Notes: Apologies! I meant to upload this last week, but unfortunately my computer pretty much exploded on my, then after my best efforts to fix it, exploded on me again. So no uploads. But at last it's here! And once I finish editing the rest, I have another few chapters ready to go. Enjoy! And please leave me reviews if you can! I know it's a bit of a pain, but they are a HUGE motivator to keep going, even if it's just to say you liked it. Thanks~

Chapter 3: Droids

Dinner was a subdued affair after the day's excitement. Even a playoff game on the holonet couldn't quite lift the somber mood, where the conversation turned towards politics.

"I'm telling you, the Republic is finished. They have no presence, no control over the outer rim, and once the big corporations in the core figure out that they can't protect trade, everything will collapse." That was Meric, the first mate. He'd had some university, so the others tended to listen when he talked.

"But Meric, the Republic just had a huge war. Of course it's going to take a little while to get back on its feet. I think it will make it. It always has before, and it always will." Laverne, one of the crew members, was the ship's designated optimist.

"Maybe. But this wasn't just another war, man. This was the Republic fighting itself. This was the Jedi killing everybody, killing each other. You don't just pick up where you left off from that. I mean, you can't have invincible people with superpowers just killing whoever they want to. It's about time they got what was coming to them."

Marina abruptly picked up her half-finished plate and left the mess, drawing the silent gaze of the rest of the crew. They held off their conversation until she was gone.

Marina settled down in her corner of the engine room with a sigh. She didn't want to hear about the war, about anything that had happened. It was over, done, and gone. No. Much better to be here, with the engine, where things made sense. She curled up, knees to her chin, and finished her meal while listening to the hum of the engine.

…

The next three days passed quietly as they sped through hyperspace. Marina spent her time tuning the engine and getting set up for the full engine rebuild she planned for their next stop, or at least as close to a rebuild as she could get without parts. The others passed the time in their own ways, dividing to their various corners of the ship seeking what little privacy they could find. The trip seemed endless until, as is the way with such things, Marina looked up from her tinkering to discover they had nearly arrived.

The captain knocked on the airlock before poking his head in. "Hey, we're a few hours out. Can you get us down in one piece?" The question might have seemed a little insulting, but it was more than most captains would have done. And it was, after all, her job.

Marina nodded wordlessly, which seemed to satisfy him. He was about to step out again when something caught his eye. He turned back to look and felt his eyes widen as he saw the battle droid curled up in the corner. "How did you get that in here?"

Marina kept her face blank as she glanced carelessly in the direction of his stare. "The droid? I dragged it in to prop up the engine while I work on it."

"Is the winch not good enough?" Marina sighed. "Busted. But I figured you wanted the engine fixed before the winch." The captain was caught between exasperation that she'd nabbed one of his prize droids without him noticing and pleasant surprise that she'd taken the initiative to get things done. He settled for a mumbled "Ask next time" and headed back towards the cockpit. As he passed the hold he took a quick glance inside but didn't notice any of the droids obviously out of place. He shrugged, puzzled, but he had more pressing matters to deal with, like preparing for the notoriously skittish and thorough customs officials of Karazak. Apparently they had a problem with slavers and weren't keen on letting them get any more well-armed than they already were. Which made going face to face to explain what he was doing bringing a "fully functional" droid assault ship into their space a ticklish process, no matter what history of friendly trading said ship might have.

Marina didn't know or care about the negotiations that started on the bridge as soon as they dropped out of hyperspace. Her focus was elsewhere. The sublight engines she'd finally gotten into good enough shape that she trusted them not to blow up as soon as she turned her back on them, which left her free to come to grips with the hyperdrive that had just given what sounded suspiciously like a death rattle as it spun down. Customs officials came in at some point but the drive had just cooled off enough to work on and she was elbow deep in engine, so she ignored them until they went away.

