Chương 225: A Deal with a Jawa
I don't own Star wars
Rykkr dropped a durasteel case onto the worktable opened it, and spun it around to face us. It had been nearly a galactic week after our 'job' with the speeder gang who gave him trouble. Lala's eyes sparkled as she gazed at the stuffed case of credits. "Oooooooh!" she attempted to reach in only to have Oriana slap her hand, "Ow!" Oriana glared at her.
"THIS is for your bounty! We can't keep running around with a price on your head!" Lala pouted as I took a pinch of credits, eyeing them thoughtfully.
"Surely this is enough to pay off the bounty." I asked glancing at Lala who fidgeted, not meeting my eyes. Rykkr however coughed, clearly trying to not burst out laughing.
"What Lacine has on her head isn't a regular bounty. It's a hutt bounty." He closed the case. "They're really more like forced loans that are either paid off in interest or blood." He tapped the case. "This is a fraction of what's needed. Sure, you could try negotiating with the Hutt Cartels and get a brief waiver on the bounty but you'd still have to pay it in the long run and they might raise it. You have to pay it off all at once and with interest."
I snarled, Oriana patted my shoulder and took the case. "It's fine we just need more credits."
"You say that as if it's just raining them outside." Lala said lazily waving a hand towards the open ramp. "But big-time work just doesn't come out of nowhere." Both girls turned their attentions to the 'Restaurateur' who looked non-plus.
"Don't look at me. I might have a few fingers in several pies but it's not like I'm an underworld boss. That's just the price of running a business on Nar Shaddaa."
"Well, who else should we talk to about looking for work? The people I normally go to are currently trying to cash in." Lala grumbled as Rattletrap scampered out of his 'droid lady' room and blinked around.
"…Well we could always try hunting for scrap." Oriana and Lala scoffed at the suggestion, but he frowned. "What? We need money, and scrap is good for business."
"It's not like you all are doing anything else." Rykkr added as Lala and Oriana exchanged a look. He ran a hand over his smooth head. "I'll keep my ears open. Maybe something will come up. Every little bit helps right?"
"Thanks, Rykkr." He waved it off and turned, heading off the ship as Nerri closed the ramp behind him.
"…I thought we were going treasure hunting?" she asked curiously once it shut as Lala grinned and Oriana coughed slightly with a smile.
"Well we ARE but we don't exactly want that going around Nar Shaddaa." Oriana winked as Rattletrap stretched.
"You are welcome. I will take my acting award."
"That's like demanding a Galaxia for being an extra." Lala replied, causing Rattletrap to scoff and return to his 'droid lady'. Oriana however led me, Lala and Nerri to the elevator.
"My cousin Circe has a couple of those." I noted… not sure why. Well, I know why she HAS some Galaxias, they are actor awards, and she's a great actor. What I don't know is why I mentioned it…
They already know who my cousin is.
"The Map leads to Raxus Prime. So we wanted a cover story…" Oriana noted, "People generally don't try to kill each other over scrap, but every little bit helps." She sat in the pilot's seat. "Now that the ship is 100% we'll get there in no time. "Buckle up." I sat next to her as Lala and Nerri made their way out of the cockpit. The ship rose from the parking pad, and we were breaking the atmosphere in no time, not bad for a massive ship like this. Oriana flicked a few switches, punched a few buttons, and pointed to a screen next to my face. "What does that say?"
"…Bunch of numbers."
"Give me the numbers." She said patiently.
"All of them?!" I replied noting the amount. She just smiled at me, pushed me back in the chair, and looked at them more clearly before immediately typing them in on the console.
"You would make a terrible co-pilot." She smiled playfully. Pushing a button as the ship jumped into hyperspace.
"You're not wrong." I noted, crossing my arms as the lights of hyperspace flickered across the view window.
"…You could actually TRY you know." she said, an odd, mischievous smile on her face. "…I could teach you."
"…Right now?"
"NO not right now we're in hyperspace!" she noted with a laugh as I smiled faintly back, "But you know, a few in space flights some assisted landings. You'll be flying in no time." We sat in silence for a moment, as she added… a little… hurt. "…It wouldn't kill you to know how to do things other than KILL."
