"Try me a River."

By: Anthony Hummerston.

STARRING

'Mama',   Rojic,   Jimmi,   Karnov,   Niall,   Kory,  
And introducing:
Joe-90 and Hen3ry
as the droids.

AND
Storm Cutter
their ship.

Kory’s eyes widen. Above her, and just in front, the levitated speeder is shaking. Niall and Master Livkin are wrestling with their wills. The result is a titanic battle to control the vehicle. Any wavering or loss of confidence will result in getting a speeder full in the face. – Not a pretty prospect. A matched battle is raging in the force. Livkin is powering his will with anger, while Niall struggles to keep calm and let the force flow through him. It isn’t helping that white-hot plasma bolts are screeching between the two feuding parties. Any distraction could end in disaster!

Kory slides along the bench seat nearer Niall. Her large assets are not helping Niall to concentrate. He closes his eyes- well, almost. Never let a chance to look at Kory right up close and personal go by, after all. He looks at her exceptionally large……Eyes. Her eyebrows shoot up quizzically. The speeder is looming large in her vision, only a second or two more now, surely.

The tension is punctuated by a high pitched shriek. Behind them, Rojic is squealing like a girl. Kory chances a glance toward him.

“I’m in combat! Eeek!” Rojic yelps.

Through clenched teeth Kory reminds him of his duties. “Keep the droids firing, and get the mouse-droids in position, we’ll take it from there.”

“It’s only a shame I couldn’t use the control boxes from the safety of Storm Cutter.” Rojic says. Kory looks at the slap-dash array of control boxes in both of Rojic’s hands. “You’re doing fine…” She reassures him. “Now do something!”

Niall and Livkin are still battling over the control of the speeder. Niall is hoping that his inexperience is going to pay off. Kory shoots him a glance. Niall doesn’t respond. Kory tries something else. “Remember the academy? The hyperspace ports that serve the Madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta? -They play a game like this…..With a bottle of Janx Spirit!” Niall tries. Kory continues. “Only you don’t want to lose this one!”

Rojic is screeching again. “Help! I’m in the middle of combat!”

Karnov calls over. “The Republic thanks you for your sacrifice!”

Unused to being thanked for anything, Rojic responds. “It’s no problem…..” Then he realises what he said. “D’oh!”

Rojic sinks down behind the speeder. “I came, I saw, I didn’t like it….”

“Could you say that in Latin?”

“Latin, what’s that?”

“Kinda like Huttese. -It almost but not quite sounds entirely unlike Basic.”

Rojic thinks. “Veni, vidi, pullus?”

“What? ‘I came, I saw, I chickened out?’”

“In Latin maybe, but in Huttese, it’d be Lappa, lookee, chikkee!”

Kory is serious for a moment. “Latin? That’s the language of magic isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, but ‘magic’ works for me!”

The battle droids respond at this point, under the hail of blaster bolts. “Magic! Magic!”

Meanwhile in Storm Cutter, Jimmi is pacing anxiously. “Where can they have got to?”

“Bleep pip, Bloop.” Hen3ry responds.

“What’s that? If only you could…..”

“Pip, bleep!”

“I don’t understand you….”

Hen3ry lights a little light. It shines on a faded calendar in the mess area. The viewers are treated to a close-up of ‘Miss November, 25 BBY.’ This would start off a big argument if the crew were aboard. As it is, Jimmi can’t see the calendar. Its presence in the force isn’t as large as the girl’s….Er…. ‘Assets.’

“What….?” Jimmi asks. “One day in the future I’m going to learn Binaric…..” ^{[ 55 ]} An idea hits him. “…In the future….!” Through the force, the future is not looking good for Miss November, 25 BBY. It’s not looking so hot for the other crew members either, now that they are involved in a protracted fire-fight. Jimmi sees Kory and Karnov being shot. “Hmm….” Jimmi thinks. “Nothing I can do. The fight’s all but over, the gallant defenders are losing, and by the time I find a pilot and get there, they’ll all be captured or dead. Oh curse my fleshy body, I wasn't fast enough. It's all my fault!” Just then a thought strikes Jimmi, who leaps up and runs to the cockpit, while beckoning to Hen3ry. “Of course! If I look earlier, I arrive sooner! Simple!” Barking a quick succession of orders, Jimmi starts hasty preparations. “Now, Hen3ry, I want you to pilot the ship…..While I supervise….Actually, forget supervision, I’ll man the guns!” Jimmi runs off, while Hen3ry plugs in with his data probe. Jimmi returns to remove the picture of Miss November, and plugs hen3ry into the correct socket. “You dirty old droid!” Jimmi tells him. “History channel, my arse! You’ve been watching National Geographic!”

