MC: AOTE: Rhea

[stingerhs]

"Jack, I appriciate the notion that you actually care about me, but now's not the time to start guessing what I can and can not do. Niether the radiation nor this man, whomever he may be, are enough to overcome the power of the Force. Besides, Jack, I do know quite a bit about these ships' systems to control the problem on my own," Ryshana replied.

 

Then something dawned on her. "Actually, Jack, something that might work is if both of us go. I certainly don't mind if we go at this as a team than trying to gung-ho our way through it."

[steven]

"Good idea," Commented Jack "What are we going to do with the ship exactly? We can't exactly leave it here for that Dreadnought Captain to get his hands on."

[stingerhs]

"Well, these ships don't have a built in self-destruct, so we'll need to improvise. I suggest priming the engines and dumping the coolant. Then, we can remotely activate the engines for maximum thrust. With the engines already overheating, switching on max thrust will likely cause a fuel line burst. Once that burst reaches the main fuel cells, there isn't going to much left of this ship," Ryshana suggested.

[JasraLantill]

“That sounds like a good idea," Cloud said to Ryshana. "I'll get to work on setting that up, while you two go down to the auxilliary control. I'll tell you what to do when you get there." He grinned. "It’s easy really. All you’ll have to do is reverse the polarity on the containment sensors, then reroute the power to the main interface matrix, then stabilise the output diodes along the exit corridor, and then gradually raise the resistance on the inductor coils to reactivate the containment field. See? Easy.”

 

Beryl stared at Cloud. “Yeah. Easy for anyone with an engineering background.”

 

“Well, like Jack said, I’ll talk them through it over the comlink,” Cloud said. “They’ll do fine.”

 

“Sure,” said Beryl. “Provided that their comlinks aren’t affected from all the radiation leakage.”

 

Cloud frowned. “Oh, right. Hadn’t thought about that. That could be a problem.”

 

“A big problem.” Beryl looked at Jack and Ryshana. “Oh, I have a feeling I’m going to regret this, but… I’ll go with you. ‘Cause unless you two know how to do what Cloud is suggesting, without depending on his instructions, you’re going to need help.” She sighed with resignation. “And as far as I know, I’m the only other one here besides Cloud with enough engineering knowledge to do the work we need done.” She looked at Jana. “Besides, Jana knows enough to pilot the Echo if need be. I’m not indispensable.”

[Writer]

Jana's expression had become decidedly uncomfortable as Jack, Ryshana, and Beryl had quickly decided they were all going.

 

"Whole damn crew's indespensible," she muttered.

[starmark2k]

"Look we can't risk loseing both of our Pilot." Nic stepped in taking command.. "Jack, Ryshana and my self will go down, if worse comes to worse i can set a couple of timed charges, we pass an armoury on the way there... It'll mean we'd have to run out but i'm sure we can hack it. Meanwhile you guys find another way to the ship as the one we took has become unpassible."

[JasraLantill]

Beryl exhaled a small sigh of relief as Nic took command, then nodded in agreement at his suggestion. “Alright.” She tapped the keys on the console in front of her. “There’s another aux control station on the other side of the starboard hanger bay. Life support isn’t working there, but if we can find some environmental suits, we may be able to get to it and reroute the containment field from there. Oliver, check those lockers out there again. There were some boots in the one I opened. Maybe we can scrounge together a couple of suits.” She turned to Jana and grinned. “You up for a space walk?”

[Writer]

Jana grinned in return. "Wouldn't miss it."

 

She headed to the lockers, helping Oliver to look for the equipment they'd need.

[starmark2k]

Nic turned to Jack and Ryshana. "We better get moving, This ship won't blow it's self up. lead the way Jack." Nic ordered walking over to the Door that led to the way they'd take out.

[steven]

"Sure thing," Replied Jack who began walking down a corridor towards 'Engineering'.

 

((Starmark, Jasra, I have a new idea of what's going to happen. I have an idea on what the Rhea is destroyed.))

