Muted rock music provided the backdrop in the crew cabin of the LAAT/DR transport craft, drowning out the low hum of the engines outside the cabin staging area.

True to its name, the LAAT/DR was a heavily modified LAAT gunship from the clone wars era. The wings and ball turrets were removed, and the hull was streamlined to a torpedo-like profile. In exchange for the control surfaces obsoleted by space travel, the craft featured powerful retrorockets that allowed the LAAT/DR to make high-G maneuvers only survivable by the occupants it was created for.

It boasted a spacious cabin like its inspiration, if a bit smaller. However, its crew transport capacity was severely limited. The 4 hulking special forces operators it supported and their similarly scaled gear filled out most of the space in the cabin, the seating area positioned toward the back bay followed by a door that served as their ingress and egress point.

The suits these operators wore were much larger than most exoskeletons to support EVA operations, amplify their cybernetic and physical augmentations, and grant increased customization depending on their roles and the needs of the mission. The greatly increased deflector shield strength compared to the clone commando armor that it drew inspiration from was another nice perk.

"I've got a joke for ya: what do this transport and Lockjaw over here have in common?" a young special forces operator perked up, shooting the grizzled clone next to him a mocking grin.

"You know, as tiresome as these jokes get, I almost admire the sheer amount of ways you've figured out to call me old, Rusty," the clone sighed, but allowed a smirk to stick around.

Rusty ignored Lockjaw. "The Empire being too cheap to use new gear!" He laughed uproariously, apparently pleased by his creativity.

"Rusty, for making the same joke a million times, your punchlines really suck," a third operator chortled and shook his head.

"But isn't that part of my charm? Face it, if you guys didn't have me you probably wouldn't even know each others' names." Rusty's tone turned to a mocking drawl. "Huh, do I know this Richter guy? For some reason they put his discharge papers next to mine."

"I'm glad we weren't all selected as senior operators, it's almost as if we're already good at our jobs," Richter said.

"Make sure you get the green off of your boots before we push off, Rusty. The enemy won't take you seriously," the 4th operator quipped.

Lockjaw and Richter chuckled, but Rusty's expression grew somber. "You sure our ROE says we have to keep them alive, Gunny?"

The 4th operator returned a somber nod. Rusty sighed heavily in response. "I really wish it wasn't so hard to get into the SFDR sometimes."

Gunny gave him another nod, drawing his eyes to the floor in respectful contemplation.

"Dammit man. Why did it have to be Sammy? He never even had a chance. Why did the deus ex mcguffin have to get him?" Rusty's voice quivered, his expression an incomprehensible typhoon of rage and sadness.

Richter leaned over and rested his hand on Rusty's shoulder. "They... they fucking nuked him," Rusty said with venomous incredulity, as if he couldn't believe his own words. "I wish Big Empire had even attempted to find his body instead of just scavenging the Bludgeoner for data. Vultures, the lot of them."

"I regret convincing him to join the military," Rusty said, barely holding back a snarl. "I know it was his decision, but..." Rusty trailed off.

"I know it's still fresh for you. Leadership probably won't notice if a few go missing," Gunny said.

"Thanks, Gunny. I didn't come here to disobey orders, though. We all worked too hard to get here, and I'll be damned if I drag all of you into my bullshit."

"I don't envy you. I came out of the test tube as a killing machine and it still hurts to think about all the brothers I lost. Sometimes I wish that I hadn't had that chip removed," Lockjaw said gravely.

"We'll get it done," Richter said with subdued determination. Rusty met Richter's reassuring gaze. Both of them nodded in understanding.

The transport lurched forward. "Final burn initiated. ETA 2 minutes," E4, the astromech pilot, announced.

The fireteam adroitly donned their gear, quickly bonding their jetpacks to their combat armor, checking their weapons, and then finally sliding their helmets into place. Once the last hiss of suit pressurization subsided, they set upon checking each others' gear.

Rusty pulled on Richter's jetpack as Gunny checked the fuel on Lockjaw's and inspected it for damage, then the full process happened in reverse. 99% of the time their gear was going to be immaculate, but that 1% was all it took to make their 4 person team 25% less capable.

"Scanners indicate high confidence of suitable breach points in this area. Hatch opening in 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Good luck, Devil."

