Chapter 3
Half-stock sat in the cockpit of her cloakshape fighter, which she had nicknamed 'Radioactive Mynock' in her own head. Technically the fighter belonged to Koravin, and he hadn't bothered naming their fighters, and no one else knew of her fighter's nickname. Half-stock had her Nautalan head tendrils tied back behind her, draping them over the back of her cockpit flight chair. She wore a makeshift flight helmet she had designed herself, chopping up one made for a human and attaching the armor plates to a nerf leather cap. It primarily offered protection for her forehead and temples. Her tendrils got in the way of any rear skull protection. A pair of goggles were attached to the front of the helmet on a hinge, currently flicked up.
Her fighter was attached to the one of the docking ports on the underside of the Blackpool Flier. The other pilot, a Quarren named Cutter, was in his own Cloakshape. His was docked facing the bridge, while the nose of her ship faced the cargo bay.
She had been sitting there almost forty five minutes, waiting for any sign of trouble from Koravin and the assault team. She didn't expect any. These drop offs rarely went wrong. For one, very few people wished to anger heavily armed pirates. Secondly, Koravin was good about knowing when take a deal that was good enough, rather than getting greedy and falling out of favor with their black market buyers.
Suddenly a bit of static from the comm interrupted the silence inside of her cockpit.
"This is Reemo, I'm with Mr. Lokil. I'm here to check the product," came a voice through the comm. The channel to the Flier's bridge was open to the whole crew, so everyone knew what was going on.
"This is the Captain. Let Mr. Lokil's man onboard to look at the cargo," came the confirmation.
Half-stock felt a slight vibration in her fighter as the cargo bay doors lowered. Out of boredom she flicked some switches on her control panels, turning on her fighter's scanners. She was merely looking to see if any large freighters were coming in to port, which she could possibly mark in order to serve as future raid opportunities.
She gasped in surprise when over a dozen small blips lit up on her screen, surrounding the docking bay. They appeared to be small combat droids, similar to the ones the Empire used as remote scouts.
"This is Half-stock, emergency. We are surrounded," she shouted into her comm.
"Get the bay doors back up," one of the Neelabi twins shouted through the comm. The distant sound of a blaster shot, muffled by the transparisteel cockpit of Half-stock's fighter, reverberated. She lowered her head, squinting at the narrow view her position under the belly of the ship afforded her.
A body was thrown from the back of the cargo bay. She guessed it was Mr. Lokil's inspector. Suddenly a volley of blaster fire erupted from the entrance of the hangar, stray shots blasting dirt and bouncing it off the canopy of her fighter. A smattering of return fire flew from the back of the ship.
"Youngest sister is down," one of the twins shouted. "We can't get to the control panel."
"Close the door from the bridge," Half-stock suggested. The blaster fire was getting heavier. Their assailants had set up a tripod mounted blaster cannon.
"They've hit the hydraulics," Opuk said from the Flier's bridge. "We can't lower it remotely.
Half-stock activated her ship, feeling the familiar and satisfying vibrations of her engines as they roared to life behind her. She armed her weapons systems but couldn't get a targeting vector. The space between the ground and the belly of the Flier left her with too narrow a field of fire.
"We need to take off so we can provide covering fire," Cutter informed the bridge.
"Negative," Half-stock said, shaking her head. "They have droids above the spaceport. They will cut the ship to pieces."
"Well, I can't take off like this," Cutter almost shouted back at her.
"I can," Half-stock muttered to herself. She fired her repulsors and dialed them down to forty percent thrust. Next she cut the docking attachment to her fighter.
The cloakshape dropped from the Flier and almost struck the ground. She had only a few millimeters of clearance when her fighter bounced back up. She quickly dialed down the repulsors to thirty percent, and her ship settled into an equilibrium.
A light push to her left thruster, increasing its power, caused her ship to rotate to the right. This threw her fighter out of balance, and the left wing tipped up. It scraped against the hull of the Flier as she carefully maneuvered sideways. A high pitched screech cut into her cockpit, as if her fighter was crying out in pain.
A cloud of formosian dust, kicked up by the thrusters and her repulsor cushion, enveloped her as she slid out from under the Flier. Their attackers must've realized the pirates had launched something, for their wildly aimed blaster fire penetrated the cloud of dust, most of it missing or glancing off the shields of her fighter.
Half-stock kept her eyes upward. Her vision was obscured by the same dust cloud that protected her, but she watched for the shadow of darkness underneath the Blackpool Flier to pass. When the light penetrating the cloud brightened she pushed her repulsors to the maximum. The fighter shot upwards, launching out of the dust cloud.
Within the space of a second the hangar bay around the pirate ship became visible. Over a dozen assailants had fanned out in front of the exit. Their tripod was set up underneath a support column.
