1.0
Blinding light flared in front of
Soong Alay, a sure sign that I was trailing far too close to Gavin Tal's light freighter in an attempt to blow him into tiny pieces. Attempted murder of a Sector Ranger was more than enough authority to spread his atoms across this little portion of the galaxy, but a shooting battle across an entire star system was never one of my strong suits. I was more of a face to face kind of girl.
The entire ship shuddered as I rolled to the left to avoid most of the debris from whatever flew out of his cargo hold at my last round of cannon fire. Whatever it was packed an extremely large amount of explosive of some type.
Why couldn't I have hit that while it was still on his ship? I'll tell you why; I have the galaxy's worst luck.
A warning light blinked on the control panel in front of me followed by an annoying high-pitched alert.
"
Schutta!" I snapped before hitting it and calling out to my astromech droid. "Artoo! Lock down that loose power coupling before we lose propulsion."
He responded with a rude low-pitched noise and then squealed when something collided with the bottom of the ship, knocking us off course yet again.
"I know. Shut up and fly the ship." It's how he always talks to me when he realizes a lot of repair work is in his immediate future.
It's my fault for not buying one of the new R-4 series droids with the predictive software modules when I had the chance. But R-2 has been with me going on twelve years without a single memorywipe. There's a lot to be said for owning a droid that knows your ship inside and out. He knows exactly what to do when worst comes to worst, and doesn't spend precious time repairing non-critical systems when his tin can is on the line.
Before I had another chance to line up a final shot, a giant ball of red and green energy exploded in front of Tal's ship and he was heading straight to the center without even a twitch of movement from his wings.
"What is he doing?"
Something flailed out of the energy field and careened off the nose of his ship, knocking it slightly off course. All I got was a few nanoseconds worth of time to see it was large, vaguely humanoid, white, and there were a lot of wings involved, before I overtook it and it disappeared behind me.
"Uh-oh." That couldn't be good.
One second he was there and the next his ship was being swallowed up in the field, disappearing off the sensor grid.
If there as one thing I've deduced about Gavin Tal is that deep down he's a coward. There was no way he'd willingly head straight into something that would end his life without any chance of escape. So, me being the brilliant investigator that I am immediately came to the conclusion that whatever that thing was, it wasn't a weapon. His shields were already down and a good chunk of his cargo hold was venting to space. I, on the other hand had my ray shield at full. Common sense said that I would be perfectly fine encountering most discharges of energy, and there was no way I was going to lose him this close to capture.
I didn't get the chance to warn R-2. I probably should have anyway.
Alert klaxons wailed around the ship as my console went completely dead.
"
E chu ta," I breathed. "We're totally
karked."
The stick went heavy in my hand as fire lit up the viewport and the hull. If I didn't know any better I'd say we were entering a planet's atmosphere at a really bad angle and that wasn't possible. The closest one was half a light year away. Sounds of something popping against the hull told me Tal was in much worse shape.
"Artoo! Now would be a really good time to…."
I didn't have to finish the order when power came back on and virtually all of it was blinking red on the console in front of me. The stick jerked and I had to fight it to ease the nose in a controlled angle. It really wouldn't be a good idea to go into a spin at the moment. R-2 let his displeasure be known.
"I'm working on it. Keep your shirt on!" I shouted.
One by one systems started to come back online just as the fire outside started to clear, and I nearly lost it when I saw the sensors. Yep, it was a planet that appeared out of nowhere, and yep, Gavin Tal and his ship were currently being scattered across its entire upper atmosphere in a nice pretty grey and chartreuse cloud of debris.
R-2 came over the coms again with a litany of problems we were about to have if I didn't get on the ground as soon as possible. The problem was it was mostly water we were over – and closing in on much faster than I was comfortable with. Something popped to my left and sent up an acrid smell of electrical issues.
"Great," I said to myself as I tapped at the sensors. "Give me somewhere to land."
