Standard disclaimer applies. I don't own Ranma or Ryoga, but the rest of 'em are mine. Deal with it. As long as I'm sure nobody reads any paragraph that has the word "disclaimer", I'd like to take this opportunity to say a few words. I love California, smoking sucks, alcohol is bad, religion is all a hoax ('cept Buddhism), ROMS and MP3s are evil, and George Lucas rules.

Chapter 8
Feh! Luke had it Easy!
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A sodden, wrinkled old man coughed gently into his fist as he crossed into the alleyway, gripping the dirty, torn rag that served as his blanket around him tightly.
Across from the alley, the little man that had thrown him out smirked, and nudged one of his Gamorrean guards and gestured to the man. It gave a confused grunt in reply.
Shooting a last heated glare at the man standing smugly between the two armed Gamorreans, the old man stepped into the shadows of the alleyway and settled down behind a rusted old steel crate that had served the same purpose for him many times in the past. A twisted pipe sticking out of the side of the building let out a constant stream of mixed chemicals, which settled onto his skin and rag and got him wet and lightly burned him at the same time. Trying to wrap the rag tighter around him, he settled against the rusted metal and closed his eyes.
*Shrk*
The man blinked his eyes open. The hiss of the gas leak had stopped.
He looked up over the crate to see a young man in a flight jacket with a pigtail grinning at him.
Ranma took his hand off of the gas main he had twisted shut. "Hey old timer, what's up?"
The man snorted and settled back behind his crate. "Leave me alone. I don't have anything of value."
Ranma blinked, then cocked his head to one side, as if considering. "Nothing at all?"
The man looked back at him, and his hand tightened on the small blaster stuck under his belt beneath the rag. "No. Come and search if you want to." There were those who had taken him up on that offer. And those that had just decided that it would be fun to kick around an old man. They were all dead.
Ranma shrugged and squatted down. "Naw, 'ain't my style to rob old people."
The man snorted again. "'Style', huh? You must think you're some hotshot crook."
Ranma's grin grew. "No. I know I'm some hotshot crook. What're you doing out here anyway? You look like you've been out here a long time, but you're not working in the trenches. Do you usually sleep in alleyways?"
The old man stared at him for a moment. "I don't see why you care, but... yeah, I do. Have a pretty nice one too, over across the street, all set up dry and about as comfortable as you can get with all the pollution and occasional crossfire. I work in that shop right next to it. Make parts. I work for food. But this street is a good business corner, so sometimes a younger punk with some guards decides he wants that alleyway, and he doesn't want to spare any guards to watch his back. Then I come over here."
Ranma frowned, then stood up and looked at the little man peddling power packs across the street in the opposite alley. "Well that's not very nice."
The old man watched curiously as Ranma rubbed his chin, then walked over to the stand set up across the street.

