Nebular Encounter (Onith Trill)

[Jorus Merrill]

[SIZE=11pt][member="Onith Trill"][/SIZE]



[SIZE=11pt]“[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]Shenna[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Yeah, boss?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Just say it.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The tiger-striped Twi’lek mechanic climbed out from under the life support console and wiped oily grime off her hands with no success. “You got taken for a ride on [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]this one[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt].”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Braced for it or not, Jorus slumped a little in the captain’s chair. “Yeah. I’m a sucker for big comscan dishes. The price seemed pretty reasonable.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Let your wife do the haggling from now on. Or Darr. Or me.” Shenna’vala peered under the console again and hissed. “Give me a minute and I should have the air circulators limping along.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Captain?” snarled the third being on the bridge, a Trandoshan. He snarled it politely. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“What’s up, Vars?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Vars Aveppar[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]’s claws clicked on the sensor console, and a staticky holographic overlay appeared on the viewscreen. “I’m detecting a Mandalorian corvette approaching. It is quite clossse: the nebula obsscured its presenssse.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Jorus grunted, slid out of the chair, and went over to helm/tactical. He flipped a switch and grunted again. “Well, at least the shields work.”[/SIZE]

 

[Onith Trill]

"Captain, we're in comm range." Jalek shouted, and Tobias grunted.

"Open a channel." The Aqualish commanded, and Jalek hurriedly did so, putting a channel through to [member="Jorus Merrill"].

"Unidentified ship this is captain Tobias Schmitt of the Mandalorian Remnant Empire. You are flying in restricted realspace. Please provide docking solutions or prepare to be fired upon." The Aqualish communicated before cutting off the comms.

"Thaela, prepare firing solutions. If they haven't sent us a trajectory in three minutes or do something odd go ahead an open fire. Try not to knock out those sattellites if you can help. They've got to be worth something."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Onith Trill"]

For the moment, Jorus kept the return channel muted. “Tell me what we’re looking at, Vars,” he said, voice grim, as he took a seat at the helm.

“Thesse sensorss are in poor condition, ssir.” The Trandoshan’s claws clicked a staccato rhythm on the controls. “A densse hull of unknown alloyss.”

“If they’re Mandos, that might mean beskar. Not good. Weapons?”

“Two keel mountss, type unknown. Their shieldss interfere with sscans. Two torpedo tubezz.”

Jorus tilted his head, squinting. “No point defense?”

“Sseveral panellss, typess unknown.”

Maybe thirty seconds had elapsed, as much as he was willing to risk. He eyed the keel mounts and leaned over to the shield controls while toggling the comm. “Captain Schmitt, this is Captain Jor Quentin. I’m sending you docking solutions as requested and dropping shields. We’ve got nothin’ to hide.” He didn’t need to do much acting to put tension in his voice, but an intact capture always had its appeal to raiders, and those didn’t look like ion cannons.

Off-mike, he made a few gestures at Shenna in Undergrounder handtalk. She nodded and moved over to the guts of the comscan panel alongside Vars. Tinkering began in some earnest.

 

[Onith Trill]

"Sir they've powered down shields and transmitted docking solutions." Comm officer Jalek announced. The Aqualish smiled.

"Ready a boarding party. Riot equipment, sealed suits. Officer Blancson, keep the gatlings trained on their vessel, aim for hull breaches to vent atmo if necessary." Docking of course put them out of the torpedo launchers, but some good punches to an unshielded vessel would hopefully give crew killing results without ship killing side effects.

Assuming there were no tricks the ship would come to the side of Jor Quentin's vessel, at which point they'd be boarded by around eight eukar'gam clad soldiers. Remnants of former armies reduced to raiders for the "Remnant Empire". Sensors would show point defense weapons ready to go regardless of compliance levels. Captain Schmitt wasn't the brightest aqualish of the bunch, but he wasn't the stupidest either. It was [member="Jorus Merrill"]'s move.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Onith Trill"]

As the Mando corvette docked, a precise little maneuver, Jorus did two things: depower the airlock, and nod to Vars. The inert airlock would prevent boarders from just waltzing in at the push of a button. They would need to cut their way in through two layers of durasteel: doable, but time-consuming.

That was kind of a side note, though it probably didn't feel that way to the half-dozen Undergrounders in the other side of the airlock. The main event was something else entirely.

