It had been exciting at first to leave, but after the first half hour, Nerissa's bouncing leg steadied down, and her breathing had relaxed. So far so good. Nothing but the gentle rumble of the hovertrain was in her ears, and nothing was in her sight but unsightly beige hills and plains.
Nerissa cast her eyes about the cabin and examined the guns available for the three of them: three pirate pistols, a flare gun, two slugthrowers, a DC-15 for each of them, four thermal detonators, and a vibroblade. Surely there were a few others in the cabin she didn't know about as well. The gray cabin was well used and depressing, usual for pirates.
Nerissa bent down, snapped open the stolen bag at her feet, and rustled around before taking out five nutrition bars. She wordlessly tossed one to Daska, and another to the short-haired young officer in the back, Oltrain. The other two she placed in the front cupholder. She gnawed on her bar before biting and swallowing.
"Blasted thing," Oltrain muttered from the back, giving thought to her words. He crumpled his wrapper. "You'd think pirates would want to steal the good food."
"They take what they can get," Daska reminded him, eyes up front.
"That doesn't mean it's random," Oltrain said. "They aim for fancy ships, official signatures on the scanners. A good side of roast nerf sounds great right about now. Surely the pirates think the same."
"Was our ship targeted at random?" Nerissa asked.
"Do you think we were?" Daska asked in return.
"I'm not sure," Nerissa admitted. She looked out the smudged window again. "It would be astronomically lucky if so, but I'm simply not sure…"
"That is something we can work out," an electronic voice sounded from the dashboard.
Nerissa and Daska jumped in place, and Oltrain leaned his narrow face forward and jabbed a finger at the dashboard. "Who are you? Have you been listening in?"
"I am VEGA, the Slayer's droid companion," the professorly voice replied. "I have integrated into the hovertrain and am willing to assist in matters of your concern."
A deep breath escaped Daska's lips. "All right, then. Well, droid, what do you know about all this business?"
"You are accompanying Senator Nerissa Bolkrin," VEGA calmly informed. "Thirty-three years old, representing Stewjon in the Galactic Senate."
After some initial sputtering, Oltrain indicated the dashboard. "Why does this matter?"
"You were taken hostage by the pirates," VEGA said. "What was the route they accosted you on?"
Silence.
"You are withholding vital information," VEGA stated. It wasn't even accusatory.
"Yes," Nerissa tiredly admitted. "Galactic business is very confidential."
"Whatever this galactic business is, it's very likely it has already failed. But if there is still hope of it going through, we can help."
Nerissa let out a deep breath through her nose, adjusted her stringy black hair so it was a cushion, and leaned her head on the side window. She saw her own reflection more than the view outside.
"...We were on our way to negotiate a treaty with the Hutt empire," she finally relented. "Passed by the Senate's vote. To stop the Hutts from expanding into Republic territory, we would cut tariffs on their trade. We were supposed to meet Gardulla at Nal Hutta, but en route…" She shrugged. "We were boarded by those thugs. I don't know how long it's been since we've been…" She indicated something invisible. "...detained. Perhaps a few weeks. A month, at best."
"This is peculiar, considering the information we were able to extract from security footage," VEGA mused. The monitor embedded into the dashboard fizzled into playback of a conversation: CCTV footage, grainy, but with sound. Jiro's office, attended by the Nikto representative.
"It's merely something to bribe Hondo with," Jiro evasively said. "And it'll provide Gardulla the Hutt with some leverage over him. It's also the key for my new position in the Hutt empire, so I'm trusting you to be careful with it, Glup."
"Please. I owe my life to the Hutts. I wouldn't dare ruin their plans for this planet's conquest. None of this is out of respect to you, Jiro the Betrayer."
"Well, how else would you have expected to gain this advantage over Hondo?"
"Hondo means nothing to me. This planet means nothing to me. The Hutts will have either your cooperation or your extinction. However that goes through, it will still happen."
As the feed cut out, Oltrain's face contorted in outrage. "So that's it, then?!"
