Thanks to the ship's loader droids and hoversleds, the Bad Batch and I had hauled a number of treasures off the old cruiser by the time the next day rolled around. It went without saying there was still plenty left, and it would take several trips filling up my own ship to max capacity to even get close to making a dent in what it was holding. I thought the Sleipnir being able to hold a 100 tons of cargo was a lot, but that was literally nothing to a Venator's 20,000 tons. We simply wouldn't be able to take all of it with us, despite Wrecker's protests.
We didn't, for example, have the room for an AV-7 cannon unless we spent a great deal of time breaking it down. And besides, if I really did need one at some point they were surprisingly cheap, but it's not like I could tell the others that to silence Wrecker's pouting. I'd make it up to him later somehow.
At least I was able to convince him to part with his proton torpedo and let me set it inside his team's ship.
Still though, I was starting to get nervous about how long we were spending on Bracca at this point. I think I might have gotten Hunter too excited about the potential haul here, since every time I mentioned that maybe we grabbed enough stuff he said they still had time and space for more. I didn't think the man was credit hungry, but he certainly saw the appeal in it in covering his team's needs for the foreseeable future.
My observation droids hadn't picked up anything on the Scrappers yet, but then again one was lost by what looked like a big scary-looking bird and another was napped by a dianoga's tentacle after it flew too close over a pool of water.
Damn, nature was scary.
One was still active at least, and in fact alerted me while I was loading up some cargo onto Sleipnir's cargo elevator. It scared me so much that it nearly made me drop a whole crate of ammo on my foot, and thank goodness I was still wearing my powersuit and I was able to catch it in time before it did.
I brought up the feed for the droid, only to sigh when it was just Wrecker showing Omega how to disable a bomb in an open space not far from the Venator. The two have been spending a great deal of time together since his operation, even more so than usual, which was understandable given the scare we all went through. Also, Wrecker thought it was perfectly normal to teach a pre-teen how to disarm live ordnance, especially in a scrapyard apparently filled with discarded explosives that you might need to disarm in an emergency.
It was a healthy reminder that the girl was basically being raised by a bunch of child soldiers who found that kind of stuff normal.
I brought up the danger of doing that out in the open as compared to hidden in the Venator, and just plain doing it at all, but Wrecker waved me off and pointed out that it something went wrong it was even more dangerous to train with explosives in an enclosed space, which he wasn't wrong about. Omega was no help either, she was totally into it, and Hunter saw it as an important part of her training.
Anyway, I watched as Omega panickily attempted to disarm a disassembled explosive, only for her and Wrecker to run for cover.
I was worried for a moment, only for it to explode into a cloud of smoke.
I moved the probe in closer to get a better idea of what was going on.
"HAHAHA, gotcha!" Wrecker laughed as he came out of cover.
"Why didn't it explode?" Omega asked with a scoff as she also came out of cover, realizing she had been had.
"Ha, because it's a smoke bomb!" Wrecker explained as he crossed his arms with a smile. "You think I'd let you train with a live explosive? I'm not crazy, HAHAHA! You should have seen your face!" he laughed as he playfully punched her in the shoulder.
"Is it sad that I honestly thought you would?" I asked through my droid as it flew over to them, grabbing their attention.
"Nick? Is that you?" Omega asked curiously as she looked up towards the small droid.
"What's with the probe droid?" Wrecker added.
"Yeah, it's me, and with the risk of attracting Scrappers while we salvage the cruiser, I figured it would be smart to send out a few of these droids to act as lookouts," I explained. "Sadly, it's proven less effective than I thought since this scrapyard has so many nooks and crannies to hide in, and I already lost most of them to the local wildlife. Apparently they've learned to have a craving for non-rusty metal, who knew?"
"Wrecker! Omega!" Echo called out from a nearby scrap pile, which he jumped down from to join them. "Pack it in, Hunter wants us back at the Jedi cruiser. How'd the test go?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Omega sulked.
"Cheer up, kid. I failed my first disarming test too," Wrecker encouraged her while handing her back her energy bow. "With my help, you will be a pro in no time."
"Nick, if you're almost done you should come by the ship too," Echo said to my droid. "We got another load to ship out."
"Got it, let me just send this droid back on its route," I said, doing just that and returning to finish loading my current crate.
Unfortunately, not a few seconds after I did that my probe sent out another alert, making me jump and then sigh. I brought up the feed, fully expecting to see the clones again, only for a trio of unfamiliar beings to show up on it not too far away. They were, in fact, even spying on my friends at that very moment with macrobinoculars.
The Scrappers.
I wasn't the only one that noticed them too, since before I could even think about radioing the Bad Batch, Echo, Wrecker, and Omega rushed the hidden figures, who quickly bailed from their position and rushed for their parked hoverbarge nearby.