"Yo! Power packs here! Blaster size, carbine size, datapad size, all good quality and low prices! Get 'em here!" The little man waved his arms in the air toward the shifty, unresponsive flood of people, as if there was actual hope to get the crowd excited about such a common and inexpensive article.
The Twi'lek that served as his only present customer scowled, and his brain tail twitched irritably. "You call these 'quality'? This one has a leak! A leak! That could kill somebody! Not to mention the poor job you did painting over it!"
The little salesman frowned up at the taller humanoid, annoyed. "Well if you don't want it, don't buy it. And if you're not buying, let the other customers get through!"
"'Scuse me, I've got business with this fellow here."
The Twi'lek looked over his shoulder, then shrugged and stepped away from the stand, tossing the broken power cartridge carelessly as he made room.
The little man eyed Ranma suspiciously. "I don't owe you nothin'. What do you want?"
Ranma smiled warmly. "I want to kill you, and then take all your stuff." The Twi'lek raised an eyebrow and took another step back.
"........................................................" After a long, and rather awkward silence, the smaller man shook his head. "Very funny. Get 'im fellas."
As one, the fat, porcine Gamorreans stepped inwards to hide their employer, and behind where they once stood, two humans crouched, blaster carbines already drawn and aimed.
Pressure was put on the trigger, and twin lances of red plasma speared through Ranma, passing through his body so cleanly it seemed as if they had hit nothing at all.
And then his afterimage faded away.
The guards and their employer gaped at the area where he had been, and then a whistle brought their attention upwards.
Alas, it was too late for the two guards carrying blasters, as Ranma's immediate descent brought a heavy kick down onto their backs. Standing up again, the pigtailed pirate casually drew a blaster, and even more casually shot each guard in the back of the head.
"Ya'know, the mind can play tricks on you sometimes. Like, say, if something is in front of you, and then suddenly isn't, like if your eyes aren't fast enough to track it, then your brain'll retain the last image it saw for a little while as if was still there. Neat, huh?" He grinned at them.
The Gamorreans looked at each other in confusion. The salesman looked at Ranma in terror. "What're you waiting for, you stupid pigs! Kill him!"
The Gamorreans, being the dumb, clueless toadies they are, started forward, and the one nearest Ranma stabbed forward with his vibrolance. Ranma holstered the blaster, stuck his right hand in his pocket, and grabbed the neck of the lance shooting towards him, stopping it a mere inch from his bare neck.
Ranma tore the weapon from the guard's grip, then used it to block a thrust from the other guard while he rained kicks into the Gamorrean's thick stomach. With his first opponent stunned, he kicked away the second's vibrolance, then stuck the one he had commandeered into its throat. Ranma ignored the hollow, gurgling squeal it made as he turned back to his first opponent, still reeling from the blows to its gut. Ranma smiled, then finally took his right hand out of his pocket.
*Thwack!*
The fat alien went sailing into the street, and Ranma lowered his fist from the uppercut position.
The little man was sweating now, almost on his knees. "N-N-Now, j-just hold on he-here, I-I'm s-sure we c-c-could work so-something out, ya kn-kn-know?" He gulped nervously at the disinterest plain in Ranma's eyes. "I've got money! Lots of money! Not here, but I can get it to ya! Just please, don't kill me!"
Ranma stared at him for a while longer, then shook his head contemptuously. "Feh. You're almost not worth killing." The man's throat went dry at the 'almost'. "With this kind of life, in this kind of place, only the strong can survive. And you're simply too weak. Anybody who has to rely on money to keep them alive in a place like this doesn't deserve to live."
The little saleman made a break for it, hoping that Ranma wouldn't fire into the crowd and risk hitting someone he shouldn't. Ranma kicked up one of the human guards' carbines into the air, then caught it, lined up his sights, and fired in one smooth motion.
The bolt pierced him right between the shoulder blades, and his scream died with him.
Ranma didn't bother with that body, as it was quickly lost behind a wall of people, all stealthily looting the corpse. Some of those whom had never gotten a taste for that sort of thing, or were simply too far away, clapped at the display of skill.
Ranma mostly ignored them, rooting through the pockets of the guards for money and valuables and taking up their weapons. He didn't turn around when the old man coughed.
"Look, I'm not used to acts of good will, this place being how it is, but thanks."
Ranma shrugged. "Whatever." He rooted through the back of the stand, stacked with the good power cartridges, and found a wad of credits. He pocketed it, and then his eyes caught something else. Looking a little deeper, he saw some kind of glassy shard and pulled it out.
The old man looked on, expressionless, as Ranma pulled out a fist-sized crystal and held it up in the light. It was unusually transparent, and flashed bright panels of color wherever the light shone directly through.
Ranma pocketed the crystal. "You can have the rest of this junk, if you want. I don't have time to mess with it.
The old man stared at him. "Umm... I... I don't think so. As soon as you have anything of value, you're a target. I get along by not being worth killing."
Ranma turned to him and smiled slightly. "Sure you do. Here," Ranma tossed him a small rectangular cartridge. "you might need a spare for that blaster." The man started in surprise, and Ranma walked away, hands in his pockets.
As the old man stared at his back in wonder, he suddenly became aware of the Twi'lek that had stepped forward again and was now tapping his foot impatiently.
"Now sir, if you now own this little business, if you wouldn't mind showing me some of the 'good' stock?"
Still quite bewildered, the old man let his torn blanket fall to the ground, and went to work.
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"Hmmmm... sometimes I wonder if I got into the wrong line of work. Seems to me I do too much good sometimes." Ranma shrugged, and then yawned. Talking to himself always seemed to help whenever he had moral issues, but he was tired. Spending all night dodging Miyuki was the sort of position most guys would kill to be in. The only problem was, he wasn't one of them. It's not that he didn't like Miyuki, but she seemed to take liking her to mean that she should trip him into bed.
He shuddered. Miyuki had called last night's chase 'foreplay'.
The sights weren't really so grand as to go sightseeing; the prettiest colors on Gorgon's Moon belonged to a particular group of exhaust vents that spewed out some particularly bright and toxic gases. Turning around, he prepared to go find Rayden, and tossed his head to one side as a laser bolt zipped by, singing a few loose hairs.
He frowned for a moment, then threw himself behind a discarded durasteel crate as more lasers tore up the space that his body had occupied earlier.
Ranma muttered to himself irritably as he got out two blaster pistols. Nowadays everybody seemed to be trying to kill him. Well, actually, there were a whole lot of people who had tried to kill him throughout most of his life as a pilot, but now they all seemed to be coming down on him in force. Well, that's enough introspection.
Ranma's form blurred as he sped from behind the crate, a pistol in each hand.
*Bweeooh* *Bweeooh* *Bweeooh* *Bweeooh* *Bweeooh* *Bweeooh*
Ranma got up from his kneeling position and blew lightly on the smoking barrels of the blasters. His two attackers, or rather the dead, lifeless bodies of his two attackers, hit the ground, each with his own set of three clean holes through the head, neck, and heart.
Ranma smirked. "I still got it!" Turning around, he searched the lot he was in for witnesses to his battle, and was slightly disappointed when he learned that there were none. Not that it would have mattered in any way if there were. In a place like this, fights were simply free entertainment.
Ranma turned back around and sweatdropped. Both corpses were now stripped down to their underwear, robbed of everything save their last bit of decency and the flesh that would probably feed some of the bigger aliens that wandered down here (Gorgon firmly discouraged such things, but in the interest of diplomacy, couldn't stop it altogether). Apparently there was somebody around.
Frowning down at the dead bodies, Ranma considered the attack. Quickly he came to the conclusion that they were assassins. Ranma wasn't a wimp, and he didn't look like it either, so he ruled out thieves. And there was only one person he could think of around here who wanted to kill him personally. He could be wrong, but......

Once more getting on his way, Ranma brought up his wrist and hit a few buttons on his tech bracer to contact Rayden.
*KABOOOOOOM!!!* A nearby building exploded onto the street, and debris rained down in floods as the building slowly collapsed to the bottom of it foundation.
Ranma lowered his wrist. He knew where Rayden was.

Sure enough, Ranma found his subordinate in the middle of the wreckage, fiercely shoving off huge chunks of duracrete as he traded fire with several other men trying to escape the rubble.
He sighed to himself. "Yo Ray! Who're they?"
Rayden blinked, then ducked behind a support beam to avoid getting shot. "I'm not really sure..." He jumped on top of the beam and shot one of the other men, then dived into the rubble below to avoid the blast from the remaining two survivors.
"Then why are you shooting them?" Ranma suspected he already knew the answer he would get, but he felt rather obligated to ask anyway.
Rayden shot one of the remaining defenders, and the other one decided to cut his losses and stagger away. Rayden frowned. "I forget!" He called back.
Ranma shook his head and walked up to his long-time companion. "Well, finish looting the place, then get Arak and Yuri and tell them we're leaving immediately!"
Rayden looked startled. "Leaving? Already?"
Ranma nodded. "The ship's mostly fixed up, so we might as well blow this joint. Besides, some jerks back there tried to kill me."
Rayden blinked at him. "So?"
Ranma looked up at him, annoyed. "So, they attacked me without provocation."
"So?"
Ranma crossed his arms over his chest. "So, they must have been assassins!"
"So?"
Now Ranma was openly glaring at him. "So, they're probably Shade operatives, dimwit!"
"So?"
*Pow!* Rayden went reeling into a broken chunk of duracrete.
"So, I gave you an order! Move it!"
"Yessir!" Rayden hurriedly stood up and saluted sloppily before scrambling away over the debris.

