"Thank you for flying to Garos IV, Mr. Boswell, you are cleared to land. Please have a pleasant and productive stay."

Sitting in the pilot's seat of his black Svelte-class Shuttle, galaxy renown arms salesman Kris Boswell acknowledged ground control's wishes with a mike click. I sure hope this trip is productive, he thought.

Behind his ship, a parade of accompanying landers filled with Boswell arms personnel followed, along with escorting blastboats and escorting Z-95s. As they moved towards the hangar complex they would occupy during their trip, a trio of Sentinel landers moved ahead of the main group. From them emerged several dozen black armed troops with jet packs to secure their hangar before their powerful and wealthy boss' landing.

The price of riches, he thought. But as numerous as they may be, I prefer the problems of being a man with everything to the problems of being a man with nothing.

Through is Svelte's tinted windscreen, he could see a pair of Garotian delegates present to greet him. Just what I needed, he thought, Government Company. But whatever cruel circumstances fate may have provided for him, he was forced to grin and bare it, and so he did just that: He put on his best diplomatic smile, and then marched down his shuttle's ramp to greet his company, wondering what fate had in store for him. Before him, a quartet of guards fanned out in front of him. His men had already secured the hangar, but it was important none the less to put on this short of show so that anyone watching him, for whatever reasons, would stop and think.

"Greetings, Mr. Boswell," one of the emissaries spoke. Each wore the snazzy dress Blues of Garos IV's navy, with shaved heads that made them all but indistinguishable to the untrained eye. They actually looked rather pathetic in the normally handsome uniforms thanks to their unimpressive physiques. Not the uniform's fault, but simply what happened when you gave second class men less-than-priority assignments. "We greatly look forward to doing business with you," the other man continued where the other left off. "We have great need for your services and hope negotiations can be made for a deal that will please both parties."

"That's why I'm here," Boswell replied. "I will be happy to deal with you at our meeting tomorrow."

"Of course," one of the twins replied-that's what he was referring to them as in his mind now- "But tonight you would like to spend some time in our capital. You would like to get to know our world, like every other planet you've done business on. That is one of the reasons we are here." He reached down into one of his uniform's pockets and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "This is a paramilitary certificate valid as long as you chose to stay on the planet. It will allow you to be accompanied by up to fifty of your fully armed guards at any time any place on planet for your protection. In addition, we have these for you." The second bald man reached into his pocket and pulled two pieces of paper. "The first is a high power weapons permit that will allow you to carry military grade blasters anywhere, anytime. The second is a concealed carry permit to allow you to carry up to two concealed blasters on your person. These second two both apply to all of your personnel. You will not lack for protection on our planet."

The other picked up from here. "Someone will be here tomorrow at ten hundred hours standard time to guide you and your men to the negotiation area, an expensive hotel not far from here. If you need speeders for them, or basically anything, really, do not hesitate to ask us. Our com link numbers are on our cards." The cards were promptly handed to them. "We are responsible for your stay here, so do not hesitate to ask, please.

"Please enjoy your stay, Mr. Boswell, and please enjoy your night."



After they had left the hanger, Kris Boswell drop the act and became Jesh Tolli again. "They've given me great hope for our mission," he commented.

"That we'll be able to achieve our primary objective?" The captain of his bodyguards, on his right, soke.

"No," Tolli teased, "That we'll be able to sell them a hundred million credits worth of blasters. Of course the main objective, though selling a few blasters would be nice.

"So," he said after a short pause, "Who's ready to move out?"


The platoon sized group of men that moved out was very different from the one that landed, at least in appearance. The soldiers, still donned in their black combat suits and armor, now had put on a layer of baggy civilian clothing over it and had stored their helmets in the backpacks each now wore, which also contained a pair of DL-44 blasters to assist the one buried in their right pockets. In moments, this apparently civilian mob could turn into a platoon of elite soldiers capable of dealing with any conceivable threat in the city. One man even had a rocket launcher, concealed in a long cardboard tube.

Despite their efforts to look like a random crowd, anyone with military experience could see what they truly were: Even in the spread out group they were in one could see the faint, distorted resemblance to a common platoon formation, and the men's ready alert state and anyone near them think twice before messing with them. Only once were they disturbed by an alien, a Verpine, who was disturbed by their passing. He leaped out at the nearest soldiers and promptly dropped, left for the following men to step over as they continued on, coldly ignoring it like the veteran killers and soldiers they were. In the center stood Mr. Boswell, covered by four men as they headed off for their night at the theater.

Or so it appeared.

The decoy and bodyguard detachment deployed, hopefully drawing off most of the planetary surveillance men that were undoubtedly watching their every move, Jesh, Bim and two guards readied themselves for the real mission. The change back to himself was relatively simple: A quick shower and the dye in his hair and the skin tone changing pigment on his skin were washed away, and the putty pieces that changed the shape of his face could be peeled right off once one knew the secret of removing them: Tobasco sauce. He quickly slipped into a gray jumpsuit, several concealed holsters (an armpit and a leg), and a bandoleer of small grenades and holdout blasters and then put on another layer of baggy civilian clothes. In his armpit holster rested his trusty DL-17 blaster, which had accompanied him since his earliest days of smuggling, and would accompany him to his last. On his side rested a rigged DL-44. It would actually fire, but if captured or confiscated the touch of a button a hidden proton charge could set it off, a useful trick in a sticky situation. To finish it all off, he put on a special pair of sunglasses with a built in weapons scanner, an extremely expensive but extremely useful toy.

Prepared for their excursion, he walked out of his ship's living quarters and marched down the ramp to Bim's current residence, a Lambda Shuttle. Bim was luck. Most of the soldiers and crews were staying in the spaceport's spartan, cramp travelers barracks. Bim was already outside the ship, waiting for him.

They didn't bother looking or waiting for the last two members of their party. They knew they were ready.

At the spaceport's gate was their lone obstacle to their mission, a guard assigned to clear every man or woman from Boswell's detachment permitted to leave the hanger by the arms company. For those that were approved, he was also giving out hundred credit debit cards to build goodwill with the crew of the company. They needed Boswell badly was the conclusion Jesh drew from this, bad enough that they though building goodwill with the crew-people who wouldn't even be helping negotiate-would help them.

As it turns out, the guard didn't do a thing to them except assign an observation team to monitor them while in another room so they couldn't hear under the guise of "validating their passes." They weren't fooled, however. A bug planted in the room not long after they arrived gave them every word passed in there between the guards and their monitors.

Behind them, in line, waited a pair of Gray-skinned aliens patiently waiting their turn for their passes to be verified.


"We've picket up two tails," Jesh whispered to his partner, looking the other way."

"I see em," Bim replied, his voice soft and apparently checking out a nearby Twi'lek slave girl in nothing but a small slave bikini-they were on the bad side of the capital now, and the law mattered very little here, especially here in the Corellian district.

"I'd like them to be gone before we meet the informant. How about a new speeder?" he asked, eying a lot full of "dirt low price speeders." They undoubtedly had all been stolen, and any valuable parts, including the engines, had undoubtedly been stripped and been replaced by inferior parts from the cheap laborer low quality twin planets of China and Korea.

The lot would serve their purpose, however: A good place to neutralize their tails.

"Split," Jesh ordered. "I'll go talk to the manager about a faulty vehicle I bought here last month, and you go eye that hot looking red one." The red one was hardly "hot," unless your standards were two decades outdated. An old XP-34, ancient even twenty years ago, was on the far side of the lot. It didn't look to be in too good of shape, but on this lot of beat up vehicles, it was far less beat up than the rest.

"Got you," Bim said, nodding and understanding. He headed of fin his designated direction. "I'll radio you if it doesn't work," he whispered.

On the far end of the lot was a crummy looking building. The section eight of the business world, Jesh thought. Within he could see two dozen employees through the remaining half of the formerly wall-sized windows. He forced himself to walk into the nasty building and lifted up his com link. "Are we good to go?"

A moment later Bim's voice came back, picked up and played by the receiver in one of his molars. He never would get used to the voices in his head coming from nowhere, but it was an invaluable tool, and it could be turned off.

"Yeah," came the response. "One's heading towards you now. The other's looking at a blue Mercedes near me."

"I sure hate to do this here, as crummy as a place it is it's still public."

"The mission," Bim reminded him. "Credits to build a city planet."

"Yeah yeah," Jes replied, hating to be reminded of what he had to do as he checked his blaster.

The building they found at the end of their trail was as unimpressive as those surrounding it. It was a dirty, grungy cantina, like the hundreds of similar establishments Jesh had set foot in over the course of his career. The establishments clientele were equally unimpressive; the standard filth that finds their way to these sorts of places across the galaxy. A band played in one corner, a bar was located in the center, leaving a horseshoe shaped remainder packed with narrow booths to maximize the number of occupants it could fit, and several Sabacc and Pazaak tables were filled with drunks on the far wall, an easy way to relieve them of any credits they weren't spending on drinks. Overall, a nice, thrifty operation that impressed Jesh because of how unimpressive it was.

The building they found at the end of their trail was as unimpressive as those surrounding it. It was a dirty, grungy cantina, like the hundreds of similaestablishments Jesh had set foot in over the course of his career. The establishments clientele were equally unimpressive; the standard filth that finds their way to these sorts of places across the galaxy. A band played in one corner, a bar was located in the center, leaving a horseshoe shaped remainder packed with narrow booths to maximize the number of occupants it could fit, and several Sabacc and Pazaak tables were filled with drunks on the far wall, an easy way to relieve them of any credits they weren't spending on drinks. Overall, a nice, thrifty operation that impressed Jesh precisely because of how unimpressive it was.

In the back of their bar, sitting in a booth with his back to a wall and his eyes towards the door was their contact, a man as unimpressive as the bar itself and, if appearances were something to go by, likely as well rounded. He wasn't particularly tall, but then again, he wasn't particularly short either. He wasn't well built, but he wasn't skinny, and sported a small keg that hinted he'd recently entered into middle age. There was no blaster on his hip--his was probably hidden, since Jesh wouldn't even look at any of the customers in here without a good blaster on him.

As awkward and unconventional as it was to do so, Jesh sat down next to the man--an unusual position for these kinds of deals at best. The alternative, however; to across from him in the dangerous position with his back towards the door, was at best uninviting to him because it was potentially deadly. You were helpless in the event of an ambush. Bim instead took the seat across from their contact, sitting in the unconventional manner of his back to the wall and his legs across the padded seat so no one could get the jump on him.

"We're here to see your boss," Jesh said quietly, not making eye contact with the man beside him.

"I know," the man replied. "So if you'll just follow me, we can be on our way."


Upon reaching the designated meeting place for their meeting, they weren't immediately shuffled in to meet the main at the end of the line. First, they underwent a complete weapons scan--which fortunately missed their undetectable DC-15s blaster pistols--and a quick stop in the further. After these brief diversions, they were directed to his office and let in.

The office they were admitted to managed to simultaneously look sophisticated and spartan. Though several simple paintings lined the walls, they were primarily bare. The uncovered portions were a simple shade of off-white, with wood trim at the top and the bottom. The desk, the only piece of furniture present save a few data card shelves behind it, was a rich, dark color with simple yet delicate lines.

