The Weaving Force: Chapter 70 (Patreon)

Chapter 70:

Dennis:

“Move!”

The impact of the butt of a rifle straight into his kidney sent a bolt of pain lancing up and down his spine. Only the arm holding him up by his bicep kept him from falling straight to his knees as the large Bounty Hunter shoved him forward. The female one to his right - the one who had hit him - gave off a satisfied air as she hefted the rifle onto her shoulder.

He wheezed, stumbling - or rather, being hauled to his feet and dragged -  towards the elevator.

Bad fucking job, this.

There were quite a few B-2 droids arrayed around them. Looked like his host didn’t skimp on his own personal security by relying just on the cheap B-1’s.

As the elevator cage doors opened, he could feel the woman getting ready to hit him again, and he hurried forward before she could demand he move any faster, even as he felt his knees shaking from the weakness in his legs.

She’d hit him fucking hard.

The larger male, a masked Feeorin, practically punched the touch-screen, slamming the cage doors shut before rounding back on Dennis, leaving him staring down the barrel of the blaster pointing right between his eyes.

“Move those fuckin’ hands, and I drop you,” he warned.

Dennis’ fingers twitched in his cuffs.

The woman also stepped back, too far for a quick tap.

They knew him too well.

…

He hoped Rugess was alright.

The elevator kept descending, down into the bowels of the asteroid mining base.

It was a middle of nowhere hole, perfect for a clandestine CIS base. Relatively small, out of the way. But resting firmly between the mid and outer rim, where small to mid-sized scouting ships keeping an eye on Republic movements could find supplies, or seek repairs. Or as an emergency hide-away for smugglers going into or out of Republic space.

He was impressed. Usually the CIS wasn’t so good at this.

The elevator ground to a stop, and the bounty hunter opened the door, revealing more droid guards.

“I see you’ve brought a gift for Moralo Eval.”

The voice was… smarmy, smug. Honestly, Dennis didn’t consider himself a racist but it fit the lanky, hunchback form of the Phindian to a T. It sounded like a bad guy voice, and this asshole looked like a pretty shitty Bad Guy.

And only bad guys spoke in the third person, so there was that, too.

“Move it.” The Bounty hunter gestured with his blaster, giving Dennis’s hands a wide berth. The woman coming up behind him likewise maintained a distance that let her shoot him before he could reach her, should he try.

Marching one foot in front of the other, Dennis’ eyes darted this way and that across the room.

A dozen B-2’s, at least four automated turrets. The flooring was metal grating, so the possibility of it being electrified wasn’t out of the question.

All in all, he wasn’t walking out of this room without a heavy fight, if he was walking out at all.

Even beyond that, he had to consider what lay outside this rock. A base this size... Probably a few dozen vulture droids. A tractor beam or two, as well. And best to assume there was help nearby, like a larger ship or a patrol fleet.

Problematic.

At the end of the hall, behind the Phindian, through a set of transparisteel doors, he spied a server room, the pale glow of a computer shining outwards.

Flanked by two B-2 droids, Tte Phindian - Moralo Eval - grinned, smug and self assured.

“The famous Kronos,” he said. “Moralo Eval knows of many a Hutt who would pay a fine price to have you delivered to them.”

He couldn’t help himself; Dennis offered a smug little smirk in response. “Jabba still ready to fork over the cash to boil me alive? Big ol’ slug can hold a grudge, eh-” He paused, thinking for a moment. “Not sure if the amount of water he’d need to pull it off on Tattoine would be more expensive than the actual bounty price come to think of it.”

“Quiet,” the male Bounty Hunter snarled before turning his attention back to the Phindian. “CIS got our money?”

“Moralo Eval will pay for your services,” he said, reaching to the desk behind him to pull free a credit chit. “Two hundred thousand credits.”

“You trying to cheat us? Jabba’s paying five times that.” The woman’s voice carried a sneer.

“And Moralo Eval is paying this,” he answered.

