Chapter 4: Heroics

"Don't forget we've still got charges to set," Corso reminded Junaida as they crept along the rooftop of the building below the warehouse. The wind was picking up, and it helped to clear Junaida's head. That, along with the stim Corso gave her before their jump.

"I won't" she assured him, breathing deep. "Damn I feel great. Like I just slept for twelve hours, ran for an hour, then had a pot of caf and a great meal. Don't tell my dad though."

"Tell him what?" Corso asked, glancing backward from his position as point in their two-man formation.

"About the stims," Junaida replied, peering over the railing to her right. "I don't think he'd approve."

"Are you kidding?" Corso laughed. "It's not like your dad never took them himself. I don't know anyone who's been in combat for real who hasn't. Maybe some purists; alien traditionalist clans or something."

"You'll have to tell me some stories when we get my ship back," Junaida told him.

Corso chuckled. "I like your confidence, Juni, just don't get your hopes up. Which reminds me, what exactly do you plan on doing with these guns once we find them. If this is the shipment you were supposed to transport after all."

"I'll figure that out later," Junaida assured him.

"Should we drop down to the street?"

"No," Junaida replied. "Best to stay high. Do you agree?"

"Theoretically, but I still don't know what you're planning to do."

"Trust me."

"You know I don't," Corso replied, but Junaida was already taking lead, keeping a low profile but moving quickly along the edge of the roof.

"We're going to do some heroics," Junaida told him.

"As nice as that sounds, I'm picturing us dead right now."

"Come on Corso, don't you want to kick the bad guys where it hurts?"

Corso looked uncomfortable, but his eyes were bright and he nodded eventually.

"We're going to find those guns and stop the Seps from using them. This is me saying thank you."

Corso grimaced. "You've got a funny way of doing that, Juni," he grumbled, then fixed the young smuggler with a hard stare. "If we get into trouble you follow my lead, got it? I don't care if I said I don't like to be in charge."

"Of course," Junaida promised. "Ready?"

"Ready."

It took some backtracking, a few narrow leaps and one makeshift bridge, but they eventually made it over to the site the van was heading for. By then the groundcar had disappeared into the small building, which looked like it might have been a hospital once before shrapnel tore out its windows and pocked its sides. Most of the windows were boarded up, but Junaida and Corso were able to follow an eaves-trough over to one of them and peer through the gaps in the slats to discover the small room inside was empty. Corso kicked the wood in, and they ducked inside and pulled the boards back up after them.

"Much easier than transparisteel," Corso declared.

Junaida scanned the room. It was dusty and empty, and the door hung off its hinges. When they stepped out into the hall they found themselves in an equally dusty corridor overlooking the main warehouse floor. Maybe the separatists had needed the main warehouse to store their weapons when times were good, but the crates of arms that took up the floor of this one were meager.

So meager, they could easily be stored in the compartments of an XS Stock Light Freighter like Junaida's.

"Those have got to be mine," she hissed. "Damn Skavak, any money says he's sold them to the Seps and is trying to pin it on me."

"That scum," Corso grumbled. "Juni, what exactly to you plan to do now? You can't exactly steal them back."

"I dunno," Junaida replied. "Maybe I could take some holos, send them to the boss."

"To Rogun the Butcher?"

"Yeah, prove that whoever stole them from me sold them on planet. I don't exactly have the muscle to take back guns from gunmen and then haul them back to the spaceport where I no longer have a ship waiting, but he might."

"I think you're misunderstanding just who Rogun the Butcher is," Corso warned. "He's not the kind of guy who goes through the trouble of getting back the goods someone else lost. He'll send a hit, and that'll be that."

Junaida's stomach churned and she knew he was right. "Then what am I supposed to do?"

"Take your holos," Corso instructed, surveying the warehouse. The crates of guns were stashed all together in a neat little cube in the centre of the warehouse below, except for one crate, which was being loaded onto a hover-skid and signed for by a Separatist leader with brass buttons on his dirty brown overcoat. "It's your best shot, however slim."

Junaida nodded and fumbled for the recorder in her pocket. It was a small device, a tiny drone that she'd only ever used before to take group photos of herself and her school friends when no one was on hand to do it for them. She programmed the drone to focus on the weapons, and sent in over the railing they were crouched behind. After a few nerve-wracking minutes the drone reappeared. Junaida checked the footage. She had serial numbers, makes and models of the contents, markings on the crates. It was probably more than enough to get her off the hook if she'd been working a legitimate job.

