GMThe
Bargon Flit, a modified YT-1250 light frieghter with distinctive protruding nose and three sublight engines, integrated into the classic disc-shaped Corellian hull.
Landed somewhere cramped, dark, underground, surrounded by vast engineering structures. A mined shaft of immense proportions.
Yellow-eyed ripper-raptors fight amongst the overhead I-beams.
Bright light spills from the freighter's cockpit. Habitation lights on.
Lieutenant Bek sits at the navicomputer. He wears brown Resistance officer uniform and a headset, plugged into the console.
A boxy vidscreen shows a wire-frame graphic of the planet Jakku, the Star Destroyer
Silencer and the Quadjumper
Sunstrider.
The
Bargon Flit is shown impossibly embedded beneath the surface of the planet, under the region labelled Plaintive Hand Plateau.
A flight path between appears between
Bargon Flit and
Sunstrider, blinking to get attention. Calculations complete.
The Mon Calamari works the instruments with his long rubbery fingers. In front of him, on the comms ticker, scrolls the encrypted message from the team on the
Sunstrider.
Flit in- mass driver barrage- central con bridge- flit out- try draw them to hspace- drop- spin- jump back- pickup at 224 by 35 cross 18.The plan might've worked if Bek hadn't been forced to lay low. Whilst the Resistance team were retrieving the Ghidrah data, the First Order's Star Destroyer had started sending out waves of TIE/es Assault Shuttles to board any ships waiting in orbit, shaking down the crews.
Either the First Order were bored or something had changed; a heightened level of paranoia and belligerence. Bek feared that perhaps the Resistance mole in the First Order's Supreme Council had finally been uncovered.
Now the
Sunstrider has been singled out for inspection. From intercepts, Bek knows the First Order are aware of a shootout between the
Sunstrider's crew and a swoop gang well-connected with the planet's crime boss.
As far as he can tell, the mission and presence of the Resistance remain secret but the First Order are obviously interested in trouble-makers.
Less than a minute before the
Sunstrider is locked-on by the Star Destroyer's tractor beam, but Lieutenant Bek masterminded the Resistance evacuation prior to the Battle of Batuu.
He speaks his reply into his headset.
"Cannot comply. Rendezvous at co-ordinates to follow. Sending vector. Dive dive dive!"
Quadjumpers can be upgraded with hyperdrives and armaments but the
Sunstrider isn't.
A Quadjumper is built for one thing only, blasting in and out of orbit and at that it out-performs even a TIE Fighter.
"May the Force be with us all!" Bek mutters to himself, hustling out of his seat, switching off the habitation lights and strapping into the pilot's seat.
Stab a couple of buttons, twist a knob, click-click-click and push the power levers. The engines come alive with a hum.
He needs to be ready. This will be a high speed transfer....
***
Group Captain Talkar screams across the armoured underbelly of the Star Destroyer in his two-seater TIE/sf, sat in the spherical pod between the two hexagonal solar collectors.
Black flight suit with red stripes on his helmet. Sat behind him is TN-1245, his new weapons tech.
In formation behind them, their unit of three other starfighters of the same type.
It has been a busy shift, escorting Assault Shuttles and harrying freighters. Ronto-work but better than sitting idle in the canteen or busting your shins doing laps of the
Silencer.
"Strip One. All TIEs, two-by-two bracket. Follow the target in. Let's make sure these scavs fill their shorts." Says Talkar into his comlink.
TN-1245 has the
Sunstrider lit by the TIE Fighter's sensors.
"TUG b-13 model. No hyperdrive, deflectors or weapons, sir." She reports, "They're going nowhere."
Talkar has an itchy feeling though. The bridge said that the
Sunstrider's crew had a dust up with the local underworld. Gutsy yet reckless.
The bridge haven't reported a tractor beam lock yet. Why?
The TIE Fighters of Strip One swerve passed the ventral reactor cap just in time to see the
Sunstrider's sublight engines flare up.
"We have a runner!" The Group Captain says over comms with a mean grin.
The TIE Fighters adopt a two up, two down formation, giving pursuit.
«Strip One, disable and contain target vessel.» Crackle the orders from the bridge.
"Tractor beam operator must be playing with his joystick." Mutters Talkar, before saying to his formation, "Engage with disabling shots and ready mag-pulse warheads."
Green lasers flash from the TIE Fighters across the intervening space, hardly worrying the Quadjumper's hull at the limit of their range.
"Readying mag-pulse warheads." TN-1245 affirms, then, "Sir, I think the target's already out of tractor beam range."
Talkar checks the rangefinder, checks the throttle of his twin ion engines. The Quadjumper is pulling away, hurtling towards the planet at incredible velocity.
"It's like a meteor!" He says in awe, then his weapons tech launches a salvo of missiles.
The blue exhaust from the Quadjumper's four engines creates a glowing nimbus behind it. The missiles home in. When the ship hits atmo it becomes a flaming streak across the sky of Jakku, durasteel hull compressed and reinforced by the inertial dampeners. The missiles burn up ineffectually.
The Quadjumper nose dives, sublight engines at max power, repulsors not even active. Sonic boom! Denser air propegates a shock wave.
