Chapter 5
Lokil led the group through the city, heading north through the backstreets and away from the burning wreckage of the cantina. The sounds of emergency sirens and fireteams screamed all around them, and the ground shook after a mercenary freighter, falling out out of the sky and trailing smoke, impacted with the ground a few blocks over. He paused, hiding behind a durasteel crate as a team of security officers came running past on the street. The others knelt down behind him, trying to stay out of view.
"...whas goin…" Koravin mumbled.
"Captain!" one of the Elarza sisters exclaimed. "He's awake."
"Careful with him!" Pleff ordered as they lowered their captain to the ground.
"...wher' wu?" Koravin asked, his speech slurred and hard to understand.
"Outside of the cantina," Pleff answered.
"Wheres da scumbag?"
"I'm here," Lokil answered, smiling.
"Should we kill him?" Pleff asked.
"Hey! I'm trying to get your people out of here alive!" Lokil exclaimed as the other sister grabbed him.
"Heh...this isn't just 'is fault," Koravin said. "Shoulda not commed ahead. Shoulda been more careful witha hutt's…" He broke off mid-sentence, listening as the Blackpool Flier passed overhead, one of the mercenary freighters still on its tail. "Where we goin?"
"I'm taking them to the spaceport. I've got a ship there," Lokil answered.
"The spaceport?! The spaceport is wrecked!" the sister yelled.
"Well, I didn't know that!" Lokil shouted back.
"What did you think that billowing smoke was coming from?" Pleff yelled.
"Shut it!" Korvain shouted, cutting off both of them. He began to cough uncontrollably, blood dripping from his mouth. "We need go to a security station…" he finally got out.
"A security station?" Pleff asked. "Why there? They'll shoot us immediately."
"Ah, I think I know," Lokil said with a nod. "They have ships there, with their own landing pad."
"We won't ever get in there," the older sister shook her head. "We can't fight the security forces."
"...Flier…" Koravin said, pointing up into the sky as their ship went past once again, green blaster fire streaming from the pirate vessel like a firework shooting sparks as it flew through the air.
oOoOo
Thom Gorono did not have a difficult job. Not on most days. He was the security chief of Formos, a spaceport whose chief export, hallucinogenic spice from Kessel, was illegal. And so he earned his pay by having his men collect bribes and look the other way for their efforts. Ships were not inspected on Formos. Weapons regulations ignored. The Imperials were aware of the illegality of the operation of course, but looked the other way as well. The Imperial sector government was a concept rather than a reality this far out in the Outer Rim.
And so, when a vengeful hutt decided to unleash his full might upon one of the most dangerous pirate gangs in the sector, chaos had ensued. His entire security force consisted of a handful of platoons meant to keep the petty crime at a tolerable level and a half squadron of outdated Clone Wars era fighters, piloted by former pirates who often targeted the ships they were supposed to protect. They weren't equipped to fight a war.
Gorono sat hunkered down in his office, listening to the sounds of distant explosions as ships fell out of the sky. His comm unit was ringing constantly, a mix of cries for help and angry calls expressing that this was all his fault coming from the populace.
"Get the Imperials on the horn!" he shouted, trying to get his secretary, who was hiding under his desk just as he was, to do something helpful.
"You know just as I do they wouldn't show up for hours, even if I did call them!" the secretary yelled back.
"Well, they will never show up if you don't ever call them in the first place!" he yelled back.
"The holonet comm is in your office!" the secretary retorted, dust falling from the ceiling as a distant explosion shook the building.
He was about to come up with something clever to say in return when the sound of blaster fire striking the side of the building interrupted him. Now what?!
He crawled from his office on his hands and knees until he arrived behind the same desk his secretary was hiding under. He peeked around the corner, spotting a handful of his officers towards the front of the security office. They were armed with heavy blaster rifles, but were hiding behind their owns desks, not putting the rifles to any good use. More shots poured in, seemingly at random. "Shoot back!" Gorono ordered.
"I don't get paid for this," one of the officers answered, shaking his head negatively.
"Shoot back or I'll shoot you myself," Gorono yelled, although he was not carrying a blaster. The effect of his threat seemed to work, however, as several of the officers crept towards the front of the building. The blaster fired had slowed, and seemed to now be directed mostly towards the second story.
One of the officers peered through one of the shattered windows. "It's only a couple of guys," he said.
"Just a couple?" Gorono repeated, his eyes widening. He had feared that half of the Hutt's mercenaries had camped outside of his office. "Get out there and take them down!"
"Let's frag these scum," one of the officers agreed, his fear turning into overconfident anger.
"I got you covered," the officer near the window said. He placed his rifle atop the windowsill and began opening up with a constant stream of blaster fire. The other officers gathered near the front door and then poured out, shouting aloud the best battle cries they could summon.
Seconds later a horrific explosion struck the front of the building from above. The Blackpool Flier unleashed a volley from each of its four quadlaser turrets, blanketing the front of the building and the street. The fearless officers streaming out to heroically confront their enemy were instantly vaporized, and the officers near the window and door screamed as the shockwave crushed their bodies.
The furniture inside the room was shoved backwards, throwing Gorono against the wall. The ceiling collapsed, crushing the secretary under his desk. Gorono's ears were ringing but he felt relatively unscathed. He got to his feet, shaking uncontrollably. He could see the distorted image of several figures climbing into the office. The dust and his disorientation prevented him from making them out, but he smiled nonetheless.
"Thank the stars you made it," he said with a smile. "Did any of the pirates get caught in the blast?"
