Log:Outriders: Veil Dancer 2
The Outriders
OOC Date: October 28, 2023
Location: Ghost Nebula
Participants: Calia, Rieve Selki, Karas Darkwing, Hadrix Kora, Poe Dameron, Rey
Previous log: http://www.swaoa-mush.com/wiki/Log:Outriders:_Veil_Dancer_1
And now....
Team A stands at the very threshold of the Veil Dancer's command center, their twin missions of disabling the ship's defenses and capturing the notorious pirate leader Thalia Kressh within their grasp. Karlie has successfully bypassed the security of the large blast doors, and they hiss heavily as they slide open to reveal the scene of controlled chaos inside.
Panels blink furiously with a myriad of warnings, and screens display rapidly updating data streams. Technicians scramble across their terminals, coordinating security movements and sending out distress signals, their fingers dancing over the controls.
At the heart of this maelstrom stands Thalia Kressh, a commanding Twi'lek whose posture radiates authority and control. The elegant curves of her lekku shift subtly with her emotions, echoing her frustration and urgency. She shouts orders, her voice cutting through the alarms like a vibroblade, ensuring every crew member knows their role in this crisis.
Around her, holographic displays showcase the battleship's position within the Ghost Nebula, its dense and shifting gases rendering most traditional navigation useless. Data analysts and navigators work feverishly to plot a safe route out, but power stations report that the engines are still undergoing maintenance and won't be back online for hours.
Meanwhile...
Team B, still on a quest for starfighters to steal for their fledgling rebellion, has taken cover inside their second cleared hangar. Krutur's last shot not only devastatingly pierced one of the guards but also cut clean through to impact the control panel on the other side. In a shower of sparks, the massive doors between the hangars reluctantly groaned and began to slide apart.
In the cavernous expanse of the Lucrehulk-class Battleship's hangar, chaos reigns. Warning alarms blare, casting intermittent red illumination over the vast space, adding an urgency to the air. The metallic resonance of the deck plates echoes with the hurried footsteps of pilots, their flight suits a blur of color as they dart toward their respective starfighters. Two X-Wings are already lifting off and flying through the translucent shield that separates the bay from the vacuum of space and the nebula beyond.
The fighters that are left in the hangar are two T-85 X-Wings, their s-foils locked in the cruise position and their newer design contrasting sharply with four older T-65 X-Wings standing side-by-side nearby. Meanwhile, three B-Wing E-Classes, unique with their rotatable cockpits, loom large with their massive chassis and heavy firepower.
Droids beep and whirr, transmitting last-minute data streams and diagnostics to the fighters. Technicians shout instructions and adjustments, their voices nearly lost in the cacophony of the alarms.
"I... I'm okay. I can walk." Calia winces, recently pulled back to her feet and leaning her rump against the inside wall the second hangar bay. The doors had just been opened on the third bay, and the third bay was where there prizes were -- the starfighters they'd come to filch from the slavers who were abusing them. In the hands of pirates, they were weapons used for rampant terrorism, but in the hands of the rebels, they would be beacons of hope flying over populations that yearned for salvation.
The young woman reaches up and pushes blonde hair out of her eyes from underneath her cap, breathing a little harder and leaning to peek briefly around the edge of the newly opened doors.
"They're there! But drek that's a lot of pirates..."
She reaches up and touches her comms. << "Team A, Team B has located the fighters. /Heavy/ resistance. What's the status of those outer turrets?!" >>
The Lucrehulk-class Battleship was using the Ghost Nebula to hide from sensors. The only reason they were even able to find it in the first place was because of a pinpoint location provided by reliable intel, but if they couldn't get the defenses down, they'd all be flying blindly into a hail of turret fire -- not to mention however many ships had already taken off. They'd be lucky if /any/ of them made it out of the nebula to hit hyperspace, much less /most/ of them.
Beep. Doot. Deet. Bwoooo.
The little black and orange BB-unit at Calia's feet, hiding well behind the wall, speaks up.
"I know, Boo. I see them."
MEANWHILE....
Down in the lower levels of the battleship, where Hadrix Kora has plummeted down the empty lift-shaft, the doors are force upon and he emerges into a scene of chaos.
The humm of the engines, normally the dominant feature in this area, is nearly drown out by the alarm klaxons and shouting. They pirates may be operating the ship on a skeleton crew, but security droids are rushing down the corridor to secure the entry-points and the most vulnerable parts of the ship -- its power core and engines.
A squad of old B2 battle droids was just passing the lift doors that he stepped through, and when the one in the rear noticed the unusual sight of the lift doors being forced open, he called out. All four of them stopped to turn at once.
"Kill the intruder!" one shouts.
