Standard disclaimer applies. Don't sue me, yadda yadda yadda, I don't make any money doing this. And if I did, you could be sure I wouldn't tell you. This is a Ranma 1/2 fanfiction, terribly twisted and warped by my imagination, which is mostly George Lucas's fault, so you're gonna see a lot of Star Wars type stuff. Other crossover/fusions will happen at my discretion.

Chapter 3
Missiles, Guns, and Everything Fun
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Another boring day at the Daviorn space station.

The Daviorn space station was a huge metal platform put into use as a storage bunker and naval repair base during the times of the Old Republic. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the base was condemned shortly after its construction due a star going nova nearby, creating a new asteroid field and a whole slew of hyperspace complications. The base was eventually purchased by an old merchant, who, ironically, died in an asteroid incident trying to get to his new piece of real estate.
Since then, the platform had been inhabited by a number of retiring space-farers and adventurers, as well as a few rouges who wanted someplace out of the way to relax and drink up. Eventually, Daviorn had been retrofitted and expanded, becoming a small rest-and-repair stop of sorts. It had bars, ship docks, a huge scrap yard, a few trading posts, and a few workshops and laboratories. It was considered a neutral zone of sorts, fights of any kind were quickly broken up and the participants thrown out (whether they were thrown out of the bar or the airlock was up to the manager).
The police generally avoided the area, knowing full well that they were not among the many "welcome" folks. Some had considered moving in several police units and doing a full search of the place, as single officers tended to come back with nothing to report, but the idea was simply ridiculous, seeing how anyone that'd been there could point out that any and all criminals there were just small time losers who had to watch out for the police or bounty hunters for a while. There were certainly no crooks worth such an expensive and time-consuming operation hanging out in Daviorn.
They would be wrong. Duh.
Still, a typical day consisted of a new drifter wandering into the station and bringing in a new story about his exploits and heroic deeds. After a good mug of Corellian brandy, of course. So one could imagine how a boring day would be.

Kerra Fire sighed as she pushed the button which moved her piece into another square on the holographic game table, cornering the computer's vital piece and winning the game. Computers were supposed to be nearly unbeatable at such analytical strategy games as this, but when you spend over 6 hours of every day playing, you can only expect to get better.

Another boring day at the Daviorn space station.

Kerra was SO bored, that she almost missed the bright red reflection off the shiny surface of her holographic projector. She turned around and her eyes widened in shock.
Flying by the window was a large red spacecraft, shaped like a bird with a huge belly and no talons or beak, with its wings lowered as if to hide its vast bulk. Its head was a rounded bulge that stood up out of the rest of the structure, and a blue transparisteel dome over the bridge.
Kerra's hand trembled over the hologram control panel, as realization dawned on her.
'That's the Wild Horse!'
Truth be told, the fabled frigate had seen better days. Two of its six engines were dimmed and non-functional, its hull had several visible fissures, and the entire thing was covered in burns easily identified as the result of heavy turbolaser fire. Lurking behind the ship was a long freighter, matching the Wild Horse's pace perfectly. The freighter didn't look too bad, with only a few laser burns and all of its escape pods jettisoned.
As the spacecraft slowly made its way into the thick of the scrapyard, Kerra's brain made an incredible revelation.
'Wild Horse here = My boyfriend is back!'
Well, technically he wasn't her boyfriend. Technically, they had never slept together, or kissed, or gone on a date, or even had a romantic conversation. Technically, Ranma had made it perfectly clear that he simply wasn't interested in Kerra that way. But guys liked to play hard to get, right? So they were practically lovers!
With that, she ran to get to the "special" hangar as fast as she could.
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The Wild Horse was classified as a light frigate for its size. While this didn't sound at all impressive compared to heavy cruisers, Super Star Destroyers, and Death Stars, it was a huge ship considering the size of its crew.
A standard Nebulon B frigate was bigger and more heavily armed than a modified dreadnought. Although it was one of the smaller capital ships designed and put to use, it still required a minimal crew of 12 bridge personnel just to get from point A to point B and operate shields. That didn't include gunners, mechanics, troops, a medical crew, or even the captain.
The Wild Horse was a VERY heavily modified 693-GX light frigate, more complex than a large Mon Calamari cruiser, and sported a crew of 3. Usually those three weren't even on the bridge, as they all had better things to do than sit around staring into space and hoping they don't get crushed by a passing comet. Therefore, other arrangements had to be made.

Rac was the most advanced computer system ever built (or so Arak said), and generally could run the entire ship himself. This had been a HUGE time-saver.
While it was a light frigate, the Wild Horse was actually more massive than most normal frigates, having gone through a complete redesigning by Arak. They only needed quarters for three people, so that had left a LOT of room. Yet not a square foot was wasted. Many of the quarters that would have held other people were reverted into luxury rooms such as a large bath, training area, workshop, and lab. Some rooms had been left as they were in case they ever needed to "accomodate" guests(/prisoners/hostages). The others had been filled with extensive special systems, like extra ordinance chambers, a cloaking device, Rac's mainframe, and a few others. Needless to say, there was still extra space, which Arak had filled with important-looking wires and electronic devices which had no real purpose or function.
Hey, he was supposed to be a genius. He had to keep appearances up.

