Kira punched her leg softly, silently cursing herself for the misses....sure they were TIE, known for their speed, but three were already down and she hadn't come close to damaging one let alone take one down.

She shook her head, telling herself to be easier on herself. She wasn't a weapons expert...especially gunnery. She was a scout and tracker...a hunter.

She focused on getting that final TIE, determined to be ready

The cockpit door opens once more and Heigren looks in.

"I just want to tell you all.  Good luck, we're all counting on you."

He left the cockpit and shut the door.

Losing both it's wingmates, the final TIE began increasing it's defensive jinking, making it a harder target to hit.  However this had the effect of throwing off it's aim and the snap shots all flew wide of the shuttle.  It also proved to be fruitless as a shot from Fiarr, closely followed by one from Kyvarr reduced the final TIE to a ball of superheated plasma.

The shuttle was now in the clear.  Beta squad continued to close but they were too far behind to be an issue.  The shuttle cleared the gravity well and Devon and Arcas had time to review the jump coordinates one last time before they pulled the lever and the universe stretched and elongated around them.

They vanished into hyperspace, the squadron of TIEs left helplessly behind.

---

OOC:  You have escaped into hyperspace.  Congratulations.  You're not technically safe yet but you certainly have time to take a breather and plan your next move.

Kyvarr watched her tactical screen until well after they'd entered hyperspace.  She then got on the comm to the turrets.

"Good shooting everyone.  Take a break you've earned it.  I'll be forwarding you all the times of our planned hyperspace exits to your datapads.  I want you all back in your turrets no less than five minutes before reversion, understood?"

Once she received clarification she looked forward.  "Arcas, could you or Seven send me our planned hyperspace reversion times?  Want to make sure our guns are all crewed when it matters."  Once she gets the times she forwards them to the gunners.

She then performs checks of her guns and replays footage of the battle while waiting to see what the commander planned next.

Kira sighs as she felt the jump to Hyperspace, knowing the TIE won't be following...both the lone one and the squadron. She heard TAlon 5's instructions and had a slight smile. "Roger that 5"

Kira stood up in the cramped gunner pod and slowly made her way out. "Time for a drink....don't know when we'll get the next one." She said to herself, and made her way to the mess to grab some water and perhaps a light snack.

Aderek quickly brings up and scans the readouts for all the sensors relating to the hyperdrive system and the power systems feeding it.  He didn't want himself, ten and the rest of the crew to be surprised by a sudden issue tossing them unceremoniously back out of hyperspace.  It would be a rude experience if something had been damaged, or there had been any kind of tampering to the system.

Devon slumped back in his seat and let out a long breath as the shuttle jumped into hyperspace.
"An' we're away.  We'll spend some time doin' some evasive stuff, throw off pursuit... then its back home.  Good work, everyone."

Devon keyed his commlink and called Dohr, still in his turret.
"Doc - medical advice:  I wanna spend a few hours makin' random jumps, confusin' our trail some before we head on to our final destination.  Hows the health of our passengers?  How time critical are things?"
Whilst he waited for an answer, Devon twisted round in his seat to look at the others on the bridge.
"OK, guys, we're currently on course for Commenor, but that's just a decoy.  Fifteen minutes from now we'll drop out of hyperspace an' plot a new course.  Then we'll do it a few more times, if the Doc doesn't disagree.  So take a few minutes - go the fresher, get yourselves a drink.  Bring me a caf back."

Devon returned his attention to the controls, waited till heard the first person get up to leave the bridge.  Then he smirked and called over his shoulder:
"An' someone please find a way to stop Four quotin' that damn film at us!  Use gunfire if you have to!"

Kira smiles as she slowly passes devon while he speaks. "Stop four talking....hmm, might be easier battling a Rancor with a vibroblade." The smirk on her face tells all she's a little more relaxed now they are off the prison planet and away from the enemy

...for now

"Well, I'll be in the refresher for a while, then. If you can find some clean clothing or we run through a supernova, let me know. I am more than certain, I will lose a significant percentage of my weight in there", the blue lady said. "I wonder if I need to get some weights to keep me on the deck." She stood up and headed for the door. "As for the Zeltron, I would suggest pouring his mouth full of ferrocrete. That should work like a charm. You could then use him as a lighting fixture or something like that. The only downsides would be, it'd be eerily quiet here and it'd be hard to use him for what he does best - baffling the Imps."

Heigren chipped up on the comm.  "Hey guys, I've been checking out our culinary choices.  This baby lacks a galley or any comforts there of.  As such I can offer you a small variety of emergency rations and nutri-paste.  You can wash it down with water or a glass of whisky though I'm afraid we're limited on the latter.  Happy to deliver to those who can't leave their posts, else see me in the corner of the cargo bay."


