So... this is a shock by now, right? Well, too bad because I had another idea. What is this idea? So, I was watching the anime Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet a while ago and recently I saw it again it on my Hulu watch list (as I didn't finish the final episode) and had an idea: what if I had a pilot with either the Resistance from The Force Awakens or a pilot from any of the Legends material Rebellion or New Republic lands (crash or otherwise) on the Earth that Ledo lands on after or during a dogfight in his (as the guy is going to be a male OC, bite me) X-Wing or another fighter? This was an idea that festered around my mind for a while and now I've finally gotten around to writing out.
But then I start to get inside of the territory of what exactly do I want to do, what do I want to really want to mess with. Specifically, in the Gargantia universe. I'm not going to mess much with the Star Wars universe outside of some references to either the canon or Legends material. The thing is, I love Legends, well, primarily because of the X-Wing book series. Ergo, I am going to use the old Legends timeline because I like it better. Now, where to place this in the episode timeline of Gargantia… It took me a while, but I figured a few months before Ledo wakes up from his cold sleep, i.e.: in the midway portion of the first episode.
After some introspective thinking, I decided to place this in the SW timeline of the post-YHV War as there's not a whole lot that happened after the whole Abeloth situation until Darth Krayt shows up with his One Sith order/rule. So, I think that will work nicely.
Disclaimer: I own nothing other than my copy of MS Word and my laptop. Star Wars unfortunately belongs to Darth Disney and Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet belongs to Viz Media for distribution. See the foreword for the full disclaimer.
XxXxXxX
A single X-Wing flew through the emptiness of space towards a pre-established rendezvous point to meet up with the carrier that it was stationed on. Said carrier was a refurbished and retrofitted Imperial era Star Destroyer. More specifically an Imperial II-class. It was old, but rugged and reliable since you could find plenty of parts for it to repair failing components and it could be highly customized, similarly to how Talon Karrade customized his own destroyer into a mobile smuggling market and gambling establishment before the Vong showed up.
The pilot reached down into his control panel and activated his long-range communication systems. "This is Green-5 reporting in," he said into his helmet's integrated mic.
"Roger that, Green-5," the operator replied. "Proceed to the updated nav point."
"Wilco, control." He adjusted his heading, a small moon over a desolate world. Looking over his instruments, he saw that there was an odd spike in the planet's gravity well. Giving it a tap, it appeared to disappear back to what was expected of this planet in the system. All this got out of him was a, "hmm." He would need to do some maintenance on the fighter when he landed. It didn't take long before he was well inside the planet's gravity well's influence. His instruments flared again with another warning about the gravity well.
"Green-5, bug out now!" the operator came over the channel. "Something's off with the planet!"
The planet started to glow and cracks started to form in the planet's crust. Reacting immediately, the pilot adjusted his course on the nearest Hyperspace entry course outside the gravity well. As he traveled away, the gravity well's area of influence grew along with it at a much higher rate than he was flying away from it. What he was thinking of doing next was insanely risky and seen as stupid except by the most desperate of people.
"R9, disable the safeties on the hyperdrive and plot a course for the nearest star system."
"[You cannot be serious!]" the droid bleated and the screen translated for him. "[That's suicidal!]"
"Well, in case you've noticed there's an exploding planet behind us!" he rebutted. "Unless you have a better idea." The droid said nothing. "That's what I thought, so disable the safeties."
"[It's your funeral.]" it tweeted.
"Not like it'll matter either way!"
There was an annoying raspberry followed by an icon appearing on his control console. "[It's done. May the Maker protect me.]"
"What about me!?" he cried out as he reached for the hyperdrive activation switch.
"[You don't matter to the Maker.]"
"You are a cold, vain bucket of bolts," he said as he pushed the lever forward. Hyperspace stretched in front of him and he was flung into the alternate dimension. However, something was wrong with the tunnel of hyperspace. Normally it was a swirling blue color, but this time it was a vertical corridor with walls with different colors passing by in streams of light. He was slammed into his seat as the inertial dampeners started to fail.
"R9, turn the safeties back on," he struggled to get out.
"[I thought you wanted it off?]"
