Deep within the StarForge Nebula sits StarForge Station. It is a "shadow-port" and home to an array of smugglers, merchants and mercenaries alike. Long has it been a fall-back point for the Bounty Hunters Guild and a personal stop-over for one Beff Pike, President of the same.



Meanwhile, somewhere within its Administration Levels...



“Our contract rates are not negotiable,” declared Sendaka, Chief of Administrations for StarForge Station. The rotund Rybet eyed his opponent warily. “You can pay like the rest, Mr. Pike.”

The latter, Mister Pike; was considerably emphasized. It was an omission, but a deliberate one at that.

Jorel Fett was first to respond. He and his squadron of Deathwatch loyalists, moving as one unit, moved to surround the seat in which the aforementioned Beff Pike had sat. “You would be well reminded to remember your pleasantries,” suggested Fett.

Beff Pike, seemingly nonplused by the insult, waved a hand dismissively. “It is the right of every politician to ignore the validity of another. President or otherwise.”

Though far less opulently seated, Pike managed to convey an air of assuredness that belied the sizable oak desk and high-back chair in which his rival, Sendaka, had placed himself. Even his silhouette, back lighted by the expanse of the nebula, seemed insignificant compared to the moderately appointed human seated at odds with himself.

“A President without a body to preside upon is no president at all.” Chief Sendaka shot up from his chair, thumping a fist against his desk. “And I will not be strong-armed by your thugs.”

The Rybet, his ears flat, leveled an even gaze at ‘President’ Pike.

“This is not something you can dismiss so easily, Sendaka. This is reality.” Pike nodded to one of the warriors whom, at a glance, tossed a data chip onto the desk between them. “Your claim to this station is not supported by law, nor is it supported by commerce… which is to say nothing of your other investments.”

With something of a wink Pike let his last comment linger and, between sidelong looks at his cadre of armed soldiers, allowed Sendaka a few moments grace to properly absorb the unspoken threat.

“Face it, Sendaka; if you want to keep your position here, at all, you are going to have to work with someone.”

Counting points on his fingers, Pike went on to list the various reasons…

“The Government is changing. It has changed, years ago. We all know it takes time for these changes to affect these outer sectors, so consider this your update. There is no one, core-wards or otherwise, who will stand and support you.”

One finger and a sly smirk, he added, “Unless, of course, you earn the trust of me and my starship captains. Perhaps then…”

Ruffled, his cheeks puffed up like some aggravated reptile, Sendaka snapped his jaws but said nothing.

“Your own investors are turning their backs on you because you lack the capital, not to mention contacts, to properly sustain and protect their investment. Two days ago Am-Cam Mining Industries canceled their stowage contracts with you. Tomorrow, I expect, DevTam Systems will be making a similar statement. At a cost of some five billion between the two and double that to you.”

“Without the financial contracts, both legitimate and otherwise, that have previously tolerated your slack, profit skimming attitude,” he waved a hand again. “All of this will be forfeit. Worse yet, there will be no one to default to… all these people you claim as your constituents will abandon you, transients though they are, in favor of greener pastures.”

Somewhere between outrage and petulant arrogance Sendaka had to concede, at least partially, that Pike was correct. Silenced for the moment, the rotund alien re-took his seat and suggested, “Go on.”

As though Sendaka had committed nothing, verbal or otherwise, President Pike pushed on.

“This brings us to your black market trade and the pack of rats who infest this fine star-port… Pardon me, shadow-port.” A menacing chuckle slithered from somewhere between Pikes thin-lipped smile. “I believe the phrase is… One evil for another?”

“I propose, quite simply Chief of Administrations Sendaka, that you admit you are beaten. That you and yours are stuck somewhere between a rock and a hard place with no visible escape save the one I am offering you now.”

President Pike, in turn, locked eyes with Sendaka. Hands crossed neatly in his lap, he waited without baited breath.

“What’s on the chip,” asked Sendaka predictably. His narrow eyes had focused to fine slits greedily examining the data card. Extending a clawed hand, he snapped it up.

“Contracts and negotiations; a myriad of sorts. You will find, on that disc, everything you need to sign to make official my claim of ownership on StarForge station. You will also find key-codes to a dozen various accounts each worth one point five billion standards.”

