Public Occupational Hazard

[Lew Ardellian]

. . . Hull Breach Detected . . . Life Su . . . FWOOM! . . .

Lew's eyes fluttered open, blue sparks dancing across his vision. The world drifted around him. No—not the world. He was drifting. Something heavy crushed his chest. He gasped in a breath as the pressure suddenly vanished. Mistake. Fire tore through his lungs, and he doubled over coughing, saliva splattering across the inside of his visor.

My helmet? Why am I wearing that?, he thought. Instinctively, Lew tried to stand up, his knees knocking against the console in front of him, straps digging into his shoulders. That brought him back to reality. The sequence of events leading up to the precarious position in which he found himself came rushing back, a sneer twisting at the corner of Lew's lips. Gespo. That Rodian rat. Lew had been holding the perfect hand, a sabaac, and somehow Gespo had still managed to win with a fortuitous dice roll. Too fortuitous. And it hadn't been the first time either. The last thing Lew remembered was the card game... then alarms... then boarding sirens and an explosion. "Pirates," he growled, hand flying to the blaster at his hip. It was still there.

He scanned the readouts in front of him, or at least, he tried. Engines. Life support. Gravity. Offline. Struggling to look over his shoulder... Idiot He was still strapped in. Reaching up, the pilot disengaged the harness system, gently floating up out of his seat as he sent his gaze aft.

Apparently, he didn't have much of a hull either. It was like the cockpit had been cracked off and set adrift from the rest of the ship. What the hell...

Looking down to his forearm, he pulled up his wrist pad and examined the readouts there. He cursed under his breath. Lew had been unconscious for hours. The cockpit had sheared cleanly away from the rest of the ship. Either the Pintle had been vaporized... or the pirates had tractored the surviving sections away. Not enough debris for the former, he thought to himself. Grabbing onto a handle along the bulkhead, he arrested his movement, he didn't want to accidentally float into the void. A modified Darius G-class freighter rigged for gas hauling, the Pintle had been a leased vessel - this was going to be expensive.

His current route wasn't exactly close to home for the native of Talus, but that had been the draw, he'd felt the itch for a long time now. That quiet whisper at the back of his mind, urging him to do something, anything other than the same old routes he'd been flying for years between Talus and Bestine. So, he'd found himself transporting Tibanna from Dorriella to Vengler. Why he was transporting Tibanna down the Sanctuary Pipeline when Bespin to Vengler would have been faster he couldn't say. When he'd said something about it to the crew, Gespo had gone on some diatribe about intergalactic shipping and how shipping things across the galaxy could sometimes be cheaper than shuttling between near adjacent planets. Lew had only heard the first part before his brain stopped listening. When he'd said he wanted something more exciting, this wasn't exactly what he'd meant.

The memory came to him, unbidden. He didn't have the time to muse or wonder at how he got here. Did he bang his head?

Right now he needed to figure out what his position was and either engineer a way towards a shipping lane or hope he could salvage enough power to get his transmitter up and running. As it stood, his ship hadn't been due in Vengler for another day or so - no one would be looking for him anytime soon.

Lew floated into the gutted cockpit and reached for the first exposed access panel.

He had air for a few hours.

Maybe.

That would have to be enough.

He was earning his hazard pay today - if he lived long enough to collect.

​

 

[Kharon]

A skull chalice sat lazily in Kharon's hand, black liquid flowing around the ivory cup. Yellow eyes flickered between the Rodian and the two Twi'leks who stood behind him with their blasters placed against his green head. He pleaded in his life in a broken mix of Basic and Rodese, saying the Draelvasier wouldn't have intercepted the shipment if it weren't for him. That he would be lost without his information. The only response the alien got was a deep laugh from the pirate captain.

"Kill him. Feed him to the dogs." The pirate stood as he finished, the massive size of the captain dwarfing the three before him. The Twi'leks nodded as they pulled the trigger on the blaster at the same time, turning the Rodian's head to a fine red mist that splattered against the duasteel floor of the ship. Their blue and green lekku were now stained red to match their lord's chitin.

Hungry eyes made their way down toward the duo as they dragged what was left of the Rodian off to the side. The hounds would eat well tonight, though they were more a fan of fattier species like Ewoks and Gamorreans, they would never turn down a treat.

"Drink." His voice was closer to a growl than speech as he pushed the empty skull toward a nearby Zabrak who obliged eagerly. He lifted a heavy bottle of whiskey up toward the air, filling the bony chalice.