[starmark2k]

Nic followed Jack closly keeping his eyes open as they walked along the thin corridors toward the engineering section. The Air was stale and had obviously not been recycled over and over again for the last few years. The whole atmosphere in the ship was eerie with the creaking metals and faint buzz from the engines that could be heard throughout the ship.

 

"Jack tell me when we're at the Armory, If we need the explosives i'd like to have them ready." Nic Asked keeping his hand on the Grip of his Blaster.

 

((OCC- Care to elaborate in the discussion thread?))

[steven]

((OOC- not really but don't worry, I'll make sure everything pans out.However it envolves a small space battle at the end of the rpg))

 

"Sure thing captain. While we're at it we could alwase stock up on the Echo's armory or something. It would be handy to have some of the weapons and other equipment onbaord." Jack suggested

[starmark2k]

"Sure, just make sure you hide it when we get back to the ship." Nic suggested as he continued to follow Jack. Nic was right to do so as the empire had made it illegal to possess military goods of the Empire of former republic, If they were caught with any equipment the ship would be empounded and the crew would be put or trial as traitors of the empire. Nic then thought for a second and wondered why he worried about it. He was knowinly transporting the Empires most Wanted, A Jedi, and the penalty for that was Death without trial. Nic chuckled at how he had his priorities.

[steven]

"That wouldn't be too hard," Jack said as he came to the armory door. He pressed the open butten but it seemed to be broken "Wonderful! Ryshana, do your magic."

[JasraLantill]

“Okay, so here’s the plan,” Beryl said to Cloud while Jana and Oliver were looking through the lockers. “Jana and I repel down the lift shaft five levels. There’s a door there where we can access an internal maintenance corridor. We’ll go through the corridor and….”

 

“Hold on a sec,” Cloud interrupted her by holding up his hand. “Why you and Jana? Why not me and Oliver, or me and you, or me and Jana?”

 

“In other words, why not you?” Beryl asked.

 

“Yeah,” Cloud said matter-of-factly. “Why not me?”

 

“Because you have to stay here and guide Jack and Nic through re-routing that aux control panel, if they make it there.”

 

“But I’ve told you what to do. You could do guide them.”

 

“But you’re the engineer. It’s your job.”

 

“Really? But you’re the last to join this crew, so I outrank you. So you should do it.”

 

“We don’t have ‘ranks,’” said Beryl. “We’re civvies.”

 

“So?”

 

“Look, I’m not arguing this with you, Cloud. Jana and I are going because… because…” Beryl paused for a brief moment. “Because we can fit through the maintenance shafts and we’ve both space walked before. It was part of our training at the TCTA.”

 

Cloud said nothing, and Beryl grinned smugly.

 

“Now, as I was saying,” Beryl continued with her plan, “once we get through the maintenance corridors, we’ll exit through the airlock, then make our way across the exterior, enter through the hanger bay, and then to the hanger’s aux control. Then we’ll realign the containment field so that you and Oliver can get back to the Echo.”

 

“And then what?”

 

“And then, you come and pick us up.”

 

“You trust me to pilot?”

 

Beryl frowned. “O-kaay…,” she said slowly, “you wait for Nic, Jack, and Ryshana to get on board, and then Jack comes and picks us up.”

 

"Fine." Cloud was quiet for a moment, monitoring the adjusted ion field around the engines. "But I still outrank you," he said under his breath loud enough for her to hear.

[Writer]

"Jana?" Oliver van Impe asked hesitantly. Jana turned to him.

 

"Yes, Impe?" she answered.

 

"What are we looking for?"

 

Jana frowned. "Enviro suits..."

 

"No, I know that..." Impe objected. "But what... what do they look like?"

 

Jana unearthed a helmet from one of the lockers. "Anything that looks remotely like this or looks like it might match this in color scheme."

 

"Might match..." Oliver muttered. "... color scheme." He frowned, puzzled. "What?"

 

"See the color?" Jana asked, impatiently. "That's what you're looking for."

