Log:Explorer's Guild: Tangle Over Tatooine

Explorer's Guild: Tangle Over Tatooine

OOC Date: December 6, 2017
Location: Tatooine
Participants: Explorer's Guild: Corr Waldin, Sar Yavok, Sapphira Solari, and Special Guest Appearance by Trillian Taim

"Because there's krayt dragons on Tatooine and Vraag, that Mandalorian, wants us to help him hunt one," Corr explains, strapped firmly in one of the seats in the cockpit as they exit hyperspeed, the purpley tube around them fading and suddenly replaced by long streaks of white as the planet comes into view, all brown and shades of brown. "Set a course for Wayfar station, Sar, that's Krayt territory."

As Corr is saying this, their comm channel starts to beep as they are hailed by another vessel. <<Nar Shaddaanian YT-1300, state your callsign and intended destination,>> a mechanical voice instructs.

"Wait... Krayt dragons? Aren't they... really... like big and ferocious and... mildly dangerous?" Trillian nervously gnaws on a fingernail. She's been fangirling all over the cockpit of the Dusty Jawa, interfering with Sar's piloting and generally drooling over the consoles. As the ship reverts to realspace, she manages to find a spare seat to strap herself in. Behind her, her black and green R2 unit warbles sullenly. She turns her head to admonish the small droid. "Marv, hush. I don't think Director Waldin cares if you have a bad feeling about anything." Trillian turns back to Corr, apologetically nodding.

Sapphira strapped herself in for the exit from hyper, and she sat there and knitted through it while it happened, her needles clicking methodically together. She's wearing a long, loose tank top and fitted pants for Tattooine, as well as a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun from her delicately pale, freckled skin. At Vraag's name, that face screws up in an unpretty snarl. "Kriffin' dragon'll eat him if I have anything to say about it..." the girl grumbles, apparently still bitter about the whole 'beat up and robbed' thing.

Sar Yavok lurches forward a bit as the ship dips back into RealSpace(TM). "You ever hunted a Krayt before, Waldin?" Sar asks, tapping something into the navigation computer. "Because I saw the way you nearly pissed yourself when you saw that acklay. Acklay's are appetizers for a Krayt dragon," Sar explains, sitting back in his seat and throttling up. <<This is Captain Yavok of the Dusty Jawa II, on a course for Wayfar. Over,>> he says into the comms. "Weird. Don't often get a lot of hails this far in the Outer Rim," he thinks to himself.

"I know you got history with Vraag, Sapphira, but I'm gonna have to ask you to be civil on guild time," Corr remarks sourly, not wanting to get into that whole snit again. "Just wait, Mandalorians don't usually live long. Course that's what they said about Sar and me too." They're so old.

<<You will hold your position,>> the computerized voice commands, <<and prepare for boarding. We will be inspecting your cargo for invasive species.>>

"Where is this joker? Tatooine doesn't give a shit what gets lose on their sand," Corr points out, glancing around at the more tech inclined folk.

Trillian turns to one of the consoles and starts typing some commands into it. "I'm picking them up on the sensors. They're behind us, and closing. I'll try to see if I can see if their transponders are legit." Trillian turns to the R2 unit and taps it on the round dome. "Marv, make yourself useful. Plug in and run a query against the known planetary defense force transponder codes." The R2 unit bounces back and forth on it's two legs in annoyance, but rolls forward with a dataplug outstretched.

Sar Yavok grunts and says over comms, <<Soon as you transmit some proof of authority, I'll comply. Until then, I've had enough run-ins with pirates to know this game. No offense.>> A look over at the rest of them and he says, "If one of y'all wants to see about making your way down to the quad turret, that might be a good idea."

Sapphira flushes unhappily, and the look she sends to Corr is ... well it's not a good one. She lowers her head, however, and turns away, and perhaps it's the hate-blood pounding in her ears that makes her miss the suggestion from the man in charge. So she sits there, folding up her knitting and stowing it away, before she realizes she's supposed to be doing something. "What? Oh." She looks to the panel nearest her. But before she can act, it's already coming up. She looks back to Sar, shaking her head a little at the quad turrent. "I wouldn't even know how to use that thing," she confesses, glancing once at Corr. Her look glowers a bit. "Sorry, sir." She's so inept!

<<Prepare to be boarded or we will open fire,>> the electronic voice instructs flatly, clearly some sort of automated message. <<You have thirty seconds to indicate that you will comply.>> Corr just looks around, strapping himself down a bit further. "I don't suppose any of you are good at turrets?"

