Armmal contained his worry. He didn’t think he had angered anyone enough to get this kind of bounty on his head - he was worth a planetside snatch and grab, tops.

But one never knew. He could be the target. Best to keep the ship on the side of the target, just in case. Besides, even if he wasn’t the target, getting taken by bounty hunters was never any fun.

“Captain, these are not good people. They could have waited for us to land, grabbed their quarry then. They blasted us in space, and I bet that means they are perfectly willing to slaughter us all after, too.

I’m a pretty good pilot. Do we have anything that can get over to them undetected? We could turn the tables on them - board THEM instead. They probably are undermanned, having sent their crew over here.”

Trista nodded along to the Human’s suggestion.

“They boarded us, somehow,” she pointed out. “Undetected. And their ship isn’t docked. There must be a shuttle on our hull.”

Her eyes swept over the group. “Let’s not forget – according to Zanowc, our engines were sabotaged before the raiders arrived. There’s a traitor on board. I saw all of this group fight the boarders, but let’s keep our plans secret for now.”

The others nodded their assent.

“In the meantime,” the Bothan continued. “We have leverage to negotiate. They want their target alive, and they surely want their injured crew back. Captain, find out who their target is. Offer to hand them and the injured raiders over as long as they give us time to repair our engines so we can make the exchange safely. It’s a fair offer. Keep them happy while we find the shuttle.”

Dace’s first instinct was to assume that he was the target, but he pushed that to one side, for the time being. Master Yoda would’ve called that reflex prideful, and he’d have been right. Truth be told, the pirates’ quarry could be pretty much anyone on the Liberty. It was clearly a “no questions asked” kind of starship.

“I agree,” he said softly, nodding to Armmal and Trista. “They have no reason to leave us alive if we give them what they want, and a lot of good reasons to kill us.” He surveyed the injured and the dead, laid out on the floor. “They haven’t told us who they’re looking for, yet. That seems strange – it’d make a lot more sense for them to tell us that, up front, to hurry things along. Unless they’re also stalling, for whatever reason.”

Scars was a little late to the group meeting after the battle, the clanking of heavy boots announcing the commando’s arrival. He’d decided to throw caution to the wind, evidently, as he strolled up in his matte black Imperial Commando armor; granted, he’d kept his helmet tucked under one arm, and his old DeeCee was hanging from its sling.

At the very least, he’d done his best to scratch out the symbols that normally indicated his loyalty to the Galactic Empire.

“It is strange, yeah.” He agreed with Dace, nodding at the kid. “You think they’d get straight to the point. Makes me wonder if they want us to board them, but…” Kyrso shook his head. “Even if it is, we slotted this many. Can’t be too hard to dispatch the rest.”

So long as none of us die, I won’t have any trouble sleeping it off.

“I’m all for the Bothan’s plan. Even scumsuckers like these pirates make friends, they’ll be more reluctant to fire on their own wounded while they’re on board with us… so long as we can confirm they’re not all dead.” He finally elaborated, nodding in acknowledgement at Trista

Trista raised an eyebrow at the man’s armor. She’d thought he looked familiar, but she hadn’t been able to place it until he wore the armor. There weren’t a lot of older clones to be found while scavenging the battlefields of Galboron.

She felt better about their odds with an ex-commando on their team. The older pilot and the haunted-looking Human with the long black hair had the air of prey who were dangerous because they were cornered. But the clone, he was designed and trained to be dangerous.

The corner of her mouth turned up in a hint of a smile and she offered a casual two-fingered salute to signal her respect.

“Collect his body? So they don’t need him alive?” Trista said. “That certainly makes things easier.”

-+-+-

The Bothan checked the timer on her gauntlet. More time would be better, but there was never as much time as one needed.

She rapped again on the Trandoshan’s door.

“You ready to come out yet, Tirq?”

When their first overture had been met with particle cannon fire, Tris and Karta had opened up a wall panel and set the environmental controls to maximum cooling.

“I’ll come out,” growled the lizard. “And tear your arms off!”

“We’re the only ones with a plan that will keep you alive and out of the pirates’ hands,” Tris shot back. “Want to hear it or not?”

