6/7

It must have been the ships nights time because Ranma didn't run into that many aliens, only a few walking the corridors here and there and some in what was obviously a cafeteria which he entered with the help of one of the aliens coming out at just the time he reached the doorway. Squeezing between the orc and the wall had been difficult without touching them, but Ranma had done it, not that she got anything out of the effort.

He'd hoped that some of the alien's food would at least look like something he could try, but that was not the case. Ranma wasn't willing to try 'nameless meat soup', especially not 'nameless meat soup' cooked for aliens that look so much like orcs. Still, he was able to steal some hot water to change back to his male body at least. While parts of his mind was busy making a map of the ship and making notes of the two alien types cataloging what could possibly be weak points and other things like that the rest of Ranma's mind was trying to come up with a plan of action.

Problem one, while a lot of the miners look the type that'll be good in a fight, the pirates or whatever seem ta be better equipped, and they might have more numbers. Problem two, would the miners know how to work this ship if we could take it over? And problem three, this ship was one of five, and those four other ships were guard ships. That might mean they've got better weapons and armor than this one. And I got no idea what their reactions would be if this ship started to break away or whatever.

Ranma had just decided to see if he could find an armory of some kind when he began to notice that the area he was now in, which was on the fourth floor of the ship near the center of it, looked much better kept up in the rest of the ship. Officer's country? He was at the outside of the ship as well rather than the center, which was proven when he walked down the corridor and noticed that it actually had small portholes allowing someone to look out into space. The view though stopped his feet for a moment.

It wasn't stars, it wasn't even just blank darkness. Instead there were uncounted billions of lines of color, all mixing up in a way to make the greatest rainbow ever imagined look tame in comparison. After only a second of staring Ranma had to turn away, his eyes watering. Holy fuck, what the hell?

A stray thought or memory struck him of a book that Nabiki had red once, a science fiction book, something about the way ships traveled. Hyperspace? For a moment Ranma stood there trying to remember what Nabiki had said about it, but then a small evil little smile appeared on his face. I wonder what would happen if this ship suddenly lost its hyperdrive or whatever you call it…

OOOOOOO

It took Ranma another thirty minutes to find what he hoped was the engine room. It was a large room at the back of the ship encompassing four, maybe even five stories of the ship and was filled with computers, pipes, what looked like some kind of generator and a lot of other junk that Ranma didn't understand the purpose of. That's alright though, Ranma thought to himself cheerfully. I don't have to understand what it does ta break it.

Any normal space-fairer who had the ability to hear Ranma's thoughts at that moment would've been horrified. Messing around with hyperdrive engines was not recommended at the best of times, there were few more horrifying ways for a spacer to die than for his ship to disintegrate around him in hyperspace, or just to go off course. While many of the main hyperspace lanes were so because they were clear of obstacles, those lanes didn't extend to the sides, above or below very far. So if you came out of hyperspace in the wrong place you could find yourself coming out into the center of a star, already in the grips of a black hole, or bouncing off the edge of some other gravity well.

Ranma didn't know any of that, of course. All he was interested in was the idea that maybe messing with the engines would drop them out of hyperspace into realspace, while the rest of the ships in the convoy or whatever kept on going.

From his perch up on top of one of the large pipes, Ranma looked around, clinging there with ease, out of the Umi-Sen-Ken for now. He couldn't use his ki sense when in the Umi-Sen-Ken very well for some reason. Now however he could sense seven aliens all around the room. They radiated to his senses somewhat oddly, but Ranma put that down to the fact that they were aliens rather than anything else.

He noticed that three of the aliens were of a new type he hadn't seen before. They looked like menial labor and were being treated almost like slaves by the orange scaled aliens too, though they didn't seem to have collars or anything on them. They were squat somewhat ungainly creature that would only come up to his chest if that. They seemed to walk on all fours for preference, with long back legs and somewhat shorter forelegs with three large fingers on the front hands, but with very dexterous toes.

One of the orange-scaled aliens seemed to be in charge here. He wasn't really doing much, simply sitting in one of the chairs at a console with his feet up and some kind of magazine open in his hands. Curious Ranma jumped down entering the Umi-Sen-Ken in midair to land lightly behind the alien. He stared over the aliens shoulder at the magazine before blushing hotly, moving away quickly while shaking his head. Should've expected that, porn magazines exist even in space, what a revelation, not!

