Inquisitor John Blackwood vs. Captain Taro "Saint" Priak

Bracca is a harsh system found within the Mid Rim Territories. It is dominated by rocky plains, salvage, and industry. Once a major source of recycled starships for the Galactic Empire, its vast shipbreaking yards remain a monument to the galaxy’s endless cycle of war. The Scrapper Guild continues to dismantle decommissioned vessels, recovering whatever they can find of value to resale or reuse.

The Shipbreaking Yard stretches across the planet’s barren terrain, filled with the skeletal remains of capital ships. Rusted Venator-class Star Destroyers from the Clone Wars stand among newer wrecks. The exposed interiors of these ships have been slowly stripped by cutters, cranes, and other heavy machinery. Elevated platforms and worker railways weave through the immense graveyard, carrying personnel and salvage between precarious structures.

Decades of conflict have left Bracca with an ever-changing inventory of wreckage, including vessels discarded during the New Republic era and the more recent war with the First Order. Scrapping remains dangerous work, with unstable hulls and collapsing structures threatening workers daily. Viper probe droids constantly patrol the area in search of intruders. Beneath the sprawling yards, the enormous Ibdis Maw feeds on the planet’s endless supply of discarded material.

It was strange to think he was standing in the graveyard of empires.

This was a place where militaries had been broken. Where the defeated had been dragged, brought low, and dissected for rare metals. Stretching across the colourless horizon, the half disassembled bridges and shattered hulls of countless warships rose up into the black clouds of a dead sky. To John Blackwood, they seemed like the skinless fingers of dead men grasping from the grave.

Getting to the planet had been easy enough, far more so than Dagobah or Endor’s moon. Actually having a spaceport rather than having to contest with trees for any landing site had been a welcome reprieve from the prior months. A few credits passed into the right palm had been enough to borrow one of the circular hover barges which the local Scrappers used for transport, meaning for once they did not have to travel on foot. Yet whatever his complaints about the prior two battlegrounds might have been, Blackwood found himself missing them. As they skimmed the currents of the air reeking of acrid burned metal and spilled coolant, watching the sea of dead battleship hulks below left him feeling far more hollow than traversing endless forests or dense swamplands.

Blackwood had been to more than one junkyard world, but there was something inherently broken about Bracca. Raxus Prime at least had a sense of rusting grandeur and cavalier life to it, as those who called the world home adapted to the decaying metal jungle which stretched across continents. By comparison, Bracca reeked of death and old mistakes. If a scavenger uncovered a holocron buried on Raxus, it would have been sold on for its treasured knowledge. Any such item found on Bracca would have been hacked apart for the base value of its metals without a second thought.

“If you are done reminiscing,” a droid voice came from behind Blackwood, barely rising over the wind whipping about them, “might I suggest we get on with this?”

Orion stood in a hunched pose, one skeletal hand grasping so tightly on the barge’s support rail that it was bending under his grip. Blackwood risked a glance back, noting the KX-series droid’s head bent down, photoreceptors fixed squarely upon the sea of vessels beneath them.

“I wasn’t…” Blackwood started and then sighed. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there. We go in, grab the objective, and then get out.”

“And your opponent?”

“Farrin gave us all we needed to know,” Blackwood said, the red scales of his face twisting into a bemused smirk. His former foe had proven to be extremely talkative once the threat of vengeful Ewoks had been posed to him, detailing what little he had known of why Clan Vizsla kept being hired to hunt down relics of the old Inquisitorius. Much of it had been useless, save for a single name and a single planet. For Blackwood, that was enough. “We know what the Sith have been hunting, and where it is. We’re also here two days early. We do this, call Brujah, and drop out. End of story.”

“And you should know by now it is never that simple,” Orion shot back. Blackwood was starting to realise how uncharacteristically on edge the security droid was, but kept his mouth shut. He waited for Orion to elaborate but, when his partner remained silent, opted to let the matter drop. There would be time for any discussions once the mission was done, not while they were heading straight into the guts of an ancient tyrant. It wasn’t long before the fallen giant became visible to them, stark against the dim cloud-choked sunrise.

It had once been called the Siren of the Abyss. A fittingly bombastic name for a ship which was an armoured bastion of turbolasers and torpedo launchers. Even stripped of its weapons and corroding into nothingness on Bracca’s surface, the Victory-class Star Destroyer was still an imposing sight. It had been found a scant year before, one of a pair of attack ships found still burning off of the shoulder of a red supergiant. Dragged by salvagers Bracca, the bitter scent of coolant still being drained marked it as relatively new to the graveyard.

