Log:Jedi Order: The First Site
The Jedi investigate an asteroid field.
OOC Date: October 17, 2022
Location: Koori System
Participants: Rey, Ax, Chani Tahn
With the information from General Veers coming in, there were a number of sites given to the Jedi Order to investigate. The KOORI SYSTEM was one of these sites.
Rey's X-Wing lunges from hyperspace and glides toward the ice giant known as Koori. Specifically toward its asteroid belt that was once a mighty moon satellite, but now is just the sad remains of a once proud relative to this cold world...
Dressed in her Jedi garments, with her flight helmet on, Rey slows her ship down as she draws closer to the asteroid belt.
She waits for those who came with her to glide in on her wings.
"Well." She says over comms. "Here we are... It looks like we hve a bit of a dangerous situation here." Rey notes just as a asteroid bounces off of the nose of her old fighter, thankfully it was a very tiny rock though, that skips off the shields and glides around them, over the canopy and past Artoo's dome.
"The asteroids here are ... always bursting in the sunshine that strikes their cold sides. Like popped corn, they're bursting, and... well, yeah, you can see it for yourselves."
The asteroid ring is indeed alive, in so far as to say its like a mess of rocks bursting, and smashing in to one another, whenever a large enough 'roid gets hit by the sun rays hot enough to cause an explosion.
"Somewhere in that field is our target, one one of the bigger chunks." Rey adds.
Ax had opted to bring his VCX-100 for this mission, though hidden inside was a Phantom-class interceptor. The freighter emerges from hyperspace. "Kinda reminds me of home. The asteroid fields surrounding Socorro don't explode from sunlight, but they do like to collide with each other."
"Buster, help me keep an eye out for impact threats," Ax says to his astromech as he settles firmly into his seat. "And divert power from anything non-essential to shields." It wasn't likely that he'd get this ship around without getting popped by a flying rock, but he could do everything to minimize the damage.
The transition to realspace from lightspeed is abrupt. There's blue, and then there's black. The transparisteel bubble of the N-1c Naboo Starfighter protects her from radiation, but it does little to filter out the view of space. Or the massive field of asteroids ahead of them, ranging from fist sized rocks to planet-killing chunks of metal, frozen gasses, and other composite materials. In the droid socket on the back, Sky's head swivels around to take in their immediate vicinity. Droid speak translated to Aurebesh on one of the three digital screens in front of her clues Chani in to what the droid is saying. It leads her to triggering the mic built into her flight helmet. <"Are we expecting any kind of trouble?"> As if she needed any more trouble than what lay ahead of them. The dagger-like starfighter is fed power and its engines propel it forward, with Chani's hands guiding the grips as an array of lights and buttons take up half of the view in front of her.
The engines on Rey's X-Wing are moving at their nearest to stopped speed. She's watching the asteroids, and watching the display on her console give readings about the trajectory of the icey rocks that are flying this way and that...
"The Gold System, right?" Rey replies to Ax. "Lando is from there... I haven't made it out that way. I'm curious, because there's supposed to be Jedi ruins there, but... my intuition tells me that a world known for smugglers, and valuable ruins, have likely been picked over."
Chani's arrival has Rey look out her canopy in that other woman's direction. "I don't know." Rey says of potential trouble. "Beyond the asteroids? I hope not. Veers said this place was used for mining durasteel ore, and even Kyber... but the average mining corporations don't care for the hostile asteroids."
AFter a moment, Artoo beeps and Rey's computer zeroes in on one of the biggest chunks, with a recommended flight path.
"Thanks, Artoo." Rey idly says before she looks forward again.
"Okay, lets check this one out, and see what we can find..." She states, her right hand pushing forward on the throttle and causing the red quad engines to flare to life, carrying her ship, with its closed s-foils, closer to the asteroids.
More of them are popping off, especially on the outer edges, but at least those are small, as they burst like tiny mines...
It's the bigger ones on the inside of the belt that are very ominous looking...
"Yeah, Lando said he was from there, but he must have left there long before I was born," Ax says as he carefully begins to move the ship on course to follow Rey's X-wing. "If this gets much more dense, then I'm either going to start using the tractor beam to deflect them away or transition to a starfighter and leave the Sands on the edge of the system with a droid at the controls."
