Shadow of the Consortium

by alexandertheII

It has been half a year since the evacuation of the Alliance from Yavin IV. Time Harry and his crew have spent hunting bounties as well as the occasional servant of the Empire. However, it will not be the Empire that poses the newest threat to them, not Vader or Palpatine or even one of their Admirals. It will be greed and a talented man with too much of it. Sequel to "A New World"

22. Sequel Announcement

Sequel Announcement!

Hear ye, hear ye, treasured readers and followers: by 1800 MET (that's like 12 pm Eastern or 5 pm GMT) I, the author of this series, endeavour to have uploaded the next part to AO3 and FFN. Thus begins the first chapter of "Into the Maelstrom", in which our heroes, scoundrels and whatever the hell Arden fits under shall once more be tested by the vast Star Wars galaxy.

I have quite a bit done already, and plan to be posting on every first and third Sunday of the month until the story is either finished (I hope) or I run out of chapters to post (less hoped for by me personally, though a distinct possibility I must warn you all of).

Just a small teaser, though, to make this entire "chapter" less pointless! Obviously, just to recap, we start with our intrepid captain maimed and burned by his own efforts to stop the Dark Side infection slowly claiming his body, so a few things that need taking care of fall, by necessity, to others.

OOOOOOOO

"We're picking up only the agreed-upon vessels," Jane announced from the sensor station aboard the Alderaanian Twilight, the newly christened VT-49 Decimator everyone somehow considered to be Leia's personal starship. She was not quite sure, how that had happened, given that she had spent rather little time on it, overall, and the last ship she had used herself was the Dromedary, one of the YT-2000s, but she was not overly willing to question it. Instead, when Mercer had told her to give it a name already, she had decided to stick with Harry's naming convention and named it after her lost home planet. And now, she was once again, without question, in command of a ship.

"Good," she replied, looking over the sensor readouts herself, just to make sure. A gifted pilot she might be, but the former slave was still getting used to operating the other aspects of many ships. "Signal the flag ship we're ready for the transfer to commence."

In the distance, just beyond visual range, she could make out the small Consortium flotilla she expected to be carrying Tyber Zann, who was eagerly expecting the delivery of their dead target. Obviously, Maximilian Seerdon was not really dead, what they were dropping off was merely a product of a clever use of permanent transfiguration on a roughly ISB commander-sized boulder, but Zann did not need to know that. No, for the moment the Black Sun mole who had painted a target on the crime lord's forces was more or less happy being a prisoner on Sanctuary. Probably more, given his most likely other option would have been death at the hand of some other, less scrupulous bounty hunter.

"They've transmitted docking clearance and coordinates," the Twi'lek announced to the gathered crew. They were a somewhat meagre group, as appropriate for the size of their ship, with only Jane herself, as well as Leia, Javoc and Corsek. Iabaes was off doing whatever it was that Mandalorians did when they had free time, and she had taken the weird starfighter/shuttle hybrid they had captured from the fleeing captain of the pirates above Mandalore with her. Harry, obviously, was still indisposed, Mercer unavailable due to his job of shouldering the growing responsibility of overseeing the colony and Arden was off doing whatever it was that Dathomirian witches did when they felt they were unobserved. Probably hitting something… maybe a tree, or a flower.

"Bring us in, helmswoman," Leia ordered, to the immense delight of their pilot. It really was always a refreshing sight to see her take that much enjoyment of something that to most others would seem rather mundane; then again, she knew multiple people like that, who all loved flying beyond reason. The princess… queen, herself, mostly tolerated it. Yes, she was rather competent, but it was not something she would do to pass the time, unlike her boyfriend. Or Jane, or Luke, or any number of the Mandalorian pilots who had simply never left after their daring rescue over Yavin IV and were now quite happy in the employ of the man they felt honour-bound to after being rescued from captivity themselves.

Around them, formed up in a protective screen, were these exact same fighter pilots, flying their M14-Xs (though maybe the X was no longer really necessary, now that the craft were no longer all that experimental), watching out for any sign of a possible double-cross. So far, everything was going smoothly though, and Leia doubted Zann would try and do anything untoward. Besides exchanging massive amounts of credits for what he thought was a dead body, obviously. But for someone like the crime boss, reputation was important, and the number of people willing to work for him, and especially their quality, was bound to dwindle if he was known to not honour his deals.

"Dawn Squadron, join the Consortium fighters' protective screen," she therefore ordered their escort as they passed the perimeter of the small flotilla sent to their scheduled meeting. Well, perhaps flotilla was taking things a bit far; it was mostly just two squadrons of the snowflake-shaped fighters the Consortium had as standard-issue for their fighter pilots and a Marauder-class pocket cruiser Zann or his representative were using to be ferried around. Into Jane's direction she then added, "Set us down in the hangar, gently. Don't want to dent anything in here."