19. Chapter

Tony stared. He looked at the timestamp. It was sent just two hours prior. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. Then, he opened them and read the message again.

::Do not take the bounty. Trap.::

That was it. No hints or explanation. He thought of how the ship started melting from the 'artifact.' "Well, it's a little too late for that," Tony grumbled to himself, wishing FRIDAY was there so he could argue on the logistics of it. He quickly typed up a message and sent it back.

::Yeah. It was a trap. Who set it up?::

Staring out the window, Tony wondered what he should do next. Realizing that, without his workshop, he had a lot more time on his hands, Tony set to work. Projecting a holographic keyboard so he could type with speed, Tony set about hacking into the transmission system. Tony respected Paramexor enough not to hack into the bounty hunter's account, but he set an alert so that he would know when Paramexor read his message.

Not knowing how long it would take to reach Paramexor and how often the guy checked his inboxes, assuming he had more than one, Tony considered himself finished for now. The alerts he put on the Bounty Hunter's Guild had flagged several bounties that fit the search parameters he set up. He flipped through several bounties that his crew would not be able to take.

Near the end, Tony found a bounty specifically for him; one of the artifact collectors that they've worked for twice had approved of their 'discreet tactics and quick delivery' and wanted them to take care of another one. Actually, Tony cheated quite a lot on both of those bounties. Finding out that one of the artifacts was legally obtained, Tony had contacted the current owner, bought it for less than the cost of the bounty, and recuperated his losses when he handed the ancient statuette over. For the second one, a stolen clay figurine, he had FRIDAY and her orb pick up the box it was in and fly to safety. Fortunately for Tony, this bounty was for a legally obtained artifact.

Not wanting to lose a customer, no matter how shady, Tony went through his contacts, searching for one that could perform the bounty for him. The conversations he had with each of his 'acquaintances' were odd.

"Oh, you can't? Too far away? Wait- why the kriff are you on Coruscant? Don't they have about fifty separate bounties on you?"

"Hey, Haiyo? Oh, it's me, Tony. I have a bounty that I- Huh? Have you tried turning it off and on? ...Well, try it. If not, open the back panel… Yeah, the back panel is in the back."

"Hey, this is Tony- No, no, no! Don't kill anyone! Why, why would you-"

"Hi, this is Tony Stark, from- Yeah, that Tony Stark. I have a favor I want- What? You've met me before. We had a perfectly civil conversation. Why the kriff do you want my autograph?"

"Hi, I'm a perfectly normal bounty hunter that wants to ask a favor from yo- My name? I am… Tiny Stank… He hung up on me. He hung up on me!"

"This is Tony, we met at a BHG office two months ago- Wrong number? Oh, okay. Sorry about that."

Having exhausted his very few bounty hunting contacts, Tony turned towards his non-bounty hunting contacts, ones that were not royalty or Jedi. The first one up was Colton, the pilot of the crashed ship when he met the Organas. Considering the hero-worship the Alderaanian had for Tony and the way FRIDAY had reported that he followed the Y-not's progress over StarkNet, Tony thought that the fanboy had the most chance of agreeing to cash in the bounty for him.

"Colton, I know you're not a bounty hunter, but can you please help me out with a favor?"

Luckily for Tony, Colton was agreeable enough to buy the artifact, pick up it up from Tepasi - quite literally one jump from Alderaan - and drop it off on Anaxes. The excitable Alderaanian even offered to do it for free because of the 'life debt' he had. Tony insisted that there was no such debt and told him to keep the profit. With that, Tony signed off, feeling a pang of loss and missing Peter Parker more than ever.

Frowning when he realized that Paramexor had read his message and decided not to reply to him, Tony decided to take matters into his own hands.

::This is not a joke. It nearly killed my crew. Who set up the trap?::

That sent, he headed to the bridge of the ship to do his own research on the trap. "Hope you don't mind. I need your terminal for research purposes," Tony told Fett as he breezed past him in the hall. The other bounty hunter turned to stare after him, narrowing his eyes. "Use your words," Tony told him.

"What are you doing?" Fett asked when it became clear that Tony would not tell him anything without prompting.

"Oooh, full sentence! I can't believe you said more than three words," Tony said.

He went to a free terminal, looking up ancient artifacts that spewed out dangerous ooze. Unsurprisingly, there were zero hits. It was a long shot anyways. Tony tapped on the terminal impatiently as he considered what to do next.