Behind the desk was a man whose looks confirmed what Jesh had suspected from the appearance of the office: Their contact was a former smuggler who had then gone into the information brokering business after old age had caught up with him. This wasn't an especially rare combination, since many if not most smuggler chiefs developed a passion for information during their tenure, fueled by easy access to information thanks to their galaxy spanning organizations and contacts.

The natural progression from there was to go from smuggler kingpin to information broker, and many were content to make that transition, selling information of various worlds where such information gathering services were needed. Crime controlled or ridden planets were the most popular locale for these men, where information on competitors activities was always in demand. Planets locked in a perpetual state of war like Garos IV ran a distant second.

The man facing them was a short yet stocky man, with powerful muscles and broad shoulders concealed beneath his robe. His face, held in a careful neutral expression, had an obvious scar running from below his left eye down to the left side of his chin. The half-untrained brown mop on to p of his head probably resembled Jesh's own hair at some point in time, but was not parted in a more business like look.

"Mr. Dickenson, Mr. Smith," he greeted them with a slight smile. "Or rather, should I say, Mr. Tolli and Mr. Thorton."

Bim inhaled sharply in a reaction cut off almost before it began. Jesh knew better and sat there calmly. He hadn't made any real effort to conceal their identity on this trip from this man.

"I'm afraid you've made a mistake," he replied mildly. "You or your agents, somehow."

"That must be it," he returned with a knowing look on his face. "So, what can I assist you gentlemen with? Military matters and movements, I believe it was."

"Yes," Jes said. "We're interested in several things that we believe you have knowledge of. Military movements and installations for one."

"Perhaps current military maneuvers and deployments would interest you?" he asked helpfully. "I've just received a large amount of both ship and personnel assignments from one of my contacts in the planets military. Perhaps some of it would interest you?"

"It depends on the kind," Bim answered. "Major movements and deployments, yes. Minor matters, no."

"Then I've got just the thing." His voice was soft as he brought up secret information. "What if I told you that a major strike force was assembling right now less than a tenth of a light year from here?"

"Depends on what for," Jes answered, his voice containing an air of interest. "But I imagine it's not for their health."

"Officially, it's assembling for a major strike on Sundari. Word of that was leaked through several channels. Purposely, I believe, though I don't have the evidence to confirm my suspicions. The true purpose of the assembly, I suspect, is to lure the Sundari fleet there while forming for some sort of ambush."

"A trap?" Bim put in, voice tactful.

"It seems so to me. And once the Sundari fleet arrives, they're doomed. Garos IV will unleash here new secret weapon on her armada, and they will be crushed."

"Secret weapon?" Jesh questioned, letting just the right touch of doubt and disbelief find it's way into his vice. But inside he was relieved. Now they were getting somewhere.

"That's right," their contact replied. "In an asteroid field on the outskirts of this system. There's a super secret installation there of some sort. So secret it's existence is officially known to the highest echelons of Garos's military officially. In practice, however, the secrets somewhat out. Only a few information brokers, as well as the Sundari military, have it's location. Nobody has any idea what goes on there, as security around the field is heavy and some property of the asteroid fields disrupts distant sensor probes. Only a little bit is known about it, gathered from a variety of sources."

"Well," Jesh spoke, "I think we'd like to hear more about this base. What kind of information do you have on it?"

He could see the man measuring him up again. He knew who he as, and that he wasn't a Sundari agent looking for information or a Garotian agent looking to see how much he knew. What possible value the information could hold for Tolli was beyond him.

"Not much," he confessed. "We don't know much of anything about the base itself, but we've got some idea about it from other sources. Convoys, for example, regularly are sent there, though they go through multiple jumps before reaching it and multiple checks for homing devices. I've got copies of their cargo records, both the official and the truth, obtained from crew and dockworkers."

"And what, might I ask, do they carry?" Jesh questioned.

Their contact smiled. "Such information is precious, Mr. Dickenson," he replied with a look of satisfaction. "General details are fine to give away to assist clients in finding what they wish to know, but the specifics will cost you."

"And what's it worth to you?" Jesh asked, a slight feeling of hostility in his voice.

"Two thousand," was the reply.

"Hold on. Tell us more about this base. What more do you have?"

"Deployment records for personnel, for one. The real ones were classified, but we got something nearly as good: Payroll records for those deployed there. A smile account tracing and background check on the names that came up gives you a complete run down of what kind of personnel they are using for their work."

"That'll be nice," Bim commented. "What else?"

"For the asteroid field I have long distance scans of it. They're rather scrambled thanks to some property of the asteroids themselves, but they're better than nothing. A few suspected paths of entry are included with them. In addition, I managed to obtain the original floor plan of it from when it was an old mining facility for some exotic metal under the Empire's control of the system during the Thrawn campaign. No telling what modifications have been made now, of course, but it's better than nothing."

"It all sounds very useful," Jesh put in. "Sir, it sounds very much like something we may be interested in. However, to be sure, we'd need to view both the personnel assignments and their cargoes. What would a single view here and now cost us?"

"Less," he said, "But I"d like to know specifically what you're looking for. "I may be able to dig up more information for you if you would give me an idea about..."

"What we are looking for is our own concern," Jesh said more forcefully. "We would like to view these records before purchasing them, and if they're not what we're looking for then perhaps we will disclose more."

"Of course, let me copy these files to a data card for you and then you can take a look."

"One more thing," Jesh interjected. "I would like a private conference with my partner. "If we could have the room to ourselves for ten minutes, we would be greatly obliged."

"Of course," the man said, who Jesh realized they didn't have a name for yet. "I am here to serve. Just let me copy the files to a data card for you and then I will leave the room."



Of course, even with their information broker out of the room they weren't really alone. Without any doubt, probes were listening to every word they spoke, while cameras watched their every move.

Fortunately, they weren't out of surprises.

From a concealed pocked in his jacked, Bim removed a small, palm sized cylinder. An expensive Disruption Bubble Generator, used to temporarily disrupt nearby communications monitors. It would produce a spherical bubble zone which was impervious to sonic and other auditory scanning devices for perhaps five meters around them, blocking the bugs placed in the room to eavesdrop on them.

"So the prime cargo has been ore of some sort," Jesh mused aloud while scrolling down the pad's contents. "I wonder if they got a chemical composition report as well?"

He worked with the data pad a few moments. "Ah, here it is," he announced to Bim, opening it up for his viewing. After a moment he spoke up. "Yes, here it is. 3-7% Hibridium, depending on the sample. It's listed by it's molecular composition, since it's real name is not exactly common knowledge. The concentrations are too high for it to be an accident or a coincidence, too. It's Hibridium Ore they're shipping out there. This might be what we're looking for."

"And what are they sending now?" Bim asked. "Still Hibridium."

"No, actually. Now they've shifted to mining and refining equipment. Heavy duty stuff, by the looks of it. Great for asteroid mining." Jesh paused and looked at his partner. "Do you think they may have found traces of it in the asteroid field?"

"I wouldn't find it too surprising," Bim answered. "It's in the same system. No reason why additional supplies couldn't have ended up elsewhere during the early days of the system. For example, it's my understanding that there's scarce but detectable traces of it in gas Nebula on the edge of the system."

"It's plausible then," Jesh allowed. "But whether they've found it or not, they unquestionably were sending Hibridium ore there at one time. The concentrations too high for it to be a coincidence." He looked up. "Do you think our man knows what the stuffs used for?" he asked after a brief pause. "He can't know what we're here for, sine only a dozen people in the whole of the Alliance know. A bakers dozen if you couldn't the old Imperial Engineer who worked on the original cloaking device for Palpatine we brought along."

"I agree," Bim stated, "But I don't think it's safe to assume so. But I do know that he's sure it's pretty important. He knows that this base and the accompanying shipments are at least related to what we're looking for, and he knows that the Luck's on the edge of the system, I'm sure. So he knows something big's up."

Jesh looked back down at the data pad. "That's the same conclusion I reached. But since I doubt he knows the primary use for Hibridium, all he has to go on right now are hunches and suspicions, most of which are likely wrong. But let's get back on track. We only have a few minutes left before he returns." He clicked around on the data pad until he found the file he wanted. "Here's the payroll list and the backgrounds on the personnel deploy there. It looks like, though, that they're mainly materials scientists and physicists. The kind of people who you'd need to, say, develop a device designed to warp space time."

Bim gave him a serious look. "So you really thing this is the thing we're looking for?"

Jesh looked at him. "As do you." His voice turned softer and more contemplative. "I think we've found what we've came for, Bim. I think we've found it."

Bim cut off the Disruption Bubble Generator after Jesh gave him a nod. "We're ready to speak with you again," he announced to the man undoubtedly listening in on them.

For a moment nothing happened. Then their contact, who Jesh figured knew they were listening in on them anyway and had nothing to lose by revealing the fact, entered his office once again. The look on his face was almost-concealed disappointment at the fact he hadn't been able to listen in on them.

"Did you find the information to be at least somewhat related to what you're looking for?" he asked them, trying to wipe the last bit of disappointment off of his face.

"Fairly," Jesh replied. "But there's more we need to know before we're finished. We need to know about the Sundari counter-attack for one, and we need the installation's location as well."

His face returned to a neutral expression. Their contact chose to spoke on the second issue first. "To be honest, I do not have the precise location of the base. Only a general idea. The sensor records on the data cards were swiped by crewmembers on freighters to the base in exchange for modest sums of cash, but the coordinate consoles data was scrambled and the men we bribed weren't high enough to access it in its unencrypted form."

"Did you triangulate their vectors?" Jesh asked. "Or did you try homing beacons?"

"Yes and yes," their contact replied. "Unfortunately, they use multiple micro jumps in order to conceal the destination's true vectors. In between the jumps, they scan the ships for all homing beacons and shut down all transmitters that could be traced. They do at least 6 or seven micro jumps, with a scan in between each one."

Jesh winced, trying to think of a simple solution for the problem. It was only a moment, however, before one reached him. "When's the next convoy going out?" he asked, quickly adding, "We can pay for the information if we must."

"Before answering your question, please let me clarify," the man replied. "Individual ships, pairs or trios, rather than conventional convoys are usually sent out every two to three days, with them occasionally being scheduled as few as twelve hours apart in recent times. This is done because individual vessels are harder to track, easier to monitor, and easier to maintain security on than a large convoy, while attracting far less attention than a big movement. The next one's leaving tomorrow. But I already said that there's no way for a homing beacon to be snuck aboard thanks to all the scans they perform."

"We've got a different sort of beacon to try," Jesh responded. "A special one. If you can get some of your men to attach several of them to the next ship or two we can find the base. We'll pay, naturally."

"Naturally," their contact said. "There's no such thing as a free lunch."

"Yes," Jesh said. "Bim, please go request several of them be brought here by a courier," he ordered his partner. "Within the next hour, if possible." With a nod, the younger Thorton turned and left the room.

"Do you have a refresher?" he asked their contact.

"Of course," he replied. "Just ask my secretary outside." Then with the sound of a shutting door, Jesh and the man were alone.



"Now, you also mentioned something about a Sundari counter-attack," Jesh brought up. "Depending on my intentions, this could be rather important information. So I believe you should lay what you know down for me."

