Private A Simple Job

[Meri Vale]

Meri flinched when the lights cut out, the sudden darkness squeezing the breath from her chest before the emergency strips flickered back on. Her first instinct was to freeze. Her second was to listen.

RED's voice came through the comms, precise as ever, and somehow that steadiness anchored her more than Sorr's shouted orders had.

"Okay," Meri said quietly, more to herself than anyone else, then a little louder so the others could hear. "Okay. I hear you."

She forced her thoughts into order, the way she did with ruins and broken mechanisms. Panic wasted time. Patterns did not.

"RED," she said into the comm, careful to keep her voice calm, "if they're at your door, they'll expect you to stay put. You're the obstacle. That means they'll cluster there."

She glanced down the corridor, already mapping it in her head. Intersections. Maintenance access points. Places where the ship narrowed and widened again.

"That gives us space elsewhere," she continued. "If the ship is under your control, can you seal secondary routes near the engine room? Not permanently. Just enough to slow them and funnel them."

Her hand tightened around the strap of her satchel as she moved, keeping close to the wall, eyes flicking over panels and seams the way she'd learned to do in old places.

"I'm not fast," Meri admitted, honesty threaded through the words, "but I'm good at finding paths people overlook. If Brinna's with me, we can reach you from a service run instead of the main corridors."

She paused, listening for confirmation, then added softly, almost as reassurance.

"Just hold on. We're coming to you. And we won't do it the way they expect."

RedSword77 Sorr Kortu Roark Garnett Liin Terallo Brinna Dara

 

[Liin Terallo]

It did not take long for me to be seen. Although I would rather of opened up the crate first. Instead I was being pulled away to deal with something else. And that was my dilema. Do I stay there and try to secure what was mine? Or do I answer the call to the young man that hired me?

I let out a forced sigh as I begrudgingly left my crate and took to following the young man. "Have you not tried shooting at the generator or it's power cables?" To me that seemed to be the first thing that trigger happy young men would do. But then again the stakes are high and he might not be thinking straight with everything that was going on.

Tags: Sorr Kortu Meri Vale RedSword77 Roark Garnett

 

[Roark Garnett]

The M-55 Medium Repeating Blaster was a repeating blaster manufactured by BlasTech Industries. That´s what the tech manual said. The tech manual didn´t say that the business end of a M-55 looked as big as the freaking engine exhaust of a star destroyers main engine and twice as menacing when you stared right into it.

Why did pirates have to be so well-armed these days? Like teeth ad claws on a man-sized dinosaur were not bad enough. The reptile pirate goon sticking the big gun into Roark´s face grinned a fanged grin over the mile-long triple barrel. Alright, these blaster were old as gravity these days but gravity still worked. If this baby in the pirates clawed hands started to cough, there would not be enough left of Roark to warrant a funeral, probably not enough t fill a tobacco pipe with.

"Uh guys, we are all okay, right? Just business, nothing personal…"

The dinosaur with the rifle looked like he was taking it personalthough. Maybe it had been the hit with the knife. Or maybe his stomach was growling and gunslinger was today's menu.

Roark was saved by the bell when in the background a blueish-white hlo-transmission crackled to life.

"DUNDEE!!!"

It was not a shout, It was not a roar. It was like an explosion and it didn´t sound happy. The accompanying holo image showed a saurian scaled head with forked tongues slithering out of the nostrils.

This saurian was ticked-off and not shy about showing it. Now Roark was no expert in xenobiology – honestly he could barely pronounce the fancy word – but he had his ear on the ground in spaceports and cantinasd and he had seen this scaly face mostly on search warrants and bounty boards or on gossip channels

Normally all reptiles looked the same for Roark but this ugly face stood out due to the stories of murder and mayhem that came with it.

Alix Gatorrr, a fugitive from the Ssi-ruu, formerly a slave according to the caste system of his people, turned space pirate with a hasty trigger finger. Just what they needed. Another carnivorous crocodile with a temper, a blaster and an inbred inferiority complex.

Meet Dundee´s partner. Thank you very much.

"DUNDEE!!!"

Roark was getting the feeling he could hear Alix twice, once through the holo-transmission and the second time through the vacuum of space and the ship´s hull. With an organ like that, why was the pirate captain bothering with a transmission to begin with? He could as well have yelled from ship to ship.

And the much more important question…

How to convince him that the merry men and women of Tianas Purr were NOT responsible for whatever problem he had?

RedSword77 Meri Vale Liin Terallo Sorr Kortu Brinna Dara

 

[RedSword77]

RED was listening to Meri carefully. Lucky for the droid, he had already done the voice recognition with the crew. RED identified Meri in mere seconds. With that and body scans, he could count on one hand chagelins that could even fool him.
"Roger, roger, Meri, the droid answered back, RED sometimes at its attempt at humor, like to say that.

Red brought up the ship's schematics and patched into the ship's sensors, locating all the crew as the systems came up. Then the droid saw it. "That Nar Rat slicer they are trying to get back into the system." said RED with some anger in his voice.

" Meri, you should hurry. I am not a good sliser, and they are giving this old droid trouble. I can discern your and Brinna's location. The droid sighed I have sealed secondary routes near the engine room and the ship," explained RED with all kinds of noise in the background.

"Good, knock three times, cliling if you want me," sings the drid in a happy tone. RED was starting to really feel the pressure with everything going on. The guys outside the engine room were trying to blast the door, but it wasn't going well for them. The engine room hatch was one of the thickest and heaviest doors on a ship.

RED rechecked all crew members' positions. His processor was starting to overheat under the load of everything he was tracking. The Sliser was taking up thirty percent of his active capacity.

Roark Garnett Liin Terallo Meri Vale Sorr Kortu Brinna Dara

 

[Roark Garnett]

Roark felt like he had to act. Like now. It was kinda difficult to talk your way out of a tight spot if your head lies on a silver platter separated from your body and with an apple stuffed between your teeth.

And amidst a bunch of reptiles who were all not vegetarian and upset to the ninth degree this was a real danger.

"DUNDEE!!!"

Yes, we know that by now. Alix Gatorrr´s vocabulary was a bit limited, right? Good thing at least someone here knew about the finer points of eloquent speech.

"Hey guys", Roark shouted loud enough to be heard by the hologram, "why don´t you get over with it and tell Lord Gatorrr that you screwed him over big time. He´s smarter than you and will find out anyway."

The bridge fell silent. Dead silent. No, poor choice of words. So silent you could hear a needle drop.

All amber colored eyes with thin vertical pupils turned towards Roark.

The only sound he could hear came from the back of his own head. Dinner bell or something? Did someone rder raw meat?

"Hey guys," he rasped, his throat suddenly very dry, "that´s what it is ll about, right?"

RedSword77 Liin Terallo Meri Vale Sorr Kortu Brinna Dara