The luxurious hall on the upper deck, where formal receptions had been held during Duchess Kryze’s lifetime, now resembled a war zone or the epicenter of a hurricane.
Overturned tables and chairs, guests’ bodies groaning in pain.
The lavish dishes and delicacies from across the Galaxy, which had adorned the meal not long ago, now lay in complete disarray, decorating the antique furniture, carpets, and fabrics.
“We’re under attack!
It’s pirates!” “You idiot, what pirates fly around in multi-kilometer monsters like that?!
It’s definitely Separatists.
Damn Dooku offered my king to join the CIS…” “Why didn’t you say so before?..” Where wise statesmen had been seated just ten minutes ago, panic now reigned.
Heated debates about galactic politics had been abruptly cut short the moment an unidentified ship unleashed the power of its guns on the cruise liner.
Caught off guard, the people’s representatives of a thousand neutral systems fell flat on their faces.
Some of these highly respected individuals whimpered about imminent death, others tore their hair in despair, and there were even those who pulled knives on their neighbors to settle old scores.
“Where has that Jedi Master gotten to?!” Orn Free Taa bellowed in a shrill voice.
“I am a senator of the Galactic Republic!
He is obligated to protect my life!” Clones were barred from the upper decks.
Some political nonsense about “Republic pressure on representatives of neutral systems.” Only the senators and heads of neutral systems, their personal guards, and crew members were gathered here.
Those diplomats who were sharper, or who had directly participated in the numerous local conflicts that had flourished in the decades before the Clone Wars, had already grabbed their bodyguards and hurried towards the escape pods.
“Oh, you fat little freak!” A highly respected guest wearing an exotic-looking turban wound around his head punched the esteemed senator of the Galactic Republic from the planet Ryloth square in the eye, causing the overweight Twi’lek to crash onto a table covered in Nabooian sauce.
“Only worried about your own hide?!” “Aaah!” The recipient of the Republic’s “guarantee” in the eye screamed even louder than before, occasionally breaking into outright shrieks.
“Murder!
Help!” The unfortunate bodyguards could only watch helplessly at the circus put on by the high lords.
Trying to drag their employer away or touch any of these elite asses would mean signing their own death sentence, and dealing with the source of the external threat was pure fantasy.
“Please stop panicking and proceed in an orderly fashion to the escape pods.” The boy’s voice, marked by the characteristic braid of all Order Padawans, was helplessly drowned in the sea of chaos that had engulfed the deck.
* * * The mighty Lasat barely managed to stay on his feet, grabbing hold of a service ramp.
The cruise liner shuddered violently again, but this time it felt completely different.
“General, was that shuttles?!” The reporting clone’s voice was full of confusion.
The interference on the comm line didn’t help matters either.
“We’re being boarded!” “Karabast!” the Jedi Master swore through gritted teeth.
He had made the right decision when he sent young Kestis to organize the evacuation of the VIPs.
A boarding melee was not the best scenario for a baptism of fire.
This way, the boy would have a chance to get out of this mess alive.
* * * Ba-boom!
A bright flash cut through the space.
A massive decorative chandelier, made of rare types of crystal and even more exotic materials, crashed to the floor with a wild roar, making the churning sea of people freeze in confusion.
“Please, listen to me!” A boy in a Jedi monastic robe stood on a table, trying with all his might to put the necessary confidence into his voice.
“Master Tapal has given the order to evacuate.” A soft hum broke the ringing silence.
For added effect, the boy reinforced his words by igniting his lightsaber.
A soft blue light illuminated his freckled face.
His eyes were full of determination.
The little guardian of order was ready to carry out his master’s orders.
“If you want to live, follow me.” * * * Taught by the bitter experience of numerous enemy boardings their Legion had endured, the clone squads quickly contained the enemy’s landing zones.
Well, as much as that was possible at all.
Who the hell knew what the unknown enemy had used… Those boarding torpedoes were big enough to put a corvette to shame!
Those huge, angular shuttles had torn straight through several decks, nearly slicing the ship in half.
It was lucky that the safety protocols had kicked in, reliably sealing off the damaged areas of the liner.
