3

Chapter Six: Surprise Attack

The Profundity continued to shake and shudder violently for the next fifteen minutes. Marney and Lyna ordered everyone to stay low and hold onto the metal bars on the walls. Yabecca grabbed the two ewok kits in her strong arms and leaned over the two wookiee younglings. Salken and Rixxi herded the human and twi'lek children over to the walls so that they were away from anything that could fall and hit them.

The young lieutenant who had helped Kyara to contact the human families on Mon Cala entered and ordered them out of the room. She commanded them to sit in the passenger seats surrounding the area and buckle their seat-belts.

"Stay here until you're ordered to do otherwise," she told them in a no-nonsense tone of voice, before running off to man her station.

The next few minutes seemed to last an eternity. The emergency sirens were wailing and the walls in their area seemed as though they were going to break apart. They heard the sound of crunching metal, and it reminded Marney of the time long ago that his ship was attacked by smugglers. It had seemed then, as it did now, that they would not survive the attack. He knew, however, that his father was a far better commander of vessels than he could ever hope to be, and so he would simply have to put his faith in the Old Fish.

As soon as that thought of faith in his estranged father entered his mind, the crunching and shaking stopped.

"Everyone stay seated," he commanded his crew-mates and charges, "Wait until the lieutenant comes back and gives us the A-okay."

"Excuse me, Captain Raddek," Jalleck Braxton interjected, "But I should offer my services to the engineering crew...they may be in need of some help."

Raddek held up his hand in order to dissuade Jalleck from volunteering for the moment. Although it was generous of the human, he would not know the mon calamari warships as well as the regular crew and might even get in their way. Fortunately, the lieutenant returned and told them that they could go back to the Civilians' Living Room. Jalleck offered his help to her, but was politely refused.

"You can aid us best by staying in the Civilians' Quarter," explained the lieutenant, "The admiral will be very busy dealing with the damage reports, but he will try to pay you a visit when he can."

"Do you think it's an attack by the Empire?" Jalleck asked Marney, "Would they try re-capturing Mon Cala at this point?"

"I doubt it," Marney replied, "If they'd launched a full-scale attack, it wouldn't be over this soon. It's more than likely some half-assed marauding force that the Empire has manipulated into raiding us in order to wear us down. The Imperial Big-Wig Moff Tarkin was pretty pissed off with the mon calamari for throwing off their shackles. He was especially grouchy about my cousin Commander Ackbar, who was given to him as a gift-slave before he "betrayed" the Moff by running off with the rebel forces."

"Maybe that's why Raddus' ship was targeted," Jalleck suggested, "If he's related to Ackbar, then no wonder they want to cause him trouble. I'm sure Moff Tarkin doesn't want to be made a fool of any more than Emperor Palpatine does. It's not good to mess with those guys...speaking of which, Cap'n...how does the Moff think about you, then, if he hates your relatives?"

"He doesn't think about me," Marney explained, "and neither does anybody else. I'm nobody, Jal...Marney Raddek, trash-captain. That's who you'll be working for."

"Hey, suits me fine, Cap'n," Jalleck agreed, "I'm not much of an anybody, anyways. Hey, if this attack is over, do you think the admiral or the lieutenant or whoever would allow me to take your quarren buddy Qualle over to your ship and start the overhaul of your vessel? I was talking to your wife earlier and she said that droid that you used to use as an engineer is still on the shelf in your ship due to a lack of service parts. I could re-build it and re-program it, with Qualle's help...it turns out he's a computer programmer by trade as well as mistaking kings' fountains for toilets."

Marney stared at Qualle, dumbfounded. He had assumed that the quarren was a simple beggar, but evidently that assumption had been based on his own prejudice.

"I'm sorry, Qualle, I never knew you had that kind of a detailed education," he apologized to his former cell-mate.

"It's all right," Qualle responded, "I haven't worked for some time because even my own people believe me to be weird."

"Join the club," Marney commiserated with Qualle, "Okay, Jal. The droid is just a Trash-T2 unit, so I don't know that you'll be able to do much with it; but if Qualle can re-program it with you, more glory to both of you. We won't be able to get out of this over-sized can of my father's though, until everything is ship-shape."

The three of them sat down by the playground equipment while Sal, Rixxi, Lyna, Kyara, and Yabecca encouraged the children to play on it. The kids had all been sitting around terrified after the attack, and so they were trying to occupy them in order to help them feel less frightened.

They had not been playing long before the lieutenant swept into the room with a group of human families.

"The humans are leaving to go to another, more out-of-the-way world," the officer explained, "and they want to take the human and twi'lek children now. They feel that Mon Cala is being targeted by too much "special attention" by the Empire, to the point where they do not feel safe here. Please, Kyara, can you help acquaint them with the families as quickly as possible? We have a Passenger Vessel which can take them to where they want to go, but it needs to leave soon."

"Wait!" Rixxi cried out, "We need some time to get to know these families, to make sure that they'll be okay for the kids..."

"The social services of Mon Cala have already determined that," the lieutenant told them crisply, "The admiral has disabled the vessel that was attacking us, but there may be more on the way. Come on, people, let's move!"