Worth: A Star Wars Story

15. The Enemy of My Enemy...

I hadn't ever seen my boys look so annoyed in my life except maybe when Fox decided to start giving us long-winded lectures on the necessity of professionalism in our jobs. Specific example, I know, but Grek looked like he wanted to be just about anywhere else rather than stuck sitting across from Venn. 

And Venn wasn't even saying anything.

The guy was just sitting there going over pads and pads of information that must have been given to him by that Dorne from before, and he seemed completely engrossed in the thing. His droids sat or stood by quietly. The B-1 was just sitting next to him swinging its legs as the Magnaguard was sitting there on his other side, cross-legged with its head on a swivel. The B-2 hadn't stop staring Grek down, and frankly I was stunned that the two hadn't just gotten up and started trading punches on principle.

"What are you staring at, chrome boy?" Grek snarled as the B-2 went to raise its arm again before Arevee grabbed it again and lowered it, its legs never stopping their easy-going swinging motion as it did.

"Stop antagonizing the B-2," I shot Grek a look as he rolled his eyes and slumped back in his chair.

"Clank," Venn gave a voice that sounded more like he was admonishing a kid than he was correcting a deadly, primed battle machine. The B-2 let out another buzzing sound like a sigh before chattering off quickly in binary to Venn, who gave it a frown and prompted it to shut up and turn away.

"Can't they talk?" Red asked with a frown, prompting Venn to look up again from his datapads.

"Clank's vocoder got damaged a while ago," Venn shrugged as the B-2 rotated back to look at us again. "I fixed it, but his Basic processing never came back. He can speak Huttese well enough for some reason." There was something about that that made me snort a small laugh out and I caught one corner of Tor's mouth twitch in an almost smile. The fact even made Venn crack a small smile. That eased a little bit of the tension. Not much, but enough for Venn to finally lower his datapad and look up at us as he sat back in his seat, "What should I expect on Coruscant? Can't say I've ever been."

"Well, you'll be in the upper levels," I supplied as helpfully as we could, "so it's mostly nicer restaurants, nicer apartments, and a nicer commute. Everything is developed, so not a lot of greenery compared to what you're used to." That fact seemed to disappoint him a little. I didn't know much about Onderon, but I did know that it was a jungle world and that it's people had a traditionally very strong connection to the wildlife there. Their beast riders were legendary. 

"Well, could be worse," he muttered, and I saw him begin turning his pad over in his hands. "I can go home after this war is over. Hopefully won't be long." That was said more to himself than to us, it seemed. "Know anything about the SIS? What they're like?"

"Not really," I admitted as Tor jumped in.

"Nobody does. They keep to themselves and certainly don't involve any of us in their business."

Venn seemed to catch what Tor meant and nodded. Before he could say another word, one of the alarms at the front of the ship went off, and we could hear the droids in charge of piloting the ship's return to Coruscant begin beeping wildly right before the entire ship tremored as if something slammed into it. I knew the feeling well. Something had latched onto it.

"Something is docking," Tor reached down and grabbed his rifle as Grek grabbed his own weapon. "Thoughts?"

"This route is permeated with smugglers," Venn spoke up, "and I think we all know what that means."

"Pirates," I muttered as I grabbed my Deecee. 

"Contracted pirates," Venn corrected as he turned to me. "Give me a weapon. I can help fight."