This ain't no self-insert fic.
This ain't no slash fic neither.
This is Top Dog.
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We are free men
Though we are poor
We will not bow to masters
No nor pay rent to the lords
We will not worship
The god they serve
A god of greed who feeds the rich while poor men starve…
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It all went well at first. Harry flew fast and low, staying below the arcs of Jabba's anti-aircraft defences; quick salvoes of gunfire from the Puma twins cut the guards outside the Hutt's front door down like grass, and then Harry set the girls down on the bloodstained sand; the Puma twins hastened forwards, sprayed explosive gel on the doors in breeching patterns, and stepped smartly back before thumbing the detonators; with a tremendous metallic crash, the huge armoured doors tipped inwards, lifting great clouds of dust.
Swiftly they headed inside, the twins' guns intermittently barking as they cut down any opposition, and in a very short time they were within Jabba's throne room.
And that was when something struck Hermione sharply in the upper chest, and from her perspective consciousness winked out like a light.
"Son-of-a!" Harry muttered, moving to stand over the unconscious girl as the Puma twins hastened to check her; the two catgirls let out identical sighs of relief as they found she was alive but unconscious.
"Trank dart, Master." Uni reported.
"Cover her." Harry said, his voice calm. "You are going to regret that, Jabba."
The Hutt, completely unperturbed, let out a roar of laughter - a deep, booming, 'Ho, ho, ho' that would have sounded right in place coming from Father Christmas, drawing the girl he had chained to his throne in short on her leash as he did so; and Harry realised he recognised the girl.
Leia Solo, though he couldn't say he'd ever seen her dressed in that little before. Nice view though, Han was a lucky man.
"Oh, ho, ho, ho! Hoya Stormclaw! Yu-a dumba bugga aintcha? Ho, ho, ho! Jabba earna lotta wonga tu-a bringa Stormclaw hea. Ho, ho, ho, ho!"
"The Great Jabba said-" the monkey-like being that was sat on Jabba's throne began, but Harry cut it off with a glare.
"Meea speeka Hutta, munki-bwa." he said. "Hoya Jabba. Yu-a gimmea Leia anna Han anna thera Wookie ora yu-a dedda Hutta, yu-a reeda meea?."
"Ho, ho, ho, ho! Yu-a wanna Leia? Yu-a shuuta Jabba, Leia dedda tu-a! Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho! Yu-a gesta riva, Rava!"
Harry's eyes went like slits as a massive red head poked out of around the immense door behind the Hutt gangster's throne.
"Stormclaw." the immense red dragon hissed, pacing into the throneroom. "I knew you'd be here."
"Well, well, well. Rava Flametongue." Harry blandly stated, drawing his howitzer-like pistols. "So either you survived a close encounter with an anti-matter charge, or they kicked you out of Hell. Still earning a living molesting goats?
"Silence!" The red dragon snarled, stalking forwards. "You killed my youngest son and my favourite wife. Now it's your turn to kiss the dust, bastard!"
"I know a vicar in Sutherland who can prove otherwise." Harry calmly replied. Too calmly. Anyone who knew him could tell you he was about to go off the handle; his voice was now calm in the same way as an armed Claymore mine. "You let your son try to eat my eldest daughter and you had her mother murdered - and what goes around comes around. Turnabout has always been regarded as fair play."
"What care I for degenerate filth? Nobody harms my people! Nobody! Now die, you son-of-a-bitch!"
And Rava flung himself at Harry, his left forelimb slamming across and sending the immense pistols crashing across the floor, where they stove a wall in; Jabba winced slightly at the damage, then shrugged.
This job was earning him easily enough for the repairs. Hell, he could rebuild his palace from the ground up on the down-payment.
Then again, he mused, as the pair of massive beasts rolled around on the floor, snapping and snarling and lashing at each other with their claws, perhaps it would be somewhat safer if he wasn't in a room with two brawling Arcadian dragons; he tapped a switch on his wristband and, with a whine of hydraulics, his throne withdrew itself through the floor.
Taking that as a good suggestion, his lackies (those who hadn't been gunned down by the Puma twins) hastily withdrew into the bowels of the palace. Except for Boba Fett.
Boba had realised exactly who Feran Deathblade really was as soon as he'd heard Jabba call the black-scaled dragon 'Stormclaw'. As a bounty hunter, Boba Fett was one of the best - his only peers were Irene 'Rally' Vincent, and the cybernetic powerhouse known only as Gally - and that was no mistake. He always made sure to know what he was going up against, he trained constantly, he read all the intel, and he never went after a mark he wasn't sure he could take. All too many bounty-hunters treated the hunt as a game, and would do stupid shit like evening the odds to make it more 'fun'; not Boba. He was in it for the cash, and because it was the only way of earning a living he had the skills (and patience) for. Okay, so he could have joined a colony and grubbed in the dirt - sod that, he'd have gone off the handle in months. But dragons were out of his league and he knew it - especially dragons called Slade Morley, because people who screwed with Slade Morley died. Period.
He was beginning to regret firing the trank dart that had rendered Morley's exceedingly dangerous pet unconscious - and he was exceedingly glad that all it had done was knock her out. This way, there was a chance he might live long enough to persuade Morely to drop the matter.
And so he skirted round the two fighting dragons, tossed a vial of trank antidote to Uni Puma, and legged it for where he'd parked his gunship.
It was high time he was someplace else.
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Disclaimer: It's only my fault on Tuesdays.
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Top Dog: Enter the Fnords
Intermission 1: Harry Johnson and the Lunatic Scientist
A Doghead13 / United Galaxies fanfic
Written & produced by Calum J 'Doghead13' Wallace
Preread by the CaerAzkaban Yahoo group
Brought to you by Hairy Scottish Git Productions, GMBH
This is not a drill.
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Chapter 10: The Hunt.
(In which our hero tries to have a show-down with a Hutt.)
The first words spoken aboard the LSS-17332 Blink Dog after she dropped below the light barrier on the edges of Tattooinie's third belt came from S'tarak'hai R'hara'tath, who was currently manning the long-range scanners because, when Harry took off, he'd smelt a rat.
