I made alot of major changes to the previous chapter/prologue, so i would recommend doing a re-read of them.
BIG shout out to Emile-The-Watcher for all the help cleaning this story up and greatly improving it!
Holden glanced up at the jury-rigged neon sign, showing a bubbly booze bottle in colorful blues and greens. It was a sign that was not high in craftsmanship, but wholly made up for that in its playful colors and lighting, and clearly marked a local bar or cantina. He quickly pressed the button to open the door and stepped through before his eyes could adjust to the dim lighting.
The bar inside was an utter mess, with flipped tables and shattered glass virtually everywhere, save the section a female Twi'lek in overall's had managed to sweep up and straighten. In accordance with the mess, there were almost no patrons in sight, though that wasn't wholly unexpected as it was midday for this town.
The only patrons were a group of five folk of various races, all wearing thick leather and carrying blasters of various varieties, one even carrying an old rifle. These patrons were gathered around the bar at the back of the cantina, being served by a quaking bartender. The five of them seemed at least slightly wasted as they laughed back and forth between each other, their words lost behind the music playing through the establishment's speakers.
Holden and Stodel shared a quick worried glance before the pair made their way across the wrecked room to the bar at the back, staying to the other end from the five patrons. Once he reached it, Holden leaned against the bar, making a drinking motion to the bartender in a sort of universal sign that he wanted something to drink. The bartender didn't even make it three steps before a burly Zabrak in the group grabbed the lanky human's arm, stopping him.
"Where do ya think yer goin', eh? Me an my boys aint done drinkin' yet!" the Zabrak snarled that out, smashing his full mug on the counter with enough force to break it, spattering beer across the counter.
"S-Sir, I have other patrons!" the bartender squeaked instead of talking, and understandably so as he barely came up to the Zabrak's chest.
The Zabrak looked to Holden and Stodel down the bar from them, eyeing them up and down for a moment before he shoved the bartender against the back wall. "And who might yall be, showing up in my town uninvited!?" he had a cruel smile on his face as he crossed his heavily built arms over his chest. Standing tall, he had to be near seven and half feet, swamping everything in the room. His companions took note of his stance and began setting drinks on the bar to start encircling the two pilots.
"Just a freighter captain and his first mate, visiting the ass end of nowhere." Holden shrugged as he kept his eyes toward the back wall in a mock uncaring attitude. Someone had been smart enough to put a long, mirrored surface along the wall, though it was heavily cracked. It did allow him to still watch the room without looking like he was watching the room.
"Freighter eh? I didn't see no ships setting down here. If I had, I would have greeted ya already. You know there's a tax for passin through here?" the Zabrak's voice seemed to twist into an almost giddy madness, his grin spreading ever further as he looked Holden up and down. It was like watching an animal sizing up a piece of meat.
Fuck, this is bad… looks like we found ourselves some local criminals. Damn it… His time in C-Sec was the only reason he wasn't panicking right now, as anyone should be when surrounded by obvious threats. His companions all looked like they bench pressed boulders, the smallest among them being a human that was still bigger Holden by every meaning of the word.
"Pretty nice blaster ya got there too. A-One-Eighty if I'm not mistaken. Those are illegal in the Empire. Means I gotta confiscate that from ya. Along with that tax I mentioned." He was reaching for the weapon in question as he spoke, clearly intending to disarm him now, likely to make him an easier target.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you. You might lose something precious." Holden calmly responded as his hand dropped to the grip, flicking the safety mechanism off.
"Oh? Little captain thinks he's brave? Wants to threaten me in my own town? Wat do we do to boys who fancy themselves 'nough to threaten me men?"
"We gut 'em!"
"That's right. So, you wanna take your hand off that, or do ya wanna to be gutted, boy?" the Zabrak growled directly into Holden's ear, his hot breath on Holden's neck.
Holden let out a small almost defeated sigh as he glanced at Stodel. She returned his glance with a small nod, prompting him to speak. "Ya know, it's a pity. I only came in here to get a drink. instead, I'm making a mess for the poor maintenance gal. She's already got enough work ya know?"
As he finished speaking, he ripped his blaster free and fired a blast into the Zabrak's foot, likely vaporizing a quarter of the man's foot as the weapon was designed to penetrate body armor. The burly man howled as he staggered back and fell on his ass. His companions were all reaching for weapons too, Holden spinning enough to unleash a flurry of rushed shots at them before diving over the bar. He clipped one in the shoulder, the rest managing to scatter in time to not be shot.
