Shootout at the Qexes Saloon

In the morning we made some repairs to the ship and then headed into the nearby town at about midday. The likeliest place we could find for food and information was a cantina called the Qexes Saloon. It was a fairly small, dim place just off the main thoroughfare through town.

We had just sat down to enjoy a few drinks when a woman hurried into the bar from the street, looking anxious and moving quickly. She moved toward the back of the place, where we happened to be sitting, and slid into a dark booth next to us. She turned off the lamp on the wall and her face was fairly well concealed in the dim light.



Almost immediately afterward, two roguish looking beings burst through the door after her - a Trandoshan and a Klaatuian. They stopped just inside the door and looked around, murmuring to each other.

After exchanging a few confirming glances with each other, the three of us quickly picked up our drinks and moved to sit with the girl, who was quite obviously in distress. Shakalakahh's massive form effectively hid her from view while Ronin and I sat opposite.

"Everything alright?" I asked.

"Just keep sitting there, big guy," she said, "and it'll be just fine." She peered around Shakalakahh's arm cautiously. The two thugs walked away toward the opposite side of the bar, slowly examining the tables and booths, and the young woman seemed to relax somewhat. "The name's Tosh," she said, "Rensi Tosh."

After Ronin and I introduced ourselves and the Wookiee, Rensi explained her situation to us in hushed, hurried tones. She had traveled here in her ship, which had crashed a good distance outside of town. While attempting to travel overland into town, she ran afoul of some of the criminal element and was captured. As her captors had no particular reason to keep her and were also not particularly intelligent, she managed to escape soon enough. She surmised that the two fellows snooping around the bar were trying to track her down.

"Can you help me get back to my ship?" she asked us.

Before we had a chance to answer, the two goons were suddenly standing next to our table. They both pulled blasters, which they leveled at us, and spoke in gruff tones.
"Hand over woman!" the Trandoshan squawked in a crude imitation of the common tongue.

Shakalakahh reacted without warning, standing up and roaring fiercely. Such was the power of his cry and the enormity of his size that the pair of thugs were caught off guard. They both reeled backward, giving Rensi enough time to slide out of the booth from behind the Wookiee. She had a blaster in her hand and before I knew what was happening, there was a blast and the bright streak of plasma fire.

From a concealed pocket, I produced my little hold-out blaster. Training it on the thug nearest me, I fired a shot. By that time, Shakalakahh had managed to knock the other one to the floor with brute force. He appeared to be unconscious. My shot missed, but it was enough to send the thug running for the door. In an instant, he was out of our sight and the bar was quiet again.

Ronin quickly dug through the downed thug's pockets, coming up with some metal keys, a few loose credits and a power pack. He pocketed them and we made a hasty retreat.

To Ord Mantell

"All I'm saying, Ronin, is that you play like a child."

Sleek grinned at me from the other side of the table. "Exactly. That's why you can't beat me."

As exasperating as it was to admit, the scoundrel had a point. He wasn't entirely undefeated, but at 20 games of Sabaac to my 3, his advantage was clear. Either his strategy was iron-clad, or he was cheating. Knowing Ronin, I expected the truth was somewhere in between.

Just then, Shakalakahh's growl sounded over the ship's intercom. We were coming up on our destination. Ronin and I rose and joined him in the cockpit of the Corellian Hawk.

Outside the front viewports floated the planet of Ord Mantell, its two moons hanging silently nearby. Shortly after departing Yormban Prime, we had dropped out of hyperspace briefly to change course. We had headed for Corellia, to throw any potential followers off our trail, and had then set a course for the Bright Jewel system more or less at a whim. We'd all heard that it was an interesting place to visit, but none of us had ever been there.


We put down just outside a small town, choosing to try to remain inconspicuous rather than draw attention to ourselves by setting down in a starport, which would immediately put us on the grid. It would mean some extra hassle for the repairs we had to make, but we decided the effort would be worth our protection.

The region we found ourselves in was a desert, spotted with odd rock formations and seemingly unending expanses of sand. It was late at night, and the temperature was well below the freezing point of water. We decided to rest for the night and venture into town the next day, to see what we could see.