CHAPTER 14

AN ALLY

Jaster cursed as he punched the interior of the speeder.

"What's your problem?" the woman called back over the sound of the repulsor engines.

"Bane escaped, Jaster grunted as he swept his hair plastered to his forehead with blood.

"Should have tried to kill him in a more definite way, like with a blaster instead of the trash compactor."

"I would have, if I had one," Jaster grumbled.

"That's good to know," the woman smirked.

Jaster eyed her closely, muttering under his breath for saying too much. "Who are you?"

"Just call me Sin. What's with the droid?"

Jaster frowned. "Why should I tell you?"

"Judging by the way that droid head looks like it was torn off, you need someone that can work with machines."

"And that's you?" Jaster said skeptically.

"See this?" Jaster looked over her shoulder to see her pointing to the device plugged into the speeder's interface. "An auto-pilot interface linked to my gauntlet. I put it together myself."

Jaster was short on options. She was right, what he had in mind he had neither the know how or the equipment necessary to accomplish it at his disposal. But he couldn't trust her. Not that she personally gave him any reason not to – he just didn't trust anyone. That's how he had lived for the past decade since everyone before had either abandoned him or stabbed him in the back. She was an asset to use to his advantage, nothing more. "Fair enough."

"So what's with the droid? Sin repeated.

"Are you on the Beckett job?"

"I assumed both you and Cad are."

"The mine's security feeds and records were wiped during the heist. Some droids found their way onto the landing pad for Beckett's ship."

"So you're going to use the droid's visual receptor to ID the ship and find Beckett," she surmised. Jaster hesitated, deciding that letting her still think Beckett was the target was advantageous for when he would ditch her. "Not bad."

"Can you do it?" he asked.

"Yes but I will need access to an analysis system computer. Probably wont find one here on Kessel."

"They won't have one here?"

"They might've but you said their computers were junked during the heist."

"We need to get to my ship then," Jaster said. He gave brief direction, causing Sin to pull back on the yoke and climb the speeder out of the mine. As they approached the tower of the bunker on the edge of the excavation site, they circled behind to the four landing pads. Jaster peered over the edge of the open cab at the pad where Slave 1 rested. At the foot of the ramp stood two Pyke sentinels. "We got company," he shouted over the speeder's engine. They touched down on the vacant pad next to Slave 1, blowing dust up around them. Jaster leapt out, holding the dome droid head.

The Sentinels approached, voicing stern phrases in their alien tongue as they leveled their blaster rifles. Sin stepped out from behind Jaster with blasters already drawn and fired. The precise red bolt struck the guard center mass, knocking him back with impressive stopping power for a blaster pistol equal only to his confiscated Westar 34s. She snapped her aim to the second guard and shot it down. Jaster stood in awe as the woman stepped past, throwing a smirk his direction. She was good and definitely someone he needed to keep an eye on.

"Security's not going to like that," he muttered. He ran up to Slave 1's ramp and approached the hatch controls. A foreign device was attached covering the entire console with a blinking red light. Jaster pressed buttons randomly but there was no change and the entry to Slave 1 remained sealed. "Feirfek!" he growled.

"What now?" Sin asked.

"I'm locked out of my damn ship."

She stepped up to the console, running her tipless gloved fingers over the edges and surface of the device. "Damn, this is pretty sleek tech," she admired. "It's a remote lockout there's no way for me to interface with it from here, we'd have to find the central lock transmitter. Unless you have a secondary entrance to this thing," she added with a look over her shoulder.

"Airlock is at the base of the ship. Can't get to it while its landed."

"Talk about a design flaw," she quipped.

Jaster scowled at her. He agreed, but that was still his ship that she was knocking. He shook it off, focusing on the matter at hand. "What are the chances your emitter is up there?" he asked and nodded up at control tower extending from the bunker.

"Let's go and see," she replied, walking past him grasping her holstered blaster pistols. For a brief moment, he caught a glimpse of the sway of her hips before shaking his head clear. Stay on the job, he thought to himself.

The door to the bunker buzzed open and three more Pyke Sentinels emerged firing their blasters down the walk way. Sin spun to the side and dropped to a knee as she drew her blasters and fired the guards struggled to navigate their lines of fire on the crowded walkway. Sin shot one down that tumbled off the walkway to the rocky ground below. Sin ducked and rolled aside to avoid the bolts zipping past her by mere inches before both remaining guards were suddenly shot down. Jaster stood at the corner of the walkway shooting with a discarded blaster rifle from one of a dispatched sentinel.

