Jax and Naomi were four, maybe five—they’d lost count—ore cars from the car they’d left the others in. They were at the hatch to the car that was coupled to the mystery car that was blocking the Osprey’s sensors. Rudy and Skip had thus far had no luck picking up any transmissions from the train’s engine or anywhere else on the train prior to departing with Steve and Kori and their first ore module.
Naomi was doing her glowy blue interface thing on the locking mechanism when the lock clicked and the hatch swung in, to reveal a bored looking shock trooper. “Oh hell!” Jax said, pulling the shocked woman to the side of the hatch as the trooper shouted something and raised his carbine.
Blaster bolts shot through the open hatch to score the car behind them. Jax leaned in and returned fire. He looked at Naomi. “We can’t let him call this in!” He leaned out to fire again, and this time, Naomi crouched and then bolted through the hatch, tackling the shock trooper. Jax groaned and charged in behind her, leaping onto the free arm of the armored man fighting with his small attacker. Glowing blue attacker, Jax noticed. As Jax struggled, he swatted at his ear. “Rudy! Are you back? I need you to jam all comms!” Naomi wriggled and generally kept the trooper busy as she tried to hold on to his helmet, her hand lined with glowing blue tattoos.
“Grab his comm gear!” Naomi shouted.
Jax reached for the trooper’s equipment belt, ripping the comm gear off, breaking the connection to the armor in a shower of sparks.
“We’re almost done dropping the ore module off,” Rudy replied. Jax growled but didn’t reply. He was still busy with the armored man underneath him.
The trooper pushed Naomi up and away as he slammed a fist into Jax’s midsection, driving the air from his lungs. In a flash of black hair and blue jumpsuit, Naomi was back, clinging to the back of the still sitting trooper, trying to force the man’s helmet off. Her hands, and what was visible of her arms, were glowing brightly. Jax couldn’t tell what she was doing, but it must have been distracting.
Jax finally came to his senses and pushed his pistol under the struggling trooper’s arm and fired once, then again. The armored man slumped and stopped thrashing. Smoke wafted up from a glowing burn hole in his armor under his right arm where the armor was weak.
* * *
Jax gestured to the logo of the grand human Empire on the hatch leading to the mysterious train car. “Guessing that’s full of these guys.” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder toward the dead trooper inside the car behind them.
Naomi made a face. “You think?” She looked at the hatch. “What do you wanna do?”
“We can’t take an entire train car of shock troops.”
“I can,” Baxter said from the roof of the car behind them. The two humans turned to look up at the matte black combat droid, or at least his red optical scanner scatter light as it swished back and forth. The rest of him blended in with the moonless night. The droid stepped off the car, landing with a thud on the walkway before them. “You two, up and over. I can jam comms within a small radius. I’ll take care of our Imperial friends.”
“This train pulling into the station full of dead shock troops won’t be subtle,” Naomi pointed out.
The combat droid shrugged. “Neither will it pulling in missing two entire cars’ worth of ore modules.”
Jax smiled. “Point, the combat droid. Still, an ore theft is one thing. Slaughtering what must be an entire company,” he said as he scrambled up the rungs to the roof of the Imperial troop car, “is a whole other thing.”
Naomi knelt next to the control panel, her hand resting on it. The blue biological circuitry tattoos lit up briefly, then faded. She looked up, winked, then followed him up the ladder to the roof of the military transport car.
Baxter climbed up the ladder of the car connected to the military car. “I’ll have to wait here. I’m certain they’d hear my heavy ass stomping along the top of their car.”
Jax looked over. “Good call. We’ll hurry.” The combat droid nodded and crouched down.