Reports of casualties and damage were already coming through the captain’s helmet, but that wasn’t what concerned clone 8012, nicknamed “Baki.” A standard compact Separatist boarding torpedo was enough to deliver at least a couple dozen heavy B2 droids onto a ship’s deck.
How much could fit into a thing the size of a multi-story building?!
A rhetorical question.
A very, very large amount.
Needless to say, a platoon of his men was, to put it mildly, insufficient to deal with a threat of this magnitude?
“I need a crossfire on the bastards who dared to punch a hole in the ship!” Baki was automatically issuing his final orders.
“Remember, no need to be heroes.
Our job is to hold out as long as possible while the big shots are being evacuated!” Baki nodded approvingly, watching one of his brothers set up a firing position for a Z-6 rotary blaster.
Having big guns was reassuring and instilled a false sense of hope.
The captain gripped his DC-17s tighter.
These little ladies were going to have some serious work to do soon… Among the Stars.
The White Streak in the Life of Hondo Ohnaka “Do you smell that, gentlemen?” The eccentric Weequay, dressed in a flashy crimson cloak, solemnly spread his arms before the shuffling crowd of his less fortunate countrymen.
Behind him rose a majestic, massive door to some unknown vault, hiding the untold riches of an unknown civilization.
Such an obstacle might have been an insurmountable wall for a pirate band, its thickness easily rivaling the hull plating of a Republic battle cruiser.
But on this day, fortune favored the honest laborers of a not-so-honest “trade.” Someone or something had broken into the vault, leaving behind mangled layers of steel.
“That, my dear friends, is the smell of my success!” The Weequay smirked, looking at the faces of his considerably thinned-out crew.
“Tonight, everyone celebrates!
Drinks are on me, you lucky bastards!” Hondo Ohnaka didn’t care about the former owners, just as the pirate didn’t care about the monsters that had devoured them.
Right, who cared what kind of devilry had happened here when a real treasure cave awaited behind the pirate captain’s back?
A vault stuffed to the brim with all sorts of goods, large enough to house a Star Destroyer-class vessel… * * * The path to success, of course, had been thorny.
Even before the civil war that engulfed the Galactic Republic began, Hondo Ohnaka was a pirate with a capital P.
This was largely due to his considerable intellect, enviable insight, and overwhelming charisma… So, what was I saying… The ability to use his head set Hondo apart from most Weequays known in the galaxy.
The result of this blend of a whole host of positive qualities was the fearsome pirate gang of Hondo Ohnaka.
The free brotherhood of laborers in a not-so-honest trade quickly gained a bad reputation in the worlds of the Outer Rim.
The loose Republic had no fleet of its own, and the galactic periphery was always the last thing on the minds of the fat cats on Coruscant.
Of course, Ohnaka’s boys were far from the level of the largest criminal syndicates.
The pirates looked like pathetic children next to the might of Black Sun, they lacked the thousand-year traditions of the Hutts, and they didn’t have the industrial capacity of the Pykes.
However, Hondo Ohnaka’s pirate flotilla was self-sufficient enough to be completely independent of the aforementioned influential players.
A luxury that few in this galaxy could afford.
It didn’t take long for the planets of the galactic periphery to figure out what was what and start paying tribute to the lucky pirate baron.
Hondo had never considered Republic credits as currency.
Out here in the Outer Rim, kids made homemade necklaces out of those useless plastic discs.
Chests loaded with the purest spice began streaming towards the planet Florum, where the dashing Weequay had established his own pirate haven.
Things were looking up.
Life was good.
And then the Clone Wars began… At first, Hondo, like his other “colleagues in the trade,” watched the brewing conflict with enthusiasm, reasonably expecting to make a tidy profit from it.
While the two titans were bashing each other’s heads in bloody attempts to divide borders, spheres of influence, and financial flows, business-minded people like Ohnaka saw enormous opportunities opening up.
It’s always easier to fish in troubled waters.
Both sides of the front desperately needed reliable supply lines.
But where were they to be found in times like these?!
Nowhere, that’s where.
Combat operations were raging across the galaxy on an impressive scale, battles for thousands of worlds flaring up simultaneously, and the front line resembled a patchwork quilt.
