Star Wars: Part Two

Part Two:  Plow Shears

Surface of the Second Moon of Horren-IV:

~There's a Speeder on the Sensors, Captain.~ Drix buzzed over the comm, ~Medium civilian engine signature.~

Captain Handerson leaned over from the side of the bed, and tapped the comm's send button, “That's probably our buyers, late as usual.  Standard defensive procedures.” he stated as his wife, Dris, started stirring.  Clicking off the comm, the captain kissed Dris, and started getting up and dressed himself, finishing up strapping on his service pistol last, just as she started struggling to attach her cybernetic leg.

Retreads, that's all we are.  He thought, looking at his wife, beautiful in his eyes, despite the damage done to her body, the lost leg replaced by a bare utilitarian plasteel cyberleg, the radiation scars along the right side of her body.  She had once been the hottest A-Wing pilots around, although every A-Wing pilot is the hottest one around (they had to be to fly the high-performance and unforgiving starfighters), until a friendly-fire incident caused the radiation shielding on her fighter's power core to be breached.  The auto-ejection system had saved her life before the explosion, but it hadn't saved her completely.  The loss of the leg prevented her from flying even the more sedate snubfighters, so she had been grounded, given a desk job, pushing bytes around until she finally left on a medical discharge.

Handerson had found her in a Spacer's bar, drinking her military pension, slowly committing suicide.  He'd dried her out, gave her a job, and, finally, given her a reason to live once more by finally proposing.

“What?”  Dris asked, smiling at her husband, who hadn't realized he had been staring.

“Sorry, lost in your beauty, and the past.”

“Right.”  Dris snorted, and strapped on her heavy blaster pistol.  We weren't expecting trouble, but we were far from civilization.  Rules were different here.  A contract wasn't a contract unless a handshake with all parties are included, and that's hard to do over more than just a few parsecs.

“Just keep an eye out, Honey, and be ready to call out our skiffer in the deck.”  I reminded her.  Always keep a back-up plan handy.  A hidden weapon.  It had saved the ship a number of times.  After giving Dris a loving kiss, the two walked out of the Captain's Quarters, and towards the cargo bay, and the loading ramp that was the main form of ingress and egress at the moment.

A series of MSE-6 droids with small pressurized tanks on their backs were spraying down the deck, starting the process of decontamination from the live cargo.  R3-H7, nicknamed “Snitch” was controlling them via commlink.  Like almost every person on the Grey Barn, the droid was a cast-off from the war.  She had been captured by the Rebel Alliance in a raid on an Imperial warehouse, but had been a plant, filled with hidden programming to give the location of any ship using her as a Navigational Computer.  Despite the techs saying they got it all, no one wanted to trust her, and had relegated her to lower and lower duties, until Handerson had picked her up at a rate an R5 would turn it's motivator at.

The auction house had even thrown in the MSE droids in.

Shaking off the nostalgia, the Captain walked down the ramp, and squinted into the sunlight.  The Banthas that had been the cargo of this trip luxuriated in the sun, enjoying the grass available in the penned-in enclosure that contained them.  Jak, the Grey Barn's current pilot, stood watch over them, an old hunting blaster rifle in his hands.  A country boy, barely of an age to be a pilot, Jak was one of two crewmen on the ship to have not fought in the galactic civil war, by dint of being too young.   But he was a good, if somewhat sedate, pilot.  After years of flying through lightfights, sedate was what almost everyone wanted at this time of life.  Handerson had found him in the traditional manner, his previous pilot had come down with Truu Syndrome, and couldn't fly for months, so a help wanted ad was put out, and Jak had been the most qualified.  Which said something about his home planet, actually.  He'd been with the crew only three months, but had ingrained himself with the crew so well that none could think of the ship without him now.

“Every thing is going OK, Captain.”  Jak reported, doing a jaunty salute that was sarcastic and sloppy even for the liberal Rebel Alliance.  But the military was in the long past.  A lifetime ago.  Yesterday.

“Good to hear, Jak.  Expect company soon, however.  Most likely, our buyers, but...”  Handerson replied, patting his service blaster.

“Got you, sir.  Bertha and I have done work like that before.”

