Sol'yc's Sharpened Claws: Heckin Pirates

[Corrine Solus]

[fancybox2]

CONTRUUM
0900 Hours

Pirates are back. A new outfit has entered Contruum space after we eliminated the last one. The power (more like pirate) vacuum has allowed other corsairs to enter the space and they are harassing asteroid miners. Eliminate them with extreme prejudice.

-Dice Rolled-
@EmilyHuene ; @Darasuum [/fancybox2]

Called back to Contruum. Not that Corrine Eldar minded. The last time she was here she didn't get to see any of the action. Her and her partner were tasked with quelling a mob before it got out of hand. They met with some minor opposition, but no fighting occurred. This was practical to the mission...but boring to the Mandalorian daughter who really wanted to knock someone's teeth in.

Technically, they weren't going to Contruum however. A nearby moon was where the pirates were. So that's where Corrine and her newest partner were headed. The tiny asteroid was being farmed for resources and they would not suffer a pirate to leave without some well due punishment. And what better way to assert that punishment than to kill them all dead.

Her partner was someone Corrine had not yet had the pleasure of working with. Burkhart Kelborn was another Mandalorian just the same as her, but from a different clan. He was also a Morling, which Corrine secretly found to people ADORABLE! But she wouldn't let that feminine side of her out. It distracted from the appearance she liked to portray: that in which she was no different than any of the guys she liked to hang around with. In such, she insisted they call her Cory, as it sounded more masculine. Though she'd only just met Burkhart and they hadn't really talked much yet.

She was flying in Burkhart's Mynock Series Freighter, the same variety nearly every Mandalorian brother and sister owned. He'd lent it to her since she did not have a ship of her own. He was flying in some other ship, she hadn't bothered to ask why or where he got it. The more guns the better was the idea. As always, -and like any other proud Mando- Corrine was dressed in her armored Beskar'gam. Given to her after her father's passing, she colored the iron skin red in honor of her family. It hadn't come close to fitting her at the time, and she had to modify it heavily to fit her frame. But now it was just as much a part of her as her own skin. Making sure to stay safe herself, on either hip she wore "Strill" blaster pistols and on her back a Westar-C1 Blaster Rifle. Unlike last time she was by this side of the galaxy she now had a very illegal wrist-mounted flamethrower attached to her gauntlet. Just in case....

"We get to fight pirates!" the twenty-four year old daughter grinned as she spoke over the commlink. "I love hunting those kriffing lowlives! Whoooo!!!"

 

[Burkhart Kelborn]

____________

THEME ​

Burkhart did not have too much use for the mynock freighter these days. It had been one of his earlier ships but now was just an additional asset in his small fleet of privatly owned ships. The Morling was flying his Waxa scout ship, the Effervescent along side his older ship. The woman did not seem to have a ship of her own or at least one that had a hyperdrive. But searching for pirates would be easy with the Effervescent's long range scanning suite. His pilot droid checked and pressed the various controls needed. They were doing well so far on this mission. No sign of the pirates yet but it was just a matter of time. They were around and the reports of from the asteroid miners were undeniable.

He heard Cory call over the communication link between the ships. She seemed excited, hopefully she was a good pilot or a gunner. On a mynock light freighter one could not be both so she must have brought along a droid or perhaps Arturo Solus was helping her. Otherwise he was just late to the party and coming in on his own ship.

His droid beeped an alert at the Kelborn clan member making him turn his attention to the scanner. "Looks like weh goht a boonch ov fighters ahead. Over a doozen contacts. Hope yer ready fer an out numbered dogfight. He called over the comms with a thick accent. He put all shields to front for the time being. They would need them for the fight ahead. He moved up to the turret on the top side of his scout ship and made ready to use it, centering on the cluster of the starfighters that had yet to see or notice them. Luckly, star fighters did not have the best scanners so they would have the initiative for engaging them.

