Shard doesn't waste any of her breath screaming at Haarmon to 'Run, void curse it!'  She used to, long ago; it was always a surprise for her teammates when the petite girl let loose with the epithets on a last sprint for whatever safety beckoned.  But it never helps, and these days she doesn't have the breath to spare.  Instead, she focuses on keeping up with the younger man, her eyes locked on Rhijans and the ramp.  Closer they come, the countdown crackling in their ears.  Blaster bolts whine.

Just go, Shard...go.  Go.  GO, VOID CURSE IT!'

Tradition carries its own weight.

Gasping, she reels up the ramp after Haarmon, the closing ramp's inner fold almost biting her heel as she takes the last step.  Inside.  Her shoulder bounces against a wall, and she turns to slide down it, landing ingloriously in a seated position.  "Get...strapped in.  I'm coming."

Rhijans is already on his way to the cockpit, with orders to turn on the boosters.  Good man...priorities straight.  "Haarmon?  Juragga?  You-Why?  Everyone here?"

Haarmon nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He was scared absolutely spitless. His mouth was a dessert and his hands were shaking and his stomach felt hot and heavy. He wasn't quite at the point of yarking. But, sweet Void, he could certainly see that point from where he was sitting.

He was happy for the armour, simply because he could imagine how he must look.

He finds the nearest flat surface and sits. Mostly so he doesn't fall down.

"Here," he manages, finally.

"FIVE SECONDS!"

The bulk freighter starts to lift first, and then moves sideways as it rises, away from the gate, the troopers, and the approaching fighters, gathering speed.  Probably accelerating too fast for port regulations.  Heat from its drives washes across the ice, turning it into a slushy liquid.

Bold Gambit is a smaller ship, lighter and faster.  Vekkis puts her into a vertical climb almost before she's sealed up.  The roar of the straining engines can be felt as vibrations in the bones of those aboard.

There are massive explosions on the ground as the Headhunters swoop low across the mining complex, strafing and launching salvoes of missiles.  Shockwaves buffet the Gambit, causing her to veer wildly.

There is a loud metallic crash from somewhere inside the ship.

After what seems like an eternity, the vibration dies down, and Vekkis' voice can be heard from the cockpit, "Sorry about that, I was a second or two out on my calculations, but we're clear now.  Would somebody mind checking what broke?"

"And, while they are at it, can they please stand me up again?  I knew there was a reason I hate space travel." UY-3PO sounds distinctly annoyed.

Juragga warbled his annoyance.

Reaching a massive paw down to lift Threepio up to his feet, the Wookiee complained again before setting off to see what had, in fact, broke.

Hopefully it wasn't the hyperdrive.

Bracing himself against the walls as he made his way to the cockpit, Rhijans made pretty good time, despite getting bounced at least once when the Gambit pitched against what he assumed was a shockwave from one of the explosions on the ground.  He dropped himself into the co-pilot's seat and strapped in.  "You want a hand?" he asked.

"Or would you prefer I just sit down, shut up, and let you do your job?"  His tone was casual and even, nothing caustic to it...but it was unmistakably sincere in the question, as well.

She used to scream 'Punch it!' as well.  That time, apparently, is gone.  Instead, Shard simply hangs on for dear life as the ship tilts, bounces and howls its way out of the atmosphere.

Then they're out.  Alive.

"Made it," she whispers, closing her eyes.  Maybe.  Her eyes pop open again. "Are we clear?" she calls, pushing herself to her unsteady feet.  Wobbling slightly, she walks a few paces to hold out a hand to Haarmon. "Are we clear?  Of the pickets?" she repeats, pitching and aiming her voice for the cockpit.

Probably; anything in their way would either be in pursuit of the Headhunters, or already taken out by them.  But there's always a chance someone has held back a TIE or two.

Vekkis turns in the pilot's seat and replies to Rhijans, "I could do with a hand, yes.  Do you know how to operate the sensor arrays?"  He nods towards the left hand seat, "Normally I'd do it myself, but I'm having trouble reaching anything on that side of me."  His difficulty probably has something to do with the hole in the left shoulder of the armour he still wears, which is surrounded by burned and blistered plastoid.

Shard's question reaches him, and he calls back, "I don't know!  There was only civilian traffic when we came in!  My guess would be they were planning to upgrade the defences before this place went into full production."  A pause then, as he regains his breath, "I'll try to get you a definite answer soon."

Juragga roams around the ship, searching for signs of damage.  There don't seem to be any fires, and he can't smell smoke.  He continues looking.

Close to the hatch, Shard makes her way over to Haarmon, and helps him to his feet.  Both of them are still breathing hard after their run across the ice.