The Abyss had been laid down almost atop of two waiting Majestic-class Heavy Cruisers, and the remains of a Venator whose hull had been peeled away to almost nothingness. Damage or simple exposure to the elements had stripped all prior honour markings and colours from each of the Republic, New Republic, and Galactic Empire ships, but if there was any poetry to be found in that sight it was lost on Blackwood.

He angled the barge forward and swept in low, passing close enough to pick out the minute scars of individual cutting tools and the dents from micrometeorites. Great gouges had been ripped into the Abyss, and Blackwood realised it had been cut from top to bottom in places, leaving entire decks exposed to the outside.

“Are you sure we will be fine in there?” Orion’s voice came from behind Blackwood as he steered the ship down for a soft landing.

“Should be. The ship’s newly arrived, and they’ve not reached the power core yet. There’s some poison gases hanging about from its engineering lines, but that shouldn’t be a problem for-”

Blackwood didn’t have time to finish his thought. Something hard slammed into him from behind and he jerked forward, a loud detonation suddenly putting the barge into an abrupt dive. A metal hand reached forward, pitching the platform down and accelerating forward. Blackwood saw Orion’s head next to his, and was about to yell a profane insult and a question, when several more explosions struck the side of the barge. Craters suddenly pitted its back and side from high explosive impacts, along with a shrill scream of a failing repulsorlift drive.

The barge skimmed the surface of the Abyss’ hull like a stone over water, each bounce a bone-jarring impact before plunging into one cutaway only a few feet wider than Blackwood was tall. He sight was overtaken by hacked away innards of the ship speeding past him. He could smell smoke now, and the barge shuddered violently, as something internal detonated. Tearing his grappling hook free from a pouch in his coat pocket, Blackwood aimed vaguely up and fired. The line went taut as the head bit into something hard and he was yanked away from the barge, Orion clinging onto his back.

They didn’t have time to watch as the barge hurtled downward like a missile, striking the side of the Abyss’ open decks twice before exploding like a fireball somewhere below them. Close enough to buffer them as they dangled precariously over the edge, the two spun in place briefly.

“Get off before you drag us both down!” Blackwood barked, already feeling Orion’s weight straining the grapple. The droid leapt from his back, landing with a sound of crashing metal onto a deck below them. Blackwood had a second to look before something screamed just past his head, smacking into an exposed girder next to him. It was joined by several other shots, as blaster bolts began raining down from somewhere above.

Still turning, Blackwood grunted and let go, dropping heavily next to where Orion had landed. He stumbled for a moment, Orion reaching out to grab the Barabel and yank him away from the edge. The droid’s rifle was in his other hand, and he was already firing almost directly upward. Standing several levels above them on the outer hull was a thin metal figure, shooting back as Orion’s unending stream of bolts hammered against the haze of an energy shield.

Blackwood didn’t wait for questions, drawing the bola from his belt and spinning it in one hand. Orion was still firing as Blackwood took aim and lunged, the KX-series bucking as his armour plating was struck twice from the return fire. Blackwood loosed the bola just as the figure’s shield went down; there was a high pitched squeal as the ionite lash set to work, blowing out servos and electrifying its circuits. The enemy droid staggered forward and plunged forward into the gap, issuing a scream laced with static.

“I’m guessing he was the reason you grabbed the controls?” Blackwood said, peering down for a moment before looking back at Orion.

“He wasn’t the one I saw shooting at-”

Orion’s statement ended as a high explosive round struck him in the chest, detonating with enough force to hurl the towering droid back. Blackwood had the sense to leap after him, another round blowing a tank hatch sized crater through the floor where he had been standing a heartbeat before.

“That would be the one I saw,” Orion said, one hand clutching at the twisted metal of his chest plating as he stood up. “Someone in gunmetal grey heavy armour and a dark overcoat.”

“Kark,” Blackwood spat, drawing his sidearm as they backed away from the opening. Orion didn’t need to finish his statement. They had both seen the holographic message from Combat Master, detailing the nature of their next opponent. Either Seraph had expected them to run and had lain in waiting, or he had been tracking them since they had entered orbit. It was difficult to tell which possibility was worse.

