Chapter 12
THE FURNACE
Standing in the center of the abandoned mine access, Jaster gazed over the area around him. The landing was cracked and scarred from both the excavations and scored with signs of a battle. Just about everywhere he looked, damaged machinery sported blackened blastpoints from the impact of blaster fire. The mine access was a wide, jagged opening, a mouth of shadows cut into the rock wall of the landing. As Jaster surveyed the area, he felt frustrated. What was he looking for?
"Is there surveillance on these entrances? Any ship records?" he asked out loud to TG-013 whom stood by the two guards.
"There are security cameras for this level and the administrator keeps a record of registered ships that deal with the syndicate in slave transportation. However, both were wiped out in the riot."
Jaster looked back at the droid. "A riot? Tell me about the riot."
"The thieves started a slave riot to distract the guards. Its believed that the riot was started in the security control room which was vandalized by the thieves and droids which were released from their restraining bolts." The droid pointed to his own restraining bolt, a round cap like object affixed to the chest of its chassis.
"Did any of the droids find their way out here?" Jaster asked with sudden excitement.
"Affirmative."
"Do you know which ones? Take me to one of them."
"I cannot," TG-013 said with a shake of its head. "They were decommissioned and destroyed."
Jaster grunted as he raced for another idea. "Well, do you still have the bodies, er I mean, left over parts?" he corrected himself. "Take me to them."
"If they haven't been scrapped yet, they should still be at the disposal depot."
"Take me there."
Jaster and his escort of the protocol droid and two Pyke sentinels boarded the speeder a second time and flew back up to the surface to a large facility with a ring of smokestacks encircled by multiple closed chambers. The mills for refining the products of spice and coaxium were contained in the closed chambers but a single roofless chamber was set in the collection. From Jaster's seat he could see the mountain of junk piled before the furnace mouth.
The speeder descended to a walkway spanning above the junk pile. With his escort still in the speeder, Jaster leapt out and started down the walkway and climbed down the stairs, descending below the wall of the chamber to the corridor behind the feeder wall. Jaster made his way through the open door frame to the foot of the junk pile. To his surprise, Jaster looked about and saw that the junk was sorted. On one side was a collection of jagged debris and on another, Jaster could make out the jumbled forms of droids.
Jaster let out a small sigh of relief that he didn't have to dig through the mountain heap of refuse. Unceremoniously jumbled together was a pile of protocol droids, astromechs and even a handful of GNK series power droids. Squatting down infront of them, he inspected the leftover droids, suddenly realizing just how over his head he really was. He knew little about computer and mechanical work.
Scratching his head, he decided to worry about that later. The conditions of the droids varied greatly. Some were clearly damaged with exposed wiring and circuitry, others were in good condition with minor dents and scrapes but were simply pulled offline. A particuler handful, however looked as if they had been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Carbon scored blastholes pocked their filthy bodies coated in dirt and grime. Jaster recognized the signs of a battle, akin to the carbon scored and blastershot machinery and scaffolding at the mine access landing where the riot had taken place.
One droid in particular was a black and white astromech. The droid's cylindrical body was completely shot up, but the domed head was intact despite extreme carbon scoring. Jaster got closer, lifting it onto its two leg struts and inspecting that the head had little to no damage. He couldn't activate the droid here, even if he did have the right tools, he wouldn't know how. Jaster grasped the head of the droid in both hands, twisting and pulling it from the body. He felt the servos freeing the movement but it wouldn't budge. Jaster released the droid's head, feeling around its domed surface for any clue on how to detach it.
Down around the rim where the head met the cylindrical body, Jaster's fingers felt along the groove, finding a catch. He pulled it free, manually unlocking the head from the body. Jaster pulled the head up to find a hollowed telescoping spine. After a quick inspection, he found the manual release and the connection for the head to the rest of the droid housed in the center of the open shaft. He wrestled to pull the stubborn plug free, banging his hand against metal innerworkings as it came undone but he didn't care. He pulled the head off of the droid and hefted it in his hands. Hopefully, this was all he needed.
Suddenly, over the clangs and whining of machinery overpowered by the roaring furnace just on the opposite side of the mountain of junk, an explosion thundered with a deafening echo in the confines of the metal walls of the chamber. Jaster looked up just in time to see the raining mass of flame sputter and fall overhead. He dove away from the pile, crashing into the wall of the chamber as the wreckage of the speeder crashed into the pile, throwing flaming debris in every direction. Jaster, dazed from hiting the wall, struggled onto his feet, wiping blood from his face from a gash on his forehead. As his vision cleared, he saw tall, lanky figure with a gaunt blue face and large yet narrow, pupilless red eyes wearing a long coat and wide brimmed hat.
"Well, well, fancy seeing you here."
Jaster recognized the chilling voice instantly, making careful note of the sleek blaster pistol aimed at him. Hovering above his shoulder was a shereical droid with a single optical sensor and outfitted with a blaster on its right side and a smoking anti-aircraft rocket launcher on its left. "Bane."
