Log:Defiance Guild: The Oktos Nebula

The Oktos Nebula

OOC Date: March 8, 2017
Location: The Oktos Nebula, Hutt Space
Participants: Defiance: Jehni'va Cihn, Nyla Forr, Rheisa Dirleel, Kasia Ashkuri, Zhu Yan, Tarion Tavers, Sapphira Tavers, and Hex as GM

The short story: The Defiance team does some fancy flying, fancy fixing, and rescues a couple of damsels in distress.

The long story:

The Defiance Barter and Acquisition Guild exists to free slaves, and the newest target for doing just that has brought the DBAGs to a familiar region of space: the vast Oktos Nebula, here in Hutt Space. They've been here before, once -- the dangerous nebula downed a slave transport on a wild, unnamed planetoid, but somewhere in between the flesh-eating parasitic bugs and the flesh-eating gourds, the team noped out of there and left. In a slightly different corner of the nebula, the space anomaly's hazards shelter Troxel Station, a wretched hive of scum and villainy operated by gangs in close affiliation with the Hutts. Hex claims to have boots on the ground there and the intel was good: Four landing bays, four ships -- Mayhem, Redline, Hotbox, and Parallax. Each loaded up fast and stealthy with a shipment of slaves, the poor souls frozen in carbonite... but that does make it easier to transport large numbers of them. Totally useful for future trips, let's get our own carbonite freezing chamber, what could go wrong. The ships are are pulling away from the station, and Hex's voice appears over the comms of each ship. "Look alive, Defiance, we're gonna have incoming hostiles a long time before we're clear of the gravity wells, so you can't pull out the way you came in. You all got the coordinates through the asteroid field and the nebula," they'd be crazy to follow us! classic! "So pilot the best you can until you're clear for a jump. Keep your comms open and try not to die. Sapphira and Nyla, keep those birds in the air when shit goes wrong, and get ready to play hands-free help if Redline or Mayhem eat shit. Rheisa, if we crash into any planetoids, get ready to track us down and like skin some lizards for Jehn and Nyla if you're the ones that crash. Also try not to throw up, ok ka?"

The Hotbox is laid out (and handles) more like a fighter than a freighter; the cockpit seats three, each behind the other, and is equipped with a holoprojector system and goggles rather than pesky windows. Jehn looks like some half-mechanical, gangly insect where she sits plugged into the ship with a doofy grin. She, as always, has opted for simplicity and mild practicability: a navy jumpsuit (stained with grease and some pasta sauce) and a belt (with a sports knife thrust through it). "It'll be fiiiiine." She is promising for the hundreth time, reaching back to grip at the knee of the shorter woman behind her with one hand while the other plays across the controls. Something beeps a soft, agreeable affirmative. "Perfect way to test if any of the junk I tried on the engine actually reinforced anything." Reassuring. "You doin' alright back there, Rheisa?" An empty bag lies near the pilot's console. "You guys doing alright back there?" She comms back to the cargo hold. She doesn't get an answer.

"Birds?" Nyla demands, leaning forward to slap the comm button. "Are we going back to that trash planet?!" She lifts her shoulders and stares at the back side of Jehn's head with a frown. She grumbles and kicks out her heel. "I don't have a good feeling about this," she grumbles without bothering to say that aloud on the channel.

What's that now? Rheisa looks up and around at the voice seemingly overhead. For a second, she's forgotten that she already knows about ship com magic, startled away from her most recent staring session at the frozen faces of misery stacked up before her. She's not riding shotgun because although there's ROOM to do so, she may not be entirely trusted not to touch 'that'. Or /that/. Or anything. "Ka..." she says to no ears but her own, sighing a glum and slightly already nauseated expression back upon the carbonite cargo. Idle fingers pick at her harness instead as she leans into it - not comfortable, but favorable above squashing the rear headtail.

"So I'm free to crash if I want to?" Kasia asks Hex, smiling at him, but there is an underlying hint of uncertainty to all of this. This is crazy, going back to this place, this mission, the plan. It's all nuts, but then it wouldn't be a Hex plan if it weren't. She's decked out in pants today, and boots, and a shirt, and she even has a blaster on her hip. She's also got her hair done nice, and makeup on, so you know it's still her and not some evil clone spacemom instead.

In the Parallax, things are good. Tarion's in the pilot seat, dressed in his usual armored getup and happy not to have to do a lot of running on this 'easy mission'. There's more than just the one vertical chair in there so that Sapphira can see out the viewport if she wants to. If not, she's probably scurrying around somewhere looking fabulous in a dress while still getting stuff done somehow. The hunter doesn't understand it and he doesn't want to understand it. He's too busy running through a weapons diagnostic for the umpteenth time since they left Nar Shaddaa. "Sapphira, I just want you to keep one thing in mind if you start messing with my systems," he remarks to her, wherever she is, tapping at the small console before him. "/Maximum firepower./" The Firespray is almost custom-built for this sort of thing, although they had 'apprehending escaped and dangerous convicts' in mind rather than 'liberate frozen slave slabs,' but that's a minor detail.

The Redline was slower, but not by much, and less maneuverable, but not by much. Whether or not Yan had mentioned it drunkenly or people had been around for various repair mishaps, word had likely filtered through Defiance that the Redline was less of a tramp freighter and more of an assault gunship. Two heavy quads on the top and bottom, along with a hidden pop-out laser cannon in one mandible and a matching ion cannon in the other, combined with military-grade engines and armor plating that would make an Imperial blush meant that the Redline was a far harder target than the lack of paint and obvious rust made it out to be. And if all else failed, it carried enough blasters to outfit a small army.

Of course, all that made it twitchy as hell to fly, but Zhu Yan had long since gotten used to all the idiosyncrasies and various erratic elements. He flew as though he were behind the yoke of a TIE. His pilot's yoke, curiously enough, was in fact one from a TIE Interceptor. The Redline was moving in a casual weave, keeping his actual velocity low while his engines ran at higher power. Behind the elevated co-pilot's seat was Reddie, his Space-Jewish mother of a droid, happily (not) plugged into the ship and taking care of elements Yan might not be able to address straight away. "Exit vector punched in, weapons are primed, Reddie's slaved to the quads," Zhu Yan said over the comms in his best Space-Chuck Yeager voice. "Are we taking scores here? Fastest exit? Most kills?"

