Chapter 3

Setting out

Hina pouted at the three before her. The pretty much ignored her pout

"Tell me again why I have to go out there. Alone. On Agamar." She whined, stamping a foot

Jaune rubbed his newly dyed hair. Red definitely was not his colour. He resisted to the urge to rub his eyes as the coloured contact lenses was itching fiercely. He saw that the other two was not going to answer, leaving it up to him to handle the third sister.

"Me and Yara have to supervise the fitting of the extra fuel and water tanks and make sure no one snoops around. Katya is updating our systems. Mari is too young to go out plus she is learning from Katya. The droids are too recognisable. That leaves you." He explained patiently

"Stop using logic on me, it Agamar." She whined

"And a lot safer than Nar Shadaa." Jaune pointed out

"But they look funny at you and dress weird." Hina objected

"You don't have to wait for the order. Go place the order and get back it is half an hour at most. Then you can come back and snuggle back in bed while we work." Jaune said cajolingly

Hina pouted all the way to the merchant sector of the docks, keeping her eyes down. Placing her orders and paying she headed back she spotted a dairy and veered of course. She was happily browsing the conservator when the door opened and three heavily armed men stepped in. One moved past her to cover the rear one stayed close to the door. Hina swore at herself for not taking a weapon or paying closer attention to her surroundings. The final one approached her holding a data pad in view. Three very familiar figures were present on it.

"Have you seen these being before." He demanded harshly

She took another look and threw up her arms before squeeling and doing a happy dance

"I knew those fish breaths were bad news. Suck it mums." She cried out

The man stepped back in confusion and some alarm as Hina continued her happy dance along with exaggerated tail swishes. H ecoughed after a moment to draw her attention

"I take it you know them." He said

"Know them?! It was always look at the the Ichuru girls, you should be more like them, The ichuru girls have better marks." She ranted

She pointed to a light scar on her ear.

"See this they gave this to me. Now no tom will look at me." She mewled unhappily

The man stepped back further

"Have you seen them recently?" He asked

"Yes two three days ago, when my ship docked. They logged a flight path manually with the dockmaster for Concord Dawn, something about their com system being down. They are still rude fish. They pushed me out of the way while I was paying the docking fee." Hina replied with a pout

The man handed her a credit chip.

"Thank you for your time, get yourself something nice here." He said backing away from the mercurial Yuki

Hina took her time before exiting the shop eating a yogan fruit ice cream. She pretended to stare at a fish tank in a pet shop using the shop window to look around her

Two of the men stepped back further into an alley. One lowered a scanner

"No comlink signals going out and we know she did not rush for the back. You think she was honest?" He said

"I guess so, checking the dockmaster will be a bust as well, probably lying a false trail." The second said musingly

"Want to go check out Arkaxis, that is where two of them are from." The first suggested

"Too obvious. I think Alterra. Noname might have friends willing to hide them or know who can. They have been hiding insurgents from us before there, and even it is a bust we should find other bounties to hunt down in the meantime. Arkaxis rarely has any bounties available." The second said

"Plus we will have not to deal with the Marshalls or the Harpies." The first agreed.

Hina took her time going back, stopping at several stores along the way. She saw no further surveillance and made her way back to the ship. She was just in time to receive her orders and loaded them up before going to the crew lounge. Katya was helping Mari play Pazaak against Yara and Jaune

"I though you were working." Hina said crossing her arms.

Jaune dropped his pad and pushed a pile of candy over to Mari

"Took less time to fit the tanks than expected, just waiting on the seals to set before we can fill up the spare tanks." Jaune said

"How long till it is safe to fill them up?" She asked

"Another hour two to be sure, why?" Jaune replied

"There are bounty hunters about. I may have bought some time but I am not sure for how long or if there are others about." Hina reported

Jaune got up

"How are doing for supplies?" He asked

"Just delivered."

Jaune switched on the holomap and studied it

"Damn it. There are no orbital stations in this sector we can refuel at. So we will have to wait."

