Last time on Star Wars: The Star Rider....
“I bet a man like you needs someone to pilot some of these fighters you got hanging around, right? I'm available. Hire me and I could put those fighters or any other ship you got to good use.”
***
“Captain, What are we doing?” Helkim asked.
“We are going to wait and see if he's planned anything. If he doesn't try to break out tonight, then we have a potential asset. “ Orlooko said.
“And if he does?” Helkem asked.
“Well..” Orlooko's voice turned cold. “Then we'll be including a corpse with the trash we dump tomorrow.”
***
“Howdy.” Deek heard a man's voice say. “Would you kindly lift this top up and then take two steps back?”
Deek did so.
And coming out the crate was a young man, with long black hair tied up in a ponytail, wearing a red scarf around his neck, and armor-like fabric, black jeans, military type boots, two high tech gauntlets on his hands, and two swords on his back.
Another person came out of the crate. This time it was a young woman, with long straight jet black hair, and beautiful blue eyes, wearing a long black jacket, with the same armor-like fabric underneath, along with the same black jeans, and military boots, but she didn't carry the two swords, and gauntlets like the man. Unfortunately, she did carry an assault rifle, and it was pointed at Deek.
***
“Wait a second.” Moz said. “Let's make sure we aren't leaving anyone behind.”
“Are you serious? We need to get out of here now!” Sig said.
Moz ignored her. He went to each door to make sure they weren't leaving anyone behind. He found six people. Four men, all in their thirties, and two women, also in their thirties .
“We have to get them out too.” Moz said.
***
“Ok fine. But I have rules that everyone is going to follow.” Sig said. “ If you get lost, you get left. If you get in front of my blaster, you get shot, and if you get shot, you better know how to crawl fast, because I'm not carrying anyone. Questions?”
Everyone seemed to look at each other, but no one had questions, and Sig wasn't really expecting them to, at a time like this.
“Good let's go.”
(Part 3)
The palace was a mess. It wasn't pretty before, Nya noted to herself, but a gunfight between Smugglers, Mercenaries, and Spice dealers, didn't exactly improve the look of the area either.
Jabba had his guards escort the instigators out of the palace, along with everyone else. It all started with one of the waitresses flirting with Merc, and then it ended with blasters drawn, blood unnecessarily spilled.
Nya was visibly appalled by what took place, but for everyone else...it was normal. The only one who didn't act normal was Jabba's Majordomo, Bib Fortuna who was noticeably angrier than he usually was.
[You Schutta! You started all of this with your winking!] Fortuna yelled. [Your job is to serve food and drinks, NOT flirt with our guests!]
“I-I'm sorry, I didn't know that this would happen!” Marla Said.
Bib slapped Marla, sending her to the ground.
[You know the type of people that we deal with! You've been here more than long enough to know that these aren't the typical customers they have on Nar Shad-]
Fortuna froze. He started wiping something from his throat, something that wasn't there. He crumbled to the floor, gasping for air. He felt something grabbing his throat, choking him, but whatever it was he couldn't get it off.
The waitresses started to gather around Bib, they all looked confused as to what was going on. Everyone gathered around him, except Nya.
Nya felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Nya, what are you doing?”
Nya snapped out of it. And suddenly Bib was fine, he could finally breath again. Nya turned around, and there her Pink-skinned friend with short black hair and dark brown eyes, the one she called Hinasa was looking at Nya with confusion.
“What were you doing to him?” Hinasa asked in a low voice.
“I-I wasn't doing anything.” Nya persisted.
“That's not what it looked like to me.” Hinasa replied.
“I gotta get these dishes to the kitchen, so they can be washed.” Nya said with nervousness in her voice.
“Nya!” Hinasa called out.
But it was pointless, Nya was grabbing as many dishes as she could, ignoring Hinasa, and not paying any attention to Fortuna.
Hinasa didn't understand what just happened, but she knew that Nya was the cause.
***
Sig and the others finally made into the hanger bay. And there it was, The Star Rider. The big Black-blue painted ship, and by far the biggest ship in the hangar. The trouble was how they were going get to it.
Sig pulled out an earpiece from her pocket.
“Jak, you there? Jak?” Sig said into the earpiece
Jak's voice came out of the earpiece. “Yes dear?” Jak said sounding annoyed.
“Did I catch you at a bad time? Because we are trying to get off a kriffing Star Destroyer filled with pirates.”
“I'm on my way. You and Moz sit tight.”
“Actually it's not just me and Moz. There are six others with us.”
“Oh.” Jak said sounding surprised. “Well...did they bring snacks? Because last I checked, we didn't have enough food in the fridge...”