As of now, many of those useless items were proving quite useful to clog up the holes which threatened to leak all their oxygen into space.

Unknown to most of the inhabitants and frequent visitors to this space station was that there was an oversized, slightly more "illegal" space dock hidden in the scrap yard that was reserved for Daviorn's most famous inhabitant.
Of course, the number of people who knew that Arak Tetsumi had actually made his home on Daviorn could be counted on one hand.

There was a loud hiss as air was leaked into the airlock that was specially designed to fit over the Wild Horse's cargo bay doors. There was a much quieter hiss as air was leaked outside via a crack in the ship's armor, but the three pirates shrugged it off. Daviorn could pump oxygen into space 24 hours a day and survive.
"Man, we sure took a beating."
"That's a bit of an understatement, Rayden. But I must say, we came out much better than the guard ships."
Ranma let out a long breath. "That was a tough battle. Who knew they'd guard a single transport so well?"
It was true. 7 Corvettes, 3 frigates, 5 light cruisers, a heavy cruiser, and a light carrier complete with fighters. Ranma and company had the element of surprise, first attack with mines, missiles, and torpedoes, plus the EMP emitters when a ship's shields were down. But they had been badly outnumbered and outgunned. They hadn't even been facing cowardly novice crews either, but military class vessels. But then, Ranma Saotome never loses.

There was the distinct sound of someone running.
Ranma's skill in fighting depended greatly on his use of force (not THE force, mind you), sometimes lethal, sometimes not. If something came running at him in which the application of force was unecessary or unwise, then it was quite easy to catch him off guard.
"RANMA!!!"
*Glomp*
Arak and Rayden stepped to the side just as Ranma was tackled at high speed, sending him flying into a stack of crates. Never mind that they were hard, heavy, metal crates. Ranma groaned as the large objects toppled onto his back, trying to keep them from hitting the person currently attached to his torso.
Ranma cringed as the last box slammed onto his shoulders, then sighed.
"Hi Kerra."
Kerra snuggled deeper into Ranma's chest, seemingly oblivious to the danger of the crates or Ranma's obvious discomfort with being hit by them.
Arak rolled his eyes. Rayden chuckled. "Well if it isn't the squirt! Come to check up on us?"
Kerra loosened her grip enough to turn around and glare at Rayden.
"Don't call me squirt! And I came to check up on Ranma, not you!"
Rayden crossed him arms over his chest. "Fine, but did you have to knock down all those crates? That's sensitive computer equipment!"
Kerra blinked, and then her eyes started to water. She let out a sniffle, and Ranma flinched visibly. Then she went on to full blown crying, grabbing Ranma in a tight hug for comfort (comfortable for her, that is).
"Waaaaaaa!! Ranma, Rayden's being mean to meeeeeee!!"
Arak had long since stopped listening and was bringing up a damage report on his tricorder. Rayden just shook his head. Ranma looked up toward the ceiling and silently told God that now would be a good time for a stray comet to come and vaporize them all.
Luckily, help came in a less lethal form.

"Kerra, stop harassing Ranma. He could snap you like a twig, you know."
Gerald Fire, Kerra's father, stepped into the hangar, his old, wrinkled face smiling. Kerra was so energetic.
Kerra's head snapped toward her father. "Ranma would never do that!"
Rayden rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "No, HE wouldn't........."
Kerra "eeped" and hugged Ranma tighter. Ranma glared at Rayden.
Gerald shook his head and quickly detached Kerra, which was quite an amazing feat considering his age.
"Some battle, huh? It wouldn't happen to have anything to do with that military technology convoy that was assaulted about 7 hours ago, would it?"
Ranma chuckled. "How'd you guess?"
Gerald shook his head. "That convoy held the prototypes and plans for the greatest products of new military technology developed across the galaxy. They guarded it better than any other convoy in 8 years. Everyone expected it to be attacked, but they all expected the Empire, or the Raalgon, or one of those other rouge races. They had Interdictor patrols all around the convoy route, along with extra backup on call."
Ranma chuckled. "Yeah, well, a good scrambler probe can wreck any communication quite easily."
Arak whispered to Rayden. "Interdictors, huh? That explains what happened to the first few mines."
"Yeah, I was wondering about that. And all that wreckage. Those things can't take much damage, can they?"
"Gravity wells are hard on the shield power supply and hull integrity. Otherwise very useful though."
Gerald continued to shake his head, though he cracked a smile at the same time as he spoke to Ranma.
"Still, that was an incredible escort to give to one freighter. Anyone to assault it would have to be incredibly cunning and confident, or incredibly stupid. I'd put you in the stupid category, except you actually managed to pull it off." Gerald stopped to catch his breath, then continued.
"I'd say you need some repairs pretty badly. And is that freighter behind you...?"
Ranma nodded. "Yeah, that's the same one in the convoy. The patrols checked up on the convoy as they got close to their position on the route, even without a transmission being sent, so we had to quickly evacuate the crew, and slave the freighter to Rac's nav computer."
Gerald raised an eyebrow. "Evacuate them out through the escape pods or through the airlock?"
Rayden scoffed and tried to sound indignant. "Out the escape pods, of course. We're nice pirates, right Ranma?"
Ranma laughed. "Yeah, 'nice' pirates!"
Gerald smiled. "Well, I'll give her the once over. I'd hate to see a beauty like the Wild Horse destroyed."
Rayden chuckled. "It's a him, not a her. Rac decided he was male, remember? And basically, he is the ship."
Gerald gave Rayden a flat look. "Don't you have anything better to do?"
Rayden made a fist and then dropped it into his other hand. "Come to think of it, I do," he turned toward Ranma, "I'm going to the pub. Catch ya later."
Arak gave a disk to Gerald and pressed a button which caused the freighter to start docking.
"I'm gonna go analyze some of this junk and see what I can do with it. I'll be in my lab."
Arak left for the other docking port, gesturing a few mover droids along with him.
Ranma chuckled and then turned around to leave. "I guess I'll be going to the-urk!"
Kerra immediately had him in a hug that made a wookie's death grip look clumsy and weak.
"Oh no you don't! I haven't seen you in three months! You're spending your time with me!"
Ranma looked to Gerald for help, only to find that the man was busy inspecting the ship. He turned back to Kerra. "Excuse me? Who are you to tell me what to do?"
Kerra hugged him tighter. "If you don't, I'll cry."
Ranma flinched and looked down at her. "Have you no shame?"
Kerra shook her head. "Nope. None."