She felt the sublight drives engage, so they must have worked out something with the planet side people, and she allowed herself a small smile as they burned strong and smooth before bringing her attention back to the hyperdrive. Her work was paying off, and once she got the hyperdrive open she could start putting everything into its proper place before taking a look at some of the secondary shunts. She had a sneaking suspicion that at least one of them wasn't locked in properly, which would explain the carbon scoring next to the far bulkhead, and . . .

Marina looked up from her work about an hour after landing when Laverne stepped into the engine compartment. He had the distinct, slightly nervous air of someone who wanted to ask for something . . . "Hey, Marina, seeing as how you're busy working in here and all, would it be alright if you took watch for a while?"

"Yeah, yeah, not a problem. Go explore."

Laverne grinned and bolted for the airlock, shouting a hasty "Thanks!" over his shoulder as he went to meet up with the others. There was plenty of work to keep Marina busy here, and it was oddly relaxing to be alone on the ship. There was no stress, no demands, no responsibilities, just her and the work, everything in order, everything in its proper place. She glanced briefly a the battle droid before settling back in to work.

Captain Cokryn leaned back with a contented sigh, a chilled drink in hand, as his feet lazily churned the hot tub water. This was much better than his cramped quarters on the Journey's End. In his considered opinion, the galaxy desperately needed to adopt the Karazakian custom of making business deals in spas. It was just good business. And if he negotiated away a percentage point or two he didn't strictly have to when they threw in free massages all around, well, that was the price to be paid for crew morale.

And yet, there was something in the back of his mind that was nagging him, something he was forgetting. He sighed and gave up on getting any real relaxation done until he'd figured it out. He'd learned to trust those feelings over his long years as a trader, even if they occasionally interrupted his enjoyment of a really excellent drink. He took another sip and mulled it over. Hmm, he'd really have to ask what this drink was called, so that next- He jerked forward, spilling fizzy pink drink into the hot tub which slowly spread a pink tint through the bubbling water. The battle droid the mechanic, what's-her-name, had—it wasn't missing from the drop racks. The only other place she could have gotten one was by building it from the spare parts. No wonder he hadn't noticed her dragging it away in the middle of the night. But if she could build one of the bloody things, what else could she do? He had to get back to the ship, and fast.

He splashed to his feet and reached for a towel when he felt cold metal against the hot-tub warm skin on the back of his neck.

"Nice ship you have there, Captain. Those battle droids will make a great donation to the cause of freeing the people of Karazak from those corrupt clowns running the show. Long live the revolution!" The captain heard at least two people echo the cry from somewhere behind him, and a quick glance revealed there was no spa attendant in sight. Cokryn played for time while he fumbled with his com unit.

"Listen, now, I'm sure we could make some sort of arrangement, we could donate a healthy amount to whatever cause—"

"No, captain. This is a great honor. Don't spoil it for yourself. What we do, we do for the people of Karazak. Your sacrifice will be remembered."

Captain Cokryn felt something heavy hit the back of his head, then felt no more.

It had been an hour since Laverne had disembarked when Marina turned to the battle droid once again. It had been a risk trying to rebuild it, but this was the last major port in fairly safe space before they started the long loop back to their staging area to conclude the cruise, which meant the last chance she'd have the ship to herself with enough time to really get at that engine, and she didn't want to blow it because she couldn't' remember some detail about the droids. As it was, it looked like the risk had paid off.

"Command code Alpha Lima 79962624601 Delta."

The droid's eyes burned to life as it unfolded into upright combat position. "Standing by."

Marina directed the droid to hoist up the full engine block and hold it steady clear of the mounting. The droid gave no sign of annoyance at being delegated to manual labor from its normal duties, though that was probably due to the limited self-awareness they were built with. It wouldn't do to have droid soldiers afraid of combat, after all. Still, the reinforced combat frame served just as well, and after a creak of strain the droid held firm. "You've got it?"

The droid was silent. Marina rolled her eyes. "Is the engine secure?" "Affirmative." Limited awareness indeed. Without further ado Marina grabbed her jurry-rigged creeper and slid beneath the monstrous hulk of machinery.

