Log:A Bad Feeling About This
A trap for to capture Krrsantan!
OOC Date: June 17, 2022
Location: Dune Sea, Tatooine
Participants: Spice Runners, Risslan, Erinn Laski, Black Krrsantan, Poe Dameron
A holo puck has been delivered to the docking bay frequented by the Ghost and its crew. When activated, a blue projection of Erinn appeared, sitting cuffed to a chair, her expression a mix of confusion, embarrassment, and trepidation. The image shook slightly, a sign the recorder was handheld and not especially steady.
She reluctantly read a prepared message, faltering over a few words while informing the "loathsome Krr'santan" that the pit fighter's "pet human" would be sold for a smuggler's bounty unless the Wookiee presented himself to reclaim her. Erinn looked expectantly off camera for a moment before the imagine blinks out, only to return an instant later, reciting a set of coordinates.
Clearly the gang is dealing with dangerous professionals.
The Ghost is on approach for the coordinates shared via puck, the ship's pilot, Poe, quiet as he follows the ten-digit satellite coordinate using the navigator within the control cabin. These coordinates take them far outside Mos Eisley and into the Dune Sea, a dangerous place for a number of reasons, but they didn't seem to mind the danger since they were obviously going toward a trap!
Poe flips a series of switches, bringing the vessel to a slower approach to do a fly over and get the lay of the land. <"We're close, Santos."> Poe informs, his hand easing back the throttle a bit to make the engines purrrrrr.
The puck was viewed and then ensued the most alarming snarling, raging, Wookiee smashing pissed off show of temper that Santos has probably ever displayed. Thankfully this happens on board the Ghost so few get to witness the rare fit pitching event.
Unfortunately it was on board the Ghost were things got broken and thrown around. And probably Poe's and Ektor's ear drums threatened to burst from all the noise. It was thankfully short lived, followed by silent, cold, intense brooding while Poe got the Ghost up and moving.
Now up in the cockpit, Santos has stuffed himself into the Co-pilot's chair. Glaring but quiet. When they draw close, Krrsantan sits up and starts looking out their view ports more carefully. Nostrels flare, anger smolders.
The coordinates led to a ship lodged in the Dune Sea, roughly forty kilometers outside of Mos Eisley. The ship was not hard to find once they knew where to look. It also wasn't going anywhere.
The old Wayfarer class medium freighter had landed on unstable sand a long time ago, and its port side had sunk into the sand up to the turret and airlock. The boarding ramp on its belly had also been swallowed by the Dune Sea, leaving the starboard airlock as the only traditional means of entrance. Heavily scarred by rust and corrosion, the upper turret and sensor dish were gone, long since scavenged.
There were signs of recent speeder and foot traffic near the airlock, though none were to be seen at present.
"Helloooooo?"
Erinn Laski can be neither seen nor heard, sadly for her. Or thankfully for the Trandoshan who had kidnapped her. She's been hollering like this ever since here captor picked up an incoming ship on some sort of local scanner. "Helllooooooooooooooooooo! I'm -thirsty-. It's -hot-," she yells out. She attempts to wriggle her wrists free of her binders with little to no success, and gives up a few moments later with a forward slump in her chair. Laski lifts her chin and begins to scan around the area, looking for any sort of indication of a listening and monitoring device present within the massive cargo pod aboard the freighter. She does spot, after some searching, what looks to be an operating surveillance camera. Uncertain if it is able to receive sound, she hops up and down within her chair and shoots for the moon. A moon. Every moon.
"Let me gooooo!"
From the darkness of the cargo pod, Erinn hears a hissed, "ismism, golk!" followed by a clatter of metal. [Language: Dosh]
After a fly by, the Ghost makes a slow rotating pass before finally settling onto the sand where scans indicated there was solid ground. Easing the throttle back now, the ship transitions from rocket engines to repulsors, then to gravity as it set upon its struts and bounced back and forth from the weight distribution. "Bee-Bee Eight, stay with the ship, buddy. We're gonna take Bones."
