AN: Hello again ladies and germs, and welcome to the meat grinder! On today's menu is action, action, action, as we do our best to run the Hasty Lady ragged. Hope you enjoy it. A big shout out going to Kam I Am for being the officially recognized Oldest TOTHL Fan. Thanks for helping stoke my fiction reactor. Cheers!

Chapter 6: Out is Through

Wren woke with a start, recognizing even through exhaustion that sudden thump and the sinking stomach of deceleration for just a moment, before the inertial dampers returned the ship's interior to neutral momentum.

"We're out of hyperspace, SENA," he said. His tone was more irritated than he intended, and what he heard next only made it worse.

"Yeah, we got pulled. I'm setting up a missile run to chain onto our escape vector."

"Escape?" Wren laughed in his grogginess.

"Yes you nerf herder, this one is no joke." SENA grumbled. She was burning with annoyance. "They've got a gravity well projector in the area, we can't leave till it's dust or dead in the void, and I need time to sniff it out through all the rest of their sensor and comm traffic."

"Okay, hostility, why?"

The agitated AI threw Wren into the wall; a simple matter of cutting power to the local gravity projectors and inertial dampner and then pitching 15 degrees. "Because you can't say no to a piece of tail willing to give you the solar rotation, doe eyes and blasted tea, and went and helped her topple a government while on a fekking hot burn across the galaxy, with mercs all over our tail," SENA spat. "Get up here, you've got a call."

"A call. Someone slapped us with an interdictor field and jumped to contact for a call?" Wren dusted himself off, darting out his door and pulling around the corner, and the moment the cockpit doors opened his heart sank further.

"Wren 'No-Holds' Eschlan!" The man's face filled the HUD; a wild shock of hair, now stark white and green in places, wide brown eyes, two rings of reddish metal in his left ear. Shana, sitting anxiously in the navigator chair, had never seen Wren scowl so deeply. Hakyo was folded awkwardly into the comm control chair.

"Utome," the captain said. "Long time no see Chol. How long has it been? How's the arm?"

The man on the screen had a vicious grin that only grew meaner. "Twelve years since Carida, bless it's dead bones. And mine! Thanks to that damn sitout shoulder lock of yours. You seem to be doing nice enough. Damn pretty dame, and I'll bet the big guy is great for cargomaster. Nice ship, bit junky looking but I'll bet she's hardly stock. Mine is..." He gestured about the bridge, with its distinctive dual crew pits. "Just a touch bigger. And you would never guess why, but I just couldn't go another cycle without seeing you!"

Wren cracked his own grin, belligerent and brash. "Finally figured out who torpedoed mom's exhaust port all those years ago?"

"Ahahaha!" Chol Utome tossed his head back with roaring laughter. "You always had jokes. Even when we were beating the poodoo out of each other at the Academy, you always had jokes. That's why I'm gonna have fun all the way to the deep core, sticking you in the fingernails so I can hear those jokes on the way to a grossly oversized payday. I'd ask you to go quietly, but I think we both know I'm hurting you anyways."

The comm channel closed, and Wren immediately said; "Threat assessment."

"Off the scale and up yours," SENA said, as she began highlighting the vessels spilling out of hyperspace. "Six modified Quasarfire bulk cruisers. No, eight. And there's a flotilla coming in at a longer standoff. High tonnage." The hulls spilled into crawlspace, a pack of twelve small and toothy Corellian gunships and a thick winged spearheaded vessel with a distinctive ventral hanger and dpuble command tower. SENA's tone was heated to the point of chipperness. "...And that's a Venator-class Star Destroyer. With added ventral primary batteries, and extra dual medium batteries, with a screen of DP-20s. Still feel so warm and fuzzy about feeding all the little people?"

Wren slung himself into his chair as SENA executed her missile locks, dumping four groups of four proton torpedoes from her forward triple-drum launchers. Wren had no time to confirm their impact visually; he heard the Lady herself, not SENA, utter a mechanical 'hit, hit, hit, hit' into his ear. It made Wren smirk; a relic of when the dear Lady was just like any other YZ-775. Two of the Quasarfires listed, spewing burning material and loose atmosphere, but the others took a turn to throw volleys from their turbolasers and ion cannons. Wren winced as he watched the shield meter jump down to 2370 SBD. "Two Quasar Fires are breaking off to pursue and launching fighters. Eta-2s coming fangs out in thirty seconds. Switching to cluster missiles. Permission to go nuts, cap?"

