At first Luke was very disappointed that Angel picked Biggs over himself as the pilot for this little "adventure" he's still not convinced will amount to anything.  But then Tank enters the farm perimeter.  Hmm.  I can just see it now.  Huff finds a scratch on one of his precious vaporators from last week's sandstorm and blames my flying for it.  Yeaaah probably best that Bigs is in the pilot seat.

Luke gives a sly smirk to Biggs and counters, "How 'bout we take the excitement back to Tosche Station?"

He's kidding, of course.  Deliberately putting people in maybe mortal danger isn't his idea of a funny prank.

Mits flips a few switches to add the Darklighter Estate to the intended recipients.

"I'm going to commence com silence for a few minutes till we can neutralize the threat.  I suspect the enemy has some means of tracking this signal."

And with that she turns off the mic, but leaves the receiver on.

"I'm expecting Tank to be under fire by the time we get in close enough to pick him up.  Apologies ahead of time if vaporators get destroyed in the process of saving his life, but please don't hesitate to smash stuff that's in your way.  I'll be getting ready for low hover extraction."

Here's hoping Tank has sense enough to abandon his speeder in order to get onboard if need be.  Mits rushes to the loading ramp and prepares a tow cable to use as a rescue line for Tank.

Angel keeps her eyes peeled for any moving targets at all. Upon seeing any, she checks whether it is Tank or not. For now, her mind is on the search part of the search and rescue. Don't wanna kill Tank with an itchy trigger finger now, do we?

Confirming what Biggs said while countering Luke's tease, Angel speaks in a calm tone that suggests she is suppressing nerves, "We're headed to the Dune Sea. Toche Station has people in it. If a fire fight breaks out, we don't want people caught in the crossfire."

Clearly, she took Luke seriously. But also clear is that she is taking Mittens' warning seriously.

"There he is!" Angel hollers as she spots Tank. Probably about the same time as the others. Angel does have keen eyes, but Mitts, Biggs and Luke do too. And Biggs and Luke are more familiar with what it looks like to see their buddy coming in from a distance.

Biggs is too focused on listening to Mittens' to react to Luke's joke. He nods to Mittens grimly.

"Lives are more important than vaporators," he reassures her, privately hoping his father feels the same.

To Angel's exclamation he nods curtly.

"I see him!"

With a smooth turn and roar of the engine he speeds them in Tank's direction.

Even as the ship accelerates in Tank's direction, an object suddenly comes into view in the atmosphere far above them. It appears as little more than a spec at this point, but seems to be rapidly growing in size as it approaches.

Down below, Janek glances up at the ship as it approaches. At first he wonders if maybe Mittens has decided to take the blasted thing out for a joyride, but no, only Biggs can fly like that. All right, Luke's not bad either, though he'd never admit it to the kid.

"Are we under attack already?" he frowns to himself, glancing about for any sign of smoke or laser fire. Seeing nothing, he shrugs and continues making for the ship.

"I was kidding," Luke answers with a sigh, "And I still haven't seen any..."

Luke notices the blips on the console that indicate another starship entering atmo.

"We've got a bogie on our six," Luke warns, "They're headed straight for us, and they're coming in fast!"

Luke gets an idea.  Just in case this is real.  He flips on the mic and transmits, "Please tell me you didn't leave the statuette on board.  YOU DID!?  What were you..."

He flips the mic off.  "Best defense is to be too valuable to shoot.  If this is who you think it is, they'll be aiming to disable engines and weapons rather than blow us out of the sky."

Mits can think of at least half a dozen scenarios where Luke's trick wouldn't work.  But at least the enemy would be out to destroy you regardless in those cases, so it's not likely he made things any worse.

She slaps the switch to open the loading ramp.

"Hey if you wunna thread a different kind of needle, Biggs, we got a chance for Tank to just fly his speeder onboard.  Just hover steady two meters off the ground with the ramp facing Tank.  I'll handle the rest."

"Angel, you might want to fire a warning shot or two at the sky.  It'll let Tank know that this isn't just some stunt.  And let the enemy know that they should keep their distance."

Mits then runs to the edge of the ramp, tow cable in hand, hot desert wind making her pigtails dance like crazy.  Standing off to one side, she beckons to Tank, indicating she wants him to drive up the ramp.

"Good idea!" Angel calls back to Luke.