"Sir, yes sir!" Sapphira's chipper voice crackles over the comms. She's so excited she could pee. During the loading, she was rushing around, nearly trembling with the adrenaline of it all. Wearing a sleeveless purple sheath dress over a taupe blouse, brown leggings, and boots, she looks stylish yet efficient. The gun at her belt tends to help with the efficient side of things. Her bright red hair is braided over one shoulder as if making an attempt to hide that ugly bruise on her face. She's just climbed out from the nose of the ship where she'd been visiting the engines, and she's under Tarion's seat now, peering up at him. "Oh? I wish you'd said something sooner. We're /running/ with /slaves/ so I've already reverted all power to the engines." She grins mischievously up at him. She's lying, right? She's totally lying. Gotta be lying. That grin basically says a giant lie, right?

"Don't get fancy, Yan," Hex's voice comms, which should be assumed to be coming over all the ships' speakers unless specifically one ship only is mentioned. "We're just trying to keep alive 120 helpless frozen slavesicles, our friends here, and also Tarion Tavers." Beep, beep, beep, everyone's scanners, sure enough, are reporting incoming ships. A variety of small fighters and fighter-freighters like Broadstars and Maccrows, typical pirate rabble, engines hot. The DBAGs are vastly outnumbered. "Into the clouds, ai'jouku," Hex suggests, then switches off the comm and looks at Kasia, gesturing to the view screen and the colorful nebula looming large. "Listen, just in case we die, please appreciate how thoughtful it is that I picked somewhere scenic for it."

"C'mooooon!" Jehn croons back at Nyla with a laugh. She's in a good mood despite the looming asteroids, fighters, and cargo full of frozen and non-frozen sentients. "What could /possibly/ go wrong?" Grin, grin, rev, rev. Hex being extra reassuring over comms. "We can go to that pla- womp, here we go." The gimballing system engages as the HWK gets serious - the Hotbox zips out of range, doing a few very sexy rolls as Jehn plows them into the danger zone. This rabble aren't hitting anywhere near close to home, filling her with a deep sense of misplaced and overinflated confidence. "Goin' in." She announces over the comms at the edge of the danger zone before the Maccrow plunges into the nebula cloud. "Hold on back there, Rheisa. If Crona bothers you, tell her mommy loves her."

Nyla Forr sinks just a little at the sudden beeping and blaring of warnings. "What are you..." Nyla begins to ask Jehn but she's suddenly sinking back into her chair and holding on. "Kr--" she begins to curse, eyes blinking wide at the whizzing space around them. The noise Nyla makes is concerned, but honestly? It's mostly impressed. "See, Rhe?" Nyla pants, glancing behind her. "Told'ya Jehn was the best pilot on Nar."

Rheisa's death clutch on the harness is indeed 'holding'. Her throat bobs ominously as her tummy performs less sexy rolls and she slides a skeptical look sideways at the Anooba panting merrily beside in its own damn seat. Crona seems to be having a blast by comparison, but there's maybe a brief moment of understanding that passes between - a special sort of kinship between wild things, even if ONE of them is unnaturally adapted to this sort of space faring lifestyle. OH THERE IT IS: Rheisa swallows it down. Close call. With head tipped back to rest between arched shoulders, the Togruta does her best to breathe.

It's in those quiet moments that she hears it. *Drip.....Drip.....Drip....* Another glance confirms that Crona is NOT producing that dense of saliva. So what is? "Nahgi?" She questions aloud, looking as best she can from her rooted vantage point. Then she raises her voice like hollering's gonna send it through the same channels that Jehn/Nyla's travels over. "Jehn'va!!?"

Kasia listens to Hex as he speaks to the others over coms, and then as he shuts off the comms and speaks only to her. "I always appreciate your thoughtful moments," she notes, glancing over at him to smile again, if briefly. There are ships incoming, and things are about to get tense. "Though I'd like to point out that if I'm going to die, I'd rather it not be while looking at the world with the drug bugs that made me talk to a tree." The rabble may not be hitting anywhere near Jehn, but the Mayhem isn't quite so lucky, or maybe the pilot isn't quite as good, because pretty soon the entire ship shudders with an impact. "It's okay! It's okay! We're good!" she's assuring herself -- kinda loudly and at a slightly higher pitch -- as much as she's assuring the man beside her. Thankfully she manages to not get hit a second time. Yet.

There's a lot of ships. A /looot/ of ships, and a lot of them are shooting. One gets close enough to send a shot winging across the bow, sending a few warning indicators off on Tarion's control console. "Krif," he curses quietly, bumping the throttle up higher as they hurtle into the danger zone, first exit off the main highway. "Sapphira, can you take a look? It looks like we got hit on the starboard hull."

The Redline straightened out, the long strip of engine and the two additional boosters above and below flared a brilliant blinding blue, and the ship fired off at a speed literally one megalight faster than a Civil War-era X-Wing could hope to achieve. Who in the nine Corellian hells had installed those engines?! The crazed supposed-Corellian didn't even bother to count if any were following him. He was too busy BINGING ON SPEED. No laser blasts came anywhere near him as he dove into the field of chaos and Zhu Yan, being Zhu Yan, started laughing. The nebula and asteroids were blending in a manner most tricky and it was quickly becoming apparent that the crazed lunatic had opted to take the most dangerous route possible through the rocks! Reddie tried to bleat something at him but Yan just yelled, "I know the odds and I'm doing it anyway!"

There was a thunk from somewhere in the cargo hold and Yan questioned himself as to whether he'd tied those slaves down hard enough.

"Woop!" Sapphira makes a noise as she stumbles backward at the sudden acceleration in the ship. She bumps her back against the bulkhead, and then she's pushing off to run forward, to the nose of the ship where she can enter the bulkhead. She doesn't respond to Tarion, though he can likely hear her booted feet running as she disappears into the bulkhead. It only takes a few seconds for her to reach the terminal she's looking for, typing quickly with her eyes on the screen. She scans, scans, scans with those bright green eyes. Then she runs to the bulkhead access entryway, shouting back to Tarion. "We're good!" she reports.