Trillian looks a bit nervously at Corr and Sar, and then at Sapphira. "I'm passable on turrets... but Sar, I assume you're a better shot than I. I can take over the helm if you want." Trillian unstraps herself from the seat, and crosses over to take Sar's place at the controls. Letting the more experienced explorer pass her by, she slips into the seat and quickly buckles herself in. A giddy smile crosses Trillian's face as she settles her hands on the YT-1300 controls. "Uh... hang on tight, guys." Trillian calls out, as she banks left, and then jukes right, the agile ship flipping around in response. Trillian lets out a whoop of excitement. "Sar, your ship can really move!"

"Fuck this. Taim, take the stick," he says, standing up from his seat and sliding out of his jacket. He throws the coat to Sapphira and says, "Hold on to this," before moving back down the corridor. Reaching the turret access ladder, he slides down and takes his seat, taking a minute to get used to the switch in gravity because upside-down suddenly feels like right-side-up. He buckles in and grabs the headset hanging from the hook near the control pannel. Sliding it on, he then sets to work powering the big guns up. Gripping the controls, he swivels his chair (along with the barrel of the gun, you know like in Star Wars) and presses down on the firing nubs. Pew pew pew. A flurry of shots fire in the general direction of their pursuer with only a few of them smacking into the enemy's shields.

Sapphira is once again magically ready for the jacket, and she catches it from the man, slipping it on over her own clothes easily enough. It's too big, but hey, at least it's safe, right? Looking away from Corr but still flushed with anger, Sapphira's fingers begin to move easily over the switches of the radar and comms, scanning and locking in on their new stalker and pushing the readings toward the turret for Sar's use.

The scanners now show, under Sapphira's expert guidance, that not one ship is out there, but three Weequay pirate ships. Bigger than fighters, smaller than freighters, and almost definitely not friendly. "There's three of 'em," Corr advises down to Sar over the shipboard comms, putting on a shiny headset to keep in touch. "Coming up on our tail."

It's true, all of it. A trio of bogeys coming in hot, spewing laser cannon fire at the Jawa as Trillian twists and turns the ship around out of its way. "Can you boost the shields, or get Sar a better lock?" That's for Sapphira.

Trillian straightens out the ship's course, flaring the engines to full and taking advantage of the Jawa's incredibly speed to put some distance between them and the pirates. "Sar, gonna' give you another pass at them. Marv, see if you can help Sapph with the radar locks." Trillian twists the controls around, and the Jawa curves upwards, flipping back over and headed straight back to the pirate ships. As she guns the engines forward, she starts rotating to give the turrets a longer window of time facing the targets. "Sar... where are the controls for the forward lasers?" Trillian asks into the headset, looking around the unfamiliar console.

"They're on the stick! It's custom!" Sar shouts into the comms because, well, turrets are loud. He fires again and one of the ship's shields fail. The power surge also leads to the enemy vessel leaving a nice little smoke trail. "Taim! Take us into atmo! We can outrun 'em down there, if you're any kinda pilot!"

Sapphira, still wearing Sar's jacket, is flipping switches above her head when Corr speaks to her. "Already done, sir," she reports back, and indeed by the time she finishes giving him what may or may not be lip, lights are flashing green and Sar will find the tracking mechanism has been smoothed with a burst of data downloaded from the ship's main computers, sent in a pretty bowed package by Sapphira herself.

"I hate flying," Corr mutters, strapping himself down tighter as the ship maneuvers around.

Behind, the pirate ships are hot on Trillian's tail, but she's pulling moves they clearly aren't expecting, darting past underneath the YT before rolling back up around after them, not able to get back on target quickly enough to even bother firing.

"Roger that, Sar. Everybody hold onto your stomachs... It's not going to be pleasant when we hit the atmos at this speed." Trillian reaches up, flipping several switches and hitting a few buttons on a side console before grabbing the stick and twisting it towards the looming, angry orange orb of Tatooine. "There may be a brief feeling of discomfort when the gravity hits us..." Trillian smiles weakly at Corr and then guns the engines while continuing to corkscrew, giving the pirates a smaller profile to fire at.

Sapphira flips a few more switches, typing in a quick command into the little screen in front of her ... just before the corkscrewing begins. Though she's strapped in, she grips the sides of the console all the same to try and keep her stable. She stays stable ... but her knitting goes flying. "No no no!" She yells, reaching up for the project as it flails above her head toward the ceiling. But she misses, and it's sent spiraling around the cockpit, needles and all.

Sar Yavok is, at heart, a Corellian fighter pilot that just so happens to be really good at beating people up and shooting them with smaller guns, too. But Corellians don't practice shooting turrets. That's someone else's job. And that's what he's thinking to himself as he has the devil's own time trying to hit anything while the ship goes round and round.