Still muttering to himself irritably, Ranma trotted down the street of one of the commercial zones, hands in his pockets. Even here, among his own kind... well, okay, most of them were nastier than he was, and a good 70% weren't even human, but still, even here, he had to be on the lookout constantly.
He sighed to himself. When he was back on his ship, then he would be able to relax. His ship was his life, his safe haven... it was all he had left, other than his friends.
He turned a corner, and shot a glance at Gorgon's palace, towering over the buildings that didn't ascend straight into the roof of the massive rock they were built in. Ranma thought of giving Gorgon a personal goodbye, but that would mean giving Miyuki one too, and she always made saying goodbye as hard as possible for him. He was briefly reminded of an incident several months ago, in which she had been complaining about his constant traveling, and made a comment about him getting a wife to 'tie him down'. He had thought it a fine joke, at least until she came at him with the rope.
His gaze had wandered as his thoughts, and by the time he finished shuddering in rememberance, his eyes had finished reading a sign that somehow caught his attention despite his current hurry.
He blinked at the curtain that claimed the shop sold 'rare, exotic, and dangerous creatures'.
He turned to face ahead of him and frowned in consideration. He wasn't 100% sure Boran had sent those assassins, but he was more than willing to simply make the assumption, and that meant payback.
Ranma's frown shifted into an evil-guy-with-a-not-too-nice-plan type grin, and he stepped inside the dilapidated store.
Looking around inside, Ranma took in the smaller pens first, from the various big, ugly toad-like creatures, to a strange black cat with a crescent moon on its forehead that was pacing irritably within its prison. Beyond that were more cages, holding strange creatures such as a really big horned beetle, a small pink horse with wings, a big red lizard that stood upright and had a steady flame on the tip of its tail, a fierce-looking black snake, a puddle of black ooze with a white spider emblem floating on it, a big lizard with golden scales, a jagged-toothed turtle, and near the end of the rows, a large purple dinosaur with an oversized head. He didn't understand why the last one was manacled and ray-shielded, but from the involuntary shudder from his senses whenever he looked at it, he was glad it was.
He eventually stopped at a somewhat more menacing giant reptile, this one a greenish-brown with two thick, powerful hind legs that kept it erect, and two laughably small little forearms. Laughable from Ranma's side of the huge cage, that is. The head didn't look way too big for its body, but it still had lots of nastily sharp-looking teeth, and the young space pilot doubted it was really well fed in an establishment such as this one.
"Ah, I see you've taken an interest in this one, no?" Ranma glanced back at the short three-eyed thing that was rubbing its three-clawed hands together greedily as it eyed Ranma's expression, his pocket, and the large creature all at once. The shopkeeper really looked more like he belonged in a cage than most of the animals he was selling. "That one is called 'tee-recks'. Excellent strength, fearless tenacity, good speed. We pick her up in some kind of space-time anomaly near little backwater planet in Sol system where some Jurians were snooping around. She'll make excellent pit beast, though she even harder to handle than rancor, and she great crowd pleaser at children's birthday parties, though you be careful about long chain you leave her on."
Ranma shook his head. "Nah. I'm looking for something a little more... subtle."
He turned around to look at the man, who raised his top eyebrow. Ranma coughed into his hand. "You wouldn't happen to have any... special types of creatures in stock, now would you?" The things he had already glimpsed would be more than 'special' enough for most people, but Gorgon was his friend, and he couldn't let loose something like this inside his city.
This time all the little creature's eyebrows rose. "What you have in mind?"
Ranma decided to be blunt. "I was thinking Charren hythra grubs, or something similar."
The man's grin increased tenfold; though how that could have been accomplished was obviously a trick of his particular species. "Well, you are very lucky my friend, no? I just happen to have few lying around! Always come in handy, you know, hythra grub! Right here!" He took out a glass box, containing two pasty white, segmented slugs, each about a foot long with a spot of tranlucent blue slime oozing from one end. "Of course, grub is special item, so I'm afraid me have to charge a little extra, no?"
Ranma nodded. "You got it. These will eat just about anything, right?"
The odd little alien nodded enthusiastically. "Oh yes! Dissolve toughest metals ever created with digestive acid! Only few things not affected by special acid: glass, certain plastic, and various biological mucus. Excellent for sabotage, slow and painful assassinations, landfill reduction, practical jokes, and even pet, once it properly housetrained!"
Ranma nodded once more, and took out some credits from his pocket. This was gonna be fun!
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He had to be here, he just had to be!
Her eyes caught a mass of red, and she wheeled around to face the most beautiful sight she had seen in a long time.
There, in the corner of the vast hangar, was the Wild Horse!
So he was here! Where the ship was found, its captain couldn't be far off! At last, she would finally get a chance to confront the legendary Ranma Saotome!
Katrina Cloud, bounty hunter extraordinaire, fought off the urge to laugh and jump up and down with glee. She had found him! Following a vague, almost worthless lead, and placing herself, a healthy and beautiful woman in the midst of the worst scum of the galaxy, she had finally tracked him down! And now! Now......
Katrina frowned. Now that she was practically assured of meeting him, she wasn't quite sure what to do. She had known about his remarkable fighting ability from the beginning, not to mention his companions, but she had been so intent on simply finding him first that she never considered what she would do when it finally came time to a showdown. She was confident in her own abilities, but she felt she should have some sort of plan or something. This wasn't supposed to be easy.
Nodding to herself, she glared at one of the uglier aliens that had stopped in her path, and she nearly choked in disgust as a thin stream of drool slipped out through the creases in its fat, rubbery lips. Luckily for her, it decided she wasn't worth its time and moved on. She wished she knew why it was drooling. Many alien species had taken a liking to human women through frequent contact, but there were an almost equal number who saw humans as meat just like every other animal.
At last, she found her quarry, and nearly jumped again in delight. It was him! She stopped. She really should have some sort of plan.