Casually, almost dismissive, Pike jerked his chin at Fett.

“Oh,” he added with the snap of his fingers. “There is also a deadly contact poison. The sort of thing that, I’m told, is decidedly deadly to your people given your naturally porous flesh. It’s called Green Cinder.”

Shocked, Sendaka shot back in his chair and clutched at his throat eyes wide with a panicked fear. “You’ve killed me!.”

“Ah, I see you are familiar with the substance.” And then, as if insulted by the insinuation, Beff Pike recoiled in mock horror. “I would not need to kill you, Sendaka. I need only collect on the contract the Synthans have put on your head and leave them to do the actual killing. Of course, they did offer a pay out clause just in case you somehow managed to come up with the credits to save your own skin.”

Between his fits of furious and ragged breathes Sendaka managed to put the pieces together. Slowly, but with a certain precision, everything fell into place.

Sendaka shot a look at the data-card.

“Exactly,” concluded Pike aloud, obviously sympatric to the Rybets sudden speech impediment. “You should have just enough to pay for your own life with a tidy little sum to set yourself up with. Unless, of course, you want to come work for me?”

Sendaka, unable to do little more then gurgle, did.

“Of course I can save you. I’ll need to keep you alive to sign those contracts won’t I? If you die, mind you, it will be at the hands of the Synthans. You recognize the configuration of that data card, don’t you?” Pike opened a palm, upturned, into which Fett deposited a compact aerosol dispenser. “The cure is right here. All you need to do is reach out and grab it.”

Pike, open handed, proffered the canister to his stricken adversary. When Sendaka, still struggling to control his own body, reached a hand towards the offering it was Jorel Fett who, a data pad in hand, interposed him between the pair.

Eyes wide and wearing a look of mock sympathy, Pike stared at his Mandalorian escort with incredulity. “As you wish,” put the bounty hunter in a disappointed tone before turning his gaze toward the alien. “It looks like my partner here is going to need your thumb print. It seems he doesn’t trust to be as cooperative once I give you the antidote. Forgive him, Jorel Fett is a hard man.”

“So, if you’ll just press your thumb here,” he indicated the pad. “I can go ahead and get you all healed up.”

“What’a yah say?”

Deep within the core of StarForge station...

Smoldering, smoking stacks hundreds of meters high, pumping their noxious toxins from invisible tops, vanished in the immense vastness of StarForge stations main power-plant. In the distance, like so many crawling insects, a myriad of workers dutifully went about their routines unaware of their distant observers.

Alone, hidden in a lower alcove, two men met in the anonymous maw of the station core.

One, a giant humanoid draped in tattered robes and lengths of unfettered cloth, shambled uneasily out of a side duct all the while leaning heavily on a tightly clutched cane. In a heavy, gravelly voice he greeted the other.

“By the sword,” he groaned meaningfully.

The second, a diminutive human female wearing the flight-suit of a freighter jockey, repeated the same words with matched intensity. Her cold azure eyes reflected a determined passion emphasized by a series of jagged facial tattoos.

“It has been too long, Silencer.” With a bowed head the woman spoke in reverent tones to the larger male. “And yet I find myself worried at the nature of your summons.”

At first he said nothing though his hood seemed to bob from side to side for a moment. Deep, glowing red eyes stared out from the dark folds of his cowl. When, some long breathes later, he did speak it was with the weight of ages in his voice.

“He has returned. The undying one has returned as I said he would.”

Now it was the woman’s turn to be silent, contemplative. Slowly, like glaciers, the corners of her lips creased upwards. “Holy fucking shit,” she said.

“Please Lancia, your language.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she shot back. “What’s our next move?”

“You must go to them again. Join them. You must get close to the monster and make ready to strike.” The passion of his words overcame the man. Coughing and wheezing fiercely, he struck out against a wall for support. “Our lives are in the service of killing their kind. With few straying from home, and their homeworld now in Imperial care, it has been too long since last we had the chance to attack.”

“Now look at our luck. Destiny, nay, fate has given us the chance to put down one of their oldest and most elusive members. What will we do?”

With a trained grace, feet sharp from decades upon the soapbox, the old man turned his piercing stare on the young female.

“We will kill the Anzati,” declared Lancia. “I will kill Pike myself.”