Madelyn managed to also rip her own blaster out, kicking the bandit behind her in the crotch to prevent him from stopping her. Her own flurry of shots was focused on the same bandit, several green bolts ripping clean through the unarmored Twi'lek. A moment later she was with Holden behind the bar, a series of red blaster bolts slapping the counter and back wall.
"Well, this is going swell!" Madelyn shouted over the din of the weapons fire, earning a glare for her sarcastic comment.
"Just shut up and return fire! These guys obviously deserved it!" he snapped that back at her, scooting down the bar before peaking up to fire another flurry of shots. In the glimpse he got of the room, two of the five were dragging the wounded and howling Zabrak toward the door, the fourth had the rifle out and was blasting shots across the bar, while the fifth was, as expected, an unmoving and smoking corpse. None of his flurry hit anything, but at least the information that they were running away was helpful.
A moment after he had ducked back down, Madelyn popped up herself, firing a pair of bolts that silenced the fire slapping the bar. With the shots cut off, Holden popped up himself, to find the bar empty of all but the maintenance girl, the bartender, and the corpses. The girl had dived behind one of the knocked over tables and was only just peaking her head out of cover now that relative peace had fallen across the room. The only other movement was bits of glass and chunks of the bar falling to the floor all around the two of them, smoke rising from the several dozen holes around them.
"They ran rather easily…" Holden spoke as he yanked the parts for his weapon off his belt, quickly assembling it into its rifle configuration while Madelyn kept her pistol trained on the door.
"Are you crazy!? You just shot the leader of the Kell Hounds! He's gonna raze the town for that!" the bartender shrieked at them as he continued to cower behind the counter, shaking in terror.
"The who?" Madelyn spoke up as she pointed her weapon at the ceiling, an eyebrow raised.
"They are a bunch of pirates! They've been harassing the town for months now!"
Holden let out a sigh as he exchanged looks with Madelyn, his weapon lowering. "We fucked up."
"Yeah, little bit… whacha thinkin Cappie?" she holstered her blaster as she picked out an untarnished bottle and cracked it open.
"Well, for one…" he snatched the bottle from her hand before she could drink from it, much to her dismay. "No drinks. For two… we should probably do something about these pirates…" he pulled his com-link out as he finished, keying it as soon as he could. "Hey uh, Roy, Kyra, you hearing me?"
It was several moments before the device beeped back, Roy's voice spilling out. "Loud and clear Garret. Whacha got?"
"We… May have a bit of a problem…" he cringed as he responded, knowing the ground combat expert of their little group was likely to be seriously annoyed with him.
"Welcome to the party then sir." His voice sounded almost defeated through the com-link, shocking Holden.
"Wait what?"
"Nothing we should say over the com-links. Can you get back to the bikes sir?"
"Yeah, probably for the best, we'll meet you there." He slipped the device back into his belt line as he finished, gesturing for the door as he loosely carried his rifle.
"So let me get this straight. While we engaged and eliminated a pair of these 'Kell Hounds', you ran across their leader, shot him in the foot, proceeded to blast a whole bar apart putting at least two civilians in the line of fire, and didn't manage to take him out?" Roy lazily glared at the Captain as he spoke, his arms crossed as he leaned on one of the bikes.
"Yeah, sums it up. Now who the heck is this?" Holden responded with a shrug, almost mirroring Roy's position on the other speeder, gesturing to the civilian beside Roy.
"This is one of the locals. He's volunteered to give us as much information as he can so we can formulate a plan of engagement." The man in question was the one who had come out of his home after Roy shot two of the Kell hounds.
"Alright then. What can you tell us about them?" Holden turned his attention to the man, his voice gentle yet firm with the man.
"Well, not much to be honest. Already told your friends here 'bout where they are based. I'd guess somewhere between twenty and fifty of em. They all have blasters but only a handful have ever been carrying rifles. Aint seen anything bigger than some swoop bikes either. They've been harassin the town for about two months now." he scratched his chin as he spoke, clearly doing his best to remember information.
"Have you tried to contact the Empire at all?" Stodel spoke up from beside the Captain, Roy shooting her a glare. Kyra looked surprised by the question, while the captain's expression remained unchanged.
"We sent someone to the capital… they won't even listen to 'em. Empire doesn't care about us. All they care about are their mines and the industrial towns supporting them." The man's voice grew to a point of anger for the barest trace of a moment.
"You know more about these pirates than we do, how do you think they will react to a few of their boys being killed and their leader being shot?"
"Violence I suspect. Last time one of their boys was killed, they rolled into town, dragged several people into the streets and blasted em. Not one of em was even involved."