Ranma continued darting from crate to ship to droid, ducking behind whatever might hide him from view and ultimately failing to be stealthy in any sense of the word.
He almost jumped when he sensed someone approaching swiftly from behind, and his hands darted for his blaster carbine as he spun around...
To face a buxom woman with her hands on her hips, smiling at him warmly.
He blinked, his blaster forgotten. His first thought was that this was one of Gorgon's daughters. She certainly looked like it, wearing what she was. It look just like a bathing suit to him, a strong dark blue material stretched from around her neck down to her pelvis, leaving her arms and legs completely bare and clinging to the muscled curves of her body. Besides her blue boots, the only other thing she wore was a metal weapons belt that hung slightly to one side. It certainly suited her, if nothing else. She had the body for it. Silvery-blue hair cascaded down her back in a long thick ponytail; she was a thing of radiance. She was a beauty to rival Miyuki, to be sure, though that wasn't really what he was concerned with at the moment.
"You're not here to kill me, are you?"
Katrina was struck dumb by the question's bluntness. Not to mention its accuracy. "What? How did you kno-er-what makes you say that?" She laughed nervously and scratched the back of her head.
Ranma looked at her suspiciously, then started looking around. "Well, when a guy is well known, sometimes he attracts the wrong kind of attention, you know?" He smirked in the direction of one of the bigger docking ports, then turned back toward her. "So... can I help you?"
'Well, here goes everything.' "Yes, as a matter of fact, there is something you can do for me..." Katrina adopted a sultry smile and stepped forward, folding her arms under her breasts and lifting them ever so slightly.
Ranma wasn't bright enough to identify this as an actual come-on, but it did set off the warning alarms in his head. "Uh... what would that be?" Ranma was surprised he didn't choke on the words as he stepped back.
Katrina smiled and slowly started walking towards the startled man. 'It seems the big, bad pirate is actually shy around women! How cute!' With a predatory smile, she stepped up right in front of him, almost pressing her body against his. "Well... tell me... what are you doing tonight?"
Ranma's brain had started going into hysterics as Katrina closed in, but he eventually managed to get the hint as she started leaning toward him with that hungry grin on her face. He tried to back up some more, but found his passage blocked by a large crate. "N-N-Now wait a minute! I don't even know your name!"
She leaned back a little bit and tossed her hair over one shoulder, smiling all the while. "Katrina. Katrina Cloud. And you would be Ranma Saotome, correct? So how about it?"
Ranma got his neurons back in line, and backtracked to her question. Then he laughed a strangled chuckle of relief, instinctively reaching behind him to tug on his pigtail. "Huh! Funny you should say that! 'Cause I'm leaving now! Bye!"
He tried to move away, but Katrina moved in closer, pressing her body against his, and his muscles all locked up.
'Heh, this is kind of nice. It really is too bad I have to kill him. I haven't been out on a good date in a while. Oh well.' She grinned up into the space pirate's sweating face, and gently traced his jawline with one finger. "Now now, just relax. You're not going anywhere for a long time."
Ranma sweated even more, and finished identifying possible escape routes. Suddenly new alarms were going off in his head, and he noticed that her other hand was slowly unhooking something from her weapons belt. Funny, that looked almost like one of those-
*Zhoo* *Shrak!* The lightsaber cut in a wide arc, spraying sparks everywhere as it sliced through the metal crate with ease. The problem was, the crate wasn't her target.
Her target didn't see it as much of a problem, and had thrown himself flat against the floor as Katrina had taken her swing. Ranma used one arm to push off from the bisected crate and slide between the bounty hunter's legs.
Katrina turned around, her seductive smirk transformed into a grim frown. She slashed down on top of him, and Ranma somersaulted away, leaving only a huge blackened gash on the floor he had been laying on. "Hey! You are trying to kill me, aren't you?!"
"My, how perceptive you are," Katrina muttered dryly. Inwardly she cursed the man's agility for negating the element of surprise. Now he was on his guard. Besides, she had to get away before...
Looking around, she realized there wasn't much chance of any authorities bothering her about causing trouble. Most of the creatures inside the massive hangar were either ignoring the display completely, or watching it like some kind of street show. 'Well, if that's how it's going to be, then I can pull out the big guns!'
Ranma growled at her. "Oh, come on! Who put you up to this? Boran?" He stopped shouting, and glared at her seriously. "Whoever it was, you can be sure they're not paying you nearly enough."
Katrina smirked at him. "Don't worry, I'm no assassin. Hell, you should be flattered that you've got a big enough bounty on your head to catch my attention!" She stepped forward, raising the laser sword in a defensive position.
Ranma gave her a half-lidded stare. "Yeah, I'm gushing with pride." Sarcasm oozed from his voice.
Apparently this ticked the woman off, because she deactivated the sword and reached for her blaster. Ranma grinned and shot forward. Whether or not she meant to kill him, she was a girl, and he had never been able to bring himself to hurt a girl, much less kill one. If she was going to provide such a nice opening, then it would make disarming her that much easier.
She seemed surprised that he could accelerate so fast, and shoved out her palm as if to ward him away.
The funny thing was, it worked.
Ranma's forward momentum dissolved utterly, and he felt as if the galaxy's strongest gale was blowing into him. Then, all at once the sensation was gone, and he was still hurtling backwards, eventually colliding into a maintenance droid. Ranma recovered and bounded away just before the robot was speared by several blaster bolts.
Damn it, he should've known! As if the lightsaber wasn't a big enough hint, now she was using the Force! That woman was a Jedi!
Ranma gritted his teeth as Katrina grinned at him and flexed her hand arrogantly. He didn't know what she was capable of, so obviously she held an advantage in defense, since it might be a serious mistake to close the distance to her. This might take a while.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Boran glared down at the smiling engineer as he stalked through the entrance to the cruiser ports, smoldering in quiet anger as he stepped onto the hovercart that sped by the few large entry ports that led to other massive spacecraft.
He had good reason to be angry. 19 of his crew, several of them experienced pilots and one a good friend of his, were found dead in the rubble of a large building that the lone survivor claimed had been totaled by one of those fool pirates that he was supposed to kill. As if that wasn't enough, none of the assassins he had hired had reported back, meaning they either got themselves killed or simply left with the 50% he had paid them in advance. One was as bad as the other in his eyes.
Still, he reflected, there was no point in taking it out on the little man in front of him. Even if it did make him feel better. Sort of.
"So you're certain the repairs are complete?"
The man nodded. "That's right. Inspected her myself, inside and out! She'll be able to take on anything!"
Boran nodded, then smiled. So Saotome had escaped a few thugs with blasters. Such was less than a pathetic annoyance when compared to the overwhelming might of a fully armed strike cruiser. He would smash that insignificant pirate the old fashioned way, in glorious battle!
Boran resisted the urge to cackle out loud. "Very good. You will recieve a 10% bonus for your good work. It's harder than ever nowadays to find good engineers." He didn't mention that it was easier than ever to manufacture them, and the greasy man beamed with pride. He always liked humans. Though he himself was only a hybrid, he found most non-human's... distasteful.
Boran stepped off the transport, and walked over to a heavily armored set of blast doors that led to the interior of his command ship. He noted, to his curiosity, that a good number of his crewmates and pilots were standing outside of it.
He frowned as he looked around at the crowd, and they hesitantly stepped back wordlessly. Now very curious as to what was going on, Boran wasn't looking at the doorway when he hit the button to open the blast doors.
The surrounding men flinched back, and the engineer gasped.
Boran turned around, and stared.
It was like looking into a cavern. Bulkheads that used to make up hallways and rooms were gone, and floors and furniture were partially dissolved, leaving a few scattered pieces lying among the smooth, glossy remains of the durasteel floor. Looking through the space that used to make up two armories and a war room, Boran could see that several fighters in the hangar had disappeared, only leaving the reinforced cockpit panes and a few engine components on the ground to indicate they ever existed. It looked as if a huge fireball had entered the ship and melted a huge path through the walls.
The engineer scratched his head and sweatdropped. "Well... I suppose this means I can forget about the bonus?"
Boran turned around and shot him.
The crew watched impassively as the corpse hit the floor.
Boran was twitching sporadically, and his chest heaved. "Find him!! KILL HIM!!! NOW!!!"
Many of the men were wondering who he was talking about, but some were well-informed enough to lead the others away.
"He will pay for this! He WILL PAY!!"
__________________________________________________________________________________