Into the breach! The pirates fire a few more desultory shots after the fleeing DBAGs when they fly into the denser, more treacherous part of the nebula, but they peel off and don't follow. Some might be considering it, and a few of the smaller ships are darting in and out as though testing the waters, but perhaps the general consensus is that the hazards of space will finish off these thieving buttnuggets just as well as blaster fire will. Speaking of blaster fire, Hex makes a helpful "AAAAH!" at Kasia as they get hit, and then looks at the console in distress. "Ay we got hit, Nyla, blinky lights, what do I do about blinky lights?!" So specific. Meanwhile, poor Nyla might have some blinky lights of her own to contend with, as highly unexpected problems crop up aboard the otherwise pristine Hotbox.

The asteroids, meanwhile, are here, and NOW, and they're much less caring, much harder to avoid, than the pirates -- the pirates at least don't try to run into you, and there are fewer of them. Yan and Reddie know the odds... but everyone else can intuit the odds. NOT GREAT.

HOW CAN SOMETHING POSSIBLY BE WRONG ALREADY?! "...Was that Rheisa yelling?" Jehn asks belatedly, several moments after Rheisa had, indeed, been yelling. Are those blinky lights?! Not worrying about it - Jehn is much, much more worried about the asteroids.... Sorry Rheisa. The Hotbox twists, rolls, and ducks around the asteroids with frequent bursts of swearing from her pilot - wings unlocked and yanking them abruptly around space rocks. "Fu-!" Jehn throws herself against the controls and drops them into a sudden, steep, and aggressive dive to bring them out of the path of a particularly large one. They're alive! She can't attest to the integrity of their third crew member's stomach, though.

In the back, a content anooba - harnessed in beside the Togruta - leeeeeeans over to try and lick at a headtail.

Nyla Forr hears the concerns of Rheisa and fusses at her belt harness. "Hold on! I'll check it out!" she pants and scrunches her eyes closed, perhaps says a silent prayer, and pushes out of the seat to skid into the back. She grabs on to holds and grooves in the bulkheads as she moves, swinging hard against the wall with an 'oof'. Warnings are starting to warn of a coolant leak. "I dunno, Hex!" She says with her hand on the comm near the back door of the cockpit. "Put tape over 'em so you don't see them blink?" Nyla Forr has better things to worry about. She kicks off a floor panel and tips herself into the belly of the ship. It isn't too far before she spies the large, rubber covered tubing with a crack down it. No... not a crack, something /chewed/ it. "What in the flippin' nine moons of..." the mechanic mutters to herself before dropping to her knees and seals it up with some of the kapton tape on her. It starts to work and the sickly green liquid slows to a drip... and then stops. In the cockpit the warning beeps cease just in time for Nyla's voice to raise out of the hole. "JEHN DID YOU LET RATS LIVE ON THE SHIP AGAIN?"

Crona might have something worth licking off that headtail, now, but Rheisa isn't sparing the time to cleanup. She's sent more or less rolling out of her unbuckled seat by the sudden dive and resulting richochet of her flailing limbs against all bulkheads. Kriff.

"Jehn'va?" The question comes again a short time later, but from a /much/ closer, quiet range. Rheisa's standing there, beside the third seat, looking like a kid that's just wandered out of bed and into her parents' room at sleepy o'clock after being awoken by a surge of stomach flu. Her left hand reaches out to tug on a sleeve, just in case her looming and staring wasn't enough to distract Jehn away from Nyla's beratement about rats. "I hear water." Which is just kriffing fantastic, because maybe now she is going to drown in space, and on an emptied stomach.

"WE'RE OKAY!" Kasia assures Hex again, loudly, like somehow shrieking that will help calm his nerves. Hint: it won't. "There's something blinking?" She'd look, but then she'd have to stop concentrating on what she's doing, and she really doesn't want to do that. Especially not as more trouble commences in the form of asteroids. A sound squeaks out as the ship, under her command, lurches to one side, and then the other, which means they both narrowly avoid being shot, and miss an asteroid. "Hex, we need to work on your plans, because this is insane!"

"Just be careful you don't break a heel back there," Tarion advises from the pilot's seat, twisting a little in the chair to try to look back over his shoulder at Sapphira. But then he remembers there's pirates shooting at him, or something, and turns to face the front again, half-gloved fingers wrapping around the yoke. "Alright, let's do this thing," he mutters, mostly to himself. "I need a new hyperdrive." It's not a complaint, it's more like 'daddy needs a new pair of shoes' type of murmuring. The ship twists and weaves in space, using its stabilizer wings that in reality would do literally nothing in space to help it maneuver, while the on-board artificial gravity prevents Sapphira from being thrown around. It's pretty much an essential feature in a ship that rotates 90 degrees to land. The hunter brings the craft unnecessarily close to as many asteroids as possible, chuckling to himself at the view out the windscreen. "You know, I bet if we get closer we might spot some rare minerals on one of these rocks," he calls to his wife, pointing at a sparkly spot as they hurtle past. "See, that could have been- I don't know, /platinum/ or something!" Shiny. He wants the shiny. "Did you learn geology on Coruscant?" Oh right, flying. A sharp pull upward at the last moment brings the medium-sized ship careening over the crest of a small peak and past the asteroid in question. "-Or was the whole 'school' thing useless?"

Zhu Yan is a leaf on the wind. Hopefully not one of the kinds that gets speared out of the air by an angry bug or something. Whether or not the pirates gave chase was currently irrelevant to his state of serenity. Unless they wanted to eat him. That would be bad. "Reddie, be a dear and get me their comm frequency and encryption," said the uncharacteristically calm Yan. Weaving through rocks and detritus and having his vision obscured by the nebula was not causing the pilot any concerns.

Reddie made a blat noise at Yan, presumably some sort of insult about his parentage but which more accurately translated to 'Sure, you're gonna ask ya little droid to do all the work while you just fly around like a schmuck! I guess it's too much to ask for you to do your own hacking once in a while!' Damnit Reddie. Yan sighed. "Do you want me to do it then?!" he asked, his cool veneer dropping like a rock, and he read the words 'What, is my hacking not good enough for you anymore?!' on his little translation screen. He didn't need them. No one could mistake that angry beeping for anything else. 'I can't do it anyway. They got it locked down tighter than your beltline after lunch!' was the next comment to accompany the sarcastic beeping. With a grumble and a frown, Zhu Yan went back to the second-most difficult piloting of his life. Oy vey.

