base of power, something like a governor of a planet," She explained, shaking her head. "He is dangerous, brilliant, and cunning, but even that doesn''t explain how fast he managed to build a power block, even out in the unknown regions, and even with a fully functional Star Destroyer, never mind the wreck that his flagship was when it disappeared."


    "You think there was something else at play?"


    "I know there was something else at play, I could feel it," She responded. "He had to have been getting help from somewhere, whether it was money, materials, or other resources, I don''t know. I''m reasonably sure it wasn''t the Empire, simply because of how lax security was, but that''s all I can really say."


    "That is worrying," Hera said, chewing her lip. "We will keep an eye out to the Unknown Regions, but there isn''t much we can do right now. We barely have enough resources as is, and we don''t have the manpower to send out on exploration missions."


    "I know, but we need to be careful."


    "What kind of shape was he in when you found him?" Hera asked, bringing the conversation back to Ezra, the whole point for Ahsoka''s mission into the unknown regions.


    "He spent so much time open to the Force it took us a while to get through to him," Ahsoka admitted. "It was slow going, but he is recovering. Sabine is staying with him, she brought him somewhere he could connect with to help ground him to the present."


    "The Comm Tower?"


    "The Comm Tower," she confirmed with a small smile before frowning. "Mentally, he should recover. Physically¡­ he will need a few prosthetics and¡­. And cosmetic surgery."


    Hera was silent for a long moment before letting out a series of curses, some of which Ahsoka understood, but many she didn''t. Her R''yloth accent came through as she let her frustration and anger loose. When Hera was done, she all but slammed her drink down on her desk.


    "Thrawn has a lot to answer for," She said, a dark look on her face. "When Yavin IV is finally evacuated¡­"


    "As much as I would like to join you, we can''t," Ahsoka said, shaking her head. "We couldn''t spare the ships or the manpower. At least, not enough to take down what he managed to build up."


    Hera took another deep breath, grasping at her frustration and slowly getting it under control. After about thirty seconds of failing, she settled for distracting herself, leaning down and opening a drawer in her desk, pulling out a normal-sized datapad. She put it on her desk and slid it across to Ahsoka, who caught it as it fell off the side, using the Force just enough to keep the Datapad from falling.


    "What''s this?" She asked, activating the device and scrolling through a series of videos.


    "That is a recording that one of our newer commanders gathered for us. He went missing for a few months, long enough that we pronounced him dead, before he showed up here, very much alive. He was captured and sold into slavery on Nar Shaddaa, stuck there for close to six months," She explained. "He was rescued by a team of escaped slaves, who were harassing the slave traders to gather credits in preparation to leave the planet and start a mercenary company. The leader was a man named Deacon Roy, who Commander Loc reported to have strange abilities."


    When she was done, she gestured to the tablet. Ahsoka activated the handheld computer and watched the video feed displayed. After a few seconds of watching, her eyes went wide, darting up to look at General Syndulla.


    "Is this real?" She asked, eyes dipping back down to the handheld computer screen.


    "Commander Loc swears it is, and the trusted data analysis expert I had verify it seems to agree."


    Before Ahsoka could comment, the video continued, this time with the voice of the camera''s focus coming through, explaining that they weren''t a Jedi and that they were not using the Force.


    She looked down, focusing back on the video, her jaw dropping as she watched Deacon Roy summon something from nowhere, heal with a glowing outstretched hand and cover himself with some sort of energy barrier armor.


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    "I¡­ I don''t know what to say¡­ I have never seen anything like that," She finally admitted, shaking her head as she scrolled back through the footage, letting it play through again. "The closest I could say I''ve seen is the magic of the Nightsisters¡­ but even that is something very different."


    "How so?"


    "Their magic was a Force ability similar to Sith alchemy. They used chants and mantras instead of rage, will and an iron grip on the Force to change the physical world around them," She explained, eyes glued to the screen. "It requires a tight grip on the dark side, at a level that is¡­ It''s not something you can have without signs. You can feel it in the air, feel it pressing down on you."


    "Even if you aren''t force-sensitive?" Hera asked, leaning forward and putting her elbows on her desk.


    "When it''s used so obviously? Absolutely," She answered confidently. "Drops in temperature, bouts of anger, disgust, fear¡­ Do you consider this Loc to be a good person?"


    "As much as I can anyone under my command," She answered, looking curious. "Why?"


    "If this Deacon was tapping into the dark side of the Force deep enough to perform that level of physical manipulation, a good person would feel the rage and would probably feel revolted. It would be like standing next to a rampaging, dangerous animal," She explained. "To just stand there like that? I can''t imagine anyone being able to do that, at least not someone with any decency at all."


    "And the light side of the Force?" She asked. "It couldn''t do something like this?"


    "I¡­ General Syndulla, you know my past. You know why and when I left the Order behind. Maybe if I had become a Master, I would have a better answer for you, or at least speak with a little more confidence¡­" She trailed off, taking a deep breath, visibly trying to rack her brain for answers. "I know there are many abilities the Order did not teach to Padawans or Knights. I don''t know why, though if I had to guess, it was because they saw such direct manipulations of the Force, taking it and forcing it to do exactly what you wanted, as leaning towards the dark. The Sith saw the Force as a tool, a hammer, to use it as such was beneath, or even dangerous for a Jedi."


    Despite all her training and experience at keeping her emotions calm, it wasn''t hard to see the conflicted thoughts that ran through Ahsoka''s mind as she looked back on her time as a student in the Jedi Order. Eventually, after a long time sorting through the thoughts bouncing through her head, she spoke again.


    "I don''t know what to make of it. The Force¡­ it''s telling me he isn''t to be feared," She admitted, leaning back in the chair, looking up at General Syndulla. "Beyond that¡­ I don''t know. Where is he now?"


    "After rescuing Commander Loc, he came here, dropping him off in a ship they stole to escape Nar Shaddaa. We offered our connection with a shipbroker as a thank you, both for rescuing the Commander and for selling the ship and its cargo to us for cheap," She explained. "Commander Loc left with them to the shipbroker since he was familiar with them. He then got roped into a material gathering mission, which Deacon Roy suggested as a way to earn the credits required to buy him and his group''s new ship."


    "Oh really?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. "How did he manage that?"


    General Syndulla spent the next fifteen minutes describing the mission outline that Commander Loc and his subordinates had joined Deacon and his crew on, including the resulting resources and credits they saw as a result. Ahsoka listened silently before eventually speaking when she was done.


    "Have you made any progress in decoding the computer core?"


    "We have. There are two locations so far that we are investigating, one of them is even an option for a temporary base if it turns out like the records described. Once we get some general scans to confirm anything useful, we plan on contacting Deacon''s group."


    "I want to be a part of that," The orange-skinned Togruta said. "I want to meet him."


    "Do you think you will be able to figure out the truth of his abilities?"


    "In the same room as him? Absolutely," She answered confidently. "Especially if I am on the ground with him, watching him use his abilities."


    "Alright, the investigations should be done in the next few days, you are welcome to stick around and rest¡­ In exchange, I want you to help plan the exodus of Yavin IV."


    "... Are you extorting my curiosity to get my help with Yavin IV?" Ahsoka asked, her eyes wide in surprise. "Why? You want to know the truth as much as I do."


    "Not really," The Twi''lek rebel corrected, smirking as she crossed her arms, her eyebrow raised in a challenge. "All I care about is if he is a threat to the Rebellion, if he can actually do what Commander Loc claims, and if he is willing to help us. I don''t need you there to answer any of those questions."


    For a long moment, Ahsoka was silent, studying the woman across the desk from her. Despite her challenging expression, Ahsoka could feel through the Force that she wasn''t really drawing a line in the sand. If she pushed, she would most likely give in, and given who she used to work with, the General probably knew she could feel that. Still, she could tell she wanted her input badly enough to at least attempt to steer her, even half-heartedly.


    "Fine, I will help plan, but that does not mean I will be participating," The ex-Jedi Knight said.


    She was lying, of course, there was no way she could take part in planning a skirmish like that and then not be on the ground, not when she could be. She was not the type to make plans and let others fight her battles. And General Syndulla knew that.


    "Thank you," She said with a smile. "There is a meeting tonight where we will discuss the recent troop movement and resource additions we have access to."


    "... Luke is going to be there, isn''t he?"


    "Assuming he returns from his duties on time, yes," She responded with a victorious smirk.


    "... Dammit."


    "Ahsoka, he is a kid. Would it really be so bad if you-"


    "Yes. It would." She responded harshly, cutting her off. "I can''t be a mentor to him."


    "Very well. But you will have to tell him that yourself."


    Ahsoka nodded before casting a look back down at the tablet, which was paused with an image of Deacon spraying fire along a duracrete wall. After a few seconds, she placed the compact computer on Hera''s desk before standing.


    "Thank you for sharing this with me," She said with a slight nod, turning to head for the door, stopping when Hera called out to her.


    "Ahsoka¡­" She said, the Force-sensitive woman turning to face the rebel General. "Thank you for bringing him back. Sabine was desperate but had no idea where to start. Without you¡­"


    "I was keeping a promise," She said, her expressionless face cracking with a small smile. "I couldn''t leave him to the mercies of Thrawn."


    "Still¡­ Thank you."


    Ahsoka nodded again, this time with a much less stoic expression, before leaving back through the door, her mind spinning both with old memories, new mysteries, and coming confrontations.

 Chater 53

    I quickly climbed the entry ramp into the shuttle, picking up speed as I did. As I stepped into the ship, the ramp started sliding up, the internal systems already working overtime to clean out the horrible poison in the air. I looked around and immediately rushed through the <u>interior</u></a>, making a beeline for the cockpit, where Tatnia and -Vaz were already waiting. They were sitting in what I assumed were the pilot and copilot seats, Tatnia already tapping on the controls. I stepped in behind them, dropped the lightsaber into one of the other seats, and put my hands on their shoulders, casting healing hands on them both.


    Tatnia let out a sigh of relief as the healing energy fed into her, stopping for a moment before continuing to familiarize herself with the ship, Vaz doing the same beside her. When my well of Magicka was empty, I sat down in one of the chairs to wait for it to regenerate.


    "Can you guys fly it?" I asked, watching them work. "Because if you can''t¡­"


    "I can fly it," Tatnia assured me, Vaz nodding in agreement. "Just don''t expect anything special."


    "I am not overly familiar with Sienar Fleet Systems ships, but we will manage," Vaz added, her screens flashing a few times.


    I nodded, reaching forward and starting the healing hands spell again, once again emptying my mana into them both. Not long after I was empty again, Tatnia looked back at me.


    "Stay sitting for a bit. It might get a bit bumpy," She said before turning to focus on her controls.


    The shuttle slowly lifted off from the ground, wobbling just a bit before Tatnia regained control. Once she was confident, she aimed upwards, and we were off, heading for space at a pretty fast pace. Once we broke the atmosphere, I could see plenty of ships in orbit, most of them cargo vessels of some kind, before we flew past even them.


    "Free and clear?" I asked, Tatnia nodding without turning away from the viewport, which showed nothing but stars.


    "Looks like it, Boss¡­ Now we just need to use the Hyperwave to contact the others. Set up a meeting place somewhere."


    "Yeah, about that... How difficult would it be to listen in on a Hyperwave?" I asked. "Specifically from the sender''s perspective, like if you had access to their ship?"


    "You think someone was listening in on whatever that guy was?"


    "I think that the Empire is a hive of scheming, betrayal, and power plays, and the Emperor is the worst out of everyone. The Inquisitors, as far as I know, are his own personal Jedi hunters," I explained. "The likelihood that he bugged their ships to better manipulate them is very much not zero percent."


    "God''s dammit¡­ okay, we plot a course to deep space, make the jump, and I will take a look at the Hyperwave unit. If it''s standard¡­ I might be able to spot anything weird attached to it," She admitted, not sounding very confident. "But that''s about all I can do, and it''s a stretch. We could fly this somewhere and abandon it if you''re that worried about it?"


    "No¡­ we just can''t take it anywhere important or say anything critical until it''s been gone over with a fine tooth comb."


    The computer set to work, quickly spitting out a short jump to the middle of nowhere while I continued to heal my two crewmates. By the time they were both feeling completely healthy, we were secluded in deep space. Tatnia and Vaz, the latter of which had some training in spotting plants, trackers, and bugs, checked out the Hyperwave transmission unit, which was set down inside a maintenance space. At the same time, I started going through the cargo, looking for anything suspicious.


    Most of the cargo space was empty, save a few crates of what looked like standard survival gear, an emergency kit and some basic rations. There were also five spare sets of stormtrooper armor, including the body suits that went underneath. There was another crate of standard <u>E-11 blasters</u></a> and other standard gear. The rest of the cargo space was empty.


    By the time I was done going through everything, relatively confident there wasn''t anything secret in the cargo crates, Tatnia and Vaz had just about finished inspecting the Hyperwave unit. I leaned over the maintenance hatch, extending a hand down to help Tatnia climb out, and was about to do the same for Vaz when she simply jumped up and out in one impressive leap.


    "So, we couldn''t see anything," Tatnia said, rolling down her sleeves and wiping a spot of grease off her cheek. "Doesn''t mean there isn''t something internal... but it''s the best I can we can do for now."


    "Alright, well, let''s put together a message, tell them to meet us somewhere," I said. "Somewhere random."


    All three of us headed back to the cockpit and put together a message, sending it out through the Hyperwave transceiver. Depending on where they were, it could take hours or minutes for them to get it. We settled in to wait for a response, all three of us closing our eyes to nap. About an hour and a half later, we got a response, a message that agreed to meet us but changed where we had suggested meeting, instead telling us to go to where "Boss had his first space walk."


    "The moon?" I asked, furrowing my brow as I tried to recall where the moon had been. "What did he call it?"


    "Point Thirteen. They are lucky I remember where it was," Tatnia said, shaking her head as she started working on the hyperdrive controls.


    "Is going there a good idea? It was... already in use as a hand-off point, right?"


    "Our friend said it was dead, they stopped using it after his original team was hit since there was a chance they could interrogate the information out of any survivors," Tatnia explained. "It''s just an empty system now."


    The astronavigation system started the process of calculating the hyperspace jumps while I walked back into the passenger area, grabbing the double-bladed lightsaber as I went. I dropped down into one of the less comfortable passenger seats, examining the weapon in my hands. As far as I could tell, it carried none of the dark twistedness that had come off of the Inquisitor, hopefully meaning that it wasn''t infected by the dark side. The weapon was sturdy and well-built, feeling solid in my hands. It was obviously well-maintained, and carried the feel of a weapon, the same as when you pick up a blaster or a gun.


    Which did nothing to change the fact that it looked fucking ridiculous.


    "Really scraping the barrel for new lightsaber ideas," I muttered to myself, shaking my head as I studied the buttons on the interior hilt. "Solid big scary bad guys, relying on a gimmick to take down anyone."


    For a long moment I debated activating the weapon, wondering what the chances were that it was trapped. The lore around lightsabers varied from case to case, but there were stories and instances that clearly communicated that a lightsaber could do significant damage if it was broken and activated anyway. Turning on one that was deliberately booby-trapped while I was holding it sounded incredibly stupid.


    "Fuck it, not worth the risk," I said, shaking my head as I put the weapon down on the seat next to me, leaning back and closing my eyes.


    I drifted off almost immediately, completely missing the eventual jump to hyperspace. I slept for almost five hours before finally coming back to consciousness. I sat back up, my back aching from the bare bones and rather uncomfortable seat. As I stood and stretched, I quickly healed away the ache before making my way back up to the cockpit.


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    "Are we there yet?" I asked, Tatnia turning her head to look at me.


    "No, not for another six or seven hours," She said.


    "Right. Well, are you two hungry?" I asked, gesturing vaguely to the back of the ship. "There are some shelf-stable food packets tucked back in the cargo area."


    I ended up going back into the cargo space and returning with an armful of food, the three of us cracking a few open and digging in. I was impressed by how good the shelf-stable, sealed and self-heating food was, even if it was noticeably not fresh.


    They even came with a little candy bar at the end, some sort of sweet nut bar that vaguely tasted like hazelnuts and cherries. I knew stormtroopers lived off some sort of horrible nutrient paste, so they must have been added by the Inquisitor.


    When we were done eating, we settled in for a long flight, Vaz and Tatnia taking turns napping as we cruised through hyperspace. When we finally arrived at our destination, all three of us were on high alert. We were pretty sure that whoever had messaged us was, in fact, the rest of the crew, but it was hard not to be nervous. After the gauntlet the three of us had just gone through, I couldn''t exactly condemn my rising paranoia.


    After dropping out of hyperspace, Tatnia oriented the ship toward the vaguely familiar moon, setting a decent pace. When we were about three-quarters of the way there, the Talos Chariot emerged from behind the moon''s curvature, burning rubber to get to us. Both of raindrops dropped from their connections and zipped across the distance, encircling us.


    "Dark Blade, this is the Talos Chariot," Calima''s voice said, coming through the comms system. "Power down weapons and engines, then prepare to be boarded."


    "Wait, this ship is called the Dark Blade?" I asked in surprise. "What a bunch of edge lords. We are definitely changing that if we decide to keep it."


    "Talos Chariot, this is Dark Blade, powering down now," Tatnia responded, tapping her screen, whole sections going dark as she did. "It''s good to hear your voice, Calima. How is everyone?"


    The comms were silent for a long time before it finally crackled back on, another familiar voice coming through.


    "Tatnia! It''s you! Are you okay!? What happened?! Is Deacon there? Is he okay!?" Miru asked at a breakneck pace. "Where have you guys been? How did you escape!? Where- Oh¡­ Nal says to put your wings up so we can dock!"


    "It''s good to hear from you too, Miru, Deacon and I are both fine," Tatnia explained with a smile. "We can tell you what happened when we dock. Oh, and we have a plus one, a new crew member."


    We could hear Miru taking a breath to start talking again, only for Calima to cut her off.


    "Miru, go help Nal set up the docking connection, you can talk to them when they come through," She said, the young mechanical genius whining but leaving with a happy goodbye. "Okay, Tatnia, since I assume you''re the one piloting. Go ahead¡­ and turn your engines back on, you''re going to have a much easier time maneuvering into place than me. Leave your weapons off for now, though, in case someone is holding a gun to your head."


    Tatnia agreed, and slowly, we began to move again, orienting to the bottom of the Chariot, moving until we were essentially belly-to-belly with the much larger ship. After a few minutes of careful maneuvering and assistance from secondary cameras and auto-guidance systems, the extended docking systems connected, and the magnetic clamps on the Blade''s landing struts locked onto the bottom of the Chariot.


    All three of us stood from the cockpit and made our way to the interior of the passenger hold. It took us a few minutes to remove the floor panel that covered the emergency docking system on the bottom of the ship, but once we did, we opened the circular entrance, revealing Nal, Miru, and Julus, all looking down at us¡­


    While we looked down at them.


    "Woah¡­ that''s trippy," I said, shaking my head. "How do we cross over?"


    "Kneel down and give us your hands," Nal said, leaning over and offering his own. "We will guide you through."


    One by one, we kneeled down, letting the others pull us through, shifting from one plane of artificial gravity to the other. To say it was disorienting would be an understatement, but we recovered pretty quickly. Nal slapped me on the shoulder with a smile, showing off his sharp teeth.


    "Welcome back, Boss," He said while I shook Julus''s hand.


    "It''s good to be-" I started to respond, only for Miru to switch from giving Tatnia a hug to giving me one, not holding back in the slightest. "Miru, it''s good to see you. I''m sorry we worried you."


    "Wasn''t worried," She said, keeping her head buried in my chest. "I knew you would come back eventually."


    "Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence," I said, returning her hug, before giving Nal a look. "How has it been on this side? Everything going alright?"


    "We were trying to find you," He explained. "But had no leads beyond knowing you were taken by bounty hunters, not the security force."


    "Probably because it was a bounty put out by Jabba the Hutt," I explained, chuckling when Nal''s eyes widened. "Yeah, it''s been a trip, my friend. Unfortunately, we have some business to take care of before we can sit down. The Dark Blade is an Imperial ship, the property of one very dead Inquisitor, the Emperor''s Jedi hunters. I don''t know if we are keeping it or not, but it needs to be cleared of booby traps, bugs, taps, and everything in between."


    "Emperor''s¡­ Well, you did warn us the Empire would come looking eventually," Julus said. "So, what, are you guys wanted now?"


    "I don''t know. The Inquisitor claimed he kept my existence under wraps," I explained, shaking my head. "He was hoping that I would join him, teach him my methods."


    "He hid your existence?" Nal asked.


    "He tried to. I''de say we are on a time limit now, we-"


    "Boss?" Tatnia said, nodding towards Vaz, who was looking around the interior of the ship.


    "Right, sorry, Vaz. Guys, this is Vaz Stross. She helped us escape, and stuck with us along the way," I explained. "I offered her a spot on the crew, and she accepted."


    "Oh, well¡­welcome to the show," Julus said with a smile, reaching out and shaking the Shistavanen''s hand.


    "Thank you. I look forward to working with everyone."


    "Lots of fun things to look forward to," I agreed with a smirk. "But first¡­ we need to know if anyone is listening. Miru? Are you up for it?"


    "Yeah, just let me get Racer and Leddy," She said, finally pulling away from our hug, heading down to her workshop. "But you are telling us everything while we work!"


    "Alright, alright. Let me take a sonic shower and get Vaz situated first, okay?" I said before looking at Nal. "Leddy?"


    "Prime repair droid, the one we aren''t wiping," He explained. "Just starting to show the first signs of divergence. Not much, asked for a different paint job."


    "Gotcha. Well¡­ C''mon Vaz, let''s go get you a room, introduce you to Calima, our pilot, and see about finding you some more comfortable clothes," I said, getting a serious nod from our newest crewmate. "Nal, any chance you could¡­"


    "Got a small pile of extra clothes in cargo hold¡­ might have something she can wear," He responded, walking the same way Miru had left. "Good to have you back, Boss, Tatnia."


    "It''s good to be back!" I called after him before turning back to Vaz. "C''mon, rooms are this way. I''ll give you a bit of a tour."

 Chapter 54

    As much as I wanted to spend some time sitting in the lounge area of the Talos Chariot, I ended up back in the Dark Blade''s passenger bay almost immediately after showing Vaz around the ship, including the large empty room at the back of the top deck, which I definitely hadn''t forgotten about. There were some backup control systems along the wall, but everything else had been cleared out while Nova and her team were fixing the ship up, so now it was mostly empty.


    After introducing Vaz to Calima, Miru came up and dragged me back down to the Blade, wanting me to tell the story of what had happened when we were gone while she was going over the ship. This led to me, Tatnia, and Vaz sitting in the passenger chairs in the Blade, watching the young Twi''lek work. She started by hooking Racer up to the ship''s main computer core, letting him roll through the ship''s systems while she and Leddy, who was now on their third color scheme, a deep forest green, scanned the ship with handheld equipment, looking for anomalous devices and emissions. Nal, Calima, and Julus were also present, with the former two hanging their feet over the edge of the docking portal and the latter sitting in the cockpit.


    I started the story off with Tatnia and I being chased through the streets of Daalang, the planetary security forces forcing us into a bounty hunter trap. I guessed that they had done that on purpose, but Nal chimed in and assured me they hadn''t.


    "Stayed on Daalang for days, looking for you. Trying to find your trail," He explained. "Security forces were only told you were wanted. Couldn''t trace where that information came from."


    "So the bounty hunters tricked the police into herding us around?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "That''s¡­ a lot of work, kind of impressive for how long we had been on the planet. How much was our bounty?"


    "Thirty-five thousand for you, Boss, twenty for Tatnia," Julus said from the cockpit. "Nal and Miru still have twenty."


    "What the hell¡­ Are we going to have to kill Jabba?" I asked before looking at Nal. "Would that stop the bounties?"


    "If he already gave the money to the guild, no," He answered. "But Jabba is notoriously cheap¡­"


    "So he probably hasn''t," I finished, shaking my head. "Alright, that''s an option then. Either way, we need to be more careful, especially around Hutt space. It''s also just a matter of time before I get noticed for my abilities again."


    "We knew this would happen, Boss," Julus reminded me. "Especially with you wanting to join the rebellion."


    "Yeah¡­ I just wanted a bit more time to build things up first," I explained. "I was hoping to have another ship the same scale as the Chariot, a few starfighters, and maybe a few support craft."


    "You realize how many credits it would take to keep a fleet, even as small as that, going, right?" Calima asked. "Fuel alone is going to be difficult¡­"


    "Which is why one of the stipulations for joining up would be that the fleet sticks together and that they help keep it supplied," I explained, getting an appreciative nod from Calima.


    "So... what do we do?" Miru asked, still holding her scanning device, having stopped once I stopped talking about what we had gone through.


    "We get to work. I think we start looking for more targets, maybe put mercenary and bounty hunting to the side and start making a list," I explained. "Anything connected to Jabba the Hutt just became a preferred target, for example. But that''s for tomorrow. For now, I need to take a break and sleep in my own bed."


    "After you finish the story," Miru said, threateningly pointing her scanner at me.


    "Yeah yeah, after we finish the story."


    It took a few more hours for us to make our way through our story, ending with my fight with the Inquisitor. Miru was enthralled by that part, even more than the rest, but I was much more interested to hear how Tatnia and Vaz handled a dozen stormtroopers on their own.


    According to Vaz, when they ran back around the wreckage of the exploded YT, they immediately split up. Vaz kept running, sprinting across the landing pad to the next ship, while Tatnia hid behind some rubble. The stormtroopers took the bait and followed after Vaz, allowing Tatnia to pop up out of cover and attack them from behind. Once Tatnia started hitting them from behind, Vaz attacked from the cover of the nearest ship. Their trap evened the odds, but the stormtroopers were still able to injure them due to their superior numbers.


    When we were done recounting our missing time, we left Miru, Leddy and Racer to finish their scanning, Nal keeping them company while the rest of us went back into the Chariot. I headed up to the lounge and dropped onto the couch-like seat that took up a corner of the space, letting out a long sigh. Calima, who was walking back to check the cockpit, chuckled as she walked by.


    "It is good to have you back, Boss," She said, crossing into the cockpit, keeping the door open. "Nal did his best¡­ to keep the situation calm, but it felt¡­ directionless."


    "I''m glad to be back, Calima, it was not fun being gone," I said, sitting up on the couch. "You guys would have been okay though."


    For a while, I just sat on the couch, soaking in the lounge and the feeling of returning home. Unfortunately, it didn''t take long for me to get antsy. I wasn''t about to jump up and get back to the grind, I had been serious about wanting to take it easy for a day or so. Unfortunately, my inability to do nothing for very long soon forced me off of the couch. I stretched and made my way through the ship, heading to the bottom deck, and making my way to the docking portal, only to find it sealed up, a red light blinking along the side.


    "Uhh¡­ Miru?" I called out, looking down the ship''s centerline and into the cargo area. "What''s the red light mean?"


    "I''m over here," She said, calling from her workshop, prompting me to leave the portal and head to her. "Leddy and Racer are handling the exterior scans of the Black Blade. They had to depressurize the ship to do it."


    "Right, I¡­ Miru, what are you doing with that?" I asked, doing my best to channel my dad''s disappointed voice as I spotted the lightsaber on Miru''s bench.


    "Just running some scans, I promise!" She said defensively. "I was gonna ask before doing anything else, I swear!"


    "You need to learn a bit about boundaries, Miru," I said, leaning against one of the tool cabinets lining the back wall of her workshop.


    "Sorry¡­ I just can''t help myself! I''ve always wanted to know how a lightsaber works!" She admitted, looking suitably ashamed. "And it was just sitting there¡­"


    I let out a sigh and pushed off the table and looked over her shoulder, the young engineer returning to her scans. Most of the information went over my head, but I could see she had identified the power source and started a scan of the two kyber crystals it contained.


    "Be careful, I do not want to have to wipe you off the floor because the edge lord who made this trapped his weapon," I explained, her eyes going wide as she turned to look at me. "And you would have known about that possibility if you had asked first."


    "Right¡­ sorry."


    "Just learn your lesson before it gets you hurt, alright?" I said, the pink-skinned Twi''lek nodding rapidly.


    "Is there anything else I should know about it?" She asked, and I chuckled, glad she had at least learned that much.


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    "Yes, kyber crystals have a presence in the Force, and lightsabers themselves require the Force to be put together, something about everything needing to be perfect," I explained. "Or at least, that''s what I''ve been told. Either way, if it breaks, do not reassemble it. We can''t take the risk of it exploding or something because it''s not precisely put back together."


    "I can be precise." She said with a slight pout.


    "I know, I don''t doubt that, but you have no idea what to adjust it to," I explained, getting a confused look in return. "Look at the crystals, see how they aren''t a uniform shape? How do you know which precise orientation to put them in to get the perfect energy¡­ Transference? Pass through? Whatever, you get what I''m saying, right?"


    "Yeah, I get it... But how would a Jedi know?"


    "Their connection to the Force lets them feel the answer to some things," I explained. "Basically, they would listen to the Force, and it would tell them when it was perfectly in place."


    "That''s¡­ disappointing," She said with a frown. "Are you sure that''s how it works?"


    "To be honest? No, I''m not sure," I admitted with a shrug, knowing that between Legends, Disney and everything in between, lightsaber lore was incredibly jumbled. "But I don''t want to find out here, on a ship surrounded by vacuum. Besides, this lightsaber could come in handy. It''s an impressive tool, and it would be a shame to break it. So, for now, just scans. I''ll work on finding you some stuff to mess around with, promise. "


    She nodded with a smile before turning to focus on her scan, tapping the screen occasionally as she guided whatever tool she was using to get a look inside the internals of the weapon. As usual, I couldn''t make heads or tales of what I was looking at, but she seemed to understand at least the gist of it.


    "It''s a simple design, but you''re right, the level of precision needed¡­ I could maybe do it if I had a few years to make specially designed and zeroed machines, but we are talking lab settings, with no room for error systems, and hundreds of thousands of credits. And even then, I wouldn''t be certain. The level of precision it would require is mind-boggling, and that''s if you know the precise angle the crystal needs to be in, which I don''t know the first thing about, " She admitted, shaking her head. "With this equipment, all I can''t tell you is that it''s not trapped. But the only evidence I have that it''s properly calibrated at all is that you claim it worked not too long ago."


    I nodded and reached around her, grabbing the lightsaber from her workstation. I carried it out of her workshop and to a slightly more open area in the cargo hold. I lifted the dangerous weapon up in front of myself, double-checking to make sure neither end was pointing at me. I spent about three seconds holding it out before cursing and looking back at Miru.


    "The top button inlaid with a goldish-colored metal is the activation, the one inlaid with a silver metal activates the spinning," She explained with a smirk. "Double tap the saber button to activate the second blade."


    I nodded and turned back to the lightsaber, my thumb hovering over the activation button before I realized I was being stupid and quickly conjuring my bound armor.


    Then I hit the button.


    The lightsaber extended with the classic snap-hiss, the thrum of the deep red energy blade filling the cargo hold. It cast an eerie red light across everything, which in turn created long, harsh shadows. I swung the blade around for a moment before activating the second blade, which snapped out with a similar sound, the red glow now twice as intense.


    After a moment of hesitation, I held out the lightsaber and tapped the second button. Immediately the blades began to spin, picking up speed ridiculously fast. I had no idea how it worked, but it was fast enough that it made me very, very nervous. I quickly shut it down, deactivating the spinning and turning off the blades.


    "Wait, that''s it?" Miru asked. "You''re not gonna swing it around or try to cut anything?"


    "No, this thing is a hull breach waiting to happen," I said, shaking my head. "When I said it would be useful, I really meant it as a tool, like carving through doors and stuff. Chances are I will not be using this as a weapon, especially now that I know my conjured swords work against lightsabers."


    "That''s¡­ kinda boring," She said, and I shrugged.


    "Probably. I might consider using one that doesn''t have all these extra bits," I admitted gesturing to the main gimmick of the spinning blade. "But that would require modifying it, and I''m not willing to sacrifice its utility for a chance to get a weapon that I already have a suitable replacement for anyway."


    The younger Twi''lek pouted for a moment before eventually letting out a groan of disappointment and turning back to her workshop.


    "How about you take a break?" I asked, Miru turning back to look at me. "Why don''t you show me what you were working on while I was away?


    "How do you know I''ve been working on something specific?" She asked, squinting at me suspiciously.


    "Because I know you," I responded with a smirk. "You were stressed and had a lot of downtime. I''m surprised you didn''t build a whole new ship."


    She slapped my stomach but didn''t deny that she kept herself busy. After a few seconds, the urge to share what she had done beat out the urge to prove me wrong, and she smiled.


    "Well¡­ you remember that idea I mentioned for the sensor suite from the ''raiders''?" She said, getting excited. "Well, I finished it! Come on!"


    She excitedly led me through the first level of the ship, making a beeline for the Arrow, which was parked in the starboard hangar. The speeder was resting on its landing struts, the side door open. She stood by the door and gestured inside.


    With a curious look, I leaned into the speeder, looking around for a moment before noticing the difference. Along the back of the interior, what was once a small storage space for gear, guns, or whatever we wanted was now filled with the scanner system. It was locked into a roller cage of some kind, cleanly welded and finished, though unpainted. It was all well done and clean but still had the custom "done in a workshop" look.


    "I hooked it up with the systems and the exterior of the speeder. You still have to run it from the actual equipment, but the data it gathers can be read from any screen connected to the main system," The excited mechanic explained. "Then, because I took up all of the cargo space, I added this!"


    She walked around the back of the speeder, where there were two new mounting points.


    "These are mag-locks, like the ones we used to attach the raindrops to the ship hull, but smaller. It will let the Arrow haul a small cargo crate. It won''t be able to go nearly as fast when it''s loaded down, but Nal pointed out that carrying cargo is important, so I added it on."


    "Nice work Miru, that''s going to come in handy," I said honestly. "Have you had a chance to test the scanner yet?"


    "No, we''ve been busy looking for you," She responded with a shrug. "I mean, we scanned the ship pretty well, but that''s about it."


    We spent a few more minutes going over what she had made before eventually going up to the lounge to have dinner. I almost had to drag Miru back with me, but ultimately, she did agree to take a longer break. The whole crew spent a while together, reconnecting and talking, enjoying an extended dinner break before we went our separate ways across the ship.

 Chapter 55

    We spent most of the next day relaxing, which Tatnia, Vaz, and I desperately needed. I woke up in the morning in a cold sweat, most of the night plagued by unpleasant dreams I hardly remembered. What little I could recall involved what could have happened and what would have happened if our escape attempt hadn''t worked. I ended up giving up on sleep a bit early, walking out into the lounge to find Tatnia already having breakfast.


    I joined her, of course, both of us thoroughly enjoying the simple prepackaged food, which despite how basic it was, blew anything we had in the prison and even most of what we ate as we escaped out of the water. I could only imagine how Vaz felt, having spent so much longer inside that hellhole.


    Once breakfast was over, I spent the day walking around the ship, helping out where I could, but mostly just trying to settle into being back. It was surprising how much being away affected me, and I mentally promised to be more careful in the future. I wasn''t exactly sure how I could have done better given what I knew and didn''t know at the time, but I did know that I needed to do better now that I knew how everything could go wrong so quickly.


    Eventually, with most of the day gone by, I called everyone up to the lounge. We ate dinner as a crew again, but this time stayed sitting once we were done, as I wanted to have another meeting about what was next.


    "Alright," I said once the table was clear. "We have a lot to go over, so let''s start with something we can definitively decide on and then move on. The Dark Blade, are we keeping it?"


    "They are¡­ impressive ships," Calima said, leaning back in her seat. "Strong shields, lots of weapons, decent cargo space if¡­ you include the passengers."


    "I know, it''s a tempting ship to keep," I agreed, shaking my head. "It has a lot of potential. The only negative I could think of at the moment is how heavily it''s tied to the Imperials."


    "It does stand out. As far as I know, they do not sell it commercially," Tatnia added. "So anyone using it either stole it or is an Imperial. And with how expensive they are, everyone is going to be paying attention."


    "So, keep it and handle the upkeep despite not being able to use it sometimes," I said. "Or sell it to the Rebels, who I know would be very eager to get their hands on it and use the money to buy another ship. Something that might not be as well armed but might be more useful in the long run."


    The group was silent for a while as we all thought through our options. When nobody said anything for a minute, I snorted and shook my head.


    "So much for this being the easy topic," I said before making a decision. "I''m going to say that for now, we keep it. We can always sell it off later, and eventually, showing off an obviously wanted ship isn''t going to be as big of a deal, at least not when we are around rebels. Unfortunately, for now, it''s probably better to keep it off the board, at least until our cover is blown again."


    "So what, we keep it but don''t use it?" Miru asked. "Or do we just leave it in deep space when we go to any populated planets?"


    "I''d say, for now, let''s just leave it parked here," I said with a shrug. "The moon is most likely safe, it''s got a spot for us to land it on already. We can park it on the surface, shut it all down, and then come back for it when we need it."


    Everyone nodded in agreement, and Calima headed to the cockpit to set a very slow course for the moon, dragging the Blade with us. She returned after a few minutes so we could continue our meeting.


    "So, we talked a bit about it already, but essentially we are on a time limit with the Imperials," I said as our pilot sat back down. "According to the Inquisitor that I killed, he hid the records of the prison break. Unfortunately, I don''t exactly trust his competency. Eventually, someone is going to find them. When they do, they are going to come looking for me. Which means worlds with a solid Imperial presence won''t be open to us. We kind of knew this would happen, but I was hoping to have a bit more time. Either way, I would rather them be after me for something we did rather than for escaping from that prison."


    "What do you mean?" Julus said, leaning his elbows on the table.


    "What I mean is, as of right now, we are not wanted by the Imperials, but that is going to change eventually. We may as well do something to earn it rather than just wait down the clock. I''ll admit, there is a chance they haven''t connected me to the Chariot, but that likely hood is vanishingly small. Tatnia and Vaz are definitely connected to me, and Nal and Miru aren''t far behind," I explained, Julus nodding in understanding. "I think it might be time to abandon pretenses and go for it. We should find something to steal from the Imperials, preferably a ship. Landing on an Imperial planet will be as easy as paying for space right now, so we still have an opportunity. Maybe even one big enough to snag multiple things."


    "That¡­ okay, it would definitely make a statement," Tatnia admitted. "Are you sure?"


    "Unless anyone can think of a reason not to, other than just enjoying the time it takes for them to figure it all out?" I asked, waiting for someone to speak up. "Then I say we push for one big heist and take advantage of the fact that they don''t know who we are yet."


    "What kind of target are we looking for?" Nal asked. "Is there something specific?"


    "We are looking for a ship to increase our effectiveness, something that we can use to create a proper fleet," I explained. "Something that isn''t too expensive to keep operational, and that staffing will be easy as well. That said, if we get handed the opportunity to steal something big, we should take it. As long as we can get away with it."


    Tatnia shook her head, rubbing her face as Nal smiled. Vaz was as calm as ever, though I could see a smile coming through.


    "Why do you make it like we are window shopping for a speeder?" Tatnia asked, looking back up at me. "So we just show up and steal something, easy as that?"


    "No, of course not," I said, shaking my head. "We start by finding something out of the way, where the local Imperial presence is light but still present. Then we land under the guise of looking for a shuttle ship, something that will fit in our hangar, as well as supplies. We go about our business while Racer finds out what he can about the local fleet, how often they land for downtime, and everything like that. Then when we have a better idea of their schedule, we wait patiently for our time to strike."


    "I¡­ I hate how much that makes sense," Tatnia responded, looking upset at my plan. "It can''t be that easy, right?"


    She looked at Nal, who simply shrugged.


    "Plan depends on certain parameters being true," he pointed out. "But if we find somewhere they are¡­ why could it not be that simple?"


    "I think you''re confusing easy with simple," I added. "The plan might be simple, but it''s gonna put us up against a crew, whatever stormtroopers they are carrying, and probably some sort of base security. It''s gonna be dangerous, but I think we can handle it, especially if we pick our target well."


    "What would be our next step after we take this Imperial ship?" Vaz asked. "This crew is too small to keep two ships active and in good shape."


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    "We could probably do it," Miru disagreed before continuing with a wince. "It would suck, and we wouldn''t have much free time¡­ and we would be working the droids really hard¡­ But we could do it¡­ maybe."


    "We won''t be pushing that hard," I explained, shaking my head. "Once we pull whatever asset we manage to get our hands on, we will work on finding some people to staff it, though I am hoping we could minimize some of the new crew requirements by using droids."


    "And then?" Tatnia asked.


    "Then I want to check in with General Syndulla," I responded. "I''m hoping they have made some progress on locating more CIS bases. I desperately want more raindrops and repair droids for the new ship."


    "They might have crew droids as well," Miru pointed out. "We could buy some crew droids, but the CIS had some actually good pilot, crew, and gunner droids we could use for the new ship. There wasn''t any in the last batch, but there might be in the next."


    "Right. Once we have our new ship equipped, I want to test our crew a bit on some easier targets, maybe by hitting a small Imperial target, or even raiding some of Jabba the Hutt''s resources."


    "What''s our plan to deal with him and our bounties?" Miru asked. "I don''t mind having money on my head¡­ well, I do, but I don''t plan on leaving the ship anywhere that could be a problem."


    "Killing him would probably work," I admitted but shook my head. "But he isn''t exactly an easy target. We can spitball some ideas, but we might just have to ignore it for a while until we are ready to deal with it, which would hopefully be after we raid another CIS spot."


    We continued to discuss our options before we started looking through a few datapads, looking for a fringe Imperial world. We whittled the list down to a few options and let Racer do his thing, digging just a hair deeper than surface level to see what he could learn.


    With the meeting over, Calima returned to the cockpit, Nal and Tatnia went to deal with the Dark Blade now that we were orbiting the moon. The plan was for Nal and Tatnia to pilot the Blade while Calima landed the Chariot on the moon. Nal and Tatnia would then land the Blade on the cargo pad left behind by the rebels before donning their EVA suits and walking back to the Chariot. Miru wanted to join them, but since we didn''t have an EVA suit her size, she was going to teach the other two how to shut down the ship entirely so it didn''t waste fuel.


    Meanwhile, I was going to head to my room and work on my magic. It had been a long while since I had any free time to learn a spell, and while I didn''t have enough time now, I wanted to look through what I could learn and plan my next spell.


    I sat down in the chair that was technically for the computer in my room and summoned my grimoire, cracking it open and almost immediately dropping it when I realized there was a lot of new stuff inside. I couldn''t resist the urge to jump out of my chair and shout out in excitement. Not only did the section on Adept spells unlock, but there were several additions for other bits for me to learn.


    That included an "upgraded" form of the Clairvoyance spell.


    I quickly started reading through the new additions, pulling out my datapad so I could make a list of everything. I immediately realized that the Adept class of spells was the largest of the three levels I had access to by far. I didn''t exactly count, but at a glance, it looked to be almost as many spells as the novice and apprentice levels had, combined. This was massively exciting, especially considering how interesting the spells looked, but I tempered myself when I remembered that an Apprentice-level spell took around seven hours to learn, give or take an hour. That meant that I could expect the Adept spells, which had three matrices in each one, were going to take around eleven to thirteen hours.


    I would have to dedicate an entire day to nonstop matrix tuning if I wanted to learn a spell with any sort of consistency. I might be able to stumble through taking a break, but judging from past experiences, trying to break the spell up into multiple sessions would be near impossible.


    Promising myself to go through the spells in more detail when I was done, I started going through the smaller additions, the real-life equivalencies of perks from the game. The first I read through was the clairvoyance upgrade, something I had been attempting to brute force for a while. I skimmed through it for now, but from what I could tell, it was a way to focus the spell to make up for being less familiar with whatever you were searching for, which was exactly what I wanted. When I got around to learning it, a whole new world of options would open up for me and the crew.


    Dismissing the daydreams about some of the treasures that awaited us, I focused on the rest of the additions, skimming through the grimoire, making notes as I went. Almost all branches had additional tips for making my spell casting more efficient or more impactful, similar to what I had previously done for my shock spells. By the looks of things, almost my entire arsenal was covered in some way.


    At the end of the Restoration section was some sort of skill called Recovery, which was basically a method of circulating your magic to temper your magic core, making your mana regenerate faster. It would create a significant boost, so understandably it went to the top of my list of things I wanted to learn. Right above that on my list was a method of making my conjured weapons a lot more dangerous, and make everything I conjure easier to maintain.


    I kept reading and adding to my list, eventually starting to go through the new spells, getting more and more excited about my options. The transmutation spell was interesting, but the description made it clear that there was no way for me to take advantage of the game-breaking money trick from the games. While turning the pages away from the spell, I idly wondered if that was something that the entities had modified to keep me from basically printing credits. I decided it didn''t matter because with the upgraded clairvoyant spell, money was going to quickly become a much smaller issue.


    As I skimmed through the book, new healing spells, more conjured weapons, more conjured constructs, and more destruction spells, all got added to the list. When I was finally done going through every new entry into my grimoire, I realized that time had just become my new enemy. I now had an incredible amount of stuff that I wanted to learn on top of the missions and projects that the crew would be attempting.


    On top of all that, I could now finally learn the spell that had prevented me from starting to enchant things, namely the Create Soul Gem spell. So far, I had ignored the Soul Trap spell because I didn''t have any soul gems, but with this new spell that could finally change. Unfortunately, instead of being a way to just conjure a soul gem from nowhere, it was the spell you cast on a crystal or gem to turn it into a soul gem. It was also how I would know if a material could be a soul gem in the first place, as the casting would fail if the crystal wasn''t compatible.


    "Guess I need to add "various gems" to the next shopping list," I mumbled to myself, shaking my head before diving back into my grimoire.


    I had a lot to do and not so much time to do it in.

 Chapter 56

    After a short break from my magic stuff to stand by in case something went wrong during the process of landing the Dark Blade on the moon, I settled back down to learn the first thing on my list, Recovery. Basically, what it boiled down to was a long process of meditating and training your core with the intent of getting your magic to replenish faster. Supposedly I would immediately be able to tell the difference, as there was a significant amount of initial improvement, which would slow down significantly. The text in my Grimoire mentioned a second level to the process, but that required having more natural magic, which the large, ornate book assured the reader would happen naturally to long-time mages.


    I settled down on the end of my bed and started to meditate, focusing down inside myself, not unlike I did oh so long ago during the beginning of this adventure. By now, I was an expert at drawing out my magic, so grabbing hold of a wisp and drawing it out was easy. The next step was less instinctual, pushing the tendril back into my core and keeping it there before repeating the process with a second strand on the opposite side.


    It was an odd sensation, a sort of metaphysical movement happening inside me as I formed something like a double matrix inside my core. After I was sure I had everything set, I slowly started rotating one side and then the other, spinning them both inside my core, each in opposite directions. During all this, I continually pulled magic out through each tendril, which of course, fed right back into my core through the internal matrix. If the previous sensations was simply strange, this was utterly bizarre, as I could feel the draw on my magic even as my core was continuously full.


    I spent three hours meditating, cycling my magic slowly inside myself, letting the process do its job. When the boredom and exhaustion finally got to me, I stopped. I was sweaty and a bit shaky, like I had just completed an extreme workout. Still, I needed to know just what kind of progress I had made, so I slid to the edge of the bed and cast Steadfast Ward, my hand glowing as the oval barrier appeared in front of me. Sure enough, the regeneration kept up a bit better with the magicka draw. It wasn''t close to breaking even, of course, but it was a noticeable increase.


    Mentally noting to try and meditate that way for a few hours every night, I barely had enough energy to undress before collapsing into bed, falling asleep almost immediately.


    The following morning I ended up casting Fast Heal and Respite on myself to recover the soreness and slight tiredness I still felt from my meditation session. I climbed out of my bed and pulled myself into the sonic shower, letting the vibrations clean me. When I was done, I quickly got ready for the day before stepping out of my room and into the main hall of the second deck, heading right for the lounge.


    Tatnia, Nal, Julus, and Vaz were already sitting at the table, with Racer next to them, while Miru and Calima sat at the bar top, facing towards the table.


    "Hey, uh, Morning Boss," Julus said, spotting me first. "Slept pretty late."


    "I was up late working on my magic," I explained, dropping down at the table. "I unlocked a lot of new things to learn. What''s the news?"


    "Racer finished digging through the outskirt worlds we came up with and found a few that would work for what we are looking for," Tatnia explained, sliding a Datapad across the table to me. "We''ve been looking at them and think this is our best option."


    The datapad showed a planet labeled a Tacruna, tagged with a simple description. It was a tropical planet, populated by a few small cities and one massive one, all built around the edges of an ocean that took up overy ninety percent of the surface. Apparently, the planet''s main export was four different varieties of fish, all of which were bigger than the average human and one of which would dwarf a C-PH. The world was wet, with near-constant downpours and wild monsoons that would last for days, if not weeks, which completely removed any interest in tourism.


    Luckily for us, the fish they exported was known as being delicious, with the largest being a particular delicacy. This meant that the Empire, probably at the behest of a corrupt general or senator, had a small defensive "fleet" stationed around the planet to protect the luxury product and the industry that harvested it.


    The "Fleet" consisted of three ships. The heavy hitter of the fleet was a retrofitted <u>Consular-class</u></a> cruiser, a design I recognized from the Clone Wars shows and the prequels. It didn''t surprise me that some of them were still hanging around in some of the backward worlds around the Rim, especially since the only reason the Empire had to protect this planet was some tasty fish. Nal commented about being surprised to see one, assuming the older ships had long since all been mothballed, but didn''t say much else.


    The Consular-class was backed up by two <u>Guardian-Class</u></a> light cruisers. Tatnia pointed out that they were probably part of the Imperial Custom''s presence on the planet, as they frequently used those ships.


    "So, unsurprisingly, fleet specifics and schedules are supposed to be classified," Tatnia explained. "Despite the fact that the first one is ruined by just stepping outside and looking up with a decent telescope. The schedule, however, is legitimately protected and out of reach from Racer, at least as long as he needs to stay undetected. Luckily for him, he found a workaround with some help from Calima."


    Tatnia nodded to the astromech, who warbled and beeped before activating his holoprojector, displaying a map.


    "This is the Imperial base of operations for the planet, notice the large landing pad here," Tatnia said, pointing to an area before nodding to Racer again, three dots appearing on the map, all around the base. "And these are all the bars and clubs around the base."


    "Racer checked out all three of these locations, and all of them had pitiful security. He pulled the footage from the last six months and quickly scrubbed through it," Miru explained excitedly, gesturing to an image of five men sitting on a wide, semi-circle couch-like seat, a blue-skinned Twi''lek dancing in front of them. "So, twice every month, the number of Imperial officers at these bars spikes for three days before returning to normal."


    "Shore leave?" I asked, getting a nod from Nal. "How accurately can you predict them?"


    "We can pick out when one of the ships will be down pretty well," Miru responded, seemingly speaking for Racer, who beeped and whistled in agreement. "But we haven''t found any way to confirm which ship belongs to each group."


    "So we know when a ship will be on leave, but we don''t know which ship¡­" I asked, continuing when Miru nodded in agreement. "What''s the time frame then?"


    "The next scheduled shore leave should be in four days," Tatnia answered. "It will take us a little over a day to get there, which gives us around three days to prepare."


    "That sounds perfect, we can do some shopping when we get there," I said with a nod. "We still need a landing craft of some sort. Something that we can easily land and take off from one of the hangar bays. We also need to pick up a few other bits and things."


    We discussed a basic plan outline, and Vaz spoke up a few times to give her expertise on assaulting a position. She recommended a fast strike, getting in, boarding the ship, and taking off as quickly as possible. Depending on the patrol pattern of the other two ships, we might even be able to time it so they are on the other side of the planet. How exactly we would assault the Imperial base depended on what the base looked like.


    Personally, I didn''t anticipate a fortress, and the few pictures Racer managed to scrounge up through other tangential sources seemed to agree. There was a single large turret, not quite a heavy turbo laser but certainly a powerful weapon, taking up the top of the tallest structure on the base. In all likelihood, we would need to take that down before starting any of our plans. From what we were able to piece together, there were only a few smaller, starfighter-scale cannons placed around the two structures that made up most of the base''s infrastructure, and they wouldn''t even strain the shields of the larger ship.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Racer managed to get his actuators on a pretty recent <u>deck plan for the Consular-Class refit</u></a>. Unfortunately, the Guardian-Class light cruisers were a more recent creation, and the Empire wasn''t keen on giving up information on an active war vessel. It did hammer home the fact that the Consular-class was only twelve meters short of being twice the size of the Talos Chariot. The Guardians were about thirty meters shorter than our current ship.


    Once we started to get to the real meat of the planning phase, Calima stood up to head to the cockpit, starting the nav computer up to compute the jumps required to get to Tacruna. About an hour later, we had as solid a plan as possible, given how many variables there were, so we went our separate ways to prepare.


    Knowing I had enough time for one spell, I warned everyone not to interrupt me unless something serious happened, before secluding myself in my room again. I pulled out my datapad and summoned my Grimoire, flipping through my must-learn spell list and reviewing everything added by the inclusion of Adept level spells.


    All in all, Destruction, Alteration, and Illusion were more or less what I expected, though I was a bit sad to learn that the Invisibility spell wasn''t Adept. As usual, Restoration lacked any spells that had to do with the undead. It did, however, offer three fortification spells that would increase my dexterity, strength, and stamina. It also had a spell called "Heal Middling Trauma." A quick skim revealed it was a healing spell that was specifically designed to fix a single injury rather than a general healing spell. It could handle much more missing mass than any of my other healing magic but wasn''t quite at the level of restoring limbs.


    Similar to Restoration, Conjuration continued to not mention the summoning of Deadra from the planes of oblivion. Instead, it offered several new construct options, allowing me to conjure things similar to the Flame Atronach construct but for different roles or elements. I was looking forward to summoning a construct with a sword, if for no other reason than to have someone to spar with. There was also the Conjure Bound Bow and Conjure Bound Quiver, two spells that I had been impatiently waiting for.


    Well, technically, I had been waiting for the Conjure Bound Bow spell because I forgot the quiver spell existed, predominantly because casting Conjured Bound Bow also conjured a quiver full of arrows. However, it seemed that whatever version of Skyrim this Grimoire came from, it encouraged the stealth sniper player even more than the game did. Not only did Conjure Bound Quiver create one hundred extremely high-quality arrows, but it also allowed you to imbue your arrows with shock, flame, or ice. It wasn''t a ton of energy, the shock arrow seemed to be the equivalent of a half second or so of the Sparks spell, but it added an incredible level of potential.


    Logically, I knew I should probably focus on something like healing or being more durable, especially because we had two crates full of ranged options in the cargo hold. But I had asked the entities for archery knowledge for a reason, and now I was being encouraged even more by the Bound Quiver spell.


    A few minutes of mentally debating and option-weighing later, and I was sitting in my chair, the Grimoire opened on the desk to the Conjure Bound Bow section. I eagerly started the process of learning the spell, noting the first spell matrix''s similarities to other weapon conjuration spells. After four hours, my ass was hurting, and I was forced to cast Respite and Fast Healing on myself, all while maintaining concentration on what I was working on.


    Another three hours passed, and I was miserable but determined. I was just starting the third and last matrix, seven hours of work behind me and another three or four ahead of me. I was hungry, sore, and I could feel the oncoming head.


    It took me ten and a half hours to finally complete the matrix tuning process and finally cast Conjure Bound Bow for the first time. I sat forward in my seat to give the quiver room to appear, letting the magic flow as the weapon appeared in my hand. The bow itself looked very similar to the <u>Nordic bow</u></a> from the game but also included a thematically designed three-pin sight, which I knew how to use despite not knowing it existed a few seconds ago. The quiver, which appeared on my back, looked like the<u> steel arrow quiver</u></a> from the game, and the arrows seemed to match. Of course, all of this was glowing, faintly see-through, and leaking a wispy purple energy.


    Instead of celebrating, I immediately started casting it again, doing it nearly thirty times until I was absolutely, one hundred percent certain it had worked and that the final form of all matrices was sufficiently ingrained in my magic. When I was finally certain, I sagged in my chair, letting out a long groan.


    After a few minutes of just basking in an utter lack of thinking, I raised my hand and cast Fast Heal and Respite, slowly climbing out of my chair. I made my way out of my room and into the lounge, grabbing two meals from a cabinet and sitting down on the couch, slowly and methodically eating the contents of both.


    "How did it go?" Nal asked as he sat down on the other end of the couch, stepping out from the hallway.


    "Pretty well," I responded, conjuring a bow and tossing it to him. "See for yourself."


    The blue-skinned, red-eyed humanoid caught the bow easily, looking down at it in confusion before looking back up at me.


    "You learned how to¡­ conjure this?" He asked, understandably confused. "Why?"


    "...you know, it might be better to show you," I said, standing from my seat and releasing my mental grip on the bow, the construct bursting into harmless energy in Nal''s hands. "C''mon, time to test this thing out."


    We headed down to the first deck, to the main cargo hold. I noticed that the emergency docking system we had used to connect to the Dark Blade was once again closed, but the panel it was under now had a hinge welded along one seam, with a simple latching and locking system added to the other. As we entered the cargo bay, I spotted Miru connecting Racer up to his charging bay, the young Twi''lek looking over at me with a smile.


    "Hey Boss, everything should be ready to go¡­ How did your magic stuff go?" She asked, picking up a piece of cloth and wiping a grease spot off of her nose.


    "It went well¡­ you wouldn''t happen to have a plate of metal I could test it on, would you?"


    "Uh¡­ yeah, I do, gimme a second¡­" She responded, turning back to her workshop.


    After about five minutes, Miru had taken a two-foot by two-foot square and welded two metal pipes to one side, perpendicular, so they could function as a stand. We quickly ran it down the main line of the first deck, setting it up on top of the cargo elevator.


    With a mental flex, I conjured the bow, rolling my shoulder before steadying myself. Holding the bow felt natural, as did every other step as I reached over my shoulder, pulled out a single arrow, nocked it, drew back and let it fly. The slightly translucent arrow streaked across the mainline before slamming into the metal plate and embedding itself into it, punching a hole completely through the metal plating before deconstructing and turning into a puff of purple magic on the other side.


    In the world of Skyrim, with magic and mythical elements, the Armorsmiths forged armor with some incredible materials. Metals like Orichalcum, Ebony, Malachite, Moonstone, and even dragon bones and scales. Despite those fantastical materials, high-quality arrows fired from a high-quality bow were still lethal, punching through all that armor to hit the target inside. I knew that, in game, Conjured Bow was a weapon on tier with the highest quality, non-unique equivalent, its arrows matching that.


    Sure, there was a chance that it wouldn''t translate the same, and to be honest, I wasn''t convinced there wasn''t some limitation I hadn''t run into yet. But for now, I was happy to have a summonable anti-armor, limitless ammo cannon with which I also just happened to be highly skilled.


    "That''s why," I said, unable to stop from smirking as I turned back to my stunned audience. "You guys want to give it a shot?"

 Chapter 57

    We stayed up for another hour, testing out my bow and figuring out what it was capable of. Miru and Nal were both fascinated with it but refused to take it and try it out for themselves, which I didn''t blame them for considering how much damage I was doing with it. We ended up testing it out on some spare armor pieces we had, the arrow easily punching through the armor and severely denting, sometimes even piercing the metal underneath, before dissipating into ambient magic.


    When I finally put an end to the testing, the three of us went to bed. Physically I was brimming with energy, but after the long process of tuning and learning to conjure my bow, I was mentally exhausted. I''m pretty sure I was asleep before I even reached my room.


    The next day we had finally arrived at Tacruna. We spent a while hovering over the planet, waiting for permission to land, which Tatnia blamed on the Imperials.


    "When the Empire locks down a world, everyone coming in and out has to go through their services," She explained. "On Terr''skiar, the merchant leaders handled it, and they wanted everything to work as smoothly as possible, while the Imperials only care about security and intimidation. I''ve seen more heavily populated planets reduced down to one-at-a-time checks by a single Imperial officer."


    True to her word, the Imperial fleet did their best to intimidate us, stopping just short of getting dangerously close to us, all of their weapons tracking us as they processed our request to land. The Consular class, in particular, cut an impressive shadow over us as it passed between us and the distant sun. Unfortunately for Imperials, we were here to steal one of those ships, meaning that they were basically just showing off the goods.


    "They all seem to be in good shape," Vaz said, sitting in one of the gunner seats, watching as one of the Guardian-class ships flew by. "Well maintained and cared for."


    "The Consular looks good as well," Nal commented, sitting next to the Shistavanen. "Appears to be the heavier-armed version."


    All three ships were painted Imperial gray, with black highlights and the Empires symbol painted in various places. They did all look like they were in good condition, but I noticed something attached to the two Guardian-class light cruisers.


    "Those might be a problem, though," I said, pointing out the four TIE fighters attached to the hull of larger vessels, two for each ship. "Will we be able to tank those as we escape?"


    "Absolutely," Calima responded, primarily focused on her flying, tapping her controls as we waited for permission to land. "Especially if we have a jump already worked out and ready."


    When the Imperials finally permitted us to land, we made a beeline for the planet''s largest city, easily finding a landing pad big enough for the Chariot. Calima landed us safely, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. Step one of our plan was complete.


    "Alright¡­ well, now we wait," I said, leaning back in my seat. "Vaz, we need to go shopping in a few hours, do me a favor and go through the weapons like we talked about. Tatnia, we can start looking for a shuttle tomorrow, so see if you can''t find somewhere to shop. Racer, keep watch on those security feeds for when our target lands."


    With us landing on the planet safely and Racer keeping an eye out for our target, I finally settled down with my grimoire. I didn''t have nearly enough time to learn a spell, but as we were testing my conjured bow out the previous night, I had a rather big realization. In the game, in order for magic to be effective at higher levels, you needed to focus on it pretty heavily. Any melee user could whip out Sparks or Frostbite, but in order to use higher-level spells like Chain Lightning more than once in a fight, certain magic-focused perks were all but required.


    While I didn''t have to worry about stormtroopers out leveling the effectiveness of a basic Sparks spell because they were growing to match my level, spells from higher levels, like Adept, did take considerably more mana. Just maintaining the conjured bow had taken more magicka than maintaining my conjured sword. Suddenly the multitude of new tricks that filled my grimoire made a lot more sense. If I didn''t learn them, I wouldn''t be able to keep up with the higher-class spells.


    Thankfully, learning these tricks, modifications to my spells, casting techniques, and methods did not take nearly as much time as learning a spell, even at a novice level. It was so short, in fact, that by the time I left my room a few hours later to go shopping with Vaz, I had already improved my conjuration spells in effectiveness and efficiency to a noticeable degree. I would need to spend a lot of time working on these real-life perk equivalents to stay ahead of the curve, but it was definitely worth it.


    I found Vaz having a conversation with Nal, standing by a crate of weapons. The two of them had gone over our supply of backup and spare weapons, separating what we should keep and what wasn''t worth lugging around. Besides Tatnia, Vaz, and myself, everyone had a high-quality side arm and primary. Nal even had a third weapon, the Proton Rifle, though really that was situational.


    "These are the ones we are getting rid of?" I asked, Nal nodding in response.


    "No point in keeping lower-powered and cheaper weapons," He said. "Need to keep track of gear, or we will accumulate junk."


    "I believe I will serve as a quartermaster in the future," Vaz added. "I need a secondary role, and while my repair skills are amateurish at best, I do know how to inspect most types of equipment, and I am familiar with many types of weapons."


    "That''s good, Vaz, thanks for volunteering," I said with a smile. "Are you all set to head out?"


    "Yes, this crate just needs to be attached to the Arrow."


    After spending a few minutes finagling the crate to the back of the Arrow, Vaz climbed into the driver''s seat, and we were off.


    "What kind of weapon are you looking for?" I asked the lupine humanoid.


    "Something to match what I used previously," She responded. "In truth, I do not know if I will be able to find what I am looking for, this is an Imperial planet with very little heavy trade."


    Vaz, before she was captured and sent to the mines, had made a living as a minor bounty hunter. I had seen firsthand that she was pretty good with a normal blaster and blaster pistol, but apparently, she preferred a heavier weapon. Considering we didn''t have that type of heavy firepower outside of our vehicles, I happily agreed to cover the costs of a new weapon. I was also looking to replace my lost pistol, as well as some armor for myself and Vaz. Tatnia might be okay with wearing whatever, but I wanted to pick out my look.


    We arrived at our first stop but immediately realized that this wasn''t going to have what we were looking for. The shop was too clean, and everything they offered were civilian models, low-powered trash that was worse than the backup equipment we had back on the Chariot. We did spend a few minutes walking around the equipment section, going through body armor and other stuff. Unfortunately, after an hour, we came to the conclusion that our initial assumption was correct, so we left for our next destination.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Our first steps into the building filled me with a lot more optimism about finding what we wanted. While the interior was much darker and a lot less clean, the pure variety of weapons on display was much more encouraging. There was a lot of stuff I didn''t recognize, which was expected. The Twi''lek man behind the counter watched us closely as we made our way to a large blaster pistol display.


    "What are you looking for?" The male asked as he followed us around, still behind the counter.


    "We need three solid sidearms," I explained, looking up at the display. "Some armor as well."


    "We have plenty of pistols," He responded, gesturing haphazardly to the wall display. "As for armor¡­ I might actually have something that your friend fits into¡­"


    The older Twi''lek clerk disappeared around back, leaving Vaz and I to share a look. A few minutes later, he returned with a small crate about two feet wide. He put it down on his counter, cracked it open, and turned it around to face us.


    "This came in on a shipment of parts for a speeder shop a few years back. Don''t quite know what species it was intended for, but they were digitigrade like your friend here, so it might fit," He explained. "I don''t normally deal in stuff like this, not a lot of people looking for such high-grade armor, but the shop owner just wanted it gone."


    I gestured for Vaz to try it on, and the skilled warrior quickly started inspecting the crate''s contents. When she was done, she started pulling on the armor, despite never having used it before. She pulled on an armored body suit first, which pulled tight around her body when it was on, which was cool and made me think this was an expensive piece of gear. Plates of actual armor slid and locked into place easily, though the back plate required my help. When it was on, <u>she cut an impressive image</u></a>, armored up like how Mandalorians designed their armor, with plates protecting vital and fragile spots. However, that was where the similarities ended. There were two mounts for what were probably cape anchors, but no cape or cloak was included.


    "What is it rated for?" Vaz asked as she tested her range of motion, even jumping in place a few times.


    "From what I''ve read, it should redirect most of the energy from a normal blaster rifle and stop pistol bolts easily."


    "How much?" I asked, the clerk looking back at me.


    "Three thousand," He responded easily. "My research says that it''s worth nearly twice that."


    "Yeah, but who is gonna buy it here?" I pointed out. "Plus, you got it cheap. Two thousand."


    "Are you kidding me? I''m not doing anything less than two and a half."


    We bartered a bit more, going back and forth. I brought up everything we had to trade and added a few more items, including two <u>DC-17</u></a> blaster pistols, one for me and one for Tatnia, as well as a heavier-looking pistol called an <u>RKF-44</u></a> for Vaz. In the end, we shook on a payment of five hundred credits and everything we had brought with us to sell. I was pretty sure he was making out like a bandit, but we didn''t really pay for anything we were trading, so it was hard to get upset about it.


    "Is that all?" He asked as Vaz was pulling off her armor and putting it back into its crate.


    "No. My friend is also looking for something a bit heavier. A lot heavier," I said. "You got anything like that?"


    "That depends. Anything specific?" He asked, looking at us both much closer. "I do like to keep an eye out for interesting things ¡­"


    "I am accustomed to heavy weapons, preferably something with a sustained rate of fire," Vaz explained, the man nodding along.


    "I''m not sure I have what you''re looking for then. I have some high-powered heavy rifles, but it sounds like you''re looking for something even heavier than those," He guessed, Vaz nodding in confirmation. "Sorry to say you''re not gonna find something like that around here. I could sell you a heavy repeater, but that''s about it."


    "I was aware it was a stretch, thank you for your time," She responded before looking at me and then back to the clerk. "I believe we have a list of energy cells of various makes that we are looking for as well."


    I handed the clerk a list of the several different varieties of power cells my crew needed, and after a moment, he nodded, confirming he had most of what we were looking for, though unsurprisingly, he did not have any proton rifle ammo.


    Once we had a pile of cells packed away in our crate, as well as a patching kit for Vaz''s new armor, we started bartering, settling on eight hundred credits for the second lot. About an hour after arriving, we left the shop with most of what we needed, though the lack of a heavy weapon for Vaz was unfortunate. We guided our storage crate, which now contained spare power packs, and hooked it back up to the Arrow, while Vaz put her armor in one of the seats. When we were ready, Vaz climbed into the driver seat and took off, leaving me in the far back seat, right in front of the powerful sensor systems that Miru installed.


    Wordlessly, Vaz kept us low to the ground, flying as if we were a land speeder, heading across the city towards the Imperial compound. After a few minutes, she gave me the signal, and I turned on the scanner, focusing it to the left, letting it scan a series of buildings.


    "Passing the compound¡­. Now."


    I could see the readout change as we passed the military base, the powerful sensors picking up the drastic change in materials as it transitioned from scanning civilian structures to military ones. Still, it had no problem picking up a huge amount of information as we passed by, even with how far we were away. Eventually, when we had passed by, we pulled away down another road, not wanting to arouse suspicion. As we pulled away, I shut down the scan. I could see the sensor computer already compiling the data into a rough map of the base.


    "Looks like we got it," I said, spinning my chair around to face forward, leaving the computer to do its thing. "How about we pick up some take-out for dinner? The shelf-stable meals are decent, but I''m feeling something freshly made."


    "This world is known for its fish..." Vaz mentioned, trailing off when I snorted.


    "Yeah, sure, super expensive fish sounds pretty good," I responded. "Just don''t hurt my bank account too much, yeah?"


    Vaz snorted but nodded in agreement as I climbed forward inside the speeder, my job in the back complete. I squeezed into the passenger seat, tapping at the air speeder''s computer to try and find a good place to eat nearby. Something affordable too.

 Chapter 58

    We ended up going to a smaller restaurant serving one of the three fish the planet was known for, ordering enough for everyone before heading back to the Chariot. The fish was interesting, similar to salmon in some ways, but with a more substantial chew and a deeper creaminess that was pretty good. Everyone but Calima enjoyed it, the Tholothian explaining that she wasn''t a big fan of fish in the first place, so she wasn''t surprised. When the food was done and the table was cleaned up, we discussed how our multi-purpose trip went.


    "I am truly shocked we stumbled onto that armor," Vaz admitted. "I did not expect to find anything like that on such a limited planet."


    "There''s always those hidden gems somewhere," I said with a shrug. "You just need to know where and how to look."


    "Racer could have probably found something if he looked on the net," Miru pointed out. "All sorts of black market, off-the-record stuff on local networks."


    "Either way, I''m hoping to find more substantial armor for everyone soon," I said, shaking my head. "The plate inserts we use now work, but we need something more substantial, something like what we got for Vaz, with full body protection. That''s a priority after we are done here."


    "You didn''t find a jacket?" Tatnia asked, and I shook my head.


    "Nothing that I liked," I responded. "I''ll find something eventually. For now, I''ll just wear the plate carrier stuff."


    Before anyone could comment, Racer rolled into the lounge, beeping, warbling, and whistling. Miru''s face lit up, and she turned towards me.


    "The data from the scan is done, you want to see it?" She asked, Racer activated his holoprojector after I nodded.


    A projected image of the military base appeared above the table, slowly spinning so we could see it from every angle. There were three main buildings on the surface, an office building of some kind, a large storage warehouse and garage combo, and the structure built under the large double laser cannon. The <u>powerful laser cannon</u></a> looked a lot like the boxy, green laser-firing turret that was in some of the movies, but I had no idea if it was the same model or not.


    Under the buildings were a series of tunnels and rooms. Unfortunately, the information the scan picked up on them was limited. The sensor clearly struggled to get through the ground on top of the tougher, reinforced military buildings.


    "Anyone seeing anything that would ruin the plan as it is?" I asked, studying the scans of our target.


    "The power generator is even more heavily protected than we thought, but that shouldn''t cause any problems," Julus said.


    The younger crew member pointed out the dome-shaped building in one corner of the base. The scans confirmed that it was the main power reactor for the base, which we had already guessed. The reactor dome wasn''t far from the large, heavy turbolaser turret.


    "The whole base is bigger than we anticipated," Admitted Vaz. "We should expect more resistance."


    "With any luck we won''t have to deal with it until it''s too late for them to do anything," I pointed out. "Unless you think there will be too much for our plan to work?"


    "... no, there''s not enough space to have that many people, especially not if we execute the plan when we know most of the ship''s crew are off base."


    "Good. Alright, guys, this scan brings us one step closer to the heist, now it''s just a waiting game," I said, getting a few nods in return. "Tomorrow, we can go shopping for a shuttle, and wait for one of the ships to land. Everyone good?"


    I paused for a second, waiting for anyone to speak up before nodding and standing.


    "Alright, then that''s it for today," I said before turning to our ever-useful astromech. "Racer, keep tabs on the bars and the skies. Let us know if we get any sudden arrivals."


    The short and stout droid gave a warble of confirmation, wheeling to the cockpit with Calima right behind him. Nal and Julus stayed in the lounge while Tatnia, Vaz and Miru headed downstairs to the first deck. I, however, made a beeline for my room. I had a lot of magical learning to do, and there were a handful of things I wanted to get down before we attempted to steal the ship, whichever one ended up landing for shore leave.


    I spent two hours improving the efficiency and power of my Destruction spells, increasing their effectiveness slightly and cutting their mana cost a not insignificant amount, before taking a break and walking around the ship. After chatting with Miru, who was also taking a break from her own preparations, I headed right back up to my room and got to work on my Restoration magic, working hard to get the slight bump in effectiveness and the more significant increase in efficiency. By the time I finished that, it was almost time to sleep, so I spent an hour meditating and internally circulating my mana, heading right to bed when I was done.


    The following day was much of the same until Tatnia and I left the Chariot shopping for a shuttle. I had to admit it was a bit surreal to be doing the same thing we were doing before we got snagged. I was a bit on edge, as was Tatnia, but neither of us was anywhere as concerned as Miru was. The young Twi''lek had stopped just short of asking us not to go, but instead insisted that we keep in near constant contact, even though she and Nal would be just as busy.


    It took a few stops to find the kind of shuttle we were looking for, mostly because the selection was so much smaller than before. Most of the places we visited were selling land and air speeders and just happened to have a shuttle or two. The first five didn''t have anything worth buying. It wasn''t until the sixth stop that we finally found what we were looking for.


    The <u>shuttle</u></a> had enough room for a pilot, a bit of cargo, and eight people to ride comfortably. It could fit about twice that many if people were willing to stand and use the hand grips attached to the ceiling. It was armed with a central dorsal medium laser cannon, which should just barely be capable of taking down starfighters. There were also two slightly heavier cannons under the cockpit. There was no hyperdrive, but the ship could maneuver and hit descent speeds for its size. The double-sided airlock entryway on both sides of the ship meant it could dock with most ships. It wasn''t nearly as capable of a shuttle as the Dark Blade, but the fact that it could land in the Chariots hangar bay made it infinitely more flexible and useful.


    It was also a <u>CEC </u></a>design, meaning there were a thousand and one upgrades available to us if we wanted to improve it. Tatnia was already looking at ways to make it harder to pick up on scanners.


    "I hate to say it, but I really think we might end up selling the Blade," I said as we walked around and kicked the metaphorical tires on the shuttle. "We would need to hire a dedicated crew for it, which wouldn''t be able to live on it. Plus, while it outclasses just about any shuttle its size, it''s not fast enough to act as a starfighter or heavy classed enough to act as a full member of the fleet."


    "It is a bit pointless to have a ship dedicated to being a shuttle¡­ but not use it as a shuttle," Tatnia said, agreeing reluctantly. "If it was smaller, we could keep it locked to the bottom of the Chariot for easy access, but emergency docking ports aren''t rated for frequent use. It sucks to give away such a well-made ship, but we would get a chunk of credits for it. Probably around a hundred and fifty thousand, and that''s with a friendly discount."


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    "Damn, that''s a whole ''nother ship, one that could actually function as part of the fleet¡­" I said with a whistle, leaning my head from side to side, weighing my options. "It would also pay for some major upgrades to the Chariot."


    After a few minutes inspecting the shuttle, we decided to buy it, even though its CEC label meant we would most likely be paying an extra two, maybe three thousand credits. It fit what we were looking for way too well to pass up, plus I liked the appeal of being able to upgrade it later down the line.


    A quick transfer of twenty thousand credits and a less quick refuel and installation of the shuttles power core, and we had ourselves a functioning shuttle. Tatnia climbed into the pilot''s seat and started going over everything, eventually starting her up and lifting away from the sales yard.


    We headed straight for the landing pad, the shuttle making quick work of the distance. As we approached, I commed Nal to open up the port hangar bay, as I knew the starboard would now be full, even with the Arrow stored along the mainline cargo space. It was a bit tight, but eventually, Tatnia guided the ship into open space, landing on the deck with a subtle thud. I stood up from my seat and made my way to the docking airlock, opening them both and stepping out onto the hangar bay deck.


    "What do you think?" I asked Nal and Miru, who were waiting by the large cargo bay doors that entered into the hangar. "It was a bit more than I wanted to spend, but it''s hard to beat CEC upgradability."


    "A tight fit," Nal commented as Miru blew past me to see the interior.


    "Should be enough room to work on it¡­ Right Miru?" I said, calling out to our mechanic at the end.


    "Yeah, it''s at least a meter on top, that''s more than enough room," She commented, peeking out the airlock. "It looks good, how much was it?"


    "Twenty thousand," I said, getting an appreciative nod from Nal and Miru, the latter disappearing back inside. "Tatnia did most of the negotiating."


    Nal chuckled and followed Miru inside, stepping to the side to let Tatnia step out. After ten minutes or so, Miru came walking back out and shrugged.


    "The usual problems look okay, but I''m gonna assign Leddy and another repair droid to do a deep inspection," She explained, turning back to the ship. "I want it fully tested before anyone takes it out of the atmosphere."


    "And the Head Engineer has spoken," I said, Miru blushing slightly, opening her mouth to apologize, but I beat her to it. "I''m not teasing you, Miru, you do get the final say on stuff like this."


    The young mechanic nodded in agreement but turned away to hide her smile. She promptly left, headed to the cargo hold. The rest of us followed her out, but headed up to the second deck instead. After a quick snack, I made my way to my room, once again putting my nose to the grindstone. I had one more set of improvements I wanted to get through before our mission started, and I had no idea how much time I had. I did my best to push through a few more improvements as quickly as possible, working hard to work them into my spell casting so they would be ready.


    Two and a half hours later, I left my room, finished learning for the day, and headed to the lounge. Vaz and Julus were there already, eating and talking. I grabbed my own meal and sat down with them.


    "I''m just surprised you recognized them on sight," Julus was saying, accepting one of his blaster pistols back from Vaz, who was handing it to him, butt first. "I know they are pretty rare."


    "They are much more common among the Mandalorians," She explained, Julus''s jaw dropping as she explained. "My father carried a single Westar-35 pistol. They were made by a Mandalorian company."


    "I¡­ Really?" He asked, looking down at the pistol as if seeing it for the first time. "I¡­ didn''t know that."


    "I thought that Mandalorians used a different weapon, the cylindrical one with a slightly wider tip and the skeletonized grip."


    "...You may be referring to the Westar-34, the predecessor to the 35," Vaz said after thinking for a moment. "I preferred the 35, as it has a larger power cell."


    "Wait, wait, back up!" Julus said. "Can we get back to the part about my dad using weapons that Mandalorians use?"


    "They are rare outside of Mandalorian circles, but not unheard of," Vaz explained. "It is not like beskar, which would have meant he was a Mandalorian, or killed a Mandalorian and took it. While I may have missed the sense of ownership over such a metal, many did not."


    "So you wouldn''t care if I managed to get us some beskar armor?" I said, catching Vaz''s full attention. "Probably won''t be until after we have the new ship set up and manned¡­"


    "How would you manage to achieve that?" She asked, looking skeptical. "After the Great Purge of Mandalore it became nearly impossible to find."


    "I have access to a spell that lets me turn one metal into another," I explained, ignoring Julus''s wide eyes and hanging jaw. "It functions in a way that making money from it is nearly impossible, essentially burning off mass when converting cheap, easily accessed metal, resulting in a comparably small amount of the metal you''re creating. It also only works with one type of metal at a time, so using scrap would also be difficult. But if I wanted beskar plating for protection, I would happily buy ten thousand credits worth of metal and convert it into armor plating for everyone¡­ or just chest plates if it''s more expensive than that."


    Vaz was silent for a long moment, digesting what I had said. After a while, she leaned forward, a frown on her face.


    "I do not know enough about Mandalorian history and culture to consider myself one," She admitted, still frowning. "I would not even be able to find any of the coverts that are hidden around the Galaxy. I know that most Mandalorians would fervently demand that any beskar be returned to them, as they consider it theirs. As most of it was stolen from them by the Empire¡­ I find myself agreeing. On the other hand¡­ any that you... create would not be the beskar that was stolen from them, you would be creating it from other metals¡­ I would have no issue with it besides the attention it might bring. I doubt a Mandalorian would believe you if you explained you created the beskar with magic."


    "Well¡­ it''s a bridge we won''t have to cross for a while," I explained. "I would need a sample of the metal first, and I would have to learn the spell. I have a lead on where we might be able to find some beskar samples, but it''s going to be a minute before we can go there."


    "Something for the future, then," She responded, and I nodded in agreement.


    "Something for the future."


    I was about to take another bite of my food when a long series of whistles, warbles, and intense beeps echoed from the cockpit. All three of us turned to look as Racer quickly rolled out into the lounge, still beeping and whistling. I shared a look with Vaz before turning back to Racer.


    "I''m guessing the ship is landing?" I asked, getting a long excited whistle in return. "Which one is it?"


    Instead of whistling, he activated his holoprojector, showing off a diagram of the Retrofitted Consular-class. It rotated a bit before winking out, Racers'' holoprojector going dark.


    "Alright, looks like we have a target," I said with a nod. "Even better, it''s the one we have a map for. With any luck, we will be gone before the sun rises tomorrow with the beginnings of a fleet."


    I could see that Vaz was excited, ready for the challenge that lay ahead, and I found myself just as excited. Racer let out another series of whistles before rolling back into the cockpit.


    ".... Could we please get back to the part where my dad might have been a Mandalorian?" Julus asked again after a long pause.

 Chapter 59

    It took four hours for Racer to spot the frequent fliers settling into the bars around the Imperial base, all of them almost immediately imbibing in alcohol. I couldn''t help but smirk as they all showed every sign of being out for a long night.


    The Chariot was a whirlwind of activity as everyone got prepared. Even Calima, the only one who was staying behind, had plenty to get ready. As quickly as possible, we got dressed and piled into the new shuttle, Miru hopping into the pilot''s seat.


    With everyone seated and our cargo locked in, Miru pulled the shuttle out of the hangar and flew away from the Chariot, heading for a location we had picked out earlier in the day. After about ten minutes of flying, we landed in a mostly empty lot, one that was hidden from view by multiple abandoned buildings.


    "Alright, everyone, this is it. Our plan is flexible, but that doesn''t mean it''s perfect. Let''s keep it simple, and if anything goes wrong, make sure you stick together," I said, everyone nodding in agreement as I looked at the cockpit. "Miru, let us know when you''re back at the Chariot and ready for your part."


    "Alright, Boss, good luck!"


    I nodded and leaned down, grabbing the shiny stormtrooper helmet beside my feet, quickly pulling it down over my head, and twisting it on securely. The armor wasn''t exactly the most comfortable thing to wear, but I wasn''t about to let the chance to use the suits we found in the Dark Blade go to waste. Once my disguise was complete, I looked around. Julus and Tatnia were also pulling on their helmets while Nal and Vaz offloaded the now hovering cargo container we had brought with us. Vaz was dressed in her new armor, looking very impressive.


    Once everything and everyone was offloaded, I waved to Miru from outside the shuttle. The young mechanic quickly lifted the shuttle off of the ground and flew away, heading back to the Chariot. We waited for several minutes until my comm unit buzzed in the utility belt around my hips.


    "I''m ready, boss! Dummy is in position and waiting for my command!" She said excitedly. "It''s your turn."


    "Alright, Miru, hold tight. It''s going to be about ten minutes," I responded before tucking my com back into my belt. "Okay, everyone, we are all set. Nal, Vaz, put on your restraints and let''s go."


    Nal and Vaz nodded, pulling out their purposely broken restraints and fixing them around their wrist. The cut and modified cuffs wouldn''t pass a close inspection, but if it got to that point, it was already too late to play pretend anyway. When Nal and Vaz signaled that they were ready, Julus, Tatnia, and I hefted our standard stormtrooper E-11 blasters and took up position around them, with Tatnia and I on either side of the two "prisoners" and Julus guiding the crate of "contraband" from behind us.


    We exited the secluded and abandoned area, making our way through back alleys and mostly empty streets. It was clear that even with this planet''s tiny Imperial presence, people were at least passingly familiar with good old-fashioned Empire justice because anyone we came across immediately looked away from us or turned around and ran away.


    It took us just over ten minutes to reach the base, having been dropped off a reasonable distance away, primarily so that we wouldn''t immediately be connected to the landing shuttle. The security checkpoint at the front entrance of the base immediately came to attention as we got closer.


    "Trooper! What is going on?" Asked a uniformed man as we got within speaking distance. "Who are they, and what is your designation?"


    "Trooper TK-421 reporting, sir," I said, standing up at attention, surreptitiously tapping my comm three times to signal Miru. "We apprehended this scum attempting to smuggle weapons aboard a commercial vessel, sir."


    "Really? And what were you doing off base, unaccompanied by an Officer?" The man asked. "And where is the rest of your squad? Standard Protocol dictates no less than five Troopers for missions outside control sections of an Imperial planet, who¡­"


    The man trailed off, eyes focused slightly above me. After a moment, his eyes went wide, and he scrambled to reach for a comm unit of his own, pulling it up to his mouth.


    "Emergency, emergency! Incoming unknown vehicle, due north! Repeat-"


    The air speeder the man had spotted, moving at a pace that was definitely in danger of burning out its repulsorlifts, whipped by the checkpoint building and disappeared over the exterior wall of the military base. While they had no way of knowing, the recently stolen vehicle had spent quite a bit of time inside the Chariots hangar bay. The unassuming civilian air speeder was being piloted by a B1 battle droid, nicknamed Dummy, whose processors had been cored out by Miru, leaving it with one final suicide mission. All four back seats, as well as the passenger seat, had been torn out and replaced with five barrels of ship fuel, and the extracted explosive components of the tri-fighter missiles Miru scavenged from the raindrops.


    Blasts of laser fire flew out over the city as the base''s defenses tried to take the speeder down, each shot going wide. Barely a moment passed after the air speeder disappeared over the wall from our perspective when a massive explosion resonated over us. It was followed by a fireball so massive that we could see the light it cast on the buildings behind us, despite being on the other side of a three or four-meter tall wall.


    The lighting inside the checkpoint security room flickered and dimmed before returning to normal, while the officer who had been questioning us looked pale. For a moment he froze, before looking back at us.


    "Get inside!" He barked, all of us quickly stepping inside before he slapped his hand on something. The doors behind us slammed shut, sealing us in the military base. "Stow your charge in the cells, then report to your commanding officer!"


    He turned back to the few soldiers and staff inside his space, barking orders and seemingly already putting us out of his mind. We left quickly, making our way deeper into the base. Already the compound was buzzing, with dozens and dozens of people rushing back and forth, most of the attention focused on the turbolaser building, which now billowed smoke from a large crater. The B1 had done its job, taking the large, powerful turret out of commission.


    We moved as quickly as possible, the chaos giving us ample reason to move fast and not arouse suspicion, though the presence of Nal and Vaz did draw a few eyes. For some distance, we took at least partial cover behind the large garage and warehouse building that ran along one edge of the base. Once the cover of the garage fell behind us, we angled directly towards the ship.


    As we got closer to our target, I could see that the boarding ramp was down. With a burst of speed, we quickly closed the final distance, heading under the front of the ship and looking up into it from the base of the main walkway inside. Standing there was a single person, dressed in the basic Imperial navy garb, holding his hat in his hand.


    "What''s going on out there?" He called. "I was just finishing fixing the commander''s climate controls when-"


    "The base is under attack," I said, cutting him off and climbing up the bridge to the <u>first deck</u></a>. "We are commandeering the ship to hold these prisoners until everything is cleared up. What''s your name, soldier?"


    "Umm I''m T- oh, Uh Ensign Tarsi, Sir," He said, nervously twisting his cap as he looked back down the ramp.


    "Right, well sorry about this Ensign Tarsi," I said, before raising my blaster and pulling the trigger, a blue wave of a stun bolt washing over him. "I know how much those things hurt."


    Even as the nervous ensign collapsed backward, slumping down to the ground, I turned back to the rest of the crew, pulling out my comm and connected to Miru.


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    "We are on board, Miru. Your B1 bomb worked perfectly," I said, smiling as I could hear the young genius cheering. "We will start clearing decks soon. I''ll get back in contact when we are done."


    Another confirmation from the young Twi''lek and I stowed my comm unit, giving the rest of the crew a once over. Vas and Nal were already out of their fake restraints and were in the process of arming up, while Julus and Tatnia tipped over the cargo crate, letting Racer wheel out of it with a soft whistle.


    "Alright, guys, we need a room-by-room sweep. Tatnia, Julus, and Nal, you get the first and <u>second decks</u></a>. Vaz and Racer, you''re with me. We are bum-rushing the <u>third</u></a> and <u>fourth decks</u></a>," I said, mostly rehashing the already discussed plan. "Give us a thirty-second head start."


    When I was done, everyone nodded while I turned to the turbolift, with Racer wheeling in first, Vaz and I stepping in after him. As the doors closed, I summoned my armor around me, marveling at how little energy it took to fully charge it. We stepped out of the turbolift on the third deck and immediately moved forward, Racer following behind and taking cover by a corner while Vaz and I went door to door, checking every single one, clearing a series of six bedrooms, a refresher room, and a lounge, before turning around and rushing back to the turbolift, since the one at the far end of the third floor only went down.


    Racer was waiting for us in the turbolift, Vaz and I quickly climbed in as well, tapping the controls and ascending to the fourth deck.


    When the turbolift opened, we were immediately greeted by a barrage of blaster fire, three bolts pinging off my armor before I could raise a Steadfast Ward up to start blocking them. Several more bolts ricochet off my projected shield before both Vaz and I opened fire. The small space was lit up by back-and-forth laser fire, before we finally managed to take down the three imperial soldiers who had taken cover inside the bridge lounge. The second the last one went down, I rushed forward, jumping over a corpse and blasting a fifth soldier hidden behind a control system in the next room.


    I kept moving, finally opening the door to the main cockpit and stepping in, lining up a shot on whatever commanding officer had been on board. Seeing me line up my shot he reached down to his hip for his blaster, but he was dead long before he could reach it. Unfortunately, as I stepped further into the cockpit, I could see he had accomplished his mission, at least partially, the ship''s systems locked down. Thankfully, we had someone who could fix that.


    "Racer! It''s all clear!" I called back down the hallway, watching as Vaz pushed a body out of the way for the upgraded astromech.


    Racer joined me in the cockpit and immediately headed for a scomp link near where the officer had been standing. He linked in quickly, his access plug spinning as he did his own magic. After a few seconds, he turned and used his holoprojector to display a timer, with eight minutes and thirty-five seconds remaining.


    "Fuck, longer than I was hoping¡­. Okay, We will buy you some time," I said before turning to Vaz and nodding back down the hall. "C''mon, we need to get ready in case someone comes poking around."


    We quickly made our way back through the ship, double-checking everything was clear as we went, eventually arriving back at the boarding ramp, the other three already there and waiting for us. Julus was nursing a mark on his torso, with melted armor and a burn mark peeking out from behind his hand.


    "How did it go?" I asked, walking to my injured crew member and dumping a Healing Hands into him, the younger man sighing in relief.


    "Only resistance was in the barracks," Nal explained. "Stormtrooper armor bought us enough time to get in before they opened fire."


    "They didn''t last long, though. They weren''t exactly expecting anything," Tatnia pointed out. "Julus just got unlucky."


    "That''s why I want some good armor for everyone," I said, finishing off my magicka on the healing. "We weren''t fast enough. They managed to lock it down before we arrived. Racer has another seven minutes or so before he can crack the lockdown."


    "Interesting, goes against protocol," Nal said. "Officers are supposed to scuttle ships before rebels get their hands on them."


    "Let''s not look a gift horse in the mouth," I said, rolling my eyes when everyone gave me a weird look for the idiom. "Don''t question good fortune. Nal, go up to the top deck and see if you can''t get an external view of what''s going on, and get ready to fly us out of here. I want to leave the second we can."


    The Duros nodded and stepped into the nearby turbolift, disappearing as its doors closed. It took them about a minute to report back that, as far as they could tell, no one was looking our way. We settled in to wait, seconds ticking by extraordinarily slowly. Unfortunately, it wasn''t two minutes later that he commed back again.


    "A squad of troopers is heading our way," Nal warned, all of us jumping up to our feet. "Thirty seconds!"


    All of us moved around, finding cover that gave us a vantage point down the boarding ramp. I motioned for everyone to duck down, just before the six troopers came into view. They paused at the base of the ramp, the first few tilting their heads to see further inside. When they saw nothing suspicious, one of the leading troopers made a gesture and the squad stepped up to come inside. The second I heard their boots hit the ramp, I popped out of my cover, taking aim with my blaster.


    "Fire!"


    A torrent of blaster bolts fired down the ramp and slapped into troopers. Some of them skimmed off their polished armor, but even more of them drilled in and pierced through. In one short barrage the six troopers were taken down, most of them sliding to the base of the ramp. Just after the last trooper dropped, my comm went off again.


    "They heard that, Boss. Most of the smaller turrets swiveled to focus on us," Nal said. Racer needs two more minutes. More troops incoming."


    "Alright, get ready, everyone," I said, looking around. "We have two minutes! I-"


    Before I could even finish, a <u>troop transport</u></a> swerved around into view about ten meters from the ship, too fast for Nal to warn us about. More stormtroopers poured out of the vehicle, taking cover behind the armored speeder. We opened fire immediately, but our blaster bolts only bounced off harmlessly.


    "Dammit, we need to hit that thing before they open up with their cannons!" I said, pointing out the transporter''s heavier armaments, only to watch as the dorsal turret swiveled to focus on us.


    "EVERYONE GET-"


    My orders were cut off by a barrage of laser fire, a volley that hammered into the transport speeder. For a second it did nothing, splashing over the armor and leaving small black indents. Then the spray tightened and focused on the domed turret on the top of the speeder, dialing in and hammering the same spot, unloading a barrage that dug into the armor. It glowed, sagged and failed, the blue laser fire punching through the turret, which exploded with enough force to cave in the vehicle''s roof.


    I turned to see Vaz, hefting a familiar-looking <u>minigun-esque</u></a> weapon, a dangerous smile on her lips, and the barrels of her weapon smoking from use. Behind her, I could see Ensign Tarsi, looking extremely conflicted, with his fingers in his ears, holding a spare power pack for the large weapon Vaz was firing.


    "Huh¡­ looks like we managed to find you your heavy weapon after all," I said, getting a snort from the armored humanoid.

 Chapter 60

    Before any of us could really do anything, Nal buzzed me through my comm unit.


    "Boss, Racer has completed his slice," He said quickly. "I am taking off immediately. Please send Tatnia up to assist!"


    I looked over at Tatnia, who nodded and rushed to the turbo lift without a word. As she disappeared behind the closing doors, I turned to everyone else.


    "Get to a turret control room," I said. "It''s only a matter of time before-"


    The ship rocked, and the sound of a blaster cannon being fired echoed up and in through the now-closing ramp.


    "That happens! Go, we need to take those turrets down!"


    Vaz and Julus nodded and ran to the closest turret station, which were down the hall from the main cargo hold. I turned to Tarsi and pointed to the turbolift.


    "You''re with me," I said, getting a nervous nod in response. "Let''s go."


    We rode the turbo lift I commed Calima, telling her we would be pulling off from the Imperial base shortly. She confirmed she would be ready to follow us up and that the Chariot was in the clear as far as she could see. As I hung up the comm and stepped out of the turbolift, our ship rocked again, this time followed by Julus and Vaz returning fire.


    "So¡­ why did you help?" I asked as I ran towards the turret control room, passing by the barracks and the small meeting room before finally dropping down into the turret control seat.


    The gunner station looked plenty different from what was on the Chariot, but CES''s obsession with keeping their systems similar and accessible meant I recognized enough to activate the station, swivel the turret I was controlling, and fire a burst of lasers at a turret.


    "I¡­ don''t know," He admitted. "I¡­ It just felt right."


    I fired another blast, even as the ship slowly lifted off the ground, Nal and Tatnia getting us going. The turret I was aiming for exploded, leaving a crater in the roof it had been mounted to. A readout along my left informed me we were down to thirty-five percent shields.


    "I''m gonna need a little more than that," I said, looking at him from the corner of my eye. "What kind of feeling?"


    "I just¡­ I''m¡­ The thing is¡­ It''s a long story," He tried to explain, nervously gripping his cap again. "I didn''t join the Empire because I believed in the holovids, you know?"


    As I listened, I could see us getting further and further off the ground through my screen, the turrets still firing on us, blasts of energy slamming into our shield and whipping by us. The shields dropped a bit more, but the ineffectual laser fire stopped after about twenty seconds of flying. We kept on putting more distance between us and the base.


    "So why did you join then?" I asked as I swiveled the cannon around, now focusing forward.


    "I¡­ I like fixing stuff. And my planet sucked. My family sucked," He said, adding the last bit quietly. "I thought I could do my service, learn a bit more about ships, maybe leave and get dropped off somewhere like Coruscant and get a job as a mechanic or something¡­"


    As I listened, the curvature of the watery, ocean-logged planet started to appear. I couldn''t resist the urge to shift the view of the turret so I could watch. Eventually, I spotted the Talos Chariot cutting out from the atmosphere to meet us. Before they could get close, Nal messaged me again.


    "Sensors are picking up the Guardian-class ships, Boss, but they are too far away to do any damage before we can jump¡­" He trailed off, pausing for a moment. "They just deployed their TIE fighters. They will intercept in thirty seconds."


    I swiveled my turret view, scanning around momentarily before a ping went off, and the incoming starfighters suddenly lit up on my screen. They read as friendlies to the computer, which was good news for us because they were feeding us telemetry. Vaz, Julus, and I fired at the incoming starfighters, forcing them to juke and dodge, which slowed them down considerably. Vaz even managed to take one out, the shieldless starfighter exploding in a ball of fire.


    As the last three remaining TIE fighters got closer, the aft quad laser cannon, which was smaller but much better equipped to handle starfighters, opened fire, slicing into and destroying a second TIE fighter. Then, before anyone else could even react, the Chariots raindrops came in screaming around our starboard, catching the last two TIE fighters off guard and completely annihilating them in short order.


    The droid starfighters made a lazy loop around us before meeting back up to the Chariot, the smaller ship slowing down slightly to let the starfighter connect to their undercarriage. Nal and Tatnia used that to catch up as we put even more distance between us and the planet.


    A few moments later, we jumped to lightspeed, leaving the planet behind.


    I slumped back in my seat as the targeting screen went blank, the jump to lightspeed automatically locking down the weapon systems. I took a long breath, letting it out after a small pause.


    We had done it. We had managed to pull off a pretty impressive heist with minimal issues. There were a few tense moments and some... interesting developments, but that was to be expected. In fact, if I hadn;t called the Chariot up to leave with us, I doubt it would have been connected to the heist. I didn''t regret playing it safe, not when the two Guardians could have shown up anywhere. Besides, we were on a timer, so doing anything else would be dangerously overreaching, especially after snagging such an impressive addition to the fleet.


    And wasn''t that an interesting feeling, knowing that we were now a fleet. Sure, we were a severely understaffed fleet, but we were a fleet nonetheless. Our next task would be finding more crew to staff this ship. I also wanted soldiers, boots-on-the-ground types who could fight with us. I knew the rebellion would provide as many soldiers as we needed, but I wanted at least some working directly for me. I needed to know I had at least some backup if we went our separate ways.


    "Umm¡­ you''re not going to kill me¡­ are you?" Tarsi asked as I stood from my chair and stretched. "You''re rebels, right? Part of the Rebellion? The holovids say you''re all savages, but-"


    "We aren''t part of the rebellion quite yet, but that''s a bit complicated," I said, shaking my head. "But no, I''m not going to kill you. Not after you helped us out. You haven''t told me why you helped us."


    "You stunned me," He responded. "You didn''t have to, you could have shot me. And you apologized for it."


    "Yeah, I know it sucks."


    "So¡­ What''s going to happen then?" He asked, waiting nervously for me to respond.


    "What''s going to happen is you''re going to behave yourself," I said, pinning him with a stare. "We are on our way somewhere to settle down, go over the ship, and discuss our next step. When we do, we will discuss what happens to you. Most likely, you''re gonna get dropped off somewhere in the Rim. Until then, you''re going to sit in a room and wait. Understood?"


    He nodded near frantically before wordlessly following me back down to the first deck, to one of the larger bedrooms. He stepped inside and sat down on the edge of the bed, before I closed the door with a tap on the control panel. I pulled out my com and connected to Nal.


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    "Nal, can you look over your shoulder and ask Racer if he could seal the first big bedroom on the first deck? I asked. "Or at least keep track if the door is opened?"


    "Sure, Boss."


    A few seconds later, the light next to the door went yellow, and blinked twice before going red. I thanked Nal before returning to the main cargo hold, where Vaz and Julus were waiting.


    "So, what''s his deal?" Julus asked.


    "Signed up for the benefits, said it felt like the right thing to do," I answered, shaking my head. "I''m giving him some slack since he helped, but stay on your toes if he decides to try and strangle us with it."


    "I do not believe he will," Vaz said, sounding confident. "I believe he wanted to help."


    "Random people stealing a ship?" I asked with a raised eyebrow before waving my hand. "It doesn''t matter. We can have this conversation later. For now, I want to start cleaning up. I want the bodies in the airlock so we can dump them when we drop out of hyperspace."


    Together, the three of us and a Flame Atronach I conjured started cleaning up the bodies. The magick construct was obviously confused at first, but I managed to finagle some directions to get it to carry a body we handed to it, the mostly brainless construct following behind us. Once we had the barracks cleared, we cleared the fourth deck, pausing to talk to Nal and Tatnia.


    "Any issues?" I asked as I patted down the officer I had killed earlier, pulling out a small datapad, a comm unit, and a side arm.


    "None so far, Boss. The ship is in good condition," Nal responded. "The engineer station down the hall was clean last time we checked."


    "Alright, good," I commented with a nod before looking around. "There''s a lot more crew stations than the Chariot. Way more than I would have expected."


    "Imperials like to spread out responsibility," Nal explained. "This ship is also old. Effective, but old."


    "Fair enough, I guess," I said with a frown, grabbing the dead Imperial officer and lifting them over my shoulder. "Comm me if anything changes."


    With the bodies taken care of, all that was left to do was wait. Rather than just sit around, we passed the time by exploring the ship in a bit more detail, going room by room to check everything out. We had plenty of time, so we started at the first deck, which included the main cargo hold as well as several sleeping quarters. We skipped the one that Tarsi was in.


    The cargo hold didn''t have any surprises, filled with mostly food and some repair materials, though there wasn''t much. I assumed that the close proximity to the planet meant they weren''t particularly worried about making major repairs while on patrol.


    It was also apparent that most of the non-crew beds were not being used. The forward escape pod, the massive one that made up the cone shape of the fore, was almost entirely unused, as were three of the larger midline rooms. As we searched, we piled up quite a bit of junk, which was carried to the main cargo bay for easy disposal.


    The second deck was much more populated and heavily used, revealing quite a few more useful things. There were three more storage rooms, one of which was filled entirely with shelf-stable food rations, another with a few more parts for the ships and misc materials. The workshop was well equipped, with plenty of tools, all in good shape. I was pleasantly surprised to find a <u>protocol droid</u></a> and<u> two repair droids</u></a> tucked into a room that looked to be specifically for droid storage. All three of them had restraining bolts on them, but I left them depowered anyway.


    The finds kept coming as we made our way through the ship, eventually stopping at the barracks. Only four troopers were on board when we attacked, but it looked like six were usually on board when the ship was on patrol. There were six standard sets of stormtrooper armor, as well as their weapons, equipment, and side arms. Between the armor from the Blade and what we had just found, we now had eleven sets of stormtrooper armor, though the one Julus used was damaged.


    We continued going through the ship, eventually finishing our search by sitting in the bridge lounge, just down the hall from where Nal and Tatnia were keeping an eye on the ship''s systems. There, we went over everything we had found, including the total of five hundred credit ingots.


    Eventually, we made our way back down to the barracks, mostly because there were empty containers for stormtrooper gear, and I wanted out of the set I was wearing. I had ditched the helmet a while ago, but the rest of the outfit was just as bad. Once I was back down to my civies we decided to crack into the food stores and try the Imperial rations. Vaz had no issue, easily eating hers without complaint, while Julus and I struggled.


    "This¡­ they make their own people eat this?" I asked, lifting up a green glob of food with a fork before letting it plop back down. "We are going to have to throw all of the food away. I won''t force anyone to have to eat this."


    "There may be some specifically for the officers," Vaz pointed out. "We did grab the first ones we could see."


    "Idiots," I said, shaking my head. "I would have mutineed if I was forced to eat this while the officer was eating good food."


    "It''s how the world works," Julus said, pausing for a moment before correcting himself. "Well, it''s how most of the world works."


    I managed to finish about half of the ration, throwing the rest away, Julus quickly following suit. Vaz volunteered to bring food up to Nal and Tatnia, stepping into the aft turbolift and disappearing behind the closed doors. Julus and I continued to familiarize ourselves with the ship before settling back into the lounge. I almost immediately shut down, my body realizing all at once that I had been up for way too long, working way too hard. I barely had enough energy to make my way to one of the empty rooms before I passed out.


    Eventually, about seven hours after I had passed out in the comfortable luxury bed, Vaz woke me up and said we were about to drop out of lightspeed. I nodded and quickly headed to the cockpit, arriving just in time to see the light show end and a familiar planet appear before us.


    When the decision to steal a ship had been reached, Miru had been very emphatic that she wanted to go over every inch of it herself before we started hiring people to crew it. So, rather than try and do that in space, we agreed that finding someplace to land would be our best bet. After a bit of debating, we settled on the small, unnamed planet with a now empty, stripped-bare, and abandoned CIS base.


    "Anything showing up on the scanners?" I asked Tatnia as I leaned on her seat.


    "No, the planet is empty," She responded. "Atmosphere still sucks, though, so back to wearing masks outside."


    I couldn''t help but groan as we watched the Talos chariot pull ahead and head down into the planet''s atmosphere.

 Chapter 61

    It took us about fifteen minutes to locate the abandoned and stripped-clean CIS base again, then another five to land both ships down onto it. We emptied out our airlock, letting the Imperial corpses burn up in the atmosphere as we made our way around the planet. The landing pad outside the hangars was big enough for both of our ships, but we parked close together so equipment could be more easily transferred between the two. Upon touching down, we exited the new ship, meeting Miru as she lowered the repair droid crew down on the cargo lift of the Chariot. She waved as the Leddy led the repair droids to the Consular-class ship.


    "Nice job, Boss!" She called out as she got closer, her voice partially muffled by her mask. "That went a lot better than expected."


    "It was a little close at the end, but we made it through," I agreed with a nod. "Not gonna feel completely satisfied until we can confirm that there aren''t any trackers on it, though."


    "That''s our first task, Boss," The young Twi''lek agreed. "How does it look on the inside?"


    "In good condition as far as I can tell," I responded. "There are three droids in their droid bay: two repair droids and a protocol droid. I want Racer to go over them byte by byte before we even think about turning them on."


    "I agree, the Empire does all sorts of messy things to their droids," Miru added, nodding in agreement. "Anything else?"


    "Yeah, get the droids going and then head to the second deck lounge. I want to have a meeting and discuss the heist and what we do next."


    "Sure thing, Boss!"


    As Miru jogged back to her repair droid team, I made my way into the Chariot, finding Calima and informing her of the meeting as well. About ten minutes later, I had Racer unseal Tarsi''s room. The door opened to reveal the young Ensign lying on the bed. He quickly sat up and stood, almost standing at attention before visibly restraining himself.


    "C''mon, that meeting I talked about is starting," I said, the nervous ex-imperial nodding and following behind me as I led him to the second deck lounge.


    As I walked into the relatively open space, most of the crew simply nodded at the additional person. Calima was the only one completely caught off guard, as no one had told her what was happening.


    "Alright, everyone, this is Tarsi. He was on board when we first took the ship, and later, instead of leaving or attacking us, he helped us fight off the rest of the Imperials," I explained. "Because of that, and I''m not about to start killing off unarmed and non-hostile people because it would be a bit easier, we need to figure out what we are going to do with him."


    "Umm¡­ could I¡­?" The nervous engineer started to say, looking at me and stepping closer when I gestured him forward. "So my name is Pola Tarsi. I grew up on Ruan, an Agriworld. I joined the Imperial Navy because¡­ well, I was hoping to gain some experience fixing things other than labor droids and harvesters. I¡­ I wish I had never left, but¡­ when you join, you join for life¡­"


    The young naval engineer seemed to grow distant for a moment before shaking his head and focusing on the moment.


    "Before you discuss what happens next¡­ I need to get something off my chest. I¡­ I was using you to fake my own death," He admitted, sounding apologetic. "If the Empire thinks I''m dead, my family back home will get a small payout, but more importantly, they won''t be punished for me¡­ for me going AWOL."


    From where I was standing, I could see Nal and Tatnia nodding in understanding, the former leaning back, a barely noticeable tension seeming to fade away. I had to admit, it was a much more believable reason for sticking with us than "it felt like the right thing to do."


    "I hated working for the Empire. They lied every step of the way during training, but all that stops when you leave the academy. The Empire is bad. You can see it in everything they do. The rules are cruel, and the standard procedures are mean. Even the things we were shown as positives, like seeing the galaxy and protecting people, it exists on a layer of cruelty and¡­ twisted corruption that-"


    He suddenly stopped and took a deep breath, letting it out after a moment, a bit more calm.


    "Well¡­ If playing alibi for someone looking to escape the Empire is the cost of you getting that gun for Vaz, I''d say it was money well spent," I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. "I think once we are done here, we could spare a trip to an Outer Rim world for you to hide out at."


    "Thank you¡­ I can pull my weight in the meantime¡­ I''m not sure how¡­"


    Pola sat down on a couch by himself, still clutching at his hat, which was now a wrinkled and twisted mess. When Pola sat down, I turned to face the rest of the crew, smiling big.


    "Alright everyone, that was fantastically done. I''m not sure how that could have gone any better, if I''m honest," I admitted. "You should all be thrilled with your performances. In one day, we more than doubled the strength of our fleet."


    "Assuming we can staff it," Nal pointed out, and I nodded.


    "That is definitely on the list of things to get done after we are done here," I admitted, pointing to the Duros. "I think that we focus on hiring enough people to fill the crew, which is what, ten people? Then, when we join up, we can ask the rebels to provide the strike team. Basically, if we have to go our separate ways for any unforeseen reason, I don''t want there to be any issues with us packing up and leaving."


    "How will¡­ we pay for these new crew members?" Calima asked. "And how will we continue to make money once we join the Rebellion? While I will enjoy¡­ fighting the Empire, I would still like to make some money."


    "At first, I think we will sell the Dark Blade since it really doesn''t have a place in our fleet quite yet, and having a big chunk of credits on hand will be very useful," I explained, getting a few nods of understanding in return. "I want to invest a significant portion of that money upgrading the Chariot and this ship, up to two-thirds of it. Past that, I think we can negotiate a way to keep ourselves funded, even if it''s claiming a portion of the equipment salvaged from our missions."


    "Are you sure they will let us do that?" Miru asked.


    "No, but I think there is a significant chance that when they see this ship, their first question will be if we can get them more," I pointed out. "They desperately need ships, and if we can prove that we are a steady source of them, I don''t think they will argue if we add the caveat that they slip us some extra funding. I also¡­ have a few ideas on how to make some more money, one of which I want to investigate after we finish here."


    The crew nodded along, accepting the circumspect talk because of Pola, who looked interested but understanding of the secrecy.


    We continued to discuss our options and eventually settled on a general schedule. We would spend around two days at the CIS base, letting the repair droids and Miru go over every inch of the ship. We would then head for Point Thirteen to drop off the yet-to-be-renamed Consular-class. On the way, we would contact Nevue to see if he would be interested in buying the Blade.


    Assuming he was, we would make a trade before heading off to do some shopping, which was also when we would drop Pola off somewhere. Nal and Tatnia assured me that if we were willing to pay out a couple extra thousand credits and wait an extra few days, we could get whatever we needed delivered to whatever Outer Rim world we wanted. That meant we could pick up our upgrades and drop off Pola at the same place.


    We might even be able to do a little recruiting while we are there, depending on where we landed.


    Once we had everything we needed, I planned on returning to Point Thirteen, grabbing the Consular-class, and returning to the abandoned CIS base, or maybe some other empty planet, since wearing masks would get annoying. We would then split the crew, leaving most of the people with the Consular-class to help Miru work on the upgrades while we go off to check out if one of my "hunches" would turn out to be profitable.


    It was a whole lot of traveling back and forth across the galaxy, but making sure our ships were the best they could be and then some was important enough that I was willing to add quite a few extra steps to the next few weeks. A quick vote showed that the crew agreed on the schedule, so I closed the meeting.


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    Over the next two days, the crew kept themselves as busy as they could. Miru and repair droids did end up going over the ship from aft to fore, looking under hundreds of panels, peeking inside hatches, and scanning every inch of the ship. Racer spent almost forty-eight hours in a row slicing and analyzing the code for the Clone Wars era ship, looking for anything left behind by Imperial security. He stumbled on a few things, including an automatic hailing program that would connect the ship to Imperial IFF if we got close to any Imperial systems. He also informed us that her ship''s name was the Harsh Penance, which Pola apologized for not telling us already. It wasn''t nearly as bad as "Dark Blade," but we would definitely be renaming it when we were done upgrading everything.


    While Miru and the droids worked on the Penance, most of the remaining crew did light maintenance on whatever other equipment required it. Tatnia did some work on the Arrow, mostly cleaning, while Julus and Vaz cleaned and maintained everyone''s weapons and most of the backup weapons. Pola volunteered to do maintenance on the labor droids, which Miru admitted was probably a good idea since she had just given them a basic once-over when we first got them. Pola was very familiar with the droids, having grown up on a farm that employed hundreds of them. Nal agreed to help him, though everyone involved knew it was mostly to keep an eye on the ex-Imperial.


    While everyone was working hard, I was sitting in my room for twelve hours straight, two days in a row, working on my magic. My first priority was the process of learning the advanced version of Clairvoyance. It wasn''t exactly a new spell. Instead, it was the first spell with a half dozen small additions. It wasn''t technically a secondary matrix, but it did help the spell be more open to my inputs and what it was capable of searching for. According to the grimoire, it was only taught after a user was very familiar with the base spell because, without that base mastery, it wouldn''t be precise enough to work through the more broad allowances.


    That only took a few hours to learn, and I immediately tested it, unable to resist cheering when the illusory arrow snapped to a seemingly random direction as it latched on to what I was imagining in my head. I then spent about half an hour focusing on a few dozen random things, from Luke and Leia to Yoda and Ahsoka. Each time, the arrow pointed off the planet. I did notice that Luke, Leia and Ahsoka seemed to be vaguely in the same part of the galaxy, though honestly, even a minute shift in the arrow could mean entirely different systems.


    When I was done learning the next level of Clairvoyance, I spent the rest of the day on Heal Other, which was an equivalent and then upgrade of the Fast Heal spell, but specifically for other people. This would let me heal people in tense situations without having to sit down and hold Healing Hands on them. Because I had already burnt a few hours learning the Clairvoyance upgrade, I resigned myself to a very long and late night, even with my inherent Restoration affinity.


    The next day, I tackled another spell, once again secluding myself in my room. I still felt bad that I was essentially sitting on my ass while everyone was outside working, but I did my best to focus on the good what I was learning would do for everyone later.


    With another healing spell under my belt, my next priority was defense, meaning Greater Ward was next on my list. I sat down after breakfast with everyone, and everyone was already sleeping when I was finally done. Still, having a more powerful way to protect myself and my crew was worth the all-day, brain-melting process.


    I was both excited and terrified of what the expert and master process would be like.


    The following day, Miru sat down with me at breakfast and went over everything that she and her droid team had found.


    "It''s in pretty good shape, especially for its age," She commented, tapping through a hologram that Racer was projecting. "It''s relatively new, meaning it was made at the tail end of the Clone Wars, and was retrofitted with more modern systems about three years ago, meaning it''s surprisingly up to date. That said, it is still an older ship. The power systems are a little under what they would be optimally for a modern ship this size, though the shield system wouldn''t be able to handle much more power regardless. My suggestion is that any upgrades we get focus on those two things first."


    "What about the engines?"


    "They aren''t the fastest, but it''s pretty maneuverable for its size. Its hyperdrive is also twice as fast as the Chariots."


    "Sounds like we should remember that when upgrading the Chariot," I said, Miru nodding in agreement. "And no signs of a tracker?"


    "None," She said confidently. "Racer didn''t find anything in the computers, and I didn''t find anything inside the ship''s guts. Scans came up empty as well. This ship is clean."


    "Alright, good enough for me," I said with a smile. "Let''s get everything packed away then. The quicker we can get the next few weeks started, the quicker we can get back to it."


    We spent the next hour or so getting everyone back together and packing all of Miru''s equipment away. Miru also spent a few minutes reviewing Pola''s work, which she seemed satisfied with.


    "I''m glad you approve," The ex-imperial said, helping a repair droid into its charging station. "Because I''d like to join your crew."


    Miru stopped and looked over her shoulder, first at the ex-Imperial, then at me. She shrugged and returned to the labor droid she was checking over, snapping the central chest plate back into place.


    "If he works on ships like he does these droids, he is passable, Boss," She said, turning back to me, dusting off her hands. "It''s up to you."


    "You realize that we are going to fight the Empire directly soon," I explained, turning to face the young man. "This is all in preparation for joining the Rebellion. What happened to wanting to leave so your parents would be safe?"


    "Well¡­ I could change my face?" He offered with a shrug. "And I don''t have much combat training beyond light gunner experience. I wouldn''t be showing my face all that much, to begin with¡­ right?"


    For a moment, I studied him, meeting his gaze and holding it. I was surprised when he didn''t look away since so far, he had been quite nervous and timid.


    "Turn around and close your eyes," I instructed, getting a strange look before he slowly turned to face the repair droid he had just been working with.


    I charged up a Calm spell and hit him square in the back, the energy swirling around him for a moment.


    "Pola, can you turn around for me?" I asked, the now slightly dazed engineer turning to look at me with a big grin. "Why do you really want to join us?"


    "Well¡­ you guys seem nice, and working with people who actually like each other could be fun," He admitted with a shrug. "Also¡­ Starting over on a small, backward rim planet doesn''t sound very fun. I also want to make up for all the time I spent helping the Empire. I might not stick around forever, but I could help for a while¡­"


    He blinked for a moment, his dopey grin fading as he shook himself, suddenly aware that he had been acting strange.


    "What¡­ what was that?" He asked, looking from me to Miru. "Did¡­ did you guys just drug me?"


    "Nope, maybe you''re overheating," I suggested, looking concerned. "Why don''t you go sit down for a while, drink some water, and rest. We can talk about you wanting to join before we leave."


    For a moment, he looked confused before he eventually nodded and turned around, leaving the Chariot cargo hold behind. Miru looked at me with a raised eyebrow.


    "You''ve never done that to me, have you?"


    "Of course not!" I assured her, her face softening a bit before I added. "I didn''t know how to when you joined after all."


    She picked up a stray screw and threw it at me, the small chip of metal bouncing off my back as I left the cargo bay, laughing as I went.

 Chapter 62

    We lifted off of the CIS base within the hour, with Nal, Tatnia, Julus, Pola, and Vaz on the Penance since it required more crew to function, and Calima, Miru, and myself on the Chariot. We lifted off without any trouble, jumping to hyperspace as we left the planet''s gravity field.


    Before we split up into two different ships, I went around and discussed the idea of Pola joining us with everyone individually. The general consensus seemed to be to give him a chance but to keep a close eye on him. The issue with that was his primary role would obviously be working on the ships, which meant Miru would be the one more or less in charge of him, even if he stayed on the Penance as one of its crew, and I hated the idea of having someone we didn''t trust one hundred percent spending any alone time with her.


    So, for the short term, instead of having him on the Chariot, I set him on the Penance, where Tatnia could keep a vague eye on him. Racer was also onboard the Penance as well, tapped into the systems to monitor them directly. The idea was to give the ex-imperial enough freedom to show his true colors but have Racer on standby to stop him from doing anything particularly dangerous.


    Of course, this was a temporary solution, one I would openly admit was probably overkill. Between his general demeanor, my own gut feeling, and the Calm spell test, I personally believed he was genuine about his desire to stay on board and help out.


    Once we jumped into hyperspace, we had just under a full day before we would arrive at our destination. We sent a message to Nevue before we left, including a few images of the Dark Blade and where he could meet us.


    Unfortunately, despite the long trip, I didn''t actually have a solid twelve for thirteen hours to sit down and learn a spell, as we were already half a dozen hours into our day, and skipping sleep seemed like a bad idea when we would be meeting Nevue and negotiating a trade. I would have to get used to skipping sleep to learn spells when I got to Expert level magic, but I was more concerned about being fully awake now.


    Still, I did have a bunch of free time, and while a complete spell was too much, picking up a better casting technique for my fire spells that increased their heat and decreased their mana was much more reasonable.


    When we arrived at Point Thirteen, we slowly approached from the usual angle, touching down on the moon gently, the Penance right behind us. Tatnia and Nal started the process of shutting down the Consular-class ship since we would be leaving it behind for a while, before Miru took our new shuttle, which we had named Brick, over to pick up our crewmates.


    About two hours after we had shut down the Penance, which we still had to rename, a <u>new ship jumped</u></a> out of hyperspace a fair distance from the moon. Before we could even start to panic, it reached out over the comm.


    "Talos Chariot, this is Free Spirit, come in Talos Chariot. Are you there, Deacon?" A familiar voice asked through the speaker.


    "It''s us, Nevue. Come on down, and we can pick you up with our shuttle, assuming that ship has an airlock?"


    "Shuttle? Dammit, Deacon, stop making us look so bad. Alright, coming in for a touchdown. See you in a bit."


    About ten minutes later, Nevue, Ayme, and Lario all stepped off the Brick''s ramp and into the Chariot''s port hangar.


    "It''s good to see you again, Nevue," I said, reaching out and shaking his hand before shaking Ayme and Lario''s hands as well. "It''s good to see all of you. How has rebel life been treating you?"


    "Until we saw you guys, I thought pretty well!" Nevue said, shaking his head. "How in the hells did you manage to get your hands on a Lambda, a C70 refit, and a CEC shuttle?"


    "It''s a bit of a long story," I said with a smirk. "How about we head up to the lounge, and I introduce you to our new crewmembers and fill you in?"


    Together, we left the port hangar and made our way to the lounge. I briefly introduced Calima, Vaz, Julus, and Pola. I also explained who Pola was, which caught Nevue by surprise, but he seemed to accept his story.


    "The Rebellion''s policy is no questions asked acceptance of all defectors," He assured the nervous engineer with a shrug. "As long as you keep it straight, we won''t have any issues."


    Once introductions were done, we went over what we had been up to since we had gone our separate ways after the CIS raid. Nevue was stunned to hear that our adventures on Nar Shaddaa caught up with us in such a spectacular fashion, cursing loudly when we got to the part where we were ambushed by an Inquisitor.


    When we were done, Nevue skimmed past what he was up to, explaining how they had secured their current ship and its cargo about two weeks after we separated and performed a large raid a few weeks ago on an Imperial shipping company. When we were both done sharing our stories, Nevue brought up the Lambda shuttle.


    "I can understand why you would want to pass it on, it''s not much use if you don''t have a place to land frequently," He agreed, with a nod, spinning the holo-projected image we provided. "They are great troop transports and support craft, lots of firepower¡­ And considering who the owner was, it would be in top condition¡­ Have you gone over its Navicomputer log?"


    "Racer went over it with a fine tooth comb," I said, turning to look at the droid. "Did you?"


    The droid whistled, bleeped, and warbled before going silent. I looked at Miru for a translation.


    "He said its records are intact, but he never reviewed any of them."


    "Rebel Intelligence would want me to buy it for that alone," Nevue said with a nod. "How much?"


    "Not gonna drag you guys through the coals on it. I was thinking maybe a hundred and seventy thousand?"


    "I might be able to swing that¡­" Nevue said, sounding unsure as he reached up to touch one of his horns. "Could you go a bit lower?"


    "Really? It might as well be brand new, Nevue, and it''s worth at least two hundred," I pointed out. "I know the Rebellion''s issue isn''t money, it''s ships. I could ask for more than it''s worth, and you would still probably cave. I''ll go a hundred and sixty-five, but that''s as good as you''re gonna get."


    "Alright, alright, you''ve got a good point. That''s a good deal, and I shouldn''t ask for gilding when you''ve already offered a trim for free," He said, reaching over the table to shake my hand, sealing the deal. "Now, to complete my secondary mission. Our slicers have finally broken through the first few layers of the encryption on the CIS computer core. We have a new target to raid, and they want you at Thila Command to go over a plan."


    "Dammit, really?" I asked, hypothetical, leaning back in my seat. "And right after we spent a whole meeting working out our schedule¡­"


    "Well¡­ we could spare a few days if it''s something important," The Zabrak admitted. "Is it important?"


    "I wanted to visit a planet for a day, investigate it for a potential scavenging operation of sorts," I explained. "And I wanted to use a large portion of the profits from the Lambda to buy upgrades for the Penance, the Chariot, and the Brick."


    For a moment, Nevue was quiet, chewing on his lip before leaning in.


    "I''ll need to confirm it, but what if you brought the ships to Thila Command? We have enough room for both of your ships easily. You could leave them behind with Miru, and our technicians could help her upgrade your ship. We can even pick up the parts. We have plenty of ships waiting for the eventual Yavin IV rescue mission."


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    "That¡­ would work, I suppose¡­"


    I looked around at the rest of my crew, gauging their reactions. When no one showed any signs of major disagreement, I looked back at Nevue.


    "Alright, we will accept your hospitality."


    With our negotiation over Nevue, Ayme, Lario, Tatnia, Nal, Pola, and Vaz piled into the Brick again. Once Nevue was back on his ship, my crew went back to the Penance to start her back up, undoing the process they had gone through just a few hours ago.


    After a while, Nevue contacted us on the comms and informed us we were welcome to use Thila Command as a temporary port, and that they would even pick up our supplies for cheap. Given how many black market pies the rebels had their fingers in, I was hopeful we could get our hands on everything we needed.


    Soon we were ready to leave, with two of Nevue''s crew piloting and preparing the Dark Blade for travel. Once they were ready, they gave us the coordinates for the rebel base and we set out, jumping into hyperspace. The trip was predicted to be surprisingly short, even shorter than the last time we made the trip, since the ancient B-7 we had been traveling on had a class four hyperdrive, while we were currently limited to the class three that the Chariot had.


    Once we were on our way, I sat down with Miru and Calima to discuss what kind of upgrades we should be looking out for. Miru had a holoprojector displaying the structure of both of our ships so we could plan our modifications.


    "I already recommended some extra power and shields for the Consular-class," Miru said, bringing the<u> deck plan</u></a> for that ship up. "I say we replace the shield generator with a bigger, more powerful version, and add a secondary reactor. We could even probably sell the original shield generator to make up some of the difference."


    "Where would we put it?" I asked


    "The more powerful shield might need some more room, but it''s along the hull, so we don''t need to worry about things getting in the way. We can just expand the hull," Miru explained. "We would have to do some restructuring, but we should have some replacement hull parts on hand anyway. The second power generator, on the other hand, is going to need its own space."


    "How about the conference room on the second deck?" I suggested, pointing it out on the plans. "The primary lounge is just as good of a meeting place, if not better because it has the holoprojector in the middle."


    "Hmm¡­ I would like a little more space¡­ what if we pushed the secondary storage bay back just a bit? That''s another meter of space¡­ we could fit a sizable generator there. Maybe increase available power by two-thirds."


    "And you can connect it properly there?"


    "Yeah, CEC ships are made for this kind of thing, Boss. You could tap into the main power almost anywhere in the ship."


    "Good. How much will that cost?"


    "If we can convince the rebels to buy our old shield system, which considering it will work with a lot of their older CEC ships, then¡­ forty thousand credits."


    "How much would adding two more quad turrets cost?" I asked. "Like we have in the back?"


    "Uh¡­. another fifteen probably¡­"


    We continued to discuss the upgrades for a few hours, Calima chiming in occasionally to put her own two cents in. Eventually, we settled on a general plan. On top of the reactor and shield upgrades, we would be adding two more quad turrets. One would be on the underside of the large, cone-shaped escape pod under the bridge, and the other on the underside of the aft end of the ship, near its engines, where it would have a clear view for targeting starfighters.


    We would also be moving the quad laser that sat in the back to on top of the central tall block along the fore of the ship, drastically increasing its firing arc. It would require the removal of a single crew quarters to do it, but there were plenty of beds all over the ship, so that wasn''t particularly important. In fact, the other two gunner controls would also be sacrificing quarters, both a stateroom on the first deck and two quarters in the forward pod, and the ship still had plenty of beds.


    The <u>Talos Chariot</u></a> was also getting a significant upgrade to its shields and power generation. The hull would most likely need to be expanded for the shield upgrade, according to Miru, but once again she wasn''t concerned. Instead of getting one additional medium-sized reactor, the Chariot would be getting two smaller ones, each tucked into the corner of the up-to-now unused back room of the ship''s top deck. They would stay opposite the stairs and take up a significant amount of the room. Together, they would provide just about the same amount of power as the additional reactor being added to the Penance would provide.


    I was tempted to add more weapons to the ship, but in all honesty it was already surprisingly well armed. It lacked the turbolasers that the retrofitted and upgraded Consular, but considering we were going for more of a small-scale carrier than a heavy hitter, that was fine.


    Once we were done with the general plans, Miru headed down to her workshop, Racer following right behind her, planning on spending the rest of the trip working up some official plans to work off of. She was clearly excited about the upgrades, especially when I made it clear that she would be leading the process, as I trusted her to keep the rebel mechanics from fucking shit up or taking shortcuts.


    When we finally arrived at the Rebellion''s temporary command base, we were immediately given guidance to land, heading to the same spot we had before. Once again, Thila''s massive mountains and valleys passed under us before we reached the rebel base. This time, we were directed to a larger hangar bay with room for the Penance and Chariot with room to spare.


    As we exited the Chariot, the other half of my crew walking down the front ramp of the Penance, I spotted our welcoming committee. General Syndulla stood by the entrance, flanked by two guards. Beside her, however, was a Togruta woman, probably just around my age. Standing just behind her was a young, blonde-haired human male. The lightsaber at his hip and the dual lightsabers clipped to the Togruta''s belt meant they could only really be two people.


    I was honestly surprised how easy it was to control my fanboying. Maybe it was because they both looked so... normal, standing there, just waiting. Luke''s behavior was so familiar it hurt, trying his best not to look nervous as he was introduced to new people. I could see my younger self in him like I was looking in a mirror, though I had considerably less riding on my shoulders. Ahsoka, on the other hand, carried her confidence much more securely, tempting me to try and rattle her a bit.


    "General Syndulla, it''s good to see you again," I said, reaching out to shake her hand. "I appreciate that you''re letting us use your space."


    "Just remember that when it''s time to talk about who gets what after this raid," She responded with a smile. "This is-


    "<u>Ahsoka Tano.</u></a>" I finished for her with a smile, holding my hand out to the once-Jedi Padawan. "It''s good to finally meet you."

 Chapter 63

    Ahsoka Tano reached out and took my hand, her confusion at me knowing her name only flickering on her face for a moment before she pushed it down. Once she released my hand, she crossed her arms, cocking her hip in a way that I was almost positive I had seen her character in the cartoons do.


    "I would have thought a commander that General Syndulla spoke so highly of would know operational security a little better," She said, looking at the General.


    "As far as I''m aware, Commander Loc and his crew have no idea you are here," The green-skinned Twi''lek defended. "They might not even know you exist. You''re not exactly common knowledge."


    "That''s just the Boss," Tatnia said from beside me. "He does that sometimes. Know things."


    "Really?" The orange-red-skinned woman asked, looking back at me. "What kind of things?"


    "Well, I know that not greeting Luke Skywalker is a bit rude," I said, stepping around her slightly to offer my hand to the young adult. "Sorry about that. It''s nice to meet you."


    "It''s nice to meet you as well," He said, in the voice of a young Mark Hamill, glancing at Ahsoka before shaking my hand.


    "So¡­ What''s the plan?" I asked, turning to General Syndulla. "We jumping right into things?"


    The rebel leader shook her head before turning to her aide and telling them to call the briefing. About five minutes later, all of us were led down to a large briefing room.


    The seats were staggered like an amphitheater, with a holoprojector at the central low point. It looked vaguely similar to the setup they used in Return Of the Jedi. Unlike the room aboard the Home One, this was carved directly into the stone. As we took our seats, Luke sat down beside me, trying his best to look casual and confident. He looked like a kid in way over his head who thought he needed to look like he knew what he was doing.


    Probably because that''s what everyone expected of him.


    "Hey, Deacon¡­" He said quietly as a few dozen people made their way into the room, slowly filling it up. "So Ahsoka was pretty determined to meet you, but she wouldn''t say why. Are you¡­ you know¡­?"


    "No, sorry," I said, shaking my head. "My stuff is a little different from yours."


    "Stuff?" He asks, looking confused. "You mean the Force?"


    "I use magic, something totally different," I explained before casting Fast Heal on him.


    The yellow gold Restoration infused magic spiraled up and around my hand before pushing into the young Force-sensitive. He jerked away, half standing as the magic faded, his hand going to his hip where his lightsaber was.


    "Woah¡­ what was that?" He asked, looking down at his hands before rolling his shoulders and stretching his back. "My back isn''t sore anymore¡­What the hell was that?"


    "It was a healing spell," I responded, smirking at Ahsoka, who was now openly gaping at me.


    Of course, everyone else was as well. It seemed that glowy magic attracted a lot of attention.


    The young Force-sensitive silently looked at me, though he did settle back down into his seat after a few seconds. He looked like he was struggling to find the words to ask a question that he hadn''t really formulated yet. I couldn''t help but chuckle.


    "Don''t think too hard about it, Luke. You had no idea the Force existed a couple of years ago, right? Well, just add a second strange, physics-breaking energy source on top of that."


    "I¡­alright," He said, though he clearly wasn''t ready to drop it. "Are there more of you? Can you help defeat the Empire?"


    "As far as I know, I''m the only one," I said, shaking my head. "As for defeating the Empire¡­ kind of a big ask for one person, don''t you think?"


    Before he could reply, I noticed that Nevue had joined us, sitting in the row directly under us. Ayme and Lario were with him, as were four other people I didn''t recognize. When they settled down, he turned to look at me.


    "I caught your show from the entrance," He said with a raised eyebrow. "I thought you were keeping a low profile? You realize everyone is staring at you, right?"


    "Kinda hard not to," I said with a shrug, ignoring our openly eavesdropping audience. "But it''s the same problem with our first raid. I can either keep it secret and not use it, or I can use it and, in the process, break the secret. Besides, I broke out of prison, killed an Inquisitor, stole a ship worth a few million credits, and I have no plans on stopping anytime soon. It was gonna get out eventually."


    "Well¡­ It''s your secret," He said with a shrug. "Or it was, at least."


    "You guys have worked together before?" Luke asked, Nevue looking at Luke for a moment before nodding.


    "We are the ones who secured the computer core this information is coming from," Nevue explained, reaching over to shake Luke''s hand. "Commander Loc, just call me Nevue."


    "Luke Skywalker," The Tatooine native said, causing Nevue to chuckle.


    "Really? I had no idea."


    Luke frowned and nodded, pulling his hand back, once again trying to keep his confident facade going.


    "Still getting used to being recognized?" I asked.


    "That obvious, huh?"


    Before I could respond, the crowd started to quiet down as General Syndulla made her way to the lower portion of the room. As she began to walk around the central holoprojector, it lit up, displaying a scattering of dots, like static, before coalescing into a large mountain face made of some sort of dark rock, much darker than Thila Command was carved out of. I could see three large hangar bays from the angle being shown.


    "Thank you all for coming. You have been chosen to participate in this raid, one we hope will provide a significant amount of supplies, both combat and general logistics, as well as a potential base location," She explained, slowly walking around the projector. "This is what we are temporarily calling Alpha Base. It is a secret CIS facility dating back to the Clone Wars. According to the information we were able to pull from the computer core, provided for us by Commander Loc''s and Deacon Roy''s teams, this base was a secret testing facility for the Separatist Army programming division. Essentially, this was where droid programming was created, tested, and prototyped before being sent off to production facilities to be uploaded to various droids, ships, and other systems controls."


    The image shifted into a wireframe, spinning around the mountain to show a cutout of what the interior structure of the base looked like. If I was imagining the scale correctly, this base was extensive, dwarfing the base we had raided before, which explained why so many people were in the room.


    "Due to the nature of their experiments on the programming of artificial intelligent war machines, the entire facility was isolated from the normal CIS network. The only communication between it and the outside world was actual physical communication. Any finished product was passed on through data storage devices."


    The image on the large holoprojector shifted slowly, going in the opposite direction that the General was walking.


    "Unfortunately, due to the high-security nature of this facility, the central computer core is located deep underground behind at least three reinforced doors, all of which will take time to crack, even with slicer resources," She explained, the projected image refocusing on a room deep inside the mountain, connected to the rest of the facility by a few hallways. "This all but eliminates the possibility of rushing the core in order to send the droids a shutdown command. If we want this base, we will have to clear it out completely."


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    As she talked, the image zoomed back out, once again showing the whole thing.


    "This mission will be broken down into three stages. The first stage will be a starfighter assault, undertaken by <u>Green Squadron</u></a>, piloting a mix of <u>A-wings</u></a> and <u>X-wings</u></a>. Their mission is to disable the heavy turbolaser and other defenses that are built around the mountain exterior."


    A crude but effective animation of a few X-wings flying around the facility played before disappearing.


    "Once their defenses are down, the troop transports will land in one of these hangar bays," General Syndula continued, three hangar bays blinking green before settling on the highest and largest. "This is stage two, where we set down teams in the hangar to create a fallback position."


    As she talked, the animation showed gun emplacements, barriers, and sandbags, focused on the two entrances into the large hangar.


    "Once the hangar is secured and defended, stage three will commence, where a team will head deeper into the facility to destroy hostile droids and shut down dangerous systems," She explained, looking across the briefing room. "This is not going to be a fast mission. We will be taking our time and clearing this facility step by step. I will not send my men into a grinder when we can just as easily take our time and do this properly."


    With a forward operating base set up, the projection showed a group moving further into the facility. It played through a few times before stopping zooming back out to the same full view as before.


    "Hangar Base will be commanded by Lieutenant Soran. The strike team that will be heading deeper into the facility will be led by Ahsoka Tano. She has more experience fighting droids than almost anyone else and served in the Clone Wars. The team will be made up of Commander Loc''s retrieval team and Deacon Roy''s own mercenaries. Luke Skywalker has volunteered to work with them as well."


    I nodded to the General, who nodded in return before continuing her briefing.


    "Now, while the data we uncovered says nothing about the strength of the droid units stationed there, because of the importance of this facility, we can assume there is going to be plenty of resistance. I''m going to hand the briefing off to Ahsoka so she can go over some of the threats you may encounter."


    Ahsoka stood and nodded to the General, who made her way to an empty space along the lowest level of seats. Once she was seated, Ahsoka nodded to her before turning to address everyone.


    "Thank you, General. Since it is the pilots that will start this engagement, I will start with what threats they may encounter."


    Over the next few hours, the Clone Wars veteran reviewed most of the threats we were likely to encounter, starting with the starfighters and making her way through the CIS ground forces. Eventually, when she had finished going over Commando Droids and Droideka, she handed over the briefing to the General again.


    "Thank you, Ahsoka. Now, while Green Squadron will be the primary driving force for the stage one attack, the Verdant Dream, <u>a C90 blockade runner</u></a>, will be providing additional backup as needed. After stage one is complete, our ground troops will be carried down from the Lead Vessel, a <u>Nebulon-class</u></a> frigate named Glory, by a pair of <u>Aegis-class</u></a> shuttles, the Mover and Shaker. They will land inside Hangar Bay One and remain there as the final fallback and retreat point for the ground troops."


    As General Syndulla listed off ships and names, projected images of the ships appeared behind her, showing off each vessel, pointing out spots of interest and their basic information.


    "The Glory will arrive in several hours, and the operation will begin three hours after that," She completed. "Are there any questions?"


    Across the room, one of the soldiers raised their hand, and the general turned to face them.


    "Yes Lieutenant Soran?"


    "General, what are the chances that people are still alive in this base?"


    "It is very possible, even likely." She answered. "Which means teams must be ready for tactics that are outside the box, as they could have a biological commander."


    The group continued to ask questions, clearing up a few things until they were finally satisfied. When no one else raised their hands, General Syndulla gave one more look around before nodding.


    "Very well. I expect all ground troops to be ready in hangar seven in seven hours. Green Squadron, I want your ships fueled and prepped by then. You''ll be escorting the Mover and Shaker to and from the Glory, where you will land and travel the rest of the way to our target. Good luck, everyone. May the Force be with you. Deacon, a word if you would."


    As the majority of people stood and exited the briefing room, I made my way down to the lowest level of the briefing room, stopping in front of General Syndulla. Ahsoka walked up behind her as well, stopping to hear our conversation.


    "I assume by the light show you performed earlier that you won''t be hiding your abilities during the mission?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "Yeah. We''ve been making waves, so it''s only a matter of time before I''ve got the big guns coming after me," I explained. "Besides, I''m not about to put anyone at risk to keep myself safe, not when we are dropping in somewhere dangerous."


    "Fair enough, I won''t pretend I''m not glad to have someone of your¡­ abilities fighting with us on this," She admitted.


    "Thank you. If that''s all?"


    She nodded, and I turned to leave, my crew following behind me. Before I could make it out of the Luke caught up to us.


    "Hey, Deacon. Mind if I tag along? Red Squadron already left for another mission, so¡­"


    "Yeah, sure, Luke, we are heading back to our ship. You''re welcome to join us," I said with a nod and a smile. "You got everything you need for the mission?"


    "I''ll probably stop by my locker to grab a few things first," He responded.


    "Sounds good. You can join us for lunch," I said before looking down at Ahsoka, who had been watching our conversation. "You''re welcome to join us."


    "... Alright, I suppose getting to know your crew would be a good idea," She responded. "Lead the way."


    I smiled and turned, walking out of the briefing hall and into the stone-carved hallway. I took two steps in one direction, only for Tatnia to grab my arm and pull me back.


    "Our hangar bay is this way," She explained, nodding down the opposite hall. "Unless you planned on going the long way?"


    "Right¡­ I would have figured it out eventually."

 Chapter 64

    Ahsoka followed us back to the ship while Luke left to grab a few things. It didn''t take long, or maybe he ran, because he had caught up with us by the time we were climbing the boarding ramp.


    I gave Ahsoka and Luke a short tour of the Talos Chariot, showing off the modifications. Ahsoka, who was familiar with the ships from the war, was impressed by the idea.


    "You''ve turned a cargo ship into a pocket carrier, very smart," She said as I showed off the port hangar, where the Brick was stored. "The newer Gozanti-class has four docking extensions, but this has much more flexibility. Who designed this?"


    "Miru did," I said, putting my hand on the young Twi''lek''s shoulders, smiling proudly. "She is an incredibly talented mechanic and engineer."


    "I do my best," She said, sounding a bit embarrassed by my bragging.


    We continued the tour before finally ending at the lounge, sitting down to eat. I was going to apologize for only having shelf-stable, MRE-style food, but apparently, the supplies we had were much better than the standard fare the Rebels ate when on a mission.


    "Sometimes our bases have access to the local food, but usually it is stuff like this, only much worse," Luke explained, happily cracking open a meal. "Where did you get these?"


    "These¡­ I think the last CIS base we raided," I answered, looking down at my packaged meal.


    "Ah, that explains why they are familiar," Ahsoka responded. "And it makes sense. That was a refuge for the leaders of the Separatists, correct? They wouldn''t have settled for nutrient paste or protein bricks."


    We talked as we ate, the conversation staying light for the most part. At one point, Tatnia tried to poke a little at Ahsoka''s past, but it was immediately apparent that she had no desire to talk about it. Rather than let the conversation hang, Miru tried to push it in a different direction. Unfortunately, she had made an assumption, and her topic was even worse.


    "So¡­ Is Ahsoka teaching you anything interesting?" She asked, looking at Luke.


    Both of the Force-sensitives worked very hard not to look at each other, Luke only being partially successful.


    "I cannot, I am not a Jedi¡­ It wouldn''t be right," Ahsoka said,


    "It would be nice to have at least some guidance, though," Luke responded, mumbling under his breath.


    "Wait¡­ you''re not teaching him at all?" Miru asked, unable to stop herself. "Why, that''s-"


    I put my hand on her shoulder, the pink-skinned girl looking up at me and stopped when I frowned and shook my head.


    "He will find a teacher soon. I am certain of it." Ahsoka added, putting down her utensil.


    "How can you be so sure?" Luke asked, now looking directly at her, his frustration rising.


    Ahsoka remained silent, either unable or unwilling to respond. After a moment, Luke stood and left the room, not precisely in a huff, but clearly done being around the Togruta. I looked to Miru, Julus, and Pola, and nodded towards the leaving young adult, all three of them getting up and following after him. Confident they would get the intent to help the young Force-sensitive calm down, I looked back to Ahsoka. She was silently eating her food.


    "You know, he isn''t going to be much of a Jedi, either," I said, getting a harsh look for my statement. "He''s only going to bare minimum training. If he makes it through this war, he isn''t going to have access to much information about the Jedi. Unless you have a holocron stashed away somewhere?"


    "He has the potential to be a great Jedi," She said, defending the young adult.


    "Of course, he has a powerful connection to the Force, unsurprising considering who his father is. Even more importantly, he is driven to be a positive force on the galaxy," I explained, getting a hard look from Ahsoka. "What I mean is, whatever order he creates might be called ''Jedi,'' but it''s not likely to look at all like the Jedi Order that raised you. I mean, think about it. Anakin struggled to fit in because he was, what, ten when he joined? Imagine how different an order that was built from someone who is closer to twenty-five would be. At a minimum, it is going to be closer to the Corellian Jedi style."


    For a long moment, Ahsoka was silent, looking at me with wide eyes as I casually mentioned information that wasn''t well known even before everyone who knew it was killed under Order 66. Eventually, she looked over at Tatnia.


    "Is this what you mean by knowing things?" She asked, getting a shrug in return. After a moment, she looked back at me. "As truthful as that may be, that doesn''t change the fact that I cannot train him. I¡­ I was a Padawan when I left the order. I don''t¡­"


    "I doubt he is expecting you to know how to unravel the mysteries of the universe or know the ancient lore of the Jedi Lords," I pointed out. "Obi-wan barely had time to teach him how to block blaster bolts. Right now, I bet he is more comfortable with a blaster than a lightsaber. Could you not just offer him some guidance, maybe show him some basic lightsaber forms? No moral stuff, no nature of the Force stuff. Because the alternative is that I do it, and trust me, you''re not gonna like that."


    "You would train him?" She asked, squinting at me in doubt. "You''ve emphatically stated that you do not use the Force, how would you train him?"


    "If Master Mace Windu wrote down everything he knew about the Force, everything he learned and thought, wouldn''t that book have valuable insight and guidance to a Padawan?" I said. "Especially if they were going to attempt to mimic his more aggressive fighting style, or shared his Shatterpoint ability. The book wouldn''t be able to use the Force, but it could still teach things about it."


    If she was shocked before, now she was dumbfounded. She stared for a full fifteen seconds before finally closing her mouth.


    "Who are you?" She asked. "How do you know these things?"


    Instead of answering, I stood up, walked away from the table, and turned down the stairs. I walked down the centerline of the ship, following the sounds of voices coming from the cargo bay. I spotted Luke, Miru, Pola, and Julus sitting on a few crates, talking and laughing. I smiled, happy that my plan of sending the younger members of my crew had worked.


    "Luke, are you up for some training?" I asked when they stopped laughing.


    "... From you?" He asked, sounding confused, looking at Miru. "I thought you didn''t use the Force?"


    "I don''t, but that doesn''t mean I haven''t picked up a thing or two," I explained with a shrug. "C''mon, worst case scenario it''s a bust, and we wasted an hour."


    "Yes! Absolutely! If you can teach me anything, then please, yes!"


    "Good. Let''s head out into the hangar where there is a bit more room to mess around," I directed, the young Force user eagerly nodding and heading directly for the boarding ramp, practically jogging.


    As he disappeared from view, I turned to Ahsoka, who had stopped just at the top of the stairs to the second deck.


    "Imagine if my intention had been to corrupt him, how easily he would accept what I was saying."


    Ignoring her response, I followed after Luke, who was waiting for me in the space between the Penance and the Chariot. He looked nervous and eager and was trying to decide whether he should have his lightsaber out. When he noticed me approaching, he let it drop to his hip, focusing on me. I stopped about fifteen feet before him, sitting on a crate.


    "Alright. So, the most important ability that a Force-sensitive has in their repertoire is deepening their connection to the Force, letting it guide their actions. It''s how you block blaster bolts, it''s how you fight with a lightsaber without cutting yourself into chunks, it''s how you feel a threat coming," I explained. "Sure, there are a lot of fiddly powers, abilities, and tricks, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to connecting to the Force, feeling it flow through you. It''s the foundation that everything is built on."


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    As I talked, Luke nodded along, eating up every word. I paused for a moment when the fact that I was teaching Luke Fucking Skywalker about the Force hit me all at once. I coughed and forced myself to continue.


    "Obi-Wan Kenobi already started this process with that training droid, the remote zapper thing, and the blast shield helmet?" I said, Luke continuing to nod. "Right, he was trying to get you to pull on the Force, to connect to it. It''s a credit to your talent that you had any success at all in such a short amount of time."


    "I kept practicing with it," Luke said with a smile. "I''ve gotten alright at predicting its shots."


    "That''s good," I encouraged with a nod. "You''re already feeling what the Force is trying to tell you. Now-"


    "What the Force is trying to¡­ You make it sound like it''s alive."


    "There is a lot of debate if it is or not, but in this circumstance, I was personifying it," I explained, doing my best not to let my own misgivings about the Force color my explanation. "That''s the kind of thing Force philosophers liked to debate, and the fact that after all this time, the jury is still out should tell you something. Now, you''re already tapping into the Force, so we just need to widen and deepen the connection. Did Obi-wan have time to teach you any lightsaber forms?"


    "Forms? No, he never mentioned anything like that," He said, shaking his head and sounding upset. "We never really had the time."


    "I know, but I had to be sure. The galaxy is a little less bright with him gone, but he would be proud of what you''ve accomplished," I said, getting a small smile from the young Force-sensitive. "For now, we need to keep pressing on. Since you don''t know any forms, I will teach you some of mine."


    I jumped off my crate and walked closer, summoning a sword and motioning for him to move back. After recovering from watching me conjure a sword from nowhere, he took several large steps back, giving me a nice place to work with.


    Over the next two hours, we ran through four different longsword forms, basically drills or kata''s, to borrow a term from martial arts. I had dozens of them in my head, but I worked four of the most flowing, clean ones into a single string, stepping back and forth, striking and defending. After a few demonstrations, I had him doing them, first with me and then alone. He had attempted to use his lightsaber, but instead I had Miru fetch a bar of lightweight metal from the ship.


    "I thought¡­ that you¡­ were going ¡­ to teach¡­ me¡­ how to¡­ connect to the Force," Luke asked, starting the pattern all over again, sweat beginning to form on his brow. "Not just¡­ have me repeat¡­. the same thing¡­ over and over."


    "Well, here''s the thing. You are a bit old. If you went to the Jedi Temple the masters would have refused you so fast your head would have spun."


    "What?" He asked, eyes wide as he stumbled. "I''m too old?"


    "The Jedi Order would take Force-sensitives when they were infants," I explained. "So they could encourage a core of peace and serenity."


    He looked at me and then past me to Ahsoka, who was keeping an eye on us despite her refusal to help.


    "That''s right, even her. Your father was actually the oldest Jedi accepted for a long time. You''re around twice his age when he was first ¡­ accepted into their Jedi Order."


    I could see the conflicted thoughts in his eyes, wanting to train but desperate to know more about his father. I chuckled and shook my head.


    "How about we train for now, and during the trip to our mission, I can tell you some stories about your dad."


    He agreed eagerly and continued to do his drills with renewed vigor.


    "Because you don''t have the core indoctrination, I mean training," I said, Ahsoka shifting in her seat behind me. "Sitting down and emptying your mind is a tall order, especially at the drop of a hat. So instead, you''re doing kinetic meditation."


    I was blatantly stealing from a few different sources, specifically the theory that Master Yoda had been doing something similar when he had Luke running laps on Dagobah. Why he hadn''t been using lightsaber forms, I don''t know.


    "As you run through these drills, I want you to lose yourself. Sink into the movement, letting your mind slowly quiet. There is nothing but the action, the momentum, the movement."


    I watched him run through drill after drill, repeating the movements over and over, moving in a small circle. At first, he was frowning, too busy struggling to move to really sink into meditation. But slowly but surely, as he worked his body harder and harder, his expression grew more serene.


    "The Force is not a thing. It does not exist as a finite amount," I continued, talking softer so I wouldn''t startle him. "It is everything and everywhere. It is infinite, omnipresent. It is you, it is me. It is the planet under our feet and all the living creatures that live on it. Feel that, Luke. Feel the people around us. Don''t pull, don''t push, just feel."


    Again, it took him a while to work out exactly what I was talking about, but gradually he seemed to get it. His movements were quicker, more precise, and his breathing easier. The sluggishness of his swings almost disappeared. When Ahsoka gasped behind me, clearly feeling something, I knew he had done it.


    So I pulled out my blaster and shot him.


    The stun bolt fired across the gap between us, racing toward Luke, only for him to fluidly spin around, using the metal pole to counterbalance himself. He ignited his lightsaber as he moved and intercepted the stun bolt perfectly. Considering I had anticipated him just dodging, it was impressive. I hadn''t even seen him grab his lightsaber.


    He opened his eyes, his stance low, ready for the next attack, only to realize there was nothing else coming. I clapped loudly, though, with a big smile on my face.


    "Very impressive, Luke!" I said as he warily shut down his lightsaber and tossed me the pole. "How did it feel?"


    "It¡­ It was amazing. I could feel you and Ahsoka... I could feel everyone around the base¡­" He said, looking around as if he could spot the people through walls. "I¡­ Thank you."


    "No problem. For now, let''s take a break," I said, nodding to the Chariot. "We are about three or four hours away from having to head down to the other hangar."


    He nodded and started to head to the Chariot, leaving me alone with Ahsoka.


    "That was impressive," She said, watching me closely. "Especially for someone with no connection to the Force."


    "It''s not an original idea or anything," I responded with a shrug. "There are many more Force traditions out there, other than the Jedi."


    "I know," She responded. "I know better than most the flaws of the Jedi Order."


    "Yeah... They fucked that whole thing up, didn''t they," I said, shaking my head. "You know... "


    For a moment, I was silent, several things going through my mind, things I could say in an attempt to help her get over what the Jedi Order had done to her or about the guilt she felt for abandoning Anakin to his fate. After a long moment of silence, I realized that this wasn''t the time or place, nor that I could really have any effect on what she thought.


    "Helping Luke understand past mistakes could help prevent them from being repeated," I eventually said.


    "...Perhaps." She responded simply, before turning and making her way out of the hangar.

 Chapter 65

    As I returned to the Talos Chariot, I spotted Miru, Pola, and Luke working on something in Miru''s workspace. The younger Twi''lek waved to me as I walked past, and I waved back as I made my way through. I saw Luke debating whether to follow me before Miru got his attention again. I couldn''t help but smile, knowing that my crew was a bit blas¨¦ about people with strange abilities. With no connection to the Rebellion, they could see him as just another person, something Luke desperately needed.


    I climbed up to the second deck and had a quick conversation with Calima, making sure she was okay sticking around the ships while most of the crew went off on our mission to this CIS base. She was a little nervous to be stuck here without the usual insurance we brought, but she was confident she could handle it and that the Rebels wouldn''t do anything stupid.


    Before long, the crew was getting ready, strapping on weapons and double-checking that everyone had the proper equipment. I spotted that Luke was just standing there, waiting, and shook my head.


    "Luke, someday you are going to be able to block blaster bolts as easily as you breathe," I said as reassuringly as possible. "Unfortunately, that day isn''t today. Put on some armor and strap a pistol to your hip."


    Reluctantly, he eventually agreed, letting Nal find some light but sturdy armor, something that would protect his vitals but let him move freely. He was even more reluctant to carry a backup pistol."


    "I''m a Jedi. I don''t need a blaster," He stated emphatically. "Obi-wan said that-"


    "Obi-wan was a fantastic man, an inspiration, and a powerful Jedi. He was also a fully trained Jedi," I added with a wince. "There weren''t many problems he couldn''t solve with the Force and a lightsaber."


    "But I''m not there yet," Luke admitted in defeat, shaking his head.


    "True, but I also think the fact that the Jedi didn''t carry backup pistols is ridiculous," I added. "The lightsaber is a weapon and a tool. So is a blaster. Just because you can solve most problems with a multitool doesn''t mean you shouldn''t also carry a <u>hydrospanner</u></a>."


    As Luke looked over our blasters, I sent Julus out to talk to whoever he could find. Eventually, he managed to get directed to where Lieutenant Soran was. With a bit of cajoling, Julus managed to convince him that sharing some resources was a good idea since we would be working together. We still paid for them, but two thousand credits for ten basic grenades was chump change. Well, they were basic for Star Wars, at least. They were adjustable, meaning they could shift from a normal explosive to a shaped charge, set to stick to metal surfaces, or even made into a tripwire.


    Nal assured me that they were definitely not thermal detonators, which were considerably more dangerous, less reliable, and more expensive.


    When everyone was finally ready, we had all said goodbye to Miru and everyone did a triple check of their gear on Vaz''s insistence, we started to make our way up to the hangar bay. As the crew left the ship, I turned to Pola.


    "I''m trusting you on your own, because I get a good feeling from you," I explained. "If you change your mind, that''s fine, bum a ride somewhere and disappear. But if you hurt Miru, the crew will dedicate their existence to finding you. Understand?"


    He gulped and nodded rapidly, while I left him behind without another word.


    When we arrived at the hangar Ahsoka was already there, as was Lieutenant Soran, his troops, Nevue, and his team. We spent about twenty minutes shaking hands and making introductions before settling in to wait with Nevue and his team. He had Lario and Ayme with him, as well as three other rebel soldiers we hadn''t met. A Twi''lek male, a <u>Mon Calamari</u></a> female, and a human woman.


    "This is Fostar, Uknia and Teril. Teril is our infiltration specialist, Fostar is our slicer, and Uknia is our explosive expert," He said, gesturing to the Twi''lek, Mon Cal, and Human, respectively.


    "It''s nice to meet you all. I look forward to working with you," I said with a nod. "This is Tatnia, Nal, Julus and Vaz. Oh, and I''m Deacon. Tatnia, Nal, and Julus are general combat experts, Vaz leans towards heavy weapons, and I do spooky shit with my mind. Oh, and this is Luke. He does a different type of spooky shit, but his is invisible."


    My description of one of the most famous members of the Rebellion and his Force abilities got a chuckle our of a few people, cutting some of the building tension.


    We spent a while longer talking about what I could do, what type of roles we would be sharing, and what our general strategy would be before eventually stalling out, picking some space on the hangar floor, and settling in to wait. Eventually, our rides arrived and landed in the hangar bays. Before we climbed in, General Syndulla entered the hangar, giving a short speech before waving us through. We climbed aboard the shuttles and took off a few minutes later, up and out of the atmosphere.


    The interior of the Aegis-class shuttle was mostly open, with seats along the aft and port walls. The troops brought on a few crates of stuff, but beyond that, it was just my team, Nevue''s team, and twenty or so rebel soldiers. Despite there being plenty of room and having grabbed a seat along the aft, I still felt anxious and uncomfortable, tapping my foot against the deck as it shook slightly, pushing through Thila''s atmosphere. Tatnia noticed and perfectly explained the problem despite the fact that I didn''t even realize it yet.


    "It''s the first time he''s flown on a ship he doesn''t control or at least knows the pilot," She explained, Nal and Vaz nodding in understanding. "You get used to it, Boss."


    "Not sure I want to," I said, shaking my head. "That would mean doing this multiple times to build a resistance."


    We landed inside our final transport hangar bay with a clunk that resonated through the shuttle. The shuttle bay doors opened, and we walked out into a decent-sized hangar bay. You could see out into space from the bay doors, which were sealed by a blue glowing magnetic shielding.


    From the hangar bay, we were guided to several large ready rooms, with space to wait through the nearly two-day hyperspace trip in relative comfort. Which meant food, some places to sleep, and enough places to walk around that we didn''t feel too cramped.


    With so much extra time on my hands, where we were basically locked into a few different places, I almost immediately pulled out my grimoire. Before claiming a corner of space and starting the spell-learning process, I asked the crew to run interference for me so that nobody would distract me too much


    .


    With the two-day journey, which took us right to the edge of known space, along the edge of the unknown region, I learned two spells. The first was Chain Lighting, a powerful offensive option that would hopefully make quick work of the droves of B1''s we would probably face, as well as Conjurer Archer Construct, which would act as a powerful addition to the team''s firepower, as well as function as a disposable asset.


    I''m sure I got plenty of strange looks, hunched over a book, my hand occasionally glowing as I pushed magic through the three matrices, testing and tuning them until I finally completed both spells for the first time. Luckily, any doubt that I was capable of doing something was well and truly squashed when, at the end of the first day, I summoned an archer construct out of nowhere.


    The <u>archer construct</u></a> was much less heavily armored than the fire atronach I summoned with my Conjure Flame Atronach spell. Despite that, the spell''s description said nothing about it being less resilient to damage. Still, I made a note to eventually experiment with it to see if it was less armored or just an aesthetic. As I was checking out the archer''s look, I discovered that if you managed to peer "under" the translucent hood that covered the archer''s head, you could see it had a smooth, featureless face that all but punched the uncanny valley button in my brain.


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    With almost all of my time spent learning new magic, the journey passed quickly, and I was raring to go. I had spent nearly two days straight doing nothing but sitting and adjusting spell matrices, so I was bored, antsy, and ready for action. Luckily, I didn''t have to wait long, as I was woken up early in the morning after learning Chain Lightning by Tatnia nudging my shoulder.


    "It''s time, Boss. They want us on the shuttles again," She explained, and I quickly got ready, packing my stuff and checking my gear.


    Everyone piled back onto the shuttles, half the troopers in each shuttle. Nevue and his team and Ahsoka stuck with one half in one shuttle, while my team and Luke claimed the other. As we settled in, mainly behind the temporary cover the troopers would be moving into the hangar once it was clear, the pilots announced that Glory had just dropped out of hyperspace with no interference. A few minutes later, they announced that Green Squadron and the Verdant Dream were beginning stage one.


    We sat, leaned, and kneeled with bated breath, wondering how the assault was going. Thankfully, we didn''t have to wait for long. After about fifteen minutes, the shuttle began to hum as its engines kicked up, and the pilot came on again.


    "We just got final confirmation, scans came back clean, threats eliminated, engaging stage two," The gravelly voice, definitely not human, said through the intercom.


    We could feel the ship lifting off and leaving the protection of the hangar, the shuttle making a beeline for our target. Unfortunately, we were completely blind in the lower part of the ship. If I thought leaving Thila was nerve-wracking, this was horrendous. I clenched and gripped the armrest beside me, desperately trying not to imagine a lone missed turret spotting our shuttle and annihilating it entirely out of our control. I leaned in closer to Tatnia.


    "We are putting a significant portion of the money we make here into upgrading the Brick," I said, gritting my teeth. "I want our shuttle to be built to take on a Star Destroyer."


    Tatnia chuckled and nodded, but I could tell she was nervous, too.


    Once we entered the atmosphere, the ship slowed down significantly, angling hard enough that we could feel it slightly despite the ship''s artificial gravity and inertial compensators.


    "Coming in on final approach, prepare to disembark!" The same gravelly voice announced, and I quickly stood up from my spot behind cover.


    With a nod, Vaz and I made our way to the portable cover barrier closest to the front of the ship. I quickly summoned my armor, feeling the familiar protective energy encapsulate me. Vaz took up position behind me, using me as cover as I stood ready, Greater Ward charged and ready.


    "Landing! Opening bay doors!"


    Another clunk reverberated through the ship, and the large forward bay door began to descend, red blaster bolts already lighting up the interior of the shuttle. I could feel the shuttle opening up with its weapons, covering us as the bay door lowered to reveal a hangar bay with a sizable amount of droids, both B1''s and B2''s, all of them focused on us.


    I finally released the Greater Ward, the shimmering protective barrier appearing, covering most of myself and what little of Vaz was exposed. Together, we led the disembarkment, her Z-6 rotary cannon unloading, taking down a handful of droids in her first sweep alone. Soon, the rest of the troops engaged as well, and the droids began to fall like dominoes, with the laser cannons mounted on the ship easily taking down the heavier armored B2''s.


    Vaz and I pushed further into the hangar, blaster bolts ricocheting off my Ward and some managing to catch my conjured armor. Across the hangar, Ahsoka was leading the charge on her side, deflecting blaster bolts and sending them back to the droids that shot them.


    Unfortunately, for every droid we destroyed, another two more entered from the entrance into the hangar bay. We took our first few losses as Vaz and I pushed the final distance to the large door, taking cover on one side. Luckily, the pilots of the Mover and Shaker spotted the problem just a moment after we did and began focusing their fire on and into the doorway, absolutely wrecking any incoming droid reinforcements. Three minutes after the shuttle bay doors opened, the droids pulled back, ceding the hangar to us.


    Once the pilots noticed there were no more incoming droids, they stopped pummeling the hallway, and the hangar bay went silent for ten seconds, which was when Lieutenant Soran started shouting orders to set up Hangar Base. I nodded back toward the group, and Vaz nodded, heading to join the rest of the crew, her rotary canon still smoking slightly. I could see Ahsoka keeping an eye on the door, Luke standing beside her, looking a bit lost, while I made a beeline to where they had dragged the injured troopers.


    Out of twenty-five soldiers, six had been hit during the landing. One of them took a B2 barrage to the chest and was dead before they hit the ground. The other five were still hanging on, though, which meant I could fix them. I completely healed them over the next five minutes, bringing four up to fighting fit. The fifth had been hit in the hand, blasting off a few fingers, which meant all I could do was stop the bleeding.


    By the time I stepped away from the injured troopers, I was getting a lot more looks, a few of them respectful, most of them wide-eyed.


    After a quick look around, I spotted the go team, most of the strike team having gathered by the far hangar wall. Luke waved me over as I spotted them, but the young Jedi hopeful continued looking around after I joined them.


    "What''s wrong?" I asked, catching his slightly confused expression.


    "I don''t know. Something feels off," He said, looking around some more. "I can''t put my finger on it though."


    I looked to Ahsoka, who nodded in agreement.


    "I feel it as well. It''s not oppressive, but something is not how it seems," She explained. "I was going to mention it when you joined us."


    I frowned, looking around as Luke was. The hangar bay was a wash of activity, troopers setting up heavy laser cannons and temporary barriers, pushing droid parts out of their way. I spotted a few troopers trying to push a vulture starfighter to the side before looking up to see more starfighters still latched into their quick-deploy storage racks.


    "Why didn''t those starfighters deploy?" I asked. "There are a lot here¡­ and there are three other hangars. That''s a lot of ships for one squadron to take on."


    Ahsoka frowned and pulled out a comm unit.


    "Captain Yernit, come in, Captain Yernit. This is Commander Ahsoka Tano from the ground team," She said, still looking puzzled. "How many starfighters did you and Green Squadron face?"


    "...Commander Tano, this is Captain Yernit. We faced no more than thirty, no less than twenty, all of them the Vulture droids you described."


    "What? There''s that many in this hangar alone," Luke said, looking up at the ceiling. "Why-"


    Before he could finish, a metal blast door, just under two feet thick, engaged along the hangar bay opening, sliding across from left to right. It slammed shut with a responding thud that shook the floor beneath us. We were silent for a long moment, all of us staring at what was once our way out should anything go wrong.


    "That, my friends¡­ is what we like to call a bad sign," I said, Tatnia slapping the back of my head.


    "Perhaps, but it doesn''t have to be," A digitally scrambled voice said, coming from the hangar bay''s intercom. "That is all up to your comrades in the sky."

 Chapter 66

    I looked over at Ahsoka, who nodded and pulled out her comms, trying to reach anyone on the outside. She turned away from us to listen more closely to her device while I focused on who was talking to us.


    "Who are you? What''s going on?" I called out.


    "You may call me Faudi," The voice said. "I am the commander of this base and now your captor."


    "Why? Why did you let us land? There are enough ships here to wipe out all the forces we have on hand."


    "Because, I needed a bargaining chip," The voice explained. "If I had destroyed your fleet, all I would have was scrap. Now I have three Jedi to trade with."


    "What do you want?"


    "The unconditional surrender of all ships you arrived with," The voice demanded, its electronic accent sparking for a moment before settling. "Once they have surrendered, I will negotiate further with your superiors for your release."


    "And what makes you so sure that they will negotiate with you?" I asked, focusing on where I thought the sound was coming from. "Why would they negotiate with some old forgotten commander from a war no one talks about?"


    "Please, and risk losing three Jedi?" The masculine voice asked. "It is improbable that the Galactic Republic will not be willing to meet my demands. Now, if you will excuse me, I must begin negotiating."


    I looked at Ahsoka, who was no longer talking to her communicator. She shook her head when she saw me checking in with her.


    "Nothing?" I asked, despite already guessing the answer.


    "Just static. Pretty sure they are jamming us somehow," She responded, shaking her head.


    "Could you reach out with the Force? Maybe somehow communicate that we are fine?" I asked. "Just enough to keep them from surrendering?"


    "Maybe?" She responded. "It''s hard to communicate without a bond already in place¡­"


    "Try your best. It doesn''t matter in the long run. Whoever that was seems to have overlooked a rather critical bit of information," I said, looking over at the speakers that the voice had just spoken through.


    "And what would that be?" Ahsoka asked, her arms crossed, an eyebrow raised.


    "We may be locked in here with them¡­ but that just means they are locked in here with us."


    I chuckled at the predatory look that Vaz made when they realized that, despite being tricked, we were in essentially the perfect position to attack our captor. Not far from us, once shocked free of their surprise by Lieutenant Soran, the troopers finished setting up their defenses and arming their weapons.


    When Lieutenant Soran was confident they were ready to hold the position themselves, the strike team regrouped around the large doorway leading further into the base.


    "I think the mission parameters have shifted slightly," I said, getting a nod from Ahsoka. "The only question is, how much?"


    "We need to find whoever is in charge," Ahsoka pointed out. "Then, we can force them to surrender. They will most likely be in the central control room."


    "Which is where exactly?" Nevue asked. "We didn''t really go over that in the briefing."


    "It is right outside the central computer core," Ahsoka said, pulling out a small holoprojector, a map popping up and slowly rotating in place. "We will need to fight our way down. It will likely be the base''s most heavily fortified part, as was discussed in the briefing."


    "Well, we can handle it," I said, nodding to my team, noting their confidence. "Should we still be clearing rooms, or are we blitzing?"


    "We will get overrun if we skip past a room that contains too many droids," Ahsoka said, shaking her head. "We need to clear room by room."


    I nodded before working with the ex-Jedi Padawan to come up with a group strategy. She and I would lead the teams, with Luke and Vaz as our direct support. The rest of the teams would clear the rooms we came across as we kept watch over the hallways. We would also provide backup as needed.


    With our strategy set and plans adjusted, we notified the Lieutenant that we were heading out to enact a modified stage three, and he bid us good luck. Before we left, I stopped and caught his attention.


    "Line up some detpacks here," I said, pointing at the doorways. "You''re going to want something big in case any droideka show up."


    The soldier nodded in agreement, turning to one of his subordinates, who I was pretty sure was his second in command. I didn''t see what they were doing, though, as I was too busy leading the team in, Ahsoka standing beside me, her lightsabers out and ready.


    As we stepped into the hallway, which was big enough for a small speeder to fit in, I summoned a new batch of conjured armor and finally conjured my bow. Ahsoka actually stopped when I stretched and tested the translucent, magically charged purple bow. She opened her mouth to say something but closed it without asking whatever she wanted, instead electing to continue moving forward.


    As we reached the first intersection, I got a chance to really study the makeup of the base around us. The hangar had primarily been carved stone, with metal brackets and pieces bolted and attached when an anchor or part was needed. The hallway, however, was almost the complete opposite. The ceiling was plated metal, seemingly held up by frequent beams that connected to both the floors and ceilings. I couldn''t tell if they were a reinforcement or a design choice. Behind those was some sort of artificial stone, probably a duracrete of some kind, but was accented by crenulations that seemed to just be stamped into the material.


    The floor was what stood out the most. It was a polished stone floor that I was pretty confident was the natural stone of the mountain that the base was carved into. It was dark, maybe a basalt or granite, speckled with dark green spots. As we passed a T-intersection, I could see it was decorated by an inlay of some sort of silver metal with a distracting amount of detail. I shook my head as we continued on straight, passing the offshoot quickly, focused on our target.


    After walking for nearly a minute, we arrived at the second intersection and immediately turned right, focusing on our target. Unfortunately, the CIS forces had another idea in mind, as a trio of B2s with a dozen or so B1s opened fire on us from down the other hallway, coming around the far corner at a jog.


    Luke, who had already had his lightsaber out, managed to keep Tatnia and one of Nevue''s crew from getting shot, deflecting blaster bolts into the floor and ceiling. Very aware that he wouldn''t be able to keep that up for very long, both Ahsoka and I stepped forward, drawing fire and punishing the droids for their ambush.


    I pulled back my bow and let my first arrow fly, the ethereal arrow slamming into a B2''s hand, destroying the blaster there in an explosion of sparks. I couldn''t help but smirk, pulling out a second arrow and putting it through the red sensor on its chest. It shuddered, before a whole chunk of it exploded, showering the B1s behind it in shrapnel. While I was happy to have taken down the heavily armored super battle droid, I had also cleared room for the B1s behind it to open fire.


    Determined to solve the problem I had caused, I charged a Chain Lighting and thrust my hand out, a barrage of electricity slamming through the gap, shocking the fuck out of one droid before jumping to the next. I cast it twice more, decimating the B1s while Ahsoka and Vaz took down the remaining super battle droids. When the last one had fallen, I stood up straight and checked around me to see if there were any wounded.


    Nal held his side while one of Nevue''s crew had a hand on his shoulder. I quickly made my way to both of them, healing them completely.


    "Alright, that could have gone better," I admitted, standing back from Nal, his wound faded completely. "Nice job covering us, though, Luke."


    He nodded, eyes focused down the hallway that the small squad of droids had come from, before looking around the hallway. Having spotted something, he smirked, taking a few steps forward before looking up, around, and finally at one of the walls. He walked over, and after toying with the wall for a second, he accessed a panel. A few button taps later, a blast door shut about a foot or so away from him. When it completely sealed up, he raised his lightsaber like he was going to slash the controls to disable them.


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    "Wait!" I called out, the young Force-sensitive stopping mid-swing. "Great idea, good job spotting it, but maybe Fostar can slice it shut rather than destroying the controls. That way, the path isn''t cut off completely if we need to retreat."


    He nodded, and the Twi''lek man at Nevue''s side stepped forward and pulled out a data pad. He saddled up to the control panel before using a knife to pop off the controls, revealing the interior electronics. He quickly plugged his datapad in and got to work. About a minute later, the door controls went dark, and he pulled his pad away, sliding it back into a pouch.


    "I turned it off and set a simple key," He explained. "It won''t open for anyone but us, and you''ll have to plug in my pad to turn it on."


    "My question is, if they have these doors, why aren''t they blocking us in?" Julus asked. "They would be perfect for slowing us down."


    "They aren''t connected to the security system," Fostar explained. "Each of them is on a closed control loop."


    "...They were worried about experiments with the AI going bad," Tatnia said after a long moment. "If the doors aren''t on the security controls, a droid can''t get in and slam them all shut if it takes control."


    "Huh¡­ is that the normal level of paranoia for an AI development lab?" I asked, looking back at my crew member.


    "Depends on what you''re working on. If you just editing exterior programming, not really. But if you''re editing the programming inside the cognitive processor, the intelligent part of a droid, then yes," Fostar responded. "Errors there can make a droid''s programming spiral, which often has horrible, dangerous side effects."


    Another minute of catching our breath, we moved out, following the directions of the map Ahsoka had. We had barely gone a dozen meters before we came across a set of large doors, one on each side of the hallway. We took a moment to get into position before Nal activated the controls on one side, opening it. Tatnia and Julus both peered into the room, mainly finding empty storage space, save a few crates along the back wall. Julus looked deeper into the room before stepping inside slowly. When nothing happened, he stepped back out, shaking his head.


    "Seems clear, nothing but a few crates."


    We repeated the process on the other side, this time with Nevue''s team peeking inside. Once again, we found a storage room with a ton of crates this time, but not any active droids.


    We continued to travel the halls, heading deeper into the facility. Twice more we ran into groups of droids, but having been ambushed once, we made sure to prepare for it now, and they failed to catch us off guard. Rather than attacking, I double-cast a Greater Ward, providing cover and letting the rest of the team take down the droids. Between Ahsoka deflecting blaster bolts and me playing human shield, we made quick work of the attempted ambushes.


    After making it down a floor, we started running into more rooms, these ones clearly labs and testing facilities. There were droid parts and computers, testing apparatus and everything in between, anything you might need to experiment on droid programming and then see how it worked. As we continued to explore we were forced to ignore several more branches, focusing on our target


    On the third floor, we ran into something worrying when clearing the first side room along our path. Just as before, Nal activated the door while Julus and Tatnia prepared to peek in. This time, Julus turned to look at me.


    "Uhh¡­ you''re gonna wanna see this, boss."


    With a frown, I stepped closer, peering into the room as he stepped back to give me space. It was a lounge area, with tables set up and what looked to be a food dispenser system along the far wall. Everything was caked in dust, even the half dozen or so skeletons that littered the room.


    "Huh¡­ well that''s concerning," I said, "Ahsoka?"


    After looking inside, she frowned, stepping closer and into the room, bending over to examine the remains.


    "Some of these are Neimoidian, but I don''t recognize the others¡­" She trailed off, squinting at one of the skeletons slumped over the table. She reached out and, with the Force, pulled out a tag of some sort. "It looks like a name tag, some sort of security badge, maybe?"


    Nal held out his hand, and Ahsoka passed the badge to him. He quickly turned it over and looked it over, nodding in agreement.


    "Security badge, worked in facility," He explained, shrugging when I looked at him. "Neimoidians are descendants of Duros, <u>Pak-Pak</u></a> is derived from <u>Durese</u></a>."


    "So why are they dead?" Lario, who was staying by the door with Nevue''s slicer. "Also, why were they just left here?"


    "If they are dead, then who was speaking over the intercom?" Tatnia added.


    We slowly made our way out of the room as we talked, but before we could dive into any possible explanations, a familiar sound echoed in from the hall. My eyes went down toward the noise, cursing as I spotted the threat.


    "Droidekas!" Tatnia called out, pulling out one of her grenades and tossing it down the hall.


    Eight of the lethal droids were rolling down the hallway towards us when Tatnia''s grenade went off, exploding three of them before they could deploy. Two more were taken out by the hail of blaster fire that followed, whizzing around Ahsoka and me.


    Three managed to deploy, their purple and blue shields wrapping them up in a protective bubble.


    Half of the combined team dove into the break room we had just come from while Ahsoka, Luke, and the rest tried to take cover in the opposite room. The heavy firepower of the feared droids pummeled the wall, floor, and door frame as they did their best to rush in.


    As red blasts of energy sent sparks and chips of floor scattering around the room, I flinched, covering my eyes. When I looked back, I could see Ahsoka dragging Luke further into the room, a blaster wound on his leg.


    I pulled one of my grenades from my belt and activated it, double-checking my armor charge before swinging out around the edge of the door and rolling the tube-shaped grenade down the hall. It rolled and skipped across the divot-riddled floor. Before it could reach its target, I ducked back inside, the grenade going off a second later. Pushing more mana into my armor, I peeked out to see I had managed to take down another Destroyer droid, leaving two left.


    "Boss!" Tatnia said. "Try that lighting mine thing!"


    I looked at her for a second before suddenly realizing that I did indeed know the Lightning Rune spell. I charged one in each hand before leaning out around the corner and casting it, my first attempt missing slightly, the spell fizzling on the closest droideka''s shields. I tried the second rune, tagging the floor just in front of the tripedal droid, the rune forming with a significant portion under the shield. Almost instantly, it went off, lighting exploding from the electric blue rune, traveling up the droid''s legs, smoke and sparks jumping off of it from every exposed wire and seam.


    Seeing me take out two of its kin, the droideka focuses all its fire on me and my doorway, forcing me to jump back inside, my armor just barely surviving the barrage. Fortunately for us, with its attention focused solely on me, Nal was able to pull one of his own grenades from his hip and toss it down the hall, the explosive just barely rolling inside of the glowing shield, completely eviscerating the bottom half of the advanced combat droid.


    The second I saw the coast was clear, I rushed across the hallway and dumped a dual-cast healing spell into Luke, letting my armor dissipate so my magic would refill faster. The hole in his pants, just around his thigh, showed the burnt flesh quickly healing, fading faster after a second dual cast.


    "Well¡­ That was exciting," I said with a smirk while offering him my hand. "First time getting shot?"


    "Been grazed before," Luke admitted, standing up with my help, testing his leg, shaking his head when he didn''t feel a thing. "Woah¡­ that is incredible¡­"


    "Everyone okay?" I asked, looking around at everyone else. When no one else spoke up, I nodded. "Good, let''s get a move on before more show up."

 Chapter 67

    We quickly got the group back in order, during which I began to understand that we might have brought too many people for one strike team. Most of the injuries so far had been because people couldn''t get to cover quickly enough because somebody else had already taken the closest cover. We had too many people to keep track of, and it was impossible for Ahsokoa and I to cover everyone.


    We cleared another two rooms before finally reaching a way down, a double set of stairs and a turbolift that led down to the fourth floor. I turned back to the group to voice my opinion.


    "We need to split up."


    "We should split up."


    I turned to look at Ahsoka, who had turned back to the group just as I had, saying the same thing. With a smile, I gestured for her to take the floor.


    "There are too many of us, and we keep getting in each other''s way. We wouldn''t have this issue in an open battlefield, but space is too limited here, " She said, one of Nevue''s crew mouthing an apology to Luke as she said it. "We need to split up so we can act more smoothly."


    "What do you suggest?" Nevue added with a raised eyebrow. "As of right now, we only have one target."


    "One group heads directly to the target. The other goes back and starts exploring through one of the alternate roots," I said, Ahsoka nodding in agreement. "Clear rooms, lock down some paths, basically just cause noise. Hopefully, it will split their attention between two groups."


    "If things get too dangerous, head back to Hangar Base," Ahsoka finished. "No reason for you to play martyr."


    "Alright, that''s fine enough for us," Nevue said, rubbing the back of his head, his blaster rifle hanging loosely in his hand. "If I''m honest, my team is built for stealing and hit-and-run tactics, not direct combat. I''m pretty sure we were included because Ayme, Lario, and I worked with you before."


    We said our goodbyes and traded some gear, specifically half a set of explosives that Ukia had been carrying. Luckily Vaz was familiar enough with the design that she could use them, in case we needed to reduce something to tiny bits. When Nevue finally left, he gave us a lazy salute before jogging after his team, eager to lead them back away from the front lines.


    "Alright, let''s move," I said, nodding to my crew and giving a thumbs up to Luke. I turned to Ahsoka, only to find her hand on her hip.


    "You know," She said, crossing her arms. "I''m supposed to be in charge."


    "Uhhh¡­ You are in charge?" I assured her, only to let out a groan when she gave me a look. "Fine, yes, I''m bad at the chain of command. Do you really care?"


    "....No, as long as everyone is being professional and your team doesn''t start ignoring what I say," She said, a smile on her lips.


    I nodded, and she turned back to the stairs, leading the way down to the floor below. Slowly but steadily, we progressed through the facility, working our way through the fourth floor, clearing rooms, and locking down any possible avenues for ambush as best we could now that our slicer was gone. The rooms on the fourth floor were a mix of labs, engineering rooms, and storage, though the storage seemed focused more on parts and materials rather than supplies. We also had to deal with several more droid attacks, including one massive wave of B1s.


    The fights were considerably more simple now, with Ahsoka and I in front, focusing on defense while everyone else hammered the droids from behind us. Luke was even getting some much-needed practice standing just behind Ahsoka and me, deflecting the few bolts we missed up into the ceiling. I would occasionally throw out a chain lighting or lightning rune, taking down groups at once when they started to overwhelm us with numbers.


    Occasionally, I added a conjured familiar, Flame Atronach, or an archer to bolster our team. They worked great when we were pinned, as I could conjure them up to a hundred feet away, meaning they could attack from a very different angle. Having an on-demand flanking maneuver, even if it was just one "person," was extremely effective. I spoke up after our last battle as we slowly walked over the destroyed droids.


    "I wonder if Nevue''s team has found any living quarters," I said, driving an Ice Spike through a droid''s chest as it struggled to move across the ground. "We haven''t seen anything like that, but the base is huge. There would have to be sizable living spaces."


    "I say we leave it shut if we find them," Tatnia said, reloading her rifle. "I do not want to know what those look like after what we saw in that break room."


    "Yeah¡­ good point," I agreed with a wince, looking back at Ahsoka and Luke. "How do you two feel?"


    "I feel fine," Luke said with a shrug, not entirely understanding what I meant.


    "The feeling of something about to happen has passed," Ahsoka elaborated, picking up my intent. "The trap has already been sprung."


    "Well, that''s good, at least," I said, shaking my head. "I was worried we were stumbling into someplace that should be quarantined."


    We continued progressing, clearing out the fourth floor and stepping down into the fifth. Suspiciously, the droid attacks became less and less effective, with no B2s in sight and fewer and fewer B1s


    "They are either running out or droids," Nal said, dumping a wave of blaster bolts into a trio of droids. "Or holding them back to defend themselves."


    "Likely the latter," Ahsoka said, deflecting a red laser blast back at the shooter. "Standard practice is to center the largest force around the commander or CIS assets."


    The final trek wasn''t a separate floor but rather the last distance to the central control room. It was an artistically designed room, something that was built to look impressive. We entered a downward staircase, which almost immediately opened up into a massive room. As we walked around the exterior, following the winding staircase, we could see a central holoprojector, as well as dozens of workstations around the circumference of the vaguely circular room.


    All of them were dark.


    As we hesitantly made our way down, eventually stepping down onto the open ground floor, we could clearly see there wasn''t a single living person. Five mummified skeletons lay at the workstations, face down on their controls. Three more were strewn around the floor, while two were lying on the holoprojector.


    "Well.. that doesn''t make any sense¡­" Julus said, scratching his chin. "Who was talking to us if the command staff is dead?"


    "A survivor, maybe? Tatnia suggested. "Are there backup controls somewhere?"


    "If there are, they aren''t on the map," Ahsoka answered with a frown. "I haven''t felt anything living as we walked through either. As far as the Force is concerned, this whole structure has been empty so far."


    We walked around the room, trying to turn on long dark consoles, carefully poking around the corpses of long-dead CIS staff. After a few minutes, we found nothing.


    "If the base isn''t being controlled from here, then let''s get into the central core," Ahsoka suggested. "We can deactivate the droids and then investigate the whole facility, top to bottom."


    "Ok, sure, how do we get in?" Julus asked, putting a hand on the large blast door that should lead deeper into the bunker, where the central core was. "It''s not like it''s going to magically open b-"


    Julus froze mid-sentence as the entire door shuddered, before a soft grinding noise filled the room, the massive door slowly opening. Julus pulled away, his eyes wide.


    "I didn''t do that!" He shouted as Tatnia grabbed his arm and pulled him back away from the door.


    Together, all of us ran across the room to get cover behind the holo projector. Nal and Vaz ran further, taking cover behind two of the massive pillars that ran around the outside of the circular room, following along the stairs. We peered around our cover, watching the large blast door slowly open, revealing an army of droids. It was two or three times larger than any group we had fought so far, with a worryingly large group of super battle droids. I quickly fully charged an archer and cast him by the stairs, directing him up further up, past Nal to shoot down onto the room.


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    "Surrender, the odds of you surviving are negligible," The voice on the comms advised. "You have fought well so far, but you stand no chance against such a numerically superior force!"


    The army stopped, all of them raising their weapons in perfect sync. For a while, no one spoke, all of us holding our breath.


    "Do you surrender?"


    "Of course not!" I shouted back. "You do realize your position is unwinnable? You have limited resources, no reinforcement, and no way to retreat. Even if you take us hostage, which won''t happen because I don''t see any of us surrendering, our allies will just destroy you."


    "You will surrender!" The voice said, the speakers crackling. "It is your only viable option! You must! You must! You m-"


    As whoever was speaking through the intercom started to spiral, I grabbed my last grenade and activated it. I could see Julus and Tatnia doing the same before hurling it over our cover into the army of droids. A moment later, I could see Vaz and Nal throw their own, the explosions rocking the control room just after. Smoke and debris rushed by us, and I hesitantly peeked over the edge of our cover.


    A considerable amount of B1s had been blasted to pieces by the explosive barrage, leaving a cadre of B2''s and a half dozen unfurled and fully shielded droideka.


    Still more than we had faced before.


    Neither side hesitated to open fire the second the smoke cleared, a flurry of blaster bolts firing across the room in both directions. The holoprojector in front of us was destroyed almost immediately, as was the majority of the consoles around us. We were getting absolutely


    hammered, and while the cover was keeping us safe, not only could my crew not return fire, but it was only a matter of time before they came around and drove us out of our protective spots.


    With a curse, I stood up from my cover, one hand holding a Greater Ward, the other my DC-17. I ran around the projector, drawing fire and peppering the B2''s, even managing to take one down, the droid exploding in a fountain of sparks.


    I could see Ahsoka on the other side, mimicking my movements, blocking and dodging laser fire with a determined look in her eye. I pushed into the crater-marked and droid-part-covered space, my armor absorbing a dozen or so shots in the process, my ward failing under strain. Thankfully, I was now close enough to use the individual droids as cover, meaning they couldn''t shoot at me without punching through a friendly bot first.


    With one hand now free, I cast a Lighting Rune, using a big chunk of magic to do so, managing to land it just between two destroyer droids, both of them getting a half taste of the electrical blast.


    I turned in time to see Ahsoka backflip over a B2, blasting it with a force push, sending it sliding across the space and taking out another droideka, the wreck cutting out its legs. By now, my team was returning fire, pummeling the droids and taking down several B2s, which spun to deal with the returned threat. The indecision between the two groups gave Ahsoka and me a chance to deal with the remaining three droideka.


    Seeing an opportunity, I conjured a flame atronach, feeling it replace my archer as my singular "intelligent" conjuration. I immediately directed it to try and tackle the nearest droideka, the conjured summon sprinting across the gap from behind, passing through the shield barrier effortlessly.


    The force of the impact rocked the droideka, just barely lifting it up and over its center of gravity. Its shield flickered and failed as it crashed to the ground, letting me hit it with a Lightning Bolt to finish it off.


    With its first target down, the atronach stood, and I mentally directed it to its next target, but it crumbled and exploded under the combined fire of the two remaining destroyer droids. Still, it served its purpose, the explosion that followed its destruction distracting the dangerous droids long enough for my magic to regenerate. I cast Lightning Rune again, this time under the closet droid. Even as it detonated and destroyed my target, Ahsoka finished the last B2 and repeated her earlier trick, knocking the last droideka before finishing it off with a backhanded swipe of her white lightsaber.


    We stood there for a long moment, looking around, breathing heavily, and searching for our next target. My armor was incredibly close to failing. The fact that it had held through the dozens of grazes and direct hits I had taken since my Greater Ward had failed was just about pure luck.


    When no new targets prevented themselves, I slowly stood straight, looking back into the main room.


    "Everyone alright?" I called out to my team. "Anyone need healing?"


    "We''re good boss!" Tatnia called, making her way to us, Vaz and Nal right behind her, Luke and Julus coming around the opposite side.


    I noticed Luke looked upset but was doing his best to hide it. Figuring it could keep for now, I focused back on our next objective, turning toward where the army of droids we had just carved through had come from. About twenty meters away, I could see a slight decline, the massive hall disappearing downward.


    "So, computer core?" I asked, looking at Ahsoka, who nodded.


    "It seems like our best bet."


    We gathered together and slowly made our way downward, descending down until we were stopped by a large blast door. This one wasn''t nearly as large as the previous one, but still plenty big. I watched Nal tap at the control panel by the entrance, only to turn to me and shake his head.


    "Faudi, it''s time to surrender!" I called out with a frown. "If you open the door and let us disengage the droids, we won''t hurt you. There''s nothing left to stop us, but there''s no reason you have to drag this on anymore. The hole is deep enough already, no reason to keep digging."


    "I don''t understand! I calculated it perfectly! Even made allowances for twice the number of Jedi. How did you beat me?" He asked desperately. "Your odds were abysmal. Why did you push! Why did you not accept defeat and allow me my victory!"


    I shook my head and stepped back.


    "Luke, Ahsoka, if you''d be so kind¡­"


    The two spent the next five minutes cutting down the door, their lightsabers spitting and sparking as they sliced through the thick metal. When it was done, Ahsoka used the Force to push inward, the red hot and dripping edges of the newly made hole sizzling as the cutaway part fell to the ground with a loud, reverberating slam.


    Ahsoka was about to step through, clearly wary of the red-hot sides of the impromptu doorway, but I held her back, using Frostbite to cool the edges rapidly. When we finally climbed inside, we were greeted by a room similar in style to the central computer core we raided from the previous CIS base but on a much larger scale. Everything was clean, and the walls were covered with racks of servers and computers, with a holoprojector sitting in the center of the room.


    "Keep your eyes open. Last time we were in one of these, we were ambushed¡­" I said, all of us watching the room for movement.


    Suddenly, the holoprojector, which was currently displaying a map of the base, changed to a hologram of a <u>Super Tactical droid</u></a>.


    "Error, defeat impossible, error. I am Faudi, and my programming is superior to the Super Tactical Droid. I am SUPERIOR!" It shouted, loud enough to leave a ringing in my ear. "It is impossible. Your victory is impossible. This is IMPOSiibbblleeeee¡­"


    The projected image, which had been moving as it talked, slowed down until it wasn''t moving. After a second, the image vanished, leaving the room silent.


    "Glad that worked," Luke said from behind us, prompting everyone to turn around.


    He was standing beside the collapsed form of a Super Tactical droid, which had obvious modifications to it done to its head. He was also holding a fistful of cords, which he had yanked from the back of the droid''s head. Some of the cords had clearly not meant to be removed, and the droid''s head sparked, smoke rising from its seams.

 Chapter 68

    After Luke pulled the plug on the insane super tactical droid, we quickly realized that while we had defeated the primary threat, there were probably still droids all over the facility. We also realized that none of us were skilled enough to slice into the computer and send out a shutdown command. Luckily, as Nevue and his team had been working their way around the facility, they had inevitably gone down, which meant retrieving them and bringing them down to the central computer core only involved destroying a small group of B1s.


    The slicer made quick work of the CIS jamming, allowing Ahsoka to reach out to the ships stationed around us and let them know everything was alright. As predicted, the negotiations for surrender had gone exactly nowhere. Instead, they had been waiting it out, pretending to go along with the unstable droid''s plans to buy us time to make it through the facility. In the end, they had been closer to calling in reinforcements to smash through the CIS droids than they had been to surrendering.


    When Fostar finally cracked the droid control program, he sent all of the functioning droids down to the lower hangar bays, easily fitting everything left into two of them. He also discovered some logs that explained what had happened.


    According to the records, close to the end of the war, not much more than a month, the people in charge of the facility were starting to feel the pressure. They needed something to turn the war around, and they believed new tactical droids were their best bet. They began experimenting on their tactical droids, trying to come up with the best way to modify them to increase their abilities. Instead, they managed to drive one insane. It took over the entire base and all its droids, slaughtering the scientists and workers.


    Apparently, the droid''s plan was to wait for a supply ship to stop by, capture it, and use it to spread its influence and take control over the entire droid army. It would then use its "superior" tactical prowess to win the war. As far as Fostar could tell, its primary directives had been shifted enough that it came to the conclusion that the organic portion of the CIS was to blame for their losses. Considering the entire army was subtly designed to fail from the start by an organic¡­ it was closer to the truth than most.


    With the facility cleaned of any potential hostiles, we began a much more intensive run-through of the entire facility. Lieutenant Soran even assembled an extra third group from his troops to help. We went through every hall, opened every door, and cleared every single room we came across, wanting to make absolutely sure that the building was as safe as we could make it because once we were done, groups of engineers and specialists would be coming through.


    At the end of the first day, after working for most of it, Ahsoka and Luke were due to return to Thila Command. Both of them were too important to waste their time hanging around doing menial tasks after all, not when they could be doing more good elsewhere.


    "It was good to meet you, Deacon. Your¡­ abilities are baffling, but I''m happy that you''re on our side," Ahsoka said as we stood in one of the remaining hangar bays, used as a drop-off and pick-up point. "Your knowledge of things you have no right knowing is frustrating, to say the least, but I suppose I can''t complain when you seem to use it to help more than harm."


    "Good to know I''m keeping everyone on their toes," I responded with a smirk, holding out my hand, which she took and shook. "It was good working with you, Ahsoka. I hope we can do it again soon."


    "Join the rebellion, and we just might," She answered.


    "I''ll think about it."


    She seemed surprised by my admission but said nothing, instead opting to head up the ramp of the <u>small ship</u></a> she and Luke would use to get back to Thila Command. Luke, who was talking to Julus, spotted that she had left and patted Julus''s shoulder before moving to follow her. He stopped in front of me, unsure of what to say.


    "Thank you for helping me," He said, finally deciding. "I know it''s a lot to ask, but could you train me some more?"


    "Ahsoka wasn''t completely wrong when she said that there is someone out there who can train you," I responded, holding up my hand when he opened his mouth to complain. "But that doesn''t mean you can''t work on it in the meantime. Continue doing your kinetic meditation, but focus on slowly learning how to reach that state without moving. When you can reliably reach out and feel that connection at will, try suffusing your body with the Force, letting it guide you more organically. Next time I see you, if you feel like you could use some more direction, I''ll help more."


    "What about getting better with the lightsaber?" He asked, sounding more impassioned than he probably meant to. He noticed and looked away, shaking his head. "Sorry, I shouldn''t be so demanding, but¡­"


    "I suppose you felt rather useless fighting alongside Ahsoka?" I asked, the young Jedi nodding with a frown. "Don''t beat yourself up about it. She has been using the Force and her lightsabers for much longer than you. That said, maybe see if General Syndulla can''t find a way to get you a sparring droid or three. They could likely teach you sword fighting styles that you could then modify to work better with a lightsaber."


    Luke''s eyes lit up at the idea of the sparring droid, realizing there was a way to cut reliance on Ahsoka or whoever she insisted was out there to train him. Before he could say thanks, I cut him off again.


    "The most important thing to realize, though, is how important balance is for Force-sensitives. The Force amplifies emotions, especially when you use your emotions to force the Force to work," I explained, making sure to sound as serious as possible. "Don''t let things fester, don''t let your frustration win. And that doesn''t mean smashing it down whenever you get annoyed. Emotions only become worse when you repress them. It means understanding where your emotions are coming from, being honest with yourself and, if necessary, fixing the problem that caused the imbalance. This is more important than anything else I could teach you, because becoming too unbalanced and still calling on the Force can make you spiral, drawing you into falling to the dark side."


    "I would never-"


    "It''s got nothing to do with wanting Luke. By the time it would happen, it wouldn''t be your choice anymore." I said, pausing for a long moment while I tried to come up with a way to explain. "I''m not trying to scare you, but the dark side is a threat to every Force-sensitive, young and old, master or novice. The Jedi Order used to preach rising above your emotions, but that only ended up pushing them too far in a different direction, unbalancing them and blinding them. In the same vein, leaning too far in the other direction, submitting to your anger, your aggression, and letting your emotions rule you is how you fall into darkness. By maintaining a balance, by understanding yourself, working through your anger and your hate, and learning to be at peace with yourself, that is how you remain balanced and keep from falling."


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    "That¡­ I knew the dark side was a problem. Obi-wan mentioned it, mentioned it''s what the Sith use," He said, shaking his head, brushing his hair to the side. "That''s a lot to deal with."


    "It''s a heavy weight. I can''t say that I envy you," I admitted with a shrug. "But it''s a burden you''re locked to, and if you succeed, you will be able to help so many people. You have the potential to shift the course of the galaxy, Luke Skywalker. I have faith in you. And as aloof as she might be with you, so does Ahsoka."


    "Thank you. You''ve given me a lot to think about, but thank you," The young hero said, reaching out his hand. "It was nice meeting you, Deacon. I hope we meet again soon."


    "I''m sure you will," I assured him, shaking his hand. "Don''t tell anyone, but my crew and I plan on officially joining up soon. We just need to finish a few pieces of business and get all our affairs in order first."


    "That''s great! We could always use people like you and your team!" He said happily, his smile absolutely contagious. "Hopefully, I can introduce you to Han and Leia."


    "Looking forward to it," I said, returning his smile. "Do me a favor. When you get to Thila Command, let Pola and Miru know how it went and that everything is fine."


    "Yeah, no problem."


    Soon after that, Luke climbed the entry ramp of the small ship, which rose up and sealed shut. Not long after that, the ship rose into the air and slowly backed out of the hangar bay, leaving me alone with Julus.


    "God, I feel so preachy!" I shouted, shaking myself as if to get it off of me. "I hate sounding like that."


    "I don''t know, Boss, sounded pretty good to me," Julus said with a shrug.


    "I know, that''s the problem! C''mon, let''s go," I said, clapping my hands and turning to the exit. "I want to check out as much of this place as possible so I know what''s on the table when we start to negotiate."


    We spent another full day at the facility, exploring every nook and cranny I could get into, noting things I wanted into my datapad. The base had an incredible selection, including an array of odds and ends that seemed to be around to test programming modifications. We spotted several people doing the same thing as us, tallying inventory for the Rebellion. Eventually, on the morning of the third day on base, General Syndulla arrived to do her own inspection and eventually discuss who got what. A representative of Nova also arrived, but they kept to themselves.


    When we finally gathered in a small, recently cleaned meeting room on the facility''s second floor. I had a solid list of what I was looking for, what I really wanted, and what I could hopefully convince them to let me have. Despite that, I was nervous. These negotiations mattered just as much as our mission to clear the base, as they determined just what we got as compensation.


    "I want to start off this discussion by stating that we plan on setting up a base at this location," She explained. "With control over the central computer core, we can control all droids in the area, giving us a substantial defense force."


    "And what exactly will that do to our cut?" The Nova representative, a Rodian by the name of Thunn, asked. "If you do not plan on selling anything, how will we make money?"


    "We will pay for your cut out of pocket, assuming that Nova still doesn''t want anything?"


    "Are there any repair droids, pilotable starfighters, ships, or stocks of parts?" He asked.


    "There were some repair droids," She admitted before glancing at me. "But I get the feeling those will be a highly contested item."


    "They will be," I agreed, getting a harsh look from the Rodian. "I would assume splitting them between the two of us, at least-"


    "Absolutely not," Thunn said, shaking his head. "Nova was promised forty percent while you maintain twenty. You-"


    "Actually, that number was for the first raid," General Syndulla said, surprising both Thunn and myself. "Because of that, and because Nova did not assist in any way, especially after we asked if she wanted to, we think it''s only fair to renegotiate the cut."


    I looked at General Syndulla, my eyes wide. I had been expecting a sort of losing battle in this negotiation, where I would be sacrificing the credits and banking on goodwill to get a few of the things we spotted. Instead, I was being offered a more equal spot at the table.


    "We were thinking thirty-five, thirty-five, thirty," Twi''lek said. "With thirty going to Nova."


    "Unacceptable!" The Rodian said, standing from his chair. "And to think Nova insisted that you would deal fairly with her. I was under the impression you had a more friendly relationship with her."


    "We value Nova greatly and would like to believe we continue to be friends. However, she insisted on not helping with this engagement," She repeated, leaning back hand, crossing her arms. "Further, it has come to my attention that she was less than friendly with our allies and further refuses to work with any more Jedi or Force-sensitives. Deacon and his crew are our allies, have fought alongside our troops, and promised to continue to support us. While we are very thankful that Nova has so far been agreeable, we are not ignorant of the amount of credits she has made from our business. If our analysts are correct, nearly seventy-five percent of her business is with us."


    The Rodian attempted to stare down General Syndulla for a long moment, only to fail utterly. When she didn''t even flinch, he leaned back with a sound of disapproval.


    "It seems there is no recourse. I am forced to accept this for now, but know that Nova will not be happy with this sudden change in our agreement."


    "Of course. Now, let''s get back to the list. The Rebel alliance is amicable to let you and Deacon split the repair capable droids, as long as we can reduce the total credit payout¡­."


    Over the next two hours, we hammered out a final deal. Thankfully, the Rodian was only really interested in the repair-capable droid, which meant most of that negotiating was done between Hera and myself, meaning it was much more amicable.


    At the end of the day, Nova was getting three hundred thousand credits and fifteen repair droids, a mix of Clone Wars-era astromech, LE-series, and a few other models. I was getting a mix of ten, which was already more than I had room for, as well as ten naval droids, ten more B2s, six tri-fighters, a mix of supplies, and two lots of tools that seemed to be specifically created to work on CIS droids.


    A significant portion of our credits also went to a group of ten <u>BX commando droids</u></a>, which I found standing unpowered in one of the laboratories. After thanking whatever god was listening that they hadn''t been reactivated by Faudi, I knew I had to find a way to bargain for them. They would make the perfect addition to our growing droid support and would most likely be able to keep up with any of the crew in combat.


    In the end, we were bringing home all I managed to bargain for and a hundred and eighty-five thousand credits. I was thrilled with the results, especially because we managed to do all that and significantly increase our standing with the Rebellion.

 Chapter 69 - Ahsoka and Luke Interlude

    Ahsoka listened through the external microphone as Luke and Deacon said goodbye. She knew she shouldn''t be, of course, but ever since Deacon had pointed out that corrupting Luke in the state he was in, a condition she was partially responsible for, would be child''s play, she had been nervous, on edge. Suddenly, her choice not to train Luke was put in a very different perspective.


    Deep down in her heart, she knew her reasoning behind refusing to train Luke was weak at best. But somehow, she had managed to pretend that delaying his training, denying his requests wasn''t that big of a deal, that it just meant he would have to find someone else, that he would find someone else. Never had she considered that someone else would take advantage of him. Or what the resentment Luke felt could do to him.


    She had been lying to herself. And poorly at that. Meanwhile, a man who had one of the weakest connections to the Force she had ever felt, less than most normal, non-Force sensitive people, gave Luke what he wanted and needed in the form of real, genuine help. And what a shock it had been when Deacon actually guided Luke into meditation and helped him connect so profoundly to the Force. Some of his success could be attributed to pure talent, but even that only went so far.


    And now he was giving him more advice, showing him how he could improve on his own, step past his need for a mentor, at least temporarily, and giving him advice about the dark side of the Force that wouldn''t have sounded strange coming from a Jedi Master. Even if it leaned a bit on the gray side.


    Ahsoka tapped off the microphone, letting the two finish their conversation in peace. She was still watching, though, as they said their final goodbyes and Luke climbed the ship''s entry ramp. Ahsoka waited for him to join her in the cockpit, but she could feel him as he walked deeper into the ship, claiming one of the quarters, no doubt thinking about what Deacon had said.


    Just as she was now.


    For a moment, Ahsoka did nothing, eventually shaking her head and putting off her thoughts, focusing instead on getting the journey back to Thila Command underway. A quick peek at the pre-flight checklist she had already started, and she pulled the ship out of its resting state, taking the controls and lifting off.


    From that point until they jumped to lightspeed, she focused entirely on flying. The planet was a mess of activity, with shipments of materials coming in and going out, setting up Alpha Base as a permanent location for the Rebellion. When she did finally jump to lightspeed, she released the ship controls and leaned back in her chair, the pervasive thoughts returning in a wave.


    Eventually, she stood and left the cockpit, the autopilot fully capable of managing most adjustments, knowing she would undoubtedly feel something was wrong before it happened. She walked back and sat down at the small space that served as the ship''s galley. She considered making herself some food, but ultimately, she wasn''t hungry enough to bother. So, instead, she sat in the silence of the ship, trying to sort out her thoughts, trying to figure out just what she would do.


    Ultimately, when she finally looked at it honestly, the choice was easy.


    She stood and headed to where she could feel Luke, knocking on his door. For a long moment, long enough that she wondered if he had fallen asleep, he said nothing. Suddenly, the door opened, revealing Luke on the other side.


    "Yes?" He asked, looking at her curiously.


    "We need to talk," Ahsoka said. "I¡­ know I haven''t exactly earned any goodwill, but¡­"


    "...Sure."


    They both returned to the galley, Luke awkwardly following behind the older Togruta woman. They settled into opposite spots on the galley couch, looking at each other. After another long moment of silence, Ahsoka took a long breath, centering herself in the Force, drawing strength from it. When her wild thoughts settled, she finally spoke.


    "Luke¡­ I need to apologize. I knew your father. I knew him quite well, actually," She admitted, finally breaking through the wall of silence. "I was your father''s Padawan."


    "... I don''t know what that is," Luke admitted, looking disappointed in himself despite there being no real way for him to have known that.


    A wave of shame washed over Ahsoka. Such a small, basic piece of information, and Luke was in the dark. He was carrying the weight of the Rebellion on his shoulders, the higher-ups making him out to be the poster boy for the future, and she had left him ignorant. She had the power to help, and she had refused because of her own problems.


    "A Jedi Padawan is an apprentice of sorts. The Jedi Order would teach younglings to a certain age, not too different from the schooling you probably had, but with additional training in the Force," She explained, making sure not to come off as condescending. "The younglings would then take part in a series of trials. If they succeeded, an older Jedi would take them on as a Padawan. Your father was mine. I learned under him, and we fought together in the Clone Wars. I looked up to him and¡­ In a lot of ways, we were like family."


    Luke was stunned by her admission, his jaw hanging open as he stared, unable to put together the words to respond. Ahsoka took advantage of that and continued.


    "Toward the end of the war, there was an attack. Someone was killed, and the Jedi Temple on Coruscant was targeted. I was framed for it."


    Ahsoka, despite having years to handle and deal with the emotions connected to one of the worst events in her life, struggled to control herself. The hurt, the frustration, the pain¡­ it lingered even now.


    "The Jedi Council, a group of masters who were the leaders of the Order, made the decision to expel me," She continued, looking away as if looking past the walls of the ship around them. "I was disbarred from the temple, my status of Jedi Padawan was stripped, and¡­ they threw me to the Republic Military Court, which seemed determined to cast me as the culprit."


    "I¡­ I can''t imagine¡­" Luke said, his eyes filled with shock and empathy.


    "The Order was all I knew. My entire life was spent working to become a Jedi Knight, my entire existence dedicated to the Force. My friends, my family, they cast me aside to avoid conflict with the Senate. Something¡­ broke inside me, looking up at the council as they refused to listen to my plea, choosing politics over one of their own," She admitted, her voice getting quiet as she confessed a deep secret. "I could feel it, but I didn''t realize until later that it was my trust in the council, in the Jedi way as they saw it. What had we become if they could just toss me aside like that? The people who raised me, trained me, the people who-"


    She stopped, once again feeling the emotions overwhelming her. Deacon''s words echoed in her head, and she could feel the truth in them. For so long she had pushed her emotions away, forcing herself to remain calm. But she was unbalanced, and everything she repressed only became more potent as it festered.


    "Your father never gave up on me. He fought for me, working to uncover what had actually happened. When the traitor was discovered, he dragged her to court, to show I was innocent," She explained, shaking her head. "I was freed, and the Jedi Council¡­ insisted that it had all been trial, that I was stronger for it. A few of them apologized and welcomed me back. And I walked away."


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    She closed her eyes, looking down at her hands, sorrow leaking out of her into the Force.


    "Good."


    She looked up at Luke, with wide eyes, her jaw hanging open. He looked upset and conflicted, but his eyes were filled with understanding.


    "What? I...but your father¡­ He¡­ I abandoned him!"


    "Ahsoka¡­ What they did to you sounds terrible," He said, shaking his head. "I¡­ I can''t imagine how it must have felt¡­ How could you ever trust them after that? I don''t blame you for leaving, and I''m sure that my dad didn''t either, not if he really understood."


    "He did, in the end. But¡­ I left him alone, and he¡­"


    "You couldn''t have known what was going to happen," He assured her. "You couldn''t have known what Darth Vader would do, that he would betray everyone. He is the one who killed my father, not you."


    For a long moment, Ahsoka was silent, finally realizing the lie that Obi-Wan had told. Almost immediately, she resolved to tell Luke the truth. Maybe not today, but soon. He deserved to know the truth about Anakin''s fall from someone who knew him well enough to understand.


    "I¡­ Thank you, Luke," She finally said, letting out a long breath that hitched slightly with emotion. "Your father would be proud of you. And he would have been very upset that I refused to train you."


    Now it was Luke''s turn to look surprised,


    "Wait¡­ does that mean?" He asked, hope slowly making its way into his voice. "You''re going to train me?"


    "Yes-"


    "Thank you!" He said, looking like he was barely holding back from cheering.


    "But!" Ahsoka said, cutting off any further cheers or gratefulness. "You need to understand something. I was just a Padawan. A Padawan that was arguably on the cusp of becoming a Knight, but still just a Padawan. I will show you the basics, teach you what I know, but¡­ you do really need a Jedi Master to guide you."


    "I''m not sure I want that," He admitted hesitantly. "What little I''ve learned about the old Jedi Order¡­No offense, but it hasn''t been good."


    "I''m the last person who would tell you that everything about the Order was perfect," Ahsoka admitted, chewing her lip. "But there is a lot of context around why the Order was struggling. We weren''t prepared for the Clone Wars, and the council''s relationship with the Senate had shifted into something that¡­ I''m not sure the first members of the Order would have liked it. But the people¡­ Most of the people were good."


    "I''ll try and keep an open mind," Luke said with a smile. "I suppose it''s not fair to judge them just off of what you and Deacon said, especially since¡­ I got the feeling that Deacon didn''t like them very much."


    "I felt the same thing. You were most likely picking up on his emotions," Ahsoka explained with an encouraging smile. "He definitely had strong feelings about them and of the Force in general."


    "Really? He talked about it like he understood it pretty well," He said, brushing his hair to the side.


    "Which is shocking," Ahsoka explained, shaking her head. "You have to understand that even at the height of the Jedi Order, the Force was regarded as mysterious and mystical, unknowable to most. The inner workings of the Order, the people on the council, how to feel the Force, how to wield it¡­ he showed a surprising level of understanding and knowledge."


    "Could he be from the Order?" He asked, leaning back in his seat. "Maybe someone who joined after you left?"


    "I don''t think so. His age suggests he would have been brought into the Order around the same time as me," Ahsoka responded, shaking her head. "I won''t pretend to know every Jedi from that time, but I don''t recognize him in the slightest. I also don''t think his¡­ magic is using the Force."


    "I don''t either. When he healed my sore back, and again when he healed my leg, it didn''t feel like the Force," Luke agreed. "There wasn''t anything behind it. No¡­ shifting or pulling."


    "Do you feel shifting or pulling when you connect to the Force?" Ahsoka asked curiously.


    "Yeah¡­ don''t you?" He asked, looking confused. "The few times I''ve managed to do it, mostly by accident and briefly before Deacon showed me the kinetic meditation, it felt¡­ like when you first sit down at a new speeder, and you can feel the controls responding. The right repulsorlift is flickering, the steering is pulling slightly left, and its power core runs better on full power. It''s telling you something, telling you how to fly it or what it''s capable of, how far you can push it. What?"


    By the end of his analogy, Ahsoka was smiling, nearly on the verge of laughing. She shook her head when he asked what was going on.


    "Sorry, it''s just you reminded me of your father a lot just then," She said, reassuring him. "He was an incredible pilot, the best of the Jedi, and he loved flying. You have that in common."


    "...Did you know my mother?" Luke asked suddenly, before backpedaling. "Sorry. It''s nice to hear I have something in common with my dad, but¡­ no one has ever mentioned my mom. I don''t even know her name."


    "I¡­ I''m almost positive I knew your mother," She admitted with a frown.


    "What do you mean?"


    "Relationships were forbidden by the Jedi," She explained. "Any attachments, really. It''s one of the reasons they only accepted new members so young, preferably before they can even bond with their family."


    Luke recoiled at that state, especially at how casually Ahsoka said it.


    "That''s horrible!" He said, disgust evident in his voice. "That''s¡­ How could they do that?"


    "I¡­ There are many things about the Jedi Order that I saw as normal once upon a time," She explained, wrapping her arms around herself. "Some of it was because it was all I knew, but some of it¡­ I don''t know. I can tell you we were taught that it was because attachments were dangerous. They lead to emotions that can lead to the dark side. Jealousy, fear, grief, lust, anger¡­"


    "So the Jedi Council didn''t approve of my parents?" Luke asked.


    "I don''t know if they even knew about your parents. I''m pretty sure that Obi-Wan knew, but the rest of the council? I can''t say."


    "What was her name?"


    "Padme Amidala," She responded, lost in one memory or another. "She was the Senator for Naboo. Before that, she was the queen."


    "Wait¡­ Queen?" Luke asked, his eyes wide. "I''m royalty!?"


    "No, no, Naboo had a democratically elected regent," Ahsoka explained. "There was no royal bloodline or anything like that."


    "Oh, thank god," Luke said, flopping back in his seat. "I don''t think I could handle that."


    "Though, plenty of them would treat you like royalty...." She added. "They loved your mother and wanted to change their rules so she could hold power longer."


    After a few seconds, Ahsoka chuckled at his reaction, understanding it entirely. After a long stretch of amicable silence, Luke spoke up again.


    "Could you¡­ tell me about them?" Luke asked. "Deacon said he would but got distracted with his magic."


    "I think¡­ I would love to," She responded.

 Chapter 70

    With negotiations finished and most of my crew''s curiosity sated about what was going on in the facility and what kind of secrets it could hold, we bummed a ride back to Thila Command. It was another two-day trip, but by now, I was exhausted, mentally and physically, to the point where I was worried about fucking up any spells I might attempt to learn. So, instead of risking it and potentially wasting my time, I took the two-day trip off, relaxing and decompressing from the adventure and mentally reviewing how everything had gone.


    The trip itself had been a wild success. The credits alone had been beyond substantial for a few days'' work, but the loot we had gotten would massively increase the effectiveness of our fleet. With more raindrops, the Talos Chariot would be an incredibly effective small carrier, especially once we dumped credits into the Brick. While I had been extremely anxious when I reaffirmed my desire to modify our shuttle, upgrading the Brick to the point that it could be an effective space combat ship would increase our reach and abilities even further. We had always intended to upgrade it anyway. It might also be worth getting a dedicated pilot for it, but we would be hiring enough people at this point, so that was fine.


    The naval droids, B1s specifically modified to perform various ship duties, including manning several different stations, would make us less reliant on the Rebels to staff our ship once we joined, without forcing us to hire more than a dozen crew. The BX commandos would make us a force to be reckoned with on the ground as well, and that was ignoring the B2s.


    It was hard not to be proud of what we had all accomplished, and I made sure my crew knew how I felt by paying out five thousand credits to everyone. It was by far the largest amount we had earned individually and would go a long way to keeping everyone happy and showing that this venture we were on would be profitable individually and for the whole group.


    By the time we arrived back at Thila Command, I was feeling mostly recovered, having a few nights of complete rest and a few days of unwinding under my belt. Once we were back, we headed directly for the Chariot, knowing Miru would be restlessly waiting for our return.


    When we arrived, the first thing I spotted was the Talos Chariot''s clean new paint job. The majority of the ship was soft white, with accents of an almost royal purple along its sides, the hangar bays, and its undersides. It certainly wasn''t the first color combo I would have considered, but it looked good. Its name was painted in black lettering along each side of the ship, above the hangar bays.


    Looking closely, I could see a new swell in the bottom of the ship, near the back end. It was seamless, and I could only tell because I knew the ship so well. According to what Miru had claimed, this would be the new and improved shield projector.


    Before I could get any closer, I heard a familiar shout and the sound of pounding footsteps. I turned just in time to catch Miru, spinning her around to bleed off the impact.


    "Welcome back!" She said, pulling back from the hug and moving to hug Tatnia next. "I''m glad everyone is alright!"


    I smiled at her enthusiasm, shaking hands with Pola as he joined us as well. We spent a while reconnecting, talking about how the upgrades were going and how they had been on their own. Miru took us on a tour of the new upgrades on the Talos Chariot, showing off the new generators and the new model of the shield generator. Once we were done, we spent an hour unpacking, cleaning ourselves up, and changing before once again meeting at the Chariot''s lounge, where Calima joined us.


    "Alright, so as you might have guessed from the large deposit in your accounts, the mission was successful," I said happily. "Even with the large payout to everyone, we doubled our group credits and then some. Of course, some of that is going to be immediately put back into upgrades, but even then, with the loot we found¡­ Mission accomplished."


    We spent a while going over the raid, how it had gone, and the sudden twist of being "captured" by a rogue, insane tactical droid. When I explained the loot we brought back, Miru was ecstatic. Unfortunately, our portion of the loot would trickle in over the next few days, but in the end that was fine. Miru still had a lot of work to do on the C70, even with the Rebel''s help.


    "Why did you focus on getting the Chariot done first?" I asked. "I''m glad you did, but I''m curious as to why."


    "You mentioned having a mission in mind, something about salvage?" Miru explained. "The Intervention-"


    "The what?"


    "Oh, right. It''s what Pola, Calima, and I have been calling the Penance," She admitted sheepishly. "We were brainstorming ideas while working, and that was the best one we came up with. We were going to wait until everyone was back before suggesting it, but it kinda just caught on¡­"


    "I like it. I think it fits," I commented. "Anyone have an issue with it?"


    When no one said anything save Julus, who just agreed it was a solid name, Pola and Miru high-fived.


    "Alright, that settles it. The Penance is now the Intervention," I said with a nod. "You were saying?"


    "Right, well, the Intervention''s upgrades will take a few more days, and now we have a bunch of work to do making raindrops and making docking spaces for the new droids¡­" The young genius trailed off in thought for a moment before shaking her head. "You''ve got plenty of time to get your business done before everything is ready to leave."


    "That''s good. Great job thinking ahead, Miru. That will make everything a little bit easier," I said with a smile.


    We talked a bit more about the loot we had gotten and what Miru would have to do to get them integrated into the ships. About ten minutes in, I heard the familiar sounds of Racer whistling, beeping, and warbling through the ship before coming around the corner into the lounge.


    He was followed by a super battle droid.


    Tatnia, Vaz, and I were all facing the stairs, so as we saw it, we all half stood, responding to the threat without thinking. My hands glowed with a Lightning Bolt while Tatnia and Vaz both reached for their sidearms.


    "WAIT!" Miru shouted. "Dammit, Racer! I told you surprising them wasn''t a good idea! Guys, it''s okay! Racer used his downtime to finally reprogram them!"


    Slowly, the three of us sat back down, the glow of my spell fading as I reabsorbed the Mana. I could see that Vaz still had her hand on her sidearm, though.


    The B2 stood at attention, its rocket arm by its side and the other pointed at the ceiling. The longer I looked, the sillier I felt for almost blasting it. It was painted with the same color scheme as the Chariot was, only in reverse, with the majority painted royal purple, accented by soft white lines.


    "He finished them a few days ago, and we painted them up," She explained. "We have a very limited supply of rockets for them, but I have some ideas for using the extra arm when we run out. We have five of them up and running and five more in parts."


    "That''s great Racer," I said honestly, my heart slowly returning to its normal rate. "If you haven''t started on the B1s, don''t bother. I think they are best spread between both ships for spare parts for the Naval B1s we are getting. With the ten commando droids, there''s no real reason to even bother with them. The B2s, though, would make a great security force for the ships, especially since we have ten more coming in. I say six for the Chariot and ten for the Intervention, with the rest deconstructed for parts."


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "I would like to keep a few of the B1s together," Maru said. "Just in case we need another Dummy to crash another speeder missile or something."


    "Fair, keep three or four on hand. You could always reconstruct some later."


    The meeting continued for another twenty minutes or so before finally dissolving. It was decided that Calima, Tatnia, Nal, and Julus would accompany me to my mystery planet, leaving Vaz, Miru, and Pola behind. We also decided we would depart the following day. The trip was long, about five days at the absolute minimum, but much closer to a week if we found what I was hoping to find. The trip there and back alone was four days, the planet in a completely different part of the Outer Rim.


    However, that wasn''t bad because I needed time to learn a few spells before we got there anyway.


    The morning we were about to leave, the first shipment of our loot arrived in the form of three of the Tri-fighters and half of our repair droids, the four astromechs, and one LE model. We stuck around, putting off our departure to help unload and get everything organized. Each of the droids needed to be cleaned, have their memories wiped, and thoroughly inspected for any modifications to the code and the hardware. We also took the opportunity to do the same to the protocol droid and the two repair droids that had so far been dormant on the Intervention.


    Of course, with these new droids and the ones we knew were still coming, it was about time to do some serious rearranging. As we had discussed, most of the B1s were pulled out of their storage bays on the Chariot to make room, and some of the charging ports were modified to fit an astromech droid. When the Intervention''s upgrades were done, Miru would work on adding charging bays for its complement of combat, naval, and repair droids.


    When we were done shifting and moving things around, preparing a bit for what was getting delivered, we had thrown out a little under half the B1s, breaking the rest down into parts to take up even less room, with one lot to be stored in the Intervention, and one set in the Chariot. Miru had also stripped the droids we were chucking for anything useful, like power cores and the like, for her own projects, but all of that was stored in her own space.


    By the time we were done shifting things around, preparing for more of our deliveries, General Syndulla hadn''t returned from her trip to Alpha base. Her second in command, Commander Gadi, however, was. He was a brown noser to an annoying extent, and I got the feeling he would have done just about anything to get me to join up. I led him along for the hour that we spoke, which was mostly spent with him clumsily trying to coax me into joining. I was tempted to see what I could get out of him, but I doubted that General Syndulla would be very happy with me, especially not when she had stuck her neck out for me in our threeway deal with Nova. Instead, I just got him to agree to let me use the hangar bay for a while longer and help a bit with buying more parts.


    "Of course, with Alpha Base being set up, most of our assets are on the move anyway," He assured me. "Another week or so is fine."


    "That''s great. We were hoping to make a few more upgrades, stock up on materials¡­ we also want to convert the tri-fighters to the raindrops we use," I explained. "If you could spare a ship to pick up the upgrades, we could teach your engineers how to make them. No guarantees that this would be something you''re interested in, but I know a few of your engineers that were working on the Chariot were interested in how they worked¡­"


    "We¡­ could spare a ship, as long as it''s done in one large order," He agreed. "I will have someone come down to the hangar and discuss exactly what you want, and what it would cost. Is there anything else I can do for you Deacon?"


    "No, you''ve done plenty already," I assured him, reaching out and shaking his damp, webbed hand.


    With permission and cargo transport secured, I headed back to the Chariot, pulling Miru away from her work for a minute to discuss what was happening over lunch.


    "Someone will be along, probably sometime later today, to discuss another shipment," I explained, stabbing at my food.


    "What exactly can I get?" She asked, trying to keep her excitement down.


    "Get whatever you need for the raindrops, and I want you to get upgrades for the Brick," I explained. "I''m leaving it here when we leave so you can work on it."


    "What kind of upgrades should I look for?"


    "Shields, thrusters, weapons, whatever you can find," I explained. "We got it for relatively cheap despite it being from CEC, after all."


    "Well, it is on the older side," She explained. "But CEC ships usually age well, and the after-market upgrades only get better as they do. How much can I spend?"


    "I''m willing to invest a lot into it, especially if you can turn it into a viable addition to our fighting force," I explained. "I''ve got a new appreciation for the importance of a powerful shuttle after our raid on Alpha Base. And before you say it, yes, I know we had a powerful shuttle, but the Brick makes much more sense for us than the Dark Blade did."


    Miru laughed and nodded, taking a bit of her meal and washing it down with a drink. After a moment of eating, I continued to explain what I wanted when we were gone.


    "So this trip is going to take five days, absolute minimum. Will you finish work on the Intervention by then?"


    "Probably? Barring any unforeseen issues, we should be."


    "Right, well, when the Intervention is done, I want you to focus on the raindrops and the Brick, because when those two are done, we can leave," I explained. "I know you''re going to want to take a look at the BX''s, but you can do that once we''ve left and after you''ve finished with the Naval B1s. I know that''s a tall order, so please don''t overwork yourself. Don''t think they need to be done by the time I get back or anything."


    "Boss, all of this is a dream come true for me," She assured me. "Shipwork, building, designing, it''s what I live for! I promise not to overwork myself but don''t feel bad for asking me to do more of what I love. As for getting things done in that order, that should be easy. Most of the work on the raindrops can be done by Leddy and her bots, and Racer is the one who will be doing most of the programming work on the Naval droids."


    "Alright. Vaz will keep an eye on you and help with the shipments coming in, so don''t be afraid to delegate."


    We finished lunch, discussing some of her ideas and what I hoped to find on my trip. When we were done eating, Miru left to say goodbye to everyone coming with me before heading back to the Intervention. Not too long after that, we departed from Thila Command again, the newly upgraded Talos Chariot pulling out of the hanger and flying up into space.

 Chapter 71

    I passed the two-day trip to our destination by learning two spells, Create Soul Gem and Transmute. I needed the Create Soul Gem spell to finally confirm a hunch that I had had for a while about what kind of gem or crystal I would need to actually create a functional soul gem. Transmute, on the other hand, I needed to test the purity of the metal sample I was hoping to get.


    When I finally learned the advanced version of Clairvoyance not too long ago, a few things came to mind. Some of them were obvious but not exactly helpful at the moment, like the exact direction of Darth Vader or where Mara Jade was. A few others could be useful but varied in danger from risky to down were damning. There was one idea, though, one singular planet that came to mind that would let me test my theory and provide a resource that could prove extremely valuable in combination with Transmute.


    <u>Dantooine</u></a>


    My in-universe knowledge told me that Dantooine was a backward farm world and not much else. I knew that it had a reputation as somewhere people could go when they wanted to leave the galaxy behind, but beyond that, it was a blank spot.


    On the other hand, my Star Wars knowledge, most of which came from the Knights of the Old Republic video game, knew that Dantooine was much more important. Thousands of years ago, it was the location of a <u>Jedi Temple</u></a>, which had a long and tragic history. Well, it might have a long and tragic history, depending on what portion of it was true in this amalgamation reality. To be honest, it didn''t really matter because I had no intention of going to the temple. Nothing really prevented me, and I would most likely find plenty of things worth salvaging and selling, but I wasn''t sure I was ready to ransack Jedi history quite yet. I might not be a fan of how the order turned out in general, but the individuals were mostly good.


    Besides, Luke had a way stronger claim over anything there, anyway.


    No, I had a different target, or two targets, to be precise. After we arrived, I guided Calima down to the surface of the planet, leaning on the back of Tatnia''s chair as she was assisting as the co-pilot. Using the images in my head, as dated as they might have been, and Clairvoyance, I quickly guided us to the general area of the Jedi Temple, landing in an open field. Tatnia and Calima stayed on board the Chariot while Julus, Nal, and I left on my treasure hunt. Nal piloted the Arrow with me in the passenger seat, guiding him down to our first target while Julus sat in the back, keeping an eye on the sensors. There were two labor droids awkwardly sitting in the spare seats as well, ready to help with the manual labor.


    The trip wasn''t that long, though it was a much greater distance than the game had insinuated. Eventually, we landed slowly in front of a small cave entrance, and I couldn''t help but feel the rising excitement. The fact that Clairvoyance latched on to the location so easily, just by what I remember from the half dozen or so times I played the game, was incredibly encouraging.


    The Crystal Caves.


    In Legends, there were dozens upon dozens of different types of crystals that could be used in a lightsaber, many of them with special properties. In Disney Canon, Jedi used crystals that had a presence in the Force, that could connect and even choose its Jedi. As I understood, there were still dozens of types of <u>Kyber crystals</u></a>, some of which did have special properties, but they were all Kyber. I had yet to find out how it worked in this amalgam universe. But, if any crystal was capable of being turned into a Soul Gem, it was going to be a Kyber crystal or a Legends equivalent.


    As Nal turned off and locked the Arrow down, I let my two crewmates know what we could be facing.


    "There is a chance these caves are infested with relatively large arthropod¡­ things," I explained. "Not sure what they are called, but if they do show up, the strategy is to retreat and pick them off one by one as we move. They aren''t anything special, meaning regular weapons should work on them, but if we charge in, they might overwhelm us with numbers."


    My companions nodded, and we climbed out of the Arrow, slowly making our way inside. The cave''s interior looked very different from what I remembered in the games, which wasn''t surprising considering that they were working with a single underground tileset. Still, the underlying themes remained surprisingly true. The ceiling was rounded, about three meters above us, and made from a single type of brown and black stone. The floor was uneven, which was made even more treacherous by a thick layer of fog around our feet that shifted and swirled as we walked.


    Nal and Julus were carrying bright, military-style lamps that we had salvaged from our work on Itander, which almost perfectly lit up the dark space. Unfortunately, that also meant that Nal''s rifle was slung over his back, his sidearm in his free hand, while Julus was only using one of his pistols. I had both my hands up, ready to cast at a moment''s notice.


    "How deep does the cave go?" Julus asked, looking around nervously. "And what exactly are we looking for?"


    "I''m not really sure," I admitted with a shrug. "It could be just a bit further or a long trek down. Just keep your eyes peeled for-"


    A screech echoed through the cave, and a <u>spider-esque</u></a> abomination the size of a golden retriever pounced on me, driving me to the ground. I could hear Julus curse as the bug drove its sharp front appendage into my arm. With a loud, pained scream, I conjured my sword and swung it around, cutting off the limb that was buried in my shoulder before I could spin my blade up and drive it into the arthropod''s carapace. Nal grabbed the creature''s legs and dragged it off me, where Julus confirmed it was dead by shooting it a few times.


