Inspired by @arrivan I thought I'd share my group's adventures here. I like to keep a record of my games that are nice to read and can be shared with non-gamers so I've been writing them up as a story, there's no game mechanics in here or anything. Rest assured this isn't just random fanfic but an actual game I have been GMing. Sadly I'm not very good at recalling dialog after the game, so mostly I'm having to summarise the conversations, but a few were memorable enough that I've written them up as accurately as I can. I let the players decide the name of the ship beforehand, so don't blame me for the awful joke. Oh yes, and I've included pictures too because I'm just that keen.

The camera pans down from the starfield to show the night side of what is clearly a city world, an endless web of artificial lights. A dynamic class light freighter flies into view and down towards the world until it is lost to view. We wipe to the inside of a seedy cantina, where a twi’lek, a duros and a zabrak are drinking together in a booth.

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The crew of the Annual Pigeon were sitting in a cantina, happy to spend their time anywhere out of the confines of their ship whilst they killed time waiting for their Captain to arrange for a new cargo. Their newest crewmember, El, had joined them on the last run, and she was attracting the attention of the locals. Although she had a somewhat boyish figure and lacked the obvious curves of the stereotypical idea of a Twi’lek female, to the denizens of a dingy Cantina in the lower levels of ancient and corrupt Taris, she was a rare and exotic beauty.

A Trandoshan in dirty coveralls approached the table slightly unsteadily, and spoke to El in the bark-roaring of Trando. The crew looked at one another to see if any of them understood, but fortunately a Rodian, who was trailing behind him translated for them.
“My friend likes you,” he said.
“That’s nice,” El replied.
“I like you,” continued the Rodian.
“Why don’t you bother someone else?” Said El, either not in the mood for a parody scene, or having failed to spot the reference.
The Trandoshan continued to speak. “My friend asks if you want to get up and dance”, said the Rodian, gesturing to the stage where a cheap hologram of a Twi’lek dancing girl was accompanying the music playing in the cantina. El continued to try and brush him off and replied simply “I don’t dance.”
The Trandoshan tried a new approach and offered to buy El a drink, who quickly selected a ludicrously overpriced drink, by far the most expensive in the bar. With that he scowled and walked away in disgust. The Rodian laughed at his colleagues failure, and parted with the comment “I don’t think he likes you so much anymore...” as he walked away.

Whilst Jom, a Duros and the pilot of the Annual Pidgeon shared a smile with El, Lok, a young Zabrak male lacking the facial tattoos common to his people and the third member of the crew, looked visibly relieved.

As they try to pick up their interrupted conversation their com-links all chirped simultaneously and R2-KT started speaking in the familiar electronic tones of an Astromech droid. Before Lok could pull up a translation on his data-slate the transmission switched as KT patched them into another com line.

A crisp Imperial accent spoke, “...ame of your ship. There’s no point resisting.”
The voice of the their Captain, Sauto Slex, replied with weariness and resignation in his voice. “If you knew what I knew you would see things differently. The end is coming for you and your ilk Imperial.”
“I tire of your sanctimonious attitude, if I have to have you dragged back to the interrogation chamber it will irritate me, but it will go far worse for you.”
The overly processed voice of a man in Stormtrooper armour cut in. “Sir, our men have located the rest of his crew. We have them surrounded and are ready to move in on your command.”
“This is pointless. If you will not tell us the name and location of your ship then your crew will.”
The unmistakable sound of a blaster going off shocks the listening crew, but the transmission continues.
“Right, I want the... what’s that?”
“It appears to be a commlink sir, and it’s transmitting.”
“You damned incompetent mo...”
Static filled the line, only to be replaced by the familiar warble of R2-KT, but the crew had heard enough and cut off the com.

They wasted no time in agreeing that they need to get out of the cantina, back to the ship and off the planet entirely. They didn’t know why they were wanted, and they couldn’t even be sure that Captain Slex was dead, but they couldn’t afford to wait around to find out. They headed towards the restrooms at the rear of the main room as the main door was thrown open; revealing the instantly recognisable form of Imperial Stormtroopers!

Struck by sudden genius inspirations, Jom shouted, “Fire, fire!” and shot his blaster into the roof, his quick thinking setting off a stampede of beings flooding towards the main door as the denizens of the run down lower districts of the planet-wide city of Taris knew only too well the dangers of an uncontrolled fire.

Unfortunately their luck was not to hold as they discovered that whilst there was indeed a rear window in the restroom it was covered in bars, no doubt a defence against burglars in this crime ridden district. Lok pulled out his toolkit and immediately got to work on the bars, as Jom peered back into the cantina. The crowd was beginning to thin out and he desperately urged Lok to hurry. Lok had just cleared the third bar when the crowd thinned enough that the Stormtroopers could barge their way into the cantina, and Lok fired a few shots off to get them ducking before dropping back into the restroom and away from any return fire.

Moments later the window was clear and the group piled through the small window and tumbled out into a dingy back alley. Turning right, the direction more in line with the spaceport and their one chance to escape the planet, they started running. As the crossed the junction with a side alley some Stormtroopers hurrying down to intersect them opened fire and Jom caught a nasty blaster burn across his back, but they didn’t slow down and jinked around a corner before the Stormtroopers could get reach the main alleyway and open fire in earnest.

A few turns later, with the Stormtroopers still hot on their heels, they ran into the back of a bar frequented by swoop bikers, with a selection of swoop bikes and a speeder, a four-seater open topped hover car. Whilst Jom dived into the driving seat of the speeder, and Lok set to work hot wiring it, El burst into the bar, shouted that the Imperials were stealing everyone’s speeders and dashed back out to her friends just as they took off. As they sped away they saw behind them the bikers thugs piling out of the bar, seeing a speeder disappearing and the accused Stormtroopers running towards them with blasters levelled, jumped straight to the wrong conclusion and all hell broke loose.

They were more than halfway back to the space station before more Imperial caught up with them, this time in the form of Scout Troopers on speeder bikes falling in behind them and opening fire without ceremony. Lok didn’t own a weapon and El’s main weapon was a solid projectile rifle which she had left on the ship, it not being appropriate for a casual trip to the cantina, so Jom passed her his blaster pistol so she could return fire whilst he concentrated on flying.

She lined up a shot on the leading Scout Trooper, but just as she went to pull the trigger an unexpected bump knocked the blaster clean out of her hands, and El and Lok watched in horror as their only weapon tumbled away into oblivion. It took Jom a moment to realise they were not returning fire and when he turned to see what was wrong he was less than impressed with the sheepish looking and empty handed El he discovered.

The speeder took a few more hits from the pursuing Scout Troopers and started to lose altitude as one of the grav emitters was hit. As Jom fought with the controls and Lok desperately tried to affect some repairs, El dug through the vehicle for some other form of weapon. As luck would have it, there was a small can of flammable oil, and she created a hasty firebomb, but they would only get one shot. With Lok’s repairs having stopped the vehicle from crashing but not been enough to keep it flying, and Jom desperately balancing the slowly sinking speeder on just 3 grav emitters, they gambled all their lives and headed into a narrow alley mouth.

The Scouts followed suit and El let loose with the firebomb, hurling it at the wall just in front of the speeder bikes. With the tight alleyway there was no-where for them to escape, and the crew of the Annual Pigeon were chased down the alley by speeder bike shrapnel and the blasted remains of Scout Trooper armour.

The crew arrived at the dock out of breath, having had to run the last kilometre or so after their ruined speeder had given up on them. A familiar sight greeted them, the Annual Pigeon, an old but rugged design of light freighter. At the top of the ramp the battered and much repaired form of R2-KT jiggled impatiently. Jom sprinted up the ramp and headed to the cockpit to get the engines warmed up and the ship ready to blast off, leaving his friends to seal the entrance to the dock behind them to buy them some time. His task completed, Lok had just reached the top of the ramp when he was turned around by Jom. The massive shuttered hatch that sealed the docking bay away from the sky and occasional mega storms that plagued the poorly climate controlled city-planet of Taris were shut, and the dock controller was refusing to open them due to and Imperial lockdown. The ship was trapped.

As Lok ran over to the manual door control, intent on hacking into the system and overriding the central control, he could see the flame of a cutting torch starting the process of cutting down the now-disabled entrance they had arrived through, undoubtedly a well armed contingent of Stormtroopers eager to catch up with them.

He plugged in and the hacking was going well, but not nearly fast enough and he was still deeply engaged when the entrance was finally breached. He was pretty certain he was about to die, or worse, as the white armoured forms of Stormtroopers started to pour in when the ventral guns of the Annual Pigeon opened fire. Only a light freighter, the guns aboard the Pigeon (at least those still functional) were relatively weak for ship based combat, but against infantry they were devastating. With El’s good aim and the vastly overpowered guns of the Pigeon protecting him, Lok finished his task and hurried back to the boarding ramp as the massive hatch clattered open.

Jom had already lifted the ship off the ground and retracted the landing gear to give El a clear light of sight all around the ship (probably more to stop her from shooting the Pigeon’s legs off than to prevent the Stormtroopers from having a hiding skill, and had been hovering the ship with expert skill, keeping the still extended boarding ramp just inches from the decking, so once Lok was on the ramp they were off, before the ramp had even finished closing.

++++

The tenacity of the Imperials was disturbing El. She knew the crew occasionally dabbled in a bit of light smuggling, but that was hardly uncommon and nothing that the Imperials would normally pursue with such vigour. Nevertheless she could clearly see on her scanner two wings of four TIE fighters each rising from the planet to give chase, and they were still far too close to the planet to jump to hyperspace.

After a visually dynamic and tense space battle that nevertheless makes for somewhat dull reading material, the Pigeon was left drifting without power. 3 of the TIE fighters were destroyed, with a fourth, the one that had finally shot them down, returning to Taris for much needed repairs, no doubt to return later in the plot no longer a nameless minion but a Fighter Ace and ongoing Nemesis.

The crew were somewhat surprised to be alive, it seemed the remaining TIEs were content to play watchdog over the disabled ship, apparently waiting for something. Whilst Lok diving into the eninge compartment to try and get power back to the ship, El turned to KT, loyal droid of Captian Slex, and demanded to know why they were in so much trouble. KT wordlessly led them to the secondary cargo hold and banged her primary manipulator arm on a panel at the bow end, before returning to assist Lok. Thus alerted it took El and Jom little time to discover and open a secret smuggling compartment none of them had known about before.

Inside they found a large container of small packages, carefully wrapped in opaque black plastic. El immediately identified this as Glitterstim, the light sensitive drug that was highly illegal and highly valuable. That at least answered some questions and spoke volumes about what the Captain got up to on those semi regular occasions when he sent the crew away and made deals without them.

With that out of the way, and some kind of shuttle or light freighter approaching them on the long range scanners, they decided on a plan. Lok would discretely get the engines running again, they would fire off the escape pod and hopefully at least some of the TIE fighters guarding them would pursue, and they would make a break for the edge of the gravity well from where they could jump to hyperspace.

The plan went to hell instantly, when Lok tried to restart the power the engines were still locked into drive mode, and they immediately flared, alerting the TIEs to their survival and ability to restore power. With everything going to hell El opened fire on the TIEs and Jom opened the Pigeon up to maximum thrust. El got some lucky shots in and took out two of the fighters, but in exchange the TIEs got some good hits in to the now un-shielded light freighter and breached her hull. As luck would have it, it was in the port side crew cabin that was hit, and nobody was inside when it was opened to vacuum and the air and much of the contents was vented out into space. The emergency bulkhead closed and sealed the cabin off, protecting the rest of the ship as she jumped to hyperspace.

Once safely in hyperspace, the crew relaxed somewhat. Sauto had divided the Port and Starboard cabins between the male and female crewmembers, with himself, Jom and Lok all sharing the Starboard cabin, so it was El alone who was lamenting the probably loss of her possessions. Whilst they were in the vacuum of space there was nothing they could do with the cabin but wait.

El was still unhappy with the level determination the Imperials had shown over what was still a relatively small-time smuggling crime. She turned once more to R2-KT and asked for more information. Once again KT led them to the now empty smuggling compartment.

On further investigation it appeared that there was a removable panel on the bottom of the smuggling compartment that had been covered by the glitterstim, a secret area within a secret area. Inside they found an old battered ammo box and inside that, a lightsaber. These antique weapons were the symbol of the outlawed and allegedly extinct Jedi Order. This could certainly explain the tenacity of the Imperial pursuit.

The crew now needed to plan. They had evaded the Imperials for now, but their ship was sure to be recorded as wanted so they desperately needed new transponder identity codes for the ship if they wanted to continue using her and not be arrested on the next Imperial world they stopped at. They also badly needed repairs, plus they had a large cargo of glitterstim aboard.

KT produced a very short list of possible places within their current range where they thought they could get a new transponder code, based on contacts they’d made working for Captian Slex. They could either go to an illegal space station run by the Black Sun criminal cartel that spanned the galaxy, or a swoop racing and spaceship garage run by the Azure Cabal on a nearby planet.

El revealed that she was aware that the Captain had occasionally had dealings with one Viggo Jonpa Brisgi, Viggo being the title of the top Lieutenants of the Black Sun, and suggested the cargo might belong to him, and thus it might be best to head to the Black Sun base and try to get in touch with Viggo Brisgi, tell him of Slex’s death and offer him the cargo in good faith.

The others were curious that El, who had only been aboard the ship for a few days, knew this about Slex when they did not, but with a manner they were quickly becoming familiar with she brushed the subject aside. They agreed that going to Black Sun openly was their best option, and Jom laid in a course and they set off.

The base, which the Pigeon had visited previously on one of their less than legal deals, was a large asteroid mined out and turned into a space station. From the outside when the guide lights were shut off, it was impossible to detect. The reason for this was all around. The asteroid ring it floats in was the site of a Clone Wars era space battle between the Republic and the Seperatists. It contained a fortune in looted military equipment, but salvage of that kind is completely illegal and the base was concealed against the occasional Imperial patrols that swept through.

Jom requested landing clearance and the Pigeon limped in to the hanger assigned to them. Once they landed a group of local enforcers turned up at the bottom of the landing ramp, but it turned out they were only interested in making sure the docking fees got paid up front. After a small amount of hassle the crew received directions to find the local Black Sun leader, Boss Tunster.

