Fitzsimmons climbs remarkably well, for a man who had just cheated death. Gaining the rim just as the airspeeders begin scouring the boulder field, he catches a flash of white armor from where the powerful lights are lingering.

“This is SAR-SaR, Saleucami Air Response Search and Rescue.” Another voice quickly interposes over external speakers and an open comm channel. “Ignore my overzealous medic, we’re only armed with flares. We’re here to..”

The T-47s open up with their twin heavy blaster cannons, decimating the communications array and the top third of the tower Briar had only recently vacated. The pulse generated by the explosion shorts all long-range communications capacity in the crater’s vicinity. There would be no calling for air support this time.

Hale slams his helmet back on as he dashes towards a more safe position, still trying to lead them away from the kid. He comms over to the rest of the team, They've spotted me! I'm pinned down out here! Not much I can do. Any idea who these punks are?

Den would openly laugh to himself as he hears the communication from the speeders coming in. "Did they just threaten us? Don't they know who we are?" he would mutter to himself while running his hand over the switches to activate the carrier.

Hopping back on the com he calls out to Hale, "hey, sergeant-major, you got that kid yet? These guys seem to be getting itchy about something". "**** civilians, they just love to push the line with us, thinking we won't respond-"

He's cut off by the explosion tearing through the tower above him. Watching with his mouth open in shock, he grabs hold of the controls for the LAAT/c and rips it into the sky. "Absolutely not, no way are they going to be getting away with that!" he shouts to himself as he moves to circle the speeders slowly. "Come on, can't this thing go any faster?" he mutters as he swivels the ship around to target the speeder attacking the base. Openining the com Den takes a moment to appreciate the situation.

"Attention traitor civilians who thought it'd be a good idea to fire on an imperial installation. You've really kicked the piranha beetle nest this time". With that he squeezes the fire switch for the LAAT/c, the blaster fire smashing straight into his target. "Now, how about you all set down on the ground before I take your attack personally?"

Gunnery Check: 2eP+1eA+2eD 2 successes

Takes maneuver to increase speed by one and move to short range of the speeder, flipping destiny point to upgrade attack. Does 7 base damage to speeder.

“I’m hit, I’m hit,” the pilot of the T-47 manages, before the speeder crashes into the rim in a fiery explosion. His wingmate looks like he’s barely keeping it together, and the other two peel off in opposite directions.

Looking up, Hettie winces as the exploding airspeeder rains wreckage down upon her. Except she’s not really there. She is seeing it through the bantha’s eyes, from the platform below. The explosion jolts her back to herself, where she is still crouched in the recess of a large boulder.

They were on the trail for several minutes, when Evon realised he made a dumb mistake in his estimation. With a grim expression, he turns to Drogos. ,,Sir, I realized I failed my estimation. We overshoot the most likely spot he surfaced. It's my fault. However, we are getting close to the squad and according to the intel, Fitz wants to get his hands on the girl again. We can use her as a bait." He waits the Inquisitor's reaction in dead silence.

"Okay, baby, let's get you back in the air." Somar hits the accelerator and takes the TIE towards the incoming flight. The smooth handling, excellent response time, and powerful weapons, start to make short work of the speeders.

"Then Bait she shall be." Drogos said as he moved to where Hale was as he was the one who had last located her. His Aura of fear emanating at full force and his Lightsaber ready he was going to stop This Fitzsimmons once and for all.

Fitzsimmons spies the lights reflecting off Hale’s armor, and quickly tucks himself under the shelter of an overhanging boulder. When the aerial battle is met in earnest, the searchlights move on, and the stormtrooper has vanished from sight. Still.. The girl must be holed up around here somewhere...

Sure enough, he finds the child crouched uncomfortably, hugging her knees in a narrow crevice of rock. The girl screams.

”Quiet, girl. Your mother sent me, to take you to safety. Come at once.” The renegade tank commander has his sidearm drawn, but it is pointing away from the girl, as he beckons for her to follow with his other.

Hearing the scream, Hale looks back towards her and sees a shadowy figure looming over her. He curses under his breath as he dashes forwards, running through a mental list of the team to make sure he wasn't about to jump his own guy. As he sprints forward he lets out a war cry and yells at the figure, I'M GONNA TEAR YOU APART! A blaster bolt rips past his bucket as he leaps into the air, dragging the man to the ground. He growls as he pulls the man down, Pick on someone your own size, punk! As he wrestles over the blaster with the man, he yells to the girl, Go on kid! Run, get out of here!

“Drake, bug out.”

