Aerial Kilometer Club (ORC Dominion of Hex G-56)

[Janick Beauchamp]

Objective: Repair the artificial gravity
Location: Engineering department
Allies: [member="Sebastian Thel"] [member="Mara Merrill-Valkner"] [member="Dax Fyre"]
Enemies: Mynocks

With the artificial gravity back online, she fell down to the floor, with dead mynocks amortizing her fall when she ceased floating. This time around, dealing with the scold of mynocks was much more straightforward: the scold was tightly packed together, and she could more safely use area-of-effect pyrokinesis to light the mynocks ablaze, and it didn't even have to be a spherical AOE either. A hexagonal prism was more like it, albeit highly irregular, with the requisite heat coming from overheating systems onboard. With the consequence that, while the remaining systems may still be broken, they no longer overheated. But the artificial gravity being back online was a relief: there were no longer any floating objects potentially causing problems to the remaining equipment, and Sebastian could now use tools without having her hold them up in mid-air, thus freeing her off-hand. Maybe, just this once, she might have to use her beskad to slice and dice mynocks if there were any mynocks that survived after she just killed several dozen of them using three different pyrokinetic effects that differed mostly on their delivery. Time is short: killing the mynocks is one thing, but the safety of everyone onboard is important, she thought, while her Force-batteries were being drained.

 

[Not Ordo]

The signals came to the crew on the 'Broken City' as they were setting up the hyperspace satellites that would give the ORC a bead on activities in the area. The party was all well and good but Gib liked to pay his bills on time. On time things didn't ever ever care if you wanted to make merry they only cared about deadlines.

The thick bodied Or'zet was 30 minutes EVA when the Comms guru called out to him.

"Gib," the woman called him since that was what most everybody called him, "Better finish up and get back. The party ship sent a distress call."

"Pfft, somebody probably butt comm'd us." He said as he and a small service droid worked to get the last hyperspace satellite online.

"Nah, sounds pretty serious." She replied, "They just said Sharukans showed up."

"Sharukans?" Gib didn't know for sure but he was about 57 percent sure his race had been cannon fodder for the Sharukans something like...a long time ago. "Ah, yeah, pull me in this will have to wait."

....

After ten minutes of decontamination and airlock cycles he was back on board and the captain was bringing them into position for a small blind (sabaac joke) jump to the private party barge. Good thing they had tow lines and tractor beams, bit if the Shakurans got jumpy, this wasn't going to go so good.

The ship jumped and arrived far beneath [member="Dax Fyre"] and his guest's ship. Gib sat down at the Comms/sensor station where he could employ his better than average ears.

"This is Broken City to Shakuran Empire Cruiser." He said as he tried to stick to the script and not cause an intergalactic incident, "We, uh, yeah we got this from here. Okay, thanks, bye."

He winced as he looked back at the captain who was now holding his temples and shaking his head.

[member="Linna Beorht"]

 

[Linna Beorht]

[member="Gib"]

<<What did they say?>>

Linna turned her attention from the small ship far below and focused on the Sharukan captain. A literal translation wouldn't do any good here. 'We obtained (object) which originates from (place)' didn't exactly capture the sentiment. <<It's another Outer Rim Coalition vessel. They express gratitude for our assistance and assume responsibility for the derelict from this point forward.>>

<<It's about time, but at least it happened. Perhaps the Coalition has a more competent presence in this region than we'd believed.>> The captain ran a blue hand through long gray hair and sighed. <<Humans. Helm, set us a course for nav point six. We're continuing on. Situation resolved, so far as we're concerned.>>

Ops reported that the Testoran Guard had come aboard. The Dancing Bantha now lacked exterior mynocks, and the locals could handle the interior infestation themselves. All that mattered was that the Bantha no longer drifted as an obstacle in local shipping routes.

The Tyrax arced away from the yacht and accelerated into hyperspace.

 

[Not Ordo]

"Well...that went well." Gib said as he turned to look at the actual comm person as she walked in with a instacook burrito and a can of caf.

"What did you do, Gib?" She asked looking at the group of semi stunned faces.

"Uh, what do you mean?" He asked as he avoided eye contact with anyone. "I just said we had the situation handled and stuff. What they gonna do that we can't do?"

The woman shook her head and nudged him out of her seat.

"Remind me to teach you diplomacy." She said as she started readjusting her settings.