TN-1245 tweaks the knobs on her targeting computer but she's lost missile lock with all the backscatter from the
Sunstrider's insane descent.
Jakku's arid surface fills the view.
"They can't pull up in time. They're terminal, sir!!" She says in alarm, given that the TIE Fighters are in hot pursuit.
Talkar hesitates, a thought suddenly occuring to him.
"No. They're not. Strip One, activate omni-scanners, it's about to get dark!"
Screens blink on in all four TIE Fighters showing terrain contour mapping.
"Sir?" Asks TN-1245.
"They're heading for the Jakku Observatory. It's a huge underground complex built by the Emperor.
"You might say it's where the First Order was born all those years ago, as the Empire fell."
Ahead, an anomaly becomes apparent through the haze. A massive bore hole, partially hidden under a shattered dome and the desert sands.
"The New Republic declared it an official secret but these scavs must have found it. Clever. Very clever."
The
Sunstrider roars straight through the dome's broken roof and down the throat of the bore hole.
Although a couple of hundred metres wide, there's no room for mistakes at such high speed. The turbulence in the Quadjumper's wake whips up decades of dust, blinding the TIE Fighters giving chase.
Talkar dodges a gantry on pure reflex but his wingman's too slow, crashing into it and disintegrating. The fireball alerts the other pair.
The walls of the bore hole scream by; daylight quickly fades.
Talkar's lost sight of the
Sunstrider's exhaust. How?
"Anything?" He asks TN-1245.
"Not yet, sir--- Watch out!!"
Sucking in his breath, Talkar weaves through a panicked flock of ripper-raptors. Thud thud thud! The deflectors prevent any damage to his fighter and the other two TIEs tuck in, following his line.
One is struck headfirst in the canopy, the reptilian bursting across the transparisteel. Scanners blocked, the TIE Fighter flies straight into a landing pad, jutting out of the wall where a side tunnel leads off.
The flash of the explosion reveals more tunnels.
"Scanners show multiple tunnels leading off from the main shaft." TN-1245 reports.
Talkar shakes his head and eases off. The Observatory must have a zillion access points. It might even be the scavs' base. They could land their Quadjumper, disappear into the complex, have speederbikes waiting for them in a garage. How badly does the Admiral want to catch them? It will take a division of Stroomtroopers to seal off this place.
"Damn." Talkar mutters, switching on the searchlights, "Track their thermals. We better at least find the ship."
***
A ventilation shaft, narrower than main shaft but less cluttered.
The
Bargon Flit cruises along it, with the
Sunstrider docked on one side, disturbing steelpeckers from their nests.
Inside, the Resistance team board the
Bargon Flit. Lieutenant Bek has remained in the cockpit, effectively piloting both ships for the time being. Mhar-li stops at the airlock though. J.B.'s ace flying got them this far but the
Sunstrider can't follow the
Bargon Flit into hyperspace.
Rather than ditch the Quadjumper, Mhar-li will take over and act as a decoy. Sort of like J.B.'s plan with the ships reversed.
"I guess this is where we part ways, guys. The First Order's looking for a Quadjumper not a light freighter." She says. Probably true.
"I don't know where the hell we are right now but I'll head back to Niima Outpost. By the time they catch up with me, I'll be sitting with my feet up, drinking blue milk."
She's likely to be questioned but after the Stormtroopers have inspected the
Sunstrider and found nothing, and heard---at tortuous length---about the feud between the scavs and the Strus Clan, they should lose interest.
Mhar-li's grin says
Viva la revolución or something.
[
2BB-2: Wounds 00≤12, Strain 00≤11, Criticals 0
Amos: Wounds 09≤12, Strain 00≤13, Criticals 1 #98/PPP
J.B.: Wounds 05≤11, Strain 02≤14, Criticals 0
Jix: Wounds 09≤12, Strain 00≤15, Criticals 0
Preach: Wounds 00≤12, Strain 01≤13, Criticals 0
Sirra: Wounds 06≤13, Strain 03≤12, Criticals 2 #102/PPP, #98/PPP
Winta: Wounds 04≤12, Strain 03≤14, Criticals 0
Mh-li: Wounds 05≤12, Criticals 0
=Unstructered Time=
GM spends Destiny Point to upgrade diff of J.B.'s next check
J.B. Action. Piloting-Space w/ situation neg. YGGG¬RPPB(-1 Setback from Skilled Jockey)...
...=3 Success, 1 Threat. YES! J.B. suffers 1 Strain(¤1 Threat)
=KEY=
_Positive_
Y =Yellow Dice, aka Proficiency Dice
G =Green Dice, aka Ability Dice
B =Blue Dice, aka Boost Dice
_Negative_
R =Red Dice, aka Challenge Dice
P =Purple Dice, aka Difficulty Dice
B =Black Dice, aka Setback Dice
_Automatic Symbols_
Ad =Advantage
Su =Success
Th =Threat
Fa =Failure
]
[The Beginner Game says to handle the escape narratively after rolling to evade the tractor beam, so that's what I've done here. Bringing us to the next scene of character interplay whilst giving us an alternative perspective on the action.]