The hulking catman knew Harry Johnson pretty damn well, for all he'd only known Harry for three years. The two of them had saved each other's lives more than once; S'tarak'hai had seen Harry at his best and worst, and he knew one thing for damned certain. The weredragon mercenary had an unfortunate habit of going off half-cocked and taking off without his backup in an attempt to deal with any problem on his own. The guy was a born loose-cannon.
And then there was Tara's presence on the Blink Dog's bridge. Harry's relationship with Tara had began by Harry being paid to protect the inky-furred girl, and then she had - as she inevitably did - wormed her way into Harry's list of his people, become his friend, and his reasons to be maniac in protecting her had more than quadrupled on the spot. The only thing more important to Harry Johnson than hard cash was his friends.
Like any dragon, he'd do anything for the people he regarded as a part of his hoard - anything at all, especially if it prevented them getting into danger - and that category included the crew of the Blink Dog and every friend Harry had ever made. S'tarak'hai knew he'd never be Harry's equal as a warrior, and the implications frightened him. The weredragon was worth ten S'tarak'hai's, yet Harry would unhesitatingly jump in front of a missile barrage for most of the people currently aboard the battered old DX-32 dropship.
And so he had his eyes glued to the sensor screen as the ship decelerated.
"I am reading unusual energy outputs from Tattooinie." he said.
"What sort of energy outputs, mate?" Ben asked. There was another man the big catman valued above and beyond his own life. Benjamin J Chaos was patently insane in a way that, oddly, worked. He was mad as a hatter, but S'tarak'hai knew perfectly well that the man was trustworthy unto the utmost degree, and damn nearly lethal in close-quarters combat. He ought to be; he was after all the galaxy's least-predictable Jedi Knight.
"Multiple heavy weapons discharges." S'tarak'hai said. "And there is significant Spirit Plane resonance in the source area. Captain, I suggest we close in and take a closer look at this."
"Agreed." Bruce Walker said, nodding. "Sis, take us to four light-secs from Tattooinie; let's check stuff out."
"Rightey dokey skip, bro." Alice Walker replied, rolling the helm over to port.
"Blink Dog, Blink Dog, Blink Dog. This is the Ebon Hawk, Revan speaking. Where are you lot off to? Over." A woman's voice, cool and detached, and bearing just a hint of sarcasm.
Bruce immediately grabbed the comms.
"Me sensor officer's reading something weird dirtside." he said. "We're gonna go scope it out. Over."
"Roger that, Bruce. Unless anything comes up, we'll see you at the party. Ebon Hawk out."
Bruce put the mike back on the hook, and all was silent aboard the Dog until they were floating above Tattooinie.
"It appears that there is a substantial dust-up in progress down there." S'tarak'hai rumbled, giving the sensor screen a highly doubtful look.
Bruce nodded, peering round the big catman's shoulder. "No shit mate. Crikey, that's the first time I've seen an Arcadian yacht down in the dirt."
This provoked an immediate reaction from Ben Chaos; being (just) tall enough to do so, he peered over S'tarak'hai's other shoulder, just as the hulking Kenti spoke again. "She is the IAS-27739 Shen-Long, home port Jeskan on Arcadia. Registered owner-operator, Lord Feran Deathblade. I understand he is affiliated with the Royal Arcadian Intelligence Service." Something was tickling on the edge of S'tarak'hai's memory.
"Bruce, take us down." Ben said. "That bloody idiot's gone and jumped the gun."
"What are you on about, Ben mate?" Alice asked.
"Hardly anyone knows it, but Feran Deathblade is one of Harry's identities." Ben explained, causing S'tarak'hai to recall what he'd been struggling for - a piece of conjecture from Department 44 proposing exactly that. "The Shen-Long's a Q-ship given him by the Dragon King. Take us down - the daft bastard's gone off half-cocked again... when the bloody hell is he gonna stop taking off without his backup?"
"Same time as the Emperor gets out his throne." Tara muttered, warranting her a couple of odd looks from Ben and S'tarak'hai; exactly where she'd picked up that particular piece of Old Atlantean invective was anyone's guess.
"Gotcha Ben mate." Alice said, swinging the stick over to starboard and opening the sublight throttles; the constant low rumble from the Dog's engines grew to a deep-throated bellow. "Here we go..."
"All runners, this is the Blink Dog, Bruce speaking. This is a Code Nine emergency - we've got friendlies in the shit dirstide. Put the hammer down and follow us in to the Dee Zed. Over." Bruce broadcast.
"Blink Dog, this is the Serenity. Message received and understood. Over." The owner of the voice wouldn't have sounded out of place in the Old West, and the message came right along with a stream of flickering inbound jump-flashes.
"Roger that Mal, see you cobbers on the ground. Over."
"Zis ist Seeadler, ve har readink hyu loud unt clear. Ve har right un hyur back door unt ready tu hunt, ja? Unt ovar to hyu, Keptin Valker." The voice was arguably female, but sounded more like the speaker was a wild animal with an Eastern European accent as thick as cement.
"Roger that, Jenka. Good to see you crew rollin' out. Over."
"Bruce, this is the Millenium Falcon and we got your six. What the Hell's going on down there? There's too much metallic dust and thermal radiation in the air for our sensors to cope. Over." Jacen's voice was accompanied by the sound of someone clouting a monitor and, in a voice that just had to be Jaden, coming out with some exceptionally nasty Th'lingon HoI invective that her mother most definitely would not have approved of but, summed up, meant 'Work, you stupid piece of crap.'
"Looks like a dragon I know decided to get this job done himself and bit off more than he can chew, Jacen. Over."
"This is the Yamato. We're hard behind you, Blink Dog. Over." This voice had the crisp note of a military officer, making it sound distinctly out of place among the assorted redneck space-truckers they'd been hearing from.
"Roger that, Okita. Glad to see you. Over"
"This is the Ebon Hawk. We'll be about a minute ten behind you - save a few for us. Over."
