Chapter 75 - The Pirate, The Mandalorian, and The Cyborg
"No, that's not necessary." Lobot said to his willing passenger.
Han Solo was about to manually open the vents on the Hyperdrive which would allow it's pressure to equalize.
It was one of the first actions Lobot took when they exited hyperspace. He pitied the man if, as he understands it, all such actions on the Millenium Falcon are manual. Primitive ship. This one was all run by a central computer, similar to the ones in Cloud City, and thus he could control them with mere thought.
"Then I'll help you pilot." Han sat in the mostly defunct seat of the "co-pilot."
"I am sending the message to the pirates now." Lobot informed him.
"Good. Uh, do you need me to get back there and act all prisoner-ee?"
"Unnecessary. I have enough holo recordings from the first voyage to prove your capture."
"Ok-ay slightly unsettling, but anything that works," Han drawled. "I'm gonna want to see those pics when we're through though. Got an image to maintain."
"They are accepting the delivery." Lobot told him, as the floating wreck of a Pirate ship opened it's bay doors.
Han began to push buttons that would release the landing gears and prepare them to fly into the Hangar on manual control, but was surprised when, in many cases, the buttons activated for him. Lobot did slow down the closing of the atrial vents to allow Han to do it for them. It is better for the human male's Psyche to contribute in some way to an endeavor like this, after all.
Next, to Han's surprise, Lobot took direct control of the ship's steering and piloted them, all without touching the pilot's controls. Han even drooled a little bit as the sublight engines gave their ship the push to turn slightly, so they were in line with the Pirate's landing doc clips.
"Now is the time for your performance." Lobot said to the still stunned Han.
"Yeah, Prisoner me." He offered his wrists to be cuffed.
Some time earlier:
Hondo greeted his guests with a big smile. "Welcome aboard, or olarom," he added when he saw the Mandalorian step off the ship. Sure, it wasn't many days a Pirate was entertaining company. Most "guests" being quickly divested of their possessions and either killed or marooned, would hardly call him accommodating, but Hondo wanted to make this work.
"Captain," the Mandalorian greeted him with a nod. "Where is Venham? According to our agreement, he is to witness the handover himself."
"Yes, Venham and Aco are on the bridge."
"Good. The other party messaged to expect them in an hour."
Hondo found bounty hunters a strange lot. Always using nondescript terms to describe their prisoners and customers. But then, when his boys wanted to get into the business, Hondo put in the work and memorized the system. It was the least he could do. "Do you want help securing the package? We have a cell on the lower deck."
"No. It is unnecessary. My man will hold him on the ship until the other party arrives."
"Oh. Alright. Come this way then. What is your name?" Hondo greeted the uptight fella with a fist on the back of his armor.
"Boba, Boba Fett." He didn't return Hondo's enthusiastic greeting, though he didn't shirk him off either, and followed his push into the ship's hallways.
Boba walked onto the bridge of the pirate ship. His Buir would have turned his nose up at the surroundings, surely. Although in Boba's experience, being judgemental rarely ever serves a purpose. Plus the man could hardly voice a complaint. 'Who got himself involved in a little cloning project on respectable grounds only to have his ade turned into DarJetti adiik akaan'ade.' Boba didn't have a lot of respect for the Jedi that died that day, but he knew his Buir would have been outraged to learn how his army was used to bring it about. How they were really a Sithspawn army. There's no honor to any of it!
There were two figures bent over a screen. "Hey Aco, He's here." One of them slapped the other on the back and turned to face Boba. "Greetings, Mister Fett. I am Venham and we are pleased to represent the Guild in your little exchange."
"Yeah, how many parties were you expecting?" The other, Aco, asked. "Another ship just arrived. They are hailing us and it's entirely in text."
Boba leaned over to read the screen in front of Aco. 'Lobot: In possession of one unit - designated Han+Solo'
"Oh. My counterpart had hacked the cyborg. He's virtually a droid now. Not our doing. It's how those implants work. Though I thought he had been lost to us when we left."
"Do you want to allow him entry?" Aco asked.
"It hardly matters anymore. The one named Solo was only wanted for his connection to my current package. And without the extra stipend they added onto it, his bounty is hardly worth the costs to bring him to Christophsis. Here, give him this, and the cyborg will turn around." Boba reached to write a computer code on a sheet of flimsy which was in his pocket.
Behind him, Hondo made a sound similar to blowing a raspberry. "Nonsense! Bring them aboard. If you don't want to take him, Venham will. Besides, the prisoner may have valuables on him. Nothing on the bounty says he has to be delivered as he came in, does it?" he said with a smile. And suddenly Boba understood what a pirate was doing in the field of Bounty Hunting.
"Alright." Boba nodded and Aco pushed buttons to open the hangar.
The ship opened and Lobot docilely walked out.
"Where is the package?" Hondo asked, eying the Cyborg-droid with suspicion.
Lobot didn't reply. He didn't even blink to acknowledge the question.
Boba explained, "He's not used to speaking much. Well, he can, but it takes up a lot of the chip's processor, and it isn't good if the thing overheats. Instead, he uses a wireless signal to send text messages to datapads and computer screens. It's how he communicated, where he was before.
"Oh, well how about this then?" Aco held up his datapad.
"Careful what you give him access to. He's still strange tech," Hondo said.
"Yeah yeah," Aco waved him off. "I'm getting the signal now, okay link forming…"
Boba was starting to suspect there was more of a parent-child relationship than captain-crewman between them. None of his men would EVER wave him off like that. But then from his memories, his Buir wouldn't have tolerated this treatment either. He'd end up cleaning the Slave One from nose to tail pipe three times if he'd done that.
