"ART!?!?" Arken's blood pressure rose, as he gestured towards one fighter. It had two naked inflatable humanoid dolls that were glued on top of the dorsal hull in a… rather
intimate position,
"Do you have any idea how hard it was to get these in here!? You will spend the rest of the day scraping off all of your vandalism, or I swear to…"
Suddenly a distant boom rumbled beneath Arken's feet and he stopped yelling. He listened for a bit, hoping to get a clue as to what it was. After a few seconds, Mortimer Mercal ran into the room in a panic,
"Sir, a large transport has landed nearby the facility and has deployed hundreds of battle droids. Ten droids have entered the base, but they appear to be severely outdated models. Five of our own battle droids are already moving to engage them and are attempting to push them back."
Arken's tone quickly switched from rage to focus,
"do you have scans of the situation?"
"I do," Mortimer produced a datapad and activated a holodisplay of the area,
"he has the rest of his force in reserve while the advance party is testing our defences. The reserve appears to be staying close to the transport."
Arken rubbed his chin thoughtfully and spoke as if thinking aloud,
"hm. The freighter appears harmless, but literally no one flies a harmless freighter these days. But what we are seeing here is a lot of hardware. Whoever this guy is, he's not going to make a lot of money on my bounty. I've seen the bounty listing. He has way too much overhead on this job. Those droids are almost 900 years old, but they are hard to get. Buying him off my bounty is simply not an option, but we can't really hope to defeat him, and I'm too old to run."
Then, suddenly, an idea hit him. Or, rather, a whole sequence of ideas and schemes hit him. It was something that should have occurred to him several months ago, but in retrospect, it was hard to "
see the forest through the trees" so to speak. Arken literally needed to be
under attack in order to see what needed to be done, and this was a
perfect situation for him. But he needed to act quickly.
"Mortimer, have our newer battle droids push back against their older ones and force them back out of the facility for now if they can. While that is happening, have our Saberdroid Starfighters strafe their reserve army as much as possible, while being careful of that transport. I suspect that transport is armed, but even so, those saberdroids are sophisticated enough to last long enough to do significant damage to their little army. Do not damage the transport or the owner though. We need that ship, and the one in charge of this assault. But we do need to make this job as expensive as possible for them."
Arken then turned to his pathetic son,
"YOU! I finally, for the first time in your meaningless life, have a use for you! Forgot cleaning the fighters. Come with me to my office."
Arken then strode out of the hangar, down the hall, and to his office. The whine of fighter engines starting up could be heard behind him.
He walked into his office and straight to a locker. From there, he produced his custom
Glastros Undercover Armor and proceeded to put it on beneath his business suit. When he was fully redressed, he grabbed a
blaster from his desk and fired three rounds into his computer. He then grabbed an envelope that held merely 50,000 imperium credits inside it. The envelope constituted all of his physical money on the whole station, and the rest of his money was either liquid in offworld accounts or tied up in a monstrous network of shell companies and security assets. His underworld credits were held in a secret bank known only to himself and his assistant droid back on the ship, the
Silent Profit, which was very far from here. There was simply no way to make sufficient profits from just simply raiding the facility. If, whoever this bounty hunter was, wanted to increase his returns, he would have to be less of a brute, and more of a businessman in his own right…
He then grabbed a poison capsule and slid it into his cheek. A politician/businessman of Arken's caliber would always have one available for situations like this, and with the bounty calling for Arken to be taken alive, this was probably his strongest leverage. Plus, he knew how to sweeten any deal…
He then tossed his blaster to
"Doofy" Dobson and said
"Here, son. Make yourself useful and hold this"
Just then, Mortimer barged into the office, panting,
"sir, our defences have engaged the attackers. Our battle droids are significantly superior to the enemy's but are outnumbered 20-1. Our Saberdroid Starfighters give us an aerial advantage against their troops, but we only have four of them and they simply cannot last forever against a force this size. I hate to say this, sir, but our only options are retreat or surrender."
Arken grunted,
"we are not running. Even if it was a desirable option, there's nowhere for us to go. But this can be turned to our advantage. Let all five of us," he gestured to Doofy, Brick, Wall, and Mortimer in the room,
"go out and talk with our guest. I think we have been far too rude for far too long. Actually, on second thought, Brick, please go get refreshments. We need to start exercising our hospitality. Order what forces we have left to stand down and… Doofy? Maybe you should get ready to show him your… best sock-puppet routine. I think you should take point when we go out to meet him. Would you like that?"
Cameron Tyris
Arken Dobson
had arranged. 