"What am I gonna do with that? I ain't got a diploma anyways." He said as he started for the doors. "I'll get suited and whatever so we can tow the slackers over for maintenance."

"Yeah, just don't break anything while you're doing it this time." The Captain said as he got up and started getting ready for a boarding party.

"Hey, last time don't count, cuz it was broke when I got there." Gib said over his shoulder as he headed back to the tractor beam battery. "They always remember what stuff you don't want'em to."

[member="Dax Fyre"] [member="Sebastian Thel"] [member="Mara Merrill-Valkner"] [member="Janick Beauchamp"]

 

[Kat'Lariah Syphex]

Kat's body slammed into the floor as gravity returned with a groan, "Blast..." The woman brought spoke into her comm unit as she rubbed the back of her head in pain, "Bridge, gravity's been restored how you guys looking up there?"
The slightly dazed voice of the ship's communications officer echoed out of the communicator, 'Yeah...yeah we're good...But, Sharukans showed up. They just bailed out, someone from ORC just showed up."
"About fethin - wait did you just say Sharukans?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Oh gorra-!" the woman's voice was cut off by the sound of her smacking her head on a low-hanging pipe as she'd attempted to shoot to her feet, "They just left you said? You're sure we're not all just dead right now and dreaming?"
Kat had never personally encountered the Sharukans before, but from what she'd heard, they were bad news...like real bad.
"I'm pretty sure I still have a pulse ma'am."
The woman groaned as she stood up, much more carefully this time, "Scan the ship, make sure they didn't leave behind any surprises for us ok? Oh and tell the ORC vessel we'd like a tow back to the Wheel...I'll ask Gorba if he won't shoot me for bringing a bunch of people there...actually, hell, he might try to price gouge 'em for rides home, who knows." The red-haired woman didn't wait for a response as she closed the channel and turned to those who'd just helped fix the life-support suite, "Are you guys ok? Thanks for fixing her up by the way." She offered a hand to each of them in turn to help them to their feet.

[member="Sebastian Thel"] | [member="Janick Beauchamp"] | [member="Linna Beorht"] | [member="Gib"]

 

[Sebastian Thel]

Location: Engineering Department
Objective: Repair the Life Support System
Allies: [member="Janick Beauchamp"], [member="Gib"], [member="Kat'Lariah Syphex"]

Standing on his feet and brushing down the rust and slime left by the Mynocks, Bas quickly assessed the damage they had done to the wiring. Unfurling his toolkit, he set up his power unit and plugged in his soldering iron. He pulled his goggles over his eyes and fumbled around with the mass of damaged wires, all the while muttering calculations beneath his breath as he crimped the ends of the wires leading to the mainframe of the system.

The smell of soldering wire permeated throughout the compartment, accompanied by a gentle hiss as Sebastian melded the damaged ends of the wires back together and fused together any holes which had been eaten away. Still muttering figures, he repaired one wire after the other, until the leads of the mainframe were repaired. Taking a step back, he turned on the life support function and to his delight, the signal light turned green and told him that the system was operational.

"Life Support is functional!" Bas called to Janick and the others, while remaining completely oblivious to the happenings of the Sharukans. He turned off his power unit and set his soldering iron down to cool. Letting his goggles hang around his neck, he brushed the rust off his hands and rolled everything back into his toolkit.

"I'm good, thanks, well now anyway." Bas said to the young woman who offered him a hand, which he accepted as she pulled him to his feet. He looked over his shoulder for any sign of mynocks and could smell their burning flesh as Janick incinerated the creatures. "Good work dealing with the mynocks, Janick, and holding the tools down." In a encouraging tone, he looked over the shoulder of Kat and spoke to the alchemist.

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

Objective: Repair the life support system
Location: Engineering department
Allies: [member="Sebastian Thel"] [member="Kat'Lariah Syphex"] [member="Gib"]
Enemies: Dead mynocks

"Thank you"

She was grateful for Sebastian having, in fact, repaired the artificial gravity generator and life support after that. Now that life support was, once again, operational, it was time for her to collect all the dead mynocks and put those in a waste container, which, hopefully, will be jettisoned prior to departure. And that was a few dozen dead mynocks, so she had to telekinetically use a finger to pull each of them and put those in the nearest waste containment hovercart that was large enough to hold those mynocks. Killing the mynocks meant also cleaning up the mess they left behind, and it's not just the chewed-through cables. And this is precisely what the cart had at its bottom when she started loading it. By now it was obvious that it became a cartload of waste, most of it silicon-based. After a while she was finding herself with about thirty dead mynocks in the cart, and hence let the cart go to the nearest trash compactor. But she also was rather drained in her Force-batteries, so she'd rather not use the Force any more than she already had once the cart has departed. And proper overhaul of the life support system will come in due course, but only after the mynocks are disposed of.

