Main IC Thread - Act I - Rumors in the Distance

[Flyboy2002]

"To be honest with you, there are alot of us asking ourselves that very same question," he responds with understanding. "There are a lot of us and we have been bred for a purpose. But as much as a normal soldier can go back to living like the rest of the universe does after he retires, we are going to have to learn how to do that. It is up the rest of the universe to decide if they will employ us as normal civilians or make it more attractive to become soldiers for higher. Personally, from all my travels I have a few places I would like to go when I don't have to fight anymore." He takes a slightly bigger swig of the drink closes it tightly, and tosses it back up to his drinking buddy.

[Wisconsin Wookie]

Kage
Kage rolls back into the cockpit, slowly chirping to himself. If anyone were listening, they may guess from tone of the chirps that Kage was upset. They would be right. The droid continued to come up empty on his search for the cause of the power fluctuation. He also had not been informed of the finalized deal between Bri'tan and the jedi Medallea.

Kage makes his way up to the navcomputer and sees the seconds counting down until the Greased Nerf reverts to realspace.

He continues beeping quietly to himself. At least Bri'tan had updated him with a few details on the mission. Searching for a ship the size of the Freedom Fighter would certainly provide some excitement along the way. Kage was beginning to calculate the odds of finding one such ship somewhere in the galaxy when Bri'tan walked into the cockpit and plopped down in the pilot's chair.

As the seconds continued counting off, Kage made himself ready at the scanners. 3...2...1... The Greased Nerf came out of hyperspace and Kage beeped happily as the intertial dampers continued to do their job well.

The tone of his beeps soon changed as the proximity alarm abruptly began sounding off.

Bri'tan
Bri'tan finished off the last half of his energy bar in one gulp and strode purposefully down the corridor. Lost in his thoughts, Bri'tan didn't even notice Lurk puffing away on a deathstick in the middle of the ship. Bri'tan had spent the better part of the flight double and triple-checking various systems and circuits on board the ship and things seemed to check out fine. Still, lingering in the back of his mind was the feeling that he had missed something.

As he enters the cockpit, he also realizes in frustration that the Jedi Knight had as yet to formally agree to the last terms he had offered. He assumed they had a deal, but then again, he would feel a whole lot better with some formal agreement or contract.

Bri'tan drops into his chair just seconds before the Greased Nerf comes out of hyperspace - almost directly on top of some kind of freighter. Purely on honed reflex, Bri'tan quickly and sharply pulls the Nerf into a hard starboard turn to avoid a fatal collision with the hulking freighter. As he does so, alarms and claxons begin sounding all over the ship.

Daevon
Daevon quickly looks to either side, but even through squinting eyes, cannot manage to see his quarry. The howling wind and the downpouring rain serve to deaden his other senses as well. Relying on the force instead, Daevon reaches out to sense the area around him. Immediately his hair stands on end and a low growl develops in his throat as he realizes danger is near - danger of a kind he has not experienced before. Suddenly a lightsaber ignites nearby. The bright red blade slices through the air in a downward motion. Daevon hears someone cry out in pain. There is a loud shout: "Master!"...

..Daevon then is violently tossed out of his bed and he awakes to the sound of an alarm going off oboard the Greased Nerf.

Daryn
Legs crossed and eyes half-closed, Daryn sits on his bed, calming himself and focusing on the task at hand. Meditation had never been Daryn's strong suit - he'd always preferred sweating it out on the training floor. But, as a leader of this mission, Daryn thought it best to compose himself and quiet his mind for the upcoming challenge.

His concentration is rudely interrupted as the ship takes a sudden and very drastic turn. He nearly topples off his bed, but just manages to reach out his arm and catch himself. Across the room, he notices his new padawan snap out of his sleep, hair on end and front teeth bared in a snarl. Daevon can be seen panting heavily and agitated about something.

Just then, the shipboard alarm begins sounding off.

[Wisconsin Wookie]

Lurk
Lurk, knowing that the ship would soon come out of hyperspace, strolled up to the wall near the gunwell and leaned in for a quick break. Lighting up one of the last few deathsticks he has on him, Lurk takes a deep drag and lets it out slowly. He frowns as the big lumbering Bith strolls by with nary a snide comment about his habit.

A few moments later, Lurk feels the ship come out of hyper-space. Seconds later, he is whipped across the hall and crashes into the opposite wall. Lurk can hear the alarm blaring from the siren just above his head.

Nihl and Shadow
The squad sits around the table in the galley, finishing up on their breakfast rations, and Salvo is holding court. "So anyway," (with a grin and a glance at Needles), "he goes to take his first field test, and the guy completely clams up. I mean, noone scored within ten points of this guy on the medicals, but when it was time to start doing the work, it's like his programming just wasn't there. It's like he forgot everything... Anyway, according to Doc, the best, or worst part, depending on your persepecive; was what happened next."
Needles just slowly shakes his head and doesn't look up from his breakfast. Salvo grins wide and continues. "So the new medical recruits all fall out for their field test. They're supposed to run the course, stopping to treat various wounds along the way and determine what kind of help each clone needs. So, the horn sounds and the medics are off. They all race off to there first station and get to work. Medpacs and scanners are out and they all get after it. And our good medic here, gets to his first patient. He sizes up the situation... Determines the treatment... Pulls out the hypodermic needle...And proceeds to eject his lunch. Yep, that's right. He pukes all over the battlefield."