”Negative. This speeder’s not gonna make it back. I’m taking down that fighter.” Buzzing past the Phantom, his tailgunner fires, and the electromagnetic harpoon strikes true. The speed differential and tether make this a one-time shot, and the pilot knows it. He must eject at just the right moment... Now! The cockpit blows and the pilot activates his gravchute, but his gunner is not so lucky, slamming into the canopy and dropping away into the darkness. “Goose!”

The remaining airspeeder returns fire on the LAAT/c, lighting it up with its laser cannons, but nothing gets through.

Hettie is not sure who to trust, so instead of lashing out, this time she reaches out with her senses. Oddly, it seems they both want to protect her? But the one has misgivings about the intentions of his friends... Flee. It’s what I should have done from the beginning. Get away.

Taking advantage of the grappling troopers’ temporary inattention, she again runs deeper into the maze of boulders, away from all of these men.

Evon stops in his place for a moment, when he hears the girl screaming. ,,Guess we have our asset!" He catches a bright blaster bolt, missing a stormtrooper by millimeters and watches as the trooper in white knocks the man down. Quickly, he grabs his strongest anesthetic, and sprints to the wrestling Hale and Fitz. ,,Grab him sergeant, he won't wiggle much after this cocktail!"

On 12/14/2019 at 7:11 PM, Edgehawk said:

“Drake, bug out.”

”Negative. This speeder’s not gonna make it back. I’m taking down that fighter.” Buzzing past the Phantom, his tailgunner fires, and the electromagnetic harpoon strikes true. The speed differential and tether make this a one-time shot, and the pilot knows it. He must eject at just the right moment... Now! The cockpit blows and the pilot activates his gravchute, but his gunner is not so lucky, slamming into the canopy and dropping away into the darkness. “Goose!”

The remaining airspeeder returns fire on the LAAT/c, lighting it up with its laser cannons, but nothing gets through.

"Yeah, that'll learn ya.", Somar says to himself. "Now for the rest of your friends."

The imperial hotshot expertly barrel-rolls his Phantom, unwinding it from its tether and guiding the vacant airspeeder into one of the taller boulders jutting from the landscape. The prototype’s shields protect it from most of the flying wreckage, but the electromagnetic harpoon is still attached, and somehow wreaking havoc with the onboard systems.

Hettie flies through the familiar boulder field, taking the low paths through the choking foliage that only the children and the animals knew. Away from the killing men and their killing ships.

"Are you mad?" he shouts over the com at the remaining speeder. "You're about to get torn to pieces, you really want to stand and fight on this one?" Shaking his head as he sees that his words are not having affect, Den swings the transport back into position to fire. "So be it, for the record I commend your bravery", truthfully he suspected he would do the same in their place, it was a matter of pride. Squeezing the button, he fires on the speeder

However Den is physically shocked when he sees the speeder dodge out of the way of his attack. "What?" he shouts to himself as he leans forwards in his seat to watch the target. "Credit where it's due I guess".

Coercion Check: 2eA+1eB+2eD 1 failure, 1 advantage

Advatnage spent to recover strain (assume that's ok with @Edgehawk)

Gunnery Check: 1eP+2eA+2eD 2 failures, 1 threat

From his position on the ground, Fitzsimmons takes aim and sprays the figures looming over him, but to little effect. Hale recognizes the distinctive silhouette of an SE-14r imperial repeating pistol- quite similar to his own- in the flickering light from the still-burning airspeeder above. As Hale presses in on him, the desperate traitor slams the pistol into him, but is unable to fend him off. “Nngggtth..aggkg...”

The light pistol barely penetrates his armor, only leaving slight burns. Hale grabs Fitz's neck and rolls quickly to the side, slamming him into the boulder. He flicks his wrist blade out, pointing it at the traitor's neck as they continue to wrestle around. Cooperate for the good doc, or I'll stick you with something worse!

Goose is gone. Move on. Escape and evade... No. Complete the mission. Drake snakes through the boulders, continuing his search for the girl on the ground. The scream came from over here, somewhere... The pilot catches swift but furtive movement up ahead, a small figure in Tusken garb.

”Beets, I’ve got eyes on the girl. Activating my distress beacon now.”

”Girl! Hettie! Hetaera!” This last name catches her attention, as none from the crater know it. “Your mother is on her way, but we need to leave this place now. It’s time to go.” Again, the girl reaches out, trying to gain a sense of this stranger’s motives...