Lifting up his StarkPad, he found pictures that Galee or FRIDAY had taken of the artifact and posted on StarkWeb. Isolating the pictures, he fiddled with the contrast and brightness until several lines of etchings became clear. Taking those

It quickly became clear that the language and Basic had diverged from the same root language. However, due to the sheer volume of other languages that had evolved from Mid-Galactic Standard, it was not quite as simple for Tony to decode.

Leaving the terminal shifting through extinct and non-extinct languages and writings, Tony opened a separate page to research the metal-eating fungi itself. Surprisingly, or perhaps not-so-surprisingly, Tony had much more immediate success with that search. There were some isolated worlds with a few species of bacteria that caused accelerated rusting. But what mostly caught Tony's attention was the world Haruun Kal.

Halruun Kal was a planet in the Mid Rim, not too far away from Naboo. Its claim to fame was the fact that all its natives were Force-sensitive. In fact, the kid they sent to the Jedi Temples - Mace Windows or something - had just became a Jedi Master earlier in the year.

Though he was not quite sure where he stood on the fact that another mind-reader graduated mind-reading college, Tony offered the guy a mental congratulations. Immediately after, he thought of Wanda as loudly as he could, repeatedly thinking, 'Don't mess with people's minds, don't mess with people's minds.' Hopefully, Windows would hear it with his Force voodoo and proceed to become a nice mind-reader that did not, in fact, mind-read. Hey, Tony could hope.

However, what was Halruun Kal's claim to infamy happened to be the fact that it boasted several species of both silicate-eating fungi and metal-eating fungi. One of them happened to have a 'surprisingly quick' reproduction rate and 'hues that vary from dark brown to green.'

Bingo.

The information on the fungus was sparse - the Halruunians or whatever they were called did not exactly have terminals scattered around their planet, but from what Tony could scrounge up, the species of fungi destroyed entire spaceships in a matter of days.

Days, not hours.

Unconvinced, Tony contacted one of the researchers that had updated the HoloSite, quickly charming her. An hour later, he had many different fungi DNA files, while purple Twi'lek received data on Ryloth's many desert bacteria in return. She promised him more data on Halruun Kal at a later date, if he needed it, while he offered her some theories about the evolution of Datoonine's evolution. It was a scientist's form of flirtation, at its finest.

Sometime while he contacted the very nice Twi'lek, Galee crept in to contact her friends. The Twi'lek scientist that Tony had been talking to seemed very put off by the sounds of giggling coming from Galee's corner, curtly saying her goodbyes and cutting the transmission.

Though she said sorry, Galee did not seem very apologetic. Nonplussed, Tony shrugged and headed to the cabins, finding Shoragg's dirty decontamination suit and swabbing off some of the fungi that still clung to it.

Not being a scientist, and having stolen the starship itself from a band of pirates, it was unsurprising that Fett did not have any DNA mappers on board. That did nothing to deter Tony, who simply stole some of the scanners off of the walls and converted them to something usable.

While the numbers were crunching, Tony decided to do a round with his crew, even though it was what passed for night - everyone was sleeping. No one seemed comfortable in the furnished cabins, nicknacks still scattered about as if their occupants were about to walk in.

Instead, he found Bai-Gon and Quinton on the floor of the hallway, leaning on each other and dozing peacefully away. The Aleenas were in a large pile of limbs on the rec room's couch. On the loveseat, Suffee was leaning on the right arm, fast asleep, while Charell was on the left arm.

On the other side of the rec room, on a pile of sheets Gis was asleep with Hoviv's five-year-old sister, Kovlo a few inches away. Greer was face-down at one of the tables.

As Tony turned around in preparation to find Kristoff and check in on Shoragg's family, Galee came in and looked around. She waved at him, then frowned at the look on his face. "You don't have to check on us. You and Suffee both already did a role call, right after we evacuated, remember?"

"I have a feeling that something's wrong, y'know? That 'shivers down my spine,' 'someone's walking on my grave' feeling?" Tony looked at her anxiously.

Galee looked back up at him, thoughtful. "I usually have more of a 'don't buy that, it's not your color, no matter how good it looks on the mannequin' kind of feeling. Do you want me to stay up with you?" she offered.