The way this is going, they're just all going to land together and hug and make up, right? Wrong, the Weequay pirates are once again taken by surprise by Trillian's flying, and the one Sar took the shields off of is promptly trashed by a strafing barrage of the Jawa's forward cannons, throwing debris and smoke everywhere as the remaining ships all plummet to the surface. The pirates don't bother with any fancy spinning, pushing their ships to try to keep up with the modified YT, and a spritzing of laser fire blooms the shields at the back of the larger craft, rocking the passengers and sending Sapphira's knitting flying. "Boost the shields!" Corr yells. "Rear shields! I don't want to die off the ground!"

Trillian aims the Jawa down at an incredibly steep descent, hitting the outer atmosphere and slicing through like a laser through rhyscake. However, as the pirates close behind them, Trillian feels the stick shake as the Jawa encounters upper level thermals. "Hang on to something!" she shouts, taking advantage of the thermals, and the unique shape of the YT-1300, flipping the round ship up, cutting the sublight engines and letting the thermals push the ships unexpectedly back behind the pirate ships. As gravity catches up to the YT-1300, she slams the nose back down, reigniting the engines with a throaty roar, and squeezing the triggers on the stick. Trillian is proud of the maneuver, but as her stomach catches up with her, she does look decidedly a little green. Shooting a turret is hard, okay? The ship continues to buck and sway in response to the attacks on its shields and Trillian's ace manuevering. So, of course Sar misses the attacking vessels. A nearby mynock gets fucking smoked, though.

Sapphira is really trying to get those shields up. She's really trying. But as she's yanked upward, then to the side, then downward again, she just can't reach that final switch. She's straining, straining, straining to get there. Her finger even brushes the top of it, but not with enough pressure to depress it. "I can't reach it!" She yells back at Corr, her voice sounding just a leeeeeettle aggressive.

Don't worry, Sapphira, the pirates aren't shooting us from the rear anyway, thanks to Trillian's maneuver. They're now at our front. They've been tailing doggedly behind, trying to take down the wily smuggler-appropriate ship, but when she twists around to face them head-on, the pirates open fire, trading a quick salvo with the Jawa before they both pass each other. Heavy hits to the Jawa's shield and klaxons sound in the cockpit. "TURN THEM BACK ON!" Corr shouts at the little redhead, pointing at what he hopes is the shielding array's bank of wires, because those wires are now sparking something crazy. It's a fair trade, though, as one of the pirates is now outright on fire, flames springing up from the place they've vented his heatshield and the friction of the atmosphere.

Why is Corr so mean, everybody? He's so mean. Shouting at little redheads and all. Though eventually, little redheads shout back. "I'M TRYING!" she roars angrily at her boss, though if he'll be her boss after this little escapade is anyone's guess. Sapphira sits all the way back in her seat and then lunges forward, which gives her enough momentum to reach and flick the switch before the belt yanks her body back. There's a hum up above as the shield reangle to protect them from the next onslaught of blaster fire.

"WELL TRY HARDER," Corr yells back, strapping himself down tighter with the restraints from one of the other chairs, but then something seems to hum into life. "GOOD JOB."

"Rest in peace, little fellah," Sar says of the mynock that's now descending upon the desert below in a hundred or so chunks. Back to business. "He swings the turret around and bites his tongue as he presses the nubs again, sending big ol' blaster bolts into the hull of the wounded pirate craft. Kersplooey!

With a teeth-rattling shake, Trillian squeaks and grabs the stick with both hands, fighting the Jawa as it takes hit after hit. "Sorry! My bad!" Trillian apologizes, gaining control over the ship again. She slaps a button on the console, and fans start venting the acrid smoke. "I think I may have lost some maneuverability on that last pass guys." Trillian looks over at a panel and hits a few buttons to reroute power from damaged circuits. "We need to end this soon. I don't know how much fuel we have left." Dogfighting is hell on sublight engines. Trillian looks back at the console, and holds a finger up. "Ok... if I was Sar Yavok, and I wanted to launch a missile... where would I.... oh, I bet it's this." Trillian hits a shiny red button on the console, and a targeting lock whines over the comms. "Missile away!" Trillian shouts, and with a sizzle and a whoosh, a concussion missle launches and hits the undamaged pirate ship, black plumes of smoke rising as it drops like a rock into the atmosphere.

With the pirate ships down, and the fire ceasing, and only a few warning bells ringing inside, Corr warily unbuckles his restraints and comes forward into the cockpit, leaning on the console to peer up through the glass dome above at the sky, apparently forgetting that sensors are a lot better for this sort of thing. "I don't see anymore. Looks like we got 'em all." It's said with the headset still on, so Sar will hear. "Good work, everyone, let's go down to the planet and take a breather. Good work," he repeats again, glancing at the two ladies still in the cockpit, and leaving the third lady, Ms. Yavok, out of it for a moment.

Sar Yavok tosses the headset aside and turns to climb back up the ladder and out of that infernal turret. Making his way back into the cockpit, he nods to Trillian and says, "You're some kinda pilot, alright."