The air inside the cabin rushed out into space as the bay door opened. Laser fire streaked across the vista followed by multiple explosions off in the distance next to the enemy warship. A bomber's ordnance impacted the ship's hull, leaving a large burn along with a scar.

Gunny quickly got into position next to his fellow Marines. He patted Rusty on the back, prompting Rusty to push off of the deck into space. The craft lurched as it reacted to Rusty's exit, and once Rusty's jetpack fired, Gunny repeated the process for Richter and Lockjaw before finally jumping out on his own.

Their goal was to find a hole on the ship sustained from battle damage, breach as silently as possible, make their way through the ship, and prevent the destruction of useful data before the regular marines boarded to turn Alpha inside out.

"Looks like our friends sustained a little less battle damage than we thought. I can't find any holes but I do see a few burns on the hull. Could use your expertise, Richter," Rusty came in over the comms.

Richter grunted and chuckled. To say Richter was large was an understatement. In his armor, he stood about 2.3 meters tall and weighed around 114 kilos out of it.

"Sending the coordinates to a likely candidate now. Hopefully their hull isn't too thick." The three sped toward Rusty and the bomber's convenient handiwork. Richter got there first, zoomed away from the hull, and fired his afterburners toward the weak point, expertly vectoring his thrust to flip his feet toward the hull and brace for impact. Normally a maneuver like this would have resulted in certain death, but the robust shock absorbers in their suits and their augmentations made this trivial.

Richter slammed into the hull, which caved without much resistance. Immediately after he breached, Richter raised his weapon as his green outline flickered over Gunny's HUD.

Hostiles.

The remaining 3 sped through the hole to join Richter, their blasters making short work of the surprised, lightly armed pirates on the other side. Absolute chaos filled their ranks as the monsters that suddenly breached their hull mowed them down and the compartment quickly depressurized. Once the team cleaned up the rest and surveyed the room for information for their next move.

"Thanks once again to our Universal Lockpick for saving us from using one of those awful breaching charges," Rusty chuckled, pointing his thumb toward the huge skid in the floor and the impression on the wall from Richter's dynamic entry.

"'Preciate the praise," Richter responded with an amused tone.

"They're going to be onto us soon. Let's get those cameras," Gunny said matter-of-factly.

"On it," Lockjaw said, quickly entering a few commands into the data pad on his wrist. One by one, small plumes of smoke filled the room as the cameras overloaded from targeted bursts of energy and the alternating magnetic field emanating from Lockjaw's suit.

"Acoustics are picking up about 20 hostiles bearing down on our position," Richter said calmly.

"Recording devices neutralized, Gunny," Lockjaw reported back, receiving a nod from his fireteam leader.

"Engage active camo and silencer boots."

They disappeared from sight, but green outlines remained in their stead in each of their HUDs. A hiss and a low magnetic hum filled the compartment before subsiding into an eerie quiet; no sound existed thanks to the lack of a medium, but the red lights indicating a loss of pressure flashed dully.

Lockjaw approached one of the small locked doors, inspecting it briefly before typing into the screen on his arm. The door opened after a short delay.

"It's nice to finally have some decent tech," Lockjaw said amusedly.

"More like lucky the door's locking mechanism sucked. Imagine being able to be opened by an alternating magnetic field," Rusty shrugged dismissively.

"Let's hope the rest of them are as easy," Gunny said, motioning toward the open door.

They moved quickly and silently. Gunny took point while Richter went last to squeeze himself through the opening, before politely closing the door behind him. Most doors were far too small for him to get through normally, so he had to learn to negotiate them at a pace only slightly slower than a normal sized person. This also made him a hero among the crew because furniture and supply packs always made it through doors when he was around.

There were many risk factors that worked against completing their mission. Their advanced stealth technology did just enough to counteract their profiles making them as conspicuous as possible. Their armor was not pillow-plated, so their gear could create plenty of noise. They could be detected with the right equipment, so smart and efficient movement was still paramount to accomplish their mission. The time limit on their objective did not help matters either.

Normally they would have a near exact layout of the ship, thus making it relatively easy to find their objective, but this type of warship was completely unknown. Missions like these made their job exciting, but sometimes introduced much more variance than Gunny liked. Now that they had time to enjoy the scenery aboard the ship, he combed it for any details that could point them toward their objective.

