Shipment 0319 - Sith

[Dastan Imatari]

4
Over the public comm, he heard Warvanus chime in.

*"Always seems that way in the void...." he then swapped over to his personal channel with his other ship-

*"A hernia would be welcome in comparison-" At least a hernia was easily repairable with modern medicine.

His eyes passed over his console, checking things periodically. Speed, heading, gyro indicators, turn indicators. Then peered at his astrogation nav and compass systems... Then looked at his ion and blaster cannons, as well as rocket payload... Typical. Slow. Things were going well. The quicker this was over, the quicker they could retreat back to the 'Spire, and get back out into the Galaxy, searching for the newest lead on stray jedi, or artifacts concerning a past sith lord who defected to the light. His dark sentinels would hopefully have something- anything- involving developments or leads.

He looked about him- through the viewport. The two Action V's with Tormentous' retinue. The Corellian freighter from Warvanus. The blastboat and infiltrator from Blood. Warvanus' starchaser... and Dastan's own Corellian freighter before him. A small group- hopefully treading under the radar. Though he got the feeling he wished to be in a fleet convoy rather than a small caravan in the moment.

[Silas Karn]

As the pair arrived at the rendezvous point Silas hailed his Verpine contact, “This is Sovereign. Since this is your operation I’ll let you take point. Signal back when you are prepared to depart.” Nil was swift to chime in, “How precisely did they acquire intel on the Sith anyway? Seems your contact might have more than a monetary interest being wagered on the success of this raid.” Silas was silent as he plotted a course to align correctly with the gathering of ships. “Regardless this may be a great opportunity. If it doesn’t pan out then so be it.” Then as if the firing of a pistol the ships departed to intercept. It seemed that at the very least they had located ‘a convoy’ now it was a matter of what goods and to whom they belonged. Silas heightened his focus as he and Nil joined the fray.

[Derric Starr]

You heard the man, get us lined up and ready to make the jump to hyperspace. Let me know when we're nearing the point to drop out of hyperspace. I have to figure out how these two ships will be useful in a fight.

Both ships changed course taking flanking positions behind the Steel Rain awaiting the signal to, Starr mean while left the command to see about the weapons in the turrets. Fighting hadn't been on his mind, when he set out; he was led to believe this was just going to be a pick up and delivery. Now he was getting the war with the universe vibe from every other new thing that sprang up around him. So he checked both turrets thoroughly, shaking his head as he inspected them.

I hope these actually work, or I'm going to have to do something down right stupid!

A slow thorough check of both the upper and lower turret was just enough to keep him from thinking about all the details that were coming to light about the Kessel Rock Trading Company, seedy little details that were fast proving what he had already knw about them when he first became involved with them.

[Jak Bexel]

"Will the next dumb son of a schutta who plans on starting a mutiny come into the cockpit so we can address this in private?" Jak hollered,nearly jamming his thumb smacking the comm to voice this announcement. As if on cue, Ozark bounded in to the co-pilot's seat.

"Way to handle that, boss," he said, deadpan and dripping with sarcasm. The comms chirped up from The Other Bandit: "Cap, we are about to make contact with the scene. On your mark," announced Van Kleef.

"Now!" Jak commanded, dropping both ships out of the blue and white swirl of hyperspace and into a battle that had already begun. "Gunners get ready. We're waiting for the coordinates, after which you have your directives: If it's Sith, we shoot it. If it's Blue Star, we defend it. Let's ride!"

His contact beacon buzzed at the alert to Rane's proximity. Both ships danced into the raiding squadron to flank their pirate pal, with Van Kleef's blastboat somewhat jauntily ambling up to his right flank while Jak set the Jacket on his opposite side.

"Steel Rain, this is Bex & Co standing by."

[Rane DeCola]

The Steel Rain and Outback 02 had dropped out of hyperspace practically on top the Sith convoy. Rane did not yet see the two YT transports that he had previously transmitted coordinates to, but instead saw a single YT-2000 and a Skipspray Blastboat, that quickly identified themselves as Blue Star friendlies, in addition to the several Sith transports, light freighters and fighters.

“Good to have you along Bex,” he radioed in response to the hail the lead ship of the two Blue Star vessels had given upon arrival.

At the sight of the small Blue Star flotilla entering real space in such close proximity, one of the smaller ships, another YT-2000, turned tail immediately and jumped to hyperspace.

“Got them on the run already! All ships, move to disable those bulk freighters, but watch out for their escorts!”

Immediately, Rane increased the speeds of his ships and charged into the fray in pursuit of the lead transport. His RX-24 droid handled coordination with his slaved StarViper fighter and augmented Rane’s piloting abilities. Despite the he only gotten the vessel a short while ago, Rane had been logging hours in his downtime in preparation for the day that he might get to lead his own ship into battle. That day had finally come and he was ready.

“We have a power fluctuation in the particle shields sir,” chirped Medic, his RX-24 droid.

“Copy that. Get that power droid of ours down to the shield panel and get him to balance the dampening system.”

The droid chirped in response. The issue with the shields had cropped up previously, and Rane wasn’t too concerned, but he hoped that it didn’t cause any further problems.

“All vessels, commence attack!”

-----
OOC:
Ashara (Sith) posted that she will not be able to make posts in the immediate future. Since she said she returned her vessel to Tormentous, I assume she is out as an escort.