A wave of fresh sensor tracks washed over the Lady's displays as Actis-class interceptors spilled from the wide hangers of the approaching Quasar Fires; where Chol found the money to buy or build so many of the expensive little fighters, Wren couldn't fathom. "Go nuts, SENA. Show them what she's got." Wren deployed the autoblasters turrets, switched the quad lasers to converge with them forward, and danced his eyes across the clouds of little orange boxes on the heads up display. The Lady unerringly executed his directives, stitching through the closing formations of Eta-2s.

Shana could feel the drum mechanisms rotate through the cockpit bulkheads, radiating out from further back alongside the small crew lounge by the ramp, each cycling its trio of double length 24 round magazines. SENA launched two volleys of six cluster missiles, and the Lady immediately broke off and poured everything she had into her three engines.

The Lady's volley of missiles exploded into a thick wall of miniature concussion warheads. Despite the cloud of ordnance, the swift little Eta-2s evaded a good deal of the attack, slipping through and sweeping in behind the Hasty Lady to chip away at her shields with well-aimed fire from their oversized weapons. SENA swung back with the quad lasers, two streams of continuous heavy bolts reaching out from the Hasty Lady's waist. Wren focused on maneuvering, slipping into the zone as he danced the Lady about. Every so often, when the opportunity presented, Wren would suddenly kill the throttle, subjecting any unwary pilots that came to close or overshot to the composite lasers and autoblasters. Wren ground his teeth, Shana winced, and Hakyo watched unblinking as the battle ground on. The mercenary pilots showed their discipline, continuing to hound the Lady despite mounting losses to the light and unshielded fighters.

"SENA, whenever you get a whiff of that gravity well projector, I would be very much obliged!" Wren insisted. It had become much harder to catch them with the throttle feint, and they'd chipped the shields down to 1960 SBD. "These guys are actually pretty good. Chol must have taught them himself."

"Who is that chakaar?" Shana asked. "He's got a nasty look about him. Kaysh troan galar dinii, his face is leaking craziness."

Wren felt the twitch in his face; her colorfulness was disarming, but as soon as he had seen Chol, his stress had entered a new magnitude. "Crazy, and vindictive. We were bunkmates at the Stormtrooper Academy on Carida. They were pitting us against each other from the very first day; they made us fight, I broke his arm, and he's hated me ever since. The Navy poached him for TIE pilot training, and I never saw his mug again, till now. But I sure as hell heard about him. The waves he made through the Imperial Starfighter Corps spread into the merc game after Palpatine kicked it, and not in a good way."

The spacer could feel Shana's eyes bore into him, studying him for what he was, the veil lifted. "He's stuck in that past," she said. The implication hung there; that Chol was, and Wren wasn't. "Still spreading Palpatine's malice." Wren could taste her meaning and took heart in it, but shook his head none the less.

"I was Paltpatine's once, but I found a way to leave it behind. The prize I earned for getting this far was unlocking the chains he placed around my life." Wren scowled deeper. "Chol couldn't leave it behind because he never caught the bug to begin with. Carida broke me, but Chol was already broken when he got there."

"Gravitic trace complete," SENA announced. "But you're not gonna like this. Only way out is through; I'm marking it now."

Shana hissed at the change in the strategic picture; one CC-7700 interdictor frigate, running silent save for her gravity well projectors, tucked up alongside Chol's Star Destroyer, and surrounded by heavily armed Correlian escorts. "There's no way we're getting in there," she groaned in dismay. The young warrior looked over to the captain of her voyage, and saw the first stirrings of a grin peek out from under Wren's scowl. Shana's blood ran cold. "No."

"Mhmm."

Shana stood suddenly, slamming her fist on the console in front of her. "Don't you dare, Wren. There's gotta be another option."

That struck Wren humorously, and his crazed grin only grew. "You really don't know how space combat works," he gasped when his breath returned. "Only way out is through."

"How?" Shana was in another realm of disbelief. "You say that all jare'la like a light freighter beating a whole armada is even remotely reasonable!"

