Flashes of light emanated from the barrels of their blasters and the din of blaster fire rang out, echoing through the rain as green bolts slammed into the warehouse. They didn't even get off of their swoops.

For my part, all I could do was watch as the pumped blaster bolt after blaster bolt into the joint. No shots returned from inside the warehouse.

My eyes narrowed as one of the attackers reached into a leather pannier at the side of his swoop, and pulled out a metal cylinder about as long as his forearm. He twisted one end sharply, then launched it towards the warehouse. I realised what it was just before it impacted and burst into thick, vivid flames on the exterior wall. Another swooper followed his lead, only his stick landed inside the warehouse. The two of them threw three more of the incendiary devices each, and by the time they were done more smoke was pouring from the warehouse than a Soccoran barbecue.

Those weapons were distinctive: Merr-Sonn Munitions D-24 Inferno Grenades. Military grade, outlawed in most systems, but available on the black market for around a hundred credits a pop. This wasn't a case of some hooligans on a rampage. Eight hundred credits was far more than a swoop gang could afford to drop. There was money behind this attack, but who? And why?

The leather-clad riders let out one final volley raking the burning building with blaster fire and then, satisfied with their work, sped off into the night.

I knew I wouldn't have long. I powered up my airspeeder and shot it forward towards the warehouse. Stopping next to the cloud car, itself riddled with dark blaster marks that marred its shiny orange chassis like the face of a kid with bad acne, I raised the gull-wing doors and climbed out, drawing my holdout blaster from the concealed holster slung beneath my shoulder. I left the engine running.

The rain had slowed to a light drizzle, but the air was still thick and hot. Sweat dropped down my back and by the looks of the flames the interior of the warehouse wouldn't be any cooler, but Heater, or at least his body, was still in there.

I charged in to the growing inferno, trying to assess my surroundings. Fire crept up the walls like vines and smoke assaulted my eyes. Pallets and crates were stacked haphazardly, sparks shot from overheating machinery, and an industrial cargo crane on the ceiling creaked a deep throaty groan like an injured beast taking its final breaths.

On the right hand side of the room, a lone body laid face down on the floor. A lone, fat, ugly corpse of a man: Opun 'Heater' McGrrrr.

His fur jacket was singed with blaster marks, matting it into burned clumps that had melted into his flesh beneath. From the way it burned it was clear the fur was synthetic, but I had no doubt he told people it was real. It didn't look so angry now.

I bent down and rolled him on to his back. He was even uglier in person. The grease on his face was so thick I was worried he might catch fire. There was shock in his dead eyes, wide and unblinking, and his mouth twisted and contorted in a noiseless scream. There was a sadness to his hideous face; it was the face of a man who had met his end unprepared.

I rifled through his pockets, hoping he might have Miss Luthi's holos on his person.

No sabaac.

All he had on him was a handful of loose credits, which I quickly pocketed. He wouldn't need them anyway. At his hip there was a CDEF blaster pistol, still in its holster, and a code cylinder was clenched tightly in his stubby fingers.

There was a data terminal near his body, and I put the scene together in my mind: McGrrrr had been accessing the terminal when the swoop gang pulled up. He wasn't so stupid as to not recognise the imminent danger, and tried to move his lumbering mass into cover. Speed was not his forte however, and now his back had more blaster marks than a twenchok had spikes.

I pried the code cylinder from his lifeless hand, and studied it. The small metal rod looked normal, just like the millions of others in the galaxy. Yet, if a man clutched something like this at the moment of his death rather than reach for his blaster then I figured it was important. Eyeing the terminal, I quickly got up and inserted the code cylinder into it.

I coughed. The fire was spreading, and a thick cloud of smoke clung to the ceiling, growing thicker by the second.

The terminal booted up. Thankfully the blaster scoring hadn't rendered the old machine inoperable. Not yet anyway.

A long list of files filled the screen, too many to look through one by one. Cargo manifests, financial reports, shipping contracts; it amused me how criminals always kept detailed logs of their dealings, even the illicit ones. The Empire had taken down more than a handful of spice-barons using the fastidious bookkeeping found in their ledgers. I chuckled, but the smoke forced it into another guttural cough.

I keyed for recently accessed files. The screen flickered, but not holovid files appeared. Instead I was presented with a cargo manifest, marked as recently edited. I opened the file, and the screen flickered again. When the display stabilised, large portions of the file were unreadable. The file was corrupted. I skimmed what was still legible: I couldn't read what the cargo actually was, but twenty percent of it had been marked as spoiled and undeliverable. That spoilage was too high for it to be spice. Whatever it was, it was due to be shipped tomorrow night, and the recipient was someone by the name Fyyar. The name seemed familiar but I couldn't place it.

I didn't have a chance to look further as blue lightning arced across the terminal. I stepped back, barely evading a painful dosage of volts as it spat sparks at me. Then it fell silent. The machine was as dead as its master.

There was nothing more for me here. The cargo crane let out one final groan as the joists holding it to the ceiling gave way, buckling in the heat. It careened to the ground in a waterfall of flames and sparks, bursting into a deadly fireball as it hit the warehouse floor.

I coughed again. The smoke was getting thicker now, assaulting my eyes and making them water uncontrollably. I pulled my jacket over my mouth and hurried back to the entrance, sidestepping flames and debris as embers singed the hem of my suit.

The rain had stopped now, and I took a deep breath. The polluted atmosphere of Nar Shaddaa's industrial sector tasted positively fresh compared to the smoke-laden air inside the warehouse blaze.

Sirens blared in the distance. I didn't want to be here when they arrived. Emergency services on Nar Shaddaa were anything but altruistic. They were private corporations, only putting out fires that paid their insurance, and that insurance never came cheap. They also served as security and cleanup crews, dealing with any trespassers or suspected arsonists. They shot first and didn't ask questions.

I was about to dive into my speeder when something caught my eye. A small device around three centimetres in diameter, attached to the rear of Heater's cloud car on the side closest to the warehouse, sparing it from the swoop gang's blasters: a homing beacon.

An Imperial homing beacon.

Clutching the chassis like a limpet it was compact and discreet, I doubted McGrrrr would ever have spotted it. I quickly pried it off of the vehicle, holding it in my hand. There was no doubt in my mind. Imperial Intelligence used these exact trackers extensively, I'd even used them myself a few times, but they were rare to see in civilian hands.

Dropping it to the floor I crushed it under my boot and got back into my speeder. I sped away from the inferno and out of the industrial district as the first rays of morning sunlight crept over the city skyline.