I frowned at that. Taking a glance at her beautiful face, currently set in a weird frown. "…Fine. But after we fix Lala's problems." I said as she chuckled, releasing a sigh.
"Well that will be a while."
I lay back in the seat. Closing my eyes and listening to the hum of the ship… and the occasion 'bang' from wherever Rattletrap was, followed closely by- "I'll fix that! I got it!" I took a deep breath and found myself drifting off to sleep.
"Kal." I sat up awake and alert as a brown planet came into view… of course, 'brown' was a kind way of putting it. It looked like something a Kath Hound vomited up after eating a pile of rotten green meat. Oriana guided the ship down as she glanced over her shoulder, "Get everyone ready."
I got out of my seat and alerted the crew. The familiar sensation of real gravity overtaking us as the ship entered the atmosphere. After returning to the cockpit with Nerri and Lala Oriana kept the ship steady, gliding it above the planet's jagged metal surface, covered with junk and scrap metal… "Keep an eye out for a landing spot." She said as we tried to find a decent area, but that was like trying to find a flat surface on gravel.
"…That old Star Destroyer." Nerri noted at the positively devastated wreck of a ship. Most of its pointed front was missing and the entirety of the bridge was gone. However. "The Hanger still looks intact."
"Perfect." Oriana noted, swerving the ship into the open hanger and landing on the flat surface.
BOOOM!!
The ship rocked and everyone held still. The creaking and groaning of the wreck quickly dissipated as Oriana's grip tightened around the controls in case of sudden and dramatic escape… "…Okay, I think we're good." Lala noted quickly, we hesitantly went to the elevator.
Rattletrap came out of his room as we all left the elevator, he was pushing the anti-grav trolly as Oriana pulled out the datapad for the hidden cache. "…We'll we're farther away from the coordinates than I'd like. But at least we found a good place to put the ship.
"Horrific moment of fear aside." Nerri noted, shouldering her spear.
"Okay, so we need to march a few miles south." Oriana noted as Lala whined with a groan. "Shut up-then we need to find an active keypad that will reveal a bunker."
"You got all of that from the datapad?" I asked quizzically
"Yes. Tuuba wasn't very smart." She noted flatly. "The 'secret' cache is hardly secret if you leave the information everywhere."
"But do we have to walk? Can't we just fly there? Or take Kal, Baby's bike?"
"Only two can ride it safely." I noted practically as Rattletrap frowned thoughtfully.
"Let's get outside. Maybe I can whip something up."
"I highly doubt you can just make a speeder out of spare parts in an old derelict ship on a junk planet in a minimal amount of time." Nerri said disbelievingly.
Exactly that later.
"Son-of-bitch. How did you do that?" she asked in awe as I helped Rattletrap lift an old TIE fighter engine into the junker speeder he had made: he quickly hooked it up and jumpstarted it. "I watched you do it and I don't believe it!"
Using a mostly intact tie fighter wing as a base, a powered down flight gyro for lift, some guard railings and scrap to form the chassis, seats for sitting and of course already mentioned TIE fighter engine. Rattletrap had built us a working junker speeder in record time. He put his welding torch in his bag and tossed it into the back before scrambling to get in. I lifted him inside. Then he quickly got into the driver's seat.
"I am deeply, DEEPLY offended by your lack of faith. I find it disturbing."
Nerri looked visibly appalled. "…I'm sorry." She said immediately and sincerely before we all clambered inside.
"This is your driver speaking." He said as we sat in the seats with no seatbelts. "Please keep your arms and legs inside the guard railings and hold onto your butts, because I didn't have time to calibrate the thrust."
"Wait wha-aaaaaaah!!!" Oriana clung tightly to me as Rattletrap sped out of the hanger in the junker.
The wind rushed through our hair, leaving our collective screams somewhere behind us as the smell of rust and old metal rushed into my senses. Thousands and thousands of wrecks over thousands of generations… just dropped onto the planet and abandoned.
Rattletrap dropped the junker suddenly. Oriana's arms tightened around me and shrieked as I held firmly to the seat welded to the ship.
"AH! HAaa-haaaa…" the girls sighed as the junker gave off one quick burst, then dropped onto the ground.