@EmilyHuene @Kraken dice thread​

 

[Corrine Solus]

Spoiler: OOC

My above post has been edited to reflect they are in different ships

In response to her call, Burkhart would reply that they seemed to be coming up onto their target. She anxiously looked down at her screen but didn't quite see anything yet. She poked the droid beside her which was doing all the flying and had him boost the range. Now, Corrine could fly. She just wasn't good at it. Nor was she really the kind of person to sit still long enough to pay attention. Who in their right mind could stare at a black abyss and not fall off to sleep. Flying was for droids.

"Are you kidding? This is going to be fun!"

Like her partner in the other vessel she would move back to the gun placement and start firing everything up. Pun intended. Even though she hated flying, she had no issue taking point with a gun. Those fighters out there wouldn't stand a chance. She only hoped that little robot in the drivers seat could keep her out of trouble until then. She didn't want to get blown out of her borrowed ship. Even still, she kept her helmet near her side. Just in case.

 

[Burkhart Kelborn]

____________

The pilot droid was making a decent heading so far. As he got closer her beeped indicating the ships were RX models . They would know soon enough whether the ships were one of the more popular ones. Burkhart's eyes squinted down the sites of his weapon system and watched their movements. If they were in the asteroid field like this they were most likely the ones with deflector shields. Or they may be the ones that had hyperdrives. He doubted they were the faster ones based on their movements speed. There was only one way to find out.

Raking his fire across two seperate star fighters he was able to get them unawares. The must have had their shields set to help against physical damage like the asteroid rocks and not the energy weapons of the laser cannons because one bumped a rock before getting wrecked by his cannon fire. The other simply exploded from the riddling shots.

In the following moments the pirates would be changing to deal with the combat situation and adjust their shields. They must think the mandalorians were a bigger threat than the asteroids because he saw the tell tale shimmer of their shields go down and soon were going to come back up as better suited for energy based defense. Only the trio's first volley would be enough to score direct damage on the star fighters' hulls.

@EmilyHuene @Kraken 14/16 starfighters remaining​

 

[Corrine Solus]

Corrine's thumbs were itching. She watched with a careful eye as the pirates got closer and closer to them. Very soon they would come to see the real danger here in this asteroid field. Like a serpent striking in the night they would dispose of their foe before they even realized they were there. Burkhart's ship would suddenly fire at the two ships closest to his. Corrine already had her targets picked out, locked, and ready for termination. Her thumb pushed the triggers in so hard she was surprised she didn't break the buttons off. She would pick off two of her own ships, firing at the first and then the second right after. The first one exploded in a great ball of fire. The second would twist in flight trying to avoid the oncoming lasers only to impact into a third ship right in its path. Five total were down of the sixteen in the area.

"WHOOOOOOO!!!" Corrine shrieked gleefully into her microphone and thus into Burkhart's ears. "THAT WAS AWESOME!"

The surprise round had been won. Now the real fight would begin. Calling up to her droid she would instruct, "Evasive maneuvers. Don't get us caught in the cross fire! Go go go!"

The droid would peel off its casual stealth flight and head into the frey. It made sharp banks and steep dives around the incoming pieces of rock. Had they not been in a zero-gravity situation Corrine would have felt like she were on some flight simulator or roller coaster.

 

[Arturo Solus]

Arturo was late to the party and, sinking back into his seat, he ramped up the speed, racing to meet up with Burkhart's freighter before things well and truly kicked off. He marveled at the speed of his Starfighter, an MM8 Bromeliad/Aliit-class starfighter, a ship that he knew was capable to turning the stars into one slick blur as the gee-forces seemingly transported his body to a separate dimension. A contact blipped on his radar, ringing in his helmet's audio, and Arturo let off on the thrusters as he made visual contact with the Mynock-class freighter he was aiming to rendezvous with. His comm link crackled, and a moment later the freighter's transponder registered as a friendly vessel on his HUD and, he assumed, vice versa. Waiting a second for his guts to settle, Arturo activated his comms, blinking away his swimming vision as he drew up alongside his comrades.

