Log:Black Squadron: Patrol Skirmishes I
Black Squad is led into an ambush!
OOC Date: December 31, 2020
Location: Chandrila System, Deep Space
Participants: Black Squadron, Jessika Pava, Bors Thul, Lofty, Ektor, Poe Dameron
A patrol being conducted by Black Squadron seemed a routine day. Even General Poe Dameron had joined the team for the sake of getting away from politicians and high ranking brass to remember that there were still elements of serving he still enjoyed. Their patrol took them to the outer reaches of the solar system, where icy rings of debris circled at a distance and collided in the void dark, shattering into thousands of pieces and occasionally conferring meteors that made it as far as Chandrila itself.
Along one such route, the team receives a distress call. It's not far away, but they had to hone in on where the signal was coming from. It was a frantic, static covered voice on comms asking for help, that they had children orphans aboard, and that they were being accosted by pirates. Poe's voice crackles to life over the secured net for Black Squad. <<"Anyone got a bead on that signal?">>
"Entertainer in a smoke filled room. Smell of spice and poor cologne... For a look they can share the day... it goes on and on and on an-" Poe's comm signal comes through and Bors's off-key singing ends as if he'd been pointed at with a holonet control and someone had pressed mute.
Would that Jessika had such power.
Working through sensor signals, the Alderaanian frowns - brow knit and his smile fading fractionally while he turns a dial, <<"Negative, Pretty boy... Nary even signal direction.">> a savage frown, knowing that his admittance of failure shall bring someone else to show him up. As is proper.
Both inside her cockpit and through the internal speakers embedded into the plasteel Tierfon Yellow Aces helmet that Major Jessika Pava wears, the static blurt of an unstable distress signal is enough to make her jump in surprise. Ailee warbles a note about heavy interference, and Jessika abandons the throttle and joystick of her craft to bring her hands to her multi-purpose color display, transitioning through from engine management to the sensors and dialging through to extend the sensor range. "Ailee, use local buoys to triangulate that signal burst to its point of origin." Together with her BB unit, Jessika isolates its location and a few scant seconds after Poe asks if anyone's got a bead on it, Jessika is keying up on the net.
<"Black Leader, Two. Signal isolated. Sending microjump coordinates to the squadron now."> That's Ailee's cue to transmit the data while Jessika's gloved hands return to their points. She's already angling her snubfighter around towards the direction the signal came from, prepping for the short jump to put them in range.
Lofty is shaking out his new starboard engine on patrol. He sits in the pilot's seat of the anti-slaver gunship WHORRWAARR with his trusty Sullustan co-pilot Stebbs in the tandem gunner seat. An old GalStarTech diagnostic computer is beside Lofty, outputting a flickering graph with ENGINE THRUST at the top of the damaged datascreen. "Engine look ok, she do a good job," Lofty warbles to Stebbs. Stebbs replies in Sullustese, "mwici caitani," which loosely translates as "she is a devil." A distress signal comes in but Lofty isn't able to isolate such a garbled transmission. However, when jump coordinates start feeding through the navigational computer, Haoziiplirs Stebbs says "<Ny ndyroona, ny ndyroona>" (I see, I see) and plots a course
Ektor supplies helpfully over comms, << See, Buh-Bors, that's cause you forgot to check your *trap* frequencies, yeah? Cause that signal? That sounds like a trap.>> The dumb grin is audible in his voice as the bomber pilot throws auxiliary power to engines in anticipation of someone more competent discerning the direction. <<Let's go spring it, yeah?>>
<<"Got the signal, two. Good work. Everyone plug it in and make the jump.">> Poe didn't have to air he had a bad feeling about it, Ektor had already said it. Naturally, if the pirate said it was a trap, 90% of the time, all the time, it was a trap. Regardless, Poe put in the coordinates Jess sent and flipped down the protective visor on his helmet. "Hang on back there, buddy!"
In quick unison, the fighters zip from view and re-emerge moments later in real space with about as much ceremony as they'd left it. There was debris from an old junker ship flash-fried and slagged. The bodies of the departed floated eerily in the places fighter lights, or strobes, could identify.