"ANNNNND perfect!" Rattletrap declared as the girls glared at him wide-eyed. Oriana's fingers sank into my skin through my clothes. I didn't bother to put on my armor.
"…I hate you. I hate you with a passion." Oriana said as we all got to our feet.
"…You seem to be enjoying yourself though." He said smugly as Oriana blushed, about to let go of me before I wrapped an arm around her waist she grumbled, but grinned as Lala draped her arms around my neck, jumping onto my back and ruining the moment.
"So map master, where are we going?" She asked, putting her chin on my shoulder as Oriana huffily removed herself from my embrace and checked the datapad.
"…Trap. Compass?" Rattletrap sniffed and handed her a distinctly homemade-looking compass as Oriana checked it. "…This way." She said, and on we followed her… but about halfway through our trek Rattletrap scampered off another way.
"Rattletrap!" Nerri shouted, watching him squirm through the twisting piles of junk. Off in the distance towering cranes forever automatically working, lifting and hauling scrap metal with hardly any design to their task.
"Trap stay together!" Oriana shouted. We hesitated as Nerri soured.
"…Should I go after him?" I frowned thoughtfully with Lala still on my back.
"…No, he'll be fine. Probably with a hunk of junk on his back."
"Not a lot of junk." We jumped, Rattletrap had appeared out of nowhere behind us, stuffing a collection of odd parts into his bag. "I thought I saw something neat."
"Stay together." Oriana said firmly as he grunted. "Force knows what's out in the piles of junk everywhere."
"Oh… Scrappers, cannibals… rouge droids." He said listing off the possible threats on his fingers, calmly. "We'll hear or smell them coming from a mile away." he added, as he looked at our concerned faces. "…What? This is obviously not the first time I've come here…"
"Just stay together." Oriana repeated like an exasperated mother, moving along for a few more moments before checking the 'map' and pointing directly at a wall of scrap. "It's just on the other side of this pile." After one climb later… yes with Lala still on my back. We reached the top of the towering pile of scrap and paused… it went on as far as the eye could see. Mounds and mounds of junk, broken ships, destroyed droids, machines of all shapes and sizes as Lala groaned.
"Uuuugh!! We're supposed to find a control panel in all of this!?"
"…Get off me if you're going to complain." Nerri, who had carried Rattletrap up here, put him down as he stumbled over the more stable pieces of garbage, gripping a protruding jagged pole for balance.
"Well… I suppose it's possible that over time the reason the cache was never found was that those things piled up on it…" he pointed to a closer, but distant crane device, it was dropping a deadly rain of metal down into a collective pile before moving along.
"UUUUGh." Lala groaned again, "So… what? we start digging?"
"Don't be silly." Oriana noted, gazing thoughtfully around. "It must be around here somewhere, gangsters wouldn't make it too difficult to retrieve their stuff. It's just in plain sight. We have a look around."
…Of course… after about three hours of searching. Lala sat down in an old broken speeder's driver seat and pouted. "Nothing! Anyone find anything?"
"No." Nerri who had ventured farther away from us replied, making her way back. "Nothing."
"Same." I replied scowling, dropping a flank of sheet metal to crash back into position.
"It HAS to be around here somewhere!" Oriana noted angrily, checking the map and standing beside Lala, these are the coordinates."
"Give it up Oriana…" yawned Lala, it's just one cache… there was always a chance we wouldn't find anything." Oriana scowled at her, staring at the mostly intact speeder… her pretty face contorted in fury… but quickly diminished.
"…Move."
"What?"
"Move."
"Hey!" Oriana pushed Lala aside and checked the dashboard, grinning as her fingers brushed some dusty, faded keys. Immediately she checked the datapad again and tapped several of them.
Two things happened… first, Lala facepalmed herself for sitting right on the door lock… second. The ground beneath our feet rattled and shifted, a crack forming several feet away as the pile of junk parted and collapsed as if the ground opened beneath it… tons of metal dropping into an opening, sliding down a long ramp.
"YES!" Oriana squealed happily, leaping into my arms. "FOUND IT!" she declared before leading the charge over the fallen junk with Rattletrap and me just behind her.
"…That's SO cliché!" Lala moaned as Nerri smacked her on the back of the head, following quickly behind us.