The ion engines took that moment to cough at me and power across the ship flickered. I winced at the thought of another power coupling blowing and picked out the first city that came up when land appeared across the horizon. Larger cities would most likely have the needed parts on hand to repair most problems and get me back out into space – if I actually made it there without tanking
Soong Alay in the gray waters below. A loud warning whistle from R-2 told me it was going to be a close call any way I looked at it.
I scanned the area with my eyes and couldn't find a spaceport anywhere, but there were a lot of low-tech building scattered all over.
"The beachhead it is then."
We came in as quickly as was possible, hopefully without scaring the
poodoo out of whoever was manning that ancient hover tech out in the middle of the bay. It wouldn't do to get on the bad side of whatever passed for authority on this backwater planet. Terrifying the locals tended to go badly whenever it wound up on my reports to SR Central Command.
The Sector Rangers had a good reputation on the Outer Rim, even more than the Jedi. The fact that we tended to look the other way on minor offenses if the information or criminals we were looking for fell into out laps had a lot to do with it. Jedi have long and detailed memories and they like to pass on every little thing to the appropriate authorities, while Rangers got in and got out with as little fuss as possible. Having a local government report you for creating a problem on their world was a nice big black mark on our records. However, this couldn't be helped. It was either land with a bit of a show or explode spectacularly on arrival.
I could always offer an official apology later.
The landing skids dropped as I brought the wings up in position on the most deserted portion of the shore I could find. Three humans still had to scatter or get crushed. Luckily, I'm an awesome pilot – not really. Once I saw they cleared, I dropped the ship with a final resounding thump, shaking the entire thing enough to receive another squawk from R-2.
"We're alive. Be thankful," I called back.
The smell of extinguisher concentrate was thick in the air as I made my way back to the engine compartment. That wasn't a good sign. Fire was involved and R-2 had to put it out. He was going to be pissed. That meant my cabin climate controls were going to
karked until everything was back to normal. It was his way of punishing me. He always blamed it on something out of his control, but the timing was always same. Once everything was fixed, magically my nights didn't fluctuate from frigid to sweltering every other hour. That new R-4 unit was looking more attractive by the minute.
"How bad is it?"
R-2 spun around and blew his extinguisher at me with a contemptuous flatulent noise just to let me know his thoughts on my question.
"It's not my fault!" I said as I fanned the air in front of me. "There was big plasma… thing. I didn't have time to avoid it."
It was a little white lie to a droid; I probably wouldn't be sent to one of the Seven Hells for that. Besides, I was the one in charge here. When he started to advance on me with more extinguisher threats I backed out of the room and was beginning to rethink the chain of command.
"I'll get it taken care of, alright?"
He whistled at me and jerked back just a little. I had to sigh.
"Fine. I'll arrange an oil bath for you. Just… compile a list of what's wrong and I'll submit it to whatever passes for starship maintenance around here." Spinning around, I headed to my cabin to grab my gear and the Corps issue credit chip. This was going to bankrupt my maintenance allowance for the coming year.
"Fraking blackmailing droids."
By the time I geared up and slipped on my jacket with all the Sector Ranger insignia for everyone to see, I could swear I heard banging somewhere below me.
Rule one: Don't touch the ship.
Everyone knows this, from the Deep Core to Wild Space. You just don't touch someone ship without permission – period; especially a Ranger ship. Apparently, I had to school some backwater rubes about that one.
I checked the loads on my slugthrowers and holstered them and then grabbed my sword on the way out, sliding it into the sheath attached to the back of my jacket. Yes, I preferred a reliable slugthrower to an unreliable blaster. I like to know, when I put a being down, he stays down. A universal sign of that is blood. Blasters tend to cauterize the wound most times, so you can't tell if the being you put down is wearing body armor. My slugs go through everything but heavy armor. That new white plastoid crap stops most blaster fire in its tracks, not my babies though.
Gavin Tal found that out the hard way when I shot him in the ass on Nar Shaddaa. I warned him though. I specifically remember saying, "
Sector Ranger; stop or I'll shoot you in the ass!"