"Stop being an ass turn it back on," he struggled to get out. His vision was starting to black out as spots appeared in his vision. There was bleating, but he didn't see what the words were as the spots had that area of his console covered. There was sudden deceleration and he was in high Lagrange point orbit above a planet that had very little landmass and was majorly water. He tapped away at his navicomputer to find out where he was exactly. Either something was bugged or something because he was getting no results. "R9, can you confirm what the navicomputer is reporting?"
"[That we're in an unknown star system?]"
"No, that there are big booty bitches outside," he sarcastically eye-rolled in response. "Of course, the reports of the star system."
"[It's not on any charts I have internally. The surrounding stars don't line up with any other alignments I have on file. We're in unknown space.]"
"Well, fierfek," the pilot replied in response. "Any artificial satellites that may hint at life?"
There was silence as console pings were made, implying the astromech unit was processing data. "[Yes, although they appear quite old and unused for some time. Their encryption method is crude yet effective.]"
"So, can you break it?"
"[You'll have to bring the ship in close for a direct connection. The distance lag is making slicing quite difficult. I've put a waypoint on your HUD.]"
The pilot started up the engines and started flying towards the satellite. As he did, he noticed a lot of manufactured satellites in orbit. The species that was here obviously made it as far as pushing into space, but whether they made it past there was an unknown. They didn't have a navy as far as he could detect and he hadn't received any hails to identify himself, as would be any standard procedure for an unidentified manned craft. The satellite was geostationary so it moved as the planet did in pace. He pulled up to it and prepped his flight suit and cockpit for EVA. "You better not let me drift out there," he commented to the droid.
"[While I despise your fleshiness, I'm dead out here.]"
"Oh, so you do care."
"[No, my programming will not let me abandon you here.]"
"Nice to see you care about me," he sarcastically remarked. The cockpit was decompressed and when it was complete, he opened the canopy. Attaching a liquid cable hook on the hull's side, he pushed off to the geostationary object which was just a few meters away. He didn't like EVA, there were a lot of risks involved, especially near a planet where the Force only knew where space debris was zipping past. He got a hold on the somewhat sizable satellite and hooked the other end of the cable on it. It was around a meter tall and had what looked like camera lenses and had photoreactive panels on it, it was meant to keep on operating until destroyed or decayed. He pushed off from the satellite back to his ship and kept his hand near the cable tether. He seated himself back in the cockpit. "Done," he reported through his comm system. He started the retraction motor and pulled them slowly closer together.
R9 came up out of its housing and leaned over and extended a universal probe claw and started to remove the panel exposing the wiring inside. It pulled out a data probe and made it connect with the wires. "[Primitive, yet effective,]" the droid commented. "[It'll be a few minutes.]" The pilot closed the canopy and repressurized the cockpit, allowing the oxygen reserves of his EVA survival rig to refill. One of the further reasons he hated EVA. "[I'm done.]"
"I thought that would've taken longer."
"[The distance made it impossible to guess patterns and solve them. This close its blatantly obvious.]"
"Right, sure it is. What did you find out?"
"[That this is a military surveillance satellite.]"
"And?"
"[The last recorded event was almost a thousand years ago on its memory drive.]"
"And?" he tried to prod the droid along.
"[Their planet was being flooded and frozen over and in a last desperate push started for the stars. Some made it away, billions of others were left behind.]"
"Well, that's interesting."
"[Oh, you'll like this. They were humans.]"
"You don't say?" This actually was interesting. Humans were by far the most populous species in the galaxy with a large share of planets belonging to the species. Many origin points had been speculated for humans ranging from Coruscant, Corellia, and further out in the Deep Core; but a general consensus was for Coruscant. "So, they all died out?" A lack of civilization would mean finding the nearest plot of land with arable soil to plant long term plants or find animals for hunting until help could arrive; which, considering that he performed a blind jump, may never come.
"[It appears that radio signals are still coming from the planet itself, however, they are all at sea.]"
"What is the ship's status?"
"[Weapons and shields are all operational. Sub-light engines are all operational. Your stunt with the blind jump inside a gravity well has damaged it. Repairs will have to be performed on the ground or hangar facility.]"
