Log:Resistance: Millaflower By Any Other Name

Resistance: Millaflower By Any Other Name

OOC Date: August 30, 2019
Location: Above Naboo
Participants: Karé Kun, Jessika Pava, Nova Korell, Ektor, Kaelyn, Callax Dalso, Elrych Cometburn, Poe Dameron

Three Gold Squadron Y-wings are on patrol, with a solitary A-wing on post above the Warhammer, with elements of Red and Black Squadrons on standby. When an alert is broadcast, it is not the immediate emergency of combat, but it does carry the urgency of limited time. <<Resistance forces, this is Echo Three of the Royal Naboo Starfighter Corp, we are in pursuit of a fugitive vessel: Ghrtroc model 720 freighter, designation *Invisible Spiral*, on course 115-7 Theta leaving atmosphere. It is outpacing us, and we request assistance in apprehending the craft- it is known to be carrying a hundred tons of refined contraband, please assist. Vessel in question is armed.>>

In Gold 1, Ektor chuckles and shakes his head. "Drek, chasing down drug runners? Let's see if patrol lead likes that idea, yeah?" R2-G13 beeps indignantly. "I am? Oh, hell- uh.." Opening the comms, he transmits, <<Gold One to standby fighters: we got a bog drug runner fleeing Naboo, with the hatpins in pursuit. Just in case this goes bad, launch standby birds and get anything fast launched, yeah?>>

At the call, Poe slams his hand down on the alert aboard the Valor, signaling for fighter pilots to quickly get to their birds and launch from the pylons. Poe is seen sprinting down the corridor following a flash of rolling orange and white as BB-8 leads the way.

When Black Leader takes flight and angles away from the bunkerbuster, he engages his engines and brings up the fighter's shields. <<"This is Black Leader. All fighters form on my wing and check in.">>

Kare's adjusting to the pod life once more when the call goes out. SHe has to shove a few things aside to get out and drags her fightfuit back up and zips it into place. Rev sitting outside is quick to join her jog to the fighter.

The engines of her ship flare as they pulls away from the Valor, coming up on Poe's port side. <<"Copy Black Leader. Black four on your port side.">> Rev starts to beep and bloop in her comm, alerting her to the tiny troubles he sees them having as he reports the read out of the ship they are currently in pursuit of.

"Got it Rev, thanks. Put those worries on the back burner for now." She's making checks on a few things before she's sitting back and steadying her ship with a firm grip.

Some pilots would gnash their teeth at the 'ignominity' at being assigned a Headhunter as old a their parents, but Callax is remarkably sanguine at its controls. Whilst the old fighter lags behind its cutting-edge wingmates, Callax hums a silvery tune to himself as he takes up position as the rear guard. "Right, darling," he murmurs over the comms to Fang, replying to the astromech's grunts and whistles upon hearing the Commander's orders, "Let's not be ungrateful. We're still flying, and we're still deadly, mmm? We shall just have to fly a bit more fancily, that's all. Now see to the shields, hmmm?"

With a low whistle of acknowledgement, Fang goes back to it, and Callax keys the squadron channel. << Black Ten bringing up the rear, status green. >>

Captain Jessika Pava of Black Squadron is in the void when the call comes through from the Royal Starfighter Corps. She's running a few systems tests regarding adjustments she'd made to her fightercraft. "Cancel test environment, Ali. Switch all subsystems back to primary functions and turn the program offline." Adjusting her flightstick, the T-85 X-Wing changes vector towards the escaping Ghtroc on an intercept course. <<"This is Black Three to Echo Squadron. Coming in to assist.">> The hand not busy with guiding her craft reaches over to switch her communications channel to the local Resistance frequency. <<"This is Captain Pava of Black Squadron. The Royal Starfighter Corps has called for aid with pursuit of a criminal vessel. Requesting support."

</Valor/ Control, Black Eleven has four starts and is go. Requesting permission to disengage and depart on vector point three five,> Nova Korell calls from the cockpit of her X-Wing, bolstered by an impatient blat from Jammer. Stifling a smile, she hits the release and kicks in the four fusial-thrust engines, pulling away from the corvette and joining the assembling formation. <Black Eleven, standing by!>

The scopes of the various scrambled fighters read a vessel barely clearing atmosphere over Naboo's northern pole, matching the class and designation of the fugitive vessel. Moments later, three Naboo fighters follow, but the unusually swift 720 model is moving faster than the light fightercraft.