It's not my fault when they don't listen. I really hate Nar Shaddaa, especially the Red District. You can't even lean up against any given wall without contracting some funky disease that takes weeks to clear up – not that I would know anything about that. Honestly. If I was looking for a little companionship it definitely wouldn't be on that moon. That's what Zeltros is for; everyone knows that – except for maybe the
skocha kung that had developed a fetish for banging on the hull of my ship!
I hit the control for the ramp at the nose of
Soong Alay and waited for it to lower itself while I contemplated heading down with two handfuls of slugthrower, but I bit it back. It was their planet and I was an uninvited guest – or at least that's what the Corps manual says in situations like these. Proper procedure was to smile, offer greetings, apologize for my unannounced presence, and ask to speak to a Republic representative.
What came out instead was, "Alright already! I had to put out a fraking fire, you impatient son of a Hutt!"
It was a small white lie told to a very rude person; I probably won't be sent to one of the Seven Hells for that one.
I had to stop and blink for a moment at the guy in the blue and grey power armor. Maybe I should have gone with the Corps standard greeting just this one time.
He stood there looking like he knew what he was doing, presenting a… is that a halberd? Anyway, he was presenting a halberd like he was going to cut a swath through the hull if provoked properly. Luckily, I was just the person that could do just that – or maybe I should just stick with the Corps manual.
"Hero or villain?" he said, speaking High Galactic like he was born to it.
Galactic Standard Basic was the language most used, especially to off-worlders general. You never know what some people would or could speak, but Basic was pretty much the standard. Considering he was using a Pre-Republic language for opening remarks made me think I might have a chance to glide through this.
"Special Enforcement Officer, actually," I announced at the top of the ramp. "Sector Ranger, which you probably know from seeing the Ranger insignia on the wings?"
The only place on his armor that showed any skin was his hairy chin and his lips, which at the moment were pressed together in seemingly mild frustration – his lips, not his lips and chin – that would just be awkward looking.
"I don't recognize those markings, or your apparent occupation, or your accent for that matter. I ask again: hero or villain?"
The obvious definitions didn't really apply to me. Depending on who you asked, a Ranger could be either. I mean, I'm sure any member of the Black Sun criminal organization would consider me a major pain in the butt.
"I'm a Ranger, Republic law enforcement. This is a Republic planet, right? I mean I know we're on the Outer Rim, but the Corporate Sector is on the other side of the galaxy, and this isn't Hutt Space… not that I have anything against Hutts in general, as long as they're law abiding."
His helmet turned slightly and I was at a loss at what he was looking for until a human female stepped out from the starboard side. She was armed, but the weapon was holstered. The one thing I didn't like was the scarf on the lower portion of her face, hiding her identity. On a seemingly temperate world like this one, it didn't bode well. If we were on some desert planet then a face covering would make sense; here, not so much.
She looked at me with a measuring gaze for a few moments and then straightened. "You said 'Republic planet'. What… what planet do you think you're on?"
Being in my line of work I hear some really strange questions. Like one time, on Tatooine, a moisture farmer approached me and asked why I was arm deep into a dead bantha's butt. He obviously didn't know about the spice smuggling ring I just uncovered and that I was just retrieving the evidence.
Yes, sometimes my job really sucks.
Anyway, I wasn't prepared to hear that particular question right at that moment, asked in that particular tone of voice; the one that says, 'you're talking to a crazy person, be nice.'
"Uh… about that. I was chasing a suspect I'd tracked to this sector and boom, big ball of plasma… I'm guessing anyway. One minute your planet isn't on my sensors and the next I'm breaking atmo."
Pointing upward I added, "That's my suspect up there… or what's left of him anyway. So, if you could point me to the closest spaceport I'll get my ship fixed up and get out of your hair."
The woman looked to Mr. Power Armor and then back up to me. "You're saying you're from outer space?"
"Terminus actually, on the south end of the Hydian Way and Corellian Trade Spine, but I grew up on Coruscant." I paused for a moment at the squinting of her eyes. "And you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"
She shook her head.
"Great," I muttered. "Only me. Only I could do this." Then louder. "May I ask – what planet am I on?"
Again she looked back to the armored guy, almost like he was her superior. "Uh… Earth, Earth Bet."
Next ~>