Chapter 52: Chapter 52

A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars

Alaris Prime, 39 BBY/961 GSC.

And just connect this here…

I finished the spot weld onto my lightsaber, then carefully smoothed the weld out. I eyeballed it for a moment before running a scanning formula to make sure everything was level and symmetrical. Satisfied at the results, I powered the lightsaber on and smiled as the white-silver blade lit the inside of my workshop on the Rusted Silver. Just above my hands, a hand guard extended two lines of white-silver plasma, shielded from my hands by a physical guard that flipped down, then the saber activated.

The original saber I had recovered from the tomb of the fallen Jedi on Alaris Prime had the physical part of the crossguard as one piece, much like some normal European swords would have. I hadn’t liked the idea of it potentially getting caught on something, so I had made a few modifications to the design when adapting the design to my lightsaber.

The physical part of the crossguard would sit flush with the side of the saber when not in use and the emitters/vents were recessed, removing a potential vulnerability if someone damaged one. The saber could be activated normally with a single blade, and a newly added switch would slide the physical crossguard down, exposing the vents and creating a plasma crossguard.

Unfortunately, while I’d been testing things, I had found that the lightwhip design and the crossguard were incompatible. Well… mostly. I just didn’t want highly dangerous plasma noodles flailing at my wrists any time I used the lightwhip. But that was fine. I had two sabers. Making one more defensive to balance the more offensive uses of the other seemed like a good compromise.

An armored fist hammered at the hatch and I shut off the saber and slipped it on my belt, moving back through the ship towards the entrance. Opening it, I found Sgt. Dyre standing on the other side, hand raised to knock again. She lowered her hand and snapped a quick salute, only to pause as the furry shit appeared behind me and landed on my shoulder, where it started to purr loudly and knead at my muscles through my robe. The woman fought a smile as she spoke. “Captain. Lt. Taris sent me. We’ve detected an enemy vessel approaching Alaris Prime.”

I grinned and left the ship, hitting the door control on the way out as we hurried out of the hangar, the cat hanging on and looking around as we went. “Excellent. How many?”

“Just one when he sent me, ma’am,” she answered distractedly. I raised an eyebrow when she reached out and the damned cat stretched out for pets, but said nothing about it.

Humming, I nodded slowly. “Likely responding to the distress signals from the escape pods, then. Maybe the closest thing they could send.” Glancing at the sergeant walking along with me, I asked, “Was there anything else?”

She lifted the tablet she had been carrying and began reading off from it. “We’ve received an encrypted transmission from the prize fleet. They’ve reached their destination and called ahead to Serenno, and the crews are on their way back.”

“Excellent news,” I grinned.

“The passenger liner carrying our Zeltron volunteers has left Zeltros. Total passenger count, including families, is six hundred and thirty-seven.”

I whistled quietly as people we passed in the corridor made a hole for us, snapping quick salutes as they went about their duties. “I hadn’t expected quite that many extended family.”

“They were quite eager to go,” Sgt. Dyre shrugged. “Finally, we’ve completed an inventory of everything seized from the prize fleet, including personal spoils. I’ve sent you the report with an itemized list, awaiting your approval before allowing the bulk of it to be divided between the ship and the crew as spoils.”

I shouldn’t micromanage things . That, and going over every little thing and claiming all of the best stuff for myself or the officers would be petty. No, I want to incentivize the boarding parties to continue doing a good job, and that means giving them the first pick of spoils and letting them keep it.

“I’ll go over it later, but so long as it’s nothing immediately dangerous to the ship and crew, or contraband, let the men keep their finds.”

Sgt. Dyre nodded. “Understood, captain. And the contraband? What should we do with it?”

We stepped onto the elevator and I asked, “What sort of contraband?”

“Spice. Enough to keep a ship the size of that CR90 in a drug induced haze for months.”

My lips curled in disgust. I almost told her to space it all, before reconsidering. After all, as disgusting as it was, there were places in the galaxy where those sorts of things were legal. Not just legal, but encouraged and had a healthy, open market in some cases. In fact, I happened to know of one such place…

“Lock it up. Put it under guard.”