Rather than head directly to his office at the top of the base, El decided to take a detour via the nearest Cantina, with Lok tagging along whilst Jom went to peruse the local traders. There she quickly located the most down on his luck looking miserable bum, and proceeded to flirt with him until he agreed to gamble with her, then take all his money and, crucially his blaster. During this El and Lok learned all about how he had recently lost his job and was very much down on his luck, but that did not give El any pause at all, and she even managed to wrangle a good contact out of him for some repair work.

It was cheap and battered and very poorly maintained, and when she presented it to Jom as a replacement for the blaster she had dropped on Taris he looked less than impressed, but he accepted it as better than nothing and they continued up the base towards Boss Tunster.

The lobby of Boss Tunster’s office contained 4 guards wearing rebuild clone trooper armour and heavily armed. They were a cut above the thugs that had met them at the boarding ramp. Unsurprisingly Tunster’s best men were kept close as personal bodyguards and minutemen. The pigeon crew on the other hand were wearing, at best, some tough leather jackets and carrying a single untested and rather unreliable looking blaster pistol between the three of them. Time to be on their best behaviour.

After waiting for 10-15 minutes whilst Tunster concluded his current meeting, they were admitted to his office. It had the styling of the throne room of a space pirate king. Built from scrap, one wall the viewing port of a starship bridge looking out into space, the other adorned with the ruined banners of long dead clone trooper battalions, and at the top of a short staircase Boss Tunster sat with an Admirals chair recovered from an old Jedi Cruiser as his throne. The only thing in the room that was not salvage was a large and immaculate banner behind and above the throne with the ominous icon of the Black Sun adorning it. As they saw nobody leaving, and there was nobody inside except Tunster and one bodyguard, either there had been no meeting and he had been playing power games with them, or there was another entrance to the office they could not currently see.

The party decided their best option at this point was total honesty. El took the lead in negotiations and explained about their Captian being killed by Imperials, and them finding a package that they believed belonged to Vigo Brisgi, and their desire to get it to him. Tunster asked them if they knew what was in the package and El kept a good poker face as she told him that they had no idea. He also wanted to know the details about Captain Slex’s demise, and they told him everything they knew. He told them he would contact the Vigo and get back to them, but in the meantime they were welcome to enjoy his hospitality and passed them a token they could use for food and drink whilst on the station.

I like the story so far. The players feel hungry.

Thanks Arrivan, I've got a few PMs about it too, so I'm gonna keep posting as long as people are interested.

That night Jom and El both slept in the starboard cabin, El having co-opted Captina Slex’s bunk, which at least had a curtain. The port cabin had been opened to vacuum when the hull was breached and was totally wrecked and that had been previously designated as the “ladies” cabin, occupied by El and containing R2-KT’s charging port. Lok also had a bunk in the starboard cabin, but it lay empty as he was fiddling with the engine, not for any real purpose but as an outlet for his anxiety. Being in a secret base belonging to the most powerful criminal organisation in the galaxy was not sitting well with him.

He knew El and Jom were in the cabin, so he assumed the noise from the other end of the ship must have been KT, but when he crept out to investigate he soon found himself chasing a phantom around the ship. Having circled each other stealthily once, he caught up to his prey in the port side cargo hold. Peering into the unlit room he could make out the silhouette of a biped with an elongated snout on its face, definitely not El or Jom. Unfortunately as he tried to retreat stealthily backwards to find his friends his luck ran out and e tripped over the access panel he’d left open before.

The mystery figure turned upon this new sound and pounced out at him. As he emerged into the light of the corridor he was revealed as a Deffl, a fierce looking lizardman. Without hesitation he sprang towards Lok and attempted to rip out his throat, but Lok pulled the loose access panel across as an improvised shield. The Defl ripped it from his hands but it had bought Lok just enough time to scramble away and run shouting for his friends in the starboard cabin.

The noise having woken them, El and Jom rolled out of their bunks in a panic and rushed out into the main room, almost instantly coming under fire from the invader who had moved into the central room to flank Lok. This soon turned into a pitched firefight, with El ducking into the boarding ramp space with Lok, and Jom taking cover in the doorway to the starboard cargo hold. The Defl returned fire from the cover of the central corridor and got a solid hit on El, the blaster shot burning into the muscle of her left arm.

El cried out and dropped back. With her left arm useless she could no longer wield her long slug rifle and passed it to Lok. Lok looked at it in mild horror, and instead of using it himself he tossed it across the hallway to Jom, swapping it for Jom’s second hand blaster pistol, which he duly passed to El to use one handed. Whilst El, shaky but still functional, returned fire at the Defl, Jom moved back into the ship. He circled behind the Defl and ambushed him from behind where he was exposed, the Defl, with no other choice, made a break for the cover of the port cabin but exposed form both sides he was cut down in the crossfire.

The crew eventually determined that the flexible and agile Defl had gained entry by climbing through the hole in the hull in the port side cabin. There he had found R2-KT, powered down and attached to her still functional charging port, and attached a restraining bolt to ensure she could not interfere with him. They found nothing on him except his weapons, so could only wonder at his purpose, but at least it meant that for the first time since their adventures began, all three of them had a weapon. Jom claimed the Defl’s decent blaster pistol with Lok inheriting the poor quality second hand one. Leaving KT fully charged and alert, watching the hole for any further disturbance, and with their weapons close to hand, the crew settled down once more for an uneasy night’s rest.

Come the morning they first went to a proper medical facility to get El proper treatment rather than the hasty first aid she had received the night before. Then they headed up for another meeting with Boss Tunster.

Boss Tunster told them that he had made contact with Vigo Brisgi, and that the Vigo had been most understanding of their predicament. Tunster offered them a deal. He would take the cargo from them and send it on to the Vigo, and as payment he would have their ship repaired, and he would even give them new transponder codes so that their ship would not be recognised by the Imperials. But in return for all this they would do him a favour.

El readily agreed to these conditions and Tunster outlined what he wanted from them. Tunster had a beneficial financial arrangement with an Imperial quartermaster on a nearby planet involving selling off Imperial equipment and shuffling the books to hide the disappearances. This Officer had recently discovered that he was due to be audited and needed to quickly replace some missing crates of blaster ammunition.

Tunster had agreed to supply replacements at short notice, made from refitted clone era packs, which were inferior but similar enough to pass inspection, but had now realised that he was only going to be able to supply half the required crates (4 out of 8). He could pack them in such a way that it would initially appear that all 8 crates were full, but it would not pass an inspection. Tunster wanted them to solve the problem in such a way that the Imperial Officer was satisfied that he had received delivery from Tunster and their beneficial relationship could continue.

As soon as they were alone together Lok turned on El and demanded to know why she had agreed to the job. They had a row about El making descisions for the whole group without consulting them first and how they were now even more involved with organised crime than ever before. El in turn was adamant that they had had no choice in the matter and she had made the correct decision.

They discussed various ideas about how to solve the problem. At first they thought about heading over the crates, then staging a Rebel attack and destroying the crates so that they never found them to be empty. Then they discussed breaking into wherever they were stored, moving all the ammunition so that four crates were full and four were empty, then stealing the four empty crates, so it appeared like a normal robbery had stolen 4 ammo crates. Then they realised there was an even better plan...

Once on-planet Lok made a few calls to some people he’d heard about in his past life. Given that the people he called were local criminals it began to reveal something about his past and why he was so antsy about being involved with Black Sun. With the information they provided the crew quickly found themselves with a hover truck that could not be traced back to them, and the location of a small Imperial Navy base for the local TIE Fighter defensive squadron.

They approached the base in the dead of night at the end of the base as far from the main entrance and hangers as possible. All of the security in the base was concentrated around the hangers and control rooms, with the relatively unimportant small armoury and it’s volatile contents kept well away at the far end of the base. The crew had only a wire fence and a small guard post between them and their goal.

Leaving Jom in a concealed position to provide covering fire if things went wrong, El and Lok crawled up to the fence in the cover of darkness. Lok got to work running a bypass on the fence, so that when they cut through it they would not set off an alarm, whilst El kept a nervous eye on the nearby guard tower. After a tense few minutes they were through.

Next they snuck over to the base of the guard tower and Lok pried the cover plate of the lock mechanism to access the electronics within. He successfully bypassed the electronics to get the lock open, but when it came time to put the cover plate back on he discovered it has bent slightly, and try as hard as he could he could not get it to stay on. He had to leave it with the cove plate off and the wires dangling out where anyone might spot it.

The plan called for the two Stormtrooper guards inside to be eliminated silently, so once inside El pulled out the Lightsaber she had recovered from KT’s secret compartment. Leaving Lok at the bottom she crept up the stairs to the viewing platform at the top. When a side door suddenly opened on her, the Stormtrooper inside was as shocked to see her and she was to see him, but she reacted quicker and, pressing the lightsaber up to his breastplate, activated it. The snap-hiss of the igniting lightsaber was suppressed within the now-corpse of the Stormtrooper and El deactivated it quickly before catching the Stormtrooper’s body and lowering him gently to the ground.

She then ascended to the top of the tower and with slightly more competency, although still unused to the strange weightless blade of the lightsaber, finished off the other Stormtrooper. Grabbing both of their blaster rifles she descended back down the tower to find Lok, nervously weighting at the bottom.

The next step was to get into the armoury itself. Signalling Jom that it was now safe for him to bring over the hover truck they headed to the squad concrete bunker. Lok immediately set to cracking the bunker door, and sliced through fairly easily, however his jubilation was short-lived when the door opened to reveal that the light had been left on inside, shining out of the now open door like a beacon. Lok dived inside frantically closing the door behind him and blocking out the light. Once inside he lit his stealthy glow rod and turned off the main light, before reopening the door and admitting El.

Looking out across the field they could see that their ill fortune had not gone unnoticed. The two-man patrol that should take 40 minutes to cycle the perimeter fence was heading back in their direction. Clearly they had little time to lose. Hiding inside they formed up an ambush position hiding behind crates ready at the entrance. More by luck then judgement El once again managed to use the Lightsaber to cut down the two Stormtroopers before they could fire a shot that would alert the whole base.

Whilst there was no audible signs of alarm, the Stormtroopers all had helmet radios, so there was every chance that more Stormtroopers were even now heading their way, so Lok and El quickly pulled blaster ammo crates onto a hover gurney and made a dash for the fence, El grabbing a few spare blasters and suits of stormtrooper armour on the way to make the objective of their theft less obvious. Once they got there Jom was waiting with the hover truck and he helped them load up and flee before reinforcements could arrive.

And there we ended our first day-long session. The ending was unfortunately very rushed after "a quick dinner out with friends" got stretched out into 4 hours. Fortunately our tale does not end there, for whilst my players had to go their separate ways (one going as far from the UK as the far side of Canada) we did later all agree we'd had great fun and, after I discovered it was possible to get EotE dice rollers online and didn't need physical dice, we wanted to continue the game online. So a few weeks later we began the next chapter of the story...

After the handover of the good to the Imperial Officer, it was time to report in to Boss Tunster. El, mindful of Lok’s complaints about making deals without consulting the others, invited Lok to join her in the communications room, whilst Jom got the Pigeon safely off-world and into orbit.

El informed Tunster that the handover had been a complete success, they had acquired all new blaster ammo to fill the empty crates and make up the order, leaving the corrupt Imperial Officer completely happy with the deal. Tunster was impressed and offered them another job, with real pay this time. El said she would check with the crew but mentioned some prior engagements that might prevent them accepting (a lie, but one he seemed to believe).

Lok was surprised by this turn, but El explained that as per their new understanding she was not going to make any decisions for the group without their prior agreement. In consultation with Jom they all agreed that continuing to work for the Black Sun was probably not a good idea and better to sever the arrangement now whilst they were not able to be coerced.

El called Tunster back and informed him that unfortunately their commitments would not allow them to take more work at the moment. He offered to beat whatever they were going to be paid, but she insisted that they had given their word to perform a job and they could not break that deal een for better pay, an approach they would take with him as well if he should become their employer again in the future. He accepted this and invited her to call again if they ever found themselves in need of work.

With that completed, and for now at least free from the clutches of both the Empire and Black Sun, they settled down to discuss what to do next and how to earn some money since they had pretty much run out of resources just keeping ahead of the Empire and repaying Black Sun.

Jom suggested their next stop should be somewhere they could get some paid work, and preferably not too heavy on Imperials. Looking at their astronavigation charts they decided the best place nearby would be the planet of Bandomeer. Primarily a mining world it had a thriving export/import trade going on, but not much Imperial security.

When they arrived dirtside they started looking on the holonet for available work as a light cargo ship, but they were quickly disappointed. Most of the work being offered was low unit cost bulk transport of minerals, nothing that would keep a small fast and agile ship like the Annual Pigeon running. Without a bulk freighter the easily available jobs were financially unviable.

Bandomeer was known for having more lucrative and rarer minerals but everyone wanted to trade in those, and without capital to put forward to buy their own cargo, they weren’t going to find a lucrative trade run there. Having exhausted the most obviously available jobs, El suggested they get out and start canvassing for work on a personal level. With little choice the crew agreed and headed out to find a suitable looking cantina where spacers such as themselves might hang out, along with anyone looking to hire spacers.

Half an hour later the cantina they found themselves in had no apparent name on the outside. It was dingy, and crowded and had a live jizz-band playing on the mall stage. El suggested they split up and talk to people and see what they could find. Jom headed to the bar first, got himself some Space Whisky and headed over to the stage to check out the band. They were ok, although not the best he’d head by a long shot, and in their break he got chatting to them about jizz music, pretty much completely forgetting why he was there.

Lok stayed on mission, but with even less success. Having tried and failed to strike up conversation with several individuals he retreated to a corner and used his data slate to connect to the holonet again and continue to look for publicly advertised jobs.

El had better luck. She took a seat a the bar and bought a drink and took some time to watch the crowd. It quickly became clear that although there was no overt organisation to it a lot of people were here just to talk to one specific individual, a Meerian female. She was seated at a table near the back, and was speaking to many individuals in turn. When one person left another would emerge from the crowd shortly afterwards and replace them. They would have a casual looking chat, and maybe occasionally a data chip would pass hands, but there didn’t seem to be any money being exchanged. It seemed El had located a local deal broker.