…The insides were surprisingly clean after we got past the pile of metal. Oriana had used the datapad to open the main door, leading into a tightly compact room filled with crates. "Yes…" she grinned, inviting me inside. "After you Kal."
I sniffed, approached one of the crates, and promptly pride it open. Blasters. Lots of blasters. Another crate, armor. Another crate, thermal detonators.
"It's a weapons cache." I noted frowning, "…And who knows how long they've been down here." I pulled one of the guns out as Rattletrap and Oriana looked around, soon joined by Lala and Nerri as I held the rifle to my shoulder and aimed at the open sky and pulled the trigger. The bright red blaster fire shot into the sky, at least they work. I checked the model and frowned. "These things are almost 30 years old. Can we even get a good price for them?"
"It's better than nothing." Oriana noted as suddenly Lala yelped happily.
"Ha HA! Check it!" she hauled a large case out from behind a few of the others and slapped it on top of the armor crate. "BOOM." Opening it was a pile of credits, a nice little rainy day fund for the gangster on the run.
"Don't say BOOM in a room full of explosives." Nerri hissed as I returned inside the room. Immediately ducking to the side once I heard the hiss of blaster fire on metal as SOMETHING behind me shot the wall.
"FUCK!" Lala noted was we took cover, dozens and dozens of blaster bolts firing down into the pit, a rain of burning death peppering the wall and just inside the door. I took the blaster rifle I had and blindly fired around the doorframe to no avail. "Who the fuck is firing!?"
Rattletrap, seemingly perfectly calm. Sniffed the air rather thoughtfully. "MMMN… no rotten meat of droid oil sooooo… scrappers." He noted plainly as I reached into the armor crate, quickly slapping on what little I could before tossing a blaster to Nerri. Oriana and Lala both had their pistols.
"So what do we do?" I asked, looking at Oriana and sending a hail of blaster fire up the ramp. "We're trapped." Oriana bit her bottom lip, grumbling quietly to herself as she seemed to think. "…Oriana."
"Let me think." She said, sounding a little panicked as a scrapper, who looked like a crazed red twi'lek in a loosely wrapped turban, began charging madly down the pile of scrap towards us only for Oriana to put a bolt easily between his eyes. "Let me think!" she shouted, seemingly taking offense with the interruption. Lala held the case of credits in one hand and a blaster pistol in the other before she slammed her fist onto the inner door panel and shut it. "Damn it!" Oriana hissed, "No!"
"Any better ideas?!" she shouted back at her as the blasting outside stopped. A look of serious, thoughtful pondering crossed the beautiful Zeltorn's face "Get ready to fire."
"What?" Oriana said as Lala took a breath and began to count.
"Two… three… four." She jammed her hand on the panel again and the door hissed open. I opened fire with Nerri and Lala… once we had shut the door the scrappers had tried to get closer, coming down the ramp and out of cover, half a dozen went down from surprise before another fell trying to flee back up.
"ARGH!!" I stumbled back, a hot bolt in the arm, and slammed against the crate behind me.
"KAL!" Oriana shouted as Lala and Nerri covered us as she pulled me aside. I growled.
"I'm fine." I snarled, ignoring the burning smell. "Armor took most of it."
"That door trick won't work twice." Nerri declared as a scrapper fell screaming to her well-aimed blaster fire. "Any other ideas? Because it looks like there are plenty left."
"Give me a minute…" Rattletrap declared, emptying his sack of scrap and diving into the crate of thermal detonators. Strangely Nerri seemed more hopeful at Rattletrap's declaration.
"Alright, ALRIGHT! Stop blastin!" shouted someone from above. We all stopped, and it was absurdly calm… with the exception of Rattletrap's tinkering. "Well well well… now I'm unhappy…" said the voice. "How many of you are still alive?" there were a few groans from the group of corpses. "Told you fuckers not to go down there…"
A man with a burnt face wearing a turban poked his head up, holding a sheet of metal as a shield and a blaster with his finger off the trigger. "Now why don't you all tell me what chu got down there?" he said, "And maybe we can discuss how much it's worth to you."
"Rattletrap?" I asked softly as Rattletrap stopped.
"…Well, let's hear him out." He said poking his head out. "…Maybe we don't have to do anything?"