“Just be ready to back up our Skiffer in the Deck.”  Handerson replied, referring to the cheating technique in Sabaac.  

The wait wasn't long, and the farmers were typical this out of beyond.  A mix of species riding in a beat-up cargo speeder, frontier types that wouldn't have fit in with the urban core worlds.  They were armed with a variety of blaster rifles, mostly civilian hunting models, and seemed mostly sober, too.  Which was both a good sign, and a warning as well.  It might mean they're just professional about things, expecting to have to bargain hard with the shifty merchant.  Or it might mean they're trying to get a “Blaster Bolt Discount”, and some nice salvage.

The leader was a Human, a touch short, pudgy from country cooking, and tanned from years in the unforgiving sun, exactly like the holo given back on Teranna-II.  He took one look at the animals brought, looked back at the cargo speeder, seeing his “Boys” ready to back him up, and instantly declared, “These aren't Banthas.”

It took all of Handerson's willpower not to snort and laugh.  This technique of negotiation was as old as freight haulers and farmers, the local expert against the generalist, trying to break down the price a bit further.

“Well, they look like Banthas.  They sound like Banthas.  They smell like Banthas.  I think we all heard the old nursery story.”  The captain replied, eyeing the Farmer carefully.

“Nope.  You see, Banthas aren't sickly.  These things, they're sickly, and going to need some serious feeding up to be real Banthas.”  The farmer repliled, “And that's going to cost us.  We'll only be paying what we said for real Banthas, not some sick things.”

Handerson scratched his chin at that, “You know, I don't know a healthy Bantha from a sick one,” The farmer smiled at that, having not expected it to be this easy, “But that's not my job.  I'm just the captain of this freighter.  That's the job of my cargo master, so how about you talk to him about it?  FLUFFY!  GET OUT HERE!”

From within the bowels of the ship came a roar like that of some ancient eldrich god, fearsome to all those with ears to hear and minds to think.  Fluffy was the runt of his litter, and was very much like his namesake, cute, cuddly, gentle, petite.  Of course, all things are relative, and, when one speaks of a Dathomirin Rancor, those words don't typically apply for anyone by another Rancor.

Just under four metres tall, Fluffy's hide was velvety smooth compared to his kind, but still thick and tough enough to turn blaster bolts.  Tiny claws and teeth that could still rend a Bantha in half with ease.  Fluffy walked out onto the ramp, roaring a few more times, shaking his great head and huffed, shuffling his feet this way and that to work out the cramps from his interrupted nap.

“Oh...  Oh no!”  Handerson said in faux shock and awe, “Fluffy heard what you said...”

The farmers just stared in horror at the monster before them, something that spoke to the primitives within every sentient.  This was Hunter, and they were Prey.  They stood speechless.

“Now, come on Fluffy!”  Handerson continued, “I'm sure you don't have to go fully on a Honour War!  I mean, I'm sure their FAMILIES didn't mean anything...”

“Honour war...”  The leader of the farmers muttered.  Fluffy looked at him, and made a noise like rocks in a tumbler, which, to those who knew the Rancor, knew was laughter.  Fluffy may not be able to speak Basic, but was able to understand it fully.  Small and slight, but a genius for his species.

“Yes, because of what you said about his work, it's an insult to his very honour...  Wait...  What was that Fluffy?”  Handerson cocked an ear as Fluffy continued to talk, “Oh!  Good!  How gracious!”

“Good?  He's not going to go all honourwar on us or something?”

“Oh yes.”

“Ah.”  The farmer said, relieved.

“As long as you face him, personally, in hand-to-hand combat.”

“WHAT?”

“Or, you know, accept the Banthas as only needing a little bit of fresh air and exercise.  I mean, they had been cooped up on board a freighter for almost a month.”

The leader of the farmers stared at Fluffy, who just crossed his arms, and sniffed as if impatient.  Finally, he hung his head in shame, “Look...  Looking at the animals again, I can see my previous statement was, um, premature.  Yes, they look very healthy, just exercised.  That's easily enough fixed.”

“Excellent, you just put your thumb on this,”  Henderson said, throwing a datapad at the farmer, “And I'll explain things to Fluffy.  Maybe I can convince him to only chew on your speeder...”