Sith-I-5's RP post rescue, and fic - Lt. Baille Harte (nothing new, just collating material)

Characters - Lieutenant Baille Harte, Agent Mitch Nifesta
Uh, who? - Female Imperial V-Wing pilot nrc (non-repeating character)
Timeframe - ANH and just prior
Genre - parent / child family situation, hurt / comfort, multi-fandom adventuring
Situation - Near immortal, Mitch Nifesta, is so ancient that he tends to patronise normal mortals anyway. When he rescues and adopts Imperial pilot, Baille Harte, she gets into enough danger without him, to convince him that she cannot look after herself, and the best way to keep her safe is to keep her under close care and supervision as his little girl.
Source - Star Wars: Intervention roleplaying game on the RPF. As a co-GM, I was assigned to run new player Roxes' suggested scenario to introduce his female Imperial squadron leader, Commander Alexandra Tachi, and have that character the sole survivor, at which time, he would take over. I ended the intro' scenario with two survivors, Tachi, and Baille.

Regrets - Some stuff that I am copying and pasting, has been affected by the truncation issue, and I won't necessarily have the original text to hand to fix that.

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Using this as a testbed for gifs I am producing as a prize in the Fanfic Awards

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Test the formatting in stories

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CHARACTER SHEETS - NELF

Inquisitor Nelf / Yavinelf - Inquisitor trained in the Deep Core.
Surgeon-Commander Debgate - medic on the Star Destroyer Ambivalence.
Ysanne Isard – Head of Imperial Intelligence.
Ewlla Iillor – started writing

Name: Inquisitor Nelf
--Age: Not applicable. Where he comes from characters grow by levels, not years. Level 32. This will never change in GAW, so stuck at 32.
---Gender: Male
----Species: Norrathian. Human-elf hybrid.
-----Eye Color: Black
------Hair Color and Style: Full head of brown hair, brushed back.
-------Skin Complexion: Caucasian with a tanned, faint greenish tint.
--------Clothing: Sable cloak, black tunic, trousers, shirt. Polished black kneeboots.
---------Physique: Strong, muscled, wiry, good condition. Trained to physical perfection by the Inquisitorious.
----------Personality: Driven. Troubled by his past, and a subconscious desire to find his two fellow Norrathians. His conscious mind has been honed by the Inquisitorious to embrace loyalty to the Empire, and to want to hunt down jedi.
-----------Quirks: Favours the accoutrements of his Norrathian past.
------------Force Sensitive: Yes. Artificially promoted within him by the Inquisitorious. Already possessed supernatural and magical powers.

Personal Ship – Imperial shuttle.
-Name: Stealf
--Class: Theta
---Exterior Description: hooked, beak-like nose, similar wing configuaration as Lambdha-class
----Interior Description: Two-crew cockpit that is large enough for the single pilot to sleep, and dance in. Main body has a living area, meditation chamber, and holocomm cylinder.
-----Weapon Systems: double laser cannon at the ‘shoulder hinges’ of both left and right folding wings, and an automated laser cannon that drops from the ventral hull if the ship detects hostiles in the area.
------Crew Compliment: 1 pilot (npc lyra, named “Jobst”)
-------Hyperspace Capability: Class 1 (primary). Class 15 (backup)
--------Misc. Specs.: Cockpit can separate as a hyperspace-capable escape pod

Biography
-Brief History: Norrath - Was a Rescue Ranger with Surefall Paramedics. Travelled the continent, responding to distress calls. As a half-elf, possesses ability to memorise magical spells from spellbook, and cast them on himself and others. Limited to what he possessed at point of leaving Norrath. Includes, “Camo” temporary invisibility, faster running speed, fire and ice (natural) offensive spells, protective armour spells to make his or others’ flesh harder to penetrate. Can assign himself a Bind Point somewhere, and Gate (teleport) himself back to it. Possesses natural telepathy. Now add Sith skills.
GAW - How he got to the GFFA is unknown. Worked for the Bureau of Extra-Sensory Intellect, a part of the Senate Bureau of Intelligence, when it became part of Imperial Intelligence.
Attracted the attention of the Inquisitorious, and was taken to the Deep Core to further develop his abilities, and trained to hunt and interrogate jedi.

-Clone Wars: Partnered with SBI agent, Triple X (Ysanne Isard) to counter a Separatist plot to weaponise a Brain Plague, culminating with rescuing her from an ocean laboratory before a Republic orbital strike.
With her, joined SGIS agent Mitch Nifesta on an off-the-books mission to Tatooine, to retrieve the mother of Jedi Knight, Anakin Skywalker.
--Military History: None.
---Traumatic Experiences: His mind is blank as to how he arrived in the GAW universe and what happened to his Norrathian compatriots, Debgate and Yavscout, and that torments him.


Jedi/Sith/General Grievous Only
-Lightsaber Blade Color: Crimson. It’s de rigueur at the Inquisitorious.
--Lightsaber Type: A dual bladed weapon, however, one blade is solid metal.
---Hilt Description: When it was time to construct his own lightsabre, he carved out the hilt of his Finely Crafted Sheer Blade, and placed the crystals and components inside.

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Ysanne Isard
--Age: 24 standard years.
---Gender: Female
----Species: Human, Coruscant
-----Eye Color: One red, one blue.
------Hair Color and Style: Wavy black hair comes down past her shoulders, and there is a distinct white streak on the right side.
-------Skin Complexion: Caucasian.
--------Clothing: Red Imperial uniform in a masculine style. Though if Lord Nelf is present, the feminine style, by the EnergyFemme fashion brand, belted tunic, knee-length wrap skirts. Black kneeboots. The heels of each boot contains C1 comlink, and 5-shot stingbeam.
She has also brought along several outfits, either her own, or purchased for her by Lord Nelf, including a blue bandeau-style Exogorth dress with a thigh-high slit on one side.
---------Physique: Slender, pretty enough, fairly strong with fair muscle tone.
----------Personality: Furtive. Ruthless in general, but soft and lovey-dovey around Lord Nelf, and happy to accede to his wishes.
-----------Quirks:
------------Force Sensitive: No.

Biography
-Brief History: One of the youngest agents within the Senate Bureau of Intelligence, she was partnered with a BESI agent, Yavinelf, to investigate a Separatist scientist who was weaponising a Brain Plague.
She was captured and taken to the scientist’s marine laboratory on the Iskalon waterworld.

The elder Isard had the base tractored off the surface, and tossed into the local sun, and was willing to sacrifice his child for the greater good.

Yavinelf succeeded in getting her off the base, which kickstarted her love for him.

Fellow Republic security agent, Mitch Nifesta, picked the two up from sea, in order to recruit them for an off-the-books mission to Tatooine.

Famously patronising to normal mortals, Nifesta, an immortal Force Vampire, and self-proclaimed ‘God of Cops’, decided that Ysanne was too young for her dangerous lifestyle, and persuaded Armand to allow him to look after her until she was old enough, and to make him her official Uncle.

Ysanne lived with her Uncle Mitch for two years, before managing to escape, rejoin her father, join Imperial Intelligence, set her father up as a traitor and oversee his execution, thereby making her head of Imperial Intelligence.

Now she plays cat-and-mouse with her Uncle Mitch, arranging to have him killed on sight, but also knowing that he can get to her, and try to adopt her again, she keeps him ignorant of the fact that her father is dead, and pretends to be a school-age youngling whenever they talk over comlink.

--Military History: No formal military action. Has participated in several missions, both as a Republic, and an Imperial agent.[/color]
---Traumatic Experiences: Getting spanked or slippered by her Uncle Mitch, whenever he has interpreted her behaviour as her being naughty.

 

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OOC: Roxez, welcome to the game. I hope your request doesn't turn me into a pariah.
IC: Colonel Jon Thaw, Samantha Irisa, Imperial Base 'Moonbase Alpha', and Chasin City spaceport, respectively.
Location: Commenor star system


Moonbase Alpha sprawled under the command tower across the landscape, served by three circular landing pads, on which cross-shaped areas descended into the tapired three-storey barrels that housed the V-Wings, while airtight vehicle and personnel tunnels connected the moonbase to a proper light grey ziggurat of an Imperial Garrison, for the storage and tractor launching of TIEs.

Colonel Jon Thaw lounged in his chair, alone in his glase-sided tower, staring the centre of the three screens positioned in front of him, at the flat too-dee image of his raven-haired Lost Girl, the commander of the Interdictor, Charlotte's Web, that had disappeared over Ryloth sixteen years before.



The view was from the back, showing her in her Auxilary Fleet greens, charcoal hair cascading over alabaster cheekbones...

He had treated her like the daughter he never had, and her loss had scarred him.

Jedi were responsible; he just knew it. Just knew it.

To their credit, the Admiralty had let him keep five of his star destroyers to chase Jedi leads - he had been the admiral in charge of the Sixth Expansionary Fleet, after all - for the best part of two years, but eventually, enough of the other Admirals and Moffs had complained about him blundering through their Sectors, and he had been stopped. Eventually placed here, running a land-based installation.

"No more star destroyers for you, Sunshine." He whispered now, paraphrasing the result of the Judicial Inquiry.

Commander Ramala's fate was on him. He had feted her, encouraged her, facilitated her getting her own command, and despite his own misgivings, allowed her and her vessel to jump alone to Ryloth.

Well, never again.

He had no influence to stop females signing up for Imperial military service, but if they came under his umbrella of influence, he made sure they did not see combat, attain command responsibility, and actively worked to divert them into administrative or support roles.

"Colonel? You wanted to see me?"

Thaw extinguished the image at the sound of Ensign Walker's voice from the doorway, and beckoned her to approach, satisfied at her appearance tan-coloured belted Imperial tunic, knee-length skirt, polished boots, blonde hair down to her shoulders.
A success of his new philosophy, WIKYTPASO - Would It Kill You To Put A Skirt On?

"Sarah," Thaw started, putting a fatherly arm round her as she stood close to his chair, "any rebel or pirate activity?"

"No, sir. The usual commercial traffic, either arriving or leaving. Although, one new ship arrived in-system, heading for Commenor."

"Oh yes?"

"A Pantolomin-registered Firespray-31 personal craft, sir. I spoke to Commenor traffic control. Occupant claimed to be following up on the 'Hero of Chasin City' incident."

"Oh yes?" Thaw contemplated this missive. Over a week before, there had been a runaway train heading without a crew towards Chasin City on Commenor, whilst carrying toxins or chemicals, or something unpleasant. An unknown individual landed a yellow N-1 fighter on the moving train, and attempted to run over the carriages to the front, and gotten taken out by a bridge whilst remonstrating with a news LAAT. "By the way, your dormitory supervisor mentioned that you missed your sleep cycle, yesterday."

"Yes, sir. I was staying up to see Corporal Thom after his shift, at midnight."

The base commander affected exhaspiration (and dyslexia), "You have a set bed-time for a reason, Young Lady. What is this man's name again? I'll have his shifts changed around so that you can still meet, and so you can get to bed at a reasonable hour."

 

IC: Ensign Sarah Walker, Colonel Jon Thaw, The Big Red One, Flight officer Cho, Flight Lieutenant Harte, Moonbase Alpha, Space
Location: Commenor star system


In the moonbase command tower, Walker stood at the transparisteel windows of Thaw's office, watching the last of the ion engine glows disappear into the star speckled firmament.

"They're away, sir." She reported, starting to turn to look down at the colonel.

"Cool." He fllicked his gaze up from the back of her knees to her earnest expression.

"Squadrons' Red, Gray, Black, the Ravens, and the transport PotShot should already be at the jump coordinates." She elaborated crisply.

Thaw scowled. PotShot? Fat, slow transport; he would have called it the Who Ate All The Pies?, but that had been a secondary penalty of his Judicial Inquiry: no more naming of ships.

Personally, he thought that needlessly vindictive. He did not drink, he did not smoke, having an ISD-II called the Whose Your Daddy had been the only pleasure he had left, and now he didn't even have that.

* * * *

Space

Cho felt incredibly relaxed as his TIE tore through space towards the rendezvous point, only able to see a portion of his fellows around the hexagonal solar panel wings on either side of his cockpit.

"Colour groups from The Big Red One. All wings report in."

Cho was not alone in filling the airwaves with laughter, but he alone waited for the hilarity to die down. "The Big Red One. Seriously?"

"Well thank you, Grey Four!" The Squadron Leader's tone was overly brittle, an indication of how invested he was in his new callsign. "You just volunteered to play patrol, the sort that would challenge any suspicious craft that jumped into our back yard."

"What, by myself?"

"Take Grey Seven with you, since you are such great friends."

"Oh, cheers, Boss." The pilot that had head-smacked Cho earlier, acknowledged without too much enthusiasm.

"Oh, you are most welcome, Seven. Get going you two. Don't get too close though; make contact from extreme sensor range."

Cho pressed on the accelerator with the toe of one boot, and saw down on his scanner, the red arrowheads of his and the other TIE breaking ahead of the pack. "Gray Four, copy. Seven, on me." He tried to remember the script for challenging the captains of suspicious craft. Hi, welcome to Commenor. Too casual? He asked himself.

"Grey Squadron from The Big Red One. Follow Greys Four and Seven at extreme range, but try to hang back from Ravens' sensor range. Reds, we are going to move round the back of their formation. Blacks, create a wide range net above, below, and to the sides of Gray Squadron, in case the V-Wings abandon the transport and run for it. They don't have hyperspace rings, so they can only go to Commenor or the moons."

* * * *

Flight Lieutenant Baille Haart felt uneasy about this mission as her V-Wing moved into formation behind and to the right of the Corellian freighter.

Unusual that all of the base' fighters were out here. No-one on general patrol, no-one back at base in Ready One position, that latter role going to a pair of V-Wings, since they could emergency launch before the TIEs could, since they were nothing without the garrison's tractor beams to put them outside the sky-facing launch chutes.

"Ravens. We're go for the mission. Switch lasers to training mode, shields to minimal. Conserve your power for maneuvering. Orders are as in the brief. We're to escort the freighter Potshot during the training. Let's make this as real as possible. Follow standard escort procedures but don't just let them hit you. Let's make sure we rack up a few 'kills' as well."

Is that wise? The Aurabesh words flicked across a screen on Baille's control panel, as her spherical R4 droid, Houdinickabollockoff, or 'H', for short, added it's own query.

 

IC: Julien Ylvan / The Big Red One (TIE Lead), Baille Harte / Raven Nine (V-Wings), Samantha Irisa (SGIS), Jump Point, and Coroners Office, respectively


Squadron Leader Ylvan flew his TIE fighter at top speed in a wide parabolic to get round the back of the Ravens, monitoring his squadron frequencies.

"Lead from Grey Four."

"Callsigns, please.? Ylvan insisted crisply."

"The Big Red One from Grey Four."

"Proceed."

"Got two bogies coming in from dead ahead. The rest of them appear to have moved to escort formation Eta around the freighter."

Julien nodded within his helmet, thinking. "Copy that, Grey Four. We are still moving into position.

Just keep them interested till we are ready to strike."

"Interested. How am I supposed to keep them interested, the Ravens are shallow as all fra-, actually, never mind. I have an idea."