"No, they did not," came a feminine but angry voice. Not the voice of one of his officers. The older Elarza sister grabbed Gorono by the shirt and shoved her blaster under his chin.
"Don't kill him," Koravin warned, his voice weak. He was held up by the other sister and Pleff, who were both looking around the wrecked carnage that was the security office.
"I know that," she hissed. "We need the security codes for your transports."
"My what?" Gorono asked. His shock and fear had rendered him borderline incoherent.
"The security codes for your transports!" she shouted, slapping him across the cheek with the back of her hand.
"Security codes?" He pointed weakly to his office, where the expensive holonet terminal could be seen through the doorway. "Use necklace..."
Elarza frowned and spotted the metallic chain he wore around his neck. She violently ripped it from his neck and released her grip on him, letting him fall to the ground. He passed out immediately.
The group moved through the wrecked building, passing through the central hall until they reached the rear entrance. They opened the security door with the key fob attached to the chief's necklace and stepped outside. Two ships sat on the landing pad, but they were not impressive.
"Your kidding…" Lokil sighed. The two ships were modified cargo haulers, designed for carrying ore. They were essentially durasteel boxes with wings, a cockpit, and two engines attached.
"It'll have to do," Pleff said. He pointed towards the ship that had slightly less rust. "Let's get going."
"Wait…" Koravin said, halting the group as the moved out onto the landing pad. "Put me in the other ship."
"Why?" Lokil asked.
"Captain…" Pleff said, his expression falling.
"Do it," Koravin said, shaking his head.
oOoOo
Poualiac the Hutt sat on the expansive bridge of his command ship in high orbit above Formos, observing the battle as it unfolded on the planet below. The crime lord was not pleased. A large and expensive holoprojector suspended from the ceiling depicted the battle going on below. The Blackpool Flier, highlighted in green, was flitting over the city, locked in a struggle with two of Poualiac's mercenary freighters. One of the freighters took a direct hit from one of the pirate ship's quad turrets, causing one of its engines to overload and explode. The ship spiraled out of control and tumbled into a row of apartment buildings like a meteor, throwing debris in every direction and shaking the entire neighborhood.
Poualiac roared in anger and slammed his fist into the arm of this throne. His slaves in the crew pits below looked back nervously, fearing retribution from their master. "Why won't they die," the Hutt shouted.
Agarma, his neimoidian majordomo and former Trade Federation executive, approached his throne, bowing her head respectfully. "The fact that they have not fled reveals they have yet to retrieve their captain, my lord. If we can locate them we will yet succeed in achieving your revenge."
The Hutt lord groaned angrily. He had already expended far more resources in this battle than the pirates had stolen from him. The only way to escape this situation without becoming a laughingstock to his rival Hutt kajidic lords was to kill every last one of those pirates. He cared not for the destruction and death his attack had brought to the locals. If anything the devastation his retribution brought would give pause to anyone thinking of crossing him in the future.
"We knew where they were! They escaped!" he rumbled in Huttese. The image of his strike force that had surrounded that cantina being blasted apart from the air replayed through his mind. His bridge crew, and even Agarma herself, continued to sweat nervously as the battle continued. Pouliac, like many Hutts, often expressed his displeasure through executions. The room visibly grew less tense as the last of the pirate fighters was brought down, even if it was due to the actions of one of Formos' security ships.
"Wait, replay that," Agarma ordered. One of the technicians paused the live holoprojector feed and the rewound it to the moment the pirate fighter was struck in its head-on skirmish with the security fighter. She walked nearer to the projection until her face was nearly within the light itself. The image went back into motion and her multifaceted eye slits narrowed as she watched a flight chair rocket away from the rapidly disintegrating fighter. "The pilot ejected…" she pointed out aloud. She watched as the pilot descended into the city.
"Target the pilot's location with our cannons! Make them ash!" Pouliac commanded.
"My lord, our weapon systems are out of range, we must get closer…" Pouliac slapped a button on the arm of his throne and suddenly the twi'lek weapons officer began to convulse as blue lightning coursed through his body. He fell to the deck and died loudly, his voice reduced to a gurgling scream.
Despite the smoke from the corpse drifting across the bridge, and the sudden itching in her neck where she knew her master had implanted a shock device identical to the one that had killed the twi'lek, Agarma spoke up. "My lord, perhaps we should capture this pilot instead. Death is so instant...let your enemies see the diversity of the anguish your punishments can inflict."
Pouliac thought on Agarma's words, and found them pleasing. He had already expended the majority of the ground forces he had brought with him, but his elite guard were still aboard his flagship. "Yes," Pouliac nodded. "Summon my death squad, my killers, my head bashers, my..." Agarma got on her comlink, ignoring Pouliac as he continued to think of creative names for his elite hitmen, and a moment later a half dozen heavily armed soldiers, many of them former bounty hunters, arrived on the bridge.
"My lord," said Lomagar, a trandoshan warrior and leader of the group. He bowed his lizard-like head in deference before his master. "What service may we honor your magnificence with?"
"One of the pilots has been shot down in the city. We want them brought back alive," Agarma commanded.
"If this master's wish, we do," another of the squad said in broken basic, a canine-like Klatoonian named Moabis. She shifted the heavy repeating blaster she held against her shoulder, in an expression that betrayed her eagerness to get into action.
The squad bowed deeply before their lord and then exited the bridge. Pouliac began to relax...his favorite servants rarely let him down. Soon these pirate bottom feeders would feel his wrath.