"How long did it take for them to launch that reprisal?"
"Maybe a day, tops. They hit at noon."
"Alright. That's all we need to go on. Thank you." The captain nodded to him gesturing him back down the street he came.
"If you boys are planning on taking them on, be careful. They may be stupid, but they don't play games. I sure as shit won't blame ya for running." The man started to slip from the small group as he spoke.
"I don't run from a fight sir. These pirates won't survive the day, I promise you that." Roy snapped that out as the man was leaving, giving him a simple nod. It was a statement he was fully behind and had been thinking that going after whoever was oppressing the town would be smart before any shooting happened.
"We need to protect these people. I'm not letting something I did to get people killed…" Kyra was the one to break the silence, not that her quiet voice was much more than the ambience.
"I agree with Kyra. We should dig in on the outskirts to the town, hit those guys when they come back around." Stodel interjected, her normally annoyingly cheerful attitude gone.
"No. four of us against fifty angry pirates will just get us killed and enrage the survivors. I hate saying it, but if we want a shot at these guys, we need to pull the townsfolk into this." The captain looked at each of them as he popped up off the speeder, his hands dropping to his hips.
"There's a way around that." Roy didn't even move as he spoke up, having been working on a plan since their small engagement earlier. One that the details on the pirates ended up irrelevant of.
"Alright, you are the ground combat expert here. Whacha thinking Roy?"
Roy popped up off the speeder himself as he pulled his data pad out, opening the map data they received before they left the Courageous. Once that was open, he zoomed the map in on the area around the farm he was told the pirates took over. "We attack them at their home. We know where they are, given the descriptions of how they engage with the locals, they are overconfident. I have a strong suspicion they don't place many guards on their perimeter."
The others had all gathered closer to look at the data pad screen as he spoke, each of them understandably curious. "Attack them? But… wouldn't that be as suicidal as trying to hold them off on our own?" Stodel piped in before Roy could continue, earning herself a small glare.
"No. the opposite actually. Think about it. These are pirates, already used to pushing the locals around like sheep. While they might be expecting some sort of defensive build up when they return, they won't expect the aggression of a full-on assault. Depending on their battle strategy, we could catch them entirely unguarded. Every action I have seen them take, and that the locals have spoken of, hasn't been well thought out or plotted. For example, the threat they made to the woman at the fruit stall. They threatened her directly with death. If they had half a brain, they would have never threatened her. instead, you go after what they care about. Family, friends, property works in some cases. More effective at controlling soft hearted folk." He spoke calmly and evenly, as though his assessment of the pirates was no more than describing how a speeder worked. All three of the others shifted nervously where they were standing, Roy only able to assume they weren't expecting that sort of thought.
"Surprise would certainly be an advantage to have, but we need more than that to bring down the numbers they have. Even at their smallest, there's at least twenty of them." The Captain was the first to move on from the brutal honesty of Roy's assessment, scratching his chin in thought. "Actually, I do have an idea. Can you zoom in on the farm compound itself?"
Roy did as the Captain asked, curious how different the captains plan was going to be from his own. The farm in question was a single story farmhouse with a large detached barn for farm equipment. There was no data on what defenses, if any, the pirates had erected, but there was plenty on the area around the farm. The buildings were located in a wide, shallow ravine, nearly a hundred and fifty meters across and at least fifteen meters deep. Both edges were steep but not unscalable.
"Alright, if we approach over the farm fields, we should be able to get pretty close without being spotted. I can post up on one of these two ridge lines and provide covering fire while the three of you sweep down from one of these valley mouths and clear out the farm. Obviously, we need to get eyes on before we solidify the plan, but I think for a rough plan, it would be the best way to go about it." He pointed at the locations as he spoke, his plan nearly identical to Roy's own. "What do you think Roy?"
"It's what I would do. If we can, we wait for nightfall. Strike them while they're on their rest cycles. I have some gear and grenades stashed in the saddle bags. Nothing crazy, just some night vision and detonators. The assault team should get as close as they can before engaging and try to use as many grenades as possible to clean them out quick. The blasts should also help send them scrambling."
"Why don't we go back to base and get one of the X-wings then? An airstrike would surely be far more effective at scaring the piss outta them." Madelyn stepped back over to the bike, leaning against it once more.