But what Corso said rang true. Rogun the Butcher, whoever he was, didn't earn his nickname or his wealth by taking, "Sorry, not my fault, see?" as an answer. But now she had something at least. She had hope. She had proof that she was innocent.

Taking a deep breath, Junaida turned to her companion. "And now the hard part."

Corso's brown eyes seemed brighter than usual. For the first time Junaida noticed the scarring on just one half of Corso's face like he'd stood next to something as it blew up. She wondered if she should have asked by now. Now wasn't the time, that was for sure.

"We've got one charge left," he said softly.

"Use it," she replied. "Those beacons were smaller than I thought they'd be. Nothing a little blaster fire can't solve."

Corso nodded, and whatever tenseness had overcome his features vanished.

"But how do we get down there to plant the charge?" Junaida asked.

"There's no easy way to do it," Corso said, peering over the rail again. They were on the second level of the warehouse, looking down on the open loading bay. The door was on the far side opposite them, and there was a ramp running down towards it to their right. "Now this is where you do as I say," Corso instructed. "Our best shot is for one of us to go in blasting, draw them over to the ramp here. There's a bit of cover up here and on the ramp. If we're lucky they'll leave their backs unguarded and whoever stays up here can pick them off from above."

"You draw them out, I'll pick them off," Junaida said. "I'm a good shot, Corso, I'm just green."

Corso patted Junaida on the shoulder. "I've also got the bigger gun. You think you can hit from up there with that little blaster?"

"I've been practicing on tin cans for years," Junaida assured him. "I had a friend with a little place on Alderaan. We used to snipe cans off of trees for weeks every year in the summer."

"Tell me all about it as soon as we're done," Corso said. "Make your shots quick. Wait until they're all drawn out. I can hold up under fire for a little bit. One shot per target. Line them up and knock them down."

"Only way I know how," Junaida drawled with a wink. There wasn't enough time to think about killing again. She knew if she did she'd be sick, and she could still taste acid in her mouth from the last time. Feeling didn't help, so she turned off that part of herself, or she tried to, anyway, and she focused on the task at hand as though it were as simple as shooting tin cans off a fence.

Corso didn't look reassured. "All right then, let's do this." He moved quickly down the semi-covered access ramp. The Separatists didn't see him until he was at the bottom of the ramp, but by then he had opened fire on the officer checking the contents of his skid and the two foot-soldiers helping him out. They all went down in a matter of seconds. Junaida saw their bodies hit the ground, but she wasn't supposed to think about that. Not now.

From the far side of the warehouse came more of them rushing in, hoisting guns and falling into position in a neat little line, couched behind vehicles, crates; whatever cover they could find. Was there a door there? No, just some benches. Was that all of them?

Their cover didn't protect them from Junaida, who they had yet to notice. From the platform above them she raised her gun, steeled herself, and thought of tin cans. She'd shot a bird once on a dare and hadn't been able to sleep for days. One, two three, went down with a blaster bolt in their backs, and then she started taking fire as well. Caught between Junaida and Corso, the Separatists scrambled for cover, but there was none to be found. If they were going to win, they'd need backup.

"The door!" Junaida shouted, glancing the door at the bottom of the ramp.

Corso followed her glance. Outside, a few passing patrols had stopped, trying to determine whether or not that blaster fire they heard was from someone testing out the new gear or from actual combat.

"A little help, here?" Corso called back.

Junaida abandoned her position on the platform and sprinted down the ramp. They would lose the high ground, but that wouldn't help if Separatist backup came in that door. She picked off a gunner trying to get a shot in on Corso's unprotected flank, and raced down to the doorway. Now it was Corso turn to keep them off of her. She heard the hammering of repeater fire as Corso took them out one after another. She slammed the panel and he bay door came down with a heavy thud, but Junaida couldn't find any way to lock it that a simple pass-code couldn't over ride.

"When it doubt," she murmured, blasting the control panel open and hoping the wiring was fused enough that the panel on the other side wouldn't work either. Spinning around, she leveled her blaster at a Sep emerging from cover on the far side of the warehouse and brought him down with a single shot to the head. The Separatist beside him took a volley to the shoulder but didn't die. Down was down, though.