The ship's passageways were clad in a similar sickly, fluorescent purple to the hull, but the floor was a pearl color and corrugated similar to the gravel pits of Gunny's younger days.

Luckily, the passageways were wide enough to fit the 4 of them standing shoulder to shoulder; but unluckily, they all looked exactly the same. It would have been a nightmare to navigate without the mapping tool that recorded everywhere they had walked.

Richter, who had since taken point, suddenly held up his fist. They froze in their tracks immediately. Richter cupped his hand over his ear and extended 3 fingers into the air. He brought his bicep in front of him and extended his fingers to a gun pose.

3 armed hostiles headed their way.

Richter faced toward Gunny while making sure to keep an eye ahead of them. Gunny flashed an "ok" sign in acknowledgement and pointed toward the wall. They broke formation and lined up single file at said wall. Gunny then signaled a halt, followed by pointing at his eyes with each of his fingers. The others signed an "ok".

Wait and observe hostiles.

Soon, 3 riflemen briskly rounded the corner, a bith and 2 humans. They were dressed in crude body armor and wielding standard issue imperial rifles. Definitely rank and file troops.

"Who do you think those imps were?" the bith said.

"No idea, probably some new spec war goons from somewhere in the Empire's taint. What do they got now, purge troopers, dark troopers, death troopers? Next thing you know they're gonna have 'super troopers.' Ain't the first time, nor will it be the last time. Any bets on the armor color?" one of the humans said.

"Uh... black?" the bith voted.

"Probably green," the other human said.

"Personally, my vote's on yellow," the first human said slyly.

"I just hope we don't run into 'em. Heard they crashed through the ceiling and washed 10 guys without taking any return fire," the second human said.

"I heard the guy who broke the ceiling smashed one of them into paste on his way, guts all over the floor and the wall. Brutal," the first human said.

"I swear this is out of some sort of holofilm. They even did this badass thing where they destroyed all the cameras after," the bith said. "Where do you think they are?"

"Definitely not here. They looked like pretty big dudes, so there's nowhere they can hide," the second human said.

"That's a relief. C'mon. Let's head to block 40 so we can get rid of that data," the bith said.

Gunny immediately stuck his arm up and waved his hand forward followed by placing his arm across his chest, his hand balled into a fist.

Follow them in fireteam formation.

Richter fell in line behind the guards while the other 3 took position behind him, Lockjaw in the rear. The fireteam gave them a wide berth, but matched their pace down to the cadence.

"Speaking of the boss, you know him, Jenkins?" the first human said.

"My name isn't Jenkins," Jenkins said tersely. "I don't know Jinkins because he's a bith. But I do happen to know him."

"Where'd you meet him, a bith meet and greet?" the first human said.

"Shut yer trap, Schmuckatelli, he might pull out his clari-whatever and play us that Cantina song over and over again," the second human guffawed.

"Hey, that's a good song and you know it!" Jenkins said, his head snapping toward the second human.

"Eh, true," Schmuckatelli shrugged. "Anyway, what's he like? Supposedly a real smart dude."

"Pretty smart? He designed most of our tech!" Jenkins shouted indignantly.

"What, you a superfan or something? What do bith feet look like anyway?" The other human tapped his chin thoughtfully.

"...he's wicked smart." The bith heaved a resigned groan. "Supposedly got some big plans brewing up. That's what all the data's for."

"I liked it more when we were focused on making money, not running around doing who knows what," Schmuckatelli said.

"You've still got enough credits to drink yourself into a coma on a pit stop so I don't know what you're bellyaching about," Jenkins countered.

"Eh, true. As long as we don't run dry I'm fine I guess," Schmuckatelli shrugged.

The group snaked through what felt like endless hallways. Every so often a group of pirates would hurry by, some rounding the corners in the direction from which they came and some with tools headed presumably toward casualties from the beating their ship was taking.

A bang echoed from aft and the ship listed heavily starboard. The silencer boots were magnetized, and had sensors that rooted them to most surfaces in response to a sudden impact force. The only required operator action was to be quick enough to brace themselves against falling over. The pirates, however, were not so fortunate. They swore when they hit the wall and scrambled to their feet as soon as the ship corrected its list. No sooner had they stood up, a second bang reverberated from aft, the following list sending them face first into the port wall.