He checked his sensor scope, and could see that his group had moved beyond the system primary's - the star - gravitational field. If the Ravens had been Rebels, they would be free to jump to lightspeed.

* * * *

Flight Lieutenant Baille Harte raised her eyebrows at the unexpected challenge from the closer of the two TIEs that was almost in her sights while the other girls moved in formation behind her.

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that please? She asked.

"I said you have a lovely voice. Has anyone told you that you should be on Athosian Pop Idol?"

Despite what she thought of the male pilots at the base, who could resist a line like that? She smiled within her flightsuit. "Well not in so many words. You really think I have a nice voice?"

Oh, tell me you are not buying this, Houdinickabollocoff scrolled across the screen.

"Like honeyed Ebla, Lisa."

"Baille."

"Whatever. So, tell me, what are you doing after wor-"

Baille did not register that he had ignored her first name in that moment, the bright yellow-white fireball that had been Raven Ten's snubfighter flaring in her peripheral vision, her suitor's words drowned out by the crescendo of shrapnel hitting the side of her ship, kinetic impacts transmitting through the hull!

"Lead from Nine, we just lost Ten! We?re under attack!!"

She could see outside her canopy, a lattice of green laser fire criss-crossing the dark sky around the Raven formation!

"Hang in there, Pumpkin." Gray Four's voice reassured, promising, "I'll go get help!" His TIE accelerated towards Baille, the woman ducking as his vertical fins passed overhead to her rear. She fed power to her ion engines, and barrel-rolled hard left.

"Houdi'," Raven Nine yelled to her Q7 as the stars kaleidoscoped round her craft, "where in Fornax did that shot come from??"

You are NOT going to like the answer. The droid promised.

* * * *

The Big Red One was miffed that he had not gotten the first kill, but he got the second, his shots stitching over the Potshot's dorsal hull to slam into the side of a random V-Wing, easily breaching her shields, and disintegrating the arrow-shaped starfighter.

"Bundle!"

 

IC: Colonel Jon Thaw, Flight Lieutenant Baille Haart / Raven Nine, Flight Officer Ool-Allar-Charn, Moonbase Alpha, and Commenor system boundaries, respectively.

Briip!

Thaw looked up sharply at his aide as she spun from his tower office window port to look down at him, one hand over her shocked visage.

"Oh, Colonel, I am so sorry!"

"Oh don't worry about it, better out than in, I always say." Actually, Thaw never said that; he was humouring the poor kid. With a sniff, he was willing to bet he could name the last meal that she and her Corporal Thom had shared. "After all, the alternative would be to explo-" The base commander froze mid-word, then he was leaning forward to press a coloured button on his desk. "ComScan, patch me through to the Squadron Leader. Immediate."

* * * *

Forward of the rest of her group, Baille was still spinning through an evasion barrel roll as her superior's concerned voice came over her helmet comlink: "Say again Nine? Confirm Ten has been removed from the scenario?"

Not just from the scenario, Baille asserted in her mind, ready to repeat that into her comlink, when Raven Six managed to respond in her place.

"I copy Lead. Ten is gone. Someone on their side must not be using training lasers. What do we-"

H screamed as he noted that V-Wing's destruction, but Baille could not hear her droid counterpart, only that the translator screen blanked, to be replaced by Six is down.

"Lead we have contacts. Three squadrons, TIE fighters, look like Red, Black, and Grey squadrons, but... their energy profiles... Lead they're running hot! Repeat, they are not using training lasers!"

Baille pushed her control joystick hard to the right, slowly coming out of the left-sided barrel roll, almost immediately, pings going off in her helmet as her counter-measures detected multiple target locks.

She jinked desperately to try and break those locks while trying to figure an escape vector from this mess.

"Damn! Ravens, shields to maximum! Accelerate to attack speeds, code Omega!"

Baille jinked her craft to the right, as green laser fire slashed past her canopy on the left. "Copy, Boss." She acknowledged over her comm unit. "Code Omega."

You have no idea what 'Code Omega' is, do you?

"Not a clue." Her helmet cast a momentary shadow across her controls as her attacker exploded behind her. "Thanks, whoever that was."

"You're welcome."

Baille recognised the melodious tones of their newest squad-member, Flight Officer Ool-Allar-Charn, Raven Eleven; the shy girl hailing from the Imperial holding, Tiss'sharl, which explained her odd name.

Raven Nine poured on the speed, quickly spying a cloud of TIEs between them and the route back to base. She stitched several low-powered shots across the hexagonal fin of a TIE that crossed her path, the lucky Grey Seven flitting clear.

Didn't Lead say to put the lasers to full power? Houdi enquired, though to Haart, the droid's word had the air of an accusation.

"Busy keeping us alive," she pointed out. Her forward sensors showed that she was closing on the TIEs of Gray Squadron, and they were clearly covering a lot of escape vectors.

"Raven Leader to incoming TIEs, we are loyal Imperial forces conducting training missions in this area. Disengage or switch to training laser power levels. Repeat..."

"I don't think they are listening, Boss."

Tag: Roxez

 

IC: Flight Officer Ool-Alla-Charn / 'Raven Eleven', Squadron Leader Julian Ylange / 'The Big Red One', Colonel Thaw, Midshipman Sarah Walker, Commenor.


The TIEs of Grey Squadron were waiting in the Raven's path to stop them reaching the planet or their moon base; the Reds were attacking the V-Wings from behind, and the Black TIEs were maintaining a wider net around the dogfights to pick of anyone trying to run.

Ool-Alla-Charn panicked, bringing her V-Wing around against Commander Tachi's orders, and high-tailing it for the PotShot freighter that her squadron were supposed to be guarding for the exercise.

She dodged the tapered hulls of her sister V-Wings as they flew under or over her, and accelerated towards the larger craft.

"Eleven from Nine; where are you going?"

Ool ignored the call of her fellow pilot. She'd call her from the freighter. As a safety precaution, it had a docking port in case a pilot had to eject out here during an exercise. If they could reach the ship, they could hole out and await rescue.

Her cockpit shuddered as laser blasts stitched along her starboard shields, then lost her as she spun free of her unseen opponent's target lock.

The disc-like hull of the YT-1300 transport passed over her canopy as she slid underneath, taking her canopy under the shaped cummerbund tube which immediately sealed itself to the hull around her cockpit.

Ool released her seat restraints, the black strapping snapping across her chest, bouncing off the breath-tubes feeding into her helmet from the life-support unit on her chest. She pushed the canopy up and rose from the seat, reaching for the ladder inside the cummerbund shaft that would take her up to the freighter's external airlock hatch.

* * * *

Squadron Leader Ylange wanted to tape a picture of the Tachi girl to the hull of his TIE fighter, but to do that, he needed to be the one to shoot her. Trouble was, one V-Wing looked like any other up here.

Two fireballs to his front left and right showed another two of the Ravens being vapourised - their numbers rapidly diminishing, but not as fast as he would have liked, not with them broadcasting distress signals.

Where in Oseon was that slitch? Looking left and right, Ylange raised an eyebrow behind his flight mask that as he spotted that a V-Wing had docked with the PotShot.

That would not be the Raven commander, but it would be an easy kill.

He steered his TIE down and towards it, setting up Raven Eleven's parked fighter for a one-shot kill, his holographic targeting sliding over the image of the freighter.

His comlink squawked and echoed with his superior's voice: "The Big Red One from Base One"

Ylange smiled at Thaw's use of his new callsign. "Colonel?"

"You remember how the briefing didn't contain any tactical info, well, you anywhere near the PotShot?"

Ylange looked out at the titular freighter almost filling the segmented, octagonal window. "Yep, and getting nearer."

"GET. OUT. OF. THERE!!"

Not just the man's tone, but the volume rang mental alarm bells within the squadron leader. He switched to the inter-squad frequency as he barrel-rolled away to port: "Colour TIEs from The Big-"

Space lit up as the freighter detonated, the white fireball partially visible as he steered away from the conflagration.

Alarms and lights flashed within the cockpit, the stars spun outside and the sensor readout disintegrated into static as his systems struggled to cope with the unexpected change in conditions outside.

* * * *

Moonbase Alpha' command tower

"ComScan, contact the fighters; find out who's still flying. I want rescue shuttles standing by."

"Err?" Midshipman Sarah Walker murmured, staring down at the Colonel.

Thaw stared back. "What?" Then he realised that she was staring past at something behind him. The commander spun his chair around, to see the life-sized, slightly transparent blue holograph of a person in a dark hooded robe. "Who the-" He paused as the mysterious figure held up a hand.

"Silence. We have need of you, Ad-mir-ral Thaw."

The effectively re-instated Navy officer smiled. "You just have to name it."

"Proceed to Gyndine. You are responsible for the security of Project Zero."

Tag: Roxes

 

IC: Admiral Jon Thaw, the Bad Boy Golan III space defense platform.
Location: Gyndine

The admiral, back in navy grey, with an admiral’s red and blue rank squares upon the chest of his tunic, stood at the vast transparisteel window, knowing that he was master of all he surveyed – star destroyers, interdictors, defense platforms, corvettes, picket ships.

But in terms of what he and all this were here to guard…

Thaw turned slowly from the window, to the visibly shaking officer. “Tell me again, what did Lord Vader say, regarding this Red Rock Processing Unit?”

“Haww-hooo-”

“Without the breathing sounds.”

“Sorry, Admiral. Uh,” The Imperial commander managed to put on a passable impression of the Dark Lord’s hollow-sounding voice synthesizer. “if anybody asks, I have taken it for dinner and a show.”

“And this raised no red flags for anyone?”

“This was Lord Vader, Admiral!”

Thaw sighed. “Yes, of course.” He started to wave the subordinate away, then stopped. “I don’t suppose he named the restaurant. Actually, no. Don’t go there; its probably the Red Rock Cafe or something. Dismissed.”

He glared at his reflection in the window. So Vader had half-inched (pinched) the blasted thing.

“Sarah?”

His aide, Midshipman Walker, stood in the shadows, swishing the hem of her dark grey skirt about her knees in boredom. She looked up. “Admiral?”

“Get a description of Vader's ship off that commander; take a paper bag, since he's probably hyperventilating somewhere, if I am any judge. Alert all commands and disperse the fleet. I want Lord Vader found!”

“Yes, Admiral.” Excited to be doing something more useful than Operation Stand Around And Look Pretty, she jogged off to find someone that the various ships’ captains would listen to, if they did not listen to her.

Thaw’s jaw set as he thought of the man he had revered when he had last been a Naval flag officer. What was Darth Vader up to now?

And where was Hillick Soal? The two beings most involved with this project, and neither of them were here, leaving the new admiral holding the baby.

In fact, Vader had taken the baby!

All Thaw had was the soiled nappy, and fistful of damp pastel-coloured flimsis. Well, at least he hadn’t started to wipe.

Jon caught himself, and shook his head. There was such a thing as taking an analogy too far.

“Vader, you rat *******.”

Tag: no-one

 

IC: Lieutenant Baille Harte, Imperial dry dock prison level
Location: Christophsis star system


"So this is how my last day is going to play out," Baille observed aloud, staring round the spartan grey holding cell where she had been brought since the military court had condemned her to death, based on the cover story at Commenor that the Ravens, her female-only squadron there, were closet Rebels, and had attacked the Imperial fighter patrols.

The room was largely empty, almost a perfect cube, with just a grey metal slab extending a metre from the wall to provide a bed.

She sat on it barefoot in a one-piece grey coverall, a white ceramic plate beside her right hip was coloured with the congealed remains of her last meal. There was no cutlery.

Baille gasped in shock and pulled her knees up to hug them as the only entrance snapped up into the ceiling.

"Hello?"

One of the dour-looking prison guards stepped in, and threw a thick white Queen-sized mattress onto the floor, and toed it lengthways to the wall on her right.

The door snapped shut, sealing him in with her.

"Is this a new thing? I get to sleep properly on my last night?"

"Well, you won't be sleeping." The guard smiled, joining her on the bench. "Strip, and lay down on the mattress, there's a good girl."

"Good girl? I out-rank you!"

The man sighed and stood, looking down at her. "Now don't make me have to remove my belt....though I suppose it will have to come off anyway.

She continued to hug her knees even tighter as he started to undo his grey uniform tunic, unlatched his belt, and sat again on the slab inches from her, to negotiate his polished black kneeboots off his feet, and then dropped his trousers.

"What are you going to d-do?" She had feeling she knew the answer. Could this be happening, in her Empire?

"Me and the guys are going to make your last night, one the remember, Rebel." He grinned at her, showing yellow teeth.

She gagged and looked away, tightly shutting her eyes, then gasped at the sound of the door snapping open again.
She sneaked one eye open, to see literally half a person, the left side from the look of things, and what looked like half a chair, clatter into the cell!

Beside her, the guard rose so fast that that his loosened grey trousers slipped down pale hairy legs to pool around stockinged feet.

A figure cloaked and hooded in black, head to foot, sidled into the room, and swept its hood back to reveal the pale white features of an adult male twi'lek with piercing red eyes that went with the bundle of shiny red fabric clutched in one pale fist, while the other held an unfamiliar-looking metal cylinder.

"Lieutenant Baille Hart? V-Wing starfighter pilot?"

"Err. Yes?" She hazarded, wondering if this was some sort of trick by her Imperial captors.

"Hi there. Mitch Nifesta from SGIS, and I am here to rescue you. Would you believe the Rebel Alliance claimed you were not one of their operatives?"

"Ah-ha!" Accused the would-be rapist.

"For the last time, I am not a rebel!" Hart countered angrily, "I am a loyal Imperial officer!"

She was pleased to see a look of surprise on the visitor's face, as if finally, someone believed her. Then she watched him lift the cylindrical hilt, straighten the forefinger, and twirl it at his temple.

"Oh. Apparently you are telling the truth." The alien looked surprised, and un-sure of himself.

The guard carefully bent down to grasp the waistband of his trousers, and cautiously straightened, pulling them up slowly.

Oblivious to him, and thinking only of her predicament, Baille gushed, "At last, someone believes me." She started sobbing in relief, the tension leaving her body, her back striking the cool wall behind her as she sagged.

"Well, this is awkward." Nifesta backed away a couple of paces, back into the corridor, glancing above the doorway. "I must have gotten turned around; I thought this was the prison level."

"It is." Asserted the guard, fastening his trousers with as much calm as he could exude. He was in here without a weapon.

It slowly began to dawn on the lieutenant that the door to her cell was open. Maybe she should try to escape. She put her feet back onto the cold floor, and started to ease slowly forward off the bench, then she spotted the blur of red just before it slammed into her chest, and unfolded softly over her lap.

"Put that on."

Baille frowned, lifted part of the bundle, and watched the silken red sleeveless dress unfold to the floor. She looked questioningly from it to the twi'lek, who now started to look shifty.

"It is sort of a policy of mine. I will only rescue you if you are wearing a dress." He gestured to a part of the hallway that she could not see right now, but she knew from when she had been brought in, that there was a circular control console down there, with several black-uniformed Imperial prison guards in boots, gloves and those oversized helmets. "And I have kind of killed everybody."

