Escape from Endor-catraz

[Mereel Vaun]

Mereel's helmet commlink crackled into life, slightly suppressed by the sound of the burning hut, "Vaun! Things are not going well up here I can tell you that -"

The volume on the last part of the message failed to beat out the sound of a large support beam collapsing on the side of the room. The baby ewok's crying intensified. Mereel slowly walked over to the pile of wood that the ewok was trapped under, the little critter's eyes grew more and more fearful as he stepped closer and it tried to stop its crying to no avail. The small beast's reaction to him disheartened Mereel who, even after being held prisoner for at least a year by the ewok's kind, did not feel right about mercilessly executing unarmed, trapped kids. Reluctantly, Mereel lifted the rubble off of the ewok, and motioned for the creature to get up, but the stubborn little furball refused to stand up. Either that or it can't walk.. Fierfek.

Mereel hoisted up the ewok and carried it out of the burning hut, and the small critter resumed its pitiful crying. Don't get flustered at yourself over this, it's just another war victim. Consider it collateral damage. Mereel activated his jetpack and flew over to the platform next door which was now halfway burnt. The ewoks on the platform were too busy combating the fire to try to throw spears at him, and he was able to quickly drop off the ewok near the platform center and fly away before so much as a single rock hit his armor.

As he flew higher into one of the trees, he finally responded to Auri, "Auri, I hope to haran you can hear me, I think that I've found another ride off of this planet so you should just get the kark out of here." He didn't know where this other ride was, but there were other dead Mandalorians on the planet based on the armor he had seen near the firepit circle, and their armor had bore the sigils of clan Vaun. Somewhere down in the forest, there was a ship that belonged to his father that was big enough to carry at least a full squadron of Mandalorian warriors into battle and he wanted to remove it from his father's arsenal.

[member="Auri Vesta"]

 

[Auri Vesta]

"I hear you Mereel..." Again he told Auri to abandon him. This time, she found it less easy to argue back. Her ship was taking an absolute pounding, not to mention the furry friends R9 was battling against on the hull.

"And I'm happy to comply. I hope you know what you're doing. Let's keep it straight though, I saved you today. And you owe me." She smirked a bit to herself as she clambered out of the gunner seat and jumped down into the hold, forgoing the ladder. Warning sirens were blaring in the navigation room and something was smoking, but she paid it no mind and instead ran to the cockpit.

Good, at least all the panels and control instruments were undamaged. She thought to herself as she slid into the pilots chair. This was going to be one hell of an escape. There were still numerous ships buzzing overhead, but at least she'd cleaned out the airspace to something manageable, hopefully.

"R9, magnetize those legs of yours buddy, cause we're getting the kark out of here." Her hands flew frantically over the instrument panel of the Rimrunner. Auri turned off the shields, and put what little power had been left in them into the thrusters. She hoped R9 had been paying attention as she flipped the lever forward to maximum thrust. Not even the inertial dampeners could compensate for the force as the ship blasted ahead, skimming over Endor's endless forest. Pulling up a bit, she spun the ship into a deadly corkscrew. If those Ewoks weren't gone already, they sure were now.

"You better contact me the moment you get back to Known Space. Drinks are most definitely going to be on you!" She once again spoke over Mereel's frequency. "Good luck. You're going to need it kid."

[member="Mereel Vaun"]

 

[Mereel Vaun]

"Yeah, yeah. The drinks are always on me. If I'm buying though, we're going to somewhere that isn't a backwater for once." Mereel said into the comm frequency, ramming two sets of retractable wristblades into solid tree trunk. He deactivated his jetpack and hung from the gargantuan tree using his gauntlet blades like the claws of a Stintaril. From his view near the tree top, he saw the sun slowly rising over the horizon. While beautiful, it wasn't what he was looking for.

He looked down past the tree branches and leaves searching the ground for the glint of anything metallic or anything that looked off from Endor's normal forest floor - which was something he had grown quite accustomed to seeing from his prison many months ago. Even with his excellent eyesight and familiarity with the forest floor, he didn't see anything that stood out to him. Alright, let's see how the helmet's HUD features are holding up.

Mereel started looking out further away from the village and increased the magnification of his helmet's HUD, allowing him to see further through each breakthrough in forest leaves - and subsequently more of the forest floor itself. After half a minute of looking through trees, he spotted the engine block of a corvette. A golden star in the center of a red cross-hair was embroidered on the the top of the hull plating.

Bingo.