"Do we really have to wait on the seals to set?" Hina asked

Yara sighed unhappily

"On the water tanks no. but the Coaxiam and fuel are too corrosive to risk damaging the seals, we can not risk a spill from either."

Jaune pulled out his comlink

"SCD, battle station. Cover the boarding ramp I have the docking hatches."

"Roger. Roger. Is terminal force authorised?"

"Yes, but no weapons that can damage the ship."

He turned to the others

"Hina help Katya. Yara stand by in the engine room. Katya call for refuel in two hours and prep for launch." He ordered

Jaune led the way to the cockpit and broke the seal on the weapons locker producing two Blastec E11 rifles and an older DC17 ICWM from the Clone Wars. He kept the DC17 and slotted in a round power cell into the side before racking the loading handle after handing the Blastech's toYara and Katya. He produced what looked to be an ancient double barrel slug thrower and handed it to Hina

"It uses standard blaster power cells but it drains the packs quickly. You have eight shots per barrel for a pack so count your shots. Also the recoils is fierce so keep a good grip." Jaune instructed

He turned to Mari and pointed to a ventilation hatch.

"The moment you hear shooting you hide there." He said

Mari nodded and swallowed. Katya leaned down and hugged her.

"Jaune is being dramatic again, nothing is going to happen." She said encouragingly

Katya walked over to the pilot chair and sat down and helped Mari into her lap. She pointed to the terminal

"Now that is the primary actuator, we need that to distribute power to all systems. The gauge next to it tell us if all systems are warmed up. That is the primary ignition that starts the engines…"

Jaune and Yara slipped from the cockpit as Katya was explaining all the stepsin getting a ship active. Jaune briefly hugged Yara

"Be carefull." He said

"Says the one guarding the hatches." She said returning the hug

She moved away rifle carried in ready position

Two hours seemed to drag along. They were allowing themselves a moment of relief as the fuelling tenders moved away. The com crackled

"I have someone trying to slice the boarding ramp controls" SCD reported

"Hina, check the cameras. Katya light her up" Jaune ordered

Hina responded almost immediately

"Three by the boarding ramp." She reported

Jaune noticed the indicator on the bottom hatch changing rapidly. He dropped a cryoban grenade onto the bottom part of the hatch activating the t thirty seconds timing and closed the top part of the hatch but did not lock it. He heard a muffled cry of surprise as the bottom hatch opened and the grenade dropped into view. He kicked the top hatch open and opened fire on the bounty hunters exposed on the ladder, The grenade going off and freezing the ones below waiting to mount the ladder. As the grenade went of at head height there would be no survivors.

Once the ladder was cleared he pulled the bottom part up and closed and sealed it before closing the top hatch and sealing that. The engines were running at full and Jaune could feel them lifting off. He rushed to the cargo bay where SCD 3 was exchanging fire with boarders. He levelled his DC17 on his hip and opened fire, the old weapon capable of a rate of fire newer weapons could not maintain for that weapon class. The boarders were caught in a pincher and had to choose between standing their ground with no cover or taking a chance jumping from the boarding ramp as the ship lifted rapidly. The last one A rodian decided to go for option B and ran for the boarding ramp but stopped seeing how far they already were from the ground. SCD3 Stood up and shot him in the knee and the Rodian fell with a scream the sound trailing as he fell before splattering onto the roof of the communications tower taking out an antenna as his body was skewered first before the force of impact ripped the antenna loose allowing him to complete the fall.

Jaune crab walked along the wall of the cargo hold till he could access the control and closed the boarding ramp and inner doors. SCD3 was already policing the bodies. A shot rang out as it found one faking death. Jaune scrambled up the ladder and ran to the cockpit. Katya was pulling back on the control column and he could see the approaching blackness as they entered space through the stratosphere

"Could you silence the coms please?" Katya asked

"Sure but why?" Hina asked

"I am tired of them repeating for us to land. Like that is going to happen." Katya rolled her eyes.