As much as I disliked the idea of pumping poison into the veins of my own people, the truth was, they were going to do it with or without me supplying it. Not only that, but they would actively fight me to keep that supply coming in, because it was good for business. It was mostly for use by visiting off-worlders, since Zeltrons were more resistant than many species. Anything I contributed would be just a drop in a very large bucket.

I didn’t like it at all, but the alternative was letting a resource that was valuable to someone to go waste. Resources I could turn directly into credits, and from there into fuel, food, ammunition, and pay. “We’ll claim them for the ship and when we leave the Kashyyyk system, we’ll stop back by Zeltros and sell them. I’ll leave that to you. Take a marine detachment to ensure things go smoothly.”

“Yes, captain,” the sergeant nodded as the elevator emptied out onto the bridge. “Captain on deck!” she called, drawing the bridge crew to salute quickly.

“As you were,” I returned the salute and they turned back to their assignments.

Quieter, Sgt. Dyre said, “I’ll get started on that now.” She radiated a bit of disappointment directed at the cat, before resignation and duty replaced it.

I gave a nod and stepped off the elevator, heading for the captain’s chair as Sgt. Dyre took the elevator back down. Lt. Taris approached as I took my seat and brought up the fishbowl hologram. The cat jumped down into my lap and curled up, tail twitching as she watched the bridge activity, ears occasionally flicking. “What have we got?”

“Single ship,” he took the tablet attached to my seat and adjusted the display, zooming in on a ship approaching Alaris Prime. “Sphyrna-class hammerhead corvette. Her ID says she’s the Long Fang, and she’s flying the Trandosha flag.”

“What are they doing?” I asked, watching as the ship painted the planet in a red beam, displayed on the fishbowl, absently scratching the cat’s head.

“Scanning for the escape pods. We made sure they would only broadcast for a short time before going dead,” Lt. Taris answered, and I nodded. “They’ve sent a transmission back to Trandosha already and they’ve begun an orbit of the planet, scanning the surface and the surrounding space. That first transmission was to confirm they’ve arrived on site and that they’ve begun assessing the situation.”

“So a forward scout, sent to assess the situation,” I surmised, and he nodded. Humming, I leaned back in my chair a bit, then hissed at the cat dug its claws into my thigh for moving. “So we’ve cracked their comms?”

“We got the newest encryption keys off the Consulars.”

“Good. Let’s wait and see what she does. I’m hoping she’ll phone home and request more ships to aid in SAR on the planet. If she does, we’ll open fire and try to disable her. Board, send their crew down, and send the ship to join the others.”

Lt. Taris nodded and handed me the tablet back, then made his way over to the sensor officer’s station. I accessed my inbox while we waited and took the time to review that report Sgt. Dyre had sent, and approve disbursing loot to the crew. The raiding party had their choices already picked out and a quick review showed none of those were going to poke a hole in the ship or cause problems, so the rest of the more valuable things went into a pool for the rest of the crew to pick out of based on credit amount—under the purview of our quartermaster. Meanwhile, all of the supplies went to the ship—rations, surplus fuel and ammunition, weapons, and things along those lines; essentially anything we could use to lighten the burden of resupplying the ship went straight into stores. There were some large chests of physical credits recovered from the ships, along with smaller stashes from their crew quarters—those went straight into a locked room in the care of our financial officer, to be paid out to the crew when their pay periods came around, or in lieu of physical prize assets recovered from enemy ships.

From there, I worked my way through the rest of the mundane paperwork required in my day to day running of the ship. Status reports, approving hours, approving hazard and combat bonus pay, reports on the consumption of our supplies—food, fuel, and ammo. For a while, I lost myself in the grind. At some point, the cat hopped down and began to wander the bridge, but as long as she kept out from under foot, I ignored it. The bridge crew seemed delighted at its presence, so I wasn’t going to complain about morale improving.

“They’ve orbited the moon and are sending a transmission back to Trandosha. Text only,” Lt. Taris reported at my elbow, and a moment later my tablet showed a notification. Clicking it, I found the intercepted transmission waiting.

Reading over it, I grinned—and as I did, a feeling of anticipation filled the bridge. Blood thirst and preparation for violence.

And for just a moment, I was in a different time and place entirely. Reading over a report from our comms officer, delivered to me by Weiss.