El couldn’t tell how the queue system worked, or even if there was one, so when the next supplicant left she slipped quickly into the vacated seat. She was met with a raised eyebrow and an appraising look that took in her clothes, her hands, the missing tip of her lekku and most of all her eyes. It was quite intimidating, but El didn’t let it show and simply returned a simple and steady gaze.

“Good evening, I don’t believe we’ve met”, said the deal broker.
“Ah don’t believe we ‘ave, but I think maybe we could help each other.” Replied El.
“Oh yes?”
“Indeed, ah am looking for some work, and ah think maybe you are someone who has work that needs doing.”
“Well it seems at least you have a keen eye and a sharp mind behind it. What sort of work are you looking for?”
“There are three of us, we ‘ave ah own ship and we’re pretty versatile.”
“What sort of ship?”
“A light freighter, dynamic class.”
“Armed?”
“Yes.”
“And your crew?”
“Also armed; it’s a dangerous galaxy you know?”
“Ideal. I have a job in mind, something big that pays well. But I don’t know you, and from the looks of you you aren’t local so there won’t be anyone around who can vouch for you. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a nice easy job, and if you perform as well as I think you might maybe we can talk about the bigger job. If it doesn’t work out you still get paid for the little job. How do you feel about, let us say 'asset acquisition'?”
El grinned as the deal broker outlined the mission.

Upon gathering up her crew, and establishing that neither of them had succeeded in getting a job, El explained to them that she had found a mission for them. It would pay 4,000cr, and although she’d tried to increase the pay, PulTan, as the deal broker had introduced herself, had refused and pointed out that this was just a trial run, the real payment would come if they succeeded and got the proper mission. All they had to do was ambush a special shipment that was being transported by ground vehicle the next day. It was a shipment from an Offworld Mining Corporation research station into the corporate warehouses in the city ready to be shipped offworld. El didn’t know exactly what the cargo was precisely; she’d been told it was an experimental weapon, so they should be careful with it, but that is wasn’t volatile so they weren’t in any danger.

Lok was concerned about the morality of this, not wanting to get away from the Black Sun only to get straight back into crime and El reassured him that this was recovering stolen property and totally ethical. Reassured that they were doing the right thing, Lok agreed. Jom seemed happy to be doing paid work regardless. They retired to the ship to make their plans.

I’m enjoying these stories! Thank you for writing them up!

Thanks Brad, I'm glad people are enjoying them.

Lok found he was sweating, even though it was extremely cold standing on the open landing ramp as they flew a dozen meters above the ground. Part of him was scared of falling off, even though both he and El has safety harnesses on keeping them safely tethered to the ship. Part of him was scared that Jom would lose control and crash the ship, as flying with the cargo hatch open was a massive and unbalanced drag on the ship, especially one that was flying so low. Mostly though he was stressed about the device El was currently holding.

They’d tested it back in the city with a forklift truck, but that was more of a proof of concept, just because it worked then didn’t mean it would work now, and if it failed he’d have let the entire team down. The device in El’s hands was an ugly amalgamation of technology. A cluster of circuit boards attached to a small crudely welded metal frame that mounted 4 pneumatic spikes and one short flexible antenna.

As they closed to within a few meters of the truck below, travelling alone upon this little used road, El looked up to the cockpit. She couldn’t see Jom from her angle but over the radio in her ear she heard him clearly as he gave the go-ahead to begin. Having practiced it a few times she knew the best way to throw this ugly mess was spinning it like a frisby, but she’d never been able to practice throwing it from one fast moving vehicle onto another and wasn’t sure how much to compensate for the wind, but it was a big target and she didn’t have a lot of time.

The device landed on the hull of the vehicle below with a thump, and immediately started to slide off, but the spikes fired as they were supposed to and the device pierced the hull and latched firmly on. That was the easy bit. The second part was where the talent and ingenuity of Lok really shined out. Once attached the device deployed micro probes into the hull to the nearest source of electrical noise, and quickly found and bonded to a control circuit within the vehicle, and then using it’s antenna formed a connection between Lok’s datapad and the vehicle.

Relieved at the success of the autonomous device he had build, Lok almost forgot that he actually had work to do now, and set about hacking into the vehicle’s data core. It was an old model and it didn’t take him long to crack, take control form the driver and bring the vehicle to a gentle stop. Jom skilfully matched speed and brought the Annual Pigeon to a graceful stop, still hovering a few meters above.

El grabbed her blaster rifle (so recently liberated from the Empire), unclipped her safety harness and gracefully dropped onto the roof of the vehicle below. At least, that was her intention. Unfortunately her right foot immediately slipped on the smooth metal and, catastrophically unbalanced, she tumbled straight off the side. Fortunately for her, the driver, a male human, had just been climbing out to investigate what had happened to his vehicle and whilst he was pounded into the ground by the weight of the falling Twi’lek, El managed to roll with it and came up pointing her blaster at the bruised, dazed and rapidly becoming terrified driver.

“Surrender” she said.
“Yes, obviously, whatever you want, please!” he babbled, torn between holding very still and trying to cover his head with his arms and ending up achieving neither.
“How many of you are there?” El demanded, as she looked over the drivers cab to confirm there was nobody else there.
“There’s four guards in the back, and the test subject.”
Jom, listening over the comms, interjected to the crew, “Are we sure this experimental weapon is a thing and not some kind of super soldier experiment that’s going to go nuts and kill us?”
El scowled but said nothing and calmly shot the driver with a stun blast, knocking him out, and paced towards the rear of the vehicle and the large shutters that granted access to the cargo section.

Jom pulled the Pigeon back to face the rear of the transport vehicle as Lok climbed down to the ventral gun turret to cover El. Given how powerful the ship based weaponry was, it was more for intimidation than actual use as a few shots from the turret would probably destroy the whole vehicle let alone whoever was in it. Having checked his datapad he informed El that the rear door was purely manual; he couldn’t control it remotely so she would have to open it by hand. Deciding that this would be highly risky, they decided to first shake up the guards inside. As Lok still had control of the vehicle he accelerated it hard forwards, braked sharply and then reversed the procedure to bring it back to El.

As the door opened and El stepped back she was confronted by a wall of fur. Boiling out of their confinement were 4 Whipids, large tusked hairy creatures, less stunned and more pissed off. The front two leapt at El, who took out one of them but was quickly overpowered by the other. As El battled her assailant Lok controlled the vehicle once more to drive it, and the other two Whipids away, but unfortunately they, along with two large cargo crates, tumbled out of the open door of the vehicle landing just a few meters from El. Knowing he could do no more from the ventral turret he climbed out and raced to the boarding ramp to assist.

El managed to shoot the Whipid currently assaulting her but she had taken a battering and now two more were facing her as she stood alone upon the tarmac. Jom and Lok joined the fight, firing their blasters from the boarding ramp, but with El so close they found it hard to get a bead on their opponents without also hitting their friend. By blind luck, one of El’s missed shot ricocheted off a vibro-ax and disappeared into the vehicle, resting some 20 meters away. The ping of breaking metal was followed by a ferocious bellow, and an enraged Wookie, with broken shackles still attached to his wrists, leapt out of the vehicle with murder in his eyes.

When the Wookie seized up one Whipid with both hands, then proceeded to smash him repeatedly into the floor head-first until there was nothing on his neck except pulp, El took advantage of the distraction to shoot the last one with her blaster rifle, finishing the fight. The four of them stood staring around at the carnage, catching their breath.

In the aftermath of the battle, flying back to the city of CITY, the crew had a chance to speak with their guest. They had recovered the two crates and discovered that each one contained a large sniper rifle and a set of solid projectile ammo. The Wookie introduced himself as Thoulyakk, a prisoner of the Offworld Mining Corporation and soon to be victim. He explained that he was the last survivor of a group of Wookies that had been used as test subjects to prove the effectiveness of these experimental weapons. They had been placed within a large force field and then shot with these weapons, the rounds apparently passing harmlessly through the field, until only Thoulyakk remained. He had apparently been kept alive only long enough to provide one final demonstration once they reached CITY. Having been rescued from his grisly fate, he pledged a life debt to the crew that had saved him. Before he found out the crew had been hired to return the weapons, he destroyed one of them by bending the barrel with his mighty thews.

Lok investigated the weapon, and although he could not find out exactly how it worked form a basic examination, his hypothesis that Ionite, a local rare and expensive mineral the crew had been hoping to be paid to transport that was known to interfere with force fields, might be involved was proven correct when he found Ionite in the ammunition. His best guess was that the weapon itself was actually totally mundane, if somewhat archaic in an age where blaster technology has rendered solid projectile weapons mostly obsolete, and the unique properties were purely contained within the ammunition.

All of this made Lok suspicious. Offworld Mining Corporation were a powerful galactic corporation closely involved with the Empire, known to care more about profits than ethics and also extensively invested in mineral extraction, including Inonite, on Bandomeer. They were exactly the sort of people who would develop such a weapon, and yet El had told them they would be recovering stolen goods.

Lok confronted El in the cockpit where she was talking to Jom and Thoulyakk. El protested that she had merely told them what she had been told, but she was clearly caught off-guard and Lok did not believe her. Jom and Thoulyakk stood by awkwardly as their argument blossomed, Lok accusing El of being a liar who couldn’t be trusted and El responding that she was just doing what needed to be done and protecting him from his own naivety, culminating on Lok storming away.

The cockpit was left silent for a moment, before hesitant awkward conversation resumed, neither Jom nor Thoulyakk choosing to take sides, before Lok returned. Slightly calmed down Lok demanded that he accompany El to the conclusion of the deal. El said she was happy for him to do it all himself if he wanted to take the lead and things began to heat up again but Thoulyakk soothed things as a neutral arbitrator, suggesting that they all go together. R2-KT, her diminutive frame somewhat overlooked at the rear of the cockpit, chirp-whistled in the negative and Thoulyakk, who secretly had forgotten she was there and never meant to include her, graciously backtracked and suggested that actually perhaps it would be better if KT stay behind and look after the ship.

As the crew decided not to leave the ship until it was time to make their delivery, they had time to kill and conversation naturally returned to the mission at hand. Thoulyakk expressed a desire for more information about what was going on with the weapons and the Offworld Mining Corporating, and Lok agreed. He further expressed that if he believed these weapons would be misused, he would not tolerate it. Jom was somewhat alarmed by this and mediated, he suggested that for now they just talk without ripping anyone’s arms ripped off, and if Thoulyakk decided that he was unhappy with the situation they could back off and make plans, rather than getting into a fight unprepared. The group also agreed that they would hear out the new mission they were being offered but they would all discuss it before they accepted or declined it.

As the time of the handover approached they hired a ground transport to get themselves and the crates over to the warehouse where they had agreed with PulTan to make the drop. As they pulled up in front of the warehouse El spoke up.
“Before we go in there, ah think ah should be clear. Mah job is to finish this deal and get us paid, and that is what ah will do. If you want to ask questions, that is fine, you can do that, and ah’ll have your back, but that is up to you.”

The group paused once more to discuss their approach until they noticed PulTan standing in front of the Warehouse. She was far enough away that she was unlikely to have heard their conversation, but she was watching their frantic discussion as they stood outside the meeting place with an amused look upon her face. With them having spotted her she approached them.

“Good evening El, it is good to see you again. I understood from our previous conversation that there were three of you, but it seems there are four now.” She let the unspoken question hang in the air. El went to respond but found herself hesitating, her usual reaction in such a situation was to lie to maintain an advantage, but with Lok standing nearby and their recent conversations about trust, she found she was unsure what to say.
“There were three of us, but the Wookie here is a new acquaintance of ours,” she said simply, after just a moment’s hesitation.
“I see,” PulTan responded, obviously having noted the hesitation. “And were you perused? You seem to be heavily armed.” She said, with a look for friendly concern.
“No, no pursuit, it’s just that you can never be too careful, you know?” replied El, with a disarming smile, getting back into her usual confident self.
PulTan smiled again, clearly satisfied with the results of their minor verbal jousting.
“Please, come inside.” She said and turned towards the warehouse. As she moved towards it the large double doors opened up giving room for the crew to bring their ground transport inside with the cargo.

The warehouse was mostly empty of goods, with just a few large shipping crates spaces haphazardly around the walls, but the central space has been cleared as a work area. There was small bundles of personal equipment lying around, a few civilian vehicles and most prominently a collapsible table was in the centre of the room covered in papers and manned by a Meerian woman talking on a communicator. It was towards this person that PulTan led the crew. There were other people in the warehouse, a mix of Meerians and other species, some working on the vehicles but notably three spaced around the interior casually holding blaster rifles and watching the crew with casual diligence. Where PulTan was dressed as a normal city-going civilian, everyone else in the warhouse was dressed in more practical clothing, either work overalls or tough outdoors clothes.

Before they reached the table the Meerian woman finished her call on the communicator and came around the table towards them. As she approached the crew could see the skin on most of her face was stiff and inflexible, and one of her eyes was bionic. It was clear that she had suffered severe trauma, maybe a burn, across much of her face and the synth-skin used to repair the damage looked good enough at a distance but seen up close it simply wasn’t fine and supple enough to replicate the fine texture and detail of a natural face, particularly in the creases around the eyes and mouth. She stuck out her hand for El to shake.
“Captain El I believe?”
“Oh, no, it just El, ah’m not the Captian, we are just... a group.”
“I see. My name is GilVan, PulTan is an intermediary we sometimes use to recruit for jobs such as this, but ultimately I am your… employer. Please, would you introduce me to your colleagues? I believe the Wookie here is a recent acquaintance?”
Thoulyakk interjected, “My name is Thoulyakk and I have indeed recently sworn a life debt to these fellows”
“Your presence here reassures me Thoulyakk, your people have a reputation for honour.”
“And this is Jom, our pilot” added El, “and Lok our engineer.”
“A pleasure to meet all of you. And is that the cargo?” GilVan added, gesturing to the crates in the rear of their ground transport. As they moved across she gestured for one of the technicians who had been loitering to unpack the creates. Whilst they were lifted off the transport and opened up Thoulyakk spoke up, “I must inform you that one of the weapons was lightly damaged, the barrel was bent, but it’s a mundane part that should be easily replaceable and it seems the unique properties are contained within the ammunition, not the weapons themselves.”
GilVan looked at him with some concern, “but the other weapon is undamaged?”
“Yes, that one is fine.” He replied gesturing at the now opened crate that contained the undamaged weapon and it’s ammunition.
GilVan turned to the technician. “Get this to Jorjj, I want it tested immediately.”