Hen3ry scuttles off to the cockpit. Joe-90 settles down with the calendar, the view screen and a can of W-D60™. “Sex, cheese and violence? This is my kind of channel!” He says, but the others have gone.

Back at Gree Bridge, the assassin droid takes a shot at Karnov, narrowly missing. Karnov is still wrestling with the armless droid. Despite having a grip on it, there is little on the droid’s metal body that Karnov can use for leverage. He swings out with the lightsabre in his off-hand, but the droid is wise to this and twists to avoid having another chunk sliced off.

Niall and Livkin are straining to gain the upper hand. Niall does a mental fade left, and Livkin over-compensates. This is all Niall needs to slingshot the speeder rightwards, over the parapet of the bridge and plunge into the river. The droid that ended up there moments before is emerging from the bed of the river, water pouring from several cracks and splits in its casing. The speeder lands squarely on its robot head, and with a big slash, all disappear again beneath the surface.

Kory covers Niall, by shooting the advancing Trandoshan. However, her shot goes wide. Her enemy grins a toothy grin at her, like a crocodile ready for lunch. She smiles sweetly back, and steadies her aim for another shot. “I need to get my eye in….Too long in the luxury hold of Rose Wanderer hasn’t helped my shooting skills!” Niall looks over. “There may well be an issue with a couple of gravity well projectors spoiling your aim.” Kory shoots him a look. “I’m sure I could hit you with my eyes closed….”

“That’s Jimmi’s trick.” Niall responds, after a pause.

“He’s obviously not as distracted by my assets as you are….”

Niall has the last laugh. “I expect they show up on the force as much as they do in real life!”

Kory thinks for a second and then asks. “I have a question….If Jimmi only sees things in relation to the force….Then Jimmi can see through my clothes….?”

“Why do you think he always sits opposite you at dinner time?” Niall asks, rhetorically.

“I hadn’t thought of that! When I catch him, I’ll tear his….” But the end of the sentence is never heard though, because at this point, a shot from the Trandoshan hits her, forcing her back in the seat of the speeder, and making a black blast mark on the front of her dress. “Ow!”

Behind Niall and Kory, their battle droids have a bead on the Trandoshan, they shoot, and blast big lumps off the lizard-man, who responds with some fearsome growling. “Grrrrrrr!”

On the other speeder, the battle droids fire at the assassin droid. They are starting to slip off the comfortable cushions and into the foot-well. Their shots merely chip chunks of brick off the building where the droid is crouching. If it had an evil mind to think of it, and lips to move, it would be grinning evilly. But its mind isn’t, so it doesn’t, and so it can’t.

Niall grimaces as he sees Kory blasted back into her seat. “Ooh, that’s gotta sting! Lucky that you’ve got lots of padding….Er….Airbags!”

Kory shoots him a hostile look. “Just to let you know, I can kill you with my ‘airbags!’”

Niall seems pleased at the prospect. “Bring it on!”

“Them.”

Niall corrects himself, incorrectly. “Them!”

“No not them!” Kory hisses. “Them! – The enemy! Over there!” Kory looses off a shot. At this point, the bodyguard droid goes to cover Livkin. Back in the action, Niall raises his gun….

Back on Storm Cutter, Jimmi is deliberating. Using the force, and farseeing into the present, and trying to find out what is going on with the rest of the crew. – A neat trick, especially if one does not have twenty-four-hour rolling news. Only now, at the end, does Jimmi understand. Jimmi turns to Hen3ry and says. “If I leave now, help them I could; but I would destroy all for which they have fought, and suffered, and besides, the ‘History’ channel is on….”