The V-Wing pilot sighed. An escape had more chance of success if she had someone helping her. "Alright, turn your back, please, and watch the corridor. And I am only changing because there are no wash facilities and I feel dirty in these."

"Yeah, sell it to yourself however you want, Kiddo, but once you get changed, you are no longer an Imperial." The twi'lek warned her. She could feel her rib-cage vibrate to the bass in this mysterious being's voice. Wierd.

She started to get changed, his words echoing in her mind. Staying an Imperial meant staying for the firing squad. Her superiors and peers at Commenor had forced her into this. Though maybe... She unbuttoned the top part of the coveralls, pulled her arms out of the sleeves, and stood up, pushing the smelly outfit down over her hips. ...maybe if she could contact Colonel Thaw. Or had he been in on the massacre of her squadron?

The prison garb was kicked along the floor, and Baille snatched up the dress, quickly righting it to find the quickest way to put it on.
She glanced towards Nifesta. "So if I come with you, it means I join the Rebel Alliance?"

Her benefactor seemed to be a proper gentlebeing, studiously looking away from her, and down the corridor. "Are you crazy?"

She had to smile at the humourous exasperation in the other's query, her view going red as she pulled the outfit over her head.

"Not now you have admitted to being an Imperial. SGIS could use someone with your skills, and we do have an immediate job for you, if you are interested in saving lives. If you want to join the Alliance, though, you will do six months probation with us. C'mon, c'mon, c'mon."

Baille pulled the dress down till it fitted in all the right places, noting that the flared skirt hid her feet from view, and looked up at the twi'lek. "How do I look?"

"Oh, for feth's sake." The twi'lek stalked into the cell, grasped her wrist with a grip like iron, and tugged her after him to the eeriely silent guard station, littered with bits of guards littering the place in cauterised parts, the place smelling faintly of cooked meat. "Careful where you step."

One of the coloured buttons on the control panel was bleeping in a low volume.

Tiptoeing carefully among the recently dead, Baille tried to lean down to grab a fallen blaster, but Nifesta held her wrist aloft to stop her reaching for it. She gave up and dutifully stepped to his side. Clearly he was running this show.
She looked on as he called the turbolift. "So, Nifesta, right? Where we heading?"

"I thought we would try the hangar where my ship is parked. Unless you know a good restaurant, around here."

"Is the sarcasm really necessary?"

"Perhaps you would like it back in your cell, your highness."

Hart turned from him, muttering under her breath, "I guess that's a yes."

To be continued...

 

IC: Lieutenant Baille Hart, Agent Mitch Nifesta, Christophsis dry dock
Location: Christophsis star system


During the long journey creeping along deserted corridors, Baille had eventually realised that her idea of turning on the twi'lek and handing him over to Imperial authorities in an attempt to convince them of her bona fides, was not going to work.

She did not know how, but the Twi'lek seemed to have sensed her change of mind, for he allowed her to pick up an E-11 blaster carbine, which she now cradled in a double-handed grip across her midriff as the blast doors to the docking bay slid aside before them.

The first thing that caught her eye was the tail section of a huge burgundy-coloured Consular-class cruiser that dominated the bay.
Thanks to the landing gear, she could see clean under the craft, its reflection in the shiny floor beneath it.

Baille led the way in, turning slowly as she covered all directions with the business end of her blaster, while Mitch trailed her.

He spotted the scared face of a maintenance tech emerging from between two tall package crates, freezing at the sight of the armed femme in the red dress.

"Don't worry about it," Mitch assured him as he passed, "she's agoraphobic. Bad childhood experience. For feth's sake, do not invite her to see a cute vornsk puppy."

"I can hear you, you know?" She griped from forty metres ahead of him. "Houdi!"

Nifesta watched her abandon all composure to run, bare feet slapping the deck, over to her parked black V-Wing, dwarfed by the bulk of his cruiser, and leap onto the near foil, cooing over the whistling black dome to the left of the canopy.

"I had your fighter placed in here with mine before my cover got blown."

The Imperial fugitive quit stroking the black dome of her Q7 unit, long enough to look over at him. "Your cover got blown?"

"Why do you think the prison guards got chopped?" Mitch slowly caught up to her. "I'm a bit of a one-trick pony at the covert insertion game, and I have done it a few times over the years. I guess news must have travelled."

A green laser bolt exploded into the back of the V-Wing's s-foil!

Baille and Mitch looked back to the entrance, to see a squad of stormtroopers enter and spread out to provide less of a target, one throwing his arms akimbo and clattering onto his face after Lieutenant Harte's return fire hit him in the chest!

"Houdi', rear shields, NOW!"

Nothing appeared to happen, but the fierce incoming fire were now stopped a metre back of the small fighter.

"Right, our mission is going to take us to the planet Flitter, in the Tierfon system."

"Now?!" Baille lay down on the back of her fighter, sighting the stormtroopers through the folded s-foils. "You want to talk mission specifics now?"

To be continued...

 

IC: SGIS Agent Mitch Nifesta, Lieutenant Baille Hart, hangar, Imperial Facility
Location: Christophsis orbit


Mitch knew he was being cheeky going through the plan while standing with the ex-Imperial woman at the back of her V-Wing, whilst stormtroopers fanned out several dozen metres behind the starfighter, and opened fire on them. But they were in little danger of being hit, he reasoned, seeing as the small craft’s rear shields were up. It ought to be able to handle small arms fire, for drokks’ sake.

Baille switched positions, rolling away off the other side of the fighter, landing feet first on the hangar deck to squat down, almost under her black-hulled craft, while Mitch opened a cargo panel on his side of the craft's rear, revealing several packed white flimsy boxes.

“Medical supplies.” He explained down to her. “There is a planet under Imperial blockade, in the Tierfon system, and your precious Empire has already poisoned the crops and water supplies, and is now not letting anyone get in to help. Our job is to break that blockade.”

“And you have to tell me this now?!” Baille yelled from the level of his knees.

KAPOW!!

A green blaster bolt actually struck the hull in front of his face! He had heard that starfighter shields were a bit porous, but this was ridiculous!

“Alright, time to leave.” The tall Twi'lek conceded gallantly, slapping the cargo compartment shut, and latching it, “Get in, I’ll cover for you.”
He pushed back the hood so he could see better, parted his black robes down the front, and pulled out the E-11 blaster carbine he had appropriated on the prison level.

“I am wearing a dress!” She raised her voice to remind over the cacophony of battle.

“And perfectly lovely you look too.” Mitch fired off a couple of shots that had the emboldened Imps diving for cover, then freed a hand to pat her on the head.

“If I have to eject, I won’t survive in this.”

“Don’t eject. Or if its going to be a problem, you can come with me aboard the ‘Unlucky,” he nodded towards the burgundy-coloured Republic Cruiser that sat to the V-Wing’s right, and dwarfed it. “That would mean leaving your V-Wing behind, and the mission does sort of hinge on you having your own starfighter.” He gestured again to thye open cockpit. “Get in. Request harbour control open the doors while I board my ship.”

Baille almost corrected him that he meant for her to get them to open the doors that would evacuate all the air, after he got to his ship, not while he was on the way to it, but considered Harbour Control were more likely to tell them to go drokk themselves, than grant the request.

A lot of the stormtrooper' fire were being blocked by the shield, but another whistled past the Twi’lek, who, she felt, could be taking this a tad more seriously.

She clambered up onto the flattened hull, and slithered butt first into the open cockpit, affording the letch a good look at legs that had not seen much sun, when he could perhaps be looking elsewhere.

“Can you fly in bare feet?” Nifesta enquired worriedly.

“Do I have a choice?”

Mitch did not regard himself as a total monster, but there were actions that even he categorised as ‘bastard moves’, such as the one that occurred to him now.

Leaving his rifle laying across the horizontal s-foil, Mitch chose a victim, ducked under the craft, drew and ignited his lightsabre then Force spun it down the hangar at ankle height towards one of the stormtroopers, looked away because this was not going to be a Kodak Moment, and waited for the screams.

A couple moments later, during which there seemed to be a lull in the blaster fire, he tapped on Baille’s canopy for her to open it, and passed the white booties through while enquiring after the response from Harbour Control.

“They said we had to be joking.” She looked down suspiciously at the footwear in her lap. “Uh, where did you get these?”

“I spent my Summer Holidays working for a Cobblers, and he paid me in shoes.”

“They’re still warm. And…” She sniffed at them, wrinkling her nose.

“Was it worth it?” The agent dead-panned, over the sound of a blaring horn, and an ominous click from the heavy blast doors ahead of them. “Uh-oh.”

Mitch leaned into the cockpit with her, his gaze darting around, then he reached past her knees and hit the canopy controls to bring it back down over her head.

Baille heard a tiny bang next to her, which was the sound of air rushing into the spot where he had been standing, and felt herself pulled by the air current in that direction, almost striking her right elbow on the side of the cockpit.

“Where the blazes did he go?”

Ahead of her, the blast doors were starting to open, while the view beyond looked a lot more metal, and solid, than free space should, and she realised she was staring at the hull of a large vessel effectively blocking their escape, whilst letting the atmosphere escape.

“Okay, that wasn’t there when I arrived.” The Twi’lek’s voice observed wryly over her commo-board.

“Where did you go?” Harte demanded, flicking toggles and switches as she ran through her pre-flight procedure. A quick glance out the cockpit had shown her that the droid pit was empty.
She had lost her spherical Q7 droid, Houdinikabollokoff, and she didn’t think the Cobbler was willing to entertain a secondary rescue mission.

“You are going to need to do some fancy flying once I move them out of our way,” her commo-board advised. “whoever they are.”

She directed her sensors straight out the doors, and ran a telesponder check. “She reads as the Imperial Justice. Imperial-class Star Destroyer.” She sounded familiar though. “I heard from the guards that she had arrived in-system for repairs.”

A new voice came over her comlink board. “This is Captain Aron Pauletti of the Star Destroyer, Imperial Justice. You are ordered to deactivate your engines, and surrender to Imperial custody.”

“This is Agent Mitch Nifesta of the Republic cruiser, Darth Unlucky. S’not your lucky day, is it?,”

Twin brightly coloured starbursts fired from the Darth Unlucky’s front, parallel trailed out the hangar, and blossomed into fire, first against an invisible deflector shield, then against the hull itself as the shield buckled, the huge behemoth ponderously steering away to create a larger opening

Baille activated her repulsors, and pushed on the sublight levers, catapulting the compact craft out of the hangar, then nosing up on a positive-z axis to clear both the facility exterior and the star destroyer’s port side, up past a command tower that had seen better days, and out into free space, away from the bright aqua and gunmetal-coloured orb that was Christophsis, and towards free space.

Okay, she could aim her craft for the next nearest star, and jump to lightspeed, but it had not escaped her how quickly the Empire had caught up with her the last time.

Maybe her best chance was to ally herself with a group, such as whoever this mad twi’lek represented.

“Darth Unlucky from-” She started to broadcast.

“On your tail, Kid. So no sudden stops, please.”

“Roger that. Okay, setting course for mission destination.”

The twilek had been talking about a blockaded planet while she had been ducking under her craft. Tierfon.

She called that up on her navicomp, quickly discovering that it was a star system in the Expansion Region’s Sumitra sector.

“Hi. Do you go faster with your s-foils deployed?”

“Whoops.” She hit that button, and felt the grinding through the seat as the foils opened up and down, the fighter feeling more stable as well.

* * * *
Imperial Justice bridge

Pauletti skidded on all fours to the nearest ceiling support, and hauled himself upright, yelling to the crewers, “Damage reports!”

“Captain, we are holed on three portside decks, and we have lost shields on that side.”

“Can we repel another attack?”

“No need. The Republic cruiser, and the starfighter have just jumped to lightspeed. The larger vessel was leaking atmosphere, so it must have collided with something during the escape.”

“Sensors, give me everything you have on that ship. Helm, direct us to the nearest free drydock. I think we deserve a rest.”

“As ordered.”

Tag: no-one

 

OOC: *Glances around desk for inspiration for an nrc name. Checks December issue of internal work magazine, and spots pictures of colleagues showing off their tops…shrugs*

IC: Christmas Jumper (nrc), Agent Nifesta, Baille Hart, caves, the Darth Unlucky, V-Wing starfighter
Location: Tierfon star system


Dirty, wrapped in rags and amateurishly-skinned animal hide, Christmas sat huddled several several metres inside the Duross Caves, overlooking the city.

The rocky, barren landscape outside the caves were grey and lifeless, the soil poisoned months ago by Imperial bombardment after they had discovered the Alliance safe world, and punished it.

They had carried out the action just before the harsh winter, and thousands had already died, from starvation, poisoning, or exposure.

Of course, the Empire had levelled the cities too, so the population had little shelter.

Christmas had no way of finding out what was going on beyond those grey skies, but something must be preventing the Alliance from coming to save them.


* * * *
Hyperspace

The hulking twi’lek did not seem so imposing as he sat on the floor in one of the ship’s hallways, staring at the salon door he had emergency sealed with hullbreach foam, just two hours before, the cabin beyond the durasteel barrier open to hyperspace, thanks to the desperate escape between a Christophsis dry-dock hangar, and the sides of a weakened Star Destroyer.

She had obviously snagged on part of the SD’s hull, and he had been lucky not to tear his Consular-class Republic Cruiser in half.

Two metal canisters of the hardening foam sat on the deck to his right, speckles of blown-back foam caking his face, arms and robes, as well as the parts of the door frame he had been aiming at.

“Can’t take you anywhere, can I?” He softly rebuked himself.

An alarm on his wrist chronometer chimed softly.

Ah, they were going to revert at Tierfon soon. He better get to the bridge.

Nifesta levered himself off the deck, putting a meaty white hand on the wall to support himself. “Getting old, my friend. And talking to myself. First sign that I should look at hiring a crewmember. Or buy a morrt.”


* * * *
Hyperspace

Baille had discovered that trying to get footwear on, in the cramped conditions of an V-Wing’s cockpit, was not easy, Imperial procedures generally requiring their pilots to already be dressed before climbing into their craft.

She had been forced to keep her feet down under the control panel, and lean down there herself, stretching her arms, and almost dislocating her spine.

And that was how she had found the stylus connected by a bit of frayed string to the corner of what proclaimed to be an SGIS Operation Feedback flimsi, though from the tone of the questions, she was unsure if was a survey, or an application form.

“Name,” She read aloud, then paused as she looked for something to press on, disregarding her own lap; the control panel, in cae she pressed the wrong button and did drokk knows what; and the canopy above her – she knew it was secure, otherwise she’d have been long dead, scattered into atoms within the hyperspatial tunnel, but why tempt fate.

Twisting uncomfortably in her chair, she found that she could press a portion of the flimsy down on her right armrest.

“Name.”

She wrote, Baille Harte on the line provided.

“How did you hear of the Secret Galactic Intelligence Service? One. I am an ally, and I am fighting alongside you. Two. Your (complete name of operative or ship) rescued my arse. Three. I am a jedi. Four. I am a Sith.” Baille raised an eyebrow. She didn't know what a sith was, but it was followed by a disclaimer that if she'd ticked ‘I am a Sith’, she must be one charming nest-fragger, cos her choob ought to be fried chicken by now.