    Meanwhile, Nal was helping me stand. He paused for a moment before grabbing the pointed limb and yanking it free of my shoulder. I barely held back a scream as the barbed weapon was violently removed, the pain threatened to knock me back down. Thankfully, I managed to hold on to consciousness and cast Fast Heal a few times on myself. I could still feel something burning in the wound, though, so I cast it again, followed by a sustained Healing.


    "They appear to be venomous," Nal said, peering closely at the limbs he had just pulled out of my flesh, still dripping my blood. "Will your healing deal with that?"


    "Eventually, I just need to give it some time," I managed to get out through clenched teeth, feeling the venom spreading out. "In the meantime, let''s keep moving. And we should keep talking to the minimum until we make it to the end."


    Julus nodded sheepishly, but I only shrugged before again taking the lead, this time conjuring my armor to protect myself, as well a conjured sword in one hand and my blister pistol in the other. In hindsight, I should have had that all out already. It took a bit for the burning in my shoulder to eventually stop, the venom spent, and its after-effects washed away by my magic.


    Feeling a bit more confident now that I was armed and armored, we explored deeper into the caves. Much like the distance between the temple and the cave entrance, the cave was a lot bigger than the game, going deeper and deeper underground. After about five minutes of walking, we were attacked again, this time by four of them dropping out of a crag in the ceiling. Three of them were smaller than the first one, but they were all still plenty bi to be dangerous.


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    "Keep moving back!" I said as I opened fire, managing to zap one in the shoulder joint, causing it to collapse momentarily.


    Keeping together in a loose formation, we slowly moved backward, peppering the decently sized abominations with laser fire. When they got too close, I would slash at them with my sword or spray them with fire, keeping them back and away from Nal and Julus. Eventually, we managed to take down the three smaller bugs, so I dropped my sword and launched an Ice Spike at the last one, the icey projectile punching through its neck and splattering its body with gore. It collapsed, twitching wretchedly before finally curling up, dead.


    While Julus quickly double and triple-tapped each bug, I grabbed my sword and pushed more magicka into it, the conjured construct having lost a portion when I wasn''t holding it. Once we were recovered and ready, we headed out again.


    We dealt with three more attacks over the next ten minutes, and I was beginning to wonder to myself just how deep this cave would go. I could tell Julus was beginning to question my sanity, while Nal was clearly just happy to be on an adventure. At the fifteen-minute mark, I noticed a slight glow in the distance, coming around a downward curve that hid its source. I motioned everyone to stop.


    "Okay, the space ahead will likely be the central chamber and the nest. Lots of eggs and probably a bunch more bugs," I explained in a whisper. "Same strategy as before, a slow retreat backward, focusing on the ones that are the closest. Ready?"


    When they both nodded in confirmation, we continued on, the glow getting brighter and brighter until we stepped around the final corner and got a look at the central chamber.


    The massive, gigantic cavern was easily twenty-five or thirty meters across, with a thick pillar from floor to ceiling, off-center by about seven or eight meters. There were four cascaded platforms along the curved wall furthest from the entrance, and along the base were a few small branches that didn''t seem to go more than a few meters. In the center of everything was a pool of water, an almost perfect circle of what appeared to be clear, clean water about three meters wide.


    Of course, all of that absolutely paled in comparison to the crystal structures that filled the cave.


    There were dozens and dozens of crystal clusters dotting the cave, growing from the ground like large latticed bushes. Each cascaded platform had around a half dozen growths, and I could see each shallow cave branch was also filled. There was a massive cluster almost as tall as I was less than six feet from the entrance, and the massive pillar next to the small pond was studded with pointed shards. The colors were incredible, with purples, blues, greens, yellows, oranges, and even white, with every shade in between. I could even see a pink cluster, high up on the wall not too far from the entrance.


    It was stunning, all three of us standing and staring at the incredible view in awe.


    Unfortunately, dotted around these crystals were two dozen watermelon-sized eggs, and around them were at least ten of the gross bug abominations. One of them spotted us almost immediately and screeched out a warning, breaking us out of our moment of wonder. With a curse, I conjured a flame atronach, letting it stand in front of me and hose the incoming swarm of bugs with fire. They shied away at first, letting all of us, including the atronach, slowly move backward as Nal and Julus laid out a barrage of blaster bolts.


    Seeing that some of the bigger arthropod abominations seemed to be tanking their shots, I quickly cast Bound Bow, drawing and firing an arrow at the nearest one. The arrow streaked across the gap and blew a fist-sized chunk out of the closest larger bug. A second shot punched through the gap in its armor and dropped it.


    We slowly chipped away at the bugs for two minutes, moving backward, letting them chase us through the cave system, burning and killing them as we went. The smell of burnt bug was horrific, but we kept going, eventually killing every last one. I let my conjured constructs fade, save for my armor, leaving us alone in the cave.


    After taking a short break, we headed back down to the cavern. Once we arrived, we cautiously walked and explored the space, doing our best to ignore the incredible scenery and focus on making sure there weren''t any more bugs. We also made sure to destroy the eggs, either driving my sword through them or burning them with a spell.


    When the cavern was cleared, we sat down on a rock and recovered, taking in the incredible view and catching our breath. I cast Respite on each of us as we did, quickly replenishing our stamina and soothing our overworked muscles. When we were feeling better, we slowly made the trek back up to the Arrow, where we sat by the entrance of the cave and had lunch.


    "Boss¡­ I''ll never doubt you again," Julus swore, shaking his head. "I never imagined seeing anything like that in my lifetime¡­ Thank you."


    "You''re welcome," I said with a smile, slapping his shoulder. "I''ll be honest, I knew it would be impressive, but¡­ That blew what I had in mind out of the water."


    When we were done with lunch, I commed back to the Chariot to let Tatnia and Calima know that everything was going well. I happily confirmed that our first destination was an incredible success and that we would probably be here for the rest of the day. I asked Calima if she was all right hanging out alone with our new security bots, and she assured me she was fine, so I gave Tatnia the location and told her to join us.


    While I was doing that, Julus and Nal detached the cargo crate attached to the back of the Arrow and activated the labor droids. Julus stayed at the Arrow to wait for Tatnia, while Nal and I headed back down, slowly walking alongside the cargo crate and the labor droids as they moved it through the cave. About twenty minutes later, we were all back in the cavern, and Tatnia was looking around with wide, wonder-filled eyes.


    "Even with the smell¡­ this is incredible," She said before looking at me sharply. "Please tell me you don''t plan on smashing all of this."


    "No, absolutely not," I assured her, shaking my head. "We are going to spend the rest of the day picking up any fragments of these crystals we see off the ground. If we don''t have enough by then, we will carefully break off some pieces of the larger clusters. This is too important for us to strip down to the ground."


    "What is this stuff then, Boss?" Julus asked, his eyes trailing down the main pillar.


    "It''s Kyber crystal," I explained, Nal''s eyes going wide and both Julus and Tatnia whipping their heads around to look at me. "It''s the main component of lightsabers, and¡­"


    I looked around at my feet, taking a few seconds to find a shard of blue crystal about an inch longer than my thumb. I focused and cast one of my new spells, Create Soul Gem. I could feel the magic gathering around the crystal as if analyzing it. After a long moment, the magic seemed to resonate with the crystal before a purple crack of mana turned the deep blue crystal into a much lighter shade. The spell had successfully created a soul gem.


    "It''s one of the main materials I need to start making some magic stuff for you guys," I explained, tossing the newly minted soul gem to Tatnia.

 Chapter 72

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    <li> <time title="Nov 6, 2023 at 11:23 AM" datetime="2023-11-06T11:23:57-0500">Nov 6, 2023</time> </a></li>


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    "Kyber crystal?" Tatnia asked in a whispering hiss, as if she was worried someone might overhear. "You mean one of the most heavily restricted materials in the entire Empire? The stuff that gets entire planets locked down and surrounded by huge fleets?"


    "Uh¡­ yeah, probably," I said with a shrug. "No one knows there is any on Dantooine, and to be honest, I don''t know if it is just this cave or anywhere else."


    "Boss¡­ this is a big deal," Tatnia explained, looking over the closest glowing crystal, which was orange and only a head shorter than her. "Kyber Crystal is something that most criminals refuse to deal in because the Empire comes down on it so hard. There are rumors that a large town was slagged the last time someone got caught."


    "Well, we won''t be selling it," I explained. "I''m going to be using it."


    "How?" Nal asked simply, binding over to pick up another chunk of yellow crystal from the ground. He tossed it to me after turning it over in his hands.


    "Well¡­. Alright, so I turn these crystals into something called a soul gem," I explained, catching the crystal and quickly turning it into a slightly yellowish soul gem. "Then, with another spell, we can kill things, small creatures, big creatures, whatever, and the gem will catch the life energy from that thing. When the crystal is charged, I can use it to enchant stuff. I don''t know the specifics because I haven''t really dove into it yet. I needed soul gems to progress."


    "... That¡­ sounds crazy," Tatnia said, leaning against the storage crate we had brought down with us. "But then again, you''re a space wizard, so why did I think it wouldn''t?"


    "That''s the spirit," I said, tossing her the newest soul gem. "We can gather some of these crystals, and let me work on them. Then, later, we might take a few jobs that involve killing animals. It doesn''t have to be killed in a fair fight. I just need to cast a spell on it first and be close enough for the stones to absorb their energy."


    "What will you be able to make?" Nal asked. "Weapons?"


    "I could enchant basic things like swords and bows easily. I have no idea how it would work on things like blasters, but it really doesn''t matter," I admitted but quickly waved it away. "We have access to all sorts of weapons already, adding a couple exotic options isn''t why I''m excited. Imagine a ring that reduces how much fire hurts you, or imagine a helmet that protects you from electricity. Maybe an amulet that lets you breathe underwater or boots that silence your steps. I don''t know a lot of the specifics because, again, I needed some of these filled to advance, but I know it''s going to be useful, and I can share it with you guys. You don''t need magic to use it."


    That seemed to get their attention finally, Tatnia looking down at the gem I had just thrown to her. After a moment, I clapped my hands.


    "Alright, let''s get started."


    The group nodded, and we spread out, slowly going over every inch of the cavern, picking up any chunk of crystal we could find that wasn''t embedded in rock or attached to a cluster. Unlike the Kotor games, which limited what you picked up because of game logic, we quickly realized there were a lot of crystal pieces just lying on the ground.


    As we worked, I tested a half-dozen more crystals, turning them into soul gems and sticking them into my pocket. It was then that I realized that there was a minimum accepted size, meaning if a crystal was too small, the spell wouldn''t work. I considered telling everyone not to bother with the smaller shards, but instead, I suggested a different idea.


    "So the ones as big as or smaller than my thumb, they don''t work," I explained, catching everyone''s attention. "How do you guys feel about putting those in a separate box, handing them to General Syndulla, and telling her we want fifty percent?"


    "...that would save us the risk of finding a buyer ourselves¡­" Julus admitted.


    "She could keep our names out of it, too," Tatnia pointed out, chewing her lip.


    "Acceptable, I believe," Nal said, the other two nodding in agreement.


    We set aside a shoebox-sized container, which was almost full of smaller Kyber shards by the end of the day. On top of that, we also filled two slightly larger boxes with usable-sized crystals, or at least the proper size or bigger. We estimated just over a hundred crystals in total.


    "Is it enough?" Tatnia asked as she slid all three sealed boxes into the cargo crate.


    "For dabbling, maybe. But I''m hoping to make some pretty serious stuff eventually, which is most likely going to take some experimenting," I explained with a shrug. "Unfortunately, I''m not sure where else I could easily find more Kyber crystals¡­ Not without fighting past Imperial forces, at least."


    "So¡­ Would it be better to pick one cluster and take it entirely or take a bit off each cluster?" Julus asked, everyone immediately pausing to consider his words.


    "I think¡­ I think you''re probably right, Julus," I admitted. "Let''s pick one of the more common colors and break it down completely. Maybe a second one as well."


    We surveyed the room for about ten minutes before settling on a pale orange cluster and a blue cluster, both of them about two and a half feet tall and at least three wide. Slowly we had the labor droids snap the cluster apart, breaking them both down into another hundred, maybe hundred and fifty crystal pieces. When it was done, we quickly packed up and started the trek back to the surface, the labor droids pushing the now-laden cargo crate up through the tunnel.


    Once we stepped into the light of the day, which blinded us for a long few seconds even though the sun was starting to get low, we quickly attached the crate to the back of the Arrow and partially collapsed the labor droids so they could fit in the back seat.


    "Alright, see you back at Chariot," Tatnia said, but I shook my head.


    "We still have one more stop," I said.


    As we climbed into the Arrow and started our journey, I explained that this next stop was much more of a long shot than the cave had been. With the Crystal Cave, the second Clairvoyance had locked on, I knew we would most likely find some Kyber crystals at the bottom. With our second target, just because Clairvoyance had latched on to something didn''t mean the target would have what I was looking for. Still, I was hopeful.


    We landed after about fifteen minutes of flight, and I jumped out of the Arrow. We quickly unloaded the labor droids, armed them with shovels, and before Tatnia could ask me for the thirtieth time what we were looking for, I led them the last few feet to where my spell was leading us. We had landed in a small clearing, with tall mounds of earth and stone partially secluding the area. I could see some weathered boulders along the back corner, mostly covered by more dirt and plant life.


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    "You dig here, and you here," I said, pointing at two spots where my Clairvoyance led me. "A two-foot wide hole until you find something, then stop."


    "What are you trying to dig up?" Tatnia asked, having followed me. "And how the hell do you know what is buried here?"


    "I thought you had moved past asking me how I know things?" I shot back with a smirk. "Can''t you just trust me?"


    "I do trust you, but that doesn''t mean I''m not curious," She shot back. "And stop avoiding the question. What are you looking for?"


    "It''s a shot in the dark. I kinda don''t want to say in case it turns out I was wrong," I admitted, getting a sigh of annoyance from her. "You can go back to the Chariot if you want."


    "No, I want to see."


    I shrugged and found a rock to sit on, watching the labor droids dig into the ground, slowly getting deeper and deeper. Part of me was worried someone would stop by and ask why the hell we were digging on their land, given that my knowledge was around four thousand years old, but as the sun dipped lower and lower, my fears proved baseless.


    Eventually, after two hours of digging, one of the labor droids stopped and let out a loud beep, the sound of a completed task. I slowly stopped my Recovery meditation, casting Respite and Fast Healing on myself to take the edge of the resulting fatigue. Everyone else slowly got up as well, stretching from their naps or, in Nal''s case, a reading break. As I got closer to the hole, peeking over the edge, I couldn''t help but cheer.


    "Yes! Fuck yeah!" I shouted, jumping up and pumping my fist into the air. "Thank you, Revan!"


    "Boss¡­ is that a corpse?" Tatnia asked, peeking over the side as well. "I¡­ I don''t recognize the uniform."


    "That''s because they don''t look like that anymore," I said with an excited smile, dropping down and sliding a few feet into the hole. "This, my friends, is an ancient Mandalorian, from a time when even the name made people nervous. These guys were terrorizing the people living here about that time when a very famous Force-sensitive stopped by and put that to an end."


    I reached down and grabbed the rotted, broken-down blue armor, the material tearing to pieces as I touched it. With a smirk, I kept pulling and tearing, finally managing to find what I was looking for. A plate of metal, about as big as my splayed hand, completely untarnished with just the faintest hint of blue plate. I kept rooting around, pulling out a dozen plates or so, tossing them up out of the hole. When I was sure I got them all, I climbed back out.


    "It''s Beskar, correct?" Asked Nal, crouching down to examine a piece of the metal. "Incredible¡­ how pure is it?"


    "I don''t know. But with some luck, it''s pure enough to transmute," I explained before grabbing one of the plates.


    I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small chunk of platinum about a quarter the size of my thumb, which I had bought from the Rebels before we had left. Holding the sample of the mostly pure metal in my hand, I cast Transmute.


    Transmute was an interesting spell, as it required two hands to cast and had no dual cast form. One hand was the sampling spell, and the other was the much more complex creation spell, which converted the metal you were holding onto the metal you were sampling. It had a few major restrictions, beyond having to have a sample. The most significant limitation was that both the metal you were sampling and the metal you were converting had to be relatively pure. Despite the spell working on ore in the game, this version would only work on refined metals.


    So, when the Transmute spell failed, the most likely explanation was that the sample of beskar wasn''t pure enough for the spell to work. Assuming it was beskar.


    "Dammit!" I cursed, shoving the chunk of platinum back into my pocket. "Not pure enough."


    "What does that mean," Julus asked, leaning down to pick up one of the plates.


    "It means my Transmute spell won''t work on it," I explained with a frown.


    "Well, we could still probably sell the Beskar for a good chunk of cash," Tatnia pointed out.


    "We still have five more holes to dig," I responded, shaking my head. "One of them might have been important enough to work with a higher grade alloy of Beskar, and even if they aren''t, we can still use these plates. For now, let''s finish this spot. If the second hole is a bust, we can return to the Chariot and continue tomorrow."


    We didn''t have to wait long for the second labor droid to find anything, it was only about ten minutes before it let out an identical beep noise. I jumped inside the hole and started pulling apart the armor, very glad that any organic matter had long since decayed into dirt. I tore as many of the plates of metal as I could before once again climbing out of the hole and testing it, only to curse as the spell failed again.


    "Alright, refill the holes," I said, directing the two labor droids as I gathered up plates. "Let''s get these stored. We have five more chances tomorrow."


    When we returned to the Chariot, we didn''t waste much time, quickly loading the Arrow inside and offloading the several boxes of Kyber crystals and shards, storing them in the spare room next to mine. After that, we ate a quick meal with Calima, who was shocked by the pictures Tatnia showed her of the crystal caves.


    The following morning, Nal and I got up early and headed back out, both of us hoping that we could finish this before the natives woke up. Nal smoothly landed the Arrow next to the second location, and I set up the droids.


    They had been digging for about twenty minutes before an old beat-up land speeder landed about twenty meters from us. Two people jumped out, one an older gentleman and the other a teenager. They were both armed with older civilian blaster rifles. They approached us aggressively, weapons drawn but not pointed at us. Yet.


    "What do you think you''re doing!" The older one called out, pointing his blaster at us, the boy right behind him with a much less steady grip. "This is my land!"


    "It is? I asked, seemingly confused, looking over at Nal, who shrugged. "We didn''t realize."


    "Well, that''s all fine and good, but I''m gonna need you to pack up your fancy equipment and head out of here," He said, his tone clearly being there was only one other option, and we wouldn''t like it.


    "Well, here is the thing-" I started to say, stepping forward, only for the older man to adjust his aim and put his finger on the trigger. "Alright, alright, let''s not do anything hasty now. We are archeologists of sorts, tracking down a¡­ historical group that was in the area quite some time ago. Now that we know this is your land, surely a payment would smooth this misunderstanding over?"


    He chewed on my offer for a moment before finally lowering the blaster rifle slightly.


    "How much?" He asked, the younger boy lowering his weapon even more.


    "How about¡­ two thousand?"


    "For two thousand, I''ll help you dig!" The man said with a smile, suddenly very friendly.


    "I appreciate the offer, but we have droids for that."


    I quickly paid the man from my own credit chip, smiling as the older man and his son returned to their speeder and flew away, seemingly happy to leave us to our devices. I watched them leave before transferring two thousand credits from the crew fun to myself to cover the cost.


    "You overpaid him, Boss," Nal said, shaking his head.


    "Yeah, I got that impression as well¡­"


    We turned back to the holes, watching the two labor droids as they dug deeper and deeper. About an hour and a half later, I slid down into one of them, searching for beskar plates and throwing them back up and out of the hole. When I finally climbed back out of the hole, Nal handed me one of the plates, apparently just as eager as I was to see what we had gotten. I couldn''t help but cheer as the platinum slowly disappeared, converting into beskar, almost too slow to see.


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 Chapter 73

    Nal and I arrived back at the Chariot not long after we finished cleaning and refilling the second hole. We debated visiting the other locations my Clairvoyance spell was directing me to, but we ultimately agreed it wasn''t worth the risk. The nameless pair that found us before might have been easily appeased, but the next person might not be. Besides, I now essentially had an infinite amount of beskar, a dozen or so extra plates of various shapes really didn''t mean much.


    Once we arrived and re-loaded the Arrow onto the Chariot, it didn''t take long for us to lift off of the planet. Our next destination was a nearby system with a populated planet called <u>Plooma</u></a>, which had a slightly larger population than Dantooine but was still small enough that we didn''t anticipate an Imperial presence. We had a day-long hyperspace trip, and I used that time to learn Soul Trap. Thankfully, it was an Apprentice-level spell, meaning it only took about six hours to learn. That didn''t mean I wasted the rest of the trip, however. The book included a method of attaching the Soul Trap spell as you conjured a weapon. This was a perk in the game, but here, it was a secondary matrix you cast with your offhand while conjuring a weapon.


    It would make trapping life energy from creatures we hunted extremely easy, and since it was an active thing I would have to cast, I didn''t have to worry about accidentally using it on a person.


    The rest of the day was spent with me struggling with the logistics of an <u>Arcane Enchanter</u></a>. I had scanned through the first few pages of the process several times, but since it had been basically useless without soul gems, I had focused on more valuable parts of the grimoire. Now that I was reading it fully, I was discovering it was a much more involved process than I had originally believed.


    On top of the wood, glass, gold, silver, and filled soul gems that I would need to physically construct the table, I would also need to learn three Apprentice level spells. One would infuse the glass sphere, the next would infuse the silver carvings set into the wooden table, and the third and final spell would infuse the wood of the table.


    When we arrived at our pit stop, Nal helped me contact a metal fabricator, who was reluctant to work with silver and gold but agreed after we put in a down payment. On the other side of the planet, we managed to find a woodworker who agreed to carve the necessary grooves and shapes into a table he had created previously. He even put us in contact with a glass worker who could create a sphere to my precise requirements.


    Twenty-four hours and five thousand credits later, three of which I paid for myself, the other two coming from the group fund, and I had everything I needed. By that time I had also learned two of the three spells I would need, leaving the last one for the two-day trip back to Thila Command. I also used that time to assemble and partially infuse the table. The silver symbols, each representing a different school of magic and the centerpiece focus, turned a pale, glowing blue and slid into their carved slots in the table. The gold stand for the glass sphere set into its mount easily, and the glass sphere itself glowed with a swirling green hue once I infused it with its specific spell and placed it on the mount.


    This was where the table took a hard turn from the design I was familiar with. Instead of candles arrayed along two edges leading toward the glass sphere, the table needed eight "stabilizing soul gems," which was a fancy way of saying eight fully charged soul gems of approximately the same size and charge. Once I had those, I would slot them into their own gold mounts, and I could infuse the wood of the table, which would complete the Enchanter by tying everything together.


    "This¡­ people are going to think you''re worshiping something," Tatnia said after seeing the Enchanter for the first time. "It kinda looks like an altar."


    "Kinda, but it''s not, thankfully. It''s a sort of stabilizer. Keeps outside influences from breaking down the enchantment before it''s stable," I explained. "Otherwise, you could enchant anywhere you wanted."


    "So¡­ What''s left?" Tatnia asked.


    "What''s left is to fill up a bunch of soul gems," I explained, sitting, leaving the enchanting room, and heading to the lounge. "We need eight for the table, but that''s like a drop in the bucket if I''m looking to get any real practice in¡­ Dammit."


    "What?" Tatnia asked.


    "I''ll need stuff to practice on," I explained, shaking my head. "I should have bought a bunch of cheap jewelry while we were still at Plooma."


    "Well, you know, once we settle on a place to recruit for the Intervention, we can look around," Julus pointed out, dropping down on the couch as well. "What needs to happen to get some of that beskar armor?"


    "I either need a lot of normal metal, and I mean a lot, or a decent amount of a rare metal. Platinum seemed to be one to one though." I explained. "It needs to be mostly pure, too. Otherwise, the Transmute spell won''t work."


    "Is there any reason we shouldn''t turn around and sell the beskar?" Tatnia asked, pouring herself a drink at the bar.


    "Other than the fact that a new source of beskar would likely get a lot of attention?" I asked, getting a nod in response. "It won''t be very cost-effective. The Transmute spell is hilariously mana-intensive, meaning I could only create so much in a day. On top of that, the resulting metal probably won''t be worth much more than we spent to make it. For a material like beskar, which isn''t just rare, but also exclusive and useful, we could probably turn a profit, but not nearly as steep as you are probably thinking. For materials like gold and platinum, which are valuable but that can be purchased easily with enough money, the margin for profit would be even more tight, if there even is one."


    "Plus¡­ if we are the only ones supplying a steady source¡­" Calima said, leaning against the door into the cockpit. "We control who gets any."


    "Exactly! Think of how much we could get by handing out a set or three of complete beskar armor to people. Not just money, either," I eagerly pointed out. "Yes, we could probably make a tidy profit off of selling Beskar ingots, but what''s the point? We aren''t hurting for money at the moment, and if General Syndulla agrees to sell the Kyber crystals, we will be set for even longer."


    We chatted a bit more, debating if the rebellion had a way to sell that sort of material or not. I assumed they did, considering how often they had to rely on smugglers to move things and people around. Tatnia, on the other hand, didn''t think they would risk it. Eventually, we had an early dinner before we went our separate ways to our bedrooms.


    For the rest of the trip back to Thila, I spent a chunk of time turning Kyber crystals into soul gems, about thirty in total. After some thought, I ended up grabbing a bag, a sort of side satchel, from the survival gear we got helping Solinda. I emptied it out and carefully stored the crystals inside, weaving some cloth through the pile to keep them from breaking against each other and making too much noise. Once I was satisfied with my efforts, I stored the bag in the Enchanting room.


    After I was finished with that, I spent a while experimenting with the Transmute spell, shifting around metals to get a feel for the energy drain and just how inefficient the spell was in general. I discovered that metals would not shift up in quantity just because I started with something worth more. A sliver of beskar turned into a sliver of aluminum. That same aluminum piece basically disappeared when I tried to turn it back into beskar.


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    I also confirmed that platinum was just around one to one with beskar in terms of Transmutation. It leaned a bit towards beskar, but it was hard to tell exactly how much because I was also losing some to how inefficient the spell was. I really needed to practice the spell before starting to convert large amounts of beskar.


    It was that discovery, plus the fact that mass wasn''t conserved in either direction that finally convinced me that whatever entity had sent me here was messing with how this worked. I honestly couldn''t blame them since the Transmute ability was absolutely busted, even with the harsh limitations. Most likely, they were shifting how the spell worked to keep me from doing some broken, munchkin crap. It was disappointing, but I had to play the hand I was dealt. Besides, having access to beskar on tap was still incredible, even if it came with a massive price tag.


    My curiosity sated for now, I spent the rest of the trip learning Frenzy, an illusion spell that I was nervous to use. Its own description said it made its target unpredictable and potentially very dangerous. Still, depending on how well it worked, it could be invaluable in taking down a group of people who were set in a defensive position. Making an ally a turn on their friends would be potent but¡­ still felt like crossing a line.


    When we finally arrived at Thila, there were a surprising amount of ships in the space around the rocky, mountainous planet. Just under a dozen larger capital ships floated in general formation with two <u>MC80 Star Cruisers</u></a>. Two Nebulons immediately started rotating towards the Chariot, but when Calima responded to their hails properly, they slowly returned to their position, giving us direction to get to the surface correctly. When we finally arrived, we pulled right into the large hangar bay in which the Intervention was being kept.


    Surprisingly, we were once again greeted by General Syndulla as we stepped down and out of the Chariot. Even more surprising was that Miru was nowhere to be seen, nor was Vaz or Pola. As we approached, General Syndulla held out her hand for me, which I happily shook.


    "Good to see you again, General," I said with a smile. "How goes Alpha Base?"


    "Good, we are getting more infrastructure set up out there. We hope to turn it into a temporary base for when we finally get our people off of Yavin 4," She said with a smile. "We are already converting some of the interiors for better use. How was your excursion?"


    "It went well. We found everything I was hoping to find," I responded. "In fact, there is something I would like to show you. Are you busy?"


    "Surprisingly, no. More people have gathered here for our rescue operation, including three other generals. My workload is a bit more reasonable now," She admitted with a smile. "What did you find?"


    "Well¡­ I think it''s better to show you. It''s not something I would speak lightly about," I explained, wincing slightly as I looked at her guards.


    "Really?" She asked with a raised eyebrow. "Alright. Calum, Redor, stay here, please. I''m sure I''ll be out in a few minutes."


    The two guards frowned, clearly torn between their jobs of protecting the General and following her orders. Eventually, they settled on following her orders, stopping by the boarding ramp as I led the Twi''lek Rebel into the ship. Tatnia jogged ahead, and as we walked, I gave General Syndulla a simple tour, pointing out the large doors to the two hangar bays as well as Miru''s workshop. As we got to the second deck, I spotted Tatnia carrying the box of Kyber shards to the lounge, so I followed after her.


    Once we were in the lounge, I gestured to the box, wordlessly inviting our guest to take a look inside. She rolled her eyes at the dramatics but stepped to the table, fiddling with the latch of the shoebox-sized container.


    "You know, I-"


    Whatever she was going to say was lost when she finally laid her eyes on the box''s contents. Silently, she reached out and picked up a blue shard, not much smaller than my thumb. She turned it over, looking at it from a few angles before looking at me.


    "Is this¡­ a Kyber Crystal?" She asked, her eyes wide. "Where in the hells did you find this many?!"


    "I think the fewer people who know that, the better," I said, the woman nodding in agreement immediately. "I''ll happily show Luke or Ahsoka the location, of course."


    "There''s more?" She asked, her jaw dropping a bit. "There must be¡­ close to a hundred here! And so many colors¡­ I didn''t know they came in these shades¡­"


    "There are about sixty pieces that might be useful in a lightsaber, about the same amount of chips and shards," I confirmed. "We have a lot more, but I need them for my own projects. As for how much is left at the location¡­ well, let''s just say that we took maybe two or three percentage points of what was there, including that box."


    "How¡­ No, I don''t want to know," She started to ask before stopping herself. "You are absolutely correct. The less anyone knows about where or how you found these, the better. But I want you to show Luke and Ahsoka ASAP."


    "No problem," I agreed easily. "Does that mean you''re interested in these?"


    "Absolutely. If there are plenty more, then the Rebel Alliance would love the ability to run tests on these," She admitted. "What do you want for them?"


    "Well, we were just going to ask for fifty percent if you sold them¡­ so make an offer," I responded.


    "Deacon, I can''t authorize a payout big enough to cover this without being able to answer a lot of questions, which, in this case, I do not want to do," She explained with a frown. "One or two pieces of Kyber crystal would be one thing, but I don''t want anyone to know there is an actual source of it out there that isn''t controlled by the Empire. Is there anything else I can help with? Anything you need. I can''t give you ships, we need those, but-"


    "Boss¡­ Didn''t you just mention needing something¡­?" Tatnia pointed out.


    "Oh! We do need metal. The more valuable, the better. Doesn''t have to be useful. We just need a lot of it. Even better would be precious metals like gold, platinum, and silver. Could be mixed as well, as long as each of the individual metals are pure, no alloys."


    She looked at me with a critical eye for a long pause, taking a deep breath and letting it out. She looked back at the box for a moment before shaking her head as if coming to a proper conclusion.


    "I don''t think that''s going to work either. Materials are almost as valuable to us as actual ships, since we use them to build with," She explained. "If I diverted a shipment of metal, even a cheap one, a lot of people would ask questions, probably more than if I just gave you credits."


    "So, what are our options?" I said. "I''m open to suggestions. This is more of a shot in the dark than anything. We didn''t really know what to do with the pieces that were too small for my project."


    "... I''m going to give you fifty thousand credits. It''s the most I can get away with no explanation," She responded after a long pause. "And the Rebellion is going to owe you a favor or three."


    "That¡­ sounds like a deal," I said with a smile, reaching out and shaking her hand again. "Nice doing business with you, General."

 Chapter 74

    Once we escorted the General off of the Chariot, we finally got a closer look at the Intervention and the rest of the hangar bay. The Chariot was parked on one side of the hangar, with the Intervention on the other. Between them were four raindrops, seemingly finished, as well as several crates, which I assumed contained the rest of the loot from our most recent CIS raid. The C70 itself looked good, fully repainted with the same colors as the Chariot, white with royal purple accents, its new name printed in black along the side of the forward block of the ship. I could just make out the slight bulge the new shield generator made in the back spine of the ship. The two new weapons placements looked good as well, as did the one we had moved to a better position.


    As we approached the ship, four B2s approached us, painted in the same style as the original five stationed in the Chariot. They scanned us all quickly, and while none of them had their weapons pointed at us, they did seem to settle a bit when they identified us.


    "Identity confirmed," The lead droid said in a deep, artificial voice that I could feel in my bones. "Greeting Boss."


    "Holy shit¡­I didn''t know you guys could talk," I said, pausing to wait for a response, only for the combat droid to say nothing. "Uh¡­ return to your patrol."


    "Affirmative."


    We all watched as the droids moved, spreading out to watch all angles of the hangar. I shook my head and made my way to the boarding ramp, climbing on board and into the cargo bay. Miru was there waiting for us, a big smile on her face.


    "Welcome back!" She shouted, wrapping Tatnia up in a big hug. "How was the trip?"


    "Very successful," I said happily, looking around the cargo bay. "How did everything go here?"


    "Really well. Everything on the Intervention went smoothly. Even got started on the droid stations." She said, gesturing to the turbo lift. "The B2s charge on the second deck, right outside the turbolift. I''m working on the repair droid space right now."


    "That''s good. Where are Vaz and Pola?"


    "They are out testing the Brick''s systems a bit since we finished its upgrades as well," She explained. "I think you''re going to like what we managed to do with it."


    Miru led us through a tour of the ship, showing off the new secondary power generator and the upgraded shields, pointing out where the new turret stations were. We passed the droid room, which had been stripped down and completely reorganized. Inside were two repair droids working on a much more space-efficient setup that would allow what looked like eight droids to charge rather than the previous six.


    "I didn''t know how you wanted to split the new repair droids, but I figured you would probably put more here, so I knew we would need more space," Miru explained.


    "Good call. Is there enough room for ten?" I asked, looking around. "Can they take turns or something?"


    "Shouldn''t be a problem."


    Once the tour was over, we headed out of the ship before deciding to work on the cargo crates waiting out in the hangar. With the help of the labor droids, we loaded everything onto our ships. We put half of the supplies, a decent-sized container of tri-fighter parts from two of the six we bartered for, as well as the extra parts from when the other four were turned into raindrops, into the Chariot. A crate of B2 parts quickly joined them, as did one of the two CIS tool sets and some of the original parts for the Brick, which Miru wanted to keep for emergency repairs. The second set of CIS droid-specific tools was moved into the Intervention, as did the other half of the supplies and another crate of B2 parts.


    We were just starting to discuss where we should put the BX droids when Vaz and Pola returned, landing the <u>Brick </u></a>smoothly in the hangar. The shuttle looked good, with almost all signs of its age fixed completely. It sported a new coat of paint as well, once again white with purple highlights and accents.


    It was also sporting some obvious upgrades. The engines looked a bit bulkier, and a quick walk around showed that they had an extra thrust module attached between the two original thrusters. According to Miru, it added a significant amount of thrust without drastically changing the ship''s height or length. As we continued to move, Miru pointed out other changes, including an improved shield projector, a new top-of-the-line energy generator, a swath of upgrades made to make the shuttle much harder to pick up on scans, a more powerful double barrel ventral cannon, and two energy torpedo cannons mounted beside the forward facing heavy blaster weapons, under the cockpit.


    As far as I could tell, just about every aspect of this ship was tuned, cleaned, or replaced by a better version. Miru had taken an old but decent shuttle and turned it into a ship to be reckoned with, all while keeping the ship compact enough to fit inside the Chariot.


    "So¡­ how much did it cost?" I asked as I looked around in the interior, which was a bit more cramped but would function much the same as before.


    "Ummm¡­ thirty thousand," She said with a wince, shifting like she expected me to be upset. "But we could probably make about five of that back if we sold more of the old parts!"


    "No, I like the idea of having spare supplies," I said. "It looks good, Miru, and we made most of that back during our mission. Money well spent as far as I''m concerned."


    By the time we finished the short tour of the Brick it was already starting to get late. Rather than push everyone to finish loading everything, I informed the B2s from the Intervention to patrol the whole hangar. With Racer''s modifications, when on patrol, the battle droids defaulted to a much more gentle protocol, which basically just meant no lethal stuff until they were fired on.


    With our stuff protected, the whole crew took an early dinner, gathering in the Chariots''s lounge, talking about the last few days, and just generally catching up. When we got into the discussion of how our mission to Dantooine went, I couldn''t help but smirk and reach into my pocket, pulling out one of the beskar pieces I had been experimenting with.


    "Can you tell what this is?" I asked, reaching out to Miru and dropping the metal into her hand.


    "Uh¡­ no, not off the top of my head. But I could figure it out!" She assured me as she turned the coin-sized chunk over in her hand. "What is it?"


    The young Twi''lek passed the metal to Pola, who squinted at the metal but shook his head after a moment. Vaz handled it next, and after a moment, her eyes went wide, quickly shifting them to look at me.


    "It''s beskar," I finally answered. "And it''s a relatively pure sample, which means I can make an infinite amount with the right resources and a lot of time."


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    "It has been a while since I have seen any," Vaz admitted, tossing it to me. "Where did you find it?"


    "On Dantooine, off a couple of Mandaolrians who have been dead for four thousand years. Give or take a hundred or so," I explained, chuckling when. "We finally have something to make some proper armor."


    "You¡­ robbed a grave?" Pola asked, looking conflicted.


    "Not a grave, at least not exactly. Four thousand years ago, Mandalorians were a lot different than they are now, or were even before the Empire glassed their planet," I explained. "They had a long history of war. With the ancient Jedi, with the first Galactic Republic, and with themselves. These particular Mandalorians were raiders, killing and harassing the civilians in the area. I¡­ don''t really remember why, but if I had to guess, they were trying to get a rise out of the nearby Jedi Enclave. They got put down for it, and some of them were left where they fell."


    "...I suppose that makes it a bit better," Pola said, sounding only partially convinced.


    "Tell you what. If we run into any¡­" I trailed off, giving Vaz a questioning look.


    "Coverts," She responded.


    "Coverts that don''t immediately try to kill us, I will offer to give them some beskar as payback for their ''ancestors'' help."


    This seemed to do a slightly better job of satisfying the young ex-Imperial. Miru, on the other hand, looked a bit worried.


    "You do realize that¡­ I have no idea how to do that sort of forging, right?" She asked, chewing her lip nervously, clearly not wanting to admit she couldn''t do something. "I mean, when I want a particular alloy, I order it. I know stuff about like heat treating and tempering, but its different temperatures for different metals, and I have no idea how any of it works, not to mention I don''t have any of the right equipment or forge or anything that I might need! I-"


    I reached over and put my hand on her shoulder, calming the frantic mechanic, who stopped suddenly, squeezing her eyes shut.


    "Hey, it''s okay. I wasn''t going to ask you to do this. To be honest, I''m not sure what we will do about it, but giving you even more work was definitely not on the table."


    "What are our options?" Nal asked, though it sounded like he was just thinking out loud. "Would searching for one of these coverts be our best bet?"


    "Oh, uh, good luck tracking one down," Julus said, getting a few looks. "What? I might have done some research when Vaz pointed out my dad might have been Mandalorian. Lots of people are looking for them, including the Empire, and no one has really had much success."


    "If we went that route, we wouldn''t need to look. Just make a couple trades using beskar, brag about having more, and they will find us," Tatnia pointed out.


    "What if we just put an ad out?" I suggested. "Mercenary crew, looking for trained armorsmith, must have training in exotic metals."


    "Umm¡­ I know basic forge stuff," Pola said, getting everyone''s attention before anyone could respond to my question. "Sometimes back home, we had to get creative replacing tools."


    "How basic?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "...Basic enough that I wouldn''t have to unlearn any bad habits," He admitted with a shrug. "I know enough to forge tools properly. We even sold them sometimes. With some research, I could figure it out."


    "You do understand that we need to be able to trust this armor with our lives?" I pointed out, making the ex-Imperial wince. "And looking good is important. Not nearly as important as getting the job done, but still something we need."


    Before Pola could say anything, Vaz spoke up in her usual calm confidence.


    "I will assist him with this," Vaz said confidently. "With my knowledge of armor and his skill with tools, I believe we can produce serviceable armor."


    I looked between the two volunteers, my skepticism obvious. Pola sank a bit in his chair at my lack of trust in his abilities, but Vaz explained the discrepancy.


    "Boss, we will not be making the armor from the ground up," She explained. "That would truly be beyond us. We will be forming protective plates and affixing them to an undersuit or body glove. Similar to my own armor. We can purchase ready-made suits."


    "So all you have to do is form the plates¡­ okay, that sounds much more realistic," I said, nodding. "Make a list of what we will need to buy, and we will make sure that where we go to recruit will have what we need."


    I tossed the chunk of beskar to Pola, who caught it, just barely managing not to bumble the catch and drop it.


    "Next question, when we are ready to go recruiting, do we bring the Intervention with us or once again leave it here," I asked. "It would be a pain to come back here again, but it really depends on how well the Rebels did, obscuring the ship''s origins."


    Racer warbled and trilled, spinning in place a single time, responding to what I said. When he was done, I looked to Miru, who snorted and shook his head.


    "He says that there is only so much they can do to hide a ship that everyone knows was recently stolen," She said. "That said, he and the Rebel slicers think they did a good job. That, combined with the change in energy signature and weapons layout, should give us some decent camouflage. Until we go to a directly occupied planet and get busted for having a fully armed warship. It can''t retract its weapons like the Chariot can."


    "Yeah, I figured that. Well, we won''t have that issue for this, we aren''t going anywhere near an occupied planet," I pointed out. "Still gonna have to be careful, though."


    "Do you¡­ have any idea how many we will be¡­ recruiting?" Calima asked, having stayed quiet up to this point, as usual.


    "We need a pilot who can act as a captain since I plan on staying in the Chariot. At least for now," I responded, leaning back in my chair. "A copilot would be good as well. Beyond that, it just comes down to who we can find. We can fill in the rest with the naval droids. I don''t want them near any decision-making, but as long as they are well-maintained and frequently wiped, they should be adequate. Right?"


    "I don''t know. I haven''t had a chance to look at any of them yet," Miru responded. "Same with the BXs. But from what I know, they are adequate. Might look into upgrading them."


    "Well then, that''s your next project. We can fly it around, but if it gets attacked, it''s a sitting duck," I pointed out. "Tomorrow, we will meet to pick our destination. Then, while we get everything loaded, you and Racer can start working on that. Depending on how far away our destination is, we might have a mostly staffed ship by the time we get there."


    With business done, we relaxed for the rest of the night, once again sinking into a casual reunion, the first time we had all eaten together in a long time. Eventually, when everyone was done, we all headed off to bed. I spent an hour doing Recovery meditating before turning in for the night.

 Chapter 75

    "Are you sure they can fly into place in here?" I asked, standing beside Miru as she tapped on her oversized, clearly modified personal datapad. "Calima already volunteered to pull the Chariot out of the hangar to give them more room."


    "There is plenty of room, Boss," She assured me for the third time. "Trust me, this kind of maneuvering is easy for them. They are used to much tighter angles in CIS storage."


    She tapped her datapad again, and two raindrops lifted off the hangar bay floor. They wiggled a little bit, getting a smile out of Miru before slowly moving across the hangar, flipping over about halfway there. They slowed even more as they approached the Chariot, dropping down as low as they could, just barely making it under the ship''s wings. Once in place, they slowly lifted upwards, the specifically designed mount latching on with a loud metallic thunk.


    Once they were attached, Miru activated the next two. They followed the same path, lifting off and flipping over before latching onto the ship. However, these two locked into place along the ship''s centerline, under the forward bow. These mounts were new, made overnight by the repair droids at Miru''s direction. When raindrops finally locked onto the ships, I clapped Miru on the back.


    "Congrats, Miru. With all the modifications you''ve made to the Talos Chariot, it''s one of, if not the most deadly Gozanti-class cruisers out there," I said with a smile. "Six starfighters, a powerful mid-sized shuttle, improved shields and power, not to mention whatever else we can fit inside the starboard hangar. Hell of a lot of firepower from a ship of this size."


    Miru beamed, eating up the praise eagerly. She shut off her data pad and tucked it up under her arm.


    "So what''s next?" She asked, looking over the hangar bay.


    "Moving the <u>MVR</u></a> and a <u>CPH</u></a> to the Intervention."


    That morning, after a full night''s sleep, I had woken up and headed down into the cargo bay of the Chariot. Immediately, I realized that we had a new problem. We weren''t full, not by a long shot, but we were rapidly approaching the point where it was going to start getting awkward to move stuff in and out. This was something I wanted to avoid, if at all possible. The Chariot served multiple functions. It was a landing craft, a warship, and also our home. The cargo bay was more than just a place to keep stuff. It was our workshop, our activities room, and it allowed us a level of flexibility when moving and taking things. Losing that, with how many people we had on board, would make spending long periods of time on the ship a lot less enjoyable. It would also make rapid deployment or embarking of cargo much more difficult.


    So, we sat down and talked about it, quickly coming to the realization that several things should probably be on the Intervention anyway, primarily because it was where any living troops would be living out of, should we ever have any. In the end, we decided that the temporary living structures, some of the wilderness gear, half of our backup weaponry, and, once we were done, one of the CPH speeder bikes and the MVR would be shifted over to the Intervention. The remaining two CPH speeders would be transferred later if we needed more space.


    It was just about noon when we finished transferring and shifting everything around, and after a quick lunch break, I headed off with Tatnia to find General Syndulla. When I finally found her, she was standing in a rather impressive-looking command center, with people working all around her, the room filled with the hum of dozens of conversations at once. When I finally spotted the Twi''lek general, I froze, not because of her, but because of who she was with.


    Standing next to her, looking over a projection of Yavin 4 and discussing the information, was <u>Leia Organa</u></a>. She was stunning, of course, and even as she stood there, listening to a report from someone I didn''t recognize, she still had a presence, a weight that spoke of her drive, presence, and pure charisma.


    I looked around momentarily, collecting my thoughts and smashing down a rising panic when it occurred to me that if Princess Leia was here and not on Yavin, she would have needed a ride¡­


    Sure enough, Han Solo and his massive hairy shadow, Chewbacca, were tucked into one of the dark corners of the large command center. He was watching me, probably noticing that I was looking too long at the princess. Unable to help myself, I gave them a casual and slightly sarcastic salute before heading into the room properly. General Syndulla spotted me as I approached and waved me closer.


    "Deacon, I''ve been told you have everything packed up," She asked. "Coming to say goodbye?"


    "For now," I responded with a smile, turning slightly to face Leia. "I apologize for the interruption, your highness."


    "Deacon Roy¡­ Hera speaks highly of you," She responded, looking me up and down. "She claims we have you and your team to thank for quite a few things, particularly our new base."


    "It was a joint effort," I insisted. "Ahsoka, Luke, Commander Nevue and his team, Lieutenant Soban and his troops all had a part to play."


    "Modest as well," She added with a small smile and a nod. "She also claims you are a¡­ wizard."


    "More of a battlemage at this point, but yes," I responded, working hard to squash my internal excitement.


    "If there wasn''t video footage of your... magic, I would be tempted to question this entire base''s sanity," She said with a raised eyebrow. "Perhaps a gas leak or something contaminating the water."


    "I can''t say I blame you there," I admit with a shrug. "Not sure I would believe it if it wasn''t happening to me. Were you here when Luke and Ahsoka returned?"


    The serene, in-control mask she wore softened at her sibling''s name, a small smile blooming on her face. She nodded and turned a bit to face me more directly.


    "I did. He spoke highly of you as well. Thank you for teaching and for convincing Ahsoka to take him on as a temporary student."


    "She agreed?" I asked, unable to hide my surprise. "That''s great. It will probably do them both some good."


    "You didn''t know?" The Alderaanian princess asked. "I was under the impression that ''knowing things'' was what you did."


    "You''ll believe I use magic, but not that I can know things I shouldn''t?" I asked, raising an eyebrow and smirking. "I really shouldn''t let myself get suckered in, but¡­ I hope you apologized to Chewbacca for calling him a walking carpet when they rescued you."


    If her mask had softened before, now it fell apart as she looked at me with wide eyes, her mouth open. I could practically hear Tatnia''s eyes roll behind me. I chuckled before looking back at General Syndulla.


    "Would you be willing to share when you plan on staging your rescue?" I asked, the Twi''lek''s expression turning serious.


    "...Within the next two weeks," She answered after a moment of thought, getting a look from Princess Leia. "We are hearing whisperings of something big coming, and that the reason they are holding back from glassing the planet with our people on it is because they want to send a message by using whatever it is on the final push-"


    "And you want to beat that," I finished, nodding along with her. "Makes sense, but why wait?"


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    "We spotted a pattern, a rotation of forces that gives us an opening, one we can use to get a group of smaller ships in and out," She explained, turning back to the projection. "The next time it''s open, we plan on pushing through, landing just long enough to load everyone on before burning fuel until we are in the clear."


    "Solid plan," I commented, watching the holo representation of what she just said. "The second you land, though, every Imperial force on the planet is going to be coming for you."


    "We are aware," She agreed, before confidently adding. "We have a plan for that."


    "Alright. Call us if you need our particular brand of crazy," I said, sticking out my hand. "I''ll even offer you a discount. We are likely going to be busy for the next week or so. After that..."


    "I''ll keep that in mind," She responded, shaking my hand with a firm grip. "Until next time."


    I nodded, both to her and Princess Leia, before turning and leaving the command center. I managed to get around a bit down the hallway and a corner before I stopped and leaned against the wall. After a few seconds spent collecting myself, I opened my eyes and pushed off the wall, stopping when I noticed Tatnia staring at me.


    "What?" I asked defensively. "If you knew half the things she''s done, you''d be intimidated too."


    "The Princess? She didn''t seem like much to me¡­"


    "She resisted Imperial torture at the hands of Darth Vader," I said. "That alone is impressive enough to be wary of."


    Tatnia was shocked by my statement, taking a few seconds to follow after me when I started walking back to the hangar.


    It didn''t take long for us to reach the Chariot, where everyone was already gathered, debating our next destination. When Tatnia and I reached the lo I poured myself something to drink before sitting at the table. When I was settled, Nal summarized the list they were compiling.


    "<u>Birgis</u></a> or <u>Listehol </u></a>are the closest planets that are likely to have what we need," Nal said.


    "Listehol is closer, and it''s an intersection of trade routes," Tatnia pointed out, looking over Duros'' shoulder to look at his map.


    "But Birgis is known for having untamed wildlife outside of its cities," Vaz pointed out. "It is likely we will find someone willing to pay us for hunting the more aggressive wildlife. Despite having a few large cities, it is known for being a rough planet to live on. Armor and weapons will be abundant, meaning Pola and I will find everything we need to craft armor."


    "I like the sound of Birgis," I responded, looking over the map Nal handed me. "What''s the Imperial presence like?"


    "It''s on the same trade lane as Dantooine, so none," Nal answered. "Unless they have a reason to be there, it shouldn''t have anything other than a periodic pass to discourage pirates."


    "Then it sounds like Birgis is a better bet for getting multiple things done simultaneously," I said. "We can take some mission to fill my soul gems while Pola and Vaz work on their smithing, Miru works on the droids, and we search for some crew. In fact¡­"


    I looked around at everyone, mentally going over everything and pairing off teams in my head.


    "We could probably do it all at once," I said when I finished. "Nal and Tatnia, do you think you could handle the primary interviews?"


    "Could certainly weed out the poor choices," Nal responded confidently.


    "Shouldn''t be too hard," Tatnia added with a nod.


    "Then you two can use the CPHs to get around. Miru and Calima will stay at whatever starport we land at, working on the droids and keeping an eye out for anyone nosing around. Or looking for us," I said, gesturing to each pair as I talked. "Pola and Vaz can work on setting everything up and working for our armor production. They can use the Brick to get around, shop, and transport anything they can''t get delivered. Julus and I go hunting with the Arrow since we will likely be dragging around carcasses."


    As I talked, I noticed Miru shifting slightly, her nose scrunched up as she contemplated whatever idea her brain came up with. After a moment she pulled out her modified datapad and started taping away, obviously lost to us until she was done.


    "That''s going to spread us pretty thin," Tatnia pointed out.


    "Yeah, what if one of us gets ambushed?" Julus asked. "Shouldn''t we stay closer to support each other if something happens?"


    "We will have support, constant support, in the form of the raindrops," I pointed out. "After what happened last time, I am not fucking around. If shit hits the fan, we send them in to cover our escape. No pulling punches, no sneaking around, just a whole lot of firepower until the problem goes away. On top of that, Pola and Vaz can be on the scene with the Brick pretty fast, especially if we stick a certain distance from the ship."


    We discussed it a bit more before eventually settling on Birgis, specifically one of the larger cities. With our destination decided, Pola, Vaz, Tatnia, and Nal headed out to the Intervention to start the preflight checks while Calima began hers. Miru headed down to her workshop, clearly working through something in her head, while I headed to the enchanting room, grabbed one of three large crates of Kyber crystals, and returned to the lounge. I had already filled a satchel with soul gems, but if Julus and I were going on an intentional hunting spree for a week or more, I wanted to have as many on hand as possible.


    When we finally lifted off, I was still in the process of turning the entire crate into soul gems, with only about twenty done at that point. The drain on my mana was significant, and with a crate of probably around sixty multicolored crystals, I would likely be sitting here for another hour. When I was finally done, I knocked on the door frame of the bridge. Calima spun around in her chair to greet me, with the backdrop of hyperspace behind her.


    "What''s up, Boss?" She asked, looking curious. "Is everything... alright?"


    "I just wanted to check up on you," I explained, stepping into the cockpit and sitting down in one of the chairs. "I spend a lot of time with the rest of the crew, but I kinda feel like I don''t check up on you often enough."


    "Don''t worry about me¡­ Boss," She said with a smile, the white tendrils fused to her purple-scaled head shifting as she moved. "I prefer to keep to myself, and¡­ the others come and check up on me when they can."


    "That''s good, but is there anything you need?" I asked. "Anything we could do to help make piloting easier?"


    "All I need is¡­ my datapad and the occasional connection to the holonet to download more books," She admitted with a smile. "As for piloting¡­Will there be any spare naval droids? Having one or two of them here to read panels and assist in sensor readouts would be helpful."


    "We can set aside two for the Chariot," I assured her. "Is that all?"


    "That''s¡­ all I can think of."


    "Okay, let me know if there is anything you want or need," I said with a smile, standing up from the seat. "I''ll talk to you later."


    She nodded and turned back around, focusing on the readout in front of her, swapping through a few different tabs before finally settling back into her chair and grabbing her datapad again. Satisfied that our pilot was happy, I grabbed the crate of empty soul gems, went into the enchanting room to grab the already filled bag, before heading down to the cargo hold to store them in the Arrow.

 Chapter 76

    Once the empty soul gems were safely stored in the Arrow, ready for our hunting trips, I made my way to the workshop. As I entered the cargo bay, I spotted Leddy, the forest green leader of the repair droid. They were working on welding something to the back of a CPH with the help of one of her underlings. Covering my eyes as I walked past, I spotted Miru. She was working on a BX commando, peeking into the inner workings of its chest with a flashlight.


    "Yeah, I see it. That''s going to make converting these a bit more difficult," She said, talking to Racer, who was already hooked into a Naval B1.


    The astromech warbled and chirped, shifting its angular dome to look at me, whistling what appeared to be a warning to Miru.


    "Hmmm? Oh, hey. These BXs have a secondary processor in their chest. Not enough to work without a head, but enough to make them much smarter," She said, clicking off her light and leaning back, turning in her chair to face me. "It''s also gonna make shifting their loyalties harder."


    "How much harder?" I asked nervously. "Like don''t be alone with them or¡­"


    "What? Oh, no, the two systems are in constant communication, and Racer is going to have to slice them individually," She explained, shaking her head. "The whole system will crash if the two processors don''t communicate properly. The problem wouldn''t be them turning against us, it would be them bricking themselves the second they try and think too hard.


    Racer whistled and tweeted at me, somehow sounding annoyed. I looked over Miru to see what he was doing, only to find him connected to the Naval B1 through three separate cables.


    "He isn''t saying you can''t handle it, Racer," Miru responded, rolling her eyes while still facing me. "He just doesn''t understand how it works. And honestly, seeing how much better these droids are than the B1 model¡­ I don''t blame him for being paranoid."


    "That''s good, huh?"


    "Just about. I kinda assumed that they were some sort of middle ground between B1s and B2s, but no, they are more like B2s with their agility cranked on high!" She said, sounding genuinely impressed. "Slightly less armored, but with more than double the computing power, more flexible subroutines, a powerful stability gyro, and an incredibly pathing system. Their sensors are better, too. And that sword is karking brutal. Honestly, they''re a bit scary. I''m just glad you guys never faced them."


    "Trust me, I am too. I nearly had a heart attack when I found them," I admitted, shaking my head. "What''s Leddy working on? Also, language."


    "I had an idea while at the meeting. These BX guys have mag locks built into their feet, and can grip pretty hard," She explained, ignoring my rebuke about her swear. "With a bit of adjustment to the repulsor footprint and some bits of metal welded on, a BX can ride on the back of the CPH. It will slow the speeder down, but the BX is light enough that it won''t be too bad. Here, take a look."


    She stepped away from her workbench and picked up her datapad, turning it to show me. It was a quick, crude <u>sketch</u></a>, marked with measurements and a few other notes, but it painted the picture pretty well. The BX would hang off the back of the CPH with its legs on either side of the chassis, straddling the back. It was partially folded up, with its feet connected to some panels that I assumed were what Leddy and her subordinate were working on. Its chest would be pressed against the back of the speeder, with its arms raised to grip onto handles and a small platform to rest its butt on. It would definitely look strange, but being able to carry our own backup around was well worth it.


    "You think you can get a few working by the time we get there?" I asked, and Miru nodded. "I''m just going through to make sure there aren''t any hidden surprises before handing them off to Racer to clear internally. We can start editing after that. Should have some ready by the time we land. Then I''ll start working on the Naval B1s, but I don''t see those taking very long."


    "Good. Once the Naval B1s are ready, you are basically free to work on whatever you want, as long as Leddy and the rest of the repair droids can do the general maintenance by themselves."


    "In general, they are, plus they will tell me if there is something they need me for," She assured me before perking up suddenly. "Oh! By the way, Racer discovered that the normal B1s have a gunner subroutine for capital ships, so every gun we have can be manned independently, as long as we have enough B1s."


    "Seriously? Right after we threw so many away?" I asked, letting out a long sigh and rubbing my face. "I should have seen that coming..."


    "Don''t worry, we have plenty of spare parts, Boss," She assured me. "We have five intact-"


    "I seem to remember saying to only keep two or three."


    "We have five intact, and I can put together five more without even making much of a dent," She repeated, catching my look and shrugging. "What? It all worked out in the end!"


    "Yeah, Yeah. Good work, Miru. Do me a favor, and don''t push yourself too much," I said, patting her shoulder before turning to leave the workshop. "Give me a shout if you need some help!"


    "Will do Boss!"


    I made my way through the ship, debating what I should be doing with the rest of the hyperspace jump. It was early afternoon, so I didn''t have nearly enough time to learn an Adept level spell. Instead, I went to the lounge and summoned my grimoire. The information the book had revealed about Arcane Enchanting had been short but information-dense. Twice now I read and re-read the same seven pages, and each time I picked up new information that hadn''t entirely broken into my head.


    This time, as I read through the same section for the third time, I noticed something that made me very happy.


    In Skyrim, there were several ways that the game controlled how powerful the enchanted gear you made was. Limiting what you could wear, locking some enchantments to certain types of items, even making some enchantments impossible to make, forcing you to find them in the wild and consequently scaled to your level. It also had different levels of soul gems: petty, lesser, common, greater, and grand. Essentially, having a smaller, less powerful soul gem meant less powerful enchantments.


    As far as I could tell, the system I was using did not mention different power levels regarding soul gems. The gems worked by gathering life energy and would continue gathering it until it was full, rather than only accepting energy from one source before being locked as "full." The book did explain that there was plenty of variation in how much energy two different gems could hold but never mentioned anything about it being important. In fact, it went as far as confirming that having multiple smaller-capacity gems was sometimes more convenient than having one large one.


    Frustratingly, there was still so much information about enchanting that was still hidden behind the completion of the Arcane Enchanter. It made me anxious and antsy, like when I was still locked to Novice-level spells on Nar Shaddaa, but I had already learned them all. I desperately wanted to know how my enchanting system worked, and being forced to fill some soul gems before I could start was torture.


    Eventually, giving myself a minor headache trying to puzzle anything extra from the information I had, I decided to kill time and learn an Apprentice-level spell to distract myself. I went through my list of spells that I hadn''t learned yet and was shocked to realize I never learned the second level of Oakflesh, Stoneflesh. I remember putting it off since it was nearly useless while I was even moderately armored, but it would be very handy if I was ever stuck without armor.


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    Like when I was stuck in a prison mine with a bomb around my neck.


    I settled down almost immediately to learn the spell, which, because of my issues with Alteration, ended up taking about seven hours, pushing me a bit later than I was happy about. Still, having a way to subtly toughen my body considerably without glowing purple was worth the lost hour or so of sleep.


    The following day, I made the conscious choice to take it easy. Julus and I would likely be spending more than a week hunting and filling up soul gems. Despite my magic and our access to tech, hunting would still involve a lot of physical activity, so I didn''t feel bad for relaxing when I could. After breakfast, Julus and I spent about an hour cleaning our weapons and preparing our gear for our trip. Julus cleaned his pistols while I cleaned a pistol and a rifle, though Julus would be the one the latter weapon. As powerful as his Westar pistols were, they were no match for a rifle, which could provide a lot more power per bolt, something necessary to penetrate the thick hide and thicker muscles of larger beasts and creatures we were likely to find. We also inspected some survival gear, which we would bring just in case.


    When we were done preparing our gear, we sat back in the lounge and connected to the holonet. Together, we began going through the bounties and culling jobs posted from the planet, looking for ones we could collect on. We were both surprised with how many they were offering, including several posted by the local government that were essentially always open.


    As far as we could tell, three main animals seemed to be the focus of bounties. One was a sizeable six-legged lizard about the same scale as a horse. The second was a scaled ape creature with large tusks jutting from its mouth, which was slightly smaller than a gorilla. The third and perhaps the scariest animal was a lizard about the size of a large dog. It looked startlingly similar to a velociraptor with a durable-looking, spiny exoskeleton helmet.


    All three of the creatures were dangerous and aggressive. While I had opinions about walking through an animal''s front lawn, getting attacked, and then calling the animal dangerous, their description certainly painted killing any of them that got close to civilization as a necessary precaution.


    On top of bounties on the more dangerous animals of the planet, there were also a lot of requests for deliveries of meat, as well as bounties put up by farmers for lowering the sizes of herds to keep them from eating crops.


    "Is this kind of thing common?" I asked, copying a contact code into my datapad for later. "This seems like a lot."


    "Kind of?" He said, gesturing so-so with his hand. "It''s, uh¡­ Some planets just have aggressive ecosystems. There are plenty of planets with normal ecosystems, and even some where it''s kinda the opposite, but some planets are just filled with things that want to kill you."


    "Like what?"


    "Uhh¡­ oh! <u>Kashyyyk</u></a>, the Wookie homeworld?" He asked, pausing until I nodded. "Right, well, its ecosystem is horrifying, below the canopy that the Wookies live on at least. But <u>Alderaan</u></a> has-... had an ecosystem that was apparently super peaceful."


    "Alright, I''ll take your word for it."


    "How much are you looking to make off these bounties anyway, Boss?"


    "I''m hoping to at least cover whatever Pola and Vaz end up spending on their new equipment," I admitted. "Beyond that, it''s just about filling up as many soul gems as possible."


    "Well, will it be one kill per stone?" Julus asked. "Because I saw your bag and the crate¡­"


    "No, from what I was reading, it seemed like the bigger the beast, the more life energy it has, and energy will fill multiple gems as long as one person is carrying them," I answered, shrugging when he looked at me. "I know, it''s magic. Sometimes things work weird."


    "Fair enough, Boss."


    With our research done, I headed to the first deck to check on Miru. I found her sitting on a crate, watching the repair droids as they painted three BX droids and two B2s. There were three other BXs who looked like they were up next, as well as the rest of the Chariots B2s.


    As I watched, I realized that the B2s color scheme was slightly different, with their armor the same dark purple it had been before, but with white highlights now replaced with a dark yellow. The BXs were also primarily purple, with their joints painted a slightly more burnt orange than their original paint job.


    I stopped to watch for a moment, nodding in appreciation of the new look, before making my way to Miru. She apparently hadn''t noticed I was there and was starting to slowly nod off.


    "Miru, please tell me you didn''t pull an all-nighter?" I asked. "I thought I told you not to overwork yourself?"


    The young mechanical genius jumped when I spoke, forcing me to reach out and keep her from falling off the crate. She cursed under her breath and rubbed her face.


    "I know, I know, but I wanted these to be ready for when you guys left," She said with a shrug. "Now everyone has a pair of BXs for backup when they leave."


    I let out a sigh, unable to deny that having such a strong backup was a good idea. I already felt better about splitting everyone up.


    "I appreciate that, Miru. It was a good idea," I admitted. "Thank you."


    She nodded and leaned against my shoulder as we watched the repair droids do their work. After a long moment, I mentioned the B2s new colors.


    "Why the repaint?"


    "The B2s? I didn''t like how the first design came out," She admitted with a shrug. "I was trying to stick with the theme of purple and white, but it just didn''t work on the droids, so I went with purple being the common color, with everything else just going with what looks good."


    "I like it," I commented. "Makes me think we should have a logo or something."


    "Probably, but we should have a name before that," She pointed out. "Kinda surprised you haven''t given us one, to be honest. Seems like something you would think is important."


    "...Yeah, you''re not wrong," I admitted. "Try and come up with something. I''ll tell the rest of the crew to think about it, too. But later. Right now, you have a date with your bed."


    "I wanna stay up and help everyone get sorted when we land," She explained. "And I want to help Racer with the Naval B1s."


    "We have like three hours until then," I responded, shaking my head. "Go get some sleep. The droids will be here when you wake up. We will probably be here for at least a week, so take it easy, okay?"


    She groaned, letting out a sound that can only be described as teenage frustration and annoyance, but nodded and slid off the crate, heading back for her workshop bed. I managed to keep from chuckling until I had left the cargo bay.

 Chapter 77

    <div>


    Intervention. We had our comms connection with the Intervention open constantly, with Tatnia giving us frequent updates on what the warships'' more powerful sensors were picking up.


    "We are being scanned, but it''s nothing out of the ordinary," She reported, her voice slightly distorted through the tightband comms. "I''m not picking up anything that could really threaten us. Just civilian level defenses."


    "Alright. Julus, contact the docking bay that we are coming down from orbit now," I said, leaning back in my chair. "Go ahead and begin the descent, Intervention. Calima, follow them in."


    We descended on the planet slowly, heading for the very outskirts of the largest city on the planet. The berth we found was waiting for us, empty, with plenty of room for both our ships to land. It was a significantly large landing pad and would cost us a good chunk of credits to rent for a week, but it was unfortunately necessary.


    With any luck, it would be worth the cost.


    Once the Chariot landed with a reverberating thump, the crew spent about an hour getting organized and preparing. The B2 guards were activated and quickly started moving around the ships, with four from the Chariot and six from the Intervention taking up a patrol outside, the rest walking around inside.


    When Miru was sure B2s were all working well, she spent about fifteen minutes explaining the BX''s abilities to everyone. She also had one put on a demonstration, the nimble droid running around the cargo bay, jumping and bouncing over crates. It was an extremely impressive display, especially considering just how stiff most of its CIS robotic soldiers were. She also ended with a word of caution.


    "These guys are much tougher than the B1s, but they are not indestructible," She explained, rapping her knuckle on one of the droid''s chest as it stood at attention. "Like most CIS droids, they are also a bit on the reckless side. Order them to do something dumb, and they will do something dumb, even if it gets them killed. None of them will develop personalities, but they are still expensive tools that will absolutely jump needlessly into the way of danger if you give a stupid order. We nudged up their self-preservation a bit, so they won''t step into moving traffic when you ask them to cross the street, but it''s still something to keep in mind."


    "Why won''t they develop personalities?" Tatnia asked. "Why not do what you did for the repair droids and have one leader who goes unwiped?"


    "At some point, we might," I responded. "For now, though, I want the very dangerous combat droids to have as few quirks as possible. Besides, lots of evidence shows that CIS droids kind of fall apart when they aren''t frequently wiped."


    "Oh. Alright, fair enough."


    When Miru was done, I ordered two of the BXs to climb into the Arrow, the droids following their orders silently and marching toward the hangar. Julus and I said our goodbyes for the day, packed up the last of what we needed, and hopped into the Arrow. Julus volunteered to fly while I took a seat next to the sensor controls Miru added a while ago. It would make finding a lot of our targets easy.


    "Alright, our first target is a bounty posted by a farmer about an hour from here," I explained, sending the location to the front screen in front of Julus. "There''s a herd of invasive grazing animals, something called a ''Dorum'', that we are going to trim down. The pay is five hundred credits."


    "Oh, wow. No wonder no one else has picked it up," Julus said, taping the controls for the Arrow and slowly lifting off the first deck of the Chariot. "If I didn''t know you needed to kill animals anyway, I would say it wasn''t worth our time."


    "It almost isn''t any way," I agreed. "I would have picked a more profitable option, but this is the first time I''m doing this, so starting with a relatively docile herbivore while I get used to the process sounded like a good idea."


    After a bit of slow maneuvering and guidance from Miru, we drove from the central cargo space into the starboard hangar bay and out of that into the open air. As Julus flew up and over the ship''s berth walls, I considered the idea of keeping the starboard hangar reserved for ground units. Being able to open the bay doors and send out a bunch of speeder bikes and an air speeder could be extremely useful. So far, the plan had been to find starfighters that could fit in each bay. Either that or to find even more tri-fighters to convert into raindrops, but the idea of having a rapidly deploying ground force was also pretty tempting. Then again, starfighters could be used against ground assets with incredible effectiveness. It was and usually a lot safer for the starfighter, too.


    For now, I put aside the idea and focused on activating the sensor unit, setting it to scan the ground, mostly just to get a feel for the concentration of wildlife. There were three very hostile creatures that the government would pay us to kill. There were stipulations, mostly about them being within range of any city, village, or town, but the range was so broad that it ended up being a significant chunk of the continent we had landed on.


    It seemed that the government had little concern for conservationist ideas.


    About an hour later, we were flying over a massive expanse of plains and lightly forested land. Inside that area was a large farm, at least a dozen or so acres across. The field was planted with what looked like small purple-green plants, maybe two feet tall. By the time Julus brought us around and finally landed us in the driveway of a decent-sized home on the outskirts of the field, an older human man was waiting for us. He was armed, but the blaster rifle was slung around his back.


    I climbed out of the Arrow and made my way to him, shaking his hand when I was close enough. We had a short conversation about the bounty and confirmed that he would take care of the corpses.


    "Dorum meat is edible, but not exactly top quality," He explained, pausing to spit something in the dirt. "Even so, there are plenty of people here who can''t afford to be picky. I''ll take some for myself, but most of it will go to those around here who need it."


    "How large is the herd?" I asked. "And how many do you want us to kill?"


    "There are about fifty of them," He responded. "I want at least fifteen dead. I also want the largest stud taken out as well. Usually, they are the reason the herd gets so large in the first place."


    After a short conversation, he directed us to the last place he saw the herd, around the easternmost portion of his farm. As I sat down in the passenger seat of the Arrow I went over a basic plan.


    "I''m going to be on the ground with both of the BXs as backup," I explained. "You are going to be above us, hovering in place and in control of the Arrows turret. If I get overwhelmed, then you can use the cannon to basically turn the herd to paste. That''s a last resort, though. And you, BX-1 and BX-2."


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    Both droids, who up until now had remained completely silent, visibly shifted to focus on me completely when I used their new designations.


    "Only attack animals I''ve hit with my weapon in the last sixty seconds," I explained. "Unless I give you the weapons-free command. We will follow them when they run, slowly taking down all fifteen. My first target is going to be the largest male of the herd, the one he specifically wanted us to get."


    As we slowly hovered over the eastern edge of the farmer''s field, the damage that the herd had done to his farm was pretty obvious, as was where that herd had gone. The BXs and I dropped off the Arrow and landed easily on the ground, the droids almost popping up, scanning the areas for threats. Julus stayed in the Arrow, following us from the air as I adjusted the satchel full of soul gems hanging on my hip.


    Slowly, the three of us on the ground followed the obvious trail the herd of dorum left, following along the edge of the treeline and down through a section of the clearing that wasn''t currently being farmed.


    Eventually, after following the "trail," which was really just a massive swath of the clearing where the dirt had been torn up enough that it was just mud, we stumbled on the herd. Dorum''s were substantial beasts, a cross between a capybara, a boar, and a rhino, with a pebbly hide and a row of spikes running along its back. The slow, steady grazing reminded me a lot of a cow, but the farmer assured me they were fast runners when they wanted to be.


    Silently I gestured for the BXs to spread out a bit, the droids crouching low as they moved away from me, stopping when they had a clear firing line. I summoned my bow, adding the Soul Trap addition as I did. Slowly, I let out a breath, mentally reminding myself that not only would all of this meat be used to feed people, but this herd was invasive and hurting people''s livelihood. Not only that, but I would be using the energy to protect my crew.


    I pulled an arrow from my back, knocked it and focused on the largest dorum in the field. I took a deep breath before slowly letting it out, drawing the bow in one smooth motion. After a second spent adjusting and preparing my shot, I fired. The purple-conjured arrow snapped across the field, slamming into the large invasive animal''s head and cleanly punching into its skull. It convulsed once before collapsing to the side, its body locked for a moment before going limp.


    Immediately, I drew another arrow, drew a bead on a second animal, and let the arrow fly. It slammed into its skull as well, but this time a bit lower, the animals still dying almost instantly. By now, the herd was panicking, simultaneously trying to spot the threat and figure out what was going on. They were spooked, and the herd broke up, breaking up and running in three different directions. I watched closely, the two I shot still twitching on the ground. After several seconds, just long enough for me to start to worry, the corpses began to glow, a spiraling, swirling energy coming off of them and reaching out to me. The energy swirled around my bow, making a subtle whirling, sizzling sound before directing downward to my satchel.


    Once the purple life energy was gone, I knelt and put my bow down, pulling my satchel around and digging through it. I had to look through the hole back, but after a minute I managed to find two gems that seemed to be fully charged, with a third that I assumed was partially full. The two filled gems had a subtle glow to them, while also looking significantly less transparent, to the point of almost being a solid opaque color. The fact that the partially filled gem was only just barely glowing and was now translucent rather than transparent led me to believe that as they were filled, they became more and more opaque and glowed brighter and brighter.


    With a new theory in mind, I lifted my comms and waved to Julus.


    "It worked," I said into the comms with a smile. "Make a note of where these are. I''m going after more."


    "Alright. Good luck, Boss."


    I waved one last time before heading off to find the largest of the three broken-off groups. This time, I cast Muffle on myself as we got closer, knowing the herd was now on alert. As we walked, I gave the BXs their new orders.


    "When we get in range and I stop, spread out again. This time, I will be hitting as many as possible, so engage and finish off any I hit but fail to kill.


    "Roger Roger," BX-1 said quietly in a deep robotic voice, his volume adjusted low.


    I nodded and continued to follow the herd''s tracks, then used Clairvoyance to find them when my absolute lack of any real hunting skill reared its head. When we finally found the smaller group, I motioned for the droids to spread out again. After they silently confirmed they were in position, I took a moment to focus before slowly drawing another arrow, sighting in my next target and letting the conjured shaft of magic fly. Once again, my first shot slammed into the target''s head, killing it almost instantly. Unlike before, I wanted to hit as many as possible this time, so I drew another arrow and fired again, pushing myself as fast as I could.


    My second shot hit a dorum in its hip, causing its back legs to lock up. By the time I lined up my next shot, red bolts of blaster fire lanced out from BX-1 and BX-2''s positions, finishing off my second target. I managed to hit much closer to the chest on my third target, and the dorum immediately dropped. My fourth shot hit my fourth target''s front leg, barely even slowing it down as it ran with the rest of the group. Thankfully, the BXs easily took it down as well.


    When the bodies were done glowing, and all of their life energy was in my soul gems, I commed Julus again, turning to look back and up at the air speeder as it hovered about thirty meters back and forty meters up. A quick comm conversation later, and I was off looking for the next dorum group.


    This continued for about three hours, the task getting a bit more time-consuming as the groups got smaller and smaller, and it became harder and harder to sneak up on them. Still, I was hunting herbivores with a bow meant to punch through fantasy metals, backed up by assassin bots with blaster rifles, so while time-consuming, it wasn''t exactly difficult.


    When the job was done, we returned to the farmer, who was now joined by a few other people, all of them with repulsor lift trucks of various types. We handed over the locations of the freshly hunted dorum, and he handed over five hundred credits, shaking my hand in appreciation.


    "This herd has been causing issues all around the grasslands. You just made a lot of farmers happy," He said with a smile. "Not to mention feeding quite a few people. Thank you."


    "I''m glad we could help," I said with a smile, before saying a quick goodbye and heading back to the Arrow.

 Chapter 78

    When we landed back at the Chariot, I was itching to get started with the Arcane Enchanter. We had filled just shy of seventeen soul gems in total, which was plenty to finish the enchanter and do just a bit of experimenting. Of course, I would need some stuff to experiment on, which would have required me to go on a shopping trip if Julus hadn''t volunteered on the way back. It seemed that my crew was just as excited about the prospect of enchanted equipment as I was.


    We landed inside the empty hangar wing of the Chariot and quickly offloaded the BXs before Julus left to trinket shopping, this time riding the MVR since the Arrow was a bit bulky. As he left, I walked around to see how everyone was doing, finding that only Miru and Calima were on board. Everyone else was still out taking care of their tasks.


    I quickly checked in on Miru, finding her diligently working on the Naval B1s. I thanked her for her work on the BXs and assured her that they were very helpful. When we were done chatting, I made my way directly to the enchanting room. I was nearly bubbling in excitement as I quickly opened my grimoire, paging through the guide and pulling out the necessary instructions. I then pulled eight filled soul gems from the satchel and, one by one, slotted them into their mounts. When they were all in place, I finally cast the last preparation spell, the entire table glowing for a long moment as I dumped my whole mana pool into it. When I was done, the glow slowly faded.


    For a moment, I looked at the table, silently wondering if there was going to be some sort of signal that it was complete. After a full minute of nothing happening, I frowned. I paged through the grimoire, wondering if I had done something wrong before flipping through the pages before letting out a whoop of excitement as I realized its contents had expanded, revealing a long section about the process of enchanting.


    I quickly picked up the book and left the enchanting room behind, happily finding a comfortable position on the lounge couch to finally start the long-awaited learning enchantment process.


    In Skyrim, in the video game at least, the process of enchanting was basically about three things. The first was having the right materials, which boiled down to a soul gem and whatever you wanted to enchant. The second part was learning a particular enchantment, which you did by finding or buying something that already held that enchantment and essentially sacrificing it at the Arcane Enchanter. The third part was your skill level and perks, which directly affected how effective you were at enchanting, as well as offering a variety of bonuses or broad increases to potency or cost. At the end of the day, it was just about as gamified a system as you could get.


    I had known for a while that however enchantment would work for me, there had been little to no chance that it would work anything like it had in the game. As I read through the enchanting section in the grimoire, my theory was proven correct. The system I would be using was very different and a bit of a double-edged sword.


    On one hand, I wouldn''t be restricted by what enchantments I had broken down and learned. Instead, every enchantment I could learn was laid out for me, with page after page of options. This was good because I wasn''t sure how to find enchanted items in the Star Wars universe. I was pretty sure the Force could do something similar to enchantment, but Force artifacts were rare, and a lot of them were steeped in the dark side.


    On the other hand, this new enchanting system was far from the plug and play, snap your fingers and now you blowing things up with fire better than I knew from the games. Instead, it was a mentally intensive process where I would create a spell matrix inside a sturdy piece of material and then shift it to fit the dimensions perfectly. I would then have to pull the life force from a soul gem through the matrix, essentially burning the energy into the material. How strong the enchantment was boiled down to how long I could hold the matrix steady, how much energy I could guide through it, and how precise the matrix was fit to the armor, ring, amulet, weapon or whatever. Enchanting stuff was a difficult and lengthy process, and that was ignoring how expensive the materials could get.


    On top of that, not only is it very likely I would never even get close to the sort of stuff I could make as a video game character, the list of enchantments was considerably smaller. Instead of having a fortify enchantment for every aspect under the sun, there were only four, those being fortify strength, stamina, magicka and dexterity.


    There were also five attunement enchantments, each for a different school of magic. On top of that, there were four protective enchantments: one for shock, fire, and frost, as well as one for general protection from damage. Finally, there was water breathing, muffle, and mana storage.


    The list for weapon enchantments was even shorter, with three elemental effects, soul trap, enhanced edge, absorb or damage magicka, absorb or damage stamina, and finally... paralyze.


    The greatest letdown I learned while reading was that while the games took a lot of liberties to gamify the enchanting process, one thing they did very little to was the restriction of how many enchanted items you could have on you at once, though in-game it was just an aspect of what exactly you could wear in general.


    Apparently, while weapon enchantments needed to be charged manually with a soul gem, passive enchantments all drew power from ambient energy. While this meant you never had to worry about your armor or amulet running out of charge, it also meant that wearing five rings, four necklaces, an enchanted hood, and a circlet would essentially cause the enchantments to run out of energy. If that happened too many times, the enchantments would become damaged and potentially fizzle out.


    As a result of the passive enchantments essentially starving each other if they were too close for too long, the most common enchanting configuration was a ring or glove on each hand, a head or neckpiece, the chest plate, the legs, and the boots. This was considered to be the safest layout, and considering even a low-end enchantment was worth hundreds of gold, almost everyone followed it. Some lords might be willing to push the envelope and risk ruining a ring or hood, but most people couldn''t afford to be so nonchalant about that much money.


    A skilled enchanter would occasionally imbue two enchantments on a chest piece, and a master could enchant some types of leg armor twice as well. Such pieces were rare in modern Skyrim according to the grimoire, as it was rumored a safe, dual enchantment process was lost to time.


    Still, while it was unfortunate that I wouldn''t be able to engage in the fiddly and easily taken advantage of enchantment system that existed in the game, my options were still impressive. Visions of Julus running around people in a blur, decked out in dexterity and stamina enchantments, floated in my mind, as did the image of Vaz, clad in heavy armor enchanted with strength and damage protection, laying down heavy fire while blaster bolts bounced off of her. Six enchantments per person was still a lot to work with.


    Of course, while I knew the concept was eventually achievable, I also knew it wasn''t going to be easy. There was going to be an incredible learning curve to this process, and even when I got past the skill issue, soul gems would very quickly become a bottleneck to the process. I would be okay with one, maybe two more visits to the Crystal Caves, but after that, I knew I would need to start looking for more sources of Kyber.


    About the time I was done with my reading, people began to filter into the lounge for dinner, including Julus, who had returned from his shopping trip. Despite desperately wanting to crack open the box he had returned with and subsequently stashed in the enchanting room, I put away my grimoire and sat down to eat with Julus, Calima, and Miru. Vaz and Pola had already eaten on the Intervention, before crashing in their rooms from a long day of hauling and setting up a high-tech forge in what had once been the second largest storage bay in the Intervention, the one on the second deck.


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    "So¡­ did you finish your altar thing, Boss?" Miru asked before I could swallow my first bite.


    "I did, and yes, it finally unlocked more pages in the grimoire," I responded, answering what I was sure was the next question.


    "Oh, uh¡­ how long until you''re ready to try enchanting something?" Julus asked eagerly


    "I''m probably gonna have to put off trying until tomorrow, unfortunately. It''s a very long process, and staying up that late is very unhealthy," I explained, giving Miru a look for the last chunk before looking back to Julus. "Sorry, I know you rushed off to get those trinkets and things¡­"


    "Don''t worry about it, Boss," Julus said, waving away my concern. "I would have just sat around, doing nothing until tomorrow anyway."


    The conversation continued, and I explained the basics of enchanting, or at least what I knew so far. Eventually, the topic shifted from what I was working on to what Miru was working on.


    "Racer should have the programming done by tomorrow," She explained, poking at her food. "All ten Naval droids are in pretty good condition. A few needed some small repairs, but with the parts we have, that won''t be an issue."


    "When they are ready¡­ Perhaps we should take them on a test cruise?" Calima suggested softly. "I have worked with astromechs¡­ before, but never droids like these."


    "Not a bad idea," I said. "I want to test the gunner function that Racer found in the normal B1s as well."


    "Racer and will get the droids done by tomorrow afternoon," Miru nodded excitedly. "Then-"


    "Don''t rush Miru, aim for the day after tomorrow." I said, patting her shoulder. "I want to be there for the test, and Julus and I will be busy tomorrow. So take your time, get everything set, and we can go after that."


    "Fine, fine. Racer and I will have everything ready for the day after tomorrow," Miru accepted reluctantly.


    Not long after, we decided to go on the shakedown cruise, Tatnia and Nal returned from their interviews. They had gone through multiple pilot bars, combing through dozens of pilots and crew. Unfortunately, unlike Terr''skiar, which had been a trade hub and therefore full of pilots and other crew just looking for new work, this planet was much more out of the way. This meant that our options were a lot more sparse. We had been spoiled for choice when we found Calima, but now we were scraping the barrel, trying to find a diamond. After briefly describing three of the most promising but still subpar choices, I shook my head.


    "I don''t want you guys to settle for anything other than a great fit," I explained, both of them nodding in general agreement. "We still have plenty of time, so there is no reason to rush. Even if we don''t find anyone in this city, then we can check the others. If that fails, we will go to other planets. I want a reliable captain who we can trust alone with the Intervention."


    "Oh, you don''t have to worry about that," Miru said happily. "The B2s will figure out they are being stolen really quickly and work with the B1s to take the ship back. Unless you plan on hiring so many people that they could overpower the B2s¡­ what?"


    "They aren''t going to get confused and think the Intervention is being stolen if it goes on a solo mission, will they?" I asked nervously.


    "Oh! No, all of the droids are tied into their ship''s communication and computer systems," She assured us. "They''ll know what''s going on."


    "Huh¡­ alright, well the idea still stands," I said, turning back to Nal and Tatnia. "Even if the selection isn''t the best, I don''t want to settle."


    "Understood. Perhaps an ad in the local boards for pilots and captains will help," Nal suggested. "Though it might only attract more unqualified people."


    Before long, it was getting late, and I was starting to feel the effects of trudging through the fields and woods around the farm, tracking down dorums for most of the day. I spent an hour on my Recovery meditations before finally going to sleep.


    The next morning was spent mostly staying out of everyone''s way, as Julus and I were putting off hunting for the morning so I could try enchanting something for the first time. That meant that as Nal, Tatnia, Vaz and Pola were rushing around, getting ready to start working on their projects, we were just waking up, and trying to help where we could. When Nal and Tatnia left, BXs riding on the back of their speeder bikes, I headed back to the enchanting room.


    The first thing I did was open up the box Julus had gotten, going through what I had to work with. After a few minutes of sorting, I finally selected a ring, a basic band of two different metals worked together. Once the object was chosen, I fished through my satchel, eventually pulling out a decent-sized soul gem, tossing it into the air and catching it.


    I had put a lot of thought into what enchantment I wanted to try first, both before I had any idea what I would have access to and more recently when I had read through the available enchantments. I was tempted to try something like enhancing my magic or one of the fortifying enchants. However, I quickly realized that with how difficult and intensive the process was, and how minor the enchantment was likely to be, picking something like fortify strength was likely to lead me to wonder if the process had worked. So, instead, I settled for the mana storage enchantment, which would allow me to store mana inside the object to pull out later. As far as I could tell, it was the real-world equivalent to fortify magicka, creating a pool I could store and pull mana from rather than just increasing my overall capacity.


    With my ring chosen, the soul gem ready, my grimoire opened, I finally started the process.


    The first step was to create the enchantment matrix inside the object. Line by line, I pushed my magic through the ring, creating the basic matrix slowly but surely. After about forty minutes, I finally formed the entire matrix, meaning I could start part two, matrix adjustment. Just like when I was customizing a spell matrix to better fit my own body, soul, and personal magic, an enchantment matrix needed to be shifted to the shape, materials, and imperfections of the object. Thankfully, this was easy to do compared to spell adjustment, as all of the issues were physical, meaning I could feel my magic struggling to pass through the shift between alloys, or the slightly less pure spot along the inner side of the ring.


    Unlike the spell adjustment process, I was pretty sure a skilled enchanter could probably adjust as they went, completely removing this process from the equation. I was far, far, far away from that point, but it only took about fifteen minutes until I was done, so I wasn''t too upset.


    With the enchantment matrix adjusted, it was time for the real challenge, the addition of life force. Leaning over the table, I put my left hand over the soul gem, my right already over the ring. Slowly but surely, I wrapped the soul gem in a spiral strand of my magic, encircling it multiple times before slowly reaching the singular strand over to my right hand and the prepared ring under it. After a few minutes of concentrating, I took a deep breath and bridged the last inch.


    My magic strand lit up, the white shimmering light it usually let off replaced by a


    much brighter pale blue. I could feel the life energy crossing along my thread of magic and pushing into the ring, burning itself in. Just as the book said, I could slow or speed up the rate of transfer by constricting the circles around the soul gem. Slowly, I increased the rate of transfer, the thread glowing even brighter before it suddenly flashed bright enough to daze me for a moment. The sudden increase in light distracted me for just a split second, and a slight increase in temperature was my only warning before the enchantment matrix suddenly failed.


    The ring exploded under my palm, sending a dozen metal shards whizzing off in every direction. Some of them sparked off the enchanted wood of the table, not even leaving a scratch, while a few others slammed into the walls and ceiling around me.


    Quite a few of them stabbed into my hand, embedding themselves in my palm. One even punched through the other side, slicing my cheek before clicking off the wall behind me.


    "Well¡­. Fuck."

 Chapter 79

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    <div>


    "Wh- Boss!" She shouted, stepping closer and reaching out like she was going to take my hand.


    "It''s fine, it''s fine! I just underestimated how violent a critical failure would be," I explained, my hands glowing as I dual cast Fast Heal. "See, already getting better."


    I showed her my hand, which had, in fact, started to heal. I cast it again and then a third time before letting my hand down. By then, the bleeding stopped, and the hole mostly healed.


    "Are you sure¡­.?" She asked. "You were cursing and shouting¡­ very loudly."


    I frowned and thought back, realizing that I absolutely had been and didn''t even realize it at the time. I shook my head and cast Fast Heal again, this time in separate hands to finish off my hand and fix the cut on my cheek.


    "Sorry, I guess I was. I''m fine though, just need to clean up this mess¡­"


    I trailed off and looked around, eyes trailing over all the blood that I had spread over the room. I cursed under my breath but looked back to Calima and smiled.


    "Thank you for coming to check on me, though," I said with a smile. "I appreciate your concern."


    "... No problem, Boss," She responded. "I''ll get back to the cockpit. Miru¡­ wanted to talk about charging points for the Naval B1s¡­"


    I nodded and watched her leave, letting out a long breath before getting to work, hunting down some cleaning equipment, and washing my blood off of the walls, floor, and Arcane Enchanter. When I was done, I stepped into the sonic shower to clean myself and my clothes at the same time. When I was finally done, I made my way back to the enchanting room, only to stop, curse, and turn around, making my way down to Miru''s workshop.


    A quick conversation later, I was back, this time with a <u>safety mask</u></a> over my face, securely strapped onto my head. The shard had gotten worryingly close to my eye as it cut my cheek, and that was one injury I was pretty sure I wouldn''t be able to heal for a while.


    As I entered the room again, I picked up the soul gem sitting on the enchanting table. The crystal was undamaged and, as far as I could tell, was about half used. I looked around for a moment before placing it in an empty box in the corner, which I then dragged under the enchanting table as a place to store at half or partially-used gems. In the future, when I was skilled enough to transfer between gems without losing my grip on the enchantment, they would be useful. For now, they would sit and wait.


    With my workstation cleared, I grabbed another full soul gem, then another ring, almost identical to the first. I leaned over the table and began the whole process over again, first creating the enchantment matrix and then adjusting it to fit perfectly inside the ring. It was startling to feel just how different the two rings were despite being made of the same material and having the same general structure.


    When I was confident everything was in place and adjusted properly, I once again started the process of pulling energy from the soul gem and guiding it through the ring, feeling the life energy flow across my magic thread and burn itself into the metal. Rather than try and rush it, however, this time, I focused on keeping steady, not shifting or pushing it to go faster or slower.


    As I watched the flow of life energy, I realized that I had been lucky the ring had taken that long to explode. The life energy was extremely energetic, rising and lowering, flowing quickly one second and almost stopping the next. If I hadn''t been carefully maintaining a tight grip on the flow, adjusting for every increase or decrease, my second attempt would have turned out the same, or even worse than the first one. I could also feel life energy escaping the transfer as well, losing a considerable portion of the soul gem''s power to nothing but the air.


    Eventually, after what felt like an hour or so, the soul gem winked out completely, its energy drained. After a second, a crack appeared along the side, quickly spreading before the entire gem broke apart into soul gem chunks.


    "Well¡­ there goes any hope of them being re-usable¡­" I said, frowning at the pile of dull, opaque crystal.


    Idly noting to get a box to keep the used and broken gems, I quickly focused my attention on the ring, my first enchanted object. It was warm to the touch, warmer than me at least, and was glowing the same color of the life energy, a pale blue, as I turned it over in my hands. I was starting to worry that the entire crew would be walking around covered in small glowing objects when it finally started receding, quickly leaving a normal-looking ring.


    Turning the ring over in my hand, I slowly slipped it on, securing it on my middle finger. Like the instructions for this particular enchantment said, I reached out with a tendril of magic, easily connecting to the ring and feeding it, feeling the draw as it drank in my magicka. The mana reservoir filled up almost immediately, with just enough magicka for a novice spell or two at most. But as I reversed the draw, pulling the magic back into myself, I couldn''t help but laugh and cheer, pumping my fist.


    I pulled off the protective face shield, laying it down on the enchanting table, and quickly left the room, turning to the lounge. There, Julus was sitting with Miru, both of whom were enjoying what looked like their lunch.


    "Did it work?" Miru asked as I smiled, tossing the ring to her gently.


    She caught it with one hand, opening her hand and examining the ring. After a minute, she looked back up at me, looking confused.


    "I don''t see anything special about it," She said, handing the ring to Julus so he could see it. "What does it do?"


    "It stores mana for me to use," I explained with a smirk. "It''s such a small amount it''s practically useless, but it proves I can do it. You''re now holding the galaxy''s first magically enchanted object."


    "The first of many, I hope," Miru said, looking over Julus''s shoulder now.


    "Oh yeah," I agreed with a nod. "I want all of us to be decked out in the best. Beskar armor enchanted to the nines."


    "Nice job, Boss," Julus said, tossing the ring back to me. "I''m excited to see what you can do with the armor that Pola and Vaz make."


    "I am as well¡­ I want to get in a bunch more practice before that, though," I said, pulling the ring onto my finger and checking to make sure it was still full. "Which means¡­"


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    "Which means more hunting," Julus said, standing up from the table. "I''m ready when you are, Boss."


    "Great¡­ How long was I working for?"


    "About three hours," Miru answered. "But one of those was before you almost blew your hand off."


    "Two hours¡­ lots of room to improve," I said, scratching my neck before looking back at the young Twi''lek. "And it wasn''t that bad¡­"


    "Judging by how thankful you were for the face shield, it could have been a lot worse, though," She pointed out. "Safety always comes first in the shop, Boss, even if the shop is a creepy-looking altar for contacting ancient gods."


    "There will be no contacting ancient gods on this or any of our ships," I said, shivering slightly. "They might actually answer."


    I turned to walk back to the enchanting room to empty out the filled soul gems from my satchel and get ready for hunting.


    "Funny, Boss," Julus said from behind me, only to go silent for a moment before continuing. "You were joking, right? Boss? Please tell me you were joking."


    We quickly packed up and piled into the Arrow, the BX droids climbing in after Julus got into the cockpit, and I took the chair beside the sensor panel in the back. Today''s target was a nest of torgena, the small velociraptor-looking things with reinforced skulls and spines along their back.


    "Alright, so I''m hoping to avoid even getting close to these fuckers," I said once we were on our way. "They look like they could tear us to shreds, and this nest is supposed to have close to fifty of them. I don''t even want to be on the ground with them."


    "So... how are we going to take them out?"


    "When we are twenty minutes out, BX-1 and BX-2 are going climb on the roof and lock on with their magclamp feet. Then we will sit at the doors, and all four of us will shoot down on the nest. One, Two, you guys are going to be shooting on stun unless something goes drastically wrong. After we clear the nest we can use Clairvoyance to track down the runners. Once that turns out negative for anywhere near the nest, we will start cutting tail tips to prove we completed the bounty."


    "Solid plan, Boss," Julus said, nodding in appreciation. "I''ll land us in about ten minutes to let the commandos climb on the roof."


    The rest of the trip was quiet. I kept an eye on the sensors, and Julus piloted us above the forest treetops. When we landed, the commando droids climbed out and jumped onto the roof quickly, making the distance with a single leap.


    "We will take it slow, but contact us through your comms if something goes wrong or you feel like your feet can''t keep you secured," I ordered.


    "Roger Roger, Boss," The droids said together, getting a laugh from Julus.


    "At this rate, the doors on the Chariot are going to start calling me that whenever I walk through them," I half-heartedly complained.


    We arrived at the outskirts of the nest about fifteen minutes later, floating around the outskirts. The sensors scanned the area, showing that the nest was centered in a large but shallow valley, a low point surrounded by rocks and fallen trees, with living trees around either side. The entire space was lit up with biosigns, about sixty of five of them in total, almost all of them in the valley.


    "Jesus¡­ They nested in a killzone," I said, shaking my head, before looking over at Julus. "You ready?"


    "Yeah, just tell me when you want me to bring it in,"


    I nodded and conjured my bow, linking the soul trap to it, shifting from a back seat to the front row, where the doors were. I pulled out my comms and warned the droids we were moving in and to wait for me to open fire. When they confirmed my orders, I turned to Julus and gave the go-ahead.


    We slowly moved over the slight gap in the trees above where the valley itself was. Once there, the Arrow began lowering slowly, pushing through the gap in the trees. As we breached through the canopy into the space underneath, I slid the door open, my eyes taking a second of five to adjust to the change in lighting. When they did, I saw dozens of the lizards looking up at us, clacking their large teeth and tilting their heads up at us. I could hear Julus slowly moving to the other door, his blaster rifle in hand.


    I slowly nocked an arrow, drawing it back steadily to keep from setting the dangerous creatures off. We may have been close to fifty feet off the ground, but I was not going to have an actual "clever girl" moment, even if it meant being ridiculously paranoid.


    After sighting my first target, I slowly emptied my lungs, and after a second pause, I released my arrow. The conjured shaft of magic slammed into one of the many lizards below us, piercing its side and sending a splatter of green blood onto the ground.


    Instantly, the BXs and Julus opened fire, a spray of blue circles firing out from above and behind me. Dozens of the torgena dropped in the first few seconds, even more following soon after. The BX directly above me kept any from escaping on my side as my slower firing rate killed at least seven, still more running and screeching as they did their best to run from us.


    As quickly as the chaos started, it abruptly ended. By my vague count, around twenty of the lizards escaped into the woods, leaving at least thirty, probably closer to forty torgena on the ground beneath us.


    "Well¡­ that worked better than it had any right to," I said, Julus snorting behind me. "Now comes the fun part."


    Over the next twenty minutes, with the help of the BX units, I systematically finished off every single stunned torgena. It was a bit on the grim side, just killing the defenseless and stunned creatures, but it needed to be done, both for the safety of the surrounding villages and for the advancement of my crew.


    When that was done, we moved into the forest, doing our best to track down any larger groups. When we had gotten around fifteen more, and our sensors read that the rest had broken up and spread out, we started going over the kills and cutting off the last five inches of each of their tails. All said and done, we collected fifty-four tail tips. With each tail worth a hundred credits, we had made a cool five and a half thousand credits. We also gathered thirty-two eggs, which would bring us another three thousand. Between them and the bounty for clearing the nest, we were looking to make an even twelve thousand credits.


    By the time we had finished everything, all the proof of our kills and the eggs loaded up in the cargo crate attached to the back of the Arrow, I gave one final look around. The sun was starting to set, and the forest was quickly getting darker and darker.


    "Alright, I think that''s everything," I said, nodding to the Arrow. "Let''s get back and cash in before it gets too late."


    Five minutes later, we were on our way back, another successful hunting mission behind us.


    </article>

 Chapter 80

    It didn''t take long for us to confirm our payment and offload what we had gathered. The bounty information directed us to some sort of game warden office, and they had clearly worked with mercenary types before. The process was quick and simple, and we were soon on our way back to the Chariot. When we arrived, the rest of the crew was waiting for us in the lounge, our dinners already warm and waiting for us. Julus and I quickly sat down, eager to hear how everyone''s days had gone.


    "Our workshop is set up," Pola explained happily. "We have everything we need to start experimenting with beskar."


    "Is it going to just be trial and error or¡­?" I asked, trailing off when Pola shook his head.


    "Beskar might be a rare metal, but there is some documentation on how to work with it," He explained. "It''s just a matter of finding it. I''m pretty sure we could have figured it out on our own, but we managed to find a few papers and books about forging it," He explained. "Save one account that insisted that only the Mandalorians knew how to forge it properly, most of the other books agreed on most of the information."


    "The information is basic but still puts us ahead of schedule," Vaz explained. "We have melting points, useful alloys, even tempering temperatures."


    "That''s fantastic," I said happily, leaning forward in my seat. "How close are you to giving it a try?"


    Instead of answering, Pola looked at Vaz, and she nodded. He reached down and pulled out a single <u>ingot</u></a>, passing it to me across the table. It was dark gray, with wavy lines of lighter, silvery gray running horizontally through it. It was heavier than it looked, but beyond that, it felt like a completely normal ingot of metal.


    "That is nearly pure beskar," Pola explained with a smile. "We melted down a few of the lesser quality plates of armor, mostly to experiment with purification and test our equipment."


    "That is impressive. Pola, Vaz, both of you, good work," I said, examining the ingot before passing it back. "Tell me about how much we have, and how much we need."


    "Well, we could probably make ten of these ingots if we melted everything down," Pola estimated. "Which would be enough to make armor for all of the fighters if we were keeping it basic and only covering vitals."


    "That''s good, but what about full armor?" I asked.


    "We would require a significantly larger amount of beskar for that," Vaz explained. "What we have now is enough for two, maybe three full sets of armor, depending on which alloy we settle on."


    "What about pure beskar?"


    "A single full set, and maybe enough to protect the vitals for a second," Vaz responded.


    "Wait, why do you have so little?" Miru asked. "Didn''t you salvage the metal from a few suits?"


    "Beskar is so expensive that not even Mandalorians cover themselves completely," Vaz explained. "It is also heavy, so it is mixed with other, lighter metals. I don''t believe pure Beskar is worth the weight."


    "But we will lose a lot of its protection strength if you alloy it, won''t you?" I asked, a bit confused. "I assumed the closer to pure it was, the better."


    "It''s a balance between weight, flexibility, and protection," Pola explained. "Too much beskar and the armor weighs too much. Not enough, and you''ll lose out on its toughness. The information we read says that any plate around three or four millimeters thick, with a sixty-five percent beskar ratio will still stop three or four blaster bolts from most rifles. However, it will most certainly need repairs and re-tempering afterward."


    "Okay¡­ If I''m honest, some of this is going over my head, and I''ve got enough stuff I need to worry about understanding to try and learn another. I''m going to trust you guys to figure out the best options for us," I said, both Vaz and Pola nodding in understanding. "We just need to figure out the best way to make more Besker. We need a lot of material to convert, and it''s going to get expensive fast."


    "Boss¡­ what about Rabben?" Miru asked. "They dealt in platinum and¡­ what was the new ones we found?"


    "Vonium and varium," Nal answered. "All three are valuable, especially the platinum and vonium."


    "... Okay. Nal, get in contact with Rabben. Ask if there is any way we could purchase or earn a large portion of metal. It''s¡­ well, we can''t ask him to put himself in danger, but we probably need a lot more than we can afford, so make sure he understands we are willing to venture into grey areas as long as civilians aren''t hurt.


    "Will do boss," The Duros confirmed with a nod.


    "Pola, Vaz, keep experimenting with the beskar we have, maybe start planning what the final product will look like," I said. "It''s probably going to be a few weeks before we can get out there. Maybe make a few chest plates as temporary protection in the meantime."


    "Alright, we''ll do our best," Pola said, sounding determined and eager to prove himself.


    Dinner continued for a while longer before, eventually, we went our separate ways. I made my way to the enchanting room, spending my evening on a second magicka storage ring. I wanted to experiment a bit and try to improve past my first successful attempt while it was still fresh in my mind.


    I worked for a while, completing each step normally until I reached the final process, guiding the life energy through the ring. Instead of letting it flow at the normal speed, as I had before, or speeding it up like I did on my first failed attempt, I slowed the flow of life energy down as much as I could at my skill level. Where the previous enchantment had taken about two hours, I was determined to at least pass three.


    Slowly but surely, I drained the soul gem, the energy passing through the ring. At three and a half hours, my concentration slipped, and I lost control of the thread. Thankfully, instead of feeding too much life force into the ring and breaking it, the thread simply broke and faded, the shock causing me to lose the matrix as well.


    I took a moment to wipe the sweat off my face, feeling a bit shaken, my brain slow and foggy. I had been focusing non-stop for nearly four hours, and the effect it had on me rushed to the foreground all at once. It was like pausing in the middle of a long run, only to realize your legs refuse to start again when you try and continue. I quickly cast Fast Heal and Respite on myself, which helped take the edge off but did not get rid of the feeling completely.


    I shook my head and looked down, finding that the soul gem looked to be about two-thirds drained, the glow having faded significantly and the crystal mostly opaque. I dropped it down into my partially spent box and pulled on the ring, quickly feeling it out with my magic, only to tilt my head in confusion.


    The ring, despite only being charged with two-thirds of the soul gem, felt just as potent, maybe even a hair more than my first successful attempt. That meant that if I had managed to hold on for longer, the enchantment would have been significantly more potent.


    "Then what''s the point of increasing the flow?" I asked myself, idly playing with the ring on my finger.


    I shook my head and pulled off my face shield, putting it on the table, my mind still trying to puzzle out the dynamics of enchanting. Eventually, as I got ready for bed, I settled on the fact that the only way to figure it out was to experiment and find out.


    The next morning, I woke up later than usual, having stayed up late knowing we would be doing the shakedown cruise. I got dressed quickly, though, stepping out into the hall to see what everyone was up to. I took one step out of my room, only to jump back as a B1 sprinted by, quickly followed by a second and third, all three of them heading straight for the aft tail.


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    "Go, go, go, go, YES!" Julus shouted, standing by the entryway into the engine maintenance hallway, pumping his fist as the first droid ran by him, slowing down once it did.


    "Did I win?" It asked in its iconic robotic voice, Julus slapping it on its shoulder.


    "That''s right, now Miru owes me five credits!" Julus said happily before turning. He clearly didn''t expect me because he tensed and froze. "Oh¡­ uh¡­morning Boss."


    "Boss!" Both of the droids said at once, going rigid and offering a salute.


    "Good morning," I responded. "What''s going on-"


    Before I could finish any question, Miru practically leaped out of the stairs to the first deck, now between Julus and I.


    "Did I win?" She asked excitedly before turning to see me. "Oh¡­ Morning Boss. We were just testing the droid''s stabilizers."


    "By having them race through the ship?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "It''s not a playground, guys. You could have at least done it outside."


    Miru apologized again, motioning for the three droids to drop their salutes, before explaining that they were actually testing the droids, though the stabilizers were just an excuse. Instead, Miru wanted to know how quickly and efficiently they could move through the ship so she would know where to put the charging bays. I chuckled and shook my head.


    "That''s easy, as close as possible to where they work. Hell, I''d build it into the chairs if they didn''t need to work for people still," I answered. "These guys are hilariously unsteady, especially when shit goes sideways."


    "Sideways? Did the gravity go out?" One of the droids asked, which I pointedly ignored.


    "Okay¡­ I think I can fit the Naval B1s in the cockpit¡­ Maybe two gunners can stay in the lounge¡­"


    The genius Twi''lek trailed off, mumbling to herself as we moved to the fore of the ship. I took a peek inside the bridge to see two Naval B1''s, identifiable by the blue markings on their shoulders and Calima. One of the droids was sitting down at the copilot''s station, and the second at the sensors and comms station. Calima was standing over them, watching them work, when she spotted me.


    "Boss¡­ Good morning," She said with a nod. "I see you found my gunners."


    "Apparently, they needed one more calibration test," I said, the Tholothian chuckling as Miru kicked the floor. "I think she owes Julus some credits."


    Miru ignored us and directed the two normal B1s to sit at the gunner seat, sending the third one to the gunner controls in the far aft of the first deck. For a while, Calima and Miru worked to test the droids, asking them to do certain things, perform some checks, even asking for vague information to see how well they could problem-solve. Eventually, they were satisfied and asked permission to lift off the landing pad for the shakedown cruise.


    "Get in contact with everyone and make sure they know we are leaving for a few hours," I said, getting a nod from Calima as she claimed her spot in the pilot''s seat. "If you have a specific destination in mind, let them know just in case."


    A few quick messages later, all done by the comms droid, and we were lifting off the planet, heading upwards and out of the atmosphere. When we were past any interfering traffic and the gravity well of the planet we jumped into deep space. The second we reverted to real-space, Calima started barking out orders, demanding sensor information, asking about energy levels, and talking to the droids on the gunner stations for updates on available targets. All of it was done at a speed and energy that surprised me, especially coming from the usually calm and quiet Tholothian.


    As she worked, I leaned over to Miru and whispered.


    "Hey¡­ how low can we scale the power on the Chariot''s guns?"


    "Uh¡­ pretty low¡­ like until they are just a light show," She responded just as quietly. "Why?"


    "Well, we have the raindrops¡­ might be a good idea to give these guys a real target?" I suggested, Miru''s eyes going wide as she picked up what I was laying out.


    "That''s a good idea¡­ I can adjust the power output from here¡­ and adjust the raindrops..."


    After about twenty minutes of putting the B1s and the Chariot through their paces, Calima finally let up. While we talked, Miru started the process of setting up the mock battle, including setting a simulated combat protocol with the raindrops.


    "How did they do?" I asked Calima, leaning against the doorway into the bridge.


    "They were adequate," She said bluntly. "With a real pilot¡­ at the helm, there aren''t any real issues, as long as they¡­do as I say and don''t mess up the simple commands. I''d hate to see one in control of¡­ a ship, but with me in control, they should do fine."


    "That''s good. Being able to reduce the number of people needed to run the ships is a huge boon," I admitted, scratching my chin. "And not just because it''s cheaper."


    "Well considering¡­ I could fly the ship pretty well by myself, what we learn here isn''t necessarily going to translate directly over to how it works on the Intervention." She pointed out. "We won''t¡­ know until we try it."


    I nodded in agreement and watched as Miru finished organizing our mock battle. All six of the raindrops disengaged from their docking locks, subtle clunks reverberating through the ship as they did. The Chariot pulled ahead of them, as if they were chasing us. After everything was set up, Miru counted down a fifteen-second head start before the droid in the sensor station gave the half squadron the green light.


    I watched from the middle of the bridge, in what little space there was between the five stations around me, as the sensor readings showed the small, speedy raindrops rapidly caught up to us. The sensor droid quickly called out that they were approaching, before we could feel the rear cannon open up. I turned to watch the rear turret''s point of view on a computer screen above the other gunner station, blasts of red energy firing through space.


    Almost instantly, they were on us, swirling and whipping around the ship even as Calima started a dive, making the Chariot as difficult a target as possible.


    When the raindrops started firing on the ship, our gunners quickly returned fire, our hidden weapon emplacements deploying and filling the dark void of space with a criss-cross of red energy. For a full ten seconds, the raindrops avoided any damage, lowering our shield by fourteen percent, or at least a simulated fourteen percent.


    Finally, the droids scored a hit, "taking out" one of the "enemy" ships. From there, the mock battle was much more even, with Calima continuing to be as evasive as possible as the sensors called out the raindrop movements and the gunners laid down more comprehensive layers of fire.


    When the last raindrop was "destroyed," they docked back up with the Chariot, and we reviewed how everything went.


    "I still prefer real.... people with guns. Nothing will ever beat the pattern recognition of a sentient... brain," Calima said, shaking her head. "But the droids are an acceptable replacement... when no one else is available."


    "What about the Naval B1s," I asked. "They good enough?"


    "They seem to be. I''m impressed with¡­. how well they respond to vague questions, and they seem to know their way around the controls," The pilot admitted. "They work well enough for me."


    "That''s great!" Miru said happily. "I''ll get their docking stations up and running so they will always be on hand to help!"

 Chapter 81

    We made good time back to Birgis, landing smoothly next to the Intervention with very little fanfare. Miru quickly returned to her own work, getting the repair droids set up to make charging bays for the Naval and gunner B1s, while Julus and I started going over bounties, looking for our next target.


    "We don''t need anything massive," I assured Julus as we sat down. "We have enough filled gems for now, I just want to make sure to have extra. Plus, we aren''t really doing anything else at the moment."


    Between our first and second bounties, we had accumulated eighty-seven filled soul gems, which was a significant amount to work with. I planned on taking a day to work on enchanting before taking on whatever bounty Julus, and I found the following day. However, my comms went off before we could find anything worth our time.


    "Nal?" I asked, pulling my comms from my pocket. "What''s up?"


    "We believe we have found someone who fits our criteria," He explained. "Three individuals, in fact. A pilot, copilot, and sensor expert. They already know each other¡­ I believe they are a good fit."


    "That''s great news," I said, standing up from the lounge couch. "Are they willing to come see the ship so I can meet them?"


    "They are."


    "Good, hire a speeder taxi for them and come back."


    Nal agreed and shortly after hung up, prompting me to turn around to Julus, the younger crewmember looking up from his datapad.


    "They found someone?" He asked.


    "Three someones apparently," I answered, shrugging at his curious look. "I don''t know either. Anyway, keep looking and make a note of anything interesting, I need to go get ready for them."


    "Sure thing, Boss."


    "Oh, and don''t mention the beskar or my magic until they are officially part of the crew."


    "Figured as much."


    I nodded and turned to the bridge, walking to the doorway and leaning in. Calima was sitting in her chair, reading a book. Without looking up, she nodded.


    "No mention of magic or beskar," She repeated. "I heard. Good luck."


    I chuckled and nodded, turning back down the hall. I stopped in my room to quickly clean up and change into something halfway presentable. When I was done, I started to make my way down to Miru, only to stop and jog back to the enchanting room. With a bit of fiddling, I sealed the door so no one could stumble into it.


    When I was done locking up, I headed down to the workshop. Miru was leaning over her workshop computer, intent on whatever personal project she was working on now. I knocked on one of her tool chests and she spun around on her chair to face me.


    "What''s up, Boss?"


    "Gonna have company soon, three candidates for the Intervention crew," I explained, Miru''s eyes lighting up. "You can tag along, but no mention of beskar or my magic."


    "Sure!" She agreed easily, tapping on her computer before standing and stretching. "Any idea what they are like?"


    "Nal said he thinks they are a good fit," I said with a shrug. "Beyond that, not really. Still, he usually knows what he is talking about."


    She hummed in agreement and followed after me as I made my way off of the Chariot and over to the Intervention. I quickly found the once storage room, now forge, that Vaz and Pola had set up on the second deck. I tapped the controls on the door, which opened smoothly to expose the interior.


    The inside of the workshop was surprisingly only one or two degrees hotter than the rest of the ship, just enough to be noticeable but not enough to be uncomfortable. The room was filled with several machines, including what I was pretty sure was a high-temperature forge and an auto hammer. Pola and Vaz stood in front of a large screen on one side of the workshop, looking at a vaguely humanoid form slowly spinning on it while dressed in some basic armor.


    "Hey guys, how''s it going?" I asked, both of them turning around to greet us.


    "Everything is going well," Vaz responded, Pola nodding from beside her. "We are just finishing the basic chest plate design."


    "Good, that''s good," I said with a nod. "You guys have been working hard, and I''m excited to see what you make. Between this and my enchanting, I have a good feeling we will make some impressive equipment."


    "Right, about that," Pola started with a curious expression. "Is there anything we should know about how that works? Limitations on what materials you can use or anything?"


    "As long as it''s sturdy, it should work great," I explained. "No limitations on size, either. I got some to fit on my rings after all."


    I held up my hand to show off my ring, Vaz nodding in understanding. Pola looked excited about the entire prospect, which only made me more eager to see what sort of stuff they would manage to make.


    "Anyway, Nal and Tatnia found some people to interview," I explained. "I''ll probably be giving them a tour of the ship, so don''t be surprised if we stop by. Do me a favor and don''t mention the beskar or my magic. We can reveal that surprise after they agree to come on board."


    "What if they find out and decide they can''t work with us?" Pola asked nervously.


    "Not much I can do about that, really," I responded with a shrug. "I can mitigate the risk by hiding it to the last second, but so be it if it''s a breaking point. I''m not about to become a murderer or kidnapper to hide my secret."


    "Alright, Boss," Pola agreed with a nod of his head. "We will clean up and hide the beskar we have here."


    "Thanks, guys, keep up the good work," I said, patting the slapping the side of the door as I turned and left, heading back out of the Intervention.


    Miru and I were waiting outside for about ten minutes before Tatnia and Nal zipped in, landing on the flat ground of the ship bay. They climbed off their speeder bikes, BX-2 and BX-3, climbing off their mounts on the back end of the bikes a second later. Both of the droids headed back into the Chariot, walking past the B2 guards as they went while Tatnia and Nal made their way to me. They didn''t even have enough time to meet us halfway when an air speeder landed on the edge of the pad.


    "That was fast," I commented under my breath, Tatnia nodding in agreement. "Don''t mention the beskar or magic yet guys, we can explain that later."


    "Do you really think we would mention that?" Tatnia asked with an eye roll.


    "No, but better safe than sorry," I pointed out. "Now everyone is on the same page."


    Tatnia reluctantly nodded in understanding as we all watched the airspeeder doors open. The first one out of the taxi was a human male, probably a few years older than me, though it was hard to tell. His head was shaved, and he had a scar running along his skull and down to what appeared to be an implant replacement for his eye. I knew that medical tech existed for implants and replacement parts, but with the advent of Bacta, you hardly ever saw people opting for them, save full limb replacements. I knew it was possible to be allergic to Bacta, so maybe that was why.


    As soon as the first person was out of the speeder, he stood to the side, letting the two other passengers out and shutting the door behind them. Both of them were <u>Mikkians</u></a>, one male and one female. The first one out, the male, was a light green, darkening around his eyes, tendrils, and fingers. The female was a yellow hue, which darkened to a very light orange around their eyes and the tips of their fingers/. Their skin actually lightened to a pale yellow around their tendril hair.


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    The female immediately took the lead, walking ahead of the other two and heading directly for me. I could feel the rest of my crew settle in behind me as well, though more spread out. When our three candidates got close, I stuck my hand out.


    "It''s good to meet you. My name is Deacon Roy," I said, the woman reaching out her hand to shake mine.


    "It is good to meet you, Deacon Roy. I am Vakim N''Mem. This is my copilot and brother, Dazem N''Mem, as well as my Ops and Sensor specialist, Allum Tynn. He is also my husband."


    "Ah, so definitely a package deal then," I commented, nodding in understanding. "That''s good. Why don''t we head into the Intervention and talk."


    "Agreeable, but be aware we have friends who will note our absence should we disappear," She said, making my mind stutter a bit.


    Behind her Allum, the cyborg slapped his forehead, partially hiding his red eye implant, though Dazem didn''t seem to notice anything wrong at all.


    "I understand," I said with a nod when I had recovered. "Rest assured, you can leave whenever you want."


    She nodded, and together, the group set off. I noticed Nal peeled off and headed to the Chariot, but Tatnia and Miru came with us. We climbed on board and quickly made our way to the large lounge on the second deck of the Intervention.


    As we sat down, Vakim nodded in approval, looking around at the interior.


    "The ship is in good condition, but not surprising as I can see the hallmarks of it once being an Imperial ship. Did you purchase this from a corrupt official or steal it?"


    My jaw dropped at her bluntness, and I could see Tatnia tense. Allum let out a long sigh, shaking his head.


    "I''m sorry, I tried to warn your second in command, but I don''t think I prepared her for this," he said, looking apologetic. "Mikkians are known for their bluntness, and my wife is an outlier even among her people. None of us would care if you bought or stole it from an Imp, as long as you''re not working for them."


    "No, we aren''t working for the Imperials. We stole the Intervention," I responded, watching them carefully. "In fact, we should warn you we have worked with the Rebellion a few times now and plan on working closer with them in the future."


    "Thank you for your honesty," Vakim said, looking at her compatriots, both of them giving her nods of approval before she continued. "You should know that the three of us were part of the Rebellion for several years, and only recently have left their service."


    "May I ask why?"


    "Our previous commanding officer was under the impression that as Rebels, we should not receive compensation for our actions, that we should be working from the goodness of our hearts," She explained, her tendrils darting around behind her head, seemingly in agitation. "When we attempted to ask those above him for some sort of compensation, he convinced them that we were simply being greedy, that he had already compensated us. We persevered for some time with this incorrect reputation, before eventually leaving."


    "That''s¡­ the primary reason why we haven''t joined up yet. I want to help, but I also looking to support myself and my crew," I explained, getting an approving nod from all three candidates. "When we do, I will make sure to stipulate that we expect a portion of any credits earned for our work. Who did you serve under?"


    "Commander Gadic was in charge of our vessel, as well as the two freighters we were charged with protecting," Vakim explained. "We moved cargo and occasionally people around the galaxy."


    "Ah, well... yeah, I can''t say I''m surprised," I admitted, shaking my head. "He didn''t give me the best impression."


    "You''ve met him?" Vakim asked, sounding surprised.


    "Yeah, he seemed like the kind of person who is a stickler for rules, but only because he knows how to abuse them," I said. "Spent a lot of time trying to get on my good side. He works with General Syndulla now, as her aide or second in command, I''m not sure exactly. Did people really not believe you? I''m shocked that he managed to get away with that so easily."


    "I''m afraid that our bluntness did not do us any good," Dazem admitted, his sister nodding in reluctant agreement. "Many people mistook our honesty and bluntness as being cruel. As a result, many found it easy to believe we were only rebels for a payout. I also believe it is why we were stuck babysitting freighters with our experience."


    "What kind of experience?"


    "All three of us served in the late parts of the Clone Wars," She explained. "When the conflict ended, we returned to Mikkia, as many of our people did. We served briefly in the private sector, before leaving to join in the early days of the Rebellion."


    "So¡­ you guys have been at this for a while. You don''t have any complaints with us working closer and closer with the Rebellion?"


    "As long as we are not forced to rejoin completely, and we are paid fairly for our contributions to the group, no."


    "That''s good. Tell me, what ships have you worked with, and do you think you will be able to fly this ship?"


    We chatted for another few hours, talking about their experience and going over their qualifications in general. Most of it was me asking questions that Nal and Tatnia already asked in some way, but the three of them seemed to be fine with repeating themselves, which I saw as a good sign. All in all, I found myself appreciating their bluntness, even if it caught me off guard more than a few times. Allum also seemed like a good addition.


    Eventually, we went around for a tour of the ship, showing off the additional turrets, which all three of them appreciated. They seemed to know their way around without my prompting, not a surprise, considering all three of them had worked on a C70 Consular-class before.


    I was also not surprised to learn that they all had less than positive reactions to the CIS droids but seemed open to working with them as long as their programming stuck. I assured them that they had been working for a while now and we hadn''t seen any issues so far. Allum seemed to be the most resistant to the idea of working with them, but reluctantly admitted they would be possible as long as Vakim and Dazem were the ones in charge of piloting.


    "Clankers can''t fly worth a damn," He explained. "But they can work as gunners. Just be sure to wipe their memories frequently."


    I also introduced them to Vaz and Pola, showing off the forge room as well. They were understandably confused about why we had a forge in a ship until I explained the custom armor project, leaving out the beskar. I made sure to explain that Pola would be working with them as well, as he would be the lead engineer for the ship.


    When the tour was over, we said our goodbyes, and I promised to call them within twenty-four hours with either a confirmation or denial. Vakim agreed but also pointed out they would be discussing if they wanted to take us up on the offer.


    "So, what do you think?" Tatnia asked as we boarded the Chariot after the three potential candidates had left. "Bit odd, but they seemed to know their way around the ship."


    "I liked them!" Miru said with a smile. "Dazem seemed to know a bit about ship maintenance, which is good."


    "Let''s get everyone together and talk about it. Tatnia, order something to eat, get it delivered here," I said, getting a nod in response. "We can talk about it after we''ve eaten."

 Chapter 82

    The conversation about bringing on the three candidates was surprisingly pretty short. While I had some worries about Vakim and Dazem''s bluntness causing problems down the road, I didn''t personally have an issue with it. It wasn''t like we had a strict rank hierarchy, and if I was being stupid, I wanted my crew to tell me before I made a mistake. Nal even pointed out that if they managed to survive even a few short years as part of the Old Republic Navy, then they couldn''t be that bad. There was no way they would have been able to make it without being able to bite their tongues or at least keep it civil.


    Oddly enough, knowing that I could trust them to be honest and speak their minds was a positive in my book. I was mostly concerned about disruptions with the rest of the crew. So far, we had managed to stay pretty balanced, but adding more crew was the quickest way to mess that up. Thankfully, everyone who met them seemed to agree they at least seemed like a good choice. Tatnia also pointed out that it didn''t need to be permanent.


    "Let''s give them a chance. Bring them on board, do a couple jobs, and see if they fit," She said with a shrug. "If they don''t, we can always drop them off somewhere."


    "Good point. Alright, I''ll give them a call tomorrow and make them an offer," I agreed, leaning back with a nod, happy to have reached a decision. "The next question is, do we keep looking for more?"


    "More biological crew?" Nal asked, and I nodded.


    "Is there a point?" Calima asked. "The pilot and¡­ co-pilot positions were the most important, and an Ops specialist¡­ on the sensors is an added bonus I hadn''t considered."


    "It comes down to how they perform," Vaz added with a shrug. "If they cannot keep up with a droid staff, or we find the Intervention''s performance lacking, we could find a more organic crew or find replacements."


    "Alright, then that means our business on Birgis is just about done, right?" I asked, looking at Vaz and Pola. "Have you guys bought everything you need?"


    "Umm, for basic temporary plates, yeah," Pola responded. "We haven''t really had time to investigate proper undersuits or body sleeves."


    "Could you get that done in a day?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "They will have to move in, assuming they agree, so we should have a free day at least."


    "We¡­ yes, if we do our research tonight, we could get it done in a day," Pola assured me, Vaz nodding in agreement. "Especially if we had a hand going shopping if it comes down to it?"


    "I will assist," Nal offered.


    "Alright, that sounds like a plan."


    When the early dinner was over, Vaz and Pola immediately headed back to their forge, clearly eager to get to their research. Julus and Tatnia headed out to do some shopping, mostly short-term food, as well as some other toiletries and general goods we needed. They took two BX units with them as protection, though I was pretty sure Tatnia was going to leave them in the Arrow when they got to whatever stores they planned on visiting.


    Meanwhile, I headed directly for the enchanting room. With Pola and Vaz stuck working on temporary gear for the foreseeable future, I decided my best bet was to focus on making rings for everyone. It would make a decent first project, and Julus had gotten plenty of them when he bought me the box of trinkets I was working from.


    However, before I could start that project, I had a few more bits of experimentation to do. My latest bit of testing had revealed that slowing down the life energy from a soul gem as it burned through an object I was enchanting would result in a more powerful enchantment, as long as I could mentally stay focused. This, of course, made me wonder what exactly would happen if I sped up the process, pulling more energy from the gem while maintaining my concentration.


    On top of that, in my previous experiment, slowing the life energy down had increased the potency, but only by a small amount. If I had managed to stay focused on the entire soul gem''s contents, the enchantment would have only been slightly more robust. The only thing I could think of that would allow me to push past that and make more potent enchantments was learning how to string multiple soul gems together. Of course, that would only be helpful if I could mentally handle holding the enchantment matrix for that long, a tall order considering I hadn''t been able to handle a single full gem yet.


    In the end, I decided to try and encourage the life energy transfer to go faster. This time, with the consequences of failure firmly in mind, I maintained a firm grip on the life energy being pulled from the soul gem. I slowly increased the draw over a few minutes until I hit a spot where I felt safe maintaining the flow. Of course, I was wearing my face shield, as well as my normal combat armor, as an extra precaution. If something went wrong, my hands would still get torn up, but at least a sliver of metal wouldn''t punch through my heart or lungs.


    With the increased rate of transfer, I managed to drain the soul gem in an hour and a half, nearly half the time my original attempt took. I quickly examined the ring and found that it contained noticeably less space for magicka than my first or second attempt. However, while the enchantment was less potent, it wasn''t as low as I would have expected for how much time was shaved off.


    Eventually, after a few minutes of thinking, I realized that if I could chain soul gems together, pulling life force through faster would mean I could make a more powerful enchantment quicker, at the cost of extra life force being used up. This would make focusing and maintaining that focus much easier, at the cost of resources.


    On the opposite side, if I slowed the process down, I would have to remain focused much longer, but I would get much more bang for my buck. Unfortunately, both of those led back to using multiple soul gems in a row, or maybe together, which the grimoire did not tell me how to do.


    By the time I was done with my experimentation, it was starting to get late. Still, between the frustration of not having a clear route of progress ahead of myself and the excitement of what I might eventually be able to do with enchantment, sleep was out of the question.


    Eventually, I sealed up the enchantment room and went to my bedroom, pulling out my grimoire and going over the enchantment section, trying to find any nugget of information that would help. While I didn''t find the solution I was hoping for, I did get a hint at the next step in enchantment. It seemed like some of the enchantments could be modified somehow, the method and result hidden until I had mastered the specific enchantment to some degree. After a few hours of trying to find more information, the time finally caught up with me and I headed to bed.


    The following morning, the crew had a quick and simple breakfast together before everyone went their separate ways. While I was tempted to try my enchantment research again, I knew I needed to be on hand for Dazem, Vakim, and Allum, and preferably not distracted. An hour or so after I woke up, I called the comms link that Vakim had given me, the connection locking in almost immediately.


    "Good Morning, Deacon Roy," Vakim said. "Thank you for contacting us again."


    "It''s not a problem," I responded. "The team and I discussed it, and we would like to invite you, your brother, and your spouse to join our crew."


    "We accept," She responded immediately. "We require transport."


    "Well¡­ if there is a place to land nearby, we can handle that."


    Ten minutes later, Nal and I were on the Brick, a hover cart strapped down in the passenger bay as we made our way to the small apartment our new crew members were sharing. It didn''t take long for us to arrive at the designated landing pad, which was honestly more like a speeder parking lot than a landing pad. After we landed, Nal spotted Allum by the edge of the pad. We quickly disembarked and joined him, shaking his hand firmly. The scared cyborg was seemingly impressed by our newly upgraded landing craft.


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    "I recognize the make, but she is not stock," He said, looking over the Brick with a critical eye. "What upgrades does she have? I can see the top cannon is different¡­"


    "Most of it has been tuned and cleaned up, with many of the major components modernized," I explained. "Shields, power, weapons, all the good stuff. If you want more specifics, you should talk to Miru. I know she has an updated blueprint scan somewhere."


    As we talked, Allum led me inside, pushing the hover cart while Nal stayed out on the pad with the ship.


    "So¡­ that young girl is really your lead mechanic?" He asked, sounding skeptical. "She can handle that?"


    "So far, I''ve only been impressed with what she has managed," I responded with a shrug, pushing aside my instinct to get defensive about the young Twi''lek. I needed to keep in mind that it was weird to have such a young person in the position she was. "I know it''s strange, but she''s been a pivotal part of our success so far. If it makes you uncomfortable, don''t worry. Pola will be the one in charge of ship maintenance and repair on the Intervention."


    "It''s fine, just might just take some time to adjust," He admitted. "She isn''t the first young adult I''ve had to work with."


    We arrived at the apartment and quickly loaded their stuff onto the hover cart, two boxes and three bags in total, before heading back out to the ship. Loading up was easy, and before long, we had taken off, heading directly back to the Chariot and Intervention. Once we arrived we landed on the pad first, offloading our new crew and their belongings before Nal slid the Brick back into the port hangar, the exterior hatch resealing when it was properly landed.


    "That''s an impressive modification," Vakim said as we watched the Brick vanish into the Chariot. "It makes an already flexible ship much more effective."


    "Thank you, Miru is the one who designed it. She turned the Chariot into a pocket carrier, even better than what the Imperial Gozanti''s are doing," I explained.


    "It has a starfighter contingent as well?" Dazem asked with a surprised tone. "It must be something small to fit more than one in a hangar¡­"


    The conversation soon turned into a full tour of the Talos Chariot, with Miru joining us to explain some of the modifications and show off her blueprints. I happily let the young engineer show off. She deserved the opportunity to brag, considering what she had achieved.


    "You really turned this ship into a carrier¡­" Vakim said, her surprise managing to shine through her usual stoic tone. "Do you have plans for what will reside in the starboard Hangar?"


    "We have general ideas, but I want to hold off until the Intervention has a proper crew, specifically a pilot and co-pilot," I explained. "I''m considering finding a small starfighter and bringing on a few pilots. I''m also considering going full robotic and finding more tri-fighters to convert or purchasing another CEC shuttle like the Brick and upgrading it. For now, though, I''m content waiting to see if any more opportunities find their way to us."


    When we were done with the tour, Nal escorted the new crew members back to the Intervention so they could start unloading and setting up their rooms. Allum and Vakim set up in one of the statesrooms, since they had a bed big enough for two people, while Dazem claimed a normal crew bed in the crew area, near Pola''s room. While they were moving in, Tatnia and Julus returned with their shopping, offloading everything and parking the Arrow inside the Chariot cargo bay.


    When everyone was settled, I called a meeting in the lounge. The usually large and empty room was starting to feel a bit tight with our new members, but it wasn''t anything to be worried about. I quickly re-introduced our new crewmates, despite them having met everyone at this point. They introduced themselves briefly, including their experience with piloting ships, with the Rebellion, and in the Republic Navy during the Clone Wars.


    When introductions were over, we started discussing what our next step would be. I was about to ask Nal if he had gotten around to talking to Rabben yet about securing some precious metals when Julus spoke up.


    "So, umm¡­ when I was looking for bounties yesterday, I stumbled on something I think we should consider," He explained, pulling out his Datapad and handing it to me.


    The screen was filled with three separate mugshots, one of a Twi''lek male, one of a Weequay and a final one of a human female. I frowned as I read some of the crimes they had committed, which was a surprisingly long list.


    "What''s so special about them?" I asked, handing the pad back to Julus.


    "They are the leaders of a nearby band of pirates who prey on this system and several others," He explained. "There''s a bounty on these three for ten thousand credits each, as well as another seventy-five thousand credits for the rest of their pirate friends."


    "That''s a substantial bounty," I said, leaning forward in interest. "What the hell have they been doing?"


    "Well, Boss, they''ve been around for a couple of years now. Dozens of missing merchant ships, a couple of private vessels, even a group hired to deal with them have all disappeared. Only a few people have managed to escape them so far. The authorities have no idea where they are living, which means that even though they have taken out a few of their ships, more just start raiding a few months later. The problem is, the authorities have no idea where they are based."


    "And they know for a fact it''s the same group?" I asked with a frown. "Not multiple attacks of opportunity?"


    "They leave a calling card, Boss," He explained, looking more than a little off-put. "When they are finished taking what they want, they space the survivors. While they are still alive."


    Everyone was quiet for a long moment as we considered what we had just heard before continuing.


    "As horrifying as that is, how would we be able to help?" Allum asked. "Unless you plan on playing bait?"


    "What kind of equipment do they have?" I asked, giving Allum a nod to show I had heard him


    "They have a variety of snubfighters and a few medium freighters that are clearly upgraded to be more effective in combat," Julus responded. "The groups change frequently from what the bounty says."


    "Hmmm¡­ Sounds like a good way to make some money," I said with a smirk. "Especially if we can take them off guard."


    "I''m not sure playing bait is catching them off guard," Vakim correctly pointed out. "I should also point out that when baiting out an enemy, the bait rarely escapes unscathed."


    "We won''t be offering them bait," I said confidently. "We are going to ambush them wherever they call home."


    Dazem and Vakim shared a look, both of them looking at me with confusion on their faces. Allum seemed to be more suspicious, almost as if he was trying to guess what sort of trick I had up my sleeve.


    "You know how to track them." He stated after a moment, no question in his voice.


    "I do," I responded simply with a smile, leaning forward. "Do any of you three happen to believe in magic?"

 Chapter 83

    At this point, revealing my abilities was something I had gotten good at. Start with a subtle but undeniable bit of magic, a glowing light, a sparkle of something harmless, just to breach the idea. Then, as they debate and refute, I calmly answer their questions. Eventually, as they start to question everything they know, you explain that "magic" is just a word and that the galaxy is filled with crazy and strange things. Was the ability to control a nebulous, self-contained energy really that strange? That gives them something to latch onto, rather than flounder around, trying to grasp something so mind-bending. Finally, you finish by performing some more incredible feats of magic, like conjuring something, healing a wound, or, if possible, flinging around some fire or ice.


    That said, all three of our newest crew members were special cases for separate reasons. Vakim and Dazem were Mikkians, who apparently frequently worshiped or at least deified the Force for many of their planet''s religions. This meant that they immediately, and rather stubbornly, assumed that my abilities were all due to the Force. Oddly enough, it was my healing spells that finally convinced them I wasn''t using the Force. Since they both had so much connection and understanding about the Force, they both knew how a Force-sensitive could use the Force to heal, which meant they also knew that my spells were something very, very different.


    Allum, on the other hand, took a very utilitarian soldier''s perspective. Since it was obviously real, the only thing that mattered to him was that it was dependable and worked as I described. He also had some experience with Force-sensitives, so he knew what I was doing was strange and very different from what he had seen during the Clone Wars. When he realized my Clairvoyance spell actually worked, he accepted it with a shrug.


    "I fought alongside Jedi during the war. What''s one more strange yet very real cosmic mystery?" He said, running his hand along the scar that ran along his entire head, all the way from the back of his skull to his eye. "Don''t really care where it comes from, so long as it works."


    By the time I was done showing off, we had moved to the cargo space of the Chariot so I had a bit more room to show off. Most of the crew was sitting on or leaning against the various crates, boxes, and equipment we had stored there. The siblings, Vakim and Dazem, looked dazed, but their nonsensical denial was gone, while Allum had maintained his mostly unphased look.


    "So, you can use the same tracking¡­ spell, at long range?" He asked, still scratching at his scar. "How does it interact with hyperspace?"


    "It doesn''t, as far as I know. It still works, but it''s not like I can use it to find jump coordinates," I explained. "We will have to triangulate by jumping around a bit and then calculating their base location from that info."


    "Easy if they are stationed on a planet or moon," Nal pointed out. "Not so if they are in deep space."


    "Why?"


    "Your method is too crude. Plotting an arrow that only you can see is going to lead to deviations," Nal answered, Allum shifting to look at the Duros. "Just a few degrees off and a short hyperspace jump later, and we missed by a whole system."


    "So, um¡­ let''s first read through the information people have on the group," Julus suggested. "We could probably cut a lot of the nearby systems out of the running just because they are too far away."


    "That is true¡­ from how they are described, they seem to be consistent," Vakim agreed, seemingly pulled from her magic-induced funk to listen and offer advice. "Most likely, we would be able to cut down the list significantly."


    "I take it that means my magic hasn''t scared you away?" I asked, looking at all three of the new members. "You''re all very welcome to leave. No need to worry about that."


    "It''s gonna take some time to get used to," Vakim admitted, only to follow it up with a confident nod. "But I see no reason to call our agreement over."


    "Good, I''m glad to hear that."


    We hung around for another hour or so, the entire crew getting to know each other properly, all while occasionally showing off more magic or answering questions about it. When we finally went our separate ways, Pola and our new three companions returned to the Intervention, while everyone else eventually made their way to their quarters.


    Among discussing old stories and our most recent activities, Vakim also expressed a desire to get a feel for the Intervention before we went out on any bounty hunt, even if we were hoping to avoid space combat by hopefully attacking the pirates at their base. So, rather than leaving as soon as we could, we decided to stay on Birgis for about another night. In the morning, Julus, Nal, Vaz, and I, along with four BXs, would go on one final hunting trip, this time with the Brick as support, while the Chariot and the Intervention left for most of the day. They would do some combat drills, set up a few more low-powered live-fire combat simulations, and even practice a few basic fleet movements. After about eight hours they would return, pick us up and take us off planet.


    The four of us headed out on the Brick bright and early, receiving a final farewell from our compatriots about twenty minutes after we left through the comms. It was a bit nerve-wracking, knowing that they would be so far away for the first time in a while. Thankfully, with the Brick as upgraded as it was and with three of my trusted crewmates with me, I quickly squashed the anxiety and focused on the task at hand.


    If hunting had been easy before with just Julus and I, it was now a leisurely walk in the park with our additional help. We easily took down another torgena nest, as well as another unruly herd of dorum, this one twice the size as our first bounty. By the end of our eight hours, we ended up filling almost all of the soul gems I had prepared, which at this point was nearly all of the Kyber crystals we had harvested from the Dantooine Crystal Caves. I felt confident I now had the resources to equip every crew member, with resources left over to experiment with.


    When we were done cashing in the bounty for clearing the torgena nest, we headed out to the city outskirts and landed the Brick. Once we landed, we waited for about an hour before the Chariot returned and messaged down from orbit. A quick ride out of the atmosphere later, and we were back on board.


    "How did it go?" I asked Tatnia, who was waiting for us at the port hangar entrance.


    "Good, Calima was impressed by Vakim," She responded as we walked. "And Vakim was impressed by the Intervention. It plowed through the tri-fighters too."


    "Well, they aren''t really designed to take down capital ships, even small cruisers," I pointed out.


    "Vakim did point that out," Tatnia explained with a nod. "She was pleased with the point defense capabilities of the quad turrets."


    "Great, did they mention how working with the droids was?"


    "No, but you can ask them yourself."


    I nodded as we stepped into the lounge, Miru already waiting for us at the table. Calima called back from the cockpit, warning us that we would be making a short, five-minute jump to give us some privacy as we sat down. True to her words, the ship shifted through hyperspace and about five minutes later dropped back to realspace. When she was done with the jump, she joined us as well, everyone sitting around the lounge table. The holo-projector in the middle of the table blinked on, showing Pola, Dazem, Vakim, and Allum with a backdrop of the Intervention''s bridge.


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    We spent about thirty minutes discussing how the training exercise went and how they felt about the ship and the droids. All three of the new crew members were satisfied with the arrangement and even expressed surprise at how well the naval droids worked. Eventually, I brought up a new potential mission, looking to Vaz.


    "Alright, Vaz, you had time to do some research. What did you uncover?" I asked, turning to look at the Shistavanen woman.


    "Judging by the location of their reported attacks, we are almost certain they are somewhere near the trade loop that the Birgis system sits on," She explained. "Their attacks are too consistent and well-timed to be too far from it. Plus, as Allum pointed out, it''s clearly weighted to one side of the loop."


    "So, they attack more frequently on one side?" Julus asked. "Wouldn''t that mean they are probably closer to that side?"


    "Unless they are intentionally distancing themselves from their location," Allum pointed out. "The only thing that their attacks being weighted to one side reliably proves is that they are close by in general."


    "...How?" I ask after a moment of trying to puzzle out the answer for myself. "I get the part that there is no way to know if the grouping is due to incompetence or planning, but how does it prove they aren''t too far away?"


    "Because if a group is willing to travel for days through hyperspace to keep themselves hidden, they wouldn''t be stupid enough to attack one place more aggressively than others. They would keep it genuinely random to avoid any patterns leaking through," He explained with a shrug. "Combined with the fact that these raids are only being reported around this loop tells us they are most likely nearby."


    "Yeah, alright, fair enough," I said with a nod. "Let''s go with that for now. If Clairvoyance starts to lead us in a different direction, we can deal with it then. For now, let''s focus on the loop. Racer, if you would."


    The astromech beeped and whistled before sliding forward and connecting to the holo table. He took control of the projection, and after a moment, the image of the Intervention crew disappeared, replaced by an image of the loop we were just discussing, systems and planets labeled accordingly. A line of hyperspace jumps traced themselves along the map, showing where we would be jumping.


    "Right. In a moment, I will cast Clairvoyance looking for the three wanted pirates, and Racer will record the data," I explained, patting the astromechs head. "Depending on where it points, we will make another jump, this one around ten hours. Then, we will rinse and repeat four or five times to weed out any outliers. Anyone see any issues with that?"


    When no one said anything, I nodded, and Racer disengaged from the table, the map changing to show the rest of the crew.


    "In that case, stand by Intervention. Calima will send you to our first destination shortly."


    Vakim nodded and the projection snapped off, the projector going dark a moment later. After she was sure the meeting was mostly over, Miru leaned forward with an excited smile.


    "Racer and I whipped something up to help while we were away," Miru said with a smile. "It''s not perfect, but it should make pinpointing things a bit easier. Go ahead and project the compass Racer."


    The little droid whistled, and a simple line appeared in front of his own holo projection unit, parallel to the deck below our feet. The line was tipped with an arrow, which pointed back at the droid, who whistled excitedly.


    "So you just need to tell Racer when this arrow lines up with your arrow from your Clairvoyance spell line up," Miru explained. "It''s nowhere near perfect, but it should help."


    "This is extremely helpful," I said genuinely. "I honestly hadn''t figured out how I was gonna describe the direction precisely when none of you guys can see it. Alright, you ready, Racer?"


    Over the next ten minutes, we painstakingly adjusted the projected arrow over my conjured arrow. It took a minute to realize that Racer could use his pincers to grab my hand and keep it steady, allowing me to pause and let my magicka regenerate, as well as cast the spell twice more for each of the pirate leaders. When we had finally taken all three measurements, one for each pirate leader we were hunting, Calima worked out a destination for us. When everything was done, she quickly sent the new coordinates to the Intervention. Together we jumped to lightspeed, our destination set to the middle of nowhere, eleven hours away.


    The crew spread out to do their own thing, primarily focused on general maintenance. I knew Tatnia and Julus planned on cleaning the guns we had used while hunting while Nal headed off to work on the Arrow. Miru was, as usual, tucked away in her workshop, happily working on a personal project, which she said wasn''t ready to reveal yet. While they all worked, I made my way back to the enchanting room, determined to work on the process.


    At this point, I essentially had two paths I could take, though I knew I would eventually need to work on both of them. First, I needed to improve my enchanting endurance. Focusing for such a long time on the process was a skill I needed to improve because I was pretty sure it was one-half of the process of creating truly impressive enchantments. The second half was also the second step or path I could take, which was learning how to string multiple soul gems together so I could switch once I drained one completely. While that ability would immediately let me create slightly more powerful enchantments by letting me quickly burn through a lot more life energy, once I could focus my way through a full soul stone at a slow pace, adding a second and maybe even a third would push my enchanting to even higher levels.


    Unfortunately, seeing as I couldn''t even make it through a single soul gem at a slow pace, looking forward to doing three in a row was probably overzealous.


    After a bit of debating, I decided to spend the next few hyperspace jumps when I wasn''t sleeping or taking a break, trying my best to improve my mental stamina. I picked out a decent-looking amulet, settling on creating a fortify strength enchantment. As I set to work, rather than just repeating the process exactly as I had done before, I experimented with focusing my mind in different ways, hoping to find some sort of trick or mental method to make staying focused easier. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that it really just came down to mental discipline, so I gave up and simply focused.


    Nearly four hours later, I finally drained the soul gem completely, the stone crumbling as it was drained of the last bit of life energy. I stumbled back and nearly collapsed in the room''s only chair, the mental fatigue catching up with me all at once, just as it had before. I don''t know how long I sat there, my mind empty of thought, slowly recovering, but when I could finally string my thoughts together, I cast Respite and Fast healing on myself, letting out a groan as the energy suffused me. As I sat in the chair, feeling my magic ease my pain, I slowly lifted the newly enchanted amulet up, the small metal plate, shaped in a symbol I didn''t recognize, slowly spinning as it hung from the metal chain.


    "If this is how it''s going to be every time, making stuff for everyone is going to suck," I mumbled to myself before shaking my head and standing.


    I made my way out of the enchanting room, trying to think of the best way to test my new amulet, both because I was curious about its effectiveness and because I desperately needed a break.

 Chapter 84

    "And Tatnia wins¡­ again," Julus said, throwing down his cards and shaking his head. "How in the hells have you come out on top three out of four games? It''s a game of luck."


    I chuckled and took a sip of my drink, putting my own cards down and watching as Tatnia picked up her credits with a smirk. It was only a few dozen credits in total, but she was obviously enjoying the process of trouncing us.


    "And that''s your first mistake," She responded with a smile. "Assuming it''s just a game of luck."


    With our final agreed-upon game complete, we started cleaning up our mess. Tatnia made a show of putting our credits away before starting to clear the lounge table of a few bottles and bits of trash we accumulated while playing. When we were done, I glanced at the chronometer on the bar counter.


    We were about seven hours into our fourth jump, having already marked down four angles for our "triangulation" attempt. I had spent the majority of my time so far working on my enchantment, with encouraging results.


    After I had finished my strength-fortifying amulet, I spent a bit working out how much stronger it actually made me, as well as passing it around to the rest of the crew so they could try it out. The results were interesting, though I suppose I should have expected that. The enchantment seemed to suck in energy and infuse it into the wearer, similar to how my restoration magic could, if I ever got around to learning the three fortification spells my grimoire had.


    Stranger still was the variable effect it had on people. Rather than have a flat increase, as I had assumed, it seemed to affect everyone differently. For Miru and Calima, it was a hardly detectable increase, making lifting a heavy metal bar just barely easier. For Nal and Julus, the effect seemed to be slightly more noticeable, while Tatnia and I could feel a minor, but not insignificant, difference. Vaz, on the other hand, gained the most from it, describing it as an obvious, if still small, increase in her strength. Nal was the first to catch on to what was happening.


    "The stronger you are, the more it affects you," He explained, gesturing to Vaz. "She is the strongest out of all of us. Therefore, it affects her the most."


    "That¡­ makes a certain kind of sense¡­" I admitted with a frown, scratching my cheek.


    "I would be interested to see what wearing multiple of this... Enchantment does," Vaz admitted.


    "I would consider this to be the bare minimal level of success," I explained with a shrug. "I''ll be able to make more powerful stuff, but even this takes a lot out of me."


    When we finished messing around with the amulet, I gave it to Vaz, seeing as she benefited from it the most, promising to replace it with something even better soon. Over the next two jumps, I practiced more, creating three more pieces of equipment in total. The first was a Destruction attunement amulet. It was supposed to help focus and ease the use of destruction magic, but at this level, the difference was negligible. I also created a ring of protection and a fortify magicka ring. I gave Miru the ring of protection, once again promising to replace it soon, while I replaced my second lesser mana storage ring with the magicka fortification. Once again, the potency was nearly insignificant, but I wore it anyway.


    By the fourth jump, I was too drained to work on anything, so I decided to take it off, sleeping in late, playing Sabbac, and casually reading my grimoire. I even asked Calima for reading suggestions, the book lover eagerly sending me a list of books on my personal datapad.


    "We still have a few hours until we drop out of hyperspace," Calima said when I stepped into the cockpit, having finished cleaning up the lounge. "But in all honesty, this is just a formality at this point. We have four points of reference already, and according to Racer, they all point to the same general system."


    "Better safe than sorry," I responded with a shrug. "One more point can only help."


    She shrugged and turned her attention back to one of her station''s readouts before leaning back in her chair, her focus back on her datapad. After a minute or so of watching out the bridge window, I left the cockpit, heading down to the workshop to check on Miru.


    As I stepped into her space, Miru was just snapping Leddy''s chest plate back on to her frame, the repair droid stood in a way that told me it was depowered at the moment. Miru pulled up her datapad and connected a long link to the green droid''s neck. She looked over at me as I leaned against one of her work surfaces, smiling before looking back at her screen.


    "I had a few ideas to help the repair droids be a bit more efficient, so I installed them on Leddy so she can test them," She explained, tapping in her datapad.


    I frowned and looked at Leddy, trying to figure out all of the changes. The most obvious addition was a welded-on backpack of sorts, which I had missed at first because Miru had been in the way. It took me a second but I realized it was about half a dozen tools all organized and attached with latches and clamps.


    "I had the supplies dropped off while we were still on Birgis. Leddy has the full upgrade, which was a bit on the expensive side, but we could do a lesser version for the other droids," She explained, still tapping on the screen. "Here, watch."


    Leddy straightened and looked around for a moment before turning towards us.


    "Greeting Leader Deacon, Engineer Miru," She said, her robotic voice sounding slightly different than before as if it had been tweaked slightly. "Were the upgrades successful?"


    "Installation went about as well as I could hope," Miru responded. "Now, all we need to do is test them. Run through a full physical demonstration, please."


    "Very well, Engineer Miru," The droid said before shifting again and reaching the new addition on her back.


    Over the next five minutes, Leddy pulled out and tested nearly a dozen tools and pieces of equipment. Half of them were on her back, but she also had a few stored on her hips and chest, all of them at least partially hidden and protected by Leddy''s protective coverings. The repair bot was now a walking tool chest.


    "That is impressive," I said when she finished, looking at Miru. "I assume those are some of the more important tools?"


    "Yeah, she should be able to fix pretty much anything," She explained with a smile.


    "What about energy draw?" I asked.


    "The tools with built-in power sources are charged when she climbs into her charging bay. Everything else draws from an additional battery that also charges from the charging bay."


    "Very impressive Miru," I said with a smile. "How much was the upgrade?"


    "The full upgrade was about two thousand credits,'''' She said with a wince. "Most of that went to buying the tools themselves. The lesser version would be just the pack and wouldn''t have the same level of finesse on hand, but that''s fine because they can still use other tools."


    "Let''s leave these upgrades as they are, so both you and Leddy can see or feel them in action," I said after a moment of thinking. "After a while we can discuss applying the upgrades to the rest of the repair droids."


    Miru and I chatted for a bit longer, the young engineer eager to talk about some of the plans she had and ideas she wanted to test. I''ll be the first to admit that a lot of it went over my head, but she was happy to talk so I did my best to listen and make at least semi intelligent responses. After a while, I said goodbye and continued to walk around the ship, checking in with everyone.


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    When it was finally time to drop out of hyperspace, I was back in the lounge, doing some reading, though not anything from the list Calima had given me. I had tried, but I was shocked to find that living through your own adventure put a damper on reading about the made-up adventures of other people. Instead, I was going through various news sites, trying to keep up to date with what was happening in the galaxy.


    Eventually, I could feel the ship shifting back into realspace, prompting me to close down my datapad. Racer wheeled out of the bridge and made a beeline for me, his grabbing arms coming out before he even got to me. About five minutes of finagling later, we had another point of reference, which Racer quickly worked into the already existing information. We quickly set up another meeting, the crew of the Intervention once again linking through the holofeed.


    "According to Racer, all of the reference lines point in the general direction of a single system," I said, the astromech bringing up the galactic map, showing the reference lines we had found. "It was a little crude, but I think that it''s a safe bet to say we should start here."


    The lines converged to a point outside the trade loop we had talked about, but only by about four or five hours by hyperspace jump, though it was more like twenty from our current position. There was a system there, which all five reference lines intercepted, even if it wasn''t close enough to guess a planet. The system itself was unremarkable, with a singular sun and several planets, none of which could support life according to what information Racer could dig up.


    "I think the best bet is to close the distance and drop out of hyperspace far outside the outskirts of the system," I said, Racer helping by zooming in on the system as I talked. "Then we can make a jump or two in order to confirm that the pirate base is here. With any luck, the close proximity will make pinpointing what planet they are on much easier. Any thoughts?"


    "Can I assume you intend to sneak up on the pirates?" Vakim asked, continuing when I nodded in agreement. "Do you have a vessel capable of that level of stealth?"


    "The Brick has a dozen upgrades that reduce its sensor profile," Miru explained. "As long as they are living on a planet, they can land without being spotted on sensors."


    "And if they are on a station?" Vakim asked. "None of these planets have a livable atmosphere for most species."


    "Ummm¡­ It''s probably a lot less likely," Miru admitted, her shoulders sagging a bit.


    "Making a ship that could sneak up on a space station is a bit out of our budget, Miru," I explained. "It''s got nothing to do with your abilities. If they are on a station of some kind, then we will have to rethink our plan. The likelihood that they not only have a station, but have been able to maintain it for the years they have been active is small, correct?"


    "Yes, it is unlikely,'''' The new crew member admitted easily. "I was merely checking what our plans were for such a scenario."


    "So, we jump to the system''s outskirts and listen for any communications," I repeated, getting various nods and agreeing looks. "If it''s one of the planets we shuttle down on the Brick, try and take them down as quietly as possible. Every starfighter, weapon, and piece of equipment we recover undamaged is another paycheck, even if we probably end up selling it back to the Rebellion at a discount."


    "And I¡­ assume we are back up?" Calima asked


    "Yes, I want the Intervention and the Chariot on standby for any trouble," I agreed, looking to Vakim, who nodded. "In a worst-case scenario, we need you to pull us out."


    "How¡­ exactly will we be able to help?" The Tholothian asked. "We cannot bombard the target¡­ without¡­. putting the ground team in danger."


    "We are going to temporarily transfer the B2''s over to the Chariot," I explained with a smile. "If we are stuck, scramble the raindrops and land as close as possible so the B2''s can offload and hopefully support us long enough to escape. That said, don''t forget we will be landing with the BX commandos as well. I won''t say anything to jinx it, but that''s a lot of firepower."


    Julus perked up from beside Miru, clearly having forgotten we would be bringing the capable droid soldiers. Vakim and Allum both recognize the name as well, and the scarred sensor specialist muttered under his breath about "scary competent clankers."


    "If it''s a station, then it probably comes down to what kind," I continued. "We could probably perform a hostile landing on an old, beat-up civilian station, but if it''s a <u>Golan</u></a> or something, we are just leaving. Maybe the authorities will pay us a smaller bounty for finding their base rather than bringing them in."


    We discussed the possibilities for a bit longer before finally ending the meeting, the Intervention crew signing off. Racer and Calima quickly plotted a route that would take us to the outskirts of the lifeless system, sending the data over to the Intervention. While that was happening, Nal took the Brick and flew over to the Intervention, picking up their detachment B2s and ferrying them over to the Chariot. Not long after that we made the jump to lightspeed, the familiar thrum echoing from the deck.


    Now that we were approaching our target, the crew shifted into high gear, preparing for the mission. Miru started going over the BXs, making sure they were in perfect shape. Nal, Vaz and Julus went over our weapons, including the blasters used by the BXs, cleaning them out and just doing general maintenance. Vaz and Leddy did an in-depth checklist of the Brick to make sure there wouldn''t be any surprises.


    After making sure that everyone was good and that no one needed my help, I made my way to my room. This trip was going to be substantially longer than the short hops we had been making to plot reference lines, which meant I finally had time to learn a new Adept spell, one I had been putting off for a while.


    When I first unlocked the Adept level spells, I was surprised to see Conjure Quiver. Not because I didn''t expect to see it, I knew it existed from the games, after all. No, what was surprising was just how different it was from the base game version. Where the original just conjured some really good arrows, this one allowed you to add them with a twist of either flame, shock, or frost. It wasn''t a ton of energy, but according to what I was reading, it was enough to be worth it.


    I eagerly sat down in my comfortable chair and pulled out my grimoire, slowly starting the process of learning the spell. By the time I was done many hours later, I was exhausted but content with what I had achieved, conjuring and dismissing a quiver of arrows on my back, shifting their charge each time.

 Chapter 85

    When we finally dropped out of hyperspace on the far outskirts of the unnamed and supposedly lifeless system, there was a layer of tension that covered the ship like a heavy blanket. Despite being surrounded by thousands of miles of nothingness, some sort of deep instinct drove everyone to walk just a bit softer and talk just a little more quietly. Even I wasn''t immune, catching myself wincing when I made a bit too much noise.


    When we finally arrived, I stood on the bridge behind Calima as she slowly oriented the Chariot around to more generally face the majority of the system. It wasn''t a precise movement, the system was too large and we were too close for that, but it did make for a spectacular view. As I looked out the main bridge''s forward viewport, the comms station crackled, Vakim''s voice coming through.


    "The scans are picking up some communication, but not much," She said, sticking to a tight beam, voice-only link. "But in a system like this, that in itself is enough. It''s all coming from the fourth planet from the sun."


    "We hear you Intervention. Sensors, anything to add?" Calima asked, not looking away from her consoles.


    "There are light traces on the very limits of our sensors," The Naval B1 in charge of sensors responded. "Nothing else."


    "Alright, alert me if that changes."


    "Roger Roger."


    "Well, Boss?" Calima asked, turning to face me. "We have a general target. What do we do?"


    "What are our options?" I said, peering over a droid''s shoulder to see a scan of the system. "Vakim?"


    "One moment." She responded, the tell click of a closed comms coming through the speaker.


    I looked at Calima, who only shrugged and turned back to her controls, tabbing through something and reading her instruments. After a few moments, the comms clicked back as we linked up again.


    "I believe we could make a microjump the third planet from the sun," Vakim said confidently. "From there, our sensors should be able to pick up which side of their planet the pirates are based on."


    I looked at Calima, who seemed to sense my unspoken question, turning to nod at me in agreement.


    "Alright, make it happen."


    The bridge was silent for a long stretch while the microjump calculations were run. When they were finished, Calima quickly fed them into the Chariots systems to double-check, before confirming they were set.


    The jump itself was sudden, a quick thrum and lunge forward, the streaks of light passing us by for a split second before we returned to realspace, our windows suddenly full of our first destination, a red and gray planet with no discernable atmosphere. I watched as Calima pulled up and stabilized the ship, quickly setting us in orbit around the planet, the Intervention off to our starboard. I could see the curvature of the planet, as well as our eventual target planet far, far in the distance, barely more than a marble. I opened my mouth to say something, only to be cut off.


    "Really?" Miru asked, popping into the bridge, sounding annoyed. "A microjump? We couldn''t just burn sublight?"


    "A microjump was the best option for remaining undetected," Vakim responded through the comms. "Traveling through realspace would have taken hours and left us vulnerable to sensors or visual scans."


    "I''m going to have to spend ages realigning the capacitors now," The young engineer complained. "I just-I¡­ I''m realizing that now probably isn''t the best time to complain about this. Sorry!"


    The embarrassed pink-skinned Twi''lek vanished from the doorway without any further prompting, seemingly having read my mind, or at least my expression. I would never expect full decorum like a proper military, but that didn''t mean jumping in like that was alright, not when we were well into a dangerous mission. I let out a sigh and turned back to Calima.


    "What was that about?" I asked with a frown.


    "Microjumps are¡­ a bit rough on hyperdrives," She explained. "A handful in a row with a well-maintained ship isn''t¡­ a problem, but more than that, or with... a junker, and it starts getting dicey."


    "You could have mentioned that before," I said, shaking my head. "Wouldn''t have changed anything, mind you. Intervention, what are your sensors picking up?"


    "... Scans are coming in much more clearly," Allum responded, speaking through the comms for the first time. "The chatter and readings are definitely coming from the fourth planet. Unfortunately, it looks like it''s somewhere on this side of the planet, so a direct approach would get us spotted quick."


    "What kind of information are you picking up on their planet?" I asked.


    "Dense atmosphere, would be fine to breathe except it''s got a lot of nasty heavier gasses too," He answered promptly. "Pretty cold, too, but not enough water for any snowfall, so we are lucky there."


    "Any rotation?"


    "...Dammit, I''m rusty," The older man said, sounding annoyed with himself. "Yes, they should be facing far enough away from us in a few hours."


    "Could we close the gap with another microjump?" I asked, scratching my neck.


    "No, the Chariot and Intervention¡­ would make even low-level sensors light up dropping out of hyperspace that close," Calima explained. "Smaller ships, one modified to be stealthier might be able to, but none of ours."


    "How long would it take for us to make that trip at sublight then?"


    We discussed the trip for a while longer before settling on traveling at sublight speeds, but waiting two hours for the planet to rotate the source of the comms chatter away from us. Once our plan was decided, we started prepping in earnest. Final checks on the BXs were done before getting them ready to load into the Brick, while everyone who would be landing started getting dressed and armed up. Most importantly was the basic chest armor that Pola had put together. It was a simple plate carrier system, like we had been using before, but with the plates replaced with beskar plates. It was far from the complete protection I wanted, but it was definitely a good start.


    By the time we were all prepped, including a double and triple check of gear, we were ready to pull away from our cover planet and head to our target. It was nerve-wracking pulling out into more or less open space, knowing that if we had underestimated the pirates'' sensors, they would easily be able to spot us at this point.


    When we finally swung around the target planet, putting it between us and the pirate camp on the other side, the ground team quickly filed down into the port hangar. Tatnia took the pilot''s chair while the rest of us quickly strapped into the remaining seats, Nal claiming the seat that controlled the dorsal turret. Once we were strapped in and ready, I called the BX''s in, the flexible assassin droids easily fitting into the remaining space, a few of them strapping into seats and the rest locking themselves in place with the magclamps in their feet and the handlebars built into the ceiling.


    "Boss?" Tatnia asked, looking back at me over her shoulder, prompting me to visually check everyone. When no one spoke up, I turned back to her and nodded.


    The Brick slowly pulled out of the hangar, rolling away from the Chariot before heading straight down to the planet''s surface. Of course, I could barely see any of this, as looking over the pilot''s seat gave us just the barest sliver of a look at what we were doing. Still, we had all gone over the plan, so it wasn''t hard to imagine what was happening.


    Once we were close to the lifeless surface of the planet, Tatnia kept us as low as possible, dipping up and over mountains and valleys, attempting to stay off any sensors that the pirates might have. After about ten minutes of this, I could feel the tension leaving my body, the rising stress of going into a life or death fight dissipating as my brain, the part I had no control over, came to the realization that even with scifi tech, traveling around a planet comparable in size to Mars was going to take some time.


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    I let out a long breath, taking a second to let out the rest of the residual anxiety and tension, rolling my shoulders a bit before settling back against the relatively comfortable seat, the harness sitting a bit loose on me.


    "Are we there yet?"


    I turned to look at Julus, who was sitting along the opposite side of me, two seats to the left. He looked serious, and I could only shake my head and laugh.


    "Yup, feel free to hop out," I responded with a chuckle, Julus''s serious face breaking into a smirk. "What is our ETA Nia?"


    "Five hours," She responded. "Might want to get in a nap or something, Boss."


    "Not a bad idea."


    Eventually, I did drift off into a nap, though it wasn''t a very refreshing one, as the frequent dips and shifts that the shuttle''s inertial dampeners couldn''t handle stopped me from getting any deeper than a doze. When Tatnia finally called out a ten-minute warning, I could feel the dissatisfying sleep clinging to me. Thankfully, a quick Respite and Fast Heal combo washed that and the sore neck away in seconds.


    We landed, and Tatnia immediately started shutting down the ship, keeping it on low power. After some discussion during the planning stage, we decided to keep it partially running as we could use its more powerful comms unit to connect our personal units to our support ships. It did increase the chances of it being spotted, but I wasn''t about to do any of this without being able to call for backup. Should things go wrong, we would be able to call for help without having to worry about range.


    As we prepared to leave, we all clipped on our face masks, ensuring they were locked on tight before we put on our helmets. Once everyone was ready, we opened up the ship and slowly filed out. The BXs left first, securing the area before the rest of us stepped out into the slightly hazy, arid landscape.


    "Alright, the target is at least a mile that way," I said in a hushed voice, gesturing to the direction the Brick had been flying. "We aren''t sure what the camp looks like or how many of them there are, so we take this slow and quiet. BX-1 through BX-5 you stay to our left, BX-6 through 10, you''re to our right. Everyone stays close; the commandos are going to be focused on looking for traps or anything suspicious. It should only be an hour''s hike, but that could change since we don''t have a detailed map of the area. Any questions?"


    At this point, I was basically just repeating what we had already gone over, so it wasn''t surprising that no one had anything to add or ask. When no one spoke up, I nodded and turned towards our target. With a silent gesture, the BXs began fanning out on either side of the group, scanning the rocky expanse for any sign of danger.


    The hike was slow, but uneventful, the rocky ground occasionally switching to a dense, chalky sand, though never for long. The landscape was pockmarked with ravines and massive spires and plateaus of stone. The spires showed off some impressive striation and reminded me of some of the <u>rocky desert formations</u></a> from home.


    After an hour and a half of hiking, one of the BXs motioned for us to stop, stepping closer to speak quietly. Its volume dialed down until I could barely hear it.


    "Our scans are picking up life signs just over the next ridge," It said. "What are our orders?"


    "Hold back, I''ll take a look," I responded, signing the same to the rest of the group before casting Muffle on myself.


    I slowly made my way up the ridge, the sounds of my footsteps and a significant portion of any other sound silenced by my spell as I climbed. Once I reached the top, I dropped down to crawl, just peaking my head over the ridge.


    Beyond the high point I had just climbed, the ground sank down a bit before flattening out into a rather large plateau, spanning almost as much as a football field. Around that plateau were several other flat spots, most of them higher, but a few lower, all of them with ladders and rocky stairs leading to them. Scattered around all of those relatively flat spots were <u>nearly</u></a> a <u>dozen</u></a> <u>structures</u></a> of various designs, styles, and sizes. From where I was, I could see nearly a dozen people walking around, some of them near the structures themselves, but most of them around the various ships that were interspersed between the structures. All of the ships and a few of the buildings were slathered in the pirate gang symbol, some sort of edgy, dangerous animal I didn''t recognize.


    A quick tally showed eight starfighters, only three of which I recognized as <u>Z-95 Headhunters</u></a>, the remaining five were made up of <u>two</u></a> different <u>types</u></a>, neither of which I recognized. There was also a <u>single freighter</u></a>, a variant of the YT that I didn''t recognize but showed enough of the signs that I could identify the overall series. Most of the starfighters had people moving around them, repairing or doing maintenance, and as I watched, I could see the freighter had its boarding ramp down, with people climbing up and down. The longer I watched, the higher my estimate for the total number of people went up.


    After observing for another minute or so, I slowly shifted to make sure my hand was covered before casting Clairvoyance, specifically the trail version, focusing on my mental image of one of the three leaders. I smirked as the glowing, pale blue guiding trail led into the camp, trailing down between the two closest structures and disappearing out of sight.


    I smirked and slowly crawled backward, having confirmed that we were at the right place, not that we weren''t sure already. As I slowly made my way back down, I stood back up and re-cast Muffle to make sure I stayed quiet. When I got back to the rest of the group, I nodded in confirmation.


    "It''s them," I said quietly. "A lot more of them than I thought."


    "Too many?" Nal asked, and I shook my head.


    "No, as long as we have the element of surprise and keep anyone from getting on board any of their ships," I explained. "Unfortunately, everything is too spread out to cut them off from their ships in one ambush."


    "So¡­ what do we do?" Julus asked.


    "We split up," Tatnia suggested. "Three groups, each responsible for locking down a different section."


    "Solid plan. What are the groups?" Nal asked.


    "Three groups of five," I answered. "Two BX teams and the five of us."


    We spent a few more minutes coming up with a general plan, before we split up into groups. The BX teams left immediately, walking around, silently sneaking around to their target area. We waited three minutes, the tension rising as we listened closely for any sign of the droids being discovered. When none came, all five of us slowly made our way up to the ridge before slinking over the top to the base below.

 Chapte 86

    We slowly made our way down the slope, quickly crossing the distance between it and the nearest structure, following the same general path that my Clairvoyance had highlighted only a few minutes ago. I was in the lead, with Tatnia and Julus right behind me, Nal behind them, and Vaz, in her heavy armor and her<u> Z-6 cannon </u></a>strapped to her back, was just behind him. We were a dangerous-looking bunch, and I couldn''t be happier about it. I fed a primal part of myself that, up until this new chance at life, I had no idea I had.


    As we finally reached the back of the closest, blocky, prefabricated-looking structure, I quickly conjured my armor, dumping all of my magicka into it so it could replenish as my crew caught up to me. Tatnia settled on the other side of the gap between my cover and the next structure, darting across the space with Julus hot on her heels. We shared a look, and I nodded, both of us getting low and slowly stepping through the gap.


    The two prefab structures, which were placed at different angles, formed a sort of angular alleyway, which the pirates had partially filled with crates and boxes. Most of them were in terrible shape, corroded and broken from misuse and time, but they still provided plenty of cover. At least from sight, they didn''t look even close to sturdy enough to hold back blaster bolts. As we reached the other end of the junk-filled alley, we both slowed and peeked out over the crates, taking in the immediate area.


    The structures we were using as cover were two out of three buildings tucked into this corner of the large rocky plateau. They framed one side of a crude landing pad, which held all three of the Headhunters I had counted before. As we watched, around a half dozen pirates worked on the starfighters, ranging from a casual inspection to what seemed like a relatively invasive repair, a mask-wearing pirate elbow deep in one of the thrusters.


    For a while, we continued to watch and make a note of the people working around the starfighters. My first instinct was to attack immediately and clear out anyone working on the ships, but I held back. Instead, I turned back to the rest of the crew, instructing them to spread out around the cover of the structures.


    "Spread out and wait for my signal," I whispered. "Once the starfighters are cleared, breach and clear the buildings, then focus on keeping people off the starfighters."


    Vaz nodded and quickly hefted her rotary cannon, heading around to the building to the far right, while Julus and Nal went the other direction, to the third structure. While they moved into position, I took my comms unit and clicked it twice, the signal for the BX teams that we were about to begin. As I slid my comms unit away, I glanced at Tatnia, who nodded in return, gripping her blaster rifle. I took and let out a long, deep breath before focusing on the targets. I pulled on my magic and leaned forward, casting Ice Spike, one for each hand, targeting the two closest pirates.


    My attack flew across the gap and impaled the two pirates with a muffled, meaty punch. One of the pirates didn''t even have time to blink as the large spear of magical ice punched through his brain, killing him nearly instantly. The second was hit in the lower stomach, knocking him off the top of the starfighter he was working on and cracking his skull open on the S-foil on the way down.


    The sound of a hard skull getting into and subsequently losing a fight with an unyielding metal corner resonated through the space for a moment, causing everyone else within hearing range to stop and look over. Before the resonating sound even stopped, however, the rest of my team opened up, easily targeting and taking down everyone else around the landing pad area and then everyone standing around the buildings.


    "Go!" I shouted and rushed around the corner, already casting greater ward while conjuring my sword.


    Ignoring the sounds of more distant fighting as the BX kicked off their own battles, I rushed up the metal grate steps to the door of my target structure, holding my ward in front of me. The door opened with woosh, air pushing at me as I stepped inside. Immediately, half a dozen blaster bolts bounced off my ward, ricocheting away and slamming into the walls and furniture of the room.


    The nearest threat was a Twi''lek male covered in tattoos and scars. His blaster pistol was already trained on me, his eyes wide in shock when his shots just bounced off my ward. Before he could recover, I stepped forward, slashing my sword out and catching him in his shoulder, cutting his arm clean off before finishing him off with a secondary slash. Another quartet of energy bolts slammed into my ward, draining my magicka dangerously low as I turned to see a Rodian and a Weequay, both of them firing at me.


    Feeling my ward flicker, I threw my sword at them, causing them both to flinch as it cut the Rodian along his chest, but it failed to take him down. I pull the stored mana from my ring, using it to cast Sparks at the Weequay while pulling my blaster pistol and firing a trio of blaster bolts into the Rodian. The Weequay, with his thick skin, recovered quickly from the blast of Sparks, firing twice at me, both hitting me center off mass but neither breaking through my conjured armor. The armored alien''s eye went wide, even as I rushed him, conjuring a dagger and stabbing him in the stomach, then finishing him off by cutting his throat.


    I stopped then, looking around the room for a moment. I quickly refilled my conjured armor with mana before rushing back outside, the door opening for me and closing behind me. I looked over to the structure next to the one I had just cleared to see Tatnia stepping out into the poisonous air.


    "All clear," She said, vaulting over the railing to drop down to the ground, an action I mimicked.


    I verbally confirmed my building was clear as well, and soon we were joined by the rest of the team, their buildings cleared or already empty.


    Taking the lead, I pushed closer to the starfighters, double checking there wasn''t anyone hiding away, before pushing past and up to a second level of the nearest plateau, where there was another structure, this one much larger than the three we had already cleared.


    "Nal, Vaz, stay outside, find some cover, and keep an eye out. Your main priority is to keep people away from the Headhunters," I said, gesturing to Tatnia and Julus. "You guys are-"


    Before I could start to explain the general plan for clearing the much larger building, the entrance we had stopped at suddenly opened. From the angle we were at, I couldn''t see anyone standing just inside, but I could see some movement further in, hidden by shadows. A flash of metal caught the light, and the door resealed. I had no idea what was going on, but thankfully Nal spotted what I had missed.


    "Grenade!"


    Even as he shouted, the Duros dove behind a stack of crates, grabbing and pulling Julus with him. Vaz, who had already been moving to get to a better vantage point, dove behind a shallow pile of rocks, leaving her rotary cannon behind as she moved without thinking. Unfortunately, Tatnia and I were standing in the open, with nowhere to jump and no barrier to hide behind.


    As the rest of the crew dove to cover, I stepped forward, deliberately putting myself between Tatnia and the grenade, which I had finally spotted. The world seemed to slow down as I raised my hands and dual-cast Greater Ward. The protective magic barrier seemed to deploy at a snail''s pace, opening up and spreading out in front of me. Before it could even fully form, the grenade detonated, a shock wave of explosive force expanding outwards, slamming into the ward and knocking it out instantly. The force continued on, reduced but still powerful, driving itself against me and my conjured armor. Chunks of shrapnel and stone hammered into the conjured construct surrounding me, destroying it in moments.


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    As the shockwave slammed into me, it lifted me off my feet. I could feel myself being thrown at Tatnia, before being driven up and over her, spinning twice like a ragdoll before impacting the ground with a bone-rattling impact. It knocked my thoughts for a loop and replaced all sound with a high-pitched whining, though if the movies were anything to go off of, the explosion did that, not the heavy impact on the ground.


    For a moment, I struggled to think, my brain rattled and my senses overwhelmed. Suddenly, Vaz rolled me over and grabbed my armor, already gripping Tatnia''s. She dragged us both simultaneously, pulling us behind a large rock before dropping down into cover with us.


    It took a second, but I shook my head and reached out, dumping a Heal Other into Tatnia, hopefully stabilizing her enough that if she was wounded in a way I couldn''t see, she would keep long enough for me to heal myself a bit.


    Quickly, I dumped the rest of my magicka into a series of Fast Heals, not stopping until the ringing in my ear snapped back to normal hearing.


    "Fucking goddammit," I cursed, rolling over despite my still protesting body, casting another Heal Other on Tatnia, whose eyes were fluttering. "Fuck! Everyone okay?"


    Vaz simply nodded, while Nal and Julus both shouted they were fine. My magicka slowly refilled, and I dumped it all into Tatnia, who gasped and coughed, cursing under her breath as she rolled over and got to a crouch, pulling out her pistol. There was blood leaking from her ears, chest, and leg. As she looked at me, I could see her left eye was also red with blood.


    As she moved, I put two more Heal Other into her before looking over at the large structure, trying to figure out how we would get inside and-


    "Grenade!"


    This time Julus called it out, giving us enough time to fully duck behind the large boulder Vaz had dragged us to. The explosive went off, and it felt like we were being slapped in the chest by a Wookie, my ears popping again, forcing me to bite off a curse.


    Fuck this, I was done playing nice. I was gonna kill the fuck out of these assholes.


    "Vaz, give me a boost!"


    I called out, standing up out of cover and running to the side of the central dome-shaped structure. Vaz followed behind me and folded her hands like a platform, letting me put one foot on them and helping me climb up the side. The first four or five feet were too steep to climb by myself, but beyond that, I managed to grab a cable and haul myself up, my sore, damaged muscles protesting as I climbed.


    "Cover me!" I shouted as I pulled myself up.


    I continued to climb, only stopping when the dome surface was slanted shallow enough for me to stand. I got to my feet, wobbling slightly before managing to catch my balance. With a tight grimace, I reached along my back and grabbed a tool I had brought just in case we ran into something that absolutely needed to be cut.


    I ignited the Inquisitor lightsaber with a flick of my thumb and drove it into the roof, the ominous red blade punching through the material easily, a hiss and spray of molten metal and plastic almost burning me as I broke the pressure seal. I took a step, testing the give of the material, quickly realizing that whatever the roof was made of, it was no match for the lightsaber.


    So I ran.


    I circled the large domed structure at the center of this prefab building, cutting the roof off like a domed can. I was barely even past the halfway point when it started to struggle, and when I had run around about two-thirds of the dome, it finally went. The large roof cracked along the curve i had cut, snapping free under the weight of the already disconnected roof. The building shook as it went, hard enough to cause me to stumble back, forcing me to grab onto a wire and hang on. I quickly shut off the lightsaber and clipped it behind my back, hidden under the armor plate carrier.


    I watched as the center of the structure completely collapsed inwards, sending up a cloud of dust. I could hear screaming and cursing coming from inside as it fell onto the pirates below. Carefully, I pulled myself up, dragging myself to the broken edge, and looked over, peering through the dust. As I carefully checked for anyone still putting up a fight, I handily dispatched two pirates who had taken cover in one of the connected branches, firing bolts of electricity down at them.


    Over the next fifteen minutes, the rest of the crew and I cleared the remaining portions of the structure, dispatching several more pirates in the process. Once we cleared the buildings, I connected the BX teams, both of them responded promptly.


    "Team one, reporting mission success," BX-1 said. "Light Freighter and two surrounding structures cleared and under our control, minimal casualties, light damage to BX-3."


    "Team Two reporting mission success," BX-6 reported next. "Starfighters cleared and nearby structure cleared, light casualties, damage to BX-7 and BX-9"


    "Confirmed. Break up into teams of two and patrol the camp. Look for anyone hiding and anyone coming in," I ordered.


    "Roger Roger," They both responded together.


    Once the building was cleared, I fully healed Tatnia and myself before dumping a few heals into Vaz, Nal, and Julus, just in case. We were double-checking that our buildings were clear when I noticed Nal frowning as he looked at an empty plateau.


    "What''s up?" I asked, looking out in the direction he was.


    "This space is cleared like the rest, but empty?" He asked.


    I frowned and studied the space he had been looking over. Sure enough, three large extra spaces had been cleared out, with all of the loose stones removed and piled out of the way. There was even a set of stairs built for the spots that needed them. Suddenly, a worrying thought wormed into the back of my mind. Quickly, I recast Clairvoyance, going through all three of the pirate leaders. The first one pointed under the rubble I had made while collapsing the large dome structure. The second pointed to one of the buildings the BXs cleared out. The third, however, pointed up.


    Off planet.


    "They are out on a mission!" I said, biting back a shout. "Goddammit, I should have checked for all three earlier! Son of a bitch!"


    "Boss, you need to warn Calima and Vakim!" Tatnia called out, and I cursed again, tearing through my pack to grab my comms unit.


    "Talos Chariot and Intervention, this is Deacon! We cleared out the pirate base, but one of the landing pads is empty, and one of the leaders isn''t here!" I said, nearly shouting. "You need to get ready for the company in case they come back! Chariot, Intervention, are you there?"


    The silence was deafening, one second turning into two, turning into three¡­ Fifteen gut-dropping seconds went by before my comms finally crackled with a response.


    "Copy that, Boss," Calima said, Julus making a sound of relief from beside me. "Thanks for the warning. Could have used it a bit earlier."

 Chapter 87 - BX-01 and Calima Interlude

    With deliberate and precise movements, BX-01 through BX-05 slowly made their way up and around a nearly sheer rock face. Each movement was smooth and clean, their sensors and software easily picking out the best path, compensating for potential faults in the striated stone. Despite their seemingly slow pace, they made good time, reaching the flat portion of the plateau in just under two minutes.


    BX-01 slowly raised his head over the lip of the cliff, peering around at the predominantly flat space that served as one of many landing pads for their targets. Sat in the middle was a medium-sized freighter, showing several signs of serviceable modifications. BX noted a ventral cannon system as a potential threat, wordlessly passing the information to his squad with a burst on his tight band comms. He also shared the location of four pirates, three of whom were working on the ship, replacing a carbonized panel along the aft. A quick visual scan showed the three mechanics were lightly armed, while the fourth pirate had a rifle strung along their back.


    BX-01 made an internal note to request a debriefing on the last twenty years of weapons development, as they could not identify the make or model of the weapon. The galaxy had twenty years to advance while their detachment was powered down, and ignorance of tech advancements only put it at a disadvantage, which his programming demanded he do everything he could to eliminate.


    His internal comms clicked twice, a final warning that the Boss was about to begin their assault. He signaled his squad to move up to the lip of the cliff, each of them slowly climbing around each other before pausing, poised to act when the signal was given.


    A few more seconds passed before the sound of distant fighting finally echoed over the landing pad plateau. All of the visible targets dropped what they were doing and turned to face where the sound was coming from, their hands reaching for their weapons. Before they could do anything, however, all five of the BX units jumped up and over the edge of the clip, easily vaulting themselves up. Immediately, they opened fire, taking out all four with quick precision.


    With the immediate targets dispatched, all five droids quickly jogged to the freighter''s boarding ramp. A quick, silent command and BX-2 and 4 both slowed as the squad climbed the ramp, stopping at the top. They quickly turned and focused back out of the ship, stationed as guards to prevent reinforcements from ambushing and overwhelming them. The rest of the squad pushed in, weapons ready, as they took their first steps into the freighter.


    They had barely stepped into the ship when a door right beside the boarding ramp entryway opened with a swish, revealing a disheveled but armed pirate dressed only in pants. He spotted the commando droids immediately but hesitated for a moment, just long enough for BX-03 to leap forward and wrap a manipulator around his throat, slamming him against the edge of the doorway. The droid wordlessly dumped three blasts of laser fire into the pirate''s stomach before the stunned humanoid could speak.


    The sound of running footsteps prompted the rest of the assassin droids to spin around, diving and rolling into cover as three pirates, each armed with blaster rifles, ran into the central space. BX-03 was still in the process of clearing the room their first kill had exited from and didn''t have time to dodge, a blaster bolt catching him in the shoulder and forcing him to step back into the crew quarters and into cover there, but not before two blaster bolts slam into his shoulder and chest, the impact spinning him slight before he recovered, now wielding his blaster one-handed.


    However, the pirates had no time to celebrate as BX-05 leaped over their cover, a decent-sized crate full of stolen goods, and landed on top of it with steady feet. It sprayed the incoming pirates with lethal red energy, hitting two of them. BX-01 quickly cleaned up the remaining targets with near-surgical precision.


    A soft thrum passed through the floor of the ship, its internal generators kicking on as it prepared to take flight. BX-01 and BX-05 both turned immediately and dashed through the ship, following the bare sounds of cursing and muttering.


    "C''mon c''mon c''mon, hurry up!" A male Rodian said in its native tongue, slapping the control panel, which flickered a few times before lighting up fully, just as the two assassin droids charged at the cockpit. "NO I-"


    The Rodian never got to shout its last words as, with a single clean thrust, BX-01 stabbed through the seat and through their torso with his hefty vibrosword, carving the Rodian''s vital organs.


    As the assassin droid pulled his weapon from the pirate''s seat and chest, BX-05 stepped up to the cockpit, scanning the controls before reaching out and shutting the ship down completely, the entire vessel going silent. Briefly, the droids debated sabotaging the controls but ultimately decided that, in this circumstance, going the extra mile would be detrimental to the mission.


    The droids quickly regrouped, walking down the boarding ramp of the ship and out onto the plateau. With their primary objective complete, their secondary objective began, clearing nearby structures. All four undamaged droids headed directly for the two medium-sized structures closest to the landing pad they had just cleared. As they moved, BX-03 secluded themselves inside the freighter, finding a hidden ambush point to act as a guard.


    When the droids reached the structure, they broke off into pairs, both groups easily jumping and scaling the simple blocky walls, reaching the roof in only a few seconds. A quick search of the roof revealed an access hatch, sealed and locked with a security panel. Rather than attempt anything fancy, the droids defaulted to speed and brutality, slashing the lock with their vibroswords and prying them open. One by one, they dropped inside, both pairs disappearing from view.


    Despite the structures being self-contained, sealed habitats, the screams and shouts from inside the structures were audible on the outside. The commando droids tore through the dozen or so pirates that had hidden away inside each of the structures, hoping to ambush whoever was attacking them. Instead, they were ambushed themselves, quickly dispatched with cold efficiency. When the droids stepped out of the structures, all four of them were heavily splattered with blood of various colors.


    With their objectives complete, the droids quickly moved to a location suitable to observe the area they had been tasked with clearing.


    Eventually, the Boss called, and BX-01 gave their team status report, acknowledging their new orders. He quickly broke his team up into patrolling units, linking his comms with BX-06 to set up the most efficient and secure patrol routes. The squad immediately split up and moved out, BX-01 and 02 heading through a central portion of the middle landing pad, his sensors on full as he listened silently for any incoming threats.


    <hr>


    Calima watched the sensor reading as they came in, her console linked to the sensor and comms console behind her. She was focused on any readings that might indicate something was wrong for the ground team, waiting for the signal to-


    A double click, steady and distinct from the background noise that an open comms naturally picked up, echoed through the comms, picked up from the Brick, which was somewhere on the planet below them. The tight band comm link to the Intervention opened almost immediately after she heard it.


    "Talos Chariot, confirm your comms picked that up?" Allum asked through the link.


    "It did Intervention. Seems like¡­ they are about to strike. We will follow you in," Calima said calmly, before slowly engaging the thrusters and shifting the ship around slightly.


    As usual, the boss preferred to keep his plans as simple as possible. To avoid early detection from the pilots, on the off chance they had any sensors looking up for threats, the Chariot and Intervention would wait for the double-click signal. Then, once the pirates were significantly distracted by the ground team''s assault, they would quickly move into position above the pirate base, ready to provide support should anything go wrong. It was a middle ground between the safety of having the ships on call for support and the assurance they would have the element of surprise during the start of the mission.


    With a flick of her fingers, Calima closed her console''s link to the sensor station before guiding the Chariot into position behind the Intervention. The smaller ship''s role as a light carrier meant that hanging back for most battles was generally the safe play, so even if they weren''t expecting trouble, it was best to keep good habits fresh. The rotation of the planet below seemed to pick up speed as both ships pushed their thrusters to accelerate. A few minutes passed, and the droids assisting both ships updated their pilots as they finally began to slow, now in orbit far above where they believed the pirate base to be.


    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    By now, the ground team would have been well into their fight, making their way through the pirate encampment. Since they were no doubt busy, both shi[ps had their sensors on full blast, actively scanning the target with no fear of their scans being detected since anyone watching would be forced to deal with the ground force.


    "How do you think they are doing?" Miru asked, having made her way to the lounge as they began to move into position, and was now leaning against the doorway into the bridge.


    "We are lucky that¡­ our crewmates are skilled. They will be fine," Calima assured the young genius. "Do you¡­ really think the Boss would let anything happen to them?"


    "No, I guess not," She responded, letting out a long breath. "Hard not to worry though."


    "Of course, but you¡­ did everything you could. Those commando droids are impressive."


    "They are kinda scary to be honest. I don''t usually like restraining bolts, but I was tempted to ask the boss if we could fit them with an internal kill switch," She admitted, biting her lip. "There is no way for them to turn on us without bricking themselves in the process, but I was still tempted."


    The two were silent for a while, the only sound on the bridge was the occasional beep from a console or a droid calling out an update. After a while, Miru let out another long breath, this one of frustration and a bit of boredom, before breaking the silence.


    "Well¡­ I''m going to-"


    Before she could finish, a loud beep came from the sensor and comms station.


    "Hyperspace arrival detected!" The naval droid said, its volume cranked to cut over everything. "Nine signatures in total. Eight starfighters and one medium freighter."


    Calima was already looking down at her console, which fed her an image of the space around their ship, including the planet below. Each of the new arrivals was marked, sensors already having designated them separately, and a considerable distance away, where the planet''s natural gravity well would have caught them. The Intervention was already pulling away from orbit, just enough that the ships would have to go through the heavier warship to get to the Chariot or the base below.


    "Unidentified vessels, this is the mercenary ship Intervention. We are executing a lawf-" Vakim started to say, only to get cut off.


    "I don''t karking care who you are!" An angry voice shouted through the comms. "Your space junk now!"


    With the enthusiastic confirmation that these ships were not friendly, Calima began shifting power through the ship, charging weapons and preparing for battle.


    "Miru, go sit down somewhere secure," Calima said, not looking away from her console as she moved with the Intervention, staying back and starboard of the larger ship. "Vakim, I''m deploying the raindrops."


    "No, hold off until they are closer," Vakim said. "They might run if they think this is a fight they can''t win. Send four up with us to keep the starfighters from zipping by us, and keep two with you to defend and hunt down any that manage to get through."


    Stopping with her finger right above the activate button, Calima pulled back, nodding despite the fact that Vakim couldn''t see her, quickly feeding the new orders through her console. While the Tholothian most certainly had more experience flying ships, most of her experience in combat was running away until they could jump to lightspeed. She had no problem following the Mikkian''s orders regarding combat.


    When Calima was done feeding orders to the still latched-on raindrops, she continually switched between looking down at her sensor read out and out through the viewport, watching the distant ships get closer and closer. Eventually, when they were getting concerningly close to the Intervention, the comms sparked again.


    "Send them out now, Chariot!"


    Calima activated the raindrops, and seconds later, they rocketed out from under the ship, hurtling up to and alongside the Intervention, circling around to stay around the larger warship. The approaching starfighters shifted, changing direction and breaking off into two groups of four. Unfortunately for them, they were well within the range of the Intervention''s weapons, which opened up at once.


    The raindrops regrouped and easily caught up with their first targets, a quartet of Headhunters. They tore into the slower starfighters, the raindrop''s heavy central cannons punching through the starfighter''s shields, allowing their rapid-fire cannons to eviscerate them directly. Unfortunately, while they were focused on annihilating the Headhunters, they left themselves open. The other four starfighters, which Calima recognized as <u>ARC-170</u></a>''s took advantage of that, weathering the storm of Intervention''s weapons to attack the smaller, more nimble starfighter.


    With their targets already taken out of the fight, the raindrops dipped and pulled back, trying to use the Intervention as cover. Two of the four raindrops weren''t fast enough, however, and their shields gave out, the heavy weapons of the ARC''s punching through and disabling them before they could dive under the ventral side of the Intervention. Unfortunately for pirates, the Intervention was not just another C70. Normally the retrofitted Consular-classes did not have any anti-starfighter weapons on their underbellies. After the recent upgrades, the Intervention had two.


    When the ARCs attempted to follow the two undamaged raindrops down under the belly of the ship, they flew right into the kill zone for two military-grade quad lasers, which chewed them up as they passed. Two of the ARC''s exploded before they could even realize the mistake they had just made, while a third was disabled as it passed, flying out into space on its momentum, its engines dead.


    The fourth and final ship survived the pass, its shields barely holding. The two remaining raindrops quickly oriented themselves to follow the larger starfighter, using their superior speed to hunt it down and destroy it.


    It was at this point that the heavily modified medium freighter blew past the Intervention, having made no attempt to slow down to engage. Instead, it was headed directly to the planet at full speed. The retrofitted and upgraded Republic warship still managed to hit it with a few of its heavier weapons as it went by, but failed to keep up to its greater speed.


    The Chariot, however, was much more maneuverable, and considering the ship was nearly half its size, it was more than enough to take it down. Calima pulled away from her position to bring the smaller ship in range, the CROC''s weapons deploying and opening up on the smaller ship. Their two raindrops escorting them peeled off and chased after the smaller ship, harrying its shields. The Chariot reverberated as the smaller vessel returned fire, a surprising number of weapons swiveling around to open fire on the carrier. Still, with its improved shields, it easily weathered the barrage, absorbing the energy and firing more than twice back in return.


    Unfortunately, the raindrops were not nearly as tough, their low-end shields overwhelmed by the freighters'' weapons. Just before the Chariot could punch through its shields and melt a significant portion of the smaller ship''s armor, one of its gunners was able to take out one of the robotic starfighters, its broken remnants immediately being pulled down to the planet.


    The larger ship wasn''t far behind it, their last ditch attempt to get down to the surface meaning that when the Chariot managed to destroy its power core, the ship was well within the planet''s pull. The smaller ship began to fall towards the planet immediately, with fire, slag, and broken chunks of the ship trailing around and behind it. As the ship began to burn into the planet''s toxic atmosphere, the comms droid spoke up.


    "Incoming message from the ground team, putting it through." It said, tapping at its console.


    "Talos Chariot and Intervention, this is Deacon! We cleared out the pirate base, but one of the landing pads is empty, and one of the leaders isn''t here!" Boss''s voice said through the comms, urgency clear in his voice. "You need to get ready for the company in case they come back! Chariot, Intervention, are you there?"

 Chappter 88

    Once the initial excitement of beating the pirates had passed, along with ample celebration that included the ship crews once they landed, we settled down and got to work. Since this bounty involved an entire group, a "local" agent had to inspect the bounty in person in order for us to receive our reward. To make that easier, we set the droids to clean up and carry the bodies to one of the empty plateaus.


    According to Nal and Tatnia''s research, anything that the pirates had "gathered" that didn''t have an existing report as stolen property was up for grabs. We were hopeful that with how long they had been operating outside the system, any records of the starfighter and remaining freighter had been lost, meaning we could claim them under the current bounty laws. The problem was that these ships were clearly military ships, with specs far outside what the Empire allowed civilians to own, even with how outdated they were.


    So, while the agent would have no legal right to claim anything not listed as stolen, he had every right to leave and report the military tech to the powers that be, who could then order him to return and seize anything illegal. As far as Nal and Tatnia could piece together, this overly complicated rigamarole was deliberately done at the behest of the bounty hunter guild and various mercenary groups to give their members an opportunity to gather more profit while still keeping the Empire happy. We were definitely skating around the edge as it seemed to be more about snagging a few extra blasters and any credits the bounty had on them rather than the eight starfighters and a modified YT freighter we were hoping to grab.


    All of that boiled down to us having a short window, specifically after the agent arrived on site and before he or another official returned later, to get away with everything that we wanted, even the stuff that was considered illegal, and not be charged with anything. Fortunately, it would take about three and a half days for the agent to make it to the site, which gave us plenty of time to plan and prepare.


    While we waited for our bounty agent, the Chariot ran a dozen or so salvage trips up into orbit to gather our damaged raindrops and most of the pirates'' starfighters. It was a bit of work, but with the Brick capable of latching on to the wrecks with its landing clamps, we were able to gather two of the three raindrops, three of the headhunters, and two of the ARC''s. The remaining starfighters and the smaller modified freighter were either lost to the planet''s gravity or not worth salvaging.


    The ships we did gather ranged from almost intact to barely worth the spare parts, but if our quickly cobbled-together plan worked, even the latter might still be worth the effort.


    We also spent plenty of time reviewing the camp, looking through every nook and cranny for anything we wanted. Miru set aside a crate of rare and interesting tools, some of them older than me, but apparently worth a good chunk of credits. We also filled a crate, which we found, with some of the better quality blaster pistols and rifles, which were stored on the Intervention since they didn''t have a spare weapons bin yet. The most significant find was two separate safes containing fifteen thousand credits in total, which I immediately split between everyone as a pre-payout bonus.


    When the agent finally arrived, he came on an old, maybe even pre-clone warship that I didn''t recognize, escorted by several soldiers. He inspected the site and marked nearly two dozen crates of varying ages and origins, as well as one of the newest-looking structures, as stolen goods, meaning we couldn''t claim them. He also reluctantly confirmed that none of the ships had any records of being stolen. In fact, the freighter was legally owned by one of the pirate leaders, though at this point, it was definitely breaking several civilian weapon laws.


    Once he had paid us the bounty in full, a total of a hundred and five thousand credits between the bounty for the group and the bounties specifically on all three leaders, he attempted to convince us to leave. When it was clear that we knew the rules, he attempted to strong-arm us into leaving, claiming that whatever laws we were trying to use to our advantage, no one really followed them and that they would get us into a lot of trouble. When he assured us the ships would be used to help protect people from future pirate groups, Nal pointed out it was much more likely that he would sell the ships for his own profit. Whether Nal had guessed right or he had just given up, the agent stopped trying to convince us and quickly left, warning us he would be back in twenty-four hours.


    While I was pretty sure that was bullshit since there were no planets twenty-four hours away, it did give us a solid timescale to shoot for.


    The second the auditor made the jump out of the system, I sent a comms message to Nevue. His crew, as well as the freighter, spare pilots, and mechanics he had requisitioned when I called him, lifted off from the opposite side of the planet and landed on one of the cleared plateaus. They swarmed over the ship and starfighters, preparing them to leave as soon as possible.


    Originally, the crew and I debated for a while on just what we would do with all of these ships. The starfighters were all serious military tech, even if they were a bit dated, and the freighter, while a bit of a hack job, could have been a potent addition with some proper time under the hydrospanner. The problem was that not only did we have no way of transporting the starfighters, but we also didn''t have a place to store them, resources to fuel them, or a crew to pilot and maintain them. In a lot of ways, it was a repeat of the situation we had with the Lambda-class shuttle we stole from the Inquisitor. It was all stuff we wanted, potent military hardware, but none of it fit with what we could handle at the moment.


    The Rebels, on the other hand, had a deep need for any sort of starfighter or ship they could get their hands on. I would be cutting them a solid deal, but seventy-five percent of something we found and couldn''t actually keep and had already been paid a considerable amount of money to clear out?


    Hard to beat a deal like that.


    While the rebels got to work, Nevue joined me in the Chariot, reaching out and shaking my hand as we sat down at the lounge. Tatnia and Nal sat on either side of me, while Nevue had brought his second in command, as well as another crewmember I didn''t recognize.


    "I''ve got to tell you, Deacon, you keep on calling me like this to bring in your finds, and I''m going to get another promotion, no matter how much I don''t want it," He joked, shaking his head. "How is it that you manage to shake out so much resources and money out of any situation you''re in?"


    "It''s all about selecting the right location," I said with a shrug. "That and a lot of luck. You get sent to missions on hostile worlds to steal from the Imperials. That means you don''t control the battlefield when it''s over, so you immediately have to run with whatever you managed to grab. If you pick your targets better, when the dust settles, you have all the time in the world to loot them down to the bedrock."


    For a moment, the Zabrak was too surprised to speak, clearly having meant the comment as rhetorical and hadn''t expected a legitimate answer. Before he could respond, I continued.


    "Of course, the fact that we keep stumbling on missions and bounties like that has basically just been luck."


    That got a chuckle from the rebel, who nodded in understanding. We talked a bit more about what he and his team had been up to before I brought up the rescue mission on Yavin IV.


    "Last I heard, they were around the outskirts of the system in deep space, waiting for the go-ahead," He explained. "The only reason I know that is because we were on standby to join them if anything went wrong, and they needed a new ship capable of carrying passengers. Your call got us pulled from that list to come inspect what you found."


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    We talked a bit more about the rescue mission before, eventually, the conversation turned back to why Nevue was here, the ships and cargo.


    "We''ve already gone through everything that we want," I explained. "You''re welcome to literally everything here, save the cargo on the far northeastern pad. That''s the stuff the bounty officer noted as being stolen and going to be picked up later."


    "Right. Well, I do need to warn you, as a friend and someone who has worked with us before. We won''t be able to match what you''d get selling to other people," Nevue admitted, looking sheepish as he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. "If you were looking to get the best price, I would recommend the Hutts, but we both know you''d rather trash it all than sell to them. You could probably find a mercenary company or maybe a nearby militia unit¡­"


    "How much are you willing to spend?" I asked after he trailed off.


    "Thirty for each starfighter and sixty for the freighter," He offered, and I couldn''t help but frown. "Another fifty for the salvage and twenty-five for everything else."


    "I was thinking more like fifty for each and eighty for the freighter," I countered, Nevue wincing in response.


    "Deacon, these ships are old and heavily used," He pointed out. "They took good care of them, surprisingly good care if what my mechanic told me is true, but that age is going to show in maintenance costs real quick."


    "It''s still low. This is full military hardware, save the freighter, not stuff you need to upscale to make it effective," I pointed out.


    "I understand that, but that only counts for so much."


    I was silent for a long moment, considering my options. Nevue hadn''t brought it up, at least not directly, but I knew he was aware of our restrictions and time limit here. There was very little chance I could get someone here to take away the ships before someone came around to seize everything we weren''t supposed to have. He was really my only option, especially now, which meant that realistically, he could set his price. Before I could mention my dislike of the situation, he relented.


    "Alright, how about this. We do thirty-two for each starfighter, sixty-two for the freighter, fifty for the salvage, and twenty-five for everything else. That''s three hundred and ninety-three credits for a job you already got paid for."


    "And around two hundred thousand below an already low price," I pointed out, starting to wonder if I had been wrong to assume that Nevue would do right by me.


    "Yes, you''re right. I won''t deny it''s a lowball price," Nevue responded apologetically. "But, it comes with an offer that I think you will like."


    "... I''m listening."


    "Right. So, during the Clone Wars, the Republic created a handful of forward operating stations, usually <u>FireStar II''s</u></a>. They were basically nearly self-sufficient deep space stations on the edge of their territory. If they pushed their territory forward, they would hook the stations up to hyperspace tugs and pull them to their new positions," He explained animatedly. "Unfortunately, when they lost territory, it became much harder to move them. That''s what happened to Station Omega-17-G."


    He pulled out a small datapad, tapping on it for a few moments before handing it to me. I looked at the image, which was a space station painted in the standard red and white of the old Republic Navy. I didn''t recognize the name or station class, but it looked like a decently sized space station. When I was done, I handed the table to Tatnia so she could see it as well before gesturing for Nevue to continue.


    "When it was stuck behind enemy lines, they tried to get it back, but the Separatists managed to find it and sent a small fleet to capture or destroy it," He explained, watching us as Tatnia passed the table to Nal. "According to the reports, Republic forces won, but the final act of the Separatists was to crash their largest ship into the station. They declared the station a lost cause and abandoned it."


    "So you''re suggesting we go out and find it?" I asked. "I mean, I guess that there is probably a lot to salvage¡­"


    "We¡­ have reliable info that says the station was far from totaled," Nevue admitted.


    "So you''re hoping to salvage the entire station?" I asked, surprised by the idea. "Even after being rammed. How did you guys even learn about this?"


    "It came through our intelligence recently when the Empire went looking for it and failed to locate it," He explained. "According to the report, they believe the Separatist ship imparted enough thrust on the station while also knocking out its power that it drifted away from its position. It''s lost in deep space, making it nearly impossible to find. Unless¡­"


    "Unless you have someone capable of locating stuff with magic. Right," I finished, nodding along. "You have no idea how that ability works, though."


    "... would it not work here?" He asked, suddenly much less confident of his offer.


    "It would, as long as that image was of the actual station, but that''s a recent development. I wouldn''t have been able to do that when we first met," I explained, shaking my head with a smirk. "So what''s the deal then? You get to cut around two hundred thousand credits off my bill, and in exchange, I get a wrecked station?"


    "Basically, yes. We would like any of the supplies the station has, like food, plus any salvage you don''t want," He explained, revealing what the Rebellion would get out of it. "In exchange, we will help with the salvage and help sell anything we don''t use, with you getting most of the profits."


    "And what if it''s junk?"


    "I think we both know there will be plenty of salvageable goods in a station like that, even if the structure as a whole is worthless," He pointed out. "Remember, the station was abandoned, not evacuated. Everything was left behind."


    "Alright. We get first dibs on all salvage associated with this, save for shelf-stable food and similar things," I agreed with a nod. "I also want you guys to lend me some workers. People to help fix up the functional parts of the station, assuming there are any."


    "We can''t supply the resources, but manpower is something we can absolutely do," Nevue said before shrugging. "Especially considering the station would stay lost if not for you. I¡­ think that is fair."


    "Kinda like I''m getting paid twice for the same job?" I responded, reaching out to shake Nevue''s hand, sealing the deal. "Seems like we both managed to make money out of nothing."


    Nevue chuckled and gave my hand a squeeze before going through the process of paying us the promised credits. When he was done, he quickly left the ship, wanting to do his own inspections of what he had just purchased. Once he was gone, Nal stood from the table and returned a moment later, pouring a small glass of alcohol for all three of us, celebrating a massively lucrative deal.


    "I think that went just about as well as it could have," I said after siping the smooth drink. "Almost four-hundred thousand free credits and a new salvage opportunity. Hard to beat that."


    "I still think you are too lenient with them," Tatnia responded.


    "Worth the cost for allies, safe harbor, and information," Nal pointed out, shaking his head. "Plus, good to have moral high ground."


    As we finished the toast, I pulled out my datapad and accessed our crew''s account, quickly splitting a hundred thousand of our newly earned credits between everyone. We had all worked very hard on this mission, and the crew deserved a proper payout for a well-done job. Tatnia slapped my back as she stood, and I could hear Julus shouting in celebration down the hall. I couldn''t help but chuckle. Not bad for a day''s work.

 Chapter 89

    With our bounty collected and the Rebels working hard to get their newly purchased salvage ready to leave, the crew and I took eight hours to sleep and recover. We landed the Chariot and the Intervention on a random plateau not too far from the pirate base, set the B2s to patrol and slept. When we woke the crew prepared to leave, and I made my way to Nevue to discuss our latest business venture. I was curious just what kind of timeframe he was thinking, since we hadn''t really talked about that.


    It took a few minutes to get over to the camp and find the Zabrak rebel, but eventually, I was directed to one of the sealed habitats overlooking one of the landing pads. I entered and spotted him leaning against a window, watching his people prepare to leave. He spotted me and nodded.


    "Deacon. You leaving?"


    "Yeah, just about to head out," I confirmed. "But I need to know the timescale for checking out this space station."


    "Resources are tight at the moment," He admitted with a frown. "The rescue mission and the preparation for the base moving away from Thila Command is taking up a lot of ships and people."


    "You want us to wait," I stated, picking up what he was hinting at.


    "Yes. Something like this is a big operation, potentially bigger than what we did at Alpha Base," He pointed out. "And we are short on manpower. I mean, just look at these pilots."


    He gestured at the window to the landing pad, where people were beginning to familiarize themselves with the controls for the starfighters.


    "I basically grabbed everyone who could fly a starfighter, with no concerns about if they could do it well. We are pre-calculating the hyperspace jumps because only one of them knows the required astronavigation."


    "How long?"


    "A few weeks. Maybe a month," He explained, rolling his eyes when I frowned. "Deacon, your crew has been moving at lightspeed since you got them together, but the rest of us travel at a slightly more reasonable pace. I''m sure you can find something to occupy your time until the Rebellion is settled enough for another asset seizure like that."


    "Probably," I admitted with a shrug. "But you should have mentioned this when we were negotiating."


    Nevue had the decency to stay silent after that, at least partially acknowledging that I was right. Without another word, I turned to leave, heading back to the Chariot. This wasn''t the first time Nevue had been less than clean in a negotiation, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I made a note to make more contacts in the Rebellion so that Nevue wasn''t the only one I could call when I wanted to make a deal.


    It didn''t take long after I climbed aboard the Chariot for us to lift off of the planet and out of the toxic environment. We made a short jump into deep space before calling everyone to the lounge for a crew meeting.


    "Before we start discussing our next step, I want to congratulate everyone on a job well done. Ground team, we all performed as well as we could hope, and I think we learned a thing or two as well. It could have been a bit cleaner, but all things considered, well done," I said with a smile, patting Tatnia''s back while everyone congratulated each other. "Space team, well done as well. You handled yourself well and took minimal losses. Had any of those ships made it down to the surface, we would have been in deep shit. Everyone earned their pay today."


    We spent a while talking about the fight, both on the ground and in space, before eventually transitioning to what was next. I looked at Miru, who perked up from the attention.


    "What''s the repair time look like for the two raindrops we recovered?"


    "One of them is already being worked on by Leddy and her team," Miru responded. "I''ll just need a few hours to finish it up when they are done. The other might take the better part of a day. We have limited resources for parts though, so I''m worried we will run out."


    "Do what you can," I said with a nod. "How about the commando droids?"


    "Those should only take a day by themselves," She explained. "From what I saw, I should be able to fix those with parts I have, but when we have the opportunity, I want to order some more parts that should be compatible with them, just in case."


    "Make a list, get it to Tatnia or Nal, and they can order it to coincide with our next landing," I agreed with a nod. "Nal, have you heard back from Rabben?"


    "Yes, he said he might have something for us, but to give him a few days to put it together," Nal explained. "He invited us to visit so that we could discuss it in person."


    "Huh¡­ alright. I''m all for visiting. Nevue revealed that he wanted us to wait before we go hunting for the Station Omega, so we have time," I revealed. "Though if I''m honest, I''m half tempted to go hunting for it myself. It would take a lot longer considering we don''t know where it was originally set up, but it could be done with some work."


    "Perhaps we should give them some time and go searching on our own if they seem to be dragging their feet?" Vakim suggested. "We are not beholden to the whims of the Rebellion, but they are allies."


    "Yeah¡­ that''s a good plan Vakim, let''s go with that," I said, nodding in agreement. "Let''s give them¡­ two weeks? Three? If they don''t get back in contact with us, we can go hunting by ourselves. Did any of you hear anything about this while you were in the Republic Navy?"


    I looked up at the holo projected feed, which showed all four biological members of the Intervention crew, focusing on Vakim, Dazem, and Allum.


    "No, but that''s not surprising," Allum admitted, shaking his head, seemingly speaking for all three of them. "There was very little news filtering through the ranks, especially during the end of the war. We barely knew about things that directly affected us, never mind something that happened in a different part of the galaxy, and potentially before we joined."


    "Fair enough. Alright, Nal, tell Rabben we are coming to visit, mention we need a landing pad for both our ships, but ask him what the Imperial presence is like on the Itander. If it''s clear we can''t land without getting caught, we might have to work something else out," I said, Nal nodding in agreement. "If everything is fine for us to land, get whatever Miru needs for repairs delivered there. We will probably be there for a day or two, so if anyone wants something, get it delivered there. Does anyone have anything else?"


    "How much was the total sales?" Vakim asked, a curious look on her face. "I could only assume it was significant considering our individual cuts."


    "The bounty got us one hundred thousand, we found fifteen thousand as we looted, and the starfighter, freighter, and salvage sold for just under four hundred thousand," I responded, unable to keep a smile off of my face. "We are doing very well for ourselves at the moment, but I''m pretty sure that if we end up settling on this Omega Station, we are going to be spending quite a bit of money to refurbish it and make it a livable, viable base. That said if anyone has any suggestions for things we should look into buying, even for just entertainment, feel free to mention it."


    Over the next half hour, we discussed a few options, eventually settling on fresher food and some entertainment options. I very happily passed the buck to Dazem, telling him to come up with a final list and giving him a ten thousand credit budget. He agreed to figure out some options for both ships.


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    "Alright, I think that''s everything for now. Calima, set a course for Itander, but drop out on the edge of the system so Rabben has plenty of time to respond," I ordered, the Tholothian nodding in understanding. "Everyone else, basic maintenance and downtime until we arrive."


    We said our goodbyes to the crew of the Intervention, the holofeed dropping a moment later. Calima stood and stretched before heading to the bridge to start working on the hyperspace route to Itander, the planet Rabben and his mining town, Solinda, was on. I knew that the town and planet were probably significantly different by now, considering just what kind of profits Rabben was talking about when we left. I was curious about just what a gold rush-style population and settlement boom looked like in a Star Wars universe. I was also very interested in finding out what sort of offer he had in mind.


    Once we were on our way, the familiar steady hum of hyperspace surrounding us, I made my way to the enchantment room, dropping down into the room''s only chair and pulling off my Fortify Magicka ring. While fighting the pirates, I had been casting spells a lot, but I could still barely detect the difference between wearing and not wearing the ring.


    In the game, fortify magicka added to your pool of magic, but here, the fortify spells were all about enhancing that aspect of the wearer. My fortify magicka ring should make calling on my magic easier, cheaper, and speed up how quickly my mana regenerates. Or it would, if it wasn''t such a pitiful attempt at enchanting.


    I frowned and tossed the ring onto the table that sat along one side of the room, summoning my grimoire and once again opening it to the enchantment section. At this point, I had gone through it several times, and despite mentioning the ability to use multiple soul gems on one enchantment, the book made no mention of how. I was about halfway through the second page when I grunted my annoyance, tossing the book into the air, the large tome disappearing before it could hit the ground.


    At this point, I was pretty sure that how to use multiple soul gems for one enchantment was hidden behind whatever next stage I was going to unlock at some point, similar to how Adept spells and Apprentice spells took a while to unlock. Maybe the shift to Expert would reveal it, or maybe it was completely disconnected from that. Either way, I was not happy about it. Enchanting had the incredible potential to turn my crew into unbeatable juggernauts, but I was stuck making shit because the book refused to spit out what I wanted to know. I refused to equip my team with such crappy enchantment, especially not when the ingredients to do so were so expensive.


    I stood up and grabbed a handful of soul gems and carried them to the Arcane Enchanter, grabbing a ring in my other hand as I went. I dragged the chair over to the table and pulled on my protective face mask.


    Over the next five hours, I tried dozens of ways to switch from one soul gem to another without interrupting the flow of life force. At first, I tried linking them up both at once, but only pulling from one. That failed miserably when the flow of life force started to pull on the second gem as well, causing it to start pushing out life force. I managed to stop the process before it detonated the ring, but it was a close call.


    I tried running them in parallel, switching from one stone to the next mid-flow, running the first stone around the second so I could simply let the first one fade and focus on the second, and several other ways. I was frustrated, mentally drained, and physically sore from hunching over the table for so long. What had once been mild annoyance at the grimoire and entities for trying to control what I could do, turned into a simmering anger that threatened to spiral if I let it.


    Rather than push myself further when I wasn''t getting any results, I took a break, leaving the enchanting room and grabbing my fortify magicka ring as I went. I sat in the lounge by myself for a few minutes, just letting my frustration fade for a while. When I was sure I wasn''t going to throw a fit at the drop of a hat, I got up to make lunch for myself. A few minutes later, as I poked and prodded at one of the decency shelf stable meals, Julus dropped down on the other side of the table with his own lunch.


    "You look rough, Boss. Everything okay?" He asked before taking a bite.


    "Yeah, Just trying to figure out something for my enchanting. I refuse to start working on the armor Pola and Vaz are working on if all I can make are barely noticeable trinkets," I explained, gesturing to the ring I had put on the table. "It would be a waste, especially after having to jump through hoops to get the beskar."


    "What''s the problem? Maybe someone outside the box will spot something."


    I shrugged and explained the basic concept and problem to the younger man, who nodded at the appropriate times. I wasn''t entirely sure he understood what I was talking about until I was done, and he rather handily summed it up.


    "So basically, you have to run multiple power sources one after the other, none of which have an off switch, and you can''t shut it down to trade anything out?" He asked. "Why don''t you run the gems in a loop?"


    "The ring absorbs the life energy as it burns the enchantment in," I explained, shaking my head. "There is nothing to loop around."


    "No, not the ring, just the gems," He clarified. "Then you can pull the power from the loop as you need. All of the energy will be in the loop so you can control the speed, and it will drain both soul gems at once."


    It took a second for me to realize what he meant before it clicked in my mind. Abandoning everything on the table, I ran back to the enchanting room and grabbed two more gems, storing the partially drained ones away. I grabbed a fresh ring and sat down at the table.


    Quickly tamping down on my excitement at the new idea, I went through the process of creating a mana storage enchantment matrix, adjusting it properly before finally working on the gems. Slowly but surely, I created a loop with my magic, basically a circle that had two spring-like swirls around two separate games. Life energy easily traveled around the loop, passing around the stones. I adjusted the swirls down as tight as possible to slow the flow before reaching out a tendril of magic from the ring. After a moment''s pause, I latched the tendril on, completing the path for the life energy to travel.


    I fought the urge to jump and shout when, after a long moment, nothing beyond what was supposed to happen happened. The flow was consistent and felt under control. The ring was stable as far as I could tell, and as long as nothing surprising happened in the next few hours, it felt like a normal enchantment process.


    For the next six and a half hours, I sat in the same position, focused on my enchantment, doing my absolute best to maintain control of the process and keep the energy flow as slow as possible. When I finally slipped and lost the connection, the enchantment sealing shut and self-completing, I collapsed backward on the chair, breathing heavily.


    When I had finally recovered enough to test what I made, I couldn''t help but laugh and cheer in triumph.

 Chapter 90

    I sat in the lounge, toying with my newest ring as I let my brain slowly recover from just over seven hours of continuous strain and focus. My usual Respite and Fast Heal had helped me get over the worst parts of the enchanting backlash, but it didn''t wash away everything. Still, even with the long recovery time, the results were impressive. The mana storage, while still not massive, was close to triple what my first few attempts had been, a significant improvement. While my first few attempts barely had enough capacity for a single novice spell, my latest effort could hold an entire Adept spell.


    The non-linear increase was very encouraging for what the future of my enchanting efforts could achieve. With the multi-stone enchantment method under my belt, my mental control and stamina were my only restraints, something I could work steadily on improving.


    I slid the ring onto my finger and refilled the well it contained, having drained it to put the enchantment to the test. I couldn''t help but smile, very pleased with my achievement. Julus was definitely first up for getting the first enchantment I made at this level since it probably would have taken a whole lot longer to work out without him.


    As I sat there, slowly recovering, I contemplated what my next step would be. Obviously, equipping everyone was at the top of my to-do list. However, now that I had achieved this better level of enchanting, there was no way I would accept handing out anything lesser. Which meant every piece would take a minimum of seven or eight hours. With around six potential items per person, equipping everyone fully would take a long fucking time.


    If I let it, enchanting would absolutely eat up all my time for learning new magic. I would need to strike a balance and take my time, despite the urge to immediately devote myself to outfitting everyone. After some thought, I came to the conclusion that my best option was to focus on making a single new piece of enchanted gear for everyone so that we always have the advantage. By that time, Pola would hopefully have started on our full beskar armor, which would be enough of an advantage that I could relax and take further enchantments much slower.


    For now, I was pretty sure there was no way I would make it through another seven hours, which led back to me sitting in the lounge, recovering my magic and mental stamina.


    The trip to Itander was two days plus some change, so I spent the rest of the first day working with everyone to do standard maintenance, including cleaning the blasters as well as going over the Brick, Arrow, and speeder bikes. Miru was busy working on the raindrops for most of the first day before going over the three damaged BXs. Unfortunately, she quickly realized that while she had the right tools to work on the droids, she lacked some of the parts, so she put it off until we picked up our deliveries when we landed.


    Since she couldn''t work on the BXs, she finally tackled something I had honestly forgotten about, the two droideka we had acquired oh so long ago in our first CIS raid.


    "Honestly, they aren''t nearly as scary to me as the BXs," Miru admitted as she plugged one of the large, collapsed droids into her workshop computer. "The BXs are full-on killing machines in just about any setting or environment. These Droidekas are impressive for sure, but if you deploy them wrong or if you shift the environment on them? Well, then, they are practically useless. I mean, you''ve taken them out a bunch!"


    "I''m a bit of a special case, though, Miru," I pointed out, leaning on a workbench. "These things used to tear through clone troops, especially when they caught them unprepared. They even had a reputation as Jedi killers."


    "Yeah, but if they are prepared, taking them out is simple," She pointed out. "Also, one word. Stairs."


    I couldn''t help but chuckle at the young engineer''s brutal but ultimately correct points about the droid. They were powerful and deadly when used correctly, but throw them into uncertain territory, and they would quickly be reduced to scrap. We would most likely be using them as ship defense should the B2s ever be overwhelmed.


    The following day, not long after having breakfast with the crew, I made my way to the enchanting room. I sat down at the Arcane Enchanter, and after about ten minutes debating what I should be making Julus, I realized I was being an idiot and went out to find him. I only had to step down to the first deck to find him helping Miru as she lifted up one of the access panels along the mainline of the ship.


    "Hey Boss, what''s up?" He asked, passing Miru a scanner after she climbed down into a crawl space. "Miru is just working on the capacitors since we did a micro-jump the other day."


    "Nothing much. I just wanted to know what you wanted your first proper enchanted item to be," I explained. "You helped me crack the final step so I figured you get first dibs."


    "Oh! Um... What are my options?"


    We spent about fifteen minutes going over what he could pick, including the options he had for something like a knife or a sword, occasionally stopping to help Miru as she moved around the innards of the Chariot. Eventually, he picked a ring of dexterity, partially because it was an all-around solid bet and because Muffle, his first choice, was better suited for his boots, which were due to be replaced by our new armor soon.


    With his option chosen, I returned to the enchanting room, plopping down in the chair after gathering everything I needed. He had wanted the enchantment done into a ring, so I grabbed something simple from the crate and set it to work. While it was tempting to try and use more soul gems and force it through quickly, I couldn''t bring myself to waste my soul gems. While my source of Kyber crystals was definitely not tapped, further damaging the Crystal Cave growths because I felt like rushing felt wrong. I knew that eventually, I would need to either accept harvesting more from the caves or find a secondary source. For now, however, I was determined to get every bit of energy I could from these two soul gems, all while working the enchantment as slowly as possible.


    When I finally stumbled out of the enchanting room, eight and a half hours had passed. I barely managed to tumble my way to Julus, who was sitting in the lounge. I clumsily handed him his ring like I was a drunkard deep in his drink before stumbling back to my room, where I promptly passed the fuck out.


    I slept for a full ten hours, waking up mostly recovered from my first successful attempt at two soul gem enchantments at a slow, steady pace. Because I had gone to bed rather early compared to everyone else, when I left my room to find some food, the ship was early silent. Racer and the naval droids were the only ones moving around as I peeked into the bridge, the former whistling softly in greeting.


    "How long until we arrive at Itander?" I asked, looking at the droid co-pilot.


    "Another eight hours, Boss," It responded, not looking away from the console.


    I nodded and left the bridge, looking through the kitchen for something to eat. Eventually, after finishing breakfast and taking a nap on the lounge couch, the rest of the crew woke up and ate their own meal. After that, we killed time around the ship, waiting for the drop out of hyperspace.


    When the timer finally hit zero, we popped back into real space on the outskirts of the system. Rabben had long since confirmed that we had nothing to worry about landing both ships on Itander, but we had all agreed it was better safe than sorry. As we closed in on the planet, the Chariot flying behind and to the side of the Intervention, we got our first look at just how much things had changed. When we left, only a few security ships were flying over the planet, with no civilian ships to be seen, even on the surface. Now, the planet was buzzing with activity, with dozens of ships going to and coming from the planet''s surface, with a half dozen ships flying around the planet.


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    "Really beefed up security," I commented, Calima nodding in agreement.


    As we approached, our comms lit up, asking us to identify ourselves, our purpose, and our destination. The code and names that Rabben gave us must have carried some sort of weight, or they had been warned to look out for us, because they very graciously gave us our directions to the surface, directly down to Solinda, definitely cutting through any existing lines.


    As we came down for a landing, we got our first look at Solinda. The town, which had once been only a few steps above a shanty, was now clean, well built, and organized. There was even a semi-concurrent theme going through the entire city, an array of similarly styled homes and buildings, all around a central structure that towered over the town, at least thirty stories. It was far from the gleaming cities of Coruscant, but it was still massively impressive for how little time had actually passed since we were last on the planet. We could even see that the outskirts were still being expanded with construction bots and workers building more and more homes and buildings.


    We finally landed in a large ship pad on the outskirts of the burgeoning city, the pad surrounded by walls that were just a hair shorter than the top of the Intervention. Not long after we touched down and the engines were switched off, Nal, Tatnia, and I all climbed down the Chariot boarding ramp out onto the duracrete pad. Rabben Corgug, the four-armed <u>Besalisk </u></a>in charge, was there to greet us by the time our boots hit the ground.


    "Deacon! It''s good to see ya again," He said, stepping out and shaking my hand while also shaking hands with Nal. "I like the new ship, yer clearly doing well fer yourselves."


    "We''re doing alright, but nowhere as good as you by the looks of things," I said back with a smirk. "The town looks incredible, well done."


    "It had better look good with how much money we threw at it!" He responded with a chuckle.


    We chatted as we walked, leaving the pad behind as the tall humanoid guided us to a speeder outside the landing pad walls. Once we were inside, the conversation shifted to just what was new on Itander.


    "It''s been a lot of good luck since you helped us out, Deacon," He admitted, the speeder taking off into the air. "We''ve already found two more sources of Varium and one Vonium. We are making money hand over fist, and our workload is a fraction of what it used to be. Lots of people owe you a whole lot of credits, my friend."


    "I''m glad we could help Rabben. What the mining guild was trying was bullshit," I responded. "I don''t want you to feel like we are calling in a favor¡­"


    "Bah, ya hardly asked me for an arm," He pointed out with a smile. "I think I found something that fits what you''re looking for. If not, then we can see about getting you a good deal for your credits."


    I nodded in agreement, turning the topic back to Solinda and Itander. As we talked, the air speeder pulled in on a landing pad along the massive central structure that towered over the town. Once we landed, it was a quick walk inside, and a turbo lift ride to the top, before we stepped into a massive office. Here, the money the settlement had been earning was even more obvious, as the office would have easily fit in among the richest of companies on Coruscant.


    Rather than head for the large desk, clearly built for someone of Rabben''s size, he led us to a lounge space in one corner of the large room. He passed each of us a glass bottled drink, which Nal seemed particularly happy to receive.


    "Good brand, haven''t had any in years," He explained, taking a long sip.


    "We have a guy who keeps us stocked, I''ll send him down to your ship later," Rabben said, taking his own sip.


    Eager to see what the fuss was about, I took a sip, humming in appreciation. It tasted like a more accessible Guinness with a strong coconut flavor and a distinct chocolate finish. All of us enjoyed the drink for a moment before Rabben leaned forward, putting his bottle on the coffee table.


    "So, yer looking for platinum, vonium or varium," He finally said, leaning back in his chair. "A whole pile of it by what yer man here claimed. Kind of an odd request for a mercenary group. You need to pay a ransom or something?"


    "Nothing like that," I assured him. "A project of ours requires precious metals. It''s a bit hard to explain¡­"


    "I don''t need to know, I was mostly just curious to see if you stepped in some trouble." He explained, waving us off and shaking his head. "Nal said you''re willing to step into a grey area. How do you feel about Kuat Drive Yards?"


    "They make ships. Their biggest client right now is the Empire," I said with a shrug. "Their class system is kinda screwed up if I remember correctly."


    "Hah! Yer not wrong at least. They also buy nearly sixty percent of what we mine," He explained, shaking his head. "They strong-arm other businesses out of the way and cut our prices with their Imperial approval. We make a lot of money off of them, don''t get me wrong, but they don''t got a lot of goodwill here."


    The large, thick-skinned human took another sip of his drink before leaning back in his chair.


    "They demand we deliver their materials to a separate location. We have to pay for transport and security for that transport too," He continued with a shrug. "When our transport gets there, we offload it, and their own security arrives and hauls it away. Usually, this is like clockwork. But recently, I had an interesting conversation with one of the transport ships captains. According to him, the site he was deliverin'' to had a bit of a stock up."


    "Why?" I asked, confusion evident on my face. "That''s a massive security hazard¡­"


    "Oh, it is, but yer underestimating the power of ah broken bureaucracy," Rabben explained. "Little delays, checks, permissions, work orders, all of that adds up. Trust me, I still have ta deal with this sort of crap."


    "So, somewhere, there is a secure hand-off point that lets their goods sit for an indeterminate amount of time," I repeated. "How much metal are we talking about here? A couple dozen bars?"


    "The man I talked to said the most he had seen was a half pallet of platinum, the same one he delivered two weeks prior, sitting in a secure facility," Rabben answered. "Claims it ranges greatly. But keep in mind, if they are letting platinum build up¡­"


    I nodded and shared a look with Tatnia, who could only shrug in response.


    "Now, don''t get me wrong. This hand-off facility is under heavy guard. We aren''t talking about an empty warehouse here," Rabben continued, holding two hands out in a slow-down gesture. "You would have to work for this. But depending on what''s sitting around in the stores, you could get all the precious metals you need, and maybe then some."


    I sent another look to Tatnia, who nodded subtly. A similar look at Nal garnered the same result. With my oldest crew members in agreement, I leaned forward with a smirk.


    "Tell me more."

 Chapter 91

    It turns out Rabben had taken our request for a "grey area" source of valuable metal pretty seriously. He had gone out of his way to gather and compile quite a bit of useful information. Over the next hour, he showed us footage of the facility from the security feed from one of his transports and gave us three separate eyewitness reports to confirm that there was a lot of metal just waiting for us to take.


    The target was on another trade world, similar to Terr''skiar, called <u>Gizer</u></a>. Unlike Terr''skiar, however, this one was firmly under Imperial control. It consistently had at least one <u>Star Destroyer</u></a> in orbit, as well as several other smaller but still absolutely lethal ships, including a pair of the more modern Imperial <u>Gozanti-class</u></a> cruisers.


    Not only was the world more heavily defended than any we had worked on so far, but the facility itself was defended by Imperial forces. The security footage that one of the transport ships recorded showed at least a full company of stormtroopers, as well as a perimeter wall, defensive turrets, and hardened buildings. I was pretty sure that the largest secondary building around the inside of the facility was a hangar, though I had no idea what was inside.


    Once Rabben handed off everything he knew, the three of us left, promising to let him know what was going on once I discussed the option with the crew. Ten minutes later, we were all sitting in the lounge, including the Intervention''s crew. I quickly presented the general concept before opening the floor for everyone else.


    "We wouldn''t be able to bring the ships," Calima immediately pointed out. "They would connect the Chariot to when we¡­ stole the Intervention, and¡­ the Intervention is a warship. It''s not legal for civilians to own."


    "It could also be connected back to Rabben since we''ve been seen landing here," Tatnia pointed. "We can''t bring that kind of attention back here."


    "That''s true. Keeping Rabben and his people out of this is a primary concern," I repeated, everyone nodding in agreement. "Beyond that¡­ does anyone have any ideas?"


    "It''s a tough shell to crack," Allum admitted, his arms crossed as he looked up at the holo-projected image of the facility, taken from the security footage. "Whatever we do, it needs to be fast, or we will get swamped by reinforcements. There are a lot of Imperial forces on a planet like this. Not to mention the destroyer¡­"


    "Or keep from being found out," Nal pointed out. "The longer we go unspotted, the longer we have."


