Chapter 48
Rescue
"All right men, let's box everything up and get back to the ship. The black market is always open, and I want to get these pearls there as quickly as possible!" Hondo's pirates each grabbed a bag of the deepwater pearls, and started marching towards the docking port.
The com unit on Hondo's belt chirped, and he tapped it. "What is it?"
"We've got trouble. That ship, the one that used to belong to Koros L'larr. It just came out of hyperspace."
"How close is it?"
On the other end of the com channel, he heard the crewman yell, "They're charging their weapons. We can't raise shields while we're docked!"
"Get out of there," he yelled back at the crewman. "The Jedi won't fire on an unarmed ship, we'll be safe here for now."
Down the corridors of the Spicy Squid, Hondo heard the airlock doors clang shut. There was a mild shutter through the ship as the pirate ship pulled away, and the stabilizers of the damaged freighter weren't up to the task of keeping the ship steady.
Ahsoka hurriedly fastened up the environmental suit and pulled her durasteel mask on tight. "Maybe I should actually paint the suit to match the mask," she said, knowing that Nat would hear her through the comlink in the mask even though she was in the middle of the Whipclaw and he was at the controls.
"Or maybe you should actually get some armor to go on there. It'll make you look more like a real bounty hunter."
"Yeah, you're probably right. I can paint the armor to match easy."
The mask was painted with the scale pattern from the fearsome Dxunian Stalker, but done in blues and purples rather than reds and oranges. With most of her skin covered by the suit, and only her striped montrals and headtails showing above that, there was barely any shade of orange that could be seen.
"All right," she said, "are you ready to dock?"
"Coming in pretty quickly. The Surronian is coming around again, I've only got twenty seconds. Hang on to something!"
She felt the ship lurch as Nat put full power into the retrothrusters. The Whipclaw had much more powerful engines than a ship this size and type would normally have, and Nat was using them to his advantage.
For a moment, Ahsoka felt a twinge of worry. She wasn't sure if it was a good idea to leave Nat at the controls of the Whipclaw while she boarded the freighter. The young Twi'lek may have been mature enough to become a Padawan at an even younger age than Ahsoka had, but she still remembered some of the mistakes she made as a Padawan. Some of them more vividly than others.
Some of the men under her command never made it through battle.
She was distracted from her reverie by the whoosh of the airlock door opening. She ran inside and slapped at the controls of the outside door, the door that had been connected to nothing but empty space until Nat expertly lined the Whipclaw up with the damaged freighter.
The door behind her closed, and the one in front of her opened up. She could see two Weequay pirates through the window of the inner airlock door, both of them with weapons at the ready.
Well, there was no need to hide who she was. This was Hondo's crew. They knew her. Hopefully they'd know enough not to get in her way.
Behind her there was a series of clicks and a hiss as the Whipclaw separated from the freighter. It accelerated out of Ahsoka's line of view, then it was followed by a pair of Flarestar attack shuttles. Over the com in her mask, she heard Nat say, "Whoa! That was close."
"Keep them busy, but don't take any risks," she told him. "I want a ship and an apprentice to come back to."
The inner airlock door of the Spicy Squid slid open and one of the Weequay said, "Hold it right there!"
Ahsoka held her lightsaber in her hands and said, "Look boys, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Your choice, really."
The one who was holding a force pike lunged at her, electricity crackling from the tip. She ignited both ends of her saber and flipped over the spear, slicing it in half and sending a Force-powered boot heel right between the pirate's eyes. He fell backwards, his eyes crossed.
The other one had a nasty looking modified carbine with an old fashioned military knife bonded to the end as a bayonet. He shot at Ahsoka and she deflected two bolts at the wall on either side.
Another quick slash from her saber turned the carbine into spare parts. He tried to step forward to stab her with the makeshift bayonet, but she kicked his leg right below the knee, aborting his step before he even took it. A solid two handed strike with the hilt of her double sided saber made him stagger back, and she darted forward to deliver a solid uppercut strike with the hilt that rendered him unconscious.
She stalked down the corridor, her double sided lightsaber at the ready. Through the Force she could feel several more people on the ship. Most of them were farther back, in the cargo bay.
But there were four minds nearby. She jogged past the crew quarters and found herself back by the escape pods. A male Mon Calamari face peered out of one of the escape pods.