Hen3ry beeps forlornly. Jimmi sighs. “Oh okay. You’ve convinced me….Pleasure before business….The history Channel will have to wait…As soon as there is an ad break….” Hen3ry beeps another sorry bleep, but more insistent this time. Jimmi turns on the droid. “Okay! Enough of the guilt; the torment of my inaction and the emotional blackmail….Oooh! Oaty-fruity bars! Yummy!”

In the vision, past the chewy nutritious snack, Jimmi can sense Niall, Karnov and the others wrestling with the dark side of the force. “That’s good enough for me! Time for some thrilling heroics! Now….” Jimmi stumbles around the cockpit of Storm Cutter. “Which exactly is the driving seat?” Hen3ry trundles around, making encouraging beeping noises. Jimmi warms to the prospect of flying the ship for the very first time. “Okay….Mirror, signal manoeuvre….” Jimmi thinks about this for a second. “Nah! Don’t need any of those stinkin’ mirrors. Go! Go! Go!” Hen3ry plugs into the co-pilot’s console, and the socket starts to turn. A few spins of the dial later, and we cut to a shot of an elastic band being twisted widdershins. In a deft bit of flying, Hen3ry lifts the ship off the ground, and in a low hover, clears the docking bay. Luckily, all but a few of the service pipes and cables have been unplugged, and only a few trail behind the ship, as Storm Cutter surges into the air. Jimmi is rehearsing a line. “I would’ve been here sooner, only you weren’t all dead then!” Storm Cutter swoops off into the sunset, while an attached electro-supply droid waves its legs uselessly in the air below them, suspended by a recharge cable. “Gonk! Gonk! G’ooooooonk! Crash!”

Hen3ry is bleeping urgently at Jimmi, who looks out of the ventral gun turret, and asks what the matter is. Somehow, the urgent bleeping translates properly. “What’s that you say…? You cannot close the cargo ramp door? Well, no wonder! There’s a chesterfield sofa jammed halfway up it! That’d be the property of Rojic’s rag-and bone business.”

Hen3ry sounds out a ‘pip-pip-pip-peeeep’ sound. Jimmi remembers something. “That sounds like the time signal. –And talking of which, how long until we are at our destination?”

“Pip, pip, pip, peep!”

“Okay, ten minutes! Fasten all seat belts, especially passengers near the open cargo bay ramp, please ensure that death sticks extinguished, seat backs back into the back position….Er…..And crew to the gun turrets please….!” There is a pause, and nothing happens. “Oh! That’d be me then!” Jimmi hurries off. There is a moment of comedy discontinuity, because Jimmi was actually there already.

Back at the fire-fight things are not going well. Kory’s vision is rather impaired from her wound. “It’s like looking through a fish-eye lens all of a sudden!” She tells Niall beside her.

Karnov responds. “For me, the world looks like that all the time!” Kory doesn’t hear him, as she blasts another shot, -another miss- at the plucky and agile Trandoshan.

The battle droids behind them start rattling off shots. Rojic has given them semi-autonomous control. It shows. All of them miss. Their metallic voices drone on. “Roger, Roger! -Bugger!”

Rojic is juggling with no fewer than seven control boxes. They are all cobbled together with leftover bits. He starts to explain. “I’ve actually been ever so clever….” Before the others shush him, and let him get on with it. With the last three controls, he is jiggling joysticks and switching switches, and pressing protuberances. It’s all rather confusing really. But the upshot is that three mouse droids shoot out from under Niall’s speeder, from where they have been concealed. They scoot forward, fanning out toward their targets. Niall is relieved. Having three unpredictable bombs beneath his bottom is more than a service corps operative can bear.

The mouse droids fan out. The white one to the Trandoshan, who very nearly trips over it, the black one to Livkin and the remaining green one to the bodyguard droid. The whole journey only takes a second or two, there’s nothing wrong with their motivators at least.

Niall calls over. “I have a message and a question. A message from Rojic…..” He nods, and Rojic, who is still cowering in the non-existent wheel well, pushes the detonate buttons. At the same moment, the Assassin droid on the roof blasts the two Battle droids behind Niall and Kory. The droids explode in a shower of limbs and wiring. “You’re playing the wrong message!” Niall yells. The assassin droid answers, from his vantage point. But no-one can actually hear him. “Now I have a blaster cannon too! Ho! Ho! Ho!”

“But we don’t!”

“That’s your hard luck!”