"Ah, ten-four on that Lord Revan. We'll see what we can do. Over."
"Blink Dog, be advised, this is the Nebachudnezzar. We're about fifty thousand kays off your port bow and vectoring to draft in behind you. Oh, and Neo just took a step outside - I gather he's going down the fun way. Over." Although in letter-perfect English that would have got an approving nod from a Cambridge professor, this man's voice had a faint trace of a Harlem accent.
"And that's a big ten-four, Morpheus mate. Be advised yourself, we'll be punching afterburners so don't get too close to our tail-pipes. Over."
"Megaera speaking. I'm ten on the floor, weapons free and ready to keep Archie quiet. C'mon over." This voice, while being definitely feminine, was completely unearthly; she sounded like how you'd expect a goddess to talk if you'd never met one, if, that is, the goddess in question used a lot of trucker slang.
"Glad to hear it; strikes me things down there are gonna get hot as fuck. Over."
"This is the Normandy. We've got your six, Ebon Hawk. See you on the ground in a few, folks. Over." A laid-back, cheeful, and very American voice.
"Nightstalker here; see you homies dirtside. Over." A voice that wouldn't have sounded out of place coming from a gangsta rapper fresh out the hood.
"This is Edison Trent comin' atcha loud aaand proud from the Friction Weasel, I got a bay full of heat-seekers and I'm ready to keep the skies clear. C'mon." This voice was pure deep-south redneck white-trash, and probably Texan to boot.
"Defiant here, Sisko speaking. We're pulling into formation with you, Ebon Hawk, Normandy. Over." He sounded like he took things too seriously.
"Roger that and thanks, Benjy. Tell the Klingon to get his Big Scary Sharp Thing ready. Over."
"Ten-four on that, Ebon Hawk. Oh, and Worf says 'Ka'ai Kassai'. Over."
"Nightstalker, you are obscuring my portside infinite repeaters. C'mon over."
"Roger that Megaera. We're boosting half a K up, that help? Over."
"Ten-four and thanks, Nightstalker. C'mon over."
"WooHOO! Express elevator to Hell - GOIN' DOWN! C'mon."
"Do us a favour and keep that crap off the air, Friction Weasel. Over."
"Ahh, that's a big ten-four, Yamato. C'mon."
"Pipe down and fly, homeboy. Over."
"Bite me, Nightstalker. C'mon."
"Trent, don't encourage the vampire. You won't like the result. C'mon over."
"Kiss my ass, Megaera. Over."
"I wasn't talking about you, I was talking about your right-hand-psycho. C'mon over."
"Hoooo Leeee Fooook, did you see that? The whole damn planetary defence grid just lit up - kick 'em in the guts! Over."
"Roger that, Nebachudnezzar." Bruce said. "Megaera, you fancy laying down some suppressive fire? Over.
"Ten-four, Bruce. Turning down bubble ten degrees, I'm ready to splash some missiles. C'mon over."
"Yamoto here, any ground sites open up, we'll take a pot-shot with the quake-maker. Over."
"WooHOO! I love this shit - moving to intercept anything they scramble. C'mon."
And down towards the planet the blockade runners powered, engines on the red-line and weapons hot, fighters rising to meet them.
S'tarak'hai smiled grimly to himself. The fury of half a galaxy was falling on Tattooinie – and he almost felt sorry for the poor bastards stuck underneath that hammer.
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Dragons are, on the whole, large and extremely tough. Thus it was that, as the assorted blockade runners plunged into the upper regions of Tattooinie's atmosphere, Rava and Harry were still very involved in trying to rip each other limb-from-limb while Jabba continued attempting to marshal his lackeys and mercs into succeeding in securing Harry's force-landed ship and assorted slaves.
The duo of dragons had been at a tactical impasse for some time now, and Rava had finally got the upper hand; he had Harry pinned, and was just manoeuvring himself into position to literally bite Harry's head off.
"This is where you get yours, you son-of-a-bitch!" Rava hissed.
At that exact moment, the sole unscathed side wall to Jabba's throne room caved in with a tremendous crash, and a squat boxy object came ploughing clean through the resulting pile of rubble. It was more-or-less rectangular, and looked a bit like an old-fashioned brass-bound steamer trunk perched on hundreds and hundreds of tiny little legs; it was visibly streaked with patterns of soot that looked to be from heavy lasers, and it dripped malevolence from every inch.
It was in fact sufficiently weird and unexpected that it momentarily distract Flametongue from biting Harry's throat out; the red-scaled dragon stared blankly at this unwanted interloper, which was completely unlike anything he had ever seen before.
"What in the galaxy..." he said. Then he screamed, because Harry had just wormed round and bit the bigger dragon's left hand off.
The Luggage - which was currently incredibly pissed off, as well as being hungry - marched straight past where Harry was now doing repeated sideways rolls away from the berserk red dragon and towards where his howitzers were laying. It completely ignored the battle of the titans, simply pausing to bite Flametongue's toes when the red dragon stepped on it, as it stormed over to where the Puma twins, still chained to a very unconscious Hermione, were trying to fend off a trio of Gammoreans who were rather insistently attempting to 'secure' the trio of girls; the presence of several empty magazines, small craters, and splatterings of unpleasant pork-scented stuff reminiscent of chunky salsa, was an apt demonstration of just how many of the barely-sentient pig-men had failed in that endeavour by the time the twin catgirls ran their ammo dry.
Very few dragons practise using their hindpaws for much beyond standing on, despite their having opposable big toes; Harry was an exception. One of his wilder lunges skittered the gigantic six-shooter towards his left hindpaw, so he grabbed it with his foot, flipped over with a sudden smirk as the massive weapon's smartgun circuits posted to his cybernetic link and, landing flat on his back with his leg straight-arming the six-gun at Flametongue, squeezed the trigger with his toe.
