Quarantine

Darby brought his ship in to dock with the pirate mothership, fighting his nerves the whole way. Lyssandra had already gone to join the "slaves" so it was just him and his crew.

Everything went normally and Darby contacted the security head to inform him he had slave stock to offload.

The head acted surprised. Darby and his team had been bringing a steady supply of materials and food, but this was his first load of slaves. Despite being happy about the change the security man decided to make sure he checked them over well, sometimes these new Captains missed things.

When the security chief got to the hanger he saw things seemed to be well in hand. A row of exceptionally attractive women were lined up and being checked over by his men. His snipers still held over watch position, everything was being handled in a professional manner.

That all changed when Darby got the signal from Deux that the synths had overridden the security system in the hanger. Darby gave a nod to an exceptionally well endowed twi'lek and she gave him a wide grin back, then she moved her shoulders just right and, with a loud tearing sound, was instantly bare to the waist.

She had actually won the coin toss to be the one to bare all, and she did it with style, holding a hand up to completely ineffectively block the collective stares while loudly yelling, "Oh my god I'm completely bare!"

As distractions went it ranked right up there with the best of them, about 90% of those present were instantly riveted to the bouncing bits. During this distraction Darby's crew went to work, quickly taking out the snipers and then beginning to mow down the pirate troops in the hanger.

While they were being taken down a signal went out to the other ship and it came in fast from the edge of the system.

There were several pirate ships around the area for various reasons, but none had even begun to react yet.

A surprising number of the "helpless slaves" produced small blasters and began laying down their own fields of fire while also seeking cover.

The poor security chief was completely taken by surprise and overwhelmed. His men had done everything right, but then in an instant it had all changed. It was a credit to his dedication that he didn't even hesitate and triggered the alarm from his wrist comp.

As the alarm went through the pirates system the signal was hijacked by the synths in residence. Unfortunately those synth had no way of knowing that the signal also went directly to Lief.

Lief got together his special squad and headed for the hanger, by nature a paranoid individual he had long prepared for something like this.

By the time Lief and a group of Supercommandos got to the hanger in their white armor the second corsair had docked to the external bay and the heavy squad was in the fight.

The supercommando's fearlessly charged. Sparrow and his men were firing their blasters and scoring repeated hits but the troops just came right on through the withering fire.

"Beskar!" Sparrow shouted, switching from his blaster to his sword, looked like this would be handled up close and personal.

The supercommando's turned the tide. The poor women

were unarmored and underarmed against them and a few of the commandos went for them first.

The women were by no means helpless but somehow no matter their grace and skill the commandos began taking them out of the fight one at a time.

Sparrow crossed blades with the first commando to reach him and realized something was wrong. This commando was at least as strong as Sparrow himself. He puzzled at the problem while they danced around until Sparrow took advantage of a slight slip and severed the mans arm.

Well, whether the commando was human or not was still up in the air but the arm that hit the floor was obviously mechanical in nature.

"I think they're droids!" He shouted.

"I one placed my faith in humanoid soldiers but no longer!" Lief shouted gleefully as he beat Jith about the hanger. She was liquid in her movements, the personification of grace and skill. It was doing her absolutely no good however, because for all her efforts he was just powering through each and every defense and due to his amazing armor was taking no damage from the hits she did land.

Sparrow worked his opponent through the same series of exchanges once, then twice, on the third instead of countering the opponents strike as expected he ducked under the swing and came up with his blade leading the way, passing right through the man's neck.

It was obvious it was a living being because of the fountain of blood that erupted from the severed neck. Sparrow ignored the mess and turned to block a shot that would have taken one of the other heavies in the shoulder.

He got through that opponent quickly, because the man was so off balance from the blocked stab. His blade went in under the armpit deep into the chest and came out soaked in blood. Once he went down Sparrow took a second to scan the room. He paid for his inattention with a sharp stab in the joint of his right shoulder armor. He nearly dropped his blade in shock but managed to counter-thrust and take the backstabbing pilot in the throat.

He glanced around again and saw his troops were through with the pirates and were engaging the 6 remaining supercommandos, besides his two he saw three more down and he figured out how as he watched 3 of his troops surround one and basically hack it down. It hadn't been one sided by any means as nearly a dozen of his people lay on the floor of the hanger. He did note that most were still moving.

Jith's fight with Lief caught his attention. His former chief was fighting with all the skill any Mandalorian could hope to attain, her short spear, a special weapon of hers flashing in and out and flicking the big Supercommando like a striking serpent.

Unfortunately all that was accomplishing was striking sparks off the mans armor and Sparrow could see the power the big man was putting into each swing at her with his heavy beskad.

Sparrow experimentally flexed his right shoulder, it hurt, but his ridiculous healing speed had already restored the use of the arm and, judging from the way that fight was going, he was gonna need it.