Gerald approached Ranma, and handed him a datapad.
"Here's the price for the repairs. It'll take about three days."
Ranma pryed himself out of Kerra's grip and raised an eyebrow toward the older man.
"Only three?"
"When Arak built this thing, he built it well. The ion dampeners protected the ship's electronics, and it appears that Rayden already took care of the directly damaged components. I'd offer to give a proffesional job, but I'd be charging you just to look at it and polish the metal. Rayden's a damn good mechanic. All I have to do is replace the armor and engines, as well as fix up a few other relays. Expensive, but quick."
It was expensive. Ranma frowned as he looked at the report on the datapad. "Man, it's a good thing we got that bank on Triar."
Gerald grinned. "Well, I'd give you a discount, but-"
"No Fire, we can pay you. It's the least we can do. It just kills me to see honest... well, mostly honest small-time businessmen like you having to deal with people like us."
Kerra grabbed Ranma's arm and stroked it soothingly. "Oh come on, we're happy to help!"
Gerald smiled. "It's true. You're not like the average criminal Ranma. You may be a pirate, but I know you're a good person, no matter what path you take."
Ranma chuckled and scratched the back of his head. "Well, don't tell anybody else that, or you'll ruin my reputation!"
They laughed.
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The sound of feet, both padded rubber and metal soled, sounded thorughout the hallway as Arak made his way through the station, a small parade of droids and hover platforms following behind him.

After Daviorn was turned from a military rest stop to an oversized community center, many new systems had been brought in. Many years had passed since Daviorn had been built, and nearly every system originally installed on the platform had been either miniturized to about the size of an oven or smaller, or had become completely obsolete. Since there was plenty of room, even with all the bulky, useless electronics, the inhabitants had simply brought in whatever they needed, plugged it into the nearest energy port, and left it as is. Being mostly unconcerned with cleanliness, they hadn't bothered to get rid of all the obsolete systems, and certainly didn't care about maintaining them.
Throughout the years, the people had made frequent visits to the decks below, which housed all the obsolete systems and devices, only to forage for spare parts and scrapmetal. This had given the lower decks the distinct look of a place that had been ripped to pieces by some kind of huge monster, and so stories not unlike the tales of Coruscant's sewer systems had arisen.
In truth, though, there were only two hideous mutants (one of them was even housetrained), and a large section of the massive mainframe computer had been removed completely, hiding a very complex and up-to-date lab.

Arak stopped in front of a former shield generator transformer, and punched a code into the control panel, which looked to be broken and useless to even the most observant fellow.
Yet there was a beep, and the repair panel for the transformer popped open. Arak stepped through it, and the mover droids followed. Suddenly there was a loud screech, and two small laser turrets slid out of the walls to point at Arak. He didn't even flinch.
A small metal box with a clear, square sensor lens built in floated up to him and focused on his eyes. After a moment it backed off, and the laser slid back into the walls. Then a monitor, similar to the ones found all over the Wild Horse lowered itself from the ceiling, suspended by a long manipulator arm.
The moniter had a picture of a sensor lens on it, matching the one on the floating box. A calm, soothing voice sounded out.
"GOOD MORNING DAVE."
Arak sighed, then addressed the viewscreen.
"Tim, given standard time, it's currently evening. And for the 284395th time, my name is Arak, not Dave."
"OF COURSE DAVE. WHATEVER YOU SAY."
The droids filed into the room, oblivious to everything but their task in getting the cargo to its destination.

