"Bantha it is," Haarmon muttered, and took out his datapad and started semi-theatrically typing, checking. muttering, looking harried and rushed (which wasn't hard) before looking up and starting toward the Bantha a good, hard clip.

Almost there.

Almost there.

Walking past the Bantha, the group suddenly veer towards the entry ramp.  A move which does not go completely unnoticed by the more observant troopers at the bay entrance.

As they ascend into the ship, the first blaster bolts start to explode against the hull.

Jalt rips off his helmet and throws it into a corner, as he slams his other hand against the hatch control.  "Turrets, now!" he yells, and heads for the cockpit.

"Somebody see if they can use the ship's weapons to knock out that shuttle." Kourene suggests.

Jalt throws himself into the pilot's seat and starts activating controls.  There is a rising hum from the drives.

And from somewhere inside the ship comes a muffled voice, very much like that of a stormtrooper.  "Who's there?"...

Rhijans peeled off his helmet as soon as he saw Jalt doing the same.  They were aboard the ship, that was the critical thing.  "Shard, Juragga...find whoever's aboard and make sure they're no threat to us."  He left the interpretation of that to them.

He scrambled for the turret...he wasn't well-versed in the particular weapons mounted there, but a gun's a gun.  And he didn't do passive-sitting-and-waiting very well...

Juragga rushed inside, arms splayed wide, frame hunched low for pouncing.  He was ready to fight.  Drawing his bowcaster didn't occur to him; in these close quarters, he was going to go with pure Wookiee rage.

Kourene parcel's out Shard's own, unspoken idea: if they can turn that bloody shuttle into blazing wreckage on the way out...well, anything that might trap her holiness Ghea Nimadda aboard an exploding Star Destroyer would be welcome to the older woman.  Better that than murdersticks at two paces, a situation in which Shard is certain she'd come out second best.

Rhijans is headed for one turret...Juragga looks ready to clear the room.  That leaves her and Kourene.  "On it, Rhijans.  Colonel, if you have any experience with turrets, I strongly suggest you take the other one."  This fired over her shoulder while Shard heads after the Wookie.  "Haarmon!  Get your pistol out and protect Jalt!" 

Speaking of murdersticks....

The metal cylinder fills one hand. Delicate components, here...don't screw up.  With that on her mind, it's rather difficult to reach for balance, but in a way the tension is an aid; they cannot afford any distractions, or the ship might not lift in time.

If it does not lift, her team dies.

Fire on one side, ice on the other, Shard hurries in Juragga's rather impressive wake.

The Bantha lifts and swings towards the force field sealing the hangar's space exit.  Jalt deliberately takes it slowly, allowing an easier shot at the shuttle for whoever takes the ventral turret.

At least there doesn't look to be anything in the hangar that's capable of shooting back, apart from the stormtroopers.  That will, of course, probably change when the Bantha gets outside, and straight into an ongoing battle.

Shard and Juragga go to investigate the noises inside the ship.  They round a curve and come face to face with eight stormtroopers and a tech with a repulsorlift pallet of scanning gear, just outside the medical bay...

OOC: Who wants to shoot that shuttle?

Juragga didn't hesitate.  He bellowed a terrifying Wookiee battle cry and charged the Stormtroopers, hoping to get inside their range before they could react.

Everyone scattered like they knew exactly what they were doing. That's part of what Haarmon loved about this team. They always seemed to know exactly what was going on. Meanwhile, Haarmon stood there like an idiot, far less juiced into the nuances of the situation.

The Shard told him right where to go. In a good way. And he nodded and darted off to the cockpit. Plopped himself down in the co-pilot's chair.

"What can I do?" He knew a little about Starships. A little. A very little.

Eight of them, and the tech.  Shard's stomach knots for an instant and she loses her concentration.  For at least two heartbeats her mind wastes time scrambling after it; a poor choice, as the harder she searches, the more it eludes her.  Then Juragga bellows and surges forward; ironically, it's just what she needs.

Are you going to leave him to fight alone?

Killing...but killing to protect?  Acceptable, her spirit deems, abruptly finding that elusive balance between fury-fear and icy emptiness.  Blue-white flares between her hands as she moves in pursuit, her steps suddenly smooth and sure, the weapon light in her hands and heavy in her heart.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:56, Tue 06 Dec 2016.

Rhijans' climb into the turret was slowed a bit by the armor...he'd used armor before, many bounty hunters had--but he didn't make a practice of it because the armor, itself, could become a liability.  After all, slipping subtly into a spacer bar after a target was kind of pointless when everyone in the place turned and looked at the armored individual coming through the door...

He slipped into the seat, powered up the targeting, and pivoted the turret.  It was tempting to aim for the cockpit...after all, if he blew out the canopy, the shuttle wasn't going anywhere...

But cockpit canopies, especially on Imperial VIP shuttles, were armored.  Open hatches leading inside were not...

And, after all, it wasn't as if his expertise were so extensive that he could really rely on killing it in one shot.  A gunnery turret was very different from a hand-held blaster...

But it was also a lot more powerful.

He did his best to line up the open hatch into the shuttle and hit the trigger...