The door slid open to reveal a shivering Trandoshan with a rifle in one hand and a serrated sword in the other. Tris kept her rifle trained on him as they spoke and she explained the plan.

“…so we turn the tables,” she concluded. “We hunt them. What do you say?”

Tirq stared at her, blinking in his creepy lizard way with his sideways inner eyelids. “I say, I still don’t trust you. I won’t be handed over. I won’t be taken alive.”

Trista scowled. They were running out of time. With an exasperated sigh, she looked to Karta. Maybe she could lay on the charm and convince the Trandoshan.

Or, at the very least, distract him so Trista could blast him in the head.

“Hey… Zanowc, was it?… let me know if you find anything that will make this bucket of bolts move better than a drunken Bantha, will you?”

Armmal was trying to keep his cool with the whole situation. Too many deaths right outside the shuttle had shaken him. And now the shuttle looked like it was built by the lowest bidder.

“They overfilled the shuttle, so they clearly weren’t counting on doing any sharp maneuvers. We won’t be overfilling it, I hope, so maybe if everyone straps in we can do some fancy flying if need be.” Armmal didn’t know if the Chiss was listening, but it didn’t matter. Armmal sometimes plotted things out in his head by talking them out.

“If the plan works, I’m not so worried about the flight over there. Its if the plan doesn’t work that I’m worried about flying out.”

Scars found himself feeling better about his choice of gear than he thought he’d be. The Bothan’s salute had caught him off-guard, enough so that he easily ignored the natural discomfort of pretty much everyone else on-board. Most of them were likely on the run from the Empire for some reason or other, after all.

Now he had to turn that fear into a weapon, Kyrso realized, as he stared down at the handful of prisoners they’d collected. His helmet hid his face, giving the pirates nothing to look at but the cold, faintly glowing T-shaped visor.

“You don’t look like much.” He decided, pacing up and down the line. At regular intervals, he flicked his wrist, revealing the small blade in his knuckle plate before hiding it again. Shink. Shunk.

It helped distract him from the fact he’d personally never interrogated anyone. His squad had done most black operations one could think of, but anything involving wets - organic targets - usually involved assassination or passing them on to professionals. Usually Jedi, he imagined, but he wasn’t sure.

What I wouldn’t give for one of them. Scars sighed. Shink. Shunk.

“I don’t see much point in keeping any of you around if you’re not going to talk.” Kyrso finally spoke, standing in front of one of the Weequay. Between his database and old training, he knew these aliens weren’t particularly intelligent. Hell, none of these pirates probably knew much. It made him doubt if there was much point to his.

Shink.

What are you doing? Why even do this? You’re not in the army anymore.

Shunk.

We don’t need this intel that badly.

“I’ve done a lot of things I regret.” He sighed, his voice low. He hoped only Dace could hear. “I don’t want to make this any messier than it needs to be… but I’ve got your back, kid.”

“I’m not a negotiator, an interrogation specialist, or even much of a people-person,” Dace replied softly. “But I’ll do what I can.”

A mind trick could solve all of this, instantly, but it would be unmistakable as anything else.

He stepped up and sat down in front of the restrained pirates. “Your friends back on the other ship… they’re going to blast this one to space-dust in a little bit, with you on it. That’s what they’re threatening, and I believe them.” He looked from one, to the next, down the line. “If you’re thinking of getting out of here with your skins intact, you might want to start telling us something useful.”

The Weequay who seemed to be seniormost among the survivors scoffed. “How d’we know you won’t jus’ put us out the airlock when we’re done talkin’?”

Giving my word is pointless. They’ve been pirates long enough that they’ve forgotten how to trust.

“Look,” Dace muttered, “you’re going to die, right along with the rest of us, if your crewmates get impatient, over there. If we can resolve this without further bloodshed, we will, but we need your help to do that.”

“Don’t give ‘em nuthin’!” the Gotal pirate exclaimed.

Dace turned his attention to the Keen, who fidgeted under his gaze. “What about you? Is this how you want your story to end? Blasted to smithereens by your ‘friends?’”

“I…” the Keen murmured, “…I… maybe I know something. Maybe I don’t. What’ll you give us if we tell you?”

Unsure how to answer that, Dace turned to Scars with an expression that clearly asked: How do we play this?