The distress was still static covered, but that's because it was being relayed after the fact, and from a location with a lot of interference. Moments after Black Squad arrived, a squadron of eight (8)R-41 Starchasers flashed into view primed with shields at the ready. <"Worked like a charm!"> One intones over open channel. <"DIE REPUBLIC SCUM!">
Poe rolled his eyes. <"This is Commander Poe Dameron from the New Republic Navy. I'm giving you one chance to back down, and cease any hostile action; otherwise we will be forced to respond with deadly--"> laser fire issues all the response Poe needs and he flips back to encrypted channels. <<"Alright, let's slag 'em.">> He pulled the lever to open his s-foils, and Black Leader's shields shimmered into place.
Meanwhile all eight (8) starchasers increase their speed looking to overwhelm Black Squadron.
<<"Tion, thou art my brother from other mother, to which my familial love threatens to smother. Shall we yet charge forth and dare those who would cause woe to spring their trap upon us that we prove they are eternally erring.">> Bors chuckles while following signals from Jessika's droid, humming while Poe engages in diplomatic requirements before the reavers engage as he sadly suspected.
A quick strike to the throttle to put it to full and Bors's A-Wing lurches forward like a race-hound set on the track. <<"Black, Buhbors, I'm making friends.">> side-mounted cannons spitting fire in high speed staccato, flaring shields until they're near blue-white opaque before they tear away like burning paper in the wake of the RZA-2.
The lurch to real space brings with it a brief moment of disorientation as reality solidifies around her. Warning alarms indicate proximity--a relative thing, given space--to debris, and through the transparisteel viewport of her cockpit, Jessika can see the listing wreckage of what used to be a ship. The visor on her helmet is already down, but the presence of a blasted freighter has her engaging her craft's shields and expanding her s-foils within moments of realizing what she's looking at. Not a moment to soon, given the sudden arrival of eight craft on sensors. Poe tries to speak with them, but they're screaming anti-governmental rhetoric and already weapons free at Black Squadron's gathered presence. <"You tried, lead.">
A valiant effort on General Dameron's part. Jessika? She's not sorry to see that those relations failed. Diplomacy with pirates--most pirates, she has to admit--falling through is not something she weeps over. Instead, she shows them their mistakes first hand, quickly isolating one of the Starchasers and lining up on him so that the helmet mounted cueing system is giving her the proper leading reticle guided by her targeting computer. She squeezes the trigger on her flight stick and the X-Wing's laser cannons bristle with bright lances of destructive force that pierce through the older craft's shields and smash through its hull, striking something critical in the engine and causing it to abruptly explode. "Maybe they'll rethink their position now."
Lofty is a little disoriented after the jump to lightspeed as the old Wookiee-made wooden interior creaks. "<< i aya magiuka!>>" Stebbs exclaims in Sullustese, 'here they come' if you know the language. Lofty's sharp claws begin flipping Bonshyyyr wood switches as he brings the shields back online. Both sets of Sureggi laser cannons activate and forward goes the Auzituck gunship, slower than the flight's fighters, but ready for a fight with a heavy ion cannon in reserve. The rapid fire lasers light up the dark with a fast PENK-PENK-PENK-PENK-PENK-PENK-PENK and impact the shields of a R-41.
Ektor is silent a moment as the 'trap' is sprung. Silent for sheer indignation. <<You Hutt-suckers are DREK at traps. Just.. the worst. This ain't even a TRAP, you know what this is? This is a waste of perfectly good Starchasers! PLEASE tell me you bastards have got.. I dunno.. like a Lancer or something ready to jump in, and you're all the bait? Otherwise I just feel bad for your birds, yeah? You are some *bad* pirates,>> the Tionese states, with the tone suggesting 'bad pirate' is a withering piece of wit. He throws auxiliary power from engines back to weapon systems and drawls to Bors, <<Uh, what you said. Let's rekk em up, yeah?>> The Y-wing banks toward the phalanx of R-41s but his initial blast isn't as precise as his banter and the first salvo sizzles harmlessly past into the trackless void.
The initial trade off and Jess brushes through one with ease. The kill is so sudden and bright that it surprises a laugh from Poe. <<"Nice shot, Black Two. Did he owe you creds? Hahaha.">> Black Leader is far less efficient or effective, his lances go for the void and streak from view as his intended hones in on the others of the squadron. Poe maneuvers his craft to follow having to brace an arm to one side before bringing that hand to the throttle to close the distance.
The comments from Xer earn an incredulous laugh from one of the pirates. <"He's asking why there aren't more of us. Hahaha! We got all we need-- HEY, WHERE'S--">> His line gets cut off as he switches to his squadron's channel. The Starchasers swarm Black Squad, few nailing their shots but not all of them. They may, or may not realize, they made a mistake. The one Bors tagged goes evasive, breaking off from his squad to RUN AWAY.
