Justice Overdue (Ask, Niner, Ractic, Myself)

[Niner]

Trish looked up at the woman, she looked like one of the masters, maybe it would be alright for her to go with this woman. Trish nodded slightly and climbed to her feet. As she started submisivley following the others one could see her limp from a leg that looked to be brutally mutilated and scarred.

 

[Captain Awesome]

Asha briefly saw the grey-robed man, shouting some sort of warning. She didn't have time to make it out, because there was an explosion behind her back. The bulkheads flashed blindingly in the reflection.
She turned around, blinking spots out of her eyes, to see the familiar, grimy assortment of faces and helmets of the pirates.

"Over there! He went that way!" She cried, pointing with one gloved finger towards a the left fork in a hallway. She couldn't make out the darkened form in the darkened hallway after the explosion, and she doubted that they could either.
"He tried to kidnap me!" she whined, pretending to want the attention as the pirates, feebly grasping at a passing leg.

"Aren't you going to help me up?" she called after the retreating backs of the pirates. They were ignoring her completely. She allowed herself a smug moment of victory, before she grasped Trish by the hand again. "Here we go. Really this time."
She took the slave in her gloved hand and walked over to the hallway where she had seen the man last.

She couldn't make him out until she was right in his face, noticing only once he stepped forward to meet him.

"Lead the way," she said, over the wailing sirens and distant footsteps.

 

[Niner]

Upon appearence of the grimy faces Trish huddled down into a ball and started sobbing softly. Until Asha came up to her, Trish liked Asha, she didn't hit her and abuse her like the others did....

 

[Captain Awesome]

((Waitin' for Piper or Ractic))

 

[Tsar Fire]

Derek glared at the women. It would be so much faster and safer if he could just magic them into the ship, but that wasn't possible.

What was worse, the slavers were now in the corridor between him and his ship.

He could hear the gunfire from the automated guns, and he hoped that they didn't do any damage to it...

It would cost a fortune to fix...

With a sigh, he asked the bothan. "Is there another way to the hangar? Mine seems to be blocked."

 

[Captain Awesome]

"Oh, don't worry," she said confidently. "I sent 'em down the long way. If we head down this way," she began, pointing down the right fork, "We'll be outta here before we have to see their faces again."

 

[Tsar Fire]

Derek shrugged. If it got them out, it was fine by him.

He was worried about the girl. Worried that perhaps she was too far gone to save, in her head.

Still... there would be time to think about that once he was off this rock.

"By the way, why are you doing this?"

He wondered why he hadn't asked before... He was getting sloppy.

 

[Captain Awesome]

Asha paused. Why was she doing this? She hadn't even thought about it.

"Well..." she began slowly. "...If you haven't noticed, well, this place ain't exactly a vacation spot for beautiful women like me. It's smelly and grimy, the pirates treat me like dirt. The glances I can take, but they'd go farther, if they could. Every last one of 'em...
"...But hey. I'm used to that, I guess. Actually, it's probably because of the girl. I guess I didn't want her to end like the last slave girl." She shuddered quietly as she jogged along the greasy halls onto the ship.
Even in her current circumstances, the klaxons screeching, she couldn't help and stop for a second. "Wow" she breathed. "She's a beaut. Havn't seen one of these in a long time. Really! What's her name? Are those modified engines? 'Cause we're gonna need 'em. How do you get in this thing, anyway?"

 

[Tsar Fire]

Derek grinned slightly.

The automated guns were still pinning down the slavers, so the relatively short dash was clear of enemies. It was also clear of cover.

"I'll cover you, get in and get secured. Break room is first door on the left." Striding past, he lifted his left hand. "It's this one, in case you get mixed up. I've heard that females sometimes have a problem with that..."

It was mean, and it was unnecessary, but Derek was about to do something really stupid for people he owed nothing to... so he didn't feel too guilty.

Keying the ramp to drop towards the entrance that the two women were in, Derek flicked a strand of silver hair out of his face, while his right hand squeezed the activator on his lightsaber.

The silver-violet blade hissed into life, and the blaster fire began angling in towards him. Flicking the blade up to block the first few shots, Derek began to sink into the fighting trance of a Shade knight, buying time for the others to get aboard safely.

 

[Captain Awesome]

"Come on!" Yanking Trish along, she practically carried her towards the ship, up the ramp, and into reletive safety. "Stay here," Asha admonished the slave. "You'll be safe. I'm going to help this guy out - he has no idea who he's messing with." With that, Asha closed the door, sealing Asha from leaving the secure bunk.

With that, she trotted off the halls, peeking from one room into the next. Though she'd never been in this ship before, she knew enough about the model that it almost felt as though she had been. But she wasn't just exploring. Oh, no. If she hadn't been mistaken, she thought she'd spotted a docking turret on the belly of the ship, from outside. Not a standard modification. Judging by it's positioning, though, she guessed it'd be located near the gunnery bay.

Here it is...

She came up to the door that she knew led to the gunnery bay. She pulled it open, and her gues was comfirmed. She vaulted the seat and thumped down neatly in the alcove of the turret, receded into the floor. She began to fumble with the controls.