As the technician hurried off GilVan relaxed slightly, as if a small pressure had been released, and led them back to her desk. “I believe the sum of four thousand was agreed upon,” she said looking at PulTan for confirmation, “I think you’ll find this in order. It’s an anonymous cash chip, I assume you’ll find that preferable.” El accepted the proffered credit chip with thanks.

GilVan then asked El about the mission, and El gave her a brief summary of what had happened, with perhaps a slight emphasis on the bravery and skill of her team. They then moved onto discussing the promised follow up mission. GilVan explained that this would be a capture or kill mission, and that given their previous performance she did not think this would be a problem for them, however the crew was hesitant, El in particular was looking to Lok for his reaction. GilVan quickly picked up on this and asked if their hesitation was an ethical concern, which the crew agreed it was.

For context, she started to explain the function of the weapons they had most recently recovered. She explained that the Offworld Mining Corporation worked closely with the Empire, providing them with bulk ore for the mass production of their starships and weaponry, but also in developing new technology. One such development, an offshoot of the Ionite ore found on Bandomeer was these new weapons which could shoot through forcefields.

At this point, to GilVan’s surprise, Thoulyakk interjected and explained they he knew all too well what these weapons could do. He told her of his captivity and the death of his clanmates at the hands of the Offworld Mining Coporation as test subjects used to demonstrate the weapon’s abilities.

GilVan expanded on this and explained that the weapons were being made for the Empire. She explained that it was common practice for politicians giving public speeches to be protected behind invisible forcefields, but that she believed this weapon would be used by the Empire to assassinate political opponents, particularly certain ex-Imperial Senators and planetary leaders who vocally opposed the Empire’s policies.

The weapons the crew had recovered were the only current prototypes. GilVan wished to follow this up by eliminating all the data on the weapon, as well as the man who had created it, a Dr Nalrid. Thoulyakk knew this name all too well. If any one person was responsible for his captivity and the death of his caln, it was Dr Nalrid.

GilVan explained that she was planning a raid on the main research base where the weapon had been designed. She had intelligence to suggest that if the base were to come under attack, Dr Nalrid would evacuate along with a copy of his data. They knew the primary escape plan was for him to take a shuttle and flee to an Offworld Mining Corporation cargo ship in orbit. Whilst they could destroy the shuttle to prevent his escape, they did not know what his next reaction would be, so GilVan had decided that rather than risk him doing something unexpected, they would let him thing his escape had worked and ambush him in orbit.

This is where the crew came in. As a small team of multi-skilled mercenaries with their own spaceship they were exactly what GilVan needed to catch Dr Nalrid. She suggested that they could either sneak aboard beforehand and ambush him when he arrived, as long as they were undetected so as not to warn him off, or they could assault the transport overtly after he had landed but before they made the jump to hyperspace, if they didn’t think they could pull of the subtle approach. GilVan also gave them some basic information, the ship in orbit was a Wayfarer Class Medium Transport, which meant they could research the layout and specification beforehand to make their plan, and warned them that there would be some pilots on board as well as some technicians and probably some basic security guards.

She was happy for them either to capture the doctor and return him to her, or kill him, as long as his knowledge did not escape. Likewise the data he had must either be retrieved or destroyed. No information can be allowed to escape.

El questioned this, she wanted to know if the information would not already be in other places, and GilVan explained that if it had been an Empire program it probably would have been, but their advantage in the situation was that this weapon was being designed by the Offworld Mining Corporation, a competitive commercial organisation. Her intelligence suggested that for operation security, to prevent other corporations stealing their data (or even the Empire taking it without paying) the data was highly restricted to only one site and never transmitted even under the highest encryption.

Finally, with the plans laid out, it came time to discuss payment. GilVan began by pointing out that her proposed price was a reasonable one and whilst some people would automatically try to haggle by asking for double or more, as professionals they would take her seriously. She offered them 12,000 credits for the job upon completion. El took the time to choose her words carefully, obviously this would not be an easy haggle but she could not simply accept the first offer without some attempt to increase their pay. She explained that the job was dangerous, and they were risking their lives and as professionals they deserved at least 16,000cr.

GilVan simply replied that they had risked their lives and successfully overcome 4 armed Whipids in their last mission for merely 4,000cr, and the high price she was offering reflected the importance of the job getting done correctly, not the inherent difficulty or risk, however the placate them she pointed out that the ship they were going to assault was a mining corporation transport ship and would almost certainly contain cargo they could steal to increase the profit on their trip. Indeed should they feel bold enough they could even steal the ship, although it would be difficult to fence a well branded corporate spaceship.

Trying a new tack, El pointed out that this plan depended on GilVan getting her side of things right first, and the mission might fail through no fault of theirs, and asked for 4,000cr up front. GilVan countered that whilst this was a reasonable request, this mission was vitally important and was unwilling to do anything to reduce their incentive to complete it successfully. Also if the plan failed on GilVan’s side of things then the crew would never begin their side, so they were not going to be risking anything.

With both her initial efforts effectively rebuffed, El looked to the rest of the crew and asked what they thought of the deal. Thoulyakk said simply that he would do this mission even if he weren’t being paid, and Lok agreed, which effectively ended the discussion.

I am really enjoying these play-throughs, Was Els made to be the 'face' or is this a role that the player just took to?

I'm pleased you enjoy it. El was never built to be the face, it's a player thing rather than a character thing. It's not that she's the most charismatic, but that she's the most driven and decisive. Indeed she is deliberately written to be an unusually flat chested and plain looking Twi'lek with a fairly crappy personality. Her back story is rich with resentment and betrayal.

Rather than heading back to the ship together, El decided to go spend her share of the money they had just earned on armour and Thoulyakk wanted to acquire some new things as well. As Thoulyakk did not even have a communicator, his only possession so far being the vibro-ax he had taken from a Whiphid and a utility belt (being a Wookie he didn’t even have the clothes on his back), and they had recently attacked a powerful corporation, Lok suggested he accompany Thoulyakk until they could buy him a communicator. Jom was left to return to the ship alone in the rented ground transport. It was as he rounded the final bend and could see the spaceport containing the Annual Pigeon at the end of the street that the sniper shot him.

The windscreen partially deflected the blaster bolt, meaning than instead of a killing shot he was merely badly wounded as the bolt grazed past his ribs. In a panic he spun the vehicle 180 and started heading back the way he came, shouting somewhat incoherently down the comms to the rest of the crew. A few dozen meters and a few more shots later and the power in the vehicle died, it dropped onto the concrete roadway and skidded roughly to a stop. Not wanting to stay inside a vehicle slowly being turned into a colander by sniper fire, he decided to break for the nearest alleyway and cover. He waited for a shot to hit again before making a dash for it. As he ran he looked down the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of the shooter concealed somewhere towards where the ship was parked. He never saw the lamppost he ran headfirst into.

++++

Jom’s head hurt, and the noises were very loud. It took him a moment to register that the sounds were a mixture of shouting, blaster fire, and the roar of a Wookie. He came round to find himself lying on the road. Nearby there were two standing figures in black armour shooting down the street, a Falleen and a Cathar, and a Human also in black armour lying on the floor, probably dead judging by the blaster hole through his face. Looking down to what they were shooting at he could see a taxi crashed into the south side wall of the street and his friends El and Thoulyakk some way in front of it, shooting back.

That recognition jolted him back to the here and now. Knowing how vulnerable he was lying on the floor in an open street he bolted for the nearest alley on the south side. The fight must have only just started since everyone but he was still standing out in the open and only one person was dead so far. Did his friends even know about the sniper, or had that been one of these black clad figures? From the safety of the alley he opened fire with his blaster pistol, his shot hitting the nearest enemy but being absorbed by the armour. The black clad figures were also moving, the Falleen continuing to fire on his friends whilst the Cathar, the one he had shot, came for him with a snarl and an unsheathing of claws.

Jom backed away down the alley as the Cathar came for him, jumping backwards every time the Cathar took a swipe at him. He knew he could only last so long though, he’d seen the alley had some garbage dumped in it when he’d first entered but now he dared not look away from the Cathar to watch for it. Every evasion led him closer to the inevitable moment when he would trip on it, and then this brief one sided fight would be all over.

++++

El, Lok and Thoulyakk had not gone far when Jom’s panicked and short-lived call came though, and after the ominous silence it took them just a few minutes to regroup. By the Time El got back to where Lok and Thoulyakk were, Lok had already flagged down a taxi. With a bit of bribery it was just minutes more when they joined the street to the spaceport and saw ahead of them the shot up transport they had last seen Jom in, and to one side a fallen Duros figure was being surrounded by three figures in black armour. Switching from bribery to threat, El poked the muzzle of her blaster into the driver’s neck and order him to run down the men.

Not being especially skilled at vehicular manslaughter, the taxi driver failed to anticipate the way the men would dodge, and missed them entirely, bouncing his taxi into the wall beyond and ricocheting off down the street. Both Thoulyakk and El, finding themselves rapidly moving away from their fallen comrade, leapt bravely from the speeding vehicle and miraculously neither of them were hurt, much of the momentum of the vehicle already been lost to scraping along the wall. Lok, on the other hand, tried another approach and politely asked the driver to stop. For his part the driver hammered on the breaks, for fear of his life, and then proceeded to crawl down into the footwell in the mistaken idea that this would be safer. Lok attempted to pay the man, with a hefty tip, and had to resort to simply dropping the money on his head and leaving.

Outside the taxi was chaos. Thoulyakk was tearing off down the street towards the surviving enemies, one of whom was already dead on the floor which could only be the doing of El. El was running back towards the taxi dodging sniper fire from the other end of the street and diving into cover. Lok took this as his queue and ran for the nearest alley mouth.

++++

As Jom saw Thoulyakk round the corner, the look of relief must have shown on his face to the Cathar who was attacking him. The cat-man managed to roll with the blow from Thoulyakk’s mighty vibro-axe, which instead of cutting him in two merely broke the back plate of his armour and ripped into his flesh at a glancing angle. Nevertheless the force of it nearly hurled him to the ground and only by bouncing off Jom was he able to stay on his feet. As he stood dazed, broken and bleeding and tried to reorient on the Wookie he completely forgot about Jom who simply shot him in the face.

Everything seemed to be going well, they had dealt with half the group already, El had zeroed in on the sniper and had already injured him, and Thoulyakk was charging the last man standing at street level with his axe, when everything turned. Thoulyakk was knocked out by stun rounds from the black armour Falleen and El was clipped on the side of the head with sniper fire and went down cold. Suddenly the two combat capable members of the team were down, and the pilot Jom and the mechanic Lok were left alone, holding blaster pistols against two well armed and pissed off armoured foes.

Having run around the back alleys to find Jom tucked in to the corner of the wall and exchanging blaster fire across the street, Lok realised there was very little he could do and ran back to his starting position. In the ally mouth he could see El, hidden from sight of the sniper behind the bulk of the taxi and bleeding from the head. Lok held the emergency medkit, and of all of them was the only one with anything approaching formal training in first aid. Whilst they may have had their differenced El was part of her crew and had gone down fighting for them when she could have just walked away. It also occurred to him that as the only one of them that seemed to be more than passably competent with a blaster she was possibly their only hope too, but he felt good that the more noble and honourable thought had occurred to him first. Assuming things weren’t worse than they looked he could probably revive her with just a stim pack or two, although she’d already had a few today after their fight with the Whipids and she was probably going to go over her recommended daily allowance. The only real drawback was the 5 meters of open space between his current place of safety and the safe spot behind the taxi. Five long dangerous meters in the sights of a sniper.

From his position on the rooftop the sniper waited with the natural patience of his lizard hereditary. The street had cleared of targets now, but he was pretty sure the twi’lek behind the taxi wasn’t dead. If they were the amateurs he thought they were then they wouldn’t be able to resist coming to the aid of a fallen comrade. Either that or they’d flee like cowards but the shooting further up the street implied they had not. Most likely then someone would be coming from the closest ally. He’d dialled in the shot exactly, if they made a move he’d have them.

With another few breaths Lok nerved himself up for the dash. If he didn’t go now he’d lose his bottle. He stepped back halfway down the ally and started running to get some speed, once he was running it was easy, it wasn’t that he was having to choose to step out into the street so much as not actively stopping himself from doing it. Just as he rounded the corner the clouds parted and the sun blinded him. There was an explosion of noise and he found himself lying behind the taxi with his ears ringing and covering in brick dust. Frantically checking his body for wounds he realised the glare must have reflected off the mangled taxi and the sniper had missed him by inches, with a huge chunk taken out of the masonry of the nearest shop at roughly his head height covering everything in thick red dust.

With his heart rate winding down from a hum to a purr he recalled his mission. He checked El over, a bad blaster burn to the head but a steady pulse. She was lucky, the force had knocked her out but it wasn’t a serious wound. She might get away with just a concussion. He jammed one stim-pack into her and followed it up with a second for good measure, wondering how he had gone from idly reading first aid manuals on the holonet to performing improvised battlefield treatments. Was a quiet life so much to ask for?

El came back to full consciousness with a shock. It was telling of her recent life that she didn’t even have to think about the strange coppery taste in her mouth to know she had been hit with a stim-pack. Maybe two from the strength of the flavour. Getting her bearings she could see she was lying behind a vehicle with Lok crouched over her, partially hidden under red dust that was sticking to his clammy sweaty and unusually pale skin. That was enough to bring back her recently memory and her duel with the sniper. She wrenched her gun free from the mangled taxi rear with the strength of anger and asked Lok where the others were.
“Um, Jom is there,” he said, nodding towards the blaster fire still crossing the street between Jom and the last street level foe, “but Thoulyakk is down. Alive. I think. Breathing. But unconscious. Maybe?”
“Right, right, ok. Do you zink you could shoot at ze sniper ah bit? Maybe just get ‘eem to duck down?”
“Um, sure, I guess.”
With a shaky hand and the smallest sliver of his face peeking around the taxi he fired off as many shots as possible towards the building where the concealed sniper was. El was moving almost as soon as he started, hurling herself across the street, away from Jom and Lok and over where Thoulyakk and the Falleen were, with the power of anger and fear combined. It was almost an anti-climax when nothing happened and she reached the shelter of the ally across the street unharmed.

