The Merchant Fleet

[Rusty]

Floating in Space
Team 2

Well, it was fun, and Rusty had bagged his share of TIEs, but it was time to get serious. Boarding a hostile ship was bad enough without having to hit the airlock in free fall.

"I'm ready when you are, Captain. Swing in front of me and I'll scratch your back."

The Shard transmitted his coordinates to the Wicked Grace and got ready for the tricky maneuver they were going to have to pull off.

[member="Malia Afredane"]

 

[Doctor Azure]

Lor grinned back at Rawnie, knowing what the smirk and the wink probably meant. Neither of them would get a bit of rest after all this was over with. And that was perfectly okay.​

​

"Mmmm... I think we can figure out something after the cake and ice cream. Just gotta make sure none of our new friends can get past our locks. And, y'know, maybe put a sock on the hatch."​

​

[member="Rawnie Tal'verda"]​

 

[Rawnie Tal'verda]

She laughed at that, the memory of Rusty walking in on them, half naked, making out on the couch. His suggestion to put a sock on the door next time had been something Rawnie had actually taken to heart. Unless they were getting busy in space. There really wasn't much chance of someone walking in on them in space.

"I will hold you to that."

[member="Doctor Azure"]

 

[Kairon Rees]

Team One
Making our first run.
[member="Rekha Kaarde"] [member="Dirks Hutchinson"], [member="Judah Dashiell"] [member="Jamie El-Eison"] [member="Rawnie Tal'verda"] [member="Doctor Azure"]

Kairon could see the arrangements of quad lights against the backdrop of the cruiser as the X-wings streaked ahead. They etched out intricate patterns as they weaved through the fighter screen, dispersing the TIEs.

A pair of B-wings flanked the Quintessence as they accelerated to attack speed. “[We’ve got it come in at the nose, dance close to their skin. If we pull away too soon, those point defences will obliterate us]!” the Sullustan alliance pilot reminded him.

Easier said than done in a freighter, Kairon thought to himself. The two bombers spread apart from them as red streaks started to cross the space between them and the target. He levelled out ahead of the cruiser, allowing the computer a limited control of the vessel. It would give the ship a gentle nudge if he moved too close to the hull of the capital ship, or if it detected a turret firing on them. A human without access to the Force had relatively limited reflexes.

“Here we go!” he shouted as the cruiser suddenly filled the viewscreen. The Quintessence burned hard as she ran along the hull. The upper turrets never stopped firing as TIE fighters trailed them. A kilometre didn’t take long to pass, and Kairon slammed his hand down on the ordnance controls as they passed the middle of the vessel. Two proton bombs dropped from the Quin, and their twin turbolaser fired at almost point blank range.

A moment later and it was over. They passed the Dark-blades engines and carried on into space. He twisted the Quin around, giving [member="Rekha Kaarde"] a clear shot at the TIE fighters following them.

“That was a good run, outer hull breached!” called an Alliance pilot. “Hit her again in the same spot and the reactor should be wide open.”

Timing was key. They couldn’t blow the first cruiser, until the boarding party had set charges on the second. The pair of cruisers were close enough together that blowing the first could breach the hull on the second.

“Come on Mal,” he mumbled to himself.

 

[Malia Afredane]

Team 2
Grabbing the shard and getting it done.

She spun Gracie around when she got the call, and slowed enough as she got near that he could activate the mag clamps. The robot secured to the hull, she hit the burn and Gracie rolled under the hull of the second ship and slipped into the open hangar bay, where some of the TIE had launched from. She touched down lightly on the deck, hitting the ramp controls as she jumped out of the seat.

"That's our cue, Kaia. Time to dance."

She pulled her blaster rifle up, safety off, ready to go. The klaxons sounded through the ship, the lights flashing yellow on black metal decking. The hangar was abandoned, nothing there now and no deck crew. It was eerie to look around, but Mal eased through the room until she got to a door leading to the main hallways running the length of the ship.

"It's a good clip down to the engines, and there's a tug over there. The quicker we get down and back, the less time the rest of the fleet has to keep the enemy engaged."

She got the door open and peeked around the edges to the empty halls, the warning lights strobing through the halls.

"Looks good, let's go."

