Private Con Air

[Reave]

ALLIANCE PRISON TRANSPORT
Isar ​

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Smoke filled the hangar deck as canisters tumbled from the loading ramp of a stolen shuttle. Blasters lit up the haze cutting down marines and security droids alike. Reave pointed a scattergun and cleared out the rest with a couple of loud booms. They were all still dressed in orange jumpsuits. He noticed a few casualties mixed in with all the smoking corpses. Their lives didn't matter. More would fall but the devaronian was confident he had the numbers to steal this ship.

"First we disable their security," Reave growled, "Then we take the bridge."

There would be more prisoners on board to replenish their numbers. It was the beginnings of a crew. Once a terror of Wild Space pillaging entire worlds now reduced to pirate scum. Cheated of his fortune by Jedi chains. Reave had seen what Dal could do back on Coruscant. Safer to kill him now, but for so long as their interests were aligned the other convict might prove useful.

"No witnesses."

 

[Isar]

“As you like,” Dal replied with a shrug.

He walked casually down the ramp of their shuttle as the rest of their convict crew secured a beach head in the hangar around their shuttle. Blaster bolts zipped past, leaving smoldering craters of blackened char where they struck. Slugs skipped across durasteel with pinging ricochets.

Free of the drugs which steeped his system for so long, Dal once again felt the Force flow through him and he immersed himself in its current. A wave of the hand summoned threads of reality, which he wove and rewove with his mind.

Around the Alliance guards of the prison barge the light contorted and stretched. A simple trick of photokinesis, incapable of true harm, but incredibly disorienting. The sensation would be akin to a speeder driver with an astigmatism trying to navigate the lights of the Coruscanti skyline. At night. In the rain.

Their aim disrupted, the prisoners closed the distance and fell upon them with terrible effect. Four among them seemed particularly prone to violence, a Houk with a missing arm named Ben “Gunfist” Brijj, a little blue Squib called Micky, a feline (perhaps Trianii) with cybernetic legs, and some sort of non-human apeman.

On the tense shuttle ride over, Dal had only gathered a few of their names and that this particular group of four had been part of a pirate crew before being captured by the Alliance. Dal glanced over at Reave. They would have to watch these four. If they survived.

And Dal planned to, whatever it took.

The hangar cleared, they had a moment of breathing room. The Squib named Micky began to fiddle with a communications panel.

“Can you slice into their security from here?” Dal asked.

“Watch me.”

 

[Reave]

Klaxons echoed off bulkheads. Reave started counting in his head. Panicked crew would be sending a distress signal from the bridge and in minutes a squadron of X-Wings would scramble to investigate. Growing impatient the devaronian pressed his scattergun against the back of Micky's head.

"Work faster."

Motivated or not by the crude threat, a few seconds later hangar bulkheads slid open. More blaster fire cut down several more convicts and Reave shoved the squib aside to lift his scattergun deafening those around him. Thumping heavy fists against a barrel chest, the ape man charged down the ship corridor absorbing several blasts with a thick alien hide. It picked up a security droid, tearing it in half with brute strength in a shower of sparks.

Reave fought his way past more convicts pounding against containment fields. He grabbed the squib by its collar and tossed the clever little thing at a cargo terminal.

"Get these cells open or I'll float you."

He turned back to the others, resting the still smoking scattergun over one shoulder. Even if some of them were useless the prisoners on board swelled their dwindling numbers. Taking the bridge was only a matter of time but that was the one thing they lacked.

"We need to jump before some hotshot pilot blows the hell out of this junkheap's engines."

Isar

 

[Isar]

“Let the Squib work,“ Dal said, words sounding cold and hollow to his own ears, “Come with me. I will deal with the bridge.“

He walked forward, as if in a dream, numbness suffusing his whole body. At the end of the corridor, guards lined up and leveled blaster rifles. Caught In the middle of the hallway, the riot shields they stole would only hold up under blaster fire for so long. Dal held his in front of him and his gaze went flat and empty.

Freedom finally in reach, but to grasp it he would have to betray everything they taught him. But they led him to this. They placed him in the cage with the rabble and the refuse, cast aside to be forgotten. So be It.

Reap the whirlwind.

Dal felt his riot shield take shot after shot as he placed one foot in front of the other, pushing down the hall. He closed his eyes and drew in the power of the Force. It cascaded through him, a river of energy that suffused all living things. A Jedi would sit in the river and flow with it. An Imperial Knight would seek to direct the river toward the greater good.

But Dal became the river. He took in the all and every, placing himself at the axis of the universe, letting it all flow into him in a torrent. The energy turned dark as he let his hate suffuse him. He reached for his anger, reached even deeper and found rage. Not hot, but so deadly cold it left all barren as Hoth. The chill crept through him and he felt the power.

Reaching out, Dal grasped at the minds of those guards at the other end of the hall. He raked mental fingers across their minds, dragging until he drew nightmares from the wells of the gouges like blood oozing from a wound. He called upon fear and let that eke out across their mental landscape.

Terror gripped the guards and they dropped their weapons, trying to flee. But the convicts, starved of societal niceties, craved only the desires of baser instincts. They fell on the guards like prey animals, butchering them with abandon as Dal strode past, emanating that aura of fear that he wielded like a weapon against the psyche of those before him until they reached the bridge.

The squib made quick work of the security and then they were through, standing before a group of terrified prisonship guards and their warden.

Reave