The job was certainly a lot easier with the unrestricted access she'd normally need a full-on shop for, and this way she actually had a shot of fixing the dang thing instead of just piling patch job on patch job. For some reason engine manufacturers were packing the things tighter and tighter into the casings, and on bad days Marina could have sworn it was solely to get on the nerves of frustrated mechanics everywhere. Still, now that it was out in the open . . .

Wow. It was in worse shape than she thought. The engine frame itself was at least dented, if not cracked altogether, and a fluid that was probably the coolant was dripping slowly but steadily onto the floor, and now onto her shirt. Well, if she pulled apart the radiation shielding that should let her get a peek at whether or not the core was actually leaking or just the much more easily fixed filters, and then she could . . .

Marina had the hyperdrive well and truly disassembled and was replacing the emergency power capacitors, three of the four of which had been fried in a burn-out sometime before she came aboard, when the master alarm went off.

Marina jumped in surprise and banged her head against the engine before collapsing back to the deck with a hiss of pain and clutching at her forehead. She took a breath, shot her best death glare at the traitorous drive, and rolled out from beneath it to charge for the cockpit.

She had the loading bay locked and weapons systems armed, customs be damned, by the time she slid into the pilot's couch. All active system lights were green, and passive sensors weren't picking up anything threatening on the pad. What had triggered the alarm? She shut down the angry siren and started checking through systems logs with the familiarity of long practice. The alarm had been triggered by the Captain's panic button. Hmm. She tapped on the communications console and sent him a ping. If she was lucky, it was just a mistake and he'd pick up . . .

The seconds ticked by, stretching into minutes, and still no response from the Captain. She hadn't expected much different. Not with her luck. Spaceport security, on the other hand, had plenty to say about her warming up the weapons on a no-holds-barred assault craft, however down at the heels it might be, in the middle of their spaceport. She took the time to ping the rest of the crew before trying to calm down the security folks. She kept an eye on the communications console, but she noted with a sinking feeling that not one of them had responded.

Twenty minutes later and the security detachment had multiplied into a full squadron of police vehicles ringing the ship, but still no word from the captain or the rest of the crew. Her calm explanation of the situation had allayed the local security boys enough that they hadn't opened fire . . . yet she noted darkly. If something didn't happen soon, thing were going to get ugly out there. It had looked like they were getting ready for a forced breach of the ship, and when that happened she'd have no choice but to—

The communications console tinkled with an incoming message, and she pulled it up on screen, still keeping half and eye on that heavy security vehicle that didn't seem that far removed from a light tank. If this was a bait and switch . . .

The captain's face lit up the com screen, looking much the worse for the wear after his brief stint off ship. His hair was disheveled and damp, he sported a black eye, and of all things he was dressed only in a towel.

"Hello Marina, glad you got my call. I've, ah, made a new business deal with these fine folks." Marina crossed her arms and stared back at the Captain. Right. It was about as loud as you could scream "under duress" short of waving his towel in the air while howling to the moon. "I need you to take the ship to these coordinates, and then we'll have the privilege of witnessing these revolutionaries—" someone cuffed hum upside the head, "sorry, these patriots returning rule of the planet to the people under their protection. Otherwise, well . . ." He looked straight into the com pickup helplessly, "otherwise we die."

Marina let out a slow breath, collecting her thoughts while the Captain started to grow panicky at her lack of response. "Marina? Did you hear me? Can you—"

"Put whoever is in charge over there on."

He blanched. "They're calling the shots, I can't tell them—"

Marina cut him off. He was afraid, albeit with good reason, and wasn't going to be much help. "Whoever you are, I know you're listening. You want this ship, then you hear me now. I'll take it to these coordinates, but before I set down I want to see the Captain and all of the crew, outside, and unharmed. Otherwise I'll assume they're dead and I'm gone from this planet for good."

The Captain went white as a ghost. "Marina, these are our lives you're playing with here, what gives you the rig—"

He was shoved roughly aside and a new, very angry face filled the screen. "No deal. You bring the ship, or they die."