Lok took this as a positive sign, maybe he’d got lucky had hit him, or maybe he was just scared. No time to hang around and find out, and leaving El to her business Lok made the short dash back to the nearside ally, intending to rejoin Jom. He didn’t register the shot until he was well into the ally when the pain finally caught up with him and his brain finally caught up and belatedly registered the impact and sound of a blaster shot. This new data was swiftly washed away again in the great cresting waves of agony as the entire left side of his torso alerted him that his flesh was I fact now made of lava and was attempting to consume him, body and soul. As he rounded the next corner on sheer momentum he lost his footing and fell to his hands and knees, rendering breakfast, lunch and dinner out onto the street as his stomach attempted to save anything it could from the impending immolation.

El heard the shot behind her but she could hear Lok shouting incoherently down the radio so at least he appeared to be alive. For now it didn’t matter as she stalked her prey. Unfortunately the shooting from Jom had stopped, so the Falleen she hunted was no longer pinned in place, so she had little time to spare. As she rounded the corner of his alleyway, approaching from the far end from the main street, she saw he had moved past the fallen form of Thoulyakk and was just checking the street, apparently about to leave the alley and possibly go and murder her friends. With no intention of crossing the ground in front of the sniper yet again she wasted no time and took a quick snapshot and, more by luck than judgement, hit him in the back of the neck and dropped him instantly.

Momentarily they were safe, with only the sniper left and him unable to see any of them at present. El asked Lok if he could help revive Thoulyakk, but Lok was busy self medicating his blaster wound and dealing with the shock of being shot for the first time. El did her best to wrap some bandages around Thoulyakk, but his physical wounds were minor and treating them did nothing to help the fact he had been stunned. Lacking better ideas her eyes were drawn to a large rainwater collection tank.
“Ah, what ze 'ell”, she muttered, as she kicked out the nearside supporting legs and pulled at it to guide it’s collapse down next to Thoulyakk, letting gallons of somewhat stale water wash over him. He awoke with a cry and a shudder and heaved himself away from the spreading puddle.
“Are you ok Thoulyakk?” asked El?
“I am soggy, but relatively unharmed”, replied Thoulyakk, in his curiously well enunciated basic.
“Zen come wiz me, zer iz one of zem left”, and with that she jogged away down the back allys to the building the sniper was on top of.

The end of the battle was somewhat anticlimactic. Leaving Thoulyakk below to watch for him coming out a different route or provide backup if needed, El snuck up the building to find the Sniper, another Falleen dressed in black armour, wrestling with a problem in his long barrelled sniper rifle. With a single unexpected shot from behind it was all over.

With their enemies vanquished it was agreed to check the bodies for useful gear, and any clues as to who they were and why they had been attacking, then beat a hasty retreat. They recovered the sniper rifle that El was much enamoured with, a selection of blaster carbines that Jom in particular thought would come in useful, a force pike that Thoulyakk picked up as a less lethal alternative to his vibro-ax, some medical kit, a climbing harness and rope, a remote control spy droid and, in the pocket of the leader, a somewhat shocking document…

The crew were safely back aboard the Annual Pigeon, now relatively safe flying in orbit above Bandomeer, and sitting around the table in the communal room that was increasingly starting to smell of wet dog as Thoulyakk gently steamed. The elephant in the room was the Wanted poster lying on the table.

From their recent encounters they all readily recognised the symbol on the bottom right. This wasn’t an official Imperial bounty but a warrant issued by the Black Sun criminal organisation. El was the first to speak. “Jom, ma friend, it ees out of professional courtesy and friendship that ah 'ave not stunned you where you sit and dragged you in for ze bounty, one ‘undred thousand iz a lot of money, no? But I zink maybe you owe us some explanation?”
Jom looked around at the faces of his friends who had so recently risked their lives to rescue him. “I should say first that I didn’t realise they were after me specifically, I had assumed they were from the Offworld Mining Corporation catching up with us all from this morning’s job.” From there he went on to quickly explain. A few years ago he had taken a job to deliver some high value cargo, and he had had an accident and crashed the ship, losing both ship and cargo. Now he owed some people more money than he was ever likely to be able to repay, and had felt he had no choice but to run. Nothing had come of it for a few years but apparently they were still after him.

The crew accepted this brief summary, and didn’t enquire further. They discussed how it was they had found him, but came up with few ideas, deciding the most likely explanation was simply that there were wanted posters floating around and some local bounty hunters had stumbled upon him by luck. El suggested that short of trying to kill everyone involved, they would simply have to put up with it for now, but agreed with Jom’s suggestion that perhaps he should acquire a disguise.

Moving on to more pressing matters, namely their impending mission that was just over 24 hours away, they decided that they would need more supplies for the job, high on the list being some better armour. Jom piloted the ship back down to Bandomeer, picking a different spaceport and paying extra for discretion, in case the identity of their ship was known. Jom stayed aboard the ship in relative safety whilst the others went out on a shopping trip.

When they returned El asked Lok to join her in her cabin, and explained why she had temporarily left the others on a private errand. They had not exactly got off on the right foot, and she wanted them to at least try and resolve some of their trust issues before their next mission, which Lok agreed was very important. With that in mind she proposed a somewhat radical solution, and revealed her discreet purchase. The familiar black plastic wrapping of a bundle of glitterstim.

Lok had spent enough of his life in the underworld to know the rumours about glitterstim, that it was not merely a narcotic but one that delivered a mild telepathic effect to users. El explained that this was true, and further to that there were certain twi’lek ceremonies performed with the drug making use of the unusual twi’lek biology. Essentially she proposed that by both of them taking the drug and then El draping her lekku over his head, he would be able to access the deep memory stores all twi’lek’s have in the upper parts of their lekku. He would see raw unfiltered memory, and the insight from such a raw exposure to her past and her motivations should build a bedrock of understanding upon which trust could rapidly be built.

Lok was hesitant at first, initially offering that she didn’t need to undergo such an invasion, but as he realised how sincere she was, and knowing how important it would be to work together and trust one another in the upcoming mission, he agreed. El explained the situation briefly to KT, her “room-mate”, and then closed and locked the door to the cabin.

El and Lok emerged from their drug induced trance in the early hours of the morning. They exchanged a few brief words, but much was left unsaid, the understanding between them implicit from their now shared experience. El was conspicuously speaking in the more refined accent of an upper-class Twi’lek, however Lok made no comment upon it.

At that point Jom, who had been busy in the galley, yelled out “Panckaes!”. Whilst Thoulyakk and El headed into the galley, Lok wondered off to the engine room where there was a spot he liked to sit when he needed some alone time. El, speaking once more in her Ryloth working class accent, had the munchies from the glitterstim, and that. combined with the prestigious appetite of a Wookie, made short work of the pancakes. By the time Lok remerged there were none left for him and he was left feeding his own munchies with protein ration bars.

Their hunger sated and the immediate emotional needs satisfied, the crew got down to planning their next mission, extracting Dr Nalrid and his data. They decided it would be best to get aboard the ship in advance of the attack on the base, and to that end they began searching the holonet for any jobs that might allow them access to the ship. As the ship was wholly owned by the Offworld Mining Corporation and thus did not advertise jobs directly, Lok had to do a lot of data work to dig through the available jobs and work out which ones would take them onto the ship in question.

In the end he identified a request to deliver and install new motivator coils to an Offworld Mining Corporation ship in orbit that perfectly matched the specification of the ship in question. Lok did an excellent job faking up credentials as a starship repair company and they successfully bid for and were awarded the contract. The ship details and location they were then given matched up exactly, they had their prey.

Over the next few hours the plan came together. They would buy the coils, Lok quickly hacked the names of the other companies applying for the job so they knew who had some to sell, go up to meet the ship and Lok and El would go aboard. They would install the coils but whilst they were there they would also plant some knockout gas in the environmental controls that they could trigger later. Lok further proposed they add a backup timer device in case they lost signal.

At some point they expected the call to come up from the surface and they would be asked to leave. Lok would leave but El planned to hide aboard with a breath mask. Meanwhile Thoulyakk would have climbed out of the Pigeon and, wearing a spacesuit, climbed over to the Wayfarer outside the hull. If all went well El would let him in the airlock afterwards, but if things went wrong he would have the lightsaber with him and could cut his way through the hull. Once Dr Nalrid boarded the ship they would trigger the gas and return, board the ship, subdue any crew still conscious and take their prize.

This conversation was the first time Thoulyakk got to hear about the lightsaber, and he was pretty stunned. The crew seemed somewhat ignorant of it, believing it to be some kind of cutting tool, and Thoulyakk, having lived through the Clone Wars, was well aware of what the Jedi were. His explanations were partially dismissed as fairy tales by the crew, who were all too young to have lived through the Clone Wars and had been raise don Imperial propaganda, but he at least managed to impart warning that running around openly wielding such a device would very rapidly attract the hostile intentions of the Empire. Given the events of their hasty departure from Taris they at least accepted this much as true.

With their plan settled they headed to bed. Thoulyakk took for himself Captain Sauto’s bunk without asking, and whatever feelings Lok and Jom had about it were not enough to start a discussion about it with a Wookie in the early hours of the morning.

In the morning they set out into the city leaving the fugitive Jom aboard the ship. They spent most of the day in a health centre getting thoroughly treated in a proper Bacta tank, then went shopping. They purchased a disguise kit for Jom, some armour, an Ion Grenade, spacesuits for each of them (finding a Wookie spacesuit was very difficult and they are unaware that the second hand suit they eventually found contains a small leak), replacement coils and some Neuroparalytic airborne toxin.

Assembling once more aboard the Pigeon in the evening they were ready to begin their mission.

As the Pigeon lifted to orbit Lok approached El and presented her with one of the blaster carbine’s they had taken from the bounty hunters. Whilst Thoulyakk and El had been soaking in bacta he had stripped it down and rebuilt it in as compact a form as he could. It was now the size of a blaster pistol, with the power of a blaster rifle, only accurate enough for very close work. Very limited but ideal for smuggling aboard a potentially hostile vessel to use in an emergency.

They were interrupted as Jom let them all know that they were closing with the Offworld Mining Corporation ship and synchronising their orbit. Time to get to work. El slipped into the co-pilot seat, pulled on a headset and turned on the inter-ship comm., using the frequency they had been given when they were hired for the job.

“Isabella, Isabella, this is…” she started, then froze. Switching off the comm. Unit she cursed and rummaged through the papers on the dashboard. The crew were still calling the ship The Annual Pigeon even though they had had their transponders changed to evade Imperial “justice” and she had completely forgotten the name they were now operating under. After casting away various pages of handwritten navigation calculations and a flyer for Bando City Bacta and Massage Day Spa, she found the forged certificate with the ship name on it. The Arbitrary Nomenclature. Somehow it didn’t seem so funny now that things were getting serious.

“Isabella, Isabella, this is the Arbitrary, requesting permission to coma alongside and dock.”
“Arbitrary this is Isabella, we have you on scope. You are clear to come alongside and dock at the starboard side airlock.”
“Roger that arbitrary, see you shortly.”
El switched off the comm and looked over at Jom, who had heard the conversation and was already starting the docking procedure.
“Everything is going well so far” she said.

++++

Later…

El opened her eyes groggily. The pain in her ears and the silence meant they had probably burst, and the fire in her lungs made a strong case that this was because there was no air in here. Her face hurt too, like she’d been punched, and she was drifting near the floor in zero G. There were men around her, some were still struggling, suffocating in the airless weightless environment, others already still. In the holodramas people normally freeze like ice cubes when exposed to the vacuum of space but in reality a vacuum is an insulator and it would take a long time for her lose all her body heat without conduction or convection.

El reflected that the mind did strange things when the body is dying. Why was she thinking about thermodynamics? And for that matter, why was she dying, suffocating in a vacuum surrounded by strangers in some kind of cargo hold with an incongruous chequered gaming table floating above her, hadn’t she just been in the cockpit of the Pigeon with Jom? No, something had happened after that, she just had to think…

++++

Earlier…

El led the way from the Pigeon’s ventral airlock through the cofferdam to the airlock of the ship Isabella, with Lok following with a couple of crates of equipment and, hidden in the bottom of one, El’s blaster rifle. Her new cut down carbine was hidden under her jacket.

The door ahead of them opened up and they stepped through into a ship as old and well worn as the one they had left. The Wayfarer class ship was considerably larger than the Pigeon however, and consequently build on a rather larger scale. The airlock lead into a lounge area, with a corridor full of cabins to the right leading to the cockpit, a door opposite leading into the cargo are and a door to the left leading into the engine compartment at the rear of the ship.

In the lounge a couple of large men in uniform that El immediately categorised as muscle for hire were seated at the table, and an enthusiastic young man in corporate overalls stood at the door to greet them. It was clear he had not been expecting an exotic female alien and his eyes rarely left El for the next few hours. He showed them to the engine room, blithely accepted all the made up techno-jargon they sprouted in an attempt to seem intelligent and even took El up to the bridge and chatted to her whilst she installed a remote control override device Lok had made onto the primary control circuits.

Whilst this was going on Thoulyakk climbed out of the Dorsal airlock of the Pigeon wearing his recently purchased space suit. Using his magnetic boots he slowly and carefully made his way across the hull and over to the hull of Isabella. During this journey he noticed that his suit had a small leak, but it wasn’t causing him any danger and he decided it would not pose a problem. The plan was that when the crew was unconscious El would operate the airlock to let him in, but as a last resort he had the lightsaber with him and could cut his way into the ship.

Whilst El distracted the keen company tech Joash, Lok had been able to install the neurotoxin such that when triggered it would be released into the life support system and spread rapidly through the ventilation system into the entire ship. The next part of the plan called for El to hide aboard, however with the two security guards in the common area having a view of the airlock they would be able to easily tell that she had not left. Improvising on the fly, Lok and El manoeuvred the guards into the engineering compartment to help Lok with a system test whilst Joash was monitoring the systems in the weapons control compartment, giving El a free run of the cargo hold and with nobody able to see if she had returned to her ship or not. Once hidden she contacted Joash via the comm and told him she had been called back to her ship for a conference call with another client but assured him Lok could handle the rest on his own.