StarForge station, over ten kilometers at its zenith, dwarfed the Concord Dawn; the huge super-carrier employed by the Bounty Hunters Guild. Despite the vast size differential between the two the station was, tactically, no match for the single starship. Coupled with a Mandalore-class escort the pair of warships could easily have run the station under.

The years had not been kind to StarForge, her weapons sold at cost, and defensive measures deconstructed before being sold for scrap. Even the massive engines, which could drive the station between the stars of the nebula for which it had been named, were no longer functional. All that remained were the bare essentials… reactive shielding to protect against asteroid impact and maneuvering thrusters to maintain a stable position within the cluster.

Once upon a time over ten thousand souls had called StarForge home where now some three thousand now lived. StarForge station had been a booming shadow-port with a stable, independent economy. Ironically, though dubbed a shadow-port for its ability to relocate within the nebula, the station had become a shadow of its former self.

Dozens of warehouses, thousands of shops and merchant stores, were once stacked high with the profits of the stations operations. Empty but for the spiders and rodents that dwelled within, these areas had been devoid of sentient life for some time. Even the shipyard; the last hope this far out on the rim, the only place for a stricken sailor to make repairs, had fallen to disuse and even farther into disrepair.

Death lurked in the shadows of StarForge and not the glorious, profitable sort of death for which the Guild was famous.

Sadly the glorious profits of the Guild had begun to wane steadily also.

The dozen or so capital starships which the loyalists had escaped Mandalore with had begun to show the signs of maintenance related degradation. Or rather the lack there-of. At sixteen hundred meters long and half as deep the Concord Dawn had been and would continue on as the Guild flagship, but a ship so large demanded constant upkeep.

Fortunate though they were to have escaped Mandalore with as much as they had it would not be enough to sustain their current assets by half. Of the countless star fighters aboard the Concord Dawn perhaps a quarter would have pilots and those pilots would have to serve as their own flight crews given that the starship itself had only a skeleton crew manning its systems.

The same could not be said of the Mandalore-class stealth starships. These were hardy vessels that had long been the pride of the fleet. Their crews were loyal to Pike without question and had been during the great evacuation. The Panther-Pack, as they had begun calling themselves, could be counted on to serve in the fullest capacity for years to come.

StarForge station, if operated by the Guild and restored to its former glory, would be just the infusion of energy they needed to sustain operations. Slowly, if somewhat unwillingly, the High Hunters such as Skurge, Fett and D’Andre were coming to accept that fact and that acceptance would slowly disseminate down the ranks. From New Underground to StarForge Station, the Guild would once again establish itself as a functional presence within the galaxy. And the profits would soon be reaped.

“Pardon me, Sir?”

Roused from his daydream, Pike rolled his eyes open and the world flooded back in. Half-asleep, he had been reclining on the couch in his office, formerly Chief of Administration Sendakas office.

“Hmm,” he replied with a sigh. His leg cramped up. Bent nearly in two, he had been trying to get a few moments rest on the couch which had clearly been designed for a much smaller humanoid… probably a Rybet. “Ouch.”

Pike gathered his legs and rolled off of the couch and turned towards the speaker. It was Garer, one of his apprentice hunters. The Barabel warrior ruffled his scales. “You got something to say, scales?”

“Yes,” snarled Garer. “Fresh meat on deck and ready. Newbies.”

“Fuck,” cursed Pike. “Go kick ‘em around a while for me. I’ll get my gear and inspect the bastards in ten mikes.”

Garer bowed and moved to depart.

“Garer, wait.” Pike caught the lizard in mid stride. “Any females?”

Knowingly, Garer raised an eye-ridge and hissed approvingly.

“We have one. She is Arkanian.”

The would be Guildsmen, and women, lined the foredeck of forward lounge ten-beta, their backs to the large transparisteel dome that looked out across StarForge station. They snapped to attention.

Clad in his ceremonial hunters armor, modified Mandalorian battle gear, President Pike stepped forward. Though slight of height and generally unassuming appearance, having donned his helmet as well, dressed as he was Beff Pike became quite the imposing figure.

After all, it was all about respect and loyalty.

“The applicants,” hissed Garer with a general shrug in their direction. The Barabel, his scales on end, moved towards the rear deck. Ominously, the reptilian busied himself sharpening his talons in the background.