“Can you still move?” Blackwood asked, noting Orion’s chest. He could see a trail of loose wiring and blast-blackened metal about the droid’s hand, but Orion’s domed head nodded.

“I am running an internal analysis now. I wouldn’t want to be hit by that again.”

Even so, Orion was still holding his rifle and aiming it down the corridor as they kept moving back. Blackwood fought an urge to grin at his partner’s stubborn refusal to stay down. Even so, there was a notable shudder to his movements that had not been present before.

“Good,” Blackwood said, and pointed further into the ship. “Find a working turbolift or ladder down and go deeper into the ship. I’ll head upward, and keep our friend busy.”

There was a sound of moving servos as Orion looked between Blackwood and the corridor behind them, lit only by a handful of flickering semi-functioning glowlamps, then gave a curt nod.

“Good luck.”

Orion turned and sprinted off into the darkness. Blackwood stood there, listening to the sound of metal feet pounding on the deck plating until they faded into a echo. His weapon was still trained at where they had landed as he began to slowly back off, expecting to see his foe drop down and open fire at any moment. Instead, there was an almost comical sound of something small striking the metal as a hand-sized sphere dropped down into the area, and bounced towards Blackwood.

Heart hammering in recognition, Blackwood fired on instinct as his cautious withdrawal turned into a flat-out run. The prod pistol cracked as it loosed its durasteel bolt, missing the thermal detonator entirely. It struck the wall beside the explosive. There was a hiss of crystallising moisture vapour, as a jagged spike of rapidly expanding ice burst forth from the impact. One spike caught the detonator, snatching it out of the air and closing around it for a few precious seconds. Then both disappeared in a roaring explosion. The thermal detonator burst outward in an energised flame, atomising everything for several meteres about it. A neat sphere was suddenly cut from the ship, every bulkhead, cable, and pipe within its blast radius suddenly disappeared into nothingness.

Blackwood saw none of this, sprinting at high speed until he found a stairway leading up and took them several steps at a time. He didn’t see the ice catching the explosive, the detonation of bright energy, or its aftermath. Or the figure in Imperial Commando armour seemingly materialising from thin air, walking almost casually through the mist of atomised ice and ruptured piping as he began to follow the fleeing Barabel.

Taro “Saint” Priak marched down the corridor with his Mandalorian Assault Rifle pointed forward, the clink of the star-spurs attached to his boots muted by the internal silence projectors of the Hush-98 Comlink fixed to his belt. The gentle light of the glow-lamps affixed to the corridor’s walls produced a short shadow of his slender frame that danced like a stop-motion holofilm whenever the lights flickered with each hiccup in the Abyss’ dwindling power reserves. That it had enough juice to power anything given its age and wounds was a testament to its resilience. It reminded Taro of himself, of his people. The Mandalorians were nothing if not resilient. They too had been robbed — robbed of their homeworld and their precious beskar, but they endured just as this Star Destroyer had.

“Y’know, I can’t help but appreciate the irony of this,” Taro called out to his opponent, his voice echoing down the corridor. “Standin’ in the bones of a ship of an enemy who tried to wipe me and mine out. They’re gone now, but we remain.”

He tapped his knuckles against his beskar breastplate. “I took this armor off the corpse of an Imp who had no right to wear it, and I’ma do the same thing with those fancy vambraces of yours.”

Taro ascended the stairs quickly, reaching the top just in time to see movement at the end of the hall. He pointed and fired. Three shots cast his surroundings in bright orange as the blaster bolts flew in a tight cluster. Only one of them struck true, earning a reflexive groan from the Barabel when hot plasma grazed his shoulder.

Were it not for the Armorweave Cloak draped over Blackwood’s suit, that shot would have no doubt been far more serious than it was. Fortunately, it left him with a dull ache in the dense muscle beneath his plum-red scales. That, he could work with. He spun behind the cover of a nearby wall, keeping his prod pistol close to his chest while listening for Saint’s footsteps. He heard none. That must have meant that the Mandalorian gunslinger was waiting for him to stick his head out so he could blow it off. One press of a button on one of Blackwood’s vambraces caused a translucent disk of blue light to materialize in front of it. The shield was a paltry forty centimeters in diameter, which looked even smaller in comparison to his impressive stature, but he was confident it and his agility would keep him safe long enough for him to rush Taro. He took a deep breath to steel himself for the impending counter, then whirled around the corner with his shield raised and bolt gun in hand.