[member="Auri Vesta"]

 

[Auri Vesta]

"Ugh, I could really use some spice right now." Auri complained as warning tones continued to blare. "Come on, hold it together girl!" There were still Ewok fighters chasing her tail. They were more maneuverable, especially in atmosphere, but that wasn't going to be a problem soon. They were in the thermosphere and about to break away from the gravitational pull of the moon. Were these dumb animals really going to chase her the whole way out of the system?

As they made their escape into space, R9 rolled into the cockpit, chirping indignantly.

"I know you could have taken them R9, I was just trying to be helpful!" He warbled something snarky back, making Auri roll her eyes. The ship rumbled again. Great, more carbon scoring for her to paint over.

"Just plot a course to hyperspace will ya? You rusty bucket of bolts." She tried to maneuver out of the range of the Ewok fighters, but she didn't want to get too fancy and break something off. The integrity of the hull didn't look so good. She did the best she could until R9 let out an affirmative beep.

"Punch it!" She told him, hoping to hell that the Rimrunner held together. She had done good today. Mereel would make it out, she knew. It was a shame though... She'd lost a frak-ton of money.

[member="Mereel Vaun"]

 

[Mereel Vaun]

Roughly twelve minutes later:
Aboard the bridge of an unknown Clan Vaun vessel
--

There were no corpses. He had searched each and every main corridor of the corvette and he hadn't even found a single crewman let alone a corpse. He had only managed to find an occasional mark of carbon scoring on a wall or bulkhead, or a broken twig fragment or stray rock laying on a floor panel. Mereel was able to put two and two together, and figured that the ewoks had killed and or captured all of the crewmen on this ship.

Still, he was a little surprised that he hadn't seen any hint of Mandalorians before he had made his way to the bridge. If the vessel was attacked, there were bound to be a few soldiers around to guard the bridge and the engine block, of course, that hadn't stopped the Death Watch Venator from being taken over, and that vessel had many many more Mandalorians than a corvette could ever hope to hold. It's for the best this way, I would have to fight them if I found them anyway.

The bridge door opened with a hydraulic hiss and as Mereel stepped aboard the bridge, a second door in the corner of the room sprang open. An old man wearing a white uniform who looked to be in his sixties came striding out of a side-room, followed by three crewmen in black naval uniforms embroidered with a chest patch that displayed a golden star inside red cross hairs.

Mereel raised his rifle and pointed it at the men, "Stop right there. Hands up!"

The old man stopped, slightly raised his hands, and indicated for the others to do the same. His eyes scanned Mereel's armor as he sternly spoke, "Well, you certainly weren't with the other Mandalorians when they left. Your armor's different too. You would be Mereel, yes?"

Mereel nodded and pointed his rifle at the floor, "What does Detrik want?"

Detrik was his biological father, but he was entirely unfit to be one, Mereel had pronounced him Dar'buir years ago.

"He wanted us to find you and kill you."

Mereel raised his rifle again, "And you've found me. Are you going to make me shoot you, or would you prefer to leave this planet alive?"

"We didn't survive the ewoks boarding our ship to get shot now. Besides, I've been wanting to leave Detrik's employ for a while now. Do you know what this vessel was before it was assigned to hunt you boy?"

Mereel lowered his rifle and slung the weapon over his back. These men were only carrying pistols and vibroblades, he could take them out easily with his armor systems in close quarters if need be. "Unless Detrik has had a change of heart in the last ten years, this ship is either a spicerunner or an enforcer's vessel. By the size of the engine block, I'm guessing it's the former. Alright, get us out of here and I swear on my beskar'gam I won't kill you."

The old man simply nodded and walked to the middle of the bridge. Each of the surviving crewmembers took a post all save one. "Demetrius, go to the engine room and standby. We'll be running full power to the engines to get out of here. Nav, get me a sensor readout of our surroundings, let's see what's going to be sharing our airspace."

"Aye, aye sir."
"Yes, sir."

"Helm, transfer flight path controls to the Captain's chair. Mando, you want to get out of here alive right? Go mount one of the turbolasers, you'll find their ladders amidship. You worry about shooting everything you see, we'll worry about getting us out of here. Once we're back in safer waters, we can figure out who's killing who. Good luck."

"Bold move telling your gunner that, but I can respect that." Mereel gave the old man a mock salute before running off the bridge. Rows of interior lights sprang to life all around him as the sound of the ship's power plant coming online reverberated throughout the corvette's main corridor. If they all got out of us, he was going to owe [member="Auri Vesta"] a whole lot more than a round of drinks.

Spoiler

That's fin for me Auri, unless you had something else planned