Angel is a little torn about Tank. On one hand, if she goes to the lift to encourage him to hop aboard, he might be quicker to respond. On the other hand, he might try a little TOO hard and ruin what would normally be routine. Then Mittens tells Angel to open fire. "I'm not opening fire until we've identified them, Mittens! All you've said is there is danger, but those ships might be my parents right before the real danger, or even our captured parents aboard enemy ships! Luke, try to open a com with those ships and find out!"

Biggs nods to both Luke and Mittens, sparing a glance at the approaching ship before turning his focus back Janek's landspeeder which is now less than a hundred meters away. He swiftly drops the ship to within a couple of meters of the sandy ground below.

"Hold on," he calls to the others, "This might be a little rough."

With that he momentarily cuts the engines, and spins the ship so fast that even he grimaces as he fights to keep hold of the controls. The ship spins one hundred and eighty degrees, and leaves the landing platform facing Janek's speeder.

He instantly ignites the engine once more as the ship starts moving in the direction it is now facing, matching velocity with the landspeeder with less than three meters between them.

Janek's eyes widen in shock as the ship hurtles towards him only to narrowly avoid wiping him out.

"What in the-" he curses as he swiftly breaks. He must have been wrong. This is Mittens' piloting for sure. But no, there she is on the boarding ramp... Unless she's using that crazy magic to control the ship from there...

"What the blazes is going on?!" he yells as loud as he can over the pair of engines roaring around them, squinting as sand and heat is blown about him.

Luke's with Angel on this one.  Her parents just showed up and an unfamiliar freighter fires a shot.  They're going to assume that the one shooting without warning is the slavers, not their daughter.  He flips the controls to com the ship.

As smoothly as he can, he speaks into the mic, "Hello there.  Welcome to Tatooine.  This is YT-2400 freighter "The Deadeye" hailing the ship heading in our direction.  Please identify yourself."

If this is Angel's parents, he's hoping that The Deadeye will be enough to tell them who's ship this is without giving any real names.  Misidentifying the ship's model with one that has a somewhat similar silhouette from a distance will hopefully sow doubt in the minds of the slavers if that's who it is.  And finally, he's hoping that the name "Deadeye" will make the slavers want to keep their distance.

Mits discovers an unanticipated detail about the science of freighter artificial gravity.  The makers never anticipated that you'd have the loading ramp deployed with the A.G. engaged, so making sure that the system included ensuring someone at the end of the ramp wouldn't be thrown by a sudden 180 wasn't included in the engineering.

Mits grabs the ramp's struts and holds on for dear life when G-forces and gale force wind suddenly spike and change direction, threatening to throw her.  How many times today am I going to wind up having to cling to a ship with all of my strength? she wonders with the world whirling around her, Good thing I practice rock climbing with Angel piggybacking.

Once she makes the world stop spinning through the age-old Jedi technique of "just shake it off," she gives Janek a big smile.

"Hi there, Tank!  We've got seconds before the slavers open fire, so please try and remain calm!"

A strong toss guided by telekinesis has the tow cable attach itself to the speeder.

"Now just ease off the accelerator, and you'll be pulled in nice and safe!"

"Safe" relative to being blasted in this case.  Another application of telekinesis and the tow winch control is switched on, reeling the cable back into the ship.

Angel just keeps her senses open. She is watching the incoming ships, sure, but is also giving quick glances to anything on the ground that might be hostile. All the same, she doesn't want to hit something unless she is sure it is hostile, so her thumbs are off to the side of the trigger rather than on them.

'Dumbstruck' rather than 'calm' would perhaps more accurately describe Janek's situation. Either way, he makes no effort to argue with or resist Mittens' efforts, slowly removing his foot from the accelerator. He seems to have recovered himself by the time the landspeeder is gliding safely up the boarding ramp.

"Slavers?" he repeats blankly as he scoops up the blaster rifle beside him, "Where are they? Hey! Careful, me dad'll kill me if I scratch this thing!"

The comm before Luke crackles to life, as an accented, male voice responds.

"This ship is not 'The Deadeye'," he says coldly, "This is 'The Lar'aak', and was stolen from me. I have tracked it all the way from Christophsis and I am not in the mood for lies. You will touch this ship down immediately or I will force you out of the sky myself."

Biggs glances grimly at Luke before temporarily cutting the comm.