As soon as Taro saw the Barabel appear in the hallway, he pointed his rifle and fired, sending blaster bolts lancing forward with deadly intent. The bastard was quick, though, and the shots that didn’t sail past him as he bobbed and weaved bounced harmlessly off his shield. He was returning fire too, and although the first arrow of his bolt gun whizzed past his helmet, the second struck the barrel of Taro’s rifle and exploded into a spray of frigid spikes.

“Osik!” Taro cursed while casting the rifle aside. But before he could reach his pistols, the sudden impact of Blackwood shoulder-checking him in a full sprint knocked him off his feet and sent him crashing into a half-opened supply crate. Although the impact wasn’t enough to do serious damage, it sure as hell knocked the wind out of him.

Before he could regather himself, Blackwood clamped his free hand around the front of Taro’s helmet, lifted his head and slammed it back into the metal floor twice in rapid succession. The first impact dizzied Taro immediately, and the second sent needles of pain ripping through his head and neck. He needed to escape Blackwood’s grasp before he killed him. Taro’s hand shot up to his opponent’s scaly face, frantically searching for any soft bits he could attack. When he found Blackwood’s right eye, he dug the thumb of his gloved hand into it as hard as he could, ripping a scream from the Barabel’s leathery lips. That bought him enough time to turn his head long enough to spot the gaping hole in the ship’s hull to their right, leading to another bisected section of the ship. That was all he needed.

In an instant, the mostly-enclosed space of the ship’s hallway vanished, replaced by the immense expanse of a hollowed-out section of the Abyss and the rush of open air.

After teleporting them both, Taro let gravity take control, sending them both plummeting toward whatever was waiting beneath them.

Wind howled past them as they fell, tugging at their coats as the dead metal surrounding the Abyss hurtled up toward them. They were still trading blows as they plummeted toward a jungle of jagged scrap metal, neither willing to break the deadlock and give their enemy an opening. Half blinded, Blackwood’s training had completely taken over. The old lessons drilled into him by CorSec’s instructors began to echo through his thoughts.

Armour plating, well trained, better armed. Weaken and distract.

Batting aside Taro’s left arm a second before a shield of pale blue energy shimmered to life upon the bracer, Blackwood jabbed out. His first blow jabbed hard into the gap between the armour plating of his chest and left shoulder with bone-jarring force. There was a grunt of pain before Blackwood’s second blow caught Taro in the throat, his hand stabbing into the gorget of the Mandalorian armour. A choking sound came from somewhere behind Taro’s visor, momentarily slowing his movements as he fought for breath. Even then, Blackwood had to half-turn, blocking a return strike aimed at his head. It was enough for him to squeeze one hand, and a tongue of flame erupted from a snub-nosed nozzle, catching the edge of Taro’s coat.

Exaggerated weaknesses. Wind and bleed.

Surprised and struggling for breath, Taro’s concentration was torn between the fire starting to consume his coat and the opponent before him. It was enough for Blackwood to lash out twice more, first punching him hard in the side, feeling something crack as he hit the toughened armourweave fabric between breastplate and backplate. Then a follow-up strike. His free hand stabbed out, five centimetre long claws extending from each finger as he jabbed hard into Taro’s left shoulder once more, tearing the fabric and feeling warm blood issue forth from the blow.

To Taro’s credit he didn’t scream, and it took the Barabel a moment to realise why. He had overextended, driving forward into the last blow and leaving himself open. Taro’s other arm came about and slammed the energy shield into Blackwood’s face, snapping his head upward. Sparks flew before his eyes and his vision swam, feeling the haze of charged particles numbing his thoughts. The second’s delay was all Taro needed to draw his pistol. Acting more out of instinct than thought, Blackwood swung, trying to slap the weapon aside. He felt a bolt of plasma and searing heat skim the edge of one arm and punch clean through his cape, missing his chest by inches.

If overwhelmed, intimidate. Disorientate. Break engagement.

There was a whip-crack as Blackwood’s tail lashed out, ripping the blaster pistol from Taro’s hand. A savage kick sent Taro sailing back through the air. He struck one of the Abyss’ exposed bulkheads with a sound like a steel drum hitting duracrete, then another, and another, falling down as he struck one exposed pipe and support beam after another. His burning coat trailed him down, marking him as he plunged down through the wreck of the warship. After several impacts he disappeared from sight, reality folding in upon itself as he teleported away to somewhere else.

