To Make an Exit

As the cargo bay doors lower, you are greeted by a line of armed goons, all with their blasters trained on you. Off to one side is a smartly dressed man with his hands clasped behind his back. Upon seeing the tied up Tanna however, the man broke out into a massive grin.

“So you HAVE brought the massive thorne in my side to me!” the man exclaimed, spreading his arms in welcome. At that sign, the goons all lowered their weapons and moved on to other things. “And you brought her to me all bound and submissive” he added appreciatively. You grin as you walk down the ramp, your hand on Tanna’s shoulder though she walked without prompting. Tanna, for her part, appeared completely naked and submissive, her hands tied behind her back and a gag in her mouth so she couldn’t speak. However, the holoprojector she was wearing was hiding not only itself, but also the fact that Tanna was fully dressed and armed. With a little flex of your godly power, you made sure nobody would ‘test’ this by groping her.

“It was pretty simple, I think she likes being a submissive slut” you say, giving her arse a smack. A little flex of your god power made the smack sound much more realistic than it should have. Tanna, the good actor she was, managed to keep the submissive and downtrodden expression, even with this impromptu addition to the script.

“Vedric!” the man called over his shoulder “Take this bitch to the pens and put her in with the others” he said to one of the alien goons, “Leave her as is, nobody is to touch her until I say” he added. The alien nodded before taking Tanna away.

“Would have been more fun if you had your men play with her in front of the others, make her want it” you say with a grin.

“Oh don’t tempt me,” the man said, turning his attention back to you “Name’s Karsten” he said. “What are you charging? I’ll give quite a lot for this ‘gift’” he added.

“Well, now that you’ve said that” you say, rubbing your chin in thought. “I was just going to ask for a cash bounty but ‘quite a lot’ covers a bit doesn’t it” you continue and Karsten narrowed his eyes. “My ship was originally designed to be a gunship” you say to him “I want the Turbo Lasers it was supposed to have” you say to the man.

“Turbo Lasers?” he asked, turning to look at the Eos. “This isn’t a Marauder is it?” he asked with a frown.

“Nope, it’s a VTX-30 but, from what I’ve learnt, it’s basically the same premise, just a smaller version” you reply “The turbolasers are meant to be mounted either side of the boarding ramp” you add and he nods.

“Considering I feel like I have plenty of work for a man of your talents” Karsten began “I shall accommodate you, but you shall receive no money from me, these turbolasers are your only reward” he continued.

“Fair enough, I can make plenty of credits with turbolasers anyhow” you say to him and the man walked off to make some calls.

You stayed in the hanger while the upgrades occurred, watching the pirate engineers work on installing the military grade cannons on your ship. It helped that the efforts were overseen by a Pantoran girl, who appeared to regularly give directions at the other engineers. It took surprisingly little time for the upgrades to be finished, with them done the Pantoran came up to you. As she approached, wiping some sort of fluid or grease off her hands onto her coveralls, you realised how short she was, she couldn’t have been much more than 5’ tall. A moment later you find yourself looking down at the top of the blue skinned girls pastel pink bob cut as she thrusts a datapad up at you.

“We’ve completed the retrofit,” she said in a light and frilly Pantoran accent that sounded vaguely South African to your ears. “There wasn’t much need for any additional power shunts or anything, everything was already there.” she continued, turning to look at the ship “Looks like she was designed for more advanced weapons actually” she added “You’ll get more firepower out of those cannons than you normally would,” she said, turning back to you “They will probably have a better rate of fire too” she finished before turning around once more and heading up the ramp. You casually inspect her arse as she strides up the boarding ramp. She was, over all, a very cute girl.

With the Pantaron gone, you looked around at all the various goons that were loitering in the hanger bay before pulling out a communicator.

“Hey Tanna, bout time we got this party started” you said into the device before pulling out your blaster pistol and popping the first armed guy you saw. With the first shot fired, the other goons immediately noticed what was wrong and began pulling out their own blasters. In no time flat, you had retargeted and put a bolt into the chest of the next guy. With the second man dropping to the ground, his chest smoking, the other goons began firing at you and you dashed behind some crates. Popping out again, you fire at a group of three goons by a door, killing one and causing the other two to dive for cover. It was at this time that the alarms began sounding throughout the base and several goons came charging down the corridor leading into the base. Seeing this, you twist around, crouch and fired rapidly down the corridor, putting a few down before they could dive for cover. Dashing out into the open, you grabbed the rifle off of one of the goons and hosed a stack of crates that had some goons hiding behind them. Rinsing the area in blaster fire. Marching up to the boxes, your rifle clicked empty and you threw it away, whipping out your pistol to kill the goons before grabbing a pistol from them. You turn around, dual wielding your guns and unleashing a hail of blaster fire into a squad of goons that had come charging in while you were distracted.

As the last goon stood in the middle of a crowd of his dead comrades, you lined up both your guns to shoot him and pulled the trigger, only to notice as both guns clicked empty. The goon, emboldened by your lack of ammo, levelled his own blaster to you before his chest exploded from the impact of a blaster. Looking around you see the Pantoran girl standing atop the boarding ramp of your ship, a Blaster in her hand. It looked exactly like Han Solo’s blaster and hit about as hard too, if the fact that the goon was deposited a meter or two back from where he had been standing was any indication.

“Did you forget you left me on your ship?” the girl asked, raising an eyebrow and giving you a very unamused look.

