"Dagoola Shipyards, this is Blazer's Balls, here about the shipment you're expecting from Ryloth and why it's either later, or not coming, depending on how negotiations go," Leo said, lounging on the command chair like it was a couch, now that Aayla was no longer perched on him.
There was a moment of silence, then the comm spat to life and a human man appeared. "Blazer's Balls, this is Dagoola Shipyards, you do not look like a ship capable of handling fifty thousand units."
"Like I said, we're here to renegotiate our contract based on changed circumstances."
"What changed circumstances?"
"The recent destruction of your fleet and forces on Ryloth, as well as an attempt by Separatist forces to destroy our shipment on the basis of scorched earth orders given by your frelling Head of State. We don't take kindly to treachery and so the price has gone up. Would you like to continue discussing this over the comm or shall we land and continue our discussions more openly? If you don't wish the cargo, we're quite certain we can find other buyers."
This time the silence stretched a lot longer as the flight controller cut both audio and visuals.
"We're sending you a flight plan. If you deviate from it, our defenses will blow you to ash. Understand?"
"Understood. We'll come in nice and slow so we don't spook your poor gunners. I know how you get itchy trigger fingers when you see a civilian ship," Leo said, voice acid. The flight controller's face twisted in anger at the jab, but there was a hint of shame there too.
"Civilian. Right. Security will meet you at the airlock and escort you in. Watch your step. Our droids are programmed to defend us."
"See you soon," Leo said, with a savage smile and cut the connection.
"Ah, Leo, making friends everywhere you go," Aayla said with a smile.
"I carefully choose plans which don't require me to befriend slavers, when I can," Leo said with a less savage smile. "And besides, we want this conversation to take a long time, which means they need to understand that they need to sooth us and make concessions."
"That's something slavers and Separatists are famous for," Aayla countered.
"Come on, we've all been to meetings that felt like they were never going to end. We're about to have one on purpose."
"Cargo away," SIS said before Aayla could respond.
"Oh, yes, which reminds me, if everything should go horribly wrong, you should be able to get at your lightsaber." Leo held out his arm to her. "Finger against what looks like a vein, it should be keyed to open for you now."
She slid a finger along the vein until she felt a slight tug and moved her finger against it. The skin slid back easily into his arm, revealing her lightsaber, hidden inside the meat of his forearm.
"Didn't that hurt?" she asked as she closed it again.
"Local anesthetic, didn't screw with my brain, so nothing was accidentally triggered. Afterwards it was sore for a bit, but some time in a bacta tank and I was feeling right as rain."
"Thanks for trusting me with this," she said, tapping the arm he still held extended.
He smiled, "Not such a big deal. I can always change who can access it, if you double cross me."
"Only if I'm very stupid about double crossing you," Aayla countered.
"Fair enough. Shall we?" he asked, extending her an arm, which she took as if she were a debutante at a ball. That was a little ridiculous in their Black Sun outfits, but it put her hand right in position to retrieve her lightsaber, which was comforting.
They did separate when they reached the other though, waiting with SIS at the main airlock.
And they waited some more as SIS did indeed take them in nice and slow. Everyone had at least one heavy blaster pistol capable of punching through the commando droids' armor, at least if it landed a square hit. That would be tricky, given the angled design of their armor, but every person on the ship had been fighting since at least the start of the war.
They finally locked into place and Leo took the lead position, Aayla beside him, with SIS bringing up the rear, made up to look like a heavy carrier droid. The agent's swagger as he took the lead out the airlock didn't slow at all as he walked into the group of ten commando droids the Separatists had sent to escort them. A flick of his hand set two of Gobi's troops guarding the entrance to the ship. The movement was larger than when they'd practiced, but it mostly covered the instinctive reaction of the Ryloth veterans to the sight of commando droids.