Just as Sapphira announces that they're all good ... they're not all good. The terminal begins to beep, and Sapphira turns and ducks back inside, typing a few more commands. The screen shifts, showing a schematic of the Parallax with a portion of the hull highlighted red. "Uhhh," Sapphira calls out. "We're mostly good," she reports. "Just uh ... slow down a sec will you babe?" Sapphira asks, and while Tarion chatters on and on and on about money. She's used to it now, so it just slides off her back like water off a feathered alien. But for now Sapphira is running insofar as she can in the bowels of the ship, moving along the inside of the bulkheads toward where the hull is damaged. In a few quick seconds, she unlatches another access panel, revealing wires and pipes. Sapphira sighs. "This is harder than in school," she mutters, and then she reaches through the wires to another panel, hitting a few switches and codes. The panel makes an angry beep at her, and Sapphira groans. "Just a minute!" she calls loudly to her husband.

Who says Hex can't follow directions! He can. He does. He's putting tape over the lights so he doesn't have to see them blinking. Then there's Kasia, gettin' all screechy and critical. "You don't like my plans? What do you mean you don't like my plans! Nothing has gone wrong!" Actually... "We just liberated 120 people who were gonna end up in slave agriculture on Nar Hekka! My plans are fine! There's nothing wrong with my plans! Why's that part of the asteroid field look like lightning?" Dense rocks. Dense clouds. And some kind of electrical storm going on inside it. It's beautiful... or it would be beautiful if they were all enjoying drinks on Raim's yacht a safe distance away. Which they are not. "Oh my god why do we listen to me," Hex despairs, then comms with a little less despair, "Hang on, everybody, we're almost there, ok ka!"

In the cargo hold of the Hotbox, an anooba happily laps up secondhand meat chunks, but back in the cockpit things are less peaceful. "THEY WERE IN CAGES!" Jehn grouses at Nyla with the exasperation of an argument that has been thoroughly exhausted. "And say what you will, they get a bad rap and are actually /very/ clean pet- WHA-!" With the goggles on, the pilot is completely absorbed in the holoprojection being fed directly to them eyeballs, and Rheisa's sudden proximity is terrifying. "Water? Nyla, what was wrong back there?" She has enough sense to assume the two things are related. "And seatbelts!" She whines at both the Togruta and smaller human. "We, uh...." Even through the goggle-view the storm is overwhelmingly beautiful and terrifying... And about to fuck them up. "...Seatbelts." Jehn's voice is a whimper now - and then they're hit. The crashes come in two quick successions, knocking once off one of their twin tails and again off the body of the fuselage. BLINKY LIGHTS. "Sorry!" She squeaks. "Nyla??" FIX PLZ.

"Water?" Nyla's voice floats up in question. "It was the coolant! I think!" Nyla reaches to grab onto the edge of the metal flooring to haul herself back up. "Can we just keep them in the apartme--EE AAHH!" They're struck. Seatbelts? Nyla don't need no seatbelts. Oh, did I say need? I meant have. There are no seatbelts in the ship's underbelly. Fortunately there is just enough room for the mechanic to start slamming around. Against pipes and valves and big instrument boxes. Nyla attempts to right herself. "I've... I've got it..." she mumbles woozily and moves to try and get the large connector that has gotten dislodged. Nyla grabs at it, falls over with the small concussion she likely has. The connector touches no-no metal. It's sparking and hissing and spitting. The lights flicker, warning bells scream, and Nyla has to haul herself up to shove the mental clasp in place, burning her left arm considerably. "Ooogg..." is her small noise of victory as the bells once again go silent.

Tazi spies with her little eye...a little poops. Tiny poops, to be precise. So while Nyla and Jehn hash it out, the regurging gruta stoops drunkenly to a knee and reaches out to poke at the ground with her finger. She then offers it up - with little black nugget balanced precariously there - to her betters. "It /is/ rrrat!" Rheisa positively beams, though her pro-vermin enthusiasm probably doesn't stem from the same origin as Jehn's. It's short lived though, because then Jehn's muttering something about seatbelts and she's suddenly in danger of joining Nyla in that hatch. Her right montral is left ringing with the impact of temple against bulkhead but at least that keeps her distracted from the would-be pain in her tongue. It oozes purple. When the rough ride smoothes out, she's still on her feet, barely, and bear-hugging the back of that third seat.

"Your plans are going to make me go gray," Kasia informs Hex, then pauses as she guides them around a series of asteroids that are just unpleasantly positioned, but she manages to get them through without a scratch. Another scratch. #killin' it. "I take that back," she revises what she said before. "It will make it not go gray, so you think about that, mister." She doesn't even notice that he put tape over the light, because she's too busy trying not to get them both killed. "There's-- what?" she asks. "Where?" She doesn't dare look for it just now, because she's trying to squeak by another asteroid, which she does, juuuuuuust barely.

"This is going far too well," Tarion comments even as his copilot informs him things are going less well than originally believed. The hunter spins the ship twisting and turning around asteroids and between space rubble, a giant Tetris piece on a cosmic board, but there's only so much you can do when it's as weirdly shaped as the Firespray, and eventually two or three rocks are unable to be avoided, at least by his moderately-capable hands. "Krif," he breathes as more warning lights and a soft siren start to chime. "Sapph, you're gonna need to finish up down there and come back up here," he warns her over the intercom.

"Okay, try it again and then play track twelv... hold on." Now y'all better cue up some Space-Metallica because Zhu Yan had just realized he was about to RIDE THE LIGHTNING. Ignoring Reddie's protests or corrections, he rolled the Redline away from the rocks he had been hugging and jammed the throttle forward as far as it could go, making a beeline for all the zaps. His blood was pumping! His heart burned with an awesome powwwweeeeer! He didn't know it, but as he plunged into the cloud of lightning, he was screaming.

