13. Apparition

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"We're travelling to Alsakan... in that?"

The look on everyone's face when they saw the abomination of a ship that I had so painstakingly selected for us to travel together to Alsakan in was worth the buildup I let them simmer in for several days. It was, for all intents and purposes...

An absolute hunk of junk. 

An old Action-class transport that was banged up all to hell and looked more like a flying weapon case than it did a ship. For what we needed to do, it was absolutely glorious. It looked terrible.

Nyra slowly turned to me, "All in favor of filing a report to get the Major relieved from duty?"

The fact the entire squad's hands went up in unison just made me laugh even harder. "Oh, come on now, my merry band of traders!" I clapped my hands as I looked out over the small sea of angry, confused, and disappointed faces, "We, my friends, are a group of traders out of Corellia coming to sell ship parts to an acquaintance planetside who put in a massive order of power converters to our humble store in Coronet City. This ship is all our humble business can afford in this post-war economy of ours."

Freis turned to me and frowned, "I'm not mad, but I am disappointed."

"We couldn't... I don't know..." Jag gestured to it, "get something... nicer?"

Hipshot stared at it and passed a hand thoughtfully over his chin, "I don't know... Give me some paint and a few hours and I can give it some nice nose art."

Robin looked over at him and squinted, "Vod, it's going to take more than some nose art to make this thing look like any less than a flying death trap."

At that, Hipshot turned to Jag, "Uh, kid, you can fly this one if you want."

Farthen nodded, "Yeah, all yours, Jag."

"I hate you both," Jag muttered as Peavey clapped a hand on his shoulder and tried her best to stifle her laughter.

"Baby's First Freighter," she cooed as Jag batted her hand away and Balos snorted back a laugh.

"What's it called?" Horran tried to keep a laugh out of his voice as he looked at me.

"Compost-1," Nyra offered, and soon Rook chuckled.

"Scrappy," Randd offered with a giggle.

"The Junk Pile Express," Hipshot murmured as if he was contemplating how well the name would looked scrawled across the front of this abomination in aurebesh.

"Bracca Bound." Everyone's head turned in unison to Novaran, who was staring at the ship in utter disgust after he had offered up the name. In silent agreement, we all seemed to exchange glances as we came to the consensus that the ugly pile of bantha poodoo in front of us was going to be called Bracca Bound for what remained of its sad existence.

We took time making it genuinely seem like a scrap ship. Hipshot got to work detailing the abomination and gave us an official sounding company name followed up with some oddly impressive logo art done in the characteristic cartoony look so many small businesses seemed to love getting to promote their wares. It didn't make the ugly old ship look any better, but it made it look somewhat believable that we were a moderately legitimate business out of Corellia. A strange ship coming from those parts wouldn't be too out of the ordinary, either. we also agreed that Jag would be the one to fly it, much to his chagrin.

"What are you complaining about?" Hipshot asked as we loaded all of our gear into inconspicuous cargo boxes in the hold. I watched Jag shoot him a glare. "You're getting to fly for a mission. I figured you'd be happy."

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