Black 12 Elrych had been back only a short time after his battle with the Knights. He was taking time to himself, away from the wounded. Half of him was glad they accomplished their hoal. The other half was seeded with doubt and thoughts of fault and failure. As the alarm came and he made his way to his xwinh, He skipped choosing a tune to listen to. "Black 12,here." He announces. Eggsy werbles at him. "I dont look yhat cliche in shades do I?" Thats what was eating at him more... Stupid Oran

Poe is at full speed presently, training Jessika's stern as she's ahead. <<"Roger Black 3, we're forming at your stern. Black Squadron, and Gold Squadron.. if you can manage it, catch up to Black 3 for intercept. We're authorized to disable that ship. If they shoot back, punch a hole through their hull.">> Poe attempts to increase his speed but gets an error on his screen warning of impending engine damage. "Hey pal, see what's going on back there.."

All that worrying Rev does is apparently for not or perhaps it is because the rather detail oriented R5 unit found a way to sap a bit more power. The X-Wing suddenly pitches forward and passes by the others as Kare is set back in the seat a bit. <"Black Four, I got some extra push. Going for target."> She banks her ship in the inky black of space and all orientation does not matter. Up, down, its all relative but for her she's angling left and trying to find the shortest distance between two points - a straight line.

<< Roger that, Leader. >> What one cannot do in raw thrust, one can do with gravitic jiggery-pokery; no stranger to the Headhunter from his none-too-distant partisan days, Callax adopts a course that will let him use gravity to help pull him along, a magnifying parabola - but alas, the ship is just too slow to make the proper turn, and he's not /quite/ as used to handling Z-95s as he used to be. Spoiled by his recent affair with X-wings, Callax misses the mark.

<< No joy, leader, >> he says as he proceeds with all the juice the ship will allow him. << Proceeding at all best speed. >>

With her s-foils set in cruise position, Jessika feeds as much speed to her craft as is possible. On the viewscreen at the center of her console, a curved vector indicates the path to follow to meet the fugitive vessel as it tries to escape orbit, but it's showing her reaching the interception point too late to intercept the craft. Shifting her hand to the panel to her right, she begins shutting down non-essential subsysems to try and encourage a little extra speed out of her starfighter. "Shut down power to the cargo bay and unlink both the intertial dampeners and fire constrol system. I want to move in as fast as possible." She can see other Black Squadron members speeding ahead, with their engines flaring bright as they propel themselves at the craft.

<Going for interception, Lead. Three, be with you shortly!> Nova calls optimistically. She hastily begins rerouting power from weapons, the fastest system to recharge. Shields, with her luck... no, better not pull from those. "Watch the power flow, Jammer. This bird's only just been refitted," she instructs the astromech as the V-gauge begins to climb steadily. Gradual power boosting seems to be the way to go: Eleven swiftly overtakes Lead and even Three, following the suddenly-speedy Four. <Backing you up, Kare. I'll follow you on the first pass.>

Black 12 Elrych pushes the throttle forwards, Eggsy beeps as suddenly the red afterburners on his t85 glare and he rockets in just behind Kare. <<"On your six, No Joy">>

Iiincooomiiiiiiiing! Well kind of, a sleek, forward-swept wing fighter comes blasting in out of hyperspace... There's a brief pause and well Kae blinks as she sees what's going on.. "A chase!"

Kae then turns and engages the main engines on the wyvern, jumping it up as fast as she can make the small space superiority fighter go. << Kaelyn here, need some help??>> She asks curiously, trying to get the more speed out of the fighter if she can.

Poe attempts to raise his engines again, but only gets a chorus of muffled warbles in his helmet and he laughs. "Alright, alright... just hurry up! This guy's getting away and Kare is gonna catch him before we can even fire a shot!" Black Leader stays on course but appears to have no progress with engaging the afterburner. He does notice that a strange vessel has joined them, and recognizes the voice for Kaelyn, the wacky engineer from the Shadowport. <<"See if you can help them out, Wyvern. I'll bet their shields are weak or non-existant given the juice those engines are sapping up!">>

As a few others have the push her ship has, Kare hears them and responds back. <"Copy you both. Lets keep our pace going. We got ground to make up."> She pushes her ship forward, losing some of the earlier steam but not giving up in her pursuit. "Rev, rev it up. Give us a bit more juice." The R5 unit provides what it can, trying top keep them pressing forward in hot pursuit. Her ship keeps hurdling threw the void.