"Burkhart, Cory, forgive my poor timing," he said, matching speed with his ally's ship, "traffic's terrible round these parts. You know how it is." He smiled, a pointless gesture really, but he couldn't help himself. He was about to enter into a dogfight with an unknown amount of hostiles, one which he knew was likely to result in his death. Not that he minded much; he was here to help the clan, and his fellow Mando'ade. Nobody liked pirates, they were the bane of shipping lanes and merchant vessels everywhere. Today, it seemed, they were the enemies of asteroid miners. Hmph! No one would complain if a dozen or so of their ships were destroyed. Only good things would come of this.

Arturo watched as his radar lit up with a kriff-load of red dots, and the tracker turned fighter pilot peeled away from his comrades as they made ready, words he wanted to share dying in his throat. A savage turn drew away two of the hostile contacts as they closed. Here we go, he thought, kicking back as the space to his right lit up with strands of thrown-fire. Blaster bolts rippled through the blackness behind him as he doubled the speed, his gut doing somersaults as he maneuvered away and past the streaking bolts and laser-lines, drawing up beneath one of the smaller pirate fighters before he could truly register what was happening. As if by instinct, he strafed the undercarriage of the nearest fighter with his cannons, watching as the fighter caught flame, the fire dying straight after. It spun away, and he did the same, only catching the tail end of it's demise; the pirate fighter suddenly sheered apart, and Arturo only had enough time to watch it explode before the second fighter returned.

This time with a couple of friends in tow.

@Darasuum
@EmilyHuene

 

[Burkhart Kelborn]

____________

In his peripheral vision he saw after firing that Cory, his wing mate had been equally successful in terminating the enemy. Four down presently, a dozen or so to go. But the two mandalorians were soon reinforced by a third member to their part. The star fighter was piloted by Arturo. He was a member of the Solus clan but one that he had yet to meet. This was his first mission with both Cory and Arturo but Burkhart had worked with members of the each of their clans respectively. It was bold of the Solus clan member to enter the fight with a starfighter that lacked shields but at least he could speed tank. A term used by fighter pilots to indicate that a ship was so fast it could avoid the damage of turrets too slow to track faster craft. However they were up against star fighters so he would have his work cut out for him.

This time Burkhart gound a new starfighter to focus on. He did not have any wing man but he was the closest to being in the Morling's sights. Depressing the trigger he tracked the starfighter, the first few shots hitting his shield. The energy based attack destroyed the star fighter but for a moment Burkhart was not sure if he was going to destroy it before it disappeared from view.

@EmilyHuene @Kraken 10/16 starfighters remaining​

 

[Corrine Solus]

A sudden static in her ear informed Corrine someone else had joined into their communication channel. While not for a moment did she think it could be an enemy, there was still a brief pause where she wasn't sure who it could actually be. The voice belonging to Arturo them chimed in explaining his late arrival. Ah, her brother. Not her literal brother, but he might as well have been. He was from clan Solus, she was from Eldar. The two clans were always good friends with one another. Their rag tag group was no exception. Corrine had known Arturo for almost two years now. She enjoyed his company very much, both on and off the battle field. Though...she still hadn't come up with a nickname for him yet. Dio she sometimes called "D". Malagith was usually hubby -after all she'd married the man. But Arturo she just couldn't think of something that would seem right. And calling him Arty just sounded weird on her tongue.

"Arturo!" Corrine exclaimed over the comms. "You finally caught up! Watch me blow these things out of the sky!"

Their ship might not have been as fast as Arturo's, but Corrine's little droid was doing circles in their vessel like it had a fire in its rear. Corrine's laughter could be heard over the mikes as they nearly dodged an incoming asteroid. Her little droid was suicidal! But Corrine was having the time of her life so she didn't say a word of protest. On her screen, she watched as one of the red blips vanished behind them. The very same rock they'd dodged...well the guy chasing them wasn't so lucky.