Ranma ducked under another slash from Katrina's deadly weapon, then backflipped away on top of one of the smaller personal ships.
Or rather, he tried to. At the peak of his jump a wave of Force slammed into him, tossing him roughly into another stack of crates. Ranma scrambled away as the bounty hunter tried to hit him with her blaster while he was down, and managed to make it onto the other side of the craft.
Ranma ignored the woman's demands for him to slow down and make an easier target of himself, instead opting to run across the hangar to his own ship as fast as possible. Amused aliens smirked at him as he ran past, enjoying the free entertainment immensely.
When he was about halfway across the hangar to his ship, however, when yet another obstacle presented itself. Namely a large group of men armed with blaster rifles who decided to blockade the way to his ship, shoot at him, and generally make quite the nuisance of themselves. Ranma ducked behind a hovercart, which was quickly rendered inoperable by a hail of laser bolts, though it still provided plenty of cover.

Katrina rounded the corner of the ship only to have to duck behind the engine again as waves of supressed fire rained down upon her quarry, coming from a small army farther down in the hangar. Spectators that had been watching the display gleefully now glared hatefully at the participants as they fled, being forced to escape the rain of plasma and abandon their ships and goods to the destructive energies. The two creatures on the hovercart weren't so lucky, not being given such a choice, and were quickly killed.
Katrina growled at the men as she watched Ranma take out his pistols and return fire. This was her battle! How dare those buffoons interfere?!
That was the problem though. There were many of them, and only one of her, and her limited ability with the Force could only compensate so much for overwhelming numbers.
Still, she had to make this kill!
She took out her blaster and started to aim, only to feel a surge of searing heat pass by her fingers. She recoiled in shock, and then looked down at her weapon to find that it had been reduced to a charred handle in her fist. Looking up at her quarry, she realized that he was glaring at her. He had shot it right out of her hand!
Ranma then redirected his attention on the more massive threat, seeming to forget about her. Katrina grit her teeth as fury waged war with determination and caution.
'Fine! If that's the way he wants to play it!'
Her plan of action set, Katrina took a deep breath and waited for a break in the laser fire.

"This sucks. This really sucks." *Shoo* *Shoo* "Okay, that's two more down-" *Boom!* "YOW! Geez, they blew through the engine block already?! This thing isn't going to provide me with much more cover!"
Ranma decided he would have to make a break for it. One good jump should take him on top of that bomber there, and-
His finely honed senses alerted him to new danger coming from behind him, and not in the form of a blaster bolt.
'No way. No way she would actually... oh damn.' Ranma turned around, and his feet lashed out as the lightsaber swung down.
Katrina stood there, wide-eyed, as her attack was halted by Ranma grabbing her fist between his ankles, and halting the deadly beam of energy just inches from his forehead.
Her honest confusion as to how he could have stopped her with such a ridiculous defense was put on hold as she remembered the far more immediate and relevant problem of several laser bolts being fired by jerks who weren't terribly particular as to who they hit.
'I'm gonna die............... crap.'
Then she was yanked downward, out of harms way, her face pressed into Ranma's chest and her shoulders boxed in between his knees. 'He... he saved me... I was about to kill him and... hey, my lightsaber is free!'
"Don't... even... think about it!" Ranma growled, causing a short blush. Killing him now wouldn't help much, anyway.
She sighed as she listened to the barrage of laser blasts eat away at the mass of hovercart. "I assume you have some sort of plan?" she mumbled into his chest.
Ramna muttered something incomprehensible. "I HAD a plan, but then somebody came and got in my way." Katrina blinked. "Look, if you want to get out of this alive, just stay down, okay? And if I tell you to move, MOVE!!"
She blinked again, and slowly rolled off of him, her own weapon deactivated, before sitting up against the hovercart and bracing herself. Ranma tensed up, then whipped out a blaster in each direction, and shot the two men that were trying to flank their position.
"Nice shot," she muttered.
Ranma went over his options. Then he almost smacked himself in the head. He still had his tech bracer! Smiling in relief, he shot someone who was trying to rush over the hovercart and shoot them, then hit a single button below his wrist.
Katrina gulped and stared uneasily at the Rodian that now lay between them with a hole in its chest. "Uh... so...... I'm kind of hoping that you're smiling because you have a plan and everything's gonna be okay, instead of perhaps because you've accepted your grisly fate and will die at peace with the world around you. You know, 'cause I'd kind of like to live too."
Ranma glanced over at her. "Look, just be ready to shove this thing into those guys with your Force powers when I give the signal, then stop worrying about it."
Hope shined in Katrina's eyes. *Shrak!* Then she screamed as a blaster bolt pierced their barrier directly to the left of her, showering sparks along her long, bare legs.
Ranma didn't seem to notice. "Four... three... two... one......... checkmate."
Katrina looked at him questioningly, for all of the 6 microseconds between the end of his sentence and the massive explosion behind them.
Right then seemed quite a fine time to panic, and she was about to do so, when Ranma shouted out "NOW!!!" and she almost reflexively struck out at the hovercar's remains with the Force.
She could see clearly once the cart had sped away and slammed into the line of confused criminals, and stood stunned in astonishment at what she witnessed. A red, glowing, molten crater stood in the center of the former enemy line. Rivulets of yellow plasma lay splashed around the crater, indicating the impact site of a high-yield explosive of that type. For that matter, several fairly large balls of energy were streaming into the enemy, sowing death among their muddled ranks.
At the end stood a large man firing a large blaster carbine in each hand, aided by two robots of roughly the same size on heavy, triangular caterpillar treads, hurling balls of plasma energy into the fray.
Ranma adapted to the sudden shift in advantage far more quickly than she did, taking out his guns and raking blaster fire across the field.
Katrina, for the most part, just stood there, noticing that most of the men that had them pinned down were retreating in panic.

