Vow of Silver Dawn Chapter 18

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As always, I recommend this, since it looks a lot better!
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Chapter 18: There is a High Price to Heroism
By 国王陛下, Translated by 74translations
Notes at the end

	Shawn was hiding in the forest, making as little noise as possible, perfectly blending into the environment, awaiting the perfect opportunity.

	It had already been some time since he parted with his Master, and the shooting outside the manor had died down somewhat, as the pirates had succeeded in suppressing all outside resistance, and were now at last able to break through into the structure itself. Pushing past some of the dense foliage, Shawn could clearly see up ahead the figures of a few pirates, on their way back with their ill-gotten gains.

	But it was clear the pirates weren't done yet.

	On the one hand, based on their spoils, most of it had come from inside the manor itself, with all manner of priceless artworks or huge stacks of credits. But at the centre of the manor there were a number of rooms, and it was clear that they had not managed to get in. There was the central control room, the armoury, the underground generator… Nothing Shawn saw indicated that they had managed to plunder those particular facilities. On the other hand, there were a number pirates who had withdrawn from the manor with serious injuries, looking absolutely battered. Some called for their comrades to return to the manor to render aid, though seeing as none volunteered, they were forced to simply curse under their breath and fall back with the rest of them.

	Whether it was the manor's security force managing to regroup in time, or his Master demonstrating her power, it seemed that there was no need to be concerned for that side of the manor.

	What came next was his own side.

	Just then, not too far from where Shawn was hiding, a group of pirates had broken into the greenhousea located in the middle of the woods, haphazardly disassembled the advanced machinery contained within, and ran off.

	A smuggler's ship, remodelled by the look of it (and poorly done), shakily landed on the icy rocks outside the forest, and awaited the return of the pirates.

	Shawn quickly came up with a plan, and quietly made his way over.

	The pirates were a mob in every sense of the word. Their arms and apparel simply radiated disorder, and most seemed to utterly lack any form of discipline, relying upon firepower and numbers to achieve an overwhelming advantage, which would be how they managed to get past the greenhouse's rather flimsy defenses.
	Nevertheless, these people had won themselves what seemed to be a great victory, raking the manor with blaster fire with careless abandon, and lazily throwing the occasional firebomb into the meticulously kept forest, transforming it into a sea of flame.

	Shawn quickly approached, but was in no particular hurry to make himself known, rather choosing to hide and carefully observe their behaviour.

	A disorganized mob they may have been, but to seamlessly infiltrate he'd still need to carefully prepare. It was clear these pirates were roughly organized into a few dozen small teams, but in each team each individual had two or three they were familiar with, and the relationship between teams seemed rather delicate. To Shawn, it was all rather a mess.

	Worse, when these people were shouting at each other, they did so with heavy accents. It was a struggle just for Shawn to listen, to say nothing of attempting to imitate it.

	Luckily, after watching for a while, an idea came to Shawn.

	His gaze was firmly locked upon a trio of pirates clad in tattered armour a far distance away, hanging about far from the other teams.

	Of the dozens of people, those three were the most isolated, so Shawn chose them. Taking advantage of the night, the Jedi Apprentice moved as though a spectre through the burning forest, his figure just so obscured by the flame that neither naked eye nor scanning device would be able to see him.

	Though his opponents now might have been a disorganized mob, Shawn nevertheless remained cautious, and it wasn't until he was half a metre from the trio of pirates that he acted. Channeling the Force, Shawn slammed two of the pirates' heads together as though they were caught between a pair of great tongs, while leaping into the air a great height, and bringing his foot to the third's throat.

	Nearly simultaneously, the three crumpled to the ground.

	After dealing with them, Shawn helped himself to the armour and cloak of one of the pirates who was of a similar build to him, before hiding their bodies in the forest.

	In the space of about 10 seconds, Shawn had finished his simple disguise and helped himself to the pirates' potentially useful equipment——a blaster, thermal detonators, and a canister of fuel, before "rejoining" the main pirate group.

	If it was going to be impossible to seamlessly sneak into a team, might as well make his own one-man team.

	It wasn't as if any at the front of the mob paid him any notice anyways, with only a few in the group noticing Shawn from a distance away, and rudely shouting out for him to hurry and catch up with them.

	Hearing this, Shawn knew he had made the correct decision, and the next step made itself clear to him.

	The 3-man squad he had picked clearly had very little interactions with the rest of the pirates. After boarding their ship, so long as he spoke and acted as though he was utterly exhausted, it should be fine. Any other conversation would have to wait until he got to their base.

	However, just as they were about to board the ship, there was a sudden interruption. Some of the pirates were cheering, when they were interrupted by the sound of blaster fire.

Shawn, startled to his core, shakily followed behind the other pirates, and looking back, could see that a fire had erupted.

	A small ship crashed adjacent to the pond that was in the middle of the forest. Based on its markings, it clearly wasn't a pirate ship, but rather that of those fleeing from the manor.

	This too, startled Shawn to his core, as he and his Master had already determined that there should be no ships within the manor, so where could this one have come from? Was there an emergency shuttle bay somewhere in the manor?

	But the surprises were still to come.

	After the pirates had shot down the ship, the cabin doors opened wide, and out spilled a number of black-armoured security guards, though as soon as they left the ship, they were subjected to concentrated blaster fire.