She ticked, Two. Your Agent Nifesta rescued my arse.

The navi-computer emitted a soft two-tone warning, announcing that she was soon to revert from supralight.

“About time; that’s five minutes of my life I’m not getting back in a hurry.”

Outside, the hyperspace tunnel ended, and shrank back around her ship to be replaced by slowly shortening starlines.

“Okay, shields on. Weapons hot. Wonder what you have in store for me now.”

Tag: no-one

 

IC: Agent Mitch Nifesta (SGIS npc), Baille Harte, the Darth Unlucky Consular-class cruiser
Location: Tierfon system


Mitch felt the death throes of Alderaan’s population, billions of people and lifeforms, soon after his craft reverted within the Tierfon system.

He didn’t know what the Feth had occurred, but it felt very, very bad. First chance he got, he would call headquarters, ask if they knew anything.

Mitch was pleased that the shock through the Force had not knocked him unconscious, not like last time when one had hit whilst he had been going to Coruscant to put a torp through Prince Xisor’s skyhook, and the kids – Fen and Irisa - had had to land the ship themselves.

Why did these things have to happen during times of high drama. Not that one had a chance of happening while he was sunning himself on a deck chair. He could not remember ever doing that, and didn’t see himself starting till the day after Palpatine accepted his invitation to wave the chequered flag at the end of the Boonta Eve pod race.

“Palpie Jam.”

“What was that?”

Startled by Baille’s voice over the comlink, Mitch cringed as he responded. “Sorry, I was thinking happy thoughts. Did not mean to transmit them.” He looked ahead, where a coin-sized grey orb was steadily growing larger as their two vessels headed towards it at sublight. “Cut for the planet when you are ready.”

“Copy.”

Mitch checked the settings on his long-range sensors, to make sure they were set to maximum, since if there was a blockade here, it wasn’t the most populous fleet he had ever encountered.

He wasn’t reading anything yet.

“Cut your speed so that I pull ahead, and prep an hyperspace escape vector in case this goes blum-shaped.”

“Copy.”

“And so you are clear, you are no longer a lieutenant in the Navy. You are a Probationary Agent in SGIS.”

“C’Boath on a bike; are you always this talkative on the way to a combat zone? What if someone is listening?”

The sensors whistled, the Twi’lek turning his chair fully that way, and leaning forwards to check the readings – they were only picking up one ship, which from the dimensions looked corvette sized.

The system ran an automated telesponder check, identifying the Imperial vessel as a Broadside-class cruiser.

“Attention, this is the Imperial Star Destroyer Ramification. You are entering restricted space. Turn around immediately, otherwise, you will be fired upon.”

Mitch’s eyes widened at the unexpected transmission, and ran an FST Full Spectrum Tranceiver scan, which didn’t show any sign of an ImpStar, which meant that it was cloaked, painted black (though that wouldn’t fool amoeba on Mimban, let alone a sophisticated FST sweep), or the captain of the corvette must be compensating for something.

"I'm not reading any-"

Nifesta jumped out of his seat at an electronic scream from the control panel, and was two steps from the station when his wing-person’s voice called over the comlink.

“Break break break, we have four torps inbound.”

Clever. Clever. Distract them with the ISD warning, then open fire first.

Sensors were reading two torpedoes coming towards the Unlucky, while two more speared after Hart’s V-Wing, which he could see out the right port was coming out of a multiple clock-wise barrel roll and diving towards the planet Flitter.

The Twi’lek took a breath and exhaled slowly to calm himself, then brought his own weapons online, lights on his board glimmering as two Taim & Bak KT6 heavy blaster cannon rolled out from concealment on either side of the command pod.

He targeted the first of the projectiles going after his new recruit, and stitched green energy bursts into it.

No effect.

“What?!” Mitch’s blood ran cold at what his scanners revealed about the missiles going after Hart’s fighter. “Shielded? Who in Flamewind shields their torpedoes?” He asked himself rhetorically, then gesturing out the window at the two-pronged Imperial cruiser, continued, “Well, you do, obviously.”

The two oncoming missiles were closing fast, and Mitch, hoping they were programmed to detonate on contact rather than at range, jinked his vessel to the starboard to have them tear past his ship on the port side.

An index finger stabbed at the heavy weapons Fire button, allowing him to return fire on the capital ship with two EF-5000 “Extreme Frag” concussion missiles of his own, the parallel twin trails of golden light spearing down to the Ramification.

He did not wait to find out if the Imperial torpedoes were making a bid for freedom, or turning to track him, instead banking the SGIS vessel hard to starboard, in pursuit of the V-Wing and her pursuing missiles.

That femme was his responsibility. Although a card-carrying Imperial when he had found her, once she had donned the scarlet outfit, for him, it was the equivalent of taking the "King's Shilling" in an obscure Pre-Expansionist era nation.

He didn't know if she gave her action as much weight as he did, but he would hold up his end of the deal.

****

Baille, for her part, quickly had white vapour scudding across her canopy, trailing rivers of clear moisture, as she dove into the planet’s cloud cover, which she could feel slowing her down, which was probably not going to be good news if she could not shake those missiles.

Had the twi’lek abandoned her to a fiery fate? He certainly hadn’t made any attempt to take them out. She shook her head, annoyed at her behaviour.

“I must have been on the happy juice to go along with this. I should have just run for it.”
Her next move did not feel like a good idea inside a planet’s atmosphere, but with gritted teeth, she did it anyway, folding in her rear s-foils to present less drag, and turned up the engine, dropping like a bullet towards the countryside far below.

---

Posted in SW: Intervention, page 129

IC: Baille Hart, Agent Mitch Nifesta, Alpha-3 Nimbus V-Wing, and the Darth Unlucky cruiser
Locations: Planet Flitter, Tierfon system


Baille switched her attention between her readouts giving the distance back to the nearest missile chasing her towards the ground, and the green and grey landscape rushing up to her.

Levelling out would give the projectile a jump on her, as it wouldn't have to use the same angle as her, but could adjust its course depending on where she was, but unless her plan was to plunge into the ground like a meteorite, she had no choice.

She hit the switch to unfold her rear s-foils which she was chagrined to see reduced the distance back to the missile, then just as she was about to pull out of the dive, she changed course slightly and applied the break flaps, squares of metal levering out of her craft's hull to catch the air buffetting over her V-Wing's nose and lines, slowing her speed drastically.

The black and white pole that was the missile accelerated past as her descent slowed, the orange fire from the exhaust blackening part of her canopy, almost obscuring the sight of bright green lances of laser fire spearing down past her from somewhere behind her.

"What in the-?"

"Do you think you could get out of the way?" She heard the twi'lek's annoyed tones over her comlink, "I'm trying to shoot these damned things."

"You're still here?" She returned, rolling her fighter to the side and levelling out at the same time, the ground visible above her as she sped along at tree-top level, upside down.

The V-Wing rolled right-side-up at the first opportunity.

Baille felt relief flood through her at the realisation that she had not been abandoned. That and something else.

She wasn't alone. Which was all she had felt since the rest of the Ravens had been killed by the male TIE squadrons over Commenor's moon.

Even running to the Empire had failed because of the story Colonel Thaw had put out about her being a rebel.

"Thanks for not abandoning me."

"You're an agent."

"Understood." Maybe she needed something to be part off. "You were hitting that missile perfectly; why wasn't it exploding?"

"Shielded."

Shielded?! Her piddly little twin-laser cannon had no chance if the cruiser's larger guns were having no effect.

"From your silence, I am guessing that you have heard better news in your time."

That made her smile. She could see on her TFS - Terrain Following Sensors, that a dry riverbed was coming up, and banked right between the riverside trees to speed along it, following its course. "Well yeah. Now, am I delivering these drugs to a pharmacist, or what? Cos I'm not going to have time to land, get out, run back to the cargo hatch, have the guy running the place sign my invoice clipboard, run back to the cockpit, and take off again. And you know why?"

"You do not have an invoice clipboard?"

Oh yeah! Baille checked her rear scanners. Still being chased. "NO! It's because there is a drokking great missile chasing me!"

"You're lucky; I have four chasing me!"

Not that it hadn't been exciting doing patrols at Commenor, but that had been about maintaining a presence in-system, and the relationships with the other girls.

This, where she could look out the left side of her canopy and see the light blue sky, and looking right, see the clear shallow waters of the stream less than two dozen metres away, had that beaten hands down.

The tree-lines cleared, and she was able to level out, flying over the bare rock and sand.

dee-dee-dee-dee

Practised reflexes had her jinking her Alpha-3 to port to evade a bright lozenge of blue-white energy zipping up from the ground in front of her, then the fighter shuddered around her in response to a shockwave hitting her from behind.

"You're all clear, Kid. Ground-to-air fire knocked your missile's shields offline, and I finished it off."

Baille felt relief flood through her. It had been looking quite dicey there. "I am going to circle back and land. See if I can find and thank whoever saved my bacon."

"Copy that. Use caution. And see if they know where everyone is."

Tag: no-one

---

Posted in SW: Intervention, page 130

IC: Mary Formal, Baille Hart, Flitter
Location: Tierfon system


The female alien pulled her skinned furs tighter around her blue shoulders as the frigid wind whistling through the thin white-barked trees buffeted her. She was floating off the ground, in her natural state, so she had to dig hard fingers into the bark of the nearest tree to anchor herself.

The small copse was close to the river where she collected the foul-tasting water for the rest of her community of survivors in the caves a couple of miles back in the hills.

The water tasted bad since the Empire had poisoned, or done something to the planet, and they had to boil it with some local moss to make it drinkable.

It had been a year since Alliance ships had stopped coming, and she and the other colonists assumed something must be stopping them, even after the Imperial bombardment that had affected the water, and flora and fauna.

There had been sightings of X-Wings and Z-95s flitting through the atmosphere, but none had landed, or managed to make a legible communication, having been quickly destroyed by mysterious missiles before they could do anything remotely helpful.

Mary, who had been rescued from her previous situation by a Rebel commando team, had been allowed to settle here, where she had worked on electronic components for the few starfighters that the Alliance to Preserve the Republic had built themselves.

She was new to this area of space, new enough that she had missed the Clone Wars, and had not experienced this Galactic Republic that the Alliance wanted to resurrect, but, they had been kind to her, had helped her, and she had thrown her lot in with them.

Alliance colony worlds had little in the way of defences, some blasters, and an armoury in town that had several shoulder-held anti-aircraft portable ion cannon.

She had one with her, and had wasted a bolt, trying to hit the missile following that sleek black thing that had blown along the river bed just now, and which had been finished off by the larger burgundy-coloured capital ship that was now making a run to the horizon with four missiles on its tail.

“Good luck.” She wished the pilot of the red craft, having long recognised the missiles as belonging to the unseen enemy.

Blue-black head tendrils floating behind her, Mary cocked her head, listening.

There was something coming. And it sounded like that black starfighter that she had tried to help just now.

Interesting.

Mary knew this place well, and if the pilot was actually intending to land, the best place was a flat grey boulder, worn almost level with the hill that it was embedded in, less than a hundred metres from the tree-line.

She tore her fingers from the tree in a spray of dark brown wood shards, and changed shape, within seconds, looking like a pretty, human woman with pale white skin, blonde hair cut into a boyish bob, wearing a maroon sleeveless top, a black synthleather miniskirt, laddered and torn opaque black tights, and muddy black ankle boots. She still had the furs around her shoulders, and the launcher.

The sound of the engines were much louder now, and when she looked up, there was what looked like a huge black arrowhead silhouetted against the clouded grey skies.

She started walking in the same direction, sure that her guess was correct – it was coming in to land!

The others in the cave would never believe her; she would have to take the pilot back to meet them.

Once the trees started to clear, and she had line of sight on the landing area, Mary decided to stay hidden until she saw what the pilot looked like – no sense greeting the Trandoshan slave trader until you have had time to weigh up your options.

It was a few minutes, and then the small craft coasted in low over the grass, and descended smoothly on her repulsors, throwing up a widening cushion of grey dust to all sides.

The observer held her breath till all that settled.

The craft was almost like a ground-effect sportscar, apart from the landing struts. Low and flat, there was an oval-shaped bubble canopy with room for one person, and vertical squarish fins facing up and down from the craft’s rear.

There was movement inside, then a low hum as the canopy lifted, and then the pilot – a Normal Human female with short dark hair - rose into view, the heavy wind that was the bane of Mary’s day catching her red-silken outfit that the pilot was wearing and flapping it like a flag in the direction of the starfighter’s nose.

Bloody hell, she saw the woman mouth, the wind whipping away any actual sound.

Still, she knew how the newcomer felt, watching has she fought to retain her dignity, while at the same time negotiating her way to the ground.

Mary boldly stepped from the treeline. "Not really dressed for Flitter are you?" She managed to greet with more decorum than she had planned a second ago, since she had been ready to gush gratitude all over the pilot.

The pilot stopped, sitting heavily onto the V-Wing's hull after her white footwear skidded on the moisture-slicked surface, and staring wild-eyed at her, mouth open with shock. "Uh. Um. Was it you that shot that missile"

"Yep!" Mary grinned, patting the launcher with her left hand. "Hit it with my fire-y...thing." She changed to an embarrassed expression. "Sorry, I don't know what it is actually called."

"Well, thank you. You saved my life."

"No problem."

The two women stared silently at each other. Seconds ticked slowly by, until the pilot pushed down on the wet metal, to slide herself off the ship, and onto the grey rock. "I better get off this wet metal before I get piles."

"Are you with the Alliance?" Mary blurted.

"Of course not, I'm with the Emp-, I mean, sort of. Uh, it's complicated."

"Un-complicate it."

Baille put up a finger, in a universal time-out gesture. "Hold on, I've got an SGIS Operation Feedback flimsi in the ship. It should explain everything."

Mary nodded and watched warily as the woman turned her back and leaned across half her ship to reach into the open cockpit. "You know you have a wet patch on your bum?"

"Thanks for highlighting that it shows."

The Alliance colonist blushed. "Sorry. I don't get out much."


Tag: no-one

 

Nifesta and Harte – ISL (If She Lived) One​

Smoke, heated air, and colourful plasma bolts zipping back and forth along the polished deck of the docking bay formed the background to the impromptu mission briefing that the pale white Twi’lek Agent Mitch Nifesta was giving to his new charge, the young Corellian femme that he had just rescued from an Imperial prison level several decks down from this hangar.

Standing beside her parked V-Wing starfighter, mostly ignoring the many laser blasts impacting on the fighter’s rear shield barrier, several inches to his left, he smiled down at the pretty woman laying on her front along the fuselage, E-11 blaster carbine held in her bare arms, her slim form and pert choob making a nice pair of mounds in the silken red dress that he had insisted she wear before extraction.

He’d killed all the guards already, before discovering that she was NOT in fact a pilot for the Rebel Alliance, but a betrayed Imperial flight lieutenant, so if she had thought it through, she could probably refused his indulgence, and left her cell anyway.