The vastly upscaled Smith&Wesson clone was chambered to fire rounds of the sort usually used by the turrets of wet-navy battleships. It's duranium structure was so over-engineered that it could take ammunition propelled by a charge of K-Hexa-5, the most powerful conventional explosives ever made stable enough for use as firearms propellant; the result was that the 350mm-calibre armour-piercing delayed-fuse artillery shell was travelling at nearly seven times the speed of sound when it cleared the massive revolver's muzzle.
In other words, there was an earth-shaking roar, the gigantic handgun spat an immense fireball, and Rava Flametongue's head exploded, raining sizzling chunks of white-hot gore across the room, several of which the Luggage snatched out the air with it's lid and gleefully gobbled.
"Eat that, fuckbreath." Harry muttered, pushing himself upright as he transferred the smoking gun to a forelimb. "Ahh shit that stings."
The Luggage, having finished eating the three unfortunate pig-men, belched loudly, embarrasedly shuffled it's feet, then gave Harry a wooden look that seemed to say, 'Okay, what now?'
"Gimme a chance, I gotta finish regrowing these scales... Jesus, you have no idea how much this stings. Well, the bastard really knew how to use his damn claws, that's for sure... goddamnit, goddamnit, goddamnit. Goddamned Flametongue. Bastard should have stayed dead the last time."
Retrieving his other gun and annoyedly tying the damaged parts of his webbing back together, Harry turned his attention to the three girls.
"How is she?" he asked.
"She's been tranked, Master." Uni said. "MF283 di-iodide, I think. Fett lobbed me this - I think it's the antidote."
"At least, it smells like it, Master." Anna provided, recovering her E-Mag.
Harry nodded, yanking his sword out of where it had got stuck in the ceiling. "Right." he said, collecting a pouch that had become detached from his webbing; he set it down and clicked the snap open, whereupon, with a hiss of hydraulics, it unfolded into the equipment rack he carried whenever he was going out into the field in dragon form accompanied by one or more of his girls.
The twins nodded, immediately getting the idea; Uni started restocking her ammunition (and grabbed a boltgun) while Anna collected a medkit and started properly checking Hermione over.
"It's MF283 di-iodide right enough, Master." she said. "I'm just calculating the antidote dosage."
"Good girl." Harry said, replacing the revolver shell he'd used. "Oi, you." This last was addressed at the Luggage, which he gave a poke.
It turned and seemed to contemplate him. Having ascertained that it's mistress was out of danger (and having had some fresh pork to eat into the bargain) it was somewhat less pissy than beforehand, so it merely did it's best to glare at him instead of trying to bite his leg off.
"Any idea where Jabba is?"
The Luggage continued glaring at him, in as much as something without facial expression can be said to glare.
"Ooog... what happened?" Hermione asked, sounding a bit dazed as she pushed herself to a sitting position, immediately gaining herself the attention of both Harry and the Luggage, which promptly came stomping over and critically examined her for any blemishes; finding none, it gave Harry a wooden look that screamed, 'Okay, buster. You're forgiven - for now.'
"You got tranked." Harry said. "Jabba did a bunk, and the bastard father of the worthless little fuck who bit Setsuna's arm off tried to eat my face."
"... right. I guess we'll get into that lot later, huh? How'd the Luggage get here?"
"Screwed if I know." Harry said with a shrug. "It came smashing headlong through that wall a couple minutes ago and saved my ass. Flametongue fucking had me, then your Luggage distracted him and, well, I managed to get out his grip and get my six-gun."
"Oha, yu-a nokka-offa Rava, heya?" Jabba's voice boomed from a concealed speaker, and portculises crashed down, sealing off every available entrance to the room - even the tunnel the Luggage had ploughed, the angry trunk had taken several passages between ramming through walls. "Yu-a costa Jabba lotta wonga! Yu-a meeta meea petta! Dia lika bugga!"
"Watta Jabba talka bowta?" Harry blankly asked.
Booming laughter and the grinding of hydraulics was the only forthcoming reply; Uni frowned, glancing at the auspex she had mounted in her bolter's side rail.
"RANCOR!" she gasped. "Master, the fucking rancor's coming!"
Harry's muttered response didn't reassure anyone.
"Oh holy shit..."
He turned to the Luggage, pointing.
"You. Open that door if you want Hermione to live."
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Sand erupted from the dunes in two-hundred-foot fountains, lifted by VTOL turbine blasts, as the Blink Dog's wheels hit the ground. The ramp had crashed down before the great clouds of flying dirt had time to fall, and a solitary Mentler Sarvek military utility truck came roaring down out the hotrod starship's hold, more sand flying as it's six knobbly tyres bit into the ground.
At the controls, S'tarak'hai was driving hunched over forwards, foot on the floor, right hand on the wheel, left on the gearshift, left index finger poised on clutch*, and a light snarl on his face. Ben Chaos was riding shotgun, his left hand lightly resting on the doorhandle, ready to bale out at a moment's notice, while the centre seat was occupied by S'tarak'hai's half-sister Aria, who was standing up, her head and shoulders poking out the hatch in the roof, a set of ballistic goggles over her eyes, and her hands on the roof-mounted A-DRKK grav machine gun; half the rest of the CTMA, S'tarak'hai's triplet sisters, and a couple other R'hara'tath siblings were in the back of the truck, grim-faced and checking weapons.
Even as the Sarvek began tearing across the sands, other blockade runners were disgorging surface vehicles. From where he sat, S'tarak'hai could see a dilapidated colony truck erupting from the still-moving Serenity's hold; he couldn't make out who was behind the primitive behemoth's wheel, but he could clearly see a man he recognised from a wanted poster leaning out the passenger's window with an absurdly large auto-shotgun. Clouds of dust visible in the Sarvek's side mirrors delineated other vehicles, and then there was the Millennium Falcon; it seemed the Solo twins had passed up on either of them going out on their looted speederbikes in favour of just taking the whole damn ship right down, skids-in-the-dirt, and using the Falcon's two turrets to blast anything that tried to slow the rescue party down.
Not that anyone was currently paying them a lot of attention. Over to the southwest near the force-landed Arcadian yacht, it was a whole different story; from the flashes, fireballs, smoke columns and sprays of beamer fire it looked almost like an all-out war was going on over there.