"Aw geez, there's more of them back there! Come on! Let's go!" Cursing internally, Ranma grabbed the shell-shocked Katrina and dragged her past Rayden and the droids, the former of which glanced at him questioningly for some reason.
Ranma noticed more of the men coming out from behind some smaller, personal ships, and scooped up Katrina in his arms. Ignoring her surprised squeak, he leapt atop one of the smaller ships, letting the wild blaster fire pepper the armored hulls with little black craters. He continued jumping from ship to ship until he came to his own, tucked away in the corner of the humongous hangar. Arak sighed in relief at his appearance, and Yuri blinked in startled surprise.
Katrina stared in alarm at the multitude of dead, and mostly charred, bodies that lay about one side of the ship, but Ranma paid them no mind.
"Okay, we've got trouble, so get Rayden back here quick, and get ready to jump for Ryloth as soon as we're out of the asteroid belt, got it?" Without waiting for a reply, Ranma entered the Wild Horse, his shapely burden still clinging to his neck.
Arak nodded absently, assured that Rac had already heard and relayed the message to Units 01 and 02. He himself merely turned around and entered the ship after his captain.
Yuri was still staring at the spot Ranma had stopped at, and suddenly snapped out of it. "Hey! Who was that girl he was carrying?! Arak!"
__________________________________________________________________________________

*Shoom* *Shoom* *Shoom* *Shoom* Rayden grinned as wave after wave of blaster bolts and plasma balls washed the surrounding area with golden, liquid flame, cleansing the hangar of his enemies... as well as a lot of other stuff too. Collateral damage. Unimportant. The molten fire blazed brightly as one of the smaller personal ships underwent a chain reaction in its damaged engines, exploding in a plethora of sparks, fire, and shredded metal.
A most glorious sight, to be certain.
*Beep* "CAPTAIN SECURED. AREA PACIFIED. ORDERS ARE TO RETREAT IMMEDIATELY." Unit 02 turned towards him as it drawled out the orders, shining the red, glaring light of its single stripe of optical sensor right in his eyes.
Rayden shook his head and slipped one of the blaster carbines in his coat, then fired a few shots at random to discourage any lingering enemies to try their luck. "All right, full reverse! Let's get outta here!"
The two torsos quickly rotated the other way, and their treads moved in a tight arc to turn to the other direction, allowing full forward movement. Rayden followed as best he could while randomly firing at moving objects, and found himself hard-pressed to keep up.
However, something caught his eye, and he stopped firing and retreating to stare at it.

Boran stepped out into the hangar, his gray eyes blazing in cold fury. He raised a blaster into the air and fired, sending a shower of sparks onto the durasteel floor. Of course, it didn't attract much attention, as most of the hangar's occupants had spent the last 20 minutes avoiding heavy laser fire, but it attracted enough to serve his purpose.
"If I may have your attention! I am offering a job. To anyone here who may take it. 5,000,000 credits! 5,000,000!! To the man, woman, or... other creature... that can destroy Ranma Saotome or the Wild Horse and bring me proof of the deed! I will pay DOUBLE for those who manage both!!"
Many of the creatures gathered around the general vicinity gazed up at him in astonishment and poorly diguised greed, while others had managed to hear the words "5,000,000 credits", and were starting to gather.
"Now! To any who wish to collect this reward, Saotome's ship will be taking off from Gorgon's Moon when that man," Boran pointed straight at Rayden, who glanced about suddenly as if the space captain might mean someone else, "reaches the ship! I suggest you hurry." Boran turned around abruptly, then stalked away.

Rayden sweatdropped as he regarded the mass of various criminal aliens that stared at him impassively as they slowly unholstered their weapons.
He idly noticed that the battle drones had already gone far on ahead to the ship. Plus he had only brought one plasma grenade; the one he had already used.
There were only so many words that could sum up the situation.
"Oh, fudge."
-Were not two of them, but he said them anyway. Right before he turned around and ran like hell.
__________________________________________________________________________________

"Rac, do a primary and secondary systems check. Make sure that all systems are up and running. We're gonna have to take off fast, and get out of the belt before we can make the jump to hyperspace."
One of Rac's spherical drones floated nearby, and a screen lowered itself and flashed several timing windows across it.
"SYSTEMS CHECK COMPLETE. TURBOLASER TURRETS 4 AND 7 OFFLINE. LAUNCHER 3 OFFLINE. POWER HAS BEEN CUT TO THE DEFECTIVE SYSTEMS. ORDINANCE COUNT IS NOMINAL. POWER GENERATORS OPERATING WITHIN NORMAL PARAMETERS. TACHYON ACCELERATOR AND SPECTRUM FLUXUATOR SYSTEMS ARE FULLY FUNCTIONAL."
Ranma nodded, and behind him Katrina continued looking around her in a mix of awe and fear. "Excellent. How's everything going out there. Where's Rayden?"
"SHIKODAN HAS FALLEN A TAD BEHIND. UNITS 01 AND 02 ARE CURRENTLY BOARDING THE SHIP. OH, WAIT. SENSORS INDICATE HEAVY BLASTER FIRE WITHIN THE HANGAR. AH. I'VE GOT A FIX ON RAYDEN'S LOCATION, HEADING AT HIGH SPEED TOWARDS THE SHIP. THIS WOULD INDICATE THAT HE'S RUNNING FOR HIS LIFE."
Ranma shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time. ETA?"
"RIGHT NOW."
Ranma blinked. Then jolted forward as he heard Yuri's shout.
"Ow! Watch where you're going!"
"Sorry! Sorry! Geez... Ranma!" Rayden burst into the bridge, gasping for breath. Small blackened patched dotted his trenchcoat, and he seemed to be walking with a slight limp.
Ranma blinked again.
"Too many *gasp* of them *gasp* must leave *gasp* now! *Wheeze*"
Ranma's features hardened, and he nodded. "Rac, bring sublight drives online and map the quickest route through the asteroid belt."
That's when Katrina finally noticed what was going on. "Hey! Wait a minute! I can't just leave! My ship is still here!"
Rayden noticed her for the first time, and stared a bit before clearing his head. "We have no time! Those guys will tear apart ANYTHING that comes out of this ship! Man, woman or robot!"
Ranma nodded. "Right. Sorry 'bout this, but you're coming with us. Rac, get us out of here."
"THE MAIN EXIT HAS BEEN SEALED ALREADY. FOR THAT MATTER, THE LANDING CLAWS ON THE HANGAR FLOOR ARE LOCKED."
Ranma looked up in thought. "Will it cause any real damage if we were to tear free and blast our way out?"
"TO THE HANGAR, OR TO THE SHIP?"
"What do you think?" Ranma asked dryly.
"NO, NOT REALLY."
"Then do it. If anybody starts shooting at us, target them with a proton torpedo and hit it. We're getting out of here, no matter who we have to tear through to do it."
Rayden nodded and sat down as the ship rose, and near the back, Arak and Yuri stood looking at Ranma nervously. Katrina just kept stuttering and gaping, not totally able to grasp the situation.