Several red dotsappeared on the scanner and a warning light came on as multiple weapons lock were registered. Katya opened a general channel

"Too late. Kiss my furry tail and smooth perky ass." She happily yowled, pulling back the hyperdrive

Being close to the planet this set of a considerable fireball before they zipped into the blue of hyperspace. The approaching ships had to run for space at hard burn to escape the rapidly approaching and expanding fireball

Katya blushed as she saw Jaune's unimpressed look and heard Mari giggling from the airvent. Hina did not look impressed either

"Sorry?" She said nerfishly

Jaune pointed to the storage compartment where LA1D2 stored the cleaning equipment

"I think you know what comes next." He said crossing his arms

She got up from the chair and with ears and tail drooping plodded to start her chore.

On the roof of the barn on a farm on the planet below Dodd Macire, the fifteenth thank you very much, was thinking hard of something to say to impress his date, which was very hard as you considered she was his cousin three times removed and already heard all the family lines. He pointed the stars

"My love for you is like the horizon" He said

Elsa Macire was not very impressed but took a look anyway. She was shocked as a red bloom flowered for a moment. Dodd seized the initiative

"A fiery bloom in the dark"

Dodd the fifteenth got very lucky or unlucky that night. Initially lucky as he scored a base run, then unlucky as uncle Todd the thirteenth showed up three months later rifle in hand and Elsa right behind to tell him she was late. He was uncertain as to why she wanted to tell him that, just get a new chronograph he told her.

Granma Jethro had to explain it to him using pictures and he realised what that meant. He froze as he realized cousin Anna could be late too. Uncle Jedd had a much bigger rifle and even worse had ammunition for his unlike uncle Todd.

The crew was assembled in the cargo hold and looking at the stasis pods. Mari was touching one, it contained another girl, this one had added features, a long red furry tail with a black tip. Hina placed a hand on Mari shoulder

"Is this Violet." She asked

"Can we wake her up first?" Mari asked, lips trembling

Jaune knelt down next to her and hugged her. Happy that she stopped stiffening up as he did so

"We will wake her up and Miss Greengrass too. But we can only do two a day and you will need to be strong for them. They will be scared and confused." He said gently

Mari's expression firmed and he felt her straighten up.

"Good girl." He muttered to her.

Monica Greengrass was first to woke. She stiffened and gasped before sitting up shivering from intense cold. Her vision was blurry but recovered quickly. She saw little Mari Arc perched on a cot holding onto the hand of Violet Banks. She looked around for her other students but saw only the screens that were surrounding the cots she and Violet were on.

"Honey you may want to cover a bit." An amused voice came

She relaxed a bit as another faunus woman entered the area. She pulled the crinkly emergency blanket closer on realising she was bare. The other woman sat down on the deck making sure to sit on her hands before speaking slowly and gently

"It is good to see you out of that disgusting pod. I know you are confused right know. First your students are safe, most of them are still in stasis. We decided to waken you first before waking them but we could not resist when Mari asked for her friend to be woken as well. My name is Yara."

The woman shifted a bit and a tail came into view

"As you can see I have more than one feature a human does not have and to be honest I find it disgusting to have parts of me described as animal parts. I am not a faunus like you, my species is called Yuki's."

"Species?" Monica echoed

"Yes species. There are thousands of species in the galaxy, unlike your planet where you have two dominant species, well three if what Mari says about these Grimm is true."

"It is true." Mari interjected

"I believe you. It just sounds a bit hard to understand a species driven by hate that turns to smoke when you kill them." Yara said soothingly

Mari rolled her eyes.

"Like being on a spaceship is so much easier to believe." She said snippily

"True enough. It all depends on what you are used to." Yara chuckled

Monica quickly focused on Yara

"What is this nonsense of space ships? Where are we? An SDC secret lab." She snapped out

Yara shook her head

" No idea what this SDC is, but I can prove the rest if you give me the chance. First I am going to call in something."