"Now what?" he says, his brow furrowing, "We technically are flying stolen property, but I'm not letting them take the girls if they are indeed the slavers as we believe."

"It's not your parents," he calls in a louder voice to Angel, "They're threatening to shoot at us if we don't touch the ship down willingly. Tank inside yet?" he calls to Mittens.

"Aye-aye, Captain!" Mittens cheerfully hollers back at Biggs as the ramp closes.

She smiles at Tank.  "Good to see I was wrong about the blaster fire.  And ohmygosh you just drove a speeder into a moving freighter without so much as a scratch!!  How's that for threading a needle?!"

With a wave of her hand to indicate Tank should follow, she bounds over to Luke and Biggs.  "That was amazing, Biggs!  Between you and Angel, these guys don't stand a chance against us in a dogfight!"

Luke's hair stands on end now that the deadly seriousness of the situation hits him like a ton of bricks.  Momentarily completely alone in the universe drowning in fear, he feels a familiar call from the dark places within his mind.  Betray your friends and you can survive this, the survival instinct tells him.  Or so he's always assumed this voiceless pull that tugs at him whenever he's afraid to be.  But everyone thinks things like this when afraid, don't they?

Then the irrationally cheery voice of Mittens reminds him that he's not alone.  He's got the best pilot in the Galaxy at the controls.  Staging a one-man mutiny against his best friend and best chance of survival?  How stupid can survival instincts be?  ((Meanwhile The Darkside shrugs.  "It was worth a shot..."))

"'Stolen?!'" Luke answers the enemy ship, "What's the meani-"

He cuts himself off for half a second then continues, "Get off me you stupid cat!  Ow!"

Cuts off for another second, "...one second.  I think I know who your thief is..."

Mits covers her mouth, desperately trying not to keel over laughing.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:49, Wed 27 Mar 2019.

Angel says, "Nice delay, Luke! Let's see.. standard protocol would have them demand we exit the ship while theirs is still poised to fire at us. And they still could obliterate us with their ship weapons even if we complied. So right now, the best bet is ship-to-ship battle. They came here for stolen goods, so they will want to disable us. We, on the other hand, do not have to worry about preserving their ship. Let's get them chasing us to that open area you spoke of, Biggs!"

Janek does not yet seem to have grasped the seriousness of the situation. He does a hasty glance over his father's landspeeder, and seems very relieved to see it hasn't been damaged. Yet.

"You just drove a landspeeder into a moving freighter," he corrects Mittens, not as easily fooled as Windy or Deak when it comes to being cheered up, "Now will someone please tell me what's goin' on?"

He watches, unimpressed as Luke does his pretend 'cat attack' routine.

"Don't give up your day job, kid," he mutters darkly, shaking his head. Not that Luke is much better at his day job, but he doesn't say this out loud.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:42, Thu 28 Mar 2019.

"Hello?" comes the accented voice from the comm, clearly confused by Luke's response, "Hello, are you still there?"

Biggs gives Angel a small nod, before looping the ship around to their right and giving a burst of speed as they shoot higher into the air.

"Agreed. Surrender certainly doesn't appear to be an option. And at least you seem to have confused them a bit," he nods to Luke, "Hopefully it will take them a few moments to register that we are fleeing."

He then grins at Mittens.

"I certainly wouldn't want to be flying anywhere near Angel in a gunner's seat."

Luke smirks smugly that Angel's compliment made Tank jealous.  But then he turns a suspicious look to Mittens.

"I'm with Tank.  Seems your so-called 'slavers' are a lot more reasonable than the kind we're used to here on Tatooine.  How do we know that you aren't some hustler that's been making up stories about how you got this ship?"

Mittens can't help it anymore and busts out laughing!

"Ohmygosh!  ME!  A grifter!  That'll be the day!  I wish..."

She wipes a tear from her eye.  "You got me!  Mittens is an expert deceiver!  She totally was able to telepathically forge Christophsis Station's security holo-recordings of being shot at while fleeing from thugs that were angry at her for the crime of freeing the poor souls they were abusing!  She also totally made up the holo-recording inside said ship that you saw that doesn't show her or Angel conspiring to trick a farmer's friends out of their super-valuable blue milk.  And pikas.  Mmmmm.  Piiikas.  The best reward for the Mastermind Mittens."

Luke of course looks annoyed with her sarcasm.