"That's gonna be a problem..."

The turret was locked. Why should she be surprised? She unclipped a precision plasma torch from her belt and began to look for the primary control cluster. She finally found it in a hinged panel in the wall. Flicking her hair out of her pretty little face, she set about her task, cutting a neat square into the security case, exposing the circuitry inside. Almost instantly, she began to map it out what she saw.. electrode capacitator... redundant coolant interface...

Then she found what she was looking for, she knew exactly what she had to do, finding the security node. It was a simple matter to directly bypass the complex with a fiber-optic conductor. And just with that, it was over. The whole affair couldn't have lasted more than 30 seconds.

Immediately, the lights in the turret flickered on on as it ran a quick diagnostic. The computer screen informed her that the turret was fully operational. Good to know.

She absently brushed her apron off, though of course it was completely clean, as she sat down once more and cranked the switch to her left. The turret groaned as it swiveled around to regard the pirates and the door. There was the old man, with his fancy laser sword, swirling it through the air, cutting the pirates' very bullets in two! Molten metal from the bullets flew through the air, burning his robes and searing his skin. But he held resolute as he showed his graceful dance of death.

Asha allowed herself to sit mesmerized for a moment. Never before had she seen such a show of skill in anything! Was it possible that this one was a jedi? She'd heard of them before, but she had never really believed that they could actually do that!

However, she was jerked out of her reverie when a lone bullet slipped past his guard, tore through his robes, and loudly thunked into the transparisteel window. Asha jumped in her seat involuntarily. She realized that this man, skilled or not, couldn't hold these men off forever. She keyed up the turret, swiveling it so that the mob of pirates fell cleanly into her crosshair.

She recognized a few of them. Hated every last one of them. Goodbye, bitches. This is for what you did to the last slave girl.

She pushed her thumbs down, and the dual barrels on the turret began to blaze, spitting a hail of metallic death onto the pirates. Four-inch shells fell against her viewscreen as the explosive content was hurled into the pirates at rediculous velocity. A red haze filled the air as she blew every last one of the pirates straight to hell, screaming with rage and predatory bloodlust despite herself. She didn't stop until the wall behind was blown apart and covered with a thick stain of red.A pool of pulp, blood, and deformed bronzium bullets littered the floor.

She eased her thumbs off the trigger, and the twin rotor barrels began to slow to a halt. Panting, she peeked over the heavy barrel to examine her grizly handiwork.

Yup. The hanger was clear.

 

[Tsar Fire]

(Quick note.. my character is an arkanian teenager shade knight. And his ship is an experimental prototype in computerized systems that he stole, it is a corvette size vessel... all cool, just letting you know.)

Derek lowered the lightsaber, staring in surprise at the carnage.

It was... thorough. Still... there were other asteroids, and other defenses, and this really wasn't a good place to hang out.

The bounty hunter could get off the same way he'd gotten on.

Closing down his weapon, Derek spun about, and ran to the boarding ramp. Striding up it, he called out to the droid system which operated most of the auxillery functions of the vessel. "Close the ramp and prep for launch. I want to take off as soon as I reach the bridge."

He could only guess what kind of damage had been done to his ship, when the bothan hijacked his turret like that... but...

She had obviously needed to do that... so...

He didn't mind.

Striding down the main hallway, he stepped over the small ridges that indicated a blast door, and made his way to the bridge, calling over the ship intercomm.

"Can you go ahead and get to the bridge? I want your gunning skills on the way out of here."

 

[Captain Awesome]

"Sure thing," said Asha, finding the intercom and speaking into it. "I'll be right over."

Asha pulled herself out of the seat and jogged up the halls, her boots clank-clanking on the chrome floor. This really was a nice ship.

Finally she walked up to the double doors of the brig, and they slid open by their own accord. That was a nice touch. "The girl's in the aft bunk. Should be save therre, at least.

So here's your best shot outta here: Judgin' by your engines, you're probably faster and more agile than any of the other ships here - 'cept the snub fighters, of course. Do you have particle shields?"

 

[Niner]

Trish huddled on one of the bunks, with a blanked pulled up over her head. She simply rocked back and forth, whimpering to herself, hardly understanding what was happening to her. Why were these people taking her away? Was she supposed to serve them now like she did the old masters?

Trish was scared that the new masters might beat her for not doing any work. But she didn't know what work they wanted her to do.

Tears streaked her grimy face as she sat alone on the bunk. She eventually closed her eyes and nodded off into a light sleep.

 

[Tsar Fire]

Derek just laughed, and told the bothan.

"Just watch the guns."

He had gotten in, and he was going out the same way...

Through the midst of the slavers. The ship lurched as it lifted clear of the asteroid hangar, but before he cleared orbit of the planetoid, he keyed the launch of 4 high explosive missiles into the asteroid core.

"Say hello to the devil for me, bastards."

Then he gunned the engines, and sped out towards the defense ring, where the remaining enemy fighters were.