Marina braced herself. Damn it all, this was the kind of thing she'd been trying to avoid. But these people had been kind to her, given her a job, and let her work. They weren't just statistics, they were names and faces she knew. And she knew what the odds of the government getting them back alive were. She couldn't just let them die; she had to see this through, though it was a very dangerous game to play, and she knew it.

"They'll be dead before I even touch down. Unless I see them alive, on site, I blow past you and head for space."

"You'll never make it past security. We've tried," sneered back Mr. Terrorist.

"So that leaves you with some bodies, but no ship. Just have them out there."

She cut the signal. The ball was in their court now. This could all go horribly wrong in a terrifying number of ways, but she'd made her move. She pulled up the coordinates the Captain had sent her on the grid and gave the terrain a quick once-over while she tersely informed the security people that the rest of the crew was being held hostage. They scrambled with frantic activity while she made her way back to her little nook by the engine. From her black bag she pulled her high-powered blaster, a remnant from the past she hoped she'd never need to use again. The grip was all too familiar in her palm.

Time to move.

She flipped the engines to emergency startup mode, bypassing the normal warm-up tests, and jogged back to the cockpit. They'd rustled up a police negotiator from somewhere and he froze like a monkey-lizard under a glow rod half-way between the ship an the ever-growing security contingent as her engines powered up. She announced over the com she was going to save the crew, which would keep them from shooting her out of the sky for the next few moments. Probably.

The engines were warm and she slammed the repulsorlifts to maximum, trusting in her repairs to hold them together, and roughly hurled the ship into the air. The maneuver slammed her into the pilot's couch as the inertial compensator fluttered in its struggle to keep up, but it launched the negotiator back a half-dozen meters to skid to a painful halt against a squad hovercar. There would be hell to pay for that later, but in the meantime she had a little altitude to play with.

Marina punched the engines up to quarter-power and rocketed way from the spaceport, leaving every alarm on base lit up behind her.

This part of the planet was fairly heavily built up with some skyscrapers breaking the two-hundred story mark. Built up enough to merit a full-on automatic traffic control center. Well, she'd been on the other end of this situation enough times to know what she had to do. The terrorists, or revolutionaries, or whatever, hadn't had long enough to move the captain very far, so their landing coordinates were close by. She just had to break free of the scrambled police sting ships now appearing on sensors for a few minutes.

The police fighters easily paced her as she charged towards the crew's coordinates, blaring warnings over the com and even a loudspeaker. There were about a dozen weapon systems locked onto her, which was enough to make anybody nervous. Just a little longer, just hold off a little longer . . . and . . . Now! She jammed the stick forward and felt her heart rise in her throat as the assault craft careened deep into the ferrocrete canyons and straight into the heart of Karazak's complex traffic pattern.

Skimmers and aircars scattered like dust in the wind before her as the automated traffic control systems realized it didn't know how to deal with this new variable and dumped everyone back onto manual control. The vehicles' on board collision avoidance software sent them scattering in every direction. The police ships broke off their pursuit on seeing that cloud of chaos. Even the most rudimentary sensor would see a hulking assault craft, about as big as you could get into atmosphere, but civilian avoidance software wouldn't have much of a chance against intentionally stealthy little sting ships coming in at max.

Marina ignored the fighters and focused entirely on not hitting the walkways built between the skyscrapers at seemingly random intervals and winced as she screamed past one with only thirty meters of clearance. She juggled the repulsorlifts and eased off the throttle for a moment, hopefully in time to avoid cooking helpless passersby, but she was past them now and she flared the engines to coax the heavy ship into banking, bank, bank damn you!

She let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding as she snuck through a gap between buildings, so close she could see people scrambling away from the windows. The maneuvering jets flared, bleeding off speed and throwing her forward against the restraints while the repulsorlifts kept her from falling out of the sky. She cut the transponder ping and watched as the police ships, now accompanied by militia snubfighters, roared past the skyscraper rooftops two hundred stories up. They'd be back, and soon. She didn't have a lot of time, and her window was closing fast.