[member='Kaia Starchaser'] [member='Rusty']

 

[Doctor Azure]

"I hope so, visahot."​

​

Lor watched as Kairon's ship blasted a hole in their target's hull, and then opened his comm again to get the X-Wings around the Bluebird going. There was some movement on the scopes as the tugs on the shield-less Dark Blade began taking off to join in the fight, along with several fighters that looked like TIE Defenders.​

​

"Where in the frak did they get Defenders from?! Watch out for 'em, guys."​

​

[member="Kairon Rees"] [member='Rawnie Tal'verda']​

 

[Rawnie Tal'verda]

Her full focus was trained on the view in front of her. Her eyes flashed from target to target, calculating the distance, her speed, where they might go. It was like hunting. She only had so many arrows in her quiver, she had to make them count. Not that they were exactly going to be low on firepower any time soon, but old habits were hard to break. She was pulling back her arrow now, taking aim. Breathe in... and out. The arrow flew from her bow-

Fire in space. Then it was gone.

[member="Doctor Azure"]

 

[Rusty]

Hangar, Target Ship
Team 2

As per usual, the Captain drove.

Rusty set Gertrude up on the front of the tug, fresh battle box by her side. This time, the ammunition of choice was frangible. The rounds would shatter on impact with bulkheads, but they'd cut through plastoid like butter, and when they hit flesh, the term most often used to describe the interaction was "ludicrous gibs."

The Shard had caught some of their passenger's telemetry feed from the space battle. She was pretty handy with a turbolaser. Hopefully that would translate over to a blaster.

"If you've got hearing protection, now's the time to use it. Gertrude here is a bit on the loud side."

[member="Kaia Starchaser"]
[member="Malia Afredane"]

 

[Kairon Rees]

Kark. The TIE Defender was much more difficult to shake. It was not due to the intrinsic manoeuvrability of the hardware, but novice pilots weren't allowed to use such vessels. The warning lights and sounds indicated that the deflector grid was struggling to cope. Some energy from a direct shot passed through the field and hit the rear engine mounts. A string of detritus was left in the Quintessence's wake as armour plating crumbled.

Kairon cut the propellant to the engine, then ramped up the voltage to the grid. When he slammed down the contol the ion stream came full blast, confusing the TIE's sensors and giving them enough breathing space. Kairon dropped the nose and one of the vetral turrets despatched their tail.

"Too close," Kairon called over the intercom. The formation of attack vessels lined up again and they arced around. They would make another run once [member="Doctor Azure"] and [member="Rawnie Tal'verda"] 's team had taken a shot at the cruiser. Several X-wings had hit the point defences with precision strikes. Hopefully the next attack run would carry a smaller risk, which was vital given the state of their shields.

 

[Kaia Starchaser]

The ship’s pilot was something else. Kaia was holding on, mainly because when other people flew, it was rough. She liked to be in control of the ship, this… was different. But it was the easiest way to get to their target. Star was too big of a ship for this kind of mission. Feeling the landing, watching the hangar fill the ship’s viewport, the dark haired Starchaser nodded and grinned. She was a Jedi, she was a protector but she was carrying a lightsaber and a rifle. That meant she was obviously more.

Stepping into the hangar, this felt a lot like home. The girl had been raised on an ImpStar. This wasn’t that different. She knew where the engines were. “I’m driving the tug.”

She looked back to where Rusty was and nodded. “Going to blow their ears out and kill?” She laughed as she held the hilt of her saber in her hand.

[member="Rusty"]
[member="Malia Afredane"]

 

[Rekha Kaarde]

There it was that target rich environment, Rekha lined them up pulled back and let it all loose, her green eyes darted from one target to the next.

“I got most of them off of us” She watched as the sky filled with fireworks of TIE fighters began exploding, and bursting into brilliant white sparkles.

“How long before the team gets the charges set?” Timing was everything. Timing was the diference between life, death, or a very long sit in a prison cell.
Rekha rolled around scanning the skies around them, where were they there had to be more of them. “I think they regrouping, and will be coming back”

That was a common tactic, just had to make sure they were ready. Rekha leaned forward, looking, Come on out and play

[member="Kairon Rees"] Dirks Hutchinson, Judah Dashiell Jamie El-Eison Rawnie Tal'verda Doctor Azure

 

[Kairon Rees]

The noises that ran through the interior of the Quintessence made Kairon wince. The vessel burst through a cloud of debris as stray ordnance impacted on the hull of the cruiser ahead of them.