But what was the fun in them just crashing into things? None! Corrine wanted be the responsible party for their untimely -but well deserved- demise. Their ship came into a more steady flight path and she caught six four more in her sights. Corrine locked her target onto the first ship as fast as she could draw her own pistol and blew it to pieces. She didn't wait long however and moved her scope over as soon as her finger left the trigger and brought down another. Pieces of it hit the ship behind it causing that one to spaz out and go crashing into another asteroid. As the doomed fighter tried to correct its course, another fighter was coincidentally coming towards it. The pilot panicked and pulled up swiftly only to go crashing into yet another asteroid it hadn't seen above it.

"Did you see that?! Boys did you see that?! Tell me you saw that! He totally swerved into that rock all on his own. I didn't even have to touch it! Hahahaha"

Spoiler: OOC

I'm editing my own roll as I don't think she should be able to kill seven bad guys all in one turn. Unless you want me to in which I'll keep the six I initially rolled and remove the four I added in. Thus making the total count seven instead of five

 

[Arturo Solus]

A sudden wave of nausea was replaced by a deep sense of vertigo as Arturo wrenched back on the controls, rearranging his innards as the MM8 climbed sharply, gluing him to his seat. The harness dug painfully into his flight suit, and for a few harrowing seconds Arturo saw nothing but stars and blackness, the console in front of his chiming every time a pirate tried to get a lock on him. Good luck with that, he thought, curling left to right as one of the fighters on his tail opened up with its cannons. The lasers went wide, and Arturo realized that they must've resorted to manual aiming, his world inverting as he doubled back on himself.

The two corsairs behind him whirled by, blobs of durasteel and transparisteel that his fighter's system recognized as hostile ships. Arturo toned it down a notch as he tried to get a lock-on, dropping in behind the pair of them, his world shrinking down to the cockpit, and the two foemen who'd taken it upon themselves to end him. He would end them first. He watched with bated breath as the two fighters, knowing that he was on their tail, began evasive maneuvers, both branching right, darting and diving, small asteroids suddenly pocking the nothingness that was space. Arturo cursed, his breakfast attempting to clog up his gullet. This makes things...interesting. Indeed, it did.

Close behind the two corsairs, he hardly noticed a third as it arched in behind him. "Kriff!" He swore, getting a lock-on, his lasers already firing as the enemy did the same. A few streaks of red light skipped by his wings, missing by what looked like a hair's breadth. And then they were in the asteroid field, and it was just him and...two of the pirates, a third having been well and truly obliterated a heartbeat before. He grinned as a klaxon sounded loud, warning of obstacles in his path, huge balls of rock, dangerously close in proximity. He veered left, balancing on a knife-edge between two asteroids, then he was spinning in the opposite direction, the pirates forgotten entirely. Up until the wreckage of one flashed across his path, a wing cleaved clean away, the pilot floating in vacuum.

His vision narrowed as his speed dropped and climbed at an alarming rate, rapid movements making him wish he'd chosen a slower vessel. One with shields, perhaps? By the time he'd gotten his thoughts under control, he was clear of the asteroid field. The claustrophobia died then, and Arturo took a breath as he recovered his composure, trying to get his bearings in order as the third fighter -one of the ones he'd been chasing- cleared the field, up and to his left. "Sorry, friend," he intoned, getting a lock-on before the pirate knew what was happening. The cannons spoke for him; the ship he targeted disappeared in a gout of flame and unseen forces.

"How we doing, vod!?" He called over comms, trying to relocate his friends amidst the chaos. He knew, deep down, that it was luck rather than skill that had seen him this far. He hoped that luck held.

@Darasuum
@EmilyHuene
Dice

 

[Burkhart Kelborn]

____________

Burkhart's wingmates seemed to be able to handling themselves. While they risked going into the asteroid field on their own the Morling remained in the relativly safe area of open space. Now he had two starfighters on him. The last two after Cory and Arturo were on his tail. However that made the lead easy game.

Swiviling his turret around he turned to the two nimble craft that started chasing after his ship. They were intentionally decelerating to keep him in their sights. Their shots missed the ship initially but his turret was able to blast away the lead star fighter. Lucky for Burkhart the last starfighter had yet to notice that all of his remaining corsair comrades were blasted to oblivion. He was the last remaining pirate and if Cory or Arturo did not end him he would.