    "Unless you get someone into security, you will be spotted," Pola said, shaking his head. "Imperial bases are covered in security holocameras that link to a central security hub. With what''s being stored, it''s going to be impossible to sneak around with doing something about that first."


    "Alright, so that sounds like one of our major hurdles," I agreed with a nod. "So far, we have the SD in orbit, the fact that reinforcements are around the corner, the lack of our own backup as well as transport. Does anyone have anything to add?"


    "Fighting through to the loot and then getting it out of the facility, then off-planet," Miru pointed out. "That''s going to be a challenge."


    We discussed potential problems for a while, coming up with a few more points, including the fact that Nal, Val, Tatnia, and myself were all known as enemies of the Empire. Vaz, Tatnia, and I had escaped from prison, while Nal and Vaz hadn''t been using disguises when we stole the Intervention. Vakim, Dazem, and Allum were all known Rebels as well. Once we finished that list, we started trying to figure out solutions. Whether or not there were any, and if they were realistic, would decide if we went through with it.


    "Calima hasn''t been fully connected to us, right?" Tatnia asked. "The only connection we have with her is recruiting her at that bar on Terr''skiar."


    "I believe so¡­" Calima admitted. "I have maintained a low profile up until this point, save my issues with the Hutts."


    "Which the Imps wouldn''t keep track of in a normal sense," I said with a nod, looking back to Tatnia. "Why?"


    "Well¡­ if we need a clean way to get down to the surface, we could always have Calima buy a ship," She said. "If she buys something legally, the records for the ship would be clean."


    "Buy a ship?" I asked, rubbing my face. "We literally just traded a light freighter away for a fraction of what it was worth, and now you want to buy a whole one?"


    "That hunk of junk was not something you wanted to keep, Boss," Miru assured me. "It was upgraded with cheap, cobbled-together parts, not anything worth improving on."


    "Besides, that ship would have been linked back to us in seconds," Tatnia added. "What we need is something not connected to us at all. Something under Calima''s name completely."


    "A clean ship would make avoiding attention easier," Nal said, seemingly catching on to Tatnia''s idea. "But what about Imperial customs?"


    "Oh, that''s easy! We make it a smuggler''s ship!" Miru said confidently. "I could set up plenty of room for you guys and the platinum. You ride down in the smugglers'' compartments, then steal the stuff, run back to the ship, climb back into the compartments, and we ride out."


    "And you''re confident you can beat whatever sensors they have?" I asked.


    "Well... that just depends on how much money you''re willing to spend," She responded with a shrug. "With enough credits, they could walk around the ship with whatever sensors they want, and they will have no idea."


    "Calima, would you be willing to do this?" I asked, looking at the Tholothian. "If it goes sideways there''s a good chance it falls apart rather heavily."


    "I¡­ believe I am willing," She said with a nod. "Would I be alone once you went on your mission?"


    "No, at minimum I want some commando droids watching over you," I assured her. "But-"


    "I would be willing to go," Allum said, seemingly catching Vakim off guard. "I would have to hide during customs and stay inside the ship afterward, but I have combat training, and I can assist with flying."


    "Are you sure?" I asked, getting a nod in confirmation. "Good, alright. Does that help Calima?"


    "Yes, it does¡­ Thank you Allum."


    "We would still need a reason for Calima to be there," Vaz pointed out. "And for her to stick around while we wait for the right opportunity to strike."


    "Ship upgrades," Nal said, continuing when everyone looked at him. "She purchased a new ship and is now having work done on it to improve and personalize it."


    "And that would be enough to last a week?" I asked, looking from Nal to Miru, who had perked up at the idea. "Potentially more?"


    "Depending on what she was doing, sure!" She said with a nod. "Especially if we went project by project. Depending on the ship, Leddy and a few other repair droids can handle any simple upgrades."


    "Alright. It sounds like we have a solid idea beginning to form here," I said with a smile. "Let''s start going over the footage and coming up with a step-by-step plan and see just how possible this is."


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    We planned, schemed and spitballed ideas for a few hours, stopping once to take a lunch break before continuing until the sun set on Solinda. By the end of it, we had all agreed that our plan was good enough that it stood a solid chance of working. With a decision reached, the crew broke up and headed off to bed, and I sent a message to Rabben with the news. Once he had responded, I spent an hour and a half doing my Recovery meditation before climbing into bed.


    When I woke up the next morning, I headed to the lounge for some breakfast. Today, we would start by setting some of the groundwork for the mission, primarily finding a ship. As I sat down with a basic meal, Miru sat down next to me, her excitement palpable.


    "So, after the meeting broke, I did a little research," She said, handing me her customized datapad. "I think I found the perfect ship for the mission."


    I looked at her in surprise, slowly putting down my fork and taking the proffered tablet from Miru. I turned it over and looked at the screen, only to find an image of a ship I didn''t recognize completely. It looked like a decent ship, at least, seemingly in good condition as well.


    "What is it?"


    "It''s a <u>YV-260</u></a>," She responded with a smile. "Made by CEC, they are extremely customizable, even more than usual. Apparently, the YV-100 was a step back in that regard, and it didn''t sell so well. So, to try and recoup their loss, they doubled down on it for the next ship in the series."


    "Is that it?" I asked. "It''s a bit more modular than usual?"


    "Well, this is a cargo model, you can tell by the extra section here, under the aft of the ship. It''s for sale for a hundred thousand credits," She explained, holding up her hand when I opened my mouth to complain. "The metrics they are listing are impressive, Boss. Shields nearly two and a half times stronger than stock, fitted with better engines, sensors, armor plating and some serious aftermarket stealth gear. All legal under imperial law, but only just. I''m pretty sure the guy selling it managed to find a VIP model and then just kept upgrading it. It''s about twenty-two years old now, but it''s a potent ship."


    "Alright, so it''s a good find. That''s great," I said with a nod before gesturing for her to continue. "But why is it good for us? I would rather save more money for fixing up the station."


    "Because, Boss, over the last twenty years, all of our tech has gotten a lot smaller," She responded with a smirk. "Even if one of the customs agents knew this model''s floor plan, all of the upgraded equipment would have left us plenty of room to hide dozens of compartments. This is exactly the kind of ship we need."


    I gave the young Twi''lek a look, and after a moment, I nodded.


    "Alright, it sounds like that is what we are looking for," I admitted. "Go show that to Nal and Tatnia, to get a feel for their opinions. If they agree, we can reach out to the seller."


    She cheered, gave me a hug, and quickly jumped up from the table. She went to run out of the room, only for Tatnia to step into before she could leave. Miru called out for her, but Tatnia gave her a serious look.


    "No. You can wait until I''ve had my breakfast and Caf," She said, her voice brokering no nonsense. "Not all of us are as peppy in the morning as you Miru."


    "Oh¡­ umm, Then I''ll go find Nal!" Miru said, her eagerness barely stuttering from Tatnia''s grumpiness.


    Miru quickly left to find the Duros, leaving Tatnia and me alone in the lounge. After she found her breakfast and sat down at the table long enough to drink her Caf, she looked at me.


    "What was that about?"


    "She found a ship to use," I said. "It looked good to me, but I wanted a second and third opinion because the price tag is much higher than we talked about."


    She nodded and continued to eat. Before long, we had both finished eating, and Tatnia went on her way to find Miru. By noon, the crew reconvened in the lounge, this time to discuss the ship. We quickly decided that it fit the bill, getting a cheer out of Miru. Once we agreed on that, we discussed what the next few days would look like.


    "Alright, so this is going to be a week-long prep phase for this mission, maybe more. Once we buy this ship, Miru, your job is to turn it into the perfect smuggling ship. That means your budget is pretty high."


    The young engineer nodded seriously, though her excitement at the challenge still wormed its way through.


    "Once we are settled, I''m going to focus mostly on enchanting. I want everyone going on this mission to have at least one, maybe even two, pieces of enchanted equipment, most likely a ring or amulet. That includes you Calima. I''m curious how a dexterity increase affects your flying abilities." I admitted, getting an interested look in response. "Once Miru is done, then the ground team, plus Calima and Allum, will leave. Dazem, do you think you could pilot the Chariot?"


    "I can, especially with the naval droid crew," He responded simply and confidently.


    "Good. I''m going to have you guys head somewhere safe and out of the way. I''ll have to reach out to Nevue, but it might be Thila Command, or maybe Alpha Base. If that''s out of the question, or something happens, and you''re forced to leave, head to the first Separatist base we cleared. Racer should have the coordinates for that."


    The astromech whistled in confirmation, its dome spinning around once to focus on Vakim, wobbling slightly like it was nodding.


    "Does that mean I can''t go?" Miru asked, looking over at me.


    "No, Miru, you''re connected to us from our time on Nar Shaddaa," I reminded her. "You''d have to spend your time in one of the smuggling compartments, and I''m worried about not having enough room already."


    "Alright, I''ll stay behind," She said, letting out a sigh of disappointment but still nodding in agreement.


    "You know, you''re going to be ordering a lot on whatever planet we buy this ship from, so add a few things on, and you can work on a personal project," I suggested. "If it''s something useful for the crew, I''ll lend you some credits to help."


    She smiled at the idea and nodded in agreement, already looking down at her datapad, no doubt looking through her list of projects.


    "Right. Well, once we go our separate ways, we will be waiting for Rabben to confirm that their latest delivery was made, and that there is enough materials to make the whole mission worth it," I explained, having talked to Rabben about this the previous night. "Once that happens, we can commence the mission. If he reports the mission wouldn''t be worth it, we can head out somewhere to wait for the next delivery, maybe even do some bounty jobs while we wait. Any issues?"


    When nobody responded, I nodded.


    "Alright. Then, let''s get going. Miru, share our destination with Calima and Vakim so they can plot a course. Everyone else, basic maintenance and downtime," I said with a nod. "I''ll be in the enchanting room working on everyone''s rings. I''ll be around to see what everyone wants, so think about it."


    Nal asked what I could do with my enchanting, so I spent about fifteen minutes going over just what was possible before the crew meeting dissolved.

 Chapter 92

    Not long after our crew meeting, we left Itander behind. I had a short meeting with Rabben, basically just shaking hands and saying goodbye, while the crew prepared to leave. It gave Nal a chance to do some food shopping for the next week, and it was only polite to say goodbye in person, especially after the opportunity that Rabben had presented us.


    Once I returned, we promptly left, leaving Solinda behind.


    Almost immediately after we jumped to lightspeed, I got to work. Originally, I had been imagining one enchantment per person. However, after taking a slightly better look at how much time I had, I decided to shoot for two. That left me with a minimum of 12 enchantments in total if I wanted to outfit everyone who was going with us on our next mission. That was eleven rings and one amulet since, apparently, Julus was already wearing a ring as well as wearing his fortify dexterity ring.


    At the absolutely grueling pace of two enchantments a day, it would take six days to finish the project. Since I was pretty sure my brain would leak out of my ears if I followed such a crazy schedule, it would likely take a few day longer. Which meant I had no time to lose.


    I immediately started working on an amulet for Julus. After discussing his options with him again, he decided that the best choice was to double down on his dexterity increase. He was impressed by the change in his speed, reflexes, and finesse that his first ring provided and was eager to see that increase even further.


    Over the next two and a half days, I managed to finish not only Julus''s amulet but two fortify strength rings for Vaz and a ring of dexterity for Calima. By then, we had arrived at our destination, a frozen tundra planet called <u>Takobo</u></a>. Apparently, whoever was selling the YV-260 had picked it as their retirement planet, something I couldn''t quite wrap my mind around, considering how cold and miserable the planet looked.


    Calima left not long after we landed, with Tatnia and Nal in tow, to go take care of the purchase. As focused as I was on enchanting, I left the ship buying and preparing for the rest of the crew. I had a mental gauntlet to complete, and I trusted them to handle themselves. I reminded them to keep the ship as separate as possible from the rest of us, as well as the Intervention and Talos Chariot, before waving them off and returning to my work.


    After nearly seven days of pushing myself mentally as I worked my way through my set target, I was finally done. In the end, Calima received another ring of fortify dexterity, while Allum, Tatnia and Nal received one dexterity and one strength each. I also made a ring of fortify magic and an amulet of fortify dexterity for myself.


    While my brain was well and truly fried by the time I was done with everything, I was ecstatic with what I had achieved. Not only was I now consistently staying focused enough to successfully drain two jewels without losing control and failing, but I could also feel it getting easier. I was hoping that, if I was lucky, by the time Pola and Vaz started producing beskar armor, I would be able to use three whole gems.


    When I was finally done, I spent the second half of the day recovering. I essentially spent nearly eight hours staring at the ceiling in the Chariots lounge, drinking ale and trying to string words into sentences. The next morning, I was thankfully feeling a bit more human, so Miru insisted that I go visit our newly acquired ship. I agreed, mostly because I had already planned on it. Calima picked me up in a rented speeder, which the crew was using since the Arrow could be linked to our group, and flew me over. We even left the large landing pad on foot, Calima picking us up once we had put a few blocks between us and our most likely well-known ships.


    "It certainly looks well maintained," I commented to Miru as we circled the YV-260 in the rented airspeeder. "Not a mark on her."


    We landed nearby on the seperate landing pad and quickly made our way inside. The interior was clean and just as well maintained as the outside. The ship was broken up into two sections, the fore and aft. The aft was basically just a large cargo space, surprisingly large due to the extra space built into the belly of the ship. It had nowhere near as much space as the Chariot, which was not surprising considering it was half the size, but it was exceptional for its class.


    The fore end of the ship was slightly elevated above the floor of the aft area. It was there that the crew and passenger quarters were, as well as a small lounge and the bridge. The previous owner had clearly not been content to pick between form and function, instead opting to spend his credits upgrading his ship to have both. It might have cost me a lot more because of it, but as I was walking through the interior, it was hard to argue with the results. The ship was stylish, crisp, and clearly functional.


    Originally, when we first conceived this aspect of the plan, I had assumed we would be buying a cheap, basically disposable ship. We would modify it, use it for the mission, and then offload it to some random spacer or the Rebellion. When Miru first showed me this ship, and now having inspected it myself, I couldn''t help but agree that buying and ultimately keeping it was probably a better idea. I was already considering using one of my favors with General Syndulla to get a full smugglers or blockade runners kit installed, whatever that would entail. Having a ship on hand that can get in and out of restricted planets would be incredibly useful in the future.


    Miru, who had finished the less-than-legal upgrades a day before I finished my enchantments, eagerly gave me a tour of the ship. Once the first tour was done, she went over all the secret compartments.


    "So the first thing I did was start with the easy places," She explained. "Places that are too small to install life support systems but big enough to be useful, like for the commando droids."


    The young genius reached behind one of the lounge''s larger seats as she talked, and the back popped forward with a hiss of a breaking seal. She pulled the seat back further, revealing a compartment that was barely big enough for a commando droid. She pointed to a box built into the base of the compartment.


    "This is a sealing unit. It was designed for museums to preserve sensitive exhibits, but it also does an excellent job making the compartment blend into the rest of the ship," She explained. "It controls temperature and pressure, purifies the air, and half a dozen other things. This¡­"


    She said while reaching down and opening up the back of the compartment door, showing off an interior that was filled with wires and computer parts.


    "Will scan as standard ship parts, so even if they start sniffing around the chair without access to the lock, it will just look like a normal chair covering ship internals. I did that in most of the compartments, though it wasn''t necessary everywhere."


    She pushed the compartment closed before we moved on to the rest of the ship. In total she managed to fit two dozen hidden compartments, ranging from the size of a large microwave to two massive ones big enough to hold two people in relative comfort. We would have plenty of room to bring everything we needed, all while being safely invisible to Imperial Customs. We even had enough room for five commando droids, way more than I had hoped to bring.


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    It was impressive work, not that I expected anything different from Miru and her team of repair droids at this point.


    Once the tour was over, it was time for us to make the final preparations. The YV-260, now called the Starcaller as a deliberately forgettable name, was already stocked with enough provisions for the mission, but we had yet to load it with equipment. It took a while to transport our weapons and the BXs to the ship in a way that wasn''t obvious, but we chipped away at it. In the end, it only took an extra day.


    Once everything was ready, the team split up. Miru, Dazem, Vakim, and Pola all stayed with the Chariot and Intervention. They would hang around for a few more days, before taking off and leaving for Thila Command. The rest of us piled into the Starcaller, with Calima and Allum at the helm.


    It was a tight fit, considering that the stock version of the ship only came with space for two pilots and two passengers. Luckily, the previous owner had taken the two passenger rooms, expanded them and turned them into double bunk rooms. That meant we had room for four passengers, meaning we were only down one bed. I was going to volunteer to sleep on the couch, but Julus and Allum agreed to switch off sleeping in one of the crew quarters before I could.


    Even with the barely adequate sleeping space, we were forced to spend most of our time in the cargo hold, as there wasn''t nearly enough room for all of us in the lounge. The rest of the crew passed the time by playing Sabbac, but I was determined to use the two days it would take for us to get into position, as well as the time we spent waiting for Rabben to give us the all-clear, learning new magic.


    At this point in time, I was picking spells based on what could maybe, sort of, possibly be useful, having officially reached the end of the Adept spells that I absolutely needed to know. On the first day, I learned Heal Middling Trauma, a Restoration spell that I had been putting off for a while because my other Restoration options had been working fine so far. Where all other healing spells I knew simply infused the recipient with healing energies, repairing everything with only a minor ability to direct it, Heal Middling Trauma could be directed to a single wound or spot, ensuring that the target doesn''t bleed out because an arterial injury while all the healing energy I used took care of some a surface burn or a concussion. It was also better at healing wounds that resulted in more missing body mass, though there was a hard limit to how much that worked.


    On the second day and third day I focused on Conjuration, learning Conjure Fighter first and Conjure Ice Atronach second. Conjure Fighter was similar to Conjure Archer, in that it conjured up a non-elemental construct that fought for me, though this one was focused on melee fighting. I could summon it with a variety of weapons or shields, the latter of which cost extra mana but actually absorbed a decent amount of damage according to the grimoire. I was happy with how <u>it looked</u></a> as well.


    The <u>Ice Atronach</u></a> was similar in most ways to the Flame Atronach, in that it was an elementally themed conjured construct, with access to its element and nothing else. I wasn''t entirely sure why the Frost Atronach was so different from the Flame variant, but it undoubtedly was a much stronger spell. It had access to high levels of magic, lasted longer and was slightly tougher. The other side of that was that it was much more expensive, mana-wise.


    On the fourth day, I was attempting to learn a destruction spell when a Hyperwave message came through. It was short, anonymous, and had the proper, pre-agreed password on it. It confirmed that a transport ship from Itander had just left Gizer, having offloaded their goods. It also confirmed that there was plenty of material for us to steal, including the platinum from this and the last delivery.


    "Alright, everyone," I said, all of the present crew gathered up in the cargo space. "This will be the first time we are going into such a deeply imperial-controlled area. The good news is that, with such a heavily populated area the chances of our comms being tapped are slim to none. So, I want near constant communication. The plan, as it stands now, allows for a lot of flexibility, but there are limits. How we avoid those limits is by keeping everyone in the same loop so that we can react to issues quickly."


    I looked around at everyone, getting clear faces and eager nods.


    "Good. If no one has any questions, then Calima, you can lead us in. Everyone else, it''s time to head to our luxury accommodations," I said, referring to our smugglers'' compartments. "Remember to double-check your respirators before you seal yourself in."


    Again, everyone nodded before we split up and went our separate ways, spreading out around the ship. While the ship was now covered in covert storage, only some of them were large enough for people. I made my way near the cockpit, following behind Calima for most of the way, only to stop just before the final doorway into the bridge. Calima gave me a nod before sitting down in the pilot''s chair, getting to jump to lightspeed. One of our astromech droids was with her, now assigned permanently to the ship. Miru already had plans to upgrade it to something similar to Racer.


    I watched our pilot working for a minute before reaching up around the top of the metal door frame that led into the bridge. I slid my hand along it until I reached a section just barely smoother than the rest. I held my finger there for a moment while a scanner did its job before a click resonated behind me. The floor had opened slightly, allowing me to pry the space open all the way, revealing a compartment just about three feet deep, the same length wide, and four feet long. I carefully lowered myself inside, grabbing the mask that was waiting for me inside and pulling it on securely. The mask was part of an EVA system, supplying air and sealing around the face, which would allow the compartment to be negatively pressurized without harming me. I took several long, deep breaths, confirming that the system was working, before reaching up and closing the hatch above me, sealing me inside.


    I could feel the pressure in the sealed space shift slightly, enough to be noticeable and even just barely uncomfortable, but I knew that as long as I had the mask on and it was sealed, I would be fine.


    I settled down as best I could, my back against the metal wall of the compartment. I could feel the hum of the hyperdrive kicking on as we made the final jump, which would only last about ten minutes. I could also feel the temperature inside the compartment slowly lowered, hiding the fact that I was inside. I knew from Miru''s explanation that the metal surrounding me would hide my heat signature well, and the museum regulator would do the rest.


    The box was pitch black, completely soundproof and built well enough that I knew it would take a lot of work, and judicious use of magic to break myself free. Even though I had never been claustrophobic, and I knew I could technically release the hatch from the inside if I needed to, I was still slightly ill at ease from the utter silence and darkness.


    I took a long, slow breath and held it for a moment before slowly breathing out. Calima would let us out when we landed. All I had to do was wait.

 Chapter 93

    We dropped out of hyperspace around the time that we were expected to, though, with no electronics on me, it was a bit difficult to judge time. The thrum of the hyperspace engines vanished as we did, replaced by the firing of the main thrusters as Calima oriented us toward the planet.


    It was more than a bit nerve-racking, knowing what was supposed to be happening but having no way of knowing if everything was going according to plan. I found myself listening to every click, buzz, and thump that reached my small, pitch-black box, analyzing what they could mean. I spent about ten minutes doing this when an unmistakable shudder ran through the ship. Someone had just connected to the external airlock, docking with the Starcaller.


    We had hoped that the Imperial Customs presence on Gizer was lax enough that the boarding and inspection wouldn''t happen, but either from pure bad luck or Imperial paranoia, that wasn''t the case. The next while was spent nervously waiting, resisting the urge to move, breath heavily or anything else that might give me away. Miru had insisted that the compartments were almost entirely soundproof and that any vibrations we gave off would be seen as standard ship stuff, but it was impossible not to be nervous about being caught, especially when in such an inopportune position.


    Thankfully, and as usual, Miru turned out to be correct. After a long, tense wait, a similar but less aggressive thumb reverberated through the ship, signaling that the boarding party had left. Not long after that, I could feel Calima adjusting the ship''s angle and accelerating. It seems that the inspection went well, or at least well enough to let us pass. We were now heading down to the planet''s surface.


    Eventually, the ship landed and slowly powered down, the engines turning off and the reactor going into low output. I could hear the ship settling around me, heated parts slowly starting to cool down, including the hull of the ship. After a few minutes of listening to the clicking of cooling parts, the seal on my compartment broke. Bright, blinding light blasted me in the face as the compartment opened, revealing the dark outline of Calima.


    "How we doing?" I asked, nearly blind as I pulled myself out of the box, wincing and partially covering my eyes. "Any issues?"


    "Everything went well, Boss," Calima answered. "They didn''t¡­. find anything suspicious as far as I could tell."


    "Good, great. You keep an eye out for emergency inspections. I''ll go let everyone else out."


    Calima nodded and turned back to the cockpit, sitting down and taping on her console, opening up what looked like a sensor screen. I turned and headed through the ship, opening up everyone''s compartments. Only Tatnia had their own compartment like me, with Allum, Julus, Vaz, and Nal divided between two large compartments. Once everyone was free and had adjusted to the lights again, we all met down in the cargo hold.


    "Alright, as far as Calima could tell, the inspection went off without a hitch, which means they have no idea we are here," I explained, smirking as Julus cheered. "Yeah, yeah, settle down. This is only the first step. We have a lot more work to do before we are ready."


    Despite my declaration of having a lot to do, the very first step in our plan was to wait. Rather than kick things off immediately, I wanted the first modification to the Starcaller to be underway before we started moving around. That way, we had the added cover of hardware delivery and repair droids moving around. It took the rest of Gizer''s day cycle for Calima to organize a delivery of what we wanted as well as an airspeeder rental. That night, we took turns keeping watch, one of us awake and keeping an eye on sensors at all times to keep from being taken off guard by a surprise inspection.


    The next morning, the Airspeeder was dropped off, and the materials for the first upgrade were delivered. I had always liked the idea of a built-in security system, specifically one like the Millennium Falcon had concealed in its ventral hull. Having access to antipersonnel blasters that could cover people as they climbed onto the ship or unloaded cargo sounded well worth the investment. Unfortunately, since the whole purpose of the Starcaller was to keep this part of the mission clean, it had to be a civilian version. That basically meant we were restricted to low-powered or stun weapons, barely better than training blasters. Thankfully, Miru assured me she would fix that once we were done here.


    Once the materials arrived, we deployed Leddy and three other repair bots, all borrowed from the Chariot and the Intervention. They started work on the upgrades with instructions to take their time. We had a second upgrade option if we needed it, but there was no reason to get that started unless we needed a whole bunch of extra time.


    Once our cover was set and we were relatively certain we weren''t being watched, Nal, Vaz, and Tatnia all left on the rented airspeeder, with Calima as their pilot. They were tasked with securing us some stolen speeders. While they were gone, Allum took Calima''s place on the sensor watch, keeping an eye out for surprise inspections.


    I knew at this point we were being paranoid and over the top, but I was determined to do our best to keep this mission from being connected to the Starcaller or back to Rabben. It made everything a bit more frustrating and time-consuming, but it was well worth it as far as we were concerned. Adding as many layers of obfuscation as possible was vital.


    It ended up taking us two days to get everything ready, sneaking around after dark, scouting locations, and gathering what we needed. By the time we were finally done, we had intentionally flipped around our sleep schedule so that we were wide awake and ready to go very late at night. We waited for Leddy and her team to finish installing the security blasters, which only took a day past our prep. By then, we were more than ready to get the heist underway.


    That night, everyone was focused, preparing their gear and going through their checks. We were all wearing simple black masks and had colored our armor solid black. Once we were done, Calima began ferrying us into place, dropping us off at a pre-scouted location, a pair of abandoned buildings.


    The ground team, as well as two labor droids, sat in one abandoned building, waiting for Calima to get some distance between us. After a few minutes of waiting, I walked across the street to the other abandoned building. We had specifically chosen these two buildings, not only because they were abandoned but because there was a large space between them and the rest of the buildings around them.


    Over the course of ten minutes, I cleared the building for the second time, ensuring it was completely empty. When I was certain I was alone, I systematically set it on fire with my Flames spell. It didn''t long for the fire to start ripping through the three-story building, sending up flames and smoke. When it was clear the fire would continue on its own, I ran back across the street to wait.


    Thankfully, we didn''t have to wait long, as a fire response speeder soon showed up to respond to the flames. It landed in the street, and a dozen droids clambered out of it, deploying various hoses and sprayers, starting to put the fire out as quickly as possible.


    "Alright, guys¡­ this is the start," I said, looking over the whole group. "Anyone got any last-minute doubts?"


    When no one said anything, I nodded and stepped out of the cover building, my crew right behind me. The droid response team had already made significant progress putting the fire out, as well as wetting the area to keep it from spreading. Confident that the fire wouldn''t spread out of control, we approached the large airspeeder.


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    While Tatnia made a beeline for the cockpit, Nal and I walked around the ship, quickly dispatching the droid crew. Vaz and Julus began stripping out everything that the ship had in storage. When the last of the droids were destroyed, Nal and I helped, quickly stripping out hoses, equipment, and any superfluous in the droid compartments. We very intentionally kept a pair of specialized pieces of equipment for later. When we were done, there was a surprising amount of room, which was exactly what we had been banking on. With our space cleared, I walked around to the front of the large, brightly painted airspeeder to the cockpit. Tatnia was inside, getting familiar with the controls.


    "Can you fly it?" I asked, looking up slightly at her.


    "Yeah, it''s a pretty basic system," She responded with a nod. "Don''t expect crazy maneuvers, but I can get us there."


    "Alright, good."


    I made my way around the vehicle, giving the area one last check before directing everyone to get the labor droids into the ship before climbing in ourselves, each of us picking a spot previously occupied by a droid. Thankfully, the spaces were clearly designed to host organic or machine, which meant we had a place to sit and buckle in. Once we had a chance to sit and get secure, I called out to Tatnia.


    "All set!"


    The airspeeder thrummed, and slowly we lifted off the ground, doors sealing shut around us. Once we were high above the street, we started drifting over the still-burning building. For a moment, I was concerned that Tatnia had lost control of the vehicle, before the bottom speeder opened up. Hundreds of gallons of fire retarding liquid, which was definitely not water, poured out from the newly opened storage tank. The fire below us let out an almighty hiss as it was almost instantly doused, the liquid doing its job and strangling out the flames.


    "Nice job!" I called out to Tatnia, though I had no way of knowing if she could hear me.


    The speeder lifted off higher before making a beeline for our target. With our transport and disguise secured, it was time to call in the next stage of the plan. I pulled out my comms unit and contacted our support, BX-01 through 05.


    "BX-01, we have our ride," I said clearly. "Time for you to shine. Good luck."


    "Roger Roger, engaging now."


    A significant distance away, I knew that the five commando droids were standing on a parking structure, with ten recently stolen and modified airspeeders around them. They would each be climbing into one of the speeders and activate their programming, a simple command system that Miru put together during her downtime.


    The airspeeders would take off from their position and fly in vague formation, as low to the ground as they could, all targeted on the handoff facility. The first five would slam into the wall and turrets of the facility, spreading destruction and chaos. The remaining five, each of which held a BX unit, would pass over the wall and drop down low enough to let the BX jump out safely. Once the BXs were gone, they would complete their own mission of slamming into the barracks, two hardened defensive positions, and a series of fuel tanks.


    Unfortunately, while I knew that''s what was supposed to be happening, I had no way of knowing if it was working. All I could do was sit in silence as Tatnia flew us across the city, waiting for BX-01 to contact me. Tatnia was going purposely slow, giving the BXs time to complete their mission. Finally, after a few minutes, my comms unit crackled to life.


    "Stage one successful," The robotic voice reported. "Unit BX-02 destroyed. Moving to the hangar."


    While the loss of BX-02 was unfortunate, the truth was that their entire mission was basically suicide. They were our distraction, with the chances of them surviving very low. Now that they were inside the walls of the facility, it was time for them to be as annoying as possible while preparing to drag the empire''s attention as far from the facility as possible. By the time they contacted me again, we could see the orange fires of their attack.


    "Hangar contained a ship as predicted," BX-01 reported again. "We have successfully commandeered the vessel, taking off now."


    In the distance, the glowing orange facility brightened slightly before a ship, no bigger than the Starcaller, lifted up from the hangar. It unloaded several streaks of light, slamming into the remaining turrets that had opened fire on it, missiles detonating and obliterating whole chunks of the facility. For a moment, the ship paused in the air, laying down heavy blaster fire at the complex below. Before we could get close enough to make out just what kind of ship the BXs had stolen through the smoke and flame, a trio of TIE fighters screeched across the sky, firing blasts of green laser fire at it.


    The ship seemed to tank the shots with relative ease but still pulled away and streaked across the city in the exact opposite direction as us. The TIE''s immediately gave chase, blasting at the ship and screaming after it.


    Tatnia clearly understood that that was our cue, as the speeder slowly picked up speed, heading directly for the burning facility. She pressed a button, and the emergency lights flicked on, as did a long, droning siren.


    As we approached the facility, we finally got a good look at the destruction the BXs had wrought. Portions of the complex''s walls were in shambles, and almost all of the defensive turrets had been destroyed. There were half a dozen burning wrecks strewn across the open portions of the complex, as well as a few burning buildings. The communication tower, in particular, was a melted pile of slag.


    Two other fire response speeders were already approaching the area, one landing by a partially collapsed structure and the other flying above the burning barracks.


    Of course, we had our own target.


    Tatnia slowly landed alongside the main facility, a large, armored structure. There was a large spot designated for cargo ships, and Tatnia guided the airship down as close as possible to the large sealed entrance.


    We all poured out of the airspeeder the second we touched down, including Tatnia. As quickly as we could, we headed directly for the massive security door, which was sealed shut. Alongside it, however, was a normal door. It was also clearly overbuilt and armored, but that wouldn''t be a problem. Rather than fuck around and do anything fancy, I put my hands up to the door and dumped my entire mana pool into it, a Sparks spell crackling into the door. By the time I was drained, smoke was pouring from the door''s seams. I then stepped back, letting Nal and Vaz step in. They slammed two large devices on the door, the same devices that Nal and I had saved. They were both overbuilt prying machines that were, as far as I could tell, the Star Wars equivalent of <u>spreaders</u></a>.


    The machine jaws slowly spread open, their tips jammed into the door''s seam. They slipped a few times but eventually managed to grab on. The door crunched and shuddered as the two spreaders overpowered the door internals. Suddenly, there was a snap as whatever locking mechanism the doors used gave way. From there, we were able to push the door open completely, using the door frame and the spreaders.


    "Let''s go, people. Every minute we waste is another minute they have to figure out what the fuck is going on," I said, conjuring a Greater Ward out in front of myself. "The BXs can only distract them for so long."

 Chapter 94

    I stepped into the building through the damaged, pried-open doors,l immediately wincing at the blaring sirens and constant flashing red lights. While we had fully expected the facility to be on alert as we entered, I underestimated how obnoxious and distracting it would be. Still, at least we didn''t have to worry about any permanent damage since I could heal that away.


    As the team crossed the pried-open doorway, we stepped into some sort of security checkpoint. Along one side were scanners and other equipment, all focused on where we were, with a slightly raised area protected by thick-looking glass on the other. Luckily, the obvious observation room was empty. With any luck, the people who were supposed to be there had run away or evacuated.


    With no one to stop us, we lugged the spreader tools into the room and slammed them into the door opposite the entrance, which was also locked shut. With our newfound experience, we managed to pry the door open in half the time the exterior door took. With the path cleared, I went first, stepping into the facility properly.


    Once the team was inside, we began exploring the facility, quickly finding that the interior consisted of only a few rooms and hallways, all of which led to a large open warehouse. As we moved quickly but cautiously into the large space, I spun around, scanning the room. Along one side was a large opening, the cargo lane that I recognized from the landing platform running through it. While I couldn''t see it, I knew it led to the massive armored entrance we had seen when we landed.


    The main floor of the open facility was mostly empty, with a few smaller lifting vehicles, basically sci-fi forklifts, as well as some other tools and equipment strewn about. On the other side of the building, opposite the cargo entrance, were dozens of alcoves. They were stacked two high and built into the structure of the building itself. Each alcove was three or four meters across and just as tall, all of them sealed shut with a mean-looking electric blue energy barrier.


    "Alright, let''s start breaking down these shields," I said, gesturing to the closest alcoves. "Anything that''s valuable comes with us."


    All of us, including the two labor droids, crossed the warehouse floor, heading directly to the alcoves. I picked one at random, stepping closer and examining the barrier, a few stacks of metal ingots visible on the other side. The glowing blue shield shimmered and hummed with energy and would no doubt zap me if I tried to touch it. Even as I looked around, I could see that it was carefully sealed into the alcove, so there was no paneling or access where we could shut it down.


    Luckily, we had known about this going in.


    While the workers that Rabben interviewed had no way of sneaking in recording devices, they had freely described everything they could remember, including the barriers protecting the metal. According to them, a nearby security station would toggle the barriers on and off as needed, while watching them through security cameras. Thankfully, the warning let us come prepared.


    While Tatnia scanned around the alcove with a handheld device borrowed from Mirus''s workshop, Julus handed me a device that our young genius put together. It was a cylinder, about a foot in length and half that wide, with a synthetic rubber seal on one side and a rubber ring on the other. It had wires platting welded around the exterior, looking like a custom-made device.


    Except none of that actually did anything.


    Since we were doing everything we could to separate this mission from ourselves and from Rabben, I couldn''t be seen using magic. So, Miru spent all of the fifteen minutes putting together what was essentially a fancy flash hider. After a few seconds of waiting, Nal pointed out a spot, and I put the cylinder over it and stuck my hand inside.


    Then, I cast Chain Lightning.


    Between the synthetic rubber and the nature of my own magic, the Destruction dumped all its energy into the wall and the barrier projector just behind it, passing through all the armor and protection that were built into the alcove. The barrier flickered and dimmed before failing completely.


    After a quick moment of celebration, we got to work, spending the next five minutes breaking into every first-floor alcove with metal inside. While Tatnia and I worked to open them, the rest of the team stepped into each alcove, examining the stacks of metal.


    "This one is electrum, though there is not much," Nal called out. "Worth taking though!"


    "Pretty sure this is varium or silver," Julus said, shouting over the alarm. "Should grab it either way!"


    "I believe I have found the platinum!" Vaz shouted, excitement leaking into her normally calm voice. "There is a significant amount."


    When the alcoves were open, we started moving our prize. Between the labor droids and some equipment we found around the warehouse, we managed to stack all of the ingots onto four separate repulsor carts. When we were done, we requested a count from the droids, who informed us that we had grabbed fifty-five ingots of platinum, thirty-five of gold, twenty-two of electrum, and forty-eight of silvery metal that Julus was pretty sure was varium.


    Tatnia and I were just about to start looking for ways to get to the second-floor alcoves when suddenly, a blast of red slammed into the floor between Tatnia and me. Both of us jumped to the side, avoiding the next trio of blaster bolts by taking cover behind one of the forklift speeders. I peeked over the top to see a squad of ten stormtroopers pouring out onto a walkway that ran along the higher levels of the facility. I could see even more coming in behind them.


    "Take cover!" I shouted.


    Thankfully, most of my team was close enough to cover that by the time the troopers opened fire again, they were safe. Unfortunately, Vaz was stuck in the open for just a moment too long, catching a blast in the leg, the bolt punching through a lightly armored section in her armor. She stumbled and rolled, managing to lay down alongside a rack of equipment, just barely covered. The labor droids were not nearly fast enough and were quickly destroyed, their parts scattered across the floor.


    As the blaster fire was focused on the now charred droids, I charged a Chain Lightning in both of my hands, throwing them up at the stormtroopers. The blast caught a handful them, the first of them slamming back against the railings and over the edge, the rest stumbling as electricity sparked through their bodies. Nal and Julus, who were taking cover behind a stack of pallets, popped out of cover and opened fire, soon joined by the rest of us.


    The level of accuracy we managed was stunning, with Julus, in particular, taking out six troopers by himself, with every other blast bolt finding a gap in the gleaming white stormtrooper armor. Tania and Nal were just behind Julus in accuracy, while my arrows seemed to have no issue punching through the stormtrooper''s white armor, with no need to aim for weak spots.


    After killing nearly twenty of the stormtroopers, there was a lull in the battle. I rushed over to Vaz, immediately dumping two Heal Middling Traumas into her leg. She gasped as the pain faded almost completely, her wound sealing closed.


    "You''re lucky. I just learned that a few days ago," I said with a smirk as I helped her up. "C''mon, I want to get out of here before more show up."


    The team quickly gathered back up around our loot. Together, we pushed all four of the repulsor carts, heading directly for the same hallway we had entered from. We took it slow, using the stacks of precious metals as cover, worried that a new batch of stormtroopers would try to catch us off guard.


    After a minute or so, we managed to make it to the security checkpoint without any resistance. After adjusting the setting on the repulsor cart, we pushed them through the pried-open doors. I nearly groaned in relief when we finally pushed out onto the landing pad, the alarm already fading as we crossed to the large Fire Response Speeder. We crossed the distance to our ride quickly, immediately starting to offload the metal, basically throwing it into the empty cargo spaces we had cleared earlier.


    Unsurprisingly, a group of stormtroopers noticed us almost immediately, opening fire with a barrage of red blaster bolts the second they did. Luckily, they were a fair distance away, so no one was caught in the initial salvo, but we did have to stop loading to take cover. Thankfully, the troopers made a critical error, namely, opening fire before they had any cover for themselves. So when I conjured a Greater Ward and stepped out of cover with Vaz beside me, easily carrying her Z-6 chaingun, a simple sweeping motion killed nearly all of them. A secondary sweep took out the rest.


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    "Fucking hell," I cursed, shaking my head. "C''mon, we need to get the hell out of here before we need to do that again. I might lose my dinner."


    Vaz nodded in agreement, and we quickly got back to work, tossing bricks of valuable metal onto the speeder. A few minutes later, the carts were empty, so we climbed back into the speeder, with Tatnia climbing back into the cockpit. Slowly but surely, she lifted off of the landing pad, turning away from the still-burning complex before gunning it, the speeder lurching forward and away, pushing through the clouds of smoke and out over the city.


    For a moment, we were clear, leaving the chaos behind as we entered the third stage of our heist. Then, suddenly, we were no longer alone.


    Three <u>speeders</u></a>, of a model I didn''t recognize, all painted Imperial colors, caught up to us, slowing down alongside us. A loudspeaker crackled to life, loud enough that I could hear it from inside my compartment.


    "LAND THE VEHICLE!" The pilot demanded. "LAND THE VEHICLE AND PREPARE FOR INSPECTION."


    Cursing, I went through our options. It sounded like they weren''t sure we had done anything wrong because if they did, they wouldn''t have bothered asking for us to land. They just would have shot us down.


    "BY IMPERIAL ORDERS, LAND YOUR VEHICLE!"


    The pilot shouted again, their patience wearing thin. I cursed again, knowing that if I opened my compartment, I could probably take down one of them, if I got lucky with my bow or with a spray of sparks. But once we attacked, we would have the attention of every Imperial asset on the planet, something we desperately wanted to avoid.


    "THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING! LAND YOUR VEHICLE OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE!"


    Cursing loudly, I stood from my seat and reached out for the door controls of my compartment. Before I could activate them, however, the sounds of a much larger vessel worked their way into my capsule. Suddenly, a <u>ship</u></a> rocketed over us, going much faster than we were capable of, despite the fact that it was very clearly damaged. It opened fire on the speeders with a ventral quad laser, easily destroying the unshielded vehicles. The ship, trailing smoke, turned back towards the facility and accelerated. Before I could do anything but watch, my comms lit up.


    "We will continue covering your escape, Boss," BX-01 said.


    "Holy shit, was that you?" I asked into the comms, watching as the ship raced away.


    "Affirmative."


    "Well... keep up your distraction for another few minutes, then head for space," I instructed. "We should be landed by then."


    "Roger Roger, BX-01 out."


    I shook my head as I watched the ship continue to speed away, opening fire on the facility once more before turning and retreating away, cutting down another trio of speeders as it did. It was surprising that they had managed to survive this long, especially considering the instructions had been to attract as much attention as possible. I quickly switched my comms connection to Tatnia while I watched.


    "Let''s not waste the time they gave us, Nia. Give it some speed to the landing area."


    "Yeah¡­ alright."


    I could feel the air speeder accelerate, the large emergency vehicle eating up the miles, the city whizzing by under us. After a minute or so, we began to decelerate, slowly coming down to land in the parking lot-type space. Immediately, we jumped out and began unloading the metal ingots into a normal-looking speeder truck, looking no different from the several that had already stopped by the ship berth where the Starcaller was located. It took almost five minutes for us to offload all of the metal, and that was with judicious use of the Respite spell whenever any of us were tired.


    After five minutes of constantly moving around lugging heavy bricks of metal, Julus hopped into the pilot''s seat, and the rest of us climbed into the back of the vehicle, nearly collapsing on top of the piles of metal. Julus lifted off of the parking lot and slowly, at a perfectly normal speed, made his way back to the Starcaller. It was a long trip compared to what it would have been in an airspeeder, but at this point, we were once again trying to seem unsuspicious so that we didn''t compromise the Starcaller''s cover.


    When we finally reached the Starcaller, we had recovered enough to start moving the piles of metal from the speeder truck to the ships cargo bay. With our own repulsor carts and Allum''s help the speeder truck was soon empty, so Julus pulled off with it to ditch it it somewhere, Tatnia leaving soon after with the rented airspeeder to pick him up and bring him back.


    While they were gone, we carefully took every single ingot and transferred them to the various sealed compartments. We even ended up having to use two of the compartments intended for the BXs. A full half hour later, when all the ingots were safely stored, and everyone was back in the ship, we finally let ourselves at least partially relax. Julus suggested a toast to celebrate, but I shook my head vehemently.


    "No fucking way," I said. "This mission isn''t over until we jump to lightspeed. We will not tempt fate by celebrating early. Unclench, take a deep breath and unwind, but no celebrating."


    Vaz, who I knew had a rather low view of superstition from comments made while we were escaping the prison planet, rolled her eyes but ultimately kept quiet.


    With the metal stored safely inside the Starcaller, we entered the fourth, final, and potentially most nerve-wracking stage of the heist. For the next three days, we stayed inside the ship, waiting for the heat to die down so that we could leave without suspicion. The planet was buzzing with Imperial activity, with TIE fighters flying by almost every fifteen minutes. Even the Star Destroyer lowered its orbit, casting a gigantic shadow over the city and our landing pad. With each passing hour, the tension inside the ship rose.


    Even worse was the inspection teams that visited the ship, obviously searching for the thieves. Because we had no way of predicting the visit, we were forced to keep the ship clean of anything that might give the ground team''s presence away. Twice, Calima caught the ships carrying stormtroopers and officers on sensors, so we quickly clambered into our smuggling compartments, spending nearly an hour each time sealed inside.


    Their visits also meant that I failed to learn Telekinesis twice before finally succeeding on the third day.


    As cover for just waiting around, Calima got nearly twenty thousand credits worth of food and other supplies delivered to the ship, which was loaded into the cargo bay, filling it almost halfway. The deliveries were spread over the three days we were waiting, and when the last one was done, it was finally time to leave.


    For a third, and hopefully last time for a long time, the ground team, plus Allum, climbed back into our compartments, sealing ourselves inside. This time, we were stuck inside for around four hours, as the line to leave was held up due to our attack on the facility. When it was finally our turn, the Imperial Customs inspection almost took two hours. When Calima finally opened my compartment, I let out a long sigh of relief, immediately climbing out despite the pain the light was causing me.


    "Alright, now let''s have a drink to celebrate," I said, shaking my head. "I can''t fucking believe that worked out so well."


    I went around the ship and released the rest of my crew, everyone meeting up at the lounge, stuffed into the smaller area. I poured everyone a drink from a bottle I had delivered with the rest of the supplies that filled our cargo hold. We drank, celebrated, and then almost immediately crashed into our rooms, exhaustion finally replacing the stress and tension.

 Chapter 95

    The trip to Thila Command took a few days, and the crew spent it unwinding and recovering from the stress and tension of the previous few days. Between constantly being on alert, being stuck on a much smaller ship than we were used to, and the ever-present weight of the Imperial forces around us, everyone was exhausted. I even put off learning any new magic now that we were free, instead of spending the return trip reading and relaxing with everyone else. Quite a few games of sabacc were played, and by the second day in hyperspace, we were using ingots of platinum, gold, varium, and electrum as chips.


    "How''s your leg?" I asked Vaz, sliding an ingot of platinum to the center of the sturdy table we had set up in the cargo bay. "Healed up, alright?"


    "I would not know it had been injured if I had not experienced it," The Shistavanen assured me, looking down at her cards. "I am disappointed with the quality of my armor, however. It should have performed better with how much we paid for it."


    "Well, not much longer to wait," I pointed out, gesturing to our stacks of metal. "I''ll start converting some of these tomorrow so you and Pola can get to work as soon as we get back. Have you chosen a final design yet?"


    "We were waiting to see just how much material we had to work with," She responded, her lips pulling back into a smirk. "I believe we have enough for our most optimistic ideas."


    "Yeah¡­ very glad we didn''t try and pay for it," I said, looking down at the stacks of valuable metal. "I''m tempted to sell some of it so I can give everyone a cut for the mission, but I think that keeping it reserved for making armor is probably a better idea. There are no guarantees we would ever be able to pull something like this off again."


    "How much beskar will all of this make?" Julus asked, having finally finished his turn, matching my bet.


    "A lot," I answered, Tatnia rolling her eyes at my response. "Between losing some to the spells inefficiency, losing more to platinum being a lesser metal¡­ I may lose close to fifteen percent at first. But the more I use the spell, the better I will get at it, so that number is definitely going to go down. I also don''t know what the ratio loss will be for gold, electrum, or varium, though I suspect gold will lose a lot more. No idea about electrum or varium."


    We continued to play the game, and Julus eventually pulled ahead and won. As we agreed before we started, we each gave him ten credits, Julus happily taking his winnings as he bragged and gloated. It wasn''t much money in the end, primarily because while I was all for playing games for fun, gambling with high stakes among friends had always seemed unwise to me. When we were done cleaning up from our fun, I headed back to the room I had claimed, grabbing the small sliver of beskar I had brought for just this purpose before heading back down to the cargo hold. I plopped back down around the same sturdy, improvised table and grabbed an ingot of platinum.


    The transmutation process was slow and tedious. The spell, unlike its Skyrim counterpart, slowly converted the targeted metal into my targeted element. It was a relatively slow draw on mana, too, taking a few minutes to drain my reserves completely. When I stopped to let my reserves fill, I turned the bar of metal over in my hand. Only about a fourth of it has been converted, the difference between the two metals obvious to even the naked eye. It was also not a one-to-one conversion. The loss of mass from the spell''s inefficiencies and from the quality of the metal resulted in the converted area being noticeably thinner than the rest of the ingot.


    I spent basically the rest of the day transmuting platinum and electrum, the two metals we stole the most of. I turned twenty bars of platinum into slightly thinner and shorter bars of beskar and the electrum bars into full, complete bars, each of them the same size as the original bar. It turns out that electrum is actually more valuable than platinum, enough to counter the inherent inefficiency of the Transmute spell. When I was done with the fifteenth bar of electrum, I looked at the remaining ingots on the table, knowing that there was still a lot more in storage and that I hadn''t even transmuted a quarter of what we had stolen.


    Already I had tripled the amount of beskar ingot that we had left behind on the Intervention, and these ingots were significantly bigger than the ones Pola and Vaz had made. In total, by weight, there was four times as much beskar in front of me than was back at the Intervention. In all likelihood, this heist had solved our beskar needs for the foreseeable future. The only question now was if I finished converting everything into beskar, or left the rest of the metal as it was. Converting it would shrink it down a bit, making it easier to store and easier for Pola and Vaz to use without my help, but leaving it as it was would mean we could sell or trade it without worrying about it getting back to us that we had a source of beskar.


    Rather than make a unilateral choice, I decided to put it off until I could at least ask for Nal and Tatnia''s opinions. Considering it was getting late, and Nal and Tatnia had both already headed to bed, the question would have to wait. I took one more look at the stack of beskar before heading off to bed.


    The rest of the journey back to Thila Command went by smoothly, the Starcaller making quick work of the distance with its powerful, heavily upgraded hyperdrive. Calima insisted the ship was faster than a normal Class 1 hyperdrive, putting the ship in a very exclusive club with the likes of the Millenium Falcon, Jade Shadow, and several other heavily modified and upgraded ships.


    When we arrived at Thila Command, it took a moment for us to be cleared for landing, three Rebel cruisers boxing us in until we were given the green light. Besides the cruisers and a few other small ships, the orbit around Thila was mostly empty, as were most of the hangars we passed by to finally land between the Chariot and the Intervention. Just about as soon as we landed, the crew poured out of the cargo bay access ramp. The Starcaller was an impressive and comfortable ship, but it was also clearly not intended for that many people, especially not for so long.


    It didn''t take long for we were greeted by the rest of the crew, Miru leading the group at a run.


    "Welcome back," She shouted, giving me a tight hug before jumping at Tatnia and giving her the same. "How did it go? Did you do it? Is everything okay? Nobody got hurt, right?"


    I couldn''t help but chuckle as I assured the young Twi''lek that everything was okay. I patted her shoulder and gestured to the cargo ramp into the ship.


    "If you''d like to know how the mission went, go ahead and see for yourself," I said, watching as her eyes went wide, and she took off, quickly followed by the rest of the crew.


    During the last leg of the trip back, we had stacked everything neatly, most of the material still in its original forms, onto three different repulsor carts. The beskar, all thirty-five bars of it, was on its own cart. When Miru spotted the stacked bars of precious metals, she froze and stared, her jaw hanging open. It wasn''t until Pola passed by her to examine and count the beskar that she finally unstuck.


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    "There is so much!" she shouted. "What metals did you get? I can see gold and platinum¡­ is that electrum?"


    "Woah woah, how about we all head to the Chariot first? We can go over the mission there," I said, giving the mechanical genius a look. "Let''s not shout just how well we did so everyone can hear."


    The crew agreed, everyone making their way across the hangar and climbing into the ship. As we passed a pair of B2s in their charging rack, I activated them with a wave, ordering them to spread out and guard the hangar, specifically making sure no one boarded the Starcaller. Once the droids had deployed, I joined everyone in the lounge, sitting down with a sigh. I idly noted that there was a large holo-projector along the forward wall in front of the ship-style couch. It looked like Dazem had started to spend his entertainment budget.


    Over the next few hours, we told the story of the last week or so, sharing the experience with the rest of the crew. We had lunch, some drinks, and generally reconnected with the people we hadn''t seen in a while. It was cute watching Vakim and Allum hold hands and reconnect, the Mikkian showing much more emotion than she usually did.


    Eventually, after everyone recovered from Nal explaining we had probably managed to get somewhere around three or four million credits worth of precious metals, we moved on to what everyone had been up to while they waited for us to return. As I expected, Dazem had worked to update our entertainment options, having recruited his sister, and occasionally Pola to help. Pola had been mostly focused on gathering the last bits and pieces he would need for the armor project. At this point, I was starting to wonder just how much was going into the project and just what he and Vaz had been planning.


    They were both clearly excited to get to work with the beskar.


    As Pola and Vaz started discussing their next steps for making our armor, Miru disappeared at a sprint, rushing out of the lounge and down the stairs to the first deck. She returned a few minutes later, proudly stopping in the doorway and striking a pose. She was wearing her usual work clothes, with a heavy-duty belt around her waist and two small boxes about the size of my hand hanging off either side. She was also wearing a<u> glove and gauntlet combo</u></a> on her left hand and arm all the way to her elbow, with obvious electronics built into it.


    "Well?" She asked, showing her creation off. "What do you think?"


    "I think it looks well made," I responded truthfully. "What is it?"


    "It''s a portable scanner, computer system and diagnostic tool!" She said excitedly, sliding her right hand along the gauntlet portion of her creation. "Just watch!"


    The gauntlet lit up as she tapped a few buttons, the light spreading all the way to her palm. She walked closer and scanned my sidearm, waving her hand over it while the lights built into the device blinked and pulsed. After a few seconds, two miniature holo projection units lit up along her arm, displaying information on my blaster pistol, including energy readings, a wire form breakdown of its interior, and several other pieces of information that I''m sure meant something to Miru. She reached to the holo-projector and ran her finger through it, the scanned image of my pistol spinning.


    Altogether, it looked like a successful, well-made, and sturdy gauntlet with an HD, full-color omnitool built in.


    "That''s impressive, Miru," I said, holding out my hand, the young genius holding her arm out so I could get a better look. "Seriously, this is incredible. You could make a lot of money selling the plans for this¡­"


    "Maybe, but it was kind of expensive. I spent like eighty percent of what I got from the pirate mission on it," She admitted with a sheepish grin. "Plus¡­ I kind of like knowing I have something unique."


    "Pola is going to have to work around it when he makes your armor," Tatnia pointed out, but Miru shook her head.


    "I made sure it was compatible with the undersuit he bought. It should seamlessly connect as long as the arm has the right ending part, which I also bought," She explained. "Plus, these metal bits are all beskar that I painted, so I''ll even get good protection! Not perfect, but still good!"


    "Well, congrats, Miru. It came out great," I said with a smile. "I''m proud of you. If you ever want to figure out a way to sell the patent, just let me know. I''m sure we can figure something out."


    The young Twi''lek nodded in understanding, blushing just a tiny bit at my comment about being proud of her. She happily sat back down in her seat, and we continued our meal, eventually finishing a bit later. By then, it was starting to get a bit later in the afternoon, so we cleaned up and got to work.


    The most important thing I wanted to get done before we all turned in for the night was transferring all of the metal to the appropriate place. All of the beskar was sent to the Intervention, the incredibly expensive metal getting tucked away in Pola''s workshop. The rest of the precious metals were split into fourths. Two-fourths went to the Chariot, stacked inside the enchanting room for safekeeping. Another fourth was split between two smuggling compartments on board the Starcaller. The last fourth was stored inside one of the spare bedrooms on board the Intervention.


    The idea was that in a pinch, each ship would have a massive amount of wealth to throw around in an emergency while also preventing all of it from being lost should a ship need to be abandoned fast, or god forbid it was destroyed. I would have split it more evenly, but the Intervention would most likely have a good amount of beskar on board, so that was at least partially covered. We spent an hour and a half lugging the metal around despite knowing that this split was hopefully not going to last long. If the deepspace space station turned out to be as intact as we hoped, chances were we would be moving most of the precious metals there. Or we would once it was livable.


    We also spent an hour or so moving out all of the supplies we had bought as an alibi on Gizer. With any luck, I would be able to sell it quickly and we could be on our way. Nevue would hopefully contact us soon about our potential new base of operations, and I wanted to give Pola to spend as much time as possible on our armor until then.


    Once the cargo was loaded, all of us headed off to our respective ships, sharing a small meal with each other before we headed off for the night. I barely had enough energy to strip off my clothes before crawling into my bed, the familiar feel making it easy to fall asleep almost instantly.

 Chapter 96

    My first task for the next day was to find someone with enough authority to buy the alibi supplies. I left the Chariot pretty early, stopping by the entrance to the hangar to watch the sun slowly rise up the opposite side of the valley. There were alcoves and hangars carved along that cliffside as well, though they were smaller and seemed more for personal vehicles than anything.


    When I was done watching the sunrise, I did a quick walkthrough of all three ships. The only things moving on the Chariot were the droid crew, while the Starcaller was completely empty. Surprisingly, despite how early I had gotten up, Pola and Vaz were already working in their workshop. I wished them luck before exiting the Intervention behind.


    After checking in with the B2s on patrol, mainly to see if anyone had been poking around during the night, I made my way deeper into Thila Command. I was pretty sure that General Syndulla would be gone with the rescue mission, as would anyone else notable that I would know from the books and stories. In fact, after seeing how few ships were in orbit, I expected the base to be mostly empty, with very little activity beyond normal maintenance.


    Which made stumbling into a chaotic rush of people, a single floor above ours, very surprising.


    The second I stepped out of the stairwell, hewn from the solid rock like everything else on this base, I was nearly caught up in a current of Rebel personnel. Dozens of people were rushing around the hallways, pushing around carts, gurneys, equipment, and more. After watching for a minute, I managed to reach out and snag someone as they ran by, specifically choosing someone who was empty-handed.


    "What''s going on?" I asked, releasing the arm of a young male <u>Balosar</u></a>. "Why is everyone rushing around?"


    "The first wave of casualties is due any minute!" He responded, turning to rush away, forcing me to step ahead of him.


    "Casualties from what?"


    "The Yavin IV rescue mission!" He explained before finally pushing past me to go on his business.


    I cursed, looking around for a moment before stepping out into and following the flow of people, finally finding where everyone was rushing. It was a hangar, one just slightly larger than where our ships were landed, which had been partially converted as an emergency triage center. There were nearly a dozen people hanging around, eyes focused out of the hangar, and more than a few kept in their ears to their comms units.


    They were clearly preparing for a lot of people incoming, despite the face that there only a dozen or so people prepared to do actual medical work. I quickly found someone who looked reasonably in the know, catching there attention as I got closer.


    "Hey, do you need more supplies?" I asked, getting the <u>Mon Calamari''s</u></a> attention.


    "What? Who are you? What kind of supplies?" He asked, still looking around, only half paying attention to me.


    "I''m Deacon Roy," I answered. "We have a few containers of basic medical supplies. Bacta shots, Bandages, stuff like that."


    "Yes, we need everything we can get," He said seriously, suddenly very focused, looking at me intently. "We are stripping rooms of their first aid kits!"


    "Alright, sit tight. I''ll have a few crates up here in a minute."


    I pulled out my comms and called Tatnia, who had clearly still been asleep. After waking her up and filling her in on what was going on, she agreed to grab the three crates of medical supplies we had brought to sell. About three minutes later, Nal, Tatnia, and Allum arrived, pushing repulsor carts with the supplies. The Mon Cal, who introduced himself as Doctor Siddials, was ecstatic.


    "Yes, yes, bring those over here," He said, directing my three crewmates to a supply station along one side. "Quickly, the tides are shifting fast."


    Immediately, the doctors and nurses cracked into the crates, going through them and preparing the supplies inside. They had just finished the second crate when someone spoke up and warned that the first ship was incoming. Sure enough, about a minute or so later, it arrived, a transport ship I didn''t recognize. It landed in one corner of the hangar and immediately started releasing its passengers, from a few limping soldiers to heavily wounded officers being carried out on simple stretchers.


    I let three lightly wounded people pass, before spotting the first person on a stretcher. I pushed closer, getting the nurses attention in the process. The soldier was human, or human-like at least, with a heavily bandaged stomach, blood already starting to show through the wrap.


    "Does he have anything inside him?" I asked, the human male nurse giving me a strange look, forcing me to repeat myself. "What''s the injury? Is there anything inside him?"


    "It''s a heavy blaster wound," They explained. "There''s not much we can do for him, there isn''t enough Bacta-"


    I ignored the nurse and dual cast Heal Middling Trauma, sinking the Restoration spell into the soldier''s stomach. The effect was immediate, color returning to the unconscious man''s face, and the strain fading into a calmer look. I gave him another single cast of Heal Middling Trauma before looking up at the nurse, who was staring at me slack-jawed.


    "I can heal the worst cases, but I need you guys to point me to them and tell me what''s wrong," I explained, already looking around for my next patient. "Biggest concern is if anything is still inside of the patient."


    At first, the doctors were understandably skeptical of my ability to heal, even with the light show and obvious results. But, after a few more demonstrations, they finally got the picture. Apparently, rumors of my strange abilities were starting to spread through the ranks of the Rebellion, so they at least had a space in their heads for some random guy doing magic.


    We worked hard for about four or five hours, stabilizing several dozen people with wounds that ranged from broken limbs to charred nubs. In between rushes of the worst injuries, I worked on helping those with painful but less severe issues, always making sure to have at least a few spells in the tank in case someone desperate arrived.


    While I worked, I noticed early that the patients were falling into one of two categories. One was the relatively fresh-looking soldier, usually carrying fresh blaster wounds. The others were gaunt, tired, and dirty people, a mix of soldiers and officers, most of them carrying injuries that ranged from days to weeks old. It didn''t take long for me to realize that the latter group were the people who had been stranded on Yavin IV for some time now.


    When the last ship left and all the heavily injured people were taken care of, I pulled away from the improvised patient reception area. I sat down beside Tatnia, Nal, and Allum, who had all stayed to help where they could. We had been sitting for a few minutes when I spotted General Syndulla stepping into the Hangar. She immediately headed toward the injured soldiers and rescued Rebels, talking to many of them. Quite a few of the patients and most of the doctors pointed us out as they spoke. When the Twi''lek general was done checking on her soldiers, she headed in our direction.


    "I hear we have you to thank for an incredibly low casualty number," She said with a genuinely happy smile. "Thank you for helping, both with the supplies and with your healing."


    "We were just in the right place at the right time," I commented. "How did the mission go?"


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    "As well as we could have hoped," She said with a nod, turning to look over the injured people, her people, as they were worked on by Rebel doctors. "Our plan to break the initial landing zone worked well, and threw off the Imperials long enough to land troops and equipment so we could evacuate everyone. We sent the wounded here since it was considerably closer than Alpha Base."


    "Officially moving there?"


    "Slowly but surely," She confirmed with a nod. "It''s a significant upgrade to what we have here. I''m here to facilitate the care of the injured and then slowly finish moving our remaining assets there."


    "What''s so much better about it?" Tatnia asked, finishing her last sip of water. "This place seems like all you could need."


    "It has been serviceable, but the ability to expand whenever we required more room was the main benefit," General Syndulla responded with a shrug. "Alpha Base has more than enough room for what we require and already has resources set up. According to the reports, it should be able to survive several hours of orbital bombardment, but it''s the power generation that really sets it apart. It draws energy from a dozen deep geothermal generators, which gives us a whole list of options for upgrading and adding additional resources."


    "Well, I''m glad we found somewhere the Rebellion can flourish for a while," I said with a nod.


    "We are as well. The alternative was a frozen planet that I was not looking forward to staying in," She admitted, and having seen what Hoth was like, I couldn''t blame her in the slightest. "Speaking of places to call home, I heard you accepted Commander Loc''s offer."


    "I did, assuming the station isn''t completely destroyed," I reminded her. "You guys get some of the supplies, and I get everything else. What I don''t want, we sell to you."


    "Well, I just hope it''s in good condition then," She responded with a smile. "You and your crew have done a lot for the Rebellion. As far as I see, encouraging your growth could only be a good thing."


    "Thank you, General. Speaking of help, we were on a recent mission where we pretended to be picking up cargo as a cover," I explained. "Would you be interested in nearly twenty thousand credits worth of shelf-stable food, toiletries, and other supplies? Technically, you have already started using the medical cargo¡­"


    "Yes, I was told your supplies were a great help already. I would be very interested in purchasing those supplies," She agreed with a smile, before pausing for a moment and looking up slightly as she thought to herself. "If you''d like credits, we can do that, but how would you feel about a trade? Commander Loc revealed you lost one of your droid ships, raindrops, I believe he called them, during your pirate raid. How would you feel about trading the supplies for a few of the tri-fighters you used to make them?"


    "Where are you getting-" I started, only to stop when I realized the answer to my own question. "You''re getting them from Alpha Base."


    "That''s right, there were quite a few fighters still stored in the hangars," she explained with a nod. "Now, I can''t offer that many. We are in the process of reprogramming most of them to function as a defense fleet, but we could spare a few."


    "Alright¡­ how about four of them?"


    "I think three of them would be more appropriate."


    "Maybe, but we both know we have been consistently lowballed in all of our dealings," I pointed out. "The least you could do is throw in an extra ship, especially when it''s something you already have and we helped you get it."


    "... fine, four tri-fighters in exchange for the supplies," She responded after a short pause. "But you will have to go drop off the supplies and pick up the starfighters. We are too busy moving our equipment around as is."


    "Sounds like a deal," I said, holding out my hand, General Syndullay reaching out as well and shaking on the trade. "We will probably load up and head out by the end of the day. Any word on when we can expect to go to this space station?"


    "Around a week," She answered. "Commander Loc is currently on a minor mission and will return in a few days, but it will be a few days after that before we can gather the necessary team of experts and troops."


    "Fair enough. Once we drop off the supplies and pick up our stuff, we will probably find a place to hunker down somewhere to do some work and wait." I explained. "We will check in after the week is over."


    We talked a bit more, discussing the basics of what the station hunting mission would look like, as well as how the rescue mission had gone. Eventually, the green-skinned Twi''lek left to continue her work, leaving us to pack up and head back to the ship. When we arrived, we instructed the labor droids to pack up the supplies into the Talos Chariot while everyone else had lunch. Once everything was loaded, the crew split up, and we lifted off, our destinations set. The Intervention and Starcaller headed off to our first CIS base, which was hopefully the last time we would have to use it as a staging ground. The Talos Chariot, on the other hand, headed off to Alpha Base to drop off and pick up cargo.


    With crew spread between all three ships, we were running a bit on the light side, but with the way we had the ships set up, that barely reduced their combat effectiveness. Really, only the ground team was hampered since Vaz was with Pola on the Intervention, and Tatnia and Julus were on the Starcaller. Still, it hardly mattered since we had nothing planned.


    It took just under two days to get to Alpha Base, drop off our cargo, and load up the four new tri fighters. After that, we had another day to get to the old CIS base to meet up with everyone else.


    Over the next three days, once we landed, the crew kept busy working on maintenance and their projects. Miru converted three of the four tri-fighters into raindrops, rendering the fourth down and adding it to our already accrued spare parts. One of the new ships replaced the one we lost during the pirate raid, while the other two sat in the starboard hangar.


    While Miru worked on the raindrops, Vaz and Pola worked on our armor. They were putting in a lot of time, disappearing for most of each day. After Nal told me they spent thirty thousand credits on the undersuit and other parts, I was glad they were taking their task seriously. By the time we left, they assured us they were making serious progress and that our armor would be done soon.


    During the entire trip, basically, from the time we left Thila Command to the time we arrived back at Alpha Base to see if Nevue and his team were ready to start hunting our new home, I was working on enchantments. My goal was to get everyone up to three enchantments, specifically two rings and a necklace. Dazem, Vakim, and Calima now had three dexterity enchantments each, while Allum, Julus, and Nal all had two dexterity and one strength. Vaz, Tatnia, and Miru had two strengths and one dexterity, while I had two fortified magic rings and one dexterity necklace.


    I had been tempted to try to increase my potency by using three soul gems for everyone''s third enchanted piece, but my instincts said I wasn''t quite ready for that yet. Still, the effects of the third enchanted item were clear, with every crewmember marveling at the effects of the enchantment.


    By the time we left for Alpha Base, everyone was excited and eager to see if we would soon have a whole space station to call home. To keep as many eyes off of it as possible, we moved the Starcaller into one of the hangar bays of the old, looted CIS base, before powering it down and locking it up tight. We left five B2s and both of the droidekas to guard it and discourage animals from messing with it.

 Chapter 97 - Yavin Rescue Mission Interlude

    General Syndulla stood on the deck of the Everant Trader, an old, partially refurbished <u>Sphyrna- class Hammerhead</u></a> corvette. It, along with a pair of <u>CR90 Blockade Runners</u></a>, was the lead gunship of this engagement and the most powerful ship assigned to this rescue mission. She leaned on a console, watching through the main viewport as the ship was carved through hyperspace. She deliberately ignored the itch to take the pilot''s seat she felt crawling up her arms, as well as the nagging feeling in the back of her head that she should be flying the Ghost, not directing the battle from on high.


    She knew her position was important, and she wasn''t silly enough to think that she wasn''t helping where she was, rather than throwing herself in danger with the rest of her people. As much as she wished she could, she had a responsibility as a general, and leaving her people without a proper leader because she couldn''t resist the urge to man the front lines was unacceptable.


    Didn''t make it easy, though.


    "General, two minutes until we drop from hyperspace, reading green across the board," The sensor specialist called out, as she had asked him to. "Brilliance and Lasting Change are both confirming charged weapons and full shields."


    "Send the warning to the rest of the fleet. Then send the final all-hands alarm," She said with a nod.


    The final warning echoed through the ship, though at this point, people were mostly already where they were supposed to be. The goal of the larger ships was to guide and cover the smaller freighters down to the surface of the planet, keeping any of the heavier Imperial ships off them. With any luck, though, they wouldn''t even have to fire a shot, but that was unlikely. All they could really hope for was that their intelligence was right and no large ships were near the target.


    "Dropping out of hyperspace in five, four, three, two, one¡­ Dropping!"


    The Hammerhead corvette shuddered as it suddenly decelerated, the shimmering, hypnotizing light show of hyperspace slamming back, revealing the large moon of Yavin, its much larger parent beyond it. The gas giant itself was part of their plan, the massive planet throwing all sorts of interference that was key to staying hidden for a long as possible.


    "Bring us in! Confirm the rescue fleet stays in formation," The green-skilled Twi''lek ordered her command to filter through the comms channel chosen for the conflict.


    Together, the fleet of nearly thirty ships slowly accelerated, making a beeline for the planet, the smaller freighters and modified civilian ships staying vaguely inside the large triangle the fleet''s three heaviest ships formed. Among them, she could see Han Solo''s ship, the Millennium Falcon, which she knew Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, and Ahsoka Tano were on board. The old, seemingly broken and barely holding together ship would serve as the spearhead of the rescue efforts.


    "No signs of being detected yet, General," The same sensor specialist called out.


    "Sensors show two Star Destroyers and their escorts on the other side of the planet, with a third and fourth moving out to switch with the larger fleet around the Death Star debris field. Our window is still open."


    "Keep me updated," The general ordered, knowing that they would have even without her asking them to. "Arrival time?"


    "One minute, twelve seconds until we hit the outer atmosphere, General," The pilot called out.


    "Comms, any sign of the beacon?" She called out, looking to her left to the comms station.


    "Negative General, no sign of the beacon."


    General Syndulla nodded, returning her eyes back out of the central viewport, watching as the large terrestrial moon grew larger and larger from their perspective, completely filling the viewport. The beacon was a critical part of the plan and one of the most dangerous aspects as well. Without the beacon, they would have no way to locate the still-running Rebel forces besides knowing the general evacuation plans. However, the second they turned the beacon on, every Imperial Force in the system would be able to see it and would immediately home in on them. More than anything, the beacon was the start of the timer. How much time was set on that timer, only time would tell.


    As the fleet moved and entered the atmosphere of Yavin IV at max speed, turbulence started to vibrate and bounce through the ships. The Hammerhead was large enough to be mostly impervious to the rough treatment, but the smaller ships had a bit more difficulty staying precisely on course. Still, their formation was maintained, even as shields started to absorb the energy that entering at such a steep angle and high speeds generated.


    The pilot kept the General updated as the ships cut deeper into the planet''s atmosphere, calling out altitude. The comms reported any changes that came from the rest of the fleet, of which there were thankfully few. When they reached their target height, they leveled off.


    "Send out the pulse," The mission leader ordered. "Start us off at low power."


    "Sending low power pulse!" The comms officer responded, tapping his console to activate a series of clicks and static meant to signal their arrival to the waiting ground forces.


    The entire bridge was silent, everyone waiting for the comms officer to speak up. When half a minute passed, Hera opened her mouth to order another pulse, this one at a higher strength, when he finally did.


    "Beacon Detected! Coordinates sent!" He shouted, furiously tapping on his console.


    "Destination thirty-seven seconds away!" The pilot quickly responded after feeding in the coordinates. "Burning atmo!"


    The rumble of the engines, ever-present on a ship this size, seemed to double, then triple as the pilot pushed the ship to its maximum speed, redlining its engines. The rest of the fleet kept up, pushing their ships to get to their compatriots as fast as possible.


    "Imperials detected! Tie fighter patrol¡­ three squadrons inbound!" The sensors officer reported. "Two from the south and one from the east! One minute thirty!"


    "Make sure the rescue teams remember to ignore them and focus on getting to the ground!" the General ordered. "Intercept the southern squadrons, send the Brilliance and Lasting Change to intercept the eastern. System control, scramble fighters, direct them to follow the Everant Trader!"


    As she gave the final command, General Syndulla looked over at the modified console, and the <u>Arkanian</u></a> Rebel who manned it. This engineer and programmer had control over the six droid ships that were attached to the Everant Trader, four <u>vulture droids</u></a> and two <u>tri-fighters</u></a>. Similar consoles existed on the two CR90s, controlling two more tri fighters and eight more vulture droids between them. Soon, the droid starfighters were whipping around the Hammerhead as it surged to intercept the enemy starfighters before they could get to the much more delicate freighters and carriers.


    As the Hammerhead turned away from the other two heavier ships, it only took a few seconds for the small, speedy starfighters to come into visual range, then a bit longer for them to come into weapons range. By then, the vultures and tri-fighters from all three ships had formed up on the corvette, using it as a way to cover themselves and ambush the speedy Imperial starfighters. The ship clashed above the thick rainforests of Yavin IV, explosions erupting as the new, modern fighters tried to outmaneuver the older, droid-piloted ones.


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    Now, while the tie fighter was undoubtedly currently one of the most maneuverable and fastest starfighters in space, they had a serious flaw in the atmosphere. Their large, flat wings acted like large airbrakes the second they deviated in any direction, massively decreasing their maneuverability. This put them at a similar level of combat effectiveness as the vultures and far below the performance of the tri-fighters. Between them and the occasion lucky hit from the Everant Trader, the tie fighters were soon reduced to so much hot metal debris, raining down on the forest below.


    With the first wave of threats taken care of, and only three vultures and one trifighter down, General Syndulla ordered the ships back into position above where the freighters and carriers had gone to ground to meet with the stranded rebels. All the General had left to do was hold the line against the next wave of Imperial forces, while waiting for word from Ahsoka that the freighter were ready to lift.


    As the three corvettes took up defensive positions, Ahsoka and Luke Skywalker jogged down the ramp of the Millennium Falcon, meeting with <u>General Dodanna</u></a>, who seemed to be armed for combat rather than escape.


    "Commander Tano, it''s good to see you, though I''m afraid we have a problem," He explained, the older man leading the two Jedi into the camp, even as people frantically packed up and prepared to leave. "Imperial ground forces were much closer than we anticipated when we set off the beacon. I''m preparing a group of volunteers to hold them off. I will lead them to-"


    "There''s no need, General Dodanna. We came prepared," Ahsoka, who had winced at


    being called Commander. "They should be unloading now."


    Immediately after landing, the fleet of freighters and carriers began the process of disgorging dozens and dozens of battle droids. Soon, over a hundred B1s were on the field, as were around thirty B2s. There was even a trio of <u>DSD1s</u></a> dwarf droids crawled out of a large transport vessel. All of the droids, who were now painted red and white, quickly formed into groups, ignoring the watching Rebels. A pair of B2s walked up to Ahsoka, stopping beside her.


    "Run a patrol and scan of the nearby forest. Halt or slow down any Imperial forces that come within range," She ordered, the metal fighters not moving. "Your primary objective is to cover us so we can retreat. Follow the directions from General Dodanna and his staff."


    "Orders confirmed." Both of the droids said simultaneously in their deep, robotic voices. "Engaging."


    With that final word, all the droid groups marched into the jungle as one, spreading out in all directions and quickly focusing on the incoming Imperial troops that the Rebels had detected. General Dodanna couldn''t help but sag in relief.


    "That¡­ Thank you, Ahsoka. I was preparing to lead my friends on a suicide mission to hold them off¡­"


    "It''s not over yet, General. We still have quite a few people to load up."


    The General nodded, a new sense of vigor and determination coming over him. As more Rebel soldiers exited the ships, the previously stranded Rebels, ranging from grunts to officers just below the General himself, were quickly ferried onto the ships. There were dozens of wounded, some sporting simple cuts and bruises while others were in much more serious condition. Luckily, this was expected, and the wounded were loaded onto separate ships, all of them with medics waiting to help stabilize any at-risk casualties.


    It didn''t take long for the sounds of explosions and laser fire to echo back from the forest to the small, temporary Rebel base. The droids had engaged the Empire, which meant time was quickly running out. While the droids could hold out for a while, they had no heavy assets besides the dwarf droids, so it was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed.


    Almost eighty percent of the stranded rebels were loaded up into the escape ships when the Empire finally broke through the droid forces, Stormtroopers breaking through the treeline and immediately opening fire.


    Both Ahsoka and Luke turned and sprinted towards the breach, while dozens of other Rebel soldiers, the ones who were fresh from the rescue team, turned and returned fire. They took cover behind crates of supplies, sandbag walls and inside several trenches. Ahsoka and Luke, with their lightsabers, ignited, blocked blaster bolts by the dozen, covering the tired, beaten, and often injured members of the stranded Rebels. While Luke''s movements were not nearly as fluid and clean as Ahsoka''s, he was still able to block quite a bit of laser fire, and with much more accuracy and consistency than he had only weeks ago. His progress under Ahsoka shined even brighter when, still deep in the flow of the Force, he reached out and flung his hand forward, sending a half dozen crates tumbling through another emerging line of stormtroopers.


    Still, as hard as they fought, taking down scores of stormtroopers between the Jedi and the Rebels, there were always more. Even worse, Ahsoka knew their time was running out. Not only would there be a constant stream of more ground-based reinforcement sent to their location, but if they delayed much longer, their window to escape the planet would soon close as well.


    Suddenly, a heavy bolt of energy slammed into an encroaching stormtrooper, lifting them off their feet and slamming them into their compatriots. Luke turned to find Chewbacca standing behind a large crate, firing his <u>bowcaster</u></a>. Beside him was Han Solo, his <u>DL-44</u></a> in his hand, picking off any Imperials that got too close.


    "It''s time to go, kid! The only ones left are the ones fighting!" The smuggler turned Rebel shouted, looking at Luke. "Everyone is clear!"


    Ahsoka, hearing Han''s words, raised her comms to her lips.


    "Retreat! The evacuation is complete, retreat to your ships!" She nearly shouted, waving everyone back with her white lightsaber.


    The remaining Rebels, as one, retreated backward, leapfrogging between the cover and laying down suppressing fire, slowly making their way onboard the nearest ships. Ahsoka and Luke, along with Chewie and Han, made it back to the Falcon unharmed. With another command, the freighters lifted, blaster bolts peppering the ships as they took to the air. Thankfully, the stormtroopers were unable to bring anything heavy enough to take the freighters and carriers to bear.


    The freighters continued upwards, the three Corvette escorts rising with them. The corvette had successfully defended the ground forces, and only one of the CR90''s was damaged, having lost two of its point defense weapons. As they moved, many of the droid starfighters reconnected with the corvettes, though several vultures stayed deployed.


    The fleet of ships rose higher and higher, quickly leaving the atmosphere of Yavin IV behind. It was a race between the Rebels and the larger Imperial ships, as two-star destroyers and their escort attempted to intercept the escaping Rebels.


    Just as the Imperial fleet was arriving in weapons range, having swept around the planet in an attempt to stop them, the fleet of Rebel ships finally escaped the gravity well of the planet. They promptly left the planet behind as they jumped to lightspeed, leaving Imperials to stew in their failure. Only six hours later, the Imperial <u>Super Star Destroyer Executor</u></a> arrived at the planet, only to find its target long gone.

 Chapter 98

    The trip between the old CIS base and the newly inhabited Alpha Base was nothing new. Pola and Vaz continued to work on our armor, spending most of the two-day trip in their workshop according to the morning updates Vakim liked to make. They were both clearly excited about how their project was going, and the rest of the crew was excited to see the results. I was busy finishing up the last enchanted item required to meet my own goal, happily handing Miru her third item, an amulet that increased her strength.


    The younger crew member had insisted that increasing her strength would make working and making things much easier despite the loss in efficiency due to her lack of natural strength.


    When we arrived at the planet, we were immediately cornered by several large ships. What looked like a significant portion of the Rebel fleet was waiting in orbit around the unnamed planet on which Alpha Base was built. Among them were quite a few smaller ships, mostly small freighters, and a few transport ships, probably leftovers from the rescue mission. When we were finally given permission and instructions on where to land, I idly wondered if they planned on keeping the fleet around for a while or if it would spread out now that the rescue mission was complete. In the movies, Hoth has no defense fleet whatsoever, instead depending on the planetary shield and ground-based ion cannon.


    Since it seemed like I had inadvertently butterflied the base on Hoth away, I wondered what else would change.


    We slowly descended through the atmosphere, heading directly for the base. Rather than land in one of the hangars, we were directed to a newly flattened landing space outside the base. As we lowered down to the flattened stone pad, the Chariot slowly rotated around. As I was standing on the bridge, I got a good look at some of the work going on around the exterior of the massive mountain.


    The turbolaser turrets, which our starfighter escort had destroyed when we first assaulted this base, were covered in Rebel engineers, sparks of welding or cutting lighting up frequently as they were worked. Along one side of the mountain, dozens of crews were cutting into the mountain, using what I assumed was the same tools they used to carve into the old base on Thila. I wasn''t quite sure what the larger crews were working on, but some of the smaller crews were close enough that I could see they were making pill boxes.


    When we finally landed, Julus, Tatnia, Nal, and I all stepped out onto the newly made platforms. Part of me had been expecting Nevue or his crew to be waiting for us, but instead, it was two random soldiers, both of them dressed in noncombat fatigues. They were waiting for us in two <u>transport carts</u></a>, which I definitely recognized from the movies.


    Once we confirmed our identities, we climbed into the troop carts, Julus and Tatnia riding in one while Nal and I climbed into the other. Not long after that, we were cruising along the ground, zipping past a few more filled landing pads before reaching the entrance into the facility, which was a series of massive, hidden bunker doors with three separate barriers, all of them currently open. There were nearly a dozen guards standing by, standing or sitting in temporary support structures, barricades, and even a security checkpoint.


    "You wouldn''t happen to know who was leading this meeting?" I asked as the Rebel drove us deeper into the bunker. "Assuming we are going to have one."


    "Sorry, sir, I do not. I was just told to come down here and ferry you inside," He responded.


    I nodded in understanding, and after a moment, I leaned back in the transport seat, watching as we passed various people and rooms. The hallways were familiar, styled just like the halls we had walked through higher up, only much larger. Eventually, we stopped and climbed out of the vehicles, heading for an elevator that took us up for a considerable distance. The two soldiers led us through the facility before eventually opening a door and gesturing for us to enter. It was a large conference room, something that wouldn''t have looked out of place in the office of a particular high-class lawyer. There were already three people inside, including two familiar faces.


    "Luke, Ahsoka, it''s good to see you," I said, reaching out to shake their hands. "I take it this means you''re joining us?"


    "Yes, Hera wanted me on board since I have experience with the Clone Wars military," She explained. "Luke, of course, volunteered immediately after."


    "You said yourself, I need more experience working as a Jedi," Luke responded, Ahsoka nodding in agreement. "It''s good to see you guys too."


    All four of us sat down along one side of the table, with Luke, Ahsoka, and the still-unknown woman on the other. After we were settled in, I leaned forward.


    "Is Nevue not joining us?" I asked, looking at Ashoka.


    "No. He has been assigned a new mission," The unnamed woman said. "They have already left for the Mid-Rim."


    "Really?" I asked, slightly surprised. "Huh¡­ I had kind of figured that he was kind of my handler at this point."


    After a few minutes of waiting, another familiar face entered. Lieutenant Soran stepped into the room, dressed in noncombat fatigues. He shook our hands before dropping down in a seemingly random chair, separate from everyone. He nodded, pulled out a data pad, and placed it on the table. Once he was settled, the woman, who was a purple-skinned species I didn''t recognize, stood up.


    "Thank you all for coming; I''m Doralik from Research and Intelligence," She explained, getting a few nods from around the room. "I was the one who originally compiled all of the data concerning Station Omega-17-G during our original attempt to find the station.


    The woman activated the holo-projector at the end of the conference room, and a projection popped up immediately. It showed a recording of deep space filled with debris and chunks of scrap. It took me a second to realize this was probably where the station was supposed to be.


    "At the time, we spent a week searching for the station but ultimately failed to locate it. It was declared a lost cause since we had no way to track it and no real idea of how much it had moved," She continued. "However, with the¡­ Unique skills of Deacon Roy and his crew-"


    "Skyforged Vanguard," I said, cutting the serious-looking woman off with a smile as I leaned back in my chair. "That''s our name. We voted on it a few days ago."


    "...Very well, the Skyforged Vanguard. Do you believe you can truly track down the station?" She asked, completely unphased by my interruption.


    "As long as you can get me an image of the actual station, I can track it," I assured her. "We will have to triangulate it, and then chase it down the rest of the way because the triangulation process isn''t the most precise."


    "Are you sure?" She asked. "It has been adrift for over twenty years."


    "Well¡­The only issue that could come up is if collision and its time adrift has done so much damage to it that it''s unrecognizable," I explained, holding back a snippy remark. "If that has happened, then there isn''t a point of hunting it down anyway."


    "Could you demonstrate your ability? At least on a small scale?" She asked, her face blank save a touch of idle curiosity. "Your strange abilities have been documented, but this particular technique has yet to be proven."


    "If it makes you feel better. Do you have something in mind?"


    She nodded and produced a small datapad, showing an image of someone, seemingly a random person. I nodded and cast Clairvoyance before turning to point at the door.


    "They are either in that direction or standing right on the other side of the door," I said, then frowning as my arrow started to move. "And now they are walking that way¡­. now they''ve stopped. Is that good enough?"


    "It will do for now," Doralik said with a nod, putting down her datapad, which I assumed she was using to communicate with the man outside.


    "So, will you be joining us on the mission?" I asked, looking curious. "Speaking of which, just how many people will be joining us?"


    "I will not be joining you. I am merely here to present the data I uncovered and assist in the planning session," The stoic woman explained. "As for the team that will be accompanying you, the current plan is to include fifteen people," She explained. "Five engineers, Commander Ahsoka, and Luke Skywalker, as well as a small squad of eight soldiers lead by Lieutenant Soran."


    "This is just the initial assessment team," Nal stated, looking for confirmation. "Too small to be a full repair team."


    "That is correct. Our current plan is for the engineers to assess the damage," She confirmed. "Once they either declare it a lost cause or worth salvaging, we will decide our next step. If it''s worth the effort, they will work on getting the station''s life support systems online, making assessing and working on the station considerably easier. I will point out that we will not be footing the bill for repair materials, simply providing tools and manpower."


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    "I remember," I nodded. "Would the Rebellion be open to lending transport ships and contacts to purchase those materials?"


    "I will have to ask. I was not given permission to allow mission alterations," She responded. "Shall I begin running down the information we have on Station Omega-17-G?"


    After we agreed, the woman began running down everything they knew about the station, including things like its armaments, its personnel spread, what its starfighter complement looked like, and what sort of ships usually served as its defense escorts. Some of this info was compiled from the general statistics of other similar outposts, while some of it was specific to this station. This included the station''s primary purpose in deep space.


    "Station Omega-17-G functioned primarily as a refueling and resupplying station," Doralik explained. "Before the front lines engulfed it in enemy territory, it was responsible for spreading a significant amount of foodstuffs, weapons, and ammunition. According to the records, it spread so much <u>tibanna gas</u></a> that it had its own transportation system set in the inner floors. We-"


    "Hold up," I said, cutting the woman off. "Just how much food supplies are you expecting to find on this station?"


    Something about my question, or perhaps the tone I asked it, made everyone freeze. I could see Ahsoka frown, and Luke looked guilty of all things. Doralik seemed annoyed, though it was hardly noticeable through her facade.


    "... it is hard to say exactly," The intelligence agent responded. "But the lowest estimate for shelf-stable foodstuffs is around two hundred and fifty tons for supply purposes and another forty tons for station inhabitants."


    I looked hard at the woman, before looking back over at Ahsoka.


    "You know, every step of the way so far, I have been honest and forthright with the Rebellion," I said, catching her eyes and not shying away from her look. "I have been more than generous with everything that I''ve sold to you, with everything we have done together. So why is it that every time I come to you with a new offer, or to move on a new deal, I''m being pushed to be even more lenient and generous?"


    "I assure you-" Doralik started to say, but I raised my hand and cut her off.


    "I don''t particularly care if you assure me because it does change what is actually happening. This deal was painted as a gift, as the Rebellion paying back my crews¡­ The Skyforged Vangaurd''s generosity with an asset that was out of your reach but could still serve a purpose for me."


    I stopped, leveling a glare at each of the Rebels. Ahsoka looked resigned, while Luke looked even more guilty. Doralik continued to seem unfazed.


    Lieutenant Soran''s eyes were wide, confusion evident on his face. The man clearly had no idea what was happening.


    "Then I find out that my Very Generous Agreement to allow the Rebellion to have whatever supplies the station had, an amount that was insinuated to be nothing special, was instead me handing over- Nal, how much are those foodstuffs worth?"


    "Depends on quality," Nal responded, mentally working out the math. "Between two and three million credits."


    "Probably more than three million credits then, considering those numbers are on the low end according to your information," I finished after Nal answered. "That doesn''t even touch on the other supplies. Tell me, Doralik, what does your research say about the worth of all the supplies on a supply station?"


    The woman''s silence was all I needed to hear. I shook my head and leaned back, looking back at Ahsoka and Luke, prompting one of them to chime in.


    "The truth is, Deacon¡­ Private Loc was a bit overzealous in his attempts to use your goodwill to increase the cut the Rebellion received in your dealings," Ahsoka admitted, getting a harsh look from Doralik for her words. "During your time at Thila Command, healing the injured from the rescue mission, you inadvertently healed the sibling of one of Private Loc''s now ex-crew members. When they learned you had saved the life of their brother, they immediately contacted General Syndulla and reported Loc for taking advantage of you. He was stripped of his rank for cheating an ally."


    "And you were just going to let it play out?" I asked, doing my best to keep my temper down, leaning forward, both of my hands on the table. "See if I didn''t pick up on it so you could keep the deal, get away with screwing me over?"


    "It was¡­ decided, against both my own and General Syndulla''s recommendation, that we wouldn''t mention the issue until you did," Ahsoka said, looking annoyed at what she had been told to do. "Between the amount of supplies we stood to gain and your own willingness to let things slide, we were ordered to let this play out and then strive to be more fair in future endeavors. Thankfully, we can now negotiate a more equal deal."


    I studied her face for a moment, looking between her and Luke. Ahsoka had let down her mask quite a bit, showing her annoyance and guilt, while Luke looked downright miserable. I let out a long breath, closing my eyes to focus on calming down.


    "Alright. Here is the new, non-negotiable deal. As before, the Skyforged Vanguard gets the first claim over all salvage, as well as an additional ten percent of all supplies. The remaining supplies will go to the Rebellion. Together, because we can''t trust you not to lie about it, we will calculate the total worth of the remaining supplies. The Rebellion will pay the Skyforged forty percent of the total. The Rebellion will also supply the expertise and manpower to repair a significant portion of the station."


    "How much is a ''significant portion''?" Doralik asked, her arms crossed.


    "That depends on the status of the station. Before, I would have said enough space for us to live and at least one of the hangars. Now, I''m feeling much less charitable," I pointed out, crossing my own arms. "I will say that if I feel like the work the station needs starts to be unfair, we will compensate you somehow for the extra labor. Beyond that... Well, you will just have to trust me."


    "And if we don''t?"


    "Then our business is done, and my team will go find the station on our own," I explained. "Expect to hear from us soon as we will have a lot of supplies to sell. At full price."


    The meeting room was silent as everyone internalized what I had just demanded. In reality, the Rebellion now had little choice but to agree if they wanted access to the supplies on the station without paying full price. They could always go back on their word once we found the station, but even if my faith in them had been shaken slightly, I didn''t think they would go that far.


    "If we agree to this, can we put this whole thing behind us?" Luke asks, surprising both Ahsoka and Doralik. "I don''t like having to deal like this, but I did enough business with Jawas back home to know you need to push back when someone tries to take advantage of you. If we agree to this new deal, to your push back, can we move past this and go back to amicable and friendly dealings?"


    For the first time since I realized what was going on, I smiled and nodded.


    "I would like that very much, Luke. I do really believe in the Rebellion cause, and in a different life, I would have handed these supplies over with a smile," I admitted with a shrug. "But my people are relying on me. I need to put them first. If the Rebellion agrees to these new terms, I will consider this water under the bridge as long as we are dealt with equally in the future."


    For a long moment, Ahsoka considered what I had said. She looked over at her young student, meeting Luke''s eyes for an even longer moment. I almost called them out for having a mental conversation when Ahsoka nodded.


    "Very well. I was given the go-ahead to negotiate for the Rebellion, and I find these terms to be acceptable."


    I nodded and held out my hand, the Togruta taking it and sealing the deal with a shake. When she tried to pull her hand back, however, I held on tightly.


    "Make sure Nevue knows that if I ever see his face again, I will make sure he regrets trying to screw my crew over," I said, holding her hand firmly. "Remind him who pulled him off Nar Shaddaa in the first place, and how often the mention curses follow tales of magic."


    I released her hand, her eyes wide at my words. The room was silent for a long moment before she nodded, and Doralik cleared her throat.


    "With our agreement re-negotiated, shall I continue my briefing?" She asked, both Ahsoka and I nodding in confirmation a moment later.

 Chapter 99

    <div>


    "She¡­" I started, only to trail off when I didn''t know how to ask my question politely.


    "I don''t know her very well, so I can''t really say," Ahsoka admitted, picking up on what I wanted to say. "I believe she may be annoyed that she won''t be getting very much credit for claiming the station now that she is handing the mission off to us, and you are the primary beneficiary of the deal."


    "Ah¡­ Well, not much I can do about that. What sort of schedule are we looking at for this?" I asked, blatantly changing the subject. "Lieutenant Soran, is your team ready?"


    "My soldiers are ready, as are the engineers. We can leave at any time," The Rebel soldier responded, eyes flicking between Ahsoka and myself, clearly trying to figure out who was in charge.


    "Lieutenant, Deacon is going to be leading this mission. You can follow orders from him as long as they are ethical," Ahsoka explained, having picked up on the soldiers'' distress.


    "If you are certain, Commander," He accepted with a nod before focusing on me.


    "Lieutenant, go ahead and see to your men. You can meet us at our landing pad in a few hours. Make sure your men have appropriate equipment for exploring an abandoned space station, particularly gear rated for vacuum and without gravity. Can your team handle that?"


    The soldier''s face pinched when I mentioned what sort of environment we could be going into, suddenly realizing this was most likely not going to be a fun experience. Still, he nodded cleanly before standing and leaving the room. When the door resealed behind him, I looked back at Ahsoka and Luke.


    "Is there anything else?" I asked, looking between the two. "I need to get back to my crew to discuss the details and go over what a fuckhead Nevue turned out to be."


    "No, I believe we are ready," Ahsoka said with a nod. "We will make our way to your ship with Lieutenant Soran and the engineers."


    After a short follow-up conversation, we went our separate ways, two soldiers guiding us back down and out of the mountain, dropping us off at our landing pads in the same support vehicle as before. Before long, I had the crew gathered, going over what we had learned and the general plan that we had come up with. I also broke the news of what Nevue had been up to.


    "What? How could he?" Miru asked, her eyes wide with betrayal. "I mean¡­ I know he wasn''t really part of the crew, but¡­"


    "I don''t know, but looking back, I can see he was never really working with us," I said, shaking my head. "Almost every deal we''ve worked with him, we''ve received less than we deserve what we should have really gotten. I mean, look back at our dealings with Nova. He was alone with her for like half an hour, and he was feeding the shipbroker information on what kind of resources we had."


    "I had forgotten about that," Nal admitted, shaking his head. "At that point, it just seemed like bad judgment, not malicious."


    "Could you really curse him?" Tatnia asked. "Cause if you can, I have a few names I''d like to add to that list."


    "No, that was just a bit of showmanship¡­ "I admitted. "I mean, who knows what I might learn, but I don''t have anything that could do that right now."


    We chatted a bit more before Vaz encouraged Pola to stand up, the younger Ex-Imperial looking nervous, wringing his hands.


    "So¡­ I should be able to finish the final touches on everyone''s armor within a day, so by the time we get to the station, everyone will have some," He explained, nervousness leaking out more when everyone seemed excited. "But¡­ well, the first suit I made, the one I used to make sure all of the pieces fit before I started making multiple copies. That one is done."


    As he talked, Vaz stood and made her way out of the lounge area, quickly returning with a large polymer crate, something professional-looking. She placed it down next to the table before Pola knelt down beside it and cracked open the latches. He reached in and pulled out what I assumed was the undersuit, though it looked baggy and loose. It was also just the upper torso and arm parts. He reached back in and pulled out a similarly made pair of pants, just as loose as the torso. When I just stared at him, he seemed to shrink a bit.


    "D-do do you not want to try it on?" He asked. "I mean-"


    "Just wondering how undressed I''m going to have to get to put it on," I asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "Oh, um¡­ down to your underwear," He admitted with a slight blush.


    I shook my head and pulled off my shirt, then my pants, not exactly happy to be getting down to my boxers but also desperate to try on the armor. I spotted Calima putting her hand over Miru''s eyes as I pulled the undersuit pants up, pushing my feet into the attached socks, the naturally pink-skinned Twi''lek giving her a "really?" look as she did. I quickly pulled on the loose top as well, holding my pants up with one hand. I could feel a small weight on my back, like there was something built into the undersuit.


    "So the undersuits are self-sealing, just tug here and here, and they will shrink or expand to make putting them on easier," He explained, reaching out and tugging on the chest area of my shirt and the waistband of my pants.


    Instantly, the suit constricted around me, warming up slightly in the process. I could feel it pulling tight and sealing itself onto my body, becoming skin-tight in seconds. I looked down to see that my pants had attached firmly and seamlessly to my shirt. I could even feel my neckline pulling up until my whole neck, all the way up to the back of my head and around to my cheek on either side, was covered. In just about two or three seconds, I was wearing a <u>skin-tight undersuit</u></a>. It kind of reminded me of the cloth Spiderman suit from the MCU, but with sturdier-looking materials. Once it was done shrinking to me, I shifted and moved, testing my range of motion. I would need time to make sure, but I couldn''t feel any appreciable loss of motion.


    "Not bad, Pola. Where did you find this?" I asked, looking down at my arms.


    "I bought them through the Holonet," He answered, handing me a pair of gloves. "They were just over two thousand credits each, but I think they are worth it."


    "Is everyone getting these?" I asked, pulling on the gloves. Pola pulled on the palm, and they immediately sealed to the rest of my suit.


    "No, we are only making full armor for people who would be going out on missions," He answered. "Don''t worry, we have something for everyone else. There''s just no reason for full armor."


    He reached into the crate and pulled out a jacket and pants, which he handed to Calima, who was the closest crewmember to him. For a moment, the pilot seemed to contemplate refusing, but after looking down at the clothes for a few seconds, she nodded. She turned and stepped through the bridge door, tapping the controls, the door quickly sealing shut.


    While we waited, I continued to stretch and get a feel for the undersuit. It was incredible just how little it affected my movement, the surprisingly soft material flexing and giving as I moved. After a few minutes, the bridge door opened, and Calima stepped out wearing an incredibly <u>well-designed suit</u></a>.


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    "Pola, Vaz¡­ hot damn. How did you-"


    "Before you compliment us, this is based on several designs that aren''t ours," He said, holding up his hands. "I just copied and pasted a bunch of plans together and then used a beskar alloy woven fabric instead of the thick polymer weave the plans called for."


    "That has beskar in it?" I asked as Calima turned around to show off what was definitely the new uniform for the Skyforged Vanguard.


    "Just over two bars, mixed heavily with a few other metals to make it more flexible, and then pulled into thin wires, which gets woven into the fabric," He explained. "It''s not nearly as strong as the armor, obviously, but it is stabproof and could tank two or three blaster bolts. Just keep in mind you''re still going to get burned from heat transference. They just won''t be a penetrating burn."


    "I want everyone to have at least one of these on hand," I said. "These are our uniforms from now on. We don''t need to wear them constantly but¡­:"


    "I already have enough of these for everyone to get one," He explained sheepishly. "I used them as a way to practice. If everyone wants them¡­"


    "I won''t complain about a uniform when it''s woven with beskar," Julus said, shaking his head. "What idiot would?"


    Everyone confirmed a similar thought, making Pola and Vaz smile. They both answered a few more questions about the uniform, promising to make even more before Nal brought our attention back to the armor. Pola seemed embarrassed that he got distracted, quickly reaching inside the box and pulling out what was clearly chest and back armor. He handed it to me and motioned for me to pull it over my head, sliding my head in the neck space between the two armored parts. Immediately, the amor sealed against my undersuit, attaching firmly together.


    "So I designed the armor to attach in pieces so that you can put the basics on and forget the rest if you are in a rush," The young armorsmith explained, setting out two boots on the floor. I stepped into the boots, my feet sliding easily inside before I could feel them lock into place.


    Next, he passed me armored gloves and greaves, both of which slid on just as well as the boots did. Next went the shoulder plates, then the thigh plates, and finally, a few other bits of protective plating. When he was done handing me parts, I stood up straight and flexed, unable to stop a laugh of excitement.


    "Guys, this is incredibly¡­" I said. "I¡­ I''m at a loss¡­ You guys went above and beyond here. <u>This is incredible</u></a>."


    I shifted and moved, testing my range of motion like I did for the undersuit. I even conjured a sword to run through a few katas. There was a slight loss of maneuverability, but honestly, it was nothing compared to the amount of coverage and protection the armor gave.


    "Oh! And the helmet!" Pola said, reaching into the crate and pulling out an intense-looking helmet. "This was actually the easiest part. All we did was find a helmet that worked with the undersuit and then replace all the paneling with our beskar alloy. Plus a bit of flare to make it match the style¡­"


    I took the helmet from him and pulled it on, the armored headpiece sealing itself to my undersuit and around my head. After a split second of darkness, the interior lit up, revealing that rather than offer a weakness to look out of, they used a pair of incredibly powerful cameras, like a seamless VR headset, but in real-time. As far as I could tell, there was no latency, and the image was crystal clear. It didn''t even feel like I was looking through a screen. The only reason I could tell was because of a subtle UI and that the screen had started on off.


    "What happens if I get hit by an EMP?" I asked, looking around the lounge, getting a feel for the impressive technology. My voice was projected out with a slight mechanical hint to it.


    "The forward face plate can be manually ejected," Vaz explained. "I was concerned about that as well."


    "I''m also working on a replacement face plate that you can swap in and out," Pola explained. "Should be done soon."


    For the next hour, Pola and Vaz explained all of the features of our new armor, which amounted to an impressive list. With the helmet and undersuit, the system was airtight and heated, allowing you to survive in a vacuum for up to an hour, though you would be very cold by the end. It was also cooled for comfort should we ever visit a desert planet. The armor portion of the suit was mostly simple plating, the beskar armor attached to inner platting to stop any energy transference. Between that and the undersuit, we could tank an impressive amount of fire.


    "How does it feel weight-wise?" Tatnia asked after I had been inside the armor for a while. "Do you think there will be any problems wearing it long term?"


    "I can definitely feel it," I admitted, shrugging slightly. "But I don''t think it''s enough to be a problem. In fact¡­ who has a strength ring?"


    I took off my armored gauntlet and unsealed my right glove, trading out one of my fortified magicka rings, catching a ring from Vaz. I slipped it on and put my glove and gauntlet back on, starting another series of katas.


    "Yeah, with that, it''s even easier," I said confidently. "I could wear this for a while and not have to worry about it. I''m guessing that with a little practice time, it will get even easier. This is incredible, guys. Well done."


    Pola blushed and nodded, no longer wringing his hands. Vaz looked happy as well, her usual cool look cracking slightly with a smile. We spent a bit longer going over the armor before I took it off under Pola''s guidance. Once the armor was back in its box, I brought it back to my room while Pola, Nal, Vaz, and Tatnia went to the Intervention to grab some of the new uniforms. I changed into mine when they got back, spending a few minutes admiring the look. When I left my room again, Tatnia was just stepping out of her room, also in uniform.


    "Now that we have a name and a uniform, we are going to need a symbol," She said, inspecting her new outfit.


    "Can''t imagine it would be hard to add a patch somewhere," I said, looking down at my chest, then my shoulder.


    Together, we made our way down to the first deck of the Chariot, where Nal and Julus, also in uniform, were waiting.


    "Well, uh, yeah, I gotta admit¡­ I think I understand what you said about our look being important." Julus said, looking at me for a moment, then a longer look at Tatnia. "We look badass."


    "All about looking the part. People see stuff like this, and it sticks in their minds," I explained with a shrug. "Still need to pay Jabba back for taking my old jacket."


    "Nothing to do after we claim the station," Nal pointed out. "Repairs will take time."


    "...not a bad idea," I admitted. "I''ll think about it. For now, let''s wait outside for our guests. I want to be there when they arrive."


    "You just wanna see their faces when they see our uniforms," Tatnia said, calling me out.


    "Damn right I do! Pola and Vaz did good work, I''m gonna show it off."


    Julus chuckled as Tatnia shook her head, though I could see a smile on her face. I nodded to the boarding ramp, and together, we headed down and out to the landing pad to wait for our Rebel allies.

 Chapter 100

    Lieutenant Soran, his troops, and the engineers showed up not long after we went out to wait for them. They arrived on two of the same transport vehicles we had ridden around on, as well as a small speeder truck. The speeder was carrying what looked like tools and equipment, which I probably should have anticipated. I reached out and shook Soran''s hand after he disembarked and made his way closer. I couldn''t help but smirk as quite a few of the new arrivals looked over our new uniforms.


    "Hello, Lieutenant. I assume these are your troops and engineers?"


    The Rebel soldier nodded and introduced his subordinates, including the engineers. After shaking hands with the second-in-command and lead engineer, I nodded.


    "You guys will be staying on Intervention, it has plenty of room for everyone," I explained, getting Nal''s attention, the Duros nodding and heading off, climbing into the warship. "Does your gear have any special storage needs?"


    A short conversation later and we were loading the engineer''s tools and equipment up into the hold of the Intervention before Tatnia left to show the Rebels their quarters. I felt a bit bad that some of them would end up in the barracks, but all things considered, there were much worse places to sleep. Before they left, I gave them a stiff warning that the forge room, engineering, and bridge were all off-limits without an escort, which they accepted with a nod.


    As they found their rooms and the labor droids started loading up their gear onto the cargo lift that Nal had sent down, Ahsoka and Luke arrived. Both of them were carrying small packs, but beyond that, they had no other gear.


    "Interesting look, Deacon," Ahsoka said as they climbed off their ride. "First, you settle on a name, now uniforms? Impressive."


    "They look well made, the style is unique as well," Luke commented. "Where did you get them?"


    "Pola made them for us," I answered. "He and Vaz are the crew''s official armor specialists."


    "Armor, huh? They certainly look better than Republic fatigues, but how protective are they really?" Ahsoka asked as Tatnia, and I led them into the Intervention.


    "Surprisingly effective, at least according to Pola," I respond. "They are woven with a special wire alloy mesh that should tank multiple blaster bolts before failing."


    "Thats¡­ That''s incredible!" Luke said, his eyes wide.


    "It better be, with how much each set is worth," I explained. "I''m currently wearing nearly forty thousand credits worth of materials."


    "What?!" Ahsoka asked, her calm well and truly broken. "How... what is it made out of?"


    "You think that''s crazy? Wait until you see our actual armor," I said, winking at Ahsoka, who seemed at a loss for words.


    Both Luke and Ahsoka tried to get me to explain my statement a bit more, but I only shrugged them off, showing them the two bedrooms I had reserved for them. They were both clearly interested in continuing the conversation, but I simply waved and walked away, leaving them to their own devices.


    "We will be lifting off short, probably less than fifteen minutes. Once we make the jump to the coordinates that Doralik gave us, we will have about three and a half days until we arrive," I called back. "Try and relax. Vakim will keep you updated on what''s going on with the triangulating, and Dazem keeps plenty of holovids stocked in the lounge area."


    True to my word, we were lifting off about ten minutes later, both the Talos Chariot and the Intervention lifting off together. After a few minutes of flying, we were free from the planet''s gravity. A quick check of the coordinates later, and we made the jump to lightspeed, starting our decently long trip to the last known location of Station Omega-17-G. Even before factoring in the triangulation process, it was going to be a long trip.


    The crew passed the time doing maintenance and preparing for the mission, which basically meant cleaning blasters and testing equipment. Since we took pretty good care of our stuff, maintenance didn''t even take a single day, leaving us with a lot of free time. The crew spent some time relaxing while I made a strength amulet to use when I was wearing my armor.


    I also spent a considerable amount of time getting used to my new armor. I would have liked for everyone to get a chance with it, but Pola was over in the Intervention, finishing up the last few pieces. He assured me they would be done by the time we landed in the station hangar bay. Thankfully, the armor''s learning curve was shallow and short, with the most complicated part being the helmet.


    I spent the rest of my free time learning magic. I was solidly back in the part of the cycle where I was learning spells just in case. I had already learned all of the spells I needed and really wanted, so I was learning everything that was left. I focused on learning Rally and Waterbreathing, both of which took longer than I would have liked since they were from branches of magic I struggled with, Illusion and Alteration specifically.


    I also spent a few hours learning how to make my Alteration magic more potent and cost-efficient. This process belonged in the same grouping as the tricks I had learned to get better at Conjuration, Destruction, and Restoration, but I had never bothered learning them since I didn''t really use Alteration enough to warrant it. However, now that I was working with the Transmute spell and handling materials worth thousands and thousands of credits, I figured being a bit more precise and cost-efficient with my time, mana, and metal supplies was worth a few hours of my time.


    Honestly, I would have done it earlier, but I completely forgot about it.


    By the time we reached our destination, both my crew and our rebel guests were chomping at the bit to get to work. Unfortunately, we still had the triangulation to do. We dropped out of hyperspace on the outskirts of a debris field, where the battle that knocked Station Omega-17-G out of its position. Just a quick scan revealed something interesting.


    "Did the Rebellion or the Empire not do any salvaging here?" I asked Calima, though it was mostly rhetorical. "There¡­ there has to be plenty worth taking."


    The field consisted of three broken republic ships, two <u>C70 Consular-class</u></a> retrofits, and an <u>Arquitens-class</u></a> light cruiser. All three ships were dark husks of their former glory, but the Arquitens, in particular, was almost unrecognizable. The two C70s, on the other hand, while definitely not salvageable enough to reconstruct, would absolutely have plenty of parts worth stripping down for the Intervention. Oddly enough, there were no CIS ships to be seen, at least none big enough for me to identify. The debris field was thick with smaller chunks, but most of it was unidentifiable from our distance.


    "Comms, tell Captain Vakim to do a high-level scan of the debris field while we start the triangulation process," I said, looking at the droid sitting at the comms station. "We will definitely be coming back here to look for anything useful."


    "Roger Roger, Boss!"


    The droid responded while I looked back out into space through the viewports. After a moment, I turned around and headed into the lounge, where Racer was waiting, ready to help me plot out our triangulation. I sat down on the lounge couch and held out my hand, the droid stabilizing it by grabbing it with two of its actuating grips.


    Just like when we were locating the pirate base, I cast Clairvoyance and used the hologram that Racer was projecting to get as accurate a reading of the station''s direction as possible. Once Race took the measurement, he rolled into the bridge and hooked up to the ship''s Astronavigator, calculating a new jump.


    When we arrived at the new location, we repeated the process twice more before Racer did some more math and calculated a new, final jumping point, triangulated from all of the directions I had generated using Clairvoyance. When we arrived at our new destination, I cast Clairvoyance again, this time using to direct Calima.


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    "It''s off slightly to the starboard side," I said. "No idea how far away it is, but it''s that direction at least."


    She nodded and rotated the ship slightly until I told her to stop before pushing the engines and moving the ship forward. I could see on her console that the Intervention was right behind us, slightly off to the side so that in an emergency, it could move past us to give us some cover.


    It took nearly forty-five minutes for us to finally pick the station up on our most distant sensors, just barely a ghost reading.


    "That''s incredible. How hard did that ship collide with it that it pushed it this far out?" I asked rhetorically, leaning on one of the naval droids chairs. "How long until we reach it?"


    "Another fifteen minutes, Boss," Calima answered. "I want to take it slow in case... there is a trail of floating debris behind it. Our sensors aren''t reading any, which is... surprising, but better safe than sorry."


    When we finally got within reasonable visual range, I rejoined the Tholothian pilot on the bridge. The second I spotted the station, my jaw dropped.


    An undamaged Firestar-class station had two large spires jutting from the center, one on top and the other down at the bottom. These spires connected to two circular disks, which in turn were sunk into a square center. The circles overhung the square on each of its four sides, creating a recess on each side, which was where each of the four huge hangars were, as well as half a dozen smaller ones on each side.


    Unfortunately, even with how far away we were, it was clear that Station Omega-17-G was very damaged. An entire corner had been blown off of the station, starting from close to another corner and <u>cutting across</u></a>. Not only that, but the top spire was missing as well, about from about two-thirds of the way down. There were other bits of damage spread throughout the station''s surface, but as far as I could tell, those two spots were the worst.


    Still, as we got closer, things started looking more and more strange. As we approached the station, the broken portion of the main section was angled away, meaning we couldn''t see much beyond the lip. As we got closer and flew around, it became obvious that something was going on.


    "It''s too smooth¡­" I said as Calima brought the ship up and over the closer edge of the station. "The edge, it''s like it''s been cut, not broken. What¡­ bring us around the station, Calima. Comms, tell Intervention to scan the station for energy signatures while we investigate."


    We got closer and closer to the station, finally passing by the completely dark wreck. As we passed by the damaged sction, we could see that it was oddly smooth, as if it had been trimmed away. As we passed, Calima pulled back and slid the ship sideways so we were looking "down" on the damaged section of the old station. There, affixed directly to the oddly trimmed damaged line, were the even more damaged remnants of a <u>Munificent Class star frigate. </u></a>


    "What the fuck¡­" I whispered under my breath as Miru ducked under my arm to catch a look at the bizarre sight.


    The Munificent was clearly heavily damaged, with one side, the side now attached to the station, almost completely ripped away. Where it was torn from was covered in haphazard plating, some painted grey and blue, some painted white and red, an eclectic mix of scrap from the station and the ship. Following along the brutal and crude welding that attached the ship to the station, I could see almost the entire missing chunk was like that. What should have been the exposed inner workings of the station were instead welded plates, armor, and scrap.


    "It looks like a blind <u>Gamorrean</u></a> tried to fix it," Miru said with disgust. "Why? Why would they attach the two? Who did this?"


    Suddenly, before I could respond, the lights flickered across the ship, startling all three of us. Calima instinctively pulled back on the controls, moving us away from the strangely barbaric and chaotic "repair" job. As we moved, more of the ship came into view, showing dozens of lights from inside the ship flickering on, from fore to aft. Suddenly, there was a rumble, and Calima pushed the ship harder, our backpedaling speeding up by a significant degree. We pulled back just in time to watch the engines of the Munificent flicker on, a bright blue flare igniting in half of the broken ship''s thrusters.


    "Did it detect us?" Miru asked, turning to look over the sensors and comms station.


    "Negative, no scans detected," The naval droids sitting there responded. "Our sensors are picking up the reactor and some sub-systems, but nothing else."


    "Let me see," Miru asked, prompting the droid to bring the scans and lean back. Miru read over its shoulder for a minute, shaking her head, "Their reactor is going through a spin-up sequence¡­ something must be really busted for that energy to go directly to the engines¡­ not exactly surprising. Well, the good news is that-"


    Suddenly, the ship went dark again. The thrusters cut out in a split second, the lights dotting the shop cutting out at the exact same moment.


    "...The good news is that the ship''s repulsors are keeping up with the thrusters," Miru finished, pulling back from leaning over the sensor droid''s seat. "And the reactor only spins on for a few seconds."


    "Why is that a good thing?" I asked, watching the now dark ship warily.


    "Well, it''s good the repulsors are compensating because otherwise, the Empire would have found the station ages ago, spinning in place like a top. Or it would have torn itself to pieces from the stress of spinning so fast," She explained. "And it''s good the reactor only spins up for a brief period, or it could have broken down from wear and tear. Probably wouldn''t have done anything, but it could have melted down and wrecked the station more."


    After a few more minutes of examining the ship and station connection, the Intervention contacted us.


    "Boss, everything alright over there?" Allum asked. "We are about a thousand meters off your starboard bow."


    "Yeah, so far, so good," I responded. "You guys pick up the patch job?"


    "Yes, we spotted the abomination of ship repair," He responded. "What do you think is going on?"


    "At a guess? The maintenance and repair crew of a Munificent is mostly robotic, but they would have taken commands from organics. If the organics all died on impact¡­"


    "The repair droids would have tried their best," He finished, not sounding particularly confident. "Still¡­ this seems like a bit of a stretch."


    "Once we get the station secured, we can plan out a trip to the Munificent and see what kind of records it has," I said. "What did the scan of the station pick up? I assume the power is out."


    "Uh¡­. not exactly Boss. All primary reactor cores are offline, but there is one backup core running at an extremely low level," He responded. "No idea what it''s powering, but it''s a miracle it lasted this long."


    "...Okay. Here is the plan. Look at your scans and find the emptiest hangar that can fit both of the ships. That is our landing zone. The first mission is to get the life support working for that hangar. I want a secure LZ setup before we start delving any deeper," I explained. "I am starting to feel a lot less confident about this being an easy, in-and-out job, so we are going to cover all of our bases. No rushing."


    "Alright, Boss."


    "And tell Pola to get our armor ready," I added. "I don''t want to jinx anything, but something is going on here, and I''m not about to take any chances."

 Chapter 101

    The Intervention led us into one of the large hangar bays built at the center of each face of the internal square, choosing the one furthest from the missing chunk and the Munificent. As we got closer, we could see that this particular bay was mostly empty, with several dozen crates tossed around, as well as some equipment, carts, and other miscellaneous items. There was also an ARC-170 in one corner of the hangar, but it was in rough shape and looked like it had crashed landed in the hangar even before the impact of the Munificent-class.


    Still, there was plenty of room for the two ships, so we made our way inside, eventually landing without issue. The entire hangar was very dark, the only real light source being both of the ship''s exterior lights. They cast harsh shadows around the interior, making the large space look eerie and dangerous. Once we landed, we had a quick conversation before the engineering crew, dressed in full EVA suits, slowly made their way out of the Intervention. The Intervention''s complement of B2s also exited the ship with them, providing cover and watching the two entrances.


    We watched from the Chariot''s bridge viewports as the engineers made their way around the hangar, their mag boots keeping them on the ground as they scanned the walls and floor. Eventually, after a while of slowly lumbering around in zero gravity, they found what they were looking for. They removed three panels from the hangar floor, one of the square, meter-wide sheets floating away before one of the engineers grabbed them. At the same time, three labor droids carried over the largest piece of equipment the engineers had brought with them, a massive generator.


    After about two hours of watching them work, the hangar lights flickered on. A few seconds later, the magcon field, the blue glowing barrier that kept the air inside an open space hangar, reactivated. All of the engineers made their way back inside the ship, now moving a lot easier with the artificial gravity back on.


    "The life support systems are kicking in," Calima reported. "Already seeing¡­ a slight temperature rise. Should be warm enough for us in¡­ thirty or forty minutes."


    "Alright, keep an eye on the energy readings," I said. "I want to know the second that generator starts acting funky."


    To be safe, we ended up waiting a full hour, before we slowly made our way down to the hangar bay floor. There, we met up with everyone else from the Intervention. By then, the temperatures were within human tolerances, if still a bit on the cold side. Julus and Nal carried down one of the heaters we got from our first mission on Solinda, setting it up between the two ships. Soon, everyone was around it, and I made a beeline for the head engineer.


    "What''s the situation," I asked, gesturing to the generator that was hooked up to the hangar.


    "We have about ten hours of power from that generator, but we will have to trade out fuel blocks at some point," The human male said. "It''s charging the emergency batteries as well, so if it fails, we have a few minutes to get back on one of the ships before everything powers down."


    "Alright, that''s a good start. What are the chances we can reactivate one of the primary cores and see about getting more of this ship powered up?"


    "Well¡­ that depends if they failed, ran out of fuel, or if they were shut down," He admitted. "If they ran until they failed, chances are we won''t be able to get them back up and running. If they ran out of fuel, it will depend if they have more sitting around somewhere on the station."


    "And if they were shut down?"


    "That is the best-case scenario, sir," He said with a shrug. "Honestly, I don''t know why any of them would be shut down. The station was evacuated, right? I can''t imagine they cared about turning the lights off when they left."


    "Right. Okay. Racer? Come here and display the scans the Intervention made before we landed."


    The little astromech warbled and joined us by the heater, spinning around once before activating his holoprojector. A wireframe representation lit up above us, showing us the station''s current state.


    "So, in case you guys didn''t hear, we discovered a Munificent-class star frigate attached to the side of the station. It appears that the damaged portion of the station was removed and very crudely patched up. At least one of the Munificent''s reactors is at least semi-function as well," I explained, parts of the wireframe lit up, highlighting what I was talking about. "We also detected that one of the station''s backup power cores is still running."


    This time, the part of the projection that lit up was a lot farther away, almost at the opposite station, not far from one of the other massive hangars.


    "My plan right now is for two teams to make their way to these two power cores, investigate their status, and, if they aren''t FUBAR, attempt to turn them back on," I explained, the two closest power cores lighting up in the projection. "With any luck, one of them will let us reactivate the gravity and life support for the majority of the station. If neither of them are working, then we head to the third, furthest power core with fingers crossed."


    "And if that one doesn''t work?" One of Lieutenant Soran''s men asked.


    "Then we will start branching out to the backup generators, turning them on," I explained. "Basically, I want three primary things. Life support, artificial gravity, and sensors, in that order. Gravity and life support so that the engineers can start their work and inspection a little easier, with some support, and without constantly being at risk of a suit pop."


    "And the sensors?" Ahsoka asked, looking over at the sealed door on the far side of the hangar.


    "Something is going on here. The Munificent is crazy enough, but the backup generator still working on the far side of the station is also suspicious," I pointed out. "I want sensors on so Racer here can tap into them and let us get a better idea of what exactly is happening here."


    "An internal security station might be a better bet then, Sir," Lieutenant Soran said.


    "If we can find one, great," I responded. "But without a detailed map, that''s not something we can count on. Racer might be able to tell us once we get the power back on, but that''s just the same plan with an added step."


    We talked for a few more minutes before I broke everyone into teams. Ahsoka, Nal, and Vaz, three of the engineers, and three Rebel soldiers would head off to the closest reactor, while Luke, Julus, Tatnia, and myself, along with Miru and the two remaining engineers, would head to the further one. The rest would remain at the hangar in case it needed defending, as well as a rescue team, should one of the teams get cornered, stranded, or have any other sort of emergency.


    Each team would also have two B2s, three repair droids, and a labor droid with them, the latter to carry extra power packs, tools, and oxygen.


    With the teams made, we started getting ready, the Rebels and engineers putting on the EVA suits, while we all climbed into the Intervention, splitting up into different rooms to get dressed. When we were finally ready, we met back up at the cargo bay. We were all wearing our armor, cutting an impressive look as we checked each other out. For now, everyone''s armor was painted a simple white, but I saw that changing pretty soon.


    "Everyone ready? Miru, your suit sealed?" I asked.


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    "Yup!" The young Twi''lek said with a nod, double-checking her armor. "All set."


    While I had originally balked at the idea of Miru having armor, Tatnia and Nal both pointed out that, as our head engineer, she needed to be able to go into dangerous situations. Plus, if there was anyone who should be more protected, it was her. Her armor was different though, more than just being smaller. The artistic flare that Vaz and Pola had managed was much less noticeable in her armor. Her plates simplified greatly and flat. She still had full coverage, but Pola did everything he could to make the suit look like equipment rather than armor. It honestly ended up looking like an armored EVA suit.


    Her arm, the one covered by her portable scanner, was sealed well into the rest of the suit, though it was very obviously different from the rest.


    Once everyone confirmed they were ready, we activated the cargo lift, riding it down to the hangar bay floor. Once it was down, we headed forward, breaking up into our two teams, Julus and Tatnia following me. I couldn''t help but smirk at the wide-eyed, slack-jawed expression on almost everyone''s faces as they spotted us.


    "You weren''t kidding about the armor," Luke said, eyes trailing over my helmet, which I was holding under my arm. "How much does each of those cost?"


    "Around a hundred thousand credits each," I responded, laughing when he physically stumbled at the number. "Don''t worry about it, Luke. I''ll see if Pola will make something for you."


    He nodded, still more than a bit stunned, before scrambling to get ready. Everyone not coming on our first trip returned to one of the ships, while the rest of us waited patiently. An engineer slowly turned off the life support, letting the vacuum back into the hangar in a controlled manner. This equalized the pressure between the hangar and what lay beyond the entrance doors. Once we were in a complete vacuum, Miru opened the doors, and the other engineer then reactivated the life support system.


    With our ad hoc airlock set up, we all made our way into the corridors of the station, our boots clunking heavily on the ground as their maglocks activated, the artificial gravity fading after three or four meters from the hangar. Once everyone was inside, the door to the hangar bay was sealed back up.


    "Good luck Deacon," Vaz said through our connected comms.


    "You too," I responded with a nod, before turning to Ahsoka. "Ready to go."


    She nodded and picked up her copy of our limited map before stepping forward and leading her group into the dark hallways. As her group left for their target, I pulled up my map, double-checking the direction before leading my own team away. Within a dozen or so steps, the only light source we had was coming from our suits, which luckily had some lights connected to the helmet. I also cast a Magelight on both of the engineers, dumping all my magic into both of them, guaranteeing they would stick around for a while. They tried to jump in surprise, but the mag boots kept them firmly attached to the ground.


    Slowly but surely, we made our way through the station. It was not a quiet journey, as our mag boots consistently made heavy clunking noises as we walked, locking and unlocking themselves to the floor with each step. As we walked, we got a first-hand look at the state of the station, including how much damage the crash had done. Almost every hall we walked down, and the rooms we peeked into had some sort of junk thrown from the impact. Trash bins, boxes, datapads, crates, and everything in between were strewn everywhere.


    Still, with all the destruction and mess, as far as I could tell, it was almost all completely cosmetic. There was a hallway wrecked by what looked like a failing turbolift, and a few fires that the engineers explained must have happened before the air leaked out of the station. Other than that, my team didn''t run into anything visible. Of course, I had no doubt that a close-up inspection from the engineers would turn up all sorts of issues. Impacts tended to rattle everything loose, so there was no doubt in my mind that we would be finding loose, broken, bent, and twisted things for a long time.


    When we were about fifteen minutes from our destination, my comms, integrated into my helmet, connected to Ahsoka.


    "We''ve reached the power core," She reported. "The engineers have started their inspection. They say it looks promising, but they won''t know for sure for a while. Their best guess is that it ran out of fuel, so we are looking around."


    "Alright, keep me updated."


    Over the next fifteen minutes, as we got closer and closer to our target, Ahsoka kept me updated. Her engineers had cleared out some minor issues, and were in the process of loading up solid fuel when we finally arrived at our own power core.


    Now, as we had made our way through the station, our major obstacle was consistently sealed and powerless doors. At each one, we would need to crack the seal and then pry them open, which took a few minutes every time.


    However, when we arrived at our destination, we were presented with something we hadn''t seen yet. An already pried-open door, specifically the one that led into the power core room.


    "What are the chances that stayed open normally?" I asked Miru. "Like it stayed open from the impact or got locked open during evacuation?"


    "Uh¡­ not very good¡­ I can''t see a reason for this door to stay open while every other door is shut," She responded. "Unless there were survivors? But-"


    "Boss, look," Julus said, pointing down the hall in the opposite direction we had entered in from. "That door down there is open as well."


    I followed his finger, and sure enough, far down the hall, I could see another pried-open door.


    "Dammit¡­ Alright, everyone, stay on your toes," I said. "Engineers, buddy up with an escort, Miru, you''re with me. I don''t-"


    The two of us entered first, and even I could tell what was wrong. The room was almost completely stripped bare, save some walkways and a few platforms. Just as stunned as me, Miru walked past and slowly turned around in the room, looking at it from every angle.


    "It''s¡­ been stripped for parts," Miru said, walking further in, holding up her hand to scan, tapping away at her arm computer. "And not very carefully either. Some of these marks look like they were done by a prybar."


    "What the in the hells going on here?" One of the engineers said, probably not intending for everyone to hear.


    "I don''t know," I respond before linking up to Ahsokas comms. "Hey, does your core show any signs of being harvested for parts? Or being repaired with parts from a different core?"


    "...No, not that the engineer can see. Why?" She eventually responded after a long silence.


    "Our core has been almost completely torn down," I answered, keeping a close eye on Miru as she ran more scans. "I''m talking to the fasteners."


    "Someone harvested it for parts?"


    "That''s what Miru thinks," I responded. "So either we aren''t the first people to find this station, there were survivors that tried to do something¡­"


    "Or the droids were trying to fix their ship¡­" She finished, the line going silent for a moment before she returned. "They want to start up the power core now. Should I give them the go-ahead?"


    "Yes. If there are droids running around, I want you guys out of your EVA suits," I said. "Get that generator going and then double time it back to the ship. I get the feeling whoever has been stripping down our power cores is going to notice one of them being turned on."

 Chapter 102

    Within ten minutes, the power core was up and running. We couldn''t hear it, of course, given how far away we were, but with some help from Racer, who had stayed behind at the hangar, we were able to direct the energy from the power core directly to the life support and artificial gravity. Unfortunately, my hopes of getting a detailed scan of the interior were crushed. It turns out Lieutenant Soran knew what he was talking about because Racer quickly ran into some issues while trying to run a scan of the interior of the station. Between the damage to the station and a startling efficient division of internal security, Racer would need to find a security station to access the station''s internal sensors.


    As the lights flickered on and artificial gravity began to pull us down to the floor, we decided the best bet we had at the moment was to return to the hangar and regroup. Once there, we could come up with a plan to address the Munificent, as well as the energy reading coming from deeper into the station.


    The return journey was thankfully turning out to be much easier than our original excursion. Between the return of gravity and light, and having already been through the same path before, we were making quick work of the trip. Unfortunately, nothing was simple, and I soo noticed something was off.


    "Does... does anyone else hear that?" I asked, turning back down a separate hallway as we crossed a four-way intersection of halls. "My mic is picking something up¡­ but its not coming through very well..."


    Miru stepped forward before I could stop her and held up her arm, the projected information bumping up and down like music levels on an editing program. She nodded quickly, stepping back behind me.


    "Yeah, something is coming. Either something big or lots for little things," she confirmed, shrugging when I looked at her. "What? A powerful mic can be used to detect damage to internal parts. The detection program was a cheap afterthought."


    I shook my head and gestured for Tatnia and Julus to come forward, both of them settling in next to me, their blasters drawn and ready, confident in their new armor. Luke was right behind me in his fragile EVA suit, lightsaber already in hand. I could practically feel his desire to be more proactive, to step ahead of us and help, but the life support system was still working on making the station livable. If his suit was breached, the cold alone would kill him in a few minutes.


    Before we could say or do much else to prepare, the source of the noise finally came into view. The grinding, thumping, and snapping had been getting louder and louder before suddenly, a wave of twisted robotic limbs, parts, and weapons came around the corner and into the hall, coming right for us.


    Immediately, several dozen droids opened fire on us, blaster bolts whipping by us, a few even hitting our new shiny armor, bouncing off and slamming into the floor, ceiling, or walls of the hallway.


    "What the fuck is-?" I started to ask, even as I charged a double-handed Chain Lightning and threw it down the hall, slamming into the first dozen or so droids, all of them collapsing. "What''s wrong with them?"


    The droids walked, hobbled, and stumbled towards us, looking everything like robotic zombies. They were made of poorly repaired battle droids, service droids, and everything in between. I could see parts of B1s and B2s slammed together seemingly randomly, mixed in with protocal, repair and other droid parts, all trying to get to us. I spotted a B2 torso with all B1 limbs, the thin legs struggling to carry the heavy, armored torso. More than one of the horrible combinations was forced to crawl on all fours, raising an arm or firing from a fifth limb welded to their back.


    There were even a few stranger combinations, with protocol droids, medical droids, and even astromechs smashed together to create something barely functional. All of them were dripping grease and oil, and all of them seemed to be determined to reach us, some of them even screeching as they spotted us, a robotic shout of triumph at finding their target. More often than not, the shout cut out quickly as we destroyed them, only to be replaced by several more. What might have been funny, or at least amusing, quickly became unnerving and downright scary as the tide just kept coming. We killed them by the hundreds, my spells wiping out dozens of them at a time, only to be replaced with more and more droids.


    Then, as suddenly as it started, the wave of droids ended, leaving the long hallway filled with seizing, smoking wrecks stacked on each other. After nearly twenty minutes of just barely holding back the tide of robotic abominations, the hallway was silent.


    "Miru¡­ you got an estimate how many droids we just killed?" I asked, looking back at the only one among us who hadn''t been concentrating on destroying the horde of broken, twisted droids.


    "Three or four hundred," She responded. "Closer to four than three."


    "Jesus¡­ Anyone hit? Any injuries? How did the armor hold?" I asked, looking at the rest of my team, both the members of the Skyforged, Luke, and the others.


    "No injuries, sir," One of the rebels answered. "We took cover, and most of the fire was directed at you."


    "Good, that''s part of the point,"


    "My instincts hate just standing out in the open," Julus said, running an armored hand over his chest plate. "I got hit a dozen times, but never in the same place."


    "According to Pola, the armor should be fine with that," I said as I looked down at the various streaks that marked impact points on my own armor. "As long as you''re not hit four or five times in the same place or two times by something particularly powerful."


    "We just became battlefield juggernauts," Tatnia said, her voice filled with wonder even if I couldn''t see her face.


    "Hell of a mission to test them on," I said before patting Tatnia''s back. "And don''t think we are invincible. Still plenty of ways to kill us. Now come on, I want to get back to the hangar."


    I commed back to Ahsoka as we slid back into our old path, a new urgency driving us forward. She confirmed they hadn''t seen anything, which made me think that the horde of droids had been looking for them, the ones who turned back on the power, and we had just happened to get in the way.


    "Fuck¡­ I just realized we can''t go back," I said, stopping in a random hallway just as we passed by what looked like a small cafeteria or break room. "We need to set up and guard the power core. Even on the off chance that that is their target, we can''t risk it. Having a functional power core could make or break the reconstruction plans."


    "What about the third power core?" Tatnia asked. "That could still work¡­"


    "Rather not bet on maybe," I responded, knowing she was just playing devil''s advocate. "We need to discuss our options and figure out our plan. But protecting the power core is our first priority."


    I connected to Ahsoka and warned her of the change of plans, and directed her and the rest of my crew to join us before we adjusted our course to head directly to the now-running core. We stopped outside the large security doors of the power core room, setting up an impromptu defensive position. We dragged some crates and old furniture into position for the engineers to hide behind. We barely had a minute to breathe after our preparation when Miru picked up another incoming horde.


    This time, rather than appearing down the end of a long hallway, giving us plenty of time to wipe them out, the wave of misrepaired, broken robots came around a corner much closer to us. We struggled for ten minutes to hold off the hoard, the twisted metal shamblers almost reaching our temporary holding position. I had a conjured sword in my hand and a conjured fighter next to me, ready to hold them back in a melee; when Vaz, Nal, and Ahsoka arrived, the former two opened fire from a different angle. Vaz''s Z-6 cannon swept through the horde, hundreds of bolts tearing through them, pushing the reinforcements back and letting us deal with those that had gotten a bit too close for comfort.


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    Just as before, after another ten minutes of wiping out hundreds of droids, the reinforcements stopped, leaving us breathing heavily, looking out over a hall filled with the broken husk of twisted droids.


    "What the hells is going on here?" Tatnia asked, slapping a new power pack into her rifle.


    "I don''t know, but I have a feeling we are going to have to find out," I said, shaking my head as Vaz, Nal, and Ahsoka joined us. "How is the hangar?"


    "Soran''s men have it locked down. We deployed all of your droids, including the five BX commandos," She explained. "Allum and Pola even deployed your airspeeder so someone could use its turret and fire down the main entrance."


    "Alright, that''s good, then we don''t have to worry about them," I said with a nod. "That just means¡­"


    "Getting to the Munifiecent and stopping whatever is sending all these droids," Ahsoka finished for me. "You realize they carry over a hundred thousand droids for ground assaults, right?"


    "... no, I did not know that," I admitted. "But they are clearly not in the best shape, and they won''t be able to field all of those at once inside the cramped quarters of the station and the ship."


    "I''ll give you that," She agreed. "We are going to have to move fast then, otherwise we will get swarmed. Getting attacked on two sides at once will split our firepower. We probably won''t last much longer after that."


    "Uh¡­ this is just a thought¡­ but why not attack from the outside?" Luke suggested, looking over at me. "You guys have a shuttle, right? We have EVA suits, so why not just attack from the hull?"


    "Because I was hoping to keep the attention on us, keeping it off of the power core," I explained. "If we are pushing them back, then guarding this area gets a whole lot easier. We would have to split up as it is to keep this place defended."


    "Lack the firepower to split us up and make a push to the ship," Nal pointed out. "Barely held back droid tide before."


    "He''s not wrong, Boss," Tatnia agreed. "They come from the wrong angle, and it won''t matter how much armor we have, They will take us down with sheer numbers."


    We were quiet for a moment, trying to crack through our predicament. After a bit of thinking, Ahsoka and I both nodded.


    "We have too many places to protect," I said.


    "We need to abandon the hangar bay," Ahsoka said, speaking at the same time I did.


    I couldn''t help but chuckle at our similar thoughts. This was the second time that it had happened, which wasn''t a lot, but it was funny that it had happened twice. I made a gesture for her to continue, getting an appreciative look in return.


    "If we have the ships pull out of the hangar, we can move the Liuetanant Soran and his troops, as well as your droids here," Ahsoka explained as I nodded in agreement. "They can defend the power core while we push forward to the ship."


    "What is our target?" I asked. "You know these ships better than I do."


    "The bridge, the backup bridge, or the primary droid brain," Ahsoka answered. "Any of those three should be able to issue new commands to the rest of the droids."


    "Well, the bridge was wrecked by the collision," I pointed out. "So that leaves the backup bridge or the primary droid brain. Any preference?"


    "... Droid brain," Ahsoka responded after a brief pause. "That feels like the right answer."


    "Good enough for me," I said with a nod. "Let''s get everyone moved around. The sooner we can stop the incoming hordes, the better."


    After a bit of discussion, it was decided that Ahsoka would remain at the power core, as would the rest of the team, while Luke and I guided the engineers and the few droids we had with us back to the hangar. Once there, we quickly explained the situation, and the engineers climbed into the Intervention while we loaded up the Arrow. Once both of the ships left, Luke and I guided the eight rebel soldiers and our droid backup back to the power core. We arrived not long later, just in time to watch the rest of the crew finish off a third wave. The broken remnants of nearly five hundred droids filled two corridors now.


    "Damn¡­ they are gonna have to take alternate routes soon, or they might jam up the corridor," I said, turning to Lieutenant Soran. "You guys need to be ready for that."


    "We will be, sir," He assured me, two of his people already setting up a heavy repeating blaster, hooking it up to a power back, and setting it on a tripod. "With the bots, we should be able to hold off for a while."


    "Alright, Lieutenant, may the Force be with you," I said with a nod, giving him a lackadaisical salute, before turning to the rest of my crew, plus Racer, Ahsoka and Luke. "You guys ready?"


    A series of nods and we were off, following the basic plans that Miru had on her fancy arm computer and sensor scanning system. I made a note to ask if we could get something similar put into the arms of our armor, something simple to display info and scan basic stuff.


    We made good progress, especially now that both Luke and Ashoka could take off their EVA suits. They still had them, of course, stored in small packs they were carrying on their backs, the helmets hooked to the bottom. No way they were going anywhere without them, not when we didn''t know how stable the station was. Not long after we passed the stripped-down power core, Luke called for us to stop.


    "Should we be following that?" He asked, calling our attention to the floor.


    Sure enough, the floor was stained with the same black grease and oil that dripped off of the cobbled-together droids. It crossed our current path, going past us, and if my guess was correct, would intersect where we first fought them. The other direction passed us and hooked a right out of sight.


    "... Depends. Are we still trying to keep the heat off of the power core and Lieutenant''s team?" I asked, looking back down the oily path. "Because if we follow that, we are bound to run into another group if they have one coming."


    "We need to move fast; we can''t stop to fight every wave that comes up," Tatnia pointed out. "And they have nearly twice the firepower we do. They may not have our armor, but they can handle a few waves."


    "I agree," Ahsoka said. "Lieutenant Soran will comm if they cannot keep up."


    "Alright. Good question though, Luke," I said, the young Force-sensitive nodding. "Let''s get moving then, no more taking it slow."


    We continued our trek through the station, crossing the remaining distance in only ten. As we got closer, the damages from the crash became more and more apparent, with twisted, broken doorways, bent paneling, and cracked ceilings. The atmosphere held, but Miru started testing each door we reached to make sure it had breathable air on the other side. Several times we were forced to down or up a floor to bypass damage.


    When we finally arrived at the Munificent, the shift was obvious. On one side was the relatively clean, white, and grey of the Firestar station, and on the other, you had the darker greys, blacks, and blues of the Separatist Fleet. In between both of those, you had some of the worst looking repairs I had ever seen. A wild mismatch of platting, armor, and other metal attached the ship to the station. It looked insane and chaotic. As much as I hated to bring the thought into this world, it looked like it was done by 40k Orks.


    And we were about to cross it into a CIS ship.


    I resisted the urge to cross my fingers.

 Chapter 103

    After a moment of incredulously studying the cudgeled-together connection between the station and the ship, I realized I was going to have to take the first step. With a long sigh, I stepped forward onto the connection. Miru, ever fearless in the face of new and exciting things, was quick to follow.


    "I cannot believe that this area is still under pressure," Miru said, her scanner out as she analyzed the hack job. "The patching is three layers thick, consisting of basically everything you can imagine. As far as my scans can tell, the two superstructures are actually attached, which is surprising considering I keep expecting to find platting attached with bonding tape."


    "Uh, yeah¡­ What''s all that mean?" Julus asked


    "It means that through sheer quantity, they made the connection airtight," She responded, closing down her scanner. "And the two are actually firmly attached to each other."


    We continued to cross the junk-patched gap, eventually crossing it completely and stepping into the old Separatist ship. Like the station, it was clear that a lot of the damage around the impact had simply been removed and used as scrap plating. There was still plenty of damage, but it was far from the completely crumpled mess one would have expected from two large objects slamming into each other.


    We slowly moved deeper into the ship, following a general path towards the heart of the ship. The further from the station we got, the darker the ship became. Soon, the infrequent emergency lights, which were dotted occasionally along the ceiling, were the only source of light.


    "Their emergency power must be getting filled by the power core flipping on," Miru said after scanning one of the lights. "These are going to go out in a couple of days judging by how little power they are getting.


    "How often is the power core flickering on?" I asked as we continued to walk, peeking around a corner to confirm it was empty before motioning everyone forward. "It hasn''t happened again since we got here."


    "I don''t know," Miru responded. "Racer could probably find out when he connects to the core¡­"


    The droid let out a low warble, confirming he could. His top spun a bit as he stayed within the center of the group, where he was the least likely to get shot. He continued to talk for a moment in audible binary, Miru nodding in understanding.


    "He could find out at any main network terminal, but the core would see it coming a mile away."


    "Alright, it''s fine, definitely not worth it. I was just curious, anyway. If it comes on a lot, that would explain why the second power core on the station was stripped. They would likely need the parts after such a long time running," I explained. "Ahsoka, where are the systems cross-compatible often?"


    "That''s a bit far out of my expertise," The Togruta responded. "But I would imagine it would be better than nothing."


    "It''s much easier to start with parts that are slightly wrong than start with nothing," Miru explained. "If the part is the wrong size or the wrong power level, that can be fixed. You can''t just clap your hands and make palladium you need to build a fuel catalyzer appear.


    I nodded in understanding, turning back to the task at hand. Slowly but surely, we made our way deeper into the ship, keeping quiet and staying out of sight. All of us were on edge, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Eventually, it did, Miru spotting it a mile away.


    "Sensors picking up another horde," Miru said, already stepping back away from the front to stand beside Racer. "Coming from the east!"


    She pointed to a hallway that intersected with the one we were walking down, which emerged about twenty feet ahead of ours. My team stepped in front, preparing their weapons as the sound of the approaching wave of droids rose to audible levels slowly. Vaz readied her repeating cannon while Luke and Ahsoka ignited their lightsabers. Thankfully, both of the Force-sensitives stayed behind us, holding their weapons ready should the horde get too close.


    Suddenly, the droids were there, crawling, stumbling, and running at us. Wild, inaccurate blaster shots scattered off our armor, slamming into the surfaces around us as we systematically dismantled the droids with our return fire. As we discussed previously, Vaz held back from unloading their weapon until everyone else needed to reload. Then she stepped forward and opened fire, dousing the hoard in a wave of deadly blaster bolts, giving us time to reload.


    But the horde just kept coming, eclipsing all previous waves.


    I was mid-reload for my blaster pistol, which I had been shooting in my off-hand when I heard Miru scream, strangled with a thump of something heavy impacting metal. Our near-constant firing line faltered for a moment as we turned towards the scream to find Miru had been knocked off her feet, her armor now sporting a shallow, shiny groove along her chest. Standing over her, now with two lightsabers spearing its torso, was a vibroblade-wielding BX commando droid.


    With at least twenty more of them sneaking down the hall.


    "Focus on the horde!" I shouted, waving the attention of my crew back to the oncoming wave of broken and poorly repaired droids before joining Luke and Ahsoka in facing off the commando droids.


    Ahsoka used the Force to shove the already destroyed droid at the second closest, the wreck sparking as it slammed into the wall, the commando droid having dove under it. It continued its dive, rolling closer and swinging its sword up at Luke. The young Jedi skipped back, just barely avoiding the upward swing, counter-attacking with a slash that cut the vibroblade in half. I conjured a sword in my right hand, charging and throwing Lightning Bolt at the now-disarmed droid, which stumbled and collapsed backward, allowing Luke to behead it. We both turned and followed Ahsoka, charging the BX commandos.


    We clashed with a pair first, both of them slashing at us with their swords. They seemed to have already learned the lesson of their weapons being destroyed by lightsabers because instead of hacking at Luke and Ahsoka directly, they feigned a swing only to try to lash out with a kick.


    Ahsoka saw through the move and hopped over the kick meant to knock her off her feet, while Luke only partially succeeded, turning his body enough to shift it from a solid impact on his stomach to a glancing blow against his side.


    Seeing Ahsoka deal with her targe, I stepped in to help Luke, slamming another Lightning Bolt into the droid''s torso. The blast stunned the dangerous droid long enough for Luke to slice it in half before he gestured to it, launching the bisected droid at its incoming allies. The fight was far from over, however, because even as Ahsoka finished her target off, more droids charged us, jumping, rolling, and bouncing towards us like a metal circus act, armed to the teeth and eager to kill us.


    A dual cast blast of Chain Lighting caught three more of them off guard, stumbling them enough for Ahsoka and Luke to behead two of them, the third getting nearly bisected. By now, we had all of their attention, especially me, the droids in the back now precisely shooting at us around their allies. Their shots ping off my armor, forcing Ahsoka to actually deflect one back at the droids.


    A trio of the droids tried to use the opportunity to rush us, forcing us to step back, the lethal droids scoring several slashes against me, scoring my armor but not breaking through. They quickly compensate, ganging up on me and trying to hack into the joints and seams of my armor, getting dangerously close with a few of their strikes. Thankfully, with their attention on me, Luke and Ahsoka carve them up in short order. Only one of them was quick enough to attack back, but was still quickly cut down.


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    With a growl of annoyance, I pushed past my two Jedi allies, catching a vibrosword strike with my own conjured sword, slamming it back, and casting Flames on the rest of the commandos to blind them. I spun, letting vibrosword slide off mine, harmlessly deflected before spinning and impaling the droid through its chest. I yanked my sword out the side, spraying sparks and oil out of the gash. I watch as Ahsoka slashes another one, finishing it off with a flourish of her second blade, while Luke Force-pushed another pair back, deflecting a trio of blaster bolts. We were just barely holding them back until Miru recovered, grabbed a fallen commando droids blaster, and opened fire, managing to distract the remaining droids long enough to let us overwhelm them.


    Not long after we dispatched the final commando droid, the tidal wave of poorly repaired droids stopped, leaving our path almost completely blocked with their broken forms. Meanwhile, my armor was covered in lines where the vibroblades, weapons known for their intense cutting ability, had scraped off the paint and just barely scored the beskar. Even with the armor, I was sore from the beating. Those swords weren''t exactly light, and I knew from experience how strong those BXs were. I looked over at Ahsoka, who had a cut along her upper arm, and Luke, who had one on his cheek.


    "How..did that¡­ happen?" I asked, catching my breath and using Heal Other to fix their injuries.


    "Our lightsabers cut their swords," Luke pointed out. "But the tips were still sharp despite not vibrating."


    It took me a second to put together what he said before it clicked that they had been sliced by the ends of the sword they had cut free. I shook my head before focusing my attention on Miru.


    "You alright, Miru?" I asked, putting my hand on her shoulder and healing her before she even responded, following it up with Respite.


    "Yeah¡­ yeah, I''m okay," She responded, leaning forward and giving me a hug despite both of us wearing armor. "They just came out of nowhere."


    I patted her back, comforting her while everyone recovered from the fight. Eventually, when everything was reloaded, and everyone had checked for injuries hidden by adrenaline, we continued pressing forward to the heart of the ship, where the central droid brain was housed.


    As we traveled, we were attacked three more times by waves of droids. Each time, the droids got more and more whole, as if the system had been saving the least damaged droids back to protect itself. Still, poorly repaired and mismatched parts were prevalent, they just seemed to work better, rather than the nearly useless combinations we saw in the first horde.


    When we finally arrived at the heart of the ship, the central droid brain, we were shocked to find the heavy security door that led inside, already breached, destroyed from the exterior by a massive explosion. The edges of the door peeled inward and were darkened by fire.


    "This was a shaped charge," Ahsoka said, running her hand along the damage. "Not damage from the crash."


    "How can you tell?" I asked curiously.


    "Because an explosion strong enough to do this would normally be massive, but there really isn''t any major damage anywhere else," She explained, gesturing to the relatively undamaged area around the door. "So it must have been a specifically designed charge. Probably one made to breach security doors like this one."


    After a moment of examining the door, we stepped into the large, normally sealed room. Inside, the destruction only continued. At the center of the room was a massive computer system, with terminals, access ports, and more stationed around it. Half of it was caved in from another explosion, the surrounding systems scarred by fire and shrapnel.


    "This¡­ this wasn''t done by the crash either," Ahsoka said as we approached the central feature.


    The core, which was half destroyed, was surrounded by hundreds of clearly salvage computers, droid heads, and other electronics, all of them roughly wired together, linked up to the core by thousands of wires. It was clear that everything was running, with lights and faint beeping coming from the various pieces of equipment hooked into the central droid brain. Racer slid forward and approached the only seemingly intact console, which was on but flickering.


    "Hold up Racer¡­ Miru, do you have any idea what this all is?" I asked, the young Twi''lek walking past us.


    She started scanning bits and pieces of the salvaged tech, running her scanner over them, sometimes taping on the interfaces if they had any. I noted plenty of Republic tech mixed in with Separatist, which I could only assume came from the station. After a few minutes, she stepped back, frowning slightly.


    "I think¡­ the droid brain is partially running off of this stuff," She explained, gesturing to everything. "It''s horribly done¡­ each piece is barely providing any computing power because their own systems are still running, they are just also running the ship mind as well."


    "Why? Why not just wipe everything?" I asked, confused


    .


    "Because their restrictions wouldn''t allow it," Ahsoka chimed in. "Droids were heavily restricted, and directly modifying the programming was definitely not something they were allowed to do. This¡­ this is already pretty out there for a droid brain to manage."


    "So¡­ someone blew up the computer core, maybe before the crash, maybe after," I started. "But it didn''t kill the droid brain, just heavily damaged it. It tried to compensate by running on whatever it could get its hands on. What about the hordes?"


    Racer whistled and warbled, getting everyone''s attention.


    "He says that he could tell you all of this if you let him hook in and cut out the droids."


    "I assumed he could, I just wanted to make sure it wasn''t trapped, or the system wasn''t going to overload him if he connected to it," I responded. "This doesn''t exactly look like a stable system."


    Miru''s eyes went wide, and she rushed to the console, scanning it again before examining the results. She let out a sigh of relief and nodded back to me.


    "It should be fine. He can use the Scomp at least."


    "Alright, Racer, do your thing."


    The astromech rolled up to the console and connected in, the screen going black before shifting to a code system as the droid sliced in. Occasionally, the droid would whistle and warble as he learned things, Miru translating as he did. According to the records, the droid mind was damaged by clone soldiers after the collision and after the station had been abandoned. The ship had been attempting to repair itself enough to leave the system, its communications and hyperdrive heavily damaged. It attempted to salvage the station by connecting to it and sending droids into the station, but they were repelled and then further sabotaged.


    According to Racer, the droid brain turned back on after an unknown amount of time passed. Immediately, it attempted to continue its repair, but its systems were damaged and corrupted, resulting in the poor choices and questionable repair jobs we had witnessed so far. When the slicer droid was done digging through the records, it shut down the remaining droids and completely powered down the ship, leaving us a way back before sealing everything up behind us.


    Eventually, we could see about salvaging stuff from the Separatist ship, but for now, it would remain powered down, filled with who knew how many broken, twisted droids.


    Once our mission was done, we returned to the power core to check on the Lieutenant and his men and let him know the danger had passed. We then made our way back to the hangar and signaled for the ships to land. The station was safe, so now it was time for the engineers to start their inspections.

 Chapter 104

    With the Munificent now fully powered down and disabled, the engineers began to inspect some of the more important systems, primarily life support, around the station. Most of the critical systems broke the station up into four quadrants, each a corner of the station. There were four central life support centers, one for each quadrant, as well as several secondary systems supporting each of the centers. Heating was a more dispersed function, with heating coils built through the structure that kept the station at a livable temperature. The system to make the rooms pleasant to stay in was another function entirely. The engineers were also concerned about the overall superstructure, the external hull integrity, internal power distribution, and several other systems and functions. The list seemed to go on and on, but the engineers seemed confident that it wouldn''t take more than a few days.


    According to the head engineer, the biggest concern after making sure the life support systems worked was the hull integrity. Any space vessel that spent a long time unpowered and unpressurized was considered, for safety''s sake, to be at risk of failing once it was repressurized. There were several ways to tell if that was going to become a problem, and most of them could be done from the central control room. Thankfully, the control room was at the very heart of the station, and seemed to be undamaged.


    Once the engineers had access to the internal structural sensors, we started to get a solid idea of the state of the station. As predicted, the general superstructure was intact, save what had been cut off by the damaged droid brain, but was also slightly warped. It would be impossible to repair that without a major shipyard facility, but given some time and a repair crew, any faults caused by the bend could be fixed. The lead engineer didn''t predict any major issues since we wouldn''t be taking the station through any tight maneuvers. We would just have to deal with the slight warping and hope any faults would hold until they could be found and patched.


    The hull of the station had a few issues, many several dozen holes caused by micrometeorites striking the station. Unfortunately, the single main power core we had running couldn''t handle everything it was already doing and the shield systems, even on low power. That meant we needed to activate the other power core or a bunch of the smaller backup cores.


    It was during that process that we made a rather shocking discovery.


    On the second day, we made our way to the third and final power core room, the fourth having been cut out during the droid brain''s crude repair attempt. Unfortunately, it was severely damaged, with the primary power core exposed by a massive crack, caused by falling debris. The engineer was optimistic about its eventual repair, however, saying it would only take ten or fifteen thousand credits to get it going again. That would take quite a few parts, however, so for now, we split up into three groups and spread out around the station to start finding and activating the smaller backup power stations.


    My team, consisting of Nal, Miru, an engineer, and two soldiers, made our way to the only backup generator already running. According to the station readings, it was running at the lowest power setting, and if we wanted the shields back up and to possibly take a little stress off the only function major core, we would need a whole bunch of the backups running at full.


    When we arrived at the backup core, Miru and the engineer started the process of checking it over. It didn''t take long for them to finish, load it up with fuel, and crank it back to full. When we were about to leave I stopped and frowned, looking over at Miru.


    "Was there any information about what the core was powering?" I asked. "Or was it just on and idle?"


    "Ummm¡­ hold on, I can check," Miru said, walking back to a console and tapping away on it. "It says here it was disconnected from everything but the Tibanna gas facility."


    I frowned, trying to understand why my brain felt like that was important. Tibanna gas was important because it was used to power blasters and a whole bunch of other stuff, but why did I feel like that was important right here in the moment?


    "I¡­ want to go see that," I said, still frowning, pulling out my comms and connecting Ahsoka and Tatnia, who were leading the other groups. "Guys, I''m going to check up on the Tibanna gas facility. The backup core that was still running was connected to it, and¡­ it feels important."


    "Alright, Boss," Tatnia responded.


    "Very well, keep us in the loop," Ahsoka said, before both of them disconnected.


    It took us ten minutes to find our target, as we were forced to move around several broken doors, a caved-in hallway, and one stretch of halls that was still under vacuum from a micrometer impact hole. The engineer made a note of each of these issues for later address.


    The Tibanna facility was a warehouse for gas storage and the facilities necessary to take large shipments and break them down into smaller ones. It would arrive at the station in large pressurized containers and would then be frozen in carbonite for safe transfer to smaller facilities or stored on ships.


    Frozen in carbonite.


    We stepped into the facility and immediately spotted what the backup power had been powering. Tucked along the side of the warehouse, stored next to several massive gas tanks were at least four dozen carbonite slabs, all hanging from the ceiling, all hooked up to power so they would be kept stable.


    Inside each slab was a single person. I stepped closer and immediately recognized the face. A clone trooper, sealed inside carbonite with a surprisingly calm expression. We stood in silence for a long while, my eyes wide as we processed what we were looking at.


    "Being frozen in carbonite is a form of stasis," Nal said, finally breaking the moment. "Used by ancient spacers."


    "They froze themselves¡­ because they knew they were stranded in deep space," Miru added, her energy growing. "The chance of them ever being found was astronomical without you, Boss¡­ but they didn''t know that. They must have thought this was a one-in-a-trillion gamble¡­"


    "We¡­ we should wake them up!" One of the Rebel soldiers said, rushing to the nearest slab of carbonite. "They''ve been trapped for over twenty years! We-"


    "No, don''t touch anything!" I shouted, reaching out and snagging him by his jacket as he ran by. "We have no idea what state they are in. We have no idea what the carbonite has done to them. Not to mention¡­ we have no idea if they are even on our side. They served what became the Empire after all."


    "Are you suggesting that we just leave them?"


    "Of course not. I''m suggesting we don''t crack them open on a station with no active medbay and no security measures," I explained, releasing his jacket. "We need a controlled environment, somewhere we can let them out and help them if they need it. First, though, I need to call Ahsoka."


    Ten minutes later, Ahsoka and Luke were standing in the large warehouse space, staring at the rows of soldiers. Our teams had reorganized and split back up, going to continue the job of getting the station''s shields running, leaving us three alone with the long-frozen troopers.


    "This is¡­ insane," Ahsoka finally said after spending a long few minutes just staring. "I never imagined we would find anyone alive, never mind in stasis¡­"


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    "Would they really attack us?" Luke asked. "On sight?"


    "I don''t actually know," I said, shaking my head. "I assume Ahsoka has explained Order 66 to you?"


    Luke nodded solemnly, standing close to his temporary teacher and fellow Force-sensitive.


    "Well these guys were probably already in stasis when it was given, so chances are, they never heard it." I explained. "But ole Palpy had a long time to work on his plot. I wouldn''t put it past the bastard to find some way to make sure all clones eventually received the Order. Maybe a timer? Some sort of sith bullshit? I don''t know. It''s not worth the risk either way, especially since we shouldn''t let them out without medical support."


    "It''s not. We¡­ I¡­" Ahsoka struggled to say anything, her controlled and calm facade completely falling away.


    I could practically feel the convoluted emotions she was feeling, even without the Force. I stepped closer and put my hand on her shoulder, giving her a gentle, reassuring squeeze.


    "It all falls on Palp''s shoulders," I said. "They were slaves. Worse, they didn''t even have any control of themselves. The fact that Rex managed to hold off the chip as long as he did was incredible. The other clones would not have stood a chance."


    "We were supposed to protect the Republic," Ahsoka said, stepping forward to put her hand on one of the clone troopers chest. "Instead, we got caught under it when it tumbled to the ground. How did we not see it coming? How did we not see this coming?"


    "Because the system was broken. Because the Jedi were defending the Republic, not its people."


    All three of us spun to see Allum standing at the entrance.


    "I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how it all happened. How one person was able to bring the Republic to the ground and corrupt it into the cruel Empire," He explained as he walked closer to Ahsoka. "The only explanation I could imagine was that the system was broken long before the Clone Wars. Nothing with a solid foundation topples like the Republic did. I don''t think it''s the Jedi''s fault, not really. How could it be when the entire galaxy fell for the same trick. For all that makes you special, you''re not infallible."


    "... He''s not wrong. This isn''t your fault. It''s not even the Jedi''s fault," I agreed. "Don''t get me wrong, there are a lot of places that the Order could have done better. A Lot of places. But being guilty of other¡­ lapses in judgment doesn''t mean this one is laid at their feet. They may have fucked up, but they didn''t pull the trigger. Even as early as the Blockade of Naboo, it was already too late."


    Ahsoka was silent for a moment, nodding along. Seeing that she needed a minute, I focused on Allum.


    "What are you doing here?" I asked. "You really shouldn''t be walking around without an escort."


    "I came to see my brothers," He said simply. "It''s been a long time since I last saw any of them."


    Ahsoka whipped around and focused on Allum, her eyes going wide.


    "I knew you felt familiar!" She said. "I¡­ assume you got your chip removed?"


    "No. Well, yes, but not on purpose," He responded. "I was injured, smacked in the head shortly before Order 66 was given. I was lucky, I got brain damage in just the right place. One in a million. I recovered just in time to see my brothers go insane and start murdering the people they had fought beside for years. Vakim and Dazem helped me slip away when I refused to help hunt down more Jedi."


    "Wait, wait, wait, are you saying you''re a clone?" Luke asked, voicing my own question. "What about the rapid aging? And you don''t look anything like them!"


    "Any medical droid capable of facial reconstruction is also capable of changing the way a face looks," Allum explained with a shrug. "And for a bit, I did age rapidly. Then, when we joined the Rebellion, I found out that there was a treatment for it."


    "I''m sorry, what?" I asked, suddenly very focused on Allum. "There is a treatment for the rapid aging? Ahsoka, did you know that?"


    "I did. It was developed by <u>Null-class Commando</u></a> <u>Mereel Skirata</u></a>, with the unwilling help of a<u> Kaminoan</u></a> geneticist, <u>Ko Sai</u></a>," She explained. "The cure was given to the Rebellion to help disseminate to any clones who wanted to defect, with the caveat that they all be given a choice to retire, should they choose to."


    "Almost none of us do. War is all we know," Allum admitted. "We were made for it."


    "That''s fantastic, I had no idea!" I said, slapping Allum on the shoulder. "Here I was thinking these poor souls only had a half-life to look forward to. Does that mean Rex isn''t an old man?"


    "He is older than he should be, because he disappeared shortly after we separated," Ahsoka explained. "He and two other clone troopers took refuge on a desert planet. It was General Syndulla and her team that convinced them to join the Rebellion actually. Luckily, the treatment has some minor restorative effects on clones who haven''t been treated. It is limited but noticeable."


    "That''s good. The more clones that we can free from what the Republic did to them, the better. So, what''s the plan for these guys?"


    "We will have to take them back to Alpha Base," Ahsoka said, Allum nodding in agreement. "The inhibitor chip removal requires special equipment to be done safely, and the anti-aging treatment requires several special injections. The Rebellion will likely need to spend some time generating them."


    "If they need help, the Skyforged will happily volunteer their time to get them what they need," I offered, Allum looking over at me with a happy smile.


    "We will need to get in contact with someone at Alpha Base first," Ahsoka explained. "They will know what else is needed if anything is."


    We discussed our options for a few more minutes, eventually deciding that Ahsoka, Luke, myself and one or two of my crew would return on the Talos Chariot. It was the obvious choice since it could hold all of the carbonite slabs, while Intervention could hold everyone we would be leaving behind, just in case they needed to evacuate.


    As Ahsoka left to contact Alpha Base, Allum stopped me from following.


    "Boss, I want to apologize for not mentioning my past beforehand," He said. "At this point, I''ve spent so long as Allum¡­"


    "It''s alright, I understand. Not everyone is interested in talking about their past," I assured him. "Besides, It''s none of our business unless you want to make it our business."


    "Thank you, Boss," He said with a nod, before looking back at troopers. "I hope they are alright."


    "I''m sure that they will be," I assured him, patting his shoulder. "And if not, we will find some way to help them, I promise you that."


    The ex-clone trooper nodded, and after a few seconds, I left, turning and leaving the warehouse behind. Allum hung behind for a while before jogging to catch up.

 Chapter 105

    About fifteen hours after we discovered the carbonite-encased clones, the Talos Chariot took off from the large hangar bay. Tatnia, myself, and Allum were all on board, as well as Luke and Ahsoka, with Calima as our pilot. Our hold was full of fifty-three slabs, all hooked up to a temporary power generator and a crude monitoring system, which Miru set up for us. We ended up having to leave the Arrow, our speeders, and a crate of Gozanti parts behind to make room for our cold guests, but that was fine.


    According to Ahsoka, Alpha Base was already preparing everything they would need to treat the clone troopers, including removing their bio-chip. I wasn''t really surprised that they were so eager to help. One of the Rebellion''s biggest deficiencies was truly experienced soldiers and leaders. It was, by its very nature, a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters, locking experience and training. Having fully trained soldiers join would always be met with excitement and eagerness.


    We had barely jumped to light speed when I stepped out of my room, dressed in my uniform. I had told the crew that it was up to them whether they wore them consistently, but so far, everyone was wearing them nearly constantly. They felt official, like a constant reminder that we were a solid, well-put-together group, with real tangible resources.


    As I turned to head to the lounge, I caught Ahsoka coming out of one of the bedrooms. She was looking around, confused about something. After a moment, she walked to the door that led to my enchanting room, which I kept locked because not only did it have my enchanting set up, but it was where we kept our stash of precious metal ingots. She fiddled with the door controls, only to frown when it refused to open. She looked around and spotted me.


    "Deacon! Sorry, I¡­ I don''t want to be nosy, but¡­'' She trailed off for a moment before continuing. "Why does it feel like you have an entire zoo of near-comatose animals in this room?"


    Her question threw me for a loop, my brain trying to parse out what she was talking about. Finally, after a few seconds of looking confused, I managed to figure out what the hell she meant.


    "Uhhh, that''s a bit difficult to explain," I responded before stepping past her and tapping in the code on the door, which sprung open. Before she could step in, I turned around in the doorway and held my hand out. "So I''m going to say a lot of words, and some of them may be confusing. The important thing is that you understand that when I say Soul, I mean life force. I''m not fucking around with actual souls, alright?"


    I knew that I could have told her just to buzz off and mind her own business, but Ahsoka was an ally. Someone whom my team and I would hopefully be working together with a lot in the future. Not to mention, she was someone I would like to think was a friend, and I wanted her to understand what I was doing rather than watching me with suspicion. I turned and walked into the room, leaving the ex-Jedi standing at the door, looking around with wide eyes. I followed her gaze first to the enchanting table, which very much looked like a ritual table, then to the boxes full of soul gems, before finally resting on the few dozen bars of platinum and gold tucked into the corner. When she was done, she looked back at me.


    "Fine¡­ despite that statement being very concerning, I will listen."


    "So, my magic has a method of instilling effect into objects that you wear," I explained, pulling off one of my rings and tossing it to her. "It''s called enchanting and requires a few things. The first is a specially designed table, like this one. The second is the object you wish to enchant. The third is something called a soul gem¡­"


    I spent about fifteen minutes explaining the process of enchanting. I assured her that despite the name, I was not stealing souls, merely gathering the dispersed life force that animals release when they die. She seemed uneasy about the idea, but after examining a filled soul gem, she seemed to accept I wasn''t somehow dabbling in Sith alchemy or anything. Apparently, that kind of thing was hard to ignore. What she was instead agitated about was what I used to make soul gems.


    "Are you telling me all of those were once Kyber crystals?" She asked, looking down into the large, full box of filled soul gems. "And they turn to dust when you are done? Do you have any idea how rare Kyber crystals are now, with the Empire cracking down on their sale and blockading Ilum with an entire armada?!"


    Instead of responding, I reached under the table and pulled out another crate, clicking it open and turning it to her, showing off the massive pile of Kyber crystals. Her eyes went so wide they looked like they were about to fall out of her head.


    "Wh-what? Where did¡­ where did you get these?" She asked, leaning down and running her hand over them. "I can feel them, but I''ve never seen some of these colors¡­ is that pink? And black? Where did you find these?"


    "In a cave on Dantooine," I explained. "If you''d like, I could show you and Luke exactly where sometime. But this isn''t even a fraction of what the cave contained. There was enough crystal in that cave for a couple thousands of lightsabers. Probably more if you were careful."


    "Dantooine? That¡­ How did we not know about it?"


    "Because it was a very well-kept secret of the Jedi Enclave that resided there," I explained. "So when the enclave was destroyed nearly four millennia ago by Darth Malak, the secret was lost."


    "... how could you possibly know that?" She asked. "I barely know anything about that time period, and there was an entire class about it at the temple."


    "Because I am the reincarnation of Revan, here to create a new empire," I explained with a shrug. "Wanna join up? We have great benefits."


    She stared at me, her eyes wide again, her mouth hanging open as well. After a long moment, I finally lost it, cracking up and laughing. Finally understanding that I was joking, she punched me in the shoulder, her own annoyed smile on her lips. I kept chuckling even as I rubbed the spot she hit. At that moment, I was pretty sure I had gotten a glimpse of Ahsoka before the darkness of the galaxy had settled over her. Before the Jedi Order tossed her to the side and her Master murdered them.


    "No reason to be violent. If it helps, I promise that whatever Jedi group Luke starts after this war, I''ll keep them supplied with naturally grown Kyber crystals, even if I have to find them myself."


    "You seem pretty confident that''s going to happen," She responded, ignoring my remark about her punch. "Something you''d like to share?"


    "Sure," I responded, the Togruta leaning in to listen. I grabbed one of the pink crystals and handed it to her. "You can have this one."


    She frowned and accepted the crystal with a confused expression, the dark pink chunk of Force-connected stone about twice the size of anything that could fit into a lightsaber. She looked lost for a moment before finally realizing I had made a joke. She scoffed and rolled her eyes but didn''t push for more. Instead, she slipped the crystal into her pocket and nodded.


    "Thank you. I will put it to good use," She said, before looking past me and around the room. "So what sort of effects can you achieve with this enchanting?"


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    "Well, I can increase your dexterity, your strength, your resistance to fire, cold, or shock-"


    "Shock? Like electricity and lightning?" Ahsoka asked, suddenly very interested.


    "Yeah, it''s one of the main types of magic combat spells," I said, holding my hand out and sending a single, low-power spark of electricity to the stack of ingot against the wall. "You''ve seen me use some of those spells. But to answer what I know you''re thinking, I don''t know if it would help against Force lightning. If it was just electricity, it would, but it''s also full of malicious intent and rage, fueled by the dark side. I could make both you and Luke something with that enhancement, but I can''t promise it will actually help."


    "I¡­ couldn''t pass up a chance to get some protection from one of the Sith''s most powerful weapons," She responded after a pause. "Even if that chance is small. You don''t mind?"


    "No, I''ve got no problem making you and Luke something. It will probably take the rest of the trip, but I''ll get them done."


    "Do you mind if I observe?" She asked, looking genuinely curious.


    "You can watch if you want, but it''s not very exciting unless I fuck up," I explained. "Grab a chair from the lounge and a pair of safety goggles from Miru''s workshop. I have time to make one now, but I will make the other tomorrow."


    She nodded and left to find a chair and the goggles while I grabbed two soul gems and sat down at the enchanting table. She returned and picked out a simple metal cuff with carvings in it that almost looked Celtic, handing it to me so I could get to work.


    Over the next seven or eight hours, I concentrated on the cuff, making sure to go nice and slow to make the defense as potent as possible. I could feel the progress I was making, the process was significantly easier than it had been when I first started. Pretty soon I would be ready to try using three soul gems instead of two.


    By the time I finally finished, I looked around the room, not surprised to find it empty, though the chair was still there. I quickly cast Clairvoyance and followed it to the first deck, where I found Ahsoka meditating on a cargo crate, her legs crossed as several small objects floating around her. Luke was nearby, doing the same thing, though he only had one object, and it was stationary in front of him, floating at eye level.


    Rather than interrupt their meditation, I gently placed the cuff next to Ahsoka on the corner of the crate she was sitting on. After that, I went upstairs to check on Calima and Allum, making sure they were good, before crawling into bed and calling it a night.


    When we finally arrived at Alpha Base three and a half days after we left the station, both Luke and Ahsoka disembarked wearing enchanted cuffs. Luke had gone as far as to ask me to help test them, asking me to shock him with and without it on his wrist. He confirmed they worked and that my ability to heal away things like minor burns and aches from meditating all day was the best thing ever.


    As we made our way down the ramp and into the hangar reserved for us, we were greeted by nearly a dozen people. More than a few of them shared the same face, though a few seemed to be a bit older than others. Ahsoka headed straight for one of them, not hesitating to give them a hug.


    "Rex, it''s good to see you again," She said, the bald, salt-and-pepper bearded clone nodding as he returned her hug.


    "It''s good to see you too, Commander," He responded. "I heard you found a whole lot of my brothers."


    "We did, fifty-three to be exact," She answered, pulling back and patting his shoulder. "It was quite the shock."


    "I can imagine."


    "This is Deacon Roy, leader of the Skyforged Vanguard," Ahsoka said, turning slightly to gesture to me. "His second in command, Tatnia. Without their help, we would have never found them."


    "Good to meet you both," He said, holding out his hand, which I happily shook. "Thank you for helping my brothers. We should talk more once they are being properly checked over."


    The frozen clone troopers were slowly and carefully unloaded from the Chariot and guided to a singular large room, where they were hooked up to monitoring equipment. Several medical droids and doctors, a few of whom I recognized from my time healing people from the Yavin rescue mission, scanned and took notes about the clones as they came in.


    Eventually, everyone was transferred over to the new room. We watched from the sidelines as doctors and medical droids continued to scan them. General Syndulla joined us once things had settled down. She greeted us each with a handshake.


    "We have medical teams working to prepare the surgery rooms as we speak, as well as three medical synthesizers working to put together the rapid aging cure injections," She explained. "We should be able to start within the hour. Any luck identifying the highest rank?"


    "No, General, none of the usual changes to the armor are present," Rex explained, brushing his beard before shaking his head. "Either they are all troopers, or they never bothered to change their armor."


    "Unfortunate. Ahsoka, I know you wish to be there as they are treated, to assist and keep them calm, but..."


    "We can''t risk them identifying me, even just by my voice," She agreed with a nod. "As small of a chance as it is, it is not worth the risk."


    "As long as you don''t say anything, there''s no issue," Rex tried to counter. "I don''t think there''s much point in sending the Commander away, not when hibernation sickness means they will be completely blind."


    "Better safe than sorry, Rex," Ahsoka said, the technically younger clone eventually frowning. "I''ll be waiting in the observation area should anything go wrong."


    The ex-Jedi patted her long-time friend''s shoulder before starting to leave the room. Before she could get far, Luke caught up and left with her. Rex was clearly annoyed at the necessity of the situation but eventually let out a sigh and focused on his brothers.


    While we were all waiting for the process to begin, Captain Rex finally got a good look at Allum. Somehow, despite looking nothing like his genetic donor, the "older" clone trooper recognized him for what he was.


    "One of the face changers, eh?" He asked. "I considered it once I got the treatment, but I could never commit to it. Got one other here that did, though."


    The clone captain gestured to the nearby gathering of several other clone troopers, all here to support their brothers. Only one of them had a modified face, though it was much less dramatic than Allum''s, as they could have passed for a close relative of Jango Fett rather than his clone.


    "I didn''t have much of a choice, captain," Allum explained with a shrug. "My chip was damaged during a head injury just before the¡­ order came through. The war was still technically going on when I ran, rather than getting accused of treason. My soon-to-be wife smuggled me out to her home planet, where I was quietly given citizenship. I had no choice but to change my face since there was no Rebellion to seek safe shelter in."


    Rex nodded in understanding, slapping Allum''s shoulder. I couldn''t help but smile at the instant camaraderie between brothers. They continued chatting before Rex eventually guided Allum over to the rest of the troopers, introducing him to the group and leaving Tatnia and me alone to wait.

 Chapter 106

    After twenty minutes or so of watching multiple people scanning and monitoring the trapped clone troopers, one of the doctors began to guide one of the carbonite slabs out of the large room. Surprisingly, it was the same Mon Calamari who had been in charge of the reception at Thila Command, along with a medical droid. As they moved, Captain Rex followed behind them, and after motioning for Tatnia to stay behind, I did as well. The medical droid of all things, spotted me first and attempted to convince me to return to the rest, but the Doctor, seeming to recognize me, ordered it to let me follow.


    As we stepped into a much smaller room, one clearly converted into a sterile operating theater, with a hospital bed and several machines I didn''t recognize, the Doctor pulled me aside. Behind them, others began preparing to defrost the trooper.


    "I''ve seen how much good your abilities could do at Thila, so I will allow you to remain in the room. But, for now, I want you to keep your¡­ magic to yourself," He explained, staring me down with the confidence of an experienced doctor in their domain. "We have absolutely no idea how your ability works, so predicting how it will interact with our equipment and treatment is impossible. If the situation spirals out of control, I may call for you to help. You may also help once the patient is calm and capable of giving informed consent. Understood?"


    "I understand, Doctor. I''ll keep my magic to myself," I said before quickly adding. "I should also say I have a spell that calms an individual, should that be useful."


    "I will keep that in mind," He said with a nod before turning back to the rest of the room.


    I walked over to stand in a clear corner, out of everyone''s way. Once I was sure I wouldn''t cause any issues, I gave a nod to General Syndulla, who was standing outside the operating room behind a clear barrier with several other people of various species. I turned back to watch the carbonite slab float down onto a bench of some kind, its onboard repulsors turning off.


    "We are deactivating the carbonite slab''s repulsors to remove one more complication from the equation," The doctor explained, seeming to treat this like any other operation under observation, dictating his methods and plan. "We will begin the defrosting process, with Captain Rex on standby should the patient awake confused or distressed. Should the patient refuse to calm down, we will administer a sedative. After much discussion, it has been concluded that, due to the non-life-threatening nature and the risk of the procedure, we must ask for consent before attempting to remove the bio-chip."


    I looked over at Rex, who caught my look and shook his head.


    "Don''t look at me. I told them that every single one of them will want it removed," He responded quietly as the Doctor continued to talk. "We may have differing opinions on some things, but not wanting to be mind-controlled slaves is pretty consistent. The only reason they might say no is if the carbonite leaves them confused. It''s not a fun process."


    "You''ve been frozen in carbonite?" I asked, surprised.


    "A crazy scheme from General Skywalker."


    "Ah, yeah, that makes sense."


    "The technician will now begin the defrosting process," The Doctor explained before focusing on Rex. "Captain Rex, if you would be so kind as to come closer."


    The aforementioned technician leaned closer to the carbonite slab and began taping and shifting the controls along the side of the slab. The temperature control systems built into the frame began to hum, and after a few seconds, the relief of the trooper began to glow red. The controls began a quiet warning whistle before the thing thin-casting encapsulation the cloned warrior began to melt, releasing bright beams of light as it did. It looked almost identical to the process I had seen in the movies. The sound was the same as well, though a bit louder than I remembered, a wet crackling sound that made me think of stepping on something crunch andy goey.


    Thankfully, unlike in the movies, the doctors had the foresight not to dump the clone out onto the floor. Instead, they stayed lying in the mold of their body, shivering and twitching.


    "Hello!? Who''s there?" He called out, reaching out wildly, gripping the edge of the, trying to pull himself out but failing due to the weakness caused by being frozen. "W-whats happening? Anyone?!"


    "It''s alright, soldier, you''re safe," Rex said, stepping closer to take his clone brother''s hand. "You''re in the medbay now."


    "Who are you? What happened?" He asked, no longer flailing around but still on edge, looking around blindly, his eyesight obviously gone.


    "We found the station and pulled you and the rest of the survivors out," Rex explained. "My designation is CT-7567. Captain Rex. What is your designation, soldier? You have a name?"


    "CT-14-2839, Sir," He responded almost instantly." He responded. "Looker, Sir. How many did you pull out, Sir?"


    "... We have fifty-two slabs remaining, Looker, you are the first. Is that everyone?"


    "Yes, Sir. That is everyone who was stuck on the station," He answered confidently, the tension he was holding slowly sliding away. "We thought¡­ we had no idea if anyone would ever find us, Sir. How long has it been?"


    "It''s been a good chunk of time, Looker. Over twenty years. A lot has changed since you went under."


    The clone soldier, who was wet and still shivering, stilled as Rex explained how long they had been frozen. Before he could react, Rex continued.


    "I know it''s a lot to take in, Looker, but there is something very important we need to talk about first. During the time you were asleep, a conspiracy in the Republic was revealed. Certain members of the government conspired with the Kaminoans to have biological control chips placed in our heads. Every clone ever born has them."


    "What?" Looker asked, once again trying to push themselves up. "That¡­ What happened?"


    "A civil war," Rex answered solemnly. "But luckily, with the right preparation and some more advanced medical technology, the chip is removable. The operation is safe but not infallible, so we need your permission to try."


    For a long while, the trooper was silent, their mind working through everything that Rex had just revealed to them. Eventually, after nearly a minute, the trooper nodded, still gripping Rex''s hand like a lifeline


    "Do it," He said with a nod. "I won''t be a threat to the Republic. Not after having sacrificed so much to protect it."


    "All right, trooper. A doctor is going to administer some anesthetic, which will knock you out. Next time you wake up, you will control chip-free. Most of your symptoms from the hibernation should have faded as well, so you should feel better."


    "Thank you, Captain Rex. I''ll see you on the other side."


    The older-looking clone trooper reached out and patted the soldier''s arm while one of the doctors put an injection tool against his neck and administered the sedative. The soldier was asleep moments later, and Rex stepped back to let the doctors work.


    "I would like to note that if that was barely passable as consent," The head doctor said as he confirmed the clone soldier was unconscious. "In any other circumstance, I would have refused to perform the surgery. Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of being one hundred percent truthful in this circumstance."


    As we watched, the clone trooper was transferred to the hospital bed. An expensive-looking machine was wheeled over, the top of which was a plate-sized sensor unit attached by sturdy multi-jointed limb. Over the course of five minutes, the sensor developed a detailed scan of the trooper''s brain and identified the bio-chip.


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation."The location of the chip follows the notes we have from several other procedures performed on other clone soldiers," The Mon Calamari doctor explained. "Which means the standard procedure should work without issues."


    Once the scan was complete and the chip located, the Doctor and his aides began preparing the soldier for surgery. They shaved his head, then used a solid-looking contraption to stabilize his head. Once they were ready, they began the procedure, first sterilizing the scalp, then cutting into it to create a flap of skin, and pulling that back to reveal the skull. They then used what almost looked like a miniaturized drill pressed, which attached to the same mount the soldier''s head was secured to cut into his skull. Once the baseball-sized hole was cut into his skull, the Doctor used a remote manipulator, the kind that translated large movements into tiny, microscale shifts to perform the actual surgery. I didn''t have the best angle to see everything, but I could see when the Doctor pulled out a thin slice of flesh.


    It took another stretch of surgery to undo the incision and reconnect the circle of the removed skull, but when his scalp was finally re-attached, the Doctor stepped away from his tools.


    "Alright, everyone, that went very well," He said. "But the tide has only begun to rise. One down, fifty-two to go."


    The turnaround was rather quick, all things considered. The hospital bed was wheeled away, replaced by another identical one, and the nurses and droids re-steralized the tools. Soon, another slab was on the table, and the process began again.


    Over the next three hours, fifteen of the fifty-three soldiers went under the knife with no real abnormalities, save when we stumbled on the highest rank of the survivors, a Lieutenant who went by Rider, CT-4478. He was the only one so far to suspect something was going on beyond what Rex was saying.


    "What were they conspiring to do?" He asked when Rex explained why the chip existed, managing to sit up despite his obvious temporary weakness.


    "To take control of the Republic and turn it into a dictatorship," Rex explained, wincing but ultimately refusing to lie directly.


    "... if they controlled all of the clones, the Republic would have been defenseless," Lieutenant Rider guessed. "They would have taken over in days, weeks at best¡­"


    I could feel the tension ratcheting up, the guards stationed just outside the surgery theater preparing to intervene as the medical staff started to back up. I made a calming gesture, General Syndulla nodding and relaying the order to her men.


    "Since you are offering to remove the chip, that must mean you are rebelling against the new dictatorship," He guessed again, proving his intelligence. "Unless this is all an act¡­"


    "Not a ruse Leuitenant. We are part of the Rebellion," I said, getting a look from Rex and a few people behind the protective screen. "We are worried about triggering anything hidden inside the chip. That''s why we are feeding you and your men as little information as possible while still giving you enough so you can give informed consent to remove the chip."


    "Who are you?" The clone asked, his sightless gaze turning towards my voice.


    "My name is Deacon Roy, leader of the Skyforged Vanguard, a rebel-leaning mercenary group. We were part of the group that found you and your men."


    "Why are you here?"


    "My team found you," I explained. "I didn''t want to pass you off to someone else, I needed to see it through."


    "... What''s going to happen to my men?" He asked after a long pause.


    "If you consent to getting the chip removed, you will spend some time recovering, then you can do what you want. Leave, stay, whatever you want," I responded. "You are not going to be held against your will, nor are you going to be forced to join up. Your war is over. What you and your men do is up to you."


    "...And if we say no?" He asked, his muscles shaking as he prepared himself to do something stupid.


    "Then you can spend some time recovering from hibernation sickness, and I will personally bring you somewhere you can bum a ride," I explained. "We need to keep Opsec, so it might not be a luxury trip, but I promise you, you will be treated humanely. I''ll even make sure you have some credits, so you''re not just stuck somewhere."


    Just like Looker, Lieutenant Rider spent a long while considering the offer before finally nodding. Eventually, his posture shifted and he lay back down in the carbonite mold.


    "Fine, I consent to the procedure. I''m trusting you, Deacon Roy, and you, Captain Rex."


    Once the officer was under and the procedure began, Rex leaned over to talk to me.


    "What was that?" He asked, his voice more curios than accusing.


    "He had already caught you trying to hold back the truth," I explained. "He was beginning to question if anything you said was true. I was a different voice, answering his questions fully. Would have preferred it to be someone higher up than me, like the General, but I was here, so what can you do?"


    When the Doctor finally called the procedures for the day, Rex headed to the room where the treated troopers were while I headed back to the Chariot. Before I had gotten more than a dozen feet, someone called out for me. General Syndulla, with heard guards nearby, was waving to me.


    "General Syndulla, it''s good to see you," I said as I made my way to her. "I gotta ask, how did everyone react to the news of the troopers?"


    "It certainly threw off everyone''s orbit for a moment," She said with a chuckle. "I''m glad we found them. I can''t imagine drifting through space for all eternity like that. I wonder if they would have ever been found."


    I had to bite my tongue from mentioning that, as far as I knew, they never would have been. My teasing about just knowing things had been fun so far, but I''m not sure how people would react to me having concrete foreknowledge too.


    "I just hope that whatever they choose, they can find some peace or at least a place in this world," I said, shaking my head. "What the Republic did to them makes me sick."


    "It definitely puts things into perspective," the General admitted, shaking her head. "Unfortunately, besides treating them better, there is not much we can do about it now."


    I nodded, and for a second, we both stood silently in the hall. Eventually, she cleared her throat and continued.


    "Do you have a moment? We wanted to discuss Omega Station and the preliminary result of the inspection," she explained.


    "On an official level?" I asked, getting a nod of confirmation in return. "Because I would prefer to have Tatnia with me if we are going to be shaking hands on deals."


    "That''s fine, I can have someone escort her to the conference room."


    "In that case, lead the way."


    She nodded and, with a gesture, headed off down the hall, her guards following behind us. I let out a sigh, knowing that it was very likely this would turn into a long, drawn-out conversation depending on who else was in the meeting. I shook my head, resigning myself to the situation and, with fingers crossed that no politicians would be involved, followed after the Rebel leader.

 Chapter 107

    General Syndulla led me to a small conference room not too far from where the clones were being kept and processed. We settled down and, after a few minutes of waiting, we were joined by Tatnia, as well as another individual that I recognized but couldn''t put a name to immediately. He was older than me by at least twenty, maybe even thirty years, with white hair and a white beard. After a few moments of wracking my brain, I finally realized who it was, which was shocking. As far as I knew, he shouldn''t have escaped from Yavin IV.


    "General Dodanna, it''s great to meet you," I said, standing slightly to shake his hand. "Its good to see you made it off of Yavin IV safe and sound."


    He seemed shocked that I recognized him, taking a moment to look me in the eye, before shifting a look to his Twi''lek comrade. He shook my hand with a firm grip, before sitting down in one of the many seats around the table.


    "It was a close thing," He admitted, a shift in his eyes belaying just how close it had been. "If General Syndulla hadn''t arrived with considerable support from CIS salvage¡­ We would have been looking at a very different scenario."


    "I''m glad it worked out," I said with a nod. "And I''m glad that the Rebellion is learning how useful the old droids left behind by the Separatists can be. Even if it means we might end up competing for resources."


    "They certainly make excellent disposable assets," Hera agreed with a chuckle, shaking her head and leaning forward. "With what the engineers are reporting from Omega Station, you won''t lack droid parts for some time."


    "Unfortunately, we don''t have the time or support to take them all apart and reassemble them correctly, if that is even possible with what the damaged ship''s droid brain did to them. With any luck, there might be some intact droids stored deeper in the ship."


    "Well¡­ we did agree that all salvage was yours¡­" General Dodanna said. "If you can''t do anything with them, perhaps we could purchase the parts?"


    I gave him a look, leaning back in my chair. While more money would certainly be useful, as usual, assets and physical materials were worth more. After chewing my lip for a moment, I nodded.


    "I have a better idea. You take the parts, disassemble them, and build however many droids you can from the good parts," I offered, getting both of the general''s attention. "And in return, we get forty percent of the resulting functional droids."


    "Twenty-five percent," General Syndulla countered. "We will be doing all of the work after all."


    "Thirty, and you can use the Munificent as the base of operations for your repair program," I counteroffered. "There should be plenty of facilities on board to repair droids and plenty of space to store them. Just keep in mind that already functional droids are fully ours."


    "We would have to repair all of the facilities¡­ But having an off-site facility for droid repair and distribution¡­We might even be able to start a minor production facility¡­" General Dodanna said, almost mumbling to himself as he stroked his beard. "As long as we can move droid assets to and from the station fully, then that is agreeable."


    "We will have to come up with some sort of security process to protect the station. The best defense it has right now is the fact that it''s lost in deep space," I pointed out. "As long we can figure out a way to do that, then yes."


    Again, I stood, my hand reached out to shake each of their hands, sealing the deal. As far as I could tell, this was a win-win for me. We would get twenty-five percent of the repaired droids for our use without having to invest any of our time into doing the actual work. On top of that, if the Rebellion had any sense, they would repair the weapons and shields of the Munificent, giving us another layer of defense. Even the fact that they would be setting up what would probably become an important facility, one attached to our station, would mean they would be invested in its overall survival.


    When I sat back down, General Syndulla was the first to speak up.


    "I''m surprised you would hand over the control of a portion of the station so easily, even with how unorthodox a portion it is," She said, studying me closely. "Especially after what happened with the negotiations."


    "General, I think we both know that the Skyforged Vanguard is incapable of keeping that station running for very long, even with the large infusion of credits we are expecting from our cut of the supplies," I admitted, getting a nod of understanding from both generals, though they looked surprised I would freely admit it. "It''s too big, uses too much fuel, and would require too much maintenance. Meanwhile, I know for a fact that having a safe haven to keep supplies and stage assets would be a huge boon for the Rebellion."


    "What are you suggesting, Deacon?" General Syndulla asked.


    "The main station belongs to the Skyforged Vanguard, and the Rebellion has already agreed to use its manpower to repair it. For the low cost of the resources needed to repair it, as well as assistance in keeping it running, the Rebellion would gain a safe haven, a distribution point, and a rallying point."


    "I will admit, that was the primary reason we sought out the station in the first place," General Dodanna said, his elbows on the table and his hands bridge in front of his mouth. "But, that is a lot of resources to put into an asset that isn''t ours."


    The room was quiet for a while, everyone considering the conundrum we had found. I really did need the support to keep the station running. Sure, I could shut down two-thirds of the station and cut the costs of maintenance and supplies, but that would just leave the station vulnerable. The Rebels desperately wanted a station like this they could use as a distribution point, something secure they could use as a buffer from their larger bases.


    "How about this," I started, getting everyone''s attention. "The Skyforged Vanguard goes out, and we do what we do, this time focusing on a larger ship. Something Imperial, probably, and a combat focused ship. Then, we hand it over to you. A functioning warship whose primary role would be to defend the station, but if something should happen, for example, you dislike the way I am running the station, it would act as collateral for abandoning an asset you invested in."


    "I¡­ It would have to be a significant ship to satisfy some of the more¡­ stubborn and controlling leaders of the Rebellion," General Dodanna pointed out. "Something bigger or more powerful than your Intervention."


    "That''s fine. We''ve gotten a bit stronger since we took that anyway," I said confidently, dusting off my uniform with a smirk. "We can handle it."


    "We would need to discuss this with others, especially Admiral Ackbar, though he isn''t who I''m worried about convincing," General Syndulla explained. "But I like the general idea. I think we can pitch it properly. Plus, having an asset specifically for defending the station will be reassuring, especially since we will have more control over the Munificent, even if it remains attached to the station."


    We continued to discuss the deal, eventually deciding that the idea of dividing the station up now, without knowing how extensive the damage was throughout all of the decks, was pointless.


    We did come up with a basic security system for protecting the ship. Once the station, including the Munifinct, was sufficiently repaired, we would turn on its engines and accelerate the station, which at this point was already stopped. We would then put a comms beacon somewhere far away in deep space. People would leave hyperspace at the beacon and then use it to communicate with us. They would then go through the security checks, which would involve passwords, codewords, scans, and visual inspections from cameras posted on the comms beacon, or maybe even stationed ships. If they passed, we would feed them our new location.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    It wasn''t foolproof, as someone could transmit the location, but since we would constantly be moving around in deep space, our location would constantly change. At the very least, it would give us enough time to evacuate.


    Once we finished discussing security, we ended the meeting with the two generals promising to know the answer to my proposal by the next morning. After Tatnia and I left, we headed straight for the Chariot. As we were walking, I looked over at my second in command.


    "Awful quiet in there," I pointed out, the woman wincing slightly.


    "Sorry, Boss. I''m just a bit tired. Besides, you did pretty well," She admitted with a shrug. "I think we could have gotten a few more percentage points in the droid deal if you really wanted to get aggressive, but that''s fine. Though, I will say it''s unfortunate that we will be spending so much effort to steal a ship only to hand it off to the Rebellion."


    "Tatnia, please, you know how we work. Do you really think I would let us invest our time and effort into something if I didn''t think we could make a profit off it?" I asked rhetorically, putting my hand on her shoulder and giving her a nudge. "I''m sure we can find an appropriate target, one that lets us profit too. If not, theres always next time."


    "Most of that was dumb luck," She pointed out, though she was now smiling as well. "You have any brilliant ideas yet?"


    "No, but I don''t claim to be the only one coming up with good ideas. You guys beat me out more often than not."


    "Yeah, yeah, fair enough, Boss."


    We made it back to the ship not long after that, both of us splitting off to go to our rooms for a while.


    Over the next three days, we spent most of our time split between the ship and the rooms where the clone troopers were being kept and watched over. I sat in for all of the surgeries, the procedure getting so repetitive that, for the most part, they bled together. The clones who had already gotten their chips removed were slowly recovering as, apparently, the symptoms from hibernation sickness scaled slightly to the length of time spent in stasis. Since they had been stuck for over twenty years, the clones had around a week or so of recovery time ahead of them. Luckily, all of the clones were grateful once we were able to explain the situation to them fully. Even better, once the first round of patients had woken up and learned the truth, they could help the next ones.


    More than a few of them were not happy about the idea of working with the Rebellion. Instead, they demanded that they be dropped off somewhere. Still, the vast majority seemed to be at least entertaining the idea of hanging around.


    We also received word that the powers that be accepted the bargain we made, as long as the ship we managed to get was of good enough size and quality and not stolen from allies. Some of the more controlling leaders wanted to demand we leave a ship behind as collateral, but General Syndulla was able to shut that down. I struggled to imagine what they could have meant but brushed it off for the sake of my sanity.


    With our new deal set, Tatnia, Allum, Calima, and I left Alpha base behind, setting our course to Omega Station. On the way, I spent some time working on my enchanting, practicing on a few strength and dexterity-enhancing rings. I didn''t have anyone to hand them out to at the moment, but I could feel myself at the cusp of being able to handle a three-soul gem enchantment, so practice was what I needed.


    Thankfully, my practice paid off because, on the last full day of travel, I successfully struggled through a full, three-soul gem enchantment. It was a strength amulet, one for me to wear while I was wearing my armor, and I could easily feel the difference when I put it on. It wasn''t exactly an incremental increase, but it was definitely noticeable just from moving around.


    Of course, it also took nearly twelve hours and nearly broke my mind. When the enchantment was finally done, I spent a good while drooling on the enchanting table, unable to remember who, what, or when I was. When I eventually recovered a basic sense of sentience, I made it only a few steps out of the enchanting room before I collapsed. Which was where Tatnbia found me three or four hours later.


    "Boss!" She shouted as she rushed to me, her words not entirely making sense. "What the hell, Deacon? What happened?"


    I felt her roll me over, and my eyes struggled to focus on her face. Attempted to tell her I was fine, but only a slight groan came out. For a moment she looked like she was about to panic before she looked around and spotted the still-open enchanting room door.


    "Did you over do your enchanting again, Boss?" She asked her voice taking a turn for annoyed.


    I managed to nod slightly, but apparently enough for her to pick up on. She let out a long groan and shook her head.


    "Shivering Hells boss, you scared me. Thought we might have picked up something dangerous at Alpha Base," She said, struggling to help me to my feet while adding. "We need a medical droid or something in case you get hurt, by the way."


    I did my best to help as she mostly carried me to my room, laying me back on my bed before dropping into my chair.


    "Didn''t using your magic help with all this?" She asked. "I''ve never seen you this bad."


    I let out a long groan, which transitioned into a sigh of relief as I managed to cast Respite on myself. I followed it up with a few castings of Fast Heal and repeat Respites. After draining my magicka, I held up a thumbs up.


    "Thank you, Nia," I said genuinely. "I tried to enchant with three soul gems for the first time."


    "You haven''t gotten nearly this bad before," She pointed out.


    "I''ve been enchanting for¡­ like twelve hours?" I admitted. "It does a number on my brain. But it should get easier every time I do it."


    "Well, maybe next time you have someone nearby to help, just in case."


    "Do you want to sit in the enchanting room for twelve hours?" I asked, "I''ll be more careful next time, but there''s not much I can do beyond working hard and getting better."


    "Did you at least do it?" She asked, looking curious. "The enchanting, I mean."


    "I did. It turned out pretty good, as far as I can tell."


    After a few seconds of silence, where I was letting my mana refill so I could cast more healing and Respite, Tatnia stood up from her chair and made her way to the door.


    "Try not to fry your mind for a few days, at least," Tatnia said as she stopped by the doorway. "It would be hard for you to lead the team if you became a vegetable."


    "I''ll keep that in mind," I said, managing to sit up slightly. "Thanks for the help."


    She nodded and left, the door sealing itself behind her. When she was gone, I looked down at the amulet I had just finished, sitting in my hand, before putting it on my nightstand and crawling under my blankets. I earned an early night.

 Chapter 108

    When we arrived at our destination the next morning, I had recovered enough to make my way around under my own power. I still felt a little well done around the edges, but it faded more the longer I was awake. Frequent healing and Respite spells helped the process.


    We spent a few minutes approaching the station at sublight speeds, dropping out of hyperspace far away from our destination. Omega Station was now the center of a lot more activity, which meant approaching it took more time and a lot more communication. While we were gone, several ships had arrived with more personnel, including a few repair ships that floated along the hull of the station and around the Munificent. As we came in to land in the same massive hangar bay as before, I could see people inside thick, bulky space suits, sealing up holes by welding plates over them. Quite a few droids worked alongside them, walking around the hull, carrying supplies, and assisting in the welding.


    When we finally touched down and I made my way down the boarding ramp, I was immediately greeted by Miru, who had a hug for each of us. She was clearly excited, though I couldn''t tell if it was because of something that had happened or if she was just that excited to see us. When I asked, she laughed and told me to wait for the meeting.


    With that bit of information, I immediately started getting everyone together. It took about twenty minutes for everyone to make their way to the hangar and then to the Chariot lounge. Once we were all there, I gave everyone who stayed behind a look and a gesture.


    "Well? You''re all clearly extremely pleased with something, so lay it on us," I said expectantly. "Tell us the good news."


    "We completed our primary inspection of supplies," Nal said, reading from a datapad. "The results are encouraging, to say the least."


    "We found three hundred tons of foodstuff spread between several different storage locations," Julus explained, reading from a datapad. "Our cut of that is a bit over one and a half million credits."


    I looked at Julus with wide eyes. We had expected a pretty large payout from the supplies, but hearing that we had just made that much money¡­ it was still rather mind-boggling.


    "That is not all. We located two intact large-scale armories," Nal added with a smile. "All Clone War era arms and armor, but all fully functional. Our cut of that is just over eight hundred thousand credits."


    My surprised look switched over to Nal, who was smirking, his sharp teeth exposed. After a long moment, I shook my head, focusing on the moment and what he had said.


    "We should see if we can''t convince them to let us keep some of of the weapons and armor," I suggested, rubbing my chin. "The armor is far below anything we have, and the weapons are basic, but a solid stockpile of weapons would be nice. I''m sure there are probably things like grenades and other stuff, which we desperately need a source of."


    "They seemed pretty interested in it, Boss," Julus responded. "But I can check. How bad do you want it?"


    "Not that bad. We can always buy some if we need it."


    "That''s not all, Boss!" Miru said, practically bouncing in her seat. "Nal, tell him!"


    "We found the hangar where the station''s starfighter complement resided," Nal explained. "It was along the side opposite the collision sight and was sealed with blast doors."


    "Then¡­ It still contained the starfighters, I''m guessing?"


    "Nearly two full squadrons," Nal answered. "The hangar bay contained twenty-one <u>Nimbus-class V-wing</u></a>s and two <u>LAAT Space variant gunships</u></a>."


    "What kind of state were they in?"


    "There was damage from the impact and some drifting after the artificial gravity failed¡­ and then more when it kicked on again," Miru explained. "But if I sacrifice two, maybe three of the worse-off V-wings, I could get the rest working. The LAATs were mostly fine, save some minor hull damage. Everything needs a thorough look over and testing before they are used, but as far as I can tell, everything looks good!"


    "Wait... Why didn''t the clones take them?" Tatnia asked as I tried to visualize what the V-wing looked like in my head. "They were stuck here. Did they not know about them?"


    "''Cause neither of them have hyperdrives," Miru explained. "The V-wings also don''t have shields."


    "Damn¡­ I forgot about the no shield thing," I admitted, shaking my head. "I don''t think I''m willing to put people in them if they don''t have any shields."


    "Even if we don''t keep them, Boss, they should fetch us another million credits, at least," Julus explained. "I don''t know about the LAATs. Didn''t know they even made a space version."


    "Holy shit," I said, my eyes wide, looking down at the datapad that Nal had passed me with all the information we had just discussed. "That''s more than 2.3 million credits and then another million worth of military hardware."


    "Do not forget we also gain any intact droids, plus whatever the rebellion salvage," Vaz pointed out. "They have been surprisingly useful so far."


    "All while securing a solid base of operations for ourselves that, apparently, we won''t have to staff or fund the upkeep ourselves." Julus finished.


    "...And you doubted that we could find a way to profit from our next mission in multiple ways," I said, looking over at Tatnia, who rolled her eyes in response. "I''m going to go ahead and divide up another hundred thousand credits and distribute them to everyone. Everyone has more than earned another chunk of credits. When we get paid our share, I plan on doing that again."


    Everyone cheered, slapping shoulders and sharing high fives at my announcement. While Julus grabbed some drinks for everyone to celebrate with, I made the first transfer, prompting another round of cheers. When we finished toasting each other, Vakim pointed out that we had a new mission.


    "Right, so the deal I struck with the Rebellion was for them to use the Munificent as a droid repair or production area. As I mentioned, I also separately convinced them to pay for and supply fully repairing the station," I explained. "The cost was that they would be using a good chunk of it for their own people, as a safe haven and distribution center. The station would still be ours, meaning that, at the end of the day, we get the final say. This is our home. They would just be tenants."


    "That¡­ seems like a remarkably one-sided deal for them," Dazem pointed out, confused as to why they would accept.


    "Which is why I had to sweeten the deal," I explained. "We are going to steal a nice big ship for them, something that they can show off as compensation for investing so many resources into something they technically wouldn''t own."


    "What sort of ship?" Miru asked. "Do you have a target?"


    "Nope," I admitted, popping my "P" deliberately. "The first step will be selecting our target. It will have to be something of significant tonnage, bigger than the Intervention for sure."


    "How much bigger?" Julus asked. "The Imperial Navy doesn''t have that much in the way of variety."


    "That is not entirely true," Vaz said, shaking his head, gesturing to Pola.


    "That''s right, I was serving as an engineer on a CR70," The young Ex-Imperial pointed out. "Coreward, sure, variety is low, but out around the mid-rim, the ships get more varied."


    "Older as well," Nal pointed out. "Though that is not necessarily bad."


    "They keep most of them up to date with refits," Pola pointed. "The Empire is terrible, but they take their navy seriously."


    "Well¡­ Let''s start by looking through some of the patrols around the Mid and Outer Rim," Tatnia suggested. "We might get lucky."


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    We spent the rest of the day, and into the next morning, looking through news reports, planetary gossip, and any other resource of information we could get our hands on, trying to find a suitable target for us to steal. It was also an excuse to relax from the constant movement and work over the last few days. The entire crew had essentially been working and doing things nonstop for nearly a week, so sitting down and doing some simple research was good for everyone.


    As we did our research, we quickly realized that gleaning the kind of knowledge we wanted, while not impossible, was definitely not simple. We started by choosing worlds with smaller populations, scanning their news for stories about their patrol fleet landing. After the seventh lead burned out because the patrol fleet didn''t have anything worth taking, I finally realized what the problem was.


    "If we are looking for ships that are landing on the planet, we are never going to find anything bigger than the Intervention," I pointed out, putting my datapad down on the table.


    Miru, who was the only other person at the table with me, looked up. She scrunched her face as she was thinking, eventually nodding in agreement.


    "I''ve been ignoring anything I learned about ships that didn''t frequently land planetside," She admitted, confirming my suspicions. "But you''re right. The Intervention is already pushing its size, at least for ships that can frequently land for maintenance. If it was any larger, you would start running into more issues than it solves."


    "So what, are we looking to disable a ship in a space battle?" Julus asked from the couch, sitting beside Tatnia.


    "No, this is supposed to be compensation," I said, shaking my head. "Handing over a damaged ship isn''t going to go over well."


    "What about commandeering a shuttle?" Tatnia asked, still looking intently at her datapad. "I found something that might fit the bill."


    We gathered back around the table so we could go over Tatnia''s suggestion, the crew of the Intervention tuning in through the holoprojector. They were still in the same hangar as us, still inside their ship, but they had been working on finding a target as well, sitting in their lounge space. When we were all set, Tatnia sent us what she had found.


    Her suggested target was a small Imperial patrol fleet made up of four ships. <u>Two Imperial Gozantis</u></a>, an <u>IPV-1 System Patrol Craft</u></a>, and one <u>Bayonet</u></a>-<u>Class</u></a> light cruiser.


    "I''m guessing the Bayonet-Class is our target?" I asked, getting a nod in confirmation. "What is it like? I don''t recognize the class name."


    "It''s a bit of an older ship, but quite a bit younger than the Intervention," She explained, finding a picture and showing it to me. "It''s also got about sixty meters on it."


    The ship followed the usual Imperial design of being vaguely triangular, though not nearly as drastic as the Star Destroyer. It had three raised sections on the back top of the ship, with a command tower behind that. The central raised section was a small hangar.


    "It''s heavily armed, armored, and shielded for its size," Tatnia added. "Eight heavy turbolasers and lighter laser cannons¡­ It would definitely beat the Intervention, though its upgrades would give it plenty of time to escape."


    "So what makes this ship a solid option?"


    "Well, its patrol is stationed over a planet called Lipsec," She explained. "The IPV and the Bayonet-class stay in orbit permanently, while the two Gozantis ferry supplies and people to and from the surface. According to local gossip, Commodore Distani, the young officer in charge of the patrol, takes a shuttle down to the surface every two weeks to see his mistress."


    "That''s¡­ damn."


    "Yeah. He rides down on his ship''s shuttle, spends two days at her large home mansion, and then flies back up to his ship."


    "So, our plan would be to commandeer his shuttle, use it to get on board the Bayonet-class, take over the ship, and then escape?" Allum asked with a frown. "There''s an awful lot of firepower around that ship. If they realize we trying to commandeer their ship, even a ship like the Bayonet-class won''t last long. Especially if we are inside it, taking out the people in charge of keeping it alive."


    "We would only need to take over the bridge," Miru pointed out. "From there, it would be much easier for Racer to take control of the systems. Right buddy?"


    Racer warbled and beeped, ending with a long whistler. His top spun, shiny, and unblemished. Miru had been working on some upgrades and repairs and had finished off with a fresh coat of paint. After a moment of listening to the energetic droid, Miru frowned but nodded in understanding.


    "With the right codes, he could do it. Otherwise, he doesn''t think he could beat modern Imperial digital security, at least not consistently and quickly," She explained. "We would need to get them from someone high up, probably the Commodore."


    "Well¡­ we can try my Calm spell trick, but no guarantees it will work," I admitted, making a mental note to check if my Grimoire had any info on making my Illusion spells harder to beat. "We could also try good old-fashioned threats of violence. Depending on how much of a dirtbag he is, they might not even be empty threats."


    I could tell a few of my crew weren''t exactly up to the idea of torturing for information, so I held up my hands. Pola, Dazem, and Miru specifically did not look happy about it."


    "I''m not saying we break out the interrogator droid and go to town," I assured them. "But a few shocks and the right words could make the process much easier. I''ll even heal him up when we are done. And again, that''s only if my Calm spell doesn''t work.


    That seemed to appease them, at least slightly. Tatnia, blessed second in command as she was, quickly brought our attention back to the topic at hand.


    "Okay, so we show up, abduct the Commodore, get him to give us the codes, then take over the ship through force and slicing," She listed. "How do we keep the other three ships from taking us apart as we try to take control?"


    "The Intervention and Talos Chariot would be sufficient to distract them," Vakim pointed out. "We wouldn''t even need to engage. Simply jump in with weapons charged and begin targeting them actively. That will light up their sensors, and as long as we remain out of weapons range, they won''t be able to do anything but shout at us over the comms."


    "Okay¡­ It seems like we have the foundation work for a solid plan," I said, putting my hands on the table. "Let''s start refining it until it is fully fleshed out. Let''s start by finding out more about this guy''s mistress and what her house looks like. In the meantime, Calima will start working on a jump plan to the CIS base. We are going to need the Starcaller to infiltrate the planet."


    Calima nodded and stood from the table, making her way to the bridge, where she could start the astronavigation calculations. Meanwhile, all of us started pouring through the local Lipsec net sources, connecting through the Holonet. Pouring over gossip rags of a small, lightly populated planet wasn''t exactly my idea of a good time, but the more information we had, the better.


    We just had to sift through all the bullshit first.

 Chapter 109

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    It did take us a few hours to pull out of the station since the Chariot had emptied quite a few things out of its main hold in order to make room for the clone slabs, including the Arrow and a large crate full of parts. Once again, I was confronted by how annoying it would be to move things on and off the Chariot, and how much time it would take if we needed to move fast. I wanted us to be able to load almost anything on as quickly as possible without having to worry about space or playing cargo Tetris.


    Seeing an opportunity, we went through both of the large cargo crates, doing a more detailed inventory and splitting the contents more evenly. When we were done, both of them were filled with more generalized parts, rather than one containing all the repulsor parts and the other holding all of the life support parts. This meant I was more confident leaving one behind, tucked into the far corner of the hangar. It freed up a good chunk of space in the Chariots cargo hold without too much risk.


    When we dropped out of hyperspace above the CIS base, we immediately started to descend. I was sitting in the lounge, waiting for us to make landfall so we could start moving everything over to the Starcaller. We had decided that this would be another all-hands-on-deck mission with the entire ground team going. Each of us would need our armor, which unfortunately meant we couldn''t take any extra droids with us as most of the spare space in the smuggler''s compartments would be taken.


    As we descended through the atmosphere, suddenly, the ship shifted and pulled out of its descent, hard enough that we could feel it through the ship''s inertial compensator. Calima called out from the cockpit, sounding concerned.


    "BOSS! You need to come see this!"


    I was already standing from my seat, but her call prompted me to rush forward onto the bridge, leaning on her seat, only to find she was pulling away too hard for me to see what had spooked her.


    "There was a ship landed on the landing strip," She explained, pulling the ship up and above the Intervention, letting the tougher, more powerful ship go first. I nodded and turned to the comms and sensors display, leaning on the droid''s seat.


    "Show me," I instructed the droid, who immediately brought up the scans on what had prompted Calima''s response.


    "No fucking way¡­"


    The scan showed a ship that I was only briefly familiar with but, surprisingly, not from my out-of-context Star Wars knowledge. I had only seen it once in passing, as it whipped by me during our precious metals heist, but it was enough to recognize it easily.


    "The fucking commando droids! They escaped!" I shouted, unable to keep the laughter out of my voice. "I can''t believe it! Run a scan and contact them, see if they respond."


    Immediately, we got a response, though it was only a brief flash of static, which, according to Calima, could be from their comms being damaged.


    "Calima, take us in, Comms, tell the Intervention in the air with weapons charged. The fact that they managed to survive and make it off the planet is insane enough that I''m struggling to believe it."


    "You think it''s a trap?" Tatnia asked, having joined us when I started shouting and laughing.


    "It could be, and that is a good enough reason to be careful," I responded with a frown. "Calima, have weapons deployed and ready. Tatnia, go tell Racer I want him ready to analyze the commando droids programming from top to bottom."


    Both of my crewmates nodded, my second in command leaving the bridge to find our slicer droid. I could see Calima tapping something on her console, and suddenly, all the gunner droids in the bridge shifted as their consoles lit up.


    We landed quickly, stepping out of the ship and approaching the other. It was an absolute mess, with damaged and carbonized armor over at least a quarter of its hull. The ventral laser cannon was a slagged mess, and I could see inside the ship through a hole in the port side.


    "Holy shit¡­" I said, eyes wide with shock as we approached. "I didn''t know ships could get that damaged and still fly."


    "Must have been difficult," Nal pointed out before adding. "If they flew here."


    As we got closer, I could feel the tension rising in the group, ratcheting up even more as three BX units descended down the boarding ramp. One of them appeared to be partially damaged, missing its left arm, its shoulder blackened from heat exposure.


    "Unit BX-O1 reporting, Boss," the closest droid said, stepping forward. "Unit BX-05 was lost during the last phase of our mission. Unit BX-04 has received major damage but is still minimally functional. Final phase of our mission... Complete."


    "BX-01¡­ well done. You guys really surprised us," I admitted. "However¡­ We need to check you over to make sure you''re not compromised since you have been gone for so long. Units 03 and 04, please power down for physical inspection. O1, disarm and allow Racer to connect to your processor. And tell us what happened in more detail."


    Without hesitation, the two further back droids powered down, leaning forward slightly, their arms hanging down. BX-01 knelt down, pulling his blaster rifle and vibrosword and tossing them aside. Racer slowly approached and connected to the droid, his head spinning as he analyzed its programming.


    As Racer did their work, BX-01 regaled us with his tale, starting with their initial attack. After a minute or so, Racer actually started projecting the commando droids'' point of view from his holo projector, letting us watch as well.


    It was incredibly, and a bit terrifying, watching the five, then four droids cutting through the compound''s security. They dropped from their speeders before they smashed into their targets, which was where BX-03 was destroyed, having dropped smack dab into a stormtrooper patrol. From there, the remaining droids regrouped and infiltrated the hangar, tearing through the security in the process. Once they were on board, they made quick work of whatever crew was on board before taking off, blasting out of the hangar.


    Then, watching the droids fly the ship, BX-01 makes an actually impressive play at a ship captain, flying around and wreaking havoc on the base, then on various Imperial assets on the planet. They blew up several Imperial depots, seven Tie fighters, nearly two dozen Imperial air speeders, and several other smaller assets before spotting that we were in trouble and blasting off to help. They made one more run after they pulled our asses out of the fire, then returned to finish off any assets around the compound before finally taking off into space. They were then intercepted there by Gizer''s patrol fleet, which managed to get quite a few shots on them, doing significant damage and ultimately destroying BX-05 before they jumped to Lightspeed.


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    When the "show" ended, we were all stunned, eyes wide and jaws dropped. At some point during our watching, Racer had given the droid what was basically a clean bill of health. As we all slowly recovered from watching the BX-01 droids be badasses, he warbled a question, which Nal translated.


    "He is asking if he should wipe his memory."


    "...no. We are going to let him develop for a while," I finally said, surprising a few of my crew. "That performance deserves a reward. Giving them a chance to develop a bit sounds like a solid start."


    "And the other two?"


    "One science experiment at a time," I answered. "BX-01 was really the one who went above and beyond there. Let''s give them some time to develop, and if he seems solid, we can keep him at that level. We just need to keep an eye on him."


    We spent a few hours going over the droid and the ship they had brought with them. It was honestly shocking that they had managed not only to jump to hyperspace but survive it long enough to pop out here. The fact that they landed was also incredible, seeing that a large portion of the engines and repulsor emitters were heavily damaged as well. Miru kept on shaking her head as she inspected the damage.


    "I''ll be honest, Boss. This thing is toast. I could fix it, but it would take a while and maybe¡­ fifty or sixty thousand credits, maybe more," she said. " And that''s just getting it up and running, back to its baseline. I would just assume we give the Rebellion the location so they can strip it for parts."


    "Any reason we shouldn''t leave it so we can strip it down for parts?"


    "I''m not the biggest fan of Kuat''s higher-end ships," she explained with a shrug. "They try and get every little bit of efficiency and power they can from every part, but fine-tuning stuff like that tends to make it much more finicky. Parts fail faster, there''s more wear and tear, and they can''t take any punishment. But why would they care? They get to brag about their slightly higher stats."


    I couldn''t help but chuckle at the young engineer''s mini-rant, though I definitely agreed with her. Give me an older, chunkier, slightly less powerful version of something, so long as it is dependable. Besides, older model ships tend to be more refined and predictable than new, top-of-the-line, high-tech, high-spec stuff.


    "Well, that''s fine. Let''s just cover it up with some tarps to keep any weather from affecting it," I said, shaking my head. "It sounds like it''s not worth it, so we''ll probably end up handing it off to the Rebellion. If we need a ship that bad, we can buy it or steal it."


    Thankfully, the commando droids had landed their ship in front of the secondary hangar, meaning that they weren''t in the way of the Starcaller. Didn''t even want to think about how we would have moved the broken, heavily damaged ship at that point.


    We spent an hour or so loading up the Starcaller with some basic supplies, plus all of our gear, before we climbed on board, settling into the various rooms and beds. It was a bit cramped, as we had learned before, but with Allum staying behind this time to pilot the Chariot by himself, nobody had to actually share a bed.


    We were finally ready to leave once we had moved all our gear in, including our armor. Calima, with the help of the astromech we assigned to the ship, took off from the old CIS base, and we took to the sky. It was a long jump from where we were to the Lipsec system, so we settled in. I spent most of my time learning magic, adding a whopping four spells to my arsenal. Detect Life, Ice Storm, Fireball, and Night Eye. All of the spells were potent, but none of them had been important to learn. Both Fireball and Ice Storm were powerful spells that could outright kill dozens of enemies at once, but they were also unpredictable, just as likely to catch a friend or an innocent civilian as it was to kill the actual target. Night Eye was pointless when we already owned night vision and had it built into our helmets. Detect Life was extremely useful, but it shone the brightest when you were trying to avoid being spotted, and¡­ we weren''t really about that kind of stealth.


    I also learned a whole list of small tricks and improvements to my Illusion magic. With any luck, the new level of potency for my Calm spell would make the difference in convincing the Commodore to spill his secrets. The less powerful version worked on a dark Jedi, and that had to count for something.


    When we finally dropped out of hyperspace, we still hadn''t arrived at the planet. Instead, all three of the ships dropped out together, just on the edge of deep space surrounding the planet. There, the Intervention and the Talos Chariot would wait for word that our attack was commencing, which would come in the form of the Starcaller, who would be hanging around, waiting for our word.


    Everyone''s timing was a bit tight, making the plan a bit more finicky than I would have liked, but with any luck, we would come out on top. We were counting on the natural and normal hesitation that would come from being ordered to fire on your own allies to cover any gaps in our timing, should it come to that.


    Once both of our warships were in position, everyone save Calima climbed into our compartments, the small, sealed spaces closing around us in total darkness. Thankfully, we had learned from the last time, and we all had brought datapads in with us, both for light and entertainment. Their wireless connections were all off, as was their sound, but reading was enough of a distraction to keep me from working myself up into a minor panic.


    Once safely sealed inside our smuggler''s compartments, the Starcaller jumped towards Lipsec, arriving near the plane less than ten minutes later. We were almost immediately intercepted and boarded. Unlike our previous experience, however, this inspection barely lasted for fifteen minutes before we were released to continue to the planet''s surface. The ground team remained in our sealed compartments until we had landed, which was when Calima finally signaled for us to come out.


    "Guess I shouldn''t be surprised that the inspection for a much more remote world was so short," I said, climbing out of the compartment. "How did it go?"


    "Fine," Calima responded. "They didn''t even pull out scanning devices, just visually inspected everything."


    "Gonna regret that," I said with a snort. "Not that it would have helped. How far are we from the mistress''s mansion?"


    "Not far, had to pay a little extra¡­ to get one closer to the city, though."


    I waved off the charge and made my way deeper into the ship, letting the rest of the ground team out. Julus and Tatnia looked a little worse for wear, flushed, and damp, but everyone else seemed to have endured the smuggling trip well.


    "Alright, Calima, I need you to rent a speeder, just like on Gizer," I said, getting a nod in response. "Once we have some transport, we can find a bigger transport to steal and stash somewhere. I want to be ready for when the shuttle comes down."


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 Chapter 110

    The prep for our next mission, compared to the last time we smuggled ourselves down to the planet''s surface, didn''t take nearly as long. A few hours after we arrived, Calima dropped Nal and Tatnina off somewhere in the city and picked them up about three hours later, after they had stolen a large airspeeder. They had a bit of a hard time finding a speeder that was big enough, but once they did, they made quick work of claiming it and hiding it away.


    Once they were done, we settled in to wait. Calima ordered a decent amount of supplies and topped off the Starcaller''s fuel tanks. We also picked up a bunch of stock and materials for Miru. She planned on taking over one of the smaller workshops on Omega Station, one that branched off from the main hangar we had claimed, and she wanted a few extra things to keep there. Like usual, the Skyforged were footing most of the bill, save a few specific expensive tools that she was covering since they were for her own creations.


    Filling up the cargo hold of the Starcaller took a few days, mainly because Calima was purposely delaying her orders to buy us more time to wait. On the third day of us watching the sky, waiting for the custom shuttle that fit into the Bayonet-class''s tiny hangar to make an appearance, Vaz spotted it flying over the city. Just as predicted, it landed just over fifteen miles away, on land owned by the Commodore''s mistress.


    Rather than head out immediately, we waited for the rest of the day, sleeping soundly and waking up very early the next morning. Calima ferried us to our stolen transport, which we piled into and lifted off, making a beeline towards the mistress''s compound.


    Now, during the three days of waiting, we had plenty of time to scout our location. The large chunk of land that the mistress owned was surrounded by four-meter-tall duracrete walls. Inside those was a green oasis, with a pool, a beautiful garden, and meticulously maintained trees and shrubs. The mansion itself took up only a quarter of the compound but was still massive, with several buildings leading to a central structure. Everything save the duracrete walls was done in what I would have called a futuristic minimalism, with cool white surfaces shaped at right angles.


    While investigating our target, I did a couple of passes with Detect Life cast, and as far as I could tell, there were no guards stationed at the compound, despite there being an obvious guard house by the front entrance.


    We landed the speeder along the back end of the compound, the large trees and foilage making the perfect cover for our air speeder, all but completely obscuring the vehicle. While the sun still hadn''t peeked over the horizon, it was already starting to lighten the sky. We were all dressed in our uniforms, obscuring the obviously militant clothes with cloaks and other coverings.


    The second our feet hit the ground, we split up. Tatnia and I made a beeline for the main building while Vaz and Julus charged around to come from a separate angle. Nal and Racer both headed for the landing pad along one of the corners of the compound to claim and protect the shuttle, since it was our ticket to our target. We also didn''t know if there was some sort of security watching it, but if there was, the sooner we knew about it, the better.


    As we entered the mansion, Tatnia and I started searching it room by room, looking for anything that could screw up our plans. I had Detect Life up, so I wasn''t worried about being ambushed by living security, but we were forced to disable any droids we saw since any one of them could call in the cavalry should they see we were holding people hostage.


    After searching nearly a dozen rooms and disabling a handful of droids, Tatnia and I finally found our target. A large, luxurious bedroom, with one wall almost entirely open, the entire space oriented for a fantastic view of the compound''s gardens. There was a singular large bed in the center of the room, with two large lumps sleeping under the covers. I gestured for Tatnia to deal with the windows while silently dragging a chair over for myself, stopping a few feet in front of the bed. When the large open windows were closed, Tatnia flicked on the lights, and our target and their partner began to stir.


    The lump on the left was the first to realize something was up, beginning to shift and look around as the light woke them up. Eventually, they sat up, bleary-eyed and confused about what was happening. It was a black-haired and brown-eyed man with a head and obvious fatigue on his face. When he finally locked eyes on me, his fatigue vanished, replaced by fear and shock.


    "Who the hells are you?" He called out. "What are you doing here?"


    The lump beside him was now moving, sitting up quickly now that their bedmate was shouting. Another man, with a short redhead and a well-maintained mustache, shouted at me as well. This was the Commodore.


    "Huh¡­ well, we are here for him," I explained, raising my blaster as Distani scrambled for the nightstand beside him, prompting Tatnia to step forward with the pistol raised, aimed directly at his head. "Easy now. I know you must be confused, but let''s not do anything stupid."


    Both of the men settled back down, watching Tatnia as she did a thorough search of each nightstand, removing comms device from both of them. When she stepped back, I finally spoke up again.


    "Okay, so before we start¡­ who are you?" I asked, looking at the black-haired man. "We came here expecting to find a mistress¡­"


    "I-I''m nobody," He said. "H-he paid me-"


    I noticed that Commodore Distani frowned at the implication of hiring a prostitute, so I shook my head. I raised my hand and cast Calm on the black-haired man, the pale green magic gathering in my hand and launching out to hit him in the chest.


    "There''s no reason to lie to me, friend," I assured him. "Who are you really?"


    "I''m Captain Senita, of the Demanding Fury," He responded, with a small smile on his face.


    The Commodore''s eyes went wide as I cast C, even more so when the Captain answered me fully. He looked back at me, even more pale than he had been before.


    "That''s right, Distani. You are in over your head, so just do as I say, and everything will be fine," I assured him before looking back at the Captain and re-applying Calm. "What is the Demanding Fury?"


    "It is the IPV Patrol Craft that is part of Lipsec''s patrol fleet," The ensorcelled man explained. "It is made by Sienar Fleet Systems and-"


    "Thank you, Captain, that''s enough," I said with a smile, giving him a nod before looking over at Distani. "Sleeping with a subordinate? Naughty Commodore, pretty sure that''s not allowed."


    "What do you want?" He said, focused on me a bit, watching as the Captain shifted from calm to confused and scared as the Calm spell faded. "Whatever you think you''re going to do, you are not going to get away with it! The Empire-"


    "Alright, calm down, that''s enough. You can twirl your mustache later," I assured him, shaking my head. "We are here to take your ship. I tell you that because I want you to know so that you can do everything you can to help us succeed."


    "Why would I do that?" He asked, still struggling to keep a brave face.


    "Because your survival depends on us succeeding," I explained with a smile. "If we succeed, you live. If we fail, I''m going to make sure you die with us."


    He opened his mouth to respond, but rather than let him lift his own spirits with a witty comeback or a statement of superiority, I raised my hand and cast Sparks. While I knew it was a relatively weak spell, visually, it looked scary as hell. Lighting arc from my hand and slammed into the wall between the two Imperial officers, sizzling and burning, sparking and crackling. They both screamed as I held the spell for a long, extended moment, finally letting it fade after I used half my mana.


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    "Any questions?" I asked, getting rapid, near manic head-shaking negatives from both of them. "Good. Now, let''s start off with a few basic questions, like why you are here, and where is the woman who owns this building?"


    "We¡­ needed a private place to meet," The Captain admitted, looking rather defeated. "And she is a friend, someone we met while performing our more social duties. She¡­ well, she saw through us immediately and offered her home as a meeting place. She and her husband leave for a small trip to their vacation home when we come over."


    "We purposely spread the rumor that she is my mistress," Distani continued. "The Empire doesn''t frown upon its officers occasionally indulging, but if command found out that I was in love with someone under my command, they would demote and separate us instantly."


    Despite the situation they were in, the admittance of love seemed to catch the other man off guard. He looked at Commodore with wide eyes, and shifting below the covers made it clear he had grabbed his hand. It was adorable, honestly.


    I met Tatnia''s eyes, seeing that she was struggling to maintain a straight face. I shook my head, before standing from my seat.


    "Alright. My friend here is going to keep an eye on you while I talk to the rest of my team," I said, giving them both harsh looks. "Do not give her any trouble. I would hate to have to demonstrate my other abilities."


    I turned and gave Tatnia a nod, stepping out of the room and taking out my comms, selecting Vaz.


    "Hey, how''s the clearing going?"


    "No complications so far, Boss," The Shistavanen responded. "We found a security room deep in the main building, but it is empty. It appears to normally be staffed by at least two individuals."


    "That makes sense with what we learned. You''re not going to believe this..."


    I explained the situation to them, Julus laughing in the background as Vaz relayed the information. I connected to Nal as well, telling him to have Racer lock himself up inside the shuttle so that Nal could join us. I wanted to meet with everyone so we could discuss a shift in the plan.


    "So, we now have the captain of the IPV and the Bayonet," I pointed out. "I wanted to propose a bit of a mix-up. We were concerned about finding a way to make a profit off of this mission while we would be handing over stolen ship¡­"


    For a moment, my crew, minus Tatnia, looked at me, their gears turning until Julus finally seemed to figure it out.


    "Boss¡­ Are you suggesting we should steal both of them?" He asked, his eyes wide. "How would we do that? We don''t have enough people or equipment."


    "One, I can use magic to level that playing field a bit more," I pointed out. "Plus, the IPV has a significantly smaller crew. I can handle taking that down by myself. That leaves you guys to focus on the Bayonet class. If we can convince the Captain to give up their codes, I could take control over the entire ship without Racer''s help."


    "You don''t know how to pilot anything." Nal pointed out, stopping my plan in its tracks. "Never mind how to punch in hyperspace coordinates."


    "Okay¡­ well¡­" I trailed off, wracking my brain, trying to work my way through his point. "Well, if I can convince the captain to defect¡­ or at least betray the Empire¡­"


    "Do you think you are capable of doing that?" Vaz asked, sounding skeptical.


    "I can try," I responded, turning around and heading back to the room.


    When I stepped inside, Tatnia was sitting in my chair, and both of the men were now dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed. They turned nervously, looking at me with worried eyes.