"Lieutenant," Captain Daska warned.
"The Hutts were being offered a better deal from this scum, and he wanted us out of the picture! Hondo Ohnaka was going to be blackmailed into giving away Florrum to the Hutts, and the Hutts wouldn't stop once they had the initiative. Their interest in treaties with the Republic would die, they'd expand even more into Republic space, and then we'd fight a war on two fronts!"
Nerissa hissed through her teeth in shock, then turned to Daska. "Captain, if that's true, we are this close to the dissolution of the Republic. The Hutt's organized crime runs deep in the Senate. If the Hutts acquire the manpower this backwater planet offers, they could eventually deal a crippling blow to the Republic's economy and force its citizens to only buy through the black market the Hutts own!"
"Kriffing skug," Oltrain whispered. He snarled and pounded the seat. "All thanks to that one little kark-stain Jiro! Who would have thought?"
"Either that or the Hutts were lying about entertaining negotiations at all," Nerissa pondered. "They may have relayed our travel coordinates to the pirates, to intercept us and erase us from the picture. Perhaps this Jiro was just a tool."
"But wait– that still doesn't explain why he kept you alive," Oltrain remembered, tapping Nerissaa's chair with a slender hand. "Why not just end the risk while he was waiting for this package of Hondo's to show up?"
"I have… a theory," Daska slowly got out; he was still occupied with the wasteland. "Perhaps so he could blackmail or bribe you. Into stating publicly that you did not reach Nal Hutta, to make it seem more, er, legitimate than a murder. And if he did need to murder you, it would be easier with you in his cell. And we were kept alive for the sole purpose of holding leverage against you. We would perhaps have been slain if you refused. But I would have given my life willingly, Senator, to preserve your honor."
Oltrain gripped his bowed head in his hands. "Did Jiro really think this would work?" he asked the floor.
"Well, some details are still unclear," Daska admitted, gently turning the hovertrain to match the displayed route. "But if Jiro fails, you still have a chance to make a difference. With Gardulla's plot now exposed, you could introduce legislation to crack down harder on the Hutts."
"That's assuming we get off this rock alive," Oltrain muttered. "Jiro's not going to let this go easily, if he got out before the Slayer, ah, slew him."
"He did," VEGA disclosed. "We encountered an old man with a double-bladed green lightsaber in the base. He was protecting Jiro, but against his will. He must be a prisoner too."
Nerissa, eyes wide, leaned back in her chair at the news. "He's alive?" she breathed.
"Evidently," Captain Daska dryly confirmed.
Silence reigned for a few seconds
"His name's Golyon Chi," Nerissa finally spoke to VEGA. "He was assigned by the Jedi Council as security for the mission. I remember he was lively for an old man, and smiled a lot. Gentle, kind, upright. He made my back straighten whenever he entered the room, but he never expected anything from anyone. I… saw him once in the mess hall of the ship, doing a crossword. On a piece of flimsy, no less. Not on holograms."
"...When our ship was boarded, he headed to the breached section to hold them off," Oltrain somberly continued after some more silence. "We never saw him again."
Nerissa was silent for a bit more, then turned to the dashboard. "VEGA, was he really serving that horrid pirate?"
"He has been brainwashed or broken into responding to the name Worm," VEGA told her. "And footage from our battle in the hallway has revealed something intriguing."
The holorecorder instantly played back the first-person perspective of the skirmish. Worm locked his twin lightsaber blades in the Slayer's elbow and knee, giving a close-up view of the side of Worm's neck. The footage paused there.
As the footage zoomed in and enhanced, Nerissa could clearly see an abnormal detail. It was a darker spot beneath a scar in Worm's neck that she didn't recall being there a few weeks ago.
"My sensors have picked up an electronic signal in his carotid artery," VEGA expounded. "I am unsure if it is a control chip or an explosive. Without delicate surgery, attempts to remove the chip will result in heavy blood loss and a high likelihood of death."