The truck's roof-mounted machine gun roared into life a split second after the massive catman saw the first inbound skiff; a civilian hoverjeep armed with a single auto-beamer on the roll-over cage, a bit like a stupidly expensive and ostentatious version of a typical colonial military patrol vehicle. It burst with a dazzling flash as it's powerpacks went up. Stupid amateurs thought they looked good riding around in an unarmoured open-topped flier, when in actual fact they were sitting ducks against any sort of real military force.
"We have company, people. Over." he said.
"Ist so, Herr R'hara'tath. Ve see zem. Unt over to hyu." Came Jenka's amused voice. That Jaeger fucking psycho was riding a creature like an overgrown cybernetically-augmented bear with inbuilt guns, while her lunatic cohorts were cramming a civilian four-wheel-drive pickup (fitted with farmer armour and unnecessarily large automatic weapons) that was barely able to stay upright on the loose sand, and never mind go in a straight line. Though their marksmanship was piss-poor, the Jaegers were putting a hell of a lot of railgun slugs in the general direction of the enemy, so they'd probably hit a few in the process.
"Any of you homies noticed how these fuckers seem to be about as tough as wet shit-house paper? Over." Whoever had the comms in the Nighstalker's shore tender (a black Hummer currently laden with heavily-armed vampire-hunters) chipped in.
"Reminds me of early-mark TIE fighters; this is a piece of piss. C'mon."
That was of course when they saw the first grav-tank. A shell slammed into the ground close enough to the Yamoto's shore tender to turn the eight-wheeled armoured carrier completely upside-down.
A heavy sigh came across the comms.
"You just had to say it, didn't you Trent? Over." Mal Reynolds complained.
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* Piston-engined Kenti ground vehicles have their clutch lever mounted on the gearshift stick rather than being operated by a pedal. Their gearshifts are inevitably sequential; pull clutch in, push shift stick forwards one notch, release clutch, you've changed up. Note that automatic gearboxes are almost a 'lost' technology in the Thousand Kingdoms as, in those few roles in which they still use wheeled or tracked vehicles, a manual gearshift is advantageous.
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The door that had sealed off the route further into Jabba's palace from the throne room was a six-foot-thick solid duranium blast door that had once seen service as an exterior cargo airlock door on a warship.
The Luggage was a steamer trunk, five feet long by three high and three deep, constructed from sapient pearwood. It tipped the scales at a little under the weight of a large man, and under normal circumstances it would have the physical strength of that large man.
Hermione's Luggage, however, was an exception. Artefacts constructed from sapient pearwood and properly bound to their owner get their strength and resilience from their owner's aura; Rincewind's Luggage, as an example, is all but unstoppable due to deriving it's strength from something as important to magic itself as the number zero is to mathematics. Hermione's Luggage, on the other hand, was gifted with a bit-share of the power of an exploding star.
Therefore it should come as no surprise that, when the Luggage hit the blast door, the blast door was ripped out of it's fixings and thrown fifty feet down the corridor beyond, impacting and cratering the end wall. The aperture that this left was a little too small for a large adult Arcadian dragon, so Harry shifted back to human form before hastening into the tunnel, closely following Hermione and the Puma twins.
He wasn't quite fast enough. An overly-long arm grabbed him and hurled him across the throne-room; the rancor had arrived.
His strangulated noise made Hermione spin round, whereupon she promptly found herself looking a very large and very ugly vaguely-humanoid monster in the face. By this time, the Puma twins were already shooting at it.
She reacted.
Her hands went back, down, then forwards and up, power building around them, and words came wrenching out of her throat even as a charge like Thor's own lightning bolt came bursting off her knuckles:
"ELECTRON RAM!"
The air seemed to split with a sound like thunder as the massive high-tension high-voltage spark crossed the unnervingly narrow gap between her and the rancor, hitting the beast with enough electricity that, if you hit an M1 tank with the same, it's ammo would cook off even as it welded itself into a solid tank-shaped chunk of metal; the rancor yowled like a half-strangled monkey and went backflipping across the somewhat battered throne-room as all it's muscles contracted, thus giving Harry enough time to kick off the wall and come sprinting back over to the corridor, hauling a railgun out of his trenchcoat as he came.
However, the Luggage was still hungry and angry, and didn't feel like giving that annoying dragon the pleasure. It had already been advancing on the rancor when Hermione threw the galaxy's most powerful lightning spell at the brute; by the time Harry was spinning round, getting ready to fire, the homicidal animate trunk had latched onto the rancor's arm and was madly munching away, ignoring the way the beast was flailing around.
Hermione was quite surprised to find herself being given the 'You-what-the-fuck?' look by Harry. The one she all too often gave him.
"Don't ask me." she said. "I guess the Luggage was hungry."
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
Meanwhile, thirty stories below, Jabba was engaging in the fine art of making a hasty departure; he'd just completed a short note.
"Yu-a givva dissa tu-a Stormclaw, ora Jabba eeta yu. Yu-a reeda Jabba?" the Hutt growled, brandishing an envelope, which Leia warily accepted.
"I read you." she sighed, wishing she had the chance to strangulate the bastard.
Jabba nodded. "Hoya Leia, Jabba thanka yu."
And, with that, he ate Salacious Crumb, hopped off his throne, and went waddling over to the waiting starship.
"Jabba getta outta hea." he fired over his shoulder. "Seea yu abowta!"
"Bastard."
"Jabba knowa vicca whoa canna dissapruva datta. Layta!"
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
Ben Chaos was worried. They'd made it this far – not without damage, two of the Jaegers were dead, the Yamato's shore tender was a funeral pyre, the Nebuchadnezzar had been forced to peel away with a sizeable hole torn in her port bow, and the Normandy's shore tender was smouldering away in the sand with it's front axle blown off – but they'd pretty thoroughly trounced the portion of Jabba's ground forces that'd moved to intercept them.