"Please don't tell me that's the..."

"Port and starboard main engines compromised," the main announcing circuit droned.

"Just great, now we gotta deal with the regular marines in addition to these spec war jamokes," Schmuckatelli groaned. "I ain't risking my neck for some secret garbage. I'm gonna hightail it outta here." Schmuckatelli turned to leave, but was quickly stopped by Jenkins's hand on his shoulder.

"The data area is the most secure place aboard, assuming the imps can even find it," the bith said gravely.

"I swear, why did I have to get paired up with the one pirate with a conscience? Fine, we'll go to the stupid secure area," Schmuckatelli sighed.

The three picked up the pace with the saboteurs not far behind. They wound around even further into the bowels of the ship, the number of personnel thinning as they went. Jenkins skidded to a stop in front of a small, innocuous door and punched in a code along with a biometrics scan. Schmuckatelli forgot to close the door behind him so the fireteam was able to slip through seamlessly. Thankfully, the door beyond it seemed to require a much more involved unlocking procedure, so the team was able to set up behind them painlessly.

The lock on it was very sophisticated and the door just as robust. This was likely the entrance to the secure area. Even if it wasn't, they couldn't afford to miss this opportunity. Breaking that lock was going to take way too long, or breaching the door just as difficult. They were going to have to go loud; they couldn't rely on Schmuckatelli's gracious aid twice.

Once the door opened, the pointman made the hapless pirates well aware of Gunny's wordless intent by shoulder charging Schmuckatelli, who landed with a loud thud. That had to hurt. The other three quickly filed in while stepping over Schmuckatelli's cursing body, barely passing the doorframe before it closed behind them. Richter could have easily killed Schmuckatelli, but gave him a light tap in comparison to what could have been. Schmuckatelli's screaming would not help them accomplish their mission.

A soft hum followed the fireteam decloaking. The room was dark, giving the team a wraith-like presence as they towered over the 3 regs and what looked to be 5 science types in front of terminals backlit with various colors. There was some vaguely scientific equipment pushed up against the wall in the modest sized room. Upon their entry, the 5 non-combatants stood up with their hands raised.

"You've got to be kidding me!" The sound of metal skidding on metal grated below them. A weapon was being drawn.

Schmuckatelli shouted as his pistol hand stopped under Rusty's heavy boot. Sometimes mission priorities have to change when dealing with an idiot who pulls guns on people that could break his wrist before he could shoot.

"Drop your weapons." Gunny barked. The two regs dropped their rifles and held their hands in the air.

"You, know, you're awfully brave for a coward, Schmuckatelli," Rusty goaded.

"My name's not Schmuckatelli you son of a..." he stopped short to howl as Rusty's foot crushed his wrist. This tactic was completely unnecessary, but would certainly help with negotiation.

"You, Jenkins," Gunny said, leveling his weapon at the bith. You said something about knowing Jinkins. Care to elaborate?"

Lockjaw's blaster rang out, causing a terrified scientist to withdraw his hand from the console he stood next to.

"N-n-no comment," Jenkins stammered.

Gunny sighed deeply. "Look, we can talk or you can explain to this guy why you thought it was a hot idea to nuke his brother," Gunny said, nodding his head over toward Rusty. Rusty's head watched Jenkins, completely still.

"W-who are you?" Jenkins said.

"Super troopers." Richter said, deadpan.

The 2nd human reg chuckled. "Well would you look at that, green, black, yellow, and blue," he said, sounding almost impressed.

"Imps with a sense of humor. Is that part of the Super Trooper standard issue?"

"No, but neither is the pirate peanut gallery. You have anything useful to say?" Lockjaw said nonchalantly.

"Yeah! Up yours you stupid clones!" the second human said as he made the accompanying arm signal.

"Cute," Lockjaw said before blasting him with a stun round. That would keep him down for a few hours; the next time he opened his eyes would be a brig on the Arbiter.

"Now, you were saying?" Gunny turned his attention back to the tremulous bith.

"J-Jinkins was saying something about strange Imperial activity on Geonosis. Glassed all the life there. Lots of supply convoys and not much else. I don't know anything else, I swear!"

"You said something about Jinkins having big plans?"

