Pash Rendarr winced as the ship rocked from
the turbolaser blasts. He no longer heard the
low shields klaxon blaring, but he could not ignore being thrown from his seat. He glanced up nervously at the pilots in their stations. If they felt any pangs of doubt or
fear, they hid it well. Pash smiled to himself as he regained his seat. A pilot should never show fear at the helm...and Pash wished he was at the helm.
As far as flag ships go, The Lion’s Mane served well for the band of mercenaries. True,
there were plenty of times when more firepower would have been extremely
helpful – Corellian Corvettes aren’t the most fearsome vessels in the galaxy –
but the speed and ease at which the model operated always made up for it. Pash hoped that today would not be an exception.
“Pash. Report to the conference
room immediately.” Captain Vorn’s voice cut through Pash’s
reverie. Pash sighed audibly. “Keep her together guys, I’ll be back,” he
addressed the pilots. They only grunted in response. Pash reluctantly left the
cockpit and headed for his destination. In truth, he couldn’t be of any help –
the cockpit was one of the few stations on the ship that was fully crewed.
Nonetheless, as a pilot, it was the only room on the ship that he felt
comfortable in during battle. Lately, the human felt too guilty to allow
himself many indulgences, but this is one that he would not compromise on. Kath
Hound Company had had too many close calls with Black Sun enforcers in the past
few weeks, and Pash knew that he was largely to blame.
Pash used to perform smuggling runs
for the criminal organization, and he was damn good at it too. To prove his
worth, he’d competed with twenty other reckless pilots to make the Kessel Run
in the shortest distance. He’d made just under seven parsecs, a feat that Pash
is still proud of to this day, but he could unfortunately never admit to the
civilized world due to how many laws his ship had been witnessed breaking to do
so. He’d probably still be running for them if a chance encounter with imperial
authorities hadn’t wrestled one of the cargo crates loose and spilled the
contents onto the hold floor for everyone to see – tak glands.
Taks are small monkeylike creatures
on the Wookie home planet of Kashyyk. Supposedly, their glands had some rare
medicinal properties . The market for them was very illegal, and thus only drew
the attention of criminal organization like Black Sun. Pash had never considered
himself a moral person, but he realized that day that there were lines that he
could not consciously cross. After emptying the contents of his stomach in the
nearest waste basket, Pash decided that he would skip out on the delivery. He vowed
to find some way to atone for years of unwittingly partaking in an atrocity
that he couldn’t bear to think about. Black Sun had been hunting him since. Pash
shook his head clear – now was not the time for
Upon reaching the conference room,
Pash didn’t bother suppressing his grin. Seated around the plasteel table were
the familiar faces of his teammates. BX-77, or “Brick” as everyone called him,
glanced casually in his direction. Despite being physically incapable of
smiling, as most droids are, Pash was sure that the droid was smiling at him
now. Years of near-death encounters with the sentient robot had given him a
sixth sense for Brick’s disposition, and it was clear to him now that Brick was
anxious for some action. Pash’s eyes quickly darted to, and away from, the
droid’s sole deformity – a serrated dent in the black metal of his head.
Brick had spent fifty years crushed
under the concrete debris of (what used to be) an armory. With nothing to external
to stimulate his superior tactical mind, the droid commando had to continually
engage his self-adaption and learning protocols to keep himself in top
condition….and in doing so had inadvertently programmed himself for philosophical
inquiry and existential debate. By the time Kath Hound Company had stumbled
into - and salvaged - him, he had grown an attachment to the idea of “authenticity”,
and he’d refused to have the cosmetic damage fully repaired. Brick was
practically a one droid army. Pash had never seen anyone, or anything, that was
so efficient at killing and destruction. Yet despite how much joy Brick took in
his job, he never showed any signs of bloodlust. “I live for my purpose, but my
purpose is not my life,” he had said. While Pash did not always understand what
Brick said, he always glad to have Brick on his side during a fight.