The Trandoshan at the comscan panel nodded, and beside him Shenna gave the thumbs up. The ship's massive comscan gear, point blank, began pumping out multispectrum electromagnetic white noise loud enough to melt the paint off a phrik hull.

The goal here was to blind, bedazzle, burn out, and otherwise confuddle every sensor around. Point-defense targeting. Ship-to-ship scans. Navigational sensors. Helmet HUDs, even: eukgar'gam was a complex and finicky bit of everything but the kitchen sink, and like most Mando armor it boasted several kinds of precision sensors.

 

[Onith Trill]

White noise permeated through all of the comm channels, the electromagnetic signal burning it's way into every which sensor of the ship. Tobias pulled off his helmet with haste and threw it to the ground.

"JAM THAT SIGNAL" He screamed, attempting to force his voice over that of the noise in many of the helmet HUD's. Like the modern major mandalorian each armor was slightly personalized, with every sensor found in an encyclopedia included if they could get away with it. Jalek worked quickly and diligently to attempt to filter out the noise, going for communications first. An intelligent young raider he managed to free communications, but getting rid of interference in the other systems would take time.

"Tell Dorsa to stand back, and be ready to jump on my signal." The Aqualish ordered and relayed the message to the boarding party. "Gacha, Talon!" He screamed. "I want you two to each manually aim the gatlings at their airlock and punch our men a hole to board in."

"Yes sir!" They said dutifully, and began to eyeball their calculations and firing solutions, aiming to get the two port gatling turrets to fire at one point across from their own airlock. It was difficult to line it up properly, but they'd point their guns and fire, hoping to breach a hole through durasteel faster than a man-portable plasma torch would. And if they managed to hit some people or something and make the boarding action easier, well that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Onith Trill"]

The Force and common sense whispered a warning, and he slapped the shield controls, but a moment too late. Two angled streams of 30mm gatling fire punched through one or both layers of the airlock, leaving holes as big as a baby's fist. Shrapnel whined around the midship corridors, and cries of pain echoed faintly. The shields came up a moment later.

The ship came with the basic attachments, nothing impressive. With maneuvering jets and a tractor beam, Jorus slewed the old surveillance boat toward the Mando corvette, still side by side.

The sheer amount of noise they were pumping out kept his own sensors from determining whether the Mando ship had raised shields in the last few seconds. He gambled that shields were still down for the moment: they'd probably dropped them for the final few metres of the docking approach. And in the heartbeats since Vars and Shenna had fired up the noise, he'd also be gambling that compensating for interference might have kept the bridge crew occupied.

It seemed a really good moment, then, to fire the ship's few turbolasers almost point blank at the Mandos' airlock. It had been a good tactic on the enemy's part, but mirroring it might just play out in Jorus' favor. A turbolaser didn't have the penetrating power of a Mandalorian 30mm mass driver, but it would sure as feth make a bigger hole.

 

[Onith Trill]

Their were no screams as the boarding party had been crisped to cinders. Even Phrik and Matrix Armor plated hull could only hold so long to point-blank turobolaser shots. A couple of the more intelligent members of the boarding party had decided it wasn't a good idea to wait by the airlock after firing so it wasn't a total loss, but two men were not eight, and the change of resolve after seeing friends charred was significant. Shields came up a quick moment after the initial charring and prevented larger hull damage, but it reassured the boarders little.

"Ready the maneuvering thrusters! I want my nose facing that ships broad-side. Ready the Raptor Cannon for assault." The Aqualish ordered.

"Sir, it'll take time to get our systems straight to make the calculations with all this interference." His navigator bellowed at him, and the Aqualish grunted. He'd lost some men to those turbolasers, he knew it. Didn't know how many yet, but could he still salvage this vessel, or was it time to go for the dishes?

"Target their engines with the Gatling Cannons as you bring maneuverability thrusters online. Then fix the guns so we can get better firing solutions." The Aqualish ordered, and Jalek, Gacha, and Talon went to work, along with another couple back-up gunners. The two port turrets along with a ventral and dorsal turret would fire towards the IGV-55's engines, though the aiming was largely eye-balled at the moment. In another 30 or 45 seconds or so the maneuverability thrusters would come online, allowing for some tighter maneuvering but for now Captain Schmitt was content to broadside. Once they came online he'd reassess and re-order based on what actions [member="Jorus Merrill"] and his crew took in the meantime.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Onith Trill"]

The number one reason he'd let the ship get this close was the pair of unknown keel mounts. This boat's shields could hold off the lighter gatlings, but the main guns would finalize the fight if Schmidt could bring them to bear.