Back at the parapet of the bridge, Karnov and the Battle droid are still in their tussle. The droid clunks Karnov on the head, Karnov is stunned for a second, and sees stars. Then through the clearing mist, he manages to angle the lightsabre up over his head, and neatly slices the droid’s head from its shoulders. Karnov is relieved. In his triumph, he yells. “Haha! Off with his head!” The head drops to the edge of the bridge with a heavy clunk, and then rolls into the river below with a splash. It lands on an abandoned shopping trolley, and as luck would have it, comes to rest in the child’s seat. There it rests, sparking but inoperative. The body on the bridge slumps to the roadway. Karnov leaps up, ready for more action. Niall blasts at the assassin droid, but only knocks more bricks off its cover. “At least I’m keeping its teeny tiny tinny head down….!” He comments, between shots.

Seeing Karnov emerge from under the bridge, Livkin decides to send him a telepathic message. In his mind, he forms the word “Surrender!” He broadcasts it directly to Karnov’s brain. Unfortunately for Livkin, he’s overestimated his chances and also overestimated Karnov’s mental capacity for complex commands. The effort fails. Karnov looks impassively on. –Or it might just be wind. Livkin tries something simpler. “Would you like me to repeat the question?” Karnov is still not responding to hails. Livkin tries something else. Behind him, an intelligent stone lays down its weapons and yields.

The white mouse droid is in position. Rojic presses the detonate button. There is a flash and a pretty shower of sparks. The bomb has failed to detonate!

At that point, Jimmi and Hen3ry arrive in Storm Cutter. Over the external tannoy, which has somehow miraculously appeared on the hull, Jimmi calls out. “Heads down, or heads blown off….It’s your choice!”

The enemies ask. “Can you repeat the question?”

“No!”

Storm Cutter’s lower guns open fire, and blow a significant chunk off the building where the assassin droid is perched. Jimmi appears at the ramp of the ship, and almost considers sitting in the comfy sofa to shoot. Jimmi calls to Hen3ry to fire the sentry guns. Hen3ry points out that Jimmi is standing in front of the sentry gun in the hold, and that the other is only a single gun. However, the blaster on the underside swivels around, and rips off a few shots. They all miss!

Rojic is incandescent with rage! The black mouse droid has exploded with a feeble pop! Their mouse droids are two-thirds duds! – Which serves him right for critically failing to set them up right. –Twice! “I think that I have a bad motivator!” He exclaims. Then he is more philosophical. “Actually though, I’d be less than motivated if my mission was purely a suicide one!”

Karnov and Kory are trying to see through the smoke toward Livkin. Livkin has something in his hand. Though they don’t spot it, it is in fact a communicator, ready to summon up someone, or something. – Maybe he is calling in Rose Wanderer for close air support. Jimmi, from a vantage point on the cargo ramp, can sense what is about to happen. Quick as a flash, the amplifiers are turned up to eleven, and Jimmi starts singing!

A horrible howling deafens all the combatants. Livkin tries shouting into his comlink, but to no avail. What with the others' blasting, and Jimmi’s singing, nothing is heard over the din. It’s actually quite a good rendition of ‘Let Us Go Into the House of the Sith Lord’ and ‘Butterflies on a Sundae,’ though normally they wouldn’t be sung concurrently. The singing doesn’t match the musical tastes of anyone assembled below, no not even the intelligent rock. Some of the droids might have recognised it as a futuristic form of audible machine code, much like the mythical Sinclair Spectrum loading manic miner from magnetic tape. However, it has the desired effect. ^{[ 56 ]} Livkin is livid at not being able to raise rapid reinforcements. Jimmi yells between choruses. “How do you like Miralukan opera?”

“Like I like Morris Dancing!” Someone yells back, with a hail of blaster bolts thrown in for good measure, -and from both sides! Jimmi is crestfallen. “Everyone’s a critic!”

On a little market stall across Hunter’s City, cheese is suddenly in high demand as sentient species and intelligent rocks rush to find something to put in their ears. Birds, Mynocks and Toydarians literally drop from the sky, dead. Droids go on a homicidal rampage, and a glazing supplier gets lots of business just as it ironically goes out of business.

Between pauses, Karnov yells. “I hope that president Noriega is in the building, or we’re gonna be had up for war crimes!”