The dust cloud pushed outward, blown by the increased power of her ascent, a billowing cloud that obscured the enemy. But the muzzle flashes of their weapons were still visible. Half-stock opened up her cannons. The sound of the Cloakshape's pair of blasters erupted like a thunderclap inside the confines of the hangar, each shot reverberating like a punch to the chest.
The permacrete wall of the hangar exploded in her initial volley, showering the enemy in chunks of rock and debris. The gas canister of the tripod blaster cannon's ammunition was crushed by a huge chuck of duracrete and exploded, throwing shrapnel in all directions. Blood vapor mixed with the dust hovering throughout the hangar, turning into a cloud of wet mist. Half-stock halted her fire, allowing the dust to settle. Bits of the enemy that had avoided being crushed by the permacrete were scattered across the bay, in pieces.
A powerful shot splashed against her shield, causing an alarm to sound inside her cockpit. The blast had come not from the ground, but from above. She raised her ship's nose and spotted one of the droids drifting in front of the control tower.
She fired away, with no regard to collateral damage. The shot from her left cannon struck a droid, blasting it into a cloud of metal shrapnel. The other shot struck directly into the viewport of the tower. The communications array on top of the tower exploded as the roof of the tower collapsed, further showering the hangar with debris.
Another warning from her fighter sounded as her ship took fire from behind. She did not have the space to rotate her ship so she punched her thrusters to the maximum, shooting fighter forward at a steep angle.
The droids surrounding the bay fired at her but the fighter had accelerated too quickly, their shots passing harmlessly in her wake. She kept her fighter flying upwards and then turned it in a wide curve. Below her the spaceport and the city around it stretched outwards. There were about a dozen of the droids around the Flier's hangar, and her scanners warned her of another ship. She spotted it hovering several hundred meters above the spaceport. It appeared to be a small frigate. She guessed it had deployed the combat droids.
But she hadn't needed to guess. A quad cannon mounted underneath the frigate fired at her, missing wildly, the stray shot blasting into an apartment building. She flew upwards, above the horizontal plane of the frigate and out of the turret's field of fire.
Once again she opened up her cannons. She continually pumped shots into the frigates rear shields as she approached. The shields held up until the last second. Just as she flew past the frigate her last pair of shots struck its aft engine. It exploded, sending the frigate into a tumble. Suddenly Half-stock realized that she may have made a mistake.
The frigate had been in a dead hover above the spaceport, with no forward momentum. And so, after its engines exploded and the ship lost power, it fell downwards. Picking up speed, it seemed to be falling directly towards the Blackpool Flier.
She watched as cannon fire blasted out of the Flier's hangar bay as her crewmates were targeted the droids who had drifted into their field of view. The enemy frigate tumbled down and struck the permacrete wall between their hangar bay and the next one over in the circular spaceport. The frigate's nose crumbled, arcs of electricity blasting outwards. The rear section exploded in an enormous fireball, parts of the remaining engines shot outwards and struck the control tower, which crumbled over sideways. The falling tower toppled over onto the frigate, just as it began to tumble towards the Flier's hangar. Instead of striking her friends, the weight of the tower's remains pulled the frigate in the opposite direction. The remains of the tower and the frigate fell into the neighboring bay, striking a spice freighter.
Half-stock had now flown past the spaceport, her attention distracted by the spectacular crash. She felt the shock wave rattle her fighter as a secondary explosion, from the spice freighter's bay, rocked the spaceport. She turned her fighter back in a tight turn and flew back towards the spaceport. The Blackpool Flier was rising out of its bay, its cargo doors still more than half down.
"You guys alright?" Half-stock asked.
"Barely, what in the karking hells was that?" Kellash answered.
"Just cleaning up out here," Half-stock answered with a smile.
Another voice cut into her comm. "This is Koravin, we are under fire, what is your status? I heard an explosion." Half-stock's navigation system pinged the location of her captain's comm on her scanners. She looked out over the city and instantly spotted the Black Spike cantina.
"We're fine Captain, airborne," Kellash answered.
"Get over here, we need covering fire," Koravin shouted. Half-stock could hear blaster fire in the background, over the comm.
"On it captain," Half-stock answered. As she flew overhead she spotted a pair of armored land speeders outside of the cantina. Mercenaries, similar in number to the ones that had attacked the spaceport, were firing into the cantina. She was about to get into an attack vector when her comm interrupted her.
"Half-stock, Cutter is away. But we got company. The locals have dispatched their fighters. They probably aren't with these other guys, but after what you did to their spaceport, they aren't gonna care," Kellash said. "We will take care of those guys on the ground."
"On it," Half-stock said. She turned her fighter and gained elevation. She extended her scanners and spotted three t-shaped clone wars era V-19 torrent fighters coming in her direction. She adjusted her shields full forward and increased her thrust. It was time for a real fight.
oOoOo
Koravin stopped at the last pair of stairs and threw his back against the wall of the stairwell. Below him was the ground floor of the Black Spike Cantina. Smoke from blaster fire blanketed the room with a thick veil of fog. Most of the furniture in the room was wrecked and a small fire burned behind the long bar.