“Of course. I am here to assist you. Sundari is planning to launch their own attack in just under twenty-four hours, striking Garos IV’s fleet at the time Sundari’s Admirals believe their foes fleet will be the most disorganized and unprepared. I’ve got more extensive details on the attack available for a price. Ship and crew deployments and assignments, commanders and their backgrounds, formations and tactics, and more. This isn’t going to be as cheap as the other stuff, though. Additionally, I’ve also got the same information on the fleet being assembled by Garos. . .
* * *

They arrived to find the asteroid field surprisingly empty, with neither the Garotian fleet assembling for the supposed Sundari strike, or the Sundari fleet attempting to counter the forming Garotians. "Either we're real early," Jesh said to no one in particular as he viewed their arrival from the vessel's bridge, "or they're real late."

The crew on the bridge of the ship were deathly quiet as their silent prayers for an uneventful reversion to real space were realized. No swarms of enemy fighters appeared from nowhere to unleash deadly storms of laser fire on the Victory-class Star Destroyer, and no formations of enemy cruisers sat waiting to pummel them upon their emergence from hyperspace. Instead, all there was to be seen was a massive, empty, unimpressive asteroid field. All around the Smuggler's Luck huge boulders and mountains of rock and metal twisted and danced in an impressive display of physics. But nowhere was there an enemy base to be seen, or a fleet to confront. Also unseen was the transport that had carried a special homing beacon, dormant unless in hyperspace, that allowed them to find this location.

It was only moments, however, before the silence became shouts as every crewmember in the sensor crewpits tried to get the attention of their superior officers at once. A quick look at the tactical sensor display in the center of the bridge showed Jesh that they all were experiencing the same "malfuncion"--their sensor images were distorted, innacurate, and impossible to make sense out of.

For a few moments, a myriad of thoughts ran through Jesh's head as his mind tried to process everything going on around him at once. He struggled to make sense out of the various thoughts competeing for his attention, and with a deep breath and exhale managed to push the less pressing ones away. First thing first, the sensors...

It took Jesh only a few moments to realize what was going on. Excitedly, he called the confused Captain Thorton to him, as well as the senior officer of the sensor crew.

"Don't you see what's going on here," he began excitedly. "You've both read the Imperial elemental analysis on Hibridium."

"I don't recall," Bim interrupted. "Fill me in."

"Don't you recall the one from the Thrawn era?" Jesh resumed. "The one where they took nuggets of the element weighing between ten grams and ten kilograms and measured their local effect on both gravity and space-time?"

From the looks he was getting, neither Bim nor his sensor officer remembered.

"In the tests, they found that Hibridium produced local distortions in the space-time fields around concentrations of the element, disrupting sensors and communications in an area of several meters around the block of Hibridium, which in turn disrupted electromagnetic energy and gravity around it. Don't you see the obvious! Garos IV is mining Hibridium out here. A few kilograms might disrupt several square meters of space-time, and the electromagnetic energy around it, but out here there's not just a few kilograms of it. There's millions of tons of it, causing a massive disruption that distorts our sensor and communications signals. That's why we're not reading anything on our sensors."

Jesh paused, taking a few breaths after his rapid speech.

"As for the base, it's around here. We just can't see it, thanks to the natural sensor jamming the high Hibridium content in the asteroid field causes. I don't know about the enemy fleets, but they're not here and we are, so let's find the base and make it ours."



Besides millions of tons of armor, reactors, plating, computers, electronics, weaponry, and more, the Smuggler's Luck also harbored within her mighty armored hide 4,798 crewmembers, 2,040 marines, and one man with a few lofty dreams. At the time of the vessel and her sister ship's acquisition--a kind way to put the theft from the former defense fleet owners--the future captains and and officers of the ships suggested the marine complement be removed and replaced with more hangar space as had been done with the 6 Landing Barges and accompanying 10 AT-ATs and 15 AT-STs she used to carry for planetary assaults. Jesh refused, however, favoring the versatility the troops offered. Even when subjected to a thorough series of upgrades and rebuilds by an underworld Verpine shipyard he'd maintained they be left in.

Now he was thankful for his decision. While he doubted the coming attack would take more than a quarter of the soldiers prepared to attack the asteroid base, he was thankful for the ability to immediately board and take it, rather than having to hire unreliable, unprofessional mercenary soldiers or request a detachment of Smuggler Alliance Assault troops from across the galaxy. The haste and flexibility they gave him here more than made up for any weaponry he'd deprived his crew of.

Minutes after realizing what was going on around them, the crew had regained their composure after what was in the asteroid field had been explained to them with a single modification--rather than Hibridium, the story told to them used high contents of highly magnetic materials in the asteroids themselves. The search for the base was thankfully uninterrupted by neither an attacking Sundari fleet or a perturbed Garotian fleet wondering just what they were doing, and the seemingly inevitable asteroid-by-asteroid search with the ship's squadrons of snubfighters was luckily cut short by a long range visual-light scans with the ships high-power telescopes. Using the primary mainframe to analyze results, and in under fifteen minutes they had the base's location.

From the battleship's bridge, Jesh watched as the two squadrons of Hornet Interceptor mk. IIs fanned out into a screen formation to let them detect, report and intercept any movement at the base or activation of weaponry or shields. Of course, whether they would be able to report back to the Smuggler's Luck, even if only a few kilometers from their mother ship, was questionable. The Hornets weren't equipped with a line of sight laser system for communication amongst themselves, since with the ships high speed and maneuverability the lasers had trouble tracking and maintaining contact with individual fighters. On the flip side, the Luck did have one she could use to send orders to the fighters, letting her captain maintain at least something resembling control during situations like this. From long range tracking wasn't a problem.

"Ready boarding and landing craft," he ordered, putting on an air of authority and confidence. "Fighter pilots not yet deployed are to remain ready to scramble."

"Aye sir," responded one of the officers around him tasked with relaying the captains orders to the appropriate stations under normal circumstances. Under current ones, Jesh was the figure they followed. He moved off to the flight boss's control pit to have the orders relayed.

Outside the scenery was slowly changing as asteroids twisted in their great cosmic dance, further warping and disturbing the space-time around them, provoking further movement in an viscous circle. In several thousand years, he figured, this place would be a seething, dangerous mass of flying mountains and boulders like some of the more hair-raising asteroid fields he'd been in. For now, though, it was rather benign. You could almost fly thorough it sleeping, if you ignored the fact the sensors didn't work and accordingly you had no proximity alarms.

Fortunately, the Hibridium in the asteroids surrounding them did nothing to disturb the spectrum of visible light. Several hundred kilometers ahead sat the officially derelict mining facility and current research facility, a patchwork of asteroids connected to one another by a system of tunnels and bridges and scaffolding--the old mining facility barely visible on the largest one. No light shone out of the large, modified Golan II battlestation that was the center of the complex, or of any of the structure sticking out of the asteroids surfaces, though he could see a few raised areas on the component asteroids making up the base, probably buildings, but unfortunately real details weren't discernable from this distance.

He absently asked the officer at the helm their time to arrival. 22 minutes, was the answer. Their progress was slow thanks to the myriad of different gravitational fields they had to overcome, and the ripples of space time both slowing, augmenting, and throwing off their course all at the same time. Caution was necessary due to the unpredictable fluctuations in both mediums.

Jesh walked over to the sensor control station, where the crew sat idly since they were unable to perform their duties. "Sensor Officer, see me please," he asked politely. The woman, having nothing to do, came on over to him to pass the time and get her mind of the nervousness that came to everyone excluding the mad before going into combat. "Mrs. Helms," he spoke, his voice without a trace of emotion or excitement, very unlike him. "Please make your crew useful. Detail two or three people to collect several dozen pairs of macrobionoculars from the marines below and begin taking observations of the asteroid and it's base. Get the intelligence officer to assist you. We need to know what we're up against."

Jesh shut his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths as he realized he was failing to keep his cool. He was performing far worse under pressure than his reasonably level-headed self usually did, and not because it had been a long time since he'd found himself in a truly stressful situation like this; it wasn't. You'd think you'd encounter fewer dangerous situations where you truly risked your neck at the top of the the organization compared to the grunt levels, but for Jesh the opposite had been true thanks to his prominent position and his style of leadership from the front--as exemplified by things like personally going to fetch the information they needed himself on Garos IV.

"Captain," he said softly, his eyes still shut and his chin turned up. "Tell our improvised sensor crew that they have five minutes until I want a briefing. That'll give us fifteen minutes until contact to plan."

Opening his eyes again, Jesh looked around the bridge with fresh curiosity. At crew stations and pits where twenty years ago sat trim, crisp Imperial crew complete with their matching uniforms and sharp accents now sat a motley faux-band of personnel assembled from a variety of mercenaries and soldiers of fortune doing their best to act the part. The Smuggler's Alliance had never had the resources to train the crew to professional Imperial levels of training and efficiency, but they had done the best they could. They went through their training in an equally motley variety of ways: some through the training programs of private armies or mercenary corporations, some through extensive training programs of planetary or sector defense forces, some through Imperial training facilities run by officers who didn't mind taking a few large bribes and altering some records, or who otherwise owed the Smuggler's Alliance a few favors. A few even went through the Imperial Navy training program itself and deserted to return to their underworld roots.

Despite any of this, though, Jesh was very proud of his ship's crew, and the crew's of the other thirteen Victory Star Destroyers in Smuggler Alliance control, as well as the similarly raised crews of the other, smaller vessels in their service. His crew, while of shady origins and not exactly of Imperial Navy quality, was well drilled and had high moral. In addition, their variety of backgrounds and training gave them a unique quality you wouldn't find in the crew of a vessel equipped with hard lined Imperials: creativity. In battle, there was no true replacement for training, but creativity had a way of defying the odds in countless dim-looking scenarios, as any long-lived Smuggler would tell you. All things considered, Jesh would take them up against any Imperial-crewed Victory-class Star Destroyer and wouldn't doubt a minute about the outcome.

Though perhaps that comparison wasn't entirely fair. The Smuggler's Luck was a smuggler's ship, with all the upgrades and hot rodding the title implied.

Stock Victory-class Star Destroyers fresh out of Kuat or Fondor or wherever the hell they made them were hardly anything to sneer at--bristling with weaponry, plated with thousands of tons of armor, they were the most feared and respected warships in the galaxy until the later Imperial-class Star Destroyer came along. But the ship whose bridge he now stood on was hardly your stock Victory. Years of modifications of various sorts had turned her into something far more potent than what she appeared to be, like any good smuggling freighter.

That considered, He'd even give them decent odds against one of the newer Nebula-class Star Defender used by the old New Republic and still give them the better odds. They might even be able to come out on top against an Imperial class vessel, though perhaps that was pushing it a bit. . .

An unconscious smile creeped upon his face. Jesh was proud of his band, even if they were one hell of a motley crew.

"When we're done here," he shouted so everyone could hear, "I'll buy every man a round!"



In a distinctly informal manner--Jesh was happy to see the former Imperial Colonel's strict formality's were starting to wear off--the Intelligence Officer who had been directing his macrobionocular-wielding sensor team came to him to report. He had a bundle of papers at his side that had some inkstick sketches on the in outlines that vaguely resembled the distant base. "We've gotten quite a bit done in that short period of time," he began quickly, in a rush to finish and lifting up the bundle. "The Sensor crew is hardly a trained observer unit, but they've done well. We've positively identified a pair of shield projectors, one located in toward the center of the complex, the other located in the upper right region where you can see a see bit more growth than the other parts of the base even at this distance. I couldn't identify any model or make a very accurate prediction about their strength, but if I had to venture a guess I'd say the center one's in the 2,000 SBD range and the other in the 1,000 SBD range."