Tim had been Arak's earlier attempt at a sentient computer. He succeeded, but the system had been flawed. Very flawed.
Tim and Rac were both acronyms. Tim stood for Totally Incompetent Mainframe, while Rac stood for Really Awesome Computer. Rayden had told him that it sounded stupid, but Arak didn't care. When Rayden designed and built his own sentient artificial life form, then he could call it whatever he wanted.
Arak had been unable to figure out if Tim's seeming lack of intelligence and reasoning had come from an accidentally programmed sense of humor, or just faulty programming in general.
Rac had been a HUGE success compared to Tim. It had everything that Arak had wanted Tim to have in spades: Intelligence, initiative, reasoning, sarcasm, and a really cool robot-like voice. Arak had only kept Tim around as a memorial to his advancements in the field of computers, and as a watchdog, as that seemed to be fully within the defective system's capabilities.
"All right. Let's get this stuff unpacked. I have a good feeling about that tachyon energy matrix."
__________________________________________________________________________________

"So then Ranma just went up into the police tower. When he came back, he was carrying a suitcase full of credits. I asked him what happened and he said that they had made a deal. Ranma was able to keep the money and Garrat was able to keep breathing. Another mug, please."
The bartender looked at him, then shook his head. "You've had enough."
Rayden looked at him strangely. "Do I look drunk to you?"
"No, but you sound drunk. A crime syndicate on Triar? Next you'll be telling me Skywalker steals candy from little kids."
"Look, do you know who I am? I'm Rayden Shikodan, from the WILD HORSE."
At that, he immediately had the attention of everyone in the bar. Several people thought that now was a good time to leave, maybe go for a nice run for their lives. Everyone else just gave the pirate plenty of room. The bartender raised an eyebrow.
"I'm impressed, but you still ain't gettin' another drink."
Rayden glared at him. "If this was anywhere but Daviorn, I'd beat you to a pulp and just take my drink."
"Yeah, well, I'm glad I'm on Daviorn then."
Rayden grudgingly paid for his drinks, then left the bar.

Rayden let out a heavy sigh as he walked along the empty corridors of the space station. He looked at the heavy gray wall, then turned around to look out into space. He sighed again. He hated space stations. Never enough to do.
He walked along some more, stopping in front of a small, quaint restaraunt. He was about to enter, when he saw Ranma and Kerra talking together as they watched the news reports on one side of the room. He sighed again. Ranma would be glad to have someone like him to talk to, but Kerra would probably devote the rest of her life to wreaking vengence upon him if he tried to intrude. He and the younger Fire had never been on very good terms, mostly because she seemed to take all his insults and teasings personally for some reason.
Rayden trudged further down the corridor. Daviorn was one of the few places even he wouldn't start a fight, so trying to provoke some loser into a brawl was out. He could go to Arak's lab, but the young scientist wouldn't be doing anything but boring tests and experiments and the like for a while now. Besides, Tim creeped him out. Every time he went into the lab, Tim would yell "DANGER! DANGER DAVE ROBINSON! DANGER!". And after that, it would revert to an old lady's voice and address him as "my precious". Arak should have scrapped that thing long ago. Or at least given it a better name.
That left only one person to talk to.

Well, okay, so it wasn't really a person, but he wasn't picky.

"So how are the repairs going, Rac?"
"SHIELD EMITTERS ARE FUNCTIONAL. HULL INTEGRITY HAS BEEN STABILIZED."
"Good to hear. Got any eights?"
"GO FISH."
"Darn."
__________________________________________________________________________________

Arak handed Rayden a datapad, then gestured to a large hover cart full of messy, useless-looking wires and other electronic devices.
"Here's a design I made. This stuff should take care of all the specialty components it needs, the rest of the parts can probably be found lying around here or up in the salvage shop."
Rayden took a look at the design plans, only slightly annoyed that he was suddenly ordered to build something out of the blue like this. He blinked, then pointed to the design.
"This design doesn't have an outer shell. If a butterknife happened to fall and land on it, the entire thing might shut down."

The design was for a droid. Specifically, a mover droid, with a few obvious modifications. Mover droids typically had large, humanoid torsos, with triangular double treads to allow movement. The arms were very large and thick, and ended in four-fingered claws for gripping objects. The changes to the design were a weapons system, which fed plasma through the arms and out a projector in the middle of the palm, a totally redigned power and fuel regulator, and a strange looking plasma converter. That, and there was no outer shell. Meaning all of the components and wires would be exposed.

"I know, don't worry about it. The outer shell is going to be composed out of a new armor, but I need some time to create the alloy. Oh, and I'll need you to build four of these things."
Rayden nodded and thumbed through the design, then shook his head.
"The projectors on the palm can't possibly focus such a powerful plasma flux without burning the claws off. If we attached a gun barrel onto the forearms, then-"
"No. It's a new type of weapon that I created with a faulty piece of junk from our new tech items. The original design would have made the weapon useless after about 8 shots, but I changed the capacitor level and remodeled the regulator. The plasma will be stable enough to travel at least 4 feet upon contact with an atmosphere before it hits critical mass and starts to dissipate. 1 foot in a vacuum. Because it's not focused very well, it has a very short range, but if it hits, they'll feel it."
"Um, right."
Rayden had only understood a fraction of what Arak had told him. True, he was a very experienced and capable mechanic, but he usually stayed away from the longer, more technical terms. He preferred the tried and true method of remembering that "this orange thingy gets put into the this little hole here". Primitive, true, but it worked.
Arak shook his head, then smiled as he patted the larger man on the back.
"Rayden, Rayden, Rayden. Don't you understand yet? I'm the scientist, you're the grease monkey. I think, you make. I draw, you build. I'm-urk!"
Rayden glared at Arak as he pressed him against the wall. "Shut up."
Arak bigsweated and nodded rapidly. "Uh huh, sure, whatever you say."
Rayden dropped Arak and started to leave, muttering about the egos of geniuses these days.
Arak regained his composure and then called out to Rayden as he was leaving.
"So, how are your Sabbacc games with Rac?"
"Go Fish, not Sabbacc," Rayden muttered.
Arak blinked. "Go Fish?"
Rayden turned. "Have you ever tried to beat Rac at Sabbacc?"
Arak shook his head.
Rayden grimaced. "It's like trying to beat an AT-AT with a slingshot. Even when he doesn't cheat."
Arak blinked, then laughed as Rayden walked away grumbling.
__________________________________________________________________________________