"The dogs will still be hungry." He paused as he looked back toward the navigator, "Take us back around- there might be survivors." As he finished, the navigator saluted and left his station, headed toward the helm to send the ship back through space to where they had just stolen the shipment of gas.

The ship emerged from hyperspace more like a missile than a vessel. The hull had been damaged from fights previous and parts were exposed, covered only by ray shields. It still stood impressive against the darkness that swallowed the stars. To any of the survivors, it signaled a very bad time for them.

"Bring me anyone with or without a heartbeat." He ordered and they listened, minions of different races all scurried off to secure the favor of The Grave Admiral.

Otherwise came with the possibility of death.

"We have a signal!" One of the other pirates yelled, referring to Lew Ardellian .

 

[Silas Wrenn]

Location: Sanctuary Pipeline (Debris Field)
Tags: Lew Ardellian Kharon

The massive forward sensor boards of The Wayward Horizon had been screaming for the last twenty minutes.

Silas Wrenn adjusted the heavy hydraulic seals of his Bastion-IV environment suit, his gloved fingers dancing across the terminal keys of his 174-meter scavenger ship. He had been tracking a dense, dissipating cloud of unrefined Tibanna gas drifting across the Sanctuary Pipeline lanes—a telltale signature of a catastrophic structural hull failure. Silas didn't need to check a corporate registry to know what had happened out here. A gas hauler had been cracked open like an egg.

"Captain Wrenn," Bizzy's synthesized, clicking voice droned over the bridge intercom from the lower refinery hold. "The forward scanners have detected a localized, low-frequency distress loop. Thermal scanners indicate a single bio-signature trapped inside a detached cockpit section. Structural integrity of the wreckage is failing at twelve percent per quarter-hour."

"Match our approach drift, Vektor," Silas muttered to his astromech copilot, his baritone voice flat and focused inside his helmet. "Keep the engine signatures low. I don't want to trigger any secondary plasma flare-ups from that leaking gas."

But the black void of the pipeline didn't stay quiet for long.

Before the massive GS-100 salvage ship could position its forward cargo arms to reel in the drifting cockpit, the fabric of realspace tore open. Emerging like a jagged, battle-scarred missile came a massive pirate vessel, its hull bristling with exposed, ray-shielded scars. It was an ugly, predatory thing, and it immediately began sweeping the debris field.

Silas's brow furrowed beneath his visor. He recognized the aggressive profile of a raider blockade runner. His experienced spacer's eye told him the ship was a walking mechanical violation; to his survival instincts, it meant the vultures had come back to clean up the scraps.

"Vektor, flip the transponder slicer," Silas ordered, his tone tightening as he gripped the armrests of his pilot seat. "Mask our power grid. If they scan us, make us look like a broken-down garbage scow drifting through the wreckage. They want the salvage, but I'm not letting them turn that trapped spacer into a line-item on a casualty sheet. Keep the weapon systems primed and plot us an escape route if we need one. You can never be too careful with pirates."

Silas stood up, reaching for his compact SoroSuub Sledgehammer automatic carbine and checking the power cell on his under-barrel stun-field generator. He wasn't military, and he wasn't looking to fight a pirate fleet, but he knew starship anatomy. If that pirate vessel sent a boarding party to drag the survivor out, Silas was going to ensure he breached the wreckage first.

Laying his hand on the primary airlock release, Silas watched the drifting, broken silhouette of Lew's cockpit through the viewport, waiting for the precise microsecond to make his move before the Grave Admiral's hounds closed the gap.

 

[Makar Clyne]

Fleet Composition

Cruiser "Tethys"
x3 Delphins
x2 Arquitens

Location: Unknown Sector, Deep space
Objective:
Tags: Lew Ardellian Kharon Silas Wrenn

Makar had watched the festivities from his flagship at the edge of the sector. Battles, no matter how quick they were, were noisy affairs in the quiet of space. A ring of the dinner bell created by the seismic waves of turbolasers, and Makar's gang of marauders were quite hungry. He commanded for a sensor sweep of the area, in seconds the screens lit up with a mix of debris and active war ships.

Sorting through the trash in deep space seemed so beneath Makar at this point, they could hardly match the riches promised by conquering an entire world. Then again, there was greater sport to be had than a wrecked freighter. Makar simply gave a smirk as he looked over his screens.

His face was bathed in the blue-green light of the Corellian ship's scanner, seeing a potential prize beyond the haul of the freighter. Another pirate crew had infested the system, using ships he'd never seen before. Perhaps they could challenge the veteran crews which Makar took pride in commanding? Yes, he figured they could, if he chose to fight them. For the moment he would consider his options.