Blackwood only witnessed a small portion of Taro’s painful descent. More concerned with his own impending death, he flipped in the air and hurtled face down toward the ground. Something was rushing up toward him, a twisted mass of metal that might have once been a ship at one point. One among a hundred he could see below him, it was a gnarled mass of distorted metal, like some vast misshapen hand reaching up toward him. Blackwood took aim and fired, the whipcord on one of his vambraces lancing out and wrapping itself about a extended bar of metal. It groaned and bent under his weight as Blackwood swung down, releasing the cord and coming to a skidding halt, skidding across hundreds of discarded metal cuttings.

Blackwood grimaced as he tore a strip of fabric free from his coat and tied it about his face before daring to take a breath. In the dingy surroundings he could already see the discolouring of chemical spills and vague shapes of half-visible vapour fog hovering low amid the durasteel forest of forgotten wrecks. Those he could endure, but even with his species’ regenerative powers a lung full of metal microfragments would at least slow him down.

Locate. Re-engage. Use terrain to your advantage.

Blackwood waited there for a second, his eyes adjusting to the sepulchre blackness. The one that Taro had jabbed was already recovering, pained rather than punctured by the previous attack. As he slowly reached into his coat and withdrew the boltgun from its holster, Blackwood began to move forward, taking in the surreal environment which had been hidden in the Abyss’ shadow. The already weak sunlight was little more than thin beams of dim illumination, blocked as much by the clouds as the tangled metalwork about them. There were so many parts here, from discarded TIE fighter wings to the broken hulls of K-Wing bombers, stripped and forgotten. Part of the Abyss’ guts had been stripped out, with trailing pipes leading to vital components of its once mighty engines. Some were placed and raised above into towers of discarded hulls, while others lay as skeletons, as if something had rooted through them. Blackwood was momentarily reminded of the discarded carcasses left by a vast predator, a thought hardly helped by the tectonic groan of the capital ship wrecks shifting under their own weight.

There were a hundred ambush points, and that was exactly the problem. A simple combination of bleeding, fire, and severe bludgeoning wasn’t going to keep any Mandalorian down for long. The fact he was aware of the Barabel’s vambraces meant he would not stop until he was dead. Until Blackwood saw a body, dead or otherwise, this fight wasn’t over. Gingerly he stepped forward, feeling the tens of thousands of discarded rivets, metal cuttings, and general debris crunch under his weight. The noise of each footstep seemed to carry, echoing upwards over even the background rumble of derelict warships and the distant clamour of industry.

Even so, it was still quiet enough to pick out sudden scrape of movement before the shooting started.

Blackwood hurled himself aside, two blaster bolts sailing past where his head had been a second ago. He came up in a crouch, spotting Taro, his injured arm slack at his side while the other was levelling a bulky pistol. Blackwood’s gun roared, the stream of explosive rounds passing through thin air as Taro teleported away.

Use terrain to your advantage.

Blackwood instinctively dived behind the wing of a shuttle, several more shots peppering his steps from somewhere else as he moved. Too slow. Blackwood snarled in pain as a spear of plasma burned through his thigh, charring meat and bone alike as it passed through. Near collapsing he dragged himself into cover, briefly seeing Taro twirling his pistol before he teleported away once more. Another bolt came from behind Blackwood, punching into the metal of the wing inches from his head. He turned, catching the briefest glimpse of Taro as the Mandalorian teleported again.

“We can make this easy,” Taro’s voice called out from somewhere as Blackwood gritted his teeth, trying to ignore the agony coursing through his system. “Quickdraw, one on one.”

“And why would I agree to that?” Blackwood answered, fighting to keep the paint from his voice. “You’re the one with the armour.”

“You’re dead either way, but I’d rather you went swingin' rather than on your knees. Call it sportsmanship,” Taro answered. As if to emphasise his point he reappeared, standing in front of a building sized assembly of the Abyss’ engineering section. Most of it looked as if it had been a vital part of sustaining one of the Star Destroyer’s secondary engines, surrounding a hovertruck sized chemical tank. His charred coat and scraped armour made him look oddly at home among the debris. “Somethin' else you’d not understand, like the value my people place in those vambraces.”

“True enough, I don’t,” Blackwood admitted, limping slightly as he forced himself upright. Taro took aim as Blackwood moved out into the open once more, tracking the Barabel as he slowly limped toward him. He stopped with only a few dozen steps between them. “But I do understand what the chemical warning on that tank behind you means.”