Salvo, laughing now, wraps it up: "This routine continued for like two weeks. That, Captain, is why we call him Needles."

Needles, sheepishly raises his head as if he is going to reply in defense, but before he can do so, the ship takes a hard turn and has each man gripping the table for dear life. Seconds later, the alarm sounds and the squad looks to their Captain.

[Guardian_A]

Bri'tan grunts as his bulk is forced back into his pilots chair by the violent maneuver. With adrenaline fludding his system, he risks a quick glance at the friend-or-foe idtentifier. Almost as fast as he jerks the ship away from the unexpected freighter, he pushes forward HARD on the control yoke, forcing the Greased Nerf into an end-for-end flip. "Kage! Shut those alarms down and scan that ship!"Shoving the throttle forward, he aims the Nerf towards the frieghter, trying to do a quick fly-by for a closer look. "Then get us a hyperspace route out of here!" Glancing out the viewport, he flies the Nerf as close to the other ship as he can, prepared to take evasive maneuvers at the first sign of trouble.

[Jedi Skyler]

"Are you alright?" Daryn asks his Padawan. Then he is almost bodily thrown from his bunk.

As the ship steadies itself, Daryn springs from his bunk and races to the cockpit. I need to tie the sensors to my bracer, and SOON he thinks to himself as he makes the cockpit and slides into the sensor station, taking a moment to concentrate on the Force before performing a sweep on the ship.

((OOC:Concentration, then Sensors. Daryn will look for engine signature, transponder, life forms, state of the ship's engines, shields and weapons...absolutely every scrap of information he can coax out of his scan. While the sensors do their thing, Daryn will start writing a program to upload to the sensor suite to allow him to remotely access it from his bracer computer.))

As he does so, Daryn says, "I'm considering your proposal, Captain. While performing maintenance on the ship is going to add skills to Daevon's and my experience, we are going to eventually have to come up with a way to legitimately make money on the side. I don't have unlimited funds. I can do slicing work, but perhaps we'll have to make sure that if any salvage opportunities arise on our mission, we get that 5,000 credits taken care of early on before dividing up any items of use, so that payment for you is never in question.

"Also, I am currently writing a program to allow me to access the sensors remotely. When that is done, I'm going to do the same for communications. That way I don't have to be on the bridge in order to help you. Plus I can also call up information for briefings or crew review more quickly. I won't mess with the command console operations; that is your domain alone. However, if I work with Kage I can work up similar programs to access shipboard security in the same manner for when we're off the ship."

[Matthias777]

Kage chitters in response to Bri'tan's commands, and the proximity alarm and warning klaxons suddenly fall silent. The little droid quickly begins a sensor scan of the freighter. Moments later, Medallea enters the cockpit and sits down at the sensors station. Realizing that the young human is going to try to preempt his use of the Nerf's sensor array, Kage locks out the manual interface. The human doesn't seem to notice as he prattles on about something; Kage tunes him out as he digests the information the sensor scan divulges. As Daryn finishes, Kage hears his name and realizes that he might have missed something. The young Jedi had said something about accessing the ship's systems remotely, it seemed. Not if Kage had anything to say about it...but he'd say it later. He was a droid with priorities. Not caring if he interrupted Medallea, Kage beeped and twittered at his master.

[southpaw]

"What the hell?" Lurkspat as he got to his feet. He jammed the d'stick in his craw and scrambled up the ladder to the gun bay.

"I thought you paid good money for a pilot!" he roared, arming the cannons and plugging into the targeting screen. He scanned the void around him looking for trouble.

"Shadow, you okay?"
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Giblet Blizzard

[Jedi Skyler]

Noticing the sensor staion's console not responding, Daryn says to Bri'tan, "Captain, your sensor station is locked out. If you did it, will you please unlock it so I can start scanning that freighter? If it was not you, please instruct your droid that we are all on the same team here, and he need not be so proprietary about this ship. Everything I have proposed to do is in the interest of the safety of the crew-including him- and efficiency. That, above all, should have him wanting to help make it happen. Droids are notorious for wanting everything to run at optimal efficiency." He then turns a stern look on the droid.

[Flyboy2002]

"Well, I guess I am up," Shadow says as he stumbles across the hall. and down the chute to the gunnery bay. As he slides down the ladder, he hears Lurks question and responds with a "I am fine, and you? Kind of wish you had a clone pilot now don't ya?" He jokes as he powers up his station and prepares for whatever just happened.

[Wisconsin Wookie]

Bri'tan
With Bri'tan leaning hard on the controls, the Greased Nerf achieves more speed and manueverability in a few seconds than anyone would have given it credit for. The ship flips end-over-end, which to an outside observer would appear that the ship was out of control. That was not entirely true. Bri'tan masterfully pulls the Nerf out of it's barely controlled spin and has it aiming back at the unidentified freighter. With the hammer down, the ship roars back in the opposite direction. This series of maneuevers leaves Daevon, Nihl, Needles and Salvo, tossed about all over the floor in their respective rooms.