The Wild Horse burst upwards, and the durasteel bonds that had held it to the metal floor twisted and gave way like paper.
It turned slowly, and then lumbered toward the darkened blast doors that had so recently cut off the massive complex's primary exit. Several ships rose from their landing sites and aimed their guns, but were quickly knocked aside by the deafening roar of a proton-scattering detonation.
"But my ship!" Katrina insisted.
"Tough! Just becase you're willing to trade your life for your ride doesn't mean we are!" Rayden sat back and growled, restless.
"Easy does it......" Ranma had taken manual control, and was slowly building up speed toward the blast doors. The ship shook slightly from an explosion, and Arak brought up a holographic display of the hangar, full of little gray boxes that represented ships. Almost instantly, over half the boxes turned red.
Arak gulped. "We have multiple enemy craft engaging us from the rear, sides, front, and, uh, belly!"
Ranma nodded silently, and the ship shook again. Yuri stepped behind Ranma's chair and held onto the back.
Rayden's grip almost tore the metal from the bulkhead he was braced against. "I don't like this. We should be firing back more. Why don't we get the turbolasers online?"
Ranma shook his head as a fiery blast a few meters away sent chunks of shrapnel bouncing off the Wild Horse's shields. "No good. The spare power can do a lot more for the shields right now. Hold on, we're almost to doors! Rac, cease all missile fire!"
"MISSILE FIRE HALTED. LAUNCHERS RELOADING."
"Replace all front multi-launchers with plasma bombs 4X-C. Aim at the firing arc overlap, and prepare to release on my mark."
"AFFIRMATIVE."
Arak blinked. "Wait... plasma bombs? Inside? While WE'RE inside too?! You can't do that!" Everyone ignored him.
Several other ships were now concentrating fire on the Wild Horse's stern, but to no great effect. Very few criminals could afford to buy and maintain even light frigates, and the only two in the hangar besides the Wild Horse had not ventured to pursue his bounty. Thus it was a collection of much smaller personal ships that battered away at the red frigate's shields, and many of them had veered off once they saw a lack of return fire, suspecting something was up.
"................. Fire."
*KA-BOOOOOOM!!!!*
The blast doors were seared open from the inside, and plasma energy and molten metal alike poured through the magnetic shield and poured into space to be quickly cooled into more stable energy states. Inside the hangar the effects of the bombs were more spectacular, bursting with white-hot fire that spread around the egg of the Wild Horse's shields. It was a remarkably bad turn of events for those who had tried to cut the Wild Horse off from the exit, as they were almost instantly destroyed by the high-power explosives. Those pursuing were forced to feed power to their front deflector screens and hope for the best as the heat wave washed over them.

"Shields at 30%! 23%! 10% and dropping!" Arak's panicky voice was ignored as the Wild Horse sped out of the flaming hangar, leaving trails of white plasma floating from its engines.
Rayden raised an eyebrow at his long-time friend. "That was cutting it pretty close there."
Ranma nodded.
"Cutting it pretty close?! We were almost killed! KILLED!!! If you make it a habit to do these things Ranma, I swear I'll-" Ranma tuned him out as the display next to him beeped and revealed that several craft were following him out of the hangar.
"What the hell? Why are they so eager to kill me too?" Ranma sat back in his chair, grumbling, and Yuri shot him worried looks.
Rayden sighed, and lightly hit Arak over the head to get the panicking genius to stop talking. "That jerk Boran set up a big bounty for your head on the spot; 5,000,000 for you, and another 5,000,000 for the Wild Horse." Ranma whistled at that.
"FOR ME TOO? QUITE UNUSUAL TO PUT A SEPERATE BOUNTY FOR THE SHIP AND THE SHIP'S CAPTAIN."
Rayden shook his head. "Yeah, well that blue guy was PISSED! I'm fairly certain he doesn't intend to stop until all of us are dead."
Ranma shrugged. "I suppose I should've expected it." He chuckled softly. "But it was still worth it."
The others looked at him curiously. All except Katrina, who was fuming.
"I... I can't believe it! Those jerks! I've been on this bounty for almost a year and only get offered 2,000,000, and they just jump in and attack for twice that! Argh!!" She turned around in a huff, glaring at the little holographic display full of red icons that were moving into attack range.
She didn't realize she had said something she wasn't supposed to until the cold ring of a blaster carbine's barrel pressed into the back of her neck. She bigsweated, then looked up to see an autocannon pop out of the ceiling and aim at her.
Ranma sighed as the floating black sphere next to him opened up and revealed a low-power blaster, aimed at the scantily-clad bounty hunter. He should've seen this coming.
Katrina started sweating more heavily, and offered a nervous smile at the little orb that shined its red sensor light into her eyes. "Uh... did I say bounty? I, uh, meant, um........." The gun barrel pressed harder into her neck, and looking over her shoulder, she could see the scientist and the younger girl glaring at her furiously.
Ranma put an arm on Rayden's arm, and the large man looked at him questioningly. "Leave her alone. We have bigger problems now." Rayden took a last glance at the bounty hunter, then lowered his carbine.
Katrina gasped in relief as the pressure of the blaster was lifted, and her eyes locked onto the autocannon.
"I HAVE TO DISAGREE WITH THIS DECISION. MISS XERO WAS ONE THING, BUT YOU REALLY ARE FAR TOO TRUSTING."
Ranma rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Pack it up Rac. Get all operational turbolasers online and start figuring a defense pattern once the pursuing ships get within firing range."
Katrina fell to her knees as the autocannon retracted itself, breathless. She tried to get her heart under control for a few seconds before she looked around and realized that she had completely shifted out of the focus of attention. Well, almost. That greenhead was still glaring at her.
"SHIELDS ARE AT 8% AND RISING. RECONFIGURING DEFLECTOR SCREENS. REAR DEFLECTOR SCREEN AT 20% AND RISING. WARNING! ENEMY SHIPS WITHIN FIRING RANGE! TURBOLASERS READY. FIRING AT YOUR COMMAND."
Katrina looked about in confusion as she stood up, for the first time wondering about a ship this size staffed by 3 men and a young woman.
Ranma nodded. "Fire." The whine of energy fluxuations filled the bridge, and several of little bars of light filled the holographic display to represent the lasers flowing from ship to ship. "Rayden, take the Dark Angel out there and do some damage. We may need fighter support when Boran gets his ship out here. Well, if it can still move. I'll have Rac upload our hyperspace coordinates to your ship. Make for Ryloth right after us."
Rayden grinned and saluted, then took off down the hallway of the frigate, his coat tails swaying behind him.
"Arak, find a good place around Ryloth to stop off while we plan our attack." The shorter man nodded and shot a last dubious look at Katrina before he too left the bridge.
"Yuri," the girl in question was startled out of trying to burn a hole through Katrina with her eyes, and turned her blushing gaze toward the captain, "I need you to watch that display and tell me if you see anything unusual, like a bunch of ships massing or a new group coming out from in front of us. Okay?"
Feeling strangely thrilled that she should be given a task, Yuri nodded and sat down before the holographic display, taking notes of all the enemies' positions and feeling slightly awed at how quickly they were disappearing.
Ranma let out a breath, then turned towards the large computer block in front of the captain's chair. His chair.
"Rac, find a common frequency to tranmist a signal. I have a message..."
__________________________________________________________________________________