Blackwood dived backward and opened fire, Taro squeezing the trigger a second too late at the sudden motion and missing. Explosive rounds sailed about the Mandalorian, punching into the massive coolant tank behind him. Near emptied, the remaining fumes were enough to release a billowing cloud of cobalt blue as the tank was ruptured, surrounding Taro for metres about in a thick impenetrable smog. Despite himself, Blackwood grinned. You couldn’t teleport if you couldn’t see where you were going.

Blackwood rolled aside, several shots hammering into the ground where he had been a moment ago. He concentrated, and the Barabel’s vision shifted into the familiar mass of heat signatures of the infrared world, singling out Taro as a single thermal blob amid the chemical mist.

Exploit established weaknesses and lay your opponent low.

More blaster bolts punched through the mist as Blackwood righted himself, Taro blindly firing as he tried to back away. Blackwood charged, ignoring the pain in his leg, half-limping half-running toward the Mandalorian. He stooped momentarily to snatch up a length of armoured hull plating from the ground, he held his breath and sprinted right at Taro, hearing a steady rain of blaster bolts impacting against the makeshift shield.

Even wounded, it took seconds for Blackwood to close the distance. He slammed into Taro with all of his strength. Smashing into the Mandalorian with the plating and flattening him against the ruptured coolant tank. Before Taro could recover, Blackwood lashed out, punching the same shoulder he had savaged in their freefall and closed his fist. A trio of darts launched free of his vambrace and into the bare skin between the torn armour. Taro fought for several more moments and then went slack as the inhibiting chemicals did their work. It was only when he heard Taro’s remaining pistol strike the ground that Blackwood eased off and began limping out of the chemical cloud, dragging the Mandalorian behind him.

“You took your time.”

Somehow Blackwood wasn’t surprised to see Orion waiting for him as he emerged, standing at the end of a stairwell leading back into the Abyss. His armour plating was even more damaged than when they had parted, and one arm ended at his elbow in a broken mess of wiring.

“And you could have stepped in at any time,” Blackwood said between gasps for air, dropping Taro and then cuffing him. “What happened to you anyway?”

“His droid wasn’t as incapacitated as we thought. It took some effort to dismember him,” Orion said, sounding somehow more at ease now than on their flight over. “But we have our prize. Exactly where you said it would be.”

He held up the device in his remaining hand. The Inquisitorious decoder was a simple thing, a technological octagon with a single insert for data crystals on one side and a holographic projector on the other. Exactly what they needed to review what Farrin had attempted to pilfer from the Ewoks on Endor.

“Good,” Blackwood sighed, trying not to think of the long and painful walk ahead of them with their barge gone. He reached down and slung Taro over his shoulder. “Let’s get moving.”

“You’re bringing him as well?”

“He’s the third Mandalorian to try and kill me for these,” Blackwood said, raising an arm to show one of the vambraces. “I’m hoping he’ll listen to reason once I explain why I have them and get the others off of my back. I just hope he believes me when I tell him "they were a gift from my ex-wife in Clan Ordo".”

John Blackwood’s heart pounded within his chest as he tried and failed to right himself in midair. Wind buffeted his chest and face with such force that it stole what little breath he had in his lungs before his unwilling relocation. The silhouettes of the starship’s partially excised innards glowed in the pulsing radiance of indicator lights used by Scrapper’s Guild junkers to mark their progress. Too far. They were too far for him to reach, and there wasn’t a hover barge in sight to break his fall.

Think, John. Think.

After a moment or two of contemplation, an idea occurred to him! He quickly pointed his vambraces and fired, illuminating his surroundings with the intense light and heat of twin torrents of flame. Improving visibility was only a convenient side effect, though. What mattered more in those crucial moments was the thrust the flamethrowers generated, pushing him to his left and altering his trajectory enough to prevent him from splattering against the Abyss’ hull like an insect on a transparisteel viewport. He tucked his limbs inward to initiate a roll when he landed. Both he and the platform’s metal surface groaned during the impact. Fortunately, the roll took a lot of bite out of the landing, but the speed with which he exited the roll sent him crashing against a set of thick durasteel doors just a few feet inside the aperture in the ship’s hull.