@EmilyHuene @Kraken dice thread​

 

[Corrine Solus]

"All good here, brother!" Corrine would call back to Arturo's question. She'd then turn over her shoulder and shout back to the pilot droid, "Circle us around. Bring us back to the others."

Looking back to the screen she would notice one blip left, besides the two green ones displaying friendly codes. Speaking to herself she'd say, "One left. Looks like it's heading for Burkhart. Let's flank 'em"

Their ship would peel into safe space and start flying toward Burkhart and his tail. Unlike moving in the asteroids, they were now taking a direct flight. In other words, they weren't being very evasive. Heading straight in the path of the final ship Corrine barely had time to yell at the stupid droid to 'watch out'. The fighter pilot turned from trying to shoot down Burkhart to now focus on her. Laser blasts struck their ship causing the Mandalorian to swear. Thankfully there wasn't too much damage and they were still flying. Corrine quickly returned fire and blew the final boggie to pieces.

And then her ship powered down.

"Uh........Guys? Hello?"

 

[Arturo Solus]

Arturo circled as the last of the pirates met a messy end, his radar going blank as the final red dot blinked out, gone. "Well, that's that then," he said to himself, his hands dancing across the controls, his weapons powering down as the MM8 swerved towards where Cory floated in space. A large chunk of wreckage drifted by to his right, and Arturo spared a passing glance. The fighter -what was left of it- crackled and sparked wildly as it drifted by, tossing and turning end over end as it continued along on its aimless journey, the pilot nowhere to be seen. A mass of wiring and jumbled components trailed behind it, falling away as the main body played chicken with an asteroid ten times its size. He neither heard nor saw the inevitable collision. He was scanning the nothingness closing on him, crawling at a snail's pace to where his longtime comrade and friend waited, her power cut, ship adrift.

He let the thrusters peel off as he came to a stop fifteen or so meters from Cory. A quick look revealed all he needed to know; light damage on the hull, the paintwork smeared away, a few glowing lines where the pirate had tried, and failed to bisect the Mandalorian's ship. 'Thank you, Kad,' he intoned in silent prayer, more worried than he liked to admit. If the pirate's cannons had struck plum....hmm, yeah. Not nice. "Having a few technical issues there, C?" Arturo said, letting his ship amble about on its own, seeking out the fiberglass dome that housed his friend. "What would Mal have to say about this, ey?" He chuckled as he sought out Burkhart, a second green blip somewhere off to his front. All of the tension of the past five minutes seeped out of him as his head rocked back against the seat. Yeah, fun times...

Keying in his comms once more, Arturo kicked the thrusters back to life, propelling the Bromeliad away to the East, or West? Space navigation was weird. "Burkhart, I've got a damsel in distress here who needs a bit of assistance. Mind seeing to her whilst I place a marker?" Arturo asked, knowing the faux jibe was likely to raise a certain someone's hackles. He smiled at the thought, actually enjoying himself as the adrenaline ebbed.

@Darasuum @EmilyHuene

 

[Burkhart Kelborn]

____________

Seeing the last of the enemies get turned to burning bits made Burkhart relax a little. The Rally Master was glad the mission was done and their objective had been accomplished but it looked like Cory was having some difficulties. "Don't you worreh yersal lass. I'll coome round an dock with ya. We'll get ya sorted." He said on the channel. He would use the ship's limited tractor beam to stabalize the woman's ship so it would stop moving before activating the docking tube.

He had his own repair kit for just such occasions. Arturo was fine though and it made Burkhart feel better even though he was confident they had eliminated every enemy in the area. After he helped repair the ship and get it back into working order the trio would return to Contruum and make their reports. The ships would get what repairs were needed by actual facilities and Burkhart would get a much needed and deserved drink.

//End Thread

@EmilyHuene @Kraken dice thread​