During this careful manoeuvring, Thoulyakk came to realise his air wasn’t going to last in the spacesuit with it constantly venting out of the tear in his suit so he laboriously returned to the Pigeon, climbed back aboard and hastened to make repairs. He slapped some gaffa tape on the hole, called it good and climbed back out into space. It didn’t seem to be leaking so he headed back to the upper hull of Isabella.

With the job complete Lok took his leave of the Isabella. Lok took the crates of tools and parts back with him, including El’s blaster rifle, but she still had her cut down carbine on her as well as a breathing mask to protect her from the neurotoxin. Jom detached the airlock and calmly coasted away, leaving El hidden aboard and Thoulyakk hidden on the outside of the hull.

++++

Later…

As the past events came back to el she realised she was still in the cargo hold where she’d hidden. She noticed a coffee cup drifting across the hold and recognised it as one of two Joash had brought for her since he didn’t know if she’d like the synthetic creamer they had on the ship and he’d brought her a choice. She looked at the bodies, none of them were Joash but she recognised the two guards who Lok had distracted. The other two were in identical uniforms but she didn’t recognise their faces.

Why was the compartment in vacuum? Where had the gravity gone? She noticed the empty crate she had been hiding in and remembered she’d been wearing a breathe mask because of the neurotoxin. What had happened to it? If she had it now it would keep her alive a little longer. She concentrated on the crate and thought about being inside it.

++++

Earlier…

The crate was pretty comfortable, all things considered. They had adapted well to the lack of hiding spaces in the Engineering compartment and the guards watching the airlock and it seemed that nobody on the Isabella had any idea about the stowaways both inside and out. This cheerfulness descended into boredom over the course of the next hour until her comm unit woke her from her daydreaming. It was Thoulyakk, probably just a few meters away on the other side of the hull.

“It appears I may be in a predicament” he said in his bizarrely eloquent basic. “My spacesuit repairs do not appear to have been as successful as they might have been. I have about half an hour of air left.”

This changed everything, and potentially ruined everything as well. If Thoulyakk ran out of air there were few options and none of them good. As El started thinking about how to deal with this, her mind racing down the possibility trees, Jom interrupted.

“Message from the surface, attack has commenced. ETA of Dr Nalrid 15 minutes.”
“Thank the Force. I shall maintain my vigil.”

Tense minutes ticked by. El had no way of monitoring the progress of the shuttle, or even telling how much time had passed, but years of training and practice made patience and easy virtue for her. Eventually she heard doors opening and booted footsteps moving about outside her crate.
“El, are you ready for me to start the plan? We’ll lose comms once I begin the jamming.” Said Lok over the radio. With the presence of the footsteps outside her crate she barely dared to breathe let alone speak a reply, Lok would have to wait until they moved away.
“El, are you there? Hello, El?”
She simply pressed her transmit button to make a clicking noise s aknowledgement.
“El? Was that you?”
“click”
“Ok, can we begin the plan to jam the comms, take remote control of the ship and deploy the nerve gas? Click once for yes and twice for no.”
El couldn’t be sure Dr Nalrid had left his shuttle yet, if people started falling unconscious around him he could get back aboard the shuttle and away before they could stop him.
“click click”
“Ok, starting now.”
“clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick”
“Wait, what? Start again. Click once to begin the plan, twice to wait.”
“Ok.”
El didn’t have time to finish wondering if that meant he was starting or not when the comm lit up with the audio static of active jamming before turning itself off. She quickly grabbed her breathing mask and started pulling it on. By the time she was done she realised there were no more footsteps she could hear, and she cautiously climbed out of her crate.

As she moved forward towards the hanger bay where the Doctor’s shuttle would have landed she could hear voices approaching from the hanger and quickly dived into the cover of some crates. The door swung open to the sound of marching feet. She peeked her head around to see what was going on and was startled to lock eyes with an equally shocked looking human. He was dressed smartly in some form of laboratory clothing and was accompanied by four security men marching in guard formation. Undoubtedly this was Dr Nalrid, and just as obviously the neurotoxin had failed to knock anybody unconscious.

Dr Nalrid was quick and didn’t hesitate in shouting at his guards to shoot her but El’s well honed combat reactions were faster and she had already dived around the corner and into a side corridor before Dr Nalrid could register the small metal sphere bouncing towards him.

++++

In the blackness of space Thoulyakk considered his options. The hiss of static meant his comms were being jammed, as per the plan. The next part of the plan called for the crew to be rendered unconscious with neurotoxin and then El to let him in one of the airlocks. But they had forgotten to factor their own jamming into their plan and had left no way for El to contact Thoulyakk. With minutes of air left and no way to contact his comrades he decided to go to the backup plan, which called for him to cut his way into the ship at the weapons control compartment which had its own airlock doors. He pulled the lightsaber off his belt.

A wondrous device, beautiful, elegant and deadly. He considered with no small amount of horror the ignorance that his colleagues had displayed about it, but they were all young and the propaganda of the Empire was strong and prevalent. Perhaps if he had never seen the Jedi on his home of Kashyyk during the clone wars he would fell the same way. He activated the blue white blade and began cutting through the hull, but it was more complex than he has expected and he quickly realised that whilst the Jedi made it look easy a lightsaber was actually a dangerously long and unwieldy blade of energy that was not easy to guide with care. If he did not cut the right shape out of the hull for a clean release it might become stuck, or worse come out at an angle and knock him off the hull into deep space, where he would surely die. It was much like felling trees to ensure they would not drop onto you or any of the nearby trees you wanted to preserve.

By the time he dropped into the compartment, now also a vacuum with a Wookie sized hole in the roof, he had run out of air and was running on a held breath. He had planned to open the airlock and go through as quickly as possible then seal it up behind him, but he now found that having detected a vacuum in his chamber the door would not open. Without someone to override the controls from the inside he did not have time to try and pull the controls apart and try to hotwire it, so he simply sliced the door open with a quick curved stroke of the lightsaber.

On the other side he found carnage. There was evidence of a large blast at the other end of the room and four men, displaying rather severe shrapnel wounds, were arrayed to defend the opposite airlock that led into the main body of the ship, however they were even now falling down and sliding towards him as the escaping air tried to drag everything else in the room with it. He ripped off his helmet and gasped for air, but it was growing thin here already so he dived through a door into the corridor on his left where the air was not escaping so fast.

++++

After the grenade when off El paused in the corridor to reassess. She pulled out her cut down carbine and considered her position. She had been forced to retreat away from the main ship compartments and further into the cargo module, technically a separate container that could be completely detached from the ship. In order to take control of the ship she had to get through the airlock onto the ship proper, which meant going right back towards where Dr Nalrid and all the guards were.

She had just begun to register that the air was growing thin in here, and wondered if her grenade had managed to pierce the hull, when Thoulyakk barged through the door into the corridor with her, breathing heavily and looking somewhat wild eyed. That at least explained the lack of air, but she had a breathing mask and she would be safe for at least a minute or two in the growing vacuum.

With barely a nod of acknowledgement to Thoulyakk she ran back past him into the larger room. A quick assessment showed that the security guards were pretty much out of the picture, they were on the floor and gasping for air in the now almost total vacuum. Looking into the weapons control compartment she could see that some crates had mostly covered the hole Thoulyakk had cut, which had reduced the escaping air from a torrent into a trickle. She rushed over to the airlock into the main ship but found it had been automatically sealed because of the vacuum. She plugged her datapad into the universal interface port on the door controls and started trying to override the safety lockout.

She finally succeeded and the lock indicator turned green, and was about to punch the open button when it turned red again. This time the door had locked because someone one the ship was preparing to jettison the cargo module. El’s loud cursing went unheard in the vacuum. This was the sort of thing Lok was supposed to do, her job was sneaking around and shooting people. Belatedly she realised that the men in the chamber with her were technically still alive, and if the door opened and flooded the room with revitalising air she might have a sudden and desperate fight on her hands. Ever the professional she calmly shot the two closest men and got back to the controls.

Thirty seconds later she had it, the light went green and stayed green. She hit the button and braced for the powerful rush of air that would ensue, ready to force her way through it and into the main ship as quickly as possible. She wasn’t braced enough for the wooden table that the air brought with it. It hit her full on in the face, knocking her mask away, breaking her nose and tossing her to floor on the far side of the compartment like a discarded ragdoll.

++++

El remembered everything. She saw the broken table and beyond it her breathing mask and dived after it. She barely noticed the pain of pressing the mask onto her broken nose as the fresh clean air entered into her burning lungs. Looking around she could see the door was sealed once more, and the lack of gravity meant that clearly the cargo module had been detached and was now running on minimal backup power, sufficient only to operate doors and lights. In theory the cargo container should only be detached when the ship was docked so artificial gravity was deemed unnecessary and worked only when the ship was connected.

The chamber was still icy cold and even with air she couldn’t stay here forever. She realised the only place Thoulyakk could have gone with his broken spacesuit to find air was forward to Dr Nalrid’s shuttle, which had its own sealed life support system, so she headed forward to find him.

Everything had gone smoothly on the Isabella and Lok was pleasantly surprised how safe he had felt with El alongside watching over him, whereas just a day ago he might have felt that she was almost as much of a danger to him as the crew of the ship they were infiltrating. Now he was sitting in the cockpit of the Annual Pigeon far enough away that he could not visually identify the Isabella, although they had it firmly locked in the sensors. After finding the Engineering compartment to be lacking in hiding places he was pretty proud of how he and El had improvised to get her concealed in the cargo bay. He was less certain about Thoulyakk as although they had only known each other for little more than a day he had seen and heard nothing to make him think Thoulyakk was qualified at spacesuit repair and would have been much happier to take a look at it himself.

Just then Thoulyakk’s voice came over the comm unit. “It appears I may be in a predicament. My spacesuit repairs do not appear to have been as successful as they might have been. I have about half an hour of air left.” Lok looked at Jom in horror but Jom was reading something on his screen and grabbed his own comm unit.
“Message from the surface, attack has commenced. ETA of Dr Nalrid 15 minutes.”
“Thank the Force,” replied Thoulyakk, “I shall maintain my vigil.”
R2-KT was plugged into the sensors and showed them on the screen a small shuttle that was just leaving the atmosphere on and intercept vector with the Isabella.

As the shuttle closed with the Isabella, Jom began manoeuvring on a course that would not at any point have them directly approaching the target, which might be suspicious, but that would nevertheless bring them in close enough for Lok to communicate with the devices he and El had concealed aboard the Wayfarer. Silent minutes ticked by until they saw the shuttle entering the small airlock in the front of the Wayfarer’s cargo hold.

Lok opened the comm channel. “El, are you ready for me to start the plan? We’ll lose comms once I begin the jamming.”
Lok waited for a reply but heard only silence. He turned to Jom and said “It’s possible with the hull between us and the distance we may not be receiving her signal, although the signal boosters on the Pigeon mean she should hear us fine.” Jom simply nodded as if this was self evident.
“El, are you there? Hello, El?”
There was still no reply, but he head a click and a moment of static.
“El? Was that you?”
Another click and static.
“Ok, can we begin the plan to jam the comms, take remote control of the ship and deploy the nerve gas? Click once for yes and twice for no.”
There was a pause, and then a click and a moment of static.
“Ok, starting now.”
Click, static, click, static, click, static.
“Wait, what? Start again. Click once to begin the plan, twice to wait.”
Click, static.
“Ok.”

Lok hit the first switch on his makeshift remote control panel and the comm unit filled with the static of active jamming before turning off. He then flicked the next switch to override the ships controls. Then he flicked the third and final switch that would release the nerve gas across the ships air ducts. He was nervous about this as El was aboard but ultimately El knew the plan and knew to have her breath mask in place so he had to trust her.

They waited a few minutes to give the neurotoxin time to work then Lok entered the command to stop the ship. Nothing happened, the Isabella continued to cruise along unimpeded. Lok and Jom looked at each other and Jom started to speed up the Pigeon on her approach run.

As they closed within visual range they could see air, frozen water vapour and occasional small pieces of debris venting from the port side of the hull, where clearly Thoulyakk had cut his way inside. The fact that is was still ongoing was alarming, indicating that he had opened up a particularly large section of the ship to vacuum. Realising that Thoulyakk had very limited air left, and the large atmospheric venting could mean the whole ship was breached and Thoulyakk would be stranded without oxygen (not to mention the ship’s crew), both Lok and Jom realised this may have changed from an assault to a rescue mission. As Jom continued to close the distance Lok rushed into the back of the ship and started pulling on a spacesuit.

++++

On the assumption that the crew of the Isablella might still be in control of their ship, Jom set up an intercept vector then killed power to the main engines and nonessential systems and closed the cooling vents on the Pigeon. Unless the Isabella was actively scanning for them they should remain unnoticed, especially if El and Thoulyakk were distracting the crew internally. Jom cracked his knuckles, this was the most exciting flying he’d done since his smuggling days.

As the ship closed to within a kilometre Jom hit the main engine restart to bring the manoeuvring controls back online. They were still coming up as they reached 500 meters and it was getting down to 400 when he finally got a response on the manoeuvring thrusters. He punched it up to full reverse thrust, the force briefly overriding the inertial dampeners and throwing him forward in his crash webbing. There was a crash and a cry from the main corridor where Lok was still trying to put on his spacesuit. Whilst the ship was still decelerating Jom was lining up at the Starboard airlock for an emergency docking, but he was still carrying too much momentum and as the ships met and rebounded, another crash of impact and a cry from Lok, the docking clamps failed to gain purchase.

With the Pigeon’s boarding airlock on the ventral surface the Isabella was now relatively below Jom and out of his sight, he was running purely on instruments. He moved in once more for a second attempt, flying half by instruments and half by gut instinct and this time he heard a positive lock and the docking light when green. The cofferdam extended and he heard KT and Lok begin working on overriding the Isabella’s airlock controls. He switched the external cameras to get another view on the Isabella and was shocked to see the cargo module had been disconnected.

The Wayfarer was designed with a modular cargo hold but it was only supposed to be disconnected in a docking bay, not in space. With the Isabella holding a steady course the cargo module did not fall away quickly, but the act of releasing the clamps had given it a small shove and even now it was gradually drifting away from the main ship.