    "Alright. So, I have an offer for the both of you," I said, sitting down in the chair after Tatnia stood up. "I-"


    "We are not interested in joining the Rebellion," Commodore Distani said, Captain Senita. "It is obvious who you are. The Empire may not be perfect, but the anarchy you Rebels wish to spread is far worse."


    "No, well, kind of, but that''s not what I was going to offer," I insisted, holding up a hand to hold off his rebuttal. "I was going to offer the two of you, together, two hundred and fifty thousand credits to help us. Then, when we are done, we can help you set up some new identities and maybe get some work done to fool anyone looking for you. You could retire early, buy a ship, a home somewhere. This is your ticket to an easier, slower life, one where you could openly be together."


    The first clue that I was on the right track was the silence I was met with. Tatnia managed to clear her face of surprise pretty quickly, but both of the officers looked stunned. I let them collect their thoughts for a moment, before Distani spoke up.


    "Why? You can clearly manipulate us into speaking the truth, like you did earlier. Why do you need our willing help?"


    "Because. Originally, our plan was only to take your ship, Commodore, and we have what we need to do that," I explained. "But with the Captain here, we have an opportunity to take his ship as well. I want both of them. This makes us a bit tight on a few roles. Namely, someone who can control the ship, pilot it, and jump to lightspeed."


    "And why should we trust you?" The Captain asked. "You''re just as likely to kill us when you are done than anything."


    "If that was the case, you''re already dead," I pointed out before shaking my head. "I give you my word that we will not just kill you when we are done. I''m a mercenary, leader of the Skyforged Vanguard, and while yes, we may have Rebel leanings, a mercenary''s word is their bond."


    The two partners share a look, a long one that you could just tell was an entire silent conversation. Eventually, the Commodore snorted and looked away, shaking his hand.


    "I guess my father was right," He said, sounding annoyed but with just the slightest hint of acceptance. "I would end up being an embarrassment."


    "He won''t get off lightly¡­" Senita pointed out. "He will likely get in trouble."


    "I''m already considering their offer, Seni. Don''t make it sound even better."


    After a long moment, they shared another look, and this time, the Captain nodded, leading to the Commodore meeting my eyes.


    "Four hundred thousand."


    "No, I''ll go to three hundred, and that''s it," I responded, shaking my head. "I''m not cashing out four hundred thousand credits just so you can both press a few buttons. Three hundred thousand is a fantastic start to a new life already."


    The Commodore looked at me for a long while before eventually giving me a small nod.


    "Fine, three hundred thousand credits¡­ and you keep your weapons on stun."


    "We will try our best to take as many of your men alive as possible, including the two of you," I said solemnly. "But I can''t promise all of them will make it, especially any stormtroopers on board. Their brainwashing runs a bit too deep to meet them with anything other than overwhelming force."


    The Captain snorted, and Distani shook his head.


    "Stormtroopers are not my men, they are barely men at all," He explained. "They are men-shaped droids, their thoughts so scrambled they would attempt to clean the hull in skivvies while in space if you ordered them to."


    I couldn''t help but chuckle, standing from my chair and stepping forward to the edge of the bed, my hand extending. After a long moment, Commodore Distani took it, shaking it once as he stood.


    "Welcome to the mission, Commodore, Captian. Things just got a bit easier with you two on board."


    <hr>


    Just a small note: the IPVs of this universe have hyperdrives, because the idea of a large ship without one is laughably stupid, and whoever decided that they didn''t clearly didn''t understand how space works in the slightest. Also, the Bayonet-class is listed as having nearly two hundred crew, which is insane for its size. I''d say its minimum level of crew, around fifty, is much more reasonable.

 Chapter 111

    The two lovers nominally agreeing to work with us was apparently enough for Tatnia to stop with the stoic, silent, threatening badass act. She turned to me expectantly, but when I didn''t respond, she reached out, grabbed my arm, and led me away. She pushed through one of the all-glass doors, stepping out onto the small balcony attached to the bedroom.


    "What are you doing?" She asked in a hushed whisper, one way too loud to actually be private. "How in the hells do you plan on taking both ships at once?"


    "Well... when the shuttle drops off Captain Senita, I will board the IPV," I explained, raising my hand when she opened her mouth to cut me off. "Then I''ll wait for him to declare all hands because you guys have started working your way through the Bayonet-Class. Once everyone is scrambling around I will kill the stormtroopers and make my way to the bridge, where Captain Senita can surrender. His crew gets confined to quarters, and the captain helps me jump the ship away from the planet to the agreed-upon rendezvous coordinates."


    "...You literally just made that up as you went, didn''t you?" She accused, narrowing her eyes.


    "Uh¡­ pretty much?" I admitted with a wince before raising a hand. "But flexibility and adaptability are important when developing plans."


    For a moment, it looked like she would hit me, but she closed her eyes and took a long breath. When she finally released her breath, she focused back on me.


    "It''s not a bad plan," She admitted, looking like it physically hurt her to do so. "But I''m going with you."


    "No, absolutely not," I responded, cutting her off. "The Bayonet-class has¡­ How many stormtroopers are on each ship?"


    After a moment, I looked over at our sort of captives, sort of allies expectantly. They were both watching us argue, and when I looked over at them through the still-open glass door they quickly looked away like they hadn''t been listening in. It took a moment for them to realize I was asking them a question, not accusing them of anything.


    "The Huntress has a forty-two stormtrooper complement on board, while the Demanding Fury has ten," Commodore Distani eventually responded. "Plus, the Huntress security doors and several locations around the ship are designed to be difficult to siege. The bridge in particular."


    "Exactly. Quadruple the amount of troopers and a much more difficult fight," I pointed out. "The IPV is a much more simple target, one I can handle myself, as long as I have a little help."


    I charge a spell and cast it in the corner, a large, armored <u>Ice Atronach</u></a> appearing, waves of frigid air flowing off him. It looked good, and I made a mental note to use him more often. The frigid friend was an all-around better elemental than the fire elemental due to its more complex and mana-intensive nature.


    "Your constructs fall apart if they take too much damage," She reminded me, looking over at the impressive conjured construct.


    "That''s their job, to draw focus," I retorted, the conjuration cracking and dissipating in a flow of mana and blue smoke, the construct having worked through its energy since I barely gave it any. "I think we both know I can handle this one ship on my own Tatnia. Have you forgotten what we will be wearing?"


    The beskar armor Pola and Vaz had made for us easily doubled or tripled our metaphorical threat rating. We weren''t invincible in it, something we would need to work on reminding ourselves, but a group of ten stormtroopers would be hard-pressed to take me down as long as I got to them quickly. Forty stormtroopers, on the other hand, could technically hit the armor enough that it became too hot and failed. It was unlikely unless they brought explosives, but there was still a chance.


    "That just-"


    "Tatnia, you have too much ship to cover and too many troopers to take down to cut the team down even more. Just four of you is already cutting it too close," I said with a finality that seemed to finally get through to my second-in-command. "If anything, the question isn''t whether I should take on the IPV by myself, it''s if I should be leaving you guys to tackle the Huntress yourself."


    Tatnia seemed to back down slightly, my logic and tone finally pushing into her head. I understood that this was a larger-than-average risk, but this was also a golden opportunity to increase our assets considerably. The IPV was a ship that was more or less on par with the standard C70 consular class retrofit. With some extra money invested it could easily meet, and maybe even surpass the Intervention.


    "We don''t even have the crew for it," She pointed out, though she had clearly given up convincing me.


    "Then we will find the staff, and augment them with droids," I responded, adding a shrug as I continued. "Or maybe we will sell it. Either way, that''s a problem for another time. For now, let''s focus on the mission and opportunities at hand."


    After a long pause, my second-in-command agreed, giving me a nod. Satisfied that I had convinced her, I turned to our new quasi-allies with a smile. I stepped back into the room, Tatnia following behind and closing the balcony door.


    "Well, with that settled, how about we move out of the bedroom? I can introduce you to the rest of the team and you can start filling us in on how to best take over your ships," I said happily. "Before, we were going off half guesswork, half rumors, but now you can tell us exactly what to expect."


    Begrudgingly, they both agreed, standing and following us to one of the mansion''s large dining rooms. It was built in the same clean, angular white style that the rest of the building was, making us stand out in our covering cloaks and disguises. Seeing there was no point in hiding ourselves anymore, I removed my disguise, revealing my uniform underneath. Both of the Ex-Imperial''s jaws dropped when the rest of my crew followed suit, showing off our brilliant-looking uniforms.


    Over the next few hours, we discussed our new plans, which were ultimately very similar to the old plan, but with the addition that I would be off doing my own thing while the rest of the crew was taking over the Huntress. Somewhere along the way, between our uniforms and our professional demeanor, the two officers slowly became more and more open and eager to help. At first, they barely responded to direct questions, only giving the bare minimum information they had to. By the time we were done, they were considerably more helpful.


    We spent a few hours planning and going over our plans, but when we were done utilizing our new sources of information, it wasn''t even noon yet. We had started all of this so early in the morning, that even after all the time we had spent so far, it was still relatively early in the day. We had a lot of time to kill until the two love birds would have normally returned to their stations, which would be early the following morning.


    We were also waiting for another reason. Calima would have left the planet not long after we left to begin the mission, and the longer we waited after she had, the less likely the Empire would be to connect the Starcaller to two stolen ships. We were already cutting it close since the heist of Gizer hadn''t been that long ago. We would have to give attention to Starcaller sometime to relax before using her again.


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    Either way, we had an entire day to just tool around. For a short while we all were just sitting, doing nothing, and waiting. Then, after about an hour of this, Captain Senita cursed us for interrupting his time off and left the room. He returned a minute or so later in a bathing suit.


    "We may be about to turn our backs on years of hard work and dedication, but I will not let that get in the way of my vacation time." He explained, already walking through the house toward the larger deck that ran along the back of the main mansion structure. "We have the rest of the day to enjoy ourselves, and I''m going to do just that."


    Distani looked around at all of us with wide eyes before turning to track his partner as they walked out of the room and outside. Once the door to the deck closed behind him, the Ex-Imperial officer scrambled to join him. Julus and I, the only two who were in the room when this happened, managed to keep from laughing until they were both gone.


    Senita''s outburst was the breaking point for most of the crew, who began to spread out through the large mansion, exploring and finding things to do. Nal and Vaz took a crack at the kitchen, sampling some of the expensive food, and as it got later, worked together to prepare dinner for everyone. Tatnia and Julus declared they were off to explore the gardens, disappearing for most of the day. I found myself exploring one of the distant structures connected to the main house, finding a library room. It was also clearly the husband''s study, and a quick look around revealed a bottle of what must have been incredibly expensive liquor and equally expensive-looking cigars.


    I lamented that I could only have one glass and a single cigar, as they were both fantastic.


    It was a strange day, like an impromptu vacation mid-mission, ending with a bizarrely friendly dinner, even when Vaz pointed out that she and Nal had made it. It was pretty obvious that both of the officers were more than a bit uncomfortable with the two non-human members of my ground team. From my perspective, it seemed to be less because they thought the Vaz and Nal were inferior and more because neither of them knew how to treat them. Either way, Nal and Vaz both clearly enjoyed making them feel uncomfortable as well, something neither of them seemed to pick up on.


    Eventually, we called it a day, all of us returning to separate rooms, of which the mansion had plenty. We traded guard duty, both to keep an eye on our impromptu allies and to make sure we didn''t get caught off guard by unexpected guests.


    When it was finally time to leave the next morning, all of us piled into the custom-built shuttle, which Racer had kept locked down all night. He greeted us with a warble and whistle, letting out a long whine when I explained the change of plans and introduced our temporary allies.


    As Racer and Commodore Distani started the preflight checks for the shuttle, the rest of us donned our armor. Tatnia and Vaz snuck away for a moment to put on their undersuits while the rest of us stripped to our underwear and pulled on our first layer before putting the rest on, piece by piece. We were just about done, pulling on our gloves and letting the armor seal around us, when Senita peeked out from inside the shuttle, his eyes going wide.


    "I¡­ Suddenly feel very glad we agreed to your deal," He said. "Who in the hells are you?"


    "We are the Skyfored Vanguard," I said, pulling on my helmet, letting it seal to the rest of my armor, the display flipping on, giving me a great view of my surroundings.


    "Right¡­ So am I supposed to know who that is or¡­?" He asked with a raised eyebrow. "Because I kind of expected you to say you were some sort of new-age Mandalorians or something."


    Once everyone was ready, we piled into the shuttle. The ship was clearly meant to hold quite a few stormtroopers, most likely to intercept and board pirates or smugglers, so there was plenty of room. They are not the most comfortable of vehicles, but beggars can''t be choosers. Once we were all in and set and locked in, the two Ex-Imperial officers started us off, lifting off the landing pad and rising into the air. It didn''t take long for us to break the atmosphere, heading directly to the small fleet that was waiting in space.


    Up first was Captain Senita and my own drop-off, the IPV. We approached slowly, trading confirmation codes. Funnily enough, the Commodore was clearly nervous about their impending betrayal, but the Captian was cool as a cucumber, calmly responding to hails and feeding his second-in-command the proper day codes.


    Since the IPV lacked any hangar bays, a connection was made directly to the airlock of each ship. This was a double-edged sword and the riskiest part of the mission as far as I was concerned. The airlock connection would keep inquisitive eyes out of the shuttle and, therefore, off of the rest of my ground team. Unfortunately, it also meant that my sneaking on board was much more difficult, especially since when the airlock was open, another officer was standing there, waiting for the captain. Luckily, I was mostly hidden around the corner, and the officer''s focus was on the Senita.


    Thankfully, he kept calm and walked quickly past them, forcing the officer to turn and follow after them, clearly wanting to talk. While they walked further away, I cast muffle on myself and slowly crept through the airlock and into the IPV. I turned and gave Vaz, who was standing on the other side of the airlock, a thumbs up, the canine-esque non-human nodding and sealing the airlock shut.


    As the shuttle detached, I could feel the vibrations through the deck, the rest of my crew leaving me alone on an Imperial ship with only one ally. I was halfway through a muttered prayer when I heard a gasp coming from behind me.


    I whirled around to find another grey uniformed officer looking at me, his eyes wide. For a moment, we just stared, but a sound coming from further into the ship broke us both out of our surprise. As he reached for his blaster, I raised my hand, hitting him in the chest with a Calm spell. He relaxed slightly, his blaster sliding back into its holster.


    "What are you doing here?" He asked, more curious than angry under the effects of the spell.


    "I''m just here to check your airlock controls," I assured him, gesturing back at the heavy-duty, vacuum-proof door. "Actually, could you give me a hand?"


    The officer gave a put-up-on sigh before nodding. I politely asked him to climb into a nearby locker, which was just big enough for him to stand in. After the fourth time applying the calm spell, I finally pulled my own blaster out, pushed it up under his armpit, and shot him with a stun blast, using his body to mostly muffle the sound. I then closed the door on him, hiding the evidence.


    With my cover at least temporarily saved, I opened another locker, this one significantly larger, and climbed inside, just barely fitting in with all of my armor. I carefully shut the door behind me, letting out a long breath as I was swallowed by darkness, only for my helmet to compensate until I could see relatively well. Now, with a hidden spot secured, all I could do was wait.

 Chapter 112 - Assault on the Huntress Interlude

    As the shuttle sealed closed, leaving Deacon behind on the Demanding Fury, a silence settled over everyone. The Commodore respectfully stayed quiet, guiding the ship away from the small patrol craft, making a beeline for his own ship, the Huntress. After nearly a minute of silence, Nal finally spoke up.


    "Boss will be fine," He said after he lifted his blaster pistol from his holster, checking its power pack before sliding it back home. "Between his armor, his magic, and his luck, he will be fine."


    "He still shouldn''t be going on his own," Tatnia pointed out. "We need to expand the group, especially the ground team."


    "Another recruitment drive?" Julus, who was sitting across from her, asked. "Not a bad idea. We, uh¡­ did just come into a lot of space."


    "Perhaps we should offer Ahsoka Tano a position," Vaz said, everyone shifting to look at the Shistavanen woman. "She obviously believes in the Rebellion but clearly dislikes being in charge. I could smell it on her."


    "I¡­ That''s not a bad idea," Tatnia admitted. "But we need numbers too, not just one more spooky sorta-not-really space wizard. Boss having to go off on his own because we couldn''t afford to split the team up anymore is not going to fly."


    "We can recruit once the mission is done," Nal said. "Now relax, Boss will be fine. We need to focus on our own mission."


    Tatnia let out a long, aggrieved sigh, Julus shooting her an apologetic look. The woman shrugged but gave him a smile to show him she was okay.


    Silently, the shuttle continued on. Eventually, the Commodore started the process of passcodes, security questions, and digital handshakes again, this time with his own ship. He managed to keep it together, seeming too slowly slide into his role as he got a bit more practice with it.


    The process of landing in the small Huntress''s hangar took a fraction of the time that connecting to the Demanding Fury''s airlock did, despite the bay''s tiny size. Once the shuttle was through the mag field into the pressurized hangar interior, it gently came to a rest on the sleek black, Imperial-style floors.


    "Give me twenty minutes," Commodore Distani said as he shut down the shuttle, pausing to straighten his uniform. "I should have the interior security doors disabled by then. That''s the only form of security I will be able to disable without the Stormtroopers catching on."


    "We know Commodore," Tatnia said, giving him a nod. "Good luck."


    The man looked at her, or rather looked at her helmet, before nodding and letting out an energetic breath. He cleared his throat and walked to the back of the shuttle, tapping the control panel and opening the shuttle''s back hatch. The ground team was treated to a view of the mag field, the bow of the ship, and space beyond. They could even see the Demanding Fury, along with the two Imperial Gozanti''s, flying in a loose formation.


    With the door open, Nal pulled out his blaster rifle as Julus pulled out his pistols. Nal had his weapon set to stun, while Julus did not. That way, they were prepared for no matter who came around the corner, either an officer or a stormtrooper. Deacon had agreed that they would do their best to spare the officers and crew, and they intended to follow their Boss'' words.


    Twenty minutes passed at a crawl, but eventually, Racer quietly warbled, and they stood from their seats. Slowly but surely, with Tatnia in the lead, all four of them slowly walked down the entry ramp, coming around the ship with weapons raised.


    Once they had left their hiding spot, it didn''t take long for someone to notice them. One of the crew, who had been working along the only other thing in the hangar, a set of probe droids, turned to spot them. The younger man shouted, only for Nal to instantly stun him, the crewmember crumpling to the floor before he could even point.


    Unfortunately, the damage was done. Three other individuals, all within earshot, turned to the team. One of them immediately ran, escaping into the attached hall through the only access point, a comm device already in their hands. Nal was in the process of stunning the remaining crew when a quartet of stormtroopers, who must have been nearby, charged into the hangar, weapons raised. Without a single hesitation, they opened fire, blaster bolts whipping by the team. Energy bolts slammed into their armor, only to glance off. The response was immediate and much more effective, with Tatnia and Julus opening up with a barrage of blaster fire that immediately took down three of the four stormtroopers. Vaz, who was only armed with her pistol, her rotary cannon still on her back, took down the fourth as he tried to find cover in the hall, backtracking while firing as fast as his blaster would allow.


    With the room now clear, all four of them rushed to the doorway, Racer following behind them. As they approached, the door slid open, exposing a wide-eyed and shocked crewmember. He was furiously tapping at the control panel, most likely trying to seal the door, something that was now disabled by Commodore Distani.


    Without hesitation, Nal stunned the already frozen-in-fear Imperial, stepping over their now insensate, crumpled form and into the first hallway.


    "Alright, the first target is the bridge," Tatnia said, getting a nod from Nal. "We-"


    Before she could continue, another eight stormtroopers came cruising around the far end of the hall, turning around the left corner. Nal dropped down and covered the unconscious crewmember with his body while Vaz stepped forward and grabbed her rotary cannon off of her back. She proceeded to mulch the new hostiles, spraying hundreds of plasma bolts down the hall. When she finally pulled off her trigger and swayed the end of the weapon, smoke curling and swirling around it, the entire hall was still.


    Everyone was quiet at the powerful show of lethality, staring down the hall at the very much dead squad of troopers. Eventually, Tatnia broke the moment by stepping forward, continuing from where she left off.


    "We don''t have much time. I want the bridge captured so that we can bring weapons to bear on both of the Gozantis and-"


    She let out an annoyed growl as the ship went into red alert, sirens covering her voice. Luckily, the helmets could compensate and connect with short-range comms. When they linked up, Tatnia stayed silent, leading them by example rather than explaining.


    Following directions given to them by Distani, Tatnia led the team through the ship, stunning several more crew and killing another squad of stormtroopers, this time ten of them. After a few wrong turns, they found the central command lift leading upwards to the bridge. They split into two pairs, with Racer, Julus, and Tatnia stepping into one repulsor lift and Vaz and Nal stepping into another.


    When the doors opened again, they did so to a decent-sized room. Opposite the repulsor lift was a large door, which, according to Distani''s directions, led directly to the bridge. In front of that door were twelve more stormtroopers, all of whom were crouched behind thick metal cover. There were also two large laser turrets coming up from the deck, swiveling slightly as they reacted to the opening doors. The moment the repulsorlift doors opened, the stormtroopers opened fire, releasing a deluge of heated plasma into the small space. The turrets, on the other hand, held their fire because their sensors read nothing to shoot at.


    Because the repulsorlifts were empty.


    What wasn''t empty was the service space below the bridge, a tight, cramped area that barely had room for the team to crouch down in. Not only had Commodore Distani revealed this floor''s existence to the team, but he had also given them the access codes. While the team couldn''t really get any deeper into the tight space, at least not with their armor on, Racer had no such issues. The smaller droid zipped forward to a control panel, inserted his scomp tool, and began the process of slicing into the leftmost turret. With the codes that Distani gave him, it only took him a few seconds to take control of the turret, spin it around, and target the right one, opening fire immediately. The heavier laser blasts vibrated through the deck, the weapon slagging its partner before turning on the stormtroopers.


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    By the time Racer disconnected from the controls, the ambush room outside the bridge was devoid of life. The droid spun around and quickly returned to the group, who had already called the repulsorlifts back. A quick ride later, they stepped out into the disaster. The only surviving turret had pulled back down into the floor, and the squad of twelve stormtroopers lay dead or dying on the floor, sporting massive blaster impacts.


    "Well done, Racer," Tatnia said, crossing the room and leading the group to the door opposite the lifts. "You-"


    As Tatnia was talking, a stormtrooper shifted, raising their blaster rifle just high enough to shoot over his comrade''s corpse. A trio of scarlet blasts of energy fired out, missing Nal and slapping into Racer. The stormtrooper was immediately killed for their efforts, three different weapons firing at him almost at once. Julus, who had been the fastest to react, frowned and turned back to the droid.


    "Dammit." He said, reaching out to touch the droid''s slightly smoking frame.


    "Miru is going to kill us," Tatnia said. "She just repainted him."


    The droid in question let out a long, mournful whine, his head spinning around as if trying to see his damaged paint. Along his torse were three spots where the blaster bolts had impacted, revealing the droid''s latest upgrade, a thin layer of beskar alloy lining his frame. Vaz shook her head, and nodded toward the door, catching Tatnia''s attention.


    "Right. Time to take the ship."


    The crew stepped to the door, which immediately opened to reveal the large bridge. It was a clearly Imperial-style bridge, with a central raised path that led all the way to the front, which was where Commodore Distani was standing in his crisp white uniform. On either side of the raised section were two lowered pits, which was where the control consoles were. Several members of his crew stood and raised their side arms, firing at the team, blaster bolts bouncing off them harmlessly. The return fire was not nearly as useless, stun bolts knocking out everyone indiscriminately,


    Within thirty seconds, Commodore Distani and the team were the only ones conscious.


    "Right¡­ well I suppose that went well enough¡­," He said, taking a moment to tear his eyes away from one of his crew. "And I have your word they will be treated humanely?"


    "You have the Boss''s word, which is good because I would have been much less gentle," Tatnia responded. "You need to call for a surrender before the rest of your crew starts to get ideas."


    "Right."


    The next ten minutes were a blur as the team secured the rest of the crew. Most of them went easily once Commodore Distani declared their surrender, though they did have to stun several more. They stored them away in their rooms, sealing them in with Distani''s passcodes. Unless one of them secretly had higher clearance than their leader, they were secure for the time being, especially since Commodore Distani could monitor them remotely from the bridge.


    When the team was just finishing up securing the remaining crew, their comms crackled to life.


    "We have a problem!" Commodore Distani''s excited voice called out, getting a wince out of Vaz. "The eight remaining stormtroopers have taken over the main power core and severed the bridge''s connection! They are working to overload it! If it works, there won''t be enough left of the ship to fill a cup!"


    "Fuck!" Tatnia said, borrowing Deacon''s favorite curse. "How long do we have?"


    "Five-"


    Before he could finish another alarm started to blare, replacing the first one, which Commodore Distani had disabled once he had "surrendered".


    "Make that four minutes!"


    "How do we get to the reactor room?"


    "I can get you there, but what if this is a diversion to retake the bridge?" Commodore Distani asked.


    "Then it''s a bad one, considering if we don''t stop the countdown, we all die no matter who has the bridge," Tatnia fired back before growling and shaking her head. "But you''re right, we can''t take the risk. Nal and Vaz, I want you to head back to the bridge. Distani, direct Julus and me to the core!"


    Nal and Vaz nodded and rushed away, heading back through the ship to the bridge, while Commodore Distani directed Julus and Tatnia, Racer following behind them. Thankfully, the power core was in the middle of the ship, meaning that it didn''t take them long to arrive. They both skidded around the final corner, the power core room just ahead, at the end of a long corridor. As they came to a stop, Julus immediately dove back around the corner. He just managed to drag Tatnia with him as he went, just before an <u>E-Web heavy repeater</u></a> opened up from the other end of the hall, punching holes along the deck and back wall.


    "We don''t have time for this!" Julus shouted as they both stood up. "Can you make that shot?"


    "Not before he gets me," Tatnia responded. "I need to get closer."


    "...Okay. I go first, you come in behind me," He said, getting closer to the corner, preparing to run. "When they hit me a few times, I''ll hit the deck. Then you jump over me and take the shot."


    "What? No, I''m not letting you face down that thing!" She shouted. "You can only take a few shots of something that heavy!"


    "A few shots in the same place," He reminded her. "I''ll be fine, just take it out before he can focus on me!"


    "But-"


    "Tatnia, if we don''t stop the reactor, we are all dead!" He pointed out, before turning back to the corner. "Now!"


    Before she could reach out to stop him, the brash man ran out from the corner, forcing Tatnia to follow behind him. They made it nearly a half dozen meters before the gunner crew zeroed in, stitching a handful of energy bolts across Julus''s armor. He went down, tumbling a bit as he did, but Tatnia leaped over him, continuing to run. Several bolts of plasma flew past her, but before they could take her down, she raised her blaster and fired, holding down the trigger and spraying the entire area with red lethal energy. First to fall was the gunner, followed by his second. A third one fell as he tried to take the first gunner''s position, and the final one fell as he stood out of cover to try and take her down directly.


    Tatnia immediately turned back to Julus, about to run back to him, when she saw he was already standing, his armor looking deformed but apparently still holding strong. Now that it was clear, Racer pulled up from around the corner and blew past Julus, then Tatnia, heading straight for the power core room, whistling and whining the whole way.


    By the time Racer got to the central power core control console, sliced in, and once again used Commodore Distani''s codes to steamroll the ship''s security, they had less than a minute left on the timer. Thankfully, that was more than enough time for the little droid to shut down the power core overload sequence and re-establish control for the bridge.


    Tatnia and Julus sagged with relief when the alarms went silent, the latter pulling his helmet off. Tatnia punched his shoulder, but he just smiled.


    "Not bad, huh?"


    Tatnia pulled off her helmet, her face a scowl. He grabbed the edge of his chest plate and yanked him closer. She very carefully looked over at Racer, confirming he was still focused on the console in front of him.


    "You are an idiot," She said, leaning in to kiss him before continuing quietly. "You''re lucky you''re a handsome idiot."


    "Is that all that matters? My dashing good looks?" Julus asked with a smirk. "I mean, I''m not complaining¡­"


    `Tatnia rolled her eyes and turned to walk away, leaving the reactor room behind, Racer following behind after a few seconds. Julus chuckled and followed as well, stepping over the cooling stormtrooper corpses as he did.

 Chapter 113

    I only had to wait in the large locker for about thirty minutes before Captain Senita hit the all-hands alarm, the klaxon easily audible through the metal door of my hiding spot. I waited a few minutes past that before pushing the door open and stepping out into the airlock entry space. A quick look around proved I was alone, and I released a long breath in relief. I was pretty confident I could handle just about anything they might have on board with no prep or pause, but there was something to be said about having a second to mentally prepare yourself.


    The first thing I did was dual-cast Conjure Fighter Construct, dumping all of my mana into the spell. The <u>soldier</u></a>, armed with his sword and shield, appeared silently next to me, already prepared for combat.


    Mentally, I had him step out ahead of me, my blaster pistol in one hand and my other hand empty, ready to cast a spell.


    The <u>interior of the ship </u></a>was just as Captain Senita had described. I had entered via the airlock on the port side, and immediately past the small in and outgoing station was the port storage bay. The bay seemed to be mostly empty, which only made me feel more exposed as I rushed across the empty space. I made a beeline for the largest entry and open connection to the central storage bay, my conjured soldier walking ahead by a few feet.


    I peeked around the corner of the small connecting hallway, looking into the central storage bay. I looked right, then left just in time to spot a trio of stormtroopers walking down the centerline away from me, patrolling the ship. Rather than let them disappear down another hallway, I charged up a Chain Lightning and fired it out at them, the dense blast of shock magic slamming into the nearest trooper before jumping between the others. All three soldiers went down, but since the attack lost power with each jump, the last stormtrooper simply took a knee, struggling against the electricity that had slammed into them. Thankfully, I had already told my conjured soldier to charge. The construct arrived just as the trooper was recovering, thrusting out its sword to expertly punch through the seam around the Imperial soldier''s neck.


    As the last stormtrooper fell, I advanced, casting detect life as I walked. I could see that most of the people on board, at least the people within range, were sitting at stations or focused on one task or another. There were, however, three more groups of people, two pairs and another group of three, moving around at a decent speed. Realizing that the moving groups were probably more patrolling troopers, I rushed off to find the next one, ambushing them as they entered the starboard storage bay.


    This time, the attack wasn''t nearly as clean, despite knowing they were coming and having the element of surprise. I managed to take down the first two with arrows, my conjured bow driving a pair of translucent projectiles through the chest and forehead of two troopers. The third target, however, managed to dodge my conjured soldier just long enough to fire off a trio of shots. The construct easily caught them on its shield, but the damage was done, the sound of the shots echoing through the hall. Within seconds, I could hear shouted words of alarm, even as I punched a hole in the last stormtroppers head.


    The last four troopers reacted almost instantly, word of an intruder spreading much faster than I anticipated. I had to assume some sort of alarm had been set off, maybe a comms message between whoever had heard the fight. Either way, both of the remaining pairs made a beeline for my location.


    Rather than run away or charge to meet them head-on, I simply waited, watching them get closer with Detect Life. When they stepped around the corner, they immediately opened fire on us, lasting long enough to score a trio of hits before I had dispatched them as well. Once I had confirmed they were dead, I left them where they were, heading back around the ship and systematically stunning any crew I came across. Once I was back in the central storage bay, I made a beeline along the centerline, walking to the bridge. Twice more, I had to stun the crew as they stumbled into me until I finally stepped onto the bridge.


    The bridge was surprisingly open and much larger than any other bridge I had been on so far. Immediately in front of the large security door was a holotable, and in front of that was an array of chairs and consoles, which were in front of a long, curving viewport. On either side of the security door were gunner stations, judging by their large displays. All in all, it was an impressive space.


    As I stepped onto the bridge, three of the crew stood and immediately fired their blasters at me. Several bolts bounced off of my armor before I raised my pistol and stunned each of them, slowly walking forward towards Captain Senita, who was on the opposite side of the holotable. I raised my pistol and pointed it at them.


    "There is no need to do that, pirate," The captain said in a pretty convincing act. "If you spare the crew, I will surrender."


    "Good choice, Captain."


    The crew seemed to sag at their leader''s words, defeat and submission coming a bit easier, seeing that their superior officer had accepted it already. I ordered Senita to send his crew to their rooms and to gather everyone I had already stunned. It took barely ten minutes for all of the crew, including the poor bastard I had shoved into a locker, to be securely sealed inside their quarters. I stood in the center of the ship, with detect life on, watching everyone follow their captain''s orders. When they were locked up, I did a full patrol of the ship, giving my team time to complete their side of the mission before eventually returning to the bridge.


    My conjured soldier, which had been standing on the bridge menacingly, discouraging anyone from trying anything, snapped and faded into a cloud of dispersing energy as I stepped back onto the bridge.


    "Are we clear?" I asked, watching as Captain Senita tapped away at one of the consoles.


    "Yes, I have sealed the crew inside their rooms and revoked security clearance from anyone who might attempt to reclaim the ship," He explained. "I am attempting to hail the Huntress now."


    "No response?"


    "No, and our escorts are getting anxious. Too much longer, and they will declare the ship lost and attempt to eliminate it," He responded, shaking his head.


    "Do they know we have the Demanding Fury as well?"


    "No, I delayed the warning long enough for you to stop comms from sending the message," He answered, frowning as he watched the console he was leaning over. After a moment, he sat down on the chair, tapping on the screen a few times. "I''m placating them by taking temporary command and having them move into position with us."


    We watched and listened as the Gozanti escorts, Defiant Gaze and Cold Blade, maneuvered around into a new position with the Demanding Fury. It felt like forever, despite it most likely only being a handful of minutes, before the voice of Commodore Distani came through in a broad spectrum comms message.


    "Defiant Gaze and Cold Blade, this is Commodore Distani. Power down your weapons and proceed to make landfall," He said. "The Huntress has been boarded, and we have surrendered. Repeat, you are free to leave to the planet''s surface as long as you power down your weapons and retreat immediately."


    "Defiant Gaze and Cold Blade, This is Captain Senita. The Demanding Fury has also been boarded, and we have surrendered," The Captain added. "You are outmatched. Power down your weapons and retreat to Lipsec''s surface."


    The response, which only took a few seconds to come in, was a scathing barrage of curses and accusations of treason. Captain Senita listened with a bored look on his face before eventually tapping a button and silencing the call.


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    "How long until your friends show up?" He asked, turning to look at me with a raised eyebrow.


    "Well, the plan was to reach out as soon as the other group claimed the bridge," I said with a shrug. "Your partner should have-"


    I stopped myself as the Intervention and the Talos Chariot dropped out of hyperspace a significant distance away. The Chariot immediately scrambled its raindrops, eight ships flying around both of our warships as they slowly approached.


    "Defiant Gaze and Cold Blade, this is your final warning. You are outgunned and outclassed twice over now," Commodore Distani said through the comms, cutting off the other captain''s tirade. Do not force us to defend ourselves."


    Several long seconds passed, with only silence coming through the comms. Eventually, and without another word, both of the ships pulled out of formation and descended to the surface. As they did, I shook my head.


    "I would have really liked to have forced them to surrender as well," I said with a frown.


    "There isn''t enough time," The captain said, already standing from the comms console, moving to what I was guessing was the pilot''s chair. "It would take a while to claim them, and the response time from the nearest fleet is less than thirty minutes. We are already cutting it close."


    I nodded and sat down at the comms station, using it to communicate with everyone, get updates on the situation, and explain myself. Both the Vakim and Allum, the latter of which was temporarily piloting the Chariot, had quite a few questions since they had no idea we had been trying to take both ships. Thankfully, they quickly put that aside and focused on completing the mission. I was most interested in the reports from Commodore Distani since he knew how my ground team was fairing. According to him, there were no casualties, but there had been a rather close call with an attempted self-destruct of sorts. I cursed and rubbed my face but shook it off after a moment.


    No reason to panic over something that was already resolved.


    It didn''t take long for both of our newly claimed ships to punch in the astronavigation data, and after a quick moment to get into a better position, the four-ship fleet jumped, leaving the Lipsec behind.


    We stayed in hyperspace for several hours, jumping deep into deep space, leaving lightspeed at a random point between systems. I spent that time patrolling the ship, dragging stormtrooper corpses to one of the cargo bays, and watching all of the crew with Detect Life. I had to stop a few of the more determined Imperials from tampering with the doors or attempting to contact their neighbors. Still, after walking into the rooms, stunning everyone, and sealing the room back up several times, they got the message. I was watching, and they had no chance of escape.


    When we finally dropped to realspace, I spent a while on the comms, talking to everyone and fully explaining what had happened. Vakim, with her serious and by-the-book-and-plan nature, was the most vocal with how bad of an idea it had been, but the simple fact that it had worked, and well at that, had kept her from being truly annoying. Besides, I knew she was just worried about what could have gone wrong. The rest of the crew was amazed and stunned at the result.


    After everything was settled and we confirmed that each ship was fine, we reached out through the hyperwave to say that we had achieved our mission. Our Rebel contact, which we had been given in case we needed Rebel support after completing our mission, had been shocked that we were claiming success so soon. Nevertheless, once we had proven our claims, the Rebels sent out several ships, some to take the prisoners away, whom they promised to treat humanely, and others to assist in scans and studying the ship. We spent a total of two days in deep space, waiting for the ships to arrive and then waiting for them to give the all-clear.


    At the end of that time, they took the Huntress with them to be painted, staffed, and do whatever other things they planned to do before it made its way back to Omega Station. We took the Demanding Fury, along with several Rebel volunteers, with us there directly, warning the station and the ships around it that we would be arriving before we jumped.


    Both Senita and Distani were with me on the Demanding Fury as we dropped out of hyperspace around Omega Base. Neither of them had any idea where we were and were shocked to see our destination. To be fair, so was I, since the activity around the station had nearly doubled. It seemed that the Rebellion had either assumed I would succeed or, more likely, had planned to renegotiate for more control of the station if I failed, because they had clearly dedicated a considerable amount of assets in repairing it. Several ships floated around the Munificent specifically, as well as the damaged primary sensor spire.


    "That''s¡­ quite a bit more organization that we were told the Rebellion had," Senita admitted. "What is that attached to the side?"


    "Technically, the Skyforged Vanguard owns the station. The Rebellion is just fixing it up for us," I explained as we came in to land in the hangar bay we had claimed. "It''s one of the reasons we owed them a ship. And that''s a Munificent. Don''t worry about it."


    We landed in our claimed hangar, followed by the Intervention and the Talos Chariot. The three starships barely fit in the hangar together, and the only reason they did at all was due to two of our ships being relatively narrow. Conveniently, Calima had landed the Starcaller in a smaller, separate hangar.


    Once we had landed, I was swept away in a rush of activity. Both Senita and Distani left the station within hours of landing. They shook our hands, thanked us for dealing fairly with them, and left, their pockets full of several credit chips that contained a lot of credits. Thankfully, the final assessment of the station''s supplies had come in, and after a brief meeting with the woman in charge of getting the supplies of the station, we received our payment. Suddenly, the three hundred thousand credits we paid them was only a small portion of our total credit amount of two point eight million credits, now two and a half million.


    Part of me had wondered if the pair or ex-imperials would defect and hang around, as it seemed like something that would happen to us, but I wasn''t surprised they hadn''t. They both clearly did not like the idea of working with the Rebellion, and I wasn''t about to try and change their mind.


    After seeing them off, mostly to keep an eye on them, and meeting with the head engineer of the repair project, as well as the woman in charge of the supplies, I was immediately contacted by Allum, who had apparently been talking to some of his newly defrosted brothers.


    "They contacted me shortly after you left on the Starcaller," He explained. "Lieutenant Rider asked permission to come to the station."


    "Really? They don''t need permission to come here, as long as they don''t side with the Empire," I said, shaking my head. "Not hard to argue they have more claim to this place than we do, to be honest."


    "Maybe, but they don''t see it that way, Sir," Allum assured me as he led me further into the station.


    "Alright¡­ well, what does he want?"


    "He is asking about joining up, sir," He explained. "And it''s not just him."


    Before I could ask him to clarify, he led me into a large room, seemingly to be one part lounge, one part cafeteria. As I entered, I froze like a deer in headlights, eyes wide as I looked around the room. As far as I could tell, there were nearly thirty clones seated around the room. As the door slid shut behind me, quite a few of them looked over, including one whom I recognized as Lieutenant Rider by a tattoo along his neck.


    "Oh boy," I muttered to myself. "This just got a bit more complicated."

 Chapter 114

    I took a moment to gather my thoughts, scanning around the room. The troopers all looked healthy and hearty, clearly having recovered from their hibernation sickness. It was hard to tell, but they did also look a few years younger. According to Ahsoka, that was a side-effect of being cured of their accelerated aging.


    After a moment, Lieutenant Rider, whom I recognized because of a tattoo on his neck, stood from where he was sitting and made his way over. As he stopped in front of me, he started to raise his hand in a solute, only to stop himself midway with a frown.


    "Greeting, sir," He said. "I¡­ Well- We¡­"


    "I heard you wanted to join up," I said, helping the trooper out. "I gotta admit, I was hoping a few of you would be interested in the idea, but I thought I was going to have to make the offer myself. And I didn''t think there would be nearly this many of you."


    "Sorry about that, Sir. When we started discussing our options, I mentioned searching you out, seeing if you would be open to me joining up," He explained. "I asked if anyone wanted to join me, and¡­ well quite a few of us did."


    "Can I ask why?" I asked. "I''m happy to have you, but I would have thought that any of you who still wanted to fight would be joining the Rebellion."


    "It was an option. Some of us even took it," he admitted. "Honestly, Sir, reasons vary, but generally¡­ We were born to fight, Sir. It''s all we know, whether we are ground troopers or naval officers. But... with how the last war turned out, and with the biochip¡­ we just aren''t ready to join up with another army. We wanted something different, and from what we were able to learn about you and your group¡­ you are different."


    "We are," I agreed, looking over at Allum before focusing back on the lieutenant. "You do realize as mercenaries, you will be paid for jobs you participate in, not a salary? We will cover living expenses, armor, and weapons, as well as basic entertainment needs, but in exchange, pay comes from working on jobs and missions."


    "What about those of us who don''t wish to fight?" He asked now looking slightly concerned. "We have several troopers who are hoping to retire from full time combat, but still wish to help¡­"


    "To be honest? I don''t know," I admit with a frown, crossing my arms. "This is a step past what we were before, so things are going to have to change."


    For a moment, the room was silent as I tried to puzzle out what my next step would be. When nothing popped into my head immediately, I decided it was time for any leader''s trump card. Delegation.


    "Lieutenant Rider, I need you to collate the concerns, needs, and wants of all of these men," I said, catching the leader off guard. "Find out what they are looking for from joining the Skyforged Vanguard and what skills they have. When you''re done, find a few of your people to represent your group. Then, we will meet to discuss the next step of the Skyforged Vanguard."


    Lieutenant Rider''s expression changed from concern to interest and finally to excitement as I explained his task to him. As cannon fodder for the Galactic Republic, the clone troopers rarely got the opportunity to engage in important discussions and influence outcomes. Now, I was giving him the chance to sit at the table as equals, which must have been a new and exciting concept.


    "I can do that for you, Sir," He said confidently, drawing himself up. "How many representatives should I bring?"


    "Enough to cover the different groups," I answered with a shrug. "Use your best judgement, Rider."


    "I will, Sir."


    "Good. Let''s give you¡­ five hours? A late lunch meeting, how does that sound?" I asked, getting a quick nod in agreement. "Good. I will see you then. Allum, you going to stay behind?"


    "Yeah, Boss, I might be able to answer some of their questions."


    "Alright, good luck."


    I gave the group a wave before heading out of the room. When the door shut behind me, I wilted quite a bit, sagging under the new weight of our latest problem. I had not expected something like this to happen, to thrust us from a small crew to a group of over forty. I knew we would eventually grow to this size, or at least hope to grow to this size and even past it, but I never saw jumping to that size all at once.


    After a long moment, I shook my head and stood up straight, tugging on my uniform. This was a lot, but if I had learned anything over the last few months, it was that I could trust my crew to keep me rock steady under whatever we got saddled with.


    I made my way back to the main hangar, getting in touch with Tatnia and Nal, as well as finding Miru and Vakim. I wanted everyone to know about the meeting, to at least give them the option to sit in, but there wasn''t much point in everyone going either.


    When everything was set up, I immediately headed to the Chariot. I had just under four hours, and I was going to spend every but of that time sleeping. The last couple of days, riding the Demanding Fury, constantly having to keep an eye on the locked-up crew, and even Senita and Distani, had really tired me out. If I was going to have to handle a restructuring of our entire group, reorganizing it to include thirty new clone troopers, I needed a bit to unwind and rest.


    I woke up three and half hours later, having just enough time to step into the sonic shower before heading out into Omega Station. Nal had found a <u>conference room</u></a>, one that was functional and nearby the main hangar. It was a simple circular room with a circular meeting table in the middle. There were datapad sockets, charging ports, and holoprojector for each spot, but they were flush with the table. There were also several couch-like seats around the central table directly against the wall.


    I arrived just a few minutes before the arranged meeting time, entering the room to find Nal, Tatnia and Vakim had already sat down. Vaz, Pola, and Miru were sitting down on one of the large couches. I made my way over and sat between Nal and Tatnia, getting comfortable before looking at my second in command.


    "By the way, congrats on the mission, Nia," I said with a smile, making sure to give Nal and Vaz a nod as well. "You guys did great on the Huntress. Sorry, I haven''t had a chance to talk directly with you about it until now."


    "It''s fine, boss," She said, waving off my apology. "It went well, all things considered. Could have done with a less close call with the reactor room, but we just didn''t see that coming."


    "We will have to in the future," Nal said, shaking his head. "Knew Stormtroopers were more fanatical."


    "There''s a difference between knowing they are hardcore and knowing they are fucking crazy," I pointed out. "Can''t expect to foresee everything. You guys handled it well, though. I''m going to pay out a few thousand credits to everyone who participated once this meeting is over"


    Nal accepted the praise with a nod, while Tatnia smiled before changing the subject.


    "Boss¡­ Do you have any plans about what you''re going to do with all these troopers?" She asked, seeming genuinely curious. It''s a lot of people to suddenly be in charge of."


    "I have a few ideas, but it really comes down to what sort of things the troopers are looking for," I admitted with a shrug. "Before you say anything, I''m not going to be handing out charity. I will help where we can, but I''m not paying a clone out to try his hand at being a florist."


    She chuckled, but lost the chance to respond when Lieutenant Rider arrived, two other clones following him in. Again, I could see Lieutenant Rider tensing, his hand shifting as he was about to salute, only to catch himself just before he did. I stood and gestured to some of the seats across from us.


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    "Gentleman, please take a seat," I said with a smile.


    "Thank you, Sir," Lieutenant Rider said, both of his compatriots nodding along with him. "We wanted to start by saying thank you for including us in this process."


    "Of course," I said with a nod, sitting down as all three newcomers claimed their seats. This is a big step forward, and I want to make sure we are all on the same page. I know this is uncharted ground for your men as well, so the need to communicate is even more critical. Now, introductions?"


    I introduced the crew that was present before Lieutenant Rider introduced both of his compatriots, Flip and Toggle. Flip was a medic who, during his time working at the station, served under the two doctors who ran the station''s two separate medbays. He was representing the troopers who wished to help but weren''t looking to be in direct combat. He personally wanted to continue performing medicine, becoming more than just a particularly well-trained combat medic.


    Toggle, on the other hand, was a starfighter pilot, one of a handful that were looking to join. He represented the clones trained to pilot or perform other duties on various starships, of which there were nineteen in total.


    Lieutenant Rider represented the clones who were primarily ground troops, of which there were eight, nine including himself. I was a little shocked at first at the low number of ground-based combatants, but then I realized that on a space station, it made sense there weren''t many ground troops.


    Once introductions were complete, we began to discuss how inducting the clones into the Skyforged Vanguard would work. The first discussion we had was what exactly the clones could bring to the table and what exactly they were looking to do.


    As we talked, it quickly became apparent that we had enough people to staff the Demanding Fury, as well as replace a few bridge droids on the Intervention and Chariot with clones, as long as we kept using droids to assist with gunner stations, manual labor, and maintenance. We also were able to replace Pola as the Interventions head engineer, as he was truly enjoying the armor-making process and wanted to focus on improving ours even more. Considering that all of our newcomers would at least need one pair of the beskar uniforms, he was already going to be pretty busy. Not to mention, he would now need to maintain them as well.


    According to Flip, one of the non-combat clones would probably be very interested in joining his work, so we didn''t even have to worry about him being overworked.


    The pilots provided a different problem, as the Chariot could not fit the V-wings we had access to, but leaving them behind would be a waste of resources. The Rebels planned to rotate their own starfighter squadrons through the station as quasi-shore leave, so we didn''t even need them to stay behind as protection.


    All this meant that I wanted a way to transport them around so they could join our growing fleet. I desperately wanted biological pilots to work with our small droid starfighter fleet.


    "Why don''t you just buy another carrier?" Pola suggested, looking a bit nervous about speaking up. "Something we could fit the V-wings into."


    "Are there any carriers in our price range?" I asked, settling my look on Nal. "Something we could afford or steal?"


    "I''ll look into it," Nal volunteered with a nod. "See if I can find a good match for us."


    "Alright. And while that is happening, how would the pilots feel about taking a few people under their wings and training them up, especially on flying V-wings?" I asked. Having a fighter screen is crucial to a fleet''s strength, so the more pilots we can field, the better. I''m already planning to have Miru figure out a way to put some shields on the V-wings so they can crush TIEs."


    "We¡­ would be okay with that, as long as they have some talent," Toggle agreed. "Training from scratch takes years, but getting someone who already has decent flying instinct up to higher standards is easier."


    "Fantastic, that''s something we can look into then. Nal, take that into account when you''re looking for a carrier solution."


    Happy to pass the buck, we tackled the next problem: how to pay the people who are not going on missions. We discussed it for a while, throwing around and subsequently throwing out several ideas. In the end, we decided to continue using the current model. The company would pay for living expenses and equipment, but completing missions earned you a payday. The caveat was that if someone ever felt like stepping back from active combat or their duties weren''t something required on missions, they would be given a monthly stipend calculated by the Skyforged Vanguard''s total income. It would definitely be less than what the combatants would be making, but it would be enough for them to save up or use to purchase personal luxuries. I was a bit hesitant to hook people so tightly to the group, but in the end, it made sense to do it that way, especially when they wouldn''t have to pay rent for their own equipment. We did agree to give this pay model some time and that we would come back and discuss it to see if it worked the way we hoped or if it needed some finagling.


    Surprisingly, by the time we finished going over what the clones were looking for, we managed to fill quite a few rolls that Nal and Tatnia decided we needed. We now had an experienced quartermaster who would be in charge of making sure we had food, ammo, and fuel, along with other necessities. We also had two pilots who would be running supply missions for us. We would most likely be buying a semi-decent and completely legitimate freighter, fixing it up a bit, and using it to go buy and transport supplies. Since that would be its only purpose, the chances of it getting connected to us were low, meaning they wouldn''t have to worry about getting snitched on. Even better, the two clones who express interest in that role would be okay with getting some cosmetic work done to hide their origins.


    We also planned on opening at least one of the station''s medical facilities, staffing it with a few clones led by Flip, the eager combat medic turned kinda sorta doctor. There was quite a bit of equipment we would most likely need, depending on the state of the two medbays. I was hoping we could salvage one to make the other fully functional, but that was probably unlikely.


    By the end of the three-hour meeting, we had discussed and handled all of the issues we could think of. Some of the clones would work on our ships, mostly the Demanding Fury, which we may or may not rename. Others would work around the station to shore up our unsurprisingly lacking logistical infrastructure.


    On top of that, the naval-focused clones would also help us train up any new recruits we had, which we would probably need soon, considering we planned on purchasing or otherwise acquiring at least one unassigned new ship, the carrier. Finally, the combat troopers would work with our already existing ground team under the leadership of Lieutenant Rider. They would be working out of either the Intervention or the Demanding Fury, depending on the situation. They could also go off on their own missions.


    When the meeting was over, I shook hands with Rider, Toggle, and Flip, all three of whom looked incredibly excited at the agreement. I was also excited, though there was plenty of nervousness to go along with it. I was now in charge of more than forty people, with a quickly growing, if not still small-scale, fleet. Yes, this was exactly the direction I was hoping I would go, but that didn''t make it any less nerve-wracking.

 Chapter 115

    <div>


    Chariot. We bounced around nearly a dozen planets, picking up supplies for Pola and Miru, as well as buying medical equipment, general supplies, and other infrastructure requirements like furniture.


    While most of the furniture on the station was fine, since the vacuum tended to preserve most nonliving things pretty well. Unfortunately, save a few rooms made for dignitaries and high-rank individuals, all of the sleeping quarters were built for soldiers, most of whom the Republic barely considered as people.


    It was not the most comfortable.


    All of that meant a lot of shopping, a lot of shipping, and a lot of money spent. In total, we spent nearly a hundred thousand credits getting a significant portion of the station ready for use. I wanted our new home to have everything we could need. A not insignificant portion of that went to medical equipment, as well as an emergency <u>medical droid</u></a> for each of our ships. The medical droids were the hardest to get our hands on as well, because, for obvious reasons, they were in high demand. In the end, I had to bribe a cargo hauler five thousand credits to "lose" his shipment, which was destined for Hutt space.


    While Calima, Nal, and I were bouncing around the Outer Rim, I spent most of my time working on my magic and enchanting. It was a lot of hard work, but by the end, I could happily say I knew all of the actually useful spells up to Adept. I had no interest in learning every single spell, so I could only hope that the next level of my grimoire would unlock soon. I got a lot of enchanting practice in, managing to complete a pair of enchanted rings, one dex, and one strength for all of the ground combat clones. My next project would be to make a pair of dex rings for our new pilots.


    After getting most of our shopping done, we made one more trip, this one with multiple destinations. We were accompanied by a pair of clones, both of whom had undergone some facial reconstruction. Between visiting a merchant to pick up a specific fabrication machine for Miru and getting a shipment of metal stock for Pola, we dropped the clones off on a Mid Rim planet. There, they would be completing the final process of picking up and purchasing a used but well-maintained <u>YT-1930</u></a>.


    This new starship would be our first primary cargo ship, which was why we went through trouble purchasing it legitimately. The pair of clones were eager to start their new jobs, which was good because they immediately left for their first cargo run. While the YT-1930 was a pretty solid ship, I wanted our guys to have better than pretty solid, which meant they left for a two-day journey to pick up several upgrades for the ship. These upgrades included some improved sensors, shields, and a second laser turret for the bottom of the ship.


    In all, the new ship would cost us just over a hundred and fifteen thousand credit. I would have spent more on it since I firmly believed that upgrading your ships was always worth the money, but this vessel was specifically designed to be legal, unassuming, and, overall, uninteresting. Stacking it to the nines with all the newest, shiniest, and most potent upgrades would have been counterintuitive. Where Starcaller was meant to look like a well of trader, so it could pick up strange things, like a high profile merchant, the newly christened Staggering Bantha was intended to carry basic, simple supplies.


    I wasn''t the only one busy, of course. While we were gone, Miru was working the V-Wings. She worked with the clone engineers to design a modification, finally affixing the starfighters with medium-grade shields. Unfortunately, while the shields meant I was finally comfortable letting our pilots use them in combat, they also drew a significant amount of extra power. With the ship''s power core almost completely tapped into, a hyperdrive unit was entirely out of the question. At least it was without a total overhaul or severely hampering the ship''s maneuverability and weapons.


    Miru and her temporary team worked on converting twelve of the V-wings, waiting for news about the planned carrier or carriers before upgrading more.


    The pink Twi''lek also orchestrated the deep scanning and cataloging of the Loyal Hound, the now-renamed and repainted IPV. The ship''s hull now followed the same pattern as all our ships, white with purple lines and accents. It also bore our <u>new symbol</u></a>, which was slowly being added to a lot of our stuff, including our armor and ships. It was a simplified eagle, wings spread around a simple circle and a shield over its chest with the letters SV written on the shield. It was very much stolen from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as it was the symbol of the Strategic Science Reserve. I picked it because it looked cool, was pretty easy to do, and was easily simplified. Also, the original Skyforge, our namesake, was a massive stone eagle, so it really all just fit together.


    Pola, as well as his two new assistants, had made solid progress on creating armor for our second-ground team. According to the talented armorsmith, only two helmets were left to convert when we arrived back from our final shopping trip, and those wouldn''t take more than a day. After that was done, he was excited to get started on making more beskar fiber uniforms. At this point, we had transferred almost all of the exotic and valuable metals to a reinforced section of his workshop. All of the ships had a stash of a few valuable ingots just in case, but since the process of armoring our new clone members would take a significant portion of our stash, we couldn''t leave much.


    I spent a whole day converting beskar before we left, giving myself a headache in the process.


    While we were busy, the Rebellion also made significant progress in repairing the station and the munificent. By the time we returned from our final shopping trip, the station''s shields were at full, which, with the assistance of the shield projectors on the Munificent, was actually just a few hairs better than they had been originally.


    Since everything looked so good, I wanted to discuss what was left to do with the lead engineer. Unfortunately, since the Rebellion had yet to assign either a liaison or a real leader of the stationed Rebels, I was forced to ambush the lead engineer in a hallway using Clairvoyance.


    According to him, the exterior armor was almost completely repaired, as was the integrity of the internal hull. Their next big project was salvaging and repairing the station''s remaining turbolasers and point defense matrix. He revealed that it was very unlikely that they would ever be able to encircle and move around the station like they could before it was lost. Still, they would be spread around to offer maximum protection and firepower. I pointed out that with the Munificent''s weapons repaired, they would be able to include them in their calculations, a fact he seemed to have not realized but promised to take into account.


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    When the two weeks, plus a few days extra, were over, I was preparing to gather a few people together to start planning our next move when we got a surprised guest. They landed their <u>ship</u></a> in one of the smaller hangars close to the major one where we landed our three larger ships. It was a vessel I recognized, so I headed out to greet its pilot.


    "Ahsoka, what can I do for you?" I asked as the Togruta climbed down her ship''s boarding ramp.


    "Deacon, I''m glad you''re here," She said with a small, worry-filled smile. "I... I need your team''s help."


    It was easy to pick up her obvious anxiety and worry, so whatever she was dealing with was important. I nodded, gesturing for her to follow me. As we walked, I pulled out my comms and started contacting my team, directing them to our meeting room. I usually liked using the act of gathering everyone as a chance to explore and see what everyone was up to, but this was obviously not the time.


    Most of my group, save Pola, as he was well and truly off the combat roster, met us at the same conference room we had used a few weeks ago to discuss how our group would change with the induction of the clones. Nal was the last to join us, coming into the room at a jog. When he sat down, I turned to Ahsoka and nodded.


    "Four days ago, the Rebellion got a message from an agent on an Imperial-held world," She started. "The message was a request for immediate emergency extraction. The agent was on the planet to watch and gather intel on a specific facility, a weapons manufacturing plant. The plan was to eventually sneak a team down to the surface and perform a precision strike on it and a few others. However, the agent stumbled on something more important. As the agent went about their cover job, they befriended a pair of street kids, siblings."


    She pulled a small holoprojector from her pocket and activated it to reveal two young children. The relation was obvious, with a younger-looking boy with dark brown hair cut short and a young boyish face, no more than five or six. The clearly older sibling couldn''t have been more than ten or eleven and shared the same dark brown hair, though hers was pulled tightly into a braided ponytail.


    "Claron is the youngest sibling, and Felia is the older. Over the course of a month, in between her observations and other work, the agent got close to them, enough so that she was beginning to lay the groundwork to have them leave with her after her mission was complete."


    "What happened?" Miru asked, her voice clearly showing that she was expecting the worst. It wasn''t hard to imagine why the story was resonating with her.


    "There was an accident involving the younger sibling and an out-of-control vehicle of some sort," Ahsoka said. During this, in order to prevent her younger sibling from being crushed, Felia instinctively reached out with the Force, picking up the vehicle and throwing it to the side."


    "Impressive, couldn''t have been easy," Nal said.


    "The Force can react particularly strongly to times of need, but yes, it is impressive," Ahsoka admitted. "The problem is that this was not some backwater world. The feat was captured on camera, and the Empire quickly reacted. The planet was locked down. The stationed fleet, which was already impressive, has doubled, and¡­ The Inquisitors have been spotted."


    "Dammit¡­ How many?" I asked, shaking my head.


    "Three, including who we think is the current Grand Inquisitor," She responded.


    "How have they not been found?" Tatnia asked before frowning and adding. "How do you know they haven''t been found?"


    "There were three other agents planetside when the lockdown began," She answered. "When her cover was blown trying to protect the children, she sought shelter with a second agent. They died at the hands of an Inquisitor, killed while making time for the first agent and the kids to escape. We know they are still free because the third is still in contact with them, though only at a distance."


    "But why haven''t they been found yet?" I asked, repeating Tatnia''s question. "I''m glad they are, but if the planet is really in lockdown, and there are Inquisitors on the ground¡­"


    "The agent who found them is good, one of the best. On top of that, I was told that she had an interest in the Force," Ahsoka explained. "She immediately recognized what had happened and what kind of attention it would bring. According to what they knew, she is helping the eldest stay calm, reducing the likelihood that they would be found, even by Inquisitors."


    "That... impressive, even if the Inquisitors are fed the absolute bare minimum in terms of force techniques," I said, shaking my head. They are kept purposely ignorant of the force, both dark and light, so they never pose a threat. The only reason they pose a threat to a fully trained Jedi is because of numbers, cheap tactics, and most of the strongest Jedi are long dead."


    Ahsoka nodded in agreement, clearly not enjoying the bitter pill. After a long pause, she continued.


    "The Rebellion, as much as it wants to help, cannot muster the forces to attack such a heavily guarded planet, especially not for just two agents and a force-sensitive kid and their sibling," Ahsoka said. "And I cannot contend with that many Inquisitors."


    "So you need us," I said, getting a nod in return. "You know, I''m pretty sure I can''t handle that many Inquisitors at once either."


    "But together we have a decent chance," She said. "With your crew backing us up, we could infiltrate the planet, find them, and get them out."


    Ahsoka continued to explain the situation, talking about the strength of the fleet in orbit, which was so large that the number of Star Destroyers outnumbered our entire fleet of starships. She described the general area in which our three targets were most likely, judging by the method of communication with the third and final Rebel agent. Apparently, there was a rock sitting by the corner of an abandoned building, which the third agent walked past every day on their way to work. Every morning, so far, the stone had been flipped over.


    While incredibly crude, the method was effective and, honestly, kind of brilliant. As long as the rock turned over, the agent knew they were still alive, and they didn''t have to break their routine at all to see it, so there was no suspicion raised. It was apparently an already agreed-upon method, planned from before the operation even began.


    As Ahsoka continued to describe the scenario, Rider raised his hand and asked the question I was nervous about asking myself.


    "Do we have an exfil plan?" He asked. "Or infiltration method? Anything at all?"


    "No. the pre-agreed upon methods have all been cut off by the fleet."


    "So, overwhelming forces, no plan of infiltration or getting out on the other side," I said, finally standing before looking around at my crew.


    Every single member of my team looked back at me and nodded. All of them were ready and fearless. Even Tatnia, who was usually first to raise her hand and point out the risks behind charity at our own peril, gave me a subtle nod.


    "Right¡­ Well, it''s time to get to work," I said, turning back to Ahsoka and smiling at her. "Our resources are yours, Ahsoka. Let''s figure this out."

 Chapter 116

    Ahsoka visibly sagged at my promise, beyond happy that the rescue operation finally had a chance. After a moment, she looked at me and nodded before we all sat back around the table and focused on the mission. We were on a timer now, one that could go off at any moment. The quicker we could figure out what we were doing and get to it, the better.


    "Would inserting on the Starcaller work?" Tatnia asked. "I know it would likely burn the ship as an undercover smuggling ship, but would it work?"


    "What sort of smuggling ship is it?" Ashoka asked, a bit confused. "And why would this burn it?"


    "It''s a higher-end, heavily modified <u>YV-260</u></a> we spent a good chunk of credits on, then spent even more money putting in some pretty solid smuggling compartments in," I explained. "The problem is that we''ve used it twice in pretty rapid succession, once to do a high-profile heist and another in our most recent mission where we stole the Loyal Hound and the Huntress. Chances are Imperial Intelligence has already labeled it as a risk, which means they won''t stop at a normal search. Hell, they might just blow it out of the sky to avoid the risk."


    "We can''t rely on smuggling ourselves in compartments, anyway," Ahsoka said, shaking her head. "With the Inquisitors around, there''s a non-zero chance they sense us if they are doing inspections, even as we''re hidden in special compartments."


    Together, we spent about an hour spitballing ideas until we finally managed to land on one. We thought would have the best chance of working.


    We would ride the Starcaller, as normal passengers, to a nearby planet. There, we would split up and hop onto a mass transport liner to our final destinations. Our target was planet Foless, a decently sized hub world that sat at the crossroads between the Corellian Trade Spine and the Shipwrights'' Trace Hyperlanes, conveniently called the Foless Crossroads. This was extremely lucky, because if the planet was not such a gigantic hub for trade and shipping, the Empire would have no doubt set on a full-blown blockade, letting no people in or out until they had their target. Unfortunately, as it was, we would most likely never make it through customs. To do that required some¡­ drastic measures.


    "Racer could whip up some temporary IDs. That''s not a problem at all," Miru confirmed with a shrug. They won''t last under any deep scrutiny, not without getting direct access to several protected locations to change some heavily defended records, but they should work short term. The problem is that there''s a pretty good chance Imperial Intelligence knows about at least some of the ground team."


    "Imperial Intelligence definitely knows me," Ahsoka added with a frown. "Once they know I''m on the planet, it''s likely to get worse quite quickly."


    "Would he come chasing after you if you''re spotted?" I asked as gently as I could, still getting a harsh look from Ahsoka, before she took a long, deep breath.


    "It''s possible," She admitted, clearly understanding who I was talking about.


    I winced, agreeing with her conclusion. It made me wonder if bringing her was a good idea. I wasn''t sure if my team could take on three Inquisitors, but I knew for a fact we weren''t ready to go against fucking Vader. There were weapons we could get and tactics we could train in to boost those chances, but he was the Chosen One, and there was no telling what the Force would finagle in order to keep it''s chosen alive and fulfill his destiny.


    "All that means is that even a perfect ID won''t make a difference," Tatnia finished. "They will be comparing our faces to their databanks directly."


    "We would have to leave behind our weapons and armor as well," Rider pointed out. "No way we would be able to get anything other than pistols through customs."


    I considered everyone''s points, chewing on my lips as I tried to puzzle out the best way to get through security. I glanced around the room, moving my eyes around until they settled on Rider. A thought came to me, one that led me to wince and curse.


    "I have an idea. It is drastic, but¡­ time is clearly of the essence. We don''t have time to find easy, less painful solutions."


    Rider, having spotted that I looked at him before wincing, looked a bit worried. It was Nal, however, that asked me for clarification.


    "What is this plan?"


    "We have our medical droids do some scans of our faces¡­ and then have them modify them," I said, holding my hands up to stave off the gasps and shocked words. "With the scans, they should be able to undo whatever change they make. Between changing our faces and maybe mixing up our hair¡­ we could look pretty different."


    "That¡­ That is drastic," Tatnia admitted, openly cringing at the idea. "But¡­ it would work. I would want to talk to a medical droid to confirm they could restore our faces and have them make multiple copies of the scans... but it would probably be enough to get us on the planet, at least."


    "Wait, what about healing?" Rider asked, "Facial reconstruction takes time to heal, even if you spend some time swimming in bacta."


    "You''re forgetting who the Boss is," Miru responded. "He can heal anything in a few minutes."


    "How will your magic react to having your face changed?" Nal asked, looking at me with curiosity.


    "I have no idea, but I''m willing to be the test subject," I said. "I know this is drastic, guys, but these poor kids¡­ what the Emperor will do to them¡­ I''m willing to do a lot to prevent that from happening. Dealing with some minor body dysmorphia for a few weeks is an easy exchange."


    While no one particularly liked the idea of having their face changed, the stakes, along with the assurances that it could be reversed, were enough to get everyone, even Ahsoka, on board. With a broad plan settled, we started to fill in the details. We quickly realized we should take the Staggered Bantha to the closest heavily populated planet, Bestine, rather than the Starcaller since our smuggling ship was still a bit on the hot side at the moment. Bestine had a pretty heavy Imperial presence, but since the Staggered Bantha was just a normal ship and since we would all have changed faces, it made the best sense.


    From there, we would ride a public transport ship in an attempt to attract even less attention. This way, none of our ships would get attention called to them, and we could silently enter the planet. With any luck, the Imperials would have no idea we were there.


    From there, the mission became less planned and more "See how it goes and adapt." Our best bet for locating the missing agent and her wards would be the communication stone that the other rebel was using to confirm they were still alive. If we watched that, eventually, someone would show up to turn that stone.


    After making contact¡­ the entire plan became about getting off the planet. Unfortunately, there was not a whole lot we could do to plan that out. All three of our rescue targets had their faces plastered everywhere, including the holonet and local news broadcasts. We were hopeful that we could find some way to get out while remaining undercover, but none of us were naive enough to assume it would work out. Instead, we would plan to have to fight our way out.


    Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit."With the proper preparation, I should be able to disassemble my lightsabers and get them through security," Ahsoka explained. "Blaster pistols are allowed on Imperial worlds, but they change the laws constantly to try and reduce the number. Chances are if you bring something recognizably high-powered, it will get confiscated."


    "Leave that up to me," Miru said. "I can make sure everyone has a good weapon that looks like trash."


    "I believe Pola will be able to fit some of our uniforms under normal clothes," Vaz said. "It will likely not be pretty or overly comfortable, but it will work."


    "They won''t pick up on armor?" I asked, looking concerned, but Vaz shook her head.


    "Armor is not illegal, just eye catching," She explained. "They wouldn''t stop you from wearing our full armor, but they would just put you under surveillance. Wearing reinforced clothes, if they even detect them, won''t raise to many read flags, especially if it looks improvised."


    "Alright. Then we need to get our medical droids so I can change my face," I said, still wincing slightly at the idea.


    Despite my nervousness, time was of the essence. I did not have the luxury of taking the time to come to terms or think things through. Our last topic at the meeting was that the Loyal Hound and Intervention would be waiting nearby in deep space in case we needed support. There were very few things that we could conceivably call them in for, and that wouldn''t result in their immediate destruction, but it would be better to have them around than not. When we had settled that, I headed directly for the medbay. Flip was waiting for me, as was a pair of newly purchased medical droids.


    We spent five minutes discussing what changes we were comfortable with before they both did in-depth scans of my face. They transferred those saves to several places, including a databank that Miru coughed up. After they were done with the scans, I laid back on the operating table, and the droids knocked me out.


    I woke up an hour later with a quickly fading numbness all around my face. The droids had, under our instructions, used as little anesthesia as possible so it wouldn''t interfere with anything. It would mean a heck of a lot of pain if this fucked up, but I didn''t care. I cast my most basic healing spell, Healing, and slowly watched as the swelling, bruising, and small incisions healed, revealing my new face.


    As planned, the alterations were minor but played together to really change what I looked like. My nose, brow, lips, cheekbones, and even my ears were slightly tweaked to make me into a completely different person. If I focused on smaller parts of my face, I could kind of see my old self, but I had a feeling that was just me coping.


    And god, did I need it. Watching someone else''s face move while I talked to the medical droids as they did some more scans was incredibly bizarre. I found myself wanting to touch my face, poking and pulling in different parts, trying to line things up where they should have been.


    When the droids finally gave me a clean bill of health, Nal and Tatnia were next in line. The surgery would take thirty minutes for each of them, and during the entire time, I was outside the medbay, talking to people on comms as we prepared the Staggered Bantha for its first mission. We were lucky that the engineering crew was between installing two of the upgrades we had bought, meaning the ship was ready to go. Its shield had been improved, as had its energy core, but that was it.


    The surgeries went off without any issues, as did Vaz and Julus''s, followed by Ahsoka. When our surgeries were done, Tatnia once again proved herself by tracking down several different engineers she noticed during her time around the station, all of whom had obviously died hair. Three of them had brought a small supply of their dye with them, and my second in command bought all of it. Using that, I lightened my hair by several shades, cut it into a precise, military-style haircut, and even combed it over. The rest of the crew cut their hair as well, on top of adding in streaks, light patches, and other stand-out differences.


    During this time, Pola, his small team, and Miru were not idle. The young Twilek genius had bullied her way into one of the armories we had discovered on the station and "borrowed" six of the <u>DC-17</u></a> blaster pistols. I already used one as my sidearm, as did Tatnia, so I knew they were pretty potent weapons crammed into a small package. Muri used this to her advantage and managed to essentially stuff them into the frames of several bigger pistols before adjusting their power draw. To any casual examination or scan, the pistol looked like a normal, legal, underpowered self-defense weapon. But, with a simple adjustment, done by sticking a long object into the power pack slot, the energy draw would nearly double, and the DC-17''s normal power levels would activate.


    Not to be outdone, Pola managed to take several pairs of civilian clothes and reinforce them with the beskar weave. It was not the same level of protection as our uniforms, but it covered the vitals and would keep us from getting one shot in the chest.


    Both Miru, Pola, and his team worked overnight to get their projects done, but they crashed almost immediately after they did. Their work was impressive, as always. Racer also completed his task admirably, using new scans of all of us to make us new, or in my case, my first, Imperial ID card.


    By the time the Staggered Bantha''s starboard cargo bay was stuffed full of some camouflage cargo, and the port bay was filled with cots, nearly sixteen hours had passed. Now ready to go, I looked around at a crew I didn''t recognize. All of Vaz''s fur was a different shade, while Tatnia''s hair was dyed green. Nal had a tattoo along his head, while Julus had a face scar that ran along his cheek, which had been a pain in the ass to do.


    Out of everyone, Ahsoka looked the most different since she was by and far the most recognizable as a Rebel and a Jedi. She had tattoos all along her arms and painted designs on her montrals. She wore a toolbelt around her hips, which was functional and also contained the pieces of her lightsaber, save the Kyber crystals. Those had been dipped in dye, which would burn off the next time she turned on her lightsaber, wrapped in copper wire, and turned into a crude necklace.


    "Alright guys, this is going to be a wild one. As of three hours ago, we have confirmation that our targets have made contact again, which means they have been active in the last ten hours," I said, getting several nods in return. "It''s going to take two days to get to the target, during which Ahsoka and I are going to give you a crash course on how to fight Force users."


    Ahsoka looked a little nervous about the idea, but I insisted that it was required if she wanted our help. It sucked, but I wanted to give my team as much of an advantage as possible, even if it wasn''t much.


    "I know the answer already, but this is your last chance to back down," I said, looking around at my people. "This is volunteer only, so anyone-"


    "Boss, let''s just get on the ship," Tatnia said, shaking her hand. "No one is leaving, and we need to hurry."


    I looked at everyone, seeing their determined nods. I smiled and nodded back.


    "Alright, let''s get going," I said with a smile. "Let''s go save those kids."

 Chapter 117

    The ride to Bestine was, thankfully, a relatively short two-and-a-half-day trip from Omega Station, our transport making good time for its size class. Unfortunately, while the Staggered Bantha was technically capable of transporting all of us on top of our two clone pilots, the interior of the light freighter was cramped and miserable. Our group was clearly pushing what was reasonable for the ship to transport. We spent the time keeping as busy as possible, running everyone through a crash course on countering, fighting, and escaping Force users.


    We went over the general abilities they could expect from a trained Force user, things like enhanced reflexes, telekinesis, and the ability to soften falls, jump really high, and block blaster bolts with their lightsaber. We also went over some of the more rare abilities, things that we were unlikely to see any of the Inquisitors use, save maybe the Grand Inquisitor. Once we went over them, we started discussing how best to defeat them.


    "Just about the worst thing you could do when fighting any Force user is to shoot at them. Especially when they aren''t close enough to stab you yet," I explained. "The ability to block and reflect blaster bolts is basically their bread and butter. They will see it coming, and they will reflect it back at you or an ally. And since they tap pretty deeply into the Force to do that, expect the blaster bolts to return with better accuracy than it left."


    "There are, however, sometimes you can shoot at a Force user," Ahsoka added with a wince. "It''s always dangerous, but it can be used to slow someone down since the act of running and deflecting is considered mildly more difficult. Many Jedi, dark or otherwise, will slow down and default to simply blocking rather than reflecting a blaster bolt if they are moving."


    "Splitting their focus between enough people can also overwhelm them, but most would simply move away rather than allow themselves to be pushed too far," I continued. "Now, these Force users will be pulling from the Dark side, so their buttons will be things like anger, greed, a thirst for power, or even a desire for revenge. You can use that to trip them up or spur them on, but be careful. If you aren''t in a position of equality or power, they will dismiss your words for groveling or begging. It''s all about power plays with them."


    "I... Suppose that is true," Ahsoka admitted. "They are likely to see an offer for a deal as useless, even if the offer is genuine and entirely in their favor if it is offered while you are losing."


    "Oh, and never believe anything they say, including but not limited to ''We have your ''blank'' surrender, or we will kill them,'' and ''You''re too late, we already have what we want'' Or even ''Your friends have betrayed you, do as I say,''" I explained, Ahsoka turning to look at me. "Trust me, they are lying. No one here is willing to betray us or anything else. Also, none of them are kind enough to take prisoners without a direct order, and if they have been ordered to take prisoners, they can''t kill them without breaking those orders."


    As I talked, Ahsoka''s eyes went a bit wide, eventually looking away and shaking her head.


    "You know¡­ I can remember a few times when realizing all of that would have really helped," Ahsoka said with a self-deprecating scoff. "Ventress said some of those things. Nearly verbatim."


    "How about that? Getting proper explanations rather than keeping concepts, ideas, and knowledge forbidden leads to a better educated and effective person," I said with a blank face. "Who would have thought?"


    She winced for a moment before shaking her head and continuing the lesson. We went over several other things, including the effectiveness of explosives and how to predict where and what was going to be thrown at you with telekinesis.


    "They might have abilities, but while the Force is potent, it lacks a lot of the flexibility I have," I explained. "By forcing them to confront different things, preferably at the same time, they can be overwhelmed."


    The group nodded, looking slightly more confident than when we had started. Unfortunately, it was time for me to temper that confidence.


    "Now, let''s be clear here. Ahsoka and I will be the primary answer to any Inquisitor we might meet," I explained. "If you stumble into them, run, break line of sight, and let us take care of them. My abilities are particularly difficult for them to deal with."


    The lessons continued for a while, stopping when we finally dropped out of hyperspace around the planet Bestine. While we were still a reasonable distance from the planet, Ahsoka checked a covert source to confirm that the stone signal was still going through. This was the last time we would be able to check this source without attracting attention, so from that point on, we simply had to hope that they would make it.


    We landed on Bestine after an hour of waiting in space around the planet. The ship was boarded and quickly searched, with nothing more than a quick scan and walk around the interior. Our IDs were also checked, and the fake information passed the inspection without complaint. When we made it to the planet''s surface, we said goodbye to our clone pilots, who would be ordering some basic things to ship out as a cover, while we headed to a nearby ship berth.


    Our next ride was a familiar-looking <u>commercial hyperspace shuttle</u></a>. Tickets were a bit on the expensive side, at least relative to most space journeys, but manageable. Within three hours of landing on the planet, we were sitting down inside the shuttle, waiting for take off.


    At this point we had split off into pairs. Julus and Tatnia were sitting behind me by a few rows, while Nal sat with me. Vaz and Ahsoka were in front of us on the opposite side, sitting just behind the cockpit. While traveling together in a large group wouldn''t be that out of the ordinary, I wanted every advantage we could have in landing on Foless unmolested.


    When we finally lifted off, I sent Ahsoka a look, the Togruta Force user catching my eye as the pilot warned of an imminent jump to lightspeed. I gave her a subtle nod, which she returned, turning back to face forward. It was not the most subtle thing, but we were surrounded by random people, not Imperial agents.


    The trip between Bastine and Foless was blessedly under twenty-four hours. Despite that, it was still a horrendous experience. We were stuck inside the tiny ship, unable to move around, stretch our legs, or do anything but read on a datapad or stare out the window to pass the time. The only bright spot for the trip was that the refresher was halfway decent, and I was sitting beside Nal, not some random person who would hog the seat.


    I managed to pass a third of the trip by sleeping, spending the other time gently circulating my mana. By this point, the exercise was mostly useless since I could keep it going nearly indefinitely with barely any side effects, but I was determined to get every little erg of extra mana from it. I was hoping that the next unlock in my grimoire would reveal a more advanced technique, but I wouldn''t know for sure until that happened.


    When we finally dropped out of hyperspace around Foless, we were greeted by two Star Destroyers hovering in orbit. Our intel from the Rebellion told us there were at least three stationed around the trade hub, meaning a third was likely on the other side of the planet. Beyond those two massive ships, there were also plenty of other, smaller ones in view, including at least four Gozantis and five other ships that were too far away for me to make out. It was hard to imagine this sort of reaction for a pair of kids, which made me think the Inquisitors suspect actual Jedi involvement.


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    It took another two hours for us to be given permission to land, the small commuter shuttle heading down to the largest city on the planet. Shortly after we landed, we exited the ship and entered the waiting care of Imperial customs with the support of nearly a dozen stormtroopers. Each person was questioned, scanned and searched before being released.


    At this point, I had half resigned myself to being forced to fight through the spaceport before trying to disappear in the large city around it, but by some miracle, the IDs that Racer made for us passed the inspection. Even better, our changed faces didn''t bring up any connection to our actual identities either. It was honestly baffling how well it worked, but I simply thanked the Force for inept bureaucracy and took the win.


    Once we had passed security and customs, our weapons were returned to us after having passed through inspection. Ahsoka''s toolbelt also passed inspection, meaning we all had access to at least basic weapons. We left the starport, still in our pairs, going our separate ways to avoid attracting attention.


    As Nal and I walked through the dense city, we got a close-up look at the intense Imperial presence. Tie fighters and Imperial airspeeders flew over the city nearly constantly, the screeching a steady reminder of the firepower the Empire had brought to bear. While the air was filled with speeders and starfighters, the Star Destroyers must have emptied themselves completely of their stormtroopers because we didn''t go more than thirty seconds without seeing a patrol. They were stopping random people, especially those with kids, scanning their faces before roughly telling them to move on.


    The entire city felt oppressive and filled with a nervous, on-edge energy, like a giant powder keg about to go off. The citizens were openly confused about what was happening. All they had been told was that there was a dangerous fugitive on the loose, with images of the agent and the two children spread around nearly everywhere. They were labeled as dangerous and wanted for crimes against the Empire, a label that was immediately called into question since two of them were literal children.


    We made our way to our pre-determined meeting point, a hole-in-the-wall bar. I paid extra to get a private table, settling down in a closed-off room in the back of the bar. About ten minutes after we arrived, Vaz and Ahsoka showed up, followed by Julus and Tatnia. I was honestly glad that we had spent nearly three days getting used to each other''s new faces as we traveled because each time they walked in, I had to stop myself from standing and asking them to leave, confusing them for strangers.


    "Any issues?" I asked once all of us were nursing drinks, nothing to strong since we needed to stay focused.


    "We got stopped in the streets, but everything was fine," Tatnia said with a shrug. "Julus almost did something stupid, but I dragged him away."


    I looked over at the slightly younger member of the crew, raising an eyebrow.


    "They got a little too rough," Julus explained, looking more than a little annoyed. "I reacted badly. It won''t happen again."


    "Make sure it doesn''t," I said, giving him an eye. "All of this will be the success of the century if all we have to do is deal with a little shoving and some invasive scans."


    Julus let out a breath and nodded, seeming to get the message. We were deep behind enemy lines now. We didn''t have room for fuck ups or mistakes.


    As we talked, discussing the heavy Imperial presence, Ahsoka began constructing her lightsabers. The process was simple in comparison to what I had anticipated, the once Jedi snapping a few things to gather, adjusting some parts before locking it all in place with screws and latches. Unlike what I knew from Legends media and what was shown in some of the newer Disney canon, she didn''t even need to tap into the Force.


    Apparently, stepping so profoundly into the flow of the force was specifically important during the first time assembling the weapon. It didn''t even need to be that showey, it was just about letting the Force flow through you to harmonize the parts in ways machining never could. Like any skill in the Force, some sensitives were skilled in it and could assemble a lightsaber in seconds from parts skimmed from a junkyard, while others struggled to build them in perfect condition, with hand-picked and crafted parts.


    While Ahsoka was assembling her weapon, Nal was using one of the tools from her belt to adjust our blaster pistols, going one by one to disable the energy throttling and return the weapons to max power. In total, both processes took nearly an hour, and when they were done, we were reasonably armed. I could tell that Nal and Vaz, in particular, were already missing their heavier weapons, especially Vaz, but we had to make do with what we had. Besides, I had a feeling it wouldn''t be long before we had a chance to skim a few blaster rifles off someones hands.


    After we were done, we regrouped into two separate parties: Nal, Vaz, and myself in one, and Ahsoka, Tatnia, and Julus in the other. We left the bar within twenty minutes of each other, and both groups headed to different accommodations. In all likelihood, we wouldn''t be spending much time in them, but having a reasonably secure space we could lock ourselves inside of could come in handy and was well worth the three hundred credits for each group.


    Once safely inside our rooms, we had several hours to kill. Our targets wouldn''t arrive at the message stone until late at night, and we arrived on the planet just before lunchtime. This left us time to sleep and recover from the most recent branch of our mission. Jumping from planet to planet, even just two, had left all of us tense, sore, and tired. Thankfully, I could fix some of that with a simple healing spell, and some sleep in an actual bed would fix the other.


    Even if Nal and I ended up splitting a bed.


    When we eventually woke up, the city was considerably darker, though, like most cities, it was definitely not what I would consider to actually be dark. Looking out the window of our cramped room, I could see hundreds of moving speeders, both on the ground and in the air, with a significant amount of lighting keeping the city lit despite the sun having long since set.


    Once we were all awake and ready, we waited for the agreed-upon time to leave and headed out to find somewhere to watch the message stone.


    Now, all of this was a specific choice we had settled on during our planning phase. We could have skipped over waiting around with a simple Clairvoyance spell since we knew what all three of our targets looked like. However, we wanted to take this on as calmly as possible to keep from spooking and setting off the Force-sensitive child. Meeting the older, much more controlled Rebel agent as she left to leave the subtle message for her compatriot was a much safer bet. That way, we didn''t have to worry about Felia reacting by touching the Force and alerting every Force-sensitive person on the planet.


    So, as much as it added to the complexity of the mission, for now, it was better to sit back, keep an eye on the location, and wait.

 Chapter 118

    We moved around the city, eventually making our way to a halfway decent vantage point, an abandoned landing platform for air speeder, connected to an even older building. It overlooked a considerable amount of the warehouse district, including the abandoned warehouse where our target was supposed to eventually appear. As we settled in, all three of us, Vax, Nal, and myself, did our best to seem inconspicuous. Even with how late it was, the Imperial patrols didn''t slow down in the slightest, both on the ground and in the air. Two of us took shelter under an alcove along the building, out of sight from everyone not at our level. Every few minutes, done randomly to keep from being obvious, we switched out so only one person was out at once.


    Technically, we weren''t the primary lookouts, we were just overwatch, keeping an eye out for encroaching patrols, and worrying crowds. The honor of being the primary lookout and potential contact maker belonged to Ahsoka, Julus, and Tatnia. While I would have preferred to be in the thick of it, it made sense that Ahsoka made the first contact since she had a lot of experience with this sort of thing. She even knew the passcodes and word phrases that would help identify her as a member of the Rebellion.


    Silently, we waited, the night slowly passing by. Judging by just how active Imperial forces on the planet were, the Rebel and her charges were still at large, meaning it was up to us to find them before the Inquisitors did and get them off the planet.


    After about ten minutes of watching, it began to rain, and pretty soon, a steady fall of water soaked us to the bone. Around two hours in, during my turn, I saw a flash of color walking toward our surveillance target. I motioned toward Nal, who stepped out of his cover and pulled out a compact pair of binocs. We were using them sparingly, since holding something up to your face while you carefully stare at something was about as obvious as you could get. I looked around carefully before pulling the binocs to my face. Sure enough, the flash of color was Ahsoka making her way to the abandoned warehouse. Tatnia and Julus were right behind her, both of them keeping a close eye open.


    "Looks like something set Ahsoka off," I said, handing the binocs back to Nal. "Can you see the agent yet?"


    He accepted the binocs back, wiped his face of the rain, and lifted them up to his face, quickly looking through the surveillance device. He shook his head before tucking his goggles away in his jacket.


    "I cannot," He responded. "What set her off?"


    "Probably an intuition from the force," I explained. "Just hope she didn''t pull on it enough to alert the Inquisitors."


    We watched Ahsoka approach with our naked eyes, tracking her movements easily once she stepped across a street and better into our view. Whether she had spotted something or felt something through the Force, the three of them arrived just as a woman, the very woman we were looking for, stepped out of the darkness around the corner of the warehouse. She headed straight for the nondescript stone we had been watching, her fingers just wrapping around the edges when Ahsoka made contact. The woman whirled around, her hand going to her hip, already stepping back toward the shadowy alley she had come out from.


    She had moved pretty fast, belaying some pretty serious reflexes.


    Ahsoka held her hands up, showing she was unarmed. The two had a quick conversation, during which the Agent slowly pulled her hand off her weapon. Eventually, she nodded, and Ahsoka held her hand up in the air, holding her thumb up. Knowing we must be watching by this point, but not where from, that was the signal that everything was fine. We probably could have gotten away with a subtle comms click, but this worked just as well. Before we could move, the woman, who now looked a bit confused, nodded uncertainly before gesturing to the darkness she had stepped out from. Quickly, she led half of our team away, leaving us to follow behind.


    "That''s our cue, guys," I said, Vaz and Nal already preparing to leave. "Follow me."


    I cast Clairvoyance, focusing the spell on Ashoka. I smirked as the spell gave us a clear connection, immediately moving to follow it. Now that the woman knew we were here and Ahoksa, Tatnia, and Julus were with them, they could properly prepare the agent and the kids for us to show up unannounced. We could track them at our leisure, rather than all six of us making our way there all at once, pouring into a spot that had kept them hidden from the empire for nearly a week now.


    The spell led us down, and out of the building we had been watching from, through the back alley and trash-laden streets. Twice, we crossed a more populated road, each time waiting for traffic to slow before quickly crossing. I purposely ignored the trail for a few alleys, pulling the directions away from the original dark alley that they had left from, so our route would be different.


    Eventually, my spell led us past several abandoned buildings to one that was actually still being used. It was an apartment complex of dubious quality and obvious age, with people coming and going even at this late hour. The nebulous trail of energy led us to the back, where several rusted-out and broken-down speeders lay in shambles. For a moment, I frowned, wondering where the heck the trail of magic was leading us, when one of the speeder doors opened up, revealing a broken down and corroded interior. There was Tatnia, standing mostly inside some sort of manhole tunnel. It seemed that the vehicle had been parked over the entrance to the tunnel, and someone had made a hole through the falling-apart speeder floor so they could access it.


    "C''mon, before someone sees us," She said, quickly descending down the hole again.


    I could hear the rungs of a metal ladder making soft ringing sounds as she vanished downward. Quickly, I nodded for Nal and Vaz to climb in while I kept a lookout. Once they were gone, I took one more look around before climbing into the speeder, pulling the door closed behind me, followed by the hatch of the tunnel. As I did, what little light was reaching down into the tunnel disappeared, and for a moment, it was nearly pitch black. Thankfully, I had a pretty easy solution for that, and with a flick, I cast Magelight on myself, the floating ball of light following me as I descended.


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    When I finally reached the bottom, it was in a relatively dry tunnel, about five feet tall, with a smooth floor. In one direction was a rather worrying cave-in. The tunnel collapsed completely, chunks of duracrete and rebar blocking the path completely. In the other direction, I could see Tatnia waving us closer.


    This time, I took the lead, following Tatnia for a dozen meters or so before stepping into a massive open space. It must have been some sort of cistern or maybe a water run-off vessel, though it was clearly long since abandoned. Instead, someone had turned it into a rather cozy secret safe house. Two beds, some lights, boxes of supplies, and even some sort of computer, though it was very clearly unplugged and off. It even had a blessedly large, and currently on heater, which making the room nice and toasty. I had to resist the urge to start oulling wet clothes off to warm up beside it.


    The space had everything one could need while hiding from the tyrannical law. It was also a bit on the cramped side, now that there were nine of us in it.


    The woman, the Rebel agent, turned to us, her hand resting on her weapon, her cloak now hanging on the wall. She was also very deliberately standing in front of a pair of kids, both of whom looked nervous but were clearly taking comfort in their protector.


    "This the rest of your team?" She asked, looking at Ahsoka.


    "This is Deacon. He is the leader of the Skyforged Vanguard, the team who volunteered to come," Ahsoka explained, though I could hear in her voice that she was repeating herself, perhaps multiple times by now.


    "Right. Well, I suppose I''ll take all the help we can get," She said with a nod. "Mind telling me what the hell that light is?"


    "Just a bit of my own special power," I explained, dropping the light spell, which sparkled and faded away.


    Both of the kids were looking around their guardian, eyes wide as they watched my magic fade. I considered doing a little something to show off, but considering the Rebel agent was still watching me, as if I might lung forward at any moment, I figured making any sudden moves was a bad idea.


    "Deacon is in command of this mission," Ahsoka explained, pointedly not looking back at me as I gave her a look. So far, we had been sharing that burden and hadn''t really discussed who was really in command. "He and his team are some of the best commandos the Rebellion has access to."


    I saw Julus stand a little straighter at that compliment, and Vaz simply nodded as if agreeing with a casual statement. I managed to keep my cool, taking a slow and deliberate step forward, holding my hand out to her. For a long moment, I was worried she would simply ignore my hand, but eventually, she reached forward and took it, giving me one stiff shake.


    "Sheora," She said. "Sounds like I should be happy they sent you."


    "It''s good to meet you, Sheora," I said with what I hoped was a confident smile. "We are gonna get you guys out of here."


    My words seemed to finally get through to her, as when she pulled her hand away, she nodded before slowly sitting back on the bed where Claron and Felia were sitting. Claron moved to hug her, while the older just slid closer. As Sheora finally seemed to realize she had some real support in her corner, her iron grip on herself slipped slightly. She sagged a bit, letting out a long, deep breath. She looked rough, but there was else, something new behind her tired eyes.


    It was hope.


    I cast a glance at both of the kids, and spotted that Claron''s arm was bandaged. The bandage disappeared up and under his long sleeve, with just a bit of dried blood visible at the edge. I slowly stepped forward and kneeled in front of him.


    "Hey, Kiddo, mind if I take a look at that?" I asked gently.


    He looked at me nervously before looking over at his older sister. It was a testament to their life on the streets that he looked to her for permission like he would a parent. Felia frowned and gave me a hard look before eventually nodding, at which point I gently rolled up the sleeve.


    "You get this from the accident?" I asked gently, making sure not to touch the actual wound. A nudge at my shoulder prompted me to look over to see Ahsoka holding out a pair of scissors from her belt.


    "Yeah¡­ but sis saved me," He said, his voice filled with awe at what she had done. "She''s going to be a Jedi."


    "She could be," I agreed, lowly cutting up along the bandages, careful not to nick him as I did. "That would be up to her, though. The Jedi were a group, one of many that had a connection to the Force. While many of them don''t exist anymore, she could adopt any number of their ideas. Or she could forge her own path."


    As I talked, I gently pulled away the bandages, revealing a deep burn that looked relatively well-treated. There was some sort of cream on it, and the area around the burn looked clean, while the burn itself looked just about as good as it could.


    "There''s going to be some fancy lights," I warned, looking at Claron first and then Felia. "Then it might feel a bit weird. But I promise you''re going to be fine, okay?"


    I waited for them both to nod in understanding before carefully putting my hand down over the wound, the young boy wincing at the contact. Then I cast Heal Middling Trauma, my hand glowing with Restoration magic, all of it sinking into the wound. Claron gasped, and Felia flinched despite my warning, but they both managed to control themselves. I cast it a second time, just to make sure, before following it up with a couple of casts of Heal Other, taking care of any lingering injuries.


    When I pulled away, it revealed that the burn was gone. Looking up at Claron revealed a face of utter wonder and amazement, color returning to his face as I healed him fully. I considered casting Respite on him as well, but I figured normal sleep would be better for him.


    "That is amazing!" Claron said, eyes wide. "How did you do that? Was it the Force? Will Felia be able to do that?"


    "That was magic," I explained with a smile. "Felia will be able to do other kinds of healing if she works hard and puts her mind to it, but this particular kind isn''t something she would be able to replicate. Speaking of your sister, though, why don''t we make sure she is all healed as well."


    I reached out to her, but she only shook her head, clearly trying to act tough for her younger sibling.


    "I''m fine," She insisted. "Thank you for healing Claron, but I''m fine."


    "Alright, but I''m sure knowing you were in perfect health would be the weight of your little brother''s shoulders," I pointed out, nodding to her younger sibling.


    The young boy was either a natural or knew exactly what I was doing because he immediately shifted to a puppy-eyed look, beseeching his sister to let me do my work without even speaking up. Felia gave me a hard look, clearly understanding my ploy, but nonetheless held out her hand, letting me heal her up. She gained a bit more color in her cheeks when I was done, as well. I spent a good chunk of mana making sure Sheora was healthy as well, giving her an extra Respite to perk her up as well. She looked more grateful for that than any amount of healing I did for her.


    "Alright, well, now that we''ve all settled down a bit," I said, getting a much less aggressive, much calmer look from Sheora than I did when I first arrived. "We can start to talk about our exfiltration options."


    "You have more than one?" Sheora asked, sounding surprised. "I couldn''t come up with anything viable, not while keeping the little ones safe."


    "We''ve got as many as we can come up with," I responded with a shrug.


    "You came here¡­ without a way off the planet?" She asked, looking from me and then over to Ahsoka. "I don''t know if I should be impressed, devastated, or angry."


    "Let''s settle on hopeful for now," I said, pulling out a nearby supply crate and sitting down with a nod. "We''ve got plenty of ways of getting us out of here. We just need to figure them out."

 Chapter 119

    We brainstormed for a while before coming up with four main ideas for getting of Foless. One was we bought a ship. There were no doubt a few ships worth buying here, and not only could we offload it to the Rebellion when we were done, but this was probably one of the stealthier ways we could try and leave. Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things, all that stealth probably wasn''t going to do us any good. Any ship trying to leave the planet, especially one that had just changed hands recently, is going to be scanned and boarded immediately.


    Not only that, but any attempt to do business under the table would likely make the seller suspicious, running the risk of someone trying to cash in the thirty thousand credit bounty on Sheora and the two twenty-five thousand credit bounty on the kids. The bottom line was that stealth wasn''t exactly worth much once we tried to leave.


    Our second option was stealing a ship. While, for obvious reasons, this had a chance of being a lot less stealthy, it would have the benefit of speed. A quick strike against a random civilian, we get in, take the ship, and blast off minutes later. If we did it right, we could completely avoid any warning to the Empire. They would immediately know something was wrong when we refused to follow their boarding and search demands, so we would need to time it right, or else we would get blown out of the sky. Luckily, we only needed to look up to see where the Star Destroyers were.


    The third option was to steal an Imperial ship.


    By far, this was the riskiest plan. On the other hand, it also gave us the most significant edge if we managed to do it right. An Imperial ship would look normal flying around and would provide us with precious seconds to make a break for it. Not only that, but depending on what ship we snagged, we would stand a better chance in a military ship. It was almost inevitable that we would end up targeted by TIE fighters at least, probably more, since our main goal would be avoiding the Star Destroyers. Still, if we fucked up, the Empire would be on our ass within seconds. We would likely only get one shot at that.


    Well, we were unlikely to get second chances for any of these ideas, but attempting to steal an Imperial ship would most likely ensure that.


    Our final plan was to sneak or bribe our way aboard a large freighter. The Empire, even with all its power and control, would unlikely be able to scan and explore every massive freighter that was coming in and out of the system. Foless was a trade world, so a lot of cargo came through on a daily basis. This plan had a few holes in it, such as how we would find someone willing to accept our bribe, and who wouldn''t then immediately turn around and sell us out. Bribes and backstabs seemed like they would be in the same wheelhouse, so it was likely someone who took one would be capable of the other, especially for ninety thousand credits.


    After some discussion, we cut the bribe idea from the list. Hiding on a large ship would be putting a lot of people in danger, and relying on pure chance for the Empire to pass us over didn''t sit well with any of us. We also cut off buying a ship, as the process would likely take too long and leave us unreasonably vulnerable for very little benefit.


    After working our list down to two ideas, we put them to the side, for now, because our first priority was getting out of this city. There were several large cities on Foless, and while our current location was the biggest, it was also under the harshest lockdown. Managing to make our way to another city would make it a lot easier to move around and get things done.


    Not only that, but none of the Empire''s larger ships were landing in the city. Instead, they refueled and resupplied at the surrounding cities to avoid breaking the lockdown. If we wanted to take one of them to escape, we wouldn''t be able to do it here. It would also make our eventual escape a lot more likely. Our current city had two Star Destroyers stationed above it at all times, with the third patrolling around the remainder.


    We stood a much better chance, planning around the patrolling one and then trying to sneak past the two stationary ones.


    "I might have a contact that should help us get out of the city," Shea said. "But it''s risky. It is a hauler, one working for the factory I was observing. With a little blackmail, I could convince him to let us ride in the back of his speeder truck, which would be empty from his delivery."


    "Would that make it through the border, though?" I asked. "Ignoring how blackmail is unwieldy, surely they will be inspecting stuff like that?"


    "They will be," Ahsoka confirmed, shaking her head. "I think we need to lean into the fact that we aren''t wanted yet. If we rent a few vehicles, we could split you three up, which they won''t be looking for. After that-"


    "Wait¡­ we are missing something even bigger," Julus said, cutting off Ahsoka. "I mean¡­ couldn''t we just change everyone''s faces? Like we did ours?"


    "That''s¡­ a bit drastic for the kids," I pointed out, chewing the inside of my lip. "Sheora, any idea how common those kinds of droids are here? Any idea where we could get our hand on one?"


    "The Empire has a pretty strong anti-droid sentiment," she pointed out with a frown. "It comes out pretty hard in the medical field. Only the truly poor would be forced to use a medical droid, and that would only be if they''re desperate. I¡­ don''t really know where you could go to get one."


    "We would likely be able to find one with some effort," Nal pointed out. "But it would attract attention."


    "So, we would have to steal one, or bribe someone to let us use it," I said with a frown. "Assuming we could find one. Also, how would we get the scan back to our droids so they could undo it? Does anyone know how to do that?"


    When no one responded, I shook my head,


    "Alright, it''s an idea, but for now, it''s not what we are going with. Too many risks, too much time," I said, shaking my head. "I''m also not super comfortable telling the kids that they need to do that."


    We looked over at the two young kids, both of whom were sound asleep, snuggled under the covers. They looked peaceful, the stress and desperation of their situation gone from their faces.


    "It''s an idea, but let''s keep brainstorming for now. If we can''t think of anything else, we can revisit it... but until then, let''s keep brainstorming," I said, getting a nod from Julus in understanding. "Splitting them up will certainly help, as long as we can convince them, I have a feeling they won''t appreciate the idea."


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    "What if we hired a few people to create a distraction nearby?" Sheora suggested. "I know a few people who would be willing to do some damage for some credits."


    "Distractions are good, but why don''t we just do it ourselves?" I pointed out. "We aren''t wanted, which means we can leave whenever we want, as long as our identities aren''t closely examined. If we split into groups, one group leaving and one group staying behind, we could cause an accident or two, draw attention away from the border, letting you cross. Then, we wait a few hours and leave on a rented airspeeder like normal people."


    "The crossing team should be Sheora, Tatnia, and Julus. Sheora, you can go by yourself, while Tatnia and Julus will cross with one kid each," I explained. "We will have to come up with something that will hide the kids since they will have the hardest time blending in."


    We discussed ideas for a few more hours, before finally settling on a seme-concrete plan. We then tried to get some rest, a difficult task considering the lack of beds or bedrolls. Sheora got the second bed since she clearly needed some quality rest, and the kids were peacefully sleeping in theirs already. That left the concrete floor for the rest of us, with a couple of thin blankets and our own jackets for pillows. It was rough, but eventually, I did manage to get some sleep, though the quality was dubious.


    The next morning, after a round of healing spells and Respite to get everyone going again, we explained the plan to the kids and immediately ran into a predictable problem.


    "No," Felia said, shaking her head. "We aren''t splitting up."


    As kids usually do, she refused to listen to reason, digging her heels in and stubbornly refusing to agree. I got the sense it was connected to some pretty deep trauma, so it wasn''t entirely surprising. I tried to play the "it will make your brother safer" card, and luckily she took the hook.


    Sort of.


    "Fine, but I want you to guard him," She finally said, backing down from "No" for the first time. "You''re clearly in charge. You have your¡­ magic stuff. I''ll convince him to go¡­ if you''re the one paired with him."


    Claron looked up at his sister with wide eyes, not expecting her to agree, but Felia kept her eyes locked on me. She must have a spine of steel, which just pissed me off about what their lives must have been like to this point.


    "We had planned on me staying behind to work on the distraction¡­ but if that''s the cost of getting you to agree¡­" I looked at Ahsoka and Tatnia, who nodded in agreement. "Fine. You will be with my second in command then, Tatnia. She will keep you safe, and I''ll keep your brother safe."


    She nodded before pulling her brother aside and talking to him calmly, explaining the situation. The poor kid was clearly terrified about the idea of being separated from his last family member, but still listened to his sister, the fear fading as she talked in quiet tones. As she did, I turned to focus on Tatnia, Julus, and Ahsoka.


    "Alright, so who is taking my job?" I asked, before we quickly started making adjustments to our plan.


    Julus, who I would be replacing, would have to take my role. Thankfully, my role wasn''t mine because of a need for magic but because it was risky, and being able to do magic would have given me an edge in escaping. It was perfectly possible to perform the task without it. He just wouldn''t have anything to fall back on. Still, I had faith in him, and I knew he could fight his way out if need be, especially with the rest of the team working around him.


    The first step in the plan, was getting a feel for the actual perimeter, specifically where we would be crossing through. Ahsoka, Julus, and Nal all left the safe house shelter together, making their way through the city to the nearest checkpoint, taking an air taxi to make the trip quicker. They were gone for a few hours, eventually returning and sharing what they learned.


    The stormtroopers had shut down an entire side of the road, setting up their equipment in the closed lanes with concrete barriers in place for cover. They created a large kill zone where people were being stopped on both sides, letting people pass after inspections and scans.


    They described people coming and going, shift changes, who was in charge, what they did while they were there, and how they reacted to stress. Quite a few people with kids attempted to leave the city, and every single child was stopped and scanned individually.


    There was also a lot of firepower set up around the checkpoint. A pair of AT-ST''s paced around the temporary checkpoint, as did dozens of stormtroopers. Gun emplacements were set up as well, four that the trio could spot. According to Nal, during the time they were there, four speeder patrols checked in and promptly left again, heading out to keep a watch on the surrounding area. They also finally revealed why there was a clear lack of air speeders flying in and out of the city. Several burned-out wrecks decorated the area, a pair of large Anti-Air turrets spinning to track any airspeeder that got close.


    "So, it sounds like the good news is that there are plenty of targets for your distraction," I said. "Bad news is, it''s going to need to be a big one."


    "Perhaps we should forget about the checkpoint," Sheora suggested. "We still do the distraction, which draws their attention to a specific checkpoint. Meanwhile we sneak through the nearby empty space."


    "Speeder groups were sweeping those spaces," I pointed out. "We won''t have any way to predict their movements."


    "We don''t have a way to predict any of their movements," She responded. "But choosing to go through one of the spots they specifically fortified is only making it harder on ourselves."


    Unable to deny her assertion, we pulled up a map to see our options. We quickly spotted something interesting.


    "Here, along this pipeline¡­ what is this?" I asked, the large projectile holo map zooming in to a large piece of city infrastructure.


    "It''s¡­ the city''s water pipeline," Sheora explained with a thoughtful frown. "It was an option for one of our strikes, but we determined that too many civilians would be affected, so we dropped it. It''s above the surface to cool down, since most of their water comes from nearby hot water springs."


    The large pipe started far outside the main city limits, and moved much deeper, only to disappear into the ground. Buildings were built on either side of it, but the main streets avoided it. A quick search through the local net showed some better angles of the large pipeline, which created an obvious sightline issue for anyone trying to find someone moving alongside it.


    "What if we used to cover our movements?" I asked. "Then there is only a few blocks from where the primary patrol line would be. With a distraction, we could easily cover that. Once under we are it, they won''t even be able to spot us from the sky. We travel like that for a few blocks before meeting up, borrowing an air speeder, and heading off. Once we are out of the city, we can start wondering about how we will get off the planet."


    "With the right distraction to bring focus here," Ahsoka said, pointing to the checkpoint closest to the pipeline, but it also blocked its sightline. "They would have no idea we were there."


    "And if a patrol stumbles on us?"


    "They should be distracted by the¡­ well, the distraction," I pointed out. "And we will still be separated at that point, so chances are they will overlook us."


    "This is risky," Nal pointed out. "Too many points of failure, reliant on luck."


    "I know. There''s a large chance this is going to get messy," I accepted. "But this is a messy situation. Pretty soon, the Empire is going to start squeezing this city, trying to find us. We need to be gone before that happens. We are running on borrowed time already. We need to move before it runs out."


    "Then let''s stick with the original plan. Split up, cause a distraction, and work our way through the patrol line, then use the pipeline as cover," Ahsoka agreed with a nod. "I suggest we meet here, at this bridge, to re-group."


    She gestured to a maintenance building that ran alongside the pipeline. It was a decent-sized structure but was obviously not currently being used. A quick check showed that recent automation had stopped a lot of activity around the pipeline, further cementing our plan.


    "Let''s start getting ready, I want to do this tonight," I said, clapping my hands. "The sooner we are out of the city, the sooner we can start planning our real escape."

 Chapter 120

    We left the safe house behind at nearly midnight, hoping that the city nightlife, present even during the lockdown, as well as the darkness, would compensate for the obvious suspicion of people being out so late. The distraction group, armed with a bunch of supplies from the safehouse, split off immediately, heading out to the checkpoint nearest our planned crossing point. Meanwhile, Tatnia, Sheora, and I split off not much longer after that, heading down different streets before ultimately heading in the same direction.


    Now, walking around late at night was suspicious enough, but walking around with a child would have gotten us immediately run down by trooper patrols. So, we needed a way to hide the kids as we moved, at least until we were ready to cross out of the main city and into the outskirts. I had it relatively easy since Claron was still a small kid, small even for his age, an unfortunate sign of poor nutrition. With the liberal use of spacers tape, a cut-apart backpack, and some metal cable, we cobbled together a large kiddie carrier backpack. With Claron strapped to my back and some liberal use of green face paint, I looked like a large, green-faced alien with a hump pack. If anyone got close, they would see I was just a human with a painted face and probably make out the kid''s form along my back, but quick, passing scans, especially in the dark? It would pass inspection.


    As long as it was from a distance.


    Tatnia needed a bit of a different setup since Felia was a bit too big to carry on her back. Instead, Julus stole the equivalent of a shopping cart, which we filled with trash. Reluctantly, the young woman crawled inside and constructed a cacoon of trash. It was a bit gross, sure, but now Tatnia looked like a crazy homeless person pushing around her trash.


    I suppose some things were just universal.


    Again, if anyone got close and poked around in the cart, they would immediately know something was up. So it was up to both of us to sneak around and stay away from roving troopers on patrol.


    It took about two hours for me to reach my agreed-upon spot, taking my time and staying out of sight. Most of the trip was spent in back alleys, staying out of yet trying not to look suspicious when I slid under cover whenever Imperial air speeders or TIE fighters flew overhead.


    After reaching our spot, I kept watch, looking out over the city outskirts, watching Imperial speeder bikes zip by in pairs. I was glad we could see them at all, considering how dark it was, and being able to spot them as they got close meant we would be able to dodge them better.


    After about thirty minutes of waiting, our distraction finally happened.


    During our time planning, we quickly realized there were two criteria we needed to meet for the distraction. One, they can''t get caught. We could postpone the whole escape attempt if something went wrong and we needed to pull back. But if people got captured or even got spotted well enough to get added to the wanted list? Things would get a lot more difficult. The second was even more obvious. It had to catch and keep the Imperial''s attention for as long as possible.


    So, to keep things simple and keep everyone as far away from the actual incident as possible, we fell back on a tried, true and proven method. The good old weaponized speeder. The distraction group would quickly steel three speeders and pile them with fuel and some other flammable things from the safehouse, including a few fuel cells and a bunch of blaster packs, all around a core of high-powered explosives, also from the safe house.


    Apparently, we were borrowing a significant chunk of what was going to be used to sabotage the Imperial production plant Sheora was originally watching.


    The hardest part was waiting for the checkpoint to be clear of civilians, but when that finally happened, the speeders were sent off on their final mission, plowing directly into the checkpoint and exploding into three absolutely massive fireballs, utterly annihilating the entire setup. The explosions were big enough that we felt them from where we were and could easily see the tall billowing flames, our queue to start the crossing. I wasn''t exactly happy about blowing up something in the middle of a city, especially such a soft target, but needs must when the devil drives.


    Once we saw the fireballs, the speeders making one last pass as they rushed back to the site of the "Attack," we finally left our hiding spot, immediately moving as fast as possible. Trusting the attack to draw everyone''s attention, we moved without concern for staying hidden, crossing streets, and pushing through crowds. More than once, we had to stop to let squads of stormtroopers hustle past, heading directly for the area around the now-destroyed checkpoint.


    We kept moving for fifteen minutes, making good time with copious doses of Respite to make up for running so much with a child on my back. Eventually, we made it past the transition zone for the city outskirts, so I slowed down considerably. Now that we were past the dangerous part, it was all about blending back into the crowds. We had crossed the no man''s land, and now we just needed to avoid attracting any more attention.


    Carefully, we slipped through back alleys and abandoned buildings before finally meeting up with Tatnia. She was moving as well, having abandoned the stolen cart once they had started their own, separate crossing of the large transition area. Instead, she was carrying Felia like a much younger child, something Felia clearly wasn''t enjoying. Thankfully, Vaz donated one of their strength-enhancing items and traded it out for one of Tatnia''s dexterity enhancers.


    Eventually, just before we reached the cover of the large pipeline, we caught up with Sheora as well. She looked tired, having just essentially run the same distance we did but without any enhancing enchantment. I quickly gave everyone a dose of Respite, to help everyone keep focused.


    "Any troubles?" I asked as we made our way to the cover of the pipeline.


    "Almost ran face-first into a patrol," Sheora admitted. "But managed to blend into the crowd before they could spot and identify me."


    "We got some looks as we ran, but no one tried to stop us, and we left public spaces a while back," Tatnia explained. "As long as we keep moving, any reports of us will be far behind us."


    I nodded and led the now reunited group forward. The pipeline, while also having one massive pipe, was also a conglomerate of dozens of smaller tubes and cables. Together, they created a whole network of messy, connected pathways, which were technically not open to the public. It was the perfect place to hide, especially since it was clearly not somewhere people frequented.


    We continued to move away from the central portion of the city at a much less frantic pace. Our primary concern now was staying hidden and not arousing suspicion, which meant acting like we belonged. No doubt there were patrols around, though clearly much fewer than in the central city, where they were hoping to keep everything contained.


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    Eventually, we slowed to a stop, using a maintenance building as cover. This was our predetermined waiting point for the rest of the team, where they would eventually join us. All there was left to do was wait, several hours in fact, to give the Imperials time to stop freaking out and for the distraction team to rent a couple of speeders.


    Tatnia, Sheora, and I all took turns keeping watch, letting the kids doze off along the back side of the maintenance building. We had a pretty decent view of the small building''s parking lot, meaning that when, eight hours later, two speeders pulled in, I had plenty of time to gently wake the adults up.


    As they climbed out of the speeders, it was clear that the second group hadn''t gotten off scot-free.


    Vaz, who was the first to step out of the vehicle, had a large bandage around their stomach wrapped over their clothes, while Julus had one on his leg. Nal seemed uninjured but anxious, while Ahsoka seemed unharmed but frustrated.


    Quickly, I waved the group over and immediately started healing people as they reached our cover.


    "What happened?" I asked once I was sure nobody would drop dead.


    "We got snagged by a patrol, and something about us spooked them," Julus explained, stretching his newly healed leg. "They wanted to take us in, but since that would have likely gotten us caught, kinda forced our hands. We took them down quick, though, so with any luck, no one got any messages off."


    "Did anyone else see you?"


    "No one still alive," Vaz responded. "We were certain to kill the entire squad. Pola''s armor kept us from being seriously injured, but the contact burns from the heated metal were unfortunate."


    "Better than a blaster wound," Nal added, Vaz nodding in agreement.


    "Okay¡­ well, that sounds like it could have been a lot worse," I admitted, giving both Ahsoka and Nal some healing just in case. "Let''s make the assumption that your descriptions have gotten out, but not images. Just to be on the safe side."


    Ahsoka nodded in agreement before letting out a long sigh as I cast Respite on her. I gave her a raised eyebrow look, and she shook her head.


    "I couldn''t use my lightsabers or dip into the Force," She explained quietly, looking to the side. "I was pretty much useless the whole time."


    "Next time, carry a blaster," I said with a shrug, a response she didn''t like, so I continued. "You''re obviously not useless. Just having you around to feel any shifts in the Force is a big plus. Plus, now you know you should be carrying a pistol."


    "Should have listened to Luke," She said, shaking her head. "He took your words to heart and always carries one, even though he can deflect blaster bolts at a pretty good level now."


    "He making good progress?" I asked, trying to distract her from her shortcomings.


    "He is. He absorbs my teachings like a sponge. It''s incredible," She admits. "Makes me wonder if... his father was like that during his early training."


    "Kind of," I said, waffling my hand a bit. "He was under pressure from the prophecy, excluded ''cause his age... and he was already pretty damaged by being a slave at that point, which the order did nothing to help him through, just expected him to let it go..."


    "Luke... feels guilty that he isn''t quite the answer to all of the Rebellion''s problems," She admitted, chewing her lip. "Without you and me helping, I fear he would have struggled under the weight."


    "When this is over, maybe we could bring Luke to the station and talk about his guilt," I said before smirking. "Then we can spar. Maybe he can learn a bit."


    Ahsoka rolled her eyes but smiled, giving me a small nod before we both turned back to the group. By now, everyone settling in behind the partially abandoned building, having found boxes, barrels, or a mostly clean spot on the ground to sit. The team looked tired, but happy to have completed the first half of their mission.


    "Alright, we made it past the primary patrol cordon, now we need to put on some distance," I said, looking between everyone. "We have a few days of travel ahead of us, and I want to be firmly out from under the Star Destroyers before we start looking for a new ride out of here. Let''s take a ten-minute breather, do some stretches, and get to it. The sooner we put on some distance, the sooner we-"


    Murphy must have been listening, because they clearly didn''t like how cleanly everything had been going so far.


    A small shout from slightly behind Sheora caught our attention, the sound of a whimpering kid. We all turned to find Felia and Claron, the latter having slid against the wall and rolled slightly, still sleeping soundly but no longer in his sister''s lap. Part of Felia must have felt her brother slide away from her, because she was shifting and twitching in her sleep. Sheora, concerned about her ward, knelt down beside her, putting her hand on her shoulder.


    "Wait, no, hold-," Ahsoka started to say, but it was too late, as Sheora shook the younger girl awake.


    Now, suddenly being woken up from a nightmare can be pretty disorienting, but after days, even a week of stress, about questioning your survival, and that only after years of living on the streets? I could only imagine what Felia''s nightmares contained. Her reaction to being startled awake, however, I did not need to imagine, as she opened her eyes with a gasp. A Force blast whipped up and shoved Sheora back, scattering the bits of trash around the young girl as well. The Rebel agent slammed into Vaz, both of them tumbling to the ground, while Julus and Tatnia slid along the side of the building, both of them already on the ground. Even her brother slid further away, though not nearly as far or as violently. Ahsoka, Nal, and I were far enough away that we only stumbled backward, managing to stay on our feet after the first blast.


    The young girl was clearly confused and disoriented, and when she couldn''t immediately see or feel her brother, her panic only increased, the Force answering her panic with several more waves of force. Finally, after a few seconds, her head cleared enough for her to focus through the panic, her emotions calmed down significantly. Unfortunately, the damage was done. She looked around in fear, pulling her now awake and confused brother against her. She looked over to Ahsoka, eyes wide, her face red with embarrassment, and as she realized what she had done, fear.


    "Everyone, MOVE!" I said, shouting to get everyone''s attention. "Get in the speeders and Go!"


    "I''m sorry! I-" Felia started to say, but I cut her off, kneeling low to look her in the eyes.


    "Felia, it''s okay. You''ve done so well staying calm and keeping your connection quiet. This is not your fault. It wasn''t fair for us to expect you to have such good control with no training," I explained before looking at Ahsoka. "Can you send out a beacon? Call out to them, I mean really get their attention?"


    "Yes, I can. Are you suggesting¡­?"


    "Yeah, they need the extra time," I finished with a nod, before turning to look at everyone else. "What are you all waiting for! I can find every single one of you no matter where you are on the planet! Split up and GO!"


    Tatnia, the first to pick up what was going on, nodded and quickly got up, guiding the kids to one of the speeders, while the rest followed behind. Felia looked over her shoulder at me, and I did my best to give her a confident smile before Tatnia guided them into the vehicle. She turned back to look at me, giving me a nod before climbing into the driver''s seat and pulling away. The second speeder, with Nal at the wheel, pulled out behind them.


    "You realize this is going to be big, right?" Ahsoka said, her eyes closed as she reached out and called to the Force. "Maybe more than we can handle."


    "That''s why I sent them away. But there is a window. A small window where we might survive," I explained, eyes looking back up to the sky. "They are wannabe Sith, which means their first instinct is clout, power, greed. They don''t want to share with whatever Captain or Admiral is really in command. They want to claim whatever juicy little Jedi just stumbled into their web."


    "That''s¡­ a reasonable assessment," She agreed with a hesitant frown. "It also hinges pretty tightly on us being able to kill the three Inquisitors. Is that your whole plan?"


    "Yeah. My plan is to kill the motherfuckers, then run before the rest of the Empire lands on our heads," I explained, looking up into the sky, waiting¡­ watching¡­


    Sure enough, within a few seconds, I spotted them. A single transport, painted black, flying over the city, coming right for us.

 Chapter 121

    As the ship got closer, it got a bit easier to pick out details. It was a <u>small ship</u></a>, smaller than I expected, but its black hull and brutal design screamed edgelord darksider. It made me wonder if the Inquisitors had a hand in designing the ship and how much their influence reduced the original designs'' effectiveness. Despite how serious the situation was, I couldn''t help but imagine a yellow-eyed human with emo bangs and eyeliner demanding his ship be as dark as his soul.


    I just managed to keep myself from laughing.


    The ship landed with an aggressive dive and rise, its repulsors blasting dirt and trash away from its landing spot. Ashoka must have done something, as an invisible barrier blocked off the grime and garbage from slapping into us. In all, it was an overly aggressive landing, something done to intimidate or impress, but had utterly failed to do either.


    Once the ship was landed, it let out a long hiss, its forward face opening and lowering, revealing the lower internals of the ship. I lost control of my laugh when the lowing ramp revealed an honest to god glowing red interior. Ahsoka, now fully tapped into the Force, quickly picked up what I spotted.


    "It is a bit heavy-handed," She admitted.


    "Imagine them demanding the red lights and black paint from some poor Imperial designer. It''s a wonder they have any fingers left dealing with all that razor sharp edge," I responded, finally getting a scoff and a chuckle from her. "So, what''s the over-under on them knowing who I am?"


    "Nearly zero considering the face change stuff," She pointed out. "They may connect the dots with me, however. Not many trained Force sensitive Togruta hanging around."


    As we talked, four stormtroopers exited the ship, stepping into the parking lot by four or five meters. They stepped back and stood rigidly at attention, weapons held ready. They were followed by a pair of darkly dressed individuals. Their presence was heavy, just as oppressive as the Jago, the fourth brother I fought and killed during our prison break oh so long ago.


    The <u>first one</u></a> down the ramp was vaguely female, though from a species I didn''t recognize, so who knows. Her skin was green, with long pointed ears and two secondary pointed growths on either side of her forehead. I couldn''t quite tell if the markings on her chin and forehead were makeup, but I was pretty sure the dark shadow around her eyes was meticulously painted on.


    She was lightly armored with pauldrons and bracers, her outfit decorated by glowing red bits. She already had her weird frisbee lightsaber in her hand.


    Her companion, second down the ramp, appeared to be a <u>Quarren</u></a>, but he was scarred and missing a few bits on his face, which were replaced by cybernetic implants, including a breathing apparatus. <u>He was much smaller</u></a> in frame, with black armor that had some similarities to stormtrooper gear, only enhanced and bedazzled with more red glowy bits. His lightsaber was also in his hand, his grip tight as if he was restraining himself.


    Both of the dark Force sensitives continued forward until they were standing between the stormtroopers. They left a gap between in the formation, obviously intended for the third and final Inquisitor, who stepped down the ramp next. Common sense said that this had to be the <u>Grand Inquisitor</u></a>, and they certainly held themselves like that. The black and red cape, the glowing eyepiece on their helmet, the pauldrons and leather boots, every inch of them was meticulously designed to shout their superiority to the rooftops.


    It was also clearly supposed to be scary or at least intimidating.


    When the last Inquisitor reached their allies, they stepped through the gap to move in front of them. The whole thing was so clearly practiced that I almost laughed again.


    "I must say, when we came to this planet, searching for a potential new recruit, we did not expect to find anyone with training¡­" The last Inquisitor said, their voice clearly altered by their helmet, coming out with extra bass and reverberation. "And so willing to sacrifice yourself for them, too. I wonder-"


    "Do those glowing bits on your armor do anything, or are they just for show?" I asked, tilting my head to the side. "I mean, respect for your dedication to the bit if they are just lights, but it seems like a bit much."


    Whatever the three Inquisitors expected, a question about their fashion sense was not it. When the green-skinned one recovered from the nonsequitur, she snarled her lip and opened her mouth to shout at me, but the leader, who I was mostly certain was the Grand Inquisitor now, raised his hand to keep her quiet.


    "I apologize, but perhaps introductions are in order," He said. "I am-"


    "Ooohhh, I get it, Big Papi Palps dresses you guys, doesn''t he?" I asked, nodding in understanding. "I mean, I should have expected that, since he already forces you to use those dumb fucking swords."


    "Our lightsabers are gifts! They-" The Quarren started to respond, only for me to cut over him as well.


    "Severely hinder your learning by forcing you to rely on gimmicks and tricks, rather than actual skill at fighting, since those dumb spinning bits make them nearly useless for high-level forms?" I finished, giving him a smile. "Or is it to cripple your connection to your weapon since he hands you a useless, meaningless hunk of metal and stone, preventing you from forming a bond with it. That way, it''s just a dead, replaceable weapon, never an extension of yourself, as a real Jedi or Sith weapon would be."


    The shock was deep enough to be palpable, both from beside me, Ahsoka stunned at what I had just divulged, and from across the parking lot. I could tell both of the lower-ranked Inquisitors had no idea what I was saying, and the revelation was not sitting well with them. Of course, being edgy Dark Jedi, rather than doing anything useful with the information, it all just fed back into their rage, the coiling anger and twistedness they spread around them growing thicker.


    Meanwhile, the Grand Inquisitor was giving off an air of¡­ interest. They already knew what I was saying, but they wanted to know how I knew.


    "You have some interesting insights for someone with such a weak connection to the Force," He stated. "You almost fade out completely while beside your friend."


    "I should hope so, I-"


    Without warning, I charged and fired two Chain Lightnings, focusing on the stormtroopers beside them. Not only were they an easy target and had no way of predicting or sensing I was targeting them, but taking them out now would make the rest of the fight much easier.


    They were also the ones most likely to call for reinforcements.


    My twin blasts of lighting fired out and slammed into the closest trooper on each side, melting their armor in tiny spots, belaying the amount of damage the magic was doing internally. The effect passed from the first to the second troopers, dropping them to the ground as well. The lighting jumped again, this time targeting the two lesser Inquisitors. Somehow, the green-skinned female managed to see the attack coming, catching the shock magic with her blade. Unfortunately, her peer wasn''t so lucky, moving too slowly to protect himself. The magic was greatly reduced by that point, of course, but it still caused him to gurgle in pain and anger.


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    All three of them were screaming, shouting about their confusion, demanding answers, but neither Ahsoka nor I felt like indulging in their theatrics anymore. I charged, taking the lead, conjuring my armor as I went. The purple glowing protection covered my body, taking a good chunk of my mana. I had just enough time and magicka left to conjure two swords before I clashed with the Grand Inquisitor.


    For a moment, we had them on the back step, between our aggressive movements, their confusion about what the hell I was, as well as the preemptive attack hurting one of them. Ahsoka managed to compound the Quarren''s injury by cutting his arm with her saber, forcing him to stumble back, while I tried my best to overwhelm the leader with two separate blades at once. After a few seconds, they recovered, and the Grand Inquisitor bought them time to regroup by forcing us both back with a Force push of impressive power. Both Ahsoka and I skidded backward, only our skill keeping us from tumbling ass over end.


    "You, your abilities," The Grand Inquisitor said, holding his red glowing weapon at the ready, its blades humming. "You are the escaped convict. We have been looking for you. You show some rather interesting Force abilities."


    Rather than engage in his banter, Ahsoka and I, now separated by a few meters, charged again. This time, however, some of my mana had regenerated. As I charged the Grand Inquisitor, I raised my right sword and hurled it at the Quarren, the translucent construct flying end over end at the Dark Jedi, only to get deflected by a simple swipe of his lightsaber. The attack did its job, however, because he did not notice the Conjured Fighter Construct appearing just behind him. At least, not until its blade slammed through his back, punching out through his chest.


    As he died, I slammed my sword down in an overhead strike, trying to power through the leader''s defenses, only to be blocked and forced to roll to the side. They swiped back with the second blade as I moved, the plasma sword bouncing off my conjured armor, reducing its remaining mana. I refilled it immediately, knowing it was a key part in my ability to stand up to a trained Force wielder.


    Despite the death of one of his comrades or underlings, the Grand Inquisitor seemed confident. Our weapons clashed, my knowledge of sword fighting barely standing up to their strikes, my armor picking up the slack at least twice. When I realized that my conjured swordsman, shield in hand, had finished off the Quarren with a second stab, I ordered it to attack the Grand Inquisitor from behind. I was rewarded with a grunt of annoyance as the leader was forced to dive and roll away, avoiding the flanking maneuver. He stood, casting a single, short look at his fallen comrade before returning his gaze to me.


    I used that time to check on my own ally, spotting her only a dozen or so feet away. She was engaging the green-skinned Inquisitor in a much more standard lightsaber duel. Ahsoka seemed to be winning, but-


    Clearly deciding that turnabout was fair play, the Grand Inquisitor attacked without warning, using the Force to tear chunks of duracrete paving from the ground around us and hurl them at me. I raise my hand and summon a Greater Ward, the protective barrier easily absorbing their momentum, the chunks falling to the ground. Meanwhile, I mentally directed my conjured fighter to charge, holding its shield up high to defend itself. As it moved, I got in line behind it, using it as cover, even as a large chunk smashed into its head, and finally, it was dispelled.


    Unfortunately for the Grand Inquisitor, my soldier exploded, as all my conjured constructs could do. I kept running though, moving into the explosion and letting my armor tank the damage. By the time I came out the other side, the armor had shattered, leaving me relatively unprotected. My hands were glowing, through both of them holding prepared spells. Finally, I unleashed two whirling dervishes of freezing frost damage.


    By this point, I was spitting distance from the armored Dark Jedi. Still, while Ice Storm was powerful and covered a large area, it was unfortunately slow. So, rather than my spells catching my target completely, they managed to partially dodge, frost locking up around one side of their body, crystal shards of ice impaling his side, arm, and leg. His scream echoed across the parking lot, just enough of a distraction for Ahsoka to perform a rather well-done parry and riposte, slicing off her opponent''s left arm before calmly finishing her off by driving one of her sabers through her stomach.


    To the Grand Inquisitor''s credit, his injury only slowed him down momentarily, as with a quick flex of both his body and the Force, the spikes of ice cutting into him shattered. He immediately attacked, his rage flowing like a river, buffeting me as he tried his best to beat me before his injury overwhelmed him. Unfortunately for him, I had already recast my armor and had no plans on letting him batter me down. Instead, I took advantage of his slower movements and reached out, grabbing his blade out of the air. I was funneling an incredible amount of mana into my upper torso armor to keep it together, but it was worth it. With a hard pull, I yanked him forward and off balance. Between his bleeding, torn-up leg, and his blind rage, he stumbled, and I used the split second of weakness to drive a conjured dagger into his heart.


    The armored fighter tensed as if trying to stave off his death by pure will. Fearing that whatever he was inside his armor didn''t have anything vital where I stabbed, I quickly cast sparks through the blade, dumping the rest of my mana into him. His body jumped and tensed even harder as the shock energy flowed through his body, which soon began to smoke. Once I was sure he was dead, I dropped him to the ground, looking over at Ashoka.


    She was lying down on the ground, having collapsed while trying to help. I rushed to her side, my armor and dagger fading as I knelt by her side.


    "Hey, where did she get you?" I asked, already charging a Heal Middling Trauma.


    "Leg and stomach," She responded, hissing in pain. "Caught me off guard by spinning her saber."


    "Yeah, it''s a gimmick for a reason," I admitted with a frown. "It''s a pain to deal with if you''re forced to engage with it."


    I put my hand over the bloody patch on her stomach, filling her with Restoration magic. I did it twice more before the bleeding stopped. Once her stomach was good, I healed her leg, too, before helping her to her feet. I finished the treatment with a Respite.


    "You good to go?" I asked.


    "Yeah, we need to get out of here," She responded with a nod. "Before whoever is in charge catches on that their power move blew up in their faces."


    "Took the words right out of my mouth," I said with a smirk. "Just give me a second."


    She nodded, and I turned back to the impromptu battlefield. Quickly, casually, I drove a pair of Ice Spikes into all three Inquisitors, one in the heart and one in the head. I then washed them down with sparks, hopefully zapping and destroying any electrical equipment they might have on them. When I was done, I conjured a flame atronach to burn the bodies as I turned back to Ahsoka, giving her a nod.


    "Alright, let''s go."

 Chapter 122

    Ahsoka and I left the scene of the fight at a jog, looking around and eventually finding an alley to slink away in. We knew that it wouldn''t take long for the rest of the Imperial forces to realize something had happened, which meant we were now working on a much smaller time scale.


    "We need to find the others," Ahsoka said as we crossed from one alley to the next. "They couldn''t have gone far."


    I nodded and slowed down as we reached another intersection of road and alley. I quickly cast Clairvoyance, noting where the arrow pointed and that, for now, they weren''t moving.


    "We need to abandon the part of the plan we were to drive the speeders out from under the Star Destroyers," I added, now leading the way at a quick jog. "We can pilot the starship along the planet and then go up, but we don''t have the time to travel by speeder."


    "The TIEs are gonna track us that way," Ahsoka warned. "We will probably be able to outrun the bigger ships if we get lucky with what we find, but there''s no outrunning the TIEs like that."


    "I know," I admitted with a frown. "We don''t have a choice, though. Our window is closing quickly."


    Ahsoka grimaced but nodded in agreement. We ran for a few minutes before I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. I stepped out into the road, forcing a passing speeder bike and its rider to slow down. Rather than respond to the shouting and cursing, I cast calm on them before helping them rather roughly off the speeder. I slid back so Ahsoka could drive since I needed to be able to use Clairvoyance.


    "I assume you can pilot one of these?" I asked.


    "Of course," She responded, hopping onto the bike and immediately gunning it.


    We flew for about five minutes before we finally found our friends, their speeders tucked up alongside an abandoned side parking for an old factory. It was sufficiently hidden from prying, casual eyes but wouldn''t withstand the scrutiny that was no doubt coming our way very soon. As we came to a stop, Tatnia and Nal both lowered their weapons, realizing who we were.


    "Good to see you guys, too," I said with a smirk. "Told you we would be fine."


    A light impact hit my torso, and I saw Felia and Claron hugging me. Felia looked relieved but still guilty, while Claron just looked happy we had returned. I patted his head while giving Felia a confident nod, getting a slightly less confident but clearly still determined nod in return.


    "Okay, people, we might have taken down a big threat to us, but we also just kicked the hornet''s nest. We have minutes, maybe less, until the Imperials realize the big spooky edgelords got their asses handed to them. Once that happens, this whole area is gonna be more overrun than the city was. And that''s not even the worst news," I explained, looking up to everyone. "We just killed the Grand Inquisitor, the leader of the Inquisitors. There is only one person who could really be expected to respond to his death. Only one Gran Pappy Pals could send after him¡­. Darth Vader."


    That got a big reaction. Ahsoka gasped about halfway through the explanation, clearly realizing what I was saying as I was saying it, while everyone else saved their curses and gasps for the end. Sheora paled, her eyes wide, and for a moment, I thought she was going to collapse. Darth Vader was at the center of a lot of scary shit for a lot of people, especially the Rebels. To them, he was a real, live boogeyman. Their fear for him ran deep, and in all honesty, I couldn''t blame them. I might not hold much reverence for Anakin and the monster he became, but I wasn''t dumb enough to doubt his abilities.


    Especially since he was part of the prophecy. Who knew what the Force would do to keep that prediction on track. I wasn''t about to fuck around with that because I most certainly didn''t want to find out.


    "There''s a starport within speeder range, on the very outskirts of the city," Nal said, looking up from his tablet. Even his blue skin was a shade paler than usual. "Popular enough that there should be a ship there."


    "Good. Everyone, pile in," I said, nodding toward the speeders. "This might get rough, but if we work together and stay smart, we can do this. Let''s go."


    We quickly climbed into the speeders, leaving the stolen speeder bike behind. With any luck, it would be returned to the guy we stole it from, though, unfortunately, I did think it was very likely.


    The two speeders that Julus and the distraction team had rented were just big enough to hold all nine of us, as long as we weren''t too attached to our personal space. Still, it was better than walking, especially when everyone was still looking for two kids and Sheora.


    We arrived at the starport a few minutes after Ahsoka and I rounded up the group. At the tail end of that time, it was clear that the cat was out of the bag and spitting mad. The Empire came down on the area like the wrath of god, with the skies choked with TIE fighters and speeders dropping in stormtroopers patrols by the dozens. If I hadn''t known better, I would have thought they were mobilizing for a full-on assault rather than an occupying police force.


    Thankfully, with the Inquisitors dead, Ahsoka could fully tap into the Force, guiding us slowly but surely through the city outskirts to our target. She wasn''t quite peaking into the future verbatim, that kind of stuff was what Jedi legends were made of, but she was perfectly capable of reading the flow of the Force and guiding us away from conflict. Of course, Tatnia, having grown up on the streets, had been dodging Imperial patrols since she could walk, so she helped quite a bit as well.


    When we finally arrived at our destination, we parked alongside the large walled-off space, ignoring the obvious parking spots. All of us, save the kids, stepped out of the speeders, Sheora remaining mostly hidden inside as well.


    "So much for getting out of the heavily patrolled area," Julus said with a frown, looking up at the sky, the familiar scream of TIE fighters filling the air. "This is way worse than before."


    "It''s far from optimal, but we have to play the hand we were dealt," I said, looking up and watching a pair of <u>Imperial transports</u></a> fly overhead, escorted by a pair of goddamn hover tanks, the <u>design of which</u></a> I didn''t recognize. "We need to get the hell off this planet before they tighten the noose anymore."


    "We need to get off the streets," Sheora pointed out. "If we get into a ship now, we will at least be out of eyesight. Even better, we can wait around for the heat to die with our escape plan already set up and ready to go."


    We agreed that getting off the street and into somewhere we could hide was our next step, so together, we moved out. Ahsoka, Nal, Vaz, and Julus swept through the small starport with very little trouble, checking it over for anything that would screw us over. Once we were sure we were not being recorded or that the place wasn''t hiding any surprises like a security system, the rest of us moved in.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    There were only five landing pads at the small ship berth, only three of which were currently occupied. Two of the landed ships were useless, way too small to even consider, and not just because we had nine people looking to leave. We needed something that could take a few hits, and a rinky-dink off-brand glorified star commuter wasn''t going to provide that.


    Thankfully, our luck held out on the third ship.


    The last berth we checked contained a <u>YKL-37R Nova Courier</u></a>, a decent ship from a company that Nal assured me was in the process of going under. Still, according to him, it had some decently robust shields, two laser cannons built to fight off pirate starfighters, and three concussion missile tubes to fight off their bigger ships. The biggest downside was its relatively small size, but it would do for what we needed now.


    Assuming the people we were about to steal it from actually took good care of it.


    Ahsoka and I approached the ship first, stepping under the shade it cast. As we did, a man just around my age descended from the boarding ramp. He was scrubbing his hands of oil as he watched us approach.


    "Can I help you?" He asked, watching us closely. I could see he had a blaster at his hip, but I smiled like I didn''t care.


    "I sure hope so," I said, raising my hand and hitting him with a calm spell, the man flinching before calming down immediately. "Is your ship in good condition?"


    "Good enough, could use some updated-"


    "Good, great, sorry, but we are a bit short on time. Are you in any way connected to the Empire?"


    "I''m an Imperial citizen if that''s what you mean," He responded with a frown. "I don''t work for the government, though."


    "That''s great. I just have one last question. Do you have any crew?"


    "Just me and my copilot droid. She is inside in her charging bay," He answered, his expression going a bit strange as the spell effects faded. "What is going-"


    I hit him with another Calm spell, guiding the man back inside the ship while Ahsoka went to get everyone else. I tied the man down to a chair in the lounge area and took away his blaster before looking around the ship to find the man''s robotic crewmate. I turned them off with an external switch before returning to the lounge. Tatnia and Vaz entered at just about the same time I did.


    "Look, I don''t know what you want, but this ship is my livelihood," The man said. "If you plan on stealing her, you''re best off just killing me."


    "What''s your name?" I asked, sitting across from him as the rest of the crew started going over the ship, Sheora guiding the kids to one of the living quarters.


    "Yalip," He said, looking at the people exploring his ship, checking out the internals and generally poking around. "Hey, don''t touch that! That panel is broken. It takes forever to-"


    Before he could finish, the panel that Julus was fiddling with popped off the wall and fell to the ground. Julus winced, but the man cursed, his frustration boiling up, overriding his fear.


    "Gods Dammit! Who the hell are you and-"


    It was about then that Yalip noticed Sheora and the kids, catching a glimpse just as they disappeared.


    "Wait a second¡­ you''re the people that they''re looking for!" He shouted. "What-"


    "Yalip, I understand that this is frightening and unfortunate. Trust me, I''m not happy about this either," I assured him. "But we are out of options. These kids, they''ve done nothing wrong, and if the Empire catches them¡­ their lives are going to be hell."


    "I¡­ then I guess that makes you Rebels?" He asked, his face red, still clearly angry.


    "More or less," I responded. "Unfortunately, we need a ship to get off this planet. Normally, I would hate to involve a civilian like this, but the Empire forced my hand. I need to put the lives of my team and the kids before my distaste for harming innocent civilians. Now, if we survive-"


    My attempt at honesty, admitting that there were significant risks involved, immediately backfired. The slightly older man paled and stuttered a few times before continuing to yell at me. I didn''t blame the guy. After all, he had every right to be upset. The empathy I felt didn''t change anything, the lives of my team and the kids came first, just like I said. When the man refused to calm down, I let out a sigh and drew my blaster. I clicked it over to stun, shooting the man in the stomach before shaking my head.


    I would try again when he woke up. If we were still around when he did, at least.


    It took a few minutes of exploring the ship before finding my way to the cockpit, especially because I didn''t expect it to be in one of the nacelles. When I eventually got there, I found Ahsoka sitting at the controls, familiarizing herself with the layout, while Nal sat slightly behind her, working his own console.


    "How does it look?" I asked, leaning on Ahsoka''s chair.


    "Well, the ship is in decent condition, so that''s something. Its shields are even upgraded slightly," She answered. "Only four concussion missiles left, which is honestly more than I expected."


    I nodded in agreement. Missile ordnance was expensive and rare outside the Imperial supply chain. That was a problem that chased after the Rebels even when they became the New Republic. I looked over at Nal, who was sifting through the sensors.


    "What do the sensors say, Nal?"


    "That one of the Star Destroyers is starting to move," He responded. "It will be over our position in two minutes."


    "Is it charging weapons?"


    "No."


    "Good. Ahsoka, start running through the preflight checklist. Nal, keep an eye on that ship," I said, getting nods from both of them. "If that starts targeting us, take off and try to get us out of here."


    "What are we doing in the meantime?" Ahsoka asked, spinning her chair to face me.


    "Waiting," I responded simply, continuing when she gave me a look. "We are going to wait in hopes they loosen the grip they have around us. We can''t wait too long, because I really believe that the next person on the way is Vader. But the situation might improve with time."


    Ahsoka chewed her lip and turned back to the controls. I could practically feel her unease, the idea of her former master showing up really throwing her off. I reached forward and put a hand on her shoulder, giving her what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze. She put her hand on mine, turning to look up at me. I gave her a nod, getting a small smile and a nod in return. After a moment, I pulled away, leaving her and Nal to their work.


    I made my way through the ship, looking for Tatnia since she was more or less heading the investigation of the rest of the ship. I wanted to fill her in, explain my reasoning, and, with any luck, find something to do to kill some time. I might be hopeful that the situation would shift in our favor if we gave it enough time, but that didn''t mean I was looking forward to the wait.

 Chapter 123

    Once the Star Destroyer was over us, my decision to wait for a while was pretty much locked in. The combination of the Star Destroyer and the surrounding swarms of TIE fighters and other assets made it unlikely that we would survive very long if we tried to leave.


    We waited quietly inside the interior of the Nova Courier, keeping a close eye on the sensors and the sky, waiting for some sort of change. The skies above us stayed busy for nearly seven hours, the Star Destroyer casting a heavy shadow over us and the surrounding city.


    Finally, not long after the seventh hour passed, we noticed a distinct shift in the patterns around us. The dozens of transports stopped, the small army of stormtroopers already deployed. On top of that, the TIE fighters spread out, giving us the barest of openings.


    "Boss¡­ It''s tight, but it''s possible," Tatnia said, having taken over for Nal at the ship''s co-pilot''s station.


    "Any guess how long it''s gonna stay open?"


    "Not even the slightest, Boss," She admitted, shaking her head. "This might be from a shift change, it might be a shift in screening methods¡­ it might even be a trap. But I have no way of knowing how long it will last."


    "...Alright. Start warming her up," I ordered. "I''ll go make sure everyone is awake."


    I made my way through the ship, waking everyone who had managed to fall asleep over the last several hours. The only place I skipped over was the smallest bedroom, where Yalip was being kept. Once he had woken up from being stunned, he spent about twenty minutes under the effects of near-constant Calm spells, answering sorts of questions that we would need to take off the ship properly, including passcodes and the ship''s ID numbers. No amount of proper procedure would get us out of the system, considering we would need to be inspected, but with any luck they would buy us time.


    Just over three minutes after we saw a shift in patrols, everything was ready. Nal and Vaz were both manning the ship''s blaster cannons, Ahsoka was sitting in the pilot''s seat, and Tatnia was ready in the co-pilot''s seat. Everyone else was strapped in and prepared in the lounge, conveniently at the heart of the ship.


    It really didn''t count for much, not when we would be evading a warship with guns nearly a third the size of our entire ship, but it made the kids feel safer.


    When everyone was all set, Ahsoka started the ship up, lifting off of the landing platform while Tatnia messaged the area''s flight control. She was just feeding them her credentials when the system overrode the connection and cut her off."


    "Clear Skies, Ship ID 356332389, this is Quadrant B4 flight control. Foless is under complete lockdown by Imperial order. Land immediately at your previous berth and prepare for Imperial inspection!"


    Ahsoka cursed, pulling the ship up and putting on a little speed. Meanwhile, Tatnia played dumb, insisting that we couldn''t return as we didn''t have the credits to pay for another day of rent. Before she could get too far into her excuse, the control tower repeated its override.


    "Clear Skies, Ship ID 356332389, this is your last warning! Land immediately before you are destroyed for disobeying Imperial orders!"


    "Punch it," I said, standing right behind Ahsoka. "This isn''t going to work much longer."


    Ahsoka nodded, and a moment later the ship accelerated, the once Jedi pushing the vessel to its limits. We streaked across the city, leaving the more populated areas behind in a few seconds.


    "TIE fighters coming in!" Tatnia called out to our gunners. "Get ready!"


    The infamous scream of incoming TIE fighters reverberated through the ship, as did the sensation of both our weapons opening fire. Nal and Vaz made quick work of the first two starfighters to reach us, before shifting around to lay down a pattern of covering fire meant to keep more of them from catching up.


    "Star Destroyer is charging its weapons!" Tatnia called out. "It''s-"


    Whatever she was going to say was completely drowned out as Ashoka suddenly juked port hard, almost knocking me off my feet. Before anyone could even think, the sound of tortured, heated air shook the ship, and the cockpit was colored a vibrant green as a turbolaser blast from the Star Destroyer above us attempted to obliterate us.


    "Guess they aren''t trying to take us alive anymore!" I shouted, holding on to the back of Ahsoka''s seat as she continued to juke and weave the ship around.


    We continued to dodge and weave between massive blasts of lethal energy, every strike making my heart stutter just a bit. It was impossible not to flinch, each blast more than enough to completely overwhelm our shields and turn us to so much molten metal and boiling organics.


    The only positive to the near-constant bombardment was that the scores of TIE fighters swirling around us immediately pulled back to a safer distance when a pair of them were reduced to slag. They were either refusing orders to stay out of the bombardment or whoever was in charge didn''t like wasting resources.


    Ashoka remained silent throughout the entire time, her hands on the controls, her eyes looking out of the viewport. Sweat poured down her face as she immersed herself in the Force, her hands moving the controls before any sign of the latest energy blast. It was an incredible display of Force intuition, and the only reason we made it through.


    After nearly five minutes of constant dodging, the turbolaser barrage stopped. By now, we were far away from the city, passing over much more sparsely populated land. Once the final shot faded, Tatnia took a breath.


    "I think we are out of range of their heavy guns," she said. "We should pull out now."


    Ahsoka nodded in agreement, silently pulling up on her controls and angling us into the sky. All around us, the TIE fighters moved in, quickly gaining on us with their significantly superior speed.


    "We just need to make it out of the gravity well," I said, watching the sensor read out as Nal and Vaz took down dozens of TIE fighter, only to be replaced by even more.


    As we climbed higher and higher, leaving the slower capital ships behind, some of the faster ships trailed after us, gaining slowly while we barely weathered the barrage of TIE fighters. Our shields were dropping faster than we could make enough distance. Damage reports started to roll in on Tatnia''s console as the sustained damage began to overload systems.


    "Tatnia¡­ Send out the call," I said, my second in command looking over at me. "We need more time, and the Intervention, Loyal Hound and Chariot can give that to us! Make the call!"


    She nodded and tapped on her controls, opening the hyperwave and reaching out to the rest of our team. As we climbed higher and higher, she sent our exact location, our speed, and vector, putting it on repeat.


    "If they don''t show up soon, we aren''t going to make it," Ahsoka said, looking over at me for a split second.


    I looked over her shoulder to her screen, revealing <u>three separate</u></a> <u>cruisers</u></a> moving to intercept us. They were a considerable distance ahead of us, up past the atmosphere, but were directly in our path. We weren''t fast enough to evade the incoming TIEs, and if we tried to fly around the waiting cruisers, the swarm of starfighters would completely overtake us. We were stuck in a slowly closing trap. I wasn''t even sure our ships would be able to help, the TIE fighters were almost through our shields, we-


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    "They''re here!" Tatnia called out. "And they brought friends!"


    Sure enough, in a streak of color, dozens of ships appeared, completing a short micro-jump that brought them just to the edge of the planet''s gravity well. Most of them were starfighters, at least two squadrons of them, mostly X-wings and some A-wings. The remaining ships were the Huntress, Loyal Hound, Intervention, and Chariot. The Huntress, in particular, was surprising since when we left, it was still undergoing retrofitting and was supposed to stick around Omega Station.


    "Hold on! Calvaries here!" A comms message came through, the crappy Rebel radio completely camouflaging their voice.


    The smaller, speedier starfighters zipped around the waiting cruisers, coming directly to our aid. They passed us in a blur, hammering into our unwanted escort of TIEs.


    The larger ships surged forward as well, immediately targeting the closest cruiser. I couldn''t help but cheer as they bombarded the Gozanti, its shields collapsing in seconds under the sustained fire. As it exploded, the remaining three ships attempted to shift into a better formation.


    "Just keep going!" Another voice said through the comms, this one is clearly Calima. "We will jump when you''re clear!"


    While Tatnia responded, Ahsoka pushed the ship as hard as she could, everything vibrating as she piloted us expertly around the cruisers, which were now well on their way to losing another ship. With their focus elsewhere, we flow around them, past our support, and in a blink, jumped away, our destination long since punched into the astronavigation. As hyperspace swallowed us up, everyone cheered, jumping out of their chairs and shouting in happiness. I could hear everyone shouting from the lounge, but my attention was yanked away when Ashoka wrapped me up in a tight hug, one I was happy to return.


    "I can''t believe that worked!" She said, a choked-up laugh escaping her for a moment. "We did it!"


    "We did. We made it," I said with a smile, chuckling when Ahsoka pulled away, a visible blush on her cheeks. "Well done, we wouldn''t have made it without that fancy flying."


    She laughed and nodded, the relief of survival washing away any awkwardness or modesty. After we calmed down, and the adrenaline ran its course, I made my way back into the core of the ship, to find everyone celebrating similarly, Nal and Vaz having returned from the gunner positions.


    "Well done everyone!" I said with a smile. "The ship is limping along, but we should arrive at the rally point in an hour or so. So, relax, unclench, and take some time to come to terms with what we just managed to do."


    Another cheer echoed through the ship before everyone finally settled down, their own adrenaline high now slowly fading as well. It was hard to go from such heart-pounding


    excitement to quiet and calm so quickly, but soon everyone shifted from wired and wild to exhausted, the last few days finally catching up to everyone.


    When we finally arrived at our rally point, we only had to wait a short while before the Chariot dropped out of hyperspace nearby. There wasn''t much reason to stick around, so after spending a bit confirming the ship would make it back to Omega Station. Once we were done, we used the Brick to transfer the kids, Sheora and Nal over to the Chariot, the rest of us staying on the Clear Skies to make the final jump home.


    During that jump, we finally sat down and discussed what we would do with the elephant on the ship.


    "We can pay him a good chunk of money," I started. "Maybe poke the Rebellion to buy his ship slightly above what it''s worth as well since the ship is definitely burned. The Empire will chase him all over the galaxy if he tries to use it."


    "I could send a message to Hera, ask if the Rebellion would be willing to clean the ship, get it set up with new tags and IFF," Ahsoka volunteered. "I don''t imagine she would have an issue with that as an apology."


    "Why don''t we just ask him?" Tatnia pointed out, rolling her eyes. "If he has a preference, we can do that, but if he is difficult, we can just pay him off and drop him somewhere."


    We retrieved our unwilling accomplice, and spent a while explaining exactly what had happened, why we needed his ship, and the unfortunate side effects of using his ship. The man was clearly conflicted, understanding that the lives of two innocent children came before his own feelings, but also understandably livid at the damage we had done to his life. After a while, we finally convinced him to take our apology money, a hundred thousand credits, as well as whatever the Rebellion was willing to offer him, whether it was some less-than-legal adjustment to hide the ship''s original name or purchasing the vessel from him.


    Surprisingly enough, he got a lot less angry when he realized his bank account was now a hundred thousand credits bigger.


    Once he was calm, or relatively calm at least, the trip got a lot less tense. He still more or less stayed in his bunk room, since we weren''t keen on giving him control of the ship just yet, but I wasn''t worried about him doing something stupid and putting us all at risk.


    With Yalip pacified, we settled in for our short journey home. It was late on the first and only night of our trip that I found Ahsoka sitting in the lounge, long past when everyone else had gone to sleep.


    "Bit late," I said, the Force-sensitive woman looking over at me from across the small common area. "Everything okay?"


    "Couldn''t sleep," She admitted as I sat down across from her, separated by a small table.


    "Wanna talk about it?"


    "It''s not anything in particular," She explained. "Just¡­ thinking about everything."


    "We did good work," I said, leaning back in my seat. "We really beat the odds with this one."


    "Could have gone very wrong. Especially at the end."


    "Of course. But we knew that going in," I pointed out, getting a reluctant nod. "We worked well together."


    "It was interesting fighting with you," She admitted. "I''m still astounded you managed to take down two Inquisitors by yourself."


    "Magic has a lot of flexibility that the Force doesn''t," I explained. "Lets me do a lot of crazy stuff. You held your own, though."


    "I''m rusty," She said, refuting my statement. "I should not have let that Inquisitor hurt me like that. I used to be better than that."


    "Well¡­ If you stick around, we could practice together," I pointed out. "Keep each other sharp."


    She looked up at me, her eyes pinched in confusion.


    "By stick around, you mean¡­"


    "I mean on Omega Station, but I also mean with the Skyforged," I confirmed. "I think you would make a great addition to the team."


    "The Rebellion¡­"


    "We are going to be working with them a lot, especially now that we have our own minor fleet," I assured her. "Really the last thing we need to get our hands on some sort of carrier. After that, I will consider stage one of the Skyforged fleet complete and the team ready to start taking on missions for the Rebellion."


    "Just how big do you plan on growing your group?"


    "Hard to tell, but bigger than this," I assured her. "I would like a decisive fleet, as well as a significant ground force, though that would probably be more focused on commandos than mass troops."


    She looked at me for a long moment, before letting out a long sigh.


    "I don''t know, Deacon," she admitted. "I''m¡­ open to the idea, but I would need to think about it."


    "Take your time," I said with a smile, slowly standing up from my seat. "And get some sleep. I have a feeling we are going to have some people waiting for us when we get back."


    She nodded, and I patted her shoulder before heading off to find somewhere to sleep.

 Chapter 124

    The rest of the trip home went by relatively quickly, with everyone mostly keeping to themselves. In normal circumstances, it wouldn''t have been considered a long trip, and everyone spent a lot of time sleeping it really flew by.


    When we did finally returned to Omega Station, Yalip was immediately whisked away by the Rebellion, a passenger in his own ship once again, though now slightly more willing. Upon arrival, every single medical droid we had available was immediately put to task fixing our faces and returning us to our previous looks. It had been easier to ignore when the tension was high, but in moments of quiet, especially when we were returning, the alterations to our faces weighed on us. All of the crew with me were desperate to get back to normal by the time we stepped foot on the station. We all agreed that this kind of thing was for emergencies only, as the psychological fuckery was a bit too much to toss around willy-nilly.


    With the differences in hyperspace capability, we arrived slightly before the rest of the crew, meaning we were just finishing up our treatment when they arrived, ready and eager for their own.


    It didn''t take long for all of us to regain our original faces, any normal recovery time washed away by the liberal application of healing magic. Once everyone was better, Ahsoka, Tatnia, and I went to greet some of the people who had helped us. Apparently, Ahsoka had already felt at least one of their identities but had kept it to herself. I think she just forgot to mention it.


    "You guys certainly got yourself into some trouble," Luke joked as he greeted us, backed by <u>Wedge Antilles</u></a> and a few other Rogue Squadron members.


    "Luke, good to see you! Thank you for your help. All of you," I said, shaking his hand, as well as Wedges, looking around and nodding at the other members of the flight team. "That last-minute cover really saved our asses."


    "Happy to help," Wedge said, giving Luke a nudge and nodding back down the hall we had found them in. "We are gonna go settle in. See you around."


    Luke nodded, and the remaining members of Rogue Squadron left, led by Wedge. When they were gone, the young Force-sensitive looked back at us with a smile.


    "So what''s the story?" I asked. "I appreciate the help, but you guys were the last people I expected to show up."


    "We were next on rotation to have some rest here," He explained, referring to the station''s status as a quasi-leave spot for Rebel starfighter groups. "When I heard what was going on, I got a really bad feeling about your chances of escape. I realized that I was getting some sort of warning through the Force, so I made some calls. I managed to convince some people to pause Blue Squadron''s next deployment so we could join your backup. The Captain of the Huntress even agreed to join the team, once a few people showed up to talk to him."


    "Well, your hunch saved our lives," I assured him. "Without the Huntress, our ships might have been able to take down the smaller light cruisers on their own, but without you guys to fend off the TIE fighters we would have been space debris."


    "Yeah, it didn''t look good when we jumped in," He admitted, shaking his head before frowning and looking at his comms. "Listen, I''m going down to hangar twelve to meet Leia, Han, and Chewie. You want to come?"


    "Why is Princess Leia here?" Ahsoka asked, stealing the words out of my mouth.


    "She wanted to see the station and check on its progress," He explained, adding with a small smirk. "Officially, at least. Unofficially, it''s been a while since the group has got together. She wants to check in."


    "So Han and Chewbacca are here as well?" I asked, Luke nodding in confirmation.


    "Yeah, Han and Chewie are more or less Leia''s official transport team now," He explained. "The Falcon is the fastest ship in the Rebellion''s fleet, and¡­ well, Leia keeps Han from getting into too much trouble."


    "Has he paid off Jabba yet?" I asked.


    "Uh¡­ not that I know of," He admitted, rubbing his back. "He has been putting it off to help us."


    "It''s probably too late by this point anyway," I said, shaking my head. "Jabba doesn''t do well with being ignored or being forced to wait. He probably wants his head more than he wants the credits he owes him."


    We made our way through the station, heading towards the outer portions of the Rebellion''s section. Somewhere along the line, Tatnia begged off to go hang out with the rest of the team, leaving Ahsoka and I alone with Luke.


    When we eventually arrived at our destination, I couldn''t help but stop to admire what was perhaps the most well-known starship to ever exist, the Millennium Falcon. It was parked along one side of a decently sized hanger, one of a few dozen that ran along the edges of Omega Station. I couldn''t help but think that from every single image, clip, or cutscene I had ever seen this iconic ship in, none of them really did it justice.


    "It looks like crap," I said, Ahsoka laughing at my comment, nodding in agreement.


    "Don''t let Han hear you say that," Luke said, shaking his head with a smile. "The Falcon is his baby, and I have to admit, she really does make up for her looks. She''s got it where it counts."


    "She would have to," I said. "But I won''t mention it."


    We didn''t have to wait long before the Huntress''s custom shuttle, the same one we rode on to take it, and the Loyal Hound slowly landed in the hangar. After a few moments, I could see Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Chewbacca step off.


    "Leia! Han! Over here!" Luke shouted, getting their attention, before leading us to meet them halfway.


    Leia greeted her sibling, not that either of them knew that, with a happy hug before Han, Luke, and Chewbacca took turns shaking hands and clapping each other''s backs. While they did, Leia looked past them to see Ashoka and me.


    "Ahsoka, Deacon, it is good to see you both," She said with a smile. "I am glad that your mission was a success. I can''t imagine what the Empire would do to those poor kids."


    "Nothing good, I assure you," I said before reaching out to shake her hand. "It''s good to see you again as well. Han, Chewbacca. I don''t think we have ever been introduced."


    "No, can''t say we have," The Corellian said, tucking his hands into his belt. "I haven''t had the chance to meet many magic people."


    "Not many of us around," I responded with a smirk before looking around with a frown. "I''m sure someone is going to show up and steal you guys away for a riveting tour of the station, but maybe I could steal you away first? We should have some real food on hand around here somewhere, and you could meet the kids you helped save?"


    Chewbacca howled and growled, slapping Han''s back, nodding a few times as he spoke. I winced and looked to Han for a translation.


    "He said anything is better than the rations they''ve had us eating," he explained. "I gotta agree with him, especially if it gets us out of the half-credit tour."


    I looked at the Princess, who seemed conflicted. The other seemed to appreciate the rescue attempt, but she was obviously hesitant to pass her duties. Before she could refuse, I quickly added on.


    "You could call it important work, getting to know a new faction, one with growing ties to the Rebellion," I pointed out. "The very thing a diplomat would need to focus on¡­"


    She gave me a studying, unimpressed look for a moment before her face eventually softened. She let out a sigh and nodded.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more."Very well, I suppose I have no choice," She said with a smile. "Besides, I need to keep these two in line."


    She nodded towards Luke and Han, though only Han pretended to be insulted by the insinuation. Luke just seemed to agree.


    With the Princess''s permission given, I led everyone through the station, back to the sections reserved for the Skyforged. Along the way, we ran into a few clones, as well as Miru, who greeted us with a smile and wave. Surprisingly, she recognized everyone, having seen their faces dozens of times on Imperial wanted posters. I invited her to dinner, but she was in the process of putting the finishing touches on the last few V-wings, so she couldn''t.


    Eventually, we arrived at the decent-sized space my people used as a lunch room. I wasn''t really sure what it had been before we took the station over, but now it was a decent-sized space with tables, a food prep area, and some holo displays along the wall. There were maybe a dozen people there in total, with a few pairs and a couple groups spread out around the room. We took a table large enough for everyone before grabbing some food. It was far from gourmet, but compared to Rebel rations, it was fantastic.


    As we ate, I couldn''t help but swell in pride as they looked around, admiring the crisp, impressive uniforms everyone was wearing.


    "Where did you get those uniforms?" Leia eventually asked, watching a clone soldier walk by. "It looks professionally made."


    "We make them in-house," I explained. "Pola, one of my crew took a liking to being an armor smith. He makes our full combat armor as well."


    "Wait till he tells you how much each one of these uniforms cost," Luke said, Leia looking back at me with a raised eyebrow.


    "Thirty to Forty thousand credits each," I answered, rolling my eyes. "But it''s worth every credit since they will tank several blaster shots."


    Han nearly fell over at the exorbitant price while Leia looked down at my uniform, which I had changed into after my face was restored, with renewed interest.


    "How in the hells can you afford that?" Han asked.


    "Oh, we can''t, not even close. At least not for everyone," I admitted. "That''s why they are all made with stolen resources. Pulled off a heist not too long ago. Though we are probably running really low on materials at this point¡­ I need to talk to Pola about that¡­"


    As I trailed off, Han seemed to recover slightly before looking closely at my uniform. He reached out and grabbed my sleeve, ignoring Leia as she rolled her eyes at his behavior. He rolled the material between his fingers before frowning and sitting back in his chair.


    "The only material you could use like that is beskar, but the Empire has most of that locked down," He said. "Unless you stole it from the Mandolorians, but I can''t imagine you''re that stupid or suicidal."


    "If Mandolorians were as tough as everyone thought they were, they would be fighting Star Destroyers with their bare hands," I said, rolling my eyes. "Don''t get me wrong, they aren''t bad, but that''s what happens when you basically train someone from birth to be a fighter."


    "Wait, you actually stole from the Mandolorians!" Han asked, his eyes wide.


    "No, no, no, I was just making a point. We stole from Kuat Drives, which at this point is basically just stealing from the Empire," I explained, waving his concerns away. "How we ended up with Beskar¡­ well, that''s a secret I plan on keeping for a while. That said, if the Rebellion were to help us secure a large amount of precious metals in the future, I''m sure the Skyforged Vanguard would be happy to supply you with either the Beskar or even some finished armor."


    "You should consider that offer," Ahsoka said, Luke nodding eagerly in agreement. "Even if it''s not exactly what his people wear, we watched them tank dozens of shots from CIS units, including super battle droids."


    "Oh, that''s nothing," I assured them with a smirk. "While taking over the Huntress, Julus tanks a burst from an <u>E-WEB</u></a>. No repairs needed."


    That got everyone''s attention, as the Imperial deployable heavy weapon was known to take down light speeders with scary consistency. Having a commando squad in armor capable of tanking that sort of firepower would be an impressive addition to the Rebellion.


    "The problem is that, even if you didn''t steal it from them, plenty of Mandolorians are gonna assume you did," Han pointed out. "Some of the groups out there won''t care, but plenty of the more¡­ devout members aren''t going to like you guys having so much."


    "I''m aware," I admitted with a frown. "It''s a problem I am working on solving."


    "Either way, I will bring up your request," Princess Leia said with a diplomatic smile. "General Dodanna and General Syndulla were both impressed by you. They may have something in mind."


    I nodded, and for a moment, we sat in silence, enjoying a moment of quiet, separated from the rest of the rush going around the space station. Eventually, once we finished, I guided the group to another section of the station, a semi-private block of sleeping quarters. It was nearby where the majority of the Skyforged lived but separate enough to have some privacy. We had designated that block for the guest rooms since the rooms already in place were of better quality than most of the stations.


    We entered the lounge area connected to the block to find Sheora, Claron, and Felia already settled in. Felia and Claron were sitting next to each other, playing on a datapad, while Sheora sat nearby, watching an Imperial news feed of our escape from Foless. According to the report, we had been apprehended before we could escape, and it was our fault the Star Destroyer opened fire and bombarded the planet.


    Thankfully, the report was silent and had subtitles up, meaning the kids didn''t have to listen to what the Empire had done trying to catch us.


    When the two kids noticed us, Claron was off like a shot. He crashed into me first, talking so quickly I could barely catch two out of five words. From the way he looked up at me, it was clear he was suffering from more than a bit of hero worship. Felia, on the other hand, approached much more calmly.


    "Thank you," She said, her voice soft, looking down at the floor. "Thank you for rescuing us¡­"


    "It was our pleasure, Felia. Besides, we were overdue for a good deed," I assured her, the young girl looking up at me. "It''s important to do Pro Bono work when you can."


    Ahsoka punched me in the shoulder before kneeling in front of the girl, somehow managing to seem comforting and kind despite having just hit me.


    "We were happy to help," She said with a smile. "I''m glad everything worked out."


    For a few seconds, Felia gave Ahsoka just the smallest of smiles. Then it fell, turning into a much deeper frown.


    "What do we do now?" She asked, looking more than a bit worried.


    "Well¡­ if you would like, I could help you better understand your connection to the Force," She offered. "I''m already helping Luke here."


    "While she does, you are both welcome to stay here," I said with a smile. "It''s not the most interesting of places, but for now, it''s safe. You can stay as long as you''d like."


    Falia looked over at Sheora, who had long since stopped watching the news, and turned to us, watching over the interaction.


    "I need to return to give my debriefing," She admitted. "But from what I''ve seen, there are worse places to stay for a while. When we get back, we can talk more about what happens next."


    Falia nodded before looking back to me, her slight smile having returned.

 Chapter 125

    We spent an hour or so with the kids and Sheora, before eventually we went our separate ways. Despite skipping out for a few hours, Princess Leia did insist that she actually did have to perform her duties, and Luke hadn''t actually moved into his temporary quarters. When the four of them left, it was just Ahsoka and I. As we walked through the station, a thought occurred to me.


    "Ahsoka... did you tell Luke¡­?"


    "I did," She responded, pointedly not looking at me as we walked. "He did not believe me at first, but after telling him what I knew of his fall¡­"


    "How did he react?"


    "It took some time for him to come to terms with it, but once he did¡­" She trailed off again, she shook her head. "He became determined to redeem him."


    "Yeah, that''s not very surprising. Its possible, but-"


    "What!?" She asked, whirling around to face. "How could you-"


    "BUT¡­ "I said, cutting off her words before it could turn into a tirade. "But, just because he might turn Anakin away from the darkness does not mean he will be miraculously cleared of his crimes. I''ll be the first in line to make sure that doesn''t happen."


    "And how would you do that?"


    "I don''t know, honestly. I mean, I have a few ideas I want to keep close to my chest for now, but¡­ yeah, I don''t really know."


    The first idea would be creating a prison on <u>Myrkr</u></a>, assuming that it existed in this Amalgam. The Force neutralizing Ysalamir, as strange as their existence was, would be able to keep Anakin pretty contained. Though, honestly, with his level of plot armor, I had a sneaking suspicion that the only realistic way to keep him contained was to convince him he needed to be.


    As I admitted my dilemma, I could see that Ahsoka was clearly struggling with a lot on her mind, trying to come to terms with what I said. I stopped in the station hallway, forcing her to as well.


    "Look, he did a lot of fucked up shit before and after taking his new mantle," I agreed. "But there is something to be said about the level of manipulation he was under. I mean Palpy is an honest to god, old-style Sith, not some new-age dumbass with dark eyeliner and parents who just don''t understand. He is capable of some devious Force shit, and worse, he is a master at implementing them. I mean, look what he did to you."


    "What did he do to me?" She asked, looking part affronted and part worried.


    "His bullshit was how you almost got banished from the Jedi," I explained. "He was obsessed with Anakin being his apprentice, but he needed him to fall. Your influence was a threat to that plan, so he threw you to the wolves. Now, Anakin stopped you from getting thrown in prison, but the damage was already done."


    "He was responsible¡­?"


    "Of course he was, Palpy had his fingers in everything, Ahsoka," I assured her gently, shaking my head. "But that''s kind of just a side point. The main point is that even if Anakin did some monstrous things, we still need to take everything that Sidious did to him into account. I''m not saying we wave it all away. He murdered kids, after all. No amount of mind fuckery, save maybe straight-up mind control, can cover for that. But don''t be so quick to condemn Luke''s efforts, if for no other reason than to make punishing him for his crimes easier."


    She stood there, for a long moment, her mind clearly not on the station, but far away in the past. Eventually, she shook herself free from whatever she was thinking about. She nodded, though at first, she didn''t respond. When she eventually spoke, it was not about Anakin.


    "I need some time. To meditate, rest, and consider your offer," She explained. "I feel¡­ unbalanced after all of¡­ that, and the mission... Even with it ending successfully."


    "Yeah, of course, take whatever time you need. I know you have your ship, but feel free to borrow any of the empty rooms here at the station. There are some nicer ones in our section that we refurbished with actual beds and furniture."


    Her eyes widened for a bit at the idea of an actual bed before she nodded.


    "Thank you, I think I might just take you up on that," She said with a smile.


    I gave her some quick directions to where the Skyforged quarters were, which was pretty close since we were still near the guest space. Before she could leave, I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder.


    "I''m not sure if this will help, but try to focus on the fact that you''re okay," I said, the Togruta''s eyes meeting mine. "There''s a lot of shit going on, so it''s hard to remember sometimes, but you''re okay, and you''re doing good. What''s in the past is in that past. Learn from it, but focus on the future. You''re okay, and you''re doing a lot of good. That''s worth a lot."


    For a moment, she was silent before eventually she nodded. She patted the hand that was still on her shoulder before she silently walked away, disappearing around a corner.


    When she was really gone, I mentally cursed myself, wondering why I had felt the need to bring all of that up. Sure, the conversation was something that probably needed to happen eventually, but¡­


    I let out a long sigh before looking around for a moment. It took a few seconds to try to recall Omega Station''s internal layout, but eventually, I headed off toward the hangar that Miru should be working out of. I spent the next few hours checking in on everyone who had stayed behind when we left for our rescue mission. Miru was still working on the last starfighter, a pair of clones, one of which I recognized Toggle, helping her out. I could see both of the LAATs were also being worked on, though I could only see a few repair bots around them.


    After that, I moved on to Pola''s workshop, stepping inside to find him pulling apart the beskar weave from the civilian clothes we had worn on Foless. He promised that once he was done making all of our uniforms, he would start working on some normal-looking clothes that were still protective. The mission on Foless had proven it was a useful concept, so he was determined to refine what we had worn. He also confirmed my fears that we were running dangerously low on beskar. He had enough to finish the uniforms, and the clone ground team already had their armor, but the undercover armor would probably end up using up the last bits, with only a few outfits to show for it.


    "In that case, hold off on the incognito armor," I said. "I''m hoping that we get a new member soon, and they are going to need armor."


    "T-that''s really gonna drain us, Boss," Pola said, shaking his head.


    "I know. Luckily, I dropped some hints to Princess Leia that we would be willing to make some beskar for the Alliance, in exchange for help on another precious metal heist," I assured him. "I''m sure that will catch their attention."


    "Is¡­ that wise?" He asked, looking at me with concern. "Just handing it out?"


    "Beskar is tough, but it''s not indestructible. I mean, just a few beskar weapons would level the playing field, though it might get us a lot of attention from Mandolorians. They don''t like that," I explained. "Sure, it is an advantage, especially when attacking someone who doesn''t know you have it, but if we decided to¡­ let''s say go hunting for someone who stole some of our armor, with the right loadout, taking them down wouldn''t be much harder than taking down a normal person."


    If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    "If you say so, boss."


    From Pola''s workshop, I continued to explore the station, checking up on my people and getting a feel for how the repair process was going. The clones were settling in nicely, eager to be working and even more eager to be done with the Clone Wars. It was nice to watch them develop more individualism as they performed tasks very different from what they were made for.


    As for the repairs, I could tell the rebel engineers were doing good work and making significant progress. One of the reactors, the one torn to pieces by the half-destroyed control droid on the munificent, was already well on its way to being up and running, meaning that our weapons would soon have all the power they could need. After that, I continued until I was on the munificent itself.


    I was almost immediately greeted by a pair of Rebel soldiers, who correctly identified me and took me to see the man in charge of the ship-turned-station addition. He was an engineer put in charge of the droid repair and production facilities that were just starting to be put together on the ship. He gave me a quick tour before dropping me off at one of the ship''s massive droid-holding bays.


    It was a simple room, with row after row of storage space for collapsed and folded-up battle droids.


    "As we have been going over the interior of the ship and cleaning up Omega Station itself, we have been moving the droids around to bays like these," He explained. "The ship has a few dozen of them, way more than we need. This one and the one next to it are reserved for you and your team, so we moved the intact droids here. When we start the repair process in earnest, we will send your portion here as well.


    "Have there been checks to see if these work?"


    "No, but the ones we have found around the ship, whole but tossed around, have been marked with red dots of paint on their chests," He explained. "The rest were securely stored when we found them."


    I walked around the bay, doing a quick general count of what we had. I noted several dozen commando droids, three hundred B2s, and nearly two thousand B1s, about a fifth of which were naval droids. It seemed like two-thirds of all the droids were marked with red dots, which meant they would need a full workup to make sure they were reliable enough to be trusted.


    Still, even with that limitation, we now had a sizable force of disposable troops and a good chunk of Commando droids, who, at this point, I couldn''t really consider fully disposable. Don''t get me wrong, for important things, I would spend them quarters in an arcade, but between BX-01 and his team making it out of our heist mission intact, as well as all of their other stellar performances, I wasn''t willing to just throw them away on a lark like I was B1s and B2s.


    Perhaps even more important than the large number of droid troops were the naval droids, which would massively lower the strain we were about to take on by adding a carrier of some kind to our fleet. They weren''t a one-to-one replacement for biological officers, but they could certainly fill in for specific positions. They were just passable as crew members, which was good enough for now. Over time, as our organization grew, we would lower the ratio as we could, like we did with the recent addition of the clones.


    When I finally left the munificent behind, I contacted Tatnia through my comms, explaining that I wanted all of our larger ships to have at least fifteen B2s on board to act as emergency security and disposable cover, should they need it. The Starcaller would have three or four BX-units tucked away in its smuggling compartment, just in case. I wish I could do the same for the Staggering Bantha but it would ruin its cover, especially since it didn''t have any smuggling compartments.


    With my walk just about completed, I made my way to the gathering area my crew and my people frequented. A quick look around and I spotted Vaz and Nal, both sitting on a couch, looking at ships. When I realized what they were doing, I joined them.


    "Is this what you are looking at for the carrier?" I asked, dropping down on the couch with them.


    "One of the options," Nal said, passing his datapad to me so I could look at it closer. "Considered this ship but discounted it. Too much for us to maintain."


    `The ship he was showing me was a design I didn''t actually recognize. It was called a <u>Valor-class carrier</u></a>, and it was an older ship made by one of the hundreds of ship-making companies that came into being around the Clone Wars. They tried to make a profit off the conflict but just couldn''t push into being remarkable enough to stick around when it ended.


    Nal was right. It was too much ship for us, both too big and, according to his research, not worth the added effort. He also showed me another of the options, a <u>Marauder-class</u></a> corvette. This starship was also a lot more than what we were looking for, easily classified as a light capital ship. It wasn''t even really a carrier, it just happened to have a hangar bay big enough for twelve starfighters, though it was so small I wasn''t sure that was true.


    The difference between the Marauder and the Valor was that the Marauder would make a great addition to the fleet, as it was a powerful ship in its own right. It would be an absolute nightmare to staff, but it would make a great flagship.


    The last option Nal was looking at, and the one he was planning on bringing to my attention, was the Deep Space Recovery Vessel, or the <u>L-2783</u></a>. This starship was more hangar than ship, with a massive open hangar built under a decently made living and crew space. It was only lightly armed but had powerful shields and an incredible amount of space. The hangar bay itself was big enough to easily fit the Talos Chariot, though it wouldn''t be able to fit through the hangar doors.


    Not only did it have plenty of room for all of our starfighters and more, it had plenty of room to comfortably house the pilots. With space to fit a crew of a hundred, with a hundred more passengers, there was plenty of space for everyone. We would likely refurbish a lot of that space to focus more on comfort than to just cram every single bed we could into every nook and cranny, but even with that, plus any more upgrades we would do, there was plenty of room. Especially because a significant portion of the hundred max crew was for working on whatever project the ship was tasked with, whether it was salvage or repair.


    It even had a pair of powerful tractor beams for recovering wrecked ships or stranded pilots. It was exactly what we were looking for, and I agreed wholeheartedly that it was absolutely the right choice for us.


    But even better than all of that, Nal knew exactly where we could get our hands on one without paying a dime.

 Chapter 126

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    That said, I was in no rush to get this mission started. Nal assured me the timer on this mission was good for at least a week or two, and I wanted to give everyone at least a few days to unwind and prepare. The rescue mission had been more than a bit stressful, with being under constant threat and dealing with body dysmorphia. Once everyone was rested and recovered, we would start working on the plan.


    Over the next few days, I talked to most of the crew about our options. In between that, I was helping Miru set up the docking stations for the fifteen B2s that were soon to be stationed at each ship. It was an easy process most of the time, with our various repair droids doing most of the heavy lifting, while Miru and Racer, along with two other astromechs that Miru had modified similarly with slicing software and hardware, scanning and modifying the droid''s programming. Miru already had instructions to start doing the same for every BX in the munificent storage since I wanted as many of them on hand as possible.


    I also spent some more time with Ahsoka and Luke, helping them both train and practice their lightsaber skills, as well as offering advice where I could. It was fun sparring with them, being able to use the sword-fighting talents that the entities had begrudgingly given me without actually being in danger. I was still no match for them in pure reflex, but I was able to fight Luke on more or less even ground by filling in the gap with skill.


    I would have been thrilled with that achievement if, just a few weeks ago, Luke hadn''t been struggling to even consistently tap into the Force. The fact that he was now getting closer and closer to beating me was astonishing. He really was a monstrously talented kid.


    Ahsoka usually beat me pretty quickly, at least, she did if we were counting hits against my conjured armor as a strike. Neither of them could beat me if I tanked their strikes for obvious reasons.


    When I felt like everyone had gotten enough rest, and after saying goodbye to Leia, Han, and Chewie, I gathered everyone together. I also invited Ahsoka along, though I assured her she was under no obligation to go on the mission with us. I just wanted to give her a peek at what our planning was like. She agreed and showed up at the conference hall just after I had done so.


    Of course, this was our full meeting since the group had nearly tripled in size. Unfortunately, the group had just gotten too big for us to have an ordinary all-hands meeting. Instead, we used a sizeable auditorium-like room, with layered chairs around a <u>central pit complete</u></a> with a holoprojector.


    First, I presented what ship we would be adding to the fleet, going over why we chose it specifically and what we could expect to get out of it. I explained that the <u>L-2783</u></a> would allow us to carry two whole squadrons of V-Wings into battle, both of our LAAT''s, and whatever other assets we might need. It would also let us seize assets and transport them ourselves, meaning more loot opportunities going forward. I brought up our first pirate raid, where we were forced to sell several decent starfighters at significantly reduced prices since we couldn''t get the ships off the planet ourselves.


    I pointedly didn''t mention that the Rebellion had been the ones who practically stiffed us, but Ahsoka still winced.


    Once I had gone over the what and why, Nal stood to go over the how, tapping his datapad to start the holoprojector


    "The <u>Hapes Consortium</u></a> is known for its incredibly harsh treatment of pirates, but its location and separation from the Empire makes it a tempting safe haven for pirate groups that pull a little too much Imperial attention," The Duros male explained. "Quite a few pirate groups set up around its outskirts, jumping back and forth between both sides in order to confuse and escape patrolling fleets, using the <u>Transitory Mists</u></a> to prevent further tracking. One such group is the Falnur Raiders."


    Nal tapped the controls, the holoprojector shifting to first display a galactic map, the chunk of space controlled by the Hapes Consortium flashing, before the view zoomed in on the highlighted area. I seemed to remember the Hapes Consortium being smaller on maps I had seen before my first life ended, but I shook it off. Either I was misremembering, or it was a shift due to the amalgamation, and neither of them changed anything.


    My attention shifted back as the projection shifted again, this time showing the symbol for the pirate group, a bloody knife stuck in the skull of some sort of large, dangerous-looking creature.


    "Six months ago, the Falnur Raiders were terrorizing a populated hyperspace lane," Nal continued. "Eventually, the Empire responded, ambushing them and destroying a significant portion of their fleet. Several ships, including their L-2783, escaped, running to the border for cover. Since then, they have been spotted running a few small raids, but mostly, they are licking their wounds."


    "The perfect opportunity to strike," I pointed out, Nal nodding in agreement.


    "What about the Consortium?" Tatnia asked with a frown. "Are we going to have to worry about them cracking down on us if they stumble on us?"


    "Not likely. Hapes recognizes the bounty hunters guild," Ahsoka explained. "They are isolationists, yes, but they aren''t necessarily aggressive. However, if we¡­ if we run into them, it would be best if the talking was left to the female members of the crew. Their society is heavily matriarchal and will probably react poorly to being forced to discuss business with a male.


    "Right, that''s good," I said with a nod, pointedly ignoring Ahsoka''s stumble for now. "Though, as of right now, the Loyal Hound doesn''t actually have any female crew¡­"


    "I will ride with them," Vaz said, raising her hand. "We will most likely end up in the same fight anyway."


    "Sure, that works," I said with a nod before looking back to Nal. "Continue."


    "According to the bounty, they are down to the L-2783, two smaller freighters, a <u>Braha''tok-class gunship</u></a>, and a handful of starfighters," he explained.


    "We can handle that easily," Julus pointed out with a confident smile. "Even without the raindrops, we have more than enough firepower. Hell, we could leave the Loyal Hound behind and still have enough."


    "Maybe, but I want to get as much as we can out of this," I said, rubbing my cheek. "Not to mention that my Clairvoyance is next to useless tracking down an actively jumping ship. No, I want to track them to where they are landing. They are landing, right?"


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    "Most likely. The damage observed to the gunship was too severe to be repaired in a vacuum," He explained, bringing up an image of middling quality that showed the long gunship with several spots of serious damage. "If they want that back up and running, they will have to land."


    "Was the gunship spotted in its most recent raids?'' Ahsoka asked, getting my attention.


    "No, it was not," Nal responded. "Which means it might have landed somewhere, undergoing repairs."


    "It''s a lot of ifs and maybes¡­ But it''s worth checking out," I said with a nod. "All three of our ships are fully staffed and ready to go. The Loyal Hound and the Intervention are probably more than enough, but I want the Chariot on hand so the raindrops can hold off any starfighters they might have up and running. But that''s all if things go wrong. What I really want is to catch them on the ground."


    We spitballed a few ideas about how we would engage the pirates on the ground and what we would do if we were forced into a space battle before finally finishing the meeting. We had the rest of the day to prepare before we left the following morning, bright and early. With that, we split up, everyone heading out to spread the news, start to prepare, or just catch a bit more downtime before we had to go. I was watching people go when I realized Ahsoka was still sitting, waiting for the hall to empty.


    When the last person, Tatnia, left after giving me a look, I finally sat down beside her, staying quiet. After a minute, she finally lets out a long breath.


    "I will occasionally have to leave," She said. "Sometimes the Rebellion asks me to help with something or finds something related to the Jedi that I need to tend to."


    "You have other obligations. That''s fine," I assured her, shaking my head at her assumption. "But if you think you''re gonna join up and then head off alone, you''re very much wrong. Skyforged don''t fight solo unless it can''t be helped."


    "But¡­ there won''t always be a way for you to turn a profit," She pointed.


    "Not with that attitude, there won''t be," I retorted, before reaching out to squeeze her shoulder. "We have plenty of people now. We can spare some to go with you while the others run smaller bounty missions or scav runs."


    "I¡­ Alright, fine. I won''t say no to better help," She said after a moment of thinking.


    "Good. Now, I assume you don''t want to wear our full combat armor?"


    "No, it''s too much," She said, shaking her head. "For your commandos, it''s perfect, but¡­ It doesn''t fit us."


    "No problem. I''ll have Pola start thinking up some light armor variants," I assured her. "something that''s more subtle and less imposing."


    "I don''t-"


    "Ashoka, I know for a fact that Obi-wan wore armor during the war, as did several other Jedi," I pointed out. "You need a helmet and some light plates to cover your vitals. If you''re part of my team, you wear the armor."


    "Fine, fine¡­ I won''t deny that getting access to such nice armor is hardly a bad thing¡­" She admitted, before letting out a long breath.


    I chuckled and nodded, standing up and offering her my hand. When she took it, I pulled her up until she was standing.


    "In that case¡­ welcome to the team."


    To celebrate our newest member, I sent a message on the comms to everyone, letting them know she was one of us. We then raised a toast to her at the lounge outside our sleeping quarters block.


    Once the short celebration was over, I sent her to Pola, so he could get her measurements. The armorsmith could get to work while we were gone, and in the meantime, she could wear the uniform, which was plenty flexible and durable for now. I hated her not having a helmet, but with her montrals we couldn''t exactly just borrow one off the shelf.


    The rest of the night was spent preparing and going over the usual maintenance. Armor, weapons, ammo, droids, and everything in between. It wasn''t anything fanatic or rushed. Since we took such good care of our equipment, there wasn''t much reason to worry about weapons failure or anything like that. But it still needed to be done, so we made our way through it.


    The following morning, we woke up with a team breakfast before we all split up and spread out through our ships. The clone ground team boarded the Loyal Hound, as did Vaz. The Intervention carried an extra twenty B2s and a complement of ten BX units, led by BX-01, whom we now call Boxi. We didn''t really plan on using the droids since I was using this partially as a test for our newest ground team and to see how we worked together, but I wasn''t about to leave behind resources that might come in handy.


    The original ground team, plus Ahsoka, was riding on the Talos Chariot, as usual. It was hard to beat the speed and flexibility of our little pocket carrier. With its upgrades and its small team of raindrops, it was the perfect landing craft.


    So much, in fact, that I was considering modifying it to fit that role even more. I didn''t know if they existed in this universe, but some sort of quick deployment system built into the bottom of the ship, some extra bunks for more troops, and some combat speeders in one of the hangers would make it perfect for landing in hostile territory, deploying assets to cover us and then buzzing out again before it could get damaged.


    When we finally left, I knew that I would be spending most of the just under three-day trip locked in the enchanting room. Ahsoka needed at least two more enchantments, and I wanted to get her properly kitted out before we even got close to our destination.


    Since she was trained as a Jedi, and they were basically the poster children for agility builds, I figured that two dexterity enhancers would be the best bet. When I eventually got around to enchanting everyone''s armor, I would level it out with some strength stuff, but for now, a Jedi with superhuman dexterity, before the Force even entered the equation, was a delightfully intimidating concept.


    She happily accepted both the amulet and the single ring. We then spent the remainder of the last day sparring so she could get a handle on her new enhanced level of dexterity. Considering I couldn''t even touch her, at least without using offensive magic, I was more than happy to consider my job complete.


    When we finally arrived near the raider group''s last location, we started the familiar process using Clairvoyance to triangulate their position. It took three jumps for us to realize that they must have still been in hyperspace since the Clairvoyance arrow was visibly moving. The movement was so small it was barely noticeable, but it was definitely moving.


    With nothing else to do, we stopped in deep space and waited, several hours in fact, before eventually they stopped moving. Julus helpfully pointed out that they might just be taking a break or stopping for repairs, but after our third reference scan with a difference of five hours, it was clear that they were staying still for now.


    It took us the remainder of the day, but we finally narrowed their position down to a singular planet just around the outskirts of the Transitory Mists, just inside the Hapes Consortium territory. With any luck, we would be able to catch them unawares as they worked on their ships.


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 Chapter 127

    We jumped into our target system a few hours after we located it, coming in on the far end of a cluster of planets. The sun was between us and the planet the pirates were landed on, meaning there was little chance they had spotted our arrival. Of course, this also meant we couldn''t scan them. We did know from records that their chosen planet had a cold climate of ice and snow, but that was pretty much it.


    The second we arrived in the system, our fleet made a beeline for the closest planet, using it as moving cover as we crossed the system in case they had access to some sort of high-end sensors. It was unlikely, but caution was cheap and could save our asses in the end.


    Over the next twenty hours, we followed the planet as it spun around the sun, catching up to the much more distant, outer orbit planet. We jumped between planetoids twice, slowly encroaching on our target, making sure to stay hidden the entire time.


    As we got closer, we finally got a read on where the ship was stationed with a passive scan. Like our first pirate raid, approaching from the opposite side of the planet from where they had landed would give us some extra cover and allow us to take them by surprise. With that in mind, we waited for the planet to spin away, before finally crossing the last bit of empty space between us. As we settled into orbit, we began the next phase of our plan.


    The ground team quickly got armored up, in full combat gear, before hopping into the Brick. We left the Chariot behind and linked up to the Loyal Hound, where we picked up all nine of Lieutenant Rider''s ground team, as well as Vaz.


    With everyone inside, the Brick was just short of completely full, making a tight squeeze, especially with everyone in <u>full armor</u></a>. Still, we had just enough room to make it work.


    Once everyone was inside and ready, we disconnected from the Loyal Hound and descended to the planet''s surface. It was a quick ride with Nal in the pilot''s chair, guiding us down and across the nearly completely barren surface of the frozen planet. It really reminded me of Hoth, even if it was just a bit less desolate.


    When we finally landed, we quickly left the ship, which Nal locked up and turned off. Once we were ready to move, I gathered everyone together.


    "Alright, you guys know the plan, but let''s go over it again," I said, addressing everyone, doing my best to ignore the fact that the group had more than doubled. "Our main concern is the L-2783. We don''t know what sort of state it will be in when we arrive, but it can have up to two hundred people on board, so be prepared for a long fight."


    My eyes settled on Ahsoka for a moment, getting a subtle nod from the Togruta. She was the only one not in heavy armor. Instead, she was wearing our uniform, with a few extra insulating layers on top, as well as a thick hat that covered her montrals and a scarf to cover her face. I nodded back before continuing.


    "Our primary goal is to recover the L-2783, everything else is just a bonus. The worst-case scenario is that the pirate''s gunship is in good enough condition to destroy the other ship out of spite. That is why, as we begin our assault, the fleet will come in and attempt to force the smaller ship to surrender by way of overwhelming firepower. If they refuse, our fleet will attempt to disable it by wrecking the weapons and the engines."


    I paused again, turning to look at the setting sun in the distance. According to Calima and the sensor droid on board the Chariot, we had five hours before it got very dark and very cold. While the far below-freezing temperatures wouldn''t bother us for a long time, it would make sneaking around the ships much easier, since not many species could hang around it and keep watch, not without gear like ours. We had been lucky to have the proper equipment for Ahsoka.


    "While our fleet strong arms the gunship, we will be taking the L-2783, clearing it room by room until the ship is ours," I explained. "Team one will be clearing the hangar bay, moving to keep any ships inside from taking off, while Team two sweeps through the crew areas, including the quarters and, most importantly, the bridge. Now, since we will be flexing our fleet a bit overhead, we might get a few surrenders. If that is the case, stun them immediately and bind their arms behind their back. Everyone else, double tap. These are pirates, each with a list of victims to their names. There is no reason to hold back."


    When everyone nodded in understanding, I gave everyone a thumbs up before turning around and leading the way, starting our trek through the frozen wastes to our target. It was not a short one, unfortunately, as we were forced to land behind a large mountain, and we were hiking around it. The only silver lining in sight was that since the place was so cold, the snow was solid enough to walk across easily, even in our heavy armor.


    About two hours into our hike, we paused for a break. I used the Flames spell to heat up a rock and melt the snow into a pit, letting us climb down both to get out of the wind and for Ahsoka to warm up.


    "How are you doing?" I asked as Ahsoka stepped closer to the rock, holding her hands out and pulling down her face mask.


    "I''m fine. There are some effective techniques to mitigate the cold using the Force," She explained. "It might get dicey if we get stuck out here overnight, but other than that, I''ll be fine."


    "Good. By the way, this is another reason I want you in a suit of some kind," I pointed out, raising a hand in defense before she could fire back. "Being able to assume that all of my people can survive the same circumstances means I don''t have to worry about individual people. You can handle this, but what about a geologically active planet with rivers of magma? Or someplace with no breathable air, or a pure vacuum?"


    She seemed to seriously consider what I was saying, but something about her pride in her Jedi heritage made her want to rebut the need for armor.


    "It also puts your team at risk," I said, getting her attention. "Imagine we are on a ship and need to cross a hall that is exposed to vacuum? If you were wearing a sealed suit, we could cross that no problem. But without it, the team would be forced to seek other, less optimal routes. And no, they would not leave you behind. Putting on a full suit like ours, even if it''s just a light version, is one less thing to worry about for me."


    ".... I understand," She eventually admitted with a frown. "It is a valid point, and I am impressed by what Pola has created for all of you. It may feel a bit¡­ wrong to put on so much armor, but I will get used to it."


    "Thank you, I appreciate it. I''m sure Pola will take all of your needs into account while making your armor."


    She nodded, and after a few more minutes of letting her warm and everyone else rest their muscles, we started moving again. I cast Respite on everyone as we left, removing what little fatigue remained as we pushed forward.


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    It was another three hours before we finally reached our destination, a massive ice field where the pirates had landed. The field was bracketed by an extensive mountain range along the side opposite to us, with the gunship only three or four hundred feet away from us and the much larger L-2783 on the side opposite that. I could see two small freighters alongside the gunship, as well as their pirate crews, walking back and forth between them.


    As we lay down on the cold, solid ground, about thirty or forty feet above the level that the ships were at, we passed around a pair of binocs, doing some light reconnaissance as we waited for the sun to go down. We noted a dozen or so pirates walking along the hull of the gunship, which was clearly being worked on. The L-2783 appeared to be in decent working order, though there was some carbonized damage on one of its fins. The front entrance of the larger ship was sealed tight, probably to save power and keep everything warm since they wouldn''t have to run the mag field. There were a few people on the forward landing deck, clearly on watch.


    As the sun got lower and lower, the number of people outside dropped. Eventually, only a single pair of pirates, wrapped up in thick winter survival clothes, were standing guard by the lowered boarding ramp. Eventually, when they even went inside, it was time to attack. I pulled out my comms and gave a triple click, my device connecting back to the Brick, which would relay its message to the rest of the fleet. Simple, tried and true, and effective.


    "Alright, the fleet should be on its way," I said, getting everyone''s attention. "Let''s move everyone."


    The second I gave the command, we surged out of our cover and down the hill. Knowing that our armor, painted white for just this occasion, made it almost impossible to see us in the darkness. Against the white ice and snow, we were nearly invisible as we made a beeline for the L-2783. We completely ignored the gunship, knowing the fleet would handle them, reaching our target a few minutes after we started our run. The small side landing ramp was still big enough for us to rush into the ship two by two, all of us stepping inside the ship in record time.


    Immediately, we split up. Four clones came with Nal, Vaz, and me, while the remaining five clones, including Lieutenant Rider, followed after Tatnia, Julus, and Ahsoka. My team headed directly for the hangar bay, stepping into the massive interior space.


    Immediately, I could spot another freighter, which looked to be in pretty rough condition. Since the intelligence we had on the pirates said they should only have two, and there were already two outside, the third ship was potentially a recent score. We could also see several starfighters, a pair of new-ish looking <u>Z-95 headhunters</u></a>, and a trio of other <u>starfighters</u></a> that I didn''t recognize.


    Before we could even step into the hangar, a shout echoed through the open space. It was impossible to tell where it came from, but it got everyone''s attention. Dozens of people turned to see what was going on, and most of them almost immediately pulled out blasters of various sizes and shapes.


    "Push forward to the freighter," I said calmly, waiting for the shoe to drop. "Vaz, you''re with me to the starfighters."


    The calm was broken when the sound of turbolaser fire echoed in from outside the ship. For a moment, I considered raising my voice and explaining that they were surrounded by our fleet, but unsurprisingly, they opened fire immediately.


    We rushed to cover, Vaz following behind me, spraying the hangar down with her rotary cannon. The clones followed after Nal as he followed a line of crates. Hundreds of bolts of red, angry energy crisscrossed the hangar, trying their best to take us down as we slowly made progress to our targets. Some of them must have realized what we were doing and attempted to stop us, only to get cut down by Vaz''s impressive firepower.


    After a few seconds of cover hopping, we slid behind a pair of the strange-looking starfighters, taking cover and preventing anyone from accessing them. With our position secure, we started to really focus our fire back at them, tanking shots left and right and dropping dozens of them in return. Finally, across the hangar I saw Nal step down from the freighter, gesturing to me that it was clear.


    With our targets secure and most of the hangar clear, we began pushing in, closing in on the remaining pirates and either flanking or driving them from their cover. In all honesty, it was a slaughter, with none of them packing the proper firepower to take us down. We had each taken dozens of blaster bolts, but they had been spread all over our armor, meaning it wasn''t even close to losing its integrity. The most the pirates could claim was that they had ruined their new paint jobs.


    As we pushed forward, a Rodian seemed to notice this, as he threw down his blaster and raised his hands in surrender. His cowardice in the face of an admittedly intimidating foe started an avalanche, and within just a handful of seconds, the remaining pirates surrendered as well. As we stood out of cover and began stunning the pirates and kicking weapons away from their previous owners, I ordered Nal and his clone escort to start searching the hallway around the hangar for anyone who managed to slink off.


    I was about to pick up my comms and contact the other teams, when a massive barrage of turbolaser fire reverberated through the ship, sending vibrations through the hull and floor. I raised an eyebrow and looked over at Vaz.


    "Think that was the gunship being flattened or a final display of force?" I asked rhetorically.


    "Perhaps, but I believe the lack of a large explosion means it was one of the freighters," She countered. "Perhaps they were trying to escape."


    "It''s possible, let''s find out."


    I pulled out my comms and first radioed Tatnia, who picked up immediately.


    "We have the hangar bay locked down for the most part," I explained. "Vaz and I are watching the pirates who surrender while Nal and the troopers search the halls. How''s it going for you?"


    "Slow," She responded. "We have the bridge, now we are just checking room to room. Also¡­ we found some survivors of their last raid."


    "How many?" I asked, pausing before adding. "I think we have their ship down here."


    "Five. Some of them are a bit rough if you feel like healing them up," She responded. "I''m sure they will be happy to still have a ship."


    "Alright, I''ll be up when we are sure everything here is locked down. Let me call Calima and see how things are going out there."


    A quick call explained exactly what the barrage had been. Apparently, the very first shot we heard was a warning shot, while the barrage was our fleet taking down one of the freighters as it tried to escape. Unsurprisingly, after such a display of firepower, the remaining ships surrendered.

 Chapter 128

    After Nal and the troopers returned from their scan through the hallways around the hangar, I left him in charge. With him keeping an eye on the hangar, I went up to meet with the rest of the crew and to meet the pirates'' captives. It turned out that a large chunk of the ship''s crew quarters had been converted into prison space, which made me think they were likely selling their victims into slavery. It certainly explained how they were so successful. Trafficking slaves was a lucrative business.


    When I finally found the victims, Tatnia had relocated them to the area outside the bridge, where Lieutenant Rider and two of his men were keeping watch. Most of them were in decent shape, save a couple of scrapes and bruises. Two of them, however, were looking pretty rough, bearing the wounds of recent and older beatings. I approached the group slowly, taking my helmet off to greet them.


    "Hello, my name is Deacon Roy," I said, gesturing to Rider and his men. "I''m in charge of these folks. I understand you guys are recent victims?"


    "They captured us two days ago," one of them explained, a woman who was tending to one of the heavily beaten victims. "They damaged our ship and forced us to power down¡­ They said they were going to sell us¡­Thank you for saving us."


    "I''m glad we managed to get here in time," I said, wincing as my suspicions were confirmed. "Why don''t you let me help with that?"


    I stepped forward and put my hand on the man the woman was tending to, casting Heal Middling Trauma to fix an obvious broken hand. The woman gasped, her eyes wide as the man''s wounds quickly closed. I got the man mostly back to good health before moving on to the second, a muscular female Twi''lek with blue skin and old scars along her arms and shoulders. When I was done, having spent my mana three times to get everyone back up to perfect health, I looked over at the first woman.


    "Why were these two the most beaten up?" I asked, gesturing to the now-sleeping pair.


    "Dialu and Nyriam are the Captain and second in command," She explained, dabbing a tear from her eye. "They would¡­ insult the guards to keep their attention away from us. Sir¡­ what did you do?"


    "Just a little magic," I said with a smile, standing up and looking at the other crewmates, nodding to them. "I want you all to know you are safe now. Your ship is in the hold, and while it''s in bad shape, I''m sure we can come up with something."


    "We... never thought we would get out of here..." One of the crew admitted, sitting down heavily on the floor.


    "I can''t imagine what you went through," I admitted. "For now, you should rest and recover. When your captain wakes up, ask one of my men to alert me. We can talk about what comes next then."


    After a moment, I gave them a nod before stepping away. They were clearly shellshocked and dazed, unsurprising considering what they had been through. With any luck, their captain and second in command would be able to pull them out of it. As I made my way to the bride, I realized I was just in time to meet Tatnia as she returned from deeper into the ship.


    "What''s the news?" I asked, my second in command stepping in beside me as I walked into the bridge.


    "We are relocating everyone who''s surrendered to their prison cell. It''s tight, but I find myself struggling to care," She explained, pausing for a moment to consider her words before speaking again. "This was¡­too easy."


    "Waiting for the other shoe to drop?"


    "Yeah. I''m waiting for the ambush, or to find out that the ship is actually a trash heap." She said, wincing when she realized what she had said. "Sorry, shouldn''t have said that."


    "It''s fine, I''m going to get the B2s out to watch for ambushes, and you said yourself the ship looks good," I reminded her.


    Instead of responding, she chewed her lip, seemingly unconvinced.


    "You''re forgetting that, at this point, we are overkill for pirates like these. We are too well-armed and coordinated. Maybe if they had been at full strength, they would have stood a chance, but we wouldn''t be here if they had been. " I pointed out, and Tatnia eventually nodded in agreement. "How does the rest of the ship look?"


    "It needs a deep cleaning, and I would rather sleep on the ground than sleep in any of the beds¡­ but it looks like it''s in good condition," She responded. "Boss¡­ They were selling people into slavery¡­"


    "Yeah, I know. Makes me regret telling everyone to accept surrender," I said, shaking my head and walking to the forward viewport, spotting our fleet flying above us.


    "I agree, but¡­ What do you think are the chances that we could follow this up the chain?" She asked. "Maybe trick some slavers into delivering themselves to us?"


    I turned away from the viewport, my brain going over what she was suggesting. As a general basic plan began to form in my head, I nodded.


    "That¡­ is a really good idea, Tatnia," I said with a wide grin, turning away from the viewport to look at her. "Why don''t we find out?"


    Tatnia smirked and nodded, leading me out of the bridge to where the prisoners were. While we walked, I commed Ahsoka to join us before telling Nal to take some of our team and head over to the gunship and process whoever was inside. Then I told our ships to take turns landing to let some of our B2s out, both to set up a patrol around the ice flow and to patrol the ship''s interior. I didn''t want any surprises catching us off guard as we waited for the bounty officer to arrive. Though technically, we hadn''t called them yet since we didn''t want to rush this. We made that mistake once already, and none of us were in a hurry to repeat it.


    When we arrived at the prisoner area, I stepped into the room confidently, Ahsoka and Tatnia following me in, though they were a bit surprised. The area was clearly just a whole group of rooms with the walls cut down and some platting put up to reinforce certain areas.


    Seconds after I stepped in, the nearest pirate attacked me, trying to stab me with a small, easily hidden vibro dagger. The normally lethal weapon skittered off my armor, barely carving a line on my armor. In response, I slammed my fist into his stomach, folding the pirate and letting him drop. A second pair stepped forward to rush me. Instead, they caught a blast of Sparks, dropping them both as they shook and convulsed. I kept the blast short so it didn''t kill them but long enough that when I did stop, all they did was lay there and groan.


    "Right, so now that we''ve established that trying to fight us is useless, why don''t you point out whichever one of you is the leader," I suggested, looking around, waiting for someone to respond. When no one did, I continued. "I''ll let whoever does it first go, free and clear."


    Eight people pointed at a single man, one who had hung back away from us when we first stepped into the room. He scowled at his crew before finally stepping forward. Before he could open his mouth, I pulled my pistol and stunned him.


    "Tatnia, you mind dragging him out?" I asked, stopping to watch her grab him by his shirt and almost throw him from the room, following after. I turned to the rest of them with a smile. "In the meantime, I''ll escort the eight of you off the ship?"


    Some of them looked excited, before one of them realized just what kind of planet they were on.


    "We can''t go outside, we won''t last a minute!" He nearly shouted. "You tryna kill us?"


    "Huh¡­ I guess you''re right, it is a bit nippy inside," I responded with a faux innocent voice. "Are you sure you don''t want to go? I suppose you could stay here, but this is your only chance¡­ C''mon, speak up!"


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    All of them stared back at me with ugly, angry eyes, none of them volunteering to leave the nice, safe, warm ship.


    "Good choice," I said, looking into their eyes as I added that last bit in, staring them down. "In case you get any smart ideas, anyone who causes any trouble gets to go for a walk."


    I left the room, only to find a quartet of B2s filing into the hall, ready to take over watching the prisoners. One of them stepped inside the room while the remaining three stood outside. I nodded to the repainted droids, before Ahsoka and I followed after Tatnia, who was still dragging the leader.


    "What''s this about?" Ahsoka asked with a frown.


    "Tatnia had an idea. We could use these guys as a way to set up an ambush for some slavers," I explained. "Depending on how lucky we get, we could be looking at quite a few new ships for the Rebellion."


    "What about the gunship?" She asked. "I''m vaguely familiar with that design. It''s a solid ship, especially for its size."


    "I was thinking about selling it for real short change to the rebellion, with the caveat that it stays stationed at Omega Station, save for emergencies," I admitted. "But I could be convinced to mothball it at the station for when we are ready for a new ship. It depends on what kind of state it''s in."


    She nodded, and I stepped forward to help Tatnia carry the pirate leader. We stopped at a small break area, tying him down to a chair and waiting for him to come around. While we did that, I coordinated with the rest of the group, making sure that someone had collected the Brick and that we had all of the ships clear.


    Eventually, the pirate leader woke up, shooting up straight and struggling with the cord we used to strap him to his chair. When he finally realized he wasn''t going anywhere, he stopped and looked at us.


    "What do you want?" he asked with a simmering anger just under the surface.


    "Well, we want you to explain how you contact your slaver partners," I explained, sitting down in front of him. "We figured that with you guys under our thumb, we could sweep up some slavers at the same time."


    "You got another thing coming if you think I''m going to help you," He said, sneering at us. "You just ruined years of hard work! Why the-"


    I cast Calm on the belligerent, angry pirate, immediately pacifying him. Over the next hour, we extracted quite a bit of information on the Falnur Raiders, including how they contacted their slaver partners. When we were done, the pirate leader was confused and exhausted, not sure if he should be terrified of me or furious. Once we had our info, I sent him back to the prisoner hold without a second thought. I then made some calls, putting together a meeting to discuss our options. It took a few hours since everyone was still performing their tasks, but eventually, we all gathered in the massive hangar of our new ship.


    "Alright. So, we''ve got the frequency, got the passcode, and we have a schedule. The slavers they work with were expecting a delivery within the next week or so, meaning that''s how long we have to make up our minds and figure out a plan," I said, looking out over the crew, including some people from our other ships, like Calima and, Vakim and Dazem. "Thoughts?"


    "What''s happening to the Braha''tok?" Nal asked.


    "Not entirely sure. It''s a nice little gunship, but I''m not looking to invest a ton of money and resources to get it back up and running. How did it look?"


    "Like it needs money and resources," Nal admitted.


    "In that case, I''ll probably be contacting the Rebels and asking if they want it. I''m considering saving the remaining freighter, just in case we need one down the line."


    "What about the bounty on the pirates?" Julus asked.


    "We are set to receive a hundred thousand for stopping the group as a whole and seventy-five for all of the pirates we captured alive," I said. "We just need to report it to the bounty officer, which we will do once the rebels are in a position to take their new ship away, assuming they want it. "And yes, a chunk of all those credits will end up in everyone''s accounts relatively soon."


    That got a bunch of cheers, and I smiled while they celebrated. Eventually, I gestured for everyone to quiet down.


    "The main topic here is whether or not we go after the slavers," I explained, pulling everyone back to my original topic. "According to what we learned, after contacting them, a transport shuttle and an escort will show up."


    "What kind of escort?" Vaz asked.


    "According to what we got out of the pirate leader, usually some sort of small cruiser, but he has seen them arrive with a squadron of starfighters. have more than enough equipment to handle whatever they might be able to bring. At a minimum, we get to bloody some slaver scum, but at best, we could make a quick buck taking down the bastards and selling their stuff."


    "What happens if we go after them?" Lieutenant Rider asked.


    "That''s where it gets a little complicated," I said. "We would need to keep the cruiser and the freighters here, as well as clean up the remains of the other freighter, since they will be suspicious if we don''t. Basically, this mission would happen before we report the bounty completed and before the rebellion takes their ships."


    "Which means they could be damaged in the process," Ahsoka said with a frown.


    "It''s a risk, especially since if it goes sideways and we get found out, we would certainly not be in a good position." I agreed. "We would have to stay grounded, making us easy targets for whatever ship they bring as an escort. Plus, our fleet would have to move around the planet, meaning there is a time window where we will have no support."


    "We could mitigate that risk," Tatnia pointed out, continuing when I looked at her. ''We have a perfectly good hangar. Let''s put it to use. The Brick could stay, and we could offload the raindrops from the Chariot, too. They won''t do us much good if something big shows up, but they could put pressure on them. Buy us some time."


    "If they are playing sacrifice time buyers, I''m not sending someone out in the Brick," I responded. "But if it''s something like a squadron of starfighters¡­"


    "We could stack the deck even more," Julus pointed out. "The gunship might be grounded until it''s finished being repaired, but this bad boy isn''t."


    The younger member of our ground team stamped his foot on the deck plating for emphasis.


    "The whole reason we came here was to find a carrier ship for the V-wings. Why not go pick up some of them? We have five pilots back home, just waiting for the opportunity to fly."


    "Huh¡­ that''s a good call, Julus," I said, looking over at Tatnia. "We have time for that, right? And could we even fly this ship?"


    "We are basically killing time until the slavers show up," She pointed out. "Three days there, three days back. That fits the schedule pretty well. As for if we can fly it¡­ if we get a bunch of people and droids from the other ships, we could."


    "... Alright, then that''s the plan. We take the ship back to Omega Station, then come back here and prepare an ambush," I said with a nod. "Any thoughts?"


    I look around at everyone who stopped by to listen, waiting for anyone to speak up. When no one else did, I smiled.


    "Good. Then let''s get to work. We have some stuff to take care of before we can leave."

 Chapter 129

    With nothing holding us back and a loose but encroaching deadline set, we immediately got to work. It was quickly decided that I would remain behind while Tatnia and Vaz captained the L-2783. Our first priority was getting them ready and seeing them off, which required quite a bit of reshuffling.


    Most of the naval droids in use by the other ships, especially the Chariot, since Calima could fly it by herself, were transferred over to the L-2783, which I had already rechristened the Whale Shark, since there was no way in hell we would keep calling it the Bloody Maw, and it really did look like one of those massive whales, opening it mouth to swallow krill. Several clones from the Loyal Hound also went, just barely bringing the crew size for the large carrier ship into an acceptable range.


    We also needed to finish the ship''s inspection. Our question and answer session with the pirate leader confirmed there were no traps, but there was no way in hell we were taking the man''s word that the ship was well maintained. The crew started at the primary hyperdrive and spread out from there, visually inspecting all of the ship''s core systems. The repair droids we brought were a great help with the process, letting us complete it in just over a day.


    It wasn''t just about the ship''s physical parts either. We also went over the ship''s food and water storage, begrudgingly concluding that their supplies were technically edible. When everything was finally set, inspected, and prepared, the temporary crew gathered on board and left for Omega Station.


    As they left, we turned our attention back to the planet, focusing on what we could do to prepare. It wasn''t a surprise to find that the reshuffling of personnel left us dangerously understaffed, with the Loyal Hound in particular only barely counting as active. Unfortunately, it was just something we were going to have to deal with until the Whale Shark returned. I made a note to discuss a major recruitment drive with Tatnia once this was all over.


    While I was looking to sell the Braha''tok gunship cause I didn''t want to deal with paying for and managing the repairs, we still needed to staff the L-2783. While our naval droids could pick up some of the slack, I disliked the idea of relying on them so much.


    On top of that, we also might end up claiming whatever escort ship showed up with the slavers, depending on how the ambush went and what sort of escort it was. We also needed pilots to staff and train for the V-wings. When the Whale Shark was active and ready for service, I wanted two wings of V-wings on board, ready for missions.


    With nothing but time on our hands, we started preparing for the ambush. The first thing we did was get the labor droids to start digging shallow holes in the snow and ice strategically around the ice flats. We then buried around half of our B2s in them, deep enough to hide them but plenty shallow for them to bust out of. While we had to do it randomly since we had no idea where the slavers would land, they would make excellent distractions or ambush teams should the coming ambush devolve into a ground fight.


    I was hoping the inherent selfishness and cowardice needed for one being to sell another into slavery would make convincing them to surrender relatively easy, but there was no way I was going to assume it would. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.


    Once we finished that, it was basically a waiting game. Some of the repair bots, a few of the clones, and Nal took it upon themselves to give repairing the Braha''tok a shot, hoping to at least get shields up and running to protect it from any wild turbolaser fire. It turns out that the pirates had already bought some of the parts needed, making the repair process go pretty quickly. Its power systems were too busted to run the weapons and the shields at the same time, but at least it could tank some stray fire.


    While that work was going on, I made a rather exciting discovery.


    Between learning older spells, re-reading the enchantment section, hoping that something would change, and just generally reviewing information, I was checking my grimoire once a day, at minimum. However, with a lack of free time, a lack of anything new, and a lack of old spells to learn, I slowly stopped checking it as frequently. By the time the Whale Shark left, and I suddenly had a whole heap of free time, it had been nearly two weeks since I had checked the book.


    So, when I summoned the book, mostly to just pass the time, imagine my surprise to find that I had finally unlocked access to Expert-level spells. The shout of excitement echoed through the Chariot, reaching Ahsoka, who was down on the first deck meditating. Curious to see what was going on, she walked upstairs to find me celebrating in the lounge.


    After I explained what had happened, she simply shook her head, rolled her eyes, and went back down to the first deck. I was a bit surprised she didn''t ask more questions about how my grimoire worked, but I guess at this point, she was used to me just being strange.


    I quickly sat back down and went over everything that I could learn, gleefully debating what I should focus on first. I had to beat down my first instinct, which was to go with something from the Destruction school, since as cool as the spells seemed, there were too many other options just to jump directly to them.


    Invisibility, Grand Healing, Pacify, Conjure Storm Atronach, Paraylyze, and more were available. These were all spells I recognized, and I was thrilled to see that I could learn them. Of course, there was a whole series of spells I didn''t recognize, as well. For example, there was another level of the ward spell called Superior Ward, as well as what looked like a half dozen more conjuration minions to summon, including upgrades to constructs I had gotten before at lesser stages.


    Restoration also had a pair of pretty potent-looking spells called Circle of Protection and Encompassing Rest. The first seemed to be a bit familiar, but I was pretty sure it had been focused on repelling the undead. This version was a barrier spell, which summoned a ten-foot radius circle around the caster, with a cylindrical ward around it. You could cast it on a spot, and it would remain in place, or you could cast it on yourself, which would make the barrier move with you. It also made healing spells inside the area more potent.


    The Encompassing Rest spell allowed me to clear a massive amount of fatigue from people all around me. It was pretty potent, with more than enough stamina replenishment to take someone struggling to move and get them ready to run a marathon.


    After spending a good while skimming through my options, I spent around fifteen minutes mentally working out which spell I wanted to learn first. That was when I finally remembered that Expert level meant the spells would likely take upwards of seventeen to twenty hours to learn.


    I groaned, realizing that not only did I have to work through my boredom, the actual difficulty of tuning a spell matrix and not losing concentration, but now falling asleep was an actual significant concern.


    With my new realization in mind, rather than immediately attempting to start learning my first expert spell, I stood up from the couch and started going around the ship. I wanted everyone to know that I would be too busy for anything that wasn''t an emergency. Not surprisingly, quite a few members of the crew were concerned about me being busy for twenty hours, though the explanation that I would be working on magic worked better at calming them than I expected.


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    When I was done informing everyone and setting up a temporary chain of command with Nal at its head, I still didn''t jump to learning my first Expert spell. Instead, I headed to the lounge, grabbed two big packets of food, and ate them both. I was very full by the time I was done, but with any luck, that would make it easier to fast while I was working.


    With that finally done, I headed to my room, sealed myself inside, and sat down at my desk. I quickly scanned through the grimoire, selecting the spell I wanted, and started the process. As usual, creating spell matrices, now four of them, was the easy part. However, even with that, that process alone nearly took an hour, since there was just so much of it to create.


    Once the matrix was stable and ready, I began the grueling, horrifically long tuning process. With each one taking around four hours, I was in for a long ride.


    Slowly but surely, I made steady progress, orienting lines, altering angles, and tightening turns, tuning the matrices to my own personal flavor of magic and my soul frequency. When I reached the fourth one, where normally I would be done, I was tired, my brain was fatigued, and my ass was incredibly sore from just sitting in this chair.


    Still, I pressed on. I was determined to finally achieve an Expert level spell, to finally take a step further into my magical abilities. I had been waiting for what seemed like so long for this, and I wasn''t about to let my first attempt be a failure, especially when it would set me back fourteen hours.


    Finally, after twenty hours of tweaking and flexing and twisting the matrices until it finally worked, I cast my first Expert-level spell. In a wave of Conjuration energy, a new <u>construct </u></a>appeared. It was just about my height, clad in robes and wielding a staff, with books and scrolls at its hip.


    I could conjure a wizard construct!


    I mentally commanded him to heal me, and immediately, the construct tilted his staff forward and cast Healing Hands on me, the glow of restoration magic spreading around me and sinking into my body. A quick thought and it was casting Respite, my stamina quickly replenishing. I cheered loudly, spinning around in my chair before quickly dismissing and re-casting the spell for a full fifteen minutes, acclimatizing my magic to the spell. When I was done, I conjured the construct again, using it to confirm the information that the grimoire had told me.


    The construct took a good chunk of mana to conjure, but once it was, it was pretty cheap to keep going, especially considering what it was capable of. It had its own source of mana, a sort of spell heart that drew in natural energy and converted it into Magicka. That definitely caught my eye, though I really didn''t know what I would do with that information. It was an incredibly versatile construct, for obvious reasons, but it was also much more intelligent than lower-level constructs. To test that, I sent a mental command for it to grab me a drink, and it actually stepped out of my room, down the hall to the lounge, and grabbed me a lom-ale from the fridge we kept stocked. According to the grimoire, it could use the information I knew, but I couldn''t really get it from long processes. I could tell it to grab something, but if I asked it to make me a sandwich, it would likely just bring me back the bread.


    That wasn''t the only restriction, either. It was locked to Apprentice and Novice level spells, at least until I started learning Master spells, and only ones that I knew. Thankfully, that was most of them at this point, so that was fine. It also regenerated its mana kind of slowly, more in line with a normal person without enchanted items, who didn''t spend so much time doing Recovery meditations.


    But none of those restrictions mattered because this construct meant one very important thing. As long as I didn''t die on the spot, and whatever incapacitated me didn''t also destroy the construct, if I was to injured to heal myself, or I was knocked unconscious, the mage construct could heal me up to full. After that, we could work together to heal everyone else. I was still a lynchpin in everyone''s ability to bounce back after every injury, but now I had a little extra reinforcement.


    I finally stood out of my chair, eager to have something to eat and finally get some sleep, only to immediately collapse forward and almost clip my head off the side of a shelf. While healing spells might fix sore muscles, and Respite fixes fatigue, neither of those fixes a pair of dead legs from sitting too long.


    "Note to self¡­ next time, do that lying down," I mumbled, rolling over onto my back with a groan.


    It took me ten minutes to get the use of my legs back, groaning and wincing as I dealt with the worst case of pins and needles I had ever had. When I finally did have something to eat, I collapsed almost immediately into my bed, falling asleep in seconds.


    Over the next five days, I only learned two more spells, since each one threw me for a loop mentally and physically. The first was Grand Healing, a useful Restoration spell that let me heal everyone around me at once. It was a bit magicka intensive, but the fact that I could guarantee everyone around me was at a hundred percent, without checking and making sure, all in one spell? That was totally worth the admission price. I also finally broke down and learned an Expert Destruction spell, settling on Unbound Freezing. It was a hilariously potent Frost spell that fired a thick beam of freezing energy out of my palm. I was pretty sure it was very different from the spell I remember from the game, as I seem to remember that version being an AOE centered around myself.


    Mind you, I wasn''t complaining. The spell was powerful, and while a bit mana-hungry, the new, revealed section of the grimoire had quite a few ways to reduce mana costs. I would just need to learn them.


    Between learning spells, I tried my best to keep myself even by sparring with Ahsoka, spending some time working and preparing for the ambush, as well as doing some light enchanting, focusing on making dexterity rings and amulets for our pilots. I also spent some time dusting up on my marksmanship, specifically with a blaster rifle. I was a pretty good shot with my blaster pistol, and I did a damn good imitation of Robin Hood with my bow. But my blaster rifle skills were my least practiced, and while I would always prefer my magic, a bow, or my pistol, shooting a blaster rifle was still an important skill.


    Of course, once I started doing that, both of the ground teams, at least those who stayed behind, turned it into a competition. Nal was the best shot out of everyone, with Lieutenant Rider coming in second. Surprisingly, Dazem came in third, having stumbled into the competition by accident.


    By the time the Whale Shark returned, everyone who had remained behind was chomping at the bit to get to the next phase of the plan.

 Chapter 130

    I headed straight for the hangar once the Whale landed down on the ice and snow, specifically somewhere without any of the buried B2s.


    I entered the large hangar and smiled, seeing the five V-wings landed and ready for combat. Toggle, the clone in charge of the pilots spotted me and waved me over, where he and another clone were checking over the ship. An astromech wheeled around under the starfighter as well, tilting back to scan the bottom of the relatively small combat vehicle.


    "Toggle, good to see you," I said with a smile, shaking his hand, then the other clones. "You guys ready?"


    "Of course, I''ve been itching to do some flying," Toggle said with a smirk. "Hoping for a bit of a dogfight!"


    "Hate to break it to you, hotshot, but that''s the opposite of what we are hoping for," I responded, shaking my head when his only reaction was a shrug. "I''m hoping we can get them to surrender without firing a shot."


    "I know, sir, can''t blame a clone for hoping for fun, though," He responded. "We are just running some final checks now, Sir."


    "Any issues?"


    "Not a single one," He said with a smile. "Miru does good work. I''ll admit, I was skeptical at first, but she really knows her stuff. Good at directing people, too. I''ve seen Jedi have a harder time wrangling droids and crew. You made a good choice, putting her at the head of engineering."


    "I was confident in her abilities," I said with a smile. "Plus, I don''t think I could pick a hydrospanner out of a toolbox, so it wasn''t like I could be in charge. I take it the shields are working good?"


    "Incredibly well, even have a solid readout in the cockpit," He responded happily. "Sounds silly, but you don''t always get that for aftermarket mods, especially not nonstandard ones."


    "I''m glad you approve," I said with a nod. "I actually have a gift for you guys. Just have enough for you and your pilots, but everyone who joins our starfighter squadrons will have at least two, hopefully, three."


    I pulled out a dexterity ring from my pocket, handing one to Toggle, who took it reluctantly.


    "Uh¡­ thank you, sir?" he said, clearly confused. "Not one for jewelry, I''m afraid, but-"


    "Just put it on you dolt," I said, rolling my eyes. "It''s enchanted to improve your dexterity. Should increase your reaction speed and reflexes."


    His eyes went wide at my description, sliding it onto his ring finger. When it was on, he paused for a moment before looking back at me.


    "I don''t feel any-"


    I threw some sort of screwdriver at him, which I had grabbed off a tool chest by the starfighter he and his buddy had been working on. He cursed, but reached out and snagged the tool out of the air, despite having no warning and me trying my best to really hit him.


    "Impressive, right?" I said with a smirk before handing him a second ring. "Now imagine every one of you gets two, and they stack."


    The clone pilot seemed giddy with the possibilities, a strange look for the usually serious-acting clones. Still, when I handed him a bag of amulets and rings, he immediately commed for all of the pilots to make their way down to the hangar, while I headed to the bridge to talk to Tatnia.


    On the way, I passed by a few groups as they worked to unshuffle the previous crew exchange, specifically the naval droids.


    I stepped into the <u>bridge</u></a>, only to find Tatnia leaning heavily against a console, red-faced, while Julus stood beside her, looking like he had just got caught sneaking cookies from the cookie jar.


    "Uh¡­ everything alright?" I asked, looking at the two.


    "Y-yeah, I just tripped," Tatnia said. "Julus was just helping me up."


    "Oh, gotcha," I said with a nod, throwing out a Heal Other Tatnia. "Right, well, how did the trip go? Any news?"


    "Nothing really worth reporting," she admitted, settling down slightly after my healing spell. "Definitely feeling the effects of being understaffed, even with the droids."


    "Yeah, we were feeling it too," I agreed, wincing and shaking my head. "When we get back, that''s going to be our first priority. I want to get our biological crew level above at least sixty-five percent. Any idea what we are at now?"


    "I would have to count to know exactly, but I could guess and say thirty-five percent," my second-in-command responded, looking like she was recovering from her fall. "The Loyal Hound is almost a hundred percent, with a small complement of naval droids kept in storage just in case. But the Intervention is almost entirely run by naval droids, minus Vakim, Dazem, and Allum."


    "We need to mix that up," I said with a shrug. "I don''t want the clones, or anyone else for that matter, to think we are grouping them up together on purpose."


    "We can make a note of that," Tatnia agreed with a nod. "But maybe we should focus on our current mission?"


    "Yeah, fair enough. Anything else to note before I call a planning meeting?"


    "No, Boss."


    "Alright, we''ll be meeting down in the hangar in an hour, probably," I said, turning to leave the bridge and stopping at the large door entrance. "Oh, and for future reference. Whether you guys are bumping uglies just to burn off stress, or actually in a relationship, I don''t really care. Just keep it out of public spaces, alright? It''s trashy, and I don''t feel like dealing with it."


    I turned and walked away, heading down and out of the ship to find the rest of my crew, leaving Tatnia and Julus alone, too shocked to say anything.


    Still chuckling at their reaction, I started contacting everyone, getting the main command group back to the Whale Shark''s hangar bay. Once we had gathered, we pulled out crates, boxes, and whatever else we could find to sit on before starting to discuss what our options were.


    The meeting lasted for over an hour, and the result was a solid but flexible battle plan, with plenty of room for improvisation if the situation called for it. To start, as we mentioned before, the raindrops would be transferred to the Shark, as would the Brick. There was plenty of room for all of that, plus the already present V-wings. I was really looking forward to having the Shark on hand during missions, with two flights of V-wings ready to fly out and fight.


    When the transfer was over, all of our starships would move to nearby valleys and chasms, which we had scouted out while waiting for the Shark to return. They were deep enough to hide our ships from most sensor scans... as long as they were on minimum power. The furthest away would be the Loyal Hound, due to its wider shape being more difficult to hide, while Intervention and Talos Chariot were both much closer, at the bottom of two separate ice canyons.


    The basic plan was to wait for the slaver transport ship and its escort to arrive. The transport would have to land, but whether or not the escort did was up to the intelligence of their captain or leader. If it did land, then we would simply wait for our starships to arrive since once on the ground, it wouldn''t be able to take off quickly enough to escape or put up a real fight.


    If the escort did not land, we would immediately scramble fighters and threaten to take them down if they didn''t land and surrender. The fighters would focus on being evasive and boxing them in, keeping them from running. Meanwhile, all our starships would burn atmosphere to position themselves above us and back up our starfighters. Once our starships arrived, which should only take around a minute and thirty seconds once we called them in, the situation was more or less resolved unless the crew of both ships decided to commit suicide by mercenary.


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    We also made it clear that the plans could change depending on what the escort was. This mission would turn from an asset capture mission to a tactical retreat if I felt the escort was beyond us. We would lose the Braha''tok gunship if we did run, but I wasn''t about to sacrifice what we came for and potentially more because we got overconfident.


    Once the plan was set, we split back up, with everyone heading out to start moving the ships and preparing our positioning. Meanwhile, Tatnia and Ahsoka followed after me, heading to the bridge.


    "We weren''t really hiding it from you," Tatnia said, referring to her relationship with Julus. It was hard not to tease her with how nervous she was, but I somehow managed. "Well¡­ we were, but not because we didn''t want you to know¡­ we just-"


    "Tatnia, relax. I get it, shit happens," I said, waving her nervousness off. "You guys are adults, and I trust you to handle it. Just remember, if you can''t¡­"


    I turned and looked at her, stopping in the hallway, making sure she understood I was laying down the law, not just talking casually.


    "If you can''t, and it starts causing problems, I won''t pick one of you to keep on board and one of you to ship off," I explained. "Both of you will get the boot. I''ve got no room for he said she said bullshit, and if you can''t handle a relationship or, god forbid, a break up, maturely, you''ve got no place being on my team."


    "I¡­ Understood, Boss," She responded, giving me a serious nod. "We can handle it."


    "Good," I responded before shifting from serious to a smile. "But really, I didn''t think you would have a problem. And I''m glad you two found a connection."


    I turned away and continued to the bridge, stopping once I was standing on the central platform to the large room. The Whale Shark was running with barely anyone on board. Almost all of the vital positions were filled with what Naval droids we could spare from other ships. While I wasn''t ecstatic about the idea, it was a barely acceptable necessity since the only thing we really needed to be able to do was engage the shields, communicate with other ships, and run away if necessary. Everything else could wait.