The moment faded and I blinked, looking away as the smile fell from my face. Clearing my throat, I put the tablet away. “Prepare to engage the enemy,” I ordered, then stood and moved over to the weapons console, watching over the operator’s shoulder.

In the background, I heard the lieutenant began giving out orders and the call to general quarters. After a moment, I heard him order, “Weapons officer, get us a firing solution on the enemy vessel with the main gun. I want to take another prize ship, so put a round right through her bridge.”

Watching as the officer input the numbers from our passive sensor readings, I compared it against what my targeting formula told me and nodded. “Looks good,” I said, moving back to my seat, where I was immediately rejoined by the furball settling in my lap.

When we had first installed and tested the main gun, there had been some teething issues. Namely, it missed ship-sized targets at the sort of ranges Cid insisted it was good for. He said it wasn’t an issue with his weapon and, after firing some rounds with telemetry packages to test how the weapon was shooting, we confirmed that it was shooting straight. The problem turned out to be the targeting system.

Modern targeting systems were made predominantly for use with turbolasers and missiles or torpedoes in mind. Missiles and torpedoes had their own guidance, so close enough was good enough. Turbolasers were just oversized blasters, and there was only so much need for accuracy at their maximum range. A margin of error of a few degrees leading to being six inches off in any direction didn’t really matter at those distances.

But six inches off at a mile was sixty inches at ten miles, and almost a mile off at ten thousand miles.

So, Cindy and Cid had needed to modify the targeting computer and its programming a bit. I’d provided some help with my targeting formulas, and we had managed to dial it in for practically any range. As long as we could see the target, tell its direction and speed of movement, and it didn’t abruptly change course then we could hit a target the size of a soda can.

“Ship’s in position and anchors are holding.” Physical anchors driven into an asteroid in orbit around Taris Prime, we had used to hide our presence and in a moment, the emissions we’d be producing to fire the weapon. We’d release them if we needed to run, but I hoped it didn’t come to that.

“Target locked. Ready to fire,” the weapons officer reported.

Now that I was listening and we weren’t in the nervous rush of that first engagement, I could hear the faint electronic whine and then feel the ship shudder at the weapon’s discharge, recoil forcing thrusters to compensate to hold us in place. On the fishbowl, a countdown began as soon as the round fired, counting down from 10.75 seconds. I watched the clock tick down, then hit zero. A little over a second later, the ship’s shields flashed and the center forward section of the hammerhead turned into crumpled ruin as a glittering trail of debris scattered away from the exit wound.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Deploy fighters and boarding party,” Lt. Taris ordered.

“Fighters and marines away,” the comms officer relayed a moment later, and we watched on the fishbowl as our ships took off and raced for the enemy ship.

The VAAT wasn’t nearly as fast as our fighters, so it took some time for them to reach the target, while we sat and waited—watching for any sign of movement from the enemy vessel, a distress signal, or any new contacts. Finally though, the comms officer hit a switch and relayed the feed from the Mando marine squad—helmet cams and comms units giving us a play by play of the action as they quickly boarded and moved through the ship.

I nodded along as they cleared the ship room by room, taking it swiftly and methodically. There was only a single enemy casualty when someone, an officer judging by the stripes, stupidly tried to lob a grenade into the engine room, only to get gunned down for his trouble.

“The enemy ship’s ours,” the sergeant in charge of the boarding party reported some minutes later as they finished rounding up everyone and taking them to the enemy cargo bay. “We’re preparing the escape pods now.”

“Roger that, boarding team. We’ll send over a crew to take over and collect the loot,” Lt. Taris confirmed, and a moment later, our shuttles appeared on sensors, heading for the enemy ship. Turning to me, he smiled. “Looks like that’s it, captain. All that’s left is getting the enemy forces off, collecting our prizes, and then sending her on.”

“Excellent. Now, let’s see what comes our way next,” I grinned. Standing and sending the cat to the floor, I stretched and turned for the elevator as it followed, radiating hunger. I sent an echo of the emotion back and it perked up. “You have the bridge. I’ll be in the mess hall, then my quarters.”

“Well, the enemy isn’t entirely stupid,” I murmured, looking at the fishbowl display. A furry tail thumped the side of my head and I brushed it away, shooting an annoyed look at the furball perched on the back of my chair.

“Only mostly,” Lt. Taris smirked, amusement radiating off of him.

