Heroes' Caul: Chapter 7

After almost a week, the Crew comes out of hyperspace near Vespar IV. The orbit is very full. They are not around the planet, but the space station orbiting it; it seems to be a major port. Fabius asks D20 what his recollection of the place is. The droid simply tells him to land at the station. Fabius and Redge debate which code to use; D20 hacks a new registration for them because so many ships there also had the same stolen codes; they use the new, different one.

When they land, D20 suggests splitting up to look for information on Boba Fett, Dengar, or Garindan. They take the its adivce: Zerrisk and Fabius leave first, followed by D’urrou, Naria, and Papa Beedo, and lastly Redge and D20. None of them seem to find anything. However, when D20 returns, he says that he and Redge were attacked by four humans (three men and a woman); they were all wearing grey maintenance coveralls and skullcaps and wielding blaster pistols. While they are discussing what to do about it, there is a knock at the door of the docking bay. The people needs pilots to fly with Achilles Starhammer’s fleet. They claim there will be a high payoff and a low risk. Kane is intrigued.

The group decides that since the four villains that attacked Redge will recognize D20, he will go and get information on this transport run for Starhammer, while Fabius, Beedo, and Zerrisk go to look for Redge and his attackers. The trio is unsuccessful. Luckily, however, the morgue turns up nothing, either. D20 calls them after a while and then they return to the White Wing to meet him.

D20, meanwhile, had met up with all the other pilots, who looked at him with scorn. He intimidates them. An older man stands up front—Achilles Starhammer—flanked by two men: a rugged survivalist with a scar under his eye and another man in a jumpsuit wearing a lightsaber, Yeager and Yarros, respectively. He needs only two pilots and two co-pilots. He will speak with them one at a time; D20 pushes his way to the front and no one argues. Starhammer doesn’t need any ships, just pilots. Whoever succeeds gets the ship and 100,000 credits. Apparently two of his other children were kidnapped by the pirate, Xermu Jek. Starhammer tells D20 that his pilot has made the first cut, but he needs to speak with the pilot to make sure. D20 leaves after agreeing to have Kane return in two hours.

The crew discusses the deal. Kane is definitely interested. He figures he can run the mission and then meet up with the others at Bespin in a few days. While they are waiting, Fabius finds a Redgeset Starhammer on the IBA list and realizes that this must be Redge. The bounty was put out by the Starhammer League; for whatever reason, they want their own. Kane and D20 go to meet Starhammer. Kane asks what the catch is. The basic fact is that the “ransom” is Starhammer himself and his whole fleet. Yet Achilles has decided not to give in. He wants to deliver himself to the asteroid base, get his sons back, and then have the fleet vaporize the asteroid, destroying the pirates. D20 suggests he accompany him and try to convince the pirates to give them Starhammer too. In case he fails, he decides to put his brain in a back-up storage, purchasing a protocol droid for exactly that purpose; he figures if necessary, they can recover it later. D20 negotiates this as his compensation, along with a possible future upgrade in body. The other three agree that Fabius will get the Starhammer Cruiser and 15,000 credits if they survive and Zerrisk and Beedo will split the remaining 85,000 (Fabius also writes a clause that says if the ship is destroyed then he still takes in the same proportion of the 100,000).

Fabius, D20, Zerrisk, and Beedo say their good-byes to the rest of their crew and head off to meet the Starhammer fleet. When they get there, Kane guides one of the cruisers down to the asteroid surface. They demand that Achilles come into their base immediately. D20 walks the elder (in a spacesuit) into the base and the two sons and a co-pilot walk out. Fabius has Zerrisk ready to scan them the minute they walk in. They are all protocol druids—not Starhammer's sons. Zerrisk’s scan also reveals a bomb inside each one of them. The crew quickly push them back off the ship, lifting off just as the droids explode.

On the inside, D20 and Achilles feel the blast and are unsure what to do. They decide to move in. The building is empty except for a few inactive battle droids. D20 hacks into them and copies a slave program into them so they will obey his commands. Once this is complete, he sends them off to look for a communications transmitter. They find some tech and work to hack into it to serve their purposes.

Above the pirate base, Kane wants to help D20 and Achilles, but wants to tell the fleet to deploy in case they are attacked. Their communications are not only blocked to the inside, but towards the capital ship they came in with. Kane steers upward to warn them, but they are already under attack, so he engages at the point at which he can do the most to help allow the fleet deploy. The pirates are flying “Uglies”: odd mish-mashes of ship parts and shoddy construction. Kane roars into battle. He, Zerrisk, and Beedo open fire (with laser cannons, concussion missiles, and ion cannons respectively); Fabius fries one of them, though his companions miss. Kane easily maneuvers through them again, destroying another "Ugly"; Zerrisk misfires again, but Beedo blasts one ship with the ion weapon. On another pass, only Kane hits, but by then, the Starhammer fighters are disengaging, and are starting to turn the tide of the battle.

Fabius tells Zerrisk to scan elsewhere; she detects a Corellian gunship on the other side of the asteroid. As they roar toward it, a message is broadcast that the pirates still have Starhammer's kids and the fleet should surrender. However, just then, the communications come back up for the fleet and the lead ship says that the Starhammer Fleet must not let the “Penumbral Saber” be captured. Before Kane and the others can figure out what this means, Yarros comes on and says that he has rescued his two brothers. Fabius then radios down to the surface and asks Achilles if he wants a pick-up; the elder Starhammer replies in the affirmative.

As Kane swoops down, they have a few Uglies on their tail and droids are lining up at the airlock. Fabius swoops over the base to shoot a concussion missile past the base (so in case he misses he doesn’t wipe out the base accidentally). Behind them, Zerrisk and Beedo take out the two Uglies following them. Feeling the Force, Fabius blows away the droids with a well-aimed shot, clearing the way for D20 and Achilles to leave.

When Achilles and D20 leave the compound, the three slaved battle droids following them, they quickly move toward Kane’s cruiser, which is waiting for them. As Achilles takes over the missiles and Zerrisk moves back to the ion cannons, the ships roars into battle. From this point on, the Starhammer Fleet takes control of the battle. Soon all of the pirates are dead or gone. Victorious, the fleet returns to Vespar IV to celebrate.

During the celebration, Fabius figures out that Redge was turned in by D20. He gets both mad and nervous. If D20 would turn in Redge, he might just as quickly turn in him or Donovan. Someone comes to the party looking for D’urrou, claiming he owes money. Fabius settles it to get a greater ownership interest in on the White Wing. D20 and Beedo decide to go check out the storage shed D'urrou supposedly owed money for. Zerrisk tells Fabius that she is going to leave their crew and stay with Redge. After a short while, the two go back to the ship and are about to hook up when their other two companions find them. Beedo uses the Force to make Fabius tell Zerrisk to leave and then fly them off the planet. Offering apologies to Zerrisk, though leaving on good terms, he does so.

In the storage shed, Beedo and D20 had found two dead hookers. Both eviscerated. Just like Drea. They have realized that D’urrou is a serial killer. The local authorities link the killings to a man named the “Eviscerator.” The two recognize this alias from the IBA list. They quickly make themselves scarce to find Fabius (interrupting him and Zerrisk) and fly towards Bespin, hoping to still be able to save Donovan and Naria.

When they arrive at Bespin in less than a day, they do not find D’urrou’s registration code, but they do locate a YZ-900 Corellian. Fabius tries to scam the exact dock out of the control tower, but the administration is Imperial and refuses to reveal it. As they land they see a large Imperial presence. They are warned to stay on their ship for a few days because there are "insurrectionists" present.