Nerissa gasped, hands to her mouth. So it wasn't just psychological captivity; even if Worm wanted to escape, he couldn't. It reminded her of the tactics used on the slaves on Tatooine.
"My recommendation is that Golyon Chi should not be engaged, for both your safety and his."
"But he needs to remember who he really is!" Nerissa insisted.
"That is our first priority. But if he cannot, he must be put down," VEGA calmly calculated.
"Put down?" Nerissa demanded, face creasing in outrage. "He's a Jedi, a man! He's no rabid animal!"
"If he continues to be a threat to the mission, he will be treated like a threat."
Nerissa sighed and leaned against the side of the cabin again. Sometimes all the words in the world couldn't change the truth. Her time in the Senate had taught her that much.
But the defiance against that awful reality still throbbed within her.
One way or another, she would save the Jedi.
The hovertrain shot a trail of tan dust behind it, partially obscuring the Slayer's vision. But he could still see fine into the distance. Nothing so far.
The double-barreled scatterblaster bobbed up and down in the Slayer's grip as the hovertrain trundled along. It wasn't as fast as his speeder had been, and the Slayer knew that it would take well into the night for a return to Hondo's base. An attack was almost certain out here; the only question was when?
But the Slayer's mind wasn't even on the horizon; he was mulling on the overheard information. A captive senator. A deal gone wrong with the Hutts. A brainwashed Jedi. All of a sudden the galaxy seemed far bigger than he had been exposed to, and this simple smash-and-grab had turned into a complex political affair.
He still needed to figure out where he stood on the politics of the Galactic Republic– if he were to remain here for long. The Jedi, of course, was his best hope, but that was different from the Republic. He hadn't seen much from either the Republic or Separatists yet. He didn't know their policies, their stances on social issues, or their military strategies. VEGA did, but he couldn't be bothered to listen at the moment.
At the very least, however, the Hutts struck him as corrupt gangsters no better than the filth he had slain already. Perhaps ridding the galaxy of their influence was best for everyone, but he did not want to do things diplomatically– within the bounds of 'our democracy' which had most likely caused the problems in the first place.
No. He would do it his way. It would be direct, final, and honest– proved by blood.
Minutes passed, but they felt like hours. The hovertrain maneuvered to face a long, wide pass in the upcoming rocky hills, and the Slayer's grip tightened on the handles. Ambush territory if there ever was one. This wasn't the way he had come to the base, but time was of the essence for this transport, and it was more direct.
His optics focused on the upcoming horizon. Nothing so far.
Would Jiro have deduced that they were returning to Hondo? If so, then all he needed to do was order his lackeys to converge on the route and, once they'd been spotted, close in.
The hovertrain got closer to the rocky pass, and the Slayer could tilt his head and look up at the protrusions and sheer faces of the tan cliffs on either side. He angled the scatterblaster up and at the edges of the protrusions.
As the hovertrain entered the pass, sure enough, the whirr of hoverbikes roared to life, and half a dozen weathered steering vanes became visible on the edges of the rock faces. Several masked pirates peeked out from the sides of the cliff and appeared from caves in the rock face, all watching their approach.
The Slayer kept a pointed eye on them, but did not fire just yet. They might not even be aligned with Jiro at all, or could be lookouts for Hondo. Perhaps they were just wild savages.
The raider's makeup was odd; aside from the Weequays he was expecting, there were also brown hooded midgets, figures with tribal masks and projectile rifles, and even a few humans showing their faces, though covered up in rags and scrap. VEGA's pop-up infographics revealed the other aliens to be Jawas and Tuskens, respectively.
"Halt!" cried an overriding echo, and then came the sound of a jetpack ignition. Something descended from the tallest point of the pass, trailing flame, and settled atop a granite protrusion sticking out from the edge of the left wall. The hovertrain ground to a halt a quarter of the way into the valley, and the Slayer looked up to regard him.