The dunes they'd crossed were littered with shattered airskiffs and wrecked gravtanks, staining the sky with the filthy black smoke pouring from their burning stores; all in, he figured they'd just converted around twelve billion New Aussie dollars worth of hardware into so much scrap – but the sky in the direction of that down-in-the-dirt Arcadian yacht was still being lit by the flash of explosions and streams of gunfire, with a sound like distant thunder.
As he'd expected, the main doors to Jabba's palace had been blown clean off, and someone had gunned down a hell of a lot of guards. The marsksmanship wasn't precise enough for it to be Harry, but there was plenty of E-Mag shell casings and expended magazines littered around, along with the occasional 9mm shell with crystal-clear H&K extractor marks, and the occasional slagged patch, presumably from dragon's breath.
But it was quiet in here. Too quiet. No gunfire, no crashing, no explosions – even the corpses had finished dripping.
He, S'tarak'hai, Neo (a rather unexceptional looking chap in a black trenchcoat, who just happened to be Kryptonian) and Jenka (a female Jaeger, short and slightly stocky with grey skin, yellow eyes, large amounts of ragged grey hair and purple clothing) moved cautiously forwards, followed by a large number of armed blockade runners and R'hara'tath siblings, checking each alcove for the expected ambush and finding none.
Entering what had to have been Jabba's throne room, they were met with two incredible sights; a very dead red-scaled Arcadian dragon, and a Luggage in the process of devouring the lower half of a rancor.
"Fuck me." Neo remarked.
"Bloody Hell, mate." Ben muttered, taking a closer look at the dead dragon. "That's Rava bloody Flametongue... he was supposed to have been dead for millennia..."
"Eet looks lak somevun put on ein hell of ein show." Jenka commented, peering critically at the swathe of thoroughly-splattered Gammoreans near the main entry passage.
"What I want to know is what the bloody hell Hermione's Luggage is doing here." Tara stated, angling a thumb at where the animate trunk was happily munching away on a twitching rancor leg.
"That is property of Granger?" S'tarak'hai rumbled, peering cautiously at the Luggage.
"Yeah. See, her name's engraved on that brass plate on the lid."
"We'd better start searching for Han and his family." Morpheus – a tall and completely bald black man – said. "Spread out, everyone."
There was a lot of nodding and people did exactly that.
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
At about the same moment as Ben was gawking at the remnants of the rancor, Harry, Hermione and the Puma twins were just getting set to blow the door off Jabba's bunker, having traced the lift shaft from his throne room; the twins stepped smartly back, and with a thunderous detonation that must have echoed through the whole complex, the door's attachment points pretty much ceased to exist; a moment later, the whole thing tipped in with another tremendous BANG.
"About time you got down here, Venger." said a sardonically cynical woman's voice from somewhere in the resulting cloud of dust.
"Leia. Jabba done a bunk, then?" Harry asked, stepping into the room; Hermione peered round him, and took note of the scene.
There was a shaft about the size that'd fit a small helicopter running off at an oblique angle right in front of them, and she could see a speck of daylight at it's far end. Jabba's throne was squatted on a bunch of hydraulics between them and the shaft, protected by a utilitarian-looking blast shield.
And the woman was still sitting, now looking heartily annoyed, on the 'throne'.
"He left this." She said, holding up an envolope. "Said it was for you, Venger."
Harry frowned at the envelope, ran a bomb-sniffer over it, did several other checks, turned round, shrugged, and opened it.
"Son-of-a..." He muttered. "Fucking Hutts... they're all the goddamned same."
"What's it say, Master?" Hermione asked.
"Tell you later." Harry said, and she nodded, accepting that for now.
"I suppose I should thank you." Leia said, fingering her tether.
"You can thank me by giving your old man a chance, Leia." Harry calmly stated, not turning round, primarily because he was pretty certain he'd end up making a lewd remark if he turned round, and making lewd remarks at Darth Vader's daughter probably wasn't the best idea.
"I can't do that, Venger." she told him.
"Hatred is us Darksiders' job, girl." Harry replied. "Besides, do you really think he'd have done it if he knew who you were? Vader's a psychotic bastard - but he became a psychotic bastard because someone killed the only people he'd ever really given a shit about; try doing the research sometime. Frankly, in his boots, given what he knew, I'd have done just the same. Don't blame your old man - blame Palpatine."
He tucked his hand into his trenchcoat, withdrew a compact silk-wrapped object, and lobbed it over his shoulder to her.
It was a lightsabre.
"That belonged to your mother. Figure you ought to have it. So long - it's time I wasn't here."
And, with that, he walked out, leaving the annoyed princess turned blockade runner's wife still chained to the departed Hutt's throne.
Considering she was now holding a fully-functional lightsabre, odds were that situation wouldn't last.
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
Orbiting the next planet starwards from Tattooinie, about a light-minute away from the current crisis, Boba Fett was taking some time off to brood and smoke a cigarette as he watched, on the maximum-zoom scopes, the blockade runners dust off.
He'd told Jabba that messing with the runners was a bad idea. He'd tried to explain until he got a sore throat, and it was like talking to a brick wall. Chances were the poor bastard was dead by now - and if he wasn't, he soon would be.
Seeming to punctuate that thought, a new contact appeared on his board, inching up over the horizon in a trailing orbit behind the Slave One. He interrogated it's IFF, and was slightly startled by the result. NIH-043 Weeping Angel. A quick check showed him that his half-recollected memory was right; the nation-code NIH belonged to the tiny nation of Nihon on the planet Earth.
"Slave One, Slave One, Slave One. This is the Weeping Angel, do you read me? Over."
"Slave One here, Captain Fett speaking. Reading you loud and clear, Weeping Angel. Over."
"Requesting permission to come abreast, Slave One. Over."
The hell with it, he was fucked anyway. Why not?
"Ah, roger that Weeping Angel. Orbital coordinates 4816 by 232 by 4211. Over."
"Roger that, Slave One. Moving to formation. Over."