    The process of sending a message to the pirate''s slaver contacts only took a few minutes. We sent out a secret hyperwave message, which contained a location, the number of people we were pretending to have to sell, and a rotating password. Thankfully, with the information we got from the pirate leader, we could pretty quickly formulate a believable fake message. After that, it was just a waiting game.


    We received a response message within several hours, and according to what it said, they would arrive within three days. That left us a lot of time to do a whole lot of nothing, especially since we couldn''t risk going out and around the exterior of the ship since our source of information came solely from the pirates. We knew what they knew, but the slavers could be hiding all sorts of information from them, like distant scans or stealthy scouts being sent down to check out the landing zone for ambushes. It was incredibly unlikely that it was anything so complex, but by now, everyone was used to my preference of assuming enemy competence so we could enjoy their incompetence.


    That left us with two full days to kill. I spent some time with Ahsoka, sparing and training each other. We even did a little lightning training, where I would blast out lines of Sparks and she would catch them with her sabers. It was a bit nerve-wracking on my part, even if I trusted her to be skilled enough to block it, Pola''s armor to be tough enough to stop the spell if she messed up, and my healing if both the first two things failed.


    I just didn''t like attacking her.


    It wasn''t until early the third day that the Shark''s sensors picked up a cluster of ships approaching the planet. They were close together, which made long-range scans difficult, but the scans looked like a pair of ships.


    As they slowly descended into the atmosphere, we got a good look at the transport and its escort.


    The transport was obvious, and I actually recognized a ship, though Nal had to tell me its proper name. It was a<u> CSS-1 Corellian Star Shuttle</u></a>, an old transport ship popular before and during the Clone Wars. Its back end look looked similar to the C70 Consular-class, while the front end was just a large, drawn-out dome built to carry the maximum number of people. No doubt its interior was heavily modified to transport slaves.


    Slowly descending beside it was another <u>ship</u></a>, one significantly larger than the transport. It was a design I recognized easily, though after watching it slowly land next to the transport, I realized it wasn''t exactly the same.


    "Is that a CR90?" I asked, looking over Nal, who was looking out the forward viewport with me. "It doesn''t look quite right."


    "No, I believe it is a CR70," The Duros corrected. "Older model. Still a well-made ship. As customizable as Intervention."


    "Can we handle it?" I asked.


    "Yes."


    I nodded, watching as the ships thruster and repulsors threw up snow and ice. Even as it was, I nodded to the clone manning the comms, who immediately sent the message out to our fleet.


    "Alright. Put the starfighter on alert, but keep them inside. We have¡­ a minute left until our starships get here."


    "They are sending us a message," The clone on comms called out. "Asking us what the hold up is. They don''t appreciate the delay and are threatening to take it out of our cut if we keep them waiting for too long."


    "Send them a garbled message as if something is been broken," I responded.


    "Aye, Sir," The clone responded, tapping away at his console, talking into it as he recorded a fake message and sent it off.


    We waited silently, our timer counting down until finally the Intervention and the Talos Chariot arrived. They flew around the ships, keeping a low to reduce their sensor profile.


    "Comms, open the channel," I ordered, waiting several seconds before he gave me a thumbs up. "Slavers! This is Deacon Roy, leader of the Skyforged Vanguard. You are surrounded and outgunned. Surrender before I''m forced to prove how screwed you are."


    For a long moment, the comms was silent, and I could see both of the starship''s engines flare as they started to attempt to leave.


    "Tell the Intervention to fire a quick barrage at the CR70. Not enough to pop their shields, but enough to let them know we can."


    Suddenly, before my order could be sent out, the final nail in the slaver''s coffin arrived in the form of the Loyal Hound. Between another ship arriving and the Intervention opening fire, both of the ships finally seemed to understand that they were outgunned. After a few more seconds, the ships started to descend, kicking up ice and snow once again. Before they could land completely, however, an alert sounded through the bridge.


    "We are picking up something, Boss!" The droid behind the sensor console called out. "It''s coming in hot!"


    Before I could comment, another CR70 descended from the skies and immediately opened fire on us.

 Chapter 131

    The moment the second CR70 descended from the sky and began unloading on our ships, both of the previously landed slaver ships started to rise again. They had clearly been waiting for it to arrive to support their escape. I cursed and turned to the one of the crew, the one in charge of the raindrops.


    "Deploy the raindrops!" I ordered. "Use them to force the transport and the first CR70 to stay on the ground! Everyone else, focus fire on the second CR70!"


    My orders were relayed immediately, and barely twenty seconds later, all eight of the raindrops flew out of the hangar and began swirling around the lower ships, getting dangerously close. Immediately, the starships stopped ascending, their smaller weapons focusing on starfighters. Their larger weapons, as well as the higher CR70''s weapons, began blasting away at the nearest ship, which just happened to be the Talos Chariot.


    "Chariot, maintain fire, but move behind the lower cruisers aft, use its engine bank as cover," I ordered, having spotted something. "It looks like a dead zone for its weapon emplacements!"


    Through the viewport, I could see the Chariot swing around, using its superior speed to stay behind the larger ship. As I predicted, while the higher starship could still easily attack it, the lower one couldn''t target it with anything.


    "Loyal Hound, what''s your status?" I called out, the open comms sending my voice through to the starship.


    "Shields at seventy-five percent and dropping, sir!"  The voice of a clone responded. "Seventy percent¡­"


    "Intervention! Status report!" I called out.


    "Shields at eighty-seven percent and dropping slowly, sir!" Dazem''s voice responded. "Eighty five¡­"


    "Loyal hound! Fly up above the higher CR70, and use it as cover from the lower one!" I ordered. "Intervention, fly around and draw fire until your shields reach fifty percent!"


    The battle continued, turbolaser blasts lighting up the bright white landscape. Both the Loyal Hound and the Talos Chariot were now in at least partial cover from one of the ships, and Talos Chariot was handling the remaining firepower with its upgraded shields. The lower starships, the transport, and the first CR70 were hovering barely a dozen feet off the ground, trying to avoid the dive bombing raindrops.


    Unfortunately, the smaller droid ships had taken casualties, with three of the unmanned ships now burning wrecks on the icy ground. Thankfully, we didn''t need to sacrifice any more of them, as the second CR70''s shield collapsed.


    "Target its weapon emplacement!" I called out. "Broadcast open comms! I want them to hear me!"


    The clone at comms worked for a moment before giving me the thumbs up.


    "Slavers! You have ten seconds to land and surrender!" I demanded. "Land your ship and power down weapons, or we will knock you out of the sky!"


    Whether it was anger, loyalty, stupidity, or a combination of all three, the now unprotected ship refused to comply, its weapons targeting the Loyal Hound, who was reporting shields dropping down even further.


    "Fine, they asked for it. Intervention. Target their engines and bring them to the ground!"


    The weapons of both the Loyal Hound and the Talos Chariot fell silent, the Intervention coming around and barraging the similarly sized ship, hammering its large array of thrusters. First, one thruster exploded and went dark, followed by a second, third, and final three of them exploded together, and the ship began to fall.


    For a moment, I was worried it would try and plow into itself into another ship, but either they didn''t think of it, or their engines were too damaged to maneuver. Instead, the ship fell from the sky, trying desperately to stay flying, only to slam into the ice several hundred meters away from the other two slaver ships. Snow, ice, and fire shot up at the impact site, and the ship went dark.


    "Broadcast again!" I called out, waiting for the signal before continuing. "Slaver ships, this is your final chance! Land and power down all weapons! This is your final chance before we are forced to eliminate all threats permanently!"


    It took a handful of seconds before all weapons fire stopped, and the two remaining ships slowly sank back down to the ground.


    "We have a message, Sir!" The comms officer stated. "They have surrendered and are powering down their systems!"


    "Call back the raindrops and send out the V-wings and the Brick to confirm that the second CR70 is down. I want a scan of the damage," I ordered. "Talos Chariot, back up our starfighters. If the starship opens fire on them, flatten it. Have the BX units begin clearing the wreckage. Anyone who shoots at them is dead, but I want them to stun the rest of them."


    The Brick was currently loaded up with twenty BX units, led by Boxi, previously known as BX-01. They would be able to clear the wreckage quickly, and considering the assholes on board the second CR70 had refused to surrender, I was fine letting the commando droids clear it out completely.


    "Loyal Hound, orient yourself behind the shuttle and first CR70. Keep your weapons charged and targeted on their engines," I ordered. "Intervention, once their ship is fully de-powered, I want you up high and running a fully powered scan once you''re out of the atmosphere. I want to know if any more surprises are coming to say hello."


    For about ten minutes, I stayed on the bridge, waiting for word from our teams. Eventually, Boxi confirmed that the disabled CR70 was grounded and defunct and that its crew was either stunner or dead. Not long after that, the Intervention confirmed we had no incoming threats that it could see. With that information in mind, I formed a pair of strike teams to board the two surrendered ships. My team boarded the surrendered CR70, apprehending the crew and going room by room to clear it of any hiding personnel. At that point, the crew seemed to understand that they were screwed, and we experienced very little resistance, especially when the first person to pull a blaster on watched in horror as the red bolt of energy he fired simply glanced off my armor.


    The interior of the ship was in surprisingly good condition for the ship''s age and who was using it, but it was also clear to see that the ship would need quite a bit of maintenance to get it up to our standards. I interrogated several different members of the crew to confirm there weren''t any booby traps, only to discover that there were actually several of them. Thankfully, once I knew about them, I was able to force the crew to disable them safely. None of them were willing to play the hero and take one for the team, so the traps were quickly disabled, and we could get back to clearing the ship.


    While my team was clearing the cruiser, Tatnia''s team was clearing the transport. The interior was nearly completely converted into a mass slave transport ship, a horrific concept. It was made only worse by the fact that it wasn''t empty. Almost seventy-five people were on board the transport ship against their will.


    Once I was informed, I immediately called the Rebellion. While we were capable of a lot, this sort of thing was far above what my group was capable of handling. We could technically transport that many people around, but the conditions wouldn''t be much better than they were, stuffed inside the CSS''s modified rooms.


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    Thankfully, the Rebellion was happy to help, with three much more reasonable transport ships showing up within two days, with enough room and supplies to take care of all victims. We kept everyone fed and gave them more freedom to walk around the ship until, eventually, the Rebellion arrived with transportation and more supplies. They would probably make the offer of joining the Rebellion, but I trusted Hera, whom I was in contact with, to make sure they were appropriately treated.


    The process of taking care of the kidnapped and abducted people took a few days, during which the Rebellion also made an offer for the Braha''tok gunship, the CSS transport, and the pirate freighter. They offered five hundred thousand credits for the gunship, which was a little low, even if the ship was damaged, so I used that to my advantage. With a bit of negotiation, I managed to convince them to keep the starship stationed at Omega Station. It wouldn''t always be there, but when it was between missions and patrols, it would function as another layer of protection for our station. Plus, I was thrilled not to have to purchase parts and work on repairing it, especially since we had enough work ahead of us on getting our new CR70 and the Whale Shark up to scratch.


    I only got seventy thousand for the Star Shuttle since it was unarmed and would need a complete internal overhaul. At that low of a price, I was tempted to keep it until I had a use for it, but Tatnia convinced me it wasn''t worth the work, and we were pretty far away from ever needing that much pure transportation capabilities at once. I got eighty thousand for the freighter since it had already been modified with extra weapons and better shields. Tatnia convinced me to let that one go because we already had too many projects and staffing needs already. If we needed something, we could buy it anyway.


    The Rebellion was also eager to buy the broken remains of the second CR70. Apparently, the CR70 and the CR90 shared a whole list of parts, which was not surprising considering that CIS was the company that designed them both. Since there were quite a few CR90s in the Rebel fleet, they were desperate for every little part they could get. They offered me a hundred thousand for the wreck, and when I happily took the deal, the wreck was gone within three days.


    Finally, when our backroom deals were done, we called the bounty officer. It took them a few days to arrive, and they did so with their own prison transport. On top of what we had already calculated with the pirates, quite a few of the slavers also had bounties on them, both government and private. It wasn''t much, just another fifty thousand, but I was happy to do away with them, knowing they would be going to some sort of jail or punishment.


    Once the bounties were collected, and the officer spent some time trying to convince us to leave the Whale Shark behind, he left, and we would soon follow. The last thing we did was spend some time salvaging the wrecked raindrops for anything worth using. We lost four in total, cutting the Talos Chariots fighter complement in half. I would either have to barter for more from General Syndulla or start looking for an alternative, one that wasn''t so scarce. While I was sure there were more tri-fighters out there, relying on salvage was going to mean spending time without them as we looked for more.


    Then again, it was hard to beat the free price tag of salvage.


    Finally, with our tasks complete and a bounty officer set to return soon, we once again broke up and distributed the crews, shifting around the naval droids. In the end, we were just only able to staff all of the important jobs. Of course, the only reason that was even possible with the addition of the CR70 was because the Rebellion loaned us three dozen crew to help us get home. Even then, the trip was a bit stressful.


    When we finally arrived home, we got the first look at the station''s new security system, which we had discussed briefly with General Syndulla and General Dodanna. It was simple, and started with an armored comms beacon set out in deep space. We dropped out of hyperspace around the beacon and used it to communicate with the station. After passing a scan and answering some questions, we were given the station''s new location, which was pretty far away, considering just how little thrust power it had.


    After making the final jump, we began the process of landing our ships inside the station. Thankfully, the Rebellion had made major strides in getting the entire station up and running, meaning there was plenty of hangar space. Emphasis on ''was,'' since after parking the two large ships, we were more or less out of large-scale hangars. Thankfully, there were plenty of smaller hangars dotted around each side of the core station.


    Once we finally landed, we were met by Miru and a large group of the Skyforged, who had come to see the most recent additions to our fleet.


    "Woah¡­ that''s a lot of hardware!" Miru said, looking up under the giant carrier. "Boss, we are going to need more repair crew, more workers, and more repair bots if you plan on fixing these both up and keeping them running."


    "I know, Miru," I said with a wince. "If you come up with a list of what you need, I''ll do my best to get it for you, and our next mission is going to be a recruitment drive. Tatnia and I talked about it, and I want a higher biological versus robotic ratio for our crews."


    "Does that include streamlining things so the ship computer can handle more of those crew tasks on its own?" Miru asked, looking over her shoulder from where she was inspecting one of the Whale Shark''s landing struts. "Both of these ships are older, the CR70 especially. I''m willing to bet I can streamline both of them quite a bit, really reduce the crew needed for each."


    "Could you do that on any other of our ships?" I asked, wondering why this had never come up before.


    "No, they are already pretty streamlined," She explained, shaking her head. "The Intervention and Loyal Hound are already pretty efficient, and the Chariot is small enough that its crew is naturally small."


    "Right. Well, spend as much time as you need figuring that out. Any position you can shave off is another job we don''t need to fill, which means one less mouth to feed and bank account to pay out."


    "Sure thing, Boss!"


    I hung around the hangar for a while, talking to Miru and discussing some of the options for the crew, as well as what we would need in terms of supplies for working on the ship. After a while, I escaped, feeling the wear and tear of being on a mission for so long starting to weigh on me. It wasn''t that we had been constantly busy. Quite a bit of the last week or two had been waiting around for things to happen, after all. Instead, it was that I was always in charge, worrying about multiple things, stressed out about oncoming conflicts, and everything else that went along with leadership. The entire operation had taken its toll, and I was exhausted.


    As I made my way to my room, passing by several members of the team as they settled in as well, I couldn''t help but smile and remember how nervous I had been about first leading the team, back when it was just Tatnia, Nal, Miru, and myself. Now, I was in charge of around forty people, and we were hunting down slavers and pirates.


    I grabbed a snack before closing myself off in my room to rest. We had a lot of work to do, but that could wait a day or so for everyone to recover.

 Chapter 132

    The following day was a day of recovery and catching up, with my only real goal being to make the rounds of the station and see how everyone was doing. My first stop was Pola, who I found in his workshop, tinkering with something that made me very excited.


    "Where did you find that?" I asked, surprising the skittish engineer.


    On one of his central workstations was a pair of <u>Clone trooper jetpacks</u></a>. Beside them was a similar-looking <u>device</u></a>, as well as a smaller metal pack I didn''t recognize.


    "For the clone equipment, I made a bid on a holonet site that specializes in military gear," He explained. "T-technically they are both decommissioned, but I wasn''t really interested in getting them to work, just how they functioned."


    "How much did that set us back?" I asked curiously, examining the mandalorian-inspired design.


    "Three thousand credits for both of them," He explained.


    "I''m seeing a bit of a pattern. Do you want to fill me in?" I asked, gesturing to all three devices on the table, trying my best to keep my expectations reasonable.


    "Well¡­ with the beskar almost completely run out, I decided to spend my time working on improving the armor that already exists," He explained, stepping away from whatever he was working on to talk. "And after brainstorming with the team-"


    "The team?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "Oh, Vaz, Pyre, and Bolt," He answered, continuing when I didn''t look away. "Pyre and Bolt are the two clones who help around the shop. Should be here soon to help with maintenance."


    At that, he gestured to a few crates by the wall, which I recognized as crates we used to carry our armor during downtime.


    "A-nyway, we talked about it and decided that if we really wanted to improve the armor, then adding some maneuverability would take it to the next level," He said, running his hands through his hair. "Pyre apparently had some experience with the clone trooper jetpack system, so we started with those. But they have some serious limitations."


    "I imagine they are volatile?" I asked, the younger engineer nodding in agreement.


    "They can be, but they are also imprecise. They are great for leaps and launches, but fine control gets a lot more iffy. Vaz claims that the type Mandolorians prefer to use can get some precise movements, but those are even more expensive and difficult to master," He explained. "They also require very specific fuel, need to be regularly maintained, and, like you said, they are volatile. We decided it wasn''t worth it, not when there were other options.


    He walked around the table, standing on the side opposite of me. He gestured to the pack I didn''t recognize.


    "T-this is a<u> T-8 Repulsor Pack</u></a>. It generates a precise repulsor field strong enough to lift three hundred and fifty pounds. I-it''s also significantly more stable and agile than the jetpack," He explained. "Honestly, it''s better than the jetpack in almost every guard, save for speed and price. It''s... kind of expensive."


    "You know my opinion on spending money on things when it comes to giving our people an advantage," I said, tugging on the collar of my very nice, very expensive uniform.


    "I know, Boss, which is why we ultimately decided the repulsors packs were the way to go," He assured me. "Right now, we are trying to work out a way to affix it to the backs of the heavy armor without the straps, as that would only get in the way. We also want a release switch so they can be disengaged manually or on command."


    "And how''s that going?"


    "Pretty well, actually. Having some extra hands on the team is really helping," He admitted with a smile. "Vaz and I are really learning as we go, but Pyre and Bolt both have some real experience with engineering, repair, and armor upkeep. We are learning a lot from each other."


    "That''s good. We are seeing a big recruitment drive coming in soon, so let me know when you need more people to keep up with everything."


    "Yes, Boss," he said with a serious nod before looking confused for a moment. "Where was I? Oh, right, we are waiting for a shipment of five packs to be picked up by the supplies team so we can start affixing them to the armor and start letting you guys try them out."


    "Is getting enough for everyone going to be difficult?"


    "No, but the supplies team might be annoyed for getting sent all over the place," He admitted with a wince. "I-it''s hard to find more than a few of them at a time."


    "Hmm... I''ll reach out to them and see if they need help," I asked, frowning at the thought. "Might need to buy a new freighter and have that working as well."


    We talked a bit more before Vaz and Bolt showed up to start helping with repairs and maintenance. See that I would just be in the way, I thanked all of them for their hard work before leaving the workshop behind.


    After that, I spent some time checking on some of the other clones working around the station, making sure they didn''t need anything and were all set. As I did, I idly inspected the Rebellion''s progress on the station''s repairs. To my surprise, it seemed that they had completed all of the high-priority work. With the station no longer in danger of catastrophic failure, they had cut the number of people working on the station by at least half. I was surprised they had gotten so much done, with the remaining repairs progressing at a slower but still steady pace.


    The station was running at full power, and its shields and weapons, at least the weapons that could be salvaged, were repaired and powered up. Any holes in the hull were patched and reinforced, though with the shields up and running, some spots remained unarmored. In total, the station was functioning at its fullest capacity. There was still work to be done, especially in clearing and fixing up the rooms affected by micrometeor impacts and damage from the original Clone Wars battle.


    After inspecting the station, I made my way to the muifincent, both to see how it was going there and to see my droid reserves. The droid repair facilities were finally up and running, and I could already see some new droids set aside in our storage rooms. I also shook hands with some of the repair teams, who promised they would get faster as they got used to the systems and the new space.


    After watching them deliver a basically refurbished B1 unit into one of our storage rooms, I noted that we still had row after row of B2s and naval droids, as well as a few BX commando droids with marks on them, labeling them as intact but potentially damaged.


    It took me a few minutes to find the man in charge of the repair facility, but when I did, I made him an offer. In exchange for half of the B1s that they would have normally given to us as a part of the original deal, I wanted them to go over all of our marked droids. Their main priority was to inspect each droid and confirm whether or not it was fit for work. They would do minor repairs if necessary, but if the droid had any major faults, they would put it aside for use as spare parts. The idea was to clear up space and prepare more droids for use without pulling Miru or anyone she worked with away from their projects.


    The man eagerly agreed, happy to get access to more B1s. Apparently, the use of the combat droids, even the B1s, had been so useful for the Rebellion that they were already looking for ways to improve the B1s into more formidable weapons. They were even thinking about designing their own droid to produce independently. A lofty goal but not a bad idea.


    He also warned me that I should expect more Separatist asset raids soon. Apperently, with the success of the CIS droids and equipment, the Rebellion was eager to find more. Their real hope was finding some sort of production facility, but any asset would be a positive gain.


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    With a new deal struck, I left the mostly repaired munificent behind, heading back to "our" section of the station. I was greeted by Ahsoka, who, apparently, had been looking for me.


    "Luke''s break rotation is almost over, so he will be leaving soon," She explained. "Would you be willing to spend some time sparring? Helping him learn?"


    "Of course, I would be happy too," I confirmed with a smile. "Let me go get changed, and I''ll join you... where would we meet?"


    "There is a series of training rooms¡­" She trailed off as I looked at her, confused. "Wait, did you not know you had training rooms?"


    "Ahsoka, we are lucky I know which way is up," I countered, shaking my head. "I work out the big problems and remember the important stuff. Everything else is Tatnia''s problem."


    She chuckled, and we split up, with me heading to my room to grab some workout-appropriate clothes. When I arrived, I was surprised to find a rather large room, a rarity in a space station. At least, save for the hangars. As I stepped in further, I realized it was a combination of a high-tech gym and training area, one angled specifically for soldiers. There was a shooting range, sealed behind a series of viewing windows along a far wall, a climbing wall, different equipment, plenty of which I didn''t recognize. It also had a large space off to the side, where I spotted Luke and Ahsoka waiting/


    "Good to see you, Luke," I said as I got closer, eventually sharing a handshake with him. "You ready?"


    "Yeah! It''s always good to have real people to spare with,"


    "Oh, you managed to get your hands on a training droid then?" I asked as we made our way to the cleared area.


    "Yeah, it''s been great to practice with when I can, but there''s just something about working with you or Ahsoka."


    I nodded in understanding, and we chatted a bit more before eventually starting to spar. We started out light, working through some minor stuff to stretch and get ready before we started to fight "For real." I used a fake plastic blade, while both Luke and Ahsoka used training lightsabers that Ahsoka made.


    It was obvious that Ahoksa had not been joking when she said Luke was making a ridiculous amount of progress. The young Force user had gotten considerably better at sinking himself into the Force. His swordsmanship was making leaps and bounds as well, his raw talent shining through. I did, however, notice something as we fought.


    Perhaps it was a symptom of learning from Ahsoka, who fought with two blades, or perhaps it was just a natural leaning, but I could see he was shifting in a particular way.


    "Luke¡­ have you considered making a shoto saber?" I asked as we took a break, all three of us breathing heavily and sweating. "I can''t help but feel you would benefit from something in your offhand."


    I knew that, in some of the many Legends books, he would occasionally bring out a smaller secondary saber, at least when the situation required it.


    "He does seem to be leaning that way, but maybe just as something to defend with," Ahsoka suggested.


    "Defensive¡­ what about a shield?" I suggested. "Something to block with while you attack with your lightsaber?"


    "A shield?"


    Rather than try to explain, I quickly cast Conjure Fighter, who appeared wielding the standard sword and board combo.


    "Like this guy," I explained. "It''s a classic combo from where I''m from. It''s actually kind of surprising that I''ve never heard of a Jedi using one¡­"


    "Probably the same reason we didn''t usually wear armor," Ahsoka guessed with a shrug. "The Jedi believed they didn''t need it, not when the Force was protecting them."


    "If that was true, then no Jedi would ever die," I pointed out. "The Force can''t stop everything."


    "I¡­ kind of like the idea," Luke admitted, running a hand through his short hair. "I''ll think about it."


    "Maybe have someone fabricate something for you so you could see how it feels. If you like it while sparing, come back here, and I''ll have one made for you that uses the same stuff our armor does," I offered. "I''d offer to do it now, but we just ran out."


    "You realize with the new, incoming recruits you''re hoping to find, you''re going to need a lot more, right?" Ahsoka pointed out.


    "I know, trust me," I said, shaking my head. "I have an idea, but I want to give the Rebellion a chance to come up with something first. My idea is a bit of a big step."


    "What''s your idea?"


    "Kill Jabba the Hutt and steal everything not nailed down in his palace," I said with a shrug.


    Both Luke and Ahsoka''s eyes went wide at my casual declaration before immediately questioning my sanity. It was easy to understand Luke''s issue. He had grown under the rule of Jabba''s crime syndicate, and he definitely had an overinflated fear connected to the crime lord. He would obviously get over that eventually, but for now, the Hutt was this big, daunting, unkillable evil. Ahsoka, on the other hand, had grown up learning that the Hutt''s were untouchable because of the chaos that taking them on would bring.


    "Do either of you like Jabba the Hutt?" I asked during a lull, waiting for both of them to respond negatively. "Neither of you disagree that he is a monstrous criminal who needs to be put down?"


    Now, they attempted to counter me, but I waved them off.


    "Jabba the Hutt is not some sort of unholy lynchpin, and he isn''t unkillable," I said, shaking my head. "I''m not delusional to think that killing him would suddenly make everything cool days and rainbows on Tatooine. But killing him and robbing him blind would crack his power base into pieces, shifting the balance of power. With any luck, the region would calm down when the fires burn out."


    "And what if the people who replace him are worse?" Ahsoka asked, her eyebrow raised as if she had just won the argument.


    "Then we kill them too. Ahsoka, I can literally hear the old, detached Jedi masters speaking through you right now," I said, rubbing my face. "He is an evil fucker who is profiting from the pain and suffering of literal millions. Now, there''s a lot of bad shit in this galaxy, and I can''t stop it all. But what I can do is make the most of every opportunity I have to make it a little bit of a better place. And killing Jabba the Hutt would be one hell of a good thing."


    "And what of the chaos that follows when you kill him?" Ahsoka asked.


    "And what of the suffering that will continue if we don''t?" I retorted. "Don''t get me wrong, I''m not some paragon of goodness here. We would be taking him on for pretty selfish reasons, after all. But don''t let yourself think that killing him wouldn''t be a good thing."


    For a long moment, we sat there in silence, sipping from bottles of water, continuing to recover from our most recent bout of sparring. Eventually, after nearly a minute, I spoke again.


    "I don''t blame you for disagreeing with me, Ahsoka. The debate about the greater good versus the immediate good is one as old as time," I admitted with a shrug. "And like I said, I don''t get to act like I have some sort of moral high ground. All I can say is that as far as acceptable targets go, a slaving, drug peddling, smuggling, murdering, raping sack of shit is pretty high up there."


    Again, we were quiet for a while, the intensity of my words making the silence much heavier. After a long moment I sighed and shook my head.


    "C''mon. Let''s cool off for a bit. Between the workout and the discussion, I think we''ve earned a break." I said as I stood up, turning to hold out my hand to her, looking into her eyes.


    "Sounds good," Luke said from beside us, startling both Ahsoka and me, which he seemed to notice and acknowledge with a smirk. "What, I assume that invite was for me, too, right?"


    Ahsoka snorted and took my hand, letting me help her to her feet.


    "Fine, let''s go get something to eat," She said with a smile. "I''m starving."

 Chapter 133

    Officially done with our spar, the three of us headed down to the Skyforged living space. We had a steady rotation of actual food, something the Rebellion lacked, especially on this station. Rather than just throw something together, I took over the kitchen and decided to finally do something I had been dying to try since I arrived in the Star Wars universe.


    I was gonna recreate pizza.


    This attempt was more than a few weeks in the making. First, I started putting together a list of what I wanted, which I brought to our quartermaster. I had assumed it would be a long, complicated process of finding stuff to replace the ingredients I was used to. Surprisingly, as I talked to the quartermaster, he assured me almost all of what I needed existed. <u>Wheat</u></a> was grown on Lothal and several other agriworlds, so of course flour existed as well.


    Obviously, mozzarella didn''t exist, but the galaxy had thousands of different cheese types made by hundreds of other planets. The quartermaster assured me that finding a mild, meltable cheese would be easy. Tomatoes also actually existed, though I would have to make my own sauce. Thankfully, that was a relatively straightforward process as long as I wasn''t determined to make one that was super deeply flavored. At least, not without a whole lot of prep time.


    They even had instant rising powder, an additive that removed the need to wait for the dough to rise. It was intended for bread making, but I''m sure it would work here.


    As I cooked in the <u>kitchen space</u></a> near our quarters, Luke and Ahsoka sat nearby at the table. Luke was fiddling with his lightsaber, the energy cell out, as he cleaned and inspected the shell. I spotted what he was doing, and after sparing a look at Ahsoka, I decided to


    speak up,


    "Luke¡­ would you like to make your own saber?" I asked, the young adult jerking his head up to me, his eyes wide. "I know that that is your father''s saber, but you might connect better with your own."


    "I¡­ I don''t know how," He admitted, looking at Ahsoka with wide eyes. "Ahsoka explained the basic stuff like Kyber crystals and how to maintain my dad''s, but¡­"


    "A Jedi''s weapon is important to them," I explained. "While they should be able to fight with most or no weapons, the lightsaber is a symbol, a powerful tool. Finding your own crystal and constructing your own lightsaber will help you connect more deeply with it."


    "I¡­ might know someone who can help with that," Ahsoka admitted. "I could teach you the basics¡­But they would be the best option. I would need to find them, however."


    "I can help with that. Finding things just happens to be something I''m good at," I commented. "And you would need a Kyber crystal. One that resonates with you,"


    "How would I get one of those? Ahsoka said that the Jedi got theirs from Ilium, and the Empire locked that planet down."


    "There are dozens, if not hundreds, of sources of Kyber crystal in the galaxy," I responded. "All crystals that are in tune with the Force are considered Kyber, which means technically any place with a heavy force presence can technically grow them, though the conditions still need to be right. I know of one location where there are crystals, plenty of them, but I also know of a few other potential places."


    "Where?! "He asked, sounding excited. "I thought¡­ I was worried that future Jedi would struggle to find their crystals..."


    "Even if they did, there are other solutions," I assured him. "But if you''re about to go on a quest for your saber¡­ I want to come with you."


    "What? Why?" He asked, sounding confused. "I can''t imagine it would be very fun."


    "One, I can almost guarantee something is going to happen. The chances of this going cleanly are damn near zero," I assured him, Ahsoka nodding in agreement while Luke looked confused. "Second, if my first location doesn''t have anything that you could match to, you''re going to need my help finding the other locations."


    "I¡­ guess?" He said. "I would need to contact General Syndulla to get time off, but¡­"


    "I''m also going because Falia should come with us, so she needs an escort," I pointed out. "She obviously isn''t ready to build a lightsaber, but she can keep the crystal with her until she is."


    "... If it''s going to be a group trip¡­ Then I believe I have someone we should invite as well," She said. "An old friend who I recently rescued from deep in the Unknown Regions."


    "Who?" I asked, looking confused and wracking my brain, trying to figure out who she could be talking about.


    "Oh? I half expected you to already know," She said, a small smile on her lips. "Ezra Bridger. He sacrificed himself in the process of stopping Admiral Thrawn-"


    I cursed, the sudden name drop causing me to drop the spoon I was using to mix the simple tomato sauce, spattering me with hot tomato juice. Both Luke and Ahsoka looked at me with concern, but I waved their looks away. Luke shrugged and accepted the dismissal, but Ahsoka locked eyes with me, giving me a look that told me she could feel how unsettled I was. Eventually, she looked away, dropping it for the moment.


    "Ezra managed to persuade a pod of purrgil to pull Thrawn''s ships into hyperspace. The Chimera, Thrawn''s flagship, was badly damaged, but Ezra was still captured. He was tortured for information and then locked away. Sabine Wren and I rescued him after I recovered from a¡­ previous issue."


    "Well¡­ Where is he?" I asked. "I can''t imagine he was in good shape after returning from being in Thrawn''s hands."


    "He wasn''t, but he is doing better. He is adapting to his prosthetics, and the facial reconstruction surgery was successful."


    I shook my head, and for a while, the room was quiet, the heavy topic sucking the energy out of the room. I began putting together the pizza itself, pouring the sauce and adding the cheese. I considered attempting to put some sort of meat topping, but I decided it was best to keep it simple at first. Once I slid the pizza into the oven, I set a timer and dropped into a seat beside Ahsoka.


    "He should come with us, then. I''m willing to bet finding a crystal that he resonates with will help him get over what he went through," I pointed out, Ahsoka nodding in agreement. "Unless Luke would prefer to go at this alone?"


    "No, the more the merrier," He said with a smile. "I would love to meet Ezra as well. I''ve heard good things about him. Plus another trained force user..."


    "Great. Then it sounds like we have a good old-fashioned Jedi adventure," I said with a smirk. "When we are done eating, I''ll start talking to Tatnia about what''s going on. I''ve been looking for an opportunity to have her and some others run missions on their own since I can''t run everything, and this is a great opportunity to do that. We can take the Starcaller since it would have more than enough room for everyone."


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    We agreed and settled down to wait for lunch. Luke reassembled his father''s lightsaber, and I served them slices of pizza before sitting down with my own. Unsurprisingly, the meal was a massive success, and both of the pies that I made were devoured. I made a note to get more ingredients so I could make more for the team later.


    Once we were done eating, we split up to complete our tasks, eager to get the ball rolling. I needed to talk to Tatnia and Nal, while Luke, who was very eager to find his own Kyber crystal and construct his own saber, needed to contact his superiors. Ahsoka was confident they would give him the time, especially since General Syndulla had the final say. Ahsoka went to her ship, the T-6 shuttle she arrived in, to gather and consolidate some of the info we would need for the first half of the trip, finding Ahsoka''s expert on lightsaber crafting. I honestly had no idea who she was talking about, so I hoped she had enough for me to cast Clairvoyance with.


    She also needed to reach out to Ezra, who was apparently still on Lothal with Sabine Wren.


    I didn''t plan on leaving that day, but it was clear there was a level of eagerness for everyone. Ahsoka was, despite her trepidation, clearly enjoying the process of training and helping Luke find his way, and Luke was unsurprisingly eager to prove himself in any way he could. I was interested for no other reason than it promised to be an adventure¡­ plus, finding another stable source of Kyber crystals meant a lot to the sustainability of my enchanting. Plus, it was hard not to want to go on a lightsaber crafting journey. They had always played a huge role in so many of the books.


    When I finally found Tatnia, she was enjoying her downtime with Julus. After I revealed I knew they were together, they seemed to have stopped hiding it, which was probably for the best considering how poor a job they were doing in the first place.


    "Tatnia, do you mind if I interrupt your downtime for some business talk?" I asked, sitting down on the far corner of a couch, facing the couple.


    "Sure, Boss. What''s going on?" She asked, leaning forward from her spot beside Julus.


    "Ahsoka, Luke, and a few other people are going on a Force-related mission, looking for their Kyber crystals," I explained. "It''s likely to take a week at least. They will be visiting that place, but the journey might not end there."


    "Okay¡­ I''m sensing a heavy addition there, Boss."


    "That''s ''cause there is. I''ll be going with them."


    She looked at me for a moment before reaching for a remote and turning off the holo-projector that had been playing in the background so she could focus on me.


    "Why?" She asked, now in full business mode. "We need to go on our recruitment drive."


    "I fully trust you and Nal to do that, and you both know I''m a bit too much of a softy to really be any help," I pointed out, shaking my head. "When you''ve selected a group you like, I can come in after and show them magic, as well as use the Calm spell on them to make sure everything is good. Other than that, I''m useless."


    "I think you are underestimating your ability to attract quality people, but fine, I understand what you mean," She admitted. "Why do you feel the need to go with them?"


    "Besides them needing my help to locate stuff?" I asked, getting a nod in return. "We are looking at the seeds of the new Jedi Order, Tatnia. This is a group of people who could potentially grow into a massively important faction in the future. They would form the core, the very heart of the New Jedi Order. When we talk about getting in on the ground floor and making important friends? This is that. Besides, traveling around with this many Jedi means something is going to happen. I have no idea what, but with the right person on board, it could also be a major opportunity."


    Tatnia looked at me for a long moment before eventually nodding in understanding. Part of me suspected she had realized I was working with a bit extra information than even I let on. I was careful, at least I thought I was, not to say things that had to do with the future, at least not as a solid fact. But Tatnia was smart, and out of everyone, she had heard the most of my little tidbits of information.


    In truth, I desperately wanted to work myself as close to the New Jedi Order as I could. They were the center of so much of the galaxy''s issues for a long time, and being around to whisper into Luke''s ear about Kyp Durron or Corran Horn would lead to massive shifts. Not to mention, being good friends with Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master and Hero of the Rebellion, would open a lot of doors.


    Seeing that this was important, Tatnia agreed to gather everyone for a quick meeting where I explained that I would be away for a while, investing in our friends and potential future assets. As we talked, we discussed what we would be up to. First, Nal and Tatnia would travel on the Talos Chariot to a few well-known recruitment planets in the Mid and Outer Rims. They would have two clone troopers and some BX droid support to cover them. Meanwhile, Vaz and Julus would work with the Clone Trooper ground team, as well as the Intervention and the Loyal Hound, to work on bounties. They would also help move around repair materials should Miru figure out what she needed while I was gone.


    Tatnia would be in command of one mission, and Vaz would be in command of the other. I was worried that Lieutenant Rider would be upset if I handed over command to her, but he happily accepted her leadership. Apparently, she made an impression during her time on the Loyal Hound.


    With a general plan set, I passed command of the Skyforged Vanguard over to Tatnia, who rolled her eyes at the over-the-top salute I gave her. She promised to gather some serious recruits but added that we would need to do some serious asset gathering when I got back.


    "If you want everyone to have the same uniforms and equip any potential ground teams with our heavy armor, we need more metal," She pointed out, and I nodded in agreement.


    "I know. I have a couple of ideas, but I think we should discuss them when I get back," I said, really not wanting to mention Jabba right before I left for a while. "Until then, focus on getting the best you can. Starfighter pilots and repair crews first. We are already putting way too much on Miru as it is, we need to give her some people to work with."


    We discussed Tatnia''s plans for a bit longer before we went our separate ways. My second-in-command went to spend the rest of the day relaxing, as much as she could with the new responsibility at least. Meanwhile, I went to prepare for the trip. I quickly packed a bag but left it in my room before heading out and moving my armor, newly gone over by Pola, to one of the Starcaller''s bedrooms.


    The rest of the day was spent touching base with everyone who wasn''t at the meeting, discussing what was going on, and warning them about my absence. They were surprised that I would be leaving, but no one doubted the importance of supporting our Jedi friends.

 Chapter 134

    <div>


    <div>


    "Morning. You guys ready?" I asked.


    "Hardly going to be much different," Tatnia said with a shrug. "Might even be easier not having to watch out for you."


    "Hardy har har, I''m sure you guys will miss me," I said haughtily before chuckling and patting her on the shoulder. "Everything will be fine. You guys are smart, and you can absolutely handle this."


    She nodded, and I looked at Ahsoka, who smiled. Before I could ask if she was ready, she guessed what I was going to say and answered.


    "We are waiting on you, Boss," She said with a smirk. "Luke is already at the Starcaller. We will be picking up Falia from Alpha Base. Sheora is still there, and she has agreed to let her go with us alone."


    "And split from her brother?" I asked as we walked, heading to the smaller hangar where the Starcaller was docked.


    "Falia is mature for her age, a symptom of having to take care of her brother and survive on the streets," Ahsoka explained, and I nodded in understanding. "She recognizes that, now that they are safe, they are a bit too reliant on each other. She hates doing it, but she is worried that her brother won''t be able to be independent if they don''t learn how to separate."


    "So she thinks the best way to fix that is to separate entirely for a week, maybe weeks?" I asked. "I assumed we would be bringing him with us and that we could help ease them apart as we went."


    "I said she was mature, not that she wasn''t still a child," She pointed out. "I explained that to her, and Claron will be joining us."


    "Sounds good. How about Ezra?"


    "He will also be joining us," She said, now smiling. "We will have to pick him up from Lothal."


    As we finally entered the hangar, we were joined by an already waiting Miru, who collided with me and gave me a large hug. Behind her was the <u>Starcaller</u></a>, already going through its startup checks.


    "I''ll be back eventually," I assured her. "And in the meantime, you''re going to be busy with all the new repair droids, parts, and staff to work on our ships."


    "Yeah, I know," She said, pulling away. "You just said you weren''t sure when you''d be back, so I thought...."


    "As in, we were not sure if it would be in one week or two," I explained to her, patting her shoulder. "We should be back before two weeks are up, don''t worry. In all honesty, if we are gone for two weeks and still not done, we will probably make our way back anyway. Two weeks is a while, so I would want to take a break, regroup, and figure out our next step."


    "Good plan," Luke agreed, climbing down from the entry ramp of the Starcaller. "General Syndulla said to take all the time I needed, but she probably didn''t mean that literally."


    Miru smiled at the Force-sensitive, walking to him to greet him with a hug, which he returned. I raised an eyebrow and looked at Tatnia, who shrugged.


    We chatted for a few minutes before saying our final goodbyes, boarding the freighter, and closing the entry ramp. I dropped my stuff off in the same bedroom with my armor before making my way to the bridge to find Luke and Ahsoka already sitting in their seats. The <u>cockpit</u></a> was just as well maintained and modified as the rest of the ship, with Ahsoka sitting in the central pilot''s seat. It was pulled back and raised compared to the two others, letting it see out of the entire viewport.


    There was also a familiar-looking blue detailed astromech sitting by a scomp interface system. It R2-D2, the true main character of Star Wars, in the metal shell.


    "Hello, R2-D2," I said as I walked past. "It''s nice to finally meet you. I''m Deacon Roy."


    The droid warbled, his dome spinning to focus on me, letting out a series of chirps and whistles before focusing back on his task, which I had to assume was getting the jump data ready.


    Leaving the droid to his work, I looked around the cockpit, seeing that Luke was in the copilot''s seat, which left the gunner''s seat for me, which was good because it was the only station that I could realistically use.


    "Alright, we got greens all across," Luke confirmed, looking back and up at Ahsoka. "Ready when you are."


    She nodded and slowly eased the ship up off the hangar bay floor and out the magfield, into open space. R2-D2 warbled and confirmed hyperspace coordinates were set in and ready to go, confirmation blinking through all of the screens, including the ones in front of me.


    We flew out away from the station, doing a wide loop around it to orient ourselves. Then we left it behind, flying out past the Huntress, which gave us what basically equated to a thumbs-up message to let us know they knew we were close. As we passed by them, Ahsoka engaged the hyperdrive, and we made the jump to lightspeed. Once we were set, Luke turned around, his seat spinning with him.


    "This is one heck of a ship, Deacon," He said, looking up and around the cockpit. "Miru was giving me a tour before you guys showed up. Lots of good work. Where did you get it from?"


    "We bought it off a guy who used most of his money to invest back into his ship," I explained. "A wandering trader of sorts. It was expensive but worth it."


    "Wait, you actually bought it?" He asked, feigning surprise. "I thought you guys only stole your ships."


    "We would if we could," I said with a smirk. "But this ship, along with the freighter we have running supplies, are supposed to be clean so they don''t draw attention. This one is clean so it can smuggle stuff, and the Staggered Bantha is clean so it can buy stuff without drawing attention."


    "The Rebellion does something similar with a rotation of freighters," Ahsoka added. "They provide a significant portion of our supplies."


    The three of us chatted for a while, discussing the supply issues that the Rebellion was nearly constantly dealing with, as well as what I would soon be dealing with should the Skyforged Vanguard continue to grow. Eventually, the topic shifted back to our trip.


    "So, where are we going, exactly?" Luke. "Alpha base is our first stop, but Ahsoka, you said you had a lightsaber specialist?"


    "I think I do," She said, tapping a few controls on the console before leaning back in her chair. "The Jedi Order had a tradition involving the construction of a youngling''s first lightsaber, called the Gathering. It involved going to Illum, opening your senses, and locating a crystal that spoke to you. It even occasionally involved visions from the Force."


    "Is Falia ready for that?" I asked, leaning back comfortably in the gunner''s seat.


    "For finding her crystal?" Ahasoka asked. "I will spend some time teaching her to open her senses when we leave. The method is basic, and she is older than me when I found my first crystal."


    "Alright, that''s good."


    "Either way, after they found their crystal, they were taken back to Coruscant on a ship called the <u>Crucible</u></a>, where a droid called Professor Huyang assisted them in constructing their first lightsaber."


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    "A droid?" Luke asked, raising an eyebrow. "I know how impressive droids can be, more than most since I have R2, but teaching young Jedi how to make their lightsabers? That seems... almost counterintuitive?"


    "By the time of the Clone Wars, Professor Huyang had been teaching Jedi how to build their lightsabers for a thousand generations," Ahsoka explained, a nostalgic smile dancing on her lips. "He had a way of helping younglings past their issues, teaching them important lessons along the way. He was so old that our history logs were filled with anecdotes that he dictated. He was even famous for telling a story called "History of the Galaxy Parts One, Two, and Three. We loved them, though I always loved the first one the most. We¡­ also have a bit of a history."


    I couldn''t help but smile with her, getting a peak at the woman underneath as Ahsoka recalled her history. After a moment, she seemed to realize she was reminiscing, and she coughed, looking away from us.


    "He was reliable, and¡­ Anyway, he was a cornerstone of Jedi tradition. If we could recover him, it would be a huge benefit for future generations."


    "Do you have any leads?" I asked. "And any pictures of him? I''ll need both."


    "Yes, I have both," She assured me with a nod. "Though, I''ll admit, the lead is... a bit strange. One of the most popular stories he would tell was of a Jedi saving a princess with an enormous bounty placed on her head by a criminal syndicate. It''s a long story, but at the midpoint, they were looking for an empty planet to take refuge on. They first attempt to hide on a random planet, only for people to recognize the princess''s identity and immediately try to capture her. They manage to find a ship, but they are chased as they escape the planet. The Jedi submerges themselves into the Force and makes an emergency blind jump, dropping out of hyperspace around an unknown planet that neither of them recognized. They landed, only to find an ancient Jedi temple, one with enough resources to fix their ship and heal their wounds. It was supposed to be a lesson in trusting the Force, but¡­"


    "You think it was a real planet?"


    "I do. Something about the way he describes it¡­ it was different from his other stories. It felt more real," She explained. "At the time, I just thought it was something different in the story, but now I think he was describing a real planet."


    "But it was a blind jump," Luke said with a frown. "Could Jedi could really do that?"


    "The Exploration Corps would use the Force to navigate all the time," I explained. "And nothing is impossible when you''re one with the Force. Few can do it on purpose, but plenty of Jedi experience moments of complete connection when the whole of the Force flows through them."


    "That''s basically how Huyang described it," Ahsoka agreed. "I know it is an insane stretch, but something about it feels right. I believe the Force is drawing my attention to it."


    "I assume you have more than just the story, though," I said, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. "I don''t feel like betting our lives on a random jump. No offense."


    "None taken, I don''t think I could even try to guess a safe jump path with the Force," She admitted, shaking her head. "Luckily, I know the location that they jumped from, as well the general amount of time that they were in hyperspace. With that information, I figure we could shrink the searching area enough for you to do the rest."


    "I can work with that," I agreed. "Should be able to narrow it down pretty quickly."


    After a few minutes of watching hyperspace and chatting, Luke eventually decided to head into the back and do some meditating, mostly to prepare for finding his crystal. R2 wheeled after him, leaving Ahsoka and I alone in the cockpit. It didn''t take long for the Togruta to speak up.


    "So¡­ Do you have some experience with Thrawn?" She asked, turning her chair to look at me, a curious expression on her face. "Your reaction to him was pretty strong when I mentioned him yesterday."


    "...Yeah, you could say that," I said. "You didn''t, by any chance, kill him when you were out there, did you?"


    "No, we tried to be as stealthy as possible," She admitted. "I was focused on getting Ezra out."


    "Dang¡­" I said, trailing off. I was silent for a long while before shaking my head. "He is dangerous. Very dangerous. There are very few people in the Empire as dangerous as him. Isard and her backroom schemes, Pelleon and his ability to inspire and lead, Vader''s iron fist and might¡­"


    "You put Thrawn in the same category as Vader?" She asked, her eyes wide in surprise.


    "They wield different weapons, but they are all just as dangerous," I explained with a shrug. "Thrawn is a once-in-a-millium genius. He outclasses anyone I could really think of. Certainly, anyone the Rebellion has on tap. What was he doing in the Unknown Regions?"


    "He built a power block on a planet and essentially became its ruler, or governor," Ahsoka explained, shaking her head. "I don''t know how he managed to take control that quickly, but his Star Destroyer was fully repaired. We rescued Ezra from a prison facility on the ground and left with a TIE squadron chasing us."


    I frowned, chewing the inside of my cheek. Knowing that Thrawn was out there in the outer rim, doing whatever shady crap he wanted? That was scary, and it felt different from the story I knew, where he was deployed to the unknown regions under the Emperor''s command.


    "His ship was repaired, like good enough to return repaired?" I asked, Ahsoka nodding in confirmation. "That''s concerning. I wonder if the Emperor knows where he is, or if he''s gone AWOL."


    "Not very likely, not with that many stormtroopers," Ahsoka responded. "Their allegiance to the Emperor is fanatical. They would never let him leave."


    "He could be lying to them," I pointed out, only to shrug. "I don''t know. It''s something we are going to have to worry about later. Something tells me he is going to sit the current conflict out. Maybe he plans on trying to pick up the pieces once we win against the Empire."


    She looked surprised by the idea, potentially because she hadn''t really considered what would happen after we "won." I knew that killing the Emperor would be a big step to beating the Empire, shattering the government and military into smaller, more easily beaten chunks, but there was still a long road after we reached the end of this one. For a moment, she collapsed a bit, the weight of our goal, the Rebellion''s goal, sitting heavily on her.


    "Hey," I said, pulling her out of her thoughts. "One step at a time. Don''t get bogged down by how long the road is, and just focus on getting to the next point on the map. For now, we are helping the next generation of Jedi, or equivalent Force wielders, take steps into their destiny. We can figure out what happens next tomorrow."


    She let out a long breath and nodded, before tapping a few buttons on the ship''s controls, standing from her seat and stretching.


    "I''m going to get something to eat, maybe review some of the information I managed to find about Huyang," She explained, making her way to the cockpit door before looking behind at me. "I could use a hand?"


    I smiled and nodded, standing up and following her out of the cockpit.


    </article>

 Chapter 135

    Ahsoka and I spent a while chatting over a small meal before she disappeared to her room, returning with a datapad. She placed it on the table and sat back down opposite me.


    "The first thing we should do is confirm that he...well, that he still exists," I said with a wince. "You said you had an image of him?"


    She nodded and wordlessly handed me her datapad. On the screen was an image of her and a few younglings. She couldn''t have been more than fifteen in the image, and the smile on her face was full of hope. Standing behind her and the kids was a rather interesting-looking bipedal droid. He had a dome-like top on his head, cones on his ears, and almost a metal fu manchu. He was wearing some sort of backpack and leaning over like he was an old person, his arms folded behind his back.


    "You did have history," I said, studying the image, eventually focusing on our droid target. "Is there a story there?"


    "Yeah, you could say that," She responded with a chuckle. "Maybe I''ll tell it to you sometime. Or, better yet, maybe Huyang will. He is a storyteller, after all."


    I nodded, and when I was finally satisfied with memorizing the image, I cast Clairvoyance. The spell immediately caught on its target, with the floating arrow pointing off in some random direction.


    "Well, the good news is that he exists in a state that is intact enough that he is still recognizable," I said with a frown. "Unfortunately, that''s all I can really tell. That and it''s not core-ward."


    "That''s enough for now," She said with a nod. "If he had been found. The Emperor would have ground him to scrap or kept him in a vault somewhere on Coruscant."


    "Not necessarily. The Emperor has a few vaults around the galaxy," I explained. "But yes, his Jedi vault is on Coruscant."


    "His what?" Ahsoka asked, looking at me with wide eyes.


    "He keeps trophies, like lightsabers and busts," I explained. "Jedi memorabilia that he likes to gloat over. Unfortunately, there isn''t much we can do about that stuff¡­"


    "I''m sensing a rather large addendum there," Ahsoka said, watching me carefully. "What do you know?"


    "I may or may not know of another vault full of Jedi stuff," I admitted with a wince.


    "What? Were?" She asked, her eyes wide.


    "There is a Hutt on Nar Shaddaa who likes to collect Jedi stuff as well," I responded. "Grakkus. He has a pretty expansive collection."


    "How expansive?"


    "Lightsabers, an<u> Aethersprite</u></a>, Jedi artifacts, Holocrons¡­" I said, the last bit really catching her attention. "And¡­ some Jedi remains."


    I could see the excitement at the mention of holocrons almost immediately shifted to anger at the mention of the remains. It took her a moment to work past the shock, but when she did, her voice dropped an octave, and her whole body tensed.


    "Why did you never mention this before?" She asked, her tone a warning that my answer better be a good one.


    "Because as much as I want to support the Jedi," I said, gesturing to myself and then around in general since I was currently doing just that. "I wasn''t about to drag my team back to Nar Shaddaa until we were ready."


    "Deacon¡­ That collection could change everything!" She said, reaching up and running a hand along her lekku. "Even ignoring the fact that he might have the bodies of some of my friends, those artifacts¡­ the holocrons¡­"


    "I know, trust me, I know. But as important as they are, they are not worth your life," I explained. "When we get back, give me some time to prepare and ask if anyone would be willing to volunteer. This is not just another heist. Grakkus has a tight fist on his home, is a brutal monster, and has had time to anticipate people coming to steal his shit."


    She let out a long breath, eventually nodding in understanding.


    "You''re right, you''re right. I... apologize for assuming the worst," She said, seeming to collapse into herself, leaning heavily into her chair. "I can''t help but¡­ My family is gone, Deacon. And to hear someone had stolen away their legacy¡­"


    I stand and walk over to her, sitting beside her. I reach out and put my arms around her, pulling her into a hug. At first, she simply tenses up, but after a moment, she gives in and leans against me. It doesn''t take long for my shoulder to feel damp.


    "Your family lives on through you, Luke, Falia, and Ezra," I said softly. "I promise you I will help you gather information on Grakkus, and if it''s possible to steal back his collection, I will be standing right beside you when we do."


    For a long while, we sat there, Ahsoka letting go of an old-held grief. Eventually, without pulling her head off of my shoulder, she let out a long breath.


    "Part of me, deep down inside, tells me that I shouldn''t be grieving, not after what they did to me," She admitted, her voice soft, as if she didn''t want me to hear. "They were so quick to throw me aside, people who I thought I could trust, who I thought trusted me."


    "Of course you do," I said, that response getting her to shift and look up at me. "Emotions like that aren''t kind enough to be simple and easy to figure out, Ahsoka. There''s nothing wrong with feeling conflicted."


    "A Jedi shouldn''t let such things get to them," She responded, shaking her head and looking away.


    We sat in silence again. I wracked my mind, trying to figure out what I could say, before remembering one of the older Star Wars stories.


    "Do you know the old version of the Jedi Code? Before they bastardized it after the Old Sith Wars?"


    "I¡­ know there have been different versions over the ages, and I know they have varied over time," She admitted. "It sounds like you do, though."


    "I do. Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force," I repeated, the words coming easier than I thought they would. "The old Jedi realized that having emotions was normal and okay, that letting them rule you was the error. Using them to pull the Force, to bend it to your will, was something that was dangerous, but having those emotions was only natural. While the modern code requires a Jedi to shed what made them alive, the old code acknowledges their existence and encourages you to rise above them."


    "I¡­ I like that. It''s less restrictive than the code I was taught," She admitted. "And you''re saying that I shouldn''t feel guilty that I feel this way but that I should rise above it?"


    "Exactly. I know it''s easier said than done, but removing yourself from the emotions is like pretending it never happened. Rising above it requires you to acknowledge it and move on," I explained. "It''s a much healthier way to handle things. The Jedi¡­ they were just repressing things. That might work when the worst thing you encounter is a little smuggling, but¡­


    As I was talking, I could feel myself starting to a tangent. Realizing that this was not the time or place for that, I stopped myself.


    "I''m sorry, I''m being preachy," I said, shaking my head. "The Jedi had a lot of faults, but at the end of the day, the individuals just wanted to help. I shouldn''t harp on them like that."


    Ahsoka gave a wet chuckle, shaking her head.


    " I don''t disagree with you, Deacon. I''ve had a lot of time to consider where the Jedi Order went wrong," She pointed out. "What were you saying?"


    "Well¡­ before the Clone Wars, the Jedi could handle repressing their emotions because, in all honesty, how many truly terrible things did they have to deal with?" I explained. "But the war would have been too much. You were already seeing a spike in people turning to the dark side, just like you did during the conflict with the Mandalorians."


    "There¡­ were a lot more people turning during that time," She admitted, pulling gently away from me to sit up straight, sliding away just a bit. "Every one of them felt like losing a brother or sister."


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    "If I had to guess¡­. The Jedi Order would have torn itself to pieces even if the war hadn''t ended how it did," I said with a frown. "There were too many Padawans and Knights exposed to too much death and violence, all of them trying to desperately to repress it, to pretend they didn''t have emotions. The Order would have splintered into groups, with large swaths of them falling to the dark side, or at least a darker interpretation of the Jedi teachings, as the trauma bubbled up and twisted people."


    "So what should we do differently?"


    I jumped, having no idea that Luke had come out of his room to join us. I turned to watch him sit down across from us, where I had been sitting before. Ahsoka stayed perfectly still, so she must have felt him coming.


    "You should be more aware of the existence of emotions. You should be more open to anger, not to let it control you, but because the best way to move past and beat something, is by understanding it. By knowing what scares you, what makes you angry, what you hate, you can learn to step beyond it and let things go, or at least acknowledge your weaknesses, so that you can compensate for them," I explained. "Honestly, including a professional psychologist, familiar with the dangers of the Force, with whatever order or group comes next is a solid bet."


    "The Jedi had mind healers," Ahsoka pointed out.


    "Maybe, but how often were they seen? And did they not just repeat the teachings in a different tone?" I asked. "The galaxy has been building up a lot of trauma, and for some reason¡­ Those with powerful or special connections to the Force often get stuck in the middle of that trauma. If someone tries to revive the Jedi after this is all done, a lot of the people they will recruit are going to have real trauma. They will need help, not just the Force. "


    Ahsoka was taken aback by my statement and opened her mouth to disagree¡­ only to stop. She closed her mouth and looked thoughtful for a long moment before eventually shaking her head.


    "I really wish I could deny that statement, but I''m finding it hard to," She admitted, looking particularly disturbed. "Why can''t I say it''s not true? Why does that feel true?"


    "I don''t know, but don''t forget, they often do incredible good by being there," I pointed out. "Maybe they are there because the Force knows that without them there, the situation would spiral into something so much worse. Or maybe Force sensitives are drawn to the Shatterpoints, which are often in difficult moments. It''s impossible to know."


    The lounge area was quiet, save for the steady hum of the hyperdrive and the occasional warble of R2 as he interacted with the ship''s computer.


    "I know this is a lot," I admitted. "But let''s focus on one thing at a time. Let''s find Luke and the others their crystals, and then we can go back to Omega Station and discuss Grakkus. One step at a time."


    Ahsoka and Luke nodded in agreement, though we did need to explain who Garkkus was and why they were important. Luke was particularly happy about the existence of so many holocrons, after Ahsoka explained what they were, as it meant teaching future Jedi would be significantly easier. Eventually, after continuing to talk for a few more hours, we went our separate ways, spreading out through the Starcaller. Despite assurances that she was fine, I could tell that our conversation weighed heavily on Ahsoka. Still, I hoped that it would help her move on, and that stealing the Jedi artifacts from Grakkus would help as well.


    I did make sure to look up the Hutt on the Holonet, just to make sure he was still out and about. According to what I could find he was still living on Nar Shaddaa, just like he had for a long time.


    The trip continued despite the emotionally draining discussion, and eventually, we dropped out of hyperspace around the planet that Alpha Base was built on. Rather than drop out of hyperspace in the thick of it, we pulled back by a considerable amount so that we had a chance to reach out, share passcodes, and warn them that we were incoming. They technically already knew we were, but that wouldn''t stop a poorly trained, jumpy gunner from sending us to an early grave if we surprised them.


    The transition from space to atmosphere, once we dropped out of hyperspace, only took about fifteen minutes, including the trip from our drop point to the planet. There were quite a few capital ships flying around, including one massive <u>MC80 Star Cruiser</u></a> and a trio of smaller<u> MC30s</u></a>. The MC80, in particular, looked familiar.


    "What is the Home One doing here?" I asked with a frown, peering through the forward viewpoint. "Isn''t that Admiral Ackbar''s Flagship?"


    "It is. The squadron was stationed there before we rotated to Omega Station," Luke said with a frown. "I wonder why it''s here now, and with so little of its fleet. There are usually several dozen smaller ships with it. "


    "You need to be careful dropping information like that, Deacon," Ahsoka warned with a frown. "Being able to identify a Rebellion ship on sight, despite having never seen it before, as well as the Admiral in command of that ship, is going to make people nervous. For some unholy reason, we don''t question where you get this information from, but there are plenty of people who will."


    "... Yeah, fair enough," I admitted. "<u>Draven </u></a>really wouldn''t like that, would he?"


    I could practically hear Ahsoka''s eye roll from behind me as I name-dropped the Rebel Alliance''s Head of Intelligence. Luke gave me a look as well, shaking his head before focusing on the console in front of him.


    The pair of them guided the Starcaller down to the surface, where we landed around the outskirts of the Alpha Base mountain. Luke decided to stay on the ship while Ahsoka and I headed to find the young Force-sensitive and her sibling. It took a bit of cajoling, but I eventually convinced Ahsoka to wear her uniform, which she looked great in. More importantly than that, however, was that we put off a united front. It was impossible to deny that Ahsoka had joined the Skyforged, not when she was wearing our gear and with our symbol on it.


    We made the walk from the base of the mountain to inside, where we were guided through the Rebel stronghold, through dozens of corridors, to a massive section of the mountain, the living quarters. I could tell that the space was new, freshly carved from the mountain, because of the roughly hewn walls and simple fixtures. Still, it was clear they were staying true to the idea of the base being incredibly tough, as the freshly carved rooms were heavily reinforced with durasteel frames and more.


    Once we were in the living quarters, it didn''t take long for us to find our way to the room where Sheora was staying with her recently rescued charges. I tapped a button on the door controls, basically ringing the doorbell. It took a few seconds to open, but when it did, it revealed Sheora. She looked good, having finally recovered fully from her rather harsh stay on Foless.


    "Great, you guys are here," She said with a nod before turning back into the room. "You two behave yourself for a while, I''ve got to take these two to talk to some people."


    Falia and Claron, both looking excited and impatient, nodded rapidly at her request.


    "Good. It shouldn''t be more than an hour or two, and when we are done, I''ll walk you guys to the ship," She said with a smile before waving and turning to us. "As for you two, there are some people who want to meet you."


    Ahsoka and I shared a look before I nodded.


    "Very well," I said, stepping to the side to let her through. "Lead the way."

 Chapter 136

    When the Rebel Alliance abandoned their base on Yavin IV, it meant that for quite some time, several months at least, the meetings and discussions of the top members of the Rebel Alliance had been relegated to sporadically few secure holomeetings, messages over secure subnet systems and even via courier. Sometimes, when time and security permitted, two or three members would meet and discuss pertinent news and topics. By and large, however, the most significant leaders of the Alliance functioned with very little in the way of communication.


    With the establishment of Alpha Base, those leaders now had a secure place where they could all meet, though such gatherings were still rare. The drawback of using a rebel cell system to keep each other''s movement as a whole secure was that removing a leader of that cell, even temporarily, could have the entire segment screeching to a halt. Still, these rare meetings were important.


    At the moment, around three dozen people stood around a central circular table deep in the heart of Alpha Base. The table was carved from stone and decorated with intricate engravings that included words and phrases in Pak Pak. The room itself had once been opulently adorned with paintings and sculptures. Now, with the art and riches stripped down and sold, it was much more utilitarian. Originally, it was built as a secure meeting room, serving the Separatists and Nemodians as they discussed matters of profit and greed. Now, it served the Rebellion as a place to discuss their struggle to overthrow tyranny.


    Around the table sat Chief of State <u>Mon Mothma</u></a>, with Princess Leia by her side, the experienced politician having taken the young royal hero under her wing. She was still a force to be reckoned with despite her young age, but Mon Mothma still had much to teach her.


    Beside them was General Syndulla, followed by Mon Calamari <u>Admiral Akbar</u></a>, Clone Wars veteran <u>General Dodonna</u></a>, Head of Intelligence <u>Draven</u></a>, Minister of Finance Viscount <u>Tardi</u></a>, as well as <u>General Rieekan</u></a>, who was in charge of the Rebel forces at Alpha Base. Several commanders, other generals, and other influential members of the Rebel Alliance stood around the table as well.


    "The Omega Station droid facility is quickly becoming an incredible asset," General Dodonna insisted, tapping the table in front of him. "Not only are they making good progress on the salvage of droids at the facility, but the clearing of space for droid production is proceeding ahead of schedule. By this time next year we may not need to purchase our droids from others, simply a portion of the parts for us to assemble."


    Unsurprisingly, ever since the impressive use of droid assets in the rescue of the remaining Rebel forces from Yavin IV, their further use had been heavily discussed. Despite having fought tooth and nail against them during the Clone Wars, General Dodonna was their lead proponent, with General Syndulla backing him up.


    "Let''s not get ahead of ourselves," Minister Tardi said, reaching up to stroke his gray mustache. "While overhauling the already existing systems was both cost-effective and worth the credits, we have yet to see consistent proof there is any need for us to produce our own."


    General Dodonna opened his mouth to disagree, but Chief Mon Mothma half up her hand.


    "We have already dedicated considerable resources to Omega Station and the droid salvage facility," She said. "It would be prudent to be patient and see if upgrading the facility further is necessary. Draven, how goes the analysis of the CIS core?"


    "The team I assigned has made decent progress, but they reiterate that progress will be slow, even with the added resources we allotted," He explained. "An¡­ error by previous parties has partially put the core in high-security mode, meaning they must be careful, or the rest of the information would be deleted."


    "I suggest we invest other resources into uncovering more forgotten CIS equipment," General Rieekan said. "I could list several battles that resulted in ships that are useless, but might hold hundreds, if not thousands, of droids."


    "I find the idea of the naval droids to be particularly interesting," Admiral Ackbar said in his iconic, blubbery speech. "While I would hesitate to replace a large number of positions, replacing even five percent of the crew on the Home One would free two hundred and fifty souls to staff other ships. With negligible difference in combat efficiency."


    "We might want to ask some of the clone officers who have joined us," General Syndulla suggested. "They dedicated their lives to fighting them. Chances are they have at least a few ideas of where to find more."


    "Perhaps we should be focusing on that method," Draven suggested. "By finding a different source of droids, we could cut those damned Skyforged out of the deal."


    "Draven, the Skyforged have proven to be trustworthy allies," General Syndulla stated with a slight scowel. "As¡­ Strange as Deacon Roy''s abilities might be, the Skyforged have been more than amicable, especially after the debacle with Loc."


    "How have they proven that they are trustworthy?" Draven asked with a frown. "They refuse to join and charge money at every step."


    "Not everyone is willing to dedicate their all to the cause. While we should praise those who do, vilifying those who don''t will only leave our pool stagnant and empty," Admiral Akbar stated, shaking his head. "The reports I have read stated they have been more than fair with their rates and sales. Was that report false?"


    "No, all the numbers reported were correct," General Syndulla confirmed. "The only time they weren''t generous towards us was after discovering Private Loc''s subterfuge. Thankfully, Deacon seemed happy to let the issue go with that."


    "I''m also concerned with their connection to the Empire," Draven admitted, shaking his head as he changed tactics. "They have gained too much in so little time. It reeks of Imperial support behind the scenes!"


    "Have your contacts reported anything about them?" General Rieekan asked, seeming genuinely curious.


    "No, they have not," He reluctantly admitted. "But you know as well as I do that our list of reliable information gatherers is small, especially deep in Imperial Intelligence."


    "While I understand why their meteoric rise is suspicious, neither Luke Skywalker nor Ahsoka Tano have detected any hints of betrayal or nefarious intentions," Princess Leia pointed out. "In fact, with Ahsoka having officially joined the group, surely that means we can trust them?"


    "That is another issue!" Draven said, somehow ignoring the real point of the hypothetical question. "The group has already poached one of our assets, how-"


    "Ahsoka Tano never had a firm part of the Rebellion to begin with," General Syndulla pointed out. "Her function as the Fulcrum was integral to the early days, but now her role is much less solidified. And even if that weren''t true, she is still an individual, not ''our asset.''"


    "Neither is Luke Skywalker," Princess Leia added, a rising steel in her voice, cutting off Draven''s response. "Besides, Luke believes in the Rebellion, and he will never leave. Having met Deacon Roy and a handful of his crew myself, I feel confident saying he truly believes in the cause. He simply also recognizes his responsibility to his people."


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    "I¡­ Of course, I apologize. That was not the best way to word that," He admitted, backpedaling to save face. "But that doesn''t change the fact that Skyforged has been making moves on both of our Force-sensitive members. Just look how quick Skywalker was to commandeer Rebel forces to run a risky operation. Several ships from Blue Squadron received heavy damage, and Rogue Squadron took a week to get back into fighting shape, drawing their downtime out extensively. The Rebel Alliance cannot afford to throw away resources like that."


    "Need I remind you that the mission was to save one of your Agents," General Syndulla pointed out. "As well as two innocent children."


    "Need I remind you that I proposed a similar rescue mission and was shot down?" He reminded, now sounding frustrated. "Even with Ahsoka''s plea, any mission to rescue Agent Sheora and her charges was declared too costly. And yet, because Skywalker is friendly with the Skyforged, it''s alright that he and Princess Leia commandeered Alliance assets and went anyway?"


    The silence that followed was much heavier, the truth of his words provided weight despite his aggressiveness.


    "While not incorrect, you are missing several points," Mon Mothma pointed out calmly. "However, I do see where your complaints are coming from. What point, exactly, are you trying to make, General Draven?"


    "That we should be wary of the Skyforged," He said simply, leaning back in his chair. "There are too many unknowns for me to feel comfortable with how close they are to our systems. Not to mention that if they turned against us, who knows what kind of damage they could do!"


    "We will take that under advisement," Mon Mothma said after a long moment. "I agree that trusting them completely would be folly, but I will not treat an ally poorly just because they might be dangerous. If we did so, half of our cells would have fallen to infighting."


    Draven, who looked like he was being forced to swallow a particularly sour drop, nodded reluctantly, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. After a moment of staring him down, Mon Mothma nodded and turned to Leia.


    "I believe you had something you wanted to share with the group?" She asked, gesturing for her to speak. "Specifically about our new allies?"


    "I do. It is an offer made directly to me by Deacon Roy," she stated, ignoring Draven''s eye roll and scowl. "As we have discussed, the armor that the Skyforged commando team is equipped with is of substantial quality and durability. We know from witness reports from the clearing of Omega Station that the armor is capable of handling sustained blaster fire."


    She paused and looked around the room, noting that several people were nodding in agreement. News of blaster-proof armor spread quickly, as did the commando''s effectiveness.


    "I now know more information about the armor, as well as their uniforms. According to Deacon, not only are their uniforms capable of handling several blaster bolts, but the commando armor is also capable of enduring a handful of bolts from an<u> E-web Heavy Blaster</u></a>."


    That got several people around the table to gasp, as well as doubtful looks from Draven, General Dodonna and General Rieekan.


    "That seems rather unlikely, Princess," General Rieekan said in a polite tone. "E-webs are powerful weapon systems. Concentrated fire from a pair could take down a starfighter''s shield, given enough time."


    "Of that, I am aware, as were my companions, which was how Han Solo was able to identify the material they were using. Beskar."


    That got an energetic response, with several people dropping their jaws. While not everyone could identify it by sight, most people at least knew the name of the metal and its legendary durability. Most also knew where it came from and who currently had control over it.


    "I suppose I shouldn''t have bothered arguing at all," Draven said with a smirk. "Princess has proven my suspicions. The only people with a supply of beskar that large is the Empire!"


    "And you think they would just pass it out? Especially to undercover operatives? To show off and brag about?" General Dodanna asked, shaking his head. "The Skyforged having access to beskar is shocking, but it does not tie them directly to the Empire."


    "Are they not worried about Mandalorians?" Admiral Ackbar asked. "Surely they would dislike their use of a metal they consider their own?"


    "Deacon is not worried, and considering he claims to have made the beskar himself, they wouldn''t have any claim over it anyway," The royal princess explained, speaking through the whispers. "He understands they might come after him anyway, but he claims to be working on that."


    "Made beskar? How?" Viscount Tardi asked, his eyes wide. "How could that be possible?"


    "Magic, I would assume," General Syndulla answered. "I have seen some of his abilities, as have several dozen Rebel soldiers. There are quite a few survivors of Yavin IV who would have died without his magic."


    "I don''t disagree that his powers are strange and impressive," General Dodanna asked, his brow wrinked in confusion. "But to produce beskar? How could that be possible?"


    "Perhaps we could allow Princess Leia to continue?" Mon Mothma suggested. "I believe she stated she had an offer to pass on."


    "Indeed. Judging from Deacons'' statement, the creation of Beskar requires large amounts of precious metals," She explained. "He assured us that his crew was incapable of affording so much normally, so they were forced to steal it from Kuat Drives. His offer was to create an amount of beskar for the Rebellion''s own use if we would help him locate, plan, and potentially assist another robbery to fuel the creation process. Though, please keep in mind he did not flat out state it was necessary. In fact, he insisted that the method of creation would remain a secret for now."


    "A source of beskar¡­ made from precious metals¡­" Viscount Tardi said, trailing off as he considered the implication. "Could you imagine just how effective our commandos would be with beskar armor?"


    The group was silent for a moment, most people imagining a group of rebel commandos clad in beskar, assaulting Imperial positions with ease. The idea was enticing enough that several people were already nodding.


    "Were there any other details he shared?" Mon Motham asked. "How much he needed, what types of metals, in what purity?"


    "No, he just made the offer," She explained, pausing for a moment before continuing. "I don''t honestly believe he needs our help. I believe he was simply giving us the opportunity to¡­ get in on the action."


    "Hmm¡­ In that case, it is important that we discuss this offer in greater detail," Mon Mothma stated with a nod. "He is scheduled to be on-site in two days. I want to set up a meeting with him."


    "I''m sure he would be amicable to that," Princess Leia responded.


    "Good. In the meantime¡­ General Draven?" She said, the Head of Intelligence meeting her eyes. "Begin looking for potential Imperial targets or groups that directly support the Empire. Nothing too in-depth, but enough to form a basic report. Will that be a problem?"


    "No, I will get my people on it," He responded, his face tied in knots. "I will have something done soon."


    "Good. Now, with that settled, I want to discuss the potential increase of our assets in our secondary fleets. Admiral Akbar?"


    The Mon Calamari admiral nodded and began to discuss a new topic.

 Chapter 137

    Sheora was short on details as she led us through the Rebel stronghold, eventually entering a turbolift that took us quite a few levels down. When we stepped out of the small space, it was a short walk to a heavily reinforced room. Sheora pressed a button on the side, activating some sort of PA system. A male voice came through, and Sheora responded with a passcode. A few seconds later, the door unlocked, and we stepped through.


    My first thought as we stepped in was that the room had the same essence of opulence I remembered from the very first CIS base we raided, but it had clearly been stripped down. The walls showed signs of art and drapes hanging against them, but they now stood bare. Even the floor has been pulled up, some sort of flooring or carpet. In the place of that art and opulence were various bits of tech and computer systems.


    At the center of the room was an intricately carved table with four people sitting along one side. General Syndulla, Princess Leia, General Draven, and Mon Mothma. The first two gave me a small smile and a nod while General Draven looked at me with clear suspicion and barely restrained frustration. Mon Mothma¡­ she had that same austere, almost ethereal calmness that she had in the original trilogy. It was almost unnerving.


    "Thank you, Agent Sheora," General Draven said. "Please wait outside."


    Sheora frowned but nodded, mouthing an apology as she left the room. I suppose it made sense that the Hea of Intelligence was the infiltrator''s direct boss. As Sheora stepped outside, I gave Ahsoka another look, the Togruta letting out a long breath before stepping forward to the table. As we approached, I pulled out a seat for her before sitting down on my own.


    "It''s good to see some friendly faces," I said, nodding to Princess Leia and General Syndulla. "I''m also flattered to get the attention of the leader of the Rebellion. I didn''t think we had reached that level of notoriety quite yet."


    "Truly?" Mon Mothma asked, seeming surprised. "The procurement of Omega Station, the droid repair facility, as well as this very stronghold¡­ not to mention Huntress, the yet to be named Braha''tok Gunship, various supplies and and starfighters, the rescue of Agent Sheora and her two wards¡­"


    "That doesn''t include your own personal fame among the troops," General Syndulla pointed out. "After what you did for the wounded during the rescue of Yavin IV, you''re almost as famous as Luke."


    "Seriously? Huh... I guess I hadn''t really listed it all together in my head before," I admitted, ignoring Ahsoka''s strangled scoff from beside me. "Besides, most of those were joint efforts."


    "Perhaps, but they are still impressive," The older politician insisted.


    I looked at everyone seated on the opposite side of the table before finally realizing what was going on.


    "Oh, I see. I might not be very good at the whole politics thing, but I can tell when I''m being buttered up," I said with a smirk, looking at Princess Leia. "I assume you told them my offer?"


    "I did. As you can imagine, they are very interested," She explained.


    "A supply of beskar, even a small one, would be an incredible boon to the Rebellion," Mon Mothma said. "We would be very interested in settling on a contract with you."


    "Well¡­ as I see it, there are two ways for this to work," I explained. "One, we plan something together, combining resources and hit the Empire or maybe a pirate band. My team has discussed hitting a Hutt for our next heist, but I doubt you would appreciate that."


    "No, the Rebellion cannot afford to anger the Hutts," Mon Mothma said, leaning forward in a slight show of urgency.


    "Well, if we find another source of precious metals, we can put that off for a while," I assured her. "Though, in all likelihood, we will be hitting a Hutt called Grakkus in the next few weeks."


    "Why?" General Draven asked, looking confused. "They are usually more trouble than they are worth. They tend to diversify their wealth, so robbing them is usually pointless."


    "Not all of them," I pointed out, but waved off his response. "We wouldn''t be stealing wealth from him. Grakkus collects Jedi artifacts, things that could really help Luke, Felia, and Ahsoka in their training."


    "Ezra as well," Ahsoka added.


    "And Ezra as well," I repeated, pointing at my Togruta friend in confirmation. "Not to mention any Force-sensitives that come after them. If the Empire finds out he is collecting Jedi artifacts, they will come down on him like a sack of bricks, and destroy everything they get their hands on."


    Before Mon Mothma, or anyone else for that matter, could respond, General Draven cut in. He leaned forward and nearly barked out his question.


    "Why your determination to help the Jedi?" He asked, peering at me harshly. "It doesn''t benefit you in the slightest besides making them indebted to you."


    "There is no such thing as a debt between friends," I responded, continuing before he could retort. "But you strike me as the kind of man who doesn''t understand that, so I''ll explain it another way. All Force sensitives, no matter their age, species, or general disposition, will always have to contend with the draw of the Dark Side of the Force. Most healthy, well-adjusted, supported, and educated people can resist."


    I paused for a moment to let my words sink in. I could see Mon Mothma give General Syndulla a small, receiving the smallest nod of confirmation.


    "Now, I might not agree with many aspects of the old Jedi Order, but their teachings can serve as a strong, light-leaning foundation for whatever comes next," I explained, looking at each of the Rebel leaders before focusing on Mon Mothma. "Without that, we risk further generations being slipping into the dark because as terrible as it is to admit, the Dark Side of the Force is easier, more tempting, and initially more powerful than the light."


    The sudden dialogue explaining how the Force worked seemed to catch the others off guard, though I had to assume Ahsoka was getting used to me by now.


    "Imagine in ten years, after the defeat of the Empire. Imagine random dark Jedi, little mini Darth Vaders, popping up every few months," I explained. "Taking over planets, trying to topple whatever government you create after this, their self-importance and greed inflated by the Dark Side. All because we brushed off the needs of the few trained Jedi still alive. Mark my words, unless you plan on murdering every Force-sensitive that pops up, you are going to want to invest in the Jedi and let them do their own thing. Let them be free, let them do their work, and keep them funded because a galaxy without the Jedi gathering together is chaos."


    For a long moment, all four people on the other side of the table stared at me. Judging from the looks of horror on their faces, they were clearly imagining the scenario I had proposed. Ahsoka, who was used to my sudden revelations, was marginally more controlled in her reaction.


    "So, we were discussing beskar?" I asked after a full minute, which seemed to at least pull Mon Mothma, experienced politician that she was, out of her contemplation.


    "Yes, I believe you were voicing your suggestions?"


    "Right. We can work together, hit something, and split the loot fifty-fifty, or you guys can do the work at your own pace. Then I''ll take the precious metals, use them to make beskar, and take thirty-five percent for myself."


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    Draven opened his mouth to argue about the thirty-five percent figure, but Mon Mothma sent him a look that immediately shut him up.


    "... perhaps a mix of both," Mon Mothma suggested, turning back to me. "If we put out to our many cells that precious metals, taken from reasonable sources, will be rewarded with increased resources and equipment, I believe we could gather a not insignificant amount on our own. However, that will be a slower process, so finding our own target for a joint mission would provide us with an immediate solution."


    "That¡­ sounds pretty smart to me," I agreed with a shrug. "I know that my team would be happy to work with the Rebel Alliance to secure more beskar. We just need a target."


    "Alliance Intelligence is already working on finding an appropriate source," Mon Mothma assured me, nodding to General Draven. "However, I would like to negotiate on the thirty-five percent. If the Rebel Alliance is securing the materials, I believe fifteen percent is more appropriate."


    "Fifteen isn''t enough for it to even be worth it for us," I responded, shaking my head. "Thirty percent."


    "Twenty-five, and you will get to keep sixty percent of what we get during our heist," Mon Mothma stated, trading immediate profits for a better cut later.


    "...Fine, as long as it stays under a certain amount," I explained. "While I''m happy to armor your commandos with beskar, releasing too much of this stuff is a bad idea. Not because I''m worried about you guys having too much, but because the Empire is going to really stop fucking around if they notice all your troops are wearing it."


    "That¡­ is a wise sentiment. We will set a certain poundage amount per month. Is that acceptable?"


    We negotiated back and forth on the poundage per month before finally settling on reasonable terms. We would get twenty-five percent of whatever they brought to us and sixty percent of the joint heist. They would provide us with enough precious metals to make twenty pounds of beskar a month, and we would keep five of it. If they couldn''t acquire enough metal, the split would remain the same, with smaller amounts.


    When the negotiations were over, I was prepared to leave when Mon Motha switched topics.


    "With that bit of business finished, I would like to inquire of your plans for the future," She said, both General Draven and Princess Leia leaning forward. "What are the plans of the Skyforged Vanguard?"


    "Growth," I said simply. "My team and I will continue to grow, pushing back against the Empire and eliminating pirates and slavers whenever we can. I want our fleet to grow, our commando units to increase."


    "And your dealings with the Rebel Alliance?''" She asked. "They will continue?"


    "As long as you continue to deal fairly with us, we will continue to be fair in return," I assured her. "More than fair in most circumstances. The pricing on your latest purchase, the gunship, proves that."


    "It does, and we thank you for your charitable dealings," She agreed with a nod, continuing a moment after. "But I was specifically talking about joint operations, working directly with us."


    "Oh. Well, as long as a mission benefits both of us, or we find a way to make a profit off of it, it''s an easy sell to my team," I explained. "Pro-bono work is a bit more difficult for me to sell to my second in command, but as Sheora''s rescue can attest, we can be convinced if the cause is enough."


    "I see. And how would we offer you missions?" She asked with a raised eyebrow. "You have to understand that as a military, we don''t usually post our assignments for people to pick and choose."


    "Then assign us a liaison," I suggested with a shrug. "Someone who takes orders from someone who knows what''s going on. They can work with us to keep us in the loop, and we can work with them to take on assignments that benefit us both. Just¡­ make sure we don''t get another Loc situation."


    "Of course, a fair idea." Mon Mothma said. "I think General Syndulla could serve as a point of contact with your liaison, and perhaps someone else you''ve worked with before for the actual role?"


    "That sounds reasonable to me."


    We talked for a little while longer, discussing the parameters of what I would consider acceptable missions. Mon Mothma left shortly after discussing the liaison idea, with General Draven following her out of the room. After basically outlining the idea of what was acceptable, we broke up the gathering.


    "I''m glad this was an amicable meeting," I said, shaking General Syndulla''s and Princess Leia''s hands. "Though I get the feeling that Draven wished it wasn''t."


    "He¡­ well, he takes his job seriously," Princess Leia explained politely. "He only wants what''s best for the Rebellion."


    "He is aggressive because he believes it is up to him to be suspicious of everything," The General explained, pulling no punches. "In his mind, we are all naive idealists among violent thugs, all of them just waiting for the opportunity to infiltrate and destroy us."


    "I know the type," Ahsoka said with a smirk. "Had to work with them before."


    With the meeting over, Ahsoka and I quickly said our goodbyes, exiting the meeting room to find Sheora waiting for us. She looked a little annoyed that she had been waiting for so long but thankful she didn''t point that annoyance at us.


    "How did it go?" She asked.


    "Well enough," Ahsoka responded vaguely.


    "Your boss is an ass," I said a moment later, getting a snort of laughter from the woman, and a look from Ahsoka.


    "He can be," She admitted. "He doesn''t pretend he isn''t, though. He is also very good at his job."


    We made our way back down to the living quarters, where Felia and Caldor were waiting. Sheora helped them finish packing before walking down with us out of the main structure, stopping at the boarding ramp of the Starcaller.


    "Now, I want you two to behave," she said, kneeling down in front of her wards. "I wish I could come with you, but I have a feeling that I''m going to end up being briefed for a new job soon. I will meet you both at Omega Station."


    Both of the younger kids gave their relatively new guardian a hug before climbing into the ship. I could hear Luke introducing himself as I looked at Sheora.


    "Did your boss say something?" I asked, referring to the opening for a liaison.


    "He did," She admitted. "He is going to recommend me at Mon Mothma''s request. According to her, keeping Felia and Ahsoka together so she can help with her Force-sensitivity is a good idea. Plus, I was planning on moving to Omega Station anyway, assuming your offer was still on the table."


    "Of course it is," I agreed.


    "Good," She said, trailing off for a moment before focusing on me. "Listen, I know I can trust you to keep them safe, but I wouldn''t be a good guardian if I didn''t tell you to keep them safe anyway. If they get hurt, I''ll hunt you down and feed you your own limbs."


    I snorted at her threat, not doubting her claim for a moment. It was clear she cared about the kids, and I wasn''t dumb enough to question the capabilities of a parent. We finished our goodbyes before climbing into the ship. We spent a few minutes getting the kids settled and moving them into their rooms. Claron would be bunking with Luke, while Felia would be bunking with Ahsoka, which would be the first step in helping them be a bit more independent of each other.


    Once everything was settled, we sat down in the cockpit and took off into the sky.

 Chapter 138

    The trip to Lothal from Alpha Base was about a day long, a surprisingly short trip, all things considered. That included a full night, which was good since having to deal with politics and Rebel leadership had left me drained. They had basically ambushed us, either intentionally or as a byproduct of waving their hands and summoning Ashoka and I. Granted, Mon Mothma was the leader of the Rebellion, so I had to assume that there was a level of urgency to the meeting if for no other reason than how busy the woman was. Still, it grated to be dragged along like that, like it was expected.


    Once we left Alpha Base and set our course, Ahsoka and Luke spent most of their time with Felia, teaching her how to open her mind, expand her senses, and guide herself into the Force. Thankfully, Ahsoka believed she was both young enough and had the right mentality to mediate into that connection, or we would have had her running around the ship, trying to achieve kinetic meditation like Luke had.


    By this time, Luke had gotten a firm grasp on "proper" meditation as well, using the Force as a way to calm and steady himself without the need for mind-numbing levels of physical activity.


    With the Force-sensitives of the group secluded in the cargo bay, eyes closed and meditating, Claron and I were on our own. Rather than let him dwell on being separated from his sister, even if it was only by a dozen meters or so, I kept him entertained by playing hologames and telling him stories. Unfortunately, I wasn''t the best storyteller, and getting beaten by a child at just about every hologame we had quickly got old. Luckily, I had plenty of stories to pull from, so my poor telling was saved by the variety.


    "So, then Aladdin looked up at the genie, having enjoyed his singing immensely despite being confused," I said with a smile. "Of course, young Aladdin was in love, so-"


    I stopped when I felt a slight pressure on my shoulder, turning to see that Claron had fallen asleep, sliding down the couch to lean on me. I couldn''t help but chuckle, before carefully standing and picking him up, carrying him to his room, laying him down in his bed. It was a bit early to be sleeping, but I wasn''t about to wake him up and scold him for it. The kid was tired, and there was no reason to try and keep him awake.


    Plus, I desperately wanted to sleep as well.


    The next morning, Ahsoka woke me up to say we were about to drop from Hyperspace, which meant she wanted me on the bridge. Lothal was technically abandoned by the Empire, driven off by the Rebels. In reality, they only stayed away because it didn''t have anything that they wanted. Yes, there was some farming, some light industrialization, and some minor Imperial production facilities. This planet was barely worth the effort, and I had to assume that since General Synduall had been part of the team trying to free it, the real attention came from her partner''s connection to the Force. Now, that would bring the Empire''s attention down to a backwater world.


    However, their newly acquired shield of indifference had a pretty serious flaw. If the Empire were to suddenly learn that Lothal was producing weapons for the Rebellion, hosting a Rebel military base, or was a stopping point for a small group of Force-sensitives and a single mage, the Empire would return. Worse, there would be no mercy. Instead, the Imperial Navy would most likely just stomp the major cities flat before leaving.


    This was why we made no effort to contact any sort of planet flight control, and most likely why no one tried to call us out. The less they knew, the better, even if purposeful ignorance had its own limitations.


    The Starcaller dropped out of Hyperspace and immediately started to descend, making a beeline for one of the planet''s many cities. We didn''t drop too low since the city wasn''t our target, but Ahsoka did use it as a guiding point on our way to our real goal.


    We angled away from the city as we slid lower into the atmosphere, getting closer and closer to the ground. Eventually Ahsoka guided us to a lone <u>communications tower,</u></a> a main relay point for Lothalnet, the planet''s internet equivalent. Once the ship was landed, everyone climbed out, stepping on the planet''s surface. I took a deep breath and looked around, a small smile on my face, which Ahsoka noticed almost immediately.


    "What is it?" She asked, looking around at the base of the large tower.


    "Every once in a while, it hits me that I''m traveling between planets," I explained. "When I was younger, I would have given anything to be here. As I got older, I thought that dream was silly. Now I''m here, working with the next age of Jedi, exploring the Galaxy, and running a group of Mercenary Rebels. It''s just a hell of a trip."


    "You know, I don''t think you''ve ever talked about where you were from," Ahsoka pointed out. "I don''t even know the name of it. All I know is that it''s some sort of backwater planet."


    "... It''s called Earth," I responded, looking up at the tower as we walked closer to the single door at the base. It was deceptively large, making the structure look smaller than it actually was. "We hardly ever left our planet. Besides me, it only happened a handful of times. It was a pretty low-tech word, slow to shift anything cohesive. Beyond that¡­ Well, it''s a lot like other human worlds. We tend to bicker amongst ourselves when we get bored, but¡­ well, it was home."


    "You don''t consider it home anymore?"


    "It''s an uncharted planet," I explained with a shrug. "As far as I know, nobody knows how to get to it. I made it off in a fluke, and immediately got snatched up by slavers, which is how I met Tatnia and Nal."


    "What about your Clairvoyance?" She asked. "Couldn''t you find your way back with that?"


    "It wouldn''t matter," I explained. "It still isn''t home. I''ve changed too much and gained too much. I was nothing like this in my old life, a swashbuckling mercenary, diving into danger for money and glory. My family would hardly even recognize me."


    I wince internally for lying but managed to use the truth as much as possible. Even as I did, I somehow forgot about one of my most important abilities and almost got caught in a lie. Thankfully, I did at least partially believe what I said, which made the whole thing quite a bit more somber now that I was voicing it out loud.


    Even if I could return, I would never go back to my old life. I was having too much fun with this one. Sure, I would love to go back for a day, say goodbye properly, and tell everyone I was doing well, but that was impossible, so it wasn''t worth dwelling on.


    As we walked, Ashoka broke me out of my thoughts by putting her hand on my shoulder and giving me a supportive squeeze. Looking over at her, I could see that she could tell there were some things I wasn''t saying. Thankfully, judging by the lack of accusations, she seemed okay with not knowing everything.


    We were a few dozen feet from the base of the tower when the entrance opened, and two people stepped out. I recognized them both, primarily through context, as while I had watched a few episodes of Rebels, it had been a while ago for me. The man, <u>Ezra Bridger</u></a>, looked vaguely Arabic to me, with even his outfit pulling from that general local, namely layers of cloth pulled around to form clothes, closed with belts and a single strap. The woman, <u>Sabine Wren,</u></a> was a head shorter than her companion, with dyed purple and orange hair. She was also clad in what I would consider light Mandalorian armor, with even a helmet hanging down from her hip.


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    "Ahsoka! Good to see you," Ezra said with a smile, walking forward and giving Togruta a hug. "When you commed, I was starting to think I would need to go to Ilium or something."


    I could see as he walked he had a slight limp, and when he reached out to hug Ahsoka, one of his arms hung down by his side.


    "You never would have made it," Sabine said, rolling her eyes. "They have half a fleet stationed over it."


    "Desperate times call for desperate measures," The black-haired man responded, turning to look at Sabine.


    As he did, I caught sight of light, heavily treated scarring along the side of his face and down his neck. It looked to me like a burn that reached all the way to his ear before suddenly stopping. That made me think the ear was either a replacement or a prosthetic.


    Sabine punched his shoulder, causing him to step away and raise his hands in defense, though he was chuckling the whole time. His movement revealed a standard-looking lightsaber at her hip. He then turned to me and stuck out his hand.


    "You must be Deacon. Ahsoka told us about you," He said as I took his hand and shook it. "I gotta say, I''m glad she found somewhere to settle down a bit. She needs it."


    Ahsoka scowled in a way that reminded me of how my sister would scowl when I would tease her.


    "It''s nice to meet you Ezra, I''ve heard good things about you as well," I responded, before looking at Sabine. "And Sabine Wren. I have some business to discuss with you once we settle in. Assuming you''re coming with us?"


    "And let this guy out of my sight?" She said, giving me a look as she tried to puzzle out what I had meant. "No, he needs someone to keep him out of trouble."


    It only took us a few minutes to move everyone into the Starcaller. Not only did we have to move Ezra and Sabine''s stuff, but the two of them had picked up some foodstuff and other supplies for the trip. While loading everything up, Ezra had to take a break twice, which no one called him out on. For one of them, he had to sit on a cargo crate, rubbing his leg about halfway up his thigh. We all politely ignored him since it was clear he wasn''t looking for pity or help.


    Once everything was loaded, we once again took off into space. As before, Ahsoka took the pilot''s seat, with Luke as her co-pilot. I was finally not required in the cockpit at all, since Sabine was a skilled pilot and gunner, making her the better choice to sit in the cockpit''s third spot.


    With my previous spot taken, I sat back with Ezra, Felia, and Claron. Felia and Claron, in a rare and welcome show of childishness, excitedly introduced themselves to Ezra, before asking a hundred and one questions about the Force, Ezra''s training, and what they were doing at Lothal. The man was fielding the questions pretty well but was starting to get overwhelmed. Luckily, I knew the key to distracting kids.


    I handed them each a datapad with games on it and a few pieces of candy, before sending them to the cargo hold to play.


    "Lively pair, huh?" Ezra said, letting out a long breath. "Been a while since I had to deal with kids."


    "Yeah¡­ I think they are overcompensating," I guessed with a frown. "They missed a good chunk of their childhood living on the streets."


    "Ah¡­ fair enough," He responded.


    As he looked down the hall that the kids had just left through, I had the opportunity to really get a good look at him. He was a young man, maybe twenty-five, though probably lower. He showed clear physical signs of some pretty intense trauma, but he didn''t behave traumatized in the slightest.


    "Get a good eyeful?" He asked, looking back at me with a smirk.


    "Sorry. Just trying to take your measure," I explained with a shrug.


    "Can''t blame you, Sabine was doing the same thing to you," He responded.


    "Not you, though?"


    "No, I just trust in the Force. I get a good feeling from you, and that''s more than enough for me," He explained as if it was really that simple."


    "And she doesn''t?" I asked. "Kind of important for a Force-sensitive, isn''t it?"


    "Force¡­ Do you mean Sabine? She isn''t Force-sensitive," He responded, with furrowed eyebrows. "Why would you think that?"


    "The lightsaber on her hip?"


    "Oh! That''s mine. Or it was," He explained, scratching the scarring along his neck. "I left it for her when I¡­ took down Thrawn."


    "Wait¡­ if you have one, why did you need to come with us for another?"


    "Because it''s not mine, not anymore," He repeated. "When I came back and tried to use it, the Kyber crystal had sort of¡­ switched allegiances. It was in tune with her, so I let her have it. I could have overrode that with some time and patience, but it didn''t feel right."


    "Wait¡­ If she doesn''t have a very strong connection to the Force¡­ how did a lightsaber attune itself to her?" I asked. "I''m not an expert, but wouldn''t that require at least some power in the Force?"


    "I¡­.huh¡­" Ezra sat there, looking at me as he tried to think of why my assumption would be incorrect, only to come up short. "That''s¡­ something we should probably ask Ahsoka''s lightsaber specialist."


    "Good idea. Maybe hold off on mentioning it to her, though?" I suggested with a wince. "At least until the expert can comment on it?"


    "Fair."


    We chatted for a few more minutes before Ahsoka, Luke, and Sabine returned from the cockpit, sitting around the lounge. Just as I was sliding over so Ashoka could sit, Ezra was doing the same for Sabine. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Luke turning and coughing into his hand, covering something up in the process, but I missed what it was.


    "So, you mentioned you had business with me?" Sabine asked, leaning forward in her seat. "What''s on your mind?"


    "Well, you''ve got connections to Mandalore, but Ashoka has told me those connections are complicated. She also said that it was your story to explain," I said, Sabine giving Ashoka an appreciative nod. "I respect that, so instead of demanding answers before we even get the chance to know each other, I have a different question. As a Mandalorian, what would be your reaction to finding that someone had discovered a source of beskar that wasn''t from<u> Mandalore</u></a> or its moon."


    Sabine''s eyes went wide, and her jaw dropped as I asked my question. Ezra seemed just as surprised as she was, though he clearly didn''t have the same emotional connection to what I had said. After finally recovering, the warrior leaned forward and gave me a hard searching look.


    "I think you''re going to have to start from the beginning."

 Chapter 139

    I stared back at the young woman, studying her face. She seemed earnest, intrigued, and understandably worried about what I was talking about. After a moment, I nodded, satisfied with what I had seen.


    "Luke, could you do me a favor?" I asked, looking at the young Force-sensitive. "There''s a crate in my room, black with our symbol on it. Would you mind grabbing it for me?"


    The young man nodded and stood up, walking out of the Starcallers lounge area. As he left, I turned to focus back on Sabine, who was still watching me closely.


    "So, as Ahsoka probably mentioned, I''m a mage," I explained, reaching out to the side and casting Conjure Familiar, the large, translucent purple tiger appearing in the open space in the middle of the room.


    Sabine and Ezra both jumped when the construct appeared. The latter quickly recovered, while the former went as far as to pull one of her <u>Westar-35s</u></a> and aim it at the construct. Luckily, not only did the Mandalorian have a blazing fast draw speed, but she also had good self-control, as she held her fire, her blaster trained on the construct. After a good fifteen seconds, she slowly pulled her pistol back, sliding it into its holster out of sight. R2, who had been sitting in the corner, had also let out a screech of fear before trailing off into confused warbles and whistles.


    "That¡­ is incredible!" Ezra said, peering intensely at the translucent feline, watching as I ordered it to spin around and sit down. "What is that?"


    "A simple Conjuration spell," I explained, pausing for a moment before banishing the construct. "No real intelligence, just a construct that follows basic orders. This one is a bit more complex¡­"


    I spent a few minutes showing off my magic, conjuring a few more things, and even chilling the table with a quick blast of Frostbite. Eventually, Luke returned, lugging my armor crate out into the lounge. I stood and took it from him, bringing it closer to my seat before putting it down and cracking it open. I pulled out my helmet, passing it to Ezra, who looked at it for a moment before passing it to Sabine. She ran her fingers along the painted metal, looking at it with wide eyes. As she was doing that, I grabbed a couple of metal ingots I had stored inside my armor crate after picking it up from Pola''s workshop. None of them were valuable, which was fine because I just needed to show off my ability.


    "So, I can do magic. What I can do varies a lot, but one specific spell is called Transmutation," I explained, placing the metal bars on the table. "As you can imagine, it takes one thing and turns it into another. Specifically, it takes one metal and turns it into another."


    I pick up a bar of aluminum, then a bar of durasteel. I hand them to Sabine, who reluctantly put my helmet down to accept the ingots. Before she could comment, I reached out, put a finger on each of the ingots, and cast Transmutation. As always, the process was slow, but constantly using the spell had given me a pretty decent grasp of it, meaning it had definitely gotten faster. It was also slightly more efficient, both for mana and for material lost.


    Everyone, even those who knew I had this ability, watched with wide eyes as the bar of durasteel slowly changed to aluminum, losing a slight amount of mass in the process. When the bar was done, I sat back down in my chair.


    "Now, before everyone starts to freak out, there are some harsh limitations. You''ll notice the new aluminum bar is smaller?" I pointed out, people nodding mutely. "That''s from inefficiencies in the conversion process. They also scale with value or worth, meaning if I tried to convert a bar of Durasteel into beskar, I''m likely to get nothing but a few specks of dust. Using precious metals works much better. I''ve found that electrum is just about the closest to equilibrium I''ve gotten to. One bar of electrum for one bar of beskar."


    "You can turn electrum¡­ into beskar?"


    "Technically, I can transmute any pure metal I have a sample of," I pointed out. "It''s just a matter of it being worth my time and effort. Beskar just seemed like a good opportunity."


    "This is¡­ Why show me this?" She asked, her brain still trying to comprehend what she had just witnessed.


    "Because I''m worried about how your people may react," I explained. "I understand beskar is extremely important to your people, and seeing it in other people''s hands seems wrong. I don''t necessarily disagree, considering how it was stolen from you."


    She nodded, following what I was saying. I could see the gears starting to turn in her head as she listened.


    "But as I clearly demonstrated, we aren''t using Mandalorian beskar," I pointed out, tapping my helmet. "Well, technically, there is some Mandalorian armor floating around in ours since I had to get the original sample from an ancient set of armor."


    I reached over and picked up my helmet, choosing to ignore the fact that she clearly wanted to take it back from me.


    "This is not made from your people''s home world. It was not stolen from your people or from the Empire," I explained. "A month ago, this beskar did not exist."


    That seemed to stump her, the armored young woman leaning back in her chair with a frown.


    "Now, the way I see it, there are two likely scenarios. One, a group of Mandalorians finds out about my ability to make beskar that they send a team to kill me to preserve the integrity of their¡­ holy? Sacred? Significant metal."


    "What''s number two?" Ezra asked.


    "A group of Mandalorians track down rumors of beskar, discover my ability, and drag me off the streets so that I can print out more for them," I explained. "Either scenario is unacceptable, obviously, so I want to ask you, a Mandalorian who I could possibly convince to keep it a secret for as long as possible, what you thought and what you think your fellows will do."


    Sabine was silent for a long time, staring down at the two metal bars in her hand. She was clearly still stunned, her brain almost visibly working through what she had just learned. After a full two minutes, she looked up.


    "I don''t think you''re wrong. The likelihood of some clan or group coming after you is not small," She admitted. "Even if you could successfully prove to every Mandalorian you meet that the beskar you use is not from Mandalore or Condcordia, plenty would come after you anyway, to take you out or take you for themselves."


    "What would you suggest we do?" I asked, leaning back in my chair. "I''m not looking to go against any Mandalorians, even if I think we would win."


    "Well¡­ If you hired a group of us to work for you, kept them on the payroll, and had them go on actual missions¡­ That would probably keep a good fraction of the others out of your hair," She responded, frowning slightly as she considered the options. "The general rule for coverts and clans is to stay out of each other''s way. Forming a covert at your base wouldn''t stop everyone, but a big enough group would make them reconsider."


    "...Damn. Yeah, I was hoping for a better solution than that, but it''s better than nothing," I responded, shaking my head. "I''m worried that someone is going to kill a lot of people who have done nothing wrong to get to me. And that I will have to burn a covert to the ground to send the message that there are consequences to doing that."


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Sabine paled at my words, and Ezra looked at me with wide eyes before looking at Ahsoka. I shook my head and explained.


    "I am not a Jedi. I do not have a connection to the Force. Whatever higher standard you may hold yourself to does not apply to me or my people," I explained before glancing at Ahsoka. "Obviously, any children would be left unharmed, as would anyone who surrendered, but considering how young your people train their children for combat and how seriously they take their ''honor"... I''m not sure the offer will make a difference."


    "You¡­ would you really¡­?"


    "Sabine, your people''s history is a sordid, violent, and long affair. You have been on both sides of morality. You''ve been the cause of and the victims of unearned violence," I explained, shaking my head. "Save for a recent and disastrous stint of barely restrained pacifism, your people have always lived by the sword. And if your people come after mine or kill innocents in an attempt to get to me, I will make sure they die by it, too. Don''t get me wrong, I''m not insane. I''m not going to declare a crusade for the actions of a small group of individuals. I will react according to whatever happens."


    She still looked a little spooked, but she nodded in understanding anyway. She slowly slid the bars back to me, which I returned to the crate, along with my helmet.


    "I do like your idea, though," I said. "Any idea who I might be able to recruit?"


    "I¡­"


    "Perhaps you''re asking a bit too much, a bit too fast?" Ahsoka pointed out, putting her hand on my shoulder. "You are spoiled by the Skyforged, Deacon."


    "...Shit, right, fair enough," I said with a wince, rubbing my neck. "We move a bit faster than other people, it seems."


    "It''s fine, I''ll think about it," She responded, seeming to come back to herself slightly. "If I can think of anyone, I will let you know."


    I nodded in acceptance but also made a note to do some research on my own. If I could recruit a small covert, or the remnants of a clan, they would be a solid deterrent as well as a great tool. Plus, we did actually have plenty to offer. Ships, resources, workshops, weapons, and armor, to name a few.


    I also needed to come to terms with working with Mandalorians. I knew for a fact I did not have the patience to deal with the religious ones, the groups that refused to remove their helmets and lived by an outdated, pointlessly strict code. Sure, it was cool in movies and books, but such strict honor-bound societies were ludicrous in real life. I could understand it if they were aliens, because then they could just have a different way of thinking than us. But the majority of Mandalorians were human, meaning they had no real excuse for following such a harsh creed.


    Societies needed to be flexible, and whenever one of them focused predominantly on one thing, it always seemed, to me at least, that they always ended up getting in their own way. I would not tolerate things like honor duels or rites of succession through mortal combat.


    "So¡­ should we talk about what happens next?" Luke asked, looking a bit out of sorts with the current conversation.


    "We are already on course to the planet of origin, where the story says the Jedi and the princess started their blind jump," Ashoka responded. "Once we arrive, we will start triangulating Huyang''s position using Deacon''s magic. Then, we will calculate a jump, get closer, and start again. With any luck, Huyang is where I think he is. If he isn''t¡­ well, we might be forced to put this on hold for some time."


    "Why exactly do you need this ''Professor Huyang?''" Sabine asked. "You know how to make a lightsaber, right? Can''t you just teach them?"


    "Attuning to your lightsaber for the first time is a delicate thing," Ahsoka explained. "Yes, I could absolutely teach you how to do it, but when you can find the expert¡­ why go to the amateur? Beyond that, Professor Huyang would be a valuable asset for us and for future generations. He has thousands of years of history stored in his memory banks and more knowledge about the Jedi''s past than anyone."


    "And you''re sure¡­ he is intact?" Luke asked, hesitant to voice the possibility our target might already be destroyed.


    "He is whole enough to be recognized as himself," I explained, continuing when everyone looked but Ahsoka looked at me in confusion. "My ability to locate things requires familiarity. I''m pretty good at the spell by this point, so a picture and a description of an item are usually enough to direct me. But, if the object or location is so destroyed that it would no longer be identifiable as the original object, say¡­ like a boulder being crushed and spread as gravel, the spell won''t catch. The boulder isn''t the boulder anymore, it''s gravel. If Professor Huyang is in one piece, or even several, the spell will locate him. If he was shredded and melted down, or blasted to pieces and spread over a whole planet, the spell would fail."


    "I gotta say, you using magic is... Freaky" Ezra said, leaning in. "If I couldn''t feel that the Force was completely still, I would accuse you of being some sort of Force witch, but there''s nothing. It''s like watching someone throw a big rock into the pond, cause a huge splash, only for there to be no ripples at all."


    "That''s because it''s not the Force," I explained with a shrug.


    We talked a bit longer about my magic and about our destination. We also attempted to get Ahsoka to retell the story of the Jedi and the Princess in its entirety, but she refused, saying she wouldn''t do it justice. I got the distinct feeling she really enjoyed the story and that she wanted everyone to experience it, if they were going to, in the same way she did.


    After a few hours, we ended up making a meal in the Starcallers kitchen, using some of the fresh ingredients that Ezra and Sabine picked up for us on Lothal. It was simple fair, but the fact that it was fresh meant it was nearly infinitely better than the shelf-stable rations, even the high quality ones.


    If living in this galaxy had done anything for me, it was an appreciation for fresh food.


    Once everyone had eaten, we ended up going our separate ways. The Force-sensitives among us went to the cargo hold to practice and prepare for finding their crystals while Sabine, Claron, and I hung out in the lounge. Sabine demanded that I put on my full armor, and by the end of it, I was chuckling to myself as she was clearly very jealous.


    "It''s insane!" She said, pacing around me, examining the armor from every angle. "The amount of beskar¡­ you have complete coverage!"


    "That''s kind of the point," I responded, pulling off my helmet. "Why go with partial coverage if it just means you might not get shot."


    "Because it''s too expensive," She explained, her exasperation coming through loud and clear. "You''re wearing enough beskar to trade for a large starship. Something big, new, well-armed and tricked out."


    "No expense spared to keep my people safe," I explained with a shrug. "All ground team wear these, and everyone has access to the uniform."


    "Wait, the uniform you and Ahsoka were wearing, that was beskar too?" She asked. "Why?"


    "Because I take care of the people working for me," I explained. "And the beskar was basically free, considering we stole the precious metals we used to make it."


    She shook her head, sitting down with a huff. She glared at me, annoyed at me and her own reaction. Mostly me.


    The laughing probably didn''t help.

 Chapter 140

    <div>


    <div>


    By now, using Clairvoyance to triangulate things from a long distance was old fare for me. Considering that Clairvoyance was also one of the least flashy spells for other people since only I could see the illusion of the arrow or the path, everyone was disappointed when they gathered to watch.


    We did run into an issue rather quickly, though.


    "Uh¡­ Racer, one of our slicer astromechs, he usually helps with this," I sheepishly admitted. "He projects an image of an arrow, uses a manipulator to keep my hand steady, and then I direct them as he rotates the arrow, stopping them when it lines up with mine."


    "And you didn''t think that was important enough to mention?" Sabine asked while Ahsoka shook her head from the pilot''s chair.


    "It completely slipped my mind, alright?" I admitted unhappily. "This whole trip came together in less than twenty-four hours. We were bound to forget something..."


    "Do you think R2 could do it?" Luke asked after a long moment. "He is pretty handy."


    "He would have to be in order to live as long as he has," I said with a chuckle. "Could he create an arrow overlay?"


    It took a couple of minutes of explanation from Luke and me, but eventually R2 understood, and cobbled together a projection program that would work. It was basic since the small droid didn''t have the same kind of skill with programming, but it would work.


    "Have you considered getting him fixed up?" I asked Luke as R2 was working on the program. "He is getting a bit old, but some cleaning, upgrades, and general repairs would probably expand his lifespan by quite a bit. The little guy has been through the wringer."


    "He functions pretty well, I haven''t noticed any issues," He responded with a frown, looking at the diminutive droid.


    "That''s because you''re comparing him to a normal astromech. R2 is at least thirty-five years old," I pointed out. "The fact that he is keeping up with modern astromechs will tell you exactly how many extra upgrades R2 has in him. Have you never sent him to get looked at or anything?"


    "He¡­ never had any issues¡­" He said, now looking at the blue and white droid in a new light. "My- he really upgraded him that much?"


    "I''m pretty sure he did, yeah," I explained before patting his shoulder reassuringly. "When we get back to Omega Station, let Miru take a look at him. She is a genius, and hopefully, by the time we get back, she will have a bit more support working on the ships, meaning she will have more free time."


    He nodded, a bit lost with the idea that R2 might be heavily upgraded by his father. It must have been a similar feeling to the difference between driving the same car your dad did and driving the car your dad built with his own two hands.


    After R2 was done, we began the triangulation process. We made four jumps, which was technically overkill, measuring each one with Clairvoyance. When we were done, R2 plugged into the ship''s computer and calculated a jump. The target was a system that was technically around the area where the lines converged, but with so much deviation, it was impossible to be certain.


    Our first attempt failed, a quick Clairvoyance showing us that we did not have the right system. The system even lacked any hospitable planets, but considering that the story took place hundreds of years ago, it was absolutely possible that a planet could have gone through some sort of ecological disaster in the interim.


    We did another triangulation, and R2 did some more calculations. Then, we jumped again, this time to a closer system, which was again uninhabited. When we arrived, we learned that there was some sort of error in the astronomical data. The galactic map had listed six planets and a debris field for a seventh, forming into an asteroid belt.


    When we arrived, the ship''s sensors painted a clear picture. The system had seven intact planets and one expanding debris field.


    The seventh planet was remarkably Earth-like, with twelve continents and large oceans in between. The continents varied in color, with plenty of green dominating the landscape. It was beautiful and made me feel a bit homesick. I shook it off and focused, however, leaning on Ahsoka''s chair as we all looked down at the blue-green marble.


    "So¡­ a habitable planet, not on publicly available records¡­" I said, pushing off of Ahsoka''s chair to stand up straight. "That kinda sounds like we might have found what we are looking for."


    "I can feel¡­ something," Ahsoka said, looking down at the mystery planet. "Luke?"


    "Yeah, I feel it too," Luke responded, just as fascinated by the blue, green, and brown planet.


    "Like we are about to be ambushed ''something'' or¡­?"


    "No¡­ it''s good. Well, not good¡­ more like alive," She explained. "The planet is alive with the Force."


    "... Ahsoka, I need you to think very carefully before answering this," I said, my eyes wide as I looked down at the planet. "Does the planet feel alive, like it''s vibrant and full of energy, or alive like it''s somehow sentient?"


    "What? Like it''s vibrant and full of- Wait, what do you mean a sentient planet!?" She asked, her eyes wide, turning to look at me. "Deacon, what do you mean by a sentient planet!?"


    "Story for another time, Ahsoka," I said, calming down a bit. I knew about Zonama Sekot, but I couldn''t remember where it was for my life. "Really, not for now. I already said too much."


    Ahsoka gave me a hard look before shaking her head and tapping a few controls on her console, the line of questioning seemingly dropped. I was honestly kind of touched by the display of trust. The idea of a living planet was a mind-boggling one, after all, so to just take my word that we should move on? That meant something.


    I''m sure I would eventually hear quite a few questions about it later, but still.


    "Sensors aren''t picking up anything, but for a planet this dense, that''s not really a surprise," She said, looking back over at me. "If you would?"


    I nodded and cast Clairvoyance, the arrow pointing down to the planet. I couldn''t help but smile and nod.


    "Looks like he is down there," I revealed, Luke pumping his fist from the copilot''s station. "Head down for that continent there, somewhere along the coast, it looks like."


    Ahsoka nodded, and the ship began to descend, going slowly and keeping sensors active. This was an unknown world, wiped off the map and hidden. There were plenty of reasons to be wary and very few to rush. Huyang had been waiting for a while, after all. He could wait a bit longer.


    As Ahsoka was flying, I stepped back into the ship to announce we had found him, and that we were slowly making planetfall. That got a cheer from everyone, the kids jumping out of their seats and jumping around a bit. I couldn''t help but smile at the childish antics. It seemed like Sheora was really good for them, as they had both come out of their shells and were acting like actual children.


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    After making the announcement and celebrating with everyone else, I returned to the cockpit. Ahsoka had pushed the ship into the outer layers of the atmosphere above the continent I had directed her to, and now she needed my magic to guide us down further. Slowly, as we descended, it became clear that our target was not part of the main continent but on an island a considerable distance off the coast. We flew over the ocean, the waves rolling under us, water spraying around from our thrusters and repulsors. As we got closer, Ahsoka once again slowed down, this time to a crawl.


    As we approached, we could see that the island was made up of a massive mountain along one side, made from white and gray stone. A considerable portion of that stone was choked with bright, vibrant greenery, obscuring a significant portion of the island. As we approached, the mountain was facing us, blocking our view of everything else. As Ahsoka guided us around the obstruction, the rest of the island came into view.


    "Holy hell¡­" I muttered.


    The low, flat area of the island was littered with ruins, seemingly carved from the very same stone that made up the mountains. The white-grey stone stood out significantly between the trees and vines that grew around and even through them, visibly cracking great chunks of stone masonry. Several structures seemed to still be intact, while many others were in complete shambles.


    "Look, along the cliff face!" Luke shouted, pointing through the viewport.


    Sure enough, following his finger, we could make out several landing pads built along the side of the cliff, each with a hangar bay cut into the mountain. Vines and other greener clung to the structures, hanging down and probably seriously damaging the integrity. There were several platforms up high, some in the middle, and then, along the bottom of the cliff, where the flatter terrain met the cliff face, six of them were built along the ground. One of them had a vine strangled ship stationed on it, while another was completely cleared, with a much newer, larger, and <u>undamaged ship</u></a> on it.


    "That''s it," Ahsoka said, a smile on her face. "The Crucible."


    "My dad made his lightsaber in that?" Luke asked, peering out of the viewport.


    "Well.. technically, no," Ahsoka responded with a wince. "I don''t actually know if Anakin followed tradition, but even if he did, that''s not the original Crucible. The original crashed during a pirate attack. This is just the replacement."


    "And they named it the same thing, with no numerals?" Luke said, his eyes wide. "Most spacers would refuse to get on that, you know. Terrible luck just copying the name without that."


    "Jedi don''t care much for luck," She responded with a shrug. "There is only the Force."


    Slowly but surely, Ahsoka guided the Starcaller down to one of the ground level landing pads, carefully touching down. Once we had landed, she began shutting down the ship, but I shook my head.


    "Keep it running," I said. "We have plenty of fuel, and I''m not getting stuck here because the ship isn''t ready to launch when we need it."


    She looked at me like I was being paranoid but nodded anyway, restarting the ship and leaving it in low-power mode. Together, we went back to the lounge of the ship, where everyone was getting ready to head out.


    "Alright, so we are pretty sure this is the right place. Ashoka confirmed that a ship not too far from here is, in fact, the ship that Professor Huyang was in charge of," I explained. "That is our first target. I want to clear that, inspect it for travel, and confirm if it''s functional or not before we start investigating the ruins. From there¡­ we¡­ can¡­"


    I trailed off, looking at everyone''s faces, staring back at me as I went over the beginnings of a plan. Ahsoka looked amused, as did Luke, but Ezra and Sabine looked confused. It was Claron and Felia, standing straight and looking eager that really hammered it in.


    "Right, sorry," I said, rubbing the back of my head. "When I started leading the Skyforged, had to rewrite my whole way of thinking to be in charge. Guess that''s hard to let go of. This is a Jedi thing, I''m just here to help, so¡­"


    "No, it was good," Ezra said. "Decisive and well thought out."


    I looked over at Ahsoka, who shrugged and tapped her chest, where the symbol for the Skyforged Vanguard lay over her heart. I let out a long breath before nodding.


    "Well, in that case, we can set up the commando droids to protect the Starcaller, but Felia and Claron, you are staying here," I said. "Does anyone volunteer to stay behind and watch them?"


    "I will," Ezra said, raising his hand. "We can practice our meditation. Besides¡­ I''m not sure I''m in the right headspace for fighting, on the off chance something happens."


    I instinctively reach out and knock on the wood paneling that decorated part of the lounge before nodding in appreciation. Neither Felia or Claron looked happy, but I wasn''t particularly interested in that. What I was interested in was them trying to sneak out and do something cliche. I knelt down in front of them, looking them both in the eyes.


    "Once we are certain the place is safe, we will call you out so you can explore with us," I explained. "If you try to sneak out, I will literally lock you in your rooms until we leave the planet. Understood?"


    Felia, seeming to understand my seriousness, nodded solemnly, while Claron just looked more petulant.


    "Alright, if that''s it, everyone load up. We move in ten."


    Everyone nodded and split up to get ready. Ahsoka and I started unpacking the five BX droids that were stored in some of the Starcaller''s smuggling compartments. I wanted to bring more, but taking more than five would mean losing some of the larger people-safe compartments. Once the droids were activated, I sent them down and out of the ship to do a perimeter check, set up some lights, and start a patrol. I instructed them that I wanted three droids around the ship at all times, but keep a patrol of two walking around. I also warned them that this was not necessarily hostile territory, which activated some of Miru''s more gentle programming.


    The last thing I wanted was them to accidentally shoot someone innocent.


    Once the droids were all set up, I quickly put on my armor, adjusting it and letting it settle on like a second skin. Pola and Vaz really did do an amazing job, especially judging from the jealousy I still felt radiating off of Sabine. When everyone leaving the ship was gathered by the back boarding ramp, I turned and looked around.


    "Marching order is me in the front as the tank, Luke and Ahsoka as flank guards, and Sabine as ranged support between them," I explained. "This guy will be joining us. He can heal anyone that''s injured, so call out if you''re hurt."


    I gesture my hand out and cast Conjure Mage, the construct appearing in a showering wave of Conjuration energy. When everyone stopped staring at it, I nodded.


    "Alright, no time like the present," I said, turning around and walking down the ramp. "Follow me."


    </article>

 Chapter 141

    Stepping out of the Starcaller and onto the island was like stepping out of one world and into a whole separate genre, never mind a new world. The air was wet, humid like a lousy summer day, with the scent of salt air heavy in every breath. While the salt air was nice, almost nostalgic to beach days when I was a kid, the humidity was terrible. I was ecstatic that it faded when I slid on my helmet and its seals engaged. Once my helmet was secure, I had a good look around.


    The landing pad we claimed was mostly clear of plants and vegetation, with only the far corner marred by a collapsing structure built from the same old white and gray stone. However, while the pad was clear, the surrounding space was not, with vines, trees, and other plant growth covering nearly everything.


    "Okay, the first step is finding a path," I said, looking around for a moment before holding my hand out and casting the path version of Clairvoyance.


    The glowing, shimmering trail, focused on getting me to the Crucible, took off along the landing pad, disappearing off to the side. I followed the path, arriving at a tangle of surprisingly thin vines along the perimeter of the platform.


    "We are going to have to get through this," I commented. "Its gonna slow us down a bit, but-"


    As I was talking, Sabine pulled out her lightsaber, but I shook my head and put my hand on her wrist, pushing it down.


    "Let''s not identify ourselves just yet," I said, looking around. "We have no idea who is here or how they would react."


    She nodded reluctantly, tucking her lightsaber just a bit deeper into her belt. I nodded and stepped forward, grabbing one of the vines and giving it a stiff yank. The green vine snapped, clearing a few steps of the path.


    "That¡­ was too easy," Ahsoka stated. "These vines are too thin. Just check out the ones along the walls."


    All of us looked over and immediately realized what she had meant. While the vines along the path were all the width of my thumb or thinner, those crawling over the walls and roofs started at the thickness of my wrist and only got bigger.


    "Maybe these ones are younger?" Luke suggested, and I nodded in agreement.


    "Good guess," I confirmed, stepping deeper along the path and snapping another web of vine. "If I had to guess, this path was probably cleared out frequently until only a couple years ago. Depending on how fast these vines grow."


    Another quick cast of Clairvoyance confirmed this was the right way, so we began the process of reforging the path. It was slow progress, even with how easy the vines were to clear. Worse was having to check Clairvoyance at nearly every intersection since I couldn''t see very far with the mess of vines blocking my view.


    The path itself was some sort of ancient street, paved with broken and crumbling bricks, marked on either side by long broken buildings and structures. It was almost immediately apparent that this had not been a normal city, given the amount of crumbled statues, choked small parks, and drained ponds or pools. In its heyday, this would have been a calming, quiet city, which made sense for a Jedi, even an ancient version of it.


    Occasionally, we stumbled on a small corner or building that was as lightly covered with vines as the path we were following. A few building entrances, which I resisted the urge to explore, as well as some small resting spots, as well as several other paths stemming from ours. The first one we actually stopped at was some sort of large meditation space with a massive tree in the center.


    The tree was notably a different type than the rest we had seen so far, with yellow and brown bark that lazily spiraled up the trunk and pointed hand fan-like leaves on its branches. There were a bunch of saplings growing from the ground around the exterior of the clearing as if the main tree had dropped seeds, and they had flourished whenever they found earth.


    "Deacon!" Ahsoka said excitedly, calling out to me as she first spotted the clearing. "That tree¡­ No, those saplings, too! They are <u>Uneti trees</u></a>!"


    She pulled away from the group, snapping and yanking at the vines as she went. A large circle around the tree, paved with thick dark gray stone, not the usually pale white and gray, had stood the test of time, meaning the space around the massive tree was almost completely cleared. Dotted around that were the saplings, growing in what appeared to have once been flower beds. The once Jedi Padawan stared up at the larger tree, her eyes filled with wonder.


    "What''s a Uneti tree?" I asked as we followed after her, looking up alongside her.


    "It''s a type of Force-sensitive tree," She explained, turning back to look at me, her eyes still wide with excitement. "They are so incredibly rare. They struggle to grow without constant attention or the perfect environment¡­ look at all of them!"


    We looked around, and I couldn''t help but mentally count the saplings growing around the clearing. Eighteen total, with the smallest being only a few feet tall, but the largest being several.


    "Before this, I would have sworn the only known Uneti tree was at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant," She explained, shaking her head. "It''s said that they are native to the planet on which the Jedi Order first formed. They can aid in meditation and calm the weary mind."


    "This alone means that the Empire can never find this place," I said, looking at the rest of the group. "These are a treasure that the next generation of Jedi would benefit from to an incredible degree."


    "Do you think-" Luke started, trailing off just after starting.


    "That the one on Coruscant still exists?" I finished, the teenage Force sensitive nodding in confirmation. "Unlikely, as sad as that is. Even if it could survive being untended¡­ Palpatine took the Jedi Temple as the <u>Imperial Palace</u></a>."


    That fact soured the mood, but Ahsoka, who apparently already knew that, was still smiling as we finally pulled away from the trees and continued to follow the path. We stumbled onto a few more cleared places after that, namely the entrance into a mostly intact building, a path to a good-sized pond, and a clearing that looked like a garden but was completely overrun.


    "Someone really was living here not so long ago," Sabine said as we cut between two collapsed buildings. "I thought we were hunting a droid?"


    "We are¡­ but someone had to be flying the ship, unless you think Professor Huyang took it for himself?" I asked, turning to Ahsoka, who shook her head.


    "No, they learned their lesson when they lost the first Crucible," she explained. "There increased the number of Jedi Knights on board for the Gathering trips. It usually had an escort as well, but they were clones and¡­I don''t know."


    I reached out and took her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. She smiled, though extricated her hand from mine after a moment, studiously focusing on the path ahead.


    We broke through to the second, much larger landing pad a few minutes later. It was just about as clear as the one we landed on, save a corner that had cracked away and collapsed from a knot of tree roots, weakening the foundation.


    Once we were there, it didn''t take long for us to realize that something had gone very, very wrong. There was evidence of laser fire along the hull, with the few weapon emplacements that the ship had destroyed entirely. Its engines were damaged as well, baldy enough that I couldn''t help but wonder how the hell it landed in one piece.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    That wasn''t the most shocking damage, though. That belonged to the boarding ramp, or at least what little remained of it. The ramp had been torn off along the base, the hydraulic struts sheered off, and the whole thing tossed to the side.


    "What the hell did this?" I asked, looking up into the bottom of the ship, the interior looked pretty messed up as well.


    "I don''t know, but I''m starting to feel like finding survivors might be unlikely," Sabine whispered with a frown.


    I didn''t respond but instead continued to look back to where the ramp had been torn free of the ship. After a moment, I turned to look at the two Force-sensitives.


    "Ashoka, Luke, think you can jam the ramp back into place so we can do a proper search of the ship?"


    The two looked at each other and then nodded, stepping closer to the ramp. They both closed their eyes for a long moment, letting out slow, steady breaths. Suddenly, they both opened their eyes, and the ramp began to lift from the ground. They strained and clenched, dragged it across the ground with the Force, before jamming it back into place. I cast Frostbite and dragged the freezing energy along the base of the ramp, creating a thick slab of ice that fused it to the ground.


    "Up and in everyone. Cmon, one at a time," I said before rushing headlong up the ramp.


    Once I was inside, Sabine followed right after me, Luke and Ahsoka following close behind. As Ahsoka stepped into the ship, there was only a few seconds before the ramp snapped free of the ice and collapsed back to the ground.


    "Alright, everyone stay close," I said before casting mage light and walking through the ship.


    Every step of the way, we saw very little save destruction. Panels were dented, displays were smashed, doors caved in, and walls stripped away like someone had tried to pry their way through them. Very little of the ship was fully intact, though I did make a note that the ship had also been stripped clean of anything useful. Food and water reserves were gone, as were parts and pieces of the sonic shower. Equipment, tools, chairs, beds, and padding from various other places had all been stripped down carried away.


    "This¡­ what could have done this?" Ahsoka asked as she easily stepped through a door that was pried open, metal plating bent and ruined. "These aren''t exactly security doors, but the strength needed to do this is still pretty extreme."


    "What about a Force tantrum?" I asked, giving her a look, receiving a wince in return.


    "That¡­ it''s possible, I suppose. Unlikely, but possible," She admitted with a frown. "But the list of people with that amount of power is short, as you probably already know."


    "Maybe, but the dark side-"


    "We would be able to feel it if this was done while enraged, pulling on the dark side," She assured me. "This place would feel a lot different than what it does now."


    " What does it feel like?"


    "Fear, nervousness, anxiety¡­"


    "Great sign," I muttered to myself, shaking my head.


    We continued to explore the ship, finding a lot more of the same. Some areas were mostly undamaged, and it was there that the complete stripping of all resources became really obvious. Specifically an untouched lounge where everything but the piping and wiring had been stripped out, as well as a bedroom that was more of a closet since it was almost entirely bare.


    We also found the spot where whoever had created the feeling Ahsoka and Luke were picking up on had died. There weren''t any bodies, but there was a fair amount of very old, dried blood. It splattered the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, and it was more than enough for me to feel confident in saying the owner did not survive. Ahsoka and Luke felt the same way, simply from feeling through the Force.


    "Okay, this mission just got a bit more urgent," I said with a frown. "I want to get back to the ship, ASAP. Whatever the hell did, this is not playing around."


    "What about Huyang?" Ahsoka asked, and I shook my head.


    "As much as I want to get him back, this drastically shifts the danger levels of this mission," I pointed out. "We need to reconvene, discuss the development, and potentially come up with a new strategy. Maybe even call in some support."


    "Can you at least scan for him?" She asked.


    "... Fine, I will when we get outside," I confirmed before leading us out of the ship.


    After we had all jumped down from the inside of the ship to the landing pad, I led everyone out from under the ship just to be safe. When we were clear, I quickly cast the path-finding version of Clairvoyance. I could feel the magic engage, but before it could latch on to anything, it failed. I frowned and tried again, only to get the same results. Ahsoka, spotting my frown, stepped closer.


    "What''s wrong?" She asked quietly.


    "The path-finding Clairvoyance spell isn''t working," I said with a frown. "But that doesn''t make any sense¡­ unless there is no way to get to where he is?"


    I was mostly talking to myself as I continued, quickly casting the second version of Clairvoyance. Sure enough, the arrow pointed up at a pretty significant angle. I turned to follow it, realizing immediately where it was pointing.


    "Right. According to the spell, Professor Huyang is somewhere up there," I said, pointing towards the cliff face, specifically one of the landing platforms that lead to a hangar bay.


    "Could we fly the Starcaller up there?" Luke suggested, following where I was pointing my finger.


    Sabine opened her mouth to comment, but I bulldozed through.


    "Are you guys serious?" I asked, looking at them with wide eyes. "We can discuss this back on the ship! C''mon, we are double-timing it back before whatever the fuck-"


    I stopped dead, having started to make my way to the path we had come from when a roar echoed over the island. A second, then third, then a half a dozen more joined the distant shouting.


    Some of the newer ones didn''t sound so distant.


    I immediately pulled out my comms and contacted Ezra.


    "Ezra! This is Deacon! I want you to grab a pair of the commando droids and have them help you fly the ship," I said. "I want-"


    "What? Why?" He asked. "We heard that roaring, too, I''m not leaving you guys here alone."


    "Damn right, you aren''t!" I shouted back. "But we found evidence of some sort of creature capable of doing some significant damage to a ship on the Crucible. I want you to take off and put at least fifty meters between you and the ground, so that one of them doesn''t get on board, kill you, the kids and then wreck the only way we have to get off this fucking planet!"


    The frustration of the team having been taking their time when I wanted to immediately head back boiled up a bit, the frustration and annoyance in my voice clearly told Ezra I wasn''t messing around. He gave a quick word of understanding before the comms clicked off. Twenty seconds later, in the distance, the Starcaller rose above the tree and rubble line. Ten seconds later, my comm clicked back on.


    "Okay, fifty meters in the air, the commando droids are on board," Ezra said, sounding calm and ready. "What''s next?"


    "Can you run a scan of the island, looking for people, monsters, anything," I asked.


    "Uh¡­ yeah¡­ I could probably¡­ Oh, got it!"


    I waited patiently for him to respond, a good fifteen seconds going by. All the while, we were making our way around the Crucible, heading back to the path.


    "Uh¡­ well, the good news is, you made the right call having me pull off from the landing pad. There are two of them hanging around in the trees around the pad," He finally said. "Bad news, there''s one by you guys, too."

 Chapter 142

    I looked back at the landing pad where we were currently, quickly realizing there wasn''t nearly enough room for the Starcaller to descend and pick us up. I let out a long string of curses, looking around us one last time before finally responding to Ezra.


    "Fuck, okay, here is the plan! We are going to keep making our way to the first landing pad since there is nowhere else you can land near us," I said, loud enough for everyone to hear. Ahsoka, Sabine, and Luke all shifted as they dropped into defensive stances and watched the treeline. "Get ready to drop down so you can pick us up."


    "You got it," He responded immediately.


    I slid the comms back into the pouch along my belt before flicking my hand out and conjuring a sword. Sabine was a bit startled, but I ignored it.


    "Alright, so we have company," I said, everyone tensing at the news. "If they attack, we need to break through and head to the landing pad. Just keep running. I can keep everyone''s stamina up. We-"


    My following sentence was cut off as whatever had been stalking us finally made an appearance, leaping down from the shadows cast by the broken debris of a nearby building. The <u>large monstrosity</u></a> slammed into the ground hard enough that various piles of rubble and stone shifted and settled around us. It stood on all fours, its feet splayed wide with singularly clawed digits. The massive creature was easily twice as tall as I was, with many times the mass.


    It was also dripping wet, sleek, and finned like some sort of aquatic beast. Two large fins ran down the top of its neck, shifting and moving as it craned its head upwards and let out a bone-rattling roar. Its face appeared to be covered in tendrils and tentacles, but as it let out its bestial cry, it all pulled back to reveal a jaw not dissimilar to a great white shark, with row after row of flesh-rending teeth. Behind the beast was a massive finned tail, flowing back and forth, constantly in motion. This creature was clearly dangerous and most likely came from the oceans that surrounded the island.


    I stepped forward, sword held out at the ready, waiting, the tension in the air only broken by the dripping moisture from the massive behemoth''s body. I could hear two lightsabers ignite behind me, the monster''s eyes flickering to them for a moment.


    Suddenly, with surprising speed, the beast moved, its attention focused on me. Its claws dug furrows into the ground as it lunged forward, its jaws snapping out as it charged at me. Rather than risk testing out the crushing strength of my armor, I jumped backward to avoid the bite, jamming my free hand forward to cast Sparks, the shock energy dancing along its face and, if it even had one, its nose.


    The monster howled and reared back, snapping at the electricity discharging into its face. It was clearly not taking much damage. As it roared and swatted, it became very clear that we would not be able to outrun this thing. It moved too fast and was way too lethal. We needed to kill it quickly, then run back to the ship before any backup arrived.


    While my attack was not doing any damage, it managed to distract the monstrosity long enough for me to get back to my feet and for everyone else to react. Sabine began peppering it with blaster bolts, her Westar-35s releasing yellow bolts of plasma that stitched small craters of burned flash along its face and neck. As she fired, she moved around to my right, staying at range as she strafed.


    Luke and Ashoka moved on either side of me, taking advantage of the distraction Sabine and I were creating to run forward. When they were in range, they used their sabers to slash at the creature''s legs. They struck within seconds of each other, their heated plasma blades cutting along the wet, scaly hide that wrapped around the creature''s limbs. Unfortunately, while it certainly did damage, it was nowhere near the instant limb removal I had been hoping for. Instead, Ahsoka had to dive back to avoid the creature''s jaws, using the Force to jump clear as the beast whirled around to snap at her.


    While Ahsoka managed to dodge the bites, Luke was less successful. As the beast whirled to face the Togruta, it whipped its tail around to strike at Luke. The Force-sensitive managed to click off his lightsaber and raise his arms before the thick, limber appendage struck him. He must have used the Force to cushion the blow, because even when the tail knocked him up into the air, sending him tumbling across the ground, he was only minorly injured. I mentally sent the conjured mage to fix him up before charging forward to take advantage of the new opening the two Force-sensitives had made.


    While snapping at Ashoka and slapping its tail at Luke, the monstrosity had turned mostly to the side, all but presenting its neck to me.


    With a shout, I jabbed out with my conjured sword, stabbing at its neck. Just like for the sabers, the musculature of the beast was too dense to slam my blade to the hilt, but I cut plenty deep to draw blood. I also charged a Lightning Bolt, firing it at the creature''s head as it whipped his head around to see who had attacked it.


    The more powerful lightning spell seemed to affect it much more, blasting off one of its face tentacles and burning away at its jaw. It screamed in pain, and in a surprising display of flexibility, it lashed out at me with its front leg.


    The kick lifted me off my feet, the creature''s claws actually carving shallow slashes in my beskar. I flew over Sabine and hit the ground hard enough for my armor to spark off the stone beneath us. The dual impacts had seriously rattled my brain, and for a moment, all I could do was lay there, dazed and confused. Then, the glow of healing magic wrapped around me, and the cloud of confusion faded just enough for me to concentrate and heal myself.


    As I climbed to my feet, I could see my conjured mage turn from me to focus on casting a healing spell at Luke, who had somehow earned a gash along his chest while I was down. Despite his wound, he was still up with everyone else, engaging the monster but making little progress as the beast snapped and slapped at them. I took a deep breath and called out to everyone.


    "Pull back!" I shouted, everyone taking a second to understand my command before running, jumping, and diving away from the creature.


    Once everyone was clear, I cast one of my powerful spells, the only Expert-level Destruction spell I knew, Unbound Freezing.


    The complicated matrix filled out into my hands, magic weaving as I focused. When the spell was complete, I thrust my hands out, my palms forward. The spell swelled as it was cast, and a beam of freezing Frost energy fired off from my hands in a creaking, angry beam. It was a pale blue with a frosted aura so bright that it was hard to look at. The beam raced across the gap and slammed into the creature''s face, its jaws open as it snapped at Sabine, who was still rolling out of the way.


    Spikes of frozen ice and frost formed around the side of the creature''s face, trailing down as I raked the beam over its body and down its neck. I could feel my Magicka reserves falling as I did my best to control the powerful beam of magic. Finally, after struggling to control it, I managed to focus the powerful and costly spell on one of its injured legs, holding it there as ice encased the limb.


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    The monster screamed and howled, trying to charge me, but by then, its leg was frozen to the ground. It fell forward, and with the sound of crushing ice, its leg shattered three-fourths the way up its leg. The stump was bleeding profusely, the monster howling and screeching in pain at its partially self-inflicted wound. By then, my mana was almost completely gone. I was forced to cut the spell, stumbling back at its final discharge, my hands feeling cold. Despite its obvious injury, the monster still stumbled forward, snapping at me as it angrily roared.


    To keep my distance, I walked backward, pulling out my blaster pistol and quickly opening fire as I did. I fired my weapon as fast as I could, my trusty <u>DC-17 pistol</u></a> dumping blaster bolts as quickly as I could pull the trigger. Sabine joined me, peppering the creature, keeping it pissed and focused on us. It was wounded, stumbling, in severe pain, with every single bit of its attention on us. Seeing the opportunity, Ahsoka and Luke moved in, lightsabers making humming noises as they ran to engage the monster. Ahsoka was first, cutting at its side, causing it to whirl around once again. This time, however, Luke was ready.


    He dove forward to follow the monster, staying by the stump that had once been a dangerous clawed limb. Now, it was just another opening for Luke to take advantage of. The young Force-sensitive slid up, almost under the creature, and stabbed his lightsaber into its belly.


    The effect was instant. The creature panicked and scrambled, trying to escape the range of whatever was attacking his sensitive underside. Unfortunately for it, Luke knew exactly what he was doing, impaling the creature deeper and disemboweling it with a wide slice. He had to jump back to avoid getting absolutely drenched in guts and offal, but he managed.


    The creature roared one last time, the end strangling out into a pathetic whimpering whine. It stumbled to the side a few feet, leaving a trail of blood and worse before its legs gave out, and it collapsed to the ground.


    For a moment, everything was silent. Then, suddenly, two more roars echoed over the city, and then three, four, and more followed after it.


    "Uh, guys! You have more incoming!" Ezra shouted from my comms. "The ones under us took off towards you, and you''ve got three more coming from out to the coast."


    "Fuck! Okay, we need to get back to the ship," I said, now jogging to the path off of the platform. "We can''t fight that many at once!"


    "What about the two coming at us from there?" Sabine asked, still following after me.


    "Better than the three coming from the sea!" I responded. "We might be able to sneak by them if we are lucky!"


    Luke and Ahsoka must have agreed because they quickly followed after me, Sabine following after them. Together, we moved, darting off of the landing pad and back to the broken, clogged streets and alleyways. Ezra kept us updated as the two creatures got closer and closer.


    "They are right on you!" He eventually shouted. "I''m coming to you. The commando droids can use the gunner station to-"


    Before he could finish, monsters landed in the street we were running down, landing side by side, easily tearing the vines around them. They were snarling and snapping already.


    "Negative, Ezra, they are already too close," I responded through the comms. "We will fight them off, maybe use the street to our advantage."


    Even as the two monsters approached, I quickly cast Respite on everyone to get them ready. We were slowly stepping back from the monsters, looking for some sort of opening or advantage, when I spotted something.


    "Ahsoka¡­ left side, high¡­ Do you think you could¡­?"


    Ahsoka followed my directions and looked up, spotting the rather large statue, its headlong fallen but the majority of its mass still standing. It was showing sins of wear, though, with vines cracking and chipping at its base.


    "I-"


    Before she could say anything, a crack resonated through the street. The near eldritch monsters, who had just stepped under the range of the giant statue, froze at the sound, trying to find its source. While they did, the base of the massive statue crumbled as the carved hunk of rock tilted forward. After a long, silent fall, the multi-story work of ancient art slammed down onto the monsters, crushing them instantly. Barely any of the aquatic beasts was still showing, and what was had been squashed through the gaps and cracks of the stone that had killed them.


    "Fuck yeah!" I cheer, pumping a fist and giving Ahsoka a double thumbs-up. "Nicely done, now let-"


    "That wasn''t me," Ahsoka said, looking over at Luke.


    "Uh¡­ not me either," He said, his eyes wide, looking between Ahsoka and I.


    "Maybe it was them," Sabine commented, pointing up to a large chunk of rubble that had previously been hidden by the statue.


    I followed her finger, and sure enough, I could see three figures standing on the rubble. They were far enough away that I couldn''t really see any features, but I could tell one of them was green, one was a human black, and the other was pale.


    "Deacon! I don''t know where they came from, but you''ve got smaller company," Ezra said, coming through my comms. "Two, maybe three people! And you still have three more of those big things coming at you from the coast!"


    "We see them Ezra. Sit tight!"


    The three people dropped down from where they were standing, all of them slowing down at the last second, landing pretty easily. I slowly stepped closer, reaching up to my helmet to pull it off for the first time since we left the ship, letting the humid, salty air in.


    For a long moment, all the humanoids did was watch us closely. After a moment, I got sick of waiting and tucked my helmet under my arm, waving as if to get their attention.


    This seemed to finally break whatever was keeping them back because they finally began to approach. Rather than make them walk the whole way, we moved to meet them halfway.


    "Thank you for your help," I said as they got closer. "We should move, though. Our pilot says we have more of those things incoming. Unless you think we should fight them?


    As they got closer, I finally got a good look at them. The oldest was the pale man, a few inches taller than me, with all-white hair, including a beard. He gave an older, grandfatherly vibe despite the fact that he, as well as the other two, were dressed in crude clothing made from gray and gray-blue leather, probably from the beasts we had just fought. The green one was a Twi''lek male, and the darker-skinned one was a human male.


    "No, fighting them for territory is pointless," The older man said, shaking his head. "They will simply keep coming. We have much to discuss, but we should first relocate to somewhere safe. Would you come with us?"


    I gave Ashoka a look, who was staring at him with wide eyes. Eventually, she noticed me looking and focused on me, nodding in response. I looked back and nodded at the man.


    "Very well, lead the way¡­?"


    "Jedi Knight Casmot Amescoll, at your service."

 Chapter 143

    We followed the Jedi Knight at a pretty good pace, first running along the street for a bit before eventually climbing up a pile of rubble. From there, we moved along a cleared and well-worn path on top of various collapsed buildings.


    As we moved, I contacted Ezra and explained the situation. He was stunned that the man identified himself as a Jedi Knight.


    "At the end of the day, we have the upper hand," I assured him. "As potent as a Jedi is, there''s not much they can do against a bombardment. If things spiral, I will call you in."


    "You want me to shoot a Jedi?" Ezra asked, outrage starting to creep into his voice.


    "Jedi is a four-letter word, not an immutable title, " I explained. "Anyone could call themselves that. Besides, I don''t want to do that any more than you. I just recognize that we might have to anyway."


    "...Understood," Ezra finally responded, a begrudging agreement if I had ever heard one. "Keep me updated."


    I gave him a final confirmation before tucking my comms unit into my belt. Judging by the look the Twi''lek male sent me, he had absolutely heard me the entire conversation. Which was good because a threat only works when someone knows about it.


    After running along the top of the buildings for a reasonable amount of time, all while getting frequent updates about the increasing number of monsters following us from Ezra, we finally reached the base of the mountain. Amescoll led us all into a large opening, a tunnel carved into the stone. Everything was worn from time, with dirt and plants growing into the tunnel for several feet before petering out. Even with all that, the craftsmanship and design of the tunnel were unmistakable, with worn murals and decorations lining the walls.


    After walking a dozen meters or so into the mountain, we arrived at what was, at one point, a turbolift shaft. The internal and external parts of the lift, including the door, were cut up and torn out, haphazardly placed along the side of the tunnel. All of it, including the wall and control panel around the lift shaft, showed signs of being attacked by the monsters, with claw and bite marks covering the metal and even the stone.


    "The ocean dwellers, they cannot climb, at least not very well," Knight Amescoll explained as he leaned into the shaft and whistled loudly. "So we sealed ourselves up high to protect ourselves."


    "Smart," I commented, looking in after the Jedi pulled back. "So how do you get up?"


    Instead of responding, he reached out and grabbed the back of my armor, pulling me out of the doorway and back into the hall. Just in time, too, as a coil of cable slapped into the bottom of the shaft, shooting up a small cloud of dust. A quick look showed that the cable extended upwards into the shaft. Attached to the cable were three old, worn, but still serviceable-looking harnesses.


    "Ah, that answers my question," I( nodded, looking back at Amescoll. "Thanks for the save."


    It took us a while to get everyone up, first sending Sabine and Luke up with the dark-skinned human. After that, Amescoll''s Twi''lek companion went up by themselves. This was done specifically because we didn''t want less than two people down at the base of the shaft alone. Ezra was keeping us updated on the ocean dwellers, as Knight Amescoll called them. They weren''t quite stalking us directly anymore, but there was no way I was going to strand one person by themselves, or even a pair by themselves, while they were still around.


    The ride up to where the turbolift shaft led was surprisingly long, and when we arrived, it was clear why. The cable ran through a pulley system made of pipes, where it was being pulled by a quartet of younger people of three different species. The fact that they looked even younger than the pair traveling with Knight Amescoll told me that something interesting was going on.


    After stepping out of the turbo lift, I helped Ahsoka do the same before finally getting a proper look around. Beyond the people pulling up the cable, I could see that what had once been a decent-sized hanger bay was now a living space for around fifteen people. Along one wall were shelters, clearly built for privacy more than anything. Just inside the entrance of the hangar was a large garden. From where I was, I could spot various food plants growing at several stages.


    Beyond the garden, I could see a few rain catchers set up on the landing platform. Everywhere I looked, I could see cobbled-together furniture made from ship parts and salvaged materials, including tables and chairs using ship chairs, most likely taken from the Crucible. There was even some sort of bird coop tucked into a corner near the hangar opening.


    What really drew my eye, however, was the view beyond that. It seemed that coming up the turbolift shaft had been more disorienting than I had thought, because I had no idea we were facing away from the island, the open hangar overlooking the ocean, hundreds of feet up along the cliff. In the distance, through a thick layer of mist, I could just make out the mainland peeking through.


    "Please, come with me," Amescoll said, snapping my attention away from the incredible view. "We have much to discuss, I think."


    The older man gestured for us to follow him, leading us through the large living space. Almost everyone was watching us, closely keeping track as we crossed the hangar before finally sitting around one of the larger tables tables. Sabine looked a little tense while Luke looked around wildly, clearly fascinated by everything that was happening. Ahsoka had unfortunately retreated into her stoic, impenetrable expression as she tried to come to terms with what was happening.


    "Take a seat if you would like," Amescoll insisted, quickly taking his own seat at the table. "Please excuse everyone''s curiosity. You''re the first new people we have seen in quite some time."


    "Yeah, definitely getting that feeling," I commented, sitting at the table opposite of him, the rest of the team following suit on either side of me.


    Before anyone could talk, an older woman came to the table and set out some cups and a large jug of water. She then kissed Knight Amescolls cheek before walking away. I nearly cheered as they shared a loving, caring look before she left.


    When Amescoll had revealed himself to be a Jedi Knight, I was worried all my progress in getting Luke and Ahsoka to loosen up would be ruined. Now, it looked like I might actually have stumbled onto an ally. I couldn''t help but peek at Ahsoka, almost letting a chuckle out at her stunned face.


    "Before I answer your questions, I would like to ask one of my own," Amescoll said, quickly continuing. "What exactly are you looking for? I assume you followed the will of the Force to find us since this planet doesn''t exist on any records, and anything worthwhile the system may contain was removed as well. I could hardly imagine that you just stumbled upon us, considering the¡­ variety of members."


    The older, graying man seemed to switch between talking to myself and Ahsoka, as if he was unsure who was in command. Normally, at that point, I would say something to subtly inform him, but this was not a Skyforged Operation. After the table was silent for a few seconds, Ahsoka seemed to realize what was going on, so she spoke up.


    "In truth, we are searching for¡­ Professor Huyang," She admitted with a wince. "We did not anticipate living survivors, though looking back, that seems foolish."


    "The Professor? Why?" He responded, now looking genuinely confused.


    "Professor Huyang has unique knowledge of lightsaber construction, and he is a walking encyclopedia of Jedi history," Ahsoka explained. "We lost so much, and the hope was that by recovering him, we could get some of that back."


    "That... Yes, an excellent plan," Amescoll agreed with a smile. "The Professor was always an interesting resource, but if we lost as much as you say, his knowledge would become invaluable."


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    "What happened to you guys?" Luke asked, leaning forward. "How did you end up here?"


    "Ah¡­ I suppose I should explain ourselves¡­" He admitted with a chuckle. "Many years ago, during the day of betrayal, when the Republic turned on us, I was stationed on the Crucible as guide and guardian to the Padawans participating in the Gathering."


    The man gestured to some of the older people hanging around. Now that I could see everyone at once, there were three noticeable age levels throughout the group. The first only had three members, Amescoll, the woman who kissed him, and another older male <u>Rodian</u></a>. Under that was a group of eight people of various races and genders, including the Twi''lek and dark-skinned human that had been with him when we first met. After that, five younger people, teenagers really.


    "When our clone escort turned on us, we were stuck in space for nearly a day as we made our repairs. In the end, that delay saved our lives, as we would have arrived back at Coruscant before receiving Master Obi-Wan''s warning to stay away from the temple," He admitted, shaking his head. "In a way, it was our clone escort that saved us."


    "It wasn''t their fault," I said, the older man looking at me. "The clones were grown with a biological control chip in their brains. On it were orders they could not refuse, including the one to turn on the Jedi. Even the strongest of them all couldn''t fully resist it."


    "And another mystery is solved," he responded with a somber smile. "It does not bring them back, but¡­ I am glad to hear my friends did not willingly turn on us."


    We were quiet for a moment, pouring cups of water and sipping from them as the man mourned for a moment. Eventually, he coughed and continued his story.


    "Anyway, when our patchwork repairs were complete, as complete as they could be at least, we debated where we should go. Some suggested the unknown regions, and some suggested Alderaan or other sympathetic planets. It was Professor Huyang who suggested this planet, taking time to explain its origins. Upon hearing that it was so well protected and already had structures we could live out of, we decided it would be the perfect place to take shelter, at least temporarily. In the end, our ship failed as we landed, so we were forced to remain here, passing time by studying the ruins."


    "What about the monsters?" Sabine asked.


    "The ocean dwellers are a relatively new development," He admitted with a scowl. "When we first arrived, we noticed some sort of field emitter around the perimeter of the island. We assumed it was some sort of protective shield, to keep out floods or large waves. We now believe it was a deterrent for the ocean dwellers. We can''t be sure, but I believe they leave the water to hunt for food during the planet''s humid period, which, from what we have observed, happens on a schedule spanning many years. We arrived during the ''dry season,'' as it were, so they were not here when we arrived."


    "So you escape the Empire, set up camp, and years later, the¡­ ocean dwellers start crawling out of the water?" Sabine confirmed, wincing at the responding nod. "That''s rough."


    "Indeed. We lost a Padawan and a member of the Crucible''s crew when they first came from the water," He explained, shaking his head. "They attempted to take cover inside the ship¡­"


    "We saw the damage," I admitted, shaking my head. "I am sorry for your loss."


    "They are with the Force. We may take solace in that," He responded with a faint smile, pausing before continuing his story. "By a fluke, we learned they were terrible climbers, so we took shelter up here. We have been living up here ever since then."


    "That is an impressive story," I said with a nod. "You should be proud of your survival."


    "Thank you. Some aspects have been more challenging than others," He admitted. "Not knowing what was going on with the rest of the galaxy has been particularly difficult."


    "Well... A lot has happened since Order 66, what you call the Day of Betrayal," Ahsoka explained. "The Empire has been in control since the end of the Clone Wars, but a Rebellion has risen¡­"


    Ahsoka spent about twenty minutes explaining the bullet points of the last twenty or so years. The crowd, who remained at a respectable distance but did nothing to hide that they were all listening, gasped and cheered at the news of the Rebels going strong. The news of Alderaan struck a cord that silenced everyone.


    "We felt it, through the Force," Knight Amescoll responded, shaking his head. "No doubt most Force-sentatives in the galaxy did. It was as if the void was filled with screams for help before everything suddenly went silent. We could all feel that a tragedy had occurred."


    Most of the crowd around us shivered as he recalled the sensation, phantom feelings of loss and horror returning to them. They looked cold despite the repressive heat. A dark part of me wondered if that moment could be used to find more Force-sensitives. It was clearly a feeling that stuck with you, which meant we could ask someone if they remember feeling horrible the day Tarkin gave the order.


    I shook the thought away and continued to listen to Ahsoka''s abridged explanation of the last twenty years, giving a little wave and solute when she mentioned the Skyforged Vanguard. When she was eventually done, Knight Amescoll leaned back, studying all of us.


    "A lot has changed since we landed here, first in voluntary seclusion, then in involuntary stranding," He commented. "This Rebellion, you believe it in?"


    "I have to," Ahsoka responded without hesitation. "I have to believe that under the oppressive regime that Palpatine has created, those who can fight would stand up and protect those who cannot. Even before the destruction of Alderaan, the Empire has committed many crimes, not the least of which is the murder of the Jedi Order."


    The man let out a long breath, nodding in understanding.


    "I do not mourn for the Order," He admitted with a frown. "Here, stranded, surrounded by the ruins of our ancient ancestors, I have had time to reflect on the Order. We all have. I believe the Order was doomed long before the Clone Wars began. No, I don''t mourn it, but I do mourn its members. The innocent, the thousands that were slaughtered."


    Silence once again ruled over the table while Amescoll took a long drink from his mug.


    "I am glad to see at least so many traveling with you, Ahsoka Tano," He eventually said, placing his cup back down. "Are you teaching them the ways of the Force?"


    "I am passing what I know on to Luke," She explained. "With hopes that we will someday find someone more suitable to teach him. Deacon and Sabine''s connection to the Force is too weak to be properly trained."


    "Not that we need it," Sabine insisted, with a slight hint of disappointment in her voice. "I do just fine with my blasters."


    "I would say so. Mandalorians are known for their combat proficiency," He responded with a nod of approval before looking at me. "I suspect you are in the same boat?''


    "In a way, yes, though my armor is better," I explained with a smirk, ignoring Sabine''s growl. "Oh, and my magic."


    "Magic?" He asked with a raised eyebrow, looking over at Ahsoka. "A Force sect?"


    "I''m afraid not," Ahsoka admitted, shaking her head. "As far as I can tell, it is true. What Deacon can do is magic, or at least is as unexplainable as magic would be."


    "Truly?" He asked, not sounding convinced, turning to look at me. "And, would you mind putting on an example so we could see for ourselves?"


    "Of course, I would love to."

 Chapter 144

    I spent half an hour putting on a show for our new friends, demonstrating everything from Conjure Familiar to Grand Healing. I stayed away from my lightning-based spells, considering the connection to the Sith that the Jedi would undoubtedly see. There was a significant chance that Amescoll had seen me using it before as we were fighting the ocean dweller, but there was no reason for me to draw attention to it more than I already had.


    As I was putting on my show, it was interesting to look out into the crowd and see the different reactions from each age group. The teenagers watched with wonder, something new and exciting suddenly being introduced after what must have been years of monotony. The older generation, the Padawans, and most likely the parents of the teenagers were shocked but also excited. They grew up learning the Force was the galaxy''s great mystery, and now they were being introduced to another. Amescoll looked almost lost. His entire life had been dedicated to the Force, and now his worldview was being soundly challenged. The other two members of his age group looked troubled but not wholly lost like Amescoll. I couldn''t be sure, but I assumed that neither of them had a connection to the Force.


    When I settled back down into my seat, I couldn''t help but smirk at Amescolls continued dumbfounded look.


    "I know it''s a lot, but it''s nothing to be worried about," I assured him. "I''m the only one who can use it, so it''s not like you''ll have to deal with many of us. Or any beyond me."


    "I suppose... I suppose I will meditate on this, listen to the will of the Force," Amescoll decided with a nod, almost visibly shifting my magic to "something to worry about later."


    "Right¡­ Listen, I have to ask¡­ do you and your people want to leave?" I asked. "I can imagine that living here is sort of peaceful, but it''s not exactly a five-star resort."


    "That... is a complicated question," Amescoll admitted. "We are relatively safe here, even with the ocean dwellers. The Empire has no idea we are here or even that we exist. That is... a difficult advantage to simply give up."


    "I wouldn''t go as far as saying they don''t know you exist," I said, tempering his statement. "Old Palpy has a hatred for the Jedi that is a full-on obsession. He likely assumes you survived simply because the clones guarding you never checked in."


    "That''s... disturbing to learn," He admitted, a sliver of disquiet passing through his expression before he settled again. "Even so, we have been cut off from the galaxy for far too long. It also sounds as if there are actually people to fight alongside, rather than the Jedi being alone against the horde of the growing Empire."


    Words of agreement were muttered through the crowd, and I nodded in understanding. The early days of the Empire were dark, and anyone who stood up against it was quickly crushed flat under its boot.


    "In that case, I think I have a solution. I want to extend an offer to join the Skyforged Vanguard," I said, surprising both Luke and Ahsoka. "I know your first instinct is to side with the Rebellion, but I think that would be a mistake."


    "And why is that?" The old Jedi Knight asked.


    "Because they will treat you like a high-value military asset," I explained. "They will give you ranks, spread you out around to leadership positions and important assets. You''ll be put in charge of ships, troops, military structures¡­Stop me when this sounds familiar."


    "They would treat us like the Republic did," Amescoll concluded with a deep frown. "They would repeat the errors from the Clone Wars."


    "Exactly," I agreed, glad he could see the issue, before gesturing to Luke. "They are already doing it to Luke here."


    Luke looked startled when his name was mentioned before internalizing what I had said. He frowned and leaned back in his chair. I looked over at him and gave him an apologetic look, the young man giving me an accepting nod in return.


    "He has risen to the occasion, but with just the barest amount of training, they are already heaping command on him," I explained. "He has achieved a lot, including having a primary role in the destruction of the Death Star, but¡­"


    I trailed off, noting that Amescoll was already nodding in agreement. When he focused back on me, he gave me a serious, searching look.


    "And what exactly would joining your people entail?" He asked, locking eyes with me.


    "What are you looking to do?" I responded, surprising the older man. "For a while now, we have been focused on expansion, filling out a fleet, and growing our operations. That will soon transition, however, to a more resource and money-focused direction. Our primary source of income at the moment is raiding Imperial and pirate assets, then selling them to the Rebellion for a steep discount. We also do our fair share of salvage and recovery. Once our growth has stabilized, and we''ve gotten comfortable with each other and our assets, we will most likely start to expand again."


    "And where would we fall in this?" He asked, still looking confused.


    "Anywhere you want," I explained. "Would you like to be a pilot? Or maybe one of your Padawans would like to shadow a ship captain to learn the ropes so that they could maybe get their own ship during our next expansion? Who here does the cooking?"


    It took a few seconds, as they were caught off guard by my question, but eventually, one of the Padawans raised their hands, followed by one of the teenagers after one of their peers nudged them.


    "Well, I''m sure the cooks at our cafeteria would love the help if you would like to continue that," I explained. "Don''t get me wrong, I would love for you to join us on the ground teams, but I wouldn''t demand it. The only requirement I would have for all of you is that you continue your training, at least as far as it takes to learn how to properly center yourself."


    "You would put yourselves at risk for harboring us, even if we choose not to fight?" The older man said, unable to hide his surprise.


    "You''re sentient beings, not robots," I explained with a shrug. "I''m not going to demand you do anything. The Skyforged Vanguard is committed to defeating the Empire, but we are not a military. There''s room for negotiation, and we aren''t just going to designate your role. The Republic should have never forced the Jedi Order into the position it was in. Which, actually, is another reason why you should join us instead of the Rebellion.


    "What do you mean?"


    "If you listen to the Rebel leadership, the first step they want to take after defeating the Empire is to reinstate the Senate and begin demilitarization," I explained with a frown. "They seem to believe that the Empire''s spirit will simply disappear into the void just by planting a flag on Coruscant. They also seem to have forgotten what started the Clone Wars in the first place."


    "That¡­ is absurd!" Knight Amescol said, his eyes wide. "We witnessed firsthand the corruption and decay stagnating in the Senate, and they wish to simply breathe new life into its rotting corpse?! Do they have no idea what it was like watching them pass law after law that crushed and starved the Mid and Outer Rims? At the time, we thought there was nothing we could do, not without tearing down the system, but to work and fight to return to that state? Are they ignorant of their history?"


    "Senator Mon Mothma is the leader of the Rebellion," I responded, answering his question. "She knows very well what the Senate was like. My hope is that by growing in influence and power, the Skyforged can push the Rebellion to reconsider their stance and come up with some sort of solution."


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    "I¡­ I would need some time to discuss this," He said, looking over his shoulder to the rest of his group. "This is... You offered a solution to our dilemma of leaving or not leaving. What was that?"


    "Commuting to work," I responded with a smirk.


    "...I''m afraid I do not follow."


    "We have a relatively secure base of operations, one that is a two or three days long jump from here," I explained. "With some basic security restrictions, we can keep this planet''s location a secret and have you guys involved with our operations. We could even see about getting those field projectors up and running to get rid of the ocean dwellers. Then we can get you some better housing and resources and basically turn this planet into a refuge for any Force-sensitive people we find."


    "Wouldn''t... that be dangerous?" Amescoll asked. "Pulling us all together like that?"


    "With the right security and safeties in place, we can minimize the risk," I assured him. "If Palpy had a way to snap his fingers and divine your location..."


    "We would already be caught," He finishes for me. "So, what, we would be restarting the Order?"


    "No, absolutely not," I stated, shaking my head. "The Jedi Order is dead, and my people will not fund an attempt to rebuild it. This will be something new. Something that grows from the ashes."


    For a long moment, the space was quiet, as what I was suggesting filtered through the small crowd.


    "This... is an incredible offer," He said, chewing the inside of his lip and glancing at the woman who kissed his cheek. "We would need to discuss this before we can come to a decision."


    "That''s fine..." I said with a nod, trailing off. "How about we give you a few days?"


    "That is... probably more than we would require," He admitted, looking at us in confusion.


    "As we mentioned, our original mission was to find Professor Huyang," Ahsoka explained, easily catching onto my intent. "But that was simply the first part. We were also planning on traveling to a location that contains Kyber crystals so that Luke and two others on our ship could locate their own."


    "Ah, I see. You were on your way to perform the Gathering and wanted Professor Huyang to assist," Knight Amnescol said, nodding in understanding. "Very well, we shall await your return. You may take Huyang with you since he requires recharging anyway."


    "Fantastic," I said with a smile. "In exchange, we have some food and other things you might have missed..."


    We discussed the numbers and logistics of getting some supplies off of the Starcaller, as well as loading on a powered-off droid. When we reached a conclusion, one of the Padawans led us to a far corner of the hangar, where several containers were stacked up and tucked away. Together, Ahsoka and I pulled one down and cracked one open. Inside was a torso for a robot, a design I didn''t recognize.


    "Our emergency generators broke when we moved up here," They explained. "So rather than leave him hanging around, susceptible to the weather and accidents, we took him apart and stored him with the other parts."


    "Parts?" I asked, looking confused. "Like other droids?"


    Rather than answer, the Padawan pulled down another box and cracked it open, showing off its contents. I had no idea what I was looking at, but Ahsoka knew instantly.


    "Lightsaber parts," She explained. "I''m glad you saved these, Professor Huyang would have hated to lose his collection."


    "We already expect a talking-to for shoving everything into unlabeled boxes," The Padawan admitted with a wince. "Won''t hear me complaining, though. I miss the old man. He made the first few years bearable, helped teach us a lot of the games we use to pass the time, and helped us¡­ adapt to our new lives."


    The Padawan, who was just about my age, so the title was a bit strange, looked back at the main group, who were huddled around Sabine and Luke as the latter told the story of the Death Star run. Funnily enough, Sabine was listening with just as much interest as the others. I noted that our guide was looking fondly at one of the female Padawans, who was standing behind one of the teenagers, her hands on their shoulders. He excused himself after a minute to join his partner and child.


    Once he was far enough away, I let out a low whistle.


    "I¡­ never imagined we would find survivors," Ahsoka said, shaking her head. "And¡­ They''ve changed so much¡­"


    "Not surprising, to be honest," I responded, shrugging when she looked back at me. "This sort of environment, the trauma they must have gone through, it''s not surprising that things slip and change. Especially without the rigid teaching of the Masters around to reinforce everything."


    "I know¡­ but children?" She asked, chewing her lip. "It flies in the face of everything we were taught."


    "Ahsoka, the Force is in all things, in all life. Doesn''t it make more sense that people who trust the Force, let the Force guide them, would celebrate new life rather than refuse to create it?" I asked. "Attachments are dangerous for Jedi because they have nothing supporting them. Attachments can pull them down into darkness because they have nothing to keep them stable. But look at them."


    I gestured to the small crowd. As we both watched, they talked, laughed, leaned on each other, and whispered in each other''s ears as Sabine told a story I didn''t recognize. They were close, drawn together by trauma and the need to survive. They looked nothing like the Jedi from the Jedi Order.


    "If one of them lost someone, would they really be alone?" I asked softly. "Or does it look like everyone would come together to support them, to keep each other stable and mentally healthy? Attachments don''t put people like them at risk because they have a dozen other attachments anchoring them down. The Jedi had nothing like that. I imagine Yoda would have listened and offered advice if you needed help, but I can''t imagine Mace Windu letting you cry on his shoulder."


    Ahsoka snorted, reaching out and slapping my stomach as she shook her head.


    "No, I can''t imagine him allowing that," She agreed. "I''m¡­ Well, I''m not disagreeing with you. It''s just shocking, that''s all."


    "I''m glad they have adapted," I said. "I feel much better about inviting them to join us, knowing they have."


    "About that. Would you really let them work in the cafeteria?" Ahsoka asked, looking at me with a raised eyebrow. "I think I know you well enough by now to tell when you have a trick up your sleeve."


    "Of course I would let them, I wasn''t lying," I assured her. "But they are, all of them, some level of Force-sensitive, with some training. They won''t ever be satisfied with just working in the cafeteria. They can all feel the Force calling out to them. Most, if not all, of them would answer that call."


    "So you only offered because you knew they would never actually go for it?" She asked.


    "I only offered the base location idea because of that. I would have still warned them about working with the Rebellion and offered them a place to stay until they figured their lives out," I explained. "Any of them that volunteered to join after that, I would have likely accepted."


    "The Rebellion isn''t going to like this," She stated. "They would have wanted access to them. Not to mention this planet as well.:"


    "Well, the Rebellion is going to have to get over it," I responded with a shrug. "I''m not gonna hold back to make them feel better."

 Chapter 145

    Once it was settled that we would be leaving the Jedi survivors behind, Ezra landed the ship on the landing pad outside the hangar. The large pad was probably thousands of years old, and despite looking like it was in decent shape, all of us were worried about it collapsing. So, we took the landing extremely slowly, lowering the ship inch by inch with the help of R2. In the end, we decided to not even fully land but instead set the ship down with the repulsorlifts on, drastically reducing the amount of pressure being put down on the ancient structure.


    Once we were confident everything wasn''t about to collapse, we started shifting things over. We took out a good chunk of our food supplies, some emergency equipment, and several other bits of cargo, handing them over to the Jedi survivors for them to use. We had a pretty good laugh handing out stuff like chocolate and datapads of entertainment. We also offloaded our ship''s emergency medical droid</a>. I wanted them to all get looked at by the droid in case they had some sort of hidden medical issue, or they were asymptomatic carriers of some sort of virus or parasite.


    Once we finished offloading supplies, one of the Jedi Padawans, a female Balsor</a>, helped carry the still boxed-up Professor Huyang into the ship. We stopped once we were inside the cargo area, which was now significantly more empty than before.


    "Thanks for the help," I said, reaching out my hand. "Sorry, but I didn''t catch your name."


    "Padawan Malua Var''Samallo," She responded, reaching out and shaking my hand. "I''ll be honest, however. I had an alternate objective for helping you. I wanted to ask a question."


    I sat on the edge of a crate, gesturing for her to do the same. Once she was settled, she began.


    "Knight Amescoll has been our leader for quite some time," She explained. "Most of us would follow his lead if he denied your invitation, whether to join this Rebellion or to stay here in hiding. My question is, would you allow some of us to leave with you, even if he denies the invitation?"


    "Malua, the first thing I planned on doing if Knight Amescoll refused our invitation would be to inform the rest of you the invitation was to everyone, not just the group," I assured her. "In fact, if he informed me you planned on staying in hiding, the Skyforged Vanguard would make semi-frequent trips here with food and equipment simply to check if anyone had changed their minds."


    Her face softened, an appreciative smile growing on it as I assured her I would make sure everyone who wanted to leave this place could. I didn''t really see that as a problem, as I had gotten the sense that Amescoll wanted better living conditions for his people as well. He might not be desperate to face down the Empire, but I felt like he wanted more freedom.


    "Thank you, I appreciate everything you are doing for us," She said. "You are taking a big risk helping us."


    "Trust me, if the Empire doesn''t already want us dead, they will soon," I assured her. "And don''t think this is all out of the goodness of my heart, though I am happy I can help. Having Force-sensitive, trained people on my side, even if it''s just with the Rebellion, can only be a plus in my mind."


    Pointing out that there were more than just altruistic reasons for helping seemed to help her understand the situation, and she nodded. We chatted a bit more about what she would like to do, and I learned that my offer to get her trained to run a ship or pilot something like a freighter was what had really piqued her interest. After a bit, we left the ship again, and after saying goodbye, I made my way to Ahsoka and Amescoll. They were talking about our mission to find Kyber crystals. The old Jedi Knight mentioned the traditional pilgrimage to Ilum</a>, and Ahsoka couldn''t help but wince.


    "Unfortunately, the Empire has blockaded Ilum heavily," Ahsoka said with a frown. "We assume it is to prevent Jedi and Force-sensitives from accessing Kyber crystals, but in truth, the Rebellion is unable to confirm that. Either way, there is little chance of us making it down to the surface and even less of us surviving the blockade as we leave. We have an alternate location in mind."


    "A separate location?" The man asked, surprised at the idea. "I know Kyber crystals can technically grow in other places, but where would you go that has such a plentiful amount?"


    "I¡­ Think it might be best to keep this location a secret, for now at least," Ahsoka said, beating me to the punch.


    "It''s better this way," I added, stepping forward to stand beside Ahsoka. "The fewer people who know about it, the better. I''m already planning on having people stay in the back when Ahsoka and I land the Starcaller."


    "I see¡­ I suppose that such a precaution is necessary," He admitted with a frown. "Dark times such as these require unfortunate actions."


    "Exactly," I agreed. "With any luck, we could share the info later."


    "I understand. Perhaps, before you leave, we should share a simple meal together? We do not have much, but I believe with the food you have given us, we can afford a large meal."


    Ahsoka and I shared a look before the once-Jedi Padawan nodded in agreement. Word spread that we would be joining them quickly, and we were guided to a table to wait. When dinner was done, everyone congregated in a sitting area. We were served a simple meal of vegetables, meat from a bird of some kind, and a few other simple dishes. It was a bit bland due to the lack of spices, but still good and definitely hearty.


    I couldn''t help but chuckle as many of the younger teens kept looking back at the crates of shelf-stable food we were leaving behind for them. They clearly didn''t get much in the way of variety here, so knowing there were various different foods just a dozen or so feet away must have been nerve-wracking.


    When we finished eating, the group slowly made their way back on board the Starcaller. Ahsoka and I were the last to get on board, stopping at the boarding ramp.


    "We will likely be gone for four or five days," I explained, reaching out to shake Amescoll''s hand. "Should be plenty of time for you to reach your decision."


    "Indeed, that is more than enough time," He agreed with a smile. "Thank you for the gifts in the meantime."


    "Of course, we are happy to share."


    After shaking hands a final time and sharing a few more words, Ahsoka and I climbed back up into the ship, the boarding ramp closing behind us as Amescoll returned inside the hangar. Slowly but surely, the ship lifted off, heading straight up into the sky.


    The trip to Dantooine would take a day and a half, with Ahsoka and I piloting the entire way. Really, that just meant that Ahsoka was piloting, while I kept an eye on the sensors, since flying was not one of my many skills. We considered telling Luke the location of the crystal caves, but he seemed content not to know. He agreed he should learn at some point or if something came up, but in the meantime, he didn''t need the knowledge rattling around in his head.


    Honestly, I think he was just enjoying not having to worry about something for the future.


    As we traveled through hyperspace, Sabine, Luke, and R2 worked on restoring Professor Huyang. Thankfully, whoever disassembled him knew a thing or two about droids, as putting him back together was a relatively simple task. Once he was reassembled, all that was left was to hook him up to a charging port and turn him on.


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    The ancient droid booted up slowly, sitting up straight on the very crate that had held him for years. His eyes slowly lit up a golden yellow as he regained power.


    "Oh, my¡­ Well, that''s an interesting sensation," The strange robot said. "It appears I was without power for so long even my backup chronometers were drained."


    The droid looked around, spotting all of us watching him, eventually settling on Ahsoka. Everyone was excited that he was working, and while I was among them, I was also shocked at the fact that he sounded like David Tennant, of all people.


    "Lady Tano, it is good to see you. I imagine I have you to thank for finding me?" He asked. "Please, tell me the fate of the other survivors."


    "Knight Amescoll and the others are fine," She explained with a smile. "We just left the lost temple and are on our way to¡­ well, we are performing a Gathering."


    "A Gathering? My, that is not what I expected to wake up to," He admitted. "Granted, I wasn''t sure I would ever be powered on again. Nor did I know if I would ever teach anyone how to build a lightsaber again. May I request more information?"


    Ahsoka chuckled and began to fill in the blanks, essentially repeating what she had told Knight Amescoll and the others. It ended with the explanation of my magic, as it had before. Perhaps I should have expected it, but the droid was the most stubborn person I had met yet, at least in terms of insisting my magic was the Force. I assumed it had something to do with his programming and let him believe what he wanted.


    When the general overview was done, the droid seemed happy to be included in another Gathering esque event. He was also remarkably flexible, since none of the people participating in this event were at the right age for the Gathering ceremony.


    "Of course, I will guide everyone in the creation of their lightsabers," He agreed with a nod. "We will need my equipment and parts from our refuge, though I am afraid my selection might not be as varied as it once was."


    "We will figure something out," I assured him. "We have plenty of resources back at Omega Base."


    When we finally landed, it was under the cover of darkness. We landed a considerable distance from the cave entrance, not wanting to attract attention directly to it. Instead, we would walk, crossing several large grassy plains and scaling a few of the stone shelves</a> that seem to populate this area of Dantooine. Because his memory was basically an open book to anyone with sufficient slicing skills, Huyang agreed to delete and overwrite both the trek to and from the cave.


    Now, the rest of the group did get a good look at the planet''s surface, but with none of them ever having been there before and with the features of the planet looking pretty unordinary, the planet''s name and location were still pretty safe. Once we reached the cave entrance, I stopped everyone.


    "Alright. So last time we were here, we had to clear the cave of some nasty big insect things," I explained, using my hands to show how large the monsters had been. "We killed a bunch of them and burned their eggs to make sure they were gone. Unfortunately, there is a chance, however small, that they have come back. If they have and they attack us, Ezra and Huyang, you''re in charge of getting the kids out of the cave. This guy¡­"


    As I talked, I cast Conjure Mage Construct, the ethereal wizard appearing next to Ezra, the ancient droid, and the kids.


    "This guy is going to be following you four, and he will keep you guys alive with healing magic," I continued. "So even if one of you gets injured, as long as he is still around, just focus on retreating. We will follow you out once the trouble is dealt with."


    Ezra and Hyang agreed, the former nodding in understanding, as did Felia and Claron. Once we were all set, we started to descend. I quickly conjured lights, feeding them the barest hint of magicka to keep them going. Everyone else pulled out flashlights, and the cave was soon lit up. It was interesting to watch Huyang deploy multiple arms, each holding large light projectors.


    As we slowly made our way deeper and deeper, I noticed that the corpses of the bugs, which at this point should have been rotten but still around, were gone. I warned everyone of this fact, and while it put us all on edge, it ended up being for no reason, as we made it all the way down to the crystal chamber without issues.


    Just as before, the glow emanating from the deep cavern was visible before the crystals. As we got closer and closer, I slowed down so that everyone else could go in front of me and enjoy the experience properly.


    The cave was still breathtaking, the sizeable cavern lit up by a rainbow of faintly glowing crystals that studded the walls and floor. The crystal growths ranged from the size of my fist to larger than me, and even though a few had been taken by my crew, there were still several dozen of them.


    "Oh¡­ Gods, it''s beautiful," Ahsoka said, scanning the crystal-filled cave with a hanging jaw and wide eyes. "Deacon¡­ how did you find this?"


    "You can thank Revan for that, actually," I explained, both Ahsoka and Huynag quickly turning to look at me, the former with wide eyes. "Or the Jedi Exile. If not for either of them, the knowledge of this place would have died with the masters of the ancient Jedi enclave that used to be located nearby."


    "Deacon, there is so much about that statement that I should demand answers about, but¡­" She trailed off, eyes sparkling with the reflection of the rainbow of crystals around us. "Thank you."


    "Of course."


    Ahsoka, Professor Huyang, Sabine, and I watched as the other members of our temporary groups slowly left the entrance of the large open area, stepping into the space proper. Sabine seemed to notice something was off, as when Ezra pushed past her, his eyes were vacant. She mumbled a curse, as if this was something that happened a lot, before attempting to reach out and shake him. Luckily, Huyang was close enough to snag her hand by the wrist before she did.


    "He is communicating with the Force," The droid explained. "Not entirely uncommon when finding a compatible crystal. In fact¡­"


    The droid gestured to Luke and Felia, both of whom had the same blank expression. We watched as Felia stopped in front of an impressive, deep blue Kyber crystal growth, nearly a foot taller than she was. She stared at it, unmoving, while Luke walked behind her and out of sight behind the central pillar of the room.


    "I knew, in general, that this kind of thing happened," I admitted, watching Ezra approach an orange crystal growth. "But I had no idea it looked so creepy. Did you go through this, Ahsoka?"


    I turned to look at her, only to see her standing in place, her eyes unfocused. I watched as she reached into her pocket and slowly and pulled out the single, large pink crystal.


    "Fascinating¡­ Where did she get that?" Professor Huyang asked, stepping closer and leaning down to study the crystal.


    "I gave it to her," I explained, recognizing the chunk of Kyber. "It''s from here originally, but I gave it to her almost a month ago."


    As we watched, she held her hand up, and the crystal began to float above her palm, slowly spinning in place. For nearly five minutes, she stood there, motionless Finally, she let out a slow breath, and the crystal began to glow. The faint pink coloring shifted, becoming a deeper, more intense shade.


    And yet her eyes were still blank, staring at the crystal, her mind clearly elsewhere.

 Chapter 146 - Interlude - Visions - Ezra and Felia

    In a moment, he was alone.


    Ezra looked around, feeling the familiar warm, soothing, and open sensation of the Force. It reached out to him, almost hesitantly, before latching on, the feelings of warmth suffusing him. He had experienced this before, too many times to count, enough that he had learned to recognize it as well as his own limbs. Of course, that was before his time away, before his time under the heel of Thrawn.


    Now he had new limbs, the gentle embrace of the Force saving him from suffering through that process as well.


    The young Jedi, the young Force-sensitive, let out a breath, releasing the echoes of his time at the hands of the cold, merciless despot into the Force. In truth, despite the horrors that had been done to him, he did not bear the emotional scars one would imagine.


    As they burned his face, he sought shelter in the Force, and it welcomed him with open arms. When they began to slowly destroy his leg, inch by inch, he smiled as the Force had set him free. Every bit of pain and torture that had been piled onto him was nothing, as he was one with the Force, and the Force was everything. How could one feel pain when one was so distant from oneself, so removed.


    He took a deep breath and pulled himself back, focusing on the moment, on the present. He resisted the call to submerge himself again, refusing to be lost on the winds of the Force. Instead, he reached out and felt himself, pulling himself back. The cave materialized around him once more, and he let out a long breath.


    At one point, that would have been a herculean task, centering himself back on his body, pulling away from the oneness he had felt with the Force. When Ahsoka and Sabine had first rescued him, he barely even registered their presence, that he was no longer in his cell. He was one with the Force.


    Everything and everywhere.


    Nowhere.


    It had taken Ahsoka considerable effort to pull him back, to guide his mind back to himself. She had done that not just once but several times, his mind slipping to the flow of the Force, following its currents without even realizing it. Thankfully, eventually, he had learned to pull himself back on his own and even to resist the pull in the first place.


    He still lost himself, as he had just done, but now he would only occasionally mislay a conversation or lose track of time. Sabine was helping with that, having gotten good at spotting an "episode," as she called it. Often, her touch or his name on her lips was all it took to call him back.


    But now he was alone, and the Force reached to him, called to him.


    "It is strange," A man''s voice said from behind him, forcing Ezra to turn around. "I don''t believe I have ever met someone with a connection to the Force like yours."


    The man was older, with short, graying hair and a clean-shaven face. He was wearing simple Jedi robes, his hands folded behind his back. His demeanor was calm and confident, with serene smile on his face even as he studied Ezra.


    "You, more than anyone I have ever met, truly connect with the Force," He said. "You''re not the strongest, nor are you by any means weak. But¡­ you understand. The full spectrum of the Force flows through you. It welcomes you with open arms as you understand its depths. Dark and light. It is¡­ remarkable."


    "Who are you?" Ezra asked, looking around, the cave now completely empty, its sounds muted. "I know this is a vision, but I don''t recognize you."


    "I''m... nobody," He explained with an almost satisfied smile. "A Jedi, old, ancient even. One of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. My name is lost to time, as it should be."


    "Helpful," Ezra commented, looking around at the clusters of crystals around him, trying to figure out which one called to him. "I hardly think I am that special. Plenty of Jedi know the darkness."


    "Oh, of course. I know that better than some," The man admitted, walking past Ezra to touch a white lattice of crystals growing from the wall. "But none seem to connect to it as wholly as you. People have predications to the dark or light, or are sometimes driven to one or the other, either from their own addictions or seemingly by fate. But few can straddle the line, and even fewer accept everything beyond it."


    "Well... Thank you?" He responded, not sure how to react to the unnamed Jedi''s words. "I think I could honestly do with being a bit less unique and special at the moment."


    The man chuckled and nodded. Ezra couldn''t help but feel that he really did understand as well.


    "Being unique is not all it''s cracked up to be," He agreed. "Why do you think I enjoy being nameless?"


    Ezra nodded and began to walk around the chamber, running his fingers over the different colors. The cave was a fantastic rainbow of Kyber crystals, more colors than he had ever known to exist, in various shades.


    "You know¡­ I''ve done this before," Ezra said, looking back at the man, who had somehow followed after him, as soundless as a ghost. "I know how this works. I need to be worthy, I need to prove myself."


    "Maybe," The man responded. "Or maybe the Force just wants to make sure you''re okay."


    Ezra snorted and shook his head.


    "I''m not sure if I''ll ever be okay," He admitted, looking up to the roof of the cave. "I survived, but I''m afraid¡­ I''m afraid I''m not me anymore."


    "How so?"


    "I submerged myself into the Force. I was one with it, completely separated from my body. I was gone for years¡­ but it felt like days. Maybe a week. I lost myself in the Force¡­ embraced it wholeheartedly¡­ I let it in, and I''m not sure I''m me anymore. I''m not sure I can ever be Ezra again."


    "...Names are confusing," The man said after a long pause. "They can describe you, in the same way you use the name of an element to distinguish it from others around it, but they aren''t really you."


    "So, what, I''m not Ezra, that''s just my designation?"


    "Do you still care about Sabine?" The man asked, shifting the subject.


    "Of course!"


    "And Hera? Little Jacen?"


    "Yes!"


    "Do you still live by the lessons of your Master?"


    "I¡­ I try to," Ezra responded. "I try to act in a way that would make him proud."


    "Oh, he is, Ezra," The man said confidently. "He is incredibly proud."


    The pair were silent for a while, exploring the cave more, mainly as an excuse to walk and think. Eventually, the nameless man spoke again.


    "Would you ever abandon those you care about?"


    "Never," Ezra responded without hesitation. "They never abandoned me, and I won''t ever abandon them."


    "Then maybe¡­ you should trust them." The man responded. "They welcome you home with open arms, they take care of you, they do everything they can to help you heal. Do you think that they would just abandon you if your time with Thrawn changed you?"


    "I¡­ No. They would never," He admitted, shaking his head.


    "If they will accept you, then does it matter if you are different?" The man asked. "If your name is still yours, even if it describes you differently from what it did before, does it matter?"


    For a long moment, Ezra was silent, staring at his hands, ignoring the crystals around him. Eventually, he looked up, turning to meet the man''s eyes.


    "No¡­ It doesn''t." Ezra agreed, realization flowing through him, obvious to some but hidden from himself. "They would never leave me. They are my strength, my home. I will always return to them, and they will always support me."


    "Then, Ezra Bridger, it seems like you are still you, even if you have changed."


    Ezra took in a deep breath, feeling the Force swirling around him. It swelled and crashed through him, but he resisted the current. The dreamlike quality of the vision ended, and as he opened his eyes, he found himself standing in front of a grand growth of deep orange Kyber crystals. His fingers were already resting on a singular crystal, and with a gentle tug, it came free, falling into his palm.


    --------------------------


    In a moment, she was no longer alone.


    Felia had stepped down off of the initial rise along the crystal cave entrance, doing her best to seem confident and strong. Part of the act was for her brother, who she knew looked up to her and drew his own confidence from her, while the other was just a natural reaction.


    As she stepped down onto the final foot of the rocky decline, she blinked, and suddenly, she was back on the streets of Foless. She frantically looked around for any signs of her brother, but there were none.


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    She started to run, following the flow of people but using her small size to dodge and weave between them. Claron knew better than to push against the flow of a crowd. It drew too much attention and slowed you down. Whenever he was, he would be forward.


    Eventually, she reached an alleyway, empty save for a <u>single man</u></a> sitting on a crate. He spotted her immediately, and he nodded for her to come closer. She hesitated for a moment before taking a few steps, approaching him, but maintained plenty of distance.


    "Have you seen my brother?" She asked, putting on her best-lost kid pout. "He is younger than me, with short hair the same color as mine?"


    "Yeah, he is safe," He assured her. "Why don''t you have a seat, kid. I think we got a lot to talk about."


    She frowned, not liking the implication. Did this man have Claron? Would he give him back if she talked? He was unarmed, but that didn''t mean much with the difference in size and strength.


    Reluctantly, she stepped further into the surprisingly well-lit alleyway. Her instincts were screaming that this was a trap, but if this man had Claron, that didn''t matter. She would trip whatever trap it took to get her brother back.


    The man snorted at her suspicious, slow walk to the crate he had nodded towards, pushed against the alley''s opposite side. She sat back on it, staring at the man with eyes harder than any child''s should be.


    "Who are you?" Felia asked, her eyes locked on the older man, her lost child routine long gone. "What is going on here? Claron was right beside me¡­"


    "My name is <u>Atton</u></a>," the man responded. "As for what''s going on¡­ you tell me short stuff. This is your vision."


    Felia narrowed her eyes at his response. It was nonsense¡­


    No, something was wrong. Her thoughts felt distant, her memories were faded¡­ but she... She hadn''t been on Foless in weeks. They were¡­


    "We were in the Crystal Cave!" She said, looking around wildly. "What happened? Is this really a vision?"


    Rather than waiting to hear his response, Felia closed her eyes and tried to replicate what Ashoka and Luke had taught her. If she could just focus-


    "Felia! Help!"


    Claron''s voice called from further down the alleyway, and Felia was up, chasing after it before she even registered what the sound. She could tell it was coming from on the street. She just needed to catch up.


    "Hey, Wait! Where are you going?"


    The man, Atton, called out after the young girl, but she ignored him. Why would she trust some random stranger? She had to find her brother! The young orphan made it back to the street, once again weaving between the crowd, trying to catch up to her brother. Just as she was losing hope, she would hear him call out again.


    "Girl, will you slow down?" Atton, who had been following her for a while, called out. "You gotta realize something is going on, right? You''re smarter than this. You and your brother wouldn''t have survived as long as you did if you weren''t."


    "Leave me alone!" She called back. "Why would I listen to some random stranger off the street?"


    "That¡­ you know that''s fair," the man admitted sheepishly. "But this isn''t the street, and I''m not random, though I am a stranger. And more importantly, we both know you wouldn''t trust me even if I was Sheora."


    That got the young girl''s attention. She whirled around at the man, stomping her feet and looking up at him, frustration and anger clear on her face. Her glare was harsh, enough to make the man wince.


    "I trust Sheora!" She shouted, taking an angry step towards the man.


    "Really?" He asked, sounding somber. "Then why do you still barricade the door? Why do you refuse to fall asleep until you can hear that she already has? Why do you hide rations under your bed? Why did you steal that vibroblade?"


    "You don''t know what you''re talking about," She fired back. "You don''t know what it''s like! What Claron and I have had to live through!"


    For a moment, everything was silent, save the echoes of Felia''s shouting. Atton looked sad but said nothing to deny her statement.


    "You''re right." He eventually admitted with a shrug. "But I do know a lot about trust."


    He turned, walking a few feet away before sitting on a bench. For a moment, Felia stood there, watching him. The street, once bustling with a rough and rushed crowd, was now empty, nearly completely silent. No speeders passed, and no distant advertisements played. The illusion had faded, and Claron''s calls had stopped.


    "You and your brother got dealt a bad hand of <u>pazaak</u></a>. But that round is over, and now you''re stuck with a lot of bad habits," He guessed, letting out a chuckle. "I know a thing or two about that as well."


    "How?"


    "I made a lot of mistakes," He explained, shaking his head and looking up at the sky. "Hurt a lot of people. And then I was given a chance to redeem myself. I just had to trust someone."


    "...What do I do?" Felia asked, slowly making her way to sit down on the far end of the bench. "I want to trust them, I do¡­."


    "But it goes against everything you ever learned," He finished, Felia nodding in confirmation. "Short stuff, I wish there was an easy answer. The truth is, that trust doesn''t work the same way people think it does. People like to think that you can trust people until they wrong you, but we both know that that''s not true."


    "Then how does it work?"


    For a long moment, Atton was silent. When he eventually spoke, it was with a faint smile.


    "I''ve broken a fair amount of people''s trust over my life," He explained. "And in turn, I couldn''t trust anyone. It got to the point where it was all I expected from the galaxy. You test people, give them a chance, and when they mess up, even with the tiniest thing, you validate all your misgivings and all your doubts because, well, I guess they couldn''t be trusted anyway, right? And then, one day, I met someone."


    For a moment, Felia felt like they weren''t alone, like someone very kind had just told her it would be okay. The sensation of the presence faded, but the promise of eventually being okay... that lingered.


    "They were¡­ troubled, broken, desperately trying to piece themselves together," He continued. "And yet, somehow, they were a better person than I could ever hope to be. Being kind and good came as naturally as breathing to them. I thought they were weak, so as usual, I put just the tiniest bit of faith in them, expecting them to fail. But they didn''t."


    He reached down and pulled out a lightsaber, rolling it around in his hands, eventually clipping it back to his belt.


    "Every step of the way, when I was sure they would fail, when I was sure that this time they wouldn''t keep their word, they came through," He continued. "I put more and more faith into them after each time, until eventually¡­ I stopped keeping track. There was no reason to anymore. I trusted them."


    He leaned back in his chair, looking out into the empty city, watching a nearby glowing holo ad blink through its list of advertisements. After a moment, he coughed, wiping his face and pointedly looking away.


    "The point is that trust, it''s not some sort of grand declaration. You don''t find someone you like, slap them on the back and say, ''I trust you!''" He explained with a chuckle. "It''s a small thing. You give someone your trust, and they nurture it, they protect it. There''s nothing wrong with not trusting someone immediately. You just need to give them a chance to prove themselves."


    Felia considered his story, his words. They made sense, even to her cynical mind. Eventually, she nodded.


    "I¡­ want to trust Sheora¡­" Felia said, standing up from the bench. "She has never doubted me for a second¡­ she put her life on the line for my brother and I. I¡­ I might not trust her yet¡­ but someday I will."


    "That''s good, short stuff," He encouraged with a nod and a roguish smile. "Sometimes the need for change is the most important thing of actually changing."


    Felia nodded, and for a split second, she blinked. The city around her disappeared, revealing the crystal cave once more. She was standing in front of a deep blue cluster of crystals, her hand already wrapped around a large chunk.


    Gently, she pulled, and the chunk came free¡­ breaking off into two pieces, which she caught, one in each hand.

 Chappter 147 - Interlude - Visions - Luke and Ahsoka

    In a moment, she was gone.


    In the blink of an eye, she went from staring in wonder at the large, crystal-filled cavern, to looking around in confusion at the entrance to a massive structure. Luke and Felia had just started to look around when she suddenly lost herself, somehow getting transported to...


    She whirled, looking back at the large open doorway, spotting the distant setting sun, which cast long shadows across the hall and filled it with an orange glow. Beyond the <u>entrance</u></a>, she could just make out the bases of four large statues, with steps down and out of sight between them. As she turned back, she had to steady herself.


    She was in the <u>Jedi Temple</u></a>. Not as whatever mockery Palpatine had made it into, but as she remembered it. As she remembered it from the last time she had been there.


    "I must admit, while much has changed in decoration, the feel of the Coruscant Temple did not shift in the slightest."


    Ashoka, already thrown off by her location, spun around to face the new voice, her lightsabers in her hands. Standing there, hands held behind her back, was a brown-haired woman. She wore maroon clothing, some sort of light armor, with hanging cloth reminiscent of a rob, but only barely. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, with separate locks of hair that framed her face.


    "Greetings, Ashoka. I believe a welcome back is in order?" She said, her tone solemn and empathetic.


    "What is going on?" Ahsoka asked, finally getting her bearings, looking around with a critical eye.


    "Well, you were standing among Kyber crystals in a wellspring of the Force," The woman pointed out. "Is it that surprising that you might receive a vision of sorts?"


    "But¡­ I wasn''t looking for crystals." The Togruta pointed out. "I already have my lightsaber."


    "True, but they were made for you by another," The nameless woman pointed out. "They had connected to you marginally, but you and I both know it can be so much deeper than what you have."


    "I¡­ I was content with what I had."


    "It seems that the Force disagrees with you," The woman pointed out. "Why else would it bring you here?"


    The woman gestured to the front hall, empty and silent, the atmosphere muted even with the vibrant sunset happening behind her.


    "... Who are you?" Ahsoka asked, standing up straight and, after a moment, taking a step forward, heading deeper into the Temple.


    "My name is not what I would consider important at the moment, but¡­ Well, I suppose there is no reason not to tell you either," she debated before holding out her hand and following beside Ahsoka. "My name is <u>Bastila Shan</u></a>."


    Ahsoka stopped in her tracks, her eyes wide. It took her a moment to find her voice, and when she did it was shaky with disbelief.


    "...Bastila¡­ Shan? The Battle Meditation prodigy? A hero of the Mandalorian War? The-"


    "There were no real heroes in that war," Bastila said, cutting Ahsoka off with a sad shake of her head. "Only victims, casualties, and those whose scars were deeper than skin. I was lucky to make it out alive."


    "I¡­ it''s an honor, I-"


    "Ahsoka, you''ve done quite a few impressive feats in your time. There is no reason to treat me as anything other than a peer," She assured her, giving her a supportive smile. "In fact, in some ways, I believe you have managed to surpass me."


    "I, but... I have so many questions!"


    "And while I may have many of the answers, I am not here to discuss the conflicts I lived through," She said, shaking her head. "I am here for you, to help you."


    "I- I don''t-"


    "Ahsoka Tano, are you truly about to insist, to a vision of the Force, that you do not need help?" The woman asked, a single eyebrow raised. "Surely you jest?"


    Again, Ahsoka was silent, this time in self-reflection, as opposed to shock. Rather than respond, she took a step forward, walking through the empty halls she once called home. Eventually, she spoke again, her voice softer, as if afraid those who once lived in the halls around her might hear.


    "I¡­. I am conflicted," She admitted.


    Bastila was silent, walking beside the orange-skinned humanoid as she traveled down the long hall. The Togruta did not seem to have a particular destination in mind. Just the need to walk.


    "I was raised by the Jedi Code. I was raised to respect the Masters, to follow their word," Ahsoka eventually continued. "I mean, I was never a hardliner, but I thought, for so long, that the will of the Force was the will of the Order."


    "And now?" Bastila asked softly. "After what you have seen and learned?"


    "... I''ve accepted that the Order was misguided in some ways," Ahsoka admitted. "Between their¡­ choices involving my own exile, and what I have learned since then, it is clear to me that the Masters did not have the control over the situation they¡­ pretended to have."


    "Control is often an illusion," Bastila pointed out. "The galaxy is filled with chaos, and it is often contagious. Many don''t realize their own lack of control until the system flips them on their head. "


    Ahsoka nodded in agreement, turning her head to watch as she walked past a mural she remembered sitting under when she was younger.


    "Did you know that I fell to the darkness?" Bastila asked, Ahsoka whipping her head to stare at the Ancient Jedi with wide eyes.


    "You what?" She asked, shocked by the declaration.


    "I was captured by Darth Malak during the fight against the Sith," She explained, and for the first time, her cool exterior cracked just a bit. "For a week, he tortured me, forcing me to succumb to my anger and hate."


    "Did¡­ how¡­?"


    "Revan," She explained, a fond smile on her face. "He declared his love for me, and that''s enough to shock me to my senses."


    "You¡­ were together?" Ahsoka asked.


    "We were more than together, Ahsoka. We were married," She explained, her smile growing. "We even had a child. As you can imagine, the Jedi Council did not like any of that."


    "But, to love like that, to form connections¡­ It goes against everything I- We ever learned!" Ahsoka insisted, having stopped her random wandering again. "The Jedi must refrain from forming attachments, as they can lead to the Dark side. Look at what it did to Anakin!"


    "Many things can lead to the dark side, Ahsoka," Bastilla pointed out gently. "Or do you think that it was my attachments that made my torture so effective? No, my love for Revan and his love for me was what allowed me to shake off the darkness and return to the light. Without that¡­ who knows what could have happened."


    For a long while, the two were silent again, pacing around the interior of the Temple. Eventually, after passing through a meditation chamber, Ahsoka spoke once more.


    "... I am struggling to reconcile my teachings with what I am learning now," She admitted. "Love, attachments, the dangers of the Light¡­ It all flies directly in the face of my upbringing. How do I know what is right and what is wrong if I cannot trust what I was taught? How do I know if I am doing the right thing? How do I know?"


    "You don''t," Bastila responded with a sad, understanding smile. "The Jedi Order... it was built as a solution to the problems of its age. As it grew, and as the ages changed, the Order, both yours and mine, stagnated. The people, the individuals were mostly good, kind people¡­"


    "But¡­"


    "But the institution was¡­ well, not broken, but certainly dysfunctional. It needed to evolve, shift, and change... But it failed to do so," She explained, a pained look on her face as they both passed a window overlooking Coruscant. "Ahsoka, you were taught were absolutes because at the forming of the Order, even before the reforms, absolutes were needed. The ancient Jedi, the ones who were ancient to me, they needed to draw a line in the sand. To stand steadfast and guide the galaxy. That hardline stance only got worse with time."


    For a long moment, the pair was silent, continuing to travel through the Temple. When Bastila continued, it was with a more upbeat, hopeful tone.


    "But now you and your friends, they have the opportunity to shift, to adapt," She explained. "The answer to your question, Ahsoka, you don''t know how, or why, or when. You simply know you must. The rest is up to you and those who walk beside you."


    Ahsoka stared back at the confident woman, her mind racing through what she had said. She wanted to say she was wrong, wanted to pull up her teachings and tell her that they were what they needed, to hide behind the rules, the code, the calm but clean precision that told her what was good and what was bad, what she should do and what she shouldn''t¡­


    Then it all came crashing down. Her knees were weak, and her heart sank. For a moment, she felt like she would collapse, her body feeling weak as the realization finally dawned on her.


    "I''m hiding behind it, aren''t I?" She asked, Bastila smiling at her realization.


    Ahsoka, her mind slowing down, her epiphany clearing her thoughts, finally realized where she was. Somehow, as they walked, they had arrived at the <u>High Council Spire</u></a>. It was impossible, since they had not stepped foot inside of a turbo lift, but Ahsoka did not care. She stepped forward to the center of the room, as if she was addressing the Council themselves.


    "The Jedi were misled, used, manipulated, and betrayed," She said, her face a determined visage. "But that does not mean we were innocent. Our neglect, our¡­ stagnation, it led to a Sith taking over the galaxy. But now¡­ We have an opportunity to change. To learn from our past mistakes."


    As she spoke, the once Jedi Padawan turned to look at each of the seats, almost as if she could see each Master who would have claimed them. She took a moment to gather herself, releasing a long breath before finally speaking back up.


    "For too long, I refused to adapt. I was scared of what might happen if we failed, scared by the fact that we would be setting the rules, making the decisions... meaning the burden of failure would be on our shoulders," The Togruta woman admitted, subconsciously shifting her position to stand firm under the burden she was attempting to claim. "But I will not hide behind it any longer. I will no longer cling to the teaching of the Jedi. Learn from them, yes, but never again will I use them as a shield to cower behind. I will stand by Luke, Ezra, Felia, Amescoll, and his Padawans, and together, we will forge the next step of the Jedi Order, whatever form it may take."


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    For a moment, her voice echoed through the empty space, her words hanging in the air. Finally, she felt a hand on her shoulder, turning to find Bastila standing next to her. The ancient Jedi gave her a nod and a smile before fading away to nothing. In the blink of an eye, Ahsoka was back in the cave. Her feet hadn''t moved, but her hands had, pulling out the pink Kyber crystal Deacon had given her so long ago. It was glowing, floating above her palm as she held it out.


    The crystal was a darker, deeper pink, almost magenta. Before she could say or do anything, though, a faint line appeared along the crystal, glowing slightly before cracking in two, each half the perfect size for their own saber.


    ---------------------


    In a moment, he was lost.


    One second, he was standing in the damp, cold cave, surrounded by wonderful glowing Kyber crystals, and the next, he was standing at the top of a <u>rocky, dry hill</u></a>. The air was dry, almost painfully so, while the mild cold had somehow changed into a dangerous biting chill. A stiff breeze flowed over the mountain, pulling and tugging at his loose clothes, the kind you usually wore when you were in danger of overheating, not freezing to death.


    "Hello!? Anyone there?" He called out, slowly turning in a circle. "Hello? I mean, you no harm¡­ I''m not sure how I got here¡­"


    Nothing but silence greeted him. Not even the echoes responded.


    Cursing under his breath, he reached down to touch his father''s saber, which had become something of a lucky charm, only for his hand to come up with nothing. Not only was his lightsaber gone, but all of the other gear he kept in his pouches were empty, too. Suddenly, he was feeling a lot more vulnerable. Luke cast another look around, trying to pick up any clue as to where he was, before picking a random direction and setting out to walk that way.


    He had barely reached the crest of the surprisingly level, large hill when someone called out to him from behind.


    "If you''re looking for shelter, I suggest you descend. The wind is less biting down low," A woman''s voice said from behind him.


    Luke spun around, turning to see an older woman with white hair, pulled into a loose bun standing there with a small smile. She was dressed in white robes as well, with one hand on her belt and the other on her lightsaber hilt.


    "Hello¡­ my name is Luke," He said, trying to give the woman what he hoped was a friendly smile. "Do you have any idea where we are?"


    The woman gave a short look around before shaking her head and shrugging.


    "I apologize, I don''t recognize this place," She admitted. "But then again, I''m not here for the scenery. I am here for you."


    "For me?" Luke asked, suddenly on the back foot as the woman slowly approached him. "What do you need me for? I''m just some guy, nobody important."


    "Oh, really? Luke Skywalker, Son of Anakin Skywalker, Last of the Jedi, Commander of Rogue Squadron, Hero of the Rebellion," She listed. "Do those perhaps sound familiar?"


    "I sort of wish they didn''t," Luke mumbled before focusing back on the women. "What do you want? Did you bring me here?"


    "No, I had nothing to do with that," She responded honestly. "I am just as stranded as you."


    "Dammit¡­" Luke said, chewing his lip before shaking his head, once again looking around. "If you''re stranded too, let''s try and get our bearings."


    Luke looked around again, taking a moment before he pointed out to an adjacent hill, one separated by a long, stone-filled valley.


    "C''mon, that hill seems to be a bit taller," He correctly pointed out. "If we can climb it, it might give us a better vantage point."


    The hilly, steep mountain did appear to be higher, and if there was anything to see nearby, it was as good as any place to spot it.


    "C''mon, we should stick together until we find a way off this place."


    Luke explained before slowly starting to descend the hill they were currently on. He hopped from boulder to boulder, sliding down in some spots and jumping down in others. He frequently turned around to check on his company, and they were always nearby, despite never seeming to move all that much.


    "So what''s your name?" he called back to the woman as he carefully crawled down a near-vertical face.


    "My name is <u>Meetra</u></a>," She responded simply.


    "It''s nice to meet you, Meetra," Luke responded, stopping on the edge of a large boulder for a break. "Any idea how we got here?"


    "I might have a theory or two," She stated, her voice suddenly closer as she sat down beside the young Jedi in training. "Tell me, what was the last thing you remember?"


    "I¡­ I was with Deacon and Ahsoka¡­" He said with a frown, looking out over the valley, then back up to where they had descended from. "We¡­ We were¡­"


    "In the crystal cave, a natural wellspring of the Force," She prodded, smiling as Luke finally started to connect the dots.


    "Performing a Gathering ceremony, something that can include Force visions," He finished, sagging in relief. "Then this isn''t real, is it?"


    "Oh, it''s real," She assured him. "It''s also happening completely¡­ up here."


    She reached out and tapped his forehead, the young man looking up at her hand as she did.


    "Right¡­ Ahsoka and Deacon mentioned this might happen," He said, frowning slightly as Meetra pulled away. "Ahsoka said to follow the will of the Force, but Deacon just said to do my best and learn what I can. Apparently, it''s not often that the Force reaches out and starts giving advice."


    Meetra chuckled and nodded, Deacon''s words seeming to tickle her fancy.


    "Your friend certainly has a unique perspective on the Force," She admitted, still smiling. "We weren''t sure¡­ Well, I won''t betray his secrets, but he has grown on us over time."


    "He has helped a lot. Both the Rebellion, myself¡­ Even Ahsoka seems to be happier around him," He admitted with a small smile, which dulled slightly as he continued. "I honestly don''t know how he does it."


    "Oh? His magic?" Meetra asked, fully aware of what Luke really meant, but playing along anyway.


    "No. Well, yeah, I would like to know that too. But I meant how he so effortlessly takes command," He explained. "Miru claims that he didn''t like it when they first started, but now he commands an entire mercenary faction, one that''s already growing past forty people."


    "You are a fair hand at leading as well, from what I''ve seen."


    "But I hate it," He explained, shaking his head. "And I''m not getting better! I hate seeing people who I would have considered as friends look at me like I should know what to do! Like I should be respected for¡­"


    "For things you don''t feel you deserve?"


    "Yeah. I mean, sithspit, I''m nineteen! I shouldn''t be leading a whole squadron or have the power to command troops!"


    "And yet, your Rogue Squadron has followed you into danger countless times," Meetra pointed out. "The people you lead respect you, and while some may wonder about your age, they see you as someone who can lead them to victory."


    For a long pause, the two were silent. The white-haired woman seemed content to wait while Luke worked through whatever was on his mind.


    "I know the Rebellion is looking to me to¡­ be a hero, a leader or¡­ A figurehead?" He eventually said, not exactly sure how to put his thoughts into words. "I miss being the kid Tantooine. It''s not that I don''t want to fight the Rebellion¡­"


    "I think I understand. The burden of leadership and responsibility is not an easy one to bear," She agreed, Luke immediately nodding. "Some people, like Deacon, find they have a talent for it, even if it''s not something they enjoy."


    "And for the rest of us?" He asked.


    "Necessity is a hard mistress but rewards those who persevere with wisdom through experience," Meetra explained before simplifying her advice. "Practice makes perfect, Luke. You''re young, and you have been thrust into this position. There is no reason you should feel confident. In fact, I would be more concerned if you did."


    "So that''s it? Just grin and bear it until it doesn''t bother me anymore?"


    "Well, for one thing, you aren''t nearly as bad as you believe yourself to be," She pointed out. "Just now, you were thrust into an unknown situation. Rather than panic or wait for someone to fix the situation for you, you took control and came up with a plan, even engaged someone to collaborate with."


    "I... I suppose that''s true, but-"


    "Luke, you must learn to trust yourself," The older woman insisted, putting her hand on his shoulder. "With that, you would be surprised how quickly you can learn to fill a role you are unfamiliar with. Learn, gain experience, and your confidence in your leadership abilities will grow in time."


    Luke let out a long sigh, seeming to shore up his confidence, before nodding in understanding.


    "I will keep working at it," He assured the ancient Jedi. "I might not enjoy it, but I have a responsibility to the people who have chosen to follow me¡­. I think I will start by asking Deacon for some advice."


    "A sound plan," Meetra suggested. "Perhaps you should consider talking to a few others as well."


    "I will."


    "Good," She said happily, standing up before helping Luke to his feet. "And remember. There are more ways to lead than by direction. Sometimes leading by example is just as effective."


    "Thank you, Meetra," Luke responded, looking around the bleak, stony landscape again. "... So what happens-"


    Before he could finish his sentence, Luke was suddenly back in the cave. For a moment, he panicked, struggling against his new position. Rather than standing at the base floor of the cavern, as he had been, he had squeezed himself into a crevasse, a space he hadn''t remembered crawling into. After a few calming breaths, he looked forward and spotted what he had unknowingly been looking for. Just at the tips of his fingers was a brilliant, deep green Kyber crystal. With a gentle tug, the crystal came free, falling into his hand.

 Chapter 148

    For a moment, it seemed as if time had paused. Ahsoka''s crystal had broken into two perfect chunks, falling into her hand, its internal shine reduced to a low glow. Then, the moment passed, and Ahsoka wobbled slightly as if a wave of great exhaustion had run through her. I had to jump forward, stabilizing her enough to keep her from stumbling down further into the cave.


    "Thank you," She said softly, rubbing her face with her free hand. "I''m okay. There''s just a lot catching up with me. I¡­ I need to sit down."


    I nodded and let her down gently, idly noting that Sabine was already rushing down to Ezra.


    "Go check on Felia," Ahsoka said, and I nodded, making sure she was okay before jumping down further into the cave.


    Felia, it turned out, was fine, having managed to sit down safely on a rock. She smiled as she spotted me, and I cast a quick healing spell on her to make sure everything was okay. Before I could even ask her any questions, she shook her head and pointed behind me. I turned to see what had gotten her attention, letting out a laugh when I realized what I was looking at. Felia appeared to be fine, but Luke, on the other hand, who was only a half dozen or so feet away, needed a bit more help.


    "How did you even get up there?" I asked, scratching my head as I walked closer.


    Luke''s feet were off the ground, and almost his entire body was shoved into a seam that ran along the wall. The gap was barely big enough for Luke to fit into, so much so that he must have had to shove himself in pretty hard to get as deep as he was. Most of his body was inside the crack, save the bottom half of his legs.


    "I don''t know!" Luke said back, his voice muffled slightly. "I could use a hand, though¡­"


    I started clapping, and Luke let out a curse that made me laugh again. Felia was giggling behind me as well, which I imagined didn''t help.


    "Alright, alright. We will get you out," I assured the stuck young man, turning back to the cave.


    "Sabine, if Ezra is okay, I could use a not-exhausted hand here," I called out, getting an affirmative from the young, purple, orange-haired woman a second later.


    After she arrived and recovered from her own laughing, we set to work freeing Luke. Together, we managed to pull Luke from his predicament. We also somehow kept him from falling on his ass on the way out, or worse, onto the deceptively sharp crystal of the nearby Kyber growths. Luke let out a happy half-laugh when he finally had his feet on solid ground and his back against the cave wall. Despite the less-than-glamorous position and the dirt that now stained his clothes and face, he was smiling. He held up his hand, showing an incredibly deep green Kyber crystal, a faint glow still emanating from inside.


    "Nice," I said with a smile. "Well done."


    "Thanks," He said, his smile slowly falling as he looked around. "How is everyone else? Did the... are they waiting for me or¡­?''


    "Everyone is fine, just a bit tired. As far as I can tell, everyone had the same kind of vision you did," I explained. "You all just woke up."


    "Everyone?" Luke asked, looking surprised. "Including you?"


    "No, I mean everyone with a firm connection to the Force," I explained, making my way back to Felia. "Even Ahsoka."


    Luke looked surprised but started to make his way back to the entrance of the cave, Sabine following after. I helped Felia to her feet, after which she showed me her deep blue crystals.


    "I''m sure Ahsoka or Huyang will say this as well, but there is probably a reason you got two," I pointed out to the smiling child as we walked around the cavern''s central pillar. "Ahsoka did as well, after all. It might mean the Force thinks you''ll do well with two blades, either in a dual-saber configuration or as two sabers at once, like Ahsoka."


    "Really?" She asked, looking down at her crystals, which had the same faint glow that Luke''s did, only in blue. "What''s a dual-saber?"


    "It''s a double-bladed lightsaber," I explained, miming its shape with my hands. "A central long staff center with blades extending in either direction. It''s a more sweeping weapon, good for crowd control, but it''s difficult to master. It also had a reputation because of its effectiveness against other lightsaber users."


    As I described the weapon, I could see Felia becoming more and more interested. It was pretty clear I had sparked something inside her, and I could imagine pretty easily just what it was.


    "If that''s what you want, that''s fine," I said, pausing along a growth of green crystals. "But I recommend building two lightsabers that connect in the middle, turning into a dualsaber, rather than one solid build. It will give you more flexibility, plus let you train with the standard saber first before graduating to the dual saber. You should talk to Ahsoka and Huyang as well."


    The young girl, looking equal parts excited and determined, nodded in understanding at my advice. After that, we continued climbing to the entrance, stopping at the rest of the group. Ahsoka, who had recovered from her vision, gave me a small smile and a look before focusing back on her conversation with Ezra. The young Force-sensitive was showing off an interesting orange crystal.


    "Alright, is everyone ready?" I asked, clapping my hands together to get everyone''s attention. "I know that you guys are probably a little tired, but the less time we spend down here, the less likely it is to get found."


    People nodded in agreement, and together, we slowly made our way out of the cavern and up through the cave system. At some point, Ahsoka stopped us, pausing to put her hand along a large rock foundation.


    "Luke, Ezra¡­ give me a hand with this," She said, calling both of the men closer.


    They spent a minute whispering to each other before all three of them took more anchored stances, lowering themselves and reaching out with their hands. The air seemed to flutter with pressure before a massive chunk of stone, which I hadn''t even realized wasn''t attached to the rest of the cave, shifted to the side. It took a few minutes, but the three of them managed to almost completely block the cave. There was still some clearance along the ceiling, but to the unknowing eye, it simply looked like a normal indent. The cave, which had been at a natural narrowing point, now looked like it was ending naturally.


    With some lights and a ladder, we would be able to crawl over the massive stone, but any wandering people would most likely assume that that was where the cave ended.


    "Well done," I said, slapping Luke''s shoulder and giving Ahsoka a nod. "That should discourage casual spelunkers."


    "I think it''s the best we will be able to get for now," Ahsoka said with a frown. "Likely the best we will get until the Empire is defeated, and we can station a guard force here or something."


    "It should do. And if it doesn''t, I''ll find a new source," I assured the once Jedi Padawan. "It would suck to lose this, but there will always be more."


    She reluctantly nodded, and after another minute or so of recovery, we continued to make our way out of the caves. I was still partially anticipating an ambush by those nasty bug things that attacked us last time, but nothing came up.


    We made quick work of the trip back to the ship, making our way back on board the Starcaller. It was decided that since Ahsoka had been through the vision and was still feeling a bit out of it, we would leave to head back to the ancient Jedi Temple in the morning. Almost everyone, myself included, headed directly for bed.


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    Leaving Dantooine and traveling back to the ancient Jedi Temple was mostly uneventful. Ahsoka once again flew the ship off the planet so that no one else could know where we had been. It wasn''t that I didn''t trust everyone, as I was intimately aware of the fact that I was essentially riding in a ship full of main characters who could all handle themselves. Even Claron and Felia had survived years on the streets, doing relatively well despite their disadvantages. Unfortunately, I was just as keenly aware that the more people who knew a secret, the weaker it was. Thankfully, nobody disagreed.


    The trip back through hyperspace was passed mainly by Huyang giving lessons on lightsaber assembly. There was a particular process involved, a method of influencing the construction, of feeling how the parts should fit together and how everything melded and worked as one. Yes, someone with the right skill could put one together clinically, with only minor use of the Force for guidance. However, if a padawan wanted to create their own weapon, something that was connected to them, that was an extension of their limbs, then that required something a bit more.


    Ahsoka rather embarrassingly admitted she had forgotten how much of a difference it was having a crystal that was bonded to herself. She had disassembled her previous white blades, pulled out the old crystals, and reassembled them with her new ones as a demonstration. She had followed Huyang''s instructions, and when igniting them for the first time, she had stared at her blades with a look of wonder. The blades were a <u>deep magenta</u></a>, with a lighter <u>electric pink</u></a> center.


    By the time we arrived at the ancient Jedi temple, everyone was itching to assemble their lightsaber. Unfortunately, they would have to wait until we got back to Omega Station at least, maybe longer, since there was no guarantee we would have the right parts.


    We arrived back at the temple ruins with little fanfare. The landing was simple, if a bit nerve-wracking, since we still weren''t sure if the suspended cliff-side platform could hold us. Rather than risk it, we did the same thing as before, with the ship hovering in place just above the platform. Once "landed," Ahsoka and I made our way out of the ship while everyone else stayed on board. Knight Amescol, as well as several others, were waiting for us as we descended the boarding ramp. Part of me wondered if they had felt our approach through the Force or if they had just spotted us as we descended from space.


    "It''s good to see you both again," The older Jedi greeted us with a smile, reaching out to shake Ahsoka''s hand first, then mine. "Was your Gathering successful?"


    "It was," Ahsoka explained with a smile, her hand unconsciously touching one of her sabers. "The Force was¡­ unusually forthcoming. Even I was able to find a new crystal, although under different circumstances."


    "Interesting," He responded. "I would love to hear more, if you''re willing to share?"


    "I¡­ suppose we could take a moment," She said after a pause to consider.


    Knight Amescoll led us back into the hangar, sitting down around the same table where we had shared a meal days before. A crowd quickly formed as Ahsoka nervously talked about her experience, leaving a lot of it out. Thankfully, Knight Amescoll and his people seemed to understand that it was personal and didn''t push.


    "To receive a vision of Bastila Shan¡­" He said once she was done, looking at Ahsoka with renewed respect. "Truly, we can expect great things from you, Ahsoka. I believe quite a few Jedi Masters are regretting their actions, even as they are one with the Force."


    "It was¡­ surprising," She admitted. "I am still in shock."


    "She was the perfect person to deliver a message of change," I pointed out. "In her early years, Bastila was a hardline follower of the Jedi Council of her time. But as she grew older, she realized their flaws and began to chafe at her leash, so to speak. It was Revan, however, who really convinced her that change was needed or that the Jedi Council was just as flawed as any group of sentient leaders."


    "I believe that neatly brings us to our decision," Knight Amescoll said, casting a look at several of the people around us. "We debated your offer, as well as your offer for you to take us off the planet so we may join the Rebellion. It was your fears and certainty that we not repeat the same mistakes of our past that won us over. The time of the Old Republic and the old Jedi Order is over. Now, we must change and evolve into something new, something better. We wish to work alongside and with the Skyforged Vanguard. As long as your people are fighting against the Empire and against those who would harm innocents, we will join you."


    Silently, I stood, Knight Amescoll following suit a second later. I walked closer and stuck out my hand.


    "In that case, Amescoll, allow me to welcome you, and any who wish to join, to the Skyforged Vanguard," I said with a smile. "Things are a little hectic at the moment, but I''m hoping that together, we can make a big difference."


    We chatted a bit more about what their joining meant and what exactly would happen next. I assured them that we would rush out a delivery of portable structures, more supplies, and some heavy weapons to potentially deal with the ocean dwellers. They could block up the lift access and turn some more of the hangars into living space. We would also be sending them at least one ship, something capable of carrying everyone off the planet if need be. Mentally, I kicked myself for selling the pirate freighter from the last mission to the Rebellion.


    Eventually, we could work on getting the entire island safe, but that was for later. Once the island was a bit more comfortable to live on, we could use it as a refuge and training area for Force-sensitives. I had a feeling that Felia would want to stay close to Ahsoka, but something told me Ezra was already thinking about returning at some point soon.


    Once we were done talking about that, Amescoll brought up something I hadn''t considered.


    "While we have joined you, I still think it''s only right that I at least meet with the Rebellion," He explained. "I¡­ would like to see it with my own eyes and explain why we have decided to work with the Skyforged rather than them."


    "That¡­ is probably a good idea," I admitted, Ahsoka nodding from beside me. "I take it that means you will be coming with us?"


    "Yes, at least at first. I would like to see the station you speak of, as well as talk to the Rebellion," He explained. "I don''t want to stay away long¡­ I have long since started considering this place my home, and I would hate to stay away long."


    "You can ride back with the ship we plan on buying for you," I suggested, getting a nod of agreement from Amescoll.


    After another thirty minutes of talking and discussing, Amescoll, his wife, and two of the older Padawans, including Malua Var''Samallo, would be coming with us. Once we had everything set up, we would start considering a more routine rotation for the Jedi.


    Amescoll promised a swift return, and his people said a final goodbye. After that, we promptly returned to the ship, and Ahsoka and Luke set a course home to Omega Station.

 Chapter 149

    When we arrived back at Omega station, I barely had time to see Ahsoka and everyone else off the ship before Tatnia pulled me away. I didn''t mind leaving the Jedi, both the new and old friends, in the care of Ahsoka, since I could trust her to keep everyone together and guide them around. I was a little upset that I missed everyone making their sabers, however.


    Still, I knew that I was needed elsewhere, so I didn''t complain. As Tatnia practically dragged me through the station, heading for the large blocks of sleeping quarters, she gave me a brief overview of what the team had been up to while I was gone.


    As planned, their first trip from the station to seek out new recruits was focused on repair and engineering staff. They cleared out most of the Chariot''s cargo so they could set up temporary beds and sleeping quarters before heading off into the Mid and Outer Rim. There, they were decently successful, securing thirteen new recruits, all of them with at least some experience working on starships.


    They had even gotten lucky and found a more experienced repair specialist, a <u>Sullustan</u></a> woman by the name of Orbor Fakkiv. She had previously worked as a lead manager in a repair yard, where she was replaced by a human when one of the higher-ups started to lean into more Imperial ideas. Miru happily handed the more experienced adult her control of the repair staff, keeping her position as lead engineer but letting her manage the actual repair process.


    The new workers, as well as a new batch of fifteen repair droids, descended on the Whale Shark and the Nautilus, the newly named <u>CR70 Corvette</u></a>. First, they went over both ships with a toothcomb, repairing and cleaning it out. While that was happening, Miru spent six hundred and eighty thousand credits on upgrades and enhancements for both ships, focused on getting both of them up to our standards. The Whale Shark now had significantly improved shields and several more point-defense weapons, as well as an improved energy system.


    It also had its computer systems significantly upgraded, cutting its crew size down from around a hundred, all the way down to thirty, with a minimum of fifteen. That didn''t include the pilots for its two squadrons of <u>V-Wing</u></a> starfighters and two gunship variations of the <u>LAAT/i</u></a>. They were in the final stages of installing the computer systems when we landed.


    The upgrades to the Nautilus were still ongoing, as it was getting a significant overhaul. Apparently, there existed a prepackaged upgrade for the CR70, called the <u>c20 retrofit</u></a>, and while it was designed to bring the CR70 up to the specs of a <u>CR90</u></a>, Miru was not satisfied with just that. She managed to wrangle the majority of a c20 retrofit, as well as an even larger upgrade to its shields and power cores. To make up for the high cost, she sold a good chunk of the old parts to the Rebellion, who happily snatched them up.


    The Nautilus also received some computer upgrades, reducing its crew size to a manageable fifteen.


    While all this was going on, Tatnia left once again to pick up more crew, this time returning with pilots for our starfighters. Again, they didn''t find the best of the best, but apparently, the clone pilots were already working them into shape, getting them into the acceptable or even skilled range. I definitely wanted to work on getting them some dexterity-enhancing enchantments to really bump them up.


    While Miru and her new crew of workers got busy with the ships, and later, the clones began training their new recruits, Tatnia and Nal once again headed out, this time in search of a crew for our new ships. This time, they got incredibly lucky, managing to find a whole crew and their captain. Apparently, a security group on a nearby system was downsizing, selling a ship, and letting go all of the crew. Tatnia was too late to snag the ship, but just in time to hire the entire crew from it, returning to Omega Station with forty-seven people, almost all of them from the same crew.


    The captain, a Corellian by the name of Pella Irsee, was an older man with nearly thirty years of experience captaining ships of various sizes. Just him alone would have been an incredible addition to the team, but the fact that he came with an experienced crew was fantastic. His second in command would be stationed on the Whale Shark, as would a chunk of his crew, while the remainder would be on board the Nautilus. We now had both ships fully staffed with an experienced crew and talented Captains.


    In total, there were now just over a hundred and twenty members of the Skyforged Vanguard, with around forty of them being clones. And now it was my responsibility to make sure none of them were going to betray us.


    The process of interviewing each and every one of them started at the quarters, knocking on doors and interviewing each of them while they were under the effects of Calm. When that was done, we moved around to the various hangar bays and other locations, Tatnia keeping track of who we had gotten to with a datapad. Even with the Calm spell to simplify the process, it still took the rest of the day. We finally finished in time to get some dinner and head to bed.


    The next day, I spent more time meeting with the new team members, getting to know them, answering a lot of questions about magic, and discussing the new developments with the Jedi. Thankfully, both Tatnia and Nal saw the value in having an uncharted and relatively safe planet in our pockets, as well as the value of having Jedi, or at least Force-sensitives, on our side. By the first morning, we had already sent the Staggered Bantha out with a list of supplies and equipment to purchase and bring back to the station. We also discussed where we could get our hands on an appropriate starship to leave on the island.


    I was also happy to see what the Ahsoka and the crew had whipped up with Professor Huyangs''s help, as well as Miru''s help with the parts. Luke and Ezra both constructed singular lightsabers, green and orange, respectively. Luke''s was simple, with a body that looked like his father''s but had the same flared emitter nozzle that Obi-wan''s final lightsaber had. Ezra''s looked simple as well, and his Emitter nozzle was somehow connected to his sadly passed master, General Syndulla''s husband. Felia''s saber was by far the most interesting, as the young woman basically followed my recommendation exactly. She created a dual-saber that could split across the middle to become two single-blade weapons. Both Ahsoka and Huyang had recommended she go with a normal blade like Luke and Ezra, but she had stuck true and finally convinced them to help by promising to learn the single blade first before starting to learn a dual saber style.


    The next few days after that was spent getting everyone settled, continuing to meet and integrate my new crew, and still explaining the whole magic thing. Knight Amescoll and his Padawans left on the Staggered Bantha, first to a Mid Rim planet to pick up a newly purchased transport ship, a <u>Maka-Eekai L4000 light transport</u></a>. It was a bit old, but the previous owner updated it to keep up with the times. Plus, it was modified with more passenger space, better engines, and improved shields, which was basically exactly what we were looking for.


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    Once they had the ship, they would return to that station for an inspection before leaving to visit Alpha Base. I was very much not looking forward to that meeting, so I was happy to find Knight Amescoll was fine with making the trip by himself. I knew that quite a few people in the Rebellion would react quite poorly to a new group of Jedi not siding with them. With any luck, though, between that and what Amescoll had to say, it would knock some sense into the ones who were a problem.


    Meanwhile, the Intervention and the Loyal Hound returned from their most recent mercenary job, clearing out a gang on a Mid Rim planet. Between that and their first job, taking down a small-time warlord that threatened a minor settlement in the Outer Rim planet, they made a hundred thousand credits. That included the bounty and the weapons, food, and vehicles that were sold to the Rebellion afterward.


    It was a bit low, but they were specifically taking it easy since they were down to only one ground team while everyone was split up.


    Speaking of the Rebellion, Sheora had moved to the station as our permanent liaison. After a happy reuniting with Claron and Felia, she outlined her role and informed us that the Rebellion was getting close to finding us an appropriate precious metal heist, as well as more CIS targets. I had been nervous that we would have been dragged off to one or more of those immediately after arriving home, especially since I had already promised Ahsoka that our attention would focus on Grakkus the Hutt. Thankfully, we had some time.


    In total, a full week passed before we finally began to discuss the concept of raiding the Jedi-obsessed Hutt. By then, Knight Amescoll and his padawans had left for Alpha Base, and Luke had rejoined Rogue Squadron. At that point, I could tell that Ahsoka was beginning to get antsy. The Intervention, Whale Shark, and Nautilus had all left to clear out a pirate nest bounty, leaving the Chariot and the Loyal Hound on duty to participate. The clone ground team was transferred over to the Intervention, while we planned on taking Commando and B2 battle droids as our back up.


    Basically, we sent the heavy hitters out to work since they all needed more experience, and there was no way they were breaking into the Hutt-controlled moon with brute force. Sure, it was a Hutt planet rife with crime, but the Hutt Cartel had plenty of ships with which to defend itself. A brute force attack would have most certainly ended with us overwhelmed.