"First mate, keep a sensor lock on that flagship, stay within weapon's range. I want to know what's happening before we commit to anything."

It was a measure twice, cut once approach. That didn't sit well with Marni, who was a rather cutthroat Sephi. She would rather send a few shots broadside than continue sitting around.

"Aye captain, I still think we should bust these bastards' heads while we have the drop on them! Our cannons could crack 'em open before they know what hit 'em!"

It wasn't a plan without merit. Their main cannon was able to command the power of twenty turbolasers with a single round. Even capital ships were wary of such destructive force. But there was no sense in making unnecessary enemies.

"At ease Marni, the time to kill will come. And when it does, we will turn the black velvet of the stars into a sea of red..."

 

[Lew Ardellian]

That was the thing about ships. Sure, each one was unique - but they all had roughly the same components in roughly the same configurations. Well, at least the commercial models that hadn't seen personal customization or had been around long enough for their parts to go out of production. Thankfully, the Pintle was the former. Lew had removed several panels, errant sparks flashing against the dull gray of the bulkhead. At least there was still something powering the lines.

Lew had gone to work rigging up a stopgap. Several of the fuses had fried and wiring was a mess, that wouldn't stop him though. All that was left was to power it up and hope the fuses didn't blow again - and that power lasted long enough to get a message out.

Breaking up the sporadic sparking of the cabling overhead, a brighter white reflected in the glass of his helmet. With a sharp intake of breath he recognized it for what it was. A ship had just entered the system. It didn't take long before he made out the general shape, a knot forming in the pit of his stomach. Battle scars and bright "scabs" of containment fields adorned its hull. Lew began to feel an overwhelming sense of dread creep in at the edge of his consciousness.

Prying his eyes from the ship, another thing caught his eye. The bulk of another vessel, this one a... salvage vessel of a sort, visible arms along its hull. When did that get here?, he thought. It didn't really matter, but it did give him an idea. The "scab" of a ship was hard to miss, its intent fairly obvious given its vector. He needed a way out of this cockpit and long range communications weren't going to matter if he was space paste. Pushing himself back towards the de-racked comm gear, Lew removed a small connector from the side of his helmet, patching himself in. This was going to be tricky. Normally, the comm array would use the ship's mounted antennae but with the unit de-mounted he had to improvise. A mid length cable stretched from the rear of the unit and snaked up towards a bulkhead handhold. Most of it was insulated but the end had been stripped and splayed forming something of a directional array antenna. It was sticks and rocks technology but the fundamentals were there. Lew pressed the power button, waiting for the inevitable - to his welcome surprise, the screen blinked to life.

Wasting no time, Lew keyed up the comm with one hand while directing the makeshift antenna towards the drifting salvage vessel.

:: Unknown Salvage Vessel, this is the Captain Ardellian of... well, what's left of the Pintle. Seem to be in somewhat of a pickle here, you all have room for a passenger perchance? ::

He could already feel the heat through the cable insulation and his heavy duty flight gloves - he only had one, maybe two transmissions before the insulated cable would melt beyond function. There was a reason they designed antennas the way they did and didn't just use loose cable. Nervously he let his eyes wander back towards the rapidly approaching "scab ship". There wasn't much time.

Kharon | Silas Wrenn | Makar Clyne


​

 

[Silas Wrenn]

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD

Location: Sanctuary Pipeline (Debris Field)
Tags: Lew Ardellian | Kharon | Makar Clyne​

The burst of static coming through The Wayward Horizon's localized short-range frequency wasn't a corporate data-stream; it was a rough, analog voice filtering directly through the background radiation.

"Unknown Salvage Vessel, this is the Captain Ardellian of... well, what's left of the Pintle. Seem to be in somewhat of a pickle here, you all have room for a passenger perchance?"

Silas slammed his hand against the console, overriding the ship's automated sensor baffles just enough to punch a targeted, tight-beam audio transmission directly back along Lew's degrading vector. He could see the thermal signatures on his HUD, the spacer's makeshift antenna cable was red-lining, melting under raw electrical friction.

"Captain Ardellian, this is Silas Wrenn aboard The Wayward Horizon," Silas's voice called back through the dying comm-line. "I've got plenty of room, but your hardware is about to liquefy. Stop transmitting and brace yourself. I'm locking a tractor beam onto your cockpit pod. You've got about ten seconds."

Silas didn't wait for a reply. He pivoted back to the pilot's console, his eyes narrowing as his long-range sensor grids lit up with a massive cascade of secondary hyperspace alarms.

