Chapter 27

"I can already feel the fear of my enemies, the coming battle will be glorious."

Renn and Alpha were stood in the Speedy Vagabonds cargo bay and watching Clank excitedly rant about the coming fight. They had brought him along when they left the asteroid base this time in case they got into a fight and now he was about to get his wish and join in the battle.

The queen was planning to use the Gungans as a diversion to allow her to sneak into the palace with the jedi and her security forces to capture Nute Gunray. Sneaking into the palace would also allow the naboo pilots to launch from the palace's hangar and assault the ships in orbit.

Renn and the others were going to assist in the space battle and the Speedy Vagabond was currently accelerating towards orbit. Renn had offered to give some help with the diversion on the ground as well which was why he was currently in the cargo hold.

Their plan was to drop Clank as well as Spark and Crow from the cargo ramp as they were travelling to orbit. The three droids would then land, with the help of thruster packs, near Theed and create their own distraction before assisting the Naboo security forces on the ground. The Speedy Vagabond would then Speak up to the second battleship in orbit, that hadn't landed troops yet, and they would sneak on board and disable it.

"The rivers will run red with the blood of my enemies!" Clank exclaimed.

"You know your just fighting droids, right?" Renn asked him slightly worried about Clanks sanity.

"That is irrelevant all shall fear my might."

"He's going to be okay, isn't he?" Renn asked Alpha, worried about the inhabitants of the planet below.

"He'll be fine…... probably" Alpha told him, adding the last part under his breath.

"He's just excited, once the fighting starts, he'll be fine." Spark said from behind them, double checking the heavy repeating blaster he was holding and grabbing a bandolier full of thermal detonators from the top of a nearby crate.

"Our enemies are doomed" Crow said from next to Spark, he was holding a longblaster ready to jump out of the ship and into the fight.

"Haha, that's as optimistic as I've ever seen him. This is going to be fun." Spark laughed.

"The enemy will come to fear our names" Clank shouted as Sapphire lowered the cargo ramp as they neared the point wear the three droids would jump.

"Remember we are here to help this planet so try not to destroy it" Alpha told the three droids.

"What was that? I can't hear the winds too loud." Spark said pretending not to hear him.

"Just Jump" Alpha sighed and soon all three had leapt from the ramp and were descending towards Theed leaving Renn and Alpha alone in the cargo bay.

"Maybe we should have sent someone else to where there would be people" Renn told Alpha as they watched the ramp close.

"It'll be fine" Alpha said, but secretly wondered the same thing as Renn.

-

The Speedy Vagabond was advancing towards the second trade federation battleship while cloaked. The battleship was on standby and hadn't yet deployed its droids, so Renn and the others wanted to take it out of the fight before it could join it.

Still cloaked the ship made its way into the battleship's open hangar bay. Once inside they steered into an open area and landed.

The ship would lose cloak once they dropped the landing ramp, so everyone was getting ready to move as quickly as possible once that happened. Alpha, Scythe, and Earl were stacked up by the landing ramp, ready to sprint out into the battleship's hangar as soon as the ramp dropped. And Renn was sat in the Speedy Vagabond's pilot seat ready to use the ships turrets to assist the droids.

The battleship wasn't expecting to be attacked so the hangar was empty except a few battle droids patrolling around. The battle droids assumed that any approaching ship would be picked up by the battleships sensors so weren't really expecting to have to do anything. So, when a ship appeared in the middle of the hangar, seemingly from out of nowhere, their simple processing units had trouble comprehending it.

The landing ramp dropped, and Alpha charged into the hanger first, Scythe and Earl right behind him. They quickly sent blaster bolts into the few battle droids patrolling the hangar and sprinted towards a data-terminal on the hangar wall near a set of blast doors.

They reached the terminal and Alpha took out a data-chip and inserted it into a slot in the terminal, as Earl and Scythe moved to the blast doors.

"The upload will take a couple of minutes. Stand by till then." Sapphire's voice came over the comms.

-

Captain Zimdi stood up from his chair in alarm as sirens started going off on the trade federation battleship's bridge.

"What is happening" he yelled at his crew.

"Sir, intruder alert in the hangar bay" one of his crew shouted back.

"Send reinforcements their now. Set the ship to battle stations. How did they get onboard?" Zimdi was starting to panic as he watched the security footage of three assassin droids tearing through the battle droids in the hangar.

-

Scythe and Earl were firing their blasters through the open blast doors and into the corridor on the other side. Battle droids were trying to push down the corridor to assault the hangar, but Scythe and Earl were holding them back by blasting them before they could get close to the blast doors.

Other battle droids had entered the hangar from corridors further in, but they were being destroyed by Renn, who was using the Speedy Vagabond's turrets to send heavy blaster fire into them.

They were waiting for Sapphire to upload herself to the battleship's main computer from the data-chip that Alpha had placed into the terminal in the hangar. They didn't need to wait long and soon Sapphire let them know that she was in, and immediately after all the battle droids shut down and the battle ships lights began flickering.

-

Sapphire was an extremely advanced A.I. and she rarely got to show off her full abilities. She was currently diving through the data channels of the battleship's computer systems like a fish swimming down a river.

The Lucrehulk-class Battleships were used by the trade federation as droid control ships, so its central computer was not just linked to every system on the ship it was also linked to every droid stored inside its cavernous interior.

Its systems were designed to be hard to hack but were still unable to stop Sapphire, who was smashing through every firewall like an unstoppable juggernaut, until she reached the central computer.

Once there she was able to seize control of everything in the ship and she grinned to herself at how easy it was.

-

Captain Zimdi was now terrified, one moment he had been nervously watching his droids failing to destroy the intruders. The next all power vanished from the battleship's bridge, and they were plunged into darkness.

He could hear the panicked shouts from his crew from around him but couldn't see them. He heard banging from where the blast doors where and realised that some of his crews were trying to force the doors open but weren't having much success.

Suddenly a blue glow lit the centre of the bridge, and a holographic figure materialised in front of them. The figure Smiled at them sweetly as she looked around the bridge.

"W-who—what are you?" Zimdi stammered gazing at her.

"Me?" The figure said and she appeared to ponder the question for a moment before her smile twisted grotesquely into an evil looking grin.

"I'm the new captain of this ship. And I'm afraid you are all now surplus to requirements."

After she finished speaking the blast doors opened and battle droids started filing onto the bridge, their optical sensors were lit in the same blue light as the holographic figure.

The droids surrounded Zimdi and his crew, and Zimdi watched in horror as one of his crewmembers tried to draw a blaster before the droids responded to the treat by opening fire and killing Zimdi and his entire crew.

"Well, guess I'm in charge of a battleship now. This is going to be fun" Sapphire said ignoring the brutal end to the ships Neimoidian crew.

"Roger, roger" The assembled battle droids chorused back to her.

"…. I wasn't actually talking to you guys you know"

"Roger, roger"

"sigh"