Fortunately, despite the awkward bulk of its comscan dishes, Jorus' boat was significantly smaller. Therein lay his only real chance of winning the day, apart from sinking into nebular murk and running for his life. As the corvette swung toward his boat, the old surveillance ship rolled and slid underneath, belly to belly. Lingering here would be bad, but he intended to keep moving and stay ahead of manually targeted gatlings. They would whittle Jorus' shields down if he let them, and once his shields dropped those cannons would punch clear through his engines.

His own turbolasers kept firing. They, too, would take a long time to whittle down shields, but better to start now and invest for the future. A moment later, the corvette started maneuvering to compensate.

TLR: My ship is inverted and going underneath yours, from your starboard side to your port side.

 

[Onith Trill]

With a flip of the ship the satellite covered Gozanti was now underneath Schmitt's ship, somewhat shielding it's dishes by positioning. Hmmm.

"Sir, I've got the guns cleared of interference. Next priority?" Jalek said, and Schmitt thought for a moment. Normally he'd say sensors, but they were doing okay due to proximity of the ships.

"Navigation. Gacha, Talon, calculate firing solutions for the engines and bring all turrets to bear." All turrets wouldn't fire obviously, as the dorsal cannon didn't have a line of sight, but the two starboard cannons had lanes now, and they'd be ready to shift targets when needed.

"Officer Blancson, divert shielding the the ventral side, then prepare to divert it to the fore. Bale, tell me when those maneuverability thrusters are ready for another go." The Aqualish ordered. It would take a little time bring them back on line without diverting too much power from the shields. He'd take five guns on those shields for now. Didn't need much force to get the engines, but would his shields hold?

[member="Jorus Merrill"]

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Onith Trill"]

"Shields down to fifty percent, boss."

"Thanks, Shenna." Jorus reached over to angle the shields and give the engines a bit more cover. "Shut down the white noise and divert the power to the shields."

Beside him, the tiger-striped Twi'lek mechanic shot him a glance. "This ship's in no condition to take system strain."

"It's in no condition to take Mando rail guns through the engines, either." He kept turning the inverted ship; now they were tail-to-nose, and he could get a better view of just how much of that ship was engine. A lot, as it turned out. Running into the nebular murk might not go so well.

At this angle, too, he could see a strange energy discharge every time his turbolasers hit the enemy shields. The discharge seemed to correspond to incremental decreases in his own shield strength. Retribution shields - feth. Jorus' ship wouldn't take the blowback plus the defense cannons for long.

Vars grunted. "Ssir, senssors are reading only a dozzen beingss aboard."

Interesting, but useless information at the moment. Something else was bugging Jorus, something about retribution shields. After too long a moment, it clicked.

"Vars, Mando retribution shields cover energy only. They're just ray shields."

"Our shields are at forty percent," said Shenna'vala.

Jorus looked over at Vars and locked eyes with the Trandoshan. "What does that ship use against missiles? Is there a secondary particle shield generator?"

"Thirty-five percent," said Shenna evenly. "Penetrating impacts. Port engine at eighty percent."

"No, ssir. There iss a ssecond generator, but nothing I can identify." The little wireframe holo lit up with another module; Jorus squinted at the readings and felt his eyes go wide.

That was a thermal shield generator. Thermal shield generators blocked their own ships from using particle weapons - torpedos and so forth. The point defense gatling cannons were still firing like mad.

Thus, unless Jorus had seriously misunderstood the tech at work - always a risk with Mando innovation - the only shield generator that protected the corvette from impact was not currently active. And why should it be? It wasn't like this recon ship had missile launchers, just a few basic turbolasers and lighter cannons, and the retribution shield was handling those easily. In normal circumstances, too, the gatlings and tough hull would offer plenty of anti-missile protection, letting them save the thermal shields for use against major barrages. But thermal shields also took a long time to charge...

"All hands, brace for impact!"

The ships were still close together, more or less nose-to-tail, more or less belly-to-belly. Jorus ran through the quickest of mental mantras, tensed in anticipation of a serious boom, and rolled the ship around its long axis.