"H-he never went into detail at the bith buffet, promise!"

"And what does your little weapon have to do with it?" Rusty snarled.

"I don't know, it doesn't make any sense to me either, please just let me live!" Jenkins cried, shielding his face with his hands.

Gunny furrowed his brow and deliberated for a moment. He leveled his weapon at the bith.

"Wait, please, no!" Jenkins cried before crumpling to a stun round with everyone else in the room quickly suffering the same fate. After the fireteam tagged all of the motionless bodies as high value, they set to work going through all of the physical media in the room.

Richter used active pulse signals from his enhanced sensory suite to search for anything not apparent to the naked eye, Rusty went to the terminals, and Lockjaw and Gunny searched the bodies. Richter made the last two's participation nearly useless, but the military had ingrained in them that standing idle was punishable by custodial duties.

Rusty retrieved a knife from a panel on his left arm. After a quick inspection of the terminal the scientist reached for earlier, he used the knife to pry open the shoddily welded metal box adjacent to the terminal that held its guts. He retrieved a cord from the same place he pulled the knife from, plugged one end into the knife, the other into a free data disc port on the terminal and checked the data pad on his wrist.

"A lot of data was deleted, but they've still got a few things intact. Luckily it doesn't look like they managed to overwrite all of it. I'll grab what I can," Rusty said.

"Good work, Rusty," Gunny said.

"Hey Gunny, you should come take a look at this," Richter said. The slight edge in his voice bid Gunny to join his flank, where found Richter examining what looked to be a small medal with a trident crest set into its face. It radiated a ghastly silver glint as Richter turned it over to examine it for an inkling of its purpose.

"Acoustics indicate that the material is definitely not homogenous. There seems to be something stored in an internal compartment but I can only guess what's in there."

"Good work, Richter," Gunny nodded and patted him on the shoulder. "Either way, it's the IDG's problem, not ours," he said as he stowed the trinket in a shoulder compartment.

"Speaking of the IDG, what do you think that Fujikawa lady does in her free time?" Rusty cut in, a mischievous edge in his tone. "Good to go."

"Probably war crimes," Lockjaw said with a hint of amusement. "Green here." He stood up from the body he was searching and readied his blaster.

"Human experimentation. Green." Richter said with no hesitation.

"Alright, we're moving. Let's just hope that we're ahead of the news. Do stealth stuff," Gunny said, raising his elbow and ushering his arm toward the exit. The others filed behind him, their chortles drowning out the activation of their active camo and silencer boots.

After the team cleared the door, Gunny turned around and sprayed a normally invisible coating on the door that would show as a bright splotch of red on their huds.

There were other teams onboard, but communication with them was kept to a minimum due to the risk of interception. To prevent duplicated work, the teams stayed in predefined areas of operation and they had strayed a bit outside of theirs. That marking would keep Zulu team from wasting precious time on the door.

Back in fireteam formation, they surgically weaved through the halls that had brought them to the secure space to continue their search for other useful caches. However, that was about to change.

As the team approached the pressure hull en route to their objective, a connection request flashed onto Gunny's HUD.

"Devil Team, Command. One of the pilots tagged something interesting, break off and investigate. Are you ready for the coordinates?"

"Affirmative, Command," Gunny nodded. His HUD automatically brought up a map and populated the data, which unfortunately was much more zoomed out than he wished. Their target was not inside of the warship, but instead in orbit around the planet.

Its orbital elements displayed next to it. Period, 115 minutes. Inclination, 0.2. True anomaly, .79 radians. Eccentricity, 0.1. The map calculated about 10 minutes before the object passed them, and if it did they would have to wait another 115 minutes before they could catch it again, in theory. In reality, the squadron was not going to stick around for 2 hours to wait for it to come back lest they get jumped on, so that gave them 10 minutes to get there and investigate whatever was on that thing.

The same map appeared in all the other operators' helmets, which caused them to dead sprint toward the ingress that Richter had punched into the hull. Their stealth equipment, especially the boots, were nearly a hindrance; so they deactivated it as their feet pounded the deck. Their footsteps, especially Richter's, would probably be able to be heard in at least a 20 meter radius; so speed was their most important asset.