Bri'tan's maneuver though was perhaps a bit over zealous and the Nerf screams past the other freighter with only about 5 feet between the two ships, too close even for the Bith's comfort.

In the heat of the moment and with adrenaline pumping, Bri'tan does not get a great look at the ship, but if he didn't know better, he'd think the other ship was floating listlessly in space.

Kage
Kage manages to lock Daryn out of the ship's systems and watches as his scan data begins coming back to him, and at the same time trying to stay tuned in to Bri'tan's conversation with Daryn.

Scan data...
---weapon's systems: disabled
---shields: down
---current course: none detected
---transponder code: ship is known as "Kron's Revenge"

Lurk
Lurk hears Shadow's witty reply from the lower gunwell and as Lurk considers a reply, his mechanical eye picks up the suns reflection off of two tiny objects about two clicks away. But as the ship is thrown aggressively into a few flips and turns, Lurk loses his visual contact.

Shadow
Shadow fires off a reply to Lurk and straps in. He looks up to check his surroundings and before he realizes what is happening, an unkown freighter looms larger and larger in his viewport. Instictively and in self defense, Shadow leans back and covers his head as the Nerf roars past the other ship with no more than a few feet separating his viewport from the hull of the other ship.

Daryn
Daryn waits for Bri'tan's reply and grips hard on the armrests as the Greased Nerf is thrown into some overly aggressive manuevers. He also notices that the droid is not looking in his direction.

[Matthias777]

In the interest of efficiency, Kage ignores Daryn's speech. They were in the middle of wild maneuvers, and he seemed to be locked into some sort of high-speed "talking" mode. In the space of just a few seconds since Bri'tan had thrown the Nerf into evasive maneuvers, Daryn had made his way from his quarters to the cockpit, launched into financial negotiations, attempted to run a sensor scan, started fiddling with that bracer of his, gone on another tangent about something else (Kage hadn't been paying attention, but was almost certain that he'd heard his name in there somewhere), and was now lecturing Bri'tan on the fact that he'd wanted to appropriate the sensor suite to run his own scan, which an experienced spacer would have recognized as already being in use. Kage briefly wonders if Bri'tan was even trying to keep up with the Jedi's diatribe. Doubtful; he looked rather focused on piloting the Greased Nerf at the moment. Kage decides not to bother him with useless queries regarding their supposed commander's possible use of illegal narcotics, and instead proceeds to follow Bri'tan's previous instructions as closely as possible. Addressing everyone in the cockpit, Kage unlocks the sensor station's interface and displays his findings.

[Guardian_A]

Shooting Kage a stern look, he addresses Daryn, "Must be a glitch. We've worked the bugs out of the propulsion systems, but we havent got around to sensors yet."

Bri'tan pulls back on the throttle, slowing the ship considerably as he brings the Greased Nerf around in a slow arc to get a better look at the freighter.

With one hand on the control yoke, and the other on a keypad, he types Kage a quick message, [Allow the Jedi access. Set it up so either of us can lock out remote access as needed.]

Glancing over at Kage, "Kage. See if you can get that Sensor console back online and help our Jedi friend set up whatever he needs."

Bri'tan realizes that it will be a minute before they near the seemingly direlect ship. Looking back at Daryn again, "You'll cover all ship and crew related fees off the top. Then I take a 5% cut off of profit on any cargo you bring on board?"

Waiting for the Jedi's reply, he starts to skim the information Kage posted on his display.

[Matthias777]

Immersed in his navigational calculations, Kage beeps twice to acknowledge Bri'tan's request, but otherwise continues to focus on the navicomputer. Bri'tan can't see it without turning, but the sensor console has already flickered back to life. He'd have to construct a proper lockout later, when he had time.
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Arek | Kage

[Guardian_A]

A pleased expression crosses the bith's pinched features, "And maybe we can line up a long term contract with the Jedi Timple upon the successful completion of this mission?"

Bri'tan glances towards Kage at the sound of his double beep. Seeing that the Sensor console is lit up again, "Seems the console is working again."

Continuing his leisurely approach, Bri'tan keeps one eye on the direlect freighter, and the other on the jedi.

[Jedi Skyler]

"Possibly. Once the Council sees how well you perform and what a help you are on this mission, they may allow us to work up such an arrangement. I cannot speak for them, but I can certainly make that kind of recommendation."

Daryn notices the lockout being lifted from the sensor station. "Yes, it would seem the station has been freed up. I realize Kage is used to running all your support functions for you. If you are going to want us 'fleshies'- he looks directly at Kage again as he says the word- to fill stations on the bridge, you're going to have to instruct him to no longer lock us out and to allow us to actually do those jobs. Otherwise, the two of you can have the bridge, and the rest of us will stay in other areas of the ship."

Daryn then activates the manual controls on the sensor console and runs his own focused scan on the freighter, looking for any info not yet picked up by Kage's scan, and keeping a focus on the ship to detect any change in its status.