She pulled the scanners up on screen and, lo and behold, the captain and crew lay out, all trussed up, next to some unhappy-looking fellows. Yes, the timing on this was going to be paper thin. Her finger hovered over the transmit key that would send the coordinates she'd received to the police, and with the other she whispered commands over the ships PA.

The dark cargo hold lit up red as two dozen pairs of eyes activated in the darkness.

Andy Draven was a very unhappy man. He paced back and forth restlessly on the makeshift landing pad, listening to the increasingly frantic reports on the police scanners and his informants in the government. The plan had all started off so well. They'd nabbed everybody on the crew manifest, and all they'd had to do was make the captain call it in and lift the ship via remote, but their information had been out of date, another casualty of the infrastructure damaged in the last two wars. Things were always fixed last on the rim.

Nobody had known about this last-minute addition to the crew, and he told himself, again, not to take out other peoples' screw-ups on his people. Or the hostages.

Even then, it could have gone smoothly, but the crazy bitch had fired up her weapon systems in the spaceport and pulled every security eye on the planet right here. And boy had they shown up in force. If they had that much hardware to spare, how in hell were those slavers still causing so many problems? Just another proof that the government was dirty.

Another set of call signs came onto the police freq and he swore feelingly. They were calling in the damned air force now. They should probably bug out now, but it looked, looked, like she'd somehow eluded the cops, for the moment. It wasn't much, but the chance to get his hands on some combat droids was worth the risk. And, he reminded himself, if it all went sideways they'd blow the ship out of the sky and salvage what they could before getting the hell out. But if she didn't show in the next thirty seconds . . .

He winced as the hulking ship screamed past the adjacent building and came to a bone-crunching halt as every maneuvering jet fired at once. Hell, she'd even popped the emergency air-break panels meant to slow a ship in an uncontrolled crash She was ballsy, he had to give her that. His com lit up, voice only this time.

"Alright, I see them. I'm powering down weapons."

He glanced at his scanner crew who nodded nervously at him to confirm her statement. It wasn't like she had any weapons that could kill him without killing the hostages and wiping out a dozen meters of skyscraper in the bargain to boot, but it was the thought, right? Right. He switched frequency to his gunners. "If that ship even twitches funny, blow her out of the sky. And the second you see her step out of the ship and you have a shot, take it." He listened to the shaky affirmatives from his people with a grimace. The general alert and police flyovers had everyone on edge. None of them were used to being this exposed. This had all better be worth it . . . Come on, come on, come on.

The ship rotated slowly as it eased down towards the landing pad, bringing its loading ramp to bear on the hostages, but she was landing way too close to the hostages for comfort. In fact, the bitch might be crazy enough to try a one-man—"

Superheated atmosphere blew him back a half-step as a dozen police air cars roared around the same building the assault craft had emerged from. They hesitated an endless half-second, confused at seeing so many weapons around their quarry, but then one of his people panic-fired a rocket at the squad cars. It missed by a full ten meters and plowed into an apartment building. The anti-armor warhead penetrated a good dozen meters into the soft target before detonating in a massive fireball that made the whole structure shudder.

The police elected to ignore the lumbering assault craft caught in a landing cycle and turned to face their smaller prey, and all hell broke loose. Andy screamed into his com to fall back, but he was already too late. Even as he screamed he watched the assault craft's cargo bay open and a swarm of fully activated combat droids boil out of the ship's cargo bay and make a combat assault jump, dropping the last dozen meters to the ferrocrete pad, firing with murderous accuracy even before they landed. His rage overcame him and he raised the combat rifle he'd pilfered from a slaver's corpse and opened fire at the ship that had destroyed all his hard work. His fire pinged harmlessly off the ship's shield, and he had just a moment to notice a small figure crouched on the ship's lowering boarding ramp before it fired a blaster bolt that punched through his armor and melted a hole in the chest.