The asteroid detonated behind them, a concussive explosion which threw shards of rock throughout the field, a spreading chain reaction which destroyed other asteroid bases, and unbalanced the field. Nobody would be able to operate in it for a few months.

Looking forwards, Derek sent his corvette roaring towards the slaver outposts.

Time to die, scum.

 

[Captain Awesome]

Asha quickly glanced at the ship. He was going to get her killed, she just knew it. She returned to the task at hand, sliding into the gunner seat and gearing up the turret. Blaster technology, very nice. She wheeled it around, checking the viewscreen for hostiles. Two heavy fighters she saw, and two she burned to slag within seconds. Their armor stood no chance against their burning bolts as she strafed at the elusive fighters moving through the astroids. "The stations' defenses are weakest facing the thick of the astroid field, and strongest facing away. If you can get through the field, we'll only possibly be blown out of the skies.

"Oh, and the pirate corvettes' fuel tanks are on the bottom of the ship, near the stern. When we run into them - and we will - try to get me a clear shot, and get the hell out, alright?"

Asha peeked over her turret. Another ship burnt in two.

 

[Tsar Fire]

Derek just laughed. He wasn't afraid. He didn't care anymore.

He was going to kill them all.

The Arbiter was a match for his ambitions. The perimeter base disentegrated in a wash of fire as a volley of high eplosive concussion missiles roared into its unshielded hangars.

The two corvettes and their accompanying fighters were another issue.

Roaring in to attack, they found their target slipping away, rolling beneath their attacks, before it turned on its axis, and thundered in from their ventral flanks.

Derek was pushing his ship to the limit, and the hull was shrieking in protest. The few volleys that actually hit his ship shook it as the shields groaned under the strain.

Still, he was pulling off maneovers that would shame a ship half this size.

It was worth it. It was wild. It was revenge.

Derek couldn't get enough of it.

 

[Captain Awesome]

Asha, however, was not having nearly as much fun as her new, bloodthirsty partner. Her predatory teeth were grit in fear and concentration as she struggled to compensate for the ship's wild pitching and rolling, having only a few seconds to aquire a target before the unpredictable movement of the ship jerked it out of the turret's fire arc.

Still, she did a decent job, releasing streams of energy to anything and everything that moved, leaving a trial of amorphous masses of metal, which used to be fully functional starfighters, in the ship's wake.

"You're gonna get us all killed!" exclaimed Asha as molten spray from a mostly disentegrated slug spattered against her viewport.

She glanced once again at her partner, laughing maniacly at the controls of the ship, loosing volley after volley of nuclear missiles at the pirate fleet. Asha cursed loudly as the shields took a bigger hit, possibly from a large piece of wreckage, causing the lights to flicker.

The ship leveled out for a second, and Asha caught sight of a cruiser ahead, just beginning to let loose another wing of fighters.

"Oh, no you don't..."

Asha loosed a slew of burning death onto the underside of the ship. Its shields couldn't withstand firepower of this magnitude - slugthrowers, maybe, but this was a top-of-the-line blaster turret. The best.

Shot after shot burned into the corvette's feul tanks' extra thick armor plating. For a second, Asha thought that she might have been mistaken, that the feul tanks for some reason wouldn't give.

And then the cruiser exploded, blossoming into a fireball near the back, eating away at the ship, crawling up its scarred plating, until the entire ship was in flames. Secondary and tertiary explosions erupted from inside the ship, spewing crewmen and inner workings into the vacuum of space.

With a final, tremendous explosion that was bigger than any since the first, the ship broke in two, now nothing more than a big piece of debris, floating in space, along with every last fighter and crewman aboard.

But there were more. More cruisers, more fighters, more stations. Asha doubted that she would get out of this alive.

 

[Tsar Fire]

Derek scowled at the red lights glowing on the boards in front of him.

Reinforcements must have arrived. There were more here than there were when he had started...

More than when he arrived.

Still, the final act was coming, and he wasn't going to be knocked out of play yet.

Rolling the Arbiter over, he pointed it towards Coruscant, and then kicked the hyperdrive into life.

There was a moment of silence, and then he extricated himself from the controls, still furious inside.

Striding from the bridge he called out to the bothan. "Find a cabin and get comfortable. You'll a day and a half before we get there."

He was still fuming. Every slaver who he left behind was one more monster ready to continue the foul work.

It had to stop, and he knew the way forwards.

Remove the head of the snake.

 

[Tsar Fire]

Still, there was something that he had to do first.

Striding down to the cabin where the girl was stowed, he reached over to touch the door lock, but paused.

What was he going to tell her? She was obviously damaged... perhaps beyond repair... but... of course that couldn't be the case.

She was rescued. Saved. Free.

Surely she had figured that out by now. Otherwise, what was the point of all this?

Opening the door, he walked through, and sat down in front of Trish, a kindly expression on his face, and asked her.

"How are you feeling?"

 

[Niner]

Trish snapped awake and scurried back from the man in front of her.

"Don't...don't hurt me." She cried.

She looked at him through her teary eyes and saw the kind expression on his face and registered what he said.

Trish looked down at the ground,

"She is fine, now that she is no longer beaten all the time."