Watching Jessika's shot pales Bors and he sends a private message to Ektor, <<"Friend Tion - methinks I have enraged her thusly... and have been saved by ruffian taking my place...">> his own shields system reporting damage despite the Alderaanian's attempt to slip the net in his chase after his previous target.
<<"Confirmed. I've made friends. Still fine, temperamental sots though...">> twisting into a spin and cutting thrust to fire too soon when attempting to lead his quarry to fly through their path, grumbling as he adjusts a dial,
"You're making me look bad in front of the Talz."
Incensed by the loss of one of their own at the immediate start of the battle, two of the Starchasers veer off to follow her. Ailee warns her, but Jessika is already juking away and changing plane, decoupling her inertial dampeners and rendering them inert so that she can fly in erratic patterns and motions just not possible in atmosphere. The harness in the craft is now just meant to keep her in her seat, rather than to help her against discernible gravitational forces. What it spells for the Starchaser pilots is a target that's not easy to hit. The one directly on her tail can't keep up. The advanced version of the X-Wing is too fast and maneuverable to match. The one trailing manages a shot off, but that strikes so far wide it's a joke.
She rotates on axis and swings her nose towards the one that just fired at her and maintains a course meant to try to line up another shot. With faster, quicker reflexes honed by untold hours of combat and numerous sorties under her belt, Jessika's able to line up her own shot eerily fast. A squeeze of the trigger sends another quad burst of shots through the dark, and the Starchaser intent on shooting her down now finds itself lacking shields completely, popped as easily as a pin might pop a balloon. The hunted becomes the hunter.
Lofty's gunship wheels around slowly as laser blasts slip by her hull. He comes up in a head-to-head with his previous adversary and that is somewhere a delicate fighter like the R-41 Starchaser doesn't want to be. With six lasers mounted forward, there is a cacophony in space as rapid-fire zips of plasma go YEEP-YEEP-YEEP-YEEP-YEEP-YEEP-YEEP-YEEP-YEEP. It is the front gunner Stebbs who gets the killing blow and he exclaims "<Yakua ku!>" or 'the chicken is stone dead' in triumph. "< Snowball get one>," Lofty says.
Ektor takes a light hit to the forward shields on the initial joust, before banking to go in pursuit of one of the two pirates in pursuit of Black Two. He laughs abruptly as Jessika deftly reverses on one, smashing it's shields. Ektor's nose cannons merely finish the job, the figurative pin to a vulnerable balloon. <<Niiice flying, Jess.>> Back in the open comms, he drawls, <<Yeah, see you guys didn't count us right. You prolly looked and said, 'oh, there's only four of them', yeah?>> There are five, Ektor. <<But you REALLY needed to count each of us like.. four times. So you *shoulda* said 'Oh, Drek, that's Black Squad, there's like.. 18 of em!'>> Four times four is not 18, Ektor.
The Starchaser that fled the scene circles back now, confidence restored with a bit of shielding and an attack led by the rest of the squadron. Red lances fill the void giving it a mesmerizing quality and a false sense that things are going their way in an even fight, but the trained eye saw no success in the attack. Experienced starpilots like those in Black Squad did more than spin, even though it was a nice trick!
Even Poe managed to land a hit, smacking the shields of a pirate to remind them he was a threat too! <<"Coming around for another go,">> Poe announced, marking his intended target while trying to avoid the fire chasing after his stern. BB-8 comically ducks down in his socket as if that might help protect him from the angry pirate chasing.
The Bors of prior mission seems missing. No rage at the danger to little girls - yet there is no holding back or lack of talent - but his quarry remains ever cagey and able to leap ahead of the attempts to lay him low. Still smiling, though a grimace threatens to work its way into the A-Wing pilot's expression. He's keeping some of the attention focused on him, maybe. A contribution of sorts, <<"I'd stop shooting if you would surrender to the New Republic, sir. Please listen to reason. Four walls. Hot food. A chance to find a better life!">>
<"Thanks, Tion,"> Jessika's gratitude is quick over the net, expressing it for both the backup that Ektor provides in the two-on-one the Starchasers tried to cement on her and for the comment about her flying. She doesn't say much more, keeping the combat net clear as Black Squadron engages an overwhelming numerical force, even if the pirates, bad as Ektor claims they are, have bitten off more than they can chew. With her target's shields pierced, the pilot's panic sets in and he tries to break away from the engagement. If they were in a better craft, or against a different pilot and starfighter, maybe they'd have had a chance. As it stands, the range in the engagement makes their maneuvering worthless, because Jessika needs little adjustment.
