Chapter one: the ShadowHawk

"Blastoh patogga, Grusk, where in the nine pits did we jump to?" Shouted the slightly scruffy-looking human, as he limped into the freighter's bridge.

"You sssaid we needed to jump anywhere, Tyler, ssso I jumped here. According to the chartsss, it'sss the Torgan sssyssstem." Replied the Trandoshan seated in the main pilot's chair.

"A black hole system??? It's a binary system, we could have been sucked in, depending on which star we were facing when we hopped out of the jump!"

"Yesss, the Imperialsss would have to be crazy to follow us here, no?"

"Yes, and so would WE! Next time, Grusk, I program the jump!"

"That'd be a little hard to do, Cap'n, " said the ships engineer, Nima Ryndor, an attractive human female. "Since you insisted that you would be in the gunnery chair, shooting those Tie's off our bow."

Tyler fumed for a second, then conceded, "Point. Let's see where we can jump to from here, before we rendezvous with the Alliance fleet, we still have a contract to fulfill;" he said, as the rest of the crew chimed in on Tyler's pet phrase, "No Contract, No Credits."

"Hrmmm, Cap'n, I found sssomething on sssensssorsss, looksss like a ship."

"Imperials?"

"Not sssure, large ship, it ssseemsss to be derelect, and caught in the gravatic 'sssweet ssspot' between the ssstarsss."

"Damn, you're right, Grusk, it looks like it's circling the umbilicus right at the gravatic balance point between the black hole and it's binary white dwarf." Tyler replied, while checking it out on sensors. No signals coming from the ship, and there's no rescue or salvage ships in sight." He turned to the others. "What do you think, guys? It's a little close to the singularity, but we could try to use the dwarf's gravity to edge us away. Salvage, anyone?" He looked back to his crew.

"I am in." Grusk said, always eager to find something new.

"Well, you'll need me, regardless, Tyler. That could be a smuggler base, an old Imperial trap, or just a derelect ship, but in any of those cases, you'll need a good mechanic to haul your space-happy brain back to the ship when your plans inevitably go wrong."

"Hey, my plans never go wrong, reality fails to keep up with me, that's all."

The vaguely saucer-shaped craft came in from the far side of the white dwarf, skimming the star's corona as they slowly adjusted the ship's systems to the varying gravity fields of the twin stars. A near constant plume of plasma, super-heated gasses, and raw nuclear forces connected the two stellar bodies, spiraling out from the white dwarf, to be sucked into the event horizon of the black hole. The freighter carefully followed the trail of power down, to where a large, visibly damaged vessel orbited the plume, trapped between the gravity fields of the two stars, hanging by the dwarfs gravity and it's own momentum.

"Jabba's jowls, Tyler, what kind of ship is THAT?"

"It looks kind of familiar, I've seen one somewhere.I got it! It's an old Dreadnaught class ship, they were phased out right after the Clone Wars."

"You mean to tell usss that that thing's been caught there for nearly twenty yearsss?" Grusk asked, disbelief in his raspy voice.

"Weirder things have happened, pal. If that ship came in at just the right angle, at near-light-speed, it could have been caught in the white dwarf's gravity well, slingshot around towards the black hole, and been pulled back to the dwarf just in time to achieve a sort of balance point, like we're seeing here."

"But for twenty years?"

"Hey, if we are the first ones here, think of all the supplies we can sell to the Alliance. Early E-11 blasters, power packs, maybe even clone armor, to be re-painted and resold to rebel Spec forces troops! Medical Supplies, stuff like that! We have a treasure trove here, let's get what we can!"

"Ah, creditsss."

"Yeah, enough to get Ploovo Two-for-one off our backs."

"Oooh, this'd really torque daddy off; first, his little girl runs off to be a smuggler, then she ends up supplying weapons and gear to the Rebel Alliance." said Nima, thinking of just how many shades of red the Moff would turn when he found out. "From old Imperial sources, yet."

Tyler rolled his eyes and brought the ship in, matching speed and trajectory with the ancient Dreadnaught. Tractor beams and magnetic grapplers brought the freighter closer to the larger ship, and a few buttons thrown on the freighters control panel extended an airlock juncture to the airlocks on the Dreadnaught.

"Okay, everyone, suit-up, full EVA, I don't want any accidents while onboard, this rust-bucket took one hell of a pounding, so who knows what kind of condition the insides are gonna be like."

Shortly, the crewmates floated down the short tube to the other ship, as the freighter's airlock cycled shut behind them. Tyler looked at the dreadnaught's airlock, and then turned to Nima.

"Think you can patch some of our power to this door, get it open for us?"

"No sweat, slim, we'll be in there faster than you can finish off a bottle of Corelian whisky."

".Okay then." Again, with the slim comment. Just because a guy's a little on the lanky side.

With an inaudible hiss of escaping atmosphere, the door slid open, pushing the crew back a meter, before they could grab safeties in the tube. Nima removed the power-shunt she'd rigged, and the three entered a darkened hallway.

"Light, everyone. No power, and this thing's been floating here so long, even the emergency power's gone dead. Unless there's a breach in the ALL the walls, some of the rooms and corridors will have atmosphere, so be prepared, but remember that the air is stale, and possibly tainted, so everyone keep your helmets on."

"A rookie, I am not, Tyler."