"Great," Shard moans.  Heading out of atmosphere, bombings commencing behind them, and no real knowledge if there's a patrol cruiser or TIE squadron waiting for them. "Someone better get on the guns...someone who can shoot."

Which, she morosely considers, isn't me.

"You okay, Haarmon?" Stepping back, she leans against the wall and eyes him critically.  "Nice suit...must be getting a little uncomfortable, though.  Heavy.  You want to ditch it now?  We can keep it, in case we might need one in the future."

Need to dress up as a stormtrooper?  Every second mission, she sourly considers.  It always used to mean the same thing for her...  'Security cuffs, Shard!' her teammates used to chime in the old days, giggling at her discomfiture.

"Nice job back there," she continues, a little more quietly.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:05, Mon 16 Apr 2012.

Rhijans grimaced.  While he knew how to fly...kind of...the other equipment in the cockpit had not really been the focus of what training he'd had.  But he knew what it was, and where it was.

"Not makin' any promises that I'll be good at it, but I should be better than nothing," he replied, and spun his chair to face the sensor console, trying to get an idea of what was in space with them besides the other transport and the Headhunters.

Seeing the blaster burn on Lund's shoulder reinforced his appreciation of the fact that he'd come through his part of the mission little more than well-shaken.  And we were both a lot luckier than Jacobs... he thought, sourly.  Leaving those two at the warehouse had been his idea--and while he knew that losses were inevitable, he didn't like the thought of those losses being people he'd sent to whatever project had killed them.  So, while he swept the sensors around surrounding space, he tried to resolve the moral dilemma, without much success.  Rather than resolve it, he just brought it to an end with a single declaration.  You did what was necessary.  Ultimately, you'd do it again, in the same situation.

He'd do it...he wouldn't like it, but he'd do it.

Haarmon, still more than a little shell-shocked, takes Shard's hand and stands, his eyes still unfocused and his steps still wobbly. At her question he shakes his head once or twice, as if to clear it and then realizes where he is and who he's so close to and takes a quick step back.

"I'm... ummm..." he starts. "Yeah. Yeah. Fine. Fine." his voice is regaining some of its swagger, but it's still miles and miles from the voice that described his pistol in such lurid detail.

He takes his helmet off and drops it. Wipes the sweat from his forehead with one arm. Looks up at her final comment. "Yeah?" he said, very quietly. Nice job wouldn't have been how he would describe whatever job it was he did. Weak-sister, maybe. Scared like a youngling in a dark alley, would be another.

She was clearly just humouring him.

"I mean, yeah," he said, "That's how we roll it round here. Negative perspiration. Am I right?" The quality of his bravado was compromised more than a little by the adrenaline-fueled nervous shakes in his voice and hands.

As Juragga wandered the ship, looking for damage and the source of that ominous THUNK sound, he passed by Haarmon.  Fondly, he reached up and lightly scruffled the youth's hair, then warbled his full approval.  Haarmon had done well.  Juragga was proud of him.

But Shard had a point.  They needed someone to man the guns.  He wasn't finding any damage, but that just meant the damage was being clever and hiding.

"I can take a gun, but someone needs to finish checking for damage," he yodeled in a simian warble.

He doesn't sound 'fine'.  Pretty far from it.  Not surprising in the least; he's new to this mess and ended up thrown in the deep end.  Shard had a hard enough time dog-paddling around on their last mission.  Haarmon must have felt like he was drowning.  And yet.

For a half-drowned first-timer...well, we couldn't have managed without him.

"Negative perspiration?"  Reaching out, she swipes a finger along his forehead and flicks a drop at the wall.  Honest sweat has never bothered Shard.  "Could've fooled me." Up goes the finger again, this time along her own forehead, and another drop goes flying. "Found some more."

Her eyes narrow and she leans forward.  "You...pulled information out of their computers, information we needed, information we couldn't have done without.  You dressed up like a trooper, fooled their people, and fought your way through a firefight.  You saved a score of slaves, you found a crawler, and you drove them out.  You.  Did.  Cursed well.  And you survived."

More than we can say for poor Jacobs.

Juragga's warning echoes through the ship as Shard pulls back, and she shouts over her shoulder.  "Good luck on the guns!  Looking for damage, I can do."  She offers a wry smile to Haarmon. "I'm no cursed good at ship stuff," Shard confesses with a shrug, "but I can smell smoke."

The smile fades as she studies him. "Haarmon..."  Her voice is low, serious.  "It never stops scaring me.  This.  If I said it did, I'd be lying."  Grimacing, Shard glances around.  "Gotta look for damage.  You can come, or get out of that armor then come.  Looks pretty hot in that clamshell."