”Drake, we’ve got you. Stand by for extraction.” With that, the last T-47 swoops in at speed, but then abruptly swerves and stops, close enough to their position for them to scramble aboard. The approach is not subtle, and as the canopy opens, the pilot again opens up on both comms and intercom: “We are removing the child to safety. Do not firrrrrrk...”

... she reaches out, but there has been so much chaos and death all around them, all she can sense of her surroundings is danger and loss. Wasting no further time, she kicks the pilot in the shins and scurries off once more, shimmying between two closely-spaced boulders that form a narrow fissure passage.

They were vulnerable. Came to a dead stop to pick up the girl... and now she was running again! We’re dead... Making a snap decision that he would probably regret, Beets bails, exiting swiftly from the cockpit. His gunner follows, close behind. “Escape and evade it is.”

Focused on the girl who was in the process of getting away from all of them Drogos decides to give chase. He wouldn’t fit in the ravine where the girl was running but he could follow from above. Leaping up above to the top of the ravine the Inquisitor gave chase, with the speed he was going he almost tripped once or twice but ultimately he would be able to mirror the girls movements just from above her with luck she would walk to a portion of the ravine where he could grab her and pull her out.

Seeing the T-47 hover and the crew get out, Can't let them get away. Brair thought to herself, she moved through the rocks switching her blaster to stun, she fired around the boulder hitting the air-speeder's pilot. "Drop your weapons and step away from the speeder!" she shouted over to them.

The energy bolt missing him by an inch, Evon stops for a blink of an eye. ,,That was closer than it would be comfortable". He quickly regains himself and tries to stab Fitz with the needle, but even on the ground the flailing arms and legs seem like an unpenetrable wall. ,,Now thats's enough!" With a loud cry, Evon launches himself on top of the 2 man and fixes Fitzsimmons with the help of Hale. ,,And stay where you are!"

Seeing the renegades make a break for it towards the rocky terrain, Somar brings the TIE around quickly to block their path. He aims the ship's cannons at the fleeing party and hits the comm's speakers. "All right, traitors, that's far enough! Don't make me make a mess here..."

Leaning over so that he can try to watch the escaping gunner through the glass of the cockpit, he slows the carrier to follow overhead. Hanging a little way back he glances up to watch the pilot of the TIE fighter do his work, it was evident why some were enrolled into the naval academy, and others ended up as grunts on the ground. "If he can get one of this lot, do I need to catch this other one?" he muses.

The renegade tank commander struggles to free himself, but Hale and Evon have him on the ground, pinned against the base of a boulder. Unable to get a clean shot with the autopistol, he reaches for his vibroknife, but to no avail- he is held fast.

Aglow with the burning wreckage of the airspeeders, the boulder field is giving up its fleeing subversives. Briar stuns the T-47 pilot, just as he is about to effect his escape; Ral and Den have successfully established air superiority, and routed the gunner and other pilot. The S.C.A.R. troopers of Banshee Squad move in to assist in taking the prisoners into custody.

Only the girl continues to flee, with the Inquisitor close behind, mimicking her progress from above... until he abruptly no longer sees or hears her movements from within the crevice, but rather hears a low growl emitting from the shadowy passage below! Before he can react to this new development, his holo-messenger display lights up.

The long-range communications systems which had been temporarily disrupted by the tower explosion crackle back to life. Holocomm displays aboard the Stormcrow, Phantom and Houndstooth LAAT/c , show a familiar figure, flanked by her crimson guard. ”Task Force 75, This is Baroness Venlana Sipal. Recent changes in Consortium leadership forced me to reconsider the offer I had been given, and the Veiled Sorority has welcomed me into its ranks after all. My crew has taken the IPD Intrepid, the empire’s only capital ship in this sector. I have the deck and the conn. The ship was taken with minimal casualties, and your officers and crew need not die. My mistress the Pirate Queen wants the girl. I want my lieutenant Porel Vakra. You have one hour to deliver them, or further casualties will ensue. Needless to say, we are not permitting ships or transmissions to escape Saleucami space at this time. One hour.” A cursory check confirms that the message did indeed originate on the Adz-class destroyer they had reported to.

Doc! Stick 'im! Stick 'im now! Hale holds the blade close to Fitz's neck to restrict his movement, simultaneously pinning his arm against his chest.

Jumping on the opportunity, Evon quickly injects Fitz with the anesthetic which soon shows its effect.

,,Take this man into custody! When the inquisitor returns with the girl, we are going to extract everything he knows." Then turns to Hale: ,,Are you okay sergeant? Do you need medical attention?"