“Full House!” crowed Baillo, Pirate Captain Garryll Gates’ top pilot. He laid his hand down to the dismay of the other denizens of Eyesore who were sitting in the smoky bar, then set his hands around the small fortune that had grown throughout the night.
“Hold on a damn’ second,” said one of the players, a brute of a man with a thick neck and foul breath, as he grabbed the pilot’s comparatively thin wrist. “Youse is a damn’ stinkin’ cheater, you swindler!”
“I ain’t a cheat!” the Pirate pilot replied, yanking his wrist loose of the man. “You just suck!”
He went back to sweeping his money into his pockets. The rather larger man took offense to it, however, and with a yell, brought his fist back.
“Son-of-a-whore!” the man roared and slammed his fist back down towards the pilot’s barely-turning head.
It never connected, instead deflecting off of the upraised arm of a man not as tall as the brute, and far leaner.
“Hey, now. It’s not in a man’s honor to yell lies and attack someone when he loses, is it? Or are you not a man, and rather some bastard rancor?”
The large man yelled and gripped the heavy bar table with his two meaty paws, lifting it with barely a strain, and sending the remaining money and cards spilling onto the ground.
“My money! Aw, you wanker. You’re just askin’ for it, ain’tcha?” Baillo said, hopping to his feet.
The huge man ignored it, and swept the table sideways into his new adversary. The only problem with that was that his enemy was Garryll Gates, newly-minted Pirate Captain and combat-specialist extraordinaire.
The clumsy attack missed him by a comfortable margin, and was answered by a series of short, quick punches into the larger man’s back.
“Rah! Mates! Teach these cheats a lesson!” the huge man roared. Half the bar had emptied out, Eyesore’s inhabitants all too wary of the oft-deadly bar fights that cropped up in the dozens of bars and cantinas every day. The other half were men from either party, unarmed - as that was the bar’s contribution to public safety - but still dangerous.
Instantly, both sides erupted into an all-out brawl, forming a makeshift ring of smashing blows and flailing limbs around the two combatants. Gates dodged a life-ending haymaker from the man’s huge fist, responding with a couple of quick shots of his own. The man grunted in pain, then tried to sweep his thick arm around to knock Garryll over.
The Osk man dodged - mostly. The hit spun him around and knocked him down, despite only catching a glancing blow. The huge man roared in victory and brought his fists up over his head in a finishing axe-blow.
Baillo crashed into the man, a heavy shoulder tackle with all his weight behind it, and managed to knock the giant off-balance for a moment before the huge man regained his balance and swatted the hired gun over a table. The brief respite was enough for Gates to roll to his feet, but a trickle of blood was leaking from a cut on his forehead and blurring his vision.
“Well, shit,” Gates muttered, favoring his right side, where the blood wasn’t dripping into his eye. A table to his left crashed over, a merc that Gates didn’t recognize sporting two swelling black eyes already and mouth leaking blood. Another man slid over the table, heavy combat boots kicking the man on his way past.
“Looked like you could use a hand,” said the stranger. Gates spared him a glance, raising an eyebrow. The giant yelled something that was unintelligible, but unmistakably rage. “Gates.”
The gears clicked - he’d seen this man a bunch of times before. Most recently on Skye. “Ah. Joamer Reistlin. Yeah, sure. Help me mess this guy up.”
The man grinned and stepped up, cracking his knuckles as he did. Again, the huge man roared, and reared back, all 150-kilos and two-plus meters of huge being. And as he dropped his huge fists, the two Stormtrooper-trained men burst into action, and took him apart.
The double-fist blow smashed through the air harmlessly as both men dodged it and circled around to either side of the man and launched attacks on him. Gates kicked the man in the side of the knee, hard enough for a sickening, audible crack as the cartilage and bone severed and left their customary place. Joamer crashed a fist into the underside of the man’s chin, hard enough to lift the man several inches off the ground.
The giant was stunned, broken, unbalanced, and very, very unconscious. He crashed to the ground, crushing the playing table underneath his girth. Gates blinked another bit of blood out of his eye, then grabbed a chair and sat down.
Around him, the melee continued, as his band of mercenaries and the giant’s men wailed on one another. Soon, thought, they realized their leader was down, a spreading pool of blood leaking from the man’s destroyed face. The fight went out of them, and one by one, the giant’s men fled the bar.
The bartender sighed and walked around his bar, moving to the door, where he flipped the switch to signal his place was closed for the night.
“Gates, you’n’yer crew need to find a place to be by themselves. These passin’ through pirates don’ like you Osk people any more than this half o’ the sector,” the man said to Gates, lifting a table back up and placing a bottle of alcohol on it, then drawing a chair over himself.
“Why? This is Osk’s world - not Black Sun, not the Hutts’, not some two-bit enterprise! This is Snipes’ world - we have our right to it!” Gates said, then nodded and grabbed the bottle. “He doesn’t roll over for anyone - neither will I or my men.”
“But how many Captains do you see muckin’ it with us commoners?” Joamer asked, accepting the bottle when it was offered to him. “Thanks. But yeah. Gates - you’re the only one I’ve seen in a while.”
“I can’t keep my men cramped up in my gunships. They’re just not big enough to live in twenty-four/seven,” Gates said. “I’ve over two dozen men and women to worry about.”
“Then it’s pretty clear you need a ship,” Joamer said, setting the bottle back down.
“There’s an extraordinary lack of ships that fit the bill on Eyesore right now, Joa,” Gates said, glaring at the empty drink.
“So steal one. The Empire, the Republic, some other shipyard world; they’ve all got plenty of the small stuff you need,” said the other man, crossing his arms.
Gates rubbed his chin, musing over the thought, mentally imagining the nearby sectors, before snapping his fingers. “How’d you like to come with me on a stealing-shit joyride to Yaga Minor?”
“One of the most important Remnant shipyards?” Joamer asked, and was answered with a confident nod. “Well hell, it’d be out of my reputation to say no. I’m in.”