Bones was already at the ramp, lowering it down to the windy desert floor. Sand whipped inside the ship, transforming the military green bulkheads and grated flooring to a weathered sandy color. The skinny droid drops down, comically crouching to peek its beak like head through the gap. When the lift has lowered completely, the droid steps out fearlessly, scanning with a rifle in hand.
"IF ORGANIC LIFEFORMS PERSIST, THIS UNIT'S PROGRAMMING HAS DETERMINED THEY ARE NOT EAGER TO DIE. NONE HAVE PRESENTED THEMSELVES FOR TERMINATION." The nasally voice says.
Poe drops down off the lift and pulls duster on, hiding the flightsuit and gun belt. "Keep looking, Bones. People are always eager to die.." Poe unclips the weapon holster housing the weathered DL-44 handcannon on his thigh.
After a fly by, the Ghost makes a slow rotating pass before finally settling onto the sand where scans indicated there was solid ground. Easing the throttle back now, the ship transitions from rocket engines to repulsors, then to gravity as it set upon its struts and bounced back and forth from the weight distribution. "Bee-Bee Eight, stay with the ship, buddy. We're gonna take Bones."
Bones was already at the ramp, lowering it down to the windy desert floor. Sand whipped inside the ship, transforming the military green bulkheads and grated flooring to a weathered sandy color. The skinny droid drops down, comically crouching to peek its beak like head through the gap. When the lift has lowered completely, the droid steps out fearlessly, scanning with a rifle in hand.
"IF ORGANIC LIFEFORMS PERSIST, THIS UNIT'S PROGRAMMING HAS DETERMINED THEY ARE NOT EAGER TO DIE. NONE HAVE PRESENTED THEMSELVES FOR TERMINATION." The nasally voice says.
Poe drops down off the lift and pulls his duster on, hiding the flightsuit and gun belt. "Keep looking, Bones. People are always eager to die.." Poe unclips the weapon holster housing the weathered DL-44 handcannon on his thigh.
As soon as Poe is lowering the ship, Santos gets up and heads aft towards the ramp to join bones. He unslings his Kashyyyk long gun and paces impatiently for the ship to land and Poe to join them. The towering black Wook has gone back to being silent and watchful, thoughts kept to himself. Anyone who knows him though, knows he is eager to recover Laski, whom he seems to tolerate more than some.
Maybe Santos is even fond of her. Hard to say.
The voice from the darkness just outside of view startles Erinn. Whether she thought she was alone, or she simply didn't expect a reply, the Trandoshan's words catch her mid 'goooo'. The word hangs in the air for a moment or two, echoing off of walls of the cargo pod and carrying her voice a touch further than it would have gone. Her wrists work together again, and she pushes her feet against the slightly-slanted ground beneath her. Her chair hasn't yet begun to slide, but she can feel how her center of gravity has shifted. After a moment or two of silence, Erinn tips her chin up and squints towards the source of the voice in the darkness.
"Look, there's still time. You can do the right thing and just -let- me go. Please. Nobody here has to get hurt," she says. 'You don't have to get graphically disemboweled by a very terrifying wookie' politely goes unsaid.
Erinn receives no reply from the darkness.
The interior is ominous and utterly dark. Perhaps reactivating the reactor would restore lighting and power to the dead ship, or perhaps those components had been carried off by scavengers, as well. Upon entry, the cockpit and crew quarters are through a corridor to the fore (right), engines and med bay to the stern (left), and an airlock leading to the cargo pod directly ahead.
Poe handles this like he would have if he were part of a breech team, by first checking the threshold of the ship where they intended an entrance (and where the tracks led inside.) Traps were easy to set in passageways and hatches like this, so when he opened it, he first motioned Santos to one side while he took the other to keep the fatal-front clear (in the case of a claymore 'point this toward enemy' kind of shaped charge.