The void of the Sanctuary Pipeline was suddenly getting incredibly crowded. Emerging at the far edge of the sector came a full marauder fleet, a flagship cruiser flanked by a heavy vanguard of support warships. To Silas's experienced spacer's eye, the tactical layout was obvious. It was an entirely separate pirate cartel converging on the Grave Admiral's territory like starved krayt dragons. The two hostile fleets were already locking weapon signatures, sizing each other up for a massive, capital-scale turf war.

Perfect. Pirates were greedy, but they were also predictably territorial. While they were busy counting each other's turbolaser batteries, they would be almost assuredly ignoring the "broken-down automated garbage scow" drifting about in the center of the debris field.

"Vektor, break our engine baffle seals and give me full auxiliary power to the forward arrays!" Silas barked, buckling himself into the reinforced pilot's chair as his astromech let out a frantic series of binary whirs. "Bizzy, get down to the lower hangar breach valve and make ready. We're going to have a guest arriving very loudly."

Silas threw the secondary structural switches forward. From the nose of the gargantuan, 174-meter scrapper, the forward tractor beam projector flared to life in an invisible, high-gravity ripple. The intangible beam cut through the choking clouds of leaking Tibanna gas, snapping a violent, unyielding magnetic lock directly onto the buckled hull of Lew's drifting cockpit.

With a deep structural groan from the forward emitter housings, the Wayward Horizon began reeling the broken cockpit inward at maximum velocity, pulling it straight toward its reinforced decompression airlock, hopefully before the Grave Admiral's hounds or the newly arrived marauder fleet realized their prize was being pulled out from under their noses.

 

[Lew Ardellian]

The cable in his hands burned hot as he heard the fading reply from The Wayward Horizon. Not only was there precious little time to respond but the situation precluded the average niceties of space faring folk. Grimacing, he released the cable and did his best to anchor himself as the deck lurched beneath his feet - the tractor had engaged. Despite the disorienting feeling of moving in a direction without a horizon or attitude to really look at, Lew managed to keep down his lunch. Mostly.

More specks of light caught the pilot's eye. Now there's two of them?! he thought, both fleets barely visible in the starlight of the void. If it wasn't already, this particular point in space was quickly becoming possibly the absolute worst place to be right now.

A loud slap snapped Lew back to reality, his head jerking to the side as a piece of debris bounced off into the nether. Oh crap He began hearing more pings and clatters as fragments of debris pelted against his suit and helmet. Most of the suit would hold against random bits and bobs floating around but he'd already beaten the odds of being in the wrong place at the wrong time - no sense relying on fate.

Lew adjusted his position in the shattered cockpit region of the ship, tucking partially behind a large console on the bulkhead. That should keep most of the debris from hitting him directly. Chancing a glance, he saw the ship of Captain Wren rapidly filling his vision to the exclusion of all else. Gently he felt for his blaster, reassuring himself it was still there. By all accounts, this really was a salvage ship but it never hurt to carry caution into the unknown. He knew one thing for sure though, he'd much rather hope for a good outcome than be left to a bad one. The appearance of the pirate vessel alone had sent a chill down his spine.

Kharon | Silas Wrenn | Makar Clyne


​

 

[Kharon]

TAG: Lew Ardellian Silas Wrenn Makar Clyne

The Wicked Providence moved through space, inching ever closer to its targets.

Molten yellow eyes narrowed in annoyance as klaxons began sounding throughout the bridge. Still, the Draelvasier's gaze remained fixed on the little blip that was all that remained of the freighter. He wanted that pilot alive. Anyone transporting that much Tibanna gas was almost certainly working for someone with deep pockets, and the lone survivor was the only one who knew where the shipment had been headed.

"Admiral, another ship is pulling in the survivor. They read as a scavenger vessel." The pirate's voice shook as he spoke. Delivering bad news to Kharon was rarely a healthy career choice. Fortunately for him, the Grave Admiral was already thinking beyond the report.

Without so much as turning his head, Kharon replied, "Good. Let them bring him aboard. Once we know he's safe, we take the ship with the pilot still inside."

His voice barely rose above a growl. The skull chalice creaked softly beneath the pressure of his grip as his mind worked through the next steps. Around him, the bridge came alive. Pirates hurried between stations while alarms echoed through the battered cruiser. Some sprinted toward the hangar bays where boarding craft were already starting their engines. It was another day in the life of a pirate. Strike once, circle back, strike again.

"Admiral... another thing." This time Kharon turned.