    That meant it was time to sit everyone down and start planning our attack.


    "Grakkus lives in a palace, heavily defended," Nal explained, having started researching the location when I mentioned it to him a few days after we returned. "Also controls Hutta Town, which surrounds his palace. The worst kind of city, filled with danger."


    He turned on a rotating holoprojector of the palace, which showed a fair bit of the city as well.


    "Also, no way to know where the potential vault is," He added with a frown.


    "It would need to be deep and protected," I explained. "Not just from thieves, but from the environment. He wouldn''t let the smog that Nar Shaddaa calls an atmosphere touch his precious stuff."


    "So we have to break into a fortress palace, find the vault, load up on goods, and then escape with those goods, all before a Hutt can catch on and track us down?" Julus asked as he sat beside Tatnia. "That sounds a bit crazy, even for us..."


    "It is," I agreed. "I don''t think there is much in terms of ground forces they could throw at us that would take us down. We are too well-armored and skilled for that to happen. However, in his palace, we are at his mercy. They could slam the doors on us or set off traps that neutralize us. Plus, if he calls in the reinforcements, and that includes ships above a certain size, we are going to be stranded."


    "Well...once you are inside, Racer can handle security," Miru assured us. "I may have upgraded his systems a bit more with some stuff I got from the Rebels. He can get you through, but¡­"


    "We still need to get in and out," I finished. "with all of the artifacts we want to grab. Without getting stranded by whatever ships GRakkus can call in."


    "I know how to get us in," Ahsoka said, looking at Nal. "How difficult would it be to tease him with Jedi artifacts?"


    "I managed to locate his intermediaries," Nal responded. "They would purchase the artifacts, not Grakkus."


    "What if it was something big?" I asked. "Something potentially fragile that could break if we shifted it around too much?"


    "I¡­ do not know," Nal admitted. "The intermediaries make no distinction for size."


    "We would still need to present something real," Tatnia pointed out. "They would be able to sniff out a fake a mile away.


    "Then it''s a good thing we have a whole island filled with genuine Jedi artifacts," Ahsoka said with a smirk. "If we have enough, we might even be able to grab his attention and secure a meeting."


    "There is a chance we would have to give up the artifacts, especially the smaller ones," Tatnia pointed out, looking at Ashoka with a raised eyebrow. "Are you okay with that?"


    "Statues and random carvings¡­ they don''t mean anything to me," Ahsoka explained, shaking her head. "Especially not from the ancient Jedi. I''m more concerned¡­ I''m more concerned about Holocrons and the remains, if there are any. A Holocron is¡­ well, it''s a combination of a diary, a last testament, and a biography, all wrapped into a semi-intelligent facsimile of the Jedi who constructed it. It is an incredibly personal thing, and to know that one Hutt is hoarding them away in a vault somewhere on Nar Shaddaa¡­ it''s disgusting. We also¡­"


    She paused for a moment, letting out a deep breath before nodding.


    "We also have another decent bargaining chip¡­ Me," She said. I opened my mouth to respond, but she put her hand on my leg to stop me. "A live Jedi, especially one who made the newsreels like I did during the Clone Wars, would be a solid way to draw him into a trap. I''m not saying it has to be our first choice, but we should keep it in mind."


    I frowned at the idea of using her as bait or as a bargaining chip, but a look from the Togruta got me to nod reluctantly. She was more than capable of taking care of herself, and I could still do plenty to keep us from being forced to resort to that sort of measure anyway.


    "Okay, so let''s say selling Gakkus Jedi artifacts is our in," I started. "That also means finding the vault will be easy since I can scan for those artifacts with Clairvoyance. We still need an out."


    "If we are not forcing our way in, then forcing our way out would be much more simple," Vaz pointed out. "If we are invited in and Racer is capable of shutting down security, then the Loyal Hound blasting through the defenses will catch them off guard."


    "Okay, it sounds like we have a general plan," I said. "Let''s start trying to hash it out into something more clean. Nal, Vaz, go online and see what kind of footage you can find of Grakkus'' palace. What we are really looking for is internal footage, but any angle could be valuable. Ahsoka, we need to contact Amescoll. I want him and his people fully caught up on this. I got the feeling he would agree with you when it comes to artifacts versus Holocrons, but we need to come to a full agreement first. If he says no, I might be able to find more, but it would take a lot longer."


    The meeting quickly split apart as we settled into our various tasks, the team beginning to attack the problem to hammer out a more solid plan. We continued to work for several more hours, eventually breaking apart once we had a solid, workable plan.

 Chapter 150

    The following morning, Ahsoka and I finally managed to get in contact with Knight Amescoll. He was waiting on Alpha Base, meaning we had to co-opt the communications between the Rebels on the station and the stronghold. The comms officer on our side was happy to help, as apparently, my crew had been working hard to keep up positive connections with our allies and neighbors, but Alpha Base took a bit more convincing. Thankfully, someone in the know overheard our issue and stepped in to set things straight. Luckily, the conversation was relatively short as well.


    "I''m currently waiting for a meeting with Mon Mothma," The holoprojection of Knight Amescoll explained. "I most likely will not be able to return home for a few more days after that. Something tells me they will ask me to stick around, most likely to give them more time to convince us to reconsider. "


    "Try not to run roughshod over them too much," I said with a smirk. "Most of them have an idyllic memory of what the Senate and old days were like... mostly ''cause their people were benefiting the most from the rot."


    "I offer no promises."


    After pleasantries and a bit more conversation about the situation, mostly just generally outlining our plan, Ahsoka popped the question.


    "Would anyone object if we took some of the more simple artifacts?" She asked, after having gone over the significant bits. "We would most likely have to sell some of it permanently to get on his good side. No telling if we will see it again. Even if we do, it would be much lower on our priority list than things like Holocrons."


    "I understand. As long you document the artifacts and only choose simple trinkets, I see nothing wrong with it. You are right to put Holocrons so far above them," He agreed. "Does this mean you will be heading back home?"


    "We should really name that planet," I said, shaking my head before focusing. "Yes, it''s our first step in the plan. We will be returning with the Talos Chariot, a larger ship than the Starcaller."


    Even if I wanted to use the Starcaller, the smuggling ship was already off station, serving as another supplies ship until we could buy another freighter. The quartermaster was already looking for one and would probably make a purchase in the next few days.


    "And the ocean dwellers?"


    "The Chariot is a warship. Between its weapons and the equipment on it, we should be more than prepared to handle them," I assured them. "If not, we will pull back and come up with a new plan, but honestly, with the Chariot, I''m not worried.


    "Very well, I trust you know what you are talking about."


    "We are also bringing more supplies and comforts for your group." Ahsoka added.


    "That is good news. Thank you," He said with a smile. "While a Jedi should strive for the endurance to withstand many issues, I believe they have endured enough."


    "It''s no issue, simply keeping up our end of the bargain," I responded. "I should also point out that these artifacts will be bringing in sizable chunks of money, and I plan to invest a significant portion of that money back into the settlement. It may only be a small group now, but I would like to prepare for more. If we manage to track down more Force-sensitives or Jedi, having a place to send them would be a huge boon."


    "We would gladly accept more people, even beyond Jedi," Amescoll assured us with a nod. "We are part of the Skyforged, and isolating ourselves was one of the major failings of the old order."


    "I''m glad you said that because I would like to start putting down roots on the planet," I admitted. "Separate from the island to protect the ruins, of course. A whole hidden, untapped world could represent a massive advantage to our group. We are already starting to fill the station, and as mind-boggling as that is, having more space would be incredible."


    "... Perhaps we should move from the island as well," Amescoll said, looking introspective. "It was obviously not an option while we were stranded, but now... between the ocean dwellers and the lack of infrastructure..."


    "I will leave that up to you," I responded. "When you arrive back at the planet, feel free to use the new ship to do a full scan looking for a better place to live."


    "Someplace with enough room for significant expansion," The older Knight added with a nod. "I am determined to squash and isolationism before it starts.


    We talked a bit more about how long it would take for him to return to the planet and what else we would be bringing before we finally disconnected. Once we did, it was time for us to get going. The quicker we found some artifacts, the quicker the next steps of the mission could start. As I passed on the message to my crew that we were good to go, Ahsoka pulled me aside.


    "Deacon, I¡­ I just want you to know how much I appreciate you pushing the Skyforged to go on this mission," She said. "I know you take your responsibility to your team seriously and¡­ Well, thank you."


    "I do take it seriously, but don''t forget that you''re on that team, too," I pointed out. "And now, all of the people on the temple planet are too. This is just another step in making sure you all get access to what you need to thrive. Tatnia was skeptical of our first mission, but now that everyone is on our team? She is all for it."


    "Well, either way, thank you." She said, giving me a long look before quickly turning away. "I have some more prep to do. I will see you on the Chariot?"


    "Yeah¡­"


    I watched her walk away, shaking my head clear and focusing on preparing for the mission. Luckily, I didn''t have much to do other than make sure my armor was on board. Together, the crew, along with a few labor droids, loaded up all of the supplies and equipment for the once-stranded Jedi and their descendants. Once that was all set, it was time to go. Miru was a bit upset that she was once again being left behind, but she understood that it was better for everyone that she did.


    At around noon, the Talos Chariot left Omega Station, jumping to lightspeed and vanishing into hyperspace. It felt good to be with the rest of the team again, especially aboard the Chariot. Even better, I could now keep busy during the trips through hyperspace by enchanting stuff for our new recruits. I wanted to focus on getting dexterity buffs for the pilots, as that would put them far above any other pilots they may come up against.


    Arriving back at the planet was exciting, and the rest of the crew were eager to see it for themselves. Calima did a wide arc around the island to let the scanners do their work, picking up the signal of three ocean dwellers wandering around the ruins. When we were done, we carefully hovered over the landing pad, letting labor droids unload the supplies and equipment for the Force-sensitives.


    Included in the delivery was a single repair droid, whose only task was to inspect and repair the landing pad for actual use. Once it was declared safe, the emergency escape ship could be stationed on the platform, meaning escape from the planet was only seconds away.


    When we were done unloading, Ahsoka and I explained exactly what was going on and what our mission was. Two of the Padawans agreed to join us, promising to lead us directly to several exciting artifacts that would certainly impress the Hutt.


    With our two helpers in tow, we returned to the ship, Calima taking off and descending immediately, bringing us nice and low over one of the dwellers. Using one of the ventral turrets, we spotted and targeted the large abomination. After confirming it wasn''t near anything worth worrying about, Vaz absolutely obliterated it with a short barrage of laser fire.


    We spent an hour hunting down the other two, hovering over them and waiting for them to move someplace mostly empty, before erasing them from existence. When our scans turned up clean, Calima guided the ship to the edge of the island that actually met the water, where the Padawans insisted the ocean dwellers emerge from.


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    Calima oriented the Chariot to have as many of our weapons pointed at the water line as possible. Between that and the ship''s complete B2s, ready to distract them away if the turrets missed, we deployed the Arrow and speeder bikes, including the modified cargo MRV. Then, we split into two teams, with Tatnia, Nal, Julus, and a Padawan in the Arrow, while Ahsoka, Vaz, the second Padawan, and I rode the speeder bikes.


    The Padawan guided us, after a quick refresher on speeder bikes piloting, along the edge of the massive mountain encircling a significant portion of the island, eventually landing in a small courtyard.


    "When we first arrived, we had no idea we were in danger, so we kind of spread out," He explained as we cut through the vines that choked the streets and pathways through the lost Jedi city. "I discovered this place while looking for a place to live, or at least sleep."


    Eventually, he guided us to a mostly intact structure, the interior of which was slightly cooler than the exterior. As my eyes adjusted to the change in light, I could slowly make out the details of the room. The walls were studded with rotting panels of wood, with technology peaking out occasionally. Most of the rotted and decaying tech was built into the building directly, most likely to be as subtle as possible. I could only imagine that what we were seeing was the tip of the iceberg.


    Along the far wall of the room, half covered in roots and a slab of newly crumbled stone was some sort of display cabinet. Looking around, I could see the crumbled remains of others, but a quick look showed they were mostly empty, or long as destroyed. However, in the relatively undisturbed case, there were a half dozen palm-sized coins. Some of them were tarnished, and all of them had a thick patina, but I could just make out the <u>Jedi symbol</u></a> on each of them.


    "These look good," I said, handing them to Ahsoka, who nodded in agreement. "They look nice, nice weight, all metal. Collectors eat this sort of thing up."


    She nodded and, for a moment, studied the large coins. Then she slowly reached out, pushing a few to the side, revealing a surprisingly clean coin at the bottom. It still gleamed like extra red copper, the pits and stains of corrosion only touching its edges. She looked up at me, and I nodded, prompting the Togruta to pull the coin away and tuck it into her utility belt.


    "Got a feeling?" I asked, watching her face as she looked out and around as if she was hearing something in the distance.


    "Yeah¡­"


    "Hold on to it," I said. "Tell me if you feel anything else."


    She nodded absently, her brow furrowed as she tried to work her way through it.


    We carefully packed the coins and a few dozen other artifacts up inside the MRV storage crate before the Padawan led us to a new place. For the next three hours, we slowly filled the MRV, as well as a few bags, with everything from statues and normal coins to an entire mural depicting Jedi art, though that was in several pieces. When we were all full, we returned to the ship, carefully offloading what we found. We were about halfway through when one of the droid gunners scared the hell out of us by melting a pair of ocean dwellers trying to make it back on shore.


    This wasn''t the first time they had pasted one, but it was teh first time we were close to the ship, unloading stuff. After making sure the danger was passed, I commed Tatnia to confirm the threat was neutralized so she and her team could continue exploring without worrying.


    By the time the sun was setting, we had filled a not-insignificant portion of the Chariots cargo hold with ancient Jedi artifacts of various sizes and shapes. Tatnia''s team even managed to find an ancient lightsaber, something that was ancient even before the events of the first KOTOR games. It spoke volumes to the age of the ruins we were exploring.


    And it was also incredibly good news for getting Grakkus'' attention.


    As the others continued to offload their finds, I spotted Ahsoka looking over her shoulder, back out to the line of ruins that ran along the slowly sloping beach. It was clear that something was tugging at her, so I got Tatnia''s attention.


    "I''m going off with Ahsoka," I explained. "She is clearly feeling something."


    "Right, I''m sure she is feeling something," She said with scoff, rolling her eyes. "If you want some alone time with her, you don''t need to lie, Boss."


    I opened my mouth to respond but quickly shut it when I realized there was literally nothing I could say that would counter her statement. At least not anything she would believe. Instead, I simply shrugged, turned around, and made my way over to Ahsoka.


    "Hey," I called out to her, waving to catch her attention before gesturing to the speeder bikes. "C''mon, let''s go find what''s pulling on you."


    She nodded, making her way over and hopping onto one of the CPH speeder bikes while I climbed onto the MRV, doing my best to keep up with her.


    For a while, we flew around the ruins, making a few lazy loops before the Force-sensitive seemed to hone in on what was calling out to her. She slowed her speeder down, bringing it to a landing on the roof of a partially collapsed structure. As she was already climbing down the collapsed edge of the roof, I landed beside her, silently following after her.


    We made our way deeper into the building, its features unrecognizable due to the wear and tear of being exposed to the elements, even partially. Eventually, after lifting a few chunks of stone and even cutting a few with her lightsaber, we found ourselves in a small room no bigger than two meters wide in both directions.


    Ahsoka turned around in place, studying the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling. When her search turned up nothing, she looked back at me.


    "Any ideas?"


    I conjured a strong Magelight and took a closer look at the wall opposite the door, running my fingers along it, slowly feeling for any aberrations through the moss and built up dirt. After a few seconds of feeling around, the metal of my gloves caught on a lip. I pulled out my small utility knife and scrapped away the layer of grime, moss, and dust, revealing a small circular indent.


    "Well.. there you go."


    She nodded and stepped forward, pulling out the large coin that had first attracted her attention and gently slotting it into the circle. For a moment, nothing happened, long enough that I began to wonder if whatever was supposed to happen was broken. Then, suddenly, a straight, vertical seam opened in the stone, the hiss of a breaking seal catching me off guard. Instinctively, I reached out and grabbed Ahsoka, yanking her back with one hand and casting Greater Ward with the other.


    Through the glimmering shield, we watched as a stone facade continued to spread apart, revealing a hidden compartment. When it was clear that nothing was going to shoot or attack us, I dropped the ward and let Ahsoka go.


    She gave me an appreciative look before stepping closer to inspect what had been revealed. Looking over her shoulder, I could see a full, complete set of <u>armor</u></a> with golden plates and Jedi robes. I could see belts and pouches, even a holster clip for a pair of lightsabers. Ahsoka reached out and ran her hand over the obvious chest plate.


    "Thank you," She whispered, talking to whatever spirit or Force trail had led her here.


    And for a moment, I could feel whatever it was respond, before the sensation passed.

 Chapter 151

    For a few minutes, we took our time inspecting the armor. It was in fantastic condition. The seal of whatever type of storage container we had found it in had obviously held, as even the cloth was just about as perfect as you could expect. Even the normal wear and tear that a suit of armor would undergo was light, leading me to think the armor wasn''t worn very often or had at least been repaired or patched close to the time it had been abandoned.


    "I can never wear this," Ahsoka said after a minute or so. "This is worth¡­ hells, I don''t even know if I could put a number on this."


    "Oh, absolutely not," I agreed. "Judging from everything else we have found, this place was ancient even before the time of Revan. Even if it was normal armor from some random soldier, it would be worth a decent-sized starship, at least."


    "I¡­ why did they lead me to it, then?"


    "Well¡­ just because you won''t be able to wear it, doesn''t mean it won''t be useful," I pointed out. "Pola can do some scans and use its design to base your armor on. His current design is just a trimmed-down version of our armor. Plus¡­ considering how it''s stored¡­ maybe it belonged to someone important? Or maybe it was some sort of prized possession. Hell, maybe it''s a family heirloom. Was it like the Force or a specific presence?"


    Ahsoka looked at me and rolled her eyes, slowly beginning to pull the armor out of its storage, carefully wrapping the robes around the armor plates so there was no scratching.


    "I will never get used to how you talk about the Force," She said, shaking her head. "It''s like you have the knowledge of a master but the dismissive indifference of a nonbeliever."


    "What can I say? I like to be special," I responded.


    "...It was a presence of some kind. Old, reaching from the Force," She eventually responded. "I¡­ get the feeling you might be right about it being someone''s heirloom."


    "Well, we can give it a look over for any signs of its origins, then put it on display wherever you and your fellow not-Jedi end up settling down," I suggested. "In a nice sealed case to keep it safe."


    "That¡­ sounds like a good idea," Ahsoka agreed.


    Once we had everything safely wrapped up, we made our way slowly out of the ruined building and back to the roof. The going was tough, as we frequently had to split up, with me climbing upwards, letting Ahsoka use the Force to float the wrapped-up armor up to me before she could climb up after me. Eventually, though, we made it to the speeders and loaded the precious cargo into my speeder storage container, before racing away back to the Chariot.


    After showing off what we found, we packed it up in Ahsoka''s room since it was obviously not going to be sold with the rest.


    By the time we were done loading everything up, the sun was starting to set over the island. It would have been a rather incredible sunset to watch, with the sun descending over the ocean. The only problem was that the beach was littered with the charred remains of over a half dozen ocean dwellers. The droids had done a damn good job keeping any of them from getting into the ruined city, but god damn was it a mess.


    When we were finally done, the Padawans were brought back to the rest of their people. They were already setting up some of the portable living spaces we had brought with us, all of them eager to sleep in climate-controlled beds, rather than the muggy, hot bedrolls they currently used. Seeing them work to beat the dark, we spent a few hours assisting them, getting three of the structures set up in record time. Watching the younger kids experience an air-conditioned room for the first time was rather entertaining and probably worth the time we put in.


    We shared a simple meal with the Jedi survivors before blasting back off into space on the Chariot. Our destination was back home at Omega station, so that Nal could reach out to Grakkus'' intermediaries and set up a meeting. Technically, we could have done so from onboard the Chariot, but I wanted to offload a lot of the Jedi artifacts and discuss what exactly the meeting would look like. Our goal was to pretend that we were uncovering more artifacts over time, but our strategy for doing so was not set in stone.


    We landed back in one of our several large hangar bays, a swarm of labor droids beginning to offload what we had collected. While Julus and Vaz watched over them, Nal, Tatnia, Ahsoka, and I peeled off to one of our meeting rooms. There, we came up with an appropriate message to send to the intermediary, along with an image of proof that we had a genuine ancient Jedi artifact. For our first contact, we settled on a statue of a person carved from white stone, embellished with precious metals along certain lines and points of emphasis. The statue was about the size of my head, and according to all the scans we could put it through, was just a simple statue. Before we sent our message, Tatnia brought up something that was bothering her.


    "What if they try to screw us over?" Tatnia asked with a frown. "Don''t forget, we are doing business with a greedy, violent Hutt here. If he thinks he can save money by killing us and taking what he wants, he will absolutely try."


    "You really think a couple of Hutt underlings are going to be able to beat us?" I asked with a scoff. "They could try and overwhelm us with ships, but they can''t risk blowing us up. After all, they would lose all the artifacts, as well as the chance to find more."


    "First off, they can overwhelm us with ion cannons, something someone associated with pirates will have access to," Tatnia pointed out. "And while I agree we should be able to handle most of what Grakkus is likely to throw at us...."


    "Beating him is not the point," Ahsoka said, Tatnia nodding in agreement. "We aren''t attempting to successfully sell things or survive dealing with a Hutt. We are here to get access to the vault, and pissing him off is not how we do it."


    I frowned, crossing my arms as I contemplated the issue. It was a strange problem to have, trying to find a way to convince a Hutt not to betray us, not because we cared about being betrayed, but because we didn''t want to be forced to defend ourselves and alienate the Hutt. Tatnia leaned forward after a long pause, her eyes narrowing as she thought of something.


    "What¡­ what if we aren''t the ones who are finding the artifacts?" She suggested, chewing her lip as she worked her way through her idea. "What if we were the hired hands for a separate client?"


    "What would that do?"


    "If we pretended to just be hired mercenaries, then we can pretend to be ignorant about where the stuff is coming from," She explained, gaining confidence in her solution. "Betraying us does nothing except piss off the real source. They can''t do that because it would mean losing access to all the artifacts."


    "Would also mean the potential to pretend to be upset at the price tag," Nal added, catching on to Tatnia''s plan. "Annoyed that we are being paid so little when our clients'' payday is much larger."


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    "The perfect target to attempt and seduce into striking a deal," Ahsoka finished.


    "If we leak that this is a big deal, a large find that has a lot of artifacts, Grakkus is going to want to be involved with that." I pointed out. "But he can''t kill us until he has access to our ''client,'' which forces him to deal with us. Not bad Tatnia, I think that is our best bet."


    We quickly went over the message and reworded it, emphasizing that we are mercenaries working for a separate, unnamed client. Tatnia guessed that it would take a while for them to get back to us, but instead, the response was almost instantaneous.


    "They are eager to communicate with us," Nal explained as he opened the message. "Most likely recognizes the nature and value of the artifact."


    "That''s a good sign, right?" I asked, looking at my companions. "We want them to be eager to do business."


    "Yes, but it also means a lot more attention is going to be on us,'' Tatnia pointed out. "Some attention is good, but a lot of attention can lead to complications."


    "Speaking of attention being on us, we need to discuss our options for our identities," Ahsoka pointed out. "While we aren''t exactly celebrities, they will certainly do their research once they meet us, and we are still not friends with the Hutts."


    "I kind of assumed we would do the whole Mandalorian thing and just stay in our armor," I volunteered.


    "What about the ships?" Tatnia pointed out. "They are connected directly to us by now."


    "Don''t believe that Grakkus will care," Nal said, shaking his head. "He is not directly connected to Jabba, and slaves are not his major source of income. Our past action unlikely to negatively affect his income."


    "Are we willing to risk it?" I asked.


    "Not much of a risk. We have genuine ancient Jedi artifacts," Nal responded. "If his obsession is how you described, he would not care enough to risk his access."


    We continued to discuss our options before finally deciding to risk it. The Talos Chariot was a pretty robust ship, especially for its size. We were confident that we could at least escape most situations and fight our way free of anything else. Unfortunately, that confidence was erased when we learned about where the intermediary was stationed.


    "Dammit. I was really hoping to never have to go to Tatooine," I said, letting out a groan.


    "I will admit, I am not looking forward to returning to it either," Ahsoka said with a frown. "The last time I was on Tatooine was not my proudest moment."


    "What happened?" I asked curiously.


    "I fell into a Separatist trap, one set by Count Dooku," She explained, shaking her head. "I was young and eager to prove myself."


    "It''s bigger than just having to go to that hell hole," Tatnia cut in. "Jabba runs that planet, you know, the guy who still has a bounty on some of us? The Hutt who will absolutely attack us on sight?"


    "Well¡­ we will just have to make the first trip in the Starcaller, with the Chariot and the Loyal Hound in the wings for support," I suggested. "That will get us to the surface of the planet and keep our ride from being singled out. We are more than capable of defending ourselves on the ground."


    We continued to talk about the upcoming mission, which is now a trip to the Hutt-owned world for a while longer. While all of us wanted to get to the mission as soon as possible, now we were waiting for the return of the Starcaller before we could continue with the next step.


    For the remainder of the day, as well as the following morning, we were basically just killing time. That morning, Ahsoka and I did some light sparring to loosen up. After we warmed it up, it was clear that the once-Jedi Padawan was showing a marked improvement. She was convinced it was that her Kyber crystals were connected to her through the Force, and I had no reason to doubt her conclusion.


    "Can you feel the difference?" I asked as we separated from a series of strikes that happened to come out in my favor. "Cause I can certainly feel the difference in the way you fight."


    "Everything feels smoother, more instinctive," She admitted, looking down at one of her sabers. "I can''t believe how much easier it is to connect with them. It''s like every swing is more stable, more in line with what I intend."


    "Not to rub salt in the wound, but how did you not notice up until now? You said your first saber was more connected to you, right?"


    "Well¡­ after I left, a lot was going on. I felt¡­ lost, distant, like everything was a struggle," She explained, letting out a long breath. "Hard to notice something like that when the galaxy around you is spiraling uncontrollably. Maybe I''m just making excuses¡­ Or maybe I was just having trouble reaching out to the Force because it reminded me of what I walked away from."


    I nodded in understanding, letting my conjured armor and sword fall away as I patted her on the shoulder.


    "I don''t think anyone could blame you for that, Ahsoka," I said, trying to comfort her. "Everything was going sideways, fast. There wasn''t a lot of time for anything, never mind something subtle like that."


    She nodded, though her mind seemed to be lingering on distant thoughts. I gave her shoulder one more squeeze before stepping away and grabbing my stuff.


    "The Starcaller should get here in a couple of hours, and we leave not long after that," I reminded her, the Togruta nodding at my words. "Take some time for yourself, and I''ll see you then."


    The next few hours were spent going over our checklist of weapons, armor, and gear. We offloaded some of the equipment off of the Chariot, specifically the speeders and the Arrow, all of which would just barely fit inside the smaller ship''s cargo hold.


    Not long after everything was ready, the Starcaller returned. The upgraded freighter had just been on a supply run, so labor droids, guided by the quartermaster, had to quickly offload everything before we could move everything we needed back inside. Since we would not be using the smuggling compartments, we also loaded a few extra commando droids into them, just in case. Ahsoka was going to be staying with the ship while we visited the intermediary, since anyone knowledgeable with Jedi stood a decent chance of identifying her. The droids would be her reinforcements in case something happened.


    Beyond that, the loading process was over pretty quickly. The Jedi statue was loaded up and stored in a protective crate, while everyone else picked their bedrooms as they boarded the ship. It was a bit tighter than any of us were used to, since not only was the starship smaller than the Chariot, but the cargo bay was stuffed to the absolute brim with our speeders.


    Once everyone was on board, Ahsoka and Tatnia took control of the ship, with Ahsoka in the pilot''s chair and Tatnia taking the co-pilot position. Only ten minutes after we finished the loading process, the pair piloted the small ship out of the hangar, heading out to open space. Not long after that, we made the jump to lightspeed, heading for Tatooine.

 Chapter 152

    Most of the crew didn''t have much to do during the trip from Omega Station to Tatooine. With the cargo bay nearly completely full and with a general lack of space, most of the team rotated from their rooms to the lounge area, watching holovids and playing games that barely passed the time adequately. This lack of space to spread out was only made worse by the fact that the trip to Tatooine was surprisingly long. It took three full days in total to arrive at the desert planet, mostly due to a dark zone of hyperspace lanes that existed between it and Omega Station.


    By the end of the first day, I was kicking myself for not having dragged my enchanting table out of the Chariot and into the Starcaller. I would have likely had to stack it on my bed or force it into the hall when I wasn''t using it, but I had a massive backlog of enchanting to get done that would have made the trouble worth it.


    Luckily, unlike the rest of my crew, I wasn''t stuck twiddling my thumbs and waiting for stuff to happen. I still had access to my grimoire, so I spent the first two days learning new magic. The first day was spent learning Superior Ward, a spell I don''t remember from the game, but I was still eager to learn now. It was the Expert-level ward and was a powerful barrier, thrumming with power when I cast it.


    Despite how much learning Superior Ward took out of me, I forced myself to repeat the process, this time learning Paralyze. The spell was simple in effect, locking up a person for ten to twelve seconds, depending on their constitution. It also needed to hit someone''s skin, rather than their armor, though it could pass through thin clothes or robes. While I remember thinking it was silly that such a simple spell was Expert-level, I could now appreciate its usefulness and potency.


    When we finally arrived at Tatooine, we dropped out of hyperspace at a pretty significant distance away, with the Loyal Hound and the Chariot dropping out nearby not long after we did. At this distance, Tatooine was just a double fist-sized ball of rock suspended in space.


    "Our scans aren''t picking up anything bigger than a Corvette," Ahsoka said, reading her console before looking over at me. "But at this range, there could be something hiding behind the planet, and we wouldn''t be able to detect it."


    "Alright, let''s plot another jump somewhere over here," I said, pointing to a location closer to the planet but past it. "That way, we can check around the other side but still have plenty of distance to run. Our escort can hang tight there, charting a micro jump into the orbit of the planet. That way, they can keep an eye on our escape route and jump in to help in case we need backup."


    Both Tatnia and Ahsoka agreed to the plan, so Racer quickly got to work with the ship''s astronavigation systems to plot a new jump. While the starship was more than capable of performing the job itself, Racer would significantly speed up the process.


    Sure enough, only a few minutes later, we were ready, both the Chariot and the Loyal Hound following after us as we made a short jump across the system. A second quick scan showed that there were no surprise capital ships waiting in the wings.


    With my paranoia temporarily sated, we accelerated towards our destination, beginning a thirty-minute journey to the large desert planet''s surface. According to the message we received from our contact, our meeting was in Mos Espa. While I was glad that we weren''t being forced to do business in Mos Eisley, Mos Espa wasn''t exactly a five-star resort. Sure, it wasn''t nearly as broken, crime-ridden, and dangerous as the infamous trade hub, but it wasn''t exactly by much better, either.


    As we got closer to the city and the surface, Ahsoka deliberately pulled away, heading down to one of many thousands of square miles of desert. With the complete lack of air control or any sort of law, there was absolutely no reason for us to land in the city itself save for the protection from Tusken Raiders and Jawas. Instead, Ahsoka landed us perfectly in the middle of the desert, far from any prying eyes or prodding nosey scam artists. The ground team would ride our speeders and speeder bikes to our destination.


    With any luck, this would make it even more difficult for Jabba to realize something was going on or for him to intervene and start making our lives difficult when he did. Sure, the wastes were not exactly safe for ordinary people, but Ahsoka was more than capable of feeling any incoming danger before it became a problem. Between her and the contingent of commando droids, led by Boxi, I had confidence she would be fine.


    It took twenty minutes for Vaz, Tatnia, Nal, Julus, and myself to climb into our blessedly climate-controlled armor and prepare our speeders. Once everything was set, I said goodbye to Ahsoka before hopping onto a C-PH speeder. Julus and Tatnia were on the other two, while Vaz and Nal were inside the Arrow with the statue. As we lifted off and started our trip into the city, the speeders took up position around the Arrow as if we were a defensive screen for precious cargo.


    We pushed the speeders to the max, cruising over the desert, leaving a massive dust cloud behind us. We made quick work of the long stretch of desert, eventually reaching the city proper.


    Now, Mos Espa was a city that shared a lot of similarities with the rest of the Tatooine cities. With sand-covered streets and large domed buildings, it was easy for your eyes to get lost as you moved through the alleys and streets. Thankfully, with Clairvoyance, it was easy for me to locate the bar we were looking for. It was a decent-sized establishment, and as we landed by it, we assigned Nal the responsibility of keeping an eye on the vehicles. The older Duros agreed, sitting inside the Arrow, rotating the blaster cannon around as if it was watching people as they walked past.


    Confident that our gear wasn''t about to get stolen, we made our way inside the bar, with me taking the lead. The second we stepped inside, the normal murmuring talk that usually filled places like that stopped, silence filling the bar. After surveying the large space, I focused on the bar, stepping forward and tapping the counter to get the bartender''s attention. When they looked my way, I motioned them closer.


    "We are here for a meeting with Yarlo," I explained, using the name we were given by the intermediary. "Could you direct us to his location?"


    "Sorry, don''t know anyone by that name," The bartender, a gravel-toned, three-eye stalked <u>Gran,</u></a> responded.


    I let out a sigh and internally fought the desire to pull out my blaster and ask him if he was sure. He was clearly expecting me to bribe him, and I was not interested. That said, this was the perfect opportunity to lay the foundations for our story.


    "Listen, pal. I am not getting paid nearly enough to deal with your bullshit right now," I explained, doing my best to sound frustrated with everything going on. "So I''m going to repeat myself. If you say that there is no one here by that name, I will leave, and you can explain to him why a business deal disappeared. Now, we are here for a meeting with Yarlo, could you please direct us to his location."


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    That got the man''s attention, all three of his eye stalks rearing back in shock before he started to nod rapidly.


    "Oh, right, Yarlo. Just follow along the bar," He said, pointing down the dark, smokey room. "There''s a door. Knock twice on it and wait."


    I wordlessly pushed off the bar and walked away, the rest of my team following after me as I followed the man''s directions. Eventually, we reached the door, and I knocked twice, stepping back to wait. Almost immediately, a small panel opened, revealing a camera. It scanned us for a good fifteen seconds before the panel closed, and an audible chunking sound of a sturdy lock being opened echoed around us.


    As the door slid to the side, I watched for a moment before stepping through. Past the doorframe was a smaller room, though it had plenty of room for all of us. Inside were several dozen shelves along the walls containing actual books, as well as dozens of datapad readers, knick-knacks, and other artifacts. In the corner was a desk with an old human sitting at it, reading something of a holo projected. He quickly slapped the base, the projection disappearing in a split second.


    "Hello, yes, come in," He said, gesturing harshly with a no-nonsense tone.


    As we all filed in, he watched us with a harsh look, though it was hard to tell if it was just how he looked or if he didn''t appreciate this many of us showing up to his office.


    "Well, let''s see it," he ordered, gesturing to a space on his desk. "I don''t have all day."


    Despite his brusque and blunt nature, I was picking up a sense of eagerness in his rushing. He knew exactly what we were carrying, and he was desperate to see if it was real.


    I gestured for Vaz, who was carrying the box containing the artifact, to step forward. She carefully stepped past us and placed the crate down on the desk before taking a step back. Yarlo leaned forward and pulled the crate closer, quickly cracking the top open and reaching inside. After gently placing the statue down, he began his inspection, starting first with a scanner of some sort, running it around the artifact.


    He spent five minutes silently confirming the statue''s authenticity before finally looking up at us.


    "Where did you get this?" He asked, looking at me with a harsh gaze.


    "From our client," I explained. "They hired us to transport and sell their finds to avoid the risk of dealing with the types of people willing to collect such artifacts."


    If the man was insulted by the insinuation that he or his boss would attempt anything nefarious, he didn''t show it. Instead, he chewed his lip and looked back at the statue.


    "They hired you to deliver a singular artifact?"


    "They hired us to do business in their name," I corrected. "They also wished to assure you there are more artifacts they are willing to sell."


    "Tell me, when conversing with your clients, did they make it seem like they were dissolving a collection? Or maybe that they had uncovered something like, say, a dig site, or perhaps some ruins?"


    "Why would I tell you that?" I asked, tilting my head to look directly at the man. "The secrets of my client are not something I''m offering here."


    "Of course, of course," He agreed, trying to seem understanding. "Then again, they can''t be paying you very well for this, and it''s not as if it would mean anything. You''ve already confirmed that you will have more to sell soon, after all."


    "...speak plainly, what are you offering?" I demanded, the man''s face lighting up.


    "This statue is genuine and worth around twenty-five thousand credits," He explained with a bit of smirk. "I could be convinced to spend an extra five thousand credits on a separate chip if you confirm what the source of it was¡­"


    I paused for a long moment, staring down at the older man. He stared back, with a surprising amount of steel in his spine, considering how much of an intimidating sight we were, especially all together.


    "...They took great lengths to reveal as little as possible about the source of the artifacts," I finally responded, the intermediary frowning at my admission. "However, I did spot several of the artifacts being cleaned. Almost as if they had been buried."


    "Ah! I see. That must mean they have uncovered something interesting!" He said, showing the real first signs of excitement since we arrived. "Grakkus is going to be very interested when he hears this."


    "Then I assume you are going to be interested in purchasing the rest of their artifacts?" I asked.


    "Assuming they are as intact as this, then yes," He prefaced. "Grakkus has no real interest in pottery shards or crumbled masonry, only what might add to his impressive collection properly."


    "Very well¡­ the payment?"


    The man, who seemed like he was barely managing to not rub his hands together in greed, nodded and opened up a safe under his desk. After its lock was disarmed, he opened it up and pulled out payment, handing me five, five thousand credit chips, before adding the sixth bonus chip.


    "A pleasure doing business with you," He said as he passed the last chip, holding on to it before I could tug it free. "I don''t know exactly how Grakkus will respond to your information, but I assure you he will be very interested in returning customers and working with individuals who remain¡­flexible when helping friends."


    After a long pause, I nodded as if agreeing with him, and he released the credit chip with a smile.


    "Good. Now get out. I have to contact my client and inform him of his newest purchase," He explained, brushing us off with a wave of his hand.


    With no desire to linger, the crew quickly filed out of the room. We didn''t bother slowing down in the bar, making our way directly back out into the harsh sun of Tatooine.


    "Well¡­ That went well," Julus commented before Tatnia slapped his back, shutting him up.


    "We can talk more once we are back at the ship," I said, Julus nodding as we made our way back to the speeders. "The walls have ears here."


    The ride back to the ship was simple, though a bit nerve-wracking. I kept on imagining everything that could go wrong as we sped through the desert, flying along dunes and rock formations. When we were finally back at the Starcaller, we quickly loaded everything back into the cargo bay. Ahsoka took off the second bay door closed, sealing us inside. It was only then that I pulled off my helmet and let off a laugh.


    "Well done, everyone. That was an encouraging result," I said, slapping Julus on the back. "I think I should take up acting. I''m clearly a master at the art already."


    "The helmets made it easy," Tatnia said, pulling off her helmet and letting out a sigh of relief before continuing. "You didn''t have to worry about covering your tell."


    "I don''t have a tell," I scoffed, only for Tatnia to roll her eyes and walk past me, making her way to the bridge to help Ahsoka in the co-pilot''s chair. "Tatnia, I don''t have a tell!"


    "You keep telling yourself that boss!" She called back, disappearing further into the ship.


    I frowned, looking over at Nal with concern on my face.


    "I don''t have a tell¡­ do I?"


    The older Duros said nothing, simply patting my shoulder and following after my second in command.

 Chapter 153

    The first successful sale to Yarlo was an important step closer to our goal, but it was not just a one-and-done mission. We had told the intermediary that we would have more things to sell, so we needed to back that up. First, we returned to Omega Station and filled the Chariot with a small pile of choice artifacts before heading back out. Then, for just under two weeks straight, we would travel to Tatooine, sell a few artifacts, and play the role of disgruntled and underpaid mercenaries. We would then leave the planet and jump into deep space, where the Chariot and Loyal Hound were waiting.


    We would then use the Brick to transfer a few more artifacts over to the Starcaller before repeating the process. We made sure to keep at least two days between each visit in order to keep the illusion we were traveling much further than we actually were. The whole charade was designed to make it look like we were being treated like a glorified delivery service, watching our clients make tons of money while we were getting scraps.


    The need to wait between each delivery to create the illusion of traveling meant we all had a large amount of free time. Because it was so cramped inside the Starcaller, some of the crew would transfer over to the Chariot on the Brick, stretching their legs and taking advantage of the cleared cargo bay. Personally, I spent most of my free time enchanting gear for our new crew. I managed to finish the three dex enhancers each for our pilots and some of the crew of our latest ships, which had been my first priority. I also finished the strength and dex mix for the clone ground team, as well as a few bits and bobs, before finally stopping. I would have liked to continue, but it became clear I had a new issue.


    I was running out of filled soul gems.


    I still had a lot of unmodified, unfilled Kyber crystals I could convert, but I would still need to go hunting again, which was not something I could just do at the drop of a hat. Even worse, while I could technically apply Soul Trap to weapons, only low-tech ones like bows and swords would work. I wasn''t about to send anyone out to hunt big game with a fucking bow. There were some options, but it didn''t quite matter at the moment, as we were busy working on our current mission anyway. When this mission was settled, I would work on solving my soul gem problem. Until then, I would just have to find something else to do.


    After about a week, or halfway through working on our current mission, we got word that the main fleet''s pirate bounty was complete and that they had returned to Omega Base. The mission details were sent over the Holonet, and I couldn''t help but whistle appreciatively when I first read it.


    Apparently, they had managed to use some bait to track down the pirate''s home base, a jungle planet in the Mid Rim. From there, they ambushed them, taking the pirate fleet mostly by surprise. A few of their starfighters managed to take off, but our guys were ready, having already deployed the V-wings, which made quick work of them. While the pirate group didn''t have any capital ships, they did have a freighter that was in pretty good condition, eight remaining intact starfighters, and a whole selection of goods and equipment.


    Most of the supplies, as well as five of the remaining starfighters, were sold to the Rebellion for two hundred and fifty thousand credits. We also received another sixty-five thousand for the main bounty, as well as various other side bounties. Three of the starfighters, a trio of old but serviceable <u>Y-Wings</u></a> of all things, we kept, as well as the <u>freighter</u></a>. Once they were repaired, the new bombers would be folded into our starfighter wings, and the freighter would join our two other cargo ships transporting food and equipment and whatever else the quartermaster ordered.


    Altogether, it was a solid win for the fleet and a testament to Captain Pella Irsee''s abilities. He and his crew proved to be capable, though really, they were never really at risk. We had almost double the amount of starfighters as the pirates alone. Between them, the Intervention and the Nautilus, it was always going to be a one-sided fight. Still, the patience and ability to set up an ambush to maximize the resources and credits we gained was very encouraging. Since we anticipated being busy for quite a while longer, I told the fleet leaders to give their crews some time off while they started looking for a new bounty or target.


    Meanwhile, we continued our delivery service, making a few hundred thousand credits in the process, though almost all of it was going to go back into the Jedi and their new home. We had already purchased a good amount of temporary structures, and Miru was looking into buying and repurposing a starship-grade shield system to project over their base.


    Knight Amescoll, after returning to the hidden world, discussed the possibility of leaving the island, at least temporarily, to build a larger settlement on one of the many continents. Almost everyone agreed with the idea, and those that didn''t were ambivalent. According to the reports, they had already started looking for a new location, and several exciting spots had already been picked out.


    It would take time and resources, but the credits made from the artifacts were already going a pretty far way. With any luck, within a few weeks, we would have a safe planet for the Skyforged Vanguard, as well as any Force we found.


    It made me consider going out to find Yoda, or some of the other Force-sensitive groups or people that were out there. The only problem with that was that my foreknowledge was making me feel guilty. I knew there were Jedi or Jedi adjacent groups out there hiding. I also knew that together, they would be stronger and be able to do more. What I was guilty about was the fact that most of the people who had survived to this point would have normally been safe through the Rebellion. If I went out and collected them, I would absolutely be ruining that assured survival.


    There was also the worry that gathering too many Force-sensitive people together would somehow let the Emporer track us down. There was a lot of conflicting evidence and stories about just how well Old Palpy could do that. Yoda lived next to a dark side wellspring to hide his presence in the Force, and yet dozens of other Jedi, including Ahsoka and others, remained untraceable. Was it because Yoda was just particularly powerful in the Force? If that was true, why didn''t he feel the surviving padawans on the ancient planet?


    It was not an easy subject to grapple with, and I was tempted to bring Ahsoka in on it just to get her opinion on it. I was also tempted to go to Dahgobah and chat with Yoda. Unfortunately, any of that would have to wait until after this mission was complete, as we had bigger things to focus on.


    As usual, we took images of our next "batch" of artifacts, sending them to Yarlo to confirm. This latest delivery contained several artifacts we knew he would like, including the remaining large metal coins that we had found. Yarlo loved the first batch and paid a good chunk of credits for them. This time, however, his response felt a bit different. We had informed Yarlo that we had another batch, and while he had been interested in the large metal coins, his message had hinted that this delivery would be different.


    We landed on Tatooine, the Starcaller touching down on a random plot of desert. After quickly deploying the speeders with practiced hands, we took off to Mos Espa.


    "What are the chances we are flying into a trap?" I asked Tatnia, who was piloting the Arrow while I manned the turret.


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    "Depends on what you mean by trap," She responded, glancing over her shoulder at me. "Do I think they are about to try and kill us? No, they need us too much. Do I think they might try and trap us into having to help them? That is much more likely. That said, we have been doing a pretty good job of playing the disgruntled employee. Even bastards like the Hutts know that working with people who want to is better than working with people you have to force."


    "And when you''re done, then you betray them," I pointed out, Tatnia snorting and nodding.


    "Pretty much. Always assume that a Hutt is working an angle. They will have no qualms about screwing over everyone they work with," She explained. "Hutts only ever really respect other Hutts, and they still fuck each other over whenever they can."


    I chuckled and nodded, both from what she said and from the fact that my Earth curses had finally started to spread throughout my team.


    We landed around the same area as usual, working our way through the city to the same bar. We didn''t bother with the bartender, and hadn''t since our second delivery. Instead, we headed directly back to Yarlo''s room, the thick security door opening after another quick scan. The grumpy old man waved us in as usual, watching as Vaz, Nal, and Tatnia all dropped off crates along his desk. He immediately got to work, opening each one to analyze the artifacts inside, confirming that they were authentic. It was a bit tedious to watch him for so long, but I couldn''t blame him for taking his job seriously. I can''t imagine a Hutt as strange as Grakkus would be very forgiving if he accidentally missed a forgery.


    When he was finally done looking over everything, he moved the crates down behind his desk before leaning forward.


    "Well done, another batch of genuine artifacts," He said with a smile, one of only a few I''d seen him make. "You have been nothing but professional about this, which is why Grakkus would like to make you an offer."


    The old man leaned back in his chair, studying all of us but mostly focusing his attention on me.


    "While Grakkus considers himself to be a collector at heart, he is also a businessman. Which is why, when presented with an opportunity to use his¡­ Business acumen to expand his collection in a cost-effective manner, he is very interested," He explained, steepling his hands like he was an overly dramatic supervillain. "He would like to propose a business opportunity for you."


    "... What sort of opportunity."


    "While Grakkus has been very impressed with the quality and breadth of what you have presented on behalf of your clients, he finds himself unhappy with continuously paying such high prices," He explained. "He has spent quite a bit of credits so far, and now he believes he has spent enough."


    "Then our clients will have to find another buyer-"


    "Or, you could switch clients," The old man explained, trying to be coy. "If you aid Grakkus with discovering where your clients are unearthing these artifacts, Grakkus will pay you a hefty sum, and you would no longer be stuck with your current contract."


    "And how exactly can I trust anything you just said?" I asked, shaking my head. "Hutts are notorious for betraying their business partners. I have no intention of getting my team killed."


    "I understand, I''m not the best to speak of this deal, however. Grakkus would like to invite you and your companions to his Palace to make the official offer himself."


    I leaned back in faked surprise, doing my best to keep my excitement calm. This was exactly what we were hoping for. We just needed to keep from seeming too excited.


    "Again, I ask, why exactly should we trust you and your boss?"


    "Well, for one thing, consider the fact that you are the only group around at the moment that could lead him to what he wants," he pointed out. "Further, we have been doing a little research into your group. The Skyforged Vanguard has been developing a reputation, one that Grakkus respects. This could very well mark the start of a long, prosperous relationship."


    "If you know who we are, you must know we don''t exactly have the best connections with Hutts in general."


    "We are, but Grakkus doesn''t hold that against you. Yes, slavery is a prosperous business, but you can''t exactly expect the product to enjoy the process. Sometimes, they fight back. It''s just the cost of doing business." He said, casually waving away the incident that started my life here in this universe. "He did, however, mention cashing in a few of his own favors to wipe your sins clean, if this potential deal was to go through. Think about it. No more worrying about Jabba coming to hunt you down every time you pass through Hutt space. Or do business here."


    I could practically feel all of us struggling to keep our cool after that. Slavery was a part of life in this part of the galaxy, especially on Tatooine, but to hear it talked about so casually was disturbing.


    "It is good to hear that he is willing to be so reasonable," I said, thankful to be behind a helmet. "But I''m not ruining our reputation while shaking hands with an intermediary."


    He smiled and nodded as if expecting the statement.


    "Grakkus wouldn''t expect anything less. With something this important, he wants to shake your hand himself," He explained. "He has asked that you deliver the next batch of artifacts directly to him. This should give you enough time to negotiate a proper deal. You are now officially above my pay grade."


    Yarlo handed me a crate of credits, as well as a data chip, no doubt containing the instructions for how to actually get to and land at Grakkus''s Palace. He seemed remarkably happy for someone who was losing a constant influx of work, but past this, I didn''t care enough to ask. Instead, I simply took the chip and left, the rest of the team following me out.


    As usual, we remained silent until we left Mos Espa and arrived at the Starcaller. This time, however, I mimed that we should continue to be silent. I found Racer in the cockpit with Ahsoka and motioned to her to stay quiet as well. I quickly handed Racer the chip, and the astromech did a quick physical scan before diving into the programming. Eventually, after nearly two minutes, he confirmed that no listening or tracking devices had been built in.


    "Sorry, I just wanted to make sure we were free to talk," I explained, letting out a long breath.


    "I take it the meeting went well?" She asked.


    "If what Yarlo said was true, Grakkus is eager to meet us to discuss how exactly we are going to convince our "clients" to give us the location of the dig site," I explained. "I get the feeling he is also looking to invest in us specifically. He sees us as a simple mercenary group of rising power and wants to get a leash on us early.


    "We need to be careful," Ahsoka pointed out, voicing sentiments we all shared, but was worth repeating anyway. "If he thinks he has a way to get what he wants without paying us, he will take it. It''s like a defining part of their culture."


    "I know. We need to make every step as if we are walking into a trap," I agreed. "Still, we are one step closer to getting into that vault."


    Ahsoka nodded and sat back in her chair, spinning it around after a few seconds so she could focus on the takeoff checklist. Tatnia once again joined her on the bridge after a few minutes, already stripped down from her armor.


    For what felt like the dozenth time, everyone quickly boarded and settled into the Starcaller''s accommodations. Our first destination was back at Omega Station, as we had a few things to pick up before we could settle into the Talos Chariot for the next leg of our mission.


    With any luck, it would be the last time in quite a while before we ever had to come back to Tatooine. As much as people liked to make fun of the movies for the infamous line, the sand really did suck, and I would be glad to be done with it for as long as possible.

 Chapter 154

    Our trip to Omega Station didn''t last long. Our first priority was picking up a disguise for Ahsoka. I wanted her along with us when we infiltrated Grakkus''s palace, and while Grakkus had already identified us as the Skyforged, I was pretty sure her status as a Jedi was still a secret. The only mission she had openly been on that could have spread that information was when we acquired the Whale Shark. While she was seen using her lightsabers, it was primarily only by people who were dead, and any other abilities would most likely be blamed on me, since I was already throwing magic around casually at that point.


    ?


    Disguising her was relatively simple since all of us would already be armored, meaning the only sensible disguise we could get her was another set of our full body armor. In order for Pola to make one for her, a few of the non-combat members of the Skyforged donated their basic uniforms, which Pola then melted down of their beskar. Those who volunteered received a decent-sized bonus on their next paycheck and were moved to the top of the list to receive more once we got access to the relevant materials, namely beskar.


    I also converted two extra bars of platinum into beskar. I purchased the bars on Tatooine during our mission, spending a significant chunk of credits to get them. It was worth it all, though, because Ahsoka was now fully armored, meaning I didn''t have to worry nearly as much as I had been previously. Even better, when this mission was complete, Pola would melt down the standard armor again and reforge it to look like the ancient Jedi armor we found on the hidden planet.


    According to Pola and Vaz, the ancient Jedi armor was elegant and perfectly designed to allow maximum maneuverability while still protecting the wearer. Enhancing the design with more modern tech and with beskar would only make it even more potent.


    For now, however, she would have to deal with our standard armor, which restricted her movement and was a bit on the heavy side. Thankfully, I could switch one of her dexterity-enhancing items to a strength one instead, which helped her a lot.


    Once we had all of our gear, and the Talos Chariot was filled with everything we might need, including more artifacts and a few specifically designed items that Miru made for us, we once again left Omega Station, our destination set to Nar Shaddaa. It was more than a little nerve-wracking to be heading back to the world I first started this journey on, especially when my arrival had been so tumultuous. It was a world controlled by Hutts, driven by greed and want, but I knew we could handle it. Not only was I much more powerful than I had been before, but the entire crew was now a force to be reckoned with.


    We could handle it.


    The trip to Nar Shaddaa took two days in total, with the third-morning set as our arrival time, leaving me with a large chunk of free time. Further efforts into enchanting would require me to at least go on another hunting trip and, if I wanted to be safe, find a new source of Kyber crystals. Having brought Ahsoka and the rest of the latest wave of Force-sensitives to the Crystal Caves, followed by watching them go through their Force visions, made the Crystal Cave feel like it was theirs, if not literally, then at least metaphorically. It didn''t feel right for me to go back and strip it for more resources now that the inheritors had returned.


    Of course, there may be other sources of Kyber on Dantooine. Geologically speaking, it was extremely unlikely that a mineral or substance could only be found in one single cave over the entire planet. Though, with the Force involved, anything was possible, so the Crystal Cave might be the only one like it.


    I also wanted to see about checking the ancient Jedi planet for any pockets of crystal growth. According to Ahsoka and Luke, the planet had a vibrancy in the Force that stood out from any other planet they had been to. Considering that the primary "ingredient" in Kyber Crystal growth was a connection to the Force, that made me think there could be a source of Kyber somewhere on or in it. We would just have to find it with either some sort of scanner or, possibly, Clairvoyance. Despite my hunch and curiosity, I wouldn''t be comfortable using any Kyber from the ancient Jedi planet, for similar reasons to my decision to no longer use Dantooine.


    With enchantment out, I picked a spell and got to work, spending sixteen hours finally learning the Invisibility spell. It had been a long time coming, and even if stealth wasn''t my forte, which was the reason I had held off for so long, being able to simply vanish without a trace was an incredible ability. Even better, it wasn''t cheap, bullshit, kind of sort of invisibility like you got in the games. Once I cast the spell, I was fucking gone. Not only that, but I didn''t even show up when scanning for heat signatures!


    It wasn''t perfect, mind you. There was a dim flash of light when I cast the spell, but even that was much more faint than almost all my other spells. I still made noise, though that was easily taken care of with the muffled enchantment. I was also weak to the standard anti-invisibility hack, namely any fine, sticky powder or obvious bright liquid, like flour or paint. However, even that wouldn''t work for long because the spell turned anything attached to my person when I cast it. That meant if someone managed to cover me in paint or anything else, all I needed to do was drop the spell and recast it, and suddenly I would vanish again.


    It made me wonder why people didn''t try that more in stories where someone used the powder or paint trick.


    With a new spell tucked under my metaphorical belt, I took the following day to recover from the sixteen-hour straight magic marathon. It really took a lot out of me, meaning the rest of the day was spent dozing off and not much else. I woke up the next morning to find we were only a few hours out of Nal Hutta, the homeworld of the Hutts and the planet in which Nar Shaddaa orbited. We used that time to do a final check on everything, checking our blasters and armor, before suiting up.


    "At least it''s comfortable," Ahsoka admitted, standing in the lounge of the Chariot, stretching and testing her range of motion. "The strength amulet you made me is compensating for the weight well, but I definitely feel a bit slower. And I can feel the restriction in flexibility, too."


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    "I''ll breathe a bit easier knowing your blaster is proof, though," I said, passing her her custom-made helmet. "It''s just one mission anyway."


    Protecting Ahsoka''s entire head, including her montrals and lekku, was a task that Pola had taken on with excitement. While we were running around Tatooine, he was working tirelessly to make it a reality. While the standard armor she was wearing for this mission would be melted down and remade into something based on the ancient Jedi armor, the helmet would stay the same.


    The base design was essentially the same as our<u> helmets</u></a>, with the first layer being the undersuit. Unlike our undersuits, hers included an extra "hood" that she would pull down separately and attach to the main body. This would create a pressurized barrier around her entire body. Her three lekku, which were actually non-vital appendages for Togruta, were protected by woven, lightweight beskar alloy, much like our uniforms. Her montrals were much better protected, as Togruta montrals were potent sensory organs. If they were injured, it would completely incapacitate her. To protect the much more critical montrals, Pola designed a segmented plating system that connected directly to the underlayer, piece by piece, with a layer of alloy weave to add extra protection.


    The last part of the helmet was what covered her face and the back of her head. It was basically the same as our helmet but sliced in half, with opened-up sides. The two halves were pressed together, one on her face and the other around the back of her head, both pieces then sealing around her extra appendages, to each other, and to the undersuit hood.


    The whole thing was easily double the cost of a standard helmet, but well worth it.


    With everyone suited up, all that was left to do was wait, which, thankfully, we didn''t have to do for long. Once again, we dropped out of hyperspace along the outer marks of the system to avoid ambushes. The Loyal Hound did not appear with us, as it was waiting even further away. Nar Shaddaa had significantly more traffic than Tatooine, so we had to keep our reinforcements a bit further back to keep them out of sight. This would mean it would take them a few extra minutes to make the micro jump into the system, but it was all we could do.


    Approaching the planet was extremely intimidating, especially since I had never actually seen it from this perspective. The last time we had been above the crime-ridden planet, I had been heavily concussed and injured, drifting in and out of consciousness as the rest of the team escaped.


    The planet itself was draped in a brown smog, with clear spots showing up as large-scale weather patterns blew the thick, unhealthy contaminants around the planet. Outside of that atmosphere, we could see several dozen ships flying around, both coming from and heading to the surface. Floating high above the planet, mostly sticking together as they orbited, were at least three dozen warships. They ranged from gunships no bigger than the Talos Chariot, to a trio of ancient <u>Dreadnoughts</u></a>, which would have been considered old during the first years of the Clone Wars. This was the planet''s "defensive fleet," with scans showing a second, smaller fleet on the other side of the planet.


    "How exactly did we escape the first time around again?" I asked, watching the larger ships drift around the planet. "And how exactly do we plan on doing it this time?"


    "Defensive fleet is controlled by the Hutt Ruling Council," Nal explained. "Will not respond to petty crimes and grievances. Designed that way to prevent members from forcing others into submission with threat of bombardment. Only there to control the population and prevent hostile takeover."


    I nodded in understanding as we slowly approached the planet, eventually being hailed by the planet''s space traffic control network. We gave them the passcodes Yarlo gave us and then waited for their response. The tension began to build as Calima and Tatnia stayed glued to the sensors, waiting for any sign of a sudden ambush. After what felt like a short lifetime, we finally got clearance to land. They fed us very precise instructions before informing us that deviating from those instructions would result in us being evaporated by the Defense Fleet. Before we could ask for clarification, they briskly cut the call, leaving us alone in orbit.


    "Alright, guys, this is it," I said, looking around at my friends and crew. "If we descend now, we are committing to this job. No more room to back out. Does anyone have any last-minute revelations about what''s wrong with our plan? Any final words of worry or concern?"


    I looked around, checking the faces of my crew, turning to the occupants of the cockpit and those standing in the lounge. When nobody said anything, I gave Ashoka a look, who returned with a confident nod, her face hidden behind her helmet.


    "Alright, then let''s go," I said, turning to look at Calima, who was turned back to wait for my word. "Take us down."


    The Tholothian nodded and turned back to her console, tapping the controls before beginning to guide us down through our descent.


    As we sank down to the planet, we could see the air quality dropping through the forward viewports. The moon had been well and truly ruined by the <u>ecumenopolis</u></a> that covered the entire surface. The smog and pollution didn''t create quite a shift in color like they had on Magravia, the planet Tatnia, Vaz and I had been prisoners on, but it was certainly noticeable. Maybe it was because it was worse around where we were landing, or perhaps I just never noticed because it was the first planet I had stepped out into after arriving in this galaxy, but it hadn''t looked nearly this bad the last time we were here.


    All of us peered out the forward viewports, watching the planet''s surface fly by. We spotted multiple collapsed buildings and several trash dumps in the middle of the populace, two of which were on fire. We also spotted a shantytown around a small clearing, with what looked like thousands of people stacked together like sardines.


    "This planet is gross," Julus said, shaking his head. "Thank the Force for these helmets because I really don''t want to know what it smells like."


    "We must have been in the richer part of it while we were here," I said, looking at Nal. "We never saw anything like this."


    "Grakkus''s Palace is built near the center of Hutta Town, the capital of Nar Shaddaa," Nal explained. "Once a bastion of the moon''s wealth. Now, one of the worst cesspits on a planet many would already call a cesspit."


    It didn''t take us long to see the palace. There were plenty of massive buildings built around the city, as Grakkus was clearly not the Hutt wallowing in the slime of Hutta Town, but none of them were much compared to the Hutt in charge.


    Of course, that''s not why Ahsoka and I spotted it so easily. The massive building caught our eye because of how familiar it was.


    "Well¡­ he is either crazy or brave," I said, shaking my head. "Because I''m shocked Palpy hasn''t leveled it already."


    "It''s not that close¡­" Ahsoka said with a frown.


    "The fact that you knew what I meant means it''s close enough for him," I pointed out. "Palpy is just the kind of crazy to absolutely react to this¡­"


    The <u>massive structure</u></a><u> </u>sat on a square foundation, which, compared to the people walking the streets, must have been a couple hundred feet high. The structure then terminated inwards before jutting upwards at an inward angle, rising into the air. It wasn''t an exact copy, in shape or size, but it immediately drew similarities to the <u>Jedi Temple</u></a><u> </u>on Coruscant. Knowing how much Vader and Palpy hated the Jedi, I was honestly shocked it was still standing.


    "We are being hailed¡­ receiving landing instructions," Calima said. "They direct us to the opposite side."


    "Just follow them in," I said, patting her shoulder. "Nice and easy."


    Calima nodded and guided the ship around the massive structure, where a large platform was built into the back. Several smaller ships were already landed on the platform, but there was still plenty of room. The Chariot slowly descended, touching down on the large landing platform. After tapping a few buttons on her console, Calima turned and nodded to me.


    "I''ll keep her running, Boss," Calima said with a smile. "Good luck."


    I nodded back before stepping out of the bridge, Tatnia and Ahsoka following me out.


    "Alright, everyone!" I said, clapping my hands together. "It''s showtime!"

 Chapter 155

    Once we had landed, we started the process of preparing our delivery. Statues, pieces of art, and several other artifacts and relics, all of which were already sealed inside crates and containers, were stacked and carefully loaded onto hovercarts. Once all four of our prepared carts were loaded up, I directed our four pre-prepared labor droids to slowly guide the hovercarts to the cargo lift, which we boarded as well, all of us completely suited up in armor.


    As the elevator descended, we got our first look at our gracious host. <u>Grakkus the Hutt</u></a> was huge, even for a Hutt, but it did not come from rolls of fat, but rather a massive muscular frame. It looked bizarre on a species widely considered to be oversized slugs, but it was impossible to ignore as he spread his arms to greet us. Hell, he had the beginning of a six-pack!


    "Welcome, Skyforged, to my palace!" He said, his movement causing his necklace, a series of lightsabers strung together, to bounce and sway. "I am so glad you could join us!"


    As he greeted us in a booming, gravelly voice, he slowly approached. I could hear and see his cybernetic limbs clanking against the ground, moving him forward at a speed impossible for most Hutts. I had no doubt, both from his looks and from what I knew from the stories, that Grakkus was not to be underestimated.


    As if to confirm and emphasize that fact, when he stopped just before the shadow of the Talos Chariot, a dozen people fanned out from around him, taking defensive positions, though they stood as if at parade rest.


    Ever since Grakkus had invited us to meet him, all of us had wondered what made him so confident in his safety that he would happily invite a mercenary group like ours to his home. Sure, he was bound to have security and bodyguards, but that didn''t quite cut it. Now, however, we had that answer. A dozen Mandalorians, heavily armed and moving in a way the denoted training and experience, were on his payroll, ready and waiting to defend their employer.


    "Thank you for the invitation, Lord Grakkus," I said, easily stepping off the cargo turbolift, even though it had about a foot left to descend. "We have brought you the latest delivery, as well as an early gift."


    I gestured, and Ahsoka stepped forward, carrying a small display case with a clear top. She walked until she was standing beside me, tilting the case forward so that Grakkus could see what we had. His already large eyes went wide when he got a good look inside the case. Inside was the ancient lightsaber that Tatnia had found, moderately cleaned to show off its fantastic condition.


    "This was found at the same dig site as the other artifacts but was considered too valuable to sell. One of my technologically inclined members managed to find its records and its location," I explained, spinning a complete lie. "We took it and replaced it with a replica before organizing an accident to befall said replica. The records stated that it may be the oldest find they have located in the dig site, and by all reports, it should still contain the original Kyber crystal. Though, I''m afraid the significance of that is beyond me, other than the monetary value."


    Grakkus lost his composure for a moment, his cybernetic limbs tapping along the ground as he listened. By the end, he was practically licking his lips in greed and want, his eyes practically glowing. It was bad enough that the Mandalorians closest to him shifted uncomfortably.


    "Truly, you spoil me, Deacon of the Skyforged." He said, nodding eagerly, rubbing his hands together. "And yet such initiative shows talent and drive you seldom see in mercenaries. Well done."


    "I figured if we were going to abandon the client, then we might as well make sure the next one knew our worth," I explained, nodding as Ahsoka walked back and placed the display case on one of the hover carts. "I can only hope you are more reasonable than them."


    Grakkus took a small step forward, almost as if to follow after Ahsoka, but he managed to regain his composure, which involved wiping some drool from the corner of his mouth. To hide his wanton greed, he chuckled and nodded.


    "You need not worry about that. I would not dream of underpaying deserving fighters such as yourself," He assured me, though I trusted his word just about as far as I could throw him. "But please, we can discuss work later. You arrived just in time for an Arena match. True, it is only the scheduled fights, nothing unique, but your timing surely means it is fate. Come, you will watch from our private box."


    The grandiose Hutt, clearly not even considering the possibility that I would deny his requests, immediately turned and began to walk away, his cadre of Mandalorians turning to walk with him. For a moment, I considered calling out to deny his request, but I held back. Half of our mission was already complete, that being getting down to the palace without being blown up or taken hostage. Every step closer we got to the vaults was just another step in our favor.


    The Mandalorians were an interesting twist and clearly part of the reason Grakkus was so confident. I had to assume that he had fallen for the same propaganda that the rest of the universe had, that the Mandalorians were the galaxy''s greatest fighters, both in equipment and in skill. Not that these Mandalorians were not skilled or tough. They were just unlikely to be as invincible as their general reputation claimed. My crew, on the other hand, was relatively unknown, and while we had enjoyed some early success, to a Hutt like Grakkus, we were easily dismissed as a story of beginner''s luck.


    I also had to assume that the nature of our armor hadn''t managed to leak out just yet. The higher-ups of the Rebellion knew, as did a few others, so honestly, it was only a matter of time, but if the Mandalorians were being so casual and dismissive of us, then they had no idea what we were wearing. Not only would this much beskar normally be a massive affront to their people, it was also a considerable threat. We were clad in it entirely, something they would not approach casually, only armed with blasters.


    "Stay tight, follow the procession, and stay alert," I ordered through our helmet comms. "I''ll be chatting up Grakkus."


    I got a series of clicks in response, confirming that my orders were heard and being followed. I idly noticed the crew had stepped closer as we began to move, and I moved ahead to stand beside the muscular Hutt, though not directly beside. He was absolutely the kind of bastard to be insulted by someone attempting to equate equality in any way.


    As I passed some of the Mandalorians, I got a better look at what they were wearing and packing. Most of them had the usual Westar pistols on their hips, and the <u>Galaar-15</u></a> carbines held at the ready, though there was some variation. As for their armor, it varied greatly from person to person. Walking alongside Grakkus, opposite where I moved up to, was assumedly their leader, who was wearing nearly full beskar armor, with plates up and down his body. His subordinates all had chest plates, helmets, and jetpacks, as well as shoulder armor and vambraces. Quite a few of them had plates along their thighs, but only a few anything more.


    What was interesting was that they all still had other armor covering their limbs, where beskar would normally be, it was just a different color. Considering the leader was covered in black plating with red highlights, I assumed that was what they painted the beskar, while the other plates were just a dull red. At a guess, I assumed that the dull red plates were temporary placeholders waiting to be replaced by earned beskar. Overall, there was a lot of black and red plating, meaning they were either incredibly lucky, or considerably skilled warriors.


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    Of course, their armor paled in comparison to ours, but they didn''t need to know that. If it came down to a fight, which I was relatively sure it would, they had plenty of gaps in their armor that we didn''t.


    "Don''t get overconfident," Ahsoka said suddenly through our comms. "I can feel your smugness through your armor."


    "Keep the chatter down," I responded. "And it''s not my fault our armor looks better."


    As we continued to walk, a pair of Mandalorians split off from the procession to follow our delivery, guiding our labor droids deeper into the palace.


    Grakkus talked almost nonstop as we made our way through his palace. As we made our way through the entrance and down the hall, he would gesture to various antiques and art that were on display. None of them were Jedi in origin, but it was still an impressive collection.


    As we continued to walk down wide, open hallways, it was impossible to not see the similarities in design, following the same concept as the exterior. The colors and symbols were different, but between the high arches, banners, open spaces, and minimalist furniture, it was obvious that he was pulling inspiration from the Jedi Temple.


    "I have to say, Lord Grakkus, your Palace is impressive," I commented as we stepped into a massive turbolift, one with plenty of room for all of my team, the remaining Mandalorians, and Grakkus.


    "Do you recognize it?" He asked, turning as the doors along the turbolift shut, sealing us in.


    "I do," I admitted. "The Emperor might like to pretend the Jedi never existed, but even he can''t wipe it out of history entirely."


    "My collection is proof enough of that," He added with a growling chuckle. "If you find this impressive, I believe you will be even more impressed by the vault."


    `That caught me off guard. While I was hoping to get a better idea of the security and layout of the building, I did not expect Grakkus to just walk us to the vault himself. It was actually concerning, because I couldn''t imagine he would show that off to a group of ordinary mercenaries.


    "You would let us see it?" I asked, looking over at the large, muscular Hutt.


    "Of course! You will help fill it, after all!" He explained as if it was obvious. "It is only right that you see it first!"


    He laughed, reaching out to slap my shoulder, nearly driving me forward into the turbolift door. I was pretty sure that if I hadn''t been wearing so many strength-enhancing items, I would have left a dent in the metal in front of us. Even after I recovered, he continued to laugh. All the while, the Mandalorians stood silently.


    "Do not get inside this fuckers arm''s length," I said through the comms. "He hits like a fucking rancor."


    I took solace in the series of confirming beeps, cursing under my breath as I pretended to be fine with the abuse. Before I had the chance to do anything, the doors opened to reveal we were descending into a massive gladiatorial stadium. It was absolutely gigantic, with room for thousands and thousands of people and a vast sand-filled fighting pit in the center. This place was clearly designed to host combat of all sorts, everything from fighting rancors to one-on-one duels.


    We continued to descend, the turbolift eventually sliding into place on top of an extensive open, private VIP area. Serving droids moved about, setting up food and drinks. One immediately approached Grakkus, the large Hutt, taking a shining metallic cup off of a tray and drinking from it deeply. He continued on, moving further into the space until he reached a large viewing booth, one designed for a Hutt of his size and that overlooked the entire arena. Dozens of holoprojectors and screams displayed closer views of the sand pit, though the glass surrounding the viewing areas seemed to be naturally magnifying.


    "Go, eat, drink, enjoy yourselves," the massive Hutt said with another laugh. "Consider it a celebration of a new partnership!"


    "Thank you for your generosity, Lord Grakkus," I said with a bow. "If there is nothing else, I would go to my crew¡­"


    The sizable muscular slug waved me off as if dismissing a peon. I had only known this crime lord for around fifteen minutes, and already I was considering killing him now, despite how difficult it would make our mission. I managed to resist the urge, however, and left his side to head back to my team, who had already congregated in one of the viewing booths.


    I could see the Mandalorians had already partially spread out as security, some of them remaining by their client''s side.


    As I approached my team, Tatnia turned to greet me, putting her hand on my shoulder and taking advantage of one of Miru and Pola''s latest creations.


    Comms systems, while fine for day-to-day communication, were not nearly as slicer-proof as necessary for vital communication. While equipment to intercept and slice comms was expensive and very illegal, we had been maintaining comms discipline to prevent giving anything away, since Grakkus would very likely have access to something like that, especially in his palace. Talking out loud wasn''t much better since there was no doubt in my mind that this place was riddled with listening devices.


    Because of this vulnerability, Miru and Pola worked together to install a direct contact point in the tips of two of our fingers. By placing one of each into a specific spot, namely two contact points on our shoulders, we could transmit sound directly between our suits, with no open or direct comms of any sort. It was obviously for close-range communications only, but it was still an invaluable little invention.


    "Ahsoka says she can feel something, an enclosing threat," She explained through the direct link. "He is obviously going to betray us."


    "But why? He hasn''t gotten what he needs yet¡­" I responded.


    "He probably assumes he can get it from our ship," Tatnia pointed out. "Or our pilot."


    "So he assumes we are amateurs," I guessed, shaking our head. "Should have seen that coming, I suppose."


    "What are we going to do?"


    "Calima knows the plan, as do Racer and Boxi," I assured her. "We continue as we have been, keeping an eye out for however he plans on betraying us. If he tries to separate us or leave us alone, don''t let him. From what I know about him, and from most Hutts¡­ showing us his massive collection before turning on us is exactly something he would do."


    "Which plays into our plan," She finished with a subtle nod. "Okay, we follow your lead."


    She patted my shoulder and turned to sit in one of the comfortable-looking seats, sitting on the edge so she could easily spring to her feet. As she did, I stepped closer to Ahsoka, who was standing off to the side. I could tell by her stance she was partially meditating, reaching out to the Force to feel her surroundings. She shifted when I got close, and I put my hand on her shoulder.


    "How are you doing? Tatnia says you can feel his intent to betray us?" I asked through the direct link.


    "I can feel something. Hutts are notoriously difficult to read, but I can feel¡­ something incoming. A tension and glee at his plan," She explained. "Also¡­ The Mandalorians. They are uneasy."


    "How so?"


    "They¡­ despise Grakkus. Just about as much as someone can," she explained, turning to look out of the booth and into the main VIP area. "When he slapped your shoulder and nearly knocked you off your feet? The leader was disgusted and sympathetic, and their constant distaste is almost palpable."


    "Would you say they feel like they don''t want to be here? Like they are being blackmailed?"


    "You know as well as I do it doesn''t work like that, Deacon," She responded. "You-"


    She stopped mid-sentence and nodded behind me, prompting me to turn and look. Standing at the entrance of our booth was the Mandalorian leader, as well as two of his underlings.

 Chapter 156

    I turned around fully to study all three of the Mandalorians, mentally noting that their weapons were holstered or hanging from straps. Whatever the reason, the leader was approaching us as close to unarmed as he was probably voluntarily willing to ever get. Not wanting to be rude, I stepped forward and held out my hand.


    "Deacon Roy, leader of the Skyforged Vanguard," I greeted.


    After a moment, the Mandolorian reached out and clasped my arms in a warrior''s handshake, gripping it tightly. As he did, I got a good look at his symbol, which looked like some sort of closing claw.


    "Corvak Syr, Leader of Clan Syr," He responded, his voice partially modulated by his helmet. "Or at least what remains."


    "Well, Corvak Syr, what can the Skyforged Vanguard do for you?" I asked, stepping aside to allow them to enter further.


    "I came to meet the new guys," He explained with a shrug, stepping into our private booth, both of his compatriots standing by the doorway. "By the sounds of it, we will be working around each other a lot."


    "It would seem so," I responded with a nod. "Lord Grakkus seems determined to have his way, so who am I to deny him?"


    "He''s got a reputation of getting what he wants," Corvak admitted, turning to look out of the large window along the far wall. "With little care for those who get in his way."


    "Unsurprising, you don''t get to be what he is without crushing people beneath your heel," I pointed out, shaking my head. "Though I suppose this does answer one of my own questions. Whether or not your clan works with Grakkus frequently."


    "We¡­ have a mutual understanding with the Hutt," He explained, the pause heavy with some sort of meaning that I couldn''t understand, though it was far from pleasant. "We have been working as his personal bodyguards in preparation for meeting you."


    "Is that right? I supposed I should be flattered that he felt we would require such well-known fighters to defend against," I responded. "Though we have no intent of causing unnecessary harm."


    "Good. I can only hope working under Lord Grakkus remains as profitable as possible for both of us," He responded, his helmet turning to look over everyone before settling on me. "You are building quite the reputation for yourself, and I will admit, your armor is quite impressive."


    "Our armorer is a smart kid. He works hard to keep us all protected," I responded. "Perhaps one day I could introduce you."


    That got a reaction, his head tilting slightly as he studied me closely. Communicating through two layers of armor was difficult, but luckily, his confusion came through well enough.


    "You would welcome us into your home?"


    "I would welcome any true ally to my home," I assured him. "The only question would be if that applies to you. And given the situation at hand¡­ I don''t see why we couldn''t be allies."


    For a long moment, Corvak stared in my direction as if trying to chew through my words. Eventually, he nodded, seeming to come to some kind of conclusion.


    "Well, this has been enlightening, but I believe I''ve taken enough of your time," He said, giving me another nod before moving towards the door. "Lord Grakkus would not be pleased if he learned I was disturbing his guests."


    "Of course, thank you for stopping by."


    He nodded and left, his people following after him. He was barely out of sight when Tatnia put her hand on my shoulder, approaching me from behind.


    "That was a warning."


    "I could tell," I responded with a frown. "Any clearer, and he would have been shaking me, telling me to run."


    The first warning was rather obvious. The only reason Grakkus would get his hands on a protection detail like this, specifically for us, was if he expected trouble. So either A, he was looking to ambush us, or he was expecting us to try and rob him. While the latter was very possible, there would be no reason for Corvak to warn us. The talk about Grakkus getting what he wants, even at the detriment of others, that Corvak was sure we would be working around each other, and finally that any work we did do was as profitable as possible¡­


    He was telling us we would be fighting, and that while he hoped neither side would take losses, but he had no choice. Because Grakkus always got what he wanted.


    "Why would he do that?" Tatnia asked. "Warning us puts his people at risk. It gives us a chance to prepare!"


    "Because he is hoping we will run, that we will try and escape before we have to fight," I explained, shaking my head. "He said it himself, we are the new guys on the block, and while our armor is impressive¡­"


    "They are Mandalorians," She finished. "He doesn''t want to have to butcher us."


    I nodded in agreement before pulling away and finding a spot to sit down. All of us made casual conversation, first waiting for the bloody show to begin, then politely watching. Thankfully, Grakkus wasn''t throwing sacrifices into the pit to be eviscerated by beasts or warriors but rather hiring actual fighters to put on real shows. It was bloody, brutal, and disturbing, but according to the information we had access to from the screens placed around the booth, the fighters were being paid well.


    At least those that survived were.


    We passed the time by placing small bets through the services provided by the arena, mostly just playing the casual, unconcerned viewer. The better we played the role Grakkus expected us to, the less likely he was to go the extra mile when he finally betrayed us. And now that we knew for sure it was going to happen, it was actually surprisingly easier to relax. Before, we had no idea what we were waiting for, no idea when we should push, and no idea when we started our plan. Now we knew we were headed down to the vault eventually, and judging by the rising anticipation that Ahsoka could feel, it would happen then.


    When the final bout of gladiatorial violence was over, which ended up being a fight between a small group of warriors and a large monstrosity I actually didn''t recognize but made Vaz shudder when it was announced, the show came to an end. One of the Mandalorians came to get us, and we stepped out of our booth to find Grakkus and his guards waiting.


    "And now that we have eaten and enjoyed some entertainment, it is time to get to business!" Grakkus said, his cybernetic legs clicking as he moved. "Come, I will show you the vault, and then we will talk."


    Grakkus and his Mandalorian guards led us back into the large, Hutt-sized turbolift. Once the door was closed, Grakkus leaned into the control panel and seemed to activate some sort of scanner and security system. The entire turbolift shuddered and began to descend.


    "I have been collecting Jedi artifacts for many years," Grakkus explained after a long moment of silence. "Before the rise of the Empire, my main competitor was the Jedi Order itself. When Emperor Palpatine wiped out the Order, my greatest competitor became the Empire''s propaganda and intelligence agency, who would stop at nothing to destroy any artifacts they could get their hands on. It''s a tragedy, but with every artifact they destroy, my collection goes up in value."


    Grakkus laughed at that statement, seemingly happy that his collection was worth so much now, even though owning it would absolutely lead to the Empire kicking down the front door.


    The turbolift descended for another few seconds, once again in silence, before we could eventually feel it slow to a stop. After a moment, the door opened, and Grakkus walked out, leading the way through a long corridor. There were obvious defenses, including a pair of half-domed shapes built into the wall I was relatively certain were turrets. The hallway split a few times, making me think that this elevator was not the only way down but rather Grakkus''s personal transportation,


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    "For quite some time, I lamented the destruction of the Jedi Order," He admitted, once again activating a security panel, this one taking several steps before the massive vault door opened. "They were a nuisance at the best of times, and an infuriating waste of money at the worst, but with the Jedi wiped out, I was forced to give up a particular dream. My dream of securing what I would consider the final, finishing pieces of my collection."


    We followed the muscular Hutt into the vault, and I could feel the rising tension. The vault interior was vast, the size of at least a full football field. It was filled with statues, artifacts, large sarcophagi, and countless other ancient artifacts. I could see rows upon rows of lightsabers, all stored carefully on shelves and inside protective cases. Just like in the comic, I could even see an <u>Aethersprite</u></a> sitting in one corner.


    I could also see our hovercarts, now empty of our delivery, sitting just inside the vault entrance. The pair of Mandalorians that had been assigned as an escort were waiting for us as well, but our labor droids were nowhere to be seen.


    As we followed the Hutt in, he stopped beside a large, tarp-covered item. It was two or three feet taller than I was and about twice as wide as my full wing span.


    "For so long, I thought to myself I would never be able to finish my collection, and then you, Deacon Roy, and you, Ahsoka Tano, walk into my vault as if to fulfill my dream."


    My stomach flipped when he said Ahsoka''s name. He had been on to it since the beginning. Maybe he didn''t know that our clients didn''t exist, but he certainly knew Ahsoka''s past. It didn''t exactly change the plan, but it was disturbing, to say the least. The muscular Hutt laughed uproariously as he read our shift in demeanor.


    "Did you think I wouldn''t know?" He asked with a chuckle, his legs clicking as he stood there, reaching out to grab the tarp. "The Rebellion rubs elbows with smugglers every day. Did you really think a Jedi leaving the Rebellion wouldn''t reach my ears? Oh, how I love naive fools. They are so easy to trick. And now I can complete my collection!"


    He yanked the tarp back, revealing two large pods with see-through fronts. I could clearly see inside, where there were straps and braces clearly designed to hold someone down. At first glance, it was some sort of stasis chamber, a guess confirmed a moment later.


    "Two live Jedi, a male and female, carefully sealed and stored in perfect stasis!" Grakkus shouted, the greed flaring in his eyes as his legs clicked and twitched.


    For a long moment, the vault was as silent as the grave. The tarp that Grakkus had pulled fluttered to the ground, and we all stared at what he had revealed.


    "Holy shit," I finally said. "You actually think you can force us into those?"


    "Do you really not understand your position?" Grakkus asked, gesturing around us. "Do you expect me to believe you would choose death?"


    I looked around the room at the Mandalorians who had been "secretly" herding us together. While some of them were armed with the same weapons, others were armed with obvious slugthrowers, while others wielded what I was pretty sure were nonlethal net launchers.


    "Right¡­ Okay, so let''s pretend I consider them a threat," I said, focusing on Grakkus. "You are aware that I am not, in fact, a Jedi, correct?"


    "You have been seen doing incredible things beyond the realm of normal beings," He responded, laughing with his deep, gravel-filled voice. "Do you really still pretend to not be a Jedi? Certainly, you are unique, but I have been told that the Force works in mysterious ways."


    "Jesus Christ, whatever you say, Spider-Hutt. Corvak!" I shouted, turning to face the Mandalorian leader, who was steadily holding his blaster carbine, focused on me. "What does he have on you? Blackmail? Slave implants?"


    "Our families," He responded with a heavy voice. "He has our families."


    "...would killing him endanger them?" I asked. "Any sort of dead man''s switch or last resort mutually assured destruction?"


    "If his heart stops, they all die."


    "Hmm¡­ that does make this more complicated¡­"


    "ENOUGH! You will surrender or I will begin executing your crew members!" Grakkus shouted, pointing at me with a big, meaty fist. "I''ll kill every single one of them, then stuff you in these stasis tubes for the next thousand years!"


    "Wait, hold on," I said, holding up my hand. "Let me just get all of this straight. You knew that we had Ahsoka Tano on our team, so when we came to you selling Jedi relics, you used it as a way to get us here so you could add us to your collection."


    "Corvak, shoot the tall one!" Grakkus ordered, growling at my complete lack of reverence or fear.


    The Mandalorian leader, probably trying to make it quick and painless, spun slightly to aim at his new target. He quickly fired his carbine, the sights set directly on Nal''s head. The bolt of yellow plasma snapped across the gap, hit Nal''s helmet, and ricocheted off, flying across the vault until it impacted a three-meter-tall statue, taking a double fist-sized chunk out of it. Nal barely even flinched, his head rocking back slightly from the impact.


    "And you never once considered for a moment that maybe we were working a plan on you?" I asked, not even skipping a beat since I knew Nal would be fine. "I got news for you, Lord Grakkus. We came here voluntarily because you''ve been hoarding things that don''t belong to you. Our clients never existed, and we are here for your holocrons. Tatnia, set them off and tell Calima it''s go time."


    "Sure thing, Boss."


    Now, the plan had always been to infiltrate the base and use Racer as a way to take control of the palace or at least shut down its security system. The problem was that we couldn''t just bring him in with us. At best, Grakkus would have been suspicious of a random droid, and at worst, he would surmise what Racer was for.


    The massive Hutt would, however, allow a quartet of large labor droids inside to make moving his new artifacts easier. Labor droids were cheap and everywhere, constantly hitting the same spot that janitorial services fell under. This meant people usually ignored them, even when they didn''t belong somewhere.


    These particular labor droids were programmed to make their deliveries before heading out on their own. They were instructed to find something important within the palace as they made their way back to the landing platform. They were then instructed to blend in and sit tight.


    For a good while, they had been waiting, stuffed to the absolute brim with high explosives, all set to make a distraction big enough to let Racer and fifteen commando droids sneak inside the palace.


    Moments after I gave the command, even with how deep we were, we could all feel the explosions go off, sending a slight tremor through the vault.


    And then the fun started.

 Chapter 157

    A pause hung over the vault as the tremors slowly finished, the statues and artifacts around us settling, dust flowing down off of them. For a moment, the vault was silent until Grakkus roared with rage when he realized that his crafty little plan had been overrun by ours. He immediately focused on me, either because I was the closest or because I was the one talking and humiliating him. He shouted in Huttese, charging at me full tilt, his cybernetic legs carrying him way faster than any Hutt had any right to move.


    As he charged, I quickly cast a new spell, Paralyze. The green spell impacted Hutt''s chest, but he barely even stuttered, breaking through the spell and continuing to charge. Either he was too big, or the spell had an upper limit of strength, constitution, or willpower.


    Behind me, the fight exploded into a barrage of blaster fire and violence. Ahsoka ignited her sabers, dancing through a barrage of bullets, the vast majority of them splattering over her armor as she melted them with her deep magenta blades. Two of the Mandalorians armed with net throwers lined up their shots and fired, but Ahsoka confidently gestured at them, grabbing them with the Force and throwing them back at the Mandalorians, who fell to the ground, now caught in their own weapon.


    Nal, who I would need to apologize to for letting him take the opening shot, had already slammed into another guard, knocking them off their feet. He rather cleanly stuck his blaster pistol up under their shoulder and fired, the blue glow of a pair of stun blasts making the Mandolaring shake before going down slump.


    I jumped and rolled to the side, avoiding Grakkus''s opening monstrous blow, his massive meaty fist actually cracking the tiles of the vault floor as he missed. He whirled around to target me again, his eyes full of deep anger.


    "I''m going to enjoy stuffing your broken body into that stasis chamber," he shouted. "You-"


    Rather than let him monologue, I raised my left hand and cast a Lightning Bolt while simultaneously using my right hand to summon an Archer Construct. It really drained my mana, but our biggest threat right now was the numbers disadvantage, and the construct would help with that. After a quick mental command to the construct to not go for any lethal shots, I focused on Grakkus. I couldn''t help but watch, open-mouthed, as my Lighting Bolt blew several cybernetic legs off of Grakkus''s slug torso. I had been aiming at his chest, but his surprising and disturbing athleticism let him jump and roll out of the way.


    As I circled around the Hutt, trying to think of the best way to take him down nonlethally, the muscular crime lord rolled to his feet with a shout of anger and pain. With my magic still regenerating, I pulled out my pistol, firing stun blasts that the large Hutt seemed to shake off with worry ease.


    As I tried to figure out my next move, I caught a glimpse of the battle going on not far from mine. I watched as Julus took down his own target, ignoring as dozens of blaster rounds and bullets bounced off his armor. For every shot he fired, three more hit him, but so far, our armor was holding steady.


    "I''m going to enjoy making your life a living hell, Jedi!" Grakkus shouted, grabbing a nearby statue, one I recognized as something we had just delivered, and hurled it at me.


    The large stone artifact flew across the distance with impressive accuracy, very nearly slamming into me. I was just barely able to get a Superior Ward up as I dodged to the left, the impressive magical shield deflecting the torso-sized statue, which exploded into smaller chunks in the process. The impact rattled my arm, but I ignored it, dropping the ward and pushing out a double-handed barrage of Spark, mostly to distract the enraged Hutt.


    The lightning danced over the large Hutt''s body, leaving black seared marks on his chest and arm. He roared in pain but seemed to have no issues pushing through it, charging, and almost leaping forward to grab my arm. Without my armor, I was sure he could have broken my forearm with his grip strength. Luckily, between Pola knowing what he was doing and the inherit sturdiness of beskar, even the monstrously strong Hutt couldn''t flex the plating.


    Seeing an opportunity, I conjured a sword, and with a spin and flick, I cut off his arm just above the elbow. The crimelord screamed in pain and shock, stumbling back as his hand slapped down to the ground. As he struggled, purple blood splattered against me, the floor, and the various artifacts around me. The Hutt was losing blood at a prodigious rate. Already, he looked pale, so even as he recoiled in pain and horror, further covering the room in blood, I cast Heal Middling Trauma on him. The bleeding quickly stopped, the healing spell doing its job.


    "Wha-"


    Before he could comment, I charged up another spell, a bright green blast of energy catching the large, off-guard hutt in the chest. Immediately, he froze, his body glowing a soft green as the Paralyze spell locked him up completely. Either his shock had thrown him off enough for the spell to work, or losing his hand had. I wasn''t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, though.


    I quickly slashed through the remaining cybernetics on his already partially disabled side. When the short-lived disabling spell wore off, I jumped back just in time to dodge the swipe of the Hutt''s tail. I listened, nonplussed, as he cursed me out in what I again assumed was Huttese before eventually switching back to Basic.


    "You can''t kill me, and I won''t call them off!" He shouted, ineffectually trying to crawl away from me, clutching his stump. "When the Mandalorians finish with the rest of your team, you''re next!"


    "... you clearly haven''t been paying attention," I pointed out, gesturing to the rest of the fight.


    More than half of the Mandalorians were on the ground, wounded, stunned, or otherwise unable to continue fighting. Ahsoka was providing cover with her lightsabers while Nal and Tatnia laid down covering fire to keep the remaining guards from running. As we watched, one Mandalorian tried to improve their position with a boost of their rocket pack, only for Vaz to jump up onto a crate of some kind and then jump again to grab the Mandalorian by the chest plate. The Shistavanen weathered a barrage of blaster fire but still dragged the Mandalorian down from the air, slamming them down into the ground.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    It was clear that between our superior armor and the many enchantment objects my crew had on them, the Mandalorians were outclassed. We were stronger, faster, and tougher. Their only advantage was training and experience, but even there, we weren''t exactly slouches.


    While I didn''t know exactly what he was saying, the Huttese flowing from Grakkus''s mouth was filled with disbelief. As we watched, Tatnia picked up one of the Mandalorians'' own net weapons and fired it at Corvak, the leader going down heavily, struggling uselessly against the confinement.


    Seeing that his guards were falling quickly, Grakkus tried one more time to escape, ignoring his still intact cybernetics, instead just trying to slither away like most Hutts did. I rolled my eyes and hit him with another Paralyze, the Hutt once again locking up with a slight green glow. Taking the opportunity, I quickly jumped up onto his back, managing to stay steady as I put my hands on the back of his head.


    Simultaneously, I cast two separate spells. With my left, I cast Sparks, feeding the sparking electricity into the Hutt''s skull. With the other, I cast Healing Hands, healing the physical I was doing to the Hutt as I did it. It didn''t wipe away the mental damage I was putting him through, though, cooking his brain as he lay there frozen.


    Eventually, he broke through the paralysis spell, flailing and twitching as he tried to throw me off, his mouth open in a wide, silent scream. But after a few more seconds, that stopped as well, the massive hut slumping over. I continued my brutal but effective brain-wiping technique for another twenty seconds until my mana ran out. By then, smoke was coming off from his eyes, which made me glad they were currently shut.


    "Okay! Grakkus is down!" I called out. "You can stop fighting!"


    It took a minute for Corvak to understand what I meant, but when he did, he quickly called the few Mandalorians still standing to stop. I made my way to him, making sure to visually inspect all of my crew as I did. As far as I could tell, none of them were seriously injured, though Nal was favoring his shoulder, so I quickly healed him as I passed.


    "Did you kill him?" Corvak asked desperately once I rolled him over. "Is he dead!?"


    "No, I just fried his brain," I explained, using a conjured dagger to cut him free of the net. "Take a look for yourself."


    He quickly stood and rushed to the large, brain-dead Hutt. Apparently, the best way to test if a Hutt was alive was by putting your hand in its mouth and pulling out its tongue. Whether he was looking for something or feeling for a pulse, I did not envy him. He did seem satisfied with what he found, however, since he quickly returned.


    "He is alive," He confirmed, the slowly recovering Mandalorians letting out various sounds and words of relief.


    "I''m sorry to cut off your mini celebration, but our window of freedom is closing quickly," I explained, getting the clan leader''s attention. "We need to get going, now."


    "We? We cannot leave until we find our people," He explained, turning back to me. "I know they were here in the palace, but I don''t know where!"


    "That''s the easy part. With the right stuff, I can find them no matter where they are," I assured him. "Even if we don''t have what I need, then our slicer can scan the palace. In the meantime¡­"


    Ahsoka, seeing that the fight was finished, was already going through the treasure. One repulsor cart was already carrying two open crates, in which Ahsoka was putting holocrons and lightsabers. As we watched, Julus was already going to Grakkus to grab his necklace. I gestured for Nal and Vaz to assist while Tatnia approached from behind me.


    "We should split up and work together," I explained. "Too big of a group running through the palace is going to attract a lot of attention. I suggest that Tatnia, myself, and another member of my team, along with you and a few of your team, go looking for your missing people. The rest should help Ahsoka. When she is done gathering everything important, they can make their way to the ship and keep our escape clear. How many of your people are here?"


    "Twenty-four," He responded. "Including children."


    "We can handle that, but first, we need to find them and get them out."


    For a while, I thought he would refuse my offer, but after a few tense seconds, he nodded.


    "We already owe you for not killing us outright, as you clearly could," he said, though his admission sounded pained. "We will work together."


    "Fantastic. Pick your people while I get everyone healed up and ready to go. We are waiting for word from our slicer, and then we move."


    While Grakkus had been our primary concern, there was no doubt an excessive amount of threats littered throughout the palace. Even just the turrets out in the hall, which both my team and Corvak''s had studiously avoided, would be a threat, considering how large they were. We were tough in our beskar armor but not invincible.


    I quickly went around and healed anyone who was injured, mostly Mandalorians. A quick zap of Sparks to the Mandalorian that Nal stunned, followed by some healing, quickly got them on their feet, though I was pretty sure I was not their favorite at the moment. We were making good progress on loading up the repulsor carts when the lights dimmed slightly, then booted back up to full power. Not a second later, my comms flicked on.


    "VIP Racer successfully guided to target," The voice of Boxi, a deeper version of the infamous B1 voice, reported. "VIP reports security has been infiltrated. Awaiting further orders."


    "Good job, Boxi, keep guarding Racer," I ordered. "Confirm that Racer is watching us and will be covering our movements."


    "Roger Roger," Boxi confirmed, pausing a beat before continuing. "VIP Racer confirms overwatch."


    I finished healing everyone, getting the last Mandalorian on their feet before waving Corvak over.


    "Okay, our slicer is in position and watching over us," I explained, speaking up so everyone could hear. "Tatnia, Julus, you''re with me. Nal, Vaz, stick with Ahsoka and help her load up. Once all her carts are full, move out. Corvak, who is staying and who is going?"


    The Mandalorian leader made a quick few hand gestures, and three of his men rushed forward, standing by his side. I nodded and tapped my helmet, contacting Boxi.


    "Boxi, let Racer know we are splitting into two groups," I explained, speaking clearly and plainly to the droid. "One is remaining behind in the vault to continue the mission, while the other is splitting off to stage a rescue mission. Be aware that we have new allies, including a group of Mandalorians traveling with us. "


    "...Change in mission parameters confirmed," Boxi responded after a moment. "VIP Racer confirms their understanding. Is further aid required?"


    "Not yet, but stay alert," I said before nodding to Corvak. "Let''s move out."


    "Wait! How are we going to find them?" The Mandalorian leader pressed. "There is no way we can search this entire Palace top to bottom before someone comes looking for Grakkus."


    "Does anyone have any pictures or video of the people Grakkus took prisoner?" I asked, my question catching them off guard. "Datapad or physical, it doesn''t matter."


    "A¡­ picture? How-"


    In rapid succession, I cast Sparks, threw a fireball across the vault, conjured my sword, slammed it into a crate, and finished by conjuring my familiar and the mage construct.


    "I am not a Jedi, I am a fucking wizard! If I say I can find your people with nothing but a picture and my mysterious ways, you best fucking believe I can do it!" I said, starting to get frustrated. "Now, is someone going to show me something, or do we have to waste more time?"


    For a moment, nobody moved. Then, slowly, one of the armored warriors who had rushed to Corvak''s side reached into a pouch and pulled out a small datapad. It was less a full data pad and more of just a viewing screen for photos, as far as I could tell. It flicked on, showing off the image of a woman and a child, both of them smiling and waving. I looked at it for a long moment before casting the path version of Clairvoyance. When the spell latched on, I couldn''t help but smile.


    "I have them, it''s time to move!"

 Chapter 158

    Thankfully, when I gave the order to move, it seemed that the Mandalorians were still stunned by my overwhelming display of magic, so rather than argue that there was no way I could possibly know where we were going, Corvak just nodded and followed after Tatnia, Julus and myself.


    Before exiting the vault, we carefully peeked out into the hall, checking cautiously that the two large turrets that were built into the hallway walls weren''t about to cook us through our armor. After two short peeks, it was clear that Racer had, in fact, disabled the security outside the vault.


    "It''s clear, let''s go!" I called out, leading the way through the hall with the Clairvoyance spell already cast.


    We turned off the main hall almost immediately, ignoring the large, Hutt-sized elevator at the end of it, walking through what was clearly designed as staff access. It was easy to figure out, as the second this new hallway was out of view from the main one, the Jedi Temple-esque decorations vanished. Instead, the halls were dull, mostly made from duracrete with smoothed floors. Hell, there were even fewer lights lining the walls. It was a clear and obvious way to save money.


    "Jeeze, what a cheapskate," Julus said muttered, looking around the roughly made hall. "It''s like walking in one of the slum buildings back home..."


    "You have no idea," Corvak said, almost too quiet to hear. "It gets worse around the base."


    We continued to follow the Clairvoyance spell through rough staff sections of the palace as much as possible, only occasionally pushing through more official, thoroughly decorated, and Hutt-accessible areas. Eventually, we finally arrived at a small turbolift, and we all piled in. It was a tight fit, but we managed. It took a bit of riding up and down to figure out what floor we were supposed to get off on, but eventually, we figured it out.


    "What¡­ magic is leading you to them?" Corvak asked as we jogged down another hall. "I don''t doubt you''re doing something, but¡­"


    "Relax, I get it. It''s difficult to just switch on belief like that," snapping my fingers for emphasis as I took cover behind a corner and peeked around, motioning everyone forward when I saw it was clear. "I was mostly just trying to push everyone past the scoffing and eye-rolling phase so we could get a move on. As for what sort of magic, it''s a spell used to locate things. It taps into a sort of underlayer that is affected by knowledge and understanding. As long as I can point it to the right target, it can lead me to it. Assuming it exists or it''s possible."


    He seemed to chew on that for a while, my short and sweet description obviously catching him a bit off-center. Luckily, he was smart enough to put that aside and focus on the task at hand since not long after that, we jogged head first into our first problem. A ragtag group of mercenaries, guards, or other criminals hired by Grakkus. Whether they were actually trying to do their jobs or were now running rampant through the palace, it didn''t matter since the second they spotted us, they opened fire.


    "Dammit, we don''t have time for this," I cursed. "Skyforged, push forward! Corvak, use us as cover!"


    Barely waiting to see him nod in agreement, I stepped around the corner, casting Superior Ward with one hand and conjuring my own extra armor with the other. I held out the Superior Ward for Julus and Tatnia while I relied on my conjured armor to protect me from anything unexpected. Together, we moved down the hall, blocking blaster bolts ranging from civilian pistols to much larger rifles. By the time we collectively managed to drop the last guard into a smoking heap, all my magical protections had failed, and our armor was a lot hotter than I felt comfortable with.


    I could see a harsh warning blinking on my helmet readout, warning me that I was pushing my armor too far and that if I didn''t let it cool, systems would start to fail. As it was, it would probably need to be reforged. I was tempted to try and think of a way to cool us off with Frostbite, without breaking anything from the rapid cooldown, but ultimately decided it wasn''t worth the risk. The temperature would drop slowly on its own.


    With the rampaging guards dealt with, we pushed deeper, bypassing damage from our explosive droids and avoiding another large group of guards before finally reaching a large, sealed-off door. Julus attempted to open it with the control panel but didn''t get very far. Luckily, we had another way in.


    "Boxi?" I called out through my comms. "Is everything alright? We could use some help with this door."


    "VIP Racer is focusing on guiding the primary group to the ship, slicing through the central elevator security system," Boxi responded. "VIP advises patience."


    Resisting the urge to snap back as the sass, I instead turned back to Corvak.


    "Hang tight. Racer is guiding the other team out and into position," I explained, the leader letting out what I assumed was a curse in Mando''a, but nodded a moment later.


    We moved into better positions, getting ready to hold the door against another wave of guards if we needed to. Rather than station at the door itself, we split up and moved to each end of the hallway so we could use the corners as cover. After four minutes had passed, I could feel the tension reaching a breaking point when Boxi finally responded.


    "VIP Racer is breaching the door controls."


    "Here we go, doors opening!" I called out down the hall, all of us rushing back to the door. I could almost feel his anxiety and nervousness, the overwhelming need to know that his people were safe.


    The door opened slowly, revealing a significantly large singular room. It could have easily passed for a large stable. In fact, at some point, it might have actually been one. Now, however, it served as a prison, with rows of beds along one side, an open bathroom system along the other, and around twenty-five people. All of them stood as the door began to open, caught off guard by the sudden activity.


    It was easy to see that the occupants looked rough, from dirty and nervous kids to grim and tired-looking adults. All of the adults were quick to pull the children behind them, and three women carrying babies pulled even further back behind the group.


    Despite their unfortunate circumstances, even before they realized that something was different, none of them looked scared. Determined and anxious, yes, but not scared. These were clearly hardy, trained people. When Corvak was finally revealed, words of relief spread through the crowd, and one woman, carrying a baby of no more than a year old, quickly stepped forward.


    Corvak met her halfway, pulling off his helmet and dropping it to the ground, embracing the woman tightly before kissing the child''s forehead. The armored Mandalorians that accompanied him were right on his heels, hugging children and partners alike. After a moment, I popped the seals on my helmet, nodding for Tatnia and Julus to guard the doors.


    Corvak turned, his partner turning as well, focusing on me with a tight smile. His partner''s expression seemed a bit more grateful but was similarly guarded. I got my first good look at his face, realizing that he was younger than I assumed, maybe just a few years older than me. He looked to be about thirty-five, maybe forty, with dirty blonde hair that was cut short. He had a scar along the right side of his face and dark brown, almost hazel eyes.


    "Thank you, Deacon," He said, extending his hand. "Thank you for your help¡­"


    "What else are friends for?" I said with a smirk, shaking his covered limb. "We can''t stop just quite yet, though. We still need to get everyone off the planet. I know Grakkus had a fail-safe, but will it activate if they leave?"


    "No, he threatened to flood the room with poison upon his death," The woman holding onto Corvak said, looking down periodically at the baby bundled in her arms. As she spoke, she gestured to a nearby grate. "None of us have had anything implanted."


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    "Well, as horrifying as the idea is, it means we don''t have to worry about cutting anything out," I said, nodding as Corvak and his partner winced. "For now, we need to move. The longer we hang around, the more likely it is we get pinned by encroaching forces."


    Corvak nodded, and he quickly got everyone together, organizing his people to follow us out. He assigned two of his trained Mandalorians to watch the back of the group, while he stayed up in front with us. Soon, we had left the prison room behind, with my Clairvoyance spell locked onto the Talos Chariot.


    Moving through the palace with a trail of civilians was considerably more nerve-wracking than just jogging through with us. Granted, the older civilians had at least basic combat training, and after we wiped out a small contingent of patrolling guards, most of them were even armed, but it was still nerve-wracking. This was especially true when we ran into a sized turbolift, one that was too small to fit everyone in all at once. Instead, we were forced to go in chunks, splitting the group five times and making my blood pressure skyrocket.


    Eventually, we were close enough to the landing platform that I informed Boxi to escort Racer back to the ship. We ran into the commando droids and the astromech as we went further, and after I convinced everyone that the droids were under our command, we finally arrived at the massive landing platform.


    When we first arrived at the palace, the landing platform had been more or less pristine, clean, and orderly. Now, it looked like a warzone. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of corpses littered the opening, all of them Grakkus''s guards. There were craters, ruined ships along the side, and collapsed pillars along the hallway and out into the platform. Luckily, Ahsoka must have felt us coming, as when we stuck our heads out, they didn''t shoot at us.


    We quickly crossed the battlefield to the ship. Tatnia and Julus immediately started guiding the civilians inside through the boarding ramp while I made a beeline for Ahsoka. She was standing by a barricade made up of a ruined speeder that I did not recognize. It was wrecked and had clearly been shot down, presumably by the Chariot.


    "How is everything?" I asked, looking around at the destruction they had wrought. "Did anything even get close?"


    "There was a pair of starfighters that buzzed us a few times," She said, shaking her head. "We got them on the third pass with the Chariot''s weapons."


    "Okay, well, unless something is wrong, then we are good to go," I said, my deep disgust for this planet leaking into my voice. "I want to get the fuck off this planet."


    "Yeah, let''s go."


    As we made our way to the boarding ramp, I looked over at her. I could see that she was holding something in her hand. When I realized what it was, I frowned.


    "Did you get it done?" I asked, holding out my hand.


    "...No. I couldn''t, but Vaz did," she explained, looking away and passing me a simple-looking detonator. "I''m sorry, it''s just-"


    "You don''t have to apologize," I assured her, patting her shoulder as both of us stopped by the boarding ramp. "He was defenseless. Plenty of people would agree with you."


    She looked at me through her helmet, and after a moment, she nodded before taking the lead up the stairs and into the ship.


    As quick as we could, with everyone and everything piled into the Chariot, Calima was given the order to take off. The civilians and Mandalorians were down in the cargo hold, watching us with suspicion as we stepped up through the boarding area. I ignored the looks, as I couldn''t really blame them for being suspicious, not after what they had been through.


    Still, I could give them something.


    "Corvak," I called out as I pushed through the people. Once I was close enough, I handed him the detonator. "This is for you."


    "What is it?" He asked, taking it from me carefully.


    "It''s connected to a bomb that''s currently wrapped around Grakkus''s neck," I explained, turning back and leaving him behind. "Better safe than sorry, right?"


    I left the cargo hold, with most of my team staying down with the newcomers. As Tatnia and I rushed to the bridge, I could hear a loud chant of what was probably victory in Mando''a, and I couldn''t help but smirk as I jogged up the stairs to the second deck. We arrived at the bridge just in time for something to impact the ship, rocking us as we came to a stop.


    "What''s the situation?" I called out as Tatnia sat down in the co-pilot''s seat, and I kicked one of the gunner droids out of theirs.


    "A squadron of mixed fighters and a small modified gunship of some kind just took off from somewhere else in the palace," Calima explained. "Must be some sort of protocol in place because the second we took off, they came hunting for us."


    "Some sort of blanket security?" Tatnia guessed. "Anyone leaves without my permission, kill them?"


    "Probably more of a vengeance thing," I pointed out. "Doesn''t matter. Call in the Loyal Hound and deploy the teardrops. Tell them to cover us as best they can."


    The starfighters were a mismatch of different models and modifications, though all of them looked to be of good quality. They broke up into different groups, catching up to us quickly while the gunship lagged behind.


    Before we could deploy the teardrops, the starfighters made several attack runs on us. They came from all angles, making it difficult to keep track of them and even harder to accurately predict them. We managed to take down one of them, the starfighter exploding into a ball of fire before. Still, the ship rocked and bounced as they peppered our shields with laser fire, no doubt weakening it.


    Finally, all of the teardrops deployed, and together, they tore after the starfighters, chasing them down. They even managed to take down a few of them, but not without heavy casualties.


    They did their job however, as while they were engaging the starfighters, they couldn''t come after us. This gave the Talos Chariot the opportunity to burn atmo and cut through the lower atmosphere as fast as we could. The ship rumbled and bounced through the turbulence as we climbed higher and higher.


    Unfortunately, while we were avoiding the starfighters, the gunship had time to catch up, angling to intercept and hammering our shields as it did.


    "Seventy-five percent and dropping!" Tatnia warned as I swiveled my gun to hammer against the gunship. "Seventy, Sixty-eight¡­"


    We weathered the barrage as best we could, hitting fifty percent as we left the atmosphere. We were starting to take damage from feedback energy, with warning sounds going off throughout the ship. Calima pushed the ship to its max, even lowering energy to the weapons to boost the thrusters.


    Finally, our savior arrived, the Loyal Hound dropped out of hyperspace nearby. We angled to intercept the larger ship, which shifted to do the same. When they entered the appropriate range, the combat ship opened up on our pursuers, slamming turbolaser blasts into their shields as our cruiser put itself in between us and the gunship. It forced us to slow down, but the Loyal Hound was already driving off the gunship with its superior weapons power, the starfighters retreating with it.


    "Calima, link up with the Hound and make a jump somewhere clear," I said, standing up and letting out a long breath. "We might be out of the frying pan, but we''ve got more than thirty Mandalorians in our cargo hold, ready to start an even bigger fire if we don''t handle them right."

 Chapter 159

    I left the bridge at a fast walk. I wasn''t afraid that Corvak would suddenly try to take over the ship, especially since my crew was still armored and their civilians were stuck like rats in a cage if shit suddenly went down. Obviously, my team wouldn''t target them, but there was only so careful you could be when fighting for your life. Despite not being worried, I wasn''t exactly looking to tempt fate, so I moved quickly.


    Before I headed down to the cargo bay, I made three stops. First, I quickly stepped out of my armor and into my Skyforged uniform, taking time to strap my pistol to my hip. I felt comfortable talking to them without my armor, both because I was pretty sure they wouldn''t try anything, and because Corvak had taken off his helmet in front of me.


    That meant that this particular group of Mandalorians weren''t devout followers of The Way. Or was it The Creed? Either way, it was a good thing because, beyond that concept and those names, I knew fuck all about the Disney version of the Mandolorians. Of course, that only mattered if the parallels continued. For all I knew, this was some sort of obscure mix between Legends and Disney canon. Though, that didn''t matter much either because what I knew about Mandalorians from the Legends canon was about four thousand years out of date.


    Basically, I was flying blind, save what was common knowledge and what I picked up from various Legend sources.


    When I finished changing, I made my way to the enchanting room. The enchanting table and materials were back where they were supposed to be, having returned them after transferring back from the Starcaller to the Chariot for the final leg of this mission. There, I grabbed a small ingot of electrum. I had set it aside to make into some jewelry, with the intention of testing if the material of the item being enchanted affected the power of enchantment at all. I hadn''t quite had the time to do that experiment, and now I was glad I hadn''t. Slipping the bar into my pocket, I made my way to the lounge.


    There, stored inside the internal cavity of the couch, was the emergency medical droid. On most ships, at least the ones that had them, the medical droid was activated, scanning for injuries and being on hand to help. On the Chariot, with me around, it was often redundant, so it was kept in an easy-to-access storage container, namely the couch. I activated the droid and grabbed the medical supply box it would need to treat anyone before finally heading back down to the cargo bay.


    I nodded to my team, who were doing their best to guard the stairs to the second level without actually looking threatening. Everyone was feeling a lot of stress, even after having escaped relatively unharmed. Thankfully, the Mandalorians seemed content to talk amongst themselves. They looked happy to finally have escaped Grakkus, but the tension of being at someone else''s mercy was still heavy in the air.


    "Corvak," I called out, getting the leader''s attention. "If anyone needs healing for any injuries, I''m happy to help. For anyone who might not trust my abilities, I have a medical droid here as well."


    Hearing me call out, Corvak pushed through the crowd, which quickly spread to let him through. He paused to look at me, studying my uniform before nodding in approval.


    "Thank you. We appreciate all of the aid you have given Clan Syr."


    "You tried to warn us away from a trap, despite what it might cost your Clan," I pointed out. "That alone would earn you our help. Beyond that, the Skyforged believes that finding allies is something that must be an active goal, not a passive one. For now, though, we should focus on making sure your people are fed and healthy. What comes next can wait for now."


    He nodded and turned to his people. After a brief explanation and demonstration of my abilities, we began to work our way through the crowd. In total, there were thirty-six Mandalorians in my cargo bay. Twelve fighters, six children of various ages, two babies, and sixteen adults of mixed genders. Almost all of the adults had light injuries of some kind, mostly just bruises, while a few were more heavily wounded. At first, several of them refused my healing magic, but after demonstrating it on myself and healing everyone else, most of them eventually agreed. The medical droid scanned everyone, just in case.


    When everyone was healed and or treated, Tatnia and Ahsoka started handing out food to everyone. Nal, myself, and several of the Mandalorians moved and shifted crates around to let everyone sit and enjoy their food, something they hadn''t been able to do for quite some time. By now, the twelve Mandalorian fighters had removed their helmets and were talking with the civilians.


    Once everyone was set, I grabbed some food for myself and sat down near Corvak and his partner. His people were remaining a respectful distance from their leader, which was perfect for my purposes. After a moment, Corvak gestured to his wife with a smile on his face.


    "Deacon, this is my love, my beautiful wife Noori, and my heart, my daughter Vina."


    "It''s nice to meet you both, I''m glad we were able to get you away from Grakkus and Nar Shaddaa," I said with a shiver. "It''s a terrible place for a child."


    "We agree on that," Noori said with a soft smile. "I am very glad to hear your droid declare her healthy."


    "Speaking of your droids¡­" Corvak started. "You have an unusual amount of CIS droids on board, and unless I''m mistaken, this ship started as a separatist vessel."


    "You''re right, on both accounts," I admitted. "The Talos Chariot was our first ship, but since then, we have had a few successful raids of old CIS bases. As for the droids, we''ve found that as long as you use them properly, they can be useful."


    "You would hide behind droids?" He asked, his tone less accusatory and more curious.


    "No, we use them to fill the gaps," I explained, resisting the urge to roll my eyes at his macho "real warriors" schtick. "For example, we couldn''t afford to split the group when challenging Grakkus, so we left it to the droids."


    "They were effective, at least," He admitted. "But why not just expand your group?"


    "Because they are also useful for suicide missions," I explained. "Having disposable troops on hand, ready to throw away distractions or other tasks, has proven incredibly useful. It opens up a lot of opportunities."


    "That... does actually sound useful," he admitted with a thoughtful frown on his face. "Still, I dislike the indirectness. It feels dishonorable."


    "Are you really insinuating that someone like Grakkus deserves a fair fight?" I asked, shaking my head. "Honorable combat has its place against honorable foes, not against bastards like him."


    Technically, I didn''t quite agree with his statement, but the way I put it was better than what I actually thought. The entire concept of strategy was about tricking your opponent before he tricked you. As long as you stick to basically decency, then all was fair in love and war.


    He reluctantly nodded in agreement, however, falling silent while he considered my words. I smiled as Noori played with her child, the small infant burbling at the attention. No matter what happened, even if someday we met as enemies again, I would not regret saving them now. Eventually, after we had finished eating, Corvak spoke again.


    Stolen story; please report.


    "Deacon, your armor. What is it made of?" He asked quietly so that no one around us could hear.


    I resisted the urge to let out a long breath. Corvak may have asked the question, but it sounded as if he dreaded the answer, and I could imagine why. In his mind, if I said beskar, he would consider himself honor-bound to demand it be returned to his people. And considering the worth of beskar, and just how much we were wearing, that would be like demanding we hand over a couple of good-sized warships.


    "I am glad you asked that question quietly, Corvak," I admitted with a frown, leaning back slightly. "I hope that by this point, we''ve earned the right to at least explain ourselves?"


    "Then it is beskar?" He asked, before letting out a long string of Mando''a expletives. When he stopped, he looked back at me, locking his eyes on mine. "Yes, you''ve earned the right to explain, though I would likely be shamed by other clan leaders for letting you."


    "Gather your people then, I can only do this once," I explained, getting an odd look in response.


    Rather than ask questions, he simply nodded and stood, walking away to gather the rest of his clan. It took a few minutes, but eventually, everyone was gathered again. My crew hung back, and I shared a look with Tatnia, who nodded in understanding. This was where things could get very messy very quickly. When everyone was gathered, I walked to the center, which naturally formed an open semi-circle around me.


    "Corvak, does anyone here have the ability to recognize metals?" I asked, the man already having pushed to the interior of the space.


    "...Our armorer does," He said, looking over at an older man, who nodded and stepped forward.


    Silently, I pulled out the small bar of electrum and handed it to the armorer before turning to address the rest of the crowd.


    "As some of you have witnessed, and no doubt shared, the armor that the Skyforged Vanguard wears is impressive," I said, getting a lot of stern looks in response. Clearly, people already suspected the truth. "As I''m no doubt you''re already thinking, yes, we are wearing beskar armor. In fact, I am wearing it now."


    Immediately, the crowd began to talk over me. There weren''t too many people, and I could have shouted over them if I wanted to, but instead, I gave a look at Corvak. The words would mean more coming from him.


    "Be quiet!" He shouted, silence returning to the cargo hold. "Deacon and his people saved this clan from working for a bastard of a Hutt. The slug held our people hostage, and the Skyforged broke us free despite us trying to kill them moments before. He has at least earned the right to explain himself!"


    "Thank you," I said, nodding to him before looking back through the crowd. "The truth is that while my people do wear beskar, it is not Mandalorian beskar."


    "Beskar has only ever been found on Mandalore and its moon," The armorer said with a frown. "No traces of it have ever been found anywhere else in the galaxy, and people have been looking for it for thousands and thousands of years."


    "I never said we found more. I only said that the beskar we have is not Mandalorian beskar," I responded, turning to face the man holding my electrum ingot. "Armorer, what is that metal?"


    "It is electrum," He responded, handing it back as I held out my hand. "Pure to as far as I can tell."


    "Indeed, it is electrum," I agreed with a nod. "Now, who here has the purest sample of beskar? Does anyone have something approaching pure beskar, in armor or otherwise?"


    For a while, the crowd was silent, until one of the fighters stepped forward. I recognized his armor as the one that Nal had tackled to the ground and stunned. Now that his helmet was off, I could see he was younger than I expected. In fact, most of the fighters were younger than I expected. I could feel there was a story there, but for now, I needed to focus on the task at hand. When the slightly younger Mandalorian soldier reached the inner circle, he nodded.


    "I have a tab of pure beskar. It''s a necklace, handed down to me by my father," He explained, reaching around his neck to pull out a small circle of metal with some symbols stamped into it. "He received it from his father, and him from his, going back several generations."


    "Impressive," I said with a smile. "Lay it over your armor, I only need to touch it with my finger."


    He frowned, but a glance as Corvak saw him doing as I said, laying it over his chest plate, the chain having just enough slack to do so. I reached out and put my finger on the simple amulet, before looking around the crowd. I raise the bar of electrum in my hand so that everyone could see it, pinched between my fingers.


    "You have all seen my healing abilities firsthand, and some of you have seen my magic in combat. But magic is capable of much more than throwing fire and healing wounds," I explained, before casting Transmute. "Watch as I exert my will over reality."


    My hands glowed, and I could feel my magic slowly converting the electrum bar into beskar, the crowd was silent. Finally, after nearly a minute of watching the wide-eyed audience stare, the process was complete. I patted the soldier on the shoulder, before turning and passing the ingot of newly transmuted beskar. I make sure never to really cover it completely so that none of them could accuse me of any sleight of hand tricks. When I place the ingot in the armorer''s hand, he looks at it for a second as if he couldn''t believe it before finally starting to identify it.


    For a good minute, he examined the ingot, even taking out a small tool and attempting to etch it. After he was done, he looked up at Corvak, his eyes still wide.


    "Sir¡­it''s beskar. Pure as you could hope for."


    Whispers of disbelief ripple over the crowd as Corvak approached us, taking the ingot from the armorer''s hand. He turned it over in his own before passing it back to me.


    "You can convert electrum into beskar?"


    "I can convert any pure metal into any other pure metal," I corrected, triggering a whole new wave of whispers to float around. "I use precious metals to make beskar because the conversion rate is too low to be worth it otherwise."


    "How does it work?" He asked. "Are there any limitations? Is it permanent? Can-"


    "Woah, woah, slow down. First, I want you to keep this," I said, handing him the ingot of beskar. "Consider it a gift. Second, we have plenty of time to answer all of your questions. Soon, we can sit down and discuss this and more. For now, I just wanted to prove we did not steal our beskar from your people."


    For a long while, he stared at me, trying to see past what I had done or maybe what I was thinking. Eventually, he nodded in agreement.


    "After witnessing it myself, as long as you are not tricking me, I agree. You are not stealing from my people," He agreed, sounding slightly lost and unsure. "But I cannot drop this topic until I know everything. This has the potential to change everything!"


    "...Fine, then follow me up to the ship''s common area, where we can discuss this in more detail," I agreed, gesturing back towards the stairs to the second level. "We have more to discuss than just beskar, anyway."

 Chapter 160

    Unsurprisingly, Corvak had a lot of questions to ask about how my Transmute spell worked. He turned the beskar ingot over in his hands again and again while we talked, as if it would eventually return to electrum if he stared hard enough. I understood his trepidation in accepting the new status quo that I was introducing. This was a significant shift, a change in how the world worked that was hard to digest.


    I answered his questions as best I could, trying to satisfy hois curiosity and keep him from freaking out at the same time. I even explained where I got my first beskar sample from, with the promise of returning that amount, plus interest, once we got our hands on more precious metals. I would have argued against it or at least downplayed the contribution, but I still remembered the old promise I made to Pola to assuage his guilt for essentially graverobbing ancient Mandolorians.


    "I have to admit¡­ a small part of me hates it," Corvak admitted when I finally satisfied his curiosity, the clan leader leaning back from the conference table in the lounge. "Beskar has always been ours, has always been tied to our people. To hear that you are simply turning gold, platinum, and electrum into it with nothing but your¡­magic? It pulls on my honor, as if I should stop you."


    "But you won''t," I responded simply.


    "Of course not," He said, shaking his head. "This is¡­ it''s not our responsibility to police what everyone else is doing. My honor demands that I do my best to keep or return Mandalorian beskar to its rightful Mandalorian owners, but¡­ Since what you are using isn''t Mandalorian beskar, then I have no reason to take it back."


    I let out a long sigh of relief at the admission, sagging back in my chair.


    "That is great news, Corvak," I said truthfully. "I was worried that¡­ well, I was worried."


    He nodded in understanding. A fight between his people and mine would not have been fun, especially since we were stuck on the Chariot, in deep space, until we decided where we were jumping out to. Having an all-out battle between us would have likely caused some major issues. Neither of us wanted to handle that, just like neither of us wanted to admit my team would win.


    "You realize, however, that other clans or coverts may not agree with my logic," He pointed out. "Once word spreads, which it will, you are going to have other Mandalorians looking for you.


    "It has been pointed out," I acknowledged, leaning back heavily in my chair. "It''s why I have a proposal for you. I asked a Mandalorian friend for what she thought was the best way to keep from being attacked or targeted. She seemed to think the best way was for me to create a covert or hire a clan to work for me. She believed bringing Mandalorians on board would convince others to leave me alone, or at least change how they approached us."


    "It¡­ would most likely help," he admitted, reading between the lines pretty quickly. "You would hire us to work with the Skyforged?"


    "I could," I admitted with a nod. "But honestly¡­ I dislike the idea of having a separate group working within mine for very long. It seems to me to be an excellent way to start creating unwelcome power groups and dynamics. I have a different idea. Instead of hiring you, what if you joined us?"


    "Is there a difference?" He asked. "Beyond the simple definition?"


    "Yes. I don''t want you to work for us, I want you to join us. Merge Clan Syr with the Skyforged," I explained. "We have resources, ships, and connections with the Rebellion. Right now, our main priority is growth, but we plan to take the fight to the Empire whenever we can, giving you a chance to pay them back for what they did to your people."


    "You want me to dissolve my clan?" He asked, his tone sharp, clearly not liking my idea so far.


    "Not dissolve it, but step it back," I explained, raising a hand to hold back his annoyance at my suggestion. "Your clan is family, so pull it back to that level. Rather than the clan being an entity around mercenary work, drag it back to being just your family."


    "Why in the name of Mandalore would I do that?" He asked, his rising anger pushed aside by confusion.


    "Because your people are dying," I responded. "Every time you fight, every time you take a job, you put your people at risk. It may be slow, but I''m willing to bet you''ve already lost an unfortunate number of people. As good as you are, as good as anyone is, it''s inevitable. The difference between you and everyone else is that Mandalorians are finite and rare. Every loss brings your group closer to falling apart."


    "So rather than a slow death, we should give up and disband?"


    "Not disband, evolve," I countered. "Your daughter, all of the children of your clan, they have never set foot on Mandalore, have they?"


    Silently, he shook his head, seemingly pained to do so. It seemed like I had stumbled into a sore subject, something he regretted immensely.


    "Even if you somehow manage to survive, by taking foundlings, training the next generation, slowly replacing those you lose, in five, ten, fifteen years, will any of your warriors have ever set foot on Mandalore? Even if the Rebellion pulls off the miracle they are trying to conjure and the Empire is defeated, what sort of life could you give your children, your people, by returning to Mandalore?"


    I stopped, standing from the table and heading over to the bar area. I grabbed a bottle of brandy, made from something fruity I didn''t recognize. I grabbed a pair of glasses and returned to my seat, pouring a few fingers of the amber liquid for each of us, before handing the Mandalorian his. I took a small sip of the sweet alcoholic drink, letting the warmth spread through my stomach.


    For a moment, I let the silence hang in the room, looking idly at the sealed door to the bridge, where Calima and Racer were likely running calculations for the jump back home. After a long moment, I looked back at Corvak, who was staring at his glass.


    "I could never understand the suffering that the Mandalorian people have had to deal with," I admitted. "Perhaps the only people who can these days are the <u>Wookies</u></a> or the <u>Alderaanians</u></a>. But as horrific as the Night of a Thousand Tears was, you cannot let it trap you and your people from evolving and changing. I''m not asking you to give up being Mandalorian. I''m asking you to be a part of something new. To look forward to the next stage for your people and consider that holding onto the past may be dooming you to a long, painful, and ultimately fruitless existence."


    "And joining a mercenary group would somehow be better?" the leader asked, his gaze sharp as he looked back at me. "That is nothing new to us, it is hardly a change."


    "No, my friend, something much bigger," I assured him. "I have access to a planet that doesn''t exist on Imperial records. A lush, green world that is both beautiful and primal. We have plans to start a town there and grow into something new. Something you and any Mandalorian willing to join can be a part of."


    Now, he looked at least vaguely interested. Human-habitable worlds were actually relatively rare in the grand scheme of things, and finding one that was not only green and alive, but uninhabited and unclaimed was like finding a needle in a haystack. Hearing that the Imperials had no idea it existed was like finding out the needle was made of <u>Aurodium</u></a>.


    Stolen story; please report.


    "You plan on settling a planet?" he asked. "What for?"


    "To eventually act as our base of operations and a safe location for the families of the people we hire," I explained. "Currently, our home is a Clone Wars-era space station in deep space, but eventually, I''m hoping to move that in orbit around the planet."


    "...Just how big are you planning on making your mercenary group?" He asked, before adding. "and how big is your group now?"


    "Member-wise, we have around a hundred and fifty souls. We have this ship, a C70 retrofit, an IPV, a CR70 with the C20 retrofit, and a L-2783 Recovery Vessel to act as our carrier," I responded. "Plus two flights of V-wings and a couple of freighters. All of that plus the FireStar II station I mentioned earlier."


    Each progressive ship I mentioned made his eyes go wider and wider until I mentioned the station. He had clearly underestimated the scale of the Skyforged Vanguard, which made me wonder what sort of intelligence Grakkus had access to, because it clearly wasn''t that detailed.


    "That is¡­ a lot," He admitted. "We have been working for a while to buy ourselves a clanship to house our people in, but Grakkus wasn''t paying us. I suppose I should be thankful he didn''t demand we empty our accounts."


    "We... have had some good luck," I admitted with a smirk. "Keep in mind, all of those ships were stolen, some from the Imps and some from pirates. It''s all about knowing who to take from."


    "So you are dedicated to fighting the Imperials? You aren''t afraid of the repercussions?"


    "The repercussions are going to hit us whether we stand and fight or we don''t," I responded, shaking my head. "Palpatine is an insane Sith Lord who needs to be put down. My hope is that we can build ourselves up to the point that we can play a big role in doing just that. Big enough that we can influence what happens next."


    For a long moment, he stared at me, trying to analyze my statement. After a while, his face cleared, having clearly worked something out.


    "You''re¡­ betting on the Rebellion to win so you can enjoy the reward when they succeed?" Corvak asked, sounding a bit impressed. "I suppose it''s better than just being a bleeding heart."


    "To be fair, we do also believe that the Empire is a blight," I pointed out. "Palpatine is a rabid dog who needs to be put down."


    "How do you fund a mercenary crew while also fighting the Empire?"


    "In part by taking down pirate bounties, but also¡­ The Skyforged had shown we have a particular talent in asset seizure," I explained. "We pick a bounty or a mission, complete the mission, and basically loot our target to the rivets. We keep whatever is useful, be it ships or supplies, and sell the rest to the Rebellion for a good-sized discount. They get ships, and we make money off of old pirate starfighters and freighters without having to worry about Imperial law. Even better, I don''t have to worry about finding a buyer I trust, or the ships I sell ending up in the hands of the Hutts."


    "That¡­ what sort of profits do you pull in?"


    "It varies, but the last mission my teams took, while we were busy working the early stages of this mission, brought in a few hundred thousand credits, plus a couple of Y-wing bombers and a used freighter," I responded, taking another sip of my drink. "A chunk of that is divided between anyone who saw combat, then the rest is set aside to pay for supplies and pay noncombatants."


    As I answered his questions, I could see the clan leader was shocked by what I was describing. He coughed and leaned back, shaking his head.


    "If I hadn''t witnessed your plan to take down Grakkus, I would have attributed your success to your armor and luck," He admitted. "But clearly know what you''re doing. Your success is, honestly, shockingly fast."


    "Yeah¡­ Tatnia, my second in command, has to remind me sometimes that other people don''t work at our speed," I responded with a smirk.


    He chuckled, leaning back in his chair and sipping his brandy. For a moment, he looked down into the glass, watching the liquid slide back and forth.


    "I won''t pretend that I don''t fear for my people''s future," He admitted after nearly a minute had passed. "That none of our children have stepped on Mandalore is something that weighs heavily on me. But how could I ask my people to simply adjust their way of life? To give up on our past and join you?"


    "First, change will come with time," I assured him. "By working beside us and integrating into jobs, as well as our base and eventually the hidden planet, it will happen over time. As long as your people don''t purposely avoid meeting and befriending our people, it''s almost inevitable."


    "Be that as it may¡­ I don''t think I can say it would go over very well," He pointed out. "Even if I could convince them, I''m not entirely certain myself."


    I let out a long breath and frowned, not exactly liking where this was going. He was clearly beginning to lean harder into not joining us, and pushing him would likely just annoy him. So, instead of trying to speech-check my way into Clan Syr joining us, I decided to settle on a middle ground.


    "How about this? Your people need time to recover, and a safe place to do it in," I pointed out. "And I''m willing to bet you could do with some credits as well. So, I''ll offer you a job. Come work for us for a few missions, see how we do business, how nice it is to have proper resources at your disposal, and earn some credits while you do. Meanwhile, your people can enjoy some peaceful recovery time."


    "What sort of work?"


    "Honestly, whatever comes up in the next few weeks," I answered with a shrug. "Might be some basic bounty hunting or pirating raids. Or we might try and steal another nice ship, either for us or for the Rebellion. Depends on what is available and what we can figure out."


    "And our pay would reflect the mission?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "I won''t walk my people into danger for short credits."


    "Tell you what. Stay with us as our guests for now, and when we find something, we can negotiate the actual price," I suggested with a shrug. "Not trying to scam or trick you, Corvak. Just want to show you how we operate."


    For a long moment, the Mandalorian focused on me, his eyes analyzing my face and expression. Finally, after what felt like several minutes, he nodded.


    "Very well, we will accept your hospitality," He said with a nod. "But do not think you have bought us. We will work with and even for you, but we are not slaves."


    "Of course not," I said with a nod, standing up and offering my hand across the table. "I look forward to working with you."


    He stood and reached out, shaking my hand with a tight grip. When we both released each other''s hands, I raised my glass in a toast.


    "A toast, then. To finding friends in the strangest of places," I said, the Mandalorian snorting and laughing at my joke, before tapping his glass against mine.

 Chapter 161

    After we shared our toast and finished our drinks, Corvak and I returned down to the first deck. By then, his people had spread out a little, with my crew setting up some of the cots and sleeping pads we had. There wasn''t enough for everyone, but Corvak assured me they would make do.


    Once everything was set up and people had started to unclench after the rapid retreat from Grakkus''s palace, I found myself once again sitting down with Corvak, this time on a few crates in the hold. We were joined by Ahsoka, Tatnia, as well as his wife, and a few of his soldiers. When I had explained what the Skyforged was and what I was hoping it would become, I had skipped over the fact that I was working with more Jedi than just Ahsoka. This was in partly because I wanted to get a feel for Corvak and his clan. Now that I felt I could at least marginally trust them, I decided to remedy that, starting with formally introducing the Ahsoka.


    "This is Ahsoka Tano," I explained, gesturing to the woman. "She was a Padawan during the Clone Wars but was wrongfully accused of betraying the Republic. She survived Order sixty-six and is now part of the Skyforged."


    The Mandalorians warily shook hands with Ahsoka, returning to their seats on crates and on the side of their cots.


    "So, to be clear, I wasn''t hiding this per se. You saw her lightsabers, after all, blocking blaster bolts and everything else when you attacked us," I pointed out, getting a series of reluctant nods. "I also want to let you know that the hidden planet I mentioned¡­ Which I am now unilaterally calling Nirn since we have put off naming it long enough, we found a stranded group of about Jedi. They are part of the group living on the planet."


    "You seem to know enough about our people. Surely you know how poorly we get along?" Corvak asked, sounding concerned. "We have clashed many times in our history."


    "I am very aware. What happened to the <u>True Mandalorians</u></a> was a tragedy, and Death Watch is a stain for tricking the Jedi into wiping them out," I said, shaking my head. "But I can assure you, I only call these people Jedi because they have yet to name themselves something new."


    "I''m afraid I don''t follow," Corvak responded after a moment, looking confused. "Have they started a new faction?"


    "Well, they spent the last twenty years surviving on an island, besieged by monsters the size of a large speeder, with claws sharp and dense enough to score beskar. Oh, and they did so without lightsabers," I explained, pausing as they muttered at the mention of beskar being damaged. "When we found them, they were wearing clothes made from their leather. The leader, a Jedi Knight Amescoll, had taken a wife, and several children had been born while they were stranded. They are far from the Republic Jedi you knew."


    "That¡­ they do sound different, I will admit," He responded, processing what I said. "Was it the isolation that changed them?"


    "More like the isolation revealed the truth," Ahsoka responded, catching Corvak''s attention. "It is... Hard to explain to someone who doesn''t feel the Force, but the Jedi feared the dark side, and because of that, they cut themselves off from what made them sentient, living beings. We were raised to think that attachments were dangerous, as losing someone close could pull us down. Cutting ourselves off from that and other aspects¡­ it affected us more than we knew."


    "And you have changed?"


    "I am beginning to," Ahsoka admitted. "I am unlearning years of training, training I leaned heavily on when I embarked on my voluntary exile. It is hard to let go of something that¡­ fundamental to me. I do realize how wrong it was to disconnect from the emotions of the people, however. I am trying to be better."


    "... Well, considering that is the first time I have ever heard of a Jedi admitting they were wrong, I would have to say you''re doing well," He said, shaking his head, before looking back at me. "As long as your Jedi aren''t sanctimonious and don''t harass us, we won''t have any issues."


    "I don''t think it will be a problem, but I will make sure of it anyway."


    "Thank you. Are there any other bombshells you''d wish to drop on us?" he asked with a smirk, which transformed into an eye roll when I winced. "Seriously? What is it?"


    "We also employ around thirty to forty clone troopers," I answered.


    The reaction to my statement was shockingly stronger than how they had reacted to the news of Jedi. A few of Corvak''s men cursed in Mando''a, and the clan leader himself scowled, shaking his head in a fair amount of disgust.


    "The abominations? Why would you allow them into their ranks?" He asked. "Their loyalty to the Empire is absolute!"


    "It is, until you remove their biological control chip, freeing them from the complete, perfect mind control that Palpatine used to enforce his orders," I responded, shaking my head. "After you do that, they regain their free will, and they are capable of defecting just like any other being. On top of that, these particular clones were found frozen in carbonite at the station where we live. They are loyal to the Republic, and they see the Empire as the regime that destroyed it."


    "A biological slave chip?" He asked, sounding skeptical. "You expect me to believe that an entire Clone Army had this chip and nobody knew?"


    "Well, considering you would have to root around in their brains to find it. Despite that, some people did find out. Hell, the Jedi even knew about them. They just didn''t know what they would did," I responded, answering his questions as best as I could. "The chip itself was passed off as an aggression inhibitor to make the clones less aggressive than their template."


    "And what, it forced them to obey?"


    "That''s exactly what it did, by making it impossible for them to ignore orders. I don''t know the exact mechanics, but I suspect that if there are any clones still in service, they are continuing to unquestionably follow orders from their superiors."


    "Do you have any proof?" He asked. "The clones occupied our planet many years after the Siege of Mandalore. Our resentment runs deep, but proof that they were being controlled¡­ It would help disperse the blame."


    "The Rebellion is the one that helped us remove the chips from the clones that joined us," I explained. "I can probably get you some scans, maybe even a copy of the surgery. But I witnessed them myself."


    Corvak slowly nodded, though he didn''t exactly look thrilled about the concept of working with clones. He directed his attention at Ahsoka after a moment.


    "And I assume this chip is why you are comfortable working with them?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "It is. I led many clones into battle, and I trusted them with my life," She said with a shrug. "When Order Sixty-Six was given, it wasn''t them anymore. I do not blame them for what they did and¡­ I wish I could have saved them."


    "And you stand by your actions at the Siege of Mandalore?" He asked, Ahsoka''s eyes going wide. "Don''t be so surprised, do you really think Mandalorians wouldn''t recognize you?"


    The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon."I have grown quite a bit since then," She pointed out, letting out a long breath. "The Siege was a complicated mess. Maul was looking to get revenge on Obi-wan Kenobi and kill Anakin Skywalker, but they were called back to Coruscant. We had no idea it was a trap, we were there to remove Maul. He would have used your people as pawns, thrown their lives away, and killed who knows how many innocent people. So, to answer your question, I do not regret my actions, though I wish it could have gone a lot smoother."


    For a moment, Corvak stared at Ahsoka, attempting to intimidate or stare her down. When she looked back unflinchingly, he smiled.


    "Good. Not many Mandalorians disagree with the siege itself, at least no more than any war," He admitted. "Rebelling against the Mandalore is expected. It''s how they were tested. If nobody rebelled, how would a new Mandalore ever win the Darksaber? It was the occupation that occurred afterward that angered us."


    I listened to the exchange with interest. This was a chunk of lore that I did not know much about, so it was fascinating to learn. I knew of the Darksaber and how the Mandalore was supposed to earn it through battle, but I did not know much about the Siege of Mandalore itself.


    "The Darksaber was the weapon of the Mandalore¡­ What happened to the <u>Mandalore''s Mask</u></a>?"


    "The Darksaber wasn''t the weapon of the mandalore, it was how new mandalores were chosen. Whoever wielded the weapon was the current Mandalore until someone killed them and took it," He explained. "As for the mask¡­ I''m surprised you know that story."


    "The story of how Revan took the mask away when he killed the Mandalore, denying the succession of power, scattering the clans?" I asked. "And how Canderous Ordo found the mask and reunited the clans? As far as I know, that isn''t a story. It''s true."


    "What? I find that¡­ My father used to tell me that story when I was young," Corvak admitted, leaning back in his chair, looking a little lost. "How certain are you that it is true? And how do you know?"


    "Well, considering I know Revan existed, then I''m willing to bet that the rest of the info I know about him is at least partially correct," I explained. "According to what I know, Revan did take the mask, but later, he also helped Ordo find it again. They were allies, and Revan charged Ordo with gathering the Mandalorians as a last line of defense against a new threat."


    "How could you possibly know that?"


    "That''s something he does," Ahsoka explained, shaking her head as she gave me an annoyed look. "He knows things, things he shouldn''t or even sometimes couldn''t. As far as I know, he hasn''t told anyone how he does it."


    Ahsoka looked to Tatnia, who just shook her head to confirm I hadn''t explained where my knowledge came from. I couldn''t help but chuckle, getting a stern look from both of the women.


    "I just assume it''s his magic at this point," my second-in-command admitted with a shrug. "As far as I know, he hasn''t been wrong yet."


    "Really?" Corvak asked, looking back at me as if he wasn''t sure he should buy into what he was being told. "Anyway to prove that?"


    "Not to you, unfortunately, not at the moment," I said with a frown. "Not unless you don''t know who currently holds the Darksaber."


    "Moff Gideon claimed it, last I heard," Corvak responded, shaking his head. "It hardly matters, since it no longer holds the weight it did, not until another Mandalorian holds it and attempts to¡­ use it as a gathering point. It''s not the same anymore."


    "Perhaps¡­ that is for the best," I responded, quickly holding up my hand to hold off any rising ire. "What happened to Mandalore was abominable. But for centuries, the greatest threat to Mandalorian lives was Mandalorians."


    "Do not look down on my people," Corvak said. "War and violence are in our blood. That we fight amongst ourselves is only natural."


    "Or maybe using an object to mark the right of succession created massive instabilities in your people," I responded, shaking my head. "With the Darksaber no longer in Mandalorian hands, you have the chance to start something new, something better."


    "With you as our leader?" Corvak asked, his tone biting.


    "Of the Skyforged? Yeah, of course," I said, giving him a strange look before what he meant clicked. "Wait, you mean like the people of Nirn? Of everyone? Hell no! You think I want to be in charge any more than I am?"


    Now Corvak looked confused, clearly not expecting a flat-out refusal like that. He looked to Tatnia and Ahsoka, the latter of whom smiled while the former rolled her eyes.


    "Look, I''m in charge of the Skyforged because when the first core group got together, they put me in charge," I explained, shaking my head. "So far, no one has challenged me because, somehow, I have a particular talent for making things happen."


    I explained, finding myself feeling defensive. I may have tapped a nerve with my comment, but I had been nothing but honest and helpful to these people. It irked me to be questioned like that.


    "And my people? I may pay them, but they follow me because they like me being in charge. I''m not some Imperial or Republic big shot who was given command for brown-nosing or winning the yearly "who can kill the most orphans" contest," I said, leaning forward on the crate I had claimed as my seat. "I can''t order my people to commit war crimes and expect them to do anything other than stun me and take me to the nearest medic. At the end of the day, I''m just some guy with fancy, flashy powers and a complete disrespect for a few of this galaxy''s major power blocs."


    "Then why are you so determined to get us to join?" He asked. "Many people have sought to control Mandalorians, to use us as tools."


    "I want you to join because of her, you dope!" I said, pointing towards Vira, who burbled and reached out for my finger. "Because you are soldiers without a nation, citizens without a world, and a people without a home. I want to help because when I look at all of you, I see beaten, crushed, burned survivors who have somehow remained unbroken, and all I can think is, ''Goddamn, I want them on my side!'' But most importantly, when you were at your lowest, and when your family was on the line, you had the basic common decency to look me in the eye and try to warn me that I was walking into a trap. And that Common decency? It''s a lot more rare than you might think."


    He looked me in the eye, absorbing my words and trying to puzzle out just how much of it was the truth. Whatever he saw, he must have liked it because, after a full minute, he reached out, his hand open.


    "I am still not sure about your proposal. You are asking for a lot from us to leave behind so much," He admitted with a frown. "But I apologize for reverting to old traumas. You have proven yourself to be an ally and a friend. I shouldn''t have assumed the worst."


    After a moment, I reached out and shook his hand once before pulling my hand back.


    "Apology accepted," I said. "I have no interest in ruling anyone, and while it''s true that I want you to join because I know how effective you will be, I also just want to help. All you have to do is let me."

 Chapter 162

    After clearing up some of my... left-out information, the Mandalorians seemed to pull together, almost huddling up in the cargo hold. After their ordeal with Grakkus, I wasn''t surprised that they needed some time to gather up and talk. Sensing that they wanted some space, I excused myself and my team, heading back to the second deck. Even as I left, I could see that a few of them had heard my little rant, and while I hadn''t intended it, I found myself getting a few more considering looks.


    Unsurprisingly, leaving anyone alone on my ship who wasn''t fully committed to us didn''t quite fit right with me, even if I may vaguely trust them, so I ordered Racer to monitor the ship''s internal sensors for anything out of the ordinary. I didn''t think they would make any trouble, but underestimating a bunch of Mandalorians seemed like a good way to get myself in trouble.


    The return trip to Omega Station was over quickly, which was good because, with so many people on board, we were quickly burning through our supplies. If it had been necessary, I would have just landed somewhere to buy more, but it was nice to not have to. When we finally did arrive, the Chariot landed in one of our smaller, private hangers, while the Loyal Hound landed in another. Our other, larger hangers were taken up by our other ships, a small fleet, all docked into our home. Or temporary home, now that I had all but firmly committed Nirn to being our real home.


    When we stepped out of our ship, we were immediately greeted by Miru, our quartermaster, his second, Sheora, Felia, Claron, Captain Pella Irsee, Lieutenant Rider, and his second in command. It was an interesting reunion, especially when the Mandalorians descended from the interior of the ship.


    "Really?" Miru asked, looking at me and shaking her head. "You can''t keep anything simple, can you?"


    I scowled teasingly at her before pinching her cheek and introducing her and everyone else to Corvak and his people. I was a bit nervous about introducing Rider and the quartermaster, a clone named Finder, of all things, but it seemed like my explanation of their enslavement got through to the Mandalorians. It wasn''t exactly sunshine and rainbows, but it was much better than the open hostility and disgust I saw on the trip here.


    No one got called an abomination to their face, which I saw as a good sign. I could only hope that the cold bruskness of their first meeting would get better in time. If it came down to it and they were unable to work together smoothly, I would pick the clones over the Mandaloroains in a heartbeat, but I was hoping that wouldn''t be necessary.


    Once everyone was introduced, Vaz and Nal guided the Mandalorians to our quest quarters. I promised to meet with Corvak soon to discuss hiring his team for our next mission, whatever that end up being. After that, Tatnia and I were immediately dragged into a meeting, with Ahsoka agreeing to keep an eye on Felia and Claron. Apparently, a few things had built up while we were gone.


    First up were Captain Irsee and Lieutenant Rider, whose people had worked together to find a new target. A pirate group made up of a squadron of assorted starfighters, a small gunship, and a freighter were hitting small settlements, demanding ransoms and goods in exchange for not burning the settlements to the ground.


    "Sir, I believe that we should be able to force them to surrender," Captain Irsee said confidently. "By ambushing them in a gravity well, they won''t be able to jump away to safety. This particular band of criminals has proven to play it safe when it can rather than engage in hostilities. I can''t imagine they would fight against overwhelming odds. If they do, the bounty on them is still sizable by itself."


    "Okay, but correct me if I''m wrong, doesn''t that assume you can catch them in the act?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "How do you plan on doing that?"


    Rider and Pella shared a look, the latter giving Rider a nod and a gesture to take the lead.


    "The ground team and a few of the Captain''s crew were working together to find a new target. One of the crew lamented that this group would be a perfect target if we could predict them," Lieutenant Rider explained. "One of my men noticed that they were only attacking settlements that produced certain agricultural products. We reached out to a few of them, and it turns out that all of the targets were hit a day or two after they sold their latest harvest."


    "They are hitting them when they know they have money to spare," I guessed, both the Lieutenant and Captain nodding in agreement.


    "A bit more digging and some help from the slicer droids Miru made, and we realized that they were all selling to the same company," Rider explained. "We believe they must be taking cues from someone inside."


    "So I assume your plan is to find a nearby world that is finishing its harvest and sells to that company?" I asked, getting double words of confirmation. "Fantastic find, well done. Make sure that the group responsible for this gets a reward, some credits, or maybe a few special requests from the quartermaster on the house. I want to encourage this sort of planning and thinking as much as possible. The greatest strength a group like ours has is the ability to stay flexible and think outside the box."


    "Very well, sir," Captain Irsee confirmed with a nod. "Do we have permission to engage our plan?"


    "Yes. Take the Whale Shark, the Nautilus, and the Intervention. Will that be enough?"


    "I believe so, sir."


    "Good, and again, well done. Pass on my happiness to your crew and teams," I said with a smile before turning to Sheora, who had winced when I assigned three of our ships to this new mission. "Something wrong?"


    "Well, Boss, I''m here as official liaison to the Rebellion," She explained. "I was given confirmation that our first shipment of precious metals is waiting for you in one of the Rebel hangers."


    "Here on the station?" I asked, Sheora confirming with a nod. "How much?"


    "About thirty-five pounds to compensate for the loss in mass from transmuting," She explained.


    "Right, twenty pounds, five of which is ours," I said, recalling our deal. "Have it sent to Pola''s workshop, and I''ll convert it sometime today or tomorrow. Any news on a location we might be able to hit?"


    "According to what General Draven has told me, we are narrowing the options down," She said. "I''m supposed to do my best to keep you around the station so that if an opportunity involving those options turns up, we can react accordingly."


    "Yeah, that''s not happening," I said, shaking my head. "I can''t just twiddle my thumbs and wait for something to show up. Tell Draven the best he is gonna get is that I''ll stay within a three or four days travel from Alpha Base."


    She nodded and leaned back in her chair, not exactly looking happy at what she had to report but accepting her fate nonetheless.


    "How are Felia and Claron doing?" I asked, the liaison perking up at the mention of her adopted kids.


    "They are doing well. Felia has been doing a lot of the exercises that Ahsoka taught her, and Claron seems to be picking up on her need for independence," She responded with a smile. "He''s picked up a few hobbies, like drawing. I''m a bit worried about how they will react when I explain they need proper schooling, but what can you do?"


    "I''m glad to hear everyone is doing well," I said with a genuine smile before turning to the youngest of the group. "Miru, what''s up?"


    "The Y-wings and freighter we snagged from the last bounty hunt are well on their way to being fixed up and ready for service," She reported happily. "Quartermaster Rider is hoping to get the freighter added to his complement of shipping starships."


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    "I was already going to suggest that," I admitted, nodding towards the clone tasked with keeping us supplied. "Do you have pilots?"


    "I''ve been interviewing people from the families of people already working for us," He explained. "Between labor droids and other equipment, anyone with flying experience can do the job, so we have gotten a few interested people.


    "That''s good. I feel like we already have a small recruitment drive on the horizon, so everyone should keep that in mind," I warned before looking at Captain Irsee and Lieutenant Rider. "What about the Y-wings? Do we have anyone who can pilot them?"


    "Any of the clone pilots should be capable," Rider responded. "There was a lot of cross-training for different starfighters."


    "Good, that means we can have a few heavy options should we need to destroy a large target," I said with a smile. "Assuming we can stock their heavy weapons. Do we have enough room to store them on the Whale?"


    "Plenty," Captain Irsee said confidently. "Even with all of the starfighters and the LAAT/I, only about two-thirds of the ship''s hold is taken."


    I frowned, clicking and drumming my fingers on the table as I considered my options. The Whale Shark was acquired primarily to be a carrier, but it was also doing wonders for grabbing worthwhile equipment on our raids. I didn''t want to get caught with our pants down when we had a golden opportunity to grab something impressive because we overfilled the carrier.


    "Miru, could you take a look at the V-wings and Y-wings for me, as well as the interior of the Shark?" I asked, a slight frown on my face. "Try and see if you can''t find a way to store them as space efficiently as possible, even if you have to get weird. The Whale Shark has paid dividends already by letting us grab more equipment, so a way to push everything into a corner when the mission is over and we need more room would come in handy, big time."


    "Sure thing, Boss," She agreed with a thumbs up. "At the very least, we can find the best way to land them to keep things optimal."


    "Thank you. Keep me posted if you figure out something interesting,"


    She nodded again, and I turned to focus on the quartermaster, who was talking softly to his second. When he spotted I was looking at him, he stopped and smiled.


    "I''ve got good news, Sir. Your request for construction equipment was filled, and cheaply too. My helper here recalled you being close to the leader of Itander. The city of Solinda just finished going through a rather large growth phase, and a quick call revealed they have a large surplus of construction droids and equipment. For a hundred thousand credits, President Rabben is willing to sell us a fourth of his stock. It is a frankly ridiculous good deal, Sir."


    "Seriously? Alright, buy it from him and start bringing it here," I said with a nod. "We can inspect it and start moving it to Nirn when we figure out what exactly the Jedi want and what we want. And make sure to ask if there is anything he needs that we might be able to provide. Weapons, equipment he can''t buy legally, anything like that. Rabben has been good to us, and I want to pay him back as best we can.


    "Of course, sir," Finder agreed with a nod, his assistant taking notes beside him. "We-"


    "What''s Nirn?" Miru asked, cutting off the quartermaster.


    "No one was coming up with a name for the hidden planet we found, so I picked one myself," I said with a shrug. "If anyone else has a better idea, I''m open to suggestions. Finder?"


    "Well, our first batch of temporary structures is ready to go as well, sir," The clone continued after I prompted him. "Enough easily deployable space for thirty people, more if people are willing to share. Should we continue looking for more?"


    "Yes, at least another thirty," I confirmed with a nod. "After that, keep your ears open for any bulk sales or opportunities for a bargain. I want to start moving people to Nirn soon, the station is starting to be overcrowded, and I''m done pussy footing around with colonization. In fact, I plan to head to Nirn after a day of recovery to talk to Amescoll about future plans."


    "We can load up the Chariot and the Loyal Hound, but I''m not sure you''ll be able to land the Hound where you described," the quartermaster said with a frown.


    "Amescoll seemed to be attached to the idea of moving the Padawans and others to wherever we decided to settle," I assured him. "So it''s most likely we won''t be settling there anyway. Tatnia?"


    "Yes, Boss?"


    "I want you to start spreading the word to the families we have here that we will be opening up the opportunity to move to a new planet," I explained. "It''s going to be rough at first, but this is an opportunity to get in at the ground floor. People who help, really help, are looking to play a big role in the future. And yes, we will compensate people who are working, both in benefits and credits."


    "Alright, I''ll get to work on that."


    "Good. Now I have some news, Miru, Quartermaster Finder? During our last mission, we ended up using the teardrops for their intended purpose, as a disposable smokescreen to keep starfighters off of the Chariot as we escaped," I explained. "We didn''t have time to pick any of them up before we jumped."


    "So we need to make more?" Miru asked.


    "We could contact General Syndulla and trade for more tre-fighters," Finder suggested.


    "She won''t give up that many, and not without charging us too much," I said, shaking my head. "Especially for something that might just be sacrificed and thrown away. No, I want you both to look into alternative options. We need something cheap, practical, and disposable. I''m willing to pay a bit more if they are genuinely effective, but don''t lose sight of the fact that they are disposable."


    "Yes, sir."


    "Can do, Boss!"


    "Fantastic. That is all I had, does anyone have anything else to add?" I asked, looking around to make sure no one had anything else to say. "Great. I''ll have my comms on me if that changes. Thank you everyone for all your hard work."


    I stood, and the meeting was adjourned. I made sure to shake hands with everyone but Miru, who I wrapped in another firm hug. As we were filtered out of the room we had settled in, the both of us made our way back to the living quarters.


    "How are you, Miru?" I asked as we made our way through the now busy halls. People would wave, acknowledging both of us as we walked. The young pink Twi''lek preened under the greetings, especially the ones calling her Ma''am, and I couldn''t help but chuckle.


    "I''m great! Boss, this is all a dream come true! I have my own team, people working with me, a massive budget, and I get to build and design and all sorts of stuff!" She said excitedly. "Working the c20 upgrade into the Nautilus, on top of all the upgrades I wanted was a blast. Best of all, I get to offload the boring stuff to Repair Lead Fakkiv, and she just takes care of it!"


    "Well, I''m glad you''re learning to delegate," I admitted. "I was worried you were going to overwork yourself."


    "Nope!" She said, popping her p. "I''m happy and working an appropriate amount."


    "That''s good¡­ C''mon, let''s go get something to eat before I go back to my room and pass out for a while."


    She nodded, and we made our way to the kitchens, only a slight deviation from our original direction.

 Chapter 163

    We spent a day and a half recovering from our mission, which most of the team spent sleeping or unwinding. Ahsoka and I spent a good amount of time going through what we had recovered, cleaning and inspecting lightsabers, Jedi texts, and holocrons. With the Mandalorian''s help, we recovered an incredible amount from Grakkus, including all of the Holocrons that he had collected, as well as all of the lightsabers and a few personal effects. Some of the lightsabers were identified as belonging to specific Jedi, some from far before Ahsoka''s time at the temple, while most of them were from the Jedi who died during the Clone Wars.


    We also recovered a few boxes of remains, sealed and stored away, precursors to what Grakkus had hoped to do to Ahsoka and me. We had plans to bury them on Nirn.


    When I wasn''t spending more time with Ahsoka, I was in Pola''s workshop. Our armorer was eager to get started working on more armor and uniforms, so I quickly converted the precious metals donated by the rebellion into beskar. We kept five pounds of it, as agreed upon, before shipping the rest back to them. I gave two pounds of the Beskar to Clan Syr, freeing up my debt to the Mandalorian people.


    The rest of the beskar, as well as the the metal recovered from Ahsoka''s temporary armor, was melted down, purified, and re-alloyed. About a third of it was going directly back into Ahsoka''s armor, this time based on the design of the recovered ancient Jedi armor. It would take a few days to make, but considering our only destination would be Nirn, that was fine.


    When our recovery time was over, we packed up the Chariot and the Loyal Hound with supplies and <u>temporary structures</u></a> for people to live in. Tatnia, Julus, Corvak, Clan Syr''s armorer, and a pair of warriors would be joining Ahsoka and me for the trip. I couldn''t help but notice that Ahsoka seemed unhappy about the extra company.


    Before we left, Ahsoka and I debated for a while if we should bring the holocrons with us or leave them at the station. Eventually, we decided to bring three that we tested so they could be used by the young members of the stranded Jedi, leaving the rest on Omega Station for safekeeping. When more permanent structures were built on Nirn, we would transfer the rest.


    Ahsoka also gave Felia a holocron, which contained the force presence of a Jedi she recognized, at least by name. Felia needed more consistent teachings, and the holocron could provide that, in part, when Ahsoka wasn''t around. They would guide her through meditation and reaching out to Force, as well as answer any questions she might have. Luke had actually taught her the early stages of kinetic meditation to help the young girl work through her age disadvantage.


    Felia also understood that the holocron was not going to share some of our more progressive beliefs, even if Ahsoka recognized the Jedi as being less strict than most. Felia understood and promised to pay attention to what she was learning. Given how independent and slow to trust the young Force-sensitive was, I didn''t think it would be a problem.


    Once everything was set and packed, we headed out, piling into the Chariot and leaving Omega Station behind.


    During our trip, I worked on my magic. I had enough time to learn two expert spells, with enough time to recover between each of them, so I quickly got to work. I learned Thunderbolt first, a massive spark of Destruction magic that I was pretty sure could be considered an anti-armor weapon. It could definitely take down a good-sized speeder bike, at least.


    As always, finishing such a long spell learning process left me drained and tired. I was really dreading how much Master level spells would mess with me, even if I desperately wanted access to them.


    After spending a day recovering, which I spent the second half sparing with Ahsoka and the Mandalorians, I got to work on the second spell, Conjure Storm Atronach. The <u>Storm Atronach</u></a> that the spell conjured had to be my favorite-looking conjured creature so far, with classic medieval armor and a simple sword, all covered with dancing electrical sparks that sizzled and arced as they moved. It was considerably more powerful than my other Atronach options and could use more powerful spells, as well as its sword.


    It was a shame that I wouldn''t be using it very often, as even with its power, it could not beat the usefulness of having a Conjured Mage who could heal people.


    The only reason I learned it at all was its potential to disable hard targets. I could conjure it, then order it to run deeper into a ship or structure before dumping all its energy into the computer systems or the energy core of whatever I was trying to disable. Judging by how much power it could output, it would be a death knell for a lot of potential targets.


    When we finally arrived at Nirn, I had fully recovered from my magic learning. I stood at the bridge with Ashoka and Calima as we slowly descended to the planet''s surface. The Loyal Hound would remain in orbit until we found a place for it to land and unload its cargo. We were only a few hundred kilometers from the island when we got a comms connection.


    "Skyforged Vanguard, this is Knight Amescoll, come in?" A familiar voice said through the comms. "We picked you up on our scanners, so you should be in range... Are you reading us?"


    "Amescoll, this is Deacon, we are on our way with a new load of supplies and structures," I responded, leaning over the naval droid''s chair. "Some of it is for you guys, but we are looking to make a new settlement as well."


    "Ah! Good to hear from you, Boss," He said, his smile audible. "We aren''t on the island anymore, we decided to relocate. I think we have found the perfect location for the settlement. Sending coordinates now."


    I looked down at the screen, a data-packet flashing on the console. The Comms droid immediately sent the data to Calima, who looked back at me and nodded.


    "Got it, Amescoll," I confirmed. "See you soon."


    The coordinates were a good distance away, not even on the same continent that the ancient Jedi island was close to. We diverted our momentum, and Calima guided us to the new coordinates before sending them back to the Loyal Hound. They weren''t coming down quite yet, but now they knew where to find us.


    When we arrived at the location, all of us that were on the bridge were stunned. The stranded Jedi had found a gigantic gray and black stone mesa that sat in the middle of a massive jungle. The black and gray stone towered over the jungle canopy by at least a hundred feet. The gigantic geological wonder was made out of two different layers, both vaguely circular, with a fourth of each overlapping, Venn diagram style, creating a high, middle, and low section, each separated by a sixty to seventy-foot cliff.


    Each circular surface was at least two or three miles wide, with the upper one having a large lake in the center. The lake must have been fed by a spring or something because it was full despite the fact that a large waterfall poured over the side that breached the massive cliff. The water fell all the way to the middle platform and traveled a short distance to the next cliff before making another waterfall. The water then ran in a long river before eventually flowing off on the opposite side in another majestic waterfall.


    The entire site was mind-boggling and gorgeous, and for a while, we just stared, the Chariot at a complete stop. Eventually, after a few minutes, Calima managed to break free of the wonder and began to land the Chariot, guiding the ship to a spot by the <u>Maka-Eekai L4000</u></a> that Knight Amescoll had purchased on our behalf. As we got lower, we could see people looking up and waving as they moved around a partially set-up village.


    Knight Amescoll, his wife, and a few of the Padawans all came down to meet us as we walked off the boarding ramp. Their smiles and excitement were palpable and only dimmed slightly when they spotted the Mandalorians. Amescoll stepped forward, moving with a walking staff of all things. All of the Jedi were dressed in new clothes, a style closer to the ancient Jedi. They looked like a combination of <u>monk and martial</u></a> artist robes, lacking the roughspun look that the brown Jedi cloak had.


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    "Amescoll, good to see you," I said, stepping forward and shaking his hand. "I''m impressed. You really found something special here."


    "I can''t take credit for it, I wasn''t on board the Patient Ponder when they found it," He admitted, nodding to one of the older Padawans, who I recognized as Malua Var''Samallo, the Balsor I spoke to on our first trip to Nirn. "They found it on their own."


    "Well, well done either way," Giving the younger humanoid a nod. "And just to confirm, you do plan on forming a joint community here?"


    "Yes, absolutely," Amescoll said confidently. "The more I think about it, the more certain I am that the old orders'' failures were due in no small part to our isolation. As you have said, I don''t know what is coming next, but I think it will be better done together than apart."


    "I agree. We have a much larger shipment of temporary housing in orbit, with enough labor droids to get it set up easily," I explained. "We also have a large order of building equipment on its way. Our techs are just looking over it before we ship it here. And, of course, a good number of the families of people who work for us are interested in settling here as well. We are looking for a large potential growth here, especially as the Skyforged as a whole continues to grow."


    "Speaking of growth, who are your friends?" Amascoll asked, looking past me to Corvak and his people.


    "Ah, these are our friends, allies, and, hopefully, future members, though they haven''t agreed to that quite yet," I said, turning to gesture for Corvak to join us. "Amescoll, this is Corvak Syr, leader of Clan Syr, Mandalorian, and honorable man. He and his people were being forced to work for Grakkus. Luckily, we were able to kill the bastard without hurting them."


    For a moment, Corvak stared down Amescoll, before the Jedi Knight let out a long sigh.


    "I can feel your trepidation, Syr, and I cannot say I blame you for it. Our people have often been at odds," He admitted with a frown. "But at this point¡­ my people are dead. The Order is dead. It feels foolish to grip on to their grudges, especially when we can see their failings so clearly."


    Amescoll reached out with his hand, looking back at Corvak. After a long moment, Corvak reached out as well, shaking the Jedi''s hand.


    "Our people are dead as well, and we cannot afford to bear their grudges either, not when so few of us remain," The warrior leader responded. "Call me Corvak."


    "I look forward to working with you and your people, Corvak," Amescoll said. "Call me Casmot. Or Amescoll, I''ll respond to either."


    "I''m glad that went well," I whispered to Ahsoka, who nodded in agreement, before I stepped forward and patted both of their shoulders. "Alright, well, now that introductions are over, we can start unloading everything. I''ll call down the Loyal Hound as well."


    Over the next few hours, the labor droids, with the help of some handy Force levitation, carefully unloaded quite a few bits of equipment. When the Hound landed, some of the larger bits were offloaded as well. Included in that equipment were a half dozen speeder bikes, a pair of more industrial speeder vehicles made for moving and pushing, food and tools, and the already mentioned temporary structures. The last item was unloaded in several large pieces and then reassembled very carefully. Most of the labor droids returned to the ships, while the rest continued to assist in setting up the buildings and moving equipment.


    "What exactly is this?" Amescoll asked, watching as several repair droids put the large, multi-part device together.


    "This is the shield generator from a CR70 Corvette," I explained with a smirk. "Our head engineer took it out while upgrading the Nautilus, then spent some time reworking it. Once turned on, it will project a dome of protection around a significant area. There''s a datapad with more details, but as long as the temporary homes are built in that area, then you won''t have to worry about animal attacks. Miru cranked the power down, extending the range considerably."


    "That''s incredible!" Amescoll said, happily thumping his staff on the ground. "That would have made living on the island a lot easier."


    "That''s what originally sparked the idea," I explained. "But now it will make living here much safer."


    Amescoll thanked me profusely for the modified shield generator and the power station that ran it. Both of them would make adapting to the new location safer and much less stressful.


    After a day of working, everyone started to wind down. Most of the people, myself, my crew, and the Mandalorians included, had crowded around a central area. While the Jedi survivors talked about some of the animals that they had seen, including the ocean dwellers, I noticed that Ahsoka was missing from the group.


    As I looked around, concerned, Tatnia spotted me, shook her head, and pointed away from the group. Sure enough, I spotted her, slowly making her way towards the river flowing across the mesa. As if sensing it, she turned to look at me, and after a moment, she nodded ahead, silently asking me to join her. I quickly made some excuses, ignoring Tatnia''s smirk, before following after her.


    By the time I caught up with her, she was sitting on the shore of the river, on a large slab of stone. She looked over her shoulder with a smile, before looking back over the water.


    "Everything alright?" I asked, sitting down beside her.


    "Yeah, everything is fine," She responded. "Better than it has been in a long time."


    I nodded and looked out over the river with her. I could feel she had more to say, so I silently waited for her to formulate it into words.


    "So much has changed in such a short time, but I am¡­ I am doing well," She said, a smile on her lips. "I was¡­ so broken, so stuck without any idea how I could go forward or move on¡­"


    "Hey, you would have figured it out," I assured her with a smile. "I''m just glad we could help."


    She looked at me, her blue eyes staying on mine for a moment before she looked back over the water. Together, we sat there, enjoying each other''s company. Eventually, as it slowly got darker, she leaned against me, her head on my shoulder.


    "You know, I talked to Professor Huyang, about how the story of the Jedi and the Princess resonated with me," She admitted. "He was glad that it had led us to him, but he actually apologized."


    "What for?" I asked, putting my arm around her back, helping her get closer.


    "Well¡­ it turns out that one of the masters who heard the original story disliked the real ending," She explained. "They forced him to change it so that the ending resonated more with the core tenants of being a Jedi."


    "Jeez¡­ What did they change?"


    "Well¡­ Apparently, while they were repairing the ship, the Jedi and the Princess grew closer," She explained. "And when it came time for them to finally return, his mission completed, the Jedi continued to see her. When the Jedi Order found out, they demanded they stop, explaining that her high-profile status and her connection to a royal family made their ... friendship inappropriate. They insisted that it would cause too many problems for the Order. They told him that he could either be a Jedi, or be with the Princess. He stood in front of the council, declared his love for her, and left, never to set foot in the Temple again."


    "Huh... yeah, I can see them not liking that," I admitted. "Runs counter to a lot of what they teach. I''m honestly surprised they let him tell it at all."


    She chuckled and nodded in agreement, letting a peaceful quiet settle over us again. We could hear our friends talking in the distance, nothing but a calm mumbling.


    "Deacon... I want to thank you," Ahsoka eventually said. "I... had lost hope, lost myself, and you found me. You gave me hope back and... well..."


    I turned to find she was looking at me now, her eyes locking on mine. She was blushing, having pulled back off of my shoulder. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, there on the shore, as all my mind could think of was how beautiful she was in the rising moonlight, about how her eyes were the same color as the water that flowed past us. Everything else disappeared.


    Until I learned that her lips tasted like cinnamon.

 Chapter 164

    Ahsoka and I spent the rest of the night together under the stars, watching the river. We talked a bit about the future, about her desire to rebuild, to create something from the ashes of the Jedi Order, and my desire to continue growing the Skyforged. There was an obvious synergy between our two goals, and while only time would tell if that would continue, I was happy to share the journey with her.


    Eventually, we retired to the captain''s cabin to sleep. Nothing further happened beyond a few, well, quite a few kisses, but that didn''t bother me in the slightest. Spending the night in each other''s arms, finally being honest with the draw that we both felt towards each other, would stick with me for the rest of my life.


    It felt like... Like breathing again after being submerged under water, far past the point that my lungs began to burn. It felt like finally taking a sip of cold, clear water after walking through a long, endless desert. It was hard not to want more than just that sip, but I needed to be careful. There was a reason I held back for so long, after all.


    It wasn''t that Ahsoka was particularly fragile or that I believed she couldn''t handle herself. She was a badass and had been for a while, and I looked forward to that continuing and even improving as we worked together. She could handle herself. I didn''t need or want to treat her like spun glass.


    The problem was that Ahsoka had spent her entire young life being told that love and attachments were dangerous. That she was supposed to be above feelings of love and lust. And then, when she left that life behind, she had all but doubled down on it, enveloping herself in her old teaching as a refuge against the storm of tragedy that followed the Clone Wars. She clung to her teachings, separating herself from her own emotions and resisting the urge to form connections.


    And here I was, making her, hopefully, feel all those things and more. I wasn''t stupid or blind after all. I knew we were getting closer, and I certainly knew I had feelings for her. But patience had been the name of the game, giving her time to grow, feel what she needed, and adapt to choose what she wanted. I had desperately hoped she would open up and, of course, realize how damaging and wrong the old Jedi teachings were. But, even if she hadn''t, if she had decided to stick to the rigorous, inhumane teachings of the old Jedi order, then I would have had to move on.


    Taking it so slowly had been challenging, especially while spending so much time with her, knowing she was interested but also knowing she needed time. Watching her finally open up, finally begin to realize how toxic her old teachings had been...


    When we returned to the Chariot to sleep, she was apologetic, mostly for not saying something sooner and for keeping me waiting. I wasn''t surprised she knew about my feelings, considering the empathic abilities of a Force user. I assured her as best as I could that it was okay and that no matter what, we would always go at the speed that she felt safe and ready for. As long as she was with me, I was happy to wait and help as much as I could. She understood, promising that she wanted to be with me. She wanted to see where our connection led to and what the future held for both of us, together.


    Waking up with her head on my chest had been an experience, one that seemed to heal a part of me that I hadn''t realized was broken. It was going to be interesting, maybe even challenging, but I was more than excited to learn and grow with her.


    Of course, all of those happy butterflies I felt when she slowly woke up, turning her head upward to give me a smile, did not mean we could stay in bed forever. We were technically on a mission, which meant getting up and out of bed at a reasonable hour. It also meant dealing with the friendly ribbing of the crew when we finally left my cabin.


    We stepped out to the sound of trumpets playing, and a holoprojector leaned against the wall playing fireworks. Each little explosion of light revealed words like "Finally!" and "Took you long enough!" The sounds of the trumpets must have alerted everyone that we had left my room because, after a few moments, Tatnia, Julus, and Camila all stepped into the hall from the lounge, clapping and cheering.


    "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," I said, my arm around Ahsoka''s waist, giving rather pointed looks at Julus and Tatnia. "We didn''t give you this kind of crap when you guys went public."


    "Yeah, but neither of us is the boss," Tatnia responded with a teasing smirk. "Besides, we didn''t do the holoprojector. That was Luke and Miru. They prepared that weeks ago for when you finally got together."


    "Damn¡­We''re gonna have to get them back for that," I said, shaking my head.


    "As if either of them can point fingers," Ahsoka added, shaking her head.


    "What?" I asked, looking at her with confusion. "What do you mean?"


    "Of course, you didn''t notice. Luke is just over three years older, but they clearly get along pretty well," Tatnia pointed out before Ahsoka could explain. "Give it a few more years for Miru to grow up, and for them to realize what''s going on, they will be an item."


    "Huh¡­ I''m gonna need a shovel."


    "That sounded colloquial, but I know that tone," Ahsoka said, biting back a smile. "Don''t be mean."


    "No promises."


    We laughed, and Tatnia revealed that they had made a real breakfast, an apology for making fun of us. It was simple food, but the fact that it was made fresh and shared with friends easily made up for it. When we were finished, it was time to start the day.


    When we got down to the first deck, the Mandalorians were already preparing to leave, armored up and packing some supplies onto a few speeder bikes. They were determined to explore the deep forest of the world, wanting to get a feel for their potential home. Or at least, that''s what I was guessing. Corvak simply stated that they wanted to hunt, but I saw an eagerness in his eyes that told me it was more than that.


    Mandalore had been a husk of a planet for a long time, long before the Empire bombed the world flat. To suddenly have access to a rich, vibrant world, with an invite to live there... It must have seemed tempting.


    I did my best not to seem smug about it.


    Either way, I was fine with them going off and doing their own thing, as long as they stayed in contact, though that that was more for their safety than anything. Not only were they my guests, meaning I had no intention of putting them to work, but any exploration they did around the mesa would only benefit us in the long term. The Jedi had done some scans and some exploration around the immediate area, but we were still woefully ignorant of the thick, primal jungle that surrounded us.


    That was why, after everything was offloaded, I had the Loyal Hound flying around at low altitude, running some deep scans to build a much more complete map. It was also why a few semi-portable sensors had been included in the equipment delivery. The more we knew about Nirn, the better.


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    Eventually, when the labor droids were all set up and working on another temporary home, Ahsoka gathered Amescoll and his Padawans, inviting them into the lounge of the Chariot. Julus and Tatnia were out walking the perimeter, mainly as an excuse for some alone time, while Calima was reading in her bunk room.


    "As we said, the mission to Grakkus''s palace was a success," Ahsoka explained, addressing Amescoll. "We were able to recover a multitude of lightsabers, thirteen holocrons, and several other personal items. We also found a few ancient Jedi texts. They are still inside their specially sealed containers, mostly because I am worried about what might happen if we take them out."


    That got some clapping, and congratulations. I know that Ahsoka had already mentioned the remains to Amescoll, who had solemnly taken them to be taken care of.


    "That is good news," Amescoll said with a smile. "The idea of our ancestors'' holocrons sitting in his vault¡­ I must say it did not sit well after I learned the truth."


    "It didn''t with any of us," She said, shaking her head. "With the holocrons uncovered, I thought it best that a few of them stayed here so that they could be used by the Padawans and younglings. I know you are here, Amescoll, but¡­"


    "Nonsense, I wholeheartedly agree," The older man said with a smile. "While I enjoy teaching my Padawans, there is much I do not know. I would suggest, however, that instead of assigning a holocron to each student, they be passed around frequently and be used in groups of three or more."


    "Why?" Ahsoka asked. "I agree, but I''m curious about your reasoning."


    "Because I don''t want them to lose who they are," Amescoll admitted with a shrug. "The masters would have had many issues with what we are doing now, including how we have structured ourselves and how we plan to continue to push who we are as Force-sensitives. I don''t want any of the older Masters to pressure my Padawans into compliance in exchange for teachings."


    "You''re thinking in a similar direction as I was, but Deacon also made a fair point as well," she said, looking over at me and gesturing for me to take the floor.


    "Well¡­ just because someone made a holocron that looks like it was made by a sane Jedi, doesn''t actually mean that''s the case," I explained with a frown. "There is a non-zero chance that any holocron you find, if you don''t already know the creator, could be made by someone who was or already had fallen to the dark side. If you use them together, it will be easier to identify if you stumbled on a bad egg."


    "That¡­ makes a disturbing amount of sense," The older Jedi admitted with a frown. "Have you examined any of these holocrons already?"


    "I have talked with a few, including the three I brought with me to leave here," She explained. "But holocrons are capable of lying and pretending, so without using them¡­"


    "There is no way to know," He said, shaking his head. "Well, hopefully, we can mitigate this admittedly unlikely but still dangerous problem with ample warnings and by using them together. What do you plan on doing with the other ten holocrons?"


    "I plan on keeping them on Omega Station for safe-keeping," The orange-skinned Togurta explained. "Once this settlement has stabilized and we have some proper structures in place, I will bring the rest here."


    "Would it not be smart to spread them out?" One of the Padawans, the male Twi''lek, asked. "So that their teachings could be recovered if the worst happens?"


    "There will be other holocrons and teachings," I assured them. "Jedi have been making and hiding them for a long time. There are caches of Jedi knowledge all over the galaxy. When things calm down and we are in a place to fully invest in the next step, I promise I will help you find as many as we can. Until then¡­"


    "We are better off focusing on more important things," Amescoll agreed. "We have our teachings, and we have the Force. Everything else is secondary."


    While some of the Padawans were eager to delve into the holocrons, Amescoll was determined to discuss what exactly our plan was. While he insisted he wasn''t the leader of whatever came next, he was more than happy to pick up the slack until one person, or several, stood up to the plate.


    "Once the proper construction equipment arrives, it will take time to train and get used to it," I pointed out. "We also have to have some sort of plan before we can start plopping down buildings. Trust me, a city without proper planning is only going to cause issues."


    "We need an expert," Ahsoka added. "To design buildings and to plan the city."


    "You sure we can''t just copy and paste a different design?" I asked with a wince. "Maybe we could buy the plans for Solinda?"


    Everyone chuckled at the suggestion, and I resigned myself to hiring another person. The new person wasn''t really a problem anyway. It was letting an unknown into our midst, letting them learn about the city and about us, only to let them walk around. At least I had a pretty firm grasp of what Corvak and his people were like before inviting them.


    "Alright, we can start looking for some sort of city planner with experience," I said. "I''ll comms Nal that he has a new task. With any luck, he could find someone suitable before we even get home."


    We continued to talk about some of the ideas for the city, and I was happy to hear Amescoll sticking to his guns about not repeating the mistakes of the old Jedi Order. I suggested some sort of Jedi dorm or gathering area, and he shook his head.


    "I would actually prefer if we spread our homes, future and current, all across the mesa," He explained. "I envision Jedi living next to families, making friends with neighbors, helping and being a part of the growing community. We could have a central repository for knowledge, maybe even a museum or memorial, something to serve as a hub, but that''s it. I would even say that we spread out meditation spaces all across the mesa, letting the city grow around them. We could treat them like public parks, with sound-dampening to make it a calm refuge for everyone."


    I once again thanked my lucky stars that Amescoll had been so agreeable and understanding of what the Jedi order needed to be. I promised him that as long as I was in charge, and even after that, assuming whoever took over for me was willing to listen, the Jedi and the citizens of Nirn would live together as equals.


    Of course, that then led to the conversation that I had named the planet Nirn because I was tired of calling it the ancient Jedi planet, or some variation thereof. Amescoll laughed, agreed it was as good a name as any, and happily agreed that they would name the city on the mesa, just to make things even.


    I told him he was welcome to, but to not take too long, since more people would be moving in soon, and any one of them could come up with something that sticks.


    He agreed that he and his people would come up with something soon.

 Chapter 165

    Between our delivery being offloaded, our meetings about the structure of the city, and our conversations with Amescoll about the future of the planet, our trip to Nirn was almost complete. By the afternoon of the second day, all we were really waiting for was for the Mandalorians to return from their hunting trip. They had thankfully stayed in contact, letting us know that they were unharmed and even enjoying themselves.


    It was late afternoon, early evening when they finally returned, the sounds of their speeder bikes audible long before they got back to the mesa. When they arrived, landing beside the central cluster of temporary buildings, they happily unloaded three large kills. First was a pair of <u>avian creatures</u></a> as big as a medium-sized pig, with black, white, and red plumage, as well as dangerous-looking talons and beaks. The third and final kill was a more mammalian-looking creature, as large as a good-sized buck, with four legs, blue and white fur, and an interesting head plate that Amescoll guessed was for making a loud trumpeting noise.


    "There''s no way to be sure without seeing it happen in person, but we have been hearing distant noises that I think would fit that creature well," He explained, examining the creature as it hung from its feet. "Perhaps when the carcass is cleaned, we could wash the skull and see if we can replicate the sound."


    Not only did the Mandalorians hunt for meat, but they also spent some time scavenging for edible plants. Apparently, food consumption scanners were considered basic equipment for Mandalorians, which meant they returned with three crates of strange, exotic-looking fruit, leafy plants, and even a few hearty-looking roots.


    Amescoll, who explained that he had learned a lot more than just how to fight from his clone comrades during the Clone Wars, worked with Corvak and another Mandalorian warrior to clean and butcher the animals.


    "I have to say, that protective shield seems a lot more important now," Amescoll admitted, carefully washing meat from one of the large birds. "This animal could easily lift up one of the younglings, and between his talons and his beak, I would say he would be a threat to anyone not armed."


    With such a bounty of food, it only seemed fitting that we held a banquet of sorts. The Mandalorians slow-cooked all three animals over a large fire pit, seasoning them by drizzling over a spice and liquid mix they made from supplies from the Talos Chariot. The rest of the harvest food was laid out on the table, either cleaned and cooked or just cleaned for consumption raw. So far, save for the initial tasting by the Mandalorians, we had all held back from tasting anything so we could all learn together.


    When the sun set, we gathered two tables around a large fire and dug into the prepared food. Despite having lived on the planet for nearly twenty years, almost everything on the table was as new to the stranded Jedi as it was to everyone else. They recognized a few leafy greens, but beyond that, everyone was learning of the planet''s tastes together. I quickly discovered that the large bird tasted like a heavier, denser wild turkey, its meat cooking almost like a cross between beef and poultry. The large, blue, deer-like creature actually tasted more like pork than venison, which made me wonder if it could be cured by making bacon.


    As for some of the foraged plant life, most of them were hard to describe, though there was one root that ended up cooking into an almost banana-like mush and a gourd that hung from a tree that did one hell of a sweet potato impression. My favorite of all was a double fist-sized purple fruit, pulled from the heart of a flower, that tasted like the most perfect, ripe cherry you could imagine, but with as much edible flesh as a large grapefruit.


    As we continued to eat, I couldn''t help but smile as the groups started to intermingle. Crovak stayed near Amsecoll, Ahsoka, and myself while everyone else moved around over time. I don''t know if Corvak and Amescoll told their people to do so or if it just happened naturally, but by the time we had finished eating, the groups were a lot less defined, with Mandalorians standing with Padawans, talking about the planet, what they had eaten,l and their experiences hunting.


    At this point, I was expecting a request to head to the ancient Jedi island at any moment so that the Mandalorians could experience hunting one of the ocean dwellers themselves.


    Corvak was enamored with the planet, something he only admitted when we had been talking for a while. He admitted that his clan had been stuck living on city worlds or on ships for a very long time, and before that, in his youth, he lived on Mandalore, which was barren save for the domed cities. He had never experienced such a primal, living planet, one where he was welcomed. He reluctantly admitted that something about it had felt¡­ right.


    At some point, Julus had ducked into the Chariot for a moment, only to return with a large container of alcoholic beverages. In fact, it was the same coconut, chocolate Guinness drink that Rabben had introduced us to. I knew that Julus and Nal liked to keep stores of it around, but I had no idea that they had so much.


    I had half expected Amescoll and most of the Padawans to decline the drink, but to my happy surprise, they accepted the gift, cracking open the can. Before anyone could drink, Amescoll stood, holding his own drink up. It didn''t take long for everyone to quiet down, recognizing that he wished to say something.


    "While we may share a different history, and our futures may or may not diverge, I believe I speak for everyone that, for this moment, it is wonderful to share a drink among friends," He said with a smile, looking around the group. "Earlier today, Deacon asked us to name this town, which will someday become a city. A symbol of hope for the future of the Jedi, a start of something new for the Skyforged, the beginning of the end for the Empire, and a new beginning for any ally who may join us."


    Amescoll looked over to Corvak, nodding his head and tilting his glass to the Clan leader. Corvak, who had been smiling and joking with us moments before, returned the gesture.


    "We debated many names, eventually settling on something that we hoped would show how dedicated we are to change, to achieving that dream," He said with a smile. "With the permission of our new friends, we would like to call the mesa and the city Vercopa''Yaim."


    For a moment, I was lost, wondering what language he was referencing. I looked to Ahsoka, who looked equally confused, before looking at Tatnia, who was sitting at a different table. As I looked, I caught sight of the Mandalorian armorer, who was now standing. A look at Corvak showed that he was also standing. All six of the Mandalorians were standing, in fact.


    "You would name it in Mando''a?" He asked, sounding surprised.


    "With your permission, yes," Amescoll responded with a solemn nod.


    "...Very well. Vercopa''Yaim, A dream of home, the Skyforged capital city," He responded with a nod. "Thank you."


    Stolen novel; please report.


    "To Vercopa''Yaim!" I shouted as I stood, raised my glass, and put my hand on Corvak''s shoulder.


    Shouts and cheers echoed out from the small crowd, calling out the new city''s name before taking a long sip of their drink. After a second cheer, we all sat down, though Corvack seemed to want to know more.


    "Why?" He asked, quiet enough to keep the question private. "Why name it in Mando''a?"


    "Corvack¡­ out of respect to you and your people, I have instructed all of mine to keep our abilities to ourselves," Knight Amescoll explained. "I know they make your people uncomfortable, so it was only right we hold ourselves back. But there is only so much we can do when your emotions are singing into the Force."


    Amescoll looked over us and, after a moment, leaned back in his chair. He looked happy, and I couldn''t blame him. He was settling into a sort of elder advisor position that seemed to satisfy his need to help his people without actually being in charge of anything important. I was honestly fine with that, as the man had seen his people through twenty years of struggle. He had done his job, and you could tell by how relaxed he was that he was enjoying the large weight being pulled off of his shoulders.


    "Even as we tried to mind our own business, we could feel you and your people''s joy and excitement clearly, even while you were out hunting," He revealed, giving the Mandalorian an understanding look. "We can feel your longing as well, every time you stare out into the horizon. A home, a real, gloriously alive world, for your people to prosper and grow on. This planet calls to you much in the same way it does to us."


    Corvak went through a series of emotions as Amescoll talked, first scowling slightly at the mention of their Jedi abilities, before switching to denial, which broke down more and more, until finally it cracked away completely. The Mandalorian leader sighed, leaning back heavily in his seat and letting out a long breath.


    "I¡­ can''t deny any of that," He admitted, looking up at the sky, Nirn''s single pink moon hanging above us. "This planet¡­ You are right, it does call to us. Your choice of name is appropriate, as it does feel like a dream of home, like a dream of what Mandalore would have looked felt like, before the Empire, and before my people wiped it barren."


    For a long moment, we were silent, drinking and eating, watching the fire as our people talked. Eventually, Corvak spoke again.


    "I need to talk to my people, and I still want to participate in your next mission," He explained, fixing me with a look. "But I will admit your offer is getting more and more tempting, Deacon. A world to call home... A world to settle, and grow, and hunt, and live, not just survive... It is more hope than most Mandalorians have ever felt in their entire lives."


    I gave Amescoll a look, the older man giving me a small smile in return, along with a subtle nod. I had to bite back a chuckle. To think a Jedi would make just as much, if not more progress convincing a group of Mandalorians to join us than I could.


    Everyone spent the rest of the night enjoying and celebrating the mesa''s new name. By the end of the night, people had already started shortening it to Yiam, which Corvak explained just meant "home," so it was kind of fitting. When it was time to finally back up, we quickly cleared the tables and mess we had made, put out the fires, and went out separate ways to sleep the rest of the night away.


    I couldn''t help but break out into a big, dumb, goofy grin when Ahsoka followed me to my room, a blush on her face as I showed her security the code and invited her inside.


    The next morning, it did not take very long for us to prepare for our return trip to Omega Station. Corvak shared all of the data they had gathered while out hunting, including the locations for several of the more popular fruits we had enjoyed during the impromptu feast. While most of the work was being done by Labour droids, Julus and I snuck out in the Arrow, using their data to grab a handful more of the large, grapefruit-sized cherries, which Julus had enjoyed as well.


    When we were finally ready to leave, I shook hands with Amescoll and a few of the Padawans, discussing some of their plans. Over the next few days, while more people and supplies were being dropped off, some of them would hitch a ride to Omega Station, where they planned on meeting and integrating better into what was slowly going to become the military arm of¡­ whatever it was we were trying to do here. Create a bastion for people so that we could better fight the Empire or something along that line.


    Corvak and Amescoll also shook hands, as did a few of his Mandalorians with the Padawans. It was exciting to see the two groups come together and move on, looking towards a brighter future. I couldn''t wait to show Sabine what was going on, assuming that things went well and Clan Syr ended up joining us.


    We would have to wait until Sabine and Ezra returned from whatever it was they were doing, assuming they did. While Ahsoka and I both encouraged them to stop by, with no pressure to join or not, it was ultimately up to them. As far as I was concerned, Ezra had already served his time and gone above his duty. He held no responsibility to help with the rest of the Rebellion.


    The trip back to Omega Station was not as long as the trip to Nirn had been, since we weren''t making a secondary disguising jump this time. Still, it was over twenty-four hours, which meant we had some time to kill. Rather than bum around and just relax, Ahsoka and I spent a good chunk of our time sparring with Corvak and his warriors.


    Corvak was hesitant at first, but I challenged Ahsoka to fight as best as she could without using the Force, a daunting concept for someone like her. Still, she accepted the challenge, as did Corvak and his men. We sparred with and without weapons, using metal piping to stand in for actual weapons.


    In the end, after a few hours, I got Tatnia and Julus involved as well since hand-to-hand combat was absolutely the Skyforged Vanguard''s weakest point. While most of our people could put up a good show in a fist fight, against trained professionals like the Mandalorians, they could barely keep up. The only reason that Tatnia and Julus could barely manage to keep up at all was, at this point, they were significantly enhanced by enchanted items, a fact I pointed out to each of them once the sparing was over.


    I also realized I had a significant weakness, in that my fist fighting was barely passable as actually fighting. The entities that dropped me in this universe had given me sword knowledge, but my fist-fighting was all me, something that was very obvious. I wasn''t defenseless, of course, since conjuring a pair of daggers was easy, and it immediately connected with my bade skills.


    I made a mental note to get everyone at least some training, perhaps by buying some combat training droids, to at least get people instructed in knife fights and fisticuffs.


    When we finally arrived at Omega Station, all of us had barely stepped out of the Chariot and into the hangar, when Sheora rushed in to greet us. She was excited, and after catching her breath, she revealed that General Draven had selected a target for a heist.

 Chapter 166

    Despite an initial burst of excitement for finally having a proper target for a metal heist, Sheora insisted that this target was not time-sensitive. I couldn''t help but chuckle and roll my eyes at that admittance, since not too long ago, her boss had tried to convince me that I needed to stay close by, just in case we needed to move fast.


    Sheora didn''t have too much information on our target, beyond the initial reveal that it was going to be some sort of Imperial industrial heist. While I knew the Rebellion would pick a proper target, I was glad to hear that we would be attacking an Imperial site.


    Still, we had some time, so after contacting the rest of my team, I reached out to our away group, which ended up with me linked to Captain Irsee and Lieutenant Rider through the holonet. Our conversation was short but effective, as they were confident they had identified the planet that was the pirate''s next target, and that they were lying in wait for them to attack. Once they had given me a proper update, I updated them, explaining that my team, as well as the Loyal Hound and the Mandalorians, would be going on this heist mission.


    We had one whole night on Omega Station to decompress and get a full night''s rest before waking up early and preparing for our next mission. My team, as usual, made themselves at home on the Talos Chariot, while Corvak and his eleven Mandalorian warriors claimed the bunks on the Lucky Hound.


    On top of that, we also decided to go a little heavy on the loadout, running on the idea that it was easier to lighten our load than it was to suddenly acquire stuff we might need. On top of the usual contingent of B2 Super Battle Droids, both ships took another fifteen. We also gathered twenty Commando droids, led by Boxi.


    Tatnia and I discussed for a while whether we should allow Miru to come with us. Her expertise and genius had more than once made the difference on asset acquisition missions, but I didn''t want her anywhere near open combat. I already felt guilty for dragging her through Nar Shaddaa our first time around. Eventually, we decided to leave her behind since neither of us wanted to put her at risk, no matter what benefit bring her might have.


    Eventually, we were packed and ready to go, with our crews running through our final checks and preparing to leave. While fueling up the ships, Pola came rushing into the hangar bay. He was pushing a hovercart, loaded down a familiar-looking crate.


    "I am so glad I caught you!" he said, visibly sagging in relief, so much so that I was worried he was about to collapse. "I finished it!"


    He quickly pushed the cargo lifter across the rest of the hangar, meeting us about halfway with an excited look on his face. As Ahsoka and I got close, he walked around and opened up the crate, revealing Ahsoka''s new armor. She gasped and knelt down, running he hand over the first piece, the chest plate. She looked up at Pola, who nodded encouragingly before carefully taking the chest armor out and turning it over in her hands.


    From what I could see, it did have a few extra bits of plating than the original had, but other than that, it looked nearly identical to the original piece. I also knew that Ahsoka had decided to leave off the extra robes, happily foregoing that bit of tradition.


    "This is incredibly Pola," She admitted, looking at the Armorer with a large smile. "How did you finish so fast?"


    "Working with other people has drastically improved my workflow," He explained. "It was hard getting used to delegating tasks, but once I did, everything got much smoother. Plus, I stayed up all night to make sure."


    We spent a few minutes discussing the new aspects of her armor, Pola explaining that while the beskar made it highly resilient, it was still much more in line with agility versus durability, something she should keep in mind when she was in combat. Other than that, it had the same abilities and limitations as the standard Skyforged armor, at least when paired with her custom helmet.


    "Pola, thank you for rushing this through," I said, patting his shoulder. "I feel a lot better knowing she had proper armor on when we fight."


    "Of course, Boss," he said with a smile. "I''m happy to help!"


    Ahsoka carefully repacked her armor, and after a final round of goodbyes, the crew finally climbed into their ships. Not long after that, we left the station behind. After exchanging security codes with the Huntress, which was orbiting around the station, we made the jump to lightspeed, our heading set for Alpha Base.


    The trip was blessedly short, as the team was eager to get to work. Our access to beskar had become a rather important aspect of the Skyforged. Currently, all of our ground teams were in full armor, but there was a chunk of our flight crew members who were not wearing our beskar uniforms. On top of that, if we wanted to expand further, which would hopefully happen soon, we would need even more.


    I was beginning to realize that, even if this mission went well and we secured a significant amount of precious metals, I would need to start looking for more almost immediately, at least if I wanted to keep my people protected as we grew.


    When we arrived at Alpha base, the orbit around the planet was filled with a dozen ships, ranging from full-scale capital ships to lower-scale corvettes. As we approached and passed through the security "checkpoint," I could also see that there were two separate groups, with one leaning towards the heavier firepower and the other with smaller, faster crafts.


    We were directed to the outer landing areas, and as we had before, as we exited our ships, we were met by a small utility speeder for transport. They seemed surprised when Corvak and a pair of his warriors exited the IPV and followed us to the speeder. Luckily, there was just enough room for all six, and my team had left their armor behind.


    As all six of us, three Mandalorians, Tatnia, Ahsoka, and myself, settled onto the speeder, Corvak turned to me.


    "They were surprised," He pointed out. "Did you not warn them we would be here?"


    "We work with them, not for them," I responded with a shrug. "This is a joint mission between the Rebellion and the Skyforged. You and your people fall under that umbrella, at least for now, so there is nothing to explain."


    "He wants to see them freaking out," Tatnia added.


    "So far, the Skyforged has a reputation for achieving unlikely things, with very little prompting," I explained, giving Tatnia a half-hearted glare. "There is nothing wrong with wanting to hammer that home."


    "...Working with you is going to be¡­ interesting, isn''t it?" He asked.


    "But never boring," I said, slapping his pauldron. "Never boring."


    "I feel as if I should have realized this sooner."


    "Can you really say it''s a bad thing?" I pointed out, giving a half salute to the guards at the side entrance of the bunker as we passed. "It''s never boring, we are kicking ass, making money, and in the grand scheme of things, we are actually doing good for the galaxy. Hard to beat that."


    Corvak nodded, not disagreeing with my statement but clearly not agreeing with me either. That wasn''t altogether surprising, considering that Mandalorians weren''t exactly known for their charitable efforts. I had discussed the "ground floor" plan of sticking to the Rebellion with him, and that was the idea he really seemed to appreciate. He wasn''t interested in being a freedom fighter, but war profiteering for credits and power? That was practically the great Mandalorian pastime.


    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    It didn''t take long for us to make it to the <u>meeting room</u></a>, a large rectangular table surrounded by chairs, all around a central holoprojector. The projector itself seemed to be in a lowered, out-of-the-way position at the moment. As we entered, I could see that General Draven, General Syndulla, and several people I didn''t recognize, as well as¡­


    "Han, Chewbacca, good to see you again," I said, reaching out to shake both of their hands. "They rope you into this?"


    "Well¡­ I have a certain amount of experience with things like this," he pointed out, seemingly startled by being greeted first. "Who are your friends?"


    "This is Corvack Syr, Leader of Clan Syr," I explained, gesturing to the warrior. "We recently got tangled up on a job, and we ended up working together in the end. I invited them along. Before anyone asks, I''ll be paying them out of my pocket, so there''s no reason to worry."


    "You brought mercenaries here?" Draven asked accusingly, standing up and preventing me from greeting anyone else. "Are you out of your mind? You''ve jeopardized the security of the entire base!"


    "They have absolutely no idea where they are, General Draven," I assured him. "The crew of the Loyal Hound was instructed to keep the hyperspace coordinates hidden, and several security droids were on staff to prevent any slicing or interference with ship systems. Which was ultimately pointless because they never even tried to access the bridge or do anything nefarious at all."


    "That-"


    "General, we have allowed Skyforged access to this base because we trust them," General Syndulla pointed out. "They helped us secure it, and since then, we haven''t questioned any of their recruitments. It makes no sense to start now."


    "Thank you," I said, nodding towards the general. "I don''t think anyone is crazy enough to doubt the effectiveness of Mandalorian warriors, they will be a significant help in whatever scenario you''ve managed to parse out. And I trust them enough to bring them here, betting our continued relationship on them not screwing us over."


    After a moment, General Draven sat down, not exactly looking happy about it. The table was silent for a long, awkward stretch until I eventually rolled my eyes.


    "So what is our target?" I asked, looking between General Syndulla and Draven. "Unless something has gone wrong, and we don''t have one anymore?"


    General Syndulla turned slightly to look at her fellow Rebel leader, the human man nodding and standing, the room going somewhat darker as the holoprojector rose into position.


    "Our target is a central vault location for an industrial planet responsible for producing a variety of parts for the Imperial Navy," General Draven explained, tapping at the computer in front of him, the holoprojector lighting up. "The planet''s name is Forisa, and it currently falls under the domain of a Moff Dowri, a career politician and Coruscant native who is currently in charge of a small but lucrative sector of the Mid Rim."


    The holoprojector first showed off a projection of Forisa, a relatively barren planet that reminded me of the world with the first CIS base we conquered but with a slightly better atmosphere. Beside that, an image of Moff Dowri appeared, showing a smooth-shaven man, including the top of his head. He looked like the kind of man who shaved not because he was balding or because he thought it looked good, but rather because having a smooth head was more efficient and cleaner.


    "Now, as I said, the target is a central vault, which is used to hold and distribute the more valuable materials across the planet," Draven explained, the projection now showing a hexagonal building, though the shot is taken from far away. "The vault is refilled bi-weekly, and since we have a pretty firm grasp on what the planet is producing and in what amounts, we can safely predict just how much metal should be in this vault. This is what we will be targeting."


    The projection shifted to a list, a dozen metals appearing with amounts beside each. As each one was put on display, I had to fight to keep my jaw from dropping. Just the first two metals alone were enough to make the trip worth it, but with all of them combined¡­ Even with us only getting sixty percent, we would be getting significantly more than what we secured from our first heist.


    "This target was chosen for a handful of reasons, in no small part is because Moff Dowri has a reputation as a man willing to take bribes and cut corners," General Draven explained. "On paper, his sector is doing well, but our agents have observed significant cutbacks on fleet movements and sizes, as well as a considerable delay in action response times."


    The projector shifted again, this time showing off a list of ships, connected with names and even a brief history for some of them.


    "Our second reason is the defense fleet above the world. While the planet is too important to have no fleet, it has shrunk in size significantly over the last four years. Three ships have been grounded and have not returned to service, either to cut costs or to hide other issues." As he talked, three ships displayed red exes over them, showing which ships weren''t expected to be part of the fleet. "Whatever the reason, we can expect a significantly smaller naval threat than we would have otherwise. Finally, we have the third and potentially most important aspect of this mission and the reason why this target was ultimately chosen."


    The projection shifted, displaying some sort of large comms tower near the outer perimeter of the city. It wasn''t anything special, and ultimately, it reminded me of the tower Ezra and Sabine were living out of when we picked them up for the whole lightsaber adventure.


    "This Comms tower 45-83B, and either through neglect or direct greed, it is the keystone of the planet''s entire off-planet communication system. Destroying this tower would make it impossible for leadership on the ground to communicate with the defense fleet, should the fleet leave a certain perimeter around the planet."


    The holoprojector went dark, bringing everyone''s focus back directly to Draven. He stood there with his hands behind his back, easily accepting the attention.


    "The assault consists of three parts. First is a hit-and-run attack on the defense fleet. Their primary goal is to outrun and distract them, leading them on a wild chase away from the planet. We have several ideas to make this safer and run up the clock, which we can discuss later," Draven said, nodding to some of the people I didn''t recognize. "Second, a small strike force will attack Comms tower 45-83B, disabling it to prevent any further communications from reaching the defense fleet, keeping them from returning. Third and finally, a larger strike force would attack the vault directly, cracking it open and raiding its storage before loading up and heading home."

 Chapter 167

    For a moment, I rolled the plan around in my head, nodding in appreciation for the basic outline.


    "I like it," I said, nodding along after Draven, the stern man shifting to look at me. "But there are a few holes. "What happens if the defense fleet gives up the chase before we are ready for them?"


    "We chase after them, harassing them as we can, delaying them as best we can, giving the ground teams time to run," He explained. "This is a high-value target. There is no way to make the plan airtight."


    "Maybe, but there are ways to make it safer," I pointed out. "How would we land on the planet, exactly? I''m open to using my ships, they can handle some heavy fire and are pretty fast."


    "We have three Aegis-class shuttles ready for use," He responded, shaking his head. "They are sturdy, easy to load up, and can handle the rapid descent.


    "Those don''t have hyperdrives, though," I said, shaking my head. "We won''t be able to retreat on our own. We would have to wait for a pickup, putting ourselves and whoever is getting us at risk."


    That seemed to catch him off guard. After a long moment of thought, he eventually nodded.


    "Fine, we can use your ships," He agreed, not looking happy but seeming to realize I had a point.


    "We should be able to land everyone at once with the Chariot," I responded with a nod. "Which is good because it leaves the Loyal Hound free to complete a secondary objective."


    "Secondary objective?" Draven asked, looking confused. "What secondary objective?"


    "Well¡­ you said it yourself, three ships have been grounded from the defense fleet," I pointed out. "Sounds like easy pickings to me."


    "We are not assigning more troops to this mission," Draven responded, shaking his head. "And further dividing the team would only make trouble for the primary mission."


    "Fine, my people will take care of it," I assured him. "We have resources, the Loyal Hound will simply go off on its own for a bit before returning. Then, if the idea pans out, then great. If not, it''s not your problem."


    I did my best not to smirk or shake my head. People were constantly shocked by how much progress the Skyforged had made in such a short time, but none of them seemed to realize that it was situations like this allowed us to grow. Looking out for opportunities and seizing them as they arrived, that was the key to turning a simple asset acquisition mission into something even more impressive. I would get Nal and Racer to run research on the planet''s situation, and we would come up with something after that. Or scrap it if it wasn''t feasible. Either way, simply waving off the opportunity was a mistake.


    "...Fine, as long as you and your primary ground team are on task, I don''t particularly care," Draven said, shaking his head. "Is there anything else?"


    "Why would a strike team be needed to destroy the comms tower?" Corvak asked, leaning forward in his chair. "Knocking out communications is key to the plan, yes, but is it necessary for it to be done by a strike team? If we are simply blowing up the comms tower, why not just destroy it with a starfighter or other vessel?"


    "It''s an Imperial Facility, correct?" I asked, looking at Draven, who simply nodded. "Then a strike team does feel like overkill. Not to mention that if they are delayed for too long, then they might get word of the attack off before it''s destroyed."


    "Then what exactly do you suggest?" Draven asked, once again frustrated but silent since we did have a good point.


    "The Brick has weapons heavy enough to destroy the tower, or at least its ability to send communications," I said after a moment of thinking. "It can deploy out of the Chariot as we get close, it''s stealthy enough to sneak past most scans, and it''s been upgraded enough that it can stand up to a handful of TIEs if they have any on the ground as support."


    The Brick was a powerhouse for its size. Originally, we paid twenty thousand credits for it, expensive for its small size and lack of hyperdrive, but after dropping another large chunk of credits on it, Miru turned it into a force to be reckoned with. It was actually a bit unfortunate that we hadn''t been getting much use out of it lately, as it was basically a small, starfighter-level gunship on its own, even if we bought it to use as a shuttle. It was supposed to keep us from having to land the Chariot on every planet we traveled to, but between Omega Station and how often we were offloading and loading things, it hardly got used.


    "All we need is a pilot and a gunner, and it should be more than enough ship to get the job done," I finished. "We can probably pull them from the Loyal Hound if we were desperate, but¡­"


    "Send me the stats and layout of the ship, and I will find a pilot and a gunner capable of flying it well," General Syndulla volunteered. "If I remember correctly, it is a CEC design, so it shouldn''t be difficult."


    "That... is a sound idea, assuming your ship can handle it," Draven said after a long moment. "Is there anything else?"


    "Yeah, there is," I said, shaking my head. "Do we have floor plans? How are we moving the materials? Will we have an escort to keep ground forces at bay while we clear and loot? Should we have labor droids with us? If the fleet is underpowered enough, why don''t we try and flat-out destroy it rather than lead it away on a chase? What happens if the chase doesn''t work or the defense fleet splits in two?"


    "Believe it or not, Deacon Roy, we do know how to plan a strike mission," Draven responded, giving me a hard glare. "Do you require every detail?"


    I looked at him for a moment before looking at General Syndulla. She looked concerned but mostly defeated, shaking her head. She met my eye and shrugged, giving me the go-ahead to voice my thoughts.


    "General Draven, I''m going go ahead and assume that your reputation is true and that your gruff, blunt, and hostile attitude is because you take your job seriously and have no time for anything that might even vaguely resemble a possible threat to the Rebellion," I said, standing from my chair, meeting the man''s glare with one of my own. "But this is a joint mission. We are working together, as equals, to perform a mission, one that Mon Mothma herself wanted to happen. While I appreciate the need to be suspicious and careful, I will not tolerate being treated like good little soldiers."


    My words silenced the room, the air sucked out and the tension rising as I stared him down. Just as he opened his mouth to counter, I continued.


    "Let me put this bluntly so that there is no confusion," I said, holding up my hand to silence him. "Pull your fucking head out of your goddamn ass so that we can actually plan for this mission, or not only will we walk, I will rescind the offer to equip the Rebellion with beskar. With your name as the reason."


    He looked at me, clenching his teeth, looking like he had bit into a lemon, and then I followed it up by punching it down his throat. After a long minute, he swallowed, nodded, and sat back down in his chair.


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    "Very well," he finally said, tapping something on the screen. "Then where should we start?"


    "At the beginning," I responded easily. "What sort of support are we looking at, and what do the defense and distraction fleets look like?"


    For the next three hours, we went over the plan, piece by piece. At first, I could tell Draven was trying to be a brat by asking for input on every little thing. Eventually, however, he seemed to at least partially realize he was being an absolute idiot, as we continued to modify the plan in ways he didn''t see or predict. I also made a point to pull Han and Chewie into the conversation, resulting in a fair few new points being brought up.


    First, the idea of only relying on tricking the defense fleet to follow a smaller fleet away was abandoned. There were too many weak points, too many moments when something out of our control could change, and suddenly, the mission was over, and we all had very little time to run.


    So, with a little cajoling and convincing, we agreed the best bet was to stack the deck. The primary mission was still distraction, so a fleet would engage the defense fleet and run. Standard Imperial procedure was to chase and apprehend the Rebels, but should something else happen, there would be a secondary fleet, just a micro-jump away, ready to take care of the defense force in a more brutal manner.


    It still had risks, and meant we would be putting more people in danger, but it also had the smallest chance for everything to go belly up and for the mission to fall apart completely.


    Once the defense fleet was chasing or being taken care of by the secondary fleet, the Chariot would descend. My team, Clan Corvak, and a Rebel commando team would all be on board. The Brick would pull off and attack the Comms system, which would be our cue to attack the metal storage vault.


    This was also, if our research confirmed it would be a worthwhile idea, when the Loyal Hound would split off on its own mission of dropping off our contingent of Commando droids. When it was done with that, it would return to the vault to provide cover and keep any starfighters off our asses. Along with our own muscles, we would be provided plenty of equipment to quickly move the metals, as well as labor droids.


    Once we had our loot, we would load it onto the Chariot and head for space, with the secondary fleet jumping in to cover us, even if the defense fleet was still off following the distraction team.


    Our cover for the entire mission would include a half squadron of X-wings, as well as the Loyal Hound when it was done with its mission, which should only take a few minutes. It wasn''t quite enough to fight off anything massive, but it should keep us covered from any ground-based TIEs or heavy ground threats.


    When the meeting was finally over, I had a much better grasp of what we were doing, what my team would be doing, and what everyone else would be doing. I also felt a lot better about the plan with the secondary fleet waiting in the wings to act as backup. General Draven left with his people as soon as it ended, but I leaned back in my chair, shaking my head.


    "You know, he''s a pain in my ass, too," Han said, watching the man leave. "It''s almost like he thinks I''m untrustworthy."


    "He really does see himself as the Rebellion''s older brother, protecting it from their own naivety," Ahsoka said, shaking her head and looking at Hera. "I can''t imagine he has good things to say about the Skyforged recently."


    "He has voiced concerns," She admitted. "But you have enough friends to keep it from being an issue."


    "So far," I said, voicing the unspoken addendum. "I can''t imagine finding a handful of Jedi, and getting them to join me is helping that."


    "Nor is the clan of Mandalorians," She pointed out.


    "They have not technically joined us yet," I corrected her. "Clan Syr is enjoying our hospitality and will be paid according to an already settled amount for participating."


    "Of course. Well, Sabine will certainly be surprised," the General admitted. "She has been reaching out to some of her old contacts for you but hasn''t had much luck."


    "Skyforged prefer to make their own luck," I responded with a smirk. "Speaking of, do you have access to the info on the grounded ships? I want to decide if we will actually be attempting to claim one or more."


    "I do, just give me a moment¡­"


    General Syndulla accessed the computer system in front of her, bringing up another projection, the holoprojector blinking as it turned back on. After a moment it displayed three ships, a pair of IPV-1''s, and¡­


    "They grounded an <u>Arquitens</u></a>?" I asked, looking at the General to confirm. "Their defense fleet only had three of them, and Moff Dowri grounded the third?"


    "Well¡­ according to what we know, the one he grounded was an older model," She explained, bringing up a close-up of the ship. "This one, in particular, fought in the Clone Wars. It''s been heavily updated, and the Imps don''t skimp on their Navy after all, but it''s still technically inferior to the more advanced modern models."


    "... I want it," I said simply after a long moment. "I want that ship almost as much as I want the metals."


    "You think you could take it?" She asked, watching me eye the projection.


    "I think¡­ it depends on what sort of defenses they have around them and if they are kept ready to serve or not," I responded with a shrug. "It doesn''t matter who I send to take it if it''s not fueled or it''s been stripped of parts."


    "I doubt you have to worry about that last one," Han said, leaning on the desk and shaking his head. "Grounding a ship to save money on upkeep and staffing is one thing. He might get a slap on the wrist if he gets caught skimming the difference. Selling parts off of it, though? He''d be dead the second someone found out."


    "Well, that''s a good sign. Still, even if it''s not ready, it''s worth the attempt," I repeated. "I have Twenty commando droids, which we can back up with super battle droids. They do good work, so there''s a solid chance this plays out¡­ Actually, we should include a slicer droid in that group, I think we brought spares of them as well..."


    General Syndulla chuckled before deactivating the computer and standing. She handed me a datapad with a smile.


    "This contains all the information we have on our target," She explained. "Feel free to go over it more with the rest of your team. Well, the rest of your team, minus Ahsoka. I was hoping to talk to her for a moment."


    I gave Ahsoka a look, who nodded with a small smile. I gave her a peck on the cheek before making my way out of the room, once we had all left, I turned to Han and Chewie.


    "I want to head back to the Chariot to brief my team. You''re both welcome to join us if you would like," I offered. "Nice chance to meet who you''re working with¡­"


    "... May as well," He said after sharing a look with Chewie. "You got anything to drink?"


    "I''ll see what I can do."

 Chapter 168

    Once we returned to the Chariot, we gathered everyone around in the cargo bay. There, we could brief both my crew and Corvak''s people at the same time. Once everyone was settled, we spent an hour or so going over the plan, discussing what sort of support we would have, as well as what we could expect from ground and air forces. Unfortunately, there wasn''t much information on that last bit.


    While I wasn''t particularly happy about the lack of information on just what sort of stationed assets we could expect around the vault, I also realized that it wasn''t really anyone''s fault. You really couldn''t know everything after all, not without putting Rebel agents at risk. The lack of information about the vault interior was the most concerning, in my opinion, but it wasn''t like we had that sort of intel in the first heist.


    Thankfully, by the time we were done with our briefing, no glaring issues had been pointed out by my guys or Corvak''s. I would not have enjoyed knocking on Dravens door and adding another change to the list.


    Actually, scratch that. I would probably have enjoyed that a lot.


    Either way, once the internal briefing was done, we all sat down and had a basic lunch. Han was rather interested in the liquor I brought out to sip with it, pouring glasses for everyone to sip. It was different from the brandy I had shared with Corvak not too long ago, closer to a smoother, more accessible whiskey.


    When lunch and the following break was over, we started reorganizing the contents of our ships to better fit the mission, namely moving the droids around so that they could deploy easily and quickly from the Loyal Hound.


    On top of that, we needed to clean up the interior of the Chariot. We would be transferring a lot of people around, and while the Loyal Hound should be around to help with the load, I wanted to make sure it wasn''t necessary in case it couldn''t land. I wanted enough room on the Chariot for all of the ground team and all of the precious metals.


    To be honest, between the labor droids and plenty of spare hands, it wasn''t exactly grueling work. It was more like an excuse to gather around and talk, everyone unwinding a bit before our mission. Hell, about three hours in, somehow, Han and Corvak ended up competing to see who was better with a blaster pistol. It was a quick competition, with the results showing that Han had a faster and more accurate quick draw, but Corvak was a better shot overall.


    Han and Corvak happily accepted the "reward" of a cold lom-ale from Julus as we sat down in the Loyal Hounds bay, after their impromptu competition. While we had mostly avoided it throughout the day, now the topic of the conversation quickly drifted to our upcoming mission.


    "I''m optimistic, honestly, especially since Ahsoka hasn''t mentioned picking up on anything out of the ordinary," I responded with a shrug, Han sipping from his drink, sitting on a nearby crate.


    "And that works? They can just feel when something is going to go bad?" The Corellian asked, raising an eyebrow. "I''ve seen Luke do some... crazy crap, but feel the future?"


    "It''s not infallible," I responded with a shrug. "It doesn''t pick up on every threat, but it cued us into Grakkus wanting to betray us. Not that it changed our plans or anything. Basically, it''s a tool that can be useful, but it''s best not to rely on some of the more¡­ esoteric concepts."


    "Not like your magic," He pointed out sarcastically, smirking as he leaned back. "That''s much more reliable, right?"


    "Well, my magic comes from within me rather than from a cosmic, semi-sentient entity with whom I share a symbiotic relationship with," I explained, chuckling at Han''s expression. "This is where Ahosoka would slap my shoulder for being so irreverent, but you get the idea. My magic is mine, the Force¡­ it''s something and someone else."


    "Huh¡­ yeah, that does sound better," He agreed. After a near minute of silence, he asked the question. I could practically feel him wanting to as this whole time. "So you and Ahsoka, huh? How''s that working out?"


    "It''s all very new," I responded honestly. "I''m looking forward to finding out where it leads. Speaking of love interests, where is Princess Leia?"


    Chewie chuffed a laugh at my redirection while Han gave me a scowl before giving Chewbacca an unhelpful look and shaking his head.


    "The Princess is negotiating a deal for some supplies from a sympathizer," he explained. "I happen to have a large bounty on my head in that system, so she is traveling with other people. She wasn''t happy with me, but a man''s gotta earn a living, and there''s not much I can do about it now."


    "Yeah¡­ she seems like an intense woman," I commented. "Fire in her veins and a steel spine."


    Again, Chewie chuffed, and I toasted him with my drink before tilting it back and finishing it. The three of us got back to work despite the fact that I once again told both of them that they didn''t need to.


    Eventually, when everything was set, Ahsoka returned. Not long after that, Han and Chewie headed off to their own ship. The Millenium Falcon would not be coming with us on this mission, which was absolutely for the best, considering the ship''s propensity for plot-driven mechanical failure, but they had their own things to prepare. I did give Han a spare beskar uniform, pulling off the Skyforged logo for him to wear.


    "I know it clashes with the blood stripes, but I''m the Princess would appreciate you wearing the extra protection," I said with a smirk before turning to Chewie. "I''m not sure we have anything in your size¡­"


    Han laughed as Chewie chuffed a couple of times before continuing in Shyriiwook.


    "He says he is good," Han translated. "He''ll just hide behind you guys."


    "He is more than welcome to," I responded with a smile and a nod.


    After the roguish smuggler left, his ever-loyal companion following behind him, I made sure the finishing touches of our prep were complete before settling in to wait for the Rebellion, as they needed to get some things together.


    This was at least partially our fault since it was our suggestion to have a secondary fleet ready to engage in case things weren''t going our way. The distraction fleet was already fueled and ready to go. In fact, we had passed by the smaller, faster-looking group. Now, they were looking to pull in a couple of their heavy hitters, which was not something they could do at the drop of a hat.


    I was also pretty sure Draven was also hunting down the X-wing escort. The way he responded to me, assuming we would have someone guiding us down and keeping air support off us, seemed a bit off, but I hadn''t called him out on it. Despite how I may have reacted to his stubborn, hostile nature, I didn''t necessarily have it out for the guy. Everything I knew about him, both from this and my own universe, said he wasn''t actually a bad guy, just overzealous and misguided.


    Still, hard not to push back on him when he kept on pushing me.


    While they reworked and moved around their naval forces, the rest of us had nothing to do but wait. Nal kept busy by doing research on our secondary target, feeding Boxi everything he could find about the facility where the ships were being stored. He was hopeful that they would be in flyable condition, but the droids would still have to make their way inside and successfully take the ship. For the most part, I was leaving the process and plan to Boxi. Despite his artificial nature, he seemed to have a solid knack for his work, and the "personality" he was developing was stable enough that I was a bit sad to just throw him away, knowing he might not pull it off.


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    Of course, that hesitance didn''t mean I was going to hold off since it was absolutely a fair trade. Around forty droids, none of which we paid for, in exchange for a non-zero chance to get a ship that would come very close to doubling our fleet''s strength? That was a no-brainer.


    We ended up waiting for the rest of the day and into the following before finally preparing to leave. Sometime around the morning, part of the secondary fleet gathered in orbit, and we received word that it was time.


    As planned, rather than having everyone pile in the Chariot now, we would be leaving Alpha Base in the same grouping as we arrived. As we approached our destination, just before we arrived, we would be landing on an empty planet to transfer the Mandalorians and the Rebel strike team over. This planet was only a four-hour jump from our primary target, Forisa, which was a considerably less daunting journey with that many people on board. The planet was also barren, its environment hostile to most forms of life, but since they would literally just be running from one ship to the other, it was pretty much the perfect spot.


    Taking off of Alpha Base was simple, and we met up with the distraction fleet in orbit, sharing hyperspace calculations before making the jump. The first leg of our journey would take a whopping four days, which left me with a whole lot of free time. With all that time, and no resources to do any enchanting, I, of course, set my sights on magic. At this point, Hyperspace was basically the only time I had to set aside for it anyway.


    During the trip, I managed to learn two more spells, both of them from the Destruction branch. Icey Spear was a powerful enough spell that I was pretty sure it could be considered anti-armor, while Elemental Blast was, from what the Grimoire described, a pretty decent explosion of fire and shock, like an on-demand grenade.


    While I was learning the spells, Ahsoka got a first-hand look at how brutal they could be on my mind and body, sitting still, concentrating on my mana for nearly seventeen hours each. She wasn''t a fan of seeing me so mentally exhausted and physically hurting, especially when I explained there was one more level after Expert that would probably require me to learn a spell for nearly twenty hours.


    Between me learning my magic, Ahsoka and I spent some time sparring and practicing so she could get used to her new armor. We fought with swords first before Julus, Nal, and I ran around her with blasters set to stun, shooting her repeatedly, letting her block the blasts of energy or dodge them.


    It was impressive to watch, her movement a dangerous dance, the stun bolt sometimes getting within inches of her, only for her to swing back or drop out of the way. We celebrated when she managed to survive the constant barrage for nearly four minutes.


    By the time we landed on the unnamed barren planet, she claimed to be more or less used to the new protective equipment.


    "It''s at least partly due to your amulet," She claimed, thumbing her simple necklace, which contained a strength buffing enchantment. "I feel a bit slower with one less dexterity increase, but I can hardly feel the armor."


    "Just wait until I start enchanting the armor, too," I said with a smile, passing my partner a cup of water as she sat on a crate. "We are going to get a lot more broken after that."


    "Why haven''t you started doing that yet?" She asked, slowly sipping her water.


    "Resources, experience, and time," I explained. "I wanted to be good enough at enchanting that the benefits were noticeable, but by the time I got to that level, I was out of full soul gems. It also takes a long time to do all this enchanting, especially at higher levels. Plus, it takes a lot out of me, worse than learning new spells."


    We continued to chat and spar in between me learning magic, until finally we arrived at our first destination. We dropped out of Hyperspace on the outskirts of the system, making our way to the barren planet.


    There, in orbit around the barren planet, was the second part of the secondary fleet, waiting for us to arrive. While the fleets coordinated and shared information, the Loyal Hound, Chariot, and a simple shuttle ship, a make I didn''t recognize, headed down to the planet''s surface. We landed in the middle of nowhere, with the other two ships following us.


    The transfer happened quickly, with the Rebel commandos rushing onboard to avoid being outside any longer than necessary. Corvak and his people were a bit more relaxed, not surprising since their helmets protected them from the toxic environment. In total, on top of the twelve Mandalorians, we took twenty new people on board. Two of those people were Chewie and Han, and another two were the temporary pilot and gunner of the Brick. The pilots immediately requested to be shown the small but upgraded shuttle, which I delegated to Nal since he had the most time flying it out of anyone.


    I guided the remaining sixteen soldiers into the back of the first deck. While Calima was in the process of lifting off back into orbit, I addressed the large strike force. In order to be seen by everyone, I climbed up onto a crate.


    "Hello everyone!" I called out, getting everyone''s attention. "So, I''m sure everyone has already been briefed, but my name is Deacon Roy, and I''ll be in charge of the ground portion of this operation."


    I looked around, spotting Corvak and his men as they removed their helmets. The Rebel fighters were eyeing them up, clearly unsure of how to react to the idea of fighting beside Mandalorians.


    "First thing, this is Tatnia. She is my second in command," I explained, gesturing to her. "If I am somehow unreachable, her words are as good as mine. If for some reason she is not available, then Corvak Syr, Leader of Clan Syr, will take over, though, at that point, this operation will have most likely deteriorated into a retreat."


    I gestured across the crowd, the Mandalorian leader raising his hand so that everyone could identify him.


    "Now, as you may or may not have heard, yes, I can do magic," I explained before casting Flames above the crowd for just a moment. Everyone ducked, but the fire was already out before they could even react. "Do not be alarmed if I am throwing fire, lightning or ice around, as well as conjuring creatures."


    I demonstrated my conjuring by quickly casting Conjure Mage, and then having them cast Flames into the air.


    "Basically, if I say I can do something, just assume I can," I continued with a smirk. "You''ll save us time and yourself embarrassment when I prove you wrong and rub your faces in it."


    That got a chuckle from a few people, who I nodded to appreciatively.


    "Fantastic, I''m glad we could get that out of the way. For now, everyone get settled in. We have about four hours until we arrive at Forisa and this party starts. Before that, I plan on coming together again and giving over the plan a final time before we can all settle into whatever pre-fight rituals and observances you might have. If anyone is hungry or thirsty, let one of my people know. You can pick us out by our uniforms."


    With my basic introductory speech completed, I jumped down off the crate. I quickly looked around and flagged down the leader of the rebel strike team. I wanted to introduce him directly to Corvak and Tatnia before people started going their separate ways.

 Chapter 169

    The four hours until it was go time dragged on for a surprisingly long time. You would think that, by now, I would be used to the hurry-up and wait that was inherent to our job, but I still struggled to be patient. Waiting was never my strong suit, especially when I knew there were things I could be doing that were more useful than twiddling my thumbs.


    Eventually, rather than just sitting there, staring at the ceiling, I joined Julus and a few Rebels for a friendly game of <u>Sabacc</u></a>. Thankfully, we weren''t betting for credits or anything. Instead, one of the Rebels had a tiny holoprojector stand-in that functioned as the chip counter. It reminded me of those miniaturized, magnetic board games they would sell at truck stops and highway convenience stores. It worked, though, so I supposed there was no reason to complain.


    Han played for a few hands, but quickly retired when the Rebel soldiers started getting annoyed by his constant winning. Plus, Chewie laughed at him every time he won. Han refused to translate, but one of the Rebels was pretty sure he was making fun of the fact he could only win when nothing was at stake.


    As we played, I was happy to win a single hand, though mostly I wasn''t paying attention enough to come even close. I was only loosely familiar with Sabacc, as it was frequently only talked about in books but rarely fully explained. I was much more familiar with how to play Pazaak, which was unsurprising considering how much longer I spent playing it in the KOTOR games. Unfortunately, while I would probably be better off playing that, I doubted anyone would recognize the game if I asked about it, never mind having a deck.


    When the time finally swung around, and it was time to start making final preparations, I climbed back onto my soapbox and once again broke down the plan for everyone. The Skyforged Vanguards would serve as guards and spearheads into the facility, <u>as would Han and Chewie</u>. I would use Clairvoyance to track the precious metal, working our way in until we found it. When we did, the Rebellion would focus on loading up the hovercarts as quickly as possible, preparing to transfer the precious metal out. When everything was ready, the Skyforged would break into two groups. One would hold the vault itself, while the other acts as guards to the Rebel mules.


    During all of this, the Mandalorians would guard the entrance, primarily to keep it from being sealed shut, as well as to keep it from becoming an ambush site. They would have a lot of support from the Chariort, Hound, the remaining droid team onboard the Chariot, and the six X-wings escorting us. Because of that, they would be mostly inside, holding the door inwards, to make the job as easy as possible for the Rebellion.


    With our portion of the plan covered, I once again stepped down, heading up to my room to put on my armor. I passed Ahsoka, who winked as she went to do the same. Before she could get to her room, I reached out and snagged her hand, pulling her into a hug.


    "Being your leader, sending you off into danger isn''t easy," I admitted, giving her a long kiss before pulling back. "I know you can handle yourself, I don''t doubt your ability at all. But it sucks every time."


    "Trust yourself, Deacon," she responded, her hand on the side of my head. "I know you do everything you can to make sure each step of every plan we make is as safe as possible. I trust you to keep us as safe as we can be while still getting the job done."


    This time, she kissed me, cinnamon on my lips, before she pushed me back into the hallway. With a teasing smile, she stepped backward into her room, walking back to where she kept her armor. After a moment, the door sealed behind her, and it took me a second to shake myself free of her last motion, pulling her off her outer layer to put on her armor.


    When I finally recovered, I hurried back to my room, quickly putting on my armor, clipping my helmet to my hip, and heading back down the stairs. By then, I was the last one to get ready, with my team waiting on the front end of the ship by the forward boarding ramp. The Skyforged would be the first down the ramp and out into the chaos, so we needed to be first in position.


    I looked around, first nodding to Corvak, who was standing nearby with his people, his helmet on and weapon ready. His team would be next after us, following our wake to the facility. Next I gave Han a look, who just smirked and shrugged, before looking over at the rest of the Rebels. The commandos were prepared, too, though their equipment was a lot less uniform. Many of them were wearing modified and painted panels from stormtrooper armor, while others were wearing completely original get-ups. Their weapons all fell into the same general category of variable blaster rifles, but I didn''t see a single duplicate among them.


    I knew, logically, that Draven would send the best he had available since this mission failing would negatively affect his reputation just as much, if not more so, than mine. Still, it was hard not to look down on their abilities because of the haphazard gear.


    "Still think me talking about our looks and optics being important was pointless?" I asked Tatnia with a hushed whisper.


    "I''m sure they are plenty skilled," She responded, rolling her eyes.


    "I don''t doubt that," I confirmed. "But who would you really trust to get shit done?"


    Before she could say anything, the intercom of the ship snapped on.


    "Dropping out of Hyperspace in two minutes," Calima''s voice informed us, the tension in the first deck clicking tighter.


    "Alright, everyone, this is it," I said, overriding the mumbling tension. "It''s gonna be a tense journey to the surface, but the Chariot is full of upgrades, Calima is a great pilot, and we have some good people watching over us. Between all of that, I''m confident we can handle whatever gets thrown at us. Pretty soon, we will be back on the ground, kicking ass. Just try not to pull anything or give yourself a cramp clenching up in the meantime."