Thankfully, they find nothing of the sort. An old ion charge Poe disables for the sake of ensuring it wouldn't trigger no matter how old it looked. "Careful, Santos.. don't step in--ahh, man. That was a big pile of drek.."
"THAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH ORGANICS, LEAVING THEIR REFUSE IN PLACES WHERE OTHERS PATROL!" Bones observes, shaking its beak head with disapproval. "Santos, you're the one with the nose.. where is this guy?" Poe clicks on a flash light and draws his blaster, waiting to follow in after the massive Wookiee gladiator.
Krrsantan doesn't mind standing aside while Poe checks the door. One thing Poe has definitely impressed the Wook about is that despite his quirks, Poe Dameron has skilzz and is a useful man to work with. So the walking carpet stands in the drek without realizing it and rumbles softly, "Smells like drek."
Oops! He looks down, lifts his huge hairy feet and wrinkles his nose. A faint, involuntary snarl of anger escapes him, "I'm going to pound someone to drek..." Things are about to get more confined so the long gun may be less practical than using his fists. That's what's in his furry hands at the moment however.
When the door is opened, Santos is sniffing the air, "Smells like rust and womp rats." Great, Mr. Obvious. [Language: Shyriiwook]
Ugh. Silence.
"Alright, well, when you get your arms and legs ripped off, don't look at me with those weird little beady eyes," Erinn murmurs. It's meant to be beneath her breath, but, well. Acoustics cut both ways. Just like her little shout for help carried a touch farther owing to the hard, long (eyyyy) surface of the walls, so too does that little murmur. Her braided ponytail slips from the back of her shoulder over towards the front, and she gives another wiggle of her torso and shift of her hips to try to break her bindings.
No dice.
There's an audible huff of annoyance and irritation, and she turns her head up to gaze into the darkness of her surroundings, trying to make out anything beyond her immediate surroundings with little luck. Erinn places both of her feet down on the ground and gives a little push, testing to see if those front two legs of the chair will lift off the ground, owing to that back-slanted floor and that extra bit of leverage from her own feet.
Illuminated piece by piece in the narrow beam of Poe's hand light, the skeletal remains of the medical bay are eerie and barren, filthy and long since stripped down to the deck fittings where a medical chair and machinery had once been bolted down. The transparisteel window overlooking the engine room corridor has been broken out.
Poe moves aft, bringing pistol and light up to be leveled in front of him and provide a good cone of vision through the darkness. He's quiet, methodical, like any trained military man who was brought up in corridor clearing operations. Poe's quiet intensity is made more comical by the red-eyed droid clanking behind him, routinely scanning as well and not requiring light to 'see' in the traditional sense; droids were weird.
Aside from finding a very messy medical bay, and an engine room with the window broken out, Poe's search turns up very little. "Odd that the transparisteel is broken; that is hard to shatter." He shines his light inside for a brief look. Santos' comment about the smell was enough to make the pilot nod. "Yeah, yeah it does smell pretty bad." Poe abandons further search of the medbay and engines, moving to the 'Fore' section where crew quarters and the control cabin were located. His light trails high along the corridor searching for proximity sensors and other explosives that could be hidden in the mess of old wiring. Classes in ship engineering from Jess were paying off.
Poe is being all sneaky careful and it's not ONLY BONES who isn't. A little behind those two, Krrsantan comes along and ... well, he's not very quiet. The very deckplates beneath his huge feet and his 600 lbs and more weight creak and groan, and suddenly one of his feet crashes RIGHT THROUGH the rusted decking. The Wookiee is suddenly knee deep in rusty shredded metal and makes an involuntary if muffled noise. Yeah, that didn't go well.
Awkwardly Krrsantan hefts his leg back out of the collapsed decking and snarls very low, "Place is a wreck!" Duh.