Such chaos, and they were the cause. It made Rieve smile as he'd taken the time to sheath his whirring blade and tug the cumbersome weapon that had been slung about his person into his grasp, readying it as those blast doors opened and revealed the mayhem going on! Thalia was wanted alive. Rieve hoped upon hope that that would indeed be achieved as he stepped out, gesturing for the team to follow and take on those present. "We need those defences down, lets secure the bridge."
Lead by the Hapan, the rebels seek to add to the coordinated mayhem on the bridge. Throw a hydro-spanner into the works. Cause a little mischief and then some! Why not? It was after all their very reason for being. Rieve himself levelled the cumbersome R-40 and spotted Thalia guiding, directing, looking every inch the figure of command and authority she was.
Rieve pulled the trigger.
A brief whine. A thud, and the net was launched. The net billowing in flight, flickering, sparking. The attack had begun. The rebels spilled onto the bridge.
Rieve's net catches a console and lashes wildly as it's snagged and rendered useless.
Karas sees the enemies and the fighters, though he's honestly surprised to see these nerf herders have two T-85 X-Wings, those are the priority fighters, along with the B-Wings. <<Calia, can you fly?>> he asks as he eyes the T-85s, he then look at the T-65s and B-Wing. <<Let's send our droids to the B-Wings, the other pilots to the T-65s and we take the T-85s.>> he says into his comms. <<We have to be fast.>> He raises his W-35 pistol, 'Come on Karas you can fly and shoot straight.' he says to himself.
Breath control warring with the urge to let it grow ragged. Shaking from 'come down' from the earlier adrenaline surges - but the old instructions, the training, conditioning... more was being produced, tiring out parts of him that will feel the ache later. When he feels like he needs to sleep for weeks on end.
When he would have been 'put back in his box' when he was a much younger man.
Walking steadily forward, the irony wasn't lost on him that the weapon selected for this bit of work was designed almost a hundred years ago, to fight battle droids of this particular model. Standing just within the forced open doors, Hadrix Kora's head turns slowly, surveying the automata before his body moves.
The storm of split plasma bolts rips through the chest of the speaking droid even as the big man is stalking forward, racking another shell into the chamber with a loud CHACK-CHACK and an awkward step as a pair of rocket darts spiral out of their launch tubes.
"Uh oh."
The famous last words of LH-2329, its fellows diving clear and evading the second of the rocket darts in a shower of droid shrapnel after the warhead erupts in the battledroid's center of mass.
<"Uh oh."> the sentiment agreed to by Al'Verde Kora.
Commander Jessika Pava and Poe Dameron disembark from the Ghost at about the same time, together. Jess is carrying an old school A280, its buttstock collapsed with a sling snapped in to keep it at her side. Like Poe, she is wearing a black flightsuit, all identifying marks including rank, missing. Weathered dark eyes scan the hangar bay the Ghost is occupying before glancing to Poe, who, immediately states the obvious.
"You know? This place has potential." Poe's stance is casual despite the chaos of slave boarding, and Bones nearby being the subject of gratuitous amounts of gratitude. Poe's hands hook on his gun belt, hip jutting a bit, and his slight limp-walk looking more like a swagger than an old wound from the cold war days.
Jess sighs and rolls her eyes. "This does /not/ have secret base potential, Poe. We /found/ it. To be a good secret base, no one should be able to find it." She hooks the buttstock of the rifle under her arm and continues to scan. She eventually asks, "Where should we go?"
Poe shrugs. "Follow the dead bodies, I guess. You trying to fly something out of here?"
Jess walks ahead of Poe and shrugs in return. "I don't know, I guess. I'm feeling rebellious."
A few paces behind Poe and JEssika, a set of dark robes sway around a pair of legs that trundle their way down the ramp. Stopping at the base of it, Rey's eyes sweep around the interior of the facility as she hears the two ahead of her talking in regards to it. She moves up to stand on the other side of Jessika, before she looks across them both, and shows a faint smirk. "I've seen worse bases..." She quietly adds in to their discussion before she starts to move ahead, her left hand wrapped in a black cloth, with her left arm wrapped in a crimson ribbon that goes all the way up to her bicep, while her right hand and arm are left completely bare, save for a small leather band around her wrist.
She reaches to her left hip with her right hand to pull her saber hilt from her belt out from under a black leather satchel resting there.
"Hey! You're not supposed to be in here!" comes the tinny voice of a B-1 battle droid standing right inside the bridge door. A moment later, it explodes in a shower of sparks one of Rieve's comrades in arms opens fire.
Thalia wheels on the door to the bridge as soon. Blaster fire erupts, Outriders picking off droids that were standing sentry along the room without hesitation. There are sizzles and sparks as blaster bolts hit B-1 torsos and heads, the droids dropping their weapons and clattering to the floor after one or two shots.