Scything the edges of the gigantic dishes toward the midships ventral hull. And the massive torpedo bay contained therein.

 

[Onith Trill]

Satellites and antennas were not designed to cut through matrix armor or phrik plating, and as the modified Gozanti-Cruiser turned they crumble like a soda can under pressure, perhaps even back into their own ship. However, the engines and the lightly build durasteel carried just enough force to bring in some blunt force trauma unto the keel of the Roche-Class Light Corvette. [member="Jorus Merrill"]'s intuition was spot on, turning the hull in on itself just enough to set off a couple of the ground-most torpedos. Being little more than pirates the likes of high yield explosives was neither profitable to buy nor profitable to use, as they made their credits through salvage and thievery.

Thus two EMP torpedos went off in earnest, with a blast radius large enough to envelope both ships. The Roche Class stopped everything, but Captain Schmitt had planned for this sort of scenario before. Sympathetic detonation was not unheard of, and his crew knew exactly what to do, even without him barking orders over the commlinks. Readying plasma torches and other ship breaching armament they quickly and quietly headed for airlocks, jumping from ship to ship and readying a charge.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[SIZE=11pt][member="Onith Trill"][/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The ensuing moments didn’t go so well. Jorus had braced for impact, but the massive comscan dishes had the recon ship’s full rotational momentum behind them, and he found himself flung out of his chair to the left. A horrific groan and a rush of air told him that the comscan assembly had sheared itself off, or been twisted far out of shape; either way, he’d breached his own hull in the process. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]A heartbeat later, his ship went dead.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“It wasn’t us,” said Shenna from the dark off to his left. “Mag pulse or something like it. I’ll try getting power back.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Vars Aveppar cursed in fluent Huttese, maybe injured, maybe just angry. Jorus picked himself up and squinted up through the spiderwebbed canopy. The Mando ship had gone dark too. Now the only lighting came from the gentle glow of the dense nebula. His jaw tightened as he spotted a couple of Mando-armored figures crossing the distance between the two ships, and if he could see them from this angle there had to be more he couldn’t see. “We’ve got boarders,” he said tersely. His comlink clicked dead. Feth. The air was getting a bit thin and chilly, with a hint of a breeze. “Vars, shout it out.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The Trandoshan filled his lungs and roared. “BOARDERS! MANDO BOARDERS!” His voice carried easily through the sixty-four-metre transport.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Jorus had come aboard this ship with twenty Undergrounders, not counting himself, Vars, and Shenna. As they got to congregating in the escape pod chamber, just aft of the cockpit, Jorus realized that number had dropped to twelve. A sick feeling grew in the pit of his stomach, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on his too-slow activation of the shields, or doubts about the strategy he’d chosen. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Somewhere else in the ship, probably several somewheres, torches started cutting through the hull. A collective flinch ran through the fifteen people in the escape pod chamber. Six wore vac suits, and the others just had oxygen masks. All were armed, usually with a knife or brass knuckles, and a blaster pistol too. No heavy weapons, not even rifles. No armor, though those space suits were fairly durable. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Gozanti-style escape pods seated three, and the ship had four pods. Jorus went over to one, yanked the lever, and pulled the door open. A few lights blinked encouragingly. The pods had insulated life support systems, and the ship’s bulk had shielded them from the worst of the pulse. “Anyone without a suit, get in two of these pods and shut’em,” he said. “That includes you, Shenna, Vars. Air’s gonna be real sparse in a minute. Anyone with a suit, you hold this room. Don’t know what direction they’ll come from. I’m going to go find some of them and see what I can see.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Vars hefted his heavy blaster and rested his other hand on the pommel of his belt knife. “I’m coming with you, ssir.” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]A Trandoshan security chief, who could grow back flesh and bone over a matter of weeks or months, wasn’t an asset to discard. “All right. Judging by the current, we’ll have maybe five minutes before the air’s too thin to work with. We’ve got some extra little oxygen tanks that can get stashed around. All else fails, you and I can fall back to the last pods with the defenders.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Behind his Trando-fit oxygen mask, Vars grinned toothily. Jorus put on his own mask, drew his blaster -- a generic BlasTech model -- and unclipped his lightsabre. He didn’t ignite it, though: its light and sound tended to give away all kinds of information that he’d rather not disclose to the boarders. With Vars two steps behind him, he slunk away into the dark corridors, looking for the glow of cutting torches.[/SIZE]

