Once the hangar was secure, the BX units took over our defensive positions around the perimeter of the large space, focusing on the half-dozen doorways that the pirates had cut open. Meanwhile, Corvak and my team pushed into the starship's corridors. Racer was able to provide us with a basic map, though the system was too corrupted to pull out much useful information. Instead, we were stuck investigating every room we could reach, trying to weed out every pirate we could find.

  Thankfully, while many halls and doors were open, all of them were dead ends, save for one path that was obvious and clear. This was the path that led to the backup power core that the pirates had managed to find. It was a crude job, something I had grown to expect from this kind of group, but they had repaired the relatively small power core and got it running, supplying power to the artificial gravity, life support, and mag-shields. Once we had secured the core, primarily to prevent any pirates from doing anything dumb, like trying to take us all out together by disabling it, we moved on to clear the rest of the ship, a few Mandalorians staying behind to defend the core.

  Since we had no internal sensors, we were forced to go door to door, slowly clearing each room and corridor that the pirates had cut into. It soon became pretty clear that while the pirates had been happy to take up residence in the ship, they had done very little exploring. Most of the rooms were still unpowered and looked like they hadn't been touched by anyone since the day the ship crashed. We found quite a few bodies, all of them little more than partial bone shards and scraps of cloth and armor in piles of dust and dirt. Four thousand years was a lot of time, but it seemed that the harsh environment of the planet had kept any horrible destructive mold or fungus from growing.

  "When we are finished clearing this place, we need to go over every room we can get into with a fine-tooth comb," I said to Ahsoka. "This ship is going to be with ancient artifacts worth selling. A simple blaster from that time period is going to be worth thousands of credits. If we are lucky, this might end up beating out our Hutt job in profit."

  "Should we really be selling Sith artifacts?" Ahsoka asked, peeking into a side room as we cleared one of the larger, higher-end rooms we had seen so far. "It feels… questionable."

  "As long as there aren't any Sith teachings, I can't imagine it would lead to anything bad," I said, considering her fears for a moment. "Besides, there's a certain kind of pleasant irony in using money made by selling ancient Sith trinkets to overthrow a Sith regime."

  Ahsoka snorted and shook her head, but continued to clear rooms with me, finishing a whole corridor after thirty minutes. Unfortunately, we were far from done, and even with all of our people spread out and broken up into pairs, it still took another three hours to clear all of the rooms of pirates. By then, there was quite a collection of bottom-feeding criminals bound up and unconscious in the hangar bay, waiting for transport to one of several bounty collection stations around the galaxy.

  With any luck, just the criminals alone would be worth a few hundred thousand credits, paying for the trip, including deploying the salvage fleet, by itself.

  Once the ship was clear and the criminals were gathered, we began the process of loading them up and shipping them off. My team, minus Ahsoka, took charge of that operation, using the and the as transports. Within four hours of clearing the ship, they left for the nearest bounty world. Tatnia and Julus were on one ship, as well as four BX units, with Nal and Vaz on the other, also with four BX units as backup.

  With the prisoners gone, we set up a basic camp inside the hangar, though not before double-checking the life support and mag-shield systems, as well as hooking up some emergency generators, just in case. We also stayed in our armor any time we were out and around the ship, since I was a bit paranoid about systems failing.

  It took a while for the salvage fleet to arrive, which was unsurprising given how long it took for us to get to the planet. During that time, Ahsoka, Corvak's team, and myself started to go over the place room by room, looking for anything intact and worth selling. In just the few days that we were alone, we found several dozen intact and functioning blasters, a few large containers of ancient Imperial Credits, as well as half a dozen ancient, as well as a plethora of other knick-knacks and other objects. Ahsoka spent most of her time scanning and meditating over these objects, making sure that none of them were tainted.

  We were both happy to find that, with the slavers gone and shipped off, most of the darkness she had felt was gone. There was still some residue, but it was spread out enough and thin enough that we both felt confident it was localized around any particular room or object.

  Some of the most interesting finds were in rooms that were clearly for higher-ranked officers, where we found jewels and coins forged from precious metals. It seemed that the Sith officers enjoyed following the same rules as their Sith masters, namely letting their greed draw them to shiny things.

  On the fourth day, while looking out of one of the hangar bay openings at the dead planet, Ahsoka approached me, passing me a container of water, which I accepted with a smile.

  "The just sent down word. The salvage fleet should be here within the next day," she said, cracking her own canteen open and taking a long drink. "The and should be back around then as well."

  "That's good," I responded, before reaching out and pulling her close. It was a bit awkward with our armor, but as we both had our helmets off, trading a simple kiss was easy.

  "What was that about?" She asked, a happy smirk on her lips.

  "What, I need an excuse to kiss you?" I asked, chuckling when she rolled her eyes. "Well, to be honest, I feel kind of bad."

  "What for?" she asked, her brow pulling together in confusion.

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  "I've been so focused on the Skyforged, getting everything working and driving us forward, I feel like I haven't been paying enough attention to you," I admitted with a frown. "We haven't had any time to go on dates or do anything."

  Now it was Ahsoka's turn to laugh, shaking her head as she reached up and cupped my cheek with her hand.

  "Thank you, Deacon, for worrying about me, but you have to know I'm not that kind of girl, right?" She asked, her hand rubbing my face gently. "I spent too much of my life sleeping on a soldier's cots and foregoing material possessions to need you to prove your love every other day. Especially when I can feel it every time you look at me."

  "Are you sure?" I asked, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. "Because where I'm from, a girl claiming she doesn't need something like this is a surefire sign you already fucked up, so you better do double next time."