Then he freezes, sniffing and listening. He rumbles low again, big ass rifle in his paws, "I hear movement aft - engines." [Language: Shyriiwook]
It's too quiet. Way too quiet. Risslan had to have heard a ship approaching, and whoever had landed -had- to be on the ship by now. Erinn gives a few more frustrated attempts to pull her wrists free of her bindings, before she angrily starts to bang her feet on the ground beneath her as hard as she can. She alternates swings, her heavy (but lil) workboots stomping back and forth as she wiggles her body. A high-pitched, girlish -shriiiiiiiieeeeek- leaves her lungs, and she uses all of the air she can muster to make that thing as high-pitched, piercing, loud as she possibly can.
"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Such is the annoyance level of her girlish ire that Erinn's screech pierces even vaccuum rated bulkheads (or at least, is audible through the atmosphere and decayed ship's seals. It's muffled, but coming from the main cargo pod, accessible by the main hatch, or possibly an interior hatch at the back of engineering.
Somewhere, a Trandoshan closes his eyes, exhales slowly through scaly nostrils and vows never again.
Defying some laws of observation, Poe has noted something in the pitch dark and marks it with the shine of his light. It's a greased panel, and upon lifting it, he reveals a passage through the guts of the ship. "Fancy," is all he says. He shines the light inside, seeing a tubby womprat waddle out of view. Then, he drops down, gets his bearing, and crawls. He can hear the AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE of Erinn, which is good; it means she's alive, but her current torment is not enough to rush Poe. If they're to do something right, they needed to move slow and steady!
Erinn's high-pitched screech carries through the air and off the walls of the cargo pod for a moment or two after the last little bit of air leaves her lungs. The effort has left her exhausted. Her back had arched, butt lifted off of the chair before crashing down against it. The sudden motion has knocked her center of gravity back enough to tip that chair. Aided by the subtle slant of the ground beneath her, Erinn's chair tips backwards, causing her to crash hard down onto her wrists and hands before gravity carries her onto her side. There's a sharp yelp of pain and then a whimper, far less loud than that deliberate screech had been. Frustration, fear, and exhaustion begin to take their toll, and Erinn Laski's body begins to shake and shudder with tears.
More feeble, fumbling attempts to free herself only compound the emotion, and within a few moments, what were quiet shaking tears have become sobs of frustration. She gives a shake of her body, but her wrists don't jostle loose.
"Come -on-!" she yells, mostly at herself than anything else. The sounds of shots up above her do very little to calm her nerves.
Drek indeed. Poe finds something nifty and Santos stands bristling on guard as the Spice Runner himself jockies the panel out of the way and slides into a space that is immediately obvious that it's too small to fit the Wookie into. Bones? He can probably slip through but does Poe want the battle droid bumping around in there?
Krrsantan growls very faintly, wuffles, then starts to head aft for the engines anyway. Very quickly he can't see drek as Poe takes the light with him. So helpful. Kashyyyk long gun in his huge paws, Santos is nonetheless NOT afraid of the dark. He listens, sniffs the air, takes a couple of cautious steps. Then he freezes after going only a little distance.
"I smell Trandoshan!" It isn't whispered, it's a snarl! Then the little hairs up his back prick and the huge Wookiee bounty hunter starts to turn even as stun rings fire past, then engulf him! With a ---===$$$ RRRROOOOAAAAARRRR!!!!! $$$$===----- Santos whips the rest of the way around and fires his long rifle but only once.
For a brief instant, the corridor lights up like a lightning flash and everything is clear to see - but only for an instant! Definitely NO Trandoshan in the direction he fired. [Language: Shyriiwook]
Risslan is only half glimpsed as a flicker of movement illuminated by the short lived blast of Krrsantan's long rifle. The lanky young warrior fires twice more, while dashing away from the Wookiee in the engine room and toward the middle corridor of the ship. "sund straippryap smoou sund yimaeism!" he roars, the reptilian snarl echoing in the derelict darkness. But first, Krrsantan has a chance for revenge... [Language: Dosh]
Poe is oblivious to the FIGHT above and behind him, the sound has been dampened by the sheer volume and thickness of the flooring above him. His task is simple at this point, crawl the distance and make it to the end. Midway, Poe pauses to put the flashlight in his mouth, then continues until he reaches the end and looks up to see a similar hatch. Checking for traps, he begins to rise, testing the hatch before shoving it up.