"Alright, so which do we approach?"
There was silence as the droid analyzed the data available. "[There is a flotilla roaming in the area listed in the old records here as the 'Pacific Ocean'. Based on the signal strength, it would imply a large flotilla consisting of larger vessels.]"
"Can you confirm that before, you know, we fly down and discover that it is just a bunch of pleasure yachts?"
"[I'm going to have to hook up the satellite to the ship to borrow the power plant, the internal battery is dead and the solar panels destroyed.]"
"Do what you have to," he ordered. "Not like I have a choice at this point," he muttered.
He looked over his instruments and took inventory of the weapons systems. He had a full battery of proton torpedoes and all of the Tibanna gas catalyst for the blaster cannons were full. If the worst came, then he could fight his way out. As for on-foot, ground combat he had his DL-44, a favorite of the Alliance for its stopping power for most armors. He had several hundred rounds he could fire before he would run out of Tibanna gas, but power cells were another thing. He'd have to be careful with his engagements.
"[I've established visual contact. The flotilla consists of vessels in an interlocked formation approximately the length of three Imperial II-class Star Destroyers end to end.]" The pilot whistled. That actually was kind of impressive for a sea-worthy construct, even if it was many of them tied together.
"Do you think that they have the facilities to repair up?"
"[Considering the size, more than likely. Although, I'm certain that they won't let you stay there for free. You fleshy meatbags value currency.]"
"And greedy droids also value credits and data."
There was silence before the droid replied, "[Touché.]"
"So, it's decided. We go down to this flotilla," the pilot announced, mostly to himself. R9 disconnected the liquid cable with a probe and the satellite floated away. He started up the engines and powered up the shields to full in preparation for reentry. Reentry was uneventful and soon he was hundreds of meters in the planet's atmosphere having a massive visible area in front of him. According to the waypoint that R9 had put on his HUD, the flotilla should be coming up shortly. Then it came into view, him circling at high altitude to take it in. "Well, when you see it in person it's fairly impressive," the pilot had to admit.
"[It doesn't take much to impress you.]"
"Shut it," he snapped. "Can you tap into their communications now?"
"[Yes. And get this, you'll find this hilarious.]"
"Yes?"
"[They speak Galactic Basic.]"
"No shit," he uttered an ancient expletive. "Can you lock onto their frequencies only?"
"[Done.]"
'Here goes nothing,' he thought. "Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is Lieutenant Axton Beneko of the Galactic Alliance requesting aid from the unidentified naval fleet in range of this transmission. Please respond," he said clearly into his microphone. He proceeded to repeat it until someone responded.
"This is the Gargantua, state your intent," a gravelly male voice asked.
'Would you look at that, R9 wasn't lying. They do speak Basic,' he thought. "My ship requires a safe harbor to perform repairs."
"Why should we let you aboard?"
"I have money and can pay," Axton exaggerated.
"[You don't have any money,]" R9 commented.
Axton muted his microphone. "I have some credits and they're made out of gold, that should buy me some time."
"How much space would you need?" the male voice asked. He was sizing up how much he could charge, Axton could feel it.
"A small hangar's worth of space. No more than thirty meters square and ten meters high with either dorsal door or elevated hull door. Starboard, port, or stern doesn't matter to me," Axton replied. This amount of space would allow for smooth take-off and landing with plenty of space for working with the specific parts.
There was an audible pause in the male's voice. "What kind of ship did you say you had?" the voice asked nervously.
'Did the word "galactic" not mean anything?' he thought. "A space ship, a small fighter craft."
"You're wasting my time."
He muted the microphone, "Do you have the bridge?" A new waypoint appeared on his HUD where a 3D model of the vessel was mocked up in wireframe. An orange highlight where the bridge was. He unmuted himself. "Seeing is believing."
"What do you mean by that?"
