A twelve-seat speeder is a solid ride.
A twelve-seat speeder with twenty three equally filthy clones crammed into it, less so.
An overloaded speeder like that, stuffed full of clones and junk, is basically the vehicular equivalent of some old rust bucket back home somehow fitting twelve drunk guys and an accordion player inside, impressive, but painfully slow.
Repulsors straining and whining under the load, moving at roughly walking pace, just not actually on foot.
And when that same speeder’s towing a second one behind it, two clones and a literal mountain of salvage aboard, plus a drag sled scraping along the ground on cables carrying a mangled twin turbolaser turret, well, the whole scene looks like a scrapyard picked up and relocated overnight.
Did I mention my own overactive imagination earlier?
Please.
Compared to whatever’s going on in Drill’s head, my quirks look downright tame.
These guys are unhinged, genuinely, like something finally snapped loose in them.
Drill had practically gutted the entire bridge by that point, every piece of hardware he could physically reach, and looked borderline euphoric discovering an intact targeting core salvaged from the same turret now dragging behind our makeshift cargo speeder.
All because of some rare, finicky processor buried inside that otherwise garbage piece of hardware.
Sure, the turret itself was a mess, but the accelerator components looked genuinely promising, maybe useful for upgrading our own DC rifles.
I did ask him to look into reducing muzzle flash and noise, didn’t I?
He remembered.
Fine, guess I’m hauling this junk myself then, no way I’m carrying it on my back.
Deep in the collapsed cargo hold, Dench dug out proton torpedoes that somehow never detonated.
One with a live warhead attached, two without, just bare accelerator units.
Turns out they’re modular too, whatever warhead you bolt on becomes the payload.
So that’s what actually blew earlier, they’d had launch tubes mounted along the transport’s flanks.
Not exactly reliable rigging, but functional enough.
What more could a bunch of scavengers ask for.
Naturally, I asked him, mid-disassembly, just to be safe.
“Does that thing go off easy?” Dench, braced against the last remaining bulkhead, yanked hard on a stuck warhead, grunted, wrenched it free with a jerk, and immediately dropped it at his own feet.
Picked it back up, turned it over in his hands as best he could, heavy thing, and remarked, almost philosophically: “Shouldn’t, probably.” I stepped back, just in case.
Knowing him, he’d have happily cut the fuel cells straight off some old rocket system with a grinder if given the chance.
Scar spent a good while chewing out his people outside the wreck over their grenade consumption.
Adrenaline does that, apparently, where one grenade would’ve done the job, they threw three.
Ran out fast, and if it hadn’t been for Dench’s demolitions crew, we’d still be fighting our way down that corridor toward the bridge.
Whoever commanded this crew had dug in seriously well up there.
Took a full minute of steady pressure to smoke them out.
Turned out to be a fool anyway.
Salty, wandering past afterward with his usual calm, suggested Scar go take a whiff of the Trandoshans currently decomposing like a neat little garden bed near the hull breach they’d all designated as their exit route, courtesy of Dench’s handiwork.
My scouts pulled their weight too, though I only sent them into the hold once Dench and his crew had actually finished clearing it out.
Mostly we hauled off weapons and food.
I handled the alcohol personally, identified by smell and requisitioned on the spot, since the clones wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Saw firsthand what Skirata’s people were actually drinking back when we raided his Nulls’ camp for salt, enough to make him choke, practically overnight.
Turned out none of them knew what currency was either.
I asked everyone to collect any little numbered chips or blocks lying around and hand them over to me, something tells me clones don’t get paid, but the body still craves a little indulgence now and then.
Back in my old life, I once caught a bit of some cheap parody Star Wars flick from some low budget studio.
Twi’lek dancers.
Genuinely, that’s worth revisiting sometime.
Anyway, the results of this whole shakedown are now piling up higher than the person walking, no, the speeder, hauling it.
A day later, running on stimulants, we rolled into camp in a full cavalcade, me humming something like the Ride of the Valkyries under my breath the whole way.
Right, forgot to mention, everything’s fine and we’re almost there.
The convoy’s arrival got greeted with the silence of a sleeping camp and stunned confusion from the Mandalorians.