Adjustment made, she doesn't hesitate to squeeze the trigger on her flightstick again, and while not all of the quad salvo of laser cannon fire connects, it only takes a couple to puncture through the craft's hull. One through a wing, another straight through the canopy and out the other side, leaving the enemy craft to veer off in the direction it was traveling as no further input can be given to it through its instruments. <"Black Two, splash two."> Bubhors offers mercy. It never crosses Jessika's mind.
The Opee sea killers have smelled blood in the water and now it's a feeding frenzy. The pride of Hoersch-Kessel Drive, Inc. are exploding left and right. Lofty's Auzituck gunship zeroes in on a damaged R-41 and both pilot and gunner open fire, strafing the hull, piercing the H-K Model 4Yb ion fusion engine and causing a rupture, then eruption. Another pirate dead. "< Snowball scratch two,>" the large Talz warbles through his snoot in triumph.
"Hey, Genius, any of these dead birds salvageable, you think?" Ektor wonders in the cockpit to his long-suffering astromech. "I'm just saying- eh, forget it." A dual blast of the light bomber's nose cannons hammer the shields of the overmatched Starchaser.
"Yeah, yeah.. I see him," Poe intones, rocked from a blast that lands against his shielding. He shakes his head, orienting his craft toward the rest of the squadron as a collection of Starchasers are transformed to slag. Poe's tactic? Lead the one chasing him back to the team to target and clean up. He didn't think it needed to be said over net.
The last three Starchasers are experiencing a bit of sensory overload. So many deaths in a short amount of time, and even though they had the numbers, they lacked the skill. Any notion of help seemed distant until the sudden arrival of a YT-2000 freighter named "Good Day" appeared on sensors with shields up. <"Heard you guys needed help,"> Said the hero to the Pirates. <"Let's smash these Republic scum and get outta here!">
<<"Indeed they are in need of aid! Mayhap you lend them sense to surrender before more have to suffer. Needn't be there any death this day!">> A chugging sound in his engines and Bors slews to one side to compensate for whatever he did to make it act up. Lips a smiling line while the R-41 in his fore continues to slip free of lock. First a dotted line of plasma fire to one side. Then another. A looping trail just behind the cause for Bors's frustrations this day while he attempts, still, to reason with them.
It could work.
"It could work."
You just thought that Bors.
Once the starfighter she's taking is put out of commission, Ailee rouses her from her battle focus with the announcement that a freighter has just appeared on sensors. "Thanks for the heads up," Jessika wastes no time in thumbing up the comm. <"We've got a new bogey inbound, lead."> Banking her craft around towards one of the Starchasers not marked on her heads-up display as being engaged, Jessika's fighter beelines for it to catch it off guard. The trigger depresses and space lights up with a quick, rhythmic flash of laser cannon fire that stitches along the Starchaser's shields and overloads them, leaving the emitters fried from trying to oscillate quickly enough to protect it. It's left vulnerable, its cockpit filled with warning blares.
Lofty hunts down another wounded pirate and obliterates it with his Sureggi rapidfire laser cannons. The explosion is so bright that the Talz fetches a pair of glareshades from the overhead and puts them on top of his lower set of eyes, which are more sensitive to bright light. "<Njogoo imwe nene,>" Stebbs says to Lofty in Sullustese, indicating there is 'one big rooster' that just showed up on sensors. It must be the YT-2000.
Ektor banks the Wishbone abruptly toward a new target, taking the moment in which the remaining (bad) pirates foolishly leave him unengaged to veer onto a course that anticipates one Starchaser's pursuit of Poe to blast the R41 into pieces. When Jessika calls the new incoming gunship, and R2-G13 blips and displays it's profile, Ektor informs the YT-2000 with disappointment, <<You ain't no Lancer! SUCH bad pirates!>> he complains, choosing a new approach vector on the heavily armed light freighter.
Seeing first hand how dire the situation was, the pilot of the YT-2000 flips a gundark and starts to gun it away. Bors spoke sense, but he wasn't getting away unscathed because Poe was hot on his tail freshly freed from his own enemy pursuer thanks to Ektor. With only one (1) starchaser left (barely hanging on at that, screaming in terror at being pursued by Jess) and one fleeing YT-2000 who was ironically having a bad day as Poe slammed two volleys into their shieldds, the fight was arguably had. The freighter didn't even fire back.