"He was talking to me, Grusk, not you." Nima interjected

The Trandoshan pried open a turbolift portal, and the smugglers slowly floated down the shaft. Lack of artificial gravity did come in handy at times, Tyler thought. Using the shaft as a shortcut, they soon made their way to the main engine room, where the primary power plant sat, dead. Nima quickly began checking the ion/fusion plant systems.

"Any chance of getting that beast back online, so we can get around easier in this heap?"

"Not a chance, Tyler. I'm surprised this thing didn't just detonate, and blow this pile of scrap to kingdom come. We're gonna have to rely on the portable unit I brought, and be glad that no power means no gravity limits to what we can haul back. All we'll have to worry about will be size, not weight."

"Well, there'sss sssome sssmall favorsss." Grusk said over the comlink. Over the next six or so hours, the crew proceeded to cycle open doors, check what they could find, rummaging through equipment lockers and frozen bodies for usable items before hauling equipment back to their ship's cargo bay whenever there became too much to carry. Space-frozen foodstuffs, weapons and power packs, technical gear.all went back to the modified freighter.

"What's this place?" Tyler asked, tired of the rapid monotony of the trip.

"Medical Bay, I think. We'll know as soon as the door cycles." Atmosphere jetted out into the void, and Grusk rasped, "Tyler, we've hit the jackpot."

"Let's take a look and see."

Loose medical gear floated around the room, along with a 2-1B class droid, and Nima gave a low whistle at something near the back of the room. Tyler and Grusk busied themselves with rummaging through the nearer medical supply cabinets, stuffing cargo-bags with items that might still be usable. No telling how being flash-frozen would affect certain drugs and chemical compounds, but syntheflesh and other items should be okay.

"Tyler."

"Yeah, what?"

"There's a full Bacta tank back here, plus reserves." Nima winced as Tyler whooped over the comlink, and the captain quickly 'swam' into the back to join the engineer.

"Nima, you just made us, rich, girl!"

"Er, Tyler, there's someone in there."

"HUH??!?" Tyler peered past her, into the amber-colored frozen gel. Just as she mentioned, a body floated in the solidified bacta. "Crap, and we've got no time to just chip him out here. We'll just have to take the whole thing, and chip him out back at the ship, before the bacta melts and he ruins the batch."

A little work with a vibro-blade and a hydrospanner, and the smugglers were able to free the trio of tanks and haul them out through the rent in the corridor outside, to the cargo bay of their ship. Soon, they were prepared to leave.

Tyler and Nima both worked together to place the shaped charges that would remove the evidence that they were ever there, tipping the dreadnaught out of the gravatic anomaly and giving the freighter the needed extra thrust they might just need to avoid slipping down into the gravity-well of the singularity, themselves. A muted thud rang throughout the hull as they were pushed away from the derelect, and Tyler toggled the thrusters, soaring back towards the visible of the two stars. Once again, he skimmed the outer atmosphere of the star, using its gravity to slingshot them into deep space, hurtling through the system towards the starry void.

"Well, now that the Hoth base is gone, where do we meet the rebels,
Grusk?"

"Anoath, according to Commander Organa. After we rendezvous there, we'll receive ordersss on where the main rebel bassse will be."

Tyler shrugged, wondering to himself why they didn't just head back to the Tierfon Base, and unload the goods there, but he realized that they might get a better price dealing with the commander of the former Hoth base. Major Thomen of the Tierfon Base was a bit of a prick, in Tyler's opinion. Instead of saying any of that out loud, he just calculated the next two jumps that would bring them to the Anoath system. That done, as the stars spiked into the swirling mess of hyperspace, Tyler walked back to the galley and prepped a meal for himself. After relaxing and enjoying his meal, he stretched and told the others to get some tools and join him in the cargo bay.

Standing there with a percussion hammer in one hand, a vibro-blade in the other, and a bucket-like container by his side, Tyler shrugged and reminded the others "Hey, we've got to get this dead Imperial out of the goods, before he thaws out and contaminates the bacta."

Nima, who had been checking the other items, walked over to help out. As she climbed a stepladder to hand a lead for the gravity winch to Tyler, a unit clipped to her belt beeped.

"Nima, turn that scanner off, the G-winch is going to futz it up."

"Tyler, that wasn't the G-winch. there's some kind of active energy source inside the bacta tank." She began actively running the scanner along the scuffed outsides of the bacta tank.

"What, a diagnostic gizmo of some kind must have got knocked in when the gravity was lost, that's all." She raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, really? Then why's it at the bottom of the tank, vacc-brain?" She ran the device further up the side of the tank.".no way is that possible.Tyler..?"

"Yeah?"

"The Imperial.he's alive."

"WHAT??? Bantha-poodoo, no way is anyone gonna be alive after spending two decades frozen like that!"

"The scanner's definitely picking up a low bio-electric charge from the so- called dead guy. I think he might be in hibernation freeze, or something."

"Crap. If he's alive, let's hurry up and get him cut out of there. Nima, go back and get those emergency cold-world med-kits out, he'll need that. Grusk, after we get him out, you keep cutting thru the bacta, see if you can dig out that gadget that Nima found, and see if it's of any use."

"Gotcha. It should be, if it'sss held a charge for over a decade. That's good workmanship."

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