Two of the commando droids remained behind as well as the others fell in around the group and led them to the command tower's one meeting room. Another flick of Leo's hand put another two soldiers outside. Two more commando droids remained with them. The remaining six joined them inside the meeting room. The holoprojector built into the table came to life, showing an Ugnaught, his short, porcine frame draped in ridiculously expensive clothes, jeweled rings on each of his fingers and a literal tiara upon his head. He was also being broadcast at somewhat larger than life size, allowing him to match the average sized Leo.
"I am Thantre Catro, Master of the Dagoola Shipyards. We had a contract and you will fulfill it."
"I'm not doing this with a projection and subject to your recording and editing. Come and speak to me, face to face and we will talk."
"You are in my control tower, under the blasters of my droids and you think to dictate terms?"
"If you want your cargo, despite your droids trying to kill my troops, yes I'll dictate whatever terms I frelling want and you can agree, or you can space me and go whistle for your frelling cargo."
"Droids!" Weapons snapped up. Gob's blaster snapped out of its holster, but Leo waved it back down. Aayla noticed, but didn't think anyone else could that he kept her in his peripheral vision and had hesitated before waving them down.
"Please. You know who I work for. You kill me and the next food shipment you get is going to be laced with Itherine. Or maybe it will just be a big box of timed explosives. No one frells with the—my employers without paying for it. Your bosses just frelled with us, so now, you have to pay for it. You can do that with a deal, or you can do it with your life."
"You won't be alive to see it."
"And if I let you push me around, my bosses will kill me in rather worse ways than you can imagine, little man. Let's get down to business. You know how this is done. Face to face, with active anti-espionage devices in place. Until then, I'll just enjoy your hospitality and let the countdown timers on my contingency plans tick."
The Ugnaught deflated slightly at that, but he was smart enough to recognize when his bluff had been called and not so proud he tried to fill it. "I will be there shortly, but I expect this meeting to be truly face-to-face, not face-to-helmet."
Leo laughed. "As soon as the countermeasures are in place, I'll be happy to show my face to you. All the better to tear out your throat with my teeth if you continue to bluster at me like I am one of your slaves."
The comm cut after a moment and Leo took the seat with its back to the door and waved Gobi and Aayla into position flanking it. The commando droids spread out around the perimeter of the room, as SIS took up position by Leo.
Leo himself kicked back, his feet coming to rest on the conference table. Most of his gear had gone through the fresher after the soaking it had got on the Prayer, but he'd left his boots out, for reasons which hadn't been clear at the time, but were now fairly obvious, as the blood and other stains on them made their own statement. Especially when contrasted with the clean metal fixtures of the room. For a moment Aayla was concerned about how neat and tidy she and the other Twi'leks looked, but they were supposed to have been rescued from the planet, not been in a pitched battle.
He waited in what appeared to be absolute calm for five minutes. Only Aayla could feel the tension under that surface, until some internal timer ticked over and his feet swung down. At the very moment that he rose to his feet the door swung open and the Ugnaught Shipyard Master flew in, literally. He sat in a gold-plated power chair, at exactly the height to be just a bit taller than Leo.
"I'm glad to see even the Black Sun understand the need for respect for their betters," he said as he floated past the guards and to the other side of the room.
Leo laughed. "Seriously? You were just waiting out there for me to stand up so you could do that? Frelling political status games. Secure the room folks." There were another few moments as the Twi'leks and droids searched the room and began activating a wide array of anti-recording and anti-surveillance devices. At long last everyone signaled they were done, including the commando droids who went last, despite being the most numerous and most familiar with the area. Another little status game.
"Good. Now we can talk freely. You reference the Black Sun again outside a secure room and I'll break your chair and both your legs and we'll see how frelling tall you are then, understand?"
"Watch your tongue, criminal, or I'll have my droids cut it out and send it to your masters on Mustafar."
"Oh, no, you, like half the galaxy know that some of the Black Sun leadership is on Mustafar! However will I cope with this incredibly impressive revelation? Truly you have put me in my place, Serl Sig."
The Shipyard Master actually stood up in his floating chair and stomped his foot, "I am Thantre Catro!"
