“We’re about to drop out of lightspeed in this system called Eriadu. They’re hurting pretty bad from the Republic’s hyperspace blockade—not enough food to go around down there. Word is the people are ready to overthrow the governors. So those guys are already in trouble, and they ain’t gonna want any more. Perfect for us.

“Everything will start to happen fast once we show up—we gotta cut this close because of the way the Emergences are lined up. Storms, you all got your crews briefed? Everyone knows their job?”

“Dunno about these other two jokers, Kassav, but my line knows their business good,” Gravhan said, fingering a tusk. He was a Chevin, mostly just one huge head to look at him, with wrinkled gray skin and wisps of long blond hair on his scalp. He looked slow and ponderous, and maybe he was, but Kassav had once seen him rip a security guard in half with his bare hands. They were robbing a bank in a tiny settlement on some backwater ice planet. Gravhan had just grabbed the guy, and…well, if Kassav’s Tempest had a motto, it would be something like Strength Wins, and Gravhan was the perfect example of that. Just ask that security guard.

“My people are ready, too, boss,” Dellex said. “I’ve been drilling them ever since you laid out the plan.”

“I bet,” Gravhan said, and a few of his Strikes chuckled, people too dumb to know that you didn’t want Dellex on your bad side.

Kassav had known the woman for a long time, even had a little thing with her a while back. He knew she thought she was ugly as sin, and that’s why she kept spending all her money on fancy mechanical upgrades. She was making herself beautiful, one shiny new body part at a time. But all that metal didn’t do her personality any favors. She was getting prettier, sure, but colder, too. Kassav had a feeling those chuckle-happy Strikes in Gravhan’s crew might find themselves with their skulls crushed some night soon.

Oh well. Not his problem. There were always more Strikes.

“Affirmative,” said Wet Bub, giving a thumbs-up from where he sat at the ship’s primary computer console.

Sometimes people figured Wet Bub was called that because he was a Gungan…but that wasn’t the only reason. Used to be, when he’d go on raids, he’d end up covered in blood, head-to-toe. Like, soaked. Happened enough times that people got to calling him that, and he never killed anyone who said it, so he must have liked it. Hard to tell what Wet Bub did or didn’t like, sometimes.