"We're never going to catch them at this rate," Jessika speaks to herself and to her astromech. Attempting to garner more speed out of her fighter isn't proving fruitful, but in the split second that she's glancing at her systems, an idea strikes her. "Ali, feed this coordinates through the navicomputer and refine them." Rattling off a string of coordinates based on the targeting computer's intercept course, Jessika begins to prepare her X-Wing for a microjump that'll put her ahead of the freighter. <<"Black Three to Black Leader. Executing microjump to get ahead.">> Better to give Poe a heads up rather than just wink out of existence next to him. Her hand lifts to the lever, ready to throw it and gain the advantage in this chase.

Eleven is making good time, aside from being passed by nearly everything here with wings. Grunt in space. And Jammer's warning warble comes just ahead of some warning tones from the T-85's on-board computer. "Dammit! So much for that refit," Nova mutters, reallocating power back to weapons. < I can't keep up, Four! I'll try to backstop you after the first pass... and the second. And probably the third...>

Black 12 El has to back the throttle back as the civilian fighter fits its way between him and Kare.

Kae waggles the wings on her fighter some, and somehow? She doesn't loose any speed, seems the engines pivot up and down slightly. Seems like whenever the fighter maneuvers the main engines swivel slightly to make the fighter change directions all that much faster... << Oki Doki, I'm trying to get up there... Ummm, I think I have ion torpedos on board... Won't use lasers..>> She says, her voice quite cheerful. Seems she's having fun << Soo whyfore are we going after this freighter?>> As she seems to be gaining more ground on the freighter....

As the lead pursuit fighters close into weapons range of the fleeing smuggler, the laser turret on the Ghtroc remains silent. It appears to be outright fleeing fir the edge of the gravity well.

Poe glances over toward Black 3 and smirks. Clever Jess. <<"Go get them, Three.">> Poe is still holding speed, unaware that BB-8 fried a circuit trying to impress Ali while troubleshooting the afterburners.

<"Weapons range reached. Black Four engaging target."> Kare evens out and pulls up her targetting system. "Rev keep us flying. They got some speed." Little does she know that Jess is about to blink into existence ahead of them all. Kare takes aim and with a quick squeeze of her finger, lets loose a volley that breaks the deep dark of space. Two hits land on their mark and meet shields that hold. <"Two direct hits on target.">> Kare goes silent again, keeping up her pursuit and lining up her next shot.

On occasion, a leaf falls on a river in the right way, a coin is flipped in favor of a pauper, a blind hog finds an acorn - and Fang manages to goose a little more power from an ancient fighter. "Yes, good, darling," Callax calls to the astromech in the socket behind him, "Now whatever you've done, keep at it. I'll see what I can do on this side." Which is nothing, really, but he has to make a show of it. Esprit de corps and all.

As soon as the flickering light and the tweeted whistle from Ali signal her to the navicomputer's readiness to jump, Jessika throws the lever and lurches in the harness of her fighter. Black Three winks out of existence next to Black Leader and then back into existence ahead of the freighter, blocking off its path. With her intertial dampeners already unlinked, Jessika uses a quick aft yank against her flightstick and a simultaneous cut of the engines to flip her starfighter around so that its quad laser cannons are trained on the freighter even as her ship continues in the direction it had been initially heading. <<"Invisible Spiral, this is Captain Pava of the Resistance's Black Squadron. Power down your engines immediately!">>

<Kaelyn, this is Black Eleven! That freighter's a smuggler hauling over a hundred metric tons of dangerous contraband,> Nova coms to the prototype fighter and its Sephi pilot. <We've got to stop it before it flees the system? Can you assist?> Right now, any help would be good, and it doesn't look like she'll be providing it anytime soon.

There's suddenly a mechanical surging sound and /Black 11/ rockets forward! Jammer warbles a smug 'You're welcome' kind of tone at his mistress's startled cry. For her part, the blonde soldier tightens her grip on the controls and pulls onto the smuggler's tail as Kare falls back. Nova flips the weapon selector switch over to quad-link, then switches coms to All-Call. <Attention unidentified smuggler! This is Black Eleven! Feel that blast just now? That was somebody a LOT less angry than I am! I suggest you power down your engines and deflectors RIGHT FRELLING NOW, or I'll blow your ion drive through your control console! ARE WE COMMUNICATING, SPACE BUM?!!>

Jammer emits a little *meep* and goes silent. If he was that smuggler, /he'd/ power down!