Boba impassively watched the other ship come up behind his; he kept his hand on the warp throttle all the way, ready to throw the Slave One past the light barrier, just in case. He found he recognised the model of the other ship; a Sentek Triturbine supersports sled with some guns slung on the outboard side of the main turbines. She was an ugly-looking machine, blunt-nosed and stout, just like all of her kind, but she had that certain brutal economy about her, as seen in sports cars with words like Ferrari or Lamborghini written on them. Boba relaxed a bit; there wasn't much of anything a sled could pack that could punch through the Slave One's high-performance shields.
"Permission for tight-beam, Slave One? Over." the sled's pilot requested.
"Permission granted, Weeping Angel. Over." Boba replied, activating the subsystem in question.
He was promptly faced by a hologram of a gorgeous green-haired woman, sat in a sled's driver's seat, as the multimedia tight-beam comms locked in.
"Hello, Mr Fett." The woman said. "My name is Setsuna Meiuu, and it is very good to see you alive."
Setsuna Meiuu. He knew that name from more than one place. From one place, he knew of her as Slade Morley's daughter. From the other, he knew her as the Old Atlantean Senshei of Time.
And he knew enough to know that Slade's-brat-Setsuna and Sailor Pluto were the same person.
"My lady Pluto." he said, bowing his head. "To what do I owe this honour?"
"Enough with the platitudes, Mr Fett." She replied. "You're far more professional than to bow and scrape."
She paused, frowning slightly.
"Thankyou, My Lady." Boba said, grinning a bit. "And... a pretty girl like you can call me Boba."
Pluto smiled a bit. "As long as you call me Setsuna." she said.
"Very well then, Setsuna. So... to what do I owe this honour?"
"I and my... team, for want of a better word, have a need for professionals like yourself." she told him. "There is a situation developing in Tokyo, and we need people on retainer for when things go all to Hell; it's proving important to our plans. We are willing to pay you seventy thousand New Australian dollars a day, plus expenses, to remain on-station until the inevitable operation. And... a part of the payment is a promise that my father and his friends will do you no harm."
Boba frowned.
"Seventy kays a day, and I stay off Slade's target list, huh?" he said. "I'd be a damn fool to refuse, though I confess I fail to see why you want me in particular."
"That's relatively simple." Pluto said, shrugging. "You are one of the top three finest bounty-hunters in this galaxy. You know exactly how to identify a target, you know exactly how to track a target, you know exactly how to appraise a target, you know exactly how to capture or eliminate a target, and as a result you do of course know the most efficient countermeasures against such identification, tracking, appraisal, and elimination or capture. You are one of the best there is."
Boba nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps. You realise I'll need backup, just in case?"
"Of course. We'll leave it up to you to locate suitable support; the maximum we can cover is twelve individuals, at a rate of thirty-five thousand New Australian dollars a day each, plus costs. Oh, and Boba? Understand that we'll be hiring other operatives ourselves."
This time, Boba smiled. It was a matter of form. There was a certain criteria to hiring a mercenary or, for that mercenary, accepting a job. A ritual, if you like. That was how it had had always been done, and how it probably always would be done. The dance must be danced.
"I'll take the job." he said.
"Good." Setsuna said. "Lay in a course for Pluto - I'll meet you there."
A few moments later, both tiny ships had flashed away outsystem and past the light barrier.
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
Harry lay, mind idling, chin resting on forepaws, studying Hermione. They'd completed the necessary repairs to get the Shen-Long dusted off in short order, and were heading back to Earth - there was the Festival of Fire on Kendarat in four days time, then not long after that there was some sort of do on at the Weasely place, then shortly thereafter they'd be back to the Collegium. He intended to spend the interim getting his mother - his poor, dear, mindwiped mother - up to speed for Collegium entry, farming for info on Voldemort's goons, and just being with Hermione, watching her, enjoying her presence - just like now.
He'd seen her wearing less before - he'd seen her butt-naked a few times - but the effect was, to his view, vastly improved by the harem finery she was currently clad in, especially the chains that gently restrained her and tethered her to his throne and the way they said to any onlooker that she belonged to him. Not that he'd ever grow tired of looking at her, regardless of how she was dressed, as he went over her again and again with eyes and mind, committing every last detail, every little nuance of her movements, to memory. The way the light fell on her hair. The distant contemplative look in her eyes. The way she was toying with one of the handles on her Luggage, which had stubbornly refused to be separated from her after it caught up with them at the Shen-Long – he just couldn't get enough of her. Looking at her, smelling her, feeling the pure and unimaginably powerful fusion-turbine roar from her aura - gods, she was gorgeous. No, she was beyond gorgeous.
She was perfection itself.
He wasn't really sure when he'd become so obsessed with her. It had gradually crept up on him sometime between when he'd first met her at King's Cross and when he'd seen her collar herself; he'd first begun to notice the near-overwhelming desire to hide her away from the universe where nothing could touch her when he realised what Flint had done to her, and he'd been fighting - and losing – against that desire, tooth and nail, ever since.
He'd told himself it was just his hoarding instincts, that it was just because she was an Omega weapon, but he'd long since stopped being able to fool himself. These days, he could tell himself the same tired old lies over and over again, and still not believe them.
The last time he'd got anything even approaching this fixated on a girl, she'd turned out to be a Tzeentchian champion, and the resulting mess had turned him from a kid with an attitude that had been (in hindsight) like a hopeful and friendly little abused puppy, into his own least favourite person... and, now that he had Hermione, Carla Jutland (or, to give her true name, Nehelania) was beginning to fade from the forefront of his mind.
They'd had such plans for Hermione. They'd planned to forge her into a weapon; she was a critically important part of their plans, and the simple fact that, no matter how much he lied to himself about it, Harry still knew to his bones that he was head-over-wingtips in love with her – that simple fact threatened to derail those vital plans. After he'd implanted the first compulsion into her head – that oh-so-intriguing obedience compulsion - when she'd realised what he'd done to her, he'd nearly lost it at the look of shock and betrayal on her face.