Jom’s attention switched back to Lok when he heard the airlock cycle, indicating that he and KT had been successful in breaching the enemy vessel. But if someone was awake to jettison the cargo module then the neurotoxin must not have worked and Lok could be facing the entire crew alone. Blaster fire range out and Jom threw himself out of his pilot chair, checked his blaster and dashed down the hallway towards the airlock.

The brief zero g of the cofferdam and then the gravity returning at 90 degrees as he entered a ship in at a different orientation would normally be disorienting but Jom was a verteran spacer and took such things in his stride. KT was at the open hatch to the Isabella but Lok had already gone inside. Jom ran heroically in after him, saw the door was open to the engineering compartment on his left, noticed several armed men now unconscious in the lounge area to his right and just had time to realise the Lok must have found a way to release the neurotoxin afterall before his head hit the deck.

++++

Added by Thoulyakk's player:

Whilst sitting in the tiny space pod, drifting inside a depressurised cargo container with a gibbering Twi’lek, Thoulyakk had some time to think. He had heard stories of the Jedi from the time when he was young, stories of heroism, valour, selflessness.

His nemesis is gassed; vulnerable. Thoulyakk’s original plan had been to ram the saber through the black heart of the Doctor as soon as he saw the man. But what would that mean? Repaying hate with hate? Killing the vulnerable? And using a Jedi weapon to do it?

The lightsaber seemed heavy in his hand, a quiet anchor against the rage and passion that had fuelled Thoulyakk for so long. He would not kill the Doctor. Not with this weapon; not with any weapon. He would not let hate define his life any more.

He would learn how to wield this sword. He would use it to uphold all that was good and right. And he would not hide.

As KT worked to bypass the airlock to the Issabella, Lok did one last check on his space suit seals, slightly worried because of the amount of falling about he’d endured when trying to put on the cumbersome suit during the bumpy ride. When the door cycled open Lok noticed two things. Firstly directly opposite him the airlock door to the cargo container that should contain El and Thoulyakk had “Cargo Module Detatched” flashing on the keypad, with the small window showing the blackness of space. Secondly he noticed that the technician Joash and another man in the same uniform were ducked down behind the table and aiming their blasters at the cargo hatch door, with a look of sudden relief.

Later on it occurred to Lok that maybe all forms of heroism consisted of surprise, fear and adrenaline. As the two technicians turned to face him, he dived not back into the Pigeon but forwards and left into the engineering compartment of the Wayfarer. The stunned technicians belatedly opening fire at the now closing door behind him. His terror at being shot at converting into rage at the machinery that had failed to render his opponents unconscious, he punched the door lock button and confronted the environmental controls with blaster in hand; ready to vent some frustration on inanimate machinery. On the front screen he saw the message “3rd party supplement detected. For best results please use Kuat Systems Engineering brand environmental supplements.” Bemused, he pressed the ok button and the machinery resumed operation with a hiss of discharging gas.

Listening at the door her heard a few thumps of falling bodies, some footsteps and a further thump, followed by silence. It seems that, overlooking that one minor oversight that might possibly have cost Thoulyakk and El their lives, the plan had worked perfectly and the neurotoxin had knocked out the crew. He cautiously opened the door, blaster pistol in hand, and was pleased to see the technicians slumped on the floor in front of the door. He hurriedly kicked their blasters away and then spotted Jom, also unconscious on the floor just inside from the airlock. What was he doing there? Someone needed to go rescue El and Thoulyakk. KT grabbed Jom’s leg and started pulling him back towards the Pigeon, so Lok, overwhelmed by too much to do and too little time, left that problem for now and concentrated on what he knew, namely disabling the Wayfarer before any crew woke up.

The next few hours passed quickly for Lok. First he disabled the ship’s power, with the added bonus of cutting off the jamming meaning he could now contact Thoulyakk and El. He discovered that they were alive and had taken shelter in Dr Nalrid’s shuttle, which still had its own atmosphere. El was hurt and the vacuum apparently having burst her eardrums and left her deaf, but alive and not in immediate danger. Thoulyakk’s suit was totally empty of air but he was otherwise unharmed. Lok then set about locking the crew, the two technicians as well as two pilots and Dr Nalrid whom he found on the bridge, into individual sleeping quarters as improvised cells. Once they were secured he then removed the modifications he’d placed on the environmental controls and set about purging the atmosphere.

When Jom awoke, revived by KT, he joined Lok on the bridge of the Isabella and had him start the ship up again so that he could pilot it to reconnect with the cargo module, which he succeeded at after only a few tries. Whilst El went back to the Pigeon and started pouring bacta into her ears, Thoulyakk whent and opened Dr Nalrid’s cell and sat on the bunk watching him. Lok and Jom exchanged a look, sure they were about to witness a cold blooded murder but with a mutual feeling that they could not physically prevent it, and perhaps morally should not interveine even if they could, but instead of extracting violent bloody revenge for the murder of his family Thoulyakk simply stared at the Dr or perhaps simply into his own soul.

Upon searching for the data they were sent to secure, El found nothing on the shuttle but Thoulyakk turned up a high capacity memory card in the pocket of Dr Nalrid that was revealed to contain the data they were searching for. Lok, searching the Isabellas data core, found nothing but did turn up reference to a hidden cargo compartment, which he took El to go investigate whilst Thoulyakk watched the prisoners and Jom flew the Isabella, with the Pigeon still docked on the side, out into deeper space where it would go unnoticed whilst they had business on-world, but where they could hopefully recover it later.

Once Lok pointed out to El where the secret door was it took her little time to find and open it. Inside they discovered some large cages bolted to the floor and a crate full of assorted large leather belts and a single large weapon which looked like some kind of heavy duty blaster with a large curved crosspiece at the end. El examined the cages and she recognised the traces of long brown fur in them. It was not hard to conclude Wookie slaves had been kept here. Lok volunteered to go and inform Thoulyakk and take over guarding the prisoners, which El thought was very brave until she realised this meant that she would be the one that had to show him the cages.

Thoulyakk was remarkably calm, even zen-like. He examined the belts and declared them to be of Wookie make but not of his clan. He claimed the bowcaster but continued to surprise the crew by restraining himself from the famous Wookie rage.

With the Isabella safely parked in a very distant solar orbit that would probably not be noticed by anyone, the crew loaded up the prisoners, some cargo palettes of Ionite Ore they found, some expensive looking mining equipment and of course all of the Wookie possessions onto the Pigeon. They then did a total shutdown of the Isabella so that there would be no waste heat to be detected, going as far as venting the atmosphere to get the ship as cold as possible. It was now just a small dead lump lost in the vastness of space, and anyone who didn’t know the exact coordinates would probably never find it.

A few hours later they were arriving at the designated meeting place, along with their cargo of prisoners, aboard a rented truck. They had taken a copy of the data, and then erased the memory card so that they could hand the card over (which would have evidence of belonging to Dr Nalrid) and tell GilVan that they had deleted the data as requested. They had also debated killing Dr Nalrid, so that the data was entirely erased (except for their secret copy) and then nobody would have the data, which they considered a good idea since they did not know exactly who GilVan represented and if they could be trusted with the knowledge, however none of them liked the idea of cold blooded murder. El suggested they try and get an idea of who these people were and worst case they could always kill Dr Nalrid later.

They found a guard on the warehouse door, who approached and did not immediately recognise Jom with his new disguise, but El leaned forward and spoke with him and he waved them inside. GilVan met them and was very pleased to hear they had succeeded. When they gave her the data card and explained that they had erased it as part of the contract to retrieve or erase the data, she was slightly perplexed about why they had given her an empty data card and discarded it. They asked her what she would do with Dr Nalrid, and she said they would interrogate him for what he knew because whilst they had backwards engineered the weapons the crew had already retrieved for them, it would be helpful to have him confirm their data. This revelation surprised the crew, who in their ethical debate about letting this unknown group have the data about this weapon had completely forgotten that they had already given them the working prototypes.

One of GilVan’s men ran over and whispered something in her ear and she looked at them with suspicion. “Were you followed?” she asked. The whole group looked at Jom, who in turn looked like a prey species caught in a spotlight. “No, I’m sure of it.” He stammered in reply. She told them to keep unloading and rushed off to the other end of the warehouse. They saw her talking with some of her men, and then heard her shouting something moments before a huge explosion blasted through the main door at that end. Seconds later as they climbed back to their feet they saw blaster bolts and figures in white armour pouring through the gap.

Love this Squirrelsan!! Much kudos!! I'll be running my first game in the next couple of weeks... Plan to post the adventures of the crew of The Echo Rising (another Dynamic Class Freighter) on the forums as well!!

I'm glad you're enjoying it, and look forward to reading about your adventures. What ship stats do you use? I just copied a YT-1300.

Jom leapt for the driver’s seat of the nearest vehicle, El ran to grab her weapons and Lok dived for the nearest cover, the net result being all three of them dashing for the rented truck they’d arrived in. On the other hand Thoulyakk immediately started running towards the Stormtroopers. Fortunately, he was intercepted by GilVan, running back towards them. She pushed the Wookie back to the van and pressed a large capacity datacard into his hand.
“If you want to get paid, and you want this to mean anything, get this to Tarth Arlos in Bratton on Junction. We’re going to try to slow them down then scatter. Get to your ship, you’re the only hope to rescue anything from this mess.”
El, grabbed Thoulyakk and tried to bundle him into the truck, but GilVan stopped her.
“What are you doing? You can’t just drive a truck out of the big door, we’re surrounded by Imperials, can’t you hear the walkers? Get out on foot and scatter into the population!”
She looked into El’s eyes, apparently searching for something, then turned and ran back towards the battle.

The initial thrust by the Imperials had been slowed once GilVan’s people got their act together and started returning fire, but the Imperial advance was unstoppable and slowly the defenders were being overwhelmed. Thoulyakk ran over to part of the wall on the far side where a broken part of the wall had been repaired with sheets of corrugated metal, and with his great strength pulled the metal away revealing a small hole in the wall they could crawl through. El hesitated, her arms filled with a sniper rifle in out and a blaster carbine in the other, and looked to the large Wookie with mute appeal. Thoulyakk grabbed the carbine from her and tossed it to one side, then picked up the lean Twi‘lek and shoved her through the hole.

Lok, hearing the shouts of the enraged Twi’lek and seeing her struggling with the Wookie to get back through the hole and not having any weapons of his own to carry, grabbed the carbine himself and reassured her he would bring it. He then set about grabbing some fuel, a battery and some copper wire to try and improvise a trap to slow down pursuit, but after a few minutes of fruitless fiddling found the battery was totally without charge and had to give up. As they fled outside El fired back at the fuel setting the hole ablaze.

They found themselves near to an alley heading directly away from the warehouse and started running, but suddenly Jom pushed them down into hiding behind some bins just as a patrol of Stormtroopers turned the corner. They lay in the garbage trying to breath quietly despite their sudden exertion as the troops moved past. As fortune would have it they were close enough to overhear the Stormtrooper’s radios as an overly excited Imperial Officer shouted orders, in particular demanding to know where the squad securing Road 6 was and why they weren’t on station.

Once the patrol had passed, the crew moved on, Thoulyakk moaning that once again his furry pelt was covered in filth. Being unfamiliar with the city El grabbed a nearby civilian thrust him against a wall and demanded to know the way to Road 6. The bewildered and terrified Aqualish spoke rapidly at them, but as he appeared to speak no basic, and none of the crew knew Aqualish, it was useless. Lok, ever one to prefer technology to personal interaction, was already trying to download a local map over the holonet, however he soon discovered that the holonet was being blocked locally. Worse, he saw a Stormtrooper on the far corner glance down to a datapad, then look in their direction, clearly trying to triangulate on something from information on his datapad.

Before the Stormtrooper could spot them, Thoulyakk tried to cause a distraction and went to pull a civilian from a nearby speeder, however he was caught unawares by an anti-theft mechanism which jolted him with a stun pulse as he touched the door. Jom, not wanting to lose the initiative, decided to get the drop on the Imperials and opened fire, but bad fortune turned to worse as he completely missed the Stromtrooper, who proceeded to return fire, clipping Jom, and calling to some nearby Stormtroopers who joined him. The crew, not wanting to hang around, fled down another alley.

With everything falling apart around them and a squad of Stormtroopers now in direct pursuit, the crew ran as fast as they could. El looked for some street signage to give them an idea of which way to go, found a promising direction and headed that way. As they charged towards Sector 6, but away from Road 6, an outside observer might consider they were having truly abysmal luck.

Bursting out onto another main street the crew immediately spotted another group of Stormtroopers ahead, turning back anyone trying to head further up the road. Thoulyakk decided to try his strength again and went to turn over a small parked speeder the cause a distraction, but it proved to be heavier than expected and he couldn’t manage it. All he achieved was to drop the speeder heavily and cause a minor fuel leak. They quickly moved away, Thoulyakk looking guilty at having needlessly damaged an innocent person’s vehicle.

El, deciding to make use of Thoulyakk’s failure and repeat her own earlier success, shot at the fuel to perhaps cause an explosion and distract the Stormtroopers, but the speeder continued to disappoint, instead simply creating a small fire along the gutter that quickly drew the inhabitants of the nearby building out to try and stop it before it burned down their homes. The Stormtroopers were now watching the scene carefully but refused to be drawn away from their guard post.

Spotting a mohawked, gang tattooed human in the crowd adorned by a belt of grenades, Thoulyakk recalling the old Wookie proverb that you catch more Shyyk Bugs with Gogo nectar than sour sap, decided to try a new approach, and approached the man. The rest of the crew stared in disbelief as the Wookie and the human engaged in a brief conversation, full of smiles, and Thoulyakk returned carrying a belt of grenades. Jom, not wishing to look a gift Wookie in the mouth, grabbed a grenade and hurled it toward the Imperial checkpoint. The grenade fell short and didn’t hurt any of the Stormtroopers but it forced them to dive for cover and the crew were off and running again.

Turning a corner but with the Imperials now once again in hot pursuit, they spotted another speeder. Third time lucky, Thoulyakk succeeded in ripping the door off. As Jom slipped into the driver seat Lok got to work hotwiring the vehicle and finally they were off.

Minutes later they were narrowly avoiding bouncing the speeder off the hull of the Annual Pigeon, with Imperial speeders not far behind. They piled into the ship, with Lok using yet more mechanical wizardry to get the engines up to full power in record time, and under Jom’s hands the ship leapt into the sky.