"Plant the charge, I'll keep them off you," Corso instructed as Junaida hurried to join him behind a stack of empty grates at the bottom of the ramp.

"Got it," Junaida replied, vaulting onto the block of arms crates. She could place the charge on the side, but they needed to be sure the only thing the separatists would be able to use these guns for would be as clubs. She placed the charge in the center of the block and took a graze in the process, right across the back of the neck. Junaida felt her hair single and shrivel and her neck burn. She armed the detonator, set the time, and jumped away.

"Thirty seconds," she told Corso.

Corso's eyes widened for a second and then he nodded. "Up!" he shouted, and Junaida led the way up the ramp again. She lanced a flurry of bolts over her shoulder as they fled, but didn't hit anything.

"There's no way they can disarm it in time," she shouted.

Corso nodded, apparently satisfied, and they hurried back the way they'd come. Up the ramp, along the second level platform, and into the empty room. Corso kicked the boards off the window, but this time they didn't bother to nail it back up. The charge wouldn't exactly take out the whole building, but in the aftermath the Seps would probably not be trying to figure out how someone could have gotten in. The time for delicate work was over. Now they just needed to get the last beacon and get out. Alive, preferably.

As they raced back along the rooftops, Junaida found Corso lagging behind.

"Corso?" she called.

"Sorry," Corso called back, but Junaida noticed his hand pressed to a dark, wet stain beside his left knee. "Just a graze, come on, we need to go."

"Tie it up first," she ordered, holstering her blaster and removing her scarf. It was singed, too, having offered poor protection from the shot that had nearly killed her. She tore a strip from it with greater effort than the holo-vids ever made it look like, then bundled another strip of under it as a makeshift compress.

"You're bleeding, too," Corso remarked, peering over her shoulder at the back of her neck. "Your dad's going to kill me."

"Not if you bleed to death here," Junaida teased. She wound what was left of her scarf around her own neck and forced a smile. "See? Good as new."

Corso grimaced.

The charge went off.

The whole street shook. Junaida unclipped her blaster. "All right, Mr. Riggs. Let's get this done."

They dropped down to the street via a drain pipe near the checkpoint, which was in chaos. Unfortunately for them, chaos meant full lock-down, and they now had a beacon sitting right under the checkpoint that they needed to take out the old fashioned way.

"What's the plan?" Junaida asked.

"Speeder's supposed to be hidden just other side of the cliff there, right?" Corso confirmed. "It's a bit of a drop, but nothing we can't survive."

Junaida grimaced. "Shoot and run?"

"As much as I don't like it, we're in no shape for a standoff," Corso agreed. "Here's to nothing," he said and they rounded the corner.

The beacon was on the side of a big solar power transformer, placed more for height than anything else. They wouldn't have been able to shimmy up and discretely plant a charge anyway. Just as well that they were doing this the messy way. The beacon was unguarded still, but a huddle of soldiers with very big guns stood just around the corner. Corso did the honors, riddling the beacon with blaster bolts until it was little more than twisted metal, and then they ran. Junaida struggled to keep pace with Corso despite his injury. They sprinted past the checkpoint, zigzagging, occasionally returning fire, and ducking under whatever cover they could find to evaluate their path. Junaida took a shot to the calf, but it didn't tear the muscle much, and she kept on running. She felt tired and weak. The stims weren't going to be enough.

And then they were at the cliffs.

Corso was right, it was a short drop. Healthy people could survive it easily, but neither Corso nor Junaida were exactly at their best. Junaida landed on her feet and rolled, and she heard Corso grunt in pain. Blaster fire was coming at them from above now, but Corso was reaching into the dirt before them, but the dirt was a blanket, and under the blanket was a rusty yellow speeder.

"Well done, Skavak," Junaida hissed as she climbed into the speeder. It was a moment or two before she realized that she was in the driver's seat. Corso passed her a helmet.

"If he's sabotaged the speeder we're dead meat," Corso hissed, pulling a helmet over his own head.

"Then we'd better hope he likes me better alive than dead," Junaida countered. The key was in the ignition. She took hold of the paddles and kicked the vehicle to full throttle ahead. The speeder responded eagerly, leaping up from the ground and catapulting them out of the rain of blaster-fire, down a short ravine, and then onward down the beach toward freedom.