For it was indeed a man, armored and armed with a heavy blaster chaingun that looked far heavier than the Z-6 the Slayer had seen. He was impressively tall for an unaltered human; the Slayer guessed six and a quarter feet. An orange T-visor helmet that matched the color of his armor was atop his head, slightly muffling the words he spoke.
"What business do you have, going through Ordo's Pass?" the man yelled, loud enough to be undeniably heard.
The hovertrain's speakers crackled to life, and Nerissa's voice came loud and clear. "We are escaping prisoners, heading to civilization."
"Are you for Hondo Ohnaka?"
After a brief moment, Nerissa answered, "No."
"Then for a sum of tribute, you may leave," the man granted. "Leave your weapons and women– which I know you have."
The Slayer immediately turned the scatterblaster on him, and the clicks of racking guns echoed throughout the pass.
"That is… something we cannot do," Nerissa shakily replied. "As a Mandalorian, Ordo, surely you know how important our weapons are."
"I do. It means you are at my mercy!" The Mandalorian hefted his chaingun. "I will barricade this pass, and your weapons will be confiscated anyway if you do not answer."
The Slayer gritted his teeth. Every minute they wasted here was another minute for Jiro to catch up with them!
So the Slayer took the initiative.
He let go of the scatterblaster and put his hands up.
He got out of his seat. He left the scatterblaster's swivel stand and approached Ordo the Mandalorian, slowly, obviously.
"Seems like your friend on top is wiser than you," Ordo taunted.
But not in the way Ordo was expecting.
As Ordo had lowered his gaze for a fraction of a second to address Nerissa, the Slayer yanked out of hammerspace the Gauss Cannon.
Ordo caught his movement and aimed at the Slayer, but it was too late. A glowing blue rod of tungsten going a respectable fraction of the speed of light shattered the rocky protrusion, throwing him atop the hovertrain and fracturing his jetpack.
Daska took that as a sign to start the hovertrain back up, and it began to laboriously speed through the narrow valley. The rest of Ordo's men began to fire, and between the energy shielding and the heavy armor plating, the small-arms fire did negligible damage, pinging off in a cacophony of energy snarls. VEGA took the opportunity to return fire from the two mounted swivel turrets, blasting clouds of smoke into the sides of the cliff.
Ordo had quickly gotten to his feet; it was fight or flight, and he was well aware of the sparking broken jetpack on his back. So he bowed down and launched the mounted concussion missile.
The Slayer caught the missile and hurled it into the upcoming rock walls, detonating in a cloud of ash and causing a small avalanche across the hovertrain's path. It hovered above most of the debris, but a few boulders nudged the hovertrain with a squeal upon impact.
Ordo then detached his ruined jetpack and hurled it at the Slayer. Midway there, he drew a blaster pistol from his holster and fired. The shot detonated the jetpack, causing a fireball that rocked the train and blocked the Slayer's vision. It bought enough time for Ordo to close in with a vibro-knife in his other hand.
The Slayer wasn't hurt by the maneuver, but he admired Ordo's ingenuity and combat reflexes– the only parts of him he could admire.
The hovertrain was still under attack by small-arms fire from the cliffs, but three of the speeders had flown down, over the rocky terrain, and were running alongside the train. A Jawa on the back of a Tusken was thrown onto the train's port side, and a human on the starboard side tossed a thermal detonator onto the roof of the train's first car, ruining one of the swivel turrets.
It didn't impact the Slayer's fight with Ordo; they were on the second car. It was hardly a fight; Ordo was slashing with one hand and firing as fast as his finger could pull the trigger with the other. The Slayer weathered it boredly, allowing Ordo to give it his all. But he eventually backhanded Ordo across the face of his helmet.
It didn't so much as step him back.
The Slayer, somewhat surprised, next delivered a harder torso hit. That one did step him back, and he was grabbing at his chest, but the Slayer knew his strength; that exact output was enough to turn a normal Weequay pirate into a donut. Whatever that armor was, it was exceptional.
"That all you got?" Ordo taunted, and he gasped out some laughter.