Niall responds. “Well, I hope no-one mentions my nifty package!”

With another volley of shots knocking away its cover, the Assassin droid is in the open. The remaining Storm Cutter crew start firing in its direction. “That’ll keep its tin head down!” The sentry gun cannot make anything of this latest development, and misses again. Kory asks Rojic if the gun is calibrated correctly. “Of course it is… I just need to re-re-calibrate the calibration…And….”

“Maybe you should reset it to the factory defaults!”

Kory takes aim on the unexploded mouse droid next to Livkin, who is still trying to open a channel to his ship. Karnov blasts the evil master, and sends him reeling. Livkin changes tack, and draws on all his evil force powers. In desperation, he tries to move Storm Cutter, spoil its aim, and stop the cacophony of sound. The dark side of the force flows through him, though even with a boost- the ship only slightly fades left. It’s too big! – Well at least it is too big in Livkin’s mind! Maybe he hadn’t accounted for the additional weight of all the robot junk in the hold, and the extensive lipstick collection in Kory’s room!

Jimmi is holding on as Storm Cutter lurches to one side and then rights itself. He turns to Hen3ry. “That was close!”

“Beep! Bleep! Pip!”

“Actually, professor, it might be better if you got back to the cockpit and plugged back in. Seeing as you’re supposed to by flying right now. I always find it disconcerting when there’s no pilot, and I’m hanging off the ramp, braced only by my buttocks clenched on a slippery leather sofa, while the ship hovers fifty feet over the planet’s surface.

“Pip, pip, toodoolooo!” Hen3ry disappears once more.

Jimmi starts to monologue into the tannoy. “Question is, should I stay, or should I go? If I stay there will be trouble, if I go there will be double… The answer is…. ‘Shoot ‘em Jimmi, fire as the guns bear. -And now for the double jeopardy question….’”

Niall yells to Kory, who is crouching beside him. “My ears are bleeding.…Actually it’s kinda nice….” Kory blasts the recalcitrant white mouse droid. At the same time, the Trandoshan fires at Karnov, looming large on his flank. Kory’s shot hits home. The little droid explodes. In a huge blast the whole bridge rocks. For a second the explosion surpasses the sounds of Jimmi’s looped singing and droning monologue. A second later, leathery strips of Trandoshan flesh rain down in bloody tatters. “A man – Or Trandoshan- though naked, can still be in rags….” Niall observes, sounding rather sinister. Kory thinks about this. She feels almost as green as the former Trandoshan gun-for-hire.

The little black droid scoots to Livkin and does nothing- It’s a dud! The green one goes to the bodyguard droid, and fully detonates. The blast of the green droid sets off the black one in a double blast. Livkin is caught in the explosion and slams against the wall. Bits of droid greebles are blown away, cracking its casing. The defenders give a ragged cheer!

Rojic is cursing the fact that his capacitor was too big. “I made a fatal flaw in my calculations, seeing as a farad is the charge in coulombs which a capacitor will accept for the potential across it to change one volt. A coulomb is one ampere-second. So a capacitor with capacitance of forty-seven millifarads will increase by one volt per second with a forty-seven miliamp current. So therefore, when I changed milifarads to microfarads, I forgot to cross off the right number of zeroes on each side of the equation, which would imply that I used a divide symbol instead of an arrow when I used it to denote a net forward reaction in the chemical calculation. – A schoolboy error!”

Quick redesign without 1000 Farad capacitor. (bottom left)

That's better!

Niall spots another target of opportunity. The bodyguard droid is damaged but functioning. The cracks in its armour are exposing bits of its innards to the outside. However, the cracks are a small target in relation to the whole. Niall concentrates. The bodyguard droid lifts up in the power of the force. It is propelled forward and then fades left. When it is above the deepest part of the river, Niall stops holding it up with the force, and lets the power of gravity take over. The droid drops like a stone into the water. – The tragedy of the situation balances the comedy of its little legs running in thin air, and the whole of its body splashing down into another shopping trolley baby seat!

Karnov shoots Livkin, with just enough underkill. The enemy agent clutches at his chest and slumps to the floor. Apart from the assassin droid on the roof, the fight is over.