My scouts had already scouted ahead, obviously, they just like the ceremony of it.
They’d relayed word to command, who’d relayed it up to the instructors.
And there she is, someone I really don’t care for, Master Isa, decked out in red, standing there like a teapot, hands on hips, foot tapping impatiently against the ground.
Reminds me exactly of my ex-wife, back when I still had one, always greeting me the same way.
Where have you been.
At least Master Palek’s standing nearby, also in red, technically camp commandant over this whole ragtag crew.
Are they about to gang up on us?
Feels like somebody’s about to get chewed out.
Won’t name names, but it’s probably all of us.
We’d barely rolled to a stop before Isa practically leapt onto the lead speeder, not exactly hard given how slow we were moving.
“Wounded?
Casualties?!” No need to shout, honestly; barely any blood left in me after all these stimulants.
I ease the speeder to a stop and lower it down onto its rest struts, gently.
Or, not that gently.
Right then, a louder rumble kicks up from somewhere behind us.
“Sir,” I hop out, “permission to report, ma’am—” “Careful with that!” “What just launched out of Dench?” We both turn in unison toward the pile of scrap collapsing off the back of the trailer, and toward Dench’s oddly frozen looking squad standing near it.
After a couple seconds of digging himself out of the wreckage, he finally surfaces holding, oh, right, forgot about that thing.
“…No casualties.
No wounded.
Mission complete,” I finish, quieter now.
“Doesn’t hurt, or…” Dench announces cheerfully to the whole group, that same familiar grin plastered on, hugging a heavy cylinder wrapped in loose wiring against his stomach.
“And what exactly is that piece of junk?” “This?” Isa’s icy exterior finally cracks.
“A proton torpedo warhead,” she says, almost affectionately, taking it gently from Dench’s hands and immediately dropping it at her own feet.
“Wait, does it detonate?” Palek looks visibly nervous.
Isa just shrugs philosophically.
“Shouldn’t, probably.” I didn’t even stick around to watch the quartermasters haul the junk away after that.
All I wanted at that point was sleep.
So we just crawled straight into our tents.
Morning came with that same familiar ding-dong chiming through my helmet again.
Sleeping in the thing’s becoming a real habit, though my neck’s paying for it.
Hm.
Of the few of us still camped here…
“Cap, we’ve got a bit of a situation,” Nest says, well, at least nobody woke me up in a full panic this time.
“What,” I yawn.
“Come up to the rock post, take a look,” and he’s already gone.
Ugh.
Nothing for it, I drag myself up.
Fifteen minutes of stumbling later, I reach the old hidden position overlooking camp from the ridge.
View up here’s genuinely stunning, looks almost like some old mountain range back home.
Nest’s the one who steps out to meet me.
Wait, weren’t you Salty a second ago?
“Cap, why do you keep mixing up my name?” “Reporting,” Nest continues, “we ran a supply sweep deep past the camp perimeter for food.
Found a couple of large, oddly-behaved bird type creatures at close range.
Stunned and secured them.” “How, exactly, oddly behaved…” Bad feeling creeping in already, just from how Nest phrased that.
“Stop.
Let’s go take a look.” We climb a little higher.
From a distance, everything looks fine at first glance.
Two healthy, nearly human-sized harpy-type creatures, sizable beaks, hanging tied to poles.
Closer inspection reveals something like fleshy, bat-like membranes along the wings.
Actually looks pretty appetizing, honestly, chop the head off right now, pluck it, straight into the pot.
No, seriously, I wasn’t the only one who read the regional survival manual, was I?
“Found this on them too,” Nest hands me a strap fitted with small pouches.
“Oh, no.
No no no.” Well, this is bad.
Someone’s going to have my head for this, and now I get to relay the news too.
“Yeah, and there were more of them a bit further off, just watching the camp.
Chirping something back and forth.” “Good thing you only stunned them.
Bring them down to camp.
Question is now whether we handle the interrogation ourselves, or hand this straight to the instructors.” Then, catching the confusion on his face, “These are the local sentient population.
What exactly they were doing out here, we’re about to find out.”
com/Hezzario