"You'll see in a moment," Axton replied in a way that sounded cryptic. He pitched the fighter into a steep dive, pulled up at the last moment, and flew close to the waves. He topped out the maximum atmospheric speed of over a thousand kilometers an hour and closed in on the flotilla. Even passing by them as fast as he did, he could see all of the much smaller ships that made up the entire flotilla which was all connected to a mothership in which those too connected. The three largest were connected directly. They were central and important. He buzzed the bridge, something that with his canopy facing them could see the glass vibrating. He proceeded to pull the X-wing into a roll and flattened out before pulling back up into the sky, circling once again.
"Is that enough proof for you?" Axton said back into his microphone.
"Y-yeah," the other man replied. "Uh, this goes over my head, I'll need to speak with the fleet captain."
"Go do that, but please make it soon, I don't want to get sores from sitting."
The midday sun slowly lowered in the sky. During this time Axton played digital Sabaacc with R9 through his secondary screen. Of course, the bucket of bolts always won because he dealt the 'cards.' He didn't care since he was bored out of his mind. If it were up to him, he'd be watching some kind of holodrama, probably something comedic. There had been no movement in the flotilla, no military action, or anything; however, their citizenry had gathered on deck to see the odd flying machine.
"Lieutenant Beneko," a different voice came over the comm system.
"Copy, control?" Axton asked. Finally, he was going to get an answer.
"After much deliberation, our Council has decided that you may be permitted to land in the requested space on the condition that monetary compensation is provided. Flares are being lit to show the way. Keep your weapons on safe, or we will open fire."
"Wilco, control. Out," Axton replied. Complying will get him what he wants, no need to start something. R9 highlighted the flares on his HUD which when zoomed in showed a hangar bay, or what would serve as one, anyway. He flew in low and slow and when he was over the opening in one of the ships, he extended the landing struts and made a soft landing. The whining of repulsor engines filled the rusty bay until he finished the shutdown sequence. As he did, he saw that several men and women, humans at that, entered the upper level of the area armed with projectile rifles. Slugthrowers. Simple, crude, but highly effective against flesh.
"[They are going to gun you down,]" R9 commented darkly.
"Well, if they do, fire all proton torpedoes and take them all out." He opened the canopy and slowly emerged from the cockpit removing his helmet.
The man who was in the front stepped forward, much to his escort's discomfort. "Lieutenant Beneko?" this old man's voice was the one who was on the same frequency he was on shortly before landing.
"Yes," Axton replied as he walked up the stairs. While he wore his sidearm, his held helmet kept his hand far away from it.
"I am Fleet Admiral Fairlock," he introduced himself. "Welcome aboard."
"A pleasure, sir. Thank you for having me aboard."
"You're human," he observed. "I expected something more..."
"Alien?" Axton completed the train of thought. Fairlock nodded. "While there are many species of aliens out there, humans are out there too."
"And you're armed," Fairlock observed.
"I'm Galactic Alliance military. You never know where your ship is going to land or crash. Best be prepared rather than unprepared."
Fairlock nodded, "A man of pragmatism."
"And regulation," Axton shrugged.
"Of course, of course," he chuckled. It looked like a lot of the same types of organizations existed. "Come, we do have much to discuss." Axton, Fairlock, and the guards that came in all left the room leaving R9 alone.
"[Sure, yeah. Ignore the droid, see if I care,]" R9 whined.
XxXxXxX
Six months later.
Deep beneath the waves, Axton piloted his midget submarine near the wreck of a destroyed wet navy ship. According to his hosts, it had been one of the leading worlds' powers most impressive ships: a battle carrier. This behemoth of a sea-faring ship essentially had an angled flight deck attached to the side of a battleship to allow the flow of support and strike aircraft without taking away from its armaments. In the fore section contained massive projectile turrets that the locals said were 406mm (luckily there was little variation on unit conversions) of which had three super-firing sets in quad-mounted turrets while just having one single quad-mounted turret aft. The most impressive aspect of these weapons wasn't the size, but the fact that they were railguns. The power consumption would have been enormous to power all of them for a salvo. There were areas on the deck that stated where VLS systems were mounted beneath the steel-plated hull and brackets for even more weapons systems that had broken off when the vessel sunk as well as over time as the water eroded the metal away.