Ax chuckles a bit. "If nothing else, one of us gets banged up, it can carry the ship home." Already, he's wondering if that's going to be an option or if he'd need to call in someone to haul this bird away. "Chani, if you need me to, I can feed sensor data and trajectories to your HUD. Same with you Rey."
<"Kyber? So there could potentially be a bunch of lightsaber crystals in these asteroids?"> There's a note of awe in her voice. Chani's head visibly turns in the canopy under Rey's watchful gaze, sweeping from the left to the right to take in the massive asteroid belt that dominates her forward view. She's not in robes like the Paragon, but a nondescript flight suit ready to provide what minimal protection it can if the worst imaginable scenario happens. Her thumbs are hooked around the flight handles with her fingers, away from the buttons and switches that will operate her fighter's weapons systems. Of its armament, only the laser cannons are dangerous. The concussion missiles have been removed and replaced with mag-pulse warheads meant to disable, not to kill. It feels more appropriate not only for the Jedi from Naboo, but for the craft itself constructed and designed by a pacifist populace. <"I'll take all the help I can get, Ax.">
"We'll see how things go, but yeah, Kyber exists here, some of the reading I did on this place suggested it contributes to these detonations..." Rey speaks up to the two of them as the trio of ships make their way closer to the edge of the asteroids.
Now, all three ships are having the icy rocks impacting on their shields, creating a flow of pattering sounds within the control cabins, along with little light shows as the dusty space rocks start popping off right against the ship's shields.
"It's kind of pretty." Rey says, noting the colors of which are coming from the little explosions.
"Okay, it's less pretty now..." She then says as the larger rocks start sweeping by.
"Artoo says this is the best path, but if your ships say otherwise, lets try not to berrate him too much."
'Bee-wooo-whiiiiiRRR!' Artoo says behind the X-wing's pilot canopy.
Now, as the three ships get closer to the more dangerous asteroids, explosions start to get heavier, and start rocking them inside their ships!
Ax had experience flying in asteroid fields, but each was different and this one was no exception. The Black Sands maneuvered past the larger asteroids, but its shields lit up quite often as smaller rocks pelted them. "So far so good," he says as his droid is channeling sensor data to the two fighters while Ax is adjusting his trajectory with the path that R2 layed out.
"That droid's seen places that I can only imagine, so I'll follow his lead until there's a reason not to, Rey." Ax then looks to his own astromech. "And he doesn't whine nearly as much as you do," he says in jest.
<"Maybe the background radiation and what's coming off the system star is causing it to supercharge the kyber."> Chani wanders it out loud. A tingling sensation overtakes her nervous system, but her hands don't jerk the controls in a panic. Small rocks ping off the starfighter's shields and they ripple as their oscillating projectors compensate. It's a more vibrant display than she thought there would be, and Chani cringes behind her blank flight helmet's lowered eyeshield. "Okay, less of just.. letting that happen." She murmurs it to herself. Sky rapidly beeps something Chani reads off the monitor. "I know, I'll be careful." Taking in a deep breath, Chani exhales it through her open mouth and tries to calm her mind of the rumblings of fear and anxiety. They don't dissipate completely, but it helps keep her mind clear.
Artoo beeps a compliment at Ax's words of praise, but otherwise his silver domed head just spins this way and that, watching the rocks fly past the ship.
A beeping noise in Rey's cockpit announces the asteroids getting dangerously close, trying to warn the pilot to be less stupid and pay attention to where she's flying...
Rey flips the alarm off then with a push of a button before she overhears Chani. Her eyes dart back up to the presence of a large asteroid coming up in to view, about the size of a bulk freighter... it has a donut-shaped hole cut through it too, and it would seem they're going to fly through it.
"Speaking of radiation..." Rey talks while flying, her mind mixed between subjects and the task. "I was reading from Luke's journal, and he mentioned a planet that suffered a terrible crash from a Mon Cala vessel after the Battle of Endor. He said the entire planet was suffering from leaking 'distronic radiation' that had turned its grass albino white, and almost all the life on the planet was..."