“Dank farrik,” Blackwood said through gritted teeth, before spitting a glob of blood borne from the tongue he’d nearly bitten off in the landing. A bleeding mouth, a busted-up eye, and more bruises than he could count were a fair trade for living. He needed to figure a way out of this before his opponent caught up with him. Pressing to his feet, John peered through the transparisteel windows in the door. There were four control panels bolted into the floor of a semi-circular balcony overlooking a reactor that rose higher than what he could see from that angle.

The ship’s power core.

After fumbling around in his coat pocket to find his comlink, he clicked it on. “Orion, do you read me?” he asked. “I’ve found the Abyss’ power core. I need you to meet me here as quickly as you can.”

A few moments of tense silence passed before Orion’s voice crackled across the comm channel. “I thought you were headed higher, not to the vessel’s lower decks.”

“Plan’s changed. Just get here as soon as you can.”

Blackwood clicked the comlink off before turning his attention to the access panel just to the right of the double doors. There was no way he was going to get through them with force, even with his strength, so he had no choice but to slice them. He produced his claws and carefully dug them behind the panel’s frame to pop it off. Although he wasn’t skilled enough to make a career out of it, John had become proficient enough at slicing to crack most rudimentary security protocols with little difficulty, and more advanced ones given enough time. His first attempt at accessing this panel failed, causing the digital screen to beep angrily. He wasn’t one to give up easily, though, and silently gritted his teeth while beginning a second attempt.

About a minute passed when the gentle hum of a low-powered repulsor engine pulled his attention away from the panel’s exposed circuitry. A single scarlet glow pierced the darkness looming just beyond the reach of the platform’s canned lights and slowly drifted forward until he could make out the metallic form of a viper probe droid. It hovered in place for a beat, and its sole photoreceptor regarded the Barabel investigator with a quiet intensity.

John tensed, but didn’t pull his hands away from the panel’s circuitry. Maybe it would ignore him or confuse him with one of the workers here? He didn’t expect the Scrapper’s Guild to spend anything more than the bare minimum on probe droids to maximize their profits.

When the droid’s photoreceptor started to flash, John knew that assumption – that hope – was wrong.

A single shot ripped through the air and pierced the viper droid’s chassis, causing it to sputter thrice before exploding in a ball of fire.

He was relieved to see Orion standing with his rifle in hand. “Good, you’re here,” John said before turning back to the panel. “Keep a look out for our Mandalorian friend while I finish this.”

Orion inclined his head in a nod, the smoothness of his actuators still suffering under the damage to its chassis inflicted by the enemy droid. “What’s the plan?”

“I’m banking on this ‘Saint’ valuing his life more than he does this beskar he seems to want so badly,” Blackwood answered. Shortly after this, the panel chimed again, and the large durasteel doors slid open. He turned back to his companion, and glanced at the smoking heap of metal on the ground. “What are the chances that thing alerted the Scrapper Guild before you destroyed it?”

“Likely,” Orion intoned.

“Well, let’s get going before they find us."

After that, the duo ventured toward the Abyss’ power core.

Meanwhile, Taro relied on a perfectly-timed use of his Teleportation ability to land safely on a hover barge far from where his opponent had drifted, whom he saw rocketing into an open section of the Victory-class Star Destroyer. He’d have to deal with him later, though. He had a barge filled with Scrapper Guild workers to deal with first.

Although he was outnumbered six-to-one, these were no soldiers, and that showed when Taro made quick work of them all. The first three he used his superior agility and strength to throw them off the side of the barge, and two fell to shots from one of his blaster pistols.

The last scrapper’s hands shot up in a defensive posture. “Please! I’ve got kids, man!”

Taro pulled his punch when it was mere centimeters from cracking the Pantoran man’s jaw. “Alright,” he said with a nod, “Not a family man myself, but I respect a man just tryin’ta make an honest livin’.” With the same hand he’d planned to knock the man out with, Taro gestured toward the section of ship that Blackwood had headed toward. “Take us there and I’ll leave you be. But if I find out you told any of your Guild buddies about seein’ me, then I’m gon’ find you. Deal?”

The Pantoran nodded quickly before turning and grasping the barge’s controls to begin steering it toward the distant ship.

When they arrived, Taro hopped off the barge and landed on the ship’s platform with a hard clang produced by his hard-soled boots hitting the weathered metal surface. He glanced at the access panel dangling by a bundle of colored wires, and the double doors left ajar before venturing forth, eager to find his opponent so he could put an end to this.