On cue, the dozen B-2’s around the room cocked and charged their wrist mounted blasters with simultaneous, high pitched whines.

“Looks like you guys got played,” Dennis snickered. “Shoulda just gone to Hutt space.”

The two Bounty hunters at his back didn’t say anything, but their body language spoke of tension.

Moralo Eval shrugged. “Of course, if you don’t want even this paymen-”

The Feeorin reached forward, practically snatching the credit chit before the smarmy bastard could slip it into his back pocket and leave them with nothing as he hauled Dennis into some back room cell.

He seemed the type.

As the Feeorin slotted in the credit chit into a wrist-mounted device, the Phindian’s smug smile returned full-force, assured that he’d gotten away with his bullshit.

The credits must have transferred successfully, because the bounty hunter straightened.

“Much obliged,” he said, almost sounding genuine.

The smug smile slipped.

A brief moment of stillness.

The cuffs around Dennis’ wrist slipped off.

There was the faintest, brief flash of surprise on the smarmy bastard’s face before everything started to move.

Twin snaps hissed beside him, a blue and green lightsaber coming to life as they emerged from the woman’s sleeves. A heavy blaster punched two clean holes into the right-hand B-2’s eye and ‘face’ as the Feeorin lunged forward, grabbing hold of the startled, squawking ‘Moralo Eval.’ Dennis smacked the left-hand B-2 at the same time, freezing it in place as he and the Feeorin lunged over the desk, flipping it over before Dennis froze that too. The B-2s surrounding them opened up on Ventress, but their red bolts bounced harmlessly off of her twin flashing sabers.

Dennis took a second to punch the shit out of Mr. Eval, freezing him mid impact as the Feeorin ‘Bounty Hunter’ fished out Dennis’s own blaster from a compartment in his armor.

“Here!” Nym shouted, tossing it.

The parahuman caught it, peeking over the edge of the desk and firing off a few shots that bounced off the armored shell of a B-2.

Seeing them safe behind the cover of the desk, Ventress started to move.

Nym’s fingers flew over a tac-pad on his forearm. “Activating homing beacon now. Inbound.”

Approximately seven seconds later, Dennis’s own comms channels lit up with the various signatures of Rugess rushing in on their ship, Lok’s Revenants beside him as the alarms started blaring.

“Thanks for coming, buddy!” he laughed.

Ruggess babbled something that sounded fairly snarky.

“This doesn’t count as part of your rescue score. It was a sting op!” he protested.

Another voice crackled through the comms. “Nym, we’ve got ya, ETA three minutes-” A brief moment “Scratch that, five minutes, base is scrambling Vultures-”

“Just get here, Jinkins!” Nym snarled, a bolt of red blaster fire nearly clipping him in the head as he ducked back behind the desk. The larger man turned. “Can you get the data? Don’t know about you, but I doubt those B-2s we saw on the way in were the only ones!”

A fair point, that alarm wasn’t howling into an empty base.

“I’m on it! Ventress?!”

“Go!” she barked, slicing through three of the droids as  she pulled back to the desk to give him some cover with her blades.

He waited until she was ready and then sprinted towards the Server room.

The blasterbolts were almost a horizontal rain, and he had little doubt it was only Ventress’s twin swords screening him that let him cover the ten meter distance without getting a couple dozen shots in the ass for his trouble.

The doors slid open, and he ducked inside, heading straight towards the computer.

Only to nearly get his head blown off by a very close shot.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” he barked, ducking back into that very awkward, very exposed spot between the door and the actual room itself.

He peeked around the corner. One more droid lurked there. Not a B-1 or B-2; something else. Slimmer, meant to guard the narrow halls of the server room.

The thing marched forward on clomping feet, and Dennis had to duck down as another shot fired by the droids still outside nearly brained him. Ventress charged into them with a feral roar, blades arcing in blue and green trails through the air.

He reached into his vest, pulling out a silk cloth and unfurling it before freezing it in the doorway. Not perfect but, definitely better than just ‘open door’ as cover.