"So what exactly are these things?" Ranma asked as he eyed the large mass of wires and metal that Rayden was working on. There were two more of them on the side, already built, but still without any outer plating.
"Basically they're mover robots with plasma cannons built into the arms."
*Ksssht* *Whirrrr*
"Ah. Why are you building them?"
*Bzzzzt* *Fzzt*
"Arak's orders. He's apparently putting all the stuff we stole to good use."
Ranma nodded as Rayden stripped a wire with his teeth.
"That's good, so long as we still have something left to auction off to a few choice governments."
Rayden stood up from under the robot. "That reminds me. What happened to the facilities where this stuff was built?"
Ranma smiled and made a wiping gesture with his hand. "All gone. After news got out as to where the technology had come from, every other government wanted a piece of those facilities. Most of them were destroyed in the battles."
"Ouch. And the research and plans to the stuff we took?"
"Oh, I'm sure they managed to salvage something, but for the most part, we have pretty much the only copies of this junk."
Rayden grinned as he started connecting one of the robot's arms. "Good to be number 1."
Ranma smiled and nodded. "Always."
__________________________________________________________________________________

The fighters of the Wild Horse were, like everything else Arak ever designed, very unique. They both used a standard T-65 X-wing engine chassis, as well as the same cockpit and quad engine structure. The similarities pretty much ended there. Attached around the engines were a set of forward-facing armored spikes that hid the torpedo launchers of the fighter. The spikes were set one on each side of the engine, and two more just above those that branched outward at different angles. There were also two large spikes that hid the main laser cannons. These began at either side of the cockpit and extended slightly downward and away from the center, extending about six feet further than the cockpit itself.
The ships were certainly frightening in combat, both in appearance, firepower, and speed. They were much larger than most fighters, yet still held the manueverability and speed of the more agile ones.
The fighters didn't have a design name, as the design was constantly undergoing improvement as they went along. So they named the fighters themselves. Rayden and Ranma's fighters were called the Dark Angel and Ion Storm, respectively. They were the same in most aspects, except the Ion Storm was blue where the Dark Angel was black.

Rayden was in the process of taking apart the engine of his fighter, in what had to be the eighth full systems maintenence check that week. Of course, normally a fighter gets a full systems check every 6 months, but Rayden was so bored!
The repairs on the Wild Horse had been completed 11 days ago, and since then Arak had been hovering around it, making more modifications and such. Since then, he had kept everybody out of the ship. Rayden asked if Arak had anything else for him to build, but Arak had clearly stated that all the rest of the new systems were far too complex to be built anywhere but in his lab.
Ranma had Kerra to keep him busy (no, not like that!), and Arak could spend years in his lab tinkering, but Rayden was reaching his limits when it came to boredom. He couldn't even spar with Ranma because Kerra kept dragging him all over the place. He had reached the point long ago where he just wanted to rend some thick metal to relieve the monotony of it all. Eventually though, he had to stop making new passageways on the lower levels because he was tearing through the power cables that ran to Arak's lab. Tim had blasted him for that but good, too.

Rayden heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and looked up from where he was on his back under the fighter. He smiled as he saw Ranma approaching, with Kerra clinging to his arm.
"Yo squirt, what's happening?"
Kerra glared at him. "Don't call me that! Or else!"
Rayden grinned. "Or else what? You gonna sic your boyfriend on me?"
Ranma put a hand to his head. "Rayden, give it a rest, would you? Do you know what Arak is doing? He said that we would be ready to leave tomorrow, but the ship was repaired a long time ago."
Rayden shook his head. "Nope. He just took the robots I made and locked the up the port. He won't even let anybody see what he's doing."
"Maybe he wants it to be a surprise," Kerra guessed.
Rayden turned a sarcastic look toward her. "No, really? I'm sure glad that you're around to tell us these things!"
Kerra's visage darkened, and she stalked up to the fighter Rayden was working on. He was about to ask just what she thought she was doing, when she gave the fighter's jack a solid kick, sending all 900 pounds of fighter crashing down on top of its owner. Ranma's eyes widened, as did Kerra as she realized what she just did. When Rayden lifted the whole thing off him and slid out from under it, she was rather quick to get Ranma in-between them.
"You little brat! I'll get you for that!" Rayden growled.
Ranma attempted to diffuse his friend, as he knew how easily he could turn Kerra into a small red blood stain.
"Now come on Rayden, I'm sure she didn't mean to do that. Calm down, okay?"
"Calm down? CALM DOWN?!?! THAT HURT!!!"
Ranma winced from the sheer volume of Rayden's complaint, and was about to try again to calm the larger man, when another voice interrupted them.
"Freeze!"
All three of the present people turned toward the voice, which turned out to be a male police officer aiming a blaster at Ranma's head.
Rayden snorted, and before anyone could do anything else, casually backhanded a certain part of an open maintenence panel on his fighter.
*Pshooo!*
Unfortunately for the officer, he happened to be directly in front of the fighter, and its lasers. The man's torso was completely incinerated, and everything below the waist dropped to the floor, lifeless.
Rayden turned toward Kerra, ready to give her a severe scolding, when he saw how pale the girl was and that she was staring at the corpse.
"Wha-how-how-whe......" Kerra continued stuttering as she slowly backed away from the dead officer. She backed into Ranma, who quickly wrapped his arms around her and turned her away from the body, leading her out of the room. On the way out, he passed a glare to Rayden.
"Couldn't you have found a less gruesome way to take care of him?" Ranma left.
Rayden stared at the bottom half of a human still lying on the floor and quickly leaking blood into a puddle. Then he turned back to where Ranma had gone.
"What'd I do?"
__________________________________________________________________________________