Marina noted with surprise that she'd actually landed her one-in-a-million shot. The most she'd hoped for was getting him to take cover, but she wasn't going to complain. The combat droids fell back to the ship, which was settling down on the landing pad, in textbook defensive posture around the four of their number carrying the hostages. Their organized movement was a far cry from what was going on around them. The world had gone crazy out there, and the fight was spilling into adjacent buildings as rebels fled from the police, who were calling in military airstrikes now, for the love of . . . At least they'd had the discipline not to shoot anyone that wasn't shooting at them, like Marina and her droids.

The droids successfully reboarded, and Marina thanked her lucky stars that someone had programmed POW rescue subroutines into the droids. But now it was way past time to get out of here. She charged back to the cockpit and lit up the engines. If they could get to open space she had a decent shot at surviving until the snubfighters ran out of range, so long as nothing heavier got scrambled, but the big boys took time to get moving, so if she could move fast enough while everything was still chaotic . . .

She kept low, weaving through traffic at slightly less insane speed than when she'd entered it. Whoever these rebels were, they were well armed and putting up a hell of a fight. She winced as a government snubfighter exploded spectacularly, and resisted the urge to bank hard as another rocket sailed past and collided with a walkway, sending screaming civilians flying to their deaths.

No time to be mucking about down here on reduced engines with those nasty rockets flying around. She hauled back on the stick and made a beak for open sky.

Skyscrapers flashed past and she heard squawks of dismay from her still-in-shock passengers that hadn't had the droid's good sense to get strapped back in.

She was a klick off the ground when her com lit up.

"Attention trader Journey's End, this is the Vigillance of the Kazarak armed forces. Lower your shields, power down your weapons, and head to vector .33, or you will be destroyed."

Marina checked the scanners and cursed. She hadn't noticed in the agitated swarm of traffic, but an old hammerhead cruiser was coming right across the ecliptic to cut her off from space. She was faster, and could make up even more ground on him by sticking close to the planet's surface and circling around to the planet's dark side while the cruiser struggled along at the edge of atmosphere, but that meant running the gauntlet of that swarm of fighters, which had just about mopped up the revolutionaries, across the entire surface of the planet. No, not an option. The game was up.

Marina sighed and leaned back in the pilot's couch while she numbly obeyed and punched in the new course into the navicomputer. It had been a good run. For the most part. But mostly, she felt relief. No more running; it would all be over soon.

Travis Bruckland was nervous behind his heavy laser rifle. This was Travis' first six-month deployment in the service, and he had figured shipboard security was about as safe as it got for marine detachments now that the war was finally over. He glanced over at the grizzled petty chief, veteran of both wars, standing next to him without a care in the world and relaxed a little. If he was relaxed, things must still be under control. He turned his gaze back to the little assault craft being clamped into place as the tractor beam finished its work and swallowed hard.

Scuttlebutt traveled fast, and rumor had it that dozens of cop skimmers had been blown out of the sky, another handful of handful military fighters were in fiery craters, and nobody had any idea what the civilian death tole would look like, other than that it would be bad.

Travis wasn't a particularly patriotic man, but as he recounted the dead at this man's hands, his nervousness subsided and he took a firmer grip on his weapon. He was ready now. If he came out swinging, Travis Bruckland wouldn't hesitate to put a blaster bolt between the bastard's eyes, or sensor stalks, or whatever the hell he had. Travis was ready.

The cargo bay loading ramp slowly lowered with the peculiar whine of overworked hydraulics. Travis' finger tightened on the trigger.

A woman knelt on the boarding ramp, hands clasped behind her head, eyes lowered. She wore street clothes, nothing exotic or threatening in the least. He tensed when he saw the high-powered custom blaster pistol, but it was safely out of her reach on the deck, alongside some sort of knife.

That was the last look he got before the boarding team, seeing no instant firefight, swarmed up the ramp from their positions around the ship. They clubbed her down and two held her at blaster point while another cuffed her none too gently, and the rest of the team disappeared deeper into the vessel.