But this massive vessel's armaments weren't what he was after, but what lay within. For almost a month he had been cutting away many square meters of the hull to expose the CIC for direct interfacing. The data that was in the computer systems would be the most valuable treasure within. His partner in this expedition kept the sub in place as he entered the diving bell. He had already suited up well before leaving due to him making this trip so many times. He donned the mask and rebreather that his survival kit had come within his X-wing and entered the chilled waters. No matter how close the ship was to the tropics, this far down was always cold. He swam through the precut side of the ship to the final door he needed to enter.
He ignited the thermal lance that had been trailing behind him and started to cut through the high-grade steel door's locks. One by one, he cut through them, leaving borderline scorching hot water and molten slag in its wake. Seeing that he was through he gave the door a few pulls, but it didn't budge. They were hermetically sealed, so even if it was sunken and filled with water, there would have still been a pressure difference. He continued to cut through the two, heavy hinges until they too were but slag. He pulled out his liquid cable and hooked one end to the door's wheel-lock and trailed the rest of it out of the ship back to the sub. He attached it to the hull and activated the electromagnet.
"I need you to pull," Axton mumbled into the built-in comm device; this had been something that he expected might happen whether it be pressure or rusted metal fused together. The minisub surged forward and the liquid cable tensed up for a moment before becoming slack. He reeled the liquid cable back to find the door dislodged. He swam inside and started looking for the main computer console. It didn't take him long to find it as it was the only thing left in the entire ship giving off an electromagnetic signature and was still slightly powered on.
He pulled out his datapad and the adapter he had wired up from the much 'lower' tech around on this planet and connected a clamped probe on an exposed data wire. The datapad proceeded to start cloning the data drive as-is, the decryption could wait until later. The data transfer happened faster than expected, but it was much slower than he was used to. Once done, he swam back out and entered the midget sub again. As the chamber slowly recompressed his partner activated the internal communications.
"So, it turns out that one of the salvage teams found something interesting, the commander wants you to look at it when we return," she said as he sealed the chamber.
"Any idea what it is?" Axton asked as he removed the flippers and mask he was wearing and stored them away.
"Some kind of robot-mech thing that doesn't match anything we've seen before."
"I mean, I don't have any experience with mechs, but ok."
The submarine surfaced and made the best speed back to the Gargantua. It was still a slow-going trip. Luckily, because of his low amount of time inside the ship at the bottom of the ocean's shallows, he didn't need to spend as much time as expected in decompression. He emerged topside while the sub was being helmed back. The sea air was oddly refreshing. Few places in the galaxy were this peaceful and allowed this level of fresh air outside of a few lonesome places.
He grew up on Corellia during the start of the Vong conflict. His family was better off than other families, but 'better off' didn't necessarily mean that they were rich. They were lower middle class. His father worked in the shipbuilding business, specifically as a layman in the laying of hull plates inside capital ships themselves and not in the exterior, something that was handled by droids for safety reasons. His mother worked in the overworked and underpaid CorSec department sector she was assigned to. When the need for more ships and security for refugees arose, he barely saw his parents and was relegated to be cared for by a neighbor girl who was ten years his senior. The increase in refugees came from the Fall of Coruscant during the Vong War. Due to the economy at the time, there were no jobs and a lot were homeless. All of this together made the lives of Corellians more stressful, especially those trying to keep the peace. He grew up in a city block tower that consisted of over a thousand people easily. Since Corella was Coruscant jr. those who lived in the city got clean air, but it wasn't 'clean'.
A few hours later, the sub pulled up to the ship that they had launched from and he disembarked towards his quarters that he had paid for above his hangar bay with the scavenging jobs that he took up as well as data recovery and analysis, mostly the latter relying on R9 and the sheer processing power of the navicomputer interface that he had. After all, during the entire trip, the computer (or astronavigation droid) had to compute several thousand calculations a second for a craft of his size. He dropped the datapad into the retrofitted charger and interface which would allow R9 to interact with it. His sidearm was still strapped to his thigh as while he didn't expect trouble from the citizenry of the Gargantua, the same couldn't be said when in open waters. He had heard about the pirates that operated by attacking lone ships and looting them of both property and lives. He walked down the upper deck of the one ship he was on and most people didn't pay him any mind. During the first couple of weeks, he was stared at as the 'spaceman'. But most looked at him now as another contractor working for the fleet.