“Uhh” you begin “Kinda?” you continue, you didn’t want to say that you thought she wasn’t a threat, and you are actually wondering where she kept that massive hand cannon since it wasn’t on her hip. “So why did you help me?” you asked, reloading your pistol with a spare energy cell.

“I decided on a change in profession” the girl called back “Starship engineer sounds better than scrap beater” she added.

“I hope you work for peanuts” You say to her and she gave you a strange look

“Why?” she asked, concern in her voice.

“I’m not really doing this for money” you say, scratching your head and the Pantoran face palmed.

“You mean to say I just threw in with a kriffing horny bounty hunter who’s risking his life for a few minutes with a Twi’lek?” she asked, mostly to herself.

“Basically” you reply anyway. “If it helps, I can probably secure you some payment” you say with a shrug. The girl glared at you for a minute before sighing.

“Whatever, can’t stay here now can I?” she said almost to herself.

“Where IS that Twi’lek of yours anyway?” she asked, staring down the corridor.

“On her way, with company” you say “she’s rescuing the slaves” you add.

“What? Naked and tied up? Great plan there General,” the girl snarked. “Even the Republic Military would be in awe of your superior tactical genius” she continued.

“Holoprojector” you say simply and watch with amusement as the girl completely grinds to a halt for a few seconds as she processed this. “She’s not only fully clothed, but armed too” you add.

“The fact that she’s tied up?” the Pantoran asked

“Hardly, the knot is specifically designed so that the person tied up can break their bonds” you reply, turning to the corridor to keep watch.

“That’s actually a decent plan” the girl said, sounding surprised. As you watched, a bunch of Twi’leks in skimpy clothing began running towards you from down the corridor. Both you and the Pantoran trained blasters on the group, knowing that the goons would be right behind them. True to your prediction, Tanna was behind the group of thirtyish Twi’leks and firing pot shots at a gang of goons pursuing them. As they got closer, the Twi’leks saw you and your blaster and began to stop before you motioned to them to keep moving, pointing to the ramp. With renewed vigour, the girls charged into the hanger and towards the boarding ramp that, luckily, the Pantoran engineer had vacated. As the girls climbed onboard, you and the Pantoran, opened fire at the goons that were in pursuit, forcing them to take cover and driving them back. With Tanna aboard, you motioned for the Pantoran to board and then followed her aboard yourself, making sure no goons got any funny ideas with a liberal spraying of blaster fire. The boarding ramp was raised after you came aboard and you could already feel the ship shuddering to life as someone sat at the controls. Running past the Twi’leks in the hold, you dashed up to the bridge and found Tanna at the controls, already punching instructions into the console.

“Took you long enough” Tanna called over her shoulder, turning her head and allowing you to see the ball gag still hanging around her neck.

“Yeah well, someone had to make sure they weren’t trying to board us as we left, and you certainly didn’t volunteer” you reply. Tanna grinned as she got up and shifted over to the right hand seat while you jumped into the pilot’s seat. As you did this, the Pantoran came into the bridge.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked and Tanna twisted around, whipping out her blaster.

“Who the kriff are you?” Tanna demanded.

“Sata” The Pantoran replied.

“Tanna, play nice, she’s a new addition to the crew” you say, turning back to the sky in front of you. “See what that console can do, if it doesn’t do anything valuable, then engineering is on the deck below us,” you say as you punch in some commands. “Look alive girls, we’ve got company and no turrets to be manned” you say as you see a bunch of fighters zip out of hangers. “What are those?” you ask peering at the ships. They were dart shape with wings sweeping forward.

“They’re Dunelizards” Sata replied as she punched in commands on her own console “Couple hundred years out of date but still do their job,” she explained.

“They’re fast” you say as you watch them fly. “But we’re faster!” you say as the Eos lurched in response to a maneuver you made. It was no trouble to line the nose up with one of the enemy fighters, but that’s where the other problem started. “Who’s got control of the guns?” you ask, not seeing a button anywhere for them.

“That would be me” Sata called over her shoulder and the cockpit shuddered lightly as brilliant streaks of red darted forward and detonated the Dunelizard in front of you. “They even have a little gimbal!” Sata announced, you could almost hear the smile. “They move a bit so you don’t need to line it up perfectly” she explained.

“Excellent” you reply and promptly begin throwing the Eos around to get a shot on another fighter.

In just a few minutes, all the pirate fighters were destroyed and you took the time to fly into orbit. There, waiting for you, is the dreadnought you saw from earlier.

“Wow, it’s a good thing we just got some new turbolasers huh” you say as you stare down the massive warship.

“Stars how many steps ahead were you thinking?” Sata asked, awe drenching her words as she turned to you. You give her a smirk over your shoulder.

“Need those guns on target my dear” you tell her and notice, with delight, that she blushes a nice shade of pink. Sata turned to her control panel and began punching in some commands.

“We’re getting a hail” Tanna said, looking at the beeping light.

“So we are” you say nodding your head to Tanna who hit the button to open the comms.

“Well if it isn’t my new friend” Sneered Karsten.

“Karsten! My friend! It’s so good to hear from you again!” you say to him, unable to keep a shit-eating grin off your face. “I heard you lost something” you say to him and you could swear the man was almost growling. “Or thirty somethings” you amend.

“Return my property and I’ll think about letting you live” Karsten said, getting control over himself and straightening out his outfit. You were obviously not going to hand over the girls to the man, not after the trouble you went to to get them so now your choice was how to get around the dreadnought. You could just attack the ship and pray your ‘slightly overpowered’ cannons would be enough to pierce it’s shields or you could try and evade it’s fire long enough to make it to the jump point.