    That got some tense chuckles from the crowd, though it didn''t last long, all of us going more or less silent again. I gave Tatnia a look before pulling on my helmet and letting the systems link up. As always, the armor was comfortable, and the helmet was easy to wear and see out of. By the time I was all sealed up, I could watch as the rest of my crew slid their helmets on as well, Ashoka taking the longest since hers was the most complicated.


    "One minute to realspace drop," Calima''s voice said.


    I double-checked my utility belt, confirming my pistol was set to lethal, before turning to face the forward boarding ramp. Time continued to count down, though we didn''t have it posted anywhere. Eventually, Calima spoke again.


    "Dropping¡­ Now."


    We could feel the shift in the ship as the hyperdrive shut down, and we decelerated into normal space. The sounds of the first deck were suddenly a lot busier, and the shuffling, mumbling, and occasional cough no longer drowned out by the consistent background noise of the hyperdrive generator. As the hyperdrive settled, we waited silently for Calima to continue.


    "Scans coming up clean for now¡­ I can see the fleets... Looks like the defense fleet took the bait," She explained, her words getting a cheer from a handful of people around the first deck. "Opening the side bay for the Brick¡­ Brick away. We are approaching the planet at a crawl, the Brick is pulling away."


    The thrum of the ship''s thrusters kicking in was barely noticeable, vibrations absorbed mainly by the hull and the reinforced floors. Once again, we were stuck waiting, this time to give the pilot of the Brick enough time to drop into the planet''s atmosphere and take out the comms tower. After much debating during the planning phase, we agreed that two and a half minutes was enough time for the small but potent ship to get the job done.


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    I closed my eyes, letting out a breath and preparing for another stressful few minutes. Then, over the intercom, music began to play. While I didn''t know the exact piece, unsurprisingly, it was easily identifiable by most intelligent species, both here and back home.


    It was the lousy quality on-hold music, the kind you would sit and wait through for hours, waiting for someone to handle your call.


    It took a moment for people to realize it was a joke, the near multiversal constant causing people''s stress to break into laughter, starting with chuckles until everyone was more or less enjoying it. I snorted and looked over to Tatnia, who shrugged.


    "Doesn''t seem like something Calima would do," I pointed out. "Not without someone instigating her."


    "I have no idea who might have done this," She said with a blank tone, all while reaching back and slapping her boyfriend''s helmet-covered head, rocking him forward slightly. "I doubt we will ever really know."


    I laughed again, shaking my head and listening to the alien but still recognizable music, letting out a long breath. After the timer passed and the ship''s engines kicked in, the thrusters ratcheted up and pushed us forward, our ship picking up speed.


    "Timers done, moving in," Calima explained, her voice cutting off the music. "Loyal Hound is accelerating with us, and our X-wing escort is in formation around us."


    When our pilot''s message stopped, the music did not return, which I was happy about. Now that we were actually moving closer and about to be in the thick of things, it would have been in poor taste to continue joking around. Still, it had done its job, and while the tension crept back up into everyone, it was not nearly as debilitating or all-encompassing as it had been before.


    Time passed, and Calima continued to keep us informed. As we entered the atmosphere, she announced that the Brick had successfully completed its task and that it was on its way to rendezvous with us, specifically the Loyal Hound, to act as an escort. Not long after that, she announced that the Loyal Hound was breaking formation to begin its own mission, the larger ship heading to the shipyard where our alternate target was landed. Only thirty seconds or so after announcing that the Loyal Hound was beginning to divert to its target, Calima made another, much more worrying announcement.


    "Twenty-five TIE fighters just took off from a nearby facility," she said, sending a shiver of anxiety through all of us. "Heading directly for us."


    Inside my helmet, I cursed. That was a lot of TIE fighters for the Chariot and six X-wings to handle. If we had gotten Rogue Squadron as an escort, I wouldn''t be so worried, but I had no idea what color group we actually got and if they could come even close to handling it.


    I was about to order the Loyal Hound back to us, delaying its mission and significantly reducing its chance for success, when Calima spoke up again.


    "The TIE fighters have split. Ten are going after the Loyal Hound, while fifteen are still heading towards us," She explained. "Contact in forty-five seconds!"


    Everyone let out a breath of relief, as those were much better odds, which meant I could hold back from changing the plan. Instead, I simply activated my comms and ordered Calima to take the TIE fighters down as quickly as they could.


    The fight was nerve-wracking, with the sounds of the shields engaging and the inertial dampeners fighting to keep us from being flung around as Calima engaged the Imperial starfighters. As they fought, Calima kept us informed of the progress, and we celebrated every kill.


    Unfortunately, we also grieved, as one of our six escorts was destroyed in a collision with a damaged TIE fighter. The rest were mopped up quickly afterward, but the mood was still sober. The news that the Loyal Hound and Brick had managed to destroy their attacker with minimal damage brought us up a bit, but this mission had seen its first friendly blood. It was now a lot heavier than before.


    With confirmation that we were in the clear, we continued our journey to the facility, flying over the large manufacturing-focused city. When we finally touched down, l led the charge down the forward boarding ramp, my conjured ward up and ready.


    The first real look at the facility we got was a lot more daunting than it had been through the holoprojector. The standard Imperial Evil aesthetic was heavily applied to the facility, with shades of imperial grey and black covering the walls, floors, and buildings. The central structure, our target, was a <u>pyramidal behemoth</u></a> with a multi-floor "hat" sitting on top. The area directly surrounding the large structure was an open landing area for transport ships made from solid duracrete. Surrounding all of that was a thick, armored wall dotted with turrets and armored holding points.


    All of this was painted Imperial gray, which contrasted nicely with the burning wreckage already strewn across the landing pads and walls, as the X-wings took out their frustrations on the weapon emplacements and stormtrooper garrisons. They flew low over the whole complex, buzzing people as they ran, making sure to keep everyone under pressure. The longer the place stayed chaotic, the longer we had to move around unthreatened.


    Rapidly, we all disembarked, the Rebels pushing hovercarts taking the longest, descending from the cargo lift. Once we were all together, we pushed towards the primary entrance of the massive storage facility. Luckily, as planned, Calima had landed us nice and close, peppering the area with weapons fire to keep it clear. None of us even had to fire a shot until we were making the final approach, where we had to quickly deal with a pair of security officers, their blaster bolts pinging off Tatnia and Julus''s armor. Both of them were dropped immediately, one missing their arm a Chewbacca blew it to pieces with his bowcaster</a>. The other had a pretty neat hole burned into his chest, right above his heart. Han just shrugged when I looked at him, shocked by his impressive draw.


    "Its all in the wrist," He explained with a confident smile, making me shake my head at teh understatement.


    "I''m sure. Ashoka, the doors, please," I said, my lovely partner already moving to start cutting the large armored doors. "Everyone else, let''s start building cover."


    While Ahsoka was cutting into the doors, a process that would take a minute or five, the rest of us started pulling and dragging chunks of stone, wreckage, and anything else we could move to the door, all to give Corvak and his people more cover to hold the door from. Ahsoka even impressed the hell out of everyone when she floated two halves of the large, industrial security door into place, giving them cover that could take a high-powered blaster cannon with no trouble.


    As we finished getting everything into position, the rush of labor droids, set to follow after us after a specific time had passed, left the ship and ran across the gap, standing in perfect formation, waiting for us to go.


    "Okay! Time to move everyone!" I called out, my team rushing forward with the Rebels following after. "Corvak, good luck, stay in contact."


    He nodded, and I gave him a half-hearted salute before sprinting to catch up to everyone, making my way to the head of the group. I shouted for everyone to pick up the pace as I quickly cast Clairvoyance, my guide spell taking down a left turn, probably the first of many.

 Chapter 170

    Within twenty seconds of stepping into the building, we hit our first wall of enemy combatants. Dozens of stormtroopers and uniformed security poured out several doors as we took a corner, clearly trying to ambush us as we stepped in. They opened fire with little hesitation, dozens of them raking their weapons over us. If we had been anyone else, if we hadn''t been so careful about my team going first, their plan would have likely put us in serious trouble. Instead, several dozen blaster bolts scattered off our armor, my team acting as a human shield wall. I dual-cast chain lightning down the hall, dropping two or three people with each cast.


    My blue crackling magic was not all that returned fire, either, as both my team and several rebels opened fire. Having slammed against an immovable object, the Imperial collapsed in on itself almost immediately, the line faltering as we returned fire en mass.


    Once the last of the ambushing force fell, I turned and tended to the wounded. As good as my crew had gotten at playing living shields, it was inevitable that some laserfire made it past us. Luckily, everyone''s wounds were treatable, and I quickly brought everyone back to their feet.


    As soon as we could, we pushed on, following my Clairvoyance deeper into the facility. Almost immediately, we ran into another security door, this one heavily guarded. A pair of <u>E-Web heavy blasters</u></a> had been built into the security checkpoint, raised up on either side of the large doorway. They must have known we were coming because they opened fire the second Ahsoka and I stepped around the corner. The Jedi had just enough time to reach out and grab me with the Force. She pulled me off my feet and flung me back around the corner, all while deflecting a barrage of powerful blaster bolts, slamming them into the ground and wall, before she could dive back around the corner as well. The Imperials continued to fire for a good five seconds after we were behind cover, turning the far wall into red-hot Swiss cheese.


    "Dammit," I cursed, Tatnia helping me up to my feet as Ahsoka popped back up to hers, finishing a simple roll. "Thanks for the catch, Ahsoka."


    "I felt it just as we stepped around the corner," She explained. "How do we get past them?"


    "I go out again, but this time, I''m ready for them," I explained with a shrug. "Nal, Tatnia, you ready?"


    They both nodded, reaching to their belts to pull out some simple grenades. Our quartermaster, having finally settled into their role and finished stabilizing our general supplies, had finally found a contact for military equipment, meaning we could buy our own stuff, including a limited amount of explosives. Which meant standing back and lobbing a few grenades was now a valid option again.


    I quickly charged up some Bound Armor before dual-casting Superior Ward. After checking to see if my people were set, I led the way in, both of them following directly behind me. My ward caught a trio of bolts before collapsing, followed by my Bound armor, which caught two more before shattering. By the time I was shoved back by a quartet of powerful bolts of red plasma hitting my armor directly, Nal and Tatnia had thrown their weapons. I cast Superior Ward again before finally pulling back around the corner.


    Two explosions rocked the hallway as the grenades went off. A quick check showed the defensive positions had taken heavy damage, both of the guns unmanned and damaged.


    "Let''s move!" I called out before charging down the hall, double-tapping the stormtroopers that guarded it. "The longer we waste in these halls, the less metal we will be able to get out of here!"


    Ahsoka quickly got to work on the doors while I leaned against the wall, watching my armor temperature slowly drop. I was lucky that the bolts had hit in wildly different places, or I would have been tearing half-melted beskar off myself, probably taking a fair amount of me with it in the process.


    Once we were through the second doorway, we made quick progress through the facility, slamming our way through two stormtrooper patrols and another heavy security door before finally finding one of many storage <u>vaults</u></a> in the structure.


    As Ahsoka set to work quickly, cutting the large, secure-looking door open with her lightsabers, I looked around the room. The room surrounding the fault was some sort of transfer station, filled with scanning equipment and other tools. It was probably intended as a data checkpoint to record information about materials passing through it, but it was obviously completely evacuated. I raised a pistol and shot a security camera before turning to everyone and nodding.


    "Once the vault is open, let''s get the carts loaded quickly," I said before gesturing to a trio of carts along the side of the room. "Let''s start with the carts so generously supplied by the Empire. With any luck, we can grab everything from this vault at once and get it back to the ship."


    As we prepared, Ahsoka finished getting through the door. Rather than cut through it completely, though, she spent a minute testing the door before slicing several specific spots, before using the Force to jam it open.


    "Well done. Sit a minute and recuperate while we load up," I said, patting Ahsoka on the shoulder before walking past her, guiding the labor droids and rebels into the vault.


    With the labor droids working at double speed, we managed to empty the vault in record time, loading up an impressive amount of platinum and gold onto the hover carts, both the ones we found and the ones we brought.


    Once the carts were full, the labor droids grabbed the remaining ingots in their hands, and we left the vault behind. Loaded down with our first batch of precious metals, the trip back took a bit longer, but between the lack of patrols and the doors already being open, we made good time. As we pushed back through the facility, I had Ahsoka mark the floor to keep us from following the same path as before. My Clairvoyance might make it nearly impossible for me to get lost, but it was better to be safe than sorry.


    We arrived at the facility entrance to find the area around it and around the Chariot as a warzone. Or rather, a dead warzone, as between the ship and the Mandalorians, nothing was actively fighting back. There were several armed speeders with holes matching the ship''s cannons and at least thirty stormtroopers scattered around the mostly open area. I could only imagine that someone was cursing the fact that the large clearing around the facility, which was great for efficiency, was now a massive killing floor for the Mandalorians and the Chariot.


    "First batch coming through!" I called out as we came out the main entrance, stepping out into the open ship landing station. "Nice work!"


    "Thanks, wouldn''t be able to do it without the cover of the Chariot," Corvak admitted.


    We quickly loaded the metal onto the cargo lift, leaving a handful of the labor droids behind to move it around inside the ship, making more space for our next run. Once everything was offloaded, we turned around and headed back to the facility. As we were leaving, making our way through the primary entrance, Calima messaged through the comms.


    "Just heard back from the Loyal Hound," she said. "They report their mission went well, they spent a bit of time softening up the area before dropping off the droids. They should be back any minute to keep us covered."


    "Roger that, going in for another run!"


    For the next long while, we went in and out of the facility over half a dozen times, raiding several more vaults. Some of them were small enough that we emptied them with room to spare, while others required multiple trips. When that happened, I split my team up, leaving Tatnia, Vaz, and Ahsoka behind to guard the vault and prevent any more security teams from setting up ambushes, while Julus, Nal, Han, Chewie and I would guard the Rebel commandos and labor droids back to the ship.


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    Frequently, we were forced to plow through dozens of Stormtroopers and other security staff, as well as blast our way through security doors and entrenched forces looking to drive us back. None of them succeeded for very long, though we did have a few casualties, including two rebel commandos who died before I could heal them. Han also took a hit across his thigh, but since he was wearing one of our uniforms under his pants, he was unharmed.


    On our third trip, dropping off the last bit of gold and a sizable amount of <u>electrum</u></a>, we stepped out into the open space to find it in significantly poorer quality than it had been before. <u>Large Imperial speeders</u></a> and TIE fighters lay destroyed around the Chariot, as well as a pair of troop transporters that were barely recognizable through the flames that engulfed them. Fallen stormtroopers surrounded the pair, none of them having made it very far, most of them burning with their ride.


    "You guys doing alright?" I asked, stopping by Corvak, casting Respite on anyone who seemed to be lagging behind as they ran to the Chariot. "Looks like things are getting interesting."


    "Just glad your other ship came back in time," The Mandalorian leader said. "With Chariot stuck on the ground, she was an easy target for TIEs. Now the Hound can cover her."


    "Good, glad they got back in time."


    We made four more trips after that, completely emptying a <u>chromium</u></a> vault as well as one filled with Vandanite, Varium, Colat, and Trimantium, before we finally got a message from Calima again, this time with bad news.


    "The party is over, Boss. The defense fleet is on its way back," She explained. "The secondary fleet just jumped in to cover us, but they are calling it. We''ve already got more than our credits worth, so they say it''s time to go."


    "Copy that, finishing our last load and heading back," I responded before turning to everyone and gesturing for them to pick up the pace. "Let''s go people! Last run before we get out of here!"


    "Took longer than I thought," Han commented, a bit surprised. "I was starting to think we would run out of room first!"


    "Don''t think too hard about good luck," Julus responded, tossing the Correllian a large ingot of metal.


    By now, we had all been moving nearly non-stop for a long time, and most of my mana was going into Respite spells, regenerating everyone''s stamina to keep them going. We quickly emptied the last vault, rushing through the halls of the once-secure storage facility. As we were halfway back, the comms clicked on again.


    "You need to pick it up, Boss," Calima said, a hard edge to her voice. "Some of the smaller ships in the defense fleet have broken off and are headed to us. They must have gotten some sort of message through. We don''t have long before leaving is going to get very complicated."


    I cursed and shouted, everyone doing their best to go just a bit faster. Seeing that they were lagging behind, I made the executive decision to leave the labor droids behind since they were stuck at a lower speed. They were all cleaned and wiped in preparation for this mission, but it sucked to watch them fall behind as we ran. Fortunately, without them holding us back, we could push ourselves to go faster, even with the large cargo we were pushing. I was running my mana down to nothing, keeping everyone going, but we finally pulled around the last corner.


    The Mandalorians were there, packed up ready to go. Rather than slow down to talk, they quickly started to run alongside our group, covering us as we charged across the short gap to the Chariot. I got a quick look at the surrounding landing space, shaking my head at the dozens of transport and other bits of wreckage. The Loyal Hound and the Chariot had both taken down everything the planet had thrown at them, but now we needed to go before we got overwhelmed.


    Most of us ran up into the ship through the forward boarding ramp, with the rest of the ground team riding the cargo elevator up into the ship, pushing along their carts of future beskar. The second we were all on board, I gave Calima the command to leave, and we quickly lifted off from the destroyed and wreckage-covered landing area. While everyone shuffled around, looking for a place to sit or hold on, I rushed up to the second deck, heading directly to the bridge. I could hear Han following after me as I ran.


    "How we doing?" I asked, peering over Calima''s seat to watch as she guided the Chariot up and over the facility wall.


    "I can feel the extra weight," she admitted, guiding the ship upwards, the forward viewport nothing but clear skies. "She is¡­ staggering a bit. Won''t be able to make¡­ her dance."


    "And the Brick?"


    "Already on board," She explained. "They landed after the news came in."


    I nodded, turning to look over the chair of the sensors, reading it over their shoulders. It looked like the Loyal Hound was easily keeping pace with us despite its larger size. As I did, Han literally shoved one of the naval droids from the gunner station behind me, tapping and running the station like a pro.


    "Show me more," I asked the clone manning the station. "I want to see the defense fleet and ours as well."


    The soldier nodded, flicking to a more expanded view, showing a much greater range of space. I could see our secondary fleet already in position, high above us, as we climbed through the atmosphere. I could also see the Imperial defense fleet getting closer, both the main chunk and the three ships hunting us. The distraction fleet was chasing after and harassing the main group of Imperials.


    "Send a message to the distraction group, tell them to break off their chase, and come defend us," I ordered. "We aren''t going to make it past that trio of ships without help, and the Imperials have already made up their mind, harassing them isn''t going to do anything!"


    "Aye, sir!" The comms officer said, quickly repeating my message and sending it out immediately.


    It took a second, but someone in charge of the distraction fleet must have seen my wisdom, as they broke off their chase and burned atmo to intercept the smaller group of ships the defense fleet sent out to chase us down. Even as we breached out of the atmosphere, the distraction fleet had destroyed the chasing ships, and the secondary fleet had engaged what remained of the Imperial fleet.


    We didn''t get to watch much of the fight, however, as the second our ships were out of the planet''s gravity well, we sent an all-clear message and jumped to lightspeed, leaving the planet behind.


    A loud cheer, clear as day even with a floor between us, echoed from the first deck below us. They must have felt our jump to lightspeed and realized that it meant we were free and clear. As the cheer started to die down, Calima looked over her shoulder, her hand hovering over a button.


    "You wanna say something, Boss?" She asked.


    "Yeah, put me on," I said, waiting for her to hit the button before speaking up again. "Well done, everyone! The operation was a success. We will be dropping out of hyperspace in fifteen minutes to meet with the rest of the fleet before traveling a bit further to transfer our loot and get you guys back to more comfortable accommodations. In the meantime, pick a nontoxic pile of precious metals and try to make yourself comfortable."


    Another cheer echoed through the ship, and I couldn''t help but laugh, letting out a relieved chuckle as Calima ended the call. I gave her a nod before making my way out of the bridge, dropping down onto the couch with a sigh.

 Chapter 171 - Boxi Interlude

    The bridge of Loyal Hound was filled with a certain amount of tension as it separated from the Talos Chariot and its accompanying X-wing escort. The Loyal Hound was a bigger and better-armed ship, but there was a certain amount of comfort that came with being part of a group. Different types of ships benefited from each other, covering for weaknesses like being slow but well-armed or fast and lightly shielded. IPVs were known for being on the slow side, and they also had vulnerable underbelly, as the majority of their weapons were built into the dorsal side of the vessel.


    Still, they had a mission to complete, and with any luck, they would have a minor escort again soon.


    The small group split as they hit the upper atmosphere of Forisa, the Chariot, and the X-Wings, heading directly for the main target. At the same time, the Hound diverted to drop off its cargo of super battle droids and commando droids, all of which were stoically standing in the back of the ship.


    As the ship continued to descend, the comms officer reported that the Brick had, in fact, completed its mission and that it was on target to join them as an escort. The tension began to unwind slightly, only to click up and over what it had been when, in almost the same breath, he reported that the Chariot had spotted a flight of twenty-five incoming TIE fighters.


    The captain of the Hound cursed, ordering his men to prepare to divert energy from the shields and weapons to the thrusters, so that they could return to the Chariot as quickly as possible. While the Chariot was a capable ship, and they were being escorted by six X-wings, twenty-five TIE fighters was too much for them to handle.


    Just as the Brick pulled into formation with the much larger ship, sensors confirmed that the small fleet of TIE fighters had split up, ten of them heading out to engage the Hound while the remaining fifteen targeted the Chariot.


    With the odds now significantly more even and no order to reconvene for aid, the captain of the Hound ordered the crew to continue on, letting the TIE fighter almost completely catch up before ordering a full stop.


    The Hound slowed down so quickly that the inertial compensators struggled to maintain control of the ship''s occupants, with several people and droids getting pulled from their chairs and onto the ground. Still, the move had worked, as many of the Imperial starfighters entered the range of the Hound''s weapons without having time to think or divert around.


    The opening barrage of the larger ships'' weapons obliterated four of the TIE fighters before they could take evasive action. Two of those starfighters dove under the IPV, which would ordinarily be a large weak point in terms of weapon emplacements. Unfortunately for them, that was exactly where the Brick was waiting, its turret and forward-facing weapons obliterating both TIEs in seconds.


    The remaining TIEs split off from each other, encircling the IPV. As they realized all of their backup was destroyed, both of them attempted to pull away and escape, potentially to regroup. The Brick chased after one, destroying it after a few seconds as the Rebel manning the turret took his time to aim while the IPV rotated on its long axis, realigning most of its weapons on the target. It barely survived the first salvo, its wing damaged and smoking before another shot obliterated it completely.


    Immediately, the ship re-oriented towards its target and engaged its thrusters, burning atmo to arrive at its destination as soon as it could.


    The destination was a large Imperial-run dockyard specifically built to repair and tend to the planet''s defensive fleet. Currently,<u> two IPVs</u></a> were grounded, as well as a much larger<u> Arquitens-class light cruiser</u></a>. Surrounding the dock were several turbolaser turrets, security checkpoints, and a stormtrooper garrison.


    Unfortunately for them, they were not prepared to be besieged by a larger ship, and with no shields to protect them, the buildings and weapon emplacements were quickly obliterated by the Loyal Hounds turbolaser fire. The ship barely dropped below seventy-five percent shields before they had utterly destroyed the dockyard''s defenses. Once the target was softened and made defenseless by the ship, it began to descend, preparing to disgorge its payload.


    "Someone tell the droids that this is their stop!" The captain shouted, the order making its way to the waiting droids.


    Immediately they began disembarking, dropping the six or seven feet that remained between the bottom of the boarding ramp and the ground. The commando droids, led from the front by Boxi, simply rolled and absorbed the impact, efficiently handling the gap. The battle droids, however, often stumbled and had to be dragged out of the way to let their compatriots down. In total, it took a full minute and thirty seconds for the small droid force to leave the ship. Once they were clear, the Loyal Hound and Brick immediately lifted off and left the droid forces behind.


    "BX-18, 19, and 20 take command of ten B2s and two slicer droids and lead an assault on IPV one," Boxi commanded, gesturing to the nearest patrol craft, nearly identical to the ship they had just lept from. "Prioritize slicer droids and commando survival to retain rendezvous coordinates and astronavigation information."


    "Roger Roger," BX-18 confirmed, nodding and raising its weapon, both commandos falling in on either side of them, ten B2s following as they began traversing the smokey, wreck-filled dockyard.


    Without needing to give a command, the rest of the commando and B2 droids fell in line behind Boxi, immediately spreading out. As they quickly moved toward the larger, three-hundred-meter-long ship, they encountered several injured or separated Imperial officers, engineers, and security. None of them lived long after the encounter, though there was a brief interrogation for the security and the officer that revealed the potential forces on board the Arquitens.


    The robotic forces pushed to the ship, quickly taking two boarding ramps that ran along the keel line of the starship. Realizing the boarding ramps were by far the most likely ambush point, Boxi sent his B2 battle droids up the ramps, facing the ambush head-on. Meanwhile, the remaining seventeen commando droids ran around to the back end of the ship and used a pile of still partially burning wreckage to jump up to the large ship. Using a heavy laser cannon port to climb up along the side of the ship''s exterior, they then hoisted the slicer droids with them using wire filament and mag clamps. Eventually, they arrived at an exterior hatch, an emergency exit designed for after the ship had crashed or was set to explode.


    With a quick handful of slashes to the hinges and structural support of the hatch, Boxi placed several explosive charges, forming them into the newly carved cracks and seams of the hatch. Once placed and set, the droids quickly put some distance between them and the potent explosives.


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    The following explosion barely vibrated the thick hell under their metal feet, even as the shockwave rocked them. It did, however, do its job, blasting the hatch open and exposing the interior of the ship. In groups of three, the commando droids dropped into the ship, clearing the outer hall they had found themselves in.


    The interior of the ship was dark, dusty, and empty, with emergency light casting a very dull light along the walls. Quickly, they formed up, pushing through the hall and following Boxi''s internal map. It wasn''t perfect, especially because this ship had been upgraded and revitalized so many times during its service to the Republic and, after that, in the Empire. Luckily, with the combination of known information and what they had gotten from the few people they interrogated, they were able to make their way around pretty well.


    They pushed through the ship, first heading to the crew area. There, they quickly eliminated a handful of security as they desperately tried to hide and fortify the lounge area. Unfortunately for them, there were multiple entrances to that lounge, meaning that Boxi ordered several of his droids to run around and attack from a different angle. The now flanked Imperials were wiped out in very short order after that.


    Determined to take every advantage they could in clearing the vessel, Boxi led his team further into the warship, this time ambushing the ambushers, attacking the people blocking the onboarding ramps from behind, wiping them out quickly as they attempted to fight off the B2s. The larger droids had taken significant casualties but had served their purpose as a distraction. Now, as they continued to clear the large ship, they acted as shield walls and cannon fodder.


    When the largest pockets of resistance were cleared, Boxi split up the remaining droids, four B2s and fourteen BXs. The first group, all four B2, and four BXs, would continue to clear, room by room, while the larger team moved to attack the bridge, claiming it for their own and allowing them to use the ship''s sensors to find the remaining stowaways.


    Boxi led the team to the bridge, prying open the turbolift shaft since the system had been physically disabled. They crawled up the interior of the shaft, leaving the slicer droids at the base where it was safe. Once they reached the bridge floor, they pried the turbolift door open, tossing a pair of stun grenades through the hole as blaster fire rushed through. Even as the explosive stunning device went off, the droids were diving into the bridge through the opening in the door. Some of the droids found cover while others sacrificed themselves to take down as many of the stormtroopers and other imperials that had been hiding there as they could.


    The Imperials, stunned by the aggressiveness, were not prepared as the second wave dove from their cover and flanked them, finishing off any stragglers. Silence ran over the bridge, and for a long moment, the droids seemed to enjoy the quiet.


    Then it was over, as Boxi made sure that the Imperials were, in fact, dead, double-tapping any that weren''t. While he did that, the remaining five BX units carefully brought the slicer droids up to the bridge, the astromechs rushing to connect to the ship''s mainframe. It didn''t take long for them to restore minimum power and begin scanning the ship, allowing the second group to quickly eliminate any remaining forces.


    In total, fifty-three imperials had been on board, and by the time twenty minutes had passed, all of them had been eliminated.


    The slicer droids also established short-range communication with the IPV that the secondary group had attacked. Unsurprisingly, since that ship was significantly smaller, that group had succeeded as well, their droids in the process of clearing out any hidden programming and cutting through lockdown restrictions.


    The droids on board the IPV reported thirty percent casualties due to an unexpected explosion as they attempted to board. The cargo bay was damaged, but the ship was nearly perfectly functional.


    As the two slicer droids slowly cracked through the Imperial mainframe on board the Arquintens, they unlocked system by system, focusing first on the power. Not long after that, they cracked the shields, the captured IPV getting theirs online not long after that. As they were working their way through the weapons systems, one of the damaged but functional BX commandos pointed out the forward viewport.


    "Incoming enemy starfighters!"


    Boxi followed the damaged bot''s gesture, spotting the incoming starfighter immediately. Unfortunately, with no weapons online, there was nothing he could do as they began to circle the dockyard.


    "Receiving Broad spectrum comms message," one of the slicer droids whistled and bleeped out. "Response?"


    "Focus on cracking the weapons," Boxi ordered.


    Within moments of the message going out, the Imperial''s patience wore through, and they began bombarding the ships with emerald green laser fire. The shield took the blasts easily, but they were officially on a timer, one marked by percentage points on their shields.


    Point by point, the shields fell lower and lower, the IPVs falling much quicker than the Arquitens. Boxi had just about given up on getting both ships off the planet when the slicer droids finally whistled out that the ship''s weapons were unlocked and ready to use.


    Immediately, Boxi ran and jumped over the weapons console, landing in the seat and tapping the screen. The weapons, specifically the anti-starfighter weapons, spun and locked on, autofiring at full speed, unloading every joule they had.


    Caught off guard by the sudden weapons fire, the TIE fighters bombarding the ships exploded immediately, followed by another three that were hanging back. Before they could even formulate a plan, however, the weapon systems of the boarded IPV activated, firing its own barrage and destroying a few more. Between the weapons systems of both ships, the TIE fighters didn''t stand much of a chance and were soon destroyed. When the skies were clear, Boxi painted a new target, the third IPV. With no shields, the powerful turbolares mounted to the Arquinten''s hull made quick work of the smaller ship, which detonated with a large explosion, rocking the dockyard and raining debris on both of the captured ships'' shields.


    Within ten minutes of fighting off the TIE fighters, the warning came through from the Talos Chariot that the mission was coming to an end and that the defense fleet was on its way back. The pair of ships waited patiently for the slicer droids to finally give them full control of the ship, listening to the messages as their Boss escaped with the help of the fleet. Finally, when the slicers were finished, Boxi gave the order to leave, the two ships pulling up off the planet''s surface and heading for space. With the defense fleet engaging the secondary Rebel fleet, the two ships quickly slipped out of the planet''s gravity well, making the jump to lightspeed right before the secondary fleet did the same.

 Chapter 172

    The jump to our rendezvous point, a random spot in deep space, lasted exactly as long as planned. When we dropped, we dropped out as a group, with the Loyal Hound and our X-Wing escort appearing around us. We did a quick external scan of the X-wings to make sure their internal instruments weren''t missing any damage, before we settled into to wait.


    About a minute after we finished our scans, the distraction fleet arrived, dropping out a reasonable distance away from us to our starboard side. We talked back and forth for a moment, reporting that we lost a singular X-wing during our mission, and they reported losing a gunship with eight souls on board. We share a moment of silence for the lost Rebels before preparing for the next arrivals to wait for the next arrival.


    We only had to wait a few minutes before they showed up.


    A pair of ships dropped out of hyperspace on the opposite side of us than the distraction fleet, our port side. For a moment, our allies panicked, sending out warnings and beginning to position themselves to fight off the newcomers. Then, the two ships contacted us.


    "Boxi reporting in, sir," The familiar BX voice modulator is coming through. "Our mission was a success."


    "We hear you, Boxi!" I shouted through the Comms, leaning over the comms officer to do so. "Welcome back, and congrats! Standby for further orders!"


    "They fucking did it," Tatnia said, standing beside me on the bridge of the Chariot. "How the fuck did they manage to get two of them?"


    "I mean¡­ they had enough units," I pointed out, still shaking my head. "Though¡­.I didn''t expect them to secure two of them, either. Remind me to get Boxi some upgrades¡­ maybe some beskar plating."


    "Yeah, he''s earned it."


    Boxi and his crew of slicer droids and BX units continued to send data to us about the ship, revealing that, other than some damage to the hatch, the ships were more or less in perfect condition. Internal data insisted the Arquiten had been upgraded and updated to modern Imperial specifications and was only moderately inferior to more modern versions of its name. The IPV was just as well kept, and both of them had full fuel tanks.


    "This is incredible," Tatnia said, still in shock. "This just brought the Skyforged up to a whole new level. We have a fleet of seven ships, and one of them is a proper capital ship!"


    "It''s certainly going to be a big step," I agreed. "Though it might be a while before we field it. I have some ideas for a combat group that I want to build around it, plus we need to staff it."


    "What''s your idea?"


    "... Let me flesh it out some more," I said vaguely, prompting Tatnia to roll her eyes. "It''s not going to be a quick thing, and it''s going to cost a good chunk of credits to get done, so I''m in no rush to start."


    Before she could respond, the secondary fleet jumped in, dropping "above" us. We could clearly see one of their larger ships had taken some light damage, but by and large, they looked okay and still had all the ships they started the mission with. After everyone had settled down, our X-wing escort left us behind to land in the hangars of one of the larger secondary fleet ships. Not long after that, we shared jump data before jumping to our next destination, the same lifeless, atmospherically dangerous planet as before.


    The four-hour jump between our deep space rendezvous and the transfer planet went by a lot quicker than I expected, mostly because I had to spend it resting with Ahsoka. I felt a bit bad sitting on a comfortable couch while everyone was slumming it in the first deck, but not enough to get up and give up my seat. When we arrived, everyone put on their masks and ran to their ships, including Han and Chewie. The Mandalorians headed to the Loyal Hound, happy to have more room for themselves. Once everyone was safe and secluded away from the poisonous air, our remaining labor droids spent an hour slowly transferring forty percent of the metals to another ship that landed on the planet at once.


    It took so long because it wasn''t as easy as just throwing four ingots for every six we got. Each metal had its own transmutation rate, meaning that we had to evenly divide out the metals as well.


    When we were finally done, we lifted off the planet once again, and the fleet set a course for Omega Station. Our newly acquired ships, however, did not, with Boxi and his crew setting course for a spot in deep space not too far from our home. The first step of preparing the ships to become part of our fleet was making sure they didn''t have anything hiding in them, in particular trackers and malicious code.


    When we finally arrived home, it was to the news that Captain Irsee and our secondary group had been nearly as successful as we had been. They were still en route, having cornered and convinced the pirates to surrender to them.


    Once we had touched down and met with everyone, my first task was fulfilling the secondary part of my side of the bargain. The Rebellion had helped us, and now it was time for me to help them. For nearly four days, I more or less lived in the cargo ship into which we had loaded the valuable metal. It had landed in one of the Rebel-controlled hangars on the station, and it''s where I would go convert their share of metal into beskar. When I was done a good amount, the Rebellion workers would load it up, and it would get shipped off to who knows where, and I would continue converting. I also converted a good amount of our metal as well, so that Pola could start working on our armor backlog.


    Pola''s task was made much more daunting when Corvack and the clan armorer came to visit me on the first day back. He found me chatting with Ahsoka as we sat on a pile of gold, converting ingots into beskar and throwing them into a nearby pile.


    "Corvack, good to see you. How are the civilians?" I asked, barely able to stop myself from smirking as the armorer stared at the beskar pile with wide eyes. "Pick a seat and sit. I''ve heard good things about the chromium."


    The Mandalorian leader chuckled but did end up sitting on a nearby pile of chromium. The armor chose electrum.


    "Before we get into whatever it is you wanted to talk about, we need to discuss your payment," I pointed out. "I talked it over with Tatnia, and we agreed you guys earned a twenty thousand credit bonus. Our mission went way better than we could have imagined. The amount of materials stored in the facility was clearly underreported by the Imperials.


    "I¡­ thank you," He responded. "I''m sure my people will appreciate the extra pay."


    "You guys earned it," I assured him, messaging Tatnia to transfer the extra funds. "Now, what''s up?"


    "We have taken a vote, and we are in agreement," He stated confidently. "Clan Syr would like to join the Skyforged Vanguard."


    "And we will welcome you with open arms. But are you sure?" I asked. "You would leave the title of Mandalorians as your past, and step forward as Skyforged?"


    "We will," he agreed with a nod. "We ask that we still be allowed the minor strapping of our past, like the foundling traditions, as well as our coming-of-age hunts."


    "As long as these remain personal choices and are not forced on anyone," I responded. "and as long as they follow the lines of common decency."


    "We also ask permission to build homes on Vercopa''Yaim, or at least on Nirn, so that our people can experience the living world as we have."


    "Of course, you are welcome to. Nirn and Vercopa''Yaim are home of the Skyforged, so it is now your home as well," I assured him with a smile. "I look forward to seeing your people flourish there."


    "Thank you," He said with a simple nod. "We would also like permission to reach out to a few other like-minded clans. The location of Nirn and Omega Base are clearly important secrets, but I would¡­ I would be doing our ancestors a disservice if I didn''t present this opportunity to others."


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    For a long moment, I studied his face, before looking over Ahsoka. So far, she had remained silent, happily not being in charge of the situation. She offered a silent shrug, and I had to resist the urge to push her off my stack of gold to a slightly lower stack beside it.


    "I would welcome like-minded clans like your own," I said carefully, picking up another ingot of gold. "You can coordinate this through Tatnia, she will bring anything important to my attention. However, there is something I need to make very clear."


    I said, now looking at Corvak with a very serious expression. He seemed to notice the shift as he sat up straight, like he was at attention.


    "I do not wish to run Nirn as a dictator, or at all, really," I explained. "But I will not allow it to be stolen or turned by infighting, political or otherwise. If I feel like Mandalorians are forming some sort of power block, working to grasp power so they may direct our future by their whims, I will rectify the situation. We will not become a new Mandalore."


    "Understood¡­ Boss," He responded, a smirk working his way onto his face. "Mandalore is dead. We will not make the same mistakes again."


    I stood and made my way to him, the armored warrior standing to meet me halfway. We clapped hands and shook, our eyes locking together. I nodded after a moment, and we both went back to our seats.


    For a while, we sat there, ironing out specific details while I slowly converted gold and electrum into beskar. The very first thing we discussed was the Mandalorian armor and what would happen to it. I explained that part of being Skyforged was wearing our armor. Anyone who saw combat received a beskar uniform, and everyone who saw ground combat received a uniform and a full set of armor.


    That was fine for a few of the warrior, but apparently, most of them wanted their Mandalorian armor worked into their new set but didn''t want to lose control over their armor in the process. The armorer was the one to suggest simply using Mandalorian beskar to make as much of the new armor as possible and marking the rest as "fake" beskar. The fake would belong to the Skyforged, and the Mandalorian would belong to the individual.


    The armorer also agreed to work alongside Pola as our armor specialist. He admitted that he knew some alloys that would allow us to use even less beskar in our armors that would let us spread our latest bounty even further than I had hoped without sacrificing durability. It would go a long way to keeping us going despite our heavy usage.


    The day after my meeting with Corvak, most of the higher-ups of the Skyforged met up in the still precious metal-filled ship hold. Once again, we sat on the piles of metal, as there wasn''t much room otherwise, making ourselves as comfortable as possible. The first to speak at the meeting was Tatnia, who reported on our mission. Then Captain Irsee did the same. I was happy to hear that their mission went remarkably smoothly once the pirates arrived on the planet. As predicted, showing up with overwhelming force got them to surrender almost immediately. After the Captain gave his report, the group discussed what we should do with the ships from the Captain''s mission.


    "Personally, I''m thinking we sell everything," I suggested with a shrug. "I have a plan, which I will share shortly, and it''s going to need some credits to make it happen. Maybe we could give the freighter to the supply fleet if they need it, but other than that, we should sell."


    "If we hadn''t just secured more large ships, I would have advised to keep the gunship," Captain Irsee admitted. "But as it is, we have enough seats to fill."


    "What exactly is this idea of yours?" Tatnia asked, giving me a hard look. "You''ve mentioned it like three times already."


    "Well, the Arquitens is a decent-sized ship with a good mix of heavy and light firepower," I explained. "But, by itself, it could be easily overwhelmed."


    "Well, of course. I hope you weren''t assuming we would send it into battle on its own?" Captain Irsee stated.


    "Of course not. It should have some dedicated escorts, a group that would let it go out on its own," I pointed out. "I''m suggesting we put out some feelers for C-Roc Gozanti-Class ships, like the Chariot. We then take them, get them up to spec, modify them in the same way that the Chariot is modded, so we can utilize them properly as pocket carriers and escorts."


    "... having a starfighter screen for a ship like an Arquitens would be useful," Captain Irsee admitted. "But why not just look for another carrier?"


    "Because C-Rocs can be pretty heavily modified," I pointed out. "Even more than what we did the Chariot. If we bought, say, three of them, we could turn each of them into potent gunships. Then, they could cover the Arquiten from starfighters, bombers, and cruisers. Imagine three Talos Chariots, a squadron of small, nimble ships, and an Arquiten working together to take down ships and keep each other covered. A potent third group to send out on mission and bounties that could really punch above their weight class."


    "How would we pay for this?" Tatnia asked. "We are sitting pretty heavily on the line as it is."


    "Having three teams earning money would help alleviate some of that pressure," I pointed out. "Plus, more than half the crew of C-Roc can be droids, assuming we get the dumbed-down model. In total, we would need to hire twelve people to fly three of them."


    "What about the pilots for the starfighters?"


    "Well, we can cram two smaller starfighters on each side of a finished C-Roc, so thats a full squadron if we get our hands on three of them. That''s only twenty-four people in total."


    "That still won''t cover anything," Tatnia pointed out. "We would likely need to increase our repair crew size to keep up with them, not to mention the Arquiten and new IPV."


    "I know. That''s why I suggest we sell the new IPV," I suggested, holding up my hand to ward off rebuttals. "It would be unfortunate, but we could get upwards of three million credits from the Rebellion for it. Each C-Roc is worth a hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand credits. Assuming the upgrade will cost another hundred thousand each, then that is three hundred thousand per, just under a million. The other two million could be used to find the starfighter complement, as well as pilots and crew. The rest can be used to hire new staff ."


    "It would be a big investment," Ahsoka pointed out. "Especially since we would be purchasing every single component, which is not something we usually do. We would need to back it up with some large earning jobs almost immediately afterward."


    "The Arquiten needs a complement, something lighter that can provide a fighter screen. A pair or trio of C-Rocs will provide all that and more," I repeated. "I want people to at least consider it and spend some time thinking of alternate options. Finder, I want you to put some feelers out and start looking at just how difficult it would be to get our hand on those ships. I also need starfighter options since the interior of the hangars is tight."


    I looked around, my crew and people nodding in understanding. With any luck, they would either agree with me the next time I brought up the idea or would have a better one, which, as far as I was concerned, was a win-win.


    "Alright, good. Now, let''s move on. With Clan Syr officially joining, we need to kickstart the development of Nirn and Vercopa..."

 Chapyter 173

    By the end of my four-day transmutation extravaganza, I was feeling understandably antsy. I had enjoyed not needing to do much for the first two days, during which I had been brought up to date on a lot of what was going on around Omega Station and our fleet. Our supply lines were doing well, and as long as we continued to take on worthwhile bounties on pirates, our finances were relatively stable as well.


    We were a bit dependent on our sales to the Rebellion for my taste, so I instructed our quartermaster to start looking for groups willing to purchase ships, resources, and starfighters that weren''t pirates, gangs, or the Hutts. According to him, there were plenty of planets in the Mid and Outer Rim looking to expand their defense fleets. If it came down to it, we would likely be able to sell most of what we took from our pirate targets to them, though if we found anything larger than a small gunship, we would likely have to sell that to the Rebellion.


    It was about finding a balance between people who didn''t care about the Empire''s laws on civilian-owned weapons and people who could actually afford the weapons and ships we were acquiring. Warships, starfighters, and decent freighters could get expensive, and not everyone had the deep pockets and funding that the Rebellion did.


    Thankfully, once I was done converting all of the Rebellion''s precious metal cut into beskar, as well as a good chunk of our own, I didn''t have to wait long to get off the station and stretch my proverbial legs. With our beskar reserves once again filled and with Pola and the Armorer already replacing our old armor platings with the Armorers'' better, lighter, and less beskar-intense versions, it was finally time to consider the next step in the Skyforged Vanguard''s power levels. It was time to finally get everyone who needed them outfitted with enchanted gear.


    So far, everyone who fought directly already had three enchanted objects, all done to my highest ability. Our pilots and gunners, including our starfighter pilots, all had three dexterity buffs in the form of two rings and an amulet. My ground team, as well as the clone ground team, all had three as well, though their loudout was more bespoke. People who were more agile, like Ahsoka, tended to focus on dexterity buffs, while people who focused on strength, rather obviously, focused on strength enhancements. Everyone had at least one stamina buff, and in the case of the clones, the whole team went with one strength and dexterity each.


    My first step would be getting rings and amulets to Corvak and his team, as they had yet to get any enchanted equipment. Once they were all set, the next step was enchanting everyone''s armor. Rather than mix and match as everyone pleased, I decided that it was a better idea to have at least part of the armor standardized so that I could assume a certain level of performance from my people.


    The armor started with Stamina enhancements on the boots. Everyone already had at least one stamina-enhancing item, usually a ring, but a ground force functioned on its ability to move and keep moving, so doubling down on that could only be a good thing. Next was a strength buff on the legs, chosen to make carrying the armor easier. And finally, I decided to go with the wearer''s choice for the chest. This would let people push further into their own talents and abilities.


    Hopefully, eventually, I would be good enough to apply a second enchantment to the chest plate. When or if that happened, I would be able to upgrade people considerably.


    Unfortunately, while I already had this grand idea in mind, I lacked a critical resource, namely filled soul gems. I had roughly a hundred and twenty Kyber pieces left, but that wasn''t nearly enough to finish the rather large task I had set for myself. On top of there not being enough, I would also need to fill each of them.


    Thankfully, I had a solution to each of these problems.


    The first solution involved a trip to Dantooine in the Starcaller, with Ahsoka, Nal, Julus, as well as a bunch of labor droids. It was a two-and-a-half day-long trip, during which I spent most of my time making my remaining Kyber into soul gems.


    When we finally arrived, we flew above the planet, circling around it while I cast Clairvoyance in its compass form. Rather than focusing on the Crystal Caves, I concentrated instead on Dantooine Kyber crystals themselves. The idea was that Dantooine had already proven to not only have a deep enough connection in the Force but to also contain the environment where it was geologically viable for Kyber crystals to grow. By any logical, scientific mind, that must mean that other pockets of crystals must exist on or in the planet, we just had to find them. Of course, the Force didn''t always follow logic, but it was still worth a shot.


    Now, my Clairvoyance could only detect pockets that were exposed enough for a person to get to, and these crystal pockets were set pretty deep, according to how deep we had to go to get to the Crystal Caves. But, with a whole planet search and a little luck¡­


    "I''m getting four positive connections," I said with a smirk. "If one of them is the original Cave, then that''s three chances. Let''s start with the most distant from population hotspots first and then work our way down until we find what we need."


    Ahsoka, who was flying the Starcaller, followed my directions down to the planet, around a rocky, hilly area that was relatively empty of settlers. Dantooine''s main export was grain, as its massive plains were fantastically fertile and perfect for growing mass quantities of the product. That meant that, by and large, its more rocky, mountainous areas were more or less left alone. We flew around for a bit, running scans and following my tracker until, eventually, we found the entrance to a cave. Ahsoka expertly landed the Starcaller in the low valley that my arrow pointed to, and after a few minutes of walking, we found the entrance.


    We explored the cave for an hour before finally finding the crystal chamber. It was impressive by most standards but was ultimately not nearly as magnificent as the original Crystal Cave. After confirming with Ahsoka that the Force did not have any sense of foreboding or negativity from what we were about to do, we set the labor droids to work. Despite basically getting the all-clear from the Force, Ahsoka did not like watching the droids as they disassembled the crystal clusters.


    "There are two others like this on the planet, not to mention who knows how many underground," I assured Ahsoka when the labor droids started packing the crystals into crates. "And I''ve already promised you to show you some other places you can find Kyber."


    "How many do you know of?" She asked, turning to focus on me, pointedly ignoring the labor droids as they snapped chunks of crystal free. "You never really gave me a number."


    "I know of a handful. Some of the locations are places you would need to look for a while, others that should have more, and in greater concentrations," I admitted. "That said, I really want to start deeply scanning Nirn for mineral deposits. I''m not keen to tear it to pieces trying to find it, but I would not be surprised if there were Kyber crystals somewhere on the planet. It has a strong presence in the Force, but that''s not nearly rare enough to explain the temple."


    "Should probably scan under the island. Islands usually have histories of being geologically active," Julus pointed out. "Plus, if it''s why they settled on the planet, what better place to settle than right on top of it?"


    Both Ahsoka and I looked over at Julus, who was peering into a deep orange crystal, watching it refract the light that passed through it. When he noticed we were staring at him, he stopped.


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    "What?"


    "Just wondering how you thought of that first," I responded, the younger man throwing the orange crystal at me, Ahsoka catching it in with the Force before it could get close. "It''s a good idea, we should get the Arrow to do some laps around it to scan under it, see if it can''t pick up any hidden elevator shafts or something"


    It didn''t take too long for the labor droids to finish breaking up the crystals, filling several large crates in the process. With no concerns about depriving future Jedi, we cleared the cave to the rocks, not leaving a single shard of Kyber behind. Each crate contained hundreds of crystals, meaning I now had plenty to start my next enchanting adventure.


    With the first half of the soul gem issue solved, it was time to fill them up. Rather than traveling around the galaxy, looking for settlements that were struggling with animal issues or the like, I decided it wasn''t worth the hassle. Yes, we made a few thousand credits, but these days, our time was worth more than that, so the quicker we could get back to work, the better. We returned to Omega station, dropping off Julus and Ahsoka, the latter of which wanted to spend some time with Felia, and pickled up Vaz. Then, we headed to a small, unnamed Outer Rim world that Nal found for me after a little research.


    The world, which was designated by a long string of numbers, had gone through some sort of ecological disaster long before any modern surveyor located it. The disaster had resulted in most of its natural biome being completely wiped out. While most of its living creatures died, one species came out on top, a decent-sized mammalian creature that looked like a cross between a squirrel and a bear.


    The creature just happened to have a strong enough biology to withstand the harsh new conditions and could eat basically anything, meaning it had no issues surviving whatever little life remained. The planet was basically a massive farm for them, with the majority of them fighting and eating each other to survive.


    I could land, kill them by the hundreds and not worry about damaging an ecology since the planet was already screwed beyond all recognition anyway. On top of that, since the population was so dense, as long as we kept moving, all we would be doing was giving the renaming animals a free meal. It wasn''t exactly pretty, but I put the lives of my teams far above the lives of several hundred wild animals.


    We spent four days on the planet, hunting during the day cycle and flying up into orbit during the night since, according to our scans, the air became increasingly more toxic during that time. It was so bad that the masks we were wearing during the day would not have been able to handle the level of toxicity.


    We would land, Vaz and I would go hunting, and after killing about twenty animals in an hour, we would return to the Starcaller, lift off, and land somewhere else, rinsing and repeating for three days, filling up a ludicrous amount of soul gems in the process. When we were done, we flew off into the void, heading towards Omega Station.


    Rather than heading there directly, however, we stopped by our newly acquired ships. Miru had completed her inspection and declared everything cleaned out and safe for our use, so I wanted to see the interior and travel back on that.


    We arrived at the deep space waiting location after a few days of hyperspace travel, a welcome break from the constant hunting and searching of the previous three days. We dropped out of lightspeed not too far from our newest acquisitions, both ships floating silently in the void. As we approached, we were hailed by the Arquiten, who we sidled on next to and connected to with a small docking clamp.


    While the new model of the Arquiten might have a hangar, the older model did not, something they did not or could not change during the ship''s several updates.


    As we finally stepped onto our new ship, we were greeted by Miru and Boxi, the latter of which saluted while Miru hugged me tightly. I hugged her back tightly before reaching out to shake Boxi''s hand.


    "Well done on another successful mission, Boxi," I said, the droid reaching out to take my hand. "You and the survivors of this mission have more than earned a proper reward. Once we return to Omega Station, I am going to have all of you plated in beskar. Feel free to request any other upgrades as well. As long as they are reasonable, we will make them happen."


    "We are simply performing our programmed tasks, Sir," He responded. "I believe spending such resources on us reduces our intended use as disposable troops."


    "That''s where the second part of your reward comes in," I assured him. "You and the remaining survivors will be reformed into a proper droid strike team. You are no longer disposable assets but the fourth ground team of the Skyforged Vanguard. Welcome to the family."


    The droid seemed to freeze as I informed it of its change in status, almost like it was stunned. Miru stepped back and watched as well, holding back a laugh as the droid finally snapped back to an even more rigid salute.


    "Thank you for this honor, Boss," he said, calling me boss for the first time since he had been turned on. "We won''t let you down."


    "You certainly haven''t yet," I said with a smile.


    "I have some ideas for upgrades that you and your team might like," Miru added. "Stop by my shop sometime after we get home, and we can talk about them."


    Boxi nodded before Miru started giving us the basic tour of the ship, showing off several things she found interesting. The ship was definitely well made and certainly would increase our overall power significantly. Unfortunately, it was also easy to see that this ship was on the older side. As always, the Empire Navy kept things as up-to-date as they could, but there were only so many layers of makeup you could put on this pig.


    Miru explained that while it would lose a straight slugging match with its more stock modern compatriots, it still had plenty of power to give.


    "It''s a fine ship," I agreed as we stepped onto the bridge, looking out of the bow of the ship as the IPV cast a subtle shadow over it. "And you''re sure it''s completely clean?"


    "I''m as sure as I can get," Miru responded, peeking up over the consoles to look out the forward viewports. "We went over it several times and had all our slicer droids running through its programming. Not to mention, we''ve been scanning it thoroughly for days now. It''s possible there is something tucked away we can''t scan for, but with a lack of proper power output, the device may as well be someone tapping on the viewport, trying to get a passing ship''s attention."


    I chuckled at her metaphor, nodding in understanding.


    "Well done, then we can make the jump to Omegas Station," I said, still looking out of the forward viewport. "Tatnia and Nal will be going on another hiring mission soon, both for this and the ships we will be buying, assuming someone hasn''t come up with a better idea for this ship''s escorts. What about the IPV?"


    "The IPV is clean as well and is in just about as good condition, save that damage to its cargo bay, which looks minimal," Miru responded. "They are both ready to move whenever you are ready."


    "Good. Let''s get them ready to jump, then reach out to the station," I said with a smile. "No reason to scare anyone by jumping in unannounced."


    Miru laughed and nodded, heading off to do as I said. I looked around for a minute before smirking, making my way to and sitting down in the captain''s chair. It was about ten minutes before we finally jumped home.

 Chapter 174

    With the suitable materials found, harvested, refined, and charged, and with a product worth working on, I was finally ready to push our combat personnel to the next level. There were two groups I needed to work on in general: the Navy and the Army, though the Skyforged differentiated that into crewmen and ground Teams. All combat active crewmen, namely pilots and gunners, would need a set of enchanted <u>uniforms</u></a>. The uniform consisted of reinforced combat boots, beskar woven pants, and beskar woven shirts in the same design as before, including our <u>symbol</u></a> on each shoulder.


    The uniforms for the Crewman would be enchanted with two dexterity bonuses and a single stamina buff. While wearing their uniforms, our crewmen were faster and had better reflexes than any other biological being in the entire galaxy. It was almost to the point that they could be the precognition of a Jedi through pure speed. It was honestly impressive to see them running around the hallways of their ships, testing out their enhancements. It also made their flying and accuracy shockingly better, as was the entire point of the process. Even our new pilots were absolutely devastating the Rebel groups we managed to trick into training with us. Slowly but surely, our crewmen developed a reputation similar to that of our ground teams.


    While the active combat crewman got the best of the best, I handed out some of the lesser enchanted items I had made to the rest of the crew. These were hand-me-downs and experiments from the last few months of enchanting and replacing older stuff with newer equipment. It was a bit more random and noticeably less significant, but there wasn''t a single baseline person in all of my crewmen.


    The process of enhancement was following behind the process of replacing old gear with new, since the Armorer''s advice had reduced the amount of beskar needed to make a uniform even more, all without reducing their effectiveness. We could collect three old uniform sets and use the melted down and refined beskar from them to make five, some of which I would enchant.


    As for the armor, a similar process was going on as our old equipment was being collected, the plating stripped off, melted down and purified. The resulting beskar was re-alloyed into a slightly lighter, more efficient mixture shared by the Armorer. It was still pretty beskar intensive, but for every four suits of armor we converted, we could make another new one from scratch.


    This process, plus the process of refitting our new members, was scheduled to take place over a week and a half, thanks to the Armorer''s help, as well as his own workers joining the armor team. This, of course, dwarfed my ability to enchant things to a hilarious degree. Still, I was determined to get everyone outfitted properly so that, going forward, any time we added new ships or groups to our team, I would only need to worry about upgrading their equipment rather than slowly upgrading everything together.


    While I was dedicated to my new, massive, daunting, mind-melting project, the Skyforged Vanguard did not lie dormant. Our secondary team went out on another pirate mission, departing not long after I left for my material-gathering mission. They returned within a week, having successfully completed a bounty and managing to retrieve some basic supplies. They were not able to force a surrender, so the paycheck was not massive, but they definitely covered expenses and made a good chunk off of selling some of the supplies.


    It was around the time they came back that we had another meeting to discuss the fate of our currently empty ships, namely the Arquiten, the gunship from the secondary team''s last job, and the IPV. The frigate from their previous job had already been integrated into our supply chain, and the starfighters were already sold to the Rebellion.


    "If we are trying to form coherent groups, like having the Whale Shark, Nautilus, and Intervention on the second group, and the Arquiten and whatever escorts we decide on being the third, then we obviously need the first group," Captain Irsee pointed out. "If that group already consists of the Loyal Hound and the Talos Chariot, then we should assign the gunship to it as well."


    The <u>gunship</u></a> was a Vanguard-Class heavy attack ship, a U-shaped vessel that packed a big punch for its size. The pirates had treated it surprisingly well, but Miru had looked it over and done some research. It was a ship built and armored for war, and better yet, it was a CEC design, meaning with fifty thousand credits, we could buff the energy output quite a bit, increasing shield density and acceleration noticeably. It would need some repairs, but that would amount to fifteen thousand credits, a drop in the comparable bucket.


    "It would make a great addition to the insertion heavy, quick delivery strategy we usually end up using the Chariot for," Miru pointed out. "It won''t be able to carry its own ground team, but it''s fast, punchy and tough. Not much else you could ask for, Boss."


    "Okay¡­ having a bit more firepower as part of our insertion group is not a bad thing," I admitted. "As long as it can keep up with us."


    "Oh, it can. The Vanguard¡­ they are pretty potent. I had to look them up because they are on the rare side, but these guys were built to fight, and they aren''t cheap because they are well made," Miru assured me. "I''m glad you guys got me on it before you sold it. It''s a good find. Kind of shocking that some random pirate group had it."


    "Okay, so our first group now consists of the Loyal Hound, the Talos Chariot, and the¡­ Forward Charge¡­?"


    I trailed off after giving the ship a tentative name, looking around at everyone for approval. When everyone had either shrugged or nodded, I continued.


    "... Our second group consists of the Whale Shark and its starfighters, the Nautilus and the Intervention," I finished. "With the Mandalorian group stationed on the Loyal Hound, the first group has two ground teams, and the second group only has one. I''m thinking that the third group, whatever form that takes, stays as primarily a naval force, so when our new beskar droid group is finished with their upgrades, they should station on the Nautilus to even out the ground teams."


    "So all that''s left is to finish the third group," Tatnia finished for me. "A wholly naval-focused group."


    "The idea of using C-Rocs as support for the larger Arquiten is a solid idea, especially since they can provide a screen of starfighters as well," Captain Irsee admitted. "I just worry about the cost."


    "Why are they costing us anything?" Lieutenant Rider asked with a slightly confused look. "At this point, I assumed ship seizure before purchase was Skyforged standard procedure."


    "Well, I didn''t know how long that would take, and who knows what sort of condition they would be in," I pointed out. "We would have to locate one, plan out a method of capturing it without damaging it, then repair whatever wear and tear it accrued before we can start the upgrade and modification process."


    "Boss¡­ I think you might be underestimating how popular C-Rocs are," Miru said with a frown. "They are pretty common with all sorts of groups, including pirates and smugglers. I''m honestly surprised we never stumbled into one on Nar Shaddaa or any of the pirates we''ve fought."


    "They are the perfect ships for smuggling, and they are easy to modify," Tatnia explained. "It''s why you aren''t going to get one in good repair for much less than two hundred thousand credits."


    "Okay, fine," I agreed with a nod. "If we can find some to take from slavers, Hutt''s, or pirates, that''s great. But I would like to get to work on the modifications as soon as possible. Having the third group up and running will push the Skyforged into a new power level. We can start taking on bigger jobs, which in turn will mean bigger profits, and we can start hitting Imperial targets."


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    "We''ve hit Imperial targets before," Miru pointed out with a frown.


    "But never in an open, head-to-head fight," I explained. "On all of our previous Imperial-focused missions, we relied on tricks, cheating, finding gaps in security, or playing certain stuff to our advantage. With an Arquiten and the rest of the fleet, we could slam through the defenses of quite a few of the lesser protected worlds around the galaxy, take what we want, and leave. No special conditions, no tricks, no unexpected, out-of-the-box plan."


    Most of the people in the meeting seemed to understand what I was getting at, but I continued just to hammer what I meant home.


    "Imagine the supply line raids. Previously, we would have to rely on a greedy Imperial shrinking patrol size or a lucky break revealing a tight window of opportunity. This kind of stuff is rare and eventually could be used to stage an ambush," I explained. "But with a much more powerful fleet, we could just drop out of hyperspace, blow up the escorts, and demand the cargo ships come with us or be destroyed. Simple, easy, no luck or loophole required."


    The group murmured and nodded at the idea of being able to overwhelm our targets rather than trick them through elaborate plans. After a minute of everyone talking, I spoke up again. "We can give our research people a week or so to come up with some appropriate targets. Meanwhile, I want Quartermaster Finder to locate ships that are being sold for reasonable prices. If we don''t have three targets by the end of two weeks, we can buy the rest."


    "And the IPV?"


    "Sell it to the Rebellion. This is already going to be another big jump in growth, and we will need the money. Three million five hundred thousand should be a good price for our friends, correct?" I asked, looking around and nodding. "Good. Now, we are obviously going to have to do some recruiting over the next few weeks. I need a captain for the Arquiten, but I also want there to be a lead C-Roc with a captain on board as well. Their job would be more about monitoring and strategizing all three starships working together than directing the ship he was on."


    "Twelve crew for all three C-Rocs, twice that of naval droids," Captain Irsee continued. "Plus twelve pilots. The Arquiten needs twenty for for a proper rotation, and that''s with droid assistance."


    "The Charging Forward will need six," Miru pointed out. "Which brings up the point of naming the Arquitens."


    "The Anvil," Corvack stated clearly. "Surely the Skyforged needs an Anvil."


    "Not bad," I said with a smile. "It also makes naming the three escorts pretty easy as well. The Hammer as the lead, then the Punch and the Chisel."


    "Sure, whatever," Tatnia said, rolling her eyes. "Can we please get back to the hiring part?"


    "Right, yeah. For the crew, it sounds like we need fifty in total," I said, doing some quick mental math. "How much are we going to need to increase support staff?"


    "We need at least fifteen more maintenance and engineering, especially if we are going to be modifying the C-Rocs ourselves," Miru explained. "Plus, maybe thirty maintenance droids."


    "We will need more people and at least one other freighter for our supply lines," Quartermaster Finder added.


    "Right, well then, thank God we started building homes on Nirn. The station would already be full, and then some," I said, rubbing my face and shaking my head. "This is the last time we are adding ships to our fleet for a while. For a good chunk of time, everything we find gets sold. We need to settle into this new size and build a buffer before we stretch ourselves too thin and unravel."


    "Pretty sure that was already the plan," Tatnia pointed out.


    "Yeah, but the Arquiten was too good of a find to hold off on," I responded, giving my second-in-command a look. "From now on, though, if we find something particularly special or expensive, we will mothball it. Maybe park it on Nirn''s moon to keep it in a vacuum and free of pests."


    The meeting continued until we discussed everything on our list of topics, after which the meeting broke down, and we all went about our business. I, of course, got back to work, enchanting, enchanting, and more enchanting.


    While I toiled away, my workshop temporarily transferred to Omega Station so that I wouldn''t interrupt the Skyforged business. As I continued to work, both the first and second groups went on another pair of missions. The first group, with Tatnia leading in my absence, was targeting a large group of pirates harassing a mining outpost and city based in the Outer Rim. They were using Clone Wars-era ground weapons, both CIS and Republic, to basically hold the entire outpost hostage. My guess was that someone from the city had found an old Clone Wars battleground and spent some time repairing all the leftover gear.


    While the outpost barely offered enough credits to get our attention, the real reason for taking the job was the heavy ordnance that they described in the brief. With any luck, we could fill a rather large gap in our repertoire with the aforementioned heavy ordinance, after which we could sell the rest to the Rebellion. Hell, depending on what sort of resources our bounty had found, we might even be able to sell them the location of the battle itself.


    The second group left two days after the first. One of their research teams had found a pirate group that was known to have a pair of C-Rocs, and since we were in the market, they would make a great target.


    Unfortunately, the second group didn''t really didn''t have much of a strategy for getting the ships undamaged, so they would have to attack them directly and whittle their forces down until they surrendered. If they refused, then they would attempt to lightly disable them, but that was such a hit-or-miss concept that they were more likely to damage the two ships beyond being worth our time.


    Even if they did damage both of the ships past the point of being worth fixing up, they would still bring them both back. I would have the repair crews tear the wrecks down for parts and store them somewhere safe for later use. We would eventually have four of them in our fleet, after all.


    Another week passed with me doing nothing but enchanting armor and uniforms. The station was pretty empty with both groups out on missions, and I was starting to go a little stir-crazy. Then, on a seemingly random afternoon, Miru stopped by, leading a surprising guest. Luke Skywalker walked into my temporary enchanting lab, looking around and staring at the piles of armor and uniforms, as well as the enchanting table. They must have been waiting for me to be free, because they came in just as I was finishing a pair of boots.


    "Luke! Good to see you!" I said, reaching out to shake his hand. "How''s it going, what can I do for you?"


    "It''s good to see you too," he said, taking my hand but pulling me into a hug. "I came to see you and Ahsoka, actually. I have some Jedi-related questions."


    "Well, Ahsoka is away on a mission with the rest of the team, but I''m sure Miru already explained the. The only reason I''m here is because I need to keep working on all this," I said, gesturing around me.


    "Yeah, fair..."


    "What''s up?" I asked, guiding him and Miru to a small table along the side of the room and sitting down with them."


    "Well¡­ I''ve been having visions," He explained, wincing when I looked up at him with wide eyes. "Obi-wan has been reaching out to me about a place called Dagobah. I''m pretty sure it''s actually him, but I know you warned me that the Sith are really good at mental manipulation..."


    "A vision, huh?" What are they telling you to do?" I asked, doing my best to keep calm. This was a lot earlier than I had expected, and I had no idea why that had happened.


    "They want me to find it and go to it," Luke explained. "But I was hoping to have Ahsoka with me when I went."


    "There''s a chance she won''t be back for several days," I responded with a wince. "But...how about I go with you?"

 Chapter 175

    Luke was surprised by my offer, though at this point, he really shouldn''t have been. If there was any tendency that I had shown so far, it was my propensity for sticking my foot in situations that didn''t belong, especially when it came to the Jedi. Still, Luke had come primarily for advice, and he was clearly a bit overwhelmed, so I guided him to a nearby table to catch his proverbial breath. Once I had gotten us something to drink, I encouraged him to share, and the young hero explained what he had been going through for the past couple of days.


    "I was on a mission, escorting cargo between Mon Cal and a few of our material suppliers," Luke explained. "We spent a lot of time in our X-Wings, bouncing around, picking up shipments, escorting cargo vessels. Lots of time doing nothing, lots of shorter jumps to keep Imperial forces guessing. That means a lot of downtime, and I try to meditate a few times, at least, just to practice connecting and feeling the Force."


    As he explained, I poured him and Miru some water, which Luke happily accepted. After taking a sip, he launched right back into his story.


    "We were on the second hyperspace jump of the trip, and I... well, I saw Obi-Wan in a dream," He explained, shaking his head. "He looked younger, but¡­ I could feel that it was him. It didn''t quite feel like the vision we had in the Crystal Caves, but it still didn''t feel like a normal dream either. It kind of felt like he was talking at me, not to me. Like he was sending me a message rather than having a conversation."


    He frowned at that, and I couldn''t exactly blame him. I remembered the scene from Empire Strikes Back, and while Luke was under much more dire circumstances, it still felt like Obi-Wan had just expected him to do what he was told. Certainly not the best way to enamor a teenage adult to your cause.


    He told me I needed more teaching and that it was time for me to go to the Dagobah system," Luke continued, taking another sip of water. "There, I would learn from Yoda, a Jedi Master who was wiser and more powerful than him. After that, every other day or so, I would get a vision in my sleep. Then, most recently, I saw him while I was awake, repeating the message. That''s when I asked for time to pursue Jedi-related stuff and came here. I haven''t seen anything from him since then."


    "Hmm¡­ well, I recognize the name, and the system is correct as well,: I said, leaning back. "Grand Master Jedi Yoda is, in fact, hiding on Dagobah."


    "What?!" Luke asked loudly, leaning forward with wide eyes. "A Grand Master? Deacon, why haven''t we gone to find him already?"


    "It''s¡­ complicated," I said, scratching the back of my head. "He is on Dagobah for a reason, that being a dark side well that hides him from Palpy''s gaze. Why he needs that and you or Ashoka or the Jedi on Nirn don''t, I don''t know. He is¡­ sort of in exile, I guess you could say. Self inposed. And frankly, while he isn''t necessarily a bad person¡­ he was leading the Order when it fell, Luke. It was wobbling and tilting already, but he was still the one at the helm. You were learning from Ahsoka, and now we have even more resources for you to learn from. You have a Holocron, right?"


    Luke nodded, sagging a bit as I talked. I didn''t know whose Holocron he had, but Ahsoka had given him one she thought would suit him, so I hadn''t enquired further. For a moment, he was silent before he eventually nodded.


    "Okay, I can understand why it might have been better to leave him there at first," Luke admitted. "But now I''m being told to go seek him out¡­ What should I do?"


    "Well¡­ What do you want to do?"


    Luke looked down at his glass for a moment, trying to parse out what he wanted. If I had any connection to the Force, I''m sure I would be able to feel the whirlwind of thoughts spinning around in his head. After a long few moments, he spoke again.


    "Ahsoka explained that Obi-wan wasn''t just my first teacher, he spent a good chunk of his life watching over me," He said, turning the glass of water in his hand for a moment before looking up at me. "I owe him to at least hear out his request. But I''m not going to act like a scared kid desperate for instruction and information. I have other options now, and if I need to, I can use them."


    "A healthy way of thinking," I agreed with a nod. "Now, I''m sure you could make your way out there with your X-wing, but we could take the Starcaller instead?"


    "You were serious about coming with me?" He asked with a frown. "Why?"


    "Because I want to have a conversation with Yoda," I shrugged. "He is an extremely old Jedi, who knows what secrets he might know."


    I also secretly wanted to keep him off Luke''s back. I had no idea how Yoda would react to our plans for the next Order, nor could I guarantee that he wouldn''t try to pressure Luke. Also, as much as I might have liked Yoda as a character, Luke needed someone around to catch the little green goblin out on his lies.


    "If you''re okay with coming with, I can pilot the Starcaller," He agreed. "If nothing else, it''s better than sleeping for two days in an X-Wing."


    "And that is why I make sure we have carriers for all our starfighters," I said, shaking my head. "Can''t imagine being in an X-wing cockpit for multiple days."


    "Your people are lucky," he said honestly before nodding. "Alright, I can''t say I wasn''t dreading the trip in my X-wing, and having someone with me does sound better than going alone."


    "Great," I said with a smile, standing from the chair. "I was going to go crazy anyway. I''ve been doing nothing but being enchanting for almost two weeks now. Though I suppose we should be glad, if you had come a week ago, I wouldn''t have been very talkative after working on an enchantment. They take a lot out of me, but each time I get a bit better."


    Luke nodded as if he understood, mainly to be polite, looking around the room again, landing on the rather interesting-looking enchanting table.


    "If there was ever any doubt you were using magic¡­"


    "You''d be surprised," I said, shaking my head. "Plenty of Sith crap used altars and other equally fantastical looking bits of equipment."


    "I''ll take your word for it."


    It took about an hour for me to walk around, informing the people who needed to know that I would be gone for the next few days. I also sent a message to Tatnia and Captain Irsee, informing both of them what was going on. Tatnia questioned if it was a good idea for us to go off on our own without backup, but we quickly came up with a solution. Boxi and four of his commandos had completed the process of being beskar plated, so I agreed to take them along as support.


    Unfortunately, that was not the only Skyforged member who wanted to go.


    When Luke and Artoo met me at the hangar in which Starcaller had landed, he looked nervous and apologetic, and I was confused as to why until Miru stepped out around the corner, along with one of our armored slicer astromechs and Leddy, our original lead repair droid. Leddy was still painted forest green, but her tool pack, the modification that Miru made to her so she would always have her tools, had been refined and improved. Her pack looked a lot smoother and better crafted. Miru also had a labor droid pushing a hovercraft full of stuff, including a crate that I knew contained her armor.


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    "Miru, what are you doing here?" I asked, looking at her with a raised eyebrow.


    "I want to go with you," She responded, not stopping as she approached me and the ship. "It''s been ages since I last left the station, and this is the perfect opportunity for me to stretch my legs!"


    Letting out a long breath, I pinched the bridge of my nose.


    "Did you tell everyone you were leaving?" I asked. "Did you make sure everyone working under you was set for a few days?"


    "Of course I did. I''m not some sort of amateur," she pointed out, crossing her arms. "You made me head engineer, after all."


    "You''re correct, I did," I said before gesturing to the Starcallers boarding ramp. "Alright, you can come. But keep your uniform or armor on at all times."


    She nodded and climbed up the boarding ramp, passing Luke and me in the process. Artoo whistled and beeped, causing Luke to chuckle, but he quickly cut himself off. I glared at him for a moment before shaking my head.


    "Alright, get in," I said, turning to climb up the ramp. "Probably good that she is coming. I''m a terrible copilot, considering I have no idea how to fly this thing."


    It didn''t take long for Luke to do the preflight checks and for Artoo, the ship''s computer, and our slicer droid to make the jump calculations. Once everything was set, we lifted off from the hangar, sent out a message of our departure, and flew out of the hangar. Once we were past the Huntress and the currently empty Anvil, we made the jump to lightspeed, leaving Omega Station behind.


    Once we safely jumped, I sat down in the Starcallers lounge, trying to figure out what spell I would learn during the trip, flipping through the pages of my grimoire. I was paging through Destruction options when Luke and Miru came back from the bridge. Luke sat down across from me at the table while Miru sat down at the head of the table, putting some sort of electronic device down and beginning to fiddle with it.


    "Do you think you could tell me a bit about Yoda?" Luke asked. "I feel like I should know more about someone so powerful and important."


    "Well¡­ Sure," I said, leaning back and closing my grimoire. "Yoda is¡­ I would consider him to be one of the wisest people at the old Order, he-"


    "Wait, wise?" Luke asked, looking confused. "But you said he was in charge during the collapse."


    "It''s not that simple," I said, shaking my head. "Yes, the Jedi Order failed, and yes, some of them could have changed that. But Grandpa Paply had been working on this for a long time, the Jedi had no idea just how much resources were being spun against them. They got stuck with losing hands all around. They could have lost more gracefully, maybe not bet the stability of the whole galaxy on a bad hand, but¡­ they were all still good people. Even the uptight bastards were just trying to do good. It''s not an excuse, but¡­ It''s not simple, Luke. He was a victim, but victims can be wrong, too."


    "I¡­Fair enough," He said, pausing for a moment to organize his thoughts. "So he was wise?"


    "For the most part," I added, getting an understanding nod from Luke. "He was powerful in the Force. Not many Jedi could come even close to what he was capable of. His connection was deep. Maybe not as deep as yours, but still impressive. He genuinely cared about the people he led, and I''m pretty sure Dagobah is at least partly a self-banishment because of the responsibility he feels for what happened during the fall."


    "What was he like personally?"


    "He was¡­ kind. Serious, as his station as Grand Master required, but with an underlying mischievousness," I responded with a smile. "I will warn you, he has been out here for a while, that mischievousness might have¡­grown a bit. Or he might try putting it on as a shield to hide his true self. Either to trick us or to distance himself from who he was, I''m not sure which."


    "What species is he?"


    "Good fucking question," I said with a laugh, shaking my head. "No one knows. There was another Jedi Master of the same species, Jedi Master Yaddle, but no one knows what their origin was or what their connection was."


    Technically, Grogu might also be around, hiding from the Empire. Unfortunately, while I might remember what he looked like enough to scan for him with Clairvoyance, it was nearly useless because I had absolutely no idea where he could possibly be. Clairvoyance was useful with general areas, not scanning the entire galaxy. He was alive, and since he was supposed to surface once the Empire was defeated, I could only hope that would happen again. I had a feeling that it would, at least if the Force had anything to say about it.


    "What does he look like?"


    "Like a two-foot-tall gremlin," I said, chuckling at Luke''s confused look. "He is two foot tall, green with two large ears. And old, very, very, very old. Eight hundred and ninety-six, I believe. Though that might be a year or two low."


    "Sithspit¡­ species that can get that old are rare," He said with a surprised look. "Did Master Yaddle¡­?"


    "No, she did not survive," I responded with a frown. "She was betrayed and killed by Count Dooku before the Clone Wars even started."


    "Count Dooku?"


    "Palpy''s apprentice before he was killed, by your father actually, at the tail end of the Clone Wars," I explained. "Killing Master Yaddle was Count Dooku''s final step into the dark side."


    The lounge grew quiet for a moment, Luke no doubt thinking about his father, who was undoubtedly guilty of greater crimes than killing one Jedi. While he was silent, I considered just how Palpatine had twisted Dooku and Anakin for his own nefarious purposes. After a long moment, Miru let out a sigh.


    "How about we have some lunch?" She suggested, putting aside her current project. "Then maybe you could tell a story that isn''t depressing and horrible with people dying and falling to the dark side? Call me crazy, but depressing stories kinda aren''t fun."


    "That¡­ sounds like a good idea," I said with a light smile and a nod. "You guys hang tight here, and I''ll go see what supplies we have in the kitchen. With any luck, we will have something better than shelf-stable meals."


    I stood and patted Miru''s shoulder, silently thanking her for the change of subject, nodding towards Luke, who was looking down at his hands. The young genius looked up and gave me a smile and a nod right back, clearly understanding my intent. I left both of them alone as I headed back into the small kitchen space of the ship, Miru asking Luke about Artoo before I couldn''t hear them anymore.


    The kitchen was pretty advanced for its size, and with any luck, I would be able to whip up something halfway decent. I started looking through cabinets and storage, hunting for the ingredients for lunch, humming a tune as I did.

 Chapter 176

    I managed to scrounge around for some decent ingredients in the kitchen, putting together a leafy green salad with some seasoned grilled meat. It was a light meal, and the grilled meat was pre-cooked, but it was still good and filling. Once we were done eating, the mood improved significantly as we talked about some of the stories I knew about the Clone Wars, some with happy endings, including a few about Luke''s father. A few hours later, Miru moved back to the cargo hold to work on whatever project she had brought with her, and Luke went to his room to meditate.


    Over the next few days, we kept ourselves busy, waiting to arrive at our destination. I learned a single spell, Circle of Healing. I didn''t quite remember the spell from the game, so I was pretty sure that it was a replacement for a spell that affected the undead. The spell created a three-meter wide circle that was tied to a significantly large surface. The circle, which glowed with a swirling golden energy, lasted for a full five minutes. Anyone inside the circle would heal at a rate about as powerful as a standard Fast Healing every other second, making it a pretty decent way to get a large group healed. People could step in, wait until they were healthy, and then step out.


    I envisioned using it when healing after a battle. The circle could heal the moderately injured, while I could focus on people who needed more direct attention.


    Of course, I didn''t just spend my time learning magic. Luke and I spared for a while, mostly because he was interested in what it was like to fight with a sword and shield, as I had mentioned previously. While I didn''t use one myself, since I used my free hand to cast magic or hold a dagger, my initial sword-wielding download included plenty of knowledge on how to use a sword and board. Miru was nice enough to weld some handles onto two metal plates, letting us practice for real.


    As I was trying to teach him, most of the sparring was slow, showing him the basic ideas and stances involved with them. I also spent some time drawing out the different kinds of shields. He seemed to lean towards the quintessential heater-type shield, which was a decent middle ground between the flexibility of a buckler and the protection of a kite. He seemed intrigued by the idea, as it somehow fit his style and seemed to gel with his own natural instincts. By the time our destination drew near, he had plans to ask for a beskar-plated shield from the Rebellion.


    "Speaking of beskar, any idea how the Rebellion is going to use their cut of our heist?" I asked when he mentioned the shield. "Do they have someone who can work with it?"


    "They are still figuring out how to work with it," He admitted with a shrug. "But I think the plan is to make a weave like your uniforms and then outfit a small group of commandos like your ground teams."


    "Copycats," I said with a smirk. "Let''s hope they keep it full coverage, because that''s the real key."


    "The Mandalorians seem to be doing fine," Luke points out. "The only protect the essentials."


    "Only because they struggle to find a large supply of it. Besides, they still lose people. In the last year, they lost three of their combat team," I corrected. "The death is terrible, of course, but from a logistical standpoint, they also frequently lose that persons beskar, depending on how they died. That means that if the Rebellion only covers vitals, chances are their beskar supply will slowly dwindle. Go big or go home, and their commandos have a better chance of coming home intact."


    On the third day of our journey, we gathered back on the bridge for the last stint of hyperspace travel. The ship''s computer, as well as Artoo, counted us down before we dropped on the very outskirts of the system. Slowly, we traveled through the system, making a secondary micro-jump through it to arrive at our destination, <u>Dagobah</u></a>.


    Luke slowed us down into a stable orbit around the planet, watching the weather systems spiral around the large, green sphere. Luke leaned back in his chair, a complicated expression on his face.


    "This planet¡­ it feels alive, like Nirn," Luke said, having heard the name as we talked about it during our journey here. "Maybe even more so¡­ But it also feels wrong. Heavy¡­ Dark... Wrong."


    "That''s probably the well of Dark Side Energy," I explained with a frown. "Which makes me think there might be something similar on Nirn¡­ we really need to scan the planet deeper, especially the island."


    "Is it safe to go down there?" Luke asked with a frown, focused on the planet in front of us. "It feels... Wrong. Where do we even go down?"


    "As long as you take it real slow and try and aim for something we can land on that''s stable, we should be safe," I said, hoping that the fan theories that Yoda had been why Luke crashed weren''t true, cause I would have strong words for him if he yanked on my ship. "As for where, that''s kind of up to you. Reach out and feel with the Force, let it guide you."


    I was pointedly not mentioning that I could find him with Clairvoyance. This was Luke''s moment, and unless he pointed out that I could, I wanted to let him try.


    "What about the Dark side well?" Luke asked with a frown. "You said it was dangerous."


    "It is. But you''re strong, Luke. Just keep yourself centered, and don''t let it influence you."


    As I assured him, the young man nodded after a moment, taking a second to take a deep breath, letting it out slowly, his eyes closed. After a few deep breaths, he finally opened his eyes and leaned forward, gripping the ship''s controls.


    Slowly, we began to descend, though not nearly as rapidly as I would have thought. Instead, we went all the way around the planet before we really started to descend. As I instructed, Luke went very slowly, descending below the cloud layer into the thick layer of fog that clung over a huge part of the planet. Rather than panic, Luke simply frowned, leaning forward and tapping at a few different controls. A sensor display popped up, showing that we were descending over a massive, viney, swampy forest.


    We continued to fly above it, until eventually descending into the forest, landing in a clearing made by an absolutely gigantic fallen tree. All of the trees were massive, but this one must have been tangled and growing with several others, as when we finally landed, we did so on solid wood. We were at a slight angle, but with the artificial gravity on our ship, we didn''t notice.


    "Should I leave the ship going?" Luke asked as he leaned back.


    "Leave it in low power mode," I responded, pulling my armor on before checking Miru''s to make sure she was all hooked up. "We can deploy the ships B2s to keep it safe, and Boxi and his troops can come with us."


    Luke nodded before flipping a few switches and tapping on his console before getting up to get his own gear ready. We opened the boarding ramp, which sat unevenly against the massive tree beneath us. At a closer look, it was clearly several trees tangled together, partially fused, and, as far as I could tell, still alive. Stepping onto the boarding ramp was a very strange experience as it meant we were crossing out of the artificial gravity. In one step, we were perfectly straight up and down, and in the next, we were standing at an angle.


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    Boxi and the four other BX units, all with freshly painted beskar plating, walked down after us, followed by five B2s. After we disembarked, the boarding ramp rose up and locked. Artoo was still inside, as were the slicer droid and Leddy.


    Miru and I were fully armored up, though our helmets were clipped to our hips. Luke, on the other hand, was in a set of <u>flight suit fatigues</u></a>. If I remembered correctly, they were the same ones he wore to Dagobah in the movies, which led me to believe they were a standard Rebellion uniform. It wasn''t as bad as his flowy, useless Tatooine garb, but it certainly wasn''t armored. When I asked about his lack of armor, he pulled down the neck, showing that a beskar woven uniform, probably the one I had gifted to him ages ago, was underneath.


    "I pulled off the paneling so I could more easily wear it under things," He explained. "The higher-ups didn''t like me walking around in something people could easily identify as your uniform, even if your symbol wasn''t on it."


    After all five of the BX droids pulled on packs of equipment and supplies, we slowly made our way off of the massive tree, descending to the foggy, misty swamp below. It smelled just about as horrible as you could imagine a swamp could, and it was difficult to traverse. The commando droids weren''t held back at all, they simply gave up walking on the ground and started jumping from tree to tree, occasionally even swinging on vines. Luckily, I had a brilliant idea about five minutes in, otherwise we would have been left behind. After sinking to my knee for the third time, I used a blast of Frostbite to freeze our path, making it much easier to cross the squishy, unstable ground.


    Even with me walking ahead to freeze the ground, Luke was directing us, guiding our small party through the horrible swamp, set on whatever target the Force was leading him to. We made good progress, but it was broken up by a few times when we were forced to cross ponds and rivers. Thankfully, Luke didn''t have a problem with a little wildlife engineering, cutting down trees to make bridges across anything overly difficult to navigate unaided.


    Eventually, the landscape shifted slightly, and the open ponds and deep swamps seemed to stabilize slightly. It was still wet and soggy, everything choked with trees and vines and moss, but the open pools of water became less prevalent. Still common, of course, but no longer constant. Luke was also looking around a lot more as if expecting something to come up to us.


    "It feels darker here," He explained. "It feels oily on my skin like I need to take a shower."


    "The downside of being Force-sensitive, Luke, is that you''re very sensitive," I pointed out. "You''re gonna get similar emotions from places like Imperial prisons or battlefields. Really, any place someone or a group has suffered greatly."


    "Huh¡­"


    In truth, it was interesting that Luke was reacting so strongly to the planet. He hadn''t reacted nearly this negatively in the movies, which made me think it had something to do with how much training he had. Originally, he had showed up here with only a few hours of training, barely able to reach out to the Force and move a lightsaber. Now, however, he could call on the Force on command and had forged a much stronger bond with it, meaning he could feel all the Dark side energy flowing through the planet.


    Regardless of his sensitivity, we continued to move, hiking through the swamp. We hadn''t spent long in the new, slightly more stable terrain before Luke stopped again, a frown on his face as he looked ahead.


    "What is it?" I asked, craning my neck and squinting to try and spot what he had.


    "Nothing specific," He said, shaking his head. "As terrible as it is, there is something familiar about this place."


    "You''re from a world where you could buy a speeder with a few gallons of water," Miru said, sounding confused. "What could possibly feel familiar about this place?"


    "I dunno¡­" He said, frowning as. "I feel like¡­"


    Suddenly, he spun around, prompting Boxi and his commandos to spin as well. Luke had his lightsaber out in a defensive position, though he did not ignite it. The commandos held their blasters steady, locked on to a single target. I could imagine the only reason they didn''t fire was the modifications that Miru and Racer made to their programming to keep them from being so murderous.


    There, standing on a small perch, just a root coiled down for the base of a tree and into the soft ground, was the gremlin himself, Yoda. The small alien recoiled from the weapons pointed at him, raising his small arms and jabbering in supposed fear.


    "Like we are being watched," Luke finished, recovering from the surprise quickly and standing up straight, hooking his lightsaber back to his belt, and bowing slightly to the newcomer. "Greeting Master Yoda."


    The ancient alien stopped his act, turning and putting his arms down, suddenly going silent. He tapped his cane on his tree root perch, his brow furrowed as he leaned forward slightly, studying all three of us. It was odd, he was still hunched and disheveled, but I could still see the moment he mentally stopped pretending to be a crazy old hermit.


    "Recognized me so quickly, you have," He said, his gaze shifting from Luke to me, to Miru, and then back to Luke. "Strong in the Force I feel you are, training you have received. Beyond Obi-wan, who has taught you?"


    "I received training from Ahsoka Tano," Luke explained. "As well as from Deacon Roy, my friend and leader of a Rebel leaning mercenary force."


    Luke gestured to me, directing Yoda''s gaze to me again. This time, it lingered, and I could only imagine what sort of feelings he was pulling from me. After a long moment, I spoke up.


    "Perhaps we could retire somewhere a bit more comfortable?" I suggested. "I believe Luke has a lot to share with you, and I''m sure you are very curious about what has been going on in the rest of the galaxy."


    For a moment I thought he was going to say no, but he simply shook his head, slowly crawling down off his perch.


    "Safe place, I know," he said with a nod. "Will have to make with outside, built for so many people, my home was not."


    Without another word, the short green man walked away, leading us in the general direction that Luke had been leading us. We were forced to move slowly since we were matching the small creature''s speed, but now we had a definite heading and a solid destination.


    "He seems nice," Miru said, whispering into my ear. "I thought he was going to send us away."


    "He might have if he didn''t think Luke would go with us if he did," I responded with a shrug, not bothering with whispering. When Miru gave me a meaningful, panicked look, I snorted. "You think you can whisper around those ears? He probably heard us coming from space."


    "My fault you make so much noise, it is not," Yoda responded from further ahead. "Send you away so quickly, I would not. Alone for a long time, I have been, but not a savage have I become."


    We followed after the Jedi Master, letting him lead us to his home, with the BX units following after us.

 Chapter 177

    Eventually, after following Yoda for a good thirty minutes, we arrived at his home. I took a moment to look at it as everyone moved closer, staring at the small, overgrown structure. For a moment, I was back home, watching Empire Strikes Back for the first time, and my father and my brother were there with me. It sent a wave of nostalgia crashing over me, my emotions so intense that both Luke and Yoda turned to look at me.


    "Sorry, I was just reminded of something from home," I assured them, taking a deep breath and following after everyone.


    Since Yoda''s home was clearly too small for all of us, and this was a world known for being incredibly wet, we required some sort of shelter. Luckily, I had known that going in, so the backpacks that the BX droids carried with them contained everything we would need. It was broken into parts, but we quickly assembled them into what was essentially one of those popup canopy tents. Under that, we set up a normal tent, some chairs, and a table, as well as a thin shield system similar to the mag barriers around a ship''s hangar. It let out a subtle hum, but it would protect us from a lot of the weather.


    It was also obscenely expensive. The only reason we had one was because it was stolen or came to us through one of our pirate raids.


    The tent and protection were set up quickly, all under the watchful eye of Yoda. He was rather quiet, up until Luke returned with a few piles of damp wood. Ordinarily, this would be next to impossible to light on fire without a lot of help, but I happened to have the perfect tool for that. I set up a sturdy base of branches before standing up and casting Flames.


    The bright spray of fire poured over the ranches and small logs, first slowly drying them out. Then, once they were dry enough, the exteriors burst into flame. I quickly ended the spell, standing back with a satisfied nod, before turning to Yoda. He was sitting in the same spot as before, his cane now lying by his side, fallen from his hands, while his jaw was hanging open.


    I had expected a reaction the first time I used magic, but I couldn''t help but snort at his stunned expression. My laugh pulled him out of his stunned look, the old man looking at me closely.


    "A presence in the Force, You lack, and yet you manage that," He said, his eyes wide, looking from the fire, then to me, back and forth. "Not a single ripple in the Force, did I feel. How have you managed this, hmmm?"


    "Simple, I didn''t use the Force," I responded with a shrug. "It''s magic."


    "Magic?" he asked, frowning slightly, carefully and slowly bending down to pick up his cane. "Magic, you say it is? Not the Force?"


    "Would you like to see more?" I asked, the small gremlin nodding.


    Knowing he would be a tough nut to crack, I put on the usual "It''s Magic, but also it''s not the Force!" show, starting with basic elemental displays, moving onto more middle-of-the-road spells, before finishing off by conjuring a few different combat forms, then transmuting one material to the another, allowing Yoda to see the process. When I was finally done, I couldn''t help but take a bow.


    "Done this before, you have?" He asked, a critical eye focused on me.


    "Basically, any time we meet a new group or expand our forces," I explained with a shrug. "It''s a bit different when explaining it to someone who is familiar with the Force, but yeah, I do it a lot."


    "A fascinating display, you have performed," Yoda admitted, with a nod, reaching out to point at me. "Not a single moment of Force usage, could I sense. A mystery your ability is, frighteningly similar to Sith alchemy and magiks, it seems. But evil, your ability is not. Time to consider this, I must have. Meditate on your abilities, I will."


    "Take all the time you''d like," I said with a smile. "For now, how about we sit somewhere comfortable and talk about other things?"


    Yoda nodded, and we made our way to our camp. There we sat around the collapsable table, the BXs doing a tight patrol of the area now that everything was set up. Before I sat down, I stripped out of my armor and undersuit, leaving just my protective uniform. Between the BXs, my abilities, and knowing we were at Yoda''s camp, I felt reasonably safe relaxing a bit more, especially with my uniform. Miru, surprisingly enough, kept her armor on, saving me the trouble of trying to convince her to.


    "I want as many layers as possible between me and this place," she admitted with a shiver. "This is the exact opposite of what I would consider comfortable."


    I chuckled and patted her shoulder, joining Luke and Yoda at our table. Luke looked a little nervous despite Yoda being just about the least threatening person I could imagine. As we sat there, Yoda seemed perfectly happy to wait for us to talk, a tactic I''m usually excited to turn back around on the user, but considering Yoda had spent the last twenty years here with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs, I''m sure he would win.


    "I supposed the best place to start off with is a short rundown of the last twenty years," I suggested. "Unless you''re somehow receiving galactic news here?"


    "Know of the Rebellion, I do," He responded simply. "Know of the horrors of the Empire, I do as well. Interested greatly in Luke''s training, I am."


    "Ahsoka was reluctant to teach him at first," I explained, Luke nodding in agreement, the annoyance and frustration of that time leaking slightly into his face. "She was stuck in a guilt loop about his father and what happened to him, and she didn''t think she was worthy of teaching him anything."


    "His father¡­" Yoda said, trailing off. "You told him tales of Anakin Skywalker?"


    "Of course I did," I said, shaking my head. "Luke deserved to know how Anakin fought in the Clone Wars."


    "Of course, Yes. A great hero, he was. Died at the hands of Darth Vader-"


    Luke let out a disappointed sigh, shaking his head and crossing his arms.


    "So you were going to lie to me too?" He asked, a frown on his face. "You were going to train me to kill Vader, my own father, and never tell me who he actually was, weren''t you? Why is everyone but Deacon so eager to keep his real fate from me? Even Ahsoka admitted she only told me because Deacon explained that it was not fair to keep from me."


    For a long time, Yoda was silent. His presence almost seemed to shift as Luke reprimanded him.


    "... Hoped to better prepare you, we did," Yoda explained, shrinking back slightly, leaning on his cane as he stood on his chair. "Old you are, for Jedi training. Wish to send you spiraling through space, hunting for your father, we did not."


    "And? If that''s what I wanted to do, what right do you have to stop me?" He asked with an aggravated frown. "Because I''m his son, then I must be a slave to my destiny, to my dad''s prophecy? Deacon told me how well that went for you guys, locking him into his fate as the Chosen One. Forgive me if I''m not eager to let fate lead me around like a sunstone bantha."


    Despite having every right to be angry, Luke managed to keep a relatively cool head, though his patience was definitely tested. Miru reached over and put her hand on his back, the young Force-sensitive looking over at her with a smile before focusing back on Yoda as he began to talk, his frustration leaking away.


    "Happy to burden your father with prophecy, we were not. Tried to shield him from it, we did," He explained, shaking his head. "Many believed the prophecy to be true. Unavoidable, we thought it was. Arrogant we were. The idea of lying to you, we did not enjoy. Fate of the galaxy, in your hands, it is. Scared, we were."


    His admission was a bit surprising, though considering how long he had to self-reflect on the end of the Jedi order and the Republic, I suppose I shouldn''t have been. I considered saying that it took a special kind of bastard to send a son to unknowingly kill his father, but this was Luke''s ballgame, I wasn''t about to interfere unless something truly horrendous was happening. After a long moment, Luke let out another long breath, this one seeming to calm himself.


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    "I''m not happy about this. It''s going to take some time for you to regain my trust," He admitted, shaking his head. "But Deacon''s explanation of how the Clone Wars ended¡­ I could never understand the pain you''ve felt. I''m willing to give you a chance."


    Yoda bowed his head slightly, accepting the allowance for what it was, an opportunity to make up for past sins. After a moment of silence, Yoda spoke again, asking about what sort of training Luke had undergone. Luek explained that I was the one to help him truly connect to the Force, at least on command. He explained some of the swordplay I taught him, the kinetic meditation, and then what Ahsoka had taught him, the basic saber stances and lessons on deflecting lasers. Ahsoka''s lessons had all been practical and small, my girlfriend teaching Luke what he needed to know and not going much past that.


    "And I''m currently learning from a Holocron, since I can bring it with me while I work with the Rebellion," Luke explained.


    "Holocron? How have you found one of those?" Yoda asked, his voice colored with surprise. "Lost at the temple, they were."


    "There was a Hutt by the name of Grakkus," I responded. "He collected Jedi artifacts and¡­ other things, including a dozen or so Holocrons. As a favor to Ahsoka, one of my teams infiltrated his palace and stole quite a few of his artifacts back, though not as much as I would have liked."


    "The Jedi order knew of Grakkus," Yoda admitted, a frown marring his features. "His collection, disturbing it was, frequently challenged our archaeologists, he did."


    "Pretty sure it only got worse once the Order was destroyed," I assured him with a wince. "He was convinced I was a Jedi as well. His grand plan was to put Ahsoka and I in stasis to complete his collection."


    Yoda seemed to struggle to understand that, which was fair because I could hardly believe it when Grakkus first told us, either. When he recovered, he seemed a bit less sure of himself.


    "Don''t forget, the raid on Grakkus happened after you went looking for Professor Huyang," Miru pointed out. "Should probably tell him that as well."


    "Why search for Professor Huyang?" Yoda asked, looking between all three of us. "A friend, he was. A good mentor, understood lightsabers and younglings, he did. Search for him, why did you?"


    "Deacon asked if I wanted to build my own lightsaber instead of just using one of my fathers," Luke explained. "And between myself, Felia, and Ezra, we all needed Kyber Crystals. Luckily, Deacon knew where we could get some."


    "It''s a secret I happily passed," I assured him with a nod, mentally laughing to myself as I could see the old hermit starting to get overwhelmed. He''d barely talked to anyone in the last twenty years, and now we were overloading him. "Ahsoka knows the location, as do a few others."


    "So anyway, since we were building our lightsabers, Ahsoka wanted to take a crack at finding Professor Huyang since not only is he an amazing teacher, but he also witnessed a huge swath of Jedi history," Luke explained. "Having him around would connect us back to the old order, maybe help us avoid some of the problems they stumbled into."


    "A droid among the universe, yet find him you did," Yoda stated. "How?"


    "My magic allows me to locate objects, locations, people, or items I''m familiar with. A description and an image are all I need these days," I explained. "Ahsoka had an inkling of where he was already because of a story he used to tell, the Jedi and the Princess?"


    "Familiar, I am."


    "Good. Well, it''s real, and we were able to locate the planet they take refuge in," I explained. "On the surface was a remarkably intact ruin of a large Jedi temple or settlement. There, we found Huyang and the surviving members of the Crucible. They fought off their clone escort and escaped to the planet. Knight Amescoll and his wards survived. We found him, eight Padawans, and five partially trained younglings."


    For a moment, Yoda stood there in silence, his eyes closing. Luke opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, I waved him down. Together, we watched as tears began to roll down Yoda''s face. After a minute of politely waiting for him to recover, he opened his eyes, a small smile on his face.


    "Doing well, are they?"


    "About as well as you could hope," I answered with a gentle smile. "They had some problems with a species of large ocean dwellers, who managed to wreck the Crucible pretty bad and force them to stay in a cliffside hangar, but they adapted. They are still on the planet, just in a different location. The Skyforged is settling a city of sorts on the surface, for the families of our people and any other Jedi being hunted. The world, which we call Nirn, isn''t on any map as far as we can tell, so it makes the perfect place to hide our loved ones and children."


    "The planet, what is it like?" Yoda asked curiously.


    "It''s honestly beautiful," Luke added with a smile. "So green, with oceans and plant life. And it''s alive in the Force, similar to how this planet is, only... so much different, so much brighter."


    "And the city we are building, called Vercopa''Yaim-"


    "Mando''a, that is," Yoda said, cutting me off. "Why?"


    "We encountered a group of Mandalorians during our raid on Grakkus," I explained. "I invited them to join us, the Skyforged, and start over, moving on from their past to start something new. To honor them and solidify Amescoll''s intent to accept them, they decided to name the city in Mando''a. It means a dream of home."


    Yoda seemed to struggle with the idea that Mandolorians would live alongside Jedi, but he nodded after a moment, which I took as looking for me to continue.


    "Yaim is being built on a massive plateau surrounded by a large, deep jungle," I described with a smile. "It''s protected by its height, and it''s even got a natural spring on the second platform, filling two larger ponds with crisp, cold, fresh water. You should see it. Knight Amescoll would love to have you."


    "Unfortunately, I cannot," Yoda said, shaking his head. "Leave this planet, I cannot. Find me, Darth Sidious would."


    "I actually have some questions about that," I admitted, leaning forward. "None of the Jedi or Force sensitives we know have had to take cover in a deep dark pool of Dark side energy. I know you are powerful, but is there some sort of reason? Luke has more potential power than you, correct?"


    "He does," Yoda agreed with a nod. "Much like his father, he is, before his fall. The Dark side well, hides not my strength. Pulling on the force, constantly I am. Rarely live past eight hundred, my species does. Ever to exist, oldest I am. Dying, I am. Only thing keeping me alive, the Force is."


    That revelation stunned all of us, including myself. As far as I knew, I had never heard of that theory. I knew he was going to die soon, but that he was already dying, and that the Force was keeping him alive...


    "Staving off death, that''s a pretty powerful aspect of the Force," I pointed out solemnly, Yoda nodding in agreement. "Without the Dark side well, you would look like a beacon to those who could sense it."


    "To leave this planet, let go of the Force, I would have to," Yoda explained. "Kill me, that would. Alive, I must remain. So leave, I cannot."

 Chapter 178

    The camp we set up was silent for a long moment, taking in what Yoda had just said. To hear that he clung so loosely to life, that his grip on the Force was all that was keeping him alive...


    "You''ve been holding on to train me, haven''t you?" Luke asked, dragging us out of the silence. "You could have let go at any time after the Order ended¡­ But you hung around, living in this place because you were waiting for me."


    "Need me, we believed you did," Yoda explained, tapping the chair with his cane. "Grown on your own, you have. Proud of you, Obi-wan would be. Proud of you, your father would be, if his mind was not clouded."


    "I¡­ Thank you," Luke said, bowing to the Jedi Master. "I would still like to learn from you. As long as you can accept that we have changed."


    "Changed, you have?" Yoda asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "The Jedi Order was¡­ It was filled with people who wanted to help," Luke said, his eyes flicking to me as he used my words. "But too many aspects of it were wrong, corrupted, or forgotten. We, meaning the start of the new order, whatever we might call it, must be different if we want to avoid the same trappings the old order fell into."


    "Already looking towards the future, you are?" Yoda asked, Luke nodding in response. "Good, good, as long as to far, you do not look. Preach the old ways, I will not."


    "Thank you, Master Yoda," Luke said, bowing again.


    "Good. Now, a rock, there is, sitting on a branch next to a pond," Yoda explained, gesturing into the swamp. "That way, it is. Quickly, you must find it, and return it to me."


    "I.. uh¡­" Luke managed to say, stuttering as he was caught off guard by the order. Yoda tapped his cane on his chair, cutting off any complaint.


    "Quickly, I said. Confused by such a word, are you?"


    Luke stood from his chair, still looking conflicted, but eventually walked away from the table. He looked back as he reached a tree, only for Yoda to add another level of difficulty.


    "Touch the stone, you may not. Get it dirty, you would," The short green Jedi Master said seriously. "The Force, you must use to carry it."


    Luke looked at me now, clearly questioning our hosts'' sanity, before I simply shrugged. He let out a breath and shook his head before turning back and jogging into the low-hanging mist. I waited a few seconds before turning to Boxi.


    "Boxi, send two of your men to follow him," I ordered. "Long distance, as stealthy as you can get. Only interfere if he can''t handle anything that attacks him. Oh and have them comm us when he gets into trouble."


    Boxi nodded before turning to his men, two BXs running off not long after that, sticking to shadows and climbing trees to stay out of sight. They vanished into the fog not long after that.


    "Safe, he would be," Yoda said, though he didn''t seem upset. "Watching him, I am. Much training he has."


    "I would say he is at the very tail end of Padawan," I volunteered. "Though admitted that is mostly based on what I know Ahsoka was capable of."


    "A bad example, she is not," He agreed. "And you have been teaching him?"


    "A few basic things, not much more than that," Assured him. "Mostly just sparring to give him variety when he can get it. He seems to like a sword style you guys don''t teach, so we will probably expand on that."


    "Child of a survivor, could you be?" Yoda asked, looking at me hard, trying to pop my bubble of mystery. "A child of the Jedi Exploration Corps, perhaps, hrrmm?"


    "No, definitely not. why?"


    "You know things, many things," he said with a frown. "Such knowledge, rare it is."


    "Yeah, knowing things is kind of my deal," I explained with a shrug. "Kinda the other side of the magic coin. "For example, I knew you were hiding here before Luke even came to us. I knew Grandpa Palpy hit you pretty hard when you fought, especially that opening blast of lightning, though honestly, you should have probably seen that coming."


    "Hiding his presence in the force, Darth Sidious was skilled at," Yoda explained, his voice sounding resigned. "His intent, I could not feel."


    "That kind of dependency is something I''m hoping to stop in this next generation," I explained, giving him a look over. "I''m assuming that fight was where you started your decline?"


    I was shooting in the dark entirely, but I was rewarded by a look of surprise on his face, then a nod of confirmation.


    "Too much, the damage was for my body," He admitted. "Clinging to life ever since, I have been. Waiting to train Luke, I have been. Pass on the ways of the Jedi, I was determined to do."


    I nodded in understanding, impressed by his tenacity and commitment.


    "Uh¡­ quick question¡­ how is Luke supposed to find a rock through all this fog?" Miru asked, looking worriedly out into the place Luke had left from. "Are you sure he is safe?"


    "The Force, he must use," Yoda explained. "Trust it, he must, or he will never rise in strength."


    We sat there for a while in silence, listening to the living biome that surrounded us. The sounds of bugs, small animals, and lizards all calling out, living in the swamp and fog. It was almost overwhelming when you stopped to listen.


    "He is determined to save his father from the Dark side," I brought up, filling the silence. "He thinks he can pull him back."


    Yoda seemed to think about that for a long moment, both hands on his cane as he looked into the distance. After a bit, he looked at me expectantly.


    "Of this, what do you think?" Yoda asked, raising an eyebrow.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Coming back from that deep from the Dark side is rare, like one in a million, but it does happen," I responded with a shrug. "The best example would be Bastila Shan bringing Revan back to the light. Also, I think Asajj Ventress also turned away, though I''m not sure about that one. If Luke wants to try, I''m inclined to give him a chance. That said, that doesn''t just wipe away everything he did. He was used, manipulated, and brainwashed by the Dark side, but he still did those things. Killing the younglings alone¡­ Luke might turn him, but he still needs to be punished."


    "Punish a powerful Force user, difficult it is," Yoda pointed out. "Impossible to separate from our connection, it is."


    "It very much is not, and you know it," I said, giving him a look. "A handful of masters could manage it, as they have done a few times in the past. However, there would be an easier method once the war is over. A backwater planet called Myrkr would make the perfect prison for him."


    "Ah¡­ that would work, I suppose," He admitted. "Haven for smugglers, it is."


    "We can handle some of them," I assured him, waving his concern off. "The Skyforged is more than equipped to clear some smuggler bases."


    "This name, you have said. Skyforged," Yoda said after a moment. "Your mercenary group, you say. Tell me about them, please."


    "Well, first, Mercenary isn''t really the best term for us. We complete bounties on pirates and the like, sure, but we are more Rebel-leaning than that," I explained. "We have a good record of asset seizure, both from pirates and from Imperials. They call us mercenaries because we refuse to hand over what we get for free. Instead, we sell it to the Rebellion at a steep discount. They get cheap ships, which they desperately need, and I get to make sure my people get paid and get access to the best I can get them."


    "Large, this group is?"


    "We have four ground teams of various amounts of people and three groups of ships," I explained before correcting myself. "Sorry, we have two and a few ships that are being worked on and staffed to create a third. It''s a good start and not bad, considering we have only been around for a few months."


    "Impressive, that is," Yoda said, watching me closely. "Supporting the new Jedi order, you are?"


    "Amescoll and his people joined us officially, but most of them are focusing on their training after we secured holocrons," I explained. "And yes, I am. The Jedi, whatever form they take in the future, they need help. I''m just hoping to help them avoid the issues and mistakes made in the past. Like tying themselves too closely to whatever government comes next when the Rebels win. Jedi need freedom to act in the interests of the Force, not to a government."


    "Freedom from you, will they have?" He asked.


    "Yes, freedom from me as well," I assured him. "Just because they joined doesn''t mean I own their souls or anything. If they want to leave, they are more than welcome. I have a feeling a few of the Padawans, who should honesty be knights at this point, will start asking to help more directly, but none of them are required to do anything."


    Yoda studied me for a moment longer but seemed to find whatever it was he was looking for, because he nodded and leaned back in his chair, his body leaning on the backrest.


    "Expect this to happen, I did not. Even after being defeated, arrogant was I," He admitted, shaking his head. "Expected to the galaxy to spin as I assumed it would, I did."


    "That''s something most people are guilty of, Yoda," I assured him. "Call it the arrogance of sentience, that things work the way we assume they do."


    He chuckled and nodded, letting out a long breath.


    "To train him, how long will I have?" Yoda asked. "Stay long, you clearly cannot."


    "No, but something could be arranged to keep him here," I assured him. "We could go up and send a message out to my people to stop by with a spare ship so he has something to fly back with on his own. Oh! I might even be able to get Chewbacca to stop by and pick him up."


    "Survived the war, did he?" Yoda asked, a sliver of a smile coming through. "Good news, that is. Unsurprised I am, that he joined the Rebellion."


    "In a roundabout way," I explained with a smile. "He got in some trouble but was saved by a smuggler with a good heart named Han Solo. Swore him a life debt for it."


    "An honorable man, this Han Solo is?" Yoda asked.


    "I would say he is a good man, but he grew up having to sacrifice his honor to survive," I explained. "He is working on regaining it, though. His friendship with Luke is helping with that, as is Chewies."


    "Good, good, that it is to hear."


    Yoda, Miru, and I talked more about what was going on with the Rebellion, what our goals were, and what else had gone on in the galaxy. Eventually, Luke returned, a head-sized stone floating in front of him. He gently placed it down on the table, letting out a sigh of relief.


    "One tree climbing rock, untouched by my hands, as asked for," Luke said, a bit of sarcasm leaking into his voice, getting a wince from me. Luke spotted that and closed his eyes for a moment, centering himself as much as he could before focusing back on Yoda.


    "Good," Yoda said with a nod. "Well done, you have.


    Before Luke could respond and accept the compliment, Yoda reached out with his hand, the rock floating up off the table. Luke watched silently before the air rippled with energy, and Yoda fired the stone back the way he came. It tore through the sky in a blur, vanishing into the fog, which curled and spiraled from the passing air currents.


    "Find it again, you will," Yoda said. "Faster, this time, I expect."


    I could see that Luke was very tempted to tell Yoda to stuff it, but he managed to keep his cool, turning around and jogging into the forest after a moment. Once he was gone, I turned to look at Yoda with a smirk.


    "You use this method with all your apprentices?" I asked, ancient Jedi chuckling.


    "No, I do not," He responds. "Like his father, he is. When overcoming challenges, his best learning is done. Also, old, he is. No experience controlling his emotions, does he have. Become reflex, it must."


    Yoda continued to train Luke for several hours until the already dark woods began to get even darker. While Miru and I enjoyed the relative comfort of our survival gear and supplies, Luke roughed it with Yoda, including eating his food and eventually sleeping in his home. It seemed the little gremlin was serious about testing his patience and forcing him to calm down and steady his emotions. As long as Luke was learning how to acknowledge and release them rather than bottle them up until he exploded, that was probably a good idea.


    The morning after we arrived, Miru and I both climbed out of our tent to find Luke already meditating, floating a dozen rocks around him while he did a handstand. It was very similar to some of the exercises I saw in the movies, but I had always assumed that it was a late-game exercise. That meant I was either wrong, or Yoda had skipped the beginner''s stuff in favor of more advanced lessons. Luke ignored us as we exited our tent, focused on his training. Yoda, however, was waiting for us, already having claimed the same seat as before.


    After a quick breakfast, during which he remained silent, he finally spoke up once we had settled again.


    "A request, I have for you," He admitted. "Agreed to stay for a month, Luke has. Wishes to learn from me, he does."


    "That''s great," I said with a smile. "Thank you for taking him as a student. Do you want us to get a ship sent here?"


    "No. It is you personally, I ask to return after one month," He explained, gripping his cane. "Leave, take the distractions with you, you will. Return later, I ask."


    "And if something goes wrong?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "I will reach out through the Force," Yoda answers seriously. "Burn my own life away, I will, if necessary."


    "And Luke agreed to that?" I asked, looking up at the young Jedi trainee, struggling to lift yet another stone. "Including the life-burning part?"


    "Agreed to stay, he has," Yoda responded tellingly.


    "Right. Well, may I bring Ahsoka with me?" I asked. "I''m sure she would like to see you after all these years. She is already going to be pissed that I didn''t tell her about you before."


    "Deserve her kindness, I do not," Yoda said, shaking his head. "But selfish, I am. Like to see her, I would as well."


    "Okay then. We will go and leave Luke to you," I agreed. "In one month, I will return to pick him up."


    Yoda nodded, turning to watch Luke as he meditated, sweat pouring down his face as he kept so many stones floating around him. Yoda flexed his power, pushing several of the stones in different directions before adding two more. Luke bit back a curse, wobbling a bit but managing to stay upright despite the challenge. Yoda nodded as he did, a smile on his face forming as he watched his new student succeed.

 Chapter 179

    Miru and I waited for a few more hours before finally saying goodbye. While watching Luke lift progressively more and more stones with his mind was rather enthralling, I did have a project to get back to. When it was time, Luke took a break from his training to see us off, shaking my hand and giving Miru a hug. We also said goodbye to Yoda, which was when I asked his permission to try something.


    "My healing abilities work in strange ways, and they are very different from the Force," I explained. "They can''t beat time, at least not yet, but they will heal effectively anything, easing and smoothing out someone''s decline. If you let me, it could help you a bit, maybe even make it easier for you to maintain yourself with the Force."


    Yoda, deep in thought, looked out over the swamps that surrounded his home before eventually shaking his head.


    "Now, I cannot. My task, almost complete, it is," He explained. "Once I have passed on my knowledge to Luke, try, you can."


    "Alright, when I come back, we can give it a shot," I said with a nod. "In the meantime, try to take it easy."


    Yoda chuckled and waved me off, Luke joining in as Miru and I left, the BX droids following after us as we once again braved the swamp. We made good time too, between my use of the Clairvoyance spell and the Frostbite spell. Clairvoyance consistently only led us through paths that we could actually traverse, and Frostbite made any wet, unstable ground much more solid.


    When we arrived back at the ship, we climbed up the massive pile of trees we had landed in before heading inside. Miru quickly stripped down and out of her combat gear, rushing to one of the Sonic showers to clean any residue of swamp from her body, real or imagined. While she did that, I got the B2 guard droids packed away, as well as everything we brought with us. It would all need a thorough cleaning, but we had droids to do that back at the station.


    Once everything was ready, Boxi and Miru took to the helm, running through the complete pre-checklist since we weren''t in any rush. While she and Boxi were working their way through, Miru looked over at me as I was sitting in the third seat in the cockpit, doing basically nothing.


    "Boss, did you even think about how we would get home with Luke staying here?" Miru asked, her eyebrow raised. "I''m not good enough to pilot this ship, and I''m curious if you even remembered that the BXs could."


    "Nope, I completely forgot," I admitted easily, leaning back in my chair. "Thankfully, I like to surround myself with competent people and droids, or getting home would have become a hell of a lot more complicated."


    Rolling her eyes at me, Miru stopped and leaned back in her chair as well, leaving Boxi to do the rest. She sat there, looking out at the fog, mist, and massive trees.


    "Are you sure that he is going to be okay here?" She asked, chewing on her lip. "This planet really sucks, and I bet there are a whole bunch of dangerous animals and plants."


    "Luke can take care of himself, and I trust Yoda to keep him from doing anything immediately lethal," I responded with a shrug. "They will be fine, and in a month, Luke will have a lot more training under his belt. I''m excited to see what he will be able to do, honestly."


    "That''s good, I suppose¡­" She responded, trailing off, not exactly sounding enthused.


    "What is it?" I asked, turning to look at her over the consoles between us.


    "It''s... It''s just not fair," She finally said, shaking her head. "He is all tied up in the Rebellion, and they expect him to be their grand savior. I mean, I get that being a Jedi is a big deal, but you''d think that he is the only capable soldier they know of, sending him on all sorts of dangerous missions like he is a beast of burden to order around."


    "You''re not wrong," I admitted with a frown, leaning back in my own chair. "They are putting a lot of responsibility on him. Honestly, they are lucky he has such a strong spirit. But Luke will be okay. He is tough, and he has friends like us to keep him on the straight and narrow. And when this is all over, we can see about getting him separated from whatever comes next so he can focus on the new Jedi, or whatever they call themselves."


    Miru chewed my words over before reluctantly nodding in understanding. She once again continued the preflight checklist before finally starting the ship up and lifting off the planet. It didn''t take long for us to break out of the planet''s atmosphere and jump to lightspeed. Miru was still not in the best mood, so I pointed something out to her.


    "You know, Luke left Artoo with us," I said. "He is an old droid with a lot of modifications. I''m sure Luke would love to come back and find his partner had regained a few of the capabilities that he used to have. As long as you don''t get too invasive or do anything extreme¡­"


    Miru''s eyes lit up at the suggestion, smirking and nodding before rushing away to find the old astromech. I chuckled and double-checked that Boxi could handle the cockpit for now, before heading back into the ship as well. I didn''t have any plans to learn magic or anything else on the trip home. Once I got back to the station, I was back on the enchantment grind, so I wanted to milk my "break" for as much as it was worth. The most work I did for the three-day trip home was talking to Miru about the upgrades Luke''s dad made to Artoo. I couldn''t help that much, but I did point out that he has some sort of thrusters in his legs that would normally allow him to fly for short distances.


    "That is certainly not standard," Miru said with wide eyes. "Thrusters? I think we should take a look at this first."


    When we finally arrived back at Omega Station, it was time to get back to work, enchanting our armor and uniforms. I was determined to get this done sooner rather than later, and now I was feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the challenge.


    I worked on my project for four days before my team finally returned home, their mission complete. By the time the Chariot finally landed, I was in the hangar waiting for them. Tatnia was the first off the ship, with everyone else following after. Nearby, the Loyal Hound was offloading the Mandalorians, and Corvak and his men were making their way to us. I greeted everyone, carefully making sure no one was hurt. Julus was a bit bruised up from a fall, and a Mandalorian had a dislocated shoulder from being hit and run over by a hover tank. I healed both of them quickly before turning to Tatnia.


    "So, how did it go?" I asked, Corvak joining us as we did a casual debrief.


    "Well, your guess was spot on. Someone from the city managed to find an old Clone Wars battlefield," Tatnia responded, all three of us walking away from the hangar as everyone went their separate ways. "Not sure why no one knew it was there, but it was a down-on-their-luck miner who blamed the leaders of the city for it. He and a couple of disgruntled friends repaired some tanks, got some droids up and working, and decided to try their luck as raiders."


    "How did that go for them?"


    "Well, most of them are dead. The rest are in custody," She responded with a shrug. "They''ll probably be executed soon. Outer Rim justice is quick and brutal."


    "Good, so at least we got paid. What about the loot?"


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    "We got a couple of interesting things, but there was a lot left on the battlefield," Corvak explained. "Lots of salvage."


    "Thankfully, I made an executive decision and spent some money greasing palms," Tatnia added with a nod. "Ten thousand credits now, another fifteen in a month and the people asking the raiders questions will conveniently forget to add the battlefield location to their report."


    "So we have a month to get what we can," I said with a nod, wincing a bit. "That''s gonna keep the Whale Shark busy, since it''s the best transport we have."


    "Or we just let the Rebellion do it," Tatnia suggested. "Tell them where the spot is, and tell them the cost is a small portion of the recovered equipment or parts. We got a pretty good selection already, Boss."


    "Alright, when you get some time, talk to Sheora to get in contact with someone who can cut us a deal. Focus on equipment first, but don''t feel afraid to accept some credits as well. For now, go get some rest, I''m gonna see what you guys brought back," I said, patting both of their shoulders. "Oh, and split the reward for completing the bounty among the crew, the Skyforged will be paid with the equipment."


    Tatnia nodded, and both she and Corvak headed off, leaving me to walk back to the hangar. Quartermaster Finder and some of his help were already working offloading the loot, the first find already lowering down on the Chariots cargo elevator. A pair of <u>Dwarf Spiders</u></a>, turned off and compacted as much as possible, were sitting on the lowering cargo elevator. At the same time, Labor droids and a few workers prepared large hover carts to carry the large droid weapons away.


    Rather than wait to see what else was inside, I quickly climbed up the Chariot''s boarding ramp. The front cargo area had been hastily reorganized, pushing crates and parts around to fit a single, almost entirely intact <u>AAT.</u></a> The large, curved front end was incredibly distinctive and much larger than I had imagined. It was massive, and as far as I could, the only damage was to one of its smaller laser cannons, which had been slagged by some heavy weapon. Stacked next to it were several savaged parts, ready to replace the damaged sections


    I resisted the urge to climb inside the tank and inspect the interior, instead squeezing around it to look at what else they had brought back. Behind the large CIS tank was a trio of <u>AT-RTs</u></a>, the bipedal walkers crouched down for easy storage. One of them seemed to be in good condition, while the other two had various carbon scoring and damage. That said, neither of them appeared to be heavily damaged, and once again, a stack of spare parts was included. Behind the walkers were another pair of Dwarf Spiders were behind them.


    When I was about to leave to check out what the crew had stashed in the Loyal Hound, when I spotted one of the Quartermaster''s men walking into the hangar opposite the one that held the Brick. I quickly followed him, stopping at the doorway as the hangar was pretty full, holding three battle-scarred but mostly intact <u>Saber-class</u></a> hover tanks.


    I did a quick inspection of the hover tanks, making sure to stay out of the offloading crew''s way, before heading out of the Chariot. I had a quick convo with QM Finder, telling him I wanted the Sabers up and running first. At least one of them would be permanently stored in the Chariot, probably two of them.


    They were the solution to our heavy weapons problem, and I was very excited to see them in action.


    I also did a quick check of the Loyal Hound, finding that it was filled with parts and equipment as well, though it was mostly smaller pieces, like <u>BARC</u></a> and <u>STAP</u></a> speeders and several crates of recovered weapons, troop equipment, ammo and fuel for the tanks and other vehicles.


    When I finished my inspection, mostly just an excuse to see all the cool toys I had once watched as a kid, I headed back to the living area, spending a bit more time talking to everyone. Ahsoka, who had snuck past me first as I was talking to Tatnia, was waiting for me in my room, freshly cleaned up and changed into casual clothes.


    "So, Tatnia said you went out with Luke," Ashoka said after our initial greetings, laying back on the couch in my room. "She seemed to think you knew exactly who and where was waiting to train him on Dagobah. Did you always know?"


    "Yeah, I knew he would get there eventually," I said with a wince. "I''m sorry I didn''t tell you, but¡­ well, they were in exile as much as hiding away. I knew Luke would eventually be directed there but until then¡­ They wouldn''t have appreciated it if we just showed up."


    "Who was it?" she asked, pulling away to look me in the eyes.


    "Yoda," I responded simply, wincing harder when Ahsoka''s eyes went wide.


    "Master Yoda survived!" she asked, her expression full of shock. "Why didn''t we go and get him? He-"


    "It''s not that simple, ''Soka," I said, leaning forward and rubbing my face. "He¡­ He can''t leave Dagobah. And he isn''t on vacation, he is in exile and in hiding."


    I explained what Yoda had told us about his dependency on the Force, why he was forced to remain on Dagobah, and how he had been waiting for Luke. I explained Yoda''s last hours on Coruscant and how his hiding was also a self-exile. In a lot of ways, Master Yoda was gone, and the old cooky hermit was what remained. I also explained that when I went to pick Luke up, she was welcome to come with me so she could see him again.


    "I¡­ I will think about it." She responded. "I''m not sure if I could face him again."


    "You wouldn''t be alone," I said, squeezing her hand. "And he seems to understand the need for the order to change. Luke laid it out for him, and Yoda accepted. Or at least he appeared to."


    "I can''t believe he is dying," Ahsoka said, shaking her head and letting out a long breath. "I will go with you. If he were to pass away without me saying goodbye when I knew where he was? I would never forgive myself."


    "I''ll be with you the whole time," I repeated, getting a smile this time, as well as a kiss.


    "Thank you. Even if I''m still a bit annoyed you knew about him and never said anything."


    "Sorry, hun," I apologized honestly. "It''s kind of the drawback of knowing things. I can''t just spew out a lot of it as I wish. Information can be dangerous, even when it seems innocuous."


    "I''ll forgive you," She said. "If you give me a back rub."


    "As you wish," I said with a chuckle, before helping her up from the couch and guiding her to the bed.

 Chapter 180

    About an hour and one nap later, Ahsoka and I were still lying in my bed, quietly enjoying each other''s company. Both of us had underestimated how much being away from each other would affect us, and once we were together, it had all come tumbling out. Her head was on my chest as we talked quietly about everything that was going on, from meeting Yoda to what sort of training she thought Luke was going through. After I made a comment about knowing where Yoda was, she went quiet for a moment. I winced, realizing I might have picked at a conversation that was better left settled, when she spoke up, asking a question that caught me off guard.


    "Deacon¡­ How much do you know about me?" She asked. "You knew my name, new I trained under Anakin¡­ How much did you know? How do you know all of this?"


    Her voice sounded worried, revealing how concerned she actually was about the question, and I honestly couldn''t blame her. I had shown before that I knew some pretty specific details about some topics, and I would feel weird being with someone who knew everything about me before we even met. Rather than immediately answer her first question, I started answering her second. This was something I had put a lot of thought into, especially how I would explain it to her specifically.


    "Imagine that the galaxy was filled with threads," I started, Ahsoka shifting to look up at me in confusion. "These threads follow through people, places, even ships, items, and concepts. Some of them are thin and barely visible, while others are thicker and more robust. Those are usually important things, threads in which the whole galaxy pivots around."


    "Like Luke?" She asked, giving my analogy the benefit of the doubt for now.


    "Luke is more like a rope than a thread," I said with a snort. "The poor kid had so much fate and destiny on his shoulders that it hurts my heart to just think about it. But yes, he is one of those important threads. So was his father, so was Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Padme, a couple of Mandalorians, quite a few Jedi."


    "And me?"


    "And you," I confirmed with a nod. "I know the path of some of those threads. Where they intersect, what they did, how they suffered, and how they triumphed. Some of those threads, I know like the back of my hand. For some of them, I only know their highlights or when they intersect with other threads that I know better. And some I only know by name and not much else."


    "You make it sound like you know the future," She asked, pulling back a bit to look at me more closely. "Do you?"


    "I did," I explained with a lot more casualness than that reveal probably deserved. "I knew a lot of it. But the problem is¡­ I don''t exist in the threads."


    "What do you mean?" She asked, looking confused. "How could you not exist?"


    "I don''t know, but I would have to guess that I just never left my home planet," I said, hating even the partial lie. "Either way, I never showed up in any of them. Never helped Tatnia, Nal and Miru break out of Nar Shadda, never helped Julus avenge his friend, never started the Skyforged, never found Omega Station, or interacted with Luke. The Rebels never found Alpha Base if we hadn''t found that CIS computer core."


    "You''re changing the threads," She said. "For the better?"


    "So far," I responded, laying back on my bed. "But there''s no way to know the long-term effects."


    For a moment, we were quiet, neither of us saying anything. Eventually, after what felt like forever, Ahsoka laid back down against me.


    "You''re lucky I have Jedi training," She said, her head back on my chest. "I am so tempted to ask about the future¡­ But I know how badly prophetic dreams can go. There is just as much danger, if not more so, in knowing the future than there is not knowing."


    "Why do you think I work so hard not to reveal that I do?" I pointed out. "If people knew I knew the future, even one that was technically invalid..."


    We were quiet for another long moment before my partner spoke up again.


    "You never answered my question," She pointed out, her nervousness returning. "How much did you know about me?"


    "Not as much as you''re worried about," I assured her. "I know next to nothing about the last twenty years. Before that, I know bits and pieces of your time with Anakin. Other than that¡­ Oh, I know that Plo Koon is the Jedi Master who brought you into the temple. And¡­ I also know what your Order 66 experience was like."


    She listened to what I was saying, nodding as I spoke. She froze a bit as I mentioned the order, and I held her closely.


    "Is that more or less than most people?" She asked after a moment.


    "Depends on who we are talking about, but generally, less," I responded. "I wouldn''t have started this relationship, Ahsoka if I knew every moment of your life. That would be so manipulative and gross..."


    "So you pushing me to move past the Jedi Order? To grow and accept the change we need to make? You didn''t know I needed to do that already?"


    "I knew you had some pretty significant baggage with the Order," I admitted. "But not your issues. That was just plain old observation and wanting to help."


    She hummed, seemingly satisfied with my answer. We lay there, together, for a while longer before finally deciding it was time to get up. We showered and dressed, but as we were about to leave, Ahsoka stopped me.


    "I don''t expect you to share everything you know," She said, her hand reaching out to catch mine. "By the sounds of it, it would be pointless and probably take way too long. But¡­ please let me know if we are following a thread you know or heading into a situation you have knowledge of. If nothing more than to have someone else who knows the situation and can help. Tatnia seems happy to just follow your lead, but..."


    "I get it. It''s not something everyone can stomach. I''ll try my best to keep you in the loop," I agreed with a smile. "Keep in mind, though, that sometimes it comes on very fast."


    "I understand," She said, pulling me back as I tried to head for the door. "One last thing. Knowing all this, it must weigh on you. If you ever need to talk about a thread, get something off your chest, I''m here to listen."


    I turned back fully now, putting my arms around her hips and leaning in to give her a kiss. When I pulled back, I had a smile on my face, as did she.


    "I appreciate that," I said honestly. "And I''ll probably take you up on that if something happens. Thank you."


    She nodded, and we both left the room, heading off to first get some breakfast. It was nothing special, just whatever one of the cafeterias was serving, but we arrived around the same time as Tatnia, Julus, and Miru, which was nice. When breakfast was over, I said my goodbyes and headed off to start enchanting. I had another week of enchanting, at least, before I was done.


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    As my crew enjoyed their downtime after their successful mission, and Tatnia negotiated with General Syndulla for rights to the battlefield materials, the Second Group returned. They brought with them an almost completely undamaged C-Roc, as well as the wreck of another. Their mission had been partially successful, with the intact C-Roc in pretty good condition, and the wreck holding some decent parts to salvage. They also got several starfighters, which we almost immediately sold, most of them to the Rebellion. We would have kept some of them, but none of them were small enough to fit inside the C-Roc hangars.


    The remainder of the week passed, and the first few days of the next as well, before I was finally done with the enchanting. All of our ground teams and all of our combat critical crew were now wearing fully enchanted uniforms and accessories, six in total for each, while the remaining crew had lesser, but still potent enchantments spread out through the group. All of my forces now had significant advantages against any other crew in existence, experienced or not.


    To celebrate, we shipped in food from Nirn, happily hunted for by our very own Mandalorians. It was a massive feast, planned carefully by Tatnia and Ashoka, when they learned I was getting close to finishing my project. I thanked everyone for their hard work, toasting both of them, as well as everyone who fought for us and those who supported us from the station. I was told that there was also a feast going on at Vercopa''Yaim to celebrate our people becoming even stronger.


    After the celebration, and after recovering from the celebration, the First Group, including myself, went off to start recruiting. We had several ships to fill, and even if some of them weren''t even in our possession yet, it was better to start filling the ships we did have so the new hires could have more time to get used to their new roles.


    Not long after that, the second group went out on another ship hunt, this time targeting a slaver group known to use a C-Roc, as well as a few other ships. Even better, this was a target that Captain Irsee was confident that he could ambush properly since they had gotten predictable in the more lawless areas of the Outer Rim. With any luck, they would be able to catch them with their pants down, freeing any captives they have and grabbing ships for us.


    Once we returned with our first batch of recruits, their families moving into Omega Station, we could finally get the Anvil running. The new captain, Captain Gimbel, was another Clone War veteran who left for the rim when the Empire took over. He was eager to stand on the helm of a ship once more, especially an Arquitens, as most of his career had been spent serving on one. He wasn''t ecstatic about the large complement of navy droids that were his crew''s backup, nor the even larger company of B2s that served as security, but he eventually agreed.


    While the new crew worked on settling in, the repair teams worked on the new C-Roc. Miru insisted on fully repairing everything before they could get started on modifications, something her subordinate and lead repair manager agreed with.


    "Modifying something that isn''t fully fixed is how you lose track of broken things," Miru explained. "A stress fracture might get covered up, or a wiring short might get overlooked. Better to make sure everything is as good as it can get. Then, we can start the modifications."


    Of course, the young Twi''lek was incredibly eager to get started on the modifications. Apparently, she had significantly improved on her previous design while also adding secondary alterations on top of the hangar bays.


    While the Second Team went out looking to capture another C-Roc, the First Group was stuck looking for missions. There were plenty of small-scale bounties we could take, but at this point, those were only worth our time if they came with a chance to get our hands on some loot, like enemy ships, equipment, or supplies as well.


    About two days into looking for a good bounty worth taking, Sheora came to us with a message from General Syndulla. Apparently, they had finally cracked another significant portion of the computer core, and, apparently, this one was a doozy.


    "It is a stand-alone repair yard," the general explained through holoprojecter communications. "One with room for at least three capital ships and several smaller. Some of the details were lost, but from what we can see, there was at least one large capital ship berthed there, undergoing repairs."


    "Holy hell... That is big," I said, my eyes wide as I considered just how much a fully automated repair station could do for the Rebellion and the Skyforged.


    "It could be. Unfortunately, this will not be a barely defended outpost or a self-sabotaging insane droid," She pointed out. "There is evidence of a sizable defense force, led by at least one <u>Lucrehulk-class</u></a> capital ship."


    "That... Okay, we need to get together to plan this," I said, General Syndulla nodding on the other side. "We will pack it up and head over to Alpha Base. I assume that''s where you want to run the mission?"


    We talked a bit longer about who I was bringing, and I explained that my second group was tangled up in their own mission at the moment, already set up for an ambush. Depending on how long we took to plan, they may or may not be available to assist. As it was, however only group one was available, including the newly crewed Forward Charge.


    The First Group quickly prepared for our next mission, packing up and settling into the Chariot. The ship was now newly reorganized, with a pair of newly repaired Saber tanks in the hangar bay opposite the Brick since they could deploy directly from the hangar despite the drop. There was also more B2 in the Cargo hold, as well as four Dwarf Droids. The Chariot was very quickly becoming more of a rapid ground troops deployer than a pocket carrier, which, at this point, I was fine with. We had the Whale Shark as an actual carrier, and soon, we would have the Hammer, Tongs, and Punch as well.


    Once everything was packed and secure, Group One took off from the various hangar bays along the side of Omega Station, heading out past the Huntress, as well as the Anvil, which was still technically in training. They were on call, however, in case we decided we needed a bit more firepower.


    Once we jumped to lightspeed, we settled in for the few-day trip to Alpha Base.

 Chapter 181

    The trip through hyperspace was relatively uneventful. We spent most of our time getting to know the controls for our new Saber-class tanks. We all spent at least some time at their controls, getting to know the ins and outs, even if we could only move them a few feet in each direction. We also learned about the turret controls. Obviously, we had the actual weapons disabled, so we didn''t accidentally blow up the hangar. By the time we arrived at Alpha Base, we all had at least a basic understanding of the tank''s controls.


    I definitely needed to reward the clone soldier who was kind enough to show us where the tank''s manual was inside the cockpit before we left. Without that, we would have had considerably less success teaching ourselves.


    Arriving at Alpha Base was an interesting experience. First Group was now a sizable group of ships, consisting of the Loyal Hound, Forward Charge, and the Talos Chariot, with the Brick in reserve for insertions. Knowing that this was just one of our groups and that we had grown so much was pretty awesome, but sitting in the cockpit, listening to the pilots communicate, and looking out the viewports to see the two other ships was awesome. Something about maneuvering together, pulling into casual formation, struck a cord in me that, for some reason, just hadn''t clicked yet.


    The Skyforged was becoming a force to be reckoned with. We weren''t quite ready to punch out Star Destroyers, but we would get there eventually.


    It only took a moment for us to get permission to land, all three of our ships passing through the planet''s defensive fleet, making a beeline for the large Rebel stronghold. Once all our ships had landed, Corvak, Tatnia, Ahsoka, and I were guided into the base, once again riding the wheeled cargo vehicle. They certainly seemed to be handy and made me think getting some similar might be good for the station. We also needed regular transportation for Nirn in general, though our recently gained speeder bikes were due to be sent there in our next delivery of equipment and materials.


    We were guided to a meeting room similar to the ones we had worked in before, although the occupants were different. As expected, General Syndulla was there, as were other people I didn''t recognize, though their tags showed them to be ship captains. I also recognized <u>Wedge Antilles</u></a>, Luke''s second and command and one of my favorite characters in the entirety of Star Wars. While Ahsoka and Tatnia shook hands with Syndulla, I reached out to Wedge.


    "Good to see you again," I said, referring to the first time we had met, oh so long ago at Thila command, after having just escaped Nar Shaddaa.


    "You as well, Deacon," He said, shaking my hand with a slight look of surprise. "I didn''t think you would recognize me."


    "I have an eye for talent," I said with a shrug. "Is Rogue Squadron joining us for this mission?"


    "That''s the plan," He said. "Along with Yellow and Mynock Squadrons."


    He gestured to a Twi''lek male and a human woman sitting next to him, both of whom stood and shook my hand. I also shook hands with Hera, during which she introduced the ship captains and the analyst sitting beside her. Once we were all sitting, she began to talk.


    "First off, I have been instructed to ask you, Deacon, if you know Luke Skywalker''s current location," General Syndulla asked, leaning forward slightly. "He made us aware that he had Jedi business to attend to, that he wanted to discuss it with you, and that it may take some time. Unfortunately, he has not been in contact with us for more than two weeks."


    "I do, he is currently receiving more in-depth training," I explained, internally wincing that no one had considered letting people know he was okay. "Though not from any of the Jedi who joined the Skyforged."


    "Another survivor?" Syndulla asked in surprise. "Who?"


    "I will not say," I answered with a frown. "I respect their privacy for now. I can say that I will be picking Luke up from the planet they are on in¡­ three weeks now, minus a few days. He will likely return a few days after that."


    "Very well," She said, looking at Wedge with a nod. "It seems you will remain Rogue Leader for this mission."


    "Yes, Ma''am."


    She nodded before tapping some controls before an image popped up on the center holo projector. It wasn''t the best quality, as it was clearly taken from far away and blown up as best as possible.


    "Since we last discussed this mission, Deacon, we have managed to get a few scans of the system where the repair station is stationed," The General explained, gesturing to the image. "The design is one our analysts recognize as CIS in origin."


    The station was broken up into five rectangular sections, each seemingly a quarter the size of Omega station, each one connected, end on end, by a pair of multi-floor thick cylinders, though they were mounted at an angle so together the station had an angular curve to it.


    On top of each section were sensor masts and various greeblies, as well smaller hangar bays, though those were harder to make out due to the angle of the scans. Branching out from the rectangular sections were the ship repair ports, two layers of beams and anchor points that would surround the ship being repaired. Three of the repair stations were big enough for decent-sized capital ships, while the remaining two had much smaller bays, with two per rectangle. Because of the angle of each rectangular base, each repair bay had plenty of room to work on ships that were bigger than the bays could fit around, working section by section.


    One of the large bays was occupied, while three of the smaller bays were as well. On top of that, the scans confirmed the presence of a Lucrehulk, as well as a half dozen smaller support ships.


    "That¡­ dammit, that is going to be tough," I said with a wince. "But damn, what a find. What sort of power readings are we getting?"


    "Low power from the Lucrehulk, almost none from the repair station," the general responded. "Our analysts believe the station is fully shut down to save power and resources while the Lucrehulk is on standby, scanning the system."


    "Probably the only reason your scans weren''t noticed," I pointed out. "They will notice if we start getting close, though. And that Lucrehulk, well, that''s going to chew through even one of your larger Mon Cal ships¡­ not to mention that it''s from before people forgot how deadly starfighters can be, so it''s going to have more than enough point defense systems to hold off three squadrons."


    "And that''s if the whole ship is empty," Corvak pointed out. "That ship is supposed to have hundreds of droid starfighters on board."


    "Exactly," I said, nodding towards my subordinate. "If we go head-on, the only way to beat it is to properly beat it, meaning we overwhelm it with too many ships for it to handle. Otherwise, it''s going kill a lot of people."


    "We don''t have that option," General Syndulla explained. "We have access to precisely one MC75 Star Cruiser, the Rapid Tides, under the command of Ferila Setano, which is already a significant redistribution of assets. We also have a pair of MC30c frigates and several smaller ships.


    "Seriously?" I asked incredulously. "With all you have to gain from this, that''s all you can muster up? That''s not nearly enough to cleanly take the station. Hell, it might not be enough to messily take it."


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    "It is all the Rebellion can spare at the moment," She explained, not sounding very happy, but clearly resigned to it. "We are stretched thin, and even if we might want this repair platform desperately, we can''t just collapse our ship station, drag away resources, and cut down defense fleets."


    I mentally bite my tongue, holding back from pointing out that any world that they are holding is only because the Emperor is letting them, defense fleets or not.


    "Well, then attacking them outright is not an option," I said with a frown, leaning back and crossing my arms. "I''m not dragging my people to a battle that is a coin flip, and neither should you."


    "Which is why we are having this meeting," She explained, raising an eyebrow at me. "We need to come up with a better idea than a frontal assault. A strategy that can minimize casualties but still give us the repair station on the other side."


    "Well¡­ getting rid of the Lucrehulk is our primary concern then," Ahsoka pointed out. "It is the heart of the fleet and most likely the main source of starfighters and firepower," She pointed out. "If we disable it or otherwise remove it from the fight, it sounds like we have enough forces to easily deal with the remaining ships."


    "I wouldn''t say it would be easy," One of the captains of our accompanying starships said with a frown. "But certainly a lot less of an issue."


    "The first thing we need to ask is, what is the likelihood anyone is still alive on these ships," Wedge pointed out. "Dealing with a living commander is very different from dealing with a droid control-mind."


    "I would agree," General Syndulla agreed with a nod, turning to look at a woman sitting beside her. "What do we know?"


    "Well, if the ship was stationed there at the end of the Clone Wars, it''s been there for over twenty years," The analyst said. "But a ship of that size could have supplies for its organic crew for much longer than that. There''s no way to really know."


    "A ship that size could contain any number of modifications to sustain its small crew indefinitely," I pointed out. "It would be child''s play to turn a hangar into a hydroponics bay. But I think you guys are missing the point. The Lucrehulk design was used exclusively by the Trade Federation."


    "That is true," The analyst agreed with a nod, seemingly genuinely curious about where I was taking this. "What does that mean?"


    "Just prior to the Clone Wars, Nemodians had just successfully taken back control of the Trade Federation from Kuati," I explained. "Nute Gunray was eager to put as many of his friends in power as possible, and that included on the capital freighters that cost half a billion credits."


    "So this ship''s captain was likely a Nemodian," one of the ship''s captains stated. "What does that have to do with it likely being empty or not."


    "Nemodian culture was all about the drive to succeed, to grow your own power and wealth," Ahsoka said, picking up exactly what I was putting down. "If there was a captain on board that ship, it was likely Nemodian, and there is no way any high-up Nemodian would sit at the helm of such a fleet and not use it to expand his domain. Turn pirate, start a security company, sell the ships to the highest bidder, or even attempt to trade it for favors. For any race, it would be tempting to do any of those things, but for a success-driven Nemodian? Too good to resist, especially after a few years had passed and nobody came to claim the ships."


    "So, because the fleet hasn''t gone anywhere, that means it must be empty of life," General Syndulla said. "I do not know much about Nemodians, but I can''t see any race just sitting and waiting for twenty years, especially out here in an empty system. Thoughts?"


    "I will admit, I was functioning under the assumption that the people would have hunkered down and hidden after the Clone Wars ended in the Republic''s favor," The analyst responded. "Your interpretation does make a certain amount of sense as well."


    "Why would the staff be fully robotic?" Wedge asked. "Alpha Base was because the droids went crazy, right?"


    "My guess is that this is an off-the-books operation," I suggested. "The place we found the computer core that contained all of this intel was an off-the-book refuge, designed as a place CIS higher-ups could hide if the war turned south. Alpha Base was off the books as well, just in a different way. It makes sense that this would also be some sort of secret location."


    "But to what end?"


    "I have no idea, but it exists for a reason, and it was on a list of hidden, secret assets," I said with a shrug. "If the last raids are any proof, precisely what happened and what is going on at the location will become much more apparent once we are there and can look at the data archives or records.


    "Perhaps we could get back on track?" General Syndulla asked, prompting Wedge to apologize. "How do we get past the active ship? The Lucrehulk is the only ship we could see that had an active energy signature, meaning it is keeping watch. How do we bypass it?"


    "Well¡­ If we assume no one is actually home¡­ Why not pretend to be their superior officers?" Tatnia suggested. "There''s gotta be a way to trick the droids into thinking we are one of them. If they accept us as actual officers, they would basically do anything that we say... right?"


    "We¡­ could probably program a ship to send off CIS signals," General Syndulla agreed. "Would that be enough?"


    "I mean¡­ we have droids too," I pointed out, running my hand through my hair as I considered the idea. "Hell, I bet we could even find some old security codes to use. With the right actor, we could convince them we are their new commander, accepting control of the whole system."


    "Assuming they don''t have pre-existing orders," One of the ship captains pointed out. "They might just get attacked on sight, no matter what credentials you''re broadcasting."


    "Oh, no, for sure," I agreed readily. "Its razor thin and could go either way. But it''s also probably the cleanest idea we are gonna get. If we can shut down the Lucrehulk, even if it alerts everyone else, you guys can mop up the rest of the fleet. Then, once everything is down, we can move on to the station and the ships inside. It''s the definition of high risk, high reward."


    "What happened to no coin flip?" Corvak asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "I''m not saying we should stride into the carnivore''s den without a care," I said. "But with the right escape routes in place..."


    "I''m not sure if relying on such an all-or-nothing bet is wise," One of the ship captains said, crossing their arms. "The repair dock is a jewel we cannot afford to lose out on. Surely, waiting for more resources to be open for us is better."


    "I think¡­ that there is a lot to be gained, and that makes relying on a trick like this risky," General Syndulla said. "But I also agree that it seems like our best chance to outmaneuver this fleet."


    She was silent for a moment, considering what she had heard, running it through her head before finally seeming to come to an internal decision.


    "Let''s spend some more time on Tatnia''s idea," She finally said, giving my second-in-command a nod. "If we can come up with a ''plan b'' play or find a way to fill in the plan gaps, then we should go with it. If we can''t, we can return to the drawing board."

 Chapter 182

    The planning session went on for another few hours. While listening to General Syndulla and the other Rebels discuss resource and time management wasn''t the most exciting way to spend an afternoon, it was preferable to what General Draven tried to do to us last time. Being involved with the planning from the get-go made it significantly easier to pick out any issues, rather than doing it afterward. About an hour and a half in, and we have more or less settled on a refined version of Tatnia''s plan, with a few different escape plans in place depending on what stage of the plan we were at, should anything go wrong.


    Most of the plans only existed to help before we made it into the Lucrehulk. Once we were on board, we were more or less on our own. While not ideal, we actually stood a solid chance of completing the mission, even if our charade collapsed the second we touched down. Once we were deployed, we could disable the ship internally, relying on our skill and armor. It was a tall order, but as long as we kept moving and used the ship''s corridors to our advantage, we stood a good chance of getting to the ship''s central core and disengaging all the droids.


    Once we started to solidify the plan, General Syndulla started pulling in people with expertise in slicing and programming to the meeting. She wanted to start piecing together just how difficult it would be and how long it would take to set up the codes and programming we were looking for. The specialists agreed that it would take a few days if we needed them to rush, but a bit longer if they took their time. Considering the success of the mission relied completely on the programming holding up under scrutiny, General Syndulla understandably told them to take their time.


    While it sucked that we would have to wait, it would give my people more time to finish their other tasks and join us. I wanted as many of our ships on hand as possible for this mission. The Skyforged was going all in on this. Even the Anvil would be joining, the first mission for its new crew.


    Unsurprisingly, it was decided that the Talos Chariot would be the fake CIS ship. While it had been extensively modified, it was still recognizable as a C-Roc Gozanti-class, a popular transport ship in the CIS navy. We would be escorted by four <u>Belbullab-22</u></a> heavy starfighters. These were classic CIS starfighters, one of the few manned craft, and were seen as a status symbol. Having four of them escort us would signify a high-status member of the CIS and, with any luck, would add weight to our claim.


    Wedge volunteered himself and his squadron to fly as escorts. Apparently, they even had some time in the ships as well, having evaluated the squadron that the Rebellion found at Alpha Base.


    When our planning session was finally over, we returned to the Chariot, where Corvak''s men and my team were waiting. We showed them some of the scans and explained the mission parameters before presenting the idea to them. They seemed to like Tatnia''s idea and had no issues being the tip of the spear once more.


    "Kinda regret not bringing Miru," I admitted, listening to my team try and crack our plan, just to make sure it was up to par. "As much as I would hate bringing her on the mission, having her here at least would make me feel better about all the programming and slicing they will be doing."


    "Have her come out with the Anvil or the Second Group," Tatnia suggested. "She doesn''t have to come with us on the actual mission either."


    "Fair. Alright, I''ll send her a message."


    Over the next few days, several people worked on our ship, installing secondary transponders and several other devices used to change the information a ship was broadcasting. These devices were very illegal, for obvious reasons, but came in very handy for smugglers and rebels alike.


    They also started repainting the Chariot, getting rid of the purple markings and replacing it with standard CIS blue, even adding the symbol along the back, right in front of the engines. Lastly, and perhaps the saddest, was painting over the name, replacing it with Quick Deal, following the CIS tendency to use business-related names.


    Eventually, the Skyforged fleet arrived. The Second Group returned from their mission, having successfully captured another C-Roc, as well as a handful of other ships. None of them stood out, not even the starfighters, so the Quartermaster was already working on selling them. Once everything was offloaded and supplies were restocked, the Second Group, plus the Anvil made the trip to Alpha Base.


    Once they arrived, the fleet remained in space. It was certainly impressive looking, as, despite the fact that there were still only seven ships, they still looked cool as hell, all grouped together. I caught a glimpse of it while riding in the Brick to pick up Miru from the Whale Shark and bring her down to the surface.


    Miru spent a day checking over all the newly installed equipment, making a few adjustments of her own but ultimately deciding they had done a pretty good job installing it. Then, she and Racer disappeared to join the slicing and programming team.


    According to General Syndulla, they were tearing through the previously unsearched sections of the computer core. Originally, their team had been focused on finding more places like Alpha Base and other assets, so they had more or less ignored other information. Now, they needed high-end passcodes, security clearances, and more. They were making good progress, especially after Racer and the two slicer droids Miru brought with her got to work.


    We got a few offers to buy the droid before they even finished, but I denied them. Miru agreed to modify a few astromechs for them, for a personal fee, of course.


    While the techies worked their magic, the rest of us prepared for our mission. Boxi''s Commando teams transferred to the Chariot since they fit perfectly in with our cover. We also offloaded the two Saber tanks, as well as anything else that would directly connect us to the Republic, which wasn''t much. The Saber tanks were loaded into the Whale Shark''s bay and tucked to the side. We would get them back once the mission was over.


    It took six days total for the slicers and mechanics to install and prepare us for our grand infiltration. The ship looked pristine, just like you would expect the personal transport ship for a high-ranking member of the CIS to be.


    Once everything was set, the pacing for the mission picked up considerably. The Rebel fleets quickly prepared and got into shape, and within a few hours, the First Group joined the Second Group and the Anvil in orbit. From there, our astronavigational computer checked the calculations for our first jump. The Rebel fleet jumped first, and after a few seconds, we followed.


    The trip to our gathering point, where the Chariot would eventually split off, and we would be on our own, was actually a long haul. The CIS repair yard was not too deep into the Outer Rim, but it was nearly on the other side of the galaxy from Alpha Base.


    I spent most of my time learning magic, studying, and practicing. Rather than focusing on learning on single spell, I went through a lot of the techniques and methods that my grimoire taught to decrease spell costs and increase their effectiveness. By the time we dropped out of hyperspace on the fifth day, I was confident I had made good strides in my mana efficiency, especially for Destruction and Conjuration, as my natural talent in them showed once again.


    We spent a few hours at the rendezvous point, getting everyone in place and calculating the final micro-jump. We were only just out of the system, meaning the rest of the fleet was on hand to escort us out if need be.


    While everyone prepared, I took the opportunity to change into my disguise. Rather than make something special, the Rebels simply took my usual beskar uniform and added a lot more CIS blue, as well as replaced the Skyforged symbol with the CIS equivalent.


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    The pair of Rebel slicers that would be accompanying me, a Querren and a Duros, both of which would have been common in the CIS, were also outfitted. Both of them knew what they were getting into and came with solid recommendations from General Syndulla. I could only hope that they could take the heat.


    Before we made the final micro-jump alone, I gathered everyone together, giving one of my usual pre-mission talks.


    "Alright, everyone," I started, looking at my team, the two rebels joining us, as well as Boxi and his fourteen squad members. "We''ve gone over this already. You know what''s happening. In a few minutes, we will jump into the system and broadcast our clearance codes. If the fleet reacts aggressively, we immediately jump out. We already have the jump calculated, so it should be as simple as swinging her around and punching it. Assuming they react positively, we make our way to the Lucrehulk and land inside one of its hangars. Team one¡­"


    I gesture to myself, to Boxi, and to my two slicer companions.


    "Will be leaving first, demanding to see the bridge," I continued. "The rest of you, stay here and get ready. With any luck, you can spend the whole mission here doing nothing but waiting to get paid. However, if something goes wrong and we are made, then it''s up to you guys to fight your way through the ship and get to the central computer core. Racer and his two astromech friends are your VIPs. All three of them need to arrive intact to have any chance of them successfully slicing into the ship while it''s on alert. Meanwhile, team one will be hunkering down, trying not to get overwhelmed by droids."


    I looked around at everyone, including Ahsoka, who winked and nodded, her body language full of confidence.


    "Make no mistake, guys, despite the beskar, they have enough resources to overwhelm us. You guys may be protected from a few dozen blaster bolts in the same spot, but if you get stuck against a big enough group, they will overwhelm that resistance and melt through," I pointed out, getting a few winces. "Rotate who is leading the charge, make sure not to get caught in dead ends, and don''t be afraid to use a few grenades if you get caught up. Any questions? No? Fantastic."


    I nodded at everyone, watching as they all settled in for the final jump. When everyone was set, I turned to the bridge, walking inside and standing a few feet behind Calima. I checked over the sensor droid''s shoulder to confirm that our four escort ships were in position, waiting patiently for our word.


    "Alright, ready when you are, Calima," I said, doing my best to give the impression of a seasoned military leader standing at parade rest. "Send the away message, let the Rogues know, and then take us out."


    She nodded, and the droid at the comms station tapped out on his console. We had replaced all of the bridge save Calima with droids, just in case someone peeked inside. Previously, we had clones on the bridge, which would have given the game away pretty awkwardly if someone had spotted them.


    "Away message confirmed," The naval droid said a few moments later. "Response was ''May the force be with you.''"


    "Yeah... We''re probably going to need it," I admitted.


    Calima pulled us away from our fleet before engaging the hyperdrive. We entered hyperspace for only a split second before immediately dropping back out. The view through our forward port flashed twice, settling on a new vista.


    A planet, still far enough away to only be the size of a giant beach ball, hung in the back, slowly spinning. It was a red world, with harsh-looking storms that swirling around the cloud layer. In front of that was the space station, seemingly stationary in the distance. It was big, the scale feeling completely different this close, even if we still had a pretty good chunk of space between the station and us.


    Ahead of the station was the defensive fleet, locked together in loose formation, the massive Lucherulk at the center. Surrounding it was a cloud of smaller ships, all dormant but nonetheless very threatening. Just at a glance, I could see a pair of <u>Munificents</u></a>, three <u>Dreadnaughts</u></a>, a single <u>Recusant</u></a>, a handful of other ships like <u>Diamonds</u></a> and <u>Hardcells</u></a>, and nearly two dozen smaller starships. Perhaps the most disturbing ship, other than the Lucherhulk, was the <u>Providence-class</u></a>. Thankfully, it was not floating in formation. Instead, it was the single capital ship sitting in the bay of the unpowered station repair.


    "Fuck I hope that Providence stays off," I asked, cursing under my breath. "There''s no way the fleet can handle it and all of this¡­"


    "Do we bug out?" Calima asked, looking over her shoulder at me. "Already¡­ picking up activity from the big one."


    "No, we knew it was here," I pointed out. "It''s a bit scarier this close¡­ but we knew it was here. Start the broadcast."


    "Yes, Boss," Calima said, nodding to the droid at the comms, who activated our fake identification broadcast.


    "That¡­ got their attention, Boss," Calima said after a moment. "Lucherhulk power usage is increasing. They-"


    "Incoming transmission!"


    The comm droid''s console blinked, before a holoprojection appeared in the space between him and Calima, showing a <u>super tactical droid</u></a> standing there on the bridge of the Lucrehulk.


    "Unknown vessel, identify yourself!"


    "I am Admiral Deacon of the Confederacy of the Independent Systems Navy," I declared confidently, turning to face the droid head-on. "On board my personal vessel, the Quick Deal. You will power down your weapons and prepare a private hangar for our arrival. I have come to inspect and reclaim CIS Navy assets."


    The droid, seemingly having switched the holoprojector on mute, turned slightly to address someone off-screen. After a moment, he focused back on me.


    "It seems your identification follows standard protocol, and your security clearance is within acceptable levels," the droid agreed. "However, I do not recognize you, nor is your ID in our known data banks."


    "Of course it isn''t!" I declared, trying my best to look stern and annoyed by the statement. "Are your chronometers dysfunctional? You have been out of contact for over twenty years!"


    The droid was silent again, but given the background noise, it was actually just not responding rather than muting the comms.


    "My chronometer is in perfect condition. However, your final statement is correct, and concerning," The droid confirmed. "Very well, you may approach. Sending coordinated to the private hangars. Shall I begin wake-up protocol for the rest of the fleet?"


    "Of course not! There is no telling what sort of damage they have incurred while sitting here, uselessly," I explained, brushing off his suggestion with a wave. "I will not risk CIS Navy assets without the proper inspection first, especially not when they are so close together. Prepare for our inspection, and heat up the bridge for us. I will be there shortly."


    I looked down and nodded to the comms droid, the robot ending the call with a button press. I take a long, slow breath, releasing it carefully before finally speaking.


    "Alright¡­ Buckle up everyone, Calima, take us in!" I said with a smirk. "Looks like it''s about to get interesting."

 Chapter 183

    Calima followed the flight path that was sent to us, diving into a slop that brought us directly to the jaws of the Lucrehulk. According to our sensors, none of the ships that surrounded the large circular starship were waking up, which was a good sign. However, sensors said that the Lucrehulk was just about fully operational. The fact that its weapons weren''t charged was about the only reason I didn''t order a retreat, despite the fact that things seemed to be going as well as we could hope for.


    We approached the large ship, passing through the gap in its outer ring. As we slowed, the Chariot shuddered around us as the Lucrehulk''s loading tractor beams passed over us, releasing us once we had sufficiently slowed. Once we passed, we were in the inner area, the main core ship just ahead. We slowly turned left and followed around the inside of the ring. Eventually, we came to our directed hangar bay, and Calima brought us in.


    As we landed, I left the bridge behind, nodding to the slicers who would be accompanying me. They stood quickly, and we prepared to head down to the first deck when Ahsoka stopped me.


    "May the force be with you," she said before leaning in and kissing me quickly. "And good luck."


    "Same to you," I said, my hand coming to rest on her hip. "Kick some ass if this goes sideways."


    She nodded, and the slicers followed me as I made my way down to the first deck, the rest of the crew staying on the second. Boxi followed as well, his team falling in behind us as we made our way to the boarding ramp. I stopped by the last door, turning to look at my two organic accomplices.


    "You two ready?"


    "Yes sir," They both responded, their faces determined and clear, which I took as a positive sign.


    "Alright, into the belly of the beast," I said with a smirk. "Let''s hope it''s not hungry."


    I slapped the controls for the boarding ramp, waiting patiently for it to deploy, silently resting against the hangar floor. Once the ramp was set, we slowly made our way down and out. I took the lead, with my accomplices walking slightly behind me on my left and right. Behind us, Boxi and his second in command led his troops down, quickly taking a more defensive position beside us.


    I had a moment to look around, pretending as if I was inspecting the facilities rather than looking for potential dangers. I spotted our escort, the Rogues, still inside the cockpits of the Belbullab starfighters. Wedge gave me a salute when I looked at him, and I simply nodded back. After a few moments, a pair of B2s arrived, charged with escorting us to the bridge.


    "Well, let''s get going then," I said, shaking my head. "We have quite a few ships to inspect. The sooner we start, the better!"


    We made our way through the cold ship, walking through corridors that were mainly empty save the occasional groups of droids. As we passed, they would step to the side, making room for my entourage. After a good five-minute walk and a turbolift ride, we arrived at our destination and finally got a good look at <u>the bridge</u></a>.


    It was an ample, open space, with the front curved in a semicircle, with large viewports looking over the massive ship. I could see the edge of the rings, even as I just stepped through the doorway inside. There were a few oversized chairs, as well as circular consoles dotted along the forward curve, all under the viewports. Everything was either gray or black, with quite a few droids working the consoles and walking around, perhaps as security. As we stepped into the room, I could hear Boxi''s team spreading out slightly along the edges of the room while Boxi himself and three other BXs followed us as we walked further into the room, heading towards the super tactical droid.


    "Admiral Deacon, welcome to the bridge of the Lasting Profit," the droid said as he turned to face us. "I am super tactical droid B4-88. How may I be of service?"


    "You can start by giving full core access to my subordinates here," I said, gesturing to the slicers. "They have come a long way to confirm your computer core is functioning properly. While they are doing that, you can brief me on the readiness of this fleet as you know it."


    For a moment, I stared at the droid, waiting for it to respond. If there was ever a point that the droids would reveal they knew something was up and that they had been lying just to force us into their grip, this was it. Thankfully, that didn''t seem to be what was happening, as B4-88 responded quickly.


    "I apologize, but I must confirm their credentials before they are allowed that level of access," the embellished droid responded. "As I am sure you know, core access requires special permission due to its sensitive nature."


    "Of course I do. Give it to them," I said, turning and gesturing to the two slicers, who stepped forward and provided their clearance.


    My security access was built from information that the Rebellion''s slicers constructed from the data we got from the computer core. The slicers, however, didn''t need a high rank, they required special acknowledgments of specific roles. So, instead, they built their IDs using data stolen from Alpha Base data, a CIS base whose whole purpose was programming. Assuming everything was done correctly, their clearance would be just about as high as a computer expert for the CIS could get.


    "Hmm, it seems we have run into the same problem we had with your identification, Admiral," B4-88 said. "Their identifications check out, even if their names are not in any of our databases."


    He seemed to pause before returning the identification tablets back to the slicers, and I had to fight to keep from breathing out in relief.


    "We will have to update them as soon as possible," He finished, giving us a slight nodding bow.


    "Of course, that is one of the tasks we are hoping to accomplish today," I confirmed, the droid nodding in response.


    "Very well."


    The tactical droid escorted us personally back down the turbo lift, Boxi and his team following after us. As we walked, B4-88 gave me an overview of the fleet''s strength. According to him, all of the ships that surrounded the Lucrehulk were fully functional, while the starships stationed inside the repair bays of the station were, unsurprisingly, still under repair and would remain that way until they received their next delivery of parts and materials.


    There were a surprising number of ships in the patchwork fleet, meaning our initial count had definitely been off. This was obviously concerning, but the fact that the ships being repaired were not staffed, including the Providence, meant we could still handle the situation. After detailing what the unfinished ships required, the tactical droid began discussing the resources each ship in the fleet had on hand. It was a lot of numbers, but I did see a pattern. Most ships were low on starfighters, but those that had full starfighter complements were always low on droids. I wasn''t exactly sure why that was, but I listened and nodded as the droid continued to talk.


    I''m sure we would figure it out after we got access to more information.


    Eventually, finally, we reached the central computer core for the ship. The tactical droid guided us to a series of access terminals, and the slicers, with barely a look back at me, got to work. I did my best to ask intelligent-sounding questions about the fleet strength and the composition of droid forces, keeping an eye on the slicers as they worked. About fifteen minutes in, they stopped and looked at each other, whispering quietly before the Quarren returned to typing, and the Duros looked back at me.


    "Mission complete, sir," he said simply. "We have them."


    I looked at him in surprise before looking at the super tactical droid, who was just standing there with no discernible change in attitude. I then looked back at the Duros with confusion.


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    "We have what? Control of the ship? The droids?"


    "Yes, sir," he confirmed. "We have patched in an update to their loyalty programming. It''s a bit complicated, but for now, they will follow your commands."


    "Holy hell, that was fast. Well done!" I said, turning to look at B4-88. "You are relieved of command. Return to the bridge and await further orders."


    "Yes, sir, Admiral Deacon."


    Without another word, the supposedly super-intelligent droid left, leaving through the same access door we had entered in through. I rubbed my hands together, eager to move on to the next step.


    "Alright, let''s get back to the bridge, I want to confirm that the rest of the fleet is-"


    "Uh¡­ sir?" The Quarren said, his voice sounding a bit squishey due to his biology. "I think there is more... There is some custom programming here... This is the central command ship for the entire fleet, but it also controls their direct command and update processes. All of the ships follow the directives of this ship completely, and it can update them at will."


    "For the layman, what exactly does that mean?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "Someone modified this ship, and I believe the other ships so that this core has complete control over everything," He explained, sounding just as shocked as I was. "All we have to do is wake them up and send the update."


    "... I''m sorry, did you just say we could control the entire fleet?" I asked, doing my best to stay calm. "No combat, no fighting, just turn them back on and give them the command?"


    "Yes, sir." The Duros responded


    "The ships are set to take cues from this ship, sir," The Quarren explained. "From what I know, this is very much not standard code. It''s not very smart either, so I don''t know why someone would do it. But either way, we have control over the core, and the core has complete control over the fleet."


    For a moment, all of the numbers, the hundreds of thousands of battle droids that the B4-88 had just described, and several thousands of starfighters buzzed through my brain, not to mention the incredible fleet of capital ships. I couldn''t help but laugh at the absurdity. Whoever had set this all up had just handed us everything we needed on a silver platter.


    "Well, boys, congratulations," I said with a smirk. "You two just became just became a really big fucking deal. How long will this take?"


    "Not long," The Quarren responded. "It can be done from the bridge once we are done here."


    "Good. Let''s get it done so we don''t have to risk waking any of the fleet up when we message the rest of your people."


    Both of the slicers nodded and got back to work, finishing up their jobs before shutting the terminals off and stepping back. We quickly made our way back up to the bridge to find B4-88 already there, silently waiting for more orders. As we began the process of waking each of the fleets ships up, we made sure to keep it all in small batches so that we could easily take them down with the Lucrehulk if they resisted the update.


    Over the span of two hours, we connected to and updated every ship, shifting them around in the fleet and scanning each of them with the Lucrehulk''s sensors to make sure they were in good condition. Unsurprisingly, a few of the smaller starships did have some minor damage from staying in the vacuum of space for so long with no maintenance. Still, it was mind-boggling to see what we had just found and snagged for ourselves.


    During that time, Ahsoka, Tatnia, and Vaz left the Talos Chariot to join me on the bridge, while Nal and Julus, as well as half of the BX commandos, including Boxi, took the Talos Chariot out of the hangar to inspect the repair station.


    The station was under the same rules as the rest of the fleet, meaning once it was on, they would be under our command. However, unlike the starships, the station could not be turned on remotely. Its reactor needed to be manually activated, meaning a team needed to be sent.


    I was nervous about letting them go off on their own, but within twenty minutes of them landing inside one of the station''s hangar bays, we were passing commands to the station, the entire thing under our control. It was completely seamless, once again making it clear that someone had specifically made it so they could come here, activate the Lucrehulk, and suddenly gain access to a fleet of ships.


    Thankfully, as the new free second half of our team started investigating the station more, as well as the ships docked in the repair bays, Vaz and Tatnia investigated some of the crew quarters. Within a few minutes, they stumbled upon the answer to this whole place in a log that was over twenty years old.


    The entire setup was a ship-skimming scam. CIS warships would engage in battles with the Republic and, in the process, get damaged. Then, someone in the CIS navy would wipe a few droids and grease a few palms, all to have some of the ships that were reported as damaged by the fleet battle records declared as totaled. They would then haul off the slightly damaged starships and set them into the repair bay.


    In record time, and for chump change, they would have a manned, mostly stocked ship all to themselves, with the CIS records calling it totaled and scrapped.


    It wasn''t a bad racket, even if it only worked because the starships were staffed with droids. Still, judging by just how many ships they, now we, had, it clearly worked. It made me wonder if the people responsible died in the CIS purge or if the station was lost for other reasons.


    Once the ships and the station were all under our control, I activated the hyperwave and reached out to General Syndulla on board the Rapid Tides.


    "Deacon, I assume from your lack of haste that the fleet hasn''t been activated?" She asked, sounding a bit concerned. "What''s going on?"


    It was understandable that she was a bit confused, since my message was supposed to come in when it was time for them to jump in and help take down the fleet. Instead I was smiling, with no sign of any fighting.


    "Oh, it''s activated," I said with a smirk. "It''s just doing what it''s told, waiting for further orders."


    For a moment, she looked confused until her eyes went wide, and she realized what I was implying.


    "The whole fleet?" She asked, clearly not believing her assumption. "The entire fleet is¡­"


    "Completely under our control," I confirmed, my smirk stretching to a grin. "We just scored big time, General. Congratulations o-"


    Ahsoka, who was standing next to me, put her hand to her forehead, catching my attention. I frowned and reached out, putting my hand on her shoulder to steady her. After a moment, she recovered, looking at me with wide eyes.


    "Something is coming," she said. "I think it-"


    "Hyperspace signature incoming!" A droid voice called out from a nearby console.


    I looked up just in time to see an absolutely massive ship drop out of hyperspace. It was angular and sharp, with jagged lines and what looked like an entire cityscape sitting on top. The engines were red, almost angry, and it filled the Lucrehulk viewports, dwarfing the normally massive ship.


    The <u>super star destroyer Executor</u></a>, the flagship of Darth Vader, had arrived.


    The bridge was silent, all of us frozen, as three more ships jumped in, <u>all of them using the absolutely massive flagship as cover</u></a>, appearing on the opposite side of the warship. Three <u>Interdictor-class Star Destroyers,</u></a> with their four bulbous gravity well generators, sat behind the Imperial Behemoth.


    I barely even heard the droids report that we were suddenly in a gravity field.

 Chapter 184

    "A gravity well has enveloped us!" The droid behind our sensors shouted, despite the organics crew''s refusal to move. "The field extends far past us! Estimated time to escape, two minutes, sixteen seconds."


    I blankly stared out of the viewport, looking at a battleship that dwarfed everything we had entirely by itself. I knew somewhere inside me that these ships weren''t invincible, but I could not have prepared myself for the absolute feeling of dread staring down the barrel of one would bring. We weren''t ready, no one was ready, we-


    "Deacon. Deacon! What is it?" General Syndulla shouted, finally breaking me free from my shock. "Should we jump in the fleet?"


    "What? No! No, it''s an Imperial ambush," I explained. "A trio of Interdictors and¡­ The Executor, Vader''s super star destroyer. Just stay away, or you''ll be stuck too."


    Now it was her turn to be shocked into silence, which was fine because I suddenly had a lot on my plate. My mind was spinning at top speed, trying to see an angle, a play, a loophole. The SSD had more guns than my entirely newly gained fleet, outclassing us in everything, even weight...


    "Incoming transmission from the unknown ship," The comms droid called out.


    "Leave it ringing! Send a message to the Quick Deal! Tell them what''s going on and that they should prepare to run, that they should jump away the second they have the chance," I said, clenching my fist tightly. "Send a message to the whole fleet to stay on standby for my order. Then put him on the projector."


    I looked around at the bridge, and as the droid confirmed my orders, I saw my team. I could see Tatnia, Vaz, and Ahsoka, the first two still staring out the viewport. The fear, the hopelessness on their faces... It burned in my chest. So help me, god, I was going to pull us out of this, the burning sensation roaring into defiance in my chest. As the droid worked, I quickly ran to the closest control chair, jumping over the side to sit in it. Ahsoka followed me, standing beside the chair as I started tapping on the controls.


    "What¡­ what do we do?"


    "We need to take down the Interdictors," I explained, frantically looking at the controls. "And if Vader is there, we need to throw him off his game."


    "How do you plan on doing that?"


    "By being an annoying bastard and pissing him off."


    Before Ahsoka could comment, the comms droid called out that he was connecting us to the incoming call. Somehow, despite the mounted odds and growing panic, I managed to throw on a big smile. When the Holoprojection of Darth Vader appeared at the front of the bridge, I started talking immediately.


    "So sorry about that, Little Ani. I was a bit busy enjoying having functioning legs," I said. "What could the Skyforged Vanguard do for you?"


    For a long moment, all we heard was the sound of his mechanical breathing apparatus, a sound that spiked fear through anyone who heard it and knew what it was. Myself included.


    "Deacon Roy. Your reputation precedes you," He said, his helmet barely shifting as he spoke. "You have attracted the attention of my Master, Emperor Palpatine."


    "Oh, no need to be shy, big guy!" I said, still smiling, my hands resting on the chair''s inbuilt control consoles. "If you wanted an autograph, all you needed to do was ask! Where do you want it? Your helmet?"


    "...Your infantile jokes will not buy you time. You are trapped and outgunned," He assured me, confidence oozing from his mechanical voice. "Surrender, and perhaps we will let the rest of your crew go. The Emperor wants you, not your band of pirates."


    "Yeah, sure," I responded, rolling my eyes. "You''re as likely to let any of us go as you are to win husband of the year. C''mon, Little Ani, what else do you have up your sleeves? Should have plenty of room without any arms."


    Now, the pause was longer, and I could see him shake. Some part of me wondered if I could even feel his growing rage pressing on me despite the distance between us. It was a full thirty seconds before he finally spoke again.


    "The¡­ Emperor wishes to meet you," He finally managed to get out. "Your abilities are interesting, and he wants to offer-"


    "I could give two shits about what that gross fucking testicle abomination has to offer," I said with a frown, before forcing my smile to return. "But don''t worry, I promise not to replace you as Grand Palpy''s new apprentice. Wouldn''t want to make you feel threatened, Little Ani. You might run off and murder a bunch of children again."


    "You would spit on your only chance for survival?"


    "I would spit on anything that bastard offered, as you should have done the day you met him," I responded. "A creepy old man taking an interest in a young, impressionable boy? Didn''t Shmi teach you about stranger danger before you abandoned her to die on Tatooine?"


    The sound of shouting and destruction was audible from the holoprojector despite the fact that it was entirely focused on Darth Vader. He must have lost control of his rage, unleashing it on the bridge around him. I could hear the crack and crunch of breaking computers, shouting in the distance.


    "Woah, careful there, Little Ani. Throwing a temper tantrum like that can be dangerous," I pointed out, my hands slowly moving along the armrest consoles, glancing down slightly. "I-"


    "ENOUGH! You will surrender, or we will wipe you from the galaxy!" He responded, cutting me off with a shout. "You have no hope of escape! You have five seconds to comply, or we will open fire. Maybe destroying your people at the repair station will change your mind."


    "Don''t threaten my people, Little Ani," I said, meeting the stare of his helmet. "You may not understand the concept of friendship or loyalty anymore, but most of us do. In fact, you''re really starting to piss me off. So¡­"


    I stood from my chair, still looking at Anakin, the pitiably miserable bastard.


    "All ships, open fire! Scramble all starfighters!"


    I shouted, and my droid fleet, whom I had been communicating with via the consoles on the chair, leaped to follow my orders. Weapons, which had been warming up once Vader had started to destroy his own bridge, immediately opened fire, and the entire fleet engaged.


    "You have sealed your crew''s fate," Darth Vader assured me. "You cannot hope to overpower this ship."


    "Shut up, you whiny, broken excuse for a person!" I said, stepping forward as I shouted at him. "You know nothing of hope since you lost it the moment you gave in to your self-fulfilling prophetic nightmares! You''re nothing but a broken child, unable to pull your head out from between your master legs to see he was the one who orchestrated your fall! From feeding you lies, to encouraging you to walk the razor''s edge of the dark side, even isolating you from your peers! I pity you, Little Ani, because while the world may have been conspiring against you, you were too lost in your own suffering to stop making it worse!"


    I motioned to the Comms droid, and he killed the feed, the large projection of one of the most dangerous people in the galaxy vanishing. With the projection gone, the viewports were clearly visible, and I could see the massive crisscross of turbolaser fire streaking across the gap between the Executor and the old CIS fleet. Nearly four thousand starfighters swirled around us, engaging with the TIE fighters, explosions spreading out between the two fleets.


    But it wasn''t just starfighters and gunships.


    Mixed into the swarm were hundreds of other ships, everything that my newly acquired fleet had with engines attached to them, poured from our hangar bays. <u>Transport shuttles</u></a>, a few dozen <u>C-9979 landing crafts</u></a>, emergency transports, and anything else that could fly in space were staffed with a skeleton crew and sent out of every ship I had control over. Behind them was every ship in the fleet that was too small to really hurt the super star destroyer with their weapons. A wave of ships spread out through space. Many of them were destroyed, each one a distraction that bought seconds that our guns could fire unimpeded.


    By the time they were in position, nearly half of them had been obliterated.


    "Order half of the vultures to break off and fly into the Executor!" I shouted. "Overcharge their power cells and activate their solid slug fuel drives! All impacting ships, aim for the weakest shields!"


    "Aye, Admiral!"


    Suddenly, the waves and flows of our gigantic fleet of vulture droids drastically changed directions, all at once aiming for the massive warship. Whoever was giving orders must have seen it coming, it was impossible not to. Nearly two thousand starfighters and under a hundred small starships, all rapidly changing direction and dumping everything into forward shields and thrusters. Hundreds of starfighters were destroyed in seconds, along with dozens of the starships, before finally, the first wave made impact.


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    In the X-Wing novel, the Bacta War, the SSD Lusankya was destroyed by wave after wave of hundreds of proton torpedoes. While I didn''t have access to the time or resources to re-create that specific scenario, I could certainly think outside the box with the best of them.


    Explosion after explosion slammed into the SSD''s forward shields, ranging from thousands of little dots to explosions as big as my thumbnail, despite the distance. Each explosion forced the usually invisible shield to appear as it absorbed the kinetic and explosive energy. The barrage of thousands of ready-to-explode vulture droids and other ships continued for nearly eight seconds before a series of explosions went off under the shield, and suddenly the protection was gone, the top front two-thirds of the ship suddenly completely unprotected.


    The next two or three seconds of impacts hit the SDD directly, exploding and destroying what remained of the shield generators, as well as turbolasers, proton torpedo launchers, and more. When the explosion cleared, a not insignificant portion of the dorsal bow was a pocket-marked mess of twisted metal and fires, though they quickly went out as the vacuum of space starved them of oxygen. Despite the damage, the ship was still firing. We had disabled a good portion of its shields and weapons, but it still had enough firepower to overwhelm us.


    "Status report!"


    "Shields at 67 percent!" A droid shouted. "Fleet strength dropping! Several ships have dropped below forty percent!"


    "Starfighter fleet holding, sir!" Another droid shouted. "We are losing starfighters at a noticeably faster rate, but we will still beat them through numbers!"


    "Dammit, now it''s double-edged time," I cursed. "Any ship below thirty percent put all energy to forward shields and thrusters. Hit the bow! The rest of you, concentrate fire on clearing out more weapon emplacements!"


    Three Hardcell ships, two of the Dreadnoughts, and a handful of other large starships moved forward with a surprising amount of speed, leaving the now noticeably smaller fleet as they crossed the distance between us. The Executor reacted immediately, concentrating its fire on the encroaching ships, turbolasers firing by the hundreds.


    "Pull the Dreadnoughts back," I ordered. "Use the other ships as a shield!"


    My order was quickly relayed, and slowly, the Dreadnaughts fell behind, just enough to let the other ships pull ahead. Within seconds, most of those ships'' shields failed, explosions raking across their hulls as they got closer and closer to their target. By the time they were getting close, most of the ships were just broken wrecks, having done their job to protect the dreadnaughts, who were trailing just behind.


    "Pull the Dreadnoughts up! Redirect them to the Interdictors!" I ordered with a shout. "Reorient shields to protect them from the Executor!"


    As the wrecked and battered hulls of the nearly a dozen ships slammed into the unshielded bow of the SSD, the Dreadnoughts pulled up, their thrusters pulling them out of their suicidal dive, reorienting them to their new targets. While their heavily damaged, mostly dead fleet mates tore massive chunks into the SSD, sending debris spewing into space, explosions, and twisted metal strewn across the massive Imperial ship, the Dreadnoughts continued on.


    Immediately, they must have realized what was going on, as all available weapons went silent for a moment, spinning to target the Dreadnaughts. An ungodly amount of laser fire tried to stop the older ships, filling the growing gap between them with plasma energy.


    Unfortunately for them, it was too late, and the first Dreadnought reached its target with its shields still intact, slamming into the special star destroyer at full speed, its thrusters driving it almost completely through the ship. Before it could manage it, however, the SD detonated, blowing itself to pieces as its core went critical.


    The second Dreadnought had a little more distance to cross, so by the time it arrived at its destination, its shields had been broken, and the Executor had begun targeting its engines, destroying almost all of them. Even that, however, was too late, as the Interdictor tried to maneuver away, and the last of the Dreadnought''s engines failed, the ship slammed full tilt into the Imperial ship, punching up through the bottom. This time, the SD completely split in half before the dreadnaught''s core detonated, destroying both ships.


    "The gravity well has shrunk, sir!" A droid called out. "Estimated time to escape, fifty-three seconds!"


    "It''s still too far," Vaz said, looking over the sensor droid''s shoulder. "We are already down to twenty percent shields. If they chase us, we won''t make it out."


    "We need to try! We won''t make it just sitting here either!" I shouted, gesturing to the fleet readouts. "We are running out of ships to throw at them. Just pray we stripped enough weapons off them already!"


    Our ship began to rotate, the hum of the engines turning to a dull roar as we dumped all energy into aft shields and our thrusters. We watched through the holoprojector battle map as our remaining ships pulled up behind us, shielding us from the SSD, which began to immediately chase after us. The Interdictor was trying to keep pace with it, falling back as its power was being drained by the gravity well it was generating.


    As it moved, the time to escape the well increased, and the field moved with the ship to contain us. I fought to keep my hopes up as our chances of successfully escaping shrank with every second. Turbolaser fire still slammed into our fleet, and as we watched, the Recusant detonated, leaving the wreck floating through space. As we began to move, I cursed loudly.


    "Where is the Talos Chariot?" I called out, shaking my head in frustration and correcting myself. "The Quick Deal. Where is the Quick Deal?"


    "They already jumped away, Admiral!" A droid called out. "Damaged but intact. The pilot''s last message before jumping was to report missing passengers."


    "What? Why?" I shouted, a cold spike sliding down my spine. "How did we lose anyone? Who?"


    "The Pilot reported Boxi and his team stayed behind to provide additional firepower."


    "What?" I asked, looking over at Ahsoka and then Tatnia in confusion. "What do-"


    "Admiral! The Providence is moving!"


    I whirled around, looking at the battle map projection. Sure enough, the rather large capital ship had torn itself free from the repair scaffolding and was now accelerating toward the remnants of the Imperial fleet.


    As we had begun to retreat, the Executor and its final accompanying Interdictor had followed after, trying to chase us down and disable us before we could escape. The Interdictor, with most of its power going to its gravity well generators, was falling behind, unable to keep up with us as we dumped everything we had into thrusters and our aft shields. But it was a race we were still going to lose, the heavily damaged SSD destroying yet another ship protecting our rear.


    Until Boxi and his squadmates targeted the trailing behind Interdictor with their ship.


    It was clear their ship wasn''t fully repaired, as the Executor''s comparably few backward-facing weapons and the Interdictor''s own weapons slammed into its hull, its shields non-existent. It didn''t fire back either, instead dumping its energy into its engines. As the large ship homed into its target, the SSD tried to make one final run at destroying us, but it was too late, Boxi and his team had come through once again.


    "Transmission from the Providence!"


    "Put it through!"


    A projection of Boxi replaced the battle map projection, the familiar droid giving me a salute.


    "Unit Boxi reports we will unfortunately be unable to return to the Skyforged," He stated. "It has been an honor, Boss."


    "The honor was mine, Boxi."


    Before he could respond, what remained of the Providence finally slammed into the Interdictor, punching up through its engines as it tried to escape. The projection disappeared with a split-second explosion, cutting to static that soon was replaced by the battle map.


    "Gravity well has faded, Admiral."


    "Make the jump."


    A few seconds later, the stars streaked across the viewport, and we were gone.

 Chapter 185

    The bridge was silent for a long time, all of us stunned at what we had just survived. Finally, after a long moment, Ahsoka reached out and took my hand in hers, pulling me against her for a long hug.


    "That was... incredible, Deacon. I''ve seen worse strategies from trained generals," She admitted. "I know you couldn''t feel it, but you really managed to get under his skin¡­"


    I looked over her as she talked, only to finally connect what I was really seeing to what it meant. Ahsoka was pale, shaky, and sweating, and as I reached out to wrap my arms around her for support, her legs partially gave out.


    "Ahsoka! What''s wrong?" I asked, looking over at the nearest droid and then at Vaz. "Get a medical droid up here! Now!"


    "I''m okay, Deacon, I''m okay," She assured me before Vaz could leave, as I dumped a few healing spells into her. "He tried to strangle you, in the end. I could feel him pulling on the Force, reaching out for you in his rage. I had to fight him off¡­ even with him reaching across the distance¡­ I almost failed."


    I led her to a seat, the same one I had been sitting in, letting her down gently before kneeling beside her and taking her hand.


    "That''s incredible, Ashoka," I said with a smile. "I had no idea that you could stop him like that. I was relying on Palpy wanting me alive. Thank you for saving me."


    She nodded with a weak smile before sinking into a meditative trance, which I could thankfully recognize at this point, or I would have assumed she had passed. I watched her for another few seconds before standing up and pointing toward a nearby BX.


    "You, keep watch over her," I ordered, the beskar armored droid stepping forward to stand by Ahsoka. "Which of you was Boxi''s second in command?"


    One of the commando droids from behind me stepped forward, and I greeted them with a nod. We only had seven of their team left, though I had every intention of reforming the group completely. These BXs had solidified their position in the Skyforged until the day I died. Probably quite a bit beyond that as well.


    "Keep an escort with each of us and two on the slicers. They aren''t allowed to touch any computer, console, droid, or anything that isn''t food or water until we arrive at our destination," I ordered, turning to look the Rebels in the eye. "Don''t try anything, or you''ll spend the rest of the trip bound and stunned."


    The Duros simply nodded at my command, but the Quarren stood up angrily.


    "You are betraying your deal with the Rebellion?" he asked, his anger rising.


    "No, I am not, despite having every right to do just that!" I shouted back, gesturing to the viewports along the front of the bridge. "Did you happen to catch all of that? That was a carefully planned ambush. Those Interdictors are rare and expensive, and yet Vader had three of them with him? They KNEW we would be coming here, and they knew we wouldn''t have a fleet big enough to stand up to them. The ONLY REASON we are not floating space debris or sitting in cells at the tender mercies of Darth Vader is that whoever set that repair station and fleet up was greedy and a control freak. If their strange setup hadn''t worked, if they had been a bit less greedy and the fleet was smaller¡­"


    "...W-what does that have to do with us?" The Quarren asked, having taken a step or two back as I shouted.


    Before he could respond, the Duros reached out and grabbed the Quarren''s elbow.


    "Spies. Must have been spies," He said simply, shaking his head.


    The Quarren''s eyes went wide, and they sat down quickly, seemingly satisfied with my reasoning or perhaps too scared to push any further. Either way, I shook my head and walked away, retaking my place at the center of the bridge and standing in front of the oversized chair I had set Ahsoka down in.


    "What is our status?" I called out, a droid immediately perking up to answer.


    "Shields at twenty percent and climbing," The droid reported. "Minimal damage to shields due to overloaded power systems."


    "Do we have the parts and staff to fix that?"


    "We do, Admiral Deacon."


    "Repair them unit by unit so that we don''t lose any more functionality due to repairs," I ordered. "I''m not sure what is waiting for at the rendezvous point, but I want to be ready."


    "Yes, Admiral," The droid said, turning back to his console. Before I could peek over his shoulder to see how he was doing, another droid spoke up.


    "We have three hundred and sixteen Vulture Droids, eighty-seven <u>Hyena Bomber Droids</u></a>, and fifty-four tri-fighters docked in our hangar bay," they reported. "There are still miscellaneous other ships that lacked pilots and others that are in the ships holds."


    The droid went on to start telling me where the starships in our hold came from, as we had taken on quite a few that had been stranded when I ordered their stationed ships to slam into the Executor. I cut him off when I realized what he was doing, instead asking my own question.


    "How many ships made the jump to lightspeed?"


    "We made the jump first, Sir, so we have no way of knowing," The droid responded.


    "Then what ships seemed functional enough to make the jump?" I asked, shaking my head at the droid''s response. "What ships still had shields?"


    "The Dreadnought was down to ten percent when we jumped," A separate droid said, looking at a console beside the battle map. "The remaining Munificent was only lightly damaged. A single Diamond cruiser and several other ships were in similar circumstances. They may have jumped as well."


    "How long until we reach the rendezvous sight?" I asked out loud to nobody in particular, quickly getting accustomed to the droids responding to me.


    "Eleven hours, fifteen minutes, Admiral."


    "Good. I want everything ready for potential combat again," I explained, looking back out at the streaking stars outside the viewports. "Repair what you can, patch what you can''t, and get everything ready for deployment. And someone find some food that is compatible with humans, Togruta and Shistavanen. Oh, and Quarren and Duros too."


    I let out a long breath as the droids began to move, sending out orders and doing their best to appear busy. I sat down in a seat near Ahsoka, my own legs feeling a bit weak. I had managed to pull so much bravado, spite, and out-of-the-box thinking that I could now feel my adrenaline rapidly fading, and I felt empty and hollow, tired beyond belief. Tatnia, who had been stun locked so much harder than I had, finally made her way to my side.


    "Boss¡­In case you were wondering, she was right. That was fucking incredible," she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. "I¡­ I was completely frozen, and you¡­ Damn, Deacon."


    "I won''t lie. Knowing the kind of things that I know made that much easier than it should have been," I explained. "But thank you."


    "I must disagree," Vaz said, also stepping closer. "No amount of knowing things could have made that easier. I was certain we were about to die, it was only a question of how much damage we may do before they took us."


    We sat there, mostly in silence, pulling strength from each other until a brunch of droids returned with some surprisingly high-quality shelf-stable rations. Ahsoka was still in her meditation, but all of us were too starved to wait for her to snap out of it. As we dug in, Tatnia brought up the subject I had put off in my brain for later.


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    "What are you going to do about the Rebellion?" She asked, taking a sip of her drink and watching me closely. "The only people on our side who knew enough about this mission were just as much on the chopping block as us. So unless we managed to hire someone willing to lay their life down for the Empire¡­?"


    "Which is a lot more common than you think," I pointed out. " Trust e when I say mind fuckery is Palps bread and butter."


    "Despite that, I believe Tatnia is correct, as you already know judging by your anger at the slicers," Vaz pointed out. "We did not know about this mission long enough to leak it properly. The Rebellion knew about it for weeks."


    "Yeah, I know," I responded, shaking my head. "I mean, it''s not surprising they have spies working against them. It''s a big organization. My question is, why were we targeted specifically? Was that part of the deal or¡­?"


    "You really think we were sold out on purpose?" Tatnia asked, her eyes widening slightly before narrowing dangerously.


    "By the entire Rebel Alliance? No, of course not. But it''s possible someone specifically did," I corrected. "And what happens when the Rebellion reaches that or whatever other conclusion is going to color how we interact from now on."


    "And if they react poorly?" Tatnia asked, looking at me closely.


    "Then we stop giving them preferential treatment," I answered. "The bottom line is that they are too large of a chunk of our income to cut ties completely. But we would stop cutting them deals and start looking for other places to sell our loot. At the end of the day, it is going to take some rolling with the punches. For example, if we demand concessions due to the amount of danger we were put in, and they completely deny them? Then what?"


    I let the sentence hang, both Vaz and Tatnia wincing but still nodding in agreement. Internally, I was torn. I believed in the Rebellion, believed in the people and what they were trying to achieve. But working with them had been a constant struggle, first with Nevue and later with Draven. That wasn''t to say every interaction had been an issue. General Syndulla had been nothing but helpful, and working with the rank and file had been fine.


    This, though, was too big to ignore. We had ridden a razor edge and only missed getting cut because of pure dumb luck. I clenched my fist to hide the tremor that ran up along my arm at the thought of what would have happened had we not had control over the fleet or if it had been a bit smaller.


    "It''s moot talking about it for now," I explained. "We will meet up with the Rebel fleet at the emergency rendezvous point, as well as the Chariot. Let''s just¡­ take some time to relax and unclench, right?"


    Vaz and Tatnia nodded, and together we finished eating, before both of them, still dressed in their armor, went to explore the ship, a pair of BXs going with them. Meanwhile, I walked around the bridge, watching the droids work. Eventually, I ordered them to calculate another hyperspace jump, this time out of the rendezvous location to a point in deep space a decent distance away. I was not about to get caught with my pants down again.


    Eventually, I sat down at the base of the chair, where Ahsoka was meditating, closing my eyes and resting. Once I stopped moving around and pacing, it didn''t take long for the exhaustion from our escape to take over and put me to sleep. I woke up briefly when Ahsoka broke out of her meditation and slid down to sit beside me, putting her head on my shoulder, and both of us falling back to sleep again.


    Eventually, Tatnia and Vaz returned, having spent a few hours sleeping in some of the few organic crew quarters on the ship. They both gave us a light ribbing for just sleeping at the base of the chair, but we just shrugged it off.


    Or we did once I healed away our stiff backs and neck pain.


    "We need to decide if we are keeping the Lucrehulk," I reminded them as we all gathered around on the bridge. "It''s fully crewed, has parts to repair itself significantly, and has a ton of resources on board. And it dwarfs the hell out of Omega Station and would make a good movable base of operations."


    "It''s a lot of ship, boss," Tatnia pointed out with a frown. "Even with it already being crewed. It''s going to take a lot of fuel and put a huge drain on our cash."


    "Well, first off¡­ if we keep it, I plan on selling our rights to Omega Station," I explained. "I''m no longer comfortable having the Rebellion looking over our shoulders, and getting off Omega Station would stop that pretty immediately."


    "That... would help," She admitted. "Is that all?"


    "Well¡­ as far as I''m concerned, the for all of this, Rebellion is due short change compared to the Skyforged on this one," I explained. "I''m thinking I claim the Lucrehulk simply because we are the only reason we got anything out of this whole clusterfuck. Then, I could demand that they pay out my cut from the rest of the ships. Now I can''t demand full price because I don''t think they could handle that all at once and because, as much as it might irk me, their men did take part in the mission, and their slicers did crack the core. I think we could have probably done it ourselves, but we didn''t."


    "Do you plan on selling everything but the Lucrehulk?" Vaz asked.


    "No. I want the Dreadnought as well."


    "The Dreadnought, too?" Tatnia asked, rubbing her face. "You realize just the other day you declared that any ship we got that we wanted to keep would be mothballed until we could properly maintain it."


    "And with a fully robotic crew, we can," I pointed out. "Both ships are in good condition, and we can work on finding some old battlefields with parts if need be. If that doesn''t work, and they start to run down or start to drain our resources too heavily, we can land them on Nirn''s moon or put them in orbit."


    "So you would sell the rest of the ships to pay for fuel and maintenance?" Vaz asked.


    "And some of what we have inside the hold," I added. "I have very little interest in B1s. They are not reliable enough in combat. That means we need a fraction of the transportation available on the ship. I would sell maybe seventy-five percent of the B1s, along with plenty of weapons and vehicles for them. We also have a bunch more C-9979s in storage that I couldn''t send out to hit the Executor. If we clean up and sell everything we don''t need, we could make a good chunk of money."


    "Assuming the Rebellion is willing to go along with this." Tatnia pointed out.


    "At this point, they don''t have much choice," I explained. "They are lucky I''m giving them a chance to benefit from this clusterfuck at all."


    "I''m not sure they will see it that way."


    "And I don''t particularly care," I responded, shaking my head. "Their bullshit nearly got us all killed, and we lost out on an incredible haul. I have every right to tell them to go pound sand."


    I paused for a moment, letting out a long breath and rubbing my face before continuing.


    "If we do decide to keep this ship, I''m renaming it," I added after a pause. "Boxi''s Fury."


    All of them smiled at that, nodding in agreement that it was an excellent name to honor the droid.

 Chapter 186

    When we dropped out of hyperspace, I was surprised to find that we were almost completely alone at the rendezvous location. I had anticipated the Rebels beating us there or another Imperial ambush waiting for us, but I had not foreseen empty space save for the Talos Chariot. The second it was safe, the small ship immediately turned towards us and began to make for the same hangar bay as before. I nodded to the second in command BX unit, who sent a pair of droids to escort the rest of my team to the bridge.


    It only took a few minutes for them to make their up to us, with Tatnia and Julus crashing together in a hug and a long kiss. I couldn''t help but smile for them, watching their love as they whispered to one another. I looked over at Ahsoka, who returned my smile before we both looked back to the empty space in front of us.


    Finally, after nearly five minutes of waiting, the Rebel fleet, plus our own fleet, dropped out of hyperspace. They were a good distance away since I had the droids reverse the Lucrehulk away from the main dropping point. Immediately, as ordered, the droids reached out to the Skyforged ships with the comms.


    "Skyforged, this is Deacon," I said cleanly, knowing my projection was on the bridge of every ship in our fleet. "Break formation with Rebellion and join us, the Dreadnought will swing around to cover you. Maintain defensive positions in relation to the Rebellion."


    Several confirmations came through the comms, many of them confused but obedient, as the Whale Shark broke away from the fleet first, the rest of our starships swirling around it as they moved, the Anvil last to leave since its shields could take the greatest beating. Our Dreadnought pushed forward as they moved, turning as it passed them to shield them from any fire.


    Of course, at no point did I expect General Syndulla to open fire on us, but I wanted to set the tone for what was happening. I did not trust the Rebellion at the moment, to the point that I was acting as defensibly as possible, waiting for them to attack.


    "Incoming communication," the comms droid called out. "From General Syndulla on the Rapid Tide."


    "Put her on hold until all ships have settled into position. I want all droid-controlled ships in the front and those with functioning shields ahead of those. Once everyone is in position, we- " I began to explain, only to cut myself off with a smirk. "No, better yet, continue positioning the fleet, but send the Rebellion the data from the battle. Video, battle maps, data feeds, the whole nine yards. They can call us back after they see what we had to do to survive."


    "Roger roger."


    It took about a minute for us to tighten up into a defensive position, the new CIS ships surrounding the Skyforged. When I was sure they were in position, I settled in to wait, minutes passing before, finally, the comms droid got my attention again. This time, I nodded, and a moment later, a holoprojection of the General appeared.


    "Deacon, that was some impressive work," she said, pausing for a moment before adding. "And I''m sorry that it was necessary in the first place."


    "So you came to the same conclusion as we did?"


    "Of course, I did, Deacon," She admitted, her expression tired as she shook her head. "Spies are part of the game. And you didn''t even have the right information to give up. I¡­ I''m sorry the Rebellion got you tangled up in this."


    "I wasn''t ''tangled up'' in anything, General Syndulla. You saw what Vader said. He was looking for me and my team, specifically General. The spies you''re talking about didn''t just sell out a mission, they specifically sold out my team and me. That is completely unacceptable."


    For a while, nothing but the hum of the ship''s power cores could be heard as we both watched each other. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, Hera spoke again.


    "So what happens now?" She asked, sounding concerned. "Your team has helped the Rebellion a lot, Deacon. You''ve easily eclipsed our best resource-gathering teams in terms of functional tonnage, and that was while you were supplying your own growth. Your organization is good, and we do not want to lose your trade."


    "And I would like to continue working with the Rebellion," I admitted with a shrug. "But what happened cannot go unanswered. As I''m sure you realize from watching that footage, we broke through that on a razor''s edge."


    "Yes, we saw. It was an impressive escape and defense," She praised, seeming shocked it had turned out like it did. "Particularly using the ships as a defensive wall to protect the two Dreadnoughts before switching their targets at the last second."


    "Thank you," I responded with a cold nod, not letting the compliment quite break through. "Now, I want to confirm, the Skyforged Vanguard does recognize that the Rebellion has a claim to a portion of what we escaped with since your slicers were used to crack the computer core, as well as for work they did on the Lucrehulk itself. However, this is not a fifty-fifty split, not after what happened, not after how close we got to dying because you couldn''t secure a mission. I will accept negotiations, but be aware of that, for now, this is not a friendly chat. I have demands, and I will not be giving things away."


    "I¡­ I understand the logic, Deacon, I do," General Syndulla assured me with a wince. "I will try my best to get the others to understand as well."


    "Good. We are not enemies, Hera. I understand that this was not a Rebel attack," I added. "But the ambush rests on the Rebellion''s shoulders. And until I feel like I can trust you again, things are going to be more difficult."


    General Syndulla considered my words for a long moment before she nodded in agreement.


    "I understand, and I can''t say I blame you, either."


    "I suggest you make sure that you are on whatever group ends up at the negotiating table," I suggested before running my hand through my hair and letting out a long sigh. "I will be taking the fleet to a deep space location momentarily, so my people can start going through them, cataloging the numbers, making sure there aren''t any tracking chips. While my people are working on the fleet, I will go and pick up Luke. I will also be sending a ship to pick up Miru while dropping off your slicers. I suggest keeping a wide berth."


    "Very well," the Twi''lek general said. "We will be waiting."


    I gestured to the comms droid, who cut the feed.


    "Alright, does everyone have the jump coordinates?" I asked, nodding as I received quick confirmation. "Alright, let''s make the jump."


    The stars streaked by the viewport once again as our newly expanded fleet jumped to hyperspace. This trip was only a few hours long, just enough to get us to the middle of nowhere. During that time, Ahsoka and I explored the living crew areas, which were actually much more expansive than I thought. The ship might be run by droids, but there was enough in the living quarters for a full crew of sentient beings, plus a large amount of passengers. So far, everything I was seeing convinced me more and more that pulling out of Omega station and using the Lucrehulk as a mobile base of operations was the right way to go.


    Once we dropped out of hyperspace, I dispatched the Forward Charge to pick up Miru and Racer and drop off our slicers, as well as our Rogue Squadron escorts at Alpha Base. Not long after that, I called a meeting to discuss keeping the Dreadnaught and the Lucrehulk, as well as the fate of the remaining CIS starships.


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    "To me, it''s a no-brainer," I said with a shrug, looking around at the leaders and captains of our ground teams and starships, respectively, most of them holoprojecting into the large meeting room we found. "Even if we only use them until they start to fall apart, they would be worth the effort. Then, we could land them somewhere to act as a defensible structure. Until that point, however, they are basically just free capital ships, one of which is on par with a star destroyer. We rely on the droid crew for now, and we can slowly replace it over time. Plus¡­ I''ll honestly be glad to have pulled out from Omega Station. Having the Rebellion constantly looking over our shoulders has clearly become unwise. "


    "Before Nirn, I would have disagreed with replacing Omega Station," Vaz said. "Now it only seems like another staging point. A mobile operating station would be invaluable. "


    "Which brings up another point, keeping the ''hulk above Nirn would mean that we could defend it just a bit better, which means more people will be able to escape if everything goes sideways," I pointed out, several of the captains nodding in agreement. "It''s obviously not a sacrificial piece, but even thirty seconds could make all the difference in the world."


    Eventually, after a long discussion, it was decided that we would keep both the Dreadnought and the Lucrehulk. Boxi''s Fury would serve as a staging point above Nirn, similar to how Omega Station functioned. It could easily hold all of our ships save the Anvil, but once we created a starport on Nirn''s surface, that wouldn''t really matter. We would take the ship into battle as needed, but mostly, it would stay in orbit above our planet.


    The Dreadnought, now named the Forge, would be joining the third group, massively increasing the threat level of our Naval-focused battle group. Or rather, it would once I hired a dozen or so bridge crew to work with the existing robot crew. I may be fine with the majority of the ships being run by robots, but I would prefer it if a biological crew had ultimate control.


    Once the decision was made, we sent out the Second Group to grab a significant amount of our repair team to start going over the two massive ships. They were obviously not enough to repair the whole ship, but I was hoping that they could work with the droid crew to scan for any beacons or planted devices.


    While that had started, we also started figuring out just what else we wanted to keep, going from ship to ship to investigate and frequently grab what we wanted, at least on a small scale. For example, the Munificent had a hundred and fifty commando droids, which I immediately ordered to be brought to Boxi''s Fury. Other larger-scale items, like the fleets of B1 and B2s, armored tanks, and much, much more, would have to be negotiated for.


    I helped with the rest of the crew, spending three days exploring the ships and discussing what our options for negotiations were. After that, it was time for us to pick up Luke from his month of training.


    Ahsoka and I hopped into the Starcaller, which had been brought to us not long after Miru arrived, and got to work with the ship''s computer core. Artoo, who was now wearing a shiny new coat of paint, greeted us as we climbed on board. The remnants of Boxi''s team joined us as well, all but his second-in-command shutting down in the cargo bay to conserve space and energy.


    After everything was checked over, we made our way to the bridge, already cleared to take off by the droid control systems. I sat down at the basically empty seat, glancing at the blank console while Ahsoka took the pilot''s seat and the BX unit took the co-pilot''s seat. As they were running through the startup sequence, I looked over at the combat droid.


    "Did we ever give you a designation?"


    "Unit BX-04 was not assigned a designation," It responded but continued after a moment. "However, leader Boxi frequently referred to me as Lefty."


    I looked at the droid for a minute, frowning as I tried to recall why that would be important. I could see that the droid''s left arm was painted black, while the rest of him was colored the normal dark purple and burnt orange our BX droids usually wore.


    "Wait¡­ You survived that mission on Gizer, our first heist!" I said, my eyes wide. "You were part of the original team, the one who got his arm knocked off in your escape."


    "That is correct, sir."


    "Well¡­ Consider it your official designation, Lefty. It''s only right his successor bear a name he came up with," I admitted. "I''m putting you in charge of the team, including when I replace your numbers with more beskar-enforced models. I''m also tentatively removing your mind wipe orders for the team as long as you present yourselves for frequent diagnostic checkups. Your previous leader''s sacrifice has more than earned the chance for you all to grow a bit."


    "...Thank you, boss," The deadly droid said, shifting slightly in its chair. "This unit will attempt to live up to Boxi''s legacy."


    "Do your best for the Skyforged," I responded. "That''s all I can ask for."


    "Boss¡­ This unit wonders¡­ If upgrades to our armament might be discussed."


    Both Ahsoka and I shared a look, surprised at the newly "freed" droids question. It was showing a lot of flexibility for a droid that should have been receiving frequent memory wipes.


    "Our combat effectiveness has increased greatly with the beskar alloy armor replacement," It continued, not looking up from the checklist it was running through. "This unit would like to suggest a similar increase might occur if our weapons were improved as well."


    I looked at the droid in confusion, noting its sword and blaster were still attached to its back. They were both the standard BX unit armament.


    "I could see the issue with the blaster, we could absolutely look into getting you some better firepower, I know the E-5 is junk¡­" I responded, scratching my chin. "Honestly, I''m kinda shocked we haven''t replaced them before."


    "That would be a good start, this unit has seen vastly superior weapons with the Skyforged Vanguard," the droid agreed.


    "A good start?" Ahsoka asked, now looking at the droid with suspicion. "What else could you need."


    "This unit wonders if lightsabers-"


    "Absolutely not!" Ahsoka said, looking like she might space the droid if it continued. "I do not want Commando droids armed with lightsabers. It wouldn''t be right, no matter how helpful you and your group have been."


    I winced but said nothing, letting Ahsoka speak first. I could see why the droid would assume that an upgrade of a vibrosword would just be a lightsaber, but obviously, that wasn''t going to happen. When Ahsoka was done, I confirmed her opinion.


    "Sorry, Lefty, there is more to wielding a lightsaber than just needing an upgrade to your weapon," I explained. "We can still look into upgrading your swords, though. Maybe we can find better, more modern melee weapons or some sort of alternative. Until then, you will have to make do with better blasters. Maybe a variety of weapons for different purposes. A side arm as well, that just makes sense."


    "This unit understands," Left replied. "Thank you for your consideration."


    Ahsoka gave the droid one last look before shaking her head and tapping the controls, the ship lifting off from the hangar bay before flying forward out of the bay into space. The jump to lightspeed went by without issue, leaving our fleet behind.

 Chapter 187

    The trip from our temporary deep space fleet location to Dahgobah was blessedly much calmer than the departure. Lefty seemed to take our response to heart and did not ask again, which spoke volumes for their stability. We also got to the bottom of why they were already a bit strange for a droid that should have been receiving frequent wipes. I reached out to Miru using the ship''s hyperwave, since the question was bugging me.


    "His second in command? The one with a black arm?" Miru asked through the hyperwave projection, looking for my confirmation. When I nodded, she smiled. "They haven''t been getting wiped either. Boxi made the argument that he needed a second-in-command who would have unique thinking processes like him. I agreed, so I held off wiping them, too."


    "And you didn''t say anything?" I asked with a raised eyebrow, looking through the hyperwave projector. "You didn''t warn anyone that you weren''t wiping a combat droid''s memory regularly?"


    "In my defense, I am the head engineer. Which droid gets wiped and which doesn''t is technically my purview," She pointed out, wincing when I crossed my arms. "Yeah, yeah, not a good enough excuse."


    "Mostly because you never said anything, Miru. If you had told me, I probably would have agreed with the logic," I pointed out, the young Twi''lek sinking a bit lower. "But these are very dangerous combat droids. I should not have been left in the dark. Especially since they stopped being sacrificial, meaning we would be working even closer with them."


    "You''re right, I''m sorry," She said.


    "Good, apology accepted," I said with a nod. "For future reference, you''re not wrong. It is your purview. However, certain projects should still be brought to my attention, even if they are technically engineering-focused. For example, droids that are this dangerous or important, or anything that affects the combat teams, should not be a surprise to anyone, especially not me."


    "Sure, no problem," She agreed with a small smile, which faded slightly. She was quiet for a few seconds before speaking up again. "So... they really saved you guys, huh?"


    "Boxi and his crew? Absolutely," I confirmed, the droid''s last moments flashing through my head. "I checked the numbers afterward, and the Executor would have chewed through the ships and our shields before we could outrun the Interdictor. It only would have taken a handful of seconds to disable our engines after that. We would have been sitting ducks."


    "I''m glad their sacrifice meant something then, at least," Miru said, clearly not happy about it.


    I noticed that Miru got closer to droids than most people, especially the droids she worked on. Whether it was a symptom of her age or her technological prowess. Either way, I did not like seeing her sad.


    "I''m sorry, I wish¡­ Well, I wish it could have been different," I admitted with my own sad frown.


    "Yeah¡­ well, listen, I need to get back to work," She said, seeming to struggle with how she should feel about what happened. "Tell Luke and the goblin I said ''hello.''"


    "Will do, and good luck," I said, the connection winking out, leaving me on the bridge. I looked over at Lefty, the only other occupant.


    "So, were you going to tell me you weren''t receiving mind wipes?" I asked.


    "It did not seem pertinent, and you did not inquire," They pointed out. "Has this unit made a mistake?"


    "No, as far as I can tell, you''re fine," I admitted, begrudgingly accepting that no, we hadn''t actually asked. "But when we get back, I want you to submit to a full scan and check-up."


    "Very well¡­ Boss."


    I stood from my seat and headed back to the lounge, leaving the bridge in the capable hands of a battle droid. When I entered the lounge, I found Ahsoka there, meditating as she tried to calm herself. This was a big moment for her, seeing someone who had almost banished her from her family, whom she had left behind because of the betrayal.


    As I approached, she stirred, blinking away the meditation as she looked over at me with a smile.


    "Figure it out?" She asked.


    "It hasn''t been getting its data wiped, at Boxi''s request," I explained, shaking my head. "Had to chastise Miru for not telling me."


    "She is a good kid, if a bit eager to prove herself."


    "She is, and I am very proud of her."


    I sat down beside my partner, putting my arm around her as she slid closer. Her warmth was a welcome feeling on the cold ship. After a few minutes of snuggling, she shifted slightly.


    "I don''t know what I''m going to say to him," She admitted, laying her head on my shoulder. "It''s been so long and¡­ I feel like I should just forgive him, but¡­"


    "I would imagine this is the kind of circumstance in which you don''t know the answer until you are in the moment," I guessed, and she nodded silently. "In that case, I wouldn''t worry about it too much. I have a feeling that, in that moment, it''s all going to come to you."


    She pulled away to look at me, a frown on her lips.


    "You think I''ll somehow know just what to say?" She asked, sounding doubtful. "I don''t think that the solution to make everything better will just pop into my head, any more than it is right now."


    "Of course won''t," I agreed, garnering more confusion. "I''m saying that when you see him, you''ll know exactly what you want to say. Whether it''s to tell him he is a horrible person, or that you understand, or that he is a horrible person and you forgive him. Whatever it is, it''s going to rush straight to your mouth, and you''re going to have a hell of a time censuring yourself, if necessary."


    "But how will that fix things? Making them better?" She asked, her brow bunched in concern and confusion. "Shouldn''t I try and make up with him?"


    "If that''s what you want, maybe. But sometimes things are broken, and it''s okay if they stay broken," I pointed out with a shrug. "I mean, a lot of time has passed. You''ve grown, he''s had time to consider his mistakes, and you are both very different from when you last saw each other. Whether you get down there and feel you need to tear into him or that you''re okay with forgiving him, whatever you say to him, I''ll back you up."


    She smiled at that and, for a moment, closed her eyes. She took a long, deep breath, letting it out slowly as if trying her best to release the stress and worry. When she was done, she opened her eyes, leaned in, and kissed me.


    "Thank you for helping me ease my mind," She stated, taking my hand in hers. "Now, come on, let me ease yours."


    I looked at her for a moment, a bit confused, and she smirked.


    "Or, perhaps I should call it a reward?" She teased, standing up and pulling me to my feet. "You faced down Darth Vader and managed to pull off a minor miracle, escaping not only with our lives but with a significant prize. That seems like something worthy of a reward."


    She leaned in again, this time whispering softly into my ear, before pulling back and walking away, looking over her shoulder as she went. When she disappeared into one of the bigger living quarters, my feet finally remembered how to work, and I rushed after her.


    Time passed, and eventually, we finally arrived at Dagobah. As we dropped out of lightspeed and approached the planet, Ahsoka had a pretty similar reaction to the planet as Luke. She confirmed it was a darkness that seemed almost the antithesis of the vibrant, life-filled presence that Nirn had. She also agreed that if there was anywhere that could hide Yoda calling on the Force for so long, it was here.


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    Once we gave Ahsoka a minute to adjust, we landed pretty easily through the clouds and trees. Lefty, who had been with us when we first landed on the planet, brought up some of their scanning data and picked out the perfect spot for us to land. They managed to locate a spot with nice, relatively solid ground that was much closer to Yoda''s home than the awkwardly slanted tree had been. On top of that, since I could just navigate us there directly, we arrived at Yoda''s house even quicker.


    As we approached, Ahsoka stepped forward, seemingly following her instincts as we entered the primary clearing around the old Jedi Masters home. As we entered, I could see that no one was home, but that didn''t last long, as soon Luke came running in, breathing heavily but smoothly, with Yoda on his back.


    "Hey!" He shouted, a smile on his face as he waved. "Just give us a second!"


    The young Force-sensitive turned and backed himself up against a tree, one with a perch suitable for Yoda to climb off his back onto. When the small green goblin had climbed off his back and was secure on his perch, Luke stepped away and took off his backpack.


    "Man, it is good to see you guys," He said when he was done. "It''s been one heck of a month!"


    "It''s good to see you as well, Luke," I said, walking closer and shaking his hand. "I''d hug you, but damn, you are a mess."


    "Yeah, I should have had you guys leave some more stuff behind," He admitted, pulling at his shirt, which was a mess of stains. "A sonic shower would have been amazing¡­"


    Before I could respond, Ahsoka walked past us and caught my eye, making her way to where Yoda sat on his perch. The ancient Jedi Master, leaning on his cane, could hardly even look at her.


    "Master Yoda. It is good to see you," Ahsoka said, and I knew her well enough to hear the honesty and depth of that response. "When I heard you survived¡­ Well¡­ I didn''t know what to think."


    "Glad to see you, as well, I am, Ahsoka," He responded, finally looking at the Padawan he falsely exiled from his order almost twenty years ago. "Flourished, you have. A blessing in times as dark as these, it is."


    "I had to survive, even if you-"


    For a moment, her words came out with a bit more aggression, but she stopped herself. After a moment of thinking, she seemed to realize something, shaking her head before continuing.


    "I am sorry, it is truly good to see you."


    "Understand, I do," He assured her, clearly having noticed her shift. "What was done to you, unfair it was. Played into Darth Sidious''s hands, we did. Kept you from where you needed to be, we did. From those who needed you. Our fault, it is. Much to atone for, we have."


    All of us were silent, the only sound around us being the random swamp creatures that croaked and slithered. Eventually, Ahsoka shook her head, reached out, and took Yoda''s small hand in hers.


    "It''s been too long, Master Yoda. What happened, happened, but¡­ time heals all wounds, and while they may still sting¡­" Ahsoka paused and looked over at me with a watery smile, before looking back at someone she once considered a member of her family, albeit extended. "Too much has happened to let old healed wounds matter. What matters is now. What we do now, and what we do now to prepare for what happens next."


    Yoda bowed his head at her words, eventually looking back up at Ahsoka, a smile on his face.


    "A mentor''s proudest moment, it is, when the student passes wisdom to their teacher," He said, holding her hand with both of his, his cane falling to the side. "Thank you, Ahsoka."


    As the excitement settled a bit, I pulled Luke aside to give Yoda and Ahsoka some privacy. As they talked, Luke explained some of the training he had been going through and some of the lessons Yoda had been teaching him.


    "For a few days, he tested me, pushed me and my connection to the Force," He explained, sitting heavily on the side of a tree, looking tired but satisfied. "Once he had learned what he wanted, he taught me other things, improving my connection to the Force, showing me how to pull it into myself, how to let it guide me. He also taught me a few Force techniques, but we stayed mostly away from them because any old holocron can teach things like that."


    "I''m glad to hear you have been working so hard on your training and that it''s been going well," I said with a smile, before letting it fade slightly. "Listen, at any point, did you feel something off while you were here? Maybe angry when nothing was really going on? A little extra frustrated for no reason, maybe?"


    "I¡­ there was a moment a few days ago. I was working on multitasking with multiple draws on the Force at once¡­" He said with a frown." I remember suddenly wanting to throw all the stones away or see if Yoda could still catch them if I threw them hard enough. Eventually, I assumed it was the influence of the planet, so I decided to take a break and meditate, but the feeling faded within a few hours. Why, how did you know that?"


    I explained about our mission, telling how the Rebellion had invited us on another joined CIS raid. Eventually, we got to the good part, where his father showed up.


    "I know you want to try and bring him back to the light, Luke, but, in all honesty, that''s only something you can do," I explained. "I needed to focus on getting my people out in one piece, so¡­ I may have resorted to pissing off your dad until he messed up and destroyed the bridge of the Executor, and he couldn''t see my strategy coming."


    "You¡­ That was him, I felt?" Luke asked, surprise running through his face. "That''s¡­"


    "Plenty of Force-sensitive people probably felt it," I assured him. "Yoda probably felt it too, but it sounds like you didn''t bring it up?"


    "No, it passed while I was meditating," He admitted. "I thought the darkness on the planet was coming and going and that I had worked through it."


    "I can only imagine him being your dad made it more extreme, but I wouldn''t be surprised if Felia noticed it," I said with a shrug, quickly followed by a wince. "We should probably check in with her, just in case."


    "So¡­ what did you say to him?"


    "I uh¡­ might have mocked him for not having arms or legs¡­" I admitted with a wince.


    "Really?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "Kind of a low blow."


    "Maybe... I also might have compared the chances of him letting us go to the chances of him winning husband of the year."


    That caught him by surprise, his jaw hanging open while his eyes went wide.


    "Then I might have also intimated that Palpy is a pedophile, who started grooming him as soon as he joined the Jedi¡­" I said, before continuing with a wince. "And that his mother should have taught him stranger danger before he abandoned her on Tatooine to die."


    "Oh, come on, Deacon! I want him to let go of his hate and rage, not make him hate more," He said, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes.


    "Hey, I could have kept going, but I held back," I pointed out. "I never even mentioned anything about angels, being a slave, Qui-gon Jinn getting himself killed so he didn''t have to deal with him or anything to do with the high ground!"


    "Did you actually hold back, or did you just not want to use all your good material at once?" Luke asked with an accusing look, and when I pointedly couldn''t meet his eyes, he gave me a half-hearted shove. "Dammit, Deacon, he is one of the galaxy''s biggest assholes. He doesn''t need your help to be more angry!"

 Chapter 188

    Despite his misgivings about me potentially making his father''s¡­ condition worse, Luke didn''t hold what I had done against me. The younger Force-sensitive might want to bring his father back to the light, but he understood that, in the meantime, Darth Vader was currently a menace. It was honestly a bit concerning and made me wonder how that kind of knowledge sat in someone''s mind, that their father was out there, being a horrible person, and it was up to you to stop them.


    I mentally made a promise to make sure Luke was getting the training and help he needed, the Rebellion be damned if they tried to get in the way. He needed support, and I was damn sure I was going to give it to him.


    Eventually, after an hour or so of small talk and chatting, both Ahsoka and Yoda joined us. I could see that Ahsoka was feeling better, and while Yoda was a lot harder to read, he seemed to be walking lighter as well. Once they returned, we gathered outside the ancient Jedi Masters home.


    "This stage of your training, complete it is," Yoda confirmed, nodding to Luke, who looked surprised but excited. "Your connection to the Force, remarkable it is. Powerful you are becoming."


    "I... Thank you, Master Yoda," Luke responded with a bow. "I know I need to go. The Rebellion needs my help¡­ But will I be able to return? Will you still be¡­ Would you train me more?"


    "A good question, that is," Yoda responded. "Depends on Deacon, it does."


    "What?" I asked, confused about his statement. "What am I doing?"


    "Wish to see this Nirn, I do," Yoda asks, looking me directly in the eye. "Pulls at me, the Force does. Whispers to me, it does, of the new home of the Jedi. See it, I wish to before I pass."


    "But¡­ you said¡­" Luke started, his eyes wide. "Wouldn''t that kill you?"


    "Pass, I would eventually. No better place to do, than among those who remain," He pointed out. "Months, it would take. Time to teach, I have, before becoming one with the Force."


    "If you are sure, I will take you," I answer confidently, both Ahsoka and Luke whirling to look at me with wide eyes, which I meet easily. "He is dying, how could I deny him a proper home until he leaves? Besides, a mentally healthy and competent person has the right to choose their own path, especially at the end of it. That said¡­ I would like to revisit my previous offer."


    "On your abilities, I have meditated. Agree, I will, to let you heal me," Yoda said with a nod. "Trust you, the Force seems to."


    "The Force¡­ trusts me?" I asked, my curiosity peaked at his statement. "In what way?"


    "Around you, the Force is, flowing as you act," He explains, leaning on his cane. "Draw on it, you cannot. Yet follow you, it does. Every choice you make, woven around you it is. Eager to shift as you do, it feels."


    "Huh¡­ that''s interesting," I admitted, trying not to have a mental breakdown on just what that might entail. "Always nice to know the potential fate-manipulating, semi-sentient, universe-spanning, psychically symbiotic energy field likes me enough that it follows me around."


    Ahsoka nearly slaps her forehead as I talk, but Yoda let out a short bark of a laugh at my description, prompting raised eyebrows from both her and Luke.


    "More concerned, I would be, if amusement, I could not feel," Yoda responded. "Sourceless and yet here, the Force it could be, perhaps? Maybe, maybe."


    "Okay, for the sake of my own sanity, perhaps we could move on from the topic?" I asked, nearly begging. "Who wants a nice dose of healing? You already gave your consent, so no complaining."


    I focused for a moment before I dual cast Grand Healing, its potent restorative energy flowing from me and encircling all three of my companions. Before that could even fade, I cast Circle of Healing, creating a zone of healing around us. Then, as that was going, and as my mana permitted it, I cast Grand Healing and Heal Middling Trauma over and over, with the latter focused on Yoda. This continued until the Circle of healing ended, and I let the dancing golden magic fade, the dazzling lights flickering away into nothing. As they did, both Ahsoka and Luke leaned in, watching their mentor closely.


    The ancient Jedi seemed to pull in on himself, and for a moment, I feared something had gone wrong. Thankfully, before that sinking feeling could drop very far, he seemed to uncoil and stand up straight, straighter than I had ever seen him in person. He reminded me of the Yoda I knew from the prequels, with just a bit more spine in his back and a bit more strength in his eyes. He was still old, and he still leaned on his cane, but I could tell something had changed, even if he wasn''t moving around.


    "Hmmm, good, I feel. Worked, to a degree, your magic has," He admitted. "Slightly release my hold on the Force, I was able to. Longer will I survive without it. No longer weeks will I live, maybe months."


    "And if I come by every once in a while to heal you again?" I asked, a bit hopeful that we could keep the little gremlin around.


    "Forever, I will not live," He responded, shaking his head. "Helped you have, but a limit to what can be done, there is. Happy, I am, to have this extra time. Thank you, Deacon Roy."


    We talked for a while longer, describing Nirn and our most recent mission. Luke was glad to hear more details about the failed raid but was understandably upset when he learned that the betrayal had almost certainly come from inside the Rebellion.


    "I could look into it when I get back," he offered. "I have a high enough rank to get involved, and most people would probably be happy to help if I was investigating."


    "I appreciate that, but I already have a plan for that. I would like you to be there at the negotiations, and feel free to chime in, but specifically for investigations? I have something already in mind," I explained vaguely. "Thank you for the offer, though."


    Eventually, we started to get ready to leave. Yoda packed up a few things, filling a single small bag, before Luke helped him onto his back so he could carry him. After that, we slowly made our way through the swamps. It was a slow, solemn journey, heavy with the knowledge that this was a known death sentence for the ancient Jedi that accompanied us. Surprisingly, though, honestly, it shouldn''t have been, Yoda retained an excitement as we made our way through the forest. He was clearly happy to finally be leaving Dagobah behind and even more excited to see Nirn and the Jedi that lived there.


    When we finally arrived at the ship, Yoda hopped off Luke''s back and stood at the base of the boarding ramp, not yet setting foot on the ship.


    While Luke and Ahsoka ran the ship through its extended pre-flight checklist, I stood at the back of the freighter''s cargo bay, looking down at the ramp where Yoda was standing. He hadn''t moved in a while, still looking out at the swampy landscape, his eyes scanning the area. Eventually, after nearly ten minutes of silent staring, he closed his eyes and bowed his head. For a moment, there was nothing, and then I could feel a wave of pressure wash over us, shifting the branches and vines around the ship and causing ripples in the nearby swampy ponds.


    The entire swamp seemed to suddenly go silent, as if the wildlife had only just realized what sort of dangerous beast they had been sharing their swamps with. Yoda, the tiny Jedi Master, stood there and enjoyed the silence for a full minute before turning away from the landscape.


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    "Released my hold, I have," He announced, slowly making his way up the ramp. "Done with this place, I am. Excited, I am, to see my new resting place."


    "Alright, then, let''s get you settled in, and I''ll let the others know we are ready to leave, though¡­" I could feel the ship beginning to ready, the engines spinning up. "Yeah, they could probably feel it themselves."


    I led Yoda further into the ship, eventually bringing him to one of the sleeping quarters. He explained that he wished to rest and meditate, and I wished him good luck. By the time I stepped through the doorway into the bridge, Ahsoka was already pulling us off of the planet, pointing us up towards space.


    "How is he?" Luke asked, distracted but trying to stay focused on the console in front of him. "He didn''t collapse or anything, did he?"


    "No, he is in one of the quarters, meditating," I assured him, putting my hand on his shoulder. "He seemed to be okay, though even I could feel it when he let go. How did it feel for you guys?"


    "Like a brilliant light you didn''t know was on suddenly shut off," Ahsoka said, shaking her head. "What he was doing was incredible¡­ it would have burned out a lesser Jedi. I certainly would never be able to do it."


    "I think you might be surprised. Strength in the Force is rarely connected to the clarity of the connection," I explained. "There are plenty of examples of sentients with weak connections at best becoming one with the Force as they face great danger."


    "... It''s still weird to hear you talk like a Master, Deacon," Ahsoka said, though I could hear the smile in her voice. "And you''re not wrong. But there is something to be said about inherent levels of connection."


    "Maybe, maybe not. Think about who taught you that, Ahsoka. A Jedi Order that had spent the previous thousand years slowly becoming a shadow of its former self," I explained with a shrug. "They felt it was necessary to test for potential and label their people as weak or strong, but do you think the Force would really care? Sure, people like Luke and his father might have an easier time learning the ins and outs, but do you really think something like the Force would deny you something simply because you couldn''t feel it as easily as Luke?"


    The two Force-sensitives were quiet, sharing a look before they both turned to look at me. Luke was smiling, and Ahsoka was smirking.


    "Whenever we get the next order up and running, you will be coming by frequently to lecture and teach," Ahsoka said in no uncertain terms, Luke nodding along in agreement. "It really is like listening to some of the masters, even if some of your ideas might have gotten you into hot water with traditionalists."


    "Eh, I''ll just write a book, and you guys can make it mandatory reading," I said. "As long as you pay me royalties."


    Luke laughed, and Ahsoka rolled her eyes before both of them refocused on flying. We had reached space when they had turned around to look at me, and all that was left was to jump to lightspeed.


    The trip was thankfully on the shorter side, and we arrived at Nirn after just a bit under two days. Yoda was with us on the bridge when we finally dropped out of hyperspace, having spent most of his time meditating and sleeping. Immediately upon arrival, with Nirn floating in front of us, tasking us a good chunk of our viewports, Yoda seemed to rock back, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.


    "Feel the truth in your description, I can. Alive with the Force, this planet is," He said, opening his eyes to stare at the slowly rotating globe in front of us. "I believe¡­ My time here may be longer than I had even hoped¡­"


    "More than six months?" Luke asked hopefully, spinning in his seat to look back at his mentor.


    "Perhaps, impossible to know for certain, it is," he admitted. "But hopeful, I am."


    Luke seemed to be buoyed by the news that Yoda would be around for even longer, and soon, we began to descend towards the planet. We messaged ahead that we would like to see Amescoll, and he agreed to meet us at one of the landing pads.


    The fact that we had landing pads at all was news to us, of course.


    Sure enough, as we descended towards Vercopa, it was clear that those working on the small city had made great progress. A few dozen permanent buildings had been erected, flat ground had been laid for starships to land, and streets had been set down, though it was all gravel and stone for now. The dwellings were simple, each seeming to have multiple homes built into one building, clustered into almost apartment clumps. As we flew low, I could see gardens and play areas set up, with kids looking up at the ship as we flew overhead.


    "It is coming along nicely," Luke said with a smile, peering through the viewport. "How many families are living here?"


    "A few dozen," I responded, unable to keep a smile off my face. "I know most of Clan Syr is already here, and our earliest recruits have settled their families here as well."


    We landed on one of the larger pads, taking our time as the ship shut down, and we waited for Amescoll to arrive, which he did after a short wait. After spotting him approaching in a small civilian speeder, we made our way out of the ship. When we began descending the boarding ramp, the Jedi Knight was standing there, waiting for us.