The only way Yan could imagine to avoid the strikes was to watch his scanners for sudden bursts of ionization. He'd flipped his environmental scanners on was staring at his sensor board intently, looking for sudden anomalies and veering away from them as soon as the shocks manifested. What flecks of lightning he didn't avoid played across the shields of the Redline. The shields held, and Yan flew on like a god of thunder, willing the storm to be at his beck and call.

Of course, for the storm to be actually at his beck and call, he'd need to tell it to kill those pirates he still thought were chasing them. One doesn't talk to a storm. They're loud and boorish. But Reddie, working in terrified silence, had finally breached the encryption on the pirates' comm channel and was now transmitting a song to them. Loudly. Obnoxiously. In a manner most distracting. It would have been a lot (and I mean a LOT) more effective if they'd actually followed, but to no one's surprise, Zhu Yan hadn't been paying attention.

The sound of rocks hitting the Parallax while Sapphira is inside the bulkhead leaves the girl's ears ringing. She lets out a sudden, surprised cry as the sirens and alarms start going off. "What?" Sapphira shouts over the comm over the sound of all the alarms going off. Sapphira is focused now, her bare hands trailing along some wires that are sizzled and melted against the bulkhead. "That's not good," Sapphira mutters, but bypassing? That's something she can do. And she does, pulling a knife out of her dress pocket to cut and strip a few wires on either end of the burn. Then she routes them together, and most of the sirens go off. Footsteps. Magnets. Placed on the bulkhead to secure the damaged area on the outside. The last of the alarms cease. "Coming!" Sapphira shouts over the comm, and her feet carry her with heavy booted steps to bring her back to the bulkhead entry, ducking out, and finding herself beneath Tarion's seat. "What do you need?" she calls up.

Rats?! Normally, she would be all for finding them and keeping them and loving them forever - but desperate times. Ugh. Okay - they can fix this. They'll just need to acquire lothcats or... Eyebrow raise. They don't need lothcats: they have Rheisa. "Dammit." Jehn groans. "Can you and Crona do anything about that?" She asks the Togruta currently fingering poo poos. "And save one if you can?" They can, as Nyla suggested, keep it in the apartment. This is all pre-chaos. Post chaos, the pilot has something more pressing to worry about: the terrible sounds coming from ship and mechanic both. "/Babe/?!" She demands frantically through the comms. "Y'okay? Nyla?" Lightning crackles, surrounding them with a terrifying array of electricity. The Hotbox shudders as their electrical systems struggle, messing with Jehn's visuals. She yanks the goggles off and cranes a view out the little windows that the ship only has for that purpose - it's a rough ride, but they do make it out.

As soon as they are clear, Jehn stalls the ship and unbuckles and rushes to check on the rest of the crew - Nyla, all fuddup and burnt, get's priority. Mostly because she's fuddup and burnt, but also because she would murder her if she wasn't given priority, Jehn is sure.

Nyla is a little puddle of wooziness and burnt arm hairs. The smell, as you can imagine, is great. Her hair, still short but growing back slowly into it's usual ponytail length, is curled and crisped in parts of it. She's slumped down into the small hold with limbs curled up like a dead bug. "Hey," the short woman says up at the view of Jehn hanging above her. "M'okay. I just... I think I got electrocuted?" Nyla shrugs because this is obviously no big deal. She is smarting a large bump on the right side of her head. It's red and swell-y. "M'jus' gonna sleep." Sleep! The cure for concussions. How is Nyla still alive?

"Wha happef?" Rheisa complains around a freshly pierced tongue. Yeah, she's feeling it now. Like butter, that muscle, compared to the little vertebrae she's usually severing. Alarm reads plainly on her features whether you're fluent in Togruta or not. Paled lek stripes, zesty orange complexion, DILATED pupils...she's either really high or really scared. Considering her choice in airline, the former isn't entirely beyond possibility. Wicked fingernails retract from their deathgrip on the no doubt classy seat upholstery and she shakily backs up a half step to let Jehni'va by and shadows her every move. Including the logically concerned peek into the maintenance hatch. The rats, for this brief wink in time, are forgotten. Somewhere, the wire-munching bastards are toasting their extended life expectancy with cheekfulls of coolant.

"Just, uh, we got hit by some rocks or something," Tarion tells his mechanical engineer, being very scientific about what happened and glancing up toward the area of the ship that rocked when they got hit. The Firespray is floating in free space now, without pilots trailing them, and his eyes peer through the viewplate toward the others. "...Hex and Kasia, they're not with us," he notices aloud. "Kasia writes the checks. We're going back for them." Without waiting to discuss it with Sapphira, the hunter flicks the throttle back forward and leans the ship into an about-face.

Flooomph! Out of the storm and into open space shot the Redline, still moving at Jedi-Take-The-Wheel speeds. Zhu Yan was breathing heavily and locked into place on the yoke, not powering down until hyper-pilot mode subsided and he regained upper brain control. "Okay, okay, easing down, easing down," he said, pulling the throttle back and letting the Redline go to a reasonably sedate speed. Then and only then did he ping the scanners. "Okay. We're good, Hotbox is out, Parallax is out, no pirates and... no Hex." Next thing's next, he pinged the comms. "Y'all good out there? 'Cause we're one short and my fiery passion has worn off. I can use the slaves as beacons if we go b... oh we're going back." If anything, anything, speaks for Yan's apathy towards the cause, that sentence is it. Good thing Hex is out of comms range! "Whatever." He brought the Redline around in a loop and started following the Parallax back into the DAYNJAH ZHOONE.

"They're not with us?" Sapphira asks. It seems like she's not about to argue with him about going back to get the boss and his wife. Not in the least. Sapphira instead moves to take a seat and, with the depression of a button, the seat moves up to the cockpit, beside her husband. "Is there anything on the scanners? Where could they have gone?" They could have hit and asteroid and been pulverized. That's the answer.

So they're going back for their bosses, which is actually really nice of them! Time to chart a course. Tarion is like welp..... CERTAINLY IS A NEBULA. Jehn can calculate a way through that has fewer asteroids, given their likely location now. Smarty pants Yan can not only chart a fewer-asteroid course, but can make some calculations that suggest based on gravity and science and maths that probably Reddie is doing, the Mayhem likely got pulled towards the planet, if the asteroids didn't explode it on impact. For the sake of moving quickly, your power hungry GM decrees you're thus following Redline toward the nearest planetoid. It's not the same one as the gourd planet from before. But it might still have gourds...