Yara looked to the opening between the screens

"Laid bring in the gowns and shoes"

Monica noticed a dome shaped thing enter the area. Cloth suspended ina claw like appendage. It whistled and beeped as it laid down clothing on the cots. It stopped moving the only activity it showed was blinking lights

"This is LA1D2 , commonly called Laid. It is an astromech droid." Yare explained

"Atlas has have robots too, this is hardly proof." Monica objected

"Laid is more advanced than the clankers Mari described but I take your point. Why don't you and miss faking sleep get dressed and I will show you more." Yara stated

Monica swung her head to see violet resembling her name as she blushed at having been caught out. Monica wrapped the robe tightly around her before swinging her legs to the ground ad slipping her feet into the pair of slippers

"Sorry if the size is off, we had to take a rough guess." Yara apologised

Yara slowly got up and pushed the screens away. Monica immediately noticed the tubes standing in line. She saw twelve were still filled with her students floating in reddish fluid

"I know it looks bad, they are in stasis right now. Basically a very deep sleep and we will wake them up." Yara said

Yara pointed to a ladder.

"Before we get there I promised you proof. Mari will you go first to proof nothing will happen?"

Yara grinned suddenly and her tail whipped mischievously

"I will go next, you do not have to worry about upskirts that way." She grinned

Mari climbed the ladder and Monica could hear her footsteps as she ran somewhere. Minutes later she came down the ladder again.

"They are in the cockpit." She reported

Yara climbed up the ladder and Mari followed Monica reluctantly followed and Violet went last. They found themselves in a passage lined by white panels. Red and green lights ran along the panels and in the middle of the passage a large black panel had lights blinking and flashing in a seeming random pattern. Mari grabbed Violet's hand and pulled her after her into a room filled with chairs. A round metallic table was in the centre of the room. Yara pointed to the table

"Mari you want to show them?" She asked

Mari walked to the table and pressed a button. A blue light lanced from it and expanded, It showed a vast space and various lines ran along the picture

"That is the known galaxy, the lines are major hyperspace lanes. Mari move in closer." Yara said

Mari pressed another button and a section dropped from the map and the rest dissapearead. The section enlarged to show several orbs.

"That is Agamar, we just came from there." Mari said happily

"We rescued you somewhere else. Shall we get to the final proof." Yara stated

Yara led the way to a another room. A human male was seated behind a terminal, another Yuki next to him with a seated third by a terminal to the side. OneYuki looked over her shoulder

"Good timing, we are about to drop from hyperspace for a cool down. We are entering a Corporate zone so we should have no surprises" She said

Monica looked out the window like structure and only saw blue lines

"That is hyperspace. I was told we are nearly moving at the speed of light." Mari explained

The man chuckled.

"Close. Hyperspace runs in a quantam state, so technically we are running a bit faster than light."

He moved a lever on the terminal and the floor shuddered. The blue lines disappeared and Monica saw black outside the window. The male turned on the column and the floor tilted a bit. Both monica and Violet gasped as a large orb came into view with a smaller metallic looking orb in front of the large orb

"Welcome to Aldera Three, The last corporate foothold before we enter wild space." Yara said

The freshly woken duo did not reply as they stared open mouthed at the scene before them. Mari looked at them and giggled before turning to face Hina

"Did I look like that?" She asked

"Pretty much but with you there was throwing food around as well so I think they are an improvement."

Any decent space crew the thing that will get you on long voyages is the blue of hyperspace. Sure it is fascinating to watch but after a while it gets boring. So you kept busy with general chores, slept, played games or practiced a hobby. Normally everyone settled in their own routine. All that goes out the airlock when you have fifteen beings that have never been on a ship nor space, and it gets worse when fourteen are children that are eight years old

That is how you end up doing something you never want to do again as an adult, attend primary school classes. Jaune had a throbbing headache as he tried writing in the newly taught alphabet. He frequently had to look up at the poster lining the wall of the crew lounge turned class room to check he picked the correct letter. Getting used to a whole new language structure was frustrating. Not that he and the sisters were the only ones suffering, Monica and the children had to suffer through Aurubesh. The lesson on binary was best forgotten and it took some time to restore order after the instructor left warbling and beeping.