Pike stalked slowly down the line.

The Arkanian woman fist caught his attention.

A stunning, pale skinned beauty somewhere around twenty standard cycles, she wore far less then her male counterparts. Her midriff, tattooed in various patterns, was teasingly exposed between leather and chain dressings that failed, almost entirely, to cover her youthful body.

She turned to watch him watching her lithe muscles, tense like a predatory feline, played seductively around the edges of her abdomen. With piercing, milk-white eyes, like orbs of pure ivory, she sized and, clucking approvingly, moved to tug a strand of errant raven hair with a clawed finger.

This lot, like the previous two groups, was relatively ordinary in terms of what sort of personality the Guild tended to attract. There were a couple exceptions, notably a large Togorian male and two conversely unassuming humans. For the rest he envisioned a less then outstanding hunting career.

“Why are you here?”

He put the question to no one in particular and no one in particular seemed inclined to respond.

After a moment one of the humans spoke up.

“I’m here to kick some ass and take no names.”

“Get off of my space station,” said Pike flatly.

“Um, what?”

Confused, the young man looked to the others for support. No explanation was forthcoming. Garer started towards him.

“Get off of my space station, now.”

“But,” began the man, back stepping towards the Barabel unknowingly, “what did I say?”

“Please,” he begged. The plea went unfinished.

Garer plunged his force pike through his back. So shocked by the sudden appearance of a vibrating energy spike jutting from his chest was he that the man did not immediately fall. He watched with a perplexed look on his face while his life blood spilled across the deck plate.

“You spoke,” offered Garer in the way of an answer. “You should not have spoken. This one has killed you for it.”

With that the man went limp and died. Garer let the body fall to the ground before retaking his position in the background.

“I am glad we have an understanding.” Pike continued.

“None of you are special. Not one of you is unique. You are the all singing, all dancing crap of the galaxy.”

“You are not what you own. You are nothing.”

“The only thing that gives you substance is the lives you take, the kills you make.”

No matter how many times had done it, no matter how many times he would be called upon in the future to perform this duty, it would always be something Pike enjoyed; the initiation of new souls to the ever growing number of hunters loyal to the Guild. It had changed over the years, adapting to meet the needs of the times and to best take advantage of their reputation but the core of the thing remained the same.

They came for glory and profits. From backgrounds legal, illegal, moral and immoral each man, woman and whatever ceased to be what they had been before. They came to trade themselves for something greater. They came to become hunters, bounty hunters.

Even the term ‘bounty hunter’ had changed over the years. It had likewise been forced to adapt with the evolving climates. Some became civilians, failing their entry into the ranks of the hunter, and would find themselves serving in mundane but vital roles that supported the further operations of the Guild. Others would become administrators; tasked with duties best suited to their organizational skills. Most, however, would go on to one day become full members within the Guild, hunters with many kills attributed to their name and rank. Currently the Guild employed a plethora of criminal careers to sustain itself but even these questionable persons and their activities as well were protected under the mandate of the Guild.

President Pike motioned to Garer.

“You are here now which means that one day you hope to become hunters, Guildsmen.”

“But know this,” he warned. “Everything you believe to be true, even why you think you are here, will be harshly challenged over the next few months. You will be transported to New Underground; your new home. Some of you will not survive the trials.”

“If you want to leave…” he turned a masked glare on the corpse, “you can take your chances.”

“Good people call us criminals and murders. Happy people who live in safe little houses call you mercenaries and monsters. People who have never lived your lives are judging you even now. They will always judge you and you always come up wanting.”

“You are not special,” he repeated. “But you will be.”

“Every soul in the Guild, every single one, has had its eyes opened to the truth as you will have your own eyes opened.”

“Life is not sacred.”

“Your life is your own to protect and safeguard. The lives you chose to protect owe you nothing. You owe nothing to those you shelter. You owe nothing to those you kill.”

“But the glory is always in the hunt, in the chase and the catch. You are not a murderer, you are a vigilant force, a privateer among brothers.”

“Everything I tell you is a lie. Everything you hear is the truth.”

Beff Pike looked towards Garer and nodded.

“And now, and not for the last time, you will have to fight for your life. You will have to fight to survive and claim the prize that your mentors have attained.”