He very carefully ignored how good looking the white skinned alien on the page had looked, or how enticing certain… parts had been, needing to concentrate on the here and now. And besides, remember Ranma you're a boy again, ya can't go perving on girls like that.

Frowning thoughtfully Ranma simply looked around the engine room trying to decide what the weakest point was and what could most easily be broken before realizing that he had really no idea. Shrugging, he grinned. When in doubt blow stuff up. First though, let's see if I can find the armory.

That was actually quite easy. The armory was at the center of the ship on the other side from the hangar bay. They were connected by a short corridor moving sideways across the ship which Ranma had bypassed because he had seen what looked like some kind of heavy gun turret stuck in the ceiling set on a pintle mount. It wasn't moving thankfully, which Ranma put down to either shoddy maintenance or someone trying to save a little bit of energy or something.

The armory wasn't as impressive as Ranma had hoped. None of the orc's pikes were here, which made Ranma think that maybe they were personal weapons. But there were a hundred plus blasters there, large two handed weapons that Ranma supposed were the sci-fi equivalent of rifles. There was also a camera on a working swivel scanning the room, which made Ranma curse.

While the Umi-Sen-Ken covered him and anything he was touching, he couldn't hide the fact that a weapon had disappeared if he picked it up. The 'not interesting' or 'not my problem' field of the Umi-Sen-Ken could not match up against something like that. Maybe if somethin; else was happening in the room ta trick their minds into concentratin' on, but as it is, no.

Frowning thoughtfully Ranma made his way out of the room, bypassing several of the orc types who were walking the corridor grunting occasionally and pushing one another by leaping up and sticking to the ceiling for a moment. Scared Spider maneuver, one o' the most useful martial arts techniques I've ever learned Ranma thought to himself rather happily. Akane had laughed at him when he had decided to create that technique after reading a few American comic books about a hero named Spiderman. But it certainly came in handy.

Ranma leapt down after the two orcs had passed, racing down the corridor in a hurry now. He had to finish this tonight, he couldn't let the night cycle of the ship pass him by. Nor was he willing to try this against at some later date, not if it meant leaving the slaves, in particular the women, in their captors' hands.

I've been lucky so far that none of these bastards have tried to go and 'sample the goods'. If they had, an alarm would've already been raised, and I would've faced a tough choice. That choice would have been to fall back and help protect the women giving up his primary advantages, his mobility and ability to stay hidden, or leave them to their own devices with only a single gun to protect them.

Soon after that, Ranma came upon where the male prisoners on the ship had been imprisoned. It was a smaller area then the ones devoted to the females, and guarded by not one orange-scaled alien but two orcs directly outside the doorway carrying those weird pikes of theirs. Luckily there wasn't any kind of camera or whatever watching the doorway. The two orcs were leaning against the wall on either side of the doorway, which allowed Ranma to move between them to stare through the bars of the cell into the interior, though he had to stand on his tiptoes to do it.

Here again he ran into a problem. There was some kind of recorder set in the ceiling of the room, and this one was moving around just like the one in the armory. That definitely limited his options.

Frowning thoughtfully, Ranma moved away from the door again, staring at the two aliens on guard, both of whom were asleep slumping against the walls. It was tempting to start the party here, but Ranma decided against it. No, best to give the crew something else to concentrate on before I raid the weapons locker, then come back here.

With that in mind and knowing he was running out of time Ranma raced back to the engine room, nearly colliding with two of the orange-scaled aliens as they moved down the corridor. However he reached the engine room without further incident then looked around trying to figure out what to break and how to do it.

Finally he decided on a series of large pipes and energy runs coming out of the generator and into the wall directly behind it. Several of them looked rusted, and Ranma figured that was a good indicator that maybe this was a natural weakness of the engine. With that in mind, Ranma leapt up onto the top most pipe staring down at it then came out of the Umi-Sen-Ken. He paused for a moment, then blasted straight down with a ki shot. "Moko Takabasha."

The Fierce Lion's Roar's blue sphere cut through the pipe cleanly, and immediately some kind of extremely cold liquid began to gush out, some of it splashing on Ranma and causing him/her to change forms. But the big surprise happened when the ki blast bore through the bottom of the pipe and then into the energy runs. The explosion picked Ranma up and threw her up into the air to slam her back into the ceiling of the engine room, throwing shrapnel and everything else every which way.