Kae tries again to get a little closer, managing to climb the fighter up some and try to clear her shot, but maybe loosing a bit of ground "Eeef, wished my freighter was this fast!" She mutters, and then selects an ion torp. As soon as her ordinance is ready she tries to get the nose of her fighter lined up.. << Dumb fired ion torp going out folks!>> She calls out and well, she pulls the trigger... The Wyvern shutters, to her, and the purple-hued drive unit of a rather expensive torpedo can be seen zooming off... aaaand missing, falling kind of short of the Freighter... << Well that didn't work! Worked once before!!>>

There's a curse in the cockpit of the heavily modified Ghtroc as Jessika's X-wing micro jumps square in their escape path. There is a moment's chance to slip past in the split second before Captain Pava re-orients to bring her cannons back online and to bear, but the veteran blocks the smuggler's escape with an expert maneuver. Then, the aft shields are strafed by Kare, and Nova screams past to complete the encirclement.

There us a moment's pause after her angry transmission, before the captain of the fleeing freighter responds, <<....yes, ma'am.>>

<<"Good work, ladies. Escort that huttsucker to the port of the Royal SFC's choice.">> Poe says over the Resistance encrypted communications channel. He turns about with a practiced ease, because he can manage that, and starts on his trek back to the Valor. Crisis averted thanks to the ace flying and quick thinking of the Black Squadron ladies! <<"Drinks are on me tonight after liberty call.">> "Yeah, we'll take a look after we've landed, buddy."

On the squad com, Kare speaks up, <"Damn Moonbeam. Remind me never to upset you."> Followed by a chuckle as Kare moves around to help better complete the escort. <"Black Four in position to escort the ship back dirtside, waiting landing coordinates."> She glances to the side of her canopy to note how the ship has powered down. "Well that went rather well."

Rev lets out a low whistle that sounds like relief that they were not hit or engaged in a firefigh this time around. No carbon scoring to clean off and assess for future trouble.

"Well. That was unexpected." Indeed, Nova's tirade brings a prim quirk of the brow from Callax, who then maneuvers to join the squadron eventually as thrust allows. << Coming up on your six, Black Squadron, >> he calls over the link. << Do forgive me for being late, won't you? There was a thing. >>

The thing, of course, is physics.

Once she's in the path of the oncoming freighter, Jessika doesn't relent any kind of ground. It's either try to smash through the potential firepower, or comply with orders to stand down from its attempted escape. The criminals on board the Ghtroc choose the latter, and Jessika sighs in slight relief. Adjustment thrusts slow her fighter, and her hand toggles over the communications frequency again. <<"Echo Squadron, this is Black Three. We'll help you escort the freighter back to the port of your choosing.">> Coordinating with Echo Leader, Jessika and the other X-Wings that choose to adopt an escort position around the freighter with the Naboo starfighters. Naboo looms ahead as they begin to bring an end to this joint endeavor.

<Nice to know you've seen reason. Now, if you'll just follow the nice lady in the X-Wing who's ahead of you, and those lovely yellow starfighters, we'll head back to Naboo,> Nova coms, moving to take up the tail. She has to stifle a smile at Kare's compliment. <Used to come in handy during drill,> she explains. <Never thought I'd be using that tone up here!>

Of course, there are Callax and Poe to answer. <Better late than never, Ten, and welcome to the flight. We're on our way, Lead. See you back at the barn.>

Black 12 "Well... alright then." Elrych says, blinking in a bit of astonishment after Nova's display of Bravato and Kare's work with her laser canons. He slows his ship back to escourt speed and keeps an eye on his scopes. Hopefully it was smooth flying back to Naboo

Waggling the Wyvern's wings, Kae tries to take up a position in the whole formation... <<Yaaay, driiiinks!!!>> She calls out, maybe she'll get to hang out with everyone! Probably not, but that doesn't stop the goofy Sephi from trying! << I fired a torpedo agaaain! Not that I did much more than get to play chase with a smuggler!>>>

<<Copy that, Black Squadron,>> Echo Three replies, as the trio of elegant N-1c Naboo fightercraft glide into formation with the Republic's last-generation of space superiority fightercraft, and some new next-generation prototype. <<It's a please to see you all in action. Transmitting landing coordinates.>> There are no further transmissions from the Ghtroc. Those near enough can see the pilot practicing hand positions, to see which method of surrender looks the least threatening. Up on either side of the head? On top of the head? Behind the head?

A solid minute later, another transmission breaks over the Resistance channels: <<Arright, I made it! ...Hey, where'd everybody go, yeah? Am I the first one here? ...Hello?>> Y-wings are good at many things. Playing interceptor is not among them.