"Hey, I got them!" A pirate called from their 12 before stepping forward of the door he had appeared from, shouldering his rifle and sending a burst of laser fire toward them. The burst was absorbed harmlessly by the fireteam's shielding as they continued to barrel toward the pirate at max speed.

"What the hell is wrong with these guys!?" He shouted, obviously expecting them to take cover. He tried to go back through the door, but ran into the 10 others filtering out from behind him. All 4 tucked their shoulders and ducked their heads, plowing through the gaggle of pirates effortlessly. Shouting and screaming filled the hallway. Pirates flew around in a confused mess of limbs and bodies either from being hit by what was essentially the equivalent of a small armored vehicle or flailing wildly as they tried to escape.

Those that had not been knocked prone readied their blasters and shot at their backs. Most of the volley missed, but what little did did nothing to slow the fireteam down. They heard more shouting behind them, but the pirates weren't exactly keen on going where they were going, not only because they'd be in close quarters with certain death, but also the significant damage taken by the hull made the likelihood of explosive decompression a gamble.

Devil had some housekeeping to do before they got back, though. First, they weren't going to get to the target without a ride.

"Echo, Devil, do you copy?" Gunny hailed, controlling his breaths to keep his call readable at a dead sprint.

"Devil, Echo, loud and clear," E4 responded.

"Meet us at our entrypoint as fast as you can. ETA 3 minutes."

"Roger, Devil."

They skidded to a stop in front of their second housekeeping item: a locked door.

Lockjaw approached it, the others reflexively moving out of the way for him. He tapped on his datapad briefly.

"This one's locked up tight. I can use a breaching charge…"

"Let me take a look at it, " Richter said slyly. The two exchanged nods, and Richter stepped up to the door to inspect it.

Other than the large cargo doors, the doors proximal to the hull did little more than seal off compartments that had depressurized or contained fires. In other words, easy enough to be pried open by Richter's bare hands.

The door had a lot of characteristics, but the one that mattered the most was the clean line down the center that extended from top to bottom. Richter, taking note of the same thing, braced himself to deliver a powerful kick to the centerline. The door bowed in the impression of his boot, which gave him enough leverage to force his hands through to the other side. He put his back into forcing one of the halves to the side with both of his hands and then quickly followed with the other.

A cacophony of shouts echoed from behind them. Most small arms fire was manageable, but if one of those hostiles had a grenade launcher, they'd be in deep trouble.

"We've got company," Lockjaw muttered, raising his blaster. His tone came off more annoyed than concerned, but his nonchalance about the situation was well warranted. He had kept his DC-17m from his time as a clone commando, a versatile weapon system that allowed interchangeable modes of fire. It operated by using customizable barrel attachments often unique to the commando.

A quick physical alteration was all it took for the user to express their preferred method of enemy suppression, which Lockjaw had honed with countless hours of practice. It would have looked almost artful had his instrument of choice any other note than a death knell. He removed the magazine from the side of the weapon while releasing the rifle barrel attachment. The interlocks keeping it in place hardly had time to clear before his hand was back on the barrel to remove the attachment and replace it with a heavy double barreled shotgun variant and an appropriate magazine.

He shouldered the weapon as 2 more pirates rounded the corner, their eyes barely having time to go wide before they ate a face full of blaster-enhanced flechette. Their bodies hardly had time to hit the ground before the fireteam was on the move again. They didn't have any more trouble with pursuers after that.

Luckily there were only a few more doors that required extra encouragement, so Gunny's prediction was accurate; 7 minutes remained when the team reached their rendezvous point. They all took a running start before zooming out into E4's open bay, and the door had hardly closed behind them before one of the LAAT/DR's retrorockets fired to correct their course toward their target. A dull thud came from Rusty's helmet after his head hit one of the supports on his way to the staging area.

"E4, watch it. I almost felt that," Rusty grumbled as the team moved toward the cockpit to select new gear.

"Forgive me, Rusty. My age can sometimes get the better of me. My calculations are not always exact."

The other 3 erupted into uproarious laughter as Rusty groaned, resigned to taking his lumps. They braced themselves as E4 did all the initial high-G maneuvers before finally making flank speed toward the target.

"I like you better when all you can do is flash your lights and make unintelligible beeps. Fine, I'll let you have this one as long as you get us there on time."