Even though Ranma had been ready for something to happen the explosion caught him/her by surprise. She grimaced as several bits of shrapnel cut into her skin here and there while she raised her arms to protect her face. One in particular nicked the redhead's side, causing her to wince irritably, but Ranma could feel her ki healing already going to work. Ranma continued to cling to the ceiling, pulling the Umi-Sen-Ken technique around him again.

Below her the aliens began to scramble around in a panic. "What in the universe just happened?! Why did we lose containment?" The one in charge threw aside his porn magazine, rushing over to stare up at the damage before turning quickly to slam his palm down on a large flat area on the side of the generator. Another panel popped up next to it after a bare flicker of an instant, and his other hand shot out to slam a large red button. "Emergency shutdown!"

The hum of the generator, which after Ranma's bit of sabotage had become more of a high-pitched whine, suddenly stopped. Alarms began to blare now, and from some kind of intercom a voice began to shout angrily. "What the hell is going on down there?! We're still six hours out from our destination, why did we come out of hyperspace, and why are the alarms blaring!?"

While the three-eyed alien that had apparently hit the emergency stop tried to explain matters into the intercom to whoever was on the other end, the other aliens grabbed up some emergency gear and began to deal with the fire that Ranma had caused. He winced guiltily however as he noticed that one of the menial aliens had been hit by a bit of the shrapnel. It wasn't badly hurt, but it was noticeably limping, one of its back legs cut in a few places near its foot.

One of the other orange-scaled aliens was down, holding his gut where a piece of shrapnel had embedded itself. But seeing as he was part of a slaving group and obviously there by his own choice unlike the menials, Ranma wasn't prepared to waste any sympathy on him.

Quickly Ranma made his way over to the hatchway into the engine room, then from there made his way along the ceiling using the Scared Spider technique until she was by the armory. She waited there as several dozen of the orange skinned aliens raced down the corridor towards the engine room shouting to one another. Ranma noticed that none of the orcs seemed to have been roused to help deal with the crisis, which was another sign that maybe they were simply dumb muscle.

She opened the door to the weapons locker immediately coming out of the Umi-Sen-Ken to fire a Moko Takabashi at the camera, destroying it before racing into the room and gathering up as many of the weapons as he could stuffing them into his ki space before racing back out. She then paused, firing off another ki blast destroying the heavy gun in the corridor moving across the ship just in case.

With that done Ranma raced along not caring that she slammed unseen into one of the orange-scaled aliens, sending it tumbling with a squawk of surprise to the corridor floor. Ranma was out of sight down the corridor before the alien could do more than shout in shock.

Ranma swiftly came to the holding area for the male prisoners. Dropping out of the Umi-Sen-Ken as he was moving forward she noticed that the two orcs were now awake and grumbling to one another, shifting uneasily on their feet as the alarm continued to blare and the voice shouted through the intercoms. Neither orc had time to bring their pikes down to bear on him before Ranma jumped up, her fists lashing out to either side. Ranma's punches slammed into the orc's noses at far faster speeds than most humans (or aliens) could hit, throwing them backwards against the walls with their faces smashed in, dead or unconscious.

With that done Ranma moved forward two steps to the jail's door. Grabbing the bars of the door's small viewing flap, Ranma ripped the door off its hinges, tossing it behind him down the corridor.

Inside the male prisoners had woken when the alarm went off and were milling about uncertainly. Several of them near the doorway trying to hear what was going on before Ranma had ripped the door off its hinges. Now they all stared at Ranma in shock. "Does anyone know who this girl is?" asked one of the more alien looking miners, a huge slow moving creature, that had long hair and tusks, looking around at the others. "And… um, where did the door go?"

"Noooo… I'd remember those… I mean her…" said one of the human-looking aliens, leering at the redheads breasts.

Ranma didn't notice the man's look, instead staring all around at the miners. She smirked at them then waved her hands, as if she was a magician about to perform a conjuring trick. Then without further ado Ranma began to pull out weapons from her ki space to exclamations of shocked surprise. "Hey all, hope you like know how to use these."

One of the miners, another young male from the race that most looked like humans with odd skin colors, in this case light purple, moved forward hesitantly picking up one of the guns. Inspecting it, he nodded at the girl who seemingly had some kind of weird power to hide things. "Who cares who she is, or what the hell she's doing." he said turning to the others with a fierce grin "For my part, I'm suddenly feeling a lot more confident now without ships overhead threatening to bombard us into wreckage. How about it, who's ready to skrog these kriffers up!?"

