(Star Wars d6) #48 - Skitter Shot, Part Two

Ne'vets Aharo - an exotic animal broker, both legal and otherwise, majority owner in the Pretio.
Tarrie - Human pilot "under contract" to fly the Pretio, and drive the Piscopo. Brother of potential terrorist, rebel Latorna Savvn. His climbing skills are suspect, but his dance moves are above par. Edging a dangerous lifestyle of drugs, booze, and loose women.

Duk'k - Sipsk'ud Bounty Hunter, recently rescued by the crew.  Offering his services in order to get off this barely existing hunk of mud.  His warning shots are dead center mass kill shots.

R2-H8(r) - A "new" astromech droid recently purchased by the crew.

Embarkation Issues

The search for a missing YT-1300 freighter 

Has landed the crew of the Pretio onto a

Not-so-abandoned pleasure liner.  Realizing the

Issues aboard the Emerald Empyrean were

Not worth the trouble, the crew

Attempted to return to their ship, 

But have uncovered the stowaways/survivors 

From the liner have managed to 

Get on board the Pretio, and trouble shall ensue...

The crew had successfully passed through the airlock from the Emerald Empyrean onto the Pretio before encountering the former passengers of the luxury liner.  Dozens of rag-tagged individuals were trying to access every corner of ship.  They had only failed to gain access to the reactors, a few cabins, and thankfully, the cockpit.

Ne'vet's was not happy with these new uninvited guests.

“Get them seated in the escape pods, Duk’k!”

Tarrie protested, “No, don’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“If they get ejected, then our ship won’t be complete.”

Ne'vets tried to find the words to counter the pilot's flimsy logic, so Duk'k took over.

“LISTEN UP FOLKS, FIND A SEAT OVER HERE," pointing to the cargo bay, "SO WE CAN GET OUT OF HERE.”

Surprisingly, most moved in an orderly fashion into the cargo bay. Duk’k followed them, sealed the door from the outside, turned around and let out a big sigh.

Down one of the hallways, he could see one of the purple furry creatures from the Empryrean stumble. down a passageway.

Duk'k though about persuing, but could her loud voices inside the cargo bay.

“Oh my, what is that? BOOM, BOOM, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!!”  

Someone had found the obvious stash of grenades in that particular hold.  Luckily, it was doze, tangler, and flashbang grenades in the inventory, not enough to damage the hull... hopefully.

GM Notes: When choosing between two largely empty cargo holds, use the one that doesn’t normally have crates of grenades to reload the usual speeder that normally resides there.

During all that time, Tarrie finally made it to the cockpit, with R2-H8(r) using his mini-jets to go up the ladder. The droid successfully disengaged the Pretio from the Empyrean  and moved away from the liner.

In response to the movement, the AI on the liner began firing counter-measures at the cockpit of the Pretio.

The first shot slammed into the cockpit, compromising the minimal shields that had been up, and causing an existing hairline crack to stretch across the windshield. Tarrie quickly whipped the ship around and pulled up shields on high. Numerous electrical shocks flowed through multiple consoles, forcing R2-H8(r) to detach and bounce side to side across the cockpit.

Ne’vets had secured himself in his cabin to catch his breath, and find a safe place to secure his odd obsidian pillar. Finding one, he climbed up into the cockpit.

Double checking the cargo holds doors, and feeling the shockwave of the attack, Duk’k climbed up to the gunner’s turret

“Status Report!”

Tarrie was beyond formalities at this point, “Are you crazy?  Buckle up, yucko. Status Report is we may be karked!”

Ne'vets was confused, “Um, Tarrie, you broadcast that over the intercom of the entire.”

“I don’t care, sit down and help me.”

“Okay, what do I, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WINDSHIELD???”

“Nevermind that. If I can hear you right now, the windshield’s not broken!”

While Tarrie continued to reallocate shields, Ne’vets was forced to take control of the ship, steering erratically, engaging the landing gear, and turning on every light in and on the ship.

Feeling his futility at piloting growing, Ne'vets handed control of the ship back to Tarrie, and grabbed a pressurized suit for Tarrie to wear, just in case the windshield didn’t hold.  He wished the pilot the best and left the cockpit.

Trying to pull audio and video from the exploding cargo hold, they could here a lot of choking and a strange squeaky voice come up on the comm.

"Who has a tail? I have a tail too!"

Checking the grainy screen, the saw the aftereffect of the chaos. Smoke everywhere, with the occasional smattering at arcing electricity. Bodies everywhere, and at least one of the furry critters staring back into and talking at one of the cameras. 

"It's nothing, we're fine here.  How are you?"

Tarrie had pulled away to a safe distance from the liner, and he too was viewing the video of the hold, amazed at the strange furry creature on the screen.  He was even more taken aback when another squeaky voice was heard above him. 

"Hey, my friend's on video!"

A blue furry creature was in the air duct, with Tarrie's blaster in his hand.  The familiar ring of a stun blast came out of the blaster.  Tarrie was unaffected, but R2 took the brunt of it, frying the droid.  The creature ducked back into the air duct. 

R2's damaged concerned Tarrie, but he was much more worried that the creature was scrambling through the air ducts to only one possible destination: the engine rooms.

Duk'k came down from the turret, heading to engineering, only guided by the "Sonuvabitch" over the coms.  He turned on his own videos and cameras in that area, then hailed Dr P3PP3R to come over for a status report.  The medical droid did not respond.  