“Are you listening?” He called down to her over the sound of blaster fire, hers and theirs.

“No!” She, Lieutenant Baille Harte retorted with gritted teeth, as one of her bolts illuminated the white chest armour of a stormtrooper, clattering him to the floor. “All, after, we are going to Flitter.”

“We are going to Flitter,” Mitch repeated patiently, “to deliver badly needed medical supplies to the stranded Alliance colonists there.”

“Why would I help Rebels?” Baille enquired, putting a second of the stromtroopers out of her misery. That left eighteen, spread out along the back of the docking bay, having trailed her and the Twi’lek through the now sealed blast door. “Imperial, remember.”

“You were Imperial.” Nifesta reminded. “You put on the red cheongsam, remember.” He referred to the sleeveless, tight-necked, slit-skirt outfit that had captivated his tastes since he had rescued the Judicial Forces ensign who eventually became his niece, back in the Clone Wars. “Now, you’re my little girl.”

Now Baille stopped firing, angling her head to pierce her black-robed benefactor with a stare that was half indignation and half query. “Pardon?”

Whoops! The agent was momentarily lost for words. His hands waved in distraction. “Ah, I was skipping ahead a few steps. Sorry, forget I said anything.”

“First up, I’m TWENTY-FIVE. I’m no-one’s little girl.”

The Twi’lek was two millennia old, so compared to him, ha. He did not say that though. Or anything.

“Nor do I need anyone looking after me!”

“I will assume that that is meant as hyperbole,” Mitch retorted, sternly, “seeing as you had been captured, tried by a thingy of your peers, been fed your Last Meal, capital L, capital M, and scheduled to be terminated, all before I turned up.”

Nifesta crossed his arms and glowered at the woman, the both of them oblivious that the Imperial troopers had stopped firing, had gotten up from the floor, or emerged from cover, and were standing around idling while one of their number held a black-gloved finger to the side of his helmet while he commed higher authority.

“Before you waste any more breath, Little One,” Mitch continued, “you should consider that when someone several star sectors away, learns of your predicament, plots a hyperjump, jumps, and comes to rescue your arse, they have probably already laughed off any possibility that you could look after yourself.”

To be continued…

 

Two

Location: Imperial Justice ISD

Acting Captain Aron Pauletti, catapulted into the role after the killing of his ship’s former captain.

There was an officer on the crew standing accused of the murder, but Aron felt certain the man had been set up to take the fall, and that was with there being no love lost between Pauletti and the suspect.

The Star Destroyer had been heavily damaged in recent engagements with the armed band called the Mercs, and the powerful navy of a legendary civilisation called the Kingdom of Jod, so as the sun-drenched necklace of orbital drydocks that floated around the planet Christophsis hove into view beyond the triangular bridge windows, he found himself looking forward to the down time.

A junior officer rushed up, his face streaked with smoke, likely from the damage suffered by the bridge, and advised in breathless words scratched by smoke inhalation, that the Imperial Justice had been momentarily diverted to cut off the entrance to a hangar where Imperial stormtroopers had chased and trapped, a pair of Rebels.

Pauletti frowned back at the lieutenant. “Rebels? Here?”

“Apparently, Captain.”

Aron nodded, and sighed. “Alright, present our best bit of hull towards the hangar entrance, and move us into position.”

The lieutenant clipped heels, and nodded stiffly in salute, then departed to carry out the order.

Aron briefly wondered where Imperial Navy crewers picked up the idea about snapping boot heels together; they certainly had not picked it up at one of the Sector-level Naval Academies.

It was a bit like primary-school-aged younglings skipping across the playground. Where did they pick that sith up? Osmosis?

* * * *
Hangar – Imperial Facility

A stream of coherent bleeps and whistles attracted both Twi’lek and Corellian attention, with both Mitch and Baille looking towards her spherical companion astromech, ‘H’.

“What’s that?” Nifesta, who did not understand a lick of binary, queried, “Did Timmy fall down the well?”

Harte reared back into a kneeling position and half-swivelled towarded the droid. “You think I should get into the cockpit?”

Mitch took this moment to realise the remaining stormtroopers had ceased shooting at them. He wasn’t sure what, but that meant something.

“Your droid might be right,” he murmured, half to himself.

To be continued…

 

Location: Imperial Hangar, Christophsis

“I can’t fly like this; I’m wearing a dress!” Baille pointed out, testily.

“And very lovely you look, too,” The tall Twi’lek smiled, bending down to pat her gently on the head. “However, you do have a point. Better get changed.”

“You brought me a change of clothes?” She raised an eyebrow up at him from her kneeling position on the fuselage.

Mitch reached into the fighter’s open cargo compartment, and pulled several of the medical cartons out from the left side of the packed area, placing them onto the flat surface, then pulled out the off-white parcel of fabric, that had been vacuum-sealed in plastic. Purple ribbed ankle-boots, and a visored helmet followed.
Then grabbing at the displaced cartons one and two at a time, he flung them back into the space, making no attempt at neatness.

“C’mon, get changed while I stuff this lot back in.”

Baille but down the blaster and shuffled back off the craft, dragging the parcel with her, shaking it open as she stood on the deck.

The parcel unfolded before her into a one-piece flex-suit patterned with multi-coloured pictures of fruit. Despite the deliberately chosen childish pattern, he trusted the inter-woven titanium mesh, and ryon outer shell to protect her in the vacuum if she had to eject, long enough for him to rescue her.

Despite again respecting her privacy to change, Nifesta spotted how she treated the dress, spun towards her, his right hand swatting her hard across her bottom, the impact loud in the high-ceilinged hangar.

As she spun away to back against the V-Wing’s nose, silently staring up at him whilst clutching the flexsuit in front of her to protect her modesty, the Twi’lek glared back and pointed down at the deck between them.

“Do not just drop your clothes on the floor.” He instructed. “Pick it up and fold it properly.”

A raucous akk-wolf whistle from behind; he spun him away from her to glare at the surviving stormtroopers, lined up close to the hangar’s internal blast door.

With their helmets on, and no particular stance standing out, it was impossible to tell which one had whistled at his girl.

Behind him, Harte took the opportunity to unzip the suit and climb into it, one foot at a time, learning as she tugged it up past her hips, that its reputation for being skin-tight was well earned.

If a bloodgnat fancied its chances of getting inside the suit before she got it zipped up, it had better have its affairs in order, because it was not getting out of this.

Just like every time she heard the Twi’lek speak, her rib cage vibrated as it asked, “Alright, which one of you whistled at her?”

She shook her head as her right hand grasped for the left side of the suit and held it steady for her left hand and arm to snake down the close-fitting sleeve, then, with the one-piece mostly on, she did the same with her right arm.

She was extremely well practiced getting into her Imperial flightsuit, so she was pretty deft and fast getting into this.
Making sure not to catch anything, since neither her jailers or the Twi’lek had thought to provide underwear, she zipped the front of the suit up to her neck.

Nifesta faced her again and approached, prompting the lieutenant to put up her hands defensively, in case he struck her again, only to have herself lifted under both arms, and sat on the side of the fighter.

“Boots on.” He handed the first of the items to her to deal with, supporting it with hands on the sole while she held it open and guided it towards the appropriate foot.

Both looked over towards the sound of the blast door sliding open, noting the stormtroopers facing them with their blasters raised, but retreating carefully through the doors.

“Oh, that isn’t good,” she opined, calculating in her mind how long it would take her to get safely into her cockpit. She gestured for the second boot, and looked morosely up at Mitch. “Their retreat means only thing.”

“Tea time?”

Despite the uncalled for assault, and the impending danger, she could not help but smile. “No! They’re going to open the outer doors, and expose us to vacuum!”

“Oh, that.”

She stared up at him, and could see, despite the nonchalant words, he was as at least worried.

The hangar plunged into darkness unexpectedly, drawing a yelp from her with the suddenness. “What the hell happened?”

Nifesta’s voice rumbled out of the darkness. “Your Uncle Dev came through; I got him to run a bypass with the hangar bay controls, just in case my cover got blown. Any attempt by the locals to open the outer doors before we were ready, cuts the power to the base, though we off course, isolated gravity and life support.”

“Uncle Dev?”

“Never mind. Mind your eyes.”

There was a snap-hiss in the darkness, and Baille found herself blinking against the bright crimson light of a drawn laser sword that was being held horizontally away from Mitch’s body.

Harte snapped the booties’ seals closed, and reached for the helmet, lifting it over her head and looking up into it for the tell-tale glow of the lightsabre, to orient where the transparent visor was. She pulled it down over her head, and ran her fingers around her neck, looking for the seals.

“Good to go.” She announced, staring as the light-blade remained suspended in the darkness while Mitch released it, but an arm under her bent knees and armpits, turned her left and poured her into the V-Wing’s cockpit.

“Seal the canopy.” he ordered.

Baille flicked the toggle, and near-blindly initiated start-up procedures, welcoming the comforting glows from her control board as the various systems woke up.

The dress, black in the darkness, hit her lap, and flowed with the momentum over her left thigh and our of sight beneath the chair.

“What about all that crap about folding it?” She sniped as the canopy hummed down over her.

“Exigent circumstances.”

She didn’t think that was the sort of situation that those words had been created for, but then the canopy clicked and the a red square on her panel switched to green to indicate an airtight seal.

The minimal glow from the lightsabre outside extinguished, and the fighter shuddered with a small bang outside.

Baille craned her neck round, but could see no sign of the Twi’lek in the darkness. “H, you see any sign of him?”

Green aurabesh scrolled across the translator screen in front of her: He has returned to his craft, the Consular- cruiser to your right.

She could not see it in the stygian blackness, so complete indoors, compared to the star-filled environment of space.

To be continued...

 

Locations: The Darth Unlucky cruiser, and the V-Wing, Imperial hangar, orbital facility


The Darth Unlucky

After depositing the girl safely into her starfighter, Mitch had lit out for his nearby cruiser and home, parked a couple of dozen metres to the V-Wing’s right.

He doubted Baille had even seen the relatively huge craft, such had been her attention on her droid, and then the stormtroopers.

The Twi’lek ascended the boarding ramp, sealing it after him, and stepped into the turbolift that was just inside the cylindrical vestibule, making sure not to catch his borrowed black Sith robes in the closing door, as he took it to the command deck at the top of the ship.

The vessel had had an onboard artificial intelligence at one point, but that was no longer the case. He’d had it when he had picked up his eventual niece, Ewlla Iillor, when she had been a brand new Judicial Forces ensign.

A smile of fondness touched Mitch’s face as he thought of Ewlla. She commanded in Imperial interdictor cruiser now, but he still considered her one of his kids.

He strode forward along the unlit command deck, through the lounge with the circular holochess table and semi-circle of cushioned seats, Communications, and then into the cockpit proper.

There was darkness outside the rectangular windows, which he rectified by hitting the lumis, bright white light beams slicing through the dark to illuminate the exterior hangar door with two large light spots.

Mitch Nifesta dropped heavily, too heavily, into the pilot seat and hit the comlink, pre-set to ship-to-ship: “Daddy’s Little Girl, from Darth Unlucky. Do you copy? Over.”

He grinned during the several second pause, waiting for the inevitable response: “You mean me, don’t you?” Ms Harte’s voice came back, her weary annoyance was conveyed perfectly.

“Use the callsign.” He clipped into the voice-pickup.

“I’m not answering to that!”

The Twi’lek’s smile grew wide enough to accommodate a spinning, out-of-control, A-Wing. “Alright, we’ll leave that for now. You fully sealed?”

“Copy. Pre-flight checks are green.”

“Okay, I am operating the outer doors now. Follow me to the right.”

* * * *

V-Wing interior

“Understood.” Baille responded, but thinking, But instead I’ll go left. She had gone along with this charade for longer than she felt comfortable, but the Twi’lek had made a mistake in letting her back into her fighter.

Another thing. V-Wings like hers had no hyperdrive capability. How had he planned for her to leave the Christophsis star system?

Commander Tachi had had all the Ravens purchase and fit hyperdrives to the starfighters, in defiance of Imperial regulations, which was the only reason Baille had escaped the ambush back at Commenor.

H whistled through the ear-cup of her headcomm set, and words scrolled across the translator screen, advising that the outer doors, which she could see, courtesy of the larger ship’s forward beams, started to slide up into its housing.

The door was high and wide enough to allow both craft to comfortable allow both craft to leave at the same time.
As it rose, the lumis hit something beyond the opening hatch.

“Darth Unlucky, are their two doors?” She queried into the comm.

“Not on the way in, there wasn’t, Kitten.”

Baille found herself not minding the new nickname. “Well, there is something there now.”

Her droid provided the answer. That’s no door. That’s a space station.

“It’s too big to be a space station,” she retorted, reflexively.

. No, it isn’t.

“You’re right, it isn’t. And I think you are close-”

There was a flare of luminousity to her right from the unseen cruiser’s ion engines as it headed out of the bay and banked hard to the right to avoid whatever they had seen.

Baille flicked off her landing clamps, and hit her own thrusters, the vertically stacked ion drives pushing her back in her seat as she took the V-Wing out into the open and yanked the controls hard to her left to avoid what she could now see was the pitted and ripped flanks of a Star Destroyer, the dark hull flashing by under her as she climbed for open space.

“DLG from ‘Unlucky. Kitten, you are going the wrong way.”

“I know!” The dirty yellow lozenge of the facility that she had been incarcerated inside, proved to be one of an in-numerable link of the things forming an impossibly large necklace around the planet Christophsis, whose blue-green glow cast shadows within the cockpit.

The facility blurred past on her left, while the Star Destroyer was now far behind her, while her droid reminded that they would need to escape the gravity well to have a hope of using their hyperdrive.

“Much as I am grateful for the intervention, you are getting a bit creepy.”

“Okay, well give us a shout if you need assistance.”

Aww, what a nice gesture, she thought, jinking the craft from right to left as a verdant green laser bolt clipped close to the top over her canopy! “What in Fornax?” She exclaimed in surprise. “Is he firing at us?”

No he’s not firing at us! Houdini screamed, digitally. TIE fighters!

“Well, this is definitely not going to be a Blue Milk run.” She muttered aloud, steering between the components of the orbital ring to dive towards the surface, thinking to use the well-known disadvantage that TIEs had in atmosphere, to aid her escape.

“Kitten, are you sure that is a good idea?”

Baille re-opened the channel as she dove for the surface down below, more laser bolts flashing past her while Houdi’ screamed in her ear.

She could see from her own sensors that she had four TIE fighters behind her. They did not seem to be gaining, but she was still well within range of their lasers.

“Darth Unlucky, do you know something I don’t?” The glow was filling her cockpit, and she flicked a switch to start darkening the transparisteel.

“Your Dad knows plenty, Kitten, and knows that the people who live down there do not allow anyone but themselves onto the planet. I have no idea how they do that, but you are moments from finding out if the answer has been brought to us by the words ‘planetary’ and ‘shield’.”

Baille’s eyes grew wide behind the visor of her flex-suit and pulled back hard on the controls with one hand, while the fingers of another applied power to the braking thrusters!