"That was too close," he grumbled. His console indicated that the sensor array had taken some damage. He pushed the freighter hard as the moved ahead of their escorts. One more close range run sent plumes of gas spewing free as they destroyed several more layers of bulkhead.

"The reactor is exposed! The reactor is exposed! Prepare for the final run."

 

[Rusty]

Inside the Ship
Team 2

"It's not their ears I'm worried about."

On a normal day, the Captain would rather be punted in the nether regions than let someone else behind the wheel of a vehicle she was capable of driving herself, but once she saw where Gertrude was being set up, she happily ceded the driver's seat. Even with a full face helmet, sitting next to Gertrude was a good way to end up hating life in the morning. She climbed into the back to take rear guard.

The vehicle shot off down the corridors, as fast as it would go. Admittedly it wasn't more than a couple dozen kilometers an hour, but it was still faster than running, and more stable too.

The stable part was important, because anything that looked like a target caught a bullet from the big gun. In the enclosed space, the blast was a physical thing. Even Rusty could feel it smacking into him. He'd hate to have been one of the squishy humans.

Mostly, the Shard was shooting up blast doors and droids. They had yet to encounter any sort of real resistance up to this point, but that changed as they rounded a corner and he saw a flash of white armor.

"Stormtroopers!" he shouted as he brought Gertrude to bear and started rocking the trigger.

[member="Kaia Starchaser"]

 

[Malia Afredane]

Team 2
Inside the second ship

At this point, Mal was firing shots off the back of the fast moving tug, and trying to hit the pursuing Stormtroopers while also ducking from return fire, trying not to be deafened by Gertrude or have a stray shot hit the bag of charges she had next to her. Nothing about this mission was ideal and the introduction of the Stormtroopers was not doing anything to make Mal like it any better. She ducked down and started to rummage through the crap on the belt she was wearing when she came across a flashbang. That should help.

She activated it and threw it at the speedcart following them, ducking down again as it exploded in their faces, causing their pursuers to wreck the cart. Mal didn't look to see if they were hit bad, rolling the blaster over to check the charges left in her cylinder.

The engine room was sight though, so there was that.

[member="Rusty"] [member="Kaia Starchaser"]

 

[Kaia Starchaser]

Inside the Ship
Team Dos (Amigos!)

Yeah, they could do all the firing. Starchasers were vehicular specialists. She preferred starships to anything else, btu Kaia was able to pilot anything with a mechanical propulsion system. Anything that was organic, well, she had to wait to learn that, and it wasn’t something she was looking forward to. But a tug? This was fine. Get the team down, disable and steal whatever they could and get back to the ship.

Simple! Right?

Never that simple. She looked up as she heard the call for Stormtroopers and slammed on the throttle. “Get them outta the way!” She shouted to [member="Rusty"] over the explosions from [member="Malia Afredane"]. Looking up at the stromtroopers that were growing in her view, she ducted down, using the tug’s body to protect herself from the fire coming at her, partially relying on the Force, and Corellian luck to not hit anything that wasn’t an enemy.

 

[Rusty]

Outside the Engine Room
Team 2

Anything in front of the tug soon began to questions the choices it had made in life that brought it to this point.

Gertrude was not just a big gun. She was a force of nature. The muzzle flash was brighter than most flashbang grenades, and the report its equal. She spat fireballs that could light a cigarette at ten paces, assuming the cigarette wasn't blown to bits.

But if anything was worse than her bark, it was definitely her bite.

The first trooper to catch a 17mm armor piercing frangible round didn't drop, he exploded. The bullet was made out of a special mixture of compressed powdered metal. When it struck something hard, like a plastoid chest plate, it held together and punched through. When it hit something soft, like the chest behind the plate, the binding agent released. The once solid mass of metal turned instantly into powder once more, about an inch and a half inside the chest cavity. The rapidly expanding powder carried with enough energy to instantly liquefy the trooper's innards, and then some. The concussive force was enough to spatter the resultant liquid slurry all over the corridor, coating the troopers in a fine mist that had formerly been their comrade in arms.