Poe pulled back on the throttle and broke off, letting the pair go while chuckling. <<"Well, you won't find any smart pirates near core systems. It's a death sentence.">> The crafts were beating feet on an escape vector.
<<"Lead, Seven, recording their exit trajectories for tracking later.">> engaging the RZ-2s systems, following their movements while he loops around. They may not have jumped yet, but it doesn't hurt to follow their flight paths for the direction they intend to flee. A chance to allow someone to live - even if he knows his compatriots may not have the compassion.
<"Waste of effort, Bubs. We can't track them through hyperspace and one direction in the galaxy could lead to an untold amount of places."> Maybe--just maybe--there's some sense to what she says, like Jessika is speaking from a place of technical experience and expertise. The only time she's ever known anyone to be tracked through hyperspace is the singular time that a beacon planted one one of the Resistance ships allowed the First Order to track the fleet escaping D'Qar to the planet of Crait. A second later, there's only one craft Bors Thul can even attempt his little feat on, because Jessika's squeezing trigger finger erases the last of the Starchasers that had attempted to ambush Black Squadron using a distress beacon. <"Black Two, splash three.">
Lofty and Stebbs chatter back and forth amongst themselves. The YT-2000 is fast and the older Auzituck gunship has trouble keeping up. "<Pirates too close to core, very strange,>" Lofty mumbles.
"I'ma throw some torpedoes at em," Ektor decides aloud. ...at range. ... without a target lock. "Overriding the safety reload timer- also known as the boring button.. Let's see what happens." The Y-wing spits a curious torrent of proton torpedoes after the fleeing YT-2000. All miss cleanly.
The remaining Starchaser didn't make it. The craft exploded before it could catch up with the light freighter. Torpedoes chase after the Good day but find no purchase when the freighter slows briefly only to zip into hyperspace and from view entirely. The glowing munitions keep traveling into the void, seemingly with no where else to go.
Poe closes the s-foils on his craft and sighs. <<"Well, that's a shame none of them listened to reason until the end. Good work, Black Squad. Finish scanning the area and let's return to friendly lines.">>
<<"Hardly a waste of effort, Testor - astrogation can project potential exit points - unless they utilize old Rebellion tactics to their fullest potential. Based on extrapolated maximum jump distance capable by their craft we can either find where they may be headed. If they do then jump to random direction afterwards it shall prove fruitless - but they attacked a venerated squadron of the New Republic and the Resistance before that. I doubt the excellence of their strategic acumen fully.">> Bors's long winded explanation finished while he continues to record numbers.
<<"Lead. Permission to pursue and recon?">>
<"Those old rebellion tactics are space pirate one-oh-one. Even if their jump distance was one light year, that's a year's worth of space travel between here and wherever they end up that would have to be searched. I'm telling you, it's a waste of effort. There's a reason following people through hyperspace is considered impossible. You have to guess, out of all the data points possible, which place they're going to exit hyperspace, and then hope that they don't have the two brain cells to rub together to jump again. The only way you could even begin to formulate some kind of educated guess is if you grab one of these Starchasers, drag it back to Chandrila, and download the navcomputer data to sift through to see where they've been. Fleet's going to tell you there's no sense in that. Mission success, time to go home.">
Toggling her s-foils closed, Jessika reactivates the snubfighter's dampeners and turns around, already beginning to use her own navcomputer to plot a course back to Chandrila and the Fleet above it.
Lofty leans back once the combat is done, turning around in a wide circle to plot a microjump back to Chandrila Prime. His old gunship is too slow for a good recon run anyway. He leans over to the screen of his GalStarTech system diagnostic filter and clicks the flickering menu from ENGINE THRUST to ARMAMENTS, checking to see if the laser cannons overheated. The diagnostic Aurabesh scrolls by and then shows a temperature graph.
<<No lie? I lost track of what you was saying after 'Testor', yeah?>> Ektor admits to Bors, shrugging, grinning and noting, << I DID hear 'we win, back to base' real good, though.>>
<"Testor's got a good idea there, Bors. We'll see if our squints can look at these wrecked fighters and find a common place they all visited or jumped from. Bound to find something we can act on. Your scan probably got their registry too; maybe we can bounce that off our directory of space ports."> Poe intones, slowing his craft to scan some of the wreckage.
