In space, near Telos IV

"Hot work, Fat Man!" Torill Cornag spoke into his microphone to his friend and commander, a full-bodied man by the name of Barret Ulluto. The two men had been friends and partners-in-crime for years and were both members of the Dark Neutron Syndicate. In truth, the 'Syndicate' was no more than a small group of pirates, bounty hunters and general lowlifes - one of many such groups operating in this area of space. Each had its own hidden base of some description and the DNS was no exception. This, in the form of a hollowed out asteroid, was where Ulluto and Cornag were leading their ragtag collection of ships that passed for a raiding force.

"Hot work indeed." Ulluto snapped back, ignoring the jibe about his weight. Unlike his friend, he was in no mood for banter - not until he was safely back at base with an ale in his hand. "Any signs of pursuit?"

"None so far." Cornag grinning. "Relax, bud. We made it. Is that so hard to belie-" His words faded away as fast as his smile when the alarms in his vessel started sounding. Scrambling to fasten the straps holding him into his seat, he shouted into the radio: "We got inbound enemy on our six, guys. Get ready."

Two Weeks Earlier

The vessel Maw Runner sat dead in space, its mobility ended by the power of an Imperial tractor beam. The captain sat stone-faced as stormtroopers and Imperial marines unloaded carton after carton of spice, all the cargo that he was unable to dump between the time the Interdictor pulled him out of hyperspace and the time the tractor beam had caught him. The officers on duty - the Imperial ones - stood behind him, their escorts' blasters pointed at his head. The Imperial Lieutenant overseeing the seizure stepped forward and said, "Captain Trailu, you are under arrest for violation of Section 341.87 of Chapter 18 of the Imperial Interplanetary Code. You are entitled to a speedy trial and a defense, if you so choose, or a plea of guilty and a reduced sentance for cooperation."

The next day, on Telos

Thompson Alameda, owner of Alameda Enterprises, leaned heavily on the bar, downing his fourth Corellian brandy in an hour. That was the fifth shipment seized by the Imperials in a month. Somebody had to be giving up his cargo manifests and his shipping routes. Nothing could be linked to him, yet, but if this continued it was only a matter of time. Then a thought occured to him. Drunk as he was, he managed to leave the bar rapidly, orders already formulating in his head.

Present

The fifteen fighters had launched as soon as the raiders had left. Alameda had spent a few thousand credits to get the location of the next Syndicate raid, and now his ambush party was ready. They tailed the raiders back to the asteroid. Alameda, in the lead fighter - an Ugly made of a TIE cockpit and X-wing S-foils, and actually a workable model for an Ugly - accellerated as the raiders began their landing sequence. It was time to play.

DNS Asteroid Base

"....returning to base. Repeat, we have been contacted by enemy forces unknown and are returning to base." The Boss knew that the voice was that of Barret Ulluto, returning from a raid on a series of homesteads. He also knew that those homesteads shouldn't have been able to field a dozen or more craft, as they apparently had.

"Ulluto, This is Base. Who are they?" He hissed into his microphone.

"Unknown, Base. They're all sporting a yellow circle with a black line through it. I don't recognise it." The Boss sat back, his face pale. "They got us pretty well ambushed though, Base. It's like they knew we were coming and waited for us to leave before they sprung the trap."

The Boss's voice was a fierce whisper as he muttered a single word to himself: "Alameda."

"Ulluto." He said louder. "Get your ships back here if you can. We'll fight them on our ground."

In Space

Ulluto acknowledged the order and had his twelve ships increase speed, even allowing some to jettison their cargo so as not to be left behind.

"Reckon we can make it back before they catch us, Fat Man?" said Cornag, easing his own vessel, a mongrel containing pieces of the old A-Wing design among others, to its maximum speed.

"Let's find out."

In Space

It was the nature of a fighter pursuit involving ships of different classes that the fastest ships of the pursuer would inevitably reach the slowest ships of the pursued first. Usually, in such a battle, it was the pursued who was at a disadvantage; their options were to turn and fight the faster ship, facing certain death, as even if the pursued managed to kill his pursuer, the slower ships of the pursuer would then be upon him, or to continue to run, hoping that his rear shields or excellent piloting ability would preserve him until he reached safety, assuming safety was to be had. This case was no different. Even as the lead Syndicate fighter was conversing with his base, Alameda's quad lasers began pinging the shields of the rear-most Syndicate fighter. It was only a matter of time before the rest caught up.

But it seemed that Alameda could get no closer. His shots were fired at maximum range and were therefore inaccurate, allowing the fighter to remain in flight and his shields to hold. It was a race, now, and the Syndicate fighters were accellerating to maximum throttle. They were holding their own, but they couldn't pull away.

In his fighter, Alameda smiled. Everything was going according to plan.

"Lead, this is Ten." The voice over the squadron intercom was heavy with static and the unmistakable sound of laser fire. "I'm taking fire back here and I don't know how much longer I can.... ..... My engines are red-lining, they're... ... ..enemy. ...can't.... ...."

On their scopes, the squadron could see Ten losing speed as his engines, already pushed far beyond their design specifications, started to overload. In his converted shuttlecraft that was acting as a fighter, Ten punched the control panels with his fist, trying to bring damaged systems back online.

The lead ships of the pursuit were almost on top of him, he knew, and he wasn't going to be able to outrun them now.

Well, I never expected to live forever. As his rear shields reached the point of failing, he turned the ship in a graceful arc to one side, exposing different shield surfaces for the enemy weapons. Routing all the power he could find to his laser cannons, he laid down as much fire as he could in an attempt to do maximum damage.

