First Reply Off The Beaten Path

[Anse Baenshaol]

A croaking sound was the first thing that registered, the not so pleasant grating notification of one very crab-like cobbled together droid. The location of the floating salvage, supposedly, that he’d heard from a trader at the last port. The coordinates were off the nearby patrolled spacelane, but that wasn’t unusual in his kind of business. Sitting up he stretched, pulling his mane of brown hair back into a tail, blue eyes fixed said droid with a half-asleep glare. Anse shifted on the bed, feet planted on the floor as he started to put himself in a better state to actually get to work.

A reminder flashed on the holo-display: Send her a check-in.

Right. Send a check-in to a woman who hadn’t answered his communique in too damn long. A woman he still missed bitterly. A woman, he reminded himself, that probably left him behind for a reason. Probably because he was an idiot. He groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands. Standing up he opened that familiar and probably abandoned hololink. “Hey, just be checkin’ in like th’ month before. Hope you be well yourself, check in again at th’ usual eh? Hope you be faring as well as I be Desbre Gensan .”

He cut the communication and got to work. The salvage was a rather spectacular wreck of a small transport about half the size of his vessel floating in what used to be a small, but lively trade route. A bit of nosing about with what details he’d gleaned from initial scans and it turned up as some forgotten piece owned by a now dead company specializing in medical research. Tarzane Group or so it used to be. He found himself mildly curious now, would there be any cargo? Thankfully what pieces were worth salvaging all fit into his cargo hold.

He stared out the viewport for a moment, it never ceased to awe him at the vastness of the inky black. The little points of light signaling places that could be a safe port or simply a new set of planets undiscovered. One felt utterly alone out in the black, yet at the same time knowing that there were others staring out into that same blackness. A flutter sent a thrill through him, danger yet exhilaration quickening his pulse. It was easy to forget this feeling, this space around one’s self when planetside. This wasn’t something he ever got used to and took for granted, space just held so much wonder and newness. It was the raw expanse that said there was still more to discover. He laughed at himself and turned to get to why he was here instead of woolgathering.

Four hours later…

He’d just maneuvered the last piece in and closed the hatch, when his whole ship shuddered paired with the sound of impact. With a curse he raced to the nearest console and caught sight of two small fighters. None of the markings were familiar, which likely meant pirates. “Damn…”

Fleeing would be problematic because he would probably be intercepted, he still could be, but his ship wasn’t built for aggression. He could defend himself, defend himself damn well, but go on the offensive? Oh, they’d pay for sure, but it wasn’t in his favor if these two fighters got their back up. He threw out a distress call, it was his best bet right then. “Mayday! Mayday! This is AVR-12ID7 Genesis. I am a salvage vessel under attack by two unknowns, more may be on th’ way. I need an assist.”

He threw up his shields to full, priming his weaponry in case he really was shit out of luck and had to fight alone.

 

[Desbre Gensan]

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Location: Name​

Equipment: Simple Jedi Robes, Silver Sigil, inherited lightsaber, light-filtering lenses, Hush-style comlink, aquata breather, liquid-cable launcher, stim pills, nutrient/food pack​

Tag: Anse Baenshaol​

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A slow, insidious but insistent feeling had built over the weeks. Des was needed, or would be. Long ago she'd learned to recognize the whispers of the Force. Learned to trust her gut. And the visions, when they came. Glimpses of past, future, and distant present.

Now it led her here. Even though her logical mind still railed and raved that this was a fool's errand. Training and experience said otherwise.

Des slouched in the cockpit, barely seeing the mottled sky of hyperspace when her console lit up with a soft accompanying bling. The sound rippled through the air, overriding the thrum of the ship's engines and reactor but for a moment. A message.

She glanced at it. Anse. She sighed and dismissed the notification. His face had flashed into her mind. The dream... It had been about him. Fragmented and disturbing as it was, she couldn't dismiss it. And here he was, messaging her again.

Maybe he actually was in some kind of trouble.

Bling! New message, broadcast in the open. Distress call. Des sat up, punched a button. The message was part-way through but repeated. She recognized that call number. ... It was Anse's ship, and voice. Even with the stress in it,she remembered it well.

Attached to the message were coordinates for the point of origin. Pulling up the navicomp and live chart plot, she frowned. They were right around the corner, figuratively.

A grimace splayed across her face then. Des yanked the drive control levers back, and the mottled sky of hyperspace shattered into starlines, then the glittering and dark view of deep space.

Orienting on the new location, she punched up the navicomp and fed the coordinates in while cursing under her breath, wishing her rust bucket was a newer one, capable of changing course without leaving hyperspace.

"Hurry up, waitin' on you. Hurry up. Hurray uuuup, waitin' on you, hurray uuuup." She half sung half chanted at the navicomp as it dispassionately crunched numbers, ignorant of anyone else's needs. Des could do the math of course, but not quite that fast.

She could also just wing it. Like they did way back, thousands of years ago. A blind jump. She'd done it before. It was extremely risky though.

Come on, come on, come on. Come ooooonnnnnnnn. One leg bounced furiously, her nails tapping incessantly.

Ding! Course calculated, set vector to... Des was already moving. The stars wheeled and slid, and as soon sa she was lined up, the ship leaped back into hyperspace. This would only be a micro-jump, maybe a minute or two long. Hopefully she would get there in time.

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[Anse Baenshaol]

Shields were holding. It didn’t stop his pulse from racing. He rubbed his palms on his pants, palms sweaty as he took in the stream of information being thrown up on the console screen, his finger on the trigger. Everything moved in slow motion, but at the same time every line and detail was vividly present rather than fuzzy and indistinct. The fighters didn’t have enough firepower to actively tick down his shields in any meaningful way, but they were an annoyance.

A slow inhale steadied his nerves. A slow exhale and he set to swatting these gnats. Most of his weaponry was meant as a screen, something to buy him time to run. However these fighters would be able to keep up and would hound his tail so if he was going to get away the fighters had to go. Impatience gnawed at him, every moment he wasted time on these two gave a larger vessel time to show up. He felt like prey and he bared his teeth at that. Screw that.

His heart pounded in his chest as he got a lock on one and sent a torpedo at the target. Anxious thoughts peppered across his mind in the second it took. The connection caused the fighter to burst into a shower of debris, some of which bounced off his shields, the force of the blast vibrating along his hull. He turned his attention towards the second fighter. A breath later a larger vessel appeared within sensor range making his alarm trill. He grit his teeth and hissed out a string of curses. The second fighter started to move more erratically, dodging in and out of range making his swear louder.

He felt the pressure as the hulking menace wallowed its way closer like a bloated water beast. His fingers flew along the console as he extended his sensors to max, one last effort to see if there was anyone else out there. Suddenly the fighter peeled away and he had enough time to brace for impact as cannon fire created a prism effect across his shields. Ninety percent. However that abrupt change gave him an opportunity and he fired, the second fighter lost a wing and careened towards the larger ship to then blast apart across their own shields.

Desbre Gensan