Zanowc looked over the shuttles engines, the thing was a mess. Shoddy patchwork at best and it seemed to be near miracle the small craft was still functional.

Turning to Armmal he replied, “I’ll see what I can do for the engines, but I wouldn’t recommend making any sharp turns unless you have to.

With that he returned to the engine. He was used to working on junker ships during his days with Black Sun, how much more difficult could this be he thought.

Trista snorted. “It’ll get real hard to talk when they vent the bay.” She shook her head. “We can’t squander the element of surprise.”

The Bothan looked to Scars. “After we get through that door, I’ll take Karta, Tirq, and our pilot to the bridge, you take the others to the engine room. Good plan?”

If the clone had earned that armor he was wearing, he’d probably done this dozens of times.

“What about the turncoat?” Tirq asked, in his rumbling growl of a voice.

Trista’s rifle swung around and dazzling blue rings knocked the Keen off his feet, stunning him into unconsciousness. “He stays here.”

Scars nodded in agreement with Trista’s plan. “You sure you just want the four of you for that? Force knows how many scumbags are still on board.” He pointed out, double-checking his blaster rifle. “Worst comes to worst, I can last long enough for someone to come back me up.” Kyrso added, pausing to rap a knuckle against his heavy durasteel plating for emphasis.

He paused as Trista stunned the Keen, his glowing T-shaped visor directed at the unconscious pirate.

“It’d be better to kill him.” He pointed out bluntly.

The Bothan shrugged. “When we have a cooperative prisoner who knows more than he does, he’s all yours.”

Tirq grinned at that. He seemed to be getting into the spirit of taking the fight to the raiders, despite his initial misgivings.

“As for taking over the engines… it sounds like Zanowc knows his way around an engine room, so it makes sense to take him, and someone else to watch your back in case he’s the traitor and sold us a line about what he found on the transport.”

The Chiss gave her a cold look and she shrugged again. “This is why I didn’t explain my reasoning before.”

Dace had been sitting quietly – halfway leaning, really, against a bulkhead – with his eyes closed, seemingly deep in thought. The flow of the Force was troubled, here. Fear, anger, aggression, uncertainty; all of these clouded the motions of the Living Force, rendering it hazy to his perceptions. Still, though, he heard the clone’s words:

“It’d be better to kill him.”

The Bothan followed up with cavalier agreement, contingent solely upon finding someone more useful on the enemy craft. For a moment, he chewed on his options. He could keep silent. Just stay out of it. The Keen was surely going to kill them if he got the chance, after all.

In his mind’s eye, he imagined Master Siari looking at him with sadness. Sadness, and shame.

“We’re not killing him,” he piped up, opening his eyes, and flicking them over in the direction of the conversation. “I’ll gun someone down in a stand-up fight, but I won’t shoot an unarmed prisoner. And I won’t stand by, either, while someone else does it.”

“I’d prefer not to kill anyone. But I’d prefer more not to die. In any case, we’re about to…” there was a harder thud than he would have liked… “land.”

The conscientious objector was a bit of a mystery. He’d been quiet most of the time, though he seemed to have gotten along well enough with Scars, earlier. The commando made an odd friend for someone so squeamish.

“Killing isn’t pretty whether they’ve got a blaster trained on you or they’re tied up waiting for a chance to turn the tables,” she said. “But since you’ve volunteered for babysitting duty, we’ll try not to take too many of the bastards alive. For your sake.”

She flicked her rifle off its stun setting before taking her eyes off the kid, then looked at Scars with an expression that asked if he could talk some sense into his friend.

Only when she turned toward the door did she let herself remember a time when she would have hesitated to kill a prisoner. She had to think far back, to when her people were losing the battle against the Aqualish occupiers. How nice it must be to live such a soft and sheltered life that one could hold onto that innocence. She couldn’t imagine what she would have become, if war hadn’t come to her world. In any case, it was far too late now.

If Dace had any thoughts on Armmal and Trista’s words, he didn’t share them. Instead, he leaned back against the bulkhead, and half-closed his eyes, again, trying to hear the voice of the Force in all this. Nothing. Perhaps, he conceded, he was just too conflicted over the entire matter, himself.