Jalt glances at Haarmon.  "Keep an eye on that scanner.  Warn me if you see anything coming in fast, because it'll probably be fighters."

The Bantha's turrets open fire, spraying laser fire across the hangar.  The stormtroopers duck for cover, as something inside the shuttle explodes, scattering droplets of molten metal and jagged shards of shrapnel across the bay...

And then the Bantha is through the force field and into space. 

Inside the ship, Juragga crashes into the stormtroopers, and two of them go down immediately, one of them not moving, as the wookiee starts flailing his arms at those who are still standing

Two more troopers fall as Shard arrives, wielding a dazzling bar of coruscating energy which cuts easily through their armour and leaves them dead at her feet.

The tech panics and flees into the medical bay, as the remaining troopers raise their blasters and open fire.  In their shock and confusion, they don't manage to hit either the Wookiee or the Jedi...

Rhijans smiled grimly at the results of his shooting, and pivoted the turret to visually scan their wake, looking for anything that looked like it might be pursuit.  Hopefully, with the pounding the Star Destroyer had been taking, pursuit would be tied up doing something else...but if someone came after them, he'd do his best to make sure it would be the last order those pilots ever got...

Juragga, as yet untouched, lays into the troopers with abandon, leaving two of them completely open.  Shard's stomach clenches as she moves in, dreading what is to come, but there is no choice and despite her distaste, she hesitates not at all.  A moment more, and half of the troopers are down...the rest firing.

"Surrender!" she shouts - probably pointless, but need forces her to try.  Possibilities flicker in the lean woman's mind as she follows her white-hot blade; Juragga's size and enthusiasm provide an additional difficulty in the cramped confines of the hallway, but the energy flowing through her guides her blade.

And yet, she finds no good openings; it's simply too dangerous at this very moment to go fully on the offensive.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:57, Mon 12 Dec 2016.

Kourene drops into the other gunnery position and activates the lasers and their targetting systems.  He makes a mental note - if he gets out of this alive he's going to offer to upgrade the Bantha's weapons.   Then he rotates the turret  and starts looking for potential targets.

The sky ahead looks crowded...

Inside the ship, Shard and Juragga battle the stormtroopers.  There is a smell of singed fur as a blaster bolt strikes home.  Juragga staggers, but seems otherwise unaffected... 

Alongside him, Shard desperately parries blaster bolts, though in the chaos she is, for the moment, unable to find an opening of her own... 

Haarmon watches the scanner, and warns Jalt that it looks like there are a couple of fighters heading directly for the Bantha...

Juragga roared - more in fury than in pain - and lashed out with a powerful Wookiee fist, attempting to inspire the trooper and the bulkhead to occupy the same physical space.

[17:17, Today: Juragga rolled 16 using 6 dice with the WEG Classic system with rolls of 5,{Wild}3,1,1,3,3.  Brawling.]

Not seeing anything immediately pursuing them, Rhijans began slowly shifting the turret, splitting his attention between the visible starfield and ships and the display on the targetting system, watching for signs of hostile activity.

The thought dawned on him...he'd been expecting pursuit from the Star Destroyer, but if the Empire was engaged in battle--as it had appeared from the state of the ship while they were on board--then the Bantha could very well be flying right into Imperial forces.  Or, other, non-Imperial fighters could be in flight around them, as well.

He took a moment, fumbling with the headset for the ship's intercom system.  "Let's make sure of who we shoot at...it'd be bad to start shooting at a sensor blip and find out it was one of ours at extreme range..." he said, once he got it settled in place.  He resumed his slow scan of the space around them.

The stormtrooper fire comes close - only barely does Shard sense their aim, and only an instant before the firing studs are depressed.  It leaves her no time to spare, and with wrenching movements of her body, she barely manages to intercept the fiery bolts with the blue-white hell she holds.  Juragga roars in berserk rage, a storming avalanche in the narrow confines.

No chance of them surrendering now, but she had to try.  That's finished, now, and with the reek of burned friend in her nose, Shard's conflict clears.  Protect.  Unstable before, the balance solidifies.  About her, the world seems to slow - seems, for in truth it does not, but her perceptions have changed.  There, the stormtroopers, weapons flashing packets of plasma.  There, Juragga assaulting one directly.

The Wookie becomes the solid pillar around which Shard whirls, a black-clad dervish dancing through her enemies in a riot of flaring cloak and long, split skirt.

But it's not a dance; it's killing, in all its ugliness.

Please, her mind whispers through the burning storm within, the clash of heat and cold creating the swirling border upon which her spirit spins, please, let us make it through this.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:52, Tue 13 Dec 2016.

Haarmon was trying his best to look and feel useful as everything went crazy all around him. He'd been on starships before. He'd even had a little training in how to work them. Sensors, astrogation, all that. But it had never stuck.

So now, staring at all those dials and windows and numbers and lights, it was all too much and he was just overwhelmed.

And the noises coming from the back didn't help. If Wookie roaring and lightsaber hum wasn't enough to get your adrenaline flowing, you were probably dead.

Or maybe Rhijans. I bet Rhijans is sitting there in the turret, cool as a hull in a vaccuum, going over his grocery list and wondering what all the fuss is about.