 

[Onith Trill]

Mandalorians fanned out on the outer Hull of the ship, comms still down. They were down to a mere dozen men, but they were Mandalorians, and these crewers were mere rabble. Annoying and clever rabble, but in a pitched fight no one bet against a Mandalorian. Still, it paid to have back up plans, so as Tobias went around the ship he looked for anything that could be useful, particularly interesting entry points. The Aqualish didn't find anything that he thought would be especially useful-

Except. Were those escape pods? Hmmm. Ideally the crew didn't know he was coming and would die quick deaths upon loss of atmo. If they knew he was coming, or simply were trying to abandon a "dead" vessel, those escape pods could prove useful bargaining chips. Slapping the back of one of his crew he pointed at the escape pods and signaled him to head over and wait. Otherwise the rest of the crewers began opening holes at various points in the ship. One crew of three over what they assumed was the cargo hold, another crew of four somewhere the barracks, while Captain Schmitt and an escort of three penetrated the bridge. The crew cutting into the cargo hold would get in first, and toss in a flashbang after getting a good sized hole. Next would be the barracks, another flashbang, and finally the bridge with a third. The goal was intimidation and confusion, before the mandalorians stormed in with stun rifles and 12 gauge rubber shells. Couldn't risk much harm to the ship after all. Schmitt also carried a knife at his belt, but the rest didn't, trusting their eukar'gam knuckleplates perhaps foolishly.

Things were getting interesting for one [member="Jorus Merrill"] and his crew.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Onith Trill"]

In Escape Pod One, Shenna'vala pondered humanocentrism furiously. Just about every mass-market space suit was designed for humans or near-humans: lekku just plain didn't fit. She'd rigged up her own suit, of course, but she'd left it aboard the Wretched Hive with half its processors stripped out. This job had been routine on paper. Now all she had going for her was the escape pod's life support module, plus an oxygen mask if things went south.

Motion caught her eye through the pod's forward porthole, and she drew a sharp breath, floating up to get a better look. The other three Undergrounders stiffened.

"One Mando right outside," she said, eyeing the other derelict. "Just watching the pod caps so far."

***​

The boarders at the bridge would find only the inert controls, and a short corridor to the escape pod chamber. The corridor was defended by three Undergrounders in tough space suits, armed with pistols and knives. Another three guarded the chamber's aft entrance.

***​

​

Jorus had spent a good chunk of his childhood and adult career in zero gravity. With the recon ship's artificial gravity down alongside all its other systems, he could actually move faster and quieter through the corridors. Vars, who'd been with him for a couple of years now, proved pretty decent at zero-gee maneuvering too. As luck would have it, Jorus and Vars were en route to the cargo hold's cutter glow when the boarders punched through. Their flashbang was pretty far off, but the harsh glow and sound made Jorus wince. He hurried on. There was a maintenance nook just by the cargo hold's door; he and Vars crammed themselves in for some cover and began laying down pistol fire at the three Mandos inside.

Another flashbang went off maybe fifteen minutes behind him: another boarding crew had cut its way in, somewhere around the barracks. "Feth," Jorus snapped. The air was getting genuinely cold and thin courtesy of three new breaches. This situation was no recipe for success.

OOC/ I'm going off the assumption that we're laid out more or less like this:

(Bow) Bridge - Escape pod chamber - Barracks - Jorus and Vars - Cargo hold - Engines (Stern)

 

[Onith Trill]

Vars Aveppar happened to be a pretty decent shot, laying a good lick into the first boarder that entered the Hull. He didn't die immediately, but laid down a little suppressive fire for the last thirty seconds of his life before losing oxygen. The other two mandos managed to slide in unharmed and began some fairly basic tactics [member="Jorus Merrill"] would immediately recognize. They lay down some heavy fire, let one continue the heavy fire, and the other would dart from one cargo crate to another cargo crate, attempting to get to a flanking point while remaining in cover.

~~~~

The women in the barracks heard the blasterfire coming from the cargo hold, but trusted their counterparts to handle it. Normally they'd head for engineering and attempt to use it take control of the ship, but they had seen their man head to the escape pods and figured they had enough bargaining power. They'd head towards the bridge and the aft escape pod crew. Lacking subtlety they'd probably be heard in one way or another before they got there, but they had weapons raised and ready to go when they found somebody.