"Under perfect circumstances, yes. I would grab the marines from the intel unit, put the two of you in X-wings and collect some real firepower to hit them with. But it took us two hours to navigate down from the mountains, and will take at least that to get back up, and at least an hour to get gear and troops ready for a fight and get airborne. This farm is maybe thirty minutes out by speeder. Fifty guys versus an unprepared town with two hours to do what they want? Half the town could very easily be wiped off the map. And if they're in the town, the added firepower of the starfighters would be utterly useless. We need to go now and get eyes on them. Once we have that, then we can decide on air support." Roy closed the data pad as he finished his small tirade, slipping it back into its slot on his belt.
"He is right. We need to mount up and move now. I don't want to catch them on the road back, I want to catch them at home if we're going to do this. So lets go." The Captain scooped his rifle up from where he left it leaning on the speeder, quickly disassembling it and reattaching it to his belt. As soon as he was done, he was mounting his own bike.
Roy was only a moment behind him, dropping into the driver's seat of his bike and firing it up. A moment after, he felt Kyra's hands grab his shoulders as she settled behind him on the bike. Even with the engine beneath him vibrating, and his leather jacket, he could feel her trembling. I'm sorry Kyra, I really shouldn't be dragging you into a fight… but I don't see another way to guarantee this towns safety without acting immediately…
He took a small deep breath, trying to clear his thoughts of Kyra from his mind, just before backing the bike off the mag-clamps and accelerating for the edge of the town.
Kyra clung to Roy as the speeder ripped over the fallow farm fields, the long wheat and grass preventing the bike's repulser skirting from kicking up dust. It was supposed to be around mid-afternoon, based off the moon's rotation, but as the moon was dipping behind the gas giant in relation to the system's star, darkness was dropping over them. That darkness had an odd green hue to it, not quite dark either. Above them, the edge of the gas giant looked like a brilliant green flare as the star was slipping behind it.
Before that darkness could fully fall, Roy slowed the bike to a stop, lowering it to the ground and shutting the engine down. "We're about three clicks out. Micro terrain let us get closer than I was expecting." His voice was a soft whisper as he slipped off the bike.
"So… we're here?" she slipped off the bike with him, trying to stretch out her muscles. Her ceaseless tremble made that an impossible task.
"Here enough. Take these." Roy opened one of the saddle bags as he spoke, shoving a set of goggles and two round grenades into her hands.
The weapons were lighter than she expected, but just holding them made her skin tingle. She worked with torpedoes and other large explosives all the time when helping out in the hanger, but there was something different about holding a device in her hand that could turn her into spattered bits of meat that was unsettling to her. "Are you sure you want to give me grenades? I've never even held one before…"
"Don't worry, they're super simple to use them. Just flick this safety pin aside and thumb the slider. If you keep pressure on the slider, the fuse won't spark off, so make sure you keep that pressure there until you throw it." As he spoke, he repositioned one of the grenades in her hand so that the grooved slider was centered on her palm, sliding away from her arm.
"Okay…" she gulped as she stared at the weapon, her vision starting to swim a little.
I do not want to use this thing... she grimaced as she slipped the two orbs into her tool satchel, retrieving the small holdout blaster she had tucked in there in the same motion.
"Here" she couldn't do more as Roy took the goggles from her hand, seating them on her head and adjusting the fit. They were designed so they gripped around her forehead and the back of her head, the device able to be popped up off her face, as they were now. Once he had the device adjusted for her, he dropped them over her eyes, entirely blocking her vision.
"Controls are on the right side of the device…" he grabbed her hand as he spoke, pulling the blaster from it and forcing her to touch the side of the device. Once there, he forced her finger onto the small selection switch, forcing her through the different selections. "One up is night vision, two up is thermal, three is blended."
When the switched popped up a space, green light filled her vision, getting a slightly distorted but visible image of Roy in front of her, more detail visible than there had been a moment ago, though there was a slight blur to everything close to her. Distant objects came through clearly though. The next setting flicked the world into grey and white, Roy's exposed skin almost blindingly bright, his clothes darker, and the grass even darker than his clothes. The only things in her vision that were black were the sky and the front forks of their speeder bike, the engine warming the rest of the chassis and the seats. The final setting was in greyscale as well but had the detail and definition of the first mode. The only difference being that Roy's skin and the bike were highlighted in white.
"When you flick the visor up, it should shut the viewer off, but that function commonly doesn't work." He popped the visor up for her as he spoke, the view shutting down as it was supposed to. "And remember, the thermals are great for spotting targets, but it's hard to see terrain under them. The night vision see's terrain very well but can make spotting targets a little more difficult. Lastly, the mixed is great for putting the two into relation with one another. The problem is, once the shooting starts, weapons fire can and will blind your thermals, so once the fighting kicks off, drop into night vision over the others to prevent being blinded."