I'll be using the stats from LibrarianNPC's freighter thread... It's a good base model, with a good number of hardpoints & I want to encourage them to improve it.

Ah, that seems to be pretty much the same as the YT-1300 but slightly weaker and fewer hard points, so I won't bother to change, but thanks.

Imperial Captain Barnes was dissatisfied with his current assignment. When he had been promoted to his own command, a Gozanti Armed Transport with a full complement of 4 TIE fighters, he had been absolutely thrilled; sure that this was the start of a glowing career and confident that he would be Captain of a Star Destroyer within a few years. But as the months drifted by with nothing but uneventful convoy escort assignments his hopes began to fade. Without successful combat deployments he could not gain a reputation and would never progress.

He had blessed his fortune when he arrived at Bandomeer to find a raid on a suspected terrorist cell underway and had immediately volunteered his ship for close orbit fire support and his TIE fighters for air support. The short sighted local Navy commander had instead criticised the short range of his heavy lasers and ordered him to patrol the shipping lanes that were backing up whilst the planet was temporarily in orbital lockdown and no ships were permitted to enter the atmosphere or leave orbit for hyperspace.

Shepparding a bunch of ore freighters in a holding orbit was totally uneventful, and after the first five minutes spent aggressively patrolling hoping that one of the ships might panic and try to run, he had ordered the ships into a tight formation to keep them close together and limited in their ability to manoeuvre, then pulled his ship back into a pursuit orbit to watch over the tightly packed bunch.

When the monotony of staring at unmoving spots on a screen was finally interrupted by a new contact on the long range scanner it took him some time to realise what was going on. When he finally understood that a Dynamic class light freighter had taken off from the surface and was running for hyperspace right through his designated patrol sector, he knew his moment to shine had finally arrived.

He assessed his resources and realised that ordering the civilian ships into a tight group for his own convenience and to make their lives difficult, was actually going to seem like amazing foresight as the tightly packed ships provided a barrier that no sane pilot would fly through, which would force the fleeing freighter to come right into his guns. Hitting the battle station alert button with a great deal of satisfaction, and hearing his crew scrambling to man the weapon stations, he devised orders for the TIE fighters. He directed Alpha wing to head toward the oncoming ship and harry them, but kept Bravo wing near him to provide a pincer when the freighter closed in.

As the freighter continued to leave orbit he checked the path projection and saw that they were heading right for the parking orbit. Perhaps seeing their path blocked they were going to attack the commercial shipping, they were terrorists afterall, it would be just like them to attack unarmed civilians. Oblivious to the irony that he had himself been hoping one of them might step out of line and he could fire upon them, Captain Barnes was now outraged at the perceived threat to “his” ships.
“Ops, move Bravo wing over the intercept the dynamic’s current course plot, helm we will hold out here to block their escape but move us closer to the parking orbit in case we need to respond.”
The pilot started to move the Gozanti but the operations rating turned to the Captain hesitantly,
“Sir, it appears we are being jammed, we have no communications.”
“Ridiculous, who would be jamming us?!”
“It appears to be the Dynamic class freighter sir.”
“Idiot! Do your job and break through the jamming. And who is that?” the Captain demanded, seeing two new returns on the long range sensors.
“Cloakshape fighters sir,” the co-pilot interjected, “registered to one of the main corporations here.”
“Are they here to help or more targets? **** it man, get me communications back.”
The Captain paused his tirade against the Operations technician as he saw that Alpha wing was closing to attack range. The TIE fighters swept past in a textbook attach run, and Barnes thrilled to see damage reported as the parts of the freighter’s hull was vaporised under the barrage of fire, the first damage “he” had inflicted since taking his command, but the elation dropped away moments later. The freighter returned fire from the dorsal turret, which the TIE fighters easily evaded, but their dodge dropped them down into the firing arc of the ventral turret which proceeded to obliterate the lead TIE.

Captain Barnes silently cursed the TIE pilot for his incompetence, this would look very bad on his report and it could be some time before he could resupply with a replacement fighter. Now he would only have three TIE fighters to dock on his Gozanti, an obvious sign of failure out there for all to see. When the Operations technician interrupted his musings he nearly pulled his sidearm on the man, but the good news forestalled the act.
“Communications are back up sir, I’ve broken through the jamming.”
“Excellent, get those lazy pilots in Bravo wing over there to engage the freighter. Both wings full attack, I want that freighter destroyed!”
It was clear now that the freighter was either going to attack the parked cargo ships, or they would have to slow down a lot to try and navigate through them safely. Fortunately the superior speed of the TIE fighters meant they would be able to intercept them before either option could occur.

As Bravo wing and the remaining TIE of Alpha wing coordinated their attack in a textbook double slash manoeuvre but the pilot of the freighter was clearly certifiably insane, jinking like an madman and spinning the ship in ridiculous manoeuvres. As the sensors cleared after the violence of the pass Barnes could see only a single TIE remaining.

“Imperial Armed Transport 732, this is Offworld Mining Corporation Defence Wing, are you certain you wish us to target the Correlian freighter? It looks like you’re engaging the Dynamic.”
Barnes was shocked, there was a Correlian freighter in parking orbit but who had ordered them to attack it and why did they think the order came from his ship? Before he could respond another voice came over the open channel, a female voice with the accent of a Ryloth commoner.
“Aah, that eez correct, we ‘ave the Dynamic under control, continue to execute your assigned designation target assignment.”
Of course, they were being jammed when the Cloakshape fighters had first appeared.
“Idiots! You’re taking orders from a fugitive. This is Captain Barnes of Imperial Armed Transport 723. Attack the Dynamic freighter IDed as ‘Arbitrary’. Failure to comply will result in your destruction.”
Captain Barnes smiled to himself, he may have lost most of his TIEs but now he had Cloakshape fighters and they were armed with concussion missiles.

Hoho, yeah I'd say it's slightly weaker... I like the fact that it'll be a bit of added challenge for my players tho )

As Lok dropped into the co-pilots seat Jom spoke to him without ever looking away from the view through the forward canopy.
“How does it look?”
“Minor damage on the inside, I’ve patched the spot leak, but the outer hull is probably messed up badly and they’re nothing I can do about that without a spacesuit and a vacuum welder.”
Jom spared a second to glance at him quizzically.
“That was a joke! I cannot fix the hull from the outside in a spacesuit even if I was stupid enough to climb out into space in the middle of a pitched battle. The ship has to be in an atmosphere for hull repairs!”
Lok checked the scanners.
“There’s still one TIE left but El’s ruse with the company fighters fell down when the Imperials broke through the jamming. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more with that.” Looking up Lok continued, “aren’t we getting a bit close to the parking Orbit?”
“Not close enough…”

Trailing a cloud of vaporised TIE fighter, and some of its own hull, the Annual Pigeon, currently operating with transponders identifying it as the Arbitrary, shot into the densely packed crowd cargo ships in parking orbit. The viewport blurred with colour as Jom wove the ship in a rollercoaster ride through the closely packed and mismatched array of ore haulers, cargo freighters and the occasional private yacht. Lok realised his hands were aching and looked down to see that his knuckles had gone white from gripping the arm rests of his chair so hard. Unfortunately their dangerously high-speed manoeuvre was causing the ships they were barely scraping past to try to avoid them. The lumbering manoeuvres of the larger ships far to slow to make any difference to the Pigeon’s progress, but it seemed to be opening up a bit of a corridor behind them. On the scanners Lok saw that the TIE fighter had decided to use this and was coming in after them.

As the last surviving TIE closed in on the dense cluster of ships it dropped its speed slightly to match that of the Pigeon. That was still dangerously fast for such a manoeuvre but whilst the pigeon was a brick shaped transport vehicle the TIE fighter was an agile combat fighter built for high speed manoeuvres. At it raced down the widening gap in the wake of the Pigeon it dodged the still-manoeuvring traffic with casual ease, however the further into the cluster it got the more difficult it became as the heavy ships, having initially tried to dodge away from the pigeon were pushing hard back to their former positions to avoid colliding with the ships around them and in some cases overcompensating with their unresponsive thrusters not strong enough for such rapid manoeuvring of the heavy ships. The TIE clipped the tip of the port wing across the stern of a shifting super sized ore hauler and recovered, the wing bent slightly out of shape, but then as a private yacht moved into the same open space the TIE was heading for, the TIE jinked hard to starboard and the damaged wing collapsed under the strain. As the wing came apart the whole ship lost control and spiralled away ending in a fiery explosion that had almost no effect upon the massive flank of another massive ore hauler.

With the Pigeon passing unscathed through the densly packed traffic it had safely passed the Gozanti Armed Transport, which being a slower ship could never catch them now before they reached hyperspace. The Offworld Mining Corporation Defence Wing was still on their tail though. The crew of the Pigeon did not recognise the ships but they appeared to be fast enough to catch them before they could get far enough out of the gravity well to enter hyperspace. El attempted to intimidate the ships into leaving them alone, but the Imperial Officer offered counter threats to the pilots and nothing El could say could trump an Imperial warship parked in orbit over the pilot’s homeworld.

With no choice but to keep running and prepare for the inevitable attack, Lok spent his time soothing the stressed systems of the ship and maximising the output of the shields at the rear, and El and Thoulyakk, in the ventral and dorsal turrets, prepared to fire. The whole crew waited silently watching the sensor board as the pursuing fighters closed towards the range of their laser batteries and the inevitable engagement, but before they reached it they slowed down. Everyone stared at their screens for a moment, wondering if the attackers had lost their nerve, when Jom shouted “Missiles!”.

The Pigeon dove to evade. Jom could not manoeuvre her quickly enough to dodge completely but it was enough that the missiles merely glanced off the hardened rear shields and exploded harmlessly. If they continued to flee the attackers would just continue to sit out of range and hammer the Pigeon’s defences, and their luck and shields would not last forever, so Jom swung the ship around to get close enough that El and Thoulyakk could return fire.

The Cloakshape fighters were taken unawares by the sudden change, and one of them was a flaming wreck before they could react. The second was briefly locking into a dogfight with the Pigeon until the stalemate broke with a head to head firing run. The Cloakshape fired missiles but at such close range they couldn’t angle in fast enough and overshot, whilst in exchange the Pigeon riddled the Cloakshape with laser fire, totally wrecking it.

As the crew of the Pigeon cheered their victory Lok spotted a small trace on the sensors closing on them fast. Missiles! The Concussion missiles fired by the Cloakshape had overshot them on the first pass but had locked on and looped around behind them to close on them once more. Jom started to evade but the missiles were too fast and the ship rocked from the blast and threw the crew around as the force temporarily overpowered the inertial dampeners.

Half wrecked, bleeding atmosphere and hopelessly outgunned by the Gozanti Armed Transport steaming towards them the Pigeon fled to the relative safety of hyperspace.

As the view screen became enveloped in the comforting blue smear of hyperspace Jom relaxed in his seat, eased his tense hands off the control yoke and flipped a few switches to silence the alarms. For now they were safe. Ever since their panicked escape from Taris, that somehow seemed so long ago, it was policy aboard the Annual Pigeon to always have a jump plotted and loaded whenever they were in system. In a few minutes they would drop back into realspace and could change their vector to avoid pursuit. With the current emergency over Jom called the crew to assemble in the communal room in the centre of the ship to discuss their next steps.

The group quickly agreed that the highest priority was to get the ship fixed, definitely before they continued this dangerous mission. The first thing on the agenda was finding a safe dock to get repairs. As El asked a general question about where they could go, KT rolled over to the central console and brought up a hologram of a Star Destroyer. The crew’s shock and scepticism faded as they read the data scrolling up beside the image of the ship. This was no Imperial Star Destroyer but an old Venator Class Star Destroyer left over from the clone wars.

She had once been called the Invincible and had served the Republic during the Clone Wars, but after being wrecked and abandoned she had been repaired and refitted as a roving free port and trading post. With a certain amount of irony she was now named the Vincible. Ruled by the mysterious and never seen “Lady Vincible” via an army of refitted battle droids, her docking bay was permanently open for business and the decks and compartments of the old warship had been refitted into shops and businesses that catered to all markets. She drifted through deep space, tough enough to resist most attacks and able to jump clear of anything big enough to threaten her.

The crew of the Pigeon agreed this would be an ideal spot to get some repair work done away from the prying eye of the Empire. The next item on the agenda was getting some money. They had a modest cargo of Azurite taken from the Wayfarer, and indeed the Wayfarer itself was waiting for them back in the Bandomeer system. They decided that they would risk collecting it, it having been left far enough away from the planet that they could easily jump out again if they got spotted. Lok would transfer over in a space suit with KT as his co-pilot and both ships would fly together to the Vincible.

When they arrived at the coordinates of the Vincible they found her to be much as depicted in the hologram. The massive dorsal docking bay doors were open and small ships were flowing in and out. The only ship not heading towards or away from the ship was a Firespray System Patrol Craft keeping pace with the Vincible a few kilometres out. Upon seeing the twin bridges of the Vincible a terrible urge came over Jom.

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Cholo the Hutt, owner and proprietor of “The Bridge”, the most expensive hotel on the Vincible that took up the entire starboard bridge pylon, the port pylon being the private domain of Lady Vincible and strictly out of bounds, was inspecting the main dining room. The dining room was built into the old command room and offered the best view on the ship, seeing the endless stars as well having a view of the entire dorsal docking bay. Many wealthy clients enjoyed the status dining here conferred as it meant they could keep an eye on everyone who moved on and off the ship, an eye in the sky for the elite and wealthy to look down upon everyone else.

As Cholo stared out of the window, completely ignoring the maitre de who was constantly rabbiting on about some nonsense, the peace and serenity was shattered as a green light freighter coming from the stern of the Vincible at horrifying speed shot between the two pylons, having to roll 90 degrees sideways to fit. Completing its roll and thus now inverted relative to the Vincible the ship then pulled a half loop down into the docking bay leaving it upright again and now facing back towards the stern. It tucked in underneath another light freighter to claim its freshly vacated berth, nearly clipping the landing gear of the departing ship.

Cholo realised that his entire staff was staring at him and his drink, now dripping from the viewport where Cholo had sprayed it from his mouth. Recovering his composure, he shouted that the drink had gone sour, threw the glass at the maitre de and slithered off to curse at the cooking staff.