He entered the designated scrapper bay to see one of the many scrapping crews swarming a man-like robot. It was easily ten plus meters high. However, some things stood out to him. The first being the oversized head and the second being the massive thighs of the machine. The second was the markings on it. On top of it, Pinion had been trying to drill away at the hull to little effect, the same could be said about those trying to use their acetylene torches to attempt to cut it down to more manageable chunks for sale or usage.
"Axton, how did the dive go?" Bellows asked as he approached.
"I think it went fairly successful; however, we're going to have to wait and see how good the data is after R9 decodes it all," Axton replied as he took the size and scale of the massive droid in. May as well call it a droid for now as it didn't look manned at all. "What do we have here?" he nodded towards it.
"One of the salvage teams found it about ten nautical miles due west of here. It was completely intact and untouched," she summarized.
"And it weighs a ton," Pinion complained.
"No kidding," Axton said as he brushed a finger against the plating. No scuff marks, no moisture from his hand stuck to it. It was almost a hydrophobic coating on the plating. "Probably in the realm of a couple of dozen metric tons."
"Actually, it was remarkably light," Bellows informed him.
"Really now?" this got Axton thinking.
Before he could have any further internal thoughts, Amy, the girl that hounded him for the first few weeks he was around. Nice kid, bright and optimistic but a little too immature for her age if he was being honest. Or, was it that he was ruined at a young age because of the Vong war, take your pick.
She hopped down from the upper level via some stacked boxes and ran towards Bellows. "Bellows!" she shouted out to get her attention.
"Hello, Amy," Bellows greeted in kind. The girl had been wearing what was popular in her age group. It was a short skirt and an open midriff blouse. It was appropriate for the climate considering it was more tropical. She was cute, in a kid sister kind of way.
"I got a message from Ridget." She started to pull something out of her messenger bag, as she was a courier. "She said if you're willing to take responsibility, you can use this place until tomorrow night." She pulled out a contract, a staple of the Gargantua, a written agreement to keep people honest. Even he had to sign one. Bureaucracy at its finest. "Here's the agreement for you to sign."
Bellows took it and looked it over. Despite being in a different language, Axton could see the listing of 'legalese' written up by Ridget and the legal council she had. "Jeez, she's such a stickler for the rules."
"Welcome to bureaucracy," Axton muttered. This sort of got him a dirty look from Bellows.
Amy finally acknowledged Axton; her task completed. "Oh, hello Axton," she greeted. "How was your job?"
"Afternoon, Amy. I'll tell you about it later." He turned to look at the mech again.
"So, what is this thing?" she asked.
"If we know, we wouldn't be having all this trouble," Pinion complained. "Forget getting it open, we tried taking the armor off and can't even make a scratch on it," he commented as he flipped and caught a crowbar. "I can't imagine how they put this thing together. And look at this here," Pinion walked on the plating until he reached a shoulder pauldron.
"What?" Amy asked as she followed. Axton followed as well just to see since he had no idea why he was called in.
"I've never seen writing like this before. Of course, who knows if these are even letters."
Axton looked at them, there was what sort of looked like a circle with a line through it and what looked like chains next to it. "They look like kill counts," Axton commented.
"Kill counts?" both Amy and Pinion asked.
"Yeah. You know-how on my fighter I have odd things painted on the side?" They both nodded. "They notate to both ally and enemy alike how skilled you are. I have several TIE fighters and other snubfighters. But then there are other marks like small capital ships and a single ISD from a warlord that I got the final torpedo on." He pointed to several of the characters. "There is pattern repetition such as here, here, and here," he pointed out.
"They do run in patterns, but there's a space in between sets of them. And it is sort of repeated all over it," Pinion observed as well.
Axton hadn't seen that. "Fair, though I've never seen this written language before. It appears to be digitized onto it. Perhaps some kind of part notation for repairs then?" he speculated aloud. "It does happen to be the biggest droid I've ever seen. But it appears to be missing any weapons."