"Sure you are. Are we done playing status games now?"
The Ugnaught visibly got himself back under control and sat back down, forcing a toothy smile to his porcine face. "All of life is a game," he said.
Aayla could hear the smile in Leo's voice as he responded. "True," he tapped the top of SIS's chassis and slid a hand into the panel which opened and his hand came out with a vibro-knife. The commando droids weapons snapped up towards him, but Leo made no movement towards the Ugnaught, instead he walked towards the nearest droid. "And this is how we play in the Black Sun," he concluded, taking off its head in a single strike, then picked it up and rolled it down the table to the other man. "Well actually," he took a step to the other side and struck three times in quick succession, taking the left hand, right arm and head off the other commando droid and slammed the knife up to its hilt into the table in front of him, catching the body as it fell and tossing it between the two of them. "That's how we play in the Black Sun."
"Are you trying to intimidate me, or audition for a job on one of our slave salvage teams? Seeing as they're only here to protect me, not themselves, it's hardly impressive to dismember one."
Leo smiled, and slid the knife back into its sheath. "Whatever you say, Serl."
The humor drained off the Ugnaught features. "Take off your helmet."
"Ah, yes, face-to-face. Well, face-to-floating-face, at least. Still, I suppose that's better than groin to face as it usually is with a porker," Leo said with a nasty smile, which was visible as his helmet came off and he set it on the table. The slur, referencing the Ugnaught's distinctly porcine appearance didn't have any visible effect on the other man.
"Ah, mindless aggression with a dash of suggested sexuality, exactly what I'd expect from a breeder," he countered. The slur referenced the ubiquity of humans in the galaxy.
They continued in that vein for a painfully long time. Aayla liked to think of herself as a woman of the galaxy and she was certainly well aware of most of the slurs for Twi'leks in most common languages, but between Leo and Thantre (or Serl, she still wasn't sure what that was about) they went back and forth in half-a-dozen different languages, several of which she didn't know, but the bits she could understand were painfully, graphically obscene. Even in the languages she didn't know their tone made it clear that progress was not being made. As they were trying to buy time, that was just fine.
However, eventually the Ugnaught held up a hand, "Enough of this. You show up without my slaves, without any warning and without any respect! I demand that you explain yourself!"
That prompted a lengthy discussion of who got to make demands of the Black Sun (no one) and who didn't (the Ugnaught, and everyone else), but eventually they were back on topic.
"Enough of this!" Thantre finally bellowed. "Perhaps I should just speak to your master directly!"
"Feel free to give the Pitmaster a call," Leo countered. "I'm sure he's just waiting for a call from the asshole who sent him into a deathtrap and he definitely won't reject it out of hand."
"Then you call him!" Thantre yelled.
"You don't give me orders and I'm not nearly stupid enough to give you a signal you can try to trace to find where he's taken the slaves. Either we work out a deal, or you get nothing."
"Fine. But the Confederacy won't forget this and neither will I!"
"Don't worry, the Black Sun won't forget your bombers blowing our operation to dust because Count Dooku is a sore loser! And the Pitmaster definitely won't forget the two fighters we lost keeping those bombers off our ship long enough to make it out of the system!"
"Let's talk terms," the Ugnaught said through gritted teeth.
"Very well. There's the lost ships, damage to others, lost people and the loss of all our operations on Ryloth. All of that can be made good with sufficient payment. Ships, slaves, weapons and spice preferred, but we'll take cash. Call it a billion credits. Ten percent discount for warships, slaves, weapons and spice. We do not accept battle droids as payment."
The Shipyard Master stared at Leo for a long moment, his mouth opened twice, then snapped shut. "You're out of your frelling mind!" he said, when he could speak.
"Present value of the destroyed operations on Ryloth was high. Ship repairs or replacements are difficult given the war and the Black Sun places a high value on its people. I can walk you through the numbers if you like."