He headed towards the showdown and was nearing the scene when Lief struck one of Sparrows men from behind who was busy tying up one of the commandos for a couple of the ladies to take down.

Okay, now he was pissed!

Jith was knocked off balance and Lief swung for the fences in an attempt to finish her. He had already realized his side was losing this fight and had activated his back up plans. All he needed to do was finish off this old fossil and he could take his escape route and come back with more of his pirate troops and the special soldiers to get his revenge.

His beskad was stopped dead by a new figure in oddly formed armor. He supposed this must be one of those new legionnaires he kept hearing about. Good, he hadn't killed one of those yet.

Sparrow realized that swapping sword blows with the big commando would be a long row to hoe so when he locked up the blade rather than go for a counter strike he instead whipped his arm over the opponents and wrenched the joint in the wrong direction. Lief howled as he dropped his sword from his numb hand.

He backhanded Jith before she could recover her balance and she went flying across the room and smacked into the wall.

"I am going to kill you!" he screamed.

Sparrow hefted his sword and launched it across the width of the bay, blade stabbing deep into the torso of a commando who happened to have twisted wrong and exposed the gap. His people dove in and finished the man off.

Sparrow then squared off in a hand to hand stance with the pirate king.

"Come hut'uun, lets dance." Sparrow taunted.

Lief had never been so infuriated in his life. After fleeing mandalore with the remains of the death watch and hooking up with his current benefactors he had maimed and killed and begged and borrowed to gain his new improved body and he would be damned if some upstart was going to end him.

Suddenly the sound of heavy tracks echoed through the hanger as 4 large warbots came in through the big inner doors.

"Say hello to my real security! I call them ravagers!" The crazed pirate cried.

"Say hello to my little friends." Sparrow replied calmly. A liquid metal figure appeared on top of one of the droids and waved.

"You've lost Lief Saxon. Surrender and I promise you a fair trial on Mandalore." Lief dropped his arms and slumped over slightly.

Sparrow's attention was caught by Tony starting to struggle to his feet when suddenly a horrible pain tore through his midsection as Lief had extended a blade from his arm and driven it right through Sparrow just under the edge of one of the armor plates on his abdomen.

"I will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that I killed you, upstart, and that the rest of these scum will die when the empire rises again."

"There's a reason they are calling it the imperial remnant Saxon, the empire is gone."

"No fool, the remnant is just the screen behind which the First Order will rise!" Saxon raged.

Now, this was going to hurt, Sparrow thought.

He gathered himself and struck the big commando right in the throat with every bit of power his bastardized genetics could produce. He felt the blade tear through his insides more at the movement but it was worth it as he shoved Lief back while the pirate clawed at his flattened windpipe, futilely trying to draw air.

Sparrow staggered back, off the blade, as the man floundered. Catching himself he slowly limped his way over to the mans large sword and picked it up,

holding in his intestines as he moved.

Lief dropped to his knees, trying desperately to draw in that next needed breath. His mouth hung wide open and Sparrow jammed in the sword as far as he could. Admittedly the gesture would have been more impressive had he managed to get much strength behind it and not wound up using the blade to keep himself upright.

He was pushing down on the sword with all his remaining strength when a large mechanical arm gently moved him back and one of the battle droids used it's armored fist to drive the sword in to its hilt.

Sparrow turned to face his gathered troops.

"That guy.." He paused to spit out some blood, "took a lot of killing."

His people started cheering and, all things considered Sparrow was feeling pretty good about himself when he was contacted by Chess, who had been stationed on the Clone's cruiser for the space battle.

"We have a rather large problem." the clone said, "A star destroyer just dropped into the system and is coming in hot."

"It figures." Sparrow groaned.

"Duex, can you patch me in, I'm sure they are already trying to contact us.

"Attention scum, this is the Devourer, you have interfered with the wrong people, surrender and stand by for boarding."

"How about instead, I allow you to surrender." Sparrow offered.

The comm officer laughed. "I won't even bother passing that along to the Captain, your rag tag little fleet poses no threat to a Star Destroyer."

"And that's where you are wrong. Omni?"

Out in the dark of space the tiny synth ship lined up the shot and once again shot out that brilliant white beam. This time it was a direct hit on the reactor core and the ship blew up instantly.

When word filtered back to the mother ship the troops started cheering wildly again. Jith approached as one of the medics tended to Sparrow.

"You combat variants heal to fast for traditional medicine." The medic said, "by the time we get bandages and bacta to the wound it's either healed or it won't. So, we cooked up this little cocktail instead, it's basically a few meals worth of all that's good for you and by putting it directly in your blood it gets where it needs to be faster."

The medic straightened and Sparrow could already feel his healing speed up.

"You knew the empire would be coming?" She asked.

"No, we knew that someone much more powerful was backing that idiot and figured they would put a hand in before it was over. Looks like we were right."