I’d like to give the Trandoshans more credit than that, but no. He was right. It was, quite honestly, fucking embarrassing just how long it took them to figure out that something was wrong and send any kind of substantial force to Alaris Prime. It was over a week before they reacted by sending anything more than lone gunships or even civilian cargo vessels that had been converted into military supply, support, and relief vessels.

When they had finally decided to send another group, the force they sent to respond to the rash of ‘disappearances’ was underwhelming. Just another three ship patrol—all Consulars again. And they weren’t exactly the brightest bunch.

We had approached claiming to have been attacked by pirates and barely escaped by hiding among the asteroids orbiting Alaris Prime, with our hyperdrive shot and in need of an escort back to Trandosha. Then, when we’d gotten close, we had shot up two of the three Consulars and let our fighters swarm the third. They gave up without a fight.

By my count, that was three ships in the initial attack, then one a day every day for a week, followed by three more on the eighth day in the AO. We’d captured a total of seven light and medium freighters, six cruisers, destroyed one cruiser, and kept a CR25 troop ship. Even at a safe estimate, we were approaching five million credits on the sale of the ships alone. But we also had a cargo hold full of goods to sell, along with a room practically packed to the ceiling at this point with space narcotics.

On the planet’s surface, our marines had managed to finish the job of destroying the droid factory and wiping out all enemy remnants aside from the ones we’d sent there in life pods. The marines had returned to the ship and the CR25 was hanging around practically directly above us tucked behind our little asteroid with a droid at the helm, waiting for orders. Master Qui-Gon had even gotten in contact and the Republic Senate were finally coming to an agreement about Alaris Prime and it looked like they would probably be leaving soon.

So of course, that was when our luck took a turn.

“What is it?” I asked, pulling myself from my thoughts and studying the new ship. Above me, the cat perked up and I felt her attention, tail swishing in the air and occasionally thumping me.

Lt. Taris tapped away at the tablet and a moment later, an information window popped up beside the displayed ship. “That is a Munificent-class frigate. The Second Mortgage, registered to the IGBC, but she’s flying a Trade Federation flag.”

Taking in the stats displayed, I hummed quietly. With dimensions roughly of twenty-seven hundred feet length, fourteen hundred feet beam, eight hundred feet height—roughly five times the dimensions of my own ship—she was the biggest thing we had come across to date. She absolutely dwarfed the prize ships we had taken so far. The specs didn’t list the weapons on her, but the ship could detect most of the external ones, and she was bristling.

Staring at the ship on the display, I considered my options for a moment before ordering, “Get Cid up here.” ɪꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ novel·fiɾe·net

The cantankerous old man joined us on the bridge shortly, and the moment he stepped into the fishbowl he whistled. “She’s a big bitch,” he murmured, studying the readouts displayed. He paused, eyes drawn to the movement of the cat above my head, and for a moment looked like he wanted to say something. Finally, he shook his head and dismissed it. “I guess you want to know if my baby can do the job.”

“Can it?” I asked, sending him a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah. Her particle shield strength is higher than what I’d like, but it’s doable. It might take two or three shots.”

“Two or three?” Lt. Taris frowned, and Cid nodded.

“Yep,” the old man nodded. “So what you want to do is, you under-charge the first shot and send it. The next one, charge it to what we’re expecting to need to take out the shield, then send it. The next one, you charge a bit more than that. If you’ve done the math right, the first two should land back to back within a second or two of each other and knock out the shield emitter for that section. Then the third shot passes through the gap and takes out the target. On something , shields will be weaker towards the aft section, too—most of the power will be focused in the direction she’s moving.”

Lt. Taris and I exchanged looks. After a moment, he offered, “Wait for them to pass, then fire?”

I nodded. “Yes. Take out the bridge first, close the distance. Launch fighters and boarding craft, while we hammer away at the ship with the ion cannons?”

The lieutenant hummed. “A ship that large definitely has a wing or two of fighters. Maybe as many as fifty. If those get out…”

“We’re in trouble, yes,” I agreed. “We could use the camouflage to get closer, but we’ve been out here long enough that it would be suspicious, even if we pretended to be one of their own ships. And we would be giving away our largest advantage in being able to get off a surprise decapitation strike. We could strike and retreat…” I murmured, considering my original plan for harassing enemy ships in the zone. The problem was, even if we took out the bridge, they had a secondary bridge and would quickly get the ship moving again, and go report home to let someone know we were out here—and there was no guarantee we could disable their engines before they could flee.