 

[Not Ordo]

Gib hustled down the corridor. His boots ringing out on the clanging deck plates like hammer blows on an anvil. His big orange eyes squinted from focus as he tried to focus on exactly what he needed to do to get the other ship's situation under control. He stopped as he reached the tractor beam battery. It would have been nice if they could be controlled from the bridge but hey can't have everything.

He walked in and began powering up the systems before grabbing a seat at the console. They had at least seemed to convinced the Sharukans that this area of space had an ORC presence. With those uppity yahoos convinced maybe they could finish setting up the hyperspace satellites for comms and start patrols.

He fired up the console and opened the comm channel to the other ship.

"This is, uh, Gib." He said wanting to add titles and make it all formal sounding but he drew a blank on what to say, "Don't fire engines or nothin'. Youse guys are bout to get pulled in for a tow."

With that he took the joystick and aimed the tractor beams at the busted ship. A few quick button presses and he had them locked in. At least he didn't have to talk too much. He wasn't so good with the making the words thing.


[member="Kat'Lariah Syphex"] [member="Sebastian Thel"] [member="Janick Beauchamp"]

 

[Kat'Lariah Syphex]

Kat made her way to the bridge of the ship where the comms officer relayed the order to cut off the engines and let the other vessel tow them into a port. Kat gave a silent thank you that she wouldn't have to deal with the Sharukans, and hopefully never would...but luck only lasts so long. "Hey, anyone know if we have any Judges or ORC military aboard?" A couple moments of silence as the bridge crew either stared the smuggler or attempted to figure out if there were any such people aboard ensued. The silence was broken as one of the security officers spoke up, "Grand Marshall [member="Dax Fyre"] is onboard. One [member="Janick Beauchamp"] as well, she's known to work with various police forces across Coalition space," he informed her. "Call him up, I'm sure he'll want to increase patrols in the area or something like that. And Janick too, we should let her know so she can inform other planets."

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

"Call him up, I'm sure he'll want to increase patrols in the area or something like that. And Janick too, we should let her know so she can inform other planets."

So this operation proved that we need to increase patrols in this area, she thought, while receiving [member="Kat'Lariah Syphex"]'s message on comms. As grateful as she was for the Dancing Bantha to be towed to safety, where more permanent repairs would be enacted, the question would be: which patrol route(s) should be modified to include points of interest in this sector? Now, Chiloon-I/IIs are not the best fit for inter-sector patrols, so she should order the after-market upgrades to the Chiloon-IV to enable them to enter inter-sector patrols while keeping the ordnance configurations as they are. The Chiloon-IV was still rather average, in terms of their handling characteristics, but it still was able to get ordnance modularity. Its main improvement was just being able to get multi-sector patrols done. Which was the real deal-breaker that made the Chiloon-II available in very limited numbers in ORC service, at least at this point. But she didn't like the J-95 precisely because the pilots couldn't load the heavy ordnance on these craft for those low-survivability anti-capital engagements, although it worked just fine as an interceptor.

 

[Dax Perl]

Dax had been called up to the bridge. Not that he had been particularly surprised, but the news he received did surprised him. "Sharukans?" the man said, "You've gotta be fething kidding me." The Marshall remembered encountering the mysterious people during the Gossamer's expedition to Companion Besh. He also remembered they hadn't been his favorites...he honestly found it incredibly surprising that they had deemed a ship full of 'lesser creatures' worth trying to save, "I'll call up the rest of ORC higher-ups. Let them know, decide what to do. I'll have my Judges on alert and get a few more out there on the hyperspace lanes." the Smuggler, who was apparently the owner of the party barge nodded, thanked him, and then simply waved him off. 'Well ok...' the Rogue had thought to himself as he left. The Sharukan were cooking something up...things were just getting started and Dax wanted to know what.