She was still falling towards the planet, but her floor faced the cloud cover below, rather than her nose, and the quartet of TIE fighters rapidly caught up and zipped past, unable to change course as easily as in open space.

The visible edges of her fighter, and the deflector shield bubble glowed orange as the upper reaches of the atmosphere buffeted her craft.

“No shield yet!”

“Strange.” The Twi’lek sounded honestly surprised. “Rendezvous with me at the system edge; got a hyperspace ring waiting for you.”

To be continued...

 

Locations: V-Wing cockpit, Christophsis upper atmosphere


Baille did not see where the ion bolt came from, but as blue electrical energy sparked and arced around her cockpit, and all her controls went dark, she knew she had been hit by one.

Cloud vapour continued to scud past the canopy as the craft continued forward on its own momentum, but the planet’s gravity quickly over-rode it, and the spinning V-Wing plummeted deeper into the cloud cover.

“I’m hit, and going in!” She called into the voice-pickup of her headcomm, forgetting that she had just tried to cut and run on the Twi’lek; basically, she was talking to be heard, and hoping that someone was coming after her.

She frantically flicked at all the switches that she could, knowing that unless she got some systems back, her craft would make a shiny stain on the planet surface, and that was assuming they did not explode on impact!

“Houdi? Mitch? Anyone?”

Spinning now, the V-Wing stayed generally level as it fell, and she could feel her ears threatening to pop, for which she could only continually dry swallow to reveal the pressure.

Baille spotted what looked like the inverted bowl of a yellow parachute, forward and to the left, several stretched strands tethering it to a slowing TIE, one of the ones that had chased her; she could see that it was also falling unpowered.

She felt another impact to her left, and turned to see a second of the creatures cooperate with the first to attach a small package to the hull, trigger it, and jump clear into the skies as a parachute flittered, stretched as air caught in the yellow fabric, and expand above her head, drastically braking the speed which her V-Wing fell through the clouds.

Were they rescuing her, or saving her for something further.

The Alpha-3 Nimbus snubship swayed like a spinning pendulum under the parachute now, but without even a working altimeter, she could not tell how close to the ground she was, or prepare herself to brace for impact.

The cloud cover suddenly became a natural ceiling as she cleared it, and she could now see a crystalline terrain spreading out under and before her, with barren-looking plains and valleys, and towering geological blue-gray spires.

The blue-green glow that had filled her cockpit a few moments ago, had convinced her that there would be verdant plant life down here, but it looked like she could not have been more wrong.

Harte looked around for a sidearm, initially reaching for her E-11, but she remembered that it had not followed her into the cockpit; she had laid it on the fuselage when she had put the space suit on.

The suit, in turn, was a civilian one, not Imperial, so there was no blaster pistol. She hoped the soldiers who had captured her, had not removed the holdout blaster from the cockpit.

She felt under the seat, checked the few compartments within the cockpit, and came up empty.

Damn, she thought, angry with herself. And the Twi’lek. He should have made sure she was gunned up, before allowing her into the cockpit. Damn him.

Well, frag.

She could only sit here, in her fruit-patterned flex-suit, hands in her lap, and wait to hit the ground.

Then she did, barely a jolt disturbing her backside and spine as the craft stopped, and settled.

“Could have been worse.” She admitted aloud to herself, then raised her gaze, spotting one of the yellow Birdmen standing on the dusty, rocky terrain, several metres beyond her craft’s nose. It was standing, clawed, thin leathery legs shoulder-width apart, the butt of a weapon, probably a blaster rifle, slung over her back; and feathered forearms crossed as a beady black eyes on a beaked face regarded her.

She blanched. “It’s worse.”

To be continued…

 

IC: Baille Harte
Location: in the air, Christophsis skies

There was a circuit on the outside of a V-Wing that allowed a rescuer to manually open the cockpit of a crashed or malfunctioning starfighter.

Baille had hoped the Birdmen were not aware of this, but that boat had long sailed, and she was now airborne again, being carried aloft between the arms of two of the winged beings, their large feathered appendages flapping slowly to catch the air.

Before them, a previously unseen multi-level structure in green, grey and white, like a partially melted, inverted cone with regular gashes cut into the sides to show parts of the interior.

She had already been in the air before she had seen it, so did not know if its small base touched the ground, but she had the impression that it was floating off it, but that could be a trick of the light.

Below her, before she resolved not to look down anymore, she had spotted that three Imperial pilots were not being cooperative, trying to fight off the Birdmen, and she did not see what had become of the fourth one, for there had been a quartet of TIEs chasing her when she had opted to try to lose them in the planet’s gravity well.

Apart from a glance to the heavens for the Darth Unlucky cruiser, she gave no further thought to the Twi’lek.

He had no reason to come after her again; she had seen to that. Plus his comment that no-one was allowed to land on the world, minimised the possibility of her seeing him again.

She was going to have to get out of this, herself.

Harte tried to guess which if the levels her captors were going to take her into, but they kept ascending, all the way to the wider top of the floating city, where she was surprised to spot, the green tops of trees starting to hove into view.

She frowned into the chilled wind buffeting her face.

Her fliers lifted her over a transparent barrier that bordered the edges of the top, and lowered her gently onto a lawn of neatly-trimmed green grass, then released her.

The Birdmen landed themselves, folding their wings neatly against their bodies.

Baille ignored them for a moment, gently probing the weals and bruises that their strong grips had left in her biceps, and gazing around.

More than a lawn, it was like being in a city park, grass, water sparkling from distant stone fountains, and in the centre of the park, a hundred metres from where she was, a dense copse of trees.

Looked a bit ominous, truth be told.

Baille decided it was time for introductions, and turned to face the pair, stepping back a couple paces so she could address them at the same time. Both were shorter than the Twi’lek had been.

“Okay,” She kneaded the bruise on her right arm through the ryon material. “who are you guys.”

“The Wishonian Guard.” One answered promptly.

“Wishion.” The other corrected, promptly.

“Whatever.”

The former Imperial was only very slightly mollified at this sign that at least one of them was not infallible. “And this place?”

“It is called, ‘Wish Manse’.”

She spotted the correlation. “Wishonian Guard-”

“Wishion.”

She waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever. And Wish Manse-”

“Our master-”

“The Wishmaster?” She quipped.

“Indeed.” The right-most of the Birdmen, both in words and direction, nodded an affirmation.

“The Wishmaster?”

A slow, but heavy-sounding flapping drew her attention between the two to see a second pair of them rise into view, holding between them, a helmetless TIE pilot, his black uniform rended with diagonal rips, showing bleeding flesh.

The captive was hanging limply, his head bowed.

Expecting them to join her two, instead she turned to follow their flight to another part of the park edge, landing there instead.

She turned back to her two. “Okay, how do I get off-planet?” She did not know what a ‘manse’ was, and felt in the pit of her gut that it would be a bad idea to share one with a being calling itself the Wishmaster. With her luck, he, she or it, was unlikely to grant her wishes of re-instatement to the Imperial forces, the clearing of her name, and safe passage offworld. “Is there a spaceport around here?”

“You are now a subject of the Wishmaster. If you pass the first test.”

“You and this Wishmaster of yours are smoking something if you do not think the Empire will ask for us back.”

“Nobody lands on Christophsis. It is understood.”

“Whoa! Whoa whoa!” She exclaimed in alarm as she saw that the quiet guard was now holding and messing around with a shock whip! She put up both hands to ward off any strike, though what she knew of the infamous torture device, she would probably do little good. “The Empire will want us back unharmed! Otherwise your master will be in big trouble.”

“Nobody lands on Christophsis.”

There was an audible hum as the guard thumbed the shock whip into life. “See the trees?”

The pilot dared not look away from him to look. “Y-yes.”

“At the centre of the woods, you will find the means to enter the rest of the manse. If you remain up here, you will perish, for, ten standard minutes from now, we will release the hunters. Run.”

Baille backed away from the pair.

“RUN!” Shouted the other birdman.

Former Imperial, and SGIS agent for less than an hour, Baille Harte turned from them and sprinted for the treeline, her harried breath loud in her ears.

To be continued…

 

Location: top Parks level of Wish Manse, Christophsis

Baille Harte put her head down and ran for the tree line, pounding across the neatly shorn grass which gave the impression of palatial parkland, but was in reality the roof of a floating city-structure on the barren crystalline planet Cristophsis.

Given there was frag-all vegetation or trees on the world, she was surprised the weather was not more severe; traditionally, this sort of world out to be battered by fierce storms of various types.

Ten metres to the tree-line, five, light dimmed dramatically the moment she crossed into it, her foot catching apparently the first exposed root that it could find, the young flight officer stumbling then skidding on her front through mulch and dirt like the Invisible Hand during the Battle of Coruscant, when Republic security operatives had rescued the Supreme Chancellor Palpatine from the clutches of the Separatists General Grevious!

“Oh, I am such a girl!” She bemoaned, sitting up in the dim light to check herself over, annoyed with herself at the stereotype she felt she typified right then.

Baille cocked her head at the yelled update from behind her in the open: “FIVE MINUTES!”

Oh, damn! She had forgotten about the countdown to the release of the ominous sounding “hunters”, whatever they were.

Tucking a knee under her, she leaned forward and rose off the dirt, facing deeper into the thicket, then looking around and down.

With no idea where the centre of the copse was, there was every chance that she would encounter one of these hunter things, and it would be a good idea to arm herself.
She had no weapons, and no time to fashion one, so a sturdy stick or branch was the best thing to find.

Nothing here, she realised, and immediately started jogging deeper into the grove, hands up to push low-hanging foliage out of her way, and picking up her feet to avoid tripping over again.
She bounded between the trees like an ungainly gazelle.

Harte ran into a horizontal growth at chest height, which had refused to yield to her arms, and landed on her butt after her lower half had tried to continue on.
She scrambled back up and looked for the branch she had hit, running her palms along the sturdy limb, a bit thicker than Mitch’s thumbs, which had been meatier than her own, she had noticed. The branch was coated in a cracked grey bark and small green leaves, back to where it joined the rest of the bush.

She heard a growling in the distance which made her blood run cold. She recognised that sound!

Cyborrean Battle Dogs! Razor sharp teeth, bulging faces, short stubby legs, and usually mixed with cybernetic patches, for Core only knew, what reason.

“Feth!” She swore aloud, finding the root of the branch and bending it every which way to rip it free.

She did not know how long she had. There was at least one other Imperial pilot here, so they might be distracted.

The Birdman had said hunters. More than one.

Would she be facing a pack, or a single Nek, as the Cyborrean Dogs were also called?

The former lieutenant changed tactics, straining to move the branch to the same angle as the wood that it was attached to, and even pushed down on it with straightened arms to lift her own feet off the forest floor, so that it was taking all of her weight.

It was definitely starting to bend, and she could see that the attached part was starting to separate, exposing cream-white wood fibres as she continued bending.

The V-Wing pilot kept her ears and eyes open, not wanting to be ambushed unawares while she was dealing with this guano.

She could hear someone or something barrelling through the grove, ahead and to the right of her, fading away slightly as it headed deeper, so she surmised that that was one of the other of today’s captives.

“FRAG!” She yelled in frustration, at the branch which steadfastly refused to come free. Given how invaluable she felt it was to have a weapon of sorts, she had allowed herself a generous window to get it, but the damn thing was refusing to tear off the tree.

Abort. Move on.

Baille dropped back to Earth, watched the branch attempt to spring back into position, and used that position to recall which direction she had been heading in, took a deep breath, and continued going that way.

She heard the distant crump of a discharged blaster, followed by a short anguished howl, and knew that one of her counterparts had been allowed to keep the holdout blaster that came with his flightsuit.

Lucky bastiche, she thought, pulling up short as the TIE pilot emerged from the brush to her right, bolted past in front of her, and plunged out of sight between the trees to her left, leaving her with their first communication: “Had, you’re it!”

“I’m what?!” She called after him, then snapped her head around to face the direction he had come from, as she had abruptly heard the sounds of something barrelling towards her. “Oh, blast it!”

She took off after the pilot, easily following the path his larger body carved through the foliage, and hoped he had a better idea of where he was going than she did.

Harte spotted the clearing to her right through a thinning of leaves, with the large dark square hole in the ground, that the pilot who had tagged her, sprinted straight past.

She veered off to her right to investigate, automatically calling, “This way!“ to her peer, bursting into the clearing and mindful of the pursuing Nek, did not stop to take in the sights, but angled to the nearest corner to her left, followed the turn, while looking down to see if the way down was a turbolift, steps, a ladder, or what.

A Nek arrived in the clearing too, and did not bother with following the hole’s edge, but instead leapt straight across the chasm at her, which, if you looked at those stubby legs, you would question the wisdom of such a move.

Baille felt the impact of the Nek, then her own into the dirt on her left side, both her and the battledog rolling separately, though the animal had a strip of ryon in its teeth.

It scrambled to its feet, chased its own tail for a second to re-orientate itself, then leapt at her just as she rose to face it.

Harte fell back and put up her right boot to meet it in a variation of a Stomach Throw, one of the unarmed combat moves that she had been taught, but others had been better at, at the Naval Sector Academy.
She landed on her back, while with her foot’s impetus, the Nek sailed over her face and into the hole, its howl of surprise or distress dopplering as it plunged into the depths.

“See you in the lobby.” She quipped.

* * * *
Location: lift(?) shaft, Wish Manse forest

Baille hung onto the metal girder at first, reluctant to start down into its depths.

She peered around the dim shaft, well not that dim, since she was very near the top, and the grass overhanging the edges were less than a metre above her.

She doubted that whomever the captives were being captured for, would want to damage their potential “property” any more than necessary, if they survived the Neks.

There was no immediate sign of a ladder, or controls to call a turbolift, and the Nek’s demise, it’s shuffle into the Nek’s Life as it were, was tacit proof that this place was not an anti-grav chute.

She inhaled deeply, and started to climb down the red-painted metalwork, the paint flaked away and paler in great patches, which revealed that it spent a lot of the time exposed to the weather.
Each step down was a heart-stopper, foot flailing blindly beneath her till it found purchase, then the rest of her making sure the purchase was secure and would support her weight, before releasing her hand grips.

It quickly got darker as she descended the mix of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lattices.

"This way."

Harte stopped where she was, where her face was nose to metal with the vertical girder that she had just shimmied down, arms and knees hugging the sides.

After a moment, she noted that there was light coming round both sides, and carefully leaned to one side to see a rectangle of light several feet away, at the end of a short metal walkway suspended between the scaffold, and the dark wall in front of her.

Unlike at the top, where the scaffold almost hugged the inside of the shaft, down here, the wall had backed away from the metalwork.

The doorway was filled, the silhouette of one of the birdmen giving her a 'come hither' gesture with his digits.

"Come on, unless you plan to spend all night in the shaft."

"I was expecting a turbolift of some sort."

The hand gesture again.

Baille sighed. It was not like she had a lot of choice. Edging around the girder, and testing her weight on the walkway, she manouvered her left hip past the metal so that her back was finally to the girder, and she was facing the guard.

"Don't look down."

"Thanks." The word dripped sarcasm. "I'm familiar with the precaution."

