Operation Red Sun (Jade)

[Corran Vellar]

Ryder woke, hands chained to the back of the chair he currently found himself in. The room was pitch black and quiet besides the faint sound of artificial gravity generators. That was his first clue, he proceeded to take a heavy whiff of the air, recycled with the hint of metallic dust often found on asteroid facilities. It was a smell Ryder was very familiar with after two years in Hutt prison. “So they got themselves a fancy little hideout,” he muttered to himself.

He had been taken prison by a group of pirates known as the Crimson Raiders. A small time organization but still a nuisance to the Empire and local space farers. Ryder had set himself up to be captured by the illusive gang in order to track down their base of operations. The CEO of three intergalactic companies proved to be an enticing target. But little did they know he wasn’t alone, one of his best operatives was set up to follow the tracking device in his robotic arm once he activated it.

He glanced down at his right arm, tho he couldn’t actually see it. The robotic arm twitch and a panel slid open and with a bit of struggle his left hand reached up and activated the long range pulse signal. “Jade you better be out there.”

He knew it wouldn’t be long now till the Raiders came in to interrogate him and have some “fun.” While he could probably make a half decent escape from here, it would be hard to explain how he did so to his Imperial leash holders without revealing he had the Force.

[Jade Rancorfang]

The Gorgon left hyperspace and started accelerating forward at full thrust. No visual feedback reached the insides of the armored behemoth, but neither Jade nor the synthetic pilot needed it. They had a plan, and it was starting. The dathomiri was waiting in an airlock, the HUD of her sealed armor displaying only a timer. She started to sing in the dark, transmitting in a frequence only one person in the galaxy can recieve:

- The heartbeat quickens,
and the blood flows.
Faster and faster,
tonight we go to war.

At this point, a strong jolt shakes the whole ship. Suddenly, the light reaches the Gorgon as it disconnects from the shell of a freighter. The base in the asteroid is visible in her HUD and the timer slowly approaches zero. At the last moment, the airlock opens and the huntress is released into space arms around her shoulders as she accelerates towards the facility.

-Steel flashes in the dark
weapons are hold tight.
The prey is ripe for the culling.
Tonight the hunt starts.

The remains of the vessel are flung towards the facility at a ludicruous speed. The attacking ship opens fire with all its weapons, making the defensive shield shine under the stress. The well aimed craft then hits the hangar, a silent fire flower blooming in the eternal night. The humanoid figure approaches the asteroid and the time of reckoning is closer than ever. She spins as she falls, activating her jetpack to soften the landing. The impact of her feet against the base's wall can be easily felt, but she knows what to do. A charge is swiftly set, and as the song comes to an end, a sudden breach of the wall marks her entrance.

-Sunrise aproaches, the mark is near.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
The blood flows, faster and faster
Cause we attack at dawn!

[Corran Vellar]

Within several minutes of the tracker being activated Ryder’s built in commlink sprang to life. Jade’s lovely voices echoed into the dark cell as she sang some Dathomiri chant. Another moment passed before the stations alarms began their painful cry. A red emergency light flashed in Ryder’s cell giving him his first glimpse of the room. As expected, empty besides himself, they had stripped him of his weapons and coat leaving him wearing his navy blue Kuat dress shirt and grey slacks, dirtied of course. The door was less then two meters in front of him.

The Dathomiri’s song continued, it was his cue to start moving. His right index finger split open to reveal the top of a fusion cutter, the man’s oldest tool. He positioned it to start searing through the chains that bound him.

The station rumbled as though something large crashed into its exterior. “What are you doing Jade,” Ryder muttered to himself. It became clear no one was coming to check on their prisoner as he heard men run by the cell. “You clearly got their attention.”

The chains fell from their grip of the prison and crashed to the durasteel floor. The fusion cutter retracted back into his figure and it closed back up as Ryder slowly came to a stand. Now he needed to retrieve his coat and meet up with Jade so they could deal with these pirates.

[Jade Rancorfang]

Checking the Gorgon's shields one last time, Jade detonated the charges. The whole asteroid shook as the powerful ordinance destroyed the hangar and the closest facilities. Amid the chaos, a smaller explosion went unnoticed. The wind of the escaping air brushed Jade's visor, and she fleetingly heard a man cursing aloud.
An instant later, the station went dark and everything stoped. Following her cue, she threw herself inside the newly made opening, flying gracefully inside while the gravity generators were down. Few heartbeats later the secondary generator kicked in and everything was online again.
Nailing the landing, she approached the man frantically trying to open the blastdoors. She threw a set of space survival gear at him while blasting her greeting in the quickly thinning air:

-Hey Boss, long time no see!

[Corran Vellar]

Ryder stepped up to the cell door and gave it a once over. The control panel looked like it’d be easy enough to disconnect which would then allow him to trick the door into opening. As he was preparing to do just that he got a warning through the Force of impending danger. The next moment there was an explosion, rocks and shrapnel shot into the room from the far wall before quickly being pulled back into the vacuum of space. Ryder let out a string of curses as his robotic hand clamped down on a part of the control panel. The rest of his body lifted and he felt it straining to not fly out the gaping hole.

Ryder was quickly running out of air as the gravity generators came back online. His feet hit the ground and he began yanking off the control panel. He glanced back to spot Jade landing in the room. Her words were barely audible as she threw him a survival suit. He immediately reached for the mask and dawned it as quickly as possible.