It was only to be expected that there were categorically not enough soldiers to be everywhere at once.
All of this opened up an appetizing opportunity to make a good profit from poorly protected military supplies.
The noble craft of smuggling, second in antiquity only to prostitution, was also experiencing its second wind.
Smuggling an industrial spy past the corporate fleet or sneaking a container of spice onto Coruscant at the request of highly respected senators had been common practice even before the war, but after the start of the Clone Wars, it was a whole different ball game.
The demand for smugglers’ services reached an entirely new level.
Besides the traditional customers in the form of criminal syndicates, their services were used by everyone, absolutely all sides of the conflict.
The Republic, the Separatists, the pacifist Duchess of Mandalore, and even the holier-than-thou types from the Jedi Temple.
Common sense promised Hondo a well-fed, prosperous life for generations to come, surrounded by a personal harem of busty Twi’leks… But luck, as it turned out, was a rare bitch!
No sooner had the pirate baron begun to fatten up to Hutt proportions than his sweet life came to a sudden, and therefore very annoying, end.
At one point, the pirate managed to pull off the unthinkable.
He had taken prisoner none other than the infamous Count Dooku himself, the head of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the leader of the Separatist Alliance, a former Jedi.
As a package deal, he also got a couple of Jedi: Kenobi and Skywalker, but those were minor details.
Anticipating a hefty ransom for the heads of these naive fools, Hondo let his guard down, allowing Dooku to escape.
At that point, metaphorically speaking, Hondo Ohnaka’s life zebra changed its stripes from white to black.
The Count turned out to be a vindictive son of a bitch and chased the pirate band across the worlds of the Outer Rim with enviable persistence.
The base on Florum was reduced to smoking ruins.
Along with it, Hondo lost several ships and a considerable portion of the wealth he had accumulated over years of bloody plunder.
Deprived of a haven, the pirates had to scrape by on whatever came their way.
The former terror of the Outer Rim was now forced to rob farmers on planets forgotten by the Hutts and carry out small-time contracts for the Jedi.
The latter, incidentally, cost Hondo a loss of face in the galactic criminal underworld, and in that business, reputation, as everyone knows, is worth more than money.
Two weeks ago, fickle luck seemed to have turned its face back to Hondo, and its backside to the thick-headed tin can “General” Grievous.
Having once again outwitted his fleet, Ohnaka stopped on an unnamed planet to replenish supplies.
The local natives were barely sentient and were ready to exchange everything, including their wives, for the beads offered by the “sky gods.” However, despite the enchanting beauty of the local women, Ohnaka’s attention was caught by a story told by the local chieftain.
According to him, not long ago, the locals had seen a bright star in the sky that struck the planet at tremendous speed, causing the “ground to shake for the next few days, and the milk of the banthas to curdle into butter right in the udder.” The native continued to spout nonsense about the end of the world, but the pirate baron was no longer listening.
Ordering his boys to check out the crash site, Hondo confirmed his own theory.
The “bright star” turned out to be a spaceship that had crashed on the other side of this miserable planet.
Well, “spaceship” was a relative term… The Weequay had never seen such a huge ship before, nor had he even heard of one.
If it weren’t for the characteristic details, like the titanic-sized engine nozzles, the pirate baron would have thought a flying city had crashed here.
The unknown ship, incidentally, had a remarkably sturdy construction.
Even after smashing into the planet’s surface, it hadn’t exploded or turned into a pile of scrap metal.
Its nose, buried in the ground, had broken off, creating a wide fissure, but otherwise the ship seemed almost untouched.
Fate itself was whispering in the pirate’s ear: “Take me, darling, and be rough about it!” Without much hesitation, Hondo grabbed the aforementioned chieftain’s wife by her ample hips and… So, what was I talking about… Ah, yes… The pirates quickly organized several teams and entered the fissure, which was marked with the symbol of a human skull against a massive cogwheel.
Things were going pretty well.
The inside was empty.
No angry owners of this “miracle,” no corpses.
Just claw marks, impact craters from shots, and dried puddles of blood and machine oil here and there.
The boys were pretty scared at first, some idiots even started raving about ghosts, but a few days later, everything settled down.