"I'm guessing you have them marked down," Jesh put in, nodding at the drawings.

"Yes," the Officer replied--Lieutenant Commander Thanis--Jesh remembered. "But I wasn't going to show you for the shields, since it's simple enough to explain. Besides, some of the crew's artwork is rather," he hesitated, "untasteful, to put it nicely, and I figured there was no reason to subject you to it more than necessary."

Jesh reached for the papers in the man's hand, and the Officer didn't resist. One quick look through the pages showed what he meant. The hastily done drawings were hardly works of art.

"How 'bout weaponry?" Jesh asked, trying to hurry the man along. He had an important job to do and he didn't want to tie him up too long.

The other man knew this as well. "We've been unable to visually identify any weaponry so far on the surface, nor any of the surrounding asteroids. We suspect they might have concealed Turbolasers or Ion Cannons hidden in small nearby asteroids, or others rigged to ram enemy ships like we've got set up back at the 'Run. They might even have them on the surface hidden under blast doors or concealed by some other means, but we've seen nothing yet. I'm sure there's something around."

"Alright," Jesh said, disappointed that he hadn't been able to learn more, but also relieved that they hadn't at the same time in a way. Less resistance would just make their job easier. "Get back to work. Make sure if you find anything important you get someone to tell me immediately, and keep me updated."

Wasting no time, the other man turned and returned to the forward bridge observation ports where the team was working, leaving Jesh will the thin stack of drawings and his thoughts.

As he stood on the main control center of the hidden base, Jesh reflected on how the inhabitants had put up surprisingly little resistance. Two Gamma-class Assault Shuttles full of Assault Troops were all it had taken: One to the base's main power generator where they used built in manual overrides to temporarily cut the base's power; the other to the base's almost-invisible shuttle hangar, who's entrance was located within a crater for concealment, where they quickly cleared and secured the structure from enemy personnel. From here, a steady stream of fresh Assault Troopers could be maintained, allowing them to push into the base.

But instead, Jesh had ordered several brief thrusts, cut off almost as soon as they began. Troops, moving down the corridors, pulled back almost as soon as contact was made. With some quick guesses about enemy strength and reserves, he then had another assault made, this time in earnest, during which another two Gamma-loads of troops were unloaded into tunnels near what he guessed was the primary command center, the dome on the surface, but was actually recreation and eating facilities for the base's research personnel, where sheepish scientists still remained despite the screeching of alarms across the base. Reinforced with both men and information forced from the naive researchers (Jesh found it funny that the most brilliant men and women intellectually often had the least amount of common sense), they organized and launched another combined thrust of both landings and took the control center, where they cut off life support for the rest of the base and waited for the surrender.

Now Jesh stood down on the base itself, with it's power and life support fully restored and it's hoards of researchers and scientists and other personnel who had worked on the cloaking device herded into their makeshift mass prison, the mess hall. Smuggler's Alliance troops stood all around them, watching for whispers amongst themselves: No talking was the rule, unless you wished to speak to an interrogator. The enemies thinned troops, who hadn't been too numerous to begin with, were well away from these precious intellectual gems and now made their home in the detention blocks deep within the Golan II that made up the station's core.

Their improvised interrogation room was located near this recreation area for convenience. It was a former holovid theater, with rows of padded chairs to the back and a holoprojector in the front, with a clearing in between where they set up shop. Mirrored glass was set between the two sections, so Smuggler Alliance personnel detailed with observing or taking notes on the interrogations could watch without being noticed near the audio and visual recording equipment they had set up back there as well. In the front, the interrogation area itself, a pair of traditional interrogation chairs had been set up near a rack of wicked looking instruments that Jesh found useful for scaring the victims before any words had been exchange, and he had no doubts that fear would be their most useful asset on these weak minded men. Geniuses they might be, even galaxy-renown researchers, but their intellectual qualifications didn't make them resistant to interrogation by any stretch of credentials or imagination. They would break easily under pressure. Now whether the troopers, currently undergoing military interrogation by the detention bays would was another question entirely, but it wasn't their information they needed. That wasn't essential.

"Defenses . . . Recalled," the Quarran Doctor currently in 'the hot seat' as the observers and interrogators began to call it pushed out dryly, slowly and weakly. "No explanation."

The interrogator picked up a wicked looking scalpel from the table of instruments beside the doctor.

"I . . . swear," the Quarran added, breathing heavily. He had likely been out of water for a while and was getting dehydrated due to it.

"You must have heard a few rumors," the interrogator led on calmly. Major Metcalf was good at this craft--he had once worked for Imperial Intelligence as an interrogator before they began to suspect him of insurgent thoughts, and he had fled before being forced to go through what he'd inflicted before.

"Rumors," the doctor added raspily. "There were . . . rumors. Empire was over Garos. Fleet . . . recalled. Only rumors. I beg . . . you. Water. Please bring me water."

"After we are finished," Metcalf returned, looking the scared Quarren in the eye. "Luckily, we are almost done." His voice had a sympathetic tone in it, and he put on a fake smile. "We very much appreciate what you have told us, and there is only a little bit more we need for now. Do you think you can go through a few more questions?"

The Quarran nodded weakly at the 'good cop' act, which usually gave subdued, defeated prisoners the will to answer just a few more questions.

"What is this station normally defended by?"

The Quarran swallowed. "Our usual . . . defenses . . . four . . . Cruisers," he forced out. Jesh had no doubt that he was burning with dehydration and would be rendered unconscious in only minutes. He'd spent four hours in the holding area without a full water immersion before being brought here.

"Can you remember the class?" Metcalf's voice was still calm and sympathetic.

The Quarran shook his head weakly. He either never knew or couldn't remember.

Metcalf smiled again. "Thank you, friend. We appreciate your cooperation to the fullest extent you can and your willingness to assist us." He turned to a guard in the rear corner of the chamber. "Private, kindly take this doctor to the aquatic refreshing facility and let him take half an hour and immerse himself. Do not let him out of your sight or fiddle with any technology."

The prisoner was escorted away and in a moment or two a new one would be brought in. A real assembly line they had going.

Each basic interrogation took approximately twenty to thirty minutes, and so far they'd been at it for four hours. The eight stations like this one had so far processed approximately 80 scientists of one sort or another. They had about four hundred total to do, plus six-hundred military personnel and eight-hundred shipyard personnel who were here to build the cloaks themselves, refine the ore necessary to make them, and work on the surprise they had found within one of the smaller asteroids.

Asteroid 7 was hardly spectacular looking--1,200 meter long and approximately 800 in diameter, it had the appearance of a rough brown egg. But within it's thin walls, one found it was actually hollow, and it contained a surprise none of them would have imagined: A small cruiser-class shipyard. From it's design, it was apparent that it was at one time a civilian yard designed for the construction of ships in the 500-750m range, and a civilian yard was perfectly adequate for military vessels. Berthed in it were several more surprises: Four apparently complete Katana Heavy Cruisers, probably left over or captured from the Thrawn Empire and never revealed, and probably equipped with cloaks. With the ship's heavy firepower to weight ratio, one of the highest ever seen on a vessel in it's class and equal superior to that of a (stock) Victory-class Star Destroyer, they were logical choices for the task, and had the additional benefit of not being too expensive. In addition, there was a half-assembled Interdictor Cruiser, several Carrack-class Cruisers, two Lambda Shuttles, and several dozen black Cygus Missileboats.

So their interrogators wouldn't be getting any sleep for a while yet; too much to do, too much information to learn. Thanks to the interrogations, the situation was becoming more clear. They had a few answers now, but with those answers came only more questions.

The scientists had only heard rumors about what was going on. The gradual assembly of a fleet outside the base, they had noticed that. But where it was going or what to do about it was unknown to them, and many didn't care. In what seemed to Jesh typical scientist fashion, they had ignored the situation and done their work instead. A few might have heard something from a friend or a few rumors, but mostly they were ignorant about their surroundings. As a result, information on military movements was available only from the station's defenders, who were naturally 'in' on the situation. Unfortunately, military men were harder to crack, but liberal doses of truth serum was taking the truth right out of the Commander in charge of this base and the Lieutenants who had assisted him without any sort of messy interrogation. Speed, right now, was more important than the expensive solution.

Empowered by the thought, Jesh stood up and moved toward the exit in the back of the room to head for the Golan II in the base's center. His escort, two Assault Troops waiting for him in the back of the room, followed him out and moved to flanking positions, naturally falling into step with him. He tried to take them out of it by subtly adjusting his own pace and the size of his steps--it was something of a game he played, and he almost always did it when being escorted unless he had things on his mind--but like always he failed to get out of step with them. They were too well trained for that.

The halls of the installation were smoothed, carved rock with a tile floor in the asteroids. Using lasers to vaporize the surface of the rock and texture-molding tractor fields, they had created a glass-smooth surface like polished marble. Very efficient, cheap, and neat.

The tunnels between asteroids didn't have the crude but elegant feel of the tunnels in the asteroids themselves. Instead, they were designed to give a brute force appearance of strength, probably as a psychological boost to those using what some may view as weak, untrustable bridges capable of collapsing at any second. Durasteel beams were left uncovered on the roof and walls, and powerful braces passed between them to give a solid look. Outside, more large beams were present, and one could see the emergency tractor beams on the asteroids connected by the passageway holding the asteroids together even if this marvel of engineering failed.

To Jesh, the experience of the walkway was a little unsettling but not the life-threatening walk many scientists who avoided the passages felt it to be. One fanatical hater of them even had a little scooter he used to travel between the asteroids in space.

Fortunately, the walk to the detention area was uneventful. No ambushes from rogue guard elements--his men had experienced two already, and were making a second, even more thorough search of the base to find any more--, no unescorted scientists to be secured, and no breakaways of the passages between asteroids.

The detention area was of the standard Imperial model followed in starships and battle station across the galaxy. Four cell blocks, each guarded on the ends and regularly monitored under normal circumstances by guards. Slightly short on manpower today, though, the Smugglers Alliance was relying on simply the guards at the tunnel ends in the unlikely event of a breakout. Connected to the guard rooms on the ends of the cellblocks themselves were the interrogation rooms, fully stocked for the breaking of even the most defiant prisoners, two on each end. Because they were soundproof, Jesh could hear nothing from them and had nothing to help him make his choice.

"Lieutenant," he said, addressing a lieutenant who had taken command of the guard station he was at now. "Which room has the ranking prisoner?" The lieutenant pointed at one and spoke.

"A captain. They've put the higher officers on truth serum and taken them away to another location since they're sedated by it, leaving us the rooms to work with."

Jesh nodded his thanks and entered the room that had been designated by the Lieutenant. The two interrogators and two guards looked at him as he entered but did not speak to him. The prisoner, head restrained and strapped in a chair facing away from Jesh knew someone else had entered but did not speak. For a few moments things were quiet as the interrogators briefly let up their interrogation for his entry. Then one of them smacked the prisoner several times while the other held a large knife. A castration knife.

"No, hell no," the man finally spoke, spitting out blood, "Half the force remained here, all that our commanders deemed necessary to rout the soon to be confused, demoralized and isolated Sundari force. They returned to Garos when the Empire attacked."