~~~~~~~

Captain Schmitt examined the bridge and found it deserted. Not unwise, but some captains preferred to hole up there for one reason or another even when the circumstances were poor. He didn't waste much time and ordered his crew to press forward, opening the only door out. Schmitt quickly found his men under fire, and they took cover by the doors and behind bridge console, trading shots with the tough undergrounders. The Aqualish himself landed a good hit with a rubber shot shell, throwing one of them back and giving him a heavy bruise in the chest.

As he and his men pushed forward in different directions he kept a very close eye on his helmet. When that HUD came back on his commlinks would as well, and chances were this ships systems would come back as well.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Onith Trill"]

A flurry of shots from the Mandos' stun rifles and rubber-slug scatterguns made their bounding overwatch tactic a solid option for closing ground with Vars and Jorus. With the gravity out, though, the crates floated as soon as a little precise fire cut a strap or two. Sometimes that afforded an opportunity for a shot at an ankle or something. That was no more than a nuisance for the two Mandos, though. Their real obstacle was the door. Jorus and Vars had chosen a maintenance nook, basically a broom closet, just outside the cargo hold's door. Vars grunted in pain as the flanking angle let a Mando smash a rubber 12-gauge slug into his left elbow. His knife drifted free, but he and Jorus kept taking shots as their pistols' ammunition allowed.

The problem, though, was the temperature. Jorus and Vars had oxygen masks, but not space suits. Jorus had estimated five minutes until the atmosphere grew too thin to function, and that threshold was coming up. He and Vars pulled back into the corridor and around a bend, though Vars grunted again and Jorus took a stinging impact to his left leg. They would need to pull back to the escape pod chamber.

Except now they were cut off. Two courses of action presented themselves.

One: Try to take the midships boarding party from behind, pin them against the escape pod defenders, take them down before the aft boarding party could do the same to Jorus and Vars, get into the chamber, and seal themselves in one of the two unused escape pods. Maybe doable, but everything would have to go perfectly.

Two: Go sideways. Grab a couple of the spare oxygen tanks, get into the undamaged starboard utility airlock, manually cycle it, and pump it full of air. The airlock door would hold off anything the Mandos had brought. At that point, Jorus and Vars would have their options seriously constrained, but at least they wouldn't​ suffer the effects of vacuum.

Option one required several separate risks to turn out favourably. Jorus picked option two.



Meanwhile, the situation in the escape pod chamber got grim fast. Six suited Undergrounders had been defending the room, three at each entrance, bow and stern. One at the bow took the Aqualish Captain's slug to the gut, stumbled out of position, and promptly received a couple of stun rifle bolts in his center of mass. The space suit, while tough, couldn't handle that. He passed out, leaving two pistol-and-knife-wielding Undergrounders to defend the bow entrance.

The aft entrance was doing better, maybe because their section of corridor was slightly longer. Three similarly equipped Undergrounders held that position. Then one peeked out a bit too far and took a pair of rubber slugs to the face. A third hammered him a moment later. He drifted into the corridor, unconscious or dead.


The other six Undergrounders, who only had oxygen masks if they were exposed to the ship's thin atmosphere, remained in two of the four pods. A cap of each pod - a rough dome surmounted by a viewport - protruded a little from the hull. And just barely, so did the first ring of tiny attitude control thrusters, whose control circuitry was now sprawled around Shenna'vala's hands while wired into her blaster's power pack. The escape pod's release was analog and its life support systems were specially insulated, but all the other systems were still knocked out.

She fired maneuvering jet number three, a tiny puff of reaction flare, at the Mandalorian who'd been dispatched to watch the pods. Her goal was to shove him off the hull, mag boots or no mag boots, and maybe compromise his suit seal in the process.