 

"So this?" Oliver clarified holding up a boot. Jana nodded.

 

"Yes," she agreed. "That." Then, she dug further into a different locker. "Oh, yes!"

 

Oliver bumped his head on the top of his locker, startled by her excitement. When he realized that she hadn't found what they were looking for, he was curious.

 

"That's not the right color," he said, scratching his head.

 

"This here's a little gaming device," Jana explained. "Has nothing whatsoever to do with us... except for when I was younger I wanted one oh so badly." She chuckled. "Guess if you want something bad enough, you're bound to find one when scrounging through derelict ships..."

 

Though Oliver wasn't sure what to think of this, he went back to his search. In ten minutes, they found two full, though mismatched enviro suits... and a glove, three boots, a ripped torso, and a helmet.

 

"How do they get so disconnected from the whole suit?" Oliver wondered. Jana chuckled.

 

"People take them off in pieces as they run back to their duty posts," she suggested. "Anything that gets dropped in a hall gets put somewhere else... either that or there's some wierd and random monster that likes to eat some parts."

 

They came back out onto the bridge and Oliver gave Beryl the suit he'd found.

 

"Now," Jana said. "We'll need something to get down the lift."

 

Oliver looked around the bridge. "How about that?" he interrupted. Jana turned to look where he pointed.

 

"The pilot's chair?" she demanded incredulously. Oliver shrugged.

 

"Why not?" he asked innocently. "Don't they make 'em with little jets at the bottom? Saw that in a cartoon once..."

 

"And you believed a cartoon?" Jana wondered. Again, he shrugged.

 

"Okay, so what about that?"

 

Jana grimaced. "First of all, a computer console would take a hell of a lot of effort to uproot from the floor. Second of all, it would just crash straight to the bottom of the shaft. And us being on top of it, we'd just crash there too. Oh, wait... did the console have jets too?"

 

Oliver muttered something about damn unrealistic cartoons and kept his mouth shut.

 

"We could use some cables," Jana suggested. Oliver ripped away a wall panel and saw a big black cable.

 

"Like this?" he suggested, reaching to pull it free. In the middle of several shouts of 'No!' and 'Stop!' from Beryl, Jana and Cloud, Jana lunged and tackled the puzzled medic Oliver van Impe. As they crashed to the ground everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

 

"Only if you want all power shipwide to die," Jana said, answering his previous question.

 

"Impe," Oliver muttered. "Better in an infirmary than on a bridge."

 

He wandered around for a moment, watching as the others tore away the wall paneling. Then, he gasped, seeing Beryl reach for something that looked remarkably like the cable he'd just attempted to pull free. With a 'No! Don't pull!' scream of his own, Impe tackled Beryl.

 

"It's a navigational cable!" Beryl exclaimed, squirming out from beneath Oliver, one end of the cable in her hand. "And as I don't think we're planning on flying this thing anywhere, that was just..." She sputtered, unable to think of what word she wanted.

 

"Looked like the other one," Oliver muttered sheepishly. "Sorry?"

 

Jana chuckled. "Just trust we know what we're doing, ok, Impe?"

 

"Right," Oliver grumbled. "Sorry?"

 

"I'm okay," Beryl answered, pulling the rest of the cable out of the wall.

 

"That should be plenty long enough," Jana observed, looking at the cable. "Let's get into these enviro suits and get moving."

[JasraLantill]

“This guy must have been a midget,” said Beryl as she struggled to put one of her boots on. “Here,” she gave up on it and tossed it to Jana. “I’ll trade you for one of yours.”

 

Jana took the boot and tossed Beryl another. "Try that one." Then, as she tried to put on the boot Beryl had given her, she grimaced. "Well, my foot fits, but... that's really squeezy!"

 

“Squeezy?”

 

“Squeezy.” Jana nodded to emphasize her point and wrapped a hand partway around the little boot. "Little squeeze to the foot. I'll manage, though."

