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"I can't make heads or tails of this gundark nest. Can one of you get over here and give me a hand before we end up vaporized?"
Warren said in exasperation as he tried to follow wires to slots and untangle the knotwork of mess he found himself faced with. The effort was herculean but the results were less then impressive.
She pauses in the midst of adjusting the central capacitor responsible for the fine-tuning of graviton direction. One of the last hits had knocked the thing loose, causing a whole host of other spiraling problems. "Don't touch anything. I'll be there the moment I'm certain this won't accidently create a micro-black hole and cause us to implode."
Tavin was relieved that the boarding was repelled. "Seems some of these guys are better with blasters than I am," he thinks to himself. He's about to pick himself up off of the floor when the ship loses power and the artificial gravity.
Tavin struggles a bit to right himself, as he listens to where everyone is going. "Pilot? Hmm, I don't think so," he thinks as he tries to remember what he can do.
When someone calls out for help, he heads in his direction. "I'm right here. I can see if I can help. Are any of you pilots?"
"Whoa, that's a mess. Maybe we do need the android here to help."
"Whoa, hey, good job Rex, but maybe fix something more important that the gravity! We're gonna die out here!" shouts Capt Perry over the intercom after Honey restores the artificial gravity.
"Beep do bo beep!" R3X3 retorts.
The sudden onset of redirected mass causes all of you to catch yourselves, and throughout the ship there are clangs of metal on metal, as everything that wasn't bolted down crashes to the floor at once.
Honey rushes into the core where Warren and Mal have collected and have a head start at dismantling the main drive casing, revealing an unspectacular knot of conduit and circuitry. You swear there's an old chewing gum wrapper bridging two nodes in place of a solder point.
Meanwhile, Tavin joins R3X3 in the left forward nacelle to assist with the repair on the shields. The droid has a pair of extender arms rerouting cables and frenetically zapping a large circuit board with many heavy nodules.
"Bo beep?" the droid asks Tavin as it continues to work.
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Honey paused briefly as if to marvel at the arrangement of wires, foil, and junk that's been incorporated into the central power core. Every single patch told a story in it's own right, each one the product of some other daring escape or desperate last measure. It was ugly, but it was beautiful as well.
So the first thing she did was rip out half the patches from their precarious positions. Everything was far too disorganized and without propper optimization, even with limited resources in mind. Honestly, to use a 4mm induction pin for the tertiary rove-shaft where one could more simply twist some of the chromium wiring around the nodes? It was an utter insult to someone of her skills.
"You," She pointed to Warren, not knowing either of their names yet. "Go over there and tear me off a sheet of inner-hull plating. I need you," She looked over to Mal this time. "To hold these two wires together as a bridge while I get it soldered."
The cyborg rolled her neck with a soft pop from her neck, a hint she wasn't all mechanical as it seemed. "Let's breath some life back into this space hulk."
Having stumbled his way up to the cockpit during the chaotic repairs, Dak gives Perry a sheepish grin, his adrenaline still pumping after the gunfight. "One co-pilot, reporting for duty. I'm a fair hand with the controls, sir. Whattaya need me to do?"
A slight pause, followed by a frown. "Um, are we crashing?"
As Greff climbs the ladder down to the belly gun in the renewed gravity, he cries out; OI! Once you get power up any chance of getting these guns working? We're sitting ducks without them."
As the group reorganizes what tasks tjey are working on, Tavin moves over to assist the other droid. "Bo beep?" he repeats to himself as he tries to figure out what the droid is asking.
"If you're asking if I'm here to help, then yes. If you're asking if I understand droid, then no," he responds as he tries to assist the best he can.
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Mal grabs the two profred wires with the tipidy-tips of his forefinger and thumb, exposing the least amount of flesh necessary to create the requested union.
"This ain't gonna kill my until I die from it, yeah?"
Of a sudden he had a thirst. His throat felt powerful parched and he licked his lips, thinking of water beading on a cold serving bulb.
"Uh, anyone else thirsty?"
She halted, glancing down at her own cybernetic hands currently covered in thin insulating fabric. It wouldn't do to admit she forgot to take into account their fleshy, easy to electrocute exteriors.
"Probably." Was her non-answer.