Within his mind, he began reciting a mantra older than the Republic:

There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force.

Even just the inward focus upon the words helped him to regain a small measure of clarity. Without looking over at the others, he said, “If you run into trouble, in there, call me on the shuttle’s comms channel, and I’ll follow you in.”

Scars frowned at this development. Sure, having someone actually watching the shuttle wasn’t a bad idea, and Dace had shown he was pretty capable in a pinch during their last firefight, but…

Kyrso sighed, shaking his head slightly. He was simply troubled by this. It meant less people going out on the assault; more people spread thin in hostile territory. It was begging for disaster.

Yet he couldn’t bring himself to speak for a long moment, pinching the bridge of his nose to get some clarity. Fierfek, he was a soldier. Feeling sentimental when it was clearly making things dangerous - not just for himself, but for his team - was unprofessional, unsafe, and-

Sithspit, stop it! Stop it!

He squeezed his eyes shut, his teeth creaking from the pressure before he finally forced himself to take a deep breath. Kyrso looked up only to meet Trista’s gaze.

It took him a moment to decipher his gaze, and with that the commando got to his feet, slowly drawing his sidearm.

“Kid, we can’t split up more than we’ve planned. You can’t say here.” He said, slowly. The blaster in his hand remained inert; he hadn’t set it to charge up, yet. “This scumbag shot his share of helpless people back on the Liberty. It’s a mercy to kill him now while he can’t feel it.”

“Everyone else, get ready to move.” He grunted, charging up his blaster pistol, giving Dace a meaningful look.

Move, kid. I don’t want to fight you over this.

“I can’t step aside and let you do this,” Dace replied. “Or I won’t. Take your pick. I’m sorry. I don’t want this to be a fight, and it doesn’t need to be.” He shook his head, though he didn’t go for his weapon. “But I’m not going to accept the cold-blooded execution of a prisoner.”

So the veteran and the idealistic kid weren’t the chums Trista had taken them for. She faced the exit ramp and turned her head to watch them in the corner of her eye.

“Save it for the pirates,” she said, when Scars couldn’t get the kid to back down. “The Keev will be out for hours. He doesn’t need a babysitter or an executioner just yet.”

She donned her helmet as the exit ramp lowered. Any number of things might happen in the next few hours; she hoped they would all still be around afterward to bicker about the treatment of prisoners.

“Agreed,” Dace answered. “We can discuss all of this when the fight’s over. Until then, we need to keep our eyes on the current objective.” He looked between the clone and the Bothan. “I’ve got your backs. I mean that.”

Kyrso sighed, finally flicking the activation switch on his DC and holstering it as the weapon powered down. “…Right, yeah.” He added his own agreement, his gaze lingering on the prisoner. Having a loose end like that still left him uncomfortable, but he really did not want to start a fight with the others. Especially not right now.

He hesitated a moment longer, sparing a subtle glance at Dace, before he headed toward the ramp with the intention of taking point.

I don’t know if I’m proud of you or hate your guts, kid. Guess we’ll see.

Tris flicked down the antenna on her helmet and set it to rear-view mode to peek around the corner at the pirate leader. The Twi’lek sure had seen some action.

“Why do you think we’d care about that old clunker when we could have your ship?” Trista taunted. “Besides, you’ve got friends on board. That’s right – we only brought the one little traitor on the shuttle. So you’re going to have to sweeten the offer. What’s this lizard really worth?”

“What!?” Tirq hissed and narrowed his eyes, but Trista gestured for him to calm down and then put a finger in front of her mouth.

She wasn’t necessarily going to sell him out, not if Scars and Zanowc got control of things downstairs by the time she ran out of ways to stall. But she did have at least a professional curiosity in knowing the stakes.

“I couldn’t help but notice you have a few job openings on your crew,” Tris continued, shouting again down the corridor leading to the bridge. “What’d the cut be on this job?”

There was a moment of silence, then the Twi’lek’s voice returned down the corridor. “You know, I’m pretty sure my crew wouldn’t be in the cockpit of the Liberty, so I’ll just blast that while we hammer out the details.”

Shit. Tris tapped her comm to signal the team in the engine room. She wasted no words: “Cut power to ship weapons!”