They'd have to get more details later on that, but the fleet was priority now.

"So where did the other half go," the interrogator demanded, smacking the man on the cheek and causing blood and spittle to fly from the prisoner's mouth."

"The other half of the fleet is gone," he said, hanging his head low in defeat. "They went to Vjun."

After fifteen minutes more in the interrogation chamber he stood and left the interrogators to their task to go and check on one of the other thousands of things all happening at once across their new station. The hangars, he thought, remembering what they had found there and the dozens of engineers currently scouring the vessels they had found. Or perhaps the defense control center. Finding out what kind of defenses this base had was a top priority--and it did have them, obviously, since there was a defense control center to control them. Why the didn't use them was a mystery, but it would have to wait. As he thought, there was movement in his jacket's side pocket, and a familiar beeping noise: his comlink. He lifted it and activated it.

"Tolli here," he spoke, hoping whoever it was would get straight to the business at hand. With so many things happening at once and so many important things that required his attention, he didn't have a lot of time to waste. This must be the 60th call he'd gotten in the past four hours since they'd occupied the base.

He recognized the voice speaking to him as Bim's. "Hey Jesh. We got something real important down in the main control center." For a moment Jesh was overcome by memories of the past stirred up by Kach's brother's voice, indistinguishable from his brothers--and then the weight of all the things going on dragged him back to the present.

"How important?" Jesh asked, drawing on his latest non nonsense method in setting priorities.. "Give me a number from one to ten."

"This one rates a twelve, Jesh," Bim answered. "It's that big. So big I have to tell you face to face. The comm won't suffice. Really."

Jesh's thoughts were filled with speculation-more cloaking technology, he expected, but perhaps something new? There was so much it could be, so many possibilities, that he couldn't even fathom them at the present.

"You sure, Bim?" he asked to reassure himelf. "I don't have lots of time to throw around with things as they are right now."

Bim made a sympathetic sigh. After Jesh, he was the top man here and knew as well as anyone did just what Jesh was going through. "Yeah, Jesh, it's that big," he answered. "So will I see you in ten minutes?"

Jesh hesitated only a second. "Yeah," he answered exhaustedly. "Ten minutes. I'll be there."



Jesh arrived at the primary command center in the Golan II battle station that made up the core of the complex after a five minute walk, during which he was still unable to break stride with his guards. The corridors of the hidden research station were packed with Smuggler's Alliance and station personnel going about their business (he noted that the station personnel were never unattended). The control center--which he found he was beginning to think of as the 'bridge' of the station--was packed with members of the Smuggler's Luck's crew and and troops, as well as captured station personnel informing them about various devices and their use. Waiting for him near the entrance, conversing with a man he recognized as one of the dozens of slicers the Luck carried was Bim. The younger Thorton approached and smiled.

"I'm glad to see you came down. This is really that important."

"Yeah," Jesh said warningly, "I hope it is."

Bim grinned and began. "Like everyone else on the base, when we began poking around in here we all assumed that their sensors were as useless as ours. But eventually somebody examining the sensor consoles noticed that the positioning of the asteroids on the sensor screens corresponded correctly with the actual, visual position of the asteroids outside. From there, we got a couple of slicers and set them to tearing through the system. That took two hours, but in the end we found the big thing we called you down for, a fix for our sensors."

Jesh looked at Bim suspiciously. "Continue."

We don't have any sort of developmental records or such for the algathorium we've found, but we've got a pretty good idea how they made it. They simply recorded everything outside, a tedious process at best with the sensor interference, along with it's velocity, Hibridium content, and other stuff like that, plugged that into a program that predicts the whole fields movements out into the far future" (kind of like the kinds they've got for stars, Jesh noted). Bim paused for a second, catching his breath. He was getting excited and starting to talk fast. "From there, a simple computer program could calculate exactly how signals were going to be distorted, even in the far future. Another simple program is all it would take to adjust the incoming signals or outgoing signals to compensate for interference, and then your communication's back online. It would take a reasonable bit of computing power--nothing that's a problem for the base or the Luck, though our fighters might have a few issues--but it's sound. We've extracted the algathorium and had surprised the Smuggler's Luck with a few messages, though they can't respond. Currently the programs are being uploaded to them, and in approximately ten minutes they'll have full communication and sensor capability once again. Estimates are fighters and support craft on the ship will have it uploaded in thirty to forty-five minutes."

At the end of his little speech, it amused Jesh that Bim was out of breath. But he'd done well at presenting the information at hand, and told Jesh exactly what he'd needed to know.

"Thank you Bim," Jesh praised politely, which reinforced the effect. He was by far a good captain and alliance member, and Jesh's favored to inherit his seat when he either died or chose to move on like Kach had. "I thank you for calling me down. That was well worth it."

"There's more, though," Bim interrupted before Jesh could turn away to look around the bridge or move on to another part of the ship. Jesh turned his attention back to him for this bit of information.

"Down here, sensors and communications are fully operational," Bim spoke hurriedly. "That includes hypercomm and it's sensor counterpart, hyperwave radar, along with Cronau radiation detectors. And now that we've begun paying attention to them we've learned a few interesting things."

"Like what?" Jesh asked, impatient yet curious at once.

"Like there's a fleet several light years from here, and heading this way. And since nobody knows we're here, I'd bet you a decicredit to a donut hole it's a sure bet they're not friendly."



In addition to the special hanger containing the Katana Dreadnuts and assorted smaller craft, they base they had captured--which remained unnamed, though a few ideals were becoming popular among their improvised crew--also had two more dedicated asteroid hangars for fighters and small gunships and corvettes. Each hangar added four squadrons of fighters to the two squadrons in the core battle station's own hangar bay, for a total of ten squadrons--two more than the Smuggler's Luck carried. Unfortunitly, the luck didn't have any pilots to spare, but if they could dig some up the craft would be a great asset.

"Bim," he said, calling his attention back to him once more. "You know there's ten squadrons of fighters in this base, right?"

"Yeah," Bim relied, "but my ship doesn't have nearly enough pilots to spare. Unless you're thinking. . . " his voice trailed off. He intended to let Jesh confirm his suspicion.

"That's right," Jesh answered coolly, trying to mentally will Bim to calm down. Like his brother, Bim was a hothead and for both of them Jesh had acted as a moderate influence. "Get engineers to place remote charges on each fighter in the main hangars and offer them a chance to fly in the bases defense. Offer it," he stressed. "I think it's a Sundari fleet, so they'd just be performing their mission. Warn them that any attack on our own fighters, battleship, or the station itself will result in their immediate destruction. The ones that agree to fly will be used as a reserve." Jesh paused. "Don't mess with the fighters in the Katana hanger," he added. "We need to inspect them more."

Bim said nothing--he was either spacing out or thinking. Then he was back. "Sure, Jesh. I'll get it done."

"Have you heard from the defense control center recently?" he asked, his voice a bit more rushed.

"Not lately," Bim answered. "This place is apparently well protected, but I dont know any specifics. You'd be better off giving Sean a call--he's the one I've delegated the job to."

"All right," Jesh said. "I'll call him. Get some men setting up those charges and a computer detonation program. I'll speak with you later, before they get here and we'll compare notes."

Jesh pulled his comlink out of his vest's front pocket--a rather late model one called a Bluetooth--and stuck it in his ear. "Call Sean Weston," he ordered, taking advantage of it's valuable speech recognition technology.

"Calling Sean Weston," the device confirmed. "There were two beeps and then Sean, who was under far less pressure and was far less busy than Jesh, answered. His voice was normal and his speaking unhurried. "Hello boss," Sean said. "What can I do for you?"

"Yeah, Sean. I need to know a couple of things," Jesh began, not bothering with any pleasantries. "First off, I have to know what state the base's defenses are in. What've you guys gotten active since we've got here, and what are you working on now?"

The response was immediate. Though he didn't always think his words through before speaking--kind of like Kach, Jesh realized--he spoke fast was was acceptable at getting his point across. "We've found that this station's got quite a few protection systems, though why they didn't use them is beyond us--a little exercise for your interrogators later. But anyway, it's got everything it seems like. Turbolasers, both on the battle station, some of the component asteroids, and some camouflaged in random asteroids further out in the field, with similar setups for both Ion cannons and missile launchers. There's also the ten squadrons of fighters which I had someone tell you about earlier, so that's not news, and there's even tractor beam emplacements on some of the larger asteroids and asteroid components that we figure are intended to snag smaller rocks and run them into enemy vessels--a clever setup. They're surrounded by missile launchers to ambush anyone who tries to destroy them.

"The bad news is we have control of basically none of it. We managed to bring hangar controls back online, so we can launch the station's own fighters and use the hangars ourselves, but the other defenses are inaccessible at the moment. We've got slicers trying to get into them currently, but so far they're not making much progress--lots of encryptions, multiple pass codes, and a few other clever tricks, they say."

"So tough luck there," Jesh commented. "What about the shields?"

"I wasn't done," Sean put in, "but we do have shields. They weren't locked off, only the offensive systems are. But as I was going to say, we've got a couple of guys familiar with Imperial computer systems down here, and they say while all the offensive weaponry outside the station or on the rocks is blocked off--sorry, the component asteroids of the base--the weaponry on the Golan II may be easier to access and so they'll try to get into there. They say the station's cyber defenses look pretty stock, so it shouldn't be too long. Call it forty-five minutes at the minimum, they told me, and probably at least an hour."

"Finished?" Jesh asked after a second of silence.

"Yes," Sean returned.

"Alright. A Golan II's weaponry defenitly will be better than nothing. Good job to your men on your work, and please keep it up. When you've got a second, figure out which men would be best on which stations so the battle station can go into combat."

"Why?" Sean asked. "Are we under attack?" His voice was unchanged.

"Not yet," Jesh answered. "Not quite. But that's about to change." Sean's expression remained unchanged. "Hell's about to break loose, Sean," Jesh continued. "In twenty minutes we catch it."

From the defense command center of the base--located on top of the core the Golan II battle station--Jesh and Bim watched the enemy fleet revert to real space several hundred kilometers away. From this distance it was just a light show--new stars appearing and twisting among one another--but the stations sensors, adjusted to compensate for the asteroid field's signal distortion, showed what they really were: dozens of warships and fighters trying to organize themselves into something resembling a combat formation without any sensors or communications while wondering where was the forming Garotian fleet they were supposed to smash.

"So they were just late to the party," Bim said softly, almost detachedly, to Jesh. As a commander, he was calculating the odds in his head and making plans for the coming battle. It would defenitly be an uphill fight--even with a Victory-class Star Destroyer on their side and the ten squadrons of bomb-rigged fighters piloted by volunteers from the Garotian hangars they would be out gunned at least three or four to one. But as smugglers, both of them had seen far worse odds in their days and come out on top.

Like most planets, the Sundari didn't have a bottomless well of money they could throw into their fleet, especially since they weren't an especially wealthy planet. It was a relief to Jesh that the large battleships and battle cruisers typical of a true expidentiary force like you'd see the Empire send after criminal elements when some bored Admiral or Moff had nothing better to do were mainly absent. On his datapad, which was programmed to bring up the same sensor data reports as seen by the sensor station crew, he coudl see the Sundari fleet was primarily composed of assorted, smaller capital ships nearly a hundred strong ranging from system patrol craft on up. They were assembled--if their scattered, unorganized formation could be called that--around a single, massive and battered old Imperial-class Star Destroyer at least four times the tonnage of the next largest ship, an antique, Clone Wars era Acclamator transport.