"STOP THEM!" Thalia shouts, eyes going wide and lekku twitching furiously as an electro-net hurls through the air in her direction, barely dodging in time to allow it to catch the large holoprojector she was standing beside instead. Sparks fly and the big holographic rendering goes suddenly dark. She turns and dashes, aiming for a side door -- maybe a ready room or a conference room, maybe a service entrance or an escape, it's hard to say without checking the deck plans. "STOP THEM!!" she shouts in her wake.
The B-1 droids providing bridge security begin returning fire even as the bridge crew try to retain their composure and work through it, keeping the ship on coarse.. a couple are already getting up, abandoning their stations and diving for cover, though.
.......
The Ghost had landed in one of the bays that ended up being full of cargo. Team B had cleared ANOTHER bay that had been full of cargo and kept pushing. They were now staged at the entrance to the third bay, where the starfighters were. There was indeed a trail of dead bodies. Actual bodies of technicians and deck hands that they'd cut through on their way.
In the OTHER direction, deeper into the ship, the big bay doors were open, but thanks to some quick thinking, they'd slammed a set of blast doors in the face of the droids that had been trying to get to them. The coast was clear alllll the way to the lift up to the bridge, if anyone decided to go that way.
Of course, lifts also went DOWN.. which was the way Hadrix had opted to go.
"I can fly," Calia assures with a cocky twist of a smile, nodding at Karas and tilting the blaster pistol in her hand to check the cartridge. She takes a breath, tests putting weight on her leg, and nods, seeming to smile through it. "Good plan." She glances down at the BB droid at her feet. "You got that? We're splitting up." Though her gaze lifts to Karas again and she grins. "Fast. Yeah, no problem," she tries to assure, even though it didn't necessarily seem like she was all /that/ confident. She had just taken a blaster bolt to the hip not all that long ago.
She glanced at the others with her. None of them seemed overly confident about their ability to fly, but they were bodies.. young, experienced bodies that would rather be leaving on the Ghost. But, they would do as they were told.
"I'm with you."
.........
Meanwhile, down in engineering, Hadrix is one-man-armying the squad of B-2 battle droids. Two of them are destroyed absolutely flat-footed before the other two raise their thick arms and begin firing back, standing their ground, apparently still entirely convinced of their own superiority despite evidence to the contrary -- or simply programmed not to care.
"SEAL THE BLAST DOORS!" comes a thundering voice over the wailing alarms, the sight of someone in an obviously expensive suit of armor momentarily visible before he fades closer to the ship's main reactor. If the bridge was the ship's nerve center, he was obviously some sort of leader in this, the ship's heart.
Rieve takes full advantage of the blaster fire pinging back and forth, his heavy and cumbersome net launcher is cast aside with a bulky thud as he darts after the fleeing Thalia. Nimble. Graceful, well... those perhaps. But speedy? Just enough as he seeks to avoid the enemy and weave his way about consoles. The distance is closed, with Rieve drawing his vibroblade along the way and twisting it about to try and bash Thalia's head with the covered section, seeking to stun and bring her in alive as requested. But this request is proving troublesome. Alive. Alive. Alive. Rieve's trying! Trying so hard! His blow misses, letting Thalia feel the whooosh of the blade against her lekku, and out he reaches with his other hand, trying to grasp at one such length! Again he misses, his form off balance having sought to close the gap so quickly as the firefight continues on the bridge.
"Thalia! Just surrender! You're done!" The words are barked, a touch breathless, yet tinged with that warm Hapan lilt as he harries the leader. "Your slaves are freed. Your people are dead or dying." The words might sound better with that Hapan accent. Possibly. Almost. Perhaps not.
Karas quickly runs towards the fighters, he's veering off to the lead T-85 and trying to use cover to keep him covered as he runs, while watching Spark his astromech droid as it trundles towards the B-Wing but seeing that there are enough pilots, Spark keeps going. Though as he sees the pirates coming towards them, Karas quickly snaps off two shots, both golden blaster bolts strike nothing but the air and crash into cargo pods. Karas is trying to get to another cargo container, when he's hit and sent skidding along the ground as he quickly rolls and scrambles to the next container, checking his armor. "Kriff!"
Blaster bolts bouncing off of his armor provide a sensation like rain on a canvas jacket for the protection afforded to the Mandalorian now 'to work'. Stalking forward, steadily, almost methodically he proceeds towards the figure that had demanded the blast doors be sealed. Scatter blaster held in one hand while his other dips to one of his multitude of bandoliers, the item drawn looking like a pair of spheres jammed together awkwardly.