[Xerxes Nova]

The blue and white swirled around them once more, at the last jump he had been met by a signal beacon that transmitted the final coordinate and countdown. He had been late, he hated this because he knew arriving into a hot situation like this without time to prepare and orientate beforehand was far from the smartest idea. All he could do though was focus on keeping his composure. He had closed himself off from the force completely after realising where the last jump would take them. His connection would be an asset there but, he couldn’t afford for his presence to be detected in route. An alert chirped in the cockpit he checked the screen ‘Weapons are hot and torpedoes loaded, lets go bloody some noses and blacken a few eyes and maybe get a little something for our trouble if we’re lucky.’ The bloodthirsty astromech droid also listed off a litany of other such things he’d like to do as if entering a rowdy bar fight for entertainment rather than a pitched dogfight where his and Xerxes lives were on the line. “Be patient Scrap, we’ll be dropping out of hyper space in T-minus 2 minutes and counting.”

Tex sighed and tried to relax but, it just wasn’t in his circuitry right now. Shen had voiced her displeasure at lack of battle planning before starting the final jump but, they were running behind by several minutes. Heck it was only thanks to the maintenance the Kid put in on the ship and their understanding of the two crafts capabilities that they were making as good a time as they could, the hyperdrives were being pushed as close to the redline as could be done safely given the circumstances they would be facing but for now. ‘Diverting power from weapons systems to drives will leave us unable to react when we first drop out with anything other than ranging shots’ Aurek bemoaned ‘Better than diverting it from the shield initialisers and leaving up easy targets Brother’ quipped Shen. “Quiet ya two, we’ve got thirty till it’s hotter than Mustafar out there.”

[Derric Starr]

The sudden deceleration from hyperspace travel shook Starr free of the small bolted down ladder in the access shaft to the upper turret. He slipped a few rungs before catching the ladder again and climbing to the upper turret. Cursing the entire way, strapping himself in Starr slipped the hands free comm unit onto his head.

What happened to that early warning about coming out of hyperspace soon. What's our situation damn droids?

Inbound vessels arranged to defend cargo ships, capital class freighters presumed to be main cargo haulers.

Fine, let's see if we can get some of those fighters to turn their backs to our comrades. Head straight for the cargo ships, and try not to get me killed. I'd like to live to see my next vein of spice.

Starr flicked over the upper turret to manual control lining up his sights with the second YT freighter from the Kessel Rock Trading Company to get it up and running properly. Swinging back around he sighted the nearest ship between himself and the capital class freighter.

Captain Starr we've left hyperspace!

[Jak Bexel]

FWOOM --- the convoy jumped into the fray before anyone could process the first jump to the rendezvous. Van Kleef jolted in her chair and remembered to strap in. At her left was her pilot droid Skipper, busy at work maintaining formation. At her right was Babe, a female Sniivian who manned the sensor array.

"Weapon systems are go," Babe announced, leaning over to Van Kleef at the cockpit of the Other Bandit. "Tell those cretins to go easy on the concussion missiles."

Down by the gunner bay were two Nikto, Blase and Peck. Raised together on the streets of Tattooine, both men came into the Blue Star business as a package deal. They were young lumps of coal, unfocused but full of raw potential. Their palms were sweaty with the anticipation of a dogfight.

"I'd just as easily take control of them myself, leave them the ions and lasers," she muttered to Bub, who silently corrected the access on his sensor panel. "Bex, how do we want to do this?"

"Escort ships are moving into formation, keep them busy with the ol' zip zap routine," Jak instructed. "I'm heading into a strafing run against the cargo ships. Don't drop any missile unless you intend on meaning it, you read me?"

"Loud and clear, boss. You heard the man!" With that, she guided the Blastboat towards the left flank of escorts.

[Xerxes Nova]

Xerxes reached forward and grasped the hyperdrive controls, “3, 2, 1” he muttered to himself and then pulled back the levers, he dropped out of the swirling blur and white back into real space but, wasted no time on pulling on the stick and yanking himself up and to the left, peeling away as the engines on his fighter kicked in to make him as hard a target to begin with. His hand shot over the control panel bringing up the radar and patching what he needed to the HUD in his display. Everything went by in a blur in those first few seconds and he tried to take in the seen that lay before him. Alongside the G’s he was experiencing from the extremely risky manoeuvre he also felt the nagging pressure of the Force tugging at him. Though he refused to drop him mask for a second he got the impression that there were several powerful Force users congregated here, which considering he believed their target to be Sith was not too surprising.

Tex grasped the controls and dropped out of the swirling kaleidoscope a few seconds after Xerxes the ship, gunboat in class, was pitched forward into a dive to put distance between the two emerging ships as they reinitialised their systems so as to make less of a tempting target. ‘Deflector shields are initialised, getting conformation that Master has exited safely as well. He has taken up position as discussed.’ ‘Rerouting power from hyperdrives back to main weapons batteries, we won’t be fully operational for 90 seconds and counting. Captain and the others will have to make do without us for the moment.’ “Ta Kid will be fine, jus’ get me a…” the situation report was fed to him via Shen who had received as partial blurt of binary from Scrap to speed up their own scanners. Action V transports, not a major worry, a few of YT freighters, a few gunships and a handful of fighters. I can’t tell who’s who Twins ‘We’re having trouble picking up and matching transponders, the wash from the hyperspace drives will clear shortly, just take evasive manoeuvres for now.’ “N’t like I hav’ any other option.”

[Master Buggie]

((OOC: FYI, there isn't an established post order in Spacelanes, otherwise one of the teams could just delay making their posts until the last minute. Post when you can.))