1.07

"...dare attack the noble House of Andrim?" The voice echoed strangely through the metal maintenance shaft, but was still recognizably Father's; the arrogance gave it away.

"Noble? Captain, please. ...were just a successful Trade Federation shipowner... Lady Andrim... experimented with." Sergeant Bates' retort had Father sputtering in his haste to deny it, but they both knew it was true. Force, Astra had known it was true and she'd been a twelve-year-old pampered princess. Father and Mother might have loved each other, but their marriage was seen as a convenience to them... and an inconvenience to the rest of the House. I never understood why, so I moved closer to the ventilation grille to listen in on the supposed grown-ups.

"...not even human when the Noble Houses have remained so for a thousand generations." There was an ominous pause, and I took the opportunity to spy on the traitorous' security guards' positions. Ten of them plus the Sergeant were present on the Doughnut's bridge, all armed with the same light blasters I'd looted from my attackers'... corpses. Damn, even thinking about their deaths brought on the revolting mix of nausea and satisfaction that I'd been feeling for the past fifteen minutes. Forcing myself to ignore both sensations, I noted down the enemies' location. Six of them guarding the two dozen or so merchants, analysts, and other civilians. Three of them watching over the rest of the bridge crew. One holding a blaster to Father's head, while the Sergeant talked to him.

"You've already lost, Bates," Father spat back with all his usual anger and arrogance, without a hint of fear. "Your foray into piracy chose the wrong target; this ship is fully automated and keyed to me. Kill me, and the computer core will lockdown, the autopilot attempting to return us to Kuat. With the hyperlane blocked, you and your minions will die. Don't kill me, and we can wait here until more ships stumble upon us. This is a busy hyperlane after all. Because there's nothing you can do to force me to cooperate."

Quite predictably, Bates shot him. Seeing the traitorous Security Chief raise his blaster at Father then pull the trigger almost had me jumping out of the maintenance shaft with my own blaster blazing. The fury exploding through me as I practically felt Father's pain, the rest of the crew's horror, and Bates' chaotic mix of glee, satisfaction, and contempt very nearly proved too strong to hold back. Two thoughts kept me back. One, Bates was a professional with a significant back-up; I was far more likely to succeed in killing him if I shot from cover. And two, he'd only shot Father in the leg. Indignation and fury now overshadowed the older Arkanian's arrogance, the agony of the blaster bolt burning into his shin to the bone held back by iron self-control.

"It is amusing that however intelligent you non-humans profess to be, you're always proven rather stupid," Bates said, adding insult to injury. "Deflector shields won't stop a slow-moving object that has no shields of its own and now that they're not being shot at, my friends can dock at their leisure. Besides, the computer core is not keyed to you, but to the Andrim family. Convenient isn't it? That the late lady Andrim's experiment is onboard and... its authority precedes yours?"

Bates' gleefully racist commentary gave me all the time and motivation I needed to line up my stolen blaster with his head. Hearing the sick pleasure in his words at calling me an "experiment", at shooting Father for his own amusement, it was more than enough to overcome any hesitation. The Nazi-like rhetoric was oddly familiar. Was it because it echoed the Nazis back on Earth? My gut instinct said no, though I could not pinpoint why.

At that moment, a barely audible beeping from my chronometer - the Star Wards galaxy didn't use the word "watch" - reminded me of the plan. Exhaling and focusing entirely on the task at hand, I pressed the trigger as soon as there was no air in my lungs. Unlike more powerful blasters, my weapon didn't make the traitor's head explode messily as I'd wanted it to over the past few minutes. Maybe it was for the best; high-power shots might destroy delicate bridge equipment in a firefight. Bates and everybody else stood rigidly in shock, their voices cut off as if by a knife. Then he toppled, his brain already cooked by the high-energy particle beam that went through his skull almost exactly like a high-explosive round burns through tank armor.

Their surprise gave me just enough time to shoot one of the traitors threatening the bridge crew. Thinking of shooting the one holding a gun to Father's head had resulted in a sharp feeling of alarm, followed by the mental image of his finger twitching on the gun's trigger as he died, taking Father with him.

The nine still living traitors exploded into activity, quickly finding and shooting at the metal grille covering the maintenance shaft high up in the wall. Two bolts went through the gaps in the metal but were too high to hit a target as small as a twelve-year-old girl lying down. Three more struck the metal bars with sizzling hisses of explosive vaporization, but most of the metal endured even if it turned red-hot. That was good as one of those bolts would have gone through my head otherwise. Trying to aim without panicking, the blaster's muzzle shoved through the grille, I pulled the trigger several times in quick succession. Another traitor went down, but wasn't dead; his armor had let him survive the low-powered shots. I drank in his pain with the same satisfaction as Bates had Father's, my fear subsiding at this evidence that they could and would die. Or maybe that was the shock talking.

The bridge's main door opened up, the sound of it opening covered by the blaster fire. The traitors didn't notice Ratty walking up to them from behind, their attention too focused on me until the tutor droid started shooting them in the back. In all the confusion I saw Father jumping off his Captain's chair, injured leg or no, wrapping a four-fingered hand around his distracted guard's throat, and giving the traitorous security guard a second smile with the sharp claws all pure-blood Arkanians had instead of nails.

Then someone shot at me with a stunner instead of a normal blaster bolt, the ion charge cascading through the metal like a rain of mini-thunderbolts. An infinitesimal moment of agony, then darkness...