"Nah, it's okay. We need you alert tomorrow," Tony said, declining her offer.

"Well, if you need me, you know where to find me," Galee said with a wink. She walked over to the loveseat, nudging Charell to lean over on Suffee. Galee wiggled into the small gap between Charell and the arm of the loveseat. "What?" she asked, spotting Tony watching her. "Did you really think I was really going to sleep on the floor?"

"No, I guess not," Tony said, smirking. "You're more of the type to bully people into giving you space with pungent perfumes and glitter bombs."

"Glitter bombs?" Galee asked.

"Obnoxious little things. Glitter gets everywhere. I'd make you some, but I'm afraid you threaten the Y-not with them whenever you want to stay on Croissant longer." Tony held back a wince. DUM-E gotten his claw onto some glitter back in their college days. Tony still found glitter in his joints, from time to time.

"Coruscant," Galee automatically corrected, to Tony's quiet guffaws. She quickly shushed him, pouting. "Hey! If you don't stop laughing, I'll make a glitter-mural on your wall!"

Tony raised his hands in surrender. "I give!" Tony said. He shook his head and turned away, trying to hide his smile. "Goodnight, Galee."

"'Night, Tony," Galee murmured, settling back. "In all seriousness, though? I would really, really like a glitter-gun. People would think twice if they knew how troublesome glitter was."

Actually, that idea had merit. With all the little gears and nooks inside the technology everyone seemed to surround themselves with, glitter could be an annoyance. In fact, it could be downright lethal if the right ingredients were near certain types of power cells. Tony made note to test it out. Flammable glitter? Explosive glitter? Or… metal-eating glitter, perhaps? And the humiliation factor alone would make Tony want to create such a gun, even without the enhancements.

Tony glanced back as he stepped back into the hall, nearly stepping on Bai-Gon. The two cousins had slid down in the time he was in the rec room, both now laying on the ground, sort-of-but-not-really cuddling.

"Aw…" Tony said, pulling out his StarkPhone and taking pictures for blackmail purposes. He peeked back into the room he just left, snapping a picture of Gis and the little Rodian, then of Galee, Charell, and Suffee. He left before Galee could threaten him, remembering to step over Bai-Gon's legs.

There were two doors that had lights on. The first one led to the kitchen. Kristoff and Fett were in there, playing an intense and dirty game of sabacc. Neither men looked up at Tony's arrival. In the three minutes that Tony stood and watched the game, both Kristoff and Fett cheated twice that Tony could spot. As Tony turned to go, he spotted Fett switching out the dice with another one he had hidden in his palm. After he rolled, Kristoff reached over to shove Fett's shoulder, discreetly sliding a pill into Fett's whiskey. When Kristoff looked up to wave at Tony, Fett switched their cups.

"Stark," Fett said, inclining his head.

"Fett," Tony returned. "Kristoff." He stole a spare tablecloth off of the next table over.

"Ha! No last names for me," Kristoff said, looking pleased, though whether it was because of being acknowledged by his first name or because of the card he snuck out of his sleeves undetected was debatable.

Taking advantage of Kristoff's distraction, Fett reached out and checked the next few cards in the stack, reordering them to his preferences. "Solo," Fett said.

Trusting that Kristoff and Fett were, in fact, friends and not enemies, Tony thought it safe to leave them unattended. They weren't little kids, after all.

Down in the last occupied room, the med bay, Tony found Shoragg's wife, his ten-year-old daughter, and Hoviv by Shoragg's still form. The pirate ship that Fett had taken over was by no definition well-stocked. There had only been two bacta patches, not nearly enough for even the mildest of Shoragg's injuries.

Tony covered the two children with the tablecloth, a poor excuse for a blanket but better than nothing.

"No more."

Tony jumped, looking around. His eyes fell on Shoragg's wife. "Excuse me, ma'am?" Tony asked politely.

"No more," she said quietly, multifaceted eyes burning with some emotion. "I will not have our children carted around while my husband fulfills some lust for adventure."

"I'm sorry," Tony said. "I'll be careful, next time. I-"

"There won't be a next time!" she hissed, her voice brimming with anger as she stepped toe-to-toe with him. "Do you know what it is like? Every day, on Nar Shaddaa, waiting to be robbed, fearful for my children's life? I thought it was going to get better, with you, but no! Time and time again, my husband has been in the thick of blaster fire. 'It's fine,' I thought. 'My sweetheart is strong! He will survive.' Then, when I thought it couldn't get worse, once again, my children were in danger!" With that last cry, she burst into tears.