That led to an even longer discussion of the deliberately confusing numbers that SIS provided and extensive arguments about the information Leo refused to share about Black Sun operations on Ryloth. Finally they reached a number, but Thantre said he'd need to get the funds from the Confederacy, as he didn't have them on hand.
"That's fine. We're in no rush, but every day there's an additional fifty thousand credits added to the charge. Costs of keeping your slaves alive."
"I could make a down payment. I need those slaves here, as soon as possible," the Ugnaught explained.
"I don't care. After last time, you're lucky we aren't demanding full payment in advance. No, when your payment is ready, we'll bring them in. Until then, dream on."
"I'll need to contact my superiors."
"Before you do that, there's one additional point that needs to be addressed. We've come up with amounts to deal with the damage caused to the Black Sun, but there's also the matter of the insult to the Black Sun. That also must be made right."
"Insult?"
"You double crossed us. No one does that."
"Lots of people do that!"
"And then they die. Are you volunteering for that method of making amends?"
"There are limits, pirate. If I have to, I can bring up locals."
"You have twenty," Leo glanced at the pile of droid parts in the middle of the table, "well, eighteen commando droids to your name and a defense net that can't target the planet. The planetary military is small, but it's a lot larger than that."
"I can get assistance if I need—"
"The nearest Separatist fleet is two days away and is engaged in protecting major operations. If you try to get a fleet to come back here to invade a Separatist world you'll be laughed off the call. They don't have the forces to spare and don't want to have to cover it up."
"What do you want?"
"Well, we might be persuaded to believe it was Tambor's fault. But I hear the Republic captured him."
"Then kill him. Sounds like a win-win to me."
"Where we do all the work and take all the heat and you get to make sure your captured boy doesn't sing? I'll have some of what you're drinking, after I check it for poisons. Or hallucinogens."
"What else do you want then?"
"An apology from Count Dooku would be sufficient," Leo said, his tone making it clear this was an initial and ridiculous demand.
"The Count will have to sign off on the payments anyway. Let's see what he has to say about that," the Ugnaught said, typing a few commands into his chair. The commando droids began removing their anti-communications equipment. After a moment, Leo signaled for his own people to do the same, which brought them back in touch with the guards they'd left behind who were simply waiting for alarms to go off so they could start shooting.
Leo got to his feet and shifted slightly, coming to a species of attention and, coincidentally, standing between the holo-comm built into the table and Aayla. It wasn't likely that Count Dooku would recognize Aayla, but it was certainly possible, depending on how bit a field it took readings from. Given this was clearly a conference room, it was probably intended to cover most of the room. With his back to her, Aayla could see the holdout blaster that had appeared, somehow, in Leo's right hand, clasped behind his back.
Then they waited while the Ugnaught slowly worked his way through the Count's flunkies until the Sith Lord suddenly appeared on the comm.
"What is it?"
"My lord, the Black Sun is attempting to renegotiate the deal for the Twi'lek slaves. They insist upon an apology from you for the attack on their ship."
Aayla focused her mind on the Force as Count Dooku turned his attention on Leo. Yoda's former apprentice was far stronger than she, but the distance would help counterbalance that. If he just chose to break Leo's neck, rather than talk, she could stop him.
"Is that right?"
"It is. We lost ships and men to your petty revenge. We will be compensated and the insult will be—"
She felt the Force gather around Leo's throat, but it was not killing power, not yet anyway. Leo lifted off the ground as a choked gasp cut off his words and air stopped reaching his lungs. Leo's hand came out, blaster pointed directly at the table (prompting raised weapons from the commando droids and therefore by Aayla and Gobi as well), only to not fire. The Force, obedient to Dooku's will twisted around Leo's hand and arm, freezing it, then bending it, despite the best the agent's muscles could do, toward his own head.
"Do accept my deepest condolences for the unavoidable losses suffered during this unfortunate conflict," Dooku said, very slowly, as Leo choked.
