Chapter 61

Renn was silently thanking that his helmet hid his face from view as he tried to stop himself from laughing while he watched Anakin's face flash from scared to confused and back again.

"I…I…. what….I" Anakin stammered in panic and Renn couldn't stop himself amore and just started laughing.

"Hahaha, I'm just messing with you mate. How've you been?" He said after laughing at Anakin for a bit.

"I…You…" Anakin kept stammering as his brain tried to catch up on what was happening.

"I know buddy," Renn nodded in understanding and patted the bewildered Anakin on the back, "talking's hard."

"Ahmmm," the other jedi cleared her throat loudly to get their attention and Renn looked over at her, pretending not to notice the glare Anakin was giving him.

"Who are you? What are you doing here? And why do you know Anakin?" The jedi began interrogating him.

"I am the supreme chancellor of the republic Sheev Palpatine. I'm here on holiday. And I have never met padawan Skywalker before." Renn said emotionlessly and heard Shae sniggering behind him.

"What? Your lying, the chancellor isn't a child!" the jedi said in annoyance and Renn saw Anakin try very hard not to face palm.

"You have caught me out, your intellect truly is impressive." Renn said still in a monotone and heard Shae go from sniggering to laughing loudly and saw Anakin turn away to try and hide a grin spreading across his face.

"Why you…" The jedi's face flushed in anger as she glared at Renn.

"Master Tachi!" Anakin cut in before things could escalate, though more to save Siri from further embarrassment than anything else.

"This is my friend Renn, we met on Tatooine before I joined the order." Anakin said," and Renn this is jedi master Siri Tachi." Anakin then said to Renn hoping he would stop antagonising Siri when he found out she was a jedi master.

"Coool" Renn said sarcastically, shattering his friends hopes.

He was doing his best to annoy the jedi for a few reasons.

One she had annoyed him when she interrupted his reunion with his friend Anakin.

Two Sapphire had told him over the comm that Siri had been undercover in Krayn's organisation for a long time and so far, hadn't helped end it and instead helped the pirates sell more people into slavery by using her jedi skills to help her find hidden people on ships they raided, so that she could look good for her pirate bosses.

And finally, three, because he thought it was funny.

-

"We need to move quickly and find Krayn. He has forced a lot of people into slavery and we need to help them." Anakin said.

It had taken Anakin a while to calm Siri down but now he was focoused on trying to kill Krayn and rescuing the slaves on Nar Shaddaa.

"Way ahead of you mate," Renn told him before talking into the inbuilt comm in his helmet. "Crow. Have you got that distraction ready yet?"

"…Yeah boss… please let me blow something up… got abit of aggression I need to work out." Crows voice sounded from Renn's comm.

"Because of you Idiot…yes, it is your fault…. yes, it is…. Yes, it is." Crow continued and although Renn could only hear one side of the argument he had a pretty good idea who it was with.

"Crow!" Renn shouted to stop the argument, "You can start the distraction whenever you are ready."

"Oh, thanks boss" Came the reply and Renn turned off the comm before the droids could start arguing again.

"Krayn is on the top floor. We can head that way now and take him out." Renn told the others.

"I think your forgetting about the army of pirates roaming about." Siri said and Renn just shrugged.

"I think they are going to get really busy. Right…. about-" 'BOOOM' "-Now." Renn said as a huge explosion rocked the building, they were in.

The explosion was followed by a series of secondary explosions and then the sounds of distant blaster fire.

"Well, lets go." Renn said and began leading the way out of the prison and toward where Krayn was located.

-

Great plumes of smoke rose into the morning air from the giant fires that had once been Krayn's spice factories.

The panicked and disorganised pirates who were running towards the infernos in and attempt to try and stop the fire from spreading hadn't fully come to terms with the fact that they were under attack.

They were under the impression the explosions were an accident, they hadn't received any messages about enemies attacking them from the command centre after all, so it was a bit of a surprise when blaster fire ripped through the fastest runners.

"We're under att-" a pirate tried to shout into his comm but was cut off when a blaster bolt blew his head off.

Crow lay prone on a rooftop, the smoke billowing out around him obscuring him from view but not affecting his mechanical optical sensors at all.

His long blaster was resting on a small pile of debris to keep it stable as he began methodically picking off the pirates running about bellow him.

He was sniping any pirate that looked to be trying to give orders or attempting to organise things so that he could sow the maximum amount of confusion that he could.

Spark meanwhile, on a different roof, was just firing on full auto with a heavy repeating blaster. The blaster bolts he was firing cutting through groups of pirates.

"Hey, Clank is gonna be mad he missed this!" Spark shouted.