	The nearest pirates then quickly swarmed into the ship, and soon came a woman's cry.

	"Release me, you maggots!"

	“Please don't kill me, please oh please don't kill me..."

	Some were crying, others shrieking, and others berating... there were all manner of reactions, and all were dressed as servants. Dragged out the ship by pirates wearing nasty smiles, they were lined up in a row in front of the wreckage of the ship, and at a glance Shawn counted 10.

	Judging by the red dress, the woman at the front of the line was none other than the manor's housekeeper, Li Qiong!

	In an instant, it all seemed quite obvious to Shawn: When the alarms sounded, Li Qiong and a group of servants had made their escape. They ran to the dock hidden in the forest and found themselves an escape craft, and with the help of some of the security staff, took off.... and to their great misfortune got immediately shot down.

	In truth, this outcome was the inevitable outcome. The entirety of the asteroid was covered by the pirates, and the surrounding natural satellites had long been pounded into nothing. Given the circumstances, the fact that the ship only crashed and didn't explode in a ball of fire already constituted incredible luck.

	Ultimately it was just a question of sooner or later.

	Of course, the bloodthirsty pirates would have never let these servants go, and exhibiting them in the fashion they currently were was for the purposes of evaluating each of their worth.

	The valuable would be taken away, to be sold later at a high price, the not, target practise.

	Already, a few of the older servants had been deemed worthless, and now faced a number of raised blasters!

	Shawn stood at the far end of the group of pirates, and felt a chill run through him.

	Even though he was merely an apprentice, Shawn had followed his Master across the galaxy for many years now. At 17 years old, he had already seen such unimaginable darkness, so to him such behaviour seemed almost like it was just in "human nature".

As a Jedi, however, sweeping away such darkness was in his "human nature."

There were close to a hundred pirates here, and undisciplined as they were, the vast majority were armed with blasters, if there was a shootout, these unarmed civilians would be right in the line of fire. To say nothing of the fact that there were fighters hovering above, and that smuggler’s ship’s gun turret aimed right at their location.

So naturally the logical conclusion would be to pretend as though he hadn't seen them, and while the pirates' attention was busy with their spoils, sneak aboard the smuggling ship, do away with the pilot, and use the vessel to make his escape. His Master had not hesitated to remain in the manor in order to better enable Shawn's flight, after all.

	But it took Shawn only half a second to come to his own conclusion: Raising his blaster, and taking aim at the pirate that looked the most like they were in charge of the mob, and fired twice, instantly striking down the pirate!

	While they were still startled, Shawn then grabbed all his thermal detonators and lobbed them into the back of the crowd, where the most pirates were clustered. A few loud bangs later, the pirates had been scattered like weeds blown into the wind, with screaming and shouting coming from all over.

	But Shawn didn't use this opportunity to escape, instead he was at the centre of the chaos, and aiming his blaster at the pirates who were guarding the servants, fired in quick, precise, bursts. One after another the pirates went down, like livestock to the slaughter. It wasn't until more than 10 had gone down that any of them finally seemed to react to Shawn's presence.

	A few blaster bolts flew towards Shawn.

	Shawn had been prepared for this, and dived to avoid the fire. Several of the closer pirates who could give chase attempted to do so, but found that they were engulfed in a wall of fire that erupted from beneath their feet——Shawn had sprayed the oil here ahead of time, such that when the survivors attempted to pursue, Shawn's counterattack would bring them down where they stood. So far, Shawn had been quite successful in drawing attention to himself.

	Whether it was fear or wrath, Shawn had managed to draw all the pirates' focus away from their spoils.

	Thanks to Shawn's rather excessive success, a great number of the pirates had chosen to simply scatter, leaving behind only a few that were willing to chase him.

They soon quickly found out that pursuing a target, whose appearance they only vaguely knew, into the woods in the dead of night was tantamount to suicide.

	Shawn's figure never left their field of view, never too far nor too close, always seeming like they were just about to catch up. As soon as one actually did however, they were met with a precision blaster bolt to the face. When the pirates tried to return fire, they quickly found that the figure they were pursuing had vanished from view.

	After a few more "rounds" of picking off pirates one-by-one, not even the bravest among them didn't dare to continue the pursuit, and instead opted to flee. However, the act of turning around and fleeing made them rather excellent targets, and from the shadows of the forest came an unending string of shots, precise, and without mercy.

	Shawn continued to fire the blaster and only stopped when it ceased to function, and after looking over all the defeated pirates, without wasting anymore time he hurried back to where the maids were, as the smuggler’s ship that had been parked nearby had already begun to take off.


Translation Notes
Alt Title: Freedom Ain’t Free

a This was described as a "生态舱", which literally would be "ecology cabin," cabin as in like, the cabin of a ship or plane, and I have no idea what this could be. Like, maybe it's the translation of some Star Wars term I'm not familiar with. At any rate, I'm imagining a hermetically-sealed building designed for ecological studies, which, lacking a specific term, "greenhouse" is vaguely close enough.

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Shawn on line 92: There are some corners of the Universe which have bred the most terrible things. Things which act against everything that we believe in. They must be fought.

Shawn on lines 98 through 116: Exterminate!