Cid snorted. “Could just walk away.”

“We can’t,” I shook my head. “This ship is here because the Republic is close to actually making a decision regarding the moon. But if they claim it by force first, which this is clearly meant to do, then that decision means nothing.”

“It’s risky, either way we go. It’s up to you, captain.”

There was another option… One I had used before, in fact. However, I was reluctant to do so, simply for the fact that I wanted my people to be able to stand on their own feet without me here to, to put it crudely, pull a miracle out of my ass. That was the problem I’d had with the 203rd. I had an entire squadron of aces of aces by the end of the war, but in the end, I was still expected to carry the heaviest load myself—and without me, it would all fall apart. They needed to be be able to operate entirely independent of me, because I wouldn’t always be with them. There would be times I’d need to be somewhere else.

But how often will I be sending them up against something that outmasses them this severely? They’re meant for harassment, recon, and light privateering, not for taking out enemy capital ships. No, if they were up against this in the wild, I’d expect them to either leave it alone, clear the AO if it’s looking for them, or strike and retreat if they absolutely can’t let it pass. They won’t be taking something head on—it’d be suicide. So, in this case, it’s not really cheating, is it?

“Okay. Here’s the plan.” Sending Lt. Taris an amused grin, I added, “You’re not going to like it.”

From the way he and Cid both looked at me like I was utterly insane, it seemed I was right.

I hung in the void, meditating as I waited. Eventually, I felt my target approach as it circled the planet. It picked up the weak distress signal my suit was broadcasting and changed course as it approached.

My plan was simple, really. Get on board, disable their ability to launch fighters, then secure the backup bridge and engineering. If things were going well, I’d make a push for the actual bridge then send a transmission back to the ship and save us a few credits if possible.

I had taken the Dagger and flown ahead of the enemy, over the horizon of the moon from them as they orbited. Then, I’d stopped directly in their flight path and gotten out. Arthree completed the flight around the planet to stay ahead of the enemy ship and would have long since docked with our ship by now. I could detect the asteroid they were hiding behind with a formula by line of sight, but at this distance I couldn’t see the probe droid they were using to monitor the situation from the back side, waiting to start the countdown from the moment I was picked up.

I felt a tug and opened my eyes as I passed through the enemy ship’s shields, a tractor beam drawing me in. I switched my optical camouflage formula on, disguising myself as I held onto the corpse beside me, stuffed into a spare vac suit from the ship. We passed through a second shield holding the air inside the docking bay and were lowered to the ground. Reaching out with the Force, I gave every biological watching me the mental impression they didn’t see the blur beside the body being lowered. I shut off the distress signal my armor was sending out and got ready to move.

When the tractor beam cut out, I stepped away from the corpse as the living crew made their way over and a medical droid floated over. A radio on the belt of a ranking officer, what I believed to be the air boss, went off.

“Well? What is the status of that rescue?” a voice asked with what sounded vaguely like a Chinese accented Basic. The sound was familiar—not just the accent, but the mouth sounds. It wasn’t human. Last I had heard that particular sound, it was from Nute Gunray, the neimoidian head of the Trade Federation.

The air boss pulled the helmet off and winced at the very dead body beneath. “Very, very dead, sir.”

“Damn! Well, what killed them?!”

“Vacuum, from the look of it. Don’t think the suit sealed properly,” the human man sighed as the medical droid finally made it over with a stretcher. “Medical droid’s here.”

“Good. Droid! Get to work! Full autopsy. We need to know everything we can about what has been going on out here.”

I slipped away, looking around and taking in the flight deck as I went. There were a few normal smaller ships and shuttles, and a small yacht. The rest were all an odd type of starfighter I had never seen before, but which lacked a cockpit. Instead, they all had droid heads integrated into the body, and from the articulation on the parts, they could apparently split into a four-legged crab-like configuration. A quick count came up with forty-eight of the things.