Gobi twitched, but Aayla moved slightly and he stopped. Leo's free hand, in both senses of the word free, was still open and relaxed. Moreover SIS hadn't moved. They were trusting her to act if he was going to die and him to handle the situation otherwise. "Is that a sufficient apology, or would you like a more elaborate one? Let no one say a Count of Serreno does not abide by the rules of courtesy," his slow speech was clearly intended to draw out Leo's suffering, as he ignored the agent's helpless nodding until he'd finished and then turned back to the Ugnaught, without releasing Leo. "Get your shipyards working again. Cost is no concern of mine."
And the communication cut before Thantre could finish agreeing to obey his lord.
Leo dropped to the ground, knees failing and only barely kept from accidentally shooting himself as his arm, suddenly back under his control, flew away from his head with such force that his holdout blaster skipped across the room. Thantre punched another few commands on his floating chair and one of the commando droids broke formation to return the blaster to him with elaborate apologies.
"Get the protections back up!" Leo snapped, doing a good impression of a man on the verge of panic, though he was actually quite smug.
A moment later when they did, he rose slowly and had to catch himself on Aayla's shoulders. The lightsaber she felt pressed into her hand was hidden from the sensors by the same jamming equipment which prevented anyone from listening in.
"I need a visit to the refresher, then we can finish our discussion," Leo said, shaking as his hand never left Aayla's shoulder. He mouthed the words 'one minute,' at her.
"Of course, my dear fellow. You've had a terrible fright. Show him to the refresher," Thantre ordered a pair of the commando droids, leaving two behind to guard him. Thantre was clearly more than happy to let Leo ruminate on what had just happened.
SIS trundled along behind the commando droids, the very picture of a droid obediently following orders which no longer applied, but had never been countermanded.
Aayla counted silently, fingers drumming on her thigh in a pattern Gobi recognized as a countdown and then moved, Force pulling the little Ugnaught from his command chair and put him down with the same technique she'd used to sedate Leo. At the same moment, Gobi flicked the droid popper off his belt and towards the droids. They went down in a burst of sparks as the EMP fried them. Outside the jammers, Gobi's soldiers heard "Sapphire," and dropped their own droid poppers. Until activated, the EMP grenades didn't give off any detectable signals, unlike standard explosives (which they also carried some of), blasters and lightsabers.
The refresher for the command tower was directly adjacent to the control room where the techs spent their days, on the opposite side of the large room from their singular meeting/communications room. The commando droids were programmed well enough to take Leo through the parallel corridor, rather than through the command room itself, but that didn't help when SIS without any visible signal from Leo grabbed the two commando droids which were escorting them, one hand on each head, another on the shoulders and quite casually pulled their heads off and activated the jamming field onboard the Balls, jamming all external communication, though the wires running from the tower to the slave pens still worked. At the same moment Leo broke for the open door and was sprinting through the command room, even as SIS moved to support him, shields flashing to life and weapon ports opening.
The techs followed Separatist protocol and were wearing uniforms, unlike their boss, but none of them had fired a shot since basic training. The few who actually had their blasters on their belts had the holster snapped shut. There were a dozen holstered blasters on top of screens, or sitting on desks where techs had placed them after sitting down to keep them from digging into their legs. Only three of the techs even looked up as Leo sprinted through, heading for the office, slicing spike in hand. One tried to get in his way, but Leo just dodged around her and kept moving. She was still scrambling to free her blaster as SIS's shot took her in the back. That started alarms all over the place and the commando droids in the corners of the room snapped to attention, weapons rising and then fell as the blasters inside SIS's chassis began continual firing.
The two in front of the Shipyard Master's office however were operating under different instructions than the rest and were already in cover, firing as Leo charged forward. Their inability to shift position away from the door trapped them, however for the droid popper he lobbed as he rolled into a piece of cover. The cover was a desk with a very startled tech, who saw him, reached for a weapon and got shot in the face by a blaster which seemed to appear from nowhere. Leo was moving out of cover even as SIS reached the command port she needed access to and plugged in. The troops they'd left behind at the ship were already moving towards the tech quarters, securing the off duty techs with a combination of blaster fire, bravado and cursing.