Tavin heads for the primary deflector shield generator in the port nacelle. The machinery is familiar - standard Kuat Drive Yard stock build parts, although it seems strange that you know that. You quickly determine the generator has shorted out - only minor damage, nothing that cannot be rerouted. With snips and pliers in hand, you construct a crude bypass and link the conduit to the generator. R3X3 patches the circuit board and flushes the chip, then does a superboot of the control module and grafts it back into place with Tavin's bypass.
"Beep beep!" chirps R3X3 optimistically. Now all you need is power...
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"Crashing? Ha!" retorts Captain Perry. "But we are falling toward the planet without any thrust, so..."
Red Barren, a planet with a name to match it's expansive landscape of rusted desert, looms large through the windows. Tavin can't remember entering the atmosphere of another planet like this, but his reflexes and ability to read the controls of the Elyisum Pale inform him that it is not his first time. You actually feel comfortable in the copilot chair - at home. A quick read of the instrument panel, dimly lit by emergency power, indicates that yes, the ship will definitely crash if power is not restored. On the bright side, you might just burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere, which will happen any second now...
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Warren and Mal prove to be serviceable mechanics in their own right, but the main drive core of a light freighter is something best left to the experts. Honey arrives just as the other two have finished disassembling the housing, exposing the raw conduit mess and power core. She realizes that the space battle has caused serious damage to the engines, but that it may be possible to restart the main for a short time - long enough to get to the planet's surface and maybe fend off that other ship out there.
But you can fix this. Something about this feels incredibly familiar, and you break down the old rigging and reassemble it with remarkable alacrity. Nevertheless, a main power core repair is something that is rushed at great peril. You need just a little more time...
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A glint of reflecting metal in the vastness of black space grips Rel's attention. From the dorsal gun mount you can see another ship, straight up in relative terms. It looks like it has completed a loop and is on an intercept course. You can also tell this is not a fast attack ship; it's another freighter, a bit smaller but more maneuverable. It could fire at any moment, but so could you...
Takes a shot at the ship, "Only need a good blaster and never tell me the odds" he mutters.
"Crashing? Ha!" retorts Captain Perry. "But we are falling toward the planet without any thrust, so..."Red Barren, a planet with a name to match it's expansive landscape of rusted desert, looms large through the windows. Dak can't remember entering the atmosphere of another planet like this, but his reflexes and ability to read the controls of the Elyisum Pale inform him that it is not his first time. You actually feel comfortable in the copilot chair - at home. A quick read of the instrument panel, dimly lit by emergency power, indicates that yes, the ship will definitely crash if power is not restored. On the bright side, you might just burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere, which will happen any second now...
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"Huh." Dak mutters to the Captain as if this single word was profound and an adequate response...and perhaps in this moment, to him, it is. His eyes flicker back and forth across the displays and dials, and for a long moment, out the front of the cockpit, while his fingers play over the instruments and controls far more out of some forgotten muscle memory than conscious thought.
"Ok, folks. So no pressure, here." He glances back over his shoulder to where the other abruptly nominated crew members were frantically working to repair or at least jury rig the Elyisum Pale's numerous ailments. "Just keep doing what you're doing, secure in the knowledge that we probably don't need to worry about the other ships out there...because if we can't get the power back up, we'll likely explode in the atmosphere before they can blow us out of the sky..."
"No pressure at all." She commented back, her hands moving through motions seemingly pre-programmed into them. While much of her body was now metal and wires, it was near shameful to admit her memory was sadly still very human. There was nothing there, nothing that indicated why she could do the things she was doing. An experience that could be best considered as almost out-of-body in nature.
Tie goes to the Players!
As the artifical-G is restored Capt Perry and Dak drop heavily onto the threadbare cockpit seats. Buffeting from planetary gravitation waves jostles you around, and you feel every bolt in the chair poking against your backside.
"Well that's good," grumbles the captain. "At least now when we get shot and the ship starts rolling we won't get plastered against the bulkheads." You can't tell if the captain is serious, but that certainly sounds serious. He bangs the intercom: "Look alive on the guns! Here they come!"