Echo and Wrecker were able to tag one with a stun before they even reached it, and the second as they were climbing on, but the third made it for the controls and was quickly starting the thing up.
"Stop! Oh no you don't!" Wrecker yelled as he jumped forward to grab the barge, attempting to keep it grounded with his strength, but very quickly found himself being carried off by it as the Scrapper tried to make a getaway. "I got this under control!"
Yeah, that was not comforting to hear as Wrecker desperately hung onto the barge as it maneuvered through the surrounding scrape.
Thankfully, I thought fast, and while this model of probe droid had no weapons installed in it, that didn't mean it didn't have a means of attack. Namely, I overclocked its repulsorlift engines and had it ram itself straight at the Scrapper's head, making a very satisfying bonk sound before my feed cut out due to 'extreme damage'.
Apparently ramming a small flying droid flying at over 100 mph into a helmeted dude's head was not what the creators of this particular droid model designed it for.
With my eyes taken out, I quickly called up Omega for an update.
"Nick! Did you just smash your droid into that Scrapper's head?" Omega asked.
"That I did," I admitted. "Did it accomplish anything?"
"Knocked the Scrapper out at the controls and made his barge crash a bit, flinging Wrecker off a ways," Echo informed me. "No big deal."
"Ouch, tell the big guy I'm sorry about that, but hey, at least the Scrappers didn't get away," I pointed out. "And hey, free barge! Be sure to bring that over to the ship. It will make moving the rest of the stuff easier."
"Will do, but after that you certainly need to get over to the ship."
"On my way," I nodded and ordered the triplets to finish up as I quickly made my way back to the Venator.
After all, if the Scrappers noticed us, that means that the Empire can't be far behind.
By the time I rushed back to the ship, Wrecker had already piled up the unconscious and bound Scrappers near the open space at the Venator's tip where Hunter and I said bye to Rex the other night, where the rest of the team was also gathered.
"Rex warned us about the Scrapper patrols on Bracca," Echo pointed out. "We should leave."
"In our present situation we need money," Hunter countered. "And we have the chance to make a lot of it right here. Nick has already loaded up a great deal."
"Yeah, but I'm with Echo here, we shouldn't overstay our welcome," I pointed out. "We got some loot, so let's get going while the going is good."
"Tech, what is the potential haul inside this cruiser?" Hunter asked the team's brain.
"My scans indicate that Nick's earlier assumption was right, the armory and the artillery bay have not been fully offloaded, and that there is still a great deal left over despite our earlier efforts," Tech explained. "The dianoga must have kept the Scrappers away."
"I don't blame 'em!" Wrecker yelled, shuddering at the memory of the creature.
"If we can grab enough of those weapons and sell them off, we will be well off for quite a while," Hunter pointed out before looking at me. "And your cargo hold still has space, right?"
"Technically, we've been taking it slow and quiet to avoid any Scrapper attention, not to mention the time it takes to navigate the goods from here back to the ships without outright flying, so it's only a little under quarter full at this point. We don't have nearly the logistical strength the GAR did to move it much faster, after all," I explained before looking at the downed Scrappers. "Though now that we've taken out the local patrol, we could likely rush things a bit more…"
"I'm still not comfortable with this. We're soldiers, not arm-smugglers!" Echo argued before turning to me. "No offense, Nick."
"None taken," I shrugged. "I'm still grappling with the morally grey nature of my chosen profession myself."
"There's no Republic for us to rely on anymore, Echo," Hunter commented. "We're presented with an opportunity here. We have to take it."
"I would also add that the intel from the bridge's central system has the potential to be worth far more than any weapon," Tech pointed out.
"Eh, not to me," Wrecker complained.
"It would take up less cargo space and be less work to move it though," I pointed out.
"Tech, get to the bridge, get the power online, and whatever intel you can gather," Hunter ordered before turning to me. "Nick, get the latest patch of salvaged supplies we prepared on the Scrapper's barge and loaded up onto the ships. The rest of us will grab whatever else we can from the armory for a final run before we leave."
"Uh, what do we do about them?" Omega asked while gesturing towards the knocked out Scrappers.
"Yeah, won't their buddies start getting worried once they don't report in?" I pointed out. "Seriously, maybe we should just cut our losses and just head out now."
"We'll grab what we need and be gone before they even wake up. These are scrappers, not soldiers, I highly doubt they'll react in a timely fashion to a late check-in, if at all," Hunter pointed out. "Tech also confirmed they sent out no communications before you all took them down, so we likely haven't been reported yet, and even if we were, the Empire would likely be slow to respond to a bunch of scrap thieves. I'd be surprised if they sent out a single reg squad to check us out, assuming the Scrappers don't try to police things on their own."
Shit, he was right. From Hunter's perspective this was the only Scrapper patrol that even noticed us, and I had no proof to refute that. Nor was there any reason in his mind that the Empire would react with such a large and fast reaction force being led by Crosshair of all people. Heck, they really might not do so due to the butterfly effect of me being around!