 

“Yeah, well….” Beryl strained as she managed to pull the boot Jana had given her onto her foot, then let out a sigh. “Hopefully, we won’t be in them long.” She put on her helmet, put the face visor down, and then clicked the seal shut. “Okay, I’ll go first,” she said into the helmet’s internal comlink, and her voice was broadcast on the speakers Cloud had linked up.

 

“Why you?” Jana asked, as she adjusted her helmet.

 

“Because,” said Beryl as she picked up the end of the cable and attached it to herself. “You’re the first mate. And people in command positions never go first.”

 

Cloud frowned. “I thought you said ranks didn’t matter for ‘civvies’.”

 

Beryl grinned. “Did I?” She backed up to the edge of the shaft. “Keep up the slack,” she said to Cloud.

 

Beryl began her descent into the lift shaft. “Droyk! It’s dark in here!” She switched her headlamps on. “That’s better.” Then she looked down. The shaft was so long, she couldn’t even see the bottom. Even though she was a pilot and was used to heights, that didn’t mean she liked them without having a ship under her. Ships were solid. Cables were… not. She swallowed hard. “Then again, maybe not. Jana, when you get in here, best not to look down.”

 

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights!” Jana’s staticy voice laughed in Beryl’s ear.

 

“I’m not afraid of heights,” Beryl retorted while she carefully repelled down. “I’m just not too keen on falling.”

 

She reached the door of the maintenance shaft, opened it with some fiddling, then scrambled inside. She tied off the cable to a bracket on the wall of the narrow maintenance corridor, and gave it a tug to make sure it was tight.

 

“Right, Cloud, I’ve secured the cable. It’s safe to send Jana down now.”

[stingerhs]

After studying the door for a couple moments, Ryshana activated her lightsaber and quickly made a couple of slashes. Deactivating the saber, Ryshana pushed the doors apart with the Force. "After you, Jack."

[Writer]

"Coming down," Jana called. She gripped the cable confidently and began her descent. About halfway down, she felt a light dripping through her glove. A little puzzled, she looked up... and then, her hands slipped. With a yelp of surprise, she grasped frantically at the cable, but her grip only managed to slow her down as she slid toward the end of the cable.

 

"You're going too fast," Beryl warned. "You'll shoot right past!"

 

At the last second, Jana released the cable and gripped at the floor of the open door where Beryl stood. She hung there for a moment.

 

"Yeah," she said sarcastically, looking up at the Headhunter pilot. "Real safe."

 

"What's that on your hands?" Beryl wondered, slightly appalled. Jana pulled herself up into the doorway and stepped through. Looking at her hands she shrugged.

 

"It's just..." she began. "Oh, it's... just... gross." Shuddering slightly, she went on, "Must be some kind of fluid from one of the lifts. Likely cause of my slip."

[JasraLantill]

Beryl looked at the black goo on Jana’s gloves, then looked up the shaft with suspicion. She didn’t see anything except the pinpoint of light from where they had entered. “Yeah…it’s probably some kind of hydraulic fluid,” she said unconvincingly, as it didn’t look like any hydraulic fluid she had ever seen before.

 

“C’mon,” she said, motioning with her hand for Jana to follow. “There’s an airlock about 100 metres down this way. Cloud?” she said into the comlink. “You reading me?”

 

“Yup,” said Cloud’s hollow voice in her ear.

 

“Great. We’ll be going out the airlock in a few minutes.”

 

“Understood,” said Cloud, knowing that he might lose contact with them for a few minutes. “Be careful.”

 

Beryl gave Jana a mischievous grin. “Aren’t I always?”

 

There was a slight pause. “No.”

 

“We’ll contact you when we get outside, Cloud.” She started down the corridor.

 

~~~~~~~

 

“Oliver,” Cloud said to the medic. “Monitor Beryl’s channel. I’m going to try and contact Nic.” As he began to tune the com channel to Nic’s frequency, he paused and turned back to Oliver. “And don’t. Touch. Anything. Just listen, okay?”

 

Oliver nodded. “Okay.”

 

Cloud gave Oliver a lingering look.

 

“Okay!” Oliver said. “Listen. Don’t touch. Got it.”

 

Cloud turned back to the com station and finished his adjustments. “Nic? Do you read me? How you guys doin’ down there?”

 