Looking down at Nyla, Jehn groans and lowers herself down into the guts of their ship. "Hun." She rumbles, shaking her head and trying to haul the smaller, lighter, easy to carry mechanic out of the hatch. But it's Jehn, so she fails. "Nyla got electrocuted." She calls back up to Rheisa in answer, the deep frown evident in her voice. Jehn taps back into the ship-to-ship coms. "Hey Kasia?" Because always run to mom when something is wrong. "Is a standard medkit going to help with -" There isn't any feedback from the Mayhem. She tries again. "Kas?" Nothing. "Hex? Mayhem, come in." Nothing. "Crap." She stoops, stroking at Nyla's cheek. "Don't fall asleep, we have to go save our boss's asses. Kasia is probably fine, but I'm going to need you functional to pull Hex's green cheeks out of the trashfire. Then you can sleep, I promise." Helplessly, she looks up at the Togruta. "We're going back into the nebula, can you...?" She nods at Nyla. Please help her fried girlfriend, savage grasslands lady.

Back into the nebula they go, not as boss at astrogate as Yan but at least she's better than Tarion.

Nyla Forr groans and tries to bat Jehn away. "M'fine," she says with a wince. "I just... need to lay off the doughrolls." Her hand flumps onto her belly which, yes, does have a small pooch to it. "So many doughrolls." When Jehn is forced to leave from the lack of Mayhem's response, concern touches her own face. "Hex's butt is green too?" The thought had never occurred to her. It's enough to get her interest and she half pulls herself out of the hole. "How do you know that??"

Help? Rheisa looks down at the slightly sizzled girl, then to Jehn's departing backside. "Ahm noth dahkta," she warns fairly before gingerly squatting at the edge of Nyla's den of misfortune and peering inside. It's a tight fit down here, with two adults, but she's a master of spatial navigation and efficiency. Thankfully, this theory need not be tested, because Nyla pops her own head up and out like a little tazitaka'a. For lack of knowing what /else/ to do, she plants her weight (butt) down and offers an arm to the smaller woman. "All elth ith this colah," she answers sagely in Jehn's place, because as the one responsible for his drumweller harp player costume...she knows. "Why wooth be noth?"

"I'm not sure," Tarion replies, relying heavily on the computer to track the course through the nebula as he slips the Parallax behind Yan's ship to depend on the other man's calculations as well. Consensus, tally ho. "Hopefully not like, you know, pounded into a million pieces by an asteroid," he hopes aloud, paying most of his attention to preventing the same fate from befalling his own ship. "That'd be bad. I don't think Hex has had time to add me to their will yet. I know he views me as a son, or at least an annoying younger brother."

"Honestly they probably just got pulled towards the other, not-gourd planet," explained Yan over the comm, saying it in a manner that sounded like he was completely pulling it out of his ass. Of course he said this while looking at the sensor board that was filled with anomalies and asteroids and all other things that Yan had been documenting during his mad flight. Automatically. By sensors. One cannot document whilst hopped up on bloodlust. But it was certainly helpful now!

"Tune your sensors to look for ionization and you'll see where the lightning is about to hit," he continued to advise. "Tell your ship computers to scan and calculate asteroid trajectories and you should get a clear map." Why wasn't he doing this over comm when they made their mad dash? Oh right. Bloodlust. He couldn't see the planet for the nebula, but his sensors said it was coming up fairly soon. "Take it slow and steady and we got this."

Tarion hasn't searched for a heat signature. So Sapphira does, her fingers moving deftly over the computer keyboard. This feels more like school. And after a moment or two of typing, there's a gentle beep. "There," she tells Tarion, giving him a little nudge with her elbow and pointing with the same hand at the screen. "But it's weak. Really weak. If it were up and running, it wouldn't be that weak." But it's time to take initiative. FOR ADVENTURE!

"Hello," Sapphira says sweetly over the comm. "It's Sapph. So there's a weak heat signature in a swamp down on ... what planet is that? I can't get this thing to show me the label. But that one there, to the right. Tarion, can you send the coordinates for this swamp to everyone? That'd be super, dear, thank you." Yup, everyone gets to hear that.

One of the benefits of swamp, and by benefit I mean not particularly a benefit, is that it obscures visibility. Mist, foliage, water, more foliage, SPACE BEES THAT SHOOT OUT OF KASIA'S EYES, there are lots of things in the swamp to provide cover. However, the three searching-ships can probably be slightly cheered by the fact that they haven't spotted a Mayhem-shaped crater as they enter atmo and draw close to the place Sapphira identified as a likely source of the heat signature. There is in fact a slightly more open stretch through the trees that might be where a TWINK PILOT WHO SHOOTS SPACE BEES FROM HER EYES could direct a ship with minimal power on its way down. There's a soggy meadow not far for landing the other 3 freighters, and this seems like the best place to search.

"Because his face is green and I like to assume that the ass to face color ratio is pretty even." Jehn answers before tapping back into ship-to-ship. "Thanks, Yan! We're doing that now." She turns. "Nyla are you able to do that?" Apparently she is, because the beautiful data stream keeps them well clear of lightning. Even with a concussion, she killin' it. "Planetoid, swamps, got it." There better be some fucking gourds. "This is Hotbox, coming in for a landing." She chatters at the other two freighters. "I'm sure they're fine." That reassurance is to those on the Hotbox. "It's Hex and Kas, they'll be fine... He'll be claiming everything is 'ok ka' while she shoots... Space bees out of her eyes or whatever it is she does." Squish! They land.

Nyla Forr struggles out of the whole, grabbing onto Rheisa to avoid falling back. "Thanks," she says weakly. "I mean, I guess it /would/ be, but..." She's distracted. With a nod to Rhe Nyla starts a wobbly march back to her seat and flops down, wincing and curling her burnt arm to her side. "I can do that," she says simply and then does it. Quite well, she might add. Then the girl is quietly reaching for the clipped in canteen and groaning lightly to herself. "Do you see them?"

