First Reply Incident at Bleak Point

[Jerec Asyr]

Fifteen parsecs off the Mara Corridor, starlines blurred to pinpoints and a sensor blip became a lonely escape pod. It had been drifting long enough that its fuel cells were inert and any life signs were long gone - a year, ten years, a thousand. The escape pod was no model Jerec knew. It held the most tenuous possible orbit around an extrasolar asteroid that his charts called Bleak Point. Not a bad sign or anything.

Rather than bring the Infinity's Free and an ever-growing family of crew, he'd fired up a basic three-winged shuttle with good legs. The nameless shuttle promised quiet time, alone time, and deep space almost guaranteed it. If he maneuvered just right, the old escape pod ought to fit in the cargo bay, and he'd have a garage project for the foreseeable future.

As he approached the drifting pod, however, sensors registered another ship. His butt clenched and he slapped the shields, just in case.

 

[Aldritch Kaal]

The search had been long and particularly vexing, but all signs pointed to a conclusion. The Prequelle was on approach to the pod's location when the sensors registered an unfamiliar craft. As her ship came around the side of the asteroid, Shaze was surprised to see it was just a shuttle. She killed the propulsion and squared the Prequelle up to face the smaller shuttle. "I need two men on laser cannons," she ordered over the ship's PA. The Prequelle wasn't a significantly large ship, but she had brought a full crew, as was Imperial procedure.

Shaze crossed one leg over the other after flipping a switch and beginning to tap on the comms controls that were built into the arm of the pilot's chair. She'd make an attempt at hailing the shuttle rather than just blowing it out of the sky, unlike what most other imperial ships would have done. She stared at the distant shuttle from beyond the bridge's viewports while she waited on a response through the comms.

 

[Jerec Asyr]

Shaze

The other boat looked like one of those new YT knockoffs from Technoid. Any other day, Jerec would have been ooing and ahing over the details and the specs. Today he just counted laser cannons.

A hailing signal came through: the other ship was trying to place a call. Jerec did not stop counting guns. He did, however, pick up the phone.

"This is administrative shuttle QZ-9 out of-" What was near here? "-Drogheda. Please keep your distance from the abandoned escape pod due to scheduled decontamination and investigative procedures. Identify yourself, over."

 

[Aldritch Kaal]

Truthfully, Zurs'haze'alorn wasn't too knowledgeable in how ship to ship communication protocol was handled. She was army, not navy, but leave it up to the Empire to shove soldiers somewhere else when one post was full and another needed filling.

"This is Imperial Non-Aggression Designation Vessel Prequelle, Imperial Spacefaring designation number: alpha, one, uniform, six...." Shaze completed the entirety of the superfluously long ship designation number. Leave it up to authoritative regimes and their bureaucratic procedures to come up with such a ridiculous system.

"QZ-9, I must request that you cease your operations with the escape pod. We will be taking it back to Imperial space. Our presence in this space does technically fall under diplomatic authorization, but I have orders to fire if necessary even if they conflict with our intended purpose."

Jerec Asyr​

 

[Jerec Asyr]

"Negative, A1U638GH53," Jerec drawled, as if this was a dull rote conversation. "We are point-two-seven parsecs inside sovereign Droghedan space." He flipped desperately through hard-copy star charts with handmade annotations. Ownership of the Mara Corridor was a nebulous and shifting thing. These days, the critical border was the fuzzy fuzzy line between the Sith Empire and the worlds protected by the Silver Jedi Order. Jerec couldn't stand either one of them, but he'd crossed wakes with enough Silvers to think like they thought, more or less. Had the other ship said they were here under diplomatic plates, something like that?

"Commencing scheduled decontamination procedures. Please keep a safe distance of no fewer than point-two kilometers. If you wish to pursue a claim, please contact Jedi Master Queam Vyrink at Drogheda Orbital Defense Control."

The shuttle had a little tractor beam. He latched onto the pod and started pulling it toward him. It resisted. The sucker was a lot more massive than its size or his basic scanner data would indicate. Mass was good. Mass meant value.

Shaze

 

[Aldritch Kaal]

Sovereign Dorghedan space? Did that even exist? She hadn't really done a great job to keep herself up to date with regional star-cartography and space territory lines, which was an obvious mistake in this case. Still, something seemed off about a small shuttle and a claim of 'decontamination'. The Prequelle would begin a slow approach towards the smaller shuttle.

"QZ-9, I must insist that you desist from your operations here."

The Prequelle's own tractor beam would begin to hone in on the pod as the ship approached slowly. A mechanical tug of war was probably preferable to blasting this poor shuttle. Having to high-tail it back to Sith Space after an engagement would only delay this mission further. Shaze was determined to complete her objective without incident, but firing on 'QZ-9' was beginning to look more and more likely.

Jerec Asyr​

 

[Jerec Asyr]

"Negative, A1U638GH53."

The shuttle had a couple of basic cannons, maybe enough to tangle with the Prequelle but probably not. The tractor tug-of-war wasn't accomplishing much. He pondered the odds of the Sith commander blinking first and didn't like them.

"Commencing decontamination."

Physics being what they were, the shuttle and the Prequelle were effectively trying to pull each other, not just the pod. Jerec deactivated stationkeeping thrusters and let the shuttle get yanked forward. He goosed the engines for a quarter of a second to close the distance faster and spin 180 degrees. The aft cargo hatch hissed open.