Above, the enemy freighter has finally swung around. If it had been a starfighter the battle would already be over, but this is probably the Outer Rim, and pirates here make do with what they have. It looks like an old YT, maybe a modified 2400, with a single laser cannon on a turret. You don't have the luxury of wondering at their intentions.
His dorsal laser cannon pointing perpendicular to the hull of the Elyisum Pale, Rel guesses at the range. Medium, probably. The enemy pilot is flying a straight run, perhaps thinking (correctly) that his target is dead in space. Fighting jerky foot controls, Rel eyeballs the reticle and swivels the gun mount.
Guessing by the intonation of the beep that they were successful in repairing the shields, Tavin looks around for the next thing to work on. "Where do we go to fix the sensors?" he asks his metal companion.
https://paizo.com/campaigns/v5748p75ivlvh/gameplay&page=2#64
Despite the crankiness of the gun controls, Rel's first shot is pinpoint perfect, hitting the enemy freighter dead-center. The well-placed shot has little effect on the enemy and appears to be fully absorbed by the freighter's thick hull.
The enemy freighter returns fire! With the benefit of fully functional weapons systems, the laser blast cuts squarely into the Elysium Pale's already brittle hull. The ship rocks and everyone feels as if they just had their legs kicked out from under them. The cockpit alights with arcs of blue electrical discharge. What controls were online under emergency power are ionized, and it's all Perry and Dak can do to pull away or be badly burned.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," deadpans the captain.
The Elysium Pale is dead in space: no thrust, no shields, no power...
"You're about to feel real great in a few seconds then!" Honey calls out, as she grabs a pair of cables with long metallic rods that snake along the ground, and actually seem to be attached to her. She starts slamming them together repeatedly, arcs of electricity jumping between them as she does until a stable arc continuously flows between them.
"Brace yourselves, please." Is her warning, before she plunges the arc into the reactor like cruel make-shift defibrillator for the ship's heart.
Honey's cybernetic fingers race to reassemble the main power core control module. Mal and Warren look on, waiting to hammer the housing back into place, sweat dripping from brow and chin. When the ship is hit emergency power briefly fails, and when the ship lurches and the gravity flickers you feel sickened in the pits of your souls. Will the main power core miraculously spark to life, or will the hull split open and spill you out into cold, dead space?
But then the circular room at the center of the ship comes alive, flooding with white light and a strobe of pure energy. With a hum that reaches a joyful crescendo, the Elysium Pale rejects death!
The cockpit blinks to life, with every button and indicator and alarm screaming at full intensity.
Captain Perry nearly falls out of his chair. "Rex, you amazing little spark plug! Great work! Now get me those shields--oh hot damn! Well there's plenty left to fix so don't get complacent!"
He grips the controls with intensity and a grimace turns into a grin. "Alright boys, let's play chicken." Space rolls beneath you as the captain pulls back on the yoke. Red Barren disappears from the cockpit windows. At the same time, everyone feels the force of acceleration. Inside the power room the throb of the core pummels your ears. Greff and Rel rotate their turrets forward and now both have shots at the enemy freighter dead ahead and closing fast.
Shield controls are at Dak's console in the cockpit. They are currently ionized (-1D). Dak can also fire the Blaster cannon which has a forward firing arc and is controlled in the cockpit. Follow multiple actions rules to do both or to fire more than once. Fire control is restored to the weapons but is currently ionized, so only add 1D to your Starship Gunnery rolls. Those of you not in the cockpit or the turrets can try to repair another ship system or be creative. Tavin and R3X3 are heading to the Sensor array. A quick diagnostic from any terminal would reveal which systems still need work.
Captain Perry pushes the throttle and the cranky engines complain mightily, putting the fear of death into those still near the main, and then puts the Pale into a roll. Stars spin in your view and the gravitational forces drag on you from two axis. Targeting the enemy just got a little more difficult, but with the distance closing fast, you'll be at point blank in mere seconds. And then...
"Beautiful. You're the best pair of engineering assistants a girl could ask for." She tilts her head slightly, "Now if only the captain would stop attributing all our work to Rex."
Giving the power core one last look over, she turns to a nearby console to find what's working, what's not, and what could be doing better.