The clomping, heavy footsteps of the server room droid were just about on top of him. He whirled around the corner - getting a shot that scored a long, painful line across his breastplate for his trouble - before his hand tapped the clanker on the shoulder. The whole droid froze as he hissed in pain, gloved hand tapping the burnt armor.

Painful, but no penetration as far as he could tell.

He reached into his utility belt, pulling free an ion grenade with a motion sensor trigger that he stuck on the droid’s forehead. “Here, gift from me,” he groaned, before painfully stumbling towards the computer.

He opened up a comm channel. “Rugess-”

His friend answered him.

“Linking you into their servers now; you ready?”

He got an affirmative, and shoved the upload link into the dataport. Almost immediately, he saw the computer screen flash, a display appearing as The Stalker’s onboard computer punched through the software defenses and started stealing everything it could get its digital hands on.

“Kronos, we got incoming! Get your ass out here!” Nym barked from outside.

He stepped away from the uplink. The program should do its job without him.

The fighting outside had gone more and more quiet as the droids died. By the time he squeezed his way past the bit of cover he’d made in the doorway, Ventress was cutting down the last of the B-2s, and Nym was setting up “party favors” for the droids about to arrive through a side elevator.

“When’s this bastard waking up?” the alien sneered, staring down at the still frozen Eval.

Dennis shrugged, looking at his custom watch, tracking individual timers each time he used his power.

Moralo was going on two minutes now.

“Less than a minute, tops,” he said, just as the smarmy bastard fell out of his frozen slumber, still feeling the punch to the face.

The CIS lieutenant cradled the side of his cheek, still disoriented. “How dare you strike at Moralo Ev-”

He didn’t finish his statement.

A solid kick from Nym knocked the air right out of him. The pirate leader grabbed hold of him by his collar as he hoisted him to his feet. Mr. Eval quite literally gasped for air that wouldn’t come.

He could sympathize. Nym hit like a truck.

“Y-you miserable ruffi-”

“You’re a slow learner,” Nym said.

Then he proceeded to punch Eval in the face.

Several times.

The Phindian was probably unconscious by the second hit, but Dennis didn’t really feel like stopping Nym overmuch either.

Anyone who spoke in the third person was owed at least three punches to the face by default, anyway.

As Mr. Eval slumped over in Nym’s hand; very very very knocked the fuck out, Nym hauled the man onto his shoulder.

“If you two are quite done with your stress ball,” Ventress deadpanned, arms crossed as she pointed to the elevator they’d arrived through, “elevator’s here.”

There was a tremendous burst of lightning and electricity somewhere behind him. Looks like his ion grenade went off.

“Let's go,” he said, clambering over dead B-2s as they rushed towards the elevator.

—

The fight back to the hangar bay was frantic and fast. Ventress was, rather literally, the knife carving their way through the mass of security droids showing up to try and stop them. Nym was somewhat hampered by Eval on his shoulder, but also protected. Each of these droids was programmed to defend Moralo Eval specifically, and so it didn’t take long for Nym to discover using the Phindian as a meat shield was a very viable tactic.

His arm got tired dangling the man in front of him, but Dennis was pretty sure that there was a very satisfied grin on his face.

Especially when he smashed a B-2 in the face using Moralo as a beat stick.

As they reached the hangar, the Stalker was waiting for them.

Its point defense guns were mowing down droids by the dozens, red blaster shots bouncing off its thick armor and shields. He still missed the Vista, but the Mandalorian-made Lancer class ship, painted silver and dark burgundy red - the colors of Clan Saxon - wasn’t a downgrade by any stretch of the imagination.

His blaster barked, blasting away at some B-1s covering Nym as his booted feet pounded up the entry ramp. Dennis followed after him, and then finally Ventress backstepped up the ramp, lightsabers making a moving shield for the both of them.

As soon as they were on board, he shut the ramp, and felt the ship lurch up off the hangar bay deck and slide on out.

The Revenants covered them, and, just a minute later, they were all jumping out of system.