Breathing, trying to concentrate on the doorway, she pushed herself forward and bounded across the walkway in four long steps, opening her eyes when she felt a hand grip her forearm and haul her inside the doorway, which snapped shut behind her.

She could see an armed Birdman up the white ante-hall, which was illuminated by lighttubes inside the walls, somehow rendering shadows almost non-existent.

Her guard released her arm, and stood behind her with his front touching her shoulderblades. "Move" It was self-evident that she was meant to move towards his colleague.

"Is your...is the Wishmaster a Birdman like you two?" She enquired, testing their talkativeness. She fully expected to be told to keep quiet.

"We-" Baille could hear confusion in the voice above her. "-we are not Birdmen."

She arched a momentary eyebrow, not caught by either captor. She started forward.

"We are Nediji"

"From?"

"Nedij. You won't have heard of the star system. Samix Sector."

She had not heard of that either, but said nothing.

Reaching the second guard, she found that he was standing at the door of a white room with tiled floor and walls, and a discreet drain in the centre of the room.

As the room came fully into view, she spotted two bipedal white-furred beings with small green eyes, reaching up for her.

"Whoa!" Baille instinctively backtracked, backing into a guard, she turned, elbowing him hard in the gut, and snatched the carbine from his hands, and without thinking, spun it around to put barrel back towards him.

She spotted the concentric blue light-rings of a stun blast, then everything went black, though she felt herself hit the floor, and something warm land on her, pinning her arm and head, then, she didn't even feel that...

End of TWO

 

Reclaimed section

 

Rec claim #17

IC: First Days, Wish Manse, Christophsis


Baille woke to find herself in a large locked hall with a stone-clad floor, laying on a thin faded blue mattress, placed directly on the floor.
Around her, the room looked like an abbreviated sea of white dunes, rammed as it was with sleeping figures on their own mattresses, mostly sleeping on their sides.

Looking down, she could see that she now wore a white short-sleeved smock-dress in a coarse fabric that looked like it had not seen the inside of even a Republic-era factory, let alone an Imperial one.
She had thick metal bangles over both wrists, which did not look decorative, and she could see that at the head of her row of mattresses, a chain ran all the way across the room from wall to wall, although it was not connected to the wall.

The smells of perspiration, and other wastes, were noticeable. But not pungent, she realised, which meant that there must be some sort of air extraction, or recycling.

Gathering her legs under her to raise herself in a squat, Baille rose off the floor to become the sole person standing among dozens of sleepers – humans, humanoids, reptiloids, bird people.

Watching her step, Harte carefully tiptoed along the thin gaps between each row and column of mattresses, trying to reach the visible doors without stepping on anyone.

“Sumpitchalay!” A short something complained harshly, when she accidentally trod on its hand!

She snatched her foot back and whispered a heartfelt “Sorry” at her victim.

 

****
Location: Wish Manse, sleeping dormitory


By the third night, when Baille crawled back to the mattress whose number matched the stencil on her smock, she was so exhausted that she fell instantly asleep.

No-one who was supposed to be in the dormitory, heard something whistling through the air, or the first TISSH sound.

But Baille certainly felt it, her eyes springing open and unfocused, prompted by the line of fire across her exposed bottom!

She found herself being half-suspended, her feet still on her mat, but friction burning where the back of her dress was gathered up about her armpits, but that was nothing to the pain that repeated itself from her backside.

“Ahhhh, get-off!” She screamed in pain and fright, her cries starting to rouse the others. “I haven’t done anything!”

“This is for running out on me, the other night.” A familiar voice announced from right beside her.

“Mitch?!” The ex-Imperial fought to turn round, but only succeeded in looking up into his pale, eye-visored face. And getting herself thrashed.

Something whistled through the air behind her, striking her bottom a fourth time. She screamed, flailed arms and tried to break his iron grip while arching her body away from whatever his implement was.

Sleepy people around the room started to shush her.

Tears of embarrassment, exhaustion, shame, and pain, rolled down her face, as Baille’s face reddened, and her scream rebounded off the dormitory walls, properly rousing the sea of bodies which groggily looked towards her, then at the male Twi’lek Force Vampire in brown robes, holding the crying human femme as still as he was able, one-handed, and the other pulling a flexible cane back for another strike.

“What is going on here?” Queried a sitting human male, towards the far corner, his voice tired.

“Don’t mind me.” Nifesta advised from the middle of the hall. “I’m halfway done.”

TISSHH!

Harte was just full on bawling now, and tried to kick sideways at the Twi’lek’s, only to get her bare foot tangled in his floor length robes! She wobbled very precariously on her supporting leg, but her butt cheeks were unable to avoid the seventh blow.

“Get him off me, please...” She sobbed, arms falling loose as she gave up trying to hold him off, though she renewed attempts to get her foot back. “I’m sorry for running out on you; I’m sorry.”

She endured three more measured strokes, then found herself released, dropped to her knees.

The Twi’lek finally noticed that he had become the centre of attention, and gamely tried to deflect it. “Nothing to see here, folks; I’m just here to extract my Baby Girl.”

“I’b nod your baby girl!” Baille sobbed indignantly from her mattress, both hands cupping her injured and quite visible rear.

“Oh, I’m afraid you are. Getting yourself captured and enslaved the moment you were out of my sight; I’m sorry, but Daddy has had to step in, again, and the nature of our relationship has thus changed.”

On the mattress next to hers, a female Bimmisaari that Baille had confided in, mainly because she looked like a domesticated animal, what with the tan-furred muzzle, and large pointed ears, kneeled up and held up both hands towards Nifesta.
“Hold on,” she exclaimed loudly, “is THIS your Dad?”

“Shut up, Whonda!”

Mitch looked from “Whonda” to Baille, and back again. “Now, now, Honey. Don’t talk to your little friends like that.” He smiled at the Bimm’, “She talked about me?”

“Yeah, how if-”

“Whonda, shut up!” Harte glared at her neighbour. “I am warning you.”

“-if you came to save her again, that she would agree to have you as her parent.” She grinned up at him. “”And here you are! Take me with you.” Whonda pleaded without missing a beat, a sentiment echoed word for word around the chamber, almost reaching a crescendo of twenty people before Nifesta had a chance to defend his position.

“Not my decision, anyway.” He pointed at the pilot, “It’s down to her.”

Rubbing her bottom hard through the back of her smock, Harte was standing now, facing her erstwhile rescuer with a pained, tear-stained expression. “What do you mean?” She snivelled, her weepy tone laced with suspicion. “Save. Them.”

“Who are you asking?” Mitch asked. “Mr Creepy, like you called me before? Or your Daddy?”

Baille glared up at the calm Twi’lek. “That is blackmail, pure and simple. And you know it!”

“Of course I know it; as the God of Cops, it is my duty to know these thi-“ He paused, frozen, then shut his eyes and muttered, “Ah, frak!”

Both hands massaging her bottom, Baille smiled at the opportunity to stick the proverbial vibroshiv in, no matter how minor. “Hah, just realised you said that sith out loud, did you?”

Nifesta ignored her, the slaves, looking down at the floor pensively. He sighed loudly.

Seconds passed. Then he looked up and around at the gathering. “Change of plans, everyone. I cannot promise to return you to your homeworlds, but yes; turns out this is in fact, a mass rescue.”

“Wait a minute, I didn’t promise anything!” The pilot had to shout to be heard over the spontaneous cheering and applause from the other captives.

Nifesta was the picture of dejection as he looked bleakly down at her. “Does not matter. Slavery is illegal. I’m the God of Cops. I just accidentally voided my own leverage on you.” He opened his robe, hooked the fishing rod with which he had punished her, inside, and pulled out his lightsabre, and thumbed the activator, a humming blue-white lightblade springing forth. Holding it to safely to one side, he bent down with his other hand, and helped the Bimmisari femme to her feet so that she was standing beside Baille. “This is a lightsabre.”

She nodded up at him, eyes wide in what he hoped was concentration.

“What’re you, some kind of jedi?” Someone asked in a shrill voice.

“No, but I have some in me.” That had to be his favourite double entendre. “Anyway, back to the lightsabre. Hold the blade away from you, and away from anything you don’t want to cut through, or put a hole through. I want you to go around, cutting everyone’s chains off. Carefully.”

“We’re not chained up.” Harte pointed out, one hand under the back of her smock as she ran an exploratory digit along the painful welts that he had left.

“You’re not? Sooo,” He kicked at the nearest chain running along the floor, “what’s with all the chains?”

“That’s for the daytime, we get chained up if we are involved in the subterranean gem mining.”

“If?” Mitch queried, looking down at her. “Is there a choice?”

“For the women, gem mining for a week, tending the vegetation, or dancing for the Wishmaster. This week, I’m the only femme on mining shift, as I refused to dance for their master.”

Mitch smiled. “Good girl.” He extinguished the lightsabre, and leaned down to proudly tousle her already unkempt hair, but the Corellian pilot tried to lean her head away from him, only for him to grasp her upper arm below the hem of the abbreviated cap sleeve, and gently but firmly bring her back into range for his sharp-nailed hand to pat her head whilst the Imperial glowered up at him from under her copper-coloured bangs. “First thing you’ve done right since I rescued you.” He straightened, and looked round at all the faces watching him grandstand. “Alright, I’m going to talk to the guards, but in case they feel inclined to use you all as leverage, best if you were not here.”

“We’re trapped in here.” One of the seated males called, pointing past the Twi’lek, “Just the one way in and out.”

Nifesta was already moving, striding away from Baille and towards a far corner of the cell. Her knees crunched over the mattress as she shuffled round to watch him, as did everyone in the room.

The Twi’lek moved purposely between seated captives till he stopped by an apparently random one, three in from the far wall.
He looked down at the occupant, a skinny Chiss male, wrinkled blue skin and red eyes, who did not look like he had many mining shifts left in him.

At least for this person, Mitch had arrived just in time, he realised.

“Excuse me.”

The Chiss looked up. “You want me to move, is that it?”

“Just budge over to the next mattress, please.”

“Well, only cos you said ‘please’.” The old man shuffled on his bottom to the next mat, crowding next to his cross-legged neighbour.

Mitch bent down and flipped the almost weightless blue mat out of the way, revealing a thin, carbonised black circle in the ferrocrete flooring.

The Force Vampire aimed a palm towards the circular plug, the thing springing up out of the floor like a white manhole cover. He caught it and set it carefully to one side. Warmth blossomed pleasantly out of the hole.
“Alright, down there everyone, through to the next level. It’s a hall full of the vegetation you mentioned, under very bright lights.”

“Hydroponics.”

“Gesundheit.”

“Hydroponics. The art of growing vegetation under artificial conditions.”

“Oh okay.” Mitch decided that since everyone here were slaves, there was no need for him to hide how little he gave a crap about the explanation. “Alright, quickly now. Try to keep clear of any guards, and get up to the park on the roof, where my ship is parked. Anyone here a pilot?”

From behind him, Baille piped up, “Well me, obviously.”

Half a dozen people had already scrambled down through the hole, with more quickly converging on it, like water to a plughole.

Nifesta ignored Harte’s statement, still looking round. “Anyone else?”

A wide-shouldered human male put up a hand. “I’m a TIE Fighter pilot. Flight Lieutenant Aspar Hunt.” His accent was clearly Commenor, one of the Imperial industrial worlds.

Mitch pursed his lips, hesitating. Last thing he wanted to do was entrust any of his charges to an Imperial. Well, second to last.

“Alright. Now, I don’t really want you flying off without me, of course; but I am only one guy; it would be a waste of time if this Wishmaster waxing my choob stops your getaway in its tracks, so, listen up.” Mitch crossed to Hunt, standing in front of him, and looking down at the light-skinned human. “If you do have to take off without me, be aware that there might be a planetary shield in place. It is not cloaked, so you’ll pick it up on scanners fine if it is up. The ship is armed, so if you can track the nearest shield generator, you may be able to take it and the shield down. Also, three conditions.”

Aspar nodded, clearly taking the information in.

“One, don’t adjust the pilot chair.”

“Got it.”

Nifesta looked over the pilot’s head, at the progress of people going down to the next level. There was a too-loud crash, no doubt of a collapsed table.
He cast out his Force Sense, to just outside the room perimeter, not sensing that any guards had heard the racket.

“Two, you need to get beyond the Christophsis star system. There is an Imperial fleet up there; if I live through this and manage to catch up with you, I will not be happy to learn that you have simply handed everyone over to the Empire.”

“But slavery is illegal under the Empire. They can help. Ahh!” Aspar exclaimed in pain, bending over slightly, knees bent, and both hands going to his crotch. “Ahhhhh!”

“What is Condition Two?”

“Ahh-ah, it’s a step up from ship status Condition Three, me-meaning, hostility likely but not p-present. What is happening to me?”

Mitch leaned over the Imperial. “I mean, in the context of me using the Force to crush your reproductive organs. What. Is. Condition. Two.”

“The Force?” Harte echoed disbelievingly from Nifesta’s right. She looked from the pained, red-faced pilot, up to the fierce-looking Twi’lek, and back again. “Mitch, release him!”

The Force Vampire arched his eyebrows over the opaque eyeband across his face, at her. "You can get me to do a number of things, Kitten, but not by calling me 'Mitch'."

She growled aloud, and snapped “Dad! Release him.” She half-turned away from the pair and scowled at a wall, annoyed at how easily she had caved.

Mitch eased his Force Hold, but did not let go. It did not escape him that she had made, what was for her, a personal sacrifice, for the sake of an Imperial, but that did not matter; she was his baby girl. She wasn’t an Imperial any longer, no matter what she thought.

“What. Is. Condition. Two.” He pressed, in two ways.

“Do-do not hand escapees over to the Empire. Ev-evade the fleet and leave the sys-system!”

The Twi’lek released his Force Grip, and Aspar collapsed to the floor, his right shoulder dimpling one of the mattresses as he moaned and clutched as his groin.

“Condition Three. Take her with you.” He gestured at his kid. “Baille can help you operate the navi-computer and the lightspeed systems. I would not normally permit children on my command deck, but-”

“Exigent circumstances.” She interjected calmly, recalling his comment about her red dress, aboard the Imperial orbital garrison.

Mitch nodded at her, his demeanor softened once more, now that the Imp’ pilot on the floor knew what not to do with his passengers. He would never win prizes for winning friends and influencing people, at least by diplomatic or sociable routes.

He bent down and hooked a large pale white hand under Aspar’s left elbow, and raised him off the floor into a near-standing position.
Supporting him thusly, the Twi’lek helped him to hobble over to the hole, Harte in tow. “Come on, you two. Offski.”

****
Hydroponics

Baille paused to sit on the edge of the hole cut between floor to look between her knees at the deck below, to see that the trestle white table directly beneath her had already been broken and bent by the other slaves that had preceded her, and the floor nearby was a mess of broken ceramic pots and other debris that would not be kind to her bare feet.

She leaned away from the hole to lay her top half on the floor and stretch hands out to grab the nearest of the blue mattresses, pulling it towards her and unceremoniously stuffing it down the hole.