Ranma quickly walked down the long metal corridor, trying to get to the hangar as fast as possible without drawing any attention to himself. He had already dropped Kerra off with Gerald, saying to stay low and avoid any pretense of being involved with them.
Ranma shut his eyes tight. Kerra. She shouldn't have had to see that. Not yet. She was too young, and still lived in her own fantasy world where pirating was happy and romantic and nobody got hurt. Ranma sighed.

Right now, he had to get going. Galactic police officers were like bees; you see one and there's sure to be more nearby. Ranma raised his head right before he bumped into somebody, and cursed himself for his inattention.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorr-YOU!!" Shouted Namake.
Ranma looked at her and groaned as the female police officer quickly took out a blaster and aimed at him.
"You are under arrest! Come silently and I won't shoot!"
Ranma looked at her, then looked around behind her.
"So, I assume you have some sort of backup coming, right?"
Namake gave him a strange look. "No, why?"
"Then you at least have a better gun than that on you, right? Or at least some type of grenade?"
Namake replied slowly, as what Ranma was saying got through to her. "No........"
Ranma crossed his arms over his chest. "So you're trying to arrest one of the most lethal fighters in the galaxy by yourself and with a puny laser pistol?"
Namake wasn't sure how to reply to that. "Ummmm......."
Ranma sighed, then lashed out with his hand. He grabbed the pistol, wrenched it from her grip, then crushed it in his hand, letting the useless hunk of metal lie on the ground. When he turned back to Namake, he saw that she hadn't moved. At all. Her hands were still positioned as if she had the blaster in her hands.
Ranma sighed and just walked around her, continuing towards the hangar. "If you're not gonna shoot, then stop wasting my time."

Eventually, Namake's brain summoned the resources to move and think coherently.
"Hey wait! I'm not done with you yet!" She ran in the direction she saw Ranma going in.
Hey, she never thought very coherently in the first place.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Ranma reached the space dock, and he immediately noticed Rayden poking around inside the Wild Horse's cargo bay and hangar.

"Rayden, what're you doing?"
Rayden turned to look at him, then pointed toward a large opening in the hangar's floor. Ranma wandered up to it, wondering how he had missed it before. He looked into it, and blinked. There, below, was another hangar, and what looked like a huge fighter. It was shaped like a stingray, except that it had a huge belly like the Wild Horse. It was colored red except for the light blue bubble cockpit.
"What is that?"
"That," Arak said from behind them, "is the Crimson Bolt. Our new secondary cargo and dropship."
Ranma raised an eyebrow. Arak had made a lot of changes. There was something else that was different, and not quite related to the remodeling of the ship, but at the moment he couldn't put his finger on it.
"Whoa, so now we've got a whole new fighter?"
Arak shook his head. "No Rayden, it's not a fighter. At best, you could call it a bomber, but its primary function isn't combat."
"Oh." Rayden was clearly disappointed by this.
Arak grinned. "I can't wait to show you the other stuff, though I haven't had time to test any of it. I wonder how the police found us?"
Ranma grimaced. "Stay in any one place for long enough, and someone'll find you. Let's get outta here."
Arak nodded and continued inside. Rayden followed him, then said, "Man, I'll bet all this stuff is expensive."
Suddenly it clicked into place. What was so different. The entire left side of the cargo bay was usually stacked to the ceiling with large crates full of credits. Ranma whirled around and looked at the area, his eyes only finding a single, empty-looking crate with a few wads of bills on the bottom.
Arak suddenly found himself grabbed by the collar and looking into a pair of very angry eyes.
"Arak, who gave you permission to spend all our money?"
Arak gulped and started sweating. "Um... Rac?"
Ranma glared at him. "Wrong answer."
"Ranma, please, it was supposed to be a surprise!"
"It sure was a surprise! We're almost BROKE!!"
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! But all those components and metal costs a lot! And you know I don't haggle well with merchants..."
"Merchants? Why are you bothering with them? There's a HUGE scrapyard right outside our ship with more components and metal than it took to build this entire space station!"
Arak fidgeted. "Well, I didn't want to settle for sub-standard stuff......"

Luckily, right before Arak was about to meet a particularly painful death at Ranma's hands, a distraction appeared. Namake stumbled into the hangar.