"It's typing now." Aco read outloud, "'Han plus Solo is immobilized onboard. Device battery is low.' Wha?" Aco's eyebrows concentrated for a second. "Oh. Yeah I've got to plug it in. I'll do that when we get back to the bridge."
Hondo rolled his eyes.
Boba pushed past the cyborg to get into the shuttle.
"Ask it, what kind of cargo this thing is carrying," Hondo ordered.
"'Three Units of carbon based matter, frozen in carbonite.'" Aco read again.
"Hmm, carbon based matter. I hope it's not someone's toiletries. Then I suppose, encased in carbonite, I could always say it's, uh… Modern Art." As Hondo said this, Boba was pulling a scruffy looking human man out of the ship. Even though his wrists were bound in cuffs, he did not come quietly. He struggled in vain to get his arms out of the Mandalorian's grip. Then, when that proved futile, he swung his head back and with a loud crack slammed it into Boba's armor.
"Oww," Han yelled. A red spot was forming on his head.
The only one who didn't wince was Lobot, with his usually robotic demeanor.
Hondo just laughed. "Greetings, Mr. Solo. I am the dreaded Captain Hondo Ohnaka and I will be your host, for the foreseeable future. Venham!" He ordered and the man came running. "Take Mr. Solo to the suites on the lower level. And get him some Bacta. We don't want to leave a scar on his pretty face. It might lessen the value."
"Yes Captain," Venham agreed.
All this rushing back and forth was unnecessary for Lobot. By the time they'd marched Han off to whatever amounted to a holding cell on the Pirate ship, he had already scanned half the data on the crewman's datapad, and transferred his consciousness to CV-771, one of many lower class droids on his ship. A simple program would let the implants control his body until he finished what he had to do.
The eye apparatus for this droid was a bit wonky, but that was normal for a CV droid. He quickly maneuvered it's way over to one of the Carbonite slabs and began to unfreeze it's captive. The first time he did this, Lobot was surprised to find using the droid limbs with tools already mounted on arms was a lot easier than using his own hands to do the same thing. Now that he had control of the implants in his brain again, he intended to use it to do a hundred tasks at once, just to prove he could.
The lights from the heating units melting the carbonite lit up the space with a white glow. Then Anakin began to cough as he regained consciousness slowly. Lobot moved on to the next, and then Obi-Wan and Chewbacca were both roused as well. Chewy struggled the most with the post hibernation blindness, and almost knocked Lobot's droid out of commission. Thankfully, Anakin was there and had recovered enough to intervene.
"There, there, buddy. It's okay. We're on the Pirate ship, remember. To help my son."
Chewbacca soothed to the voice of his friend.
"And do we know anything about where they are keeping him yet?" Obi-Wan asked.
Lobot used the droid's processors to give his reply in binary. Anakin spoke the translation out loud for the others. "Haven't located Luke yet. The Bounty Hunter uses the name Boba Fett and appears to be a Mandalorian. The Pirates are harder to identify. The Captain is consistent with a number of witness reports from various crimes from before and after the fall of the Republic, all unsolved."
Obi-Wan flinched when he heard the first name mentioned.
Anakin repeated it to himself, contemplating. "Boba Fett. Is that..?"
"Son of Jango Fett. The unaltered clone he ordered from the kaminoans. Apparently he was there, during the first battle of Geonosis, in which his father was killed."
Chewbacca growled a long moan in shyriiwook expressing sympathy for his loss.
"Yeah, I imagine he doesn't think too highly of us Jedi, then," Anakin said.
"That's putting it lightly," remarked Obi-Wan.
"Okay, what do we have to worry about leaving here? Where is everyone?" Anakin asked Lobot.
"The Pirates and Boba have left the hangar and are on their way to the hangar. As soon as the younger crewman plugs in his mobile device to charge, I should be able to access more of their systems. The Bounty Hunter's ship is in the same hangar you are in. Han has been taken to a location on a lower deck. I haven't located any Imperial agents yet. Will update you when I have more intel." As Lobot finished blinking the binary words, he gave the droid a command to return to it's charging station.
"So, I say we start by searching Fett's ship." Anakin suggested.
"Grrrrrrrrrrroooooooooaaaaaaaaah," chewy growled in agreement.
"Wait. We should first recover enough to walk. I think Lando said there was a water dispenser in here. We should all have a drink." Obi-Wan said.
Chewy and Anakin both growled in resistant agreement, and took a few tentative and dizzy steps to follow Obi-Wan to the dispenser.
Hello everyone,
Hondo is back! As are my two OC's from the earlier adventure, Venham and Aco-Ness. (Chapters 42 - 49) If you forget, I didn't exactly say so directly, just kind of implied that Aco-Ness and Venham were two orphans who were found by the Pirates way back, taking refuge in their cargo somehow. Anyways they were unofficially adopted by Hondo and raised by the Captain as a part of his crew. In my imagination, atleast. Venham and Aco had left him for a while. Then they got into trouble, and Aco was brainwashed by the empire for a time. But our heroes restored Aco and Hondo made peace with the kids again. Now one of them wants to get into Bounty Hunting, what's a good captain to do, huh?
So, this adventure may take a few chapters. I just can't write them short. I apologize. Anyways, It'll be fun, I hope.
The mandalorian language is from an internet translator. I think it should be apparent in the context what each word means. But if it's not, just ask.