"I… I'm sorry," Tony said, not knowing what to do. He thought of Pepper, so scared and worried for him every time he put on the armor. But he had an excuse - he was 'saving the world.' What was Shoragg doing? Being a bounty hunter.

"Mom?" asked Hoviv's sister.

"Hey, it's going to be alright," Tony said softly, closing his arms around her in a hug. "He's going to be alright. It's okay, kids. Go back to sleep." Noticing the nasty glare Hoviv was giving him, Tony added, "Don't worry, kid. I'm not trying to steal your mother."

"When my husband wakes up, he will choose. Me and the children, or you and your crew," Shoragg's wife muttered stiffly, dabbing at her eyes with her sleeves.

"He's going to pick you and his kids," Tony said confidently. "How is that even a choice? You know Shoragg loves you."

"You are a very easy, yet very hard man to hate, Tony Stark," Shoragg's wife said.

"Thanks?"

"Please leave."

"Right, okay." Tony let go and took a step back. After making sure she was not going to come after him, he took another step back. Then another.

Heading to the box he retrieved from his workshop, he went to an abandoned room near the back of the ship and assembled the Iron Maiden armor. He carefully inserted a hyperdrive and placed some shielding on it. Lastly, he programmed it on a course around the Mid Rim, combing through the HoloNet and local servers as it went. If FRIDAY was trapped in a file somewhere, he had faith that Iron Maiden would find her.

He took the FRIDAY-Orb and pressed record. "Friday, if- when, when you get this, I give you full permission to visit Bail before you come bac. There's a Holomatter generator installed in this now. Don't get it damaged. I'm not sure how well I can replicate it," he warned. He wrapped it in a polishing cloth and placed it in the helmet of the Iron Maiden armor.

Checking to see if the coast was clear, Tony had the armor follow him to a escape latch. "Here goes nothing," he muttered, pulling the lever that opened the latch. He closed it a second later. Iron Maiden escaped into the depths of space.

"What happened?"

Tony spun around to see Fett with his arms crossed. "How did you know I was here?"

"This is my ship. I was alerted when someone opened one of the external doors," Fett said neutrally.

"Oh," Tony said. "I was trying to find Friday. My AI," he clarified, walking past Fett. He went back to inspect his slime DNA, somehow picking up Kristoff on the way.

"This is the thing that nearly killed us, huh?" Kristoff asked, peering down at the petri dish. He sounded remarkably sober for a man that was supposedly drugged. Tony glanced at Fett, wondering if Kristoff had switched it back.

"I'm not stupid enough to drink while Kristoff is around," Fett said lowly, raising an eyebrow.

"Ten and a half words. That has to be a new record," Tony commented.

Fett scowled, but it was Kristoff who answered. "Don't be an a**," he retorted.

"It's my default mode. I'm apparently very easy to hate, except not," Tony said.

"Who said that?" Kristoff asked suspiciously. "One of your a****** ex-teammates?" He scowled, but Tony just waved his hand, bringing up the files and comparing the DNA. He glanced over at the two other men, seeing that neither of them knew what to make of the data.

"Someone was trying to kill us. The fungus on the ship? It used to be a species from Halruun Kal. Then, someone weaponized it. See this right here?" Tony pointed at the end of a DNA strand. "Someone spliced bacterial DNA in. It made the fungus reproduce quickly, but it also made the DNA unstable at the same time. That's probably the only reason why we survived for long enough for Fett to pick us up. Thanks for that, by the way."

"Are you going to let them get away with it?" Fett asked neutrally.

"Not a chance," Tony scoffed. "Wake Suffee for me, will you, Kristy? If we're going to be a team, she needs to know this."

"Aye, aye, captain!" Kristoff made a complicated salute and left, leaving Fett and Tony alone in the room.

"So, how was your month? Other than stalking ships, what did you do? Steal some targets from right under any rookie bounty hunters lately?" Tony jibed.

Instead of answering, Fett typed the password onto a datapad and handed it to him. Confused, Tony took it and started flipping through. The first couple pages were of Iron Man; there were paragraphs upon paragraphs of possible weaknesses and ways to take Iron Man down. Tony had to struggle to keep his face blank when he realized that a few of them were certainly possible. Unfortunately for him, it got worse.