He was answered with a roar as the miners all moved forward quickly grabbing up weapons.

Ranma nodded her head rapidly. "I'll show you where the girls are being kept, we don't want these bastards to be able to take them hostage against you all." None of them seems to understand and Ranma rolled her eyes before pointing down the corridor then at herself. The blank looks continued even while some of the miners began to move rather uneasily around her, one of them stopping to put some laser rounds into the orc's heads.

Shuddering a little at that Ranma made motions to her breasts. Then she pointed at the prisoners before pointing back down the corridor. "I think she wants to show us where the rest of the women are." Said one of the older prisoners. "Is that it?"

Ranma looked at him blankly then did the same motions again, saying aloud. "I can't understand you, but the women are that way, that way? God I'm sounding like an American tourist just speaking loudly and clearly in Enlgish, as if that'll help. Ughh…" Ranma shook his head before turning and moving off.

"I think that's it!" Said another miner, one of the aliens with longer necks. "Those of you with family go with her and guard the women. The rest of us let's raise some hell!"

A moment later Ranma was gratified to notice that several dozen of the male miners were following her. The redhead raced across the hangar bay, stopping halfway to knock out several of the orc aliens that had gathered there, possibly as a first response in trying to retain control of the prisoners. Ranma barreled into them like a bowling ball hitting ninepins, scattering the orcs easily their best efforts to hack at her with their pikes. They might be strong in comparison to most aliens but they've got nothing on a martial artist, she thought to himself grimly.

Leaping up Ranma dodged a pike that an orc tried to hack at her with, grabbing the orc by the head and flipping over it. Using it as a handstand, she kicked out at two others before twisting its neck with an audible 'Crack'. Ranma winced in revulsion at having killed again, almost automatically reaching mentally for the Soul of Ice, but she fought the instinctual reaction off. That kind of thing could get to be a habit, and Ranma wasn't willing to fall into it.

Ranma raced on, coming upon two of the orange scaled aliens about to head down the corridor towards where the women were being kept. Attacking them from behind, Ranma slammed their heads together before they even knew she was there, tossing them to the side before racing on. Arriving at the door into the women's cell Ranma did the knock he had shown them before he left.

The women must've been on edge already from the sirens and the shouts through the intercom because the door was opened a second after Ranma finished the special knock. Over a dozen of them stared out at her then over Ranma's head towards the running men. The men in turn shouted gleefully when they saw wives, daughters or more often than not simply significant others. Some of them stopped at the other two doors on this corridor, opening it to reunite with the women who hadn't made the cut to be among the best looking bunch, and there were shouts of joy all around.

While the families were reunited Ranma grabbed two of the younger, tougher looking miners that had followed him. They looked at one another in shock as the girl carried them back towards the start of the corridor, their feet not even touching the ground like they were small packs of food. Once there, Ranma pointed down at the floor and then at them emphatically. "Hold here, guard here, understand?"

"I think she's trying to tell us to guard this position. " said one of them to the other, shrugging his shoulders. " It's a good idea too, since this is the only entrance to the women's areas."

"I wonder why she can't speak Galactic Standard." said the second looking at the redheaded human girl. "And where the hell she came from. Coffec was right, she's damn memorable for such a short thing. Plus there weren't any true humans among us except for old man Dufty, and he was gunned down before we boarded the ship."

"Worry about that later, if it's really something to worry about at all considering this crap we've found ourselves in." The first man muttered, going to one knee and siting along the top of his blaster rifle down the corridor at one of the orcs Ranma had knocked around in the hangar bay. A second later blaster bolts raced down, catching the orc in the chest and face. He nodded at the young girl, who nodded back then raced off leaving them behind to their surprise, having thought that she would stay with the other women now that the men were armed and moving around the ship.

They watched astonished as the redhead leaped over two more orcs entering the corridor, kicking out to their heads as she went. The two orcs flew to the sides, slamming with enough force to shatter some of their bones against the sides of the corridor despite their layers of fat. "I'm not certain what race she is, but with strength like that, I don't think she's fully human whatever she looks like."

"You think?" The other miner scoffed. "I don't kriffing care what she is or where she came from! Whatever she is, we owe our lives to her. I just hope that the kriffing retrofitted corvettes keep right on going. We can't take those gunboats." The miners had figured out that they had fallen out of hyperspace, but had no idea why and no idea if the gunboats had kept on going or not.