Rey goes quiet as she flies through that donut-shaped hole in that huge asteroid, the pinkish red glow of her engines illuminating the sides of the rocky tunnel as her ship moves through it...
"Ahem. Uh, I mean, that Mon Cala ship had a leak from its fusion core, which is remarkably rare. Anyway, it sounds like a rather amazing site that I wouldn't mind seeing, from within the safety of a ship..."
"Okay, keep your wits up, we got larger rocks coming up on the other side of this tunnel...." Rey's voice crackles over the comms.
Ax is forced to alter his course a bit more than he wanted, the larger freighter not as agile as the two fighters he was with were. This caused him to lag behind the others and there were multiple impacts on his shields.
"I don't know much about radiation, but I do know our ships are shielded from most forms of it. I wouldn't recommend a space walk though," Ax says. Looking over to his droid, "Buster, we are shielded, right?" The droid just beeps in exasperation. "I should have brought a fighter in this," he adds, regretting his choice of ships. "Chani, you alright?" he asks, knowing that the woman was a good pilot, but not an elite one like Rey.
<"That sounds fascinating. And awful. Just trying to imagine the damage to the ecosystem.."> Her voice trails off, but not because she attempts a fancy maneuver like the Paragon. As the Naboo starfighter enters into the field with the bigger asteroids, Chani searches for the path of least resistance and the safest one at that. Between her symbiotic connection to the energy of the universe and the constant updates from Sky showing a navigable path through the field, she keeps it simple and does whatever she can to keep the starfighter itself safe. Safe ship, safe pilot. The craft's engines rev through the maneuvers, and Chani can't help but think they sound musical in their particular tuning. The Naboo have always had a thing for elegance, and it translated into their shipcraft, too. <"I think it would be beautiful to see. I wish I'd gotten to meet Master Skywalker."> Realizing she's also talking TO Master Skywalker, Chani rushes to add in after. <"The other one, I mean."> She's ignorant of his own heritage and connection to her planet. The question comes in over the net and is answered in turn. <"I'm hanging in there.">
Rey is glancing down at her scopes, watching the other two flying close behind her ship. She has to quickly dip under a rock on the other side of that tunnel though, causing her ship to dip and turn on its axis to avoid collision!
She exhales sharply. Her piloting skills were born out of the use of a simulator she'd scavenged on Jakku, one of the primary form sof entertainment she'd had growing up... but it was a Y-wing simulator, and ironically.... Rey has still yet to ever fly an actual Y-wing since leaving Jakku.
With her brown eyes scanning the asteroids up ahead, she sees the field of medium to large sized rocks spread out before them like a prairie... and beyond them is that massive asteroid, what looks like it was likely a considerable amount of what was once a moon eons ago...
"You know... one of the reasons I took on the name Skywalker, is that I wasn't ready to accept that Luke and Leia were gone, and that the galaxy could handle the lack of a Skywalker being a... public figure. I wanted LUke's legacy to continue as we rebuilt the Jedi Order too, and that it would be my way of... helping him." She relays to both of them over the crackling comm systems.
"I also--" Her voice is cut off as an explosion happens off to their starboard sides, an asteroid had turned in to the sunlight, and it was rocked by surface explosions, all of the jetting gas and stone sending waves of debris across their flight paths!
Artoo wails in his droid socket!
Just as Ax was catching up to the others, the explosion happens and alarms blare from his cockpit as the Black Sands is pelted with debris. "More power to shields!" Ax says to his droid who is draining power from all but life support and thrusters. Even still, there's going to be some marks on the paint of his ship after this. "Kadi's gonna kill me," he mutters, his droid beeping in acknowledgement. "Everyone alright?" he asks.