"Didn't you say a warrior is more than his armor not minutes after we met?" Shana's face developed a full on pout. Wren was having as much fun as he's ever had while preparing a mad dash to freedom through overwhelming opposition. Shana's retort died in her throat as the Lady came around as tightly as she could, and the enemy force was laid out before her; the swarming mass of Eta-2 interceptors first. Behind them, two Quasar Fire cruisers burned in pursuit. Behind them, their four remaining compatriots formed a loose screen, and further still waited Chol's battlegroup.

"Ready on this end, skipper. Shields double front at 2970 SBD total, ECM on standby," SENA reported.

That finally seemed to snuff Shana's fuse a touch. "Wait... Twenty-nine seventy, or two ninety-seven?"

Wren laughed again. "Now she gets it!" He crowed. Wren threw the throttle open as the Hasty Lady plunged nose first into the jaws of the interceptor squadrons. Eight more cluster missiles left the Lady's drums, bursting open into the heart of the incoming formations and thinning them out dramatically. Shana's vision was frantically split between the dropping shield meter and the curtains of spherical explosions spreading across her vision, as Wren and SENA set the Lady's energy weapons against the fighters streaking by on all sides. Then they came out the other end, a trail of shattered spaceframes and desperate stragglers behind them.

IImmediately, the leading Quasar Fires began pouring heavy cannon shots into the gaping hole torn in the fighter screen. But these guns were much more sluggish than the breakneck Eta-2s, and Wren's evasions were successful against them more often than not. Wren spun his selector wheel and clicked it in twice. The icon for the dual cannons blinked brightly on the HUD as power springing from the Hasty Lady's core was shunted directly to the paired turbolasers. Bolts of colossal power lashed out from the Lady in flurries that approached those of the quad guns. The Quasar Fires died, one while still trying to angle itself into a firing solution. The other turned on seeing the death of its partner, but couldn't escape a lethal torrent of crushing strikes.

As Wren threaded his way between the burning crippled wrecks, the four remaining bulk cruisers harried her with sustained long range volleys. The spacer eyed his ammo counters as the HUD began to fill with detected Eta-2s, twice as thick as before. The tally was fourty-six ions, thirty-six protons, and twenty-six cluster missiles. Shana's bug-eyed expression grew stronger when she saw the numbers. The HUD came to life again as pilot and copilot began setting up their next move, bringing the shields back to 360 degree coverage, falling in at 1740 and slowly rising, until long shots from the approaching squadrons stopped the Lady's shield regeneration.

On the bridge of the Corusca Fist, Chol couldn't contain his glee. "Eschlan you perfect, magnificent bastard," he gushed. "Of course you would go and build the ultimate Q-ship. A fekking heavy cruiser stuffed into a smuggler's tin can. Classic Eschlan."

The warlord watched on the strategic plotter as the Hasty Lady began to clash with the second wave of interceptors. The YZ transport dispensed yet more cluster missiles, sweeping aside his forces with vast swaths of lethal seeking warheads. Their defensive screens scattered, the four remaining bulk cruisers were subjected to additional munitions, paired ion torpedoes bursting against their shields and striking them dead in space. "Such a savage little thing," Chol remarked, watching the little ship speed past the stricken Quasar Fires and angle in on the Corusca Fist. "And so petulant! Roll out the red carpet boys and girls, this one is worth it!"

Wren hollared loud as they danced through the last of the pickets. Shana was flinching with every bump and bang, and there were many, as the DP-20s schooling about the Venator shifted to intercept. "1310 SBD!" SENA shouted, as shots broke across their front arc at the same time that surviving Eta-2s began nipping at their rears.

Sweat beaded on Wren's brow, stinging his eyes as he pressed the Lady to her limits. One by one the Hasty Lady took the larger gunships, leaving them powerless, blasted open, or both. With a spin of the selector wheel Wren deployed the dual mass drivers. The Corusca Fist began looming large in the Lady's canopy, launching devastating curtains of blue energy pulses. "940 SBD! Star Destroyer is launching fighters! XG-1 StarWings and Skipray Blastboats!"

"Nu draar!" Shana lamented. "No way am I gonna die here on this osik'la rustbucket! Osi'kyr, osi'kyr, osi'kyr!"