 

[Onith Trill]

The two Mandolorians in the Cargo Hold continued to lay down suppressive fire as the human and Trandoshan made for the oxygen and airlock. [member="Jorus Merrill"] and Vars would find that achieving their objectives wasn't that difficult, but veering off course would put a stun bolt into their guts. Once they were in one of the Mandalorians held a raised rifle at the door in case it opened, while the other pulled out his torch that had previously been used to cut into the hull. The airlock door looked pretty touch, and breaching a hole would be pretty difficult if not impossible, but that wasn't what the Mandalorian was aiming for. No, he was simply going to change a few settings and weld the airlock shut rather than cutting a hole.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At the stern one of the Undergrounders had taken quite a few rubber slugs, a couple to the face it looked like. The Mandalorians weren't sure if he was alive after that, but even if he was he'd never get a compliment on his smile again. The other two to their credit were good shots, and one landed a blow at one of the Mando's armor. It didn't give a grievous wound, but the armor wasn't all plate all everywhere; the armorweave was torn and the mando was soon frostbitten and oxygen deprived. Another cursed and went to grab his dying comrad and took a couple of blasts to his faceplate, the first melting it down and the second melting it through. Two down, one to go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Captain Schmitt and his escort continued to trade shots with the two unstunned opponents. Jalek poked around the corner and tried to line up a shot before taking a couple blaster shots, penetrating through his armor with quickness. Schmitt grumbled internally. It would take some time to find a good enough systems operator to replace him. This had become a very costly venture for a couple of now-broken satellites, but he couldn't stop now. His pride wouldn't let him leave tail tucked between his legs. Making a rush towards Jalek's position by the door he dragged the body out of the opening and picked the now dead man up with a hand locked on his shoulders. Putting himself behind the cadaver he pushed forward. If Jalek couldn't kill these men in life Schmitt would him to kill them in death.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The reactor flare pushed the mandalorian back, knocking him off hull and catapulting him into the nebula. Being the good Mando that he was mother never let him leave the house without a wrist mounted something or another, and today it happened to be a fibercord launcher. He pulled his wrist to his eyes, aimed, and fired. It hit the escape pod, but didn't stick, and he was floating away fast. Lining up another shot wouldn't work, too far away, so he aimed at his own ship, the Roche Class, and fired. Stuck that time, and he began to reel himself in. It would take a little while to get back to the Roche, then back to the IGV-55, then back to the escape pods. His anger at nearly being adrift in space might have proved lethal for Shenna, if not for the fact that he had forgotten he'd let go of his breaching torch and it was still floating away behind him.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

[member="Onith Trill"]

The airlock, unfortunately for Jorus and Vars Aveppar, had only one viewport, and it faced outward, not inward. Thus, their first indication of trouble was a sullen orange line of warming hullmetal, part-way along the rim of the hatch.

"Lookss like they sstill have torchess, Captain."

Jorus eyed the door, hands tucked in his armpits for warmth. They'd succeeded in fully pressurizing the airlock, but that didn't do much against the cold. "Yeah, I forgot about those. I'm getting dumb today, Vars."

"Ssir, iss there a reasson you're not ussing your lightssaber?"

"It'll stop a rubber slug, but the impact might wreck my grip and we might wind up with flaming melted rubber all over." Jorus eyed the door. "Then again..."

The minor airlock's hatch, and the corridor behind it, were fairly small. It wasn't hard to guess where the torch's user would need to stand. Holding his saber's emitter a handspan away from the hatch at an angle, Jorus triggered the washed-out blue blade. A heartbeat later, he pivoted the lightsaber firmly through a forty-five-degree arc, using the blade's intersection with the hatch as the pivot point. That kept the hole small.

---

At the pod chamber's aft entrance, the two remaining Undergrounders held the line. They had a good spot, and no reason to abandon it. Stray shots kept impacting the third, who now floated bonelessly in the middle of the corridor, surrounded by a haze of blood globules.

The two defenders started conserving ammunition. For ranged weapons, they only had blaster pistols with one extra power pack apiece. Their weapons might hit harder than stun rifles and rubber slugs, but sooner or later the pistols would run dry.

---

At the pod chamber's forward entrance, the two conscious Undergrounders had managed to pull their shipmate back to drift in the chamber. The effort distracted them at a critical moment, and Schmitt's charge caught them flat-footed. A few blaster shots punched into the dead man he was using as cover. They panicked a bit then, and started pouring fire into Schmidt's cover. One's blaster clicked empty; he drew his knife and lunged to meet the Aqualish.

---

Shenna'vala's stunt with the pod's maneuvering thrusters had given the entire recon corvette a tiny amount of spin. Through the viewport, she watched the blown-off Mando start reeling himself in. That couldn't be helped unless she wanted to trigger the analog launch charges and try to use the pod as a battering ram. That would be a no.