"So this is the infamous Sundari fleet," Jesh commented dryly. "Somehow," he added jokingly, "I expected it to be a bit, well, bigger."

"It's not a wealthy planet," Bim answered seriously. "Garos IV is, and even they only have two Imperial Star Destroyers."

"Yeah, I've heard of that," Jesh said sarcastically. Hi didn't say any more, and instead began to think along the same lines as Bim.

Even with their massive advantage in firepower and numbers, Jesh figured their odds had to be about even. A Victory Star Destroyer--especially of the heavily armed Victory I class--was nothing to sneer at, and the Smuggler's Luck was far more capable than a stock Victory, with upgraded systems and a few surprises on the side. He would consider the ship equal to an MC 80 or even an MC 90 Mon Calamari Cruiser in a head to head duel. But in a pure slugging match against their current opposition, even the Luck couldn't pull through. Not unless they had a half a dozen more Victory's like here in ambush positions would they have much of a chance in a contest like that (at the thought, Jesh briefly considered, then dismissed, the thought of calling for reinforcements. At least one of the Smuggler's Alliance's thirteen other Victory's. But they were at or around Smuggler's Run right now--two days jump away).

Under normal circumstances, anyway.

Their largest advantage was they had full sensor and communications capability while their foe was both blind and mute. The smugglers had come here to steal cloaking technology and now, ironically, as long as they were in the asteroid field, to their opponents every one of their ships was effectively invisible. Paranoia, easily fostered with a few attack from the rear by fighters, could help limit the number of vessels they were facing at once, and the attacks would be uncoordinated and slow, since messages would have to be transmitted in tedious code with their running lights, and data would have to be physically carried from vessel to vessel by messenger ships.

In addition, simply being able to see nothing, Jesh realized that with their sensors disabled their enemy had another major problem: targeting. While at close range (a few kilometers) it could be done visually and this wouldn't be a big factor, at longer ranges Sundari gun crews would be incapable of hitting basically anything without their now-useless targeting computers to calculate enemy velocities and tell them where to point their guns. The Luck, on the other hand, had no such issues. Her guns and targeting computers would work just fine out to the very edges of their effective range, so as long as they stayed distant they would be all right.

He smiled at the thought. The enemy could bring as more guns to the fight, but if they didn't know where to point them then they might as well have brought clubs.

Missiles wouldn't be a problem either. With their expensive guidance systems unable to detect and lock on to any targets or guide the projectile to them, they were nothing but expensive rockets, even more useless than turbolasers at long range.

"Bim," he said. "Any ideas?"

"A few," he responded. "They can't see us, so we can use our fighter to . . ."

Jesh cut him off. "Already got that. And that they don't have targeting computers, too. Anything other than that?"

Bim looked at him with an absent expression. "Nothing."

"Alright," Jesh said softly, looking back up at the distant stars before looking at his data pad once again. So far their enemies had launched twelve squadrons of star fighters--144. Quickly remembering what he had seen on the capital ship list on his data pad, Jesh estimated that at most they would be able to bring only three times that number to bare--hardly an optimistic number, but with no enemy sensors or communications he figured what the combined Smugglers and base had now--18 squadrons--could take on three times their number with minimal loss. So they were in the black when it came to fighters. But that still left the problem of capital ships.

Not for long, though. Turning around, Jesh began giving orders, and the battle was joined.

Now on the bridge of the Smuggler's Luck with Bim, Jesh watched the huge asteroid below them spin as they waited for the right opportunity to attack. On the other side of it sat the powerful Sundari fleet, blind and mute, but certainly very deadly none the less. Surrounding the ship, in a cloud around the Victory-class Star Destroyer, waited half of the fighter squadrons at their disposal, evenly divided between Hornet Interceptors and the bomb-rigged buckets flown by volunteers from the station's old defense force. The remaining half of the fighters were divided into two groups, with the remainder of their Hornet Interceptors back at the station, and the remainder of the garrison's own fighters getting into ambush positions in the asteroid fields. Skimming behind the asteroids in a path designed to minimize chances of visual exposure, in only moments the group would be in it's position for the attack, and then things would get interesting.

"Hey, Jesh," Bim called to him, "The fighter group's in position, and the shuttle group will be ready for action in only a minute tops. Do I give the signal to begin the wake-up call?"

Jesh nodded soberly. He was not a seasoned military officer like his old comrade turned Imperial Kach was or even a fresh academy graduate. He was just a smuggler playing the part. That he had commanded forces larger than this one in the past didn't make it any easier to send men under his command to their deaths. That the odds weren't the best he'd ever seen--even if they weren't the worst he'd ever seen, either--didn't make it any easier still.

"Do it, Bim. Fire the missiles."

At once, Bim stood back from Jesh and nodded to Sean Weston, his second in command and Bim's own smuggling partner from his smuggling days. Even now, down below in Luck's docking bays, sat Bim's personal ship, the Firebird next to Jesh's own Shockwave. Sean in turn turned and nodded to the armaments officer on the far side of the bridge, standing over the Armament Control pits, who said a few indecipherable words and looked back in their general direction. The orders had been given, and now the battle would begin.

At the helm, the current pilot of the massive Battleship pushed the throttles forward, granting more power to the mighty LF9 Ion engines, heavily modified for more speed and thrust over the years. The deck began to vibrate, and the battleship slowly eased forward and away from the asteroid below until if they moved only a hundred or so meters further ahead they would be in view of the enemy fleet.

The bridge was dead silent. All eyes were on Jesh and Bim at the forward view ports.

Jesh turned around. "This is it, people. Stay sharp, stay confident and we will emerge victorious," he spoke loudly, then paused. "Fire the first salvo."

And with that, instantly they all turned back to their stations. The silence of a few moments ago was washed away in the voices of diligent crew. From the front of the vessel, there was a brief roar, barely able to permeate the roar of the excited crew, as twenty of the vessel's eighty Assault Concussion Missile Tubes fired one of their deadly payload, and then the meter-long missiles were outside the ship and accelerating away. A few seconds later, each was only a small star in the distance: their drives glow, charging the projectiles forward to their target: the enemy formation's left flank.

Jesh sighed. For the moment, the battle was out of his hands.



Snug in his fighters harness, Devon Thane manipulated his Hornet Interceptor's controls carefully as the nimble vessel skimmed above the surface of the asteroid below. One slip and it would all be over, but the hazardous method of travel was necessary to minimize chances of the Sundari fleet spotting them, as unlikely of an event as that was. Behind him flew his single squadron, the only one sent out with the first ambush party of the Smuggler’s Luck’s eight Hornet Interceptor II squadrons. Following in their wakes. Were five of the station’s ten squadrons of fighters: one squadron of E-wings, two of A-wings, and two of Sorosuub Planetary fighters, a rather popular model of starfighter designed a decade ago and then sold in bulk to planetary defense forces across the galaxy.

If you looked closely at the fighters, you would find that they had a bit more in common than they were simply the newest fighters the base had to offer. In addition to this, they were all fast fighters designed for interception and assault duties, and each had a heavy missile armament that would deliver real power to their coming attack.

“Hold here, I’m taking a quick peek,” he radioed, and then pulled back on his stick and pushed forward on his throttle to pull his ship up, briefly revealing the enemy fleet. Just as soon, he was back down and in formation. A quick look at the valuable data his sensors had collected during his brief exposure told him what he needed to know: They only had a few moments until it was showtime.

“All squadrons, report in,” he radioed. “Black squadron is here.”

“Red squadron is here,” the next squadron in the group’s leader, the E-wing squadron, returned.

“Orange squadron is here.” One of the A-wing squadrons.

“Yellow Squadron is here.” The second A-wing squadron.

“Green Squadron is here,” the leader of the first squadron of the Planetary Fighters reported. While not really designed for deep space combat, they would be extremely useful out here with their heavy missile armament and acceleration and speed equaling that of the A-wings.

“Blue Squadron is here,” the leader of the last squadron, also of Planetary Fighters, reported.

“All squadrons present,” he confirmed. “Check arms, check arms, check arms. Take off the safeties, we’re playing for keeps. Check your shields—they can’t speak but they can still shoot! Wingmen, stick with your leader. Leaders, watch your wingmen. Everyone remember this is a slash attack. As soon as those missiles hit the flank we’re in. Fire your missiles at the smaller ships, repeat the smaller ships, who’s shields are out or weak. Attack in squadrons, firing one missile a pass. As you are empty break off and engage the fighter screen. As one we will return to base and reload and rejoin the battle. Remember to follow the escape corridor to lead them into the trap. Godspeed and good luck.” He temporarily cut the com and pulled up, getting another quick look.

“All fighters, put the throttle to the firewall and follow me!”



In a scene that would have made directors of war holo films across the galaxy envious, the six squadrons of starfighters pulled out from behind the asteroid as a single, brilliant entity just as the enemy fleet became aware of the missiles baring down on them. But without the long term warning from sensors there was no time for evasive maneuvers on their part. They had exactly eleven and a half seconds from the time the first crew person spotted the incoming pinpricks of light in the vastness of space until impact. Unable to even readjust shields, the twenty missiles slammed unopposed into their targets,.

From his approaching Hornet Interceptor, Devon Thane watched as chaos overcame the left flank. Captains, convinced more were coming in began evasive maneuvers, while others watched ships guarding their flanks or on vanguard duty explode mysteriously, peppering them with shrapnel. A few, convinced they were being fired upon by surrounding vessels, returned fire on their most likely candidates for traitors who an odd officer or enlisted man swore to have seen fire upon them or the struck vessel just moments ago out of the corner of their eye. Some ships blundered into each other in attempts to avoid the sudden bombardment. Fighters milled about, their pilots unsure what to do.

In front of his Hornet, Thane watched the chaos ensue. The targeted flank, the left one, was made up of approximately eighty vessels of the two-hundred ship fleet, of which about seventy ships were now left intact after the sudden missile strike by the Smuggler's Luck. The formation--which was hardly what one would call parade-ground perfect before--was now almost completely broken up, a ripe target. The crews were obviously inexperienced at best, green at worst. Not really surprising, if you knew the situation like he did. According to the informant they had got information from on Garos IV, both Garotian and Sundari commanders viewed this confrontation in the days leading up to it as the one that would decide the long war once and for all, so it wasn't surprising that Sundari had thrown everything she could into the battle, including ships with green crews. But for the enemy fleet, unforeseen circumstances had turned them into a liability that was liable to cost them dearly. The unorganized formation, with fighters wondering around wondering what was going on and what to do about it, would put up little or no resistance and probably open fire on their own fighters.

Pushing the throttle to the firewall, just as he had put it, he led his squadrons into the combat zone.



Their approach was fast and deadly, with their engines maxed out and lasers blazing, the Smuggler Alliance fighters tore into the enemy flank, missiles streaking out ahead. Even if they knew the fighters were bearing down on them, they never would have knew the missiles were coming until it was too late, thanks to the Hornet Interceptor's decoy beams. By using it to block out the targeted ship's sensors, they wouldn't have been capable of detecting the fighters missile locks and would remain blissfully ignorant. In this sensor disrupting goop, however, they decoy beams remained off, sparing valuable power for the computer cores, which were using almost every bit of spare capacity they had to compensate for the sensor and comm distortion of the asteroid field.