He was being engaged by several ships now, and even as his colleagues reached their destination of the Syndicate base and began establishing a perimeter, he heard his hull buckle.

As the cold vacuum of space rushed into the ship, his penultimate thought was that he might have bought some valuable seconds for the men who were the closest thing he had to friends. At the very end, though, his mind contained nothing but fear.

On his heads up display the man known only as Krugar watched the distant melee. He had been shadowing the fighter squadron since their departure. The man was a bounty hunter, he had been hired to track down and capture his quarry. In the midst of the fray waited his prey. At the moment however Krugar was not ideally disposed to pounce and while it looked as though his target, hunter not hunted, looked poised to survive the conflict, he knew his opportunities would be limited.

His ship, a light skiff modified for stealth, could expect to come out on top engaging the man one to one but, unfortunate for the bounty hunter, he was not alone. His squadron-mates would doubtless complicate things. All he could do for the moment was hope - hope that the runners, the squadrons targets, would somehow even the odds and present him an opening.

It wasn't a spectacular bounty but credits were credits and he had fallen on hard times. Wanted for bail jumping and alimony, taking the fighter jockey in wouldn't solve all of his problems, financially speaking, but it would help. Boasting a spotty history of his own Krugar was not a sought after mercenary in fact more often then not he had to bid against other third tier pro's just to get work.

Times were hard.

"I hate waiting," he muttered to his mechanical counterpart.

"Mmm," was all his partner, an outmoded IG-87 series droid, offered by way of a response. The droid was busily checking their supplies, slotting power packs in to blasters and making ready his biological friends jump suit. "Humans are not properly programmed for patience."

Krugar smirked, turned his attention back to the control yokes, and kicked his ship in to motion; stalking the fighters from a safe distance.

As the fighter disintegrated, the voice of Garath, Alameda's wingman, came over the comm. "Nice shot, Lead. Way to pay 'em back."

In his cockpit, Alameda smiled. "All in a day's work, Two. Do we have the numbers?"

"Affirmative. Download and computation complete. Everything set on the inside?"

"Everything but the call," a third voice replied.

"Alright," said Alameda. "Time to confuse 'em. Break off the attack, head for home."

The fighters split, turning rapidly back the way they came and computing their drives for the jump to hyperspace. Within minutes, the pre-loaded coordinates had been fine-tuned, and the ships were off, heading for their first stop.


Space, three light years from the Syndicate Base


The fighters dropped out of hyperspace, Alameda still in the lead. They'd done well, so far. Now all they needed to do was finish the deal. Alameda keyed his comm to a certain channel and sent the pre-recorded message. It took less than two minutes, just long enough for the navcomputers to compute their second jump to another vector change, ten light years away, where another message would be sent to a different recipient, then another vector change, then finally home. This was going to be a glorious coup; Alameda only wished he could be there to see it.

Krugar had the distinct impression that somewhere along the way he had become involved in something bigger then a simple smash and grab bounty. It didn't make sense - the pirate raid should have been drawn out but it had not lead anywhere. The fighter squadron had broken and done an about face leaping to hyperspace almost as quickly as they had come. It was only thanks to quick action on the part of his droid partner that they had managed to plot a tracking course and follow and then, just as they arrived the squadron was preparing to make another jump. Credit again went to his droid for keeping up. Unfortunatly neither man nor droid to be sure if their presence had remained a secret even with stealth systems active.

"Ever get the feeling you're being used?" Krugar asked the droid in a pensive, possibly paranoid tone.

The droid, in his best aproximation of sarcasm, replied, "Constantly."

Levity aside, something felt out of the ordinary. Curious, his ship tracking to hyperspace once more, Krugar pulled up the file on his target hoping that he could glean something useful from it. It was not by any means a comprehensive dossier but then that hadn't seemed unusual at the time; little more then a name, a location and a price.

Krugar stared at the name flashing on the screen before him.

"Who are you Thompson Alameda?" But there was no answer. Even his droid was too busy computing hyperspace trajectories to offer any witty quip. Somewhere in the back of Krugars head a small voice said, 'I have a bad feeling about this.'

Back in the hanger bay of the DNS asteroid base, the pilots of the raid had just completed docking and were in the process of staggering out of their ships, pale-faced. Had they been allowed to, they would have been well on the way to getting drunk within ten minutes and they would have been bragging about the number of Star Destroyers they blew up within the hour. A voice, however, stopped them.

"Ulluto." It was the Boss. He rarely came down to the hangar bay but his presence filled the room when he did. "Get your guys refuelled, rearmed and back in the air ASAP."

There was a groan as the men heard that. A stern look from the Boss stopped that though. The DNS had survived for so long because of its discipline, and its discipline was due to the Boss. He continued.

"I'll brief you all when you're out there, but if this goes well we could wipe out one of our biggest rivals. If you pull this off, the drinks are on me, lads."

The 'lads' perked up at that. The Boss may be harsh, but he knew how to reward loyal service.

"Cornag. A word."

The younger man exchanged a look with his superior and then headed towards the Boss. Behind him, he could hear Ulluto shouting at his subordinates and getting things moving.

"Yes, Boss?"

"Cornag, you'll be leading a second group of ships. I'll brief you in space, but we intercepted a transmission with some very useful information. Now, I'm pretty sure that it was sent for our benefit."

"You mean we're flying into a trap?"

"Ulluto is. You're going to be supporting with your squadron. If you're too slow, everyone dies. Don't be too slow, Cornag."

The younger man took that to mean that if he was too slow then he might as well not come back, for the DNS would no longer be a home to him.

"I won't, Boss. Let's spring this trap."