Fixer found himself with a rather strange feeling: his plan had worked, and he could barely believe it. Even better: the remaining Tie had broken contact, so the actually risky part of the maneouver was no longer neccesary. Now... was that the ship that was behind them in the checkpoint's row? Another smuggler probably, or someone who didn't wanted to get blamed for what they had just done and was fleeing. Law abiding citizens were not native from Pressy's Thumble as long as he knew. 
And the ship was not firing at them.

Then, his improved sensors proved, once more, his oldest and most important improvement when he heard the hatch opening in the nearby room. That should be Jacques going down...

... but he hadn't heard the room's doors opening. Damn! Hadn't he locked the hatch from the outside?! 

Fixer commanded the ship's computer to get the auto pilot on and start plotting a safe Hyperspace route from outside the field. Then he heard one of the doors opening and as fast as he could, retrieved his blaster from over the console and pointed at the door: it didn't opened.

[b][i]"Krus"[/i][/b] -he called through the internal comm-link- [i]"Is Jacques by yourr plaze?"[/i] he heard another door: yet not the cockpit's. [i]"Krus, I'm hearrring the doors in ze korridor from ze Cockpit: iz zat you?"[/i] Krus had to be alive and operative. Krus had been pointing at the sole entrance of an small room in silence. Whatever happened to the inspectors down the corridor couldn't have gotten him by surprise. He... he SHOULD be in his room, dammnit!

After an instant of doubt he switched the blaster into Stun. Something still felt bad into his programming when he thought about harming neimoidians. 

And the door, finally, opened.

And the heavily retroffited E-5 fired for the first time in a long time of service to the Confederacy.