    "Deacon! It is good to see you!" He called out from the boarding ramp. "I- Master Yoda!"


    Like a clip from a movie, the older Jedi Knight spotted the smaller Jedi Master as he was greeting me, doing a complete double take, his eyes opened wide.


    "Knight Amescoll, good to see you, it is," Yoda said, quickly walking down the ramp, where Amescoll greeted him on one knee. "Done well, you have. Told me of your work protecting and guiding the Padawans, Deacon has. Proud, I am. Proud, your master would have been."


    Yoda reached out, putting his hand on the Knight''s shoulder, the older man looking beyond happy to see one of his mentors had survived.


    "It''s amazing to see you as well, Master Yoda," he assured him. "I¡­ I cannot believe you survived! I did not think anyone made it off Coruscant."


    "Not many of us did," Yoda agreed solemnly. "But we must not drown in sorrow at our loss. Celebrate those who have survived, we must. To celebrate coming together again, important it is."


    "We should organize a meal, a feast! And show you around the village," The Jedi Knight said excitedly, as if in seeing his older mentor, he partially reverted to a kid. "The Padawans¡­ The kids¡­"


    Amescoll trailed off, suddenly looking a bit panicked. His Padawans had learned in a lot more flexible way than the order considered acceptable, and a few even had kids, despite the rules against it. Yoda immediately picked up on Amescoll''s panic and squeezed his shoulder.


    "Worry, you should not, understand the folly of the Republic and old Jedi Order, I do," Yoda admitted. "Judge you, I will not. Hope to learn, I do."


    "Oh¡­ well¡­"


    "Maybe we should go somewhere a bit quieter before doing anything like a feast or a tour," I suggested. "We have a lot of things to talk about, and not all of them are pleasant.


    "Of course," Amescoll said with a nod. "We could use my home. The Padawans and builders insisted on making my home bigger than the other, so we may as well use it."


    Amescoll headed off confidently, leading the way back to his civilian speeder, which was thankfully large enough for all of us. It didn''t take long for the speeder to take off, our destination set for Amescoll''s new home.

 Chapter 189

    Despite Amescoll''s assertion that his home was unnecessarily large, it was by no means a mansion. It was a decent-sized home, and save for the rough exterior and differing materials, it wouldn''t have been too out of place in suburban US. The interior was on the simple side, with very little decoration, either because the home was so new or because, as a Jedi, Amescoll preferred a simpler aesthetic. Either way, there was enough room for all of us to pile into his dining room and sit around his table, but only just.


    It was there that Amescoll learned that Yoda''s time was running out, something that the older man struggled to comprehend. Having been a significant part of the Order for so long, the ancient Jedi Master must have seemed timeless to the Jedi who grew up with him. Not only did they learn from him on a semi-regular basis, but he would have also played a part in any history they would have been studying as younglings. He was literally a living legend.


    And now he was dying.


    Eventually, Amescoll took Yoda to meet his Padawans and their children, guiding us to a communal area, where some of the parents, including from clan Syr and other Skyforged people, were watching the younglings. It was a large field with an easily identifiable jungle gym to one side and plenty of space for kids to run around. Their ages ranged from barely above toddlers to several preteens sitting on a bench as far away from their parents as possible.


    After greeting and talking with several people, news spread quickly around the town, and while we had planned on traveling to multiple places, people ended up coming to us. Soon, an impromptu feast was set up, with Clan Syr hunters more than happy to donate larger kills to a town event. Soon, the party had picked up, the crowd growing until I was pretty sure most of the town had arrived.


    At first, I was worried that Yoda would be overwhelmed, he had spent nearly twenty years with very few visitors, after all. Thankfully, he seemed completely at ease, happily talking to my people, be they Jedi, Mandalorian, or "civilians."


    While the arrival of a living legend was the focus of the event, I did manage to wrangle in a small meeting with Amescoll and several other prominent members of the growing city. I warned them that we would likely be pulling out of Omega Station to focus on Nirn, and that we would be gaining some resources and defenses. They took the news well and promised that with an infusion of labor droids and other equipment, they could start preparing for more families to move in.


    On top of that, I asked Amescoll to survey some space around Vercopa for a much larger landing area. While Boxi''s Fury, Forge, and Anvil were not meant to land frequently, if at all, most of our ships would benefit significantly from having a landing zone of their own, where we could perform maintenance and take care of loading and unloading equipment and supplies.


    All I really needed was some relatively flat space chosen out, the droid army I had just gained was more than capable of setting up semi-permanent operating bases, which would translate nicely to landing zones. We could convert them into proper shipyards later, but for now, we just needed the basics.


    The night continued, ending not long after Yoda headed off to sleep. While he may have been excited to see the survivors of the Jedi Purge, he was still old, and soon the constant activity wore on him. Amescoll happily volunteered his spare bedroom until his own home could be cons uilt a home for me as well. It matched Amescolls almost perfectly, though I did notice I had waterfront property, the river and ponds that flowed through the heart of the mesa running through my backyard. Not many other buildings were even remotely as close,


    The home was sparse, even more so than the bare bones of Amescoll''s home. There were beds, clean linens, working plumbing, and some sparse furniture, but beyond that, it was empty. That was far from a bad thing in my mind since it meant I could decorate it how I wanted. I was already excited to start looking for souvenirs on missions to add to the wall. Of course, Luke could stay in the spare bedroom while he was here, and Ahsoka obviously had space just next to mine. I, of course, explained she could basically consider it her home as well. She could even convert one of the spare rooms into a meditation chamber or whatever she wanted.


    The following morning, we woke up and prepared to leave. While a large part of me, a part that had grown even bigger now that I had my own home, wanted to stay for longer, just enjoying the growing city, I needed to get back to work. The negotiations with the Rebel Alliance wouldn''t happen without me, and they definitely needed to happen.


    Once we were ready, we headed out to say our goodbyes, finding Yoda, Amescoll, and several Padawans meditating in one of the specific meditation centers. It was a beautiful park, with several roofed areas and plants growing all along the semicircle space. At the center was, of all things, a <u>Uneti tree.</u></a> Judging by its size, they must have transplanted it from the island, which had quite a few growing on it.


    "I thought these trees were incredibly hard to grow?" I asked, both Amescoll and Yoda standing to greet us.


    "A mystery, it is," Yoda agreed. "A constant struggle, the Great Tree was. And yet, grow wildly here, they do here. Investigate, I would like to. This ancient Jedi Temple, I would like to visit."


    "Well, make sure you get a sufficient escort," I said. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."


    "Wise words," Amescoll agreed with a nod. "I have been putting off the deep scans you recommended, too busy keeping up here. With more people arriving to take charge of the city, perhaps I will join you in that investigation."


    "If you find anything interesting, call us," I said with a smirk. "I am always up for a little Jedi-instigated adventure."


    Both Amescoll and Yoda looked at me, confused, while Ahsoka and Luke, both familiar with my theory and at least partial believers as well, simply nodded. "Fate seems to turn around the Force-sensitive," I explained, responding to their confused looks. "I''m sure you''ve both noticed that events always seem to reach their crescendo just after a Jedi arrives when probability states that it should be a more even spread. Basically, the Force bends fate and likes to pick on Force-sensitives. So, if you''re looking for adventure and challenges, travel with a Jedi, they usually find it eventually."


    "He warned me when he first started training me, that training yourself in the Force is basically locking you into an interesting life," Luke explained with a shrug. "Fun, exciting, fulfilling, but never boring. Never really peaceful."


    Both Amescoll and Yoda looked like they wanted to dismiss the claims, but after a moment, they both realized that they really couldn''t. The galaxy, by and large, really seemed to rotate around those who could feel and tune into the Force, for better or for worse, both for those with the connection and those around them. Hell, you could even graph a direct link between the depths of their connection and how much fate seemed to focus on them.


    "An interesting theory, that is," Yoda admitted after a long moment of thought. "Some truth to it, there is, I suspect. Change anything, it does not."


    Stolen story; please report.


    "Well¡­ I mean, you might want to consider warning people when you recruit them," I pointed out. "A life of servitude to the Force is a lot, especially when you really didn''t know what you were getting into¡­"


    "While debating what the future of the Jedi will be is both interesting and necessary, we unfortunately need to leave," Ahsoka pointed out. "I have a feeling our negotiations with the Rebellion will already be tense, there is no reason to make them wait any longer than necessary and make it worse"


    "Hmm, wish you well on your journey, I do," Yoda said, bowing slightly. "Once you return, talk to you again, I would like to. A task I have, one that could benefit the Skyforged."


    "How time-sensitive is it?" I asked with a frown. "I could have another team here in a day or so, they could easily take care of anything you need."


    "Consider it, I will, if unavailable you are for long," Yoda agreed. "Wait, I can, but not forever."


    "We will be back soon, maybe a week or so," I said. "We can talk business then. For now, all of you take care."


    We finished saying our goodbyes before all of us headed back to the Starcaller. Before long, we were leaving the planet, jumping into hyperspace, on our way to Alpha Base. As we traveled, I reached out to our people, instructing the rest of my team to head to Alpha Base as well and to transfer the updated inventory for all of the CIS ships that made it out with us. The list was extensive, even with how many ships we were forced to leave behind and sacrifice.


    Ahsoka and I spent most of our trip going over the inventory, talking to our quartermaster, Tatnia, and our captains as we discussed what we wanted, what we wanted to trade for, and just how stringent we would be about it. I already had ideas in my head, but getting everyone''s thoughts, many of which confirmed my own, was always good.


    It wasn''t until the last half day of travel that Luke got our attention for a conversation in the lounge.


    "Alright, so¡­ Is there anything you guys can tell me about how this is going to go down?" He asked, looking concerned and worried. "I know you guys deserve your pound of payback for what happened, and you''ve certainly earned the right to lead the negotiations with how you described the fight¡­ It''s just that¡­ I''m worried about what sort of damage this might do to the partnership between the Rebellion and the Skyforged."


    I let out a long sigh, leaning back in my chair, resisting the urge to cross my arms. I had no reason to be confrontational with Luke, he had been nothing but good to me and my people. He was a friend, and I was not angry with him.


    "Unless the Rebellion does something truly stupid, like attempts to capture us and force us to turn over our assets, or something equally dumb, I''m not going to pull away from the Rebellion," I assured the young Jedi. "I believe in the cause as well as in the people way too much to let a single incident like this do that."


    "So why does it feel like you and Ahsoka are marching to negotiate with the Empire, not the Rebellion?"


    "Because, look, a line was crossed," I explained, shaking my head. "We cannot back down from this, not with how much it almost cost us, with how directly it was targeted at me. This was not some random Rebel cell getting infiltrated, this was an attack specifically to apprehend me and my team. If we let this slide, let bygones be bygones, the Rebellion, the politicians at least, would assume they could walk all over us. That could cause our partnership to break down since I would not tolerate that in the slightest."


    "So then, what''s your plan?" he asked. "I know you have one, what is it?"


    "My plan is to use this negotiation to show that the Skyforged is no longer just a small-time mercenary company," I explained. "I want to change how they see us because I am no longer satisfied with the relationship we have at the moment. It needs to evolve if the Rebellion wants our continued support. We want to continue to support you guys, but we can''t do it if we aren''t being treated well."


    Luke''s eyes went wide for a moment before seeming to understand what I was saying. While he may not be as politically savvy as his twin, he had definitely gotten a crash course in it since he joined. Plus, he was a pretty smart kid in general, so I wasn''t surprised to see him understand what I was getting at.


    "Alright, I suppose that''s about the best I can hope for," He responded, leaning forward onto the table in front of him. "I suppose that means things won''t be as¡­ casual with our dealings?"


    "I prefer to keep things simple and straightforward, but yes, it''s pretty likely," I admitted. "My casual attitude was, marginally, part of the problem. I kept things simple and uncomplicated, and because of that, we were treated as simple and uncomplicated. I''m not saying that it is the reason we were taken advantage of, but I am saying that I don''t think I can afford to be quite so casual, at least when doing business."


    "That''s unfortunate," He said with a frown. "Does that mean¡­"


    The young rebel trailed off, and for a moment, I saw a deeper weakness, one that worried about the friendships he had made since meeting us. I quickly spoke up to squash those thoughts before they could progress.


    "Relax, Luke, I''m not gonna stop being your friend. None of us are," I assured him, shaking my head. "Even if the Rebellion royally fucks this up, I''m still gonna support you and all of the Jedi. You will always have a place with us, even if it gets complicated."


    The tension that had been building up inside him seemed to melt a bit, and he smiled. Before he could say anything, I smirked and continued.


    "Besides, I don''t know if I could keep you and Miru apart even if I wanted to," I added. "She is stubborn, and saying no to you would be like yelling at a puppy. I don''t stand a chance."


    The rebel Jedi blushed at my teasing but did not deny anything. I couldn''t help but laugh as the last bit of tension in his shoulder drained away. I was about to tease him some more, but Ahsoka came to his rescue, poking my stomach with her elbow.


    "Alright, alright, no more teasing," I agreed, raising my hands up, still smiling.


    The three of us chatted a bit more, and eventually, we went our separate ways to get ready. We had plenty of time, more than Luke even realized since I didn''t tell him everything, so I wasn''t exactly feeling rushed. Still, better safe than sorry, so I put on my uniform with the intent of straightening it up later.


    After another two hours of hyperspace travel, we dropped out of lightspeed around the familiar planet. By now, I recognized the rebel defense fleet pretty well, and while I couldn''t pretend to know every ship, I was pretty sure they had around the same amount as usual, which was a good sign that nothing crazy was going on.


    At least not yet.


    We waited on the outskirts of the planet for a bit, before the rest of the First Group, including the Loyal Hound, the Forward Charge, and the Talos Chariot, dropped out of lightspeed not too far from us. We shared a quick conversation before grouping together and descending down to the planet''s surface, passing by the defense fleet and into the atmosphere.

 Chapter 190

    When our fleet landed around the mountain that made up Alpha Base, Ahsoka and I left the Starcaller, making our way to the Chariot while Luke went to head inside the base.


    "How is everyone doing?" I asked, stepping into my ship, where Tatnia was waiting for us. "Everyone ready for this?"


    "Julus, Nal, and Vaz are just getting their armor on," She responded, absentmindedly touching her own uniform. "Got a message from Corvak saying his men will be ready shortly as well."


    "Well, don''t rush too much," I said, shaking my head. "Step one is the wait, and I''m not sure just how long it will take."


    "Are you really going to wait until they come to you?" She asked. "I get the idea, but¡­"


    "It might take some time for them to realize what is happening, but once they do, they will have a choice to make," I explained. "Either they come out here and invite us in, or we sit on our thumbs and play chicken. If we wait more than forty-eight hours, we start powering up the ships and requesting a departure vector. The point is that they come to us to invite us in. I''m trying to set a certain look, and this is step one."


    She nodded in understanding, and together, we all made our way up to the lounge, shortly joined by the rest of the team. As she said, Nal, Vaz, and Julus were all in full armor, which had been cleaned, repainted, and polished. They would be our escort, our honor guard, as would Corvak and two of his men. I wanted to include Corvak in the uniformed group with Ahsoka, Tatnia, and me, but I felt that three was already a high number for that. Thankfully, he didn''t mind, assuring me he was more than content to not have to spend time dealing with politicians directly. On top of that, he could also contact me silently using a connection to my datapad and his armor in case he did have something to say.


    We sat around and passed the time by playing a few holo games, discussing the upcoming meeting, and generally just killing time. Corvak and two of his team joined us, armored and ready to go.


    Eventually, after a few more hours of waiting, Calima let us know that a group of people were approaching the ship. A quick look showed that it was General Syndulla and Princess Leia, escorted by a quartet of soldiers, riding on a group of small transport speeders, a few of them empty. Once they stopped and disembarked, they approached the ship, stopping just ahead of the boarding ramp, still in view of the viewport.


    "Alright, seems like someone is already picking up what I was putting down," I said with a nod, turning back to the lounge. "Or Luke gave them a hint. Either way, it''s showtime. Is everyone ready?"


    I got a series of nods and verbal confirmations, and after a moment, I led the way down to the first deck. There we spent a minute getting into position on the cargo elevator, with the armored crew in a two-by-three stack behind us while Ahsoka, Tatnia, and myself took the lead. When we were set, I took a long breath and shook myself off for a moment before finally putting my game face on. I needed to play a specific role here, one that didn''t necessarily come naturally to me. Ahsoka and Tatnia would help keep me on track, but ultimately, this was my show.


    "Ready. Let''s greet our host."


    The cargo elevator lowered, and after about thirty seconds, we stepped off to the flatted landing pad beneath us. Together, we moved, with me slightly in the lead, walking out from under the ship to meet the Rebel Leaders.


    "Welcome, Deacon. It is good to see you again," Leia said, stepping forward and offering her hand. "I apologize for taking so long to greet you."


    "Admiral Deacon," Tatnia corrected, fast enough that I didn''t have a chance to comment, which was good because I hadn''t even thought about a title. "He is Admiral Deacon."


    "My apologies," Leia responded easily, bowing slightly. "Admiral Deacon, it is good to see you."


    "It is good to see you as well, Princess Leia, General Syndulla," I said, reaching out to shake her hand, switching to the General next. "I assumed the delay must have been from a miscommunication, I understand they can happen. I trust it''s being addressed?"


    "We¡­ are still uncovering the issue, but rest assured we are dedicated to addressing it," She said with a gentle smile. "Shall we adjourn to a more comfortable location?"


    "Very well," I agreed with a nod. "I expect my guards will not be a problem?"


    "Of course not, we understand the need for protection," General Syndulla agreed with a nod before gesturing to our rides into the base.


    It was strange, talking to them both like this, as they were both people I had talked to before, one quite frequently. It was clear we both knew I was putting in airs, but, as expected, neither of them commented on it. I hated it, but it was necessary.


    We climbed onto the speeders, and we were quickly off, traveling along the landing pads until we entered the base, where we were guided through the facilities. Unlike previously, we traveled at a much more sedate pace, Princess Leia and General Syndulla discussing some of the basic renovations the Rebellion had made to the base. None of it was anything strategically important, and it all amounted to small talk between politicians.


    Previously, when we had come here to discuss missions or raids, we had been guided to basic meeting rooms. Now, though, we were shown to a much larger, much more open <u>conference room</u></a>. The room was lined with greenery, carefully cultivated, with a fake sunroof in the middle, which I was pretty sure doubled as a holoprojector. The sunroof shone down on a large circular table, which itself was of high quality. This was a room that was clearly meant to impress while also putting someone at ease.


    Including Leia and General Syndulla, who took their seats shortly after we entered, there were six Rebel leaders present. On top of Luke and General Dodonna, there was also a human male I vaguely recognized and a female whom I didn''t recognize at all. As we sat, our guards spreading out behind us, I could see and feel everyone''s eyes on us, studying us as we moved. I returned their looks calmly, giving General Dodonna a respectful nod, which he returned.


    "Before we begin, I would like to thank the Skyforged Vanguard for making your way to us. We apologize for the inconvenience," Princess Leia said, standing from her seat with a smile while holding her hands in front of herself. "I would also like to introduce <u>General Rieekan</u></a>, as well as Commander Vitali, <u>Viscount Tardi''s</u></a> second in command. The Viscount apologizes for being unable to join us in person, but as you can imagine, gathering our forces together is a costly and often dangerous affair."


    Both of the introduced humans nodded as Leia said their names, and I followed suit. After a moment, I stood, Leia quickly sitting as I did.


    "I appreciate your welcome, and I very well understand the difficulty in arranging your people into one location," I responded. "The more moving parts, the less often those parts align together."


    Leia and the others accepted my forgiveness with their own smile and movements of acknowledgment. After waiting for a moment, just enough to let the empty air settle and begin to weigh down on everyone, I began to speak again, slowly sitting down again as I did.


    "I would like to start this off by setting something straight so as to avoid confusion going forward," I said, looking at each of the Rebel leaders in turn as I spoke. "The Skyforged Vanguard does recognize that the Rebel Alliance has a claim to a portion of the spoils from our past mission. While the spoils were cut down drastically by¡­ unfortunate circumstances, that does not change the reality of the situation."


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    I could see Commander Vitali shift in her seat, as if she was going to speak up, but I quickly plowed through.


    "I conferred with my aides and advisors, and we have reached a conclusion that the Rebel Alliance has a fifteen percent claim to the materials, equipment, and weapons we recovered."


    "Fifteen percent?!" Commander Vitali said, her eyes wide. "We gathered a significant task force to assist in that mission, and-"


    "A task force that, due to an ambush stemming from an unknown leak, never saw a single moment of combat," I cut in, meeting the finance-focused leader''s frustration easily. "It is only by the efforts of myself and my team that there are any spoils left at all. Tell me, would your fleet have survived against the Executor if it had been ambushed?"


    The room was quiet for a moment, as anyone with even a basic understanding of naval combat knew the answer. Without my idea to sacrifice CIS ships to take down the interdictors, their fleet wouldn''t have stood a chance in the hypothetical battle. They would have been torn to shreds trying to escape.


    "While I do agree that our portion should be the lesser fraction," Princess Leia admitted calmly. "Surely there is a more reasonable number we could agree on?"


    "There is," I answered cleanly, surprising the Princess and Commander Vitali. "I am willing to offer twenty percent. But we are keeping the Lucrehulk and the dreadought."


    Even with how few of the leaders were at the table, it still erupted into various words of disbelief, admonishment, and disagreement. After a solid thirty seconds, I snapped my fingers, sparking a jolt of electricity that resonated like a firecracker, silencing the room.


    "Let me be perfectly clear," I said, once again meeting each of their looks. "The Skyforged Vanguard will be keeping both the Lucrehulk and the Dreadnought. This is non-negotiable. As far as I am concerned, we earned them when we fought and escaped Darth Vader and his Super Star Destroyer. The extra five percent is being offered because we understand we are going against normal negotiation procedures. It is an apology for that and nothing more."


    "It is still unacceptable," Commander Vitali stated again, rapping her fingers on the table. "The Rebel Alliance is in desperate need of ships like the Lucrehulk. You would deny us such an important ship?"


    "Should I not?" I asked, looking at her confused. "After all, the betrayal came from your side. If it wasn''t for the arrival of Darth Vader, we would be enjoying a celebration of the greatest find of the year or maybe even the decade! We found an entire fully staffed and mostly self-sufficient fleet, as well as the infrastructure to repair it should it get damaged. And now we have a bare third of that fleet remaining."


    I looked around the table, focusing on each of the leaders, giving them a tight look. I couldn''t help but notice that General Draven was not among them, which made me wonder if he had been blocked from joining to keep things civil. Before anyone could interrupt, I continued, this time dropping my voice to sound angry.


    "Besides, a Lucrehulk is worth more than four hundred and fifty million credits," I pointed out, eyeing Commander Vitali closely. "Are you prepared to pay out the Skyforged Vanguards portion for that?"


    My question caught the woman off guard, her face paling slightly. It seemed that despite the warning that both General Syndulla and Luke no doubt gave them, they had still expected to run this negotiation, assuming I would hand things over quickly and with a smile. I resisted the urge to shout, instead only standing, focusing a glare on the Commander.


    "You weren''t expecting us to simply give over a near priceless vessel of war, were you?" I asked, leaving no doubt that''s exactly what I knew they had expected. "Well, allow me to correct your assumptions then. The Skyforged Vanguard does not, at the moment, believe that the Rebel Alliance is capable of being dealt with in a¡­ casual, hand-waving manner. After being repeatedly taken advantage of, pushed to the side, and flat-out betrayed, the Skyforged is no longer willing to deal in good faith. If the Rebel Alliance would like to gain access to the equipment, ships, supplies, and other goods that we procure, you will pay for them. Every bolt, nut, and wire. This is now a business transaction, not a charitable donation."


    I stood for a long few seconds, my hands on the table, waiting for my words to settle in before finally sitting back down. General Dodonna, who, out of everyone, besides maybe General Syndulla, looked to be the most understanding of my position, leaned forward, taking the floor.


    "Since you are determined to claim the two largest starships, and you claim that Rebellion is owed twenty percent, what are you offering in compensation?" He asked simply. "We are owed our twenty percent after all."


    "Very true. First, the Lucerhulk contains an entire droid army," I explained. "We are offering you the greater portion of it."


    I held my hand out to Tatnia, who placed my tablet into my open palm. It was one hundred percent a practiced move, an attempt to make us seem streamlined and coherent, which I''m pretty sure worked. I opened the tablet and accessed the specific data inside.


    "In total, we have one hundred and seventy-eight thousand battle droids, fifty-seven thousand super battle droids, armaments and equipment for the entire breadth, as well as transport, tanks, and other equipment," I explained. "I am offering a hundred vulture droids starfighter and ten C-9799 transport ships, as well as enough tanks and equipment to fill each of them, as well as one hundred and thirty-five thousand battle droids, twenty thousand super battle droids, and the equipment to run and maintain that amount. Basically, I am offering you an entire army, lock, stock, and barrel."


    "That¡­ that is an incredible amount of equipment," General Rieekan admitted, more than a bit caught off guard by the numbers.


    "It is, and it''s yours to do with as you wish. Keep it, sell it, use it to take over a ship dock to make up for what your negligence lost us in the last mission. It''s completely up to you," I explained with a shrug. "On top of that, I am offering full ownership of Omega Base. We would pull out completely, and you can move it anywhere you want."


    The idea seemed to catch Leia off guard, but both Dodanna and Synbdulla seemed to have seen it coming, simply nodding in agreement. The two officers no doubt understood that after a leak from their side almost got us killed, there was no way we could trust being so close to them at the station. I could also imagine that, as a diplomat, Leia was concerned about losing a way to interact with my group so easily.


    "And finally, we are offering seven smaller combat ships, all of which are fully staffed with droids, as well as all the supplies and equipment on board. If any of you have datapads or systems you''d like the data on?"


    We took a minute to bounce the data around, eventually getting the information for the seven smaller ships to the leaders, allowing them to look at the inventory themselves. Once they were satisfied, I pulled everyone together again, though I resisted the urge to snap my fingers again.


    "That is all we are willing to offer in exchange for the Lucrehulk and the Dreadnought," I said, confirming the question I could see brewing in many of the Rebel leaders'' heads. "From here, we can begin a more neutral and normal negotiation process for each of the individual remaining starships and their cargo."

 Chapter 191

    Despite me drawing a clear-cut line in the sand, stating that the negotiations for the Lucrehulk and the Dreadnought were over, the Rebel Alliance was not prepared to drop it. They were not ready to accept losing the Lucrehulk or the Dreadnought, at least not that easily. For a moment, listening to Commander Vitali again attempt to convince me it was better off with the Rebellion, I contemplated simply standing and leaving. Showing that I was willing to leave the table might be enough to take my words seriously, but it could also come off as a tantrum, an inexperienced negotiator leaving when things aren''t going as he planned.


    "Perhaps we could negotiate a trade for other ships," Princess Leia suggested, sending a silencing look to Commander Vitali. "The Lucrehulk is a large ship, large enough to put a severe strain on your resources. We could agree to an amount owed, which we would pay in ships of increasing size, as your organization is prepared to utilize them. You receive larger and larger ships as you are prepared to deal with them, while we receive the capital ship we desperately need."


    That offer caught me by surprise. The Rebel Alliance was always desperate for starships of any kind, and for her to offer up a material trade rather than credits showed how badly they wanted a ship of this size. Not to mention, it wasn''t actually a bad offer. In other circumstances, this would have been a hard offer to deny.


    "Had this been any other ship, I would consider that offer, Your Highness," I admitted with a smile. "However, CIS ships are designed to run on an almost completely droid crew. The ship contains more than enough repair and maintenance droids, as well as parts and facilities, to keep the ship working for years without any interference. With small infusions of parts and repairs to droids, you are looking at a decade."


    "And if the ship is damaged during combat?" General Dodonna asked. "Do you have the facilities to maintain it then?"


    "No, but you do," I pointed out. "And the Rebel Alliance wouldn''t refuse to help their allies against the Empire just because they happened to get the better end of a deal, would you?"


    "Of course not," Princess Leia said, once again cutting off more words from Commander Vitali. "But they would not come for free."


    "Of course, we wouldn''t want anything for free," I agreed with a nod. "Shall we now move to negotiations for the other ships? As I have already said, the Lucrehulk and Dreadnought are ours, but everything else is up for barter."


    The leaders shared a series of quick looks and nods before, finally, Princess Leia looked back at me and smiled.


    "Very well, we will lay the discussion to rest," She said, the look in her eye adding the "For now" clearly as if she had shouted it at me. "Perhaps we should begin by going over the available ships?"


    "Removing the ships we already offered as compensation, we have eight ships on the table," I explained. "One <u>Munificent-class star frigate</u></a>, one <u>Diamond-class cruiser</u></a>, two <u>Hardcell-class interstellar transports</u></a>, one of which has the <u>Battle Refit</u></a>, and four <u>Gozanti Cruisers</u></a>."


    "That is¡­ a significant list of ships," General Dodonna admitted.


    "It''s under a third of what was there in the first place," I pointed out. "And don''t forget, what some of these ships have on board is equally valuable."


    I sent the data over to the Rebel leaders, revealing exactly what each ship contained. Cut from that list was anything we had already claimed, including any BX units we found. Before they could dive into the numbers, I clapped my hands to get everyone''s attention.


    "I suppose the easiest place to start with is the four Gozanti-class cruisers," I suggested. "They don''t have much inside save for some minimal supplies and equipment, nothing worth bargaining about. I estimate their worth to be a hundred and fifty thousand credits for each. With your cut discounted, that brings them down to a hundred and twenty thousand."


    "The Gozanti is a sturdy ship, but these are old, Admiral Deacon," General Syndulla said with a frown. "That''s not much less than an entirely new ship would cost."


    "They are well maintained, our teams have been working hard to check for any of the usual problems," I assured her before nodding slightly. "But you do have a point. A hundred thousand for each one."


    "Three hundred and fifty thousand for all four," She suggested.


    "Three hundred and eighty."


    "...Fine, you have a deal."


    "Fantastic, I''m glad we could reach at least one satisfactory sale," I said with a smile. "When we are done and receive payment, we will share their coordinates with you."


    She nodded in agreement before General Dodonna spoke up, seeing that we were done, a frown on his face.


    "Admiral Deacon, if you are looking to charge at the same rate as you just did¡­ I''m afraid we will not be able to afford all of these ships, as well as the cargo they contain, especially not all at once," He admitted. "Following your estimations of value, we are looking at nearly fifty million credits for the ships and potentially another ten to fifteen in ground equipment."


    "I am aware, which is why I have some alternative offers. You were able to secure a planetary shield system for this base," I pointed out. "I understand that those sorts of systems are not just expensive but also rare."


    "Getting them can be difficult¡­. However, we may be able to procure more, but it won''t be easy," General Rieekan admitted. "For obvious reasons, they are illegal for civilian purchase, and those sold to settlements or cities are highly regulated. They also require large power generators, which we could get as well, but would increase the cost, nearly doubling it."


    "I would like the most powerful one you can get your hands on, as well as a power system robust enough to power it at full charge," I explained. "In exchange, I will give you both of the Hardcells, as well as the <u>Hailfire-class</u></a> droid tanks they have on board. That''s a ten million credit value easily, even including your cut, for both the cost and your contacts in procuring a planetary scale shield system."


    "That¡­ I believe that would be an acceptable trade," General Rieekan agreed with a nod, casting his eyes over the rest of the leaders.


    "Good. We will deliver the starships once we have the opportunity to examine the shield and power system," I said with a nod, the general wincing but also nodding in agreement.


    In reality, the Hardcells were barely worth anything to me. They were primarily transport ships and not very good ones at that, so I was happy to see them gone. Especially since the Hailfire droids they were filled with were one-time use at best, and money a trap at worst. Their missile systems were adequate, yes, but the vehicles were way too big for what they could do. On top of that, they were difficult to maintain, the missiles were incredibly expensive, and once they ran out, if they couldn''t keep up with production, each tank only had a pair of small laser cannons, barely worth mentioning for a vehicle that size.


    Not to mention how big of a target their missile arrays were.


    If I had to take them, I would either throw them at the enemy as disposable weapons while I did my business or immediately disassemble two-thirds of the convoy and station them on a craft capable of rapid deployment, like the Whale Shark. I would use them until their parts and missiles ran out before selling them for scrap or just returning to the original idea and throwing them away as distractions. Either way, trading them and the two ships that carried them was well worth a planetary shield system that could cover a couple hundred miles of Nirn, obviously including Vercopa.


    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "Now, concerning the Diamond-Class. Currently, it has some light damage but contains four hundred and fifty <u>OG-9 spider droids</u></a> and two thousand <u>DSD1 dwarf spider droids</u></a>," I said after a moment. "I want one hundred of the OG-9s and a thousand of the DSD1s, but the rest are yours. However, I should warn you, between the units on board, I estimate that the Diamond class is worth at least fourteen to seventeen million credits. And yes, that does include reducing the price for the damage and because the droid units are used."


    "That is a significant price tag," Princess Leia responded. "These larger droid weapons, do their limbs not present a large weakness?"


    "It is their primary one, yes," General Dodonna said, focusing on his tablet and not entirely paying attention to the Princess. "But do not underestimate them. Their primary weapons are substantial. A group of six could take down a Corellian Corvette in short order if it stopped moving."


    Seeming to realize who he had been talking to, he looked up to find Princess Leia eyeing him, having firmly shut down her attempt to probably lower the price of the droid weapons. I couldn''t help but chuckle.


    "I understand they are expensive, but I believe in the right hands, they will be extremely effective," I assured them. "Deploying them as defensive forces, as movable heavy weapons alone would make them worth the credits."


    "That may be true, but I cannot invest that much money at once, especially with your other ship, the Munificent, still on the table," Princess Leia explained.


    "Well then, how about another trade to lessen the price?" I asked, continuing when the Alderanian princess gestured for me to continue. "Two squadrons of A-wings, as well as the exact technical information so we can make our own repairs. For that, I will cut eight million credits off of the price tag, bringing it down to seven million credits. With your cut, that would be five point five million."


    "Deacon, every starfighter we have is precious," Luke said, finally speaking up. "Especially hyperspace-capable ones. We use them to guard supply transport ships and do hit-and-run missions."


    "Besides, asking for the technical data is too much," Commander Vitali pointed out, shaking her head. "It would allow you to produce your own if you managed to secure production equipment."


    "I am aware, which is why I offered so much for both," I explained.


    The truth was that while I loved the X-wing, I wanted A-wings badly. Not only would they be the perfect match for our pocket carriers since two could fit on each side of a hangar bay-modified C-Roc, but their incredible speed and maneuverability matched perfectly with my pilot''s enhanced dexterity. Not to mention that if the Rebellion could puzzle out how to produce them without proper mass factories, so could I.


    "You intend to manufacture A-wings?" Princess Leia asked, raising an eyebrow.


    "I don''t see why we shouldn''t," I responded. "They are fast, maneuverable starfighters, and their small size means they are easier to fit in small hangars. We are allies against the Empire, correct? Is allowing us to build a competent starfighter really a bad thing?"


    "Not necessarily," General Syndulla admitted. "But the plans for all our starfighters are top secret. We can''t just sell them."


    "To be frank, General Syndulla, that''s a load of crap. Your starfighter supply line consists of mechanics shops and small-time workers producing ships by hand. At this point, you starfighters borderline artistic custom pieces rather than mass-produced items," I pointed out, giving Luke a look. "I know for a fact that X-wings are notoriously "custom" for each shop that produces them. Have you ever seen wood paneling or maybe a hand-painted console?"


    "I¡­ will admit things like that are not uncommon," Luke responded, rubbing the back of his neck.


    "Those don''t exactly sound like state-of-the-art secure facilities," I pointed out, crossing my arms and leaning back. "How hard would I really have to look on the black market before someone handed those plans to me for some spare change and a free meal?"


    I let them stew in my statement for a while before finally continuing.


    "Look, I''m giving you an opportunity to save some credits by trading something that has, realistically, no real value," I explained with a shrug. "I could just as easily take them myself or go off and find a different suitable starfighter. I hear MandalMotors have some interesting designs, so maybe we should buy a few starfighters from them."


    "The Empire more or less controls MandalMotors," Luke corrected.


    "The point remains. We could steal some plans, buy some, bribe them out of someone, or even earn them through good deeds. Either way, you would lose out on a good deal."


    "If that is the price to add this starship to our fleet¡­" Princess Leia trailed off before smiling. "Then perhaps the Skyforged could be added to our list of designated producers of A-wings. So long as you occasionally sell us one, then so what if you decided to make some of them for yourself¡­"


    I could see General Syndulla and Luke smiling, both of them realizing pretty quickly what Princess Leia''s plan was. It was smart, a solid way to both get me what I wanted and appease anyone who might have issues with handing over these designs. Unfortunately, it was also precisely what I wanted to avoid. No under-the-table deals, no friendly winks as we reap unofficial benefits. No off-the-record payments to keep people from catching on.


    "No, I''m sorry, but that is not acceptable," I said, shaking my head. "As I stated before, the Skyforged Vanguard does not feel as if the Rebel Alliance can be trusted to deal in good faith, or with assurances, IOUs, or any sort of under-the-table manner. This is not a casual deal being done between buddies. This is a business transaction being done between two allies. I refuse to leave us open for future reprisal when someone "suddenly" realizes we shouldn''t have access to the plans and demands we stop."


    All of the Rebel leaders looked stunned at my statement and swift dismissal of the Princess'' solution. All of them save the Princess herself. Instead, she looked as if she had seen my response coming.


    "I see," She responded, nodding in understanding. "In that case, you have to understand the situation. We cannot unilaterally decide to hand out these plans. It is not a choice we could make alone."


    "Unfortunate, but very well," I accepted easily. "In that case, we amend the deal to nine million credits and two squadrons of A-wings."


    "Again, I will have to discuss that with others, but I see that deal being much more agreeable," She responded. "Is there anything else you could accept as a trade? On top of or instead of the starfighter squadrons?"


    "At the moment, no."


    "Then, perhaps, now might be a good time for a recess," Princess Leia suggested, standing with a serene, calm smile. "I would like some time to contact others and discuss amongst ourselves, as I''m sure you would as well. After that, I would like to invite you to a short meal."


    "I believe that would be wise," I nodded. "We shall return to our ships, come find us when you are ready."

 Chapter 192

    We were quickly escorted back to the Talos Chariot, all of us piling inside and heading up to the lounge. I resisted the urge to loosen my uniform to sit casually, as it would only make getting back into "character" that much harder. When I sat down on the lounge couch, I let out a long sigh, running my hand through my hair.


    "So," I said as everyone found a seat or leaned against something. " Anyone have any thoughts?"


    "You went a bit deeper than planned when compensating for the Lucrehulk and Dreadnought," Tatnia commented. "We only planned on giving them half of those smaller ships."


    "I know, but honestly, that was all chum change in what we are negotiating for," I pointed out. "If we had pushed to sell them separately, I could have maybe gotten half as much as we did with the Gozanti."


    "I still think we should have kept the Gozantis," Julus said, popping off his helmet. "Even if we just kept them in storage or on the Lucrehulk."


    "If they hadn''t seen them already, I honestly would have considered it," I admitted with a tired shrug. "But there was no way they didn''t get a good scan in when we first met up at the rendezvous, so there was no reason to hide that they existed. Plus, it was also a good way to prove that we are actually here to do business. Play it simple and fair, you get simple and fair deals."


    That seemed to at least partially satisfy Julus, who leaned back in the chair.


    "What sort of planetary shield generator do you think they will get their hands on?" Tatnia asked.


    "Well, the one they have here is enough to withstand sustained bombardment from a dozen star destroyers, probably even the Executor," I said, gesturing vaguely to the mountain. "That one is worth maybe a million credits? We gave them ten, so I''m expecting something a bit more impressive."


    "Do you think they can back that up?"


    "If they can''t, then they''re gonna be stuck footing the bill," I pointed out. "If they come to deliver, and it''s just another one of what they have, they are going to have a rude awakening when I refuse to turn over the ships."


    Ahsoka winced, but Tatnia nodded with a smirk. She had always been eager to play hardball with all of our allies, including the Rebellion. The fact that I was drawing a line in the sand and not dealing with their bullshit anymore was music to her ears. Ahsoka, on the other hand, had helped the Rebellion grow into its current form. To hear us voice valid concerns that wouldn''t be too far from what we had had to deal with so far must have sucked.


    "Princess Leia was not surprised to hear you deny her deal," Corvak pointed out, also having taken off his helmet as we all sat down. "Was she testing you?"


    "That''s all I can think of," I agreed with a nod. "Either that or she wanted our denial on record. I would consider Leia to be a tentative ally as long as we keep playing it straight with the Rebellion, so I don''t think she is trying to catch us out on a technicality or anything. More than likely, she wanted us to prove our intent wasn''t flimsy enough to fold when offered what we wanted at the cost of our message."


    "Is she that skilled of a diplomat?" Corvak answered. "I''ve always seen royalty make terrible politicians because they never work for their positions."


    "Her family raised her on lessons of diplomacy," I explained, shaking my head. "It''s in her blood, and it''s certainly in her soul, though... her methodology and goal might be a bit misguided. She is learning under Mon Mothma¡­ Her dream right now is to reinstate the Senate so it can all go back to normal. I hope that is the result of Mon Mothma misguiding her and not her own conclusion because if it''s the latter, it''s very disappointing."


    I shook my head, most of my crew picking up on and agreeing with my mocking tone at the last part. The last thing this galaxy needed was to go back to the train wreck that the Old Republic had become before and during the Clone Wars.


    "Do you have a plan if we cannot reach a good deal for the Diamond and the Munificent?" Julus asked. "If they are struggling to buy the Diamond, how are they going to buy the much bigger and more impressive ship?"


    "And all the droids they have on it," Nal pointed out, sipping a drink he poured himself. "Not as much as the Lucrehulk, but there was still a lot."


    "To be honest, I don''t know," I admitted with a shrug and a frown. "I''m hoping to get a big chunk of credits for the munificent on top of some sort of trade. I have a few suggestions, but I don''t know how thrilled they will be."


    "How difficult would it be to set up a shop making these starfighters?" Vaz asked through her helmet.


    "Pretty easy, I wasn''t lying about how they get their ships after all," I responded. "Most of their starfighters are made in one-offs in garages and mechanics shops, so we could absolutely set up a couple of hangar bays somewhere that slowly trickle one or two A-wings a month into our forces."


    "So we could hire a couple of workers, get some gear, and build them ourselves?" Tatnia asked. "Why aren''t we already doing that with some other starfighter?"


    "Because we currently have a surplus of V-wings. They basically fill the same role as the A-wings, but to a lesser degree," I explained. "A-wings are fast and nimble, and with the stuff I give our pilots, they will make them dance. Plus, the A-wings are small, meaning they would fit easily in our pocket carriers or anywhere else we wanted to tuck them."


    "If they deny your deal, would you go behind their backs?" Ahsoka asked, an eyebrow raised.


    "In an ''all bets are off'' scenario? Maybe," I responded with a shrug. "But unless this meeting goes south hard, that''s not gonna happen. I don''t want to alienate them, I want them to take us seriously. Bartering with schematics like this is a good way to do that."


    We continued to discuss our options until Calima passed on a message that our transport would be returning soon to pick us up. Sure enough, we were soon taken back to the base, where we were dropped off at a dining hall that had been spruced up and decorated similarly to the conference room we had just been in. Considering it was quite close to the conference room told me this was intentionally created as a dining hall for those using that room.


    We sat down and enjoyed a simple but well-made meal, made from food harvested from the planet Alpha Base was built on. A rather large crablike crustacean was the centerpiece, with several mollusks and other food set around it. The first course was a soup that tasted remarkably like clam chowder, enough that it actually struck me silent after I first tasted it. Leia seemed to pick up on it but didn''t mention it, simply continuing to talk about the planet''s plentiful, vibrant oceans.


    "I''m sure the Mon Cals stationed here have been enjoying the waters," I commented, the trained diplomat nodding and smiling.


    "Indeed, and their skill at gathering food in underwater settings has made keeping those that live here fed considerably easier," She admitted. "We are currently in the process of designing several fish farms to be sunk into the water. Any mass production of food we can manage is well worth its weight in gold."


    We continued to enjoy the meal, mostly sticking to polite small talk, until eventually, I managed to steer the conversation to our most recent failed mission and the ambush itself.


    "I assume that the Rebellion is investigating where the leak came from," I said. "I may not blame the organization as a whole, but finding those responsible would certainly make me and those I lead more comfortable."


    "We are investigating," Generally Syndulla. "Whoever it was not only sold you out, they put the entire fleet in danger. We were minutes, maybe less, from jumping into the location. While your plan worked to save your people, we would have likely been torn to shreds trying to escape. I¡­ Our people were not trained to stand up to such a massive ship."


    "They are tough, but they aren''t invincible," I assured her. "They share the same weaknesses that all large Imperial ships do. You just need to exploit them. However, that''s not what I wish to discuss. The investigation, who is performing it?"


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    "Our internal investigations unit has made it a high priority," General Rieekan explained. "They have been running through our systems and going over our records looking for a lead."


    "In that case, might I make a suggestion?" I said, continuing when Princess Leia and General Syndulla nodded. "In the Old Republic, it was the Jedi who would have responded to such a blatant and dangerous breach of security."


    As I made my suggestion, I gestured to Ahsoka, who did not look surprised by my proposition, which made sense since I had already discussed this with her.


    "Ahsoka is well known by your people, I trust her with my life, and considering her previous role in the Rebellion, I can''t imagine anyone would deny her questions or hinder investigation without nefarious reasons," I pointed out. "She may be a member of the Skyforged Vanguard, but surely she can be trusted, given her history and dedication to the cause?"


    "That¡­ is an interesting suggestion, one that has merit. I could assign her to the case, especially if she agreed to work with a member of the investigation team?" General Syndulla said, looking between Ahsoka and I.


    "As long as they can keep up, that shouldn''t be a problem," Ahsoka responded, nodding slightly. "It may even help."


    "They will certainly help you get around the base," General Rieekan said. "We take security seriously on base."


    "Of course, General," Ahsoka said with a nod, and I bit back a retort about how their security could probably use some work if people were sneaking around it and selling out secrets without getting caught.


    We finished our meal after another hour, by the end of which I was really starting to feel bad for the rest of the crew. They spent more than an hour and a half just standing there, watching us stuff our faces with delicious food. I decided that when we were done here, the whole crew would join us back at Nirn. We would celebrate or commiserate together as a group, depending on how these negotiations went.


    As we settled back into the conference room, Leia was first to take the floor. She stood up with a carefully crafted, excited smile.


    "I have some good news. I was able to contact <u>Admiral Ackbar</u></a> and <u>General Merrick</u></a>. They have both agreed that, as a sign of trust and hope for our future endeavors, you may have the schematics for our most advanced version of the A-wing. That, along with seven million credits and a single squadron of A-wings. That is, unfortunately, all we can spare."


    "That''s fantastic news," I said with a smile. "I''m glad we could reach a satisfactory deal. I will message my people to start preparing the ship to hand over. We will be taking the mentioned cut of the droids for ourselves, as we discussed, but the ship and everything else is yours."


    "That just leaves the final item, the Munificent class," General Dodonna said. "We were able to come up with a deal I believe you will like."


    The general tapped on his datapad, and a moment later, mine received a data packet, an image of a ship. It was a <u>GR-75 Medium Transport</u></a>, one of the more recognizable ships from the movies, especially after the Hoth battle scene. This particular version was modified, with the hundreds of crates under the curved plates replaced with massive fuel tanks.


    "This is one of our standard fuel ships, which we use to transfer starfighter and starship fuel across our many cells," He explained. "We get this fuel from several sources. Some of it is stolen, but some of it is harvested and refined at our own plants. We offer one of these fuel ships and to fill it three times a month for two years."


    "From the early days of the Rebellion, we know how difficult it can be to reliably find fuel. We can only imagine how much of an issue it has become for your forces," General Syndulla said, continuing after the general made the offer. "In exchange, we ask that you take ten million credits off of the Munificent price tag."


    "An interesting offer," I admitted, tempted to accept off the cuff since fuel was more or less one of our most significant expenses and one that our quartermaster struggled the most with. "But should we not talk about the actual price first?"


    "What do you think it''s worth?" General Dodonna asked.


    "New, it should cost fifty million, but obviously, between time and the minor damage it took as we escaped, that isn''t reasonable. We were thinking thirty million," I responded. "With your cut removed, that would be about twenty-four million. Of course, you have to take the entire ground force stored inside, as well as fifty-three vulture droids, into account as well."


    The Munificent was carrying nearly a hundred and twenty thousand battle droids, twenty thousand of which were super battle droids. This included weapons and basic equipment, as well as basic transports, but unlike the Lucrehulk, it did not include heavy weapons, tanks, speeders, or several other bits of what would make up a functioning army. Still, it was not something I could just fold into the cost of the ship.


    "The Skyforged will be taking ten thousand super battle droids and a correlating portion of upkeep equipment for them, but the remaining force is still worth seven or eight million credits," I pointed out. "I would say, to keep things even and fair, we can call it six million with your percentage included, making the whole ship a flat thirty."


    "And would you be willing to accept the deal for fuel?" Princess Leia asked, raising her eyebrow.


    Before I could answer, Tatnia slid me my datapad, prompting me to look down. On it was a quick series of calculations, showing a generalized cost analysis of how much money that much fuel, spread out over two years, would actually cost. Apparently, a shipment of fuel that large would cost somewhere in the ballpark of ninety-five thousand credits, totaling about seven million over two years. That would account for two-thirds of our current fuel consumption. Taking into account how difficult it was to get that amount of fuel, it was a good offer. At the bottom, as if to confirm my opinion, she wrote, "Solid Deal!"


    "I think we would be happy to accept the fuel shipments," I said with a smile. "As long as you agree to cover with credits or materials if you are unable to meet the deal each month."


    "Agreed," She said with a nod. "Twenty million credits and three monthly shipments of fuel for the Munificent and its on-board army. I am thrilled we could reach an amicable compromise for these ships, Admiral Deacon."


    "As am I," I said with a smile. "The Skyforged Vanguard will likely take some time to allow itself to adjust to its new situation and ships, but once we do, I assure you we will continue our resource and asset seizure from both Imperial and criminal sources. I believe I can reliably state that, after the success of this negotiation, the Rebellion will remain our primary client."


    "I hope that, over time, the Rebel Alliance can become more than clients," Princess Leia suggested. "As a group determined to free the galaxy from the Empire''s iron grip of Tyranny, we hope that any like-minded group would consider us allies."


    "I think, given time, anything is possible," I said with a smile and a nod. "The Skyforged Vanguard is happy to forge alliances with those who prove themselves. As long as we are treated respectfully and can expect a level of trust and security from those people."


    The back and forth ended with the proverbial ball firmly in the Rebellion''s court. The Skyforged Vanguard was here as a major entity now, not as a small-time band of mercenaries. If the Rebellion wanted to play ball, they would have to make an effort to keep us happy, not just toss us scraps and expect the world in return.

 Chapert 193

    With negotiation finally over, Princess Leia invited us to a closing session of sorts, which basically amounted to sharing drinks in a much smaller room, more private setting. General Dodanna and Rieekan, as well as Commander Vitali, all departed to begin preparations for their newly purchased goods, as well as to gather our twenty-seven million credits. Once we had received our payment and we finished offloading what we had negotiated to keep, both the Munificent and the Diamond class ships would be delivered to any location the Rebels chose. The three Hardcells, on the other hand, would be passed over when we could confirm the planetary shield was of good enough quality.


    Once those who couldn''t attend left, Princess Leia poured us a toast to a successful negotiation, which we shared happily. It seemed that, now that she knew what we were looking for, Princess Leia was determined to give us the full diplomat treatment. We talked mostly about our fight against the Empire, and I revealed that, for a short while at least, the Skyforged would mostly be focusing on settling into its meteoric growth. We had new people to hire, ships to tend to, and a whole new group of starships to streamline. With the Forge now the lead ship of 3rd group, I was even more eager to complete the naval-focused group, which meant procuring a third C-Roc.


    When our afterparty was finished, it was finally time to leave. We were paid, and after paying out three thousand credits to all of the ship crews, the remaining money was sent to the Skyforged accounts. When we confirmed the money was safely in our accounts, we handed over the locations for all of the Rebellion''s new ships, which were just a few lightyears away from where the Forge and Boxi''s Fury were undergoing their final scans and searches by the engineering crews. The Hardcells would remain in deep space, alone, until our planetary shield was delivered.


    The last thing we did before leaving was say goodbye to Ahsoka and Vaz, the latter of which had agreed to stay behind with the Togruta. They were both immediately starting Ahsoka''s investigation and would be accompanied by a pair of commando droids, though Lefty was coming back with us.


    "I suspect they won''t cause trouble," Ahsoka assured me as we pulled back from a long hug. "The Rebellion wants whoever was responsible caught almost as much as we do."


    "I''m worried about the traitor, not the Rebels," I pointed out.


    She gave me a look, and I raised my hands in defense.


    "I know you can handle yourself, but that doesn''t mean I''m nothing going to worry about you," I explained, before leaning in to give her a final kiss. "Keep us in the loop as much as you can, especially if you leave the planet. I need to know where to send the fleet if you need a rescue mission."


    She gave me another look, before giving my arm a reassuring squeeze and turning to walk down the ramp of the Talos Chariot. She and Vaz would be using the Starcaller to get around as needed. I insisted they needed something to get around in, and the freighter was a surprisingly powerful little ship. I felt much better leaving her and Vaz alone when they had their own ride, rather than just leaving them to the mercy of Rebel logistics.


    Once the two had climbed into the Starcaller and out of sight, the group one fleet began the preflight checklist, taking our time before finally lifting off. We left the planet behind, jumping to the deep space location of Boxi''s Fury and Forge. The journey was blessedly short, and I spent most of my time in my enchanting room, preparing for the future influx of members.


    Once we arrived at the deep space location, we landed the entire 1st group inside the Lucrehulk''s massive hangar bays. It is astonishing how easily the whole 1st group fit inside, and I couldn''t help but laugh at how much more room there was around us when we first stepped out into the massive hangar.


    Once we were all settled in, all that was left was for us to wait for Miru and her workers to give us the all-clear to jump back to Omega Station. There, we would evacuate all Skyforged personnel and assets, getting them all on board Fury.


    Then, it would finally be time to head home, where the remainder of our fleet was.


    A day and a half after we landed in Fury''s hangar bays, and after another two days of hyperspace travel, we arrived at the space station. We had called ahead before we started our hyperspace jump, meaning that once we arrived, our people were more or less ready to move.


    Of course, the people weren''t the only things that needed moving. We spent three whole days transferring our assets. Between the spare V-wings, our stored equipment and supplies, as well as our spare parts, furniture, and other home goods we had been bringing on board for the families staying on the station, as well as the nearly five thousand B2 and other droids being stored inside the Munificent welded to the station.


    It was a blur of moving, shipping, gathering, and storing things. Thankfully, we now had a pretty sizable amount of robotic manpower to keep up with such an endeavor, not to mention the space.


    God, did we have space.


    The Lucrehulk was, frankly, absurdly large, and despite what one might think, it wasn''t just the ridiculously huge hangar bays, though that certainly did play a part. The ship was easily double the width, all the way around, of an Imperial star destroyer, as well as double the height!


    Yes, some of that was empty space around the core, but that hardly made a dent. Lucrehulks were initially cargo ships, and while ours was the later redesigned combat version, there was still plenty of carryover. That meant that while the hangar bay was massive, there were also thousands of storage rooms around it, places for fragile, expensive, or otherwise unique goods to be stored. We easily stored everything away, and I was pretty sure we had used maybe five or six percentage points of the ship''s potential storage, and it was only that high because we prioritized ease of access, rather than maximizing space economy.


    It wasn''t just room for storage, either. I was pretty sure that whoever designed this ship got to the point where they had run out of things to fill the space, so they just started doubling up. I had seen the crew quarters during the previous tour, but there were also several floors of passenger space around the inner ring. Some of these were closer to apartments, a frankly ludicrous idea on a starship.


    As expected, Miru was already frothing at the mouth, coming up with ways to use all of the extra space. She was working with a few of her underlings to come up with a streamlined production area for A-Wings. It would be tucked up into the space previously taken up by our fleet of C-9979s. We still had several of them, the ones that had been in deep storage when I ordered all available ships to engage the Executor, but there was plenty of room in the back of their storage for the production facility.


    Speaking of A-wings, our new squadron and the technical plans arrived at Omega station on the third day of our evacuation. The A-wings were most certainly not new, but according to Miru''s people, they were all in good working condition with no major or minor faults. I had the A-wings tucked along the sides of one of the many hangar bays around the inner ring of the capital ship.


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Miru, who was also planning on adding her own flair to the A-wing design once she had a chance to sit down with them, was certain that with the help of repair and production droids, as long as we had a steady infusion of materials, they should be able to produce two A-wings a month. I told her to put together two facilities and to make sure they could repair A-wings as well.


    Once we had everything loaded up and stored away, while our people started to settle into their new living situations, we started offloading everything that we had sold to the Rebellion. The Rebel Alliance now had an entire droid army stored in and around Omega Station, including several transport ships, tanks, equipment, and basically anything they needed to deploy and run the large fighting force.


    That, of course, cleared out even more space.


    "I''m glad we found Nirn first," I had said to Tatnia and Julus as we watched hundreds of droids moving around the massive hangar bays, clearing and moving things around. "My paranoid ass would have definitely converted this ship into an entire city so that the Skyforged Vanguard could be a completely nomadic group, moving around the galaxy, never in the same place twice. I would have converted a good-sized chunk of the ship to produce food so we could support a larger group¡­. I wouldn''t have even considered living on Nirn if I had gotten very far into that."


    "I don''t know if I would be able to live for very long on just a starship," Julus admitted with a frown. "I was honestly getting a bit close to my limit when we started staying at Nirn."


    "Really? Is it that much of an issue for you?" Tatnia asked, sounding surprised. "You''ve never mentioned that before."


    "It wasn''t that bad, especially since we were running missions planet side," He responded with a shrug. "I just prefer being on a planet to being in space. Vaz is the same way, but that''s not really surprising."


    Revelations about our crewmate aside, the preparation for our final departure from Omega base was rapidly coming to a close. I had no delusions that, once my people and I left, they would be moving the station so that we could no longer find it. It was a bit sad, considering just how long it had been our home, but it was time to move on to bigger and better things.


    Once everything was settled, packed, and loaded, we finally made the jump to Nirn. The trip was thankfully short, and when we finally arrived, it didn''t take long for the work to start again. I sent a large team of labor and other droids down to the planet''s surface. As I had asked, Amescoll''s people had located a flat area not too far from Vercopa for a spaceport, an area large enough to land all of our landing-capable ships. Having a place to set down would greatly reduce the wear and tear on the ships and give us a place to make external repairs if necessary, all without clogging up the Lucrehulk''s hangars.


    It would take a while for the droids to finish their task, especially clearing out a road between the city and the port, but with the entire team being made up of droids, it was basically just a set-and-forget scenario.


    We also spent some time distributing a good amount of our new droid army to our ships, even the Naval-focused 3rd group. The Forge already had a security force made up of B1s and B2s, but the other ships needed some added security.


    For the other two groups, these new forces were meant to augment our existing ground teams, secure our ships, and, if necessary, get sacrificed in order to give the ship a chance to escape. Depending on the size of the ship, these forces ranged from a few dozen B2s to speeders and heavier assets like Dwarf spider droids, which packed a decent punch for their size.


    The last thing we did before finally returning to the surface of Nirn was to inspect and tour the CIS Dreadnought, the newly christened Forge. The ship itself was in good shape, with no sign of what damage had brought it to the off-the-books repair site in the first place. We did find a surprise in the hangar bay, or at least it was a surprise to me. A full wing of <u>Belbullab-22</u></a> starfighters, which had survived the fight with the Executor because the Dreadnought had them listed as unique assets of some kind, meaning standard orders did not apply to them. They were perfectly functional, and once we had some pilots for them, 3rd group would have another full flight of starfighters to bring to bear.


    It also meant I needed to get back to enchanting if I wanted to keep the pilots stocked with enhancements, but that was for another time. I had already started preparing, but now it was a much higher priority.


    When I was finally done coordinating stuff in orbit, at least for now, I rode the Chariot down to the surface, landing at Vercopa. We were greeted with cheers and congratulations for once again somehow coming out on top and making a profit from a situation that should have been a death sentence. Unfortunately, I had to do my best to calm the people down, bringing everyone back down to a reasonable level.


    "While I am proud of what we were able to accomplish, it''s important to remember that, in the grand scheme of things, we got incredibly lucky," I explained to a small crowd of thirty or forty people. "A lot of things lined up, and in the end, we came out marginally on top. But if any one of those layers had come loose, the whole thing would have come tumbling down. We are not invincible, and we cannot expect everything to just work out because it has always done so before."


    The crowd sobered up as I explained how close we had come to dying a furious, explosive death, or ending up under the tender mercies of the Emperor. I did lighten the mood and point out we did still come out with a ship worth nearly half a billion credits, while all Darth Vader got was a significant loss and a serious bloody nose.


    When the impromptu crowd dispersed, the jubilant atmosphere diminished slightly but still strong enough to prompt laughter and smiles, I retired to my home. It was still bare, and without Ahsoka there, it felt even more empty. I was tempted, about halfway through the night, to make my way back to the Chariot, where I was pretty sure I would feel more at home.


    I stuck it through, however, getting at least some sleep before waking up and making my way around the settlement. I tried to keep mostly out of everyone''s way, just walking around and checking out the city''s progress. They had really bumped up their efforts, with almost two dozen three-family homes complete, just waiting to be filled. A larger apartment complex was also being worked on, which would provide a few dozen smaller apartments for smaller families or pairs.


    About an hour into my exploratory walk around the city, I was stopped by a familiar face. Malua Var''Samallo, the Balosar Padawan, had been looking for me with a message from Yoda. Apparently, the old Jedi really wanted to speak to me about the job or mission he had mentioned before we headed off for the repair yard job.


    After a brief explanation, I let the younger Force-sensitive lead the way to the old Jedi Master.

 Chapter 194

    Yoda was at the same meditation park as he had been before we left, which was unsurprising considering it was the only one that was even close to being complete. The Uneti tree at its heart was impossible to miss, but the rows and beds filled with plants made the whole thing look like a flower garden park. I had to assume that the plants were transplanted from the forests around us because they were already grown and flourishing. It looked substantially more luscious and grown than it had just a week or so ago, and I could see a pair of B1s painted green and unarmed, walking around, tending to the plants.


    Yoda was sitting not too far from the Uneti tree, overlooking a few other padawans as they meditated, slowly floating blocks and other things around in circles. As we approached, Yoda raised his hand, the padawans pausing in their practice.


    "Underestimate the struggle, you must not," he explained. "Hard work, control is, exercise in patience it must be. For precision, a clear, methodical mind, you must keep."


    The Padawans nodded and, as if sensing the end of the lesson, stood from their spots, bowed to Yoda, and spread out around the park, bringing their learning aides with them. Once everyone had cleared out, I finally approached Yoda, the old man gesturing for me to join him.


    "Deacon, good to see you, it is," The little green gremlin said, settled into a comfy-looking chair.


    "It''s good to see you as well," I said with a smile. "How''s basic civilization treating you?"


    "For luxuries, Jedi have no need," He assured me before letting out a laugh. "Nice, it is, to sleep in a real bed. Miss being truly clean, I did."


    "I''ll bet," I agreed with a chuckle. "How has working with Padawans been?"


    "...A pleasure I thought long lost to me, it is," He admitted, casting a look back over the Padawans, who were now in more secluded areas of the park. "Owe you much, for this I do. A dream, you have made come true."


    "I''m glad I could help," I responded. "It''s not like I did much, I just brought you here."


    "Invest thousands of credits into building a city, you have. A home you are creating, for the remaining Jedi of this galaxy," He said, giving be a bow, leaning on his cane. "I thank you, again, Deacon Roy."


    This time, I said nothing, chewing my lip. I could feel that just brushing this off would be rude, so I did my best to accept his words with a smile and an understanding nod. After a long moment of silence, Yoda eventually spoke up, seeming to lean back in his chair.


    "Your mission, go wrong, it did," he said. "Glad to see you are well, I am."


    "Yeah, you could say that," I said with a snort, chuckling at his understatement. "We got lucky and managed to come out on top, somehow. Though¡­ I am concerned about how high up on Vader''s personal hit list I might have jumped up in the process."


    "On his hit list, all of us are," Yoda pointed out. "Spiraling in the dark side, he is. Stop when we stop him, he will. Not a moment before, will that be."


    "Yeah¡­" I agreed¡­ trailing off and looking around the park. Malua Var''Samallo was sitting nearby, paying attention but letting us talk in private. "So what is this about a more urgent mission?"


    "Hmmm, yes. Much more urgent, it is," He agreed, nodding his head. "Meditate, I have, on the survival of Knight Amescoll and his Padawans. Another possibility, I have recalled."


    "More survivors?" I asked, perking up. "Who?"


    In truth, while I knew a few Jedi who might have survived, the list I had was actually pretty short. I knew one or two groups, but I also knew they were safe for the moment, so there was no reason to hunt them down just yet. But if Yoda had an idea of someone who might have survived, I was more than willing to investigate.


    "Soaring Hawkbat Clan was one of our youngling clans during the Clone Wars," He explained. "Off-world, they were when the Order was given, stationed on <u>Bogden 3</u></a>. A guard of clone soldiers they had, but minor it was."


    "So you think they might have survived the purge."


    "Possible, it is. Hope, I must."


    "Okay, so a big group of Jedi younglings, I assume some older Jedi as well?" I asked, nodding as Yoda confirmed it. "Well, I need pictures of at least one of them, preferably multiple of them."


    "Have that, I do not," Yoda responded, shaking his head. "No alternatives, do your abilities offer?"


    "Depends. Do you think you could draw them, or describe them well enough to be almost as good as a picture?" I asked, frowning when Yoda shook his head. "Then not really¡­ unless¡­"


    My frown deepened as I contemplated the idea that popped into my head. For a moment, I simply stared at Yoda, who patiently remained quiet.


    "How well do you think you could push a memory of them into my mind?" I asked, getting a surprised look from Yoda. "It doesn''t have to be long, just a split-second view of them, as long as it''s a solid memory."


    "Do this, I could," Yoda confirmed. "Trust me, you would, to do so?"


    "... I think I can, if for no other reason than Ahsoka would notice if you tried to go rooting around too deep in my brain, mixing things up," I pointed out. "Not that I think you would."


    "Understand, I do. Appreciate your trust, I do," He said before gesturing for me to come closer. "Kneel, if you would, and open your mind."


    Shoving down the massive wave of anxiety and nerves about what I was about to do, I stepped closer and kneeled down in front of the old Jedi Master. When I was ready, I nodded, and he reached out, putting his hand on my forehead. I closed my eyes and waited.


    At first, I was tempted to crack a joke, maybe ask if he wasn''t getting any service or something, but then I could feel it. A wave of pressure, not heavy but gentle, like a wave of mist flowing out over my face and mind. I could feel the slow, methodical pace in which he reached out, until finally, after a few more minutes, the memory started to come through.


    It was strange, muted, but for a moment, it was as if I was recalling my own memory. A decent-sized group of younglings, all lowering their heads as they said goodbye to the Jedi Masters of the Coruscant Temple. It would likely be several months before they returned, and I could feel Yoda''s melancholy approval that, while they would be away from their peers and teachers, they would also have more peaceful surroundings, somewhere away from the heavy presence of Coruscant.


    Their faces weren''t exactly clear, but it was enough of an emotional connection that I knew them. Names, general outlooks, how they were doing. Say what you will about Yoda''s part in the decline of the Order, but the poor man clearly cared about the younglings.


    When Yoda pulled his hand away, it took me a moment or two to adjust, shaking off the dissonance of the strange memory I now held in my mind. Quickly, before any of the details I did have faded even more, I cast Clairvoyance, focusing on the Jedi Master, who I now knew was Master Du Mahn. She was the Caretaker of the Soaring Hawkbat Clan and should have been with them.


    The spell failed.


    Biting back a curse, I switched to the children, picking one at random. I smiled when it locked on, the arrow pointing down through the planet, no doubt locking on to a distant person. This time, I smiled, and before, I quickly cycled through every face and person I could "remember." It painted a bleak picture, but not exactly hopeless.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "First, some of the Hawkbat Clan did survive," I finally said after checking for everyone. "From what I can tell, nine of the younglings survived, as did Padawan Chase Piru. However, Master Du Mahn, as well as the other younglings¡­ I could not find them."


    Yoda bowed his head, his eyes closed in a silent prayer to the Force. I remained silent, waiting for him to eventually respond.


    "Happy, we should be, to know of survivors," The small Jedi said, looking up at me. "Mourn those we have lost, I will. What will you do?"


    "Well, our first stop will be Bogden 3," I responded. "If they aren''t there, and I can''t imagine they are since it''s where Palpy would be looking for them, we will start trying to triangulate them. Once we have a general area, we can start searching for planets. With any luck it shouldn''t take us too long. If it does¡­ Well, I can stay in contact with the Chariot, so it shouldn''t be a problem. I''ll leave most of the 1st group here since I can''t exactly travel inconspicuously with that many ships."


    "Thank you, I must, for all you have done," Yoda said, now bowing to me.


    "I''m just trying to help," I assured him, a bit embarrassed to be praised by someone who was a childhood hero. "There is one issue. With Ahsoka busy trying to root out the spy that almost got us killed, I don''t have a Jedi contact. If I just show up, claiming to be there to rescue them¡­I could use a mediator familiar with the Jedi."


    "Predicted this, I did," Yoda admitted with a smirk. "Volunteered, Malua Var''Samallo has, to fill that role."


    The ancient Jedio gestured to the Force Sensitive who had found me in the first place. She had stood from her waiting place and was now approaching us.


    "Given her a holo recording, I have, explaining the situation," he explained. "Between her presence in the Force, and the recording itself, fine you will be."


    "Great, sounds good. Happy to have you on board," I said, before reaching over to shake her hand, which she happily accepted. "I''ll probably be bringing at least a few members of my crew, just in case."


    We discussed the mission for a while longer, before eventually Malua Var''Samallo, or Malua as she asked to be called, split off from the meditation park. I headed off to talk to my crew, specifically Tatnia since I was once again going off on another Jedi Adventure?. It took a while for me to get to everyone, but both Nal and Julus agreed to come with me on the journey, While Tatnia was going to stay behind. As I said, we would be able to stay in contact, so it wasn''t like she was being put in complete charge, but she did grumble about me taking her boyfriend out when they had finally gotten some time off.


    It was the following morning that we finally all met at the landing pad where the Talos Chariot was stationed. It was just the four of us, plus Calima as the pilot, but that was fine. With any luck, we will have a full ship on the way back. We also had Lefty and the BX remnants because Tatnia wanted us to have as much backup as possible. I had very seriously considered just cramming them into a few storage crates to avoid traumatizing a bunch of Jedi who lived through Clone Wars with droids that were widely considered to be Jedi killers. Then I remembered all of the crew were naval droids, and we also had a large ground force of B2s lined up and ready to activate.


    I would just have to make it clear that they were repurposed assets before they got on board.


    When our gear and personal packs were loaded up and ready to go, the living crew crashed in the lounge, while Calima did the final checks in the cockpit. After a few minutes, I stood up, went behind the bar and food prep space, grabbed some drinks, and passed them to Nal, Julus, and Malua. We needed a bit of an icebreaker, and having something to drink and do with your hands always helped with that.


    "So, I know these two chuckleheads just like jump feet first into the crazy I get into," I said, leaning back in my chair after handing out the drinks. "But what got you interested in this? Did Yoda ask you to come, or did you volunteer?"


    "I volunteered when I heard what was happening from Knight Amescoll," She responded easily. "I don''t think it is a surprise that some of us¡­ are looking forward to stretching our legs. Finding more of our family is a better reason than we could have hoped for to do that."


    "I suppose that''s fair. I did get that feeling when you cornered me last time we met," I said with a smirk, the serious-faced woman nodding. "We should start talking to you guys and Amescoll about what you would like to do. We talked about finding you places where you would be happy and could help, but we haven''t made much progress."


    "The excitement of finally having modern facilities has made waiting easy," she admitted. "As has the progress we have made building Vercopa."


    "Should be proud of what you have achieved," Nal commented. "It is a sight to behold."


    "Thank you," She responded, nodding her head towards the Duros. "In truth, between the knowledgeable minds you have found, and everyone''s dedication, progress has felt easy. It does not hurt that most of the challenging work is done by droid labor."


    We chatted for a bit longer, even as Calima lifted off from the mesa and up into space. As we broke through the atmosphere, Malua joined Calima and me in the cockpit. She watched as we passed by our fleet, almost all of our ships gathered around or inside the Boxi''s Fury. It was one hell of a view, especially with Nirn''s moon passing behind them, highlighting the smaller ships passing around them. Malua watched all of this with wide eyes that showed her relatively young age, the wonder and interest shining through.


    "We never saw combat, but we did learn about the enemy we would likely be facing," She explained as we flew past the massive Lucrehulk. "To think you managed to capture such a behemoth..."


    "To be fair, we had a little help," I reminded. "Whoever had set up the off-the-books repair yard had clearly been greedy and controlling. Without that, we would likely not have this conversation."


    "Did you have a backup plan?" She asked, turning to look at me. "If the fleet hadn''t been under your control, what would you have done?"


    "I didn''t have any plans, never mind a backup. I was coming up with all of it as I went along," I admitted, rubbing the back of my head. "If we didn''t have the fleet...? I would have likely ordered everyone to the hangars to look for a way off the ship, then ordered the droids to plow the Fury into the Executor. Past that... well, it would have been up to luck. Judging how the mission was going already, you can pretty much already imagine how that would have gone."


    "You don''t think they would have been enough?" She asked.


    "I don''t know, but the idea was to not be around and find out," I responded. "It might have worked, but the Interdictors could have probably finished us off if our ship couldn''t outrun them. Lots of ifs, a lot more than I would like to bet on.


    She nodded in understanding, all of us going silent as Calima finally jumped us into lightspeed. We had a few days before we arrived at our first destination, so there would be plenty of time for questions later.

 Chapter 195

    The journey to Boden 3 did not take long, as the system it was located in resided inside the Inner Rim. That meant there were plenty of clear-cut travel lanes, which greatly cut down travel time. During the two-and-a-half-day trip, I passed the time by mostly enchanting piloting equipment to keep busy, though I did do a little sparring with Malua. She was actually pretty good with her saber, even if she hadn''t had a functioning one for very long. Power was one of the first things they lost when they were stranded on Nirn, so dueling with lightsabers would have been impossible. I would put her on par with Luke, though considering he had only been training for a year or so, I kept that to myself.


    She fought with a single blade, with a more aggressive fighting style, and used primarily Makashi, or form II. That made dueling her difficult, though I could still give as much as I got.


    I also stayed in contact with the team back at Nirn, discussing business and developments. Among a few things discussed was my own executive decision to purchase the final C-Roc necessary to complete the Hammer, Chisel, and Tongs group. They were already starting the upgrades on one of the C-Rocs. I wanted the group finished ASAP so that we could start looking for A-Wing pilots and finish the 3rd Group dynamic.


    We also discussed allocating funds to upgrade our remaining ships. For some, that meant fifty thousand credits, maybe double that. Such an amount was easy to stomach, especially given our last paycheck. Unfortunately, our larger ships were a little further up the budget, and no one had even bothered mentioning Boxi''s Fury or the Forge. In the end, we decided to spread basic upgrades throughout the fleet but to hold back on the more expensive ones. We had a lot of growth planned in the next few weeks, maybe even months, and our credits needed to be counted wisely.


    Despite needing time to organize and stabilize our people, Second Group was already looking for a new target, which was good. We couldn''t afford to be spending so much time down, not when we would also be spending money. I told them to keep it light and simple.


    When the first stage of the trip was finally over, we dropped out of hyperspace on the very, very edge of the Bogden system. It was a rather busy system, with the massive gas giant Bogden surrounded by twenty moons, several of which boasted breathable atmospheres. There were several cities spread out through the moons of Bodgen, and one of the largest was on Bogden 3, though the planet still retained most of its wilderness. On top of the numerous habitable moons, it was also on the Hydian Way trade route, making it a valuable spot to stop and rest, as well as a hub for trade. Unfortunately, since we were on the Chariot, and very wanted by the Empire, we wouldn''t be able to set foot on any of the planets without a fight.


    This was why I was convinced that there were no Jedi in the system. The whole system was too busy, especially around Bogden 3, and there was no real place to hide, at least not reliably. This was even doubly true for Jedi or Force sensitives since the idea of "in plain sight" never really worked for them, at least not usually.


    When we got in the system, rather than bothering to navigate closer, tempting fate in the process, I simply scanned for the names I knew worked, all nine younglings and the singular padawan.


    "Okay, the good news is the scan is still picking them up," I said with a smile. "But they aren''t here. In fact, the scan seems to think they are just about in the opposite direction."


    "So, what''s next?" Malua asked curiously.


    "Now we jump away before someone spots us and reports our presence," I said, looking across the lounge area to the bridge. "Calima, we are done here. Do me a favor and make a small jump out of sensor range, please."


    "Sure thing¡­ Boss," Calima responded, getting the ship working on the calculations with the help of the onboard stationed slicer astromech.


    I would have to remember to thank Miru for having the foresight to make the powerful, incredibly useful modified astromechs standard equipment for all our large ships. Not only should the system Racer developed for triangulation with Clairvoyance already be built into the deceptively simple-looking droid, but having a slicer on tap was just smart in general.


    We jumped away after about five more minutes, hopefully before anyone got a good look at us, even from a distance. While being in that specific system wasn''t an immediate giveaway for what we were doing, if someone with the right information got word we had visited the Bogden system, it wouldn''t take them long to connect the dots.


    Once we were safe in deep space, I worked with the slicer droid to get a decent heading on where Clairvoyance was pointing us. With an adjustment for accuracy, we sat down at the holotable and planned our next move.


    "I want to get a bit closer before we start making triangulation jumps," I said. "I say we jump somewhere around Vena, do another scan, then start plotting out our target. While not guaranteed, their location is probably on record, meaning it shouldn''t be hard to identify what planet they are on. After that, it''s up to you, Malua, to guide us to them. Think you could handle that?"


    "Yes, I believe I can."


    "Fantastic. Calima, you hear all that?"


    "Aye, Boss. We can plot a course for Vena," She agreed. "Just to¡­ confirm, You see that that is not far from the Hapes Consortium?"


    I frowned and looked at the map again, zooming out slightly and spotting that she was correct, it was just a short jump from the Consortium.


    "I see it, but we can only hope that''s not where the spell leads us," I admitted. "If it does¡­ well, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, let''s just focus on locating them."


    "Very well. The trip should be plotted soon."


    Within ten minutes, we had returned to hyperspace for another two-day-plus-long trip. I had honestly forgotten how much time in hyperspace we spent doing these triangulation missions. It was boring, but I could spend the getting ahead of my enchanting backlog. I already had the dex enhancements for our A-wings squadron, and now I was working my way through the pilots and gunners of our new ships, which was going to be one hell of an undertaking, one I would be chipping away at for a while.


    When we arrived at our next location, another scan showed the younglings were still ahead of us, but I figured we had closed enough distance to start triangulating. It also showed that they had not entered the Hapes Consortium, a blessing since dealing with them would have been a nightmare.


    We spent a few minutes in the cockpit planning our jumps, before the slicer astromech took my hand with his gripping claws, I cast Clairvoyance, and we slowly lined up the holoprojected arrow with the magic one. After that, it was a matter of jumping, waiting, and repeating the process.


    We spent two days homing at our destination before we finally managed to lock it in. A small system in the <u>Axiom Sector</u></a> of the <u>Expansion Region</u></a> called the Arkinnea System. It was the only habitable system that lined up with our work, at least that existed in the records.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Once we had settled on that system, we let our slicer droid do a little digging, and according to what he could find, the system had only one livable planet, <u>Arkinnea</u></a>. This planet was mostly an Agri world, with very little material production beyond lumber. During the Clone Wars, there were some mentions of Separatist attention on the world, and a period of economic instability due to large amounts of refugees, but according to what the droid could find, and what we could find to collaborate, the planet had settled significantly.


    It had no major Imperial presence beyond the usual circling patrol, which we were just lucky enough to avoid, as long as we left within the next few days. A quick half-day jump brought us to the system, and we slowly approached the livable planet. There were two major cities on the planet with dozens of farming communities spread out over the planet, but there were still large portions of the planet that were still more or less wild.


    "Alright, Malua, you''re up," I said, gesturing for the Force-sensitive to join us on the bridge. "Come guide us in."


    "Could you not just continue using your magic?" She asked, sounding curious as she sat at a gunner''s chair, turning to look forward. "Why rely on the Force?"


    "Because I''m hoping it will give them a little warning that we are coming, and let them see you through the Force," I explained. "If it''s too rough, don''t push too hard, though."


    "Very well."


    The humanoid alien closed her eyes and let out a long, centering breath. After a long moment, she opened them again, a small smile on her face.


    "I can feel them¡­ I think they felt me, too," She explained. "They are in the top hemisphere, along this southern coast, but not too close to the sea."


    Calima pulled up a scan, and together, they slowly brought the ship down. We didn''t get contacted by anyone, which is not entirely surprising considering how small the two cities were. We slowly sank through the atmosphere, lower and lower, until Malua was guiding us over forests and plains. After about five minutes of crossing land, we finally flew over a final clearing, leaving a forest behind and slowing down. A large, half-ruined structure sat in the large plains, halfway up a gentle slope that eventually led to a long range of flowing hills. As we approached, I could see a few people climbing on some of the structures, others taking cover inside as we landed. As we did, I flicked through a couple casts of Clairvoyance, just confirming that everyone I had scanned was there.


    "Keep the droids inside, Calima, at least until we can explain the situation," I ordered, standing up from my seat. "Nal, I want you to stay in here, armored up and ready to come rescue our asses with Lefty."


    "Rescue you from what?" Malua asked with a frown. "I could feel them, there was nothing dark about them."


    "If I killed a man for attacking my home, does that make me dark?" I asked, Malua and Julus following me as we made our way to the first desk.


    "Of course not," She responded.


    "And yet the man attacking would still call me a bastard for killing him," I pointed out. "Confusion happens to everyone, even good people. Best to stay prepared. Besides, all our weapons have stun settings."


    That seemed to mollify her, which was good because we had reached the front boarding ramp. I activated the ramp, and it began to descend. Once it was ready, we slowly made our way down, finally stepping onto the grassy ground beneath us. Unsurprisingly, there were quite a few people who had exited the partially ruined structure to greet us. What I was surprised to find was a few much older people, including what I was pretty sure was a <u>Whiphid.</u></a> On top of that, there were more than just the ten people I had predicted using Clairvoyance. There were at least eight people that I could see alone, and we had all seen more retreat inside.


    The people were dressed in simple but well-made clothes, worn but not falling apart, and definitely not handmade, though some people sported cloaks or additions that were. I could see a few different species, some of which I recognized, and some I did not. Malua looked at me for a moment, and I gestured for her to step forward.


    "H-Hello, my name is Malua Var''Samallo," She said, stuttering once but quickly getting control of herself. "I am a Padawan, learning under Jedi Knight Casmott Amescoll."


    When she was done, she gave a small bow, greeting the group. The older Whiphid stepped forward, the large humanoid alien hard to read since I had no experience with his people.


    "Padawan Var''Samallo, it is good to see a survivor. I am<u> Master K''Kruhk</u></a>," He said, looking over her shoulder at me, before focusing on Malua. "Knight Amescoll, he lives?"


    "He does, as do my peers," She explained, continuing when the master looked confused. "As you may know, Amescoll was put in charge of guiding padawans through their Gatherings, and as they designed their lightsabers. When Order 66 was given, the Crucible managed to defeat our Republic escort. We fled to a secret location."


    "Even more survivors! That is great news!" He said, his face pulling into what I was hoping was a smile. "How did you manage to find us? And why have you sought us out? We are happy to hear of your survival, but secrecy and obscurity are both our best defenses."


    "We come with good news and an offer," She explained. "Perhaps we could sit down and discuss it?"


    "I have plenty of supplies for a meal," I said from behind Malua, the Jedi Master shifting his gaze to examine me. "We would happily share what we have."


    "And who are you?"


    "I am Deacon Roy, Leader of the Skyforged Vanguard," I explained with a slight bow. "A Rebel mercenary group fighting against slavery, pirates, and the Empire."


    Now he looked even more confused, studying me for a long moment, trying to puzzle out just exactly what my intent was. I could feel his mind against mine for a moment.


    "Please, restrain yourself from probing too deeply. I''m not a big fan of that sort of mind invasion stuff," I warned, holding the older humanoid''s gaze. "A light reading is fine, but please keep it to that. But please, we have a story to tell you, and an offer you will at least want to hear."


    "...Very well. We have a meeting pit, where we have fires and share stories," he offered. "I believe that will suffice."


    The Whiphid turned, and the crowd of younger Force Sensitive spread for him, allowing Julus, Malua, and myself to follow after him. Soon, we were sitting around a meeting room, with the center hologram system torn out and turned into a fire pit. It was a nice touch, and as we sat, I could see the younger people following in behind us, taking a seat to listen. Malua remained standing in the center of the space, as did I, while Julus sat down behind us. More people filed in, sitting around us and waiting patiently, some of them whispering to each other.


    "We are comfortable, and out of the sun," Master K''Kruhk said with a nod. "Now, what is this story? I wish to know if my people are safe. "

 Chapter 196

    Together, Malua and I told our story. Malua focused on the journey of the padawans and Knight Amescoll on Nirn, including the arrival of the ocean dwellers, while I gave a brief intro to the origin of the Skyforged. I also gave a general explanation of what''s been going on in the wider galaxy since they were stranded here. Most of our audience, especially the younger members, were captivated, obviously starved for news from the wider galaxy, though they did seem to know some of what was going on.


    Apparently, the local natives, a species called the <u>Yunu</u></a>, and some of the more recent people who came and joined the hidden group had filtered some information to them. They knew of the death of Alderaan, for example, but did not know of the Death Star, as that was far from public knowledge.


    When we were finally finished saying our piece, Malua brought out a holoprojector, a small device that fit in the palm of her hand. As she held it up, it showed the message recorded by Master Yoda. It was a general greeting, followed by a short explanation of his own survival, and assurances that the location I was going to describe, Nirn, was truly safe. He assured the audience that Malua and I could be trusted and even included an image of me to confirm I was who I said I was. I made a note to keep the recording very safe, as someone with basic editing skills could turn it into an easy way to trick any other hiding Jedi.


    Then Malua made that thought moot, as when the recording was finished, and she had played it a second time, she dropped it to the floor of the gathering space and crushed it with her heel. I nodded in agreement. It was a useful way to get random hiding Jedi to trust us, but it was also too risky to leave floating around.


    "This is all great news," K''Kruhk said, standing to come and shake my arm in a warrior''s greeting, doing the same to Malua. "To know that Grand Master Yoda has survived, that the order is rebuilding¡­"


    "We aren''t quite sure of that yet, sir," Malua pointed out, having found her confidence as she told her group''s story. "Time has revealed quite a few of the Order''s shortcomings. We intend to learn and evolve, to adapt and grow. Master Yoda agrees with us, that the time for change has come. We aren''t sure if what we create would be considered a Jedi Order."


    That seemed to catch the older Jedi off guard, a frown appearing on his alien face.


    "Change? What sort of change?" He seemed to tighten up considerably, as if fearing we were about to propose joining the dark side.


    "Nothing so drastic as you might be thinking," I assured him, raising my hands in a calming gesture.


    "We fear that our isolationism, our chains to Republic politics, our focus on the greater picture, and our belief that our emotions were meant to be crushed and thrown aside led to our downfall," Malua explained. "We are still in the very early stages of imagining what comes next. Truly, I don''t believe we will be able to decide and rebuild anything until the Emperor is defeated, but that is simply my own opinion."


    K''Kruhk seemed to unclench, seeming to understand what the younger Force-sensitive was saying.


    "I see. It is true, the time since the Purge has meant plenty of time for introspection," the Whiphid admitted, shaking his large head. "I often wonder what we could have done differently."


    "Unfortunately, there wasn''t much to be done by the time you realized something was wrong," I assured him, shaking my head. "The Sith were deep in their preferred battlefield, that of stealth, manipulation, and corruption. The Jedi order was already struggling under thousands of years of isolation and compounded cascading problems by that point. It was as if you had challenged a Mon Calamarian to a swimming contest, and kept your robes on."


    The older humanoid male seemed to consider my words, nodding slightly as he did. He also seemed to focus his full attention on me again, though he kept his mind to himself.


    "What is your purpose in this?" the Jedi Master finally asked. "Master Yoda trusts you, but why are you here? Why help the Jedi?"


    "Beyond the fact that I can, and it''s the right thing to do?" I asked, continuing when he gestured. "While I may not have lived it, I do know that the Jedi have been working with a bad deal for a long time. I also know that having a working Order of some sort, someplace to train, guide, and help the next generation of Force-sensitives is imperative to the fate of the galaxy. This galaxy needs the Jedi in some form, whether it''s to give it hope, to fight oppression, or to show everyone that there is good in the galaxy. I''m hoping that with a few nudges in the right direction, I can help the surviving Jedi get back on their feet, as well as provide a solid foundation for whatever order or sect rises up from the ashes."


    As I talk, I look around, seeing the people who had gathered around the room. Many people were nodding, listening to my words. What K''Kruhk asked next snapped my attention back to him, catching me off guard.


    "And we would do this under your rule?"


    "Rule? Hell no! I don''t want to rule anything," I assured him, shaking my head. "I run the Skyforged because my people put me in charge. I don''t hold anything over them, I can''t threaten or order people to do things they don''t want to. If I told my people to do something morally reprehensible, the only thing I could expect to happen is to catch a stunbolt to the back, and a quick trip to the medbay to see why I suddenly went crazy. Not to mention the fact that only the people who join the Skyforged would be under my command."


    "You aren''t demanding we join?" He asked, surprise coloring his deep, vibrato voice. "The planet you own is not under your rule?"


    "Again, I don''t rule anything," I repeated. "I lead because my people want me to lead. Plus, we are in the stage where quick, rapid decisions are key to success. We would fall apart if we had a board of councilors or anything like that. As for joining, I have no desire to force anyone to do anything. I would like your help because, let''s be honest, every Jedi we have on our side is a valuable fighter who can change the tide."


    "You mentioned a Rebellion? What if we wish to join them?"


    "I could have you at one of their major military bases after three three-day Hyperspace jump," I said with a shrug. "I would say having you working with them would be the second best result I could imagine. I will warn you, not only will they treat you as the Republic did and scatter you around to where you are the most ''useful,'' but on top of that, the main goal of the Rebellion is to reinstitute the Senate as it was before, followed by demilitarization, back to the same levels as before."


    Just as it had with Amescoll, that got a strong reaction.


    "They¡­ wish to return to the status quo? No search for improvements or learning from their mistakes?" He asked, sounding baffled. "But the Clone Wars¡­ They learned nothing?"


    The Whiphid Jedi Master sat heavily into one of the chairs in the partially ruined meeting hall, rubbing his long face.


    "They learned what they wanted to learn," I responded with a shrug. "They saw Grandpa Palpy standing up, betraying the Republic, and somehow came to the conclusion that he was the only problem. Mostly because anything else would disturb their power. The truth is that, even if Palpy hadn''t betrayed the Order and the Separatists were defeated cleanly, it would have only been a temporary patch at best. The Outer Rim was and still is struggling in a lot of ways, and they are tired of being jerked around by a core government that doesn''t actually help. There would be another rebellion in just a few years. This time, however, without a Sith Lord to sabotage the Separatists from becoming too effective, they might actually win."


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    "I¡­"


    For a moment, the Jedi around us seemed a bit stunned by my words, their minds following after what I said. In truth, I had gotten a little of topic, but what I had stated was important enough that I would repeat it at every chance I could get. Maybe, if I got lucky, someone would actually hear me.


    "My apologies, your questions landed on a topic I am quite passionate about," I explained. "It''s one of the primary reasons I refused to simply just join the Rebellion myself."


    "Your passion is understandable," The Jedi Master assured me. "We spent quite some time in the Outer Rim during the Clone Wars. It is not hard to see that the Republic is far from the shining beacon it portrays itself as."


    "I can imagine you did."


    For a moment, I let the silence hang, letting them all think about what they had witnessed and felt during the war. Even those who had only been younglings would have felt the uncertainty that filled the galaxy during that time. Before the silence began to grow too long, I continued.


    "Either way, this is not a decision that needs to be made immediately. Think it over, talk to the people you lead and see what they think. In the meantime, we should celebrate!" I said with a smile, spreading my hands wide. "More Jedi have survived, and you are not alone! Even if you wish to stay here, we can at least hook you up with some basic creature comforts, as well as a way to communicate with your peers on Nirn."


    For a moment, the Whiphid leader stayed silent, before eventually standing and nodding, accepting the thought to put it to the side for now.


    "Very well! Let us enjoy the news and share our company," He agreed. "Please enjoy our hospitality."


    There was a cheer, and several of the people sitting around listening to our discussion quickly stood up, coming down to talk to us directly, asking questions about the Skyforged, about Nirn, and about what else was going on in the galaxy.


    Over the next hour or so, a feast was set up, with handmade tables placed around outside the inhibited temple ruins. While the food was cooked and the tables were set up, we got a tour of the land and buildings, getting a look at how they were living. There were quite a few similarities between the group stranded on Nirn, but it was clear that this group did have it easier. Not only did they have significantly more room to expand, but they also had room for small farms to grow food, game to hunt, and a forest to forage from. On the other hand, Malua''s group had been forced to live in a large hangar bay for several years, the massive temple island too dangerous to live in or even spend that long in with the ocean dwellers on the prowl.


    Thankfully, we did have plenty to contribute to the meal, providing several drinks, including enough of the chocolate coconut stouts that had become a mainstay for my team. We also handed out sweats and pre-packaged desserts, though I would need to apologize to Miru since most of them were technically hers.


    When we sat down to eat, I spent most of our time describing the adventures the Skyforged had gone on. While I regaled them with stories, retelling our heists on Imperial worlds and Pirate raids, I got a chance to look over the general population. In total, there were fourteen adults, not that much younger than myself. Most of them seemed to be survivors of the Soaring Hawkbat clan, but there did seem to be a few others who had made their way here afterward, looking for shelter.


    On top of K''Kruhk, there were also two older Jedi, neither of whom I recognized, both of whom had clearly taken similar roles as the older male, as teachers and guardians.


    Then, of course, were the children, eight in total, ranging from a newborn still swaddled up against their mother''s chest, to a preteen human who watched all three of us with wide, wonder-filled eyes. It was clear that some of the younglings had grown up and had children, a good sign when it came to convincing them that a lighter, less restrictive touch was the way to go for the future of the Order.


    Both Calima and Nal joined us for the meal as well, since I had long since made the call that even if we couldn''t convince them their best bet was to leave with us, they weren''t going to do us any harm.


    Eventually, the feast was over, and we went our separate ways for the night, my team returning to the Chariot to sleep. It was quiet, though I had the night crew of droids on high alert, running near constant scans. I was beginning to get nervous at how simple this whole mission had been so far. I would be happy to have my Jedi Adventure? theory disproved, but my gut told me that''s just not how it worked. Something was bound to happen, it was just a matter of when.


    When we woke up the next morning, we descended from the ship and began helping the locals with their morning chores. Getting water from a nearby river, preparing a simple breakfast, starting fires, and cleaning up from the night before. It was about noon when I finally sat down with K''Kruhk again, along with several others. We gathered around a small seating area outside, the remnants of a meditation space alongside the ruins of the ancient Jedi Temple. We talked for a while, and I did my best to convince them this wasn''t some sort of entrapment or trick. In all honesty, it was beginning to get annoying, talking in circles, trying to convince them we weren''t going to do them any harm, that we just wanted to help.


    "Please understand, this is not the military. We are a mercenary group with plans to challenge the Empire as best we can. We aren''t going to chase you down for going AWOL because you get tired of us and want to leave," I assured them. "Hell, until recently, the closest thing I had to an official title was ''Boss.''"


    "My issue is not if we can trust you not to abuse our trust," K''Kruhk assured me. "I am concerned about joining an organization-"


    "K''Kruhk. This is nonsense, and you are beginning to seem like a stubborn fool," One of the older Jedi said, cutting into the Whiphid''s words. "Both Yoda and the Force say we can trust them. Why not reveal the truth?"


    K''Kruhk turned slightly to look at the older human Jedi harshly before turning to look back at us. He studied us for a long moment before eventually nodding, almost reluctantly.


    "Very well, it is only fair that we are honest with our comrades," He said, standing from his chair. "Rather than insist we do not trust you or that we will not leave with you by our own choice, we will show you why we cannot leave."


    The large Whiphid made his way out of the outdoor space, gesturing for us to follow. I gave a lot to the Jedi who had spoken up for us, and he simply nodded. I shook my head and followed after the Jedi Master, with Malua and Julus right behind us.


    K''Kruhk led us down, deeper into the ruins, which got more stable and clean the deeper we went. Eventually, the Master stopped alongside a clear, blank wall, seemingly at random. He put his hand against the wall and, with a wave of the Force, accessed something on the other side. With a soft grinding, the door slowly slid to the side, revealing an even cleaner hallway on the other side. Wordlessly, he stepped inside, walking down the hall before slowly beginning to descend a staircase.


    "Are you coming?" he called back, prompting me to grumble and follow after him.


    "Hold your horses," shaking my head and pulling out my comms. "I can only tolerate so much spooky Jedi shenanigans."


    I sent a message to Calima and Nal about what was going on, confirming we might lose contact and the general situation. When I was satisfied, I clipped my comms unit to my belt and nodded to the large Jedi Master.


    "Alright, big guy. Show me what you''ve got in your basement."

 Chapter 197

    I followed K''Kruhk down the nearly pristine hallway, then down the spiraling staircase. It was a bit of one heck of a walk, as the hole they ran around went down a considerable distance, but there were no railings anywhere, just a gap in the middle that went all the way down to the bottom.


    The thick layer of dust making the stairs just a bit more slippery didn''t help.


    When we reached the bottom of the massive OSHA violation, we stepped into a large arched hallway. Murals were carved into the walls, set in with what I was pretty sure were small cuts of kyber crystal, too small to be used in a lightsaber. It was awfully opulent, a strange feature for a Jedi Temple.


    At the end of the long hall was a massive door. It was reinforced metal, a vault door clearly designed to securely protect whatever was inside. It was marked in a few places by what looked suspiciously like lightsaber strikes, but even the spots with looked like dozens of strikes got more than a few millimeters deep.


    "Tried to break in, huh?" I asked, stepping forward and running my hand over the marks. "Would have had a very hard time with so much <u>cortosis</u></a> woven through this metal¡­"


    Cortosis was a strange, fibrous material that was weak in its raw form but could be woven through weapons and armor. It absorbs energy at a stunning rate, meaning a cortosis weave could stop lightsabers and blaster bolts alike. A dense, high quality weave, or a pure enough block of the raw form, would cause a lightsaber to lose coherencey and shut off. I would have already been looking for ways to get it for my people, but unlike beskar, cortosis was worse than useless when it came to physical damage.


    Of course, throw enough of it into a strong enough metal, and you could get around that issue.


    "It wasn''t us," Master K''Kruhk responded, shaking his head. "The damage was done when we arrived. We were drawn down here, and the vault opened for us on its own, as if it sensed our peaceful intentions."


    "Will it-"


    As if to purposely cut me off, as I asked, the vault door shuddered and slowly opened. Behind it was another layer of doors, followed by a third, each layer opening slowly. When the third layer opened, the interior of the vault was revealed.


    And holy hell, was it a sight.


    Stacks and stacks of books, armor, coins, art, and statues lay around a massive chamber. It was at least twenty meters wide, and while the center of the room was clear, the walls were stacked high with riches. Sitting at the very opposite end of the room, resting on a pile of what looked like coins, was some sort of throne, carved from white stone and inlaid with gems and metal.


    "What the fuck," I said, almost stepping inside instinctively, stopping myself at the last moment. "What the hell is this?"


    "This¡­ Is the treasure vault of a powerful <u>Jedi Lord</u></a>," K''Kruhk explained, stepping into the chamber and motioning me to follow. "Those books over there describe a benevolent and prosperous reign of Jedi Lord Hafor Clarit. He passed shortly before the station of the Jedi Lord was abolished, and this treasure was lost."


    As I stepped forward, a sensor descended from the wall, catching me off guard and running a scan over my body. Almost as fast as it appeared, it returned to where it had extended from.


    "New entity located... Human, male... relationship to acknowledged user confirmed... Entry granted."


    A voice echoed through the vault once the scan was complete. When it finished talking, I looked to K''Kruhk, who once again encouraged me to enter.


    With a nod, I tentatively entered the room, now aware that some sort of security was in place. Still, it was impossible not to get distracted by the treasure around us, and soon I was trying to examine all of the room at once. The longer I looked, the more I realized just how priceless this vault was. Not because of the stacks of precious metals and gems I spotted, but because of the history it contained. Three bookshelves were filled with ancient Jedi tomes and scrolls, and I could see at least seven holocrons tucked into cases and shelves around the room. We were sitting on a treasure trove of Jedi knowledge.


    "This is incredible," I finally said. "The knowledge here could help stabilize whatever sort of order comes next! Think of all the secrets and lost knowledge that might be here. Ancient Force techniques, new ways to train, lightsaber forms, the possibilities¡­ I mean, you would have to watch out for anything leading to a hard on the ''right to rule'' mentality, but even with that¡­ this is huge¡­"


    "Imagine-"


    K''Kruhk''s words were cut off when Julus attempted to enter the vault after us. The same little probe descended, though now I could see it was from a hatch in the wall. When it was done, it slipped away again.


    "New entity located... Human, male... association to acknowledged user confirmed... Entry authorized."


    Julus raised a hand as he stepped in further, making room for Maula to enter as well. She apologized to K''Kruhk for interrupting while she was being scanned.


    "New guest located... Balosar, female... association with existing user noted... Entry authorized."


    "...Imagine how dangerous it would be in the wrong hands," K''Kruhk pointed out, pausing first to confirm no one else would interrupt him.


    "How exactly could there be any wrong hands for this knowledge?" I asked with a frown.


    "Darth Sidious-"


    "Would destroy it out of principle," I said, shaking my head. "I mean, he might try to corrupt some of the Force techniques for his own use, but he doesn''t really need more weird Force stuff. He certainly wouldn''t be able to use them right off the bat, he is too dark and twisted to use light-side-powered techniques. Just like you would struggle to use Force Lightning without-"


    "Danger of Sith... Unacceptable." The same security voice said, cutting off the rest of my rant. "Vault must be defended."


    The older Jedi Master looked at me with raised eyebrows despite the interruption, trying to puzzle through what I just said, or more specifically, how exactly I knew that. Thankfully, Malua stepped forward to clear things up.


    "Among his talent in leadership, Deacon is also known for his knowledge in unexpected areas," She explained. "Quite a few times, he has surprised us with information he should not have. Both Knight Amescoll and Master Yoda have confirmed this."


    Now he gave me another look, this time more appraisingly, as if trying to figure out how much of her words had been the truth. I simply shrugged.


    "It comes in handy," I said, turning to look around the vault contents. "Anyway, if the threat of Sith is unacceptable, then we could move the contents of the vault. This place is one unlucky scan from being discovered anyway."


    "Removal of Vault contents is prohibited," The same voice said.


    "Cool... Why should we care?" I asked with a frown. "The vault has done its purpose and it protected its treasure for what, a thousand years? More? Now it''s time to move the stuff somewhere safer."


    "The items stored in the Vault are property of this sector Jedi Lord," The voice emphasized. "You are not authorized to withdraw its contents."


    Rather than respond, the master bent down and picked up a single coin. He held it out to me, placing it in my palm when I reached out to accept.


    "Try and remove it from the vault," He instructed, gesturing to the door.


    Trusting that he was smart enough not to get me killed, I slowly walked towards the door. The second I was within two feet of the exit, A red barrier snapped to life with a violent grinding noise before settling into a loud humming.


    I jumped back, managing to stay on my feet despite the shock, and I even held back from cursing up a storm. I did turn around and threw the coin back at K''Kruhk, who caught it despite the extra force I put behind it.


    "Okay¡­ so there is some security in place," I admitted once I recovered. "We have some tools and a slicer droid. I''m sure we can take this down pretty quick, probably."


    Before I could continue, the red barrier once again appeared, blocking the doors. Even more worrying was that the doors on the other side began to close.


    "Contents of the vault must remain in the vault," the voice said. "Apologies, but I cannot let you leave."


    I cursed loudly, preparing to start throwing lighting to try and disable the door and barrier before it could seal us in. Nal and Calima would notice we were missing eventually, but I would rather not be stuck in the meantime. Before I could do that, however, Malua stepped forward, looking upward as if trying to figure out where she should talk to.


    "You''re not just a normal security program, are you?" she asked, still looking around. "I apologize for my friend''s words, but surely we could discuss this without threats?"


    For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, finally, the doors on the other side of the barrier stopped, slowly opening again. The barrier remained in place, but the message was clear. Whatever was in control of the vault was listening, but it didn''t trust us.


    "What gave me away?" The voice said, the harsh electronic cut to it diminished greatly.


    "Your words changed when you were scanning us," Malua explained. "A simple program wouldn''t have been able to do that. Plus, I could hear your emotion through your words."


    "...Well done, no one has noticed that before," The voice confirmed. "Be that as it may, it does not change anything. The contents of the vault cannot be removed."


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    I couldn''t help but cast a look at K''Kruhk, who had more than twenty years with this vault, and yet looked as shocked as I felt that the vault was not just a simple program. Still, even if I was caught off guard, I was nothing if not adaptable.


    "I understand that your mandate states that the contents cannot leave," I said, stepping forward and finally choosing to look where the sensor had emerged to scan us from above the door. "But I am also guessing you have a mandate to not let the contents fall to harm."


    "...That is correct," It confirmed.


    "Well, which one is a higher priority?"


    "... why?"


    "Well, your systems are more than a thousand years old, and the temple above you, which I''m guessing was meant to protect you, is a shadow of its former glory," I explained. "How much of your system still functions? I''m willing to bet you had more security options than just a barrier, but they don''t work anymore, do they?"


    The voice stayed silent for a long time before finally speaking up again.


    "I cannot violate my programming. The contents of this vault cannot be taken."


    I cursed under my breath. If the droid''s priorities were set up in that order, there wasn''t much I could do to trick it into letting us take the contents, even if we were just trying to help.


    "Correct me if I am wrong, but you are the vault, correct?" Malua asked, looking at the same spot I was.


    "That is correct."


    "And as long as the contents remain with you, then they have not been removed from the vault."


    "That is correct as well."


    "Then, if we brought you with us, then you could fulfill both of your mandates," she pointed out. "The contents of the vault would not be removed, and you are preventing the contents from being damaged."


    That idea caused all of us to pause, puzzling through the loophole that she had just created. After a good thirty seconds of considering, the vault spoke again.


    "I am anchored into the bedrock and weigh several hundred tons," It responded. "You cannot move me."


    "No, but you are a droid mind, correct?" I asked. "If you show us where your droid brain is, we could download you into a new mobile chassis."


    Again, silence settled over the space as we waited for the droid to respond.


    "You would keep the contents together, not sell them?"


    "We will build you a secure building to store them all," I said, an idea coming to life in my head as I talked. "You would be the curator of the building, with your contents securely on display, so that people could see and appreciate them. That''s why you let these Jedi in, isn''t it? A vault is meant to store and display. "


    "...I... The vault systems are failing, and its contents will soon be destroyed by time," The droid mind agreed, speaking as if it were attempting to convince itself. "They will remain in my domain. I will not be separated from the contents. Jedi can be trusted..."


    I chewed the inside of my cheek, mentally preparing to use my magic in case the droid mind reacted negatively to this plan. After a long, tense moment, it finally spoke again.


    "Very well. Please ensure that the contents are safe and protected. I am the vault, and I will follow the contents, protect and tend to them."


    "Fantastic, I am so glad we could reach an agreement! Your contents deserve the proper care," I agreed, nodding to Nal, who rushed from the vault, comms already in his hands. "My associate is going to get the help required to download you and begin transferring you and tour contents onto our ship. When you wake up, you will be in a much better position to protect your contents."


    We talked with the droid brain for a few more minutes, soothing its fears and discussing what sort of facilities we would create for his contents. Eventually, Nal returned and agreed to watch over the process, as did one of the Jedi Masters. The rest of us returned to the surface, where Master K''Kruhk announced that they would be leaving with us, gathering with their kin on a plant safe from the Empire.


    Over the next hour, I ended up answering a bunch more questions about Nirn and the Skyforged Vanguard. It went well, not only because I could assure people that what they were heading to was better than this, but I also got a chance to see who was reacting poorly. Even among Jedi, people got used to being in charge or a certain way of doing things. Between the previous day''s discussion and this, I got a good sense of who might end up being troublemakers in the future.


    I didn''t expect anything too drastic, especially because I could clue those in charge to watch out for them, but it was still nice to know.


    Once it was clear that everyone would be leaving, we quickly started packing the temple up. In total, twenty-five people would be making the trip back with us, which meant it was going to be a little tight. We had enough bedding, thankfully, to keep people comfortable, but it was going to be a close thing. Thankfully, I made sure the ship was running light before we left, otherwise we would be in an even worse position.


    Four hours into packing, I got a message from Nal. The Slicer droid had cracked the security and downloaded the vault droids brain into a spare core from Miru''s old workspace. He confirmed that they were in the process of loading everything in the vault up into crates and hauling it up the stairs. It was going to take time, even with the help of labor droids and the Force. Nal confirmed they were starting with Jedi texts and holocrons first, then Jedi artifacts, followed finally by material wealth.


    About an hour after that, as the hold of the Talos Chariot was starting to fill, Calima reported some concerning news. According to the information our scanners were picking up, something had caused the local government to go on alert. Their cities were partially locked down, with their local security Force looking for something.


    "Any signs of them searching the wild areas of the planet?" I asked into my comms as I hefted a bag of seeds. "Are they looking for us?"


    "At the moment¡­ no one is looking outside of the city limits," She explained. "And we have no idea what they are looking for. It could be us, or it could be unrelated."


    I cursed and confirmed I had received her message. I instructed her to warm up the ship, run through the preflight checklist, and get the droids stationed in the gunner positions. We needed to be ready to go as soon as possible, before whatever miracle was keeping us safe for now ran out.


    The loading picked up rapidly, and our previous pace was eclipsed completely. Done was the careful transfer from the vault into the Chariot. Instead, we had more than half of the younger Jedi running up and down the stairs carrying handfuls of everything they wanted, stuffing them into boxes that remained in the ship. Thankfully, by then, everything fragile had already been carefully stored in several sealed containers.


    Finally, after another four hours, we were packed and ready. Everyone was loaded onto the ship, with my crew, the Jedi Masters, and a few of the younger generation by the bridge in the lounge. Master K''Kruhk stood behind me on the bridge itself while Calima ran on a final scan of the surrounding area.


    "We are still in the clear, sir," she said, sounding confused but hopeful. "We have a short jump already calculated and ready to go¡­ If you want to leave¡­ now''s the time."


    "... Alright. Lift us off and burn atmo," I ordered with a nod. "Drain the guns and push it to the limit, I want to be halfway gone before they even know we are here."


    "Aye, Boss," She said simply, before tapping the internal com system and warning everyone to secure themselves as best as possible. When she was done with that, she lifted us off and pointed the ship straight up. "Hold on tight!"


    Suddenly she shifted the engines, and we were off, you could feel the rumble of the ship, the engines working past their limits to move us as fast as possible. While all we could see was the sky, I could see on Calima''s console as our altitude skyrocketed.


    "Multiple ships have noticed us," The sensor droid called out. "They are moving towards intercept positions."


    "They are too... far away," Calima assured us, peeking at the scans even as she controlled the ship. "The closest one might get... a few shots, but not enough to take us down."


    As we continued to fly upwards, the sky began to go dark as there was less and less atmosphere between us and space. Finally, we pushed past the atmosphere, and the ship''s speed increased.


    "The... closest ship is pull back," Calima said, sounding genuinely confused. "The rest are too¡­ They aren''t coming after us."


    "Slow us down," I ordered. "No reason to burn out the engines if they aren''t chasing us."


    Calima nodded and slowed us down marginally. We were still moving fast, however, and were soon free of the planet''s gravity. Calima jumped us out immediately, our cockpit filled with streaks of light as we escaped into hyperspace.


    "Why did they stop?" I asked once everything had calmed down.


    "Sir, communication intercepts stated they were not looking for our ship, but an escaping smuggler in a smaller ship," The comm droid stated. "When their scans came back negative as that ship, and they couldn''t reach us, they gave up."


    "I¡­ So we were freaking out for nothing?" I asked, looking over at Calima, who was scanning through the same data as the droid.


    "It appears¡­ so, Boss," Calima said.


    I snorted, shaking my head at the situation. The Jedi master behind me seemed to find it much funnier, chuckling softly to himself.


    "Alright, well, I''ll take the win, even if it makes us look dumb," I said, still shaking my head. "C''mon, K''Kruhk, let''s go get you people set up and tell them we are in the clear."

 Chapter 198

    After jumping at shadows and running from people who apparently weren''t really chasing us, K''Kruhk and I spent some time calming everyone down and organizing everyone. To their credit, the younger Force-sensitives took directions well, moving and shifting our cargo around to create plenty of room for beds. We even set up a significant amount of crates and other stuff to act as chairs. It wasn''t exactly a five-star resort, but it would do for an emergency evacuation.


    Technically, if we were really in trouble, with damage or some other issue, I could have called in the Whale Shark or even Boxi''s Fury to pick us up and take us into their hangar bay. However, I didn''t want to get into the habit of calling the Fury at the drop of a hat since I really wanted to cement it as a forward operating base and part of the defensive force around Nirn. As for the Whale Shark, it was undergoing heavy maintenance and upgrades, as were a lot of our ships. Miru was spending a good few million credits making all our ships the best versions of themselves that we could afford.


    Once everything was organized and set, and after explaining that no, I wouldn''t be sharing Nirn''s coordinates, as the fewer people that knew them, the safer we were, it was time to settle in for the trip. It wasn''t too long, thankfully, the journey passing through two major trade lanes, meaning we made good time. I tried to spend most of it enchanting, but unfortunately, I realized something not long after we settled in.


    I still hadn''t explained magic to this group.


    Now, normally that wouldn''t be a massive problem, but as we were all crammed into a relatively small ship, I didn''t want to stir up anything. I would tell them after we landed, with Yoda and Amescoll there to calm them down and assure them that, yes, I was not using the Force. I even warned Julus, Calima, and Nal about it, so that they didn''t mention it by accident. However, all this meant that I didn''t have an excuse to sit in the enchanting room for the entire trip, trying to get ahead of the ever-increasing size of the Skyforged Vanguard.


    In the end, I split my time between meeting and chatting with our guests and enchanting. We also spent a good chunk of time checking everything we brought with us for tracking sensors. I knew I was coming off as paranoid, but thankfully our guests played nice, seeming to understand the scale of what I was trying to protect.


    The days passed quickly, thankfully, and before long, we dropped out of hyperspace above the surface of Nirn. When we did, I was sitting on the first deck, sharing lunch with one of the Jedi Masters who had found their way to the hidden temple when the ship shuddered out of hyperspace. Suddenly, the hold went quiet, and everyone, even the youngest child, looked off into the distance, as if they could see through the hull of the ship.


    "I can feel it¡­" The Jedi I had been talking with said. "You were right, Deacon. This planet¡­ is teaming with life¡­ Alive with the Force. I have never felt anything like it."


    "Well¡­ never say I don''t deliver, I suppose," I said, looking around at everyone as they slowly broke out of the spell that Nirn had cast on them. Whispers and muttering spread through the deck, people excitedly talking about getting down to the planet.


    I excused myself and headed up to the bridge, only to find that several people stuffed inside, peering out of the viewport to see the planet. I rolled my eyes and told them the sooner they left the pilot to their job, the sooner we could land. They sheepishly headed back down to the first deck, leaving Master K''Kruhk standing there, politely standing to the side.


    "Calima, getting any messages?" I asked. "We free to land?"


    "Just a bunch of greetings from the fleet¡­ and now we are free to land," She said with a nod. "Starting our descent."


    As we pulled through, making our way down to the planet, we passed by all three of our groups, most of our fleet in orbit around Nirn. It was an impressive sight, seeing the entire fleet surrounding the Lucrehulk and the Dreadnought.


    As we slowly made our way down to the surface, I sent a message warning Amescoll that we were almost there, while K''Kruhk left to calm and guide the rest of his group. When we finally landed, the group inside was eager to disembark, and frankly, I didn''t blame them, as the Chariot had never seemed so small after three days of being filled with so many people.


    My crew and I were the last to descend from the ship, walking down the forward boarding ramp. We were greeted by the beginnings of a celebration, the two groups of jJedi meeting in a moment filled with laughter, cheers, and not a small amount of tears. From what I could see, there weren''t many among the younger generation that knew each other beyond just passing association, but the simple fact that they were all Jedi, young, old, trained, or just barely starting, was more than enough for them to greet each other as old friends.


    Unsurprisingly, the meeting celebration quickly turned into a feast, as I noticed they tended to do. I already foresaw some interesting shenanigans when the population started to rise, and we couldn''t just shut everything down for a party.


    As usual, the Mandalorians were eager to use the excuse to go hunting for big game, rushing out to stalk food for dinner. This time, a dozen or so other people went out as well to gather wild fruits and vegetables.


    While the party was nice, and it was good to see Amescoll''s group explaining how everything worked, I couldn''t help but feel a bit melancholy without Ahsoka around. Toasting Amescoll as Yoda promoted him to Jedi Master, for at least as long as that role meant anything, was nice, but I was still out of it. I ended up retreating early to the Chariot, using the hyperspace to send a message to her. Unsurprisingly, she wasn''t on board the Starcaller to receive it, but she would get it the next time she was. I ended up sleeping on the Chariot, as I didn''t feel like making my way back through the crowds to my home.


    The following day started with a meeting between Amescoll, Yoda, K''Kruhk, several other Jedi or Force-sensitives, as well as Tatnia and myself. By the time we had all piled into the Amescoll''s dining room, I was once again sorely missing Ahsoka, this time for the stability she represented between the Skyforged Vanguard and the rest of the once Jedi and Padawans. I wasn''t expecting trouble, but it was nice having her there just in case.


    "It''s good to see none of you were too affected by the celebration," I said with a smile, getting a chuckle or smile from a few of the attendees. "At this point, I think the Jedi or Force-sensitive portion of our population is large enough that some things need to be addressed. For instance, I believe you should select a councilor of sorts. This doesn''t have to be the leader, spiritual or otherwise, of the group, just someone I can talk to, spread the word, and be informed of issues or anything else."


    "Discussed something similar, we have. Suggested a new Jedi council, some did. A mistake, we decided, a new council would be," Yoda explained. "Jedi Master Amescoll, our councilor is. You, our leader, will be."


    "Amescoll is a good- wait, what?" I said, my mind screeching to a halt. "You want me to lead you? But I''m not even one of you?!"


    "And yet you have done more for the Jedi than anyone has in many years, even those among our ranks," Amescoll pointed out. "My padawans already agreed to join the Vanguard, so for us, this is a formality."


    "To be clear, this is not without limits," K''Kruhk pointed out. "We will follow you, but not blindly."


    "Good, I have no use for blind underlings. I want allies and friends," I confirmed, mind still reeling a bit. "I¡­ If this is what you want, then I will accept. I will lead the Jedi faction here on Nirn¡­ under two conditions. First, the day-to-day needs to be handled in-house. I have too much on my plate to settle daily issues. Second, this is only until the Empire is defeated, or at least defeated to a degree in which large portions of the galaxy are free. Once that happens, I expect you to create a new council or something else."


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "Agreed."


    "Very well."


    Both Amescoll and K''Kruhk said, while Yoda simply nodded.


    "Well, if that''s the case, we need to talk about what we are doing with the vault treasure we brought back with us."


    At the mention of the treasure, I could see visibly who really trusted me and who was still on the fence. Both Yoda and Amescoll simply nodded, as did most of the older padawans. The newer additions, as well as K''Kruhk, tensed slightly as if waiting for me to prove them right.


    "I made a deal with the Vault, and I intend to honor it, but we cannot pass up the precious metals and other valuables, so I propose an alternative," I explained, leaning back in my chair. "I suggest we delicately modify the Vault''s programming. We remove the fanatical desire to keep everything and shift his focus toward preserving the things he is tasked with protecting. With a soft touch, we could task him with curating and protecting the Jedi museum or memorial we have floated several times while also taking the unrelated general valuables and putting them to better, namely as funding."


    "Best option we have, that may be," Yoda said.


    "Good. On top of that, there is obviously some work to be done in terms of preserving the more delicate things, like the books and paintings. Unfortunately, I don''t know enough about that process, so we need to find someone who does," I said. "Hopefully, that person will know a way to scan them so that everyone can read them without risking the originals. I''m willing to bet we could find an archeologist or specialist who would be happy to do that for simple pay and the chance to research what we have found. We will have to be careful about security, but that''s a bridge we can cross later."


    "I''m concerned about the Holocrons," Amescoll admitted, and I nodded in agreement. "I know we are working hard to find a new path, a mix of old and new, that is more stable and less detrimental, but I feel like letting Jedi Lords teach our Padawans and younglings might be a mistake."


    "I''ll be honest, I don''t know much about that era," I admitted with a frown. "But I agree. The Holocrons should be reviewed in depth before they are spread among the students, and the students should never use one alone. Let the holocrons teach two or three at once. That increases how many can learn at once, and will hopefully mitigate any¡­ unsavory influences."


    We discussed some of the teaching methods, including the public meditation spaces and setting up classes with the Jedi Masters teaching. I made a mental note to find out if we needed to start doing classes for younger kids, those not among the Force-sensitive. Eventually, when we finished talking about teaching the younger generation, the conversation switched back over to what we had found in the vault.


    "The treasures we can store easily, probably on the Fury since we can more easily control the temperature, humidity, and other factors. It''s probably where we should put the books as well," I pointed out, scratching my chin as I thought it out. "As for the treasures that aren''t related to Jedi, I would just assume that we sell them after modifying the Vault intelligence. They have no value to your people, we have no reason to gather paintings, statues, and other things, so we may as well sell them and use the credits to fund Jedi training."


    "There is a substantial amount of precious metals as well," Amescoll pointed out. "Both in ingot and coin form. They would go a long way in outfitting newcomers in beskar uniforms and armor."


    "It would, and it will go a long way to keeping everyone kitted out. It''s complicated, however. Your people are all members of the Skyforged, so they automatically get at least the uniform, and they also get their own armor if they are fighting on the ground," I said, more or less just stating the obvious. But if our newcomers don''t want to join, then¡­ I don''t know if they get their own armor or uniforms. Even if they supply the base metal. I cannot just be handing out beskar, in armor form or not."


    K''Kruhk looked a bit confused, trying to figure out when beskar had become part of the conversation. He opened his mouth, but Amescoll spoke up before he could ask for clarification.


    "Hmmm, that is tough, especially because it will make the difference between those of us who are part of your group and those who are not," The recently promoted Jedi stated. "Your beskar uniforms are expensive and represent our group. There is no reason to distribute it or the armor to people who will not be joining, as they won''t be fighting."


    "Anyone who wishes to join can. I will not order anyone to, even if I am technically the leader," I said, shaking my head. "Those that joined will be armed and armored to fit their role. That''s not to say that people who don''t volunteer won''t be working. Every adult, even Jedi, will have to work in some way to help grow this city."


    "Hold on, please. Where are you getting this beskar?" K''Kruhk asked, still confused. "I know that the Skyforged Vanguard has Mandalorian members, but they guard their metal closely. I cannot imagine that has changed with their planet being decimated."


    I opened my mouth to say something, wincing as I realized that I still hadn''t explained magic to K''Kruhk. Before I could say anything, Amescoll began to explain.


    "It is one of Deacon''s many abilities," He explained with a casual shrug. "It is truly interesting to watch, using his magic to shift one material into something totally different."


    "Magic? Surely you are joking, Master Amescoll?" K''Kruhk asked, skepticism clear on his face. "There is only the Force, and it is clear Deacon, not to belittle him, has a very low connection."


    Both Amescoll and Yoda turned to look at me, eyebrows raised. I couldn''t help but sag a little, feeling tired.


    "We¡­ didn''t get quite that far," I admitted, running my hand through my hair. "My magic never came up."


    K''Kruhk began to protest again, but I shut him up by conjuring a dagger.


    "K''Kruhk, I have something that I can only call magic¡­"


    For a while, the meeting devolved into me showing off my magic, slowly convincing the newcomers that it was definitely not the Force. When I felt like I was successful, we took a break for lunch before reconvening the meeting afterward, which continued for another few hours after that.


    Unfortunately, that wasn''t the only meeting I would gather.


    As our crew worked on upgrades, our membership was due to swell again, final expansions to the fleet were made, and we had gathered another group of Jedi survivors, I felt it was time for the Skyforged to truly rest and consolidate our growth. I gathered every major player in our mercenary crew, from our captains and the leaders of the expansion teams working on Nirn, to the leaders of the ground teams and everything in between. I even got the recently reprogramed B4-88, the super tactical droid from the bridge of Boxi''s Fury, to join us. I then gathered the massive groups several times over the next week or so.


    These massive all-hands meetings would be used to discuss the future of our group, plan upgrades, raise issues for discussion, and discuss ideas to benefit our strength. Then, during our downtime, we planned on implementing those ideas and upgrades, working on solving the raised problems, and working together to increase our effectiveness. It would take time and effort, but I could hardly wait to get to work.

 Chapter 199 - Ahsoka Tano Interlude - I

    Ahsoka and Vaz watched as the 1st group, carrying their friends, allies, and lover, took off and headed out towards deep space with a final message goodbye. Once they had jumped out of sensor range, Ahsoka turned to Vaz, standing up and out of the Starcaller''s captain''s chair.


    "Well, Vaz, tell me, do you have experience with investigations?" she asked, passing the Shistavanen to head deeper into the ship.


    "I have experience tracking bounties and hunting," Vaz responded, following after the Togruta, still dressed in full armor, only her helmet off, clipped to her hip. "I believe that is why the Boss instructed me to remain with you. I also have basic Mandalorian training from my adopted father, with a focus on heavy weapons. Beyond that, I am afraid I lack any experience."


    "I would think that''s more than enough experience for this," She assured her, patting an armored pauldron. "For now, I want you to act as my bodyguard of sorts, looming behind me, the hard to my soft approach. Does that make sense?"


    "It does, I am familiar with intimidation and negotiation tactics," She explained, Ahsoka smiling.


    "See, more experience than you thought," She responded, releasing the warrior''s shoulder. "Our first stop will be Alliance Intelligence, which probably means we will be interacting with Draven. Don''t let him get on your nerves. We are still guests, so anything we do might negatively affect or restrict our access."


    "Very well."


    "Good. I don''t know how difficult this will be or how long it will take," Ahsoka admitted, now making her way to the lounge area, where a pair of beskar-clad commando droids were waiting. "It all depends on what sort of information security the Rebellion employed for the mission. We could puzzle it out in a few minutes, or this could take weeks."


    "I am here for the long haul, Ahsoka," Vaz assured her, prompting another smile from Ahsoka.


    Rather than respond, Ahsoka focused on the two Commando droids, who were armed and ready for battle. They stood at loose attention, tightening up when Ahsoka focused on them.


    "As for you two, I expect you to stay quiet unless Vaz or I address you," She explained. "I don''t think we particularly need you accompanying us, as Vaz and I are perfectly capable of defending ourselves, but I promised Deacon that I would take you with me, so I will. Keep your sensors going, guard doors as we enter rooms, and I don''t want your weapons to leave stun unless I give you a direct order. Understood?"


    "Roger roger," Both of the droids said in unison, switching their weapons to stun, before saluting the young Jedi. "We follow your command."


    Ahsoka gave them a nod before pulling out her comms and contacting the number she was given to start their investigation. After a quick conversation with an intelligence agent on the other end, they were invited back into Alpha Base to begin, with a transport sent out to collect them. Thankfully, they didn''t even have to wait long, as the wheeled transport showed up to pick them up in only a few minutes. From there, they were guided through the base until, eventually, they arrived at an office space of sorts, with people sitting at computers, looking at projections and analyzing data and machines. Quite a few people looked up as they entered, but most focused back on their work soon after. One woman, a female <u>Kel Dor</u></a> spotted them and approached.


    "Ahsoka Tano, I assume?" she said, reaching out to shake her hand. "I am Agent Yos Yuca. Draven wished to meet you, if you''d follow me?"


    She gestured to the direction she had come from, carefully guiding the two further into the room. The two BX droids stood at attention at the door, following Ahsoka''s instruction, as the Kel Dor guided them to a small conference room turned office. A desk sat tucked in the corner with a holo-projector on it, while the center of the room was occupied by a large table. There, by the conference table, standing above several data pads, actual printouts, and a second larger holo-projector, was General Draven. When they stepped in, the head of intelligence operations looked up, nodded, and gestured to the pile.


    "Welcome, I''m glad to see you are so eager to start, "General Draven said, cutting through any sort of small talk. "As you can see, we have compiled a lot of data concerning the most recent collaborative mission."


    Draven leaned forward and tapped a particular datapad, sliding it toward Ahsoka.


    "On here is a list of our people who knew about the mission far enough in advance to somehow communicate the knowledge to an outside source," He explained. "It is cross-referenced with people who didn''t actually participate in the gathering of the fleet, so they were never in danger."


    Ashoka approached the table, focusing on the tablet directly in front of the General of Intelligence. He picked up the tablet and handed it to her, activating the screen. Ahsoka scrolled through the names, noting its relatively small size before looking back up at the General.


    "I understand that we have our differences, but if there is anything I dislike more than wild card variables and opportunists like your leader, it is traitors and spies," He explained, gritting his teeth as he shook his head. "This is our best place to start."


    "I understand your sentiment, General Draven," Ahsoka said, keeping her response diplomatic. "How have you ordered the suspect list?"


    "Those at the top have somehow tripped our suspicions already. The lead suspect was already under surveillance for "losing" a shipment he was in charge of, while the second, third, and fourth, have some suspicious credit activity," Draven answered with another tight scowl. "Anyone past the third page is suspicious in some way, but not worth investigating immediately because of an alibi or some other evidence."


    Ahsoka raised an eyebrow at the general''s dismissiveness, realizing that, as much as it was unfortunate, it was necessary. The size of the list and the distance some of the people were spread out meant that a bit of practicality and generalization was needed to focus the search.


    "Unfortunately, the list is only so short because we have avoided the influence of zealotry," Draven admitted, shaking his head. "If the traitor or spy was willing to sacrifice themselves by setting up an ambush they would be caught in, the list becomes significantly longer."


    "Yes, but thankfully, out of all the possible motives, the zealotry is the easiest for me to detect," Ahsoka explained. "Such blind faith and belief leaves a stain on someone''s mind. Should it come to that."


    Draven didn''t seem to know how to react to that statement, so he simply stayed silent. After a minute of looking through the list, Ahsoka nodded, looking back up at Draven.


    "I would like to interview as many people on the list as I can," She said. "Certainly any that are suspected or have a motive."


    "That can be arranged, we have been working to keep those we suspect from being moved off the planet," Draven explained. "I will have a room set up for you so you can meet them. Keep in mind that bringing these suspects in will likely let them know we are onto them, should they be guilty."


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    "I am aware," Ahsoka responded. "But if there is one thing a Jedi is good at, it is establishing guilt."


    "I was under the impression that a sufficiently strong-willed mind could resist such attempts," the general said with a frown. "Is that not true?"


    "For some of the more complicated mind techniques, yes, but reading surface emotions is as basic as breathing for a Jedi. I will be asking questions while probing their mind, not bending them to my will," she assured him. "Unless one of these suspects has an especially willful mind that is trained in repelling a Jedi''s senses, I will most likely be able to sense something. I do not imagine the interviews will take long."


    Draven seemed a bit skeptical, but nonetheless nodded. Ahsoka had no illusions that the General of Intelligence would be continuing his own investigations while they worked on theirs, but she had faith that the Force would find the truth.


    "I should also point out that, as agreed, you will be accompanied by an Intelligence agent," he added. "I believe Agent Yuca was the one that greeted you? She will be your escort during your investigation."


    "Very well,"


    It took about an hour to start the interviews, with Draven selecting a nondescript room not far from the Intelligence office. Ahsoka, with her years of experience and prior training, worked hard to streamline and interview each suspect efficiently. Unfortunately, there were quite a few people on the list, even with the generalizations and assumptions that Draven had made to cut down the list.


    One by one, suspects were brought to the cordoned-off room, and Ahsoka would ask them simple questions designed to prompt their emotions, using the small psychological description provided for each Rebel member by Agent Yuca. For some of the suspects, Ahsoka complimented their cunning to foster their pride. For some, she belittled their uselessness to incur anger in failure. In others still, she shouted at them, working their weak wills to push for a response.


    Soon, a day passed, and then another, Ahsoka interviewing nearly two dozen people each day. Some only took several minutes, while most took around fifteen or twenty, while others with stronger, more controlled minds took quite a bit longer.


    In total, she had managed to uncover a small smuggling working out of a nearby rebel cell, an illicit relationship between a high-ranked official and a subordinate, as well as an actual traitor who had been selling secrets to the Hutts. Unfortunately, her investigation into the one who sold out the Skyforged Vanguard was coming up short. Within a few days, she was forced to reconsider the list, wondering what she was missing, the Force tugging at her mind.


    "What sort of reasoning pushed certain people down the list?" Ahsoka asked General Draven after another day of interviews. "Is there a concrete reason for all of them?"


    "They have alibis or witnesses saying they weren''t able to reach out to anyone. Some of them also maintain an otherwise clean record," the general explained. "It''s obviously not completely foolproof, but we needed a way to consolidate and organize the list."


    Ahsoka frowned, going through the whole list again. She was missing something, and the Force fluttered at the back of her mind to pay attention. It had been pushing her to step further and do something else, but so far, she had been unable to figure out what. As she was scanning through, a single name caught her eye. It was familiar, but she couldn''t quite place it.


    "Who is this?" She asked, pointing to the name and showing Draven.


    "Commander Neshweh Gadic¡­ A Mon Cal who has been with us for years. He is one of the leaders of an important station near the Hydian Way," He said, pulling up a datapad and reading from it carefully. "He was moved down the suspect list because of the intense security of his post. No electronic messages go in or out, and everything is heavily monitored."


    "Why was he made aware of the plans in the first place?"


    "We had to call in quite a few assets to put together the fleet we sent with you, fat lot of good that it would have done against that monstrosity of a ship," He explained with a growl, before shaking his head. "His post deals with several cells dropping off goods they procure from the Empire, then shipping them off to other cells, a distribution point, much like Omega Station. We wanted some of his people on board to help with whatever goods we found. We would have loaded them up with supplies, and they would have taken it back to their base and disseminated it through their usual routes."


    "I take it he isn''t here?" Ahsoka asked, feeling the Force tugging at her.


    "No, he never left his post," He responded with a frown. "Why? He is only on the list because he knew about the mission. Otherwise, he has a clean record and no reason to betray the Alliance."


    "The name¡­ it sounds familiar," She admitted. "The Force is telling me he is important."


    "Ahsoka, Apologies, but I recognize the name. It simply took me a moment to place it," Vaz explained, stepping forward from her position by the door. "Vakim, the captain of the Intervention, as well as his brother and husband, were Rebels before coming to work with us. According to them, they left because of rumors and slander that Commander Gadic spread in order to stiff them on compensation for their work."


    "Ah, right, I remember now. The Mon Calamari who worked with General Syndulla," Ahsoka said, her mind''s eye providing a mental image of the aquatic humanoid. "Interesting. He did interact with Deacon and his crew in the early days, just around when I first met them¡­ He did not seem to appreciate their success or me leaving to join them... In fact, he was quite vocally against it..."


    "That is hardly motive, no one was exactly happy about that," General Draven pointed out. "You were legendary among the ranks, after all. Losing you to a mercenary branch was a hit to morale."


    "Perhaps, but if you say he has no record of issues, and yet our people say he was the reason they left the Rebellion¡­ that says to me he is just good at covering his tracks," Ahsoka pointed, shaking her head. "The Force is pulling me towards him, so I can only think he is important to this investigation. Can you get me access to his station?"


    "I¡­ I believe I can, if that''s what you want to do," He said, a frown on his face. "But I reiterate, there are no comms going in or out of that base, we monitor it too heavily for him to have snuck a message by. All communication is done by courier, which is also heavily monitored."


    "Perhaps¡­ But the Force is telling me that there is something there," Ahsoka reiterated, standing up from her seat. "We will be visiting his post so we can question him directly."


    "Very well, I will get you the passcodes on a datapad," He agreed with a shrug. "Agent Yuca will be accompanying you, of course, so she can handle the contact."


    "Of course," Ahsoka agreed with a smile. "In the meantime, we will head back to the Starcaller and prepare for departure."


    General Draven nodded, and Ahsoka returned the gesture, turning and leaving the room. Vaz followed after her, as did Agent Yuca. Finally, as they left the intelligence office, both of the beskar armored commando droids followed after them, trailing behind like an honor guard.

 Chapter 200 - Ahsoka Tano Interlude - II

    Getting the proper security codes and clearance to engage with the base where Commander Gadic was stationed took only a few hours. General Draven presented Agent Yuca with a specialized Datapad containing clearance codes, as well as a verbal code that would essentially get them through the door. It would be her responsibility to make contact and introduce Ahsoka and Vaz. Which obviously meant she was going with them. Thankfully, the serious and professional agent was ready to go immediately, simply grabbing a go bag on her way out of the facility.


    Within an hour of getting everything sorted, they had taken off from the landing pads around Alpha Base, Ahsoka sitting at the helm while Agent Yuca sat in the co-pilot''s seat. The Togurta wasn''t particularly worried about her doing anything, but common sense told her to keep her as close as possible so she could keep an eye on her. Even so, the Starcaller would need a thorough scrubbing for listening devices when they got back to Nirn. She was an intelligence agent, after all.


    The trip would take a total of three days, which Vaz and Ahsoka spent sparring and Yuca spent reading in her bunk room. It was quiet, uneventful, and boring. Ahsoka, settling into the captain''s quarters that she now usually shared with Deacon, had resigned herself to mediating to sleep, since she struggled to fall asleep without him. She did get a message from him during the tale end of their hyperspace journey, though she missed the direct connection since it was in the middle of the night and everyone had been sleeping.


    Eventually, after three and a half days of travel, they finally arrived at the distribution point.


    This particular Rebel cell had been set up inside of an abandoned mining guild asteroid facility, stuck in a relatively calm and stationary asteroid cluster on a system unimportant enough that its designation was simply two letters and a string of numbers.


    The facility itself was built into a massive asteroid, the central facility being a simple squat and heavily armored structure that was carved right into the rock and sealed in place. Two other small asteroids were attached by rigid scaffolding, with enough distance that, as we approached, I could see dark tube-like reinforced corridors leading between all three asteroids. Around the facility were three large hangar bays, open and powered down, with no mag shielding in sight.


    To the outside observer, the facility appeared abandoned, its lights off, and its atmosphere completely drained.


    "According to the info that General Draven gave me, they will keep the facilities dark, until we land and close the hangar doors," Agent Yuca explained, peering out the forward viewport. "I''ll admit, this is much larger than I had assumed when he described the operation to me, just from what I can see. According to records, they use the mines as cold storage for supplies that are coming in, before distributing them to other cells that need them."


    "An interesting setup, efficient and well hidden," Ahsoka admitted. "I''m not picking up any power sources that might indicate that there may be people living in the facilities. What I am picking up could easily be blamed on emergency power slowly fading out around the facility. It''s well done."


    Slowly but surely, Ahsoka slowly landed the Starcaller in one of the smaller hangar bays available. Once they touched down, she turned the ship into standby mode, letting the power core spin down while the rest of the starship remained ready for an emergency takeoff. Once everything was set, she scanned for any local access to the hangar systems around us before eventually finding the open controls. With a tap, she activated them, a large metal dome slowly closing over the small hangar, sealing it shut.


    "Do we now simply wait?" Vaz asked, sitting in the comms chair on the other side of Ahsoka from Agent Yuca.


    "According to the sensors, the hangar is already filling up with breathable air," Agent Yuca said, leading forward to examine her console. "Everything seems clean. We just need to wait for our friends to step out so I can greet them."


    After a few minutes, when the hangar had warmed up and filled with breathable air, Agent Yuca stood at the back end of the ship, special datapad in hand. Ahsoka activated the cargo bay door of the Starcaller, the back of the ship slowly opening and the ramp descending, revealing two dozen Rebel soldiers with a variety of weapons aimed at them. Agent Yuca quickly called out the verbal code, which, after a moment, seemed to be confirmed as valid as the soldiers slightly loosened up, though they stayed in place. After a moment, a human male stepped out of cover and approached the hangar bay.


    "I''ll need to confirm the rest of your security codes, ma''am," he said, holding out his hand expectantly.


    "Of course," she responded, holding out the datapad, before pulling out a second and passing him both, one after the other. "This is our clearance code''s and mission objective, and this is an update on recent activity. I''m sure you must be starved of news."


    The man nodded and disappeared around the corner, leaving the same way he entered. For a long while, the hangar bay was quiet. There was tension in the soldiers, but since agent Yuca had already given the initial codes, and by all appearances, seemed to be waiting patiently, the tension stayed at a low level, the soldiers'' weapons aimed firmly away from the ship and its occupants.


    Eventually, the human male appeared again, this time in a bit of a rush. He quickly dismissed the soldiers, sending them away before addressing the Ahsoka and the Rebel agent.


    "Jedi Tano, Agent Yuca, I am Commander Recito. My apologies for making you wait," he said, his tone apologetic but with no hint of groveling. "We will, of course, cooperate fully with your investigation."


    While it was important to keep suspicions low and not show their hand, they did need to have a reason to be sniffing around for the traitor, specifically Commander Gadic. Their mission, according to the information Agent Yuca had handed over, was to investigate a potential issue with supplies not ending up where they were supposed to. While this would involve Commander Gadic, since he was in charge of logistics and the supplies that passed through the base, as opposed to Commander Recito, who was in charge of personnel and the facility itself, Commander Gadic had no reason to be nervous. As far as anyone could tell, including General Draven, not a single pound of equipment or supplies had been misplaced in months. Gadic might have spiked Ahsoka''s connection to the Force as suspicious, but it was fairly clear he wasn''t skimming off the top.


    "I appreciate the cooperation," Ahsoka stated. "I understand you are not expecting a delivery for several days?"


    "As far as I am aware, that is correct," the human responded.


    "Good, that simplifies things," She responded with a nod. "I apologize for taking such drastic measures, but if you would have someone escort these droids to the station''s freighters? They will be standing guard to prevent any unauthorized access while we do our investigation."


    Ashoka gestured behind her, and the pair of beskar commando droids made their way down the ramp, causing the Commander''s eyes to go a bit wide. Nevertheless, he nodded and quickly relayed his orders through the comms. A minute later, a pair of soldiers arrived and left with the droids.


    "What else can I do to assist you?" He asked patiently.


    "I would like to review your security records, both internal and external," She responded, hands crossed behind her back, her beskar uniform cutting an impressive image. "Then I would like to interview several of your people."


    The man nodded, quickly turning around and leading Ahsoka and Agent Yuca down the cargo ramp and out of the hangar, a modified slicer astromech following after them. The hangar bay was left empty, with the Starcaller''s cargo bay still open.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    The vast majority of the abandoned mining facility was either empty or repurposed as temporary cargo holds. The abandoned portions were sealed shut, with some doors even welded shut to reduce the energy costs of heating the base. Even with such measures, the facility was very cold. Most people were wearing <u>winter gear</u></a> as they went about their business.


    Commander Recito took them directly to the security room, which was staffed by several people. Quickly and efficiently, he got his people to transfer the records to an open terminal, allowing Ahsoka, Agent Yuca, and the astromech slicer to view them at their pleasure.


    It didn''t take long to see, that unless there was a major conspiracy going on, that General Draven had been correct. There was no way an unregistered message had gotten out from the repurposed facility. First off, the comms bay was the only place such a message could go out from, at least without smuggling in some complicated equipment. That wasn''t impossible, but in a place with such tight security, it was at least unlikely. Second, any communication of any form struggled, as the high metallic content of the surrounding asteroids made sending and receiving signals almost impossible. Third, the base was continually being scanned for outgoing signals.


    It was honestly a pretty tight setup.


    "It might not look like much," one of the nearby Rebels explained when asked about the tight security. "But this is a crucial supply point. We supply a good percentage of Alliance cells on this chunk of the <u>Hydian Way</u></a>. If we went down, a lot of freedom fighters would start running out of food and supplies. Hard to fight the Empire when you''re hungry, and your blaster is empty."


    Despite the increasing unlikelihood that Gadic had somehow gotten a message out, they left the astromech working on the scan data and records just in case. While that was happening, Ahsoka walked through the halls, doing her best to listen to the Force. Agent Yuca was not helping this, as, despite her entirely professional outward demeanor, her internal thoughts were filled with doubt, focused on the trip and on Ahsoka herself.


    Eventually, after a few minutes of aimlessly exploring the facility, Ahsoka turned and began to move with a bit more purpose. Soon, the pair crossed into the now shut-down mine portion of the facility, the hollowed-out asteroid filled with cargo containers, boxes, parts, scrap, and everything in between. It was clear this was a sizable operation, and from what Ahsoka could see, it was running like a well-oiled machine.


    "Ahsoka, where exactly are we going?" Agent Yuca finally asked, following behind the Force-sensitive. "I assumed you would want to talk to Commander Gadic? Recito said he would be in his office, in the upper facility¡­ where it is warmer."


    "I do wish to talk to the commander," Ahsoka agreed, looking over her shoulder with a smirk. "And I have no doubt his office is where Commander Recito said it was. But clearly, that is not where Gadic is."


    She gestured forward, and sure enough, the Mon Calamari was standing by a cargo container, bundled up in heavy clothing. He was looking down into his datapad, hardly aware of Ahsoka walking up to him.


    "Commander Gadic," The Togruta called out. "A moment of your time?"


    The aquatic humanoid started, whirling around towards Ahsoka, clearly caught off guard. After he recovered from his shock, he lowered his datapad. He then carefully pulled some of his coverings down to expose more of his face.


    "Ahsoka Tano, I must say I did not expect to see you here," He said, quickly adjusting to her presence. "What can I do for you?"


    "I have several questions for you," she repeated, continuing before he could cut her off. "I have been empowered by General Syndulla, Draven, and Dodanna to carry out a crucial investigation. Please, let us find someplace private?"


    For a moment, the humanoid''s mouth hung open, before he finally nodded, silently agreeing to her request. Not five minutes later, they were sitting in a small break area not far from the entrance into the now-defunct mines. It was several degrees warmer than the adapted cargo space, a fact Agent Yuca clearly enjoyed as she rubbed her hands together.


    "Commander Gadic, I was asked as a favor to several people to investigate a troubling string of missing equipment and supplies," Ahsoka lied, now sitting opposite Commander Gadic. "Do you know anything about that?"


    "Missing supplies....? No, absolutely not!" The humanoid said, sounding genuinely insulted. "These supplies are set for local Rebel cells, keeping them fed and armed. I wouldn''t dare¡­"


    Ahsoka let him rant for a moment, not quite listening to him. Instead, she was far more interested in his emotions. A strong layer of concern had been prevalent from the moment they had first found him, spiraling and swirling stronger the longer they were together. Then, she falsely revealed they were hunting for missing supplies. Outwardly, his expression and voice did not change, but the second she explained what her "mission" was, the growing concern almost instantly began to lessen. He wasn''t nearly as nervous as he had been before, and he was only getting more calm.


    "How are you communicating to whoever you''re selling these supplies to?" she asked, cutting off his long-winded rant. "You must have a buyer or some way to communicate with them?"


    The more she asked about missing supplies, the more confident Mon Calamari felt. For ten minutes, she fed that confidence, watching as frustration also began to leak into his mind. She was questioning his loyalty to the Rebellion, and it was making him angry. Suddenly, Ahsoka stood, giving the male a nod.


    "Very well, Commander Gadic, you have convinced me," She said, giving him a nod. "I apologize for accusing you, but I am sure you understand how serious these matters are."


    "I¡­ I do," He agreed, visibly reigning himself in. "I am sure you are just being thorough."


    "Thank you, Commander. If you notice anything suspicious, please let me know."


    The humanoid nodded, watching as Ahsoka walked out of the room, Agent Yuca following after her. The Kel Dor female was buzzing with curiosity, but her training kept her from asking in earshot of the commander. Eventually, after walking for a few minutes, she spoke up quietly.


    "Does this mean you are satisfied?" She asked, eyebrow knotted.


    "I am satisfied that I was correct," Ahsoka revealed with a smirk. "Commander Gadic is guilty of something. He was very close to complete panic before I started accusing him of skimming supplies. After that, he immediately began to calm down. He suspected I was here for something, but was relieved when I accused him of smuggling your supplies."


    "I¡­ you truly felt that?" the intelligence agent asked, skepticism clear on her face despite her breathing apparatus. "The Force can tell you that?"


    "It can, and it did," Ahsoka confirmed with a confident smile. "But I am also aware that we need more concrete evidence than my own empathic abilities. Plus, we need to uncover how he is communicating with his contact. He is most likely putting the base at risk."


    "I would say so," Agent Yuca agreed with a nod. "Do you have a plan?"


    "Yes. We are returning to the Starcaller," she responded, a shiver running down her spine before she managed to get control over herself again. "I feel as if my montral are freezing off. We can warm up at the ship and plan our next move."

 Chapter 201 - Ahsoka Tano Interlude - III

    After warming up and having something to eat at the Starcaller, Agent Yuca and Ahsoka discussed their plans with Vaz, who had remained on the Starcaller as a sort of trap. With the doors open and the proverbial keys in the ignition, Vas was waiting on the off chance Commander Gadic tried to run. Since the station''s own ships were clearly guarded by commando droids, the Starcaller was a purposeful, tempting target.


    When they finished filling Vaz in on their progress, the two investigators made their way out of the ship and towards the security office, once again leaving the ship open and tempting. This time, both of the warm-blooded humanoids were wearing a few more layers, with Ahsoka wearing her temperature-controlled undersuit for her armor, with some light clothing over it for modesty''s sake. Agent Yuca borrowed a heavier jacket and pants from the ship''s stores, wearing them both tightly and covering the Starforged symbol on it. Ahsoka was now toasty warm, while Agent Yuca was no longer suffering from the temperature.


    When they arrived at security, they found it a bit more active than it had been before, with Commander Recito standing by with his arms crossed and a pair of Rebels kneeling beside their astromech slicer. They were attempting to get inside the droid''s chassis but were utterly failing to breach even the thin beskar plating that the vital droids were covered in. When the astromech spotted the new arrivals, it whistled and beeped, making an almost bored sound with their attempts.


    "Commander Recito, is there a problem?" Ahsoka asked, in a tone that demanded attention.


    "Yes, in fact, there is. Your droid here was done reviewing our security records and began slicing into our database," He said, frustration clear in his voice. "It was accessing our docking and supply records. That is highly sensitive information that contains logs on all the cells that come to us for supplies, as well as the ones that deliver them."


    "And?" Ahsoka asked, the commander looking surprised at her response. "Did we give you the impression we would only be investigating half of what was going on here? And what do you think gives you the right to start prying at the droid we brought with us?"


    "We¡­ we have to protect the cells that depend on us and the soldiers who help keep us supplied," The leader explained with a frown. "We can''t do that with your droids slicing and revealing the locations and names."


    "Commander Recito, need I remind you who exactly gave us the authority to do all of this?" Agent Yuca asked rhetorically. "Not only was Princess Leia speaking with the authority of Mon Mothma, but General Dodanna, Sydulla, and Draven all charged us to investigate this issue."


    Commander Recito began to shrink a bit as Agent Yuca got her steamrolling. The intelligence office was doing a great job of keeping their story going while assuring the man that they did, in fact, have the proper authority.


    "You read our security codes, did they say anything about only getting access to certain amounts of data?" the agent continued. "Did they say anything about taking matters into your hands when you thought we had gone too far?"


    The commander was silent now, standing at partial attention, seemingly by instinct, his hands behind his back. The two kneeling by the droid seemed to have gotten the memo as well, as they had both scrambled to their feet and settled in at attention.


    "The droid would not have had to slice anything if he had been given the access we requested," Ahsoka pointed out, giving the commander a focused look. "I suggest you correct that mistake so that it can continue its task uninterrupted."


    "...Very well," Commander Recito confirmed with a stiff nod before looking to one of the technicians, who quickly got to work on the console system that the astromech had been working on.


    It took a few minutes to set it up, but soon, the astromech was back at it, scanning files and compiling records that the two investigating women would go over when it was done. Eventually, after a few minutes, Commander Recito left, leaving a technician behind to answer our questions. Ahsoka watched him leave, waving away Agent Yuca as she opened her mouth to speak.


    "He is only trying to do his job," Ahsoka explained, letting out a long breath. "This is the cost of the many-cell system, the cells don''t always line up, and even if they do, sometimes there are miscommunications. It was logical to him that the information we would have access to wouldn''t include the most dangerous data they have here. After all, it could be used to attack everyone they supply and those that keep them supplied. We expected one thing, and because this cell is different from others, there was a miscommunication."


    "How did he¡­ feel about that?" Agent Yuca asked, her tone leading as she referenced the Force without mentioning it. "How did he feel after?"


    "Worried, as he truly wants to protect the information, as it is very sensitive," Ahsoka explained with a frown. "He was also frustrated for being strong-armed in front of subordinates."


    Ahsoka gestured around the room to the five other people working around them, all of them very specifically not looking their way. Most of them tensed when she mentioned getting shown up in front of the people he was meant to be in charge of.


    It took about another hour for the astromech to complete its task of scanning and compiling. Once it was done, all three of them left the security room to find somewhere more private, eventually finding a small conference room that was actually heated.


    With no one around to interrupt or overhear them, Ahsoka and Agent Yuca sat down and began to go over the data that the astromech had found and collated. It was a thorough composition of what the droid tagged as important, dating back two days before Commander Gadic even knew about the mission. The report quickly confirmed that no comms had gone out and that the freighter records confirmed that no hyperwave messages were sent as well. Even worse, the sensors hadn''t picked up any extra signals, originating from the base or not.


    "If he didn''t send a message through technological means," Agent Yuca said quietly, putting down the datapad she had been reading from. "Then that just leaves physical means. Could he have ejected something? A physical container perhaps that someone picked up at a distance?"


    "In an asteroid field?" Ahsoka responded, raising an eyebrow. "They would have better luck shouting messages through the vacuum. At least then they might be able to read his lips."


    "Then he has a conspirator," The Kal Dor woman settled on, leaning back in her chair. "Someone who passed on the information for him."


    "Most likely," Ahsoka agreed, crossing her arms and chewing the inside of her cheek. "But why? He was genuinely offended when I suggested he was stealing from the Rebellion. He is loyal, in his own way... why sell the mission out?"


    "Because... the Rebellion was never the target," the agent pointed out. "Not to him. The Skyforged Vanguard was. He knew the plan, knew your team would be heading in first¡­"


    "I mean, yes, that is the obvious point. But at such a risk? With a difference of just a few minutes, that entire Rebel fleet would have been trapped," Ahsoka countered with a frown. "He¡­ didn''t feel capable of that. He wouldn''t have been willing to risk that loss, just to get rid of us."


    "Why does he want you gone in the first place?"


    "That''s easy. He sees the Skyforged Vanguard as a threat, not an ally," Ahsoka explained, shaking her head. "When I left to join, he saw it as a betrayal, I could feel it. And with Deacon at the helm, we have grown drastically and rescued dozens of my brothers and sisters. To him, it would seem like we were stealing resources and people from the Rebellion, especially with these CIS missions."


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    "So he assumes if the head of the Vanguard was destroyed, the rest would fall in line with the Rebellion?" the agent asked, sounding baffled. "That is ridiculous. Our data says the Skyforged is too mercenary-focused to simply fall in line."


    "You''re not incorrect," Ahsoka admitted with a smirk. "The Skyforged would likely simply break up into groups. It''s also possible that the ship captains would form a council of sorts. Clan Syr might also make a play, but if my judgment of Corvak is correct, he would do his best to run the group as Deacon has, rather than turn it into a Mandalorian clan or something similar."


    Agent Yuca filed the information away in her head, Ahsoka perfectly aware of what she was saying and who she was saying it to. The Rebel Alliance needed to understand that the Skyforged was not a minor group anymore, and that picking off the leader or even the entire leading group would not destroy them.


    Sure, the group would inevitably have to adapt. Deacon had a unique style of leadership, to say the least, so removing him from the equation would inevitably lead to change¡­


    "What if the plan changed by Gadic''s messenger?" Ahsoka said, her thought sticking for a moment before an interesting thought popped in. "Gadic knew the mission plan, knew that once we arrived, the mission would likely take some time. We were infiltrating in disguise, so we couldn''t rush. If he doctored the information he passed on, said that we were just scouting, quickly popping in and out¡­"


    "The window of attack would have been much smaller," Agent Yuca agreed, nodding along. "The Imperials would have had to attack the second you appeared."


    "The risk to the Rebel fleet would have been considerably smaller, almost non-existent, since we weren''t going to call them in until everything was ready."


    "Then why change the message at all?" Agent Yuca asked. "The plan was less risky and would have worked, hypothetically. Why change it?"


    For a moment, Ahsoka had no answer. Then, she happened to look down as she fiddled with her datapad. The data she had been idly looking at was gone, having scrolled away while she was talking and not paying attention, by the will of the Force.


    "Because¡­for them, it wasn''t about resources or bringing back the Jedi to the Rebellion," Ahsoka said with a growing smirk. "It was about revenge."


    On the screen were names and dates, the list of incoming and outgoing Rebels groups, both those coming for supplies and those dropping them off. As Yuca peered at it, Ahsoka tapped the screen, her finger pointing to a single name.


    Nevue Loc.


    "Nevue was the one who brought the Skyforged to the Rebellion in the first place, before I joined up," Ahsoka explained. "After they escaped Nar Shaddaa, Nevue was basically their point of contact, their handler. He was promoted and given his own team, making a name for himself in the process. Unfortunately, he took advantage of the Skyforged several times to do that, cutting them terrible deals and taking advantage of Deacon''s goodwill, all while using it to make himself look good in the process. When one of his team members blew the whistle on him, he was demoted down to a private, stripped of his position, and shipped off to another group, with a harsh warning and a promise he would never be promoted again. He was not happy about the demotion and claimed the Rebellion was playing favorites because Deacon is a little special."


    "Okay, so he has motive," Agent Yuca agreed with a nod. "But why would he change the message?"


    "Because if the Empire jumped in while we were still flying around the fleet, there was a chance we could escape," Ahsoka explained. "No of us could have predicted just how intense the Empire''s response would be. If it had been more reasonable, say, a few Star Destroyers and some smaller ships, there was a very good chance that the Talos Chariot could have escaped. But, once we landed and were inside the Lucrehulk, exploring and completing our mission, the Empire would have all the time in the world to wipe us out."


    "So if you''re correct, then Nevue was willing to risk the fleet being stuck fighting the Empire, and potentially CIS assets as well because it would confirm you would be stuck, with nowhere to run," Agent Yuca said, rephrasing what Ahsoka had just explained. "What a karking bastard!"


    "I would have to agree," Ahsoka said, standing from her chair. "C''mon, it''s time to confront Gadic again. I have a feeling he will be a bit more pliant if our theory is correct."


    Ahsoak and Yuca left the private room, while the slicer droid left to return to the ship. It wasn''t difficult to find the Mon Calamari traitor this time, as he had returned to the warmth of his office.


    "Jedi Ashoka, Agent Yuca, is there something I can help you with?" He asked, looking up from his computer. "Have you had any luck locating the thief?"


    "In fact, you can help us. You can tell us exactly what you told Commander Loc to do when he was last here," Ahsoka demanded, calmly standing in front of his desk. "I want to know, in exact detail, what you instructed him to do and who his contact with the Empire was."


    The Mon Calamarian stared at Ahsoka for a long pause, his large eyes focused on her, his expression unreadable. Suddenly, he moved, reaching under his desk to pull out a hold-out blaster. Before he could even aim it, Ahsoka''s lightsaber, a dark magenta, sliced through the barrel. By the time the traitor pointed it up under his own chin, all it did when he pulled the trigger was shoot out sparks.


    "Neshweh Gadic, with the power given to me by Generals Syndulla, Draven, and Dodanna, I am placing you under arrest for betraying the Rebel Alliance," Ahsoka said as Agent Yuca stepped around him, pushing him down against the desk and roughly locking his wrists behind him. "I suggest you cooperate and admit your guilt clearly so that when Nevue comes to visit, we can catch him as well. It is just about the only thing you can do to make up for your crimes."


    The damp-skinned humanoid sat back up straight, his webbed hands cuffed behind him, nodding slowly after a long moment. For the next fifteen minutes, he explained his plan, which he had passed onto Nevue, knowing that the beleaguered Rebel would jump at the chance to get back at the Skyforged. He had no idea that the bastard would go so far to ensure the Deacon and his team would be destroyed.


    "The risk to the fleet was minimal! It was only your leader''s ridiculous abilities that garnered so much attention," The traitor spat, shaking his head. "I was only trying to aid the Rebellion, General Draven will agree with my plan! He knows that the Skyforged is only hurting the Rebellion."


    "General Draven was just as angry about the situation as Deacon Roy was," Ashoka explained, shaking her head. "You will find no kind words from him."


    The traitor was moved to a secure room, guarded by both of the beskar-clad commando droids. Meanwhile, Ahsoka, Vaz, and Agent Yuca settled in to wait for Nevue Loc to return to the base as scheduled. It took nearly a week, but it was well worth it when Ahsoka and Vaz stepped out of the shadows while he and another Rebel were unloading cargo. Unlike Gadic, who first tried to hide his guilt, and then tried to end his shame, Nevue''s first instinct was to run. He barely made it a few feet when Ahsoka slammed him into the ground with the Force.


    If it was perhaps a bit harder than was strictly necessary, no one commented.

 Chapter 202

    I stared out at the forward viewport, watching the slowly shifting stars and the planet below. I knew that below us, there was a mining colony, slowly recovering from the latest raid of bandits. With any luck, it would be the last time they would have to deal with that.


    "Sensors?" I called out, keeping my eyes forward. "Anything?"


    "No, sir, no readings of any kind. Save the normal background noise from the colony," said the Bothan behind the sensor terminal. "The fleet is on standby with no change."


    I nodded idly, leaning back in the command chair of the Forge, our newly refurbished and upgraded <u>Dreadnaught-class heavy cruiser</u></a>. The Forge was now aligned with the standards of the Skyforge Vanguard fleet, meaning it could punch firmly above its weight class, and take the same punch right back. It had cost nearly a million credits and some lucky purchases from our lead acquisitions manager, but considering the ship itself had been free, it was hard to complain.


    Currently, through the forward viewport, I could see the Anvil, our <u>Arquitens-class cruiser</u></a>, which we thankfully only had to spend about five hundred thousand credits to upgrade since the Empire had already modernized it before we stole it from them. Flying around the Anvil in formation were the Hammer, Chisel, and Punch, our heavily modified <u>C-Roc Gozanti-class cruisers</u></a>. Affectionately called the Tool Trio or the Tools, they were the brainchild of Miru, who had taken the already improved designs of the Talos Chariot and taken them another two steps forward. The design had turned out so well that we were already looking to make more.


    As I watched our ships float, the new and improved 3rd Group, I did my best to settle in. I idly noted that the countdown to the projected arrival of our target was still a far way off, before checking the viewscreen built into the command chair. I did my best to distract myself, trying to keep the tension in my back and neck from showing to the rest of the crew. This was an important mission, as were the missions that the 2nd Group and 1st Group were on.


    It had been several months since our big sit down and negotiations with the Rebel Alliance, and the Skyforge Vanguard had not been idle. We poured a considerable amount of resources into our ships, our people, our gear, and into Vercopa''Yaim, the first and prime settlement of Nirn. Now it was time to show the Rebels that what we had claimed, the stance we had taken and forced them to dance to, had not just been theatrics. We had talked the talk, and now that we were back in business, it was time for us to walk the walk.


    The 1st Group was currently being led by Tatnia to engage an Imperial depot. Our intelligence said that quite a bit of equipment and supplies ran through the location, and we hoped to secure a good chunk to sell to the Rebels. The 2nd Group was working on a pair of modern Imperial <u>Gozanti-class</u></a> cruisers, which had landed and were basically sitting ducks. We, the 3rd Group, were currently waiting to ambush a well-equipped bandit gang that had been feeding off Mid and Outer-Rim colonies.


    The idea was to present the Rebellion with another large shipment of ships and resources, therefore proving our previous claims were serious, not hot air.


    As I considered our plan, I looked over my shoulder at the corner of the bridge to a slightly raised platform. I could just make out the sound-dampening field around it, sort of a slight discoloration in the air. I knew from the description Miru gave me that the area also included its own inertial damper and gravity generator, all three of which could run even if the ship ran out of power. All of this sat underneath a simple raised bench covered in thin padding, where the newly raised Jedi Knight Loran was sitting on the padded stool, his legs crossed and his eyes closed. The entire platform was designed to help him, or any other Force-sensitive person, maintain a deep meditative state.


    "Nothing has changed that I can feel," he said, answering my unspoken question, despite the fact that he couldn''t even see me. "Knight Vilo feels nothing either."


    I nodded, turning back and splitting my focus between the viewport and my console, unable to keep the smirk off my face. While Miru''s design team had made the idea for the platform possible, I was the one who had thought it up. We had been working on the best way to implement the Jedi into the Skyforged without just throwing them all into open combat and turning them into commanders.


    Here, on the bridge, they could sink deeply into the Force, feeling the minute ebbs and flows, the subtle changes and warnings it provided. They could feel ambushes coming, warn us about incoming tricks, and even let us know if something was wrong without strategy. They weren''t Bastila Shan, and it wasn''t Battle Meditation, but even having just a few seconds of warning to an incoming ambush could still make all the difference.


    With double confirmation that everything was okay, I closed my eyes and let out a slow and quiet breath. My rising anxiety was not only because I was leading this battle, but because I wasn''t with my team, with 1st Group. We had yet to find an acceptable captain and commander for the 3rd Group, so until we did, I was filling the role. I was hoping we would find someone soon, especially as we would need to start staffing the 4th group.


    With all of our groups mostly complete, we decided it was finally time to start working on the next one. For now, 4th group consisted of only a single ground team, made up of seven single Mandalorian warriors as well as five Jedi volunteers from both Master Amescoll and Master K''Kruhk''s groups. The mixed group was led together by Sabine and Ezra, who had joined officially after returning from Sabine''s Mandalorian search. Their current mission was to steal themselves an appropriate transport ship, the start of the naval side of the 4th Group.


    A few more minutes passed, then fifteen, before Knight Loran finally stirred, speaking without opening his eyes, though he did wince.


    "They are on their way, sir. We can feel them coming," He explained, his voice filled with distastes. "...Bloodthirstiness and greed¡­ I don''t feel much beyond that..."


    "Alright, that''s a good sign. Let me know if that changes," I said with a nod before leaning forward. "Have the Tools scramble their A-wings, and scramble the Bulbs too, but keep them back. This is an acquisition mission, so let''s focus on that."


    My orders were acknowledged, and within a few seconds, I could see the full squadron of A-wings pouring out of the tool trio, the Hammer, Chisel, and Punch. This was the first A-wing squadron we had produced in-house, a version of the iconic ship that Miru had tweaked to better fit our situation. First to go was the concussion missile launcher. Not only did I prefer weapons that didn''t require expensive ammo that was incredibly hard to find for a civilian, but the A-wing was not a bomber, so why would you try to shove that into its frame? Instead, we filled the space with starship-rated ion cannons. This meant our little A-wings could take down starfighters without destroying them, meaning we could swoop in and collect the ships and the bounties if the pilots had any.


    Miru''s team also downscaled the hyperdrive considerably, effectively taking it from class one to class four. This made them considerably cheaper and faster to make, easier to maintain, and made the starfighter lighter, meaning faster. Quite a few people questioned my sanity when I asked them to do it, but I explained that I never had any plans to send any of my starfighter pilots out without a carrier to support them. Not only would they arrive at their destination fatigued and tired, but also with no way to recover any pilots who ejected from their ships. As far as I was concerned, the hyperdrives on our starfighters were for emergency purposes only and, therefore, did not need to be top-of-the-line military versions. They only needed to get the starfighters home if their ride was destroyed.


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    It also had the bonus of clearing up some space to add some safety features for the pilots, like an improved environmental shield for the ejection chair. That alone would close to double an ejected pilot''s estimated survival time.


    As the A-wings left their hangars, they zipped around their carriers, staying in position with them as a defensive screen for now. We knew the bandits were coming and had a general accounting of their strength. We just didn''t know their overall positions.


    The Forge''s own starfighters, the <u>Belbullab-22''s</u></a> that I had started calling Bulbs, were also flying forward, setting up a formation to screen any starfighters that headed our way. The Bulbs had been updated a bit, but honestly, I was on the fence about them. They were a halfway decent starfighter, but they weren''t anything special. Slower than the A-wing, not as beefy as the X-wing, not to mention only one weapon system¡­ They lacked the level of high quality I really preferred for my people. I was pretty sure the next two squadrons of A-wings would be stationed on the Forge since the bay could fit them, and I would set the Bulbs as part of the planetary defense force by stationing planetside on Nirn.


    Our starfighters were just dropping into position when our enemy finally dropped out of hyperspace, just in the general area we thought they would be. Twice over the past three months, they had come and stolen from this and another nearby mining outpost, stealing ships, credits, and some of the more valuable metals they were extracting. The bounty hadn''t been very high since they couldn''t afford much, but that really didn''t matter that much to us. Credits were credits, of course, but the Skyforge dealt in goods, and judging by what just dropped out of hyperspace, our goods had just been delivered.


    "We have confirmation on the <u>DP20 gunship</u></a>," sensors called out. "As well as two <u>AEG-77s</u></a>, a trio of <u>ST-70</u></a>s, and several freighters. Starfighter complement is¡­ three <u>Z-95s</u></a>, <u>six ARCs</u></a>, and two <u>Y-wings</u></a>."


    "Dammit, that''s too many starfighters," I cursed, shaking my head. "Send the Bulbs in to act as a counter while Sparks Squadron picks them apart with their ions. Bring us over the DP20 with our ions charged and ready. Tell the Tools I want them on the AEGs and ST-70s and bring the Anvil around to keep them from running around the planet. Then broadcast the order to surrender."


    My orders were quickly disseminated, and I watched, both through the viewports and on the main holo display in front of me, as the fleet began to move. The Bulbs thrusters flared as they headed directly for the fight, as Sparks Squadron, the A-wings from the Tools Trio, waited for their backup.


    Of course, as we were moving, so was the enemy. Without bothering to respond, most of them attempted to turn tail and run, most likely buying time to calculate and input a jump.


    "Hit the DP20 with an opening barrage to weaken the shields, then send the ion cannons," I ordered, despite the great distance. "Everyone else, pick your targets and hit them. I want them down before they can jump!"


    A slight thumping reverberation played through the large bridge of the Forge as several beams of thick green energy fired out from our forward-facing turbolasers. At that range, most of them missed, which I had assumed, but two had at least struck glancing blows, no doubt draining the shields significantly. Immediately, the forward ion cannons, which had replaced two of the medium and two of the heavy forward turbolaser cannons with appropriately sized cannons, fired as well. This time, three of them hit, instantly disabling the larger gunship as sparks and lightning danced across its hull.


    While we moved to get the gunship in a tractor beam to keep it from falling into the atmosphere, I could see the rest of my ships engage. First, the starfighters clash, the A-wings holding back as the Bulbs push forward. As they caught up, the enemy ships gave up running and scattered, our A-wings giving chase, firing their own small ion cannons, darting around like nimble dancers on a stage. They wove in and around the Bulbs as they push and force the enemy starfighters away from each other, making them easy targets for Sparks Squadron.


    Unfortunately, as I watched, the Y-wings proved resistant to such maneuvers, using their resilience to focus fire on the Bulbs as they attempted to pressure them. The A-wings still managed to take them out, but not before a pair of Bulbs were destroyed, and only one of them managed an ejection. I could see the blinking red light of their locator beacon on the holoprojector battlescreen.


    As the starfighters were clashing, the C-Rocs were chasing after their targets as well. Their engines burned bright as they showed off their upgrades, catching up and pulling into range quickly. Then, they showed off their major hidden upgrades.


    The C-Roc Gozanti had an incredible amount of room in the lower deck, its shovel-like nose almost completely empty. For people looking to carry cargo or run a business from their ship, like we did on the Talos Chariot, all of that space came in handy. But for a dedicated combat ship, that space was just wasted. So Miru and her team filled it.


    The front paneling along the curved nose of all three ships pulled to the side, revealing four large barrels stacked on top of each other with two on each side of the mainline, with about a two-meter gap between them, to make room for maintenance and the boarding ramp. The first layer was a large ion cannon, and the second was a turbolaser. Both of them were way beyond what a ship of that size would typically have access to, the weapons and power systems for each taking nearly sixty-five percent of the forward cargo bay. It was a high cost, but the result was that what could have been just a trio of pocket carriers were now heavy hitters, outgunning anything their size.


    The Tool Trio opened fire on the AEG-77s first, hitting them with the turbolaser, then the ion cannon, damaging their shields before hammering their equipment with energy until it gave out, leaving them floating in the void.


    The Tools immediately broke off, each of them heading out to attack and disable one of the ST-70s before going after the freighters. Before long, the fight was over, and the attacking raiders were completely disabled, free-floating in space.


    "Okay, send a message to the salvage team, get them here," I called out. "Pass on the emergency beacon for the ejected pilot¡­. And start looking for the remains of the one that didn''t. Keep the Tools on high alert and their ion cannons charged in case any of the ships manage to get their systems started again."


    Before I had even finished my order, the salvage fleet, newly formed from half stolen half half-purchased assets, micro-jumped into the planet''s orbit. The fleet was made up of two <u>L-2783s</u></a>, the same ship as the Whale Shark. These didn''t contain any starships, though, but instead were filled with salvage machinery, tug boats, and battle droids. Some of the tugs would focus on small ships, the ones that could fit inside the large recovery ships, dragging them inside so that nearly two hundred battle droids on each starship could safely clear them out of any resistance.


    The remaining tugs would drag over specially designed containers with custom airlocks. The commando droids inside would breach the airlocks and take care of business. I watch the ships slowly work, transporting and clearing out starfighters. Eventually, I step away from the bridge and head down to the main hangar, intending to meet the Bulbs squadron as they return.

 Chapter 203

    Most of the 3rd Group and Salvage Fleet stuck around the mining colony planet for around a day, cleaning up our battlefield and shipping the bandits we collected from their disabled ships off to the nearest bounty collection station. We made just about two hundred thousand credits on that alone. In the end, we took the payment for stopping the bandit group in materials, namely a chunk of the precious metals the bandits had stolen in the first place.


    The stolen haul was recovered when slicer droids broke into one of the captured ship''s hyperspace logs, allowing us to head straight for their base. There wasn''t much to it, just a half-burned-out Clone Wars-era fort. It had a single turbolaser turret that was cobbled together from several broken ones, but it was no match for the Tools Trio, who immediately disabled it and forced the remaining bandits to surrender. We got a few thousand more credits from bounties there, and we were able to return most of the stolen goods to the mining colony, while also packaging up a good chunk of equipment to sell.


    We appraised the turbolaser for repurposing, but it was barely holding itself together. We disabled the weapon by removing a few crucial connections before noting the location and leaving.


    Meanwhile, around the colony planet, the asset gathering was just finishing up. Our two <u>L-2783</u></a>s were filled with freighters, starfighters, and two ST-70s. The DP-20 was being piloted directly by a temporary crew of droids and my pilots, as were the pair of AEG-77s and the remaining ST-70. Once we were sure there weren''t any hidden boobytraps or beacons, we jumped to lightspeed.


    Our first destination was empty space, somewhere around halfway between our starting point and our eventual destination. There, we waited for an extra day, spending it going over every inch of every ship with a fine toothcomb. When everything came up clear, we finally made the last jump.


    As we dropped out of hyperspace, we were greeted by a familiar site, Boxi''s Fury, slowly moving as it stayed in geosynchronous orbit with Nirn, high above Vercopa''Yaim. The ship, even from a distance, looked massive and impressive, the small fleet of starships flying around it looking small in comparison. The large capital ship was slowly in the process of being painted, but since it was so massive and it was such a low priority, only a few dozen droids were assigned to the task, meaning it was taking quite a while. The new look was the same as all of our starships, big or small, white with purple highlights.


    Around the large capital ship were five floating <u>space stations</u></a>, each one a vague rhombus shape, just over two hundred meters long and seventy-five meters wide. They were armed defense stations, meant to augment the already impressive firepower of Boxi''s Fury. Two of the stations were heavily damaged and were currently being stripped down for parts, which were then shipped over to the other three, which were in a much better state, though they still needed some repairs.


    We picked them up for next to nothing from a now-defunct mining colony on the inner line of the Outer Rim. They had been attacked one too many times, and while we had offered to take down some of the pirates and bandits harassing them, they were determined to evacuate. 3rd Group hung around for a week, guarding the incoming and outgoing ships, even taking down a small group of raiders, and as payment, we were given a massive discount on the stations.


    One would think that, after the colonists left, there would also be some good salvage opportunities where they had set up, but when the colonists left, they all but scraped the ground clean. There was nothing but some empty structures left behind, with even the wiring and piping removed. Still, the buildings were sturdy, so we marked the location as a potential gathering point should we ever need someplace to hide, away from Nirn.


    We ended up having to use the Fury to move the stations to Nirn, the large stations a bit too big and unwieldy for our other transport methods. Once we did, we started retrofitting them. Each got an extra set of sublight engines, as well as big slabs of ship armor, which we bought used for cheap. They didn''t exactly look pretty, but since they were all staffed by robots, each one was also a hefty battering ram waiting to take down ships several times their size, if necessary, on top of having some decent firepower. The two more damaged stations were even more heavily reinforced, since we didn''t have to worry about the decks or even keeping an atmosphere inside.


    Once the Forge had settled into position near the Fury, I was shuttled over to the larger starship, where we landed in "my" hangar, one of the smaller ones nearest to the command sphere in the center. I could see the Anvil settling into its position nearby as well, while the Hammer, Punch, and Chisel waited in line to make their way into the right-arm hangar bay.


    As we passed through the space between the two primary hangar openings, I could see down both of the curved massive hangars, both of which had gone through some changes.


    The left side was almost entirely converted into a repair and production wing. I could already see some of the starfighters we had just claimed, as well as other starfighters and ships that the other groups must have gotten, being moved around, landed, and worked on, checking for any lasting damage from our ion cannons. Once they had gotten a good checkover to confirm they were in good enough condition, they would be moved around to make room, ready to be sold to the Rebellion or one of the various contacts we were fostering. This was also where heavy modifications to our ships, the ones that fit, at least, were done.


    The left side was also storage for most of our droid army. Deployment was not the fastest since the <u>C-9979s</u></a> that functioned as our army deployment fleet were pretty large and cumbersome, but we did have a few rapid deployment crafts ready to go as well, just for smaller groups of droid troops.


    On the right arm of the large warship were the hangars for our ships. The roof contained bays for all of our droid starfighters, a good mix of bombers, vultures, and tri-fighters, two hundred and fifty-four in total. On the ground and along the walls were bays for our own starfighters. <u>Racks inspired by the Force Awakens</u></a> ran along a good chunk of the wall closest to the entrance, filled primarily with A-Wings, but also containing Y-wings and V-wings. We had three squadrons of A-wings racked and ready, with only two of them currently assigned to pilots. A squadron of Y-wings was also assigned pilots, but the V-wings were not. In all honesty, if we didn''t have such a surplus of parts, and they weren''t such good ships, I would have already sold the V-wings. We kept the Y-wings because they were some of the best bombers money could buy at this point, and even if explosives were expensive, they were still valuable capital ships killing starfighters.


    Boxi''s Fury had plenty of other modifications, but most of it was on a smaller scale. Despite having acquired a veritable army of autonomous workers, the Fury was still a lot of ship, so significant upgrades would be incredibly difficult to do, and extremely costly. By and large, the ship was stuck how it was.


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    Luckily, the robot workforce that had been maintaining it before we found it had done a good job. We had yet to find any major faults, even in some of the deeper bowels of the ship.


    As I made my way to the bridge, I was greeted and saluted by droids and people alike, some of them in uniform and others in civilian clothes. The ship had a population of nearly thirty families, all of whom were waiting for homes to finish up down planetside. A lot of building had happened in the close to four months since we had buckled down and focused on settling in, but with our most recent expansion of people, they couldn''t keep up.


    Finally, after a five-minute walk, I entered the bridge of the Fury. Immediately the captain of the Defensive forces spotted me, giving me a light salute as I made my way to him.


    "Admiral Deacon, good to see you," He said, shaking my hand. "How did your mission go?"


    "We captured the whole bandit fleet, but we lost one of the Bulb pilots," I said with a frown. "I think we are going to put the bulbs up for sale next time we meet with the Rebellion. They are decent starfighters, but I want my people to have the best. I shouldn''t have put the decision off for so long. Even the V-wings would have been a better option."


    "We have racks that fit them for now, and we can transfer our empty A-wing squadron over," The captain responded with a nod. "


    "I want two squadrons on the Forge, so reserve the next batch for it. With the racks, there is room for them and two transports," I said, the captain nodding. "Put one squadron in there for now. For our next recruitment drive, we will have to lean heavily toward starfighter pilots."


    "I''ll put the work order in."


    "Good. I won''t keep you."


    The captain nodded, and with a salute, he returned to his duties. His assistant, the reprogrammed Super Tactical droid B4-88, approached me next, carrying a datapad that he handed to me.


    "The checking process for the last batch of starfighters went well, we have twenty starfighters ready for sale," It explained. "The freighters cleared as well, but one of the two <u>C1-A62s</u></a> had a major issue and will take some time to finish."


    "That''s alright. We haven''t contacted the Rebellion yet, so we still have time to polish our wares," I assured the droid. "We have a lot of larger ships coming, so feel free to shuffle things around at the starport or in the right arm to keep room free for incoming ships. Any news from away groups?"


    "All away groups hit their last check-in, save for 4th Group, which is in deep cover," The droid assured me. "1st Group believes they will be engaging within the next seven hours, and 2nd Group is still waiting for their targets to arrive."


    "Still no hints about what 4th Group''s target is?" I asked the droid, who simply shook his head. "Alright, I really hope they took everyone''s advice to heart."


    The 4th Group, which again was only a single ground team of Jedi and Mandalorians, had volunteered to prove themselves by stealing their first ship. Sabine and Ezra, both of whom were experienced in fighting and stealing from the Empire, had unsurprisingly chosen an Imperial target. They also asked to surprise us with their target, inspired by a joke from Julus. I agreed that I would let them design and implement their plan on their own, but only if Vaz, who I considered to be the most down-to-earth member of our team, could sit in on their planning and offer advice, as well as veto anything too crazy. Ahsoka had actually been the one to convince me to let them work on their own project, making the very valid point that while Ezra and Sabine had a considerable amount of experience, but very little of that experience had been in a leadership position. They both had what it took, they just needed to build on it.


    It was a risk, but I had faith. Plus, Vaz knew their general schedule. If they missed their mark by too much, she would reveal their target, and a rescue operation would commence.


    After the super tactical droid finished its update, and I finished giving my own instructions, I headed back down to my hangar, finally taking the shuttle down to the surface. As we slowly made our way down, I got a bird''s eye view of Vercopa''Yaim, as well as the starport, which was only a mile away. The spaceport was primarily made from the massive trees they had to cut down to make room for the ships. The droids had cut them down, sliced them in half, and laid them down with the flat side up, filling the gaps with relatively cheap soil hardener. The result was a strange striped look, especially from the air. The first time I saw it, I called it Z-base, for zebra, which, funnily enough, stuck around.


    Z-base was surprisingly large, and could easily land all of our ships that could land planetside. There were several structures, including some rather large hangars we bought as kits and a large tower that rose above the treeline for about fifty feet. The road to and from the base was built in a similar way to the base itself, with half-cut trees laid down. Eventually, all of the wood would rot, but by then, I was hoping to have a much larger, official starport up and running with proper facilities and everything.


    The closer we got to the city, the harder it was to look away. Vercopa had grown massively, and every time I saw it, I thanked my people for convincing me that a proper city planner was a must-have. The entire city was focused around the two massive lakes at the heart of the raised plateaus. A huge path ran around both lakes, connected by a set of stairs that ran up along the different levels. It had been a massive undertaking, but with droid workers working essentially non-stop, it had only taken a few days past a month to complete.


    The path was three meters wide and made of reddish brick we made ourselves from a mix of sand from one of the planet''s many deserts, bound by a neutral binding agent. The path specifically hid a barrier system designed to prevent runoff and other contamination from getting to the river, assuring it would be clean and safe to swim in no matter what. Several bridges passed over the ponds and rivers at different points, giving the place a look that felt like an outer rim Naboo.


    The city itself was filled with greenery and trees, with stone roads that split off into gravel paths, weaving between homes. There were two primary business streets, filled with shops and other services. Currently, we had no large-scale production infrastructure, but we were already looking to decide where we would put that. Personally, I wanted to turn the moon into a factory station. It would be dreary as hell, as we would have to basically dig into the moon or build sealed domes, but I thought that was a small price to pay for keeping the planet pristine.


    I felt the transport shift slightly as it flew over the city, setting a course for one of the several small landing pads on the upper plateau. It was pretty active, unsurprising, considering we had just finished a mission, which meant plenty of leave time for people to see their families. I would have likely been moved ahead of the line if people knew I was there, but I told the pilot to hold back.


    Eventually, we did land, and I stepped out of the transport, taking a deep breath of the fresh air. I needed to see some people, check in around town, and see how everything was going, but for now, I wanted to enjoy the moment.


    I was home, and I could feel the anxiety and stress falling away. Only a small portion, currently worried about my team, 4th Group, and Ahsoka, remained.

 Chapter 204

    Once the area around the landing pads had slowed down, I made my way to the garage unit that had been built nearby. It mainly contained transport speeders for moving materials and goods when they got delivered, but tucked in the back was my own personal speeder bike. It was nothing complicated, just a civilian model that was reliable and not too expensive. I had the two-person model, which could carry two passengers and some cargo, but I knew that there was a sleeker, <u>single-person model</u></a>.


    Once I had slowly guided the speeder bike from storage, I climbed on and flew away, rising up above the buildings and up around the city, enjoying the slow pace and fantastic view. My first destination was the various spots around the city that were still under construction, eager to check out what sort of progress had been made while I was gone.


    I was unsurprised to find that a few multi-family homes had been completed, as well as a two-floor apartment complex designed for single people to live on a budget. Having been inside one of the rooms already, I had been reminded of those stereotypical Japanese one-room plus apartments that appeared in anime all the time. It was simple living for sure, but as long as it was only one person, it was livable.


    As usual, I found myself amazed at just how much could get done with the help of a few high-tech machines, the help of droids, and some hard-working people. Already, the construction group was making considerable progress on their next batch of homes, working hard to make room for more people.


    After checking out the construction, I flew around the edge of the plateau and looked down at several acres of cleared trees and jungle. A tall wall, built from the trees that had been cut down, encircled the area, ensuring the many wild animals that lived in the surrounding jungle could not get in. Inside those walls were our first forays into farming, with rows of plants, a mix of native and staple crops, being tended to by several families. A few of the families had been brought in specifically for their knowledge of farming, including one who specialized in xeno-agriculture.


    There was another clearing not too far from the crops where several animal farms were also being run. Again, it was a mix of staple farm animals, as well as some of the native animals were placid enough to domesticate. Both farms were interesting projects, and should either of them take off, they would probably be moved far away from the town so they had more room to grow. Thankfully, with the newly finished planetary shield projector facility, we had plenty of room for expansion.


    Setting up the shield projector had taken a good chunk of time, after all, just the facility alone had been an enormous undertaking. It was really one of the primary reasons why we didn''t have enough homes for everyone to move down to the surface, yet. All of our construction resources were diverted to making the site, first clearing trees, laying down duracrete foundations, constructing control buildings, and digging an underground, sealed bunker to house the power generation. The entire complex was surrounded by walls, with a large droid presence as security, as well as a substantial amount of biological staff. The facility had been a significant investment, but well worth the price.


    The shield itself was substantial, capable of protecting nearly fifty miles of land at once, almost twice the surface of Rhode Island, if it was all mushed together. We currently had it set to a much smaller portion of land, which substantially improved its strength. The Rebellion had genuinely delivered on its promise to secure something that matched the ten million credit worth that I had invested into it, especially since the power generation was of excellent quality as well.


    On top of all that, Miru and her team were working on secondary protection measures, some of which were already being implemented.


    With my curiosity about the farming and construction sated, I made a beeline for my home, the speeder bike making short work of the distance. Once there, I parked the speeder bike and left it in the garage. While it would have gotten me to my destination in a fraction of the time it would take to walk, riding the bike was a luxury, and riding it down and around people was more than a bit rude, especially when most people were just happy to walk around, without having to worry about being run over by someone in a rush.


    Plus, my people had worked so hard to make our streets and paths beautiful, the least I could do was appreciate that beauty on foot.


    I made my way from my house through the city, eventually passing by a food vendor. On a whim, I dropped a few credits for a few boxes of some sort of warm meat and noodle mix. The smell honestly reminded me of the meal Nal had brought back to our hotel room, which was oh so long ago, when we had just first met and teamed up. It was a dose of delicious-smelling nostalgia that made me think of just how far the Skyforged had come. Even the vendor itself represented progress, as the owner was making money in a way that wasn''t directly tied to the Skyforged, a good step towards the city becoming legitimate, rather than just fancy company housing.


    I continued walking through the streets, doing my best to ignore the incredible smelling food, before eventually making my way to my destination. Eventually, I arrived at one of the many meditation and park combinations across the growing city, filled with native plants and flowers, as well as a small Uneti tree. There was plenty of space for people to picnic, and as I crossed it, I could see Jedi and civilians alike spread out across the area.


    It was a peaceful space, and one of the more popular parks, mainly because Yoda was a frequent visitor, the green goblin giving advice and enjoying the sun. Unfortunately, the reason he frequented the park was because it was the closest to his small home, and while he was doing remarkably well for the state he was in, moving around was getting noticeably harder for him. He rarely stepped down from his hover chair, and a young member of Clan Syr was helping to take care of him.


    The ancient Jedi''s time was quickly approaching.


    Still, the ornery old gremlin refused to sink into sadness. He laughed and helped the younglings and older Jedi alike, handing out advice as often as he could. It was his right, after all, having earned it by making plenty of mistakes over the nine centuries he had lived. He had also finally made a holocron, though he made Amescoll swear he would not activate it until he had been one with the Force for many years.


    With his end approaching, it was unsurprising that quite a few people wanted to spend time with him, including Luke, who had been returning frequently over the last few months to train and learn from him again. I would have expected that the higher-ups would have complained about him coming here and refusing to tell his superiors where the planet was hidden, but according to him, Leia was just happy to have a connection to us and a way to contact us informally.


    As I approached the old green alien and the rebel hero, I could see that Luke was practicing his fine control, floating a dozen small rocks around himself. He was deep in concentration, so I walked around him and sat next to Yoda, whose floating chair was next to a bench.


    "You awake, old man?" I asked, reaching into my bag and holding out a container of noodles for him. "Got you some lunch."


    "Mhmm, good timing, you have. Hungry, I am," He said, ignoring my needling and happily floating the box to himself, as well as the offered fork. "Good to see you, it is, Deacon. Your mission, successful, it was?"


    "From a numbers perspective, it went about as well as you could hope," I responded, opening my own box of food. "Doesn''t feel like it, though. We lost a starfighter pilot."


    "Sad, the loss of life is, no matter how small or big," Yoda responded. "Solace, you must take, in the lives you have saved. Otherwise, crush you, your guilt will."


    "Yeah, easier said than done," I admitted, the Jedi master nodding in agreement.


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    "Indeed."


    We silently watched Luke''s practice for a few minutes before I smirked and reached out my hand. I cast Telekinesis, focusing on a single stone. I could see my magic snag it, and I could immediately feel the drag Luke was imparting it. Unfortunately for the Jedi in training, he was purposely being as gentle as possible, so my spell won, and I yanked it out of his mental grasp. This startled him enough to lose concentration, the pebbles floating around him falling to the ground. He frowned and looked around, spotting me as the glowing pebble slowly settled into my palm.


    "Hey, Luke. Feeling hungry?" I asked, gesturing to the bag of food.


    "Welcome back, Deacon," He said, standing up and stretching for a moment. "Just to let you know, I knew you were here. I felt it when you first made it planet side and started flying around on your speeder."


    "What would Leia say, hearing you ignored an important dignitary to train?" I shot back, the younger man sitting down beside me, snagging one of the remaining boxes of food.


    "If she knew you like I do, she would have told me to keep practicing," He commented, cracking open the box. "Thanks, I was just getting hungry."


    All three of us were quiet as we ate, enjoying the greasy noodly goodness and the pleasant environment. We watched Jedi and civilians as they enjoyed the park, walking around or sitting and meditating. I even spotted Felia with another youngling about her age, listening to a holocron. When we broke off from the Rebellion and pulled out of Omega Station, Sheora reached out shortly after we left, asking if she could join us. After some debate, we allowed it, and the once Rebel agent had come to our planet, with Felia and Claron in tow. We were still trying to find the best place to utilize the agent''s talents, but for now, she was working with our planning committee, coming up with missions and vetting bounties as reliable and legitimate.


    We were making a serious name for ourselves in the Mid and Outer rims as a successful anti-pirate and raider mercenary group, and with fame came the wrong kind of attention. Not only could the Empire conceivably set up an ambush with a fake bounty, but pirates and slavers could as well.


    On the plus side, being well-known made the recruitment process much easier. Gone were the days when we needed to explain how we worked and what we did. Now, more often than not, in places where pilots and fighters gathered, looking for work, our name was already being spoken. Some didn''t think it was smart to join a group that pissed off the Empire, but plenty liked the idea. Even more people loved how we stuck it to the pirates, wiping them out, stealing their stuff, and selling it to people for a significant profit.


    As we finished our food, I took a look around, spotting a nearby sparring pit. Usually, it was occupied by younglings and older going through the stances of various lightsaber forms or actually sparring, but it was now actually empty. I couldn''t help but smirk and nudge Luke.


    "You up for a spar?" I asked, getting an eager grin and nod in return. "Great, go get your stuff. Master Yoda, do you want to watch? Do you need a hand getting over there?"


    "Hmmm, watch, I would like to," He agreed. "Move myself, I can."


    I watched as he manipulated some controls along his chair, the repulsor seat moving slowly, turning to follow the path down to the sparring pit, which was basically just a slightly sunken down oval with some seats around the upper parts. The floor was black-gray sand, and as I walked with Yoda, I grabbed a wooden sword and a shoto-style faux saber from one of the racks. Luke soon joined us, sporting a surprise I had not expected.


    His lightsaber was clipped to his hip, as was a bright blue training saber, but along his left arm was an honest-to-god <u>shield</u></a>. It wasn''t massive, but it was built like a standard heater shield, meaning it had a point on one end and a wider "top." It was also not just simple metal plated but clearly built with some technology involved. When he spotted my look, he couldn''t help but smirk.


    "I toyed around with the idea like you mentioned, and I liked it," He explained. "I commissioned Miru once I knew I needed one, and even supplied the beskar from the Rebellion reserves. Oh! And watch this!"


    The kid was clearly excited by his new toy, as he raised the shield up defensively, before activating something on the inside. Suddenly, from both the bottom and the top, two separate energy shields extended out, down to the ground and the other up to cover his head. He was now completely protected. From one direction, at least.


    "Damn¡­ That''s impressive," I said with an appreciative nod. "Miru really likes spoiling you, huh?"


    "She does good work for everyone," Luke responded, just a hint of a blush on his face, the energy shield shrinking back into the physical one. "Are we gonna spar or what?"


    I gestured to the pit, and we both walked down into the sandy surface, separating by about ten feet. Luke pulled out the bright blue training saber, igniting it as I conjured my armor. I would leave it up without recharging it, which we had decided was a good handicap since I didn''t have access to the Force.


    "Ready, are you?" Yoda asked, up by the seats, sitting on his hover chair. When we both nodded, he paused for a moment, before finally saying. "Go!"


    Both Luke and I rushed in, Luke raising his shield and saber up, the blade reaching past the protective equipment. Rather than meet him head-on, I spun left, using my shoto to deflect a shield bash by laying it against my arm. I let the impact spin me faster, coming around with a slash of my sword. Of course, Luke saw it coming, deflecting it with his lightsaber as he absorbed our impact. Just as I used the energy to spin, he used to pivot, bringing up his shield to try and jab at my wrist. I let my conjured armor take the blow, blocking a cut with his saber before putting my foot between me and heaving him back, my enchantment-enhanced strength letting me push him up off his feet and several feet back.


    "No bad," I said. "You''ve clearly been training with the shield."


    "I''ve had to look up some old fighting styles, not used by the Jedi, but yeah," He responded, settling into a stance that wasn''t too dissimilar to the forms I would have used with a shield. "It feels good, balanced. I''m glad I listened to your recommendation."


    "Happy to-"


    I leaped forward mid-sentence, stabbing with my sword, trying to catch him off guard. Of course, that was futile, as he had plenty of time to block with his saber. He tried to punch with the point of his shield, but I dropped my shoto and reached out, catching it. My conjured armor absorbed the damage because, otherwise, I would have definitely broken a few fingers. Still, I managed to catch him off guard, letting me get inside his defenses and mime slamming my fist into his elbow, which, if I had done it in earnest, would have at least dislocated it temporarily.


    "Not bad. It is definitely possible to use the shield as a weapon, too," I confirmed as we separated. "But you''re reaching too far with it, leaving yourself open. Here, stand like this with your saber across, then punch."


    I took a stance similar to his, motioning with my sword as I lashed out, keeping the training blade up and in play. The angled position of my blade would keep anyone from sliding into the space the punch opened up.


    "You have to watch out for your saber, since there is no safe side, unlike a normal sword, but it should help."


    Luke nodded and tried to replicate my movement, before chaining them into a block and strike, weaving it into a combo. It was impressive to see how quickly he adapted, a sign of just how hard he worked, as well as his monstrous talent.


    We continued to spar and train for another few hours before I needed to head off. While I would have liked to spend more time hanging out and training with Luke, there were still a few stops I needed to make before I could settle in for the day. I said goodbye to both Luke and Yoda before leaving the sparring pit. As I did, a pair of Jedi and one Mandalorian stepped down to talk to Luke, hopefully to keep him busy and learning.

 Chapter 205

    For the rest of the day, I traveled around, meeting with different people and groups to discuss the future and the plans people were making. So far, a few groups had started to form, most of of them looking like the precursors to guilds and unions. The various vendors around the city had selected a spokesperson, as had the various shops and the construction workers.


    I was happy to listen to what they had to say, wanting everyone to feel like they were being heard, but I was also very careful in the messages I was sending while doing so. While it was important that problems were brought to my attention and that the people had a voice, I was not about to let power blocs or any sort of group capable of political influence take shape.


    Basically, I was trying to set a delicate balance as Vercopa grew. People could work together and build what they wanted, but the second that corruption, controlling factions, or anything else like that started to crop up, I was going to be the one to squash it, and I would not be holding back. It would be a tightrope walk the whole way, but I was determined to keep politics, and power grabs from ruining our home.


    So far, people still saw me as the leader of both the Skyforged and Vercopa, but I was sure that would change over time as the city grew. Personally, I was pushing for a council with short turnovers, as well as some sort of built-in anti-gridlock system. Before that could happen, however, we needed to have a solid foundation that could withstand people grasping for power and wealth. I would put boots in asses if it did, but I would very much prefer if I didn''t have to.


    These meetings took the rest of the afternoon as well as the following day, spending two nights planetside before hopping back on a transport to head up to the Fury. 2nd Group had reported that their mission was a success, and that they were on their way home during my first afternoon, and I wanted to be there to greet them when they arrived home.


    When they finally arrived back in the system, I happily shook hands with Lieutenant Rider and Lefty, the respective clone and commando droid leaders of the two 2nd Group ground teams, as well as the captains of the various ships. I pulled them all aside for a short, unofficial debriefing, listening to how the mission went.


    "The hardest part was getting down to the surface without alerting the Imperials," Lieutenant Rider admitted. "We ended up hiring a freighter to land us near the Imperial starport for the planet."


    "How did you manage to make it through the defenses?" I asked with a frown. "I can''t imagine they just leave those open to the public."


    "My team infiltrated the base at night, scaling the walls along a metal reinforcement point," Lefty explained. "Our primary mission was to destroy the security systems of the facility, giving the other ground team the opportunity to engage. They boarded the first ship, and we boarded the second."


    "And how did that go?" I asked curiously, turning to the clone lieutenant.


    "The droids had the security system down in minutes, it was honestly impressive," The lieutenant admitted. "It reminded me how karking terrifying it was fighting them during the war. I''m glad they''re on our side now.


    "We did incur casualties. Three droids were damaged but remained at fighting capacity," Lefty explained. "One droid intercepted a grenade, and diverted its explosion using their body. We managed to recover seventy-eight percent of that droid''s chassis.


    "Good work. Have the damaged units report to the droid repair shop," I said, referring to the chunk of space near the hangar Miru converted into a large droid upgrade and repair facility. "Have them bring the chassis with them so they can salvage the beskar. Rider, how did you do?"


    "Our mechanical expert has a bit of a concussion, and we have a couple of scrapes and bruises, but besides that, we are good to go," Rider responded.


    "And your target?"


    "We successfully made off with both of the Gozantis, sir," Rider responded. "Both seem to be in good order, stocked with supplies. The mech crew will have a better idea, but we never ran into any issues. I will say we took some fire from some TIEs, but the shield handled most of it."


    "Alright, you two, well done. Rider, I''ll get the payment moving early so you can see your profits even if the ships have not been sold yet," I said with a smile. "In the meantime, enjoy your leave, get some rest, and restock. Start working with the planning teams to find your next mission, but keep in mind that the Whale Shark will likely end up being borrowed to transport starfighters and equipment once 1st Group returns."


    Both of the leaders, droid and clone, nodded and stood to leave, saluting as they left the room. It seemed that, despite a history of being enemies, the two ground teams were working well together. Perhaps it was because they had once been enemies and would have to be very familiar with the other''s capabilities and methodology.


    With my schedule clear until 1st Group arrived, I spent some time with Miru, who, at this point, was running a whole research and development team. She loved the position and happily showed off some plans she had for a new A-wing design. Where her first attempt replaced the missiles with ion cannons, this new one replaced them with an <u>energy torpedo</u></a> system like the Vulture droid starship. Where the droid starfighter had two, the new A-wing design would have one heavier option, giving the A-wing just a bit more firepower without sacrificing speed.


    The design was still in the works, and a background project as well. I didn''t quite see the point in having a light ship like the A-wing pack a heavy weapon as it would only result in trying to use the ship in ways it wasn''t intended. She knew this and was only working on the design for fun and just in case.


    Eventually, after a few more days in space, organizing the latest goods and preparing for a trip to the Alpha Base to sell them, 1st group finally returned home. They entered the solar system late in the afternoon, the fleet approaching and settling into orbit with Boxi''s Fury with two additional ships. A pair of <u>Imperial Cargo Shuttles</u></a>, one in perfect condition and the other with some carbonized marks along the back end, one of its engines taking the brunt of the damage, the thruster off and sparking. The rest of the fleet seemed to be fine, and while the Talos Chariot landed inside the Fury, the fleet descended to the planet''s surface.


    Of course, the two cargo ships landed in the left hangar, where they could be inspected for hidden damage, and the visible damage could be appraised properly. That could wait, however, because I was more concerned with meeting my team. I was waiting in the hangar as the forward boarding ramp lowered, laughing as I caught Ahsoka, who jumped down before it had finished. For a long moment, we simply enjoyed each other''s presence, silently holding each other before pulling back just enough to look into each other''s eyes.


    "It is so good to see you," She said, her arms wrapped around me tightly, holding me close. "I missed you."


    "I missed you too, love," I said, holding her back just as tightly. This was the first time I''d seen her in nearly two weeks, after all. "How are you? Did everything go well?"


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    I let her go, pushing her back slightly to look her up and down as if inspecting her for damage. She chuckled and slapped my chest, pushing back in to lean on me. My head rested on her montral gently.


    "It went well, save a little issue at the end," She explained. "An overzealous Imperial ship chased us far beyond what was smart. Took down the shields on one of the cargo ships and knocked out one of its engines."


    "Blew it up before it could do any more damage," Tatnia added, having made her way down the ramp while I was greeting Ahsoka. "We didn''t expect it to pull so far out of ranks with the other ships we were racing to escape."


    "Likely a captain looking to further their career," Nal guessed. "No career now."


    I snorted and shook my head, giving Ahsoka one last squeeze before pulling away and turning to the rest of my crew. They were all in their uniforms and looked unharmed. A knot that had been coiled around my heart slowly unraveled, and I felt considerably lighter.


    "Well, if that''s all that happened, I''d call that a pretty solid win," I said with a nod and a smile, ignoring the sense of relief, even as Ahsoka squeezed my hand, no doubt feeling it through me. "You guys wanna show me the loot and fill me in on how it all went?"


    Tatnia, Ahsoka, Nal, and I traveled across the entire ship to the left hangar bay. The rest of the crew took the Chariot down to the planet''s surface. While we walked and rode turbolifts across the ship, they gave me a short debriefing. Tatnia and Nal would write up a report for later, I was just curious how it went.


    Apparently, most of their time was spent sitting around and waiting for cargo vessels large enough for their liking to arrive. The plan had always been to snag a ship, stuff it full of loot, and burn atmo, but the depot wasn''t populated enough to see a consistent stream of large enough starships. So, when the two Imperial Cargo Shuttles landed, they jumped on the opportunity.


    Working with the Mandalorian ground team, they took control of the entire depot, clearing it out of any hostiles, before stuffing both ships full of supplies, taking everything from crates of stormtrooper <u>blasters</u></a> and other weapons to two dozen <u>C-PH speeder bikes</u></a>, just like the ones we had been using for months. Food, armor, weapons, and tools were all stacked and shoved in as jam-packed as possible.


    Some of it, like the three massive crates of grenades and at least half of the speeders, we would be keeping for ourselves. Everything else was destined to be sold to the Rebellion. I wouldn''t subject my people to Imperial rations unless it was life or death, but the Rebels seemed to be fine with it.


    Beyond giving a look at the more obvious and impressive items they had taken, we didn''t dive too deeply, since it was clear everyone was tired. I would receive an updated report once they finished cataloging everything anyway, so there was no point in hanging around, especially since the labor droids would do most of the work for us.


    The next day was spent preparing to travel to Alpha Base, loading up all of our L-2783s, including Whale Shark, with the nearly three dozen starfighters we planned on selling, as well as the ten remaining Bulbs and whatever small freighters we could fit inside. The rest of the ships, the ST-70s, DP-20, AEG-77s, <u>C1-A62s</u></a>, the two Gozantis, and both cargo ships were piloted by a skeleton crew, usually only two or three people. It was an incredible procession of firepower, protected and escorted by the 3rd Group.


    While my team and I were traveling on the Talos Chariot, the rest of 1st Group remained at home, as did 2nd Group. They were basically waiting in case 4th Group needed help. They were due back in two days, so the rescue operation would start if they didn''t make it back by then. I wanted to make sure that there were plenty of resources to make that happen, and I gave them permission to even take the Boxi''s Fury out of orbit if they required any serious firepower.


    I was not about to leave any of my teams hanging, especially not in the hands of the Empire.


    When everything was prepared, we left Nirn behind, our nav computers set for Alpha Base. I had already set up a meeting with General Syndulla and General Rieekan to hopefully sell the majority of our recovered equipment.


    When we arrived at Alpha Base, we were directed to land, but 3rd Group stayed in orbit while Talos Chariot escorted the fleet of products down to the surface. We landed among a cleared-out section of their landing space, probably set aside so we could land in a group. Not long after we had settled in, General Syndulla and Rieekan arrived, stopping outside the Chariot to meet us. With them were about twenty Rebel engineers, ready to look over our work. I quickly made my way down to greet them, Vaz following behind silently, fully armored as my bodyguard.


    "It is good to see you again, Admiral Deacon," Syndulla said, reaching out to shake my hand. "I''m excited to see what you have for us today."


    "It''s good to see you as well, General, and you, General," I said, reaching out to accept both of their hands, one after the other. "We have a variety of freighters, starfighters, and warships. I suggest we start with the starfighters since I suspect they will be the easiest to inspect."


    "That sounds like as good a place as any to start," General Rieekan. "We are also very interested in the freighters you mentioned, specifically for this base. We are looking to beef up our supply capabilities."


    "Well, we have three dedicated freighters, as well as two Imperial Cargo Vessels, though one of them has some damage to one of its thrusters," I commented, leading them towards the Whale Shark while gesturing to the cargo ships. "We also have some ST-70s. Technically they are assault craft, but they make great rapid distribution ships."


    Me listing off what we had brought seemed to trigger something, causing Syndulla to frown with a confused look.


    "... just which of these ships are for sale?" the Twi''lek rebel asked, stopping as we walked up the Whales to look out at the around ten ships outside the carriers.


    "For the big ships, all of them but the L-2783s and the Chariot," I said with a smirk. "For the starfighters, only the A-wings and the LAAT gunships aren''t for sale."


    Both of the Generals eyes went wide, suddenly realizing just how many ships we had brought to the table to sell. It clearly caught them off guard, and I couldn''t help but chuckle.


    "We have a few days, so don''t worry about signing for them all now," I assured them. "Take a look, let your people go over them, then reach out to anyone you need to talk to. No rush to sell them all right this minute. For now, let''s just take a look at the starfighters.


    We continued to climb the boarding ramp into the ship, walking down the interior. We passed several of the crew, all of them respectfully nodding as we passed.


    "Now, on this carrier, we have a mix of heavier starfighters, including some headhunters¡­"

 Chapter 206

    I led the two generals through the Whale Shark, showing off the just under two squadrons worth of mixed starfighters that were on display. They were all in serviceable condition since anything of poor quality was broken down into parts and stored away to use the next time we got the same model. It happened frequently enough that parts were in high demand, and we ended up fabricating quite a few of them.


    "I''ll be honest, Admiral Deacon, this is more than we thought you would show up with," the Twi''lek general admitted after showing off a half dozen headhunters. "How did you secure so many ships?"


    "Looking to steal my secrets, General?" I asked, laughing at her unpleased look. "The Imperial assets are stolen from Imperial worlds, as you might imagine. Everything else was seized from raiders and pirates."


    "How do you manage to take them intact?" General Rieekan asked. "Starfighters especially are notoriously difficult to intercept without damaging them, and our ion cannons just can''t keep up with the nimble ships."


    "I''m afraid that is a bit of a company secret," I explained, raising my hands in defense. "Sorry."


    We continued the tour, walking them through the small freighter the Whale Shark was carrying before turning to leave the ship. As we did, General Rieekan stopped by one of the starfighter racks, looking up at the four wide, three-tall stack of A-wings. Each layer was pushed back by half the length of the starfighter, allowing each to have a platform that the pilot could stand on to prepare and hold his gear. Despite this, the stack was still compact, and the entire construct only took up the space of two rows of tightly lined up A-wings, despite containing three rows with enough room to take off relatively quickly.


    All said and done, compared to a squadron of starfighters that were status green, ready to disembark and engage, it only took up half the space. We had two racks of A-wings on the Whale Shark, having transferred the V-wings over to the Boxi''s Fury.


    "This is an interesting storage method. How long does it take to prepare them for combat?"


    "Oh, these are all green and ready to fight," I explained before gesturing upwards. "If you look up, you can see the descending charge and fuel lines. Those move and can be pulled down to each starfighter without pulling them out onto the hangar floor. When it''s time to fly, the pilots climb those ladders and into their starfighter."


    "That is astounding! You must save an incredible amount of space¡­" General Rieekan said as he looked around, trying to mentally calculate the amount.


    "Indeed it does. It''s why this carrier holds two squadrons and still has room for a LAAT gunship and these," I explained, gesturing to the for-sale starfighters and the single freighter. "If you are interested, I could have the designs for the Y-wings and A-wings sent to you¡­ For, let''s say¡­ a hundred thousand credits each?"


    I was massively undervaluing the actual design, but now that they had seen them, it wouldn''t take long for an engineer to take the idea and make it real. At least this way, I could take the money and distribute it to Miru and her team as a reward for making a vague idea that I had a reality and doing it so well. Plus, while maintaining my business-first mentality with the Rebellion, I couldn''t just hand out anything for free, which I would essentially be doing without charging them now, even if it was only chump change.


    "I¡­ very well, this is not something I can ignore, this could increase the lethality of every ship capable of carrying starfighters in the entire fleet," He admitted, shaking his head. "Not to mention, it could take pressure off of starfighter pilots for long journeys. Yes, it is well worth two hundred thousand."


    "I''ll have the plans sent to you as early as this evening," I said with a smile. "We have racks for other starfighters, including the <u>Belbullab-22</u></a> and V-wings. Eventually, I want to add a rack for something heavier, but we haven''t settled on what we want our official heavy fighter to be."


    "Why not just use more Y-wings?"


    "I don''t want to tie us to purchasing proton torpedoes or concussion missiles," I explained with a frown. "They are powerful, sure, but a massive money sync. We were looking at potentially replacing the missiles of a <u>Kimogila</u></a> with a heavy energy torpedo launcher or maybe finding some sort of small gunship."


    "What about your <u>Brick</u></a>?" General Syndulla suggested. "I was under the impression that it was a powerful gunship, and the pilots we lent you to fly it during the heist seemed impressed by its firepower and handling."


    "That¡­ that is not a bad idea," I admitted, frowning as I thought about it. "We spent a good fifty thousand credits making it that good, but¡­ some of those upgrades wouldn''t be necessary if it was functioning as a gunship¡­ and it has plenty of internal room¡­"


    I considered the idea for a moment before shaking my head to clear it from my head. I was in the middle of something now, I could get distracted by the idea later when I had more knowledgeable people to bounce it off of.


    "I''ll mention it to my people and see how viable it is," I assured her with a smile. "I know we were hoping to produce our eventual choice in-house, but this might be a good option despite that. Thank you for the suggestion."


    She nodded, and we continued the tour, stepping into and exploring various ship interiors and showing off their options. The two Imperial Cargo Shuttles greatly interested General Rieekan, both for their contents and the ships themselves, while the DP-20 and the two AEG-77s seemed to catch Syndulla''s eye. By the time we finished the tour, both of them seemed to have a good idea of what they wanted to initially purchase.


    "I can tell you right now, I will give you three hundred thousand credits for each of the cargo shuttles and their contents," General Rieekan offered. "I would offer more if it wasn''t for the damage and their lack of weapons."


    Taking their tonnage into account, the cargo shuttles were essentially unarmed, slightly larger C-Rocs, and we had already picked over the cargo. For what we had valued the remaining goods at, that deal was more than kind.


    "I will happily take that deal, General," I said, reaching out to shake his hands. "Are you interested in any of the other freighters?"


    "Yes, the two larger ones, those over there.. for a hundred and fifty thousand each," He offered, gesturing out to the largest freighters we had captured. "I would also like the <u>Z-95 headhunters</u></a> and the Y-wings."


    "I accept the price for the two freighters," I agreed with a nod. "Perhaps¡­ seven hundred thousand for the starfighters?"


    "Six hundred and fifty," He countered. "The Y-wings were in good condition, but the headhunters looked to be nearly fifteen years old. We will probably end up having to break down one of them to keep the others running."


    "...Alright, I think we can do six-fifty," I said, pretending to consider it for a moment before agreeing. In reality, I had started high, so dropping down fifty thousand credits was fine. "General Syndulla, anything you want?"


    "All of them," She commented with a smirk, shaking her head. "But the two Gozanti, the AEGs, and the DP-20 are all I can really afford without talking to some other groups, and even that is pushing it. Assuming you''re charging reasonable rates."


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    "I can do a hundred and seventy-five for each Gozanti and a hundred and fifty for each of the AEGs," I offered, raising my hands to defend myself. "I had to fight off Miru with a stick to keep the AEGs on the list, she wanted them so badly. Apparently, they upgrade extremely well, and if she finds out I sold them for under that, she will be on my case for weeks. Not to mention, these Gozanti aren''t old CIS models like we usually have. These are top of the line near new Imperial models, almost as customizable, and can carry a significant attached load through hyperspace."


    In truth, the ability to carry things through hyperspace was an interesting feature, something that sparked quite a few ideas in my head. If the load those ships could carry was a bit higher, I wouldn''t be selling them at all, I would have attached them to the salvage fleet.


    Still, it was food for thought. If we could come up with a ship conversion or find another ship capable of that, it could make stealing ships pretty easy.


    "She isn''t wrong... and they were in near perfect condition¡­ Fine, the price is steep, but fair," She admitted, shaking my hand, agreeing to the total price of six hundred and fifty thousand credits as well. "But if you charge that much, I''m going to have to reach out to Admiral Ackbar for funds for the DP-20 and a few others for the rest. You said you had time?"


    "I do. It will be a few days before our mission planning team starts to tick over ideas, and I''m forced to let my sales team start spreading the word to some of our other contacts," I responded, raising my hands when she gave me a critical look. "The Rebellion is my first contact for sales, but that doesn''t mean I can wait until you can afford things."


    "... Two days should be plenty of time anyway," She admitted, shaking her head slightly. "As long as I reach out as soon as possible. If you''ll excuse me?"


    "I must go as well," General Rieekan added with a nod. "I need to organize moving these ships, get proper inspections done, and get my crews working on repairing the Imperial Cargo Ship."


    "Very well, me and my team will be staying in the Chariot, reach out if you have any questions or when you have reached a decision," I said with a smile, shaking hands with both of them with a final smile, waving as they left with their escorts. "Thank you for doing business with the Skyforged Vanguard!"


    I chuckled as Syndulla sent me another look, no doubt picking up on my used car salesman smile and tone at the end. When they were out of earshot, I turned to Vaz, who had been silently following after us from the very beginning.


    "Not bad, right?" I asked, walking side by side as we headed back to the Chariot. "Already made more than two million credits, and we still have three squadrons of starfighters, a handful of small freighters, three ST-70s, the two C1-A62s, and the DP-20, which should double what we just made by itself."


    "It was well done, Boss," She agreed, pausing before continuing. "... General Syndulla had an interesting idea."


    "The Brick thing?" I asked, Vaz nodding in confirmation. "Yeah, I liked it as well. A pair or trio of those with each squadron in the fleet would give them considerable firepower and give them a cover point from heavier ships. I''m worried about the cost and the lack of hyperdrive, though. I hate the idea of sending our starfighters off to fight on their own, but I hate the idea of them getting stranded somewhere even more."


    "Sounds like you need to have a conversation with Miru," The Shistavanen pointed out. "She will be able to tell you what upgrades are possible for a decent price."


    "She definitely would."


    We finally climbed the boarding ramp into the Chariot, heading up to the lounge, where most of the crew was waiting. Tatnia and Julus were working on making a meal from relatively fresh ingredients, while Ahsoka and Nal discussed how much the Rebellion had just purchased, and if they would buy the rest. Vaz headed off to remove her armor while I gave Ahsoka a hug from behind, the Force-sensitive turning to me with a smile.


    "Nal thinks we will only get two and a half million for the rest," Ahsoka said. "It''s worth at least three."


    "They will attempt to lowball you, as you are bulk selling," Nal answered my wordless question.


    "I would hope they have learned their lesson. The DP-20 is easily worth two million on its own," I said with a frown. "General Syndulla knows better than to try and lowball us right now. If they try, I will leave with the rest and start selling to colonies and other groups. Even if we end up making less money than their offer because of it, I will not be lowballed by the Rebellion again, not until things have changed significantly."


    I gave Ahsoka a tight hug, knowing she hated that we had to be so mercenary and cold with a group she had helped start.


    "It''s unfortunate," I continued with a frown. "Had they not ruined it by taking advantage of us, we could have been giving them significantly cheaper ships, because we would be working together, rather than trying to make a profit off of them."


    "Could we return to what we were before?" Ahsoka asked, turning to look at me, her eyes meeting mine.


    "Anything is possible," I admitted with a shrug. "If we reached an agreement, some sort of alliance, or contract or something, that benefited us or declared us an allied power¡­ I could see us cutting our prices by a good further twenty, maybe even twenty-five percent. That number would be easier if we could start supplying Nirn and our fleet with food we grow ourselves and equipment we make, but that''s a far-distant idea. For now¡­ we just need to-"


    "Boss, getting a comms message¡­. It''s from General Syndulla¡­" Calima called out from the cockpit. "She is asking for permission to¡­ come aboard. Says it''s urgent."


    "Lower the boarding ramp," I said, turning to head down to the first deck. "I''ll be there to meet her. Nia, Ahsoka, with me, please."


    Ahsoka and Tatnia followed behind me as I hurried down the stairs to the first deck, heading directly to the boarding ramp, just as the General arrived at the top. She looked a little flushed, like she had been running.


    "General, what is it?" I asked. "I didn''t expect news this quickly."


    "It''s not about your ships. It''s about a mission," she explained, visibly biting her cheek. "The Rebel Alliance would like to hire the Skyforged Vanguard for a mission."


    "What sort of mission?"


    "A rescue mission," She explained. "Two members of Rogue Squadron, Leader <u>Wedge Antilles</u></a> and <u>Derek "Hobbie" Klivian</u></a>, have been captured during a mission to recover a potential Imperial defector."


    A shiver of fear ran up my spine, and I could see Ahsoka turn slightly to look at me. I continued to look straight ahead at the General.


    "Why not send your own team?"


    "We don''t have assets on base or nearby that can handle this kind of mission," She admitted. "Your track record is near perfect, and we are currently the closest group to where we think they are being taken. We need your help, Admiral Deacon."


    It took me a moment to realize that she was waiting for a response, my mind racing at what she had said. Ahsoka nudged my side to break me free of the whirlwind, and I quickly nodded.


    "Join us upstairs. You can fill us in on the details," I explained, gesturing back the way we had just come. "We can discuss it more there."


    "Thank you," She said, bowing her head slightly. "Please, lead the way."

 Chapter 207

    We quickly guided General Syndulla up to the lounge, where everyone was already waiting. She deftly inserted a data drive into our holoprojector, bringing up an image of three people, all of whom I recognized.


    "Approximately three hours ago, Rogue Squadron was set to meet with a prospective Imperial defector," She explained. "<u>Tycho Celchu</u></a> is an Alderaan native who recently reached out to another ex-Imperial and once classmate, <u>Derek "Hobbie" Klivian</u></a>, a member of Rogue Squadron. Tycho had reportedly spent weeks breaking through the internal lie that the Imperials were not involved with the destruction of Alderaan.


    Once he had his proof, any allegiance he felt to the Empire shattered, and he began gathering intelligence, with the intent to turn it over to us when he finally joined. Unfortunately, his defection, which was set to take place on Dantooine, was uncovered, and he was followed. Once captured, Pilot Klivian and Wedge Antilles, Rogue Leader when Luke Skywalker is away on training, attempted to rescue him but were captured as well when the Storm Commandos forced them to surrender by threatening both Celchu and the rest of the Rebel assets on the planet to aid in the defection."


    My mind raced as I listened to Syndulla talk, all of the names I recognized weighing heavily on me. These three people alone changed the course of the Rebellion, and now they were at the mercy of the Empire. It wasn''t until she finally mentioned Luke that why this was happening slid into place. I wasn''t familiar with this moment in particular, but Luke was currently still on Nirn, advancing his Jedi training. He spent a lot of time there, way more time than he canonically spent training with Master Yoda. If I were a betting man, I would put money on him being there when Celchu was defecting, preventing him, Wedge, and Hobbie from being captured in canon.


    And now, because of the changes I had made, they were captured.


    "Do we know where they are being taken?" I asked, tearing my eyes away from the three images on the holo projector.


    "The force that captured them was too small to contain proper interrogation resources," the Twi''lek leader responded. "Standard Imperial procedure is to bring assets like them to the nearest Imperial base for processing and initial interrogation. If their processing triggers any red flags, then they may be brought off the planet to even better facilities. The closest Imperial base to Dantooine is Tolita VI, a terrestrial moon that is just over a one-day hyperspace trip from Dantooine."


    "How far are we?"


    "By or estimate, just under two days."


    "Calima?" I asked with a frown, looking towards the bridge. "Any thoughts?"


    "Bringing it up now, Boss," she responded, focused on her console, which was barely visible from where I was standing. After a long moment, she spoke again. "I could push it down a bit. But the Talos Chariot won''t survive diving into a planet with a solid Imperial presence."


    "... what about one of the ships we have here?" I asked after cursing under my breath and chewing my lip. "Is there anything that could get us there faster?"


    "The ST-70s are almost all thruster. One of them could get us there in a day and a half. Maybe less." She pointed out. "But it won''t survive either."


    "It doesn''t have to," I responded before looking at General Syndulla. "Are you sure we are the closest you have?"


    "Who can do the kind of infiltration we are looking at? Yes, absolutely," She responded confidently. "We are trying to replicate your teams, but¡­"


    "We are just that kind of special, I know," I acknowledge, standing up and looking around at my crew.


    For a long moment, I was silent, looking into their eyes, seeing how seriously they were taking Syndulla and her request. Both Ahsoka and Tatnia had noticed something off with me as she had given her report, and I could see that Nal was realizing it as well.


    "This is going to be quick, rough, and brutal," I said, looking at each of them. "We will be flying by the seat of our pants and most likely getting dirty in the process. I will only accept volunteers, because this¡­ this is not something we can pause and wait for the optimal conditions for. Every minute counts, because every minute we delay is another minute those Rebels are in Imperial hands."


    Julus looks around for a moment, confused, before leaning forward.


    "Boss¡­ Of course we are all in," he said, everyone nodding like it was a stupid question. "But what''s so important about these guys?"


    "Luke is usually Rogue Leader," Ahsoka cut in. "How would he react if he found out his people were captured while he was away, training to be a Jedi?"


    "Oh¡­ yeah, good point," He said with a nod. "We need to get his back."


    "I''m glad you all agree," I said with a nod, feeling proud of my team. "Alright, everyone, pack up and move our shit to the best-looking ST-70. Calima, you''re staying here, but I need you to teach Tatnia and Ahsoka everything you know about pushing an ST-70 as hard as it can go. You''ve got twenty minutes, people, let''s move."


    My order was simple, and my crew all but lept to get started on preparations. I turned back to Syndulla, focusing on her while my crew rushed around.


    "We accept your mission, and expect to be properly compensated," I said, giving her a pointed look. "I need everything you can get on the Imperial base on Tolita VI within the next fifteen minutes."


    "I can get that for you," She responded with a nod. "Anything else?"


    "Yes, put a fleet together, as big as you can, and put it in deep space as close as you can get to Tolita VI," I responded. "Coordinated with 3rd Group, they are the ones waiting in orbit. I need you to get as many ships as you can get to cover our escape, if needed. They may just be hanging out until we can give the all clear, or they might just need to pop into the system long enough to scare the Imperials off for a few seconds."


    "I''ll see what I can do," She assured me with a nod.


    "It might be the difference between life and death, so I hope you do well," I said before turning back and watching as Racer headed down to the first deck. "That''s all, General, I need to help my people prepare."


    "Very well, I''ll go do my part," she said, walking past me to head for the stairs. "Thank you, Deacon. And may the Force be with you."


    I nodded, watching her leave before rushing to my room, double-checking my armor was in its case, before moving on to Ashoka''s. When I was sure everything was in place, I carefully lifted both crates and carried them out of our room. As I stepped out into the hall, I spotted Julus doing the same with his and Tatnia''s crates.


    For the next ten minutes, we rushed back and forth, transferring everything we would need to the new ship, securing it in place where ever we could find room. I also had Nal grab an unmodified commando droid from the hold, securing it in a corner of ST-70


    When we were finally done, I confirmed with Racer that the General had come through with the information delivery. Within a few minutes of that, we were leaving the planet behind. We sent one final farewell to the 3rd Group, who we had, of course, been keeping in the loop as we prepared to leave.


    Now, while we had absolutely made the right choice in terms of speed, the ST-70 did have a problem. It was tiny, ideally meant for a max of four people, and even that was cramped. Considering we had six heavily armed and armored people stuffed inside meant things were going to get cramped. It did have a storage bay, which could be used to carry some cargo, but it was long and thin, not really the kind of space you could run around in or spar. With all the equipment we had brought, we barely had enough room to set up a few cots to sleep on.


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    Still, it was fast, which was what we really needed. We could spend our time reviewing what little data General Syndulla could scrape together, rather than stretching or burning off energy with a spar.


    Ahsoka and Tatnia stayed in the cockpit nearly the entire time, watching the readouts and listening for issues. They were pushing the ship''s hyperdrive past what was really considered safe, so they needed to be ready to shut it down at a moment''s notice, lest we end up scattered across a solar system or something equally horrific. Early in the trip, I stopped in during one of Ahsoka''s shifts, since I knew she would have questions. I entered and tapped the cockpit bridge control, sealing us in alone.


    "Hello du d''bhem," She greeted, using a Togruti affectionate pet name, as I leaned over and kissed her cheek, before claiming one of the passenger seats. "Everything okay?"


    "Yeah, figured you would have questions," I said, letting out a long breath.


    "I filled in the blanks pretty easily," She said, turning her seat to look at me. "I assume one of the taken people is¡­ important?"


    "All three of them are," I responded, shaking my head. "All three of their threads flow directly through the Rebellion, and even¡­ Well, they are important. But that''s not the problem, not really. Ordinarily, I would have faith in their skills, for the Rebellion to solve their own issues. I may have untangled and adjusted their threads, but that doesn''t suddenly make them incompetent. They can normally handle their own problems."


    "Then what''s different about this one?" She asked, reaching out to take my hand. "What makes this situation different?"


    "I don''t recognize this particular thread¡­ but I''m pretty sure Luke was supposed to be there, to keep it from happening," I explained, continuing quickly. "I know Luke''s and Wedge Antilles threads pretty well, Tycho''s slightly less. Putting together what I know about all of them¡­ I''m almost certain that Luke being at Nirn so much with Yoda is what kept him from going on that mission, which doomed Rogue Squadron to fail."


    "And you''re worried they can''t get themselves out of this one on their own," Ahsoka finished, and I nodded.


    "I''m worried that if we were the closest ones available, no one else would make it in time," I explained, chewing my lip. "I''m worried the Force lined us up to rescue them rather than some other Rebel group."


    "Well¡­ If that''s true, then I''m just glad we were in the right place and time to help," She said, giving my hand a squeeze. "We can handle this. We will get them out."


    "Yeah, I know," I agreed, letting out a frustrated huff. "Doesn''t mean I like it."


    We sat there for a few minutes, enjoying each other''s presence, before I eventually left to double-check our armor, leaving her to get back to watching over the ship.


    The trip took a total of a day and nine hours, considerably less than the day and a half that the Chariot could have done, even if we could absolutely feel it. The hyperspace unit was audibly struggling, sending reverberations through the ship that we were all working very hard to ignore. When we were only an hour out, we started getting dressed, putting our armor on, and double-checking that all the systems were functioning. This was going to be one hell of a ride, so everything needed to be perfect.


    All of us were carrying at least a little bit extra, stashed in hip bags or utility belts, holding extra blaster packs, explosives, cordage, and everything we might need. Tatnia, Nal, and I were wearing bags filled with a single folded uniform, the logo removed, for the prisoners to wear once we found them. The beskar would give them a significantly better chance of survival, at least if we found a chance for them to change.


    Ten minutes before we dropped out of hyperspace, all of us were ready, our blood pumping as we waited.


    "The goal is to find the rebels and get them out of harm''s way," I explained, repeating the plan we had managed to come up with the last day or so. "Once we do that, our next target is a ship off world. If there is one on the base, we can try that. Otherwise, we should head out into the city around the base, find cover, and do our best to fade into the city."


    Before I could continue repeating myself, Ahsoka came down from the cockpit, joining us in the cargo bay.


    "We are due to hit Tolita VI''s gravity in a few minutes," she explained. "The commando droid knows the plan."


    "Alright, helmets on people," I said, grabbing my own from my hip. "Time to prove why we are the best."


    I watched as my team clipped and sealed their helmets in place. They looked imposing and lethal with their <u>armor</u></a> on, and I couldn''t help but smirk under my own helmet. I watched as Tatnia checked over Racer as well, the droid whistling excitedly.


    Once everyone was sealed up, we each reached around for the various handholds and netting that dotted the cargo bay of the ST-70. We also locked out mag boots onto the metal plating beneath us. Just under a minute later, we could all feel the hyperspace generator stop, sputtering out as we decelerated from lightspeed.


    While I couldn''t see what was happening, I could absolutely feel it as the commando droid immediately pointed us directly downward, dropping us into the planet''s atmosphere, no doubt ignoring plenty of warnings and demands to stop. As we punched through the atmosphere, bouncing and vibrating through turbulence, we all held on tightly. Suddenly, the turbulence was the least of our worries, as whatever patrol or defenses the planet had started shooting at us, rocking the ship aggressively.


    "Shields aren''t gonna hold much longer¡­" Julus pointed out.


    "They don''t need to hold through much more¡­" I responded, managing to sound much more confident than I really was.


    A few tense seconds passed, sparks starting to fire around the hold as the ship was hammered from several directions at once. Finally, the timer ran down, and I nodded to Nal.


    "Do it."


    He nodded and hit a detonator, the cargo bay door exploding as several charges around the opening went off at once, tearing the door free and sending it flying away through the air behind the ship. Suddenly, we were being buffeted by winds, and only our desperate grips and mag boots were keeping us standing.


    Only a few seconds passed, and I could feel the ship evening out, the cloud layer orienting itself perfectly as the ship flew straight, with no more juking or dodging.


    "Go, go, go!" I shouted, my voice carrying over the comms


    My shout got us going, all of us running out of the back of the ship. One by one, we jumped, Tatnia going first, dragging Racer along forcefully, clearing the ship and disappearing. I was the last one out, following Ahsoka out the door, turning to look at the starship as we fell. It looked like a mess, broken and bashed, with both thrusters pouring out smoke.


    Suddenly, a tight grouping of lasers, coming from a larger ship higher up in the atmosphere, slammed into the cockpit, carving it out completely. Before the starship could even start to drop, however, it detonated, the damage finally too much. The shockwave buffeted all of us, though not enough to do any harm or knock us off course.


    With a bit of struggling, we aimed ourselves downward, pulling our limbs in close to accelerate at a blistering rate, punching through the clouds and disappearing from the sensors of any ship scanning the expanding ball of fire and debris that had once been our ride.