"Yeah, that's true." Crow answered before firing a blaster bolt through a pirates torso and watching the Weequay man fall to the floor in a heap.

Clank had been forced to stay behind at the asteroid base as he had gotten damaged the last time they were out exploring the galaxy.

Clank, Spark, Earl and Alpha had been out on their own to protect a freighter from Krayt Shipping, Renn's shipping company, that was making a delivery to a outer rim planet with a dangerous reputation.

The freighter crew were worried about running into problems and so Renn had sent the droids to help them as he was busy on Kamino training with Jango and some of the other Mandalorians there.

While on the planet they had been attacked by bandits and though the droids had delt with them easily, Clank had chased after the fleeing survivors a bit to zealously and had fallen of a cliff.

He hadn't been badly damaged as he was heavily armoured and had jump jets installed in him so that he could survive even a fall from low orbit, which he had done on multiple occasions.

But there was a fast flowing river at the base of the cliff and he had been swept away by the current. He had travelled miles and been dumped over numerous waterfalls, and according to Sapphire managed to smack himself into every rock in the river, before the others had managed to find him and pull him out.

They had then taken him back to the asteroid base for repairs.

When Renn said they were going to get actual combat experience Clank had tried to persuade them to let him come with them, but Bolt and Tinker had gone berserk at him.

He had then been forced to stay behind as the repair droids fixed him up, and made fun of him for being an idiot.

Crow could still remembered the big droids depressed screams as they left for battle without him.

"To be honest though Clank would be annoyed even if the only fight we got in was watching a organic punch another organic in a bar." Crow said to Spark.

"Ha, yeah. He just loves violence." Spark said excitedly as he threw a thermal detonator at a crowd of pirates and watched as it exploded, and a shower of debris and body parts was launched into the air. "The wierdo."

Crow laughed and carried on blasting pirates, who seemed to now be swarming the large open space between Krayn's compound and the spice factories.

Large automatic blaster turrets were dotted around, presumably to help the pirates in case there was a slave revolt, and a number of pirates seemed to be pointing at them and shouting questions about why they weren't turned on.

The turrets then began to come alive, the lights on them showing a blue glow as their barrels swung up and started powering up.

The pirates gave out a cheer as they saw the turrets powering up, no doubt thinking that things were now turning in their favour.

That was until the turrets then began spewing heavy blaster fire into the faces of the surprised pirates, blowing them apart.

"Hehe, these idiots really don't know anything about cybersecurity." Sapphire's voice came over the comm, "Honestly, you'd think they could at least make things challenging for me to hack."

Spark and Crow laughed as Sapphire used the turrets to lay waste to the assembled pirates.

-

Krayn was charged down the corridor towards the turbolift that would take him to the ground floor.

A large group of pirates ran behind him as they all tried to rush towards the sounds of fighting.

Someone had dared to attack his base of power on Nar Shaddaa and Krayn was determined to show them why that was a bad idea.

He would tear them apart with his bare hands and display their mangled corpses on the streets of Nar Shaddaa for all to see.

He was the mighty Krayn and he was going to remind the galaxy why he should be feared.

They were still only halfway down the corridor when the turbolift doors slid open and Krayn was barely able to fling himself out of the way before a hail of blaster bolts ripped into the pirates behind him.

Two armoured children, one wearing Mandalorian armour, the other wearing a type of armour Karyn couldn't recognise, rushed out of the lift followed by a HK-51 assassin droid and began cutting down the pirates in the corridor.

Two jedi with their lightsabres ignited followed the other intruders out of the lift and started redirecting blaster bolts back towards the few pirates who had managed to fire back at the intruders.

Krayn saw a side door and dived through it to get out of the way of the incoming blaster fire.

"There are intrudes inside the compound! Send reinforcements now!" Krayn yelled into his comm.

He watched as it became clear that his pirates weren't going to be able to deal with the intruders and he ran away screaming for assistance over his comm.

He didn't see the jedi padawan that rushed forward to chase him or the armoured child that followed the boy forwards.

He did see the a group of pirates rushing to help and he ordered them towards the corridor behind him.

He heard blaster fire breakout behind him, followed by screams and explosions. He ran faster and changed direction towards the landing pads and began yelling for his ship to come pick him up.

Krayn wasn't a coward. But he wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to stay on the ground and be slaughtered, he was going to get back to his ship and start raining heavy blaster fire down on the area.

He might lose some income if he levelled the area, but he would be able to recover. There were plenty of beings in the galaxy that he could capture and enslave, and it wasn't like the republic cared enough to send ships to patrol the outer rim.

He would recover. He just needed to get back to his ship.