Oh, look. A swamp. It's savage grasslands landy's 'favorite' terrain. Rheisa glowers out the viewport over the top of the humans' seated heads before turning her back on all the flashing sensors and pacing aftward into the hold. She does the decent thing and unclips Crona's seatbelts so the canine can at least whiz in comfort on some poor carbonite-struck person while they're out. Without a word, she strikes the 'lemme out' button to lower a ramp/ladder/whatever and escape the vessel ahead of the gang once they've landed. If they didn't notice her exit then, they soon will when the 'gruta materializes from some swamp fog in front of Hotbox and gazes blankly ahead with a gentle, rhythmic sway of her head. Either Nyla's not the only one who's concussed, or....one arm uplifts to point northwestward.

"Hey, a swamp!" Tarion's voice comes ringing over the comms, bright and cheerful as he swings the yoke of the ship toward the wet, marshy area below. "This reminds of that time everyone wanted to leave me to the mercy of space pirates and I got some fancy-dance ammunition I'll never need," he remarks to Sapphira, with a wide grin. "If they're on this rock, they'll be in the swamp. They call to Hex's spirit where he keeps it shoved down in the toe of his left lekku." The hunter sets the ship down after it's little rotate-y deal, deploying the exit ramp as he hops out of the seat and collects his rifle on his way out. "Come on, Sapph. I want to be the first one they see and solidify my spot in the will."

Zhu Yan carefully pierced the atmosphere of the planetoid and made his way towards where the Hotbox and Parallax were touching down. But, unlike the other two ships, the Redline hung in the air in the exact same way that bricks don't. "Reddie, atmos scan please," he asked his droid quietly, who beeped an annoyed acknowledgement and started the scans. "I'll keep the search going from the air. Astromechs aren't good for rough ground." Yan watched out the viewscreen to see Rheisa point a direction, then he looked in that direction, and as a result the Redline drifted slowly in that direction.

Sapphira almost falls out of her seat in a hurry to get out of her seat and follow Tarion. "I'm sure they're fine," she tells the man, in a voice full of emotion. Tarion may joke, but Sapphira is SURE he really cares. She BELIEVES it. And that's what matters. "But I'm with you," Sapphira assures the man, and indeed and infact she is.

"Hey." With the ship landed, Jehn pushes herself upright and turns to possessively examine her tiny mechanic. Face in hands: turn, turn, kiss to forehead. There's a medkit in the cockpit (say it three times fast) and she may not know much about healing, concussions, or absolutely anything - but there's a little tube of bacta spray that she can put on the burn that might maybe sort of help things? Whatever, she'll try.

Her hackjob medical care complete, an arm is offered out for the less-than-steady co-pilot. "Let's see what fresh hell awaits." Jehni'va snatches the empty bag from the floor on their way after Rheisa. "C'mon, Crona! This might almost be familiar. No! Please don't pee on th- oh god." Sorry. Outside, Jehn doesn't spot anything. She is able to navigate the mud without falling and eating snails (though she might pocket one), but she definitely looks stupid coming up the encampment. She struggles, she slips to the bottom, she bumps someone's ass, and makes it up last. The anooba rushes past her to 'boof' at the ship; she's pretty at home in this miserable place.

"Yaay hell," Nyla says in a chipper voice, wincing at the tingling burn of the bacta spray. She flexes her fingers but the skin is still raw so she leaves it. "Gimme those pain packs," she says, but grabs them, rips them open, and downs them herself. Nyla pushes out of her chair and grabs her blaster, sliding it into the loop on her belt. The mechanic is a little distracted but she has no issue scrambling up the embankment and she's to the top first. Well, after Crona, of course. She looks back to Jehn, frowning slightly as the others start to gather as well. Nyla reaches to scratch Crona's ears. "The heck are you all waiting for?"

The Mayhem lived up to its name, crashing through these already soggy, bent trees and mucky earth. Like a fast-healing wound though, the swamp is already covering the Ashkuri's tracks. Fortunately, some uncivilized eyes can still recognize the disturbances for what they are without the boon of tech. Rheisa waits patiently for the others to catch up noisily before pressing on along to firmer terrain. It's not like she has a choice though, because she herself has stumbled twice into patches of knee-deep sludge and became pseudo stuck. The rocks aren't any more friendly, but her bare toes do find a solid purchase as nimbly as her fingers and up she goes. Blast and wermbugger and krif. So many new words she's learned this past year and all can be aptly applied! She's paused to inspect a mean jab of thorn in the sole of her foot when A sudden slither of motion in her peripherals warrants a second glance. "Tog'na ki?" she queries to self, pulse quickening with instinctive fear and draws her knife. It moved like a snake, she was sure of it! But it is not snake. Curious, she edges nearer while the Anooba races on past, and gives the unknown foliage a cautious poke with the blade's tip to see what poisons seep out. Was this the thorn bearer?

Where is Kasia? Well, she's still inside the ship, which isn't in little bitty ship bits that would indicate a much worse outcome for those aboard the Mayhem. At least those that aren't frozen in carbonite. Maybe for those too, who knows. "I've unlocked the emergency hatch, and opened it long enough to make sure it could open," she tells Hex, sitting in the cockeyed pilots seat. "I didn't want to leave it open, though, because who knows what is out there." And she doesn't want to find out, she knows it's nature, and that's enough. "Things are fried though, and I don't know how to fix them. Hopefully they'll find us, but if not, I'm honestly not sure what we can do at this point." A pause. "This might be our worst date yet."

"This might be our best date yet," Tarion is telling Sapphira as he scrambles up the rocky embankment, ass still dripping green slime from his tumbles in the swamp, his G8 rifle hanging on his back ready to test that reliability claim if any danger presents itself. When he clears the top, he tromps right past Rheisa's little inspection time, moving in the same general direction the painted lady was with the vague assumption that she's probably at least right about which way they should go. "We flew, and we're getting paid." All good things. The Mayhem is up ahead, but Hex isn't outside trying to pry it out of the mud yet. Weird. "Hex! Kasia!"