So… this is what the Trade Federation are using to fill out the bulk of their air forces. Just like their ground army, then—relatively cheap, mass produced droids. In great enough numbers to overwhelm most conventional forces. Lt. Taris was right. If we had simply attacked, these things would have swarmed us if we couldn’t flee quickly enough. We’re going to have to adjust our strategies to take this into account in the future, if we ever directly go up against Trade Federation forces.

Shaking that thought off, I left the hangar bay, in search of my first stop. As I went, I passed several patrols of B1 battle droids marching through the corridors in formation, but very few biological crew. And in many cases, biological crew attempting to train the B1s on how to do specific jobs. On Serenno, the droid forces were all controlled from three control ships. It stands to reason that this ship itself acts as the control center for all of these droids. Which means that somewhere onboard, there is a nerve center I can attack and shut down, and render them all inert. I’ll need to adjust my priorities. Target whatever is controlling the droids first, then engineering, then the backup bridge, then the main bridge if I’ve got time.

Spinning up a detection formula, I pinged the ship around me. Locating an area near engineering that I believed to be the droid control center. Picking up the pace, I hurried down the corridors, taking stairs between decks instead of lifts where needed. Finally, I came across a sealed, unmarked hatch with a security panel to the side of it—more security than I had seen anywhere else in the ship until now.

Reaching out with the Force, I felt a living presence inside. Considering my options, I shrugged and banged once on the door with my fist, then again, and a third time—not a human knock, but more like a droid bumping into the door repeatedly. A feeling of annoyance radiated off of whoever was inside as they approached and I got ready. As soon as the door slid open, I slipped inside as the near-human alien looked outside, looking both ways with a frown.

I waited for them to step back inside before hitting them with Mind Trick. “Is this the droid control center?”

There was a pause as the alien looked around. “…Yes.”

“What controls the droids?”

He pointed to a large pylon of computer equipment in the middle of the room. “That’s the control unit.”

Moving over to it, I studied it for a moment and considered my options. I wanted to leave it as intact as possible, but I also didn’t want it being reactivated easily and those droid fighters coming online to defend the ship, or the battle droids inside to pose a threat to my boarding team. “How would I disable it in such a way that it can easily be repaired?”

The technician blinked, before moving around to the back and opening an access hatch. “This cable runs to the transmitter and broadcasts the signal to the droids. If you cut off the signal, the droids will shut off. This one is main power to the unit and will shut it down entirely until it’s reconnected.”

“Alright. Disconnect both, then close up that hatch. When your boss calls, tell them there was an electrical surge and it’s going to take some time to repair. Then forget I was here.”

The alien man’s face blanked, then he pulled both plugs and shut the hatch. Only a moment later, a voice came over the intercom above. “Droid control center, respond.”

The man walked over and pressed a switch on a panel. “Droid control center.”

“All decks are reporting that all of the droids have shut down. The captain wants to know what’s going on.”

“Aye. We had a short in the system. It blew out a component. It’s going to take a few hours to get it swapped out.”

There was silence for a moment, before the person on the other end came back with a response. “The captain says to do whatever it takes to get it working again, ASAP.”

With that, they cut communications. I gave the man another command, “You’ve got plenty of time to fix it and they’re not paying you to rush. Why don’t you take a nap?”

The man considered for a moment before grinning. Dropping into his chair, he propped his feet up on the console. “Fuck ‘em. They’re not paying me enough to rush. They can wait.”

Nodding, I slipped out the hatch behind him. Pulling my lightsaber, I made a couple of quick spot welds to seal the door shut, then hurried on towards my next stop.

Engineering was practically next door and I quickly ducked inside, looking around as I followed my senses to the few living people—a trio of engineers crowding around a screen, watching… I paused, then raised an eyebrow as I slowly approached them from behind. A quiet sigh escaped my lips. The engineers were apparently so bored, and had enough free time on their hands, that they could just watch soap operas all day. Although, given the sheer number of droids in engineering that were slumped over at the moment, I could understand why that was.

Most of these systems wouldn’t require extensive, to the minute monitoring and constant adjustments from an operator. Even with the droids down, it appeared the engineers weren’t at all concerned with anything going on around them. Focusing on the three of them, I ordered, “Lock out the engineering controls so that no one can scuttle the ship.”

Two of them stood and moved to obey, while the third stumbled and shook his head. “Wha— Who said that?”