“Jak.” Sig said sounding annoyed.
“Okay. Okay.” Jak said. “Assess the situation, how many pirates are in the hanger bay? Are there any explosive containers nearby?
Sig peeked through the door. As far as she could see, there were only seven. Four on the left, three on the right. And it looked like there were a few explosive containers next to one of the TIE fighters.
“Four left, three right. And there are few containers nearby.” Sig said.
“Good.” Jak said. “You got your blaster on you, right?”
Sig frowned into the earpiece. “Yeah...”
“Give it to Moz.”
Sig did so. Moz took it without hesitation. Obviously he was feeling a little vulnerable without one.
“You shoot the containers and take the four pirates on the left, and have Moz shoot the three on the right.”
Sig looked at Moz. “I hope that arm hasn't rusted” Sig said jokingly.
“Very funny.” Moz said, obviously unamused by the metal hand joke.
There was only one more question, Jak wasn't going to like it, but it needed to be answered.
“You want our weapons on stun?”
There was a brief pause from the earpiece.
“Do what you need to do, Sis.” Jak said. “I'm on my way.”
Sig looked at Moz. He nodded at her.
Sig aimed her rifle at the containers, and fired. It wasn't as big of an explosion as Sig would've liked, but it was enough of a distraction to the pirates in the hangar bay.
Sig and Moz ran through the door. Sig aimed and fired four short rounds, all killing the pirates on her side, Moz fired five shots hitting two of the pirates, but unfortunately missing one. The pirate reached for his gun, but Sig shot him before he could fire it.
Moz looked at Sig. “Thanks, I owe you one.” Moz said.
“Don't mention it.” Sig said. “I'll take that blaster back now if you don't mind.”
Moz handed Sig the blaster. Sig looked around to see if they missed anyone. It looked clear.
“Clear!” Sig yelled out, signaling to the others to come out from behind the door. They did so.
They started to run towards the Star Rider, when all of sudden, the Destroyer alarm went off.
The hangar bay doors shut behind them. Sig ran towards the door, pressing the button for it to open, but it was useless.
Sig backed away from the door and pulled out a grenade.
“Get to the ship!” Moz yelled to the others.
Sig threw the grenade at the door.
***
Jak cursed to himself, of all the times for a plan to go wrong, it happened to be on a Pirate occupied Star Destroyer.
He was running down the corridor leading to the hangar bay, when all of sudden he heard a large number of loud footsteps rapidly approaching.
Jak threw a gas grenade down the hallway. At least anyone that walked through would be hesitant about it.
Jak started running towards the hangar bay as fast he could. He stopped at the sound of an explosion near the hangar bay.
“What the-”
Jak was cut off by a flurry of blaster bolts barely missing him. He started running as fast as he could, still hearing the sound of blasters firing behind him. He threw another grenade, this time it was a frag grenade to slow down the pirates.
Jak stopped at the sight of the hangar bay doors blown open. He poked his head past where the hangar doors used to be, only to find Sig aiming her rifle at the doorway.
“Whoa! Sig! It's me.” Jak said.
Sig put her rifle back in it's place.
“What the hell took you so long?” Sig asked.
“Would it kill you to say something even remotely welcoming?”
The conversation was cut off by more blaster bolts.
“Go, go, go, go! Jak persisted. Him and Sig hurried to the ships ramp.
“Moz! Get we're on board. Get her going!” Jak said.
The ramp closed and the Star Rider left the hangar bay.
In the dining room were six people, four men and two women.
Jak smiled and waved.
“Howdy.”
Everyone just looked at each other.
“Don't worry, soon we'll be far away fro-”
Jak was cut off by the sudden jolt from the ship. Jak was able to keep his balance.
“Moz?!”
“TIE Fighters.” Moz called out.
“Huh...How did we forget about that?”
“Moz, are we in hyperspace range?” Sig asked.
“Negative.” Moz confirmed.
“On the laser canons” Jak ordered.
***
Jak took the top gun turret, Sig took the bottom one.Altogether there were five TIE Fighters. The battle was intense,but short.
“Are we at the edge?” Jak said into the intercom.
“Just about...now!” Moz confirmed.
“Punch it!”
The sky flared with starlines, went mottled, and they were finally in the clear.
“Nice flying.” Jak said to the intercom.
“Decent shooting.” Moz replied.
Jak chuckled.
“Next destination?” Moz asked.
“Let's drop off our guest at the nearest inhabited planet, then we'll head to Jabba's palace afterward.” Jak responded. “The faster we get these crates to him, the better.”