'We have time.'
'No.'
'But we could play.'
'No.'
The ion detonator was already airborne when Hadrix picked up his pace to a run, following after the armored figure headed deeper into the reactor rooms of the battleship. Airbursting to flood the area in the immediate vicinity of the droids with ion energy, sending heat lightning crackling over bodies that jitter and dance before collapsing like stringless marionettes.
Hobnailed boots sending up sparks where the beskar strikes duranium and then showers of them coming when the Warlord of Dxun turns his momentary sprint into slide on one side, shooting through the closing doors and then rolling to flip to his feet. Head lowered, shoulders hunched, glaring through his visor in search of enemies.
Jess sighs, again, when Rey sort of takes Poe's side. "Of course you took his side, but Rey, we talked about this. His head gets any bigger, it won't fit in a helmet..." She makes a funny face at Rey, then turns ahead, jogging to get into position with the other teams at hangar three. Poe draws his blaster, making casual modifications to its output while staying beside Rey. "Is that true?" He asks Rey. "When people get married, they're supposed to take each others' side?"
Poe moves to one side of the large bay door and sticks just his blaster out from cover to fire blindly toward the enemy pirates.
"IF SO," He yells over the battle. "I DON'T THINK WE GOT THAT MEMO!"
Poe pulls his weapon back behind the safety of cover just as a bolt sparks off the threshold and makes a loud THWONG. Commander Pava, on the other side of the door, pies the corner and fires a very specific shot with her rifle. The blast hits center mass throwing them backward and onto the deck with a fresh smoking hole in their torso. "I TAUGHT HER HOW TO DO THAT!" Poe called out, earning a sneer from Jess just before a reciprocating shot is fired her way.
At first Rey was taking up position behind JEssika, but when she got a glance inside the bay she saw that it was a lot more dangerous than she'd thought it'd be. Making a decision, Rey activates her lightsaber. She steps around Jess and glances toward Poe before she strides in to the hangar. Her golden saber beam sweeps through the air, intending to draw fire. A shot headed for Jess is redirected toward a set of metal crates, causing a shower of sparks to fly across the ground at their feet.
Stay behind me." Rey says back to them. "Use me as cover!" She adds in a bit more haste before she moves further out in to the open, her golden saber likely making her quite a tastey target for any further incoming fire!
Rieve might not have yet succeeded at capturing the slippery Twi'lek that was so close to escape, but he DID prevent her from shutting the door in his face. Where she might have simply vanished around the corner and hit the lock, she was now so busy trying not to get grabbed that all she could do was duck into the ready room -- not much of an escape route without a locked door between them to keep her safe. Now out of the sight of the blaster fire still underway on the bridge just outside, the Twi'lek pirate leader snatches her pistol out of its holster!
......
All of the X-Wings were parked together, so while Calia wasn't moving NEARLY as fast as Karas, she was still coming... as were the droids, bringing up the rear. She brought her pistol up, firing off a couple of shots at the pilots that were taking cover and firing back at them from positions as close to their ships as they could get. Crates provided most of the cover. Crates, service droids, ship hulls, and anything else you could generally put between yourself and a stray blaster bolt.
As soon as Karas goes down, Calia's angling to come up behind a crate for cover where she can still see him.
"I feel your pain!" she shouts. "You okay?"
But even as she asks the question, her head snaps around. There was more blaster fire coming from behind them -- Poe and Jess had joined the fray with Rey's golden blade providing cover for them. Without being able to see Karas or Calia for the moment, all eyes turned on the new trio, giving the two farthest into the action a momentary reprieve.
"You good for one last push?" Cali calls to Karas. "We're almost there!"
......
The heart of the Veil Dancer soon becomes a standoff between imposing figures. Those blast doors were closing to keep Hadrix and the rest of his team out, but he was too fast for them. He slid under them just before they could seal closed behind him, but he was slicing into a hail of blaster fire, the man inside already prepared for the invasion.
"YOU SHOULDA STAYED OUTSIDE!" the big man calls as he shoots, the two of them trapped in that room together. Only one of them would leave it alive.
Drawing her gun? Rieve realises he's all out of non-lethal options. Except one slightly unorthodox measure. Rieve looks momentarily stunned, as if the drawing of that pistol was his undoing. He'd tried twice? No three times! To grab, to net, to whack. And now? He braces himself and activates his rocketpack, launching himself across the small space of the room in barely a second, slamming into Thalia hard, and a bare nano-second later slamming them both hard into the wall with a good hard crunch of bodies. Wall. Momentum. And Kinetic shock.