Livkin

The assassin droid hefts the heavy blaster cannon, and starts shooting at Jimmi, who responds in kind. The others on the bridge have a clear shot at the droid. They level their guns and open fire. The droid is motionless, and unaware of their presence. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, and easier than hitting a barn door from the inside. Kory says. “Only a complete incompetent could fail to hit such a target of opportunity.”

Rojic fires. He misses!

The assassin droid soaks up the blaster damage. Seeing Storm Cutter turn for another shot, it changes tack, and aims the cannon at the floor. It fires a volley of shots, blasting a gaping hole at its feet. Then it neatly drops to the level below, disappearing from sight. Jimmi barks orders at Hen3ry to hold steady and then back off. Hen3ry obliges by resting Storm Cutter atop the building. Jimmi neatly jumps through the hole in the roof in pursuit, but the assassin droid already has a head start.

Niall crosses the bridge to meet up with Karnov. He tears the disguise from his head, and hands Karnov back the robe. “Oh and by the way, it still smells of three week old haddock.”

Karnov starts to say, “Mmm….Haddock!” But stops himself. “Only the Mon Calamari like haddock!”

Quick as a flash Niall says “Fish!”

Karnov can’t help himself. “Fish!”

Kory cuts in. “Today's fish is trout a-la-creme. Enjoy your meal!”

Niall turns to Kory, who is nursing her wound, and trying to cover up some exposed flesh, with the taters of her dress. “You’re hurt. I can help. Lie down and I’ll start C.P.R.”

Kory rounds on him angrily. “I DON’T NEED C.P.R!”

“You’re obviously in shock. Lie down and I’ll administer mouth-to mouth….You know how to do mouth-to-mouth don’t you? -You just put your lips together and blow….!”

Kory puckers up. Niall comes closer. Kory gets out a lipstick and quickly smears it on. Niall reconsiders. “On second thoughts, Livkin needs some attention. He’s fading fast!”

Kory puts her hands on her hips, and shrugs. “Men!” she says and stalks off to look over the wreckage. Rojic has got there first, and like Master Yoda on Dagobah, he is rapidly doing triage on the wreckage. “One of ours, one of theirs, one of ours…. Keep! Bin! Bin! Junk! Might be useful! This is Valuable! Oooh, a droid head! Rubbish! Not worth keeping! I need another wheelbarrow here…!”

Niall and Karnov tend to Livkin. In a touching moment of compassion, they stabilise his condition, and stop him from dying. Karnov and Niall exchange a glance. “That’s why we’re the good guys.” Karnov says, in a whisper. Niall concurs. “Agreed.”

Livkin is starting to come around. He starts drawing on the dark side of the force to sustain his miserable life, though his plan of draining the Trandoshan all went up in smoke – and reptilian chunks. He opens his eyes. Niall sees Livkin start to revive. He whips out his gun and blasts him. Karnov gives him a look of horror!

Livkin slumps back down. There is a moment of stunned silence.

“Stun setting! I want him alive! No disintegration!”

Everyone sighs a sigh of relief.

“What are we going to do with him?” Kory asks.

“Contact our superiors. They’ll send a transport, and get him and his cronies off-world to a holding cell. Then they ship them off to the pen.”

“Pen?”

“Penitentiary. Where the agents of darkness are held.”

“Where’s that exactly?” Karnov wants to know.

“I don’t know. That information is classified. Service corps directive Nineteen-Dorn. On a need-to-know basis. Official secrets. If I tell you, I have to kill you….Blah, blah, blah!”

Niall and Karnov decide to put binders on Livkin. Kory offers them some, and they cuff him. They make sure that he’s out cold, and will be for a while. Then them they set off to offer backup to Jimmi, who is tracking the assassin droid. Kory and Rojic stay with the prisoners.

As the others run off after Jimmi, Kory and Rojic gather useful and saleable wreckage. In doing so, they notice that the cyborg prisoner is starting to fade.

“His life signs are weak.” Kory says.

“What do you expect me to do?”

“I expect you to do nothing. But I don’t think I have the skill to keep him alive much longer.”

Rojic flutters over. “If we had a defibrillator we might start his heart.”

“A what?” Kory asks.