"There you are! FREEZE!!"
They all froze. Then they watched as Namake fumbled around with her belt, trying to find her blaster.
Namake suddenly remembered that her blaster had been crushed into nothing earlier. She looked around to see if she could find one lying on the ground. Seeing none, she turned back to the pirates.
"Um, you wouldn't happen to be able to spare a sidearm, would you?"
"......................................................................."
"......................................................................."
"......................................................................."
Ranma dropped Arak, his hands lacking the concentration and will to hold him up any more.
Namake suddenly looked very nervous, and beat a hasty retreat from the area.
There was a moment of silence.
Suddenly, Rayden spoke up.
"You know, if I had any respect or faith for the law, that would have been sufficient to crush it right there."
The others could only nod in agreement.
__________________________________________________________________________________

"Sir, we have located the stolen frieghter on the far side of Daviorn. The units down on the station have also reported the location of some type of hidden room on the lower levels."
"Good work Liuetenant. Enter the facility and confiscate anything of interest."
"Sir! We're reading a ship leaving the station!"
"Didn't I give specific orders? No one is to leave until the investigation is done! Get the nearest ship to identify and capture it!"
The crewman worked the station quickly, then reported back.
"The ship is coming out of the scrapyard sir! None of our ships are within firing distance!"
"Damn! Deploy the inderdictor! Keep that ship here!"
__________________________________________________________________________________

"We've got the go-ahead boys! Let's rock!"
The group of officers got their blasters at the ready, and the leader pushed a button on a remote control.
*Thooom!*
The explosion blasted the door to Arak's lab, and ruined the automated defenses behind it.
The group moved in, and slowly started to let their guard down as they found nothing but stray lab equipment at first glance. They were about to further explore the area when a floating cube hovered up to them.
"HELLO. I ASSUME YOU ARE HERE TO BE DESTROYED. ARMEGGEDON IS COMING! HA HA HA HA HA! YOU'RE ALL DOOMED!!"
As the small box continued to laugh maniacally, the officers just stared at it. Eventually, one of them took aim and blasted the thing, spraying metal components everywhere.
After that, a moniter swiveled down, with a picture of the same square sensor lens that was on the cube.
"THAT WAS A MISTAKE. IT'S THE END OF THE LINE. OBLIVION. SUCKS TO BE YOU. MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB. TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE-"
*Bweeoo* *blam!*
The moniter exploded.
Suddenly, a large cylinder rushed up from the center of the lab, with a little clock on the side with the number 5 on it.
Number four.
Number three.
"Death March" started playing from out of nowhere.
Number two.
"Dun, dun, dah-dun, dun, dah-dun dah-dun dah-dun."
Number one.
The officers suddenly figured out that it would have been a good idea to run.
Zero.
*Beep* "GOODBYE DAVE."
*KAAABOOOOOOOOM!!!!*
__________________________________________________________________________________

Arak gaped openly at the small explosion that sounded out, blowing a chunk of Daviorn out of its side.
"My lab! Tim!"
Ranma looked toward Arak to see what was wrong.
*Beep* "LEVEL 3 EXPLOSION. NO LIFE SIGNS. ALL PRODUCTION HAS BEEN TERMINATED."
Rayden leaned back in his chair. "Well, it looks like your self-destruct mechanism works well enough."
Arak sighed, and sat heavily into his seat. "Yeah... I was hoping I'd never have to use that."
"AN INTERDICTION FIELD HAS BEEN ACTIVATED. HYPERSPACE ENGINES OFFLINE."
Ranma turned towards the moniter, which displayed a red, circular sensor lens. "Source?"
A holographic display appeared on the table in front of Ranma, showing the Wild Horse in relation to the small interdictor frigate. The ship was closer to the Wild Horse than the rest of the Galactic Police ships, which had been guarding the main ports.
Ranma smiled. Too easy. They were launching fighters to intercept them, but it was quite pointless. Unless a Star Destroyer, Jurian warship, or Oni UFO appeared out of nowhere right next to them (it happens more often then you'd think), this battle was theirs.
"Rac, full speed ahead. As soon as we get within range, start firing torpedoes until it drops the gravity field."
Surprisingly, Arak's voice sounded out, "No Rac, don't."
Rayden fell off his chair. Ranma just stared at him. "Huh?"
Arak smiled, and turned toward his leader. "Trust me."
__________________________________________________________________________________

"All wings report in."
"Red Seven, standing by."
"Red Twelve, standing by."
"Red Eight, standing by."
"Red Two, let's beat some ass! Ha ha ha! Kill! KILL!!"
*Crash* *boom!*
A few scraps of metal bounced off the black spot on the derelict cruiser's armor from where Red Two's X-wing hit. His companions blinked.
"He shoulda' been paying more attention to where he was going."
"Damn waste of an X-wing."
"All right guys, form up! And, uh, watch out for debris!"