—

“You aint half bad,” Nym said, large meaty paw clasping over Dennis’s forearms as they said their goodbyes. Eval was being hauled onto Nym’s personal ship, the Havok, cuffed and still very very unconscious… and very very bruised.

They’d landed on an old derelict station the Revenants used as a safehouse/cubby hole. No power anymore - beyond basic life support in just one or two sections of station - so the chances of anyone detecting them was minimal.

Perfect place to leave a ship for a few hours and then come by and pick it up.

“Likewise,” Dennis answered with a smirk and a nod. He’d worked ‘with’ Nym in the past, or at least…coordinated. But this was the first time he’d been directly involved in an op alongside the guy. “I got my data, you got your bad guy. Win-win.”

The Feeorin nodded. “Yeah. This bastard knows where the Federation’s getting its material resources in a few systems. Probably help set up most of ‘em. We’ll squeeze him for everything he knows.”

He’d rather not get into specifics on how exactly the man would do that. The less he knew, the better.

Nym continued, “I still think serving the Republic’s a waste of time, but as long as you make the Federation pay, more power to you, I guess.” He let go of Dennis’ arm, marching towards his ship. “Keep in contact, human. Be willin’ to work with you again, if need be.”

He nodded, though Nym didn’t see it. “Only if you buy me dinner next time,” he joked.

He heard the man snort.

Marching back towards his ship as the Havok began to take off to leave with the rest of the Revenants, he found Ventress and Rugess in the Stalker’s lounge area. Ventress nursed a glass of her favorite fruity drink while reading something on her datapad, while Rugess looked over the stolen data.

He sat down next to Ventress. “Any blaster holes where they shouldn’t be?”

She took a long draw of her drink.

“Nope.” The P popped “Your kidneys feeling any worse for wear?”

He winced at the phantom pain the question brought up.

Then he glared at her with that reminder; “You have to hit me so freakin’ hard?”

“Stop changing the thermostat while we’re sleeping,” she said, eyes never leaving the datapad.

He stared, utterly stone faced and deadpan. “You hit me in the kidneys, hard enough that I might be pissing blood tonight; because of the thermostat!?”

She very primly- sipped her drink.

Somehow he felt she was flipping him off.

“It’s a furnace in here,” he sneered.

“No, it's perfectly reasonable at seventy. Good for most known races in the galaxy”

He rolled his eyes. “Who’s ship is this anyway?”

She didn’t miss a single beat. “Alexandria footed the bill, if I recall-”

“Yeah, don’t fuckin remind me.” He growled. Ventress always knew what buttons to press.

Alexandria had paid for this ship… just like she’d paid for the Vista. Freeing slaves didn’t exactly leave one filthy rich.

He hadn’t asked her. He wouldn’t have ever asked her, but one fine day she just handed over the access codes. Fully paid for and modified with enough firepower, shield output and armor that he’d feel confident in taking on a small fleet.

Somehow she made even giving a ‘gift’ feel like she was an absolute bitch.

Before he got into another snippy argument with the crew’s resident ‘muscle,’ he turned towards Rugess.

“What’s the word?”

The Bith’s fingers ghosted over the pad, answering.

Dennis frowned. “Scale of one to ten. How hard is that encryption gonna be to crack?” he asked.

Rugess gave him a look.

A moment later Dennis was giving a low whistle.

“Shit.” He shook his head, leaning back in his seat. “Do we know any really good slicers?”

The bith opened his mouth to answer-

“I mean ones we don’t owe a shit ton of credits to or ones tied to the Republic?”

His friend’s mouth closed

Yeah… he didn’t think so.

Ever since losing the Vista, he was very, very wary about sharing anything through Republic channels. The Jedi still didn’t know who the fuck had nearly killed them, and he wasn’t risking it.

“Did we get something for our troubles?” he asked. “And I mean beyond the satisfaction of punching Eval in the face.” Though that had mostly been Nym.

He was robbed.

Rugess nodded.

Dennis’ features scrunched up. “The fuck is an Illum?”