“A defibrillator. It depolarizes a critical mass of the heart muscle, terminates any arrhythmia, and allows normal sinus rhythm to be re-established by the body's natural pacemaker, -the sinoatrial node of the heart. Defibrillators can be external, transvenous, or implanted, depending on the type of device used or needed.” Rojic explains.

“Okay…..But we don’t have that kind of kit.”

Rojic is in no mood to hesitate, he brushes Kory aside. “Never mind, we’ll give him a jump-start. Hand me those two red crocodile clips.”

“They aren’t crocodile clips.”

“What then?”

“They’re the leftover bits of Trandoshan jawbone.”

“Eeew!”

Naill and Karnov fan out. Jimmi in the meantime has carefully worked every room through the building in search of the assassin droid, and finally concluding tha the droid has given its pursuers the slip, and escaped to the next building down the block. Jimmi advances carfully as the other two catch up. As they approach jimmi, a thought strikes Karnov. “Er….Did anyone else think it strange that Kory should have a handy pair of handcuffs?”

They think about it. Finally Jimmi comes up with an explanation. “She was held prisoner for a while. –That’s why we came to be in this mess, after all.”

“Okay. That works for me. One thing though?”

“Yes?”

“Why were they all pink and fluffy?”

Jimmi shushes them, and with a series of deft hand movements indicates that the droid is probably within. Jimmi communicates telepathically. Niall opts for taking the rear entrance. The others are keeping silent, and don’t comment on his obvious freudian slip.

The three of them close on the droid. Niall opens the door with the force and slips inside. He is in a dimly-lit room, which appears to be strewn with old furniture and junk. Karnov and Jimmi are in an adjoining room, sweeping it carefully, and checking every corner. Jimmi is searching the force, knowing full well that droids cuase hardly a ripple. Karnov is faring better, as his low-light vision is kicking in and helping their advance. Niall is searching too. He skirts around the wall and around a table. He checks under the table. There are two chairs and a pole about four feet long, under a grotty tarpaulin. He diregards this and makes his way to the wall, on the other side of which, Jimmi and Karnov stand ready. They scan the room. They scan it again. Jimmi’s hands are issuing signals as fast as a tic-tac man.

Niall and Karnov are interpreting the hand signals with varying success.

“You’re going to hit the pitch over the bleachers at Wrigley field?”

Jimmi head shakes a big “No!”

“You want to do the hand jive?”

Jimmi indiactes no.

“Niall creep rightwards, and we’ll cover?”

Vigourous nodding from Jimmi.

They take up positions. Niall edges sideways. At the table, he stops, thinking he can see something in the corner. Sure enough, in a cruel parody of the Blair Witch Project, the assassin droid is powered down and standing in the corner. Niall can only just make out a hard edge against the wall. He indicates this to the others. Jimmi counts down with fingers. Three. Karnov draws his lightsabre. Niall edges a little more to the right. Jimmi raises a blaster. Two. Niall is in position. He’s right up against the table and chairs. He and Jimmi are ready. One. Jimmi gives the sign. Karnov ignites the lightsabre, Jimmi and Naill squeeze off shots. The assassin droid is hit by a volley of fire. Karnov blasts it too. Niall steps to get a better shot, and clear the way for Karnov.

As Niall takes a step, the hidden blaster cannon fires right past his hip, and into the back wall, taking out a large chunk. A boobytrap! Light floods into the room. The assassin droid starts to power up. They take another shot, before realising that this is no ordinary power up, but a power overload! In a deft move, Niall grabs the blaster cannon, and aims it on the droid, whose electronic ‘eyes’ are now glowing a demonic red. A the last second, Niall fires the almighty weapon. The droid is blasted clear of the building, leaving a gaping hole. In a sprawled heap, the overload is complete, and the assassin droid explodes. Shrapnel slashes all around like razor blades, but our heroes are in enough cover to escape injury. Outside, a smoking crater and a few gears are all that remain.

Jimmi, Niall and Karnov exchange glances. That was a close one!

Niall hefts the blaster cannon. “Time to get that sentry gun upgraded, no?”

“Whatever….”

Niall warms to his theme. “This is my all time favouritest gun! I’m gonna call her…. ‘Sarah-Jane.’”

Karnov still can’t belive that Niall so very nearly walked in front of the cannon. “You mean you looked at it twice, and it didn’t register?”