She nodded to him as he handed her the pistol once more, just before he secured his own set of goggles on his head as well as dropping several grenades in his cargo pockets.
"Roy… I shouldn't be doing this…" she barely managed to speak, her voice stopping him.
"You can do this. It really is a lot easier than people make it out to be."
"I've never even held a grenade before! And yeah, I've fired a blaster… at a static target in training, that's it! I've never shot anyone… nor do I want to…" she mumbled out the last part of her statement. She still remembered what blasters could do to people, and not just from the two gang members Roy shot earlier. All her brain was letting her see was her mother, lying still with her throat burned and blasted away, blood leaking past the charred tissue. The smell had been awful, especially at point blank.
Just thinking of the fact that she could be doing that to a person in mere minutes made her sick to her stomach. She would have puked, had she not already puked out all of her stomach contents earlier. A shudder rocked her body, sweat causing her skin to feel slimy, the cold air making it feel all the worse.
"Kyra, we need you. With out you there, we lose almost a fourth of our fire power. And we lose another person watching our backs." She felt his hand gently squeeze her shoulder, bringing her out of her memories and back to reality. He had a gentle frown on his face, a slight furrow to his brow.
"I can't kill someone… I became a mechanic so I didn't have to…"
"Anyone can kill Kyra."
"Like how you executed those two thugs earlier?! They didn't deserve that! You could have stunned them… or captured them… but you just… killed them…" her voice dropped off as that fresh memory played through her mind, the brutality she had witnessed literal feet from her, for the second time in her life.
"Kyra. They would have killed you. I did what I had to."
"No, you didn't! The Duros wasn't even a threat anymore! And the human… you had plenty of time to switch your blaster to stun…" she wanted to yell at him, but her instinct demanded she keep her voice down.
"William Stanton. Task Force Nexu, alpha team. Shot and injured a pirate, moved to disarm and treat the pirate's injuries, pirate detonated a grenade. Killed three other members of the team. If he had shot that pirate then, himself, and three other good soldiers would still be alive right now." Roy spoke with a cold severity, his face hardening back to his usual, with an extra sort of tension there. "Cory Darklighter, Hudak Sarri, and Emma Kael. All KIA because one person wouldn't pull the trigger on one person."
"You still could have stunned them!"
"Tara Reed, Charlie team. Switched her weapon to stun to try and capture an Imperial officer. The man's muscles contracted and fired his weapon. Killed a child the officer was aiming at." The way he rattled off incidents was unnatural, almost as though he had memorized the circumstances of every soldier he had seen killed.
"You… That… it can't be right to just kill people though…" she muttered to herself as her eyes dropped to the dirt, trying to process everything he had said alongside her own beliefs.
"Alright. Let's say we had kept walking today. That woman either would have paid up a portion of her livelihood, or she would have been killed. She may have struggled, maybe even killed one of them, maybe even both. Then these pirates would retaliate on the town and kill even more people. If we intervened and took the pirates captive, they would probably attack the town to re-establish dominance. But if we kill every last one of them? No one in that town can ever be harmed by them again. So, which of those sounds better to you, a bunch of dead pirates? Or a town of dead people." He kept his voice calm and controlled as his eyes seemed to burn into her.
"It's not that cut and dried! If we just show up in our ships, we could get them to run or-"
"So they can come back after we leave and terrorize them some more?" he snapped that out, cutting off her voice. "I will not let myself be responsible for a civilian death. Period. And judging by how you went after that thug earlier, you feel similarly. So why don't you stop trying to be clever in your solutions and do what we both know will work?"
Her shoulder's slumped in defeat, knowing that he wasn't wrong by any means, no matter how horrible the thought made her feel. Several tears slipped out of her eyes as she did her best to prepare herself to have to kill someone, just the thought itself hard to contemplate. How does one even try to prepare themselves for this…?
"Roy, I managed to loop around the far side and get up to the ridge. Can see at least six, two guard towers on either end of the compound, four rough huts around the main building. I beat their leader here, he looks pissed as hell though. Went into the main compound." The Captain's voice buzzed out of both of their com-links, almost painfully loud.
"We read you. Moving to link in with Madlyn. We need to hit them now." Roy looked at Kyra as he spoke, an obvious question in his stare.
Kyra took a deep shuddering breath, closing her eyes as she did so. As much as she didn't want to, she knew why they had to fight them, and no amount of mental prep was going to prepare her for it. She opened her eyes and nodded to Roy, her body's tremble far worse now than when she got off the bike. A simple hand gesture for her to follow him was all Roy responded with as he turned and walked into the wheat field.