Time was running out again. If he didn’t have the package delivered to Ketaris by the next dawn, Grassk would have his hide. As Davosan Dogg pulled his head into his bunk to get some rest now that they’d made hyperspace, the freighter made a hard lurch to stern. The sudden shuddering stop made him groan as he pulled his coveralls back up around his shoulders.

He had to admit, back on Lasat, he didn’t think being a glorified gopher would have been his calling, but nowadays, the syndicates that the Tholothian Grassk represented had some nasty ways to make bad smuggling gigs look pretty good. And there were few who worked harder to deliver the goods than Dogg; you had to watch your step when you were traveling through backwaters like Agamar.

The Braxant Run to Ketaris had been a troubled route since the Empire fell. Phaedan pirates were growing even more bold since a number of old Interdictors had been gutted from an Imperial deep dock on Ord Mantell. Gravity well piracy, Dogg shook his head, not something he ever hoped to have to deal with, but the rough riders on Agamar had given him a word of caution when he’d picked up the last shipment.

Now here he was, stuck in a gravity well on the first junk freighter to leave the Agamar system in weeks. Dogg stretched, cracked his back, and rubbed his hands together as the sound of a saw from a boarding tube next to the door of his room began its loud whirr.

Upon the vibrosaw’s completion of its circle, the piece of hull that slammed out and down into the cargo hold was followed by the small head of an Anzellan that poked out of the hole with a yell of triumph. Dogg grabbed it by the scruff of its neck and along with it came the vibrosaw that it nearly dropped in muffled surprise. In an instant the saw started up again and came within an inch of the Lasat’s bicep.

“What’s this toy you got here?” Dogg asked, plucking the saw out of the Anzellan’s hands with a decisively deft maneuver. The creature squirmed and spat at him as it howled to someone deeper down the tubeway.

“Well, well, well, looks like we’re gonna have to have a word with your boys about how to play nice and quit gettin’ in the way of legitimate business.”

Dogg flung the Anzellan like a dart back down the tube with his right hand and followed after running at a clip down the side of the tube, gripping with prehensile toepads on his furry feet. Revving up the vibrosaw in his left hand, he grimaced wickedly to the Rodian and the Sullustan pirates at the end of the tube. Dogg gunned directly for them, looking like a ghastly acrobatic monster wielding the devastatingly torturous device,.

The Rodian fired a wild blaster shot at him while gesturing frantically at the Sullustan to do something. Finally, the dumbstruck technician punched something into a keypad near the tube and the ripping sound of vacuum pulling everything into space filled the air around Dogg.
With an angry grunt, the Lasat threw the vibrosaw out of the tube across the widening gap of space, through the pirate’s magnetic shield, and into the Rodian’s chest where it sparked and sizzled with a satisfying thunk. Dogg winced as he scrabbled for an emergency handle in the tube to avoid being pulled into the darkness of space. The handle slammed home but nothing happened.

This tube must have been a scavenged part just like the Interdictor’s gravity well. The emergency mechanisms were probably an afterthought for the pirates. As he gripped the sides of the tubes with his straining legs, Dogg concentrated on the movement above him. I really hope they look down and throw me a line before they shut off the tube.

A length of red silk scarf dropped beside his head and he grabbed it while dodging several loose mugs and a datapad that whizzed by him from the hold above. He breathed heavily as he pulled himself back onto the freighter, looking forward to the moment he could get back to his bunk and catch up on some sleep.

They’d make Ketaris in time. He’d see to that.