OOC - Going to poke around looking for broken stuff.  Or fires.  :(

Juragga gave an enthused hoot and then went for the gunwell.  He was no ace shot, but he was trained and had a decent eye.  And what he lacked in accuracy he would make up for in enthusiasm.

Shooting at Impies was always fun.

Haarmon listens intently, head bowed, eyes closed just a little. Half of him was convinced she was giving him a pat on the head and a cookie to make him stop crying. Half thought she was on the level. in the way of such things, he completely believed both halves at the same time.

But nothing was to be gained by arguing. A swaggerer he might be, but he tried his best not to be a whiner.

So he just nodded in agreement. And when she went on his way he took a few moments to divest himself of his armour (which was, indeed, getting hot and uncomfortable) and find his way to the nearest terminal. Maybe he could see what was wrong with what.

"Getaway ship is broken. I knew it. I just knew it. Bring on the romantic misadventures and we're all set." He muttered to no one in particular as he sat down at the computer screen.

Juragga takes position in the turret.  It's cramped for somebody his size, and the controls are made for smaller fingers than his own, but after a couple of false starts the systems come on-line.  A targeting grid unfolds in front of him, blinking slowly to indicate that he doesn't yet have a target.

The ship informs him that the laser cannon is fully charged, and ready to use...

Haarmon decides that the best use of his time is to do something he knows how to do.  It takes all of a fraction of a second before Bold Gambit starts reporting in its status, and what it seems to be telling him isn't making any sense... 

In the cockpit, Rhijans works alongside Vekkis.  The sensors start to change mode, providing more information with each passing second.  So far, nothing looks to be heading their way, with the exception of four traces coming up fast behind them.  IFF reports those as the Headhunters.  Another ship is heading away from the planet on a slightly divergent course.  The computer tentatively flags it as a bulk freighter.  It's a little slower than they are.

Vekkis grins, "There was a TIE hangar down there, I saw it as I was trying to get back to the ship.  The racks were empty.  Our boys got away clean, by the look of it.  Impy's mustn't have had any heavy weapons to use against them.  All this other stuff looks like the same civilian traffic that was here when we came in.  Just to be on the safe side, I'll take us away from it."

There is a momentary sensation of disorientation, and a brief motion in the inner ears of the ship's occupants, and Bold Gambit veers away from the other traffic in the system...

Shard searches, but can't find any sign of damage.  Neither can she hear the crackle of electrical sparks, nor smell smoke or ozone.  Very odd.  And suddenly she spots something...  The sudden turn of the ship causes the object to roll out from between two crates - a small gold coloured hoop, a flattened cone in profile, some four centimetres wide, and a centimetre high, with a three centimetre aperture in the centre.  Smooth, and coated with lubricant, it rolls across the floor for a short distance, before falling over and stopping...

Rhijans grins in response to Lund's comment.  "Well...they had some heavy stuff, although Ewebs aren't really designed for engaging aerial targets.  But 'had' is the operative word.  I think the heaviest weapon I left intact down there was the cutting laser on that mining skiff that I came into the hangar driving.  And their comm center is history...aside from the commlinks in the stormtroopers' armor and any backups that the miners might have stashed, they've got no means to call for backup.  We should be long gone before any of the civvie ships in the area get a chance to get word through channels to Imperial Command for this sector."

Still, something gnawed at his thoughts.  With everything else that's gone wrong, can it really be this easy to clear the area? he asked himself.  Pessimism, some would call it...but given that he'd just blown up half the Imperial installations in the mining complex, Lund and Jacobs had leveled the warehouse, Jacobs had died...and he still had no idea what kind of challenges Shard and the other two had gone through...

Part of him just couldn't accept that getting away would be as easy as boarding a ship and flying off, even though a large part of his efforts had been directed at making it that easy.  Better to be overly skeptical and wind up pleasantly surprised than the other way around...

"Oh, that can't be good," Shard mutters, dropping to her hands and knees and waving a palm above the small hoop.  "I found something!" she calls out.  "Some kind of small, oil-coated hoop!"  It's not hot, so she gingerly picks it up, studying it for a moment before slipping around the crate from whence it came.

As she does, she vaguely recalls an image on a screen from years ago, shown to her by an overly enthusiastic (and amourous) tech.  This...hoop...looked it it might fit around a proton torpedo warhead, at some place along the conical weapon's explosive head.  Near the top, for example.

"That would figure," she mutters, peering into the space behind the crates.

Shard searches around the crates.  The labelling identifies them as containing food supplements, and aside from a little dust, there is nothing near them other than the small golden hoop.