Double checking his weapons, Duk'k kept an eye on the smoky hold, looking for any sign of life. 

Duk'k grabbed the ship's comm and announced his intentions.  

"Attention uninvited guest aboard our ship.  Get it kriffin' together or I will personally jettison all you freaks into the vacuum of space.  Behave and we'll get you to safety as quickly as we can."

The only response was from one of the furry creature on board in an unknown location, "Deeeeee-licious!"

Duk'k amended his statement, "If you are one our guests and not currently in the starboard cargo hold in one minute, we will assume you are a hostile and begin firing."

Ne'vets had turned around from the sound of blaster fire, and the quick "Sonuvabitch" on comms, finding R2-H8(r) in repair mode and Tarrie gathering himself off the floor.

"I leave you alone for less than a minute... What happened now?"

"Find Duk'k, we have an issue..."

Ne'vets tried to hail Duk'k on the coms without success, so he travelled back to engineering to find him. He found the Sipsk'ud lying on the ground, the victim of a tangler grenade, but quite intact... and very pissed off.

"Just my karking luck..."

Above the scene, Ne'vets could hear a squeaky voice, "Oh no, not another one."

Standing in the air duct opening above them was a blue furry creature, blaster rifle in one hand, some strange data-pad in a second, and its final two arms holding grenades. This creature was wearing a pair of overall, festooned with grenades from the cargo hold.

Ne'vets immediately threw his hands up, "I'm unarmed, friend. We're just trying to get you guys to a safe location. Let's not have anymore problems, okay? How 'bout food? You guys should be hungry."

The creature kept his eyes locked on Ne'vets, but fumbled through it's pockets and pulled out an exotic piece of fruit, a type that had been stockpiled in one of the escape pods."

"That was a good one to grab. Sour-kind of prickly thing. Bit of a tang."

The creature checked his weapon, pulled a pin from a random grenade and gestured towards the cargo hold, "Open that door."

Ne'vets complied. The cargo hold slid open to unleashed a foul stench of ignited grenades, tear gas, and some other indiscernible smells. A few of humans slowly moved out of the door and into the common area, hands raised 3/4 high.

Over the coms, "Start shooting!!!, You guys get to the escape pods, I'll grab the Something Awesome and we can scuttle the ship."

Ne'vets was angry, "Tarrie, shut up, stay in the cockpit and do not come down. We will do none of the sort."

The blue furry creature, blaster rifle trained on a Duk'k, reached one of its extra hands towards its ear, and his com linked with the ship's system.

"Team, standby. Do not proceed. I repeat, do not proceed."

Duk'k freed himself and stared down the critter. "So what you, a kriffin' pirate?"

"We're a salvage crew!"

"And you got trapped on the space liner?"

"No, we were trying to salvage everything for our captain back on Takodana. She told us to do it. Except something happened and the ship blew up while still docked to the liner. "

"So you wanted to take our ship?"

"No, we could care less about you or your people, we just need to get back to Takodana to get a new ship and finish the job."

Another, different, squeaky voice came over the com, 'So can we kill them?" The blue creature was noticeably peeved, "Nobody is killing anybody today, just stand down."

A few more passengers eek out of the cargo hold, most simply looking for fresh air to breathe.

Duk'k began to relax, "What's your name, master with a blaster?"

"Corax."

"Well Corax, we'll great your crew back to Takodana, take care of these folks, and be on our merry way, sooner or later."

One of the passengers spoke up, "We're near Takodana? Thank the gods, we can call an Imperial rescue team."

"You shut up, we'll deal with you guys in a bit."

Up in the cockpit, Tarrie was a nervous wreck, anxiously hanging on every word that was going over the coms. He pointed the ship towards Takodana but was two seconds away from grabbing his bug-out bag under his captain's chair and setting the self-destruct on the shp.

"Duk'k what are we doing?"

"Just keep piloting towards Takodana."

Corax used the open channel, "Nako, just make sure he does what he's supposed to."

"Can I stab him?"

"No you can't stab him! Nobody needs to get hurt now!"

"They've taken my sight, they've taken my sight."

One last figure emerged from the cargo hold. Dr. P3PP3R, with his head backwards.

Securing some rations for the passengers, accounting for the furry Skittermanders, they got a better story from the passengers.

The liner had embarked on a two month cruise a few systems over, and with the ship AI going haywire, the survivors were forced to barricade themselves inside the buffet for the last three months. The ship had blown up the previous freighter before they had a chance to commandeer it.

Realizing an Imperial rescue team on Takodana would mightily anger the Pirate Queen herself, it was determined that the passengers from the Emerald Empyrean would be dropped off at the spaceport on Kinyen  Tarrie secured the damage to the windshield so with enough shields it wouldn't get worse during a jump.   He also got  R2-H8(r) back up and running with a few hours of tuning-up to plug in the coordinates. 

After dropping off the passengers at Kinyen, the Skittermanders volunteered to clean up the mess on the Pretio.  Most damage, save the windshield was repaired.  Even the fish smell in the microwave was removed! 

Returning to Takodana, the Skittermanders were returned to Captain Neff, with a reasonable reward. She did have to buy a replacement ship, after all.  

Arriving back at the ranch, a windshield needed replacing, the grenades needed to be restocked and reorganized, and Frokazza picked up from the rocking chair on the wrap-around porch to head towards their next destination: Devaron. 

Next: #49 - A Snowy Cantina