"Black squadron, check your new target," he said, selecting a new one right as their first salvo of twelve missiles shot away towards a Corellian Gunship rendered shieldless by the earlier bombardment of Concussion Missiles and clicking the appropriate button on his control stick to transmit the targeting information to the rest of his squadron. After three seconds to let them track their new target, he gave the order to fire. "Fox two, fox two!" he called, unleashing the Concussion missile towards the new target--a wounded but still fighting IPV System Patrol Craft--just as the last one exploded from their volley. As soon as the missiles had left the craft, he was already scanning for another target.

"Hold missiles, use lasers," he said, picking out a Guardian-class Customs Cruisers doing it's best to stand up against a larger Corellian corvette. "This one'll be a strafing run." Pushing the engines hard in their rapid firing run, they opened up with their powerful laser Gattlings, sprinkling the shields with laser fire and actually forcing them down, leaving the ship open and vulnerable. Pulling his ship back around, he targeted the corvette and transmitted the information to the rest of the squadron. "Fox two!" he shouted in his adrenalin-pumped excitement. "Let 'em have it!" The Corellian Corvette, weakened by it's battle and not a particularly strong ship to begin with, exploded behind them.

"Alright," he said, "Let's cut the strikes for now, and see if we can take down a few fighters. Remember wingmen, stick with your leader." Quickly scanning the area around the Hornets for enemy fighters, which were automatically highlighted on the helmet-mounted Heads Up Display, he pulled into a hard right bank and up in an equally hard climb toward a squadron of Z-95 Headhunters circling confused above them.

Poor bastards, he thought. If he was right about the capital ships with green crews being put into service for the final battle, then it was probably true about the fighter crews, too. And green fighter squadrons, with no sensors or targeting equipment to help them or communications to keep in touch with both each other or fellow pilots, were nothing but cannon fodder. Closing rapidly, he pulled the trigger for his laser cannons and watched as a dozen green lances were spewed from each one, half of each connecting with the surprised Z-95 he had picked out and tearing down it's shields. Cutting the throttle, he pulled up behind it and unleashed another salvo that turned the antique fighter into a fireball. Beside him, his wingman did the same to his target's own wingman, and his squadron attempted to do so with their own targets. In the first pass, about half of the enemy fighters were destroyed and the rest damaged in some way, twisting about as the confused pilots tried to find out what was going on, but visually unable to see their attackers thanks to the Hornet II's glossy Reflec paint job, which made visual tracking all but impossible. Less than a minute later those half dozen craft went the same way as their comrades as the outclassed Z-95s were destroyed in detail by the smuggler craft.

Something inside of him screamed that that was wrong, that the green pilots never had a chance, but this was the wrong time to pay it any mind. He was in a war zone, not safe back on the Smuggler's Luck or in his apartment on Skip 100. He was a seasoned combat flyer, and he pushed the thought and accompanying emotions away. Instead, he focused on his sensor screens and on the view outside, awed at the carnage around them.

The Smuggler's Alliance pilots and their hastily recruited allies had done their job well. Over twenty ships--ranging from a small Corsair-class Starfighter to a Carrack-class Light Cruiser were wrecked thanks to the combined forces of the assault and the resulting chaos. In just a few minutes, the enemy fleet had lost more than 10% of their strength, and they would have to go about the laborious process of either rescuing the crews--made even more difficult by the lack of communications--or suffer the moral loss of abandoning the survivors. Either way, the Sundari fleet was going to be having some problems that would only benefit the defenders.

"All squadrons report in," he commed, wondering about the states of the other squadrons. "We'll discuss losses later. As ready, report to rendezvous point. We've done our job for now, and now we're going home."

After having the Smuggler's Luck inch up so the bridge was barely visible to the enemy fleet, Jesh now watched the ship's Sensor intelligence officer to his right, who in turn watched the Sundari flotilla through one of the pairs of macrobionoculars now easy to find around the bridge. "Things are pretty disrupted, but they're slowly restoring order" he reported without taking the macrobionoculars off the other fleet. "They're using their running lights to blink Morse code to one another--it's pretty crude, but it's the best they've to to work with. The downside to them is that we know what they're saying as well, so we got both a running commentary of events and advance warning of their moves."

"What are they saying?" Jesh asked. From a hundred-fifty kilometers away the enemy vessels were just pinpricks of light. At this distance the flashes of running lights were invisible to the naked eye.

"Left . . . flank . . . reform," the officer translated, watching the tedious transmission of messages by their foes. "Cease . . . fire . . . Garotian . . . trick . . . all . . . vessels . . . hold . . . formation . . . and . . . advance . . .along . . ." The officer named a vector. Still looking through the macrobionoculars he asked, "Was that our fighters return vector?" Jesh nodded. "Well, they're coming this way."

"Please continue with the message," Jesh asked.

"Oh, it's just standard stuff now. The big ISD ordered vanguard pickets forward and sent out that 'Sundari expects every citizen to do their duty.'"

"That's their command ship," Jesh mumbled.

"What?" The sensor officer asked, still looking out at the enemy ships.

"It was nothing," Jesh answered softly. "Alright," he continued in a firmer, louder voice, "Keep me posted." He shifted his attention to Bim, who was standing next to him. "Is the first wave recovered?" he asked.

"Yeah," Bim answered. "We've got the Hornets back on the Luck to be rearmed, and the Garotian squadrons are doing the same thing back at the installation. The pilots are being given a quick debriefing now, but things look good. Only half a dozen--none of them Hornets--failed to return, and we've received claims of at least a dozen and a half capital ship kills and twelve more wounded or probable, plus two squadrons worth of fighters. Only the sensor records will tell us the true results, but it looks like they did a good job.

"Thanks, Bim," Jesh returned. "Get them rearmed and then back in flight--extensive debriefs can wait for later. We've got more pressing business now. Launch 'em and get 'em in formation as soon as they're ready. We might be able to get another strike in before they hit us."



But they didn't, unfortunitly. Jesh estimated it would take twenty minutes to get all five squadrons rearmed and refueled, plus another ten to get in position for an additional attack. Unfortunitly, before half of those thirty minutes had gone by the Sundari flotilla had approached within forty kilometers of the Smuggler's Luck's position. By the time the Garotian fighters had returned from the base and were ready to move in position for a second ambush the Sundari fleet would already be finishing with the Luck and preparing to move on to the base, which was barely within visible sight from their current position. If there was to be any hope of survival, they would have to act soon or they would be in serious trouble.

"Alright," Jesh ordered, "it's time for us to be pulling back ourselves. Helm, power up our drives and move the vessel forward to give them a clear view of us. We wouldn't want them to miss this." Once gain, the Victory's massive drives powered up and pushed the ship forward, this time clear of the massive profile-hiding space-born mountain that had been concealing them. Less than six minutes travel away at an Imperial Star Destroyer's best pace, there would be no way they could miss this lightshow. Outside, the escorting cloud of fighters moved with the ship, maintaining their positions.

"Alright, on my mark weapons fire. Ion cannons hit the Star Destroyer, Turbolasers target smaller vessels from the vanguard. Missile launchers hold your fire, we may need your services later when things are a bit more sticky." He paused for a moment, letting the Luck drift that much further out of her abandoned cover. Finally, after an eternally long for seconds he gave the signal. "Mark."

Instantly, the space outside the battleship flashed in green light as the hundred twenty individual turbolasers she carried all fired at once. Moments later, the powerful lasers all connected with their targets, turning half a dozen small vanguard ships corvette sized or smaller into molten slag. Seconds later, the ship's ten Ion cannons--ten of them, added years ago during a refit in case they ever needed to disable a target but not destroy it--fired their own salvos, bathing the enemy star destroyer in a shower of sparks and energy as they hit. Seconds after that, another dazzling spectacle of the ship's turbolasers was on it's way, turning another half dozen ships to slag.

"Give them three more salvos," Jesh ordered, "then switch targets to the main body of battleships and cruisers. Give them three salvos, focusing each time on a specific ship, then switch back to the vanguard." The Smuggler's Luck's main guns fired again, slagging another half dozen enemy vessels, helpless thanks to their lack of targeting information but perfectly able to see the threat tearing into them with even the unaided eye. A second later, the macrobionocular-wielding officer tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey, Jesh," he announced, "we've got communications going on. All ships . .. flank . . . speed . . . corvettes . . . pickets . . . full . . . speed . . . advance . . . and . . . engage."

Jesh smiled and patted the man on the back in his excitement, one of his rare unsuppressed bursts of emotion, joy or otherwise. "One more salvo!" he shouted as the space outside flashed green again and a Sundari Assault Frigate burst into flames from the concentrated firepower. Beside it rested a destroyed Carrack-class Cruiser. "Then re-direct fire back to the pickets." He quickly looked around for Bim, who happened to be conveniently standing beside him. "Captain, they're going to do it. Direct the Luck into the asteroid field."

"What other option do they have?" Bim asked coolly. "They probably know it's a trap of some sort or another, but their only option beside springing it and reacting accordingly is splitting up to search the asteroid field, and if they did that they'd get picked apart piece by piece."

"Yeah, well whatever their reasoning, they're still going to follow us." He paused with a thoughtful expression. "I knew we were going to do it earlier, Bim, but this is the first time in this fight that my mind has really agreed with my heart and my instinct that we're going to win this one."



Finally presented with a tangible target, the Sundari fleet accelerated forward at the sight of the Smuggler's Luck. Far faster than the larger battleships lagging behind, the smaller corvettes, gunboats and patrols hips that made up the bulk of the fleet charged on ahead, leaving the more powerful but ponderously slow vessels in their wake. Jesh watched as they opened up into an uneven and disorganized pincer formation--if they successfully reached the smuggler battleship, the Victory would be rendered immobile by the encompassing swarm of smaller craft and slowly pummeled to death. Though individually weak, their large numbers--nearly a hundred now bearing down on the battleship--gave them the combined punch of a larger vessel if they could get close enough for their guns to be effective.

Fortunately for the smugglers, Jesh didn't plan on giving the Sundari fleet that chance. Drives fully powered and slowly accelerating the mighty vessel, the Luck began to move away into the thick of the asteroid field, her continued fire almost daring her enemies to follow her. As Bim had pointed out, they really didn't have a choice in the matter--they could follow the Luck and be slowly worn down, or move towards the base, in which case his ship would pummel the enemy flank. Either way, it was a losing proposition for them.

In hot pursuit of the battleship came the eighty vessels that had formerly made up the enemy vanguard, now tasked with chasing them down. Though her engines were heavily modified, Jesh knew they wouldn't be able to outrun the pursuers for long, but what he really wanted was a chance to get them separated from the following battleships and then turn and destroy them in detail without the thread of the larger battleships interfering--the Luck single handedly outgunned the pursuing formation, but by stopping now to deal with them she would allow the battleships--particularly the large ISD--the chance to catch up to her and force an engagement that the smugglers would lose. In high spirits as the vanguard followed them deeper into the asteroid field and away from the base, Jesh was confident that they would be able to deal with them in just a few minutes and then engage the Sundari battleships from a distance.