"What makes you think it needs weapons?" Amy asked.
"The hands and the markings, they look military. The specific spacing and where they're marked. Almost like serial numbers for tracking. I'm going with that it's a military model. And I can outright confirm it doesn't match any of the languages that you guys had before the freeze." They gave him a look. "I had to read a lot of those old files and you guys had a lot of books. You're telling me you don't read on your expeditions during travel time?" No one said anything.
"Anyway," Bellows said in an attempt to get things back on topic. "Everything about it is odd, since we found it. It is not rusted or degraded. It's unlike any treasure we've found."
"Well, I'd be careful around it, at least until you've removed the power source."
"It's not much of a treasure if we can't take it apart," Pinion complained. He was observing a piece of bioorganic material that looked like a tooth that had taken a bite out of it or at least attempted to. He tossed it and as it bounced off of the deck, Axton could hear the sound it made. It had mass, and it was abnormal.
Axton picked it up. It was abnormally sharp and it was heavy, heavier than he expected it to be. The creature it came from was large and it didn't match anything that the Gargantua had reported to him existing. Either it was an undiscovered species of sea creature or something else. It looked like it belonged in a Rancor's jaw or a Sarlacc Pit's maw.
"You're buying it at the price we agreed on, Pinion," Bellows interrupted. "You're the one who told us to dredge up anything we can."
"You cheapskate," Pinion rebutted. Axton had to bite the rebuttal that he should have asked to work on it first before paying.
"It looks like it could start moving at any second, doesn't it?" Amy asked chipperly.
"And that's what's got me worried," Axton muttered. "Did you find a power source?"
"No, we didn't and I'm sure it's broken," Pinion answered both of them in the same breath. "No matter where you touch it, not even a budge…" he said as he proceeded to kick dense metal plating and stubbed his toe despite wearing steel-toe boots.
"Well, you picked the isolated area way out on the edge to be safe, right?" Bellows said as she started to wave the work agreement around. "If something happens, we can cut it loose."
"Idiot, this is my house!" a worker cried out. "You can't cut us loose that easy!"
"Right, right. I'll tell Ridget," Bellows dismissed the worker.
"As you can see, Amy. There ain't going to be much to see around here for a while," Pinion continued. "Just get back to your deliveries." Amy's pet flying squirrel was skittering around his body while trying to attempt to futilely capture it.
"I'll come again tomorrow morning!" Amy cheerfully replied as her pet jumped off, landed on her arm and she started to run off. As she did, Bellows handed over the signed work order. Amy grabbed it and ran off. "Make sure you've taken off at least a few parts by then!"
"If we can," Pinion complained once more, using his comb to restyle his hair to his 'signature look'. "No clue how, though," he muttered before getting back to work.
Axton felt something in the air change and looked directly at the droid. Something was off and he could feel it. He had felt these things many times in his life and they had always been in dangerous situations. His babysitter when he was young called it his 'sixth sense' and to listen to it. Before he could say anything, Bellows asked, "Are you ok?"
"Yeah," Axton shook his head. "I got a bad feeling about this," he muttered. "What did you need me for anyway?"
"Well, we wanted to see if maybe you could lend some of your space tech to help us take this apart," Pinion explained. "Maybe that hand-cannon of yours could bore a molten hole for us to work with.
"No, I'm not using my limited power packs and Tibanna gas catalyst in your salvaging endeavors."
"Oh, come on! What about your fighter? It's got those big cannons. Surely it could make a hole in this thing."
"It more than likely could, but please see my previous answer: no."
"What about one of those… torpedo-y thingies?"
"Ok, that's going to be a hard no. Those things are meant to take down capital ships and we'd probably kill everyone nearby." 'Plus, I only have six of them,' he thought to himself.
"Come on! You're not helping me at all!"
"Any why should I?" Axton asked with a raised eyebrow.
There was absolute silence from Pinion. "He has a point," Bellows commented. "Get back to work, you lazy bum!" she chastised Pinion.
"Yeah, yeah," Pinion muttered as he continued to futilely try to pry open the armor.