"Wild Horse is engaging with enemy ships. They're going down pretty quickly, but the Horse's shields are almost down. If they can keep up enough fire, we should be within attack position in 10 minutes."
Boran nodded, looking over the crew of his bridge imperiously. "Good. Are the magnetic fields on the damaged portions of the ship holding?" He still couldn't believe that something ate through 27 rooms in less than an hour!
The tech nodded as he looked over the readings. "Damaged sectors are secure. Maintenence also called up and said that they found one of what damaged the ship, though they think there's at least one more. Some kind of slug. They found a new tunnel leading down to the cargo hold, and they're trying to flush it out."
Boran glanced at him, then shook his head. "Let them deal with it. I want all available fighters to depart immediately, targeting-"
"Admiral Rehli! Sir! I'm reading an incoming signal coming in over a high-wavelength frequency! Every ship should be able to pick it up!"
Boran gave a start, then rubbed his chin. "Scan the signal."
"It's a visual recording, sir!"
"On-screen."
The recording went up, and the huge video screen above the bridge went black before a small glowing red circle swiveled into view.
*Beep* "ATTENTION ALL INCOMING SHIPS. I AM THE ENTITY CURRENTLY IN CONTROL OF THE WILD HORSE, THE SPACE CRAFT YOU ARE NOW PURSUING. IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT YOU HAVE BEEN OFFERED A SIZABLE SUM OF MONEY FOR MY DESTRUCTION, AS WELL THAT OF MY OWNER. I WONDER. IS 10,000,000 CREDITS WORTH YOUR LIVES? HEH HEH HEH... HAH HAH HAH HAH! HA HA HA HA HA HA!! MWA HA HA HA HAAAAAA!!!" *Beep*
Boran snorted as the mechanical-sounding digital laughter was cut off, then realized that almost everyone at a bridge station below him was glancing at him nervously.
"Oh, come on! You can't seriously be afraid of a computerized recording! Bah! You're all worthless!" He growled and shook his head as the magnification of the Wild Horse locked in fearsome crossfire slowly enlarged, showing the close in distance.
Suddenly, the crossfire from the Wild Horse's rear stopped.
"Admiral Rehli! Several of the rogue ships are retreating back to the hangar! Others are moving out of attack range and entering hyperspace vectors."
Boran's face contorted with fury. "WHAT?!?! Those cowards!!"
A communications officer coughed to get his attention. "Several of the rogue craft have beamed us messages explaining their hesitation. The general concensus is 'Even a billion credits is worthless if you're not alive to spend it. Loser.'" The officer had actually added that last part himself, but was hoping the Admiral wouldn't realize it.
Luckily for him, Boran was far too enraged to focus his wrath on anything beyond the rapidly diminishing dot of red that speeding beyond the lazily orbiting asteroids. Light frigates being naturally faster than cruisers, the Wild Horse would have little to no trouble getting beyond the gravity fields of the multitude of asteroids before they could even get within range.
Gritting his teeth and gripping the handrail in front of the captain's chair so hard his hands hurt, Boran issued his orders. "Call back the fighters." Any craft that pursued the Wild Horse without support fire would be annihilated. It was only a question of how quickly.
"Sir, we're picking up another signal! This one appears to be aimed for us! It's a visual recording, like the last one!"
Boran had a bad feeling about this. "On-screen."
*Beep* This time, instead of the field of black, the viewscreen clearly showed the bridge of the Wild Horse, with his newly-proclaimed most hated enemy, Ranma Saotome, smiling up from in front of the captain's chair.
The famous space pirate smiled a little wider, then pulled down one eyelid and stuck out his tongue. *Beep*

The bridge crew turned to their superior officer as the viewscreen winked off, then collectively gulped as Boran started trembling.
And then the blue tinted half-human lost it, banging his foot against the durasteel deck below him without abandon.
*Clang!* *Clang!* *Clang!* *Clang!* "Damn him! Damn him!! Damnhim damnhim damnhiiiiiiiiiiim!!!!"
*Creeeeeeak* The Shade Admiral stopped his short-lived tantrum, and stopped with everyone else to listen to eerie whine of metal bending.
*Rrrrngh!* Boran's weight was suddenly no longer supported, and he fell through the torn durasteel, falling a good 10 feet before landing flat on his back onto a slightly more stable metal surface.
In considerable pain, he looked up at the hole in the bridge to see a large, slug like creature sliding along on the ceiling around the tear, smoky mist wafting from the slime trail it left on the durable alloys. All around him, once flat, solid metal planes were eaten through and given ghastly, rounded shapes.
Surprisingly, his last thought before losing consciousness was not another damning of Ranma, but a totally different thought entirely. 'Wait... in the background... I thought I saw... Katrina?' And then all went black.
__________________________________________________________________________________

Rather far away, though really right next to the previous scene if you're measuring on a true galactic scale, the Wild Horse entered hyperspace, flung into the region of shortened distances on a straight-line path to the Ryloth system, home of the Twi'lek.
Moments later, the venom-class fighter Dark Angel followed its mother ship into hyperspace, on the same heading.

Somewhere, very far away (even on a galactic scale), a signal went out. A call. A cry. A scream.
And in the depths of hyperspace, a strange, carelessly pocketed crystal glowed softly in answer.

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

End Chapter 8