"…Armor, weapons." Oriana shouted as the scrapper leader listened, barely visible behind his shield. "A few crates full."
There was silence for a moment, "…And how many of you are there?"
"How many of you are there?!" she replied firmly as he chuckled.
"Probably a LOT more than you…" he replied ominously as Rattletrap grunted, diving back into the crate. "…I'll tell you what… you give us all you found. And we'll leave you alone." He noted as Rattletrap laughed.
"Oh is that all? Take the deal guys." He said, from the sound of it going back to tinkering whatever he was tinkering.
"Just like that?" Oriana said suspiciously to the scrapper leader.
"Hell yeah just like that." he laughed, "We want your stuff… we want your bitches too but we'll make do with your stuff. You haul those crates out here, lock up your little room there. And we'll leave."
"…Can they close the upper door behind them?" I asked as Oriana shook her head, scowling furiously.
"Not without the datapad…"
"But are we really going to give them all the loot?" Lala whimpered, "Old or not we could STILL get a lot for it!"
"Give them the crates." Rattletrap said, scampering out of the crate and securing the lid. "Take the deal." He grinned at all of us as I rolled my wounded shoulder. "We still have the credits."
"…Okay." I nodded to Oriana as Nerri kept watching Lala groaning, but pushed the credit case into a corner as if they could see it.
One after the other I pushed each of the crates out, five in total, before shifting back into the room. "Alright…" the leader said waving to his men, "Shut the door and we'll be on our way. Give us a few minutes." He said as towering lifter droids plastered together with junk parts began to follow. "Tough son of a bitch moving all them crates…" he mumbled as I shifted back into the room and Lala secured the door…
We all took a collective breath as the hooting and hollering of the men outside echoed into the surly room. Our treasure hunt potentially becoming a tomb. Only Rattletrap seemed unaffected, happily tinkering with his previous gatherings.
"…You know… there's nothing stopping them from trying to trap us here…" Nerri noted disdainfully as the noise began to diminish, their footsteps outside soon becoming obvious that they were leaving. Oriana sighed and put her head on my shoulder.
"…Thanks, Nerri." She said with sad sarcasm as Nerri shrugged.
"We were already trapped, and now we don't have anything to show for it…"
"Except a load of credits." Lala replied, "…Assuming we can spend them."
"On YOUR bounty." Oriana scowled… snuggling up next to me comfortably.
"A pleasure doing business with you all!" laughed the scrapper leader cruelly. "Hey Parto bring up the RPG! Let's seal them and our dead crew in their tomb!"
"Shit." I grumbled, getting to my feet to do something, anything only for Rattletrap to clear his throat, and hold up what looked to be a homemade detonator.
"There were a LOT of thermal detonators in that crate." He declared simply, before dramatically pushing the trigger.
…The room rattled from the noise above us… chunks of… something slammed against the wall of the room… judging by the smell of burning meat and oil. The explosion rattled above us like fireworks, and it was a long time before it finally stopped.
"…Holy fuck Rattletrap what did you do?" Lala asked as we opened the door to the seared flesh and corpses of the scrappers.
"What?" he replied, stepping on the dead leader. Still smiling even though most of his lower body was missing as charred beyond belief. He lied crumbled beside the door, his neck bent oddly. He clearly didn't know what happened to him in his last moments. "Never break a deal with a Jawa who has access to thermal detonators." He declared as Nerri covered her nose of the smell, me as well, and followed him out.
We climbed out of the pit and into a smoking crater, then climbed out of the crater. Oriana sighed at the datapad. "…From what I can tell, there is potentially one more untouched cache… but it's in the Outer Rim." She stared at me as I frowned… The Outer Rim was a serious danger zone…
It was Cromwell territory… I'd have to wear my shistavaanan 'face' the whole time.
"Hey if it has a case of credits I'm all for it!" Lala said, "In. Out. Boom easy credits."
"We almost got blown up by scrappers," Nerri noted as I wrapped an arm around Oriana's waist. Following the girls and Rattletrap back to the junker speeder.
"Yeah, but what are the odds of that shit happening twice?" Lala replied with a confident smile. We all collectively threw things at her, she easily dodged.
End of Chapter
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