The wind is driven from Rieve's lungs as much as it is Thalia's. Crumpled. Groaning. Stunned. Dizzy. The only thing that saved Rieve was using Thalia as a body-shield against the wall. It takes a few seconds. But Rieve drunkenly rises, bats away the pistol with a trembling hand and almost wretches. "Kriff..." Is something broken? His brain probably.
A few seconds more and Rieve fumbles for the bindings, binding both her wrists behind her back, tightly too, and likewise her ankles. For a moment he ponders binding her lekku. But that's just the mild concussion speaking.
A breath.
Rieve tugs his helmet free, blue hair glossy and rich just tumbling free as he sucks in lungfuls of sweet air and pain. His chest hurts.
Everything hurts. Drawing his pistol, staggering from the ready room, Rieve seeks to join the fight. One pained step after the other. Damn it hurts. "Your Captain is... down... surrender!" His voice blurts a touch wearily as he makes his way back. With a little support of the wall.
Karas grunts and this crap hurts! "Kriff!! I'm good, we gotta get these fighters out of here, I will cover you all, get to your ships." he calls out to her and teh others. He quickly looks to Calia and give her a thumbs up, and with that he rushes towards the lead T-85. As he does, he snaps off two more shots, but again both fly off coarse hitting the ground or cargo container. "I need to get this thing looked at, he was right there!" he complains as he runs under the fighter, and he quickly climbs up the ladder and lands inside the T-85 X-Wing and he begins to power up the fighter, and quickly go through weapon checks.
'Finesse...'
The word echoes in the back of his head, the scatter-blaster raised and tracking after the source of the blaster bolts sparking off his armor is centered in Hadrix's visor.
<"You should have found an escape pod..."> approaching steadily, the glowing red pin light in the right branch covering his eyes, <"Tall..."> there's an... additional sound of interest in the Boar-Wolf of Ealor's voice as it drips from his vocalizer, the tibanna pressurizer in his scattergun beginning to screech a warning. Allotting a moment longer and then firing in a conical spray of energy darts aimed to make the limited space even harder for his quarry to move in.
<"I'll take your spine.">
Jess watched Rey bat away a shot intended for her and the color from her face drained a bit. Avoiding death could only happen so many times, and Jess was a person who understood odds and numbers really, really well. She pushed the flush of panic away to save face with the troops though, and those who watched saw her spring from her spot to follow Rey out into the open. She shot and killed another pirate running for cover, then moved with the Master Jedi to cover her.
Poe stepped out from cover and blasted a pirate with a quick-sighted shot. The modified handcannon he used was enough to put the poor sod on their back, dead before they hit the ground. He fired blindly as he followed after Commander Pava and Rey, though his jiggy-jog showed no real urgency to his movements, just fluidity and experience. This was not their first fire fight together. Despite the cavalier bravado, the three of them worked well, like a well-oiled machine.
The growl of the lightsaber blades cutting through the cold oxygen around them heralds the Jedi's advance toward the enemies. She deflects a shot directed right at her middle, then another that was whizzing toward her side vying to injure Jessika again!
Over the course of the past decade and change, Rey has committed herself to going above and beyond to always defend her friends. JEss was one of her first friends in the Resistance too, and infact she was the first person Rey ever tried 'healing touch' upon. A long time ago, in this galaxy not so far away, Rey had healed a cut on the side of Jess' face.
Call this a continued effort of that gesture from a long time past!
With a determined expression, Rey's hands continue to move her saber hilt in well practieced moves to keep the graceful actions playing out before her! She discards the saber bolts to the sides!
Thalia's blaster had barely cleared leather before she was flying backwards a meter.. two meters.. and then SLAMMED into a wall. To her, the room went dark, and she slumped forward, dropping her blaster. She groaned, not dead, but dazed.. injured badly from the impact, and soon, bound as Rieve's prisoner.
As Rieve emerges from that ready room and makes the announcement, however, a few last shots are exchanged between droids and Outriders soldiers.. and then it goes quiet. Eerily quiet. The last of the B-1s had been demolished, leaving only the remaining bridge crew -- most of whom were hiding from the gunfight -- who on hearing that Thalia had been captured throw up their hands in surrender...
Except for one.
One of them, reaching as if he were going to put his hands up, hits a big... red... button.
<< "SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ACTIVATED." >>
It was a message that played over the comms for the entire ship.
<< "TEN MINUTES UNTIL SELF DESTRUCT." >>
Why would you make that just one button? Why would you make it ten minutes? What the hell was going on?!?!
.........
Calia was running as soon as Karas was, taking the opportunity of the distraction to get to and climb up into the other T-85 -- she wasn't even trying to shoot, anymore -- while her BB unit rolled straight for one of the B-Wings.
Switches begin to flip, and the X-Wing humms to life. She reached up and tapped her earpiece.