The children had been very happy to imitate Laid, but whistling tweeting and bleeping does not translate into binary, all it did was create cacophonic noise.

Jaune was thankful as a small finger poked him. He looked to his side to see Violet. She pointed to the holomap where SCD3 was manipulating the starmaps.

"What is it doing?" She asked

Jaune took a quick look before shifting to let her see the map clearly

"It is trying to modify jump points. The yellow points are the known exit and enter points. Normally we would use that, but we don't know if the bad beings left some of their own behind to watch those points so we have to make our own using the known marks." Jaune explained

"But we know where we want to go can we not just jump there?" Violet asked

The sudden total silence told him he had everyone's full attention

"It is too far, the engines need to cool down and just jumping blind is very dangerous. Think of it as building a house. What happens if you get the measures wrong?"

"It falls down?" Violet answered

"It does. And people could get hurt, hyperjump are worse. The first mistake will put you somewhere close to where you wanted, the second will take your further away and so it goes on until you get completely lost."

Violet pointed to SCD3

"But doing what it is doing means we will get lost again." She said sounding afraid

Jaune hugged her

"We know the last point so we will not get lost, it will just take a bit longer to correct and then we have a safe new route to use. Don't worry we will get you home to Remanant." He said

"Remnant."Violet corrected him with a smile

Jaune pointed to the pad

"Will you help me with the maths? The numbers still look funny to me."

Monica cornered them on the bridge when the children were asleep

"What did you not tell them?" She asked

"A simple change can put you parsecs of course. Sorry, a parsec is roughly a thousand of your miles. To correct your course you need to either jump back to your original jump point or move at sublight to the marker you were supposed to be at." Yara explained

"If it so dangerous why risk it? Monica asked

" The slavers, they have been known to set up ambush points on the lesser patrolled hyperspace lanes or set up refuel bases for their fleets. And since we are an unknown ship using a route that to our knowledge only one slaver group uses. We would have no way to bluff our way past and we will likely be outgunned by a very large number, with no hope of anyone coming to our rescue" Jaunse answered

Jaune pointed in the direction of the lounge where SCD 3 was still attached

"We are lucky to have access to a Seperatist Control Droid. they are programmed to control battalions of droids continuously so despite being annoying it has the best memory capacity of all our droids. Secondly The Seperatists used them to create hyperspace routes for invading the Core planets so it has the knowledge to do what we want it to."

"I have seen pictures of those droids they did not look that impressive." Monica stated

Jaune snorted

"A B1 by itself, no they are not impressive, having thousands come at you at once, that is a different story. However the Seps used other types as well, the B1 was the cheapest to build. There is quality in quantity."

Jaune manipulated a control and several droid types appeared.

" The B2 or heavy battle droid, armoured and could take and inflict heavy damage. The droideka, I know it looks weak. They were fast had a heavy rate of fire and were shielded. Even the Jedi avoided them. The spyder droid, capable of both light weapon fire in the later models and able to punch a hole in reinforced starship grade hull material. The vulture droids were apparently a nightmare to evade in battles."

Monica shook her head

"All this all still so confusing. Empire Republic Seperatists, how do you keep track of who is who?"

Katya handed over a datapad.

"This contains the history of the clone wars and should help explain. Laid managed to create a translation program but is likely to have some faults in translation so if something does not make sense ask us, especially if the translation is something funny. It will give you decent overview."

"Thank you." Monica said gratefully

She pointed to the blue lines of hyperspace

"How long are we going to jump around like this for?" She asked

"Twenty days if we are lucky, hyperspace jumping is not like spraying farm crops." Yara said