First Reply Lost in Space

[Rixa]

Rixa Vey lounged across the pilot’s chair. One leg hung over the armrest, the other was planted squarely on the control panel, leaving a scuffed boot print across the surface she kept promising to clean.

The Wayward hummed around her in its usual patchwork rhythm, but beneath it all was the faint, teeth-grinding wobble that meant the backup inertial dampener was on its last miserable legs.

She flicked a switch with the heel of her boot, watching a row of warning lights blink in offended protest.

“Brilliant. Perfect. Exactly what I fething wanted,” she muttered. It was as if the ship itself had chosen this moment to spite her. Everyone else dissapointed her, why not the ship?

They were out of credits again. That meant no repairs, no upgrades, and no chance of the Wayward stopping her from being flung sideways across the cockpit the next time they pulled a hard turn.

Rixa threw her head back, groaning dramatically into the stale air.

“I swear, if one more thing breaks on this cursed bucket, I’ll start charging the galaxy for the privilege of disappointing me.” She glanced sideways at the overhead console, then added under her breath, “And yes, that includes you.”

"Boss! One of the buoys was just set off."

Rixa dropped her feet from the console and sat upright.

"Has the mine gone off?" She called back. They set basic gravitational mines along routes often travelled by smugglers. They were difficult prey, but it was better than attacking a Republic guarded convoy.

A smuggler ship specced out to escape a patrol destroyer wasn't able to escape the Wanderer.

"It's gone off!"

"Get my a hyperspace route."

Rixa grinned. There was a chance they were all about to be flattened into the back wall, but she would take that over boredom.

OOC/ Looking for someone to either be a fellow pirate arguing over plunder or someone who just got caught in a Grav trap.

 

[Sarah Vulke]

"Scum and Villainy."

Tags - Rixa ​

Piracy followed war the way rot followed an untreated wound.

Where borders frayed and governments bled out, it seeped in—patient, opportunistic, inevitable. Former Galactic Alliance space was no exception. The old order had collapsed with such speed that the vacuum still screamed, and in that scream, the carrion-feeders flourished.

It was an ugly thing, piracy: a symptom of weakness wearing the mask of courage. It allowed the small to harry the powerful, to pretend at dominance while the true predators were occupied elsewhere. Even the Iron Fist of the new regime could only stretch itself so far, its claws raking across one frontier while vermin scattered into another.

And now, one of those vermin had scurried into her path.

Task Force 39—one of the more stubborn remnants of the old Galactic Alliance Navy—had taken to staging ambushes across the fractured hyperspace lanes. Their favorite hunting ground was the route funneling new Imperial recruits toward the sedated Imperial Core for basic training: soft targets, predictable paths, and just enough political value to sting.

They found their prize when a lightly defended convoy drifted too far from its escort screen.

The ambush hit with surgical timing. Sirens howled. Command barked contradictory orders. Half the convoy scattered into emergency hyperspace jumps before the gunners even sighted the attackers. One of those vessels—the Viridian Dawn—carried Sarah.

The exit from the forced jump was violent, jarring, and immediately fatal for the ship's hopes of escape. A grav-trap bloomed around them like a snare, wrenching the hull into immobility. Recruits scrambled toward escape pods in a blind, animal panic. Imperial designs could usually launch pods at speeds exceeding the pull of improvised traps, but panic crushed discipline long before physics did.

Sarah—stuck on the lower decks when the stampede began—had no such luxury. The officers had abandoned ship minutes ago. The remaining recruits were barricading corridors, stacking crates into waist-high cover, and clutching weapons they barely remembered how to aim. Fear thickened the air.

She felt none of it.

By the time the shaking stopped, she had already made her way to the bridge. The crew had fled in too much haste to wipe the navigational logs; she extracted the coordinates of the training facility with clinical precision. Then she found an abandoned blaster pistol and settled into a quiet corner of the shattered command deck.

Outside, boots pounded. Someone shouted to brace for boarding.

Sarah breathed in slowly, letting the persona of a frightened recruit settle around her like an ill-fitting coat. Beneath it—untouched, unhurried—waited the Tyrant Queen.

Do or die, they called it.

But for her, this was merely the next opportunity. Whatever came through those doors, she was curious to meet it.