Naill is sheepish. He tries to brush it off. “I don’t have the superior low-light vision that you do Karnov.”

“-And I don’t have the underwear bill that you do Niall.”

Niall hefts the heavy weapon and retorts. “Important safety tip, Karnov. Never insult a man’s underwear when he’s got his blaster cannon in his hand.”

Karnov thinks for a while. There is a palpable tension in the air. Then there is a snigger from Jimmi. Niall’s stern expression cracks as he realises what he has just said. Karnov grins, and catches Niall’s eye. They all fall about laughing. The tension is gone!

Back at the bridge, our team is reunited. They look over the devastation. Niall, Jimmi and Karnov are still giggling. Kory and Rojic have done a good job of sorting the wreckage from the salvage. Karnov points out to Kory that taking everything that the enemy owned is technically stealing.

Kory is hurt. “Oooh, ‘stealing’ is such an emotive word.”

“Emotive, no. Accurate, yes.”

“But we need supplies, Karnov. -Such as food and water. Then there’s paper for the head; hyperspace fuel; solder, wire, spare parts, ammunition, power-packs ….. - The list goes on and on….”

“They’re not that expensive, are they?”

“Bacta doesn’t grow on trees, Karnov.”

“Funny, but Mama always said it did.”

“I think she was winding you up.” Kory tells him.

“Does that mean that spaghetti doesn’t grow on trees either?”

“No. Spaghetti actually does grow on trees. She was one hundred percent correct there.”

“It’s a strange old galaxy isn’t it?”

“Yup. -And none so strange as that which people are prepared to believe!” Kory has to turn away to stop herself laughing aloud.

Rojic has found a pair of underpants in the river.

“Look what I found!” He corrects himself, with a glance toward Karnov. “-Ahem! ‘Stole.’”

Karnov berates him. “Rojic! Put them back, or at least dispose of them in a sanitary, and sensible way!”

Rojic looks at the undergarments. “They’re actually quite a good pair. I’m only sorry that I don’t wear any.”

“On second thought, ‘steal’ away!”

Kory is deep in thought. Rojic is totting up his share of the haul. Jimmi asks. “Of course, the question is, what are we to do with all this stuff, and more importantly, what are we going to do with Rose Wanderer? –Presuming we can get into the compound.”

Kory tells him. “It’ll take many days of complex calculations to crack the code. Of course I can do it in less than a minute.”

Jimmi looks at her with amazement.

Kory holds up a pass-card. “Look what I found in Master Livkin’s pocket!”

They high-five.

Niall picks up Livkin’s lightsabre. He ignites it. A very dark blue blade extends, and crackles menacingly.

“Amazing! A blade so dark it’s almost black.”

Karnov looks over. “I’ve never seen one that hue before.”

Niall thinks. “A dark blade. –A night-blade! ‘A night-sabre!’ -I don’t know what crystal he’s used, but I’m itching to find out!”

Sensing people approaching, Jimmi scans the area. Sure enough, other people and aliens are starting to converge on their position. “Time to go, people!”

They load up the remaining speeders with salvage, and hop aboard.

Niall takes the controls. “We need to let our superiors know the situation, and possibly get to Kegan before too long. That package is starting to burn a hole in my curiosity, and I want to get rid of it.”

They pull away. Looking back, Kory yells to Rojic. “We’re leaving!”

“Oh, why did you have to go and tell him?”

“Well, he might be the best to negotiate with Lorrey, the junk dealer.”

“Why so?”

“Because Lorrey has the shuttle that the bad guys trashed, and stole from us. I want a little payback. It’s time the Hutts owed us something. You never know when you’ll need a favour.”

Niall steers through the city streets. As they close on Storm Cutter he turns to the passenger seat. “Now, Sarah-Jane, I’m taking you home, so be on your best behaviour….”

There is an awkward silence. Finally, Jimmi says something.

“When a man names his gun, and starts taking to it, then it’s time to get rid of the man or the gun….”

NEXT EPISODE: Just a stone's throw away: Kegan.

Niall's very favouritest gun. Sarah-Jane.

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Footnotes:

[ 55 ]   A computer language, a portmanteau of 'binary' and 'basic.'
[ 56 ]   Everyone turns their guns on Jimmi.