There were dates and coordinates, of both Iron Man and Tony himself. He listed where each crew member was and StarkNet posts like Galee's 'Shopping with Suffee and Charell! Tony wouldn't go. He never hangs out with us anymore!' and Hoviv's 'No idea where Stark holed up in this time,' complete with the dates and timestamps of each. He even noted some of Tony's and Kristoff's purchases of raw metal and correlated the repulsor claws from Coruscant to the repulsors on Iron Man.

Tony looked up, mouth dry. As if to add insult to injury, Fett drew up security footage that was taken just minutes ago, footage that clearly showed Iron Maiden following him down the hall.

Clearing his throat, Tony asked tiredly, "What do you want?"

"You free slaves," Fett said.

"Yes," Tony answered, finding no reason to deny it. Fett had all the data anyways - he already knew the answer. "What do you want?"

"I want in."

"Wait, what?"

-Insert Quote HereTony looked up, reading the identification number. Colton. He could really use some good news. With this in mind, Tony picked up the transmission, ready to hear Colton babble on about something or the other that could have captured his interest during the very short journey.

However, when the transmission connected, the excitable pilot Tony had gotten to know over the months was nowhere to be seen. Well, that was not quite correct. Colton was physically there , but the cheerful mood Tony was expecting was not present. In fact, the atmosphere the inventor was met with was downright somber, filled with a crackling tension that Tony could make out even from the other side of the screen.

Colton was in the cockpit of some spacecraft, smaller than a shuttle, but much larger than a starfighter. The lights were dim, leaving Colton illuminated by some overhead light to the man's left. Sitting stiffly on the pilot's seat, Colton stared fixedly to his right, his face casted in shadow.

"Colton?" Tony asked, alarmed by the usually perky man's silence.

"I'm sorry, sir. I failed. I wasn't able to get the artifact," Colton said, his crisp manner nearly hiding hs hoarse voice.

Tony tilted his head, listening to the rasp in Colton's voice. It was a roughness that came from screaming and crying. "That's alright, buddy. You tried. It's no big deal." He turned his head slightly to try and catch the much younger man's eye, though it was no use. The silence stretched on. The starship rumbled threateningly, and Colton flinched. "Colton, what's wrong?" Tony demanded, suddenly very worried.

Colton returned to his odd position, scanning the right side of the ship. Every so often, his gaze would land on Tony. "They never planned on selling the artifact to you," Colton said conversationally.

Something in the younger man's inflection was undeniably wrong. The hairs on Tony's arms stood on end. "Colton?"

"There were bounty hunters waiting for you." The Alderaanian shrugged. "They got me instead." The one eye Tony could see gazed at Tony speculatively.

"Are you okay? What did they do to you?" Tony leaned forward, watching as Colton's left eye darted everywhere, not pausing for more than a second. Loss of concentration? Trouble focusing? "Do you have a concussion? Head injury of some sort?" Unless they were still following him and Colton was trying to keep an eye out for them... "Are they still after you?"

Tony's fingers flew over the console as he tried to pinpoint where the transmission was coming from. It was taking too long for Tony's comfort. Too bad FRIDAY was…

No. Concentrate.

Meanwhile, the pilot's gaze returned to Tony. "They were… friendly enough. I wasn't the one they wanted, after all." Smiling a humorless smile, the younger man tilted his head, gaze distant. "They warned me away from you, told me several of their friends got killed because of you," Colton said lightly. Every word of his seemed measured, following that strange diction. Something was off.

"How did you get away?" Tony asked warily. It drew Colton's attention back to him. "Colton?"

"I didn't get away. They let me go." The tip of Colton's lip curled upward, forming something that was not quite a smile, but not quite a sneer. "They took something very important away from me and let me go."

Tony's stomach dropped. "Colton… What did they take from you?"

Colton considered him for a long moment, He looked to the right for a long moment before turning his gaze back on Tony. The single eye Tony could see darted across Tony's face, looking for something. Then slowly, deliberately, Colton tilted his head left, the light falling on his face at a new angle. For the first time, Tony properly saw the right side of Colton's face. Instantly, his stomach rebelled.

There was an empty, bloody socket on Colton's face.

Because Colton's right eye was gouged out.