"Sorry about that," Bellows apologized. "I thought he wanted to use any information that you had as a member of a space-fairing military to figure out what this thing is."
"This is sort of out of my depth, but it definitely resembles a battle droid," Axton said as he walked out into the innards of the ship in an attempt to get above deck and back to his quarters on another ship, Bellows in tow.
"Battle droid? You mean like the little trash can looking one you have?"
This got a laugh out of Axton, as that's what he called R9 behind his back. "Sort of. He's an astronavigation/mechanic model, shortened to astromech, and their role is primarily to repair and assisting in the navigation of hyperspace. The specific type I mention are combat models. The most common type is bipedal and can bare blasters or melee weapons, but there are other models for different roles. The machine looks like a super-sized YVH droid."
"The kind that were designed to hunt down those Vong creatures?" Axton nodded. He had told her about a lot of things. Working together a lot tends to have a lot of information change hands. "Do you think it's dangerous?" she asked with a slight hint of worry, but she masked it well.
"Maybe. It gives me a bad vibe. And, it was like there was someone else in the room too."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. I've had that kind of feeling before, it's nothing to worry about," he replied with a handwave. "Listen, I got to get R9 working on that data dump I got. See you later?"
"Yeah," she replied as they parted ways.
Axton made his way across the mass of ships to his hangar apartment and changed into the 'civvies' he had been given and then purchased. He looked over to R9 who was completely silent, using a mass majority of his processing power towards decryption. "Working hard or hardly working, R9?" Axton asked, using a local work joke.
"[Shut up,]" he bleated.
"Guess what the scavvers found?"
"[A new piece of erotica that you meatbags pleasure yourselves to?]"
"No, but that one's a good one. A massive battle droid."
"[You sure it wasn't erotica?]"
"No, and it wasn't like anything I've seen before. There were also these markings, chain looking if I were to describe them. Either kill tallies or serial numbers of some kind."
"[Weird.]"
The two sat in silence until Axton nodded off in his chair. He had a weird dream There was what looked like giant snails attacking bipedal machines in a massive space battle. There was what also appeared to be flower-like ships and weapons fighting against the mechanical. Both entities felt familiar to him, but before he could he fell out of his chair. As he came off the deck, he realized why the general alarm klaxon was blaring. He grabbed his blaster pistol and ran out of the apartment, following everyone else to the commotion.
"What's going on?" he asked as he joined a militia member.
"Armed intruder, he kidnapped Amy," he replied.
"What? Where'd he come from?"
"No idea, just came out of nowhere."
Axton didn't believe that, but he knew that neither of them knew anything. If he had any suspicions it involved that droid. Making the long run, he finally joined the rest of the group who were currently pointed many slugthrowers towards a jumpsuited kid who was holding an oddly designed slugthrower. He drew his DL-44 and pointed it center mass. While he didn't want to, if the kid tried something, he wouldn't hesitate to drop him. Amy wasn't currently in his arms or anything, so he didn't do anything yet. He appeared to be speaking in a different language that definitely wasn't the local flavor of Basic. Before he could make any other observations, there was the sound of grinding metal and a figure appeared out of the bay that the droid had been in.
It flipped end over end and appeared behind the kid. It looked like it wasn't a droid, but an exosuit. 'Fantastic,' he thought, not taking his eyes off the kid, his aim never wavering. After all, even if he did try to get back in the suit, he could cut him down before he could try something.
Ledo was very confused, he didn't know where he was nor how he was on a planet with a breathable atmosphere. He had summoned Chamber which had frightened everyone that was armed. All but one man. He could see in his eyes that he too was a soldier and showed no visible fear. Chamber had finished assembling how their language was spoken and his next words would either end in tragedy or something beneficial.
To be continued…?
XxXxXxX
That's all I have for this one. This has been something that has also been on the backburner for a while. According to my file's metadata, it was originally saved back in 2016 and has been an idea that has been knocking around in my mind for some time, so I decided to finally finish it. I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to go with this outside of what I wrote here. I guess you can say the main reason is since it's a 4-year-old idea that I finally decided to finish writing out. That's all I really got for this one, do the things for after the chapter things. See you in whatever I do next.