Aayla, Gobi and the two Twi'leks outside entered the command room even as Leo stuck his head out from cover and slipped over to the office door and slammed the spike into place.
It didn't open.
"Aayla!" Leo called as he retreated and joined the Twi'leks in forcing the on-duty techs away from their stations.
"Problem," SIS said even as Aayla's lightsaber flared to life and moved towards the door. "There's someone in his office. They've got overrides for some systems. Crushers and external defenses are still live. The battle is already occurring down there, they just didn't set off the tower alarms for some reason."
"Didn't want to let the Black Sun know there's trouble—"
Aayla's lightsaber made it three inches into the door than stopped as it impacted a ray shield, which simply should not have been there. "Ray shielded. I'll try the wall."
"Get me the Ugnaught," Leo snapped to one of the Twi'leks. "Can you get me a comm channel to whoever's in there?" the Twi'lek moved off, her partner moving with her.
Before SIS could answer, one of the viewscreens sprang to life, revealing a female Ugnaught, just as gaudily dressed and outfitted as the man they'd already captured. "Squish-squish go the stupid big folk under my crushers. Stupid rebels think they can take over my station. I still have control over the defenses. They'll fry anyone who tries to come in. You can still run, but no one gets in to help you steal my slaves!"
"Wall's ray shielded too. I need to get down there," Aayla said, then stopped. The command tower had no access to the shipyards themselves. Unless she turned herself into pure electricity, that simply wasn't an option so long as the defenses remained live.
"Congratulations, you can reduce our profit margin. I can execute your…" Leo paused for a moment, trying to read the relationship and took a guess, "brother and your techs and blow this entire tower to ash before I leave. Shall we negotiate, or shall I leave a smoking heap where there was once your kingdom as a warning to everyone else not to frell with the Black Sun?"
She laughed, "Stupid big folk thinks I didn't see the Jedi? Thinks I don't know they don't work for Black Sun? Thinks I don't know they don't execute prisoners? You have no leverage, stupid."
"War makes for strange bedfellows. As for her ethics…Jedi, we're still missing four commandos. Make sure they aren't causing problems," Leo said, with a smile.
She gave him a look. This was very definitely a test of trust. If he killed these people in cold blood, then there would have to be consequences, but she didn't think that was what he would do. And she felt movement in the Force, threat to the soldier who'd gone to get the Ugnaught. She moved away, fast.
The threat was the remaining commando droids trying to rescue their master, or erstwhile master, she wasn't sure which at this point. The Twi'lek resistance fighter had actually seen them coming, but when he took cover in the conference room all the equipment to prevent eavesdropping had prevented anyone from hearing his screaming for help, or shots. It also kept them from hearing Aayla coming up behind them, which made all four easy prey, but not before they took down the Twi'lek as he tried to make a break for it. She returned a moment later, Ugnaught in her arms and the soldier's body over her shoulder. She laid the man down to the mourning of his friends and a darkening of the mood in the command center.
"Shit. Jedi, we're also missing two techs. Do make sure they aren't interfering with our plans," Leo said. That was a flat lie. She'd heard the count which confirmed they had all the techs, but she nodded and started to move away.
"Wait!" the Ugnaught woman yelled on the screen. "Don't leave him with them."
"So we do have something to discuss?" Leo asked.
"What do you offer?" she asked as Aayla paused.
"We want the station and the slaves. Transfer control of your defenses and your bots."
"And what do we get?"
Leo glanced at Aayla, "We'll hand you over to the Jedi. No more casualties."
"Not good enough. We want to go free."
"Why? So Dooku can choke the life out of you for losing the shipyards?" Aayla asked. "Honestly, you're better off in Republic custody."
"No. we go free. There are four ships that are complete enough for hyperspace flight. We'll take all of them and everything we can carry. The techs get in one, go home. We take the other three. Leave the war behind. Live good on some Wild Space world. That's the deal!"