Haarmon continues to interrogate the ship.  Nearby, in the lounge area, UY-3PO is complaining, loudly, "Of course, who knows what damage was inflicted when I fell.  Like this.  I am quite sure my arm never made that awful noise when I moved it before.  It is really quite horrible."

In the turret, Juragga whatches the stars wheel overhead, and notes the approach of four starfighters, coming in fast, on an intercept course.  The gunnery systems provide him with an enhanced view of one of the ships...

"As soon as we get those Headhunter's latched on, I'll have us out of here." Lund assures Rhijans.  "The course is just about calculated.  Once they catch up with us, I'll need to keep her steady while they dock, then we can make the jump to lightspeed, and we're home and safe."

"Except for Jacobs, of course.  I couldn't have made it back to the ship with him, not with this hole in my shoulder, so I had to leave him behind."

Juragga warbles, "That's no TIE fighter.  Someone's coming to intercept."

The Wookiee trains his guns on the incoming ship, but doesn't fire.

Yet.

Rhijans' face twitched...he hadn't realized they left Jacobs behind.  Even if it was no longer Jacobs, but just a corpse, the idea bothered him, on multiple levels.  "Well, hopefully there was nothing left back there with him that will steer the Empire in our direction..."  He was pretty sure any survivors that might be left back there--and there would be survivors, four Headhunters didn't carry enough firepower to wipe everyone out--to the officers directly overseeing the whole operation for the sector, and possibly all the way up to the stiff-shirts in Sector High Command, or even the Moff, would be pretty upset by what had happened.  If they got a general direction in which to start looking, they'd be hunting hard and fast.

He didn't let himself dwell on the other reasons why leaving their comrade-in-arms behind bothered him.  That opened the door to an emotional chaos that he'd learned to keep carefully in check.  He satisfied himself with acknowledging that there were, in fact, other reasons...and then focusing on the here and now, trying to get the unfamiliar controls of the sensors to produce some useful results.

Ship on intercept.  Mysterious golden hoop.  Shard balances the two in her head, and leaves the ship to those qualified to deal with it.  Hurrying back to where Haarmon and You-Why are working (and complaining), she holds up the golden ring.

"Quick check.  Seen this before?  Haarmon, any thoughts?"

Better not be a red herring, the older woman gloomily considers.  After a moment, she changes her mind.  Scratch that.  Better if it IS a red herring, and just a bizarre seal off a crate or something.

It won't be, she knows.  The colour, the grease, the fact that it rolled out while they attempt to escape, all paint a nice picture screaming THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Haarmon, though very busy, can always spare time for Shard.  He looks up from the display, giving the object a quick glance before focussing on the woman's face, "What?  No?  Could be anything."  Then his attention is dragged away by a chirp from the console.

"What the... ?  Vekkis!" he yells through to the cockpit, "Your ship is insisting that it's suffered no damage, and that it's all in perfect order!"

Lund, meanwhile, opens a channel to the turret and is replies to Jurraga.  He understands only a little Wookiee, but with an excited Wook manning the gun gives him a good idea what's being said.  "Jurraga!  Don't shoot.  Those are our boys coming for a ride home."

Only then does Haarmon's report sink in.  "No damage?" the pilot says to Rhijans, "But I'm sure I heard something break."

UY-3PO focusses his attention on Shard, since everybody else seems busy, "Excuse me." he says, elevating and lowering his arms, for all the world like a Onderon dragon bird taking off, "Can you hear that awful noise?  My shoulder joint never did that before, did it?"

Rhijans shrugged.  "It's your ship, does it sound like something's not running right?"  He thought for a moment, then added, "There's a chance the breaking wasn't the ship...we do have some extra metal we're hauling back, after all, and I'm not talking about the ore containers."

He scowled slightly, and grumbled, almost under his breath, "I know even less about fixin' droids than I do fixin' ships...hope he's not broken.  Better him than the ship, though..."  He shrugged again.

"How soon to hyperspace?" he asked.  He'd spent a little too much time dangerously close to the muzzles of Imperial weapons...getting out of this system would go a long way to easing his nerves.

"Just as soon as the fighters are docked.  Minute or two, tops." Vekkis replies, making a minor course adjustment.  Then, after some thought, he admits, "I suppose you could be right about the noise being something falling over.  None of the instruments are showing any problems."

Haarmon is troubled. It doesn't take any real degree of genre savvy to see that something is definitely amiss. He might not know what that thing in Shard's hand is, but it sure as heck is something.

After another moment spent crawling through the ship's diagnostic code (always a chance that's what's awry) he gets up and takes the thing from Shard. He plunks it down next to the ships terminal and gives it a serious looking-over.

"Ship says nothing's wrong. So that means something's wrong on the ship, not with the ship. Mebbe it's this."