The crew of the Pretio risking their lives in This Week's Episode:
Ne'vets Aharo - An exotic animal broker, both legal and otherwise, majority owner in the Pretio, with no combat skills whatsoever.
Duk'k - Sipsk'ud Bounty Hunter who recently joined crew. His warning shots are dead center mass kill shots.
Latorna Savvn - Rebel Terrorist and Saboteur, big sister to former Pretio pilot Tarrie Prolek (RIP). Hiding with the crew to lay low after comitting a heinous act of terrorism on an Imperial Shipyard.
"Sid" - A peculiar woman with some piloting prowess, no social skills, and a mysterious past.
Evus - Twi'lek male, former slave, then former associate of Ne'vets. Former lover of infamous Rebel Terrorist Latorna Savvn.
The Hyperlane Less Travelled
With potential bounties on their heads
From galactic crime organizations,
And the fact that their hosting a
Known rebel terrorist and saboteur,
The crew of the Pretio has decided
To expand the repetoire to paramilitary
Rescue operations.
They will be paid handsomely if they can travel
To a literally forgotten backwater planet
And get an oligarch's misguided son
Out of prison, through hook, or by crook,
Or by Latorna just blowing the place up...
The next morning, the crew finished loading up the Pretio and with Latorna in tow, departed for the planet Ruie.
 |
| The Pretio, a Ghtroc 720 Freighter |
Ruie was a former colony that had simply been forgotten with bureaucracy of the Old Republic. When corporate exploration teams rediscovered it a few years ago, the Empire had no immediate use for the planet off the grid for generations, leaving the politically fractured planet to the business dealings with corporate interests, one nation at a time.
The planet is not on any active astrogation charts or nearby hyperlanes, so what would take a few days at worst, took over a week, even with R2-H8(r), with a series shorter jumps and subsequent corrections to locate the system.
Once it could be narrowed down to the right star, the Pretio finally arrived in orbit of Ruie and hailed the Space Traffic Control for approval and approach directions.
No one responded.
The crew tried a few more com approaches with no success. Sensors were vague, noticing lots of life on the planet, but nothing that recognized large human cities, or even settlements. Even worse, there were no energy signatures indicating significant power generation.
Confused, but undaunted, Ne'vets instructed Sid to enter the atmosphere and visually look for signs of life.
The planet itself was quite bucolic, if otherwise unremarkable. There were large swaths of farmland, but no buildings, equipment, and people/droids maintaining them. Any structures they could make out were shed-sized and couldn't hold a speeder bike.
They did encounter actual train tracks and an ancient-looking train, belching smoke as it travelled, but no one thought it a good idea to fly parallel to the tracks and see where they led.
It was finally decided to land in one of the fields, near the tree line, and investigate on foot.
Sid brought the Pretio down for a landing. As the landing gear were deployed a mere ten meters off the ground, an explosion rocked the vessel, sending all the sensors on high alert, the same sensors that had not detected any energy sources seconds before.
Sid immediately performed evasive maneuvers only known to pilots trained to make high speed, rapid ascents out of combat hot spots. As the Pretio did a barrel roll, the internal finally coms lit up with with two messages.
"I'm on fire!!! I'm on fire!!!" followed by "AAAAAAiiiiiiieeeeeeee!!!!!" then silence.
Everyone was immediately accounted for... except Duk'k.
Fighting the Pretio's rapid ascent Ne'vets pulled himself down the hallway to the ladder for the quad laser cupola where Duk'k would normally station himself. Beyond some twisted, burning wreckage was open sky and no sign at all of the Sipsk'ud.
"Sid, do not leave the planet, we've got a breach... and a missing crew member."
Next: #74 - Search and Salvage
No comments:
Post a Comment