Towards the engine room there's all kinds of racket that breaks loose! Someone fires a weapon but it sounds like it's on /stun/?!? There's a huge ROAR followed by the distinctive sound of the Wookiee's long gun being fired. Movement follows.
Then MORE firing. Instead of Poe and Erinn hearing Santos using his long gun again back there, the entire wreck shudders with the BLOOM of a frag grenade going off! Followed by the sounds of debris hitting the bulkheads, hatches and deck. Womp rats start scurrying in sudden panic away from that end of the ship, looking for hiding places FAST.
There is another ROAR, this time of a Wookiee's laughter. Half stunned out of his gourd or not, Krrsantan is tearing up the back of the ship in Wookiee style!
Risslan's shout abruptly cuts off in the blast of a fragmentation grenade in the enclosed space of a shipboard corridor. Whether for death or for discipline, there are no screeches of pain from where Risslan had been thrown, and for a heavy few seconds, there is silence apart from the ringing in the ears (or similarly functioning sensory organs). Krrsantan roars in triumph, before being greeted by a further pair of blasts from a shoddy little shock trooper's carbine. "ojiriwn stroscroft yastrya stamb ui zhip scryajdya! sonbli." [Language: Dosh]
There's more shooting and that Trandoshan is yelling gibberish! Krrsantan's ire is up! Snarling, he pulls another grenade and is about to pull the pin to make it live when Risslan shoots him again!
THIS TIME the huge black Wookiee stumbles backwards, stunning nearly senseless. Santos' heel snags on debris on the deck and he bounces off of the wall, drops the grenade and falls to the deck with a loud BANG!
The unarmed cryoban grenade rolls away in the dark. For the moment, Santos stares up at nothing above him. It's all darkness - except perhaps for the stars swirling around in his dizzy vision. Wait, what?! Are they jumping to hyper?
Softly he sighs, "Damn you, Pretty Boy." [Language: Shyriiwook]
The paneling in the floor rises up and Poe's head pokes up to find a crying Erinn. It takes a minute to climb out of the hole, the older veteran grunting about an old wound, but when he's made it, he moves toward her.
"Hey kid," Poe says casually, not really trying to stop her crying so much as see what state she's in. He finds her bindings and releases it with a casual twist, dropping the binders to the deck and offering a gloved hand to pull her up. "Let's get you out of here, yeah?"
The sound of the battle is more apparent to him now, and Poe wonders how Santos is managing.
Erinn Laski doesn't hear the sound of Poe's approach until he's speaking. A sharp pull of air into her lungs interrupts her sobbing, and she lifts her head to peer up towards the dark at Poe when he approaches. She sniffs hard in an attempt to calm herself, but her emotions betray her when she tries to speak. "Hey," she manages back, but her tone is cracked and uneven. She seems more than a little afraid and in emotional distress, but physically she seems mostly fine. Some swelling around the wrists and forearms from where she'd fallen, but there is no immediate wince or stabbing pain that might indicate even the most mild of fractures.
When her arms are released, she pulls them forward and grasps them with the opposite hand. Hands carry Erinn Laski to her knees, before she begins to wipe her wet cheeks off on her forearms. Only after both of those eyes are streaked free does she see Poe's offered hand. She takes it, and rises back up to her feet with a nod.
The sound of blaster fire above prompts her to tip her chin and head up, as if in an attempt to see through the ceiling and into the floors above.
She sniffs again.
"We should probably stop Santo from ripping him into too many pieces."
Risslan rolls with sharp, clenched teeth onto one knee, rising pained to his feet, and stagger-limping toward the downed Wookiee to stun him one more time. He has the instinct to let the Wookiee see the face of his foe, before recalling that the fact Krrsantan couldn't see him at all is the only reason he's not dismembered, yet. So he just fires.
