Chapter 30

Pirates

Ahsoka weaved the Whipclaw back and forth, desperately trying to avoid incoming fire from the two saucer shaped Flarestars. She hit the retrothrusters, attempting to let the Flarestars shoot past her and get on their tails. One of the Flarestars didn't react in time, and she fired a few shots as it flew by. The other, however, stuck to the Whipclaw's tail.

"Nat, target the one behind us with the turret!" she yelled over the sound of turbolasers striking the hull.

"I can't!" he said nervously. "Their first shot took out our targeting linkage!"

"Fire manually, then! I need to get them off my tail."

Bollox pressed several buttons on the console in front of him and said, "I will attempt to keep power to the rear shields."

"Divert power from whatever you can. Grife, one torpedo could take out this Flarestar, but we've got the holocron in the tube right now." Ahsoka fired a few more shots at the Flarestar in front of her, but once again had to scissor to port to avoid incoming fire from behind.

She hit the transmit button on the com and yelled into the microphone, "Hondo, cease fire! This is not Koros L'Larr!"

"A nice try, bounty hunter. But if it were not Koros L'Larr in that ship, then how would you know who I am?" came the reply, along with several more turbolaser shots, one of which scraped the edge of the engine housing. "Come now, bounty hunter. You would hide behind the voice of a child as a shield?"

"A child?" Ahsoka said, and much to her chagrin, the annoyance in her voice caused her voice to sound a little bit more squeaky than usual. "Stang it, Hondo. This isn't Koros. You know me. You know my voice."

"I know a lot of voices. Not many of them sound like children."

Ahsoka realized that she was losing concentration on her flying, and the ship in front of her sideslipped and almost escaped from under her guns. "I am not a child! And who do you know who could take down Koros L'Larr and steal his ship?"

The voice on the radio chuckled, "I don't know anybody that crazy. Except... no... little Ahsoka, is that you?"

Ahsoka sighed. "Yes, Hondo. And I'd prefer if you didn't use my name on an open com channel."

"Of course, little one. Gentlemen, cease fire. She is not our enemy." The ship behind her stopped shooting, and she let the other one out from under her sights. "Now, switch over to ion cannons. Jedi are worth far more alive than dead."

"Son of a..." Ahsoka jerked the yoke to the right as two pairs of blue ion blasts flew through the empty space that the Whipclaw had been in a moment before. "I'm sorry I didn't personally write you a letter to tell you when it happened, but I got kicked out of the Jedi Order a year ago."

Hondo chuckled over the radio again. Ahsoka was beginning to hate that laugh. "A nice try, little Jedi. But in the last week Jedi have become a very profitable commodity in the galaxy. So much rarer now than you were before. And so much more in demand. Before, you were Generals. Now, you are prizes. You could be worth a great deal to me."

"What are you doing out this close to the Corporate Sector, anyway? I thought your territory was around Florrum!" Ahsoka couldn't think of much else to say to distract Hondo, since talking while trying to avoid incoming fire was distracting her just as much. Luckily ion bolts traveled slightly slower in space than blaster bolts did, so she had a little more time to react to her Force senses than she would have otherwise.

"My territory is wherever there is profit to be made. And right now, with the Empire taking over the core worlds, the outer rim is where the money is at. At least, the money that I can get my hands on. Please, little Ahsoka, stop struggling so much. I don't wish to cause harm to you or your ship."

"You've got a funny way of showing it!" she yelled. An ion blast struck her ship's shields, and she saw tendrils of ionic energy flashing across the cockpit. Then, amidst all the other noise, she heard a beep from the console. She spared a glance down and saw something she hadn't expected to see. The hyperdrive was powering up.

"Hold on! One of the ion blasts did something to our systems, we're about to jump!" Ahsoka shouted to the other two in the cockpit as she wrenched the controls, trying to point the ship away from the sun before the hyperdrive kicked in. She heard something patter against the aft shields, and her entire rear sensor scope fizzled into static.

Then the starlines stretched out, and then the view from the cockpit turned into a roiling blueish mass.

"Coming in hot!" yelled Jyssa over the ship's com, "Focus your fire on one at a time, we want to take these schutta out."

She pointed the ship at the Flarestar on the left, and fired the quad lasers into the aft of the ship. They splashed off of shields, doing minimal damage. But they were followed up with a pair of ion bolts from both Ylenic and Arc. One of the ship's engines went out, and it started listing to the side. As long as Ahsoka's ship was out of the line of fire, that was fine with Jyssa. She followed close on the heels of the other, firing indiscriminately. She saw the ion bolts from the lower turret continue targeting the first Flarestar, leaving it mostly powered down and drifting. The top turret fired along with her, striking the one in front of them. It pulled a barrel roll, avoiding most of both her and Arc's fire.

Arc cursed over the com system, "Kriffing feedback... sorry. New hand twitched at the wrong time."

Jyssa heard Xho's voice from behind her, "It is a learning device. It will do better next time."

"Well it can learn on its own time, Ahsoka and Nat are in danger."

The lower turret turned back towards the enemy in front and fired. One shot skimmed the shields, and the other hit on the bottom of the craft. But it wasn't enough to take it out of the fight. It continued firing on the Whipclaw.

In desperation, Jyssa launched a chaff torpedo. It sailed past the Flarestar and exploded in a cloud of small reflective fragments just behind the Whipclaw. Jyssa peeled off from behind the enemy ship, and saw the Whipclaw dart forward and disappear into hyperspace.

"What the... she just did a blind jump. Kriffing crazy Jedi." She turned to the Verpine sitting in the navigator's seat. "Xho, can you trace her trajectory?"

Xho chittered and said, "Yes. I believe that the Flarestar's sensors were blocked by the chaff cloud. I highly recommend we disable their sensors before we follow."

Jyssa nodded. "Good thinking. Ylenic, Arc, disable that ship. Now."

Four ion bolts converged on the struggling Flarestar, and it went dark.

An accented voice came over the com channel. "I don't know who you are, freighter. But I suggest you stay out of my business."

Jyssa saw a large blip on her scanner, and she targeted it. Her computer reported it as a Surronian style Corona-class starship. And her sensors picked up four more Flarestars docked onto it. "Oh boy... we might be kriffed... Xho, where does it look like Ahsoka jumped to? We might have to follow real quick."

The Corona spun closer to the Red Drexl, and Xho quickly calculated a flight plan for Jyssa. "It looks like an out of the way system, the Horuset system. The navicomputer reports only one planet. Habitable. Seven moons, two asteroid belts in the system. Possibly a good place to hide from pirates."

"I cannot imagine why Ahsoka would choose to go there," came a tinny voice from the console. The tablet that housed ZT-47 lay facedown there. "The Horuset system is the last planet a Jedi would want to go."