Frowning, I hit him with a stronger dose and decided to just knock him out. “Sleep.”

The man’s eyes fluttered and he wavered, before reaching out and slapped at a button on the panel—a big red button with emergency warning labels. I grabbed him with the Force and jerked him away, screaming, before slamming him to the deck and holding him there. I clamped his jaw shut as one of the other engineers reported, “The system is locked out.”

“Give me the password,” I ordered, and memorized the short sequence he repeated. “Good. Now, go get something to restrain your friend here.”

I waited for them to head over to a tool box and studied the man. I didn’t recognize the species, but whatever he was, he was apparently resistant to mental manipulation via the Force. I made a mental note to look up the species later as the two returned with a spool of wire and a roll of what looked very much like duct tape. I quickly got the three of them secured and two of them sleeping soundly.

As soon as I had the third’s mouth duct taped closed and the man secure, I pulled out my lightsaber, crouched in front of him, and dropped my optical camo. Flicking the blade on, I held it under his chin, letting him feel the heat coming off of it. “We’re taking this ship. If you stay quiet and don’t cause problems, you get to live. You’ll be put on an escape pod and sent to Alaris Prime below. But if you cause us trouble…” I flicked the lightsaber and the metal support beam I’d tied him to sparked and hissed, making the man jump. “I’ll be back. And then you’re going out an airlock. Nod if you understand me.”

The man nodded and I shut off the lightsaber. “Good. Sit tight. This won’t take long.”

I left them there and made my way to all of the exits from engineering. Three of them, I spot welded from the inside. The last, I stepped outside and began working on. As soon as I was finished, I turned my camo formula back on and hurried for the secondary bridge. Luckily, it was empty at the moment. Finding a comms panel, I flipped the external wideband broadcast on and off in a short code. There wouldn’t be a response, so I quickly started welding the doors shut. Halfway into the first weld, a voice came over the intercom.

“Emergency bridge, this is main bridge comms officer. Did someone down there bump the transmit key? We noticed a strange transmission from your console.”

I hurried out of the room and welded the door shut. From inside, I faintly heard, “What’s that sound? It sounds like…”

The comms cut out, and a moment later, an alarm began to blare overhead as amber strobe lights lit up the hallway, blinking regularly. From above, the same voice announced, “All hands, be aware. We have a potential intruder. I repeat, all hands be on the lookout for a potential intruder. Report any sightings to security. Security team to the secondary bridge.”

So much for the element of surprise, I mused, considering my options.

At the moment, they hadn’t confirmed there was an intruder, let alone that they were already under attack. They weren’t on full alert and their droid forces were disabled. The moment I started fighting though, they’d have their confirmation.

I’d already sent the signal to my ship not to fire, and that I had captured two out of three of the original objectives and was on my way to the third—the main bridge. I wouldn’t be getting backup unless I broke my own radio silence and called for it, or until I made it to the bridge and sent the all clear.

And while there weren’t nearly as many living crew as there were droids, there were enough that I would be completely overrun. I couldn’t hold the entire ship all by myself against a couple hundred crew. I could hold them off in battle, but I couldn’t be everywhere on this half-mile long behemoth at once, nor could I cross it fast enough to hold down everywhere I would need to if the crew decided they needed to take back the ship. That was what a boarding party was for. Nor did I have enough knockout gas to flood the ship. And if I could avoid it, I would prefer not venting the crew to space—they were worth more to us alive than dead. Specifically, as hostages and leverage against the Trade Federation. Taking captives for ransom was perfectly within the charter of a privateer, after all.

These weren’t Trandoshan soldiers. This was a Trade Federation vessel, here where and when they weren’t supposed to be, on a likely very illegal mission attempting to claim jump the Wookiee settlers on Alaris Prime, and this entire ship and its crew were evidence of that. And while the ship would be disappearing, never to be seen again (likely stripped down and torn apart to see how we could better attack ships like it in the future), the crew were all excellent bargaining chips to use to force the Republic to finalize their decision and extort a large sum of money from the Trade Federation.

So really, there was only one path forward from here. Spinning up a detection formula, I followed it to avoid running into people as I hurried for the main bridge. I needed to take the bridge and signal the ship so my men could come back me up.

Well, it looks like we’re all going to be earning that overtime pay today.