  "No, Deacon, I'm sure," She said, pulling her hand back and leaning against me. "The occasion gesture and special dinner, like we had before we went to rescue Clan Galti, is more than enough for me."

  I smiled and put my arm back around her, holding her close as we both looked out the window. We watched as sweeping winds of green fog whipped around the edges of the caldera, not quite pulling over the edge. After a few minutes, Ahsoka pulled away and gestured back at the hangar.

  "So, what do you plan on doing with these ships?" She asked. "There's a lot here."

  "I think we should keep one Pelta and one DP-20," I responded, both of us turning to look back. "The DP-20 for 4th Group and the Pelta for 1st Group."

  "You want to add another ship to our group?" Ahsoka asked. "Why not give them both to 4th group?"

  "Because I like the idea that 4th group as a small army on board the , their Imperial Escort Carrier," I explained. "The Pelta might be the modified assault version, but it's got a ton of room, which is perfect for holding a pocket ground force. We might even be able to fit some tanks on board. As for 4th Group, the DP-20 is a pretty potent gunship, especially for its size. This one needs some work, but for a couple hundred thousand credits, we can get it repaired and modified to fit what they need pretty well. I might put more with them eventually, but for now, that's more or less all they need to get working."

  "That Guardian you fit with them is a pretty small ship," Ahsoka pointed out with a frown. "Are you sure that's enough for them?"

  "None of the groups, save 3rd Group, are really meant to be a heavy-hitting space fleet," I pointed out. "They are ground team insertion forces, getting their people to the ground and then covering them as best they can. Besides, we can only add so much at a time. These ships are smaller, so we can fill them with some work, but we still need to keep an eye on our growth."

  "How much do you think we will get from the rest?" she asked, eyeing the starfighters. "Those two ships aren't a small chunk."

  "I'm thinking seven or eight million in total from the Rebellion, maybe another two from the starfighters," I responded, looking over the hangar bay. "I honestly think we may make more long-term with any of the stuff we find throughout the ship. Each of those blasters we found should sell for five to seven thousand credits. Even just counting what we found so far, it's almost a hundred and fifty grand, and we are barely scratching the surface. Not to mention what might be in that scrap pile at the end of the hangar. If there is anything even remotely intact, it would be worth millions, easily."

  "What are we going to do with this ship after we are done scavenging it?"

  "I'm tempted to melt it from orbit," I responded with a shrug. "But that would be a waste. I'll probably have the techies mothball what the pirates got working just in case we ever need a place to hide out. Beyond that… I think these systems are too old to integrate well, but we will see what the salvage techies say."

  By the time the salvage fleet arrived, 1st group was more than ready to head home. I had high hopes for the haul, though it would most likely be a slow source of income that our merchants would sell over time, rather than a large-scale, all at once burst. On the plus side, I already sent some of Ackbar's underlings the information for what we were looking to sell, and they, of course, were very interested. I got them to agree to a tentative eight million credits for all the ships, save the starfighters, as well as the supplies the pirates had gathered. That was on top of eight million credits added to the Rebellion's debt.

  When 1st Group finally left, 3rd Group stayed behind to watch over the mostly defenseless salvage fleet, which was more than enough firepower to keep them safe. We also left Blink and his squad of BXs to guard them as they began pulling apart the scrap pile and further investigating the ship's interior, with plans to explore the Hammerheads outside.

  With any luck, we would get some Republic artifacts as well.

  As we traveled back through hyperspace, I took the opportunity to do a little experimenting. 1st group had just received the first batch of beskar-lined vibroblades, an incredibly cheap way to create a weapon that could pierce through beskar, since the Empire seemed to be finally using what they stole from the Mandalorians.

  Usually, complicated things like blasters were impossible to enchant. It was why our armor had exterior plating, because if the platting was connected permanently to the sophisticated systems inside, the enhancements just wouldn't have taken. However, from how Miru described the vibroblades, the blade itself was a separate component from the vibrational generator, or whatever you called the part that generated the vibrations.

  Yes, the components were attached, but they were separate enough that I was hoping any enchantments on them would hold.

  I took my blade and carefully disassembled it. This wasn't technically necessary, I could enchant the blade without removing the generator first, but this would hopefully make it easier. Once I got the hang of it, then I could skip that part.

  Once I had the blade separated, I carefully applied a simple strengthening enchantment. This would reinforce the blade, just like I had done with my beskar sword, but since it would draw from ambient energy rather than from a soul gem, I could afford to enchant them without having to spend all my soul gems keeping everyone's weapons charged.

  A quick enchantment later, and I reassembled my blade and turned it on... after making sure that I was wearing proper safety equipment. I didn't expect any explosions, but it was better to be safe than sorry, especially considering my track record for failing enchantments. The vibroblade hummed with a familiar frequency, which shifted and changed as I moved it around. After a few seconds of running the weapon, I clicked it off, raising the weapon up to study the blade. To my slight surprise, the enchantment remained intact.

  "Huh… well, I just made a whole lot of extra work for myself," I said, shaking my head and slipping my blade back into the sheath.

  The rest of the trip home was spent enchanting everyone's combat knives as well as enchanting Corvak's, which he had given to me before we left, for this express purpose. I treat his weapon with the same level of enchantment as my own sword, though rather than getting fancy, Corvak asked me to simply double stack the cutting enhancement. It left me beyond dazed and tired, but the end result would make Corvak even more deadly than before.

  I handed him his newly enchanted and reinforced blade once we landed on the , the Mandalorian accepting it with reverence. There seemed to be a bit of cultural significance in a leader handing his subordinate an improved weapon, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. Either way, he was happy to receive the weapon back, and promised to experiment with it before bringing it into battle so he would know its limitations.