Radiation and magnetic interference generated from the asteroid field isn't wreaking total havoc on their communications net, but it is making an impact. Parts of Rey's speech crackle or modulate into metallic noise Chani struggles to discern as words. The message comes across clear enough to understand, and a question forms on the tip of her tongue. Like Rey cuts off because of the sudden silent explosion that occurs off their starboard, Chani finds her question gone. She can only think of the flash of light caused by erupting gasses interacting with the system star's rays permeating through the asteroid field. Chani sucks in a breath, but she doesn't panic. She sees the chunks big enough to damage her starfighter hurtling their way and it's not conscious thought, but feeling that guides her through the motions. Her starfighter noses down, then up, before twisting port onto its vertical axis so Chani can pull on the flight handles and jerk the nose in the same direction so it doesn't collide with another. She rudders the starfighter upwards and her hands twist the craft into a roll that spirals her around another rock before she can level out on her previous heading and adjust course. Breathing out shakily, Chani takes a moment to settle. <"Still good.">
"All good here." Rey replies over comms, as she dips the nose of her fighter downward to get out of that active gas and debris spewing from that newly sun-drenched asteroid!
Once she's lowered her altitutde a little down toward the Ice Giant planet below, she evens out again and spirals her wings around until she has the planet beneath her ship again.
"I can see why this isn't the most sought after mining colony location..." Rey then mutters to the others.
Artoo is soon to chime up then, alerting them of soemthing up ahead.
IT's not but a second later that more flashing explosives can be seen on the edge of that massive asteroid piece that they're getting ever-close-toward.
The explosions are rapid, happening in quick succession to one another....
"That's not ice and gas." Rey says, pushing the throttle forward to give her ship some more speed!
"Do either of your droids see anything bouncing around out there, what we're in for up ahead?" Rey asks, as Artoo is reporting his sensors unable to see around the edge of the asteroid chunk.
Buster beeps rapidly as Ax is working his ass off to maneuver the ship out of the path of more debris. "Uhm..." Ax says "We've got action ahead, and not the natural asteroid field type. Relaying sensor data to your ships now," he adds. "Either we're gonna get in a fight, or we're going to need to get sneaky." Ax looks to his droid for a moment, "Shut off all external lighting." He flips a switch, turning off the cockpit lights, leaving only the light glow of the console in front of him.
"Sky, ping the field. See if you can't chart a navigable course off the data that'll keep us away from the more active asteroids based on rotational spin and how long their unaffected sides have been soaking in radiation." It stands to reason that the faster spinning asteroids are spending less time with any one surface exposed, meaning the radiation spread is greater across their surface area and they're less likely to be primed for an explosion. It also means that asteroids like that who have soaked up enough will more likely have more violent reactions because of a greater buildup overall. What they need now, however, is the slow spinning asteroids that will tell them where more pockets of bigger rocks are likely to be.
<"Master, Sky's ping detects unsual readings with designs that don't match the asteroid field. Sky is specifically using the word 'design', not origin. It might be something constructed?"> She wonders the question aloud over the net. Rey's fusial engines light up in the dark and Chani watches her begin to pull away. She feeds more speed to her own craft, though the newer model Naboo starfighter can't match the X-Wing if it's maxed out. At Ax's insistence, one of Chani's hands leaves a handle to cut the lights beaming out from the front of her starfighter.
"I'm not interested in trying to fight in this field." Rey's voice comes over in a distorted fashion. "But, it may also not be our choice...." She notes. "If you have stealth options, better get them ready."
With that said, the trio of ships sweep through the lighter portions of the asteroid field, with more smaller explosions going off, one of them splashing across the upper portside s-foil of Rey's ship, leaving a streak down its hull. Artoo reacts to it, but Rey doesn't say a word...
Instead, as the trio comes up on that Titan of a asteroid, where the explosions are now visibly light up its edges, they are soon to see where the blasts are coming from...
"Bank starboard!" Rey shouts over the comms. "Get toward those rocks over there!" She indicates as her ship tumbles to the starboard side, rolling behind some of the larger rocks and cutting her speed down to near nill again...
OFf in the distance, an Imperial Light Cruiser is over the surface of the massive asteroid, it's laser cannons are firing down upon it, causing explosions to light up the surface, as its hammering 'something' down there.
"Operate your scopes, see if you can pick up what they're firing on." Rey says, with a look of her eyes down to the sensor readouts.
"There are two TIE Fighters, older models, short range fighters... I don't think they've seen us yet...." She adds while scanning the Cruiser itself...
The Black Sands banks slightly when Rey gives the order to maneuver towards starboard. "I've got sensor jammers, but that's going to be bad for all of us," Ax says as he's trying to bring the VCX-100 into a hidden location amongst the asteroids. He'd hidden amongst such things many a times as a smuggler. "According to Buster, there's a hangar imbedded in that rock the cruiser is firing on. I can't see it, but I'm also trying not to crash."