My metaknowledge was useful, but I couldn't assume everything would line up one to one the more and more I interacted with the universe and altered things, nor could I convince people to act on most of it without proof to work with.
So yeah, from Hunter's perspective it would be too paranoid to run away now when there was a good payday in front of us… I just hoped he was right and I could help speed things along.
"Ugh, fine, but we should make this as quick as possible!" I said as we all rushed off to complete our various objectives. "It might not be a full cargo hold, but it's still worth a great deal since I made it a point to grab the most valuable stuff I could find first."
"I just hope there are still proton torpedoes left!" Wrecker said. "You can never have enough of those!"
"Sure, just so long as they aren't pointed towards us!" I yelled back after him as I split off from the group and headed towards the hanger.
I had the dangerous feeling we were gonna have to rush out of here fast.
Thanks to having the cargo pre-arranged for pick up and the Scrapper's barge, I was able to load it up and transport it back to the ships in a much shorter time than my earlier system.
If the Empire truly was on their way now, no point being slow and sneaky about it after all.
I had the triplets and the Things help me quickly load as much of the stuff on board as possible, quickly reaching a little over a quarter of my ship's total cargo capacity according to Launchpad's scanners. I made sure to put a little on Marauder too, mostly small stuff, just to make sure the Bad Batch had some stuff in case… something bad happens, but I tried not to think about that too much.
Assuming everything went as I thought I did, this would likely be my first official clash with the Empire, and that could easily lead to my- I shook my head.
"No time for thoughts like that," I muttered to myself as I loaded one of the few crates left on the barge onto my ship's cargo elevator, letting it go up for the triplets to strap down as I headed back to the barge to start moving the rest when my comm device went off.
"Nick! We have a problem!" Launchpad screamed into my ear comm, making me wince a little. "We have a proximity alert! We have three ships inbound."
My blood ran cold.
"What kind of-" my words were interrupted by the sight and sound of three Nu shuttles flying not too far away overhead and heading towards the Venator. "Nevermind."
I quickly activated my comm device.
"Hunter, it's the Empire! Three attack shuttles just-"
"We know," Hunter interrupted me. "You were right, we should have left earlier when we had the chance. Get on your ship and get out of here. Crosshair is leading this force and no doubt he's gonna have a sweep done for our ship, but they don't know about yours yet. You can still possibly get away from here without them noticing you."
"But what about you guys?!" I asked in disbelief. "You can't just expect me to abandon you!"
"This won't be the first mess we've had to sneak or fight our way out of, we'll be fine," Hunter assured me. "We will do better knowing you aren't in the line of fire anyway. We'll avoid the regs, get back to the Marauder, and fly our way out. We've done it a thousand times. Now hurry!"
"Pack it up everyone and leave whatever's left! We need to go!" I told my droids, who quickly got moving before I kept speaking to Hunter as I rushed to the entrance to the ship. "My ship's armed though! I can… I don't know…do a flyby on their shuttles or something!"
"Hmm, maybe," Hunter considered my words. "Okay, we'll call you in if we need air support, but move your ship somewhere away from ours before they find it."
"Got it, I'll call back the second we do," I said before ending the call and pointed at Thing 1 standing nearby. "Thing 1, go into the Marauder and pretend to be a shut down protocol droid. Stay that way if any clone troopers show up, but if that duros I mentioned shows up, feel free to go nuts! Until we meet again, consider the Bad Batch your commanding officers, including their power droid, got it?!"
"Sir, yes, sir!" Thing 1 saluted and rushed his way over to the other ship while I ran into mind, the entry ramp closing behind me as I rushed towards the cockpit.
"All crew members reporting that cargo is as fastened down as possible, Nick," Launchpad informed me. "Are we running away?"
"Not quite," I said as I took the co-pilot set and started adjusting the ship's power systems. "Take off, but keep us as low and slow as possible. Find a relatively open space to land and hide in. I'm shutting down all non-essential systems and setting everything but the flight controls to low power so we are less likely to get picked up on scanners. But the second we get the signal, we need to be ready to launch and fight!"
"Fight?!" Launchpad squeaked. "B-but I'm a civilian pilot droid, I'm not programmed for combat!"
"Then consider this an upgrade," I commented as I, with Launchpad's help, commanded the Sleipnir to rise from the hangar bay and slowly moved away from the location with all its lights off and power low, with only the dull shine of its ion engines providing limited thrust.
I kept half an eye on the scanners, watching to see if the Nu shuttles made a move, and watched as one did, making a sweep of the area around the Venator. It was most likely looking for the Bad Batch's ship, as Hunter suspected, but if we stayed up in the air much longer it would find ours too. We needed a place to land that would be overlooked!
"There!" I pointed at a sideways hulk with a large tear in the side. "It's narrow, but we should be able to stay afloat inside!"