Seated across from BX-77,
Kallatherie eyed Pash tensely. To a casual observer, the wookie might have
appeared calm, but Pash knew better. Kallatherie was a force that could not be
contained and, like a snake, stillness only signaled that she would strike at
any moment. Pash was certainly glad that he was not present when they “rescued”
her from the slaver’s ship she had been imprisoned on. In her rage, she had
managed to kill twenty of their crew before they finally convinced her that
they were not her captors. In mission, Kallatherie was the team’s unofficial
leader. While no one ever appointed her as such, they recognized quickly that she
had a penchant for decisiveness and violence. The team preferred the former
over the latter and, as such, rarely ignored her suggestions. A few months ago,
Pash learned that the slavers who had captured Kallatherie were one of the tak
gland suppliers to Black Sun. Apparently, she had taken it upon herself to shut
down their entire operation without any help. Pash hoped that she would help
offer him his chance for atonement, but now was not the time to think of such
matters.
Across from her, sitting next to
Brick, L’Entu Sneebrac fidgeted nervously in his seat. Pash never knew what to
think about L’entu. His name seemed like it should belong to a Twi’lek rather
than a Bothan. When he’d first met L’entu,
he told him as such. L’entu launched into a long, and seemingly well-rehearsed,
story about his father being an ambassador to Ryloth, home planet of theTwi’leks.
The name was intended as a gesture of honor to their people. This had satisfied
Pash, until he learned that L’entu had told Captain Vorn that he’d been held
prisoner by Twi’lek slavers, and brainwashed so that he couldn’t remember his
real name. Kallatherie wouldn’t even speak about what L’entu had told her. The bothan
seemed to have an endless supply of lies for every occasion, and, more often
than not, landed the team into bigger trouble than he was trying to connive his
way out of. On top of it all, L’entu was a complete coward. Without fail,
whenever the shooting started he would crawl under some table or behind some
rock to hide. Pash couldn’t completely
despise the alien, however, as his bluffs did save the asses on more than one
occasion... and no one in Kath Hound Company could patch up a blaster wound better than L’entu.
Peering further around the room,
Pash noticed that members were missing. “Now we only need Dasha and we can
begin, ” Captain Vorn spoke as if reading Pash’s mind. “I’m here,” Dasha
stepped out from the shadows behind L’entu, as if emerging from thin air. The
bothan, startled, nearly leapt out of his seat “You KNOW I hate it when you do
that.” Dasha Freestar chuckled in response and sat at the end of the table,
across from Captain Vorn. Like Pash, and Captain Vorn for that matter, Dasha
was human. She was the team’s “security specialist,” and there was almost no
lock that could bar her from her prize. Apparently she used to be a Corellian
Spy, though she never spoke about her background. Dasha was the kind of person who
believed more in action than words- words gave away your position. She believed
in being prepared, and Pash never ceased to wonder at how much gear she was
able to fit in her pack. Pash was always happy to see her on a mission – it meant
that there was good money to be made.
Kallatherie
bellowed a question, breaking Pash’s thoughts. Captain Vorn chuckled in
response “Oh yes, I sent Dakson ahead with the Incom engineers. If anything
happens to the escape pod, I want someone there who can handle repairing it
under fire.” Dakson was the last member of the team and their mechanic. Like Dasha, Dakson preferred action to words,
though for a radically different reason. The Duro was not a people person, and
could go days without human or alien contact entirely. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the
few times he did speak were rather profound. He doubled as the team’s historian
and yielded surprisingly insightful suggestions from his studies of past
errors.
“Why don’t we just jump into hyperspace again?” L’entu
whined , “all of this fighting has my fur standing on end.” Pash piped in “Too
close to the planet-if we tried to jump, the gravity wells would rip the ship
apart. Reinforcements should be here soon, so we just need to hold out for a
while longer.” Captain Vorn cleared his throat, “Actually, that’s why I called
you all here. I’ve just received word…there isn’t going to be any reinforcements.”