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Warren took a minute to assess the state of the ship. Taking in the dialog he formed a pretty good picture what was happening. He ran over to a nearby ship intercom and broadcasted to everyone near a speaker "Hey what are the chances we can board them? I am betting their ship ain't any better then ours at the minute. Can we take the fight to them?"
"Chicken??" A huge grin emerges on the co-pilot's face as the cockpit of the 'Pale flares to life, followed quickly by a flurry of activity flipping switches and checking gauges in rapid succession. "I like how you think, Captain..."
"Board them? I dunno, maybe?" Dak calls back to Warren, still grinning. "I doubt they'd welcome a social visit at this hour. And I don't have a THING to wear."
A slight pause and then he adds, more serious in tone,"Does anyone even know WHY they're trying to kill us??" Dak momentarily considers firing the forward cannons, but then realizes that especially with the two other weapons readied, his efforts would be far better used angling the deflector and modulating the shields...especially if they were indeed about to challenge the other ship head-on!
As it is, it takes all of Dak Kandru's concentration and skill to even slightly adjust the ionized shields, much less alter the configuration on the fly. Still, Force willing, it might be enough...
Takes a shot at the perusing vessel, "damn, thats a tough bastard..." he snarks "or else we got some of the weakness after market guns!"
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"Uh, I'm not even sure why -I'm- here," Mal answers after Dak while wondering just what it is coming out of Honey and if he needs to fix it. "But I got a guess that there's lotsa reasons t' want to kill someone. Money is only most of them. Anybody here get real friendly with someone they ain't supposed to?"
Greff pokes his head up to look up to where Rel was. "Nothing a few well-placed blaster bolts won't fix," he says with a smile.
Just as he's about to follow the droid to the sensor array, the ship begins evasive maneuvers and Tavin has to balance himself to move.
Moving into position, he then waits for the droid to start working on fixing the sensors.
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"She's coming up FAST!" Dak calls out, gritting his teeth with the light freighter grows larger and larger in the viewport as the two ships charge directly at each other!
"Now you can't get away," Captain Perry mutters, his eyes wild, lips curled. "From hell's heart, I stab at thee! For hate's sake..." He seems more than a little consumed with this game of chicken as the two light freighters race toward one another on a collision course.
Rel and Greff thumb the triggering mechanism of their gun turrets. The twin laser cannons erupt with white-hot beams of death, arcing into black space at the Raider ship, still flying true and getting ever larger through the operative windows of the gun placement. It's scary and crazy and exhilarating all at the same time, and seeing the shots slam into your target gives you a momentary thrill.
But the old 2400 is a hard nut to crack, and once again your laser cannons splash against the thick hull. You see sparks erupt from the enemy ship and a web of blue electricity spreads across the steel gray shell. You've wounded her! Luckily, the laser shot from the other ship hits the Pale's reactivated forward shields, which provide more than enough buffer to deflect the superheated blast.
Perry grits his teeth and seems intent on ramming the enemy, but at the last moment the enemy ship breaks away and flies directly overhead. Your guns swivel and track, but so do those of the enemy freighter!
"Rex, quit screwing around!" shouts the captain through the intercom. "Whatever you're wasting time with right now, leave it. Hot-rig the cannons to fire-link. We need more firepower!"
Honey, Mal, and Warren gather at the nearest terminal and a quick diagnostic reveals the following ship systems are still down: Sensors, Communications, Hyperdrive, Aft-facing Shields, Landing gear, Food storage, Water systems, and exterior doors and hatches.
Tavin follows as R3X3 abandons the Sensors and wheels his way toward the main fire control system, magnetic legs having no problem with the pitch and roll of the Elysium Pale.
"One of you should go help that droid, while I do what I can to get those sensors back in order." She advises while moving to fill Tavin and Rex's spots. The jumper cables she had attached to her internal batteries is left behind with the engine core for now.
As the light freighter soars past the Elysium Pale, Dak blinks comically at the controls in front of him when he realizes that the aft-facing shields are not responding to his input commands. "Gah. Captain, we have a problem. Well, lots of 'em, but this one's big. No aft shields..."