The airlock that separates the main ship from the detachable cargo pod is a standard double locking vaccuum hatch: the door behind must be sealed before the door ahead can be opened. Poe is cautious and a professional, and thus he sees the vulnerability of this. Further, he finds a simple latch activated gas canister that would flood the airlock once both doors close.
Risslan fires away and the very stunning, very large Wookiee tries to roll away and avoid being hit. But Santos is barely conscious, quite incoherant, and dazed out of his skull. All that results is some flailing of huge meaty arms, some kicking over onto his side, followed by heavy breathing and stillness as the edge of a shot catches him. Santos is down and out for the count.
What pride Risslan can take in bagging BLACK KRRSANTAN!
Poe holds up an arm to stop Erinn from moving forward, and he takes a moment to point. "Number one rule in the book, assume every door wants to kill you; because every door /wants/ to kill you.." Poe reaches up to disable the fuse on the concoction before lifting the latch and opening the door. His pistol is hefted from its holster and brought out in front of him again. Erinn's comment about Krrsantan ripping this guy, whoever they were, into little pieces isn't answered until Poe has made it through the door. "I have no idea how one would stop that Wookiee from doing anything he wanted.." Poe pies the corner of the corridor, shining his light down it simultaneously orienting the muzzle of his doom pistol that way, too.
Erinn stops in her tracks when Poe's arm reaches across her torso. She blinks and nods, peering forward toward the door and watching him disarm the little trap in front of them. When it's clear, she follows him through the hallway and in the direction of where the gunfire had been sounding off on the far side of the ship. "We could ask him nicely, maybe," Erinn suggests. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective.
Also the least effective, but one never knows until they try!
Erinn pats herself for her own pistol out of habit, but distinctly remembers her things being carried away shortly after she awoke from that stun blast.
"This ship's gutted. I couldn't get the lights back on even if I wanted to," she murmurs.
Once the ship-to-cargo airlock is cleared, and Poe and Erinn open the second door leading into the main ship, they come upon a very unexpected sight in the cone of Poe's hand light: a grunting, snarling Trandoshan is trying.. valiantly.. to drag the dead weight of a massive Wookie in massive Wookie scale wrist and ankle binders, linked by a chain. It's slow going for the bloodied Risslan and the slow going freezes altogether as the main hatch opens. Eyes clenched shut against the sudden light, Risslan speaks two of the Basic words that can be formed without lips: "Oh hell."
Rounding that corridor, he came across a sight he thought he'd never see in his lifetime, Krrsantan being dragged by a Trandoshan. There is an awkward pause when the Hunter looks up into the light and has to close their eyes. Poe had him. He knew it, the hunter knew it, and it was only a moment or so later that the shots came.
Two gradient blue blasts emit from the end of the blaster pistol, releasing as a double tap. The handcannon hits harshly, and the result seems to clear the way. "Let's get Santos up and get the hell out of here. Should probably restrain ol' boy there, too. Santos might want a second go at them.."
That awkward moment is just awkward for Poe and Risslan. Erinn Laski is also left standing just beside Poe and his blaster, able to give one look towards Risslan's narrowing pupils an then one look towards Poe's finger squeezing down on the trigger. She pulls a breath in to say something, but it happens too fast. Two quick pulls of the trigger, two quick pulses of blue. The same blue that had struck her in the back in the crowded street of Mos Espa. At least she knows he won't feel much. Maybe just the subtlest bit of tension, and then nothing at all.
"Let me tie him up," Erinn says, giving a little rotation of both wrists as she approaches him. She does find him butt up, naturally, as that is the way he fell. She squints to see what looks to be blood coming out of his buttocks as well and winces.
"...We should probably drag him on his stomach."
Risslan abruptly dropped the chains by which he'd been trying to drag Krrsantan and turned for the only way out of the ship: the airlock at the end of this corridor. Hurry-hobbling as fast as he can, the young warrior sees a first blue blast streak past him, before being struck squarely in the bounty and blasted to the floor, unconscious.