<< "Team A, we've begun securing the fighters. How are we doing on those defense turret--" >>
The self destruct message plays just as the X-Wing's canopy was closing, and Calia's eyes go wide.
<< "Uhhh... Team B, to Team A... you got that under control? 'Cause... we really need to get out of here. The sooner the better." >>
She started bringing the X-Wing's defenses online, lowering the fighter's under-belly blaster cannon turret and getting it ready to provide Poe, Jess, and Rey cover, this time.
.........
"You'll take nothing you Mandalorian scum!"
Not to be outdone, apparently, the Engineering Commander was giving this fight his everything. He leapt from in front of the spray from Hadrix's blast and put his back to a console, letting it absorb the attack. Regripping his blaster, he rolled back out and fired again on the move, not willing to fight the Mandalorian in a straight-up-duel, but firing and feinting, keeping himself as close to cover as he could manage.
Then the self-destruct alarm goes off, and the man laughs.
"I've got the codes to get out of this room!" he yells. "I guess you'll die here, regardless."
<"Give me a second oui?!"> Rieve's voice rings out over the group's comms, a little drunk sounding, a little dazed, a little... frantic. Computers aren't his specialty. A few steps in, and Rieve just glowers at the 'loyal' criminal who started this whole debacle, raises his pistol, and blasts a hole into the man's leg by way of hindering any futher attempts at being a nuisance.
PEW!
"Aaaaah!"
And Rieve moves to eye his console, the console, the one that will at the very least stop people from being blown apart outside. <"I'm working on it! It's not going to plan..."> His voice rises an octave or two with each frantic pressing of buttons, and each beep of denial. <"Kriff!"> Again and again, and then green lights turn to orange, and then to red. The outer defenses are powered down. A dull thrum of energy denied possibly heard by those with good hearing throughout the ship.
<"Defenses are down and spiked, they aren't coming back up."> Rieve sounds relieved over the comms, and with a grin looks to his fellow rebels. "Right, get Thalia, get to the Ghost. I'm not sure I can stop the countdown..." He looks to one of the enemy crew. "Is there? Work with me and you get off this ship." His bright blue eyes look to those surrendered enemies as he moves to the console that started the whole thing in motion. He'll try, perhaps there's time!
Karas was one of hte first to get to his ship, now that i's fully powered up, he sees that his astromech was able to board adn prep the B-Wing, Spark has the coordinates and where to go. <<Giving cover fire.>> he calls into the commms having seen Calia jump into her fighter as well. THey will both need the bacta tanks after this. The T-85's engines rumble to life and with a smooth hand, Karas pulls back on the stick allowing the repulsor lift engines raise the X-Wing. As it raises, the under belly blaster cannon drops from below the X-Wing and it turns and Karas begins firing at enemy targets, attempting to clear the area for the others so they're able to get to their ships.
<"I don't need codes."> turning to let his shoulder pauldron absorb the incoming blaster fire, DP-23 transferred to his left hand so that the right can drop to a very specific pouch on his hip.
A moment is spared, eyes moving point to point within the reactor room. The cover that the man hurling threats at him is using... the great, big, glowing, form of the main reactor with its spherical primary ion reaction chamber and the funnel like points that both support and draw off excess to power weapons, auxiliary systems and more.
Alarm klaxons sounding still, he shakes his head, <"No time to play.">
The sphere drawn from the pouch goes out and Hadrix turns towards the doors, walking steadily and without looking even as proximity warnings begin sounding within his helmet.
The glittering silver orb bursts into a flash of glaring brightness that washes out colour, a roar born on the heatwave of nuclear fire that renders all other sound null, forcing the Mandalorian's armor systems to disengage audial pickups to protect his hearing while the pressure wave forces his steps to stumble.
And in it's wake, sections of the reactor are gone. Sections of the floor, the ceiling. Erased, the specialized containment deflector of the detonator used up and the edges of the weapons blast zone glowing white hot where it hasn't been vaporized.
Pilots moving for fighters was Poe's cue to head back. "Alright, think you two have it from here.." Was his only parting to Rey and Jess before backpedaling a few steps. When he turned, it emphasized just how bad off his leg really was.
<<"BONES.. GET THE.. GET THE SHIP READY.. ">> Poe said, breathing hard. He was moving pretty quickly, but he still had a stretch to go. Repulsors on the Ghost were already pivoting and firing up, and the massive black Wookiee guarding the ramp was already waving Poe on, calling him names that were.. less than satisfactory.
Rey's mind had been so focused on protecting the two very important people to her here that she hadn't realized she was standing beside a number of tipped over crates and cannisters. After she sees their enemies beginning to scatter, she deactivates her lightsaber, and turns to run toward one of the open X-wings. "No jump skipping!" She shouts back to Poe a mere moment before she cracks her left knee right on the edge of a metal box.