"Bah," Leo waved his hand. "We can't trust you to release control once you're on the ship and you won't trust us not to shoot you the moment you release control. There's no way this will work!"
Aayla frowned slightly, but the Ugnaught woman saw the way out he'd left. "But we both trust the Jedi. I shut down my crushers now. When we get to the ships, I'll pass over those control codes and you let me get on those ships and make the jump to hyperspace. But only the Jedi takes us to the ships and the Jedi gets the codes. None of you thugs!"
Leo nodded. There was the double cross. She'd give them fake codes. That was fine. He didn't actually need the codes, though they would have made things a lot easier. Leo looked at Aayla. She nodded. "Done."
"Crushers are shutting down."
"I'll meet you at the ships. Bring my brother. And his chair!" the woman said before cutting the comms.
Aayla moved out with the prisoners. At the same time SIS finally managed to get the internal systems to work with the Spaceways secret comms net and make direct contact with the Spaceways agents throughout the slave quarters and they began moving the slaves into position for extraction and she got Cale moving her way in. Separating out the Spaceways agent in the control tower was the work of a moment, though transferring her to the slave area was a bit tricky, especially with the defenses not under their control.
The exchange took a while, requiring as it did the use of a shuttle, but it was done before Cale reached the perimeter that the automated defenses would now rake with fire, as the Ugnaught had locked them onto the highest state of alert. The woman passed over a code disc and boarded the ship eagerly, along with a shocking amount of loot. A part of Aayla wanted to strike down the slaver, but she'd made a deal, and she was fairly sure there was a hitch in there somewhere. Still, as she saw them pull away some part of her feared that whatever they did next would be her fault. The rest knew that was nonsense, but still…
She returned to the command center and passed SIS the codes that had been given to her. "I can't believe we're letting them get away," Gobi said, before Aayla could say anything herself.
"Letting them get away? Don't be silly. We got confirmation that the navigation overrides were installed on all the ships, right?" he asked SIS as he continued to work on the encryption locking them out of the defense systems.
"Of course. How else would I have flown all the slaves out of here on them?" SIS said.
"It's a shame they're too clever for us to give them a long hyperspace trip to figure out how to override our override," Leo muttered. "I'd have preferred prisoners and their treasure would have been a nice recompense for these poor folks."
"You sent another Separatist ship into a star?" Aayla asked with a smile.
"Don't be silly. We sent four additional Separatist ships into a star," SIS corrected her. "Cale's here."
"All right, here goes," Leo said as he shut down the entire power grid long enough for Cale's massive cargo carrier to get in. That wasn't as easy as it sounded, as it was designed not to do that and Leo only did it in the sense that he asked SIS too, then pushed the button once it was ready. As they sat in the increasingly cold, dark room, Aayla asked the obvious question and got the obvious answer. The message finally came in through the Balls.
The slaves had boarded the ship and (after testing with a shuttle to confirm the defenses still let ships out) Cale began pulling out. The assault team reboarded the Balls, Leo carrying the various commando droid heads he'd spent much of the blackout connecting and was still attempting to crack the encryption on their systems.
"Don't you want to use the defenses to destroy the place?" Aayla asked. "We can't just leave it to be reclaimed by the Separatists and trying to blow this place up with one freighter is going to take forever.
Leo frowned. "Just for laughs, let's see what happens if we use the code she gave us."
Almost no one was surprised when the turrets swiveled around and began pouring fire into the superstructure of the shipyards, which began to come apart. The Ugnaught had been thorough. The power to the laser batteries was the very last thing to be fired upon. If they'd plugged in those codes while still on the station they'd have been extraordinarily dead.
"If someone's going to try to double cross you, leave an opening you can control," Leo said, as if quoting from something.
"This has been a very satisfactory operation," Aayla said. "Though I am sorry about Illith," she added to Gobi.
"He was a good soldier. This is a good thing to die for. Especially now that I know that those responsible died as well."