The city-ship was a confusing labyrinth, packed with unknown, often grotesque technologies that must have been worth a fortune.
However, the pirates, and Hondo Ohnaka personally, were interested in the most important place on any ship — its hold!
And that’s where the serious problems began.
Who the hell knew how, but even after crashing into the ground, the ship had kept its defensive systems in excellent condition.
The pirate baron experienced this unpleasant news firsthand when a red-hot ball of blue plasma instantly vaporized five of his boys who were walking a short distance behind their captain.
Now, looking at the ship’s hold opening before his eyes, which looked much more like a Banking Clan vault, the captain could confidently say (to himself, of course; voicing such thoughts aloud was fraught with extra holes in the speaker’s body) that losing more than half of the idiots in his crew had been worth it.
He had traded the lives of a bunch of useless fools for a cave full of treasure.
“And now, gentlemen…” Wanting to emphasize the importance of the moment, the pirate baron made a dramatic pause.
“Quickly take everything here that isn’t bolted down, and anything that is bolted down… take it along with the floor!” * * * In the very depths, hidden under a separate force field generator and duplicated by enhanced security measures, was a vault for… xeno-artifacts.
Inside it, under endless seals and a restraining portable Geller field, rested an artifact covered in ancient Eldar runes, radiating pure Warp energy… Sergeant Pivius was feeling melancholy.
And this disgusting feeling, in his understanding, was interspersed with wild, almost furious anger, a hatred for everything that surrounded the noble son of the High Spires of Scintilla.
He had suspected something was wrong from the very start of this Warp-forsaken operation, intended to capture a thrice-damned backwater planet.
Why did the Imperium even need this spherical lump of rock, overgrown with kilometers of tasteless, poisonous-green excrement?
There was nothing on it but slippery mud, meter-deep puddles, and ugly fauna!
Wherever you looked, you just wanted to spit like some peasant or farmer from an agri-world, but you couldn’t — a high-born shouldn’t stoop to the level of plebeians!
It should have been burned, yes, definitely… The bastards in the chairs of the Crusade’s high military council, damn them!
So, you found an underdeveloped tribal xeno-race on it, guilty of its own existence, so you destroyed all their primitive settlements with orbital bombardment — why station troops here, huh?!
Though it should be said that Pivius, unlike all the other fusiliers, was the most morally and physically prepared for such a turn of events.
Yes, he knew that the irresistible urge to take command of the leaderless regiment would quickly boil in the veins of the Scintillans.
He knew because he himself desired with all his heart to take the place of the deceased Colonel Astolfo.
After all, that was his dream — becoming a colonel, rising through the hierarchy of the Imperial Guard, he could finally spit in the face of everyone he hated.
His fellow soldiers who outranked him and looked down on him, and the others who didn’t grovel enough before his nobility, his “friends” and enemies in the High Spires of Scintilla, but first and foremost, his family.
The family that had thrown the second son of the aristocratic Kisian clan, no less, into this cesspit called the Guard!
But what could he, a sergeant, do?
All he could do was cast his vote for a candidate from among the least unpleasant personalities among the senior officer corps.
However, the heated arguments about who was most worthy to take command of the Scintillans, which often descended into outright abuse and other insults, led nowhere.
The regiment had been without a commander for several days now, and to finally close this matter, the fleet command had decided to provide this very commander.
Who it would be was still unknown.
To say the senior officers of the Infantry didn’t like this was an understatement; in fact, some individuals from the highest aristocracy of Scintilla were ready to tear apart and humiliate the appointee, who was due to arrive on the planet shortly, at the first opportunity.
“And yet,” Pivius said quietly, standing a step ahead of his squad in the standard greeting formation.
“Who will this man be — a dirty peasant from an unknown planet, or one like us, a pure-blooded aristocrat from some hive city?” The sergeant smirked with just the corners of his thin, perpetually blood-filled lips, an inheritance from his mother.
In any case, this man wouldn’t last long among them, the Scintillan Fusiliers — a week at most, maybe two.
And then he would leave, one way or another, and it would all start again: intrigue, bribery, threats.
It was all predetermined.
Yes, he was sure of it…