Biting his lower lip, the young pilot pounds his fist once on the panel, scowls when it obviously does nothing helpful, then slides onto the floor and ducks below the control array, sorting through the chaotic tangle of cables and wires to check the connections and fittings, hoping that the problem is simply an issue there and not the shield generator itself.
"Might want to keep 'em off our backside...sir..."
As the raider's ship looms larger and larger in his reticle, Greff sets his jaw and eases off more shots, a small smirk on his face as the last shots hit home.
"Rust, here? Honestly..." She judges, observing Mal's work. "I didn't even notice that. Thank you."
Continues to pour blaster fire into the oncoming vessel trying to take use of the partially enabled fire control.
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"Right, I got the droid's err, back?" Warren called out as he made his way to the area the droid was in. [b]"ok Little guy, you keep doing what you are doing I will start re-routing these couplers, Let's see if we can't shunt the by-pass to compensate for the added strain of the" he continued talking while he worked outlining all of the steps he is taking.
vs 16
Greff and Rel thumb their laser cannons as the freighter careens away. This time it's Greff's shot that finds the soft spot on the 2400, twin bolts of plasma slamming into the gun turret. A small explosion rocks the enemy ship, and it fails to return fire.
Captain Perry punches the ceiling of the cockpit. "Great shot, boys! Now let's finish them off." He brings the Elysium Pale around in a tight roll, putting the old ship through punishing stress. Once again, Red Barren looms large in the forward view. The enemy freighter is trailing ion and fleeing for the planet at maximum thrust.
Honey and Mal tangle with the sensors, and the cyborg is relieved to discover the repair only necessitates a new patch cable and a reboot. In seconds, the sensors are back online, just in time for Dak to see that this is no longer a one-on-one dogfight. Another ship has joined the entanglement! This one is larger, faster, and sleeker than the freighter, a small corvette by the looks of it on the scan. It seems to pay the enemy raider ship no heed as it leaves the shallow atmosphere on an intercept course with the Elysium Pale.
Tavin and Warren lend their expertise to R3X3 at the fire control system. Clearly, this old ship is not meant to have fire-linked laser cannons.
Tactical: The YT-2400 is at Medium range; the Corvette is at Long range. If you plan to move to a new area of the ship, for a repair or whatever, that is an action, so take the penalty if you attempt to also make a repair attempt in the same round.
Part of her patience routine with repairing the sensors involved actually using them, somewhat alarming her to the fact that things just Got Worse. Getting those aft sheilds back in order seemed like a fantastic idea right about now. Her voice wrbled with irritation, "We just woke up, and everyone already seems to hate us. What in the galaxy were we doing before now?"
More work, less questions.
Greff's smile widens as his last shot connects, and he shouts "With pleasure cap'n"
"Why is that even-!?" She starts with irritation. Yelling at their captain for how ill-maintianed and hodge-podge his ship was would be best done when their survival was more certain.
Dak rights himself and sits himself on the edge of the co-pilot's seat, anxious to carry out the curious captain's orders and try to finish off the fleeing raider ship. His fingers flutter over the controls, arming the forward cannon, targeting and then firing on the freighter!
But even as he fires the amnesiatic pilot sees the incoming vessel making it's way to intercept them. "Looks like this party is just getting started, people! We've got an incoming ship, a Corvette, making for our position..."
The beeps this time didn't sound encouraging. "What is with all these wires? It looks like a bowl of spaghetti. How am I supposed to know what goes where?" Tavin says as he tries to help.
Grabbing a wire to see where it goes, there's a spark and he's holding the end of the wore with no idea where it wemt.
"More pow coming up" he says as he sights in on the enemy vessel.
Greff and Rel score direct hits against the enemy freighter but the thick hide shrugs off the laser cannons. Dak has better luck with the forward mount blaster cannons, and in successive salvos the 2400 bucks and shudders, veins of blue electrical discharge encircling the ship.
Between Honey and Mal, the aft shield is restored, and the steady coordination of Tavin, Warren, and R3X3 get Fire Control back to full operation.
"Someone get up here to man the shields!" the Captain hollers over the com. He grits his teeth and pulls hard on the yoke. The Elysium Pale breaks off it's tracking of the 2400. "We got bigger problems," he grumbles.
The wily Captain throws the old freighter into another roll, but she can only be pushed so hard...