In short, Gertrude was a bad [bleep], and these poor fellows had just got on her bad side.

"EAT FINELY PULVERIZED ALLOYS HELD TOGETHER THROUGH PRESSURE AND MY PROPRIETARY BLEND OF HERBS AND SPICES, IMPERIAL SCUM!!!"

[member="Kaia Starchaser"]
[member="Malia Afredane"]

 

[Kairon Rees]

"C'mon, c'mon c'mon," Kairon called as he diverted from their attack run. The intensive firepower from overlapping arcs and the vector of incoming TIEs had meant the run was impossible.

"Closing in!"

"I see them!" Kairon replied. He had no concussion missiles left to fire, and could only try and align the ship to fend them off.

They came in hard and fast. Only one out of three destroyed. They never slowed up as chin lasers fired. Lasers lashed the shields and warning lights erupted across the cockpit.

There was a flash as they hit home, burning through the armour plating on the base of the saucer section.

"Mai, we have a breach and fire!" Kairon shouted. Damn but if the last of his Whyrens was lost he was going to be pissed.

 

[Malia Afredane]

Hot Shots, Team Deux
Engine room

They managed to get into the engine room in the nick of time, and Mal grabbed the bags of charges, jumping off the tug and sprinting towards her objective down a catwalk above the core.

"Y'all cover me while I set these."

She had paid particular attention in her briefing where the timed charges needed to be placed in order to detonate and trigger a chain reaction that would incinerate the Sith vessel. The problem was the timers only had so much time and they were going to have to fight back to Gracie.

Mal shook her head. Another maxim floated through her head but she kept her eye on the job. She attached the small bombs and then set up a secondary measure of trip mines that Rusty brought with him. Booby trapping the catwalk so the troopers couldn't dismantle the charges complete, she grabbed her blaster and ran back to the tug.

"Charges set, we have 10 minutes to get clear before it goes klaboey and hope real hard that they haven't done anything to Gracie."

@Rusty @Kaia Starchaser

 

[Kaia Starchaser]

Kaia was actually enjoying herself. Sure, she wasn’t behind the controls of her ship, or any ship, but this tug? Well, it was like flying. Now this is podracing. Anyone who ws looking at the Starchaser would see one of the largest poodoo eating grins on her face as she hit the throttle hard, at the beings in front of her. They were going to scatter, because just the momentum this vehicle had, alone, would do enough damage. The fact that there was the crazy Shard with the large rifle and Mal, with her weapons, was something less.

The tug got through the group, and with [member="Rusty"] shouting really long tag lines, Kaia was now only starting to wonder what the sanity level of all the people on that tug were, herself included. People were firing at this vessel!

And she was on board. Shaking her head, yeah, she didn’t want to think about it. As Mal was putting the charges down, Kaia had turned the tug around and was looking back, whispering c’mon, c’mon under her breath. As soon as Mal was back at the Tug, and it was clear Rusty had his head on straight again, Kaia slammed the throttle. “Hope your ship starts quickly.” How many smugglers had something go catastrophically wrong when the clock was ticking?

[member="Malia Afredane"]

 

[Rusty]

[member="Kaia Starchaser"]
[member="Malia Afredane"]

As it turns out, the Wicked Grace was attracting attention. There was a squad of troopers camped outside, trying to set up an E-web. They might not have known that their ship was about to blow, or they might not care.

One way or another, they were bound and determined that the Wicked Grace wasn't going anywhere.

If the tug had arrived thirty seconds later, they'd have succeeded. An E-web was perfectly capable of punching holes in her hull.

Too bad, really. It was close, but close only counted in horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear weapons.

The first few were caught unawares, the massive bullets from Gertrude splattering them across the hangar. The rest tried to take cover, but there was none to be had except for the ship, and Rusty picked them off before they could duck behind it. In the handful of seconds it took for the Shard to wipe out the weapons squad, the hull of the Wicked Grace had gone from its normal subdued tones to blood red. Finely atomized trooper coated the front so evenly, it might have been planned.

"Alright, let's get in there."