If anyone were around her, they'd hear Rey actually pop off a curse word for possibly the first time in the history of anyone ever knowing her!
With a little limp in her step, the black clad Jedi continues to rush toward the T-85 fighter, one hand going up under the s-foils as she strokes her fingers across it while keeping low, a simple hand gesture to say 'hello' to the new ship.
Soon there after and Rey is ascending up the side of it to throw herself in to the cockpit, jamming the button to close the canopy over her head!
"DREKKING BASTARD!" the criminal shouts, screaming and wrapping his arms around his leg in agony.
The base's exterior defenses do go offline -- confirmed both by Rieve's spike and the flashing panel of red status lights on the gunner's console. All weapons offline.
"Yes sir!" a couple of the Outriders in the bridge bark, immediately moving towards the ready room follow Rieve's orders and collect Thalia. Even as Rieve's asking for help among the crew, the soldiers can be seen dragging the Twi'lek backwards, arms hooked under her shoulders, towards the lift with her heels dragging the floor.
"Only Thalia has the code!" one of them chimes up. "Kyr's a drekkin' lunatic!" He's pointing at the man Rieve shot. "Please take us with you!"
...........
<< "Oh, sure. Take your time..." >>
It was Calia's voice back over the comms when Rieve asked to give him a second, but the half-smile half-grimace could be heard in her voice.
Calia doesn't raise her X-Wing off the ground. Instead, still planted firmly on its landing struts, that blaster turret opens up and absolutely DEMOLISHES a crate of extra ship parts. That crate is DED. DE-STROYED.
Karas has much more luck, practically vaporizing a couple of pilots that take the blaster cannon to the chest.. one to the back.. and the rest all go scattering. They were fighting a Jedi on one side, X-Wings on the other, AND the self-destruct alarm was going off. Chances are, they were all going for escape pods, even though there wasn't a planet anywhere even close. It was still better than running face-first into a lightsaber or getting randomly exploded for no good damn reason.
In the end, the path to the fighters is clear. BB-00 makes it up into one of the B-Wings that sits beside the one Kara's astromech climbed up into, and its engines begin to hum to life.
Then comes the word that the defenses are down.
<< "NICE! Great work. We're getting out of here. Get back to the Ghost! Al'Verde Kora, if you can hear me, exfil!" >>
She didn't even know they had Thalia. That would be the cherry on top, later.
............
All throughout the battleship, lights go out. Pitch black, the entire thing comes a tomb. And then slowly, after several seconds, battery-operated emergency lighting begins to come back online. That blast from the thermal detonator had taken out a whole section of the main reactor. The entire ship was forced over onto auxiliary power as battery-operated emergency containment fields sprang to life, creating a forcefield around the hole in the reactor to contain the radiation.
The warning klaxons stopped blaring, though, and the lights in the corridors were illuminated brightly enough to be able to see... for most people that weren't from Hapan... even if it was much darker than before.
The Engineering Commander was not as fortunate as Hadrix to be shielded from the effects of the blast, even if he wasn't injured by it specifically. The sound of the explosion alone had him screaming, clutching at his head, and searching for cover to get behind until he could recover from the flash-bang style fallout.
Meanwhile, upstairs, one of the remaining soldiers went to Rieve, flipping on a light at the end of his rifle and hoisting it up to light the way. "We have to go, sir!"
Rieve nods at the soldier, gathering his stun net on the way, the helm was off in the other room and would need replacing! "Lets go. At the double." A blind glance back to those crewmembers has the Hapan nod. "You try anything, you die. Drop all your weapons, you're prisoners now. You'll be treated accordingly, bring the idiot and move fast." The Hapan squeezes the shoulder of the helpful rebel, his seeing-eye-soldier! His Guide-dog-o-war. "Lets move..." And boy do they move.
Rieve manages to make a breathless utterance across the comms as he moves back to the Ghost, prisoners and soldiers in tow, Thalia bound and dragged up ahead, the true prize of the evening!
<"Enroute oui! Prisoners incoming. One wounded. The... uh... how you say? Package? That was also apprehended and is a little concussed and unconscious... the package is called Thalia... just in case that wasn't clear, perfect!"> The comms cut off and onwards the motly group of rebels and prisoners dash! Boots thudding across the floor, the pace picked up, and Rieve putting his trust entirely in the guidance of his dear comrade in arms.
The man forced to go to ground by the explosion is forgotten when the exfil order is given, Hadrix's frown palpable even with the helmet covering his features. Jets on his backpack firing and lifting the mandalorian off of the deck, he glances around momentarily before he is hurled through a gap in the deck caused by his pyrotechnics.