“Always have to be dramatic don’t you,” Ryder replied as he returned to the panel and taking a deep breath. It wouldn’t be long before he’d freeze so he chose not to continue to converse.

A moment past and the door suddenly slid open. The air once again blew through into the open vacuum. Ryder pulled himself through and waited for Jade to also get in before reclosing the door. He looked at her, his grey eyes gave her a slow once over, and for a moment he didn’t know whether to kiss her or punch her for that stunt.

“You have a weapon for me?” He asked instead of following either of his thoughts.

[Jade Rancorfang]

Jade followed Ryder across the blast door and released the air seal of her helmet. She hated being sealed from her environement, but removing the seal of the rest of her armor would require several minutes of undressing, a luxury that wasn't available at the moment. A short pause made her awareness of her glare obvious. Her blush, although hidden by her helm, was apparent in her body language. An awkward delay delay in the conversation stretched the next instant until a discreet cough from her returned things to the normal pace.

Handing him her carbine, she dropped her holoprojector on the floor. A display of lights marked the appearance of a rough schematic of the base they were in. A red spot marked their position, in the soutwest of the display. In the east, a big red zone marked the remains of the hangar and apparently the main generator, while the secondary one was steemed to be somwhere in a hotspot around the northwest. The main turbolasers emplacements were on the southern edge of the facility, with the northern one corresponding to the depths of the asteroid they were in.

-There you have, boss. So, according to the intel this is what we know. We could ask for updated and more precise scans, but I'm pretty sure they'd use it to pinpoint our location. Last calculations estimated that the Gorgon will last around 15 minutes until it's shields are down. It wasn't made to sustain this kind of punishment, and those four turbolasers pack quite a punch. So, what's the plan?

[Corran Vellar]

Ryder took the carbine offered to him by Jade and watched as the holomap materialized. It was a very basic outline seeing as they had little intel before this operation but it was better than nothing. He listened to Jade give a quick run down of what she knew and the status of her vessel.

“Then we need to take care of those turbolaser emplacement first,” Ryder replied. “Once we disable their control room then we’ll need to prevent any communication which means finding their main comm-relay.” His grey eyes looked back up at her flashing a smile. “Also I need my coat, it’s gotta be around here somewhere.”

Ryder glanced around, no one was in sight for now but it wouldn’t be long till they noticed their prisoner’s cell was breached. “Let’s get moving, fifteen minutes isn’t a lot of time and I’d hate to lose our ship out of here.” With that he raised the carbine and prepared to follow Jade’s lead towards the turbolasers control room.

[Jade Rancorfang]

Jade held her force pike tightly and got her shield ready. She rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck, getting ready for the inevitable fight they'd encounter on their way to silence the turbolasers. Setting her personal shield to maximum charge on the front, she lead the way. The base shook several times as a result of the attack from the Gorgon, but she knew time wasn't playing on their favor.
Eventually, they did find some oposition. Half a dozen men going somewhere just happened to cross paths with them. Luck was not on their side that day, apparently. A quick breath and she was already in action. Lashing quickly against the lights in the ceiling, she dashed in the direction of the clueless goons. In the brief instant of darkness until the emergency lights flared, she had already closed half the distance. A couple of blaster shots hit her energy shield, but that didn't stop her advance. Deflecting the last shot to the side with her vibroshield, she was already on top of the first man. Among a rain of sparks from that last blaster bolt, she broke mayhem among the enemy, shield and pike and claw and fury.

[Corran Vellar]

Ryder stayed less than a meter behind Jade as they rushed through the halls of the asteroid facility. It didn’t take long for them to find trouble. As Jade moved, shorting out the lights and closing the distance between them and the pirates, Ryder took a deep breathe and brought the carbine up to his right shoulder.

Closing his left eye he aimed down the holographic sights and unleashed short precise bursts at the hostiles. In the chaos the pirates never even spotted Ryder, their full concentration on the Force pike wielding Dathomiri in front of them. She had half the group scrambling which became easy targets for Ryder.

Within seconds of the conflict starting the two professions left a scatter of bodies in the hall. “Good show,” Ryder said, his breath returning to a normal pace. He reached down and grabbed one of their commlinks and activated it.

“Spotted intruders heading down the east wing towards the engineering bay!” He shouted into the device, his voice taking on an accent of those who had first interrogated him. Clicking it off he looked at Jade.

“That should give us some breathing room on our path to the control room.”

[Jade Rancorfang]

Jade continued leading the way, always on the lookout for groups of thugs running in other directions. The shallow corridors of the stations weren't full of hiding spots, but being careful and trailing different groups they managed to get to their destination unspotted. Only to find the place heavily guarded, almost on lockdown. Apparently, whoever was in charge wasn't a total moron. Half a dozen men guarded the door, although they only carried light weapons and no armor. In another situation, they could've been dealth with just fine, but the circunstancs didn't allow them to stack the odds against them with the usual ease. This called for a plan.

Jade quite signaled Ryder: "Stop", "Contact", "6", "Need back up", "No reinforcements". Military signals had their limitations, but they were unvaluable in a situation where talking could lead to fatal failure. She couldn't do this alone, not with her skillset, but the environement played to the tinkerer's advantage. Hopefully, he'd catch her message and rig something, because going in guns blazing wouldn't be optimal under those circunstances.