The bridge seemed to shrink as all nine feet of the Draelvasier settled his gaze on the pirate who had spoken. Fear irritated him. It always had- there was no honor in terrifying men who already expected to die.

"What is it?"

"Another signature, sir. Pirates." The human swallowed before continuing. "They're just sitting and watching us. Initial readings put their fleet larger than ours."

The man couldn't have stood much taller than five and a half feet. Even across the bridge, Kharon dwarfed him.

"Have they made any moves?"

"No, Admiral."

"Demanded anything?"

"No."

"Fired on us?"

Again, the answer was the same.

"No."

Silence settled over the bridge for a few seconds before Kharon looked back toward the viewport.

"Then they are not our concern."

The words immediately eased the tension hanging over the room.

"If they want violence, they'll announce it soon enough." His eyes drifted back to the tactical display where the cockpit was steadily being reeled toward the scavenger ship. "Until then, I won't waste men chasing another pirate while our prize slips away."

"Should we launch the fighters?"

"No. Boarding craft only." His answer came without hesitation. "The pilot and that salvage ship are worth more to me than proving something to another pirate captain."

The only reply was a sharp salute before the officer hurried off to relay the orders.

Kharon returned his attention to the stars beyond the viewport. On the tactical display, the cockpit and scavenger vessel continued drawing closer together, wrapping themselves into one convenient prize.

All he had to do now was take it.

 

[Silas Wrenn]

SPACER'S GAMBIT
Location: Sanctuary Pipeline (Debris Field)
Tags: Lew Ardellian Kharon Makar Clyne​

CLANG

The structural tremor of Lew Ardellian's ruptured cockpit impacting The Wayward Horizon's lower deck vibrated straight through the floorplates of the main bridge. Instantly, the massive capital scrapper's automated magnetic docking clamps snapped into place, locking the broken hull securely down inside the depressurized hangar.

Silas didn't waste a single heartbeat. He slammed a heavy thumb down on the internal hangar comms loop.

"Alright Captain, I've got you locked on my cargo deck, but the hold is still depressurized." Silas's baritone voice boomed through the hangar's overhead speakers. "Stay tucked behind that console and keep your helmet sealed. My droids are deploying a rescue pod to haul you up to triage. Let the machines do the heavy lifting."

Silas flipped the switch, cutting the line, his eyes instantly tracking back to the forward tactical displays. On his HUD, the trajectory of the oncoming pirate vessels was flashing a bright, hostile crimson. They hadn't launched fighters. Instead, a cluster of heavy, slow-moving armored boarding craft had detached from the scarred ship, crawling across the void with their docking seals primed.

They thought they were collecting a defenseless, stationary prize. They were wrong.

"Bizzy, open the primary venting manifolds on the gas intake," Silas commanded into his headset. "Reverse the internal compression pumps. I want a full purge."

From the underbelly of the 174-meter salvage ship, the massive gas-scrubbing arrays groaned as they shifted into reverse. The tens of thousands of liters of highly volatile, unrefined Tibanna gas that The Wayward Horizon had been systematically siphoning from the pipeline wreckage weren't stored away—they were violently weaponized. A massive, choking cloud of dense, microscopic chemical mist spewed out into the vacuum, billowing directly into the flight path of the oncoming pirate boarding pods.

Silas reached over, keying open a wide-band, unencrypted subspace frequency targeted directly at the bridges of the surrounding vessels. He didn't know the name or the faction of the warlord commanding the scarred ship, and he didn't care. He simply spoke the mechanical truth of the grid.

"To the vessel launching the boarding party," Silas stated, his voice carrying zero panic, echoing across the open comms lines of every ship in the hex. "Your pods are currently flying straight into a concentrated cloud of unrefined, volatile Tibanna gas. I have my forward mining lasers locked onto the epicenter of that drift. If they try to advance through the cloud, I'll ignite the entire debris-field. From the looks of your hull, your ship has already taken a pretty serious beating. With that kind of damage a plasma blast at this range will easily fry your flagship's sensors, never mind incinerating your boarding teams before they get anywhere near my hull."

Silas leaned back slightly in his pilot's chair, his gloved fingers hovering directly over the primary ignition triggers for the heavy mining lasers. But he wasn't firing yet. He was giving them an out.

"Listen to me Captain: I have no interest in the remaining cargo or the salvage rights to this wreckage. Strip the field to the bone for all I care. My only objective here is getting this pilot to a medical ship. I got no beef with you and I'm not looking for a fight, but press me on this and I'll light you up. Tell your pods to cut their engines and back off. It isn't worth the trouble. No one needs to die today."