It didn’t take him long to locate both Blackwood and his droid. In fact, they were waiting for him — the droid had his rifle trained on him while its master held his hand atop a red button. Behind them, the gargantuan power core hummed with residual energy waiting to be unleashed.

“What kinda game are you playin’, Blackwood?” Taro asked while moving both hands to his belt, ready to draw his twin blaster pistols at a moment’s notice.

“No game,” Blackwood countered, “but if I press this button, it’ll initiate a sequence that will overload this reactor core and blow this ship and everything on it to the Void and back.”

When Taro’s right hand inched closer to his holstered weapon, Orion interjected. “Don’t make another move.”

The gunslinger’s orange eyes narrowed at the droid before darting back to Blackwood. “I’m faster than that bucket of bolts,” he said. “Reckon I’m faster than you too.” And Taro suspected that was doubly so with the wounds the Barabel had suffered.

“But are you faster than the blast produced by a full core meltdown? I doubt it.” Blackwood narrowed his one good eye in kind, stonefaced and completely resolute in his decision.

“You’re bluffin’. You’d kill yourself and your droid in the process. No way you’re that crazy.”

Blackwood didn’t flinch. “The way I see it, we’re both going to die here anyway if I don’t give you what you want, so I might as well go out on my own terms.”

The tension in the room was palpable. Taro didn’t move a muscle and neither did Blackwood. After an intense staredown, the former chuckled. “You’re crazier than a spiced-up Ewok, John Blackwood. I still don’t like you wearin’ that beskar, but I don’t hate that as much as I love bein’ alive. So, I’ll leave you be.”

John's scaly eyebrow rose incredulously. “That’s it? You’re giving up on this fanatical crusade of yours?”

“Mind your words, sir,” said Taro with a slight frown. “I’m no zealot, but I am a man of my word. You’re free to go.”

John looked to Orion. “I’ll stay here to make sure he doesn’t try to shoot us in the back. Go get the ship and hurry back so we can get off of this scrapheap of a planet.”

The droid hesitated, presumably considering the wisdom of leaving his companion alone with an enemy as deadly as this. But another cutting glance from John convinced Orion to head toward the room’s entrance with a brisk, albeit spasmodic jog.

Gradually, the metallic clanks of Orion’s feet against the durasteel floor were overtaken by the thudding, resonant footfalls of something far larger.

... thoom ... thoom ... thoom ...

Both men looked in that direction.

“The frak is that?” Taro asked.

Blackwood shook his head. “No idea.”

Without warning, Orion’s metal body came flying back into the room in two pieces. The footsteps grew louder.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

From the shadows emerged a droid that, standing at more than three meters, made both men look diminutive in comparison. The droid carried a massive shield in one of its blackened metal hands, and a club in the other, which thudded against the ground when its disproportionately long arms straightened. More than a dozen smaller droids and humanoid organics poured into the room shortly thereafter, all armed with stun batons and small blaster pistols.

Blackwood and Taro exchanged glances.

“The big one’s an old Imperial siege droid,” Taro noted. “Guessin’ they found it on one of these ships and reprogrammed it for security.”

The Barabel detective shifted his free hand to the studgun hanging on his hip. “This isn’t good.”

“For them, maybe,” Taro said., “The two of us are more than enough to take these frakkers down.” That earned him another incredulous look, to which Taro shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said, I’m a man of my word, and I swear to you that if you fight alongside me, I’m willin’ to let bygones be bygones. Water under the bridge.”

Blackwood looked back to the approaching Scrapper Guild enforcers. He didn’t have much of a choice, now. “Alright, you’ve got a deal.”

Taro grinned from beneath his helmet. “Good. But you’re gonna want to drink this. It’ll get you back to fightin’ shape.” He unclipped a canteen from his belt and tossed it to the Barabel, who caught it.

Blackwood popped the cork with one finger, gave its contents a few sniffs, then downed it in one go. His eyes shot open when the strange concoction coursed through him like liquid fire, completely healing his wounds. For the first time since arriving on Bracca, he grinned.

Both men drew their weapons and charged into battle. Taro teleported across the room with dizzying speed, unleashing a volley of blaster bolts on their enemies with deadly precision. Blackwood ripped through metal and flesh with terrifying strength and agility. Together, they toppled the Imperial War Droid, but not without sustaining serious injuries in the process. And when the fighting was done, they went their separate ways.