The rest of the battle against the slavers was actually anti-climactic. Miners were a belligerent sort at the best of times and all of them were used to looking after themselves. Moreover the ship's crew was actually much smaller than Ranma had thought. The men alone among the prisoners outnumbered them two to one. And the orcs were useless at range, which meant the miners could cut them down with relative ease so long as they saw the orcs coming, even on the ship. They seemed to be able to absorb a lot of blaster bolts, but not enough to make a difference when the miners had their blasters on full auto.

Realizing this Ranma took the time to hit up the commissary in search of hot water. The redhead poured water over her head transforming into his male form with a sigh of relief. Then he joined the battle occurring elsewhere on the ship.

OOOOOO

Jedi Master Dooku sighed staring at a screen of text in his room on the Consular class cruiser that was carrying him to yet another interminable peacekeeping mission. While he would never say it aloud, Dooku felt that his diplomatic skills were not the match of his martial ones and he would much rather deal with a straightforward problem than endless discussion. Though he supposed as a Guardian that should have been a given, but even Guardians could not turn away from diplomatic missions.

That didn't even consider the fact that he felt that the Jedi Order should not be called upon as mere diplomats of the Republic. If politicians can't solve the problems that they themselves are creating, then what good are they? The Jedi Order is meant to serve the Light side of the Force. Not the law, not the Senate, but justice and the rights of the common sentient being. When did we become part of the corruption?

Dooku knew that some of his thoughts were fueled by simple grief. The death of his latest padawan on a mission she shouldn't have even been a part of and which the Jedi Order should never have been called to deal with in his opinion had hardened his thoughts against the current course of the order. The Jedi Order was created to defend others, not to serve a corrupt government. We serve the Light side of the Force, of balance, justice and peace. We are not a police force nor are we diplomats, simple voices of the government, of those in power. Laws matter yes, but only if the people who made them actually follow them, and it must be the people or their peers in the senate that bring them to task if they do not. A fact my current mission is an excellent example of, yet here I am, a Jedi Guardian on a diplomatic mission.

The Gran Protectorate had originally been a simple colony of the Gran on the planet Malastare. The Gran were originally a peaceful race from the planet Kinyen. But due to a series of social issues the colonists leaving had caused, the colonies had become isolated from the rest of their people. This changed the Gran on Malastare very much for the worse. Their society became much looser, much more corrupt and violent without the ability to interact with their fellows.

Worse, they oppressed Malastare's native population, the dug, creating a slave race. Though thanks to the dug not having a senator and the Gran of Malastare being very influential thanks to the planets resources and position in the galaxy, the label 'slave' had yet to stick, since of course the Republic did not allow slavery. The Gran were merely aiding and defending the dug, not exploiting them, not at all.

If there was one thing that irritated Dooku, it was dealing with two-faced politicians. He'd met the Gran senator several times, and he was one of the most two-faced of an already two-faced lot.

Recently, the Protectorate had begun to send privateer wolf packs into the systems around Malastare, taking over anything they could, wiping out a few small mining operations and, rumors stated, enslaving some of their populations to be sold to the Hutts in the Outer Rim. That was why a Guardian like Dooku had been chosen for this mission. But instead of searching for evidence as he had wished, Dooku was being sent to simply warn the governor of the Protectorate that such acts were not allowed and to clamp down on the 'pirate activities' around his system. The evidence that the acts were actually government-backed had been tossed out as inconclusive, and the Jedi council had gone along with things rather than make waves.

And that right there is the point isn't it? The Jedi Order doesn't want to change the status quo, turning a blind eye to the growing corruption and abuse of power in the Senate and even on a planet by planet basis. We have simply become a tool of the Republic, not the people we were meant to serve. We have become too staid, too certain, we no longer grow, and we follow the Senates orders like good little lap dogs!

With a sigh Dooku turned the screen off, leaning back as he closed his eyes, centering even so, he could not throw off the direction his thoughts were taking.

I know there are voices in the Senate that try to act against the corruption, but they too are part of the system, and the system itself marginalizes such voices. I can see the Republic crumbling slowly but surely into warring interest groups, corporations and guilds. And the Jedi and our abilities go to the group with the highest number of representatives in the Senate!