The Slayer's foot impacted Ordo's helmet at something resembling terminal velocity for an answer.
The Jawa on the hovertrain made it to the power coupling of the two cars. A buzzing bar of energy was reinforcing the cables. He was holding a sparking welding torch in one hand as he bent down to examine the coupling.
But the door to the first car squeaked open, startling the Jawa, and he was immediately blasted off by one of the Republic officers.
Blaster bolts ricocheted off the open door, and the officer used that as cover; the ravager on the starboard side had fallen behind and was firing on full auto. But between his attack and his focus on the road, the ravager wasn't prepared for the passenger door opening.
Nerissa leaned out to fire with her non-dominant hand. The shots went wide, but it was enough for the ravager to swerve and lose his focus. The officer by the coupling now had an opening, and he managed to strike the steering vane's lance. The ravager's front instantly plowed headfirst into the earth, and the ravager was hurled from his seat. He flipped once before striking his head into a boulder, instantly discoloring the whole thing with his blood.
The officer who had taken the shot, though, was blind to a port-side speeder firing at his unprotected back, and he slumped over the coupling with scorch marks in his spine. Shouts of dismay accompanied his body being dragged back into the car by the other officers.
The Slayer saw this out of the corner of his vision, but quickly turned his attention back to Ordo, lying on his back. The Slayer strode above him and fired a fist into Ordo's helmet, and to the Slayer's surprise, it dented the hovertrain roof more than the helmet, which honestly looked amusing.
Now that the Slayer's experiments with the metal were done, he gripped the sides of the helmet to take it off. But seized by some manic energy, the Mandalorian gripped his helmet too, trying to keep it on. The Slayer irritably grabbed and bent his fingers backwards, snapping the bones in his hand. The Mandalorian roared and let go, and the Slayer pried the helmet off his head.
Ordo had a black mustache but no beard, and his bloodshot blue eyes boiled in rage. With his good hand, he reached up and activated the flamethrower built into his wrist, coating the Slayer's vision in flame. The Slayer straightened up and stomped on his chest, doubling him over and stopping the flame.
A furious roar came from the hovertrain's side, and one of the speeders' drivers hurled a thermal detonator into the Slayer's path. Spotting the baseball-sized grenade, the Slayer scooped it out of the air with Ordo's helmet and planted it on the roof. With a shake and rumble, the grenade went off, damaging neither the hovertrain nor Ordo's helmet.
The driver's door opened, and a second grenade, courtesy of Daska, flew into the speeder bike's path. It detonated on impact. The twisted wreckage quickly fell into the path of the Tusken speeder, and that, too, turned into fiery scrap and quickly fell behind.
The five speeders which had not gone to the floor of the pass were zooming along the cliffs, just above the Slayer's head and keeping pace with the hovertrain. The closest biker, to the Slayer's upper right, bellowed, "Boss!" and jumped his whole speeder bike, plummeting down to the hovertrain's roof.
The Slayer's old reliable Super Shotgun appeared in his hand and blasted the man in midair, cartwheeling his bloody remains out of his seat and sending the speeder crashing into the Slayer's face. It shattered against his armor in a smoky explosion and fell off the train.
A second speeder, this time from the right side, jumped at the hovertrain too, but Oltrain's upper half had appeared from the cabin's sunroof. The DC-15 in his hand perfectly struck the biker just as he was about to throw a thermal detonator. He, the speeder, and the detonator all struck the side of the hovertrain and rocked it with a wet thud, a crash, and an explosion. The biker's charred upper half was left impaled on one of the protruding spikes.
The final speeder bike to try this technique aimed right for the cabin itself. He, too, was shot out of midair by Oltrain, and his speeder thudded on the hood of the train, deeply scratching it. The speeder fell to the cow-catcher and was quickly shredded underneath the two-foot hovering distance of the train. An explosion rocked the bottom of the hovertrain, but no obvious damage had been done.
They were nearly out of the ravine by now; the exit edges could be seen. Beyond that edge was a long stretch of wasteland going directly to Hondo's base.
