Episode 3.08 Kanter's War, Chapter 6 Report
General Summary
Nothing gets people talking more than an explosion. I mean, toss a concussion grenade into a smuggler shadow port, and people will be talking about it for hours!
After the running and the yelling, of course.
We skipped the running part, since we had been tossed to the floor like sacks of Anzati snot garlic. As for me? I think I should learn to duck better.
It was a brutal, hard fight. The kind you only see in back-alley cantina brawls or a Tapani cotillion where someone served the wrong cheese with the wine. A Dark Trooper had exploded like a bomb right in the middle of the outpost’s cargo storage.
That brings us to snot garlic and the floor. The droid exploded like a thermal det, knocking everyone, and almost everything, onto the storage room floor. The only thing standing was the last three Dark Troopers, and even they were having to reset and recalibrate.
Thank the Force whoever packed the weapon crates, added the blast-absorbent gel-pads in there!
Everyone got their head back together fast enough. Unfortunately, so did the pirates and those last three Dark Troopers. I used the Force to haul a ruined Dark Trooper off of Vanya then tore up from the floor up as I was, planted my feet for round … two? Three? I was losing count.
Suddenly, everything happened at once and in our favor! That doesn’t happen every day!
Omitron, armored up to cover his softer droid parts, soared into the room with what looked like Reese riding on his back. I think they were trying to scare off one of the pirates but wound up colliding with him and some water barrels instead. I wasn’t sure where Omitron came from, but I was glad to see him.
It turned out Bishop, So’zen’s R2, had found his way here, too.
So’zen had gone down fighting, taken out earlier by the same sharpshooter that Omitron and Reese had subdued. But, suddenly, Bishop charged out of the back room with the maintenance controls.
The droid brandished multi-tools and bacta spray cannisters while he raced over to So’zen. A quick few injections got him back on his feet. I think So’zen got injected at least four times with bacta. I’m surprised it didn’t make him fly.
After that, the fight turned around. Vanya, with a little ‘aggressive diplomacy’, got a pirate to not only surrender but join the Church of the Force, provided it got him out of there. Turns out, the pirate leader is a former member of the Crimson Dawn syndicate and is something of an unholy terror.
After a day like we’ve had, I’m not surprised! Fortunately, we put a few locked doors between her and us. Though, I suspect that isn’t the last we’ll see of her.
The other pirate, still in fighting shape, was willing to negotiate. Turns out he was one Arthal Kale, and a bounty hunter hired by the gang for some light guard work. All this? It fell way outside his contract. So he was willing to switch sides and work with us.
I hope that doesn’t put him on the outs with the Bounty Hunter’s Guild or the ‘Administratum’ of the Bountypedia. That could be messy.
Next came the last of the Dark Troopers. I thought those would be a tough fight, but the pirate gang had hard wired them into the base network. Vance found a console that gave him access. He shut those down real fast. Reese went back in and locked them down with a good old-fashioned Mentat encryption equation.
Most likely those combat droids will stay locked down until the next ice age.
Things, like my knife wound, got wrapped up pretty quickly after that.
We headed as a pack down to the mess hall where the pirate gang was keeping the kidnapped farmers. But! All the work the others had done to stir up trouble remotely down in there worked!
It was moisture farmers against pirates. Apparently, the pirates hadn’t gotten the memo that moisture farmers are tougher than they look. A few punches later, they got the message.
Also, we got another surprise. One of the pirates, a Devaronian named Heth G'vanek, was not quite what he seemed. First, he was an avid fan of Wookiee Opera. Specifically, Warvu’s “Ride of the Wookiees”. I can’t say I blame him. That’s a real toe-tapper there.
Beyond that, he claimed to be a student of the Zama-shiwo martial art. Claimed. Firmly claimed even. Not that I believe that, since he slapped a blaster bolt out of the air with a metal mop handle. Yes. Metal mop handle to blaster bolt. The bolt lost.
I’ve heard of Zama-shiwo but never met a practitioner. During the post-Clone Wars era of the Galactic Empire, the students of Zama-shiwo were being hunted by the Empire as eagerly as they hunted Jedi. Really, I thought the style had died out. Good to know it’s still around.
It was no surprise he was willing to talk. Zama-shiwo practitioners prefer negotiation over fighting, or so I read. Turns out he was willing to keep up the habit with us. Good thing, too. I’d really would’ve hated to bend his mop handle against my face.
From Heth and the moisture farmers, we learned that the pirate's whole plan was to sabotage the weapons, then ship them discreetly onto the Chalcedon Republic forces… which would promptly get them killed. Clever, nasty little plan there. Has the flavor of Almon D’Joy about it. Since pirates are drawn to profit, I suspect someone is paying them to do this.
We got a name… Gomen Dos, the head of the Chalcedon Trade Guild and supposedly as rotten as a Hutt’s five-day-old breakfast. My theory? We need to pry open Gomen Dos’ life and accounts. Something’s off there.
That would have to wait. Once we ushered the farmers out, we … borrowed? Liberated… ‘Impounded’! Impounded the pirates' fighter and troop carrier to get the farmers home. Then to get us back to Port Etmar.
I thought it would be time for at least some rest, relaxation, sharing information… maybe some of those froo-froo drinks with the frilly umbrellas? No, of course not. Because while we were stopping bad pirates from doing bad things… other bad pirates were doing bad things.
Those bad things were the Killian pirate clan attacking Chausid Station and capturing that town and some Republic troopers whose sabotaged weapons nearly got them killed. Chancellor Kanter would have to do something, but her forces are already stretched thin.
So Hicks did what any Advanced Recon Commando Clone Trooper would. He got inventive with a plan to get the place back with only a few people.
Me? I’ll be flying north with Omitron and one of the former pirates to visit Erenn Baize. After all, he’s looking after our shuttle and possibly playing host to fighters from the Sisters of the Steel Rose and… I hope… working with Chancellor Kanter on countermeasures to deal with this mess with the pirate clans.
KitKat the Mentat
Danar Vorpadaran
So'Zen Al Saba
VN Ysadora
Aerena Kolene
Davish Tam
20220212 Valentines are for Thermal Detonator Lovers by KitKat the Mentat
The droid did WHAT? by VN Ysadora
Report Date
12 Feb 2022
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