The approaching wave of heavy attack craft began slamming away at the Lady, the StarWings outriding to launch precise strikes while the Blastboats began dispensing constant, punishing attacks. "Now SENA!" Wren shouted.

From the droid bay, through the Lady's own computer core, through the comm and sensor equipment, SENA reached out. Grasping hold of each missile, she inserted fratricidal commands, spoofing their command signals to smash the oncoming missile attacks into themselves. Despite it, the pounding laid upon the Hasty Lady was beyond anything she'd seen in quite some time. "470 SBD!" Came SENA's from report. Shana was still babbling.

"Almost..." Wren growled through grinding teeth. "Hold together..."

"165!"

Wren pitched the Lady up, boosting as hard as she could muster, until the CC-7700 was in line of sight. Another round of impacts rattled the ship, heavy assault starfighters all around it struggling to pierce the electronic fog and solidly tag the YZ. "Almost..."

As another volley of shots slammed into the Hasty Lady's reflectors, something lurched in a dire new way, and a painful alarm began sounding. "40 SBD! Wren!"

"Got 'em!" He pounded the trigger, and a long burst of twelve shells tore from the mass drivers, each coated in a blue and red shell of propellant plasma. The flat anvil-faced frigate was eaten through and gutted by the destructive little shells. As soon as the last shell was lose, Wren slammed his hand down on the hyperspace control; he and Shana shared laughter and tears while Hakyo loosed a victorious roar as the stars stretched out before them, welcoming the Hasty Lady into the respite of hyperspace.

"Mr. Utome, I was under the impression that when I rendered payment of one and a half million NRC, I expected a YZ-775 transport, it's crew, and my experimental droid, all intact. And I can't help but notice that you haven't contacted our liaison to make good on your end of the bargain."

Chol picked at his teeth, lounging in a chair that was much more comfortable than the one the ship had come with. "Yeah, well, about that," the warlord sarcased. "When you talked about a modified YZ transport, you probably should've mentioned the sixfold missile capacity, or the reactor output rivaling a Dreadnought-class cruiser, instead of letting me think of smuggling compartments. Consider your initial payment as compensation for my damages, sustained in the course of a mission sabatoged by your false pretenses."

Uyoroi was certainly an attractive woman, and the murderous face she made at Chol only endeared her further. "The balance of power in this galaxy is about to shift," she insisted with that high-chinned Imperial certainty that Chol couldn't help but laugh at. "You'd best find yourself in the good graces of the prevailing wind, dear Chol. Order will return to replace this haggard shell of democracy, and I fear that you and your lot may not find a place in a just galaxy."

"Fek you, greysuit." Chol flashed a cheeky grin, and oogled her shamelessly for good measure. The Imperial grays were conservative, sure, but their cut couldn't quite hide a woman of Uyoroi's voluptuousness, and Chol was in his usual mood of maximum disrespect. "Give me a call in a couple of years, when you know you're just like every other two-bit Imp warlord scrabbling for little crumbs of Palpatine's cake. I might just throw you a spanner."

Chol motioned to his comm officer to end transmission, leaning back in his comfy chair. "Damn Eschlan," he sighed, running a hand through his wildly dyed hair. "What kind of heavy weather have you gotten into?"

The cockpit was dark, save for the blue glow of hyperspace. Shana had always found the realm of hyperspace to be a thing of wonder and mystery. What lay beyond the tunnel of azure light? Such questions had boggled Shana's mind since she was but a girl sitting in her mothers lap, gazing out the viewports of her father's ship.

Wren too had an affinity for hyperspace. To him it was ultimate freedom, ultimate security. Tucked away in another dimension, half way to anywhere, beyond the reach of all but the most dangerous foes. He leaned back and blew Marcan smoke into the atmospheric vents. It was just the two of them; Hakyo was sleeping, and SENA had said she'd be defragmenting herself.

"You okay?" Shana asked after what must have been at least an hour of siting in silence, smoking away their lingering fears of death.

"I'm still alive," he said simply. "One more drink, one more meal, one more cigarra. Another jump."

Shana nodded once. "What's our next stop?"