Feeling Mitch and Aspar's eyes on her, she judged where the mattress had landed and tried to aim for it as she let herself down the hole, fingers gripping the edges of the carbonised ferrocrete. Her hanging legs kicked empty air, which was disconcerting, but then she had to make a leap of faith and let go of the hole's sides, legs slightly bent so that she would start to absorb the impact of wherever she landed first.

She bent her knees as soon as her feet touched the mattress, and felt it moving away under her, making her slide in the opposite direction on an already tortured bottom, the short distance into the floor among a clatter of already broken handmade garden pots.

She could not help howling with the pain, a sound which she halted at the sound of a violent commotion at the far end of the aisle that she was sitting in.

"I'm going to need a blaster!" She called up to the dark circle in the ceiling.

"Hang on a sec', Kitten....incoming!"

A silvery object fell towards her, and she stretched to double-hand catch it out of the air, turn it towards the threat. "Thanks!" She called up to the hole.

"Thanks, what?", the Twi'lek enquired pointedly.

"Thanks, DAD!" Baille called back. Second time in a couple of moments. Oh, she would pay for that later, but the being was saving her life. Again. She could throw him the bones.

* * * *

Harte was sitting on the floor, both knees up and apart, left hand planted onto the deck behind her left hip for support, and the right hand was closed around the blaster's grip, aiming it towards the crowd that was intent on something at the far end.

She sighted along her dirt-stained bare arm at weapon that had regained her a modicum of control within this situation, and recognised it as a Model Q2 holdout blaster with a floppy pink bow around the barrel. Only six shots, but an elegant-looking, chrome-plated design from the Merr-Sonn company.
Sort of thing you could imagine being made on Naboo.

The ribbon aside, it was totally unsuitable for the Twi'lek. She could imagine him standing in his armoury aboard his ship, looking for "something to arm the kid with".

That told the young woman volumes of how he thought of her now. He had expounded upstairs about how she was now his "Baby Girl" - she could feel her teeth grinding at that - but this hammered the point home.

She had been allowed to hold and fire an E-11 during the escape from the Imperial drydock prison level, but while it could be argued that, yes, there had been a lot of them just lying around on the floor as they re-traced Nifesta's bloody passage through the orbiting space station, she was certain he would have picked up a lot of them from earlier missions against the Empire.

This certainly wasn't his first pod race.

An up-and-down movement ahead and to her left drew her attention to the TIE pilot, jumping onto his heels in an effort to alleviate the damage done by the Twi’lek.

She snapped her knees shut, tucking her right leg under her and coming forward over it so that she could rise up in the smoothest manner possible and do a complete circle with the blaster like she should have done first, securing the hydroponics hall.

The space, four times the size of her sleeping area, was packed with white trestle tables, lined up end to end in separate aisles, their surfaces covered in trays and pots containing black soil, and leafy green foliage entwined around brown, tan, or white wood sticks.

Hot white lamps bathed the plants, and as she turned on the spot, Baille Harte felt the skin rubbing between the insides of her thighs, and armpits, becoming moist with new perspiration.

“You bul-lithering idiot.” She sent towards Aspar as she came round, “You made me use the ‘D’ word. Why couldn’t you have simply acknowledged that slavery is allowed under the Empire?”

“But it isn’t.” He jumped again, while he looked at her.

The two were alone, the rest out of sight at the far corner of the chamber, doing...whatever they were doing.

“What about Wookiees?” She pointed out in a reasonable tone. “What about all the races that fought on the side of the Separatists in the Clone Wars? When was the last time you encountered a Neimoudian?” She flew a V-Wing. Researching the craft had naturally led onto the galactic conflict where it saw most of its service.

“Oh, that’s security stuff, outside the...oh, look who I am talking to, a fragging Rebel!”

She sighed, unwilling to get into this again. “Dammit, I’m not a Rebel! I have never betrayed the Empire...except maybe in that blaster blaze with those stormtroopers.”

“Oh yeah?” His voice was rising too, “What about what happened at Commenor? All those TIE fighters you ambushed?”

“They attacked us!” She jabbed an arm to the side, as if she had a hope in Flamewind of pointing to Commenor’s spatial coordinates.

One second, Aspar was standing a few feet from her, then they were toe-to-toe, with the taller and bulkier male standing over her, shouting in her face! “”Oh yes, and why would they do that?”

“We were outnumbered three squadrons to one, with our weapons powered down for a live fire exercise, so funnily enough, we did not stop to ack-”

Her final word turned into a gasp as his hand around her throat interrupted her vocal capabilities, and she felt herself lifted and slammed onto the nearest intact table so hard, that trays of plants skittered aside and crashed noisily to the floor, along with her blaster as the table edge bit into the bony part of that forearm. Her recently-bruised bottom, now sliding along the table, was more painful than her shoulders.

Oh, for crying out loud, she thought as her hands went to his, and tried to pry it loose. Was the Twi’lek right? That a second out of his sight, and she was immediately in fear of her life?

She cast her right hand out for another weapon of some sort, fingers searching the table and plants while her other hand stayed at his wrist, more to keep his attention, than in any hope of removing it.
If she could not budge it with both hands, one was not going to do the trick.

Then she felt why he was also only choking her with the one hand. The other snaked under the front of her smock, gathering the rough material as his rough palm glided fast up her thigh, over her womanhood, and up her stomach.

The edges of her vision was starting to blur and darken.

Ah-ha! Her free hand closed on something, and she brought it up in a straight-armed swing, crashing a plant-filled ceramic pot against the side of his head, shutting her eyes and turning her head against the avalanche of disintegrated pottery and soil that came down off him.

“Ahh!” The TIE pilot shrieked and released her, staggering back from the table as he checked his head wound.

Allowing herself a second to draw in a deep, ragged breath, she forced herself to exaggerate a sit-up, and launched herself off the table towards him, taking meaty grasps of his smock below the level of his collarbone, jumped off the floor and heavily planted both feet, knees bent, into his midriff, her entire body weight pulling him over towards her, then as her back softly touched the floor, she pulled down on her hands, and kicked out with both feet, flipping the serving Imperial over her head to crash heavily onto his back.

She tucked her knees up, and used her hold on his smock, to perform a backward roll and get herself sitting astride him, digging her knees in to prevent being bucked off. Letting go of him, she crossed her forearms into an ‘X’ over his neck, her left hand to the left side of his neck, and her right hand to the right side of his neck, dug fingers inside the fabric past his ears, then did the double duty of twisting the stressed fabric into his carotid artery on both sides, as well as pressing her wrists against his throat, a choke and a strangle at the same time.

“I might look dainty and fey, you Bucket Head,” She rasped down into his reddened face, using a term she had heard some use to describe TIE pilots, referring to their distinctive black helmets, “but I learned from the best at the Vensenor Flight Academy.”

Aspar did not say anything, but showed that he’d had some of the same training, both of his hands palming her elbows to push her arms straight, and reducing her pressure on his throat. He could feel from their close proximity, when her body tension switched from clamping him between her knees, to re-pressing her forearms back into a choke, and he arched his back, bodily tossing her aside to crash into the legs of the nearest table, rocking it back, the contents crashing to the floor.

"Hybrid rebel scum." Asher snarled from his kneeling position as he rolled to his feet.

"Are you a moron?" She raising herself on shuddering arms to glare up at her attacker, spitting a gobbet of salty redness onto the bare 'crete. A few scant days ago, she had been him. A starfighter pilot in the service of the Empire. "Look, think this through. You and I have both been held captive down here. You're main hope of rescue has been a vast galactic government with a fleet of star destroyers, and the largest armed force this galaxy has ever known; whilst mine has been a delusional alien that thinks he is my Dad. And this is despite me knowing him for less than a Standard Hour, and running out on him at the first opportunity. On flimsi, the Empire should be the one to turn up. But no, he did. Going after me now, strikes you as a sound idea, does it?"

​

Baille packs her suitcase, for her Ibrix hols'.​

****

To be continued...

 

The Mitch Activities​

Dormitory level


He saw them down through the hole, the last two, and sealed it with the ferrocrete plug he had cut, then turned, sighed, and strode towards the doorway, thumping it hard with a fist. “Coo-iee. I wish to talk to any guards out there.”

Nifesta stepped back and waited for some sign of life, noise or movement from the door or beyond, anything.

Nothing. Which was unusual, as the Force was indicating there were four life signs on the other side of the door. Maybe this was a security measure, simply locking the door, and not opening it at night, or even acknowledging any shouts from inside.

He stepped back to the door, leaning close to put his mouth close to it. “Anyone standing close to the door, step back, please. I am coming through.”

The blue-white pole of his lightsabre telescoped instantly into existence, and he stabbed it through the door, about waist height. It was almost up to the hilt, when the hidden locks clicked encouragingly, and the door started to open.


****
Corridor outside sleep chamber


Nifesta allowed himself to be surrounded by four bemused Birdmen, armed with Blastech E-11s clasped tight to their feathery yellow chests. He had already identified himself as an SGIS agent.

“So, in what way are you beholden to this Wishmaster of yours?” He enquired of the quartet. “Does he pay you? Does he have something on you? Is there a promise that at the end of your service, he will ensure you return to Nejidi in comfort?”

“You-you,” started one with an amazed stammer, “have heard of us and our homeworld?”

“Of course! I get around.” Plus he had asked his 'daughter', if she had learned anything useful before he turned up. “Now, I cannot promise anything in the way of financial compensation, but if you promise not to oppose me this night, I promise to do my utmost to get you home.”

“I have heard enough.” Said one, stepping back from the circle, and bringing the business end of his blaster round, pressing the trigger.

Nifesta’s lightsabre blade was up before his face just in time to re-direct the lime plasma bolt into the ceiling above them, and he spun the blade as fast as he could in the tight space, adding the assailant to the list of beings he had sliced in half, this week.

“So,” he asked of the remaining three, “any other objections?”

They jumped back to avoid the grisly halves’ eventual surrender to gravity.
Two desperately flapped wings for lift as carbonised brain and body matter splashed across the worn ferrocrete floor beneath their claws.

Not easy to do in the tight corridor with a ceiling overhead. They settled down several metres away.

“Pango was a good man.” Mumbled the guard still with Mitch, staring down at what had become of his friend.

The Twi’lek reached down and plucked the E-11 from the speaker, who did not resist, or look up at him.
“Pango was a slaver, just like all of you.” He looked up the corridor at the still-armed ones. “I am giving you the opportunity to get out of this, clean. But make no mistake, this operation ends tonight, and I am not taking prisoners.”

“Alright, I am with you.” Announced one of the distant guards. “You can call me Prang.”

“Is that Nediji for ‘bad at driving’?”

“It-it’s meaning does not translate easily into Basic.”

“Never mind.” Mitch looked over at Prang’s team-mate. “How do you want to play this?”

“I’m...I’m with you too. You can really get us back home?”

The Force Vampire straightened and sighed, holding the acquired blaster around the barrel. “I have not been blessed with good luck and judgement these past few days, but I promise to do my best.”

Prang angled his head, and turned to look up the corridor. “Company. They must have heard the shot. We will have to kill them.”

“Whoa!” Mitch was surprised at the guard’s willingness to kill its own. “Why?”

“No time to explain.” Prang and his team-mate turned to the noise if scratching feet, bringing his blaster carbine round.

“Make time. Or set for heavy stun only.”

The new arrivals arrived at the far end of the corridor, seventy metres distant, and despite his instructions, Prang and the un-named one opened fire, which the avian response team, about half a dozen of them, enthusiastically returned, filling the corridor with laser bolts.

Nifesta dropped to one knee, ducking his head to present a smaller target, the Nediji closest to him, dropping two, crying in anguish at the smaller trail feathers of his wings dipping into the viscera on the floor.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure I have some Moist Wipes on me.” Mitch reassured.

“Oh thanks, I am sure that will do the trick.”

Ahead, two of the newcomers dropped to the floor, their chests smoking with burned feathers.

“The Nedij-born guards, like us, have static guard positions. The ones who rove about, the response teams, will have been born here, and will have imprinted upon the Wishmaster when they hatched. They will not turn on him.”

Nifesta nodded. He understood the concept of just-born animals imprinting on the first being they see. The explanation was plausible. “So, better to wax ‘em?”

“If we cannot capture the Wishmaster, and persuade him to get them to stand down, I am afraid so.”
* * * *

Throne Room

When Agent Nifesta and his escorts reached the throne room of Wish Manse, he could not help but whistle in appreciation, drawing nervous glances from the avians at the lack of stealth.

Mitch could not help it.

The installation was not exactly replete with windows that let in natural light, but the Twi'lek had only been down inside long enough to find his child, so had not had time to notice.

But then again, most of his own cruiser behind the cockpit pod, was in the same boat, so perhaps he was de-sensitized to such things.

Still, the floor of the throne room, once through one of the several doors and column and plant-lined vestibules - this place would be a full PASS for a fire safety inspection - had been polished so highly that it reflected many fixtures of the actual room, then at one end of the main hall, a dozen V-angled steps led up to the elaborate gold throne, splitting at the top to the left and right, allowing a shorter and more compact set of steps to ascend the foot or so to the landing which the throne dominated, whilst behind it, a V-shape extrusion of six high-arched window panes let in plenty of natural light, and nice view of the nearby golden domed roofs...

​

Throne Room of the Wishmaster​

"Waaaiit a minute." A confused Nifesta drawled, pausing a few feet into the chamber. "It was night time outside when I landed, plus your slaves were getting locked up for the night. Why's it so bright outside?"

And that was not all.

Wish Manse was a woods and park-crowned cylinder, in the middle of nowhere, floating a dozen metres above the parched, barren surface of the planet. There were no adjacent buildings for there to be roofs of, domed or otherwise.

"Who disturbs my slumber?" A voice echoed from the direction of the throne, Nifesta backing up a step and sweeping back one side of his robes to drop a pale white hand to his lightsabre hilt.

"Oh, stang!" He exclaimed, genuinely caught of guard. "You sleep in your chair?" Sight-seeing over, the Twi'lek security agent peered the near hundred metres towards the throne itself.

"I sensed deaths. I say again; who disturbs my sleep?"

"Agent Mitch Nifesta." Mitch identified clearly, too cautious and wary, since he could not actually see his adversary yet, to reach for his credentials. "Secret Galactic Intelligence Service."

There was movement up ahead, with a bipedal figure sort of rolling into sight at the right side of the throne, rising slowly from a squatting position.
"And what can I do you, Agent?"

"Your reign is over, Mister Manse. Your slaves have asked me to liberate them."

The being stood up, revealing that he was a corpulent, pink-faced human or humanoid in Imperial Grand Admiral whites, string-like gold brocade hanging off his shoulders. Like the Twi'lek, he too possessed a lightsabre, the silver cylinder visible against his left hip. "I am the Wishmaster!"

"Well, I wish you'd come quietly."

"AH-hahahaha." The self-styled Wishmaster laughed uproariously, and the Twi'lek got no sense that the mirth was less than genuine.


To be continued...

---

Note: The Throne Room was designed by Martin "MartinH" Holnberg and Thiago "Minos" Klafke, and is titled "Throne Room of Utu".
I gather that this was something to do with Unreal Tournament.