Easy Money

You are actually half surprised that the Nautolan girl came through with the payment. Even more surprised that she brought a Gamorrean with her to hold the briefcase full of Peggat coins but here you are.

“I had no idea the Hutts had their own transport ships” you say, staring at the Hutt ship you are tracking.

“What? You thought everyone used Corellian Freighters?” Tanna asked amusedly.

“I mean. . .” you begin.

“Don’t finish that” Tanna hastily cut you off.

“Sata, what kind of ship is that and what can we expect” you ask of your Pantoran engineer.

“That is a Hutt cargo ship” Sata helpfully supplied. “Notice the panelling along the hull? That’s additional armour plating” she added, “Given that captains of these ships have a lot of leeway and their ships are often very versatile, I bet some of those armoured panels even open up to reveal canons” she finished

“What kind of cannons? Turbo, laser, dakka, or other?” you ask.

“Yes” was your engineer’s only reply.

“Excellent, who knows, maybe they even have a fighter bay” Tanna snarked and then paused before tapping the monitor she was looking at. “So they have a fighter bay” Tanna sighed. You chuckle as you look over at her screen.

“What kind of fighters are those?” you ask with a frown. They looked like any other Hutt skiff just with wings.

“Ahh those” Sata began. “Starhoppers, the Hutt’s own starfighters” she added.

“What can we expect from those?” You ask.

“Two twin-linked blaster cannons and enough armour to almost negate the lack of shields” Sata replied.

“Alright Tyttania, looks like we get to try out the Dakka cannons today” you say into your intercom as the Hutt Starhoppers approach.

“Are we really calling them ‘Dakka cannons’?” Tanna asked, giving you a look.

“Uhh yeah? Why?” you reply, returning her look with one of you own.

“What does that even mean?” she asked.

“You know . . .dakka dakka dakka” you say, miming the use of a rifle as you say ‘dakka’

“You have a word for the sound that a gun makes” Tanna stated with a light chuckle. “Fighters are incoming now” she said, suddenly getting serious. You sit up straighter in your seat and start punching in commands.

“Give me a count” you command.

“Twelve hostiles incoming” Tanna replied.

“Damn that’s a lot, can they get through our shields with an alpha strike?” you ask.

“If they put enough fire on us, yes” was Sata’s reply. With that knowledge, you punch in commands and hit the throttle, slamming you back into your seat before you roll the ship and throw it into a dive. A shudder told you that the enemy fighters were now on your tail and hitting your shields. You punch in commands and throw the Eos into another manoeuvre, bringing the enemy fighters, hopefully, in line with the top mounted turret you had installed.

“One down!” Tanna called out and you grinned. Tyttania was getting some work done so you decided to follow suit. You punch in some commands and throw the Eos into an immelman roll, putting you into a head on with three Hutt fighters. Sata reacted immediately and laser bolts streaked from your ship, claiming one of the three fighters and forcing the other two to dive. Not wanting them to get away, you throw the Eos into a maneuver to bring you back onto their tail, managing to just get a firing angle on one of the fighters which Sata capitalised on, slamming lasers into another of the Hutt fighters.

“That makes three down! Nine more” Tanna called out and a shudder told you that those nine fighters were still attacking you. You punch in more commands and the Eos responds, twisting back onto the tail of the Hutt fighter you are following, allowing Sata to destroy it. With that fighter gone, you throw the Eos into another immelman turn and surprise another Hutt fighter, claiming it with a quick burst from your guns.

“That’s another three!” Tanna counted. Tyttania must have gotten one as well. You twist the Eos around and perform a spiral maneuver, allowing you to get onto the tail of another fighter which was quickly destroyed.

“The last three are bugging out” Tanna called out. Tyttania must have gotten a couple more. Not wanting to let any of the fighters get away, you twisted the Eos onto their tail. The Eos was definitely the faster ship and the straight line they were flying in made them easy targets for your laser cannons, all three were quickly destroyed.

“Now we just have the enemy ship to deal with” you say as you turn the Eos around to face the ship in question. Now that you are closer, you could see that the ship looked like some kind of Confederate ironclad. It had that same kind of sloped armour angling to a point at the top of the ship and what could only be described as a ship’s keel. All in all, the Hutt cargo ship was probably sea worthy.

“It’s run out it’s guns, they are definitely turbolasers” Tanna reported as she sat back. You snort, there was no reason for you to take on a ship like that.

“Ion missiles if you please, two rounds, fire for effect” you order and the telltale ‘thunk’ of the missiles leaving the tubes reached you. You watched as two blue streaks dashed forward and slammed into the shields of the Hutt cargo ship.

“Enemy shields down” Tanna reported.

“Two more if you please” you order and another two ‘thunks’ reached you. Two more streaks dashed forward and slammed into the enemy ship. “Alrighty then, let’s go get the goods” you say, getting up and walking down to the cargo bay.

The thing about casemate guns, you are starting to realise, is that they were actually mounted IN the hull of the enemy ship. Meaning that the gun crew was inside the ship itself while the gun was outside of the ship. This required the ship to have gun ports, just like an old sailing ship. And like those old sailing ships, there wasn’t much to stop you from climbing through the open gun ports. Once inside, you noticed that the gun crews were all dead already. When the power was cut, the energy shield keeping the air in and the void out, dropped. This lead to all the gun crews suddenly trying to evolve the ability to breath in a vacuum and failing miserably. It made your job a whole lot easier though.

It turns out that, when you hit the enemy cargo ship with the last two ion missiles, their entire energy grid ended up fried. This meant that everyone suffocated when the life support died. Normally, a ship would have enough air encased inside of it for the crew to breathe comfortably for a while if the life support died, but that would only work if some idiot hadn’t cut holes in his ship to mount big heavy cannons into. So you had absolutely no trouble walking into the cargo hold, opening the cargo hold’s doors and watching as Wub Wub collected his fill from the hold. All in all, a very successful raid that even came with a little spice in the form of Hutt fighters. You smiled the whole way back to your ship, this is much more like what you wanted.