OOC: GM tells me there is no caf on board.  Do we need to pull out the riot gear?

Dohr let out a sigh when the black starriness turned into a familiar streaks of light. They'd made it out in one piece. He knew it was far from over though. With the calculative power of a Star Destroyer's computer systems, the imps had probably been able to track their exit trajectory and calculate possible target locations. For all they knew there could be another Destroyer waiting for them at the other end of the jump.

The Doc closed his eyes for a moment and took a few long breaths to calm himself down. He then got up from the strangely comfortable seat and climbed out of the turret.

"Doc - medical advice:  I wanna spend a few hours makin' random jumps, confusin' our trail some before we head on to our final destination.  Hows the health of our passengers?  How time critical are things?" Dohr rolled his shoulders a couple of times and answered:

"Everyone is stable at the moment and since we have the Bacta tanks, no one is in immediate life-threatening danger. But of course the sooner we get One into proper intensive-care, the better. Dropping out of a jump might not exactly make things better though, so please do it as gently as possible. I will give you an update as soon as I have dragged my useless leg into the Med Bay."

The sarcastic attempt at a joke was so bad, it didn't even make the Kel Dorian himself laugh as he limped towards the part of the ship they'd cleared up for the injured. The Gamma was an assault shuttle designed to carry stormtrooopers into combat, not to act as a mobile hospital so they lacked nearly all equipment of a proper sickbay.

OOC: Just to clarify what I said to Heigren and expand.  This ship is a designed for combat operations but has been modified for transport duty.  It is not a vessel build to comfort.  It has no bunks, no galley, no shower, only one 'fresher (which Lin is now monopolising).  So only food/drink on board is the emergency rations (and Heigren's emergency booze supply) and the only beds are the ones you brought for patients.  The chairs in the cargo area are simple fold down jobs, not built for comfort.

Mika feels the ship surge into hyperspace.  She feels a bit of tension drain out of her, knowing that they've bought a bit of time on their pursuit.  Now she could really focus on getting everything shipshape again.  Still squirming out of the guts of the shield equipment, she calls a muffled yell to Lefty, "What's the status now?"

Getting out and stretching out a few kinks, she looks around to see if there's anything that obviously needs work.

Lefty, takes a moment from his scan of hyperdrive related systems to verify the status of the shields, relaying that information to 10.  He points her to the next most likely bottleneck in the system according to the monitoring equipment and his years of experience.  [I don't know if our past repair roll was successful or not.]

Having limped his way back to Mark and the other wounded, Dohr had a look at everyone's condition and had a quick chat with Trycson. Neither of the men were smiling. Dohr nodded to the younger human and sighed. "Yes. An extra large caf would be a life-saver right now, but we will have to manage without." The Doc nodded to the medic and then made a not-so Kel Dorian gesture and padded Trycson on the shoulder. The soldier was doing and had done a great job so far.

Dohr opened the Talon comms. "Seven, I take back part of what I said. Time... we... he is running out of it. I understand we need to lose the tail, but keep those jumps to bare minimum, please. Other than that, we are ok. For now."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:26, Tue 14 Nov 2017.

Devon stared up at the ceiling and sighed.  This was not the answer he had wanted.
"Understood, Eight.  Will do what I can."

And there was no caf, that hadn't been the answer he wanted either.
"Four - no caf and nothing with actual flavours?  OK - can we at least manage to get something with calories in it sent up?"

Whilst he waited for someone to deliver his oh-so-tasty ration goo and for their first jump to complete, Devon hurriedly began reworking their jump sequence to get them to their final destination that much faster.  He figured that if they completed both the first and second decoy jumps without incident or anyone spotting them, then that he could risk a straight shot back 'home'.

He quickly explained his theory to Arcas, to see if the ex-Imperial could spot any flaws in the plan - but carefully didnt mention that their final destination was a mobile fleet.
Meaning we can just move the damn fleet, once everyone arrives. he added in the privacy of his own mind.

Heigren appeared shortly after on the bridge.  He handed Devon a ration bar.  "It's not great but compared to that nutri-paste goo they feed the stormtroopers, this is heaven.  This should help wash it down."  He hands Devon a small cup, half full. 

Hegren offers ration bars and water to anyone else on the bridge who wants it then heads to the door.  As he reaches it he turns.


"I just want to tell you all, good luck, we're all counting on you."

With a grin he departs.

While the rest of the crew wound down from the spike of excitement, Arcas sat down, contemplating his newfound freedom. While he was still captive of these Rebels, they seemed like they would honor their promise.

Realizing he hadn't eaten for ages, Arcas gratefully accepted the ration bar. While he was attacking the rations, he listened to the Rebel leader's jump plan.