"Hey, you're not one of the pirates," he said. "Are they all gone?"
On the other side of the corridor a Quarren and another Mon Calamari vied for window space at the other pod.
"I knocked out two of them back there, but I think there are more up ahead," she said. "It might be safer if you stayed in there."
The Mon Calamari on the other side, a female, said, "Captain, it's a Jedi. We're saved!"
"Do you know what the pirates were after?" Ahsoka asked.
The Mon Calamari woman nudged the Quarren next to her. He said, almost inaudible through the thick transparisteel window, "I owed some money. A lot of money. To pay it off, I agreed to smuggle a shipment of deep-sea pearls hidden with my regular cargo. That's the only thing of value on board, it must be what they're after. Somehow they knew where we'd be. We plotted a unique course, and we came out of hyperspace well outside the regular shipping lanes. There shouldn't have been any way for them to track us."
"I can't really condone smuggling," Ahsoka said, "but I won't let these pirates hurt you. I'll be back as soon as I've dealt with them."
She passed through the living area of the ship and reached the cargo bay doors. Through the doors she could feel several living presences, all of them alert and ready for her.
"I guess I'll just have to find some way to surprise them."
Ahsoka looked around the room, then turned off her sabers and used the Force to leap up and perch above the door. Reaching out again with the Force, she triggered the door release.
The wide double door slid open, and she heard Hondo's voice yell out, "Hold your fire! She's playing games with us."
Another voice said, "Where is she, Captain?"
Using the Force, Ahsoka slipped a small narrow-waisted cylinder off of her belt. She levitated it slowly around the edge of the door and let it float up high, almost touching the ceiling. There were no shouts, no one seemed to notice it.
Then she let it drop near the largest concentration of pirates she could sense in the room. It hit the ground with a dull thunk, then it went off.
There was a loud bang, which thankfully her mask helped compensate for and dampen. There was also a bright flash, courtesy of the flash-det she'd taken from L'larr's stash aboard the Whipclaw.
She flipped down from above the double door and landed in the center of the room. As the noise compensation in her mask faded away, she could hear several yells from the pirates. She sprung across the large cargo bay and delivered a spinning kick to the jaw of one of the Weequay. Another was blindly swinging a vibroaxe, and she ducked under it, then came up inside his guard and delivered a solid uppercut, with her saber hilt in hand to reinforce the blow. She caught the vibroaxe out of the air and shut it off.
That was two pirates down, and she could help but notice that there were also two large bags of brilliant spherical gems lying next to the fallen pirates.
"Shoot her! I am not going to lose any more money because of this Jedi!" Hondo yelped.
"I can't see anything!" yelled one of the pirates, waving a blaster pistol around blindly. "Where is she?"
Ahsoka darted forward, then hooked the Weequay pirate's leg with the vibroaxe and pulled it out from under him. He yelped in surprise and found himself lying on the deck.
All that was left was Hondo and an unfamiliar Human. Both of them appeared to have been unharmed by the flash-det. Hondo opened fire, and Ahsoka dodged his first blaster bolt, then ignited her lightsaber to catch the next two.
"You have become a most annoyingly unprofitable thorn in my side!" he said as he threw his hands in the air.
"Leave her," the Human said. "She's not important. And she can't stop us. Take your spoils."
"Really, you think I can't stop you?" She twisted her saber hilt, and the double sided saber separated into two single blades. "Just watch me."
The dark haired human drew his vibrosword and blaster pistol. He loosed two shots at her, which she deflected easily, then a third that she barely caught, and she felt the heat of it pass by her shoulder.
Then he charged forward, swinging his vibrosword at her. She slashed at it with her shorter blade, expecting to cut it in two.
Instead, the vibrosword stopped her blade, and he twirled it around to entangle it with her longer blade.
"What the..." she said as she stepped back, trying to disentangle her blades from his. His boot stomped down on hers, pinning her foot to the deck and making her stumble, almost exactly as she'd done to one of the Weequay minutes before.
Then the butt of his pistol smashed into her mask, hard enough to make the mask itself smash against her face. With shock and surprise, she saw Hondo and one of the pirates run past her and out the cargo bay doors. The Human gave her a mocking grin, then followed.
"What the kark just happened?" she asked herself incredulously. She started to follow the pirates, but when she took her first step, she found that her foot was completely numb and she almost stumbled.