“Never forget, every soul in the Guild has seen the truth. Not all can handle the truth and so become civilians and workers but even their glory is far beyond what you now merit.”

“Fail and the Guild will abandon you. Succeed and you will always be one of us.”

Garer thumped his fist against a door lock. The airlock hissed opens a crack. Slowly, the atmosphere began to seep out of the room. Pike, contained within his armor, did not move.

Garer then moved towards the main doors and, pressing them open, was forced to step aside as a dozen armed and environment-sealed hunters dashed into the room to attack the shocked applicants. Wielding various bladed and blunt weapons, the seasoned warriors set out after the others.

Beff Pike laughed, “Welcome to the fold.”

Her starship slumped on the hangar deck. It didn’t so much sit as lean. God was it ugly. All of them were ugly, the starfighters her group of apprentices had been assigned. Ugly; the word said it all and that was probably why they called them just that.

Uglies.

Someone, somewhere, had obviously sold to the Guild, years ago by the look of things, a case load of starfighter bits salvaged from the various bone yards of the galaxy. They must have gotten a great deal because some of them looked like they’d just been put back together.

Amused, Lancia imagined the technical crews assembling these ugly monsters and then, for shits, taking a couple pot shots at them with blaster pistols. She fingered a blast mark just below the cockpit of her mismatched interceptor.

“Do they even fly?” She asked.

Hers looked like the mutant love child of an Incom fuselage and Sienar superstructure. Octagonal wings, mounted horizontally, jutted out from the side of the thing where it had been married to a bulky pair of high-thrust engines. Quadruple fire-linked, stutter fire blasters had been affixed to the wing tips and the nose of her fighter. An old model missile rack had been mounted, inverted, on the upside surface of its wings while the underside played host to its landing gear.


“Is this the best we get? My ship was better then this.” Lancia said while struggling with the canopy of her fighter. It shot open with a hiss, nearly sending her bottom first off the S-foils. “This is genuine garbage.”

“Yeah,” snarled Garer. “But it’s your garbage and the important thing to remember is that ship of yours, the old one… it was your ship. Now it belongs to the Guild. This is yours.”

“All mine?”

She mocked him with a grin, which, despite their different species, drew a sinister laugh from her instructor.

“As you get better, as this one has, you will be given rewards for your efforts. Your rewards will win you rank and rank gives you position. For now your position is sitting behind the stick of that junker.”

Garer laughed and stalked off towards his own fighter, an almost completely rebuilt Fritek E-Wing.

Lancia dropped into the cockpit and examined her instrumentation with a critical eye.

Obviously someone had been paying attention here. Everything was exactly where it should be, according to the largely human designers at Incom. Nothing had been too badly damaged and even the crash webbing of her seat felt as though it had been reupholstered. The boys down in the ‘yards had been working hard.

Curious, she switched on her scanners and ran a quick pass on the other ships nearby.

By and large they were the same as hers which implied that, even with the shit bits, the construction crews had probably built a production line of some description. They had probably begun reassigning parts according to more productive schedules. Further down she noticed a line of TiE like cockpits that had been matched with powerful A-Wing sublight engines. She assumed they were probably short range fighters without hyperdrive capacity, unlike her own vessel which was geared more towards long range interception.

Lancia started flicking through the star up procedures. Unexpectedly, her ship turned over seemingly without effort. A calm hum, the sign of well tuned engines, echoed through the cockpit.

“Almost perfect,” she commented as a slight tremor shook the cockpit. “How about a systems diagnostic?”

Before she was able to key up the right programs, a visual display scrolled across her screen. It was the information she was about to call up. The full systems diagnostic read from only moments earlier, when no one had been on the flight deck. Lancia spun around in her seat and studied the aft section of her fighter.

Sure enough, beneath a transparent polymer dome, were the inner workings of an astromech droid though stripped its bodily components. They had reduced the unit to its fundamental parts and hardwired it into the operations systems.

“Genius,” she quipped.

The word “Yes” appeared on her Heads Up Display followed by a question mark.

Lancia chuckled, “That’s your name, is it? Brilliant.”

Both of them replied her starfighter, Brilliant Genius.

“Alright, smarty pants. Let’s go for a test drive.”