~~~~~~~

 

Beryl and Jana had reached the airlock door. “It’s been ages since I did a space walk,” Beryl said to Jana while turning to do a final check of her and Jana’s suit. She switched on her mag boots. “You ready?”

[Writer]

"Hasn't been quite so long for me," Jana answered, smiling slightly as she remembered more than once when she and Nic had needed to do the same aboard the Echo to fix something. Generally, they were able to do a sufficient job, but there was once... with a shudder, Jana decided it would be better to hope that didn't happen here.

 

"Let's go," she said, switching her mag boots on as well.

[JasraLantill]

Beryl cycled the airlock and the two of them stepped outside on the hull of the Rhea.

 

“Woooo!” Beryl chortled. “Would you look at that!” Underneath them, the lower half of the ship was glowing green. “As much as I love space walks, we better not stay out here long.”

 

As they trudged towards the open hanger bay, Beryl started singing. “Think of action, and reaction, Never mind the lack of traction; When the band begins to play, Grab your partner's hand, Simply kick away.

 

“C’mon, Jana,” Beryl said encouragingly. “You know this one. We'll be whirling, we'll be reeling, And rebounding off the ceiling--Don't pull my leg, my dear; I haven't one to spare!” She paused. “Jana? You’re not singing.”

 

"Beryl, I don't wanna!" Jana protested. "And you're the only one on the crew who knows I can sing... you tell anyone and you're on kitchen duty... food prep, table setting, AND cleanup for a month!"

 

“We-eeel, then you’d better start singing, or I’ll tell…everyone.” She turned around and grinned mischieviously at Jana, and then she started the chorus.

 

“Turn off the G-force, Turn off the G-force, We wanna dance in mid-air!

No other recourse, without the G-force, Cling to the floor if you dare!

But let us warn you, when you get up there, A foot in the face is no crime--

For They say all is fair in love, war, and sex, And two-fourths time!"

[Writer]

"You do that and it'll be two months," Jana threatened. Nevertheless, she began to sing, playing harmony to Beryl's melody. Most of Jana's skills had come from her father, a rough Corellian man who made sure his daughter would know how to defend herself against the dangers of the galaxy. Her voice though, was from her mother, Dana Vailar-Vincent, a beautiful woman who'd come to Corellia from Naboo and had attracted young Daniel Vincent first by her voice and second by her looks.

[JasraLantill]

"Turn off the G-force, Turn off the G-force, We wanna dance... Hey!" Beryl stopped singing in the middle of the second chorus and stopped walking. "There's the hanger bay, Jana," she said, pointing directly ahead of them to the open bay doors. "And look!" She turned to look at Jana, then wiggled her eyebrows. "Think we've found a way back to the Echo. After we finish in aux control and get Oliver and Cloud out, care to take a quick spin in a TIE?"

 

~~~~~~~~

 

Cloud shook his head. "I can't reach Nic, Ryshana, or Jack on the com," he said. "Anything from Beryl and Jana yet?"

 

Oliver raised his eyebrows. "Sort of."

 

Cloud turned to him. "Sort of? What's that mean?"

 

"Well, it keeps fading in and out," said Oliver. "It's a nice song though."

 

"Song?" Cloud frowned. "You got a bottle of Jawa Juice hidden in up your sleeve or something?"

 

"No. I just keep hearing... singing."

 

Cloud shook his head. "Beryl...," he muttered. He turned back to the com station. "Just let me know if you hear any conversation that let's us know that they're getting close to aux control, okay?"

[Writer]

"Not quite a TIE..." Jana murmured, staring at the hangar bay. "Must be its predecessor or something..." She grinned. "Yeah, that's our way back to the Echo... but first we have to get to aux control. Come on." She gestured forward and began humming softly.