"Go," he motioned with the leveled blaster for Sin to advance, catching slight hesitation and suspicion in her dark blue eyes. Jaster followed from behind as they approached the open door.

She entered first with Jaster close behind. More sentinels were set surrounding the lift shaft in the center of the bunker. Jaster and Sin shot quickly attempting to dominate the fire fight. Blaster bolts of red concentrated energy blazed across the bunker. Sin found crates for cover from where she would pick her shots dropping guards as they charged at them.

Jaster pressed forward, drawing on deeply rooted tactical training as he moved and fired with the clunky blaster rifle. He rounded the lift shaft and two sentinels spun in response. Jaster dropped the first with a center mass shot but the second at close distance managed to let off a shot. Jaster let out a cry and dropped to a knee from the punch of the blast glancing his side. Sin jumped from her cover and shot down the remaining guard with a precise pair to the head.

She looked down at Jaster, still grunting from the pain of the bolt's impact, a new burn hole in his cape exposing a small blast point on his armor underneath. He stood up clutching his side, still grumbling curses. "Pretty resilient," Sin said.

"Its nothing, lets go." They moved into the lift and pressed the control to go up. The door closed and they felt the pod shoot up the shaft.

"Remember, they're no good to us dead," Sin said as she checked the power cell level on her blasters.

"Leave one alive to talk, got it," Jaster replied.

"Just make sure its someone we can actually understand," she added with a grin. Jaster glanced at her. She had an energy about her he didn't quite understand. She seemed to enjoy it all as if the running and gunning was fun to her. He was annoyed by it. All of this stopped being fun the day Jango died. But it wasn't a normal annoyance like what he had felt before, this was foreign to him.

The doors to the lift opened and Jaster found himself faced by another sentinel. Sin shot it down, giving Jaster space to engage. Both were extra careful, picking their shots but still dropping their targets with precision. In the close quarters of the control tower, Jaster charged up on a guard, kicking in the midriff before slamming the butt of the rifle down on the keeled over form. Jaster scanned about the room down the iron sights of the blaster rifle and found the form of a figure a different shape and size from the rest of the guards.

The alien had a thin frame and a small sick green skinned face. The Pyke leveled a long thin blaster pistol and fired at Jaster with haphazard aim. Jaster dodged the blaster fire and vaulted over a control terminal, tackling the Pyke to the ground. As abruptly as it had started, the blaster fire died away. Jaster stood over the Pyke, quivering under the muzzle of the blaster rifle. Acidic yellow saliva dripped from the spouts on her face.

"The lock on my ship, how do I get it off?" Jaster growled.

"W-what?" Gyoot Soa stammered, shielding her head from the blaster.

"The remote lock! Tell me how to get rid of it!"

"I-I don't know." The saliva dripped more intensely.

"Can't do it from here," Sintas called out from a terminal, the blue glow of the screen scrolling on her face. "The central lock transmitter is somewhere else."

Jaster turned back to Gyoot. "You know what she's talking about? Where is it?"

Gyoot shook her head. "Its not ours."

"What do you mean its not yours? Who's is it?"

"Crimson Dawn's Mandalorian," she stammered. The saliva dripped faster than before.

Jaster glared at the Pyke. "Hos. Where is he?"

Gyoot winced and clamped her lips together.

"Where is he? Talk!" Jaster growled setting the blaster's muzzle on the Pyke's knee cap. The saliva now pooled on the floor. Jaster's finger wrapped around the trigger with only a mere inch of pull left required to fire.

"I got it," Sin called out from behind, her eyes still on the screen of the terminal. "The Mandalorian has a ship at landing site 0-6. It looks like a speeder left here an hour and half ago for the site. It's gotta be him," she shrugged. The Pyke stared at Jaster with apprehension in her glowing violet eyes. He suddenly felt became very aware that his finger was still on the trigger. In his mind a chilling voice whispered in his ear, a voice from his past - her voice. Do it, Boba. Jaster could almost picture the pale gaunt face, her thin black lips inching close to his ear. Jaster redirected his aim.

Sin felt a tiny twitch of her eye from the sound of the blaster shot. The shot itself was not what caused her to flinch, killing was nothing new. It was the motive of the kill.

Jaster turned and started for the lift in the center of the control room. "Let's go."

"Did you have to kill her?" Sin asked.

"The dead don't talk."