"A nebula between Loronar and Exodeen. My mechanic Fink has his shop there, we're gonna sell our cargo to him, he'll work on the Lady and get us replenished, and from there we hit Coruscant."

Shana took a moment to think on that. "But we're already on the Corellian Run," she said. "It'd be faster if we just went straight through. We'll safe once we reach my employer, and you'll be able to find everything you need for the Lady on Coruscant."

"No," he said bluntly. "The Hasty Lady only flies at 100%, and only Fink goes under the hood."

Shana sighed. "Ni ceta," she said quietly. "If I hadn't convinced you to do what we did on Mon Gazza, this wouldn't have happened."

That elicited a soft chuckle from Wren. "Maybe," he admitted. "But aside from beating it out of Chol, there's no way to be sure."

Shana chewed her next line of inquiry around her mouth before she let it loose. "You didn't say you were a stormtrooper," she stated, with no further comment.

No comment because she didn't have anything else to say, Wren realized. No judgement. "I didn't want to be thought less of," the spacer admitted. "Big P and his boys aren't exactly popular. With anyone."

Shana watched across from the copilot chair, smacking Wren on the arm with the bottom of her fist. She waited till he turned to her, rubbing his arm, to firmly utter; "You're not his." Wren's gaze flickered back to the blue walls of hyperspace, till she grasped his hand and pulled him back towards her. "You're not."

"...I know," he said after a while, when he could manage to meet her gaze. "In my head, I know." He rose out of his chair and slipped out of Shana's grasp. She moved to follow him out of the cockpit, but found him turning back towards her, two bottles in his hands that he'd grabbed from a refrigerator in the cockpit lounge. He passed one off to her, and written in basic on a label sporting a sandy walled, green roofed building was Hoygan's Old Theed Ale. He popped the cap and took a long swig, prompting Shana to do the same with hers. "I just don't always feel like it."

So they drank because they were free, and they drank till they felt like it.

Hakyo's snore was a deep rumble, interrupted as his single icy eye snapped open. His pointed ears twitched thrice, detecting a familiar sound intertwined with an unfamiliar one.

As Hakyo turned over, Wren and Shana stumbled down the cockpit corridor, roaring with laughter, practically falling over each other as they passed the crew lounge and ramp. They paused at the front of the crew quarters to teeter and totter, regarding each other with young drunken eyes and sleepy heads as they propped themselves against the bulkheads.

"We're gonna drop out in 'bout seven hours," Wren slurred. "Probably gonna wanna sleep some. Get sober before I gotta deal with Fink."

"You're not sounding thrilled," Shana commented with the smallest of hiccups. That pulled a snicker from Wren.

"Oh it's gonna be great. Fink is like Hakyo. An acquired taste, ya know?" Wren pulled a cigarra from behind his ear, lighting it, dragging on it, and then passing it along. "He was raised by Verpines. And even they thought he was a prodigy. Guy has radio transmitter implants, lets him communicate with his droids and Verp folks by thought. Real weird, kinda being who is always talking five meters over your head."

Shana took the burning herb and pulled deeply, nodding her head at the same time. "Brikaase ca," she said, in a voice that tangled up in Wren's heartstrings and dragged him along after her by them.

"W-wait," he blurted, catching her by the wrist. The mercenary turned back in a fan of red hair, locking him speechless for a moment with her verdant glance.

"Yes?" she questioned, considering his hand and then him with a flushed bemused, and slightly confused expression.

Wren blushed deeply, staring off into the bulkhead. "...I don't wanna face it alone again." he eventually ground out, wringing his wrist in nervousness.

Shana had to stiffle a sound that bubbled inside her, a feeling that at once elevated her and rendered her vulnerable. "You always did like the men who knew how to drop the jagyc and ask for help." Shana shook her head, shoving Wren along. He opened the door, stepping inside and grabbing a pillow off his mattress. He dropped it on the floor and Shana loosed a flood of laughter. She snatched the pillow back up, dropping onto the mattress. "Don't be ridiculous," she said.

Shana scooted over till she was up to the wall, pulling the blanket over her. Wren gingerly filled the other half of the bed. Wren felt her shift a little, till she was leaning up against his back, and soon she was snoring softly. The buzz in his head and rhe faint scent of the woman sleeping behind him ushered Wren off to sleep.