The urgent commands from Rey prompt Chani to react without questioning. She banks her craft to starboard without jerking it so harshly as to make a sudden movement. Speed bleeds from the engines while she adjusts the throttle, slowing it to slip down behind asteroids that seem to be moving at a glacial pace compared to some of the others. "Sky, use maneuvering thrusters to keep us in place with the asteroid between us and that Imperial cruiser. Bring up scope on the right display and scan that larger asteroid. Let's see if we can't figure out what's going on over there." With her astromech concerned with the positioning of the fighter, Chani diverts all her attention to the display. The cold realization falls over her moments later, after her fingers have adjusted small dials to get the focus correct. "Oh no.." Chani cues up on their communications net. <"Master, there are people down there! It's some sort of facility. A science station or a mining outpost. There are bodies.."> Chani trails off, unable to articulate the rest.
Artoo is feeding Rey information about the Light Cruiser on the other side of the asteroid base that they're firing down upon. They're a ways off still, but the view of their green laser fire can still be seen smashing in to that complex down in the asteroid's mega-crater.
"Copy that... If there's people... we have to do something. I don't know why they're firing on them, but..." Rey exhales sharply and reaches a hand up to a control set above her. She brings up her targeting computer and lets it rest off to her side to track some of the shots being fired down at the surface.
"Ax. Can your sensor jammer get the attention of those TIE Fighters?" She asks him. "If you can ... Draw them off, get them to chase you. Maybe Chani can hop out from behind some of this cover, and ... disable them." She says then.
"I'm going to see if I can't send a few shots off the Cruiser's bow. Artoo says some of its cannons don't seem to be operational anymore..."
IT's not but a second later that the X-wing's strike foils snap open, and the nose of Rey's ship starts to angle around the medium sized rock she was 'hiding' behind.
"Lets see if we can't get these monsters to chase us, to give those people down there time to get to their escape ships." She says then.
"I can do that, or something like that. I've got missiles if necessary for that Cruiser," Ax says as he pulls away from his hiding place. "Buster, see if you can send a jamming pulse at those TIEs. Might cause a feedback loop in their system if they're operating older systems," he says hopefully. "Give some power to the weapon systems as well," he says as he's punching his ship forward towards the TIEs.
"Let me get their attention before you pop out and start shooting," Ax says over the comms before his droid begins firing off the jammers, which will disrupt comms from his ship as well as the TIEs.
<"I'll be waiting for them."> Chani takes manual control over the fighter and maneuvers it around so that the nose is pointing in the opposite direction without any movement in the direction of the nose. The craft flips and twists, orienting the other way but on the same plane. She reaches her right hand away from the handle and adjusts buttons on the console ahead of her to switch the weapon systems from laser cannons to the mag-pulse warheads. "Sky, get ready to bring up firing solutions for the fighters if Ax can draw them in over here. We need to disable them so that we can buy those people time." Her voice is rushed. She speaks in urgent tones. Adrenaline is coursing through her, and Chani's fingers tremble around the handles in tandem with her body feeling like it'll explode if she doesn't somehow move. It's fight or flight, and in a way, Chani supposes she's about to do both. "I've never been in a battle before." She admits aloud. Sky knows. The other two don't, but it's probably not a difficult thing to guess if one were to be asked.
Rey doesn't move her ship out just yet, she keeps it moving behind that series of medium sized asteroids, enough to stay hidden behind. She hears Ax, then Chani, and stares for a second as she considers Chani.
"Wait for Ax's word, and then just get behind them, take your shots. They're just people inside those things... They will likely get spooked, because they don't know how many of us are out here... If you can't disable them, it's okay, we just have to buy those people down there some time..."
Rey watches Ax's ship on her sensors, and once he becomes a open target, a freighter no less, she'll sweep her old X-wing around in the field and come around 'the long way' toward where that Light Cruiser is.
"If we struggle with this, Ax, you can come in and fire those missiles of yours at it too. But... otherwise... we need to make for the edge of the field. Whatever was here, I thik the Imperials have seen to its erasure already..."