"Of course. I am an assistant first and a nuisance second."

Rusty moved his head as if to say something, but only managed a huff as he went to the back to pore over all of the equipment they had chosen to take on this mission.

"Bring up the intel, E4," Gunny said, stopping to listen intently as the other 2 moved to join Rusty.

"Our target appears to be a small station in a low orbit around Eridanus II. It has a singular, enclosed bay for fighter type craft. There is a high likelihood that some sort of information system or experiment is aboard."

"Why would they leave something like that floating in space over a dead planet?" Rusty perked up.

"I cannot say with an acceptable degree of confidence," E4 said, almost sorry in its delivery.

"You think we'll need one of these?" Richter said, hoisting a circular, spoked breaching charge. The device covered most of his chest; even with all of the Empire's best weapons at their disposal, that was probably the smallest possible profile for something that could make a Richter-sized hole through meter thick warship armor. Carrying that on them would make stealth impossible, so they were only used if there were no other way to get in. They made trying to go through a full flight deck undetected seem almost reasonable by comparison.

"Unlikely. Spoofing authentication should be trivial," E4 said almost smugly. "Approaching station."

Gunny quickly checked on the fireteam. Richter and Rusty hadn't changed anything, but Lockjaw had swapped a few magazines for a plasma cutter and a small toolkit for working on delicate electronics.

The team turned their attention to the feed as E4 made station keeping maneuvers to successfully dock with the target. The bay doors opened as if ready to receive them.

"Thanks for rolling out the welcome E4, you could have convinced me that they actually wanted us aboard," Rusty chuckled with amusement.

"I… did not do anything. It seems the door just opened on its own. Did they really not put any authentication on this station?" E4 said, perplexed that anyone could be that careless.

Richter shrugged. "Less work for us."

E4 finished landing and opened the door for them.

"No signs of life detected onboard. 5 minutes until target becomes unreachable. Good luck, Devil."

The 4 of them entered the station, clearing the rooms with intent. There were only a few rooms and, inexplicably, open closets. Either someone was bad at cleaning up after themselves, or someone had left in a hurry.

They entered a final room, which housed a large control console with two seats. Some scrawls lined the console and the walls close to the seats.

"This thing's ancient. Clone wars at least. For whatever reason it takes them forever to delete data, but they're impossible to break through otherwise-" Rusty flourished his data knife-"unless you've got one of these of course."

He quickly got to work finding an appropriate adapter and scouring the console for data.

"I checked the logs, the last time someone accessed this console was a few minutes ago. We probably could have seen them on the way out. Last command was… stopping system deletion? Extracting the data now, but these systems take a bit to move anything in or out. Camera feed is stored on this console as well. Want to pull it up while we wait?"

Gunny nodded.

Rusty positioned his arm and moved his head out of the way so Gunny could look at the feed while the others watched their 6.

The playback showed a TIE interceptor pilot landing in the bay. Rusty fast forwarded it to him operating the console, looking around feverishly for (presumably) a password until finally entering one and shaking his head at the screen like a disappointed father.

"Well color me surprised. We owe this guy a big one for stopping the deletion of the data. Awesome 'stache by the way. With this particular system, we would have never been able to recover it. Do we have to turn this camera data in?"

"Considering that he may have saved us several months, I think we need to let leadership leave it to our discretion."

"Oh, and get this: those pirates never changed the password from the default, that's how he was able to get in," Rusty laughed. "Also, what's that pistol?" Rusty pointed at the sleek silver sidearm on the video feed that was definitely not standard issue.

"Everyone's got their own secrets. We've got ours and he's certainly earned keeping his."

Rusty nodded. "Looks like the data's close to done. Pulling it up now." The console's screen flashed the data that Rusty requested. "Wait, what the hell is this?" Rusty said incredulously. The other two peered over their shoulders to see what he was looking at.

Project Rahu

The title appeared quickly followed by models of the ship they had been briefed on in preparation for this mission. Rusty's shoulders tensed as he peered into the one of the birthplaces of the weapon that took his brother.

He shook his head.

"It's fine. I wouldn't have signed up for this if I didn't have the guts for it. Data's done. Let's go home," he said distantly.

The others nodded. Rusty finished up at the console and the others followed silently behind him. 2 minutes remaining.