"Assuming they warrant us important enough to give chase, they will probably send the Vendetta. With a Star Destroyer's worth of technicians and analysts, I'd wager they can track us very effectively", the man said before closing his eyes and dredging his memory.

"I recall several tricks how to evade pursuit by cronau analysis: Find a busy hyperspace intersection and make the jump there, make the jump from a dense nebula with radiation interference or find a trajectory that has more than one reasonable end points. I figure in our situation the last one would be preferable... Assuming you have a very good astrogator on board."

Devon cast around for something to throw at Heigren, but by the time he had seized on something suitably heavy, the Zeltron had already shut the door.

He subsided and turned his attention back to Arcas and their escape plan.
"My usual trick is to lay in a course to some place - like right now we're headed for Commenor - then interrupt the jump before we arrive.  We end up somewhere in the middle of deep space, replot and pull the same trick again.  Result is they THINK we headed to Commenor, but we'll have replotted and headed some place else by the time they realize we're never gonna arrive there."

Mika wipes her hands on the legs of her coveralls and heads over towards Lefty's location.  "Looks solid enough, as soon as the capacitor charges, shields should be back to 100%.  Anything else looks like it needs attention?"

"So, this bucket is still very factory fresh, I can't find anything that's been modded at all.  I'm thinking we work on the engines, see if we can get a few more legs out of 'em.  Or maybe we mod shields, we're not going to outrun Imp fighters so maybe we need to be able to take more punishment instead.  What do you think?"

Something about her suggests that she's more interested in assessing Lefty than getting his assessment of the shuttle.

Lin headed for the refresher, but prior to entering it she did her best to find herself at least something clean to wear. As it was, she was lacking everything from fresh shirt to clean underwear. But whether she found anything clean enough for clothing, she was going to hit the refresher like a dirtbomb and practically peel off the layers of dirt and grime. After about thirty standard minutes she emerged from the refresher, now smelling far better and her hair a mane of pink fluff. Her skin was now a couple of shades lighter, she was wearing a slightly oversized Stormtrooper's body glove and there was a somewhat pleased look on her face.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:13, Thu 16 Nov 2017.

Fiarr gratefully climbed out of her turret and stretched as best she could in the confines of the shuttle.  She desperately wanted to shower and to brush her fur but that was not going to be a reality as of yet.  Instead she headed for the cargo bay to purloin whatever remotely passed for food, and more importantly, some of the whisky.  If she knew the Zeltron, it would be decent quality.

The idea of dropping out in some random point in space wasn't exactly appealing to Arcas. That was basically hyperspace exploration.

"If you can astrogate your way back to known lanes, then by all means. In that instance I doubt you need more than one jump. Even the Empire doesn't have the resources to scour every point from here to Commenor."

"That's what I figured," Devon answered as he munched on the ration bar Heigren and left him.
"An this aint the first time we've dodged a Destroyer this way."

Swallowing the last of the bar, Devon sniffed at the contents of the cup.
"Everyone else packed survival gear, medical supplies, weapons... he bought a decent whiskey." he muttered and took a sip, savoring the taste.
"Good stuff.  I gotta remember to mooch some more off him when we're done."
He drank in silence for a few moments.



Five minutes till their stop at 'this isnt Commenor' - Devon sighed and set the cup aside, then activated the comms.
"Five minutes till real space, five minutes.  We ain't anticipatin' trouble, but I want everyone sharp an' ready.  Just in case."

Aderek pauses, looking around the craft.  "Depends on its purpose.  If this craft is going to be used to sneak back into a core system, you won't want to make significant external changes.  But given its current purpose, at least as I know it, I'd run another backup power conduit down here so the Doc doesn't have to choose which people's support systems are shut down here to be able to run others."

Pausing he considers for a moment, "Longer term, if keeping it, I'd probably replace some of those various filters an such that are dependent on disposable supplies.  They are a pain to try to recycle and reuse when you're ona long trip without ready supply runs.  I prefer the ones that are more work, take more skill but can be cleaned and reused with proper tools."

The tone in his voice reflects a certain detachment, realizing he doesn't know exactly where they are going, save for away from that hole of a prison planet.  His comments show a certain disdain for the systems designed for barely trained techs to be able to fully maintain them, perhaps revealing a certain personal appreciation for people's skills.  However, it also includes a definite longer term sustainability that the disposable items trade longer term sustainability for utilizing a steady supply chain.

---

When the call says five minutes until coming out of hyperspace, Lefty responds.  "I'm happy to continue helping here, but it might be good for me to check with Doc to see if he would need to monitor any of the patients vitals when we emerge to make sure none have a reaction."