"Oh dear, more cosmetic damage…" Launchpad whined. "My programming finds the very idea repellent!"
"Cause you were programmed to fly ships owned by people who never wanted them near anything dangerous if possible, but that isn't the galaxy we live in," I said as I directed the ship inside the hulk. "Sometimes you have to get a few scars just to stay alive."
"Personally, I would much prefer not being in the position to possibly end up destroyed in the first place," Launchpad fired back as he flinched from the sounds of rusted metal scraping against the hull of the ship, and to be fair, so was I.
'I need to spend a good amount of time fixing her up after this,' I thought to myself as they finally put the whole ship inside the hulk and gently turned her around in it so they could make a quick exit if needed, causing yet more scraping.
"Okay, it was a tight fit, but now we just gotta wait," I whispered to myself as the Sleipnir floated within the rusty maw of the former ship. I activated my comm unit. "Hunter, we're in position, but I'm pretty sure they found your ship."
Or at least the scanner was showing the Nu shuttle having landed again in the same area as our former position.
"We figured that would be the case," Hunter noted. "We had a run in with Crosshair. We're heading towards the engines and plan to exit the ship from there. Stand by in case we need fire support."
"Will do," I nodded before ending the call and turning to Launchpad. "I'm heading to the top turret and will tell Thing 2 to man the second one. I'll let you know when we need to launch."
"Yeah, right, I'll be here for… that," Launchpad said nervously, so I patted him on his back.
"We'll make it through this, I promise," I told him. "I just gotta shoot as well as you fly, and we'll be untouchable."
"I think you're giving me too much praise, Nick, but… thanks," Launchpad eventually nodded.
"You're more skilled than you think," I said as I got up from my seat. "Your brain certainly thinks faster than mine."
With that, I quickly headed to and climbed into the upper turret.
"Thing 2, man the second turret and get ready to shoot the second we go loud," I said over my comm unit to said droid as I got into the gunner seat.
"It will be a pleasure to bring fiery death to our enemies, Sir!" Thing 2 said with a bit too much enthusiasm in his voice.
With that, it was all a matter of waiting… and waiting… and waiting some more…
"Man, time really does seem to go on forever during the calm before the storm," I muttered to myself before Launchpad contacted me.
"Nick! I'm reading a massive energy surge from the downed capital ship! One of its engines just came online!" Launchpad informed me.
"That must be the signal!" I said as I white knuckled the gun controls. "Launch!"
"Launching!"
Suddenly the ship powered up to full and blasted out of its hiding place, zooming towards the Venator. Even from here I could see one of its ion engines firing, before slowly shutting down.
"Hunter! Was that you guys?!" I commed him.
"Partly!" Hunter yelled over the comm and as I heard blaster fire in the background. "We used some explosives to detach a section of the engine from the ship so we didn't get vaporized, but Omega and I got separated from the others! Now we are being harried by a shuttle! Mind giving us a hand?!"
"Coming in now!" I told him as Launchpad was already maneuvering the Sleipnir on an intercept course with a Nu shuttle that was firing at the ground while another was stopping near a scrap pile next to the Venator. "Take cover!'
I aimed the turret, and the second it was lined up I opened fire, only a few seconds slower than Thing 2's turret.
The gun might not have rumbled like a projectile weapon of similar size might, but still felt it as it unleashed its deadly payload of energy at its target.
The quad-lasers slammed into the shuttle, its pilot likely not expecting to be attacked at all, hammering its shields as we flew by it. Launchpad made a sharp turn, which even I felt a bit, and soon we were firing again at the shuttle as it started taking evasive actions.
"We drove it off! Get back to the ship as fast as you can!" I commed Hunter as while I kept on shooting, barely making any hits now as the much experienced pilot worked hard to dodge us. At least Thing 2 was still making some decent hits.
"On it! Thanks for the assist!" Hunter told me between light huffing breaths. "Keep them distracted as long as you can! If things get too hot, get out of here and we'll link up again later!"
"It's only the one shuttle so far, with the other busy with the troops back near the Venator and the other likely keeping your own ship locked down, so be careful about that when you arrive," I informed him while we kept chasing down the Nu. "We should be able to wait until you are up in the air and-"
"Nick! More contacts incoming!" Launchpad suddenly screamed over the comm. "It's starfighters!"
And before anymore could be said, I heard before I saw a familiar sounding engine roar reach my ears, making me break off my shooting of the Nu and turn the turret around to face behind us.
Narrow profiles flanked on both sides with four wings, it was hard not to recognize the large-noised craft as anything else, especially as they were rushing right at us. Namely, what was coming right at us were four V-Wings in attack formation.
"Uh, Hunter," I gulped nervously. "We have a new problem up here."
The problem being that we were now being hunted down by the TIE fighters' much more dangerous ancestors.