The Duros' scarred and rugged face smirked at him. "It's a smart move, checking on the busted droid memory banks."
"Seems I'm better at this than you think," Jaster said smugly. It was a lie, he struggled to believe at that moment. If he were half the bounty hunter he was meant to be, he wouldn't have ever let Bane get the drop on him.
"Don't get full of yourself, this is a move I could make in my sleep."
"And yet I'm here first. Your reputation has been exaggerated, Bane." Jaster watched as Bane's fingers flexed on the grip of one of his blasters, noticing the missing tip of his middle finger.
"Watch your mouth, boy," Bane growled. "I've been in this work since before you were even a thought."
"And even then, you were still only second best to a Fett."
Bane's red eyes sharpened as his lip curled. Not even Jaster knew where that came from. He hadn't even thought to say it. "What are you mouthing on about?" Bane snarled.
Jaster didn't back down. What was said, was said and there was nothing he could do now but stick to his guns. "Jango, clearly ten times the bounty hunter you ever were."
"Last I recall, Jango was cut down by a single Jedi." Jaster visibly flinched, his own lip curling in resentment at the mere reference of Jango's death. "I on the other hand have killed many. Now, this conversation has been pointless and annoying," he said with a shift of tone. "Time for you to hand over that droid head."
Jaster held the droid's domed head even tighter. From overhead, an arc of blue energy struck Cad Bane. With a cry, his body seized and jolted stiffly before he fell over. The droid opened fire on Jaster whom ducked behind a mass of machinery for cover, relying purely on his survival instinct without thought. The blaster fire suddenly increased as he noticed bolts flying down from the walkway above. Jaster looked up to find another figure at the edge of the walkway shooting. The silhouette briefly lighted by the muzzle flash of twin blasters. Jaster peeked around the cover of the machinery, watching as the raining blaster bolts cascaded around the maneuvering droid.
"Move it!" the voice of a woman shouted down to him. With the droid head still in hand, he scrambled over the foothills of the junk pile, careful to avoid patches of flame from the shot down speeder. Across the way, he fixed his gaze on the open door to the corridor behind the feeder wall, his target. Nothing else intruded his mind, he would not die here. He trudged on over and through the mounds of machinery and junk, occasionally encouraged by the potshots taken at him by the droid. He jumped down from the last mound, feeling his boots clang hard on the solid metal surface of the chamber floor. Sprinting to the door frame, Jaster did not turn to look back at Cad Bane's frozen, limp body sprawled on the floor. As he burst through, into the corridor, his eye spotted the feeder control console installed in the wall. He paused in thought, a scowl setting on his face as he stepped up to the controls.
"So long, Bane." A blaring siren burst with flashing red lights as his fist hit the button. The system, powerless to act against the controls sensed the breach in protocol as the floor was not cleared or the chamber door sealed, yet the massive feeder wall rumbled as pressurized pistons pushed the massive black wall toward the junk mountain in the direction of the mouth of the furnace. Jaster scrambled up the stairs, looking over the chamber's wall to see the press crawl to Cad Bane's body. Over the rumble and screech of the machinery, Jaster barely heard the woman's voice from down the walkway beckon over to him. Still engaged against the droid relentlessly firing up at her, she paid Jaster no mind as he quickly looked her over.
She wore dark fatigues with an open sleeveless jacket baring tattoos on her suntanned biceps. The woman duo wielded blaster pistols that flashed red bursts of light onto her soft, young, yet strong face marked by three hard black horizontal lines tattooed on her cheeks. Long, black untamed hair flung about past her sturdy shoulders. Over the blaster fight, and the screech and crushing of machinery, Jaster heard the quivering rumble of a repulsor engine. Overhead, an empty speeder flew towards them and abruptly hovered two feet from the edge of the walkway. "Get in!" the woman demanded as she fired a last pair of shots at the hovering droid climbing up to the walkway.
Jaster hesitated, looking around for another option, his scowl deepening as he accepted there wasn't one. He tossed the droid head into the open cab before climbing over the rail one leg after the other and jumping into the speeder. The woman was close behind, running and jumping over the rail with impressive agility into the cab of the speeder. She threw herself into the driver's seat deactivating a device plugged into an interface port, taking control of the speeder.
The droid, now hovering over the surface of the walkway opened fire again. The woman whipped her blaster pistol, aiming and firing at the droid with close precision. A smirk set on her tattooed face as she threw the speeder around. Jaster grasped onto the interior with his free hand to secure himself in his precarious seat. As the speeder began to pull away, Cad Bane burst from over the chamber walls, the propulsion of his jump jets flaring down from his ankles.
With practiced ease, the jets dissengaged and he landed on the walkway with his blaster drawn and firing at the speeder quickly disappearing in the industrial smog of Kessel's orange sky. Bane sneered as he holstered his blaster. Pinched in his grip with the finger missing the tip, was a memory card ripped from the remains of a droid- this was far from over.