Zhu Yan sure felt real cozy up here, where the air was recycled and the seats were genuine imitation leather. He drifted over a suspicious gap that was in the trees, serving as a general beacon above as to where the Mayhem had crashed. Or landed. Or whatever. That was, assuming anyone could see through the canopy. He carefully eased the Redline on repulsors over and above that little clearing and was happy to see the sight of metal. He dialled up the comm again, not knowing whether or not he'd be audible. "Hello ladies and gentlemen, for ten percent off market price for airfares you too can save! Flights to Anywhere Else from This Godforsaken Rock on sale now at Zhu Air." At least if his comm message wasn't heard, the Redline hanging a couple hundred feet above them would be visible.

Sapphira is ... behind Tarion. A lot behind Tarion. Twice she goes ass-over-teakettle down the embankment, rolling in mud and algae. So when she does finally come up for air, she's literally gasping. No one can tell that she's bruised, because her face is just caked in mud. Her red hair is brown. Her pale skin is brown. Her dress is brown. It's a nice coat. C'mere, Tarion. Give us a kiss. She pauses to look up at the Redline hovering overhead, and then she starts to jog, catching up behind Tarion in a few steps. "I fell," she reports to her husband. He'll be able to tell she says it because there's a gap in the mud when she opens her mouth to talk. "Are they out here?"

Hex is picking himself up off the floor, where he went ass (it's green) over teakettle into the hard and unyielding structures of the cockpit. "Witchtits," he hisses, holding his arm at a weird angle, "Reckon I've dislocated my shoulder, nonna, it hurts like hell. And I bashed up my lekku, which might actually hurt worse. We're not dead though, which... honestly is pretty amazing, really. Nyla has the worst ideas of what to do for blinky lights, tape didn't fix it at /all/." He draws a breath, lets it out, owww pain oww. "This isn't worse than the date where we went skinny dipping on D'Qar and then I threw up on you. That was worse." Then his lekku perk up, very slightly. Ow. That hurts too. "I hear a ship! And hollering..." A moment later, from the outside, he can be seen gimpily crawling out of the emergency hatch, stepping out onto the top of the ship so Kasia can exit after him. "Hey!" he calls over the sound of the Redline, "You came back for us, and you found us!" He peers back towards the hatch, "Babe, none of them ate shit and died or killed each other in the five minutes we were gone! Gods, I'm so proud, I'm gonna cry." Sniffle. Actual sniffle. "We're okay, little bit banged up, ship needs some help to get back in the air but it ain't broke."

Jehn finally hauls herself up the embankment and joins her teammates, just in time to see... YES. At last! It isn't the Mayhem that has her excited - it's the vegetation. A fist tightens around the empty bag as she slinks in behind Rheisa and stuffs a few gourds into the bag. Casual. Nothing to see. Ahem. She falls into step with Nyla and their anooba just as Tarion starts hollering and Hex soon makes his appearance. "There's still time." She reminds their jolly green boss, eyeing the ship with a sigh. They got this. The gourd sack is tied and passed to Nyla.

Nyla Forr turns, hand lightly on her blaster. She smiles as she spies Hex and misses Jehn stuffing gourds in her... whatever. "Huh?" Nyla blinks as she's handed a sack. "What's this? Supplies? They've only been here for a few minutes, Jehn." She squints her eyes up at the taller girl. "C'mon. Let's go see if we can help." And Nyla starts to plunk on down towards the Mayhem with a sack full of dangerous squash in tow.

"KO!?" Rheisa shouts, narrowly evading capture as the vine retaliates with a reflexive curl 'round her wrist. "Dunga leh!" Like the nervous creature she is, the woman hisses and flexes those headtails into an immediately bigger, bolder profile. Yeah check out /these/ guns, plant. Yeah! She doesn't know what it is, but she DOES know she doesn't like it. A low note carries well into her next sentence as she feels Jehn move in and glances around in time to see a bit of gourd disappear into sack. "You eath this?" she gestures with mild contempt at the crazy plant. Because why else would she be harvesting...

Not too much time's spent worrying over the matter though, because the commotion ahead alerts her to their success. Mayhem found! As reward to self and also because the rumbling stomach commands it, Rheisa plucks a few snails from the slick rocks when finishing the ascent and pops a couple between teeth for slurping. Hex's declaration of pride may have been premature. Maybe.

"Poor ka're," Kasia doesn't appear to be hurt. Like at all. She might be Superwoman, or like that dude from Unbreakable. She moves to try and assist him to the emergency hatch, and then out of it as much as she can without actually hurting him worse, and then she follows. There is a relieved exhale as he sees people, and then she hears them as well. "Things are broken in there," she hollers to the people, most of whom she can't see yet. "I don't actually know what, except that things won't come on, and there is a burny kind of smell in there, which I expect isn't a good thing." But they're alive and mostly well -- Poor Hex -- and that's a good thing.

Kasia Willis in there comes popping out of Mayhem behind Hex, and Tarion just grins up at the two, happy to see Kasia alive and well. And Hex. "We saved you!" he calls, pulling Sapphira over next to him so that he can do that heroic sort of stance with a pretty lady on one arm, but it's not as effective as that time right after Kasia got shot in the butt and they drove off a pack of demons together, what with the mechanical engineer half of the duo covered in mud like she is. "...don't fall on the way back," he whispers to her, helpfully.

No response. Comms must be dead. That had to be it. The alternative was that people were ignoring Zhu Yan and that just doesn't happen. He couldn't see jack sithspit from up here!

"I'll do my best, sweetheart," Sapphira promises to Tarion. She's stuck to his side for the heroic pose, but already the redhead-turned-mudhead looks concerned beneath the filth. "How bad is it? Your ship I mean," Sapphira looks over as others make their appearance on the ridge. "I can take a look ..." she offers. But as Jehn is already making her way there, she gets priority for said look. Also she's still held against Tarion for his heroicness.

Hex's comms are dead. "Toss me a short range unit," he instructs Nyla because SHE'S NOT HERE I CAN DO WHAT I WANT lolol and he takes it up to queue up Zhu Air. "Yan, you here to rescue me? Us? Did you ever know that you're my hero? Can I have your babies? Oh. It's on... I didn't know it was on yet. Hi Yan. We're alright, ok ka, girls are gonna fix the ship and we'll get out, if you can pick people up mid air, people might like a ride back to the ships out of the mud." A pause, then one corner of his mouth curls up in a smile, and to the comm and the group on the ground, Hex says with what miiiight be pride in his team, "Bonuses for everybody."