However, mere moments later the expression of smug, ego-building success that had covered Jesh's face just moments ago disappeared as the group of battleships ignored the Luck's diversionary flight into the asteroids around them. Instead, they charged on straight ahead towards the base. He went white. They had several working cloaks and the complete backup computer core from the base stored on the Smuggler's Luck, so whatever the outcome they would have succeeded at their mission, but never the less he was filled with horror at the idea of the base--their base, still containing valuable bits of technology and data and scientists and who knows what else, being wasted and all that precious stuff being lost. "They didn't fall for it!" he exclaimed softly and worriedly, running for the turbolifts at the rear of the bridge. Almost there, he was stopped by a shout from Bim.

"Jesh, where the hell are you going?" he called to his boss.

The base needs me now," Jesh answered. "I've got to get back there!" And before Bim could shout a response, Jesh was locked away on a lift and on his way to the hangar bay.

By the time he was secure in the cockpit of his personal vessel the Shockwave, Jesh was feeling much calmer. Clam enough, in fact, that he was able to speak with Bim over the radio without any noticeable signs of stress in his voice.

"I've got to get back to the base," he transmitted to the younger Thorton. "With both of us and the Luck away they haven't got a chance when they catch it. With me back there there's at least some hope."

"Seriously Jesh," Bim responded aggressively, "What can you do? There's no defenses." There was a pleading note in his voice, and Jesh was slightly amused at the reversal of their usual roles. Usually it was Jesh trying to restrain Bim from going off and doing something impulsive these days. "You could even die."

"I don't know exactly what I can do, Bim," he answered, "but I know I've got to do something. I can't just abandon our men there to die. I've dodged death many times; I can do it again, and I may just save the day in the process."

There was a moment of silence that seemed to last a minute. "Goddamn it," Bim finally answered, realizing Jesh had already made his decision and there was no talking him out of it. "Be careful out there Jesh," he continued after another moment of silence. "My brother would kill me if anything happened to you."

"Trust me," Jes replied, throwing a cocky smuggler's grin onto his face even though there was no one around to see it. "After all, I'm me."



Slowed by the winding, asteroid clear course the enemy fleet was following and further limited by the slow speed of the Star Destroyer in the center of their formation, the enemy fleet would be a bit before it arrived practically on the bases doorstep. Jesh, on the other hand, with throttles open and taking shortcuts that were probably more dangerous than he should have risked, arrived in a little less than four. It was right where he had left it, naturally, surrounded by four squadrons of Hornet IIs plus the five Garotian squadrons who'd participated after the first ambush and returned and rearmed, and now were waiting for something to do.

"Is that you, boss?" came a transmission from one of the smuggler's own Hornet IIs, presumably the wing leader.

"Yeah," he responded, clicking a switch so his ship would transmit a Smuggler Alliance recognition code. "Hey, who's in command down there?" he asked.

"You are, of course," the pilot answered jokingly. "I don't know who's kind of taken charge, though. Sean Weston was too busy with his project to take command, so he handed it off."

"Alright," Jesh responded. "Well, tell them that I'm back in command, and then have them patch me through to Sean as soon as it can be done."

"Sure," the pilot responded. "Give me just a second and I'll hook you right up." There was an uncomfortable period of brief silence, and then there was a ringing sound over his cockpit speakers: The ring of a comlink. A few moments later a familiar voice picked up.

"Hello?" Sean answered, not used to his caller ID not telling him before hand who he was speaking to.

"Hey, this is Tolli," Jesh said. "I'm on the Shockwave now and was patched through station communications, so that's why you have no ID. But anyway, I need a few answers quickly. I don't have a lot of time handy so it'll have to be fairly brief. First off, how are those weapons systems coming along?"

"They're coming along," Sean echoed--an annoying habit of his Jesh hated--"the men have been working harder since I told them there was trouble brewing. True to their work, those slicers who said they were familiar with Golan II computer cores managed to unlock the battle station's weapons, so we have a Star Destroyer and a half's worth of guns on our side in addition to whatever else we've had. Not much else, though."

Jesh breathed a sigh of relief--they weren't defenseless now, not by a long shot. "Anything else?"

"Not in our area of specialty. I've heard some interesting rumors about the hangar full of dreadnuts, if there is such a thing in the base. Some rumors that might even be looking in to. But unfortunitly besides the big Golan breakthrough we've made little progress."

"You say there's been some interesting rumors in the hidden hanger?" he asked. "Like what?" Sean gave him a brief run-down of what he'd heard, and a minute later he was in contact with the head engineer in that area.



Fifteen minutes of delicate remote piloting later he was satisfied his "wild cards" were satisfactorily placed and the voice signals he'd programmed were adequate for the task at hand. It wasn't a moment too soon, either. The enemy fleet--which he'd correctly guessed had sighted the base--was nearly close enough to for him to make out the shape of the single massive Imperial Star Destroyer the other vessels clustered around. Carrying sixty Ion cannons and sixty heavy turbolasers, it alone was not too much for the Golan II to take on. But when the forty capital ships ranging from Frigates to Heavy Cruisers around it were added to the equation it became clear they were heavily out gunned. Not to mention the forty or so smaller picket craft around them, and the twenty-five fighter squadrons flying escort.

Facing them he had only nine squadrons of fighters--four of Smuggler Alliance Hornet Interceptor IIs, and five of the makeshift Garotian squadrons they had put together as an emergency measure.

"Pilots, form up on me," he ordered as he activated his fighters weapons systems. With four quad laser cannons, two Concussion missile launchers and four proton torpedo launchers it would be a valuable addition to their forces in the coming fight. "Save your missiles for later--use lasers on the fighters. Attack in squadrons. Wingmen, stay on your leaders. Good hunting." He ended the transmission and settled down to wait. To pass the time and in case something happened to him, he radioed his verbal codes for his secret weapon to Sean and attempted to send them to Bim, but the Luck had withdrawn too far away into the field to be contacted. It was a small comfort that there was no way short of suicidal ramming they could have destroyed the Luck by now, so that the ship was out of range was the obvious conclusion.

Nearing the smuggler base, the enemy fleet slowly shifted formation as orders were tediously relayed via running lights pressed into service to flash code. Momentarily Jesh wished he could read it like the signal intelligence officer on the Luck, but he figured someone on the base below could and would inform him if anything big was up. Freakishly, there was a shrill whistle as his receivers picked up a transmission. "Jesh, this is Haarkin,"--Haarkin was the commander of the base, apparently, until Jesh had returned. "They're sending out attack orders. Fighters are coming first with half the corvette escort--I guess they want to get rid of our own fighter defenses first before bringing in the big guns."

"Tell our gun crews on the battle station to hold their fire until they're close so we can clean up before they bring the big ships in--they're obviously scared after our raid because they're being awfully cautious with their movements, and a demonstration of our firepower will give them something else to sweat about. Keep 'em guessing."

"Alright, sir. Good luck and good hunting. Haarkin out."

"Yup, you too," he answered, looking down at his mid-range sensor screens as nearly all the enemy fighter squadrons, twenty smaller ships, and six larger vessels left the slowing formation to continue toward the base.

He pushed the throttle to his two powerful fusion drives forward and turned on his comm. "Here they come boys, power up and follow me!"


A bastardized version of an old sailer's quote ran through Jesh's head at the two masses of fighters charged towards one another. "Fighters fighters everywhere, and not a sec to think." Outnumbered two to one and lacking the benefits of frigate and corvette support their enemy enjoyed Jesh still didn't fear the engagement's outcome, as costly as he believed it would be. Without their high tech sensor equipment or fancy unit tactics the enemy star fighers and ships couldn't even tell friend from foe, let alone fight effectively.

"All squadrons, hear this," he transmitted over the fighter command channel. "Our goal right now is to lure the capital ships back to wards the base. Accordingly, we will all quickly engage the enemies, after a few moments of which we will promptly retreat. Five kilometers from the base we will cease firing and turn to confront them. Seer clear of capital ships--the station will fire on them, and the enemies won't be able to differentiate between friend and foe so they will likely shoot everything that comes near in the thick of things. Remember, survival is your first priority.

"Let's roll!"



Of his ships many features besides the old Stygium cloaking device he'd dug up, Jesh's favorite thing on the Shockwave was his targeting set up. Using sensors embedded in the instrument panel that tracked the movement of his eyes, the craft's weapons automatically targeted and aimed at whatever he was looking at, eliminating the need for conventional inconvenient set ups. In the thick of combat this was wonderful, greatly reducing his workload while drastically increasing his effectiveness. It increased his effectiveness so much that a cheaper version using a helmet mounted sight was used in the Alliance's version of the Hornet Interceptor. Rushing through the formation, he blazed at targets as fast as he could see them. After only thirty seconds or so, though, it was necessary to pull back for his plan, even though he was doing rather well.

"Break off, break off!" he ordered. "Pull back to base." In response, about a third of the formation did just that, breaking off their engagements and turning back toward the installation. The other two thirds of the fighters attempted to pursue them, but the faster smuggler ships--selected earlier for their speed when preparing the ambush--easily outpaced them.

On his sensor screens, Jesh could see the Sundari force hastily moving forward to pursue, the fighters and corvettes leaving the slower frigates behind in their haste. Jesh smiled. That kind of sloppiness could very well cost them this round. In just a minute or two they would be close enough to the base to turn around and attack themselves, and if the powerful frigates were at a distance then so much the better. Even without targeting sensors Jesh wouldn't want to get near one of them in a little snubfighter.

At the end of the brief chase, the enemy fighter formation was two kilometers behind them and the frigates about six back, giving them just two minutes in the clear before they would have to deal with them as well.

It was a bit close for comfort, especially for Jesh who liked to think things out in advance to completion rather than work on instinct like most smugglers. "Screw it," he muttered under his breath. "Tolli to base, open fire on the frigates now. Fighters, stay clear of the turbolaser channels between the base and the fighters and go get some!"

In response, about ten seconds later a great salvo of turbolaser and ion energy--a Golan II had twice as many guns as an Imperial Star Destroyer, and twice as many shields--heading towards the enemy vessels. By this time, Jesh was already flipping his ship around in a half-loop to re-engage the enemy fighters, the more nimble ships surrounding his shuttle matching his maneuver expertly. The cloud of Sundari fighters, seeing their renewed attempts to engage them, pushed their throttles forward and collided with Jesh's own group.

Throttles still maxed--he would need all the power he could get out of his drives--he launched himself into the fray. Surrounded by targets, he blasted away with his ship's big quad lasers at every enemy fighter he could, turning several weakly shielded models into wreckage. For a few minutes he twisted around, acutely aware that though his ship was unmaneuverable by modern standards the twenty-meter long Svelte-class shuttle was actually capable of outmaneuvering many of the older Sundari fighters, such as Z-95s and Cloakshapes. Intent on conserving his missiles, he found his ships big guns were capable of blasting through the rugged ship's shields with little difficulty.

So far things were looking rather well. In the last few minutes half a dozen enemy squadrons had been destroyed by the smuggler forces, along with half a dozen corvettes and two of the frigates, but their successes were by no means free. A squadrons worth of his organization's fighters and their allies had been destroyed as well. The battle was one sided, maybe, but not free.

Focusing his ming back on the business at had--a wondering mind in a bad situation was liable to get you killed--Jesh fought on.