Rey's ship flares its brilliant bright engines again as it starts getting closer to the Light Cruiser, like a predator in the sea...
Ax opens up with a blast from a forward-locked quad-laser, combined with the comms and sensor jammer he's definitely got the attention of the TIEs and anyone else who might be watching them. Then, he's banking his ship to get them on his tail. While he didn't have a gunner with him to handle the turrets, Rey and Chani should have shots at the TIE fighter's tails. That would leave only the Cruiser, unless there were more fighters onboard. With the jammer going though, he couldn't send or receive radio comms, and neither could the TIE Fighters for the moment.
<"Yes, Master."> Chani's acknowledgment sounds more steady than she feels. Waiting feels like forever. She becomes more primed by the stretching seconds, hands on the flight handles and every muscle attempting to stay loose so that she can kick her speed up and slip into position behind the fighters once Ax's freighter goes zooming by. Right now all she sees is the asteroid field and the sensor blips of Rey's and Ax's ships along with the TIEs. They don't physically come into view until moments later, when Ax's craft rushes past the asteroid she's hidden behind. The TIE craft follow, and Chani can see carbon scoring on one of them to indicate that Ax's shots found their mark. She counts a second of one before throttling up. The Naboo starfighter shoots out of cover and behind the TIE craft. Sky plots firing solutions for them. Chani depresses the buttons on top of the flight handles with her thumbs. The missiles shoot away, rapidly outstripping the speed of her fighter. The engines of the missile break away and propel the mag-pulse warheads forward. Chani's close enough that the one TIE never has a chance. The warhead latches onto the ship and immediately infects its subsystems, rapidly disabling its weapons. The other missile's warhead glances off without latching on. <"One's weapons are disabled. The other one is still live!">
Rey's X-wing bursts out from behind one of the asteroids that is resting along the side of the Imperial Light Cruiser! Its cannons stop firing on the base, and instead focus on the freighter and the Naboo fighter that have popped up out in the distance! Their cannons start to open fire on the other two Jedi vessels, only to have Rey streak past in her ship and fire a proton torpedo salvo... but not at the Imperial Cruiser, instead she fires it at the edged corner of a asteroid causing its rotation to kick off in a new direction, which has its dark side turning around in the sunlight, aimed directly at the cruiser....
What follows is a volatile explosion from the sun instantly warming the gas surface of ice crystals! The explosion is aimed right at the Imperial vessel and it starts lighting up the shields as it batters the capital ship with explosive energies, rock debris, and ice shards that dash against its shields, and through them onto its hull!
The TIE Fighters that Ax and Chani engage both start to flee when their systems are non responsive. The two ships bank hard down toward the Titan asteroid, unable to fire, they sweep low over the surface, with their engines screaming in their wakes!
"Good shooting!" Rey says, her X-wing banking to the port and heading back toward them, with the Imperial Cruiser in emergency mode, as it turns to try and get itself out of the explosive wave of debris set off by that proton torpedo!
Down in the base, the hangar is badly damaged, but there's signs of ships powering up their engines, taking this moment of opportunity to get their launch windows!
With the TIEs on his tail, and flying only by visuals and not sensors, the Echani was working his tail off letting the Force guide his movements as best he could. Soon though, he's forced to turn off the jammer to keep from getting pounded between asteroids. "Jamming down," Ax says over comms. Once we're clear, I'll engage it again to hide your hyperspace trajectories then I'll fly an alternate route back to base," he says. "Buster, lay in a course to sector sigma six, we'll take a smuggler route from there."
"Plot our course out of here, Sky. Follow Ax's path." Chani adjusts the starfighter's heading based off the data fed to her instrument panel. The sleek craft dips in behind the freighter no longer being harassed by TIEs, and Chani weaves in and out of the asteroids on the path to take them out and away from the situation. <"All those people.. I hope some of them made it."> Rather than let it dwell on her mind, Chani hones her attention to making it free of the asteroid field without planting her craft into one of the rocks churning and hurtling through space amongst its siblings. There'll be time to ruminate on it later, and there's no doubt much meditation in her future to help her through this and the many other situations she's witnessed.