But the pod was a little spaceship, wasn't it. Shenna hadn't seen the boarding parties herself, but clearly, enough Mandos had landed to keep Jorus, Vars, and six Undergrounders busy. Maybe eight or ten Mandos, then, and sensors had only registered twelve lifeforms after the hatch bombardment. Count the Mando reeling himself in...

...and there was a decent chance the number of Mandos aboard their corvette ranged from two to zero. Probably zero.

Shenna threw the levers that controlled the pod's release. Small charges kicked the pod out of its bracket and shoved it toward the inert Mando corvette. A rush of thin air helped propel the escape pod. She controlled its flight with the maneuvering jets, still with her power pack wired in. It depleted, and she replaced it with the pack from someone else's gun.

Too late, she realized that she'd just opened the escape pod chamber to hard vacuum. If the Captain and Vars hadn't gotten into one of the other pods by now, or found shelter elsewhere, getting into one of the two empty pods had probably just become infeasible.

 

[Onith Trill]

One mandalorian began to flip out internally as the other was skewered by a blade of pure plasma. He backpedaled, keeping his rifle raised and trained on the door heading towards the engines. He'd open fire if [member="Jorus Merrill"] and Vars came out. Mostly he'd attempt to defend himself, but he wasn't going to push forward against superior numbers when one of them was a Forcie.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Stun bolts abound as a lone mandalorian pushed towards the escape pod's aft entrance. He was fairly certain they were running out of ammo, could have sworn he saw a power pack tossed between them. He'd attempted to shoot it, but this mando was no hero or supercommando. The shot missed. Eventually he landed a good blow on one of the undergrounders, but it came at cost. A life for a life, or a life for a stun. Undergrounder and mando both went down, afterwards the other turned around, pointed his blaster, and pulled the trigger to be greeted by an empty click.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of the undergrounders had run out of ammo, drew a knife, and charged. Schmitt replied by thrusting his cover forward atop the body, then quickly shifted his footing to aim a rubber slug at the other undergrounder. He shot his blaster bolt and landed a blow, but Schmitt's armor was a bit tougher than the other crewers. It held where the vac suit of the undergrounder didn't stop the concussive force of the slug. Behind Schmitt the other two Mandalorians charged, and by the time the knife-wielding undergrounder had recovered from dead mando being thrown on him he noticed blasters trained on him. He dropped the knife and put up his hands.

Schmitt almost sighed. It would have been so much easier if he hadn't done that. Schmitt was fairly certain he'd lost half his crew if not three-fourths on this venture. He wanted revenge, but he was smart enough to know that killing a surrendered hostage was a poor idea. If everything went well he wouldn't need a hostage, but if things went south, and they had for quite a while, bargaining chips and shows of good faith were useful. Schmitt held out a hand and then clenched his fist together, and the other two mandos tooks his hands and put binders on them, then binders on his legs. One hostage.

Schmitt then continued on to find another undergrounder who had just shot down one of his men. He turned around right as Schmitt was coming and aimed his blaster before pulling the trigger. A click. Empty. Schmitt took a gauntleted fist and planted it into the man before him with enough force to knock him cold. His suit wasn't penetrated, but he was out. Hostage number two. Things were beginning to look a little better for Schmitt. With a wave of his hand his escort bound him as well. Schmitt then continued forward and spotted the three mandalorians that had come through the barracks. Each were dead in one way or another. There Schmitt took a deep breath and knelt beside them, putting a hand over one of the bodies. A could of tears formed at his eyes before he took another deep breath and then rose.

What a terrible captain I have turned out to be.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The outer Mandalorian reeled himself in and cursed at the escape pod that didn't seem all that into escaping. If he had to bet the mando would say they were trying to get in his ship. Schmitt would have his head if he had captured their ship only to let their own more military focused vessel be stolen. A quick hull breach into that escape pod would do the trick. All he needed was-

Feth.

He turned his head as he reeled into the ship. His breaching torch was probably a kilometer out into space, if not more. He couldn't even see it through the nebula. Feeeeeeth, captain was gonna have his head. Once he got reeled into the ship he figured the best thing to do was to head inside and keep an eye on a viewport to watch the escape pod. They had to have had a plan on getting inside, and when they did he'd be ready for them.