As soon as the Handree had made it to Neskroff it has been Nessquik's duty to get all the medical supplies onboard and the gunship ready for launch to the besieged Polmanar system. After the maintenance crew had fully loaded the starship Nessquik remained on the Handree a moment longer to double check the cargo in the forward hold. When the Quarren was sure that everything was in order he started to make his way to the Belly Hold to check if there was any stock there too. To get to the Belly Hold he took the turbolift to Deck 4 and was making his along the corridor when he heard the sounds of a struggle. Hiding in an escape pod Nessquik avoided detection and waited as he expected the intruders to be caught and dealt with.

After a few minutes he felt the sublight engines start and ten minutes after that the ship entered hyperspace. Nessquik didn't have a clue what was going on. Nessquik did know that if the maintenance crew had already left the only people on the ship would be him, the guards and the intruders. It was then that he heard the sounds of ship's droids becoming operational down the corridor.

The moment Ness felt the ship's sublight engines start up, everything he thought about what was going on flew out the airlock.  He had presumed that the sounds of a struggle was just a couple of his fellow Rebels having a row.  Men being men, sometimes there are arguments that cannot be solved except by fisticuffs.  The unoccupied ship would make the perfect place for two angry men to fight it out outside of the view of a sergeant who would break up the fight.

Well Nessquik wasn't having none of that.  He isn't the sort of person to get himself in the middle of a fight.  Though technically an officer, he wasn't the kind who went around barking orders at enlisted men.  In fact, most enlisted men looked down on him and insisted he polish their boots.  Which was something the Quarren was not against doing.  Unlike most of his kind, Nessquik had no illusions of pride.  So when he heard a struggle, the first thing that came to mind to do was hide rather than get drawn in.  Sooner or later a sergeant would come around and break up the fight.

But then all his thoughts changed when he felt the ship begin to move.  That wasn't two enlisted men having a row!  The ship was being stolen!  And being the only person aboard who wasn't stealing the ship, Nessquik began to think that an escape pod wasn't the best hiding place.  It was a little too obvious a place to hide.  Plus the ship's security systems could detect an unauthorized access of the escape pod.  Any numbskull checking the ship's security system could see that the escape pod door had been recently opened.  As a supply officer, his security code gave him clearance to open the pods when there was no emergency.  He had to check to make sure the pods were well stocked with food, survival, and medical supplies.  His identification would be in the security log.

And now he could hear the ship's droids powering up.  That came as something of a relief.  It meant that the hijackers were small enough in number that they couldn't operate the gunship all by themselves.  So he wasn't too outnumbered.  But still just outnumbered.

Knowing enough about droid programming to know that not enough time has passed for the hijackers to re-program the droids to be loyal to them, the Quarren felt it was safe enough to crawl out of the escape pod to go seek out the droids.  He was just one poorly trained officer against how many hijackers.  But with the help of the droids and some ingenuity, he could give himself a fighting chance of taking back the ship.  Or at the very least sabotage the Hyperdrive so the ship can't leave the system.  Nessquik knew a lot about tech.  He also knew enough to know he wasn't a greasemonkey.  His fingers were far too soft for the menial work of a mechanic.  That's what he needed droids for.  The droids just needed the proper instruction.  What he was about to tell them to do would likely go against their programming.  So their programming needed a little adjustment.  That he could do.

Nessquik moved silently, which for him only meant slowly.  His father may have been a smuggler, but he didn't teach Nessquik everything he knew.  The art of making the deal came first.  After that came the skills of operating a starship.  But stealth and concealment were things best left up to a partner.  It gave him plausible deniability.  It could be the partner doing all the illegal stuff and going around his back to do it.  The best way to keep out of trouble was to point the finger of blame at someone else.  This time though Nessquik knew the finger of blame would be pointing at him.  How else could someone steal the ship if they didn't have an inside man?  The Quarren was obviously in on it.  He could hear it in his head, all the Mon Calamari naval officers pointing the finger of blame at him.  The only way to keep that from happening now was for him to try to wrest control of the ship back from the hijackers.  It went against everything he had been taught by his father, but this time he had to be the hero.

There was another reason for Nessquik to move slowly other than to try to be quiet.  If the droids were being activated, then there had to be someone in there with them.  Not all the droids could remotely activated.  So Nessquik was hoping that by delaying, he would give that person time to finish what they were doing and leave the droid maintenance bay before he entered.  There was the chance though that that person would exit the bay in his direction.  So with that possibility in mind, Nessquik drew his compact Blaster Pistol and pointed it ahead of him.  He didn't know if he could fire it.  It would depend on how scary that person looked.  Nessquik had never shot anyone before outside of a training scenario.  He always kept his blaster on stun.  For the first time outside of the target practice range, he switched his pistol over to its kill setting.

The Quarren supply officer walked down the corridor, as he got closer he could discern the voices of women talking in the Droid Storage and Maintenance area.

Hearing the voices gave Nessquik reason to pause but it was too late, he'd obviously been detected as a shout came out from the room "uh...come out into the open or we'll just throw in a thermal detonator" a feminine voice called in Basic.

Caught!  Well that was a brief attempt to retake the ship.  Nessquik always knew that his first attempt at heroics would quickly end in death.  He never saw himself as the hero, but that person who supports the heroes from far behind the front lines.  Still, no reason to throw in the towel just yet.  Like his father, even when caught Nessquik wouldn't try to survive using every trick in his book.

"You won't do that!  I'm standing against the outer bulkhead.  Do that and you'll open this entire section of ship to the vacuum.", replies Nessquik from his buzzy vocal sacs.  Partially, he spoke the truth.  Moving from the port-side Escape Pod toward Droid Maintenance, he had to go along an outside corridor.  On his right is the main bulkhead of the ship.  Whether a Thermal Detonator would breech the hull, especially the armored double-hull of a Corellian Gunship, he did not know.  Chances were that the woman threatening him didn't know if it would either.  In that case he had to sound certain it would.

OOC: 20:54, Today: Nessquik rolled 31 using 1d20+11. Bluff.

"What species are you?" the female voice called back.

OOC Move to the Locked In thread to complete the conversation.