Private The Spiral Down

[Desbre Gensan]

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Location: In the air, piloting​

Equipment: Simple Jedi Robes, inherited lightsaber, light-filtering lenses​

Tag: Anse Baenshaol​

Des saw the smile, and after a moment smiled back. There was a spark, a light in her eyes that he'd only seen once before. Even though things were tense, she was happy. At home, at peace up here in the sky. "Good," she said sharply, and then hauled back on the flight yoke. In the space of a second, the ship stood on its engines, and one hand shoved the power collective to the firewall, its physical limits. Behind them the engines exploded with power, going from mild thrust, drifting on repulsors to blasting out intense blue-white thrust forming into triple accelerator cones. The ship trembled as an invisible hand smashed both of them back into their seats. The vessel accelerated like a rock kicked by a mule. They traded energy for altitude as the ground fell away, but the gee forces eased up after a few seconds.

When Anse looked over, there was an ear to ear grin on the pale girl's face. It was a look of pure, almost feral joy. She only had eyes for the sky. Then she straightened and pointed. "There," she said, pointing at a bright dot, one that looked to him like any star, but as the ship twisted, putting it high in front, and then centered in the screen, it began to take on a comet-like shape.

More dots showed up behind it, and as they watched, laser blasts began crisscrossing the distance. The lead ship was decked out in Silver Jedi Concord colors and was returning fire. Des scanned the boards in front of her and then brought up a few readouts, then looked to Anse. "Go man one of the turrets. I got a better idea," she said.

As he went to stand, she stabilized their flight. Outside of the cockpit, the inertial dampers were running on full. Anse shouldn't feel any of her crazy maneuvers.

The padawan turned up the reactor output and began feeding energy to the weapons and shields. Sure the energy spike would register on sensors, but there was about to be a whole world of problems for these cretins. As systems came online, a projected HUD appeared on the screen along with a few bits of data, and the sensor scopes lit up with more information.

Reaching out to the other Jedi vessel, she found the pilot quickly. Much closer now, she had a sense of who she was joining in the air. A woman, obviously, but one that seemed no more concerned than if she were reading the local news. Des hauled back into another relative climb, flattening out their flight relative to the planet, then rolled once more and climbed, putting her into the friendly ship's trajectory. It looked suicidal. She only trusted that the flight indicators on the ship were correct, and with Anse being a top-notch mechanic, she felt safe in that assumption.

A couple shots from the Uglies splashed across deflector shields, scattering the blasts into so much incoherent ionization. She could make out the closing fighters now they had an angular body with a wide view screen. It looked as though they had attempted to create an A-wing variant mixed with an atmospheric version of an ancient Z-95 Headhunter. As Uglies went it looked sleek and fast. And she guessed it would handle very well in an atmosphere. Already she found herself wanting one, just to try it out, even if it wasn't an unproven design. She almost hated what they would do to the ships.

Blue-white ion blasts hit the shields and caused them to flicker out. Shifting her nose up a little she sighted on one and let loose with the forward guns. A ripple of laser fire blasted out, going mostly around her target, but she saw at least one shot hit. The fighter slewed and jinked to the right, and in less than a second, all four vehicles passed each other.

The whole thing took three seconds to execute from the time the first one fired in her direction. Killing all thrust she let momentum take them high, and flipped nose for tail. Inertia sent them flying backward, but all the other vessels were ahead. The lead Jedi ship burned bright, trailing a plasma wake a half-mile long like a shooting star.

"Now they die," she snarled, her voice coming over the internal comms to Anse, and resumed firing. New pips on her display informed her more fighters were on their way down. "Keep an eye on our tail. More friends joining the party."

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[Lepri]

Location: Aboard the vanguard class freighter​

Equipment: 2x Lightsaber, adegan pendant, Covert Jedi Robes, comlink, vibro-knife, aquata breather, cable launcher, assorted other items. Vanguard-class Light Freighter​

Tag: Desbre Gensan | Anse Baenshaol ​

Gritting her fangs, Lepri focused on the readouts. Two bandits were on her tail and closing. Ion cannons flashed all around. They wanted to run her down and close in for the kill. Atmosphere wasn't the best for a Vanguard-class. Even if she were to modify it, it would still be a brick with wings. Briefly, she missed the Nexu's Pride, her personal vessel from years ago.

This was certainly the place though. It matched the coordinates with the distress call. And she could feel the disturbance in the Force of another presence strong within it and making use of it. Her sharp eyes picked out a dot of motion against the backdrop of the forest moon. The display picked up her gaze and a moment later, a window opened up with a zoomed view. A sleek looking ship was coming up from the planet at high speed. Then it twisted into an S-curve that brought it in line with her own trajectory while powering shields and weapons. That was concerning. Except she didn't feel any threat from it, not the pilot or crew. But whoever was flying had skill and talent. They'd set up for a classic head-on pass. If they weren't shooting at Lepri, then they were going to shoot off the bandits. It was an advanced flight maneuver, aka aerospace combat.

Sure enough, shots flashed out, streaking just past her vessel, and hit at least one of the fighters chasing her. Lepri grinned. Shooting that good in something that wasn't a fighter? Had to be someone very good. "Okay kid, let's see what you've got," she muttered as Desbre's vessel passed among the others.

Within moments, the padawan was on the bandit's tail and firing. Atmosphere was a bad place for the Vanguard-class ship. Hauling back on the yoke, the ship groaned at the effort of changing its delta-vee. Gravity scrabbled its claws all over the vessel but she managed to come out of the dive, scraping the upper atmosphere. Then after a few moments nose came about, pointing at the stars again. A heavy ion blast flashed past the cockpit close enough to make Lepri's fur stand on end from the ionization. Now the main ship was shooting at her?!

"Come on, come on, let's work fast," she said more loudly. In front of her, her HUD popped up. The turbolasers for the vessel were locked into the forward firing arc. She dropped her aim point over the closest fighter and focused on the target lead assist. Dropping that pinpoint into the circle, she pressed the firing stud. Four red spears of light shot out and punched through shields, straight into the cockpit and out the bottom. The fighter careened and listed for a moment before beginning to fall into the atmosphere and burn up in the uncontrolled descent.

Trusting the Padawan to do her job, Lepri located the other ship and aligned on it as more shots flashed out. A shot struck the forward shields, but instead of shorting them out, they glowed bright blue for a moment as the ionization discharged slowly into space. At least the ion shields were working. Flipping over to torpedoes, Lepri quickly acquired a lock and began dumping every single one out of both tubes. These were heavier, capital grade, rather than the kind mounted on a starfighter. Magazine emptied, she switched back to guns and began firing once more, hammering out pulse after pulse. The torpedoes began to close, streaking across the distance...