"That's mine," Ordo snarled, trying to sit up. "You don't deserve that helmet!"
What for? He had fought and lost. The Slayer just snagged Ordo's arm and yanked him over the train, causing him to tumble in the dust and dirt. The Slayer deposited the orange helmet in hammerspace and looked forward, silently urging the hovertrain to speed up.
Only a few moments later, the edges of the ravine blasted apart in enormous plumes of smoke.
Oh yeah, Ordo had that contingency.
Even as the enormous debris began to tumble across the path, the Slayer could see that the hovertrain's repulsors couldn't make that kind of angular upward turn without damaging the bottom and getting it stuck, and that the cow-catcher in front would be destroyed and stop the vehicle.
So the Slayer bent his knees and launched off the hovertrain. The force of his leg's output caused the train cars to bang together and jerk in place, slowing it down somewhat.
The Slayer curled up, turning himself into a cannonball, and straightened his legs on impact. He hit the settling rocks hard enough to shatter boulders and turn pebbles to dust, blowing a hole in the wall large enough to allow the hovertrain to scrape through.
He rolled on the ground for a few seconds and looked up to see through the dust the devilish hovertrain, squealing from its impact with the rocks, barreling right at him.
The Slayer simply rolled to the side and reached out an arm as the hovertrain roared past. His hand connected with the edge of the second car, and he was pulled along for a few seconds before his grip improved and he got into the coupling gap.
He pulled himself up to the roof of the car, got to his feet, and circled his shoulders. That was a great warm-up.
"Who is he?!" Oltrain exclaimed from the cabin.
"You would not believe me if I told you," VEGA calmly answered.
Ain't that the truth.
They were half an hour out of the pass, and the remaining speeder bikes had had no intention of following them into the late afternoon wasteland. This was Hondo's territory now, and his base was within a two-hour drive, according to the estimation VEGA was displaying. Aside from the ridges behind them and the mountains in the distance, the rest of the wasteland was flat as a pancake.
It would mean Jiro's war party would easily see them. But so, too, could the Slayer spot them in return.
Which was what the Slayer was seeing now.
Far in the distance, there was a cloud of dust too small to be a storm and included specks of black, like swarming ants. The Slayer's intuition told him it was Jiro; nothing else made sense.
Evidently Jiro had counted on the hovertrain taking that pass to get back to Hondo, which he knew they were going to because the Slayer had taken Hondo's crate. If not, they would have fallen into his grip earlier. Now he was around the mountain ridge as well, and he was closing in.
The Slayer's HUD zoomed in on the pursuers. Then a second time; they were still quite far away. But he could clearly see what was in store for them.
There were scores of craft. Jiro had apparently pulled out all the stops for this one. Thin predatory speeder bikes; bulbous yet angular personal hovercars; heavily-plated tanks; boxy troop carriers; fuel tankers stickered with large warning labels; lumbering speeder deployment craft. They came in all colors and shapes, and four were even larger than the hovertrain.
No two hovercraft were identical. The personalizations shared a few common elements, though: spikes, weapon emplacements, stylized or real flames, and skulls, real or carved. Dozens of banners from three tribes flapped in the wind: a gear with twin blaster pistols crossing behind it on a white flag; an upright lightsaber splitting an Ithorian head in half on a red flag; and a spear piercing the red symbol of the Galactic Republic on a black flag. The Slayer vaguely remembered seeing that last flag on some passing walls back in the base, but he had ignored it.
Personalized decorations extended to the pirates themselves: wreckage, repurposed garments, and dangerous implements coated the wild tribesmen. Many were painted white, black, or red to match their flag's colors, and from their mouth movements, whoops and hollers were roaring from the collective. They were armed with long pikes, boathooks, and javelins in addition to blaster rifles, pistols, rocket launchers, and grenades.
The Slayer smiled in spite of the danger. Or even because of it. The officers needed to be kept safe, but this was going to be fun for him.