Koravin ran onto the floor, ducking as a stray shot sizzled past his head tendrils with Pleff following behind him. As he ran he spotted Walaa sitting with her back against the bar, holding her blaster pistol up in one hand and peering out towards the exit.
Another blaster shot flew past just as Koravin hit the floor. He came to a stop beside his crewman. "What in the karking hells happened?" Koravin asked, shouting to be heard over the sounds of battle.
"We were just sitting there, watching the entrance," Walaa answered. "Then these guys came in, mercs, didn't say nothing. Just started shooting."
"Is anybody hit?" Koravin asked.
"Yeah," she answered sadly. "Saruush took one in the chest before we could get our guns up. He's gone."
"The sisters?"
"I think they are okay," she answered. Koravin looked across the room. He could barely make out the form of an overturned table through the smoke. Blaster fire was erupting regularly from behind it. He felt Pleff kneeling down behind him.
"Do you have any grenades?" Koravin asked his first mate.
"I always bring grenades," Pleff smiled and retrieved two of yellow plasteel balls from his utility belt. Koravin took them from him and then surveyed the room, or at least as much of it as he could make out.
"Walaa, cover the back rooms behind the bar. There could be a back entrance to this place. Pleff, cover the entrance from the other side," Koravin ordered, gesturing towards the right hand side of the doorway, opposite of the sister's position.
"What are you going to do?" Pleff asked.
"I'm going to find out what kind of firepower they got out there." Koravin waited until a lull appeared in the amount of blaster fire streaming into the cantina and then took off in a crouched sprint, as fast as he could go.
Something heavy, a piece of the ceiling, struck him as he ran, knocking him to the floor just as a large shot streamed through the space his body had only just occupied. The shot struck the back wall, blowing it open. It was not the kind of shot that could come from a hand-held weapon.
Koravin wiped some blood from his forehead and got back to his feet. He ran towards the stairs, taking the steps three at a time. He reached the second floor quickly, finding it was mostly untouched, although indirect fire was begin to punch through the walls. He paused, getting his bearings. Lokil was hiding underneath the table in the booth Koravin had left him under. The devaronian spotted Koravin and attempted to crawl away behind the cover of a neighboring booth.
Despite the pleasure it would bring him to end his life, Koravin was not interested Lokil at the moment. Instead he ran over to the wall, the floor shaking beneath him. He grabbed a table and threw it out of the way, his enormous strength sending it flying. He jumped onto the booth, behind the space for the table against the wall, pausing to think.
He armed the grenade and sat it into the space behind the booth. He turned and ran, falling to the floor just as the grenade exploded. Debris showered him, followed by a cloud of smoke. But when the smoke cleared the pale light of Formos' sun shone through the hole he had blown into the cantina's outer wall.
The hole was just above the entrance on the floor below. Koravin crawled over to the hole and peered out, his back against the charred remains of the booth. Outside he could see a pair of armored landspeeders with blaster cannons mounted atop their canopies. They were manned by a pair of canine-faced Klatoonian mercenaries. So that was the source of the overpowered blaster fire.
Besides the speeder he spotted an armored troop carrier parked between a pair of buildings across the street. There were over a dozen mercenaries, representing most of the Hutt slave species, arrayed between the speeders and the carrier, crouched in strategic positions so they could fire into the cantina.
Koravin maneuvered his body against the booth so none of the mercenaries could get a clear shot at him and palmed his remaining grenade, preparing to trigger the arming mechanism. Suddenly an enormous explosion rocked the cantina, and for a split second he thought the mercenaries had fired a rocket into the establishment.
And then he realized the sound echoed from a distance. From the spaceport.
He placed the grenade carefully beside him, so that it would not roll away, and retrieved his comm.
"This is Koravin, we are under fire, what is your status? I heard an explosion," he said, attempting to reach his crew who had stayed behind on the ship. He feared the worst.
"We're fine Captain, airborne," came an answer. He recognized the voice of the Kellash. The momentary lull following the distant explosion expired, and the mercenaries began firing once again into the cantina. Koravin could smell smoke, and realized grimly that the entire building was beginning to catch fire. They wouldn't be able to hold out much longer.
"Get over here, we need covering fire," he shouted. A blaster shot struck the booth above him, raining hot debris onto his head. The mercenaries had spotted him. He quickly put the comm back in his pocket and grabbed the grenade. He waited until another shot struck and then leaned out over the hole.
He wrenched his arm as hard as he could, flicking the arming switch and throwing the grenade. He immediately withdrew, but not before a shot struck him in the shoulder.
The blast sent him spinning, throwing him backwards onto the floor. He screamed as all of the nerves in his body cried out in burning pain.
He felt a blast shake his body as the grenade he threw outside exploded, but it failed to register in his mind. He felt only pain, saw only the twisted wreckage of the dance floor, and smelled only the horrible scent of his own burning flesh.