Somehow, the thought made him feel a little better. He keyed the intercom.

"Uh, Cap? We got incoming at..." he couldn't remember the way you expressed it. Something-something mark something-else? "Down. And, like, to the left. Your left. Um. Assuming you're facing the same way I am. Hot void. Over by that moon."

Ugh. He wasn't cut out for this.

Reldan Jalt, throws the Bantha into a tight turn, "Got you Haarmon."  Ahead the sky is full of rapidly moving points of light, many of them engaged in frantic dogfights.

"We've got incoming fighters.  Two one five mark three by one seven four.  Roughly." the captain calls through to the gunnery positions.  Er... scratch that."  As a pair of TIEs hurtle past the ship without firing.  "Ahead of us now!"

Pulse after pulse of laser fire spray past the Bantha, narrowly missing the jinking TIEs...

"I... I don't think that was aimed at us." 

The two TIES break, twisting away in different directions... 

Roaring, Juragga barges into the remaining stormtroopers.  Blaster fire ricochets off the walls and ceiling around the Wookiee as he grabs one of the troopers and hurls him back at the other Imperials in the room.  The tech falls, stunned, as the armoured body hits him hard.  The trooper doesn't move again...

Alongside the Wookiee, Shard cuts diagonally with her weapon, and another stormtrooper screams as he falls to the floor with a scorch-edged rip across the breastplate of his armour.

Only two of the troopers remain standing.  Backing into the med bay, they continue firing.  Without much success.  Between Shard deflecting blaster bolts, and Juragga's surprising display of nimbleness, they fail to hit anything...

She doesn't think of killing as success; nevertheless, it's a feeling resembling that elusive goal.  Those firing at her teammate are going down, and the pair who remain continue to fire.  No room for hesitation; they've been given their chance, and anything more would put herself, Juragga, the entire team at risk.  And the space has opened up; the Wookie's furious, deadly charge has rammed their enemies back into a room.

Shard follows the flying trooper, blazing murder in her hands.

She'll be sick, later.  She might even dive back into the bottle, forlorn and forgotten in her sock drawer for more than a week.  But here and now, she regretfully accepts the necessity of killing, of ending the battle.  No fancy twirls of her weapon, no butterfly swings; instead, it's a short, horizontal cut to the right with a forward step of that foot, then a similar diagonal step with her left as her right hand leaves the hilt, the left-handed cut giving her almost a foot of added reach.  Speed is meaningless; timing is all.

One-two.  Follow-step for balance.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:48, Tue 03 Jan 2017.

"Taking the one on the left..." he said coolly into the comm system.  The weapon pivoted, he lined up as best he could, and fired.  It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't smooth...he let himself hold his breath for a moment, waiting to see if the sloppy shooting would do anything more than give the TIE pilot another reason to dodge.

Moving in tandem to the Jedi, the fierce Wookiee warrior didn't hesitate, but lashed out with powerful fists at on of the remaining troopers, trying to pile-drive him into the deck.

22:11, Today: Juragga rolled 23 using 6 dice with the WEG Classic system with rolls of 1,6,{Wild}4,6,1,5.  Brawling.

Laser fire erupts from Dancing Bantha's turrets,  The TIE on the left explodes in a ball of flame and fragments of hot metal, while its partner veers sharply off course with blue sparks dancing across one of its vanes.  It recovers, butonly for a moment...

The third fighter passes the Bantha and, for a moment, is clearly visible from the transport's cockpit and dorsal turret.

"What the Hell?" Jalt exclaims, "Did you see that?"  The third fighter has an unusual configuration - similar to a Z-95, but with four S-foils in an X pattern.  And it's fast...

Shard and Juragga finish the remaining two troopers with ease.  Hairy fists and glaring lightsaber make short work of the stormtroopers...

The final TIE swings back towards the Bantha, as Jalt throws the ship into a desparate evasive roll.

"I'm glad we're too close for the star destroyer's guns to bear on us!"

"Where is he...?" Rhijans growled softly under his breath.  Partway through the maneuver, the TIE fighter came into his fire arc, the targeting system lighting up as the fire control plotted out the best potential firing point.  Scarcely waiting for it, Rhijans pivoted the weapon, in some weird mix of instinctive targeting and relying on the fire control, and thumbed the firing stud, spitting energy at the closing fighter.

01:33, Today: Rhijans Thanus rolled 12 using 4 dice and +2 pips with the WEG Classic system ((3,2,{Wild}3,2)).

Juragga hammers the final trooper down with appalling finality, and Shard slides to a halt.  Her breath comes evenly - in moments, it'll probably turn to agonized gasps, but for now, no.  She swivels like a turret, the lightsaber coming up, the tip oriented between the tech's eyes. "Don't move," the older woman commands, loudly enough to be heard over the howling cacophony of the battle: the thrum of the turret, the whine of the shields, the growl of the engines. "Juragga - any of the ones still alive, we'll try to keep them that way.  Information," she clarifies, knowing full-well the Wookie will need a reason.

The turret speaks again, and Shard's lips thin.  Their battle might be over, but the other still fight the war.