Butt end first, the shuttle soared to catch the pod and maybe probably run into the Sith freighter backwards.

Shaze

 

[Aldritch Kaal]

"QZ-9, I'm warn-" before she could finish her sentence the small shuttle backed its ass up against The Prequelle. A few members of the crew who had been on their feet stumbled and nearly fell to the ground. Shaze gritted her teeth as she was jostled around in her seat. "You can't be serious right now," she sighed, very unamused.

"Ma'am, permission to fire?"

"No, hold your fire. Target the shuttle with the tractor beams and follow."

Shaze pressed down on the comms button to speak to 'QZ-9' once more. "You're playing a dangerous game here. Do not force my hand."

 

[Jerec Asyr]

A horrific squeal of metal on metal carried through the shuttle's frame and jittered in the deckplate under his boots. The scoop had worked, and the cargo bay's artificial gravity had dragged the escape pod against the deck. He slapped the back hatch closed with an out-of-character whoop.

"A1U638GH53, thank you for maintaining a proper distance for the-"

The shuttle trembled as tractor beams locked on.

"-decontamination protocol."

A tractor shroud. He needed a tractor shroud. He left the shuttle's engines burning straight ahead and left the cockpit to start rummaging.

 

[Aldritch Kaal]

Shaze gripped the ends of the armrests of her seat with anticipation as the tractor beam took hold of the shuttle. "Good now bring them in," she ordered, leaning forward in her seat. Her legs uncrossed so that she could lean almost comically forward as her crimson eyes fixated onto the hatch of the shuttle through the glasteel viewports of The Prequelle.

"QZ-9, we're pulling you towards the cargo loading bay. Please comply with our instructions going forward. We don't want this to get messy."

 

[Jerec Asyr]

Jerec paused at a multipurpose panel and thought about rerouting a couple things for a retort, but nothing good came to mind and he didn't have the time anyway. Instead he got to playing with other systems.

The shuttle had exactly one aft fixture that could serve as a good tractor shroud. It came with problems attached, like, say, getting away once he blocked the tractor beam.

As the three-winged shuttle strained against the beam, it would be pulling the Prequelle, which wasn't much larger. Jerec couldn't figure out all the physics on the fly, but when one of the shuttle's engines exploded at close range, it sure threw things for a loop.

The shuttle lurched terribly as the explosion formed a tractor shroud, blocked the beam, and let the remaining engine shove Jerec's boat ahead again.

Shaze

 

[Aldritch Kaal]

Shaze's face twitched with frustration as one of the engines exploded and blocked the tractor beam. She watched, flabbergasted, as the shuttle began to gain distance on The Prequelle. She clenched her teeth together and swallowed slowly. "You've got to be kidding me." She stood up from her seat and began to walk towards the exit of the small bridge. "You," she addressed one of the piloting crew on board. "Take my position, follow that shuttle." She ordered as she made her way through the ship.

She founders her way to one of the gun controls, practically ripping the gunner out of his seat and taking his place. She swung the gun around to face the shuttle's position and began to fire wildly.

Jerec Asyr​

 

[Jerec Asyr]

Shaze

On the one hand, there were benefits to provoking the Sith Empire diplomatic boat into firing the first shot. On the other hand, this damaged basic shuttle had compromised its aft shields spectacularly to pull off the exploding-engine-tractor-shroud gimmick. The cockpit's already-significant number of blinking red lights increased sharply.

It took zero acting for Jerec to slap the comm, an open transmission, and panic.

"A1U63-whatever, this is QZ-9. Cease fire! You win! For the love of feth stop shooting and I'll give you what you want."

The cargo bay wasn't exactly equipped to jettison a multi-ton escape pod. He cut the remaining engine, turned off the artificial gravity and inertial dampeners, nearly puked, opened the back hatch, and punched it. The pod slid out the hatch and floated more or less in front of the Prequelle.

 

[Aldritch Kaal]

Shaze ceased the wild and uncontrolled firing of the weapon. She was breathing heavily from a mixture of adrenaline and anger, which could be heard even from her comms when she forwarded her headset to the ships hailing frequency. "Good, hold still then," she ordered with a tone that inflected both relief and agitation. "Re-initiate the tractor beam," she ordered through her headset as she slowly realigned the gun for her next shot in case this was another one of the shuttle's ruses.

"I expect that you actually intend to cooperate this time." Her voice had nearly returned to the calm yet commanding diction she had sported at the beginning of this clusterfeth of an interaction. She was surprised that the diplomatic vessel ruse had held up this long, but having to fire on a civilian ship wasn't exactly acceptable, even for The Empire's standards. If she could at least get back with this pod, maybe they wouldn't ask questions.

Jerec Asyr​

 

[Jerec Asyr]

Unutterable relief coursed through Jerec's veins as the Sith vessel held still and resumed tractorizing the escape pod. It was a heck of a prize to lose, but so was his butt, and given the choice he generally preferred his butt intact to a hold full of loot. He didn't even bother answering the transmission from the Sith ship. With a decent tractor shroud between them and a working engine, he reoriented and keyed up the hyperdrive for a simple local jump to some friggin fuel depot. Nothing out there except frozen burritos and a couple guys he owed money to, but anywhere was better than here.

The busted engine backfired a colossal fart of detritus, and the shuttle hit hyperspace. He'd send a distress call after he got wherever he was going. No point in antagonizing the people with the guns when there was nothing to gain.

Shaze