Within the helmet the glowing red pupil of his bionic suddenly extinguishes and the gold wire iris dilates before what looks like a droid socket moves into place and plugs directly into his head feeding sensor data that Commander Kora reacts to more than follows.
Hands squeezing to direct thrusters and his organic eye flicking about wildly, blinded while the cybernetics threaded to his optic nerves and occipital lobes process information being fed 'raw' to him. Weaving around droids and ship crew trying to hustle in the chaos of the reactor being quite thoroughly disabled.
<<"Understood. En route.">>
His own tracking signal activating while he surges for the whatever path he can find to make for the docking bays.
Poe made it back to the Ghost and moved up the ramp with a hitched step. He knew the corridors like the back of his hand, so navigating them was not the hard part, it was getting through everyone standing around on board. When he finally made it to the control cabin, it wasn't Mr. Bones who was prepping the Ghost, but BB-8 who warbled a question. "She's flying one of the fighters..."
Setting himself down at the pilot's chair, he dons the headset and fixes the laughably large BOOM mic in front of his mouth. <<"Alright teams, this is Commander Dameron. We're launching in twenty seconds, get your birds in line.. we're jumping out together; use my wake and be ready to pilot. No telling what we're jumping into..">>
A row of buttons and switches are flipped up in a pass of his hand, then he moves the yoke to pivot the Ghost and orient for the exit. A proximity alarm goes off and he smacks the release, "Yeah, yeah, I see it." Another sounds, same result. Then another; another, another. "Buddy, turn that damned thing off!"
Poe has to stand up to reach the shields button on the co-pilot side, then takes hold of the lever controlling the thrusters. Golden hued engines began to increase with brightness as propulsion moved them from the hangar. Mr. Bones' droid-like nasally voice is heard over the internal net, <<"REAR RAMP UP, PRETTY GIRL. MURDER PARAMETERS REDUCED TO DEFENSIVE MODE, RESUMING INTERNAL SURVEILLANCE!">>
"Whatever, Bones.." Poe comments, after having to pull the headset away from his ear to keep it from ringing thanks to the volume. BB-8 asks something else, and in typical Poe fashion, he responds, "WHAT?! Of course she told us we could do this. Why wouldn't she?" BB-8's response didn't sound convinced. "Well, believe what you want, she's totally behind it this time. Trust me."
Taking the ship into space with a slow transition out the docking bay slot, Poe gradually increased the speed as they all pulled away from the station. He waited until all callsigns were ready, then pulled back on the hyperdrive lever. The Ghost's engines roared, then purred as the heavily modified hyperdrive kicked, rattling the ship's interior, and the vessel shot into hyperspace, followed in sequential order of every fighter caught in the unstable wake. "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Everyone was on board when he pulled back on the lever, right?!
The T-85 cockpit was a big step up from her Galactic Civil War era ship that LUke had gifted unto her, but Rey had been in these things before throughout the years. This one had a distinct pungent 'pirate odor' to it that caused the woman to curl her upper lip at for a moment while she went through the pre-flight warmups. She was pleased to find the ship was already in stand-by mode, which made its turbines wind up much faster, and with a swipe of a hand over the internal airflow controls to boost the degredation of that weird scent, Rey had the ship lurching up off of the deck in moments.
The intricate s-foils on a T-85 were a bit different from her own variant too, but Rey had them shifting open just-in-case as she pulled the flight yoke and sent the ship wavering toward the long ahead hangar exit. Waiting for Jessika's ship to appear ahead of her own, Rey started on her way, pushing the throttle and kicking her X-wing onward toward the blanket of stars beyond the mega freighter!
Calia's own X-Wing lifts off with the others, as does Karas's and the two B-Wings being piloted exclusively by astromechs. This was the /real/ test, of course. Sure, Rieve /said/ the battleship's defenses were offline...
But as the starfighter cuts through the hangar bay shielding and out into the nebula at large, all she's greeted with is the tranquility of that space.. the glow of the nebula all around them.
<< "You good, Boo?" >>
There's a whistle of a response, and one of the B-Wings pulls in behind her X-Wing.
<< "Alright. You heard him. Follow Poe! We're all meeting back on the Highwayman." >>
The whole flight of ships cuts through the nebula, X-Wings and B-Wings trailing with the Ghost in the lead. All of them lined up. All of them called in ready. And all of them jumped to lightspeed.
Almost exactly two minutes later, there was a blinding flash from within the nebula they'd left behind. In the vacuum of space, there as no sound of explosion, but where there was once a Lucrehulk-class Battleship... there was suddenly nothing.