The fighters jetted alongside the interdictor frigate, noticing that it was completely untouched.
"That's the Wild Horse all right! Be careful!"
"Wonder why it's just sittin' there?"
"I've got a baaaaaad feeling about this."
__________________________________________________________________________________

Arak stretched, then started filing his nails as the fighter's approached. Ranma was getting tenser every moment. It wasn't that he was afraid, or nervous, but he knew Arak had something special in mind, and he just hated not being in control of the strategy.
Finally, Arak looked up the holographic display, noting that the fighters were almost within torpedo range.
He got up.
"Rac," Arak begin, "start the new antimatter capacitors. Drain energy from all shields and weapon systems to the tachyon accelerator."
Rayden looked at Ranma. "Tachyon accelerator? Since when do we have a tachyon accelerator? What IS a tachyon accelerator?"
Ranma shrugged, clearly as confused as he was.
__________________________________________________________________________________

"Sir, they're powering down their shield and weapon systems!"
The Captain looked at the bridge officer as if he had grown another head. "What?"
"It's true sir! Their shields are down, but they're not surrendering, or even hailing us!"
One of the communications operators gulped deeply. "I don't like this. I don't like this. I don't like this."
The Captain considered the situation for a moment, then shrugged. "If their shields are down, then destroy them!"
__________________________________________________________________________________

Rayden watched as a bunch of little white dots appeared on the display hologram. He turned to Arak.
"Um, whatever you're doing, could you hurry up? They fired their torpedoes, and our shields are down."
Rac beeped, and started a systems check of some sort.
"TACHYON ACCELERATORS AT 100%. TACHYON EMITTERS FUNCTIONAL. PLASMA FLUX COILS ARE NOMINAL. PRIMARY CELL CHARGE HAS REACHED CRITICAL MASS. SECONDARY CELL CHARGES ARE AT 80% AND RISING."
Arak grinned. "Apocalypse Cannon! FIRE!!"
__________________________________________________________________________________

As the pilots of the fighters watched their proton torpedoes streak towards their target, they were quick to notice that a large hump on the back of the Wild Horse that had not been present in the readout displays had opened up, and a large, cyndrilical, metal object popped up.
Red Twelve remarked how the thing was glowing orange before everything went white.

For them, at least. To those that weren't in the line of fire, they saw a thick, yellow-orange beam shoot out from the barrel of the massive gun. The torpedoes were destroyed instantly in the blast. The X-wings, with their shields and armor, lasted a full 0.00006 seconds. The interdictor lasted a whopping 0.3 seconds before the beam bursted through the other side, continuing on into the crowd of approaching capital ships. It pounded its way through a Nebulon B frigate and continued on to hit a Mon Calamari Cruiser in the side. The frigate, having the entiredy of the ship facing the beam, was completely ravaged into nothing, its power core being disintigrated before it could even explode. The cruiser and interdictor, luckily, took the blast in non-critical parts of the ships and just had a big holes in them.
The frigate's hole was big enough to completely destroy any power cables running from the power generator to the gravity well generators, both of which were floating away , untouched, from what was left of the rest of the ship.

Needless to say, a display of firepower of this kind coming from a light frigate was more than a little frightening.
The Wild Horse suddenly sped up, then disappeared in a flash of blue.

"............................................................................................................................................" was about all anybody could say at the time. The Wild Horse had just displayed a kind of firepower unheard of by ships twenty times its size.

The Captain of the ship sighed, then asked for a status report.
"Um, Interdictor Web's life support systems, as well as all other systems, are off-line. The crew is abandoning ship. Mon Cal Cruiser Tiem is requesting permission to abandon ship too, since they're leaking oxygen and heat into space faster than they can deal with. And, well, those little scraps of metal brushing against our hull right now is all that's left of the White Knight. The good news is that one of our other ships says they found the kidnapped freighter."
The Captain quickly swallowed a handful of aspirin and replaced the bottle under his chair. When that didn't work, he fantasized about simply shooting himself in the head to rid himself of this blasted headache.
__________________________________________________________________________________

*Pshoooooo* The sound of gas leaking into the airlock was audible as the marines prepared to board the abandoned freighter.
The first one stepped in, and switched on his visor display to infra-red. When nothing that could be registered as human body heat appeared, the man switched it off and took off his helmet.
He was followed inside by several more marines, all of them pointing their guns around nervously, as if they expected guns to pop out of the walls. Which was a perfectly acceptable fear, considering who tampered with the freighter last.

The leader of the marine force looked around the freighter a bit, then pulled out his comlink to contact the Commander.

*Beep*
The marines all jumped, and then looked for the source of the noise, ready to discharge their weapons at just about anything at this point.
They found the source. A 1' x 1' gray square, with a small glass rectangle that was currently glowing an angry red.
*Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep*
They looked around, and found themselves surrounded by the objects.
Just then, a hatch opened up from above them, spraying confetti everywhere and releasing a banner.
The banner had a picture of Ranma, Rayden, and Arak together, making victory signs with their fingers.
Underneath it, it said "Sayonara Suckers!"
One of the marines let out a whimper.

*CHA-KOOOOOOOOM!!!!*
__________________________________________________________________________________

The Captain of the Galactic Police Dauntless-class cruiser Red Dwarf, let out a long sigh as the freighter exploded, taking the nearby transport and two perfectly good Corellian Gunships out with it.
He looked around the room, noting that everyone was once again staring slack-jawed at the moniter.
The Captain quickly reached under the seat, pulled out his bottle of aspirin, and downed all the contents in one gulp, tossing away the small cylinder container as he did so. He grimaced. One bottle was NOT going to be enough.

**********************************************************************************

End Chapter 3