That was when he'd realised how he felt about her, and he told himself, never again. For the first time in his life, he'd found means that the ends – even their critically important ends, the ends they'd agreed justified any and all means – did not and could not justify. Nothing and nobody was allowed to put that look on his precious Hermione's face, and if anyone tried, he'd kill the bastard and to Hell with the plans and questions.
Damn it. He wanted her more than he'd ever wanted anything - she was his own little slice of beauty in a universe he loathed. He wanted to throw her down on the ground and have his wicked way with her, and he knew that if he told her to do it, she was incapable of saying no.
Let he who would battle monsters beware indeed. He'd done a lot of things he regretted, a lot of things he knew he shouldn't have, but no way in Hell would he go that far. Never mind sinking to the level of filth like Vernon Dursley and Marcus Flint; it would put the betrayed look on Hermione's face again - and Hermione's face should never look like that.
Never again. Frankly, he'd rather that they failed and the universe died than he was forced to see that look in Hermione's eyes again. He'd bleed for her. He'd die for her. He'd kill for her, without hesitation or remorse. He fully intended to shake the galaxy for her, and telling himself it was because of mere plans was a waste of valuable time. She belonged to him, mind and body – yet, at the same time, his heart and soul were her private property.
He was jerked out of his ruminations by Hermione rolling onto her back, sighing, and giving the ceiling a pensive look.
"So... what was that letter Leia gave you about, Master?" she asked.
Harry snorted, even as he smiled inwardly at the unabashed thrill he got from her calling him that. The letter had read, in Huttese:
-/-
Howdy, Stormclaw.
Be a pal and let Vader know Rava Flametounge was threatening my family, okay? I didn't want to cross the line, but it's not like I had a hell of a lot of choice, and hey, the pay was good, so whatever.
You leave me in a bit of a quandary, Stormclaw. I owe you for getting rid of that ignoramus Rava, but at the same time you owe me one real nice palace and a whole bunch of useful servants and nifty pets, oh, and a dull but functional star-system.
Watch your back, dry-skin. I'll be taking the costs out your hide, and the same goes for your little blockade-runner friends. Space is a big place, and I only need to get lucky once, while you need to get lucky every day of your life.
Of course, I would drop the matter for the meagre sum of six billion League dollars, in used unmarked notes, shipped to one of my subordinates on Rokolushu, a Mr Slov Borkavich at 381 Imperial Docks in Jurai City. You and your pet redneck spacers have six weeks to come up with the goods, or I get serious on the lot of you.
Signed:
Jabba the Hutt.
-/-
"The bastard simultaneously disavowed responsibility and claimed the pay made it worthwhile." Harry grumbled. "According to bitch-tits, Rava fucking Flametongue was threatening him into accepting the job. Now, I wouldn't put that past Rava, but the next thing I know Jabba starts threatening to kill me and the runners unless we pay him six billion New Aussie dollars within six months. Typical damned Hutt – those bastards will do anything for money and they'll give it a go extorting anyone any chance they get." Harry grimaced a bit, realising what a hypocrite he was being – but Jabba's tone had pissed him off. At least he didn't tend to pretend to be all buddy-buddy when he was off to fuck someone over.
"Rava?" Hermione asked. "Who's he, Master?"
"Rava Flametongue." Harry told her. "That dragon I turned into a pile of stupid dead fuck while you were out. Ancient history for me... You know Sestuna's cybernetic arm?"
"Sure I do, Master."
"Well, Rava fucking Flametongue and his worthless brat of a son are the reason Setsuna needed a cybernetic arm in the first place. Rava... was always a nasty piece of work. He thought it was funny to eat humanic children in front of their parents, and he passed that on to his brat, who attempted to eat Setsuna in front of her mother at a palace do on Arcadia. So of course her mother ventilated the little bastard's skull clean through. Rava reacted, tried to have Setsuna's mother murdered, so I turned his yacht into an anti-matter blast. That was the last I heard of him until today. Gotta hand it to the bastard, he did a hell of a job of covering his tracks – I could've sworn he was dead." And next time he killed a personal enemy, he'd make sure of the job.
"Why do people have to be so fucked-up, Master?" Hermione asked.
"Good question." Harry sighed. "I reckon the fact is, life breaks everyone - and the people who won't break die."
Hermione nodded.
"That's an old saw, Master."
"Sometimes a cliché gets repeated enough to become a cliché because it's true."
"I wish things could be simple, Master. I really do."
Harry gave her a sad and tired look.
"It'd be nice if the world was clear-cut, wouldn't it?" he asked. "It'd be nice if monsters looked and acted like monsters, heroes looked and acted heroic, villains had bad-guy moustaches and evil laughs, innocents never had to be broken for so-called noble goals, the good guys didn't have skeletons in their closets, laws were fair, nobody had to kill to survive, and good things happened to good people. Wouldn't it?"
Hermione nodded, her expression distant.
"We're not living in that universe, are we, Master?" she asked. Harry decided to reply, even though he was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question; he rested his cheek against her side, and blew out a huge draconian sigh.
"We're in the real universe." He said, and she sighed and cuddled up against his head, staring off out the front of the Shen-Long's bridge into the depths of space and the uncertain future.
Soon, it would be time to tell Hermione the truth... but she wasn't ready yet.
Yeah. The real universe, down in the dust with the scum of a galaxy.
-/-End Chapter-/-
Apologies for the horrific 'Huttese' portrayed herein. I couldn't work out how else to write it since subtitles are difficult to pull off in fanfics. Likewise, sorry about the abrupt change in my scene breaks; have started mangling the series of -'s I was using. When in the fuck are they going to work out that nobody likes reading a solid block of text and a single '-' doesn't cut it as a scene break?
To put the characterisation of the assorted blockade runner crews in perspective, if Luke and Bo Duke, the Bandit, Cleetus Snow, and the Rubber Duck were spacers, they'd likely be blockade runners. These people are heavily-armed redneck outlaws with hot-rod starships.
I've compiled a reference list for the radio chatter between the assorted 'runners; I'll be posting it on my forum shortly.
Doghead Out.